The Man in the Shed

  ‘I think so,’ I reply, and it is true that I am beginning to see something here.

  ‘Gran thought an opinion like that would be too much for their relationship to bear. And after all, she did love Harold.’

  She is about to start on the next rose bush. She has raised the cleaver when something makes her return it to the ground.

  ‘Well, Tom?’ she asks, and this time it definitely is a question. Jude is simply waiting to see whether we are together on this.

  And really there is no choice that I can see. It occurs to me that I am about to help in the destruction of a garden. I wish there was a reason not to. I wish its destruction wasn’t so necessary. Perhaps it is the stillness of Jude’s eyes or the way she holds her mouth that I understand—I understand all right that something is in the balance. Yes. That’s it. Something important is in the balance. I am going to have to help. There is no way around it.

  We work steadily. I have fetched from the shed Harold’s old gardening boots and, while Jude continues to slash at the rose bushes, I work with the pitchfork throughout the morning.

  Harold’s rose bushes are lying on their side, perhaps as many as fifty or sixty, maybe more, but I have had enough. I thank my lucky stars that I never met Harold; otherwise, I am fairly sure, I could not have done it. As it is, by late morning I feel I’ve done my dash. I float the idea of a cup of tea and Jude says, ‘Just this row.’

  I am in the kitchen when the Laurensons and Kerrs pull up in the drive across the street. They pile out of the shiny Pajero. Their faces are flushed with good deeds. I imagine their legs are scratched and bleeding. I can almost smell the orange peel which although biodegradable is a foreign thing, and so it will have been conscientiously stuffed inside the pockets of their oilskins.

  I attend to the jug and when I return to the window the Laurensons and Kerrs are looking directly back my way. A second later Jude comes into view. She is walking across the road in Harold’s old green gardening coat. Her hair is matted from the light rain and her bare feet are red from the damp cold. Yet she is gallantly composed. Perhaps it is the green coat with its military overtones that makes me think of Jude as the cagey general wandering across the battleground divide.

  She is beside the Pajero now; I have an idea Jude must have said something about our morning’s work, because as one, they gaze back at the house. They look a little startled, then one by one they start to laugh. I have never seen the Laurensons or the Kerrs laugh before. From the distance of the kitchen I find that I am smiling—if not quite laughing. They look back at the house again and there is just time to step back from the window. I have an idea what my wife has proposed. There is just time to pull on my jeans and T-shirt. By the time I arrive back at the window the Laurensons and the Kerrs are following my wife through the front gate.

  swimming to australia

  Warren was first into the water. He lifted his knees and kicked out over the shallow surf and dived beneath a breaker. Warren made it out beyond the breakers and lay on his back. Any moment now he would call out ‘Marilyn’ as was his wont when underneath a car and needing something from his toolbox.

  We caught up to Warren—Tess, Bron and myself—and Mum, covering the last few metres underwater, surfaced next to Warren and surprised him with a kiss. Then Warren spoke up and said, ‘Australia is out there.’ He pointed with his hand and we tried to make out the exact place on the white horizon. Tess began to say how she couldn’t see a thing—but lost the confidence to finish the sentence, or say it loud enough for Warren to hear. ‘Yep,’ said Warren. Australia, he meant. Our mother stared over his shoulder to the horizon with a dreamy smile, as if it had just become clear to her what the rest of us could not make out.

  Well, Warren had seen what he wanted to see. Without a word he swung around and headed for shore, and the rest of us obediently followed. We picked ourselves up out of the shallows and wiped the salt from our eyes, and the first thing we saw was Warren sitting on the wet sand, pulling on the wet ends of his beard. ‘Same old place,’ he said, and to Mum as she bent down for the towel, ‘I’m the abo with the spear. Watch out.’

  We drove to McDonald’s—Warren ordered nothing for himself which confirmed that he was upset, and at some point, either in the car or in the doorway at home, Mum kissed him on the cheek and said, ‘Maybe some day.’ But that was Warren, we told ourselves. Like a child when he couldn’t get what he wanted.

  Other times, usually after dinner, we drove to the end of the quarry road and watched in silence the sun deliver itself to that place Warren had pointed out, and felt ourselves to be fools for not following.

  ‘Keith says formwork is a hundred-dollar-a-day job there now,’ he said.

  It grew awfully quiet. We could hear our own breathing. Finally Warren said, ‘Yep. I don’t know for the life of me why we need to stick around here.’

  Then, a week later, ‘How would the Musters like to team up with the Gilberts and travel over to Oz?’ Warren happened to be cutting his meat, which he kept at as if nothing controversial had been uttered. We exchanged looks but were slow to comment. Then Warren put down his knife and fork, and got up to leave, slamming the door to the kitchen. We heard the car start up, and the spit of gravel as he reversed out to the road. Mum put on a brave face. ‘Not to worry,’ she said. Warren had got a bit antsy.

  We travelled out to the West Coast beaches this particular afternoon, the last week in February. Warren was in a serious state of mind. Earlier there had been some shouting from the bedroom, after which Warren emerged and rounded us up into the car. I didn’t care one way or the other, but, of course, choice didn’t enter into it. It never did with Warren.

  He drove faster than was comfortable. Every other driver was an arsehole, and usually Mum would have said something like, ‘Warren, better late than dead,’ but she didn’t. He was in one of those kinds of moods.

  At the beach he pulled off his T-shirt and kicked his slippers inside the car. It was up to each of us to keep up—to get out of the car so he could lock up. He was in no mood to be delayed.

  Tess complained of scorched feet so I picked her up and carried her as far as the wet sand. A bunch of kids were playing on a log, and a man wearing goggles swam side-on to the waves with a painfully slow crawl action. Every now and then a wave gently lifted him up, inspected him, and gently put him down again.

  Warren dived and smacked his fists. He bullied his way out beyond the breakers. Further out he lay on his back, staring up at variable skies. None of us felt like swimming to his exact whereabouts, but since we were seated at the same table, as it were, there wasn’t much else to do but look the other way. Mum had a race with the girls to hurry them along. We duly fell abreast of Warren. We were a good distance from shore but none of us gave it a thought. We had hit a warm seam in the current. ‘Warm as bathwater, isn’t it?’ said Warren. And once to Bron, ‘This way’—as if she had veered offcourse.

  Mum said it wouldn’t surprise her if we bumped into an oil tanker way out here. Bron immediately said she wanted to go back.

  My mother laughed. ‘Just a little further, Bron. You are doing fine. All of you.’

  Then she put in a couple of powerful strokes to where Warren was shuffling along on his back. I heard her say, ‘We need to talk.’

  ‘I’m all ears,’ he said.

  ‘Not out here.’ But then she said, ‘Supposing we did, what about the children?’

  I heard Warren say, ‘We’ve been through that one enough times already, Marilyn.’

  ‘What about Tess—her friends? And Bron? Jimbo just about to start high school …’

  ‘New friends. New schools,’ he said.

  ‘Fine,’ said our mother.

  ‘Fine is what?’ he asked.

  Some spluttering from Tess attracted attention. She had swallowed sea water. So Warren rolled over on his back. He idled there while Mum swam back to Tess. She wiped away a trail of snot for Tess to say she wanted to go back. She was cold.
br />   ‘Go back to what?’ called out Warren.

  ‘We’re on an adventure, sweet pea. Yes, we are,’ she said, nodding her head, I think to reassure herself of the idea. She called back to Warren, ‘I’ve just told Tess we’re on an adventure. Isn’t that right?’

  ‘Pretend. Pretend,’ he said.

  ‘I hate Warren,’ Tess said quietly.

  ‘Warren loves you,’ Mum said.

  Warren paddled his feet and blew up a spurt of water like a whale. ‘That’s right. Mollycoddle her, Marilyn. Every time that girl sniffles the entire company has to pack it in.’

  ‘Tessa is fine, aren’t we, sweet?’

  Tess nodded, allowed herself to be placed back in the water under her own power. She put her head down and swam furiously, out past Warren.

  ‘Dawn Fraser,’ he said, now sitting in the water. ‘That’s another thing, Marilyn. We would have new heroes. More of them.’ And he began to reel off the names of famous cricketers, tennis and league players. ‘The Great White Shark,’ he said, because he knew I had done some caddying before Christmas.

  ‘Not to mention climate,’ he added, and we stared out to sea.

  Back the other way the beach had sunk from view. We seemed to be bobbing above the tops of farm scrub.

  At last Mum thought to ask, ‘What are we doing out here, Warren?’ Her brave smiles had been deceptive after all. And of course. She must be worried. Probably she had been worried the whole time. But Warren pretended innocence.

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘You tell me. I know what I’m doing. Jimbo, what about you?’

  I said I did.

  ‘See? Jimbo knows what he’s doing. What about you, Marilyn?’

  Then Bron piped up that she didn’t want to go to Australia. She was young enough to say what she felt, and I for one was pleased she had, even if it was just to say that she didn’t want to leave behind her dolls.

  ‘We’ll buy more. Better dolls in Australia,’ said Warren.

  ‘But I want Hetti.’

  ‘Hetti can come too. Jesus,’ he said. ‘What a party of sadsacks. Sing a song somebody.’

  When nobody did Warren stared to sing ‘Advance Australia Fair’. He lay on his back as effortlessly as before and sang at the top of his voice. Barely noticeable at all, Mum had started to hum ‘God Defend New Zealand’. Why, way out at sea, did I feel so embarrassed? In between Warren’s bellows, we could hear Mum’s fragile tune. I don’t think she was particularly aware of what she was doing, at least not until Warren had finished and she was still carrying on.

  ‘Well, well,’ said Warren, as Bron joined in with breathless gasps. I could see Bron’s feet and arms scrabbling to tread water, to stay afloat, and her face growing red with the struggle of getting out the words. I wished she would stop. It was a stupid thing to be doing way out here, without anything solid underneath us. At the end of ‘Advance Australia Fair’ Warren might have turned and stroked for the New South Wales coastline. But when Mum and Bron finished I felt as though we were all about to sink to the bottom, that there was nothing in this world to keep us afloat, other than this old Victorian prayer.

  ‘You silly bugger, Warren,’ Mum said then, and swam over to where Warren floated secure as a log. She was halfway there when Bron said she had had enough. She was tired, and was heading back to shore.

  ‘Bron. Please, honey.’ But Bron did not appear to hear. She was breast-stroking for the beach. Mum turned around to Warren, who was singing in a silly voice a few more bars from ‘Advance Australia Fair’. He was enjoying himself—anyone could see that. Then Mum turned back to me and Tess. She said she wanted us to stay out here. ‘I want us to stay together,’ is what she said, but below the waterline I could see her legs quietly propelling her towards Warren. For the first time it occurred to me that her problem had become our problem. She reached Warren, and the two of them smiled back at us. Warren had one of his hands inside Mum’s togs and they were looking at us, pretending that there was nothing for us to see that might cause alarm.

  *

  Maybe Warren was right after all. Even in late March summer hung on—women and girls wore summery dresses—a fringe of surf stretched to the white cloud, and beyond. There was a lightness here that included all manner of possibility, whereas, at home, everything had seemed anchored to the ground.

  Warren’s friend Keith, a man in shorts and desert boots, was there to collect us. He was pleased to see Warren. Tipped his hat to Mum. But the rest of us caused him to scratch his brow. Mum and Warren squeezed into the front; me, Bron and Tess sat in the back of the ute.

  The air was bone dry, and Bron complained her eyeballs were hurting. Soon we were driving away from the city and the air smelt of bark and leaves. And suddenly of hot road mix, where we slowed for a road gang. Then for a long time we were on a highway. Driving to where—none of us knew. A few times Mum looked back over Warren’s arm, which was slung over the top of the seat, to see that Tess wasn’t hanging off the end of the tray.

  Bron woke Tess soon as we hit the sea. We had entered a stream of traffic and were making slow work of it along a beach esplanade in the shadow of tall buildings. We stopped at the golden arches. Warren ran across for burgers and shakes, and we set off again, heading inland.

  There were times in the days ahead when each of us thought we could smell the coast. Perhaps it was simply a longing to be where other people were. In the dusty quiet of the country it was a lot to wish for. Sometimes we sat on the porch and followed a red dust cloud across the flat scrubland, which traced the progress of a four-wheel drive. At night Keith put roo bars on his ute and from our beds we heard it smack through the undergrowth—the rip of rifle-shot, and the high whine of a vehicle held in low gear.

  Warren and Keith went out shooting most nights. Friends from school it turned out. They took it in turns to hold the spotlight and shoot. Another man did the driving, a fellow from the Danish steelie gang with whom Keith and Warren were contracted to help build the retirement village—Ocean View—in the foothills. Warren sometimes returned home and reported having spotted the sea. On clear days it was possible—as well, it was comforting to know it was there; that there was this edge, that is to say, a limit to this new life of ours.

  Our house for the time being was the former headmaster’s house in the grounds of an abandoned country school. We were saving ourselves a bundle living here, according to Warren.

  Although Mum did say that she felt she would be able to chip in were we on the coast, where jobs were to be had cleaning out motel rooms and apartments. ‘For that matter,’ she said, ‘I might even teach piano.’

  I don’t think Warren heard her. He walked to the fridge, took out two beer cans, and tossed one to Keith.

  We were into our second month and everything that had been new was now familiar and practised. Warren couldn’t think why Tess had to land awkwardly after all the times she had landed perfectly okay. Most times Warren slapped the side of his door and we jumped clear, like hunting dogs, from the back of the ute outside the school gates. This occasion the ute started to roll away, then stopped. Warren got out angry at the noise Tess was making. She was screaming and it was hard to know which part of her hurt. Warren stroked her hair and pinched her cheek. But it turned out to be her wrist, which he then held and kissed. He babied Tess until Keith called out something like, ‘We’re running late.’

  But Tess was complaining that her arm hurt. Really hurt. Warren had another look. He gave it a waggle and pronounced it okay. He had done the same thing plenty of times in his younger days on the rugby field—it always felt worse than it really was. It was never more than a sprain which on the ladder of injuries was just a notch up from a bruise. And there was nothing you could do about sprains other than exercise patience and let nature take its course. At the same time he wandered back to the ute with a troubled look.

  I think Bron, as much as myself, wanted to believe Warren. Tess was prone to overreaction. And already her tears had dried. Sh
e didn’t mention it to her teacher and had no further complaint until that evening when she said it was hurting again.

  Warren and Keith were watching the league on the box. Warren stretched his bare foot forward to the TV dials and with his big toe turned up the commentary.

  But Tess was crying hard. Everything she must have held in all day was coming out. She hated Australia. Her arm hurt. And as much as Warren leant forward to concentrate he wasn’t succeeding. Finally he had had enough, and yelled so he could be heard, ‘Marilyn, will you shut her up, for Christ’s sakes.’ Then he shook his head and I heard him mutter to Keith, ‘Every time you can bet your bottom dollar that little …’ Keith wasn’t saying anything. His eyes were stuck to the box. Apart from the commentary the only noise was coming from Tess. Warren shook his head again. This time though he got up and walked over to Tess. He stroked her hair. ‘What did I say this morning, Tess? I said, “It’s a sprain”.’

  Mum wondered aloud whether we had gotten travel and health insurance, which only further aggravated Warren.

  He said to Keith, ‘Can you believe this? A small girl falls over and suddenly we’re looking at airlifts to hospitals. Tessa. Tess. Listen to me …’

  But she was crying too hard. Sobbing her eyes out. Mum led her to the room where she and Warren slept, and Tess’s sobbing carried on in there, through the doors, in competition with the league.

  Warren returned to the sofa and sat down heavily.

  ‘What have I done to deserve this?’

  ‘I give up,’ said Keith.

  Then Warren noticed me lurking, and ordered me to the couch.

  ‘The guy with the ball. See him? There. That’s Bella. He’s crunched through more bones than you’ve had hot dinners.’

  ‘That would be true,’ said Keith.

  Then Warren said to Keith, ‘It’s still all new to him.’

  I heard them shooting later that night. I lay with a sheet over me, listening to the crack of the undergrowth and Keith’s ute. It was going on later than usual. Mum came and sat on the end of my bed. ‘Still up?’ she said, trying to be jolly. A light from the hallway found her face, a full cheekbone of smile that with a little prompting, I felt sure, might turn to something else. ‘I suppose it all seems a bit strange. A new school. New country,’ she said, and I knew she was waiting for me to say it wasn’t that at all. She was daring me to speak her thoughts for her.