Last Day in the Dynamite Factory (14 page)

The old wool store is a shell of dull red bricks, high timber beams and opaque clerestories. The upper-level flooring has been removed but the building is sound and dry. Chris knows he can create something that will provide the developer, Roger Noland, with real value from his investment.

‘I'm thinking mainly three-bedders,' says Noland. ‘A few twos. What do you reckon?'

‘Other way about,' says Chris.

The area, in the back streets, is still mostly industrial. People wanting three-bedroom units would probably go closer to the river. High density, though he dislikes it, is the most efficient use of space and will provide the best return. He squints up at the rafters that have held the roof in place for the last hundred or so years. Those rafters, so briefly exposed, will soon disappear behind insulation and gyprock and probably not see daylight again for another fifty years, by which time Chris will, in all likelihood, be dead.

‘Chatty, aren't you?' says Noland.

‘Sorry,' says Chris, forgetting that his silence can be unsettling, but reluctant to speak until a sentence is ready. He knows his client will smile when the construction is done, when the squabbles between the sparky and the chippy over where to put the power outlets are forgotten and the facade – still gracious – satisfies those who need to pretend things are as they've always been. And despite a new interior, in some ways they will be. Over a century, clothes and customs will change but human lusts, loves and despair will not.

The project doesn't interest him, but the project isn't the problem. Neither is Noland. Ever since he found Jo's diary Chris has been unable to engage in work. All he wants is to throw a knapsack on his back and go someplace where the only person who can find him is himself.

Yeah. You're shrivelling up like an old mummy.

A troubling image forms of his corpse lying stiff and curled among the folds of an ancient paint-caked dust sheet in a room long forgotten.

‘Well?' says Noland.

‘I'll jot down some ideas and get them to you. A week; two at the most.'

When the family gathers over a rare meal together the following Monday evening, Chris is up to his eyeballs in Roger Noland's project. It's not a difficult job but he's been working on it all weekend and getting nowhere. Concentration has fled.

Having Phoebe and Archie at the table is normally a pleasure but he has just told them their grandfather really
is
their grandfather and evoked a stunned silence. He feels guilty without knowing why.

‘Gross,' says Archie, staring at his plate as if the food is contaminated. ‘What an arsehole.'

Diane looks sharply at him. ‘Don't speak about your grandfather like that.'

‘But he is, Mum. Pretending not to be Dad's father or our grandfather – it's a shithouse thing to do.'

‘One of these days, Archie, you'll learn not to pass judgement without weighing all the facts.'

Forlorn hope, Chris suspects. It's verdict first, for Archie; trial later – maybe. His son pushes away his plate. Chris wonders how he has room for food, anyway. He spent half an hour before dinner sprawled in Chris's armchair with a beer and a huge bag of potato crisps which he crammed into his mouth so forcefully they scattered down his clothes and onto the chair.

Diane's chicken paprika, Phoebe's favourite, is as good as always but Phoebe isn't eating hers either. ‘Why?' she says. ‘Why didn't they tell you, Dad?'

‘To protect him from the kind of gossip that would make his life hell,' says Diane, resolutely forking rice into her mouth.

‘He's forty-eight, Mum – he doesn't need protecting. They should have told him thirty years ago.' She folds her serviette, pushes away her plate and sighs. ‘You think you know somebody, and then they do something like this. I don't get it.'

A raggedy silence settles, which Archie eventually breaks with a burp, shaking Chris from his thoughts. ‘How's work?' he asks Phoebe.

‘Not bad. I've actually been let loose on an old Queenslander at New Farm. The owners are cool. I've talked them into keeping the tiles in the bathroom from the sixties – navy and white, in beautiful condition – and a massive four-door fridge from the fifties that still works perfectly.'

‘Great.'

‘They want a second storey which will muck up the line but I'm setting it at the back so all you'll see from the road is the timber fascia. I'll take out the rear wall, keep the floorboards and the T & G and put French doors onto a new verandah.'

Chris nods. ‘And life otherwise? James is … well?'

‘Yes, he's fine.' Phoebe picks up her wine glass, then puts it down again. ‘We've been together six months now. Some kind of anniversary, I suppose.'

‘An excuse to celebrate?' Archie says hopefully.

‘Could be.' Phoebe glances at him. ‘If you cook.'

‘I'll cook if you and Jim supply the wine.'

‘Don't call him Jim. He doesn't like it.'

Archie smirks. ‘Jamie-Pooh.'

‘Shut up, Archie.'

He turns to his mother. ‘Speaking of anniversaries, Mother dear, how are you and Dad going to celebrate a quarter of a century of wedded bliss?'

‘I don't know. It's not until August.'

‘What's your plan, Father?'

‘Dunno. We haven't discussed it.'

‘Let me do you a party. I'll cater.'

‘That's sweet, Archie,' says Diane, ‘but no.'

‘Come on, Mum. At the very least a five-star meal with a few friends. Dad can source the best wine, foot the bill and buy you a cripplingly expensive anniversary present. Right, Father?'

‘Sounds fine to me,' says Chris, touched, as he always is, by Archie's tenderness towards his mother. ‘Would you to like to go away for a few days, Di?'

‘No,' she says, rather too quickly. ‘Thanks, all the same.'

Chris feels himself redden. The memory of the last time they went away for a wedding anniversary – their fifteenth – is still sharp and humiliating. Their trip to Fiji began promisingly enough. With no kids, no cooking, daily massages and the
shush
of waves on their doorstep, Diane seemed different – looser, more relaxed. On the wide, white-sheeted bed, caressed by a salty breeze, ripened by sweet fruit and tangy wine, he'd kissed every inch of her flesh. It rose to his touch and gently, gently he entered her and she moved with him and cried out and he whispered in her ear, ‘Yes, Di …
yes
…'

But his words had the effect of a bucket of ice. She froze. Gathered in her wayward desire and left her body to do with as he pleased. He willed her back but it was too late. He rolled over, stared up at the fan on its journey to nowhere and felt like slitting his throat. Words … or maybe the sound of his voice – either way, he'd destroyed it. Never had disappointment been so bitter.

Yet, there was a time when words might have worked. After her father died, Diane tried to draw close to her mother but Valerie resisted. Diane shrugged off the rebuffs but the night of her mother's death, Chris, on the edge of sleep, heard a sound he didn't recognise. A strange crusty utterance that sounded like hiccups. He put out his hand and Diane turned to him, her face damp with tears.

‘She never loved me.'

‘Oh, Di.' He pulled her close. ‘She did, in her own weird way.'

But he had doubts. Valerie's remoteness defied any definition of love he knew. Twelve years of excellent report cards from her school – an achievement that even coaxed grudging respect from her father – left her mother indifferent. Only at their wedding did she show real approval, eyeing her daughter's gently swollen belly and her new husband and commenting briefly, ‘Well done, dear.' As Chris held his wife, he sensed a chance to convince her she wouldn't fall apart if she opened up. But the only language he could summon was desire, and longing made him hasty. He kissed her face and stroked her body and he knew he was going too fast but he couldn't help himself. Diane put her arms around him and he slid inside her and rode her gently until it was over but he knew with every inch of his being that he'd failed her. Failed himself. They fell asleep with their bodies touching but their souls apart, and in the morning her tears were gone.

‘Dad – where are you?' Phoebe is peering at him with an uncertain smile.

He shakes his head.

‘Grandpa?'

He nods.

‘It's sad – you know? Sort of … pathetic. Something he and Granny must have started and got stuck with – like the sorcerer's apprentice. Bigger mess. Bigger secret.' She sighs. ‘Poor Granny. Imagine. Her husband and her sister. Yet she loved you. What a heart.'

Chris looks at his daughter and nods slowly, realising he's been so fixated on himself and Ben, he's given little thought to how difficult things must have been for Jo.

‘That's settled then,' Archie says, hijacking the conversation. ‘A no-expense-spared anniversary dinner.'

Chris makes coffee while Diane loads the dishwasher.

‘You need to set an example for Archie,' she says.

‘In what way?'

‘Stop acting like this business with Ben is some catastrophe. If you move on, Archie's more likely to do likewise. It's well past time you did.'

‘You know what, Diane? Just for once I wish you'd put yourself in my shoes.'

‘I have, and they don't fit,' she snaps. ‘I understood your initial shock, but you're so morose and self-absorbed lately I hardly recognise you. You need to move on.'

Chris bangs a cup down in front of her and slops in coffee to the brim. ‘Yes ma'am. Moving on, right away. Enjoy your coffee, but make sure you don't choke on your self-righteous advice.'

In his den, he puts
Les Misérables
in the boom box, clamps on the headphones and turns his thoughts to Jo. Phoebe was right. Jo was the one stuck with the fallout, and she dealt with it valiantly. Took him in, mothered him, loved him. But did she really believe that a lifetime of silence, based on her fear of losing him, was justifiable?

Chris drags her boxes towards him and takes out her journals. The earliest one begins with Liam's birth – nearly two years after they adopted Chris. If there were earlier diaries, he's certain they're gone; his and Ben's cleanout of the house was thorough. He trawls painstakingly though every diary but finds nothing. He changes the CD and turns up the music.

‘I'm not who you think I am,

Not that simple, foolish man

Yoooou used to knoooooow …'

As he picks out the words in his rough, tuneless voice, there's a tap on his shoulder. Diane's mouth is moving but he can't hear her words. He takes off the headphones. ‘What?'

‘I said, it's time you came to bed.'

‘What are you – my mother?' He peers at his watch. ‘It's only ten o'clock. I'll come when I'm ready.'

‘You have work in the morning, don't forget.'

‘How could I for-bloody-get?' He slaps the headphones back on but music fails to erase a persistent image he's had lately of Fletcher, packing. Stuffing his knapsack with T-shirts, underpants, toothbrush, torch, broken biscuits and bow and arrows, and going out through the front door, between the strips of lawn he's mowed all his married life, up the street and around the corner, past Prime Video and Helen's Hair Klinik and the Seven Day Pharmacy, plodding along on his sturdy pancake feet.

Where are you going, Fletcher – Coomera?

No. I'm going where I was headed forty years ago and never made it.