The Memory Tree (23 page)

‘Sometimes. He can’t concentrate like he used to.’

‘Pity. He needs some sort of hobby to get him out of himself.’

Get him out of himself.
An odd term, that, when you apply it to someone like my grandfather. It seemed that more and more he was being inhabited by someone other than himself.

Eileen had taken to bringing sandwiches and a thermos of coffee when they met in the park and as they sorted the ham and pickle from the egg and lettuce, Godown thought about what she had said. ‘You could be right,’ he responded, demolishing a sandwich in one satisfying bite. ‘He’s got too much time on his hands.’

So Godown suggested that they take a break from Bible study and was surprised to find Hal meekly amenable to the suggestion. They watched television or listened to music in the evenings instead. That left the whole day free now that Hal was as good as retired. Bob was relieved when he stopped coming to the office, and continued to keep Godown on the payroll as an unofficial carer.

‘It’s Hal’s business, too. Might as well spend some of the money we make on looking after him.’ He grinned. ‘It’ll keep him out of my hair.’ Bob took pains to sound casual, but was deeply worried by his friend’s decline and resolved to speak to Zav when he returned.

Godown investigated lawn bowls, golf, tennis, ten-pin bowling, bocce. He had read somewhere that exercise is good for depression. Lawn bowls and bocce were discarded first. He couldn’t see Hal involved in team sports. Tennis was a possibility, but was Hal fit enough? In the end, golf seemed like the best solution. He and Hal could play together. No necessity for other people to be involved at all.

‘Golf?’ Hal would have none of it. ‘Do you know how many people are struck by lightning on a golf course?’

‘Only those stupid enough to play in a storm.’

‘Lightning can come out of the blue. Literally. They won’t get me on a golf course.’

‘Who? Who won’t get you?’

Hal placed a warning finger on the side of his nose. ‘You’d be surprised, my friend.’

As it turned out, Hal found his own occupation. The local gym had installed a swimming pool and he found the flyer while sorting through the mail.
Fun and fitness at the YMCA. Come and swim in our new salt water, heated pool. Pool membership
 
only also available.
Hal had been a strong swimmer at school; his long, smooth strokes earning him numerous medals and, once, a place in the interstate school swim team. He decided in an instant. Godown had been on at him about fitness and here was the perfect solution. They could swim together every morning.

‘Not me,’ said Godown. ‘Can’t swim. Never could . . .’ Anticipating Hal’s argument, he added, ‘and I never will.’

So Hal swam laps. He started with six and was soon swimming twenty-five in the fast lane. In the water, the noises abated. Mostly they stopped altogether, if you didn’t count that little dark-blue buzzing. Fifty laps. Twice a day sometimes. He got out of the water, prune-skinned but invigorated, and saw the middle-aged flab replaced by increasingly defined muscle. He looked healthier and ate better. Godown’s reports to Mrs Mac, Bob and Sealie were all positive.

‘Apparently he’s looking much healthier,’ Eileen reported as she and Alice ate their chops and veg. ‘Mr R was good to Moses in the past, but I don’t know what he’d do without him now.’

‘You neither.’

‘Me?’

Alice just smiled.

This period was a welcome respite from the worst of the voices and Hal swam as though his life depended on it. I suppose it did, in a way. He went to the pool in the mornings and often in the afternoons he and Godown drove to Carlton to give my mother a break for an hour or two. If the day was fine, they’d tuck me into my pram and take me to the park. We saw ducks, aeroplanes and one day, a kite.

‘When you’re older, little Gracie, we’ll make a kite and fly it all the way up to the moon.’ Grandad was always making promises like that.

If the weather was too hot or too wet, we’d stay inside and play This Little Piggy and Round and Round the Garden. My mother was grateful for these interludes. It’s sad to think now that she enjoyed this time away from me. Natural, I know; but sad.

Yet while Hal swam and played grandfather, while he wrote to Zav and worried that Sealie was working too hard, he had a secret. When the late news was over, he’d say goodnight to Godown and head for his room, unlocking the door and locking it again behind him. After putting on his pyjamas and dressing-gown, he’d sit in his chair and open his Bible at random. But now he understood that the texts on the page were not at all random. God was guiding his finger.

Sealie’s first days off coincided with one of Hal’s better periods. She wanted to tackle him about Mrs Mac, but Godown advised her not to.

‘He had a bad patch back there, but the swimmin’s good for him. Give it time. He’s still a bit down but lookin’ forward to you comin’ home. He always cheers up when you’re around.’

Sealie was full of news about her nursing and her eyes sparkled as she told them about Sister Iron-Knickers and the Great Bedpan Scam (the upper case was obvious from the tone of her voice). ‘Marilyn and I had been caught sneaking in late one night. Only twenty minutes, Dad,’ she said, noting Hal’s frown. ‘The second-years leave this window open and Marilyn’s a bit plump so she got stuck. I was trying to pull her through and we were killing ourselves trying not to laugh aloud. Then old Iron-Knickers came in and switched on the light. She had curlers in her hair!’ Sealie chortled at the memory of the sight. ‘And face cream!’

‘Your mother used face cream.’

Sealie corrected herself. ‘Nothing wrong with face cream or curlers. It’s just that she was trying to look dignified.’

‘Hard to look dignified in curlers and face cream,’ Hal agreed.

‘So we had bedpan cleaning duty for a week! I think it was more for laughing than for being late.’

‘Serves you right,’ Hal grinned.

‘No. Wait. Marilyn had this idea. We don’t have enough money for bets, so if we want to make a bet with someone, we bet “slaveries”.’

Godown looked uncomfortable but held his peace.

‘Annie, you know, the one I told you about last time. She owed me enough slaveries to cover most of the week.’ Sealie was enjoying herself. ‘So poor old Annie had almost finished the week, when Iron-Knickers found out. She called us all in to her office and bawled us out AND we all got another week on bedpans.’

They knew they should have disapproved, but Sealie’s high spirits were such that they laughed along with her.

They were proud to hear that she was posted to a ward and admired the photo Marilyn took of her in her nurse’s uniform.

‘You look just like a real nurse,’ Hal marvelled, and they all had another laugh. It was so much like it should be that Sealie returned to the hospital with little inkling of the extent of her father’s deterioration.

Busy to the point of exhaustion, she didn’t spend all her days off with Hal. She spent a lot of time with Kate and me. She met with Mrs Mac, and sometimes she slept. She was rostered on over Christmas and on her first day off in the New Year, she decided to visit her father.

‘I feel a bit guilty,’ she explained to Marilyn, who was anxious to introduce her brother to her good-looking new friend. ‘I haven’t seen Dad properly for ages.’

She found Hal in his study, looking out onto the garden. His Bible was open on the desk, but his mind was obviously elsewhere. Pulling up a chair she took his hand and sat with him the way she used to.

‘Penny for your thoughts, Daddy.’

Hal took her hand between both of his. ‘I don’t like the way this war’s going. Zav’s just as likely to try to be a bloody hero.’ Sealie was surprised. She had never heard her father use even a mild swear word.

‘Zav is the world’s greatest escape artist—always on the edge but always ends up okay. Anyway, you haven’t asked me how I’m going.’ She affected a pout. ‘Sister Iron-Knickers is more dangerous than any Viet Cong.’

‘You’re as good as a tonic, Sealie. I miss you both.’

Sealie looked at him shrewdly. ‘Are you keeping yourself occupied? You’re a bit young to be retired.’

‘Nothing to do with age. Just finding work all a bit boring.’ They both knew that he hadn’t been to work regularly since falling out with Bob over the wedding plans. Hal had tried unsuccessfully to communicate through their secretary, and the truth was that he found it increasingly difficult to concentrate. It had, in fact, been many weeks since he’d been to the office.

‘I can help Kate with Grace,’ he told her, his face softening. ‘She’s a great little girl, our Grace. She recognises her old grandad, you know. Loves it when I take her out in the pram.’

I did, too.

This was a period of relative peace for Hal. No witch cackles, no radio static, no sniggering and snickering. No jeering. The Voice was gone too as, one by one, the noises in his head fell silent. The last to go were the angel-songs, the cool, blue rivers of sound that washed away all other colours before themselves fading into a blank white. Hal’s mind was a
tabula rasa
: scoured, cleansed, pure, ready for the voice of God.

He didn’t know this, of course. All he felt was a blessed relief in the silence that was no longer a void. Now it was comforting and warm. He found enjoyment in simple things— his swimming, the sun and rain on his face, the smell of roast lamb.

In his newfound fitness, he’d run along the path with my pram. ‘Brrrrmm. We’re in a racing car.’ He’d scoop me up and fly me around. ‘You’re superbaby. Up, up and away!’ When he was in the right mood, my grandfather certainly knew how to have fun.

But Hal’s obsession with scripture hadn’t abated. If anything, it was worse. He no longer sought Godown’s reasoned interpretation and he read the texts in the lurid light of his delusions. One evening, feigning a yawn, he headed to his room. Godown sighed as he heard the key turn in the lock.

Now!
Hal let the Bible fall open on his lap and saw it was opened at Genesis, chapter 22. He peered at the page through his recently acquired reading glasses.
God said unto Abraham ‘Behold, here I am.’

‘Yes, Lord. I’m here to know your will.’ Hal returned to the text.

Then God said unto Abraham ‘Take now thy son, thine only son Isaac whom thou lovest and get thee to the land of Moriah and offer him there for a burnt offering
 
.
 
.
 
.’

‘No!’
It was too horrifying to even think about. But this was God’s sacred word. Who was he to deny God? Hal began to pace the room, running his hands through thinning hair.
I
 
can’t. Not Zav. Not my only son.
He stopped, feeling a flood of relief.
He’s not even here, Lord. He’s in your keeping, not mine.

And the voice of God was momentarily silenced and Hal was reprieved. But he was trembling uncontrollably and his shirt was drenched in a cold sweat.

15

O
N 31
J
ANUARY 1968
, Z
AV
came off picket at ten o’clock, ready to roll into his foxhole. Every cell in his body screamed for sleep, but before entering that dark space, he stopped and listened as he always did. Hearing a sinister scraping sound, he groaned. ‘Hey, Scottie. Can you give us a hand? Scorpion invasion.’