For Everyone Concerned (5 page)

I can recall no details of how I arrived at the room in a neighbouring suburb in which a three-hour seminar was being held on door-to-door selling of imitation leather credit card-holders. I remember on this day visiting the Student Job Centre at Melbourne University, as I had often been advised to do by the woman. And I remember, as I was reading the notices of available jobs on small filing cards pinned to a large board on the wall of the Centre, feeling, firstly, the freedom that paid work would bring me from my brother’s flat and from the woman’s constant reminders
of my debt to my brother and the worthlessness of my pursuits—which
exhilarated
me—and, secondly, terror at the distance I had walked on this hot day and the thought that I was now separated from the work of fiction I had put aside on the arm of the chair in the lounge of my brother’s flat—which
crushed
me—and that instead of reading books which I sometimes dreamed I had written, I was now reading notices about the rates offered in the suburb of Prahran for lawn-mowing services.

The man who was taking the seminar on door-to-door selling was wearing a shirt and tie during the first hour of the seminar. During the second hour he was wearing a shirt, having taken off the tie. In the third and final hour he had taken off his shirt because of the heat and the humidity and underneath he was wearing a white teeshirt. I can recall no details of what the man in the shirt and tie said, though I remember the particular moment of his taking off the shirt and revealing the tattoos he had on the biceps of both arms. In that instant I knew that the man was taking more money in commission from his sellers than he said was the case in the seminar. And I realised that without his shirt and tie, I could now see that the skin on the man’s face was badly scarred. His shirt and tie had not been covering up in any way the scarred skin but it was only when he took off the shirt and tie that I could see the scars. Also I imagined that I was
hearing his speech deteriorate across the three hours. Just as the man’s skin had deteriorated, so his speech had deteriorated, I thought. So that the man who had started the seminar in a shirt and tie, speaking very politely about selling imitation leather credit card-holders door-to-door, was, I thought, by the end of the seminar, only half-dressed, coarsely spoken, and, I imagined, moving his arms in such a way as to make his tattoos show exaggeratedly large.

During the three hours of the seminar I sometimes felt exhilarated that I would not have to pretend on this day to my brother when he came home with the tall bottles of Fosters beer that I had been outside and that I had not been sitting in the same chair all day wasting my time reading while, in the woman’s words, my debt
ticked over
. I felt pleased and triumphant to have something of interest to tell the woman when she came home from work to ask me again about the beer in the fridge.

While the man taking the seminar spoke, I was already forming in my mind the sentences which I would say to my brother and to the woman. I remembered thinking, as I watched the man’s tattoos, that the woman, after all, had been perfectly right about my laziness, my wastefulness, and my complete inability to move from the chair and pay off the debt of several hundred dollars which I owed my brother. I was, after all, I now recognised,
a parasite on my
brother
’
s good nature
, and that what I had done was simply to move from the chair I had been sitting in in Wellington, fifteen hundred miles to the chair in my brother’s flat in Melbourne.

I now realised that until this day I had paid no attention to the actual sky outside the window of my brother’s flat but only to the skies which filled the pages of the works of fiction into which I sometimes imagined myself being lifted under the power of my brother’s blue-coloured cans of Fosters beer.

During the three hours of the seminar I sometimes thought of the work of fiction I had been reading and had put aside on this day. And I thought of how much I hated the woman who had made me do such a thing and who had made me see myself in this way. And I thought of how much I hated my brother’s weakness in living with the woman.

Several months after I received the phone call which is mentioned in the first sentence of this story, I was sitting in the same room as the American writer mentioned in another part of this story who had spoken of
getting
even
through writing. The room was not in the house of the writer, though I had, at an earlier time, looked in the pages of the phone book and
walked past
the house which is listed as the writer’s address.

The writer was giving a lecture in this room on the subject of Philosophical Classics. I can recall none
of the details of what the writer said about this subject, except an example he was giving as to the part Reason played in the life of our minds in which he mentioned a visit to the horse races. Say I go to the races, the writer said, and this is unlikely and indeed the Greeks would say I had lost my Reason by going to the races, that it was
a waste of time
, but I am at the races and how am I to pick my horse?

While the writer was speaking about picking a horse, I was thinking of the names of two horses, Gin Rhythm and Impressionism, and also of my brother who, for two years, had followed a system he had read about in a book on betting. It was a complicated system which involved entering in long, thin columns many numbers and then calculating mathematically a percentage figure which translated into that horse’s chances, with that rider on board, on that track, under those skies, of winning or placing in the race. After more than two years of following the system, my brother calculated that he had come out about even, or slightly worse in terms of money outlaid and money returned. It was not unusual for my brother to win up to a thousand dollars or more on one day and then to lose a corresponding amount the next. And that through these wild swings, he had come out after two years at about even, or slightly down.

I remembered one evening of my second visit to Melbourne when my brother had showed me the log
book where all the numbers and calculations he used in his system were written. The instant my eyes had settled on the endless columns of figures which filled pages and pages of my brother’s book, I felt restless and anxious in the way that viewing any work of infinite patience always affects me. I remembered thinking in despair of the hundreds of hours which my brother must have wasted in writing these worthless marks on to the pages of his log book.
I despaired of his weakness
in submitting for more than two years to the endless routine of entering the numbers in their long, thin columns.

Then, as my brother was speaking
passionately
about the system and its rigorous tracking of every possible variable in the running of a race, of the search for an equation adequate to all factors of environment, skill, past performance, whim, and chance, of the absolute
impossibility
of finding such an equation but of the endless tinkering and reformulating of existing systems in an effort towards completing exactly this
hopeless task
, I began to see the figures not as columns which
bullied
my brother but as the work of a careful, responsive hand which sought in the finest mathematical adjustments a sequence by which something might be finally guessed, and I saw in the arrangement of the numbers themselves, in the shape of their marks on the page, a kind of beauty, as if every evening for more than two years my brother had taken
cotton and a needle and painfully stitched the columns of figures through the pages of the log book.

I then remembered what I had completely forgotten, that when my brother was a boy he had been interested in painting and had attended Art Classes and had, through the ages of twelve, thirteen and fourteen, filled many canvases. He had, of course, I now thought, done several passable imitations of the works of famous painters, propping up books which contained reproductions of these works beside his easel in the bedroom we shared as boys. In addition to these copies, my brother had, of course, produced his own paintings, two of which still hung on the walls of my parents’ house. I remembered also that when he was a boy he had wanted to become an architect, before, as a young man he had travelled to Melbourne and finished up where he was now, somehow, in a job which, he said,
used no part of his brain
.

I had completely forgotten all of this, though whenever I visited my parents’ house, I looked at one painting in particular which my brother did as a boy of fourteen. It is a simple painting with very few things in it, just a tree in a field. But the field is a thickly applied gold-coloured crop of some sort—wheat or corn— which gleams in the foreground with a light which is almost too bright for the eye to settle on, so that one’s sight travels over this luminous field towards the brown-coloured tree which sits in the distance. And
often my eye has travelled like this across the expanse of my brother’s burning field with joyful anticipation, as if it is very hot under the clear, pale blue sky and that there amongst the far-off dark branches I will find shade. It is seen as though from the wide, clear window of a passing train or vehicle and, indeed, my brother painted it from a photographic slide my father took from just such a travelling vantage point; through the windscreen of our family car while on holiday in Spain several months before our return from London to Wellington and my first visit to Melbourne aged eight years.

I then thought of the phone call I had received several months after I had returned from my fourth visit to Melbourne. On the fifth day of this last visit I had imagined receiving such a phone call upon my return to Wellington. Or rather, I had imagined receiving a different call, with the news that no more books would appear which carried on their gold-coloured spines the name of the writer who is the subject of this story. Instead, the call I had received was from my mother who had just learned from a letter written by my sister living in Melbourne that the woman who had been living with my brother for several years had left him for good to travel to a distant part of Western Australia which my brother had no interest in travelling to. My sister had written that as a result of the woman’s leaving, my brother
had become even more uncommunicative than was his habit and that she was now
worried about his future
. She had written that all my brother did now was sit inside his house drinking beer and whisky and that he was leaving the job he had had for almost eight years in the Commonwealth Serum Laboratory to apply for entrance into a course in Design at a local school it was almost impossible to get into.

As my mother told me over the phone what my sister had written, I could hear in my mother’s voice the exhilaration and relief which I also shared in listening to the news of the woman leaving my brother
for good
. I heard and felt the shared exhilaration and relief when she spoke of the sadness of the situation and of her own worries for my older brother’s future. She repeated the words my sister had written, saying that it was an almost
impossible
thing my brother was doing. And as my mother was speaking, I was thinking of the image which the writer who is the subject of this story had used in the film my brother and I had seen together in Melbourne, to describe his own process of composition.The writer, whose feathered hat my brother and I had looked for on Derby Day at Flemington Race Track, had said he wrote sentences by placing each word into position
as if he was using tweezers
and that this task was almost an impossible one, though it was
the only task
, he said,
he considered worthwhile
.

The American writer went on with his lecture by
saying that he would have no other method of picking a horse than by settling on a name which appealed to him.
No Forgiveness
, he said, there’s a name I like, so I put my money on
No Forgiveness
, which method of choosing, as the Greeks will tell you, is a complete waste of time.

And while the writer, whose books I alone had truly loved as a young would-be writer in the years between 1984 and 1989, spoke of the horse in his mind named No Forgiveness, I remember thinking that perhaps I would now be able to leave the room in which I was sitting and return to the house, on whose walls are fixed images of the writer whom I had imagined as my father rising from the brown soil through the lilac of a special country blue sky, and there begin, finally and truthfully, to outline the story which appears on these pages.

—She must be feeling better if she wants her own nightie.

—Why don’t I go and get it?

—No, no, no.

—Why not, Dad? And you wait here.

—No, no.

—Gimme the keys.

—No. I’m very worried, Kevin.

—But asking for her nightie, that’s a good sign.

—A woman could, you could chop their arm off, they’d want their …

—It’s reassuring, I suppose. To get your own stuff around you, hospitals are so …

—He said she’d be wobbly for a bit.

—Listen, why doesn’t one of us sit over there? So we’re facing each other.

—She went down like a sack of … I was going to make a call on this.

—On your calculator?

—Losing it all right! Where’s my phone?

—I’ll sit over there.

—No, Kevin, don’t. Other people might want a seat.

—We’re at this table.

—There’s room for four.

—God, Dad. No one’s going to come and sit …

—Shush.

—No one’s going to come and sit facing us.

—I’ve got to work this out here.

—I’ll run and get the nightie. Come straight back. If you’ll let me out.

—How’s Mum?

—Good.

—Yeah?

—Tired.

—From what?

—From … I don’t know, she’s, there was a flu.

—Your mother has the immune system of—

—I don’t want to hear it, Dad.

—There have been, I suppose, some nasty flu bugs.

—Did they say when Jen would be out?

—No.

—What did they say?

—I told you.

—I guess this means America’s off.

—Why is America off?

—Why, what did they say?

—Nothing.

—Did they give her the all clear?

—That’s not how they work.

—How do they work?

—Not like that. They hedge things.

—So you’re still planning to go to America?

—She’s not been before. I told her, ‘You missed last time.’ Remember that?

—Dad, if she’s still crook—

—You know, I added it up. I’ve been to the States thirteen times in the last three years. Average of twenty flights each time? What’s that? She wanted to go, to see everything. Empire State, Grand Canyon, the works. Kevin, she’s taken two hours to recover from this … she didn’t know who I was! I thought she was joking. It was worse than the first time, even though this time we had an explanation, almost straight off, I knew.

—That’s what I mean.

—Two hundred and sixty! Two hundred and sixty flights, and that’s low as an estimate. Maybe I’ve done three hundred flights. Considering when I was married to Mum, I’d been once to Australia, total.

Once overseas in forty plus years. It’s come in a rush, that’s for sure.

—It’d be good to go with Jen, wouldn’t it.

—In fact, I’ve never seen those things myself, in all the times. New York, New Orleans, all that.

—Then you should, with Jen.

—Because I see the insides of hotels, motels on the big highways, convention centres bigger than you could imagine, really quite impressive places. I’ve been in ten feet of snow in Denver but I’ve never seen the sights. Airports. Did I tell you the time we took off, when was it, little place, up in one of the Dakotas, and we were getting into the plane, it was minus 23, we were climbing up the steps, having walked through the snow, and I look down and there’s this poor bugger digging us out!

—Yes, I remember.

—He’s got a shovel and he’s actually digging us out of the runway!

—Yep. And you said to him—

—I said to him, ‘You probably want a hand with that, do you?’

—I remember.

—I always remember what he said back too. ‘God bless you, sir.’ Eh?

—Mmn.

—Two hours, now she’s asking for her … things. ‘Not the blue one but the pink one.’ There could be a serious serious accident, they just have enough oxygen in their lungs. ‘I told you the pink one.’ It’s coping, it’s how they cope, she gets on with things. At least we
know the procedure, we’ve been here before. It’s great of you to come, Kevin.

—Well, you called. Sounded like it was …

—No.

—Yeah, you said she was pretty close and all.

—No, this is Jen.

—Gave me a fright.

—Gave you a fright? You weren’t there.

—I know I wasn’t. I wasn’t saying … She needs to take it easy for a while.

—Sure, sure. Take it easy, that’s it.

—Probably so do you, Dad. With your blood pressure.

—I told her in a month, you’ll be on the stand at the show.

—You’re doing the show again.

—Got to. Can’t afford not to. Exposure is the name of the game. Create a bit of bloody interest. We know we’ve got a great bloody product. Did I tell you about the guy from Wrightson’s? —Could I get out?

—Why?

—‘Why?’ I need to get out, Dad.

—What are you going to do?

—I’ll climb over the table.

—I’ll let you out. —Thank you.

—If she doesn’t come through, I don’t know what I’ll do.

—Rubbish. She’s … really fit.

—Jen?

—All that gym.

—She cares about her shape. She’s fifty-two.

—She’s taken very good care of herself, Dad.

—Then why’s this happened? Why does this keep happening? What do they want us to do, sit in our bloody rocking chairs for the next thirty years? Trying to run a business here!

—This is probably just bad luck.

—Only reason I’m doing this is for the family.

—Can I get out now please?

—I’ve got to phone this chap.

—It’s eleven pm.

—He’s the chap I see in North Dakota. What’s the time there?

—I have no idea. About twelve or ten hours behind, I don’t know. Don’t call, please.

—What’s the problem, sitting next to your father?

—Nothing.

—What’s wrong?

—Nothing’s wrong.

—Squirming away.

—No.

—So I’ll wait till tomorrow to call him.

—Can I get out now? I need to go to the toilet.

—Where are the toilets?

—Just over there.

—I need to go too.

—You go first then.

—Why?

—I’ll mind this.

—Mind the table? There’s no one else here, Kevin.

—God.

—Why can’t we both go?

—Fine.

—Is there something wrong with that? What are you hiding?

—Nothing.

—What’s your mother been telling you?

—Nothing.

—She’s always tired from something. She’s not healthy. It’s because he has her working like a dog.

—I’ve got to go.

—Okay, okay.

—Just stand up, please.

—Give me a minute. Please, Kevin.

—We’ve had a minute.

—Give me a couple of moments.

—It’s late.

—This is a real special time to have with you here. It was good of you to come. Are you all right there? You all right, Kevin? I’m appreciative of the time we have here. Very much so. To know you’d come right away. That’s a huge plus. For everyone concerned.