The Memory Tree (32 page)

That was 1970. The year Godown turned fifty. How many changes had he witnessed in those fifty years? In his short lifetime—the Great Depression, a world war, a cold war, Vietnam —then what? He had mourned the death of Martin Luther King and the Kennedy brothers. So much wasted hope.

As he continued his inventory, Godown became increasingly depressed. But he had seen the miracle of penicillin, a vaccine for polio, and blacks and whites walking together in the great freedom marches. Most wonderfully, he’d seen, in flickering black and white, a man walking on the moon.

His own life had taken strange turns, he thought, as he sat in the neat little flat he had just bought with the money he’d saved over the years. His parents had never owned more than their furniture, and here he was, a home owner. He felt a flicker of pride but even though the walls were nicely painted, the stove clean and modern and his bed soft and comfortable, he was reminded also of what Hal had taken him from. The surroundings were different, but today there was the same hollowness, the same sense of isolation, that he experienced in the shabby room behind the shop. Worse, he no longer had his vision to sustain him. The Divine Conflagration was completely extinguished.

Where did he belong on this planet that Neil Armstrong had seen from space? He yearned for the old neighbourhood of his youth despite knowing that his parents were dead and his siblings long moved on. If he returned, would he find one person he knew, one building unchanged?

He opened a small photograph album. His parents stared at him sternly from a formal portrait. The children were corralled into their best clothes; his older brothers Aaron and Jude, almost visibly squirming in collar and tie, and his little sister, Mamie, with black pigtails and dancing eyes, sitting on his father’s knee. Only he and Mamie left now. They wrote, but she never really forgave him for not coming home. ‘You broke Momma’s heart’, she had written all those years ago. The next few pages of the album displayed child photos of Sealie and Zav: Sealie posing and smiling in her ballet dress, Zav scowling uncomfortably with a football under his arm. Here was a picture of his congregation at Fellowship in the days when he believed he was doing God’s work. Brushing his eyes with the back of his hand, he sniffled a little before turning to the wedding photos. He and Mrs Mac had been so proud to be included in the family group. There they were. Smiling fit to kill. The last pages were photos of me. Godown had invested in a camera and had a good collection of baby photos. He’d been going to offer most of them to Zav, but couldn’t see how that was possible now. The final photo looked like one of grandparents and grandchild. It was Godown, me and Mrs Mac, taken in the park.

Godown looked again at the wedding group wondering about the fate that had tied him to these people. Fate. The word had never had a place in his lexicon. Fate, God’s will, free will, randomness and chaos—a universe that had been so ordered, so utterly explicable had become a strange and lonely place.

He glanced at the clock and jumped up. Eileen and Alice were preparing a little birthday party for him. It was time he started to get ready. Before he stepped into the shower, he looked down at his fifty-year-old body, pinching the flab that had accumulated on his once muscular torso. He looked in the mirror. Greying hair, sagging jaw. The strong, handsome young man who had so entranced women, who had lived for the pleasure of their bodies—where had he gone? That part of his life was all too short. He had scourged his flesh by denying his needs and now he was left with nothing. In the normal scheme of things, he thought, he’d have a wife and children, maybe grandchildren, but he’d lived his life for God.

No
, he suddenly realised.
I’ve lived my life for Hal.

Godown Moses stood under the hot water pondering this revelation.

Where would he have been if he hadn’t met Hal? Would he still have been working at The Perfumed Garden? Would he have returned to the United States, perhaps to marry and have those children? Maybe he’d have been a famous preacher, saving the unjust from the fires of Hell. He’d never know now. It was a combination of Hal’s generosity and transparent need that led him down the path he now trod. He had made his choice. And he had to admit not all his reasons were altruistic. When he chose to accept Hal’s impulsive offer, he was effectively homeless. Of course, he had also wanted to help Hal, but had no way of knowing how their lives would stay entwined. Over time, Hal had become a friend, and despite his best intentions, he, Godown, had failed in that friendship. He turned off the shower.
No way to celebrate a birthday
. There were others relying on him now.

Godown had expected a small dinner with Eileen and her sister, but was pleased and confused to find that the guests included Sealie, Bob and Rose, Chloe and Ariadne and Helena and Spiros, back from their holiday. They squeezed around Alice’s small dining table and ate crusty bread with tzatziki, olives and stuffed vine leaves.
Delicious
, they all agreed as they ate the unfamiliar food prepared by the delighted Helena.

‘Lamb roast, next.’ Alice and Eileen disappeared into the kitchen, while Bob poured more drinks. ‘Dee-licious, Mrs Mac,’ Godown said, as he loosened his belt a notch. ‘And you too, Alice,’ he added, catching her quizzical look.

‘Many happy returns, Godown.’ Bob proposed a toast as Eileen brought out the cake.

‘I thought fifty candles might start a fire,’ she said. ‘So there’s one for each decade.’

‘We’ll have tea in the front room,’ Alice said. ‘Or would anyone like coffee?’ She took Godown by the arm. ‘Come on, birthday boy. Time you did a bit of work.’

As they prepared the tray, Alice turned to him. ‘I might be an interfering old biddy, so stop me if you want, but why haven’t you asked Eileen to marry you?’

Godown looked nonplussed.

‘I mean you’ve been coming here for dinner once a week, walking with Eileen in the park—you really seem to care for each other. Why not go the next step?’

Godown continued to stare at her. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, paying sudden and extraordinary attention to the sugar bowl. ‘None of my business. Now—how many for coffee?’

When the party broke up, Godown offered to walk the twins to the tram stop.

As the tram approached, they kissed him, one on each cheek. As their hair brushed his face, he sensed rather than heard the murmured words,
take happiness where you find it.

Looks like the ladies have been talking about me. Why do women always want a weddin’?
He tried to be outraged, but grinned, in spite of himself.
Bet Helena’s in on this too.
He was outnumbered. But did he mind? He was surprised that he didn’t mind at all.

‘Men are so unknowing,’ Helena was saying, scrubbing a saucepan with unnecessary vigour. ‘My husband, the pig’ (this now had the cadence of a pet name) ‘says—“why spoil a good friendliness with a wedding?” And I say, pah!’ She flourished the dishcloth like a banner. ‘Marrying me was the smartest thing you did in your whole life.’

Alice grabbed her arm. ‘Shh. Eileen’s coming.’

Meanwhile, Moses B. Washbourne, former Sergeant of the United States Armed Forces, erstwhile pastor of the Church of the Divine Conflagration, walked back to his flat, stomach churning.
Marriage.
Uncanny that he’d only just been thinking about marriage himself. He tested his feelings for Eileen McLennon. She was a dear, dear friend. She was good and she was kind. Wise, too, in her own way. They had shared a life and family for over a decade.

Suddenly he saw her as a woman; saw the sweetness of her smile, her mild, myopic blue eyes, her finely boned hands. Soothing hands they were. Caressing hands. As he turned his key in the lock, he felt a little surge of excitement. This could be home. He thought of it as ‘the flat’. With a loving woman, with a loved woman, it would become a home. All those wasted years! He’d been such a fool. Well, he wouldn’t waste another day. He tossed in his narrow bed, alternating between the excitement of planning for the future and panic that he might have left it all too late. What if she didn’t feel the same way? What if . . . he steeled himself. What if his colour prevented her from accepting him? Though it was only a thought, he flushed with shame. How could he have even imagined such a thing of Eileen? She had never given the slightest indication that she even noticed his colour. He was honest enough to admit that it would bother some people. But Eileen (he had already begun to think of her as
his
Eileen), was a woman of principle. She had never let what others thought affect her. ‘I take people as I find them,’ she always said. And she did.

The question was, how did she find him? Godown Moses dared to think he just might have reason to hope.

I wonder, sometimes, at how dense people can be.

As they walked in the park the next day, Moses took Eileen’s hand. Except for the time he told her of my death, he had never done this. She looked at him in surprise but left her hand in his.

The usually eloquent pastor was lost for words. ‘Eileen,’ he began. ‘I want to ask . . . if . . . if you brought some of that dee-licious fruitcake.’

‘Fruitcake?’

‘That’s right. I wanted to ask you about fruitcake. And if you’d . . . you don’t have to answer right away, but what would you say if I asked you to marry me?’ He groaned inwardly. He felt as foolish as he had when he asked Delia to go with him to the junior prom.

‘Are you? Are you asking me to marry you?’ Eileen McLennon felt as nervous as a young girl. ‘Because if you
are
asking me, I need to know why.’

They stopped and he took her other hand, saying, ‘To be honest, I’m too old to feel the kind of passion we might have shared years ago. But I’m not too old to feel love.’ Godown Moses was overcome with a sudden truth. ‘I think I’ve loved you for years.’

Eileen looked up at him. The great love of her life had been her husband, Ken, killed in the wanton folly of the Greek campaign. She still remembers him waving from the rails of the
Strathaird
, as she and so many others stood on the dock and watched the ship pass through the Heads. She had never looked at another man until Hal brought home this handsome stranger, and for the first time since her young husband’s death, she felt the stirring of desire. But the years had gone by, and their friendship had grown. At the expense of passion?
Probably not
, she thought.
I’m not the type to arouse great passion in a man.

Friendship, respect and a shared history; that would be enough for now. This new life would be their own. They would cherish and nurture what they had and who’s to say that isn’t love?

Godown Moses and Eileen McLennon announced their engagement shortly after the birthday party. Neither of them was young, and they were slightly embarrassed at the fuss. ‘A small wedding,’ they protested. ‘Just family and a few friends.’

My father was the only one unhappy with the match. ‘Going to live off a woman now Hal’s not around. He can weasel his way in anywhere.’ Zav was adamant. ‘There’s no way you’ll get me to that wedding.’

‘Do it for Mrs Mac,’ Sealie pleaded. ‘She was always there for us.’

In the end, Zav went and behaved well, much to his sister’s relief.

Mrs Mac understood Zav’s reluctance, but she couldn’t bear to think of this day without him. He was the closest thing she would ever have to a son.

The wedding took place at St Theresa’s. The bride wore a mauve silk suit and carried cream Singapore orchids. As Moses saw her coming towards him down the long aisle, he felt that he finally belonged. Her plain face was transformed in the filtered light and he saw her as she might have been as a young woman, tentative and glowing with the prettiness of youth. He promised before God that he would love her tenderly and faithfully and realised, as he looked down at her upturned face, that joy was still possible.

5

B
ROTHER AND SISTER SETTLED INTO
an attenuated life back in their old childhood home. Sealie had begun to dread going out, imagining that passers-by were pointing her out to each other.
That’s her. The one whose father drowned his granddaughter.
But the truth was that their neighbours and many of their friends found themselves unable to reach out to the grieving pair. The tragedy was so vast, so unspeakable, that normal condolences and the customary offerings of food seemed pitifully inadequate. So, while they pitied Zav and Sealie, they did so from a distance, safe in their own houses where they could only pray that such terrible things might never happen to them.

Zav, locked in depression, didn’t care, but Sealie, desperate to escape, suggested that they move to another state, or maybe a regional town, where they were not known.

‘We could rent this place and move to Ballarat, maybe. Or Geelong. Or even Adelaide,’ Sealie suggested.

‘Who’d want to rent a house owned by a murderer? Besides, this is home, whether you like it or not. I’m not going anywhere. You do what you want. I’ll be okay.’