The Memory Tree (43 page)

Hal is playing cribbage with Godown. ‘Can I ask you a favour?’

‘Sure can.’

‘I need to do a couple of things. Can you drive me? It’ll only take a day or two.’

Godown asks what he wants and organises to take Hal away for a few days. Zav has planned his move for the same week. He’s put it off twice. He’ll have to put it off again. Well, he doesn’t really have to, but in fact, he’s relieved to have an excuse.

With Godown at the wheel, Hal reverses the journey he made with Sealie less than a year ago. The fields are greener now, and the sheep, shorn and vulnerable looking, mill about in the flat paddocks. Hal looks with curiosity at the town he never visited.
Seems like a nice place
, he thinks.
I wonder if Mad Mollie’s living in one of these streets?
He scrutinises each figure as the car passes through the town and finally pulls up at the gates of Aradale. There is a skeleton staff caring for the few patients who haven’t yet been relocated, and a team of archivists, collecting and collating all the sad, mad, forgotten lives and storing them in boxes. Sealie would understand this, but Hal feels forlorn as he looks at the now unkempt garden and hears the echo of empty rooms. He stands in the doorway, gnawing at his thumbnail.

Emil is now Deputy Charge Nurse and he greets the visitors with cool professionalism. ‘Nice to see you, Hal. You want to spend some time in the garden?’ Hal nods and they thank Emil before taking the winding gravel path behind the administration block.

Hal looks back at Emil. ‘He wouldn’t win a medal now. Not with all that extra weight.’ This remark puzzles Godown, but he doesn’t comment.

They turn the corner and Hal begins to run in an awkward lope that takes him across the lawn with remarkable speed. Godown falls back, leaving Hal to greet his beloved tree.

The tree is in full leaf but the green is fresh and tender. Not long ago, thinks Hal, these branches were bare, stretching out nobbled fingers to clutch the white-cold air. He always hated to see the tree like that, looking for all the world as though it were dead. With his heightened senses, he had often breached the woody covering and run his hands through the cold, secret rivers of sap, spellbound, frozen by winter’s sorcery. At those times, in the thrall of the tree’s stillness, he could never recall that return to life he is now witnessing.

He stands back to take in the tree’s hugeness—its solid trunk, its broad roots, its branches, like the ribs of an umbrella scooping him in under the safety of its awning. His eye is sated and now he must touch the tree—run his hands up the trunk, feel the roughness of the bark under his fingertips. His questing hand moves on to a leaf. He touches it reverently. The green of hope. Renewal.

Now it’s time for his ritual. He takes out the tattered bookmark with the old photograph and smiles at the faded images. He has forgotten all about Godown, who waits patiently on a nearby seat. He performs his ritual with care, touching each image and reciting his mantra.
Keep them safe
. This time he has no need to add to the house. It’s finished. All he needs now is a key. This ritual is to cut the key. Then the house he has been building all these long years will be complete. He will leave the key in the lock. He can’t be sure when his loved ones will want to move to their new home, but he must be prepared. He chuckles in sheer delight. He’s done it. Despite the voices no-one else can hear, despite the efforts of various psychiatrists, he has never wavered in his goal. He holds his hands above his head, as though he has won an Olympic medal.
A marathon,
he thinks
. It’s been a marathon.

He gives the tree an affectionate pat. ‘Thank you,’ he says. ‘Goodbye.’

They stay in Ararat overnight, and all evening, Godown feels Hal’s suppressed excitement. He doesn’t comment. His friend’s mood changes are only too familiar.

Hal has one more errand. They leave after breakfast the next morning and reach the narrow terrace house in the early afternoon. Chloe and Ariadne are expecting them. They have changed little over the years, their finely sculpted faces smiling gravely as they usher the two men into the living room, where the collected sea-things serve to confirm Hal’s belief. He waits patiently while the women speak to Godown, who leaves, telling Hal he’ll wait for him.

When he finds himself outside again, Godown can’t remember anything that was said.
Was anything said at all? How long was I in there?
he wonders. He remembers only one thing—each woman kissing him on one cheek, then the other before gesturing for him to leave.

‘Goodbye, dear Pastor.’

Now he is standing by the gate, struggling with a sense of abandonment.

When Godown’s footsteps have faded, the women extend their hands and Hal obediently completes the circle. A breeze, as insubstantial as thought, touches his face. It carries the smell of salt, of seaweedy rocks, of sun-warmed sand. The waves roll in, hypnotically regular—surge after surge of foam-flecked green. A massive wave engulfs him and just as his lungs are bursting, it flings him onto the sand where he lies, depleted. Now he’s caressed by wavelets, lapping at the soles of his feet, rippling over his back, singing sad, secret ballads in his grieving ear. He is deliciously cool. Washed by these precise waves, his long-tortured spirit experiences a moment of reprieve.

What he hears in this circle is the summer blue angel-song. Within its ambit he is safe from the noises, the colours, the Voice that tormented him through the years. Chloe and Ariadne have sung him to a place where he can take some rest.

‘It’s time to go,’ Chloe says and they release his hands.

‘Thank you,’ Hal says. ‘Thank you for everything.’

My grandfather is not cured of course. There is no cure. But I must say he looks a lot more at peace with himself when he leaves that house. Godown sees this and swallows his resentment. Hal needs all the help he can get.

That night, Hal sleeps in the room, in the bed he shared with Paulina. Godown is the only one who knows and he gives Hal his nightly medication without comment. The next morning, Hal cannot remember his dreams but in that half-state between sleeping and waking, he feels cocooned in something warm as wool, soft as silk. A shawl woven with loving hands. When he awakes fully, the sensation is all but gone, and try as he might to clutch it to him, it dissolves, leaving him fragile and exposed.

That same night, in the secrecy of the dusty round room, Zav is using a mortar and pestle to crush an array of pills. He can’t wait any longer. Sealie is getting better by the day. Tomorrow, he’ll empty the powder into his father’s cocoa.

6

I
DON’T WANT YOU TO
think that my father finds murder an easy option. Neither should you think that he is excused because of his depression, because of his experiences in Vietnam. He is as sane as any of us and that makes his planned killing a murder. Before, during, and after the event, he will be fit to plead. He plans to plead guilty.
That will help everyone move on
, he thinks.

Zav spends the morning in his room, watching, pacing, checking his little packet of death and for the hundredth time, rationalising his decision. His father has ruined all their lives. They need to move on. He murdered his granddaughter, Zav’s only child. An eye for an eye, then. He has no qualms regarding patricide versus infanticide. He savours the thought of revenge and finds it sweet indeed.
And he never loved me
, the child in Zav wails. Never loved his own son. Ironically, he would be doing the old man a favour. Put him out of his misery, the mad bastard.

All good, even logical, reasons to kill, if you’re that way inclined. But remember, Zav is not a killer. During his short tour of duty, he had witnessed the awful and prosaic fact of death. He still dreams about it, and the thought of inflicting this final oblivion on his father dries the saliva from his mouth, sets his hands trembling. He looks out the window and sees Hal settling down in the chair beside Sealie. He is talking to her with earnest intensity, the loose skin hanging from his bare arms touching and vulnerable.

Zav moves away and sits on his rumpled bed. His head is beginning to ache and he is unaware that his fists are painfully clenched. Hal always loved his sister best. Always. He has a sudden vision of his father the night Sealie collapsed. He was crouched over his daughter, his whole body willing her to be okay. And his face . . . Zav is ambushed by a long-buried memory. His face was the face Zav saw all those years ago when he woke up in the hospital bed. His father had been holding his hand and the face Zav saw from his pillow was frantic with worry and love.

That fragile memory is enough to stay his hand. Shaking with relief, he goes to the bathroom, empties the packet into the handbasin, turns on the tap. The powder coagulates, and he pushes it towards the plughole where the water swirls it away. He looks in horror at the residue on his finger and turns the tap on harder. It’s gone in an instant. He stares at his wet hand. He needs to cry. Resisting that urge, he rings Will. He doesn’t want to be alone today.

Hal and Sealie sit in the pale spring sunshine.

‘Sealie?’ She looks up from her book. ‘Do you still miss Mum?’

‘I don’t remember her very well. But, yes. It would have been nice to have a mum.’

‘I tried to be a good dad.’

‘I know.’

‘I tried to be a good grandfather, too.’ Sealie braces herself. Moves fractionally away from him. Looks down at her book.

‘I love you all. You. Zav. Paulina. Grace. I took care of each of you in the only way I knew how.’ Sealie continues to stare at a page where the words dance before her eyes like flying insects.

Hal stands up and rubs his head in a gesture of defeat. ‘You were good to me when no-one else would speak to me. You do understand why I did it?’

She knew what he meant but couldn’t give the answer he wanted. Taking his hand, she says, ‘You were sick. In your mind—you were sick.’

Hal tries to explain. ‘I’m not asking to be forgiven or excused. I just need you to understand. You do understand, don’t you?’

Sealie shakes her head. ‘I don’t understand anything beyond your illness. That way I can forgive you, whether you want forgiveness or not.’

Hal gives a tremulous smile and brings her hand to his lips. ‘Then I’ll have to make do with that,’ he says.

On his way up to the bathroom, Hal stops at Zav’s door and knocks softly.

‘Zav?’

The door remains closed.

‘Zav. Just a few minutes. I need you to understand.’

The door opens and he’s met with Zav’s cold stare. ‘Go away.’

Hal feels a surge of pity for this man, his son. ‘Yes. I think that’s for the best.’ Mrs Mac is preparing lunch when Hal comes in and stands watching her quietly.

He picks up the knife and begins to butter the bread. Mrs Mac deals with the fillings.

‘We need Vegemite,’ he says. ‘Vegemite for Zav.’

Mrs Mac looks up, surprised. ‘Zav’s gone out. Anyway, he hasn’t had Vegemite sandwiches since he was in primary school.’

‘He used to like them. Time goes by so fast.’

‘That it does. We’re none of us getting any younger.’

‘I wonder why I called you Mrs Mac, all those years. It’s Eileen, isn’t it?’

‘I’ve always been Mrs Mac in this house.’

‘I’m sorry, Eileen. They were bad voices, the ones that told me to send you away.’

Eileen swallows a lump in her throat. ‘I know that.’

Hal gets the Vegemite from the pantry. ‘I might have Vegemite myself, today,’ he says.