The Naked Drinking Club (41 page)

K x

CHAPTER
THIRTY-SIX

THE MOMENT I
walked into Weaver Avenue, I felt all eyes upon me. There was no evidence of this, of course, but it was my feeling. I felt nervous and conspicuous, as though I looked like a girl searching for her mother, hiding behind the pretence of selling paintings, with a beaten-up face that was so obviously not acquired through a white-water-rafting incident. It felt as if the way I walked or what I wore told them my story.

I was heading for Mr and Mrs N. Brotherstone of 15 Weaver Avenue. I thought about Dennis Weaver, the seventies cowboy detective Sam McCloud, as I climbed the uphill path to the front door. I knocked at the fly screen; I could smell warm food and cleanliness.

Outside were two enormous flowerpots with children’s shoes leaning against them. Were these the shoes of my young blood relatives? If so, then they were the first things I had ever seen of my real family in my life. And if they were indeed the shoes of the children of Mr and Mrs N. Brotherstone, and Mary Brotherstone was my auntie, then what would that make me to the children? And how would I be explained to them? I would be their great-aunt, I supposed, or was it a cousin thing? I wasn’t sure. They were girl’s shoes, perhaps belonging to a ten-year-old. Ten years ago I was fourteen, dying to be eighteen so I could look up my adoption records.

I was nervous and my mouth was dry. I felt quite sick as I knocked, but the moment I did, I sensed it was quiet inside the Brotherstones’ house, and that perhaps no one was home. I had, after all, been standing on the step for a few minutes, staring at the shoes and gathering the courage to knock.

‘Hello there, are you all right?’

I jumped. An elderly man with a sunhat on leant over the fence to my right.

‘Sorry, no, I’m OK.’ I was startled.

‘I didn’t mean to frighten you. Are you looking for anyone?’

Great – this was all I needed.

‘No, thanks. I’m travelling around showing some paintings.’

‘You’re what, dear?’ He leant in closer, cupping his hand at his ear.

‘Paintings. I’ve been here before and I’ve been asked to come back.’ I hadn’t used that one for a while.

‘No, don’t need anything.’ The guy was deaf and struggled with everything I said. I didn’t want to hang around on the doorstep having an extra loud conversation for all to hear, so I decided to grab the bull by the horns.

‘OK. Do Mary and her husband – whose name I’ve forgotten – live here?’

‘WHO?’ he bellowed.

‘MARY?’ I bellowed back. Surely if Mary, or whoever she was, was nearby, then she would now hear me.

‘Sorry, love, haven’t got my hearing aid. Yes, Mary and Neil, they’ll be back shortly, I expect. Can I help?’ He strained further.

He was only being neighbourly but I wanted to tell him to fuck off for the time being.

‘OK, sorry to bother you.’ I walked away, embarrassed by the volume of our conversation. I moved a few blocks out of the area to a shaded tree with a bench, where I sat down to recover and mentally regroup. This was mad. I was feeling stressed and agitated, as well as worn out and hungry, as I’d had no time to eat at Hank’s, what with my hasty departure and the study anxiety.

I thought about passing the time by trying my luck in some other houses, but decided against it. I knew what I looked like – I’d been examining my facial injuries in the driver’s mirror in the cab on the way over. Although they had improved in terms of swelling, they wouldn’t help with my gaining access into the houses. I waited for twenty minutes, which in the
circumstances
felt like far too long. I was confident that the Brotherstones would be back soon, given the shoes outside.

I got up and wandered off in the direction of a wider, busier street that I hoped would lead to shops, food, phones and a beer, perhaps. Around fifteen minutes later I found a parade of shops and a tiny, cute, toy-looking train station.

I was hot and tired from carrying the folder that I had now lost complete interest in. My selling days felt over; I’d lost my spark, I was worn out inside and tired of feeling rootless. I longed for the foundations that the other people – who went to and from the shops in their family cars, carrying newspapers and bread – took for granted. I went into a bakery, feeling stressed at the light banter exchanged between the vendor and his customers.

‘And how are you today, love?’

The ‘happy love shit’ was wearing me down every day now, and I felt myself turning against Australia by the second.

‘Yes, all right, thanks.’

‘What can I get you? That looks nasty.’ He was referring to my bruised face.

‘Yes, it is very nasty.’ I deliberately missed out an explanation. ‘Just a cheese roll, please.’

He bagged me one up without saying any more and I left. Outside I looked for a place to sit. I walked back to the train station and wandered onto the platform, where I took a shaded seat and ate my roll, watching people around me. A train pulled up on the dinky little platform opposite. I saw a handful of housewife-types and mothers with babies get off. I looked for any potential relatives and fixed on a woman around my height, maybe in her mid-forties, with dark hair like mine, watching her as she walked along, oblivious to me.

I longed for dusk, and a post-selling-day drink with the group. I hated this bright domestic day shit, and all those no doubt settled and fulfilled people waiting on the platform for a train to take them somewhere they felt they belonged. The lady who looked the most like me was the last to climb up the stairs and then she disappeared out of sight.

I scrunched up the bag my roll was in into a ball and threw
it
at a garbage bin by the station steps. If it landed in it, then I would meet my mother today.

It landed inside, and I found some new resolve.

‘Excuse me,’ I said to a man standing in the waiting shelter. ‘Where is the nearest bar?’

‘Oh, now, that’ll be the Fern.’

‘Oh yeah? Near, is it?’

‘Just few minutes down there, second on left, right next to a dairy.’

When I got to the gate at the entrance to the station, the lady I had been staring at was waiting, and I got a closer look at her. She wore a uniform, maybe of a hospital auxiliary nurse or dental assistant. She had a name badge and was obviously waiting for someone. I tried to move nearer to her without making her aware of me. We were the same height, and she had glasses and short brown hair.

As I stopped and pretended to rummage in my folder, she looked over at me. My eyes flicked up but I couldn’t make out the name on her badge. A green station wagon pulled in with a Garfield stuck to the back-seat window. She smiled, got in, and it drove off.

I knew I was clutching at straws with this kind of behaviour, but I felt that I had little choice now but to go with it.

The Fern was a typical small suburban pub with no character or golden-oldie section on its jukebox. I had noticed that the old-style jukebox that had been around from the seventies and early eighties was being phased out in many places in favour of a depressing, futuristic-looking one, which looked like pages of an open book. I put on the Bangles’ ‘Eternal Flame’ (the best of a rum lot) and ordered a midi of Foster’s. There was only me and two old guys in the bar, but however substandard it was, it offered me some sense of peace and respite from the outdoor daytime world I didn’t fit into.

I paused before my beer, thinking that perhaps it was a bad idea, on top of the state of me, to smell of drink on the doorsteps – but then I ignored those concerns in favour of feeling more reassured by its effect. I lit up a Marlboro Light and took a long slow drag on it and an even longer blow out.
I
gulped the midi almost in one, as I wanted an immediate result, then ordered another, which I vowed to sip.

The jukebox volume was disappointingly low and drowned out by a fruit-machine jingle and some clutter from the kitchen, no doubt the noise of making the roast-chicken lunch advertised outside on a chalked board. I looked up at an advert on a turned-down TV attached to the wall in the right-hand corner. A man stood on a doorstep with a box of washing powder, charming a smiling housewife who let him wash her clothes with it. The old men looked up at the screen with me. I felt so much better after my beer, warmer and safer inside, and more positive again.

I got out my notebook and the piece of paper from Hank’s folder with the name on it and the suburb I was in. I prayed inside for guidance to whatever I prayed to, which wasn’t a god, but more like my strength and my beliefs in things leading me to things. I looked back up at the TV to find Joyce Cane advertising her carpet showroom, which appeared to exist in Brisbane also. That’s when I knew I was back on track and in the right place.

I asked the barman to look after my folder while I went to the toilet. In less urgent times I would have tried to palm off some of its contents on him, but decided instead to use the time productively by raiding his Tampax machine, which contained a well above average amount of coinage. I downed the rest of my beer, thanked him and left.

I leant against the wall across the street, chewing gum and staring at the white station wagon, which earlier I’d seen pick up the nurse woman. It was now parked outside the Brotherstones of 15 Weaver Avenue. I longed to have someone with me to witness and experience all this coincidental madness. I was so close now, and glad of the beers that had steadied my nerves slightly.

I crossed the road, walked straight up to the house and knocked on the now opened fly screen. I waited but a radio from inside was drowning out my knocking, so I rang the bell.

A figure walked up the hall towards the door and pushed open the screen. She had an oven glove on one hand, and still
wore
her uniform, and her badge said ‘Margaret’. It was the lady from the station. I felt the colour drain from me, and struggled to get words out.

‘Can I help you?’ She had a warm smile and nicely applied make-up.

‘Yes, my name is Anaya and I’m from Denmark. I am an artist trying to bring my work to people, for I cannot afford a gallery.’ I was pretty pleased with my accent, even if it was a little ropey at first.

‘Did I just see you at the station?’

I felt my hands shaking. ‘I think, maybe yes, I was there with my friends. We all show our work around the place. I live in Sydney but I’m trying to sell work further afield.’

‘What did you do to your face, Anaya?’ She spoke slowly to help me with my accent.

‘White-water rafting.’

I decided to try the oldest trick in the book; but she seemed kind and I felt sure it would work. ‘Could I trouble you for, please, a glass of water?’

‘Eh, yes, hang on.’ She took her foot away from the fly screen, causing it to ping shut. ‘Oh, sorry.’

I opened it again.

‘Come in, then and just wait there, I’ll get you a glass.’

I was anxious to look around and see some photos maybe, but the other rooms were too far down the hall, and she was back in a second. I smiled and gulped the water.

‘That better?’

‘Yes, thank you, I’ve been walking around for hours.’ I examined her face for signs of my own as I drank from her glass.

‘Have you seen someone about your cuts? That one above the eye looks bad.’

I dragged out the last of the water, convinced that we had similarly high cheekbones.

‘Yes, it’s OK really, looks worse than it is, that’s all. So, you are a nurse?’

‘Yes, in the city hospital. Just come off a shift. So, what are your paintings?’

‘Well, a mixture, but I need to spread them out somewhere.’

‘Uh-huh. Listen, if you were to come back later maybe, but I’ve got to get lunch on, my husband and I are going back into town. Sorry, it’s not a good time.’

I felt all my powers of concentration had gone on my accent and trying to appear calm, and therefore I was not in full possession of my usual charm, personality and ability to control the situation. An oven-timer went off in the background.

‘Hang on.’ She ran down the hall, and I took a couple of steps inside and swung my head round the door, trying to take in the room and any clues. There were two photos above the fire but I couldn’t make them out. I moved quickly back to my folder. She came back, looking more agitated.

‘Like I said, I’m sorry, but now is a bad time.’

I looked at her, willing her to recognise me. She didn’t feel like my mother, although I had no idea what that would feel like; she felt like a stranger, and her eyes were blue, while mine were green. I realised that meant nothing after thinking about it, but I was at odds over what to do next.

A man walked up the drive with a Border collie behind him, sniffing around.

‘OK, thank you, not to worry,’ I said politely.

‘Yes, sorry, dear.’

I looked for signs of worry or suspicion in her face, but she had quickly moved on, and began talking to her husband about some hosepiping and did he have any joy. The man went to the station wagon and rummaged in the boot.

‘G’day,’ he said, as he walked past.

‘Yeah, hi there,’ I said, dropping the accent. I swung my folder over my shoulder and walked away.

The pub was fuller than when I last had been there. A few younger men played pool, and two women ate lunch.

‘Is there a phone?’ I asked speedily. The barman brought one out from under the counter.

First I dialled the backpackers’ and asked if there were any messages for me. The reception guy told me my friend Jim had left a note for me. I asked him to read it. He sighed and said they didn’t usually do that, but I begged him, told him I was in a spot.

‘“Kerry, got your message, can’t come to Ferny Hills, been some car trouble, got to go to garage. Disaster. Plus some news from Sydney. Meet back here at four, like we said. Jim.”’

‘If you see him, can you please tell him that I got the message?’

He sighed a bigger sigh and I hung up. I turned round; a man was waiting to use the phone.

I got out the piece of paper with the phone number of the house I’d just been in and dialled the number.