The Memory Tree (30 page)

When Sealie reported her father’s request and his reaction to her refusal, Godown offered to visit Hal in her place. ‘Just this once—to give you both time to get over it,’ he said, when she demurred. ‘Okay? Well, then—have you decided what to do about the photo of little Grace?’ His voice still shook when he said my name.

‘I had a call from Nurse Steve,’ she said. ‘Apparently the doctor thinks it’s a bad idea. You know him best of all. What do you think?’

The big man had lived with Hal’s obsessions for many years. ‘Hal had a notion,’ he said reluctantly. ‘A notion that he was protecting your mother’s soul. It had something to do with that poster and the photograph he had on his desk. I don’t want to go against the doctor,’ he added.

Godown had aged overnight, it seemed. His shoulders were stooped, his thick hair looked dusty. The light had gone from his eyes and the passion from his voice. He looked like an old man, and she couldn’t ask him to take responsibility. ‘I’ll think about it,’ she said.

Poor Aunt Sealie. She had been the favourite child, and the time had come to pay her dues. She still loved her father but was appalled that she did. She loved me too, and was conflicted as to how she should approach the issue of her father’s illness. Intellectually, she understood that it was an illness, but deep in her heart, she felt that Hal could have chosen to act otherwise. Zav would have nothing to do with his father. She had acknowledged that Godown had done enough and Hal had taken against Mrs Mac and Bob. So who could she turn to? She had no-one. She folded her arms on the desk and lay down her head. Her throat ached with the need to cry. She wanted her mother. It wasn’t fair. Here she was, at the beginning of her life and there was no-one. She was, by default, head of the family. With all the responsibility that implies.

She went into her room and closed the door. Cutting a strip from the back of a birthday card, she picked up the photo of Paulina. She measured it and cut a little off the edges. Then she sat down and held the Brag Book on her lap, turning it over once or twice before opening it and scanning the pages as quickly as she could. Finding a small photo of me on a bunny rug, she took it out and trimmed it too. She folded the strip of card then stuck the photos inside the fold, leaving the glue to dry while she fetched Hal’s novel and removed the bookmark, replacing it with the concealed photos. Now my grandmother and I clung together between pages fifty-six and fifty-seven of
I, Robot
, which Godown promised to deliver the next weekend.

It was Godown’s first time at Ararat and he had to will his feet to climb the steps of the forbidding, bluestone building. At reception, he was asked if he had any gifts for the patient and handed them the book and a pack of cigarettes which were put in a pigeonhole labelled Heraldo Rodriguez. Steve was on duty and, after checking that Godown had no contraband, led him to the dayroom.

‘He’s been unsettled since he got up,’ Steve said. ‘I think he’s expecting his daughter. Tell her I’m sorry about the photos.’

‘Where’s Sealie?’ Hal demanded as his friend sat down across from him, shocked at how thin he had become.

‘Work,’ Godown lied. ‘But she sent something for you.’ He tapped the side of his nose.

Hal’s eyes gleamed as he looked around to ensure they were not overheard. ‘Where is it?’ he said out of the corner of his mouth and Godown explained about the book.

‘Brilliant.’

‘They don’t want you to have it, so be sure to keep it hidden in the pages.’ Godown was ashamed to pander to Hal’s paranoia, but was more worried about what might happen if the photographs were found and confiscated.

‘Good old Sealie,’ Hal chortled, inviting a sharp look from the duty nurse. ‘I’ll beat the bastards at their own game.’

So the marker moved from book to book as Sealie’s and Godown’s visits continued. For Hal, it was both a source of comfort and a focus for his delusions. He was not able to read every day in J-Ward. All activities had to be supervised and staff were allocated according to need. Reading Days became so significant that Hal thought of them in the upper case, like Christmas Day and Melbourne Cup Day. He developed a cunning that saw him take his book nonchalantly from the nurse and stroll over to a chair where he’d fuss with the cushion and only then, open the book at the marked page. Glancing quickly around the room, he’d sneak a look at the photos—Paulina first and then me. This was the prelude to a strictly observed ritual. He would read five pages exactly, finishing mid-sentence, if necessary. While he did this he held the bookmark in his right hand. (He never touched it with the left, the sinister hand. That belonged to the devil.) After turning to, but not looking at the sixth page, he slipped the bookmark open and looked at Paulina, saying her name in his head, three times, touching his lips and then her image to complete the sequence. After reading another five pages, he would do the same for me. When his reading time came to an end, he placed his hand over the bookmark and murmured, ‘Keep them safe,’ before handing the book back. This last invocation was very important. Each time he said it, another brick was placed in the wall of the house that, one day, they would live in together.
Keep them safe.
He could say this three times three per day, but on Reading Day, with the images under his control, often a whole twenty bricks were mortared into place.

Hal was cautious about the other patients. He didn’t join in any of the group activities in the exercise yard but he did occasionally try to have a chat. He had always been something of a loner, but he needed to know the sort of people he was dealing with. He was shocked to discover that they were mad, bad or both.

One handsome young man, with a plummy accent and a languid slouch, was a final-year medical student. His surgical skills were useful, he told Hal one morning as they leaned against the wall, taking advantage of the sun-warmed stones. ‘I had access to scalpels, of course,’ he said conversationally. ‘And the expertise. You can’t just hack away with a scalpel.’ He held out his hands, revealing long, strong fingers. ‘The women said I have pianist’s hands, but they served me equally well as a surgeon. The women? I made love to them first, you know. They were happy when they died and they bled to death very prettily. With one, I even managed a star-shaped blood pool. Not easy,’ he told a horrified Hal. ‘But there’s no sense in false modesty.’

A gentle old man with faded-blue eyes also heard voices. They told him that he had to cleanse and scour the city and he consequently set a string of fires in Melbourne brothels. Two prostitutes and one customer had died as a result. ‘They don’t understand that I’m doing them a favour,’ he told Hal, sadness washing his eyes to an even more faded hue. Hal nodded gloomily. He understood the reasoning, but setting fires! The poor old coot needed to learn self-control.

So Hal worried about his fellow patients and was appalled when, on the first wet day, they were taken to the dayroom to watch Alfred Hitchcock’s
Psycho
. He had seen it before but watched it again with increasing disquiet, fearing that the psychopathic murderer on screen might give his companions ideas they could well do without. He sat through the first half on the edge of his seat, gnawing at his nails and shooting glances at those he considered most unstable. Finally, unable to stand it any longer, he leaped to his feet and sought out the bandido, whom he had come to trust.

‘Can I have a word?’ Hal muttered, sidling up to him. ‘It’s about—you know,’ he said, looking significantly at the screen.

‘No, I don’t know.’ Steve hadn’t seen the movie and still had one eye on the action.

‘You can’t show this stuff to people like that.’ Hal jerked his head to indicate the rapt audience. ‘Most of them are mad as hatters.’

The bandido pulled at his moustache. ‘I know. That’s why they’re here.’

‘Please. Switch it off immediately,’ Hal pleaded. ‘Or I can’t be held responsible.’

‘You’re not responsible,’ the bandido said wearily. ‘We are.’

Hal was not to be trifled with. ‘Then I must take unilateral action.’ And darting towards the projector, Hal tripped over the sprawling leg of the blue-eyed arsonist whose shout roused the others. The staff took quick action and a riot was narrowly averted but the movie was switched off and patients taken to their rooms early. Hal was not popular after that. But then, he reasoned, he wasn’t here to be popular.

What was he here for? He often wondered about that. There was plenty of time to wonder. He’d gone right off talking to the other patients. He’d be as loony as they were, if he didn’t look out. He was aware, of course, that he, too was considered to be mad. He was a reasonable man, and in one way, he could see where they were coming from. From their point of view, the drowning of a granddaughter must be either mad or bad. He knew he wasn’t bad and if they (whoever ‘they’ were) thought so, he’d be in jail. So he was deemed to be mad and locked away with really dangerous people. He never sat next to the surgeon at mealtimes and always kept a nervous eye on him when he used a knife and fork, even though that personable young man had explained that he had no desire to make love to Hal or to create patterns with his life-blood. ‘It’s just red-haired women,’ he’d explain over and over. But Hal wasn’t willing to take any risks.

So what was he here for? Hal began to look at the question in a more existential way and, sadly, found no answer. He did light upon an explanation, however. His enemies had found a way to manipulate those in charge of the system so that they were unable to understand that his ostensibly mad or bad action had been, in fact, a sublime sacrifice. He understood that this made a return to the real world extremely difficult because he had no way of dealing with unseen or maybe just unrecognisable adversaries. Hal lived in a complex world peopled by enemies; former friends who had been corrupted by his enemies; the ignorant and uncaring who couldn’t or didn’t want to understand; police, medical and nursing staff who were either collaborators or dupes; the real mad and or bad inmates of J-Ward; Sealie and Godown. The last two were the only people in the whole world that he was sure he could trust.

With his highly developed cunning, he decided to approach the bandido. This nurse had some empathy, Hal thought. He really seemed to care, so maybe he was just one of the ignorant and not one of the corrupt.

One mellow autumn day, the bandido was on duty in the exercise yard. He had been supervising a thin young man playing a guitar. The young man was pathetically grateful, blissfully playing the same chord over and over again until one of the others threw a basketball at him. ‘Can’t you play anything else, dickhead?’ Distressed and confused, the young man started to cry as others began to shout, some at the perpetrator, some at the victim. Once again, the staff averted the impending crisis, but the guitar was locked away and the young man became increasingly two-dimensional, day after day, sitting slumped on a hard wooden bench.

‘Can’t he have his guitar back?’ Hal asked the bandido, looking across at the fading figure. ‘He wasn’t doing any harm.’

‘Not my call. We can’t take the risk. He could’ve started a riot.’

‘He didn’t start it. That fat bloke did.’

‘I know. It’s not fair but we have to keep them safe.’

Hal was instantly alert.
Keep them safe
. Was this a coded message? He would have to tread warily but . . . ‘I don’t feel safe here,’ he confided. ‘The loonies seem to come and go. How do they get out?’

‘Patients. You’re patients.’

‘That’s as may be, but how do they get out?’

‘Some are well enough to return to the courts. Others are moved on to Aradale—that’s our main campus. You may have passed the big white building when you came in. There’s a lot more room there. More to do, too.’
More pleasant for your daughter, as well
, he thought. He didn’t mention that some patients return home. For someone in Hal’s condition, it was a forlorn hope.

‘So how do you get to go to Aradale?’ Hal said as casually as he knew how.

‘Keep your head down. No more movie riots. No more looking for adders under your bed. Eat your food without demanding a taster’ (the latter two were recently acquired precautions). He didn’t mention the depression that occasionally overwhelmed his patient. Hal was still considered a suicide risk and the privilege of pyjamas seemed as far off as it had ever been.

When Hal was in a depressive state, he would refuse to get up and had to be helped into his clothes, his uncooperative arms and legs manipulated by two nurses. He wasn’t able to shave himself and sat passively as the razor scraped across his cheeks and chin. He picked at his food and moped around the exercise yard, speaking to no-one. It was believed that this state was triggered by guilt and grief, and grief certainly played a part. The guilt, however, was more complex. The voices were pouring poison in his ear, a sticky, green poison, glowing like something radioactive.
You know you want to join your wife and granddaughter. They despise your cowardice. Do it! Do it!

Hal’s daily struggle with the voices wore him down. He had to stay in this world until the last brick was laid. That was his firm belief. But if Paulina and little Grace despised him, why bother? There were other voices, however—
Wait
, bright, blue angel voices said.
You are needed. Your task is to finish the house.
Torn between the two, struggling for air, Hal floundered in a gelatinous swamp, witch cackles and the cries of children exploding in his ears. Then, his medication adjusted, he’d return from the depths until the voices started again.

Do it! Do it!

Wait!

While unable to control his depression, Hal was strategic about his delusions, wearing his pants tucked into his socks and dressing and undressing on his bed. That frustrated the adders, who were inclined to sulk. Later, he was glad to see them leave of their own accord. Even a little victory was welcome. The food was more tricky and he discussed this with Godown who visited at least once a month.

‘If I ask for a taster, they’ll say I’m a troublemaker.’