The Memory Tree (37 page)

That was what happened when their good days collided and their stars were aligned.

Hal’s life follows the seasons and years trudge by barely noticed. It’s 1997 and he is seventy-nine weary years old when the letter arrives for Sealie, informing her of her father’s impending return home. He is unaware of his daughter’s frantic efforts to keep him where he is, but if he did know, he wouldn’t feel rejected. He’d be happy—if happy is a word you can apply to Hal.

Overwhelmed by the need to cope with her father and brother all at once, Sealie has conspired with Will and Scottie to take Zav away on a fishing trip. Zav can’t get out of the house quickly enough. The other two men determinedly talk about the weather, the fish they might catch, the football, and Zav is pitifully grateful.

Meanwhile, Sealie sits in her little blue Corolla in the Aradale visitors’ car park, gathering her resolve, while Hal skulks in the dayroom, ostentatiously ignoring the bags waiting by the door. Sealie rests her head on the steering wheel for a moment then gets out of the car and heads for the office. She is met by the charge nurse and, for the last time, makes her way down the tiled corridors to where her father is waiting.

‘It’s time, Dad.’

Hal looks up. ‘I don’t want to go.’ His tone is as reasonable as he can make it, but Sealie detects panic just under the surface. Her father’s face is a landscape of perplexity.

He looks at the nurse. ‘I can’t leave the tree. You know that.’

‘We’ve talked about this, Dad.’ Sealie turns to the nurse. ‘Can we go by way of the tree?’

It is mid-autumn and the massed brown leaves are dance-ready. Hal steps into their welcoming ambit and turns to his daughter, extending his hand with a courtly bow. She touches her hair, hesitates, then joins him under the broad canopy. Together they waltz through the whispering leaves. Sealie whirls on the feet of memory. She hasn’t danced in years.

‘I’ll bring you back to visit your tree, Dad.’

Hal’s shoulders slump, the joy draining from his face like blood from a wound. ‘I’m coming.’ He looks at Sealie. When had his little princess become so careworn? There are still traces of beauty, but sadness has nibbled away at her strong, clear features, leaving them frayed and drooping.

‘I won’t be any trouble,’ Hal says humbly.

Book III

Nineteen-ninety-seven. The year Hal came home. It was the year that a princess, and a Belgian nun working in India died within weeks of each other. The princess got more flowers. A sheep called Dolly was cloned, then died of old age. In Cuba, Che Guevara’s remains were buried with full honours. The Hale-Bopp comet made its closest approach to earth and twenty-four of the optimistic dead were whizzed into space by a rocket called Pegasus. Imagine! A rocket full of corpses. As one of the dead, myself, I have to say there’s some style in an exit like that.

In Australia, a man called Stuart Diver managed to survive for sixty-seven freezing hours after being buried in a landslide. At last. A survivor. With all the dead princesses, space burials and whatnot, you might have thought I was becoming morbid.

One more thing—Hal, the science fiction fan, had read Arthur C. Clarke’s
2001: A Space Odyssey.
Nineteen-ninety-seven was the year that HAL, the Heuristically programmed ALgorithmic computer was activated. In nineteen-ninety-seven the signs were everywhere

Against these world-changing events, however, there are the small happenings that alter the course of individual lives. What if the Minister for Social Services hadn’t been ticked off by the Finance Minister for exceeding her budget? What if her daughter had brought home a straight A report instead of straight Ds? What if the Minister’s new shoes hadn’t been killing her? Would she have been more compassionate if there had not been that unfortunate confluence of events on the day she received Sealie’s letter of appeal? We can only speculate. As it was, her colleague in Finance was acerbic, the daughter unrepentant and a nasty blister had formed on the ministerial heel. So Hal found himself despatched, with what he felt was unseemly haste, to his former home.

1

A
S THEY LEAVE THE FREEWAY,
Hal sits in the car, taking in a streetscape at once familiar and strange. That large block of flats. Wasn’t that where the glove factory had been? Parker Street. Bob and Rose lived down that street when they were first married. But there used to be a corner shop—a milk bar. It’s no longer there. Or perhaps he has the wrong street. It might be Porter Street he’s thinking of. It’s so confusing. Look at all the cars on the road. He isn’t sure he’d want to drive in traffic like this. He is shocked to see a large hoarding dedicated to erectile dysfunction and slides an embarrassed glance in Sealie’s direction. Thank goodness she seems not to have noticed. He is relieved to see the old tennis courts, and St Theresa’s, its bluestone bulk reassuringly solid and familiar, keeping watch over the playing children.

They are turning now. One more corner and they’ll be home. Home. Hal tastes the word and finds no lingering sweetness. Not even the bitter sweetness of nostalgia. His tongue shrinks from something dank and mushroomy. Overwhelmed by the desire to bolt, he grabs the door handle.

‘Dad!’ His flight is arrested as Sealie puts a steadying hand on his arm. It’s too late now. The car is pulling into the driveway and the house that he built for Paulina, the still-beautiful house he left so long ago, sails into view.

Sealie stops the car and Hal is home at last. It appears to him exactly as it was when he left, carrying me in my Moses basket on his way down to the river. He had turned back that day, to look at his house, never dreaming that it would be nearly thirty years before he would see it again.

Now, he winds down the window, and looks at his house with eyes of love. He doesn’t see the exhaustion evident in the discoloured paintwork, the cracked concrete paths, the prison griminess of the windows. He sees rather the fine bones of its sweeping architecture; the roses and lavender that have been cut back for winter; and best of all, the trees . . . He looks for the magnolia, bare now, but grown strong and wide.

‘I’d like to visit the magnolia before we go inside,’ he says.

‘Of course.’ Sealie waits as he fumbles his way out of the car. She stands back a little, watching him approach the tree and reach out to touch it with the tips of his fingers. He senses the sap, the nascent flowers, the curled leaves, all waiting.
You appear dead, now
,
but you’ll bloom again in time.
Hal remembers how, with the children, he had dug and mulched the soil before placing the fragile sapling in the earth. Zav and Kate were married under this tree. Poor Kate. A sweet girl. He had loved her and had ruined her life as well as Zav’s. He realises now that no-one understands the pain and loneliness that pave the hard road of duty. He straightens his shoulders. Now he’ll have to face his son. Explain that he had no choice, and ask, not for forgiveness, but for understanding.

‘We should go in now.’

Sealie takes his arm and they walk together up the steps.

As he crosses the threshold, Hal is visited by more memories. His mind recoils, but images and sounds wheedle their way into his consciousness. He sees his strong, young self, carrying his bride of two months through this very door. It was raining that day, and her hair clung damply to her laughing face. Her stocking caught on his watchband, (stockings were still rare after the war, he remembers) but Paulina continued to laugh her surprisingly full-bellied laugh. Later, he had carried their babies through this same door; Zav, red-faced and squalling, Sealie sleeping profoundly, rugged up against the frost.

Hal looks at Sealie uncertainly. Though familiar, the house belongs to another part of his life. He feels like a guest.

‘My room. Can I take my things up to my room?’ Anxious not to do the wrong thing.

Sealie has been wondering about this moment. What room did he want? Was it the bedroom he had shared with Paulina, or the little guest room he’d taken after her death? She had aired both rooms, made up the beds, but the poster was now part of the wall, part of the structure in the lonely hermitage he had left. She had put a photograph of Paulina in the master bedroom, hoping it would be enough should he choose that option.

‘Just take your case. I’ll bring the rest up later.’

‘Zav. Where’s Zav?’ Hal peers up the stairs as though his son might come bounding down any minute on his way to football practice.

‘He’s gone away for a few days. With friends. Fishing.’

‘I never took him fishing, did I?’

‘No—no you didn’t.’

‘He had a lot of energy, that boy.’

‘So he did.’
Long, long ago.
Sealie blinks back tears. ‘I’ll get dinner ready while you unpack.’

Hal goes straight to the smaller room. It isn’t locked now, of course. He goes inside and shuts the door behind him. Relieved to have that settled, Sealie hurries out to the kitchen to prepare their evening meal.

Hal puts his case on the floor and sits on the bed. The cell-like room feels safe. It’s not much bigger than his room at Aradale and the furnishings are similarly functional. He stares at the old-fashioned poster on the wall, where blurred grey shadows dance on a stage the years have all but obliterated. No longer flesh and blood, the dancers have metamorphosed into mist, into fog, into air. Hal absorbs this evidence of disintegration with equanimity. Medication has dulled the pain, hushed the voices, and he can feel only a lingering sadness.

Opening his case, Hal begins to put his clothes in the drawers. He hangs his shirts and pants in the wardrobe, then picks up the book, which is hidden in a scarf at the bottom of his case. He brings us home between the pages of our old favourite,
I, Robot
. He takes out the faded photographs of my grandmother and me and begins the old ritual—look, read, touch—and then the incantation,
Keep them safe
. When he has completed the cycle for both of us, he returns the worn cardboard folder to the book and rewraps it in the scarf, placing the bundle on the top shelf of his wardrobe, under the spare blankets. He needs to keep us safe a while longer.

Sealie is putting the roast in the oven when she hears footsteps and turns to see her father standing in the doorway.

‘It’s nearly five thirty,’ he says, frowning.

‘That’s right. Do you want to watch TV while we’re waiting for dinner?’

‘I’ll just wait here until dinner’s ready,’ he says, sitting in his old place at the kitchen table.

‘Dinner won’t be ready till after seven. Why don’t you watch the news?’

Hal’s face twitches, ‘I have to be in bed by seven. Dinner is always five thirty.’ He opens the cupboard and takes out two plates.

‘It’s a roast, Dad.’

‘Can’t wait for a roast—what else is quick?’ Hal’s face takes on a desperate, mulish expression. ‘Got to be in bed by seven.’

Sealie gives in. ‘Omelette?’

Hal nods and she makes a cheese omelette while her father looks on impatiently.

‘Me and Godown used to love Mrs Mac’s omelettes.’ Occasionally he surprises her with snatches of normal conversation. She is wary. Mrs Mac is banished, but Godown is waiting to visit. Best to respond normally.