The Naked Drinking Club (36 page)

I was last off the bus and could see the others looking at him as they stepped down onto the forecourt. It was probably the black clothes more than anything, for black in Australia seemed to be a big no-no, automatically arousing suspicion among the happy-go-lucky colour-clad.

‘Kerry?’ He clicked his fingers into a point.

‘Hank.’ I outstretched my hand.

His Cuban heels clicked towards me as he rejected the hand and forced a hug, with big back pats.

‘Ow, careful, I’m a little fragile.’ I coughed from the firmness of his pat.

‘Yeees, what the blazes happened to you, girl?’

‘Boat capsized during white-water rafting, smashed into the rocks.’ I scanned the rest of his clothing. He wore a cowboy belt with studs round the leather and an enormous star buckle; he also wore his shiny shirt open at the chest,
revealing
a huge pendant made of stone or bone hanging by a piece of leather. I couldn’t believe this guy was for real, and hoped that he would soon tell me he was on the way to a fancy-dress party.

‘You gotta be careful, girl.’

‘Shit!’ I had nearly forgotten the portfolio in the hold, with the shock of seeing Hank. I ran over to the bus driver as he was unloading the last few items, and dragged it out with Hank’s help.

‘What you got in here, love?’

‘Paintings.’

‘Oh yeah.’

‘Yeah, I sell them.’

‘Is that a fact? Well, don’t be trying to sell them to us; we’ve got far too much stuff at our place as it is.’

I wondered who made up the ‘our’ in Hank’s life, as we walked towards a large station wagon with a ‘Country Classics 115 FM’ sticker along the bottom of the back window.

‘Your face has taken quite a battering, hasn’t it, girl?’ He put his hand on the side of my face and turned it round, letting his sunglasses drop onto the chain round his neck. I was tired from sober, stranger, small talk already and couldn’t wait for darkness to come so that I could be alone in what I prayed was my own room.

‘So, Hank, what do you know? I need to know everything.’ I imagined I was a detective again, just arriving on the scene, needing to be filled in on the situation by my hapless sidekick.

He laughed, which annoyed me.

‘I know you do, love, but we’ve only just checked in. Let’s get you back, get that cut of yours seen to, and we’ll sit down with a nice meal and a nice glass of wine, and we’ll have plenty of time to chat, OK?’ He loaded my things into the back of the truck.

‘OK. I’m just dying to know.’

Hank gave me an over-the-top sympathetic look. ‘Let’s get back, OK?’ He opened the doors, and we got in.

‘OK,’ I sighed disappointedly.

‘Have you ever had barramundi fish?’

‘No.’

‘Do you like wine?’

‘Of course.’

‘Good, good.’ He put a tape in, and we drove away listening to some whiney, wobbly man’s voice singing about his wife leaving him.

‘Funny, I feel like I know you already, like we’re old friends,’ he said, smiling at me.

‘Yeah, I know, it’s weird, uh?’ I forced a polite smile, not a hundred per cent sure yet how I felt about him.

Hank’s place was a big, old, white colonial house with a porch right across the front. It was in a quiet road in an area called Paddington. I asked Hank why all the names of areas seemed to be the same in different cities and he said it was because the English settlers named them after places at home, and didn’t expect people to build others anywhere else, and because the land was so vast they rarely got to know about the settling of other places.

‘We’re back!’ Hank opened the fly screen with wind chimes dangling above it. He took my rucksack, while I went ahead of him dragging my folder, which was extra heavy with the double-ups. I left my folder in the hall and followed Hank through to a room.

‘Will this be safe here?’ I asked, concerned that there was only an unlocked fly screen between the street and my only source of income and ticket to spy on my mother.

‘You’re not in Sydney now, love. Of course it’s safe.’

Something good was cooking: a warm spicy coconut aroma drifted through from another room.

I looked around. He led me to the kitchen and we pulled chairs up to a table and sat down. The house was old and plain-looking, cool and dark – which I liked – and the furniture was heavy, and dark-stained wood. There were lace doilies on the tables with ornaments on them; the ornaments were all stones, or marble, shells and bits of driftwood. There were pieces of material hanging on various parts of the wall with Asian writing on it. He saw me looking.

‘A lot of the furniture’s my mum’s. She lived with me most of my life until she died two years ago this December.’

‘Oh, I’m sorry.’

‘Don’t be, she had a fine old time. She was OK; just old, that’s all. I could sure do with changing the place around. It’s a bit dusty, shall we say?’

‘Wasn’t Slim Dusty a country music star?’

‘Very good. You like country?’

‘No, not really, bit of Patsy Cline of course, but not a huge fan in general. But we were near Tamworth a few days ago, and there were signs on the road for some of the stuff going on.’

‘Oh, yeah, that’ll be right.’

‘There was one for the Slim Dusty museum.’

‘Well, as you can tell, I’m a big country fan.’ He pointed to his clothes. ‘Now, just you sit down and relax. Can I fix you something? Coke, beer, cup of tea?’

I struggled with my decision; it was a hard one. My kidneys ached and I still felt thirsty and bloated, but the polite chat was killing me, and I was finding it hard keeping my eyes open.

‘I’ll have a Coke please. Cold, if you’ve got it.’ I’d wait to drink until I’d eaten, that would be my new rule for my stay here.

‘Sure thing, let me get that for you, and I’m going to find some plasters and stuff as well, OK?’

‘Thanks.’

Hank, although Australian, spoke in a bit of a fake Memphis drawl, which was so corny I was amazed that he didn’t notice it. He opened a cold bottle from the fridge and put it down beside me, and began rooting around in the drawer.

‘Excuse me.’ He left the room and began shouting for someone. ‘Pat! Pat, love, you in?’

He came back into the room muttering to himself. I wondered where I would be sleeping, longing for dinner and answers about my mother and an early night. Then in the morning I could start what I came here to do.

A bell sounded from the oven, and a small smiley woman with a round face and straight black hair burst in through the back door, saying, ‘Oh my goodness, you are here.’

Pat was Chinese or Mexican, I couldn’t be sure.

‘Hi there, I’m Kerry.’

‘Kerry, this is Pattana.’ We shook hands.

‘Nice to meet you. Sorry, I was outside picking some coriander but, my goodness, what has happened with your face?’ She dusted her hands on her apron.

‘Pattana, we need to sort it out, it looks very red,’ said Hank, putting on some spectacles and going back to the drawer.

She looked horrified.

‘White-water rafting,’ I said sheepishly.

She gasped.

‘Stupid, I know,’ I said, shrugging my shoulders.

‘Let me take a look.’

‘Yes, Pattana used to be a nurse back home in Thailand. I’m looking for the plasters, sweetheart.’

‘Here, I get them.’ Pattana went to a different part of the kitchen and brought out a small red box. ‘My goodness, such a mess.’ She was shocked but laughed and darted around. I liked her, she seemed like fun, and they were an odd couple.

After Pattana disinfected my wounds, she put some more micropore stitches above my eye and cleaned the cut to my mouth with a cotton bud. We had dinner, which was the most fantastic meal I’d ever eaten in my life. The fish was huge and white and lay on my plate covered in a tasty chilli and coconut sauce, with carrot and coriander salad. I finished well before Hank and Pat, and perked up immediately.

‘Are you sure you won’t have a glass of red, Kerry? Brown Brothers is a good wine, you know.’

‘I will now I’ve eaten, thanks, but only a small one, please.’

Pattana laughed.

After dinner she tidied around us and I thanked her for her excellent cooking.

Hank kissed her on the head and asked if she wouldn’t mind seeing to things herself while we ‘got down to the nitty gritty’.

I was loosening up already, and feeling happy and appreciative for the special care lavished on me.

‘OK, Hank, this is lovely but I really want to know stuff now.’

‘I’ll get my file,’ he said, putting his reading glasses back on from the chain round his neck.

‘File?’

‘Hank likes to be organised about everything,’ said Pattana, laughing away again to herself.

Hank came back to the table with an orange folder and began examining his notes. ‘Now listen, Kerry.’ He shut the folder and pulled his glasses down onto his nose, looking over at me.

‘Hank, this is driving me mad, what do you know?’ I leant forward anxiously, drinking from my glass. The wine was the smoothest I had ever drunk, slipping down effortlessly, burning my stomach slightly with the chillies.

‘This isn’t all your stuff, by the way. I just like to keep notes so I remember things, that’s all. I didn’t want to miss anything, you understand?’

‘Yes, but please tell me, this is killing me. Have you spoken to my mother or not?’

‘I’ve spoken over the telephone with your mum’s sister, your auntie.’ He read off the file again.

‘Fuck!’ I quickly turned to Pattana, embarrassed. ‘Sorry.’

‘That’s OK.’ Pattana tutted in the background.

‘A woman going by the name of Mary spoke to me and from what I can gather she’s your mum’s oldest sister, and she’s married.’

‘And is my mum here?’

Hank stared at me. ‘Well.’

‘Hank, don’t be slow with her, she needs to know,’ chided Pattana.

‘Pat, I’m not playing around, I just don’t want her to get hurt. Kerry, your mum is very resistant, she’s fearful of meeting you. It’s traumatic, you understand that?’

‘What!’ I shouted, ecstatic that I was now talking to the first person that had ever spoken to my mum, or at least a blood relative of hers.

‘This Mary woman said that your mum has been terrified of this happening since the day she gave you away, worried that you might just show up.’ Hank took his glasses on and off to emphasise points, but I knew it was nerves because he was
unsure
of how I would take all this. I didn’t quite know how I felt about it, but I would settle for anything at this point, even just an acknowledgement that I did have a person somewhere who gave birth to me, that some part of me looked like.

‘Did you tell them I was here?’

‘No, I didn’t. In fact, they asked that. I told them you were thinking of coming over, but so far were just trying different means of reaching them, or finding out something, and I was just someone you came across when you thought you’d try radio as a way of reaching people. For all they know, you are in still in England.’ Hank’s glasses were off for the last part. Pattana cocked her head to the side in sympathy.

‘You sure?’

‘Positive. I didn’t want to frighten them off, you see. I wanted to get as much information as possible.’ He stopped and read the wistful look on my face, then smiled. ‘That’s it, that’s all we know for now.’

I could have cried, but swallowed it and got back to my questions. ‘Is Mary her real name, I wonder? What about her second name?’

‘Well, I’m presuming she wouldn’t lie about a first name and she didn’t tell me her second name.’ He shrugged.

‘OK.’ I ran my hand through my hair, trying to think of what to make of everything and what plan of action to take. I needed one of those plastic boards on the wall with bits of card pinned to it that detectives use on TV.

‘Got some other news that might disappoint you, I’m afraid, love.’

I braced myself for something along the lines of, she’s going back to the UK this week.

‘Your mother didn’t marry the man you thought she did, the Duffy fella.’

‘No?’

‘Not according to Mary.’

‘Well, how do you know she isn’t double-bluffing?’ It seemed to me that Hank was a pushover with this Mary woman.

‘Well, I don’t, but I just got the feeling that she was telling the truth. She said your mum did marry a military man, but not by the name of Duffy.’

I felt drained. This meant my search would be much harder, and completely ruled out the back-up plan of search by surname – if fate didn’t do its magic this time, of course.

‘Perhaps who ever told you it was Duffy was wrong; it could have just been a mistake on their part.’ Hank smiled kindly in an attempt to console me. I thought back to the old lady on the doorstep in Newcastle, who gave me the information; at the time, she seemed reliable. Now, however, that seemed doubtful and I recast her in my mind as a confused old woman who’d sent me off on the wrong track with her muddled memory.

‘Was the man my mum married Australian, even?’ I was clutching at straws.

‘I honestly don’t know, love.’ He sipped his wine. ‘Like I said, she was resistant and kinda well’ he moved his hand around ‘worked up, you know?’

This was fairly bad news, and threw a spanner in the works, but I wasn’t going to be put off that easily.

‘Phone book.’ I clicked my fingers. ‘I should still check the Duffys out up here, in case she was lying.’

‘Of course. It’s the first thing I did. You’re welcome to take a look yourself.’ He pointed through to the hall. ‘Only three in this area funnily enough, and a couple of pages for the rest of Brisbane.’

I looked at him quizzically.

‘I called a couple but none of them knew what I was talking about. That means nothing because a hell of a lot of people are ex-directory.’

‘That’s right,’ Pattana nodded.

‘They could be lying as well.’ I laughed a little, feeling that the obvious was being overlooked.

‘Yes, they could, but I don’t think so. One was an old lady who’d never been married, and the other two I could just tell were being honest.’

‘OK, tell me the whole thing, please, from the start. About Mary coming to see you and everything she said.’

‘Well, I got a call from the station that evening. You see, I do pre-records sometimes, so when the call about you went out, I was at home, yeah?’