The Naked Drinking Club (39 page)

‘Grey, I suppose, but familiar grey.’

‘My grandparents were Irish, came over here after the First World War.’

‘I think my grandparents were too.’

‘We’re all from the Irish somehow, kid.’ He laughed, staring out to the end of the garden, to the city lights in the distance.

‘Except for Pattana.’

‘Yeah, not Pattana, she is one hundred per cent Thai. You ever been to Thailand?’

‘No. I should really drop off on the way back but I’m not really a traveller, you see. I’m on a mission.’

‘A mission to save your soul, eh?’ He chuckled.

‘Or to find it. How did you meet Patt?’

‘Well, she’s not a Thai bride, if that’s what you mean.’

‘I don’t even know what that means.’

He swung his head round. ‘You’re kidding?’

‘No, why would I be?’

‘Well, there’re some blokes who can’t get a woman through the normal ways, shall we say, so they buy themselves a Thai lady. There’s millions of them that want to get away and have what they think is a better life, and an Aussie, British or sometimes American is the only way.’

‘But I thought it was a great place, Thailand?’

‘It is, it’s very beautiful, but some people are so poor they have to get out. Same old story.’

‘Were you in the Navy there?’

‘Yes, I was, for a long time. Pattana is not my first wife, though.’

‘Oh.’

‘I was with someone when I was very young and we had a child.’ He sighed deeply and played around with his feet,
trying
to get them to pick up an old beer can next to the tree stool. ‘Yep, mucked that up but there you go.’

‘How old is your child now?’

‘She would be about twenty-six, I guess. I haven’t seen her since she was a toddler.’ He played with his cigar ash, flicking it with his fingers and turning the cigar round. I left a deliberate pause in the conversation.

‘I’m lying. I’ve never met her.’ He leant forward and looked straight at me. ‘Her mother gave her up for adoption, Kerry, just like you. I know it’s awful, and I worry, I worry that there are others.’

I must have looked horrified.

‘I know, I know, it’s terrible. It’s what happened in those days, you know. Women got pregnant and they couldn’t keep the baby. It’s wrong but that’s how it was.’

‘Oh God, this is fucked. What’s wrong with everyone? Is anyone normal?’ I couldn’t honestly say I was surprised at what I was hearing; it seemed that anyone I ran into these days had some other life that had produced children, a life that they were running away from.

‘Hey, maybe you’re my father, Hank, you ever think about that?’ I was joking, but it was all so ridiculously closely linked.

‘I’ll be honest, when you first called, I thought that it might be you. I mean, her, the baby I never knew. I’ve always expected a call at some point.’ He laughed the comment away.

I didn’t. I felt sad again. ‘So that’s why you’re so sympathetic to my real mum and her family?’ It made sense now, all his talk of what a shock it must be for her.

‘Well, the curious thing is, I feel for all of you. I know what it’s like to be afraid of your past catching up with you, because you feel such guilt and such a sense of failure. But on the other hand a huge part of me also wants to know this little girl I made, and know how she is and what she looks like.’

‘Look, Hank, do you ever wonder why we’ve been thrown together like this? I mean, you were at your sister’s when I called, your name isn’t even Duffy, yet I phoned you, and the radio, I mean, come on, why?’

‘Of course I’ve thought about it, and I know what it means.’

‘Well?’

‘We are all on this earth to learn about what we did wrong the last time.’

‘What, like reincarnation and all that stuff?’

‘Yes, past lives. Each time we give it another go and see if we can do any better, but there’s some stuff that feels familiar in our current lives. That’s what I felt with you when I picked you up at the station, like I’d met you already – that’s past lives, kid, that’s what I believe.’

‘Oh God, I don’t want lots of lives, not unless I have no feeling or memory of the ones before, or not unless they’re easier than this one.’

Hank laughed like a man pretending to be Santa Claus. ‘You’re a young soul, that’s why you find it so hard. You’re new to this, this is maybe your first life.’

‘No, I find it hard because my mother left me when I was born, and that’s fucked up, and I’ve felt odd and broken since I found out, although I felt odd before anyway and that just confirmed it.’

‘You’ll find your way, but you and I were meant to meet. It must be to help you and it must be to help me, help us both move on in this life.’

‘You really believe this stuff?’

Hank took a few puffs on his cigar before answering. ‘Yes, and you know what? You do too – you just won’t admit it to yourself.’

‘Want to know what I think?’ I said, like an old hand.

‘Go ahead, but you won’t tell me something I don’t know.’

‘I think desperate people throw themselves into the paths of strangers, because they are the lost ones, who need to search, and to search you must be open to others, and open people open themselves to like-minded lost people who too take comfort from their paths crossing.’ I went over what I’d said, not sure if I’d made any sense.

Hank started laughing again. ‘How did you work that out?’

‘Because I’ve had quite a bit of a life already, OK?’ I liked what I said; I liked myself for the stuff I came out with at times. I felt hopeful again. I liked being with Hank and Pat, I loved the people I got to meet, all the strangers who were
most
kind, unlike my experiences with most of my own family members.

Maybe I had read Hank wrongly; maybe he just didn’t want me to get hurt, like he said, or maybe he wanted me to hang around because of his past-life feelings, and his lost child. He had his chanting and his crystals, Pattana had the dream-catcher, Scotty had his bong, Anaya had her aloofness and I had my wine. We all had our things to get by with, what the fuck.

‘Let’s open another bottle, eh? Pat’s having a soak – she won’t know.’

‘Doesn’t she let you drink?’

‘It’s not like that. She doesn’t like me to overdo it. I guess I did when she first knew me – it was the Navy you know, we were all drinking. I just don’t like to overdo things now. I like it quiet.’

‘I’m good at quiet drinking,’ I said.

‘Excellent, then we shall have another.’ He got up and left, rubbing his knees as he stood.

I stared up into the Brisbane night, under the same sky as my mother.

‘Hank?’ I asked, when he got back.

‘Yes, love?’

‘I need you to be honest with me about what you know. I know you’re lying.’

He was standing holding the wine; I could see his chest heave up and down as I spoke to him. He let out a long breath through his mouth.

‘What makes you think I’m not telling the truth?’

‘Let me see your phone book and I’ll show you.’

He began taking out the cork.

‘Don’t be daft. Why do you want to do that just now?’

‘Hank, please get me one and I’ll show you.’

He stopped what he was doing, put down the bottle and walked back indoors to the study. I was nervous. I didn’t want to look a fool, but if my instincts were right, I wouldn’t. He walked back shaking his head and threw the phone book down on the grass in front of me.

‘Okayee,’ I said, flicking through to the Ds. He continued opening the wine, and refilled our glasses.

‘As I thought.’ I dragged it out like Colombo, certain I had found no Duffys, until I turned a page, and found three at the top.

‘As you thought, nothing.’

We laughed together. He was right, he was telling the truth, there were only three Duffys. I was way off track with my last hunch. He just laughed and laughed, until it annoyed me a little.

‘Jesus, kid, is that how that mind of yours works?’ Hank coughed and spluttered and laughed some more.

‘What – what’s so funny?’ I laughed some, to be friendly, then I became serious and stood up. ‘You’re not getting off that lightly. I know you’re lying about something, and tomorrow I’m going to leave and follow my own line of enquiries, until I get what I want.’ I felt pretty smug. Hank had stopped laughing, and became as serious as me. ‘Listen, I didn’t come all this way to get fucked around. I’ll find out with or without you, but I will find out, at any cost, do you understand me, Hank?’

‘I do. OK, just keep it down, love.’

‘Don’t fuck about, Hank, please. I am really grateful to you and Pattana for letting me stay here and everything, but I won’t let people mess me around with the facts. I was half-arsed before about finding her, but lately I need to do that more than anything. I won’t stop now, until I find out who and where she is.’

‘Sssh.’ Hank pointed to the steamed-up bathroom window upstairs. I was leaning over him, bending down. ‘OK, OK, I think you should calm down.’ He did the flagging hands sign for slow down.

‘Calm down! I’m trying to find the person that fucking made me, and right now you are the only living soul that knows more than I do.’

‘OK, OK, fair enough. Sit down, love, sit down, there’s stuff you need to know.’

CHAPTER
THIRTY-FIVE

I DIDN’T MOVE
from the spot until Hank began to explain his big mystery to me.

‘Look, I lied about Pattana,’ he said. I rolled my eyes. ‘We’ve not been together for as long as I’ve made out. I didn’t meet her in the Navy, I met her here, OK?’

I nodded, mystified at the connection between the details of how they got together and me.

‘About ten years ago, no, not about, I know it was ten years ago, I got a girl pregnant. She was young, seventeen, although to be fair she had always claimed to be twenty, but that’s another story.’

My heart began pounding in anticipation of some head-fucking announcement that would knock me off my feet. ‘Fucksake, how many children have you got out there exactly?’

‘I know, I know, but ten years ago I was a very different person, Kerry. I was very unhappy with myself, had been all my life, and I drank a bit too much. It was just after my first divorce and I was really low. Things are very different now, very different, and I’m very happy with Pat. I’m a changed person and—’

‘Anyway and …’ I was impatient and increasingly anxious that I might perhaps be related to this nutcase unravelling before me. After everything I’d heard so far it wouldn’t have surprised me.

‘I had to move away from the area. People gossiped and I was very unpopular. My name then was different, it was Frank Coleman. I had some trouble when people found out,
and
I owned a shop at the time, a small business. It got in the local paper, because her uncle and her brother burnt the shop down and got charged with arson. Well, the girl kept the kid and I had to move away and start again, different name.’ He looked up remorsefully. ‘When I tried to help you initially I didn’t think I’d get involved. Thought I’d maybe get some information for you, a phone number and I’d pass it on, and I wanted to help, really I did. With hindsight, maybe I shouldn’t have, but I felt responsible, probably because I skirted responsibility years ago with my own situation. Can you understand that?’

Hank kept a watch on the bathroom window, lowering his voice every so often.

‘Of course I can. I’m not stupid.’ Hank
was
a lovely man, but I found it disappointing to learn that he too, like so many others, abandoned a child of his own, and I found it hard to be as sympathetic as he would have liked me to be. I just stared at him blankly throughout his confession.

‘But I wasn’t thinking. I thought it was all forgotten about, but when the people you’re looking for got in touch, and I found out they knew who I was, I just wanted to back off.’

‘Shit, so they remembered you from before?’

‘Exactly. So they started threatening me, that if I didn’t butt out they’d cause trouble for me, and I don’t want to hurt Pattana with any of this.’

‘So you weren’t going to tell me.’

‘I didn’t know what I was going to do, to be honest, and I still don’t. I mean, I told Pat about you and that I wanted to help, but I got scared when that lot turned up and started getting heavy with me, so I thought maybe if you came here and I told you a little bit of information, you might either be satisfied with that and decide to leave it, or not bother turning up at all. I don’t know. I’ve been so worried, to be honest, I’ve been trying to not think about it.’

I looked at him, thinking he’d lost his mind.

‘I know, I know. Crazy.’ He looked at me directly. ‘Kerry, seriously, aside from all my problems, they are very pissed off. They’re very protective of your mother, whoever she is. I know it’s hard to accept and it’s wrong, but they don’t want
to
meet you. To them and to her, you are a terrible secret, I suppose.’

Nothing affected me about what he was saying. It didn’t hurt me in the way he worried it would. I was more shocked at how people were trading in lies about children they’d made. I was also determined that whether my mother liked it or not I was going to meet her, with or without her knowing. It was all something she’d thank me for in the end.

‘Where did you live before, when all this happened?’

‘Ferny Hills, the other side of Brisbane, but it was ten years ago.’

‘The chances are that if they remembered you, then they probably still live there.’ I started looking through the phone book. ‘And you know nothing else about them, no more names, nothing? Please, Hank, I need you to be honest, I really do.’

‘No, honestly, that’s all I know.’ He put his hand on his chest. Maybe because he was a Buddhist, which I thought must give him some kind of integrity, I believed him. I don’t know why, but I did.

I lay looking up at the dream-catcher, trying to figure out why Hank would encourage me to come here then withhold information from me. It made no sense whatsoever, if I was honest with myself. I was glad Hank had levelled with me, obviously, but all the same thought it best to rely on myself for the next part. I planned to make some calls in the morning and move this situation along, hoping to attract no more flaky people in the process.