Illywhacker_ A Novel Part 16

Molly clutched at her wires. She could not remember the names of streets. She was as confused and shocked as a householder returning to a bombed-out city and her directions to me lacked confidence.

"Down here," she said. "Up here."

Phoebe stroked her mother's arms and dabbed at the beads of perspiration that appeared on her upper lip. She tried to loosen the wires which were cutting off circulation. She despatched me to ask directions. But no one knew of any Dr Grigson. They shook their heads before I had finished my question. They turned their backs. They walked away.

We circled the streets. The Crystal Palace Hotel had vanished. Nothing was the same. People came from their houses to watch the Hispano Suiza go by. They shouted and grinned and sometimes jeered. Annette found none of this rea.s.suring. As a sympathetic student of the Bolsheviks she considered the working cla.s.s of Ballarat with some trepidation.

"All gone," Molly said, "all gone."

But Dr Grigson's building in Lydiard Street was precisely where it had always been. It was one of those buildings that disappear from the eyes of a city's inhabitants. It no longer had any part in their lives and they did not trouble to spell out the bleached and peeling letters on the rotting fascia of the veranda. We pa.s.sed it four times before Molly located it in the wrecked map of her memory and experienced, in that drop from memory to reality, the chronological equivalent of an exceedingly large air pocket.

"Oh dear," she said as she confronted this desolation. "Oh dearie, dearie me."

Annette was ready to pee on the footpath.

"The good Dr Grigson," she said dryly, "appears to be no more."

"Herbert will knock," Phoebe said and Annette sighed in irritation and held her hands between her knees. Oh G.o.d, she prayed, find me somewhere to pee.

I did as I was bidden and gained Annette's best cynical smile for my attempts at kindness.

The windows facing the street were painted cream like a dentist's surgery. I knocked on them. I hammered on the door from which the ancient paint, unused to such agitation, fell in a flurry of green flakes and adhered stubbornly to the sleeves of my dark suit. I stooped to look through the generous keyhole and when I shouted I could hear my voice echo through the empty pa.s.sage.

I had no idea why Molly wished to see Dr Grigson. It would be another year or two before I became privy to such delicate secrets. For the moment, all I knew was that it was a pressing matter. I did not need to be instructed to go round to the back of the building. I signalled this intention to my pa.s.sengers.

I scaled the high wooden gate in Dr Grigson's back fence, although the padlock was so rusted I might have snapped it with my bare hands. A pale light glowed in the upstairs window. I picked up a piece of coal and threw it at the window. I fancied I heard a cough. I threw another, larger lump and knew, before it hit the gla.s.s, that the throw had been too hard. I sucked in my breath as the window broke.

"Beg your pardon," I yelled.

"Go away," a voice came quavering back.

"Dr Grigson?"

"I have the telephone," Dr Grigson said fearfully. "I shall call the police."

"Mrs McGrath wishes to see you, Dr Grigson. She motored all the way from Geelong to see you."

"Go away."

"Out the front," I pleaded. "Look out the front. In the Hispano Suiza."

"Hispano Suiza?" asked Dr Grigson (whose Daimler Benz sat quietly rusting in the shed beside which I stood). "Did you say Hispano Suiza?" A shard of gla.s.s fell to the courtyard and shattered at my feet.

"I did, sir."

The figure disappeared from the window and I went to stand at the back door. I heard footsteps descending the stairs at quite astonishing speed. Minutes later I heard high heels and the voice of my beloved echoing through the house.

I waited. No one came for me. Only after Annette Davidson, unprotected by cardboard, had released a loud cascade of urine into what had once been Ballarat's only upstairs water closet, was I able to make my presence known.

55.

Dr Grigson was two days past his seventy-fifth birthday which he had celebrated alone. His hair was almost gone and his neck and spine had stiffened to such an extent that, in order to alter his point of view, it was necessary that he change the position of his tiny feet, which he did with small shuffling movements.

He had been washing his dishes and his rolled sleeves revealed skin of an almost unbearable limpidity, like a fish who has lived at such a remove from the sun that its internal organs are displayed beneath its transparent skin, a spectacle to make the sensitive squirm and turn away at such a display of the squishy vulnerability of life.

It was Annette (her bladder bursting) who had kept him from the motor car. She had taken him by his narrow shoulders and turned him in his tracks.

"I am sorry to be so blunt, Dr Grigson," she said, "but I need your toilet as a matter of some urgency."

Dr Grigson found himself incapable of arguing with such firm resolve and, under the impression that his visitors had driven in an Hispano Suiza simply to make use of his water closet, led them to it without complaint.

"There is no hurry," he told Annette as she closed the door, "we will look at the car in a moment."

By the time Annette had relieved herself and admitted me through the back door, Molly had made the nature of her business clear and was already locked away with Dr Grigson in the consulting room.

Very little had changed in the waiting room in thirty years. The roses and delphiniums still entwined on the carpet which, if threadbare in places, and faded everywhere, was spotlessly clean. The telephones and Remington typewriters and Graphaphone dictating machines lay ready for the use of secretaries who were now grandmothers, their generous bosoms soft pillows for the b.u.mping heads of their daughters' children.

Phoebe was giggling.

"My G.o.d," she whispered as Annette and I came up the stairs, "what an extraordinary place. It's a museum."

"What sort of doctor is he?"

Phoebe shrugged. We stood in the middle of the room. The ancient chairs had the appearance of valuable exhibits easily damaged by the simple demands of everyday life. We hesitated to sit on them.

The consulting room door opened. We had a brief view of the widow in her underwear. She scuttled behind the door as Dr Grigson emerged and shuffled mechanically, jointlessly, amiably across the roses and delphiniums.

He began to fuss at a large wooden filing cabinet whose small drawers were packed with musty filing cards. Long-bottled odours flooded gratefully into the room.

"Ah," he said to me, "the driver!" He nodded to me as a kindred spirit. "Rourke," he called out to Molly who was now safely tucked away behind the door. "There were Rourkes at Creswick. Were you a Creswick Rourke?"

"Ballarat East," said Molly in a wobbly falsetto that betrayed her state of undress. "Mrs Ester's niece."

"Ah, Mrs Ester, yes. Yes, yes." He took out a grey card. "Please help yourself to sweetmeats." He offered the bowl of confections to me. I obliged by offering it to the two ladies while Dr Grigson shuffled back into his consultation.

The sweets had faded wrappers whose substance had long ago melted with what they were intended to contain. We chewed and made faces. I was spitting mine into my handkerchief when I was nearly discovered by the doctor as he scurried out again, turning head and body this way and that, but whether from curiosity or fear of attack was not exactly clear. He flung open a high gla.s.s-fronted cupboard and began sorting through cardboard boxes. The odours of perished rubber and elastic joined the must from the index cards in our wrinkled noses.

"I had the first automobile in Ballarat," he said over his shoulder, "a Daimler Benz. They thought I was crazy. When I recommended sewerage at a town meeting Harry Wall said he would throw me into it."

He held up an astonishing elastic and metal contraption for the benefit of his audience.

"There," he said, "she's lucky. Or should I say, fortunate." The distinction was obviously important in Dr Grigson's mind and he did not lower the contraption until I had smiled and nodded my head in agreement. Grigson, satisfied, returned to Molly who burst into tears the minute the door was closed.

"He's a quack," Annette said. "It's obvious. We should take her out of here."

I was inclined to agree with her but one glance at Phoebe showed that she would have none of it. Annette quickly took the place beside her and left me to find less attractive accommodation.

56.

Grigson placed Molly's hand on the velvet cushion and stroked it with his parchment-dry hands.

"There," he said, "does that feel better?"

"Yes, doctor," she smiled through her tears. "Oh yes, thank you."

"We are only electricity," the doctor said, and she did not doubt him. She gave herself to the belt and to the soothing strokes of the old hands which became inseparable in her mind. She closed her eyes. She multiplied some numbers, slowly at first.

"Of course," Grigson said, "it offends people to acknowledge it. It offends their primitive idea of themselves. It offends their religious principles. But if there is a G.o.d, perhaps," he smiled, "he is an electric charge. And why not? The Ark of the Covenant was an electric generator, although I have been physically threatened for saying such a thing."

Molly silently worshipped the electric G.o.d and begged its forgiveness.

"You are fortunate to find me still here," he said, not for a moment stopping the stroking. "I have been considering moving to Dubbo."

Molly shuddered at the thought.

"The town has gone backwards. I blame it on the gold," he said. "A marvellous conductor. The best conductor of electricity known to man and they waste it on decoration. This was a city of great potential, built on gold, and the fools squandered it. There has been no progress, nothing. They would rather go to spiritualists, herbalists. There is no belief in science," said Dr Grigson who had, just the same, borrowed the idea of the velvet cushion from a Chinese herbalist of my acquaintance.

"Rhinoceros horn, monkey foetus, snake livers," he sighed. "It is quite extraordinary. Which is why," he said, "it is an especial pleasure to help someone in an Hispano Suiza."

Molly was weak with relief and grat.i.tude. She smiled at him dreamily. She would have offered him the car as payment.

"Would you like ..."

"... a drive?" Grigson smiled. "Would you offer?"

"Of course," Molly said, arranging her stole. She could have sung. "It would give me pleasure."

"I can ask no other fee," the doctor said, "than to drive around the streets of Ballarat in an Hispano Suiza."

57.

"No," Annette said as we trooped down the stairs. "Please, Mr Badgery," she whispered in my ear. "Stop him. He'll kill us."

I had no intention of stopping it. I opened the car doors politely and sat beside the tiny doctor in the front seat while I explained the machine's controls.

I have had worse drives, although possibly not quicker ones, for Dr Grigson took to the Hispano Suiza like a demon. He displayed a sensitivity towards the controls that was surprising in such a stiff-necked man and although his frail legs were barely strong enough for the clutch he certainly had no trouble with the accelerator.

He drove recklessly up Lydiard Street and screeched around into Sturt Street where people, queuing for the cinema, turned to stare.

"Barbarians," said Grigson, puffing as he swung the wheel into Battery Hill Road, running down a fox terrier that was too slow to appreciate the danger.

Annette shut her eyes, but Phoebe, unaware of the dead dog behind her, only giggled.

They travelled up the highway and killed nothing more except a Rhode Island Red c.o.c.kerel outside the Buninyong Post Office.

He drove back into town at a more leisurely pace. "That will teach them," he said, and I was never sure whether it was the display of the automobile, the demonstration of skill or the execution of two animals that was intended to have such an instructive effect on the people of Ballarat who remained stubbornly indoors, leaving Dr Grigson and his pa.s.sengers to pursue their pagan rites in solitude.

58.

Molly disowned the electric radiator. She was irritated, she said, by the amount of s.p.a.ce the silly thing took up. She kicked at it with her tiny patent shoes. On the way from Grigson's to Craig's Hotel she made me stop and put it in the boot. There was not sufficient room and I was reduced to tying it on to the spare wheel with its cord-it b.u.mped and rattled over the neglected streets, breaking all four elements and leaving sharp fragments of ceramic to find their way into the hooves of the dunnyman's horses.

Molly held her daughter's hand and kissed her. She fussed over the pale hand where it emerged from the fraying cast. She spat on her handkerchief and cleaned the skin beneath the ledge of plaster. She retied the sling. She pinned up loose wisps of hair that had straggled down from underneath her hat.

The hotel kitchen was closed when we arrived and it was Molly who persuaded them to open it again. When we sat at table in the big high-ceilinged dining room (famous for its pendulum clock and its original oil painting of Alfred Deakin) she ate heartily, demolishing two helpings of very grey roast lamb and only announcing herself stonkered after sc.r.a.ping clean the large monogrammed plate of steamed pudding.

Annette, as usual, was disgusted by the Australian habit of consuming large quant.i.ties of lamb, great slabs of dead dark meat smothered in near-black gravy. She scorned her knife and picked moodily at her shepherd's pie with fork alone and wondered what drug the quack doctor had prescribed for the widow's grief. If it had been the gonads of monkeys she would hardly have been surprised. The widow was all fluffed up like a hotel cat. Her plump cheeks were smooth as a china doll's and her fine nose, which had seemed so pinched, now flared its nostrils as if greedy for air and life. She held her knife and fork with a graceless enthusiasm more suitable for cricket bats.

Under the influence of a number of shandies, Molly began to reminisce about her life.

Annette had no curiosity about the subject. The blend of sentimentality and naivete naivete that Molly brought to her tales of the late Mrs Ester offended her, but not nearly so much as the happy smile on Phoebe's face as she decorated her mother's colonial ramblings with "Dear Mummy"s. that Molly brought to her tales of the late Mrs Ester offended her, but not nearly so much as the happy smile on Phoebe's face as she decorated her mother's colonial ramblings with "Dear Mummy"s.

Annette, the faint-hearted, had no confidence in anyone. A few "Dear Mummy"s and she imagined Phoebe's character changed immediately. She saw her back-sliding into sentimentality and provinciality. Sloth and mediocrity, she thought, would come to claim her.

Annette, as usual, leaped to embrace the thing she feared the most.

She sipped what Craig's Hotel was pleased to call sherry and, although she nodded her head politely, her eyes sparkled with indignation.

Phoebe, she saw, was touching my leg beneath the table and the activity was being noted with disapproval by a silent group of Creswick matrons (who sat stiffly at the next white-clothed table) and with lewd amus.e.m.e.nt by the young boys who waited on us.

It was typical of her luck in life, or so she thought. She had invented Phoebe (another misconception) only to have her treasure plundered by the barbarian opportunist who sat opposite nodding his head, bringing nasal charm to bear on the widow whom Annette judged to be helpless in the face of such dishonest flattery.

Annette, Annette, for Christ's sake. You do me a disservice, an injustice. My heart, at that table, was as light as Molly's. I felt myself, not incorrectly, a kind man. The terrible whimpering journey up through the Brisbane Ranges from Geelong would have been worth it if it had lasted four days not four hours. It had been worth climbing gates, breaking windows and running over both dog and c.o.c.kerel. I would have run my wheels over cats and goldfish to achieve this end: that Molly, after all, would not go mad with grief. I wished only, as Phoebe's leg pressed gently against mine, that Jack could be alive to witness, if not his daughter's leg, at least the kindness I had shown his widow. I was not a bad man after all. I was capable of kindness, and the kindness, or at least the antic.i.p.ation of more kindness, built up in me until my ears were humming with the delicious pressure of it. I vowed, there and then in Craig's Hotel, to do everything in my power to make these two women happy. I would nurture them, protect them, be son to one, husband to the other. If it occurred to me that I had stolen a family from Jack, I must have wrapped the ugly thought in blankets, trussed it up with twine, dispensed it quickly down a laundry chute, slammed the lid behind it.

The cook had, at last, gone home. The young boys stood in the corner and watched the agitation beneath the tablecloth. They were in no hurry to knock off and did not mind that Molly wanted to tell her daughter the story of her journey to Point's Point. They admired Annette's b.r.e.a.s.t.s as she leaned back, bored and miserable, in her chair. When she brought an ebony cigarette holder to her wide red lips, they could only think that she must surely be an actress. Thus distracted, they missed the real event at the centre table which was Molly, who had glimpsed a future, like a rosella, hardly seen, swooping through the high umbrellas of the bush.