chapter eighty-three
The day of the barbeque
Harry climbed the stairs, hand over hand on the railing, like he was climbing up a rope. It was unacceptable that a man couldn’t even climb his own stairs without his legs aching like they did. He’d once been as strong as an ox, and he’d always taken care of his health. He was interested in health. He kept himself up to date with things. As soon as the surgeon general released the report about lung cancer and cigarettes, Harry gave up smoking. That same day.
He knew about that food pyramid. He followed it as best he could. He did regular exercise. He took a multivitamin as recommended by his GP, who looked like he was still in high school and maybe he was still in high school, because the multivitamin was a waste of money. It had no effect whatsoever. Every day he felt a bit worse. The manufacturers of that vitamin were laughing all the way to the bank. Harry was considering writing a letter of complaint. He averaged two to three letters of complaint a week. You had to keep corporate Australia accountable. When he was in the corporate world there were standards. People cared about quality. The shoddy workmanship these days was a disgrace.
He stopped halfway for a rest.
This was why old codgers had to move out of their homes into those god-awful retirement places – because they couldn’t make it up their own bloody stairs. What a joke. He wasn’t moving anywhere. They could carry him out in a box.
He could still hear the music from next door. Very selfish, bad-mannered people. He would call the police if necessary. He used to call the police all the time, when the son had those parties while the parents went off on their bloody river cruises in the south of bloody France. The son with the long greasy hair like a monkey. Disgusting creature.
But those people weren’t there anymore, were they? He knew that. Of course he knew that. They moved out about ten years ago. He knew that perfectly well. He did a Sudoku puzzle every day. His mind was fine. It was just that he sometimes got fuzzy about time.
It was the big Arab guy or whatever nationality he was. Probably a terrorist. You couldn’t tell these days. Harry had his mobile number. He had all his details carefully recorded just in case he ever needed to pass them over to the police. He kept an eye on him. The wife had said they would turn down the music but Harry strongly suspected they’d turned it up. What could you expect from a man who wore a bloody bracelet? The wife wasn’t bad to look at but she had no class. She dressed like a whore. That girl could have learned a thing or two about class, about elegance, from Harry’s wife. Elizabeth would have set her straight.
Their kid reminded Harry of Jamie. Something about the shape of her head. And something else: a kind of stillness, like a birdwatcher, as if she were studying the world, carefully working it out. Jamie had been a thinker. It made Harry furious to look at that child. How dare she look like Jamie? How dare she be here when he wasn’t? It enraged him. Sometimes when he looked at her, he literally saw red. Like a fire glow.
He kept climbing the stairs. One hand after the other on the railing. Harry used to run. He was a runner before running became trendy. This body used to run. He didn’t recognise his own withered old legs anymore; looked like they belonged to someone else. Why had no one invented a drug to stop this happening? It couldn’t be that hard. It was because the researchers were all young and they didn’t know what lay ahead. They were oblivious! They thought their bodies were theirs forever and then by the time they found out, it was too late, they were retired, and their minds were all fuzzy, although Harry’s mind wasn’t fuzzy, he did Sudoku.
‘Don’t run, don’t run!’ Elizabeth used to shout at Jamie when he ran along the bush tracks. She was worried he’d slip, but he never slipped. He was nimble. They used to walk out the back door with a packed picnic lunch and be at the waterfall within the hour.
Now Harry was marooned in this house, like he was marooned in this body. He didn’t even know if that walking track was still there, the track where Jamie used to run. He could find out, but if it was under a shopping centre he’d be angry and if it was still there, if other kids were running along it while their mothers shouted, ‘Don’t run! Don’t run!’ he’d be angrier still.
He was at the top. What a palaver to climb a flight of stairs. Now, why was he up here? What did he need?
His mind wasn’t going. Sometimes he couldn’t find the right word for a thing, but he remembered that sometimes Elizabeth couldn’t find a word, ‘Where’s the thingamajig?’ she’d say, and she’d been so young, so beautifully, gorgeously young, she had no idea how young she was, and he had no idea why he’d come upstairs.
He could still hear the music from next door. Even louder now. Who did they think they were? Pretending to be artsy-fartsy types. Elizabeth used to love classical music. She played the violin at school. She had more class in her little finger than that little two-bit whore had in her whole body. She’d have shown her a thing or two. How dare they play it so loud? Inconsiderate.
He imagined calling the police and telling them the neighbours were deafening him with bloody Mozart. Wasn’t Mozart the deaf one? No wonder he wrote such crappy songs. Elizabeth used to laugh at his grumpiness. Elizabeth had a good sense of humour. So did Jamie. They both used to laugh at him. Once they were gone nobody laughed at him ever again. All his funniness flew away with them.
It was the neighbours’ fault he couldn’t remember why he was up here. He’d got distracted. He went into Jamie’s room to calm himself and turned on the light.
He looked out Jamie’s window. The neighbours had all their outdoor lighting going. It was like bloody Disneyland down there.
There were two little girls running about. One of them had wings on her back like a tiny fairy. The other one was wearing an old-fashioned-looking little pink coat. Elizabeth would have liked that pink coat.
He could see the bloody dog zipping back and forth. Yip-yap-yapping. It had been digging up Harry’s garden today, as happy as you please. Harry had given it a kick up the backside, to show it what’s what. It wasn’t a hard kick but it was true that both Elizabeth and Jamie wouldn’t have laughed at that. They would have stopped speaking to him, probably. He and Elizabeth had been going to give Jamie a dog for his ninth birthday. They should have done it for his eighth.
He looked out the window. The electricity bill for all those tiny lights must be exorbitant.
He could see the people from two doors down. Oliver. Namby-pamby name but he was a nice enough bloke. You could have a sensible conversation with him. (Although he rode a bike, and wore those shiny tight black shorts. Looked like a bloody galah when he did that.) He couldn’t remember his wife’s name. One of those worried, skinny women.
No kids. Maybe they didn’t want them. Maybe they couldn’t have them. The wife didn’t have good child-bearing hips, that’s for sure. Although now they could mix them up in test tubes.
Elizabeth would have liked a little sister for Jamie. She always looked at little girls. She liked their dresses. ‘Look at that little girl’s pretty dress,’ she’d say to him, as if Harry ever gave two hoots about a little girl’s pretty dress.
She was looking at a little girl that day, a little girl clutching a stick with a giant ball of fluffy pink fairy floss. Elizabeth said, ‘Look at that, it’s nearly as big as her,’ but Harry had just grunted in response, because he was in a bad mood, he wanted to leave, it was a Sunday afternoon and they had a long drive back and he was thinking about work and the week ahead. The union was giving them grief. Harry didn’t like Sunday nights to feel rushed. He liked to feel sorted for the week.
He hadn’t wanted to drive all the way out to bum-fuck nowhere to come to this crummy little country fair. He shouldn’t have said ‘bum-fuck nowhere’ to Elizabeth because she hated that, it really offended her, he was just thinking about the union rep, a tough bugger, that one, and the battle ahead. (The union rep came to the funeral. He hugged Harry and Harry didn’t want to be hugged but he didn’t want to be at his wife’s funeral either.)
He should have been nicer to Elizabeth and Jamie that day. He would have been nicer if he’d known it was the last day they’d ever have together. He wouldn’t have said ‘bum-fuck nowhere’. He wouldn’t have told Jamie that the games were all rigged and he was never going to win. He wouldn’t have grunted when Elizabeth pointed out the little girl with the fairy floss.
But then again, he should have been grumpier. He should have been firmer. He should have said no when they wanted to go on that ride for the third time.
He did say no, but Elizabeth didn’t take any notice. She grabbed Jamie’s hand and said, ‘Just one more turn.’ And off they ran.
If he saw them again he would shout at them. He would shout, ‘I said no! I was the man of the house!’ Then he would hold them both in his arms and never ever let them go.
If he saw them again. Elizabeth believed in the hereafter, and Harry hoped she was right. She was right about most things, except that day she hadn’t been right.
It was called ‘The Spider’. It had eight long legs with a car at the end of each leg for up to eight people. The legs went up and down, up and down, and then the whole thing spun around in a circle.
Each time they’d flown by he’d seen a brief glimpse of their pink, laughing faces, their heads flung back against the seats. It had made him feel sick.
The Spider had been built ten years earlier by an Australian manufacturer with a German name: Flugzeug Amusement Rides. Flugzeug Amusement Rides had provided only rudimentary maintenance and inspection procedures for The Spider. The company that ran the funfair was called Sullivan and Sons. Sullivan and Sons was in deep financial shit. They made staff cuts. A dedicated maintenance manager called Primo Paspaz was let go. Primo had set out his own maintenance schedule for all the rides in a red notebook. The red notebook disappeared when he lost his job. Primo thumped his fist against his knee when he testified in court. He had bright tears in his eyes.
One of the mechanical bearings malfunctioned on The Spider, and a car spun free.
All eight laughing, screaming passengers died. Five adults and three children.
The court cases dragged on for years. It consumed Harry. He still had the files: big foolscap binders filled with a story of negligence and incompetence and idiocy. Nobody ever stood up and took responsibility. Only Primo Paspaz said, ‘I’m sorry’ to Harry. He said, ‘It would never have happened on my watch.’
People needed to take responsibility.
Harry turned away from the window and spun Jamie’s globe so that all the places Jamie never got to see sped by his finger.
He looked back out the window at the neighbours. It occurred to him that if Elizabeth had lived he would have been down there at that barbeque, because Elizabeth was so sociable, and the Arab was always inviting Harry over, as if he really wanted him to come. It was peculiar. For a moment, Harry could see it so clearly; the way this night was meant to be: Elizabeth sitting at the table enjoying the music, Harry pretending to be grumpy about it and everyone laughing, because Elizabeth made his grumpiness funny.
Harry watched the two little girls run about the yard. It seemed to be a game of chasing.
The littler one got herself up onto the side of the fountain. She was carrying a little blue handbag. She ran around the edge. The fountain was the size of a swimming pool. ‘Careful there, little girl,’ said Harry out loud to her. ‘You could fall in.’ Was anyone even watching her?
He scanned the backyard. The adults were all gathered around the table, not even looking at the kids. They were laughing their heads off. He couldn’t hear their laughter over the music. He couldn’t see Oliver, but he could see his wife, Erika, that was her name, standing on the pathway that led from the back door. She’d be able to see the little girl.
He looked back at the fountain and his heart dropped.
The little girl was gone. Had she climbed down off the wall? Then he saw it. The pink coat. Christ Almighty, she was face down. She’d fallen in. It was like he’d made it happen by predicting it.
He looked for an adult. Where was that Erika? She must have seen it. She was standing right there with a direct line of vision.
But she was just standing there. What was the stupid woman doing?
‘She’s fallen in!’ He banged his hands on the glass.
Oliver’s wife didn’t move. She just stood there. Like a statue. Her face turned away as if she didn’t want to see, as if she was deliberately looking the other way. For God’s sake, what was wrong with her? What was wrong with all these stupid people? My God, my God, my God.
Harry’s face was hot with rage. The little girl was drowning right there in front of those idiotic, irresponsible people. Shooting was too good for them.
He tried to pull up the window so he could yell out, but it was jammed closed. It hadn’t been opened in years. He banged so hard with both fists on the glass it hurt. He yelled, louder than he’d yelled in years. ‘She’s drowning!’
Finally the woman looked up at him. Oliver’s wife. Their eyes met. Thank God, thank God. ‘She’s drowning!’ screamed Harry. He jabbed his finger at the fountain. ‘The little girl is drowning!’
He watched her turn her head towards the fountain. Slowly. As if there were no great hurry.
And still she didn’t move. The stupid, idiotic woman didn’t move. She just stood there, looking at the fountain. It was like something from a nightmare. Harry heard himself sob with frustration. Time was running out.
He turned from the window and ran from the room. It was the only way. He had to be fast. He had to be nimble. He had to run next door and pull the little girl out himself. The little girl in the pink coat was drowning. Elizabeth would have loved that little girl. He could hear Elizabeth crying out, ‘Run, Harry, run!’
He ran from Jamie’s room onto the landing. It was like he had his old body back. There was no pain. He felt exhilarated by the urgency of his mission. He was running gracefully, fluidly, like a twenty-year-old with perfect, limber knees. He could do this. He was fast. He was nimble. He’d save her.
On the second step, he fell. He grabbed for the banister to save himself but it was too late, he was flying, like his wife and son.