Frederick's Coat (13 page)

When he fell asleep on the sofa, his father saw what Danny had painted, and it took him by surprise. He couldn’t decide if this was genius or just the work of a weird person who happened to be his son. It was his usual crowded and busy canvas full of incident, people, animals — this time fish — and in the centre, a rather large cave.

And who should be standing in it, underwater, but Frederick, in his big grey coat.

A hose ran from the surface to his mouth. His arms were outstretched and written in the form of tiny individual fish were the words:
Behold the man within the coat. Like the pages of a book, you must read him first before passing judgement.
Were these his own words or Frederick’s?

On the surface the figure in the boat bore a resemblance to Johno — it wore a wetsuit and had the greying sideburns every Ryan male got in his mid-thirties.

Then he picked out the figure representing his son because the fins he’d bought Danny were depicted with the same grey as Frederick’s coat, the same herringbone texture. And he had his hat on. Fish here and there were painted in the same pattern. The top layer of this
three-tiered
planet earth had a line-up of sneering, mocking youths pointing down at Frederick. And look, surely that was Melanie, her short brown hair, the green eyes overdone, like emeralds; without a face mask, her expression sad, swimming in a back-pedalling style as if departing reluctantly.

In the corner of this teeming dreamscape was a fully dressed child with her cheeks fully extended, holding her breath. There was more — gulls glided over this scene, their eyes human, full of bad intent.

Johno had seen enough to decide his son was weird but in a marvellous way. And quite possibly had genius.

F
or the second successive Sunday, Danny cried off going
spear-fishing.
Given that his first time he’d dropped his spear-gun with the fish struggling on the other end, Johno assumed he found it too distasteful. But as nothing got in the way of his son’s art, Johno promised he’d bring home a good catch. ‘And you’ll wish you’d come.’ When he didn’t really believe Danny’s painting was the reason: it was Frederick, still with that mysterious hold over his son.

Tahu Kanohi was now Johno’s understudy at the third version of Danny’s Drawings and in charge of the busy Sunday barbecues. He had a fixed request for his boss to bring back sea urchins, which he ate raw. Johno felt Tahu would soon be ready to take over the lease of the bar in Ultimo. The current leaseholder was always late with his rent, a sign that the booze had got to him. It might even be time to sell it to Tahu; with finance left in and with a positive cashflow, Tahu could easily borrow the rest from the bank.

When Johno got home he was expecting to find Danny to brag to, but Mavis said he’d gone out for a walk and maybe a chat with Frederick, if he was around. Just as Johno had thought. Frederick’s circuit took in the parks and he had a liking for long train rides, waiting to be kicked off by an inspector but sometimes getting away with free-riding for a day or longer. Danny was strictly forbidden to join his friend on these jaunts. Johno figured Danny might show up for an early evening Sunday barbecue.

At four in the afternoon the place was busy, with that rather
pleasant buzz of people who’ve been drinking since noon but aren’t yet at the rowdy stage. Tahu’s large if smiling presence stopped anyone getting silly, and the fact it was a family day kept a lid on things, too. Another great idea by the landscape architect to include an enclosed play area for smaller kids, and Johno was intending to make an offer on the property next door and extend the beer garden and add another kids’ play area.

He didn’t even know who his own landlord was: the rent got paid to a company entity. Johno dealt directly with a lawyer for the two-yearly rent reviews and had twice agreed to a pretty hefty increase. Luckily his place made quite a lot of money, but he could see how a greedy landlord could sink a business or at least greatly reduce its margins. He’d quite forgotten that a new lease needed to be negotiated and this time he wanted a far longer term. This would mean fronting that lizard-eyed lawyer again; he wouldn’t do Johno any favours.

Out in the kitchen, he watched Tahu crack open the first ball of sea-urchin spines Johno had brought him. Sometimes they covered the sea floor, or in their place would be vast numbers of starfish, eating them out. Tahu was spooning out yellow slivers of roe and slurping them down.

‘You don’t like them much, do you, mate?’

‘Nope,’ Tahu grinned. ‘Hate ’em.’ He sucked down several in a row. ‘I forgot to tell you, seeing it’s the old man who taught me to love what he calls kina — he’s getting out soon.’

Bang. Straight back into the past. Shane McNeil loomed up somewhere there, too.

‘Is that right?’ Johno aware of the irony: he’d been a long while on the respectable side of the fence and had no desire to be anywhere else.

Tahu stopped eating and looked at Johno. ‘Yeah, boss. I’ve been thinking the same.’

‘Well, he is different from anyone else.’

‘Keeps me awake at nights thinking about it. Image of
him
walking in here, the tattooed face … Jesus, and this is my father. I like this job,
just like I do these.’ He held up what could be mistaken for a headless hedgehog.

‘Can you picture him sitting at a table on a Sunday, glaring at everyone, and our customers leaving in droves?’

‘And introducing him as your father?’ said Johno. ‘Or me telling our customers: “This here is my old jail friend, Dixon Kanohi, former kingpin of Long Bay Prison, finally out after fifteen years. Don’t mind his tattoos. It’s his vicious temper you have to watch out for.” End of Danny’s Drawings.’

‘But I’ve had an idea,’ Tahu said. ‘Going to write him and tell him straight that coming here will be an embarrassment to us and therefore him. He won’t like it. Doesn’t get how scary he is. Says he owes you, so I figure he’ll want to come and thank you in person.’

‘For what? You’ve earned where you’ve got to. No one owes me anything,’ Johno said. ‘I owe him for getting me out of a sticky situation, and for giving us you.’

‘Thanks, boss. You made me feel important from the first moment I met you. If anyone tried to hurt you …’ Tahu becoming the Maori warrior even though he’d been raised in Australia. ‘Well, put it this way: I’d take your side.’

‘I know you would. Goes both ways. Writing to him is a good idea. I don’t mind you throwing my name in the mix. This is too good a business to have someone spoil it without even knowing he’s doing it. Now, what time you wrapping up tonight?’

‘We’ve got a group of twenty coming in for early dinner, or very late lunch, at five-thirty. It’s a birthday so we’ll stay open till they stop spending. They’re a business organisation. Maybe you should join up, boss? I figure they scratch each other’s backs.’

‘I’m no joiner, not of clubs, associations or anything else that has everyone singing the same tune,’ said Johno. ‘Happy to stay an individual.’ Add loner to that.

‘Wouldn’t expect anything else. The old man reckons that’s the problem with Maoris, they have no sense of individuality. Hide in the
group. He calls it “scuttling into the collective cave”,’ Tahu said. ‘But I wouldn’t know. I’m as Aussie as you are.’

‘You wanna bet?’ Johno explained about his Maori mother.

After he’d got over the shock, Tahu offered the sea urchin. ‘See if the genes claimed you.’

‘Exact words your old man used,’ said Johno. ‘’Cept in different circumstances. I expect he’ll still turn up here, so we’d better be prepared.’

‘Like how? With weapons or just legs on our bellies?’

Danny had passed on yet another dive trip, this time to Old Mans Shoulder at North Head, which they’d dived twice before.

‘You loved the sights,’ Johno had said. ‘It’s where you got the seahorse idea from.’ Danny had interpreted the charming creature’s form as different punctuation marks and elegant strokes among numerous fish forms and creamy iridescent pastel streaks of light. Above them Frederick, head and shoulders rising from his supermarket trolley, under the sail power of his coat in a good wind, laughing triumphantly.

‘Less than an hour to drive there. We’ll be back in time for a barbecue lunch. Mavis is away for a couple of days, too, visiting family.’

Danny had still said no, and when Johno had asked if he was meeting up with Frederick, Danny said, with unusual sullenness, ‘I might.’ As if to say none of his father’s business, and the first sign of typical teenage behaviour. Not that Johno minded; it was a relief when Danny showed he was kind of normal.

As they were driving back to the city, Johno said to Melanie, ‘My boy would say a dive is like a dream. A vivid, real experience you can’t describe, right?’

‘They call that lost in translation,’ Ross, driving, spoke up. ‘My wife goes to sleep when I try to relive a dive for her.’

‘And you, Mel?’ said Johno. ‘I know you’re not married. But I never asked if you have a—’

‘No boyfriend or a girlfriend, Mr Ryan.’ Melanie threw it back at him before he could finish: ‘How about you?’

‘Always on for a casual sexual encounter.’ Johno decided, what the hell.

Melanie shook her head and went, ‘Uh-uh. That’s not me. Guess you’re in the right business to get all you want.’

She gave him almost a hurt look. Maybe they were growing on each other. Maybe that was why he’d not been with a woman in a little while and kept using Danny as a reason — no, an excuse.

‘Would you like to join me for a barbecue lunch?’ he said. ‘You, too, Ross.’ Just to be polite.

‘I’ve made other arrangements, thanks,’ said Ross.

Melanie, who had hardly broken out in a smile, said, ‘What will your staff say, the boss having lunch with the hired hand?’

‘You’re hardly that,’ said Johno, feeling a surge of excitement. ‘You’re the star vocalist. Long as you keep your hands to yourself.’ Grinned.

She did the same, and with new meaning.

Taking their barbecue meals in foil back to Melanie’s flat, eating the last thing on their minds.

She said, ‘I wondered what was taking you so long.’

He said, ‘None so blind as those who won’t see.’

‘You sure?’ She seemed in need of reassurance. ‘I already told you I’m not into casual encounters.’

He felt no need to use words. It had been way too long.

H
e arrived home to voices coming from Danny’s bedroom, and one didn’t sound like Wilson. He went to the open door.

‘Well.’ He hoped his disbelief didn’t show too badly. ‘Frederick.’

‘Hello, Mister Father.’

‘Don’t call me that.’ Johno irritated immediately, and the smell didn’t help. ‘It’s Johno.’

‘You don’t come across as a Johno,’ Frederick said.

‘What’s a Johno s’posed to be like then?’

‘Casual, sir. Warm to his son’s good friend.’

‘Really?’ Johno not sure what to say. The room reeked of the man’s putrid body odour and of booze. He wondered how his son could stand it, what on earth he saw in this man.

‘Hi, Dad. I thought you were coming home and taking me to lunch.’

‘Sorry. I got, uh, waylaid.’

‘You have a good dive?’ The boy had been drinking. His eyes were clear but the heaviness of the lids gave him away, as did several empty beer cans lying near his bare feet.

‘Not bad. How’s your day been?’

‘Well, when you weren’t home by two I went for a walk and ran into Frederick.’

‘Blame me, sir. I wanted to see what a home is like. Been a long time. It’s very nice.’ He actually had a normal voice, if on the croaky side. ‘But verily I say unto thee, that he who worships false idols and covets material possessions above love and knowledge shall—’

‘That’s good, Frederick.’ Johno didn’t want to hear any more. He was aware that he was uptight, as he was of the smell of Melanie on his skin. It had been an unexpected and special afternoon.

‘“Why do sinners’ ways prosper?” That’s the question the great English poet, Gerard Manley Hopkins, asked. “When I that suffer—”’

Again an irritable Johno cut Frederick off. ‘When
I
would like to have a chat to my son,’ he said. ‘If you don’t mind.’ Wanted this stinking man out of the apartment right now. Then he saw the whisky bottle, his best, at Frederick’s scruffy feet. ‘Danny and I have something to discuss.’ He looked hard at his son to shut his trap.

Danny looked away, gave an elaborate sigh. For a brief moment Johno felt the urge to shake some sense into his son.

Instead he drew in a long breath as Frederick got up off the bed, buttoned his coat and started for the door, muttering. ‘Verily I say unto thee, that he who shuns his flesh and blood’s friends can be no friend of mine.’

Then Danny was following him, saying, ‘I’ll see you next Saturday. Here, take this with you.’ Handed Frederick the whisky, already
half-drunk,
and a twenty-dollar note.

‘Had a good time?’ Johno knew he was wound up.

‘We weren’t doing anything wrong.’

‘No. But not exactly right, either.’

‘You’re just prejudiced because he has a mental problem.’

‘It isn’t prejudice.’

‘So why don’t you like him?’

‘He’s not right for you. I’m your father. It’s my role to keep you safe as well as doing my bit to make sure you grow up — healthy, equipped to make your own way in the world.’

‘You mean normal?’ said Danny, presuming a little too much. ‘Like other people?’

‘I know what you’re like and I love you for it.’ Or despite of it, he might have said. ‘But you and this man can’t be real friends because you’re not befriending the true Frederick. His problem makes him someone else,’ Johno said.

‘Well, I understand him.’ Danny started painting furiously. His father thought about challenging him further but decided it was best to leave him to it.

He stood at the living-room windows, oblivious to the view, a concerned father and a man who had fallen in love. What should he do?

Danny emerged a couple hours later and argued his right to have who he liked as friends. ‘Dad, you’ve been at me for years to be more social. And I know without being told that doesn’t include types likely to get into trouble with the law — even if that is hypocritical.’

‘Dan …?’ Johno narrowed eyes at his son. ‘Don’t ever load that one on me again.’ His limit had been found. ‘That was long enough ago I don’t owe even you an explanation, let alone an apology — if that’s what you were trying to wring out of me. What I’m trying to tell you is, this friendship can’t go anywhere because Frederick isn’t going anywhere.’

‘So you think. What he’s taught me has helped me as an artist,’ Danny said. ‘Ask Wilson.’

‘I’m not arguing that. Just saying, Frederick’s destiny is to be one day found dead in a park. Most of us die where we live. Your destiny, Danny Ryan, is a long, successful life as an artist who’ll die in his own home, reasonably happy and at peace with your success or lack of. If being an artist doesn’t work out, then your intelligence will take you in another direction from this man you call your friend.’

‘A very good friend. You’re so heartless, Dad.’ More angry words poured forth. This wasn’t the Danny he knew. Surely just a teenage son in the difficult transition from childhood to manhood? So couldn’t a father let him be and just keep discreet eye on the relationship? And how could it be that Melanie’s image, her smell, the closeness of her naked body, should keep intruding, demanding of his thoughts and emotions? Why couldn’t he separate his feelings for Mel and his fears for his son?

‘Danny, I can’t decide who you make friends with. But as your father I have a right to express my concerns. We’ll talk again when we’ve both calmed down.’