Frederick's Coat (22 page)

U
nable to stay seated, Johno stood up and stayed standing when Danny got a second nose-bleed. Kid had lost weight and most of his good looks.

Not daring to say anything lest Danny close completely down, Johno went over to the windows, eyes hardly registering the view. He could smell that Frederick had once lived here, cigarettes and his strong body odour still lingering. Regretted giving in to Danny’s pleas for him to buy this place and let him move in.

It was a mess and perhaps a mistake, as he’d told Danny when he arrived. He hated disorder, and Danny’s paintings were everywhere, in stacks lined along the walls, two up on easels — fevered progress marked by the paint spills on the carpet, brushes and paint containers strewn everywhere. Take-away barbecue food containers bearing, ironically, his own name. The dining-room section had a table somewhere underneath yet more paintings, and Johno noticed that many were unfinished. All he could do not to say harsher words about this chaos — about reflecting his son’s decline.

He was here to tell Danny that Mavis Wilkinson was moving on since his absence had made her role redundant, and he was putting on a farewell party for her. ‘With just our little circle: Wilson and Mel, you and me. She’s moving to Darwin,’ he’d told an obviously uninterested Danny, who said, without meaning it, he’d miss her.

He felt like slapping his son’s face to jolt him out of this lethargic dream-state, but he could just hear his affluent clientele, with their
liberal views when it suited, telling him he mustn’t do such a thing. Fuck them. This young man, once a son he was proud of, had fallen through the floorboards.

When Danny came back from the toilet Johno could not believe the transformation: the kid who’d never been that much of a talker was chattering non-stop. Must have been a good ten minutes that he talked about his painting, the ‘new direction it’s gone in’, his colour blending, experimenting with ‘opposed layering’ and ‘back shadowing’, whatever the hell they were. Yet there was no question some of the works were the output of someone inspired, not addicted to cocaine. Unless it was the drug that did it.

The weight loss on someone trim and unmuscular anyway meant he looked like some bizarre mannequin, a bad caricature, and the running off at the mouth made the image worse. Now he was painting furiously, fallen silent. Jesus Christ.

At the end of his tether, Johno said, ‘Son? You’ve just taken—’ realised he didn’t know the term, or how they described their habit. ‘Did you hit up while I was sitting out here?’

Grinning like an idiot, pupils dilated, Danny said, ‘You’ve been standing for most of it. And pacing. Who’s hit up here?’

Moving menacingly towards his son without at first being aware of it, Johno said, ‘Hey, you? This is your father here. Johno. “Daddy” you liked calling me till you were about fifteen. The fuck has happened to you?’

‘Happened, Daddy?’

‘Don’t use that tone.’ He pointed a finger. ‘Don’t.’

‘Okay. Dad, I made a new friend. You should be pleased for me. You know what Frederick meant to me. Well, Corey understands me.’

Words that might be taken at face value if it wasn’t for the big pupils and the quivering fixed smile.

‘This is how you’re going to say thank you to Mavis — by being a dickhead fucking drug addict?’ He might go see his mother again. Who else would know about this carry-on?

‘No. I’ll be coming. When is it?’

‘Thursday night, six o’clock at the apartment.’

‘I’ll be there. Pr—’

No way was Johno going to hear it. ‘Don’t be making promises you don’t know you can keep. Might see you Thursday.’

He walked out, heavy of heart. And so angry.

The following week, several days after Mavis had departed and Danny failed to show, Johno’s lawyer called.

‘Your son’s property has a lien on it,’ Geoff Fielding informed him.

‘What does that mean?’

‘It means a certain finance company has the legal right to stop a sale or other borrowings against the property until its debts are cleared. The interest rate is — wait for it,’ Fielding left a suitably dramatic pause, ‘sixty-five per cent. So it’s compounding rapidly.’

‘I still don’t understand.’ Even as the penny was fast dropping, Johno was aware that he didn’t want to understand.

‘Danny has been borrowing money using the apartment as security …’

Johno didn’t really hear the rest. Danny needed him all right. And he needed the services of a former prison kingpin — no more anguish about it. Since when had he become an official member of society? Paying his taxes didn’t make him a citizen. Citizens don’t understand how the sub-society of criminals works, how
real
life works.

I
s this a bad dream? It must be. Real life never gave him so much pain — ever. There was that incident when three boys beat him up and pissed on him. But that was more internal pain. From being disliked for no reason, not being like them. Boys stuff. Ask his father, who’ll say, ‘But look what came out of it. Home-schooling and it allowed your art to develop. You left those bully-boys behind.’ Silly old Dad, always so proud of him that people said he’d bust a boiler.

Only a dream. He’ll wake up and the pain will be excruciating but an interesting memory he can analyse, appreciate how lucky his life has been and how the brain not only imitates life but twists and warps experience, weaves it into strange garments that never quite fit, or they are perfection. Maybe he’ll pull deeper meaning out of it, given its level of intensity. Discuss it with Frederick — no. Dear Frederick is dead. Killed himself. His note said: ‘I let the ultimate darkness claim me so I could laugh in the face of that other miserable dark.’ Corey had handed it to Danny with grave ceremony, had given the occasion dignity at the very time Danny needed it.

A note that didn’t say goodbye or sorry. Ended in speaking against Shakespeare: ‘My life does not signify nothing. It had you, Danny boy.’ Now that was pain, too. Beautiful and unbearable. Thank goodness his new friend, Corey, had been right there, had stayed at his side as the world tipped and heaved and got dark, too.

So it must be a dream or Corey wouldn’t be part of this, snarling at him, letting people inflict such pain on him. When Danny wakes up
he’ll go tell his dad about it; they’ll laugh like they used to. At first his father will ask if he’s stoned ‘on that damned stuff’, as he calls it. Just does not — will not — understand what it does for his son’s well-being, for his art. Who is he harming?
Dad, you worry about me too much.

Danny Ryan is dreaming. Frederick is yelling. Whoever listened to a homeless man other than Danny? And he’s dead. Corey’s arm around him feels just awful. Awful. The same arm that reassured — loved — Danny when he needed someone to help him through the shock of Frederick’s death. They’re all screaming at him about money. Don’t they know he has no idea about money? Are they doing this because of money? They would do these things to someone like him who has no violence in him? Because they want money, more of it, they keep wanting more of it and therefore more of him, his essential, confused being? This has to be a dream. So why doesn’t he wake up?

Well, sometimes he’s woken up
inside
the dream and telling someone of the first dream. His dreams can fold in on themselves as if he’s going between dreaming and talking about them. When he does truly awaken he realises the dreams ran on from each other, as if giving him deeper insight not just into himself but into the brain’s marvellous creativity. Like painting. Where does it come from?

It’s a dream all right. There’s a woman saying she’s his mother — his mother who writes occasional letters, sends photos of herself and a girl who’s his sister. But she never felt real, how could she? Ryans don’t have mothers. The mothers only give birth and disappear. Who needs a mother with a father like he has? His father grew up without a mother. He’s had no grandmothers in his life. So who is the woman urging him to follow her?
Excuse me, kind lady, but no thanks
. He has his father. And the memory of Frederick. He still has Frederick’s possessions and, most of all, his coat.

What a funny obsession that is, a filthy old overcoat. But what joy he’s had painting it in endlessly different forms, re-creating it to say what it will. Picking out Frederick from a host of weekend park-goers, the ordinary citizens, family groups, all ignoring the man with the shopping trolley, by his coat. People won’t understand that —
oh, yes
.

There. His father’s hand has hold of his and love is leading him out of this nightmare. Thank goodness the terrible pain is about to end. His father will laugh and tell him ‘Your dreams are so
real
, son.’ And they are and always have been. But this one is up there with the most vivid and certainly the most unbearable. Huh?

Why has Corey put his spitting, snarling face in mine like that? Aren’t we friends? Corey? Corey? You said you could take away the pain and you did. Why are you helping these men to hurt me?

Is that Frederick speaking? Yes, it is.
Why do sinners’ ways prosper?
Danny knows that poem, repeated it so many times to his father, who was perplexed at first. But he got it, Hopkins’ beautiful, dark words, thundering from the heavens. ‘Beseeching the Lord he so believed in,’ Frederick explained. ‘As all around him sinners and ignorant oafs lived lives of sordid debauchery — what he called the sots and thralls of lust.’

Frederick? Where have you gone? Oh, that’s right: hanging from a tree with a smile on your clean-shaven face, laughing at defeating the darkness that dogged you your whole life. Come back, Frederick.
I’ve let go of my father’s hand. Got distracted. The pain made me let go. Tell them to stop it. Wake me up. Please, wake me from this. I’ve had enough.

There you are. His father is back, saying, ‘It’s all right, son. No one will hurt you. Keep on with your art, keep taking that stuff if you must. Daddy will be here.’

Maybe he’s in one of his paintings. He knows three of these characters. That’s it: this is just a painting and he’s in it. Except a painting captures a moment, while this has sequence, goes from one worsening moment to the next.

Now Frederick is ranting to a heedless world, something about life being but a dream. ‘This violence is
their
reality, son. Don’t you give any of your pure self to these scumbags. They dwell in worse darkness than even I knew. For we, you and I, kid, we knew such soaring, lofty heights. The words, Dan. The ideas. The concepts we wallowed in. The wisdom that roared at us from the silence.’

In that case he can take this. For he’ll wake up while these awful
people will remain in putrid darkness. Oh, but it
hurts
.

The pain is leaving.
They’re
the ones suffering. Because, as Frederick says, they have to live in their tormented darkness smelling a thousand times worse than him on a bad day. ‘Their stench is from the inside, kid. And don’t you ever forget it.’

Ah, that big coat feels so good the gentle way you lay it over me. Told you it was a dream.

Telling his mother what she wouldn’t understand. ‘Mum? I saw something on the television news. I need to share it with someone I know.’ Worded like that in case she grasped anything out of the murk she dwelled in.

But she thought Shane was the orderly who should be bringing her food. ‘Where’s my breakfast?’ It was early evening in autumn, though a summer-like heat lingered.

‘You had it, Mum. Remember? Porridge, with lots of sugar and cream.’ He had no idea what they fed the residents here; that was what she used to give him for breakfast as a child and ate too.

‘Don’t tell lies.’ She raised a finger. ‘You know it’s naughty.’

‘You always told me, never tell a lie or your nose will fall off.’ He saw the thought travel slowly to her cognition centre and send a signal back to her facial muscles that amusement had registered, some concept had found a home. But it didn’t last long.

‘Did I tell you that? Who are you? Where are my radishes?’

‘Your radishes are coming. Someone’s just rinsing them,’ said Shane and he trembled all over. ‘I’m your friend.’ A different tactic might work. Anything to pacify her long enough to get this thing off his chest.

‘Oh, that’s right. Harry. From across the road. How are you?’

He almost said ‘Mum’ again. ‘I’m fine, thank you. I want to tell you something. That all right?’ And when his mother nodded he kept talking.

‘On the television news a terrible thing was reported … A young man was found in the Botanic Gardens — murdered. They tortured him first …’ Willing his mother to stay silent a few moments more.

And when her mouth opened to speak he put out a gentle hand and whispered shush. She said okay and called him Rex, like that first time.

‘I know the victim’s father. He was my best friend …’ Now emotion started to choke him up. ‘I want to know what to do.’

‘About what? The man in the garden? He’s not—’

‘Don’t interrupt while I’m talking,’ Shane put on a voice plucked from his childhood growing up under this good woman’s influence. She had meant so well, and if her hopes in him were not high, she didn’t expect him to follow in his father’s footsteps. Well, he didn’t. He went way further than his old man, who never did a day in jail.

‘What you used to tell Rex when he was a little boy. Don’t interrupt while I’m talking.’ Found a little chuckle to reassure her he was no threat.

‘You remember Johno? John-o?’ he said as if to a child. ‘He used to sleep at our place all the time. His dad and my dad were mates. He and I were
good
mates. You remember Laurie? And Laurie’s dad, Reg Ryan?’ She must remember these names, surely? Spat them out often enough, with her absent husband’s name there, too.

‘That bloody Bob McNeil and those Ryans,’ she’d say. ‘Bob loves the booze more than his wife and kids. Poor Johno left to fend for himself aged only, what, ten?’ Telling Shane and Johno not to grow up and behave like that. Shane thinking he sure wouldn’t. Johno keeping his hurt bottled up. Shane felt his friend went into his shell a bit as a way of covering up his hurt. Shane had no memories of his adoptive parents together. He’d seen his dad with different women: later he’d think of them as sluts.

‘I don’t know any John-o,’ she said like a petulant child. ‘Better watch your nose doesn’t fall off.’ And she cackled.

‘My best mate has lost his son, Mum. And I don’t know what to do.’ This was the younger Shane, trying not to bawl while telling his mother some tale of woe, wanting her to console him. And she always did.

But this mother couldn’t. And this Shane needed advice. Wanted to tell her that he also knew who’d committed this terrible crime.