Tuvalu (34 page)

‘Live with him, go to university, get a job, get a wife, leave him for this new wife?'

‘Put like that, probably not. Who told you he wanted me to do all that?'

‘Your mother. Once your father, too. He came here for lunch. They both fighted—fought. Mostly it was about you. That's odd, no? You are in Japan and you don't care, and they are here. They need to talk and they use that talk on you, they spend every word on you.'

I watched Celeste return to her work. ‘And what did my mother say?'

‘She said you will come home.'

‘When?'

‘When you are tired of alone. Then you'll marry here.'

‘So they talk a lot, Mum and Dad?'

‘Only about you or bills or selling things.'

Celeste seemed pleased to say this. She held my eye and, almost out of spite, I shifted the conversation from my family to hers. ‘What about your children?' I asked.

‘What about them?'

‘Do you see them?'

Celeste glued a piece of metal in place—a part of the guardhouse I had stopped to inspect shortly after Mami tried to hang herself.

‘No,' she said. ‘They have lives. I have this life. I hear sometimes, they hear from me. We are close but really we don't know anything. They left home like me. We talk on the phone but they tell me nothing. When you do not see someone, when you do not see eyes, it becomes easy to lie to and hard to see a lie, I think …' Celeste stopped talking to glue two pieces of wire, both belonging to the guardhouse. Only when each was safely in place did she resume our conversation. ‘I was in Japan. They chose jobs, my children. I wanted to be involved in the lives. I had a husband but he was a risk man.'

‘A risk man?'

‘He loved the risk. If he had everything, he would risk everything for more. He was in construction.'

‘What, a speculator?'

‘Construction man.'

Frenziedly, she flapped one hand and scraped glue from the edge of a finger. ‘He bought old buildings and made them better. Or he made buildings from nothing. Or he made money just to make buildings. He always wanted to make something big. I loved that. He was a dreamer. But not really dreaming about me, I knew.'

She ended up biting the dried glue from her finger.

‘In Japan gambling is difficult. Without casinos it's difficult. You have to go to the yakuza. You have to go to secret casinos. Little. My husband did not like that. He liked to gamble always, every day.'

Celeste shook her head. ‘He gambled at work, with work. He looked like a good salaryman. I was always embarrassing when people came to dinner. I said too much. My cooking was bad. He liked to pretend but he was all risk. When he did projects he made them too big. He always wanted to win. We were rich. Then we went broke the first time and the second time, and I said, “goodbye love”.' Celeste waved her long-fingered, glue-free hand at me.

‘The children were at the university then. In and out like our money. Then back in and they got angry. This is not fair, they said to him. He was sad and he was with other women. I knew this but I did not want to prove it. I did not catch him because I did not want to. The children left us, all going to different cities. They were angry about the university, about the money. Only my husband was left—to get old together
ne
, but he did not like this idea. Also, I did not like this idea, not his way. He slept with some young women. One was our daughter's friend. I screamed. He went to parties. I stayed at home. I sat on the floor calling my children, leaving a message, leaving another message. The bad time. After it, I took a lot of money. I left. He agreed and I was very lucky because soon he went broke again. His buildings had a problem—they fell. Maybe he's rich again now, maybe not. Maybe he has more children, maybe not. I don't know. I don't think about it. He's a risk man, so I stay here. I stay away. I don't need risk. I don't need his crazy life. This is enough.'

‘Do you regret it all?'

‘No. Nothing.'

‘Why not?'

‘Dreams you must chase. Maybe they leave you, not like you think, but after they finish you are somewhere new. Like chasing an animal.'

I was impressed with this response, and to note Celeste discussed her own lingering disappointments with the same almost thoughtless candour she did mine. She gave up on the Imperial Palace, setting down a largish pair of pliers.

‘Let's drink tea,' she said.

I followed her upstairs to the kitchen. My mother had gone to tennis. She played every Tuesday and was the top competitor in her division. I had had no idea she was so good at tennis. I wondered, watching Celeste strain the tea, what else I did not know, what other things my mother had done before marrying my father and being saddled with me. I had an idea of her as a young woman, but now saw that it was garnered from a handful of stories which she herself had chosen to tell. She had had the luxury of being able to edit her own past, tailoring it to fit her present. I thought of her words the previous night, and of my father.

We carried our tea to the balcony and sat in silence watching a willy wagtail hop along the rail in a series of flighty, nervous bounces. It was careful to keep one eye on us at all times, as though expecting an attack.

‘Mum seems very happy staying with you.'

‘Thank you.'

‘Have your children seen this place?'

‘Yes. Once each. Maybe it's like a job for them now.'

‘You must miss them.'

‘Of course. That's why I make my art. A long time ago it wasn't needed. I had my children. They were my art. I did everything for them. Maybe too much, maybe not. I was like three mothers.'

An hour passed, which we filled talking about everything from coffee to confetti, then I stood and pretended to stretch, watching the bird—which had come and gone throughout—resolve to take off and flap ineffectually towards the city. Tilly came to mind.

‘I'd better get on and pack,' I said.

‘Where are you going?'

‘A bit of a road trip, but I'll be back by Friday. Thanks for the tea.'

‘A pleasure.'

I stepped into the house, then turned. ‘I'm going to go and see Tilly's father. What should I take him?'

Celeste beamed. ‘I will arrange Japanese flowers.'

I travelled early the following day, using yet more of the money Mami had given me, and arrived at Mr Willoughby's farm around midmorning. It was a cold day despite the clear sky. I paid the taxi driver and took the long path in. The air was clean and cool, and there was more green in the fields than I remembered. Blue smoke wafted horizontally from the chimney. But as I got closer I realised it was all wrong. It was not the same house. It was the old shack. I quickened my pace and was soon standing inside a scorched section of earth the size of a basketball court. Littered with blackened bricks and charred stumps, it was all that remained of the house in which I had stayed.

I kept on towards the shack, where unseen birds chirped lazily in shrubs. The ute was parked out front. My presence went unnoticed until a cat came out to greet me, running its long body over my leg. I nudged it with my foot and it cantered towards the ute, pausing underneath. I could not remember if there had been a cat the first time or not.

Setting down the Japanese flowers, I knocked on the door, then cupped my hands at a window to peer inside. Before I could see anything I heard the deadlock turn. I stood straight, brushing lint from my jumper. I was nervous, so nervous my hands trembled, but I dared not bury them in my pockets. I completely forgot the flowers, which were off to one side, out of sight. The door opened and Mr Willoughby appeared, looking frail, almost unsteady on his feet. The whites of his eyes were bloodshot and he had the skin of a sober drunk—flushed red and layered with a fine film of sweat. He was wearing only a dressing-gown.

‘You,' he said. ‘I didn't expect you.'

Silently, the cat slipped around him and on into the shack.

‘I tired to ring but—'

‘Disconnected. They hooked the line to this place right after, but it never stopped ringing. I cut it off.'

I swallowed gloomily as Mr Willoughby pulled his dressing-gown tight and tied the belt with a bow.

‘You'd better come in. That sun's got no heat.'

The kitchen was a mess and filled with acrid smoke, like a fog.

‘I'm having trouble with the chimney. Dead bird in it, I think. Can't get a fire to take.'

Mr Willoughby clicked the kettle and spooned coffee into two mugs. When it clicked off he filled both, yawning. ‘No milk,' he said.

‘That's fine.'

In one corner of the kitchen the floor was littered with once frozen, finely diced carrots, peas and corn. I took a seat at a rickety wooden table.

‘What happened?' I asked.

‘The house? Fire.'

Before I could ask more Mr Willoughby excused himself to get changed. When he returned, dressed in jeans and a shirt, face shaven, he explained he was going shopping. I offered to accompany him into town but he shook his head and started for the door. ‘No, I'll go alone. How about steak?'

‘Steak?'

‘For dinner.'

‘Great.'

‘I'll be back in a couple of hours. Make yourself at home. It's comfortable enough. I'm almost done moving in.'

When the ute's diesel engine faded, I crossed to a small bookshelf and flicked through a work about Russell Drysdale before picking out a larger book,
The History of
South-East Asia
. Published in 1959 it finished with a chapter discussing European domination. I replaced this carefully and, after some indecision, began reading Graham Greene's
A Burnt-Out Case
. I read all afternoon. Two hours became four, four eight. Darkness fell. On my third visit to the bathroom I opened one of six stacked cardboard boxes and found it to be full of empty whisky bottles. It was no surprise to find the same in the other five.

I took a shower. Above the recess, between heavy, full bottles of shampoo and conditioner, there were intricate spider-webs. When I splashed them they shuddered. Afterwards I dried myself with my T-shirt, then put it on wet. Back in the living room, clocks ticked. Even here there were too many clocks and a piano.

I thought about Tilly and tried to piece the puzzle together, but I still needed answers—certainties. Without these the trip was in vain. I began to wonder if Mr Willoughby was perhaps giving me a chance to leave quietly. It seemed plausible, then possible, then probable. He had not said anything explicit, but where was he?

Mr Willoughby finally returned a few minutes before ten p.m. I heard the ute, then headlights ran over the living room. Oddly, there were no dogs to bark.

I helped him in with the shopping. Although characteristically stooped he looked a little stronger, and drunk. He lurched under the weight of the shopping bags and twice avoided looking me in the eye. When he spoke his voice was a mumble, as though his sentences had no real importance. We set up a lantern in the backyard and barbecued three steaks. We drank beer and did not bother with vegetables. We said little. After the beer ran out we swapped to whisky, served straight. Around us the night wind delivered far-off sounds. This wind had been reassuring all afternoon, but now it seemed impatient, like it wanted me to speak up. Mr Willoughby lit a cigarette and offered me one. I nervously accepted.

‘So we both want information,' he said, surprising me. He stood and crossed to a window, staring inside as the wind flung his hair about.

‘How did she die?' I asked. ‘Was it in that fire?'

‘Leukaemia.'

‘Leukaemia?'

‘Her third time. The first two bouts she battled when she was still just a teenager. She didn't tell you about it, did she …'

‘You mentioned she was sick.'

‘True. I did.'

‘And the fire?'

‘An accident.'

I remembered the story Tilly told me on the phone and it occurred to me Mr Willoughby had probably lit it himself.

‘How long had she been sick?'

‘This time not very long. The first two times everything was about survival. Her mother died of cancer, as I think you know, and I was determined Matilda wouldn't. To you that might sound natural, but it's not. Not at all. It's selfish.'

Mr Willoughby loosened his shirt which had bunched a little around his potbelly. ‘Let's get inside,' he said. ‘It's too cold.'

I followed him indoors, and in one corner the cat that had snuck in sneezed gingerly. It appeared with the subdued pride of a magician from behind the piano, stretched its body and strode to Mr Willoughby, who reached down to pet its ball-like skull.

‘With Matilda's mother I was confident. Being confident was my job. No matter how crappy some piece of news—some doctor's honesty—by the time I repeated it there was a positive spin on it, an angle no one had thought of. I still believe she needed me to be like that. Never mind that she died in inches, died in the sort of pain you could only begin to understand by lopping off your arm at the elbow and dunking it in this whisky. In and out, day after day.' He cleared his throat and took a sizeable gulp. ‘Five a.m. comes, goes. That's when you hold your breath, hope for a miracle. You go along and here and there even get your hopes up. We're halfway through. Not in the clear, no, but halfway. And half of nothing is nothing. I couldn't have tortured the poor woman better if I tried.'