Bruny Read online

There was a pause then Stephanie said, ‘We have a lot to be grateful for, and it’s so nice to put our differences aside and just be a family.’

  She lifted her glass. We followed suit. ‘To family,’ said Stephanie. ‘To Astrid, for coming all this way. For coming home.’

  ‘To Ace,’ everyone said. ‘To Aunty Ace! To Astrid.’

  And our father said, ‘They do not love who do not show their love.’ And stood and clinked his wineglass carefully against each of ours.

  Stephanie had seated them apart, Angus and Hyacinth, because since the dementia had set in, our father had taken a deep dislike to our mother. They had been married for nearly sixty years. Now he lived in an aged-care facility and our mother remained in the family home with the aide who’d lived in for five years now.

  My boy. That was how Mother referred to the endlessly patient Phillip—nurse, cook and cleaner—who was in his thirties and from New Zealand.

  The main course was served and Mother embarked on a joke involving Irish people, black people and refugees. Stephanie had diced Mother’s lamb roast, but our mother simply pushed the food about the plate and drank white wine as if it were water. At the end of the joke, she erupted into laughter while the children looked surprised, and the adults looked mortified to various degrees, except for JC, who giggled and said, ‘Mum, you can’t tell jokes like that anymore.’

  ‘Oh, why not?’ she said. ‘It’s only a bit of fun.’

  And Angus said, ‘There’s no more faith in thee than in a stewed prune.’

  Which got everyone giggling. Except Mother.

  ‘It’s all very well to laugh at him, but it only encourages him,’ she said.

  ‘How are you finding being back?’ Max asked me quietly.

  ‘I’m seated between dementia and cancer,’ I said.

  She touched her shoulder to mine. ‘And you thought the UN was a challenge.’

  ‘The UN always looked good compared to this,’ I said.

  ‘Shakespeare.’ Max had called me when it had first happened.

  ‘Shakespeare?’

  ‘Yes. Some kind of neural loop since this last stroke. It’s not that uncommon. Well, the Shakespeare is—I don’t think they’ve seen that before—but the neural loop isn’t. Apparently there was one woman who could only talk in Twinings tea varieties, and someone else had to commentate the 1966 Grand Final over and over again.’

  ‘Who won?’ I asked.

  ‘Oh, don’t, Ace. I didn’t ask.’ Max had laughed softly. ‘I’m afraid his days of travelling to see you are over.’

  A silence had fallen.

  ‘I’ll come home,’ I said. ‘As soon as I can sort things here.’

  ‘He would love that. I would love that too.’

  I’d intended to follow through. I wanted to see my dad. I wanted to see Max and JC. I’d escaped a long time ago yet a part of me was still here. I put it down to biology because, despite the fact that we replace all our cells every seven years, we seem to go on being what we are. Believing I could escape was futile. But I went on trying, and not coming home made it easier.

  Dad had appeared to be delighted when I’d walked into his room my first day back. He was sitting in a chair by the window, dressed in a thick cable cardigan, smart pants and shirt, his silver hair combed. He had a view looking out towards the river with the mountain behind. There were fresh flowers and a speaker on the table playing Maria Callas. At least I guessed it was Maria Callas. Something beautiful. But did he know me?

  ‘How are you, Dad?’ I had asked.

  ‘Here we will sit and let the sounds of music creep into our ears,’ he’d replied.

  I took his hand, his dear, papery hand. The skin thin now, showing every vein and bone. The skin on his face marbled too. His eyes sunken but still bright, as if they were shining with a distant light. He had aged ten years in one.

  ‘I’m sorry you’ve been unwell, Dad. I’m sorry I didn’t come sooner.’

  He put his hand atop mine and squeezed it. He said, ‘Trust not your daughters’ minds by what you see them act.’

  ‘I’m here for a few months. I’m helping JC with his bridge.’

  ‘Tell me, Juliet, how stands your dispositions to be married?’ he asked.

  ‘Ah, well, I broke up with Ben. Almost three years ago now. Do you remember? But I’m better without him. I’m not looking for love anymore, Dad.’

  With that he lifted my hand to his mouth and kissed the back of it. I was sure he knew everything, remembered everything. It was only the speech centre that was betraying him. We sat together, the music creeping into our ears, and he nodded off. After perhaps half an hour, he woke and saw me there.

  ‘To die, to sleep. To sleep, perchance to dream. Ay, there’s the rub. For in that sleep of death what dreams may come …’ he said.

  ‘I think death has only good things waiting, Dad,’ I replied.

  How often I had soothed myself with that thought, walking into a town that had been bombed, a home that had been the scene of unspeakable atrocities, the bodies gone but the blood, the marks on the walls, the stained beds all still there. Or when you have brought together religious leaders, soldiers and rebels knowing that, despite everyone being searched with care, someone may still have a way of blowing everything up.

  I wanted to believe that death was a warm place my father would escape to, but really I wanted him to be himself again. Looking at him as he sat there at the Sunday table, carefully finishing everything on his plate, for the first time it really struck me that I was going to lose him. We were all going to lose him. His body might still be here, but our father was already leaving, trailing his beloved Shakespeare behind him like a long, velvet cloak.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Profound thought: Time is not an illusion.

  I don’t sleep well. I’m a fifty-something woman and if you know one who sleeps well without medication, then congratulate her. It was a novelty for me getting more than three or four hours at a time. Mostly I tried not to fight it. I read a lot through those wee hours, trying to slow the brain. I listened to podcasts. Tried meditation apps. That Sunday night, I’d gone to bed early, trying to settle in to the new time zone but found myself wide awake at 1 am. I considered visiting my dad. I wondered if they’d let me in. Even if he was asleep, it would be good to sit by him, so I walked the few streets to the centre.

  ‘My dad is Angus Coleman,’ I said to the night nurse who appeared when I buzzed. ‘I know it’s late, but I’m here from New York, I’m really jet-lagged and I thought …’

  ‘You’re Astrid,’ she said. ‘Of course, it’s not really permitted but he’s often awake now. A bit prone to wandering about at this hour of the night, if we’re not careful. He doesn’t mean any harm. I think he likes the company. Such a lovely man. Says the sweetest things to us. Beauty lives with kindness. Isn’t that lovely? I think he’s told me that most every time I’ve looked after him. Let’s go find him.’

  We set off through glass doors down a pale peach corridor with peach patterned carpet.

  ‘By the way, Astrid, I’m Robyn Lucas. You were in the year ahead of me at school.’

  ‘Oh, hi, Robyn,’ I said. ‘I thought you looked a bit familiar …’

  ‘I didn’t expect you to remember me.’

  This was Tasmania. Everyone knows everyone.

  Making small talk, I said, ‘So did you stay in Tassie after school, or have you come back?’

  ‘Oh, I went travelling for a few months, like we all did back then, and then I came back, and I’ve hardly left since,’ said Robyn. ‘I married my first boyfriend, actually, and our children are grown up now.’ She smiled. ‘I’m a grandmother six times over. My eldest grandchild is twelve. Your sister has been marvellous for us nurses, you know. You’ve all done so well for yourselves.’

  She had a kind, lined face.

  ‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘And congratulations to you too. Family is quite an achievement, isn’t it. So are they here in Tassie, your kids and
grandkids?’

  ‘Yes, everyone stayed close by. My eldest works for one of the fish farms. My youngest is with the Symphony Orchestra—marketing not musical. And my middle one is a nurse too. There have been divorces, you know, but they’re all good. Does it feel like it’s changed much? Coming back? Must be very quiet after what you’re used to.’

  ‘It’s definitely got busier,’ I said.

  Robyn frowned. ‘Yes, peak hour used to be between five ten and five twenty—when all the public servants knocked off. But now it’s any time. We live at Kingston and it’s a nightmare trying to get in and out of town. Where did all these cars come from? I can’t imagine the bridge is going to help any of that. There’ll just be more visitors than ever.’

  ‘You had an older sister, too, didn’t you?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes, Laura. You’ve got a good memory. She died five years ago. Cancer.’

  ‘Oh, I’m so sorry.’

  ‘Your mum has cancer too, doesn’t she?’ she said.

  I nodded. ‘It’s metastasised now.’

  Robyn shook her head in sympathy. ‘I often wonder whether they might have been able to do more for Laura if we’d lived in Melbourne or Sydney. It was really awful at the end. And we don’t have the best technology here. No money for new equipment. Or the new drugs. One of my boys broke his leg a few years back, and it was so crowded in the fracture clinic he had to stand up and wait. When he finally got in to see the doctor, the scales were held together with duct tape. I looked at them and I thought, that’s what it’s come to. Our public schools, our public hospitals, barely held together with love and duct tape. My husband has been waiting three years for a hip replacement. So much for two billion dollars on a bridge. It’s health and education we need here. Feels like everything is for the tourists.’

  I nodded again. We had come to a halt outside room 29.

  ‘Still, you’re not here for that,’ she said. ‘This is your dad’s room. Let’s see if he’s awake. You do know what to expect, don’t you?’

  ‘I do,’ I said.

  Dad was sitting in his chair, wrapped in a blanket. He saw me and said, ‘Good morning to you, fair and gracious daughter.’

  Robyn smiled. ‘I’ll leave you both to it. Just let me know when you’re going.’ She closed the door behind her.

  ‘How are you, Dad?’ I asked, pulling the visitor’s chair up beside him and opening the curtains so we could look out at the lights of Sandy Bay.

  ‘The web of our life is of a mingled yarn, good and ill together,’ he said.

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘That’s just what I was thinking too.’

  I miss you, Dad, I wanted to tell him. I mean, I missed being here all these years. Close by. My dad had come every year to New York, faithfully making the day-and-a-half trip from Tasmania. He had loved New York. Loved the Metropolitan, took the children there so often Tavvy had said, at the tender age of six, ‘Please, Grandad, could we go to the Guggenheim instead?’

  I thought how the perfect place for my father to die would be there in the Met, in one of the re-created rooms from the mid-nineteenth century, or marvelling at a painting of the French Revolution.

  We had not seen this coming. That our father would go this way. Three strokes in quick succession over the last two months, the first two seemingly benign, other than him being found after the second one on the floor of the State Library. The last he had simply put his head on the table at a cafe. When the staff woke him, he hadn’t a clue in the world who he was or how he’d got there. All he would say was, ‘To be or not to be, that is the question.’

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  I was walking from the car park to Sandy Bay Beach to meet my sister Max. It was five to six, and already the sun was up, the light golden, the sea breathless. Years ago, when I first began travelling for my work, I kept a diary. I came upon it when I was packing up the Brooklyn house and moving to Manhattan after Ben and I split. Reading back over it, I was exhausted by myself. The travel schedule. The meetings. The sheer number of people I had contact with on any given day. Sharing this with my daughter, Tavvy, she said, ‘Mum, don’t you know that keeping a diary is meant to be about writing the high point and the low point of every day, and what made the low point bearable? You can’t write it all!’

  I wondered what the high point of today would be. At 11 am I had a meeting with the Bruny Progress Society. Bruny Island, I’d discovered, had more interest groups than street names. The Bruny Progress Society did not see eye to eye with Bruny in Action. The two groups fundamentally disagreed on the meaning of the word progress. The Bruny Progress Society was against the bridge, and they were against the fish farms, which they said had ruined the Huon River and were utterly destroying the channel. They were also against any further tourism development at Adventure Bay until there was a proper planning scheme that was based on projected visitor numbers, not on the handful of residents who lived there permanently.

  Bruny in Action had been started by a local and very successful cheese maker who believed that the bridge was the epitome of progress. His followers believed the bridge was the bright future for Bruny, its businesses and its landowners. The cheese maker and Farris were bitter enemies and there had been several very public showdowns at community events. Bruny in Action was funded, in part, by the biggest aquaculture company. Also, interestingly, they were funded by Friends of China, a tourism body that had sprung up to help Chinese tourists on their Tasmanian visits. Friends of China was funded by the Tasmanian government and, I discovered, by the Shenzhen Association, which was a front group for the Chinese Communist Party. This, in itself, was not unusual, I quickly discovered. Most organisations in Australia with links back to China also had links back to the Chinese Communist Party. It wasn’t advertised, but there was plenty of research.

  The Adventure Bay Residents Group was against the Adventure Bay Friends Group and the Birdwatchers of South Bruny did not see eye to eye with Birdlife Bruny. The latter had sprung up only with the arrival of the bridge project, whereas Birdwatchers of South Bruny dated back to the 1950s, so I was told. Then there was the BFG, which had attracted a lot of people who didn’t agree on anything else but did agree a bridge was not what Bruny needed.

  A few marriages were split down the middle, wife in one camp, husband in the other. Children and grandchildren, too. A grandmother or grandfather was in the Bruny Progress Society while a child or grandchild was in the Bruny Friends Group. The Adventure Bay Progress Society, an offshoot of the Bruny Progress Society, had got a spike in membership a few years back when the government had tried to log the hills behind the bay.

  ‘Pretty much like sucking the lilies out of the Monet, to wipe out those forests,’ one of the Progress Society people said. ‘Same with this bloody bridge. You finally find a bit of peace and, suddenly, the whole bloody world wants in. Want to be able to drive right to it.’

  ‘It’s like expecting daily flights to Antarctica but no harm done to the place,’ said another. ‘Well, it’s the same here. You can’t have wilderness and crowds.’

  ‘It’s like porridge and pesto,’ said the Monet wit. ‘Some things just don’t go together.’

  If you google, you can find a counter showing the world’s population. It ticks fast because around three hundred and sixty thousand people are born every day and around one hundred and fifty thousand die. Net result: the population of greater Hobart is being added to the world every twenty-four hours. Glaciers are melting, soil is drying out, sea levels are rising. We’re a tumour, the human race. And like a good tumour, we’ll keep on growing as long as we can. This is possibly today’s low point. I think Tavvy would want me to work harder for my low point, because this is not a new thought. Luckily, at that moment, I spotted Max.

  She was coming down the path wearing a pink beanie and dark glasses. I grinned. Here was my sister. Not thousands of miles, four airports and the whole wide Pacific away, but here. Here, on her home turf. Maybe this was the high point of today. We had alwa
ys looked alike, even though we only shared fifty per cent of the family genes. I was the tall version, she the short one. But still, we’re a pair. Light brown hair dyed variations of ash blonde, unusual amber eyes, our mother’s cheekbones and small ears. Our hands honed by piano lessons, our calf muscles by ballet. Max had been better at both than me. I grew too tall to ever look right in a pas de deux. I’d had an urge to learn jazz piano, but I wasn’t allowed.

  ‘Jazz is for drug addicts,’ our mother had said, and that was that.

  By twelve, and five foot nine, I gave up ballet. By age fifteen, and six feet, I gave up piano. Just flat refused to go to lessons. ‘You have to stop growing, Astrid,’ Mother said. ‘No man will ever marry you.’

  People suggested basketball, and I did play for a couple of seasons, but the truth is when I was younger I was pretty uncoordinated. I used to like jogging until I got shin splints. Swimming suits me. I like walking too. I’ve done some yoga over the years.

  Though she won a few events through school at the Hobart Eisteddfod, it wasn’t music that called Max; it was activism. Max out in the south-west protesting the damming of the Franklin River. Max in Western Australia protesting something—maybe forests, maybe gas exploration, I can’t remember. Max with the Aborigines and their tent embassy in Canberra.

  It was that trip that really got her thinking about politics. She came home and said, ‘Did you know the Aborigines weren’t allowed to vote until 1962? And that the first woman elected to the federal parliament was a Tasmanian?’

  ‘There’s always room for more,’ our father had said.

  ‘One politician in the family is quite enough,’ our mother had added. A quote that’s remembered with some amusement.

  So far Max hadn’t opted for federal politics.

  ‘I can’t leave Tasmania with these short-sighted blokes in charge,’ she’d said, when we discussed it. ‘I can do more here.’