THE BUGG-WOMAN’S GRANDFATHER
What must it be like? At The Edge? That point where you decide to step off, voluntarily let go? I mean, not simply considering it, being there. Ready. Resolute. The moment you actually wash down the pills, turn on the car’s engine, step onto the train tracks.
When I was in my midlife and still full of the delusions of certainty, one of my uncles topped himself after his wife of 60 years died. I remember saying to Mary that I thought he was made of better stuff than that, that he had the grit to go on waking up each morning and bless his remaining days. Said that it couldn’t simply have been about his wife’s death, because he’d held out for a year, weathered the worst of it.
It was the day after he backed his car into a shop window. A bit messy, a bit embarrassing, but no big deal. But it was his tipping point.
For me it was termites.
The young electrician rewiring the laundry found them, said they were in the cavity, announced it like he’d discovered hidden treasure, gave me a card for the pest control people his neighbour worked for. Said it was the third lot he’d found this week.
I was surprised when you turned up – a superbly fit-looking mid-forties woman in coveralls – surprised because I’ve seen you some mornings, jogging the length of the beach, and always wondered what you did. My money was on the military, or the firies, a copper maybe. You had that kind of a presence, that kind of an impact to the eye, strong, enduring. But here you were, the Bugg-Woman. And I’d always seen it as ‘The Bugg-Man’ anyway, like on the ads. Like on the side of your van. And you were waiting for it, so I said nothing. But the question was all over my face, so you asked it for me.
“Why isn’t it ‘The Bugg-Person’?”
You had a way of fixing your position, sort of steely-eyed, like a perpetual challenge. So I just shrugged one shoulder, non-committal, but smiled. You smiled back, the steel softening. I still had money on you having been in the army, sometime.
“S’okay. I’m breaking new ground. The company’s working on a non-sexist image. Someone had to be first”, and you just left it hanging there, like it was none of my business anyway. So I showed you the offending hole with the dangle of unfinished wiring, had already accepted I was going to lose a heap of wall lining, so I said do what you have to and left you to it.
I didn’t actually think you’d take up my offer of coffee afterwards. It’s just what you do, with tradies. The subbies always stop, their time’s their own, expect an assortment of biscuits. Paid employees don’t. But you said sure, thanks, milk two sugar, can we have it out there, and nodded in the general direction of the back yard and the barbie table under the vines, went and washed up with the ease of a regular visitor.
I’ve always found it curious how people steer people. I mean, steer a total stranger into a space. So they can talk. Not the compulsive yappers who try to corral you and hog-tie you with their mindless words, but the true story-tellers. You get to be adept at picking the difference.
But, you looked like – well, looked like me. Careful. Introspective. A one-on-oner. The best kind. And with Mary gone a year - Mary of our long ago youth – I sensed I was drifting towards The Edge. And not afraid of it any more.
So I brought the makings out on a tray. Along with an assortment of biscuits. Waited for you to find your opening.
“Sorry I couldn’t make it yesterday, but I had a funeral t’ go to.”
“That’s okay, someone – like – close?”
“My grandad.”
“Oh, I’m sorry...”
“Nah, it was his time. Past his time really. Poor old bugger.”
You were looking through the table top, still in that place, that place after a funeral, where we sometimes need to go to get things about them arranged in our head so we can properly bury them. Knowing we’re moving on without them.
“Sick was he?”
“Nah – well – a bit – but mostly sick in the head I s’pose.”
It was then I knew that it was your grandfather you needed to talk about. And a stranger is always the best. Like neutral ground. You stirred your coffee and went looking for the words. So I waited.
“Poor old bugger”, you said again. This is the point where you tread mindfully, respectfully.
“Struggling, was he?”
“Yeah. Last few years especially. I’m not sure why he went the way he did. Maybe he was always like it, one of those people just put together wrong at the beginning. Doesn’t come to the surface till later in life, when all their resistance machinery starts to break down. Something like that. Best as I can work out. It’s only a lottery anyway isn’t it. A gene lottery. All a matter of which tadpole makes it to the egg first, every one of those million or whatever is different, eh? And our mum’s egg is just the next one in the queue. Any of us could get anything. All only a lottery.”
You blushed just a touch at that, like you were in unfamiliar territory. With a total stranger. I was wise enough to understand that, with you, this was no small honour.
“I spent a summer with him once, when I was a kid. Mum was wrestling with her latest scab of a boyfriend and thought it best I was somewhere else. Grandad was about the only relative she could rely on. And fair enough, he was still pretty normal back then.”
For a second I thought you were going to explain something about your family, dysfunctional maybe, but that would’ve been a step too far.
“He was out on one of those railway maintenance towns, way up the line, middle of nowhere, but he seemed to be at home there – he was a quiet man, but decent, y’know? And geez that joint was basic. Always had that temporary look, like they knew it’d all become redundant any day. And it did, don’t have a need for them any more, probably send some radio controlled gadget out to put in new sleepers now’days.
“And bloody hell that first summer was hot. One of those endless fettler’s summers, full of grits and where’s the waterbag - hot weeks, hot months - gangs away most days up the line, or waiting for the supply train, then lots of unloading sleepers and lengths of track, bags of bolts and spikes, with those shitty little desert fringe flies y’know, forever exploring your nostrils, and bull-ants! - big as goannas - with attitudes like hungry cattle dogs.”
I would liked to have said I knew, but I would’ve been lying. And then you’d close up. So I just nodded.
“It wasn’t really a family sort of a town, but there was a few of them there, men who couldn’t cope with the city, or running from something, dragging wives and kids with them. But they made a sort of a life out of it, had a bit of a support network going with the outlying farm and station towns.”
Here you laughed, a short snort of a laugh that said much.
“I went to school there for a while, a one room job with one teacher who did the lot, place always under threat of being closed down because the enrolments were too low. There was another two schools out in the donga the same, so what they’d do, any time they got the whisper that the Education Department guy was doing the rounds, was lend their kids to each other, to make up the numbers. Each school would keep about eight extra kids enrolled under an assortment of local names, and they’d truck a bunch of us in for the week to where the bloke’d be next. Us kids thought it was brilliant. Like a holiday. Years later Grandad told me that it was actually the inspector guy himself who’d quietly give them the nod that he was on his way! Give them time to get organised. No losers there!”
And then that laugh again, and I was worried that you’d finished.
“Was he living locally – when he died?”
“Yeah. He was actually in Birdsville last I heard, before I did my – before I - when I was away. He was a handyman for the pub and the Flying Doctor, but he must’ve quietly come back to town when he retired, lived on his own, not far from me in fact, just him and his dog, and a cat called Mickey.
“One day he rang me. Out of the blue. Mum was long gone anyway and I hadn’t seen him for best part of twenty years - but I was pretty much the only rellie the poor old sod had. But he wasn’t like that, only rang me because he had to”, and you put your hand to your head, phonecall-wise, acted it out, enjoying yourself I think.
‘I got white ants again!’
‘What?’
‘White ants! Effen termites! You do bloody white ants doncha?!’
‘Who IS this?’
‘It’s ya bloody grandfather! Who else you expectin’?!’
‘Where ya callin’ from?’
‘From bloody home! Me and the bloody white ants!’
‘What – up at Birdsville?’
‘Don’t be stupid – I’m about ten streets away.’
‘What?! How long you been...?’
‘Look, you comin’ t’ do my termites or do I ring someone else?’
You hung up your hand and looked a touch self-conscious, watched me for reaction, watched me put the brakes on a guffaw, which pleased you. The guffaw that is.
“I went round and did a full inspect for him, but he was hot onto me about paying, said he wasn’t a charity case, said he’d find the dough - this time. And I sort of queried that, the ‘this time’ bit. And that’s when he told me he’d had termites visit him three times in his life.
“The first was in the Depression he said, when he’d just lost his job, and had a little timber frame cottage out on the edge of some Mallee town, one he was only just hanging on to, when my mum and her brother were small, and he’d had to go to his parents for the money, and never did repay them because they died before he was back on his feet.
“The second time was when he tried to make a go of it in the city, after the war, to keep his missus – my grandma - from going loopy he said, after my mum’s brother was killed, off his horse. And he was trying to put Mum through High School, and paying off a suburban bungalow, doing his best to be normal he reckoned. That time he had to plead with some stone-faced banker for another loan against the house to pay for it. That nearly killed him, having to beg.
“And now this time – ‘when I’m bloody old and on me bloody own and on the bloody pension, but there’s no way I expect you to pay for it girlie!’ And then he said – ‘geezuz, a man never could afford to have white ants!’
“I put it through on the cheap best I could, and he paid about half on the spot, and I gently touched on it about a month later, but he didn’t know what I was talking about. Totally forgot he’d even had termites. So I just quietly fixed it up. I should’ve realised then he was struggling. Not just money-wise. He had a sort of – scrappy look about him, like he’d become disjointed or something, and I knew it was some sort off head thing, getting worse. But he’d go off if I suggested he get in some help, so I watched out for him best I could. But he was always a bit of a strange old coot.”
You paused, stirred what was left of your coffee, then added - “But loveable - sort of - y’know?”, and I had the passing thought then that he was probably the only person you loved.
“He had this old bike, with a box on the back, and he’d put his dog in it - it was a terrier sort of thing that looked even older than him – he’d put it in the box and ride the bike off to do his grocery run, but not on the footpaths like I told him to – always on the roads. And every time he went over a pothole or shortcut a kerb the bike would go whooomp! and the dog’d fly up into the air and back down again. Better than a circus act. His neighbours used to tell me it was worth waiting just to see him go by!
“But I was sure the old bugger and the dog and the bike’d all finish up under the wheels of a truck one day, so I started going around there on the quiet and hide his bike. But he’d just go off to the local Vinnies and buy another one, put another box on the back, like he’d forgotten he ever had one. Geez he was a worry! He actually owned five bikes when he cashed in his chips!”
Your smile at that told me more about you than you would’ve cared to give voluntarily. But that’s the best part, the best part of one-on-one.
“And then there was his long suffering cat he called Mickey. Poor bloody Mickey. Scraggy! - he always looked like he’d been pulled through a blackberry bush backwards! But Mickey thought Grandad was a king, sit in his lap, follow him around, always waited at the front gate any time the old boy and the dog went for groceries.
“But the cat seemed to understand about Grandad’s problems. Like some sort of animal instinct y’know? - always seemed to sense when one of his episodes was coming on. I saw it a couple of times. Grandad’d say – ‘Okay, it’s time to fix the cat...’, and Mickey and his balls would be off, out of there like a shot. Or he’d say - ‘This cat’s older than Christianity...’, and if Mickey didn’t move fast enough he’d finish up in a wheatbag and heading for the river. Poor old bugger had a couple of close calls, used up a bunch of his nine lives I reckon, was rescued more than once just in the nick of time. But, that cat was ridiculously forgiving y’know, stayed totally devoted to him, would go on sitting on his lap every afternoon, and purr. And wait. People just don’t love like that, do they.”
I know you wanted me to say something then, maybe about people and loving, but the thought of Mary rose up in my throat and I was sure I was going to choke on the grief, and I had to look away. But you knew. Because you quickly led me away.
“He had this sign on his gate...”, and you sat back, put your empty cup on the tray, and smiled, generously. “It was hand painted on a chunk of plywood. It said...
‘no collectors no inspectors no door-to-doorers
no scammers no flim-flammers no carpetbag lawyers
no bankers no wankers no nonstop talkers
no wheelers no dealers no Salvation hawkers
and especially not you
Bill Brodie.’
“I think he was always waiting for me to ask. Who the hell is Bill Brodie Grandad? But I didn’t. I wanted him to tell me without having to ask. Not sure why. Just the way we were with each other I think. Like we were both trying to be the most – y’know – private. And he cracked first. One day out at the gate as I was going. He nodded at it and sort of winked a bit, but his eyes weren’t smiling.
“‘All the others just want a piece of you, but Bill Brodie wants the lot’, he said. For quite a while I thought it must’ve been the bloke his first wife pissed off with y’know, some travelling boxer with one of the troupes that did the country circuits back then. But it was only yesterday, at the funeral, that I realised who Bill Brodie was, to him. Will be, to all of us. When it’s time.”
You were done then, you’d made your grandfather comfortable inside, and more. Much more. Oddly, I wasn’t really surprised when you dropped by a week later, said it was a free follow-up, and stayed for coffee. And the weeks after that.
© T. R. Edmonds 2018
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