34

Rob is waiting for Louisa to have a cup of coffee with him. The weather’s been patchy lately and he’s had to cancel work because of storms; still, he thinks and allows himself a smile, it’s swings and roundabouts with storms, there’s plenty of work after they’ve done their worst. Insurance jobs are always the best kind, no doubt about that.

The café is in Linen Street, North Melbourne, near the market. It’s halfway between both their houses and they meet there for convenience and maybe, if they’ll only admit, for their father’s sake. He lived in Linen Street as a child with his Nana and his uncles. In North Melbourne they feel the child their father once was, feel the possibility of his life before it was lost.

There’s something Rob needs to say to Lou and it won’t be easy. He orders a short black to give him strength and knocks it back in a hot speedy gulp. How do you say such a thing? he wonders, looking up at the sky. How do you tell your sister that you think it’s a mistake for her to have children, for any of us to.

It gnaws at him and now she’s gone and married this Keele bloke, something is bound to happen. There’s something about her that says secrets and something just a little too happy for his liking.

The truth of it is, he reckons, after long thinking on the subject, that considering the childhood they survived, none of them can possibly become a decent, let alone an excellent, parent. And for Rob that is the only sort anyone should be: wonderful. But how’re you supposed to get it right when you’ve got so little to go on?

He gears himself up for the talk. Knows she won’t appreciate it. What woman would? he supposes. Though he will never really think of Louisa as a woman, she’s a sister to her core, so that excludes her from the woman issue. Rob has his own complicated relationships to worry about, but one thing he’s sure of: he will never have children. It wouldn’t be fair. It would be gross irresponsibility.

He sees her striding down the street before she sees him. She’s wearing a new cream coat and her dark hair is long and shiny. Okay, he decides, she looks well enough. Possibly, she even looks good. He likes the big brown boots but he won’t tell her.

She kisses him and he seems to flinch so she punches his upper arm and ruffles his hair which he straightens immediately with both hands. ‘You are a dag Robbie boy,’ she says and orders a decaff cappuccino which would have given him a clue if he had truly been awake.

They try to catch up at least once a month at this café and when they do, eyes privately held behind sunglasses, they talk in snatches with their frothy coffee before them.

As usual, she starts, ‘How are you then, how’s things?’ He stirs his second coffee for a long time and says they’re fine and she thinks, oh dear, it’s going to be one of those days when talking to him is like pulling teeth. Poplar trees whisper beside them and further along, plane trees line Linen Street like green soldiers. Traffic is orderly and cars slip by like ants heading inside before rain. The market isn’t far and the occasional call of the stall-holders reaches them.

Emmett inevitably comes up. Louisa has heard from Anne that he’s having blistering headaches. Shockers that keep him down for days. Rob’s not impressed. ‘Oh well,’ he says, trying to make his face show some concern, ‘bound to happen with the booze plus he’s getting old and he’s hardly a poster boy for taking care of yourself.’

And then flatly out of nowhere it seems, he snaps, ‘You know Louie, I hate the old man and I will never feel any pity for him. I hate his fucking guts. He was a brutal bastard, the worst, the worst...’ And Louisa thinks, No, not today, I don’t want to hear it. Today is a clear good day.

Rob sips his coffee and though she agrees with him, Louisa tries to talk him out of the hate ‘because hate just eats into you’, she says like some American talkshow host. And so then, of course, the talking slows because just for once Rob would like to hear someone agree with him, just this one time would do. Not someone who tells him about their experience the minute he tells them of his own. No, he’d just really like to be heard.

‘Say it,’ he urges, leaning in, ‘just say it, just say you know what I mean and don’t try to talk me out of what I’m feeling. Give me some credit Lou.’ Louisa doesn’t feel like agreeing, so they grind to a halt. Rob peevishly scratches at the new beard he’s grown because he can’t be bothered shaving. It’s bloody itchy and he decides it will have to go. The sun slides in and glints on the cups.

And then again, baldly out of nowhere, like an actor walking onto a stage for his big moment, Rob stretches his neck, lifts off his sunglasses and tosses them on the table and says, ‘You know, I don’t think it’s a good idea to have children.’ Louisa thinks it’s payback time and looks at him. He lets the statement sit in the chasm between them and pauses, sipping busily at his coffee. There, he’s said it, now he takes a big hot swallow. ‘ I for one,would not be rushing into it.’

Louisa is already pregnant with Tom and while Anne has guessed, no one else has. She hadn’t expected it, but John is enthusiastic, which seems a good thing. She feels the world of possibility expanding within her. She thinks for a moment she might say something to Rob but then she feels a boiling anger followed by a kind of pity. Still, she wouldn’t mind sticking it to him. Thinks he knows it all, flashes through her but she takes hold of herself, smiles and says, ‘Surely, Robert, it’s got to be a personal decision. What are you going to do mate, have us all sterilised?’

‘Ha!’ he laughs far too loud, ‘Ha! Good idea! Excellent! Yeah, I’ll book us all in, there must be some doctor around here who’d be willing to give us a family rate.’ And he keeps up the ruthless, biting laugh.

‘You are such an idiot,’ she says, leaning back in the chair to get a better look at him. ‘One out of the box. Don’t you realise we had a wonderful mother, not just an insane father?’

She’s at the point in pregnancy when perfection is not only possible, it’s likely and she places her hand across her stomach and holds it there, protecting the peanut that will become her child. The breeze picks up and the poplars begin to scatter their small gold leaves and some are cast in Rob’s hair and rest there unheeded, like coins. Rob is too careful, she thinks, and what a damn shame he had to be male, he’ll never know this feeling because this really is hope, and it’s the best thing in the world.

And she realises that because he’s male, the shadow of Emmett falls heavily on him while she’s got Anne, a mother above all mothers. However you work it out, sadness follows them around like a faithful dog, she thinks. And Robert, poor Robert, could use a little mercy. She looks up from her coffee to smile at him but he’s scanning the poplar with his clever eyes.