51

As they age, they all look more like Emmett. The wide face, the big eyes, the cheekbones, they might even be Slavic. But who cares anyway? As Emmett would once have said, ‘We’re all of us just plain old bastards like every bloody one else in the world. No one is anything special and that includes the Queen her Royal self.’

These days when he walks, Peter keeps his head down a little and there’s a subtle stoop to his back. You can only see it from the right angle, but his thinness tells you all about it.

He likes plain clothes, square jackets with deep pockets. Shoes with thick treads that he wears until the uppers collapse. His hair is fading gently rather than going grey. When he lifts his face though, he’s mostly smiling. And when he smiles hard, his eyes nearly disappear into the creases.

He lives with Lily in a cream weatherboard house in Flemington not too far from the river. All the trim, after much negotiation, is indigo. There are two windows at the front and a small verandah. Round the back, the park washing up to the back fence is rimmed with peppercorn trees. Peter used to regard them as weeds until Anne said she liked them and then he began to see the stringy beauty of them. He often likes things his mum likes. It seems that she knows the best things.

He works from home servicing Apple Macs. He’s a computer technician with his own practice and he fits work around home duties. He cooks dinner every night and sometimes he still rings Louisa to talk about food. ‘Tried the new season’s asparagus yet? I got some really fat stalks the other day at the market...’ Or ‘Rocket pesto. What do you know about it?’

When anyone’s in trouble Pete is on the phone talking a bit of calm into the situation. When Jess briefly wanted to leave Warren once years ago, it was Pete she combed through it with.

‘He’s such an old man, he just sits and corrects and he lectures me about whether or not I clean up the kitchen properly or not. He can just go jump, I’ve had him.’

‘You’re joking Jess,’ he said to her, incredulous. ‘You’re not going to leave him ’cause he wants you to clean up after yourself, you’re not really that mad, are you? Warren’s got a lot going for him.’ And then he listened while Jess talked herself into staying with Warren.

And Anne calls Peter when Emmett goes walkabout. He has the knack of finding the old bloke and that’s true enough, though he’s not deluding himself. She probably calls the others too but he’s the only one who can spare the time. To Pete it doesn’t matter much who finds Emmett, he’s sick to death of the competitions with siblings, there’s always one of them better at something than the others, always bloody will be.

The truth is, he finds Emmett three out of the five times he has bolted and the police get to him the other times. The first couple of times Emmett nicks off Anne is nearly hysterical, not at all like the most serene woman in the world. This day the side gate wasn’t shut and Emmett has strolled out.

Peter grabs his coat, hops into the kombi and though he floors it, it still takes a while to move. He’s heading from the Maribrynong River over to Footscray. The sky is a darkening dome and in the park the peppercorns are whipped by the cold wind.

Anne has called the police and is waiting in the kitchen in case, by some miracle, Emmett comes home. She’s given the description to the young policewoman, a lass named Constable Schultz, who she tells Louisa, is really kind.

The Constable reads the description back to Anne: ‘Elderly man, blue eyes, silver hair, wearing bottle-green cardigan, checked blue shirt and navy trousers with black braces, wearing Adidas running shoes. He has a Parker pen inscribed with Emmett Brown.’ And it takes Anne a few seconds before she is able to speak.

Driving through Flemington, it hits Peter that Emmett will go home to the market. He doesn’t ask how he knows stuff like this, he’s just glad he does. He realises the knowledge is the same as when you’re fishing; you just click into the larger consciousness and then you listen and it comes.

He knows he’ll find the old man, but it takes longer than he imagined. He trawls those streets around the market for some time. It’s not a market day so there are barely any people. A stray sheet of newspaper flaps like a bird past towers of stacked-up crates. And further off, way up in the grey, pigeons are swinging around in the clean wind. The sky is heavy with low-slung cloud.

It feels like there might be a downpour and though the drought is eternal and every single human being in the city is praying for rain, Peter prays it won’t. The thought of Emmett getting drenched is not good. Poor old bastard wouldn’t know what was going on.

He decides he’ll see the old man better in the little lanes where the car can’t pass, so he parks at a meter, fishes in the ashtray for a gold coin and then runs off with the coin in his hand, such is his panic.

It’s at least another half an hour of scouring the streets around the market before he catches sight of Emmett, barefoot and moving surprisingly fast. Peter jogs up behind him and draws up level before he puts his hand on his shoulder and says, ‘G’day Dad, where you heading on a grey old day like today?’

Emmett seems angry when he turns towards Pete. ‘No time for that’, he says crossly.

He’s lost the dental plate that held in the false teeth (most of the teeth on one side went years ago in a fight) so a dark gap looms. He scowls and says urgently, ‘I’m bloody late for tea. Nana’ll kill me.’ Pete agrees that he’s late too and this works. ‘You too, poor bugger eh?’ Emmett says, and they both laugh as if it’s the funniest thing they’ve ever heard.

Peter steers him over to the crates, gets him to sit down on one. Emmett tells Pete he has to see Chook and Eric, his mates. Peter doesn’t know what he’s talking about, so he asks him where his shoes are. Emmett doesn’t hear him but he’s jiggling his bloody feet around as if the ground were on fire. Little creeks of blood have sprung up everywhere on them.

Pete finds some jellybeans in his pocket and he pops a red one into his father’s mouth. Emmett narrows his eyes and gets ready to eject and then the taste of sugar speaks, and he smiles a little sideways smile.

He chews the lolly vigorously on his good side then Peter puts his arm around him and guides him to the car. He’s walking slowly now as if the air is all gone from his tyres. Getting him into the car scares him and he rises moth-like against the window. The glass confuses him. Is it there or what?

He doesn’t like to sit, but Peter is patient and finally gets the seatbelt on him and he settles. At a phone box, he calls Anne and tells her he’s found him and he hears her tears, though no mention is made. Emmett keeps trying to touch his bleeding feet and gets blood on his face.

They plough through the packed, pushing traffic and Peter thinks of distance and time and how it is so long ago and so far away from the days when Emmett was well. Who’d have thought dementia would improve anyone? Peter reflects. He cleans Emmett up with a bit of spit on the tail of his shirt before they go in.