53

The next day Chook is at the door of the shop banging away with no intention of not being heard. She opens the screen door and it takes a while to recognise him. But when she does, she sees that he’s a roomy man and still shambolic. And now, standing there engulfed in plaster dust, there’s a ghostly quality to him. His hair is streaked with plaster.

He edges into the kitchen shyly, as wary as a horse moving uncertainly into a stall way too small for him. They get a cup of tea going and then go out to the backyard to look at Anne’s lemon tree in a pot. Chook seems more comfortable outside. It’s easier to talk out here under the shade of the peppercorn. A wind picks up and touches the lemon buds lightly. Emmett is upstairs in his room sleeping in the cradle of the afternoon.

‘I don’t know, Chook,’ Anne says, and then she surprises herself and starts crying. God, it’s a rotten nuisance all these blasted tears. She tells Chook about the brain scans and the dementia and how fast it will go. ‘I just wanted to talk about Emmett with someone who really knew him.’ Chook puts his hand on her shoulder and tears slip down their faces.

And even Chook is suddenly and fiercely amazed that Emmett means this much to him. He has been gone from him for so long. Then they sit at the green plastic table splattered with chalky bird-shit circles and after a bit Chook starts talking and thinking together. ‘I knew that I had grown to love Emmett as a mate, but I knew he didn’t ever love me. It didn’t matter in the end, he was something else. I’ve never met anyone like him.’

He tells Anne stuff about Emmett that she has never heard. About the orphanage. ‘He got sent there time and again, poor little bastard, when his Nana couldn’t afford to keep him or when he went wild or when his mother decided he should go back in the orphanage to be with his little brother, Jimmy, but it wasn’t just one he went to, he went to them all over, even went to that awful one at Royal Park. It was bad in there and worse in the foster homes. He wouldn’t tell me what the foster father did to him, but as I got older I could imagine. He hated that bloke.

‘He wasn’t an orphan as you know, he just had a useless mother who couldn’t be bothered looking after him and then she kept having more kids by different fathers, all over the place, there were at least four halves, you know, half-brothers or sisters. Springing up everywhere.’

Sitting there in the yard, their eyes are towed to the lemon tree as if by mutual consent. Over the fence, the top of the Uncle Toby’s Oats silo just shows and goods trains hustle by along the fence-line making long clacking in the afternoon. A couple of Screen-master James Stirlings spread upwards near the fence, a mesh of olive green leaves as big as raindrops. A daisy bush takes the sun and a mauve hydrangea, its singed leaves as wide as wings, clings to the mercy of shade.

But the lemon tree in the cobalt blue pot is the undisputed star of the yard. It even has its own shade cloth cape constructed by Anne to fend off the sun on killer days. Today it has four lemons hanging from it like yellow balls.

Their eyes shuffle from one lemon to the other. Anne knows some of this stuff, but she doesn’t let on what she knows or doesn’t know. She’s mining a rich lead here. She asks Chook how Emmett ended up in North Melbourne with his grandmother and he speaks as if this was something he’s been waiting to say. He’s an authority on Emmett.

‘Eventually it was his uncles who saved him from the orphanage. I think it was his Uncle Spud who said he should just stay put with them at Nana’s. Left the other poor little bugger Jimmy in the home though. Don’t know what happened to the other halves. Unbelievable, the way they treated kids in those days.

‘You know, he loved my mum so much. She’d ruffle his hair and make him eat and tell him he was a handsome boy. I came home one day and Emmett was sitting in the kitchen having a cup of tea with her. Now I know she was a kind woman and everyone loved her and she was not a bad mother unless she was pissed, which was most of the time if I’m honest, but I got a bit shitty seeing Emmett Brown sitting there helping himself to a slice of bread and dripping and a second cup of tea. After a while, I made Emmett uncomfortable with my bad manners and he got up and left. He gave Mum a peck on the cheek and it seemed to me they had some kind of understanding.’

Chook pauses for a while and then says, the fact was, he was only a kid himself. Left unspoken is that he was always touchy about his mother, probably still is. In the quiet that follows his words, Anne knows she’s just gathered more about Emmett than she ever has. She puts her head down on the table and leaves it there resting on her arms.

Chook reaches over a white hand, still flecked with plaster, and puts it on her head. He pats her hair softly as if she were a child. This is so affecting, a wave of feeling for him washes up in her heart.

He offers to help Anne in any way he can and she’s grateful, but she never calls him again. She thinks of Wendy and their girls and she doesn’t want to be taking up their time. She’s just glad he knows.

When Emmett goes into the hostel, there’s often a note in the visitor’s book saying that M. Sash had called in. When he comes, Chook always brings a piece of fruit, a pear or a peach or if it’s winter, a thick-skinned navel orange. Peeling it, the spiky citrus smell springs into the stale air like a song.

Though Emmett stares ahead resolutely as if he’s concentrating, Chook firmly believes that Emmett remembers the smell of oranges from when they were boys at the market, tossing them around against the grey gully of winter. Chook divides the fruit into segments and sets the pieces out on a flowery plastic plate he brings along. And then, with the patience of the humble, Chook places a fragment of orange into Emmett’s papery hand and guides it up to his mouth.

He waits the long minutes until it’s time for the next piece. Sometimes it doesn’t get to the mouth. Emmett throws it away. When this happens, Chook places the next piece into Emmett’s mouth. Sometimes he spits it out. Sometimes he chews it. He looks solidly ahead. Whatever happens, Chook wipes his old mate’s mouth with the bit of paper towel he brought along and then he wets it at the tap and cleans him up before he sets Emmett free to roam the corridors once more.