55

Louisa has taken the morning off because Anne needs someone with her today. ‘Lou,’ she’d said low and even when Louisa told her that today she didn’t care about the old man or how sick he was, ‘he’s still your father.’

So she asks Mr Conti and he waves his heavy hand at her in answer and says, ‘Make it up another time dear girl.’ She heads over to the shop, picks up Anne in the dented green Mazda 121 she calls Olive and drives to the hostel. She’s decided her new policy is that if she’s going to do something she will not begrudge it. This is Policy number 5431. She is trying to be more positive. Maybe it will help. Dr Mackenzie thinks it will.

They enter the hostel and loop the building looking for him. He’s nowhere. They ask at the staff desk and are told to their astonishment that he’s locked in his room. The key is passed to them.

Flinging the door open they see Emmett lying in pain on the pencil bed, in that stinking room. And this is far more than they bargained for. It’s an outrage. Louisa feels the bile rising and thinks she might heave and fights it down.

In that small cave of a room, the tight hot smell of urine fastens Louisa to the foot of the bed. To see her father, to see anyone, like this is shocking. Poor old bastard lying there in his own piss, I can’t believe it, and this is supposed to be a civilised bloody country. Anne takes the chair over and sits next to Emmett.

Louisa flings the window open as if there’s a fire. Then she strides to the front desk and bails up the matron. ‘Emmett Brown is really sick,’ she says raising her voice, ‘and blind Freddie could see that.’

But casual cruelty is a way of life for Matron Knight, a wide woman with a long pointy nose and the startled look of a rabbit. With an affronted expression, she peers up from her ledger at Louisa.

‘I face immense funding problems and since Mr Brown became doubly incontinent, his care category has increased. We have staff shortages every day, it’s not a job people are reliable about. Besides,’ and she turns back to her ledger, pen scanning figures, ‘I thought he’d benefit from a day in his room.’

Louisa hears something about funding and wishes she were Emmett in the old days because chucking a mighty tantrum would feel real good right now. She looks at the matron as though she’s never seen anything like her but decides restraint is required. ‘I’ll be in Dad’s room. I’ll speak to you there.’ Tearing along down the beige corridors, she feels time slowing, even while her heart is thudding like an engine.

In a while, Matron Knight cracks open the door to Emmett’s room and peeps in timidly. She thinks it’ll be safe to step in and when she does, Louisa goes for her. ‘What do you think you’re doing here, leaving a sick old man locked up, all alone like this? It’s not human. What are you, some kind of a sadist?’

This is a pretty long speech for Louisa and now she’s lost for words, except for one more thing. But, her voice has gone on her again. ‘We want to see a doctor,’ she croaks, assuming this will be a simple matter, but nothing, it seems, is simple when it comes to hostel etiquette and procedure.

Matron Knight is ready for this one and smiles patiently. ‘The doctor was here yesterday and he saw your father and decided it was nothing serious.’

Louisa stands up and in her new boots is about a foot taller than Matron Knight. They look like a sideshow act. Trump the old witch, go on she urges herself, and says, ‘Okay, I’ll pay for it myself, I don’t care, just get the doctor here.’ Matron exits with as much grace as she can muster.

The tentative air slips in through the window and Drysdale’s image of The Drover’s Wife, the one Emmett cut from a calendar and Anne framed, hangs sideways. Louisa straightens it. Emmett periodically clutches his stomach.

The walls of Louisa’s life are high, and this day she holds her emotions tightly to herself because Anne won’t appreciate her tears. This is the first time Louisa’s seen Emmett in a while. She hasn’t been able to stand it. She hasn’t brought Tom and Beck because she can’t explain this to them. Seeing Emmett being subtracted from the world before your eyes is harder than she would ever have believed.

The last time she brought the kids had not worked. She had told them that Grandad was not the way he used to be, that he’d changed, that his brain was sick. Even so the kids were excited to see him because Emmett always made them feel special.

Tom, at fifteen, stood tall, with blue eyes and long dark curls and Beck, though she was olive skinned, looked very like him. She was almost thirteen. Louisa had been keeping them away from Emmett since he’d gone into the hostel, because she found it as much as she could handle on her own. But now it was holidays and, because they had no extra money for going away, here was a Saturday they were all free and the kids wanted to see him.

As soon as she walked in with them, she knew her strategy had been wrong. She should have introduced them to the deterioration more gently. Emmett was staring by a wall and Tom walked over and put his hand out to shake hands as they always did. Emmett didn’t see him. So Tom dropped his arm and came back over to his mother looking hurt and puzzled, and Louisa thought, this is too much for them. The stranger with the staring eyes frightened Beck. She could see nothing of the funny old Grandad and the tough adolescent veneer she was pursuing dropped from her like a curtain. She began to cry.

Dealing with the kids’ sadness over their grandfather made sense of Anne’s need to quickly get back to normal after her Nan died. But Louisa reflected that perspective is always hard won. And driving away from Woolemai with the silent children, she decided they’d seen enough reality to last them a very long time.

Now Emmett is old and skeletal and he knows no one and is all but dead and time just keeps marching on. The pity of it all wells and she turns away to look at The Drover’s Wife and recognises the lost eyes of her father.

Finally Dr Edward Roote appears in the small room. He positions himself at the foot of Emmett’s bed as if he’s a contagious proposition. Anne holds Emmett’s hand. It lays there like a dead fish until the cramping pains come and then he clutches at his stomach.

Louisa feels herself reddening in the face of authority, something that hasn’t happened since high school, but quite firmly she says to Dr Roote, ‘My father needs to go to hospital now and if you don’t arrange it, then I’ll put him in the car and take him there myself.’

The doctor is a thin young fellow with ears like small fine wings. His eyebrows and his hair are so light as to be no colour at all though palest green is hinted at. ‘I examined, err’ – and here he consults his clipboard and scans until he finds the name – ‘Mr Brown, is it? Err yes, yesterday, and he had a mild cold. There is no need for further treatment.’

For a man clearly so unsure of himself, Dr Roote is pretty arrogant, Louisa decides. She controls her anger. ‘I don’t care about yesterday,’ she says quietly. ‘I care about now.’

The doctor glances at her with his clam-like eyes and fiddles with his pen and scans yesterday’s notes again. He reminds Louisa of one of the gilded youths in Banjo’s ‘The Man from Ironbark’, the ones whose ‘eyes were dull, whose heads were flat’ and who ‘had had no brains at all...’ Just recalling the lines makes her want to flatten this little creep and fight for her father. The class system, she thinks, alive and bloody thriving.

Once again she says, ‘I don’t care about yesterday,’ an undertow in her voice. ‘Today is what matters. Look at him. He needs medical attention now and you are clearly not giving it to him.’ She considers calling him an appalling dolt but thinks better of it; that would just be indulgent.

Dr Roote fudges some more and blinks and steps back, then in a few hollow seconds completely caves and scurries off to ring the ambulance. It’s a victory that doesn’t feel like one.

Louisa puts her hand on Emmett’s head and his hair is baby hair now and suddenly the grief is pouring out of her. She has to go outside to compose herself. It’s been a while since she stopped having shock treatment but she’s still reasonably fragile, she’s coming to terms with the new medication and she’s still on anti-depressants and she still sees Dr Mackenzie. She stands near the door with the sad old lost people wandering around and lets out a breath.

An old woman touches her face and Louisa sees that she only has one shoe and her cardigan is hanging off her. Just under her mouth a clump of whiskers sticks out like a paintbrush. Sometimes everywhere you look makes you sad and she reminds herself that sometimes sad is normal, sad happens to us all. Sad isn’t the end.

And in a while the paramedics plough their shining trolley up the hall and into Emmett’s room. The ambulance men are bald blokes with flushed faces and big polished cheeks, one a head shorter than the other, and they pick Emmett up gently as if he were a baby and tuck him in on the trolley.

They call him mate and shake his flapping hand as though they mean it. They pat his shoulder and let Anne hold his hand and pretty soon Emmett looks better already and then they put a brave red rug over his legs.

As they leave, Louisa shuts the door on the stinking little cave. The tender paramedics have made her teary again but then she’s a great sook. She strides ahead to lead the way to the ambulance, up front where she can get some privacy. Her father groans again and Anne walks besides Emmett still holding his hand.

Ambulances are common at Woolamai and they provide a break in the day but today nobody’s that fussed and most miss the exit of Emmett. One old woman waves as they pass and then there’s Nancy who waves at everybody. At the ambulance Emmett looks straight at Louisa and salutes and she salutes back. And then the old man’s laughing with the paramedics. She puts her arm around Anne’s shoulders. They laugh. Emmett always did love a fuss.