North of Nowhere, South of Loss. Janette Turner Hospital
you know, in the city, on the corner of Adelaide Street? Mrs Matthews!”
“Mrs Matthews?”
“Richard’s mum, you remember?”
“Oh, Richard,” I said, dizzy with loss. It was so unsettling, this vertigo, hitting sudden pockets of freefall into the past.
“Richard went away too,” she said. “They never see him. It just seems like yesterday when Brian and Richard and you and the others … and Julie … and Elaine. It was terrible what happened to Elaine. I cried when I read it in the paper. It’s not fair, it isn’t fair.” She picked up a leaf and began shredding it nervously and then dropped it. She ventilated herself again, holding the dress away from her skin, shaking it lightly. “Everyone’s children went away.”
“God, it’s hot,” I said. “The staff club will be air-conditioned though. For the reception. I wish they’d hurry it up.”
“But you come back a lot, Philippa. I saw in the paper —”
“Oh yeah. Every year. Brisbane’s got its hooks in me, I reckon. Look, he’s coming at last, he’s seen us. Oh damn.”
We watched the student who had intercepted him: jeans and t-shirt, sandals.
“They all look scruffy,” she said. It was an affront to her. Even the adults, the university people, the ones who would be at the reception, even they looked scruffy. Well, not scruffy exactly. But more or less as though they were dressed for an evening barbecue at the neighbours’. I shouldn’t have worn the hat, she saw. I shouldn’t have worn the corsage. But how could she have known? She had thought it would be like going to a wedding.
And he could have been a bridegroom coming towards us, easing away, trailing worshipful students like membrane-embedded alpha-helical streamers. He had the kind of bridegroomly self-consciousness and forced gaiety that goes with weddings.
“Dorrie!” he said loudly, full of energetic joviality, hugging her.
He had always called her that, from before he even started primary school. At five years of age: Dorrie and Ed. Never mother, father; certainly not mum and dad. It was as though even then he knew something they didn’t. And they had been too apprehensive, too apologetic, to protest. They had never even asked why.
“Philippa.”
“Good on ya, mate.” We hugged, old puzzle parts locking together. “You were bloody amazing. I’m speechless, I’m dazzled. What the hell’s an ootheca?”
“What’s a what?”
“An oo-ith-ee-ka.” I pronounced all four syllables carefully, the way he had, the stress on the third, treating each sound like glass. “The ootheca of the praying mantis.”
“Jesus, Philippa!” Brian laughed. “Typical. Absolutely peripheral to the lecture. Trust you to focus on a fucking word.”
“What does it mean?”
“It’s the ovum sac,” he said.
“The ovum sac. Hmm. So the breakthrough was dependent on female biology.”
“Oh, fuck off.” He made a fist and shadow-boxed, stopping an eighth of an inch from my nose. “Listen, Dorrie …” — turning toward her. He had a message of great urgency and import.
“Brian,” she rushed in eagerly, tripping over her nerves. “I remember about the crystal set, you and your Dad, how you used to hear foreign languages.”
Brian frowned, at sea. He just stared at her, disoriented, and then looked around nervously. (“You actually blushed, for God’s sake,” I told him later. “As though anyone would give a damn, even if they’d heard.”)
“Now, Dorrie,” he said gently. “There’s this ghastly reception that Philippa and I have to go to, it’s a stupid boring thing, and there’s no sense in the world making you put up with … So listen, I’m going to call a cab for you, all right? And we’ll come on later for dinner, just like you wanted. All right?”
“All right,” she said, parrot-like, meekly, looking somewhere else. And then afterwards there’s a reception, she’d told the saleswoman, seeing white linen and cake and champagne, and I think this little one, the saleswoman had said, adjusting a wisp of feather at her brow, this little number will be perfect. Just the thing for mother of the famous man. Just the thing for the scientist’s mum.
It’s because I wore a hat, she thought.
“Look,” Brian said, raising his arm, waving. “Here’s a Black and White.” He hugged her again. “Take care of yourself now, Dorrie. Go and put your feet up on the verandah for a while. We’ll see you later, okay?”
He said something to the driver, gave him money, and we both waved. We kept on waving till the taxi disappeared.
“Don’t look at me like that, Philippa.”
“Like what?”
“Just cut it out, okay?”
“Don’t try and dump your guilt onto me.”
“She would have hated it. She’s terrified of social stuff, always has been. They never went anywhere. I was being kind, if it’s any of your business.”
“Jesus, Brian. That was brutal. And so totally unnecessary. I would have kept her under my wing.”
“She would have hated it,” he insisted. “Anyway, I’m not even going myself. I’m off to the Regatta. Let’s go.”
“What? But it’s in your honour!”
“I don’t give a stuff and nor do they. No one’ll even notice I’m not there. It’s the free booze and free food they’re after, that’s all. C’mon, let’s go. You got your car here?”
“You think it’s because I’m ashamed of her,” Brian said moodily on the verandah at the Regatta. “But you’re wrong. It’s not that.”
I sipped my beer and stared across Coronation Drive at the river. Two small pleasure craft, motorboats with bright anodised hulls, were whizzing upstream, and a great ugly industrial barge from Darra Cement was gliding down, shuddering a bit, moving its hips in a slow, slatternly wallow. The sight of it filled me with happiness. Good on you, you game old duck, I thought fondly, and raised my glass to it. “Probably the same rusty tub we used to see when we were riding the buses out to uni,” I said.
“Probably,” Brian said lugubriously, slumped over his beer. “Everything’s stuck in a bloody time warp, it’s like a swamp” — he waved his arms about to take in the verandah, the Regatta, the river, the whole city — “it’s like a swamp that sucks everything under, swallows it, stifles it, and gives back noxious …” His energy petered out and he slumped again. “There was this funny little man in the front row who used to sit in on lectures when I was in first year. Flat-earth freak, or something, he used to buttonhole people in the cloisters. We all used to duck when we saw him coming. Must be ninety now, if he’s a day, and there he was in the very same seat. It gave me the shivers.”
I squinted, and lined up the top of my glass with the white stripe on the broad backside of Darra Cement. “I saw in the paper that home-owners in Fig Tree Pocket and Jindalee and those newer suburbs are trying to get the dredging stopped. One of these days we’ll come back and the river won’t be brown anymore, it’ll be crystal clear. I suppose that’ll be a good thing, but it’s funny how I get pissed off when anyone tampers with Brisbane behind my back. God, I love being back, don’t you?”
“I hate it,” Brian said. He’d thrown his jacket across a spare chair. Now he undid a couple of buttons on his shirt and rolled up his sleeves. “Look,” he said with disgust, raising his arms one by one, inspecting the moons of stain at the armpits. “A bloody steam bath.”
“That’s