Remnants: Chapter 1
MITCHELL GRANVILLE WOKE some time before dawn. He needed to use the bathroom but he could feel a damp chill on his face, and his room was well and truly dark – he didn’t want to move. He lay in bed, on his back, his arms across his chest, and felt his ribcage rise and fall. What day is it? he asked himself silently. He had to think for a moment before he could work it out, a nimble mind was no longer his. The heady taste of red wine lingered in his mouth, and his eyes felt dry and sore as if he had slept with them open. It’s Monday, he decided. Oh I know what’s happening today.
He switched on his reading light, then pulled aside the sheet, blanket and eiderdown, and sat on the edge of the bed. Come on, he told himself, get to the toilet otherwise you’re going to do it right here and now. After standing up slowly, feeling stiffness in his back and legs, he headed for the bathroom. The house was silent like something dead and, strangely, it seemed empty already. Quite suddenly he became light-headed, unbalanced, and he stopped outside the toilet to put a hand on a wall to steady himself. He remembered the previous evening’s dinner, the spread of food they had eaten, the wine, the talk. You’ll probably be glad to have Main House to yourself, Ruth had said to him. Mitchell hadn’t offered her, the only other member of his immediate family, a response, but he knew what she had said was true.
He finished in the bathroom and returned to bed. He was pleased to have his head back on crisp, white pillows. He knew that when asleep things seemed to be all right, in their place, just fine thank you.
▪
At eight a.m. he woke again. Now the house had become alive with the hubbub of Ruth and Sarah talking loudly in the kitchen – it sounded as if more than just two others had stayed over night. After wrapping himself in his dressing gown and putting his feet into his slippers, he went to meet them for breakfast. The house felt cold. He shivered. Through the freshly-cleaned glass panes of the front door he could see the morning was sheer and bright. It was early June and the days had been cloudless, but the nights had fallen below freezing, making the mornings white with frost. It wouldn’t have been hard to imagine an overnight fall of snow.
‘Good morning,’ said Ruth, sliding a plate of muffins onto the long timber table in the middle of the kitchen. Her grey woollen suit coat and matching knee-length skirt had the unusual affect of making her body appear younger but her face older. To a stranger she may have looked like a retired air hostess. ‘They’re cinnamon,’ she said. ‘Louise has just made them. There’s plenty for you to snack on for a week.’
Mitchell put his hands on the back of a chair, he let his weight rest there for a moment. Good old Louise – the caretaker’s wife has done it again.
Sarah stepped over to him and kissed his cheek. ‘Hello Uncle,’ she said. ‘Tuck in.’
‘I can’t believe we’re eating again after last night,’ said Mitchell. He sat down at the table.
‘Louise even offered to do us bacon and eggs,’ said Ruth. ‘But I told her it would be too much.’ She joined Mitchell at the table and hurriedly began to spread dollops of butter on a muffin. Ruth always seemed to be darting somewhere; her brother felt sure her heart would be the first part of her to go. Then again he thought that of everyone, including himself. Recently he’d been thinking about his own heart more and more.
After a moment Ruth turned to him and, already sounding pleased with what she was about to say, said, ‘Looks like we’ve finally got there. It’s done.’ She smiled, more to herself than anyone else.
‘Well, Mum,’ Sarah cut in, ‘not all of it’s organised. But the bulk of it’s over.’
Ruth got up to turn off the kettle. ‘All we have to do now is send out the invitations. But we don’t have to be up here to do that, we can post them from Sydney.’
Sarah looked at her uncle. Quietly she said, ‘God, I hope I never have to go through this again. It would kill me, it really would.’
‘It’s just as well we’re got our acts together,’ continued Ruth as if only she were taking part in the conversation. ‘I have such a busy few months coming up, I really do.’
At dinner the night before, over a chicken-and-pumpkin pie and piles of home-grown winter vegetables, all of it washed down with a bottle of champagne and two of red, Ruth had once again told Mitchell about her months leading up to Sarah’s wedding. Jam-packed, she said, filled to the brim, how would she ever be able to cope. And the law had to answer for most of it. J. Martin Coach, the barrister who employed her as his legal assistant, had encouraged her to attend a conference in Bangkok. Then there was a trip to New York to negotiate business arrangements associated with joining a boutique but international legal firm. After all this she had planned a rest of sorts – an eagerly awaited European holiday with her husband George Partridge, the brain surgeon who was allergic to holidays in his own country. She told Mitchell that in all likelihood it wouldn’t be until September that she’d next be up at The Green. Obviously she worried about whether her brother, who was almost ten years her senior, would be able to cope with living by himself for a protracted period of time – she never said anything about it aloud, he just knew what she thought, he could tell for sure. There had been times when he’d want to say something particular to her: If only you really knew me, Ruth.
‘Are you going to miss our weekly visits, Uncle?’ asked Sarah, her mouth half-filled with a muffin.
He thought about the question.
‘Bobby and Louise will look after you, as always,’ said Ruth on his behalf.
‘I’ve got plenty to read,’ said Mitchell finally. ‘And there’s always sun on my bench.’ He knew it was ludicrous to suggest that sunshine always drenched his bench.
Ruth began pouring the tea. In the cups it had the colour of new rust. ‘I’m just saying that if you’re looking for things to do,’ she said, ‘just ask the caretakers.’
‘You make it sound like I’m about to keel over.’
‘We know you’re not that old!’ said Sarah.
Mitchell laughed under his breath.
Sarah said, ‘And Brandon might be coming up too.’
‘Really?’ said Mitchell. He had a genuine enthusiasm in his voice – the boy was his youngest grandson. In the same way he had time after time held affection for Sarah, he had always been fond of Brandon. He never asked himself why, and he knew he shouldn’t have favourite nieces and nephews and grandsons and grand daughters, but he did, and he was too old now to do anything about it. Favouritism was a fact of life, it was an in-built edit mechanism. The last time he’d seen Brandon was at Irma’s funeral.
‘Have you spoken to him recently?’ Mitchell asked.
‘A month or so ago,’ replied Sarah. ‘He’s thinking of studying landscaping or green-keeping, something like that. That’s why he wants to come up here.’
‘Well, it would be good to see him if he does visit.’
‘He’s just bought himself a Volkswagen. I think he’s joining the other side, Uncle.’
Mitchell was about to reply when his sister cut him off.
‘Anyway, my dear,’ said Ruth, ‘we should throw these down our throats and then get going. I said I’d be at the Chambers by two.’
‘And I have a stack of preparation to do,’ said Sarah obligingly. ‘We’re down one of the senior lecturers so I’m taking on his workload. This corporate university approach really is a dog of a thing.’
‘Every organisation has to be efficient with its use of funds,’ said Ruth as if she had been thinking about precisely this issue for the last half an hour.
‘I guess so,’ replied Sarah.
Mitchell looked through the kitchen window. He wondered if his bench was covered in frost or sun.
▪
He opened the garage doors and watched as Ruth backed out her station-wagon. Sarah got into the car, then wound down her window. ‘We’ll see you in a few months, Uncle,’ she said. She had always seemed much younger than her forty-one years of age, but now with her mother about to drive her back to the city she looked even younger, almost like a teenager.
Mitchell leant down a little and kissed Sarah on her cheek.
‘Take care now,’ he said. He meant it. He looked across to his sister
.‘I’ll ring you whenever I get a chance,’ said Ruth.
‘You know where to find me,’ said Mitchell.
Ruth turned away and stared along the driveway, looking as if she could be home simply by thinking about it. She put the car into gear, readying herself for the trip back through the mountains to the city. The Bells Line of Road, with its almost trance-inducing curves and climbs and dives and u-bends, had never been the easiest to navigate even though for any Granville it was as familiar as a domestic driveway.
‘Goodbye, Uncle,’ said Sarah.
Mitchell took one pace back from the car. He watched as it left him alone and began gliding past the face of Main House, that grand sandstone post-colonial home featured in a dozen National Trust books. It seemed to him that this was not a departure but a farewell. There should be streamers of all different colours and a seething crowd, but it felt as if it was he who should be moving, and that it his sister and niece should be standing still, waving him off.
The car disappeared from view. Mitchell knew Sarah would have to get out and drag open the black and heavy wrought-iron gates so her mother could drive through. Then she would close up before she and her mother would be able to leave the mountain – this the routine, the ritual, the tradition for anyone leaving Bellstay Green, all of it perfectly appropriate.
Mitchell looked across the lawns. The bright morning sun had melted most of the frost, leaving a few white patches to bravely cling on to shadows. Yes, I know what’s happening today, he said to himself silently.
He knew all those seemingly endless weekends in late summer and autumn, packed with his sister and niece’s frenzied wedding planning activities, had taken their toll – and probably not just on himself. John’s a rising star in the Party, Ruth had informed him on Christmas Day. Mum and Dad would be really chuffed if Sarah were to marry him, she said. Especially Dad. Yes, Mitchell agreed at the time, especially Dad. There was a photograph: Harold Granville, the esteemed Queen’s Counsel and one time Deputy Premier of New South Wales, standing next to the Prime Minister of the day at a gala function. Curtin was the enemy, Harold would sometimes say should his eyes be caught by the picture, but you did have to admire him. Indeed, Mitchell thought, Dad would be truly chuffed. It sounded as if Sarah’s romantic interest could well be on the right path, a fine man, a potential Granville recruit. And potential recruit so quickly became actual recruit.
Sarah and John’s announcement of their intentions to marry came in March. Mitchell received a telephone call so Ruth could share the news; he thought his sister may have had tears of joy – at long last her only child would be a wife. From that month onwards, Ruth and her Sarah made the trip up to The Green every weekend to work out the arrangements. The service was to be at the Mount Bellstay Memorial Anglican Church, the quaintly dilapidated venue for all Granville weddings, and the reception back on the sprawling, lush green lawns in front of Main House. But the details took forever to finalise. Ruth invited up a flower artist, a man called Pip Kipper, to determine what could be used from the gardens (apparently it was possible to have too much choice). The Double Bay caterers made a day-trip to Bellstay Green, but ended up staying the night after they couldn’t reach agreement on that eternal question: modern Australian seafood or a traditional roast? Lists were made, then more lists. Ruth orchestrated it all as if it was her wedding she was organising, as if it wouldn’t happen unless she had a firm grip on the reins, as if she simply didn’t trust the whole thing to become reality. Sarah tried to keep up with her mother, but it seemed as if she could only manage a few hours of this frenetic activity before her hair became a mess and she walked around the house and gardens with her eyes half-closed from exhaustion.
All the while Mitchell sat on his bench and read his books, watching the goings on around him out of the corner of an eye. And each Monday morning he would stand on the driveway in dressing gown and slippers and see them go, knowing he had the luxury of being by himself for a few days before it all happened again.
But this time it wouldn’t be happening again for months.
▪
After a long shower and dressing himself in his standard uniform – black shoes, dark-blue socks, dark-blue trousers, white shirt and blue cardigan – he collected his book from the bedside table and took it out to the bench. He sat down. The timber slats felt cold and dampish beneath him, but not icy. A slight breeze brushed his face. In the air was distance. He knew a hundred kilometres separated him from the city; it was almost half that to the nearest town. He closed his eyes. A nearby pine tree wheezed quietly to itself. A peacock cried out. He felt the first of the day’s warmth on his face – he let it settle on him, he let it drench him.
He opened his eyes.
He saw her. Fricka. Stark white, her strong face turned away as if shy – she was drying herself by the koi pond; it would be a thankless task with one arm missing. He had seen her many times before. His father said he had found her and a companion in West Berlin in the sixties, and then put both on a ship back to Australia. But Mitchell had only ever known of Fricka by herself, not Fricka with another. He knew she always looked distinctly unsatisfied, that there was someone she needed to have by her side if she were to feel truly content.
He looked away.
He stared up at the sky. Yes, he knew about this day. Solace would soon be his. He saw the rich mountain blueness above him, as if it were the depths of the ocean and he was about to go swimming.