Pulse Points Read online

  For Roma, Lorna and Fred.

  CONTENTS

  Pulse Points

  Aokigahara

  We Got Used to Here Fast

  Turncoat

  Dogs

  Convalescence

  Vaseline

  Peaks

  Eternal Father

  Alpine Road

  Vox Clamantis

  Hungry for God

  Pressure Okay

  Coarsegold

  Acknowledgments

  PULSE POINTS

  Ramesh had known Gerry for years—eight, in fact; as long as he and Henry had been together—but this was, in a way, like meeting him all over again.

  ‘This?’ he asked, holding up a ceramic figurine of a rabbit, and Henry shook his head. But the water-stained Hopper print in the bathroom was carried lovingly to the sunroom and added to the small pile of things they were taking home with them. Gerry was not his father, of course, and so Ramesh felt no ownership or right to his belongings, or to the decisions about them. He did not understand what was special, which objects were freighted with memory.

  Ramesh stopped trying to guess, and started cleaning the place instead. In the end it had been too much for Gerry. The dementia had caused blind spots where he would once have seen weeds in the paddocks, dirt smudges around the light switches. Ramesh filled a bucket with hot water and sugar-soaped every wall in the house, moving methodically from one end to the other. When the water turned grey and tepid, he hauled it outside and tipped it over the grass. Afterwards he felt the flush of satisfaction provoked by manual labour and drying streaks. The place seemed to him lighter.

  Gerry’s property was four acres of neatly fenced paddocks, proteas, blue gums, melaleucas, banksias, old horse troughs full of stagnant water, two neat pyramids of debris ready for burning off. In the summer months the grass turned dry and pale overnight; in the winter, the air smelled of eucalyptus and turned earth, and the mornings were misty. It felt, perhaps, more rural than it was: Berwick was only a short distance away, and the city itself only forty kilometres or so, but the road to Gerry’s house was unmade, and on the hill behind it was the town water tower; a hulking shape crowned with radio masts and transmitters. Henry and his sister, Niamh, had grown up here, though the house was not the same: their childhood home had been razed in the Ash Wednesday fires. This made cleaning out the place at once tragic and unsentimental. The normal artefacts of a childhood had been cremated long ago. What was left was strange: the residue of half a life, a life rebuilt. The photos on the walls were all from the last thirty years. The bedrooms had always been spare rooms, empty of Bakelite toys and the desks at which the kids had laboured during their HSC.

  Gerry had moved into an aged-care facility, so they were down from Sydney for the weekend to help Niamh get him settled and clear out the house. It was a solemn, tedious task.

  Saturday evening they drove to the nursing home and signed the ledger by the front door to confirm they were taking Gerry out for a few hours.

  ‘Niamh’s doing a roast,’ Ramesh said, trying to distract Gerry where he stood, watching Henry fill the boxes with his neat print: name, time, relationship to resident. The pen was fixed to the table with a cord.

  ‘It’s like I’m a bloody parcel,’ Gerry said.

  ‘It’s like we’re signing a guestbook,’ Henry said.

  ‘We’re kidnapping you,’ Ramesh said.

  ‘Good,’ Gerry said. ‘You can cut me up and dump me in the reservoir instead of bringing me back to this—prison camp.’

  But in the car Henry jollied him along and he became peaceable, his emotions shifting quickly, like weather systems, the way they did in toddlers. The old man’s eyebrows were unkempt. There was a stain on his shirt roughly the shape of the African continent: such indignity in old age! Ramesh thought of his own parents, both still in good health, back in England. The thought of either of them developing the uncertain shuffle of the dementia sufferer made him suddenly, desperately sad. And what about him and Henry, both hurtling towards fifty? Would one of them become the other’s carer?

  In the front seat, Gerry was telling a story he’d told a million times before and Henry was laughing as though it were new. Ramesh blinked at the dark scrub outside and wished for a swift, lightning-strike death.

  Niamh had cut daphne from her garden. The perfume was strong, even with the smell of dinner.

  ‘What’s that flower, love?’ Gerry asked over and over. ‘Your mother used to have it in the driveway.’ Niamh’s partner Frank sat beside him on the couch and gave the answer again and again, only once sliding a glance sideways at Niamh to grin and roll his eyes.

  One of the children crawled onto Gerry’s lap and held a stem right under his nose. ‘It’s beautiful,’ Gerry said, then sneezed extravagantly. The baby started; the dog ran to the back door. Everyone laughed.

  ‘I’ll cut you some to take home, Dad,’ Niamh said, wiping her hands on a tea towel. ‘We’ve got loads. It’s gone nuts in the last week or so.’

  ‘Don’t you call that place my home,’ Gerry said savagely. The baby sneezed then, too, and the sound was so different from Gerry’s that they all laughed again, and the tension funnelled away.

  Ramesh and Henry stood in the kitchen while Niamh tossed the salad. Ramesh folded the serviettes. He was conscious of intruding on the conversation, but he couldn’t bear to sit with Gerry. He was sure he’d say the wrong thing, devastate him afresh. Through the doorway he could hear the old man playing a cheerful, repetitive game with the children, and Frank trying to get them all to wash their hands before dinner.

  ‘Does it have to happen so quickly?’ Henry said. ‘I mean, you and I don’t know jack about property, but everyone’s saying this is a bad market to sell in.’

  ‘We need money for his bond,’ Niamh said. She was talking to the salad, her back to Henry. ‘Care’s expensive.’

  ‘It’s okay. I’m not having a go, Niamhie.’

  She glanced at him over her shoulder. ‘I did my research,’ she said.

  ‘I know you did,’ Henry said. He looked surprised.

  She put a basket of bread in his hands. ‘Here. Can you put this on the table?’

  At the home they signed Gerry in again and walked him to his room, but he followed them back down the hallway to the front door. There was an electronic lock with a numbered pad on the wall. Gerry watched as Henry jabbed at the keys and the door slid open.

  ‘What’s the code?’ he asked huskily.

  ‘Five-five-five,’ said Henry, ‘two-four-one-hash. I’ll come back tomorrow, all right, Dad? Maybe we can go to the Paradise for lunch and watch the footy.’

  Gerry followed them to the front gate. It also had a lock. They said goodbye, but when Ramesh and Henry turned back to wave, Gerry was hanging his arms and head over the railing. His hands were flapping, his eyes rolled moronically: he was playing the lunatic, perhaps, or the rabid dog in the cage. Ramesh saw a flash of movement past his shoulder. One of the nursing staff was already heading out to distract him, lead him back to his room.

  ‘Go inside, Dad,’ Henry said. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow.’

  In the car the heater sighed. The lights of the little town, the Woolies and the football oval and the houses, disappeared as they rounded a corner, and Henry flicked on the high beams. He drove smoothly, maybe with muscle memory for the road’s curves. Ramesh imagined him learning to drive here as a teenager, this long stretch with its guardrail and roadside markers shining in the dark, the trees just blackened shapes.

  ‘He’ll get used to it, won’t he?’ Henry said.

  ‘Of course he will,’ Ramesh said. ‘It’s bloody dreadful, but he’s safe where he is. You know he’s getting three meals a day and his medication. He can’t wander off a
nd get lost anywhere. And it’s more company than he’s had in a decade.’

  Henry was silent. And then he braked hard. Ramesh thought of nothing, bracing for impact, but it didn’t come. The car skidded and stopped. He was struck mute, motionless, still unconvinced of the absence of pain, but Henry had unbuckled his seatbelt.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Ramesh asked. Henry opened the door and scrambled out. He fell to his knees, got up, and ran to the thing that had made him stop the car, and then Ramesh saw. There was a person lying in the road, face down.

  Ramesh stepped out of the car but could not go closer. He could not join Henry where he knelt with two fingers pressed to the body’s neck. Ramesh had thought it was a woman, but now he saw it was a small man, thin, in jeans and a hooded jumper. There was blood coming from his ear. It was in his hair.

  ‘Call triple-oh,’ Henry said. ‘He’s got a pulse.’ His fingers, bloodied now, were still pressed to the man’s neck.

  Ramesh fumbled for his phone. He dialled the numbers. First the recording—You have dialled Emergency triple zero. Your call is being connected—then the operator, then the dispatcher with a salvo of questions. She was calm, firm. Flat Australian accent.

  ‘What’s the address of your emergency?’

  ‘We’re on the Beaconsfield-Emerald Road. There’s a man—I think he’s been hit by a car. He’s lying in the road. Please hurry.’

  ‘Can you give me an approximate location?’

  ‘Um—we were driving back from Emerald. Maybe five ks out of Upper Beaconsfield. I don’t know, I’m not from the area.’

  ‘Say between Blue Ridge Road and Elephant Rock,’ Henry called. Ramesh repeated it.

  ‘What’s the phone number you’re calling from?’

  ‘Zero-four-one-two,’ started Ramesh. Henry’s voice sounded distant: Can you turn off the high beams? They’re blinding me. Ramesh hurried to the driver’s side and batted at the lights. For an instant, the world went black. He heard Henry swear.

  ‘Okay. You said you thought this fella had been hit by another vehicle?’

  ‘I don’t know. That’s what it looks like.’

  ‘Is he conscious?’

  ‘He’s not moving. He has a pulse.’

  ‘Is he breathing?’

  ‘Henry, is he breathing? He’s—he’s breathing.’

  ‘Does he have obvious injuries?’

  Ramesh stepped closer. Henry had taken off his jacket and draped it over the man’s body. There was a dark slick on the bitumen beneath his head.

  ‘He has a head injury, I think. He’s face down.’ Ramesh felt his stomach lurch. ‘Oh, God. Please hurry.’

  ‘Don’t move him around, all right?’ the operator said. ‘I need you to stay calm.’

  ‘My partner used to be a nurse. He’s trying to help.’

  ‘That’s good.’

  ‘It’s really irregular,’ Henry said. Did he mean the man’s breathing, or his pulse? The operator had asked something else; Ramesh had missed it. He felt giddy.

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘I said, is he out of harm’s way? You’re on the road, is that right?’

  ‘He hasn’t been moved. He’s in the middle of the road. We’ve just—we’ve just stopped our car here so no one will come and—’

  ‘Okay. I want you to put your hazards on. Ask your partner if she thinks he needs CPR.’

  He felt a throb of irritation at the careless she.

  ‘Henry. Does he need CPR?’

  Henry glanced up. ‘He’s still breathing and he has a weak pulse,’ he said. Ramesh repeated the sentence. His inflections were the same; he accidentally mimicked Henry’s accent.

  ‘Tell him I want him to start CPR,’ said the operator.

  ‘I’m going to put you on speaker,’ Ramesh told her. He squatted as close to Henry as he could bear, arm outstretched, phone in his hand.

  ‘I used to be a psych nurse, but not for years,’ Henry told the operator.

  ‘All right,’ she said. ‘We’re going to turn him over so he’s face up, but really carefully, okay? I need you to stabilise his head and his neck.’

  Henry held out his hands as though rehearsing it, then sat back on his heels. His mouth opened and closed. He shook his head.

  ‘Have you done that?’ the operator asked. Her voice hung between them, bodiless.

  ‘He’s frightened to move him,’ Ramesh told her.

  ‘Ask him to use his discretion. If he has experience as a nurse—’

  ‘He’s got a bad head injury,’ Henry said.

  ‘Okay. We’re going to turn him over and start CPR. If he’s in this much trouble, and he’s not breathing normally, we’re not going to do him any more damage. I can talk you through it, okay? You just need to turn him really carefully.’

  ‘Ramesh,’ Henry said, ‘I need you to help me. We want to keep his body in a straight line while we roll him.’ He yanked away the jacket he’d laid over the man. ‘I’m going to hold his head up here, and we’ll flip him on the count of three. We need to keep his shoulders and neck in the same position.’

  Ramesh crouched closer and put one hand on the man’s shoulder, the other beneath his hip. The body was a thing still alive: he felt its warmth and substance. They rolled him over on Henry’s three. Ramesh heard Henry say Oh my God in a new, tight voice. The man was a boy, and he had no face: or, his face was a hole. His eyes were shut, and one seemed somehow untouched, but the other, and his mouth and nose, were a pulpy pit of blood and brain and tissue. Ramesh fell backwards. Something surged in his chest. He crawled to edge of the asphalt and vomited into the grass.

  ‘Ramesh,’ Henry said. ‘Come here. I need you to hold his head.’ Ramesh staggered to where Henry knelt, silhouetted in the headlights. Could he hold the boy’s face—what was left of it—without seeing?

  ‘He’s not been hit,’ he said.

  ‘What’s that?’ said the operator.

  ‘It’s not a hit-and-run. I think he’s been shot.’

  ‘Ramesh. Come here,’ said Henry. ‘Grab him behind here and hold his head steady.’ He leaned forward, mouth agape over the boy, and froze.

  ‘Henry? Do you remember how to do it?’ the operator was asking.

  ‘I can’t. He’s got blood all over his face. I don’t have anything to…’ The panic had crept into his voice. He sounded as though he’d been winded. He was still holding his hands in the air like a surgeon might, but they were shaking.

  ‘You can just do chest compressions,’ said the operator. ‘You don’t have to do mouth-to-mouth.’

  ‘Oh shit. Fuck,’ Henry gasped. ‘He’s making a funny noise.’

  ‘It’s okay. You’re doing a great job. The paramedics are on their way, all right? I just need you to hold it together for a tiny bit longer—’

  ‘I’m doing chest compressions,’ Henry said.

  ‘That’s good. You’re doing so well. Keep going.’

  They heard the sirens a long time before the paramedics arrived. Then the splash of light, red and blue on the thick scrub, the dusty roadside, the pale trunks of the eucalypts, the planes of Henry’s face. Then the police. The ambulance left and a second police car arrived. They began setting up large floodlights. Ramesh watched Henry talking to one of the officers. He was wrapped in a silver shock blanket, and when he moved it caught the light in a metallic f lash. Blood had dried in dark streaks on his cheeks. He was wearing his helpful face to answer questions. It was like watching a stranger. Ramesh was awed and repelled by him. The area where the man had been lying was cordoned off with tape. Ramesh’s mobile phone was on the asphalt. He didn’t remember putting it down, but he must have. He didn’t remember the emergency operator hanging up, but she must have. He lifted the plastic police tape, thinking to retrieve it, but an officer stopped him with a gentle hand to the chest.

  ‘I just need you to stand back here, mate,’ he said.

  ‘Sorry—I only wanted—I left my phone there.’

  The officer glanced fro
m him to the cordoned-off area. ‘That yours?’ he asked. Ramesh nodded. The officer looked like he didn’t believe him. Check it, Ramesh thought. The picture on his screen was of him and Henry on Cradle Mountain, beaming. Deep afternoon light, Henry’s head on his shoulder, their fingers locked.

  They’d left the kitchen windows open to let out the bleachy smell of cleaning products, and the house was cold. Ramesh made tea the way you were supposed to for someone in shock: black, with three teaspoons of sugar. Henry set out the yellowed crocheted flowers they used for coasters. They sat at the dining table by the wall heater. Ramesh held out his palm, felt the hot dry air.

  ‘There is no way he could have survived,’ he said.

  ‘No,’ Henry agreed. ‘And if he did, he would not be—I mean, there’d be no point.’

  ‘Will you sleep?’

  ‘I’m going to take some of Dad’s Valium,’ Henry said. ‘Maybe you ought to as well.’

  The clock on the mantel beat away doggedly. Ramesh looked at Henry’s fingers curled around the mug. There were little crescent moons of dried blood in his cuticles. ‘I don’t think I could do it like that.’

  ‘Do what?’ Henry said.

  ‘Shoot myself. I don’t know. If I were going to do it, I’d swallow a bottle of pills or jump off a bridge or something.’

  Henry stared at him. ‘Did you see a gun anywhere near him? He didn’t do it to himself.’

  He picked up the mugs and teapot and carried them to the kitchen. Ramesh heard the thud of ceramic in the sink, the colicky sound of air in the water pipes. It went quiet again. Henry appeared in the doorway. He was grey around the mouth: for the first time he looked struck with horror.

  ‘I need to wash him off me,’ he stammered.

  He was so long in the shower that Ramesh began to worry. He stood outside the bathroom listening for the thunk of a shampoo bottle, or the squeak of a heel on the non-slip bathmat. Steam purled from the slit of light where the door met the hall carpet. Once, when they’d only been together a year or so, Henry had got up first thing in the morning to shower. Ramesh was dozing. He knew where Henry had gone; he could hear the water running and his cheerful, sporadic whistle. But half asleep, he’d started to panic. All he wanted was to see Henry, to know he was still there. And yet how ridiculous, how pathetic, to stagger into the bathroom, choking for air, terrified, when only ten minutes before Henry’s legs had been wrapped around his as they slept. He’d sat on the edge of the bed until he could think clearly again. And Henry had bounded out from the bathroom, naked and joyous, still very much alive and in love with him. Ramesh had never told Henry the story. He’d forgotten it until this very moment, crouched on the nubbly carpet with an ear to the door. At last he went to the kitchen and busied himself with the pantry, which they were halfway through clearing out. There were tins of spaghetti with best-before dates of 1992.