Chapter 7
7
Hamish
Hamish felt antsy. No other way to describe it. He couldn’t settle to anything. The real estate agent had been back again to take more photos and videos of the apartment. For their website, she said, a virtual tour or some such nonsense. That was part of the reason for his mood, but not wholly. When he considered what else might be the cause of his restlessness he settled on the uncomfortable fact that they hadn’t had a funeral or formal farewell for his father. Even though the old man’s instructions had been explicit: he was to be interred next to his wife in the niche wall of the Cutlers Bay Cemetery and there was to be no funeral or memorial service.
Fed up with feeling out of sorts, Hamish braced himself and broached the subject with his sister.
‘The kids have been at me about that very thing,’ she said when he rang her. ‘They don’t feel as if they’ve been given the opportunity to say goodbye to their grandpa. We’ve decided we’ll drive over one day and have our own family thing.’
‘And am I included in this … family thing?’
‘Of course,’ she said, but Hamish hadn’t missed the beat of her hesitation. ‘If you want to be.’
Did he want to be? If he had his own family thing there’d be him, all on his lonesome. He had let his ex-wife Andrea know that his father had passed away. She’d murmured the appropriate condolences, but hadn’t asked about a funeral. They had no children.
‘Why don’t we all go together when the plaque’s done and Dad’s ashes have been interred next to Mum?’ Nat said—grudgingly, he thought. ‘We can set a date when you hear from the funeral home. Sooner rather than later.’
‘I suppose we could make that work,’ he replied. ‘I’ll be in touch.’ Hamish put away his phone with a vague sense of relief.
* * *
So it came about that on the Wednesday of the first week in December, Hamish, his sister and her husband and whoever of their children and grandchildren could get away, made the trip from Adelaide to Cutlers Bay to make their last goodbyes to Theo.
They left early, the three cars travelling in convoy. Hamish had Natalie and Pete with him. None of them were overly chatty. Nat had climbed into the back seat of the dual cab without complaint. The few times Hamish had glanced in the rear-view mirror, she’d appeared preoccupied, mindlessly staring out at the passing scenery.
‘All right there, Nat?’ he said one of those times.
‘Yep, all good,’ she replied in a flat voice.
Pete swivelled around to look at his wife. ‘Day’ll be over before you know it, love,’ he said.
She half-heartedly returned his smile.
There were a dozen things Hamish could have said, some nice and some not. Prudently, he concentrated on the road. After all, it was his choice to be doing this with them.
The plan had been to go directly to the cemetery when they arrived in Cutlers Bay. They’d stopped en masse at Port Wakefield to use the restrooms and then the others had insisted on coffees, bacon sandwiches and the likes. Hamish had wanted to press on to their destination. He didn’t want the day to go on forever.
‘I wonder where the others have got to?’ Pete said, after another anxious glance over his shoulder. They were roughly ten kilometres out of Cutlers Bay and there were no other vehicles in view.
‘They are behind us,’ Hamish said. ‘Although I haven’t seen them for a bit.’
‘One of the kids probably needed another toilet break,’ Nat said.
‘That’s true.’ Pete settled back into his seat. ‘It’s not as if we have to be there at a certain time.’
Too bad if they had. Hamish eased his foot off the accelerator. No point getting there long before the rest of the family and who knew when that would be? In Hamish’s experience, the younger generations tended to be careless of the plans of others, especially older others; they did whatever suited them when it suited them. Come to think of it, hadn’t he been a bit like that when he was younger? Was it the hubris of youth? To believe you had all the time in the world and, as a consequence, you squandered the precious time of those who had a lot less of it to waste? How thoughtless and selfish. Was it the destiny of the human species to make the same mistakes over and over, one generation after the next? To never learn? Whoa , he thought. Bit deep .
It was a few minutes before eleven when they reached the outskirts of Cutlers Bay. Nat had asked if Hamish would stop on the side of the road and wait for the others. He’d refused.
‘They’ll be able to find the cemetery, love,’ Pete said. ‘It’s well signposted and remember, Robyn was there for your mum’s funeral.’
‘Whatever,’ she said and didn’t speak again for the remainder of the trip.
At the cemetery, Hamish parked in the shade of a clump of straggly she-oaks. They sat in silence for several minutes, the only sounds the wail of distant corellas and the gentle sigh of the wind through the trees.
‘Do we just wait here for the others?’ Pete said and craned around to look at his wife.
‘You can, mate, but I need to stretch my legs,’ Hamish said.
Leaving his sunglasses on, he climbed out and closed the door. The air was fresh and smelled of the sea. He stretched and then began the walk up the rutted pathway that led to the niche wall. Stones crunched underfoot and sparrows flitted among the headstones. Now he was here he felt empty; devoid of emotion. Why had he felt so compelled to do this?
Nat fell into step beside him and he found her presence oddly comforting. They reached the wall without speaking and went straight to the spot. The brass plaque gleamed in the sunlight, new and untarnished. Pete wandered up, all the time looking over his shoulder for the stragglers. It wasn’t hot but he mopped his brow with a snowy-white handkerchief.
‘It’s nice,’ Nat said. ‘But then it’d want to be, the amount they charged. Bloody robbers.’ She turned and took in the country cemetery. Headstones ranged from glossy new to old and decrepit and falling over; dead and dying bouquets abounded. The paths between the graves were uneven and needed resurfacing. Weeds flourished. ‘And it’s not as if the place is anything to die for.’
Pete smirked at his wife’s unintended pun.
Behind the screen of his sunglasses, Hamish rolled his eyes. ‘Don’t worry, the plaque is all paid for. You can reimburse me for your share when you have the cash.’
‘Our share? Shouldn’t it come out of the estate?’ Nat demanded, squinting at her brother, hands on hips. Pete threw Hamish a nervous glance then jammed his hands into his trouser pockets and stepped away.
‘Yes, but in the interim, I’ve paid for it.’
‘Yeah, well, you’re the one with the all the money,’ Nat hissed, before directing her attention towards the car park. Two cars had stopped and disgorged the remaining family. The motley group eventually made their way along the path towards Hamish, Nat and Pete.
‘Where the hell have you lot been?’ Nat said, her ear-piercing tone carrying clearly across the distance.
Pete edged up next to Hamish. ‘She’s upset,’ he said in a confiding whisper. ‘Taken her dad’s death really hard.’
‘Has she?’ Hamish said. He raised his eyes heavenward, hoping for an alien abduction or the likes, anything to get him out of here. Now. But you wanted to be included , he reminded himself.
‘I know he was your dad too, but the two of you weren’t close.’
Hamish took off his sunglasses and stared at his brother-in-law. He didn’t speak. He couldn’t. No words would come. He slid the sunglasses back into place and pretended to read the other memorial plaques on the wall.
Next thing, Nat was ordering him to come and stand beside her.
‘Robyn’s going to say a few words. Bridie wrote a poem and she’ll read it out.’
Oh, goodie. Eight-year-old Bridie belonged to Robyn and was Nat and Pete’s youngest grandchild. Hamish had always thought her precocious. The child had a way of staring at him with her pale blue eyes as if she could see right through him. Creepy.
Nat fossicked in her handbag and pulled out a folded A4 sheet of paper along with her reading glasses. ‘I’ve written down a few things I want to say. Have you got anything to contribute, Hamish?’
‘No,’ he said. Except my capacity to pay for things .
A cloud of smoke drifted over from where Carmel’s partner sucked hungrily on a cigarette. Carmel was Nat and Pete’s eldest. She was a registered nurse. The partner hadn’t been in the picture long and as hard as Hamish tried, he couldn’t remember the bloke’s name—that’s if he’d ever known it. Probably no point asking, given Carmel’s history with men. At least she had the smarts not to marry them or have them father any brats.
Cate was next in line after Carmel. She was a freelance editor. Hamish liked her; out of all his nieces, he found her the easiest to be with. She was quietly intelligent and had a wry sense of humour. She reminded Hamish of his mum. Her husband Nigel was a lawyer and he hadn’t been able to get away. Their two gangly teenage sons stood next to Cate, one on either side, a bit like bodyguards. They were handsome boys and both taller than her.
Sally, the second youngest, was trekking in South America. She was always trekking somewhere in or outside of Australia. Probably to get away from her mother, because when they were together all they did was fight. Hamish hadn’t seen Sally for at least a decade. He didn’t think any of the others had either, except perhaps Carmel.
Robyn cleared her throat. ‘Let’s get this show on the road, people,’ she said, a facsimile of her mother in both looks and voice. And personality. Hamish always kept his distance from his youngest niece.
Without the aid of notes, Robyn gave a simple but eloquent tribute to her grandpa. After that she read out an email Sally had sent. Neither Cate nor Carmel had anything to add. When it was Nat’s turn, she made a show of unfolding the sheet of paper and sliding on her glasses. ‘Dearest Daddy,’ she started.
Hamish gritted his teeth and asked himself again why he’d felt the need to do this. He fought hard against the urge to tune out completely. To just walk away.
His sister droned on. The man she eulogised wasn’t the man Hamish remembered. He understood that siblings growing up together in the same household with the same parents recalled childhood events and experiences differently. Nat remembered her father’s sadness in the months after their brother Jonathon died; he remembered the slow burn of Theo’s bitterness and anger. In the immediate aftermath of the tragedy, Hamish would have left home if he’d been a year older. But he’d been barely fifteen and his mother had begged him to stay on at school for another year. She’d told him countless times that his brother’s death hadn’t been his fault, that he was blameless. It had been a horrific accident and his father would have to eventually accept it for what it was.
But Hamish didn’t think his father ever had. He’d never stopped holding Hamish accountable in some way, just for the fact that he’d been the oldest and nearby when Jonathon had been knocked off his bike and killed by a drunk driver.
Hamish thought of his life as having two parts: the years that came before his brother was killed and the decades that came after.
No-one was more relieved than Hamish when Bridie admitted to her mum that she’d left her poem at home. ‘And I didn’t learn it off by heart,’ she said in a loud whisper, her cheeks pink with uncharacteristic embarrassment.
‘Never mind,’ Nat said and hugged her. ‘It’s the thought that counts.’
‘I could murder a beer,’ Carmel’s partner said loudly. Carmel nodded and Pete grunted in agreement. Nat glared at them.
‘We’ll go to that cafe, the one in the main street, and have lunch,’ his sister declared as if she was in charge. She sailed off down the pathway towards the parked cars. Everyone traipsed after her.
‘How are you doing, Uncle Hamish?’ Cate said as she came up beside him. She linked her arm with his.
‘All the better for that being over,’ he muttered. But he knew in his heart that it wasn’t over. He’d tried to say his own silent goodbye to his father while Nat had droned on, but the words wouldn’t come. He hadn’t been able to farewell Theo here, or anywhere. He didn’t know why he’d even considered it possible. First he needed to forgive: his father and himself.
Cate leaned into him, her head resting briefly against his shoulder. ‘Mmm,’ she said, ‘Mum does like to think she’s always the one in charge. Dad never contests. Who am I to dissuade them of the notion?’
Hamish laughed.