Chance Developments: Unexpected Love Stories by Alexander McCall Smith
“Sixteen, sir.”
“No, none of that. I’m your Uncle Jack, right? We don’t go in for none of that out here. One man’s as good as the next.” He put an arm about the boy’s shoulder. “You’re going to do fine out here. Look after yourself, you see—that’s the ticket.”
They travelled to Bendigo by train, the line winding through a landscape that Lou found familiar and unfamiliar at the same time. There were the things one would recognise anywhere—roads, houses, churches; there were hills and farms and sheep; but there was something that was unlike anything he had seen before—a sky so high and wide and empty that he felt dizzy just squinting up at it from the window of the railway carriage. There were trees that were quite different from the trees he was familiar with—the oaks and hawthorns of his boyhood.
Jack was proud of Bendigo. “You see all this,” he said, pointing to the street outside the railway station. “All built on gold.” He paused. “Wait till you see our town hall. And our trams too. Big fountains too—we’ve got a place called Pall Mall—anything they have in London, we have here. Anything.”
“Where’s your mine?” asked Lou.
Jack sniffed. “Not my own mine, actually. There’s one I lend a hand with. I never found anything myself, although I’m still looking, you know.”
They made their way to Jack’s house. “Nothing fancy,” he said. “But it’s got a roof and four walls. What more does a fellow need?”
The plot was a dusty half-acre. There had been attempts to grow shrubs of some sort, but these had been abandoned, leaving small areas of dejected wilderness. Along one side of the plot was a line of eucalyptus trees, casting a shadow that gave protection, in that direction at least, from the sun. That night Lou heard the wind moving the branches of the trees. It made a sound like the sea, he thought, and for a moment he was back on that long sea journey that took him from everything he had known to put him here, in this strange land, friendless and alone, apart from an uncle he had never met before.
3
Jack introduced Lou to a man who said he would give him a job.
“He sells rope,” Jack said. “Rope’s the thing of the future, now that gold isn’t doing too well. Rope’s different. You don’t have to dig for it, and they’re going to need a lot of rope.”
He liked the smell of rope, and its texture too. This enthusiasm made him a good salesman: if you believe strongly enough in something, then you can persuade others to believe in it too. He was promoted and his salary, meagre at first, was almost doubled. Now he was able to afford to rent a room rather than to live in the lean-to extension to his uncle’s house.
He was worried that his uncle might resent his departure, but that did not happen.
“No offence taken,” said Jack. “A man’s got to stand on his own two feet.”
He found lodging closer to the centre of town, in the house of a gold prospector’s widow. There he had the breakfasts he had dreamed about.
“This,” he said, pointing to his plate, “is the reason I came to Australia.”
“As good a reason as any,” she said.
—
Four years after Lou’s arrival, Uncle Jack disappeared. He left a note on the kitchen table, and Lou found that when he went to look for him.
“I tried,” the note said, and not much else. There was no forwarding address nor any indication where he was going.
“People go walkabout,” said the widow. “And I hear he had debts. A lot of the prospectors do. The suppliers get paid if they find gold, but not if they don’t.” She shrugged. “Business.”
“He could at least have said goodbye,” said Lou.
“Then his creditors would have been able to get at you,” said the widow. “This way, you don’t know anything. What you don’t know, you can’t tell.”
He continued to work with rope until he met a man in the bar of the hotel who said that agricultural machinery was the business to be in. “Farmers need these things,” he said. “Tractors, ploughs, harvesters.” Each was given the weight of a word in a litany. “Carts. Winnowers. Wire cutters.”
Lou was convinced, and agreed to put what savings he had into a new venture. It was a success, although the partner—the man he had met in the bar—turned out to be a bigamist and left hurriedly for Adelaide. Lou now owned the entire business, which was growing rapidly. Jack had been right: people needed rope.
He met Dolly Lancaster, the receptionist in the Grand Hotel, at a party to celebrate his twenty-sixth birthday, and married her six months later. David was born two years after that, just when they were beginning to wonder whether Dolly would have trouble conceiving.
He was a particularly precious child to them, as the doctor had warned her she could have no more. She watched him in his cradle at night, sitting silently beside him until she herself dropped off to sleep. Sometimes Lou found Dolly still there in the morning, having not moved from her vigil.
“Don’t wrap him up in cotton wool,” he warned. “Boys learn by scraping their knees.”
She knew that he was right, but could not help herself. “When something is as precious as that, it’s really hard to let go, Lou. It just is.”
He understood. “I have three precious things in my life,” he said to Dolly. “You, my boy, and the business. Three things.”
“You deserve it,” said Dolly. “The moment I saw you in the hotel—the very first time—I knew that you were a kind man. I knew that you were going to ask me to marry you.”
Lou laughed. “Get away!”
“No, I did—I swear it. I thought: That’s a good man and he’s going to be my husband.”
“I love you so much,” he said.
She took his hand, and kissed him.
Several times a day they exchanged kisses. David watched them, bemused by the ways of the adult world. He kissed the dog, a Sydney terrier called Bob. “We don’t kiss dogs,” said Dolly. “Not in this family. It’s unhygienic.”
“He likes it,” said David.
“That may be, but you don’t want to get dog germs,” she said.
“Don’t kiss the dog,” said Lou sternly. “You hear me? Don’t kiss the dog.”
David was loyal, and saw in the dog a quality of loyalty that seemed missing in the human world. “Dogs are good,” he wrote in a school essay. “They don’t drop you for other friends, they don’t mind what you’re like, a dog will never let you down.”
The teacher wrote in the margins of his exercise book: “This is a very good essay, David. You are right about dogs. They are very loyal creatures. Remember, though, that each sentence must end with a full stop—a comma will not do. A comma is just like taking a breath. And it’s their not there when you’re talking about what people possess.”
4
His strongest memory of childhood was of waiting for the beginning of the school holidays. That came achingly slowly, but when the day arrived the whole school was gripped with an electric excitement. The holidays themselves seemed endless, particularly in the first days—a blissful period during which he would spend hours with his friends at their favourite dam, fishing for the giant whiskered barbel that were rumoured to live there but that had never been seen, making camp fires on which they cooked roo steaks, riding their bicycles along the town’s perimeter roads until heat and thirst drove them indoors.
He was aware that his father drank too much and that his drink problem was becoming steadily worse. He picked this up from his mother’s look when his father returned from work each evening and immediately poured himself a whisky. He listened to their arguments: “Not too much, Lou. You know how strong that stuff is.”
“Doll, I’ve been drinking since I was knee high to a grasshopper. I know my limits.”
“Too much is bad for the liver.”
“My liver is used to it.”
“You know what Dr. Bamfield says. He said the fact that you’re alive is something of a minor miracle.”
“The fact that any of us is alive
He worried for his father. On one occasion, when he was ten, he accompanied him to an agricultural show. On the journey home, his father drove back by an unusual route, stopping outside a house in an unfamiliar part of town. “Wait in the car,” he said. “I won’t be long.”
He watched his father go inside. It was dusk, and a light was switched on in one of the front rooms. A blind was pulled down at the window.
He entertained himself by counting the stars as they appeared in the sky. Then, bored with this, he let himself out of the car and went to sit by a small pond that had been created in the garden of the house. There were tadpoles in the water.
He looked up. His father was emerging from the front door. He glanced briefly over his shoulder, and then leaned towards the woman who was showing him out. He heard the sound of voices—his father’s voice, and then hers. He heard laughter.
He ran back to the car, shielded from view by a hedge of stunted willow. They had learned a song at school: I shall hang my harp on the weeping willow tree, and never more will think of thee…
His father returned to the car. There was whisky on his breath; David could always tell.
“Good boy,” said his father. “Just doing some business.”
“Are they buying a tractor?” he asked.
His father glanced at him. “Maybe.”
He knew this was not true, and he was shocked that his father should lie to him.
“Don’t tell your ma we stopped by here,” he said, as they drove off. “I don’t want her to think I spend all my time working. Understand?”
He nodded.
His father gave him a peppermint. “Would you like two bob?” he asked.
He said he would; he thought it was a lot of money.
“Fair enough,” said his father. “I’ll give you two shillings when we get back.”
David knew that something was being purchased, but he was not sure what it was.
—
Relations between his parents became increasingly tense. Kissing had stopped long ago, and now there were long periods of silence, punctuated with sighs from Lou. David watched, but could not find the words he felt he should say. He wanted them to be friends; he wanted them to stop the arguments he could not help but overhear after he went to bed and they thought he was safely asleep.
Then he heard the last of these exchanges. It was on a Sunday night, and his mother had been listening to a serial on the radio. His father had been out, but came back after David went to bed.
He heard him come in. He heard a bath being run.
“What do you want that for? You normally bathe in the morning. Why the bath now?”
His father’s voice was slurred. “Cleanliness is next to godliness. Ever heard that, Dolly?”
“You’ve been with that woman. That’s why.”
There was a brief silence. Then: “So?”
“Don’t you care any more? Don’t you care any more about your son?”
“Of course I care.” And then there was a new note of defiance. “I’m leaving. Tomorrow.”
“Going where? To her?”
“She has a place up in Queensland. I’m going there. Sorry, but I can’t see any other way.”
“Then go. Just go. Go and drink yourself to death with this floozy of yours. Good riddance.” There was a pause, during which he could not make out what they said. Then she spoke again, her voice rising with emotion. “I can’t stand any more of this—Davey and I will be better off without you. Just get out.”
The bathroom door slammed.
He lay quite still. He thought that he might go and plead with his father; surely if he begged him he would stay. But would his mother want that? He remembered what she had said: it would be better for everybody if he went.
In the morning, he woke up to find his father standing by his bed, wearing his coat and a pastoralist’s hat. There was a lengthy and not very coherent explanation. “Your ma and I have been having our little differences, see, and sometimes when it’s like that, it’s best to go your separate ways.”
He closed his eyes, willing this not to be happening. It was what you did as a child: you willed away those things you did not want to be. Sometimes it worked; but not now.
“You understand that, don’t you? It doesn’t mean that I don’t love you as much as I always have—I do, of course—but I’m going to go and live up in Queensland for a while and see how things work out up there. I’ve got that fellow, Hopkins, to run the business for me—that’ll give you and your ma all the money you’ll need. You won’t want for anything.”
He lay immobile. How was it possible for a man to leave his own family? How could such a thing come about? How could his father understand so little about loyalty?
At last he spoke. “Can I see you?”
The question seemed to please his father. “Of course you can see me,” he replied. “You can come up north any time—in the school holidays. I’ll have a cattle station up there, you know, Davey—I’m going with a friend, you see, and she’s been left a half interest in one by her grandfather. That’s great, isn’t it? Half a station! Me!”
“I wish you’d stay,” he whispered.
“What’s that you say?”
“Nothing.”
His father bent down to kiss him on the forehead. “Be good, son. Work hard at school. Show them what you can do.” There was a pause. “Look after your ma, too. Get that? Look after Ma.”
David started to sob, but his father neither saw nor heard this, as he had straightened up and was walking across the room. He turned at the door, raised a hand to wave, and then left. A few minutes later his mother came in and held him tightly to her as he sat up in bed. She dried the tears from his cheeks. She said, “We’ll be all right, Davey. Just you and me—we’ll be all right.”
5
Lou left the family in 1931, when David was twelve. They heard from him every three months for the following two years, and then the letters—all of them formal and giving very little personal news—stopped coming. David received birthday cards and money was wired at Christmas, but his father ceased to play much of a part in their lives.
Dolly proved resilient, and was, as she had suspected, better off without Lou. She met a man whom she started to see—a teacher from the local senior school, whose passion was woodwork. He did not move in, but he was often about the place and appreciated by David, to whom he taught carpentry skills.
Dolly forgave Lou, and even started talking fondly about him. David did not. “He was disloyal,” he said. “He was disloyal to you, Ma. How can I forgive that?”
“You can forgive most things,” she said. “And if we don’t forgive people, then how do we get on with life? You’ll always be thinking of things that happened a long time ago. How can you get on with life if your mind is full of old stuff?”
“I don’t want to forgive him. Ever.”
“Well, it’s up to you. But remember: he’s your father, and you only get one father in this life. Just one.”
At eighteen he went to university in Melbourne to study mechanical engineering. He had shown an aptitude for tinkering with machinery, and with his strong school record the university was keen to enrol him. Boarding was arranged for him with a family who were distantly related to his mother. They lived in North Fitzroy, and he travelled to lectures each day by tram.
At the beginning of his third year at university, war broke out in Europe. Events at that distance seemed very remote: he was not quite sure where Poland was, and looked closely at the map printed on the front page of The Age. But in spite of this remoteness, few questioned that this was their battle too. The Empire stood or fell with the mother country; everybody understood that very well. And it was the Empire that protected them from the threat from the East, and from the posturing of Japan.
He joined up at twenty-one, before he finished his degree. The university promised him that his place would be open when he came back. ?
“Could be longer,” he said.
The professor was not convinced. “Could be. But look at the facts; look at the countries lined up against Hitler and his blackshirt windbags. You’ve got France—they’re on our side. Massive army, I understand. Canada—big country. Then there’s the rest of the Empire. South Africa and so on. India, too. Look at the Indian Army—countless men ready to serve; countless. Gurkhas, too, from Nepal. And it’s just the Germans, with very few friends. They’re outnumbered, David. No doubt about it, in my view.”
He was sent to a barracks for his initial training and was then allocated to a transport unit. After three months he was given two weeks’ leave and he returned to Bendigo. At a party at the house of a school friend, he met a girl called Hannah. She was Jewish.
He fell in love with her, and invited her to the town’s cinema—the local way of making a declaration. They held hands. The following day he took her to dinner at the hotel. He said, “I’m sorry that I’m going away just as I’ve met you.”
She looked at him. “We can see one another when you come back,” she said. “I’ll wait.”
“Do you really mean that?”
“Yes, I do. I’ll wait.” She gave no thought to what she was saying. It was as if the lines had been scripted for her; that was what women said to men about to go off: I’ll wait.
He drove her back to her house, but she asked him not to come in. “It’s nothing personal,” she said. “But my father…”
“Yes?”
“My father might not be pleased about this.”
“About us?”
She nodded. “He’s Jewish, you see. We’re all Jewish. He won’t want me to…to be seeing a boy who isn’t Jewish.” She looked at him despairingly. “Can you understand that?”