Happy as Larry Read online

  HAPPY

  AS

  LARRY

  SCOT GARDNER

  This project has been assisted by the Australian Government through the Australia Council, its arts funding and advisory body.

  First published in 2010

  Copyright © Scot Gardner 2010

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. The Australian Copyright Act 1968 (the Act) allows a maximum of one chapter or ten per cent of this book, whichever is the greater, to be photocopied by any educational institution for its educational purposes provided that the educational institution (or body that administers it) has given a remuneration notice to Copyright Agency Limited (CAL) under the Act.

  ALLEN & UNWIN | 83 Alexander Street | Crows Nest NSW 2065 | Australia

  Phone (61 2) 8425 0100 | Fax (61 2) 9906 2218

  Email [email protected] | Web www.allenandunwin.com

  Cataloguing-in-Publication details are available from the

  National Library of Australia – www.librariesaustralia.nla.gov.au

  Teachers’ notes available from www.allenandunwin.com

  Cover and text design by Bruno Herfst

  Set in 10/14.5 pt Bohemia by Midland Typesetters, Australia

  Photographs: baby by David Stuart/Getty Images

  dog watching television by Andrew Vraci/Getty Images

  television on page 1 by Shaun Lowe Photographic/iStockphoto

  Printed in Australia by McPherson’s Printing Group

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  For Robyn

  A LIFE, LIKE a film, has a beginning, a middle and an end. There may be a cast of thousands, millions even, and the action may skip over several continents and be darkened by war or famine or the ceaseless struggle for power.

  But movie-goers the world over know that a big budget and a stellar cast don’t always make a great movie.

  The story of a life can be left in the hands of just a few key players and acted out on a stage scarcely bigger than a suburban dream. With a humble cast and a budget limited to the income of a professional postman, the life of Laurence Augustine Rainbow is one such story. A life of darkness and light, hope and pain, and miracles of an everyday nature.

  CONTENTS

  SMILE

  TOES

  FISHING

  BIRTHDAY

  CLEAN WHITE TEETH

  YOUR HEAD IS NOT A HAMMER

  GRASS

  UNLIDDED EYE

  STOP

  EARTHQUAKE

  WET BOTTOM

  A PEG AND A PENIS

  SATISFYING BRUISES

  GILLIGAN

  TRYING TO FLY

  DRAMA QUEEN

  MOMENT BEFORE SLEEP

  MAGIC FINGER

  A TOOTH IN THE HAND

  CRACK

  GOOD EYES

  IN TIME

  BEACH

  A HAND TO HOLD

  FANTASTIC BROTHER

  BRANDY

  SANTA

  HAIR

  SECRETS

  A GENTLE MAN

  THE COMING WAR

  BLOOD SOAKS THROUGH

  ROPE

  FIRE POKER

  SKEWERED TOADFISH

  I’LL BE BLOWED

  KNELT BESIDE IT

  ALL FALL DOWN

  FRAYING FABRIC

  WEDGED LIKE ART

  FIERCE-EYED

  JUNK

  STEAM TRAIN

  BOUND

  ROADKILL

  STICK

  GOODBYE

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  SMILE

  LAURENCE AUGUSTINE RAINBOW was born in July 1990. This was the month Saddam Hussein amassed his troops for the invasion of Kuwait, the act that spawned the Persian Gulf War. In Mecca, 1426 Muslim pilgrims died as a result of a stampede in a tunnel during hajj. Boris Yeltsin quit the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, eventually becoming the first popularly elected president of Russia, and so the Cold War was officially over.

  Laurence Augustine Rainbow was born at Cradle Valley general hospital, Villea, after a thirteen-hour labour, on Friday the thirteenth, but those portents went unnoticed by the people in the room at that moment.

  They all had bigger things on their minds.

  Malcolm Rainbow, Laurence’s father, had missed his morning postal round for the first time in his working life. He’d held his wife and encouraged her for the entire labour, though he couldn’t help worrying that whoever did his round would use the letterbox of Mrs D. Kilgower at 27 Factory Place, not knowing that Mrs D. Kilgower had misplaced her keys and would be forced to retrieve her mail with pliers if it wasn’t left in the tube for newspapers. He also worried that his beautiful wife might be irreparably damaged by the birth. He worried that his child might be born with the wrong total of appendages and no provision for a fiercely scribbled ‘Return to Sender’. He worried how much the birth, and the child itself, would cost. Nappies. Clothing. Food. Education.

  Denise Rainbow (nee Bonnevich) had finished worrying. She’d gone from worrying what the midwife thought of her heavy breathing to not caring what anyone thought about her screaming; from being concerned whether the photographer from the Villea Times would let her fix her hair before he took a shot for the local paper’s ‘New Arrivals’ section to not giving a toss about her clothing or her dignity. Sweating and shrieking, she’d gripped her husband’s hand and prayed: prayed for ten fingers and ten toes, prayed that the seven miscarriages that led up to this one full-term – and, by all accounts, normal – pregnancy were a test of endurance that she had finally passed.

  Taxed by disappointment but never hardened against hope, Denise breathed with the pain and imagined the warm, smooth skin of her baby’s cheek against her own.

  The midwife prayed also. She prayed this baby would hurry up and make its appearance.

  The midwife’s prayer was answered and she had cause to give orders to Malcolm. She called him ‘mate’ and ushered him into the catcher’s position as the crown of the baby’s head finally presented. The child sluiced into the world like a lychee pinched from its skin.

  ‘What is it? What is it? What is it?’ Denise panted.

  ‘It’s a baby,’ the midwife cooed. ‘You did it!’

  She patted Denise’s sweaty cheek with a towel and inspected the newborn cradled in its father’s hands. His father’s hands. Pink and shiny, with a full quota of fingers and toes, the boy looked perfect. The midwife noted the time on the patient card.

  ‘It’s a boy,’ Malcolm said, blinking tears of joy and relief. ‘A little boy.’

  The baby squawked and it made the midwife smile.

  It sounded like a laugh.

  The child’s first noise was a laugh.

  With the birth of more umbilicus, the midwife lifted the baby to his mother’s breast.

  ‘Oh, he’s beautiful,’ Denise whispered.

  The midwife looked on good-naturedly. Only a mother could see the beauty in that tiny bundle of pruned-up skin.

  ‘He’s smiling, Mal, look,’ Denise said.

  Mal puffed a breathy laugh of delight.

  ‘Bit of wind,’ the nurse said, not unkindly.

  Mal raised his eyebrows. ‘Looked like a smile to me,’ he whispered to his wife.

  And later, after he had cut the cord and the placenta was delivered, Mal bathed his new son with the help of the nurse while his wife showered.

  ‘He did it again,’ Mal said. ‘Come on, that was a real smile.’

  The midwife looked disbelieving, but Mal knew what he’d see
n: a smile as big and true as the rising sun.

  TOES

  THE NAME LAURENCE had been Mal’s idea. It was a serious name that met Denise’s wish to counterbalance the frivolity of Rainbow. Mal considered, with an inward smile, that his friends would probably call the boy Larry. Larry Rainbow. A name that stood out on a stormy day, that rolled off the tongue like a favourite poem and that captured within its simplicity a smile.

  My mate Larry. Larry with the toes that gripped his father’s finger like another hand.

  ‘How would you feel about Augustine as a middle name?’ Denise asked, tentatively.

  Mal regarded his wife. Sometimes she seemed as fragile as a wounded wren. Indeed, it was this vulnerability that had attracted Mal to her when they’d first met.

  Augustine was her father’s name. He’d been a Christian missionary and filmmaker who Mal knew only as a flickering image surrounded by dark-skinned people all dressed in white. Augustine had been the cornerstone of Denise’s life. For her first fifteen years, he’d been the rock to her dead mother’s sand. Like Mal’s own father, Augustine had died tragically in a car accident and too young, although Denise’s dad wasn’t driving drunk when his car left the road.

  Denise had told him the truths hidden behind the white-toothed smiles in her father’s movies. He’d built churches and libraries, community halls and gardens that turned to rubble and ash under the weight of the people’s indifference. Then his beloved wife died. Just as he’d started to escape from her memory, just as his life was becoming his own again, he fell asleep at the wheel. All that was left was the car, the tree and pieces of the man.

  For Denise, giving her son his name honoured him in a way the mortal world never would.

  ‘Okay,’ said Mal. ‘Laurence Augustine Rainbow,’ he sang, and lifted the child above his head.

  His wife smiled.

  Iraqi troops invaded Kuwait, and Laurence Augustine Rainbow was christened in a quiet ceremony attended by a few postal workers and a small flock of the ladies from Denise’s church. As a keen new father, Mal took to jogging home from the post office. He was already lean and hard from his daily ten-kilometre round – on foot – and the jog home barely raised a sweat. With a beer on hand and his boy in his arms, he’d hang off every detail his wife could recall about their day together: from the time and duration of Larry’s sleeps and feeds to the contents of his nappies, Mal didn’t miss a word.

  There was a story, however, that Denise tried to forget.

  The Rainbows didn’t own a car. Mal and Denise agreed that it was better for the environment, their savings and their health and wellbeing if they could do without, and on the whole it worked. Except on shopping days when there was so much to carry on the pram. Larry travelled serenely in the baby capsule aboard the shopping trolley. He would never sleep in the capsule, but his temperament made shopping an unhurried and uncomplicated endeavour.

  On the ill-fated day, Denise found her husband a gift she knew he would love: a home-brewing kit. It made sense on every level. The man loved to tinker and potter and fiddle; the house they’d rented for four years in Fishburn Street was testimony to that. He was a man who sought the company of men many years his senior – father figures, Denise surmised, knowing how much he’d endured living with an alcoholic single mother – and he bathed in their wisdom and practicality. Like Mr Montanetti next door, who in a single afternoon got Mal hooked on growing vegetables.

  Mal and his friends drank beer and none of them brewed their own. If he made two batches, the kit would pay for itself.

  Denise paid at the checkout and carefully balanced the box on the pram. With two bags wedged on the lower rack, the pram had a satisfying equilibrium and there was a hint of happy pride in Denise’s step as she donned her sunglasses and rolled out into the blue-eyed springtime.

  She was more than halfway home with the wheels of the pram tock-tock-tocking kindly over the lines in the pavement when the feeling of having forgotten something crept up on her.

  Butter. No.

  Milk. No.

  Eggs. No, got eggs.

  It ticked like a time bomb in the suitcase of her mind.

  Nappies. Plenty.

  Shavers. Fine.

  Toothpaste. Uh huh.

  And then it exploded.

  Baby!

  Larry was still strapped in the shopping trolley.

  She left the pram and the shopping in the middle of the pavement and ran. Her flat shoes slapped on the tar in the carpark and a woman in a big four-wheel drive braked hard and stalled when she realised Denise was not going to stop for her bullbar.

  Denise was moving so fast that the automatic doors at the entry to the supermarket didn’t have time to fully open. She hit one with her shoulder, generating a bang that made every shopper and staff member turn and look.

  ‘This must be Mum,’ came a matronly voice. ‘Over here, Mum! Everything’s okay, baby’s fine.’

  Denise tore her sunglasses from her face and saw the woman waving. She was in her fifties, at a guess, her hair short and dyed bright red. There was a pinched empathy about her smile that even in this most embarrassing first meeting seemed comfortingly familiar.

  She jogged the last six paces as the woman rolled the trolley towards her.

  ‘Everything’s okay,’ the woman said. ‘We’ve been having a lovely time, haven’t we, beautiful baby?’

  Denise fumbled with the straps, her whole body glowing with shame.

  Larry recognised his mother’s face and smiled.

  ‘God, child, do you ever stop smiling?’ the woman said, and chuckled. ‘Lady-killer, this one. What’s his name?’

  She stepped in and helped Denise unloop the straps from Larry’s arms.

  ‘Larry. Well, Laurence. We call him Larry.’

  ‘Happens all the time,’ the woman whispered. ‘Don’t feel bad about it. Takes a bit of getting used to, doesn’t it?’

  Denise couldn’t look at her face. She read the name tag. Anita. She nodded thanks and ghosted from the store.

  While the thought that she’d forgotten her baby wouldn’t budge from the front of Denise’s mind, the whole incident slipped from the day’s reportage. Mal was too enamoured with his brewing kit to sense the guilt that still clawed at his wife, and he’d brought her a gift too. A video cassette. Apparently Stan Ward’s wife was part of a foreign-film club in Villea and had access to a collective library of over a hundred titles.

  After dinner, when Larry had been fed and put to bed, Mal retired to the garage to set up his first brew – ‘A pale ale reminiscent of the effervescent Canadian Blond’ – while Denise propped her feet up on the couch and watched A Bout de Souffle (Breathless) directed by Jean-Luc Godard. They both prickled with delight at having discovered something new. They both swooned with the potential pleasures incumbent in the new ideas. The movie reminded Denise of her father; the brewing reminded Mal of his friends. They were blind to the seeds of pain and upheaval they’d incidentally sown in each other’s lives.

  FISHING

  LARRY WAS SIX months old when he missed his first church service. He was teething, and the grizzling and dribbling had pushed Denise to the point where she felt he would ruin the service for other parishioners. Mal offered to take him fishing. Denise, at first reluctant, warmed to the idea a little when Mal dragged from the garage a metal-framed baby backpack. It had been bequeathed to them by Dominic Evans, fellow postman and local hairdresser. It had wheels and a fold-out handle, and could be worn as a backpack or pushed as a rudimentary stroller. Half unfolded, the handle became a kick stand that would allow Larry to be propped in one spot, upright and secure. The backpack also had a fold-out sun visor.

  As much as she loved Larry, Denise secretly wanted the break. Secretly wanted a slice of her life back, whatever that was. Or just a few hours for herself in which to dream.

  With the boy on his back, Mal found the trip to the long jetty was only two minutes longer than normal. He pointed out the sights as he w
alked. Being only six months old, Larry didn’t understand a single word his father said, but rocking about so high above the ground and the sheer colour of that January day filled his little body with a sense of adventure, a feeling that over time became seamlessly associated with the coarse blue fabric of the backpack, the softness of his father’s hair and the smell of fresh bait.

  Sundays quickly found a ritual and rhythm. Everything Mal caught, he passed by his son for inspection. From the slimy toadfish to the pearly-skinned trevally, the baby just had to touch it and – if at all possible – stuff it in his mouth. Mal gave him a lustrous, weather-softened piece of abalone shell and Larry used it as a teething rusk for more than an hour and cried inconsolably when he was asked to give it up. Mal tucked it in the pocket of the backpack and brought it out those Sundays when Larry got restless while the fish were still biting.

  Salmon, Tommy rough, flathead, bream, King George whiting were all on the cards, but mostly they caught inedible toadfish. The menu was set for Sunday night – Denise’s fish curry and rice. If Mal had been lucky, the fish was fresh; otherwise it came from the freezer in the garage where he’d squirrelled away extras from the Sundays he’d caught more than they could eat. Larry purred as he ate, stuffing handfuls of fish – that had been meticulously crumbled to eliminate bones – mostly into his mouth.

  One Sunday evening, shortly after he turned nine months old and the Europeans ended their sanctions against South Africa, Larry discovered home-brew. He’d been lowered from his high chair and came across a quarter-full longneck resting against the table leg beside his father’s boot. He drank quietly as his parents chatted and ate, oblivious. He drank, and was savouring the last fizzy drops as his father reached beneath the table for the bottle. Instead of the cool brown glass, Mal found the rounded softness of his son’s head. He rose in a panic and Larry dropped the empty bottle. It made a musical plunk, then a tenor rumble as it rolled across the polished floorboards. Larry smiled.

  Mal could find no puddle, other than that on his son’s bib. ‘Did you drink . . . ?’