Back of Sunset

“Jack!” Goodyear came round his desk in a hurry, one hand outstretched to the newcomer, the other waving Miss Mack away. “God Almighty, where have you been? Stephen, hey Stephen, this is Jack Tristram! You should remember your father talking about him – well, stone the crows!” When he was excited, and it was a long time since Stephen had seen him as excited as this, Goodyear dropped back into the slang of his youth. “Holy mackerel, I’ve often thought of you!”

“You never wrote, you baldy old bastard,” said Tristram, false teeth clicking loudly in his widely grinning mouth.

“Where would I have written, you old bastard yourself?” Goodyear’s clothes seemed to crease even more with his excitement; the silk tie had begun to creep round under his ear. Stephen, standing up to take the knobbly-jointed, calloused hand Tristram thrust towards him, marvelled at the change in Goodyear.

“You don’t remember me, do you?” Tristram said, biting at the air as if trying to catch his teeth before they slipped from his mouth. “You were a nipper when I saw you last, about twelve or thirteen. You’ve grown, son. A big skinny bastard just like his old man, eh, Charlie? Well, how are you, mate?” Tristram dropped Stephen’s hand and turned to look about the room. “That was a bloody silly question. It’s pretty obvious how you are. I been reading about you. I’m surprised they haven’t made a bloody knight of you. Sir Charlie. They’ve given titles to worse bastards than you.” Tristram appeared able to talk without taking a breath; his teeth clicked continuously. He squinted about him, looking for something. “Where’s your degree, Charlie?”

Goodyear pointed to the framed degree, hung on a side wall and almost obscured by the drawn-back curtains. “There.”

“What’s the matter, you ashamed of it or something? Or ain’t it as decorative as them two paintings?” Tristram had unwittingly hit on the truth, the reason why Rona had hung it where it was, but he hadn’t stopped talking to note the effect of his comment. “Well, I’m glad you’re still a doc, even if you do hide your proof of it. That’s why I’m here, Charlie. I been feeling crook lately. Well, not exactly crook, just a bit off, you know what I mean? About six months ago a horse fell on me, up Noonkanbah way, and busted a coupla ribs. It’s been sorta coming back on me lately.”

Goodyear looked at his watch. “I’m due out at St. Vincent’s at twelve for a lecture. But come on, Jack. You’re not going to any other doctor in Sydney while I’m still in practice.”

“That’s why I come to you,” said Tristram, winking at Stephen. “Why should I pay good money to a stranger when you owe me about ten quids’ worth of treatment? You never did pay me back that ten quid you borrowed on your wedding day.”

“You’ll leave here with a cheque, plus interest,” Goodyear said. “What a memory!”

“Me memory is all I’ve had sometimes,” said Tristram, and drew his shirt over his head: the crackling voice was all at once hushed, the clicking teeth silent. “It’s been a long time, Charlie, and I been gone a long ways. Memory is a good thing, Charlie, you know what I mean? And not for just remembering ten quids you’re owed.”

Tristram lay on the table against one wall and Goodyear began to examine him. Stephan stood by, listening to the continuous crackle of Tristram’s voice, his mind stumbling through the misty memories that were now coming back to him: a younger, dark-haired Tristram seen from the larger-than-life viewpoint of a twelve-year-old boy; his own father greeting Tristram with the same excitement as Goodyear had just shown; Tristram, talking a multi-coloured streak, his teeth clicking even then, telling him stories of the Outback that had made his boy’s heart leap till he was dizzy.

“Shut up, Jack,” said Goodyear. “I’m trying to hear what’s going on inside you.”

“Nobody ever hears what’s going on inside a man,” said Tristram, and winked again at Stephen. “You know what I mean?”

“A bush philosopher,” said Goodyear. “Shut up!”

Twenty years, thought Stephen, and the world and himself had changed for ever: he saw the world now through the wrong end of a telescope and his heart no longer leapt. But Tristram hadn’t changed, except in the flesh, where none of us could avoid it. His hair was grey now and thinned by years of sweat and neglect; the square, broken-nosed face was gullied with deep lines, and the eyes had faded, washed in too much sun; and the body now exposed on the white-sheeted table had begun to loosen round the belly and the legs and arms had begun to thin, the muscles atrophying and the flesh slackening off. But the energy and spirit were still there, and the voice was tireless.

“See that? A croc took a bit outa me up on the Roper. Had a good year that year, ‘48 it was, shooting crocs. Me and me mate ud do a hundred and fifty, two hundred crocs in a season. That? Got that breaking in some brumbies up on Gogo. That? Got that—”

He talked on and on without pride in his scars or wonder at the life he had led, lying there on the table in the elegant room in the building high above the roaring city while Goodyear probed and listened and grew increasingly sober. “Shut up for a while, Jack,” Goodyear said at last. “Get dressed.”

Tristram began to dress, struggling with the starched old-fashioned collar he wore. “Are you always as cranky as this during consultations? Wonder anyone comes to you.”

“Jack.” Goodyear was sitting at his desk, drumming a gold pencil on the pad before him. He had taken off his jacket and his tie was now loose; it suddenly struck Stephen, seeing the two older men in their shirt-sleeves, that there was almost a likeness between the two of them. It wasn’t so much a physical likeness, and yet whatever it was he knew that he himself didn’t share it. And taking off his jacket would bring him no closer to them. They shared something that seemed to have gone out of the world he knew, and he wasn’t sure what it was.

“Jack, I want you to go into hospital.”

“Hospital?” Tristram stopped struggling with the collar. “Ah, don’t be silly, Charlie—”

“Jack.” Goodyear looked at him with affection. “You’ve got a heart murmur that I don’t like. I think you were fortunate you chose me to come to – or did you remember I was a heart specialist?”

“I remembered all right, Charlie; But I come to you – well, you know why.” Tristram made a small gesture with a rough hand: it took in a friendship that had lasted years of separation. “There’s nothing wrong with me heart, Charlie.”

“You always were an argumentative coot.” Goodyear was talking now in the language of his youth; he had dropped even the hard-acquired smoothness from his voice. “I tell you, you’ve got a bad heart and I want you in hospital for a couple of weeks so I can have a good look at you. And I don’t want any flaming argument.”

“It’s outa the question,” Tristram said emphatically, his teeth clicking sharply. “I’m leaving Monday night by Quantas to go back home.”

“Where’s home?” Goodyear said.

Tristram waved a vague hand. “Well, not exactly home. I ain’t had a home for years if it comes to that, not since I went bush. But I keep going back to Winnemincka, and that’s where I’m going this time. Me mate’s waiting there for me. We got a job coming up, managing a station during the Wet while the bloke comes south on leave.”

“As your doctor—”

“You ain’t my doctor, Charlie,” Tristram said, with a kindly grin, and looked about the room again. “I could never afford anyone like you.”

“You’ll never owe me anything,” Goodyear said. “I’m the one who’s in debt, Jack.”

Stephen stood on the outskirts of the conversation, feeling like a trespasser in the world of the past that bound these two men. His own father had belonged to that world, and he had talked to Stephen of it with the regret of a man who had seen the sun of his life pass the yard-arm. Tom McCabe had been a dreamer, and Stephen recognised now that there were still traces of a dream left in these two men as they talked.

“Why did you come all the way south to see me, Jack, if you’re not going to take any notice of me?”

“I come south mainly to tidy up the family’s estate. Me two sisters are dead, and I’m all that’s left. There ain’t much, but I can take a few quid back north with me – I know some people up there could use it. No, I come to see you, Charlie, partly because of this pain I’ve had, but I dunno—” He looked about the room again, at Stephen, and then back at Goodyear: the crackling voice was slow now: “I come to see you because of old times, Charlie. When I left here back in 1921, when they said I had T.B. and gimme twelve months to live, I said good-bye then, remember? I come back for your wedding, when was that, ‘28, and then again in ‘38, it was the sesquicentenary celebrations that year. I was still alive, and I bought meself a new suit, can’t remember what I was celebrating, being still alive or a hundred and fifty years of Sydney. This is it, the same one. Cost me twenty quid, I remember saying to the bloke price was no object.” He looked at Stephen. “That was when I met you, Steve. And the last time I saw your dad. I said good-bye to him then, and that was the end of that. He was dead two years before I knew about it. Read it in an old Herald I picked up one day in a pub in Derby. It was lining one of the drawers in the wardrobe in me room.” He was silent for a moment, contemplating the devious ways news went round the world: bad news could never be hidden, not even in a drawer in a fly-blown room in a ramshackle hotel in Derby, two thousand miles from where the story had been written. He blinked, all at once old, and looked back at Goodyear. “I come to say good-bye, Charlie. For the last time.”

“I never say good-bye to my patients,” said Goodyear. “Or my friends. It’s bad psychology for a doctor.”

Tristram grinned, shaking his head. “Well, we’ll think of another word for it, Charlie. But I’m catching that plane Monday night. Me mate is waiting for me.”

“Write him a letter.”

“He can’t read,” said Tristram, grinning. “No, Charlie, I’m grateful for your diagnosis, but hospital’s out. When I hand in me chips, I don’t want it to be down here.” He looked out of the windows, at one of the most beautiful views in the world. “I know a better place.”

Goodyear attempted to argue, but to no avail: Tristram was a man you would have to knock unconscious before he would concede defeat. At last Goodyear rose, straightening his tie and pulling on his jacket. “I’ve got to go. Look, the family is going down to our place at Palm Beach for the week-end. Stephen is coming. You come, too.” He held up a hand. “No, don’t start another argument. You’re coming. Tell Stephen where you’re staying and he’ll pick you up.” He began to usher Tristram towards the door. “You’ll be interested in our house at Palm Beach. More glass than brick. The possums sit on the outside and we sit on the inside and stare at each other with equal curiosity. It’s called outdoor-indoor living or something. Peggy found the architect. Didn’t look the type that could ever look a possum in the face, but that’s what he prescribed for us. Do you ever regret having to give up architecture?”

“Never a regret, Charlie.”

“I’ve often wondered about you. Where you were, what you were doing—”

“Been all over the north and north-west. Never stopped any particular place, never designed even an outhouse, never built even a humpy. Anywhere back of sunset was good enough, anywhere where there weren’t too many people.”

“You’ve got something against people?” Goodyear said, smiling.

“Some of ‘em. City people, mostly. No offence.”

“And you don’t feel you’ve wasted your life?” Goodyear said, still smiling. “You had talent, Jack. You don’t feel you wasted it?”

Tristram looked about him. “I could ask you the same question, Charlie. I dunno you could give any better answer than I could.” He turned to Stephen and put out his hand. “I’m at the Metropole, Steve. Pick me up any time you like. It’s been nice seeing you again, son.”

“It’s been nice seeing you,” said Stephen, and looked at Goodyear standing in the open doorway, the web of the past, of dreams gone for ever, thick on his unsmiling face.

III

Stephen picked up Tristram just after six on that Friday evening and joined the streams of traffic fighting to get into the channels that would take them across the Harbour Bridge. “Lotta bad-tempered bastards,” said Tristram. “Where they all rushing to?”

“Some going home, some going away from the week-end,” Stephen said, keeping the Jaguar steady, out-bluffing a Holden trying to crash in from the left. “Friday night’s always a bit of a mad panic. Everyone likes to get home for a restful week-end.”

“Stone the bloody crows,” said Tristram, and stared out at the city as it battled furiously to get home for a restful weekend.