head and heart..

He’s lying in bed in the palliative care unit listening to a discman. I touch his foot and he opens his eyes and smiles. He takes off the earphones, turns his body to the side and sits up slowly, pressing his hands on to the sheet to raise his back off the pillows. The knobbly bones of his shoulders are clearly visible in the light. His face is drained and thin. “Mozart” he gestures to the cd player, as though introducing me to an old friend.

In the late 70’s he is the principal at the school where my husband teaches. I have the feeling when I meet him of being in the presence of a good man. He is quiet, calm and thoughtful. He sees the best in every student. After six years as head of the school, he moves home to Sydney and although we see one another only occasionally, our friendship continues through letters and phone calls.

When his marriage breaks up he wonders how things could have gone so awry. He misses the company of his wife and young daughters and writes long, sad confessionals of the head and heart that humble me when I read them. How could I have not understood when everyone else who knew us saw it so clearly? Why didn’t anyone tell me she was so unhappy? Why?? I picture him sitting in the house alone and wonder how he’ll cope. Some time later though, the tone of the letters changes. He’s been reading a book by the Englishman Terry Waite which details his experience as a hostage in Beirut. “I had three principles firmly established: No regrets. No self-pity (it kills) and no sentimentality.” In some sense too, when I read the words that follow Waite’s I know he’s found the way to go on. It’s what we make of what happens to us that’s so important.

Then out of the blue, he develops a neurological condition which is difficult to identify and debilitating to live with. My feet feel like blocks of wood, my hands like sausages full of sawdust. It interrupts his teaching and places severe restrictions on his daily life. Each treatment he has is painful and prolonged but as time passes by, and gradually over the next eighteen months, the symptoms start to ease in their intensity and he begins to experience short periods of respite. Although the frustration of facing such slow recovery is evident, there’s also an indication that he might have come through the worst of things and is on the road to better health. He recommences swimming and light running when he feels well enough. The last line of his Christmas letter has the promise of a new start. Everything seems to be going well now. Emily scored 89% in her HSC English exam.

He flies down to Melbourne to address a school reunion. It is the 25th anniversary of the school which he pioneered and he delivers a speech that is warm and considered. I sit beside him during dinner and am shocked by the change in his appearance. His frame’s as light as a boy’s. He has difficulty breathing and eating. A fortnight after the reunion he phones and says his energy has dropped again and tells me his doctor suggests he may have cancer. There’s some doubt about this because no primary tumour has been found and he is told it could be some time before the results of tests are known. A week later however, the news is unambiguous. Cancer is well advanced in his stomach and lungs and is evident also in part of his brain. He is given a month or so to live.

My husband and I fly up to Sydney to see him. He says he wants to sit with us in the sun. I wait beside him in the ward while he slides his legs out of the bed and steadies himself to stand. His belongings are arranged like lines of thought on the bedside trolley. A teacher’s diary, a spiral note-pad and biro, a small black radio and a hardback book The War that Never Ended. The only other patient in the room is a round faced man with flushed cheeks lying in the opposite corner sleeping. In the chair beside him his wife sits reading.


Robert walks slowly out into the sunroom to a couch beneath the windows. There’s a dignity about the way he holds himself, carefully clasping his dressing gown with his hands, holding it over the lower part of his body. He’s wearing pale blue pyjamas knotted with a white tape bow high above his chest. He has no waist. I sit next to him and take his hand in mine. His fingers are lean and warm. He’s wearing his silver wedding ring again which marks the most positive thing that has come out of his illness. “A great reconciliation” he says, “she’s been marvellous to me.” The ring swims on his finger.

He’s lucid and intense in conversation and in this sense nothing’s changed. He speaks about a nurse who waited with him one evening until he fell asleep. A mother of four who had only recently returned to nursing, she tells him her children had taught her what was most important in life. We have to care for one another.

“We’ve got to be compassionate” he says “in the end it’s all that matters.”

He wonders whether I know a good poem about death and I tell him I’ll find one and then we talk about books to read and I watch as he writes down the names of these carefully on his notepad.
I ask him what’s sustaining him and he looks me in the eye. “Love” he says. “This” he nods and motions towards us sitting there. “It means so much that you’ve come to see me.” He strokes my fingers and I feel the firm grip of his hand.. I ask him what he most fears. Again his look is direct and almost boyish in its simplicity. “What tricks my body’s going to play on me” he laughs.

Old students drop by to see him while we’re there. Business men on lunchbreaks. Others phone to enquire when they can visit. Many are from Melbourne.

I find a comb in the drawer beside his bed and run it through his hair. Soft brown curls unravel in the heat then puff around his head like a halo. His fringe flops over his eyebrows and I sweep it back into shape, press the curls down and touch his head. His scalp is small and bony. His hair feels like a bundle of warm wool. I put down the comb and rub my hands along his shoulders and across the back of his neck. I’m frightened my fingers might break his skin but catch sight of his face and notice his eyes are closed and his forehead relaxed. I want to stroke his cheek and ears. Pass my wellness into him.

At the other end of the balcony stretched in a recliner and facing into the direct sun, a woman in a blue floral nightie is filing her nails. Her body is swollen and her legs are covered in bright pink welts that glisten in wetness. Now and then our conversation pauses and the rasp of her emery board is the only sound made in the long room. A plastic tube sticks out from beneath the side of her chair and carries dark yellow fluid into a crumpled bag lying on the floor. She makes no eye contact with me until we stand up to leave, then she smiles.

Mid-afternoon we say goodbye. My husband cries in his arms. Is this it? I think. I want to carry him home, feed him, make him well again. He walks with us to the door of the ward then turns and goes back. The last image I have is of a thin, determined man moving slowly towards his bed.

A week later there’s a card from him in the letterbox. Our address dips down the envelope like the broken branch of a tree. Inside, his writing’s small and firm as though each word’s been chosen deliberately the way a note of music might be before being placed onto the page. “Your love buoys me up and makes this last part of the journey easier, more acceptable somehow. Love Robert.”


No Sooner -Michael Leunig

No sooner do you arrive than it’s time to leave. How beautiful it is, how glorious, yet it’s nearly time to go. So you take it in, you take it in.
And you take a few small souvenirs, some leaves: lavender, rosemary, eucalyptus. A few small pebbles, a few small secrets, a look you received, nine little notes of music, and then it’s time to go.
You move towards the open door and the silent night beyond. The few bright stars, a deep breath, and it really is time to go.
No sooner does it all begin to make sense, does it start to come true, does it all open up, do you begin to see, does it enter into your heart…no sooner do you arrive than it’s time to leave.
Yes, it’s the truth. And then you will have passed through it, and with mysterious consequence it will have passed through you.

Kate Cahill

the red van

Outside it's drizzling and the tiny coloured flags that run the rim of the car-yard whip in the wind like pistol-fire. I’m sitting in a tin shed at the back of the yard while a salesman sprinkles HP sauce into a bag of chips, mops beads of sweat from his forehead and tells me we’re getting a bargain. I sign some papers and he gives me a key flattened and worn like an old fingernail. A 1983 van the colour of a ripened tomato is waiting under a tree on the nature strip outside. I slide its back door open, hook up the baby's safety capsule then climb into the driver's seat.
No dashboard, no bonnet, just the steering wheel, windscreen and a long drop to the road. The mirror wobbles in my palm like a weak handshake, the glove box won't shut, but the baby gurgles and the key turns in the ignition.

The bongo van.

It’s cheap to run, the motor's quiet, and with five kids it's the only way we can all travel together. My husband takes the tiny blue bomb to work each day and I get the van. A roving red shoe with every window holding the face of a child peeping out.

When I was little my siblings and I were squashed together in a station wagon. There were no seatbelts then and no thought of accidents. Dad gripped the wheel like a rudder and off we went. A couple of times a year we travelled to Melbourne to visit my grandparents. I stood up, putting my feet either side of the hump that lay in the middle of the back seat floor and because it felt like a stage I sang: all along the highway I patted Mum's shoulder and sang little tunes while she nursed a baby and stared out the window.

At ten to nine I drive the kids to school. Past the shops and up the long hill to the steel gates where I park and watch as they climb out. Some mornings they hop off like frogs ready for fun but on other days I feel like I’m unloading tired soldiers whose voices trail away to whispers on the walk towards the asphalt. In the afternoon when I pick them up again, a day's stories fill the little wagon. Lunchtime goals, a lost library book, a friend who's mean. Their voices run over one another like tangled threads that unravel into single strands as we glide down the hill towards home.

One afternoon my daughter picks the front passenger seat lock after reading a Nancy Drew book. She uses a paperclip straightened carefully into the figure seven and pushes it into the hole. The metal snaps inside the barrel like a thin bone and stays there. No key can pass that way again. Another day when they're all on board I hit the dog. As I edge onto the driveway I feel a soft thud underneath the wheels and hear a pierced yelp. In the split-second quiet that follows someone notices the back gate’s open and a chorus of PADDY!! goes up. We find him in long grass at the side of the house, chest pumping, tongue trembling in the air like ticker tape and with a pink lump on his tail. In that space beside the fence, frightened and quiet, they kneel and wait as the breathing eases, the whimper fades and he begins licking the hands that stroke him. I watch as they carry him to the shed, the youngest running on tiptoes ahead of the parade like a king's messenger. It is only later when I'm in the van by myself that I notice my leg won't stop shaking.

On Saturday afternoons I park by the fence at the football oval and watch the older boys. Dark blue thoroughbreds pounding over the dry ground towards the boundary or bogged in the centre-square while rain falls in thick sheets. I turn the wipers on full, strain my eyes to pick out their numbers from the gloom and toot when there's a goal. Some days we go to Waverley and pull in beside thousands of others on the apron of land that lies in front of the entrance. Inside the ground the Record passes up and down the benches and they dribble sauce over their jumpers. On the freeway going home they fling their scarves out the windows and stare backwards at the striped arms that stretch and dive in the dark.

Often on a Sunday we go into the city and I feel my daughter's tiny feet kicking against the upholstery as she arches forward to glimpse the river. Her river. The Yarra lying just below us, curled underneath bridges and resting beside trees like a snake in the sun.

In summer we pack up and head down to the beach. They cram their bodyboards next to the windows and on the boot's tiny floor. Bags of clothes and food lie tucked against their legs. The wind batters us on the climb up the Westgate and we struggle to go forwards, but the Bongo Van fights back. My husband puts his foot to the floor, the tyres grip the road and suddenly we're on top looking out over patchwork land and the blue-grey water of the bay. At Ocean Grove the caravan park lies across the road from the sea and the van slips into a tiny space underneath the branches of a pine. At night we lie and listen to the roll of waves and the sound of the canvas annexe shuddering like a sail in the wind. During the week we drive down the Great Ocean Road and while my eyes follow the blue line that runs away to the sky, the van hugs each curve tightly in a slow, rocking dance that lasts all the way to Lorne.

And meanwhile they're growing up and one day the baby's midway through primary school and the older boys are taking driving lessons from their Dad. Clutch- gear -accelerator are the only words that matter on the back roads and then they have their licences too! Bit by bit the van show its age: dents appear on the duco, the gearbox packs up, the grey felt carpet peels away to a red metal floor and one night the engine seizes. Everything the Bongo Van needs now lies in rows of rusting bundles at the wreckers.

The boys get their own cars and we stop travelling as a family. The younger ones don't like to be seen in the van any more. Too daggy. My husband takes it to work each morning and I have a yellow sedan. At night though I reclaim it. Two kilometres from home is the park where I walk the dog. I toss the lead onto the back seat floor and Paddy jumps in. He pokes his head through the gap in the front seat and a hot, fluttering breath hits my neck. I drive into the car park thinking of the kids, hearing their voices and remembering how they all once looked in the seats behind me. Five bodies folded against each other like the pages of a book. I slide the side door open and Paddy bolts for the track that winds like a hem around the creek. I shut the door behind him and follow.