The Man Who Was Heavy Going
By John Ellison Davies
I let myself in using the spare key Caitlin gave me after the party.
"I don't have to leave," I had suggested.
"Be nice," she insisted, pushing me out. "Come back and help in the morning."
The living room was a sour-smelling wasteland of overturned ashtrays and spilt wine, a festival of scattered breadcrumbs, cheese, tabouli, champagne corks. I began collecting glasses. A half bottle of gin stood as if on duty on the stereo turntable, or rather on a Joan Baez album. At least, I thought, Caitlin had had the good taste to play one of my records before going to bed.
"Hey tiger." Mark's lazy alien accent drifted down the hallway. Mark himself appeared in a red bath robe, scratching his chest.
"Don't tiger me, you Californian creep," I said, rubbing a wet finger around the dried gin tracks on Joan Baez.
"Say Malcolm, buddy..."
"Shut up."
"Okay, 'kay. Coffee?"
Carl was the next awake, or nearly awake.
"Tell me it was a dream."
"No dream. Merton died last night."
Carl rubbed his pink, gentle, Serbian eyes.
"I remember the party finished early," he said, limping into the kitchen.
Caitlin appeared in a loose shirt, one of my striped white-collared business shirts borrowed in happier times.
"I still can't believe it," she said. "Do you?"
"I felt his pulse. It stopped."
"Oh God."
In the kitchen the coffee began to drip, choking and gurgling.
.
"I feel kinda responsible." Mark perched his coffee on one of two available knees. I wondered how he decided which one to use.
"You should."
"I guess you don't think much of me, huh?"
"Guess again. I think you're an elaborate device for carrying car keys. I think..."
Caitlin shushed me before I could move on to my opinion of his latest girlfriend, the one who started the trouble.
"Hey, she's a good kid, you know. We all say things we don't mean."
"Some of us learn to get a rope around our big mouth."
Mark appeared hurt. It didn't suit him.
She had been the centre of attention when I arrived. To me she was just a loud blonde with a big nose. Merton had edged himself in on the group surrounding her, laughing when they laughed, listening while they joked. His eyebrows followed their trivial conversation like slow sad caterpillars above eyes trying to smile. A lost old man at a young party. I don't know how or why he was invited to these things. He never seemed to enjoy himself. Perhaps someone felt sorry for him. Perhaps it had something to do with the fact that he was worth three million dollars. I had spoken to him myself once or twice. He was heavy going.
"Reminds me of the time I was prospecting," he interrupted clumsily. The younger men turned to him, tolerantly willing to be bored for a few minutes.
"Jesus, grandad," said the blonde. "We don't want to hear all that."
Merton sagged. This was the pin in his balloon. He did not pretend to smile any more. The caterpillars drooped. He saved her listeners from further embarrassment by walking out onto the balcony. I followed passing Irina, Mark's previous girlfriend. She was already drunk and sullen.
"She's very pretty," she hissed, sliding away from me. Caitlin gave her a seat and stayed kneeling beside her.
Merton poured himself a healthy whisky from the trestle table on the balcony. His stubby fingers pinched the railing. I expected his hands to be larger. He'd done a lot with them in twenty years prospecting, before he got lucky. The flesh on his fingers had regained their softness but it was still possible to imagine him in his days of stone, alone, clawing through sand and gravel, sifting quartz and rock chips, slinging a pick and shovel and setting dynamite. Nothing could repair the roughness of his face and neck and arms.
"Mr. Merton?"
He stared at the satin moonlit water and the yachts' masts bobbing almost level with us in the marina below.
"You can call me Jim."
"You like the water?"
"Yes," he said, not at all stony.
"I thought you were a land man."
"I'm not a city man. I'm no good here. Out there," he said, pointing west, "or out there," pointing east. "That's where the noise stops."
"Buy a boat."
"That could be the go," he grinned. "Toss the fancy house and start all over again. Minerals under the sea."
"I meant a yacht. Something to enjoy."
"Who with?"
I knew that his wife had left him. She lived now near their only daughter, in a comfortable unit he paid for. She asked nothing more of him though he regularly offered more.
"I met her after the war," he continued, anticipating my thoughts. "At a country dance, on a night like this. I can still hear them bouncing off the floorboards. The girls. They bounce differently, you know." He began to smile again and then suddenly reached for my arm. "I need to sit down."
"Let's go in."
"Can't make it." His shoulders jerked forward. He clutched the railing, pressing a hand to his chest. "Right in a minute."
"No you're not. Let me help you."
I took one arm over my shoulder and walked him inside. The party withered around us as people realised what was happening.
"Run out of puff, grandad?" said the blonde.
I took him into Caitlin's room and helped him onto the bed.
Irina was the only doctor in the house. I found her in a corner, drinking vodka too quickly and flirting with a nearly unconscious computer programmer.
"I think Merton's having a heart attack. Can you look at him?"
Her eyelids fluttered. She collapsed, legs twisted, her skirt rubbed up above her erotic Japanese party stockings.
I shouted for someone to call an ambulance. Mark - I'll say this much for him - sobered in a
second and made the call. Everyone else was staring at me. Herd instinct, I suppose, like wildebeest facing a giraffe. I retreated to the bedroom.
"How is he?" I asked pointlessly. His face was several colours, a confused sunset breathing in short grunts. Caitlin held his left hand and stroked his forehead, murmuring that everything would be fine. I sat on the edge of the bed and felt his pulse. There was a hiccup in the blood. And then nothing.
"He's gone," I said.
"Shouldn't we hit him on the chest or something?"
"I don't know. I can't remember. Irina's passed out."
In the hallway the wildebeest gathered in baffled silence for one of the herd who would roam the plains no more. Mark's blonde came into the room.
"He's really dead?"
"Yes."
"Poor old man."
"He wasn't so old." I hadn't the energy to insult her. I wanted a glass of water. I found Irina in the kitchen crying, her make-up a mudslide.
"Did you hit him on the chest?" she asked
"He'd already suffered enough."
"I want to see him."
"It's never too late to take an interest."
The blonde and Caitlin held hands weeping over his body. Irina joined them. Together they formed a puffy-eyed fragrant chain. Their tears fell generously. Lucky Merton, I thought.
"Merrilee feels kinda awful," said Mark.
So that was her name. Merrilee.
Merrilee was praying. Irina was praying. Even Caitlin was praying. Behind me another voice picked up the words. And another voice. Rusty unbelieving lips fumbled with a forgotten prayer. It sounded to me like the uncertain scraping of hooves before dawn.
"Please don't die," Merrilee pleaded. She kissed Merton and he opened his eyes.
.
"It was a miracle." Caitlin, the windsurfed, abseiled, tobogganed, lapsed Anglican, had no doubts.
What did I think? I felt a man's pulse stop. I saw him breathe again. What should I think?
"I left Merrilee with him at the hospital," said Mark uncomfortably. "Irina too. They both feel kinda..."
"I know."
"They're gonna take him away for a while, when he gets out. Irina has a weekender."
"I see." Mark, denuded of girlfriends past and present, seemed slow to grasp the situation.
Outside it was a fine, clear, warm day. I imagined Merton in shorts, on a verandah, eating pineapple, pampered by Irina and Merrilee.
"They bounce differently," I said.
"What was that?"
"Never mind."
- The End -