Up from the Bottom: A Novel

By Alastair Sharp

No one would ever regard the insignificant muddy watercourse that wanders through the eastern suburbs of Melbourne, Australia, as iconic, or mystical. There is nothing of the Ganges, or the Thames or the Mississippi about the Yarra. Most people barely notice it's there and those who do tend to disparage its effluence. Yet, for the two men who have spent most of their lives keeping the Yarra channels flowing, there is a kind of divine power there. From a family tradition of riverboat men, identical twins, Jay and Vic Walker, see their almost religious respect for the river confirmed, when their dredge brings up a small fortune, the river's gift. The gift however is conditional, it comes with responsibility, one that consumes them and changes their otherwise humdrum simple lives indelibly.

Birthdays mark the significant steps in the Walkers' story, and on his 50th birthday, looking back, Jay attempts to make sense of his journey. From the temporary sanctuary of his hospital room, gently impelled forward by his psychiatrist, he records the events as a birthday present for the eight year old boy in his family. Steadily unravelling the Walker history into a tape recorder, he narrates their trajectory, from the dredge's revelation, purchasing their identical Honda Gold Wings and then encountering the homeless Mo Heany on her beaten-up Yamaha. When they invite her to become their housekeeper, their lifestyle changes irrevocably. At the same time, their dredging days give way to a very different kind of craft, all fuelled by the secret stash under the barbecue in their backyard. However, as Jay comes to understand ever more deeply, the river has its price and ultimately the price must be paid. What is dredged up must be accounted for.

Who is responsible for the mysterious and deadly explosion on the tourist boat? Who in fact is the real father of the child? The tape recording narrator's portrayal of his own world may be rather different from how the world really is.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Dec 12, 2008
• ISBN: 9781440107634

Alastair Sharp

Alastair Sharp is an Australian living in Bordeaux France and so his writing forms a bridge between those two very different worlds. A lifelong career in writing has drawn him inexorably towards the human pursuit of meaning in life. Although his novels are not explicitly spiritual in nature, his writing constantly alludes to the innate desire we all have, no matter how latent it might be, to know more about who we are and why we find ourselves where we are and doing what we do.

Book preview

Contents

Dawn

1. Up From The Bottom

2. The River Gives

3. Gold Wings

4. Mo

5. Keeping house

6. Three Orphans

7. The day to day

8. Reading

9. Last voyage

10. Water beds

11. Back to the River

12. Outfitting

13. Up the River

14. Reality Check

15. Getting down to Business

16. The House

17. Birthday Present

18. Last Rites

Afterword

Up jumped the swagman……

Waltzing Matilda

To the sadhakas, fellow travellers on the path.

A Chacun son chemin, à chacun son histoire.

Dawn

Masked in crepuscular grey, the long flat riverboat glides almost silently towards the bay, the glass superstructure catching momentary flashes of shore-lights reflected up from the ripples of the dark water. Then the engine cuts out, the bow slowly turns, dips slightly and edges in towards the left bank, as she slides under the vast shadow of the Westgate Bridge. When she explodes, the flames seem to climb the massive towering concrete bridge-base at the water's edge, the low hull looking for a moment like a giant crucible in some pagan river offering. A second explosion rips the hull apart and flames flicker up from the water as they feed on the oil slick. Within minutes, the fire dies and the wreckage bobs and hisses slowly on the ebbing tide, drifting downstream out from the bridge-shadow into the ghostly pink hints of first light. The charred body lies face down, rocking gently, with several waterlogged blue and yellow bank notes floating around it like funeral flowers. By the time the water police approach the scene, the detritus has almost reached the bay.

1. Up From The Bottom

Beside the bed there is a small bouquet of flowers in a simple clear glass vase and propped against it sits a hand-coloured card written in a child's careful hand. I hope you have a nice birthday. I hope you get better soon. Love from Kray.

The man sits facing the picture window and his right forefinger slowly traces up and down the profile of his wide flat nose. His face is bruised and cut, although it is beginning to heal. The finger tip remains still, his elbow anchored on the arm of his chair. He slowly pivots his body forward and back, forward and back, so the tip of his finger runs rhythmically from brow to tip, tip to brow. Outside, a child, perhaps of another patient, runs in aimless circles through the wet, browning, post-autumn leaves of non-indigenous trees, oak, elm. The man hums to himself, the funeral march from Mahler’s Titan symphony. Dum dum da-dum dum.

When she comes in, he doesn’t bother to look around. They have been edging towards this moment over several days and he has carefully blanked himself to make sure he doesn’t lose his nerve. He’s acutely aware of her as she plugs in the machine. She wears a subtle rose perfume which he has come to pick up almost before she enters the room. He breathes it in, as she pulls up another chair to be close.

Shall we? she says gently.

His body allows one more slow digital return, then it stops.

Yeah. It is flat, nervous, but it comes from somewhere deep.

Shall I start it?

OK.

She pushes a button on the machine. Testing. This is Dr Alicia Schaff with Jay Walker. How is the volume? Let's check it shall we. Then she stops the tape and rewinds. They listen to her voice together, without his taking his eyes off the child, who has now buried herself into a pile of dead leaves. She’ll get wet, he thinks to himself. The afternoon sun slants obliquely through the bare branches and the child lies speckled in shards of light and shade.

Sounds good to you? Alicia's voice is gentle but firm.

Fine.

OK. I will erase that little bit, so your voice will be the only thing on the tape. You can stop whenever you want. She looks at him silently for a moment, until he turns, very slightly, to meet her gaze. Are you ready? she says.

He nods and returns to looking out the window. She moves her chair until it almost touches his. Then with one elbow poised on the arm of his chair, she tilts the microphone close to him. He hears the cassette tape give a slight squeak and then he breathes long and slow. When he begins to speak, his head tilts slightly to one side as if he is searching for the right angle.

G’day……… Then he falters, surprised at the gruffness of his own voice. He glances furtively sideways at her, then down at the microphone in her outstretched hand. He notices the slight tremour as she holds it and he can see the fine blue veins in her arm. He studies it closely for a long minute then he tilts his head again. He clears his throat.

I’m sitting here with a little black microphone under my nose and I don’t know how to get this started……… I mean, what am I going to say? She….

His eyes slide round towards her, then back to the window.

She, I mean the Doc, she wants me to say how I see all this, and say it in my own words. It’ll be good for me she reckons. Maybe she’s right. Maybe it’ll help me to get a few things straightened out. He hesitates again.

Hmmmm…… It is as if he is getting lost inside himself somewhere, until suddenly he jerks a little in his chair and looks down at the small black microphone. He stares at it, rocking very gently, then he begins to speak more rapidly.

If it makes any sense, this tape, then I’m hoping that I can give this to you on your eighth birthday. Well I hope somehow it gets to you, because I reckon by the time a kid like you turns eight, you know what’s going on. I think I did when I was eight. There’s a kid out the window about your age, running around in the grass. Nobody seems to be keeping an eye on her and she’s gonna get hell when they find out she’s got wet. It’s funny when you look at a kid. Everybody looks at you like you’re just a little bloke but inside you, you know a lot and you understand more than most people realise. That little kid out there has a whole life going on and nobody has a clue what it is. She probably couldn’t tell you herself. Well, you and I know there’s a lot of difficult things we’re going to have to face together………

He takes a breath. She watches him carefully and catches the tightening of his jaw. The muscles of his face ripple over the bone. Ripples of held-in tension, waves rolling against a stone breakwater. And then he speaks again.

Things. The things you’ve got to face, well, I can’t be sure I’m going to be there to help you. But you’ll manage, I know you will. You may be young but you’re a giant in my book……

He stares in front of himself, no longer aware of the child outside or of the microphone. Alicia gently moves it up a little closer and he comes back to himself.

OK….. So the tape’s rolling and I’m just going to rave on, the best I can, however it comes out and with a bit of luck, most of it’ll mean something to you. Today seems like the right day to do this and although I’m sorry you aren’t here, to be with me in person, as I tell you all this, still I want you to know…. I want you to know that I love you, I think you’re a great kid and I believe in you.

He waits and resumes his gentle rocking, forward and back. His face is tight and closed. She lets him be, then sensing that he is not going to speak again, she stops the tape. They sit in silence for a moment. At last he draws a long breath and nods. His body comes to rest and she restarts the tape. He listens for the squeak without shifting his eyes from the window, then again slightly tilts his head.

"Alrighty. Here goes.

First things first. Happy Birthday Kray. I hope this is your birthday, I mean I hope you are listening to this tape on your birthday. I want to you know that this, this tape, is what I want you to have for your birthday. It's the best thing I have to give you. Maybe it's the only thing. What’s going to be in this tape is for you, just you. If you are listening to this and today is your birthday, then I hope you’re having a good day. Yeah a really good day."

He runs a hand over his chin and up to his temple and squeezes his eyes closed. He speaks with them shut. Things haven’t been exactly simple lately, have they, and I’m just hoping that they have settled down a little bit by the time you are listening to this. I hope you get some presents, some good books maybe, and that you have a cake and all that sort of thing…… I want you to know that, even though I probably won’t be there with you physically, in person, you can bet I will be thinking of you and sending you all my love.

He rocks again, minutes elapse and she stops the tape.

How do you feel? she says at last, coming in quietly from beside him. He continues to rock. Jay, she says, Stay with me.

The chair comes to a stop. I'm not going anywhere.

I felt I was losing you. You were retreating back into yourself.

Was I? There is more than a little irony in his voice.

Can you tell me what were you thinking?

If you like. I was just thinking about Kray. He'll be eight and I won't be there. It won't be the same.

You might be. When is his birthday?

November.

And here we are in July, a lot can happen in four months.

Maybe. A lot can happen. Ah fuck it, let's just do it, alright?

She smiles at him which he doesn't notice and turns the tape back on. He listens to the running cassette, the slight squeak, like a kid waiting to skip rope, round, round, round, then he begins.

"I’m a bit all over the place with this, Kray, a bit muddled, so I hope you can understand it. Might as well start with birthdays. They’re markers aren’t they, each one. It’s like the place where you climb on to the Ferris wheel when it stops at the bottom. You remember how we did this, last year at the show? Going up so high you could see all the way to the river, across the racecourse, right out to the bridge. Well birthdays seem like that to me. On you get, then up you go for another year, another round, maybe the view’s pretty good or may it’s all foggy and you can hardly see your own nose. Every time you get to the bottom though, well there’s a chance to get off or you hang on and go around again. No, maybe it‘s not like that when you’re eight. But when you’re fifty, like me, it really is a bit like that. Stop the wheel I want to get off. Or do I? No, maybe not yet. So here we go again, up from the bottom and around one more time.

So…. birthdays…….. He seems to set himself straighter in his chair and his voice takes on a surer tone. When my brother Vic turned 40, on his birthday, I gave him a midnight blue Honda Gold Wing. The most beautiful touring motor bike money can buy. When I turned 40, on my birthday, my brother Vic gave me a midnight blue Honda Gold Wing. Top of the line. Mine’s probably still in the garage, almost good as new. That all happened ten years ago, exactly today, July the 10th.

We’ve done that kind of thing all along. Obviously, seeing as we’re twins, you might say we started out that way. In together, and we’ve done much the same thing at the same time ever since. Well, as you know by now, not every single thing.

We’ve loved big bikes, right from when we were nippers, not much older than you are now, and when we turned 40, suddenly we could afford the best, one each, matching right down to the chrome.

Now this is something you probably don’t know. This is our big secret and it’s time to share it with you. It was the river who gave us the means."

He pauses and at last he turns to her. She stops the tape.

What's happening? she asks gently.

He shrugs. He brushes his hands over his eyes, suddenly tired. I dunno. I feel kind of a bit stupid, talking to myself. Well, not really to myself.

She waits for him to say more, but he turns back to the window. She watches him and then carefully prods. We can stop for a while if you like.

He sniffs as he considers her offer and begins his gentle forward and back rocking and his finger makes its way back to his nose. Then he abruptly turns on her and there is a new kind of light, almost fire in his eyes.

Nah. he says, I owe him. Jesus, at least I owe him some kind of a…..I dunno…. Some kind of an explanation. Nah. Turn it back on.

She is pleased but keeps her face neutral as she presses the start button. He listens for the tape to move and then he launches himself with a much stronger, more urgent voice.

"Just so it’s right there on this tape: My name is Jay Victor Walker and today is my 50th birthday. I am celebrating it, if that’s the word, on my own for the first time. I’m also wondering, for the first time, whether I really want to go up again. Can I face another round on the Ferris Wheel? When you turn 50, I suppose you have to think a bit like that. I know you would’ve wanted to be here, Kray. You like birthdays I know that, but it’s best that you aren’t. I hope one day you’ll understand about that.

And then there’s Vic. My brother, my other half, Victor James Walker, born on the same day, half a century past. And he is gone. I miss him like a bike minus a front wheel. I feel kind of like the chain drive is still connected, all cylinders are firing perfectly but I can’t go anywhere. It’s like I’ve got a pair of naked front forks rammed into the earth. Usually when you’ve got a bike that far gone, you’d scrap it. You know the way we were, so I hope this makes sense to you. On a bike with a wheel gone, there’s no way you can take on a pillion passenger is there? So that’s why it’s not a good idea for you to be here, just for a little while. I miss you though."

His breath comes hard for a moment and he hunches back and down in his chair. She leans in to check how he is, but her movement seems to prompt him, and he comes up and out of himself.

You see, you have to know about this. The river, the Yarra, that winding brown unpretentious waterway that drains the eastern half of Melbourne into Port Philip Bay, she has been the life blood of our family for three generations. Our old man, your grandfather, James Victor Walker, ran a dredge his whole working life. His old man, we called him Grandpa Walker, Victor Raymond Walker, was a captain on a tug in the old Yarra ports in the 40’s, before he went onto the dredges in the 50’s. You would’ve liked those days I reckon. I’m sorry you never knew the other boatmen in our family. You would’ve been impressed. We were river boatmen but not like most who just stay afloat on the surface. We were bottom feeders, muck movers, channel diggers. We’ve roiled and moiled and we thrived in the mud. In our family, we have always worked from the bottom up. Of course, not any more. You could say we’ve come up, at least in some ways, from the bottom. The Walkers, the Up from the bottom Walkers.

He looks at her maybe even a little pleased with himself. She keeps her face expressionless then she raises her eyebrows asking him if he wants to go on. He nods rhythmically, psyching himself back into his narrative.

"Yeah. Vic and me, we manned the same dredge, two-handed since our early 30’s. Dad was our boss, right from when we started, straight out of school. We crewed for him some fifteen years, before the fags got him and he shriveled up and coughed himself to death. We’ve worked other rivers here and there, dug channels in half a dozen different ports, but the Yarra was always home to us. When you run a dredge off its home port and work it somewhere else, it’s not the same. You get to know a river and you get to feel like it’s your life’s work to keep her flowing. That’s what we did, until just after our 40th birthday.

She’s a filthy, turbid old river, well at least she used to be. I heard some bloke recently caught a rainbow trout in the middle of the city, so I can’t deny there’s been some improvement. Dunno if he was game to eat it. Still, if it's true, well that’s all to the good, the cleaner the better. They used to joke about how the Yarra was always flowing upside down. Still looks a bit that way, but the Yarra’s not a sewer anymore or the arse end of a hundred toxic factories. The old leatherworks, abattoirs, dye shops, they’ve all turned into prime waterfront properties and those solid old Hawthorn brick facades are now just the masks for expensive architectural renovations. Ugly bloody things but they’re apartments, hotel suites for executives, graphic design studios and computer software offices. Instead of the old corroded and flaking effluent pipes spilling guiltily into the river, low down on filthy weedy banks, now they have shiny marble balconies and glassed-in coffee shops. They have patios with huge Italian umbrellas, superciliously overlooking the willows from on high. You can take water tourists anywhere on the old Yarra now and be proud to show them all of it. At least that's what the tourist bureau would have you believe. And we believe it, don't we. Maybe you have to turn a blind eye to the odd turd here and there, but in the general flow of things, she's a great river."

Alicia , although surprised at the erudition and the sophistication of Jay's description of the river, begins to wonder if he's forgotten that he is supposedly talking to an eight year old. She is tempted to cut him off and get him to refocus but he is so intent, it is as if she isn't there. For her the purpose of this narrative is not just the boy. He is in his own world and flowing, and she truly believes that with the narration will come the clarity.

"A few brave souls even swim in the Yarra. A couple of International tennis stars got even more famous by their well-publicised post open championship baptisms. A couple of desperate Vietnamese teenagers ended up jumping in, as a last resort to escape from some South Yarra nightclub street gangs. Chose drowning to a machete. More than one sad soul has made the choice to deliberately end his life in her waters.

The river gives, my old man used to say. He loved that river in all her moods. He’d get downright lyrical about it. You gotta get on her wave length, he’d say. Not that there’s too many waves on the narrow old Yarra. My Dad’d sit there in the wheelhouse of the dredge, fag end hanging out the corner of his mouth. He’d sit on the Captain’s Chair with his feet up, in a fog of smoke. All you gotta do, he’d say, Is be here. This old river’ll give you every damn thing you could ever want. Thing is, you gotta be patient and you gotta be humble. You get that, you got a friend for life.

That's how he saw it. It was true for him and it’s been true for us. Another thing he taught us was respect for what she wants. When you work the river, it’s like any other kind of relationship. You want something and the other half wants something. The trick is to get to the point where you both want more or less the same thing. Then it's like you’re married to it. Say the Port wants a channel dug in a certain part of the river. You can churn away till you’re blue in the face, but if you don’t work along with the river, the way she wants it, she’ll silt you right up, the minute your back’s turned."

The door opens and a thin grey-haired man with steel rimmed glasses looks in. He has a small round fruit cake on a plate but when he sees the two by the window, he pauses in the doorway. Then after a cautionary look from Alicia, he grins and then gently withdraws. Jay hasn't noticed, lost in his narrative.

"And the last thing about the old Yarra, the old man was passionate about this one, if you cross her, he’d say, she’ll never forgive you. It might sound stupid, but he reckoned, at the end of things, at a time when he could barely talk, that all those cigarette butts he flicked into the river, without a second thought, they were what killed him. He never really believed it was the nicotine or the carcinogens or whatever it is. No, he reckoned he had defiled her, pure and simple. He had to live shorter as a consequence.

From where I stand, well, from where I sit……."

He smiles to himself. It is the first sign of any lightening up of his tension and she makes a mental note of it. A small empathetic smile teases at the corners of her own mouth. He doesn’t seem to notice, but at the same time, the rhythm is broken and he has come back into the room. The smile softens his face. One hand runs softly along the arm of his chair.

From where I sit, talking to his grandson on a cassette tape, I reckon he was a bit of a river sage, the old man. I suppose, if you spend enough time on anything, you get to know it inside out. That river, Kray, that river makes you take stock of things. You sit there and you watch the flow, the backwash when the tide turns, still-water and then the current going back out. It makes you realise there is a time when you receive and there’s a time when you lose. I am of the opinion, if anyone cares to listen, that it pretty well balances out overall. In, out, wait, in again. That’s how it seemed to me then, when we worked on her every day, digging the channels, moving the muck. And in the years after, I can’t say that it changed all that much. Now, well, sometimes it’s just too hard, but I want you to believe in this. No matter what happens, with me, and with you, even if it looks pretty bad, in a while, don't you worry, it’ll change. It will, no matter what's going on. I really want you to remember this.

The wintry sun has begun to set and Alicia gets up to turn on a small lamp fixed to a table in a corner of the room. She has handed him the microphone and he sits staring at it for a second, then speaks directly into it, holding it at an angle below his chin. She watches him from across the room.

"We’d lost our Dad, your grandpa, a year earlier. He’d been off the river a good five years by then. He went down slowly at first, then the lung cancer got hold of him and, poof, he was gone. In a way, he took our Mum right along with him. They were a pair, as much as me and Vic. When she saw him go down, it was like she went down to keep him company. They shriveled up together. Maybe she thought we were old enough to look after ourselves by then. A year to the day, his anniversary it was, right after we went out to the cemetery to put some flowers on his grave.