billion galaxies. Each galaxy has billions of stars, let’s say at least 100 billion, on average. That means the total number of stars vastly exceeds ten thousand billion billion or in proper terms, ten sextillion. If there was only one planet orbiting every one millionth star - not a number of them like our own solar system - there must be a minimum of ten million billion planets. And if just one in a million can support life, there are more than ten billion life-supporting planets. And so far we have seen 270 planets in total. Like an infant knowing the world from the inside of its crib.
At least I’ve had a go at it; I have attempted a Theory of Everything. I’ve kept that stuck up my jumper since the day it was written - apart from the copies that were sent out, so far, to no avail. What’s wrong with the world? Doesn’t anyone want to know how it all came to be, how the universe works?
Still can’t get a handle on how I have ended up in this place. Lisa’s choice of course. Eden Aged Care Facility my arse, ‘house of the dying’ more like it. Before I came here I was quite happy at The Grace. Hardly ever saw the other tenants except on the way to the bathroom. I had a good room onto Very Street and I could always go to the lounge for a quiet drink and a game of pool - one of the few boarding houses to allow a bit of responsible alcohol. And cheaper than here! All very well while you have your health.
The good Matron Collier just stuck her large pro-boscis through my door, no doubt checking to see if I’m smoking. I enjoy the way they just march in. I wonder what she’d say if I came over to her house, walked right into her bedroom to check her socks and undies? I’ve only been here a few weeks but it’s obvious she’s no Mother Theresa. Hates her job, hates the people and runs this camp like the Gestapo. Messages over loud-speaker: Residents may NOT close their doors during daylight hours. Residents caught smoking in their rooms will be evicted. Residents caught washing their clothes in their hand basin will be evicted. They charge six dollars a time to take your clothes to the wash and then they are gone for a week. Never mind if you need a shirt or a clean pair of socks. Can’t afford to buy more on the Invalid Pension.
Invalid: Enfeebled or disabled by illness or injury. Verb, to invalid someone: Remove from active service, send away. Oxford p. 423 (also see invalidate).
A few of the others in here: Dooley the ex-publican. Don’t know his other name. Everyone calls him Dooley and it seems his great claim to fame is that he once owned a pub in Fitzroy. Won’t say which one - or can’t remember. Only lucid about 50 per cent of the time and then the only thing he talks about is his days at the hotel. A bit of a loudmouth, but harmless.
Joe. The closest thing to a skeleton other than death itself. I’m thin but this bloke takes it into a new realm. Walks OK, if painfully slow, but he’s bent double like a gerbera left in a dry vase. All he ever sees is the floral carpet, poor bugger. Must be at least eighty-five or ninety but still gets around. Don’t yet know what’s wrong with him.
Ivan Radish or Radisich? The one who stole my little table for me. He has a way of leaning in so close that you can hear his lips smacking. He wears bottle-neck glasses and I’m of the theory that he thinks he’s further away. Also Clem in a wheelchair, all ears and nose. Speaks in riddles but when he looks at you it’s clear he hears well enough. Look at his eyes and you can tell he’s not like all the other dementia inmates. I’d bet a fortnight’s pension he knows what people are saying. He tries to use his wheezy little voice and what comes out is hard to comprehend. Unfortunately all the carers treat him like the other senile ones, shove him in a corner facing the TV, lock up his wheels and there he stays until supper time.
Collier is the registered nurse. Then there’s Osborne, Stinson and Gillies who aren’t nurses but registered carers, by degrees all sharp and economical. I’m talking about their comments not their care. Can’t get too close to the dying I suppose. And in truth that’s exactly what I’ve got in here, the walking dead waiting for a heart attack, or die in their sleep. Or just fade away like an accidental stain on the carpet.
Just back from lunch - the muster in the dining room. Hilarious if it wasn’t so tragic. First, Joe was sitting in my spot and I asked him to move - only to learn he’d arrived at the table without his hearing aid. I’d have shouted in his ear except I didn’t want to get that close. I’m on a table with five others - some of the more ‘capable’ ones, all men. Keep the men and women separate.
This is lunch: Ivan stealing other people’s bread and also peaches from dessert bowls. Even speared a sausage off Dooley’s plate! Created quite an uproar. ‘Don’t worry about it,’ says Nurse Stinson. ‘You’ll get used to him.’ It was he who stole my little side table for me - now I can see it’s in his blood. The highlight of the meal? Watching old Clem trying to get his fork into a chocolate biscuit. I was just getting over that when an old lady on another table coughed so hard I thought it was the end of her. Then she spat up a slimy gob, caught it in her hand and wiped it on the side of her wheelchair. Looking forward to dinner.
Now I sit by my little window and try to see the logic in the rule that denies me a quiet fag in my room. I open the window and blow the smoke into the courtyard which is exactly where they want me to go in the first place. But for me to push my chair right around to the other side of this same window would take more effort than I can afford. I have a little washbasin in my room and I put the butts down the plughole. A tip: flush each time otherwise they swell up and block the sink.
Kitty and I took off again. We caught the tram out to the last stop in Fawkner with exactly one pound in our pocket, two ten shilling notes. One was given to us by the Social Services man who drove us home - out of his own pocket - and the other came from our mother. She told us to go down to the shop and get some food in the house. We figured we were going to eat the food anyway so why not save the ten bob for when we got hungry? At home we packed a canvas bag, took some coins from a saucer in the kitchen to pay for the tram to the end of the line, and off we went on the road to Sydney.
Out on the highway we waited no more than twenty minutes before we had our first ride. This was 1959 and people would pick you up straight away. They remembered the War years and the Depression and they still thought it was a good idea to give each other a hand. Today it’s the reverse; rather than help you up they use you as a rung on their own ladder.
The trip was uneventful so no use repeating it. Except that we slept on the banks of the Murray River at Wodonga. It was March and hot as hell. There’d been a big bushfire somewhere to the east and you could smell the smoke, a faintly acrid scent that caught in the nostrils and though I’ve never seen a fire it gave me the jitters. We knew nothing of the bush and Kit and I lay side by side as close as we could get. Above us in the total blackness a million stars blinked. It made me think of poor dead Milo and the missing theory. The breeze picked up and the leaves and branches rustled and Kitty said the trees were talking about us. Maybe so - how would I know? Then she said she was feeling frightened again, the way she sometimes did in the dark at the Daco. I told her to sleep; I put my arms around her and reminded her of her magic sleigh, something to take her somewhere else.
When we woke the grass was wet even though it was going to be a hot day. We had a loaf of sliced bread and block of cheddar and we gnawed off bits of cheese and drank some of the river water. No restaurant meal could have tasted better.
Two days later we walked up Aunty Deb’s street in Cronulla. She was our mother’s sister and from what we’d been told, the two hated each other. I knew a lot about Aunty Deb from our mother - all of it bad and punctuated with swears and curses. From that bit of information we could tell she was nothing like Mum so we figured she might be alright. Kit rang the doorbell. We waited quietly and just stared at the mat. Welcome,
