the known unknown

Laurie leaned to one side across the table. He body was angled at about ten thirty, his head tilted back the other way. A strange S of a figure. He was drunk. He had had a few sherries in his office before supper, listening to music, whilst M and I sat with M in the kitchen, helping with the food.

We drank wine with supper. Steak, his favourite. His wife had cooked it as a special treat. My sister and I sat on the other side of the table from our grandparents. Some discussion had blown up. My sister had engaged Laurie in it, was sparring with him. Laurie enjoyed these jousts, by and large.

Tonight, one eye was rolling in his head. He had an angry smile. Tonight he wasn’t telling tales of getting Bob Hawke drunk, or the Communist marches he and his brothers used to go on after the war, before he discovered capitalism.

Tonight he had some kind of dark mischief in his head. The conversation had gone down a different path. One which lead to this question.

You know I’m not your real grandfather, don’t you? Not by blood?

We knew. It was known. He was our step grandfather. He always had been. Ever since we were born and long before that too.

I said that we knew.

Laurie stared at us.

His wife, our grandmother, threw up her arms like a sparrow in mid-flight, and said, in her still accented English, all those years on:

This is ridiculous.

Laurie kept staring. Laurie said there were things he could say. Laurie looked like someone who wanted to cause trouble. My sister and I sat quietly, dealing with this man and this couple who we barely knew. Who had been present all our lives, but at a remove. This was the first time we had spent time with these people who’d we met but a handful of times.

Laurie continued to lean. His wife, our grandmother, said that the children didn’t need to hear these stories. There was no need to bring these things up. At a certain point she got up and walked out into the hot night. Sometime later, Laurie followed her. Sometime later he sobered up and sometime later still it all blew over and the past was forgotten.

M and I went back to the units. There was no-one else for miles around. The kookaburras and the cockatoos were silent. There was little to say. Sooner or later we went to bed.

Australia is a beautiful country but sometimes all that unknown space can bear down heavily on your shoulders.