The Spare Room Read Free Page B

wandered over to the far wall, which was covered in photographs. There was one of my grandfather and his first workers, and one of my grandfather and my father as a young man. And there was one of my grandfather, my father, and me as a very small baby held in my father’s arms. I leaned in close to the glass over that photo. How strange, I thought. My father holding me in his arms, and I can’t remember a thing about it. Memory, I’ve decided, is a very tricky thing. I think about Australia and there are some things I remember so vividly, but they’re not always the things you think you’d remember, not the big things, or the outwardly important things, like graduating from class. They’re often the smallest things, things you don’t even know you’ve stored away in your head until they pop up much later. Once at work I was chopping vegetables or doing something else that I can do with my eyes closed and suddenly I found myself thinking about the book that I read to Daisy the night before I left Australia, some of the funny characters in it. And how she kissed me goodnight. It makes me smile even now as I write this. Dear Daisy. She must be jealous as all hell.
    Just then my father opened the door and looked completely surprised to see me there, as if he’d forgotten I was coming in to say goodbye. He asked me a couple of questions, nodded a lot, told me he hoped I would behave appropriately, and then made it clear he had work to get on with. We stood there, both a bit awkward, a bit shy, a bit nervous even. That’s speaking from my side, I suppose. It’s hard to tell how my father felt. But we did a bit of leave-taking, with me bowing my head and shuffling. I wish we could have at least shaken hands. But at that stage I’d never shaken anyone’s hand at all. And the thought of it frightened the wits out of me later on the plane when I realised I would probably need to shake hands with my homestay family, or at least the father, or … I realised all of a sudden there were a lot of things that weren’t on my list and that I should have asked the program officer before I left. I consoled myself with the thought that they would be as nervous meeting me as I was meeting them. And that’s a bit of how I felt there in my father’s office, guessing at what was going on in his mind. I knew I was only guessing though. I suppose we always are. But some people give more hints than others.
    Finally I made my escape. I would like to have given my father one of those searching looks I’d given our living room, so that I could indulge in wondering about changes that would occur, in him, in me, before we met again. I hadn’t thought to do that with my mother, but somehow my mother was more known to me, whereas my father managed to be an enigma. I thought about how he achieved that, as I walked back to my marooned suitcase. And I decided it was through silence. I thought of the rare nights when he was home soon after dinner-time, or the even rarer nights when he was there for dinner. He maintained this silence about him as if he had loftier things to think about and didn’t want to waste his energy. Perhaps he just had nothing to say and didn’t feel driven to fill the spaces.
    As I reached my suitcase I realised that I felt a bit sad. Who knew what lay before me, what adventures or trials out in the unknown land of Australia, and this was all the send-off I was getting. No fanfare, no hugs, no wise words. Just then there was a commotion among the women all down the line of machines. They were motioning to me and pointing. When I looked around, there was my father standing outside his office. Standing there waiting, as if there was something he’d forgotten. Perhaps he did have some words of wisdom for me. Perhaps he did have a hug for me, I thought, as I retraced my steps. I had to stop myself from running and I felt self-conscious with my father watching