Mr Menzies, as he was then, used to report to Parliament upon his return from
The Prime Ministers’ Conference in London. He’d introduce his report with, ’By a happy concatenation of circumstance I happened to find myself in London for the Conference at precisely the time of the Cricket Test Match at Lords…’
I read this in the ‘Age’ newspaper and looked up ’concatenation’. I have kept the word close, generally unused, for the half century since.
By a singular concatenation of circumstance, today Jewish people around the world observe Shushan Purim on precisely the date of Good Friday. Yesterday we had the concurrence of Purim with Shrove Thursday; and the previous day the Jewish Fast of Esther coincided with the fast of Ash Wednesday. That’s how calendars concatenate.
By a happy concatenation of circumstance, while riding home through the park yesterday I overtook another cyclist, emerging into Commercial Road just as she did. From a long way back I saw first the yellow jacket. Gaining, I noted her tall, erect carriage in the saddle, her fair pony tail, her fair skin. Emerging from the park, with eyes only for the vehicular traffic ahead I had no time to sight her face.
I crossed the road and halted, waiting for the red light to turn. A voice emerged from a blur of yellow: ‘Howard? It is Howard, isn’t it?’ I had time now to take in that fair face, to recognise the features and that voice. A voice of a singular quality, a soft voice, with a sweet self-echo, as of a bell. I knew that voice.
‘Hello, Camilla.’ My voice would have carried surprise and delight.
‘Where are you heading, Howard?’
I indicated.
‘Me too,‘ she said, ‘I’m headed to St Lucy’s to pick up Joe.’
Our ways were the same and we rode together and caught up on the events of ten years: the growth of her son Joe (one of my babies), the decline and deaths of her parents and mine; and the premature loss of a brother, in each case only a little older than ourselves.
I told Camilla about Dennis. I mentioned the regret, my uncompleted mission, that marked my time with Dennis and that surfaces years after his dying, in my dreams. When I spoke of my brother’s dying Camilla’s face fell. Her voice a deeper bell.
‘I lost a brother too. I loved him.’ Camilla’s voice thrilled and her face shone as she spoke of her brother. ‘His name was Tom. He was a twin. He lived to forty-nine then he died. I don’t know what of. He was disabled. I loved him. We spoke on the phone every day. Every single day.’
‘What was his disability, Camilla?’
A smile, a half shrug: ‘Do you know, I can’t say exactly what he had and I don’t know what he died of. I suppose now you’d call it cerebral palsy. He was born with it. He was just my brother and we loved each other. We were together every day as children, back in the Mallee. Then I left and studied and moved interstate, but it was still the same. We spoke every day. I loved him. Often we’d speak a few times in the one day.
‘Tom was the second twin, you know. Second twins are often sicker…but you’d know all about that.’
I wondered about Tom’s disability: ’Was it physical or intellectual, or both?’
‘It was both. Do you know, I’m buying the old family home. In the Mallee. It’s a sentimental thing, a bit silly really.’ Camilla laughed: I’m buying out the other twin. I want the house. Tom and I lived in it, Tom lived there all his life.’
We arrived at St Lucy’s. Children thronged in the grounds, ignoring the scores of parents who waited outside. They played and shouted and pushed and grabbed each other in the high spirits of the coming holiday, while Lucy’s eyes searched for Joe and my mind played on brothers loved and lost. On a brother who called me every day, often two, three times a day.
Shouting goodbyes children drifted from the gates to their parents. A tall child, erect and fair, came into view. He greeted Camilla in a sweet voice, soft, with a sort of self echo.
[I wish readers variously a joyous Shushan Purim, a holy Easter, and always, always – happy concatenation.]
Tag Archives: brothers
Life-long Friendship
My oldest friend is named John Baikie Wanklyn. Johnny calls me Doff and I call him Johnny, and sometimes, Wank. We have been friends since the summer of 1950. We first met outside the front of his father’s shop, the Leeton Furnishing Company. At least that’s how I remember it: I was playing with something inconsequential, a little stick, perhaps a toy car too, on the concrete paving. An area of dark and pleasant shade thrown by the large verandah. I became aware I was no longer alone.
Did Wank walk up and say hello? Or did I wander along and join him? I don’t know. I was playing alone and then I was no longer alone. My mind holds the scene like a dream. And like a dream there are no borders to the image: my mind sees the cracks in the concrete where my fine stick ploughs and throws up a narrow furrow of dust. There is the deep shade and beyond the shade the great heat. I know that heat in my skin. Whenever I leave the coast in summer and move inland that dry heat greets me and welcomes me home.
An additional element in the scene is our smallness in the world. The shaded area would be about five metres by, say, about twelve metres. That area encompasses two fine figures of children of four years, the margins seeming distant from us as we play. One of us asks the second his name. The second asks the same question of the first.
‘It’s my birthday next week,’ says one.
‘It’s mine the week after. I’ll be four.’
‘Me too.’
The two resume playing until a parent calls one of the children. That child and his parents and elder sibling are going to visit the Harrises. The other child – this feels like me – goes home and finds his parents are taking him visiting too. He is cleaned up and taken along. And discovers he is at the Harrises where he plays with the Harris girls and another visitor, the new boy from the Leeton Furnishing Company. The three families drive down to the river and picnic there. The Murrumbidgee is the great fact of life in the area; it shapes our Huckleberry years.
The dimension of time has a distinct character: we meet in January of 1950; we part in June of 1955. In the course of those spacious years a pavement is laid in our lives. He is Johnny, I am Doff, we are friends. In that space we accumulate experiences together that fade in detail but burn in memory, in their texture, in their felt quality, in their great mass. By the time of our parting those few years account for more than half of our lives.
We shared enough for it to remain enough. Enough for Wank to refer – thirty years later – in conversation with a friend, to his ‘brother.’
The friend, confused, says ‘Who’s this brother Howard you speak of, John? I thought your parents only had the two children, you and Julieanne…’
‘That’s true. They did. But Howard Goldenberg is the closest I’ll come in this life to having a brother.’
One night in 2014 a bad dream disturbed my sleep: John Wanklyn had died. I awoke crying aloud, ‘Wank is dead!’ I wept: I’d never see him again. A moment later I was smiling. Of course I’d see Wank again; Annette and I were to drive to Albury to visit John and Christie next weekend.
Am I Wank’s best friend? Is he mine? We have never spoken on the matter. I know I’ve never addressed it. There is no need. The questions have no weight. They would be as strange to us as to blush or nudge-nudge at the word Wank. Neither of us has ever had a friend like the other. There can be but one first friend.
Jewish education called us from Melbourne and tore our family from Leeton. The tearing was painful for me. I saw before me a great gulf open. I kissed my friend goodbye. Wank looked at me, confused by an unexpected act.
We wrote to each other, signing our letters, ‘Your old school chum, Wank’, ‘Your old school chum, Doff.’ We managed to see each other a couple of times a year, inserting the other into lives that were changing fast. The visits continued until my barmitzvah.
Johnny and his parents came to Melbourne for the celebrations. He had never been in a synagogue. I saw my friend holding the unaccustomed cap, I saw the strangeness to him of prayers in Hebrew, I saw the strangeness of Melbourne Howard to Leeton John. I saw it and I felt it all painfully.
Years passed without further visits. Through the letters that our mothers wrote I knew the events of Wank’s life and he knew about mine. The two women loved each other. Their letters, always in blue ink and lovely copperplate, continued into old age until one declared her handwriting no longer ‘respectable.’
In 1967 a phone call came from Wank in Sydney where he was studying Pharmacy. As I was not at home, Johnny left a number. I was in residence at Queen Victoria Hospital in my fifth year of Medicine. Mum rang and gave me Wank’s number. But I misplaced it. I thought of it from time to time. And the years passed.
The Jewish Sabbath doesn’t finish until nightfall on Saturday. It was eight o’clock on a Saturday night in the ‘nineties when Annette and I left Melbourne for the drive to Albury. It was midnight as we reached the border at Wodonga. I drove slowly, my eyes searching for something needed. There it was, black, silent, broad, gleaming in the moonlight – the Murray. It wasn’t the Murrumbidgee, river of Leeton days, but the river knew me and I knew it. We drove the few remaining minutes through quiet streets, turning left as directed at the Siamese restaurant. One turn to the right then we parked, got out and knocked. A giant – he’d have filled his father’s verandah shade outside the Leeton Furnishing Company – emerged from the house. He swept me into his arms and kissed me. Later we sat, Wank and Chrissie and Annette and I, speaking softly for children asleep. Wank said, ‘I kiss my boys and I just knew it would feel right to kiss you too, Doff.’
It was a hot summer’s day. A boy was playing alone and was no longer alone. Neither boy has been alone since.
howardgoldenberg 