He had not mentioned the telephone call two days before. He had lived with that contained in his procedures and his habits. He had rationed himself carefully. It had remained inside. It had fermented.
When it did come out, finally, in the long talk around the table as the gravy grew cold and the steak bones were declaring themselves and the slivers of fat were congealing on the sides of their plates, Bernard was quite open; he almost made it a joke, though he did not call himself an old fossil and he did not actually utter the word ‘retirement’. Jean realized that Port Douglas was out of the question. She had always felt they were living on credit.
But it was possible to discuss their future. That was like a burden lifted, like a long weight of clay that over the past two days had weighed down this news upon him. He did not speak of himself at all, really; he spoke about the town and the economic effects of the Bank‘s closure. He joked that the only person to benefit would be the Shell Service Station. Everyone would have to drive into Somerset to do their banking. And their shopping. Fuel usage would increase. “That’s if anyone can afford to pay for their petrol,” he added, and they both laughed as if that were a joke. Shut-down. Closure. Even as they discused it they could not believe it.
“What will happen to the records?” Jean asked.
“They will go into archives,” Bernard answered, but that did not encompass the history of the whole town as expressed in those figures, lists and records. It would be submerged and forgotten.
The fossil had been washed of its clay, very carefully. It sat on one of the Noritake platters for most of the meal, and after the long talk and the almost delighted realization that they had missed the TV news and the 7.30 Report as well as Quantum, Bernard had picked it up yet again. Why did he feel so elated? Why did a commonplace thing like an unearthed fossil – in a district well known for its fossil potential, hadn’t the University sent students here for decades? – why did it leave him feeling – what?
Positive, was the only word that came to him, but it was other than that, more than that. He could not explain it, even to himself, but it made him feel curiously connected.
“Now I know what a scientist feels,” he quipped to his wife, as he did the drying up. “Or an explorer. Or a discoverer. Silly, isn’t it? But I will take you up, dear, and phone the Museum tomorrow. Though it is probably nothing valuable.”
“It’s valuable to you, though. To us.” And Jean passed him the Noritake platter, which he handled carefully, though his thoughts were elsewhere.
The person at the museum was cautious but just a little responsive. Could he bring it in for identification? Was he ever in Brisbane? Very well, the week after next, then.
Bernard was just a little regretful when the Museum took it from him. “You’ve heard of the Wollemi Pine? The one they discovered in Wollemi National Park a few years back, that they thought extinct for millenia? Related to the Bunya and the Hoop Pine and the Kauri. It was known only from fossils. Well, I’m not saying this is a fossil of a Wollemi Pine but we’d like to do tests. Tell you the truth, Bernard (why were these public servant types always so familiar?) I’m just a little bit excited myself. It must be exciting for you, too, if you have uncovered something really interesting?”
But the excitement had been subsumed by the ordinary events of living and confronting his future and his customers who had all been sympathetic though quietly angry. Bernard had forgotten the moment of discovery and that long animated conversation at the dining room table, when he and Jean had been close in a way that both seemed almost to have forgotten.
He had even forgotten to gather up the freshly harvested potatoes until the next evening. They had enjoyed them, though, and they were not really surprised that Bernard poked further, but had turned up no new fossils.
The Museum never returned the treasure, and, indeed, Bernard never discovered what they finally made of it. When his garden bed had been dug up and thoroughly prepared a second time, Bernard planned to grow legumes. Then, the following year, it would again be potatoes.
The day that the bank closed its doors, finally, he decided to make it a picnic, under the Kauri Pine in the Town Gardens. Bernard’s potato salad would be remembered. Nobody had turned up yet from Central Office to look after the official bank archives, which Bernard had labelled, tabulated and prepared according to a system that had already been forgotten in the big offices in the city.
But at the last minute Bernard knew he had a final duty to his customers. All his scrupulous personal notes and annotations on every Bank client over his entire career at this Branch – a veritable history of the town – had been kept in the red filing cabinet in his office. How could he allow all that to be consigned to some dusty vault or even a shredding machine in an anonymous basement?
Bernard carefully conveyed his alphabetical files to the little back sewing room which he now made into an office in his own home. For the first month after the Bank Premises had been locked and the building stood empty and dusty Bernard went through all these files and memos, discarding a few, reorganising others. He would dress in his suit and business tie each morning and even, for a little while, made his ritual local visits – the weekly barber, the newsagent, morning coffee every second day in Whiteheads Café with the Postmaster and the Solicitor and the local Police Inspector. But his records claimed him, finally.
Much later, after he had done everything possible to tabulate and finalize all his records, he was watching The Gardening Show with his wife one evening and was intrigued by a demonstration of composting that used wads of old papers. They disintegrated with surprising speed under a mulch or a load of good heavy earth. The demonstration featured how a clay patch had been rendered malleable and suitable for roses.
The next morning Bernard went out early, in his old gardening clothes so that even his wife was surprised. He spent an hour digging and preparing. Then he went to the little sewing room and came out with the first of the dun-coloured manilla folders. Carefully he layered them, one by one, in alphabetical order. Then he applied the half broken-up clods of clay interspersed with some rough sand from the ancient childrens’ playpit. He covered it all with what he could find of mulch from the compost heap. He rubbed his hands together and went indoors.
The next morning again he dressed in his gardening shirt and the old saggy tweeds. Without thinking of the effect he wandered down at 10.15 to the café.
It was the day for morning tea.
the art is inside
