This is the Life. Alex Shearer

a plumber round.’

      ‘No point. It’s screwed,’ Louis said.

      ‘Louis, there’s a blockage in a pipe somewhere, that’s all it is. A plumber can fix it. It’s a half-hour job. I’ll ask Don, your neighbour, if he can recommend a plumber and get him round.’

      ‘No use,’ Louis said. ‘We’re screwed.’

      I went round to see Don anyway and got a number for Barry the plumber and I called him up.

      ‘Sure, I’ll be round Thursday, mate. No worries.’

      No worries, I thought. That’ll be the day.

      But it didn’t cheer Louis up much. He still said we were screwed, and by then I was starting to agree with him, though I never said as much.

      He was right, of course. We are screwed. Every single one of us. People go on so much about winning and being winners and coming in first and all the rest of it. But we all have to lose in the end and the best we can hope for is to go gracefully. Everyone dies. Death comes for us all. We’re all screwed. We’ll all stop functioning properly sooner or later. So Louis was right.

      On the other side of the coin, though, when I suggested getting a fan heater to warm the chilly Australian winter evenings – not exactly cold by northern European standards, but cool enough – Louis was against that too. He said, ‘We don’t need any heaters, we’re tough.’

      ‘You’re tough, Louis,’ I told him. ‘I’m getting a heater.’

      And he’d asked the Malaysian girl to put the burner on at the café, hadn’t he?

      I went to a shop the next morning and bought two heaters – a convector and a blower. I brought them back and plugged them in. Louis sat in his Salvation Army armchair and toasted himself. They got to be inseparable, Louis and that heater. Towards the end of his life, that was one of his firmer friends. He wouldn’t have it in the bedroom though. He drew the line at that level of comfort and self-indulgence.

      ‘I’ll be all right when I’m under the blankets,’ he said. ‘You don’t have heaters in the bedroom.’

      I guess you didn’t when you were tough.

      I recognised the blankets. I’d seen them before. They’d belonged to our mother. They had to be thirty years old and they were disintegrating. When I tried to wash them, the fibres came apart and blocked the washing machine. I went out and bought some doonas – Australian for duvets. While stripping the bed I got a look at the mattress and went on to the internet to order a new one. It was falling apart. Underneath the mattress was a thick crop of dust growing out of what was left of the carpet.

      ‘Have you got a vacuum cleaner, Louis?’ I asked.

      ‘Of course I have,’ he said indignantly. ‘Of course I have a vacuum cleaner.’

      ‘Where is it?’

      ‘I don’t remember,’ he said.

      We had a look and found it in a cupboard. It was out of a museum.

      ‘Who was the last to use it?’ I asked.

      ‘Kirstin,’ he said.

      ‘And when did you and she split up?’

      ‘I don’t know. Ten years ago?’

      ‘Have you got an iron, Louis?’

      ‘Of course I have an iron!’

      ‘So where is it?’

      ‘I’m going to bed.’

      I found the iron in a drawer. I don’t know who had been the last to use it. Or if anyone ever had.

      Barry the plumber came round on the Thursday and fixed the plumbing. He said the pipe-work was so old that it was blocked up with internal corrosion. He turned off the water, cut out the bad pipe, and replaced it.

      Louis said he could easily have done that himself at half the cost. I wanted to ask him why he hadn’t done it then. But I never did ask him things like that, as I knew he’d just get angry.

      I paid Barry cash which I got out of the wall with Louis’ card. We met up outside the pharmacy where we were going to get Louis’ drugs. It was dusk and the sun was dipping and the street and vehicle lights were coming on. I handed Barry a wad of folded dollars.

      ‘It’s like doing a drug deal or something, Barry,’ I said.

      ‘No worries,’ he said.

      ‘Thanks for fixing things.’

      ‘No dramas, mate,’ he said. ‘See you, Louis.’

      ‘See you, Barry,’ Louis said.

      And Barry drove off in his own ute. Every self-respecting tradesman had one.

      ‘That’s good then, Louis,’ I said. ‘We can have showers and brush our teeth now and do the washing-up in the sink.’

      But he just shook his head and peered out at me from under the perpetual beanie hat that always seemed about to slide down over his eyes and blot him out. The world wouldn’t see him then and he wouldn’t see it.

      ‘Shall we go in and get your prescription?’ I said. ‘Have you got it there in the bag?’

      He turned and pushed the door open. The Asian woman who was the pharmacist there recognised him and said hello. She had infinite patience with Louis, even when the words wouldn’t come to him or he was having trouble sorting out all the drugs he had to take. It seemed to me that the place was full of people who were infinitely kind, and most of them not white.

      We got back out to the street with the drugs ordered and on the way – to be delivered tomorrow by three o’clock. In those few brief minutes the sun had set completely and the world was in southern-hemisphere winter darkness now, which came suddenly and early.

      I saw a curry house with its sign lit up.

      ‘Shall we go and get a curry for dinner, Louis?’ I said. ‘Is that place any good?’

      ‘It’s okay,’ he said.

      ‘Shall we go there?’

      He didn’t answer me, which was a habit of his since childhood. He’d often simply stare at you and not answer your question. Not as if he hadn’t heard it, but as though the question could not be answered, or deserved no answer. I could never tell. Maybe he hadn’t heard me after all.

      ‘Louis,’ I said. ‘Shall we have a curry?’

      ‘We’re screwed,’ he said. ‘Completely screwed.’

      He turned his back on me and walked towards the neon goddess. I followed and we went into the restaurant. Once again, when we ordered our food, the waitress taking our order said, ‘No worries.’

      There you have it, I thought. Some say no worries and some say we’re screwed. I guessed there had to be a middle ground somewhere. But I didn’t know what you’d call it. Or maybe it was just a swinging pendulum, which veered between the two conditions until it finally ran down and came to a halt and you couldn’t wind it up again. And when it stopped moving, that was when they buried you, and you were neither one thing nor the other then, just finished, but free from pain.

       4

       TERRI TWO

      At the funeral Terri got up and said some well-meant and well-intended words. I liked her. She seemed like a nice, genuine person, who had felt real affection for Louis and had liked him for himself. We got talking and she said I should come around for a meal before I went home. I said I would take her up on that, and besides Louis had borrowed