Page 1 of Malaise

PROLOGUE

Trauma is ahell of a thing. I’d seen first-hand how a person’s experiences in life could shape them when I was a child. Our neighbour, Mr Clavers, was ex-military. He was one of the unfortunate souls who returned from the Vietnam War to be spat on by the people who should have thanked him for his sacrifice. Because there were sacrifices, a lot of them… something I could go on about forever, but let’s get back on topic.

Quarter past three on a weekday, my brother, Den, and I would cycle past Mr Clavers’ house on our way home from school. Mum always told us that if he was out in his garden with his back turned we had to ring our bells to let him know we were coming. You see, Mr Clavers was shell-shocked. On a wet August night in 1966, a mortar round struck the camp he slept in. As well as robbing him of a decent night’s sleep ever since, it stole away three of his fellow soldiers and injured many more. Anything that merely resembled the whine of an incoming shell would set him off, and our tyres on the pavement were one of those things.

He gardened a lot. Most perfect roses you’d ever seen. Mum would help him prune the bushes in the colder months when his aches set in and he couldn’t grasp the secateurs as well. He would say with a sly wink that he only accepted the help because couldn’t say no to such a pretty woman, but we knew that the cooler weather aggravated his old wounds. Yet the generation he was born and raised in didn’t like to complain. He suffered in silence until the day he passed; it’s just how things were done.

This particular afternoon, though, Den led our homeward bound chase down the long stretch that was our street… late. We’d had fun after school with a few friends, throwing water bombs at each other, and I remember to this day the patterns in Den’s wet T-shirt as he stood on his pedals to gain distance on me. Mr Clavers was in his garden, bent double, foot pushing down on the edge of the shovel blade as he dug weeds from around his row of Icebergs. Den would have rung the bell, let him know we were coming past, but for whatever reason he looked back at me instead and never realised the old man was in his yard.

That grin—so infectious. As a kid it was the kind of smile you couldn’t help but share, the sort that got under your skin on the worst of days and made you laugh even though you had no idea what was funny to begin with. As a young man, it would be the grin that got him in trouble on more than one occasion when he unleashed its deadly effects on some unsuspecting girl.

He smiled, stilled his feet on the pedals and coasted toward our driveway. There was only a metre to go, but Den wouldn’t make it. We were seconds from home, but Mr Clavers was back in Long Tan. That day, I learnt how badly a head injury could bleed. Especially when the cause is a shovel to the side of the skull. Den fell instantly, and Mr Clavers snapped back to reality just as quick. But the damage was done.

The old man hobbled across to get our mum while I sat with Den, talking to him as he cried. I had blood on my hands, it was on the concrete below us, and I remember being mortified that Den’s new WWE T-shirt was ruined. An ambulance came, and Den then spent two days in hospital to recover. Mr Clavers brought roses over each afternoon and asked how he was. But nothing would change the fact Den wouldn’t ever hear a thing out of his left ear again.

Permanent injury caused by blunt force trauma.

Little did I know that wouldn’t be the last of it for him.