Sarah worked in well with her cousins and her sister, and Johnny’s son James. There was a TV and a DVD player in the Chevron Island house, and Pat and Felicity took turns bringing the kids cordial drinks and biscuits while they watched The Wiggles. There was a real Christmas tree in the corner with presents under it, and Mac was busy wrapping up more in the spare bedroom with Pat McQueen.
‘You’re lucky with Jenny,’ said his mother quietly, not looking at him. ‘She’s going to be fi ne with Sarah.’
‘I know, Mum. She’s amazing.’
‘So are you, darling,’ she said, smiling at him. ‘I’m proud of you.’
‘Why?’ he asked.
‘A girl needs a dad. And Sarah and Rachel are going to enjoy having each other in their lives.’
‘Thanks, Mum,’ said Mac.
They fi nished the last present – Mac doing the wrapping, Pat tying the ribbon – put them all under the tree and walked outside to where the extended clan was sitting down to eat in the back garden under the frangipani trees. Mac took a seat between Jenny and Pat and marvelled at the set-up. An old cop buddy of Frank’s called Bobby Seavers had inherited a house on Chevron Island behind Surfers Paradise but never used it. On hearing that Frank’s kids were living in Brisbane and the Gold Coast, Bobby had put out an open invitation to his old friends to use it.
Frank came over from the barbecue with the plate of meat. He’d hardly changed since Mac was a kid in Rockie. Still wore a short-sleeved button-up shirt with a pair of teal slacks. Still had those boxy wrists and piercing pale blue eyes that missed nothing. The receding, thinning blond hair was greying and swept back straight off the face, and Mac could see what he’d look like himself in twenty-fi ve years.
‘Get your laughing gear round that lot,’ Frank drawled as he put the chops, steaks and bangers on the table.
‘Oh, Frank! Please!’ said Pat. ‘What will Felicity think of us?’
‘Yeah, yeah, yeah,’ he muttered as he headed back to the barbie to take his apron off and grab his beer.
Pat made a face at Felicity and they both giggled.
Frank stood at the head of the table, the citronella wafting over them, and raised his glass. On Christmas Eve the McQueens took the opportunity to make their toasts and Frank started with his usual: ‘To all the angels who made it and the devils who didn’t.’
Jenny toasted Johnny and Tony and Vi, Mari toasted Jenny for busting the slave sweatshop, and Pat asked them all not to forget Sarah’s mum and Felicity’s daughter, who was still recovering in Jakarta. Mac raised his glass to Gary – who hadn’t made it – and Didge, who was alive but in Southport Hospital for Christmas Eve and probably a long time beyond. Frank reminded them that it was Queensland cops who, in the end, had bagged Hassan Ali in a stolen car somewhere up north on the Burnett Highway. Huck raised his beer, pointed at Ari, and said, ‘Here’s to Ari – the fi rst boyfriend Marama’s had who doesn’t stutter when he meets me.’
Johnny and Ari laughed at one another and Mari pouted. ‘ Dad! ‘
They dug in and one of Virginia’s boys, Charlie, wandered out, complaining that someone wouldn’t let him watch something. So his father, Graham – Mac’s brother-in-law – told him that if he had to come in there and sort it out, the whole thing was going off. Charles scarpered, problem solved.
They got louder as they drank and Ari, who’d been regaling the table with tales of how different the Israeli desert was to the Moscow ice, asked Huck how he had met Frank. The table went silent, the rest of them knowing that Huck didn’t talk about the war.
The two old soldiers stared at each other, and Frank shook his head, ‘Nah, Huck doesn’t want to tell that.’
‘Oh come on, Dad!’ said Mari. ‘I’ve been waiting years for this.’
Huck fi nally smiled, sipped on his beer, and told them how the Kiwi and Aussie SAS were doing the LURP patrols out of the Nui Dat base in South Vietnam during the late 1960s. ‘I knew Frank to say hello but we hadn’t done any patrols together by then.’
‘Hang on, Huck. Dad, you never told me you were SAS,’ said Mac.
‘Yeah, well you’ve spent fi fteen years telling me you’re a fl amin’ textbook salesman!’
The whole table went up in a roar of laughter and Mac sat there and wore it, Johnny slapping Ari with a high fi ve. As the laughter died, Mari said, ‘Go on, Dad.’
‘Well I’d been having a few problems with this Texan bloke, red-headed special forces fella.’
‘Trouble?’ asked Jenny. ‘Weren’t you all on the same side?’
‘Yeah, but in those days – 1968 – a bloke like me couldn’t hit a white fella.’
‘Why not?’ asked Mari.
‘Because that’s how it was. The Yanks didn’t even have an integrated special forces.’
‘So the Texan?’ asked Jenny.
‘Well, yeah. He was winding me up and I was ignoring it. It was a big base and the Aussies and Kiwi SAS generally kept to themselves, pretty much. Anyway, one afternoon the Texan had been drinking and he did something which was supposed to get me fi ghting. I didn’t want to. A white man would’ve just been told off, but I’d have to spend time in the stockade and lose my leave privileges. I was going to let it go, but Frank here -‘ he smiled and Frank raised his glass, ‘was this wild-eyed Queensland boy and he took the fi ght for me.’
‘Kick his arse, Frank?’ asked Mari, fi ring up.
‘Nah, mate,’ smiled Frank, shaking his head.
‘This Texan was the barracks bully,’ said Huck. ‘He’d been a Golden Gloves heavyweight back in Dallas but Frank just walked up and got into it. They fought for ten minutes and the whole base came out for it – the MPs stood off for a while and then broke it up and marched both of them down to the stockade. I think they spent a week emptying the latrines.’
‘Go, Frank!’ said Mari. ‘Kick his arse!’
They laughed and then Ari piped up. ‘For what did the Texan say that make Frank fi ght?’
Huck turned to him, and they held stares. ‘Fella called me a nigger.
Frank wouldn’t let it go.’
They arrived at Southport’s Guardian Angels church in two minivan cabs and muscled some room for the whole gang about halfway down and on the left. They were going to the nine o’clock mass and, although the church was large and had high ceilings, it was still Queensland in the middle of summer, so it was hot. Mac wondered at his father’s enthusiasm for mass. An atheist since Vietnam, he’d once told Mac that during the war he’d lost his childhood faith and couldn’t get it back. But he liked the family togetherness of Christmas mass.
Mac ended up between Frank and Ari, so he stood between the atheist and the Jew and they all sang the hymns, and when Mac leaned back he saw that Ari was holding Marama’s hand and further along Rachel was asleep over Jenny’s shoulder. Sarah – his other daughter
– was standing in the pew trying to sing along to ‘O Come All Ye Faithful’. Mac caught her eye and winked, and she was bashful, buried her head in her grandmother’s hip. Then she turned back and smiled at him.
He thought back to a midnight mass in Manila, when he wondered how Joe Imbruglia could smile and cry at the same time. And Mac looked at Sarah and smiled, and it all made sense.