Afterwards

After the service, everyone gathered at Jim’s house in Wahroonga. Their cars soon filled the driveway and overflowed out into the small street, so that other driveways were nearly blocked. The neighbours, knowing there had been a funeral, did not complain.

During the service and in the graveyard, despite the warmth, the immediate family had each worn some item of knitwear. Jim had sweated inside a big woollen jumper with a tie poking through the top and a suit on top of it all. Returning, he had taken off the suit and also pulled off his tie, but so far still wore his woollen jumper.

The mourners filled up the living room, the kitchen, and spilled into the garden. Outside, the sun lit the world like an explosion. Through the windows, Jim heard voices chatting, and it surprised him. It made the afternoon feel like a normal Sunday gathering, except that this was a weekday. Jim felt strange. Had they really just been to his father’s funeral?

Sarah, Jim’s wife, had organised sandwiches, savouries, fruit and other small snacks to be delivered from the deli in the nearby shopping centre. Neither she nor any of the relatives had wanted the responsibility and distraction of preparing food.

“It was a good service, Jim,” said his cousin Fred, patting him on the back. “I thought you spoke very well.”

Fred had a single woollen mitten hanging around his neck, like a fluffy medallion. Gloves, Jim knew from old conversations with his father, were hard to make, mittens were easier, and better insulators in the cold winters that he remembered out west.

“Thanks, Fred. Got something to drink?”

“I had a wine, that’s enough. I gotta drive.”

“Make sure you get some food.”

“Yeah, thanks.”

Sarah joined Jim and Fred, looking perplexed.

“Cathy and some of the other kids want to know if they can go in the pool,” she said. “I’m not sure if it’s appropriate, given the circumstances.”

Fred said, “A poolside wake?”

“Don’t you think some of the rels might take offence?” Jim asked. “Besides, the kids haven’t got any swimmers.”

“They’ll be OK just in their undies,” Sarah said. “Perhaps you could circulate a bit and find out if anyone might be offended?”

Fred said, “I’ll help you, Jim. We’ll concentrate on the aunts and uncles; if they don’t think it insults their brother, it’ll be OK.”

They wandered off into the garden to perform the necessary negotiations.

The funeral had been sombre, but not distressing. Jim’s father, who had not long survived his wife, had lived comfortably for fifty-five years after the end of the war, with the benefit of some family wealth and his wife’s career. There were no family tensions arising from his death, no buried hostilities or resentments.

In the garden, the younger descendants of Jim’s father fidgeted in three or four small clusters, grouped by age and familiarity with each other. Jim’s own kids had taken off the woollen scarves he had given them to wear for the funeral, and were now ready to take off more.

Jim and Fred obtained agreement for them to use the pool.

As the afternoon wore on, the gathering began to separate into smaller groups. Jim noticed two young girls he did not recognise standing together in the garden. He remembered them sitting together at the service. One of them half smiled at him. Jim nodded automatically, and said, “Hi. Thanks for coming. Have you come far?”

“From Narrabeen, with Mum and Dad,” one of the girls replied.

“Oh?” Jim glanced around the garden.

“They’re inside,” the girl said. “Fred and Mona.”

There was a brief moment of silence as Jim, startled, peered at her, then said, “Good grief! Penny! It’s you, all grown up! I didn’t recognise you! When were you last round here?”

The girl, his second cousin, smiled. “Obviously not for some time.” She wore a woollen beanie of a grey-green colour, pulled back and high on her head because of the warm afternoon, so that it looked ready to fall off. She gestured at her companion, who wore no wool. “This is Jill. She’s my cousin—on my Mum’s side.”

Jill nodded at Jim. Penny said to her, “This is my Uncle Jim. He’s the son of, of—”

“Oh,” said Jill quickly. “Yes of course. I’m sorry for your loss.”

“Thanks,” Jim said, smiling at the awkward formality of her words, coming from such a young face. “And thanks for coming.”

Penny said, “I brought Jill along for company. I—I’ve never been to a funeral before.” She blushed.

They fell silent for a moment. A fraction after Jim recognised the silence had lasted too long, Jill said, apparently trying to keep the conversation going, “These pieces of woollen clothing on a warm day like today look a bit odd, but it’s nice, isn’t it?”

“In honour of my Dad, yes,” Jim said. “It was my wife’s suggestion. Of course, we hadn’t expected it to be so hot today, this time of year.”

“Did he always knit?” Jill asked. “Penny told me about it on the way over.”

“He started when he came back after the war. It was Mum’s idea. She taught him; it was to help him relax.”

“I remember him when I was a little girl,” Penny said. Her face was grave. “I was so surprised to see a bloke knitting. I was only seven or eight. I said to him, ‘Aren’t only women supposed to knit things?’”

“I didn’t know you talked to him,” Jim said. “What did he say to you when you asked him that?”

“He just said, ‘The wife taught me.’” Penny’s eyes took on a distant look. “I should have shut up right then. But I was a persistent little kid. I said, ‘Other men don’t do knitting, Grandad.’”

She looked sad. “He seemed so enormous to me. He had such great big strong looking hands, holding these black knitting needles.”

Jim, too, remembered how large his father had been. When Jim had been seven or eight, his Dad had seemed like a mountain, his face pockmarked and lined.

As he knitted, Dad occasionally sighed, paused with his knitting needles, and his mouth made what looked like little panting movements. Then his shoulders would jerk minutely, as if shrugging, and he continued knitting.

Jim’s father had knitted jumpers, socks, cardigans and balaclavas for the entire family. From the unravelled, worn out remains of their old woollens, he made blankets.

“Did he answer when you talked about other men not being knitters, Penny?” Jill asked.

“He just muttered, ‘Most men my age do something.’ Then he put his needles down, and said, ‘It takes my mind off things.’ He wouldn’t look at me. Then Grandma came along and shooed me away. I think it might have been a bad day for him.”

Penny glanced at Jim as she spoke. In her eyes, he suddenly recognised fear, and he felt a momentary shock. He saw that Penny had been frightened by his father, frightened of the great hands gripping the knitting needles, frightened of what it might mean.

He wanted to lighten the conversation, but could not think of what to say.

“I’m surprised you remember all that.”

“It’s the image of him looming over me, squinting down at his knitting like that. And the expression on his face.”

Jim’s father had worked only fitfully, at a local service station, and rarely went to the pub. The family mainly visited relatives for a social life.

Dad had knitted sitting up in bed, he sat on the back verandah knitting, and he knitted on long car trips with Mum at the wheel. Jim’s first real memory was the small blue jumper his Dad had made for him when he was less than three years old. Jim rapidly grew out of it, and his Dad had replaced it with a bigger one, and when he grew out of that not many months later, an even bigger one. The warm jumpers seemed to grow with Jim through his childhood. They were good for the frosty winters when the family lived out west, the other side of Blacktown.

From an early age, the jumpers had carried mystery. They were warm, comforting, friendly, but he always knew they had their own secrets, a little bit of the hidden adult world, the one he knew existed because of the silences that sometimes fell among the grown-ups when he joined them.

As Jim looked at Penny, he wondered if some part of his father’s own personal nightmare, some incoherent dread, had been transferred to her, merely by the exchange of a few words, a look, the image of the great powerful hands clicking away with the knitting needles.

“It must have been really horrible, whatever happened to your Dad,” Jill said to Jim.

Neither Jim nor Penny replied.

“I mean, knitting away like that. All those years.”

For Jim, it had been normality. It was only at school that he knew his father was different. When Jim was ten he asked Dad about his friends, and his father answered, “I used to have a few, they’re mostly long gone now.”

Penny’s friend Jill still wanted to know more from Jim. “Did your Dad ever talk about the war? About what happened to him?”

Jim shook his head. “I think Mum knew what it was about, but I was never told.” He glanced at Penny again and felt relieved when he saw that the look of fear had gone from her eyes. He pulled at his own woollen jumper. “I suppose I’d better take this off.”

“It’s so sweet and sad at the same time,” Jill said, looking at Penny’s beanie and then at Jim’s jumper.

A memory came to Jim. “I remember hearing Dad saying something about the war to Mum once. I was out in the hallway, they were in the living room.”

The two girls waited for him in silence.

“Dad was having a conversation with Mum. I knew they were talking about the war, but their voices were so soft I couldn’t hear it properly. But then Dad’s voice rose a bit, and he said, ‘The worst sound you’ll ever hear is a bullet smacking into your best mate.’”

As Jim spoke, his voice cracked. It took him by surprise, and dismay registered on his face. This unsettled Penny and Jill. Penny put her hand to her throat. He saw Jill swallow. Jim wished he had not tried to repeat his father’s words.

For a moment, there in the warm garden, with kids splashing in the pool, they all felt a pang of dread.