The Philanthropist

by John Tesarsch

Genres: Literary Fiction

Synopsis

Charles Bradshaw is an ageing tycoon, burdened with regrets.When he suffers a heart attack, he abruptly retires and announcesthat he will give his fortune to charity. His family strenuously resists,especially his son Jeremy, who is desperate to take over the Bradshawempire. Meanwhile Charles’s old lover, Anna, returns after more thanforty years, bringing unwanted memories of aterrible secret from his youth.The Philanthropist is a compelling exploration of love and heartbreak,frailty and mortality, and the unending search for redemption.

Release date: August 28, 2018

Publisher: Affirm Press

Print pages: 304

Sample

I

CHARLES FLIES IN that evening after a week in Jakarta. All he wants is a shower, fish and chips, and an early night in his own bed. It was a demanding trip, far beyond him at his age. He worked fifteen-hour days brokering the terms of the deal, but on the final afternoon the interpreter misquoted him and, in the confusion, the other parties refused to sign the contract. There must have been an underlying problem: perhaps the financiers had decided to withdraw their support, or the government had other priorities. It would have been worthwhile, to build a hospital in a region short of medical facilities. He had been prepared to cut his margin and to accept a greater share of the risk, but now it seems his efforts were futile.

His driver, Lionel, meets him at the airport. Exhausted, Charles settles himself on the back seat and tries to rest. He has been suffering indigestion and headaches that his usual tablets cannot dull. The pain has distracted him in meetings and denied him sleep. On Monday he must cancel all his appointments and see a doctor; this has affected him for too long.

‘Congratulations boss,’ says Lionel. ‘Did you know before you left?’

He knew he had been nominated, but it was only when his assistant called that he knew it was official. Then his name was published in the Australia Day papers.

Trish would be a more deserving recipient. Philanthropy should be expected of men in his position; he may sign the cheques, but she is the one who works full-time for any number of charitable causes.

The driveway is choked with cars, so they park around the corner. He is dreading his entrance and is tempted to ask Lionel to drive him to the office, where he can wait until the guests depart. Later, he can pretend that his flight was delayed.

He had not sought recognition and he didn’t want to celebrate. He believed it was in bad taste, but Trish had insisted they throw a party. ‘Charlie,’ she said, ‘if we don’t they’ll call you ungrateful. We must invite everyone from the Foundation, I want them to share this with us.’

There is a marquee, waiters in black tie, and the gardens are swarming with business associates. It is difficult to see any friends in the crush, let alone his family, but eventually he finds Trish beside the pool. She kisses him fondly. ‘We’re all so proud of you,’ she says. ‘You deserve it, you should have received it ten years ago.’

Late January, stifling heat. He is too exhausted to be a decent host, so he finds a quiet corner and pours himself one Scotch after another. His shirt is drenched with sweat and his armpits reek. The wind carries smoke from distant fires; it is so oppressive that he wants to retreat to his study to catch his breath. But when he tries, a stranger blocks the doorway and harasses him about tax reform.

Eventually, the Health Minister makes a speech. He talks about what it means to receive an Order of Australia and praises Charles for what he calls tireless work for the community. The Minister mentions the bequest to the Children’s Hospital, to build a cancer ward, and the Nolans that Charles donated to the Gallery. They barely know each other: who asked him to speak? There is applause and someone calls for Charles to give a speech, but he shakes his head. He is tired of this praise; in future he will make his gifts anonymous.

Afterwards, the Minister catches him in the courtyard and shakes his hand. Another cheap politician, what does he want – more campaign funds?

There are guests in front of Charles, beside him, behind him, all competing for his attention. They are talking as though they are his friends, even though he cannot remember many of their names, and their faces are unfamiliar. He feels faint, his heart flutters, his knees begin to buckle. Trish notices there is something wrong and takes his hand, leads him away to the rose garden. ‘You aren’t enjoying yourself, are you?’

He shakes his head. ‘It was nice of you to throw this bash, but I need to lie down.’

‘Are you feeling unwell?’

‘I’m worn out.’

‘Do you think you can hold on for just another hour? I’ll make sure they start to leave then.’

Most likely there is nothing actually wrong, only his usual anxiety, something like a mild panic attack. These social events – they always unnerve him. Thinking back, he cannot isolate when he first felt this sense of dread. If he could identify that precise and defining moment, perhaps he could reverse the damage it has caused him. Initially he only suffered minor discomfort, so that rather than confront his emerging fears – public speaking, crowds, confined spaces – he avoided them. Now, though, his anxiety can be so great that he has to be careful how he plans his days. At times he has considered seeking professional help but he’s never gone through with it. Not that he is afraid of what a doctor might say, but Melbourne is a village with a handful of families who matter, and now is not the time for the wrong word in the wrong ear. So he tries to live with his fears, even though they have become debilitating, with the belief that perhaps they serve a purpose in his frenetic life – maybe they induce a sense of humility, of acceptance.

He can wait no longer for the guests to leave, so when no one is watching he lets himself in through the side entrance. Thankfully, Trish had the good sense to make sure the party was outdoors – perhaps she was concerned about the art collection – for the hallway is clear and he can escape to the bedroom. He takes off his suit and sprawls naked across the bed. Within minutes he is asleep.

He has a weak bladder and wakes several times during the night. At dawn he still has a throbbing headache and heartburn. He gazes out the window at the sunlit waters of the bay: fishing boats lie at anchor and yachts cruise in the distance. He paid millions for this view and it always gets him out of bed.

It is still hot, so he only wears his bathing shorts. He attempts to follow his Sunday morning routine, which he missed when he was overseas. Normally he would jog but today that is beyond him, so instead he strolls along, admiring the clouds floating across the bay and the shells washed up on the shore. The beach is nearly deserted and he keeps his distance from the others, as it is the only time when he is truly alone, when he can regenerate for the working week. Besides, he is badly overweight.

In summer he swims out to the lifebuoy, a hundred yards from shore. Washed in from the Southern Ocean, the water is cold even at this time of year. He wades into the shallows, then stops. Perhaps it is unwise to swim until he has seen a doctor. But Charles has had these doubts before and things have been fine, so he forces himself to ignore them; he will not surrender yet again to his anxieties. He counts to three and dives in.

The shock leaves him breathless – his lungs ache, his legs cramp, his hands are numb. But he imagines that he is twenty or thirty years younger, he pictures himself in his prime, and eventually he strikes a decent rhythm. It is only when he is well out from shore, approaching the lifebuoy, that he realises there is something wrong and he should turn around. The heartburn has intensified into pain like nothing else he has experienced, shooting from his chest down through his arms. It could not be worse if he were impaled upon a submerged metal stake.

Must be a heart attack: strange, that he has such clear awareness. More than panic, his first reaction is surprise that death, that old jester, has caught him here on his favourite beach. He had never expected this. It is a glorious morning, not a breath of wind. All around, the smooth grey water mirrors the reflection of the sky: so benign, oblivious.

It is tempting not to struggle, as every movement sharpens the pain. Gasping, he forces himself to swim for shore, but his arms do not respond, as though they are encased in plaster. The water is alive, a malign organism which wraps its tentacles around him and drags him beneath the waves. Strands of seaweed catch his toes but it is too deep to stand on firm ground. Only instinct drives him to the shore – it is more compulsion than a matter of will.

His heart is hammering, must surely expire, and there is almost comfort in the thought that he cannot struggle much longer. His eyes are barely level with the surface and now it seems he is caught in a filthy oil slick. He cries for help but his lungs fill with water. He coughs it back up, then swallows more again. Why will he not allow himself to drown, when from what he has heard it is a peaceful death and he has nothing to fear?

His last prayer was more than forty years ago, and it went unanswered, so there is no use trying again. He can see his home in the distance: the marquee in the garden, his yacht at anchor. It is all like a simple parable. The rich man, the fat man, gets his comeuppance. Absurd, that he will be found dead wearing nothing but Speedos – it almost makes him laugh.

A confusing rush of images. Running across a field, so fast he barely touches the ground. His first taste of lemonade. Mother wearing a red dress. Father laid out in a coffin. The children fighting for his affections. Trish complaining that he is late home from work. Fleetingly, it occurs to him that they are just clichés.

He has regrets. He has worked so hard, for so long, that he might as well have died at thirty. For years he has planned to retire, to bask in the golden afterglow that has long beckoned – with the promise of long walks at his farm, nestled in the alpine foothills, and of declining into old age surrounded by family and friends. But, given his lifestyle, death at fifty-nine should not be unexpected, and he cannot complain that it is unfair. For some time, after all, he has had morbid thoughts, as he is mindful that his father and grandfather both died young. And yet it does not seem long ago that he buried his father. In no time at all his own children will be older than him.

His lungs are now swollen with seawater. A curious sensation: that there is no longer any air left in his body, that he is so permeated with water he can neither sink nor float, but must drift suspended like a jellyfish beneath the surface.

He wonders whether this is the time for an offering to lighten his soul. The usual things occur to him: that he can dispose of his house, his cars, all his money. What use are they to him now? They only serve to remind him of that lesson from Sunday school years ago, about the eye of the needle. He wonders why his parents forced him to go to church – even then he was aware that he came from wealth, and the story had disturbed him; now its simple truth resonates. What a struggle it has been for him to be a decent citizen. Even now, when his mind is clouding over,when he is losing sense of who he is, there is no peace.

II

CHARLES WAKES, AND it seems as though the sun is in his eyes. Except that it’s not the sun, but the brass nameplate of a nurse leaning over him.

‘You’ve been asleep a while, Mr Bradshaw.’

He cannot answer because he is breathing through a mask. Pinned to his back, tubes feeding into his wrists, he is as helpless as an upturned beetle. He rolls his eyes backwards, then sideways, and in his sedated daze he calmly observes – and accepts – the four walls of a hospital ward.

The effort is too much; he falls asleep. This time, when he wakes, Trish is sitting beside him. He can also make out the blurred outlines of his children: Jeremy leaning against the wall, hands stuffed in his pockets; Rebecca carrying flowers. All the way from the country – what is she doing here? It does not yet occur to him that anything in particular has happened. He can remember the party, that he drank too much whisky. Did he faint from heat exhaustion? The nurse must be able to read his confusion, and tells him that he has had surgery. She speaks slowly, no doubt careful not to alarm him, while she reads his pulse. But although he understands her words, and what they mean, he is too drugged to care and dozes off.

When he wakes again there is another visitor. A young man, vaguely familiar – tall, dark eyes, benevolent smile. ‘This is Jonathan,’ says the nurse. Her words are distant, like she is calling to him from another room. ‘He swam out to reach you, dragged you into shore, and gave you CPR.’

He points to his chest, then his watch; somehow she understands. ‘How long had your heart stopped? We don’t know,’ she says. ‘He caught you just in time.’

‘Charlie,’ says Trish, with tears in her eyes, ‘we thought we’d lost you.’

He remains on a strict regimen of morphine and antibiotics. Day and night he is trapped in the ward. He has no shame when nurses undress him, wash him, or adjust his catheter – or when he soils his bed. Nothing matters anymore, except how to deal with the pain, and each time the morphine wears off he presses the buzzer and waits for help, curling up his fingers and toes. When the nurse arrives and doses him up again, he has the sensation of being lulled to sleep, as though by a gentle swell on his yacht.

In his lucid moments he tries to remember what happened to him on the beach. Images float past – the lifebuoy, the chill waters, the outline of the clouds overhead. It is only in his dreams, though, that he can remember the moments when his heart had stopped, when he was lost. And through his dreams, he realises that what occurred was more profound, more unsettling, than just a heart attack.

He has heard of near-death experiences, of drifting towards the shining light, but he is not sure whether this is what happened, whether he can recall the lost time itself or only the shadow which it casts. It is not really a memory, but more a belief about what occurred in those moments which evolves with every dream, with every day.

It first occurred to him that something out of the ordinary had happened shortly after the operation. He had an intense dream in which he viewed, from high above, his lifeless body as it floated on the waves, rolling from side to side. He saw Jonathan charge into the water to retrieve him, drag him back to shore, pound on his chest, give mouth to mouth, cry out for an ambulance. He saw a small group of onlookers standing around, not sure how to react. One of them even turned away to answer his phone. And all the while Charles was drifting, drifting further away, no longer caring about his corpse, turning away towards the sun and the distant voices calling to him. But there was one voice warning him away. It was a voice telling him he had been weighed and found wanting, that he was not welcome in the afterlife in his rough, unformed state.

The dream recurs, and each time it reveals another telling detail. It is so vivid that when he wakes, for a moment he forgets where he is.

As he floats about five yards off the ground he listens to the onlookers. Hale and wealthy burghers of Brighton, walking their dogs on the beach on a summer morning. They could hardly have expected this sad encounter, and cannot be judged for their callous disinterest.

‘I’m heading up to Noosa tomorrow,’ says one of the men: short, with a round face. ‘What about you, got any holidays coming up?’

His friend is tall and lean, with a bristling moustache, and what may be a hairpiece. He looks like he spends time in the gym. ‘No, we’ve had to cancel our trip. I can’t get leave.’

‘Hard, isn’t it, juggling work and family?’

Their dogs are agitated by the sudden halt to their constitutional. They sniff each other’s backsides, strain at their leashes, have no interest in the spectacle. Meanwhile Jonathan persists with giving CPR to that body on the sand.

‘The kid should be careful,’ says the short man. ‘You can catch AIDS if you’re not careful.’

‘Don’t worry, lad,’ calls out the other man. ‘He’s gone. Nothing more you can do.’

‘Hang on a minute.’ The short man takes out a cigarette. ‘Isn’t that Charlie Bradshaw?’

‘So it is. Hey Mal, I thought you’d given up the fags?’

‘Got to die of something.’ Mal lights up. ‘You know, Charlie Bradshaw was worth more than half a billion. Won’t be taking that with him, where he’s going.’

‘He’ll have a few questions to answer, that’s for sure. Couldn’t lie straight in bed, Charlie. Corrupt as they come, from what I’ve heard.’

‘Yeah – that so-called philanthropy, you know it’s just bullshit, don’t you? Just another tax dodge.’ Mal reflects, enjoys his smoke, posturing like one of the little folk who dream of real wealth. ‘Those blokes,’ he adds, ‘all of them, they have it coming.’

Of course, Charles has no idea whether this is what happened, or whether his mind has played tricks on him. Perhaps it doesn’t matter. Now that he is laid up in his hospital bed, he has no anger or indignation towards these men who may have watched him fighting for his life. Over the years, he has survived tax audits and fraud inquiries, even a Royal Commission. He has stopped reading articles about himself in the papers. Always the same line of attack, from the same handful of left-wing journalists. They are not convinced by his generosity; they call him a dinosaur and accuse him of being a throwback to the days of Robert Menzies. They refer to ethics and corporate social responsibility. Easy for them to criticise. He runs a business and at times he must act swiftly, decisively, even ruthlessly. When a tribe of hundreds of breadwinners depends on him, the odd unscrupulous act is justified. The greatest good for the silent majority.

He has never made time for meditation, compressed what little time he had for introspection into a few brief moments every week. If he had turned his mind to overriding questions, he may have found room in his heart for belief, but at this stage of his life it would be insincere. He is certain there must be a better explanation for these dreams than the divine, or the paranormal, but still they trouble him. Even when he is awake he has thoughts that have never occurred to him before: about the damage he has done, over the years, to his rivals. Questions plague him about how to make amends, for which he has no answers. It is as if he is looking at familiar surrounds from a great distance, through the wrong end of a telescope.

Every morning the nurse brings him all the daily newspapers. It is a pointless routine. He does not have the energy to put on his glasses and read the small print, let alone to sit up and turn the pages.

A defining characteristic of his illness is that there is no longer a sharp distinction between sleep and his waking state. They blur into each other, and at times he is confused as to when one begins and the other ends. He can tell them apart only with hindsight. There are the pleasant dreams, from which he is reluctant to awake to the reality of the white walls of his hospital ward. Then there are the other, more sinister dreams, when it seems as though he is drowning, is caught suspended between the waves and the strands of seaweed which reach up for his dangling limbs, when through his dying eyes he can just make out a shaft of sunlight above the surface. Still, he would not call them nightmares, and he is reluctant to wake from them, because in those dreams there is no fear, only a quiet, disturbed beauty.

There are cards and flowers in his room, but he does not have as many visitors as he would have expected. There are some notable absences. This does not trouble him; he knows that his friends have their own private struggles. Some are bankrupt and others are divorced, living in apartments littered with beer cartons. Others have lost children in accidents or to disease. With hindsight, he knows that he did not himself make enough effort to console them, and that may be why they do not offer him support. Besides, there is nothing remarkable or even unfortunate about a fifty-nine-year-old having a heart attack – it is the natural order of things. Even all these drugs and procedures do not sit easily with his idea of fate. In one sense, it seems as though he is already dead, that all the time since he drowned belongs not to him, but to some other shadow which has been dragged from the waves.

The doctors tell him he is improving, but also remind him that there is nothing routine about open-heart surgery. No sooner than when the pain begins to ease, and he is less dependant on morphine, a virulent infection takes hold. His temperature soars; the nurse taps the thermometer with disbelief. He stares at the name tag dangling from her breast. Agnes. Unusual, but somehow familiar. He once slept with a girl called Agnes – or was it Agnetha? Hard to be sure. All he can remember is that the girl was slightly cross-eyed, and had a gap between her front teeth. So does this nurse. Could it be one of those unhappy coincidences? If it is her, there is no chance she would recognise him in this humiliating state. Thick, stringy mucus dribbles from the corners of his mouth. His sheets are drenched with yellow sweat. He throws up the mouthful he ate for supper, covering his bedclothes. But he no longer cares. It is of no concern to him that he must look and smell repulsive, that she must wear latex gloves to clean him, to help him piss into a bottle. Strange, how easily he submits.

By evening, he is stunned by the violence of the infection; it lays him out quivering, like a fish knocked senseless by the flat of the angler’s knife. A young Greek doctor examines him, then the nurse plunges yet another needle into his forearm, and pumps him with antibiotics and a sedative to allow him some rest. He stares at the corner of the room until the sharp outlines begin to blur. Once again he does not know if he is awake, or dreaming.

He is sitting on the hospital bed, flowers lined three-deep on the bench, as he is visited by friends and family. At first it seems normal enough: he shares a joke with Rebecca; Trish reminds him of the day they went to the market and brought home some goldfish. Jeremy says he’s lost interest in business, wants to be a pilot. They shake hands. ‘Son, I don’t mind what you do.’ Of course, it is a relief that Jeremy will not be able to ruin his lifetime’s work.

His mother appears. She walks without her stick, no trace of the bent spine that cursed her final years. They chat about raising children. He tells her that Jeremy got into a fight and has been sent home from school.

But she has been dead for many years.

And then there is a stranger, a young man dressed in a severe black suit, like he is on the way to a funeral. Bible Belt conservative. Earnestly, he whispers to the charge nurse, as though he wants to be sure he has found the right room. He slinks across to the foot of the bed, extends a spidery hand to the chart, slowly turns each page. A bookish sort, gaunt, with a pigeon chest. There is a sharp vertical crease in his brow, like his skull has been split in half and stitched back together. His eyes are set deep in their sockets: watching, judging. He is followed by a draft.

‘Who are you? What do you want?’

‘You know me,’ the stranger replies in a curious, nasal voice. He shuffles around, favouring. . .