On Smoking

My uncle died at the weekend. He had emphysema and pulmonary oedema and for the last three years had been kept alive by an oxygen cylinder which stood in the corner of his bedroom. He was sixty-four. Although I had seen him rarely since I moved to Sydney, I remember him as a good-humoured man who loved cricket and tennis, and wore sports shirts and navy blazers. In every photograph I’ve seen of him he is tanned with a cigarette burning between his fingers.

When I was eleven he flew down to Hobart to star in an advertisement shot at one of the newer hotels overlooking the river. For years after, whenever that ad appeared on television, my sisters and I would run in to watch Uncle Arch on the small screen. We saw him chatting to a younger woman with shiny lipstick and a headful of gorgeous hair. Although we must have seen that ad a dozen times, I don’t recall my uncle ever talking, only the orchestra music playing, while he flips open a pack of Benson and Hedges, peels off the silver foil, and the woman’s long manicured fingers reach over the cocktails to ease out a cigarette. The woman slides it between her shiny red lips, a waiter appears alongside and with a click of his lighter fires both their cigar­ettes. My uncle and this woman inhale deeply, smiling at each other with the satisfaction of shared pleasure.

It was simple but effective advertising I guess, for both my sisters and I took up smoking early. I started on Marlboros at thirteen and then moved up to Viscounts at fourteen. For a while I tried Courtleighs. I bought an imitation silver cigarette case from Coles and used to keep my ration in it until I lost the case at football practice. In my last year of high school I began smoking a pipe at the weekends and, though it seems hard to believe now, none of the other boys found the sight of a fifteen-year-old puffing away on a clay pipe strange. It was only when my tongue developed blisters from the cracked stem that I gave the pipe away to a younger kid down the road and went back to buying cigarettes or begging them from relatives. All my friends smoked and there was a serious edge to our habit as if this were a secret duty imposed on us by the adult world.

When I moved to Sydney to live I dropped in to visit my uncle one time. He was out the front of his unit mowing his lawn and the smell of cut grass hung in the air. For some reason he didn’t invite me indoors; he had no children and a much younger wife, and I was driving an old yellow Holden with a mattress in the back. We leaned our elbows on his low wooden fence and talked a little and, as I was about to leave, my uncle, happy that his only nephew had come to visit, went inside and came out with a carton of Benson and Hedges. He tore open that carton and pressed two packs of cigarettes into my hands and said how great it was to see me, and if I phoned in advance next time, maybe we could do something.

My father flew up for the funeral on Monday. I found him standing at the carousel waiting for his piece of luggage, a curl of blue smoke drifting over his right shoulder. In the car I said to him, ‘I thought you’d given up smoking.’

‘I have,’ he said.

‘Didn’t I see you smoking back at the terminal?

‘Not me, you didn’t.’ My father gave his head a firm shake. ‘I haven’t touched a cigarette in years.’

I wasn’t sure now if I had actually seen the cigarette in his hand or just imagined it. We drove to the crematorium in silence, while I glanced over at him from time to time as if I might catch him out. When I first quit cigarettes ten years ago the first thing I re-discovered was the power of smell. I could detect cigarette smoke in my father’s sweat and in his hair and clothes. Even in the toilet after he’d used it. At the crematorium my father placed a framed photograph of his brother in police uniform on top of the sealed coffin. Orchestra music started playing and the coffin disappeared through a curtain. Standing in the grey light afterwards, I watched my father comfort his brother’s wife. She called me over and took off her sun-glasses and looked me up and down. She told me how pleased she was to see me, that my uncle used to talk about me sometimes, tell her I was a lot like him. She gave my arm a squeeze and I went and stood over with the line of great aunts and distant cousins underneath the flowering bottle brushes.

The undertaker, a large man dressed in black, with shiny oiled hair parted down the middle, took out a pack from his inside pocket, placed a cigarette in the corner of his mouth and lit it urgently. I watched the muscles on his face relax as he stared off down the road. He took two quick drags, dropped the cigarette half-finished onto the path and crushed it out with the heel of his boot. I went over and asked if he had a spare cigarette. He looked at me guiltily, as if I’d caught him out.

‘I’ve given up,’ I explained.

He whipped out his pack. It was red and white and I caught the words WARNING SMOKING CAUSES before he palmed it back into his pocket. He handed me a single cigarette. ‘Spose you need a light?’ But I shook my head, told him I’d smoke it later. I went back and stood under the bottle brushes with the thin cylinder of paper and tobacco enclosed in my hand. I looked around and when no-one was watching I brought that cigarette up to my mouth, pushed the filter in between my lips, let it hang there. Staring down at a bend in the road, I realised what I missed most about smoking – it wasn’t the kick as your lungs filled with nicotine, or the wisps of blue smoke trailing after your fingers, or even the taste – it was the way you could stand and stare at a bush, a rock, or nothing at all, and get lost in the moment. That never happens to me now. A light rain was falling, the tall trees were heavy against the sky and mourners began moving towards their cars. I watched them go. I took the unlit cigarette from my mouth, placed it in my shirt pocket and walked across the gravel to the emptied car park. I felt a sense of loss that both my uncle and my days of smoking were gone. My father was waiting by the passenger’s door, impatient, checking his watch. ‘Thought you’d given up,’ he said.

‘I have.’

‘Didn’t I see you smoking over by those trees?’

‘Not me, you didn’t.’ And I climbed into the car beside him.