When Cyclone Nora crosses the coast, it rips right through the dunes. Vacuums them up and carries them off. Doesn’t bring much rain. Just the wind that blows everything apart and rams it home. Before it hits, they manage to tape up the windows and hide in the bathroom with a mattress and the dogs.
The next morning, it takes them nine hours to clear a path and get out to the far paddock. As they pull up at the gate, Jules sees them first. The parts are familiar, but the picture’s wrong. They’re lined up on their sides, legs stuck straight out sideways like overturned picnic tables. Blown over like statues, half buried by drifts. Ballooning bellies with sand sloped up. Peeled-pink noses and scalded ends of teats, shedding skin in the sun, too dry for flies to bother.
‘Stupid animals,’ says Mick. ‘Gonna need a bulldozer to bury them.’
Jules doesn’t answer. She just stares at the back of his thick, sunburnt neck and wishes that, for once in his life, he’d shut his fucking mouth.
Blurred Edges
You will go through a metal detector on your way in. Your bags will be searched for contraband. Opened packs of cigarettes will be sealed with tape. Do not bring anything in for the prisoners. Do not take anything out for them—packages, letters, messages. Do not leave the theatre. If you need to go to the toilet or get changed, call a guard to accompany you. If at any time you feel unsafe, call a guard. If you need anything at all, call a guard. Hope the audition goes well. Have a nice evening.
As you enter the empty theatre, one of the three men in blue overalls seated on the plastic chairs removes his cap and stands up. The guard walks you over to the men and introduces you. The other two stand and shake your hand.
‘Phil,’ says the tall, thin one.
‘Gino,’ says the one with tight black curls and a scar on his chin.
‘Kevin,’ says the oldest one, the one who’d stood up, with pale green eyes and deep wrinkles in his forehead.
After they get you to read for the part and tell you you’ve got the role, Phil asks you what you do.
‘I’m a student. At La Trobe.’
‘I was at La Trobe once,’ he says.
‘Yeah? What did you do?’
‘Held up the State Bank.’
You shake your head and smile, but that’s when it hits you. Where you are. Despite the metal detector at the entrance, the prison blues and the guards standing by the door, it had started to feel like just another audition.
‘I’ve given up all that now,’ says Phil. Thirteen years. Nine years non-parole. Should be out next year, he hopes. ‘You only get to be in A Division for good behaviour,’ he explains, ‘and you have to earn your place in the theatre group.’ He sounds proud. This is his eighth year and he’s had his share of lead roles.
* * *
During the first week of rehearsals, you try to memorise the names of all the cast members. Besides Phil, Gino and Kevin, there’s Harry, Rocky, Sooty, Dave and Old Paddy. The others you can’t remember. You don’t ask them what they’re in for, and they don’t bring it up. One of the other girls, Tula, did a play with them last year, so she knows. On the way home in the car, she tells you to guess. You mostly get them wrong. You’d never have picked the murderers and rapists, especially Kevin and Ian. They’re not at all what you would have imagined. So respectful and polite. No doubt because they’ve had so long to practise being something else in here.
It’s only since he’s been in here that Phil’s discovered his hidden talent. He’s known as quite an artist now. He draws portraits in 2B pencil. Some of fellow inmates; some of famous people from the papers. One night during the third week of rehearsals, you talk down in front of the stage while the set guys install the asylum walls.
‘So, have you got a boyfriend?’ he asks.
‘Yeah, but it’s not that serious,’ you reply, looking up at the fluorescent lights hanging by chains from the ceiling. ‘I don’t think I’ll stay with him much longer.’ He nods and you change the subject. You tell him you want to apply to art school. He’s never studied; just taught himself with books. In here he does mainly faces, but his real talent is for nudes.
‘Yeah, right.’ You laugh.
‘No, serious,’ he says and you realise that he is. He’s copied some from art books he’s borrowed from the library and done a few from Playboy, but the poses aren’t real natural and the lighting is too flat. He wants to draw you nude.
‘Nothing dirty,’ he swears. ‘I’m like your big bruvver, Trish. I don’t think of you that way.’
You look hard into his eyes, but see no trace of mocking.
‘Can’t you just imagine a woman?’
‘It’s not the same,’ he says. ‘You need to see how the shadows fall; where they end and the light begins.’
He explains he’s read Leonardo da Vinci, who filled six notebooks with his analyses on that one subject. The secret, da Vinci said, was in the blurred edges of shadows. He lends you his book from the A Division library—Leonardo’s Notebooks: Volume One. He’s bookmarked the sections on light and shade. In the middle of the book are a dozen pages of glossy plates with details of paintings and drawings. You look at them closely, examining the boundaries between black and white. Phil’s underlined a sentence: Make the end of it fading into light, seeming to have no end. The five-hundred-year-old instructions make the hairs on your arms stand up.
During another rehearsal, you comment on Phil’s red socks.
‘They’re my own little act of rebellion,’ he says. ‘Against the prison blues. Drives the screws crazy ’cos there’s bugger all they can do. My jocks are red too. Wanna see?’
‘Back off, Phil.’ You smile. ‘Not very brotherly of you!’
‘You obviously don’t have big brothers,’ he says, chuckling.
* * *
As there are only four girls for five female parts, you have to play two roles. When you start the dress rehearsals, you realise it won’t be easy. There’s a two-minute costume change between coming off as the nurse and climbing back in the window as a hooker. So there’s no time to go anywhere. Just a two-by-one-and-a-half-metre space backstage.
There’s a slow fade to black at the end of the scene and you move quickly off, a hushed proximity of bodies as the actors exit the stage and press into the narrow wings. The two prisoners who are backstage with you and Tula turn their backs and face the wall. In the shaded backstage light, you unpin the nurse’s hat and pull your hair from its bun. Quietly you unzip the stiff white uniform and drop it to the floor. As you step out of it, you put your arms up in the air and Tula, who plays the other hooker, pulls the black dress over your head. The cold of the satin against your naked torso makes you shiver. You hope your nipples won’t show too much. The fishnet stockings are tucked into your nurse’s shoes, and you slide them up your legs and attach them to suspenders. You slip on pink stilettos and use a small mirror hung on the wall to apply bright red lipstick and a beauty spot.
While you’re dressing, you try not to stare at the prisoners’ backs. You never hear a sound from them. Can’t even hear them breathe. Maybe they’re holding their breath. You imagine if the guards knew, they wouldn’t be too happy. You know one’s in for rape. The other you’re not sure. Drug trafficking, you think. And you’re never sure if the mirror hung below the light gives them a view of the whole thing or not. You’ve decided it’s not worth wondering about.
* * *
One night during the last week of rehearsals, you take a break while the lighting guys run through their cues. You’ve brought in some sketches you’ve done to show Phil. Seated on the edge of the stage, he examines them in silence. The stage lights fade and the blue moonlight filter comes up on the back wall. You watch Phil’s face. His light brown hair is glowing blue. As he chews the inside of his cheek, you look for signs of a reaction. The house lights dim and now your faces are in darkness as the stage lights come back up. Phil turns and places the sketchpad on the stage between the two of you. The individual pencil strokes show more than
you would want.
Finally, Phil points to a study of an arm and says, ‘Just there. See there?’ He looks up at your eyes. ‘You’ve got the shadow right. On the inside of the forearm. That’s good. That’s really good.’ Your eyes follow his finger tracing the edge of the shadow and you feel the curve of the flesh beneath his finger, sure as if you were touching it yourself.
* * *
The audience for opening night is the rest of the A Division prisoners. Unlike the prisoner actors and crew, they haven’t been with you and the other girls every night for the ten weeks of rehearsals. They’ve heard about you, though, and are impatient for the play to start. Like a line from a poem they’ve recited your names: Sandra, Tula, Trish and Jen. Sandra, Tula, Trish and Jen. They’ll know which one is which from the descriptions they’ve been hearing. Blonde hair, short hair, black hair, tits.
There’s a bit of a hold-up, problems with the lighting, and the audience gets restless. From backstage, the slow clap is amusing, but when the foot-stomping starts and the whole stage is shaking, your smile fades. As soon as you and the other girls come on stage, the wolf-whistles start. Just a few at first, with the odd crude comment. You try not to see them but the front row is so close to the stage you can smell their body odour. From the gloom beyond the edge, their upturned eyes pick up the glint of the stage lights.
Half way through act two, when Tula and you climb in through the window as prostitutes, your short dresses riding up and revealing tops of thighs below suspender belts, the prisoners go wild. The guards are on edge as they scream and stomp and jump up from their seats. The scene is a write-off. Not a word of dialogue is heard until Nurse Ratched announces that Billy’s killed himself. Then there’s absolute silence for the lobotomy scene and after for the suffocating. The other actors don’t know what to think. Do they hate it? Do they get it? When the Chief rips out the heavy marble washstand, smashes it through the window and escapes, they erupt. They’re cheering and screaming and stomping their feet. The guards just let it roll, like a storm front that’ll pass.
* * *
For the rest of the run, the audience comes in from the outside. Two hundred people a night. Families, friends, but just plain theatre-lovers too. At the end of the play, the public has thirty minutes to mingle with the men before the guards call ‘Time!’ and they’ll all be ushered out.
Half a precious hour for the couples to catch up. Some are seated in dark corners, noses touching ears, whispering the things that are censored from the letters. Some are eating Boston bun, coconut stuck to their lips while talking kids and cars and bills. In front of the stage, you and Sandra talk to some of the lighting men. Phil comes over to introduce Cheryl.
‘Hey, Trish. I’d like you to meet the love of my life.’
Cheryl laughs and squeezes Phil’s arm.
‘It’s lovely to finally meet you,’ you say. ‘Phil’s told me so much about you.’
‘Don’t believe a word of it,’ says Cheryl, winking.
‘Well, I can’t very well tell her the truth about you, can I,’ says Phil.
‘What truth?’ asks Cheryl.
‘That you’re a crazy bitch.’
‘Have to be crazy to agree to marry you.’
Phil holds his fist up in front of his face. ‘You’ll get yours, woman.’
You look from one to the other and smile at their well-worn routine. Phil puts his coffee down on the stage and looks over at the guards chatting by the door.
‘Right, sorry to love you and leave you, but we’ve got some dirty business to attend to.’ He takes Cheryl’s hand and leads her to the far side of the stage, where there’s a gap for storing the chairs after the play. After one last glance at the guards, they crawl under the stage.
Sandra raises her eyebrows and says, ‘Unofficial conjugal visit.’ You stand a metre away from the edge of the stage with a small group of prisoners and guests. You hold your polystyrene cups of tea and assorted cream biscuits, talking loudly to cover the noises coming from underneath. Tomorrow night it’s Dave and Carol’s turn.
* * *
On the last night of the play, after the audience has left, there’s a special celebration for all the cast and crew. Thirty extra minutes for a cake and presents and goodbyes. The men have all put in some money and have bought each girl a Walkman. You and the other girls have wrapped a big box filled with cartons of cigarettes and chocolate bars. It’ll be divided up among the men tomorrow. The guards bring a Polaroid camera, to take a shot of the cast. Everyone in front of the stage with their costumes on. One photo for each of the girls and one for the men. You stand around with the men, shaking the black squares and watching the images appear. Everyone laughs at Old Paddy’s red face, and Harry giving Gino bunny ears.
Phil takes you aside and gives you a pencil portrait of himself that he’s done in the mirror in his cell. He looks a little odd, you think, because he’s back to front, less self-assured. Maybe a little sadder.
‘That way you won’t forget my ugly mug,’ he says.
‘Bugger.’ You smile. ‘Thought I’d seen the last of you.’
When the guards say it’s time to wind things up, you say you’ll get changed into your own clothes and then come back to say goodbye. You go to get your travel bag from the corner, while the men scoff down the remaining cake. The guards hold the garbage bags and the men throw in paper plates and plastic forks.
One guard holds open the door and escorts you and the other girls to get changed in the empty storerooms by the library. Jen and Sandra share one room and you and Tula take the other. When the heavy door clicks shut behind you, you put your bag down on the floor and reach in, holding a finger up to your lips. Tula frowns and mouths, ‘What?’ You pull out the Polaroid camera, bite your lip and smile. You pass it to Tula and start to get undressed. Your hair unfurls from its bun as you unpin the nurse’s cap. The white uniform is unzipped and laid out flat on the brown floor tiles. You unclip your bra and place it on top of your bag. Back turned, you slide your underpants down, step out of them and place them on top of your bra. Tula watches without saying a word, knowing the guard is just metres away. You kneel down and lie back on the white uniform, one leg straight out, the other leg bent and raised. You lean on an elbow, one hand behind your head, the other on your hip. Your hair falls forward across one shoulder and you look straight up at the camera. ‘Reclining nude,’ you whisper. Tula raises the camera to her eye, frames the shot, and pushes the button. The brightness of the flash blinds you for a moment and the sound of the film squeezing out from the camera resonates in the empty storeroom. You both hold your breath and stare at the door, waiting for the guard to knock and ask what’s going on. You get to your knees and pull the shiny black square from the slot. You hold it by a corner and shake. As the black starts giving way to light, you take the Leonardo book from your bag and slip the photo between two glossy plates without looking at the image. When you are both dressed, you open the door and smile at the guard.
‘Been a good season,’ he says. ‘Full house every night.’
‘Yep,’ says Tula.
* * *
Back in the theatre, the seats have been stacked away and the stage props have been pushed up against the back wall of the set. The men line up to say goodbye, shuffling from foot to foot, looking smaller in the empty space than they had up on the stage. Tula, Sandra, Jen and you kiss their cheeks and try not to offend by pulling too quickly out of the tight bear hugs.
The guards say, ‘Time to go, ladies,’ and everyone drifts towards the door. The men shuffle forward, heads down, the odd jaw clenched to hold back tears. You slow till Phil is by your side, just in front of the door. You pull the Leonardo book from your bag and hand it to him.
‘Almost forgot to give this back. I loved it. Thanks.’ You smile at the guard. ‘It’s from the library.’
The guard nods. ‘Yep. No worries.’
‘I’ll miss you, little sis,’ says Phil.
‘I know,’ you say
. ‘Me too.’
You all sign out for the last time and come out through the main door. You hug under the dim yellow light of the entry, laughing at your tears and wiping away each other’s smudged mascara. When the final goodbyes are done, you all separate and walk off towards cars, parked a little way further along the street.
Your boyfriend is waiting in his car in the 7-Eleven car park across the road. He flashes his lights and you spot him, parked against a wall, away from the fluorescent haze. As you walk towards the car, he starts the engine and turns the headlights to high-beam. The glare is blinding. You stop and stand, your eyes watering. Jerk, you think. With both hands up in front of your eyes, you turn your back to the car and face the floodlit bluestone walls and the grey roller door of the prison.
The night is mild for August, but your arms are covered in goose bumps and your legs are trembling slightly. Your boyfriend beeps his horn, but you ignore him and stand dead still. With the headlights right behind you, the shadow you cast is enormous.
You trace it along its length as it reaches out across the car park, black on the bitumen, then grey on the footpath. As it melts into the road, you follow it with your eyes. You can’t see exactly where it ends, but you squint and strain to see its edges as it fades away and blurs into the darkness at the bottom of the thick grey wall.
Precautions
As soon as the doors wheeze open, she knows she won’t be able to stand it. Same mouthwash-green curtains. Same pastel-print flowers on the walls. Same dismal scent of sleeplessness.
‘I’ll leave you to it then,’ she tells her father. ‘You’ll need your rest.’
‘Fine. Someone will be along soon, I guess.’
She hitches her handbag up on her shoulder.
‘I’ve really got to run. Hospital odours make me nauseous,’ she says. ‘I’ll be late getting Penny from kinder.’
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