Limestone Man

by Robert Minhinnick

  So what were you doing in ’76? asked Mina.

  Good question. Trying to work out all the punk stuff. Still listening with Gil and those to bands who played twenty-minute drum solos. Deciding I was good at art history, and that maybe I should be a lecturer. See, I was delusional even then…

  And what happened?

  Applied for jobs but they didn’t quite … take. In the meantime, I decided to go back to The Works. To tide me over while I waited.

  That carbon paper job?

  It paid, love. Dad was right. Dead end work like that has an effect. It’s comforting, you’re never challenged. You understand exactly what the job means. Often it means nothing.

  After college, I just walked into The Works one Monday morning. They said welcome back, what took you so long? It was that easy.

  And you stayed for…

  Four years. And eleven months.

  Burning paper?

  Look, it was a real job. Ridiculously well paid. After a while I moved to other duties, but, yeah, they were all pretty menial. Compared to history of art lecturing. Which I never did. Or compared to studying. Or teaching. Which I was good at.

  After a while there was a clerical job on offer at The Works and I breezed in. Too bloody easily.

  A month later I remember the department’s Christmas party, trying the Grand Quiz. One of the questions was about the jobs people did before they became famous.

  You know, like Kenny Everett, the disc jockey, working in a bakery. He used to scrape burned sausage rolls off the baking tins. These days people haven’t a clue who Kenny Everett is. Such is fame.

  Wanted to be famous did you? said Mina.

  Parry paused. Didn’t we all. Or should I say don’t we all? And isn’t that the trouble? We’ve been infected by the sickness.

  And then you trained as a teacher?

  Eventually. Could have stayed at The Works. They liked me there. But teacher training seemed the better bet.

  You were all teachers, you lot, said Mina. That John Vine, Gil, Sian. All bleeding the country dry with your pensions.

  It’s different for the rest of us, she added. I’ll be in Basement Booze till it closes. Which children, is only three months away. You’re not supposed to know. After that, everything’s a mess. Look, how old am I?

  Thirty-two, said Fflint, through his glass.

  Not so bloody old I won’t have to try the Job Centre soon. Now they’ve changed the pension dates.

  So, said Mina, it’ll all be meaningless retraining. Then travelling to somewhere that’s ninety minutes away by public transport. Then ninety back. It scares me.

  That’s why I’ve started Badfinger, said Parry. Christ, some places have to stay open. Caib Street’s a disaster area.

  But you don’t pay, do you? said Fflint. You’re running on volunteers. What’s the good of that?

  We offer expenses, insisted Parry. And listen, we’re providing the experience of work, the community of work.

  Yeah, I know the shop’s small, he went on. But all it needs is vision. Okay, and a business plan. Don’t tell me I should have stayed burning carbon.

  Look, every record and poster in Badfinger has its own story. What I say to people like Glan and Serene is, learn that story. Make it your own. Come on, let’s see Badfinger thrive!

  Like your place in Oz? said Fflint.

  Anyway, said Parry, you should try and catch Storm Boy somewhere. It’s set in The Coorong. All sand bars and pelican beaks.

  Now, The Coorong’s near where I lived in Goolwa. The pelicans in the film had names. One died only recently in Adelaide Zoo.

  I think it was on one afternoon, said Mina. When I had flu.

  But you asked about the weather, shrugged Parry. That summer was so hot, we even called off school sports events. Rarely done over there. Then autumn stayed dry and everything was … ominous. It was one dry year after another in a disastrous series of dry years.

  Libby used to tell me how worried everyone was. Because she was worried herself. But I was obsessed with starting Hey Bulldog. With finding stock, organising volunteer rotas and then rehearsals for The Black Cockatoos.

  So it didn’t really register with me. The weather, I mean. Yes, the whole state had become arid. A drought’s not unnatural in South Australia. But I had to learn a drought can last years. And that’s when it dawned on me that things were bad. That the country was in a crisis. But how was I to know? I’d arrived almost at the end of everything.

  III

  By then the ground was parched. Withered, I suppose. The look of a famished land.

  Rain was expected, but rain wouldn’t fall. Simply would not fall. And everyone was desperate for rain.

  It was like an illness, a starvation of rain. People were rain-sick, cattle were crazed. It was the rain famine and I’d turned up in the middle. But as I said, it was difficult to tell, being an alien there. Because sometimes I felt an intruder, trespassing in another life. Which it was. Another life.

  When it was windy there was too much dust. I remember the dust on the counter at Hey Bulldog. I could write my name, clean it off, then write that name again an hour later. Which meant dust all over the stock.

  There was dust in my eyes and dust in my throat. Veils of dust drifting down the dirt roads around Goolwa. Some dust red, some dust grey. Riverbeds had disintegrated into dust. And that dust turned the sunset purple. Yes, tall indigo skies. Like a psychedelic album cover.

  And you know, I could taste that dust on my tongue and the same dust sharp in my fillings. Ever seen a young trout with those red stipples on its belly? Or a foxhound with red sprockles on its paws? I looked like that trout at the end. A white man in a white shirt painted with crimson dust. Only this dust was brick-red.

  We used to catch trout in Caib stream when I was a kid. Silver and red those trout. I can still remember tickling trout in the shallows.

  IV

  I’d already decided that anything was possible in that country. I spent my life being amazed. Yet though I depended on Lulu to tell me things, weather was unimportant to her.

  For months, I was obsessed with the shop. Or the idea of Hey Bulldog. Once, we went to the library to look at astronomy books. To find The Pistol Star. But the real reason was for me to visit Gouger Street. To have another look at the market.

  I was always trying to learn things for the shop. There was this café in the market and we ordered bowls of broth. Tofu, Chinese cabbage, something spicy like horseradish, which we’d grown on The Caib. Cheap, easy to make by the gallon. I thought, maybe we could serve food. Start a café.

  Well, I remember Lulu’s face. Grinning at me over the bowl, as she slurped her soup. Wild girl, making these sucking noises. So other people started to look. And the more they stared, the worse she behaved.

  She had freckles, did Lulu. Darker on a dark skin. Like cappuccino chocolate. Not that she was black, nothing like. Lulu was mixed race, sandy-coloured. No, weak molasses, if you follow me.

  That time she was ill she had this awful yellow tinge. Anyway, her hair was black hay. Yes, straw with a kink which she made even frizzier.

  In the mornings she’d be walking around in these curlers she’d tied herself. Just rags, and a fag stuck on her lip. Her language first thing something ripe.

  Yeah, Lulu, that little star. If she wasn’t talking about stars, that is. Because stars were sanctified. Stars were sacred. On and on she’d go about The Pistol Star. How enormous it was. And what stars meant.

  You what? I used to ask. No matter how big they are, stars don’t mean diddly squat. Stars can’t mean anything. Stars simply are. Nothing means anything. Or the other way about. But however you cut it, it’s the same.

  That surprised her, I think. But it’s what I believed, and still do. Is there a holy principle in physics? I don’t think so. Just things we haven’t discovered.

  But it’s exciting to look, I understand that. Yet at the end, packing up the shop, all I remember were those copies of Astron
omy Today that Lulu never returned to the library.

  That was the hardest thing to do. Pack up Hey Bulldog without Lulu. Not knowing what had happened to her. Giving her things away. Her mug, her clothes.

  What was I supposed to do? Lulu had vanished but nothing was resolved. There was no closure. Lulu was the missing particle we were looking for in the heart of the atom.

  At the end, only Lulu could make sense of the country for me. She could be out in the desert still, for all I know. Gazing up at the skydust.

  V

  You see, people came and went. It was hard to keep track.

  Once this woman arrived with a refrigerated display case, run off a generator in the back of her car. She was selling oysters.

  Where you from, honey? she asked, when I ordered the first oyster, showing me her soy, her lemonjuice.

  Oysterville, I laughed. So these better be good.

  And they were.

  Later I took the woman into the garden of Hey Bulldog, and begged a bottle of sauvignon from the motel. We drank it under the jacaranda while Lulu ran around, lighting incense, putting Bach on the CD.

  And how about you? I asked the oyster woman, looking at her brown knees, torn vest. She smelled of oysters, too, cutting open the last oystershell from her fridge.

  Addy, she laughed, lips salty with soy. There was a young poets’ reading that night in the shop and I invited her to stay. Scared her off.

  VI

  Sometimes we’d go next door to the motel. If I had Chinese tea, so would Lulu.

  What’s my title, boss? Lulu would ask. What do I call myself on the phone?

  No one ever rings us, I told her. So don’t worry.

  But if they do? she insisted. When they do call.

  How about Development Officer? I’d say. No, Deputy Project Manager. Is that serious enough?

  Stupendous, she’d say. Yes, I like that. And she’d sip her tea, and pronounce Deputy Project Manager till the Dutchies left the bar in disgust.

  Well Hey Bulldog’s a project, I’d say. In fact, a hell of a project. In the wrong place, of course, but plenty of people find themselves in unlikely places. And make the best of it.

  And I’d ask her what we had sold that day. This was when I was permanently in Goolwa. I’d given up Adelaide by then. So I was tidying up, preparing. For departure. Even if it took ages.

  And I realised I’d already been out there for five years. But in the end, I was back in the UK within six months.

  Album by Nirvana, she’d say. You know, the first Nirvana. With the Irish boy and the Greek boy. It was called Pentecost Hotel.

  Good girl. I’d say. Yes, I’d taught her well. Who bought it?

  Sophia, she’d say. Who else?

  Sophia lived in Goolwa on a farm outside town. She wanted to be Joni Mitchell. Or Kate Bush. Strummed a black Fender Dreadnought and wrote her own lyrics. Helped in the shop sometimes, too. One of our merry pranksters. Sophia was headed for college, and maybe Europe. Smart kid. Budding poet, God help her.

  And? I’d ask. Don’t tell me that’s everything?

  Well Blagger came in and wasted my time. Then Myra came in. And wasted my time. Steve came in next. And wasted my time. Kept looking down my front. Should I wear a bra, boss?

  After Steve, this old bloke comes in. And asks if we had the Oxford Book of Australian Poetry.

  Dunno, I said, but told him he could check the shelves. You see, that’s what you always said. Get the customers to do it themselves. To feel involved.

  Anyway, seems we didn’t have it. But he found a pamphlet he liked. About the paddle steamers. Just a few pages stapled together, but he coughed up ten dollarinos.

  Then ten minutes ago this girl asks if I knew about Carinda. Turns out to be a tiny place in New South Wales. Much smaller than here, she says.

  Never heard of it, I said. Must be a long way away.

  Oh, she says. You know David Bowie went to Carinda and they made a film of him. In Carinda.

  No, I said. But I’ll check. So I’m checking with you. And there it is, boss, the report from Hey Bulldog’sDeputy Project Manager. Can I have a pay rise now, boss?

  So I told Lulu, yes, it was on the news or maybe YouTube. David Bowie had arrived in a forgotten town, smaller than Goolwa, more insignificant than Goolwa. To make a video of ‘Let’s Dance’.

  Okay, maybe I laboured the point of Bowie as an Outback explorer. But Lulu understood why I was making it.

  Bowie in Carinda was unthinkable. But since the unthinkable had already happened, it couldn’t happen again.

  And yes, I suppose I felt a bit peeved. Wasn’t Bowie famous enough? Anyway, Lulu knew I was leaving. That I was getting ready. But she disappeared before I’d said goodbye.

  VII

  No. No rain at all. But everywhere a rumour of rain. A Chinese whisper of rain. That became anything but rain.

  I’d look at the sky as if I was a meteorologist. Like everyone else, I studied clouds. Yes, those Australian clouds, huge and gold-rimmed in the evening. Grey and pink at dawn.

  In fact I thought I should have been painting clouds. Because surely there had never been clouds like those before.

  Most of us were weather experts at the end, me and Lulu and the Dutch couple included. It was all we talked about.

  I would get up early, before six. For years I’d been an early riser, because that’s what school demanded. And I’d sit in Hey Bulldog behind the sunscreens and look at the shadows of the shrubs and potted plants we grew in the garden.

  Which was my garden. I’d rescued it from the undergrowth in ten-minute stints. Yes, it was my garden. Though I never felt much like a gardener. Over there.

  That was where Lulu lit her tea candles and we stayed smoking. And talking, talking. Where kids like that singer, Sophia, might strum that black Dreadnought and read her mystical couplets. Where some writer could freeload on my wine and a pizza from the motel.

  Yeah, druggy rubbish, I suppose we talked mostly. But important to me at the time.

  I can still see those shadows trembling on the green walls. My walls, that I was leaving behind. Walls someone could turn into a hairdresser’s. Or tourist information centre when they’d arranged for the rent to be knocked down.

  Lulu used to do these finger puppet shapes in the morning when the light was right. Seems blissful, now I think about it. So here’s a toast to the Hey Bulldog gang. All those who naturally gravitated to that scene. Hey, no matter where you are now, you too had a role.

  Actually, I had an email from Goolwa last week. Seems the shop is still empty. But waiting for a possible tenant to make up her mind.

  And I thought, yes, another sign of these times. As if I needed one. But at least I put my hand in my pocket and paid for something I thought could make a difference. And maybe it did. For a while.

  VIII

  There was a painting I liked. Pinned up, not even framed. Called ‘Chronicle of Light’ I think. Whoever the artist was, and I’m sure they were local, they’d done something wonderful.

  I nearly said perfect. But perfect’s never the word, is it? Yet at least I liked it. They’d shown the Murray in spate before the years of drought. Olive waters, but gilded. Yes, like the light you see around The Caib.

  And you know, sometimes I look at the light here and it breaks my heart. I call it the limestone light because it’s laid down in layers. Like stone or paint can be. Photon by photon. As if there was, or there could be, a geology of light. But yes, limestone light.

  And if I see it, then I think that everybody else must see it. Even if they don’t talk about it. That limestone light. Which shines out of the people around here. Even though they would laugh at the idea.

  Like you’re probably laughing now. No, they’d never admit to it, the limestone light. Rather shrug it off as an embarrassment.

  IX

  It might have been only one room and I’d have been happy. But Hey Bulldog was three rooms, and it felt like home. And I was making my stand. A
s I’m doing now.

  Yes, it felt like home. Whatever home is supposed to mean. In the morning I’d sip a cold coffee and maybe play something so low it was hardly audible. Say Steve Reich. Or a raga, all drone.

  Or maybe I’d put on some Bach harpsichord piece. Sheer sunlight, that music, like the concerto in D minor. And I’d look at the shadows moving and hear the breath of Bach. Then I’d think, no it’s not so bad here. Even with the ants it’s not so bad.

  X

  Lulu would be asleep somewhere unexpected. She was a cat who curled up anywhere. But even at the end, when I was in Goolwa permanently, I would walk first thing out to the Murray. To smell the low tide, smell the high tide. And realise how different those tides were. Just like The Caib.

  The tide here reeks on the slipway. It smells of weed and salt and rot. Of rottenness. But it’s different when the waves creep up the breakwater. Slapping against the stone steps and over your shoes.

  That’s when you know the water’s perfume is in your hair. And on your skin. There forever, its stink. The stink of The Caib.

  When they die, that’s what people from here take with them. The filthy perfume of The Caib. Its salt pollen. Because it’s here now. The Caib on our eyelids. The Caib on our lips. Its smell no other smell. Its taste no other taste.

  Taint, is that the word? Good enough, I’d say. Because we’re tainted by life on The Caib. Yes, that taint is the giveaway. It’s what identifies people here. Like the sand in our shoes.

  XI

  But whatever the tide at the Murray mouth, it ran under a dirty white sky. My sky. Or darker still, almost pewter. Gunmetal without the sheen.

  Yes, I’d gaze at clouds that became greyer. An ominous sky with clouds massing in the south. Like a photograph I saw once, of cancer cells under the microscope.

  So I’d walk down to the Murray and say for God’s sake now. It must be now. As if I might predict rain to the second.

  Here, I know how rain smells. Blackthorn flowers in the morning. A salty January dawn.

  Over there was different. By the end we were all pleading. But no rains fell. There were weather systems passing over and I thought, yes. Right about now. Those owl eggs are ready to hatch.