Limestone Man

by Robert Minhinnick

They were playing music too, pretty loud. I didn’t recognise it, maybe it was their own concoction. One track was drumming. But there was also something else. Sad and mysterious. A silvery sort of music.

  We saw the dancer stop for a drink and start again. Only now she was naked, peeling off the swimsuit and throwing it into the Shogun. Then she walked out into the untouched ash. That ash like a snowfield.

  I tell you, the girl was naked in the firedust and dancing like I’ve never seen anyone dance. And the man was filming everything, every movement she made, every breath. And then she tumbled. And lay still.

  That’s the last thing we saw, the girl falling to earth. A cloud covered her, a veil of dust and grit.

  She lay there, smeared with ashes like mud and mortar, mixed with her own sweat. Grey and spent. And only then did the music stop.

  Yes, when that music stopped there was silence. But the man carried on filming.

  TWENTY-TWO

  I

  Parry stared at the street. The mist hung in the air. Icy smoke. Bone-coloured blossom. The foghorn moaned down the coast.

  Fret, he said to himself. Warmer air, colder sea. That had always been the cause of such weather in the old days.

  Like cuttle, he thought. With a yellow tinge. And an acid taste to such mist. But the colour of an old woman’s jewellery. An old woman’s saltwater pearls. Or owls’ eggs. The pride of the collection. Dirty behind glass.

  II

  Last night a spasm of hail. He’d watched it in the gutters, smoking as it vanished. A creature that became a negative of itself. Now nothing moved. No traffic sound. No traffic.

  Parry looked up at the first floor over the shop. The finial beside the aerial was still there. But bleached to matchwood. It was the last one to survive on that part of the street.

  Home, he thought. And shrugged. Or maybe it was a shiver. Bedsit. Bed-sitter images. With the grey lace curtain, the cactus on the sill.

  Last night he had stared out of that window. At the mist that writhed in the lamp light. Not far away the sea had lain slumped yet invisible.

  A man might die in a room like that, Parry thought. And he remembered back to his teenage years in the resort. A room not unlike the room he now called home, a summer room when sea frets also intruded. When mists gripped the town and hid, he always thought, the people from themselves.

  But there were better times. Times when the swifts arrived. Or came back. To Amazon Street. Now, unexpectedly, he was thinking of swifts.

  Out of the attic window of his boyhood, through its aquarium gloom, he had watched the swifts arriving in May. Swifts screaming between the houses. Over the roofs and the reefs of air, seaward and westward. Swifts over the water, that water the colour of June grasses, the sea moving as the grasses moved on the dunes. The swifts arriving from Africa.

  Yes, swifts. Sleepless swifts back out over the ocean. Black swifts arriving and immediately taking back the street, the shore, the sky with their screams. Taking back the swiftless world. Swifts reclaiming the light through the cobwebbed pane. As if they had never been away. Had never been missed.

  But Parry had missed the swifts. Their stoops, their steepling climbs. Their absence an ache. Swifts that might never come again, even after the million miles each swift flew. Swifts gone from the rafter. The creosoted beam.

  And what might unreturning swifts signify? Grief, he thought. A grievous shade to the world. A deeper shadow.

  An absence of swifts meant a code had vanished. The prehistoric code of wings and wingbeats. And if the swifts failed he failed. Or so he thought.

  Yes, that was something else to worry about. Some sign or signal. To bring him down to earth.

  And he remembered coming off the beach with Sev. They were walking down Amazon Street on a blistering afternoon. Sev’s brown skin was peeling, so it appeared silver. Yes, Sev was silver that afternoon, Sev in his Californian shorts, his bleached daps. Parry could only squint at his friend on that hottest day of the year.

  Then Sev had turned away and ducked down.

  What’s that? asked Parry.

  Dunno.

  Sev was bending over the gutter. His face lay against the kerb as he inspected what he had found.

  It’s dead.

  What’s dead?

  Must have died seconds ago.

  What’s dead?

  Hardly a minute.

  What’s dead?

  Maybe a car.

  What’s dead?

  That red mini that sped past us.

  What is dead? demanded Parry.

  Sev stood up, both hands cupped before him. Parry could only turn his face from the glare. The spectral boy was outlined in black.

  Swift.

  Swift?

  Dead swift. Still warm.

  That car killed a swift?

  Still warm.

  Parry turned his face away once again.

  Fuck. What kills a swift?

  Car might.

  Fuck.

  Or…?

  Yeah?

  You know.

  Yeah.

  Smooth it. Go on.

  Parry bent towards Sev’s proffered hands.

  Yes. It’s warm.

  Sev’s right forefinger was under the swift’s chin. It was as if he was bringing water out of the gutter. And offering it to Parry.

  Then Severin took both wing tips and was spreading the bird. A dark crescent, the swift. Chocolate brown when Parry looked closely. Not black at all.

  Didn’t know they had white throats.

  Evening glove, said Sev.

  You what?

  It’s like one of my mother’s evening gloves.

  What are evening gloves?

  For women to wear in the evenings. Dances.

  My mother doesn’t go out in the evening. ’Cept the allotment.

  Come on.

  What?

  We’ll bury it.

  Bury the swift?

  Yeah. Or we can let the ants carry it away.

  III

  Parry might have dreamed. But no, it was a memory. So vivid it could have been a day this week.

  Everybody had broken up from college. They had agreed to walk to The Horns. Then keep walking.

  Maybe a kind of farewell, Parry now thought. They were going their own ways. Careers were beckoning and Sev was already long gone. He had never heard from Sev again.

  There were Vine and Sian, Gil, Fflint, Dai Pretty and Branwen. And someone else, someone on the edge of things. But Lizzy, of course. She’d certainly been there. He counted Lizzy first.

  They’d wandered as far as The Tramlines, looking at the seams of quartz that coloured that part of the coast. The Caib Caves, as it was known. Those caves and gutters submerged at high and middle tides.

  The idea was to camp out. Some had brought sleeping bags. It was a scorching day that became a warm evening. Parry remembered the tide going out from around midnight. The air was alive with the reek of salt and weed.

  The Tramlines marked the boundary between limestone and sandstone. The new rock to the west was not grey but pink. The beach pavements, cave walls and drifts of pebbles from then onwards were the same pink.

  Gil had been enthusing about Roxy Music. This subject exasperated Parry. As ever, they’d built a driftwood fire, and were roasting potatoes in silver paper, coaxing one another to sample the flagons, red wine and two bottles of scotch.

  For the camp they’d chosen an area of sand and flowering sea holly above a red sandstone pavement.

  Diamonds, said Lizzy. These look like diamonds.

  She was passing pieces of quartz from hand to hand.

  Onyx, Vine had said. That’s what I think these are.

  To Parry the quartz did indeed resemble diamonds. He watched the firelight gleam on the metal ring between the cups of Lizzy’s bikini. Then looked away.

  Fools’ gold, he laughed.

  No, people collect these stones, Lizzy had insisted. And make jewellery. So, they might be onyx, yes.
That’s a precious stone, isn’t it? It sounds precious enough. Yes, onn-yxx. In fact there used to be a girl in school whose parents started a business making jewellery. Don’t know how, but they made money. And it’s all here, lying around. Waiting for us. All free.

  Parry tipped the whisky to his teeth. The bottle glinted in the fire which both he and Dai Pretty had wanted to light. Parry had won so Dai would have the last task of pissing it out.

  Parry had pressed his cheek into the sand around the driftwood. Some were white as ivory, some hollow as flutes, those sticks from the sea’s forest, laid low along the shore.

  In the 3am. darkness the embers were a blue-white nest. Around the gang the sandstone was redder than chilli oil.

  No one had to suggest skinnydipping. That holiday it had become their usual practice. They knew the waves were warm. The girls agreed it was dark enough. Gradually, everyone had stripped off.

  IV

  When he awoke Parry found himself in a crimson world. The sun was coming up in a sky the colour of the sandstone beach. A flock of turnstones was going past, low and silent. There were ingots in the driftwood ash.

  Someone was nearby.

  Oh God, breathed Lizzy. I’m so incredibly … stiff. Whose idea was it to sleep on the beach? The tide could have come in.

  Still well out, said Parry. Another hour. But yes, I think I slept an hour at most. How’s your hangover.

  He watched Lizzy unzip her sleeping bag and start putting Dai’s coat over her denim shirt. Dai Pretty was the best swimmer and had been encouraging the girls to try further out.

  Parry looked round and found there was nobody else.

  Maybe they slept in that biggest cave, Lizzy said. Or are they back in the water?

  The pair stood together on the sandstone pavement. Brighter now that bloody reef. The rockpools here were pink with coralweed.

  Can’t ever remember a dawn like this before, she smiled, raising her arms to the orange sky. What’s that word in Macbeth?

  The pair moved across the sandstone to the mouth of the cave. Parry knew the others couldn’t be there, the space was too small. But Lizzy seemed intent on looking.

  Hey, she sang out. You lot. Hey Sian! Wake up.

  You see, we’re at a boundary here, said Parry. It’s where different types of rocks meet.

  Sian! called Lizzy again.

  They’ll be up by the sea holly, said Parry looking away. I know where they’re…

  Then Lizzy was kissing his mouth. Putting her tongue between his teeth. Hard and sour her tongue. Her tongue that tasted of salt and wine and whisky. Determined, that sudden tongue. Practised.

  Parry gasped at the girl’s bitter breath. Behind Lizzy’s tilted head he saw the sun brighten on the quartz walls of the cave. He glimpsed a purple he had never seen before, a yellow he’d heard others describe.

  In the cave was a slab of sandstone, seamed with quartz. Three hours earlier the gang had been standing round this rock in candlelight. There was a cloth still draped over the stone and an assortment of bottles and wrappings. Remnants of the feast.

  Lizzy and Sian had sat on smaller stones. In a space at the rear of the cave Fflint and Gil had attempted a version of ‘Dipsomaniac Blues’.

  As Lizzy kissed him he wondered why, in all the times he had explored Caib Caves, he hadn’t noticed the coloured quartz.

  But it was Lizzy who slowly released him and breathed the name of where they stood.

  Now I know, she smiled into his eyes. Now I know why they call this the cave of lights.

  Three hours previously, although it felt like weeks, they had taken burning driftwood torches into the caves and looked at the quartz in the firelight.

  Sian had brought a box of tea candles. They’d lit them all together, toasting the night, the girls starting to shiver, Fflint and Gil and Dai Pretty still dripping from the swim. Dai brandished a driftwood staff, bleached white, he had discovered. He had been drawing something in the sand.

  Do you know, whispered Lizzy, how long I’ve been wanting to do that?

  And Fflint’s coat was at her feet, and somehow the shirt also. And there were her breasts, blue-white and round as the ammonites at The Horns. Lizzy’s nipples were cold and sharp. Lke the quartz she had pressed into his palms.

  The sun was shining now into Parry’s eyes. For one minute at most its beam would travel directly into the cave. But already the colours around them were fading.

  In a crevice above Lizzy’s head he saw a candle stub in a circle of white wax. The same colour as the quartz outside on The Tramlines. The seams where he and Sev had chased after one another. Had invented games.

  Look, Diz, he muttered. You see…

  How long he had stared at her limestone breasts, he never knew. There were salty curls at her neck. Fronds of weed, those dead man’s ropes.

  But the sun must have moved. Or a cloud appeared.

  Very carefully Lizzy stepped away. She stooped and pulled the shirt back between them.

  Yes, she breathed. I see. You know, I’d have… I’d have…

  Then there was shouting outside and Fflint’s deep voice. Dai and Sian too were calling.

  The quartz had been yellow as turmeric, a web of gold. Now it was indistinguishable from the cave wall. As he listened he overheard the pools settling. The limestone breathing. Parry felt a subterranean chill.

  TWENTY-THREE

  I

  Leads, said Parry to himself. Leads and wires. Leads and wires and … connections. Makes no sense to me.

  He looked around. No one was listening. Parry had watched Gil and Fflint set their equipment up on the Paradise stage. There seemed a ludicrous amount. It had taken the three of them an hour to bring it in from Gil’s van.

  Could have been worse, said Gil genially. Could have been drums.

  Hope we don’t regret that, said Fflint. If that computer goes awry, drums might have been the answer.

  Trust me, laughed Gil, placing one of his Apples on a table. Drums are never the answer. And remember, we’re recording this. It’ll be on the site. After it’s cleaned up, of course.

  Not the raw tape then? asked Parry.

  Not when you can do what I can do. And we want it to sound its best, don’t we? What about Seamist: Live at The Paradise Club as a title?

  Stinks, said Fflint. And who the hell’s heard of The Paradise, these days?

  Mystery’s good, said Gil. And Paradise is better than whatever it’s called now. Look, if Nia wants this place to work, that’s the first thing to go.

  Parry had changed the CD they were playing. But the Kerala raga he had put on had drawn protests. Gil commanded them to listen to his choice.

  Who’s this then? he asked. Sound familiar?

  Jesus, it’s us, said Fflint.

  Nia had appeared then, with Mina, who was clutching an early drink. Everyone had drifted over to the bar. Parry was ensuring the ragged stage curtain was as neat as possible.

  It was a green velvet, possibly moth-eaten. Parry had stretched both arms out to secure it behind one of the amps. He was standing in the far corner of the club. The only man on stage.

  But there must have been someone else. Someone behind him. Maybe Mina, playing about? Mina after her second, no third drink of the evening. Or Fflint, come to help with the curtain, with the amp? Maybe Gil, meticulous Gil, or Nia, wanting…

  Yet surely no one would have held his arm so tightly? As if they wanted to cause him pain. For there was sudden agony in this right shoulder. Quickly the grip moved down his arm. By the time it reached his wrist it was an icy tourniquet. Taut as a reef-knot. It was as if his arm was encased in a gauntlet.

  Parry looked around. Everything seemed as it was. There was Mina, laughing with Gil at the counter. There was Fflint with a camera, making a shot. And there was Nia, nervous Nia, with her own wineglass, introducing one or two of the Elvises. Who seemed to be arriving. The gig coincided with an Elvis Presley festival.

  Everything was clear. Startlingly
clear. Now the pain was incredible. Yet it concentrated Parry’s vision. There was Glan, zipping his flies as he slouched out of the men’s room. Glan who had not helped set up the equipment. Glan in Parry’s pink shirt. Glan already drinking the wine Parry had organised at the counter.

  And there was Serene in her purple blouse and purple tights. Despite the weather, her belly was bare. Her fingers lingered on the purple tattoo.

  Yes, Parry noticed, there was someone else at the bar. He had noted them at once. Because now he saw everything. He remembered it all.

  This someone was wearing black, was a little removed. Parry could even see a crust of dew on the figure’s shoulders.

  This someone, like everyone else in the room, had come in from the gutters of the town. This someone had come in from the fog in Senhora Street. From the fret in Amazon Street. This someone had come from the salt and the stink of The Ghetto. From the tunnels beneath the rattling Ziggurat. They had come from the Caib Caves and from the Tramlines, from The Horns and from the slipway, from The Chasm and the hollow dunes.

  Parry was going to call out. He felt he had to protest against the pain. But he knew what was gripping him. At the bar the figure in black, might, Parry thought, have been female.

  II

  I’ve been meaning to ask, said Mina. How did you find that little town?

  Goolwa’s not so remote, said Parry eventually. But as I say, distances are different. Some people love the absence. Over there.

  Over here it can be hard to breathe. In Oz, at least there’s oxygen.

  I was exploring the peninsula around Adelaide. Looking at the beaches, the tiny towns. Fetched up in Goolwa, parked in the high street behind the motel, went in for a spot of lunch. The meal lasted four hours. No, all night, because I stayed. Room 33 as I remember. It’s following me round, that number.

  ‘Dipsomaniac’s Blues’ had now lasted for over thirty minutes. The crowd had thinned. Parry and Mina had moved from the front of the bar to one of the empty tables.

  Gil was repeating a chorus, hunched over two different keyboards. Parry seemed to be mouthing lyrics, with Gil immersed in improvisation. Nia passed their table carrying a bottle and topped up Mina’s glass. Although no one could hear him, Parry continued to talk.

  The Dutch couple who kept the motel seemed friendly. If a little misplaced. We started chatting about roots. And how peculiar Australians were. Usual thing. Eventually, they told me about the empty shop. Next door.