Secret Scribbled Notebooks

by Joanne Horniman

  Outside, Alex was leaning against the front fence with his hands in his pockets. ‘Well,’ he said, and smiled at me. We set out down the street together.

  ‘Oh,’ I said, stopping. ‘I’ve left my jacket somewhere. I don’t know where. Either in the car or back at the party or –somewhere. Oh well, I’ll have to find it later.’

  We kept walking, and I thrust my hands deep into my pockets, feeling very manly in the suit pants and white shirt and bow tie. I burrowed down so hard that I hit a torn seam and one of my fingers went through into the lining. There was something hard there; I pushed my index finger and thumb through and plucked it out. Under a street light, I stopped and stared at what I had found.

  ‘What is it?’ said Alex. “What have you got?’

  ‘It’s a stone.’

  The Wild Typewritten Pages 24

  It was the stone I’d picked up all those years ago, and given to my father, the day after we’d played in the motel pool late at night. I put it into the top pocket of my shirt, and kept walking.

  Except it hadn’t been my father. The man I remembered had been Alan.

  For some reason, this knowledge gave me a new feeling of freedom. I felt light and light-headed. The memory of that stone had weighed me down for years. And it had been there all along, sitting at the bottom of a trouser pocket in Lil’s wardrobe. Now I had the absurd feeling that it didn’t matter what I did, and I had never felt this way before, so free of anything that tied me to the earth. I might never return to Samarkand. I could, if I wanted to, get on the bus with Alex in the morning and head away from here. Just like that.

  There was someone waiting in Alex’s garage. It was the thin boy who sold the socialist newspapers in the main street. He’d been sitting at Alex’s table reading a paper, and he got up as we came in.

  ‘Sorry,’ said Alex. ‘I had to go out for a while. Michael, do you know Kate? Kate, this is Michael.’

  Michael bobbed his head shyly at me, and said softly, ‘Hi.’ He had beautiful blue eyes. I’d thought he looked nondescript, but his eyes were his beauty. I thought that perhaps everyone had something beautiful about them, if you bothered to look at them properly.

  ‘Well,’ said Alex, ‘Are you ready? I’ll find an extra brush.’ He rummaged on one of the shelves at the back of the garage and found an old brush, stroking its bristles to make sure it wasn’t too stiff. ‘Graffiti,’ he explained. ‘I said I’d give Michael a hand.’ He held out the brush questioningly to me. ‘Do you want to come with us?’

  ‘Yes. Why not?’ I took the brush and felt like wielding it at once. Alex picked up the pot of paint (an old pot, left over from painting Vivienne’s house, probably), and we set off. For the graffiti, Michael had chosen a wall supporting a railway bridge with a road running beside it. In the daytime it was a busy spot, but tonight it was deserted. The only living creature that observed us was a dog that met up with us near a streetlight, a dog with legs too short for its body, and large tan spots all over it. A car drove past. I wished we had spray cans, something we could conceal under our clothing.

  ‘Right,’ said Michael. He seemed sure of himself now. ‘FREE THE REFUGEES. Alex, you do the FREE, Kate do THE, and I’ll do the last word. Letters so high,’ he indicated. We lined up, and began.

  I thought of Alex’s typewriter and the unused ream of copy paper that he couldn’t find the words to fill, the novel that he hoped might help change the world. Perhaps sheets of A4 paper weren’t big enough for him. Perhaps he didn’t need to write a whole novel. Perhaps three words could say it all, and he needed a whole wall to say it on.

  ‘Car!’ hissed Michael, as he saw headlights approach, and we ducked behind the support of the bridge, then emerged again when the car had passed. The spotted dog with short legs had decided that it would stay and observe us, and it sat with a worried and faintly embarrassed expression on its face, glancing at us every so often.

  I had never imagined that paint could be so stiff, or brickwork so difficult to paint on. I had rolled up my sleeves, and the paint dripped down my arm and trickled over my wrists. Michael and Alex finished before me, despite having longer words, and as I completed the last part of the E, Alex grabbed my elbow and we departed.

  We couldn’t stop laughing. The dog gave us a departing glance and trotted off. ‘Police informer,’ said Michael, and we burst out laughing again.

  At Alex’s place, we washed the brushes out under the tap outside the back door, and cleaned the paint from our fingers. ‘I’d better go,’ said Michael. He had been confident and decisive while we were painting the graffiti, but now his shyness had returned. ‘Thanks for helping, Kate,’ he said.

  He turned again to Alex. ‘You too. Anyway, have a good trip. Look us up if you ever pass this way again.’ They embraced briefly, and he left.

  Now Alex’s room seemed very small and very quiet. I saw that his few possessions had been packed up into boxes and labelled ‘For Lifeline’. The bed sat there, neatly made; it was the only sign that someone still lived there. The suitcase labelled ‘Winter Stuff’ stood next to the bed, ready to go.

  ‘Well,’ said Alex. ‘What now?’

  ‘I don’t want to go home,’ I said. ‘I don’t want to leave you like this.’

  ‘There’s not much of the night left,’ said Alex. ‘My bus goes at eight this morning.’

  ‘What, then?’ I said.

  ‘Let’s walk,’ said Alex.

  So we walked, and the streets were as silent and thoughtful as we were. It seemed natural to head upwards, because Lismore is a hilly place, and by taking the streets that ran uphill we eventually came to the highest point, where a grassy park looked out over the town. We sat down on a seat at the edge of the park, not touching, and I leaned forward, looking down at the place where I’d spent almost the whole of my life.

  I sat there with Alex and it seemed that I was poised between where I was from and where I was going. All I possessed at that moment was the present.

  ‘I never told you my love story,’ I said.

  ‘No, you never did.’

  ‘I was about two, or three. And we’d gone to a wedding . . . at least, I only have a feeling that it was a wedding.

  ‘I do remember this. We were staying at a motel. It was late, and I couldn’t sleep. I was making a lot of noise, talking and giggling. Someone tried to shoosh me –they thought I’d wake up Sophie.

  ‘And then a man picked me up and put on my swimmers, and took me out to the motel pool. Everyone else was asleep. The place was dead quiet. It must have been two or three in the morning.

  ‘We played for ages in the water. I’d jump in, and he’d catch me. He’d pull me through the water and hold on to me and bounce me up and down. It was wonderful. It really was. I was full of wonder. And all the time there was this sort of quiet laughter between us.

  ‘I don’t even remember his face properly. Just this particular way he had of smiling, and the way he . . . was. He was quiet and sure of himself. He took a lot of notice of me. Not fussing over me, but noticing how I was feeling. It was just the two of us, and the lights sparkling on the water. Everything shimmered.

  ‘And I can remember the next morning, I gave him something I’d found. It was a stone, from the garden of the motel. I’d found one that I thought was prettier than the rest, and I picked it up and gave it to him. He lifted me up and kissed me on the cheek. He told me that he’d always keep it.’

  I took the stone out of my pocket. ‘Here it is. He did keep it. Except he died not long afterwards, so I’ll never know if he really would have kept it all this time. But I think maybe he would have.’

  I looked at Alex, who was regarding me with all of his bright, bird-like attention.

  ‘The man was Alan, Lil’s son. This is his suit I’m wearing.’

  ‘How did he die?’

  ‘A road accident. He was overseas. He was a journalist –always travelling. Always adventuring. That’s what Lil says about him, anyway. And I really loved
him, that night. I don’t remember anything else about him –he was just here for a little while, must have come back for a friend’s wedding, and he and Lil took us to it. But I loved him. It was special, that time we spent with each other, you know?’

  I had spent my whole life fruitlessly waiting for my father to come back. And now it came to me again that I could get on the bus with Alex and go. If I was going anyway, why shouldn’t I leave sooner, rather than wait for university to start? And besides, even if I didn’t get in, I knew I didn’t want to stay here. I could get a job in Sydney.

  I didn’t say anything to Alex, but the more I thought about it, the more I liked the idea. Why shouldn’t I do what I wanted to do? And I did want to go with Alex, didn’t I?

  I looked across at him, where he sat in contemplation, looking at the lights of the town. He glanced at me and smiled.

  I said to him, ‘All my life I told myself that the man I remembered that night was my father. I told myself that he would come back for me. But I think I must have known all along that it wasn’t him. ’ Alex took my hand and held it unemphatically, letting it rest in his.

  ‘My real father wasn’t like that. I do remember him –a bit. He neglected us. He used to leave me and Sophie for ages –days on end, it seemed –in a flat with very little to eat. She used to look after me as best she could, and feed me on bits of bread . . . She and I have never talked about this.’

  Alex squeezed my hand, and let it go. We leaned forward, putting our elbows on our knees, and watched the light creep over the town.

  It was a long time ago that Sophie and I had stood together, barefoot, at the top of the stairs of Samarkand. Even now I could feel every grain of the weathered boards against my soles. My sister and I were not hand in hand; we stood together stoically like little soldiers, arms by our sides, watching our father make his way down the steps. I can see us as though I’m watching myself all that time ago.

  We wear faded summer dresses, too small. Mine has gold sunflowers. Sophie is in blue. She has put a red ribbon in her hair.

  Our father is going away and I know that he isn’t coming back. No one has told me this. No one, apart from him, must know this. Perhaps, at this point, he doesn’t even know it himself. I don’t cry, because crying would do no good. I can only watch.

  He turns around on the lower landing and looks up at us. ‘See you, kids,’ he says, putting one hand in the air in farewell, his face skinny and sly, his eyes avoiding ours. They are as dry as a parched landscape. ‘See you in a coupla days.’

  His eyes are the kind of blue that has almost all colour leached from it. Every part of him seeps guilt. He’s off up the road, his back eloquent with it.

  I know that my father isn’t coming back, and I know why. Even at that age (perhaps especially at that age, when children can read people the way dogs read people), I know that he’s a weak man. He bears us no ill will, but looking after the two of us is something that is simply beyond him.

  That night, Sophie started to talk in her sleep. I couldn’t make out what she was saying, but the sound of her voice in the darkness frightened me. I ran to Lil’s room, and she woke Sophie, and bundled us into her own bed. We lay in the summer dark, listening to her sing.

  Ten little ducks went out one day,

  Over the hills and far away.

  Mother duck said, quack quack quack quack,

  But only nine little ducks came back.

  Finally, we all slept. It was the first of many nights we would spend in Lil’s bed.

  I remembered how Sartre had written that it was quite an undertaking to start loving somebody. That it takes energy, generosity, blindness. He said that there was a moment, right at the start, where you had to jump across an abyss. If you thought about it, you didn’t do it.

  I had already jumped. I had jumped without thinking the first time Lil had taken us into her bed; I had jumped when I lay near Sophie as a child and listened to her speaking unintelligibly in her sleep. I’d been loving people for years without even realising it. Without thinking, I had leapt across the abyss many times: when I saw Hetty staring at me only moments after she was born, and with Alex . . .

  I took up his hand again and stared at his fingers, remembering how Sophie had undressed the new-born Hetty and looked at every single part of her, silently counting her fingers and toes. So Alex’s mother might once have examined him.

  But I knew now that I would do the sensible thing. I wouldn’t go away with him that morning (not that he’d asked me, or even knew what I’d been thinking). I would stay where I belonged, for the moment, with my family.

  I asked Alex, ‘What are you going to do when you get back to Sydney?’

  ‘Go and see my father. Persuade him that it might be a good idea if we went for a trip to Poland together, to look up the distant relatives over there. My grandparents kept in contact with them, though they never went back to see them.

  ‘Take up my degree again. Write to you. See what happens. Does that sound like enough?’

  ‘That’s enough.’

  The sun came up, the way it always had, I presumed, though I had never seen it before. Alex and I sat like spectators at a theatre while the light of the world was slowly turned on, illuminating everything. The shapes of trees appeared, and houses, nebulous at first, and then the summer sunlight poured colour through everything, and paled the streetlights to insignificance.

  Alex stretched, and looked at his watch. ‘Are you hungry?’ he asked. ‘We could do the unthinkable and go to a fast-food place. And then I have a bus to catch.’

  At the garage that he’d made his home, we found my jacket, which I must have thrown down when I fetched him to drive Marjorie home. That seemed such a long time ago. While I put it on, Alex picked up the typewriter, which was all closed up in its carry-case, and put it into my arms, like a baby. ‘I know computers are more the thing these days, but some people still use these, and you are very low-tech.’

  ‘What would I want it for?’ I asked.

  ‘You might want to write. You’ve got the secret scribbled notebooks for it. Haven’t you read that book I gave you by Jack Kerouac? The piece called “Rules of Modern Prose” advises, “Secret scribbled notebooks and wild typewritten pages, for your own joy.” This could be for the wild typewritten pages. Here –take the paper as well.’

  I found myself with a ream of A4 under my arm.

  We gave his room a backwards glance from the doorway. Alex carried the suitcase that said ‘Winter Stuff ’, in which I presumed he’d packed the few possessions he wanted to keep, and I took the typewriter. It amazed me that a person could travel so light.

  We ate raisin toast and coffee in a room filled with the glare of laminex and vinyl tiles and the clatter of trays. I walked him to the bus depot, and everything seemed ordinary and extraordinary at the same time. A boy with a shaved head sat on a chair outside eating chips. A police car cruised past. A sparrow alighted on the pavement and the boy threw it some crumbs.

  We hugged, but I didn’t wait for the bus to come. I couldn’t bear to stay and watch it pull away through the empty streets, with his smooth hand at the window long after his face was no longer visible.

  The Wild Typewritten Pages 25

  That first morning, Lil gave us breakfast in bed: strawberry jam on toast, and hot chocolate. I lay there and stretched with the luxury of it. ‘Do you know what?’ I told Lil happily. ‘I love this bed!’

  ‘Do you, darlin’? That’s nice.’

  ‘I love this room!’ I said, looking around and wriggling my feet. It was the first time I’d ever felt at home anywhere. That sense of peace and belonging and absolute rightness.

  ‘I love this house!’

  And later that day, Lil lifted me up and showed me the name of the house, a magical name made of mirrored letters. Sam-ar-kand, she said, pointing to the syllables, syllables that dripped off your tongue with a natural poetry.

  I felt secure in her arms. I could see my face in that w
ord, but only bits of it at a time. My eyes, my hair, my teeth. I was the word. I was Samarkand.

  Samarkand.

  I got close to the word and whispered it, and my breath fogged up the glass. Samarkand was my breath. It was the first word I ever read.

  And that day, when I got home from saying goodbye to Alex, I stood looking at the word SAMARKAND, and suddenly all of my life made sense. I had no need of three notebooks to record my life, I needed only one, because my past, my present and my future were all one continuous stream.

  ‘You’re very late home, madam,’ said Lil, coming to the door with a tablecloth in her hand.

  ‘I’m sorry, ’ I said.

  ‘And what’s that you’ve got there?’

  ‘A typewriter. Alex’s typewriter. He bequeathed it to me.’

  ‘Bequeathed it, indeed.’ Lil snorted.

  ‘I love you, Lil,’ I said, without knowing that I was going to say it. I said it sincerely and helplessly, standing there in Alan’s suit with the typewriter in one hand and a ream of copy paper in the other.

  Lil stopped, on her way back into the house. ‘And I love you too, Katie. Oh, come here, you, and give us a hug. I don’t know . . . you come in at all hours –and what’s that all over your nails? Paint! And now a typewriter. What am I going to do with you? And what would you do with a typewriter?’

  Lil had left a big smudge of vermilion lipstick all over my cheek. I could smell it. I wiped it away with the back of my hand, and said, doubtfully, ‘I could write something with it?’

  But she had already gone inside to make the breakfasts. ‘I could write something!’ I yelled out, with more certainty, to her departing back.

  The Red Notebook

  From Jack Kerouac’s ‘Rules of Modern Prose’: ‘Be in love with yr life.’