White Light

by Mark O'Flynn

  ‘Do you want an ice-cream?’ he called to Shona.

  ‘Not yet.’

  ‘Do you think the kids—’

  ‘I don’t know. Ask them.’

  He turned to the kids, furiously digging their hole, and there, just beyond them, was a punch-up. A struggle in the water between three men. And then suddenly there wasn’t. One of the men, a boy really, a youth, called to Dean.

  ‘Give us a hand, mate.’

  For a moment Dean considered foisting this plea on to someone else. But there was a particular look he could not name in the boy’s eyes, and in that moment there was no one else. Then Gracey stood up to see what was going on.

  Two young fellows were holding up an older man between them in buffeting, waist-deep water. His head lolling forward. Dean stepped towards them decisively.

  ‘Go to your mother,’ he said, marching past the children.

  He admired what ever it was in his tone of voice that made them obey him so swiftly. Dean splashed through the choppy backwash to the young lads who were struggling to keep the older one’s head out of the water.

  ‘He was just floating,’ said one.

  Dean grabbed the legs, which were limp and leaden.

  ‘Up to the sand,’ he said.

  They were only teenagers. Didn’t really know what they were doing.

  They staggered out of the water. Between the three of them, the man was as heavy and slack as a sack of lemons. Dean felt mildly shocked at so suddenly having a stranger’s feet in his hands. No sooner had they laid him down and rolled him onto his back than the two young lads ran off. Dean looked down at the face before him. He saw the froth and slime at the lips.

  Come on mister, snap out of it, he might have thought.

  ‘I don’t know how to do this,’ he called, as though he were speaking to the figure lying on the sand. Suddenly, a woman dropped to her knees beside him. She tipped the man’s head to one side and scooped the white goop out of his mouth with a finger. Then tipping his head back and placing her lips over his she blew heavily into the open jaw.

  ‘Find the xiphoid location,’ she said, between breaths.

  Dean looked at her stupidly.

  ‘I thought you knew how to do this,’ she said.

  Dean shook his head. She’d misheard him. He looked at the white slop on her fingers. Then there was another man beside them who seemed to snip some hairs from the hairless chest with his fingers before launching into a fierce barrage of chest pumping. What was that called? Repercussion or something? The woman jerked her face aside as sea water and mucus gushed up into her mouth. She spat on the sand. Returned to breathing.

  ‘Come on mate, you can do it,’ said the chest-pumping fellow.

  Really, Dean thought, isn’t that going a bit far? Surely, after a little rest this chap will spring up and ask what all the fuss is about. He thought this even as he watched the man’s face turn blue. Then bluer. There was sand on his eyeball. Dean picked up the fellow’s hand and searched for a pulse. The hand was flaccid and cold, the fingers wrinkled from the water.

  ‘I can’t find a pulse.’

  The others said nothing. Perhaps he hadn’t said it at all. From the periphery of his vision, Dean saw several dozen legs gather and mill around them as they worked.

  ‘Does anyone know him?’ Dean called out. It was the only thing he could think to do, to try and involve everyone. To his surprise, a voice answered:

  ‘Yeah, he’s my uncle.’

  Dean glanced up at a face amongst the crowd.

  ‘How old his he?’

  ‘Sixty-two.’

  Dean looked at the hard muscles of the stomach; the penis shriveled within the Speedos. Sixty-two! Jeez, he looks fit for sixty-two. He looked at the blue body, the blue hand in his. Even at that moment, the cynic in him wanted to shout: He’s your uncle why don’t you try and save him? In fact, while we’re on about it, where’s the bloody lifeguard?

  ‘Can you do this?’ asked the man pumping the chest.

  ‘No.’

  Surely I’m doing enough—still searching for a pulse and finding none. Should he admit that perhaps he was no good at finding a person’s pulse? They turned the man’s head to the side again and drained more of the bubbly slop from his mouth. It looked like dishwashing water. This was what he was afraid of, and of not knowing what to do, for despite all the urgency he was afraid. It was like a dream where he should have known and had forgotten everything.

  He couldn’t believe a face could turn so blue.

  After a while someone said, ‘Here are the ambos.’

  The crowd parted and the uniformed legs of two ambulance officers soon crouched beside them. Calmly they took over. Their uniforms incongruous among the bare legs surrounding them. Thank Christ. Their calm was a deep relief to Dean. Surely now the bloke would be all right. He realised there was no more he could do; that there was probably nothing he had done at all, other than be first on the scene. Apart from the two teenagers, but where were they?

  Letting go of the man’s hand, he stood and became one of the forest of onlookers.

  ‘There’s no carotid or radial pulse,’ said the woman who had done the mouth-to-mouth. She knew what she was doing.

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘He’s sixty-two,’ Dean thought to add, a voice from the throng.

  The ambulance officers opened their box, greased the electroshock pads—whatever they were called—it was just like television.

  ‘Stand clear.’

  The body jumped on the sand and lay still. Again. And again. The waves lapping at them. One of the ambulance men told them there was nothing more to see, and the people began to move away. All except the one who had identified the man as his uncle.

  Dean went back to Shona and the kids, who had thankfully kept their distance. His hands felt cold. His relief at their calm, also cold.

  ‘What happened, Dad?’

  ‘I don’t know, love.’

  ‘Is that man dead?’

  ‘I think so.’

  ‘Will he be all right?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘I’ve never seen a dead person before.’

  He had no idea how much time had passed.

  ‘I don’t know what story that nephew is going to tell the aunt.’

  Shona put her arm around him, ‘Let’s get these kids out of the sun.’

  They packed their paraphernalia: towels, snorkel, flippers. Warm apples in the bottom of the bag. The message in the sky had blown away.

  ‘Dad can we have an ice-cream?’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘Can we look in the ambulance?’ Its lights flashing in the car park.

  They shuffled across the sand. Moving away slowly, as did the other onlookers, from the small scene on the beach. Retrieving their number. And the seagulls and dogs carried their ceaseless activity into the brightness of the afternoon.

  RED SHOES

  They want to give me an honorary doctorate. An honorary doctorate when all I want is to lie here and drink tea on the sofa. A long time since I’ve headed west. Old stomping ground, old wilderness. No more stomping for me, I’m afraid. These fucking feet are fucked. But I get to thinking. West. The turnoff at Wickepin. The weird light. Spears of grass sticking in my bobby socks and braids. Golden dust in my hair. All those ghosts. Running through the wheat, all sweat and sex underneath my pinny. A beauty I was then. A wild creature. Any bloke I fancied. And I fancied them all. I was a mermaid. Look at me now. Prostrate on the couch, a harpooned dugong. Gregor Samsa, that’s me, reclining on the fucking commission-built leather catafalque. Look at those feet. Leper’s feet. Cut them off at the knees and stick umbrellas in them.

  Help me up, Merv, I gotta piss.

  * * *

  So they want to honour me. Make a big fuss. Wa
nt me to clamber up some wooden steps wearing a gown and mortarboard, prance across a rostrum, make a fucking speech. Elocute sweet thankyous into the microphone. I’ll give them a speech all right.

  ‘No,’ I tell them over the phone, ‘I hate flying. Perth is dead for me.’

  They’d forgotten all about my forthrightness.

  ‘It’s a great accolade,’ they say. ‘In celebration of your work.’

  ‘Stiff.’

  But then I get to thinking; maybe I’m being a bit hasty. I’m not dead yet after all, and maybe Perth has changed for the better. Maybe they’ve got rid of all the drunks and mad bastards and con men and corruption and ex-husbands, and maybe this and maybe that. In a way, I think it might be kind of nice. Nostalgic. Romantic. On the road again. The last hurrah, instead of lying here rotting away on this fucking couch with a swollen, pouting pillow shaped like Mae West’s crimson lips. My lips. You bloody bet. These lips were made for kissing, and that’s just what they’ll do… Ha! This couch. My final resting place, a library where every book is out of reach and the cracks in the stained glass let in a little whistle of wind.

  * * *

  Merv packs my ports. Don’t forget my red shoes, Merv! I’m not going all that way without my lucky red shoes. This morning, early, he tells me, after insomnia has woken him again, he wandered into the lounge room and found a fox hiding behind the settee. Someone must have left the door open all night. I can picture them together: Merv staring at the fox, the fox staring at Merv; the highway silent, the birds outside just starting to twitch.

  ‘I think it’s time you went,’ Merv tells me he said to the fox. And the fox went. Here in Faulconbridge. It’s a nice story. Fuck knows what it means. Too brief for a play. And who would put on one of my plays? Plays have left me now. All the stories have rolled down hill into the river. Maybe a poem, then. But what about Perth? They want to pay my airfare too, but no thanks. Bloody planes. Bloody airports. Bloody blood pressure. I’m playing hard to get. My inner ear plays up something fierce too on take-off. Bladder at landing. Even driving down the mountains in the back of the hearse shits me to tears. The river like a moat. No. I want to go by train. I want to see the desert, Wickepin. One more time. I want. I want.

  So we catch the train. And here we are at Central at the appointed hour. Merv takes care of the ticketing and the bags. Sleeper compartment number such-and-such, with our own foldaway bed and a little stainless steel sink and table and a grimy railway curtain over the window looking out to the grey platform. Merv wheels me up the asphalt like a piece of luggage. Just stare straight ahead, I tell myself. Retain what grace you can. People get out of my way. I hobble up the steps onto the train—goodness the corridors are thin—smell of diesel and rail ballast. I’m holding people up. Why don’t they stop staring? Merv clears the corridor before me simply by walking up it. His shoulders touch both walls. Even at eighty, he is a force to be reckoned with. Everyone gets out of his way. Everyone is afraid of what might happen if Merv were to fall on them. Fell on me once and sprained my ankle. ‘Merv, get off me foot,’ I yelped. He didn’t even know. He could clear a room of poets in a flash if he took it into his head. Sometimes I wish he would. And I don’t mean with the tureen of mulled wine in the boot of the hearse ladled out into their thirsty cups. He has a great method he employs if he ever has to deal with recalcitrants who want my attention: he simply places a hand on their shoulder, turns them around and sits them down on the floor. They don’t get up in a hurry. The trouble is so many people want my attention.

  Merv settles me in our compartment, which is a hell of a lot smaller than my library. He takes care of the conductor. Presses a few bribes on him. Eventually we are off. Suburbs flash by, then paddocks, more slowly. Cows stand about like cardboard cutouts of cows. I settle in to our cabin to read through those bloody poems that young up-and-coming- prizewinning suck-hole of a poet has asked me to comment on. Fucked, I should say. Hopeless, I should say. What does he want my opinion for? Why does anyone still want to listen to me? But I won’t. I’ll be polite and innocuous and lie through my teeth, and people will read it as a considered judgement, as if I know what I’m talking about, and he’ll get a grant and stick my comments on the cover of his next book and people will quote me in reviews. I toss the manuscript aside. For Christ’s sake, Merv, help me up, I gotta piss.

  It’s a struggle trying to keep our balance as the Overlander rattles across the plains towards Bathurst or somewhere, but he finally squeezes me into the tiny cubicle of the dunny.

  ‘Close the door so I can’t hear you,’ Merv says. Never could stand to hear the sound of a woman pissing. Could stand a lot of other things though. He could stand more of my behaviour than any other man. Could stand the looks I gave to them, and received, because he knew he was the one and only. Turning awkwardly on my obese axis—there’s no other word for it—I manage to click the closet door closed. Mmm, nice alliteration that, although not as nice as the one about the cows, might save it for something, that new poem maybe, about the mad old woman lost in her own house. Click the closet door closed. Click or kick? Closet or corset? Dress hoicked. Bloomers to half-mast. A vicious jolt from the train and I flop onto the seat. Ahh. The sound of a woman pissing. Sorry, Merv. Paper right there. Job well done. Bit of a rest while we’re here. Enough of the lady leisurely. Ah, but fuck—I can’t get up. My legs are fucked. Come on old girl, of course you can get up. If I… if I… Nngghh… Shit!

  ‘Merv! Merv! I’m stuck.’

  And I am. I can’t stand up. And I can’t open the door. Jesus.

  ‘Dorothy, what is it?’ Merv calls.

  ‘I’m stuck.’

  Merv tries to open the door but it’ll only open six inches before it whacks against my knees. He pushes harder.

  ‘Ow!’

  ‘I’ll go and get a conductor.’

  ‘No, no.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘I don’t want anyone to see me wedged in here with me knickers around me knees.’

  I can almost hear Merv cogitating.

  ‘Well, what do you want me to do? You’re blocking the door.’

  I make a Herculean effort to raise myself, at least to pull my knickers up, but the rocking of the train makes this impossible, and a particularly violent lurch tumbles me first against one wall of the cubicle, then the other. I bang my head.

  ‘Ow.’

  I collapse back onto the bowl, slightly stunned.

  ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘No. I’m stuck.’

  ‘Do you want anything?’

  ‘Can’t you take the door off or something?’

  ‘The hinges are on the inside.’

  ‘Fuck.’

  He’s right. Merv doesn’t say anything on the other side of the door.

  ‘Are you laughing at me?’

  ‘I’m not that brave.’

  Stuck all right. Whose idea was this train anyway? I’m stuck because I’m so fucking fat. And old. I hate growing old. I hate being old. I feel like every vertebra in my spine has been jolted out of the chain. Merv passes in all the cushions and pillows he can find and I pad them around me to stop myself whacking against the walls. In other words, I make myself comfortable. Hours pass. He passes me in a book, but I can’t read because of the jolting. I let it fall to the floor, out of sight. The continuous rattling of the wheels is like a dull electric shock, like holding a battery against your tongue. It’s not comfortable but after a while you get used to it.

  ‘Do you want this manuscript?’

  ‘Fuck no.’

  He passes me small waxpaper cups of water, which I gulp and gulp like some animal at a water hole, and in no bloody time have to piss again. So I piss. Here where I sit. Maybe this is for the best. Maybe I’ll die here empty of bladder and pride; all honour gone.

  After a while I say, ‘Merv, I’m hungry.’

&nb
sp; ‘Do you want me to fetch something from the dining car?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Food.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Anything. Anything. Anything.’

  I almost sob.

  I hear Merv fossicking about in the compartment and I hear him going out, the door sliding shut behind him. Even when I know he’s gone, I still think he’s out there, fossicking and I realise I must be delirious. I call. No answer. I call again. No answer. The rattling of the wheels is like dull music, like a battery held against your tongue. I piss. I drink and I piss and I try to read. The transaction is pretty simple. A life’s work. This is where devotion to the party gets you. Stuck in a shithouse on the Overlander. Dymphna Cusack should be here, not me. That old commo in a tiara, swanning through Moscow in her fur coat. Well Dymphna, did you ever see red shoes like mine? The politburo loved my red shoes. I try not to think about Dymphna for a while, as the music of the train fills me. More hours pass. I think I even doze a little. Merv returns with some railway sandwiches, which he passes in to me.

  ‘What took you so long?’

  ‘I had a cup of tea.’

  ‘Tea! While I’m stuck in here!’

  ‘I’ve walked the length of the train looking for a lavatory. I can hardly use this one.’

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘No. My legs hurt. I feel buried alive.’

  It’s true. I practise scratching my old nails against the door. I try to project the face of several theatre directors I could mention on to the door.

  ‘I can’t get you out unless you let me call the conductor.’

  ‘No. What would the vice-chancellor say?’

  ‘Bugger the vice-chancellor.’

  Merv has never cared much for vice-chancellors. He goes on in his expedient, male way: