narratorAUSTRALIA Volume Two

by narrator AUSTRALIA

My dog ‘Bundy’

  Dear beautiful dog,

  No one loves you,

  You’re scruffy and you’re ugly.

  You drag your feet

  Through the mud,

  Then traipse it all through

  My humble hut.

  Dear morbid, melancholy dog,

  Who I’ve grown to love –

  You mope around

  With such sad eyes –

  When I look at you,

  All the joy from me is robbed.

  The other day

  A loving soul passed this way,

  Dear Bundy –

  She offered to take you away –

  For not even five minutes,

  Did I hesitate.

  I’m sorry Bundy,

  You’ve been betrayed –

  But you were only meant to stay

  For as long as I needed you to play

  This sad and lonely game.

  I will see you now and then,

  But you will no longer be my pet,

  You’ll get a new owner,

  Who will change your name,

  And give you all their blame,

  I’m sorry, Bundy your fate is set.

  Dear beautiful Bundy –

  I love you,

  You’re scruffy and you’re ugly.

  I see your purpose now,

  Next time we meet,

  I’ll see your sad eyes,

  Extend a soft pat,

  And a warm smile,

  And that will be enough

  Somehow.

  Joanna says that she finds it amusing that the term ‘The black dog’ is used as a metaphor for depression, so she decided to personalise her own experience with mental dis-ease by giving her ‘dog’ a name and identity. She found it a loving way to accept depression as just another part of her life.

  Friday 8 February 2013

  Broken Armour

  Linda Yates

  Katoomba, NSW

  For Tony

  I thought of you today,

  as I tended my garden,

  gloved and bonneted,

  growing stout with age,

  (how you would laugh to see me!)

  and you dead, Christlike, at thirty three,

  from the demon drugs

  you took when your childhood demons

  came to pierce and crucify you.

  I thought about how I never marked the anniversary,

  being young and rushing to embrace life

  and wanting to distance myself

  from your fate

  because when I got the call,

  saying you were dead,

  I wanted to lock all my loved ones away

  for safekeeping.

  I thought about how I still

  need to speak to you

  in realms where you have never died,

  for you were wise beyond your years,

  though that did not help you

  in the end.

  I thought about all the seedy dens

  we had lived in

  and the adventures we had

  in our precarious hand to mouth,

  seat of the pants existence.

  And how it was you who read

  my first tentative poems

  and later told me how worried you were

  because you would not know what to say if they were crap,

  but luckily they were ok.

  I thought about how I could not

  let it work between us,

  because you were too much like me

  and I was looking for knights

  with no broken armour.

  And how it was mean,

  wanting to keep your loyalty

  without wanting you.

  I thought of your funeral

  and how it did justice to the richness of your life,

  without glossing over,

  and everyone being so close and kind

  for a while.

  And how the funeral director said

  that where ever you were you were now at peace

  and maybe you were working your problems out on another level

  and I hoped he was right.

  And how, on the way home,

  I had such an urge to tell you

  what a wonderful funeral

  I had been to today.

  And I thought of the fifty dollars I spent

  to send flowers, when I had refused

  to lend it to you a week before,

  knowing it would go straight

  up your arm and I would never see it again

  and how I never saw you again instead.

  And I thought of the son you left behind,

  his mother already dead the same way

  before you.

  I thought of the doctor’s receptionist

  who kept ringing to hassle me to

  give your mother’s address

  so she could send the unpaid bills.

  And I thought of your mother

  who had to identify you,

  lying there, I imagine,

  a wax effigy of yourself.

  I hoped your beard showed

  the Celtic red, of which you were so proud.

  And I thought of how I told her

  I could not believe you were dead,

  it was some trick you were playing on us

  and she said she felt the same way

  and she had seen your body.

  I thought of your mother

  who had you too young at sixteen,

  so that you were farmed out to her mother

  until she married and how you told me your

  step father hated you,

  though he seemed like a nice man to me,

  and how you bounced around from

  foster home to foster home

  until you finally ran away

  to join the rest of the unwanted,

  washed up on the shores of King’s Cross

  where we met.

  I thought of how your stepfather

  would not let your mother grieve

  saying she had other children (his)

  to care for

  and how then I knew

  what you had told me about him

  was true.

  I thought of all the ‘if only’s.

  And, lastly, I thought of the lover who,

  in trying to shirk me off,

  once told me I needed

  an older, more together version of you.

  And I thought how he was probably right,

  for, armour all broken,

  I have grown wiser with rust alongside you.

  Friday 8 February 2013 4 pm

  The Driver

  Susan Sargent

  Narrabri, NSW

  It was dark, so dark. It was quiet, so quiet.

  Eerie silence in the gloom.

  Except for the drip, drip, dripping of something nearby.

  Fear hung low, heavy like a blanket.

  No memory at all of how this had begun.

  Stuck fast in the darkness, can’t feel a thing, in this fog you could almost cut with a knife.

  Would anyone come?

  Did they know you were here?

  Did anyone see you when you missed that last bend?

  Oh, when would they come?

  Did they know you were here?

  Life’s grip was slipping, slipping away.

  Fading into the gloom, merging into the fog with no separation.

  What was real? What was not? No way to tell now.

  No more pain, no more pain, an unexpected relief.

  One saving grace amidst the panic increasing.

  Fear has its hold, a heart fluttering wildly.

  Was that a siren, could that be likely?

  Oh, when would they come?

  Did they know you were here?

  Out of the mist, red and blue, red and blue.

  A jumble of voi
ces, faceless in the gloom.

  Then one, a lone voice, extremely quiet, but a whisper.

  Yet somehow louder and clearer than the others combined.

  So very close, no more than a breath in the ear.

  ‘You don’t have to stay. It’s okay to go.’

  Your waiting is over, your salvation is near.

  A message so simple, a message so clear.

  When will they come?

  Does not matter now.

  They know you are here, but they lingered too long.

  A snap, almost audible, then swirling, rushing, spinning like a vortex, as life’s grip breaks away.

  Relief, peace, panic’s hold released.

  Looking down on the scene, no hurry now.

  A breath of wind felt by all as the last knot breaks.

  Not cold, like you’d think, but a warm little zephyr.

  It is done. It is over. No more fear. No more life.

  Another one taken, another one lost.

  Saturday 9 February 2013

  His Gift Back

  Tamara Pratt

  Mount Gravatt, QLD

  It was strange, Tania realised, how in the middle of a perfect Spring day, moments before she saw the military police standing on her front porch, that she could sense the news. Her husband, Mick, continents away, had died in the middle of a sultry Summer night, fighting to protect another nation, the civilians of another family he may never have known like he’d known his.

  Now, with the news still raw and her heart threatening to stall, she stood with fledgling composure in the kitchen, the unassuming cardboard box on the table. In nights long passed, when Mick warned her bad things could happen, she had closed her ears. Was this his way now of having her open her eyes?

  It had taken less than a few minutes for the police to hand her the box after they had it shipped from his post – a journey she wished her husband had made home – not a scrappy, dented parcel. If she had the strength, she’d throw it across the table to its own demise. She couldn’t though. Not when she could feel Mick’s hand touch hers and hear her last words to him as he packed his bags. In here, she told him, holding up the box, is everything you need to remind you of us.

  He’d smiled and kissed her gently, told her that one day he might have to do the same. And that if that day came, she would promise not to mourn him, but do everything to keep his memory alive in their little girl’s mind.

  ‘Mum!’ Amy squealed, skipping through the kitchen, arms reaching out, grasping her mother’s waist. ‘Did Daddy send us a present today? Can we open it?’

  Amy slipped out from her mother’s hold and grabbed for the white card on the box. Something Tania had stared at for minutes.

  ‘Don’t!’ she called. Too late. Little Amy was already unfolding a familiar page of stationery.

  ‘It’s a note from Daddy!’ she said, her eyes wide with delight. ‘He tells us that in the box is everything we need to remind us of him.’

  Amy tugged at her arm.

  ‘Can we open it Mummy, can we?’  

  Sunday 10 February 2013

  Little Minds

  Thomas Gibbs

  Sydney, NSW

  On the farm there were cows. Many of them. They just stood there, waiting for the hay bales to be thrown every day. I was ten years old. I could barely carry a hay bale.

  On this particular day, it was sunny. My father was talking to a man with a rifle. They both had sunken shoulders, and concerned eyes. I could hear them talking, but I didn’t understand what they were talking about. I was too busy playing soccer with my brother. We were kicking the ball to each other, and made goals out of the large pine trees. I took a shot. My brother was the keeper. It went in the bottom corner! It’s at times like this where you really need a net.

  My brother was rubbing the dirt off his knees, so I ran past him, to collect the ball. I could hear my father talking: ‘Cows have small brains.’ He held up his hand to the man, connecting his thumb and index finger, forming a hole.

  I went back to play with my brother. He wanted me to be keeper. ‘I’ve only had one shot,’ I said. ‘You have a cow’s brain,’ I added.

  My father walked past with the man. The rifle was still in his hand. I could see him loading it. It was weird to see a gun in real life. My father raised his hand and pointed towards one of the cows. This cow was my favourite. He had a great personality. All the others just stood there. This one would shake its head at me, and sometimes stomp around. He wasn’t the most attractive cow. One of his eyes was always red, and looked painful. There were black teardrops that had dried up underneath his eye. I walked over to my father. I was bored. I could hear the man talking: ‘One shot should be enough.’ The man looked through the sight of his rifle.

  ‘You’re not going to shoot one of the cows are you?’ I asked. My father looked at me, and then looked back at the man. He took me away.

  ‘Son, one of the cows has a brain tumour; we have to put it down.’

  ‘What’s a tumour?’

  ‘The cow is suffering; see its eye?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘The cow has lost its vision.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘The tumour is growing out of its eye.’ My father turned back to the man.

  I ran over to my brother. I told him what my father had just said. We followed our father, and this strange man, from a distance. They were trying to get the cow to move. They were trying to guide it into the place my brother and I used to climb on. It was like a prison for cows. You could climb up the bars and swing on the metal gate. They eventually trapped the cow inside the cow prison. All the other cows were watching, just standing there. The man walked through the gate and approached the cow with his rifle. My father was standing at the gate. He couldn’t see us. We were hiding behind a large pine tree. The man raised his rifle to the cow’s head. ‘BANG!’ The cow just stood there, doing nothing. ‘BANG!’ Eyes couldn’t turn away. My brother was holding my arm. ‘BANG! Fuck!’ The man was getting angry. His face was all sweaty. The cow fell down.

  We ran back to the house. There was some kind of tractor entering the property. My brother and I started playing soccer again. This time I was keeper. My brother missed his first shot.

  Monday 11 and Tuesday 12 February 2013

  Love And 13 Cossacks

  Paris Portingale

  Mt Victoria, NSW

  Once upon a time, somewhere towards the end of the twentieth century …

  They were drunk when they met. Pissed and staggery, about an hour away from passing out, maybe a little longer for him, but that was more to do with body mass than anything else. She was a slighter build, the way women often are, and he was a little heavier and taller, the way men often are, and the extra mass meant if he went drink for drink with her he’d remain, if not altogether upright, then at least conscious for maybe thirty minutes longer than she would.

  He was sitting on a stool at the bar drinking vodka, ‘13 Cossacks’ vodka to put a definite name to the thing, and she’d come in, it was around 12.30 in the morning, and she’d tripped and fallen onto her face and while she was thinking she might just stay there for a while, he got up and went over and, standing beside her, said, ‘Can I get you a drink, or are you alright?’

  She said, ‘I don’t know, what are you having?’ and he said, ‘13 Cossacks,’ and he bent unsteadily and grabbed onto her wrist and, as she’d been picked up from the floor some number of times before, she handled the manoeuvre with a level of competency.

  He said, clarifying, ‘Vodka, but you’d get that from the title. From the name. I don’t think they have Cossacks anywhere other than vodka-drinking Russia. I think they’re unique to that area. Or were. I don’t know if they still exist, they used to go around on horses. I can’t see a band of Cossacks travelling across the Russian steppes in Mazda hatchbacks.’

  The picture made her laugh. She said, ‘I might have one of those 13 Cossacks,’ and he said, �
��Well, follow me to the bar my dear, we’ll pick one out for you.’

  He led her to the bar and gave her his stool and he went and found another for himself and he brought it back and ordered two doubles. He asked for big doubles, but doubles are what they are and don’t come in different sizes, but he was more showing off than anything else.

  While they were waiting for the drinks he said, ‘It’s possible I could be unconscious within the hour. Do you think you’ll be able to find your own way home?’

  The drinks came just then. It had been over half an hour since her last drink and she threw hers down in a swallow and wiped her mouth in an exaggerated manner with the back of her hand.

  His smile was funny and his eyes were soft and his voice had a sort of powdery, almost self-conscious poshness, like he’d been recently deported from old Mother England for wilful yet uncompromising drunkenness and dissolution, all of which touched her in a funny way so she said, ‘Buy me another one of those. What number Cossack was that one?’ and he said, ‘Ivan, he’s number twelve,’ and she told him, ‘Another Ivan and I might just join you.’

  ‘Don’t you have a cat?’ he asked her, and she said, ‘No, my cat left me,’ and he said, ‘Oh no, that’s so sad,’ and she said, ‘I know.’

  He asked her, ‘How did things break down like that?’ and she replied, ‘We lived in two different worlds. It ultimately generated irreconcilable differences.’

  He said, ‘Do you ever see each other,’ and she said, ‘No. I once thought I saw him, Tom his name was, I once thought I saw him going past on a number twelve bus, but it could have been another cat. You know how you do that,’ and he nodded, because he did know how you do that, and had in fact done it himself with a woman who’d quite officially changed her name from Rose to Magdaline, who’d suddenly spurned him when she discovered he had not, in fact, read the bible from cover to cover, as he’d explained during the process of getting her pants down and off. ‘I have so read it all,’ he’d said, and she said, ‘Oh yes, well, what did God say to Moses on Mount Sinai?’ and he’d replied, ‘He said – Moses, take this down, and you may need another tablet,’ and that was the end of that.

  So, he ordered two more doubles and told her his name was Anderson and she said, ‘What’s your Christian name?’ and he said, ‘That is my Christian name,’ and she said, ‘Bullshit, that’s a surname,’ and he said, ‘Not to me it’s not.’

  She said, ‘Well, what is your surname?’

  He said, ‘I forget.’

  ‘But your first name’s Anderson, right?’

  He nodded and drank half his double and she drank half of hers.

  She said, ‘Well, my name’s Valerie,’ and he said, ‘Is that true?’ and she said, ‘As true as you’ve got a surname for a first name,’ and he said, ‘Fair enough. Do you come here often?’

  She said, ‘Seriously? Do I come here often?’

  ‘It’s a line so hackneyed and parodied it’s quite fresh again I’ve found. I’ve been using it quite a bit lately, to good effect too, I might add.’

  ‘Okay, well, no, I don’t come here often.’

  ‘I think you should,’ he said. ‘Hey, I have to visit the gentlemen’s lounge. Don’t go away, for Christ’s sake,’ but when he got back he saw that Christ had in fact been forsaken and she had gone away. He ordered another two doubles, in case she came back for some reason, but on that particular night she didn’t.

  She did come back three nights later though, and she had someone with her. A man named Harry. She looked for Anderson from the door and when she saw him she walked over unsteadily with Harry and said, ‘Harry, this is Anderson. Anderson, this is Harry.’

  He said, ‘Hi, Harry,’ but he was mainly looking at her. Harry looked like an idiot, he decided, in that way you can in the first instant of meeting someone.

  She said, ‘Harry and I are going back to my place to fuck. I’d ask you along, only …’ and she waggled her hand in the air to show just how iffy his coming along would be for all concerned, even Harry, who was an idiot and pissed to boot and keen to get going, or at least have a drink.

  Harry said, ‘Hi,’ then he put his arm around Valerie’s waist and pulled her against him and said to her, ‘So, what are we doing? Do you want a drink, or what? Or should we just go? What do you think?’ His tie was undone, and while ties can be undone in quite a fashionable way, Anderson decided Harry’s was undone in a stupid way that just made him look more like an idiot, and on an impulse, perhaps to underline for her his feelings towards Harry, he leaned forward and started to straighten Harry’s tie.

  Being pissed and an idiot, Harry lifted his chin for an instant, then, getting a more realistic grasp of exactly what was going on, he pulled away. He said, ‘Hey, watch it, champ,’ in a way that was belligerent, pissed and idiotic, Anderson thought. Then Harry reached forward and pushed Anderson in the chest, and because it was 11.30 pm and the 13 Cossacks had well and truly made their presence felt, Anderson toppled off his stool to crash to the floor and end lying flat on his back. Staring straight up at the ceiling, he found a spot, ever so slightly to his left, and he directed his concentration on that, so that, when she looked down at him and said, ‘Can I get you a drink, down there, or are you alright?’ he didn’t look at her, but rather said to the spot, ‘No, I’m fine. Don’t let me stop you though. Get something for yourself. And Harry too. Tell Jimmy to put it on my tab.’ Then he closed his eyes.

  Any amount of time could have passed, or no time at all, until Anderson felt Jimmy grabbing at him and heard him say, ‘Come on, up,’ in a way that was half bartender, half serious bouncer. He opened his eyes and let Jimmy get him to his feet and he sat on the stool again and ordered a double. ‘13 Cossacks,’ he said, ‘and make it a double. A large double,’ and Jimmy put an extra jigger into the glass, on top of the double, to ease the pain of everything, because he had a soft spot for Anderson, in a similar way that Anderson had a soft spot for him, Jimmy being his bartender and all.

  She’d gone, along with Harry. They’d slipped off while his eyes were closed. He said to Jimmy, ‘She didn’t seem the type to fuck an idiot.’

  Jimmy said, ‘Yeah, well, you can’t tell with women.’

  He nodded, even though the statement was of itself a vast and meaningless generalisation that often bartenders, taxi drivers, bored men in ticket booths and sometimes even dentists deliver in response to other vast and meaningless generalisations, and he didn’t hold it against Jimmy in the slightest because Jimmy, his bartender, lived in a soft spot Anderson had created specifically for him, somewhere in the middle of his chest there.

  So, two nights later, sitting on his stool, well into the 13 Cossacks, he saw her come through the door again. She saw him and, as much as he suspected himself of wishful thinking, he fancied he saw the briefest expression of relief flit across her face, so he said, ‘Is there a male equivalent to the line “Is that a gun in your pocket or are you just happy to see me?”’

  She said, ‘Nope, girls don’t show it that way. Obviously. You are such an idiot.’

  He said, ‘Talking of idiots, how’s Harry?’

  ‘Harry is an idiot. Was an idiot,’ she corrected herself and Anderson ordered two doubles, then asked her, ‘Why would you fuck an idiot? I’m genuinely curious.’

  She said, ‘I didn’t fuck him. He spewed in the gutter. Just a little way down from here as a matter of fact. And I escaped. Into the night.’ And the drinks came then and she drank hers in three quick swallows.

  He said, ‘Lucky escape. So, would you have fucked him if he hadn’t spewed?’ and in asking the question he hoped his voice was carrying the full weight of the casual indifference he was trying to convey, because he felt that to be important at this particular point.

  She was looking in her purse for a cigarette, pulling things out, piling them on the counter. There were keys and crumpled banknotes and small change and a little tin of eucalyptus based sweets. A handkerchief with a lipstick stain, a small notebook
and part of a padlock that had broken in her hands and she’d kept, just in case. She said, during this, ‘What would you like to hear?’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘I’d prefer to hear you say no. But anything in the ballpark of the truth would be okay.’

  ‘Okay, no, then,’ she said, and he said, ‘Is that the truth?’ and she said, ‘What would you like to hear?’ and he said, ‘That you wouldn’t fuck an idiot. Particularly one like Harry who’d be like the genetic pinnacle for idiocy. He’s probably got trophies for idiocy. A special cabinet for them in his lounge room.’

  She’d found a crumpled packet of cigarettes and was lighting one.

  He said, ‘How excellent that you smoke. I think smoking is about the most sophisticated thing a single person can do.’

  She looked at him, to check for sarcasm or irony, but both were absent and she took a deep drag and, leaning back her head, she blew a vertical column of smoke.

  ‘They will kill you, though,’ he told her. ‘I’d really appreciate it if you didn’t die before I’ve got to know you a bit better.’

  ‘Excellent line,’ she said, and he said, ‘Thanks.’

  She said, ‘Do you write all your own material?’ and he replied, ‘Mostly.’

  They drank on into the night and when it was time to go he said, ‘I’ll walk you home,’ and she said, ‘That would be nice.’

  On the street they were both a little staggery, just a little.

  She said, ‘Down this way,’ and they walked without touching.

  Before they reached the corner he said, ‘I’m so much less an idiot than Harry, you know. I can do logarithms in my head.’

  ‘Really?’ she said.

  ‘I can show you how much less an idiot I am. If you want me to,’ he told her, and she said, ‘Go on then,’ and he stopped and took her arm and turned her so they were facing and he moved closer to her and she looked up at him, because he was a little taller, which, as I said, is often the way with these things, and she tilted her head slightly because it was obvious his plan here was to kiss her, but instead he said, ‘I’ll show you I can get you all the way home without spewing in the gutter,’ which is what he did and it proved no effort whatsoever.

  At the entrance to her block of apartments they stopped. She said, ‘This isn’t a euphemism. Do you want to come up for coffee?’

  ‘Why not?’ he said, and they took the little lift up to the fourth floor and she found her keys and they went inside and, while she went into the kitchen to make coffee, he lay down on the couch in her lounge room and went to sleep.

  In the morning he woke up with his head feeling like it did most mornings and his hand tingling from sleeping on it, and he got up and found the toilet and peed and washed his face and came out to find her. She was in the single bedroom, lying on her stomach under the covers, on the bed and she smelled lightly of cigarette smoke and perfume, and he found the smell strangely exotic and compelling. He sat on the edge of her bed looking at her and after ten minutes of this he tentatively reached over and touched her hair and her eyes opened and for a moment she looked at him uncomprehendingly, then she groaned and said, ‘Oh God,’ then, ‘There’s a bottle in the freezer. Oh God, get the bottle from the freezer. I’m seriously about to die. I’m on the precipice of death. Seriously.’

  ‘Okay,’ he said, ‘you wait here.’

  ‘I’m going to pee,’ she told him, and she pulled off the covers and got out of the bed and small-stepped, almost tip-toeing, to the toilet in her underwear and he heard her close the door and throw up in three retching contractions.

  She was sitting up in bed when he came back with the bottle. It was vodka, chilled to a thick oiliness so it didn’t make the usual splashing sound as it hit the glasses. He’d brought a bed tray with fold-down legs he’d found and he set it up across her thighs and they each lifted their glass to their lips, both giving that early-morning, first-drink shudder you do when you’re starting early, as they were, because he saw the bedside clock and it said 8.30 am.

  They were pissed by 11 am, still in her bedroom and the bottle was mostly empty. She said, ‘There’s another in the cupboard,’ and he got up to find it. On his way back he noticed the bookshelf and briefly ran a hand over some of the spines. They were mostly poetry, a lot of Keats, and he pulled one out and took it with him.

  Back, sitting on the bed, with their glasses topped, he opened the book, flicking through, and he found a page and, smoothing it down he read aloud:

  I met a lady in the meads

  Full beautiful, a faery’s child;

  Her hair was long, her foot was light,

  And her eyes were wild.

  I set her on my pacing steed,

  And nothing else saw all day long;

  For sideways would she lean, and sing

  A faery’s song.

  I made a garland for her head,

  And bracelets too, and fragrant zone;

  She look’d at me as she did love,

  And made sweet moan.

  She said, ‘Keats. He was still just a little boy when he wrote that. He used to make me cry. Not so much now. Actually I don’t think I’ve cried in quite some time. Guess that’s an indicator of happiness, right?’

  ‘Maybe,’ he said. ‘We’re the only species that cries, I guess because none of the others developed the ability to read Keats.’ He looked up from the book. ‘Do you have any Byron?’ he asked her.

  She said, ‘No,’ and he said, ‘There’s something I’d love to read you. It’s sad and angry and about the end of the world. It’s really very sad, but in a kind of not-sad way. When I read it, when I get to the end, it makes me want to kiss someone beautiful.’ He snapped the book shut, to distract from what he’d just said. Then, ‘There’s never been anyone there before, when I’ve read it. It’s just that, you’re here and there’s a bookshop not that far away. We could …’ and he looked at her to see if her face said, ‘yes they could,’ which he figured he could read there, or at least he couldn’t see, ‘no they couldn’t,’ and he stood and picked up the tray to take it to the kitchen, saying, ‘I’ll wait for you out here, till you get dressed. If you want to go. Or we could do something else. Or I could just go. Maybe I should just go.’

  She didn’t say anything, and he said, ‘I’ll just go,’ and started out of the room with the tray and she said, ‘I’ll come,’ and he said, ‘To the bookshop?’ and she said, ‘Yes,’ and nodded, and he said, ‘Only if you want to,’ and she replied, ‘I want to,’ and he said, ‘Really? Because I could just go,’ and she said to him, ‘You’re such an idiot, you know that?’

  He said, ‘Like Harry?’ and she told him. ‘No, idiot. And stop mentioning Harry. Harry was only a ploy, anyway,’ and he filed that away to explore later and took the tray into the kitchen to let her get dressed by herself, which was polite and quite right at this stage of the relationship.

  So, they walked together the blocks to the bookshop, not touching except for twice, when they crossed the road and he grabbed her hand to steer her and keep together, so that, once the street was crossed he released her, and the second time, when he dropped her hand, he ran his through his hair in an absent way, to show how insignificant the action had been.

  On the way he bought two flasks of vodka, but they didn’t open them. Not straight away. She put hers in her bag and he put his in a pocket, and when they reached the bookshop he held the door open for her.

  And as luck would have it, in the reverse of the way you mainly find luck doesn’t have it, the bookshop had the volume of Byron he needed and he found the poem and, standing towards the back of the shop, in amongst the bookcases, he opened his vodka and drank some and passed the bottle to her, then he read her the poem, ‘Darkness,’ by Lord Byron. And when he’d read the final lines –

  They slept on the abyss without a surge

  The waves were dead; the tides were in their grave,

  The moon their mistress had expired before;

  The
winds were withered in the stagnant air,

  And the clouds perish’d; Darkness had no need

  Of aid from them. She was the universe.

  – he saw it was alright and he kissed her as the shop assistant rounded the aisle to ask if they needed any help and, seeing them, turned and returned to his counter with the question unasked.

  When the kiss ended he said to her, ‘That’s exactly how the poem should end. I’ve known that for so long, without having it ever end that way. But now it has.’

  ‘It was beautiful,’ she said, and he said, ‘The poem?’ and she replied, ‘Yes,’ and he asked, ‘And the kiss?’ and she said, ‘I don’t remember,’ so he kissed her again.

  Of course they ended up in the bar, sitting in front of Jimmy, ordering 13 Cossacks, in doubles, and drinking them while he recited sections of poems he’d written when much younger. The pieces he could remember. And she recited for him a poem she’d written to a young man, twenty he was at the time, she was eighteen and so much in love she thought she would surely die. As surely as the night was black, as surely as caterpillars grew wings and the tide turned, as she’d told her friend Marcy, in the toilets of the Bright Hill cinema complex one Saturday evening before the show. She’d sent it to him in the mail, and a few days later he sent her one he’d written himself, that began, ‘My love is like a red, red rose,’ so she knew it was Robbie Burns and love evaporated the way it tends to in the face of minor treacheries and the subversion of the little truths that seem to hold the whole thing together. Hers had been about how love is like a mist and when two people are in love, how their mists coalesce and in the mixing a wonderful and special energy is established that, properly nurtured, can carry the two through all of their days on the earth. She explained it was a young person’s poem and he both nodded and shook his head to say it was, yet was simultaneously much more.

  At 9.30 pm, an early hour, he said to her, ‘If we leave now we could still fuck,’ and she said, ‘Are you sure? I thought we’d given up on that,’ and he told her, ‘Not entirely,’ and she said, ‘Okay then,’ and they got their stuff together and wished Jimmy a good night and ‘bonne chance’ for some reason, even though it was clear he had little need for any additional good luck at that particular point in things.

  They went to her place. He’d said, ‘Let’s go to your place for a change,’ and she’d replied, ‘Break the routine,’ and he’d added, ‘A change is as good as a holiday,’ and she’d said, ‘Change is the lifeblood of the universe,’ and he’d stumbled, ‘Change … change … nope I’m out,’ and she’d clapped her hands and said, ‘One nil.’

  In her apartment they undressed each other, lying on the bed, facing each other, which was awkward, but there was strangely no rush and in a funny way the awkwardness made it somehow more of a funny, special thing, and when they were finally unclothed he looked at her for so long she began to wonder if everything was in fact alright. It was alright. He was in a kind of hazy awe, and the alcohol was ebbing and flowing so that he kept jumping back to the start, to begin his examinations again, as though from the very first instant.

  Afterwards they drank and talked and drank and talked some more and about an hour before the sun was due to rise they went to sleep. And when they woke up, somewhere around the midday, they took it in turns to throw up in the toilet.

  They were married four days later, in a civil ceremony, and as Jimmy couldn’t get away they got permission for Rory, the table-wiper, to take an hour off to be the witness, and when they got back, Jimmy showered them with the torn pieces of a dozen paper napkins he’d made for them during a slow spell at the counter.

  And over the next months they managed to work and drink and sometimes make love, when they remembered, and the occasions for making love seemed to become more and more separated until they stopped altogether one night after a drunken fight about something like tomato sauce or why the lottery had to be a fake, and he’d staggered into the night street and slept under cardboard in an alley somewhere and next day collapsed on the way to Jimmy’s for a quick one before work.

  The doctor at the hospital told him it was his liver and he’d replied, ‘Good God, do I still have one? How extraordinary,’ and the doctor had smiled briefly, then told him just how bad it was, and when he’d finished, his patient made a whistling sound and said, ‘Boy, I could really use a drink right now,’ and the doctor shook his head the way they do with naughty patients and gave him a pamphlet which outlined more fully his condition and what to expect.

  She came to see him of course, always pissed or just flat out drunk, and as he was sober now, he found the visits increasingly unsatisfying. Jimmy called in once, saying he’d meant to bring a bottle but had forgotten at the last minute, however he’d definitely remember next time, but there was no next time as the bar was a full time occupation and even very regular customers could only expect so much.

  And as it transpired, on the very night his mortal coil finally shuffled itself off to join all the other shuffled off mortal coils, wherever it is in the universe they ultimately reside, and the usually jagged red line on his bedside monitor went flat and lifeless, pretty much at exactly the moment those things were happening, she was entering Jimmy’s, trailed by a fattening businessman in an unnaturally shiny suit and skew-if tie, leading him to be introduced to another man, met the night before, in this very same establishment, to say, ‘Fattening business man, this is the other man. Other man, this is fattening business man. Business man and I are going back to my place to fuck,’ and the man she’d met the night before got to his feet, more than a little unsteadily, and just looked at her, till she said, ‘Well, see you,’ and left.

  Wednesday 13 February 2013

  Love Not Lost

  Sam Elliott-Halls

  Campbelltown, NSW

  Time’s flown by

  Still asking why

  Things that’ll never be

  Said between you and me

  The silence crashes around me

  No answers abound

  Just questions that beggar

  Answers that’ll never

  Be found

  The angry brother

  The hostile mother

  And we who loved you

  Like no other

  People sang your praises

  They still do

  I loved you

  Couldn’t reach you

  Sheltered we were

  From their deeds

  Those who hurt you

  Took away your smile

  The promise and love

  Of a beautiful child

  You ran like the wind

  Are you still running now

  Would you answer

  If you could

  Were you still here