Journeys in Creative Writing

FIND MY FREE STORIES EASILY WITH THIS INDEX

2011-04-21T18:15:00.050+10:00

The very essence of a blog means that some of the best bits are lost among the earlier posts.

This index will make it easier to find out what's inside. It's a list of links with a short synopsis of each piece on offer. Here we go ... and please leave some feedback among the comments!

PATERNITY - a mystery novel that spans Australia from the outback to the beautiful city of Sydney. Taste the opening chapter here and click to read the rest for free ...

They waited with some sort of bizarre discipline, although straining at the leash.

The vicious wind set leaves scuttling on the ground, and branches arching against the bright night sky. The full moon saw it all, and intensified the shadows at the bases of the trees. She felt freezing then, and fear took over from the anger. What did they intend with her?

Soon two white lights shattered the gloom, appearing first at the top of the track. They followed its bends and twists until they lit the clearing and then the target directly … blinding her.

The car door slammed once.

And now click the link below or go to the side bar to read the whole book for free!
http://journeysincreativewriting.blogspot.com/2008/11/paternity-original-australian-novel.html

LAMB CHOPS AND APPLE PIE - a short story
Plain and fresh home baked food was a big part of my childhood in Australia. The 1940s and 1950s were simple times when neighbours were an important part of family life. When kids climbed trees, and when wandering unguarded for hours in play with your siblings was regarded as safe and quite okay ...
http://journeysincreativewriting.blogspot.com/2008/07/lamb-chops-and-apple-pie-short-story-by.html

SEX AT SIXTY-FIVE - short story
This one is from the other edge of the age spectrum. I've seen young people squirm when they are faced with the possibility that the elderly may still indulge in sex. Mon and Velma's advice holds good for young and old.
http://journeysincreativewriting.blogspot.com/2008/07/there-was-something-wrong.html

HOPPING MAD - a short story
He breeds rabbits to save the world from hunger. Ralph also suffers bi-polar disorder, is a much loved husband and father, and the scourge of the manager of his local supermarket.
http://journeysincreativewriting.blogspot.com/2009/05/hopping-mad-he-breeds-rabbits-to-save.html

HIDDEN MEANINGS - Married to a Bi-Sexual? - a short story

She has no idea that her husband is bi-sexual. Gradually the truth dawns upon her ...

There are two voices here, in parallel monologues.

http://journeysincreativewriting.blogspot.com/2009/07/hidden-meanings-married-to-bi-sexual.html

PATERNITY - My full length Australian Mystery Novel
Sydney journalist Pip Holmes wants to know who her father was. Does the answer connect with a pack rape in an Australian country town 28 years before?
Follow Pip's journey through the outback and meet some extraordinary characters along the way.
You can begin Episode One here

MEET PIP IN THE FLESH - Read how one of Pip's fans drew her portrait
Staggeringly talented Vikki North of California’s The Red Chair Gallery has done a conceptual portrait of the heroine of Paternity, Pip Holmes, and allowed me to publish it here so that we can all share …
Pip is a Sydney journalist, a pocket dynamo who faces all sorts of dangers to track down her father who could have been a member of a pack of rapists. See Vicki's portrait ...
http://journeysincreativewriting.blogspot.com/2009/01/meet-pip-in-flesh.html

THE BLACK OR BUBONIC PLAGUE IN SYDNEY 1900 - a short short history

It was 1900 in Sydney - when rats on board ships coming from overseas brought the Black or Bubonic Plague and spread it throughout the town. Pictures of conditions at the time.
Also, see Labyrinth in Olde Sydney Town (below) for a story set in this period. http://journeysincreativewriting.blogspot.com/2009/08/black-or-bubonic-plague-sydney-1900.html

LABYRINTH IN OLDE SYDNEY TOWN - a short story

Young Miriam McDonald reclines on dank straw, the fine cotton fabric of her nightgown stretched against her distended belly. Her long thin hands move to this roundness, stroking gently. Miriam is alone in Olde Sydney Town where the Bubonic Plague has created death and panic.

http://journeysincreativewriting.blogspot.com/2009/06/labyrinth-plague-in-olde-sydney-town.html

FRIENDS FOR A TIME - LOVE IN A NURSING HOME - a short story

There is a squinch of rubber soles on linoleum, and the tap tap tapping of a stick as a young nurse guides an old man down the hall and towards the garden. She watches as he sighs into the second best chair on the verandah, next to the cat. She pats a rug around his knees, adjusts the shawl lying on the shoulders of an elderly woman sitting in the third best chair, alongside the man, and leaves them.

http://journeysincreativewriting.blogspot.com/2008/08/friends-for-time-love-in-nursing-home.html

MR AND MRS Y - a short story

The old couple made a perfect capital ‘Y’ shape as they walked together around the corner and up the hill. You see, they each had severe curvature of the spine, as though in sympathy with one another. Problem was their spines bent sideways, sending their heads at the top of the ‘Y’ away from their partner, by a good 45 degrees. The man bent right and the woman bent to the left.

http://journeysincreativewriting.blogspot.com/2009/07/mr-and-mrs-y-short-story.html

WHITE DUST - a short story

My Dad used asbestos sheeting to build small cottages when I was a child. The white dust was a large part of our lives, and this meant that long drawn out illness and shortened lives followed. This is part of our family story.

http://journeysincreativewriting.blogspot.com/2009/07/white-dust-how-asbestos-killed-my.html

BLOOD SPORT - A Story About a Very Special Robot

We've all dreamed of having a robot at our place to do the chores, but could there be unforeseen consequences?

http://journeysincreativewriting.blogspot.com/2008/09/blood-sport-story-about-very-special.html

HILL END SUITE - A Poem About an old Australian Gold Town
Pick pick clink clink
Metal on rock…
A ghostly chorus of yelling and clamour,
Hollers and shouts and bellows and yelps.
Muscles and hearts straining, hurting,
Incessant toil…
Wearing away bodies and hope.
http://journeysincreativewriting.blogspot.com/2008/09/hill-end-suite-poem-about-old.html

POETRY CAN BE A COMFORT
It is sometimes said that it's good to take up pen and paper to write a letter in a moment of anger or desperation, even if you don't post it.
To me, writing poetry is perhaps a more satisfying solution. I found it so during one particularly testing time in my life ...
http://journeysincreativewriting.blogspot.com/2008/09/poetry-can-be-comfort.html

UNKIND CUT! - A Short Story About a TV Romance
You wring your psyche dry for twelve hours at a trot. You twist and you squeeze your inner self until reality and fictional character slide together. Then at the end of it all comes the moment of disengagement, and you’re not quite the same person any more.

http://journeysincreativewriting.blogspot.com/2008/07/unkind-cut-short-story.html

THE EMPEROR'S NEW CLOTHES - REWRITTEN
A re-write of the old favourite to take on the flavour of modern day Australia.
http://journeysincreativewriting.blogspot.com/2008/10/emperors-new-clothes-rewritten.html

PARTNERS - A Short Story with a Surprise in Store
His face was cracked as a paddock in drought, but he was still a handsome man.
Here, standing at the cash desk in my little shop, he launched into a rambling yarn. I’d heard it before, but I laughed, and he was happy.
http://journeysincreativewriting.blogspot.com/2008/09/partners-short-story-with-surprise-in.html

MEMORIES OF IRELAND IN 1982 - A Travel Story

In 1982 I was in the land where the Irish jokes used to come from. I knew I was there by the time I got to a little village in Leitrim on the north-western coast.
http://journeysincreativewriting.blogspot.com/2008/08/memories-of-ireland-in-1982.html

THE ZOMBIE - A Short Short Story
It’s unashamedly inspired by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, the astonishing Colombian short story writer.
Warning – this story is not a fun yarn!
After 1994 when a military coup ushered in an era of soaring poverty within their native land, Haitians in their thousands attempted to flee the misery, many in small boats making illegally for America. They did so with the aid of their faith, Voodoo, a national religious folk cult characterised by a mixture of Roman Catholic ritual elements which date from the period of French colonisation, and the theology and magic of Africa.
http://journeysincreativewriting.blogspot.com/2009/03/this-is-something-bit-different-akin-to.html

AT 72 YEARS ... Some Thoughts Written Down in 2009
Sometimes a birthday gets one looking carefully!
http://journeysincreativewriting.blogspot.com/2009/04/at-72-years.html
WRITING - A Hobby that Lasts

I was meandering through some of my old keepsakes the other day when I found a 1949 newspaper clipping of a story I had written at the age of twelve.
By then, I had been reading books and writing stories for years, but this was the very first time I had been published. What a thrill it was!

http://journeysincreativewriting.blogspot.com/2009/08/writing-hobby-that-lasts.html

A WISP - A Thought Which Appeals - and seems even better when written down ...
http://journeysincreativewriting.blogspot.com/2009/11/wisp.html

I'm gradually going through the stories on this blog, and adding more synopses. Come back and you're sure to find other subjects to suit your taste.

Have you added your comments yet? You'd be doing this writer a really good turn!

Cheers June

Family History with a Punch

2010-11-07T18:31:00.007+10:00

HERE'S A BOOK DOUBLE THAT'S BOUND TO GET ANY FAMILY HISTORIAN SALIVATING!

The Secret River is Kate Grenville’s creative take on the life of her great-great-grandfather after his transportation to Australia in the early 1800s, and Searching for the Secret River is a memoir of her family history research project which produced her prize winning novel.

For generations Australians studiously ignored the realities of the early years of white occupation in this country.

Our grandparents refused to speak about just what happened when the British arrived here in the late 18th century with ship loads of soldiers and convicts, and not-so-gradually took this land as their own.

The Aborigines, occupants for many thousands of years, were not even mentioned in the history texts when I went to school.

This compelling book by Kate Grenville would have spawned a furore if she had written it years ago.

Today the Aboriginal culture still strives to survive, despite gradual realisations among those in mainstream society.

The author’s imagination (guided by excellent research) follows the re-named protagonist as he gains a pardon, is given land and establishes a new life for his wife and family, becoming wealthy and influential in the new colony.

But all of this does come at great cost.

Her clever writing nudges Australians to confront the issue of their nation's early turbulent years. She encourages us to think about how the changeover from black to white ownership may have occurred. She does this subtly and with some apparent concern for the psychological welfare of those who take up her invitation.

Kate Grenville (Image: ABC)

For instance, although born as the result of research into her own family, The Secret River does not presume to pass sentence. Grenville simply uses historical documents to sketch the bare bones of the picture while she paints in further details from her imagination, leaving any decisions to the reader.

My bloggy mates will note that I haven’t posted for a while, what with moving house and renovating, a spot of illness or two, but here I am again.

I give credit (or blame) to Kate Grenville for jerking me out of my blogging lethargy. The Secret River and its companion volume Searching for the Secret River did the trick.

After it was written in 2005, The Secret River won a swag of awards including the Commonwealth Writer’s Prize and a short listing in the Man Booker of 2006.

A few months later Kate followed her successful novel with Searching for the Secret River, a memoir describing her research. It is an invaluable aid to any family historian, as well as a darned good read.

These two books have me poring again through my own family history which had lain ignored for many months.

They reminded me that I had walked a vaguely similar path to our Kate when I wrote a story based loosely on research into the background of some of my own family. See: http://journeysincreativewriting.blogspot.com/2009/06/labyrinth-plague-in-olde-sydney-town.html

Creative writing of fiction is a wonderful tool which allows the writer to safely explore difficult subjects. It can also bring to the light of day previously ignored events, and encourage scrutiny in a useful context.

Have you looked at your personal family history with open eyes?
Tell me in a comment …

A Wisp

2009-11-21T08:59:00.022+10:00

There is such a contradiction between the desire to dip ones toes into every corner of the universe supping a myriad possibilities; and on the other hand, to make the most of our own personal garden, wringing from it all that is offered.

It is difficult to do both, especially as we grow older (speaking at 73 years). I suppose that we might choose one path at a time, depending on our circumstances, and thus benefit from both at various moments?

This wisp from my thoughts was prompted by an email from Smita Tewari, encouraging me to write more at a time when my being wishes to lie dormant awhile, meandering among my thoughts and experiences.

Do you share my feelings? Tell me in a comment and we can chat about it.

The photograph is one I took during a wander through The Eco Village at Currumbin, now developing in south-east Queensland. The village is a lovely happening, burgeoning gradually into an intriguing community. This sculpture of fence posts is an introduction to an area of parkland, and incorporates a bicycle rack ... a small installation which characterises the love and care involved in this project.
Have you had experience of communal living? There are so many different styles ... This one at Currumbin is highly organised in the hope of ensuring success, and has won the Prix d'Excellence as the world's best environmental residential development, declared as such earlier this year.

Paternity - A NOVEL Episode One

2009-09-14T08:19:00.012+10:00

Image by Michael Myers

'Paternity', is the story of Pip, a feisty young Australian investigative journalist who wants to know who her father was. I posted the entire book in episodes on Journeys several months ago with a great reaction from thousands of readers.

I've decided to re-post the first episode today and readers can follow the rest of the novel via links on my sidebar. Why should you miss out? Begin following Pip's story now ...

LINKS TO OTHER EPISODES ARE ON THE SIDE BAR

PATERNITY – A NOVEL Part One
© June Saville 2008

They waited with some sort of bizarre discipline, although straining at the leash.

The vicious wind set leaves scuttling on the ground, and branches arching against the bright night sky. The full moon saw it all, and intensified the shadows at the bases of the trees. She felt freezing then, and fear took over from the anger. What did they intend with her?

Soon two white lights shattered the gloom, appearing first at the top of the track. They followed its bends and twists until they lit the clearing and then the target directly … blinding her.

The car door slammed once.

By age 22 Violet Selene Holmes, yoga fanatic, had saluted the sun in a dozen different countries. She draped her long limbs on the sand at Goa as the saffron sun swelled above the Arabian Sea, and, less comfortably, on mountainsides in the Andes, the Himalayas, and among the Kurdish sheep on the slopes of Mount Ararat.

Her mother named her after a flower, and an old fashioned one, although Violet was anything but a delicate petal. Given the choice between a rough pebble-strewn path and a smooth one, she’d take the pebbles.

Her second name was borrowed from the moon goddess of Greek mythology. This was Selene's favourite, and she used it throughout her life.

Selene paid for her fares from a cache she began collecting at age seven, and she travelled alone. But she knew how to party.

She had been roaming for three years, luxuriating in the sights and sounds and smells of other lands, when her thoughts turned homewards. Selene found herself longing for the toss and tumble of a Sydney surf, the smell of eucalyptus leaves burning in a barbecue fire, for streets clogged with Australians — whatever their hue, whatever their accent.

So the young woman with the wheat field hair booked a flight home and did those things which had set her aching while on foreign shores. She steeped herself in old friends and familiar places, but a year or so later she felt again the old need to move along. This time she would explore the vast spaces of her own land ...

The thin strip of gibbers and gravel which had passed for a road for the last two hundred kilometres became wider now and Selene’s hands relaxed on the smooth vinyl of the steering wheel. She could even see signs of desultory attention from a grader. The car picked up speed, rattling by occasional clumps of ancient pine trees, branches gnarled and foliage bedraggled, and spewed dust high into the air. The dust changed colour to red, and eddied and swirled, to settle on the stumps and drunken fence posts on either side.

The town must not be far away.

She took the bend too fast, and had to wrench the wheel to avoid a row of mail boxes on posts set too close to the road. They stood there like abandoned skeletons with no real connection to humanity. Where were the people who got letters in this godforsaken place?

Everything she saw was evidence that people had been there — not that they were there now. A tractor ravaged of moving parts, and rusted. A wattle and daub hut, collapsed upon itself. A lonely sentinel chimney, fireplace attached. Willy nilly tangles of barbed wire, battered baked- bean tins and scattered shards of lager bottles.

The car groaned towards an outcrop of round red rocks lying topsy turvy on a sudden rise. It heaved up the hill, gasped as it came to the top, and died.

In the distance, a small town lay all but concealed on the flat below, as though resisting prying eyes …

Selene stormed out of the driver’s seat and tugged open the bonnet. Her tall frame doubled itself as the fair head bent towards the engine, seeking reasons. There didn’t seem to be any. Finally, she locked the car. Her boots clomped rhythmically, exciting the red dust as she made her way down the slope.

The sun’s glare ricocheted from the galvanised iron walls of a shed dimly labelled War Memorial Hall, and bounced off the road to hit the figure of a soldier dressed in World War 1 uniform, ramrod straight as the gun he held aloft. The cenotaph warrior was the token human being in the place, for the single street was hushed, and empty apart from a clutch of cars shimmering in the relentless light at the far end.

This town was the product of a time tunnel. Small windows of a shop front winked at her, sharing Selene’s delight at its wares. Rolls of cloth, scissors, umbrellas, packets of needles, children’s clothing dangling raggle taggle on wire hangers, and shoes. A battered and cracked mannequin stood proud of her daisy-showered cotton dress, and rubber knee boots. There was a sign on the wall: Closed for lunch.

Next door two small wooden houses leaned against each other, also in siesta.

However, the milk bar was open. The long fake marble counter was coloured with rows of sweet jars, bottles of ice cream soda flavours, stacks of plates and containers of cutlery, all reflected in the long mirror engraved with a likeness of the Parthenon, and swirls of leaves and flowers. An endless row of cubicles with laminated tabletops set with salts and peppers, menus and sugar, lined the opposite wall.

A row of slowly moving ceiling fans hummed a greeting.

‘Afternoon,’ she smiled in relief. The chubby man behind the counter was tied at his middle by the strings of an apron, and his hesitant nod came framed by a moustache, curled and drooping on either side of stacked chins.

‘I’d die for one of your milkshakes — caramel malted?’

‘Just arrived in town?’ He craned his short neck towards the street.

‘My car threw it in at the top of the hill … Lucky to get so close.’

She sat in the corner of one of the cubicles fondling the coolness of the glass, which was thick and squat. The tumbler came empty, accompanied by a tall dented aluminium container filled with creamy milk and froth. You poured the drink into the glass yourself, and there was enough for two helpings. There were no straws, and as she drank, the froth tickled her nose.

The smell and sound of crackling bacon sidled its way from the kitchen, soon followed by the proprietor and a hamburger on a plate. A fly buzzed in his wake.

‘With the lot!’ He slid the plate across the slippery table towards her. ‘I’d have thought you’d be busy … it’s lunch time,’ she glanced around the empty cafe.

‘If you must know they generally wet their whistles at the pub first, and maybe eat later. Watcha here fer lady?’

‘Just wandering. Is there a mechanic?’

‘Gazza’ll probably fix you up. Ask at the bar.’

The clatter in the pub ceased immediately she walked in from the street. Schooners of beer stood ignored among the slops on the bar, and every eye leered in her direction.

'Ladies’ lounge is out the back,’ the barman whined.

Selene chose not to hear: ‘Is Gazza around? I’m after a mechanic.’

The little knots of drinkers, wearing broad hats to a man, stood mesmerised. Then, as Selene stood firm, the entire bar seemed to shift weight from one foot to another.

‘I’m after a mechanic!’

Finally, a mountain of a man extracted himself from the crowd, lumbered over, and breathed a stink of rotten eggs at her. Selene thrust her hand forward to force a greeting and immediately wished she hadn’t. The fellow had hair growing on his palm!

‘Got car problems eh?’ The drinker’s currant eyes flicked over Selene’s jeans where the denim stretched tightly across her thighs.

‘At the top of the hill. It died at the top of the hill … ’

‘Oright. I’ll see ya after I’ve had me lunch.’

Selene drifted into the street just as the last of the sun began to disappear behind a hill. A bed she’d organised at the pub bent in the middle like a hammock, and the shower rose down the hall was broken, but it was all clean enough. Her car was supposed to be on the road next morning.

She thought about the wild ride up the hill in the rusted old ute, engulfed in Gazza’s breath of bad eggs. The mechanic was a soaring suet pudding with cold eyes staring from slanted brows that met at the bridge of his nose. He was impervious to her attempts at conversation. However, once they reached her car he was a changed man: methodical and efficient. To each his own.

That peculiar disinfectant smell of pubs in Australia lingered even on the footpath outside. The barman was hosing down the tiled wall with its mural of brawny footballers advertising KB Lager. He seemed to ignore her, but directed the hose closer as she passed, splashing her shirt. She could feel the damp spreading on her skin.

Where were the women? She hadn’t even caught sight of the ladies’ lounge.

A couple of doors down there was a grocer’s shop with long scrubbed counter and bags of potatoes and onions near the till. Closed. A lone petrol pump outside cast a long weak shadow …

It was good to be in the open air after the smoke and stench of the pub. A full moon sat majestic in the sky, occasionally blotted out by scudding clouds. Washing on a decrepit clothesline flapped with the strengthening breeze …

This place was so silent. The moon withdrew again, and the shadows disappeared as well, becoming one with the sombre darkness.

Close to the cenotaph at the far end of the street Selene paused before an aged building: Guardian Printers. The town had a newspaper! She pressed her nose to a window, opaque with grime. It was now too dark to see anything.

An engine roared somewhere. The moon came out from behind the clouds. She strolled on towards the hall at the edge of town, and then crossed the road. The engine was still roaring. Some hoon trying out his V8. The engine screamed repeatedly, but the car remained hidden.

An abrupt howl and a shriek of tyres, and Selene, startled, stared down the silver road towards the pub. A red Holden screeched into view and was thundering toward her.

The three faces in the front seat of the car gleamed white with the return of the moon. They sneered at her: evil ghosts.

The car propped.

‘Ya fuckin’ cunt. Git in!’

Selene’s body became a spring. She leapt to the side and was running. Her legs were pistons. On foot now, the men clamoured after her, increasingly near and shouting obscenities. The buildings, monsters on either side of the street, mocked her plight.

© The foregoing is excerpted from Paternity by June Saville. All rights reserved. No part of this novel may be used or reproduced without written permission from the author

EPISODE TWO here All episodes are on the side bar.

Pip gathered many regular fans over the nineteen weeks that episodes were posted, not the least of them talented Californian artist Vikki North. She was so keen about the story she drew a concept portrait of our heroine and I reckon the picture captures her character perfectly. Tell me what you think as you work your way through the episodes ...

Image by Vikki North

Did you enjoy Part 1? Have you seen a town like this? What will happen next? Have a guess and leave your idea in a comment ... and please leave feedback at the bottom of various episodes as you work through them. We'll have a conversation about your opinions.

LINKS TO OTHER EPISODES ARE ON THE SIDE BAR
EPISODE TWO here
ALSO, THERE ARE MANY MORE OF MY STORIES ON THIS SITE - EXPLORE AND ENJOY!

Writing - A Hobby that Lasts

2009-08-22T10:15:00.016+10:00

I was meandering through some of my old keepsakes the other day when I found a 1949 newspaper clipping of a story I had written at the age of twelve.

By then, I had been reading books and writing stories for years, but this was the very first time I had been published. What a thrill it was!

I even won the princely sum of seven shillings and sixpence – a huge amount to me then. I talked about this on 70 Plus and Still Kicking a week or two ago, and when I found the actual clipping, decided to post it here.

Remember, I wrote this long before many Australians had vacuums and dishwashers and there was certainly no television! That was to come to Australia in 1956 - seven years later. Man landed on the moon later still, in 1969.

A MODERN FAIRY TALE

By June Saville (age 12)

Once upon a time there lived a young girl named Jetrella. She was compelled to stay in the kitchen and look after her ugly sisters.The only implements she had were a vacuum cleaner and an electric dish-washing machine.

Well, one day a fellow appeared on the television set advertising a ball which was to be held on the one hundred and sixty-seventh floor of the palace, situated on the plant Venus.

The ugly sisters prepared for it at once. Not one thought did they spare for Jetrella.

After the sisters had zoomed off in their new rocket, she was found weeping by her fairy godmother.

‘Oh Jetrella,’ said the fairy godmother, ‘why do you weep so?’

‘Fairy godmother please help me,’ cried Jetrella, overjoyed by the friendly vision ‘I have never been to a ball and I should love to go.’

‘Oh,’ said the magic one, ‘I shall have to summon a golden space suit, a wonderful jet-propelled space rocket and robots by the hundreds to escort you. All that will come with just a wave of my wand! I don’t fuss around like old-fashioned fairy godmothers. That wastes time.’

This amazing thing was done as quickly as anyone could say Ginger Meggs and Jetrella was transformed into the most beautiful girl who ever stepped into a space suit.

Away she went to the ball.

Jetrella arrived at the one hundred and sixty-seventh floor of the palace.

At the moment of her entrance there was a hush. First to speak was a prince.

“Go and ask that girl if I may have permission for a dance,’ he said to his footman robot.

Well, this story ends much like any old-fashioned fairy story and if you have a little imagination you may finish it off for yourself, but don’t forget ‘they lived happily ever after’.

(Prize of 7/6 to June Saville (12), 52 Bondilla Rd., The Entrance. June wins first prize for the best entry in the Modern Fairy Tale Competition. Many other ‘Beamers have won certificates.)

Wasn’t I lucky to have found a hobby that went on to become the central skill which earned my living for the rest of my life? By age 15 I became an under age cadet journalist on the local paper, and went on to work in radio, newspapers, television and as a corporate public relations manager.

Have you had a similar experience which began as a childhood hobby?

Do your children show any signs of being so fortunate?

©June Saville. Not to be reproduced without express written permission of the author.

The Emperor's New Clothes - Rewritten

2009-08-10T07:26:00.005+10:00

This story is a take on the old Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale The Emperor’s New Clothes.

Andersen told of an arrogant vain ruler who was swindled into thinking he’d purchased a very special suit which was invisible to anyone who was stupid or unfit to hold his position. When he wore the non-existent suit in public the frightened citizens declined to warn the ruler that he was all but naked. Only innocent children dared to declare the truth …

My original re-write dates back to 2005 and carries echoes from the past, including the spectre of a recent Australian Prime Minister and his longest-serving predecessor whom he idolised. Mentions of global capital may be interesting in today's context.

A little man walked into King’s Hall in the old Parliament House in Canberra, where his nation kept its former leaders framed, and under glass.

As usual, he halted before the impression of a wide, majestic-looking creature with stainless steel hair, black woollen eyebrows and blushing pink cheeks.

The visitor craned forward to allow the light in the stately hall to glint at an angle, just so, and his reflection became part of the artwork. Mind you, because of his height, the likeness appeared in the lower half of the glass, and even when he smiled to crisp up the image, it still looked sad.

The little man himself was unremarkable with his stiff upper lip, pea-size eyes and chaste spectacles.

Well might such a homely figure covet the charisma of a dead man.

The Prime Minister of the day (for that’s who the fellow was), visited Kings Hall most lunchtimes to buoy his flagging spirits. He was uneasy, but he couldn’t admit it. He had doubts about the road he travelled, but he was far too single minded and proud to deviate so much as a millimetre.

His was a nation of wide spaces, big cities, beaches and bush. The people came in all sizes and colours, and before the Prime Minister came to power they loved life, cared for the little bloke in trouble, and were painting a Big Picture in bright hues.

Okay, there were problems here and there, and one day the people looked over the fence to see greener grass and without too much thought, threw out the old Government. Things began to change with amazing speed.

Those of us watching shivered when the new little ruler declared: ‘I am the most powerful man in the nation! I have a driver and a long shining car. I share platforms with Heads of State throughout the world. My people love me. I know best for them, and they will trust me while I reshape their lives. Still waters and suet puddings are what they need – and that’s what they’ll get.’

Even as he spoke the Prime Minister’s eyebrow twitched uneasily, and he stumbled on the steps on the way out. But he straightened his back with resolve, and returned to his office to sign a decree which sacked a swathe of workers, mostly women. ‘Women should be in the home’ was his credo. He thought that families would understand this when they couldn’t pay their food bills, and half of the nation’s talent went to waste.

One day there came to the metropolis a delegation from the world of Global Capital. The men in suits sold the Prime Minister an Economic Philosophy: Let Global Capital make all the decisions. Become one big happy family with Big Business. Be relaxed. Be comfortable. Just sign here…

The Prime Minister read the instructions and sacked even more people and made others work part time for less money. He reduced benefits for the poor, hacked hospital budgets, decimated schools and universities. And then he went home to his wife and family, and slept soundly at night.

This land of sunshine grew dark and melancholy, and the people scowled, and scratched each other in their efforts to get to the top of the heap. They were unable to look after their children’s wellbeing, nor help them fulfil their dreams. The Prime Minister sometimes heard the howls of dismay, but squared his shoulders and pressed on.

The Minister for Health saw the sick people’s beds in hospital corridors, and the ambulances taking away the dead. The hairs on his neck rose uneasily, but he knew the Prime Minister’s new Economic Philosophy had come from all powerful Global Capital. He squared his shoulders and pressed on.

The Minister for Employment hated driving home at night because of people sleeping in the gutters. They’d lost their jobs and their homes, and had nowhere else to go. To avoid the sight, he took to staying overnight in his luxurious parliamentary office.

Under duress and in return for favours, the Minister for Technology signed more and more documents giving control of New Information Technologies to Big Business. He tossed and turned in bed at night and wondered: What will happen at the next election? Will Big Business play the game? Will they back the Government in their television programmes and editorials, and with their other communication technology? Or will they bite the hand that fed them? He worried at night, but during the day, the Minister squared his shoulders, and went to lunch with the media owners.

A red headed right wing politician came to town. To the people, she said: ‘You are angry and upset. But do you know why you are angry? It’s those others – those different looking people. They’re the problem. They’ve got your jobs, and your money is paying their pensions. It’s all their fault. Trust me. I will control them.’

And with this, some of the people felt comforted. They began walking the streets looking for anyone who looked ‘different’, and they threw stones and felt better still. Their children’s ragged clothing and empty stomachs didn’t seem to matter so much.

The Prime Minister decided he could make himself popular, and began mouthing some of the words that spilled from the red headed politician. Divide and rule was okay by him.

Not long after that the red head made a mistake and was clapped in gaol, leaving the way clear for the Prime Minister to take the spotlight again.

Then one day there was to be a Major National Commemoration March through the streets of the capital. The Prime Minister sensed that the people were growing angry, and thought a Big Parade would calm them down, especially if he was there to acknowledge the March Past. The people would forget their troubles, and the music would drown out the mumbling that was growing louder.

Ready for the Procession, the Prime Minister took his place on the steps of Parliament House and stood tall, just as he’d seen yet another Prime Minister do, and he felt very powerful. Wasn’t that old Prime Minister sacked and long gone? And wasn’t HE in control now?

Just as the bands could be heard in the distance, there came a young boy and a young girl who wore school uniforms, and perched on the steps. They waved banners proclaiming: ‘We are hungry’.

The children caught sight of the little man, stared open-mouthed and called out and waved their banners wildly, hoping to warn the politician of what they saw.

The Prime Minister chose not to look their way, and clapped his hands to his ears to drown their cries.

And as the band and the soldiers came to the steps they saw a small man standing there in white underpants and singlet. The soldiers and the bandsmen blinked as they recognised the nation’s Prime Minister. They beat their drums more loudly, and snapped a salute as they passed.

©June Saville 2008. Not to be reproduced without express written permission of the author.

THE BLACK OR BUBONIC PLAGUE SYDNEY 1900

2009-08-01T15:54:00.008+10:00

MY SHORT FICTION 'LABYRINTH' (which you can read here) was set in the year 1900 in Sydney - a time when rats on board ships coming from overseas brought the Black or Bubonic Plague and spread it throughout the town.

The photo above from the NSW State Records pictures a group of ratcatchers who fought to rid the town of vermin at the time.

Gangs of rat catchers like these ranged the streets and official figures showed 44,000 rats were killed and incinerated. This team posed alongside their haul for the day. One of the men is holding a trap used to catch the rodents.

According to NSW State Records the Plague hit in January and at the end of eight months 303 cases were reported and 103 people were dead.

A huge clean-up campaign was launched to disinfect the labyrinth of filthy hovels clustered in back lanes in the town, and many were demolished.

This was also a period when single women on their own (such as my heroine Miriam) still had few options of earning a livelihood other than in household service or prostitution. Many rented space in houses such as these - crammed with people creating insanitary conditions which must have encouraged the spread of the disease.

The standard of construction of these houses at 12 Robinson Lane Sydney was fairly typical of the crowded lanes, although the yard itself was more orderly than many others. A majority of such small buildings housed more than 20 people each.

Not the most hygenic of butchers shops ... Presumably the sausages hanging from the roof were sold for human consumption. Sutton Forest Butchery 761 George Street Sydney in 1900. Photographs courtesy NSW State Records .

Mercifully, how things have changed!

My story 'Labyrinth' speaks of stark days, but I'm one who supports the old saying 'She who ignores history is destined to re-live it'. Read 'Labyrinth' now.

Another post of mine (with reference to the plague) can be found here.

Did those who live in Sydney know that your town suffered greatly from The Black Plague?

Have you ever looked at the history of the area where you live?

White Dust - How asbestos killed my Dad

2009-07-25T17:27:00.014+10:00

There have been so many families affected by the terrible asbestos debacle, brought on when the manufacturing company James Hardy ignored their responsibilites in the pursuit of profit, making and selling their poisonous building material for more than a generation, even though executives knew of the dangers.

Australia in my childhood was full of the stuff, and even now new cases of asbestos related diseases are found every day. At least these days some people are receiving a little money in the name of justice, but nothing will ever compensate for the damage that was done.

This is the story of our family and asbestos ...

EVEN DURING MIDSUMMER a sea breeze used to riffle its way through the back yard. It rustled the heads of lettuce and the row on row of green and red beetroot tops which had so recently fought their way through the sandy soil to a new existence in the open air.

Her childhood at 52 Bondilla Road was as benign as the climate, although the little girl didn’t think so at times.

The vegetable garden was the work of both her parents. The father dug the soil, extracting the old tree roots from the loam, and made doubly sure of its purity by passing it through a sieve to extract any wayward bits of rock. He raked that soil until the bed was perfect, and then the mother took over, transplanting seedlings from the boxes where she had sprouted them. She pressed those tiny plants home, ensuring that every row was ramrod straight and NEAT.

The little girl and her sister learned the work ethic at an early age. Their job was to manipulate the hand pump at the garden well, taking turns until the bucket beneath the pump nozzle was half full.

They would then each get on one side of the handle and struggle their way, water slopping, and bucket occasionally knocking their shins, until they got to the new bed to spill the contents as carefully as they could into the spaces between the plants. She would have been eight at the time, and her sister six.

‘Five buckets today girls,’ the mother would say.

They were working people who thought of themselves as ‘middle class’. Her Dad was a ‘builder’ in those days, having worked his way up from ‘carpenter’. ‘Builder’ meant he employed two men to fashion the little fibro cement cottages which littered that small seaside town. ‘Carpenter’ was for when he worked with his own father, the little girl’s grandfather, learning the trade.

The carpenter’s apron seemed a part of him. A wide pocket for nails and a long thin one for the rule, and he’d sometimes hook a hammer to a leather belt at his waist.

To the girl, this was a bit like a cowboy’s holster, and she remembered the handle swaying against her Dad’s well-shaped bottom.

He was handsome as a young man. Not tall, but with a strong body developed by constant physical work and tennis and cricket, and he had a sun beaten complexion. She never saw him in a hat.

The father was never still, and always complaining. When he wasn’t complaining, he was sullen. He ground his teeth in concentration, and the incessant tension stiffened his entire body.

He didn’t even like food. It was as though the act of sitting at the table brought unwelcome bile to his throat, making it hard to swallow. More often than not he’d peck at a few morsels and then he’d push the plate away saying ‘I’m not hungry’.

Because he was middle class, he read Frank Packer’s Daily Telegraph, voted for Bob Menzies and was always condemning the unions.

He never swore. That was something you just didn’t do. Church was out, but he worked for charity and was a member of the Masonic Lodge, but didn’t reach high office as his own father had.

Like her Grandfather though, he believed children should be seen and not heard, and paid attention to the girls mainly by imposing discipline with his tongue. He never hit them, but his haranguing was so sharp and belittling that it was worse than the cane the mother used to wield around their legs on occasions, though she did this more in threat than anger.

He’d be charming to all of the women up and down the street, helping them fix an old electric jug here or nail up a recalcitrant fence paling there, but when he got home he became morose. It seemed impossible for him to express any gentle emotions.

To the little girl he was a feeling more than a presence: she would knot up inside when he was around, and even in her later years the smell of old tobacco, sawdust and fibro cement dust brought prickles to the back of her neck.

If her father’s building job was within walking distance, the little girls would be asked to take a billy filled with scalding tea and pieces of new cake wrapped in grease proof paper for his morning snack. The walk always seemed an eternity.

They’d hold the billy between them, the wire handle biting into their skin. Taking care to keep it balanced so the hot liquid wouldn’t escape, they’d travel maybe a hundred yards or so, in fear they could slip and burn themselves. Then they’d set the billy down, adjust their grips and walk some more.

It was like a three-legged race in which one mistake could bring the whole crashing to disaster. The hot air from the container wafted around their legs, menacing. Sometimes one girl would lose the rhythm, and the evil hot billy would sway, nipping the other’s leg with a scorching sting. They always made it safely, but the dread never diminished.

Sometimes when a house was finished the whole family would work to clean up the mess: pick up the chunky bits of left over wood, the bent nails, and sweep up the sawdust and the white powder from the fibro sheets. They would throw it all into the father’s little Ford wagon and he’d take it off to the dump.

For years she pleaded with him to make her a book case, but it never happened. Instead, her few prized volumes lay in anonymity at the bottom of her wardrobe.

But she’d still gain his interest whenever she had academic success at school and his small eyes lit up when she brought home a book prize for coming top in the class. ‘Well, we have a stewed ant,’ he said. She got the message that he was proud of her.

Mostly, though, she and her sister were just scared of him, and did what they could to stay out of his way.

The back yard was a great place for games of cowboys and Indians when their boy cousins came to visit. Hopalong Cassidy and Roy Rogers would jump around the tank stands and hide behind shrubs, dive in and out of the workshop (when their Dad wasn’t there), and generally shoot things up.

There was a day when the little girl didn’t notice the piece of galvanised iron piping left sticking out of the ground as part of new extensions to the house, and tripped and sprawled full length. Even now, if she ran her finger over her shin, she could still feel the deadness where the wound healed long ago. The deadness was in an area the shape of a half moon left there after the doctor inserted nine stitches.

She sobbed and dripped blood all the way along the path to the surgery, up the steps and onto the waiting room linoleum. Her father’s ultimatum got them straight to the doctor who sat with her, cringing, on the examination table. The surgery was dark with heavy furniture and paneled walls, and there were glass cases filled with evil looking medical instruments and specimens of diseased appendices and tonsils. She hated the smells of chloroform and disinfectants, and the bottles filled her with fear.

The starched sheet underneath her crackled as the doctor smiled, belying his intentions. He peered against the light at the sharp end of a syringe, and suddenly plunged it into her skin. She got a surprise more than anything: it didn’t hurt terribly much. But then he got some white cloth and began dabbing at her wound.

The sting was horrible. She tried to close her eyes, but she was fascinated with what was going on. She glimpsed bone and raw flesh and there were spots of blood on the sheet now too. Then the doctor had a needle and a thick thread a bit like her mum used to darn socks, but stiffer somehow. He began sewing her up, just like the socks. He pulled together the two sides of the hole in her leg with one relentless stitch after another.

‘Not much longer now,’ he said.

It was the worst darning job she’d ever seen. The black stitches didn’t even match the creamy pink of her skin. Would she spend her life darned up like that? She decided she couldn’t look any more.

When she did open her eyes again there was an imposing looking bandage on her leg, and she was able to walk importantly out of the surgery, in front of all of the other patients.

Altogether, it was a singular day – she was the centre of her father’s caring attention, and there had been anxiety in his eyes. Anxiety for her.

The garden had a secret. The little girl was small indeed, and greatly impressed, when her father buried an entire Indian motor bike and sidecar very deeply in the left hand corner of the yard, beyond the clothesline. It lies there still in its unmarked grave, hidden by kikuyu grass.

Until the poor old engine gave up the ghost the whole family traveled around on that rig for years. She remembered her mother clinging to the pillion seat behind her father, with her sister packed tightly beside her in the sidecar, swamped by the slipstream and the deafening noise from the engine.

A couple of years later her father divided up the yard with a picket fence, leaving a large space at the back. He’d been shooting out west with his mates, and she trembled at the idea of guns. This time he came home with a skinny little kangaroo wrapped in a towel – her Dad had shot its mother and found the joey in her pouch. He brought it home for them as a pet, and to keep the kikuyu down. The girl cried into her pillow that night.

In daylight hours Joey lived in her mother’s apron pocket, and gradually grew fat on milk she fed him through an eyedropper. Graduation day came when the picket fence was complete, and Joey was expected to live full time in the back yard. By this time he was still all legs, but able to hop around and munch grass. However, with his relentless growth, their love for Joey became tinged with fear. The mother would let herself through the gate in the picket fence to put washing on the line.

Thrilled to see his ‘Mum’, Joey would charge, aiming at her ‘pouch’ – the large pocket in her apron. Things got sticky when he was big enough to knock her over, and stickier still when he became so big he could leap the picket fence at a single bound and range the local streets.

One night Joey got out and didn’t return, and she saw her parents exchange a guilty look. Joey, she guessed, had shared the fate of his mother.

The little girl’s mother’s laundry copper was another source of childhood horror. It lived at one end of an outbuilding in the back yard, alongside two cement tubs that were fitted with a mangle.

As a family they would sometimes go prawning, taking scoop nets down to the local lake. The cool crystal water swirled around their bare toes and in the lamplight the prawns flashed as they swam into the traps. On a good night they’d fill a kerosene tin, and she was mesmerised as the green crustaceans squirmed and writhed, like so many big maggots with legs.

Her father would build a funeral pyre under the copper, by then filled with water. When it bubbled and fumed, fitting for a scene with the witches of Macbeth, he’d upend the tin into the cauldron and the prawns thrashed and flailed in the heat until they became still, and turned pink.

She hated seeing this torture but, pragmatically, she helped them eat the sacrifice only a few minutes later, on fresh bread and butter. The sweet-salt flesh of the prawns and the scrunch of the crusty bread were just too delectable.

Next to the tubs, the father built a small aviary, where they kept canaries. Yellow canaries that sang and lay speckled eggs that produced scrawny featherless chicks with huge beaks. Beaks that consumed mashed boiled egg and crushed arrowroot biscuits, and later, special seed the girls bought at the grocery shop down the street.

They were in for a surprise when the second nest of birds hatched out, and one turned out quite different from the rest. This chick had brown feathers and looked for all the world like a sparrow; probably a throw-back of some sort.

The little guy was doomed from the start though, because horror stalked him too. One morning they found his lifeless body in the bottom of the cage, torn half way through the bird wire. A cat must have got into the laundry during the night .

The main part of the laundry outbuilding in the back yard was the father’s workshop where he prefabricated kitchen cupboards and other portable parts of his houses.

She hated being around him when he worked as he was always full of tension and created a stifling atmosphere. He didn’t yell; just exuded anxiety and stress. Her problem was that he always liked to have a ‘mate’ nearby. It was as though he was afraid of being alone, and so it fell to the mother and the girls to stand by when he worked at home. This meant they fetched and carried small things for him: ‘Pass that hammer for me.’ or ‘Hold this still will you?’

She still remembers the tobacco smell and the flying white dust, and the taut muscles in his face as he sawed and hammered. Even then, his hands were gnarled and misshapen where he’d occasionally blundered with his tools. He must have driven home hundreds of thousand of nails in his time.

The ‘holding still’ often meant putting her meager weight on a piece of fibro cement sheet in an effort to keep it motionless while he split it with a special cutter. They all inevitably left these sessions covered in white. This was the same dust that was an integral part of her Dad when he came home from work at night.

His hair and his clothing were always drenched in the stuff. This was the dust that lay all over the floors in the unfinished houses, and coated the walls and the window sills. It contained asbestos, and today they know it as a courier of death.

The white powder from the fibro building sheets always surrounded them, but they rarely gave it a thought. They didn’t even consider it when the mother developed what the doctors called ‘emphysema’, although she’d never smoked. Nor when she and her sister both became asthmatics.

They did think about it many years later when the father became very ill. Scientific evidence about this white dust was at last being made public, and memories flooded back when they diagnosed lung cancer.

For the first time ever her father slowed down. He had time to think, and he began to talk about his life. He was dying in a nursing home when he and his daughter shared their one and only deeply personal conversation.

On that day he allowed her in. He talked about her mother and his parents. And how his father raised him as a child.

‘Boys were men before they were boys. They had to be,’ he said ‘If a man didn’t have flamin’ blisters on his hands he was a loafer. If his wife worked he was a sponger on his wife.’

Her grandfather embedded the lessons with floggings, he said. With a sulky strap eighteen inches long and half an inch thick. And at other times with his fists.

Her father adjusted his hearing aid.

‘A man had to keep his head up. Play a man’s role …’

He was trying to put his life into perspective. She looked at him closely, probably for the first time in many years. His face criss-crossed with lines like tracks through bushland, battered by years in the sun, the eyes lifeless with sad memories and his body shrunken by age and illness. Not a figure to incite fear.

He was powerless and distressing, so now she dared to cross the barrier which had lain between them for so long, and asked occasional questions.

‘I was the only boy and I copped the lot. I wasn’t allowed to look cross-eyed at my sisters. To him they were little godesses …’

The two of them had been talking like this for an hour: a long time for a dying man.

There was a rattle of cups outside in the hall, and she looked at her watch. Time to leave for the plane. How lives slip by …

She never saw her Dad again.

His death had taken a long time, and it was often painful. The medical people tried to persuade him and his children to take the central roles in a legal test case against the fibro manufacturer. Her father would be examined and interviewed and there would be a bedside court hearing … There would be an autopsy too, because they couldn’t prove absolutely the cause of his illness until after death.

A win would mean big money, they said, and it would pave the way for other sufferers to obtain just compensation.

His children couldn’t think of anything more horrible for a dying man than having to deal with barristers and courts. They didn’t want him prodded and verbally pushed around. The idea of a postmortem horrified them. They rejected the requests.

So her Dad died poor, and in peace. He’d suffered enough.

Has asbestos or other industrial products touched your family? Tell me in a comment ...

HIDDEN MEANINGS - Married to a Bi-Sexual?

2009-07-18T09:56:00.011+10:00

This is the story of woman who has no idea that her husband is bi-sexual. Gradually the truth dawns upon her ...

There are two voices here, in parallel monologues.

IN 25 YEARS OF MARRIAGE I never once saw her naked. We conceived our children huddled under a sheet, with her nightgown held just so, and she locked the bathroom door whenever she took a shower.

She dressed as the nuns taught her to. In layers. With as much as possible hidden from view at any given moment. A work of art, the way she did that. In a way it was sexy, having to guess the sum of all the individual parts I glimpsed over the years. An occasional nipple. The soft skin between her breasts. The vision of brown fluff as I entered her.

I can’t even swear to it that she really ever had an orgasm, although I did try with her. Time and again. She didn’t seem all that interested, but I wanted to witness the explosion of her emotions for the first time. All that penned up sexual energy … The release would have been a mighty sight to behold.

So I caressed her softness, and worked at her button whenever I got the chance. But it seemed worse than useless. She never seemed to get a release. And more often than not she was as bitchy as hell all next day.

So, even while she lived, I mostly pursued my own path to satisfaction …

It was steamy, the night he first came to her room. An enclosing, fierce tropical heat. Sweat
seeped from the pores of her skin into the gossamer stuff of her negligee, and little droplets of it clung to her cheeks. She hadn’t known he was coming.

‘It’s so hot,’ she said.

‘Yes, it is,’ he agreed, and sat on the day bed in the corner. ‘So very hot.’

‘A wine?’ And she brought the clear crystal glass to him, and took hers to the deep chair across the room.

‘It was special, last night. The dinner ... You ...’

She said nothing, and sipped pensively.

‘I haven’t been with a woman for so long. Nor even sat with one since she died. My wife. Since she died …’

He raised his glass. There. On the daybed. His sienna eyes pierced the space between them; his silver-grey hair glinted in a shaft of bright light.

She sat in the chair. Occasionally moving to him to pour more wine.

And when she did, a shaft of light, perhaps the same one, penetrated her thin gown. It penetrated her gown, and threw her body into relief. When this happened, he could sense the silkiness of her. Sense more than see, the curves of her. Almost see. But not quite. Sense the erectness of her. The roundness of her. Almost see. But not quite.

They spoke for ages. Desultory. In fits and starts. Spoke. Touching here and there on the past, the present, the future. Touching. Almost touching. But not quite.

And then: ‘Will you do something for me? Do something very special?’

She looked towards him. Wondering.

‘Will you? Will you show me you? All of you?’

His entire being asked. Sought her consent.

‘Please?’

Her body had already agreed to his petition. Everything about her poised to meet his need. His need so apparent, so urgent. She nodded.

Nodded and placed the glass on the small table beside her chair. And she rose to stand in the shaft of light. To stand there, and accede to his necessity.

How to pin down the past, in order to understand the now … To make sense of the half truths, and the contradictions. To apply the filter of reason to the mix of happenings so that one might rid one’s view of contamination by passion and idealism and trust.

To remember the beginning. The comfort of having each day planned on your behalf. The enjoyed laziness of not having to think. Such a contrast to competition in the larger world. Lulled. Lulled into inaction. Lulled into a trap which tightens oh so gently. So gently that soon it surrounds and engulfs you, leaving you incapable, ineffectual … without value.

His first wife was supposed to be ‘a lovely person’. A talented cook, good at flower arranging, sewing, interior design. All those traditional wifely things.

But in recent times her friends cast little gems of information about. How hard she worked. Always at his beck and call. How she would choose some dress or other at a local store, but couldn’t pay for it until he’d inspected it and given the go ahead. Her distress when he insisted the children go off to boarding school at an early age. Her loneliness when they had gone.

I put women on a pedestal, to live there untouched by the filth in life. I guard a woman and protect her so that she may go on nurturing and caring. A woman is the mother of my children, so I look after her. Cater for her every whim and fancy.

Men deal with the rubbish.

Even my young second wife … We’ll have no children. Or dogs or cats for that matter. That’s our deal. But I will protect her. Protect her from life at large. In return, I bed her. She’s good in bed. A new age woman, unafraid of impropriety. Exciting. Abandoned and exciting.

Around the time I met this second one I worried quite a lot. Whether I was doing the right thing ... what people would think. In some ways, whether I could keep up with her. She was pretty bookish. An independent sort of person too. I wondered whether this was the way to go at all really. There were so many options …

She’s no madonna. My first wife was my madonna. This one is an exhilarating pastime. An alibi as well. A legal wife removes suspicion. Provides unmitigated respectability.

In the rainforest one day, not long after they met, she glimpsed a deep and private moment. He was walking a few metres ahead beneath the thick green canopy when he came to a sparkling trickle of a stream. The waters tinkled over round coloured pebbles.

His frame seemed to lose its strength as he came to that stream, and he sank, slowly, to his knees, to his knees at the edge of the crystal water, and bent forward as though to taste the coolness of it.

But she was wrong, for the sound of his wrenching sobs gushed from him as the water stain spread, unnoticed, on his dampened shirt. His head on his arms, there in the shallow water, he sobbed deeply and painfully. A private agony, flooding from a hidden spring.

After thirty-two years of being there, his wife was gone. His wife and the mother of his children. It hadn’t been the same without a dependable woman to call his own, a woman who was known and respected by everyone in the town. You didn’t get the same respect, as a single man …

And now, with someone new, especially so quickly, they looked at him sideways. A bit shocked. No, it wasn’t the same without her.

Watching nearby, his second wife walked away. Excluded. Excluded and numb. What was the source of this agony? The memory of his first wife, she supposed. He was entitled to his privacy, of course, but would she ever truly know him? Would he ever cry for her?

He seemed so caring, so considerate of my every caprice. He’d plan each day for me. Plan my day ahead for me. With suggestions and arrangements and quiet insistence. Until I found I simply fitted into the mold he prepared. Which, incidentally, also served him well.

We didn’t fight, each day was peaceful, and he seemed quite happy. We were the ideal husband and wife. I cooked and cleaned for him. Wrote business letters for him. Dropped my career for him. Looked good by his side. Made birthday cakes for his grandchildren. Enjoyed our intimate moments. I loved him.

My trust secured my complacency.

Sex can be a tyrant …

Women seem relatively uncomplicated about it, in my experience. My madonna … Sex passed her by. She didn’t seem to feel much at all. A block of stone in bed. Unbent enough to be agreeable, that’s all. Let him have his way …

The new one. She’s different. She enjoys a bit of rough and tumble. She’s really something. It’s exciting to play with her. Bring her on just when I want. And withhold satisfaction too. To see her reaction. And maybe punish her a bit for bad behaviour …

Sex. It rules from day one. We were a big family … four girls and five boys, and there was always some hanky panky or other. The farm was our education. Animals leave nothing to the imagination, and here was an avid scholar.

I was a big boy. And attractive. Big for my age. So there were plenty of opportunities. I could have whatever I wanted. The trouble was, I suppose, I didn’t really know what I did want. So I dithered around not doing much, keeping myself to myself most of the time. I think I was shy.

We had paying guests at the house when I was about eleven, and there was a knot hole in the wall near the linen cupboard. It was easy to prise a bit bigger hole in the gnarled wood. Enough to see into the bathroom beyond, and I crouched there, and after time I could have passed almost any exam you could throw at me. It’s amazing what bathrooms are used for.

My graduation came that very year, and my tutor was a woman I’d been watching through the knot hole for about a week. One morning I was there, mesmerised by another subject. A man on the other side of the wall. She caught me watching.

The changing expressions on her face were something to behold ... amusement turning to realisation, turning to grasp of opportunities presented, and finally, to lust.

She didn’t do anything just then. But next day I was throwing stones into the creek down the back of the farm, as was my wont, when she walked by, casual-like. She sat down in the long grass, and patted a spot beside her. Inviting me to join her. Inviting me to touch her. Inviting me to undo her buttons. Inviting me to explore her hills and valleys. Inviting me to undress. Inviting me to slip my finger inside her pants. Inviting me …

That was a blowout. The memory stayed with me at school where I concentrated even less than usual. And the nuns thrashed me for inattention, not understanding that I was living my experience all over again, surprised and tremulous at what had happened. There, sitting in the fifth class desk, thinking about it.

He was such a mixture. Always just out of my reach. The essence of him just out of my reach. Always. There was always something. Something unexplainable. Curious and inexplicable.

With him I felt secure and insecure, loved and hated, central and marginalised, needed and repelled, manipulated, used, cherished, cheated, beguiled, passionate and plundered.

He was charming, stimulating, insincere, perfidious, affectionate, disingenuous, generous, mean, mocking, secretive, bewitching, enigmatic, evasive, loveable, charismatic, a sham.

And he drank too much.

I loved him.

Bits and pieces can be crucial. They confirm memories. Without them parts of your life slip away.

I know I’m sentimental, and I don’t see any harm in that. But he did. He resented my sentimentality, and discouraged it. Belittled me for it.

Sometimes there is a sense of loss. Loss for my mother’s silk scarf. For the pieces of rough opal my father gave me. For the marquisette ring of my first love. For the Pete Seeger platter from the sixties. My school badge with the prefect bar swinging beneath the motto. A nostalgic collection of lace handkerchiefs.

Some of my favourite small pieces went missing at times, and I believed they had been stolen. But really, there was no monetary value in any of them, so I must have been mistaken.

Money’s important. It’s power and freedom. It’s necessity. Money. To have and to hold. Strength. Authority. A buttress against invasion. A baton to wield.

She’s different. Mawkish and sentimental. Money comes and goes with her. No problem. But little useless things turn her on. She touches and looks, and tears can come to her eyes. Over the smallest item.

It was a real temptation, just occasionally, to spirit away something or other, and watch her reaction. No harm in that …

I developed asthma the summer after we were married. A struggle for breath. A nervous tingle and creep through my being and a tight band around my chest.

His children came to visit. Often. An invasion of the house which was never my personal space. They were pleasant enough at first. But they spoke together of underground things. They spoke sentences with two meanings, with forked tongues. Their memories rekindled in malice to confront me. Secrets hinted at, to alienate this stranger who stole their mother’s place.

And he never took my part. Just made excuses for them, and passed me my asthma puffer …

When I was a boy we would go to town for supplies and I’d run down to the railway yards while my mother did the shopping. Maybe I’d meet a couple of mates on the way, and by this time we knew what we’d find among the tangle of steel tracks and creaking trucks. We’d find this bloke. Old to us. He’d give us sixpence if we’d stand there and watch him jerk off. A bargain eh?

Not much later I earned two bob for other duties …

Experiences with the bloke down the tracks didn’t go astray a year or two later when I went off to the Brothers. It was an agricultural boarding college and because I wasn’t the greatest with the academics, I mostly ended up looking after the stables and milking the cows. It was in the soft hay that I did my time.

My apprenticeship there began when this new brother caught me whispering at Saturday afternoon mass, and he dragged me by my ear all the way down the hall to his office, and he made me take off my knickers. My knickers and my underpants, and made me stand there, bollicky, right in front of him, shirt hitched up, showing everything below my navel.

He kept me there for a full five minutes while he stared at me, unmoving. With a sort of a leer on his face. Finally he growled: ‘you’re for it son; bend over.’ And he grabbed the wide leather belt hanging ready on the wall behind him and, grunting to improve his technique, brought that thing down on my bum in six agonising sweeps. I bit my lip to stop screaming.

A bit later on that evening I was down checking the horses when this same brother sidled up behind me, and put his hand on my shoulder. He had that leer on his face again, but it seemed he wanted to be a bit more kindly, for he said: ‘You do a good job in this stable son.’

Anyway, he chatted for a while and twenty minutes later I found myself on my back in the hay with his face on my pecker showing me what he could do. Then he asked me if I could manage any better on him. It was weird. My knees really shook when he suggested it. But I had a go and didn’t feel too bad about it. Not too bad at all.

Strange, eh? I mean. A brother!

Sometimes you’d wonder what went on in his head. There would be hints. Clues, but nothing definite. I sometimes felt there was something hidden about him, something very private and not altogether in my interest. But for the most part I’d toss aside uneasy thoughts and get on with life.

He did some strange things which, in retrospect, and if my suspicions were correct, would give a peculiar slant to his character.

For instance, when I was vacuuming the carpet, I’d discover a single coin under a chair where he normally didn’t sit. As though he was testing me. As though he could confirm by the presence or absence of the coin whether I’d cleaned under the chair that week. Did I do the housework thoroughly? It happened too regularly to be an accident, so in the end I’d leave the coin where it was and damn him for his attempt at control.

Then there was the cupboard in the hall which he named as his own. He told me he kept some things there which he wished to keep private. That seemed fair enough, so I respected his request and left it alone. Except for dusting. And it was then that I noticed he’d placed, ever-so-carefully, a thin strand of cotton just-so in the runner of the sliding door of the cupboard. Nice to be trusted …

He told me how he’d read once about domestic servants who wanted to steal something from their masters. The idea was to continually rearrange items in the house, each time moving the target article just a little. Maybe from a shelf to a cupboard to a shelf to another room. Then, when it was likely to be out of sight out of mind, the item would be filched – right out of the house.

He mentioned this in passing a couple of times over the years. And I noticed he was always re-organising cupboards and shifting things from one room to another.

I’d been married about ten years to her when it occurred to me she was probably approaching menopause. The thought sent prickles up the back of my neck. She didn’t seem to have any of the symptoms they talk about. You know … depression and illness and such.

But I couldn’t get it out of my mind, and it started to affect my feelings towards her. I like full, ripe fruit. I could not stand the prospect of anything shriveling up. Suddenly she didn’t seem so attractive, and I started to encourage her to do things without me. She enrolled in art classes … that sort of thing. And I was able to spend more time in my own way.

The beach near our place had always been a magnet to me. I suppose I’d been a bit of a voyeur for years, enjoying the passing parade. I loved to watch the young people in their
g-strings: succulent fruit, ripe for the picking. The boys really turned me on.

Now, I decided, I would not try to hide from myself why I was there. I would indulge my feelings more often, dwelling on the impulses within my body as it celebrated this beauty. I would enjoy the quickening, the tingling in my swollen crotch, the breath which came faster now …

It was time.

A couple of years ago things seemed to change for us. He wasn’t so attentive. Suggested I take art classes, and he gave me time to myself. Mind you, there’d always been business trips for a week or so at a time … Anyway, now he didn’t seem to be so intense, and in some ways I felt free.

There was time too for thinking, thinking and remembering … remembering little things.
Like when he left a motel receipt in one of his suit pockets. Made out to him, but acknowledging payment for a room and breakfast for two. I thought it may have been his brother ... company on a business trip.

One day I came home from art class and as I drove up the hill to our home he drove down and there was a young boy of about fifteen in the car with him. A blonde boy with curly hair, with him in the car. I hadn’t seen the boy before and wondered why he was there. I forgot to ask …

He had an unusual mannerism. When he was uptight, and didn’t realise people were watching, his hand would stiffen and he’d wave it at his side. Effeminate? Almost. But not quite.

I was raking over memories, dissecting a relationship. A search for meanings. For meaning and hidden meanings. Did I really understand our marriage? Was he the man of my dreams after all? Was this all an abomination? Something unimaginable? After all?

I began to feel more unsettled each day, but I needed to comprehend some truths.

Ah… Life is such a smorgasboard. Select an experience here, another there. Taste, select, accept, reject.

I needed a wife, but she was an experiment too. How it would be with a young, vibrant modern woman. Comparing. And controlling. The opportunity for another experience. A new buzz. It can be fun to see women dangle at the end of your string …

I still want her around. She’s a good cook, and people seem to like her … that doesn’t do me any harm. But she can do her own thing and I’ll do mine. Times are different and I don’t care any more. No more double life. No more loss of real freedom.

Time to get on with life in all its possibilities.

Mourning him. As though he’d died. I am an empty vessel, somehow betrayed and cheated. Without knowing how or why.

I combed through his papers and pockets. Looking for answers. Somehow knowing of his betrayal. Knowing through a sixth sense, of his betrayal. He had been absent so often of late, hadn’t he?

It was time for me to know. To put aside the feelings of apprehension.

And so when I noticed the video tape thrust to the back of his drawer, I took it up and, without pausing, slid it into the slot of the VCR, and pressed ‘play’.

© June Saville 2009 All rights reserved. No to to be reproduced without the express written permission of the author.

Please leave a comment about how you feel about this piece. I understand that marriages of this type are not so uncommon. Have you heard of anyone with this type of experience? Does it help to bring these subjects into open discussion in the community?

Mr and Mrs Y - A Short Story

2009-07-11T18:36:00.009+10:00

'Mr and Mrs Y' is another of the stories I posted earlier on Journeys - here to prompt my bloggy mates to look more deeply among my posts. There are lots of different stories here, including my novel 'Paternity'.

Just look for the past links on the side bar - individual chapter links for 'Paternity' and behind the archive dates for the other stories. Please leave a comment telling what you think ...

THE OLD COUPLE made a perfect capital ‘Y’ shape as they walked together around the corner and up the hill.

You see, they each had severe curvature of the spine, as though in sympathy with one another. Problem was their spines bent sideways, sending their heads at the top of the ‘Y’ away from their partner, by a good 45 degrees. The man bent right and the woman bent to the left.

From the hips down they walked very closely, often holding gnarled hands.

From hips up their curvatures seemed to create a distance that shouldn’t have been there.

I saw this man and woman on most mornings. They spoke constantly and with animation that I’d more often noted in youths smitten by love. Their old bodies sometimes shook with laughter, but to fully share the joke, glancing sideways and into each others eyes as they walked, would have been impossible.

I looked forward to my regular meandering, and I looked forward to spotting Mr and Mrs Y. My imagination ran riot when I saw them, building stories in my mind.

How difficult would this strange impairment be in their everyday lives?

They say people in a couple tend to grow alike over the years, but this was so unusual as to be almost ridiculous.

They were both as thin as sticks, testament to a life of exercise and dietary good sense.

He always wore those very short shorts made of some synthetic stuff that never wears out. The kind that men wore twenty years ago.

His shirt was always crisply ironed and I never saw him wear a hat.

On the other hand his wife demonstrated an acute awareness of the power of the Australian sun. Her skin was nowhere visible except around her eyes and mouth.

The wide brim hat was made of some sort of cotton and flapped as she walked. His pants were full length and again cotton, and a light blouse covered her arms right down to the wrists where a pair of cotton gloves took over. The style of her attire never changed.

This hill was abrupt and my breath became laboured, but Mr and Mrs Y were still drawing away from me. They were very fit, although apparently in their late seventies.

As the road steepened and the view became more broad, I glanced sideways to judge the clouds banking on the horizon to the south west. They were tall and threatening: black with even a tinge of green.

In our summer this could herald fierce thunder storms and very occasionally hail with lumps of ice that may be as large as ping pong balls. I’d fired my computer to the weather site before clapping on my own hat for the walk, so I knew today would be unsettled …

But clouds in this direction tended to remain to the west and move along the ridge of mountains to plague towns further north. My walk would not be interrupted today.

Our path passed through tree lined streets and gardens where children played and puppies yapped.

I was sweating.

We passed a row of grevillea bushes alive with noisy green and red lorikeets fighting over the tastiest seeds.

These birds are arrogant little beggars who love nothing more than a lazy feed of honey and bread left out by an unwary householder. There were a couple of problems with that – the sweetness tended to produce sickness in the birds, for one.

I encountered problem two myself when I began feeding a bird that visited my garden. Within a week I had thirty of the creatures swooping and careering among the native bushes.

I knew I had done the wrong thing when the local paper warned against the practice for the birds’ sake, and I withdrew my largess.

Regardless, for weeks afterwards lorikeets tapped fiercely at my kitchen window insisting on being fed!

The old couple had turned right into a quiet street and I continued on my own way.

There weren’t many people so much in love at that age I mused.

My head was busy imagining a fiery courtship and a huge wedding for them when a fat white rabbit dashed across the road followed closely by a young girl trying to recapture her pet.

The girl had long fair hair and wore a dress with a frothy wide skirt.

Alice in Wonderland …

On my walks I sometimes took a turn into a cul-de-sac that contained some of my favourite gardens.

Today there was a shock. My house of roses looked abandoned with unpruned bushes languid and choked with weeds. Gone the riot of colour and perfume.

Where was the family? There was a good six months worth of weeds in the garden now. What had happened?

I skipped to avoid a dog poo on the footpath and turned towards home.

*

Even in between walks I often thought about Mr and Mrs Y.

A friend of mine was a member of the local RSL Club where they had a good band and ballroom dancing on Friday afternoons. Lots of oldies turned up and my friend said she’d often seen Mr and Mrs Y among the crowd.

How on earth could they dance together I thought? I was used to seeing them walking with their heads wide apart.

I’d also wondered in my imagination how they got on in their more private and personal moments of physical contact (you’d know by now that curiosity and imagination are my middle names).

One afternoon I was sitting at my computer desk with pen and a fresh piece of white paper, and found myself doodling.

Mr and Mrs Y appeared before me, taking on the character of the stick figures that children draw.

My pen tripped along, producing Mr Y’s skinny legs and Mrs Y’s hat.

There they were: a perfect second last letter of the alphabet.

Then I looked again and the right hand side of my brain came into play: the side of lateral thinking and creativity.

With a flash and an ah-hah, I realised that my fears for the Ys was unfounded. Face to face – for dancing and in love making - they’d be fine!

*

Does anyone else know a couple who, through the years, have growth alike in some way? Tell me in a comment ...

©June Saville 2008. Not to be reproduced without express written permission of the author.

FRIENDS FOR A TIME - Love in a Nursing Home

2009-07-04T18:22:00.006+10:00

THE GINGER CAT languishes in the best chair on the nursing home verandah, purrs loudly and occasionally preens himself.

A ray of sun plays on his fur, making it shine, and trickles onto the paved verandah floor and over to the garden bed of brilliant pink azaleas and maiden hair fern. A locust hums in the gum tree in the centre of the lawn. It is an idyllic day.

Inside the building, the sun shines only occasionally. Where it does, it lights the wide expanse of highly polished corridors, the neat counterpains on the beds, and brings a sparkle and a flash to the fish pond in the large television room.

There is a squinch of rubber soles on linoleum, and the tap tap tapping of a stick as a young nurse guides an old man down the hall and onto the verandah. She watches as he sighs into the second best chair on the verandah, next to the cat. She pats a rug around his knees, adjusts the shawl lying on the shoulders of an elderly woman sitting in the third best chair, alongside the man, and leaves them.

At the same time, the man and the woman turn towards each other and smile. He leans over and strokes the cat. The three are very comfortable together.

Mr Reynolds is a godsend. He is such a gentle man, and so full of interesting conversation. My days now seem to revolve around our times on the verandah, for he has changed my life. With him, I feel so warm.

The man and the woman are both quite small, shrunken with age. Their bodies respond slowly now, but their eyes are bright and flit over the details of their landscape. Their expressions change in unison, and with the conversation: sometimes twinkling over a story, or growing still with a thought from the past.

I have lived here for twelve months now, and a mixed up time it has been for me. I felt a freedom when I was first shown my very own room. Suddenly I had a space of my own. Always until then someone else had made the running for me. Mostly it was my husband who set the pace, sometimes with my welfare in mind, but mainly for his own reasons. In his self-centred way he made all the decisions, and didn’t ask what I thought. It was the same when the children left home. Nothing really changed.

He was a person who swept all before him. Yes, he was efficient. And capable. But he never seemed to have time to spare for little things. He was just a spinning top. I looked after the children and the house, but he put his stamp on everything. Everything was his creation, not mine. I was always an extension of another’s life.

He died suddenly and of course there was a void. Take a huge personality like his out of the equation and there has to be loneliness. I lived with my daughter for a while, but I felt I was in the way, and when my chest got worse I had the excuse I wanted to get a place of my own. Even though by then it had to be a room only, with 24-hour care.

So I really enjoyed my new room, putting my bits and pieces around, and ordering curtains and bedspread to match, just to my liking. It was pleasant to have quiet times too, when I knew no-one would interrupt, or be demanding.

There are always nurses, of course, but they’re nice here, and very insightful when it comes to seeing that you want some time to yourself.

There is a clatter of teacups and a rattle of a trolley coming down the hall. The two old people stir in expectation of a cup of tea, and a scone with jam and cream. Today they are remembering their childhood. Spinning stories of school time, of Christmas, and holidays. Of parents and siblings. Of joys and sadness. Their faces shine with involvement and appreciation. The tea is always hot and strong, and peps you up so the conversation keeps on rolling.

The solicitous tea lady and her cups have rattled down the hall again. There is the sound of muffled crying in the bedroom across the way, and the voice of a nurse reassuring a bewildered new resident. Cooking smells give away the secret of tonight’s menu: baked lamb. A cleaner swishes a mop, and clanks a bucket.

A loud insistent voice shatters the calm, and a pudgy woman in a flannelette nightgown with bare feet and curlers in her hair rushes past. ‘That patient should have been discharged yesterday. We need his bed!’ she yells at the top of her voice, and indicates a man sitting at the far end of the verandah. He is oblivious to the fuss, and continues staring into the distance. The woman is the former matron of the local hospital.

The couple near the cat watch on. Then they laugh. They have seen this sad circus before.

Well I suppose I enjoyed my solitude for perhaps a month, when I began to feel the need for some company. The occupational therapist suggested a game of Scrabble in the television room. That really appealed to me, for I love word games. But I found that the other residents and I parted company when it came to the game itself. The therapist tried valiantly, but it seemed that I was the only person in the room capable of putting a couple of letters together.

It was a shock to learn that most of the residents were afflicted mentally in some way. Many of them had dementia, it seemed, or had simply let themselves slow down. Their faculties certainly left a lot to be desired.

That discovery left me a very lonely woman. Except for the nurses, I was in an intellectual desert. Of course, the staff members didn’t have much time for long conversations, although they did what they could.

Three months after I arrived there was a young man in a wheelchair. He had car injuries but he was still very alert, and he was a real gentleman with all the old people, however vague they seemed to be. There was no-where else for him to go at the time, and he and I became quite friendly even though we were poles apart in so many ways. I did enjoy our conversations. Lucky for him, and sad for me, he got a place in a rehab centre just a few weeks later. That meant I was alone again, sitting here on the verandah with only the cat for company. I did miss him. Terribly.

The elderly couple ease themselves from their chairs now, and make their way to a sunnier corner of the verandah. The man is tap tapping with his stick; the woman holds the shawl tightly around her shoulders. At this spot, near a display stand of pot plants, the nursing home gardener has set out a watering can and a small container of implements. The man and the woman take turns watering the pots which are a riot of annuals. They loosen the earth around the plants and scatter fertiliser granules. It is their private garden.

Mr Reynolds arrived three months ago. At the first opportunity, my favourite nursing sister brought him around to the verandah where I was sitting, and introduced us. I could see immediately that he was such a nice man. He had suffered a bad heart attack – his third – and he was left in a very frail condition.

His brain was quite intact, though. We hit it off immediately, and we have been sharing our days ever since.

The shadows are lengthening a little, and a middle aged woman makes her way along the verandah, and finds the couple at their garden. She is the man’s only daughter, and it is obvious that she enjoys her father’s company, and is glad of his friendship with the woman. She has come straight from work and stays only a short while. She has family responsibilities at home.

I think I’m in love. It might seem ridiculous at our age, but why shouldn’t it be so? Does love have to mean an overwhelming urge for sex? Why can’t it be a comfortable feeling. A sharing and a happiness? Can’t that be love?

The sun rises and it sets at the nursing home. Some days are bright, and some wet and cool. The private garden is in full bloom, and commented upon by staff and visitors. The lady and the man share the limelight, and enjoy their flowers. They are blooming themselves.

I am feeling more happy within myself than I have been for many years. It is so wonderful to share one’s days ... Mr Reynolds and I have so many common interests. Comfortable is the word. Perhaps it is our time in life to some extent, for there is no need for competition. No need to impress. Simply a shared requirement for peace and companionship.

The piano tinkles softly in the television room. A community volunteer is playing ‘The Rose of Tralee’, and a dozen residents sit in a row of ergonomic easy chairs, memories stirring.

Today there is a chill breeze on the verandah and clouds are scudding across the sky. The annuals in the private garden are almost spent, and the gardener has taken away some of the pots. The lady and the man draw their winter woollies closer, and amble into the television room where someone has set a log fire not far from the piano. It has only been weeks since they met, and yet it has been a lifetime.

Mr Reynolds isn’t well. They took him to hospital for a check up a week ago yesterday. I asked the nurse to tell him not to worry about the garden. I would look after it while he is away.

The lady wandered over to the cat lying there, as usual, on its chair. She bent painfully, and stroked the soft ginger head. She smiled and spoke quietly to the animal, as though in reassurance. Then she sat down in her own chair, with the second best seat empty between them. The lady looked at the empty chair and then out towards the garden, unseeing.

Ants were swarming on the poppy seeds in the nearby sprouting troughs. A knife thin breeze edged its way onto the verandah, and the cat stirred and stretched itself before gliding towards the warmth inside. The lady remained still.

Day after day she sat on her chair. Only occasionally she moved – mostly to scratch with a garden fork around the last of the petunias. The grey sky lingered, and a fine rain brought a liquid shine to the leaves of the poinsettia grove. Each morning and afternoon a staff member placed a cup of tea and a scone on a small table beside her chair, but on each occasion the liquid grew cold and the scone developed a hard crust in the crisp air.

The doctor came to see me this morning. He came especially. Especially … to tell me that Mr Reynolds had died in his sleep. Mercifully, he went quickly, the doctor said. It was another heart attack, but this time stronger, and lethal.

I feared this. Inside myself, I feared this …

It is so horrible. Poor Mr Reynolds …

What shall I do now? What can I do?

He was such a nice man. A gentle man. I keep imagining I can still hear the tap of his walking stick on the linoleum ...

The young nurse squinches along the hallway to deliver a bowl of fruit to B Wing. There is a whiff of urine, overcome by a disinfectant smell. The notice boards on the wall speak about a bus trip to town and a visit from a local choir, and there is a display of brightly coloured drawings from the primary school. The woman in the water bed in Room 6 is restless, and in pain. A chaplain speaks to the matron about next Sunday’s church service, and Mrs Jeffries has her hair set.

On the verandah, the lady with the shawl dabs a tear with the corner of her lace handkerchief. She then moves from her customary position to the second best chair, next to the cat.

© June Saville 2008. Not to be reproduced without express written permission of the author.

Has this story brought back memories for you? Do you think 'it's never too late' so far as love is concerned? Let me know in a comment ...

Labyrinth - Plague in Olde Sydney Town

2009-06-21T15:30:00.013+10:00

I set this story in Sydney in the year 1900 - the time when Bubonic Plague hit the town, creating death and panic among the residents and those who would govern them. Another of the favourites I'm repeating for those who missed out on the first time around.

Cheers

June

'and then we got into a labyrinth,
and when we thought we were at the end,
came out again at the beginning,
having still to seek as much as ever.'
- Plato

It is a particularly dark and still February night in harbourside Sydney Town, a scorching airless night where hundreds of souls toss and turn on beds of straw and rags, wishing for the southerly to come and ease the heat, the latest of their discomforts.

Look close through the gloom to see outsize rats skitter from nearby docked ships. See them nuzzle the rubbish in streets and backyards, and watch them scamper through cesspits and ground depressions where foul slops lie.

Venture a little behind the fine facades of Kent Street to find those souls in the tangle of filthy brick huts. Little buildings packed tight in criss - crossed lanes and courts, hidden and forgotten. In rows of seven at a time those huts, stuffed with families and workers sharing four rooms at the rate of sixteen per hut. And them with one tap and two water closets to the row.

In one such room a candle flickers, throwing strange shadows about the walls, and lighting six sleeping bodies and another, with eyes wide open, staring.

Miriam McDonald is odd to this place, her red hair gleaming. She reclines on the dank straw, the fine cotton fabric of her nightgown stretched against her distended belly. Her long thin hands move to this roundness, stroking gently.

A deep sigh, and a woman nearby throws her arm loose as she rolls in her sleep.

Listen for myriad other sounds in the night. Groans, and screams and thudding bodies, horse's neigh, ropes strain and slack canvas flaps, distant train whistle. The body collectors trundle their cart.

Against these rough sounds, Miriam sings, oh so low and so sweet, to her coming child.

They say that the more respectable a family, the less patience is shown if a child should fall from grace. This was surely the case with Miriam’s Momma and Poppa who had worked in the employ of the Macarthurs at Parramatta all of their lives, and their parents and grandparents before them.

Through the years her family had invested much in achieving a good reputation, and were now showing very little tolerance in their daughter’s time of trial. To Miriam, it seemed as though they had thrust her aside, leaving her prey to countless horrors. She would never be so heartless with a child of her own, she whispered.

Mostly she was able to persuade herself that she had done nothing to bring about her troubles, and that there was nothing to feel guilty about. At other times she felt an unease and asked herself if she could have done anything to prevent the catastrophe.

Try as she might, she could not condone her parents’ attitude and that made her very determined that she would make her own way, and solve her own problems.

To be fair, Miriam’s parents were always kind and taught her the niceties of her station, and some accomplishments a little above that. She even played the piano a little, and wrote a reasonable copperplate. Her needlework was not perfect, as she lacked patience in that field, but it was passable.

Those who knew Miriam intimately would note that she knew how to seem docile and agreeable, but suspected that she didn’t always feel that way. Something in Miriam seemed to bubble at times. Some would say it was her nature to speak too loudly and too long. Her eyes did not peep out from fluttering lashes, but gazed boldly. Perhaps this was a predisposition for one with such red hair.

Miriam was eighteen when she first decided to take a path of her own. She'd heard of life outside of Parramatta, and she wanted to live it. It is perhaps an irony that her parents’ careful preparation of their daughter’s attainments smoothed the path to her downfall.

The decision made, Miriam had little trouble gaining a place at one of the more stylish residences in the colony. It is also true that this was made easy because of the connection between the Macarthurs and Lyndhurst. After all, its original owner Dr. Bowman married John and Elizabeth Macarthur's daughter.

Miriam imagined that her parents believed the new discipline would be good for her character, for they had supported her application. So, even when she found herself in a most horrifying and extreme state, because she understood the pain they suffered, Miriam still called her parents ‘dear’.

To a young girl away from home for the first time Lyndhurst seemed the most dismal and sombre of houses: two storeys with vast high ceilings at both levels, and sprawling on its own peninsular into Blackwattle Cove.

The darkness closed in as the sulky rattled up the bluff. The great bulk of the house threw deep dark shadows over the garden beds, and the leafless trees thrust their branches outwards: threatening and gnarled and ugly.

Miriam discovered herself cringing into the corner of her seat. She dabbed with a handkerchief at small beads of perspiration that had settled on her forehead. To that point she had been excited at the prospect of her new life. What was so different now? She pulled herself together and adjusted her bonnet as the horse clip clopped its way to the servants' quarters around the back.

For many days the girl with the red hair was tossed on a most turbulent tide. She was a maid, at the beck and call of everyone in the household. Her duties called her to answer to the slightest of whims, dashing through a maze of dark and shadowy rooms at the sound of a bell.

She fetched firewood and hot water to the upstairs bed chambers, humped mattresses, and moved furniture from parlour to dining room. She scoured and fetched and carried until exhausted.

Still, in her occasional quiet moments she felt a sense of accomplishment, and an enjoyment with the newness of it all. There were dinner parties and soirees when some of the most powerful people in the colony ventured along the Lyndhurst carriage way to pay their respects, and show their finery.

Always from a discreet distance, Miriam watched the ladies in their elegant gowns, and wondered at the miracle of their tiny waists. She could hear refined voices discussing Mr. Hordern's new emporium and the demise of the skirt bustle in Sydney fashion circles.

She noted that the gentlemen vied with each other for the heaviest gold watch and chain, and for the fine tailoring of their black suits. The new Constitution Bill also featured heavily in their conversations.

There was one man Miriam admired particularly, even though his demeanour made her strangely uneasy. Young Mr. Oswin was different from the rest. He remained detached from those milling around the piano, or gossiping on the various sofas. He simply stood quiet, a tall and brooding presence at one end of the room.

A friend of the young master, Mr. Oswin was staying as part of the household. For some days Miriam took any excuse to view his bearing and his languid brown eyes, apparently filled with secrets.

She fell to daydreaming about him, imagining him paying her attentions; offering her a posy he had picked from the garden. She imagined him bowing grandly and asking her to dance. She caught herself blushing at the thought.

One evening it occurred to her that Mr. Oswin himself was returning her glances, even though his gaze was more steady and unsubtle than she dared herself. His unwavering gaze became a compelling feature of her life and those eyes seemed to follow her everywhere, quite hypnotic.

Miriam would admit that she enjoyed the attention, and on occasions, she even found herself smiling in his direction. However, when she did so, a strange sensation of fear always followed.

Sharp needles of ice cold pricked her cheeks as Miriam moved through the darkened house, setting things to right before she could retire for the evening. Her hand lingered on the thick velvet of the drawing room drapery, enjoying its softness.

Outside, a gusty wind whipped through the trees on the bay. The dull glint of gaslights played on the buildings of the distant town, then slipped into the bay to shimmer on its restless water. She shivered. And then she turned swiftly to direct the light of her candle towards a subtle movement in the corner of the room ...

The light flickered, revealing Mr. Oswin.

He looked strangely uneasy, his frame ramrod straight and his eyes shuttered. He took a step towards her and Miriam’s prickling skin warned that there was something amiss. She reeled towards the door, but Oswin moved closer and his hand was a vice on her shoulder.

‘Be still,’ he whispered hoarsely.

The heavy candlestick clattered to the floor, snuffing its flame. Oswin’s hand stifled her scream and they struggled together, there in the half light. Then for a moment, the girl with the red hair seemed to relax, as though bending to his will.

But she sank her small teeth into his hand, felt the bone, and tasted warm blood. She broke free, ran to the end of the room and stopped, twisting to meet him.

Blue eyes flashing, Miriam brandished a scoop of red hot embers from the fire.

'Come no closer,' she seethed.

'Now my pretty. You want this. You know you do.' The gold watch and chain glittered at his waist.

'No sir. I do not. Get back. Get back .'

For a moment, he turned from her, and then he turned again, to step sideways and behind her small frame, capturing the scoop and her arms in one action.

'You little witch!'

He stemmed her cries again, this time with fierce lips, and they rolled to the floor.

The dying fire illumined her desperation.

The black water of the bay was thick with floating trash. The stench of human waste intensified as she approached the scramble of buildings on the other side of the swivel iron bridge. Lightning bolts split the lowering sky, and she shivered, although the sticky heat was intense.

The girl with the nest of red hair bent beneath the weight of her single cloth bag, and her gait faltered.

Sydney Town.

Humanity gathered to crush her in its grip, sweeping her past Sussex Street and left into Kent Street. Leering men and skinny crones, yelling and screaming children, and young women with lifeless faces.

Miriam approached one who sat suckling a child on the wooden steps of a house.

'Roach, ye say? Next lane, fifth on the right.'

The squalor was worse with each step. She fought her way past four children playing in mud, and a slobbering drunk propped up against a wall. Mrs Roach, toothless and gross, leaned in the doorway of a crumbling hut at the end of the row.

'Miss McDonald? They said you was comin'. A wicked girl, they said.'

Wicked. She didn't feel wicked. It was Mr. Oswin who was wicked. Him and his oily ways.

Miriam felt the sting of tears as the woman preceded her into a dim hallway, damp with earthen floor and corroding brick walls. Many eyes peered at her as they passed a row of doors lining the hall.

They were the eyes of people prostrate or sitting in semi-darkness, crowded into tiny spaces; people odious- and angry-looking.

'This room's yours. Only five in here, with yersel', an all of 'em females. Think yersel' lucky.'

The hag turned to shuffle down the hall. Miriam wiped the tears with the back of her hand and gazed at her new prison. It reeked of sweat and pain and hopelessness. She placed the bag with her precious possessions on a heap of straw in the corner, and sank down beside it.

Which way out of this hell hole?

That night on her squalid bed she tossed and then she dreamed. She dreamed of a woman, lone and proud, and her baby nestled in a field of spring flowers and sunshine. Beyond, distant dark figures of apprehension were lost in the mists of time.

'Have you news of The Plague?' Jenny Entwhistle, a little wisp of a girl, emerged from the shadows.

Mrs Roach was right. There were but four other women in the room. However, she had failed to mention Jenny's two children who also vied for the space: young Beckie, three years-old, skinny stick legs peeping from beneath a rag of a dress, and Grace, thumb in mouth, and snot from her nose rushing to meet it. Never had I seen such miserable little creatures.

'No,' I said absently. 'What, pray, is The Plague?'

'They say 'tis the cause of the most vile illness and death, and that it kills wherever it breaks out. They say a man has died from it in Ferry Lane, in The Rocks. You have na' heard?' The words tumbled into the dismal room.

I shook my head, but Jenny did not pause to take note of it, and prattled on: 'They say he 'ad great swellings on 'is body, and he was vomitin' and shakin' and died in no time, stinkin' somethin' awful. They say it could spread everywhere.'

I was still for some moments, the tangled sounds of human habitation all around. Jenny's panic was infectious. She now had my full attention, and the room was suddenly very cold.
My baby. I must make my baby safe from this terror.

I had not imagined such degrading and detestable circumstances existed as those of the Kent Street lanes.

They say the hidden parts of Sydney at the turn of the century were worse by far than the slums of London, of which I had heard whispers often enough. Many people held physical scars, with pock marks, wasting and many other afflictions quite obvious. One man had no legs at all, and bumped along on shrunken stumps. God alone knows how he managed.

Families fought over their differences in the streets, clawing at each other and rolling in the mud in fits of drunkenness. With seclusion so scarce, men and women could be glimpsed coupling within and behind buildings, night and day.

To move in these lanes was to stumble over rubbish and filth; attending to personal needs, such as the washing of bodies and clothing, a constant struggle.

The women in my dormitory had difficult lives. Sarah Campbell, the most determined of them, had taken to prostitution as a way out of her penury. She was an animated skeleton, and most brazen, always taking the Lord's name in vain.

A young woman who thrashed about on the litter next to me had a naturally surly expression made most remarkable by the absence of her left eye. The empty socket glimmered sideways at you, seeming more lively than her real eye, and as black as her soul.

Hannah Simpkins, a thief, was capable of stealing the leg from a donkey.

Paradoxically, my favourite among this brood was a woman who haunted the darkest part of the room. Mary Jones was quite mad, her frenzied dark eyes mostly hidden by grubby tangled locks. She bore her indisposition quietly at most times, venting her frustrations only on herself.

She would sit in that corner and scrape away at her arms with any sharp object which came her way, and her limbs were a mess of scars and raw red wounds. Regardless, she did have a certain dignity which was hard to overlook. I was indeed sorry for her, and did what I could to help in little ways. I wonder even now what dreadful matters came to pass to reduce her to such a plight.

Somehow these people existed here, as much a part of this place as werethe cockroaches that crawled around the walls and the floor.

Jenny Entwhistle had counselled me against walking up fashionable George Street, saying we should keep to Sussex Street which was more to our station. How I wish I had listened to her.

We'd barely reached the corner of Liverpool Street when a group of three larrikins and their girlfriends surrounded us, calling and jeering. Jenny and I huddled in a tight knot, she clutching tiny Grace, and me with Beckie cowering into my skirts.

'Get back to yer filthy holes,' they yelled. 'Ye molls.'

The boys stood there in their flashy bell bottomed trousers and high heeled shoes, arrogant and menacing, performing for their donahs. The girls themselves loved it, in turn parading in their cheap and fancy velvet jackets, a profusion of ostrich feathers fluttering from their hats.

The circle they formed grew tighter and tighter around us.

The little girls sobbed loudly. I knew I had to act. I straightened my stance and said as haughtily as I could: ‘'What would your parents think of this behaviour? Cease at once.'

In my experience, there is something in the heart of a delinquent which answers to such a response, whether it be shock or perhaps an echo of childish discipline. At any rate, the ploy worked.

They turned on their heels and walked north, yelling as they went.

"Prostitutes!"

"Sluts!"

We ignored them as best we could and soon breathed more easily.

It was Wednesday, rations day at Sydney Benevolent Asylum, and the queue outside the store was exceeding long with sad and ragged people. We would wait hours for an allowance of a little meat, flour, sugar, bread and tea ... supplies for a week.

This will not be my lot in life!

The poor house was also the lying-in hospital. It was large and rambling and evoked a distinctly supercilious air, guaranteed to keep the lower classes in their place. Cold as charity, as they say. I would keep my distance for as long as I could, but in the mean time, I must eat.

Jenny and the children entered the store first, but only Jenny herself emerged, clutching a parcel of rations to her chest, with tears tracing muddy paths down her face.

'They took me bairns,' Jenny sobbed. 'Said I wasn't lookin' after 'em proper and I could have no more rations 'less I gave 'em in.'

Grace and Beckie were to go to the Infants' Home at Ashfield, and Jenny could apply for them when she had reached a standard of living fit to support the two little girls.

How could she do that?

Shrieking whistles ripped the air as we turned the Market Street corner to find that horror ruled.

People young and old, singles and families jostled us and each other, scurrying south in panic and hubbub. They carried everything they owned, tied in cloth bags and humped on shoulders; and with fractured faces.

Officials yelled and screamed orders, carts rumbled, and the picks and shovels of sanitation teams scraped and scratched at the great piles of rubbish strewn around the streets. Men carted off the muck and ordered the scrubbing and scouring of hovels and the drains and lavatories surrounding them.

We struggled on to our lodgings.

A group of men with masks around their faces carried a body between them, on a frail litter, and we gagged as its stink submerged us.

The Plague had arrived and we were defenceless against its power.

Jenny and I edged down the hallway to our dormitory, but the space was skint - completely bare of any possessions. Someone had taken our belongings.

As we stood there, gazing in disbelief, I felt a sudden griping sensation, followed by a wrenching agony.

My baby would come, thievery and plague notwithstanding.

The handcart bumped and bucked as we trundled towards the lying-in hospital, past the George Street cemetery. Its gravestones shone in the light of a weak crescent moon: so many white teeth in the mouth of hell.

Aboard the cart, I was largely insensible, my entrails on fire.

The wheels shuddered again at the asylum entrance, and the men encouraged me roughly to my feet.

I almost fainted away in terror then, but made it up the steps. Here a severe looking woman stood, her face framed by a stiff white collar, and lit by a candle.

We moved forward, and I was in a very large dark space lined by portraits of imperious men.

The flickering light created strange shapes of the thick furniture, and threw into relief the rectangles of many doors around the perimeter.

As best I could, I followed the woman with her long skirts swishing across the tiled floor, my own steps slower, and faltering.

Perhaps sensing my terror, the matron turned to smile at me.

With surprise I realised that her eyes were kindly, and comforted by her softened expression, I made an effort to settle myself.

My stance became more confident and the pain lessened momentarily.

Whatever lay ahead I was determined to make a good life - for my daughter and for me.

© June Saville 2008. Not to be reproduced without express written permission of the author.

Read about the Bubonic Plague now and see some pics.

I thought this story was topical, even though The Black Death or Bubonic Plague was a much more horrifying disease than the swine flu has turned out to be right now.

It's the Australian flu season and many thousands of people have come down with sniffles, fever, aches and pains. However, it's impossible for the lay person to tell the difference between the usual annual flu virus and the new strain that is swine flu.

A bit more attention to everyday hygeine (like washing hands) is much more useful than any form of panic, in my view.

Has swine flu hit your town? How does it affect people?

Sex at Sixty-Five

2009-06-15T18:23:00.005+10:00

Many younger people tend to believe, without thought, that the elderly are as good as dead when it comes to personal relationships and sex. My story centres on two friends who share their innermost feelings in everyday conversation. We learn of their hopes and desires, and their talk demonstrates that they have great wisdom as well. Enjoy 'Sex at 65', another of the favourites among my short stories.

There was something wrong. Something different. And Velma was sniffing the breeze.

Theirs was a long term ritual. Every week day Monica and Velma watched Days of Our Lives while curled up on Monica’s sagging two seater lounge, and sucking cups of Bushells tea. One sugar and a splash of milk for Mon, and for Velma, three sugars and black.

The machinations of the Salem crew always played out in total silence, but Mon and Vel’s post mortem was fierce, and punctuated by a second cuppa and some peanut butter sandwiches.

There was rarely a break in the routine. They’d watched daytime tele together since 1985 when Velma and her Fred moved into the fibro triple front next door. Mon lost Wilbur early in 1980 and had lived alone in their two bedroom brick ever since.

On week-ends when Fred was home Mon kept herself to herself except for a trip to the local club on Saturday nights to play Bingo. But of late, things had been different. Mon had been doing things she wouldn’t talk about.

Velma reached for her third sandwich and broke the triangle of white bread in two. She licked her finger and trawled the plate with it to collect crumbs. She sucked at them and prepared to attack the sandwich itself.

‘Mon … Are you ready to tell me? Come on, spill the beans. It’s a fella isn’t it?’

Monica looked sideways at her friend, and then pushed back a lock of silver grey hair from her face. About six weeks ago she’d had it permed for the first time Velma could remember, and now it was getting too long.

‘Come on Mon. You don’t keep things from me!’

Thoughtful, Mon rose from her lumpy seat and limped over to the kitchen to refill the teapot. The bright purple flowers on her shift clashed awfully with the bright orange of the bench top.

‘Well, I suppose.’

Velma settled her bulk more comfortably, in anticipation.

‘We met at Bingo.’

‘Ah …’

‘He was across from me and we were both going really well with our cards, chalking up numbers like mad. I had only legs eleven to go and it stayed there for about three numbers and I was sweating. I hadn’t won for weeks.’

‘One number for three turns!’

‘Mmmm. Anyway, it came up. Legs eleven. And I yelled “Bingo” as loud as I could, real excited.

Then I realised he’d yelled too. The man across the table. At the same time. And we looked over at each other. And I saw his eyes. And he was as excited as I was.’

Mon had forgotten to put the lid on the teapot, and the window glass was becoming opaque with rising steam.

“So we had to share the fifty dollars, and when we came back to our seats after collecting it, he ushered me into my chair in such a posh way.’

‘Truly!’

‘It was nice to be treated special again. By a man. Before I knew it my heart was saying “Bingo” too.’

Velma waddled over and gathered her friend in a bear hug.

‘Oooh. How lovely!’ She had tears in her eyes.

Mon broke away from the hug, still miles away. Then, as though on automatic, she took the teapot and a second plate of sandwiches waiting ready on the bench top and placed them on the coffee table next to the lounge. She sat down again.

‘ We used to sit on the cliff at dusk, eating ice cream.’

‘Mmmmm.’

‘We had some really nice times ...’

Velma was tucking in, although intrigued.

‘So what’s happenin now? Is it still on?’ An oily glob of peanut butter dropped to her lap, unnoticed.

‘Well, not at the moment …’

‘Oh! Oh well … ‘

‘No. No, it’s not on now.’

‘Oh.’

‘No. It was good while it lasted. In some ways. But … ‘

‘Yeah. I suppose. I s’pose there’s two ways of lookin’ at these things. I s’pose.’

Monica shrugged, and gazed out of the window at a magpie pecking for grubs in her lawn.

‘Yes. There’s different ways of looking at things …’

Velma plumped herself around on one hip so she could look straight at her friend, sitting there on the lounge.

’You know, I s’pose if you look at it fair and square, you’ve probly had a bit of a lucky escape.’

‘You reckon?’

‘Yeah. I reckon.’

Mon was grinning from ear to ear. Suddenly.

‘Yes. I reckon too.’

This was more like her Mon. Velma swirled the tea in her cup to make sure of the last grain of sugar.

‘A bloke’s good for a bit of company. Yeah. But once they get long in the tooth things change.

Then they just want a cook. A servant.’

They shared a long silence. Then Mon said: ‘Men are scared to be by themselves you know.’

‘Yeah ... but it’s more than that. They’ve got egos. Egos are what gets them in knots.’

‘I agree with that!’

‘Yeah, they like a woman around to make ‘em look good, but you try and contradict ‘em or want your own way and you’ve had it. They can’t cope. Nope. They just want a cook.’

The silence was more comfortable this time, and Velma took over the pouring of the tea.

‘Remember, only one sugar please Vel. Trying to cut down on carbohydrates. Made myself a promise to get into a size sixteen.’

‘Don’t forget the chocolate cake I brought in. You’ll have a piece of that?’

‘Oh … Okay ...’ The magpie had caught a grub and she could see it wiggling in its death throws, trapped there in the maggie’s beak.

‘We did share a lot. Movies and books. We liked the same films you know. And books, like I said. Wilbur Smith ... Colleen McCullough.

Velma was rummaging in the fridge and came back with two plates laden with chocolate cake.

She passed Monica a pressure pack of cream, and Monica squirted a tall rosette of airy white onto her cake.

‘That’s what happens, in the beginnin. It’s amazing how many common interests they find. In the beginnin ...’ said Velma.

‘ … And music. He seemed to like everything that I did. Amazing really. The young ones’d call it synchronisity.’

‘Synchron ... What?’

‘I mean, we really got on well. And jokes! Did he have a cupboard full of jokes. Always there ready ... ‘ She smiled in her remembering, ‘Here’s one. Knock knock.’

‘Who’s there?’

‘Old Lady.’

‘Old Lady who?’

‘I didn’t know you could yodel!’

Velma began to shake in mirth, her rolls of fat a dancing bean chair.

‘Oh Mon, you are mad!

‘He was a dreadful driver though. It was like risking your life every time you got in beside him. He didn’t ever seem to see the cars coming. And roundabouts! What a hassle! He should be dead.’

The maggie was stabbing its beak into the grass again.

‘He was nice though …’

‘Now Mon, if it’s over, it’s over. There’s nothin’ worse than a man you don’t want ruling the roost around the place. Don’t forget the bad things Mon ...’

‘Mmmm ... But I reckon you’re wrong about only wanting a cook. One night at his place he sat me down to a beautiful meal. Tablecloth, candles and all. Fillet steak and three veg ... He looked wonderful there, in the soft light. A pretty good looker. For his age.’

The cake was all gone now, and the tea leaves were showing at the bottom of the cups.

‘Do I know ‘im Mon? Come on …’

‘Well don’t go teasing me for the rest of my life if I tell you. Promise?’

Velma drew her pudgy figures over her chest.

‘Cross me heart.’

Monica’s look was meant to pierce right through to Vel’s conscience.

‘True. Honest I won’t.’

Monica looked out of the window again, then said: ‘Harry Roberts down at the post office. You know … on the counter.’

Velma was impressed.

‘Well! I say! You devil you!’

Mon’s face turned pink.

‘Now you promised.’

‘He’d be a good catch. If you wanted a man.’

‘You think so?’

‘Well … Good job … Clean. Nice smile. Funny nose though. And ‘e could have a bit more hair.’

‘Anyway, it was a lovely meal ... It was nice of him to cook for me.’

‘Well, why not? It’s about time men turned their hands to the kitchen. Did you ever have ‘im over?

Here?’

‘Mmmm. You know when you and Fred went to Noosa for the week-end?’

‘Yeah? You crafty thing.’

Velma smoothed the floral arm of the lounge chair.

‘Did you ever … You know …’

Monica’s face turned from pale rose pink to a light shade of vermilion.

‘What? Oh ... Well ...’

‘Come on Mon. Did he ever kiss you?’

Mon balanced on the edge of her chair.

‘Mmmm … Well … Yes. He did.’

‘That night?’

Now Monica looked as though she could crawl under the chair.

‘Not then … no. But we used to talk on the phone all the time. One Friday night we’d been chatting on for a full hour and he said: “Mon, I want to see you tonight; be with you. Damn this phone nonsense.” And he asked if he could come over. Right there and then. I mean what could I do?’

Velma was enjoying herself, eager for the next revelation.

‘I don’t s’pose you minded too much.’

‘He did seem sort of ... urgent. Anyway, he came. Half an hour later. In nice slacks and his dark brown shirt. I noticed he’d put on some Old Spice ... a bit too much really.’

‘And ...’

‘Well ...’

‘Yes?’

‘Well, he came in through the door. And I could smell the after shave right off. Can I have another cup, Velma?’

Velma filled Mon’s cup from the teapot.

‘It’s probly a bit cold.’

‘By this we were standing in the middle of the lounge room when he grabbed hold of me and planted a kiss on my mouth. Hands everywhere. I must admit it made me feel pretty gooey.’

‘How about you!’

‘Anyway, he was breathing deep and so was I. All tingling I was. From top to toe.’

Monica eyes were transfixed on a spot in the middle of the patterned carpet.

‘He was sweating. Then, before I knew it we were tumbling around on the spare bed. Rolling around and all hot ... Us and the Old Spice. We were there about a minute or so, just long enough for me to wonder what I was doing. I mean, it was all a bit sudden ... We’d enjoyed our talks. And our outings. But this was different. I mean. At our age.’

‘Yeah. But only a minute though?’

‘No, I mean ... We were there, on the bed. Rolling on the bed for just about a minute. Before he had my blouse off. And then my bra. And there he was with no shirt. And only his undies. And then no undies. And I had no undies.’

Velma had stopped breathing.

‘I noticed he was still limp, but he began pushin’ himself against me. I could feel the flab on me stomach. Then he sort of angled to get his paunch out of the way ... he’s got a bit of a beer gut.

He grunted and groaned, and it was as though I wasn’t there any more. He was all taken up with himself.

‘I was shy I suppose – too shy to interrupt him. I tried to help him along. Stroking and cooing. But no go. And he kept at it. And time went on. And he kept at it. A lather of perspiration he was.

By this time I was really turned off.’

Velma began breathing again.

‘I remember noticing the glow of the street light coming through the curtains, and the pattern of the bedspread. He had a small tattoo on his back too. A ship’s anchor. And then I noticed the daddy long legs spider clinging to the corner of the room. Must dust that off tomorrow, I thought to myself.’

‘Fair dinkum!’

Monica was deep in the memory and had completely forgotten her embarrassment.

‘True. Anyway, his penis was still the centre of his world. It was a real battle for him. Like forcing a wet chamois into a coke bottle. I was just the bottle.’

Velma’s rolls of fat were jitterbugging.

‘So I tried to hasten things a bit. Swinging with him, trying to get a bit of rhythm going. He grunted with each shove and sighed with each push. Occasionally he would whisper that he loved me. As though to convince himself. But you know, what I might really feel, or want, just wasn’t part of the scene at all.’

‘How amazing. The buggers are just so full of themselves.’

‘I started thinking: “I’m being used here. He’s massaging his own ego as much as anything.” I thought: “Blow this. I’m not putting up with it.” So I quietly slid off the bed and asked him if he wanted a cup of tea.’

‘Oh Mon, what a joke!’

‘Well, it might seem that way now. But it wasn’t very funny. Really. It was sad. It was a case of a man’s ego getting in the way of a perfectly good relationship.’

‘You think so?’

‘I mean, if he’d taken things more slowly you don’t know what might have happened.’ Mon sneaked a glance at her friend.

‘You know yourself Velma that a woman’s most erogenous zone is between her ears. Massage that first and there’s a chance with the rest. A woman’s got to feel good about a fella. Don’t you think?’

‘Yes, I do. ‘

‘Why don’t men learn? They need companionship too. The same as we do. A bit of caring.
Sharing of hopes and dreams.’

She pulled a colourful handkerchief from a pocket and dabbed, absentminded, at the corner of an eye. Then she stuffed the handky down the front of her dress, suddenly angry.

‘They just muck things up by thinking about themselves too much. Keeping up with their own idea about themselves.’

Mon had left the lounge behind and was pacing up and down on the carpet.

‘Me, I’d probably come good in the sexual stakes if he’d only taken things easy.’

‘And he probly would of too. You’re right Mon.’

‘Anyway, next day I was a cot case. Threw my back out with all the action, and I had to go off to the chiropractor. Haven’t been quite the same since.’

‘Oh no!’

‘No sooner had I got home from the chiropractor when he was on the phone again, apologising for being inept. Truly!’

‘You’re jokin. ‘

‘I didn’t give a damn whether he was inept or not. I didn’t want a rampaging bull in my bed right then anyway. I’d been there years ago.’

Outside in the garden, the magpie had flown high into a large gum tree.

‘A bit of gentle petting would have been the ticket. Build up the trust.’

‘Too right Mon.’

‘That way the flames will come.’

‘Too right Mon.’

‘The upshot of it was that he rang me again about two days later. Hadn’t even heard from him in between.’

‘Hurt ‘is ego I don’t wonder.’

‘You know what he said?’

‘Nope. What?’

‘You can believe this if you want to ... He said he was thinking of going to the doctor for a prescription ... for Viagra.

‘I didn’t return his calls after that.’

© June Saville 2008 All rights reserved. Not to be reproduced without written permission of the author.

Do you share personal concerns with friends? What do you think about Mon and Vel's opinions?

I'd really like to know what my male bloggy mates think of this story? I note that all of the early comments are from women ...

Lamb Chops and Apple Pie - Childhood in Australia.

2009-06-08T18:39:00.010+10:00

This is another of my favourite short stories - sent into the blogasphere when I had few readers. Maybe you'll enjoy it. Please let me know ...
June

‘Mother’ meant warm cuddles, love and lots of praise.

She meant the whiff of fresh sponge cake in the oven of the Early Kooka, and pea soup on Sunday afternoons. She was Tchaikovsky’s First Piano Concerto. She was floor polish and the pungent smell of ironing. And the taste of Laxettes.

While my father was The Back Yard, Mother was The House.

The Back Yard was often marked by mild horror.

On the other hand, The House was filled with light and bright colours. It was serene and encouraging and good fun. Only when my father came home was there a change; when tension poked its head in the door and stayed there until he slammed that door shut on his way to work next day.

Sundays were different. That’s when my father slept all morning to get over the big working week, and we all went off to tennis in the afternoon. My mother and father had done their courting at grade tennis matches and the game meant a lot to them. They were still great players, and my sister and I used to watch them in awe as they moved around the hard yellow-coloured surface. It was a novel view of these two important people.

In those days my mother shone, with her lithe body and strong handsome face and soft eyes. My father was tenacious, and together in a doubles match they were unbeatable.

To us, the kids, the best part of the tennis afternoon was still the ‘cuppa’ halfway through. That’s when sponges and the slices and the scones appeared from baskets and disappeared along with steaming cups of tea.

For some reason my sister and I were the only children there; I suppose because my parents were a little older than the other half dozen or so local couples who played. We became the centre of attention, with the adults seemingly obliged to have fun with us, and ask about school, and pass remarks about our new dresses, or just smile.

When the shadows grew long, the men would roll up the net and throw it and the balls into a big box in the tennis shed and it would be pea soup time. My mother always put a huge boiler of pork bones, onions and split peas on the Kooka on Sunday mornings, and we came home to steaming bowls of the best pea soup in the business. She always invited old Mr Vaughan from next door to share with us, and he was good fun.

I remember Mr Vaughan sometimes asked my sister and I into his little house for lunch and served runny poached eggs topped with a slosh of blood red tomato sauce. It was a love/hate relationship. Not with Mr Vaughan; with the eggs.

Mother attracted people. They loved her for her kindnesses, her friendliness and her intelligence. I loved her for all of these things too, and also because she passed on to me her own passions which she had been unable to experience in full measure for herself.

She really adored music and won high praise with her early piano lessons. Grandmother was a musician and artist and encouraged her children. But Grandmother died when my mother was twelve, and she took with her the gentle cultural pursuits, including the music.

My grandfather was a rough labourer who drank to assuage his loss, and Mother left school and piano lessons to take up the household chores and be a substitute parent for her two brothers and sister.

So my mother encouraged me in my burgeoning love of music, and when we got our first radio set, we used to listen to the classical request programmes. Our favourite was the Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto No 1. I remember crouching to press my ear against the cloth- covered speaker to hear music through the crackle coming all the way from Sydney. Mind you, I did the same to hear ‘Mrs ‘Obbs” and ‘First Light Fraser’.

Later, I was to spend my first couple of pay packets on a huge old secondhand phonograph. It was the wind up variety with needles you had to change with each play, and lived in a wonderful polished cabinet. I bought one vinyl record to begin: Mantovani’s string version of ‘Charmaine’. The Tchaikovsky came in a several record set and was beyond my reach.

I wanted to learn to play an instrument, but my father couldn’t see the point.

But I did get to run bare foot through the bushland at the back of our home. There was a sweet smelling eucalyptus tree with a gnarled white trunk and scars where the sticky red gum seeped and congealed. That was our climbing tree.

A blue tongue lizard with no tail rustled through the bracken ferns nearby, and there were flannel flowers, and egg-and-bacon, and boronia, and mountain devils. The devils were seed pods that had spiky little ears and pointed noses and we used to take them home and Mum would make miniature dolls of them. Great Big Banksia Men and gumnut babies, and Christopher Robin, and Eeyore and Pooh Bear and even Toad of Toad Hall all lived in that bit of Australian bush. They’d wandered from the books in my wardrobe.

Mother took us for walks down the beach from a very early age. We’d clamber across the rocks and peer into the little pools where magic lay. There would be shells and star fish and sea anemones with their waving feelers. They were worlds of crystal clarity and pink and cream.

We’d drag our bare toes through the sand, and scratch important drawings with a stick, and sometimes we’d find cuttlefish to take home for the canaries.

At home, when it was wash-up time, my sister and I would dry while Mum washed. It was then she would spin stories of her childhood, mostly leaving out the bad bits, and concentrating on the picnics, and the people in her street, about the children’s joy when their father brought home sweets on pay nights, and the dances at the community hall they called the Butterbox. These were dream stories from faraway, with the mists of time blending with the steam from my mother’s dishes.

Ours was a lovely house for the period, built by Dad over years, and eventually it became one of the finest in our seaside town. But it wasn’t always that way. We started off with the four of us in a garage at the back of my grandfather’s home.

When Dad did begin building the new house he was called up for civil service during the war, and we stayed in the garage. They wouldn’t let him join the forces: carpentry was an essential occupation. During the week he’d work in Sydney as a foreman on search light installations and munitions factories, and most week-ends he’d be at home building the house, with Mum alongside helping.

Months later we moved in when it was still unlined, and Mum would paint and sandpaper every spare minute during the week, so that Dad would notice a difference when he came home again.

In those days a man delivered the milk with a horse and cart and we’d rush out with a jug, and the warm milk would gush from a tap at the back. At first we had only a meat safe, a small cupboard with fly wire walls, and keeping food and milk was strictly short term.

We soon enough graduated to an ice box, with the freezing blocks brought in a corn sack from the ice works a mile away. By the time we had a Hallstrom Silent Knight kerosene refrigerator the front part of the house was finished. Cold drinks from the fridge were wondrous.

Our mother washed and polished that house until it shone, and she scattered little ornaments and keepsakes around. We always knew what she’d like for birthdays and Christmas, and each year the collection would grow. Small Wedgwood jugs and figurines and vases and fine pieces of bone china made the house hers.

On her dressing table she had a crystal tray and powder bowl, and a silver mirror backed with a picture of Queen Elizabeth roses. These things were her memories and her treasures.

One afternoon when I was eleven Dad called my sister and I into the house and greeted us with a big grin. There was going to be a visitor to our house and that visitor would be small enough to fit into a shoe box. It would be most exciting. Mum seemed quietly troubled.

I added up two and two and decided we were going to have a brother. There was never any doubt that the new baby would be a boy.

I noticed my mother became more lethargic, taking naps in the middle of the day. I’m sure I didn’t connect any weight gain to the coming birth, although I knew vaguely that mothers did carry babies. There was no discussion at all about the technicalities.

Around that time my sister and I were bouncing on our beds, quite illegally, when Wendy noticed blood on my pants. My mother was horrified, and panicked. I could not go swimming she said, and I’d have to put bits of towelling between my legs, and I’d have to soak them and rinse them out carefully and … and … and …

No suggestion that this was a perfectly normal happening in the life of a young girl, even though I had ‘come’ a bit early. I was convinced I had a terrible illness; an illness that would wrench me away from my favourite pastime, the beach. None of my girlfriends had spoken about this, and we didn’t talk about sex and suchlike anyway. I was in despair.

I didn’t put births and periods together in my mind until I bought a book at the newsagents probably four years later. I could then tell my worried sister that no, she would not have a baby if she kissed her first boyfriend.

So I had no real idea what was going on with my Mum all the way through her pregnancy, and reality set in only months later when we were called out of class at school one afternoon. My father had come to pick us up early: our brother had arrived. He was beside himself. A son filled a void in his life. Girl children were really of not much account. But boys … !

Dad was the only boy child in a family of four, and his father had doted on the girls and even bashed him to make him a ‘man’. He always had to work extraordinarily hard for his father and received no tenderness in return. When his own first two children were girls it was too much to bear, and he had to wait another nine years for a son.

Girls were a burden and boys were mates. My father rarely showed any animation when he was around us and I don’t remember him making any toys or spending time playing. My sister and I often asked for a swing and I wanted a book shelf, but as children we never got them.

Dad was the good provider though and we always had excellent food, clothing and shelter.

When my brother arrived we suddenly saw a new side to him. He played with my brother and made him things and they actually had real conversations as he grew older. He was spirited when my brother was around. When he was with us he withdrew into himself and ignored our presence. My sister and I were astounded at first, and later we just got angry.

On the other hand, Mother loved us all, and there was never a shadow of favouritism. Somehow we grew up loving our brother fiercely, and jealousy wasn’t part of the scene. I’m sure that was her doing. Mother the miracle-worker.

Dad always smoked and we always breathed it in. We didn’t know then what tobacco smoke could do. Later, I blamed my mother’s illness on a combination of this smoke and the asbestos in the fibro sheeting in the cottages Dad built. She began coughing a hacking cough, and could not breathe properly. She gave up tennis and lost weight, and became old before her time: transformed from a vibrant vigorous woman to a tiny gaunt and feeble physical wreck.

The doctors were puzzled. They told her to do away with her pet birds, suspecting they were implicated, and she travelled to Sydney for all sorts of horrific tests. A hospital technician, shaking his head, told one of my aunts that he saw no reason why elderly people should undergo such tortures, especially as they were unlikely to do them any good.

But Mum’s nimble brain remained active, and when they took her to a nursing home her eyes were the same as they had ever been … intelligent, insightful and kindly.

The staff loved her too and helped with little personal things as often as they could.

My sister arranged a small stand with pot plants outside her window and each day the gardener set a can of water out there for her. Mum would struggle out of bed and to a chair placed near the stand. She’d settle painfully onto the seat, breath whistling reluctantly into her lungs and out again.

Then, when she had recovered a little, this wizened little person would water each plant separately, admiring the flowers and scratching around for weeds. In between plants she would drop back into the chair to replenish her strength.

When she could no longer do this, nor care for herself in any way Mother decided to die.

And she did just that.

She asked the nursing home chaplain to visit, and made sure she saw everyone she loved, seemingly making peace in her world. Then she ceased to eat and she ceased to drink.

She lay there for many days, as determined in her decision as she had been throughout her life. I saw tears come to her doctor’s eyes because the law wouldn’t allow him to shorten her misery.

‘One day there will be a way for doctors to help people such as your mother,’ he said.

All we were allowed to do was hold her hand and watch her battle to die.

Our mother asked us to put her ashes beneath a Queen Elizabeth rose bush, with flowers just like those on the back of her hand mirror. I have such a rose bush in my garden now, planted there the week she died. There is always a flower on her rose bush whenever I am troubled. It never lets me down.

© June Saville 2008. All rights reserved. Not to be reproduced without written permission of the author.

Do you still have your mother close by? What's special about her? What did you think of my story?

HOPPING MAD - He breeds rabbits to save the world.

2009-05-31T18:38:00.009+10:00

I've decided to re-post some of my old favourites on Journeys, to allow a little 'me' time while still keeping faith with my literary bloggy mates. The next few posts will contain stories which many of you have not read, as they were sent into the blogasphere when I had few visitors. I think some of them are among my best - let me know if you agree (or disagree). And please don't be afraid to offer constructive criticism, as usual!
'Hopping Mad' is a story told from the points of view of three different people - you'll work it out.

And please leave comments - what do you think of Ralph's situation? Did the story keep yopu reading?
Cheers
June

HOPPING MAD

Me wife’s an angel. Trouble is, she don’t like herself as much as other people do. She gets angry with herself because she’s is really terrified of crowds.

In a shopping centre or on a bus she begins to sweat and tremble. I tell er don’t worry so much, but it doesn't seem to make any difference. The other day we were near the butcher’s in the mall when she had a panic attack. It had er crumbled up in a corner in no time, with chest pains and a feeling of bein smothered. So do how can you wonder why she’d rather stay at home?

I’m a bit like that meself at the moment. It’s a struggle to get to the supermarket, or do anythin really … Everythin’s an effort. I’m always sayin’ to meself: ‘Ralph, get a wriggle on.’ I get terribly sad about Alice and I wonder why I can’t fix things for her.

I got up this morning a bit late and the kids had already packed their sandwiches for school. We made it to the gate just as the buzzer was goin for their assembly. They’re good kids.

They understand the problems Alice and me have. I just hope we don’t pass anything down to them …

Ralph is in his sullen mode – I twigged as soon as I saw him in the supermarket standing between the toilet rolls and the baby food.

Normally Ralph fills any room … with sound, and because he is big. He’ll usually greet you at the top of his voice. Today he seems diminutive by comparison, shrunken somehow. Quiet and unresponsive. So I know it is one of his bad days.
Ralph suffers bi-polar disorder — manic depression in the old money. So his life is high highs punctuated by low lows.

His wife, Alice, has problems with agoraphobia and her life is riddled with dark periods of wishing to shut herself in a cupboard and the other times when she steels herself to face the world, defying fear and trepidation. At times when she really hates herself she even slashes her arms, leaving great scars.

But those two – they’re good for each other. Ralph’s mania has him encouraging Alice to venture out of her cupboard to conquer the universe, and Alice works day and night to slow him down, for the sake of her own equilibrium.

Right now it seems as though Alice is winning. Ralph’s as low as the tide on June 30. He explains to me that he has given up on his Big Plan to apply for a government small business grant to breed rabbits. Last time I saw him he was all-fired to get into the scheme which was meant to produce high quality very large rabbits especially bred for meat production.

His idea was to build hutches on land belonging to a mate of his. The land is at the edge of town and he reckoned there wouldn’t be any problem. Now though the idea was dead.
I commiserate with him and move on. I know from long practice that trying to jolly Ralph out of his low moods is quite beyond me.

That person over there – the one in blue standing over there near the toilet rolls – he’s the bane of my life. Although I must say he seems calm enough today. It’s a case of be grateful for small mercies though. Normally he yells and rants around the shop aggravating the customers. Bails up my cashiers. ‘You owe me another dollar,’ he’ll say ‘it’s the wrong change.’ Then he’ll scream: ‘This tin of jam has a use by date of six months ago!’. Next thing he’ll have a loud conversation to himself about the shop staff being the stooges of international capitalism. We can hear him bellowing from the delicatessen counter all the way to the soap powders. He’s a raving lunatic and no supermarket manager should have to put up with him. He’s as loopy as they come.

I know this mood I’m in won’t last long. The extra lithium will kick in soon and things’ll look a lot brighter.

It’s about time. I’ve been as depressed as hell for six weeks now. It does horrible things to yer sex life. I’m as shitty as all getout if I can’t make it when we’re together. Alice is some woman in bed, except when she’s really depressed. I suppose sex is a comfort to her. A bit womb-like eh? Being in bed with me …
But right now I can’t be bothered.

‘Hey Alice! Have you seen me hat? I’m sure I put it here somewhere …’

Do you like me colour scheme? It can be depression blue or sky blue, according to my mood. Me mother used to say: ‘Make sure you match everything up Ralph.’ I have always had problems with that because, you see, I’m colour blind. I mix up greens and reds. So as I got to the age of consent I thought of a way out. I matched up me clothing with me eyes – they’re the same as me mother’s. A gentle shade of blue.

It’s worked well. I don’t have to think about what shirt is what colour. I just buy everything white and dunk it in a tub of dye. No worries. People make comments all the time, and it picks me out in a crowd ...

I thought I might get outside and water the fruit trees. But now, without the hat …

Yes, Alice is a gift from God. We’re good for each other. Teamwork in a marriage is the stepladder and the bookends as they say. The formula is sacrifice. The true blue bird of happiness has two wings – one male and one female – and they oughta fly in unison as though they were one.

Although they are on social security, Ralph and Alice have two kids who go to the best private school in their country town. He used to be a salesman in the city before his crisis hit, and a member of the Labor Party. Now the family survives, and very well thank you, because Ralph works the system.

He’s also a mad keen environmentalist, with a garden that is a mass of fruit trees and vegetable gardens; cutting down on the food bills.

With uncanny know how Ralph smells out the latest government and community handouts. How to get cheaper drugs, treatment, accommodation and schooling. He seeks out support for his brood, making friends of health workers, pension officers, church goers and government administrators. That’s how he got the idea to breed rabbits.

Alice and I come from a long line of dysfunctionals y'know. Addiction to grog and mental illness as well – on both sides. It was a big decision to start producing kids together, I can tell you. We were shittin ourselves about it. It took us a long time to make up our minds …

We were both married before and Alice had a daughter by a schizophrenic father. I adopted her and now she’s surprisin everyone. She’s got a job, employed as a psychiatric nurse, and our own three kids are doing okay too. I worked the system a bit with the church and got them into a good private school down the road. The squeaky wheel gets the oil, y'know.

The youngest girl tops her class, so the way things are going it’s possible that two wonky people may be producing leaders of tomorrow. How about that …

Would I do it again? Most of the time … I would. The kids are our life. They force us … okay, because of them we get to eat baked beans on toast when otherwise we could sometimes eat caviar. But that’s all right.

We could’ve eaten caviar if I’d got on with me rabbits. I had this idea to breed rabbits. For meat. To slaughter for meat. But I just didn’t have the guts to go ahead with it.

Well, I dunno what’s come over me … I’ve talked more to you than I have for days; to anyone. I gotta put me feet up now though.

Maybe the lithium will kick in tomorra …

Well hi! It’s been months hasn’t it? Boy, have things changed fer me. How about coming to look at me rabbits?

You look a bit shocked… didn’t ya think I’d make it? Yeah, they arrived yesterdee. I bought a job lot of just a dozen, and I reckon it won’t be long before I treble me stock. Come on give us a lift – it’s not far.

It had been three months since our meeting in the supermarket, and he seemed to be keeping a low profile. Yesterday though I was crossing the main street when there was a bellow a few metres behind me.

It was Ralph. The old expansive, rowdy, fun-filled Ralph. Hopefully, the lithium was doing its job, I thought.

He caught up with me: ‘How about coming to look at me rabbits?’ he asked.

‘What, you’re on the way?’ I gasped, a bit shocked. I should have learned not to be surprised at anything after all this time; in his good periods Ralph was a real bulldozer. Before I knew it we had jumped into my car and were on our way. to the rabbits.

Well, there we were standing on his mate’s land alongside maybe fifty big rabbit hutches sitting in straight rows, all as neat as pins.

Forty-eight of the hutches were bereft of tenants. The other two were filled with healthy looking bundles of fluff.

‘They’re the New Zealand variety – great for fur and meat, but I’m just concentrating on the meat side af things at the moment. Beauties, aren’t they?’

‘I bet your kids love them, Ralph.’

‘Sure do,’ he bubbled. ‘I do meself.’

‘What about Alice? Does she like them too?’

He glanced at me, momentarily glum. ‘She ain’t seen them. She’s real dark at the
moment ... ‘

‘Oh well Ralph, she’ll come good. Tell me. Why the extra forty-eight hutches? A bit premature, aren’t you?’

‘Do you know your multiplication tables still? Well, rabbits seem to. They only arrived in Australia in 1858 and multiplied so fast that the population grew to 500 million in next to no time. That’s before myxomatosis hit, af course. A single doe can have a couple of dozen babes a year y’know. I reckon I’ll need these hutches.’

What could I say?

God’s on me side in this. I’ve prayed for divine guidance about the rabbits, and He has assured me I’ve got it. I’ve been given a big responsibility here. It’s the beginning of a project that will feed the whole world.

I wrote to ex-President Mandela the other day to give him the benefit of me experience. They’ve got lots a mouths to feed over there, so I’m expecting a reply any day. Maybe he’ll even visit, now he has more time.

I’ve let little Johnnie Howard in on the secret too, although I can’t stand a bar of him. But still, he’s in power at the moment, so you have to take advantage of all avenues.

Yeah, everything is going real well. Even Alice is swept up with all the excitement. She comes and visits the rabbits now and then, and tomorra we’re going to the school sports carnival. It’s maybe tempting fate with the crowd and all, but she’s determined to give it a go …

Over the months I used to see Ralph in full roar in various parts of the town. Invariably he’d call out to me with news of some progress in his rabbit scheme: ‘I’ve built another dozen hutches’ or ‘We’ve invested in six more does to help things along a bit.’ I even met Alice at a school sports day, and she looked pretty good, and once Ralph showed me a cheque he’d received after sending the first batch of rabbits to the abattoir. Things in the family’s garden were rosy. I just hoped all this energy was being directed in a profitable way.

We’re up to 100 hutches now. The Bank card’s taking a bit of a battering, but I know we’re onto a good thing. Had to buy a few more does to send the breeding along a bit, but that’s goin’ all right too.

I said to the kids: ‘Look kids it’s better that we’re on baked beans at the moment than give up on the rabbits. This is an enterprise that could save the entire world. You’re makin’ a noble sacrifice.’

They don’t always seem to understand that we’ve been chosen by the Almighty for this work. They want to put tickets to the movies and new clothes before the rabbits. Bugger them! They’ve gotta learn …

I’ve got a real buzz on at the moment. Made another two hutches last night. It took all night, mind you, but I’m on a high, so I may as well get into it. There’s a problem, though. The bloody neighbours are complaining. Old Jack screamed at me about two 2am, yelling about the hammerin and sawin. I just yelled back and kept workin.

If only people would understand. Like the chick at the supermarket checkout … I was in there buying me lettuces when she had to do her till right when it was my turn. Then, after I waited five minutes for er to tie up the little bag of change she said I had too many lettuces. There was a special on, she said, and there was a limit of only half a dozen …

Well! I said how do you think I’m going to make half a dozen lettuces go around forty rabbits? These multinational conglomerations make all the rules, I said. She called the manager and even then I couldn’t win. He stood his ground and I gave mine, and stamped out of their bloody store never to return.

Next time he comes into this shop I’ll call the police. If they can’t shut him up in a lunatic asylum he’ll have to spend time in a cell. I couldn’t care less. I have my bottom line to think about. Customers walk out of the store because of him, and he’s here so often it’s bound to affect business. It’s the ultimate embarrassment. Why he terrorises us I wouldn’t know. Why not give all the other supermarkets a turn?

Alice and the kids are startin to feel the stress of all this rabbit stuff, y’know. Alice is hidin’ in her room, in a real dark mood, and the kids go around starin me down and askin me if I’m takin enough lithium.

They can’t recognise an efficient hard workin human being when they see one. They think the rabbit enterprise is gamblin with the family finances. It’s not bein able to afford a computer and new school uniforms is what’s gettin them.

I say: Look kids, you’ve got to take the long view, like the Chinese. They’re the successful ones in this world. Short term pain for long term gain, I tell em. But I can’t seem to make a dint.

All together, things are startin to crowd in on us. I’ve been puttin a fair bit of pressure on God lately, askin Him for help with all these stubborn people around me.

I tried the Lord’s Prayer last night. I needed to get His attention so I have started goin to church three times every day and goin round the house at night. I’ve got a little ritual worked out for Him. I say the prayer to Him, fast and regular, and non-stop, and turn the various lights off and on in the house. He won’t be able to ignore that. I got the message back … to press on regardless.

G’day. Thought I might see ya here. Wanted to let ya know I’m goin real well. Getting so many things done. Really gettin things done. Goin hell for leather. Been a week since I slept. Since I slept. No need for sleep when there’s so much to do. One hundred rabbits now and 150 hutches. All in a row. Hutches. In rows. And rabbits. And all those lettuces. I get mates to go and buy lettuces. That gets around the conglomerations.

I got the priest to help the other night. I collected all the rabbit crap and all the rancid lettuce leaves out of the hutches. Dumped em on the presbytery doorstep. Asked him to do his bit for the world’s hungry. Help me get rid of it I said. Everyone must take their part. You too. What are you goin’ to do?

Saw yer daughter yesterdee. Down the main drag. I thought to meself: What a lovely person. Just like her dad. I gave er a big hug and a kiss. She understands me rabbits. I told her about em. And she understands. I had to tell her about me rabbits. Feeding the world. With rabbits.

Maybe a year later I was in the supermarket again, buying milk. As I closed in on the refrigerator my eyes nearly popped. I blinked purposefully, but no, my first impression came through again. There, cringeing in a corner not far from the cream and the margarine were two fluffy white rabbits.

I couldn’t help thinking of Ralph at the time, but put him out of my mind and dutifully reported the rabbits to the store manager who dispatched two underlings to deal with the situation. It was a fun time, watching the staff chase the rabbits down the aisles and finally out the main door.

Fifteen minutes later I was driving home when I noticed three more rabbits in the main town park. I nearly skittled another near the bowling alley and then saw another six or so quietly munching grass in the school playground. It was time to investigate.

That’s the last straw. It’s him. I know it’s him. The rabbit man. The loony. This company has been the laughing stock for the last time. They say he has a wife and children to feed, but it’s now him or me. He’s a ratbag – completely unhinged. Customers complain and respectable citizens are suffering. Next stop for him – a padded cell.

I made it to Ralph’s rabbit enterprise, and got out of the car. There had been a sea change since I last visited. Now maybe 150 hutches peppered Ralph’s mate’s land, all sturdy and standing in military style rows. But there the similarity to precision and shiny buttons disintegrated, for the place was a shambles.

There was a horrible smell of filth and rotting vegetation. Matted grass had grown halfway up the walls of the hutches and there was a general air of untidiness. The doors of most of the little houses were wide open and there was not one rabbit in sight.

I walked down the rows in a sort of mourning. So much energy had been expended there. So many dreams and hopes.

Right down the back of the place there was a feed and equipment shed and I put my head in the door. Ralph was sitting on a ricketty chair at the far end of the room, sobbing – his whole body racked with despair.

It was so sad to see this grown man cry.

G’day. Things aren’t real great are they?

Two weeks ago I blew a gasket, and they wheeled me off to the funny farm. They say I’ve been overdoin it and they’ve been pumpin heaps of drugs into me. Far too many of em … Far too many … They reckoned I was overdoin it. I tried to say to them: If you’re given a task you ave to overdo things to get things done. They don’t seem to understand …

There, in me PJs in the funny farm I said to em what about me rabbits? I’ve got to look after me rabbits. I tried to convince them, but nothin seemed to work. And then after a few days I said to meself: Why worry? Why worry about the rabbits? Why worry about the starvin millions? Me shoulders just aren’t big enough. Not big enough for all that.

The kids came to visit and it was so sad to see their dark little eyes filled with disappointment. They said their mum couldn’t come to visit. They said she spent the night in the walk-in wardrobe, and couldn’t see her way clear at the moment …

I asked them – the kids – about the rabbits. They said they had fed them the last of the lettuces, and what else could they do?

I thought a bit. Yes, what could we do with the rabbits? I couldn’t just let them starve. There in their hutches while I’m locked up in the funny farm. So I said to the kids: Look mates, just go out to the Enterprise and let them out. Let them all out. Open the doors to all of the hutches and shoo them until they get loose. They’ll have to fend for themselves. And so that’s what they did …

Well, as you can see, I’m out of the funny farm and back into me depression blue … It’s a month now since I’ve seen the Enterprise and there’s been a lot a changes … A lot a water has gone under the bridge as they say. The rabbits are all gone. All gone. Along with me dreams of savin the world.

The kids tell me their school friends are talkin about seeing rabbits all over the place. They’ve scattered to the four corners of the compass. I hope they make it. The rabbits. I don’t think they’ll starve. Not with the grass growin like it has since the rain.

But what makes me sadder than anythin is President Mandela. I gotta letter today. He said I was doin a mighty thing for mankind, and must keep it up. How can I break the news to im? How can I tell im what’s happened?

© June Saville 2008 All rights reserved. Not to be reproduced without written permission of the author.

Constructive feedback and criticism VERY welcome!
To me, it's important to separate the person we know from the new personality that sometimes emerges in an episode of mental illness. The old person is still there!
Ralph suffers a mental illness but he's a most caring and worthwhile person. Do you agree?

Wisdom in Small Chunks

2009-05-24T08:48:00.004+10:00

Haiku-like poetry can be fun.

I find just a few words can lead towards an unveiling of small chunks of wisdom that may be waiting quietly in one's subconscious.

Genie Sea of Reality Insanity Blog is a poet and an artist and posted a small challenge to her visitors last week. She presented to us a verse about Life and asked everyone to play along. I did and enjoyed the experience. You may do the same.

This is Genie's first verse:

Life is...
a mystery
with clues along the way
some red herrings
and exciting revelations

And this is my contribution:

Life is ...
friendships
with fun and sharing along the way
laughter and tears and, occasionally,
a falling out or two.

Try this and let me know if it worked for you ...
June

At 72 years ...

2009-04-10T13:24:00.009+10:00

At 72 years ...

It's not long since
I remember thinking:
No-one I know has died
but one grandfather
years ago.

Today:
I am surrounded
by the essence
of loved ones and friends
now dead or
simply clinging on …

For myself,
I have other plans.

Tell me, do you have thoughts on any of this?

Final of 'Paternity' Episode 19 - Pip's story, an Original Australian Mystery Novel

2009-04-04T11:33:00.030+10:00

It's what we've been waiting for - the long Final Episode of 'Paternity', the story of a young Australian woman's journey to discover her mother's best kept secret - the name of her daughter's father. Here we discover whether Pip's birth was the result of a vicious pack rape.

The present availablility of Pip's story is a gift to my bloggy friends. There is but one condition - I ask that those many readers who have been 'peeking' anonymously for the past eighteen episodes simply make a feedback comment so I'll know how you feel about it - very important to every writer.

To those many who have become Pip's fans and my friends through regular comments - please let's know whether you're happy or not with end of the story.

And if any of you know a publisher who may be interested in Pip - please let me know!

Remember too that there are many of my short stories and poems on this blog. Links for 'Paternity' and all short stories and poems are on the sidebar.

Sincerely
June Saville

image of Pip by Vikki North of Redchair Gallery - thanks Vikki
http://redchair-vikkisblog.blogspot.com/

Pip was the first to slide into one of the cubicles at the Greek café, with its long thin laminated table and pseudo-leather seats, and Joe, and then Frank, sat opposite her.

The aroma of slow cooking baked lamb wafted from the kitchen.

‘I could eat a horse,’ said Frank, breathing deeply.

‘Not here you won’t. Beef and lamb, but no horse … What’s the bad news? Come on.’

‘It’s not all that dramatic really. Just wanted to get you interested.’

‘You bugger Frank. I had you with a dreaded disease or something …’

‘Nice that you care …’ Frank was grinning, enjoying egging the others on.

‘Well?’ Joe was getting impatient …

‘Denzy rang …’

‘And?’

‘The test has been delayed. The Macquarie Street doctor is on holidays and his staff needed his go ahead before they could release my test to the Institute. And so we won’t have a result of the comparison between my test and yours for at least another few weeks.’

‘Everything takes time mate. This has been hanging in the air for years. What’s another week or two?’

Pip knew Frank was disappointed, so she leaned across the plastic tabletop and patted his hand.

‘Good things come to those who wait Frank,’ Joe was signalling Cosmo who wandered towards them from the kitchen.

‘Maybe,’ murmured Frank. ‘Hey Cosmo, take these bottles. Open them both and bring one down as soon as it suits will you?’

‘Sure. Three glasses?’

‘That’s unless you want a small riot on your hands …’

‘This is a mate of mine Cosmo. Joe Black.’

‘From the city?’

‘Yep, and I’m hanging out for some of your great food. Pip’s been telling me about your prowess.’

Pip ordered stuffed egg plant, Frank baked lamb and green beans and Joe’s was a cheese pie and asparagus.

The wine was a rich cabernet with a lingering scent of grape.

Again Pip found that she was really enjoying herself. She felt comfortable with these men, and seemed as relaxed as she had been for a long time. Even though the answer to the biggest question was still unknown …

They were into the second bottle of wine and Cosmo had taken away the plates of the main meal when new customers came into the café.

It was Harold Staunch, the football club president and his comfortable wife. The couple stopped as they passed, Harold wheezing a little as usual.

‘It seems as though you were right about Con Robson Miss Holmes.’

‘And so the news is out already Mr Staunch …’

‘Yes, charges of rape and murder. Con’s been a quiet worker through the years. He had the glitch with the fraud, but in the main you’d think he was the model of propriety, in public anyway.’

‘That’s the way things go Harold. It’s often the ones we least expect who are the villains,' said Pip.

She mentioned that Joe was the News Editor of the Daily, the paper which had run Pip’s story about the town’s health needs.

Harold Staunch beamed. ‘Now Miss Holmes that is most fortuitous. I’m sure you’ve also heard the news that our town will have its own heliport soon. The Minister rang me this morning … Altogether, a very happy day.

‘So much is down to you Miss Holmes, and Mr Black. And you Frank. You and the Guardian have been such supporters.’

‘That’s what a local rag is all about Harold. Or should be. The advancement of its town.’

Harold Staunch was so happy he was moving from one leg to another, in a little dance.

‘As a matter of fact Mrs Staunch and I are here to have dinner with Irene and Jesse Rouse, the parents of the young footballer who died. They’re helping the football club organise a gala dance to celebrate the heliport decision.

‘I wished to see you before you left town. I hope that the three of you will be our honoured guests on the night. Agreed? Will you accept our invitation?’

Next morning was sparkling and bright, with a little edge of fresh cool air to it. The tiny police station in town was manned only spasmodically, and the pointy end of crime fighting in the area centred at the district station and courthouse complex in the bigger commercial centre a few kilometres away.

Pip and Joe drove over there early, hoping to get advice on DNA testing of Con Robson. They walked up the worn steps of the police station with its wide shady verandah and wooden benches which had been rubbed shiny by generations of bottoms belonging to law breakers and their victims, all awaiting justice.

The burly sergeant came to the counter on the request of a young female constable, and Pip and Joe introduced themselves.

‘So you’re Selene O’Rourke’s daughter … I can see a resemblance.’ The man’s barrel chest magnified his voice to a boom.

‘I heard you were in town. Actually, I’m pleased you dropped in.’

‘You knew of my connection?’

‘Our mutual friend Dwight Garry Bullfinck has been talking. And Frank Rolls mentioned you as well. You know we’ve charged another man in connection with the rape and the murder?’

‘Yes, I hear you’ve had a long term interest in the case.’

‘I don’t want to talk too much out of school, but I’ve been certain another man was involved. I believed there was a cover-up …’

‘And it looks as though justice may be done soon eh?’

‘We can hope so. Gazza has put a man in the frame, and he’s told us enough to enable me to place the charge with a fair amount of confidence.’

Pip told the sergeant of her quest to find her origins, and he suggested that it might very well become appropriate for DNA tests to be done as investigations continued.

‘Will you cooperate with us? It could be valuable to discover if you and Con have genes in common. And we could kill two birds with the one stone and help you rule him in or out as your father. That result would come out in evidence at the trial.’

To date, Joe had been an enthusiastic bystander to the conversation.

‘That result might even become known in a very private conversation beforehand?’ he asked.
‘This search has meant a lot to Pip and she really wants to get rid of all of her doubts …’

Pip looked fixedly at the polished surface of the old cedar counter.

‘Look I know where you’re both coming from, but I can’t risk jeopardising the legality of the trial. Sorry.’

Pip knew the sergeant was right. He couldn’t let her in on any secrets.

‘Fair enough,’ she said, and beamed at the big policeman. ‘You’ve done quite enough to help already.’

Pip agreed to make her DNA test results available to the police, when the time came. At the end of the interview both she and Joe felt that the futures of Con and Gazza were in very good hands.

Pip and Joe had a counter lunch with Frank at the pub once they got back to town and, over a quiet beer, decided to begin rolling back to the city that afternoon.

'We’ll take it easy and become tourists for a few days,’ Pip told Frank.

Joe would give back the car he’d earlier rented at the district airport and cash in the return air ticket, joining Pip in her car for the mini-holiday. For his part Frank said he’d be in the city in ten days or so and promised to make contact.

‘Denzy might even have some news for me by then,’ he said.

Pip and Joe found the most scenic route to the coast. It was good to see the trees and paddocks becoming more lush as they moved east.

They stopped their car in some of those old towns that boast little museums which trace the history of their communities. They wandered through the displays of carefully preserved 1900s hand stitched fashion and the bone china afternoon tea sets, and then out to the obligatory displays of butter churns and farm machinery in a shed or two out the back.

As the road stretched on, they could not ignore signs announcing ‘Devonshire Teas’. More than once Pip and Joe sat up to a plate of country baked scones and piles of thick cream and home made jam, along with a pot of tea each. Both of them had a sweet tooth, and both were giving it free rein.

Come evening time the car edged down a little dirt track that led from a wide gate labelled with a sign boasting ‘Farm Home Stay – A Rural Experience You Won’t Forget’. Joe had heard of this place from a mate who’d spent a holiday there once, so they decided to give it a go.

Their room turned to be all starched sheets and shining floor boards, softened with cushions wherever there was a horizontal surface.

Dinner was caramelised onion tart and a bowl of crisp salad with citrus dressing followed by huge pieces of lemon meringue pie, all served in the homestead kitchen by the couple who owned the place.

Neil and Beth Rogers were keen environmentalists, hoping to carve out for themselves a little organic corner of the world where they could keep in touch with the outside via paying visitors. They were in their early forties with two young children who shared the meal with Pip and Joe, along with their parents. It was one big happy family.

Their son Toby was a confident seven years-old with athletic limbs and a giant smile who helped his Dad and Mum in the veggie patch and fed the chickens. He’d already taken a shine to Joe and had shown him the chook pen while Pip was having a shower. Samantha, the five years-old was part of the team and collected the plates in between courses.

‘They’re very used to strangers,’ Beth Rogers watched with pride as the small girl climbed on a chair to rinse the dishes. ‘The farm attracts people who like nature and yet they come from all walks of life. We’ve had merchant bankers, school teachers, backpackers from overseas and artists – the whole gamut really.’

‘Yes, it’s really good for the kids and we have made some great friends ourselves,’ said Neil, ‘They know that milk and eggs don’t really come from plastic bottles and cardboard cartons. Toby and Sam appreciate that things don’t come easily, but know that life can be full of fun as well.’

Pip licked her fingers to remove the last vestige of a home made chocolate that Beth served with the coffee.

‘I used to run a mile if someone new talked to me when I was her age.’

‘And you still shy away from washing up,’ grinned Joe.

‘That’s okay mate. You don’t mind doing the dishes, so we’re a team.’

Pip suddenly heard what she’d said. What was she thinking? The slip didn’t go past Joe who winked at her when she stole a glance in his direction, in order to gauge his reaction.

‘Come and look at this Magee.’

Pip and Joe were back in their room after dinner, and Joe was standing at the second exit to the room – double glass doors that led to a verandah wreathed in grape vines. His lithe frame was bathed in light from a soft lamp in the room, and silhouetted against the sky outside.

Joe scooped her to him as she approached and guided her into the evening beyond.

Here was a little magic place lit by a generous full moon: a private enclosed rose garden, the familiar perfume wafting in the autumn air.

Joe took Pip’s hand, and led her towards a feathery poinsiana tree in one corner, and beneath its branches the moon shadows played over a swinging double seat, plump with floral cushions. Joe drew her down and kissed her tenderly.

The garden aroma mingled with Joe’s familiar scent as they snuggled together, dreamily taking in the moon, a single wispy cloud scudding briefly across its face.

‘In my mind she’s Selene you know – my Mum. I’ve always thought of the moon as watching over me, a familiar friend.’

‘Mmmm – that’s nice,’ murmured Joe.

‘I feel happiest and safest when the moon is around.’

The wispy cloud disappeared into the velvet blue of the sky before Pip spoke again.

‘Grandma called her Violet Selene and Mum asked everyone to call her Selene instead. Selene was the moon goddess of Greek mythology. She’s said to carry the moon over the night sky in a chariot. I’ve always loved stories of the old gods.’

‘The moon goddess is supposed to have fallen in love with a shepherd, a mortal called Endymion,’ Joe mused.

‘Yes. And they had fifty daughters …’

‘Fifty! That doesn’t sound like what I know of your Mum. Although so far as I’m concerned you’re worth fifty other women …’

Pip looked sideways at Joe. He was sitting with an earnest smile on his face, and it seemed as though he meant what he had said.

She leaned over and brushed a lock of hair that had strayed low over his forehead and let her hand wander down the side of his face; gently.

Pip smiled: ‘I feel sure that Selene was not a promiscuous type. No. It’s the bit about the shepherd that I’m interested in. Really Joe could you think of any of the rapists as ‘shepherds’?’

‘Hardly. Let’s see. I think George Wimpole would come the closest. He was a school teacher and had a flock of kids in his classes. And Gazza. Hell no …’

‘The boxing promoter guy?’

‘Pug Raven? Can’t see it.’

‘And then there’s Con Robson. I reckon the closest he’d come to being a shepherd would be cheating on a football field. Even that would be far fetched because shepherding means protecting another player from attack while he makes a move for the good of the team. Hardly Con …’

‘No not Con. I cannot see Con being your Dad. He’s a sneak thief who works only for himself. He’s cruel and calculating and secretive. I can’t see him in you Magee …’

A tear was quietly coursing down Pip’s cheek.

‘Even when I am being harsh on myself I can’t see that either. It’s a horrifying prospect.’

She looked again towards the moon.

‘The myth of Selene and Endymion is a lovely story. Selene is supposed to have seduced him while he lay asleep in a cave and the fifty daughters were the result of this one seduction. Or so it goes.

‘Endymyion chose his own fate – never to grow old and to sleep eternally. Selene visits him every night and kisses him with a ray of light.’

‘You know Magee Gazza reminds me of another myth – the one in European folklore about werewolves.’

Pip laughed. ‘Yeah – you’re so right there. I can picture Gaz as a man who turns into a wolf at night to devour people and corpses, returning to human form during the day. One story says they transform under the influence of the full moon. Fits doesn’t it?’

‘You know a werewolf is a vampire in the making? After death they become blood suckers…’

‘Mmmm. Be thankful he’s not dead eh? The first time I ever met Gaz was a shock to the system. He’s got a terrible aura. Frank told me Gazza has hair on his palms and shaves them. He’s got the werewolf eyebrows too – slanty and meeting at the bridge of his nose.’

They both dissolved into laughter – a release for them sitting, bathed by the moon’s light.

Once they returned to the city life became a flurry of activity. Joe went back to work and Pip realised that she too had better put her nose down and make some money. In the weeks to follow she saw Joe only occasionally.

Pip rearranged the inevitable dust that had settled in her unit and then rang a friend who had a contract to produce dreaded ‘advertorials’ for the local newspapers that were thrown over the fences in suburban streets. These were the ‘freebie’ stories that businesses were given as a part of advertising deals and put in the back pages of the paper in the ‘feature section’.

To a serious journalist, writing these was a bit like prostituting yourself. They went against the grain of quality investigative reporting, but Pip found occasionally that a bout of this writing was a quick way of making a dollar, allowing her to retain a freelance status. She was a quick wordsmith and could roll out such rubbish at the speed of a train, and without compromising too much.

Her friend Kathy Jefferies had a business in which she employed a dozen or so writers on a casual basis, and sent a cheque at the end of the month. The writing was done at home and sent into the office by email so there was no need to admit publicly that you did this, and reputations remained intact. It was a bit like piece work in the rag trade, although better paid.

So for the next month Pip rose at dawn each day and went for a run. She sat down at the computer after a good breakfast and the mass production began. Her penance in the cause of freedom was relentless but for breaks for coffee, and a sandwich for lunch.

Most nights she ordered in a Chinese meal or made a speedy salad for dinner and continued the work until 11pm, thinking of the cheque when things seemed tough.

Payment for the story about the death of young Jim Rouse arrived from Joe’s Daily, as did one for some research and writing she had done some time ago for a prominent television documentary series. They all paid her mortgage instalments and grocery bills …

Pip cheered inwardly at the end of the month when the last of her advertorial assignments was wrapped up and safely emailed to Kathy. It was now just a matter of waiting for the money to come in.

She made herself a cappuccino coffee with the idea of settling down to watch a bit of television when the phone rang.

It was Frank.

‘All good news Pippin. All good.’

‘I could do with some of that.’

‘You know of course that Con and Gazza are on remand. The thing is, I’ve had a yarn with the sergeant and he’s generally very pleased with the way things are going with the investigations. I reckon the evidence from Gazza has Con tied up in knots.

‘He’s been able to implicate him in George’s murder for sure.’

‘That’s great! What about the rape?’

‘That’s not quite so straightforward … But the sergeant does think there are a couple of ways of getting a result.’

‘You mean … Have they done the comparison between my DNA and Con’s? Is that what you mean?’

‘Well, yeah. Are you ready for this Pippin?’

‘Of course …’ ‘The scientific boffins got a negative result. Con Robson is not your dad.’

The buzz of the television in the background faded, and the spoon in Pip’s hand froze, poised above the froth on the coffee. The froth bubbled and expanded, filling the room. She felt she was drowning in a haze of white.

Con Robson is not your dad. The words thumped in Pip’s head. Con Robson was not her dad. She was not the fruit of an act of horrific violence. The seed which became Pip Holmes was not planted at the time of the vicious rape on her mother Selene.

‘Pippin! Are you still there?’

Frank’s voice spilled anxiously from the phone.

Pip’s mind came back into the room. ‘Sorry mate. Wow. That is good news … such a relief.’

‘It certainly is Pippin. I thought you’d gone walkabout on me … You still don’t know everything, but at least you know the rape wasn’t involved eh? That’s really something eh?’

There were so many implications to this news. She needed some quiet time to take it all in.

Frank was still talking: ‘The sergeant was prepared to tell me the results just because they were negative. They wouldn’t have been introduced into evidence, so letting you know wouldn’t prejudice the case. It does open up other cans of worms though …’

‘Sure Frank. Sure. Do you mind if I digest this news? I’ll talk to you later …’

‘Certainly. Certainly. It’s a big one for you.

‘I’ll be in touch.’ And Frank was gone.

Pip had some thinking and feeling to do ..

Next day Pip rang Joe and organised a date to take in a matinee performance of a play for which the Belvoir B Company was receiving rave reviews. She loved the little playhouse in inner Sydney for its great character and the sterling work it did for grass roots theatre in Australia. The company regularly provided space for plays that may not have been given a chance otherwise.

After the show the crowd spilled out onto the seedy little streets that were a source of charm in this area, and Pip and Joe followed those people heading towards Central Railway. Here they caught a bus that carried them along George Street to the Circular Quay area.

By the time the waiter showed them to a table overlooking the Sydney Opera House across the water, lights had begun to wink, reflecting on the surface and turning the place into a fairyland.

It was a balmy evening with a light breeze riffling the menus on the tables of the outdoor balcony. They ordered a meal and the waiter disappeared into the kitchen.

Pip had been waiting for this moment to tell Joe Frank’s news. It was momentous and she wanted to choose her time.

Joe sat opposite at the little table and he stretched his hand with its long fingers towards her small one, covering it and bringing a feeling of security. The tear in her eye was a symptom of relief and release.

‘Joe baby, Con is not my father.’

Joe’s eyes glinted with happiness.

‘That’s wonderful! Wonderful that you know at last. I didn’t think he was. Ever. Not for a moment.’

Pip looked towards the gleaming cutlery on the table, not noticing.

‘Thanks Joe. But you were more confident than I was. You know the nature or nurture argument. How much of us is due to our genes and how much to our environment. That’s all still up in the air. It was a very real possibility. ’

‘You are a living argument for a balance between both nature and nurture Magee, and so my hypothesis was a sure thing. You could not have been spawned by that bag of sleaze.’

Joe squeezed her hand.

‘And so who is my dad? That’s the question that’s been hanging around for just so long …’

‘How do you feel about Frank? He seems to be next in the line, and he’s pretty sure that he was around at the right time.’

‘We’ll soon know. I really don’t have any evidence that Selene was promiscuous. Her heart would have been very much a part of any physical relationship I reckon. On the other hand there may be someone else we don’t know about.’

‘But how would it be for you? If it was Frank …?’

Pip’s gaze was far away. ‘I’ve had since last night to think about that. Frank is a little rough around the edges sometimes, but then so am I.

‘In many ways he was adversely affected by the rape just as much as I was. His entire life turned upside down because of Selene’s emotional reaction to the attack. She suddenly changed and disappeared without any obvious reason. Frank was in the dark about the why of the situation just as I was. His life became second best after that and he turned to grog for comfort. That’s not a good decision, but we human beings aren’t rational at times like that. We’re swept along by uncertain breezes.

‘I prefer to remember the good times with Frank – the good times you knew as well. He was an impressive professional journalist, with a damned soft heart. He’s honest and cares about little people. He was fun and a good friend. We don’t have much say in it once life takes a serious turn and addiction takes a hold.’

‘I agree mate. He’s certainly a solid citizen,’ Joe grinned suddenly ‘I can’t help thinking your assessment of Frank’s fundamental character is pretty much as I would describe you. Maybe you’re a chip off that old block after all…’

Two weeks later Pip and Joe were seated at the same table bathed again in the shimmering atmosphere of Sydney Habour on a fine evening. This time Frank was there as well, strangely querulous and fingering an unaccustomed tie.

Pip’s smile embraced him in a motherly sort of way.

Joe took hold of the good bottle of Australian white waiting in the ice bucket, half filled her glass, then leaned towards Frank’s.

Frank gently placed his hand over the glass. ‘I’m on the wagon,’ he said.

Joe and Pip exchanged a surprised glance.

‘Really?’ said Pip ‘How come?’

‘I reckon I’ve destroyed too many of my liver cells already. Look I’ve got some news.

‘I leaned on Denzy last week and she found the results of our DNA comparison tangled up in some Institute inbox. Been there for weeks.’

Pip felt herself swallow deeply. ‘And …?’

‘It’s a positive Pippin. A positive. How do you feel about that?’ Frank looked even more anxious.

‘That’s wonderful Frank. Really wonderful. It makes me so happy.’

Pip rose from her chair and moved around to Frank’s, inviting him to his feet. She looked deeply into those green eyes.

‘I am so very happy …. Dad!’

They engulfed each other in an embrace, and stood there, rocking and quietly sobbing.

Joe joined them to make it a three way hug.

Much later that evening Pip sat quietly on the little balcony outside her unit.

It was amazing how often the moon was full at turning points in her life. There she was again, Selene the Moon Goddess – comforting and familiar.

Pip now knew how much this discovery would have meant to her mother. She was quite certain in her heart that Frank and Selene had been the closest of lovers, and that the pack rape had destroyed the future for each of them.

Selene had coped by disappearing inside herself, her self confidence destroyed. She made the mistake that so many others had made before her, and refused the help of the man she loved.

Why? Because she couldn’t face hurting Frank? Or did she feel unclean and unworthy of him? The result had been the same.

Frank? Poor Frank was thrown into a vortex of confusion, and had mistakenly sought the help of another god – Bacchus. Hopefully that influence was fading.

For herself, Pip needed time to adjust, but so far so good, she thought.

It was now a month since Frank told Pip the news that he was her father, and she and Joe were driving west again on the invitation of Dr. Harold Staunch. The Department of Health had come good with its promise to provide a heliport in town for use in emergencies, following Pip’s story about the death of young Joe Rouse.

It seemed that Harold and the entire town would be eternally grateful to Pip and included Joe and Frank for their share of praise as the result of support they had given. The three of them were to be guests at a special dance and supper to mark the official opening of the heliport.

By late afternoon the day before the dance, Pip and Joe pulled in at the district police station in the next town to chat with the police sergeant in charge of the cases against Con and Gazza. He was extremely optimistic that all charges would stick and that both men would face long gaol sentences for the murder. He believed Con’s would be lengthened still more because of his part as mastermind in the pack rape of Selene. Of course, Gazza had already paid for his part in that crime.

‘I think you can relax about those two now. They’ll both be very old men before they see the light of day again. You’re safe mate.’ And Joe planted a kiss on Pip’s forehead before taking the luggage from the boot.

They’d decided to stay for the night in a motel just down the road from the district court, and spend a leisurely day before meandering over to the dance the next evening.

In preparation for the dance, Pip ditched her customary jeans and shirt in favour of a deep blue-green dress the colour of gum leaves. It complemented the perfectly cut large and sparkling aquamarine solitaire Joe had presented to her on bended knee just a week before.

‘It’s your birth stone and mythology says it’s for a person of courage, and brings safety and security in marriage,’ Joe had explained.

‘I’m into safety and security so long as it’s not boring,’ said Pip ‘I promise never to be boring.’

She really loved the ring, and the symbolism.

They drove past the soldier memorial guarding the main street almost half an hour after the dance was set to begin, not meaning to make an ‘entrance’, but that turned out to be their lot.

They’d forgotten that country people tended to be there at the beginning of social events.

Pip had spoken to Frank on the phone during the afternoon and he’d warned them that townsfolk had been preparing for days. ‘Don’t eat lunch or dinner for god’s sake. There’ll be a mountain of home made food.’

As they rounded into the street proper Joe drew her attention to a small boy running at full pelt towards the Memorial Hall where the dance was being held. Pip realised it was the youngest Rouse child and wondered about the reason for his haste. They soon found out.

The boy had been a ‘cockatoo’, set to watch out for their arrival. Pip and Joe mounted the steps and walked into the little foyer of the hall, to be met immediately by the rotund, smiling Harold Staunch.

Behind him was the beginning of two hastily formed rows of residents forming a guard of honour that stretched all the way to the stage. It seems as though the entire town was there, dressed in their very best.

The old hall was dripping with streamers and flags, and signs hand drawn on cardboard declared ‘Thank you Pip and Frank and Joe’.

The show was for them!

There was music … a bush band of three players struck up a familiar folk song just as Harold led them through the first of the guard of honour. A girl was playing a piano accordion, a guy wielded a wild violin and another the largaphone – a very Australian invention.

Made of beer bottle tops attached loosely to a 1.5 metre pole, the largaphone created a rattling percussive beat when bounced in time against the floor.

Pip looked sideways at Joe and decided not to be embarrassed, but to enjoy the occasion to the full. She squeezed Joe’s hand and laughed, and he did the same. From then on all of the attention seemed great fun.

Pip noticed that Frank was standing at the end of the lines near the stage, looking very pleased with himself. Anyone watching may have noticed Pip’s jaw drop momentarily because Frank was holding a woman’s hand. She looked again and realised it was his friend Flo, from the old days.

Pip recalled that the two had an on again off again relationship for years. They’d been together here, but the situation was in the ‘off again’ range when Pip saw him at the time of her first visit to the town. Judging by the body language Frank and Flo were now very much ‘on again’.

Harold ushered Pip and Joe onto the stage, and collected Frank on the way.

Pip leaned over to her father and whispered: ‘You old dog. You’ve snared Flo again.’

Frank whispered back: ‘It’s amazing what happens when you find out you have a lovely daughter. You can even give up the grog and catch and keep a lady.’

Joe and Frank greeted each other fondly.

Pip thought her heart would burst.

Mercifully, Harold Staunch’s speech was short. He thanked Pip Joe and Frank for the part they had played in obtaining the heliport, and forecast a long and healthy future for the town because of its presence. He then invited everyone to eat supper.

The band struck up ‘Waltzing Matilda’ while the town tucked into steak sandwiches, sponge cakes, home made trifles and pavlova. There was a sea of food.

Everyone there seemed to know Pip’s name and many of them personally wished her well. Some even made oblique references to her mother, and talked about the incarceration of Gazza and Con. There was no love lost in that direction.

As usual the barn dance was the most popular of the evening. The entire hall was dancing, kids included.

Pip got to dance with every man in town as she moved from partner to partner to the beat of an Irish inspired jig. She was having a hoot. When it was Frank's turn, she discovered he was a mean dancer. It was a strange feeling to know that this man was truly her Dad.

Finally they all completed the circle, returning to their original partners, and there was Joe awaiting her, with his deep blue eyes.

The band slowed its pace to a romantic waltz, and Pip and Joe set off into a swirl of happiness.

Selene,
It’s done.
This raking around
in the past.

Secrets now tumble
from their closets.
Locked there
they had the power
to hurt and destroy.

Revealed,
secrets decay,
become secrets no more —
Unruly influences vanish
in the first puff of breeze.

Finis

© The foregoing is excerpted from Paternity by June Saville. All rights reserved. No part of this novel may be used or reproduced without written permission from the author.

The availablility of Pip's story has been a gift to my bloggy friends. There is but one condition - I ask that those many readers who have been 'peeking' anonymously for the past eighteen episodes simply make a feedback comment so I'll know how you feel about it - very important to every writer.

To those many who have become Pip's fans and my friends through regular comments - please let's know whether you're happy OR NOT with end of the story.

And if any of you know a publisher who may be interested in Pip - please let me know!

Remember too that there are many of my short stories and poems on this blog. Links for 'Paternity' and all short stories and poems are on the sidebar.

And thanks to my very many regular Paternity mates - it's been good to have you along on the ride!

Sincerely
June Saville

Second Last Episode of 'Paternity' an Original Australian Mystery Novel

2009-03-20T07:15:00.011+10:00

This is Episode Eighteen of 'Paternity' in which Con Robson makes a move, and Frank has some good news and some bad news. Just one more episode before Pip's story is complete.

LINKS TO OTHER EPISODES ARE ON THE SIDE BAR

And please leave feedback in a comment at the end of this instalment.

The ceiling fan buzzed, in the heat of this afternoon a gigantic insect, mesmerising.

After they returned from their walk and a counter meal at the pub, Joe had gone off to his room to catch up on email and Pip decided to spine bash – a rarity for her.

All seemed well with the world, even though she hadn’t yet got to the end of her quest to discover who her father was. Even though all was still up in the air about the rapists and George’s murder.

She supposed she was relaxed because everything she could do at the moment, she had done. Nothing left but to wait for the police investigation about poor George, with the hope of a DNA test on Robson at the end of that. And wait for the result of Frank’s own test.

The fan moved unnoticed as Pip mused on Joe’s presence.

She was pleased he’d turned up. It was good to feel that he was looking out for her, and things seemed safer now.

It was strange how easily they had slipped into enjoying each other’s company again, because they had hardly seen each other since they split up more than eight months before. Mind you, there hadn’t been any trauma in the split so far as she was concerned. Simply, Pip hadn’t wanted to commit herself, and walked the other way.

She suspected all along that it was different with Joe. She always thought he was pretty serious, but that was his look-out, not hers.

Pip lay on the chenille bedspread for maybe half an hour, and then made her way down the hall to do battle with the plastic shower curtain in the bathroom. After the shower she did feel better in fresh shirt and jeans, and knew that she could murder a beer. It had been a hot day.

Pip trotted down the carved staircase and into the bar, now filling up with drinkers also anxious to quench their thirst. Without even glancing around the room, she ordered a middy of light and made for the usual round table and high stools which she and Frank had pretty well made their own of late. The old journalist was not there yet, and she expected that Joe would turn up soon.

Feeling the cool film of condensation on its side, Pip raised the glass. The beer froth bubbled against her lips, and for the first time she became aware of others in the room.

Particularly was she aware of one man – the man just one table away from hers. He was a short tomato stake with a large nose, ineffectual mouth and weak chin. Con Robson was looking straight at her, a leer on his face. Pip made herself stare back.

She would not give him the satisfaction of giving an inch.

When it did seem appropriate she lowered the glass onto a cardboard KB poster on the table. Only then was the link between their eyes broken.

Pip turned towards the window, looking across the street and into the distance. Despite herself, her mind was a whirl.

A moment later, her peripheral vision told her that Robson slid off his stool and took the four steps to her table. He was so short that his eyes were at a level with hers as she sat there on the high stool.

‘If you know what’s good for you, you’ll get to fuckin’ hell out of town. Now.’ His voice rasped. And then Con Robson turned on his heel and walked back to his table.

Pip hadn’t even finished her middy when Frank approached with two more – one for her.

'Why’s that prick here, showing himself?’ Frank nodded towards Robson.

‘Being obnoxious as usual. That’s what.’

‘He hasn’t had a go at you again?’

‘Just told me to get to hell out of town. Nothing I can’t cope with.’

Robson could have read Frank’s body language a mile away. He was furious.

She looked towards the door and saw that Joe was coming down the stairs. Pip’s army of guards had all reported to duty at once.

‘I’d say that little threat was Con Robson’s last hurrah,’ said Frank.

The three journos had been in the bar together for an hour, and were making short work of any bar nibblies that came their way.

Five minutes before Con Robson had oozed past them and out the door to the street, as though he needed to be somewhere else. He had been drinking alone throughout, seemingly friendless.

‘Have you heard any more from the police?’ Joe looked towards Frank.

‘Yep. The good sergeant has Gazza teetering on the edge of cooperation. He thinks it’s just a matter of time now before Gaz comes across and that means charges will be laid against Con too. Rape and murder.’

‘That can’t come quickly enough.’ Pip could feel her teeth grinding against one another, and they all became engrossed in their individual thoughts.

Joe was the first to speak again: ‘By the way, there’s some good news for the town, thanks to you Magee.’

‘Really? Has the story brought some results?’

‘Yes, the Minister announced this afternoon that there will be an official heliport established here to cater for health emergencies. Well done!’

Frank went off to interview a local councillor and Joe and Pip were having a quiet time in a little space that was formerly graced with the name ‘ladies’ lounge’, at the back of the pub. The room had a somewhat moth eaten carpet and the walls were adorned with a dozen framed photographs of town luminaries of the past – all men.

There were half a dozen brown coloured lounges and some hard backed chairs, and a television set with a small screen in a corner. In the late afternoon light, dust motes danced in the air – a measure of how little the place had been used (or cleaned) lately. Even so, it was good to be away from the noise in the bar, Pip mused.

Joe handed her a bag of salt and vinegar chips, and they began munching in between sips of light beer.

‘How long do you need to be here now Magee?’

Pip hadn’t thought about when she’d go back to the city; she’d been far too caught up with happenings in the bush town.

‘I’d like to hang around to see what happens with Con Robson.’

‘But we can find out everything we want to know from the Daily …’

Pip shrugged her shoulders. ‘I don’t know. I’d just like to be here when it happens.’

‘If it happens.’

‘Mmmm. If it happens. I’ll stay just a couple more days. You’d think if Gazza is going to implicate Con in the rape, and then the murder, it should be soon. At least that’s what Frank says.

‘Once he’s charged I can start proceedings to get his DNA tested. It would probably be easier to do that here, on the spot.’

‘Okay, I’ll hang in here too. I’ve got some leave coming to me, and I reckon you need a back-up.’

Pip squeezed Joe’s hand in gratitude.

Joe had just come back to the lounge with another couple of light beers when Frank wandered in with a bounce in his step and bearing a middy of his own.

‘Do you want to hear the good news first, or the bad?’

‘I think we’ll have the good stuff first eh? Might make us feel stronger.’

‘Gazza has dobbed in Con Robson on both the murder and the rape, and the sergeant made the arrest not long after Con left the pub. Is that good news or what!’

‘Wonderful. I can’t believe it!’

Pip stood up and jumped towards Frank, almost knocking the beer from his hand in her effort to give him a bear hug.

‘That is just the best news ever. Joe – what d’you think about that!’

‘Amazing Magee. Bloody amazing that’s what it is. Let’s drink to the sergeant of police.’

‘And to a long closeted life for Con Robson,’ added Frank, holding his beer in the air briefly in salute, before tossing off half of it.

Pip sat on the lumpy old lounge and burst into tears. She sobbed and her shoulders shook, there in Joe’s arms.

And when her tears had almost dried Frank patted her shoulder, a tear in his own eye. ‘I’ll get us a bottle of wine and it’s my shout for dinner at the Greek’s. Agreed?’

‘What about the bad news?’

‘That can wait until we get some tucker under our ribs.’

The foregoing is excerpted from Paternity by June Saville. All rights reserved. No part of this novel may be used or reproduced without written permission from the author.

So … what will be the bad news? The story of Pip Joe and Frank draws to a CONCLUSION in our next chapter of ‘Paternity’.

Be sure to watch out for this next exciting and FINAL EPISODE, as all good authors would say. It’s the moment we’ve been waiting for!

What will happen next? Tell me in a comment ...

AFTER THAT GO TO EPISODE NINETEEN, THE FINAL EPISODE OF PATERNITY

Stop Press! Ep. 17 'Paternity' - an Australian Mystery Novel

2009-03-14T11:27:00.009+10:00

Better late than never! Here is the next episode in Pip's story. You'll remember that our young journalist is again in the town where her late mother was raped and seems to be getting closer to finding out who her father was.

Links to earlier episodes are on the side bar.

The sun had been up only a short time when Pip opened her eyes to the next morning.

She was lying, dreamy, the embossed rose patterns still out of focus on the ceiling when there was a soft knock on the door of her room. She felt relaxed for the first time in days and wished to hell whoever it was out there in the hall. They might go away she thought, and lay quiet.

The knob rattled and the door moved inwards, even though she had felt sure she’d locked it before going to bed, as usual. Who could it be?

Joe was there, standing in the open space.

Then he moved into the room and closed the door. Softly, he said: ‘Did you get my rose Magee?’

The pink rose on her pillow had been Joe’s gift … Pip raised herself on one elbow, and Joe came over to her, and sat on the side of the bed.

She seldom saw him without a tie these days … He looked wonderful, with a day’s growth of beard emphasising the shape of his jaw line.

‘I am so pleased to see that you are okay. I got in last night and couldn’t find you anywhere in the pub. Didn’t know where else to look. I couldn’t wait to check you out this morning. I’ve been worried sick that those blokes may be planning some revenge or other …

'Knowing you is some responsibility my girl.’

It was just so good to see Joe.

‘I did have a scare …’

‘You what? Scare?’

‘Yeah. But that’s all it was.’ Pip told him about the ambush in the darkness near the ruined house.

She hadn’t taken the time to process that scare properly, and now the memories came back … the proximity of Gazza’s breath, the laughter floating towards her as she ran. Her own strangled breathing. She recounted it all, and realised for the first time how very frightened she had been.

Joe leaned forward to take her in his arms.

‘There there. There there Magee…’

Pip realised tears were coursing down her face and she buried herself in the soft space between his arm and his chest.

Two hours later Pip and Joe walked hand in hand down the carved staircase and into the dining room where breakfast was still being served.

The waitress was laying a corner table with fresh cloth and cutlery, and looked up with surprise.

Pip could see that an explanation was called for: ‘We’re old friends,” she said.

‘Oh. Oh, that’s nice.’

Frank was helping himself to cereal and turned around to see the two of them, still holding hands. His eyes sparkled.

‘Well, you’re fast workers. Where did you spring from young Joe? Haven’t seen you for a millennium.’

Joe surrendered Pip’s hand to take Frank’s in a solid handshake. It was very obvious the two still held each other in great respect.

Joe had been a second year cadet when Pip joined the Daily and they had both worked under Frank’s tutelage for years. They were among the many Sydney journalists who later shared a general disappointment at the slow disintegration of Frank’s powers.

The three old friends shared a meal of cardboard cereal followed by mixed grills of chops, sausages eggs and bacon, slightly seared at the edges, and were now sipping pub instant coffee and planning their day.

It was deadline afternoon at the Guardian for Frank, and he had still to complete page one so that the press could roll.

Pip looked across at her old boss and reminded herself how strange life could be, and how it seemed often to move in circles.

Here they were, all together again, but this time in the town of Selene’s nemesis. She hadn’t let Joe in on the secret of the picnic yet, and wondered how he’d take it.

Could Frank be her father? She would soon know if he was. The DNA test should be through very soon now ...

Pip watched as Frank lit up one of his roll-your-owns, having neatened his creation, as usual, with the end of a match.

She was struck by Frank’s purposeful demeanour and his obvious enthusiasm about seeing Joe again. He was facing the food servery, sideways to her, silhouetted against the mottled glass of the dining room window.

Pip gazed idly, happy with her lot. Then her eyes focussed.

She focussed on that silhouette, so familiar in its entirety as to be almost unknown at the level of detail.

She’d never really noticed the shape of Frank’s nose.

Pip became aware that Joe was watching her intently.

‘You’re deep in thought Magee.’

‘Mmmm.’

She forced herself back into the dining room.

‘I wonder how the police sergeant is getting on with Gazza. Whether he’s got through to him that he’d be better off spilling the beans on Robson than sticking to his silence about his involvement in the murder, and the rape.’

‘What’s that all about?’ asked Joe.

It hadn’t occurred to her that there had been no time to bring Joe up to speed on the latest details about her rape investigation. She’d talked about the scare last night in the main street, and he knew George was dead …

Frank turned to Joe.

‘The local copper has banged up Gazza the mechanic for George Wimpole’s death, and we think he’s working on him in the hope of implicating an accomplice in both the murder and the rape.’

‘Accomplice?’

‘We think a bloke called Con Robson was egging him on in George's bashing, hoping to silence him. Con is a solicitor in town and George told Pippin he had been part of the rape.’

‘Yes Joe,’ Pip said. ‘George reckoned that Con Robson there. You know I suspect that four rapists were involved with Selene that night …’

‘Yep.’

‘Well. One was George Wimpole, now dead after Gazza assaulted him.

‘The second was Gazza himself, now being questioned about the murder, and another was a Sydney boxing promoter ‘Pug’ Raven also dead, but of natural causes.’

‘And rapist number four?’

‘We’re pretty sure it was Robson, the solicitor who George says was also in on the rape, but we have no way of proving it yet. And Con is still very much alive.’

‘Well. How …?’

‘George told us that Robson had been there that night and threatened the rest of the rapists into secrecy about his presence. We think that George was killed because he knew too much. They feared he had talked to me.’

‘You mean Robson got away with the rape scot free?’

‘Yes, so far anyway, but we want to change that for him. And once Robson is implicated in the rape I can apply for a DNA test on him.’

‘Yes. The local copper had always been uneasy about the case and now he is out to prove he was right,’ Frank said, ‘He’s working on Gazza to come clean and get Robson put behind bars too.’

‘Let’s hope he’s successful.’ It was Joe’s turn to be deep in thought.

Then he said quietly: ‘It’s the only way this thing can be put to rest, and it’s the only way you will be truly safe again Magee.’

Pip knew that Joe was right. She hadn’t thought of it that way before.

Frank had gone off to work and Joe and Pip set off on foot down the long main street towards the cenotaph. Joe had wanted to feel the town for himself, a little like a dog marking out his territory.

Every one of Joe’s actions now spelled out for Pip that he was determined to protect her, and to join in her quest. It was obvious that he appreciated her deep desire to understand the events of Selene’s night of torture, and to put right what she could.

Strangely for Pip, so independent and with such a mind of her own, she found the prospect of Joe’s help something of a comfort.

As they walked, they talked, and Pip went through the events since she had first arrived in town. She told him about the people she had met: Harold Staunch the GP, Jim Rouse and his wife and children, the football coach, the Greek café owner.

They stopped and peered through the grime of the front windows at the Guardian office, glimpsing Frank at his typewriter, and they chatted about the obvious changes that had come to their industry.

When they came to the soldier on his plinth, Pip turned right, down a narrow gravel road she hadn’t travelled before. Something stopped her from going left, to the scene of her mother’s torture. She didn’t want to face that today.

She wanted the gentle morning with Joe to continue on in its peaceful way.

This little by-way turned out to be greener, with occasional tall trees replacing the straggly growth of the other side of town.

Pip and Joe were holding hands again.

Pip drew a word picture of the picnic with Frank, and the story of the old journalist’s theory unfolded. To say that Joe was astonished at the possibilities would be an understatement.

‘It’s too much like a novel, Magee.’

‘Perhaps. But stranger things have happened. Frank was a real charmer in his younger days, as you know … I could see my Mum falling for him.’

They climbed through a wire fence and made their way down an embankment to a tiny stream, to on a patch of soft grass, under a gum tree.

The sun was high now, and the birds had gone wherever birds go in the middle of the day. It was all very quiet.

The foregoing is excerpted from Paternity by June Saville. All rights reserved. No part of this novel may be used or reproduced without written permission from the author.

This all looks very cosy. Will Pip and Joe get it together? Leave me a comment ...

GO TO EPISODE EIGHTEEN

THE ZOMBIE - A SHORT SHORT STORY

2009-03-08T07:28:00.012+10:00

This is something a bit different – akin to stream of consciousness.

I am posting this piece to help fill the gap before I get to finish off Paternity properly for you.

It’s unashamedly inspired by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, the astonishing Colombian short story writer.

Warning – it’s not a fun yarn!

After 1994 when a military coup ushered in an era of soaring poverty within their native land, Haitians in their thousands attempted to flee the misery, many in small boats making illegally for America They did so with the aid of their faith, Voodoo, a national religious folk cult characterised by a mixture of Roman Catholic ritual elements which date from the period of French colonisation, and the theology and magic of Africa.

The Zombie

The hold is dark and dank and it is filled with eyes and I am twenty-five years old and refuse to live any longer working working in the wretched poverty of Haiti my Caribbean homeland, working so long and so hard and yet still in a boarding house room with thirteen others and little food between us all, and now I am in this boat called ‘Belief in God’ with so many eyes, but on the way to something different and better in the USA even though death may come before we make it however I am prepared for that and I am prepared to face this sour taste and swollen tongue and the parched lips of thirst, and the stench and the crush of these bodies and the stomach pain from hunger and the stiffness because I can’t stretch out my limbs, and the cursing and the bucket with the faeces and the vomit, and the groans and the retching and the yells, followed on other days by the gentle sharing talk of hopes and dreams and of times past, and the stars glimpsed through the trapdoor, open at last, when you know it is all worth while for a change from everything that has gone before, but then the returning doubts that crash in with the roaring of the wind, and the screeching of the timbers, the flapping canvas and the bucking and lurching as this frail little boat groans and screams its way up mountainous waves and into never ending chasms of dark green water when all forty of us would slide as one across the hold, a tangled mass of pain and sweat and cursing only to be tossed with force in the opposite direction to confront other gnarled timbers and tumbled limbs, then the blessed relief when the boat is quiet again and they give you just two mouthfuls of water that taste better than any feast, when you clutch your Good Book closer, thanking Him for Deliverance, while those around finger little flags and chant against the sound of a strangled squawk when the captain on deck slaughters a rooster as sacrifice to our safety, and he scatters perfume among us, a scent that cuts the stench but briefly, and the sun beats down, hotter every hour and the hold is an airless furnace and we sink into ourselves: vessels of fear that takes over from our fading memories and hopes, and a drum beats above, beating … beating … and the naked bodies writhe and the sweating limbs are snakes slithering and ensnaring, and I wonder for my reality, before sinking even further into myself, the drum beating is the beating of my being and the black walls of the hold closer now, and I do not wish to move, even when the opportunity comes, and I cannot move, and the little voodoo flags and the charms drift through the thick black air, and the rooster crows, and the priest captain chants to Agwe, the spirit of the sea, and Christ is on his cross, flesh blooded from the tearing of thorns, and I am escaped from my misery.

© June Saville. Not to be reproduced without express permission of the author.

I'd love to know your feelings about this little piece. Did it hit any nerves? Any memories materialise? Did you hate it? Did you enjoy it?

Apologies that I've Left You Up in the Air

2009-02-13T07:18:00.002+10:00

Sorry I'm leaving everyone up in the air with Pip. Life is frantic in a few directions at the moment.

I want to return to the final few chapters that I'm re-writing when I have the time to reach the right head space again. Shouldn't be too long I hope.

I think that the re-write of this last part will be worth the wait. Much rather that than dish up the old ending. In the mean time please enjoy the many other stories on this site.

Also you may like to check out 70 Plus and Still Kicking which has concentrated on the tragic Victorian fires in southern Australia. I've kept abreast of the happenings in a series of posts and there's a live map of where the fires are.

Sincerely
June