Categories
Categories
The Cloud. Episode 52
Edinburgh, February 2020
Four missed calls from Bessie, one from Katherine and one from Jeremy by the time Janet got home from Princes Street Gardens. Janet never answered her phone on the bus, nor when she walking in the street. At other times when it rang, when she could easily answer it, she didn’t and she wasn’t sure why. She just didn’t. She pondered now as she put her wet umbrella in the bath and pulled off her soaking boots. Maybe it was something about control. That therapist had said she was controlling. It was the third or fourth time that they’d met for the counseling sessions – part of the deal after Edward’s death. Not her choice. Ten pointless weeks where she’d sat on an implacably sad chair studying the book case behind the psychologist’s head. He’d had an extensive range of books for a man with a loose chin and careless claims about the state of her mind and her inability to take responsibility. Funny to think of those sessions after all this time. He’d be dead now.
She put the kettle on and poured some dry cat food into a saucer for the ferret. Bloody thing smelt like sileage again. She’d get the kids downstairs to deal with it. They were forever at her door asking if they could play with Fontane. Giggling, shy, with their sticky stubbing fingers all over their faces. They never seemed to look her in the eye. Miss Waters, Miss Waters could we come in for a minute. Just to see Fontane. How had those kids come up with that name? Their mother was a reader but even so. Theodore Fontane was a bit niche. The ferret didn’t seem to have any Germanic habits although it did appear to have an unusually high level of scepticism for Janet’s way of life.
Who to phone back first? Katherine would be best. Katherine had been loyal, respectful. Katherine had not dug around in Janet’s past. Had not dismissed her hysteria when Cyril had been kidnapped. Katherine wasn’t one to pry or judge without reason. But she was curious. Janet made herself a cup of tea, sat down at the table in her living room, and keyed in Katherine’s number.
‘Hello, Katherine, it’s me, Janet.’
‘Hello, Janet, thanks for calling me back. How did you get on with the detective. Lisa Smythe wasn’t it? What was she like?’
‘To be honest, not what I was expecting. But thorough. Polite.’
‘What do you mean, not what you were expecting?’ Janet took a mouthful of tea and pushed the ferret backwards as it jumped up onto the table. It landed on the floor with a surprised thump.
‘Fashionable. Smart. Not like you see in the movies.’
‘You probably watch the wrong movies. You should try the French ones. The woman are always impossibly glamorous. Do you think she’s going to be OK? Jeremy was confident that he’d find someone good.’
‘Yes, I think so, but I was wondering, you know… ‘
‘Sorry, Janet, wondering what?’
‘Well, just to be certain you know, given Bessie is going to spend all that money.’
‘Yes?’
‘Whether we should just do some checking?’
‘Just like watching the detectives?’ Katherine laughed and hummed the line. ‘You’re not serious, Janet?’
‘I’m probably overreacting. I’m old, Katherine, but…’
‘Of course you’re not old.’
‘Perhaps you could do, what do they call it, diligence, due diligence. Just a quick check. So that we’re not wasting any money.’
‘You snatch a tune, you a match a cigarette,’ Katherine sang.
‘What’s that Katherine?’
‘Don’t you know it? Elvis Costello?’
‘Of of course,’ Janet said, not recognising the words. ‘But you’ll do it, will you?’
‘Yes, I will. What do you want to know?’
‘Just the basics. Education, that sort of thing.’
‘Sure thing. She is watching the detectives, just like watching the detectives.’ Katherine laughed again. ‘I’ll have to go out and buy that now. Love Elvis Costello.’ Janet didn’t know how to reply. Was Katherine mocking her? So hard to tell on the phone. Maybe she’d over estimated Katherine’s concern for her. ‘I’ll ring you back tomorrow first thing.’
‘Thanks, Katherine.’
‘A pleasure. Have you got a CD player?’
‘Yes.’
‘I’ll see if I can find an Elvis Costello album with the track on it. Bye.’
‘Bye, bye.’ Janet put the phone down on the table. The ferret was half way up the potted fig tree in the corner of the room. She looked around for something to throw at it. Nothing obvious came to mind. She got up, switched off the light, and made her way to bed.
Categories
Protected: Bloody Jackstones
Categories
The Cloud. Episode 51
1966, Sydney.
They drove to the first day of the two day Inquiry together. Janet and Edward in the back, Janet’s parents in the front. Her father drove. Her mother hadn’t driven since they’d arrived in Australia. She couldn’t, she’d say tearfully when anyone suggested it. I’d just be a danger to others. I don’t care about myself, she’d continue. But what if I killed a mother’s son? Or a young man’s brother? She’d look at Janet when she said this, her eyes damp and blaming. Janet would stare back. What was she on about? Philip had died at sea, not in a car crash. Her mother’s grief was exhausting. But her constant bitter accusations were worse. When would her mother accept it was an accident and leave Janet alone?
Two men in suits hurried towards the car as they parked up. One of the men opened the door for Janet’s mother. It was their lawyer. Mr Higgins. Janet didn’t trust him. Everything he did or said was overcooked or overwrung. His plasticine hands were damp and hot and were always pressed too hard on her back or her shoulder or her waist. He took Bernadette’s arm and whispered something to her as Eric locked the car. Bernadette dabbed at her eyes with a fresh white handkerchief. Edward waited for his father. Nobody waited for Janet.
A woman in a neat navy suit with a notepad approached Janet from the steps of the court house as she walked up the street behind her mother and Mr Higgins. Miss Waters? Are you Miss Waters? I’m from the Sydney Morning Herald. What are you hoping will happen today? Janet stopped and looked at the woman. She didn’t know what to say.
Miss Waters, this must be a terrible time. Could you tell me what happened? You were the last to see your brother alive? Janet couldn’t move. How did she know that? Who had been talking? The woman was smiling through tart cherry lipstick. Her blue mascara gave her eyes a baby doll look that didn’t go with the conservative cut of the suit. Reporters weren’t supposed to be glamorous. Not in Janet’s world. Janet looked around for help. For a way out. You must be devastated, the reporter said. How is your mother? Her pen hovered over the notebook. Janet couldn’t make out the squiggles already on the page.
Heh Barbara! The shout was from further up the street. The Inspector? He knew her? Janet swiveled around. The Inspector was standing at the top of the steps. He had a large brown cardboard folder tucked under one arm and a black leather brief case in his other hand. Leave her be, Barbara, she’s not used to the cut and thrust. Go and pick on someone your own size. Cut and thrust? There was something in the Inspector’s tone that caught at Janet’s stomach. Friends, they were friends. Maybe more than that. Janet looked over the woman’s shoulder. The Inspector nodded to her. A brief nod and a shallow smile. Just doing my job, Colin, Barbara shouted back. Catch you later.
Janet’s feet were stuck to the pavement. Barbara had called him Colin. Did he kiss her too? Take her on picnics and fondle those stupid over cherried lips? Never mind him, Barbara said. You know what the police are like. How about a quick comment before you go in? You can trust me, I’m always very fair. Janet looked around the street. Her mother had gone up the steps with Mr Higgins and disappeared into the building. Her father was stooped, tightening his shoe laces as he always did when he was anxious or playing for time. Edward was eying up the journalist, the way he did with the sports cars parked up with their tops down at Manly Beach on Saturday afternoons.
It was nothing to do with me, Janet said. It was an accident. A horrible accident. She pushed past the journalist and hurried towards the Inspector. But the Inspector had disappeared. And Janet was left to walk into the court house on her own.
To be continued.
I am not a lover of similes, homilies, courtesies. Metaphors are my thing. Metaphors and tragedies and magic. Not card tricks or scandalised women climbed into boxes who aren’t cut in half by saws or even swords. No, the magic of marvellous realism. The art of the impossibly strange invading the lustrous detail of the ordinary. And while I have read many of the translated Latin American works of this genre, I don’t set out to fumble with the surreal. Rather, the surreal emerges through my lack of ability to story as I struggle for a fitting end to an unravelling or a spoiling that will leave both the reader and the author pondering. Did that woman really just turn into a crow or was it simply an extended metaphor for her apogee?
Why metaphors and not similes? Perhaps it’s their assertive nature. Written on a yellow post-it pinned to my desk. Never use the word perhaps. ‘Love sieved out of me and I brushed it up with a pan.’ How much neater and more assured this is without the fuss of a like or an as. Why use a metaphor at all? I could write ‘I stopped loving him.’ But who would pause even for a moment to care about that? And, as a writer, why waste time on the anodyne?
I write because I can. Beyond that, I’m not sure. But I know how I like to write. It’s all about the craft. Crafting sentences, rhymes and alliterations. Subverting structures. Twirling words into the whimsy of the where-will-it-go wound-up toy. A contumacious of clichés. Spinning paragraphs like tops. (See what I did there?). Rhythm rhythm I cheat to its beat. I once had a best friend, a cinematographer and film maker, who insisted that he wasn’t a creative. What he achieved, he used to say, was simply a result of being diligent in his craft. He’d be even more insistent after two pints of Burnside and a packet of salt and vinegar. He’s dead now, his bowel cancer too canny for the finest of our white coats and my name is badges. But his words are survivors. And so am I.
I’ve had my share of grief. So I’d expected to write about it. But it doesn’t work like that. Instead, without conscious deliberation, I’ve turned my attention to repression, suppression, and auto-suggestion. I write resistance with a lower case r. Catriona plants seeds in a shed in a kingdom that has banned gardening. Samuel buys a clapping machine to save his family’s palms from the blistering of obligated applause. I write the absurd. Tetraplegic Maisie has a healthy leg removed from her pet dog Peg. Elderly Janet, having murdered her two brothers fifty years ago, buys a pet cloud and keeps it in her bathroom. I’m on episode 51 of that one.
I dig deep on motivation. Why did Jeremy become a flat earther after his brother died in a car crash? Why did ten year old Scaredy Mary participate in the vicious assault of her classmate Speccy Four Eyes? Silver filaments of mental illness vein through most of this geology. Lorna, who doesn’t speak after the break-up with her partner, is saved by a beaver resplendent in a red turban. Geoffrey, a Home Office Minister, is banished to a remote island in the Arctic Circle and is forced to shack up with his conscience, a walrus called Brenda.
If a stranger were to read all of these pieces, could they determine they were from the one author? Do I have an authoritative voice? That is for the reader to judge. I suspect I am more of a shapeshifter. A changeling with magpie gilt. I peck at whatever I’ve just read that beckons and glitters. I write in the first person or the third. I write in the past or the present. Sometimes I pour the words out with such breathlessness that a sentence ends up a paragraph long. At other times I use one-word sentences to haul the reader backwards into a juddering screeching full stop.
I read Ducks, Newbury Port (2019) and produce a piece called Marmalade, liberally flavoured with ‘the fact is.’ Cormac McCarthy sends me off on a moody filmic binge. Raymond Carver pares me down, scraping the flesh off until I get to the marble chill of the elementals. John Cheever has me spying on my neighbours. Tim Winton coaxes me into the characterisation of landscape. And Liz Lochhead, with her lyrical and lol Scots, brings me to my knees with ‘I wiggled tapselteerie, my heels were that peerie’ in Almost Miss Scotland (1991).
Covid_19 has closed my writing in and boxed it up into claustrophobic angst that rails against the state and seeks redemption in chrysalids, or crocus buds, or the dandelion softness of a young dunnock chick. The virus has also exploited and exposed the weaknesses in my writing. Where I must and can do better. I can murder a darling with the best of them. Edit out the superfluous without a twinge of dismay. I can spot a point of view inconsistency from thirty paces. What I cannot do, and this a pathological cannot, is complete a work that is more than around 4000 words.
Jeremy is 70,000 words in, but still on the ice-breaker, slicing through the Antarctic in search of The Edge. Geoffrey is 5000 words in, but still on the beach, waving at a boat that may or may not stop to rescue him. Sometimes my problem is plot in these longer pieces, but more often it is structure and my struggle to choose the most appropriate tense.
When writing in the past tense I loop endlessly between the simple past, the past perfect and the past perfect progressive if my story is not linear. That looping eventually results in a mid-air stall and I hang there, the blood rushing to my head, until I’m forced to pull down on the stick and coast back to safety. And abandonment. My obsessive attention to detail that doesn’t matter is to the detriment of detail that does. I write because I can never finish.
Categories
The Cloud. Episode 50.
Edinburgh. February 2020.
Janet sat down heavily on the bench in Princes Street gardens and pulled her scarf tighter around her neck. That went well, Jeremy had said, as he’d buttoned up his thick woollen coat and ushered her out into the street. A consummate professional as expected. We’ll go for a coffee and debrief. There’s a little place round the corner that does excellent cheese scones. He’d put his hand on her arm and moved her in the direction of the cafe. Janet had muttered some excuse that she didn’t feel so well and had hurried away from him in the opposite direction before he could insist. She’d ignored the splutter of his surprised calls at her back. She wasn’t sure how she’d ended up in the gardens by this particular bench. I’ll call you later, she’d said, or something to that effect. There’s a lot to take in.
There was indeed a lot to take in. In front of her on the weak winter grass, two crows were squabbling with a large herring gull over an empty crisp packet. The birds hopped, skipped and jibed as the packet was torn from one beak to another. It’s empty, you idiots, Janet wanted to say. And its two against one. The gull, however, showed no sign of giving up, even as the larger of the crows hopped onto its back and threw a jab at the back of its skull. Distracted, the gull swiveled its head around, and the crow on the ground grabbed the packet, winked at Janet, and flew up into the weeping ash tree with its worthless prize. The other crow took one last jab and flapped up to join its mate in the bare branches. The gull looked at Janet, blinked, and lifted off towards a discarded cardboard coffee cup further along the path. The crisp bag floated down from the tree a minute or two later.
It would rain soon, Arthur had remarked cheerlessly in the detective’s office. Janet looked up at the sky. A habit now, searching for Cyril. A pointless one of course. It wasn’t a day for cirrus clouds. There were no celestial brush strokes or fallstreaks. Instead the sky was plugged with drab and unremarkable nimbostratus. The thick featureless grey hung across the city like an old mosquito net. The damp of the cloud crept into Janet’s scalp, stole along the bare skin on her ankles, and sidled into the harrying pain of her wrist joints.
Lisa Connolly-Smythe. What a mouthful that must have been for a little girl. Had the Inspector been carrying on with her when he had a baby at home? Or did baby Lisa come later? After the Inquiry.? Maybe years later? Janet was hopeless at estimating people’s ages. But the Inspector had never taken Janet to his house and Janet had never asked why. Or at least she didn’t remember asking. Had he been hiding a family all along? Or maybe she had been to his house and she couldn’t remember? It was all such a long time ago.
Perhaps this wasn’t a coincidence? Jeremy was setting her up? Bessie knew and she’d told Jeremy and they were in it together and they’d chosen this private detective to out her once and for all. They’d bring her down out of some warped sense of justice or jealousy or just bloody vindictiveness. She should quit now, just leave Cyril. Maybe those criminal kids were right that he shouldn’t be caged up. That he’d better off in the sky. She was just a stupid lonely old woman who’d attached herself to a cloud instead of people. And now her past was finally chapping at her door.
Her phone buzzed in her handbag. She pulled it out. Bessie. Bessie calling her to ask how the meeting went? Bessie calling to ask why she’d run away from Jeremy? Or Bessie calling to dig for information on how both of Janet’s brothers had died young in such tragic circumstances. She let the phone ring out.
She got up and walked along the path towards her bus stop. A discarded Metro paper flapped across her feet. She stooped and picked it up. She couldn’t understand why people felt the need to litter. She continued on until she got to a bin. She glanced at the headlines as she threw the paper in. The first British persona had died of corona virus. A man on a cruise ship in Japan. Janet shivered. The rain started. Heavy and insistent. Janet didn’t have her umbrella. She put her head down and quickened her step.
To be continued.
Categories
The Cloud. Episode 49
1966, Sydney.
Janet’s first dinner date was three months before the inquest into Philip’s death on the SS Himalaya. There were several more dates before the inquest. Always on Saturdays. Only on Saturdays.
There was the picnic on the black and green tartan woollen travelling rug under the shade of a narrow-leaved iron bark tree in the Botanic Garden. Janet pressed her chest against the trunk and wrapped her arms around the thick rough bark and wondered how a tree could save itself from fire and drought. Such a tree could teach her things. But fire and drought were the wrong things. She needed water. Oceans. Drownings. Maybe they should have chosen a different kind of tree, another species closer to the harbour?
The Inspector pulled her down onto the rug, told her the tree was crawling with bees, and poured tepid white wine from a cardboard box into two red Tupperware mugs. She sipped the wine slowly, anxious about getting giddy, saying something she shouldn’t. The Inspector lectured her on the history of the grey-headed flying foxes that roosted in the trees in the gardens. Bats, he repeated over and over, shaking his head. They’re just bats. They stink, too. Why do they insist on calling them foxes? They’re really vermin you know.
Janet lay back on the rug and studied the azure of the patchwork sky through the fankle of the tree’s branches. Bats, foxes, she didn’t care. As long as he stayed off the subject of Philip she’d go along with anything. When he’d finished with the flying foxes he lay down on the rug, but stayed several inches away from her, more the way her brothers used to lump down beside her rather than a lover preparing for an amorous move. He pushed a strand of her hair back behind her ear and Janet tingled, a pleasant rush of heat rising up through her breasts and neck. She willed him to do it again, to bring his face over hers, to lean in with his lips. She moved her hand across the blanket towards him. Maybe he didn’t notice. Maybe he did but didn’t want to touch her. Either way, he didn’t take up the offer, there was no repeat of the beach kiss, not even a holding of hands.
The following Saturday, the Inspector picked her up so early that her parents were still in bed. His car smelt of leather and petrol and the cupboards in Pop George’s bedroom that no one ever used. He opened the passenger door for her, settled her onto the seat, and adjusted the seatbelt to fit. She breathed in the clean coal tar smell of his hair, smiling. Her stomach fluttered and she wriggled closer in to him as he leant across her. That’s it, he said. Need to keep your pretty face safe. Australian drivers are lunatics. Not to mention the animals on the roads. There was no kiss.
They set off south towards Botany Bay, Janet in her sunglasses with the wind from the open window whipping at her hair, and the Inspector giving a running commentary on every driver that was too fast, too careless, not responsible enough to own a car, or all of these things. She didn’t speak much during the drive. Didn’t need to. She watched him from behind the safety of her sunglasses. Watched his hand firm on the gear stick as he moved up and down the gears, his face tight with concentration as he listened to the engine changing tune. She watched his feet do their magic on the pedals as he braked, accelerated, braked, accelerated. How could anyone learn how to use a clutch? It was all so complicated. She watched him check the mirrors, the folds of his skin in his neck crinkling up and down as his head twisted forward, side, forward.
On Silver Beach, still too early to be busy with sunbathers, he took her hand and they walked across the yellow amber of the sand. He took her hand! Janet kicked at the shells as he talked about Captain Cook landing there on the HMS Endeavour, and how later, Governor Phillip had made first contact with the natives. Another Phillip. Coincidence? Or was the Inspector fishing? Janet moved her fingers in the Inspector’s hand, willing him to change the subject. She pointed at the long-legged birds scuttling through the froth of the waves as the water swept up and down the sand. Do you know what they are, she asked him. He shook his head. I’m hopeless with birds here. Kookaburras, cockies, everyone knows those. But these little grey ones, he said, pointing, down the beach, they all look the same to me. What I am good at, though, he continued, pulling Janet into his arms, is history.
Then his lips were on hers, damp with salt and mint, soft, just the tip of his tongue curving in around her mouth. His hands on her waist, gentle, kind. Not the forceful grasping of Angus in that stinking cupboard back on the ship. No, this was languid, unhurried. Not as passionate as the first one on the other beach, but definitely a move in the right direction. She leant against him, standing on tiptoe in the sand, the gulls wheeling and shrieking overhead. He pulled back from her, cupped her chin in his hands. Looked into her eyes. Not blinking. History, he said again. People and their history.
To be continued.
Categories
Protected: Sherry Cherry
Categories
Protected: Maybe
Categories
Darlene
Christ. Am ah sorry. No, yes. No. Stupid bloody word. We do what’s right. What’s needed. Ah did what’s right. When it’s right there aint no point in feelin sorry. You deserved it. You know that. There weren’t no secrets. Ah am what ah am. Never said otherwise. Poor lamb. Look how you bleed. Young blood. Lost youth. Not lost. You chucked it. Ah didn’t see it comin. Ah can stand a lot of things, Wyatt, you seen me stand them. You know that. Pain. Hunger. Fuckin rain. Fuckin crop dug over. But betrayal? No one betrays Darlene. Not even you. Specially not you. Exceptional you aint. No one exceptional in Darlene’s world. Except Zeke. Good in the sack. Hadn’t expected that. Made me feel twenty five. That smooth bubby skin of yours. Those kinky little curls twined around your thumb. The way you cleaned your ice-cream bowl round and round with your pinkie. Same as you cleaned off the mirror after snortin a line. Somethin dead innocent about you. Saw that from the start. Way you twinkled at me. Rubbed that chocolate jelly-ice over my tongue. Was fair taken by you. That’s why ah moved you in. Trusted you, Wyatt. Livin in ma house. Stirrin ma tea just right. Two sugars and a half. Quick learner. Stompin in the old boy’s boots. Dead man’s boots. Ironin sheets. Young cub stompin in dead man’s boots. What a hoot first time saw you do that. Practical. Ah like a man practical. Good with your hands. Peelin off ma dungarees that tender you’d think ah was a baby in dirty diapers. Ah trusted you Wyatt. Fucked you. Don’t just fuck anyone son. You knew that. Knew ah loved Jacob, God knows ah cared bout that man. More than anythin. Who wouldn’t love an old slub like that. Together thirty years. But the farm, he forgot to love the farm Jacob. Nothin worse than betrayin the land.
Christ, if you’d needed money you only had to ask. Whole bloody chest of the stuff dug under the timber shed out back. Told you Christ more than once just take what you need don’t want for nothing Wyatt plenty there’s always plenty. Little Zeke, proper darlin of ma life. Jacob shot blanks. I shot him. Yeah, few steps in between but true anyway. Jacob shoulda got his bone idle sperm swimmin not floatin about on fucking lilos wouldn’t a needed little Zeke and ah wouldn’t a needed to protect him from you cos ah would a had ma own boy, ma own son and he’d be grown up now just like you Wyatt just like you. How much did that fuck Marty offer you? Or was it Wendy? Did she flick her hair Wyatt and pout that pussy at you? Not even hers, Zeke, little angel born from the wife of that prick the god follower rest his soul hers too. Got themselves in too deep. God botherers should stick to god and leave the business side a things to us experts. Nothing gets between me and baby Zeke, Wyatt. Not one thing. You shoulda known. Told you often enough. Told you the cops are in ma pocket for years. A weekl hand-job and the odd pay-off all it takes. Stupidly cheap. They know what’s best for this community. This farm’s an employer Wyatt. Half the town puttin food in their bellies from this farm. That’s community. That’s ma contribution. What were you gonna do? That bull-arse captain’s not as daft as he looks. He told me. Marty was gonna pay you some whack to get little Zeke back. Ma baby. You were gonna steal ma baby. Gonna lift him out of his crib there in the best room in the dead a night when ah was sleepin ? Didn’t think ah was guardin that little boy with every sinew in my body? Every sleepin breath? Didn’t think I’d hear your pretty bare feet pad pad those creakin floorboards? Best thing Jacob never did, not fixin them floorboards. Those creaks saved me more than once. Didn’t need no camera with those floorboards son. Darlene’s got trip wire wired in her own brain. No moral fiber, Wyatt. You shoulda learned from your mad sister Ruthie. That’s a strong woman. Don’t take no shit no betrayal no nothin from anyone. Ah got time for that woman. Such a mess. Such a waste. Marty’s next. Ahm tolerant that’s for sure but I’m not toleratin this. Not ma baby. Jacob had to go. You had to go. You men, you boys, thick as weasel shit. You think we dot about with apron strings and fanny about dunkin donuts. Know what? Almost fell in love with you son. They laughed at us, in the street and all. You young enough to be ma grandson. I stood by you. Didn’t take no shit from no one.
You know what ahm sorry about, Wyatt? That I shot you in the fuckin kitchen. What a godforsaken mess to clean up. Here you are your brains all over them pretty tiles your disloyality all over the hob like lacerated liver. Still, should get it cleaned up before that goddam nurse woman turns up. Long as she causes no trouble, Wyatt, she’s safe enough. She thinks she’s checkin on me but ahm watchin her and one step wrong and ah’ll gun her down with the rest of ya.
This week’s writing exercise was fan fiction (this is my first attempt at it).
SANDERLINGS 