Category: serial

serial

The Cloud Episode 58

April 2021, Edinburgh

Janet keeps her eyes wide open. Sees clouds where there is no sky. Fingers where there are no hands. Liquid where is no container. Janet studies these oddities not with surprise, but with intent. They are telling her something important, she just needs to learn the code.

Janet knows her carrot soup from her stewed apple. Feels the cold of the vanilla ice-cream and the heat of the minced beef and tatties. But the swathes of material on and around her are incomprehensible. She plucks and scratches and writhes and undresses herself several times a day. They have tied her up. They have kidnapped her and they won’t let her go.

Janet knows her left from her right. Understands up and down. She is also clear that one foot is lucky and one is not. On weekdays she must set off on her ten steps an hour from the left foot. On weekends, she must start with the right. She hasn’t told the physiotherapist this. This is one of her secret weapons. And no one gets to know.

Janet knows the name of each fidgeting fairy that tiptoes along the table beside her bed. Can recognise the one with the limp, the one with the itchy back, the one that likes to cover her face with a perfect starling feather fan. The fairies don’t talk to Janet. There’s no need. They communicate with facial expressions, or a crooked finger, or the raising of an arm. Speaking is too dangerous. They all agree on that.

A woman in a red trouser suit with tangerine lips and green sludge above her eyes turns up with small machines and pens and notebooks and lays them out in front of Janet on a tray. Asks Janet if she can record the sessions. Asks Janet to pick up her pen. That she should write her memories down. Janet knows this woman is a secret agent. This woman has been sent to trick her. Janet lets the pen roll loose in her hand. Sometimes she draws a cloud the way a child would. A cloud that would be a sheep if four short lines were added. Janet doesn’t add the four short lines. Janet is not going to give the woman in red a single clue. Especially not about the sheep.

Through the long, never dark enough, nights, Janet knows the voice from deep within her mattress is different to that one in the ceiling, and that coming up the pipes and into the hand basin. Janet knows these voices have a pecking order, that the voice in the ceiling is in charge, that the one in the mattress is still finding its way with pronouns and adverbs and complex nouns. The voices speak to each other more than they speak to Janet. Sing song voices that only she and they can hear. Janet never looks in the direction of the voices. She knows not to give the game away.

Janet has stopped asking Sergi where she is and why can’t she leave. Sergi seemed to struggle with such questions. But Janet knows Sergi isn’t as stupid as he looks. Sergi is monitoring her. And she, Janet, must never lower her guard. Janet relaxes when Sergi enters the room. Leans back on her pillows or into the chair and opens her eyes slowly.

Ah, Sergi, she says. It’s you. Could you close the blinds a little. The sun is terribly bright. There are no blinds to close, but Sergi goes through the motions. And the smallest of crinkles crease around Janet’s eyes.

To be continued

Tags cloud, institution

serial

The Cloud – Episode 57

2021 – Edinburgh

Katherine cannot find Janet.

Katherine has been to Janet’s street several times. Pressed hard down on the buzzer, a tissue between her finger and the brass, with no response. Janet has tried the neighbours in the same stairwell. The neighbours, all seven of them, refuse to speak to her, refuse to let her enter to push a note through the letterbox, and all seven end the intercom conversations with a breathless ‘no’ before Janet can even explain.

Katherine has called the police and the police tell Janet they have more important priorities that a woman who has lost a cloud and isn’t even a relative and by the way don’t break any covid regulations dear in this hunt of yours you’ll stay at home if you know what’s good for you and have you tried mental health services (for yourself not your imaginary friend).

Katherine has called the hospitals and has been lectured on privacy and confidentiality and interrogated over her mask wearing habits and her personal hand sanitation.

Katherine has called the courts and has been put on hold for hours at at a time as someone, generally a woman called Marjory, disappears to ask a superior and never returns.

Katherine has called the prison, Cornton Vale, and been met with a surprised scoff and a read out response on confidentiality and the prisoners’ charter.

Katherine has called the airlines and has been given three options only: press one for rebookings, press two for refunds, press three for traveling with pets.

Katherine has sent a press release to the local Edinburgh paper and asked them to run the story. Katherine has never heard back. Katherine has noted that the local Edinburgh paper is more interested in stolen puff puff dogs than actual people.

Katherine has lost Janet and Janet has lost her cloud and Katherine needs to be a lot more cunning.

To be continued.

serial

The Cloud Episode 56

1966 – Sydney

‘Just nipping to the boys’ room,’ the Inspector said as they filed out into the large marbled hall after the verdict. Janet watched his back as he hurried away down the long corridor, listening to the echoing clack clack of his leather soled shoes on the marble floor, seeing for the first time the white skin at the back of his neck above his tan line. A new haircut. Must have had it done especially. It was cool in the building but she needed air. She spun out through the revolving doors too fast, catching her elbow and wincing, out into the damp heat, and stepped to the side, leaning back on the smooth grey stone of the building. She’d wait for him. She wished she’d brought something to drink.

‘Come on, Janet,’ her father said as he helped her mother down the steps past her. We need to get home. ‘Your mother needs to lie down.’

‘I’ll be along in a minute,’ she said. Neither Bernadette nor Eric replied. Edward came out of the building and caught up with their parents. The three of them walked side by side down the road towards the car, heads bowed as if in prayer.

Janet checked her watch. Checked again. What was taking him so long? Each time the doors revolved she readied a smile, slumping in disappointment when someone else emerged. Where was he? Why didn’t he come out to speak to her? Comfort her. Tell her well she’d handled herself. Put his cool hand on hers. Squeeze her fingers. Tell her it was all over. What a relief. The Coroner was sensible and had come to the right conclusion and they could all move on now and perhaps Janet would like a swim in one of Sydney’s more secluded bays, he could take the day off?

But he didn’t come out and Edward was shouting at her to hurry up, what was she hanging around for?

Barbara was there, though. Barbara had come out a minute or so after her parents, had caught them up in the street and appeared to be asking each of them in turn for a comment. Barbara, laying a hand on her father’s shaking arm. Barbara putting her arm around her mother, offering her a clean white hanky. Barbara looking at Edward, saying something that seemed to make him smile. Barbara scrawling notes on her small pad and motioning with her hand towards the photographer, who stood still in the shade of the neighbouring building, a black bag full of kit, waiting for his instructions.

Barbara had apparently run out of sympathy by the time she returned to Janet. She clipped up the steps, seemingly oblivious of the heat.

‘How do you feel,’ Janet, she said, her pen poised, ‘as the last person to see Philip alive. He was so young, only thirteen. It must prey on your mind.’

‘It was an accident,’ Janet said, ‘that’s what the Coroner said, ‘a terrible accident.’

‘You know what I think’, Barbara said, not waiting for a reply, ‘I think you know more than you said in there.’ Janet put her hands in her pockets and started down the steps with one final backwards glance. The journalist followed her.

‘Leave me alone, I said everything I knew.’ Janet quickened her step. Barbara did too.

‘You can run, darling, but you can’t hide from yourself. No one’s ever achieved that.’

Barbara slipped her notebook into her bag and looked at her watch. ‘Need to get going. Colin hates me waiting. See you around, Janet. This story isn’t going away.’

To be continued.

Tags clouds, Sydney

serial

The Cloud – Episode 55

April 2021, Edinburgh

On the other side of the city, in a quiet park lined with oak and beech trees, two women sit two metres apart, each on their own blanket. It is still early, perhaps around nine thirty in the morning. There are few others in the park. A slim woman running under the trees in pink leggings with a blond bobbing pony tail. An older man in the middle of the vast expanse of grass with a chestnut spaniel straining at the end of a long leash. Two men in hi-viz vests with black bin bags and litter pickers propped against their knees sitting on a metal bench smoking cigarettes.

Sun is burning off the harr and the light is shifting, brightening.

Both women are dressed for an early cold spring. Thick coats, thin scarves and woolly hats. If one was to make a judgement, Lisa appears the more elegant of the two. She has chosen greys and blacks and charcoals. Her wool is fine, the cut of her coat neat and narrow, and there’s no skin gap between her matt black ankle boots, her dark socks and her black corduroys. She holds a takeaway coffee cup an inch from her lips, steam pushing up past her nose and eyes.

The other woman, Katherine, has bright lips and matching orange nails, and a green pompom so large on her yellow woolly hat that it seems to tilt her backwards when she laughs. Her legs, clad in thick red tights under a navy pinafore dress, are splayed out across her blanket and cross and uncross in an apparent attempt to find some comfort on the hard ground. Lisa watches the legs without comment.

It is their first meeting in person, beyond a few text exchanges, and they have been talking about lockdown and pandemics and vaccinations and survival. It takes some time, ten or fifteen minutes, for Katherine to steer the conversation to the point.

‘You must have had some odd cases,’ she says, pouring milky coffee out from her flask into its matching metal cup. Lisa smiles, puts her own cup down, and leans back on her elbows.

‘Yes,’ she says, ‘but not as many as everyone thinks.’ Katherine laughs.

‘God, everyone must ask you that, sorry.’

‘Most of it’s divorce stuff, affairs, money, lost family members, you know. Straightforward.’

‘I didn’t even know private detectives existed beyond the telly’.

‘Private investigators,’ Lisa says. ‘Detectives are employed by the police.’

‘Sorry,’ says Katherine.

‘You really need to stop saying sorry,’

‘I know, sorry, no, I take that back.’ Katherine laughs and the green pompom does a rapid cha cha before settling to the right of her head. ‘What about unusual pets, stolen ones, ever investigate those?’

Lisa sits up again, crosses her legs into a lotus position, and faces Katherine. She is no longer smiling. ‘Is there something specific you want to know, Katherine?’

Katherine takes a sip of the luke warm coffee. Puts the cup down on the grass beside her.

‘Yes’, she says, ‘I guess there is.’

Lisa gets up to her feet, lifts the small cream blanket, brushes it down and folds it up, doing up its three leather buckles.

‘I never break client confidentiality,’ she says, pushing the blanket into her bag.

‘Lisa, please. You’re misunderstanding me. It’s not about a case. Not exactly anyway.’

Lisa picks up her coffee cup and looking around the park. Her eyes settle on the bin in the far corner.

‘I trusted you, Katherine,’ she says as she walks away.

Katherine is up on her feet, calling after her. ‘My friend is missing, Lisa, please. She hired you before all this covid stuff. To find her damn cloud kidnappers. Now she’s disappeared herself.’

To be continued.

Tags clouds

serial

The Cloud – Episode 54

The year that drops our of Janet’s life is the flutter of a dying oak leaf, spinning flailing gliding flying until it settles quiet in the shadows a few metres away from the host trunk where it may lie and decay, unless disturbed by a blackbird or a hedgehog or a stag beetle or the tread of a non-slip waterproof walking shoe.

Janet is, initially, a wisp of her former self. Her hands do not comply with orders. Her fingers shake and struggle to grasp the half-filled plastic cups of luke warm tea. Her feet are too far away and too discoloured and too full of fluid and too uncertain to walk without a frame or a physiotherapist holding her arm. Her tongue and lips form words that are uneven, clipped, that take time to get going. Her mind toys with her, teasing, playing hide and seek, scrabble without the full set of letters, a favourite jigsaw with a missing piece. There is no one to ask and no one to tell her. No visitors, they keep saying. And she’s too afraid to use the phone.

Some days Sergi helps her to get up and dressed and she sits on a reclining chair by the large picture window in the room that used to be reserved for visitors. She wiggles her toes under the blanket, counting them in and counting them out. Over and over until she is sure. She has ten. She has ten. She has ten.

The room has been emptied of anything interesting, of any visual cues, of anything that connects the institution to the outside world. No calendars, no posters, not even an old newspaper or a magazine. She leans back and watches the sky. Watches the Altocumulus clump and roll and dodge the sun. She measures the clouds with her fingers, counting off the inches, checking them against the horizon of the long pale flat of water that sometimes glistens, sometimes doesn’t.

How do you know their names, Sergi asks her one morning as she points out the Cirrocumulus.

That cloud, she says, is six miles high. Imagine that. They’re made of ice crystals. Rare.

I didn’t know, Sergi says as he measures her pills out and signs off her chart.You know a lot about clouds, he says, handing her the pills. Were you a weather lady?

It takes Janet a minute to reply. I don’t know, she says. I’d be on the telly, wouldn’t I. I’d remember that.

To be continued

Tags clouds

fiction serial

The Cloud – Episode 53

Janet has been awake now for a week. So Sergi says although with all that white kit on she can’t really see him never mind make out what he’s saying. He reminds her of astronauts. She could have been an astronaut. Imagine that, being fired into space with a rocket under your seat. Little earth all green and blue and spinning, spinning. Imagine being weightless, throwing your lunch to your colleague, playing a guitar upside down. How does sound work in space?

‘You’ve had a tough time, Miss Waters,’ he says as he rubs Vaseline across her lips with a small sponge on the end of a stick. ‘We’re all so proud of you.’

Janet lies back on the hard mattress and the hard pillows and lets him get on with it. Everything is too white and too stiff. Someone has pulled blue curtains around her bed and she doesn’t understand whether she is alone or whether there are others. There are too many tubes in too many orifices and her bladder feels strange. Full and empty at the same time. She’d love to sit on a toilet. Sergi smells of bleach and antiseptic. Sergi tells her his name every time he approaches her. It’s Sergi, Miss Waters. Here to give you a wash. It’s Sergi, Miss Waters, just checking your catheter. It’s Sergi Miss Waters, the doctors want a word.

Nearly a year, she hears him whisper to someone. No one thought she’d make it. Strong as an ox, someone else says and he whispers shush, shush, she can hear you know, don’t go round calling my patients oxen it’s not kind. A year of what? She can’t work it out. Who are these people in their cosmonaut suits and their visors and gloves and their tired eyes and their flitting from one thing to another and all that beeping and clicking and all those tubes?

A head pokes through the blue curtains. Hi, Miss Waters, it says behind its visor and mask. I’ve got the menu for tomorrow here. Doctors say you can have something soft. I’ll leave it with Sergi and he can fill it out for you.

Something soft? Janet isn’t hungry. She shuts her eyes. She hears Sergi pull the curtains back. Light lands on her face. It’s warm the sun. Warm and bright. She turns her hands over and lets the sun alight on her palms. She curls her fingers, catching the light, holding onto it.

‘I’m afraid you aren’t allowed visitors, Miss Waters,’ Sergi says, ‘but we could set up a phone call. Is there someone you’d like to speak to? A friend?’

Janet struggles with the thought. A friend? Does she even have any friends? There was a friend. But he left. Or he disappeared. Or someone took him. She’d been searching for him. That’s right. He’d been important. More important than anything. She’d been looking everywhere. Even in the sky. With the cosmonauts. With Laika. Laika sniffing through the stars looking for her friend. Barking and running and barking again at the endless iridescent trails.

She opens her eyes. Sergi, she says. The ferret. Who is looking after the ferret?

to be continued

Tags clouds, serial

serial

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.

serial

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.

serial

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.

Tags clouds

serial

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.

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