Tag: Sydney

Categories
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.

Categories
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.

Categories
serial

The Cloud. Episode 45

1966, Sydney.

A Greek restaurant on a Saturday night in downtown Sydney. Two tables on the small patio out the back of the restaurant. The patio is dim, lit only by a weak bare bulb mounted on the wooden wall of the restaurant, and a candle in a bottle on each table. The patio is hemmed by high walls, recently white-washed. The paint smells of fresh chalky concrete. One wall is adorned with tumbling plants, the others with blue and white ceramic plates. One table is empty. A couple occupies the other table.

She is in a tight green dress, the hemline well above her knees. Her skin is not yet tanned. Freckles dot about her bare arms. Her hands flutter around her face. Her eyelashes and her lips have been thickened for the occasion. She is leaning back on her wooden chair. Every few minutes the weeping cactus plant on the shelf behind her head tangles in her hair and she pulls away, laughing. She doesn’t say much. She doesn’t want to say the wrong thing. She’s not sure what the right thing is. She is waiting.

He is in a blue-checked short-sleeved shirt. His trousers are not worth describing. He may be wearing sandals. If he is, it will feel more agreeable. His dabs at his brow with a cotton handkerchief are rhythmic and methodical. His face is pink, a malady brought on by the heat and the alcohol. It’s difficult to hide a pink face. He looks like he’s trying.

His glass is nearly empty, hers is almost full. The thick pine scent of the retsina is sticky sweet. It reminds her of treading barefoot through the forests back in Scotland. The pale brown spindles jabbing at her toes.

A small black (hand glazed?) bowl swanks large green glistering olives. The bowl’s white partner is empty. The man gestures to the bowl. For pips, he says. It’s not easy to eat an unpipped olive in a decorous manner. The woman, trying olives for the first time, takes her cue from him. She punctures the soft flesh of the fruit with a wooden cocktail stick. Pops it into her mouth fast before the olive drops off the end. Chews the pulp around the stone. Holds the stone in her mouth for longer than is comfortable. Spits it into a cupped hand and drops it into the white bowl. She waves away his signal for her to eat another.

Is there anything you don’t eat, he asks her, running a finger down the menu. She shakes her head. She is too shy to say. He knows the chef, he says. Anatoli. He’ll cook us the best of the best. The waiter, bursting through the plastic string door curtain with a smiling flourish, brings them a small tray of warm pita breads and a plate of dolmades. They look like babies. A row of babies tucked in tight in viridian swaddling. Stuffed with grape leaves, he says to her. They’re divine.

He picks one up with his fingers. Come here, he says. And open your mouth. She hesitates. She is not sure about the leaves. Come on, he says. She leans forward. He twists the dolmade into two pieces. She closes her eyes. The mixture of leaf and rice is soft, sensuous on her tongue. Delicious, she says. He wipes a line of brine from under her lip with a finger. She can’t believe she said delicious. What a ridiculous word. He puts the other half in his mouth and chews. Another, he asks. She nods. Of course, she says.

The waiter returns with his note pad. Scrawls the order down with a chewed down pen. The woman understands none of it. She trusts the man to do the right thing. The waiter leaves and the man calls after him. Georgios, could we have some music? Greek music for the princess here. He called her princess. She blushes. The music starts a minute later. (If you’re reading this aloud, stop and find a version of Zorba on Youtube. Crank up the volume as the tempo increases. Tap your foot. Click your fingers..That smile you have? That’s the woman’s smile, too.)

I love it, she says. I knew you would, he replies. She dances her fingers on the table. He reaches across and touches her hand. It’s nice, he says, being with you. She doesn’t reply. She looks down at her plate. She grins. He likes her. He really likes her. It’s been hard, you know, he says, these last couple of years in Oz. Took me ages to fit in. But now you’re here. And it’s home from home. He dabs at his brow.

The waiter bursts through the door curtain with a tray. A long red strand of plastic wraps around his neck. He flicks it the way he always flicks it. He’s a flicking expert. Madam, he says, kolokythokeftedes, compliments of the chef. Anatoli’s special. He puts the plate of courgette balls down on the table. Eat those and I’ll be back with the moussaka and the souvlaki. Aren’t you lucky, the man says. He’s never done that for me. The woman blushes. This, she is sure, is the happiest night of her life.

To be continued.

Categories
serial

The Cloud. Episode 43

1966, Sydney

Two long raps and a short. Two long raps and a short. Everybody in the Waters family knew the Inspector always knocked twice. Views diverged on the purpose and value of his visits.

Eric, with tight lips and clenched fists. ‘He’ll have nothing new to say. Just leading us on.’

Edward, throwing stuff out of the laundry basket. ‘Has anyone seen my rugby shirt ask him why he looks at Janet that way the creepy little shit.’

Bernadette, with blinked back tears. ‘He’ll have a date this time. He said he would. He has to.’

Janet, with flushed cheeks and a check of her fingernails. ‘Just going to my room (to change).’

Bernadette opened the door and let the Inspector in. He followed her through the hall and into the kitchen. Eric got up from the table and went into the garden, slamming the screen door behind him. Edward, having found his rugby kit, shouted goodbye, that he’d be staying with a friend overnight, and left via the front door. He didn’t say anything to the Inspector.  

Janet stood in front of her open wardrobe and studied the three dresses, the four skirts, and the five blouses. She was bored with yellow, tired of polka dots, and wanted something different. Something grown-up. But she had yet to start her new job, and, without her own money, there was no chance of a new outfit. Not unless the Inspector paid. But they weren’t at that stage. Not yet. And, if Janet was honest with herself (she wasn’t always), they’d only been on one actual date. One date, one kiss, one ice-cream and a large stick of pink candyfloss to share.

The green dress was shorter and tighter than the others. Bought in a sale the one time she’d be into the city centre to shop. Her father had frowned when she’d brought it home and asked how much money she’d wasted on it. Edward had said it was the same colour as the slime down at the sewage treatment works. Her mother hadn’t even noticed. The Inspector hadn’t seen the green dress. She’d been saving it for something special. For when he invited her out to dinner. She changed into the green dress.

‘Hello, Janet,’ he said, as she walked into the kitchen. ‘I was just telling your mother we have a date for the inquest.’ Janet stopped. Her stomach knotted. Heat rose up her neck and into her cheeks. She’d been sure that this wouldn’t happen. All that international law of the sea stuff would be too complicated. What could they say without a body? They’d call her as a witness. She’d have to swear on something. The bible maybe. Or the queen? Did they even do that in Australia?

Bernadette was wiping her eyes with a handkerchief. ‘I’m so grateful,’ she said to the Inspector, ‘for all you’ve done for us.’ The Inspector nodded. Patted her arm. Janet poured herself a glass of water from the jug in the fridge. Leant back against the wall. Whose side was he on? How could he have done that to her? Put her in front of the coroner? What’s the point of bringing that stuff up all over again. She gulped back the water.

‘In three months,’ Bernadette said to her daughter. ‘It’s a long time, but at least we know it’s coming.’ Janet couldn’t look at her. Couldn’t look at the Inspector. He’d betrayed her. Just kissed her to get her to say something. Open her up. Ready her for the prosecution.

‘You look nice,’ the Inspector said. ‘Are you going out somewhere?’ Janet shook her head, left the kitchen and returned to her bedroom. She pulled the dress off, changed into her old clothes, and threw the dress into the back of the wardrobe. She lay face down on the bed, put the pillow over her head, and wept.

Two long raps and a short. Two long raps and a short. That was her door, not the front door. Janet sat up. Yes, she said. The Inspector opened the door.

‘Sorry to disturb you, Janet. Just wondered whether you’d be free on Saturday night?’

To be continued.

Categories
serial

The Cloud. Episode 41

1966, Sydney.

A police inspector drapes an arm over the bare shoulders of a young woman. The woman’s face is hidden under the flop of a wide-brimmed hat. A yellow polka-dot ribbon swings from the hat, tickling the sun-bleached hair on the Inspector’s arm. The arm spans an age gap of eighteen years.

A man spinning clouds of pink candy floss has lost a shoe. Children notice and point. Parents keep their eyes on the prize. Maybe the missing shoe is part of the sell. Maybe not.

The bar across the beach is tasselled with dogs waiting for their men. The dogs pant pant piss. Most of the men piss out of sight. At least three of the dogs will be named Bluey.

A small child runs into the legs of the police inspector with a melting ice-cream in a cone. The Inspector’s navy shorts are dolloped white. The Inspector laughs, wiping at the cream with his fingers. The child’s mother offers the Inspector a red balloon on a long string. He shakes his head, no.

Eucalyptus rubbed between the fingers is a medicament for some. A memory of something lost by others. The woman selling it from a basket promises an end to flies and a future flushed with fortune. New migrants invest handfuls of unfamiliar coins in her augurs.

So we sailed up to the sun. Til we found the sea of green. Try to see it my way. I’m picking up good vibrations. We can work it out. She’s giving me excitations. Smooth tanned feet everywhere drumming to the beat.

Immigrants are surprised by the rain’s vertical nature and its mocking insistence on dribbling where it shouldn’t. Most didn’t pack umbrellas. Those that call themselves locals lie on the beach, face up, and just carry on.

The young woman has never seen so many people on a beach. Has never felt sand so hot. Has never smelt that salty sun oil barbecue sweet. It’s her first time out in a bikini top and a matching mini. She could be on the cover of a magazine.

A police inspector leads a young woman down through the crowds onto the steaming sand. He is holding her hand. Guiding her steps. Picking past the picnickers. Kicking a stray football back to a group of running lads in black shorts. He takes her to the edge of the water. Removes his sandals. Then hers with a grinning bow. He throws them all back up the sand.

The water will be colder than it looks. He lifts her up. She shrieks. He wades in deeper, holding her just above the ocean. The waves crash up to his waist. He is soaked. She is salt sprayed. She is laughing. She has her arms around his neck.

The kiss yokes the Inspector to a murder. The kiss yokes the young woman to the Inspector’s yet to be declared bastard child.

To be continued.

Categories
fiction serial

The Cloud. Episode 39

1966, Sydney.

Philip’s death shunted his parents’ ages forward a decade or more. Bernadette’s fingers gnarled into the twisted uselessness of broken twigs. Her once straight back diminished to a stricken stoop. She seemed perplexed when asked a question. Bewildered by mundane tasks. She’d start and stop. Or finish then start over again. She’d leave the broom, brush end up and colonised by spiders, parked up against the mantle piece in the living room for days. Or abandon a bucket of dirty water in the middle of the kitchen until Edward would kick it over and step wet grime through the house. She’d sit in the tin bath, knees up, arms wrapped around her legs in cold shallow water until Eric, prompted by Edward, would remember to rescue her before her skin wrinkled to a shrivel.

Eric’s thick dark hair moulted into a thin white cap. He became a man with only two moods – melancholy or fury. The moods flipped as probabilistically as a spun coin. Heads for melancholy. Tails for fury. Or heads for fury. Tails for melancholy. Janet came to predict her father’s mood by the feel of the old house as it pre-empted Eric’s emotional status. It sighed and settled in sorrow. Or it was taut and crackling in anger. Even in his absence, in the long hours that Eric was out at work, the house kept the dark sentiments going.

Edward went to school, came back, and went to school. He was alone, then in a pair, and finally promoted to the most popular group of boys in the school. His leather satchel developed an uneasy rash of stickers. His skin oxidised, his hair bleached and he extended upwards beyond his father. He patted his mother’s arm, nodded to his father, and cleaned his rugby boots on the back step. He was never in the same room as Janet. He ate his meals in the back garden, or stood, tapping his foot at the kitchen door, until Janet got up to leave. On Saturdays he disappeared with a rolled up towel, a packed lunch, and his bus money, returning late in the evening with salt-slicked hair and grazes on his shins. Sharp lines separated brown skin from pale, denoting the length of both his shorts and his sleeves. One evening he turned up with a black coral necklace scooped around his neck. No one said a word.

Janet enrolled at the University of Sydney in the school of law. She would start in the following February. Neither of her parents noticed the accolade that this should have brought upon the family. Nor did they notice Janet’s sudden switch in interest from English literature to the legal profession. In the meantime Janet searched through the classified ads for an admin job in a criminal law office. Two months after her arrival in Sydney, she would pull on a smart blue skirt, tie her hair back into a sharp tight pony-tail, and start her new role for Mr Shepherd LL.B.

The new arrivals had, like all new arrivals, attracted attention in Macaulay Road. Did the neighbours know about the Waters’ bereavement? If so, they kept schtoom. And if so, they behaved magnanimously. (Or they held a dark fascination for the horror the family was suffering and they wanted to get in closer to have a dig around in the misery.) Grief is not a social butterfly. It isn’t invited to dinner parties or trips to the zoo, or a family day out to Manly Beach. And if, on occasion, grief is invited to these events, it declines through reticence or silence.

So the neighbours in Macaulay Road, despite their unswerving and collective efforts, didn’t manage to get over the Waters’ doorstep for months. Instead they left entreaties just inside the garden gate. A passion fruit pavlova in a Tupperware box. A small rubber plant in a large hand-painted terracotta pot. Pretty white crocheted doilies with dinky weights on the corners to keep the flies off food. Handwritten cards in smudged ink with telephone numbers and invitations to barbecues. Janet would rescue these offerings and dump them on the kitchen table. A day or two later her father would caress the objects with both hands before standing up and dropping them silently into the bin.

The Inspector was the only person to visit the family in its first season of mourning. His visits were initially regular, and greeted with angry questions from Eric and pleas for further investigation from Bernadette. Did the Inspector obfuscate? Perhaps. He mentioned the coroner. The lack of a body. The complexities of the law of the sea. Maybe there’d be an inquest. Maybe not. He was working on it. He’d wipe his brow down with a cotton handkerchief and Janet would bring him a glass of cold water. Sometimes she let her hand brush over his. And sometimes his pinky would move just enough for Janet to pinken in the cool glum of the kitchen and hold out hope that something more than the rub of a finger would be forthcoming.

To be continued.

Design a site like this with WordPress.com
Get started