ALLIE’S FAREWELL SLIDE

The death of a family pet is always a trauma. However, sometimes that inevitable trauma is relieved by a most unlikely circumstance that somehow ameliorates the sadness of the occasion.

The family pet was a much-loved, tail thumping, sooky old Labrador named Allie, whose only two sins in his behavior patterns during his life was to bark at people wearing large hats and sometimes embarrassing his family by his inbred desire to rescue bathers from the sea.

He contracted arthritis in his back legs at the age of fifteen years and went downhill rapidly until he was almost completely immobile. Groaning became his chief occupation. Drugs did nothing for him, so driven by concern for his well being, our family assembled one day and, unlike our nervous politicians, we unanimously passed the Euthanasia Bill in my backyard. We thought it for the best and the vet thought it for the best and we presumed that poor old Allie would agree.

The following day after a lot of pampering and soothing words we took him to the vet who injected him with a lethal drug. Within a few seconds his groaning stopped and I’ll swear to this day that his last breath was a sigh of gratitude.

I had prepared a grave for him and bought a pencil pine to plant on top but our family couldn’t assemble until the following Saturday. The vet told us that he put Allie’s body in the cooler until then. What he didn’t tell us was that his cooler was set very low for when we picked up his body two days later poor old Allie was quite frozen inside a stiff plastic orange bag.

It’s what we use for such occasions, the vet told us. People find it less confrontational.

We carefully settled Allie in the back of my daughter’s wagon and off we went to the burial site in my back garden relating ‘remember how’ stories of the dog’s life on the way.

At the time I lived in Warwick Street just above Argyle and anyone who knows the area will realize it is quite steep. I’m not quite sure what happened when we lifted Allie out of the boot. Perhaps we were distressed at the occasion and not quite concentrating. Whatever, his body suddenly slid out of the plastic bag and took off down the street at a rate of knots that he’d never acquired during his life.

We watched in awe as his frozen body slid into the traffic in Argyle Street - running a red light I might add. I could hear brakes squealing, horns tooting and shouts of disapproval and disbelief issuing from inside the cars that were banking up behind each other.

The iced up carcass of Allie finished up in the gutter twenty metres beyond the intersection. Two young girls hanging over a picket fence added to the mayhem with a duo of high-pitched screaming as they bolded indoors when they realized the thing sliding their way was a frozen dog.

Several cars were jammed together because their drivers had climbed out to see what it was that had run out in front of them. Others, further back, began tooting impatiently. Road rage was pending.

When the cops turned up a few minutes later one took to sorting out the traffic and the other walked down to where my daughter and I were trying to slide the dog back into his bag.

He stood in front of us with arms folded, trying to take in what was going on. An older cop he was who thought he’d seen it all, but hadn’t. He cleared his throat and asked me to explain.

Well, I said. It was like this…

Due to the solemness of the occasion he did his best not to smile but I imagined that it wasn’t far away. I also imagined how the bizarre event would be described and relayed around the police station on their return. I mean what could we book him for? There’s no law about keeping a dead dog on a lead, is there? Right, but the dog didn’t have a licence to slide on the Queen’s Highway and it did run a red light! Yeah, sure, but imagine explaining that to a magistrate?

It would make their day.

Back in the real world the older cop who was still holding back his smile said finally: Well no real damage done, though you better bury him quick and try not to do it again, hey!

Yes officer, my daughter said, trying to beat him at his own game. And if we do we’ll be sure the traffic light is on green.

And that made the bugger smile.

Teaching Creative Writing. Fact or Fallacy?

 

Dear Michael de V, I agree with you that far too many people (students?) are flooding the writers’ marketplace with their “thinly disguised biographies to the detriment of literature.” I have commented on this myself. In fact I wrote an article about it back in 2001. Except for a page excerpt that was published as a letter in Island 87, no one else wanted to give it an airing. Was it because it was a poor argument? Or is it because there is too much money involved in continuing this myth that anyone can learn to write creative fiction? Below is the article the letter was taken from and I challenge anyone who disagrees to come forward…

 

Teaching Creative writing:

What are these strange convolutions taking place in the literary world? Publishing houses, for example, reneging on their traditional role as the literary nurturers of emerging talent? How convenient for them to be able to drop all that tedious time-consuming work, sack a few editors and get on with the simple task of making money.

  How propitious it is for the institutes of higher learning that our present day literary policy - presumably promoted by the Literature Board in conjunction with the Federal Ministers for the arts - have managed to sell to the gullible youth of this nation, the foolish (and I consider destructive) notion that anyone, if given the right tuition, can write literary fiction. And are we to assume from this outlandish supposition that it also means that anyone can learn to become a concert pianist, compose a credible orchestral symphony or become a first class portrait painter, if given the required tuition?

  Rather than querying this very shaky assumption as one would expect, educational institutions have cashed in on it by offering painless, do-it-yourself, soft-option degrees for the multitudes of aspiring young (would-be) writers for a mere $15000. It seems to me that the most popular and ever growing literary activity in this country from the late nineteen eighties on, revolves around its learning rather than its doing.

  Ah, but some might say, it pays the writers a decent wage for teaching creative writing. Well yes, but that’s not the point is it? Do we continue on with a fallacy just so writers can earn money? Wouldn’t it be better to simply pay promising writers some kind of remuneration to continue to write and stop the fudging of the facts?

  I had the privilege in Adelaide once of sharing a coffee break with two women writers I admire, the late Thea Astley and Elizabeth Jolly. I remember clearly Elizabeth lamenting that her time to actually write was beginning to take second place to her teaching writing and talking about it at various festivals around the country.

  These days, she said, much of her writing was done on an aeroplane heading across country for the next engagement. And, although it was probably a throw away comment, there is an underlying truth that such a process could have a deleterious effect on both the quantity and possibly the quality of literature.

  It is a fact that most people involved in any branch of the arts should also have a day job to fall back on. However, I would suggest that hiding oneself behind the castles walls of academe is hardly the kind of social interaction that a creative person needs to stimulate his or her imagination. I painted other people’s houses for my day job where at least I was engaged in the hum of ordinary life.

  But I repeat the central point; can creative writing be taught? I think it was Kurt Vonnegut who said that he could tell a class of students how to write all afternoon and he would just as likely to be wrong as he would be right. I agree entirely. In those few times I have attempted to explain how I write stories I found it impossible to come up with any kind of concise formula that could be followed. All I could say was that when the idea came I found the right voice(s) and began. How the story evolved was as much a mystery to me as it was to anyone else.

  I agree that it is beneficial to show someone how to improve his or her sentence and story structure, but can a teacher tell someone else how to construct a personal contrivance that not only engages readers but also offers them up an individual’s unique view of the world? One might be able to teach the craft of writing but to my mind the creative process that brings a fine story into being, is indefinable.

  And if anyone continues to believe that creative writing classes have any real literary value, look around at the results from nearly thirty years of its practice. Where is that multitude of storywriters that the system promised? Where is the wealth of writing from the thousands of students who have been taught to write? Where are the up-and-coming honest to God storytellers like Carey and Winton? Where are the replacements for the world-class women writers like Olga Masters, Amy Witting, and Beverley Farmer? And if I need to go further, where are the hundred or so storywriters that were represented in the Penguin Century of Australian Stories and the Harper Collin’s Personal Best volumes published in the late 1990s?

  And, I ask, how did these writers learn to write? The same way, I would suggest, that all writers in the past learnt – by the simple method of reading and writing and reading and writing and by trial and error and making minimal use of advice from those writers they trust and all the time believing implicitly in their ability that they have something worthwhile to say. 

  Certainly there are writers emerging today like they always have, but I would suggest that those few with the necessary talent to grow into first class writers might be hard to find in the piles of the untalented, misguided wannabees cluttering up the editorial desks around this nation.

  What a waste of the valuable time of the young and the bright who should have been concentrating on some other more profitable life’s endeavour that they might be naturally good at. 

Reply to Peter K

Peter K, you ask how I weave between dialogue and narration (or monologue). The fact is I learnt the style mainly from five writers – all American and all quite some time ago. 1920 -1940 I think. Damon Runyon, William Saroyan, O'Henry (for his surprise endings) Mark Twain (who said I remember everything from the past even if it didn’t happen) and somewhat later, Hemingway.

At an early age I found in those five writers the ingredients for story telling that I should follow. Simplicity, awareness, passion, drama, sensitivity, consideration of their subjects and easy telling. I added poetry and flow to all that and they took precedence over being strictly correct. Other bits and pieces I got from a myriad of sources, but the framework was laid down by those writers. I re-read Saroyan’s Best Stories and Runyan’s More than Somewhat at least once a year. Thank for your encouraging comments. I was going to do some gardening today but it’s raining again. Regards.

Re story ending

Dear Peter B, this story taken from my book The Literary Lunch has the kind of ending that I was telling you about on the phone – like it could have ended with the words…sorting out the state of the art.’ But, with the ending I did give it, I was trying to add a further dimension to the clown’s character – a man who can overcome adversity rather than being just a poor put down clown. And it also throws up a greater intrigue - was the gun real or wasn’t it? Let the readers work it out. And because I didn’t network along with the rest that day I got the story did I not? And by the way, the other 17 stories in TLL are just as good.   

 Clown/Juggler/Magician

and the Literary Barbecue

 

I first see him on the brow of the hill looking down on us. Even at that distance it is possible to recognise that it is a male figure and that by his attitude he is contemplating possibilities. But of what, I have no idea.

    But then my attention is taken by a nice line from the woman sitting on the collapsible canvas stool right in front of me. ‘It was so hot today even the flies seemed stunned,’ she says.

    She is leaning back against the rough bark of a Jelly Palm and addressing her friend who sits on a carry-rug at her feet but the voice is loud enough to encompass others in the vicinity who may be interested in her brief revelation. She is holding a transparent plastic cup in one hand and a sausage in the other. Both she and her friend are dressed in smart pant-suits of earthy toning reminiscent of Bali. Having made her point she lowers the sausage and frowns in the general direction of the setting sun. ‘Ah, Adelaide,’ she drawls, and there seems both awe and regret in her following sigh.

    Her friend nods acknowledgment as she beats at the hot, still air with her Writers’ Week program, and they both lapse into a contemplative silence. Beyond the tops of their nicely tinted hair (perfect yet, in spite of the heat), I see the distant, dark figure moving down the springy bank of grey buffalo grass towards us; although at this point there is some doubt in my mind that the crowd gathered around the barbecue is his eventual goal, for there appear to be several shifts in his intention. A moving first to the left of the crowd then a cutting back to skirt to the right.

    He has a loping sort of a walk, and a leaning, as if he may be favouring an old injury, and when once again he changes direction — this time heading into the very centre of the crowd — he is caught briefly in full silhouette against the setting sun. A bent stick of a man with a dome-shaped head. It seems now that rather than moving towards us he is simply growing — looming upwards out of the blaze of evening light.

    It isn’t until he is quite close that I realise the shape of his head is due to the fact he is wearing a bowler hat with an unusually narrow rim. Underneath this curious object his painted paste-white face is covered in red and green spots. Black brows ride ridiculously high over each eye and curl around to fade eventually into the spotted hollows of his cheeks. The general effect is an unyielding expression of sickly surprise, which will undoubtedly surmount all other expressions. No joke, no matter how hilarious, or pain excruciating, could possibly crack through that fixed intention.

    As he swings out of the sun’s glare other details emerge. His top half owes quite a deal to the tradition of the cockney ‘Pearly King’. Buttons of many shapes and hues decorate his frilled dress shirt in a series of Vs and scrolls that could have mystical symbolism, and his bottom half is clad in a black leotard, which sports random jagged holes through which rising welts of pinkness lend what is possibly an unintentional provocation of skin and flesh.

    I see he is carrying a silken brocade bag with leather straps slung over one shoulder. He bends slightly with its weight and I realise this accounts for his strange, lopsided walk. He stops, finally, directly in front of the two women in the pant-suits, lowers the bag onto the grass and immediately begins taking several items from it. But his concentration is elsewhere, for as his hand dips in and out of the bag he continues to peer about with little shifts of his head. He reminds me of someone unpacking a bag of groceries while they are watching television and I realise then that underneath the facade of painted surprise there are rapid calculations taking place. This man is a professional — a performer preparing to engage in his legitimate trade and he expects a just financial reward like everyone else.

    With his paraphernalia finally settled he stands upright and, like a swimmer on the blocks, his hands, arms, shoulders, droop and flick. His neck stretches and retracts. His eyes fall eventually on the two women under the Jelly Palm. He catches the eye of the one sitting on the stool and despite his surprised eyebrows he affects an expression that is at once cheeky, sad and appealing. ‘Ullo Maa-dum,’ he says, and the two simple words border on hilarity — restrained hysteria lurks in the quivering of his lips. He bends suddenly and whips a hideous light-green spotted handkerchief out of thin air. The spots look like dried snot randomly scattered across the handkerchiefs surface. He sweeps it up to his nose and blows noisily and then with the same spectacular flourish passes it on to the woman.

    Her instinctive response is to take it, but she suddenly realises what she is doing and withdraws her hand hurriedly as she laughingly shrieks her disapproval. The rejected handkerchief disappears as mysteriously as it had appeared. The clown leans closer to her. ‘I am sorry, Maa-dum, I could have sworn it was yours because you have one just like it tucked into the collar of your exquisite little outfit.’

    The handkerchief re-appears and flutters under her nose and she again rocks backwards with little screams of protest. She tries to hide her embarrassment by covering her face with pale, delicate hands. The clown immediately flicks his attention to the second woman, whose tentative smile displays uncertainty. She is not sure whether she should implicate herself or not. But she hasn’t the choice, for he lunges forward, the obscene rag out-thrust. In unison both women sway away from it with further cries of protest.

    The noisy hilarity has had the effect the clown intends. With a quick, backward step and a swinging glance he includes several more curious onlookers with his cheeky expression of surprise. His hand dives into his bag of tricks and comes out holding a cardboard carton of eggs. He grabs up a handful and holds them up for the scrutiny of the growing number of uncertain participants.

    ‘Are they real?’ he asks. He waves a hand into the air and an egg drops. He catches it neatly on his shoe. ‘Ooh!’ someone cries and as more people glance towards the agonised sound he repositions himself to a spot that takes advantage of their interest. ‘Are they real?’ he calls again.     Conversations are cut as more heads turn. There is an increasing sense of anticipation as he begins to juggle several of the eggs. Again one slips and falls to perch precariously on his outstretched toe. He is now juggling and hopping in circles. There is a settling taking place in the crowd’s attention and an increasing hush as more eggs flip through the golden evening light. Higher and wider, spinning up and arcing down. His hands flash, to the right, to the left, above his head, between his legs. He projects the wayward egg back into the concentric swirl of flying objects. He is dancing, backwards and forwards, his body swaying, twisting, contorting into quite amazing shapes.

    ‘Are they real?’ he shouts breathlessly. A hand flashes out, just in time to save a breakage on the shirtfront of a mesmerised watcher. No one yet dares to answer. Eggs are flying perilously close to heads, to arms, to bare shoulders. A woman in a white dress cringes with a moan of protest and several men in the forefront grin bravely, holding their ground, books and clip folders raised to protect light-toned safari suits.

    Juggler/clown/magician, he does a quick pirouette, rips the narrow-rimmed bowler from his head and lets the eggs fall one by one into it. The crowd groans, envisaging disaster as he bends with a swirling flourish to finish. Is it a momentary lapse of concentration due to his flush of triumph or a further deliberate act of perversity in the name of entertainment that he replaces the bowler on his head? The crowd waits breathlessly for a result. Will the smashed eggs dribble through the rim and down his face and neck?

    He waits. Stretching expectation to its very limit. Then casually he removes the bowler and slowly turns it upside-down. Nothing happens. He shakes it vigorously and eventually holds it out for general scrutiny. It is undeniably empty. He looks surprised and so do they. There are several sporadic bouts of appreciative clapping, especially from the two women whose attention he had first attracted. They seem to expect some proprietary right to share in his modest success. They step forward to congratulate him personally.

    But as yet our clown has not been paid for his undeniable expertise. Admiration is not enough. He places the hat on the grass and whips out a water pistol from under his decorated shirt. His voice mocks aggression. ‘Okay you lot,’ he snarls, ‘put your money and your valuables into the hat or yer get a jet of filthy Torrens water fair between the eyes.’

    Polite (albeit nervous) laughter ripples through the crowd. Half a dozen coins flick into the hat. Juggler/magician/clown! highwayman; he is not impressed. ‘Pathetic,’ he snarls. He sweeps the gun around again. Heads and bodies sway away to avoid the meagre jets. ‘Give, give.’ A few more coins flutter towards the hat. There seems genuine surprise expressed in his hand-on-hip stance as he gazes down into the hat. Then with an exaggerated shrug he suddenly bends, dives his hand back into his bag and comes up holding another handful of eggs which he promptly begins passing out to those nearest him. With the pistol waving again, he indicates the eggs should be held high. ‘Up, up, swines.’

    I see some of the more mistrustful participants pass the eggs on to anyone who will take them. He continues to move quickly around the circle, taking hold of hands, re-adjusting heights. I recognise several well-known writers holding up eggs for other well-known writers and their friends to see. Editors and literary agents pass tolerant smiles between each other as they wait impatiently.

    The water pistol squirts aimlessly in their general direction as he again tries to extract the required answer from them. ‘Are they genuine farm-fresh eggs? Sirs, Madams?’

    Beyond his imploring, perambulating frame, I see two small boys move in to explore the discarded bowler lying in the grass. The clown’s voice rises to a crescendo. ‘ARE THEY REAL?’

    ‘No,’ shout the kids. They have found the eggs in the hat’s lining and are banging them together. One boy holds an egg above is head. ‘Ya, they’re made of rubber.’

    Our clown swings around and drives the boys off with his water pistol. They scuttle away to safety, still jeering. With one quick notion he whisks the bowler into his brocade bag. His pistol is left on the ground. One of the boys returns, swoops it up and aims it at the clown. Two quick squirts hit him in the face. The crowd applauds. The boy who has got the laughs for being so clever continues to squirt and gets more laughs and claps.

    Our clown acknowledges the kid’s smartness by offering him an exaggerated clap too, but I am close enough to hear his urgent plea. ‘C’mon kid, fair go. I need the gun for the next trick.’

    The boy backs off, still squirting.

    Clown/magician/juggler/desperado; he glances quickly around the crowd. Concentration is eroding rapidly. Arms are beginning to falter above heads. Desperate measures are called for; he grabs an egg from the nearest hand and tosses it into the air. It arcs and falls. He heads it neatly. Orange and silver slime dribbles own his surprised face. A few people laugh. Someone even manages a lone clapping. I suspect from its direction it’s one of the two women in pantsuits; remaining true.

    There is an increasing sense of frustration as the clown begins to stalk the boy through the crowd. ‘C’mon kid, quick, I need the gun.’ He holds out his hand, pleading. The boy is not impressed. His role as tormentor has already been condoned by most. He slips deeper into the forest of legs, reappearing occasionally to deliver the odd shot in the direction of the pursuing clown. The crowd, deprived of further entertainment, returns to its own pursuits. A prize-winning author, cheekier than the rest, cracks her egg onto the barbie hotplate. So inspired, two lesser-known writers follow suit. Three eggs (they are real after all) sizzle alongside the next batch of sausages.

    At the crowd’s edge I see the clown returning with his bowler tucked under his arm. There is no sign of the water pistol. Despite my earlier opinion that the fixed painted surprise could override all other expressions, there is a distinct scowling.

    He stands for a few seconds in his old position, looking around. The small, huddled groups seem even more impenetrable than when he first arrived. This time his hand-on-hip stance seems to express genuine antagonism as he spies the eggs sizzling on the barbecue. With great deliberation he tips the few coins out of his hat onto the dry, dusty lawn. No one notices the gesture. He grabs up the remaining eggs, real or otherwise, stuffs them into his bag, spits at nothing or no one in particular and lopes off in the direction he had first come from.

I glance around. Hot sausages dripping sauce (looking like blood) are squeezed into open mouths. A fairly well known writer is waving his sandwiched sausage under the nose of a little known editor of a small magazine. The editor counter-gesticulates and looks perplexed when he finds he is clasping a forgotten egg in his hand. One of the boys who uncovered the magician’s trickery is on his knees on the lawn scrabbling after the discarded coins. The other boy is showing off his new water pistol to his admiring parents. I decide I am not hungry enough to burrow my way into the tight throng around the Barbie so I leave them to it — sorting out the state of the art

 Later that evening I pass another crowd assembled on the concrete at the back of the Festival Centre. I see the clown/juggler/magician holding a handful of eggs for all to see. ‘Are they real?’ he shouts.

    There are many tourists present. An entire clan of Aborigines sits astride a concrete wall. There are off-shift bus drivers and office workers and ordinary families taking in the hot night air. There are kids galore, of all colours, shapes and sizes. ‘Yes,’ they chant in unison. ‘Yes, yes, yes.’

    Our clown, despite his benign, fixed expression of surprise, seems more confident, more aggressive. He holds the eggs high with his left hand and in his other hand I see he is holding a new gun—black this time and shiny. He is waving it under the noses of those kids who come too close. Forcing them off his patch.

    The gun, like the eggs, looks surprisingly real...

 

 

 The real Mr Eddy

 

My dad was a disabled veteran from the war with a wife and four sons to keep on an inadequate pension. Because of his circumstances the spin off was he got a few perks from the kindly citizens of our small city. One of those perks was a free haircut for him and his four boys down at Eddy’s. Eddy, or Mr Eddy to us boys, had a two-room barber’s shop down town. There was an opaque glass wall and a door dividing the two rooms. When you stepped in from the street there was a counter to one side with all kinds of tobacco, chocolates, combs, brushes, hair oils, dandruff eliminators and all things to do with men’s toiletry.

           To the very front of the counter there was an array of chewing gums set out somewhat enticingly in their boxes and I, probably along with other boys, used to nick a packet of that chewy on the way out when Eddie was out the back engaged with someone’s hair. I kidded myself that Eddie was well off enough not to miss just one small packet each month. Chewing gum was a luxury my family couldn’t afford. Though I must admit I did it with some guilt. I mean he was cutting my hair for nix, but that fresh hot tangy hit of peppermint was something I just couldn’t resist.

           Mr Eddie cut our hair mostly on Mondays after school because it was his slackest time. He called it his belated service to all those brave men who went off to the war to fight for their country. Those brave, brave men, he’d say and shake his head. I began to think Mr Eddie had a really soft side. On Mondays, for instance, he always had his radio on a music station - orchestral music mostly. He told me he loved all kinds of music. I remember one evening when there a whole lot of stringed instruments playing ever so sweetly in the background he suddenly stopped cutting my hair and said with some feeling: If music be the food of love, play on.            

           Shakespeare said that, he told me. Do you learn about Shakespeare? I shook my head. You will, he said, you should. That bard said almost everything there was to say about life. Then he went back to snipping and humming away with the music in the background. I thought I’d ask my teacher about Shakespeare. He sounded pretty grand.

           Mr Eddie also had a fondness for quoting poetry by Banjo Patterson or Henry Lawson, or some such. He sometimes spouted a few lines from their poems when he was snipping away at my hair. Music and the poetry, he told me once, made his life worth living.             

           But it was only on Monday evenings he said those sorts of things. My dad was surprised when I told him. Funny thing that, he said, Eddie was all sport Saturdays. My dad told me that what Eddie didn’t know about sport wasn’t worth knowing. Damn it, my dad said, that bloke could predict winners better than the local paper’s sports journalist yet he never went to see a game in his life. He’s a bit of a genius when it comes to sport, my dad reckoned.           

           So I worked out that there were two sides to Mr Eddie. He liked poetry and music but he also wanted to be one of the boys. Just about all his men customers worked at the canning factories, or the shoe factories, or the Zinc Works and shopping emporiums and hardware stores. Those men, my dad said, who through the week sweated their lives away for the captains of industry. They congregated in Eddy’s shop and sipped a beer or two out of sight, chewing over the sporting fat before either going to the game or home to their family responsibilities. According to my dad the excuse Mr Eddie gave for not going to the footy was that his customers kept him too busy cutting their hair. It’s the beer you blokes drink, Eddie quipped, it irrigates your scalps. How can I take Saturdays off?           

           Well, that was he said on Saturdays, but I knew there was a different reason. Mr Eddy didn’t go to any sport, be it athletics, or cricket, or any place where able-bodied men hit or kicked a ball about because of one simple fact - he hated all sporting activities because of his own affliction. He had one leg shorter than the other. The different lengths of his legs was well known, you could see the built up heel. You could hear it thump on the floor. Everyone took it for granted, but Mr Eddie didn’t. It’s all right to talk sport in theory, he told me, but being there, watching and thinking what could have been, was too much.

           He told me all about this when there was only me and him in the shop. Me, a boy of twelve, and him a grown man; it was a somewhat unusual friendship and a friendship that came about in an unusual way. I once showed him a story that I’d written at school about the war and how my dad got shot. He sat in the vacant seat next to me and read it from start to finish. When he read it I was surprised to see his eyes water up. Then he got up and went across to a cupboard and opened it. I heard him blowing his nose. When he came back he was carrying a new packet of paper towels as if that’s what he went for.

           He asked me if I got a good mark? I told him yes. I told him that I was the best at writing stories in the class. My teacher Mrs Peach often lent me books to read. She expected me to become a writer. He nodded his approval and from that day on he used to talk to me about himself and how he felt about things. He said I would understand because I had the sensitivity of someone a lot older.

           He told me once that he cut the hair of all the returned soldiers and their sons and learnt all about sport because he felt so guilty that he had to stay home cutting hair when all his able-bodied friends went off to the war. Some came back and some didn’t, he told me. It was all so terribly sad. He said that he would have cut the hair of all the soldier’s daughters too but that he was a single man and it wasn’t a good idea. Someone would see something bad in that. There are some people who see bad in everything, he said. I think it’s because they are unhappy with their lives. I’m unhappy with my life but I don’t think bad thoughts about others.

           He also confessed to me once that he would have liked to marry but who would want a man with one leg shorter than the other. But the war I said…like my father, he was shot up and he got married. There are lots of men without legs, without arms, in wheel chairs even and a lot of good women around who would marry them - widows and things, lots of them.

            Ah, he said, but they are men who went to war. I’m just an old stay at home cripple who does his best by cutting the hair of the wounded and the widow’s children. I do my best but it’s not enough.

           I was getting quite heated. He just didn’t know how good he was. But you cut hair and you entertain with your knowledge about sports and things, I insisted. Men come here to listen to you. You’re a…I couldn’t think of the word I was searching for but I knew there was one.

           He wasn’t convinced. He shook his head and finished cutting my hair. He took off my white cape and shook it out on the floor. He stared down at it on the polished linoleum, pushing it around with the toe of his boot as if he was trying to figure something out. Then he gave a big sigh picked up his brush and set to work whisking the hair from my shoulders with an unusual vigour. Ah, he said finally when he put the brush away, if you only knew just how much I hate sport.

            I left him that night sweeping up the hair on the floor. He seemed to have forgotten I was there. I put on my jacket and quietly left. In the outer shop the display of the neatly packaged chewing gums on the counter seemed less enticing than before. To hell with tangy peppermint, I thought. I walked on by and through the door and out into the sun-setting street. 

           

 

Mombai Calling

We’ve all had them - those calls from a distant place, trying to sell you an update of this or that – you know something brand-spanking new that will change your life from one of mediocrity to one of instant heart-stopping excitement with this new get up and go … whatever…

 

When I first got these phone calls my early responses were like: Sorry, not interested and I put the phone down. But, as you all know, being polite doesn’t get them off your back. They don’t cross your name off the list just because you’re polite and the calls go on.

 

The next set of my responses were a little more creative: Like no, Mr Dean is not here, he’s gone to Queensland - or the Bahamas, or wherever else for the winter. No go, I’m afraid, it does not deter the professional. And what about you, the caller says, are you interested in this blah…blah…blah…

 

Others things I’ve tried are like: Sorry, I’m just the real estate agent doing a check. I’m afraid Mr Dean has flown the coup for destinations unknown owing a considerable amount of rent.

 

Or even better I found that pretending compliancy and saying hang on a tick and I’ll go and get him and then going to the shops instead does have some appeal. I mean it’s a way of getting your own back by letting them waste their time.

 

Some people tell me that they use invective to get rid of the calls, but I always understood that as a cop out and demeaning to both parties. And it doesn’t work anyway because there is always someone else to take up the challenge. Anyway, I didn’t just want to blast off haphazardly; I wanted a quid pro quo for my harassment.

 

So, because the rings went on regardless I upped the ante. I became more creative. I tried things like: Sorry, I’m ill and can’t be bothered with anything. Or, more potently: Are you the doctor?  I’m waiting for his call. Please get off the line. I’m very ill. (All said in a very weak voice).

 

Well, they did get off the line but like insistent mossies in late summer they disregarded my pathetic swipes and came back the following week for another feed of my psychological blood. I had to lift my game once again.

 

So to be ready for the next inevitable assault I began studying up on exaggerated narrative. It went something like this: No, Mr Dean is not here but I am the neighbourhood burglar and I’m telling you Mr Dean’s house, which I am now ransacking, is bereft of any worthwhile goods and it appeared to me as an experienced burglar, that he is poorer than a Delhi street beggar. It is my belief that he can’t afford food, let only a new mobile phone. I’m telling you the guy’s not worth your attention.

 

Well, as creative as that might be, I’m afraid to say it still didn’t work. It was like the caller wasn’t listening to the words. No doubt part of the caller’s training was to completely ignore incidentals. Okay, I thought, I’ll make them listen. I’ll try a touch of pathos. I’ll twig their conscience - I’ll make them shed a tear or two. So next call I said; Mr Dean is not here. He has had a very serious accident and is in hospital and probably will not survive. You are invading his privacy at the moments before his demise. Please have mercy on his soul.

 

Failure again. Calls went on. It was like these anonymous callers were tuned into a different life. Perhaps I thought they aren’t real. In this world of advanced technology perhaps they are running a program with automatons. So I responded in a similar manner. I got I held a cup to my mouth and in the kind of non-human voice that your computer sometimes addresses you when it denies responsibility for an error, I said: This is Mr dean’s answering service. We are sorry to report that Mr Dean has been murdered by a drug-crazed Veterinary surgeon who wanted to cut out his body parts and sell them off to the Russian Mafia.

 

I must admit I enjoyed all those later answers I began to see it as a kind of exercise in creative writing. I thought up all kinds of responses in the next few weeks and the phone kept ringing and I kept upping the anti. 

 

The climax came after a visit I had from an old friend that I hadn’t seen for a few years and who remembered that I liked vodka. He brought a bottle with him and even though I hadn’t drunk vodka for many moons I had several nips that afternoon. By the time he left I’ve have to admit I was thoroughly inebriated and my head was swimming with nonsensical thought patterns.

 

Ten minutes after he left, the phone rang, and judging by the foreign accent it was a call from afar – a female voice who asked if I was Mr Dean. And hyped up by vodka and creative thought patterns I let her have the full broadside. As far as I can remember the following conversation was a reasonable interpretation of the events that afternoon.

 

I say, no madam, I’m not Mr Dean, I am a policeman. Are you a friend of his?

Oh no, she says, I want to speak to Mr Dean because I have a very magnificent offer for him.

This offer, I say, is it anything to do with drugs?

Oh no, no, she says. I only want to talk to him.

Ah huh, I say, and what’s your name then? She tells me her name was Andira.

Well, Andira, I say, my name is Detective Sergeant Morgan from the Australian Federal Police and we are also after Mr Dean for an infringement of the class A drug laws and I have it here also he owes a considerable amount of rent at this address.

Mr Dean, I tell her in a very serious voice, is in a lot of trouble. Are you sure you’re not a friend of his?

Oh no, she says. I only want to talk to him about his Internet Provider.

Well, I say, why don’t you send him an email?

I’d better call my supervisor, she says.

After some seconds delay a man’s comes over the phone. Hullo, the male voice says, this is Chandra speaking. I am the supervisor of this call centre. To whom am I talking?

Australian Federal Police here Mr Chandra, I say. Detective Sergeant Morgan speaking. I hear you are looking for Mr Dean. Are you the one who is Mr Dean’s friend?

Oh no, he says, this is only a call centre.

And where is this call centre based, I ask?

Mombai, India, he tells me.

(Here I hold the phone away and ask question of my fictitious superior.)

Hey chief, I say, there’s a guy here from India who wants to talk to Mr Dean. Wasn’t the word from the CIA and the Interpol that he was sighted in Afghanistan heading for the golden triangle? Do you reckon he might have dodged back through India to put us off the scent?

(Indistinct mumbling in reply?)

Okay boss, I’ll tell him that. Mr Chandra, I say, Mr Dean has skipped Australia on a phoney passport. We have a big operation on to bring him to justice. You’re said you don’t know Mr Dean – is that right?

Oh no, I am just a supervisor in a Call Centre, he said.

But, I said, if you say you don’t know Mr Dean how come you are calling him?

His number is on our list, he tells me.

List, ay? What kind of list is this, I ask?

Our phoning list sir. We are supplied with a list from our Company.

We could check up on that you know?

Certainly sir, he says. You can check sir, but I assure you we are a legitimate call centre sales company.

Okay, I say, we’ll let you off the hook this time Mr Chandra, but if Mr Dean contacts you at any time you’ll let us know, won’t you? The contact address is Australian Federal Police, Canberra, Australia. You can get hold of us by phoning 1800 666666. Okay?

Oh, yes sir, I will certainly let you know sir – I certainly will. 1800 666666 you said. Is that right, is that right sir?

 That’s right I say.

Oh thank you sir, he says, and hangs up.

I didn’t get a call for nearly a month after that and rightly or wrongly I kidded myself that there was one list, in one particular call centre in Mombai India, that has a big black mark through my name. A small step, but a step nevertheless…

 

 

Dear Michael re the story The Last Page

Melbourne,October ‘08

Dear Michael, herewith the story I told you about. The first story I ever won a prize with and had published – in the Mercury Newspaper 1956, I think. I polished it a little but in the main it remains the same. The prize helped when I got back from Canada flat broke. There it was waiting for me all alone in my depleted bank account.

In retro, I do declare the story is not too bad at all. I note that even back then I took a stab at writing about things I didn’t really know. And in this case the main thing I tidied up in the story was the hospital experience – the morphine bit particularly. I know about it now, I only guessed then. I haven’t been shot of course, but with cops and robbers and cowboys and all that stuff it’s easy to imagine. Besides, not many people have been shot in the stomach twice and lived to tell the tale, so there are but few to correct me.

Which brings me to one of the problems I see with today’s stories. The number of times I’ve given up reading a story because it didn’t engage me – well, who wants to know about someone dad, mum, granny who made her own soap, or school, or I or me and my love affairs and disappointments, blah, blah, blah. Self-centered, first person mediocrity in a short story; even when written in the third person I can still see the writer behind the story. As far as I’m concerned these are the subject matter for the novel where they can be explored fully in a more emotional context. As far as the short story goes it seems like everyone has misinterpreted the meaning of ‘write about what you know.’ I mean it was OK for Hemingway but most of us have dull lives and what we know is dull, unless we bring our imaginations to bear and ask ourselves: What if?

Consider the Bronte sisters. Most of their work was dragged out of their vivid imaginations. Remember that story I wrote about the grandfather who stole a train so his grandson could experience what he experienced in his own youth. Well, I was writing about what I know but I interpret the meaning of that advice quite differently than seems the general consensus. I know what it’s like being a boy. I know what it’s like getting old and feeling a bit useless. I know what it’s like to fish in a river like old Gramp did. I know about frustration and being a bit pissed. I know that some rivers are getting polluted. I know what a country pub’s like. I know how to drive a car and also a train because of my experience with the C.P.R. in Canada. I know how a train’s whistle sounds in the distance, especially in the night. So very atmospheric, a sadness and longing and sometimes loneliness – many things, but for the boy, so exciting. That’s what I know. The rest, the storyline, was dragged out of my imagination. It didn’t exist until I made it so and what authenticated the story was my experience. What more can I say? Hope you enjoy it. 

PS there is another story about that time I’ll send you. Seeing I was so fond of William Saroyan I couldn’t help spoofing him. I had heard, and I’m sure it’s true, that copying the style of an author you admire is a very good way of learning how a writer solves the problems of the trade, as it is with any trade. Anyway, I’ll send it on later when I’ve polished it a little. I think it had promise.

THE LAST PAGE

The impact was simultaneous with the shattering roar - the bullet thumping into his chest, and then another flash, another roar and a thump lower down and an orange fireball swept down from the ceiling and exploded in his eyes. His knees buckled under him and someone hit him in the face with a floral carpet. The last thing he heard was a muffled scream in the air above him and the dark rushed in…

            Slowly, as if it wasn’t sure of its intention, a light flickered and flickered again – a white light, first blinding then subsiding and finally separating into two white masks peering down at him. The masks told him to lie still and not to move. One mask told him her name was Veronica and the other mask was called Jim. He told them he had a bellyache and began to swear. Jim said just relax we’re going to operate. Veronica told him to count to twenty.  He began counting and after ten he forgot what came next…

            He lay on his back feeling the starchiness of the white sheets under and over him. Two blank walls looked sideways at him. The wall in front had two windows in the middle. It could have been a huge bespectacled old man watching him.

            “How do we feel,” a voice asked. It was the ward nurse. Her dress was blue. He felt irritated; it should have been white. She was heavily built; she had a square face and a thin mouth.

            “I don’t know how you feel,” he said. “But I feel fuckin’ awful.”

    Her tight mouth became even tighter. “No need for that, she said. She pointed out the small device attached to his arm. “That is your morphine pain regulator, press the button on the end if the pain becomes unbearable. There’s water there too, but sip, don’t take it too quickly. Now, is there anything else you want?”

            More of a groan than a statement, he said, “I want to go back to the day before yesterday.”

            “Seriously, I mean.”

            “Pull back the curtains,” he said. “I’d like that.”

“There’s nothing out there. It’s after ten o’clock. It’s pitch dark.”

“I don’t care,” he said. “There’s always something to look at.”

The nurse went to the window and pulled back the curtains and then she turned and stared at him with disapproval. “See,” she said, “Dark, like I said.” She came back and sat on a plastic chair by his bed and opened up a book.

It was still raining. He could see a few lights through the wet glass. Streetlights? Or lonely stars in a black sky? Yes, he thought, there’s always something to see or imagine. He turned back to the nurse, “What’s the book about?”

The nurse looked embarrassed. “It’s about an Australian girl on a working holiday in Italy.”

“Who meets a boy, no doubt.”

“A man - yes.”

“A cliché plot, you mean?”

“You shouldn’t be talking. You should save your strength. You’re very ill.”

“D’you reckon the book’s got a happy ending?” He was dragging the words out. He hated silence. Too many unwanted thoughts crept into silence.

“How do I know how it’s going to end?”

“Probably a happy ending. Isn’t that what they’re all about - a happy ending? A girl a boy and love? The few I read were full of that kind of bullshit. They made me spew. The world’s a sick oyster.”

The nurse didn’t say anything.

“Come on,” he said. “This one might be different. Do me a favour; read the end.”

She looked across at him with suspicion. “That’s silly.”

“Come on,” he said, “Just the last page.”

 The nurse turned the pages over slowly until she reached the final page. She moved her lips - silently reading it through.

“Read it aloud,” he said softly. “Read it for me.”

She began to read in a flat nasal monotone. He watched her lips as she read but didn’t hear the words.

Why was she so plain? Why not a pretty nurse like they had on the soapies? Someone he could fall in love with. A nurse who would sponge his brow – sponge him all over - be kind and not judge him with frowns and narrow looks. Not like this one with her mean-looking lips. Suddenly he began to dislike her for being so unrelentingly plain. Then he began to hate himself for being shot up and feeling ill and useless; lying in bed on a wet night so far from all the things he’d hoped for. Where was the sun? The laughter? Where was his best girl?

Whistling a tuneless tune, walking down the street with a bunch of bright yellow flowers - daffs or marigolds? Whistling Genevieve.

Where had the summer, his youth, his friends all gone? What happened to yesterday?

The nurse closed the book. “Did you like it?” she said.

“It was beautiful, truly beautiful.”

“I thought you’d like it,” she said. “Now, if there’s nothing more that you want, I’ll go back to the beginning.”

“What’s the point,” he said, “You know the ending, that’s all you need to read. Every writer is at his or her best in the last page. Everything neat, all tidied up – happy! What more do you want?”

“Well, if you don’t mind I’ll try and stagger through it. I have to sit here for another three hours and I have to find something to do.”

He gave her a half-hearted wink and forced out a grin. “There’s always something that boy and girl could do.”

She looked at him, her eyes half closed. “Now I don’t want any funny stuff from you Mr Smart Aleck. I know all about you.”

He smiled wistfully, “Ah, yes, my reputation is tarnished I have to admit, but there was a time long ago when I believed it was a perfect world. I was in love, you see, just like in your book.

The nurse watched him warily with narrow, unblinking eyes. He closed his own eyes, frowning as if recalling and the huskiness in his throat adding authenticity to the tone of his telling. “Ah, she was so beautiful, her eyes shining acorns, her hair golden, full of soft curls it was. I adored her and when she looked at me my heart melted. Yes, I guess I was hopelessly in love.”

He paused and screwed his face and closed his eyes against the sharp pain in his lower stomach. He pressed the button on the top of the drug regulator. Only when the pain subsided did he open his eyes again. She was staring at him and her large square face was full of expectancy. Her thin unpainted lips drawn tight. Damn her, he thought, why is she so plain?

Then he said: “She was killed in an accident. A truck hit her and she was killed.”

The nurse blinked twice. He was pleased to see a look of anguish creeping over her foolish-looking face. “How utterly ghastly,” she said. “I’m so sorry.”

“So am I,” he said, “She was the best little bitch I ever had.”

She didn’t react like he thought. She was staring at the white wall. Her flat, white face giving nothing away.

“She was a terrier,” the man said and started to laugh softly. Then deep down in his guts he felt the pain beginning to burn again. A slight stirrings in his intestines. Then he felt as if some part of him had turned over. An acid taste was trickling down his throat and he began to cough with hard retching movements of his chest.

He pressed the button on the device again and closed his eyes until the warm surge swept away the pain. He could get used to morphine - such a pleasant feeling – like lying on a bed of feathers. A peacefulness he’d never really felt before. How ironic, he’d sold drugs but had never really indulged himself. It was easy money and there was always a steady cliental. A rather weak-willed lot, his clientele, he always thought. But now, perhaps like him, they were alleviating their pain - seeking their own peace. Maybe he was wrong about that? Wrong about a lot of things.

All he could see of the city where he’d spent most of his life were a few distant lights twinkling mistily on a far hill. He wanted to be there. He needed to stand on that hill and the fact he couldn’t filled him with an almost unbearable loneliness. He began to realize how much his life meant to him. How the city was part of him and how he part of it.

Down, down, down, and the flames rose higher…

The door opened and two men came in. One was overweight and the other over tall. For a moment they stood at the door looking at him. They both looked uncomfortable in the clean whiteness of the room. A small semi-circle of water dripped soundlessly from the bottoms of their shiny wet mackintoshes.

“Hullo Sommers,” said the tall one. “We’re police officers. We’d like to talk to you.” They showed their badges that were too far away from him to see.

“You surprise me,” the man in the bed grunted.” I thought you were giant  golliwogs.”

The nurse rose to go.

“Sit down,” the man in the bed said. “I might take another turn for the worse.”

She looked at the policemen. The tall one nodded towards her chair so she sat down again.

“We want you to give us a statement, Sommers.”

“Sure, why not.”

The fat policeman took out a notebook and a fountain pen.

The man in the bed gazed reflectively out of the darkened window. “It was a burglar,” he said,

He saw their faces harden and felt their dislike for him fill the room.

“Look,” said the fat cop, “We know all about you and your phony deals. We know how most of your so-called clients end up. We know about the lives you’re ruined with your sordid little rackets. You must have lots of enemies. Was it someone trying to get even? Why not tell us? It can’t hurt you now.”

“Now that I’m terminal you mean?”

“I don’t mean that,” The fat cop said flatly. The two policemen shifted restlessly and looked at each other. The fat one shrugged his shoulders drew in his breath and for a moment it looked like he might spit at the floor.

God damn them, he thought, why can’t they leave him alone. He began to feel sorry for himself. He realized the cops were right, he had no friends - only enemies. He thought that maybe he should tell them the truth. But then he remembered the girl - her trembling hand – her despair. So young – so off the rails ...

Sweet eighteen, red hair in the porch-light, receiving a bunch of red carnations ... a piano playing on a warm summer’s night ... a ride on a bicycle along a country lane ... skinny-dipping the river.  Sweet Genevieve, long, long ago…  sweet, sweet, murder …

“Do you want a statement, or don’t you?”

“Shoot,” said the tall policeman said and looked around for a laugh.

The nurse frowned and looked out the darkened window. The fat policeman was gazing noncommittally at the white ceiling.

The man in bed took a deep breath. “Monday night - it was raining. I just got back from dinner. I was alone. I took out my door key when I saw it was already unlatched, so I crept in. At first I couldn’t see or hear anything, then I noticed a torch light flicker in the room I use as an office. I threw open the door and there was this guy going through my desk. I asked him what the hell he was doing and he threw his torch at me, so I hit him and he went down. The next minute he was back on his feet and waving this gun under my nose. I made a grab for it and he fired – twice. That’s all - you know the rest.”

“We don’t know anything, except that you’re a liar,” the fat cop said.

“You cops are too cynical.”

“Who in their right mind would rob you at that time?”

Pain coming again. He was forcing the words through bloodless lips, “Yeah, you’re right … it was strange.”

“How was this burglar dressed,” asked the tall policeman. “What did he look like?”

“I don’t know, bugger it. He had a stocking over his head. He was about average height. I didn’t notice much, I was too busy bleeding.”

“The man cleaning the lobby said he only saw one stranger - a woman. Quite young – she had red hair.”

“It must be a lonely job he’s got.”

“He said the girl was acting strangely,” the fat policemen said.

“They all do, believe me.” The man in bed tried to smile in a way that he knew annoyed them. But it didn’t come off. It came out more of a grimace. He pressed the button on the self-administrating painkiller. But the pressure wasn’t there. It was all that he was allowed. Any more and it might kill him the doctor had told him earlier. Well, how was that for irony? What a Goddamn farce!

Pain building again. Bugger it, he thought, he just wanted to get it over with. I want it all to stop. Everything.

The nurse who had been a spectator during the whole interview suddenly stood up. She faced the two policemen. “He said he didn’t know. Just give him a break. I’m going to call the doctor if you don’t leave him alone.”

The tall policeman shrugged his shoulders. He stared at the nurse for a moment. “You know.” he said, “I can’t make up my mind whether he’s a hypocrite or not. What d’you reckon nurse.”

The nurse looked at him blankly. “It’s not for me to say, is it?”

The cop smiled. “No, me either. Though I wish I was religious sometimes. I wish I believed in Heaven and Hell and all that sort of thing. Some blokes need to get their comeuppance somewhere.”

The man in the bed gave the nurse a wry grin. “We wouldn’t want to go down below would we nurse, there’re too many crooked cops down there.”

The overweight cop ripped the sheet out of his pad. “Your statement,” he said. He screwed it into a ball and tossed it into the stainless steel rubbish container. “More hospital waste,” he said.

When the two policemen had left the nurse sat down again. “Was it true what you told them?”

“My, you are a curious one. Of course it wasn’t. I was shot up by a midget Indian Rajah with horn-rimmed specs - I stole one of his concubines once and he never forgave me.”

The nurse said, “Oh, you’re impossible. I don’t know how you can be so flippant?”

“Why not?”

“You know – you’re ill.”

The man in the bed felt the pain coming again. He felt like someone was ratcheting up a red-hot band around his lower back. He couldn’t help groaning aloud. “I’m not ill – I’m dying and my morph has run dry. How about some more?”

“You know what the doctor said.”

He groaned. “Fuckin’ doctors and their hypocritical oath. I wonder what he’ll do when his time comes?”

“That’s enough of that,” the nurse said. “All those things you used to do. I read about it in the papers. You should be ashamed of yourself and all you can do is swear and carry on.”

He snorted. “Sure, I got away with a lot and I got blamed for a lot I didn’t do. Some call it procuring but I prefer protection. It’s the way of the world. Some men can be worst bastards than me and their expertise is in shifting the blame. Take my old man for instance - he blamed me for everything…me and my mum…just for living mostly. He’ll be happy now.”

The nurse’s expression softened. “Do you want me to ask the doctor for more morphine?”

He found it hard to even shake his head now, and even the pain seemed somehow justified. The nurse was gazing down on him. She had such a look of concern on her face he was shamed. How very strange, she thought him a creep, she’d made that plain, but now – it was almost as if she cared for him. He thought that he could even see her blinking back tears.

He said, “I’m sorry, truly sorry.” And the more he thought about it the more sorry he became. “I’m sorry for me and I’m sorry for my mother, who I should have looked after those years ago when I was too busy looking after myself. I’m sorry for those strangers who offered me a smile and I didn’t respond. I’m sorry for the friends I pissed off and for all those girls… and for you. Mostly for you nurse who’s stuck here on a rainy night when you could be somewhere else. You’re quite beautiful … I hadn’t noticed … you remind me of someone … someone long ago.”

And then he was further surprised to see her actually smiling down at him. A smile, empty of malice, or anticipation, or greed, or calculation - just a smile as smiles should always be. He tried to lift his hand in salutation but all his strength had dissipated and this time the pain came in searing rushes, driving everything before it, every thought, every feeling being swept away. There was a bell buzzing, buzz buzz buzz. Jarring! Then, inexplicably, it faded and he felt an amazing lightness and relief, like he had escaped from something. The sound of soft music filled the room and he listened with wonder. Genevieve. Someone was singing about her. Genevieve. Ah Genevieve, the girl he never met, the town he never saw, the house he never lived in … how it might have been?

Now he was walking from his bed across the mirrored floor, his image foot to foot through the wall and into the wide world. He was floating through space. Below him the streets were black, the building shapeless. He was drifting in the lightness of peace…hovering. He felt the air cool on his face and he smelt the fragrance of spring – of roses and jasmine – and he rose up, swirling, becoming unattached, until, like cigarette smoke in the breeze, he was gone… 

Me speaking this time: When I get better I’m going to buy a van and go ferae naturae on a tropical beach.