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.

 

 

 

The story of Dog Lately

Dear Dorit V.C.

Thank you for your letter and photo. Is your lovely little dog Bandit a Tibetan terrier? I had one just like it but sadly he died at the remarkable old age of eighteen years four years ago, his name was Dog Lately. Like have you seen the dog lately? He was a wild dog in many ways and somewhat savage towards other dogs. He never discriminated size-wise. Any dog would do. With half a chance he’d just tear into them, be they Alsatians or Pomeranians. More than once we had to take him to the vet and get him stitched up.           

His original owner was a local millionaire of some note in the white goods business. He bought the dog as a pup from a dog breeder in Melbourne for a very high price. The pup was a Tibetan Terrier, the breed that in ancient times were used to guard the temples. That little pup more pedigree than the Queen and I suspect that Mrs Millionaire wanted to show him at the Hobart and Launceston Shows and lift her profile in the doggy world.            

Unfortunately his original owner wasn’t observant enough to note that dear little Dog Lately only had one testicle and a slightly overshot jaw. He was definitely not a show prospect. The millionaire who bought him, it seems, had been gazumped by a canine breeder and it was suggested through the local gossip that he was somewhat pissed off with the deal and took out his spite on the growing pup by not giving him a lot of love and affection. And Dog Lately who, like most dogs, had an insatiable desire for the same ran away from his new home and spent the next eighteen months living off the land. He became expert at hunting down and catching the local and plentiful Tasmanian native hens.

He also learnt the art of grafting in between times. He turned up in the yard of a friend of mine one rainy winter’s morning and sat beneath a camellia bush looking somewhat wet and miserable and fixed his doggy eyes on my friend the moment he stepped out his door. Well, you know what doggy eyes can do in the pleading game? Within the hour the dog through the largesse of my friend’s wife had a quantity of breakfast left overs, including some first class home-cured bacon rinds and crusty bread to fatten him up. Naturally enough, being a dog of some wisdom, he found that grafting was a good deal less strenuous than chasing wild birds so he turned up the following morning and got more of the same.

And so it went on for several weeks and Dog Lately was putting on weight. He looked like he was settling in. He began to stay around longer and longer. Sometimes, right through until almost dark, when he would mysteriously disappear. By that time my friends had found out the hard cold facts about Dog Lately’s recent  history. They reasonable assumed that having satisfied his doggy needs for the day he had either returned to his original owners or to some secret doggy den somewhere.

Both assumptions that were proved wrong when my friend met one of his neighbours some time later and the neighbour told him how this stray muddy dog turned up on his doorstep just before dark each night and cadged the family’s evening meal leftovers. He told how the dog would gulp down his meal, slurp up some water and collapse on to their verandah to sleep. In the morning there was no sign of him.            When I finally met the wayward dog I was also smitten by those eyes of his. I offered to take him home with me and make such a fuss of him that he would never stray again. Everybody agreed that it was a great idea, including, it seemed the dog who had already decided the carpet in the back of my Kombi was a good place to snatch a bit of shut-eye after a hard day’s grafting.

So off I went with him in the back of my van - an excitement for both of us. Me, with plans of walking the dog on the beach, playing ball with him in the parks and having high expectations of having a  dog to guard our temple when we were away. The dog’s excitement was more direct. The moment I started the van he suddenly changed from a happy soft-eyed, tail-wagging doggy into a monster. Every car we passed got his message with his snarling and barking that he wasn’t a dog to be fooled with. And I’ll swear to this day, that when we so coincidently passed a carry van with the name of his late master emblazoned on its side, the dog’s barking rose to a crescendo that would have put the hounds of Baskerville to shame. He literally hurled himself at the windows of my van. Leaving, I might add, smears and scratches that I could never quite rub off.

Unfortunately, my envisaged doggy games with him never eventuated. Dog Lately never brought back a ball I threw. He preferred rather to eat them. Neither did he ever stay home and house watch. He insisted on going everywhere we went, whether it was to a party, a funeral or a wedding. He sat in the driver’s seat with eyes half closed looking like a bored taxi driver waiting for us to return. That Kombi belonged to him and woe to any stranger trying to touch it. Our warm house was of very little interest him. He preferred to sleep outside in his kennel or in the Kombi. He was an outside dog. Indoors was alien to him.

That showed on the first night I brought him home. I had to pick him up and carry his struggling body inside where hopefully he would get to know his new home. He spent most of that night trying to eat his way through the back door. Too scared to let him out we fed him up in the closed porch until he was busting and only let him out on a lead to recycle his meaty-bites in the garden. I had to practically drag him back into the porch when he was finished where he howled and yapped half the night and spent the other half working on the door.           

Two days later when he’d quietened down somewhat we decided give him a run. We walked him up the road towards the farmlands and that was when he showed us some of his acquired show-dog characteristics, he was out in front, pulling at his lead like a sled dog, his plumed tail up and wagging, fit for any show. When we were in the open paddocks we let him off his lead and held our breaths. He was Ok for two minutes sniffing around, but then when he hit the trail of native hen he was off with a speed that would have shamed a racing greyhound.

For hours we trekked around the paddocks and the nearby dams, calling and whistling, but there was neither sight nor sound of Dog Lately. We imagined him racing the forty kilometres back to our friend’s place on the outskirts of the city to get his leftovers. Or worse, getting himself squashed on the roads in the attempt.

We decided we’d better go home and ring around. But that dog continued to surprise. When he got back home in the early afternoon there he was sitting up expectantly on our doorstep, with the kind of eloquent, tongue-hanging expression that seemed to enquire where had we been all day. We were further surprised to see that lying between his paws was a somewhat mangled and very dead, native hen.  We presumed the bird he was offering was not so much of a gift as it was his token of his acceptance of us as his new slaves…

           

             

The day I nearly met Patrick White

When I read Patrick White’s book The Tree of Man I was fascinated by his style of writing and his storytelling ability. He became my favourite Australian author. When I published my first book, Strangers Country in 1977, I readily admit, that, in parts, its style and phraseology owed something to Patrick White.

 After its publication my friend, the late James McQueen, suggested I send Patrick White a copy of my book. There was some discussion about how many other aspiring writers would do the same, and how Patrick White might think that it was a sneaky way of using any comment he might make as promotion material. I didn’t want him to think that, so I expressly wrote inside the cover that my book was just a small gesture in appreciation for all his writing and that I wasn’t seeking a response.

On the strength of my book having positive reviews in The Age Newspaper, The Australian and the ABC book program, I was invited to attend the Adelaide Writers Festival where I mixed with many literary luminaries such as Elizabeth Jolly, Ann Summers and Thea Astley.

 On the third day after I had read (rather nervously) one of my stories, a man I’d never seen before emerged from the crowd, sat down beside me and introduced himself. I was somewhat surprised by the event and I regret that I didn’t get his name. I think he said he was a publisher.

 He told me that he had a message from Patrick. He told me that Patrick said thanks for the gift of my book and that he’d read it and enjoyed it, that I had an individualistic style and that I should never be persuaded to sway from it. I thought it a rather cryptic message at the time, but who cared, the man at the very top of my literary tree liked my stories! I was, to say the least, elated.

 In 1982 I was accepted to attend the Film School in Sydney to learn film script writing. I rented a room from a friend of mine in Randwick and drove to the school in North Ryde each weekday. At the weekends I used to walk for miles in all directions, exploring the Eastern Suburbs and working potential scripts over in my mind.

 During one of my walks around Centennial Park, quite by accident, I suddenly realized that I was in the street where Patrick White lived. Martin Road, Centennial Park. Number 20. I remembered it well.  It was the address to which I’d posted my book.

 Would I walk right in and knock on his door? Hello Mr White, I’d say, my name is Geoffrey Dean… remember my book? Would he invite me in? Would he offer me a cup of tea or coffee? And why did I want to say hello? Perhaps I needed the story of my visit to carry around me in my name-dropping bag to impress my friends at the dinner table? I had no real idea what my motive really was.

 And just say that he had invited me in - what then? I wasn’t really a literary person at all. I’d never so much got a sniff at getting a degree in literature. I disliked disseminating writing for its own sake. I was a storywriter. I wrote stories intuitively by watching and seeing and listening; teasing stories out from the remembered past and the present ethos; waiting for them to emerge and reveal their shape and purpose. How could I have talked about that with a great writer who had won the Nobel Prize?

 But then Hell, I could talk about something else, couldn’t I? Like, where I lived under the mountain in Hobart and how my day job was painting other people’s houses - or about farming - just general repartee - the kind of conversation I was reasonably good at.

 So, drawing in my breath and imagining that my backbone was lashed to a shining steel rod, I opened the gate and let myself into his garden. A garden, I thought, that owed as much to Southern Europe as it did to Australia.

 I either rang or banged at the door. (A detail that escapes my memory.) Silence from within - the kind of dull silence that belonged to a house bereft of any living being. There was hardly any need for the neighbour’s voice calling to me from over the fence that Patrick and Manoly were away.

 I never did try again during that year I was living in Sydney. I had stumbled on his street by accident, knocked at his door and he wasn’t home. I put the event down to Fate giving me a message. At that age and experience draining my feeble literary courage once, was enough…

 Some years later I met Vivian Smith the expatriate Tasmanian poet at Salamanca Market who now lived in Sydney. I knew Vivian when he lived in Hobart and I had heard through the literary grapevine that he was Patrick White’s friend. I told him about my foray into Patrick White’s territory. Ah, yes, he said, I actually had a conversation about you with Patrick when I saw your book in his bookcase.

 And, I asked? Well nothing much really he said. He asked me how old you were and when I told him you were about my age he seemed rather surprised. Was it because he thought my writing had the promise of the young, I asked?  No, nothing to do with that, Vivian said. It was more to do with whether your stories would be acceptable in Australia because of their...

 That’s when the phone rang Vivian told me and Patrick went off to answer it. When he came back, Vivian said he was fuming about something that had gone wrong with the publishing of his next book. Unfortunately we never got back to you, Vivian said rather regretfully. I wonder what it was he was going to say?

 Yeah, and me too. A pity he wasn’t home that day I called.