On Brunswick Ground Read online

  The wind picks up in the gathering darkness of dusk and we both stir with it. We empty a bag of clippings into the green bin. I climb on top of it to stamp it in, yet the lid barely closes. Mitali laughs up at me a broken, gasping kind of laugh and I realise I have never heard her laugh before. She doesn’t give me a hand to help me down, the same way you wouldn’t with a brother. The garden is raked and cleared of its weeds; it seems to be bowing in the dusk.

  We pick up our tools and walk to the street. I can hardly hear the sounds we make, as if the air were made of blotting paper.

  ‘I’ve just received a letter from him,’ I whisper.

  I know she has heard me. Her living silence has an animal’s stillness. I have never talked about his accident, but by the way Mitali turns towards me swiftly it’s obvious she knows what happened. Everyone in Brunswick seems to know about Jack. We are all knitted together in a Brunswick sweater – like the knitting those women wrap around tree trunks and streetlights.

  6

  GLOW-WORMS

  Whenever two women walk together in the streets of Brunswick, every sound they make floats freely in the air, every step they take is inscribed in the land. When I’m walking, I often catch myself following in their wake to catch swathes of their conversation. Soon enough, what I am waiting for happens: one or the other will inevitably let out two words in a slow, sensual monotone: ‘I knooooowww,’ she’ll say. What she knows matters little, what matters is that her companion is no longer alone in solitary flesh, but loosely moored to the floating, harmonious lament bobbing at her side.

  Now I am walking along Sydney Road, within the soft perimeter of where I live and work, soft with familiar sights and signs – a cement garden where people swear easily and kindly, even mothers of two year olds. I recognise the walks, the tilts of heads, the tattoos and the piercings, the unshaved jaws and the shaved heads. I recognise the black-dressed old women with gnarled hands and bright eyes – those who are still living, in all but their bodies, in the small villages they have come from. They are trapped in an Italy that no longer exists – even if they go to ‘Colees’ or ‘Safeways,’ even if they say ‘no vorries,’ Brunswick is a parallel universe for them. Their husbands sit in front of cafés and nod to each other, sipping hard liquor in tight espressos, peering straight through the flow of passersby. Then they walk back to their Victorian homes, where they have removed the cast-iron lacework and cemented over the front gardens, keeping their lemon trees and vegie patches for the back, to disappear into their severe, spotlessly clean interiors with their oilcloths on the tables, their crucifixes, their photographs of the current Pope and – because they know how to manage shutters, blinds and night air – their cave-like coolness in summer. Even though spring is still teetering, today’s a warm, sunny day and the crowds – like just after a war – are walking aimlessly. Women of all ages and nationalities, trendy, academic, arty or businesslike, drift along the footpath with the same unspent load of love, while the trams, held between cable and rail, thunder past doggedly.

  Bernice wants to have a coffee with me. It is 1 pm and I am running. Bernice is rarely late. Green’s on Sydney Road is packed, but she’s purloined a table. I queue for the coffees and bring them to her. She wrestles to pay me back. When I won’t give in, she jumps up to buy a cake. Bernice’s generosity is connected to her sciatic nerve. It’s compulsive; she has to give. And the world takes. Men especially. Birthdays, Christmases, good news, an exam, a good mood, anything is an excuse for Bernice to give a present. At the moment, she is on RSVP.

  ‘These men just flick through the photographs and choose a different woman each night,’ she complains as we wait to be served.

  It does not occur to her to do the same thing, even though, from what I sense, she’s a highly organised romantic.

  ‘If someone contacts me, I sail into the date dressed to the nines, teetering in my tight skirt and my high heels …’

  I can imagine her warpath make-up and her heart beating too fast – a bright Victorian butterfly sailing into the Net.

  ‘They never call me back,’ she says. ‘They only go for the pretty girls.’

  ‘But you are pretty, Bernice. That would be the exact word to describe you.’

  I look at her. Her fluffy dress, her warm breasts, her camellia skin are a soft lolly waiting to be unwrapped.

  ‘There must be an explanation. It doesn’t make sense.’

  She exhales a violent sigh.

  ‘You have to play hard to get,’ grumbles Bernice.

  Her face puckers.

  ‘The problem is I often say “I love you” after the first date. I can’t help it. You are not supposed to do that, are you?’ she whispers guiltily.

  ‘We’re in the same boat, Bernice. The man I love prefers the company of giraffes.’

  ‘If I were you I would go and raid the Werribee Zoo.’

  I stare at her in horror.

  ‘The very idea of it makes me feel seasick.’

  My reticence is a mystery to her.

  ‘But why? You should shake him up or he’ll forget you all the more.’

  She also knows my story. I stay mum. Werribee Zoo looms so large it churns up the gigantic disproportion of the world you first experience as a toddler. I remember the first time I was fished out of my life. I must have been two or three. It was in the middle of a heartbeat high on a swing: when all I knew of the earth was a few rooms, the enormous wave of the earth swept up at me. Soon after that, I climbed towards a loft, heaving myself up each gigantic step. Completely alone in the dark, creaky, spidery silence, I stared through the tiny attic window. But I did not catch sight of Bluebeard or of the witch, as I expected – no, to my utter stupefaction there was a whole world out there and in a flash I understood the earth was round, just like my father said. But there are no swings, no attic steps from which I can fathom Werribee Zoo.

  Bernice smiles at me.

  ‘Ah, don’t worry. We’ll be right.’

  At another table I catch a glimpse of a blue burqa. Could it be Mary? Green’s is a Brunswick hub. The blue burqa is talking earnestly to a blonde in jeans with a prim smile and a sexy blouse. She has to be a symbol too; it doesn’t seem fair otherwise. I turn and pretend to look at a picture on the wall so it’s possible for the possible Mary to have a chance of recognising me. Nothing happens – they are deep in conversation.

  Bernice is talking about IVF again.

  ‘IVM is better,‘ she says, ‘more natural. They don’t mess with your hormones so much.’

  Bernice has beautiful hands. They lie near her cup and saucer like the hands of Virgins painted by Memling. They hardly seem capable of clasping the smiling child with the halo. They are hands to be kissed and adored, not nappy hands. I’ve seen Bernice’s hands do the dishes. They dive in and out of the water like tentative mermaids. The plates and glasses escape, tumble and slide within an inch of their lives. Still, Bernice gets things done. She pours herself into action with a kind of crazed devotion. It’s beautiful to watch because it all seems to happen by utter chance. And yet things land, safe – breathless.

  ‘I haven’t bought a pram yet,’ Bernice sighs. ‘It would be a bit premature,’ she adds with her quaint dignity. ‘But I have looked for schools.’

  It reminds me of Bob Marley’s ‘I shot the sheriff, but I didn’t shoot no deputy.’ I ask her if she has a preference for a girl or a boy.

  ‘A boy!’ her face falls. ‘I never thought of that. With my track record with men, I’d be in trouble,’ she sighs and then shrugs: ‘Oh, well.’

  I glance again at the possible Mary, and Bernice leans towards me and whispers:

  ‘Isn’t it nice, that they can be exactly how they wish to be, here in Brunswick? Nobody cares, everybody wishes them well.’

  Just then, the blue face turns round and calls out something I don’t catch. I smile tentatively. She gets up. Now it’s Mary for sure. She moves towards me rather quickly considering all the blue in the way. In a secon
d, her clear voice and common-sense tone are familiar to me again.

  ‘How’s Melbourne treating you?’ I ask.

  ‘Not too bad.’

  She then tells me her friend’s name and calls her over to our table.

  ‘She was my tutor at university.’

  Bernice is good with thresholds. She talks about where you come from and where she comes from, immediately putting land under everyone’s feet. Then she moves on to what you share with her – anything from womanhood to liking the coffee. She repeats people’s names after her phrases, which anchors them still more. I heard a talk once by a psychologist expert in hostage situations. They use the same procedure. It makes me wonder about Bernice. I somehow feel Mary may have winked at me, but of course I can’t be sure.

  ‘Billie told me her stepmother likes working with you.’

  I stop asking myself why she wears this thing and tell her how relieved Mitali and Ian are that Billie is going to be okay. Suddenly, without Sarah, it’s easier to talk to her. We end up all having a second coffee. I ask Mary if she’s still staying with Sarah.

  ‘Yeah. We’re getting along quite well.’

  I gulp my surprise. She volunteers more information.

  ‘We’ve been seeing films like maniacs. And I might have a job soon – at The Monthly, designing their layout, if I’m lucky.’

  Her hands are curled on the table. I stare at them. Surely they can reveal some clue? They are slightly podgy with stubbed fingernails, a bit like a child’s hands, except that they seem preternaturally agile. They look clever, as if they knew things. They act with sudden decision. Full of character and economy of movement, they don’t waver or hover around the cup like mine do. I peer into the veil and catch the colour of her eyes for the first time – bright blue. Gosh. Mary doesn’t have to have coal dark eyes as if her father were a sheik, but I certainly didn’t expect the full force of this Yves Klein statement. I have to stop myself thinking about her burqa again, but my mind keeps returning to it like a dog to its bone.

  Bernice is chatting happily to the academic. They both went to the same university. I find myself surprisingly comfortable in Mary’s presence. Instead of being busy wondering on which side of my arse I am going to sit or where to park my elbow on the table, I discover we’ve both read The Ballad of the Sad Café, Mollie Panter-Downes and Stefan Zweig – unrelated, unexpected bridges out of the blue. Loving the same book is like finding out that you’ve travelled to the same remote village, or busy city. Mary and I exchange emails when they get up to leave.

  Bernice returns to prams and men. Since I’ve seen her last, she has set sail towards a series of decisions. They’re all aligned in front of us. They feel slightly disembodied but Bernice’s enthusiasm blows colour and shape into them. For a moment, they glow; I can nearly see them: the pram, the toys, the cot, the clothes, the school. They all heave into reality, but then she slumps forward on her elbows and sighs.

  ‘It’s so hard to do it alone. I wanted a family. I’ve always wanted a family.’

  We stare at each other as they deflate, the balloons from the party in her mind.

  She tosses her fringe.

  ‘Has Mary been a Muslim for long?’

  I say I don’t know.

  ‘It’s a bit extreme, isn’t it?’

  I nod and open my hands in doubt. Maybe we’re all extreme, too busy hoping instead of living – Bernice hoping for a husband and child, me for Jack, Sarah to reach her daughter, Jack his memory. Mitali is the only one who’s gone beyond hope, just trying to accept what has already happened.

  Bernice looks at her tiny watch and jumps to her feet. She has to rush off to her radio station where she will interview people and bring to light every atom of humanity they may possess. They don’t see her tiny handbag, her track record with men, or her slightly knock-kneed gait, they don’t see her bright lipstick on the bad days or her woebegone dimpled elbows digging into Sarah’s bar top, all they hear is her merry laugh and her trusting faith in the Labor Party. Yet intimations of her life will permeate the blandest of her statements. After a few minutes of conversation with her, they won’t feel like strangers, loafers, creeps or weirdos anymore – they’ll get a glimpse of a shoreline, climb onto the human raft we all share, and start paddling again.

  I wave to her as she blitzes through the tables. The café is buzzing. University students are queuing for wraps and salads, carrying takeaway coffees. Each one uses the palette of fashion to draft a rough sketch of their souls and, according to mood, become Goths, Visigoths, abandoned waifs, Jane Austens or mittened grandmothers. Sitting with the empty seat in front of me, I think about my own grandmother as if she were just waiting in the wings for me to be on my own. Her sadness, her longing, her deep, unused, but available emotional life, are left behind like a letter for me to read. Surely something happens to people’s discoveries and epiphanies when they die – especially when they die suddenly. Where do they leave them? There must be a responsibility to pick up where they left off. Jack used to think so.

  The night I met Jack in the rain, I was walking back to the first place where I stayed in Melbourne. I was still on a tourist visa and had no idea what I would be doing. I had somehow landed here in Brunswick – that was about it. I must have tripped on something, and was flat on my face, when I felt a hand on my elbow. I started and looked up into Jack’s face. He had a quiet, reassuring smile, as if stumbling, starting women didn’t faze him one bit. We walked on, the melaleucas shepherding us forward. Soon I was banging on about my grandmother, not the best way to engage a man, but I wasn’t thinking of him as a man – he was simply a human being in the night. Right from the start that lurch of the opposite sex was absent, that fandango people fall into, as if attraction were as coded as a bullfight: olé.

  It was raining, it was night, it was under the ghost gums.

  ‘She’s often on the edge of my day, as if she were hanging around waiting for me to understand something.’

  I looked at him with a hurried smile.

  ‘I don’t mean she’s a ghost or that she’s haunting me or anything like that.’

  He grinned solemnly.

  ‘Of course not.’

  He was leaning on a white, almost phosphorescent trunk.

  ‘People leave unfinished business. I’m a musician. I feel it often. Floating stuff, unspent tears, boomerang smiles that haven’t come back; the unsaid things that clog the air around us.’

  He grinned at me again.

  ‘Music deals with all that.’

  I grinned back.

  ‘You make it sound like spring cleaning.’

  Jack ducked closer under the tree as the rain pelted down. He told me about his own tough, old curmudgeon of a grandfather, who he hadn’t spring-cleaned either. As a child, Jack liked to follow him around his yard, breathing the same air.

  ‘He was grumpy and crotchety, never walked without a stick and snapped at everyone, but it didn’t bother me.’

  There was something real and convincing about his presence, something that made the world bounce into being for a boy of ten.

  ‘One day he told me he wanted to show me something. He walked to his car, with a nod to me to follow him, flung his stick in the back, and we took off on the spot.’

  Lithgow, the town where he lived, was soon left far behind. They went through endless miles and miles of sparse, flat land. Soon Jack realised dusk was coming on and that he was going to miss a football match on TV.

  ‘It was no use saying anything, I knew that.’

  They drove, and drove, through those dry plains, and still did not get anywhere. Finally, in the middle of nowhere, Jack’s grandfather turned off the ignition. He set off on foot and headed towards a small rise, as if he knew the way. Following behind, all Jack could see were anthills and scraggy plants. Suddenly, the old man dived into the bush and disappeared. Jack followed and found himself in a cave next to his grandfather. There they were, side by side in this dark grotto of a place. As
his eyes got used to the darkness, Jack noticed how everything was glowing. Every nook and cranny of the rock face glittered and shone like a bit of starlit sky under the earth.

  ‘Glow-worms,’ said his grandfather.

  They stood there for a while without saying a word and then he drove them all the way back.

  Jack’s grandfather was always dreaming of gold mines and later on bought a ghost town for five hundred dollars. In the end, his was an Australian death. One day, he drove off again, into the West Australian desert this time. His body was never found – only his car. I wonder if Jack remembers this now.

  A few days later, I am working in a garden with Kim and Mitali, when Mary turns up out of nowhere. She announces that she is moving in with Billie, and asks if they can borrow Mitali’s car so that they can move things. I don’t say anything, but I think of Sarah. I can see them both sharing films in wordless communication, catching up on common ground, carefully, offhandedly. Of course, the burqa must be off when they are alone at home at night, and Sarah can see her daughter’s face at last. But now, after such a short time, Mary will be heading off into the blue again. I hope it’s been enough.

  We’re all standing in the dusk, our tools at our feet. The day is finished. The garden itself looks disturbed in sleep with its newly dug-up beds and pruned bushes. Maybe this quiet place doesn’t need three carers, and would benefit from less efficient attention. Suddenly, I see something glitter. I walk towards the tiny light, leaving the three others talking behind me. There’s another gleam a bit further on, I follow it and stumble upon two small pieces of quartz, which for a few seconds I thought might be glow-worms.

  7

  MERRI CREEK

  The Merri Creek meanders with a will of its own. The council interferes with it in a half-hearted way, but the Merri is a lazy, obstinate hippie. It won’t be changed, it sprawls along, in spite of flats and houses, in spite of bridges and banks, in spite of wire fences dotted with plastic bags – it’s a survivor, like Sarah. Yet the simple presence of her daughter can unravel her. The sun is high in the sky, clouds are banking up in enormous white citadels and parapets. Green and scarlet parrots are screeching at each other, the trees alive with their conversation. A fierce wind looms in and out, catches at branches and whooshes us forward, Sarah and I – snatching at us so wantonly, so insistently, as if it wanted to transform us into pillars of salt.