A ghost of aviation
She was swallowed by the sky
Or by the sea, like me she had a dream to fly
Like icarus ascending
On beautiful foolish arms
Amelia, it was just a false alarm
Maybe I’ve never really loved
I guess that is the truth
I’ve spent my whole life in clouds at icy altitude
And looking down on everything
I crashed into his arms
Amelia, it was just a false alarm
WOKE
up. Fell out of bed. The terrain out of Bairnsdale on the Dargo Road was a
different road experience to yesterday. There were more sheep instead of
cattle. We stopped sometimes to marvel at baby lambs dragging on their mother's teats. We
also stopped to morbidly assess last night’s carnage- wombat and kangaroo on
the side of the road. The fields, too, had changed, farming-wise. Instead of
dairy farming, winter crops instead, and fields of what looked like wheat. Are
wheat crops compatible in winter?
We
found ourselves in Glenaladale at a horse riding camp called ‘Coonawarra.’ We
were too late for a planned two hour ride. Instead the instructor rode off with
experienced riders who were on time, and we were left to parade the girls
around ourselves on a dirt track in circles a bit like a rugged version of the
mounting yard at Flemington racecourse. Lolly was a passive agreeable horse who
was more than happy to make about a hundred strolls in wide circles, one
lightly built child at a time.
About
twenty minutes away was the Mitchell River National Park, situated right on the
Mitchell River. A skinny track led us to The Bluff- a lovely lookout over the
glistening river and rugged granite cliffs. The gravel path undulated gently
and in our minds took us far away. I sang ‘And The Tide Rushes In’ at the top
of my voice.
Photos
of landmarks that reminded us of yesteryear on the way back. Old service
stations now closed and derelict; ancient farm buildings with an old wooden
wagon. Then suddenly we were driving along the busy Bairnsdale Streets. Antique
shops, the expansive Salvation Army store. The impressive St Mary’s Catholic
Church. Simply just crossing the road alone threw me back to wandering the
quiet country streets of Wangaratta when I first left home. I knew nobody and
was initially quite lonely. Still, the memory gave me a romantic association
and somehow I felt free, a feeling naturally that I don’t associate with
streets like Sydney Road back home.
The
exterior of the Grand Terminus Hotel behind Main Street has probably changed
since the days after it was first built in 1885. The lovely nostalgic photos
inside suggest this but there is a strong resemblance just the same. As we
began driving home after dinner, we saw other charming old buildings to explore
for another day- the courthouse and the library for example. After this, thick
night fell very quickly.
THIS
morning we slept a bit too long on uncomfortable bedding. It was the first
night of the newest Ashes cricket series, from Cardiff. A restless night.
Eventually we got dressed and went for a renewed tour of the farm, visiting the
animals that provided our entertainment last night. S and I were looking at the
ducks and geese. Tiffany shouted out from the house ‘you can let them out!’ I did. Then S had a horrible feeling we had
misheard and wondered how we could get them back behind the wire again. ‘But
it’s ok’, I said hopefully. ‘Foxes only appear at night.’
We
left Sarsfield mid-morning en route to Lakes Entrance. Last time we ventured
here a few years ago, disaster struck. Our house became flooded in our absence
because of the behaviour of an errant rat. This time, we cross our fingers.
The
road to Marlo and Cape Conran is pretty. The fields on either side of the road
are marshy and green. There are a number of farms dotted around, and by the
look of it, they are mostly dairy farms. We stop at one point and humans and
cows lovingly gaze at one another across a small ditch. The crossword keeps us
busy. We are briefly stumped on a word starting with ‘O’ in reference to
‘threatening.’ It is the final word, and when we think of ‘ominously’, we have
completed it.
The
eastern beach at Cape Conran is rugged and pretty at the same time. A looks
everywhere for shells which is par for the course, and S indulges in her new
found love, handstands. I find any number of weird formations out of sea weed
and sea and beach debris, and large sticks which I hurl into the water. The
tide is coming in so we have to head back, but not before we explore the
slate-grey jagged rocks at the beach’s edge. I imagine I am Ingmar B and I am
on Faro.
We
drive, calm and contented, toward Marlo. There is something about the name of
the town. But we don’t really see much of it- just the pub which overlooks a
pretty estuary. The girls memorably have their first ever taste of alcohol- a
minuscule drop of red wine.
Wending
our way back homeward, it is starting to darken. A comments from the back of
the car that she likes the orange sunset strip in the sky. We stop, looking for
adventure, at one of those dairy farms we passed much earlier. The friendly
farm woman is milking her cows, by machine. Some metal implement squeezes their
teats, as they chew on cow feed passively. There is much bemusement about the
cascading of cow waste. It’s a good country education for all of us. The cows
rotate on their metallic roundabout contraption, then peel off.
The
final stop is the supermarket in Orbost. The night sky envelops us all around.
We are home at the cottage, satisfied. The cricket is back on.
WE are in a little place called Sarsfield, near
Bairnsdale. We arrived last night with just a few hours of daylight left. It is
a family farm with an adjacent wooden cottage. The
owner’s son, a fifteen year old boy called Ashley, immediately gave us a tour
of the property. He did it with a certain relish. He loves living here. I told
him we are city people, naïve and curious. Simply adorned with t-shirt and
shorts, he was full of chatter and friendliness and charm. We visited the large
sow who wandered over from behind her fence repaying our curiosity with
curiosity of her own. Her body was warm and her back felt like the straw you
find from the bottom of an outdoor broom.
Then we saw the myriad ducks and geese soldiering
around, seemingly at random. Not quite as friendly, they kept a few paces ahead
of us, expectant of food. Ashley collected white buckets filled with pellets.
His slightly older sister, Tiffany, joined us in her tracksuit. She had food
for the ducks. The four of us were to feed the pigs. Their large pen was
mud-filled. We approached them excitedly and what a raucous sound they
provided! The air became filled with heavy grunts and high pitched squeals. I
thought of the young porkers in ‘Animal Farm.’ Some of the pigs climbed on
other pigs’ backs. We splashed the food randomly on the soft surface of the
muddy floor and patted their backs while they ate.
When Ashley finished his farm stories and the animals
were satisfied we wandered back to our cottage to prepare dinner. By now, in
the twilight, a heavy mist had descended spookily all about us, sitting on the
surface of the land. These are all new experiences. Stars began appearing. I
swear the sky towards the horizon was a distinct mauve or lilac colour.
LITTLE did I know, all
those years ago, sitting nervously, stomach rumbling, in some innocuous little
tutorial somewhere at La Trobe University, that the big man who walked into the
room to tell us about his new book of poems would soon become known as one of
Australia’s finest ever poets. I’m pretty sure I met him, directly, and felt a
very vague sense of awe, but then again maybe I didn’t. It seems a long time
ago. I remember distinctly, however, hearing him say that it had been a long
time since he had done any sort of real work. The irony of that statement was
lost on me at the time. (The book we were studying was, I think, ‘The
Vernacular Republic’).
So now I am finding out a
bit more about Les Murray, because I have taken the plunge again after a long
time of reading overseas poets, skirting around the Australian ones. Les Murray
is married. Both he and his wife are old. She has afflictions and needs his
care- (‘golden staph bacteria’)- just as his father did when Les’ mother died,
and Les came home to look after him.His
36 year old autistic son also needs his care. The three of them have lived on a
farm in rural NSW for a long time, in a place that played a big part in
Murray’s childhood as the only child of dairy farmers, called Bunyah. The
Australian newspaper recently ran a beautiful, very human portrait of life in
Bunyah. The Murray’s seem so real and quietly impressive. Country folk of the
type that Kevin Rudd would like. The chat is about a recent car accident that
could have been fatal (Murray doesn’t like seat belts), and an anthology in
which Nick Cave discusses a Murray poem- ‘Who’s Nick Cave?’, Murray asks his
wife. ‘I don’t know the bloke.’ And why would he?
The other slightly odd and
slightly charming thing about Murray is the fact that he doesn’t like
computers. He types his poems- on a typewriter. To think that that still
happens. Depression isn’t ‘slightly charming’ however. Murray wrote a book of
poems about ‘the black dog.’ He has had it (along with extreme hypochondria), his
father had it, and his mother, Miriam, had it for half of the time Murray knew
her. She often miscarried, and only Murray survived. It haunts him still to
think that maybe he caused these miscarriages, or maybe that this is what his
mother thought each time a new baby didn’t survive. And Murray was bullied, a
lot. One can only imagine. The sum of his girth and his brain.
The new book has the
enigmatic title ‘Waiting For The Past’ (Black Inc). It is a little slim black volume with a sepia
coloured dustjacket of a drawing of the portico of a handsome old house. There
is a great range of topics explored in these new poems, all under a page or two
in word length, perfect for reading and re-reading in order to gain maximum
pleasure and understanding.
Many of these poems are
built around memories, of recent times or the distant past. Murray is clearly
of the age in which it is important to remember. ‘Inspecting The Rivermouth’
takes us on his journey to Hahndorf and Hindmarsh Island, and home again,
somewhat matter of factly:
‘the barrages de richesse,
Film culture, horseradish
farms,
Steamboats kneading
heron-blue
Lake, the river full again.
Upstream, the iron cattle
bridges,
So. Then a thousand miles
home across green lawn.’
A poem called ‘High Rise’
set in Beijing describes air conditioners on windows as ‘wristwatch-shaped’,
hinting at the multitude of them, and ‘burglar bars’ on each window to the
tenth floor. Murray remembers the days before television, seeing American films
at the drive-in, and being transported into another world where people on
screen would ‘kiss slow with faces crossed’, enchanting to any naïve kid.
A significant memory
contained in one of the best poems, called ‘High Speed Trap Space’, is of a
collision in the car with animal with ‘big neck, muzzle and horns…’ on a narrow
road in the bush on a ‘rainy dark’ night. The feeling of entrapment and
claustrophobia is contained in ‘Nowhere to swerve-but out between trunks
stepped an animal…’. The car is described as ‘our little room’ racing on to ‘a
beheading.’ The deadly seriousness and potential violence of the situation is
captured graphically:
‘No dive down off my seat
would get me low
enough to escape the
crane-swing of that head
and its imminence of
butchery and glass.’
Murray braces himself for
the worst, and even though the collision is avoided, it may as well have taken
place:
‘My brain was still full of
the blubber lip,
the dribbling cud. In all
but reality
the bomb stroke had still
happened.’
The whole Azaria
Chamberlain/ dingo story is evoked poignantly but succinctly in ‘Being Spared
The Inquests.’ A localised fright- ‘a toddler’s scream’- but the horror is
avoided as:
‘Our valley came this close
to a deadly later fame.’
The unfortunate schism
between Ireland and its northern neighbour is featured in ‘All of Half Way’
where the speaker is advised to take off his green cap before he gets to
‘Coleraine’ (Derry) - it is only ‘our equestrian team cap’, and ‘colours aren’t
yet mortal in Australia’, says the poet wryly.
Sometimes the memory is focused
on a clearly stated location, as in ‘A Denizen’, about an octopus at Wylie’s
Baths. By using ‘bing’ I can discover that Wylie’s Baths is an ocean tidal pool
near Coogee, NSW. Murray sometimes offers precise locations in order to take
you there. The ‘octopus is dead’, right ‘below the circus balustrade/ and the
chocked sea tiles.’ Once entertaining the children by hanging ‘from its cupped
feet’, it now, chlorine-infested,
‘…lies, slop biltong,
beak and extinct pasta
out in the throwaway tide
and will leave with the
wobbegong.’
The ‘wobbegong’ I know from
reading Tim Winton, but ‘biltong’? Apparently a dried, cured meat from South
Africa.
The poem ‘Growth’ refers to
the growing cancer in ‘friendly Gran’, as well as the growth in the speaker who
grieves because he is ‘barred’ from seeing her (‘…Grannie’s death had/ been
hidden away, as cancer/ still was then…’), and growth in the crossing of a
threshold of sorts: ‘I was hugged and laughed over/ for the miles I’d covered’
in a long walk trying to make sense of it all.
Elsewhere Murray
celebrates, in his memory, 1960, which ‘Brought the Electric’- ‘the new yellow
glare/ that has reached us at last’; recalls the sober experience of being on
‘Bench Seats’ when the polite conversation of a girl with Downs Syndrome is met
with ‘a whispered grimace of mirth’ between two women she is addressing; and
chillingly recounts a high school massacre in which ‘…a celibate/ victim of
years ago divines/ We’re shooting back now.’
Besides a strong focus on
memories, Murray main preoccupation seems to be matters of family and matters
of health, as you might expect from a man writing in his seventies. Poems about
the aging body, hospital visits, body replacements and falls. In ‘Diabetica’, in a poem that just might be
closing in on Sylvia Plath confessional, Murray writes of a man who ‘…yawns
upright/ trying not to dot the floor/ with little advance pees.’ Murray, it
appears, is visiting his wife Valerie in hospital in ‘The Plaster Eater’, she
who is undergoing (another?) knee operation. The end of the poem features one
of the loveliest tributes I have seen between two old lovers-
‘I, butter boy, sipper of
vinegar,
am amazed as ever how you,
dear pardoner, kindest
wife,
always blame yourself
as now, beyond hospital
staph
and the overworking
knife.’
‘Vertigo’ tells the story
of a speaker who sounds just like Murray who has fallen in the shower-room of a
hotel he is staying in (always worse when it’s not your place). The pragmatic
nature of the speaker is illustrated by his understanding that falls of this
kind mean it’s ‘…time to call the purveyor/ of steel pipe and indoor railings…’
Furthermore, there will come a time with the arrival of:
‘…the sunny day when
street detail gets whitened
to mauve
and people hurry you, or
wait, quiet.’
This enthralling and varied
slim booklet of poems was all created on Les Murray’s beloved Brother typewriter-
as discussed in his poem about a third of the way through this collection- ‘The
Privacy of Typewriters’:
‘I am an old book
troglodyte
one who composes on paper
and types up the result
as many times as need be.’
For Murray, the computer
prints ‘text that looks pre-published.’ And it doesn’t awaken or seduce his
senses like the typewriter does:
‘I fear a carriage
that doesn’t move or ding,
no inky marching hammers
leaping up and subsiding.’
The typewriter has its
advantages- mistakes made- ‘whiteouts where thought deepened’, and ‘wise
freedom from Spell Check’; and lo and behold if you hit the wrong key- ‘a
writhe of child pornography’ might suddenly fill the screen, and, scarily,
‘…the doors booting open
and the cops handcuffing
me,
to a gristlier video
culture
coralline in an ever colder
sea.’
Oh, to one day drive off,
far away, to Bunyah, NSW with a bottle of red, and knock on the door of the
Murray’s, just like Ted Hughes did forty or so years ago with his brother
Gerald, when they drove to meet their painting hero, Hans Heysen, in Hahndorf,
SA.
THE first time I can ever recall looking at
YOUTUBE.COM was when I came across a link on a Van Morrison website for his frenetic
song ‘Mystic Eyes’ – an enigmatic performance taken inside some zoo grounds
with ‘Cuby and the Blizzards as backing, a guitarist running around and around
a tree. I loved the clip- still do- and it set me off for hundreds, if not
thousands, of YOUTUBE journeys.
VAN: MYSTIC EYES
Some of the clips I have watched the most
are live clips from favourite performers, like Elvis singing Unchained Melody,
and Joni singing Amelia, Melanie with Ruby Tuesday, The Moody Blues dubbed
somewhere in Paris in a concert called The Lost Performances 1970, even America
on German television with I Need You, and an exhilarating performance by Stevie
Nicks of Rhiannon on Burt Sugarman’s Midnight Special.
Then there are these clips, special for
that extra bit that they can add. They consist of footage of the singer or the
band performing live in the studio in preparation for the album. Each of them
offers fascinating insight into the craft of recording, and what it tells about
each performer.
This first one is of Simon and Garfunkel in 1969 in a rehearsal of the
majestic Bridge Over Troubled Water, from a documentary called Songs of America
1969. From the same film is footage of their special live performance of the
beautiful For Emily Whenever I May Find Her.
Art sings Bridge Over Troubled Water
dutifully whilst Paul wanders around the studio looking at various stages tired
or grumpy. When his ‘mic’ doesn’t come into play immediately for the shared
‘Sail on silver girl…’ he barks orders consisting of ‘where’s my mic!’ Towards
the end of the song he wanders behind Art and dances and does his own
orchestral moves, clearly enjoying the tune. I love watching it, not just for
the lovely, lovely music, but also because I fancy that I can read Paul Simon’s
ecstatic sense of ‘wow, what a great song I have written’, on his face, and I
find that intriguing; and also because his grumpiness reminds me of the story,
apocryphal or not, that he was always jealous that his partner got to sing the
majority of the track, and received most of the plaudits as a result. The
performance is raw and it makes me think that the song is young and fresh, like
newly grown flowers, and that is exciting.
SIMON & GARFUNKEL: BRIDGE OVER TROUBLED WATER
I grew up pretty much obsessed with The Doors. I had great fun wearing my
Jim Morrison t-shirt in the Year 12 school photo. I wore a Morrison badge
everywhere I went. Not many people my age back then seemed to know them. This
was the period before the great Doors renaissance that occurred around 1980-81.
It was rumoured that John Travolta was going to play Jim in a film (it ended up
being Val Kilmer). Slowly, slowly some of my friends caught on to how good they
were, and then we started collecting bootlegs. Wild Child is a good song, but I
don’t think it’s one of their very best. This clip is unique, though, in that
it captures the band and their producers in the studio rehearsing, and possibly
even laying down, the definitive take. Jim looks stoned, Robby appears to be
quiet and going with the flow, John is practising his drumming, and Ray is
trying desperately to get some control happening. It’s just as I would have
pictured it. Jim is clearly having a great time, much to Paul Rothchild’s
chagrin. ‘Don’t overblow it, Jim, we’ve got a long way to go…’ One imagines he
might have said these words plenty of times. After some false starts, the song
begins, sounding just like it appears on the record, and a transformation takes
place. Like a true professional. Jim suddenly becomes serious- concentrating
but posturing, eyes closed, doing his best to pay due credit to his great
lyrics and whatever the others have done to his words. He looks and sounds
wonderful, enough to make Michael Hutchence cry.
This
revealing clip intrigues me for another reason. It shows rehearsals for the
album The Soft Parade. If you look at the footage of Jim singing other songs
from the album- Touch Me and Tell All The People- outside of the studio-he is
fully bearded and looks much older. Did his looks alter that much, so quickly?
It all may be partly explained by the fact that the album took a total of nine
months to record, beginning in June 1968. By all accounts a lot of this was due
to Jim’s alcoholism and general apathy. There is a hint of this in this clip.
My guess what we see is very much a truncated account.
THE DOORS: WILD CHILD
The Rolling Stones have always been a strange fit for me. A band I
admire, for their music, enigma, charisma, the same reasons I like The Doors,
as a matter of fact- but there is some sort of hole, or chasm in my
appreciation, and I have never really been able to work out why. It might
because I don’t know their music well enough- just their ‘popular’ songs,
mainly. And they don’t work for me in a lot of cases all that well. I am
thinking about ‘You Don’t Always Get…’; ‘I Know It’s Only Rock ‘n’ Roll; ‘Let’s
Spend The Night Together’; ‘Get Off My Cloud’, etc, etc- all ok tunes but not
ones I would deliberately listen to. Then there are the ‘classics’, like
‘Jumping Jack Flash’ and ‘Brown Sugar’, great songs but for my brain the
appreciation wears off- in other words I tire of them- I would say this is the
same for ‘Wild Horses’ as well- I will it to be a GREAT song, a masterpiece,
but it doesn’t quite seem to me to get there- unlike, say, my favourite Stones
songs like ‘Gimme Shelter’ or ‘’Street Fighting Man’ which I CAN listen to
every week of the year.
Nevertheless,
I do really enjoy this clip of ‘Wild Horses’- it really is something to watch a
tired looking, really hard working band laying back to hear the fruits of their
success and hard work, knowing that they do have a lovely song, and listening
carefully to it to make sure it is exactly what they want. It reminds me a
little of the story about Justin Hayward who apparently cried when he heard
‘Nights in White Satin’ played back for the first time- this one not quite as
euphoric! Mick: pensive, thoughtful, ultimately content;Charlie: nearly asleep???;Keith: having the time of his life. Each
member of the band probably listening to their own personal contribution to the
song- the vocals, guitars, drums.
THE ROLLING STONES: WILD HORSES
This is Nick Cave in the studio during the making of ‘No More Shall We
Part’, in Abbey Road Studios, around 2001. My favourite album of his- I played
it to death in the car on the way home and on the way to one of the toughest
jobs I’ve ever had, in a place called Mansfield, Nottingham, UK. This is
probably the most polished of all the studio recordings, a kind of documentary
feel, like it was always going to be released. There are other songs that
feature on this DVD as well.
Nick
Cave looks very serious, very professional, wanting to do a great, sombre
serious justice, with the rest of the band fully committed as well. The false
starts are magical, as is the intensity of emotions, the removal from the
loose, anarchic days of ‘Nick The Stripper’, the live playing of music in
separate rooms, the mixing, everyone’s contorted faces, and the fantastic blast
of aggression at the end with Cave standing up and throwing everything behind
it- ’98 out of 100? Well we better do another one then!”
When the Smartbus arrived at the Madden Street junction at the
exact time she hoped it would, Milly dragged her tired limbs onto the first
step and used the small handrail to clamber onto the path of the bus proper. In
her right hand was her vinyl briefcase and in her head were memories of last
night and the dull repetition of the previous nights before- and, oh, for as
long as she could remember. There had been, for some time now, the
‘infotainment’ shows like ‘My Kitchen Rules’, and ‘Masterchef’, both as bad as
each other and now the news itself had become dreary, and there was those
ghastly American courtroom and law and order shows on every other channel…
Milly looked around at all the flashy advertising on the walls of the bus, and
the driver’s door, and even above her on the roof if you ever craned your neck
that high. Notices about fare evasion abounded- she always hated the way young people-
students mostly, refused to pay their way- and there was a droll notice about
changes that were about to be made at the Northland interchange… and when it
came right down to it there weren’t too many advertisements, they all seemed to
be from the transport commission, about giving up your seat to pregnant women,
and the consequences of placing your feet on the seat, and a number to ring if,
as a passenger, you see anything suspicious. The explanation of what might entail
‘suspicious’ was not made clear.
Then Milly glanced around at the other people on the bus. Everybody
had the same expression, sitting so still, looking directly in front of them. She
counted twelve people all together, excluding the bus driver, and all but two
besides herself were engaged in the use of a mobile phone in some way, whether
it be employing some kind of application, texting someone or merely scrolling a
screen stupidly and automatically.
The bright lights of Bell Street threw a hazy glow onto the windows
of the bus. Milly noticed with relief that Balmoral Avenue appeared through the
windscreen gloom. It was sudden but as luck would have it somebody else wanted
Milly’s stop and had planned its arrival better. The rear doors yawned open and
Milly spilled onto the street, crossed the road with the 7-Eleven on the
corner, and walked solemnly around the corner into the path of her apartment.
Herownroomatlast!Sheclosedthedoor,
put the kettle and the radio on, unfastened her shoes and stepped out of her
dress. She found a half- finished bottle of wine in a cupboard and some
crackers besides the fridge. Milly found herself staring at the plum-coloured
carpet at her feet, as she eased herself slowly into a chair. Whenever she
stared like that she asked herself if she was happy. She often had these
interior conversations. She hated sitting completely still, in case depressing
thoughts came into her head. Besides the useless chatter coming from the radio,
everything else was completely still. How she longed for a knock at the door or
the phone to ring. This feeling of melancholy stillness lasted long enough for
Milly to finish her wine. She began to think about everything that had happened
that day.
Milly taught her Year 7 class first thing in
the morning. As she emerged from the room, feeling good about things because
her fears of an unruly class were not even close to being realised, Harry
Taylor walked toward her from the opposite direction. He must have seen her
smile because he wanted to chat now it was recess. ‘It’s funny’, thought Milly,
‘how everyone wants to speak to you when you have a smile on your face, but
hide or look away when they see you glower.’
Harry Taylor was always strict with his kids.
Milly was glad her students had not interrupted his, two doors away. She saw
right away that he was feeling good about something too, a rich beam spread
across his encouraging face. Milly accepted his invitation to stop, somewhat
apprehensively, because it hadn’t happened before.
‘Hi Milly, something’s made you happy. You know, I have never been
able to reconcile the thought of you being a teacher, even for the whole two or
three years you’ve been here. None of the teacher’s at my school when I was a
kid looked like you. There is nothing remotely teacher-like about you!’
Milly felt her face redden, and couldn’t help
asking, ‘ so what is a teacher supposed to look like then?’
Harry’s face flickered and his eyes glanced
over Milly’s shoulder, and he replied ‘oh, I think you know exactly what I am
talking about.’
Shehadthoughtofnothing elseallday;she
shivered in her sudden realisation that Harry’sfacefascinatedher;shecouldsee
clearly the soft lines around his cheeks and the small, charming grey stubble
on his chin; his grey eyes that were soft and endearing; his teeth that were
surprisingly small and even and still naturally white despite what Milly knew
to be his mature age.
Suppose Milly invited Harry Taylor back home, to Balmoral Avenue.
She would have to get rid of quite a lot of clutter. She would be embarrassed
by her bedspread and her old, faded yellow towels. The ugly gnome by the front
door would have to go as well as her sentimental collection of snow domes from
all over the world that had been on her dining room shelves forever, depicting
places Milly had never been to, and in some cases, had never heard of.
‘Come in, Harry’, she would giggle, and offer him a glass of her
favourite McLaren Vale wine. She would ask him to take off his shoes, and take
him on a tour of the apartment and show him the lounge and the two bedrooms.
She would sit next to him on the couch and finger her glass romantically and
smile flirtingly and offer him some Chocolate Royals.
A glint of moonlight shone through the bay windows. Sitting at
opposite ends of the couch now, Harry and Milly’s shoeless feet touched
meaningfully. Milly felt light-headed and filled to the brim with happiness.
Harry’s pleasant faced creased into an involuntary smile. Now there were two
small crystal glasses filled with a strong dark liquorice liqueur. Milly’s
favourite Beethoven Cello Sonata floated through the air. Milly’s shoulders
twitched. She looked at Harry’s heavy, commanding hands and asked him if he
would massage her neck and shoulders. Harry leant forward into Milly’s aromatic
space…
The real Milly crept away from the couch and undressed slowly. The
stress of the teaching day meant she could smell a faint odour of sweat. She
struggled with her underclothes and accidentally ripped a gaping hole in her
left stocking. Feeling drunk and ill at the same time, Milly had difficulty
finding her balance and settled for an ungainly squat in an ugly attempt at the
Lotus position. Her mind became filled with the messy minutiae of the day that
lay ahead, seemingly only hours away now. She threw her arm out to grasp
something that wasn’t there. A cry reverberated around her apartment’s walls.
