Currawalli Street (19 page)

Suddenly she and her companion are standing and picking up their bags. They walk through the public bar to the door. She is looking the other way as she brushes up against him but he feels the warm touch of her hand as she passes a small piece of paper into his. The same hand that he opened. He looks elsewhere. He hears the front door close and feels the blood running up his neck behind his ears. He holds the note, if that's what it is, tightly in his hand and finishes his drink. He quickly orders another and makes a show of looking through his wallet for the money. When the drink is delivered, he feels that he can unfold and read the note as if it is something he has come across in his wallet.

483 5202 Between 6.15 and 6.20.

He puts the note into his jacket pocket and finishes his drink much more quickly than he normally does. He says goodnight to the man
standing at the bar next to him; it happens to be his neighbour in Currawalli Street, an odd but friendly man with lively eyes and long scraggly hair who claims to be Polish. He is opening his mouth trying to say something as Jan walks away.

Jan leaves the hotel by the front door and is at his desk in the church office by five thirty, looking over some receipts but paying no attention to the figures. He sits at his desk for a while then stands up and walks around the room. At sixteen minutes past six he rings the number on the note. It rings once before she picks it up.

‘Yes?'

‘I am at the office, working. I'll be here till late. Do you know where it is?'

‘Yes, out the back of the church.'

‘Come through the main doors. They are the only ones that are open.'

‘I might just do that.' She hangs up while Jan is waiting for her next word.

And so begins an affair that happily exists only in the twilight gloom of a church office. Never will it be acknowledged elsewhere.

S
ally Domak has always walked fast. Her steps are small but her legs move quickly. She is used to having to stop and wait for walking companions to catch up to her. It is something she has been doing all her life. That's one of the reasons she prefers to walk alone. She walks up and down Currawalli Street as often as anybody else but is so intent on walking that she doesn't see in the front yards or on the verandas the people waiting for her to address them.

She generally leaves for university early in the morning, intent on catching the express train. It is earlier than she needs to leave but this is the train she wants to catch. The man who was the stationmaster told her about it on the platform one morning. She had seen him at church but didn't realise that he lived in Currawalli Street. He is no longer the Choppingblock stationmaster but, like all decent occupations, his job will not leave him alone even though he has finished with it. She used to talk to him at the station often, but then she began to catch this earlier train. He doesn't look up from his broom so early in the morning.

She likes Currawalli Street at this time. The night has picked up her skirts and left and the day has just stretched the sleep out of her bones and is easing into the business at hand. Willy-willies are a different colour; they carry the pink of the early morning sun and rise higher in the lighter air. The statue of the soldier glistens with dew, delicate lines of spider webs drift into her face, the sound of her quick steps echoes in the quiet street. Sometimes she can still hear Jan snoring as she closes the front gate. Not because he is a loud snorer but because she is attuned to it.

At first, Sally went to university to study European painting but midway through she switched to social studies. In some ways she feels like she is waking up for the first time. That's why she didn't tell Jan about changing courses. She suspects now that he has happily kept her in a state of slumber ever since they have been married. She has realised that keeping secrets is as much a part of a marriage as confessions and disclosures.

The university is on the outskirts of the city proper and Sally spends her whole day discussing with other women what they are happy about, what they are angry about, and what they can do to change what they think must be changed. The course is called social studies but most of her classmates have crossed out the word ‘social' on their notebooks and replaced it with ‘women's'.

And today they are marching on the city in the first of a series of strategic demonstrations.

Sally steps off the train and begins to work out what she needs to organise in what order. She is in the university grounds before anybody else and by the time that her classmates arrive, most of the preparation
is done.

The protest chants are carefully orchestrated; Sally organises choir practices after class that appear at first to be quite innocent and unremarkable. But this is where the most powerful chants are chosen and arranged. Lessons have been learned from rallies around the world. Women have returned from Lebanon, Thailand, Burma, Guatemala, China and Ireland, places where the power of voices chanting in unison is recognised. Sometimes the windows seem to rattle, even when there is no chanting.

The anecdote that galvanises all of Sally's classmates and what binds them to their concerns is one that she innocently told one morning over a cup of tea. How Jan likes to ask her questions about her study but never listens to the replies. Yet he considers himself to be an enlightened man. And every woman had a similar story.

And as far as she is concerned, therein lies the real issue. Probably most men need only to be woken up rather than beaten over the head. The enemy doesn't lie in men; it lies elsewhere. Men and women, in different ways, have both been suppressed by discrimination and chauvinism. That's the opinion she currently holds, especially when she sits across the table from Jan and sees in his eyes the delight that he has always shown when he is with her.

The rally begins as a decent downhill walk to the centre of the skyscrapers, far enough away that the most passionate and strident of chants begins to sound tired and unconvincing by the time any protest reaches the parliament building that signifies the centre of the city. And so it was Sally's suggestion to stay silent until the marchers turn the corner into the main street.

And as they walk the silence becomes powerfully dramatic. Anybody
who sees the line of silent marching women, their heads bowed, thinks they are witnessing a religious ceremony of great richness and intense dread. The silence held along the line makes the energy of the marching women grow. And so the strong ranks are among the shoppers and businessmen before anybody has time to comprehend the meaning of their presence, and when they begin their chant, it is like an explosion: the resonating calls like weapons, slashing and stabbing at the occupants and representatives of the Establishment.

Peter Alexis, the young Polish man with the wild eyes and long scraggly hair who lives at number thirteen, is resigned to living alone. At this very moment, two o'clock precisely in the afternoon, he is seeing a young woman out the front door. It is for the first and last time. He doesn't know it for sure yet, although he suspects it.

Most people think Peter is strange. Sometimes, strange in the simplest of ways. In quaint, gentle ways. Sometimes not; some people think that his apparent simplicity hides a tangled and dangerous complexity just under the surface. He is not disliked; he is just best left alone.

On some days, strange is too strong a word for Peter. Odd is better.

Merryn is turning the screen door handle as she listens to Peter continue his story about a casual evening he once had in Geelong. The tightness of her grip belies the pleasant expression on her face. She feels that it is okay to turn and look at Peter now that the door is swinging open.

‘So remember,' he says, ‘Friday night is my Electronic Music Night. Once a month without fail. I stay home and listen to some music. I
get Chinese food. It's a real buzz. Can you be here at seven thirty this Friday?'

‘I don't think I want to. Look, Peter, I'm not sure that we're suited. We should let this settle down and see what is there before . . . before.'

‘But this is only the first time you have come around.' The smile leaves Peter's face as he realises what Merryn is saying. ‘Oh I see . . . I understand . . . Well, thanks very much. It was really good getting to know you.'

‘I'm sorry, Peter. I wish it could be different.'

‘Don't worry about it. At least you came around. That's the main thing. Are you going to be okay to get home?'

‘Of course. I'll just walk down to the station. I'm glad there are no hard feelings.'

Peter looks confused. ‘So am I. See you later.'

Merryn walks to the front gate. It's a sunny afternoon. The door is already closed when she looks back. She won't visit him again. She had liked the look of Peter when she met him at her sister's boyfriend's party. She thought he was shy because he didn't say very much. She was pleased to come to his home and see his cat paintings when he asked. She likes artists. But she soon realised he was not what she thought he was. Which is more her fault than his. She has always misjudged people, especially men; she often assumes there is more to them than there actually is.

To her right is another house, a little grander than Peter's, then the little park with the statue of the soldier with the bowed head and, beside that, the church. She stops and looks at the church again. The letter ‘T' has fallen off the sign on the wall and so it reads the church
of chris. She laughs. She turns and begins to walk down the street. Across the road a young man is trimming a long-established honeysuckle growing along a fence. She likes honeysuckle. He stops pruning to look at her. She looks back at him, unafraid of meeting his eye. There is something about this man gardening that gives her an unusual courage. He is thin and muscled like a circus worker. His cropped hair is black and his shirt looks too small for him. Perhaps he hasn't worn it for a long time, she thinks.

‘What made me think that?' She speaks aloud but quietly to herself. The young man is still looking at her. He has seen her lips move.

‘I love honeysuckle!' she calls out.

‘Good for you!' he calls back.

She smiles and walks on. Then she hears footsteps behind her. When she turns he is standing there. He has green combat boots on. They look well worn. She looks up at his face. The shadow of the jungle is there. Not that she recognises it for what it is.

He hands her a spray of honeysuckle. ‘There you are,' he says. He is halfway back across the street before she can call out thanks. He either doesn't hear or ignores her. She resumes walking. At the end of the street she turns and looks back again. He has disappeared.

She walks along Little Road to the station. Two streets run off to the left: the first, closest to Currawalli Street, is Borneo Street and the next is Battlefield Street. It has a few shops perched awkwardly near the corner. She can't see what they are. Her grandparents used to live in Borneo Street. Not this one, but in a suburb on the other side of town.

By the time she is standing on the platform, the train is pulling into the station. She is quickly gone, transported away, thinking about the
honeysuckle man rather than Peter.

*

Jim watches the young woman leave number thirteen. She walks quickly to the gate. He sees her notice the sign on the church and thinks for an instant of the letter T now on his mantelpiece. She is dressed like a hippie girl going out for the day. Her hair is brown and long. She looks like she is wearing combat boots, but they are probably not. They don't have the right heels for the jungle. He looks down at his own. They are the only shoes that fit him at the moment. His feet grew so used to being wet and swollen that they are now a half size bigger than before he left.

He has been struggling with the honeysuckle growing across the front fence. It is old, grows bark like dried-out leather. But it is the smell of his childhood and represents his life in this street. The strongest memory he got of home while in Vietnam was when his unit walked through a deserted village and he caught the fragrance of honeysuckle on the wind. That was the day before Brent stepped on the mine.

Over there he was surprised how often he thought about this honeysuckle. Going away, he had discovered, is all about thinking of where you have come from. It wasn't number ten Currawalli Street that he remembered specifically, but rather the smell of gum trees and bushfire smoke, the big empty sky, the sound of his feet on the footpath, the magpies calling out to each other, someone laughing in the distance, radio sounds rolling across a front lawn, the knowledge that the heat would go away at the end of the day. And the sweet smell of this
honeysuckle.

The young woman is wearing a pair of jeans that look new. He sees her lips move but he doesn't hear what she says. He concentrates on her face and forces the echoes of Brent's scream to go away.

‘I love honeysuckle!'

So that's what she said. What do you say to that? Brent's one scream is like sonic glue on the back wall of his mind as he tries to find an adequate response.

She is abreast of him now on the other side of the street. If he doesn't say something then she will think he is mute or, even worse, uninterested.

‘Good for you!' That's it? That's the best you can come up with? What's wrong with you? No wonder she's still walking.

Quickly he picks up a few trimmed stems of the honeysuckle and as he walks across the street, ties them together into a spray. He knows that she hears him coming up behind her; he is making enough noise so that she won't mistake him for a sandshoed assassin.

As she turns he holds out the honeysuckle. ‘There you are.'

All of a sudden he realises that he doesn't need this. He wants to be inside. He doesn't need to be handing out flowers to strange girls like he is a pimpled teenager. He turns and walks back across the street to number ten and goes inside.

But for the next hour, he struggles to remove from his thoughts the picture of that girl's brown hair moving towards him as she accepted the honeysuckle. It is a long time since anything good has stuck in his head. It brushes away the thought of the strange look on Brent's face when he put his foot down and heard the mine click.

Lance Barron lives at number sixteen. He has lived here for ten years. He likes his house. He likes the colour of it, he likes the trees that shelter it, he likes the creaking sound the corrugated-tin roof makes when the sun heats it up, he likes the ruined chook sheds that have grown over with geraniums, he likes having to cut the grass in the backyard, he likes the train line at the back, he likes the house two doors down with its face silhouettes supporting the eaves, he likes living next door to an almost-famous footballer, but most of all he likes Debra, inside his house.