Limestone Man (21 page)

Jack Parry was a loner. A humorous man yet still a loner. But his son recalled one older friend, Yonderly, with whom his dad was close. Yonderly collected tools for Africa.

He lived in George Street and the tools were stored in Yonderly's workshop. This was a green shed opposite his house across the back lane.

On one of the occasions Parry had visited, he had found three men employed, restoring the donated tools. Stropping, stripping, gauging. One man was learning to clean the throat of a huge wooden plane.

Such work, the boy had thought, as he watched these volunteers busy with wire wool and shifting oils. Each face rapt in dedication. Cocooned in concentration.

Nothing here, he realised, was too insignificant to be considered for improvement. A blunt saw, a cracked mallet.

These tools were collected from local shops, or saved from the scrapyard. Dull shears and blunted mattock left Yonderly's workshop renewed.

Parry remembered a scythe from his first visit. This was a huge implement with dangerous blade, awkward handle.

He had seen Yonderly himself select a whetstone from a baffling selection. Then he began loosening the tool's rust. The scythe itself was wrapped and bandaged like an invalid, so careful had Yonderly been to protect his volunteers.

Usually, Parry's work was to roll up unending reams of carbon paper. Under a frieze of women who touched themselves and licked their own fingers. While, outside in the sun, carbon smoke hung in ribbons, the yellow plastic shimmering in its lake.

So when Yonderly had pointed out the scythe's sap
-
blackened chine, the cracked snaith, Parry had found himself speechless.

The boy did not know those words. When Yonderly said
chine
, then when Yonderly said
snaith
, those were the first occasions Parry had heard the words. And the last.

But such a sound was
scythe
. How that word had unsettled Parry. It flashed in his mind, that scythe's iron chine.

Amongst the grasses' seedheads, the yellow rattle and smoky mugwort, Parry gazed into a world the scythe revealed only to himself.

Look at that beast, Yonderly had said, unwrapping the scythe's swaddling.

A man peens a scythe blade, he said. Yes, peens a chine. Peening is sharpening. Or hammering. The finer a man peens, the sharper the metal.

They say the best peeners could get their blades thinner than cigarette papers. Even finer. And hammered out on a scythe anvil.

Ever seen a scythe anvil? No, nor me. In all the years I've had this shed open, I've never found a single one. But comes a day. Comes a day…

I love this work, Yonderly would announce. I say to the boys, we can never know what will be brought in. Simply never know. What might be delivered. Think of everything that's waiting for us. The possibilities.

Jack Parry had been there to see the scythe unwrapped. His son had expected comment. He was not disappointed.

Well, we must all be safe now, the father beamed. The Grim Reaper's lost his big knife. Hallelujah! Let's have a party, tell the girls. But what a nasty piece of work that shears is. Could take a man's head clean off.

Although he had not seen one used, Parry imagined a scythe's strokes, its sighing amongst sap
-
heavy stems, as dusk's dew settled on the swathes.

Yes, Parry had once thought. Was it the tools he loved? Or the words for the tools? In those days, he had been going to write.

Even in Australia, he had still been eager to compose, enthused as he was by Gouger Street market.

No better work, was there? Not painting, no, not painting.

But he saw his mother once again. Her face to the earth as she breathed in the white coriander flowers, tiny as watchwheels. As she burrowed in the limestone tilth. Yes, gardening was considerable work.

But in Yonderly's workshop, there had been incense in the air. Parry thought now it was the perfume of the words themselves. All the lost vocabularies that might find restoration.

On one of his walks Parry passed what he thought was Yonderly's house. He found himself in the back lane, searching out the workshop.

But there was no green shed there. Or nowhere that Parry could recognise. He looked around a cratered yard, hoping for evidence of tools that had awaited repair.

Not a screwdriver, he grimaced. Let alone a twisted caib on The Caib.

Haven't thought of Yonderly for forty years, Parry realised. Yet maybe his house was in Lily Street.

Yes, perhaps the old man never lived in George Street at all. In this mist I'm getting my orientation of The Caib all wrong.

And Parry had paused in a cone of streetlight, tasting the pearls that crusted his stubble. In that district of town not another soul stirred.

Must be close to high tide now, he had thought. Yes, almost high tide. The shoulders of the swell were rubbing against a world he called home. Somewhere, the glow from a pub door shimmied like mercury. An attic light was switched on.

He closed his eyes and tried to recall the workshop. Wires and wheels. A forest of dead dials. But more powerful were the smells of the different oils that had suffused the benches.

And on he walked, a puzzled man, doubting himself. The workshop could not be found. The fret clung like thistledown. Air was thick around him.

And he thought once more of his mother. A pinch of ash was all he had held, watching it blow back from the Caib cliffs. A spoonful over The Horns, across the lagoons. An urnful dug into the allotment. Now kept by strangers.

Ash grey, ash fine. To stick to the lapels of his second
-
hand suit. To rest a moment upon his lips. A powder like the mist that had grown over the town and hung in a pall.

Yes, people disappear, Parry said to himself, the rime cold on his lips. Everybody disappears. Eventually. So why shouldn't places vanish?

III

What did you do there exactly? asked Mina. In this marvellous shop? Down Under?

She and Parry were together in Basement Booze, sharing mugs of coffee. A man came in and asked about cigarettes. There was a woman with a gauze of mist in her hair, looking at the Polish beers.

I can get these for nearly half the price in B&M, she told the room.

Mina looked tired. Obviously after a poor night. But she shrugged and clinked mugs with Parry.

You really want to know? he asked. It's pretty dull.

Try me.

Sorted the stock that I brought in from Gouger Street Market. Tapes and CDs and second
-
hand books.

Think: posters of David Bowie, poems by DH Lawrence. Or was it the other way around? All these boxes of paper, I suppose. Anything that people might have stored. Bills of lading, news cuttings. Rubbish, mostly.

But anything that could make
Hey Bulldog
seem cool. Or vital. I was trying to give the impression that something was going on. You know the song?
There's something happening here…

Must have passed me by, love. But I understand you. And doing it then was easier then doing it now. So opening
Badfinger
is…

Half
-
baked? Suicidal? A stroke of genius? Who's to say? But yes, we need a website. Will ask Gil.

Parry paused. Or is Gil past it already? Might ask a twenty
year old. Glan must know something. As to money, this first year we'll make a loss. And a loss next year. But I can cope with that.

Mina clinked Parry's mug once more.

Maybe we'll also try clothes, he said. A cool second
-
hand dress agency, if we can squash it into
Badfinger.
Use upstairs. Use my bedroom. And try Serene as a model for the frocks. Good figure, hasn't she? Kind of classical.

And Glan too. He's got great cheekbone structure. I can picture him in a vintage dinner jacket. Or something tweedy. With leather elbow patches.

Hoi, Svengali! Cool down.

I mean it, laughed Parry. They're a couple with er, stylistic possibilities.

First time I saw them together in the shop, I thought, yeah, that could work! Didn't even know what I was looking for. Just that I was looking. For something.

Yes, I like Glan's sneer. Seemed a bit shifty on first acquaintance, okay. But combine that sneer with his vulnerability. His rock ‘n' roll insouciance. Mix it up and you've discovered something. What everyone is looking for.

He's a hard little bastard, said Mina. I'll say that about him. Maybe the girl's all right. Yeah, great tits. And small waist. Lucky madam. But Glan is a user. And he's using her. Plain as day.

Maybe it is. Maybe he's using me. Maybe Lulu was using me. Maybe I was using Lulu.

Look, I used to tell Lulu what to wear. Just a skimpy top, I'd say. Flaunt those shoulders, I'd say. You know what I mean, Lu.

Soon the boys were queuing for a gander. Their dads, too. This was Goolwa, remember. Not much else was happening. Farm boys who wrote their names on dirty pick ups? Older brothers who collected stamps? None of them with the Net. Remember that, the world without the Net? Stone Age. I was doing them all a favour.

And here's me thinking it was art, said Mina.

Course it was art. It still is art. Everything's art. I just helped the art along.

And little Lulu cut the mustard in Goolwa?

She was a natural. As to Oz,
Hey Bulldog
was only open eighteen months. Not long enough. It was still in the experimental stage. And now, years later, I'm trying again. One last throw of the dice.

Was it expensive over there?

Not really. I didn't own the place, after all. Just a dusty little shop, wasn't it? A shop with a garden we tried to use for unplugged nights.

Paying the rent was the big expense. And the rates. Making sure most of the bills didn't get out of hand. But there weren't proper wages. I never drew a salary. Lulu had to organise her own tax, her own insurance.

Then Parry smirked.

As if! he said. It never occurred to me to talk to Lulu about tax. She just wasn't that kind of person. Too young for a start. The whole idea would be …
preposterous.

IV

How old was she really, and don't lie.

Sixteen.

Sure?

Well, yes. Call it sixteen. Maybe seventeen.

You're unconvincing.

Maybe twenty
-
five.

Oh yes. Who could ever believe you, mister? I never do. You're dangerous, you are.

Then call it seventeen. I think so. No, I know so.

Sure?

Believe me. She was. Sixteen. She was twenty. Might have been eighteen. Honestly. Not that it mattered. She was like …
family.
And I've never had a daughter, remember.

Like me, you mean?

Not having children is crucial, said Parry. Sometimes I wake up and I think I'm still in Oz. Must be summer, I think, I'm sweating so much. I'm clammy. Christ, I'm soaked.

But it's dread I'm feeling. Yes, a kind of sickening horror. And you know what it comes from? It's not having a family. That's what.

But little Lulu was sort of … expendable? suggested Mina.

Well … who isn't? After what happened to me I know I am. But, yes, being honest again, she was expendable. Yet that's not the word.
Hey Bulldog
was just an idea, remember. A conception. The trick is, always get others to do things for you. So they own that idea. And one day they'll fight for that idea.

But you liked her?

I loved Lulu to pieces. Wonderful kid. Yeah, she slept in the shop. Amongst the stock. Wherever she curled up. In a nest on top of the tapes and posters. Sometimes in a hammock in the garden.

And you miss that life? Don't you?

Too true. But it feels like a dream. I've entered the dream time, God help me. And there's no coming out of that.

Out of the Dreaming? That's what they call it, isn't it? Over there?

Yeah. The Dreaming.

So tell me about it, said Mina.

Parry smiled. It was … the right thing. For a while.

Or is that called hindsight? Look, I gave Lulu money. Of course I gave her money.
Hey Bulldog
didn't cost too much, and I wasn't really spending my salary.

So I started paying for Lulu's clothes. For everything.

There was this haberdashery in Goolwa high street. Real old
-
fashioned place. Corsets and stockings and petticoats. Used to be a girl in there I liked. By that I mean she had an interesting face. And, I wanted to rescue her.

So I brought that girl into
Hey Bulldog
. She came in once, I think. Picked up a Miles Davis album and …
giggled.
Without hearing a note. ‘Bitches Brew' I think it was. Bit different from The New Seekers, which was on the jukeboxes in town.