Limestone Man (31 page)

V

You see, people came and went. It was hard to keep track.

Once this woman arrived with a refrigerated display case, run off a generator in the back of her car. She was selling oysters.

Where you from, honey? she asked, when I ordered the first oyster, showing me her soy, her lemonjuice.

Oysterville, I laughed. So these better be good.

And they were.

Later I took the woman into the garden of
Hey Bulldog
, and begged a bottle of sauvignon from the motel. We drank it under the jacaranda while Lulu ran around, lighting incense, putting Bach on the CD.

And how about you? I asked the oyster woman, looking at her brown knees, torn vest. She smelled of oysters, too, cutting open the last oystershell from her fridge.

Addy, she laughed, lips salty with soy. There was a young poets' reading that night in the shop and I invited her to stay. Scared her off.

VI

Sometimes we'd go next door to the motel. If I had Chinese tea, so would Lulu.

What's my title, boss? Lulu would ask. What do I call myself on the phone?

No one ever rings us, I told her. So don't worry.

But if they do? she insisted. When they do call.

How about Development Officer? I'd say. No, Deputy Project Manager. Is that serious enough?

Stupendous, she'd say. Yes, I like that. And she'd sip her tea, and pronounce
Deputy Project Manager
till the Dutchies left the bar in disgust.

Well
Hey Bulldog
's a project, I'd say. In fact, a hell of a project. In the wrong place, of course, but plenty of people find themselves in unlikely places. And make the best of it.

And I'd ask her what we had sold that day. This was when I was permanently in Goolwa. I'd given up Adelaide by then. So I was tidying up, preparing. For departure. Even if it took ages.

And I realised I'd already been out there for five years. But in the end, I was back in the UK within six months.

Album by Nirvana, she'd say. You know, the first Nirvana. With the Irish boy and the Greek boy. It was called
Pentecost Hotel.

Good girl. I'd say. Yes, I'd taught her well. Who bought it?

Sophia, she'd say. Who else?

Sophia lived in Goolwa on a farm outside town. She wanted to be Joni Mitchell. Or Kate Bush. Strummed a black Fender Dreadnought and wrote her own lyrics. Helped in the shop sometimes, too. One of our merry pranksters. Sophia was headed for college, and maybe Europe. Smart kid. Budding poet, God help her.

And? I'd ask. Don't tell me that's everything?

Well Blagger came in and wasted my time. Then Myra came in. And wasted my time. Steve came in next. And wasted my time. Kept looking down my front. Should I wear a bra, boss?

After Steve, this old bloke comes in. And asks if we had the
Oxford Book of Australian Poetry
.

Dunno, I said, but told him he could check the shelves. You see, that's what you always said. Get the customers to do it themselves. To feel involved.

Anyway, seems we didn't have it. But he found a pamphlet he liked. About the paddle steamers. Just a few pages stapled together, but he coughed up ten dollarinos.

Then ten minutes ago this girl asks if I knew about Carinda. Turns out to be a tiny place in New South Wales. Much smaller than here, she says.

Never heard of it, I said. Must be a long way away.

Oh, she says. You know David Bowie went to Carinda and they made a film of him. In Carinda.

No, I said. But I'll check. So I'm checking with you. And there it is, boss, the report from
Hey Bulldog
's
Deputy Project Manager. Can I have a pay rise now, boss?

So I told Lulu, yes, it was on the news or maybe YouTube. David Bowie had arrived in a forgotten town, smaller than Goolwa, more insignificant than Goolwa. To make a video of ‘Let's Dance'.

Okay, maybe I laboured the point of Bowie as an Outback explorer. But Lulu understood why I was making it.

Bowie in Carinda was unthinkable. But since the unthinkable had already happened, it couldn't happen again.

And yes, I suppose I felt a bit peeved. Wasn't Bowie famous enough? Anyway, Lulu knew I was leaving. That I was getting ready. But she disappeared before I'd said goodbye.

VII

No. No rain at all. But everywhere a rumour of rain. A Chinese whisper of rain. That became anything but rain.

I'd look at the sky as if I was a meteorologist. Like everyone else, I studied clouds. Yes, those Australian clouds, huge and gold
-
rimmed in the evening. Grey and pink at dawn.

In fact I thought I should have been painting clouds. Because surely there had never been clouds like those before.

Most of us were weather experts at the end, me and Lulu and the Dutch couple included. It was all we talked about.

I would get up early, before six. For years I'd been an early riser, because that's what school demanded. And I'd sit in
Hey Bulldog
behind the sunscreens and look at the shadows of the shrubs and potted plants we grew in the garden.

Which was my garden. I'd rescued it from the undergrowth in ten
-
minute stints. Yes, it was my garden. Though I never felt much like a gardener. Over there.

That was where Lulu lit her tea candles and we stayed smoking. And talking, talking. Where kids like that singer, Sophia, might strum that black Dreadnought and read her mystical couplets. Where some writer could freeload on my wine and a pizza from the motel.

Yeah, druggy rubbish, I suppose we talked mostly. But important to me at the time.

I can still see those shadows trembling on the green walls. My walls, that I was leaving behind. Walls someone could turn into a hairdresser's. Or tourist information centre when they'd arranged for the rent to be knocked down.

Lulu used to do these finger puppet shapes in the morning when the light was right. Seems blissful, now I think about it. So here's a toast to the
Hey Bulldog
gang. All those who naturally gravitated to that scene. Hey, no matter where you are now, you too had a role.

Actually, I had an email from Goolwa last week. Seems the shop is still empty. But waiting for a possible tenant to make up her mind.

And I thought, yes, another sign of these times. As if I needed one. But at least I put my hand in my pocket and paid for something I thought could make a difference. And maybe it did. For a while.

VIII

There was a painting I liked. Pinned up, not even framed. Called ‘
Chronicle of Light'
I think. Whoever the artist was, and I'm sure they were local, they'd done something wonderful.

I nearly said perfect. But
perfect
's never the word, is it? Yet at least I liked it. They'd shown the Murray in spate before the years of drought. Olive waters, but gilded. Yes, like the light you see around The Caib.

And you know, sometimes I look at the light here and it breaks my heart. I call it the limestone light because it's laid down in layers. Like stone or paint can be. Photon by photon. As if there was, or there could be, a geology of light. But yes, limestone light.

And if I see it, then I think that everybody else must see it. Even if they don't talk about it. That limestone light. Which shines out of the people around here. Even though they would laugh at the idea.

Like you're probably laughing now. No, they'd never admit to it, the limestone light. Rather shrug it off as an embarrassment.

IX

It might have been only one room and I'd have been happy. But
Hey Bulldog
was three rooms, and it felt like home. And I was making my stand. As I'm doing now.

Yes, it felt like home. Whatever home is supposed to mean. In the morning I'd sip a cold coffee and maybe play something so low it was hardly audible. Say Steve Reich. Or a raga, all drone.

Or maybe I'd put on some Bach harpsichord piece. Sheer sunlight, that music, like the concerto in D minor. And I'd look at the shadows moving and hear the breath of Bach. Then I'd think, no it's not so bad here. Even with the ants it's not so bad.

X

Lulu would be asleep somewhere unexpected. She was a cat who curled up anywhere. But even at the end, when I was in Goolwa permanently, I would walk first thing out to the Murray. To smell the low tide, smell the high tide. And realise how different those tides were. Just like The Caib.

The tide here reeks on the slipway. It smells of weed and salt and rot. Of rottenness. But it's different when the waves creep up the breakwater. Slapping against the stone steps and over your shoes.

That's when you know the water's perfume is in your hair. And on your skin. There forever, its stink. The stink of The Caib.

When they die, that's what people from here take with them. The filthy perfume of The Caib. Its salt pollen. Because it's here now. The Caib on our eyelids. The Caib on our lips. Its smell no other smell. Its taste no other taste.

Taint, is that the word? Good enough, I'd say. Because we're tainted by life on The Caib. Yes, that taint is the giveaway. It's what identifies people here. Like the sand in our shoes.

XI

But whatever the tide at the Murray mouth, it ran under a dirty white sky. My sky. Or darker still, almost pewter. Gunmetal without the sheen.

Yes, I'd gaze at clouds that became greyer. An ominous sky with clouds massing in the south. Like a photograph I saw once, of cancer cells under the microscope.

So I'd walk down to the Murray and say
for God's sake now.
It must be now. As if I might predict rain to the second.

Here, I know how rain smells. Blackthorn flowers in the morning. A salty January dawn.

Over there was different. By the end we were all pleading. But no rains fell. There were weather systems passing over and I thought, yes. Right about now. Those owl eggs are ready to hatch.

Then, one Sunday morning, something woke me. I think I'd been drinking into the small hours. Wasn't supposed to, but who is? These days? And maybe I was starting to feel cut loose. A state of disassociation.

When you've been used to school it's hard to adapt to change. You realise your need for routine. That you're uncertain when deprived of it. That you're bereft.

All that time us teachers spend complaining about the job? Meaningless. We're institutionalised. We're timetable addicts. Without the direction a proper job brings to life, lots of people go to pieces.

XII

But forget the red wine or Australian whisky. That Sunday my head was as clear as it's ever been.

Not a cloud in my mind. I was sharp and primed. I almost said ready, but ready for what I've no idea. Outside there was complete silence. Yet I knew. I knew.

Lulu was snoring. Curled like an ammonite in the limestone. In the dirty sheet. And sucking her thumb. Yes, Lulu always sucked her thumb. And I never knew from one night to the next where she'd fall asleep.

It was night, or at least still dark. But I'd heard something. I got up immediately. Naked I suppose, and walked through the shop and opened the front door. I stepped out on to the street.

When I woke it wasn't quite raining. By the time I opened the door I could hear pittering on the skylight. Big drops. Fat, slow drops. Like blood. Drops so big they exploded around me. Great sticky detonations against my shoulders. On my belly and on my neck. And I knew then the weather had changed. But maybe it wasn't a serious change.

Because if the rain came from the south it would have been cold, travelling over the southern ocean. Maybe up from Antarctica.

Like when the wind blows east on The Caib, and the sand seems to go the wrong way. Because we're used to sand travelling east, not west. The same direction the trees point. The way people on The Caib lean into the east. Have you noticed that? Because that's what the wind on The Caib does for you. Deforms you from birth.

XIII

I'd felt it before, that southern rain. Just once or twice. And I'd hated it.

Cold as quartz, that southern rain. You know, if I was a musician, I'd write a song about it. Minor key, a bit wistful. The mood darkening as the rain grows colder. As you realise that southern rain from the southern ocean means winter coming on.

But this was warm rain. And that's why I thought it felt like blood. Rain from the interior, where there never was rain. Where the rain didn't belong.

This was red rain. Miraculous red rain that left rust on my skin and a ruddy film over this silver Hyundai parked in the street.

You know how sometimes everything you see stays clear? And you know you'll never forget it? It's rare but it happens.

That was one of those moments, when I saw the silver car. And the silver car made sense. At last I was seeing that car for the first time.