Authors: Helen Garner
âHave you seen Javo?'
âNo â or not to speak to, anyway.'
âIs he spending all his time at Claire's?'
âI guess so.'
A funny kind of pain, dull, not sharp, spread through my body as if by way of the bloodstreams. Doesn't matter, doesn't matter.
In the middle of the night I woke up and went outside to piss on the grass. The moon hung low in the sky above the quiet hedge. I squatted down at the corner of the house and let my piss run down the bare, grey earth in a trickle. I stood up, wiped myself with my hand, and rinsed my hand under the tap. I stood still, staring at the moon and feeling the soft air on my skin. Claire's car sat there behind me, a big silent bulk in the dark. I thought again of her and Javo, and instead of that pain came the thought,
âWell . . . so be it. Let it be what it is.'
I went back up the steps and crept under the woollen blanket.
In the morning the sky was clear. The sunlight lay on the scrubby grass in long, pinkish-gold strips. The absent-minded carolling of magpies dropped out of the pine trees half a mile away.
Time to go home.
Acknowledgement is made to the following: Judith Wright for permission to quote from her poem âTrain Journey' from Collected Poems, published by HarperCollins; the Essex Music Group for the lines from Joni Mitchell's songs âBarangrill' and âelectricity'; Special Rider Music/Sony Music Publishing Australia for the lines from Bob Dylan's song âI Shall be Free no. 10'; the lines from Noel Coward's poem âThe Boy Actor' are reproduced by kind permission of Michael Playwrights Ltd on behalf of the encore of Noel Coward.
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First published by McPhee Gribble Publishers, 1977
This edition published by Penguin Group (Australia), 2008
Text copyright © Helen Garner 1977
The moral right of the author has been asserted
All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
ISBN: 978-1-74228-213-8
Athena and Dexter lead a frumpish, happy family life, sheltered from the tackier aspects of the modern world and bound by duty towards a disturbed child. Their comfortable rut is disrupted by the arrival of Elizabeth, a tough nut from Dexter's past. With her three charming, chaotic hangers-on, she draws the couple out into a foreign world. In the upheaval Athena see a way out: it leads into a place whose casual egotism she has dreamed of without being able to imagine its consequences. How can they get home again?
â
The Children's Bach
, like the fugue, works its magic most powerfully upon the subconscious mind . . . it is a celebration of family life in the context of the thousand natural shocks that it is heir to in modern times.'
Book World
âHelen Garner is an extraordinarily good writer. There is not a paragraph, let alone a page, where she does not compel your attention.'
The Bulletin
In two of Helen Garner's finest short stories, she examines the idiosyncratic and bothersome notions of honour by which her characters â adults and children â shape their untidy lives.
Honour
is about a couple whose marriage, though abandoned in practice, persists in spirit. But the arrival of a new lover obliges them to make a proper separation and draw their child into the conflict.
Other People's Children
is a witty, sad story of the breakdown of friendship between two women, Scotty and Ruth, and the collapse of their collective household. Scotty loves Ruth's daughter as only the childless can love other people's children, but the broken friendship leaves Scotty with no claims. Into this mess blunders Madigan, looking for something that Scotty has long ago trained herself not to give.
Late in the afternoon my mother and Auntie Lorna and I walk along the beach to Surfers. The tide is out: our bare feet scarcely mark the firm sand. Their two voices run on, one high, one low. If I speak they pretend to listen, just as I feign attention to their endless, looping discourses: these are our courtesies: this is love. Everything is spoken, nothing is said.
From one of Australia's most celebrated writers come eleven stories about the complexities of life and love; of looking back and longing; of what it means to be a stranger, on foreign ground and known, told with the piercing familiarity and resonance we have come to expect from Helen Garner. Remarkably honest, often very funny and always woven in ways that surprise, these stories tease out everyday life to show the darkness underneath â but also the possibilities of joy.
âShe glories in the ordinary and makes it glow'
Adelaide Advertiser