Isobel Blackthorn's Blog, page 45

Asylum – 11th instalment

To catch the beginning of this story go to Asylum ��� a novel in weekly parts.

In which Yvette makes a surprising discovery about Heather’s brother Angus…

 

3.5

 

Having forgone a tattered National Geographic, Yvette flicked through an old copy of Vogue, before tiring of that as well. She was in the waiting room of a nearby doctor���s surgery, located in a dilapidated weatherboard house. It appeared nothing had been done to the d��cor of the room since the seventies. All the walls were papered with repro-Paisley wallpaper, tan, grey and washed-out orange against an off-white background, wallpaper that clashed horrendously with the ancient loop-pile carpet of deep-purple swirls. The reception area was crammed into what must have been the former kitchen, accessed by patients through a high serving hatch. A series of posters pinned to a wall beared down on waiting patients with bold warnings of the consequences of imbibing and injecting and gorging on junk food. On a rack nailed to the wall beside the hatch was a selection of pamphlets on a range of health matters, from anorexia to UTIs.

Yvette was seated between a doddery old man and a plump mother whose sniffling child scrambled about on the floor at her feet. Yvette ignored the child. Hers would never turn out like that.

She was surprised to find she was filled with a placid acceptance of her lot. Never mind the paternal contenders ��� what a self-absorbed bunch they were ��� the course of her life would turn out fine. Fate was no bad thing. As well, she was awash with the unconditional kindness and support afforded by Heather who had insisted she seek medical attention.

Yesterday, while munching through the breakfast of bacon and eggs Heather had cooked for her, Yvette complained that she couldn���t afford the doctor���s fee, whereupon Heather whipped out her wallet, extracted two fifty dollars bills and thrust them into Yvette���s hand saying, ���that should cover it.��� Yvette had been too overcome by her friend���s generosity to decline. Heather had even made the appointment.

Tired of glossy photos of nubile women draped in designer clothes, all pouts and come-hither eyes, and not keen to return to images of breathtaking scenery and endangered animals in striking poses, she went to the wire rack and rifled through the leaflets, extracting a bi-fold on the Fremantle Prison which clearly didn���t belong there, any more than Profits of Doom had belonged in the reference section of that library. She returned to her seat and read the pamphlet blurbs, slipping into reverie, in her imagination an army of beleaguered convicts in ragged slops lumbering limestone boulders in the blistering heat. Then she heard her name.

She put the pamphlet back in the rack and followed the doctor to one of the rooms in the front of the house. The doctor was a crone of a woman, her long white hair, parted in the middle, drawn away from her face and clipped in place by two carved wooden combs. Her face was weather-beaten with a pair of beady brown eyes, a hook nose and sparrow-beak mouth. Dressed in a grey blouse and straight black skirt she looked half public servant, half witch.

Yvette sat down on the edge of a wooden chair beside the desk and with a quiver of trepidation explained the purpose of her visit.

The doctor observed her closely. ���When was the date of your last period?���

Yvette thought back. ���About twelve months ago.���

The doctor looked puzzled.

���I had a termination last April and I haven���t had a period since.���

���Can happen. Why do you think you are pregnant?���

���Morning sickness.���

���So when do you think you conceived?���

���About the middle of November.���

���Okay. We���ll date the pregnancy from the first.��� She scribbled a note on Yvette���s new-patient file. ���And the father?���

���I���m not sure.��� Yvette felt the colour rise in her cheeks.

She detected in the doctor���s face a wry smile that faded as quickly as it appeared. The doctor wrote out a request for a blood test and told her she didn���t usually ask for an ultrasound at this stage but since they had no real idea of how long she���d been pregnant she requested one as well and told her to return once she���d had the tests.

After paying at the counter, Yvette left the surgery clutching the two forms. The appointment had left her uneasy, her placidity replaced by harsh reality; her circumstances yanked into the brilliant light of the day.

 

3.6

 

Angus was in the back garden when she returned. As she tramped down the hall she could hear him chatting to Viktor. Heather, it seemed, hadn���t arrived back from work. She sat on her bed, knees drawn to her chest. An ultrasound? The receptionist at the doctor���s surgery told her the cost was a hundred dollars. A hundred bucks to have her uterus scanned when women have been having babies for millennia before that technology had come along? She screwed up the referral having reasoned away the need.

Then she reached into her shoulder bag for her phone and ran a finger over the keypad. She had to call her mother. She hadn���t been in touch since she moved to Heather���s place and had been ignoring Leah���s calls. Told herself she was too busy. Now she felt she had no choice. She dialled the number.

Straight away her mother asked if she had any news. She said she didn���t. Then she listened with no interest to her mother���s blow-by-blow account of Debbie���s latest confrontation with Simon���s music teacher and how sweet and unsure of themselves the boys had looked in the choir at the folk festival. Leah said she was sure Peter forgot the words to one of the songs. Yvette made polite introjections, thinking she���d never tell her mother she���d joined a choir.

At last Leah turned her focus back to Yvette.

���How���s the flat?���

���I���ve moved to Fremantle.��� She braced herself for the reply.

���What do you want to live there for?���

���It���s changed since the America���s Cup. You know that.���

���Nowhere can change that much. It was, and always will be, filled with Italians.���

What could her mother possibly have against Fremantle���s Italian community? Yvette felt her own irritation rise; Leah still hadn���t mellowed her prejudices. Was this a veiled attack on her choice of men? Leah had been almost accepting of Carlos in her letters, assuming he was Maltese which was somehow acceptable since Malta was a former British colony, but as soon as Yvette mentioned his nationality, Leah never mentioned his name again.

Yvette knew Leah would never condone the exotic mix of ethnic possibilities on the paternal side of her grandchild, which leant her predicament a new if perverse appeal.

���You���d better give me your new address,��� Leah said.

Yvette told her, adding, ���I���m staying with Heather?���

���That Scottish girl.���

���She���s been incredible.���

There was a moment of silence. Then her mother said, ���Terry���s been looking for you.���

���Really?��� She didn���t want to hear it.

���He asked after you in the post office and the newsagency.���

���Why?���

���Why? Because he still cares for you.��� That inflexion again.

Yvette didn���t answer. She was struggling to accommodate Leah speaking to her this way, as if she were still eighteen. She felt herself pulled back to a younger self as she pulled in the opposite direction, determined to be who she was. Yet another part of her sensed, albeit dimly, that her mother wanted for her a lesser catastrophe than the one she was bent on fashioning for herself.

���You could do a lot worse,��� Leah added as if in agreement.

There was no easy way to do this. ���Mum. I���m pregnant.���

���Pregnant?��� There was a long pause before the inevitable question. ���How far are you?���

���About four months.���

���Why didn���t you tell me?���

���I���m telling you now.���

Leah said nothing for a while. Yvette pictured the down-turned mouth, the stern eyes beneath a furrowed brow. ���Well, congratulations,��� she said at last, with little warmth in her voice.

���And the father?���

���Um��� Does it matter?���

���Of course it matters!���

���I don���t know.���

���How can you not know?���

���There���s a choice of two.��� Which sounded a lot better than three.

She heard her mother sigh. ���And this is what you want?���

���Yes.���

Her question filled Yvette with doubt. Something she���d never let her mother know. She���d burrow her way into it like a worm.

���At least now you���ve solved you���re immigration problem,��� her mother said, with a cool, pragmatic air.

���You think so?��� Yvette said, doubtfully.

���You���ve told the authorities, haven���t you?���

���No.���

���No? Why not?��� Her voice rose in exasperation.

���I want to wait until I hear the outcome.���

���Be it on your own head,��� she said in a low voice and hung up.

Yvette reeled. To her mother she supposed she would always be an insufferable disappointment.

She had never been able to ascertain if beneath her mother���s harsh exterior there lurked a caring heart. It was why, when Leah had left London with Yvette���s step-father and sister ten years before and settled in Cobargo, Yvette stayed behind. She wanted to make her own decisions. She wanted then what she wanted now, to be out from under her mother���s influence. Then she���d thought half the world would be just about beyond earshot. Besides, she���d had an offer from Goldsmiths. Art school was her way of rising from the narrow aspirations of her parents. And she was not without talent. She���d duxed her final school year in art, her paintings hung in all the school stairwells, one even finding its way into the office corridor, bearing down victoriously on the school roughs waiting outside the Headmaster���s door.

Her mother had tried to persuade Yvette to go with them, insisting that as a child Yvette had loved Australia. Yvette didn���t know where her mother got that idea. Not the heat. Not Mrs Thoroughgood���s cruelty. Nor her father���s tornado of a temper. Maybe her mother selectively recalled the flush of Yvette���s face, the gleeful smile she wore when she came home from Heather���s place.

When they arrived back in England and spent that first Christmas at Grandma Grimm���s, Yvette felt deep in her core a cultural resonance. She would stare out the upstairs bedroom window looking down on snow-covered gardens, the very cells in her body fibres in the fabric of the place. Encoded in her DNA were the houses, the garden sheds, the leafless trees, the half-light of winter, the accents, attitudes, television, food, and all of it made perfect sense.

She wasn���t to know the tribulations that lay ahead, that she was to attend one of England���s roughest underachieving schools, its pupils, all two thousand of them, roared to order by an ex-military sergeant garbed in gown and water-board. He instilled terror in all but the most hardened sort. He made Mrs Thoroughgood seem almost affectionate. But he had no influence on the bullying, the malice, the threats. Coming from Australia, skinny and timid and cursed with an Aussie accent, Yvette was a target from the first day. Words flew from the tough girls��� mouths like bullets from a machine gun. Girls with peroxide blonde hair, mean faces and scarred wrists. Yvette survived six years. She retrieved her south-east London accent. Defiance grew in her like jam in a pressure cooker and when her mother announced they were to return to Australia it erupted in scalding splats across every inch of her faith in her family.

 

3.7

 

Early-autumn sunshine shafted through her bedroom window, a sea breeze causing the shadow of the paperbark in Heather���s back garden to dance on the opposite wall. Yvette made a mental note to suggest to Heather that she move the block print to avert fading. She turned onto her back and gazed absently at the ceiling, placing both hands over her belly, feeling the heat from her palms on the taut skin around her navel. And a quiet triumph pervaded her despite her apprehensions. In under a year she���d replaced the fruit of one man���s seed for that of another. For the first time she thought of Carlos as part of her history. She could conjure his image without craving his presence, and Malta, that island filled with the artefacts of the underworld, at once glorious and grotesque, was set free. She���d even lost her compulsion to check for messages from Josie on Heather���s lap top, relinquishing her disappointment that Josie hadn���t been in touch since her arrival in Australia. Still she craved her friend���s forgiveness, which had left her untypically hanging like a door loose on its hinges, flapping back and forth in a fickle breeze.

Her triumph dissipated the moment the fly screen door snapped shut and she heard the steady throb of chords, meandering, then what had become for her an annoyingly twangy prattle. She was anxious for Angus to move out, tired of shoving his doona aside when she wanted to sit on the living-room sofa, tired of his lackadaisical attitude. Angus was condemned in her mind as nothing but a wastrel with delusions far in excess of his abilities. His presence in Heather���s house made her recoil and it was as much as she could do to be polite.

She kept her contempt hidden from Angus, with whom she remained civil, and especially from Heather. She didn���t want to appear to her friend ungracious. Besides, she had no idea the strength of their filial bond. It was impossible to gauge with Heather at work, shopping, visiting friends or otherwise rarely at home.

Before long, the strumming stopped. Footsteps tacked across the kitchen floor and the fridge door opened and closed. Hearing that sound she was hungry again. Which left her no choice. She joined him in the kitchen.

He was bent over his script. ���Leichhardt had an incredible drive you know.��� He straightened, clenched a hand and punched his chest. ���I feel it, here in my gut.���

She stifled a laugh. The fool had no idea where his organs were.

���Writing this script,��� he went on, ���It���s as if I���m becoming the man himself.���

���Wow,��� she said, but what she thought was good grief.

���I���ll have to take the part. I don���t think an actor would do him justice.���

Could he think of nothing else?

She went to the fridge and pulled out a container of the frittata Heather had made last night. She cut a hunk and levered it onto a plate, grabbed a fork from a drawer and turned to see Angus gazing at her.

���That bump of yours sure is growing.���

���Thanks.���

���I must set to work on the script while there���s still peace in the house.���

���I thought you were moving out?���

���All in good time.���

She tried not to contemplate the thought that he might never leave.

She noticed the local newspaper, tucked under a pile of opened envelopes at the end of the bench. She picked up the paper and took her plate to the table, taking up the chair furthest from Angus. Ignoring him was an effort. She forked chunks of frittata and opened the newspaper, keeping her eyes firmly on the print, scanning all the articles from the first page: Old-age pensioners celebrate opening of new Senior���s Centre; school kids raise money for cancer; street crime spike in Hamilton Hill; local men���s group determined to fight on for the rights of fathers. She quickly turned the page, casting an indifferent eye over all the adverts, then the TV guide, the What���s On page and even Trades and Services. Arriving at the penultimate page she stopped, short of sport, to read the small ads.

She had to find a job. With the pregnancy came additional expenses. She���d need a cot, a pram, baby clothes and nappies. She scanned the ads. Cleaner, cleaner, cleaner ��� nope. Bookkeeper, gardener, dog-walker, and, finally, something she could do – junk-mail delivery. The only requirement was a passion for keeping fit. She went back to her room and called the number.

 

The following afternoon, leaflets, fliers, and glossy brochures from Coles and Woolworth���s advertising the week���s specials were piled on Heather���s kitchen table. She had to collate the junk mail herself. She���d been allocated South Fremantle, with a junk-mail drop of about one thousand. She made two cents per leaflet. Today���s delivery amounted to a hundred dollars. When the distributor, Kylie, a jolly woman in her thirties, had dropped off the leaflets, (something she generously offered to do when Yvette explained she had no car), she���d told Yvette she was lucky: It was a bumper week. Heather had tried to talk her out of it before she left for work that morning but Yvette was resolute. Angus had stared in disbelief at the leaflets, mumbling an annoyed, ���I suppose I can write on my lap,��� before tramping to the living room with an arm full of his Leichhardt script.

Four hours later, Yvette crammed the folded junk mail into two large shoulder bags. With a rough outline of a route and a gut full of determination she left the house.

She reached the end of the street and already her shoulders were tense. She could head left down to Marine Terrace or right and up to the end of the next street and down the other side. She headed up the hill.

It was a punishing ascent. At the crest she crossed the road and worked her way down, passing, over on the other side, blocks of units with letter boxes out front, all huddled together in low brick walls. Damn! On her side, on about every third letter box was a No Junk Mail sign. She loathed junk mail, a crass form of advertising, a useless waste of paper and therefore trees, but delivering this heavy bulk she couldn���t help resenting every No Junk Mail sign she passed.

By the time she reached Marine Terrace, her bags felt no lighter than when she���d started. After that, she turned every corner and went up every street, her bags emptying, her heart filling with resentment and humiliation. She could think of at least five ways she���d rather keep fit, swimming, dancing, tennis, yoga, the gym, anything but this. It occurred to her that at least detention-centre detainees have all their basic needs met, a thought she slapped away before it had a chance to take hold.

 

3.8

 

When she returned to the house, Angus was in the living room, a luxurious space, with walls of terracotta red, the damask of the sofas in complementary sienna, strong colours tempered by cream curtains, cushions and rugs. The room was a sanctum, sullied now by Angus slumped on the sofa with a can of beer, his eyes fixed on the television.

An even greater abhorrence unfolded on the screen. A close-up of a careworn woman, the voice over telling viewers she���d just given birth to a premature baby and they both faced deportation to Nauru. Nauru. That hellhole! Yvette wondered what Dan would have made of it; at once troubled by her own lack of engagement, her initial interest dwindled to chaff drifting at the bottom of an empty sack of grain. The few morsels of Profits of Doom she���d managed to retain had faded into the background of her awareness. What happened to the burst of illumination she experienced that day? Even her initial creative fervour after the night of her troubling dream had abated. Artistically, she still found herself in a space between her old precisionist ways and something new, but her mind was hazy and unstructured. She left Angus undisturbed and dumped her bags in her room.

She found Heather in the kitchen, dicing zucchinis. Behind her, onions sizzled in a frying pan. ���Smells delicious,��� Yvette said, sitting on the chair nearest the bench.

���Cheers honey.���

���Can I help?���

���Stay where you are. You look exhausted.��� She scooped the zucchini into the pan and gave the contents a stir.

���I���ve never done anything so gruelling,��� Yvette said. Which was true, she wasn���t given to hard labour.

���Does it pay?���

���I made a hundred bucks,��� she said with a surge of unanticipated triumph.

���I make that in an hour,��� Heather said, benignly. Adding, ���I���m sorry. I didn���t mean������

Yvette deflected the rancour that rose in her defence. ���That���s okay,��� she said. ���The annoying thing is I���m a graduate. I have a Masters for heaven���s sake. But of course, painting doesn���t pay.���

���Unless you paint walls.���

���In cream.���

They both laughed.

She watched Heather crack six eggs into a bowl. The steady rhythm of the fork chinking against glass, the sight of the fresh herbs, the mound of grated cheese, the tomatoes and salad vegetables laid out along the bench, it was all so consummately homey.

���You could teach,��� Heather said reflectively.

���I don���t think I���d be good at it. Besides������

���I meant in the future. For now you are stuck.��� Heather poured the eggs in the pan. With her attention on the omelette she added, ���The mother of Angus��� daughter is a teacher.���

���I never knew he had a kid!���

���Hasn���t he mentioned her?���

���No. But then, we haven���t talked much.���

���He���s the silent type. Doesn���t give much away.���

Yvette found the remark an odd assessment of Angus. He was a gas-bag in his exchanges with Viktor. She let Heather���s belief pass without comment, keen to find out more about his offspring. ���How old is she?���

���Amy? Five. Cute little thing but we don���t see much of her.��� Heather left the stove, a look of sadness fixed in her gaze.

���That���s a shame.���

���It is.���

���Where is she?���

���The mother, Julie, has custody. She���s in Adelaide.���

���A bit far.���

���He���s moving over there as soon as he���s fixed up the bus.���

Angus started to make sense. Heather had never displayed to her brother anything but a diffused goodwill, accommodating his presence on her sofa with tolerance and sympathy. The whole time she���d been here, Yvette found her friend���s attitude towards him astonishing. Even with this new insight into his character he still hadn���t shifted far in Yvette���s estimation. All along she hadn���t doubted the Leichhardt script would come to nothing yet at least now she could see that perhaps it didn���t matter. The script was his way of coping with his loss. He was a little less a wastrel, a little less delusional. He���d become to her a larrikin with a wound and she made a mental note to regard him with a measure of respect.

Filed under: Uncategorized Tagged: antony loewenstein, asylum, asylum seekers, Australia, black comedy, boat people, free novel, illegals, profits of doom, visa overstayers

Asylum- 10th instalment

To catch the beginning of this story go to Asylum – a novel in weekly parts

In which Yvette moves into Heather’s house and struggles to accommodate the presence of Heather’s older brother, Angus…

PART THREE

3.1

Yvette leaned against the balcony wall one last time, resisting an impulse to rest her elbows on the scalding cap of concrete. A shimmering haze rose from the rooftops, the city skyline indistinct in a sandy murk. She turned her face to the east, the wind sweeping back her hair. She heard a car roar up the road somewhere below, the screech of brakes, then a few loud honks. Stupid goose, she thought, narrowing her eyes as she imagined a domed head of slicked-back white hair and a clapping beak. Her bare arms were stinging so she pulled back into the shade.

Australia Day was affecting her mood. The anniversary of the arrival of the First Fleet when this land was invaded and conquered, and its indigenous peoples oppressed, a day of white-fella flag waving, righteous congratulations and back-slapping celebrations, the sort of day relished by Mrs Thoroughgoods and an entourage of blokes and sheilas. Today Yvette couldn’t help identifying with the indigenous peoples, not that she knew any. For her it was a day of complete alienation. After all, that was what she was, an alien. Some creepy, be-tentacled freak barred entry after having dropped in from outer space.

She wondered if asylum seekers viewed Australia as a haven. Locked in detention centres or deported to malaria-infested islands to languish for months and years in demountables and tents, did they hanker to belong here, to commit their hearts minds bodies and souls to this place? Or, like her, did they question why they even came here?

The heat and the glare became too much so she went inside, closing and locking the balcony door before going to the bedroom and the bathroom scanning for missed items. Then she opened all the kitchen cupboards. They were empty. Not a cockroach in sight.

Heather was due any minute. Dressed in a loose cotton shift that vaguely hid the small bump of her belly, Yvette stood by the door with her meagre possessions that were packed into the three small boxes, the canvass holdall and the blue travelling bag all stacked at her feet. Her canvasses were leaning against the edge of the sofa.

She heard footsteps approaching in the corridor and opened the door before Heather knocked. Heather was garbed in a loose berry-red frock with cream brocade around the neck and the short-sleeve cuffs. She had a way of seeming regal without the pretentious airs. Yet her outfit was too smart for house moving. Yvette surmised she must be on her way elsewhere. They hugged and she breathed in a musky scent.

‘Is this all?’ Heather said, looking down then glancing around the flat.

‘I’m a light traveller.’

‘So I see.’ She bent to lift the box nearest her feet. Yvette followed her downstairs with another.

Two more trips up and down the stairs and they stood by the car, panting. Sweat beaded on Heather’s brow. ‘Ready?’ she said, opening the drivers-side door.

Yvette swung open the passenger-side door to a blast of hot air and braved entry into the car’s vinyl-infused interior. At least now they were away. Australia Day, she thought, would always be the anniversary of the day she left that rotten flat. She glanced up one last time as Heather pulled out of the car park. It’s all yours, she said to the cockroaches.

‘Thanks Heather,’ she said, spontaneously.

‘Don’t mention it.’

Heather turned into Beaufort Street and they waited at the next set of traffic lights. It was clear from her demeanour she knew where she was heading.

‘How does it feel, being back here?’ she said, once they’d got through the stream of traffic.

‘Weird.’ As though her past crowded around her, a jostling throng of memories, of school, home and Heather’s place. ‘I’ve always remembered you,’ she added, impulsively.

‘Same. It was lonely for a while, after you left.’

It had never occurred to Yvette that she’d been missed. She thought of Josie back in Malta and wondered if she, too, felt that loss. Maybe it was easier for the one who leaves, than the one left behind.

Forty minutes of light-hearted observations and fond reminiscences and Heather parked in a narrow, tree-lined street outside a charming brick cottage with a façade rendered in cream and a red-tiled roof, the house tucked behind a neatly-clipped hedge. Yvette was immediately confidant good fortune had provided her with the ideal place to bring a child into the world.

‘I have something to tell you,’ Heather said as she unclipped her seat belt. ‘Angus hasn’t quite moved out. He’s sleeping on the couch. You might say, he’s in transit.’

Then Yvette saw, parked in Heather’s driveway that ran down the side of the house, an old bus, gaily painted in green and red horizontal stripes. To get to the front door, they had to pick their way past spanners, wrenches, screwdrivers and pliers scattered in a wide arc around the front end of the bus. Laid out higgledy piggledy on the small square of lawn were the old bus seats, and up on the porch a small fridge and a two-ring gas cooker. Lengths of pine and sheets of masonite leaned against the side wall of the house.

Inside, the house was spacious, airy and cool. All the rooms to the left and right of a wide hallway had wooden floorboards. Heather showed Yvette into the last room on the left. They both set down a box and after giving Yvette’s arm a quick squeeze, Heather turned to go back outside. Yvette started to follow but Heather told her not to bother. ‘Go put your feet up,’ she said and soon Yvette heard the fly screen clap shut.

A double bed took up much of the room. Beside the door there was a free-standing wardrobe and a matching chest of drawers. Centred in the far wall, a small desk. A tall window overlooked a neat garden of native shrubs and small trees. She sat on the bed, made up with a lusciously-patterned maroon and turquoise quilt, when Heather returned and set down the last of her things.

‘I’ll go and make tea,’ she said. ‘How do you take it?’

‘Heather. I need to tell you something too.’

Heather paused in the doorway. ‘No you don’t. I already know.’

‘How?’

‘That you’re pregnant?’ With a cupped hand she made a sweeping curve over her belly.

Yvette gave her a sheepish look. ‘I should have told you.’

‘You were about to.’

‘I mean before.’

Heather gazed at her sympathetically. ‘How far gone are you?’

‘I don’t know exactly.’

‘You haven’t seen a doctor?’

‘Not yet.’

There was a pause.

‘And the father?’ Heather said, quietly.

Yvette wasn’t sure what to say. How would Heather take the divulgence? ‘I wish I knew,’ she said.

She needn’t have worried. Heather’s, ‘oh dear,’ contained no censure.

 

3.2

 

A week later and Yvette was sitting at her desk. The room was dark, the only light an anglepoise lamp shining its circle of light on her sketch of the deranged woman with the screaming face. The work hadn’t progressed much past her initial effort. She still felt far from translating the sketch into paint. All week she’d been pampered by Heather, who’d brought early morning cups of tea to her bedside, baked savoury slices and quiches, prepared stupendously zingy salads for dinner, and whipped up wholemeal cakes for snacks. She’d even driven Yvette to work a few times and hung around for her to finish her shift. Perhaps that’s why Yvette hadn’t been feeling creative. Suddenly, her life had become soft as feathers.

She clasped her hands behind her head and arched her back. Angus was in the kitchen strumming his guitar. She tuned in to his melodic ramblings and smiled. He’d never be an Eric Clapton, his playing more a pastiche of song snatches. She had barely known Angus when they were growing up. He had his own interests and friends and remembering all their squealing and cavorting in Heather’s back yard, his little sister and her friend must have been to him an irritation he was forced to bear.

The strumming stopped and the fly screen door squeaked open. Soon she heard the murmur of voices coming from the backyard. She put down her pencil and tiptoed across the hallway.

The kitchen was large with patterned tiled walls. Cupboards and shelves were crammed with all the paraphernalia of a good cook. An old oak table took up the centre of the room. Cooling on a wire rack in the table’s centre was the date and walnut loaf Heather had made before she went out to visit a friend.

Yvette stood by the back door. Angus was talking over the fence to their neighbour, Viktor, a welder who’d emigrated from Serbia in the eighties to work in the shipyards. The day she moved in Viktor had invited Angus over and he’d returned with a lemonade bottle filled with plum brandy. Viktor had a still. He had a wife too but Yvette had yet to meet her. Viktor, a pro-Milosevic Serbian from Belgrade, was a wizened old man with a thin mouth, a large nose and piercing blue eyes. He’d look terrifying if he allowed his face to drop its smile. So far she hadn’t seen him wearing anything other than what appeared to be his work clothes. He would entertain Angus with stories of his old life in the Balkans and Angus would entertain him with tales of driving trucks across the Nullaboor. No doubt with the help of a glass of plum brandy that never emptied.

Angus was no doubt telling Viktor about his fascination for the German explorer, Leichhardt, judging by the sprawl of notebooks and paper on the kitchen table. Heather had explained while preparing dinner last night that her brother’s interest had been kindled when he saw Travels with Dr Leichhardt in Australia in the window of a second-hand bookstore in Fremantle. He’d come back with it tucked under an arm. Apparently, within the time it had taken to head home he’d conceived an entire screenplay.

‘A documentary?’ Viktor said.

‘No, no. A drama. A mystery.’

‘You are a talented man Angus.’

‘Thanks. And the story is great. Leichhardt disappeared in the mid-nineteenth century during an expedition across central Australia.’

‘By himself!’

‘No. He had men, horses, bullocks and mules. They were last seen in the Darling Downs.’

‘Where’s that?’

‘Near Brisbane.’

‘Didn’t get far then.’

‘Oh they did.’ Angus sounded defensive. ‘Remains have been found near the Tanami Desert on the Western Australian border.’

‘Really?’ Yvette sensed Viktor was humouring him.

Angus seemed oblivious. ‘A brass plate among other things. No-one knows if it belonged to Leichhardt but I believe it did.’

‘Not much of a film though eh?’

‘I’m going to reconstruct what I think happened. Some say the party died of thirst. Others that they perished in a bush fire. But I think they were massacred by Aboriginals.’

‘Yes, that makes for a good ending. Well, best of luck with it my son.’

Yvette thought Angus’ preoccupation with Leichhardt was obsessive. She doubted he had the talent or the skills for script writing, but she humoured him. When she’d tried to suggest the project might be a touch ambitious, his eyes darkened and his face took on a sort of petulance. He growled at her to leave him alone. So she did. She didn’t suggest he read the copy of Patrick White’s Voss she’d bought in Vinnies one time. Or that he might research other screenplays already written, and published.

Last night, on her way to the bathroom, she’d caught him standing before the bedroom mirror reciting lines, shifting first one way, then another, tilting his head, raising an eyebrow, pointing his chin forward. He was a tall, thick-set man, with a helmet of dark hair framing a long rectangular face. Puckered lips, eyes set deep beneath an arch of eyebrow that barely paused above his stubby nose, and his face carried a look of Munch-crafted alarm, rendering his current efforts even more ludicrous. She had to stifle a laugh as she’d walked by.

Then she censored herself. What right did she have to ridicule his aspirations? She was behaving like Anthony. Angus might lack talent but at least he was trying. She had to respect that. Besides, he was Heather’s brother.

And, to his credit, after months of unemployment Angus had managed to acquire a part-time job at a Mr Muffin franchise in Canning Vale. At last he could raise funds for his trip. He had to wear a blue uniform and a Mr Muffin cook’s hat. He went to work in a sour mood and came home with a headache and a box of leftover muffins.

Angus was busy. He had his guitar, the screenplay and his job. Heather was either at work or in the kitchen cooking up a feast. While they were doing all that Yvette frittered hours and hours of her days sketching faces. She’d probably have been more productive had she taken up whittling.

 

3.3

 

At work the following day, Yvette was feeling surprisingly light-hearted. It was another bright summer’s day but the sea breeze had come in early and there were wisps of high cloud to the north. With the school holidays over the café was quiet and there wasn’t a discounted Santa toy or box of Christmas cards in sight. Yvette set about cleaning tables, tidying the counter and serving the few customers that trickled in from the mall.

At the end of her shift, Pinar drew Yvette aside. She gave her a knowing smile and said, ‘Are you having baby?’

‘Yes.’ There was no denying it.

Pinar’s smile fell away and her face took on a troubled look. ‘Yvette, I’m sorry. I have to let you go.’

Yvette stared at her, open-mouthed.

‘Your husband take care of you. Yes?’

‘My husband?’

‘I’m sorry. But this is your last shift.’

Yvette was stunned. It was an old-fashioned perspective on domestic life she thought had faded out of existence along with cross-your-heart bras, wrap-around housecoats and Doris Day’s Secret Love. Its last gasp had to be when, back in the eighties, Scottish belle Sheena Easton sang Morning Train. She hoped Sheena earned a lot of money singing that crap. Enough to support her comfortably for the rest of her life.

Pinar couldn’t really believe the dependent-woman-cosseted-in-domestic-bliss myth. She ran her own café. No, Pinar was using the pregnancy as an excuse to get rid of her. She didn’t like working as a waitress but she was always polite and courteous. Perhaps her distorted love hearts were the real cause.

Whatever the reason, now she had no job.

Heather was waiting for her in the car park. She opened the passenger-side door and gave Heather a quick smile before getting in.

‘How was your day?’ Heather said as she pulled away.

That was all it took for the tears to roll. After sniffling and wiping her eyes Yvette managed to fight back the flow and tell her.

‘Oh dear.’ Heather paused. ‘Because of the baby?’

‘I thought I’d manage a few more months, but that stupid cow told me my husband could look after me.’

‘Ouch.’

‘Now what’ll I do?’

‘There’s Centrelink.’

‘I can’t claim benefits.’

‘Why ever not? It’s nothing to be ashamed of.’

There was no avoiding the truth yet in the telling Yvette succumbed to more shame than she thought herself capable of feeling. ‘Heather, I need to tell you something else.’

‘Again?’ Heather glanced at her with an ironic smile.

‘I’m an illegal immigrant.’

‘What?! How can that be? You grew up here.’

‘We never became citizens before we left.’

‘So you came on a holiday visa.’

‘I’m trying to get in under family reunion.’

‘Do you fit the criteria?’

‘No. My father is still alive. I don’t even know why I bothered filling in the form.’

‘You really could do with a husband.’

‘I can’t bear to think about it. I’m hoping when they find out I’m having an Australian baby they’ll let me stay.’

‘Were the contenders Australian?’

Yvette explained she had no idea. Dimitri was obviously Russian, Lee half Portuguese half-Chinese and Varg Norwegian.

‘Ah…’ Heather let out a soft chuckle.

Yvette was baffled by Heather’s easy acceptance, at once relieved her friend didn’t judge. For she was surely judging herself, cowering beneath a welter of shoulds; she would have undone time if it hadn’t been zippered up and fastened in place like some diabolical ligature.

 

3.4

 

It was Saturday. Angus was at work on his screenplay. There were pages of writing scattered across the kitchen table. Looked like he’d be working all afternoon. With every passing day of her pregnancy she had less time for the larrikin, who, ever since that single petulant growl, had fused with the image of her father that she carried in the deeps of her psyche. She stood in the doorway and watched him for a while, before grabbing her shoulder bag off a chair.

‘See you later,’ she said, breezily.

‘Where are you going?’

‘Choir.’

‘Have a good time,’ he said, without looking up.

She walked purposefully through the front door, letting the fly screen swing shut of its own accord. She stepped down from the porch and picked her way across the garden. She didn’t allow her thoughts to wander. Last night over dinner Heather had invited her to choir and she’d recoiled, determined to pursue nothing, no matter how tenuous, that had any association with her sister. She’d endured Heather’s gentle cajoling, steeling herself against her friend’s, ‘It’ll do you good,’ until she realised there was no reason she could provide that didn’t sound craven. She relented, assuring Heather she’d see her there.

The narrow streets, the houses all huddled together, the picket fences and wrought-iron gates, and soon she felt a spreading calm. She adored Fremantle’s quaint cosmopolitan vibe. She was at one with the area. Other than the cockroaches, enormous in size, there was nothing to dislike about it. Especially today, when tufty clouds scudded across the sky and a fresh breeze blew in from the ocean.

She passed the newspaper-reading, latte-sipping lunch crowd seated outside the cafés at the end of Wray Avenue then crossed the road and headed down South Terrace. Walking by the heavy edifice of the Fremantle Hospital she looked the other way. Beyond, it wasn’t until she passed the next block that the streetscape settled back into the old and the higgledy-piggledy that was Fremantle’s colonial heritage

The Cushtie Chanters rehearsed in Scot’s Hall, a Presbyterian church adjoining Fremantle Markets. Built of creamy limestone with contrasting russet-brick quoining on the narrow buttresses and window mouldings, the church was solid and imposing, as if built to withstand a Scottish winter’s icy north wind.

She was early. The door was ajar so she entered.

The hall was large with a raked ceiling and bare floorboards. Light filtered in through windows set high in the walls. At the far end there was a stage, more a raised platform with a wooden lectern set to one side. At the other end, a trestle table laden with mugs, jars of tea, coffee and sugar, a jug of milk and an urn. She went over to a row of wooden chairs lining the far wall and sat opposite the entrance door.

Women of all ages and shapes drifted in, some with children. A thicket formed over by the urn. Chatter and laughter echoed round the walls. One woman came in through a door near the stage, glancing at her watch. She was tall and thin with long fair hair and dressed in loose-fitting jeans and a colourful short-sleeved shirt. She scanned the room then stood by the entrance door greeting women as they appeared. She had a commanding yet edgy manner. Yvette stared in her direction, hoping that one of the women filtering in would be Heather.

The chatter and laughter soon became a hubbub. The tall woman, who was clearly in charge, closed the door and walked to the centre of the hall. She raised one arm and called out, ‘Okay everyone. Gather round.’

The chattering diminished and the women flocked around her. The door opened but it wasn’t Heather. Quashing the misgivings darting about inside her like midges, Yvette joined the others.

‘For the newcomers,’ the woman said, raising her voice, ‘I’m Fiona. Welcome to the Cushtie Chanters. If you haven’t paid, it’s five dollars.’ She looked at a heavyset woman with cropped grey hair standing at the front. ‘Sue, could you pass round the hat?’

There was a rummaging through pockets and bags and the clink of coins. Yvette withdrew a five-dollar bill from the pocket of her jeans and waited for the hat to pass her way.

Fiona kept talking. ‘We’ll start by forming three groups, tenor, alto and soprano. If you’re new and you don’t know where your voice sits, join any group.’ She looked around, her gaze settling on Yvette. Feeling awkward, Yvette struggled not to blush.

The choir members strolled towards the stage end of the hall and formed three huddles. Knowing her vocal range couldn’t reach heights or depths, Yvette joined the altos, standing behind the hat-bearing woman, Sue, who turned to her with a smile.

The door creaked open. Yvette glanced over and was relieved to see Heather walk in. She caught her eye. Heather’s face lit with affection. She came and stood beside her, triggering in Yvette a warm glow.

‘Hi,’ she whispered.

Heather squeezed her hand. ‘So glad you didn’t change your mind.’

Fiona called out from the front, ‘We’ll start with “Inannay.” It’s an indigenous lullaby. Anyone heard The Tiddas’ version?’

There was a murmur of yeses.

Fiona turned to the sopranos. She sang the verse and chorus solo. Her voice was thin with an operatic inflection, exaggerated mouthing released on a breath, no doubt an ethnic interpretation a world away from the ancient language of the song. Then she raised her hands and with a sudden downward sweep of her arms and a rhythmic nodding of her head, led the sopranos through the song. Satisfied she moved to face the altos.

Yvette sang along, quietly at first, then opened her throat and relaxed into the flow of the harmony, sensing her own voice blending and merging with the others. The air resonated with their voices. And she found herself swept along by every rise and fall. She’d forgotten how good it felt. She was swelling inside. She was a child again, in Heather’s back yard, performing a routine they’d devised using the slippery dip and swing set as props, singing their little hearts out to The Best Things in Life Are Free. She was Janet Jackson, Heather Luther Vandross, until they were forced to swap roles because Yvette couldn’t reach the high notes.

Fiona turned to the tenors and once satisfied, conducted the whole choir with a look of intense concentration. They sang through the song three times and moved on to rehearse two more songs. When they finished, a look of admiration softened Fiona’s face. ‘Well done,’ she said and the choir members, all smiles and laughter, broke ranks and wandered to the back of the hall.

Yvette followed Heather to the queue forming by the urn.

Searching for something to say she glanced down at Heather’s dress, taking in the rich shades of brown and cream, the embroidery and the elegant cut.

‘You wear such lovely clothes.’

‘Ingrained in me since childhood.’ Heather paused. ‘Do you remember how Zoe Fullman always got picked to write on the blackboard?’ Her response brought to the fore the threads of their shared school life, the years they endured of Mrs Thoroughgood’s vicious spite. An image of Zoe Fullman, all smug and precocious, came immediately to mind. ‘Teacher’s pet,’ she replied.

‘I hated her, for no other reason than that she was pretty.’

‘I always thought that was why Mrs Thoroughgood chose her.’

‘Me too. She was the bane of my life. Stupid I know.’ She paused again. ‘Did you see her out of school? She wore the finest dresses.’

‘I don’t remember.’

‘I do. I was jealous. I didn’t own a pretty dress. Not one. Clothes were not my father’s forte.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘Don’t be,’ she said with a laugh. ‘I’m making up for it now.’

Yvette stood beside her friend, feeling the strength of her character, trying to imagine growing up without a mother. She could only wonder at what possessed Heather’s mother to leave. Did Heather blame herself for her mother walking out? Children have a remarkable propensity for self-blame, a propensity designed to eclipse the unconscionable possibility that mum or dad are weak and fallible. Or horrible. Poor Heather.

They shuffled forward, Heather now in conversation with one of the altos. Before long they reached the urn.

Filed under: Uncategorized Tagged: asylum, asylum seekers, black comedy, boat people, Centrelink, choirs, free novel, illegals, Inannay, Leichhardt, Patrick White, Sheena Easton, The Tiddas, Voss

My 2014 in review

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2014 annual report for my blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

A San Francisco cable car holds 60 people. This blog was viewed about 2,100 times in 2014. If it were a cable car, it would take about 35 trips to carry that many people.

Click here to see the complete report.

Filed under: Uncategorized

The Refuge

I started writing The Refuge in 2010.  Now, four years on, and here it is published in the American literary magazine Mused.

http://www.bellaonline.com/review/issues/winter2014/f004.html

There is a little bit of truth in the story. It would be hard to write convincingly about the experience of living in a women’s refuge unless the author has done so herself.

When I heard recently that in New South Wales, Australia, women’s refuges were being put out to tender by local government, the contracts almost invariably won by the corporate giants,I felt inspired to revisit the original draft of my story that had remained untouched for years.

The Refuge portrays what it might be like to find yourself in a corporatised women’s refuge. It’s dystopia.

Filed under: Uncategorized Tagged: domestic violence, dystopia, feminist discourse, literary magazine, Mused, short story, violence against women, women's refuges, women's shelters, women's writing

Asylum – 9th instalment of my serialised novel

To catch the beginning of this story go to Asylum – a novel in weekly parts

Christmas in Perth with her friends and Yvette is desperate to leave her dismal flat. 

2.22

 

Christmas Day and outside the air was still and the morning sun did its usual dazzling and baking. Down on the streets, there wasn’t a car or a pedestrian in sight. The neighbourhood was silent. No kids on bikes. No washing hanging in back gardens. The whole of Maylands was hushed. Not even a fly disturbed the peace.

She went back into the relative cool of the flat. This time of year, when families and friends unite in celebration, she felt so separate, her own family were foreign to her. Still, she picked up her phone and called her mother.

‘Merry Christmas Mum,’ she said, cheerily.

‘Merry Christmas.’

‘Thanks for the present.’ Another tea towel and, of all things, a nut cracker.

‘Oh that’s all right. Hope you like them. I didn’t know what to get you.’

Anything except a ruddy tea towel. ‘They’re great,’ she lied.

Leah chatted on for a while about her grandchildren and her cat, Yvette more disengaged than ever, her thoughts centred on the tiny life in her belly.

‘Well, I better go,’ Leah said at last. ‘I’m off to Debbie’s shortly. Pity you’re not here.’

She felt a twinge of longing, of missing out, mingled with relief.

For once Leah didn’t ask about the progress of her application. DIBP were having a rest from the horrors they inflict at a pen-stroke.

She knew her mother had left Australia in the nineties without any intention of coming back. If she had even considered the possibility of returning she would have made sure they had all become citizens. Yet Yvette couldn’t help a pang of resentment.

It had been cold and murky that first Christmas back at Grandma Grimm’s end-of-terrace house in London. In front of the bay window Grandma Grimm had crammed a needle-shedding Christmas tree, tinselled and borbled and sprayed white with fake snow. Uncles stood about smoking chunky cigars and telling lewd jokes. Aunties gathered in the kitchen to gossip over sips of advocaat. Cousins she barely remembered or hadn’t met before giggled and scampered, hovered looking bored or bragged and swaggered like their fathers. After the turkey and the pudding they gathered round the old upright piano. Aunty Iris punched some chords and the rest of the adults formed a circle in the middle of the living room and made enthusiastic attempts at Knees-up Mother Brown and the Hokie Cokie, while the older cousins rolled their eyes and stroked their iPhones.

Yvette had a great time. To her, the Grimms were a family united. She wasn’t to know the tensions and strains, the feuds and the fights, in all, the violent rip that sucked at the family psyche. She was innocent, the mind of the child adept at storing bad memories in the darkest corners. Leah lavished the Grimm-family story upon her years later, in those months after her father left, ensuring Yvette developed an unwavering loyalty to her and an unequivocal animosity towards him. At which point Yvette never again saw any member of the family Grimm.

 

She was due at Thomas’s at twelve. She put into a shopping bag a bottle of sparkling Chardonnay, and the large plastic tubs of potato salad and coleslaw she made last night.

Leaving the roaches to party by themselves, she slammed shut the front door and walked down the carpeted corridor and the six flights of concrete stairs passing no-one. There were no cars in the car park.

The streets were deserted. Walking past the neat frontage of one dwelling upon another, she imagined there’d been an exodus, her, the last remaining human of the suburbs, left to fight an apocalyptic battle with the cockroaches.

When she reached Thomas’s flat she was relieved to hear muffled voices and a radio playing somewhere. Before she knocked, Anthony flung open the front door and spread his arms wide. She was thrown for a moment by his effusive, ‘Ah, Yvette!’ He kissed her firmly on her lips and took her hand, pressing it between his own. ‘So good to see you again.’

‘And you.’

Anthony was exactly as she remembered him, slight of build with wispy fair hair a little shorter than he wore it in London, the same haughty eyes and a  mouth drawn into a small smile that pulled slightly more to the left. He had the same effete manner, accentuated today by his outfit, a paisley-printed silk chemise cascading over loose ivory pants.

‘Yvette. Yvette. Yvette. It’s been too long.’

He steered her into the room. Laid out on the coffee table were small plates and napkins, bowls of peanuts and pretzels, champagne flutes and an opened bottle of sparkling wine. The room was uncommonly tidy and smelt faintly of patchouli oil.

Thomas called out from the bedroom. He appeared moments later straightening his shirt. ‘I was just getting changed,’ he said, blushing.

‘I brought some goodies,’ she said, raising the shopping bag. She put the bag on the kitchen bench and removed the contents. Anthony bustled up beside her. ‘Fridge,’ he said, abruptly, handing Thomas the bottle and the coleslaw.

‘Fridge?’ said Thomas, pointing at the potato salad.

‘No. Bench. Better warm. The flavours are more…,’ he kissed his fingertips, ‘Present.’

He opened one of the drawers, pulled out a sharp knife, deftly split and de-seeded three avocadoes, and mashed them in a glass bowl. ‘Lemon juice, garlic, a little chilli, a pinch of salt,’ he chanted, holding the last syllable of each phrase. He squeezed the juice of a lemon and tossed the squashed skin into the sink. ‘Tut, tut. You don’t belong in there,’ he said, plucking out a pip with his fingers. Yvette watched, amused. Then, with a knife hovering over four cloves of peeled garlic, he looked up at Thomas and said, ‘Where did you buy this?’

‘Coles.’

‘Never, never buy garlic from Coles.’ Antony waved the knife in Thomas’ direction, ‘It’s kept in cold storage until the flavour turns bitter.’

‘I’m sorry. I had no idea.’

‘We’ll survive,’ he said, rolling his eyes.

His reprimand, though playful, carried with it a certain malice. He winked mockingly in Yvette’s direction. ‘Shall we?’ he said, gesturing at the coffee table.

‘I’ll be one moment,’ Thomas said. With focused intent he arranged olives and crackers, strips of carrot and celery, and cubes of cheese on a platter.

Anthony sat cross-legged on the floor and poured the wine. Yvette joined him, taking up a space on the other side of the table. She took the glass he proffered. Through the adjoining wall, next door’s pop music reverberated in dull, muffled pulses. Once Thomas had sat down, choosing the straight-backed chair beside his music stand, she raised her glass.

‘Merry Christmas.’

‘To absent families,’ Anthony said.

‘Absent? I thought yours lived in Perth.’

‘They’re camping on a beach near Margaret River. Parents, three sisters, their husbands and a mob of nieces. I’m driving down tomorrow.’

Yvette glanced at Thomas as a look of anguish appeared in his face.

‘Respite from the heat and the dry of Kalgoorlie,’ she said positively. Then, keen to steer the conversation elsewhere for the sake of Thomas, she asked him how he enjoyed last night. He’d gone to the Fremantle Town Hall to listen to Kavisha Mazzella’s women’s choir, Le Gioie Delle Donne, sing Italian regional folk songs.

‘I know Kavisha,’ Anthony said, under his breath.

Thomas held her gaze. ‘Captivating,’ he said, dreamily, ‘And poignant. The hall was packed with a mixed crowd, but I was surrounded by Italian migrants. The woman seated next to me clutched a white handkerchief to her bosom and muttered to herself “Oh Mamma, Oh Mamma” through the whole performance.’

They all laughed.

Yvette reached for a pretzel. ‘Memories of home,’ she murmured, suddenly aware of Thomas’s Jewish heritage. The only son of an Orthodox mother, he’d struggled with guilt his whole adult life, over his lack of faith and his sexuality.

‘It fascinates me what motivates people to emigrate,’ said Anthony.

‘There’s no single reason,’ Yvette said, glancing at Thomas again, who looked tense. ‘Everyone has their own circumstances.’

‘Other than sun and sand and the great Aussie dream.’ He pointed his gaze at Yvette. ‘So, what were yours?’

She reached for another pretzel and dipped it in the guacamole.

‘Delicious,’ she said, between mouthfuls, relieved she wasn’t feeling nauseous.

‘Thank you, dear heart.’

‘I see what you mean about the garlic though.’

‘I’m surprised you didn’t know.’

‘I took it for granted. In Malta, garlic is always fresh.’

‘You haven’t answered my question. Why leave Malta and come here?’

‘England is too cold and too grey.’

‘You see? I told you. It’s always the same. The good old lucky country.’ He dipped a celery stick in the guacamole and waved it in her direction. ‘And your parents? Why did they come here?’

‘Is this an interrogation?’ she said with a short laugh.

‘Just curious.’

‘As you say, they wanted a better life.’

‘Did they get one?’

‘Not really. My dad worked in a factory and my mother was a cleaner.’

The muffled sound of the pop music next door droned annoyingly on. Yvette took a large gulp of her wine and grabbed a handful of olives. Anthony’s eyes never left her face.

‘You don’t strike me as the offspring of a factory worker and a cleaner, if you don’t mind me saying. There’s always been something, dare I say, more cultured in your manner.’

She bristled. ‘Is that so?’ she said, returning his gaze with a measure of contempt. ‘Well, I got an education.’

‘Ah of course. That explains you a little more. Here’s to education.’ Anthony raised his glass.

Yvette sat motionless, suddenly grateful that Thomas hadn’t thus far told Anthony she was pregnant.

Thomas, who had been tapping his arm rest and looking nervously back and forth from Anthony to Yvette, darted forward and grabbed a handful of pretzels. He didn’t appear to want to add to the conversation so Yvette shot Anthony a cold stare and said, ‘So tell me, how do you find the life out there in the wild west? All bandit and bordello, isn’t it? I expect you fit right in.’

‘Ha ha. Touché.’ Anthony laughed. ‘No bandits or brothels these days, although the legacy is there, sort of ingrained in the locals.’

Thomas was now tapping his fingers rhythmically on his thigh.

‘Do they still mine?’ Yvette said.

‘God yes. The Super Pit is still going. As the name suggests, it’s a massive open-cut gold mine. And just across the highway from my house.’

‘You can see it?’

‘No. It’s over the crest of a rise. But there’s a background drone sometimes. When the wind blows from the East.’

‘As it does,’ murmured Thomas.

‘As it does.’

‘And dust?’ she said.

‘Yes, even more dust.’

Thomas slurped back the rest of his wine and went to the kitchen. He returned moments later and laid out a seafood platter and a bowl of salad greens along with the coleslaw and potato salad.

‘Fabulous!’ Yvette said.

‘Thanks.’ Thomas gave her a cordial smile.

The conversation meandered along as they ate. Thomas engaged Anthony in an exchange about wild flowers and a visit they’d made to Wave Rock. Yet the atmosphere remained strained.

After lunch Yvette thought about leaving, hesitating when Thomas removed his violin from its case and adjusted the music stand. Following a brief and intense few moments of string tuning, he launched into the piece he’d been learning since Yvette arrived in Perth, Sibelius’ Valse triste, in D minor; an adorable piece but a dubious choice for Christmas Day. His body seemed rigid, thighs pressed together, head frozen to the side, a look of pained concentration on his face. Altogether there appeared not one jot of pleasure in his manner.

Anthony plucked a volume of Byron’s poetry from a bookcase and flopped into the armchair where he flicked through the pages, making pretences at reading a stanza here and there. Yvette wandered about the room. A single Christmas card leant against a hard cover of Jean Genet’s The Miracle of the Rose. The front of the card, embossed and speckled with glitter, displayed a bucolic Christmas scene. Inside, in shaky cursive, Thomas’s mother sent all her love and best wishes. She must miss him, her only son.

Sunshine streamed in through the window. Thomas played a last few wistful notes before setting down his violin to draw the curtain. He then moved on to play some equally melancholic tunes. Anthony now seemed engrossed in a poem so Yvette lay down on the floor and closed her eyes.

Christmas at Josie’s parent’s house was nothing like this. Their semi-detached home, set well back from a leafy street in Twickenham, had large bay windows, at that time of year festooned with decorations, the lights on the Christmas tree winking reds, yellows and blues at the darkness of the day. The house was a haven of genuine yuletide cheer, no accoutrement overlooked, from holly wreaths and mistletoe to novelty Santa napkin rings. Josie’s mum, a plump and homey woman who oozed benevolence, would pass round mulled wine, home-made sausage rolls and devils on horseback, before inviting the family to table to feast on roast turkey and Christmas pudding. Josie’s dad, a tall and portly man, would carve, and Josie’s siblings – two older brothers and a younger sister, all as charming as Josie – would ready themselves for the cracker pull. Then came the Drambuie and the mince pies, the nuts, the chocolates and even Turkish delight. Yvette pictured Josie, bedecked in seasonal red, throwing back her head and roaring with laughter at her dad’s attempt to convey Corpse Bride in charades. Present opening was the only time Yvette felt apprehensive, not over the exchange of gifts, she always gave them a bottle of good French wine and they gave her something carefully chosen, one year a box of oils, another a book on Dadaism. It was the well-meaning inquiry as to whether she was missing her family and what they were up to right there and then in Australia. Yvette was always evasive.

She wondered now what the prison guards offered the inmates at Curtin.

 

2.23

 

Boxing Day and Yvette was clasping a mug of tea out on the balcony in the cool of the early morning. The solitude, the vacuum left by yesterday’s company, memories of other Christmases and she’d woken wondering if she was doing the right thing bringing a child into the world, knowing she could never be like Josie’s mum. She knew that her last chance to have a termination was fast approaching. She reassured herself that she wasn’t having a baby to gain permanent residence, that no part of her, not even lurking unseen in her depths, held such a corrupt motive. She was bonded to her unborn child like a barnacle to a rock. Giving birth had become imperative, a seed she had planted in her psyche like a farmer experimenting with a new crop. And she knew with all the conviction of fate that the pregnancy was preordained. Therefore, she reasoned, it was her destiny and changing course now would lead to a lifetime of punishing loneliness.

Still, she felt restive.

She stood up and leaned against the balcony wall. The family in the suburban house below were again in their backyard: Women arranging tables, three men leaning over a barbecue. Looked like another celebration. Up until then, Yvette had been annoyed she’d been rostered on at the café. Now work seemed the better of the two locales. At least there she could pretend to be gainfully if precariously a part of this nation, and she didn’t want to spend a single moment more than she had to in this squalid little flat.

At the sight of the party preparations below, it occurred to her to host her own celebration. She would invite all of her Perth friends, which amounted to only a few, but even so, she wanted to prove to them and to herself she could throw a decent party. It would be her eve of New Year’s Eve party. Competition for the cockroaches.

Buoyed by the thought, she left the flat.

 

2.24

 

‘We are the reckless,’ Yvette sang, following the lyrics of Daughter playing on her new CD player, another Vinnie’s score, as she sashayed her way to the kitchen. ‘Olive anyone?’ she called out, pretending she could be as carefree as her guests were taciturn. So far her party had all the joie de vivre of a wake and it was all she could do to hide her displeasure.

‘Sure,’ said Rhys, plucking an olive from the bowl.

Dan, and his boyfriend Barry, a tanned and toned man with short hair and a moustache, sat quietly together on the sofa sipping champagne. Thomas was staring despondently at the carpet. Something had passed between him and Anthony on their way in and he hadn’t recovered. Anthony, elegantly dressed in a light-blue suit that loosely covered his slender frame, a trilby hat tilted over his pallid face shading his eyes, his mouth arranged as always in a pert ironic smile, had the enigmatic hauteur of a character from the silent-movie era.

‘I’m ninth generation Australian, or seventh depending on which side of the family I follow,’ he said, putting on an Aussie drawl. ‘They were migrants too. One of my ancestors came out on the Second Fleet, for having a forged one-pound note in his possession.’

‘And Australia has never recovered,’ Dan said, sardonically. They’d been discussing the Australia Day celebrations to be held at the Burswood Entertainment Centre, a multicultural extravaganza featuring scores of Perth’s migrant communities, and Anthony had chimed in with his usual flippancy.

Thomas raised his face to the others, snapping from despondency in a single breath. ‘Will indigenous Australians get a look in?’

‘For sure,’ Dan said.

‘Invited to cavort about to the sound of didgeridoos, no doubt,’ said Anthony.

‘They could stage a massacre.’ Thomas said with a laugh. ‘The custodians’ revenge.’

‘In keeping with The Chant of Jimmy Blacksmith. That would fit right in with my Year Tens.’ Anthony grinned and slapped his thigh.

Dan looked at him, reprovingly. There was an awkward silence.

Thomas and Anthony, seated in chairs on opposite sides of the living area, had started to flash conspiratorial looks at each other. Yvette was annoyed with both of them for being so ill-mannered, especially Anthony. In the little time she’d lived here even she knew the contentiousness of his remarks. And how could Thomas allow himself to be an accessory to Anthony’s poisonous badinage?

Rhys, who had said little all evening, leaned forward in his seat, apparently inspired by the banter to add his own witty remark.  ‘Do the boat people have a spot?’

Anthony’s eyes sparkled. He shifted to the edge of his seat and said in a low, dramatic voice. ‘I can see it now. Ten short men, dressed in black, running on stage and crouching down pretending to be a boat pitching and rolling in a storm.’ He stood, removed his jacket and walked to the end of the sofa, turning abruptly and taking command of the room. ‘And then Varg Axenrot…’

‘Varg?’ Yvette said doubtfully.

‘The very same.’

‘Why Varg?’

‘Because he’s a head and shoulders taller than the rest. Now don’t interrupt or I’ll lose my thread.’ He flicked a censorious hand in her direction then went on. ‘Varg appears on stage in his peasant shirt and high-waisted pants and makes his way to the man-boat.’ He paused, casting a cantankerous eye around the room. ‘Then he steps aboard.’ He raised his left leg and made an exaggerated step. Thomas started snickering. ‘He’s standing at the helm with his hand to his forehead. The boat starts pitching and rolling then lists heavily to one side.’ Anthony swayed. ‘Then the starboard men tumble on the portside men leaving Varg flailing on the floor of the stage.’ A long pause to maximise impact. Thomas and Rhys were both grinning.

‘What happens next?’ Rhys asked.

Anthony shrugged as if the answer were obvious. ‘The men simulate waves by doing the Worm dance.’

Thomas laughed, loudly.

‘The worm dance?’ said Rhys.

‘The very same.’

Thomas took control of his laughter to explain.

‘And of course Varg worms his way to the front of the stage,’ Anthony said.

At this point Thomas doubled over, clutching his belly. ‘Do it, do it!’ he gasped.

‘The worm dance? You have to be kidding.’

Yvette was uneasy. She’d just glanced at Dan. He wore a face of granite.

Anthony bowed, sweeping his hands wide. ‘The perfect school play, don’t you think?’

‘You can’t be serious,’ Dan said, angrily.

‘Of course not. It’s just buffoonery.’

‘Fun? You think that was fun? You’re barbaric.’

‘Oh, come on,’ Anthony said, annoyed.

Dan stood abruptly and motioned to Barry to do the same. ‘Yvette, I’m sorry. We must be going. Thanks for inviting us.’

‘Please, don’t go.’

‘I’m afraid of what I might do if I don’t.’ He picked up his jacket and walked to the door. ‘All the best with your painting.’

‘Thanks.’

At the door, she kissed them both goodbye and thanked them for coming, catching Dan’s gaze with a shoulder-raised smile.

‘Yvette,’ Anthony said, the moment she closed the door. ‘What are you painting? Do tell.’

‘Nothing, really.’ She went across the room to the CD player and pressed play not caring if they heard the same tracks twice. Then she went to refill glasses.

‘Not for me,’ Thomas said, covering his glass with his hand.

‘Me neither darling.’

Anthony gave Yvette a weak hug and fetched his jacket. Thomas kissed her cheek, mumbling in her ear an apologetic see you soon, then pulling back with a quick glance at her belly. Rhys scurried out of the door ahead of them.

Yvette was dismayed by their sudden departure. This had to be the worst party she’d ever hosted, eclipsing even the time Carlos threw a party in the month before they’d left for Bali, and Yvette had imprudently invited Josie.

Josie had never liked Carlos. She’d warned Yvette to keep away from him the very first time he’d entered the bar where they both worked. It was about six months into her stay, and Yvette was about to fly back to London, when Carlos breezed in, all grand gestures and camaraderie. He sat on a bar stool with his arms resting wide apart on the counter and caught her eye. Four beers later and he was taking her home. Before she left the bar, Josie had grabbed her arm with a hissing, ‘he’s no good.’ But five years of strict self-discipline and study had left her hankering for adventure; like a long-stabled filly released in an open field, she was all frisky, heels a-kicking ready to gallop off full pelt.

Four years with Carlos and she’d developed a taste for spliffs and sniffing white powders. She’d resigned from the bar, moved in with him and tinkered with simple-jewellery making to keep occupied while he was away doing business. Many times Josie had told her Carlos was dangerous. Yvette didn’t want to hear it. She knew. She knew he was a womaniser and a crook. She didn’t care. She also knew she was going through a phase. That she’d never fully let herself go, there remained the onlooker, fascinated with the lifestyle she found herself in. Josie didn’t see things that way.

At that party Yvette told Josie she was pregnant. They were standing by the pool surrounded by sparsely clad sylphs with glossy hair and smart-suited men with swanky attitudes and brash mouths.  The air was redolent with French perfume. No sooner had the words left her lips, she realised she’d made a mistake. Josie wasted no time telling her under no circumstances to go through with the pregnancy or she’d be tied to that ne’er-do-well for life. Then she left and Yvette hadn’t seen her since.

Now she couldn’t understand Josie’s or for that matter, Thomas’ attitude. What right did they have to dictate what she did with her body?

A short while later there was a light knock on the door. It was Heather.

‘So sorry I’m late.’ They hugged on the threshold and Heather handed her a bottle of red.

‘I’m pleased you made it. The others have left.’

‘Oh no! Am I that late?’

‘They left early. Long story. Come on in.’

She’d invited Heather two days before, the last on her guest list. She’d been uncertain about the social mix and when Heather had explained a prior engagement, fully expected her not to show up. Now she was here Yvette was unsure where to take the conversation. Fortunately Heather took the lead. ‘How was Christmas?’ she said, following Yvette to the kitchen.

‘Okay, and you?’

‘The same as ever. Dad was in his usual dour Christmas mood and Angus lounged about in a half-drunken stupor all afternoon.’

They both laughed. Yvette filled their glasses and they sat down on the sofa.

‘Help yourself,’ she said, gesturing at the food.

‘Thanks.’ Heather sat back in her seat. ‘Must have been hard not being with your folks again.’

‘Not especially. Mum spent the day with my sister’s lot.’

‘You don’t sound that close to your sister.’

‘Debbie? Ten years separation has taken its toll.’

She thought of her sister, her brood, their doting grandmother.

Heather didn’t speak. Her face took on a reflective expression.

She sipped her wine. ‘You don’t have children?’ she said, stating what seemed obvious yet she couldn’t be sure.

‘No. Not yet. My ex-husband wasn’t inclined.’

‘How long were you married?’

‘Three years.’

‘What when wrong if you don’t mind me asking?’

‘Nothing. He came out.’

‘Oh.’ It occurred to her fortuitous the others had left. Not that any one of them might have been Heather’s former husband. What would Heather have made of her coterie of gay friends? Certainly she wasn’t the sort to hold a grudge against an entire group but nevertheless Yvette was relieved Heather hadn’t met Anthony. She glanced in the direction of the balcony and spied a cockroach ambling towards the kitchen cupboards. Her revulsion more intense than ever, she groaned.

‘What is it?’ Heather looked concerned.

‘A cockroach.’

‘He’s out early.’

‘He’ll be the scout. Do cockroaches have scouts? All I know is this place is infested.’

Heather grimaced. ‘They’re disgusting.’

‘I know.’

‘Have you tried an insecticide bomb?’

‘Didn’t seem to make a difference.’

‘They’re tenacious buggers.’

‘You’re telling me.’

They were silent for a while. Yvette stared into her glass.

‘Are you okay?’ Heather said, softly.

Yvette sighed. ‘I have to get out of this place. It’s driving me nuts.’

‘I can imagine,’ Heather said, looking around.

‘It isn’t just the roaches. I feel like a prisoner in here.’

‘It is rather, um, cell-like.’

‘Trouble is Heather,’ she said, succumbing to an urge to confide, ‘I can’t afford to rent anywhere on what I earn and I don’t want to go back to my mother’s farm.’

‘No, don’t do that.’ She seemed thoughtful for a moment. Then she said, ‘Would you like to stay with me?’

‘With you?’

‘I have a spare room. Angus is staying with me at the moment but he’s moving on soon. So help me.’ She raised her eyes to the ceiling with a playful shake of her head.

‘Where do you live?’

‘Fremantle. When do you need to be out of here?’

‘Yesterday.’

‘Can you hold out till Australia Day? Angus should be gone by then.’

‘I think I can manage a few more weeks.’

‘Then it’s settled.’

‘How much is the room?’

‘Nothing. I couldn’t charge you rent.’

‘But…’

‘No buts. You are my oldest friend.’

‘Heather, thank you. Thank you so much.’

‘I take it you don’t have a car.’

‘No.’

‘Then I’ll swing by and help you move your things.’

‘I could catch a train.’

‘I won’t here of it.’

Yvette felt heady. Heather, she told herself, was the nicest, warmest, kindest friend she’d ever encountered.

 

 

 

Filed under: Uncategorized Tagged: asylum, asylum seekers, Australia, black comedy, boat people, free novel, illegals, Power, visa overstayers

Tragedy in Peshawar

Pakistan and so many children slain. What a terrible terrible sadness.

Maybe there should be a second spot in Martin Place for the flowers for these children. Seventy times as many flowers please, for there are 141 gone. If we were to see such a thing, then we would know we have risen above an ingrained nationalism, reached beyond our borders, expressed a true humanitarian empathy. We would have far extended the principle of #iwillridewithyou It would be a remarkable expression of unity.

Meanwhile, I was intrigued to hear the comments of the ”expert” on the telly of the causes of the tragedy in Pakistan and possible solutions to the ongoing violence. She didn’t say what I will say in my letter here.

Dear America,

You have created yet another bloody mess, you and your bestie Saudi Arabia. Back in the 1970s, as Saudi  exported Wahhabism to Pakistan, to the madrassas, radicalising the young and the poor who had fled Afghanistan, you  trained the mujahideen in order to fight the Russian foe. And so together you created the Taliban. Together you fanned the flames of fundamentalism.

And it is you who have nurtured the formation of Islamic State.

You are the ones who know exactly how to turn psychologically vulnerable types into unhinged killers.

And I do not doubt that you have exported this expertise to your little brother Australia. And now we too find ourselves at the mercy of unhinged killers.

Gee, thanks!

Filed under: Uncategorized Tagged: American empire, dystopia, flowers, Lindt Cafe, Martin Place, Pakistan, Peshawar, Saudi, schoolchildren, slaughter of innocents, Terrorism, terrorist, Wahhabism

Asylum – 8th instalment of my serialised novel

To catch the beginning of this story go to Asylum – a novel in weekly parts

It’s Christmas in Perth and Yvette, estranged as ever, makes a startling discovery…

2.19

Christmas decorations were sparkling throughout the mall and an overly adorned Christmas tree standing in the centre of the main thoroughfare assaulted Yvette’s unfestive mood as she walked by. Tinsel draped window displays and lumbering from glitzy shop to glitzy shop, a man in a Santa suit ho ho’d, ringing his bell. Even the café had silver tinsel arcing along the counter front, in cultural collision with the Turkish delicacies piled on platters beside the till.

Pinar greeted Yvette in her usual appraising way and asked her to clean the coffee machine.

A steady flow of customers occupied an otherwise tedious four hours.

Towards the end of her shift, when she’d relinquished any hope of seeing Heather, her friend, strikingly dressed in a flowing emerald skirt and matching blouse, entered the café. She took her usual seat by the windows that overlooked the car park and caught Yvette’s eye with a friendly wave. Trapped behind the counter, Yvette returned Heather’s smile as Pinar went to her table.

There was by an unexpected rush of customers. A harried-looking mother with five boisterous children ordered chips and soft drinks while ignoring their demands for everything else. A group of six men wanted extra-large kebabs and iced coffees to go, and an elderly couple, who took forever to make up their minds, settled on baklava and flat whites.

More grannies, more mothers, more kids and thankfully, not a love-hearted latte among them.

When at last she removed her apron, Heather approached.

‘Sorry I didn’t get a chance to chat,’ Yvette said.

‘I could see you were busy.’

In the mall, Jingle Bells played cheerily on. A clutch of excited toddlers jostled around Santa. Yvette followed Heather into the glaring daylight and they stood in the shade of an awning. The car park, a mass of metal and glass on tarmac, radiated heat like a kiln.

‘Christmas in Australia?’ Yvette said. ‘It’s an ironic celebration.’

‘Beach and barbecues and the start of school holidays.’ Heather chuckled. ‘Not exactly Hogmanay is it?’

She had a flash of memory, something wholesome and sweet. ‘Do you remember our Christmases when we were kids?’

‘Sure do.’

‘I adored going to your place. Especially after Christmas Day. All those presents!’

‘It was guilt. My father making up for the absence of my mother.’

‘I never knew why she wasn’t there.’

‘Neither did I. She walked out on us when I was six.’

‘That must have left a hole.’ She paused. ‘You had a terrific dad though.’

‘Yeah. He’s great,’ Heather said, with a measure of warmth. She rummaged through her shoulder bag and took out her car keys.

‘Your back yard was a playground,’ Yvette said, caught in the reminiscence. ‘Swings, slippery dip, a swimming pool.’

Heather looked off into the distance. ‘We had a ball.’

‘Heaps of balls.’

‘Of all sizes.’ She returned her gaze to Yvette. ‘I never did see your place.’

‘I wasn’t allowed to have friends over.’ She winced inwardly, her mind belted by an unbidden image of her father in a frothing rage, hurling her Christmas presents down the back steps of the veranda. The anguish she felt watching that little girl gather her presents off the lawn. Little wonder her mother preferred to keep her and Debbie in a domestic fortress, the draw-bridge shut fast. She recoiled at the thought of walking in her mother’s shoes, choosing for the father of her offspring a Vesuvius of a man, spewing his bilious guts at any time.

They hugged. Heather’s embrace was strong and lingering. ‘Happy Christmas Yvette,’ she said as she pulled away.

‘You too.’

Heather was about to head to her car when a thoughtful look appeared in her face. ‘Do you still sing?’

‘Sing?’ She’d forgotten the afternoons when they’d stand in front of Heather’s bedroom mirror, hairbrushes in hand, opening their lungs to Whitney Houston playing on the radio. ‘I do a bit,’ she said, cautiously. ‘Not very well.’

‘I’m in a choir. The Cushtie Chanters. We meet every Saturday in Fremantle. I thought you might like to come along.’

A choir? Straight away she thought of Simon and Peter and Debbie’s motherly pride. Resistance pinged in her guts. ‘I’d love to,’ she said, with forced warmth.

Heather handed Yvette her business card with the address for the choir neatly scribed on the back.

‘We start at two. I hope to see you there.’

‘You will. Definitely.’

 

2.20

 

It was the summer solstice and after a long morning toying with the idea of dipping one of Dan’s brushes into a splodge of acrylic paint in an effort to break through her hiatus, Yvette slipped on a summer frock, grabbed a cold bottle of water from the fridge and left the flat. In the northern hemisphere, pagans of yore had cavorted, revelled and wassailed through winter’s deepest night. Here in Australia she wondered what went on, two-hundred, three-hundred years before now, before the whites took over?

She’d decided to venture into the festive melee of Perth, determined to purchase herself a Christmas present to compensate for the anticipated disappointment she’d feel upon opening the pre-loved Christmas paper from her mother. Through all of her ten years away, Leah sent her a small gift, one year a tea towel and a pair of oven gloves, another an apron with I Love Bermagui plastered across the front, and always wrapped in what Yvette presumed was the wrapping paper she’d received from Debbie the year before.

The air was unusually still for midday and it must have been at least a hundred degrees. Surely Malta was never this hot? Or had her tolerance for heat inexplicably diminished? The air was cooler in the shade of the plane trees that lined the street. Beyond, the aggressive brightness rendered every building sharp and distinct. In this oxymoronic setting, Christmas had lost all meaning, all warm fuzzy associations of a freezing day at Grandma Grimm’s house back in England, with aunties and uncles and cousins everywhere, with cheers and chatter, mince pies and vol au vents, and the smell of roasting turkey. Her Christmas spirit was as empty as a wizened walnut shell. Yet she had to summon a modicum of enthusiasm for Christmas for the sake of her soul.

She wandered into Myers department store, relishing the air-conditioned cool and her spirits lifted, rising further with the ascent of the elevator and a crooning Bing Crosby dreaming of white Christmases, glistening tree tops and sleigh bells in the snow. Bing knew how she felt.

As she neared the women’s clothing department she garnered her resolve, scanning the racks for special offers and searching to the bottom of the bargain bins. She found a thin scarf and a T-shirt among the marked down mark-downs and went to the checkout, stoically ignoring the woman in front of her clutching a giant teddy bear under one arm, the other struggling to hold a basket overflowing with apparel.

On her way down the escalator she felt reluctant to head back into the heat. So she took the next escalator down to the basement and walked around the racks of suits and shirts. A young man with neat fair hair was replenishing a display of novelty boxer shorts in red and green satin with ludicrous ‘jingle my bells,’ motifs. As she approached he turned to her. ‘Can I help you?’

‘No.’ She felt confused and couldn’t fathom why she was even in the store.

She went back up the escalator and exited the store through sliding glass doors as Brenda Lee rocked around the Christmas tree, with no expectation of a flurry of snow but maybe at least a sea breeze. Her head spun for a moment. She walked quickly towards the shade of the awnings in a nearby arcade, narrowly avoiding colliding with a man in a suit laden with gift-wrapped parcels in bulging shopping bags.

 

Back in the flat, Yvette opened the sliding door as wide as it would draw and stepped outside. The sun was high in the western sky. The row of jacarandas in the street below was a feast of blue-lilac. Directly beneath the balcony, in the garden of the neat suburban house next door, a large gathering was whooping up a shivaree of pre-Christmas celebrations. Even six floors up, she could pick out children’s squeals and sudden rushes of laughter.  Heading for the front door, she went back inside, wincing in the sudden gloom. She propped open the door with a sandal, allowing the stale air of the corridor – at least it was cool – to waft through the flat. She went back to the kitchen and was about to flick on the kettle when, in an isosceles of light on the scuffed vinyl floor, a cockroach caught her eye. She made to stamp down her bare foot but thought better of it. No doubt the critter and his cronies had festive plans of their own. With a swirl of defeat rising in her belly she decided to leave them to it.

She’d reached her threshold of endurance in this entomological flat share but she hadn’t a clue what do to do about it. The cockroaches had made it clear they were not about to move house, so it was down to her, but to where, how, and how would she afford it? She doubted Pinar would give her more shifts at the café and her casual wage wouldn’t cover any rent.

And she wasn’t about to fly back to her mother’s farm.

She felt suddenly queasy, which she tried to ignore, but the bilious wave rose inside her and she ran to the bathroom.

Back in the living room she sat on the sofa and stared blankly at the drab-cream of the opposite wall. She knew without needing to visit a chemist or a doctor what that vomit meant. She was pregnant. She couldn’t be certain as she hadn’t had a period since her abortion, but she felt that vague sense of self-containment. She hadn’t thought falling pregnant again would be so easy. Only counting back the weeks she realised she had no way of knowing which one of her recent liaisons was the father. Two days after Dimitri the prurient photographer had seduced her in the park, she’d slept with Lee the music teacher. It had been a lacklustre tryst and he’d turned his back to the wall the moment he was done but conception had nothing to do with pleasure.

She didn’t even know how to contact either man. The day after she’d met Varg she’d discarded all evidence of the men’s existence. She couldn’t even recollect their surnames. She supposed she could track them both down through Love Station but it hardly seemed worth the effort. Why bother? It would be sure to bring her more trouble. She didn’t like either man and recoiled at the idea of negotiating the terrain of shared custody.

Now she hoped Varg wouldn’t phone. She’d slept with him as well, invited him into the flat that first night, and he too might be the father, she could have claimed he was the father, hoped with the might of Demeter that her offspring had red hair, but the pretence would have been unendurable.

Little wonder that palm reader had looked at her strangely the moment she’d released Yvette’s hand. She’d met the father of her children, that much was true, and the prophecy was fulfilled, but what about her? Twenty-nine years old, stuck in Australia on a holiday visa, here in this scummy flat with few friends, about to be a single mother to a child with a triptych of possible fathers. She had to summon all her resolve not to feel cheap.

She wondered if the department of immigration would look more favourably upon her status if they knew she were about to give birth to an Australian? Would that be exceptional circumstances? Did they have exceptional circumstances? Or would her baby be allowed to stay but her, the mother, deported? She couldn’t face finding out.

All she knew for certain was she would avoid telling her mother until it was too late for her to advise a termination.

 

2.21

 

An hour later and she had scarcely moved. She contemplated taking a shower when her phone rang. It was Thomas. After the ritual exchange of how are you’s, he invited himself round after dinner.

‘About eight okay?’ He sounded ebullient. Before she had a chance to tell him that was fine he hung up.

He arrived about half-past eight carrying his violin case and a bottle of wine.

‘Sorry I’m late,’ he said, kissing her cheek.

He set down the violin case just inside the door.

‘Aren’t you going to serenade me?’ Yvette said.

‘I’ve just had an audition.’

‘Fantastic,’ she said, enthusiastically. ‘For an ensemble?’

‘For a gypsy folk band.’

‘I won’t have heard of them.’

‘The Romanas.’

‘How did it go?’

‘First rehearsal next week.’ He was grinning.

‘That’s great.’

‘I’ll let you know when we perform.’

She took the bottle from his grip and went to the kitchen, pulling open one of the drawers and rummaging through the contents for a cork screw before realising she needn’t have bothered. The bottle had a screw-top lid.

They sat out on the balcony. A light breeze cooled the air. Beyond the haze of the city, stars shone down from their lofty heights in a clear moonless sky.

‘I have something to tell you,’ Yvette said, but Thomas wasn’t listening. He was gazing at the city skyline. Without turning he said, ‘Would you like to come to my place for Christmas dinner?’

‘Thanks. Will Anthony be there?’

‘I believe so.’

She took a sip of her wine. It was surprisingly good.

He continued staring off at the skyline, the fingertip of one hand idly gliding round the rim of his glass.

‘Have you seen Varg again?’

‘No.’

‘I thought you two were an item.’

Yvette looked into her glass and said nothing. She had profound misgivings confiding in Thomas but he’d find out soon enough. Yet now was not the moment.

She relaxed somewhat after a second glass of wine. It occurred to her she shouldn’t be drinking but couldn’t bring herself to stop.

They chatted for a while about the great Australian way of life, exchanging a long string of light-hearted insults before agreeing that the culture wasn’t that bad.

‘You were lucky you came by plane,’ he said, wryly.

‘Yeah. It had occurred to me.’

They were silent for a while. Yvette made out patches of slow-moving high cloud that blacked out the stars. Then Thomas took a succession of quick gulps from his glass. ‘I better go. Thanks for having me.’

‘You’re always welcome.’

She followed him to the door. They exchanged goodbyes and he made to walk away.

Consumed by a sudden desire to confess, she stood on the threshold and blurted, ‘I’m pregnant.’

He swivelled round to face her. ‘What?!’

‘I said I’m pregnant.’

‘I heard you, but how, I mean…?’

‘I’m not sure.’

‘Huh?’

‘Never mind.’

‘And?’

‘And what?’

‘Are you going to keep it?’

‘Of course.’

‘But you’ll be a single mother.’

‘So?’

‘You’re crazy.’ His face had turned to stone. ‘Are you going to tell Varg?’

‘No.’

‘No?’

‘I don’t know if it’s his.’

‘How come?’

‘Don’t ask.’

‘Are you sure you know what you’re doing?’

‘Yeah, I do. Besides, when you know a thing is right.’

‘When it comes to matters of the heart,’ he said, bitterly, ‘There is no right.’

‘I agree. But it feels right.’

‘I’m glad one of us is able to trust their feelings.’

‘Stop judging me.’

‘I’m trying to save you…from yourself!’ He sounded exasperated. She hadn’t expected censure from him.

‘I don’t need saving,’ she said, snappily. ‘I know what I’m doing.’

He shook his head and blew through his lips. Then he walked briskly down the corridor without a backward glance.

His reaction stung. Besides, she knew what she was doing. She was following where life led her. That was how she’d always lived her life. Besides, it was Thomas who invited her to Perth to live in his cockroach-infested flat. Thomas who invited her to that party. Why now try to rescue her from the very fate he’d been instrumental in manifesting?

She closed the door and made for the balcony, where she slugged the rest of the wine.

Filed under: Uncategorized Tagged: asylum, asylum seekers, Australia, Australia Day, black comedy, boat people, free novel, illegals, multiculturalism, Perth, The Chant of Jimmy Blacksmith, visa overstayers

Asylum ��� 7th instalment of my serialised novel

To catch��the beginning of this story go to Asylum ��� a novel in weekly parts

In which Yvette goes on a date with Varg…

2.15

 

The cockroaches were retiring from their nocturnal activities in the soft light of dawn. Yvette stepped outside to clear her head, inhaling the cool morning air. Sunlight glistened on the roofs of cars, the long shadows cast by houses and trees shortening even as she watched. A sweet afterglow infused her; still wrapped in Varg���s presence, transfixed by his smile. He���d been as attentive in her bed as at the party. Before he���d left – it must have been about two, something about having to be up early – he invited her to a concert at the Fremantle Town Hall on Friday night. That was a week away.

The day stretched before her like the sky, empty to the horizon. She needed to keep busy, needed a distraction. Then, in the steely blue light, surrounded by the grim concrete of the balcony, images of Curtin flashed before her and she felt a familiar welling of creativity. She could spend the day working on the beginnings of a painting, one that would convey some of the stark oppressiveness that Loewenstein had described. For that, she needed photos.

She showered, dressed in an old T-shirt and shorts, plopped her thumb drive into the side pocket of her shoulder bag and went out. She had no idea if the local library would be open, but she���d find out soon enough.

Down on the pavement her strides were purposeful. She reached the library five minutes after opening and walked past the reception desk and the stacks of non-fiction books to the computer terminals. She glanced back at a librarian wheeling a trolley of books and pointed at a terminal with a look of inquiry on her face. The woman nodded so Yvette sat down.

Minutes later, she walked out of the library with her thumb drive loaded with images of Curtin. Heading home she called in at the photo processing shop on the corner of her street and then ducked into the Vinnies next door, where she found three canvasses of Australian landscapes, none painted with flair.

Back in the flat she laid out on the table a line of five photos, three depicting the detention centre from an aerial point of view, a concatenation of dismally grey shacks behind the strict lines of chain-link fencing and razor-wire coils. How would Sheeler have approached the subject? A bird���s eye perspective accentuating the overlapping planes of the iron roofs? A geometric simplification of the cluster of demountables positioned in pairs like pinned butterflies with their conjoined breezeway bodies covered in grey colourbond? She could use a three-point perspective of the site to accentuate the height of the overhead lighting poles. Or a ground level face-on O���Keeffe-style treatment of a single pair of demountables.

She went and sat out on the hard concrete of the balcony floor. Out here in the stark light, each of her artistic ideas seemed geometrically enticing yet she wondered how she���d incorporate a moral engagement with the subject. She sensed the problem she had lay in the sterility of the approach. Yet she was determined to proceed.

She began a sketch, then another, tracing lines and shading shapes, drawing closer to the subject in her mind until she was standing outside the high fence, staring in at the buildings in the intense heat.

After hours of trying, fending off a mounting dissatisfaction, she took her sketch book inside.

 

2.16

 

For the whole of the following week, Yvette was by turns swayed by artistic frustration, restlessness and the yearning promise of Varg. Now she was standing outside the Fremantle Town Hall, a neo-classical mock-stone building with Corinthian pilasters, pediment windows and heavily moulded architraves. This was her first visit to Fremantle and she was delighted to be surrounded by an abundance of fine old buildings, all of them at least two-storeys high. Even the train station, a stone building with an impressive redbrick and stone fa��ade, had an air of grandeur so lacking in the suburbs of Perth, and an authenticity absent in faux-Tudor London Court. In King���s Square, giant Morton Bag figs offered that welcome respite of shade. As daylight began to fade, street lights illumed St John���s Anglican Church presiding over the square. Built of limestone in a simple gothic style with a row of arched windows over the nave, a church not out of place in a Cotswold lane. Altogether it was a delightful scene, enhancing the anticipation stirring in her belly.

Minutes passed. She watched people passing by in all directions, some bustling along, others sauntering up the Town Hall steps. She felt a rush of relief when Varg appeared out of the melee. He was dressed in the same high-waisted pants and loose-fitting white shirt. He glanced in a parked-car window, flicking his hair, cascading in long and full locks, from his face. Then he saw her and smiled.

She caught her breath.

He dodged a gaggle of youngsters climbing the steps, bent forward and kissed her lightly on her cheek. ���You look stunning,��� he said and she was pleased she���d chosen to wear the slinky black dress she���d found in one of her numerous trips to Vinnies.

He guided her through the entrance hall and on into a small, high-ceilinged room where a gathering of fresh-faced and tanned men and women were chatting enthusiastically round a large wooden table. Music, a high-pitched female voice accompanied by piano, spilled from the main stage located in an adjoining room.

���Hey, Varg!��� said a man with short black hair and a full beard.

���Francois.��� Varg shook the man���s hand and smiled warmly at the others.

���Pull up a chair.��� Francois shunted his own chair to one side.

Feeling awkward, Yvette sat beside Varg. She had no idea their first date would be so public. When Varg introduced her to the gathering, one by one she smiled and shook hands, forgetting each person���s name the moment she greeted the next.

Varg settled into conversation with Francois. Yvette listened, avoiding the gaze of the fair-haired woman opposite, who kept trying to catch her eye. Varg was discussing his role in a Nativity play to be performed at a Nursing Home. Varg was to play Joseph. ���Anton���s insisting I wear a wig.��� He groaned

���A wig?��� Francois laughed.

���He says no Joseph he���d ever directed had red hair.���

���He has a point.���

���Can you see me in a wig?���

Francois laughed again.

���He���s too picky.��� Varg turned to Yvette. ���Don���t you agree?��� She hadn���t a clue what to say. Before she came up with an answer, Varg had turned back to his friend. ���And, he keeps changing the script.���

���You���re joking. It���s a nativity play.���

���I know. He���ll have re-written the whole thing before opening night.���

���What a fuss pot.���

���Worse. He keeps cutting my lines. He���s reducing my character to a monosyllabic simpleton.���

���Poor Joseph,��� Francois said.

���Poor me. Anton reckons the new version is more subtle.��� There was a sarcastic tone in his voice. He tilted his head from side to side in a girlish parody of Anton. ���It leaves space for the audience to���ponder.���

���Maybe he���s right,��� Yvette said, seizing a chance to include herself in the conversation.

Varg shot her a blank stare. ���What do you know about acting?���

���Only that acting goes far beyond words. A character is portrayed in tone, intonation, mannerisms and nuances of body language.���

���I���ll rise to the challenge I���m sure.��� He turned back to Francois. ���But I preferred the script the way it was.���

An enthusiastic applause in the other room was followed by a twangy guitar accompanying a droning male voice. She was glad she was seated away from the brunt of it.

Varg continued talking to his friend. The man on her right was engaged in a private exchange with the woman beside him. Yvette was largely ignored, save for the fair-haired woman opposite, who seemed as keen as ever to gain her attention. Yvette steadfastly avoided looking in the woman���s direction.

Towards the end of the evening, after much bonhomie and Yvette���s half-hearted attempts to include herself somewhere, anywhere in the merry flow, Varg left the room and the fair-haired woman, now drunk, eased her way round the table and sat on Varg���s chair, gripping the side of the table to steady her descent. She reached for Yvette���s hand. ���Yvette,��� she said, intently, ���You���re beautiful.���

���Thank you,��� she said, politely.

���Varg is special you know.��� The woman put her arm around Yvette���s shoulder. Then, placing a hand over her heart, she thrust her chest forward and said, ceremoniously, ���On behalf of all the women of Perth, I wish you every happiness.���

���Thank you,��� Yvette said again. She was mystified. Was this woman nuts? Maybe she was an old girlfriend.

Outside, Varg suggested they take a walk. He folded her arm into his and led her down a narrow side street lined with the Georgian and Victorian gothic buildings she so adored, and on past trendy-looking caf��s. Patrons filled all the outdoor seating, the air rich with garlicky cooking smells. A cosmopolitan atmosphere reminiscent of European cities pervaded the streets. Yvette was enchanted. She knew from Mrs Thoroughgood���s weekly history instruction that Fremantle was famous for its maritime history. She hadn���t realised the town had such style. Fremantle glowed civic pride from every fa��ade. Perth took on a fresh significance. She was no longer alienated by the dead plains of suburbia.

They strolled down to a small sandstone building of chunky unevenly-cut stone, squat and proud on its clipped lawns, and on through the tunnel beneath to a short strand between low harbour walls. The water was dark. Waves slapped lazily on the shore. Harbour lights flickered and the ocean-infused air blew in on a soft breeze. Imagined embraces of passion and love glided through Yvette���s mind like.

Varg turned and cupped her face in his hands. ���Yvette,��� he murmured. He searched her eyes. He seemed about to say more then hesitated. A man and his dog walked towards them. His hands fell and he stood back.

���Shall we go?���

Yvette did her best to hide her disappointment.

 

2.17

 

She was pushing a trolley down the canned-foods aisle of her local supermarket, her heart swelling to Maria McKee���s breathless ohs and pleading heavens spilling from a hidden sound system in as mellifluous a voice she���d ever heard. The desperate longing of the song perfectly matched her mood. She could scarcely believe she were capable of such slushy emotion. She was an embarrassment to herself. The only redeeming feature of the song was that it wasn���t sung by Bonnie Tyler.

Yvette hadn���t heard from Varg since he dropped her back at her flat after the concert in Fremantle last week. A swift drive through the suburbs and she���d spent the whole journey swooning, reading into his silence a passion commensurate with her own. When he pulled up outside her flat he leaned across the console, kissed her cheek and told her he���d call her soon. She was ecstatic. She floated up the stairs to her flat thinking she���d at last found a truly respectful man.

Now she went to the checkout with two tins of diced tomatoes, an onion and a small block of generic cheese. All she could think of was that she had to get back outside as fast as possible in case Varg phoned.

Her love-struck state dissipated the moment she opened the front door of the flat and her phone rang. Convinced it was Varg, it had to be Varg, she dropped her bag of groceries at the door and scrambled through her shoulder bag for her phone before he rang off.

She pressed the receiver to her ear and heard her mother���s voice.

���Still not heard anything?��� Leah said. The same question, every time. And each time she asked after Yvette���s residence application, Yvette felt a twinge of anxiety, this time coupled with an avalanche of disappointment.

���Not a word.���

There was a pause.

���Debbie���s had a bit of drama,��� she said. ���Peter was taken to hospital yesterday.���

���Is he okay?��� Yvette was concerned in the detached sort of way she felt for anyone come to harm. Her nephews were strangers to her.

���Oh, it was only a broken finger. He collided with a cricket ball.���

���Oh dear.���

���Last week of school too. Rotten luck. What are you doing for Christmas?���

���Spending it with Thomas I think. I haven���t really thought about it,��� Yvette said quickly. ���And you?���

���Going to Debbie���s as always. She���s threatening to roast a turkey.���

���I thought you liked turkey.���

���I do. Only last time, she left the cooked bird uncovered on a bench and by the time we came to eat, it was flyblown.���

Yvette didn���t know whether to defend Debbie or share in her mother���s revulsion. ���She won���t make that mistake twice.���

���I know. I���m bringing my meat cover.���

���Oh Mum.���

She wondered then if Leah talked to Debbie about her in the same way.

 

2.18

 

Later, after snacking on cheese and some sticks of celery that had been languishing in the crisper all week, Yvette sat down on the sofa. Her earlier anticipation stabbed by her mother���s call and now replaced with doubt, she read differently his hesitation on the beach, his silence in the car. He wasn���t going to call.

She flicked through her sketches. Then she toyed with her tin pencil box. Stamped on the lid, between a capitalised ���Mars��� and a lower case ���Staedtler��� was a cameo of a Roman soldier in profile. Apparently the manufacturers wanted to impart the message that their pencils were all it took to conquer a drawing. The hinges squeaked as she opened the lid. Perhaps this once that Roman figure would be right.

The evening wore on. A line here, some shading there, crosshatching part of a side wall, adjusting the angle of the fence, staring sunrise into one of her photos wondering if she ought to shine a desk lamp on the side of a cereal box until she had the effect she was after and not mustering the will to do it.

There was nothing wrong with her execution but with every stroke of her pencil she sensed it wasn���t enough. Somehow, she needed to find a way inside, portray the breadth of emotion of the inmates. Yet her entry was barred, her training and her predilection for precisionist art preventing her from accessing the reality inside the fence. All she could produce, felt herself capable of producing, was the front cover of a detention-centre procedures manual or a glossy advertising brochure.

So she went to bed.

 

She was in Carlos��� house. Only he wasn���t there. Dust sheets covered the antique furniture. Cobwebs hung in corners. She was in the courtyard. The pearlescent light of the moon illumed the bedraggled pot plants in its centre. Somewhere in the house she heard a door creak. She climbed the stone staircase to the bedroom. With every tread she entered a thick choking fear. She pushed open the door and shivered in a sudden rush of cold air. Sitting in a rocking chair was a voluptuous young woman wearing a scarlet ball gown. Her feet were bare. Her hair long and thick and black. Yvette seemed to know her. The woman stared with wild, trance-like intensity at the four-poster bed with its crumpled sheets. Sensing her presence, the woman turned to Yvette and screamed, ���No!��� It was a murderous scream. Yvette absorbed the scream with horror. It was then Yvette saw that the woman���s wrists were chained to the arms of the chair.

She woke with her legs tangled in the bed sheet. She yanked the sheet from under her left thigh and sat up, hugging her knees.

The room was a dim grey. She slipped out of bed, went to the kitchen to make tea then stepped outside, inhaling the fresh air. Dawn glowed mellow. A car beeped its horn somewhere below. Before long the rooftops glinted in the early morning light, the curtain raised on another bright and sunny day.

Deep in her was a space black as pitch, a dark dreamscape no sunshine could disperse.

And out of that space burst the woman in her dream, the face, the screaming face, lips opened wide, the whole of that fleshy cavity contorted. The torso rigid, hands rearing, wrists and forearms straining at the chains that bound her to the chair. It was a confronting image, one that repelled as much as compelled her.

She went inside.

In an hour she���d sketched out the form. For now it didn���t matter how the chains would track around the wrists. No, she told herself censoriously as her precisionism came to the fore with issues.

She leaned against a wall one of the canvasses she���d found at Vinnies. Opening Dan���s art box she automatically grabbed the oils. She hesitated. Acrylics would be better.

She hadn���t attempted a painting like this since her last year of high school. Then she���d approached her coursework with all the resentment of a headstrong teenager coerced into producing an expressionist work in acrylic. Plastic, quick dry, one level up from poster paints. She���d always been a medium snob. For her, oils were supreme, requiring skill and patience. To be a master painter is to be an oil painter. She���d carried the attitude stoically right through her years at Goldsmiths, culminating in her Masters – The Shelton with Sunspots: Gender, Modernism and the Urban Landscape. It was a topic that matched her skills and creative ideals.

How many isolated hours had she spent on that Goldsmith���s campus, determined and aloof as though she had to prove herself to herself at any expense? Her only friend at that time was Josie, a bright and enthusiastic red head with boundless energy and a passion for Matisse. Josie had the studio space next to hers. She would stride in to comment, purposefully interrupt, steer Yvette away for a coffee. Looking back it was Josie who���d kept her from the brink of burnout.

They���d shared a house in Hackney with two other artists, cooked together and went for long walks through Hampstead Heath. It was Josie���s parent���s house in Kew that provided Yvette with cosy Christmases and Easters. And when Yvette completed her Masters it was Josie who enticed her to Malta.

Now she had no idea how to manage the wayward stirrings of her creativity. The canvas stared blankly at her. She���d obliterated the Australian landscape beneath a layer of gesso. Holding the sketch in one hand she succumbed to quiet desperation. How would she transpose that intense form?

All her confidence fell away. She���d spent too many years being precise and now she couldn���t let go. All of her artistry fell away. She dare not even stroke the canvas with the tip of her brush.

Her inhibition took her by surprise. And she was four again, with an unsteady hand and an uncertain eye. She stared into her hiatus. Perhaps she needed direction, a life-drawing class, a mentor to guide her. Someone like Josie. Yes, someone exactly like Josie.

Deflated, she put away the canvas and the sketch book and went out on the balcony.

Filed under: Uncategorized Tagged: antony loewenstein, asylum, asylum seekers, black comedy, boat people, free novel, Georgia O'Keeffe, illegals, Precisionism, profits of doom, trauma, visa overstayers

Asylum – 7th instalment of my serialised novel

To catch the beginning of this story go to Asylum – a novel in weekly parts

In which Yvette goes on a date with Varg…

2.15

 

The cockroaches were retiring from their nocturnal activities in the soft light of dawn. Yvette stepped outside to clear her head, inhaling the cool morning air. Sunlight glistened on the roofs of cars, the long shadows cast by houses and trees shortening even as she watched. A sweet afterglow infused her; still wrapped in Varg’s presence, transfixed by his smile. He’d been as attentive in her bed as at the party. Before he’d left – it must have been about two, something about having to be up early – he invited her to a concert at the Fremantle Town Hall on Friday night. That was a week away.

The day stretched before her like the sky, empty to the horizon. She needed to keep busy, needed a distraction. Then, in the steely blue light, surrounded by the grim concrete of the balcony, images of Curtin flashed before her and she felt a familiar welling of creativity. She could spend the day working on the beginnings of a painting, one that would convey some of the stark oppressiveness that Loewenstein had described. For that, she needed photos.

She showered, dressed in an old T-shirt and shorts, plopped her thumb drive into the side pocket of her shoulder bag and went out. She had no idea if the local library would be open, but she’d find out soon enough.

Down on the pavement her strides were purposeful. She reached the library five minutes after opening and walked past the reception desk and the stacks of non-fiction books to the computer terminals. She glanced back at a librarian wheeling a trolley of books and pointed at a terminal with a look of inquiry on her face. The woman nodded so Yvette sat down.

Minutes later, she walked out of the library with her thumb drive loaded with images of Curtin. Heading home she called in at the photo processing shop on the corner of her street and then ducked into the Vinnies next door, where she found three canvasses of Australian landscapes, none painted with flair.

Back in the flat she laid out on the table a line of five photos, three depicting the detention centre from an aerial point of view, a concatenation of dismally grey shacks behind the strict lines of chain-link fencing and razor-wire coils. How would Sheeler have approached the subject? A bird’s eye perspective accentuating the overlapping planes of the iron roofs? A geometric simplification of the cluster of demountables positioned in pairs like pinned butterflies with their conjoined breezeway bodies covered in grey colourbond? She could use a three-point perspective of the site to accentuate the height of the overhead lighting poles. Or a ground level face-on O’Keeffe-style treatment of a single pair of demountables.

She went and sat out on the hard concrete of the balcony floor. Out here in the stark light, each of her artistic ideas seemed geometrically enticing yet she wondered how she’d incorporate a moral engagement with the subject. She sensed the problem she had lay in the sterility of the approach. Yet she was determined to proceed.

She began a sketch, then another, tracing lines and shading shapes, drawing closer to the subject in her mind until she was standing outside the high fence, staring in at the buildings in the intense heat.

After hours of trying, fending off a mounting dissatisfaction, she took her sketch book inside.

 

2.16

 

For the whole of the following week, Yvette was by turns swayed by artistic frustration, restlessness and the yearning promise of Varg. Now she was standing outside the Fremantle Town Hall, a neo-classical mock-stone building with Corinthian pilasters, pediment windows and heavily moulded architraves. This was her first visit to Fremantle and she was delighted to be surrounded by an abundance of fine old buildings, all of them at least two-storeys high. Even the train station, a stone building with an impressive redbrick and stone façade, had an air of grandeur so lacking in the suburbs of Perth, and an authenticity absent in faux-Tudor London Court. In King’s Square, giant Morton Bag figs offered that welcome respite of shade. As daylight began to fade, street lights illumed St John’s Anglican Church presiding over the square. Built of limestone in a simple gothic style with a row of arched windows over the nave, a church not out of place in a Cotswold lane. Altogether it was a delightful scene, enhancing the anticipation stirring in her belly.

Minutes passed. She watched people passing by in all directions, some bustling along, others sauntering up the Town Hall steps. She felt a rush of relief when Varg appeared out of the melee. He was dressed in the same high-waisted pants and loose-fitting white shirt. He glanced in a parked-car window, flicking his hair, cascading in long and full locks, from his face. Then he saw her and smiled.

She caught her breath.

He dodged a gaggle of youngsters climbing the steps, bent forward and kissed her lightly on her cheek. ‘You look stunning,’ he said and she was pleased she’d chosen to wear the slinky black dress she’d found in one of her numerous trips to Vinnies.

He guided her through the entrance hall and on into a small, high-ceilinged room where a gathering of fresh-faced and tanned men and women were chatting enthusiastically round a large wooden table. Music, a high-pitched female voice accompanied by piano, spilled from the main stage located in an adjoining room.

‘Hey, Varg!’ said a man with short black hair and a full beard.

‘Francois.’ Varg shook the man’s hand and smiled warmly at the others.

‘Pull up a chair.’ Francois shunted his own chair to one side.

Feeling awkward, Yvette sat beside Varg. She had no idea their first date would be so public. When Varg introduced her to the gathering, one by one she smiled and shook hands, forgetting each person’s name the moment she greeted the next.

Varg settled into conversation with Francois. Yvette listened, avoiding the gaze of the fair-haired woman opposite, who kept trying to catch her eye. Varg was discussing his role in a Nativity play to be performed at a Nursing Home. Varg was to play Joseph. ‘Anton’s insisting I wear a wig.’ He groaned

‘A wig?’ Francois laughed.

‘He says no Joseph he’d ever directed had red hair.’

‘He has a point.’

‘Can you see me in a wig?’

Francois laughed again.

‘He’s too picky.’ Varg turned to Yvette. ‘Don’t you agree?’ She hadn’t a clue what to say. Before she came up with an answer, Varg had turned back to his friend. ‘And, he keeps changing the script.’

‘You’re joking. It’s a nativity play.’

‘I know. He’ll have re-written the whole thing before opening night.’

‘What a fuss pot.’

‘Worse. He keeps cutting my lines. He’s reducing my character to a monosyllabic simpleton.’

‘Poor Joseph,’ Francois said.

‘Poor me. Anton reckons the new version is more subtle.’ There was a sarcastic tone in his voice. He tilted his head from side to side in a girlish parody of Anton. ‘It leaves space for the audience to…ponder.’

‘Maybe he’s right,’ Yvette said, seizing a chance to include herself in the conversation.

Varg shot her a blank stare. ‘What do you know about acting?’

‘Only that acting goes far beyond words. A character is portrayed in tone, intonation, mannerisms and nuances of body language.’

‘I’ll rise to the challenge I’m sure.’ He turned back to Francois. ‘But I preferred the script the way it was.’

An enthusiastic applause in the other room was followed by a twangy guitar accompanying a droning male voice. She was glad she was seated away from the brunt of it.

Varg continued talking to his friend. The man on her right was engaged in a private exchange with the woman beside him. Yvette was largely ignored, save for the fair-haired woman opposite, who seemed as keen as ever to gain her attention. Yvette steadfastly avoided looking in the woman’s direction.

Towards the end of the evening, after much bonhomie and Yvette’s half-hearted attempts to include herself somewhere, anywhere in the merry flow, Varg left the room and the fair-haired woman, now drunk, eased her way round the table and sat on Varg’s chair, gripping the side of the table to steady her descent. She reached for Yvette’s hand. ‘Yvette,’ she said, intently, ‘You’re beautiful.’

‘Thank you,’ she said, politely.

‘Varg is special you know.’ The woman put her arm around Yvette’s shoulder. Then, placing a hand over her heart, she thrust her chest forward and said, ceremoniously, ‘On behalf of all the women of Perth, I wish you every happiness.’

‘Thank you,’ Yvette said again. She was mystified. Was this woman nuts? Maybe she was an old girlfriend.

Outside, Varg suggested they take a walk. He folded her arm into his and led her down a narrow side street lined with the Georgian and Victorian gothic buildings she so adored, and on past trendy-looking cafés. Patrons filled all the outdoor seating, the air rich with garlicky cooking smells. A cosmopolitan atmosphere reminiscent of European cities pervaded the streets. Yvette was enchanted. She knew from Mrs Thoroughgood’s weekly history instruction that Fremantle was famous for its maritime history. She hadn’t realised the town had such style. Fremantle glowed civic pride from every façade. Perth took on a fresh significance. She was no longer alienated by the dead plains of suburbia.

They strolled down to a small sandstone building of chunky unevenly-cut stone, squat and proud on its clipped lawns, and on through the tunnel beneath to a short strand between low harbour walls. The water was dark. Waves slapped lazily on the shore. Harbour lights flickered and the ocean-infused air blew in on a soft breeze. Imagined embraces of passion and love glided through Yvette’s mind like.

Varg turned and cupped her face in his hands. ‘Yvette,’ he murmured. He searched her eyes. He seemed about to say more then hesitated. A man and his dog walked towards them. His hands fell and he stood back.

‘Shall we go?’

Yvette did her best to hide her disappointment.

 

2.17

 

She was pushing a trolley down the canned-foods aisle of her local supermarket, her heart swelling to Maria McKee’s breathless ohs and pleading heavens spilling from a hidden sound system in as mellifluous a voice she’d ever heard. The desperate longing of the song perfectly matched her mood. She could scarcely believe she were capable of such slushy emotion. She was an embarrassment to herself. The only redeeming feature of the song was that it wasn’t sung by Bonnie Tyler.

Yvette hadn’t heard from Varg since he dropped her back at her flat after the concert in Fremantle last week. A swift drive through the suburbs and she’d spent the whole journey swooning, reading into his silence a passion commensurate with her own. When he pulled up outside her flat he leaned across the console, kissed her cheek and told her he’d call her soon. She was ecstatic. She floated up the stairs to her flat thinking she’d at last found a truly respectful man.

Now she went to the checkout with two tins of diced tomatoes, an onion and a small block of generic cheese. All she could think of was that she had to get back outside as fast as possible in case Varg phoned.

Her love-struck state dissipated the moment she opened the front door of the flat and her phone rang. Convinced it was Varg, it had to be Varg, she dropped her bag of groceries at the door and scrambled through her shoulder bag for her phone before he rang off.

She pressed the receiver to her ear and heard her mother’s voice.

‘Still not heard anything?’ Leah said. The same question, every time. And each time she asked after Yvette’s residence application, Yvette felt a twinge of anxiety, this time coupled with an avalanche of disappointment.

‘Not a word.’

There was a pause.

‘Debbie’s had a bit of drama,’ she said. ‘Peter was taken to hospital yesterday.’

‘Is he okay?’ Yvette was concerned in the detached sort of way she felt for anyone come to harm. Her nephews were strangers to her.

‘Oh, it was only a broken finger. He collided with a cricket ball.’

‘Oh dear.’

‘Last week of school too. Rotten luck. What are you doing for Christmas?’

‘Spending it with Thomas I think. I haven’t really thought about it,’ Yvette said quickly. ‘And you?’

‘Going to Debbie’s as always. She’s threatening to roast a turkey.’

‘I thought you liked turkey.’

‘I do. Only last time, she left the cooked bird uncovered on a bench and by the time we came to eat, it was flyblown.’

Yvette didn’t know whether to defend Debbie or share in her mother’s revulsion. ‘She won’t make that mistake twice.’

‘I know. I’m bringing my meat cover.’

‘Oh Mum.’

She wondered then if Leah talked to Debbie about her in the same way.

 

2.18

 

Later, after snacking on cheese and some sticks of celery that had been languishing in the crisper all week, Yvette sat down on the sofa. Her earlier anticipation stabbed by her mother’s call and now replaced with doubt, she read differently his hesitation on the beach, his silence in the car. He wasn’t going to call.

She flicked through her sketches. Then she toyed with her tin pencil box. Stamped on the lid, between a capitalised ‘Mars’ and a lower case ‘Staedtler’ was a cameo of a Roman soldier in profile. Apparently the manufacturers wanted to impart the message that their pencils were all it took to conquer a drawing. The hinges squeaked as she opened the lid. Perhaps this once that Roman figure would be right.

The evening wore on. A line here, some shading there, crosshatching part of a side wall, adjusting the angle of the fence, staring sunrise into one of her photos wondering if she ought to shine a desk lamp on the side of a cereal box until she had the effect she was after and not mustering the will to do it.

There was nothing wrong with her execution but with every stroke of her pencil she sensed it wasn’t enough. Somehow, she needed to find a way inside, portray the breadth of emotion of the inmates. Yet her entry was barred, her training and her predilection for precisionist art preventing her from accessing the reality inside the fence. All she could produce, felt herself capable of producing, was the front cover of a detention-centre procedures manual or a glossy advertising brochure.

So she went to bed.

 

She was in Carlos’ house. Only he wasn’t there. Dust sheets covered the antique furniture. Cobwebs hung in corners. She was in the courtyard. The pearlescent light of the moon illumed the bedraggled pot plants in its centre. Somewhere in the house she heard a door creak. She climbed the stone staircase to the bedroom. With every tread she entered a thick choking fear. She pushed open the door and shivered in a sudden rush of cold air. Sitting in a rocking chair was a voluptuous young woman wearing a scarlet ball gown. Her feet were bare. Her hair long and thick and black. Yvette seemed to know her. The woman stared with wild, trance-like intensity at the four-poster bed with its crumpled sheets. Sensing her presence, the woman turned to Yvette and screamed, ‘No!’ It was a murderous scream. Yvette absorbed the scream with horror. It was then Yvette saw that the woman’s wrists were chained to the arms of the chair.

She woke with her legs tangled in the bed sheet. She yanked the sheet from under her left thigh and sat up, hugging her knees.

The room was a dim grey. She slipped out of bed, went to the kitchen to make tea then stepped outside, inhaling the fresh air. Dawn glowed mellow. A car beeped its horn somewhere below. Before long the rooftops glinted in the early morning light, the curtain raised on another bright and sunny day.

Deep in her was a space black as pitch, a dark dreamscape no sunshine could disperse.

And out of that space burst the woman in her dream, the face, the screaming face, lips opened wide, the whole of that fleshy cavity contorted. The torso rigid, hands rearing, wrists and forearms straining at the chains that bound her to the chair. It was a confronting image, one that repelled as much as compelled her.

She went inside.

In an hour she’d sketched out the form. For now it didn’t matter how the chains would track around the wrists. No, she told herself censoriously as her precisionism came to the fore with issues.

She leaned against a wall one of the canvasses she’d found at Vinnies. Opening Dan’s art box she automatically grabbed the oils. She hesitated. Acrylics would be better.

She hadn’t attempted a painting like this since her last year of high school. Then she’d approached her coursework with all the resentment of a headstrong teenager coerced into producing an expressionist work in acrylic. Plastic, quick dry, one level up from poster paints. She’d always been a medium snob. For her, oils were supreme, requiring skill and patience. To be a master painter is to be an oil painter. She’d carried the attitude stoically right through her years at Goldsmiths, culminating in her Masters – The Shelton with Sunspots: Gender, Modernism and the Urban Landscape. It was a topic that matched her skills and creative ideals.

How many isolated hours had she spent on that Goldsmith’s campus, determined and aloof as though she had to prove herself to herself at any expense? Her only friend at that time was Josie, a bright and enthusiastic red head with boundless energy and a passion for Matisse. Josie had the studio space next to hers. She would stride in to comment, purposefully interrupt, steer Yvette away for a coffee. Looking back it was Josie who’d kept her from the brink of burnout.

They’d shared a house in Hackney with two other artists, cooked together and went for long walks through Hampstead Heath. It was Josie’s parent’s house in Kew that provided Yvette with cosy Christmases and Easters. And when Yvette completed her Masters it was Josie who enticed her to Malta.

Now she had no idea how to manage the wayward stirrings of her creativity. The canvas stared blankly at her. She’d obliterated the Australian landscape beneath a layer of gesso. Holding the sketch in one hand she succumbed to quiet desperation. How would she transpose that intense form?

All her confidence fell away. She’d spent too many years being precise and now she couldn’t let go. All of her artistry fell away. She dare not even stroke the canvas with the tip of her brush.

Her inhibition took her by surprise. And she was four again, with an unsteady hand and an uncertain eye. She stared into her hiatus. Perhaps she needed direction, a life-drawing class, a mentor to guide her. Someone like Josie. Yes, someone exactly like Josie.

Deflated, she put away the canvas and the sketch book and went out on the balcony.

Filed under: Uncategorized Tagged: antony loewenstein, asylum, asylum seekers, black comedy, boat people, free novel, Georgia O'Keeffe, illegals, Precisionism, profits of doom, trauma, visa overstayers

A Tribute to Alex Legg

     It is with huge sadness that I write this. Not twenty-four hours have gone by since the passing of consummate songwriter and performer Alex Legg.

This morning I was so moved by all the messages of love and goodwill on facebook  I wrote a short story to contribute to his memory. It’s no more than a vignette. I wanted to capture something of the private Alex, the man I knew so well; his humour and imagination that bubbled continuously behind the scenes. Incredibly, the ABC have published it straight away.  This story is for his son, his siblings, his family and for his ark of fans and friends who leave no room aboard for even a fly.

 

Follow the link to read it: Alex Legg, born 1952

I was fortunate to spend two sweet years with Alex. I went to all of his gigs and applauded every song. I guess I lived inside his song bag so to speak, and each one grew on me so that now I’m covered in them like a rash.

His music is a feast for the ears and the heart. His lyrics have an aerodynamic quality found in the great master songwriters, such as Paul Simon or Bacharach. Each song is carefully crafted with all the hooks and sweet melodies of truly great pop. He wrote in many genres: blues, folk, country, pop. He will be dearly missed but his music will live on.  Here he is playing I’m Down at Camelot, Sydney.

Alex was a passionate man. We shared a take on the world and all its flaws. His views came out in songs.   You Gotta Laugh Sometimes

And here’s one of my favourites. Some Old Junk Shop

Photographer and artist Marg Thompson has created this tribute to Alex – Thanks for Everything

Rest in Peace my friend.             

Filed under: Uncategorized Tagged: Alex Legg