by Jack Dann
‘Here in the Lanes we walk Beyond the Pale,’ Daniel said.
‘Beyond the paling fences you mean?’ Julia said.
‘Yes, and somehow beyond the limits of civilisation, beyond reality’s pallid appearance. On the maps this lane is nameless, you know Jules. Even now, they do not have official titles, these secret footpaths. No signs, no labels. That is part of their mystery. Is it impossible that the influence put forth by a place might be so strong that it subconsciously affects even the cartographer who attempts to define it?’
‘You’re being a nerd again,’ Julia called out from ahead of him. Her voice echoed strangely.
‘I know. How many lanes are there on the way to school?’
‘Only one.’ They emerged into the relative brightness of Sir Garnet Road. It was like coming out of a subterranean passageway. ‘That is, if you go the quickest way,’ Julia added.
‘Look at this corner,’ said Daniel, surveying the street. ‘Isn’t it the strangest shape? A complete anomaly! Within a few paces the whole street abruptly makes two right-angled deviations for no apparent reason, then changes its name to Surrey Avenue. And half the houses turn their backs on it! There’s not a front door or front gate to be seen along the western section, only back fences. Who do you think Sir Garnet was?’
‘No idea. Maybe there never was such a person.’
‘The Knight of the Red Jewel,’ Daniel said softly, half-serious. ‘Damn,’ he subjoined, staring across the road, ‘look at that. They’ve pulled down the Southall house.’
Towers of scaffolding and concrete rose from a block where a familiar weatherboard house used to stand, at the crux of Sir Garnet’s strange configuration. Julia gave a cry of disgust. ‘They’re building townhouses or something, by the look of it,’ she said. ‘What a shame. That house was no mansion but it had a certain character.’
‘And memories,’ said Daniel.
After navigating Sir Garnet Road’s dog-leg, they struck out across a public children’s playground no bigger than a standard house-block. A kind of goat-track, made by the passage of countless feet, ran down the middle; a path of worn-away soil cloven through the tussocky sward. Nearby, brightly coloured plastic equipment squatted like alien spacecraft.
‘What a shame they’ve removed the whizzy,’ Daniel said with regret. ‘It provided one of the two most thrilling rides in this playground. The old steel climbing frame and slide and swings have gone, too, swept away by politically correct safety rules.’
‘What other dangerous ride was your favourite?’
‘The “maypole”.’
Julia visualised the lethal construction of free-swinging heavy chains and metal rings, which no doubt knocked many a child unconscious and smashed many a bone, not to mention wrenching shoulders from their sockets and probably attracting lightning to boot.
‘Aah, but it was a wonderful ride,’ said Daniel, ‘with the wind in your ears and the clamour of the chains against the concrete-embedded pole, jangling like iron bells. A wonderful ride!’
The track led them to Empress Road — ‘Named, no doubt,’ said Julia, ‘in honour of Queen Victoria, Empress of India,’ — where they turned left, but soon they paused again at the other side of the Southall block with its tall, hollow-eyed skeletons of buildings. The house’s rear had overlooked Sir Garnet Road while the front faced onto Empress Road, and notably it had been the abode of the famous author Ivan Southall. More pertinent for children of that bygone era had been the fact that all along the base of the Southalls’ white-painted wire-work front fence grew small plants they called ‘egg and bacons’, because the flowers, with their bright yellow centres, looked like fried eggs and, more astonishingly, they smelled like eggs cooked with bacon. The children had considered it quite fascinating. It was also frustrating to inhale the odour of a delicious but inedible breakfast.
The other outstanding feature of Ivan Southall’s house in those days was that their schoolmate Jan Southall — his daughter — was able to depart either from her front gate onto Empress Road or from her back gate onto Sir Garnet Road. Every other suburban house seemed to be hemmed in at the back by someone else’s private property. As children they’d considered that Jan’s ability to slip between roadways via her house was intriguing; like owning a secret passageway. She was deemed to be incredibly fortunate; almost charmed.
They loitered in the street outside the Southall block, trying to see if any egg and bacons had survived the construction workers. There was nothing to be seen except dust and clay.
‘It’s all gone pear-shaped,’ said Daniel decisively. ‘At the risk of seeming to turn into a bitter old coot, I feel like saying what happened to the good old days, and they don’t make ‘em like they used to.’
‘At least schools are better now than they were,’ said Julia.
‘That’s true,’ her companion observed. ‘Nothing could be worse than Chatham School in our day. The awful, awful school, I thought it was. The strict, soulless, brown-linoleumed, vertiginously-staircased, cruel school with its hard-surfaced so-called playground that fried us in summer and gouged our knees when we fell, and all the other petty inflictions: the headmaster with his strap, the rulers smacking the backs of our legs, the public humiliations, the eccentric teachers.’
‘If we detested the buildings and staff,’ said Julia, ‘We loved the learning, you and I, didn’t we Dan.’
‘We did, and it was by losing ourselves in that, and those fanciful games we used to make up, that we survived, I think …’
‘I am sure of it. Come on, shall we get moving? We’re only halfway.’
‘No, wait, there are other ways to get there.’
‘We could go by the lane with the buttercups. It’s slower, though.’
‘Perfect! I would love to see that again.’ They retraced their steps past the desecrated Southall site, moving east. ‘I think,’ said Daniel, ‘of all the lanes the buttercup one was my favourite. If ever I walked home via Luke’s house, I used to take that way.’
A short street formed a T intersection at the end of Empress. On the left it narrowed to become, along more than half its length, the unofficially named Buttercup Lane — forbidden and inaccessible to all traffic except pedestrians. When they reached the entrance, Julia and Daniel could discern no sign of the massed drifts of buttercups that had so enchanted them as children. Disappointingly, nothing but short-cropped turf abutted the neighbouring properties.
‘Well it has been a long time,’ Julia said despondently. ‘Anything could have happened.’
‘Gone! All gone!’ Daniel said, throwing up his hands in despair. ‘Did the drought kill them? Or is it political correctness again — has someone poisoned them, or mowed them all down because they are not native plants?’
Julia uttered a squeal and ran forward. She crouched down close to the fence, peering eagerly at something on the ground, cupping it gently in her hands. ‘Look Dan, just here. Right against the fence, where the lawnmower couldn’t get them. A few, just a very few — and dwarfed, clinging to the dry earth. Tough little things aren’t they, despite their fragile beauty when they’re in flower!’
Daniel was kneeling beside her in an instant, his handsome face alight with pleasure. ‘I’m going to save one,’ he said. ‘I’ll dig it up and put it in a flowerpot.’ Carefully excavating he dislodged one of the tiny plants from its niche in the dirt, wrapped the jagged foliage in his handkerchief and folded it in a capacious pocket.
They sprang to their feet, exuberant about this precious find, this symbol of childhood’s golden past which had courageously struggled through years of adversity and emerged victorious. ‘Let’s see if the peppercorns are still there,’ said Julia, impulsively taking her companion by the hand and leading him into the Buttercup Lane.
The peppercorn trees at the other end of the shady thoroughfare still let down their spicy grey-green tresses, and in that the couple rejoiced anew. Turning left as they exited the lane, they headed down Mont Albert Road to
wards the pedestrian crossing.
‘Camberwell,’ said Daniel as they went. ‘Such an English name! It might be part of Britain’s landscape, or Canada’s, or New Zealand’s, or America’s. It might lie in Australia, or Gibraltar, or anywhere in space and history that was once colonised by the British, who brought their place names with them. Did you know, Jules, that there are many Camberwells all over the world? The original, a district, lies in the London borough of Southwark. There is much in a name, for names have roots, like trees, and those with the longest roots tell stories. Through them etymologists can trace languages, which give clues to migrations, famines, wars, invasions, and the entire history of the human race.’
‘However,’ said Julia, ‘in 1994 they changed the City of Camberwell’s name to Booroondara.’
‘An Aboriginal word,’ said Daniel.
‘It is. But one cannot help wondering what Booroondara’s etymology is, given that in 1951 the Aborigines bestowed the title of Melbourne’s famous festival, Moomba, upon the City’s aldermen, with the assurance that it translated as “Let’s get together and have fun”, when in the late sixties it was revealed that the term literally means “up yours”.’
Laughing and joking they reached the school, strolled around its perimeter marvelling at how it had shrunk and recalling increasingly hilarious anecdotes of school life, then turned for home. The late afternoon sun had appeared and, as the cloud cover receded to the east, the daylight brightened to mellow amber.
‘This is closer to the feeling,’ Daniel muttered, as if thinking aloud. Addressing Julia he said, ‘Two lanes. Only two lanes between home and school when you go the long way. Keep reminding me! It seems like three or four.’
‘I suppose the playground could be considered an honorary lane,’ said Julia, in an attempt to reassure him. ‘I mean, there is a public footpath through it, and it cuts through between houses, like the lanes do.’
‘You’re only saying that to mitigate my madness,’ said Daniel, smiling, ‘but thanks anyway. I assure you I am not this navigationally challenged in other suburbs. It’s only Surrey Hills.’
‘You might be thinking of the Three Lanes Way,’ Julia persisted. ‘The really long way.’
‘Let’s take that route back!’
They crossed Mont Albert Road and turned right. About a block further on they ducked into the shadows of the Top Lane, whose straight, echoing path brought them out into the western section of Empress Road. There they stood still, looking about. Front fences, punctuated with gates, stretched away to either hand. Twin avenues of trees dwindled into the distance.
‘If you didn’t know any better,’ said Daniel, ‘you’d think you only had two choices — to go left or right. Two dimensions.’
‘But you’d be wrong,’ said Julia.
Hidden on the opposite side of Empress Road, slightly to their left and easily overlooked, was the mouth of the Middle Lane. They followed it to the end, the sound of their footsteps ricocheting hollowly off adamant surfaces. After they emerged into Sir Garnet Road they walked diagonally across and entered the confines of the Lower Lane. This graven furrow disgorged them opposite the wide grassy oval of Canterbury Sports Ground, at the bottom of Guildford Road which — Julia’s parents had told her — had been named after some place in the English county of Surrey.
Daniel said, ‘Canterbury, Surrey, Guildford, Chatham, Victoria — all the English names transplanted.’
‘Turn left,’ Julia said, ‘and prepare yourself for the long hard walk home uphill, or so it always seemed; an arduous drag, with a heavy schoolbag on your back after an onerous day of cruel school. Now that we have grown up it doesn’t seem so terrible.’
‘This place where we are standing right now,’ said Daniel, ‘is one of those connecting points I’ve identified on the maps. Straight ahead a footpath leads across the Sports Ground to the railway station. The line runs to the city centre, the hub of the state’s rail network, which in turn is connected to every city on the globe. We could turn for home, or if we had the inclination we could journey from this point to just about anywhere in the State of Victoria, or in Queen Victoria’s Empire for that matter.’
‘Come on,’ said Julia, ‘let’s go back to my place. I’ll cook dinner for us both.’
They trudged up the hill, Daniel still airing his thoughts aloud. ‘My mother went to Chatham School. She must have Walked the Lanes daily.’
‘Walking the Lanes,’ echoed Julia. ‘The phrase reminds me of the ancient English tradition of Beating the Bounds. I’ve heard that in Britain they still do it to this day, ceremonially circumnavigating the boundaries of a district. It’s a relic of the ancient need to protect the borders from invading Picts or Gaels from Beyond the Pale, I suppose.’
‘Which means,’ said Daniel, without breaking his train of thought, ‘that the Lanes of Camberwell and I share a long history maybe, beginning when my mother was old enough to begin school. Fifty percent of my genetic heritage travelled those pathways regularly, before I was conceived. In a way, I made this journey before I was even born.’
Wattle birds were squabbling in the street trees and the sun was going down at their backs. Shadows stretched long before them.
‘But what,’ said Julia, as they passed the wrought-iron gate of an Edwardian mansion, ‘what is it all about these clues you speak of, this feeling you get? What’s the point of it all?’
‘Jules, you’ll think I really am crazy if I tell you.’
‘No I won’t! I promise.’
They bantered for a while, but eventually with reluctance Daniel began to reveal his theories.
‘The Lanes of Camberwell have a secret,’ he said. ‘That, I have come to suspect. An old, old secret. Older than colonisation or the Aboriginal tribes that roamed Victoria; maybe older than anyone guesses. As old as the underground waterways? Older?’ He brushed a stray lock of hair out of his eyes, made as if to say something, faltered, then continued, ‘They are almost exploding with that secret.’
Julia merely nodded, unwilling to interrupt the flow.
‘It alters the course of a road,’ Daniel said. ‘It chops through boundaries, bans some people from its route and invites others, contains its own dewy moist atmosphere, grows its own flowers, hugs mystery to its tall fences like a cloak of leaves and shadows, confuses us, misleads us, swallows us up in places between; neither here nor there, neither England nor Australia, neither the old world or the new, nor at home nor at school… and spits us out into somewhere else entirely.
‘There are secrets here, Jules, and strange, unguessable forces of nature at work.’
‘That may be true,’ Julia said noncommittally.
‘It is my theory,’ he persevered, ‘that the secret of the Camberwell Lanes can be discovered. But only by someone who Walks the Lanes in the right way, at the right time. Oh yes, it has to be the right time. And the right person.’
Julia said, ‘Maybe a person who travelled the Lanes before their own birth. Someone who Walked the Lanes when young enough to perceive and hear and feel and taste what adults cannot; young enough to see through angles that harden and cloud over as you grow older and preconceptions blind you.’
‘Exactly. As to the right time — the time when the secrets rise closest to the surface; when, as you Walk the Lanes, you tremble with anticipation, the paling fences grow taller, the overhanging foliage sharper and clearer, the streets more deserted — why, that season is autumn.’
A sudden afternoon breeze blew motes of thistledown past their faces.
‘Autumn of the early mists,’ said Daniel, ‘the long amber sun rays of perpetual morning, the glassy panes of leaves turning crimson; mushrooms and toadstools springing in the short-mown turf of the nature strips. Walk the Lanes of Camberwell in autumn and there’s a chance you will hear an echo of an echo. You might almost but never quite see.’
‘Autumn is now.’
‘True, but it’s not the right time yet. There are certain days …’
‘It is a feeling. I know I’m right. It’s a “feeling I get when I look to the west, and my spirit is crying for leaving” as the Led Zeppelin song goes. There will be days during this season, certain days, when the feeling will be just right. It’s easy to tell. Magic will be in the air; thick in the air, and that’s when it will be time.’
Giggling erupted from one of the front gardens, where small children were blowing bubbles through wire rings dipped into detergent. Translucent spheres came drifting over the fence into the plane trees then popped and vanished.
‘The tides have their rhythm,’ said Daniel, ‘the heart has its rhythms, the seasons have theirs … and there is a rhythm too, to the approach and retreat of that Something Else. How can that feeling be described? It is the sense that something exhilarating and possibly dangerous is about to happen. It is the sense that some unseen barrier, having congealed and thickened throughout the months of summer, has diminished to the sheer filminess of a veil, and that veil in places is so tenuous it can, perhaps, be torn — if you know the secret. It feels as if some Other World is pressing up against ours as the veil dwindles; some Other World which is usually separated from ours by impenetrable forces. As you are walking beneath the leaves on your way to the Lanes something from that place is, or might be, watching you from behind the trunk of one of these very trees, but for what purpose, with what intent, is unfathomable. Time’s wheel turns, the forces ebb and flow. Autumn is low tide; the lowest of the year.’
Daniel watched as seven bubbles floated past.
‘The veil becomes, in places, as thin as a soap bubble’s walls,’ he said. ‘Thinnest in places such as the panes of autumn foliage.’ They were passing beneath the burnished boughs of a plane tree. Reaching up he touched one of the leaves. ‘When the sun shines through the stained glass of a smoky-amber plane tree leaf, it becomes a window, if only you knew how to look through it. The splendour is leaching through into the Pale — the rich apple-reds, the warm gold tints, the wine-crimsons — and do not be mistaken, the changing of the leaves is attributed to chemicals and sap but it is not. No, the leaves turn colour because they are membranes where the bubble-wall is thinnest, so that the hues of Other World, of Autumn Place, of Equinoxia, come seeping through, dripping through like mulberry wine and melted toffee and honey mead … It’s the leaves, Jules, and the light — the long mellow rays of equinoctial light.’