The Lost Love Song

by Minnie Darke

  ‘Fuck, Luce! What was that for?’

  ‘For being a total ass-wipe,’ she said.

  Still on his back, Elijah groaned.

  ‘It’s not nice to dick around with a woman’s heart,’ Lucie said, teary and almost yelling. ‘Especially not a woman who’s about to turn thirty-seven.’

  ‘I’m not dicking around. I promise you.’

  ‘Fuck off, Elijah. You think you’re being funny?’

  With some difficulty, he propped himself on his elbows. ‘Tell me. Where do you want to live, huh? Where do you want to call home? I mean really home. San Francisco? Quebec? Fuckin’ Fairbanks? We’ll move there. Anywhere you name, I’ll go there. I’m yours.’

  ‘Shut up.’

  ‘How many children do you want to have? I don’t care. We’ll have as many as you want.’

  ‘Fuck you.’

  ‘Two? Three? Seven? Tell you what, go get a piece of paper. Let’s write their names down right now. You pick whatever you like. Even, you know, weird hippie noun names if you want. River, Ocean, Forest. I’ll just roll with it.’

  ‘Will you stop teasing?’

  ‘I’m not teasing!’

  Lucie put her hands over her ears. ‘E-li-jah!’

  ‘Okay, here’s a deal for you,’ he said, her hands hardly even muffling his words. ‘You say yes to me, and I will never. Ever. Never, ever again, for as long as we both shall live, make another banjo joke. That is my proposition to you.’

  Lucie snorted, half laughing, half crying. ‘That is not a promise you can keep.’

  Elijah’s face was serious. Really serious. ‘It is if you say yes.’

  For the briefest interval of time, Lucie allowed herself to consider that he might actually be for real. She pictured them at folk festivals. They’d be one of those music families where the kids ricocheted from parent to parent during and between gigs, ending up asleep on the lap of their harp-playing godmother before being given a shoulder ride by their mandolin-playing godfather. Lucie had seen those kids at festivals. She’d seen toddlers chewing on electrical leads, watched how fast they learned to keep their fingers out of the stomp box. They were always cool, those kids, having become accustomed to staying up late dancing to reels at the front of country halls, their feet bare, their faces painted with flowers and rainbows and puppy faces.

  ‘Luce, I’m saying I want to do the whole thing. All of it. With you.’

  Lucie cried, ‘You’re a jerk. You know that?’

  ‘I’m a jerk who loves you.’

  ‘You love me? You love me now?’

  ‘I’ve always loved you, you crazy banjo girl,’ he said.

  ‘But you always run away from me!’ Lucie cried.

  ‘Yeah, that’s true. I used to do that,’ Elijah said, nodding. ‘But I won’t do it any more.’

  ‘So, what’s changed?’

  ‘I’m ready.’

  ‘Well, what if I was ready for so long that now I’m unready?’

  ‘Are you telling me it’s too late? I don’t want to believe that.’

  ‘I don’t know, Elijah,’ Lucie said. ‘I promised myself . . .’

  Elijah was on his knees beside her now, and he pulled her up so she was on her knees, too. He kissed her, and she kissed him and the feel of his mouth on hers, and the warmth of his hands on her waist under her T-shirt made her want to kiss him more, and more. They kissed for the longest time. He kissed her tear-streaked cheeks and he kissed her in the middle of her forehead, and then he kissed her on the mouth again and her body hummed, and she could feel his body harmonising.

  She opened her eyes. ‘Did that just happen? Hang on, what just happened?’

  ‘I asked you to marry me.’

  ‘You did?’

  ‘I did.’

  ‘I think I missed that bit.’

  ‘Okay, so there can’t be any mistakes. You ready? You listening?’

  She nodded.

  ‘Lucie Doran, goddess of the banjo, love of my life, most outrageously sexy woman alive, will you marry me?’

  ‘No more banjo jokes. Not one. So long as we both shall live?’

  ‘Not one,’ Elijah agreed.

  Lucie’s heart said yes; Lucie’s body said yes; even Lucie’s mind said yes. Still, it seemed a shame to waste all that rehearsal time. She tossed back her straightened hair, looked Elijah full in the face, and – just like she’d practised – said, ‘No.’

  His eyes went wide. ‘I thought . . . Are you serious?’

  ‘No,’ Lucie said, grinning with happiness. Twice she’d been able to say no, and this time she really meant it. ‘No, Elijah Tripp, love of my life, I am not serious. Not at all.’

  MARCH DWINDLED ON and slipped into April, and every day Arie thought of one reason or another that he might have called Evie, if only he’d been able to. He’d have liked to tell her that he’d been asked to build a website for a pair of graphic artists calling themselves The Mandela Effect, and to share the fact that the Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows, which had so far been found only on the internet, was now apparently going to be published as an ink-and-paper book.

  Arie had assumed that as the days went on, she would fade from his mind, but if anything the reverse was true. Increasingly, it seemed to him that he was passing just about every thought he had through the lens of Evie. What would Evie think? What would Evie say? Would Evie like this/that/those?

  Easter arrived, and on the Sunday Arie turned up alone at his parents’ home for a family gathering. Although his mother never failed to mention how she missed the Easter daffodils and hyacinths of her childhood, she had adapted her traditions to Antipodean conditions, decorating the table with a red-leafed autumnal branch, and hanging its twigs with blown eggs that had been dyed to russet shades using onion skins.

  Everyone was there but Heidi and Greg, who were still on their trekking honeymoon in Bhutan, and after lunch, when the children were outside hunting for eggs, and Malcolm was watching from the sunroom window and fearing for his beloved vegetable garden, Ilse handed around Heidi’s wedding photos on her iPad.

  Arie flicked through images of Heidi getting dressed, of the flower girls and page boys climbing trees and standing amid flowerbeds, of his eldest niece sulking in a tree swing. There were photographs of the ceremony, several trillion of the bridal couple, and all the predictable groupings – Greg’s family, the Johnsons, the families combined, the entire gathering. Although Evie had done her best to absent herself from all the photographs but the one of the whole crowd, the photographer had found her nevertheless.

  In one candid image, Evie was kneeling opposite Imogene so that their noses, in profile, were level; woman and child were smiling into each other’s faces, and the quality of mischief in their eyes was identical. There was another of Evie by herself, standing with an attitude of listening; it must have been taken during the dinner-time speeches. Although Arie knew that nothing Evie had been wearing that night had been expensive, she had looked lovely in that simple green dress with the black wrap looped through the crooks of her elbows. He remembered the sound of that dress’s zip opening, the fabric falling to the floor.

  She had fitted in so perfectly at the wedding. Nothing about the way she looked or behaved had asked to be especially noticed or remarked upon. She hadn’t sought any attention, nor too obviously tried to avoid it. When Imogene had thrown a tantrum, Evie had been the one to resolve it, and during the speeches – the evidence was here, in this photograph – she had listened with wholehearted happiness for other people’s joy.

  ‘Why didn’t Evie come today?’ Imogene asked, parking herself on Arie’s lap and noticing the photograph he was looking at. The corners of the little girl’s mouth were smudged with Easter egg chocolate.

  ‘She’s gone away, Im.’

  ‘Where?’

  He gave a helpless shrug. Like most citizens of the digital world, Arie had believed that he lived in an era when an internet search would turn up at least some small detail about almost anyb
ody. But when it came to Evie, the great god Google had failed him.

  The search ‘Evie Greenlees’ returned nothing except some telephone directory results from the USA. There was no Evie Greenlees on Facebook, and although he telephoned every Greenlees who still had their number listed in the dwindling Australian White Pages, none of them had ever heard of Evie. He tried to recall the number plate of her Beetle. It had been a Victorian plate; he remembered that much. There had been a K somewhere in the mix. The numeral 3, possibly.

  Remembering that she’d grown up in Tasmania, that she had a sister there, he’d gone back to Google and tried ‘Evie + poet + Hobart’, ‘Evie + poet + Tasmania’. Getting more and more desperate, he dropped the ‘poet’. In the results pages that this generated, he found many Evies from Tasmania, but search as he might, none of them was her.

  ‘Where’s she gone? I wish I knew,’ Arie said, tucking a lock of white-blonde hair behind the child’s ear. ‘I really wish I knew.’

  So, where was Evie?

  To get to the place where she was, Stella, Reuben, Matilda and Oscar, carrying the makings of an Easter Sunday lunch, had to pick their way down a steep, shaley path. At the bottom they reached a walkway which stretched around the edge of a wide bay, and which gave access to about thirty small timber boatsheds.

  The sheds were of similar shapes and dimensions, but in different colour schemes and various states of repair. They had been built above the water and rested on pylons, some of which were made of timber, some of concrete, and some – most dubiously – cobbled together from rickety stacks of bricks. Each of the sheds was unique. Some had corrugated iron fireplaces jutting out from their sides, others porthole-style windows; one was plastered with pictures of silver screen icons, another decorated with pieces of driftwood. Their front doors were reached by short jetties that stretched from dry land across water that lapped around seaweed-covered rocks.

  The shed Evie was minding, while its owner was overseas, was a shade of deep terracotta with a black tin roof. Inside there was a single room with a rudimentary kitchen, a fold-down double bed, a pleasant cluttering of eclectic furnishings and knick-knacks, a well-stocked bookshelf and a chest full of board games. There was nothing much to take care of except for a couple of pot plants, but Evie’s main task was to be visible, coming and going, so that nobody got the idea the tiny home was lying vacant.

  ‘This place is awesome, but why did you have to look after it in autumn?’ eight-year-old Oscar complained when he’d passed through the room and out to the back deck, where yachts and catamarans leaned back on their moorings in a chilly breeze. His stretching legs were those of a soccer player, and no matter the weather he always wore short pants. He was right about the season: in summer, this deck would have made a beautiful diving platform, but today the water beyond it was a disappointing and choppy grey.

  ‘Because, stupid – people leave here when it’s cold and go to warmer places,’ said ten-year-old Matilda, using the scathing tone Evie had noticed she reserved solely for her brother.

  Matilda was the same height as Oscar, although it was possible that he was going to fully overtake her in the next five minutes. She had a slender figure and thick, mid-brown hair, and was presently in the business of growing into her teeth. Evie could see, though, that all of this was going to blossom into something special when Matilda hit her late teens. She was a lovely kid – a deep thinker who wrote poems and songs and had decided that the ultimate in fabulousness was to sleep over at the boatshed of her newly reappeared aunt.

  Because they had all agreed that it was too much of a hassle to cook, lunch was a case of cold chicken and ripped segments of French bread, plum tomatoes and avocado, ham and various kinds of cheese. Reuben pulled the cork out of a bottle of sparkling wine and filled three of the boatshed’s plastic flutes, while Stella poured pink grapefruit juice for the kids.

  ‘To you, Eve-star, to “Dandelion Clocks”, and to the many, many, many more poems you will publish,’ he said.

  It had been a good week for Evie. Not only had she exchanged a very casual job behind the bar at a grubby pub for a guaranteed five shifts per week at an upmarket wine bar, she’d also had an email from Edinburgh, from the publisher of Ten Lines, telling her that ‘Dandelion Clocks’ was to be included in their anthology, which would come out later in the year.

  ‘How much do they pay you?’ Oscar asked.

  Evie laughed. ‘Not much, Oscar. If they pay you at all.’

  Oscar screwed up his face. His plan was to become a world-famous soccer player. Or a cricketer. At a pinch, an AFL star would do. ‘So why would you do it?’

  ‘It’s a mystery, buddy,’ Evie said, ruffling his hair, which was dark like her own. ‘Although, there’s this poetry competition I heard about while I was in Melbourne, and if my poem’s chosen, I get one . . . thousand . . . dollars.’

  Oscar’s eyes lit up at the word ‘competition’. ‘That’s cool. What’s your poem about? The one you’re entering?’

  ‘I haven’t decided yet.’

  ‘Make sure it’s a good one,’ Oscar advised sagely.

  They ate indoors because of the cold breeze on the deck, and also because the local silver gulls were daring creatures. When the food was eaten, the sparkling wine gone, and Reuben and the kids had started a predictably fractious game of Monopoly, Stella suggested she and Evie take a walk along the foreshore.

  ‘It’s great having you home,’ Stella said, slipping an arm through Evie’s.

  The soundtrack to their walk was the tink of halyards against mainmasts and the rhythmic lap of waves.

  ‘You have beautiful kids,’ Evie said wistfully.

  They walked in silence for a while, but when Stella said, ‘So, tell me,’ Evie knew that she’d walked smack into an opportunity for one of Stella’s famous heart to hearts.

  ‘So, tell me why it is that someone who’s wanted to be a published poet for as long as I’ve known her, who really ought to be very happy right now . . . isn’t.’

  It was a good question. The surge of excitement Evie had felt when she got the news about ‘Dandelion Clocks’ had quickly fizzled out in the absence of anyone to share it with. There was really only one person she wanted to tell, and although she got as far as looking up the number of Sonder Digital with her newly activated phone, she took herself in hand before she dialled it. There were reasons, she reminded herself, that she was here, and not in Melbourne.

  ‘What makes you think I’m not happy?’

  ‘Come on, Evie,’ Stella said, in the maternal tone she had every right to use on her little sister. ‘What’s the problem, girly-bird?’

  Evie turned her face to the wind so that it blew back her hair. ‘I got hurt.’

  ‘By that Dave character?’

  Evie laughed. She’d lived with Dave for months but thrown him off like an unwanted coat, and without a backwards glance. On the other hand, she’d known Arie for just over a week, and her tangle with him had left her feeling like half her heart had been torn away. ‘No, not Dave.’

  ‘Well?’

  ‘I met a guy in Melbourne. I slept with him once, and I can’t stop thinking about him.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘Well, he liked me. I know that much. But . . . there’s someone else. Someone he can’t quite let go of.’

  ‘Bummer,’ Stella said.

  ‘Huge bummer,’ Evie agreed.

  ‘So, what are you going to do now?’

  ‘I am going to . . . write poems, read books, pour wine, regrow heart, and hang out with the neven en nichten,’ she said.

  ‘The what?’

  ‘It’s Dutch,’ Evie said.

  ‘For?’

  ‘For Oscar and Matilda.’

  The sisters walked until their cheeks were pink and their fingers bloodless, and when at last they returned to the boatshed, Oscar had worked his way up to hotels on Trafalgar Square, Bond Street and Park Lane.

  Make sure it’s a good one, Oscar had sa
id, and that night Evie trawled through the scribbled notes, vague ideas, fragments and first drafts that filled her notebooks. When she came upon an embryonic description of a plane falling into the sea, she lingered there.

  Studying her own words, Evie saw how she had tried to capture an image of the plane twinning itself in the moments before disaster so that only one of its selves plummeted towards the ocean, while the other rose up and went . . . where, exactly? Her unfinished poem didn’t say. The instinct behind the poem was to offer a vision of hope, but Evie could see that the image wasn’t the right one, that the words on the page were not yet hitting the mark.

  Sometimes poetry felt like extraction – a kind of mining that involved hunting in the dark for seams of brightness, and working out how to bring them up to the light – but she could now see that with this poem she had been digging to one side of the place where the gold lay.

  She tore out the page so she could lay it alongside a fresh one and begin again. She tried and failed, tried again. On scrap paper she free-associated, scribbling down every relevant word she could think of, no matter how obvious. Flying, flight, flew, wings, feathers, wax . . . and then, there he was. He had flown right into her vision: Icarus, son of the inventor Daedalus. Icarus: the boy who’d flown too high, and fallen when the sun’s heat melted the wax that glued the feathers to his wings. I start the day by falling from such a great height. That’s what Arie had said, on that television interview. Evie wrote those words down, too, and at last she was beginning to see how her poem might come together.

  She added words and took them away. She sharpened her pencil, added more words, then erased them. Then began again. It was frustrating work, both wonderful and mystifying. It was so strange, she thought, the way poetry worked – the way words from one draft of a poem pushed through into the next, hard as jewels, while the rest crumbled away. Pictures wafted past your mind’s eye whispering a childish dare: catch me if you can.