The War of Immensities

by Barry Klemm

  “No. West,” the old man said.

  She looked West. That was where she had been going all right.

  “But what’s over there?”

  “Te Atatu,” one said.

  “Kumeu Motorway,” said another.

  “Further than that,” she asked, because she knew it was!

  “West coast,” the young wouldbe hero said.

  “The sea,” the old Maori added.

  “There must be something else,” she demanded, because she knew there had to be.

  “Nope. Tasman Sea, all the way to Australia.”

  “Australia,” she echoed, wrinkling her nose distastefully.

  It was time to get out of there, and with a last thankful expression, she decided to turn and walk, giving them their final thrill for the day. She actually heard the collective intake of breath and stopped, turning sideways, grinning, waggling a finger at them. They all smiled back as well they might.

  She paused one moment more, to complete the scene. In her hand, she still held her shoe and she regarded it now, and then threw it out into the water.

  “Why’d you do that?” the old Maori asked.

  “Well, if someone finds the other one, now they’ll have a pair,” she grinned.

  *

  Fairhaven Hospital inhabited one of the finest old mansions along the escarpment that overlooked the wide estuary of the Swan River and the metropolis of Perth on the other side. It was used as a convalescent home for those who could pay and was considered to possess the best facilities available in Western Australia. Around the building—classified A by the National Trust—was a tall iron fence and at the front heavy gates, although these days they operated automatically from both inside the building and a small guard post where a hired security guard was always on duty.

  After all, within the premises were more than thirty people who were well worth the efforts of a kidnapper or terrorist. A former Prime Minister, a world famous author, a distinguished British General and an aged film star were to be numbered amongst the inmates, in a hospital where the staff behaved more like butlers and maids than the medical teams of most hospitals.

  No terrorist, nor kidnapper, nor even assassin—as a potential murderer of one of the patients might have been regarded—had ever attempted to penetrate Fairhaven’s walls, but still the security remained vigilant and efficient. Even if, for the period of about a week, their most critical duty seemed to be the interception of a noted lawyer trying to escape the grounds in his motorised wheelchair. He tried it three or four times a day, and never once got past the gate. But that did not deter him in the slightest.

  “But really, Mr Solomon. Where do you think you’re going?”

  “Somewhere else,” Joe Solomon said grimly as they wheeled him back inside.

  *

  Slowly, methodically, as was his way, he began to piece it all together. At first it seemed that it had not happened at all—he remembered none of it—but then, when he concentrated and worked it over in his brain, it began to come back to him. Still it did not seem real, and in fact the only way he could be sure that he had made the journey at all was because here he was at the end of it, even though the destination obviously wasn’t anywhere at all.

  When he pulled out of the driveway, Brian Carrick had known only that he was going further than he could walk. He had swung the tail out, the engine of the big Scania prime mover chuffing and gruffing at this unexpected activity, and he was surprised to realise that he had known which way to turn. The truck was without a trailer, and Larry had loaned it to them because their car had a flat battery—as if to ensure he got to work. Well he hadn’t fixed the battery and he wasn’t going to work. One of the many things forgotten or abandoned these days, and now he was taking off as if escaping his whole life. Where the hell was he going?

  It was three months since New Zealand and the volcano—his skin had healed although it left him rather botchy, and he was sure that he was all right. He had started back to work—light duties only—and was glad the tedious round of rehabilitation and councillors was ended. If it was.

  He remembered with a sickening sensation having glimpsed Judy in the rear vision mirror as he drove away—he had promised to take her shopping but instead left her for dead on the driveway, clutching her handbag and shrieking after him, but he carried on anyway. It didn’t occur to him until he reached the shopping centre that he might have at least been decent enough to drop her off along the way. To where? It seemed to Brian that he knew the answer, only it wouldn’t come to mind. He was going this way, for some distance and if he didn’t yet know where this way led to, still he knew he was going the right way.

  “There will be nightmares, there will be unexpected behaviour, there will be a certain listlessness, a lack of concern for important issues. Often, they have a lot of trouble getting their priorities right.”

  Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, they called it, at least on the forms for Accident Compensation and Sickness Benefits that he had to fill in. In fact the government had been very good about it although now their patience was beginning to wear thin. They had paid the return trip to Wellington for Judy and the kids, the hospital costs there, and the expenses involved in bringing him home. They put him in Monash Hospital until they sorted out that difficulty with his skin, and he seemed fine, keen to get back to work, back into his life. But nothing like that happened.

  “He will be very nervous. He may be troubled by claustrophobia. He will sweat a great deal, especially in confined spaces. Loud noises will be a great trouble to him.”

  He talked to the counsellor about it. Mary Ashwood was a young middle-class girl with a degree and a theory to go with it. “Maybe it isn’t because of what you saw but what you didn’t. There you were in the middle of a massive disaster, and you were in a cellar and then unconscious. You didn’t experience any of it. Maybe that’s what’s troubling you.”

  So fucking what?

  Onward he had thundered into the evening, leaving the freeways and sprawling suburbs of Melbourne far behind, up the Hume and onto the Northern Highway that would take him eventually to Bendigo and he had some friends there—maybe it was their company he was seeking? But once he got beyond Kilmore, the highway began to swing slowly north-west and he grew increasingly agitated. Yes, it was all coming back to him now, constructed from vague flashes and faint impressions, but definitely assembling itself in his mind. He had pressed on, for the roadmap in his brain told him there was no road that went the way he wanted until he reached Heathcote.

  There the highway divided, left to Bendigo, right to Echuca and he chose the latter option and immediately grew more at ease. There was no doubt that it was somehow more correct, and so no choice but to drive on. Eventually, he arrived at an insignificant place called Corop and the road divided—left to Rochester, right to Stanhope and nothing much else. But that was the way to go, no doubt about it.

  In Stanhope he stopped and found only a milk bar open but he was able to get a hamburger and coffee, trying to force himself to take an hour. It wasn’t much of a town, and noted only for a recent outbreak of anthrax. He regarded the hamburger ruefully but such dangers weren’t what bothered him. His system hated the lack of motion. On the one hand he was almost falling asleep, on the other he was frantic to get back on the road. After just twenty minutes he was back behind the wheel and moving on, following the road toward Shepparton, which lay east, but he didn’t get far before he knew he must turn north again. The new road led toward Kyabram and he sensed that the corridor of contentment that guided him was growing narrower.

  And then he was slowing down and stopped. He was ten kilometres beyond Stanhope and about eight short of Kyabram and had been on the road five hours. At first he thought it was exhaustion and he contemplated taking a non-doze but then he realised he had passed the spot. He turned back, drove three kilometres and then pulled off the road. There was a track of sorts and the gate through the barbed wire was not locked. In the half-moonli
ght, he could see only that there was nothing to see. He bounced along the track for about a kilometre then swung off onto grassland and ploughed through. The terrain was flat as a dinner table and there were only a few clumps of trees in the distance here and there. He stopped and stepped down from the truck, walking a few yards wide. He was way out in the middle of a completely empty field—not even a sheep to be seen. He had arrived. This was the place. But where was it?

  Right in the bloody middle of nowhere.

  *

  Andromeda awoke with Jim Morrison pounding in her brain—it was the worst kind of hangover.

  We gotta get outa this place.

  If it’s the last thing I ever do;

  Girl there’s a better life for me and you.

  Yo! what a shocker, and all the worse because it was entirely inside her head—out there in the real world, insects hummed and only birds sang. And there was sunlight—wicked and mean and incinerating her eyeballs right out of their sockets. Her nose was hurting unmercifully and had spotted blood on the pillow, she saw. That last line she snorted near blew the sinuses right out the back of her head and there was nothing after that. Wow, what a way to go!

  There was a dream too, a nightmare, stuck in the mire of her brain somewhere. She had been standing naked, surrounded by a sea of little boys all of whom were no taller than her mid-thighs. They were reaching with their hands to touch her as high on her body as they could, and although they could reach no higher than her buttocks and abdomen, every one of the thousands of them seemed able to touch her with grubby, pawing hands. There was nothing erotic in it—it was menacing, those little boys were all evil gnomes…. What would the shrinks make of that! Guilt, maybe, for cradle-snatching all those young musicians… She squeezed her eyes closed, to try and force the memory of the dream out of her brain.

  Have a damned look at yourself, woman. Just have a goddamned look. Go on, turn the light on and show yourself, you mantis. The fluorescent flickered macabrely and she looked dead! Holy Shit. Only thirty-seven and decomposing already. Sure, the body was in good shape—the work-outs and diets took care of that—but the face! It gave the game away completely.

  She dragged her fingers on her cheeks, to make the wrinkles smooth, like Joan Collins. Still looked god-damned awful. Those eyes, so hideously bloodshot. Bags under that you could pack your entire wardrobe in and go down home.

  Yeah, sure. Home. But where’s home? For sure not hot and dusty barefoot days in Trinidad—Ma and Pa were long since dead and no one was left to remember her. Nor the even worse poverty of Soho and all those fog-bound years of trying to break into musicals. Not plastic Hollywood with plastic throw-away careers in television and the movies that never happened anyway. Not sleazy King’s Cross nightclubs where all the best looking girls were guys. She didn’t have a home to go to. No place to go. But she knew she had to go there anyway, and right now!

  Get dressed. She hauled her drooping ass into jeans, dragged a shirt over her sagging tits, stuffed a handful of tabs in her pocket—didn’t matter which. Forget the rest. Go, go, go.

  The heat outside made her reel back against the door-jamb. The god-damned sun was in her eyes no matter which way she turned. Where the hell am I anyway? Whitsunday? Oh yeah. Whitsunday Passage, wherever that was. Go. Hitch a ride and get moving. But where?

  Thataway. That was it. South, to judge from the sun. Down Dixie? No, wrong country. So what’s south? Not silly-bloody Sinny—hate the god-awful place. Tasmania? Antarctica? Can’t go south. Can’t go any where because you’re on an island, silly bitch. Gotta get out of the sun at least. Coffee. Go to the cafe and get coffee.

  When she glanced around, she saw there were some small boys—real ones—over there, in the bushes, watching her. Shit! And all around, the tourists stopped to stare at her and whisper to each other. Okay, so now she was completely paranoid. No reason to be surprised about that.

  She struck out across the nicely manicured lawns with tables under the palms, the suburban folks’ idea of paradise. People were everywhere, and all gaping at her. Well, look on it as good publicity for her act. The club, The Golden Dolphin—her present four week gig—was in the lounge bar of the pub and she went that way, although only because the coffee shop was in the same tourist complex. She marched up the steps into the lobby, and there stood a life-size cardboard cutout of Andromeda Starlight, Superstarlight, in glittering gown and full song. Andromeda Fuck-anything-in-sight Starlight, star of the show, hot from Hollywood and London and Sydney, the Windies Revenge.

  No one would have recognised the sorry shabby individual who gave the effigy the finger as she stalked by.

  Joel Tierney, her agent, was there, sucking coffee. “Ho, there Andy. Back in the land of the living.”

  “I gotta get out of this place.”

  In reply, Joel snapped his fingers in front of her face. “Hey, come on Babe, wake up!”

  “I’m awake.”

  “You sure? I just come from explaining to the resort management how you been under a lot of pressure and it won’t happen again.”

  “I never … What won’t happen again?”

  “Don’t remember, huh?”

  “Remember? What?”

  “You were sleepwalking…”

  “I never sleepwalk…”

  “You did this afternoon. There you were, bollock naked, marching down to the beach. You did it twice. I had to grab you and drag you back to the room both times. Caused a huge sensation.”

  “Are you serious?”

  “Great publicity. The bookings have doubled since….”

  At the window of the café, young boys were staring in at her in wonder.

  “Sleepwalking. In the buff…?”

  “Extraordinary sight, Andy.”

  “Holy shit.”

  “That’s what most people that saw you said.”

  She was shaking her head in utter disbelief, but then the new sensation flooded her body again. “Joel, I gotta get out of here.”

  “Don’t worry about it. Everyone’s hoping you’ll do it again…”

  “I’m serious. I want to go. Right now.”

  “Can’t. Booked for a month. Got ‘em queuing out to the reef.”

  The radiantly smiling waitress hovered.

  “Gimme coffee.”

  “Certainly, Miss Starlight. Black or white?”

  “I don’t give a fuck. Just give me coffee.”

  “She takes it black with cream, sweetheart,” Tierney sleazed at the waitress. Next victim of his despicable charm.

  “Will there be anything else, Miss Starlight?”

  “Yeah. How the hell do I get out of here?”

  “There’s flight schedules on the rack by the counter...”

  “Just get the coffee, sweetie,” Tierney smiled. “She ain’t going no place.”

  “Joel, please! I gotta go.”

  “Why? Come on, you’re big here. Biggest you’ve ever been.”

  “I don’t know. But I got this big urge to go. Thataway. Outa here.”

  “Thataway?”

  “Yes. That way. I want to go there, now.”

  “Why?”

  “I gotta.”

  “Here, take this and forget it.”

  He stuffed a tab straight in her open mouth and she nearly choked on it. But then the waitress brought the coffee and she gulped it down, heedless of burnt lips. It’s tentacles immediately began to move through her intestines and into the blood stream.

  “Better?”

  “I guess.”

  “This is an island, Andy. There’s no place to go.”

  “Jesus, Joel. You don’t know how I feel.”

  “Get this in yer. Then tell me how you feel.”

  “I dunno. I just got this wicked urge to move, to go. I feel like I’ll die if I don’t.”

  “But go where?”

  “That way.”

  “But there’s nothing there except miles of reef.”

  “That’s where I’ve gotta
go.”

  “Just take it easy. The tab will help calm you. Sleep. Get ready for the show. It’ll be all right.”

  “Yeah, Joel, sure.”

  *

  Remember Xanadu. Harley Thyssen got up with slow arthritic movements and went to the door. Coleridge had begun the epic poem, then someone knocked at the door and by the time he returned to the task, all but the first hundred lines already written had gone right out of his head. Not much chance of that in this case, but still Thyssen approached the door with irritation.

  “Are you all right, Harley?” Joanie, his neighbour, asked nervously.

  No, he was not alright. “Of course. What can I do for you?”

  “Oh, nothing. Albert saw the lights on. We thought we should check...”

  Nosy bitch. And she knew it too, as her sentence ran out of words.

  “Just had some work to do and wanted to go where I wouldn’t be disturbed,” Thyssen said heartlessly. The truth was always cruel.

  “Oh, I see. I’m sorry. It’s just that it was so unusual...”

  Joanie, like many gossips, had a habit of embarking upon statements that they didn’t know how to finish. He ought to invite her in, ravage her on the couch while her husband stood on the porch across the road, meditating on the Ancient Mariner and not at all wondering why his wife was taking so long. That would give them something to talk about, except of course they never talked about themselves.

  She was a sturdy, good-looking woman and heaven knows what was left of his libido needed it. But he didn’t have the energy, the risk to his health would be excessive, and anyway, what he had told her was true. He had work to do and did not want to be disturbed. For the first time in about a decade.

  “Yes, Joanie. I realise it is quite out of the ordinary for me to be at home at this hour of the evening. Here, smell my breath. Not a trace of alcohol will you find. Do you want to come in and verify that there are no young women hiding under the bed?”