by Nick Earls
Nick Earls is the author of thirteen books, including five novels with teenage central characters. 48 Shades of Brown was a CBCA book of the year, and his other four young adult novels were CBCA Notable Books. After January was shortlisted for the National Children’s Literature Award, won a 3M Talking Book of the Year Award and was shortlisted in the Fairlight Talking book Awards. The International Youth Library, Munich, included it in its White Ravens selection of international notable new books. It was the first of five of Nick Earls’s novels to become plays.
Awards for After January
2000 shorlisted, Fairlight Talking Book Awards
1998 shortlisted, National Childrens Literature Award
1997 White Raven and international notable new book, International Youth Library, Munich notable book, CBCA Awards
1996 winner, 3M Talking Book of the Year Award, young people’s category
introduction
By 1994, my career as a writer of fiction had stalled. I’d published one book – a collection of short stories called Passion – and most of the fewer than 1,000 copies sold seemed to have been bought by my mother. I was in the habit of saying yes any time anyone asked me to write something, since it didn’t happen often and I needed to take any chance that came my way.
Robyn Sheahan (now Robyn Sheahan-Bright) approached me about an anthology for 15- to 18-year-olds that she was putting together with Leonie Tyle for their fledgling publishing company, Jam Roll Press. She asked if I would contribute and I told her I wasn’t sure I was the best choice, since I had no idea how to write for readers of a particular age group. Robyn persisted, and said that I should pick something from my last year of school as the starting point for the story, and then write the way I would normally write.
I chose a school play and, even though the story quickly became fiction, its start in real life meant that I didn’t write the way I was normally writing at that time. I connected with the character, and I wanted to see him through this story, which I called ‘Juliet’, after the girl he meets. The story seemed to connect with readers even as a draft, and my central character stuck with me. This was a different experience to Passion.
Jam Roll Press became part of UQP and even before the anthology Nightmares in Paradise was published in 1995, I knew I’d be doing more with Alex Delaney. He felt to me like a character who had a novel in him, and I hadn’t written a character like him before. But I didn’t want to write what happened straight after ‘Juliet’. Even months later, Alex would still be at school and school looked like a big, crowded world. I wanted to take him somewhere that needed fewer characters.
So I thought about my own life again, and remembered my school holidays at the Sunshine Coast, and that one-time-only holiday between finishing school and whatever’s next. And I sent him there and gave him the holiday I never quite managed to have and the story that, with Robyn’s invaluable guidance, became After January. The earlier ‘Juliet’ story even ended up being mentioned in the novel as a piece Alex had written following the play, which had found its way into his school magazine.
After January was perhaps the start of me finding my feet as a writer, and it has stayed in print since it was published. It has gone on to become a play and to be published internationally. Nightmares in Paradise is no longer in print though, so the ‘Juliet’ part of Alex’s story has quietly gone missing. Sometimes readers and students and teachers have asked about it, and I’ve sent it to them. Most of the time, though, After January has been read without the reader knowing that the story Alex recalls in the first few pages is real and was actually written first.
For some years I’ve wanted to make that story available for anyone reading After January. The best way to do it was to put it back where it belongs – with the longer story of Alex’s summer.
So here, for the first time, are Alex Delaney’s two stories together.
juliet
I can’t believe you, Juliet. I can’t believe the way you’ve just appeared and now I’m different.
And we rehearse four times a week now, three afternoons and all day Sunday, and suddenly there’s nothing else.
And I remember when I first saw you and I know I’ll never forget it. When the door opened and I looked up from my script and your father was there with his hand on your shoulder. And the drama teacher said, Everyone, this is Mr Koh’s daughter Juliet. She’ll be playing the part of Caroline.
Juliet. And you stood there and you smiled and said Hi and we shouldn’t have stared but we probably did. All of us suddenly feeling like drama nerds. And we rehearsed right away while your father sat in the staff room marking my maths exam. You with your skin the colour of honey and your long black hair that shines like the feathers of a black bird and your dark eyes. Next to me, sitting next to me as we read through, standing next to me as we blocked out the scenes. Saying to the drama teacher, And then we kiss, right? And turning to me mechanically, holding out stiff arms because it’s in the script, turning away and reading your next line.
And you sat making notes with a pencil, your school hat on the desk beside you. Your legs tucked under your chair and crossed at the ankles, your fingers in your gleaming hair, slipping through it without thinking. And you brushed your hair and your hands made plaits while your lips made the words. You said your lines at a whisper and your face worked as though I was in front of you when I was just beside you watching and learning my own lines, or at least running through them hoping something would stick.
I watched you walk to your father’s car, your hat in your hand, your bag on your back. The way your calves tapered to your ankles so perfectly in your dark winter uniform stockings. And I’ll tell no one this, ever.
I think about you all the way home on the train. I sit back with my feet on the seat opposite and my script open in front of me and I look out at the late August afternoon. Ahead there is rain and the city buildings are only grey outlines as we travel towards them. The first of the rain flicks across the window in fine beaded lines and then it’s pouring and my view is gone.
And this script isn’t good. I don’t like my character, or yours, and I can see no point in the kiss. Why do they kiss? Do they feel anything for each other? In the context of the play it means almost nothing.
I step out onto a wet, windy platform and I know the rain’s set in. I run and the drops swipe across my blazer in dark blotches, fill my hair and my eyes and run cold under my collar. And I’m running almost blind up the long hill home and I don’t care.
At rehearsal we talk about our characters and how they might interact. I try to make you laugh and sometimes you do. But you seem so old already, already beyond me, unreachable. And in my room I think of things to say that might impress you, conversations we might have. Your voice that I won’t forget, that I keep in my head. And I’m counting down. Thirteen rehearsals before we perform for just one night. And I don’t want this to end.
I can’t stand the time we waste in this cold empty hall, the slow steps we take across this wide wooden stage, our scripts in our hands. Walking through scenes, working on the detail.
And you turn to me with those mechanical arms that don’t touch me and your script in one hand with a circle in pencil around the words They kiss.
If you could be closer please, the drama teacher says. And don’t be afraid to touch. Remember this all has to be comfortable before an audience sees it.
So you drop your script and it slaps to the stage and I drop mine and you say Okay in a very practical way. And you reach your arms to me as though we might dance, but just because we have to. So we touch carefully, your hands on my chest, my arm around you. Your hands warm through my shirt und
er my open blazer, even if you try to pretend you haven’t just dropped them there.
I can’t see my lines, you say and the drama teacher tells you lines should be down now.
We pick up our scripts and go on.
And we get used to this dance, this formal holding that must eventually be comfortable. And we can talk when we’re this close and no one can hear us. I talk into your ear, just at a whisper, and make you smile. It’s as though we’re alone.
And I think of these parts of the rehearsal on the train. These few moments that make the rest of this bad play as irrelevant as the day. And I imagine us standing there, just the two of us, because it’s what we want to do and not because it’s in the play. But we’re not in the hall, we’re somewhere else far from this winter, far from school. But still close, just like this. On the top of a mountain with only mountains around us, deep in a rainforest where a waterfall crashes into a clear cold pool and the parakeets shriek crazily. But on this stage, in this uniform, in this body that’s all limbs and ears and a nose my mother tells me I’ll grow into, I feel so gawky, so far from cool, so unlikely to be wanted. And I can’t see how my luck could change now, how this won’t be over in a week and a half. Six more rehearsals.
And you still kill me with your cleverness and your bright eyes when they look at me. And I churn when you look at me and you’re so close and I don’t know how your hands can’t feel it. How they can’t feel every part of me tipping over and over.
We talk on the red brick steps outside the hall in breaks and you wear big baggy jumpers on weekends and pull your hair back and it gives your face a stark kind of beauty that you break in pieces when you laugh. You tell me about your friends and you only mention girls, and you talk about movies and books and parties. You tell it so well I can see you there, feeling so normal about it all, your brother’s uni friends bringing you drinks. And I can imagine you anywhere fitting right in, or not caring if you didn’t.
And then we’re back inside. On stage moving through conversations and punchlines and improbable disasters. But that’s this farce, this hopeless farce that we’re wrapped up in, that we expect people to laugh at next week. And I can feel you breathing when the holding part comes again, and the rest doesn’t matter. I can hardly hear it. And then the kiss.
Let’s have it this time, the drama teacher says.
And the touching suddenly stops being easy, becomes mechanical again. And your eyes look away as we move closer and I know your hand can feel my heart. Our lips bump briefly. Your soft lips on mine and then away, without a sound.
Okay. That’s fine. That’ll work. Now keep it moving.
So we go on, to the end. And then home, the train again. Me in an empty carriage on the way into town, filling up at central with commuters. And I try to remember the kiss but it’s almost gone.
And my friends ask how the play’s going and I say fine. And they talk about you as Koh’s daughter and I tell them nothing other than you’re pretty good for Koh’s daughter. Surprisingly good for Koh’s daughter, with his ugly head.
And I think of your body close to me, our conversations. Those few seconds of my life entirely different from the rest.
And I keep this to myself. I have one friend, and I don’t tell you about this, one friend who boiled and re-used a condom three times when we were in year eight. When he was about to put it on again it fell apart in his hands and he had to steal another one from his brother’s wallet. This friend is known to exaggerate, probably to lie, but I can’t compete with that. I can’t tell him, you wouldn’t believe Juliet. The only thing that matters about the play is talking to her, standing near her, hoping that it’s not nearly over. I can’t tell him I can’t get you out of my head and nothing’s happened. He’d tell me what I should be doing.
And we do make-up for the dress rehearsal and you tell me I have no idea about lips and you say, Watch me. And you take out the scarlet lipstick since it’s that kind of play and you turn to face me on your stool and you open your mouth a little, draw your lips against your teeth and you slide the stick along, slower than you need to. And I see your tongue curled up against your white teeth in your half-open mouth.
And we rehearse and in costume you’re distinctly older, and you were already more than old enough. And I feel a fake in the suit I’m wearing. It feels like a costume and you look real. And remarkably desirable. You laugh and it’s a sound like someone pouring a sophisticated drink. I don’t know anyone who laughs that way, or walks that way. My friends will talk, I know they’ll talk.
But I can’t. I can’t find too many words in the breaks when you’re standing in front of me, talking to me as though you don’t know you’re in that dress with those raging red lips. Making the words easily with those impossible lips that you’ve turned into something else.
And we’re back on stage, powering towards the end and you come up to me for the kiss. And your body fits in against mine, your fingers with their blood-red nails spread open across my chest. My arms are around you, around your waist and this time when our eyes meet you don’t look away. You move your hands up around my neck and for a moment I think there’s a smile at the edge of the intimidating lips.
Okay, you say softly.
And you tilt your head up and we kiss and this time we hold it a while and your whole body is up against mine, your fingers in my hair. And when we separate the kiss makes the right noise and you laugh and wipe your lipstick from my mouth with your fingers.
Let’s not start introducing anything new now, the drama teacher says.
And your mother is there to take you home straight after the rehearsal and she puts a coat around your shoulders to stop the cold and I see you walking off with her, high on your heels and breathing steam in the cold air.
And my mother finds me too and tells me I was good and the play wasn’t as bad as I’d said. And in the car she asks me why I hadn’t told her anything about Mr Koh’s daughter.
I told you ages ago she was in the play, I say to her, and we leave it at that.
I can’t believe we’ve only one more night of this. I don’t sleep well. I don’t want to sleep at all. And even if nothing happens tomorrow this won’t be over for me. Even if you just walk off with your coat around your shoulders. And you probably haven’t even noticed me and none of this makes sense. But I can feel your fingers in my hair, your nails on the back of my neck.
I arrive early on the night of the performance and you arrive just in time. The hall is full. I can hear all the voices and I hadn’t given this much thought. We’re on.
Tonight there is laughter at the bad jokes, applause. I thought they’d be smarter than this, but they seem to be liking it.
And you walk over to me, this time slowly. This time with a lingering walk that steals all the attention and not just mine. And you move in against me right away and you keep looking into my eyes. And your arms are around my neck again, drawing me closer, your red lips open a little when they meet mine. And I feel your tongue in my mouth, feel you breathing heavily against me, your fingers now bunching my hair, twisting it, tugging at it. And I feel the muscles of your back working under my hands, fitting us even closer together till there’s nothing between us.
And then it’s over, and the look on your face gives nothing away. Around us people are saying their lines over the cheers of the audience and the predictable animal noises of my friends. You step away from me and your eyes are the last part of you to leave. My mouth tastes like wax from all the lipstick. But not just like wax. The play goes on.
After the bows I’m the first to the dressing room but I hear your heels on the concrete floor behind me and I turn.
I’m sorry, you say with your smudged mouth. That was very unprofessional of me.
And your parents appear behind you smiling and congratulating you and giving you flowers and chocolates. And your father s
hakes my hand and says well done.
We’ve got a dance at school, you say as the drama teacher interrupts to tell your father how good you were. Saturday week.
And then you’re gone.
My mother hands me a tissue to clean the mess around my mouth.
one
This begins in January, and January is okay. It begins like December as though their join is seamless. Sometimes as though the bright days of summer will last forever.
But the end of January is the end of the known world. This is when I stand at the edge. It’s been easy till now, relatively. I’ve had a new school year to face each January, but not this year. School is over, so there is not the usual symmetry about the holidays. The feeling of days leading up to Christmas and New Year and then away. Across the slow heat-heavy weeks of January and back to school.
This January I’m waiting for my offer, waiting for the code that will tell me what happens next. Waiting.
It’s as though the future is held here. Held at bay, held at more than arm’s length. Held just beyond my reach all the long days of summer. And the waiting is everywhere, in the rhythm of waves and winds, in the familiar lights and sounds of the coastal summer, in the sun rising over the sea and settling through an orange sky into the Glasshouse Mountains. The impossible days and nights of a suspended world.
It’s hard not to think about the day I’m waiting for. The twentieth of January. Seventeen days from today. On the twentieth of January it all comes out in the paper and I’ll be there with the others from school around midnight at Newspaper House, the way the uni students do in December. I’ll head down from the coast and I’ll meet the others and we’ll buy a paper and then we’ll all know. I’ll go to bed knowing, and in the morning everyone will know; everyone who bothers to look for my name and work out the code – everyone who’s ever known me, expected things from me, expected me to make it. They’ll know right then whether I have, or not. And then it will come in the mail. A few days later maybe, and just the way that phone bills come, and reminders from the dentist, and my mother’s medical journals. Just as unannounced, just as unspecial, wound in a bundle with a rubber band or wrapped in plastic if it looks like rain. One envelope, a few sheets of paper, the definite offer in writing. And if the newspaper says I made it I still won’t believe it till I see the letter. If the newspaper says I didn’t, then I won’t want the letter.