After January

by Nick Earls

  Yeah. I honestly didn’t think either of them would ever go. I just didn’t think there were enough overs in the day any more.

  So we sit sipping our beers and solemnly theorising about the great game. This is one of life’s significant pleasures that eludes my mother entirely. Once I won a voucher in a literary competition and amazed and appalled her by swapping it for a book of complete test cricket statistics. Every match, every innings, every individual score over forty and every haul of four wickets or more, since tests began in 1877. Batting and bowling averages and aggregates, by country and alphabetised, any individual or career record that could be conceived, usually with the top ten performances all listed.

  But why would you want that? my mother said.

  And the question cannot be answered. Anyone who asks it can never understand. I showed the book to Len and he looked up Spofforth’s incredible performance on a sticky wicket in the 1880s, he looked up Bradman’s 334 and he looked up the last test he had seen at the Gabba before the war.

  And just how good was bloody Victor Trumper? he said, and he looked that up too.

  He didn’t ask me why anyone would want the book, and from then on I was expected to bring it to the coast with me each summer, as there were frequently issues one or other of us felt needed checking.

  When he’s finished his beer, he tells me there are a few things he should be doing in the garden. He invites me over for dinner later, another barbecue. Next door it is the season of salads and burnt sausages.

  Unless you’ve got plans, he says.

  No, no plans at all.

  In fact I had not even thought of dinner. I suppose I would have worked this out at some time, and ended up walking down the road for a burger or fish and chips. It makes me wonder what else I should be planning, now that I’m here by myself.

  You could invite your friend, he says, if you like.

  So after he’s left I call her again. She says she’ll come.

  twenty-two

  At the barbecue I think I’m watching her all the time. I think I should be saying more, listening more, being more interesting, but I think I’m watching her.

  Len easily fills in the spaces with talk, and even when he asks Fortuna something about herself, it often ends up with him talking again. He asks her how long she’s lived around here, and then he tells her about the past, what it used to be like here years ago, when he was young and coming up here with a tent. She hasn’t heard these stories before, and it seems to surprise her that it could have been so different here, so recently.

  Makes you wonder what’s going to happen next, she says. What it’ll be like in ten or twenty years time.

  Up at our house there is no movement, no sound. The lights are on in the living room and on the front veranda so I can make my way home, but the house is empty. I drink beer and we turn Len’s latest selection of gourmet sausages on the barbecue. Philippine style, he says as they’re cooking, but I’m buggered if I know what that means.

  We sit eating and Fortuna tells Len and Hazel about her work for the markets tomorrow, the honey, the twins rolling beeswax into candles, Cliff firing coffee mugs in half-dozens and making wooden stands with pegs to hang them on.

  And I’m doing this thing, she says, with quite an intense expression as though in her mind she’s doing it right now, this thing with old stockings and grass seed, where I put some grass seed in the stocking and then stuff it with dried grass and make it into the shape of a head and I put a face on it and sell it. Then people water it and the grass sprouts as hair. She laughs. It’s very popular. The most popular one is Merv Hughes, but I don’t know why.

  He’s a popular man, Len says.

  Yeah, but I don’t know why people would want to grow grass out of his head. What I want to do is a series of people whose hair already grows straight up and sell them as a boxed set. You know, Yahoo Serious, Kramer from Seinfeld, that boxing promoter, Don King. And she’s nodding while she says all this, nodding quite earnestly. Einstein maybe. People like that.

  We all nod too and make mmmm noises and try not to look at each other. I briefly wonder what the hell I’m doing hanging round at the coast to be with a girl who seems to think growing grass out of old stockings holds the key to her future.

  She laughs. I’m kidding, she says. That was a joke. You didn’t think I was really going to do it, did you?

  You had me going, Len says. All the way. Right from the Merv bit on. And he laughs.

  The Merv bit’s true, she says, looking a little uncomfortable. I make Merv heads. People buy Merv heads. I don’t know what for, but people buy them. Birthday presents for people they don’t like maybe. You can make five bucks for a reasonable size Merv head, ten if you sell it with a base.

  A base?

  Yeah, a jam jar painted like a one day cricket outfit. My mother does those, I just do the heads. Seriously. You’d be surprised how many of them I sell.

  Five bucks sounds like a bargain for a Merv head, Len says.

  We go inside, into the pool room, and Len suggests a game of doubles.

  I’ve never really played before, Fortuna says.

  So you’ll be on my team, Len tells her. We’ll be right.

  He rolls a few balls onto the table, hands her a cue and takes one for himself. He says it’s a matter of simple geometry.

  There’s simple geometry? she says. I should have concentrated more when we did those sines and cosines and things.

  The balls fly around crazily when she starts hitting them, but soon, with a few hints from Len about where to strike the cue ball and how to aim, she’s crouched down over the table staring down the cue with one eye, taking on the pose of the master.

  I can do this, she says. Let’s play.

  We rack the balls and I break. I watch Fortuna circling the table, studying the possibilities, playing and not quite putting the twelve-ball away into the middle pocket.

  You’ve got a good eye, Len says. Bloody good eye. Watch her, young Alex.

  A quite unnecessary remark, of course. I’m watching her already. Watching her move around the table as sleek as a cat, tilt herself into position to play. Watching her fingers around the cue, the bridge of her left hand, her left thumb turned up with the cue running next to it, the muscles of her forearm working under her tanned skin, her hair gripped in a scrunchie behind her head, loose strands falling across her neck like soft uncoiling springs.

  I want to do more than play pool with her. Right now it’s hard to stand here and just play pool, even when she’s playing and enjoying it, having this uncomplicated good time, and close enough for me to touch.

  It’s my shot and I’m not playing well. My hand shudders just as I play and I miss an easy one that would put us ahead. It’s up to Hazel to keep us in the game.

  This is it, love, she says, and straightens her glasses.

  She sinks the three but misses the five and sets Fortuna up for another shot at the twelve. This time it goes.

  Nice one, partner, Len says.

  When it’s my turn again I breathe deeply, concentrate, blow it again. My game is only deteriorating.

  Not your night, is it mate? Len says and turns to Fortuna. He usually cleans up. Makes me look like a joke most days. Don’t you mate?

  Not that I’ve noticed. But I do play better than this.

  They win. Predictably they win, and the next frame too. We take the third because Hazel plays like a genius and I don’t have the chance to drag her down. Everyone else has fun and I feel like a complete dickhead.

  Good on you, Haze, Len says. I haven’t seen you play like that for a while. Eddie Bloody Charlton wouldn’t have stood a chance.

  When the going gets tough . . . she says.

  Well, I’d say honours are about even, Len goes on. I reckon we should stop now before Haz
e really gets on a roll.

  It’s still warm outside, warm and almost silent and lit by a bright moon. We walk slowly. I don’t want her to go, and she seems in no hurry. We stop at the roadside. She looks down and then looks up at me, into my face and I see the moon in her eyes. She says nothing.

  I usually play better than that, I tell her.

  I’m sure you do. She smiles.

  Another long time passes with nothing said.

  I might come to the markets tomorrow and see you.

  That’d be good.

  Maybe we could do something later.

  Yeah.

  Good. Any idea what?

  What?

  What we could do.

  No. Whatever. I don’t mind.

  Good. Well, we will then.

  Yeah.

  But this is not what I want to talk about with her, this is not the conversation I want to have, this negotiating of practicalities.

  So I ask her, what’s going on with us?

  And of course it comes out in some rude-awful way.

  What do you mean?

  I just wondered what you thought about what’s going on with us.

  She smiles again. You’re very analytical, aren’t you?

  Yeah.

  She gives a small laugh. I like you. I like being with you. You’re very funny, particularly when you’re being very serious.

  Thanks.

  No, I like that. You’re very different. And you’re really nice.

  Nice? Nice is a death sentence. Nice people get nowhere.

  Not always.

  She puts her hand on my cheek, moves it behind my head, draws me towards her and kisses me on the mouth. My surprised mouth that was not quite ready for this, that was about to talk again perhaps, talk like some stupid boy. She puts her arms around me, smiles, kisses me again and her nose ring presses against my upper lip. I reach out to hold her too and I feel her body press against me as her open mouth meets mine.

  A car comes over the hill and catches us in its headlights and the moment is gone.

  I’ll see you tomorrow, she says, walking round to the driver’s side of the car.

  Yeah.

  She drives away, over the low hill, and her brake lights disappear.

  twenty-three

  My head spins all night. All night I lie here in this totally empty house, staring up at the dark. I’m sure I don’t sleep, but I must.

  The doors are locked but I listen for noises. I play no music tonight and the only noise is the sea. And I think of the few seconds we had before the lights of the car came over the hill. I think this is only the start, and for me at least whatever happens from now will be new.

  I walked inside and I felt different tonight, almost physically, even in these same old rooms. When she left there was just me here, me and the dark spaces of the night, the huge spaces of this small fibro house, like an empty house, with me as an intruder. Lost in this dark with my hair still messed by her hands, the taste of her still with me.

  She’s on her way home, along the unlit roads out to Little Mountain, to her own room. I don’t know what it means to her, all of this. Can she remember my body, right up against hers?

  I lie on my unmade bed. I’m used to the nights here. I’ve been here for hundreds of them. But none like this. None when it’s just me, none so long, none with such pervasive absences of light and sound.

  I try to persuade myself the night is safe, that I am safe here. That I can sleep now, heavily, deeply, dreamlessly, till morning.

  twenty-four

  The Caloundra markets are a favourite place of my mother’s, mainly because they’re not actually very good. They are not contaminated by any real notion of merit. They make no great concession to the tourist and they never have done. They sell a lot of crap there, and nobody minds.

  It’s light when I wake, so clearly I have slept after all. I lie there in the warming room on my already hot bed, the corner of a white sheet twisted round my legs and the rest of me uncovered.

  I get up and I open the sliding doors to let some air into the house, and I make breakfast.

  G’day young Alex, I hear Len’s voice saying as I’m eating my toast.

  I go over to the door.

  Hi.

  Haze and I thought we’d have a look at the markets. We wondered if you’d be interested in heading down there with us.

  I finish eating and I don’t tidy up. I go next door. In the car Len says, I think I might pick myself up one of those Merv heads. What do you reckon?

  Would that be with or without the one day cricket painted base?

  I’d imagine if you were serious you’d take the base. Do you think?

  As we turn into the old drive-in I see a sign that says that the markets will move at the end of the month to Corbould Park, the race track back along the road to the highway. I wonder if things will be different then, stalls in rows, people with broad hats selling goods of quality. And I think I might prefer it now, no real sense of order and a broad and comfortable range of crap.

  We park among the disorder of cars and gum trees and I notice that Len, keen to do his bit for the Merv head industry, is looking out for Fortuna almost as much as I am. We see their stall and she sees us and waves.

  This is Alex, Skye tells Storm. The boy. Storm laughs.

  Alex, mate, Cliff says, offering a limp wave and not moving from his deck chair, back in the shade next to a tree. He is wearing sunglasses and gently applying aloe vera to a lump on his forehead.

  Dad got stung by a bee, Fortuna says. And he’s not good with bees, so he’s taking it easy today.

  He’s completely unable to lift anything if he gets stung by a bee, Skye adds, in case there’s any doubt. Not that Cliff is presenting himself in a way that suggests any doubt.

  I introduce Hazel and Len, and Cliff does the embarrassing Any friend of Alex’s is a friend of mine remark. Fortuna gives him a look.

  I hear there are some Merv heads to be had around these parts, Len says. He makes his selection, choosing a medium size head with green zinc on the face and mad eyes and a base that will complement it appropriately. You know, he says, you should think about doing a few of these with famous historical people with hair that stood up. Einstein, you know, people like that.

  Or Don King, the boxing promoter, I suggest.

  Or Kramer from Seinfeld, Fortuna says slowly.

  Yeah! Yeah! Cliff shouts, as though he has just been struck by a vision of religious magnitude. Yeah, and you could put them all together in a set. Yeah, people would go for that. What do you reckon, Big?

  Yeah. Great idea, Dad.

  Said with a particular lack of enthusiasm and a resigned shake of the head, but Cliff isn’t noticing anything like that. He’s on a roll, already talking on and gesticulating imaginatively with the hand that isn’t rubbing aloe vera on his lump.

  Or how about this? he says. How about a series of famous bald people, and you grow the hair on them? How about that? Kojak, Yul Brynner, Telly Savalas.

  And a dribble of aloe vera slides down into his left eye.

  Go easy on him, Fortuna says. He’s just been stung by a bee and he’s not well.

  Some people stop to buy candles and honey and she tells me she’ll be taking a break in twenty minutes and I should come back then.

  I walk around slowly, as though I’m looking at the stalls intently, but most of the time I’m not. Past leather stubbie holders, religious icons, cacti, second-hand anything, food smells, fragrance smells. I find the stall that must be the place my mother buys chutney, and I realise I have made no plans for dinner.

  I look at the satay sauce, which I think my mother has used before, but I can’t think what I’d do with it. The woman behind the trestle table
tells me I could use it like any satay sauce. She clearly has no understanding of my needs. I decide I will go down the road and buy a burger tonight, and I thank her and move on.

  Twenty minutes is starting to look like a long time when Fortuna appears beside me, takes my hand almost before I know she’s there, and twists her fingers around mine.

  My mother came back sooner than I expected, she says.

  We buy proffertjes and cover them with syrup and icing sugar and sit on a log just away from the crowd.

  I ask her about the markets moving and she says, We’ll be fine. We’ll move and we’ll see how it goes. She shrugs her shoulders. Anyway, it’s not all we do.

  I look at her eating, talking, licking the syrup from her fingers. All the colours of her face, the icing sugar powdering around her lips. I imagine her face very close to mine. And she’s looking at me, looking all over my face with those green eyes.

  I want to see you later, she says. I want to come down and see you later, okay?

  twenty-five

  In the afternoon the storm clouds come in. In from the west like a dark hand, a bunched fist of lightning and rain pushing in front of the sun, making no noise at all, growing larger. The cicadas sing as though it’s evening and the birds cry and go home.

  Fortuna arrives as the first warm globs of water smack down onto the roof, and she runs in with one arm over her head, the rain bursting from her skin.

  Made it, she says.

  I turn off the cricket and I make tea. The rain intensifies in an instant, crashes over the roof, covers the veranda with wet black circles that quickly coalesce and a cold wind tears out from under the cloud, cleaning the dead leaves from the trees and the grass and spinning them away. The first thunder pounds like a distant gun and lightning cuts the inland sky.

  This is suddenly a shelter here, this house, a place that keeps just the two of us from the storm. We sit at the pine dining table, each with our cup of tea, and we look out into the furious hypnotic rain.