Skyglow

by Leslie Thiele

  ‘I might be getting a cold,’ he told her. ‘There’s a lump in my throat.’

  She smiled. ‘Mine too.’

  They walked slowly back down the corridor towards the sitting room. He could think more clearly now. They had hot Milo around this time, sat in the armchairs in their pyjamas, clean and bathed. There was a comfort to be had in the gentle whooshing sound the heaters made while the wind whistled through the eaves outside and the unchanging routines went on inside. As they passed the big picture window, the girl went to draw the thick curtains against the night, but he put up a hand to stop her and peered out at the darkness.

  There was something…something. A fragment of memory rang in his jangling mind. There was something he should remember.

  He stared out into the darkness, pressing his palm against the cold of the windowpane. The courtyard was dimly lit from the light within the room, the wind and rain causing his precious shrubs to claw wildly at the glass. He couldn’t see out there very well and had to peer with his other hand held up against the glare of reflection.

  The flagpole. That was it!

  He felt the puzzle falling into place around him with a satisfying sense of rightness. A great smile, wide as the summer sky, spread across his face.

  He turned to the girl, certain for once in his convictions. ‘You’re Jen! Your name’s Jenny.’

  ‘That’s right, Ron. Well done. Good on you for remembering.’

  Ron grabbed at her arm, shaking her elbow excitedly with a hand of bones and sinew. ‘Jenny, Jenny. When is he coming again?’

  She looked up at him, her open mouth a question.

  ‘When is he coming again, girlie? When is Mr Kiamichi coming to help me with the flag?’

  Coming Clean

  I knew Simon was still on the gear. I’d seen his sister a few weeks before outside Kmart, asked after him. She’d stared me down onto the wet pavement.

  ‘I don’t see Simon anymore.’

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry.’ Here we go. ‘I hope he’s okay.’

  ‘Yeah, right.’

  I felt only sadness, not the devastation I expected. There are always going to be some stains that won’t come out.

  *

  After a time, you get to thinking that it might be okay to lay your burdens down. That you’ve been through rehab, gone along with all the therapy and done your best to keep away from all the people and places that might drag you back under. That you’ve said ‘sorry’ so many times, to so many people, that you shouldn’t have to say it anymore. It all becomes meaningless syllables in your mouth. You know how important it is to clean out all the mess in your life in order to move onto something else. But sometimes it felt like my house would never come clean. That’s what I said to Stu in our last session.

  ‘I’m done with it. There’s no-one left to apologise to.’

  He didn’t miss a beat, pounced on my certainty. ‘What about Simon?’

  I regretted ever mentioning him, though he was so much a part of the story. Stu would have seen through it in an instant. A very astute man, Stu. He’d pegged my early deception and called me to account on all of it. Who I blamed for my addiction and why, circumstances gone against me, the huge tragic wave of my life. All the usual excuses. He’d whittled them all away, one by one, until there was only me standing there with my great wall of lies in pieces around me.

  That had been the start of all those sorries.

  Somehow Simon had slipped through the net. It was all about atonement with family and friends, all the people I’d let down, the ones I’d worked for and ripped off. The trust I stole. None of it had been easy.

  In the grip of heroin you never stop to think about the wreckage you’re leaving in your wake. You don’t really think about anything. The world shrinks to a pinpoint focus. Where? When? How? How much? Any ex-junkie will tell you it’s not stopping that’s hard, though it’s bad enough. It’s dealing with the blame and shame you have to wade through afterwards, and I’d accrued what felt like a concert hall full of pissed-off people in my time.

  I’d diligently worked through a list of names as part of my recovery, brick by brick, putting things back together, building bridges. I’d been ready for the hostility I met. The distrust, the looks, the silence. I deserved nothing less and made a pretty good effort at taking it on the chin. But I hadn’t seen Simon since the day I walked out on him, and didn’t want to.

  ‘What about him?’ I picked at a hangnail, enjoying the tearing pain of it.

  ‘Look at me, Cass.’

  Stu had never lied to me, not once amid all the bullshit I’d spun him, and he had earned my respect.

  ‘It’s not really over until you’ve made amends with everyone, is it?’

  I felt a flare of anger at his presumption. The very best thing for both Simon and me was to stay as far away from each other as possible. Why couldn’t Stu see that? After all, the guy knew more about me than my own mother, much more. ‘I don’t see what good it would do.’

  ‘You know anger is just resistance to change, don’t you, Cass? Isn’t that what all this has been about?’

  ‘Oh please, Stu. No more of the therapy crap. I thought we’d moved to a higher plane.’

  We smiled at each other, breaking the tension. It was an in-joke, one of the new-age sayings our therapy group had cottoned on to after a yoga session.

  His face grew serious again. ‘Cass, you’ve come a long way. None of this has been easy and you’re so close. This is your last loose end. What are you afraid of?’

  I wasn’t just afraid. I was terrified. ‘Aren’t you afraid I might backslide?’

  ‘Are you?’ Stu was big on answering a question with a question. ‘So what do you think? Are you up for it?’

  I had to take it on faith that Stu knew what he was doing. In different circumstances we might have been friends, but I didn’t need friends so much as someone honest, and Stu was definitely that, brutally at times.

  ‘I guess.’

  And a guess was the best I had.

  He looked at his watch. ‘We’re finished for today. How about you think about it during the week. If you feel okay, go ahead and give it a go. If not, we’ll go through it next session.’

  I made ready to leave while he shuffled papers together.

  ‘Cass?’

  I turned back, the door half open.

  ‘Call me if you need to. I think you’re ready for this, but ultimately it’s your choice.’

  I nodded, not saying anything, holding all my protests inside.

  *

  The following Thursday, I pulled into the Banksia Gardens car park with my hands slick on the steering wheel. I wasn’t sure what I was doing, but I wanted to make Stu proud and to move on. The only way through is through. Sometimes those corny therapy mottos came in handy. Said loud and long enough, they could drown out the other voice in your head. The one that said, Don’t do this. Go home. Lie to Stu. He’ll never know. I might have been able to pull it off too. Lying had been a way of life for a long time, and I’d got good at it. But I would know, and that would be another grubby little room to clean.

  I’d deliberated long and hard on what to bring with me. What exactly was a suitable present for a junkie? Other than more junk, and I wasn’t going there. I’d settled in the end on a bunch of daffodils wrapped in lurid purple, dripping all over the passenger seat. I didn’t know if he’d pick up on it. It didn’t really matter. It had felt right at the time, and I was running on instinct.

  I carried the flowers up the damp, stale stairway and knocked on the door, my legs shaking. The methadone clinic would be closed by now, so I was pretty sure he’d be home. The door opened, and we stood for a second, sizing each other up in silence. He looked awful, sick and pale. My heart broke at the echo of his former beauty. It still hurt.

  ‘Hey, Simon.’ I tried to smile but nothing happened. I could sense stuff going on behind his eyes, gears clicking.

  ‘Cass?’ He held out a hand and dropped it ag
ain. He seemed steady. He must have had his dose. ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘I came to…’ I faltered, breathed in and out slowly. The only way through is through. ‘Can I come in?’

  ‘Sure. Sure, you can. It’s great to see you.’

  He sounded as nervous as I felt. I should have called first. I wasn’t playing fair.

  ‘Come on in. Place is a bit of a mess.’

  It was, but I hadn’t come to inspect or judge. The grime and chaos felt frighteningly familiar. I handed over the dripping flowers.

  ‘Daffodils?’ He raised an eyebrow.

  Maybe he didn’t get it after all.

  He found a smeary glass and cleared a space amid the clutter on the table. His hands shook as he set the flowers down in the makeshift vase. We sat opposite each other across the stained laminex and struggled to begin.

  ‘How have you been?’ I asked. Stupid question.

  ‘Okay. I’ve been okay.’

  Stupid answer with tracks still bruising purple down his forearm.

  ‘You?’

  I thought how best to answer. The truth felt banal and cruel. ‘I’m good. Things are coming together for me.’

  ‘Still clean?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘That’s great, Cass. That’s really great. I’m happy for you.’ He stared at the daffodils nodding in their glass.

  ‘Are you really?’ I suddenly felt shy and desperate for his approval.

  He smiled sadly. ‘Yeah. I really am.’

  ‘Look, Simon’—I traced patterns in the dust on the tabletop—‘I wanted to come see you. I mean, I wanted to see how you were doing. I should have come sooner, I know. But I wanted…’ I rubbed my palms against my jeans in a scrubbing motion. ‘I wanted to apologise for leaving the way I did and for, you know, starting all this.’

  ‘Starting all what?’

  ‘Oh, come on. Don’t make this any harder. For the gear. For being the one who went there first.’

  We looked at each other, and he started to laugh, shaking his head.

  ‘Same old Cass. It’s still all about you, isn’t it?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  He leant forward. ‘Tell me, Cass. Tell me honestly. Why did you keep taking it?’

  I felt like I was in Stu’s office. I thought for a minute, searching back. I wanted to tell the truth. ‘Because of the way it made me feel.’

  ‘Well, there’s the difference. You like to feel things. You always did. I take it so I won’t ever have to.’

  It was a bald statement, and a sad one. The first time we went there, onto the slippery slope, we’d been out in the fields beyond town, getting away from everyone and everything. We’d smoked some pot and come across a pool of daffodils growing up wild around the stone foundations of some old farmhouse, made love there under the warm sun with the gold light of flowers all around. Afterwards, he’d opened up and talked for a while about his dad. Ex-army and demanding of an unreachable perfection, such an upright citizen. Good old Mr Anderson.

  He told me how it had felt to be a small boy listening to his mother getting thumped behind the walls and being utterly powerless to stop it. How she’d gone one night and left him behind. Left him there with a father he couldn’t ever please, a sister he couldn’t protect. I’d wanted so much to cheer him up, to take him out of the dark place he lived in. I’d reached into my back pocket as we walked home in the afternoon light, taken the serpent out into the light of day.

  ‘Marcie gave me this,’ I’d said. ‘Want to try it with me?’

  When we’d got home, high as kites, there was still a dusting of yellow pollen on our faces.

  ‘How are you managing? Are you working?’ I asked him now.

  ‘Nah. Tried a few things.’ He looked own at his arms. ‘It’s not so bad on the program. The methadone’s cheaper.’

  ‘There’s a way out,’ I ventured, knowing how I’d resented people saying the same to me once. ‘The Dover Street place is pretty good, better than others I’ve tried.’ I dug into my bag and handed him the card Stu had given me.

  Simon tossed it on the table and shook his head. ‘Not interested.’

  There wasn’t much more to say after that.

  I picked up the card and slid it under the glass. ‘Call me, won’t you…if you ever decide. I can maybe put you onto someone.’

  We’d been so in love with each other once, it seemed strange to be matter-of-fact about everything. When he hugged me goodbye at the door, I held on a bit longer than I should have, felt him pulling away first.

  ‘Hey, Cass?’ he called, as I headed for the stairway. ‘It wasn’t your fault.’

  I turned around, but he’d already closed the door.

  There were still things to work through with Stu and more healing to be done, but my guilt over Simon felt like something handled as well as it could have been. I was smiling when I got to the car. Looking up, the pale orb of his face showed in the upstairs window, his palm flat against the glass. I waved up at him before getting in, unshed tears blurring the dashboard as the engine started up. At last, I lay my burden down and drove away.

  The Medal

  The salty smell of ocean lingered, hinting at the high tide in the mangroves offshore, an early westerly keeping the day cool. Lying there in his cocoon of blankets, he breathed in the clean air, the rise and fall of Kate’s shoulder as she slept beside him. He had had no dreams. It was such an unusual occurrence that he marvelled at it for a moment. Turned the feeling over in his mind, limbs heavy and soft. This is what it could have been like, this is how he could have lived.

  Careful not to wake Kate, he slid from the bed and opened the caravan door, stepping outside. Above him, the sky stretched from end to end like tent canvas. Tinged pink towards the desert country, fading to washed blue towards the ocean. Cold air bit at the bottom of his lungs, and he had the sudden urge to shout, or dance. Instead, he turned slowly in a full circle. The world felt limitless and the outlines of his body seemed to dissipate into the air. Not a damn thing in sight. Not a fence, not a tree, not a building. No wonder Jonesy had loved it so!

  He had a fractured memory of Jonesy whimpering in the night on his canvas stretcher, gripping his hand like a vice, the smell of gangrene heavy around them. I wanna go home! I wanna go home! They all bloody did.

  Ron pushed the image away with an effort, replacing it instead with a memory of Jonesy laughing fit to bust, best shot in the company. You’d never make a stockman, Ron! No, Ron was born a city boy and had scurried back to his life as soon as he could. It had taken him twenty-five years to make it to the outback, and he’d needed a fair old shove from Kate and Frankie, even then. No excuse after retirement. He’d made a promise, after all.

  A great battalion of corellas came screaming across the sky, their shade flickering across his upturned face. He followed their raucous progress east towards the homestead. It was exactly as Jonesy had described it. The wide spaces, the sound of the wind and sea. He knew from Jonesy’s talk, long into the night on patrol, the place would be gearing up for the mustering season. Jonesy’s stories had painted pictures so vivid, Ron always felt he’d been there, could imagine the clouds of white dust rising up behind the mob of cattle and the jingle of horses.

  He’d woken in the night to the lonely call of dingoes out on the plain. It seemed to him a great comfort that the world here remained wild, unchanged. It made things seem worthwhile. Maybe there had been a point to it, after all. He’d lain quietly for some time, looking at the spangled sky through the window and gradually drifted off into that precious dreamless sleep. Felt almost healed.

  Now, in the dawn light, a wallaby hopped across the dunes towards him, its front paws held out in a hopeful appeal. No fear of man. No fear at all. He dug into the pocket of his jacket and pulled out a coin, so tarnished it was impossible to read the print, although Ron knew it by heart.

  ROSS JONES. SADDLE BRONC CHAMPION. DERBY RODEO. 1939.

  He walked across the
cold sand, lifted the shovel from its place on the trailer and began to dig. The sound of the shovel as it worked at the hole kept his thoughts at bay. He dug deep enough so that no high tide or cyclone could disturb its depth, until, at last, he was satisfied.

  He stood for a moment by the pit. Stood to attention alone in an empty world and hoped his nightmares would follow the medal down into the whispering earth.

  ‘Welcome home, Jonesy. Welcome home, mate.’

  Notes

  Previous Publication

  The Slaughterman In This Desert, There Were Seeds, Ed. Elizabeth Tan (Margaret River Press and Ethos, 2019).

  Harbour Lights Joiner Bay & Other Stories, Ed. Ellen van Neerven (Margaret River Press, 2017).

  The Boat Shibboleth & Other Stories, Ed. Laurie Steed (Margaret River Press, 2016).

  The Gingerbread Man Lost Boy & Other Stories, Ed. Estelle Tang (Margaret River Press, 2015).

  Catching Trains to Frankston The Trouble with Flying & Other Stories, Ed. Richard Rossiter (Margaret River Press, 2014).

  Notes on the Text

  Ashore Written in acknowledgement of, and respect for, the Dunan people of Coolingup (Capel) and the Wardandi people in the south west of Western Australia, on whose country these events took place. All words in language taken from R. Whitehurst, Noongar Dictionary, 2nd ed. (East Perth, Western Australia: Noongar Language and Cultural Centre (Aboriginal Corporation), 1997). Introductory extract taken from P. Hambly (Ed.), Pierre Bernard Milius. Last Commander of the Baudin Expedition. The Journal 1800–1804 (Pratt, K. Trans.) (Perth, Australia: Australian Capital Equity Pty, 2013).

  The Blow-In Introductory extract taken from D. Enfield, ‘El Niño, Past and Present’, Reviews of Geophysics 27 (1989): 159–187.

  Acknowledgements

  The stories within this collection span a period of huge growth and change in my life, but I have never walked there alone. This book is for all those people as much as it ever was for me.