Detours

by Tim Rogers

  He woke the next morning with sand spilling from his pockets and a few ripped articles on the pillow to his right: one on Phillip Glass’s history as a plumber fixing art historian Robert Hughes’s pipes, and one about good walks for children in New York City.

  The crunch of his shoes upon the sand and pebbles of the track are as pleasing to him as biting into lightly burnt buttery toast. His thoughts flip to another acquaintance, this one a decade older than him, who had confided that he had recently broken up with a woman because she wanted him to be faithful. Archie couldn’t commit to the request, they split up, and since then he had been taking up with a procession of young women half his age, as if in a victory lap or farewell tour. While the confession was being given, on a chance encounter in the street, he remembered several occasions when Archie had been, if not libidinous with a woman in his company, then at least coquettish, in a way few fifty-year-old men could be – his language expanded into poesy, his eyelids grew heavy with lust not fatigue, and his offer to shout a round of drinks was echoed with the thwack of his cock on the bar. Archie had also spoken about his unfaithfulness during a marriage that welcomed three children.

  As a line of black swans cross his path now, followed by a bundle of signets still fluffy and directionless, all with yellow tags gripping their necks for Parks monitoring, he is blindsided with a fresh jealousy. Fuckin Archie has close relationships with his children and their mother, lives near them and will see their opening nights and graduations. All this distance, longing, worry, money – and he’d been loyal throughout his marriage, despite its furies and histrionics. But is it anywhere near as good to not do something as it is to not do anything? He’d never raised his fists, but he’d withdrawn his affection for months on end, walking for miles to avoid another confrontation rather than hold his own wife close.

  Losing hours in pretzels of thought is common practice for him, but he realises that he’s done little with the day’s winter sunlight except calculate damages. As he resolves to change his diet, his habits and his wardrobe to prevent any more wasted days like this one, he notices a queue of stationary cars. Thinking it’s because of the swans crossing, something that never fails to raise a wry smile, he is surprised to discover something else has caused this traffic jam. A small bird, its body no larger than a clenched fist, lies on its side in the middle of the lane a couple of metres from the lead car’s bumper bar. As he moves towards it, a young lady in her mid-twenties with a northern English brogue protests, ‘We just didn’t see ’im. It were an accident really!’ – but she stays inside the triangular space of the passenger door.

  ‘That’s hardly the fucking issue,’ he sighs, and kneels down beside the bird. It’s a little welcome swallow, ordinarily so comically quick in flight but now, after being struck, it’s crumpled. The pinkish-red plumage of its face is striking against the deep blues of its head and back, and the paleness of its undercarriage resembles spilt ice-cream. Its eyes blink in what first seems to be incredulity but is surely shock.

  He picks the bird up by rocking it very gently from side to side to cup it in his hands. He sees there is no bleeding and moves back towards the grass. Afraid that putting it down will only distress it further, he holds it in one palm and strokes it gently with an index finger.

  Almost at once, the cars speed off. An offer by the English lass to take the wounded and its nurse to a vet would have seemed reasonable, but none is made. He considers hailing down a driver but then dips his head, keeping his eyes on the little bird.

  ‘C’mon, little fella, you’re better than this. We can’t go out this way . . . you can’t go out this way.’ And then in a rogue’s patter: ‘Dem girls didnae care for you but I do. Come on, ya lil’ bruiser.’

  The swallow gazes heavenward then blinks three times in a way that seems, in the emotion of the moment, like it is being granted some vision of corporeal beauty. An entry into the big skies of the afterlife free of backpackers in hire cars and worms as fat as human fingers. The bird’s plum-like breast fills with air, then with a shudder it shrinks into immobility. It expires in his hands.

  He hasn’t buried anything since two pet mice when he was eight, and now doubts that’s the thing to do anyhow, so he calls Parks maintenance. During the twenty-minute wait he delivers a gentle eulogy, avoiding the stares from passing cars. ‘We can’t hold on too tight. We can’t hold on too tight.’ He wonders briefly what the drivers are thinking as they see this large, shaggy-haired, long-faced man talking to his hands on the side of the road as dusk approaches. He smiles artlessly for the first time today.

  When the night rolls in, it’s as if he’s been given another chance. The day can be thrown off like a coat and hung up to stretch out its creases. The possibilities of evening can commence. His apartment is completely safe now. The living room’s lamp throws a light that is particularly pleasing at this hour. Once the sun retreats around 5.20 on these winter afternoons, the main room takes on a different character: more poetic and bohemian, with stacks of books and records placed the way he’s seen married couples position indoor plants or objets d’art. He decides to write her an email. Tell her a story of no great consequence, about a little dying bird, that he is quite sure won’t upset her. And he’ll remind her of the walks they’ve taken around the lake together, and of the time they saw the fox, skulking through the park at nightfall like a crafty thief.

  There is a can of tuna in the pantry. Ever since he watched that episode of Happy Days where Fonzie spoons himself something from a tin, all alone in his auto-workshop on Christmas night, he’s thought that eating fish from a tin was impossibly sad. But he has some hot sauce to spice it up, there’s no washing up, and no-one has to know.

  So it’s a quiet night in with the tap dripping quietly behind a shut door, like someone reading a book aloud to themselves. He doesn’t spread out the brocade of notes and photos, just a magazine in case he can’t sleep. On the cover is an Elvis impersonator. Yeah, something light to read if sleep doesn’t work this first time.

  As he turns out the light for the night, with a small smile he says the same words he has said every night since she left: ‘It’s a funny ol’ whirled, ain’t it, sweetheart?’

  Bagatelles II

  At a 7-Eleven in Townsville, a brawny, military-looking guy asks me what I charge for solo shows. His approach is combative rather than inquisitive, so I halve the usual fee and tell him. ‘For playing songs you get paid that?’ he whines. I reply, politely, ‘No, I play songs for free, I get paid to have photos taken with people,’ and I leave empty-handed.

  When doing a David Bowie tribute with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, I ask my friend Adalita, who is also singing, if she’s spoken to anyone in the orchestra. She says no, and explains that she feels intimidated by them. ‘Hold their gaze like they’re wild animals and tame them,’ I advise her.

  Kristy is the girlfriend of our stage guy, Steve, and she’s come to Europe with us. I worry about the wisdom of taking a partner on tour. We’re loading out of a club in Hamburg on the Reeperbahn the day after the show, and it can seem such a grim activity so I go to her and I am about to tell her of the ‘three-day rule’ – a recent dictum of mine that anyone not making music on a tour will lose their bottle after three days, unable to cope with the ennui of the routine – as Steve lugs guitars and cases and she protects some luggage from tourists stumbling back from all-nighters in St Pauli. She’s staring at Steve, and I fear the worst.

  ‘You okay, Kwisty?’ I ask.

  She shakes her head as she stares at Steve and then coos, ‘God, he’s just so . . . cute, y’know?’

  She’s a keeper.

  A woman about my age approaches me after the show in Newcastle as I go get a beer and try to gauge if the show was okay. She opens with the traditional ‘I used to see you years ago’ and then with a laugh says, ‘but you all look so old now!’ I automatically respond with, ‘Every crack in my skin is a sin worth lived in.’ Geez, I wonder to myself, where did that c
ome from? That line’s so great maybe it’s not mine. She walks away puzzled and I now know I’ve got a motto for life. Wherever it came from.

  I’m introduced to footy legend Brent ‘Tiger’ Croswell in his hometown of Hobart and am so mesmerised by his eloquence that my face hurts from smiling. I ask about his Ménière’s syndrome and it’s the only sombre moment in a dreamy evening. His text messages, sent over the next weeks, are saved for life:

  You’re a bloody rummin Timmy Rogers, full of ink at some after-show party, birds every which way, sending cheeky texts to old footy stars in physical and financial free-fall. Yeah. Brent C.

  With just a novel, a hip flask and a damn telephone on me after delivering our guitars to baggage, on finding my seat at the back of the plane a familiar dredge of nerves scrapes close to my skin, and what others may interpret as expectation is interpreted as mild fear. The gaggle of television commentators in the forward section of the plane is unsettling for reasons of imagined news headlines in the event of a plane malfunction. But there’s also the excitability of the football fans surrounding me. Families wide-eyed and expectant for the trip away, the game, and the thrill of being on a plane with ex-footballers and coaches who fill a million television screens for half the year with analyses and personal jibing, to the point that most of the plane knows the underwear preferences of one commentator or the grooming peccadilloes of another.

  When the most feted and notorious of them all, Wayne Carey, appears at the top of the aisle, the whole plane’s attention is so utterly engaged that I can retrieve my hip flask and slug a healthy dram. Nerves duly flattened, the flight is uneventful, but enjoyable.

  My only other experience of being a passenger on a plane bewitched by the presence of another was when I caught a flight with Barry Humphries. He seemed none-too-happy to be relegated to economy class, taking his seat only once his perfectly crisp fedora was positioned with appropriate care overhead. But perhaps his disgruntlement was a performance. The entire cabin was his audience for the taking. Voilà.

  The dreams featuring my daughter are usually calm and conversational. The scripts run very much like our real rambling conversations about our daily activities. The nightmares about her wellbeing – who is holding her hand to cross busy New York streets, or stumbling onto her Snapchat account – are left for the early mornings after I’ve woken, and can only be ironed out by contacting her. Lately the moth in the room that we just can’t seem to shoo out the window is her burgeoning romantic life. The traditional response if I show anyone her photo is a non-too-sympathetic sigh of ‘Geez, you better get a shotgun, mate. Bloody hell . . .’ which has recently begun to annoy me. While it is entirely possible she will be introduced to meatheads and thugs, she may equally have an adolescence of discovery and recognition where she makes strong friendships with smart, funny, caring young men. Like all the ones I have met in her orbit so far. Thank fuck. It makes the distance between her home and mine feel less like 16,671 kilometres and closer to a snug 10,000.

  In Berlin after the show, on a stage that was so small I had to hold my guitar at an unusual angle so as not to hit Andy too often, I spend an hour looking through a mottled glass window in the band room, separated from the club only by a black cloth. Although a DJ is playing music loudly, I feel a wonderful peace. Each of my bandmates has popped back from drinking with audience members and friends to see if I’m okay. I’m fabulous. The view through the window of heavy night traffic inching down Skalitzer Strasse has me hypnotised, and I think of the paintings of Georges Seurat.

  After a show with The Bamboos I catch the red-eye from Perth so that I can get home in time to open the bowling in the final cricket game of the year. I catch an hour’s sleep on the flight. At 7 am I’m home and changed into my whites although the game doesn’t start until 10. I watch a documentary of Australian cricket in the seventies to pass some time and get me in the mood, but fall asleep around 1974. I wake at 10.35 and cry a little in frustration as I hurtle downstairs. Arriving on my bike, late and dishevelled, I’m allowed on a side and when there is an edge off my bowling that is caught cleanly by the wicketkeeper, any discomfort from the preceding hours evaporates with a tremendous blast of hot joy.

  At an awards show for songwriting I run into painter Ben Quilty, whose playful company is always a joy but seems at odds with his work, which often haunts me. We both went to the same high school, though a decade or more apart. Separating work and manner is something I think on with a furrowed brow for the duration of the evening, until we meet up to share a cab to a pub many hours later. He is still buoyant and charming, I am still furrowed. Together we push on, arm over arm, story over story.

  At the pub after footy practice, Dobbo is talking about his current musical theatre role – in The Sound of Music – and his pencil-thin moustache that he has grown for the part, and the pros and cons of such facial hair offstage.

  ‘Why didn’t you just draw it on each night?’ asks Wes.

  ‘Well, then we wouldn’t have this glorious subject to talk about.’ Dry as a bone.

  Davey and I spend too long at a friend’s house in Maroubra after the show. We’re still wired at 11 am but the conversation is turning dark, we’re slumped on the shag carpet and his sentences are hard-earned. I suggest we go back to the hotel. We cab it back and I make us a tuna sandwich and suggest trying some kip before the van ride to Newcastle. When I wake him at 3.30 pm to go down to the van, all we can manage is to say ruefully, ‘Thank fuck we’ve got a show tonight.’

  My Man

  I know this guy

  If I’m the mayonnaise, then he’s the cream

  Some sit and wait for a ride

  While others become the scene

  He can see a Wednesday morning

  The way others see Friday night

  It’s all an open book

  It’s just how you vandalize.

  Davey is fast asleep, open-mouthed, with his eyes sheathed in a non-decorative sleeping mask. The cackle of Ricky Gervais’s laugh escapes the cushioned headphones into the outside world. How can he sleep with that convulsive rattle which annoys me even here on the other side of his vacuum chamber? I’m so familiar with the sight I generally no longer check if he’s still breathing when I lurch out of the room. But this morning, recognising we have a half-hour before resigning to the airport, I take a minute to look at him: we must seem quite a pair when we’re together. ‘Steptoe and Son’ was how an English friend described us. And that bothers me not one bit.

  I try to lay off the paternal dogma these days – he’s thirty-four, for Chrissake – but I asked him to join the band when he was only seventeen, and at times I feel a little twinge of responsibility. I did the right thing and called his parents who, after I had assured them that I’d be protective, replied: ‘Take him. We mean, look at him, Tim, what else is he built to do?’

  On his first tour with me and a band called The Twin Set, our double bass player, Stuey Speed – a towering giant, over two metres of mischievous magnetism – told us about a drink which was ‘two measures of Jack Daniels to four of orange juice: first you get the kick of the Vitamin C and then the boot of the bourbon’. Thirty shows later and with Davey a sickly shade of green, a concerned Stuey asked if he was okay. When Davey replied that he thought maybe he overdid it on the restorative tour cocktail, Stuey, in mock-concern, whispered, ‘Jesus, you didn’t drink that shit, did you?’

  It wasn’t the first time I felt I’d let Davey down, or the last, but my intentions are always pure. He’s always strolled through this mess with a ready smile. Often regarded as a tenderfoot and treated as if he were naive, he’s never been that green. He may have been wary of hidden motives and agendas, but that wouldn’t determine his opening gambit.

  I know, this being a mining town, that later as we sit in the small airport bar, on white plastic chairs, someone in hi-viz wear will look us up and down and declare, rather than ask: ‘You guys in a band’ – and while I am fumbling for something clever to s
ay, straightening my back and arching my eyebrows, poised to douse the hasty appraisal with unctuous sarcasm as if I were Peter Cook, Davey will answer politely, ‘Yep, yep. How you goin’?’

  When on tour in Sydney, say, if we have a day of no travel the next day, we might drift into mumbling non sequiturs some time in the early morning, but before being defeated by sleep we’ll make vague plans to see a movie, and have a lunch that involves food, and go to that huge bookstore with the unpronounceable Japanese name in town. The likely reality, however, is we’ll just mooch around the inner suburbs of that big, fearsome city separately, meet up at cocktail hour, have some drinks before sound check and resume our conversation – the one that has been rambling since we met, when Davey was just a kid.

  My dad travelled a lot when my siblings and I were young and when he got home he’d thrill us with tales of who he’d seen at the airport lounge. His storytelling style was without any theatrical touches at all. As we’d tuck into chops and two veg, he’d put his knife and fork down and ask us kids with an emotionless tone: ‘You guys heard of a rock band called . . . U2?’ And then share an anecdote featuring ‘some bloke called . . . Bonox?’ to our open-mouthed wonder. ‘You guys like a certain fast bowler called . . . Lillee?’ – with a wink, a little disingenuous, teasing wide-eyed little kittens with a ball of wool. ‘Well, as I was saying to Paul Hogan at the airport the other night . . .’ Though his delivery was always deadpan, I can see now that it was a thrill for him too, enjoying our excitement at his brushes with celebrity.