Limestone Man

by Robert Minhinnick

  The Works, I suppose, he said, squinting. Then he said it again, as if for reassurance.

  The Works.

  After this, the boy closed his eyes against the sun’s assault, its dazzle leaping off the oil-stained macadam.

  He and Parry lay on the tarmac under a buddleia bush that had smashed through the tarry crust. Parry had never met anyone more at ease with himself than Daf. At least, as undemanding.

  Now it was morning break. The two had come back from a visit to the incinerator, one hundred yards distant. They had carried panniers of crushed grey carbon paper on their backs. The salvaged paper he was told would be picked up when a lorryload was ready.

  The incinerator was simply a metal cage. All Parry had to do was stuff the carbon paper inside and fire it with a match, or Daf’s Rizla lighter. It burned to grey shreds, leaving a filthy ash.

  Parry decided to try another tack.

  What else will we have to do today? he asked.

  This is it.

  Burning carbon paper?

  Mm.

  These miles of carbon paper?

  That’s it.

  Pulling rolls of carbon paper out of the print-outs and taking it for burning?

  That is it.

  Bit boring isn’t it?

  Daf opened his eyes.

  No, he said. It’s not boring. It’s just work. But last week, last week was great. There was no carbon at all. No burning. No nothing.

  What did you do?

  I said. Nothing.

  Nothing?

  Yeah. Nothing. Played football. Went down the beach on Thursday and Friday. Wednesday, we just lay around. Remember that hot day? That was Wednesday. Hottest day of the summer it was.

  Parry considered this. There was a tarn of melted polythene, ten yards by ten, in a dint of the fractured tarmac before him. It gleamed a noxious yellow in the sun. A seagull had disintegrated on the surface.

  But today we got work?

  Yeah. Plenty of work today. But quiet tomorrow. Guaranteed.

  How do you know?

  You can always tell.

  But how can you tell?

  You just can.

  How long you had a job here?

  Two years.

  Parry considered this.

  Fuck, he gradually heard himself saying. Daring himself. Allowing the word into his mouth.

  Yeah, said the boy with driftwood boots.

  Fuck.

  SEVEN

  I

  When Parry woke his watch said 15:19. So much of his life was now dreamlike. Anything was possible. Everything impossible.

  Parry realised he had been dreaming about a workshop he and his father had sometimes visited. It was owned by a man called Yonderley.

  He didn’t know how he came to be there. Or for how long he had sat against the sofa. But there was a watchmaker’s lathe he needed to reassemble, gravers and collets, chucks and bits to clean. Each had its special place. Nothing else, nowhere else, could suffice…

  The light in the room had been on. Someone had switched it off. The fog breathed against the glass. Nitric acid, he thought. In its oily cloud. Aqua fortis in the glass bottle. In his right hand was a bloody handkerchief. The blood was new.

  II

  Glan looked at Parry as he came out of the bathroom.

  Just cleaning myself up, said the older man. I feel better now. Nothing like a swill in the bosh.

  What’s a bosh?

  Oh, a sink, I suppose. But yes, restored.

  Glan regarded him and looked away.

  I better find Serene, he said.

  Yes, restored, smiled Parry. Like a painting. And he gently cuffed Glan.

  You know, I was talking to my best class in Adelaide not long before I came back. About restoration.

  Oh yeah?

  There was a painting I’d always remembered. Leonardo da Vinci’s ‘St Jerome’. Do you know it?

  No.

  Dates to about 1480. I think Leonardo was just under thirty. Not far off your age.

  I’m twenty-three.

  And he’d already done extraordinary things. By your age. Learned to think. Developed enormous curiosity.

  Serene says you’ve got a shirt for me.

  Oh, I do. Follow me, young man.

  Parry led the way into his bedroom. Every surface was piled with clothes.

  She said it was dusky pink.

  Oh it’s pink, all right. I can tell it suits you. But that painting had always fascinated me. Wonderful draughtsmanship, unusual angles, like most of Leonardo’s work. What we have of it. But don’t think I’m an expert. Because really I’m not…

  You taught art, didn’t you?

  Sort of. But maybe a teacher doesn’t know as much as people believe.

  Oh, that’s true, laughed Glan. My teachers knew nothing. Always down the pub, my teachers. Or getting things wrong, my teachers. Giving the wrong grades.

  But I loved this painting, said Parry. Because it was unfinished. Leonardo simply hadn’t got round to finishing what he’d started. Maybe he was hoping one of his pupils would complete it. After instruction. That’s the way they did things. In those days.

  Lazy type, was he?

  The very opposite, man. He’d gone on to other projects. Other disciplines. A thousand different all-consuming tasks.

  Oh yes?

  But St Jerome attracted me for that very reason.

  That it was incomplete. The saint’s right arm, and the lion in the picture, are unpainted. You see, he seems to be taking a thorn out of the lion’s paw. Jerome’s arm and all of the lion are drawn in. But not coloured.

  Maybe he was on a break?

  Leonardo didn’t have breaks. Or dinner hours. But I’ve a print of that painting, that cartoon, as it’s called. And I’ve studied that lion. Ah yes, what a lion. No lion in art had ever been so carefully proportioned. Maybe since the cave painters thousands of years ago.

  You can see every aspect of that lion, and Jerome’s arm too. But to me, it’s as though it’s a ghost lion. That lion is disappearing in front of our eyes. It’s been disappearing since the painting was first discovered. Like Jerome is disappearing too.

  Yeah, that shirt.

  First his right arm. But the implication is, the rest of the saint will also vanish. A man becoming a ghost. Beside a ghostly lion. Cell by cell. Atom by atom, the man is disappearing. Like the lion has disappeared. And that’s what happens, isn’t it?

  What happens?

  To people. To all of us. It’s what happens to everybody and everything. Atom by atom. Cell by cell. Till all that’s left are our outlines. Which are made up of memories. And eventually, those memories disappear as well.

  Glan scratched his stomach.

  Pity old…

  So most of the people you meet on Amazon Street are like that, said Parry. They’re slowly vanishing. Right in front of your eyes.

  Then it’s a pity old Leonardo didn’t invent the camera, isn’t it? said Glan. Pity he didn’t have a camera phone.

  Have you one of those?

  You bet.

  Pricey, aren’t they? Where d’you find the money?

  Glan smiled at Parry. Saving up, see. Better try that shirt on, hadn’t I? Dusky pink, Serene said. Well, why not?

  III

  The Clwb seemed surprisingly full. Dai Pretty was in, and Fflint, his hair slicked back, black beads on his shoulders. He must have walked from the brimming gutters of Senhora Street.

  Parry ordered a bottle of red.

  Don’t tell me, he laughed. No decent malbec. So I hope the shiraz is okay.

  Anything for you, said Nia. My best customer tonight.

  Never tell any customer that, warned Mina.

  In Goolwa we always suspected customers arrived by mistake, said Parry. Or by destiny.

  So what did you sell out there in the Land of Oz? asked Fflint.

  An experience, said Parry. What we described as a … scene. Anybody who had the guts to walk through our doo
r was considered someone of immense discernment. Of cutting-edge taste. They acquired immediate respect.

  Parry looked around. He had an audience.

  That’s right, he claimed. Sometimes we used to give away our stock. Free. Dylan bootleg of ‘Precious Angel’, taped in Sydney. Free. Battered translation of Rimbaud’s Illuminations. No cover. Free.Anything like that. It had probably arrived in job lots, in garage sale surpluses. So was free to start with. We were simply redistributing culture that already belonged to people.

  Christ, once a hippy … laughed Fflint. And that’s what you’re hoping for? With Dirtfinger? Or Badbreath? Or whatever it’s called?

  Well, these are unpropitious times, Parry admitted. The new austerity take its toll. And that’s why we’re having this gig. This celebration. New Year’s Eve. You’re all invited. Been planning it for months. Haven’t we, Nia?

  Er … no. You’ve mentioned it a few times. But nothing’s definitely fixed… Is it?

  Surprise party, said Parry. Kind of launch event. Giving the flyers out tomorrow. Just a few. Only a modest proposal. No, of course we don’t expect many to turn up. But we’ll be in the bar here, like old times. The stage is fine. What can go wrong?

  Not been used for years, warned Nia doubtfully.

  No big deal, said Parry. And you’ll play? he asked Fflint. Gil’s already agreed. Seemed keen. Was delighted someone’s showing an interest. When was the last time you saw the old bastard? Drag him away from that bloody website of his.

  I haven’t played in public for years, spat Fflint. Are you mental?

  Relax. It’s spontaneous. Life should be spontaneous, my friends.

  Spontaneous doesn’t mean suicidal.

  Just a couple of numbers.

  No way.

  I said relax. We’re alive, said Parry. Remember what it used to be like?

  Absolutely no chance.

  IV

  Parry was still talking.

  Over in Oz, the shop was at one end of a long street. The busy end, if you can believe it. Okay, neither end was busy. But rents were rock bottom and we fitted in. For a while. For eighteen months we were famous.

  The shop was called Hey Bulldog. That gave us irony, a British, imperial quality. An intriguing English tone. A crucial cachet. Unmistakeable as Gibson feedback through a Leslie speaker. For those who understood. For those who enjoyed the cool joke.

  A girl called Lulu helped, first on weekends if I wasn’t able to turn up. Then she was permanent. It just happened. I inherited her with the premises.

  Quite a kid. Lulu was clever and talkative. I gave her some money I couldn’t afford. She was interested in everything, poetry, where she came from. And me. With my peculiar accent.

  Listen, I would tell her. We could be twins. Sand brother and sand sister.

  I got two brothers already, she’d say.

  Okay, I’d say. But The Caib, where I come from, is like this place. Sand hills and salt lagoons. Red sun in a black bayou.

  What’s a bayou?

  Oh, that’s a word I heard once in a song. I get lots of my words from songs.

  My grandmother tells me songs, said Lulu. How about your grandmother?

  She died, Parry said. But she told me about cuckoospit and snakeberries. And rhubarb and itching powder.

  You’re crazy.

  Getting there, Parry said.

  My grandmother once told me about kingfisher nests, Lulu said. How they were made of bleached bones. You reached your arm in and there were the eggs. Hot white stones in a chamber at the very end. Sometimes snakes crept in too and stole the eggs.

  Where’s your grandmother now? Parry asked.

  Adelaide. I’m going there soon. She lives near Gouger Street, walking up and down. Used to work on a stall in the market. Oh, I love that market. The fish wriggling around on the ice.

  I love that market too, Parry said. See, I have this dream about Gouger Street market. To go there on Saturday morning for coffee.

  And cinnamon doughnuts?

  Or potato wedges and a bowl of soured cream. And then a bowl of chillied mayo. They make the best wedges in the world on Gouger Street.

  But yes, I’d go there for coffee first thing, and work on my novel. Because I should be working on a novel. Writing about whatever comes to mind. Anything at all.

  On Gouger Street! she laughed.

  Yeah, great street. See the dusty lorries arriving with their apples in cardboard boxes. And all those Chinese vegetables, and those crispy ducks, and those lobsters with elastic bands around their claws. I love the smell of apples in cardboard boxes.

  And me.

  And I’d get on with my writing and not have to worry about Hey Bulldog. Just live in the market on Gouger Street. Letting the city come to me. Then have another coffee.

  On Gouger Street!

  Wouldn’t it be great?

  But you live in Goolwa and Adelaide. Two places at once!

  So no coffee allowed. And no wedges with sour cream. Because I have to teach the naughty children who don’t do their homework. And then mark their exams and talk to their parents and keep the Art department happy. And drive on the expressway over the flattened snakes.

  But if I had been a real writer, I know that Gouger Street market would have been the place for me. I’d just sit in a corner, at one of those old stained tables. Hiding away.

  Some old Chinese man would be there too, the only other customer. And they’d keep the coffee coming.

  V

  They all sell out, said Fflint. Who hasn’t? Who wouldn’t?

  Not everyone, said Parry.

  Nia at the counter came closer.

  Everyone who has the chance, hissed Fflint. And by now, that’s everybody. Everybody’s implicated. Everybody’s doing it.

  Not everyone, said Parry again.

  Yeah, everyone sells out, said Fflint. So, don’t drone on to me about the sainted sixties. They’re all at it.

  And if the bands are defunct or the singers are dead, then it’s their wives or lovers. Or their children. Or their friends who were never part of it to start with.

  Yeah, any tune they ripped off in the first place. Any photograph they can exploit. Anything that makes money. Anything that helps keep the putrid ghosts of their reputations alive.

  No, not everyone, said Parry again. And he realised it sounded like an appeal.

  And you, spat Fflint. You. Starting a shop called Badfinger. Of all the names you could have chosen, Badfinger stands out.

  Why’s that? asked Nia.

  Why? said Fflint, Because of betrayed bands, Badfinger was the worst treated.

  Two of the members hanged themselves, they were in such despair. Supposedly. That group sums it all up… The whole rotten world of rock and roll. A world of agents and managers and soul-dead middlemen.

  And worse than that were the bands themselves. Jealousy at its most loathsome. Envy at its most blatant. A life made up of deadly resentments. Christ…I ’m going for a piss.

  What’s eating him? asked Nia. All of a sudden.

  Our friend Fflint knows what he’s talking about, smirked Mina. Or likes to pretend he does.

  Course. Fflint was in a band, wasn’t he? asked Nia.

  Yip. So know our history, girlie. And that’s ancient history. They used to play in here, once upon a time. When it was called The Paradise Club.

  Heard the name, said Nia. But that’s before my era.

  You got an era have you? laughed Mina.

  You know what I mean.

  Oh yes. We all have an era. Hard to believe, isn’t it? For some of us? Enjoy it while it lasts, chicken.

  In fact, there’s a sign upstairs for The Paradise, said Nia slowly. And ledgers and dockets and rolls of posters and a little book with carbon paper. All gone mouldy damp.

  They were quite a gang, smiled Mina. Your dad was one of them. With his friend, Gil. And who was their girl singer? Long red hair. Pre-Raphaelite bottle red, if you know what I mean. Quite striking. N
ice personality. Couldn’t sing of course. But she looked the part in those miniskirts she used to wear. But they must have done a few things together before the band broke up.

  Lizzy, said Parry. Her name was Lizzy.

  And Fflint? asked Nia.

  Guitarist, said Mina. Nothing flash, but steady. Held it all together. Chugga chugga man. Every band needed a chugga chugga man just to keep it rolling.

  You talk as if…

  Hey chicken, I haven’t always worked in Basement Booze, said Mina. Don’t think that. It used to be Paradise in here, remember. Just down the corridor. I feel the curls in my perm tighten at the very thought of it. Or maybe it’s the ghost of the lacquer in my beehive.

  Beehive? said Parry. Now that’s before my day.

  Used to call me the burning bush, laughed Mina. Yeah, I suppose it was a fire hazard. Gold it was. Tall and gold and stiff as candyfloss. I was fifteen and my friend Vanno would come over and we’d play records and…

  Don’t tell me, said Parry. Bit of Dusty…

  Bit of Cilla, said Mina. We worshipped our Cilla then. ‘Love of the Loved’, God help us.

  ‘Shy of Love’ on the B side, said Parry.

  Didn’t play B sides, chicken. Beneath me. Anyway, we couldn’t get the American groups round here for love or money. But as to that hairspray, we’d have to open the window. Otherwise we’d be choking. Gassing ourselves. Yes, The Paradise used to be a little bit special. Here and that place in Cato Street were the scenes…

  What you come back for, anyway? asked Fflint, restored. He was staring at Parry.

  You want to know?

  We all want to know.

  VI

  Parry looked around. There was Nia, Mina, Fflint. Someone else stood at the end of the bar. A black dew shone on the shoulders of his anorak.

  He sighed and poured himself another glass of red wine, proffering the bottle.

  Parry smiled. People always wanted answers. To problems. To riddles. But above all, people wished for explanations. To the everyday mysteries. Explanations that would make sense of themselves.

  I woke up one morning, he said.

  In Australia, you mean? asked Nia.

  Sssh, said Mina.

  I woke up early. In the town of Goolwa, South Australia. Call it sixty miles outside the city of Adelaide. That city was where I worked in a high school, teaching art history. But it was Sunday. So…