Currawalli Street

by Christopher Morgan

  ‘I’m not sure . . . I’m not sure if I can . . . walk that far.’

  ‘I’ll help you. We’ll walk together.’

  So Jim holds Upper Lance by the forearm and they step back from the bar with its hanging tin mugs and over to the door. The sun has gone down and the streetlights have come on. Jim anticipates Upper Lance’s weaves and holds him tighter with each sudden movement. They walk past the unoccupied apricot tree (Jim is pleased Rodney won’t be logging this in his book), past the honeysuckle on Jim’s front fence, under the apostle bird tree and on up to number sixteen. Jim is going to leave Upper Lance at the letterbox, but when Jim releases his arm Lance overbalances, and so Jim walks him down the driveway and around the back. Through the kitchen window, he can see Debra at the stove. The two men walk in the back door and she looks up from the pan.

  ‘I’m afraid I might have made him drunk,’ says Jim. ‘We got carried away talking.’

  Debra turns off the stove and walks over to the table, pulling out a kitchen chair. Jim helps Upper Lance sit down.

  ‘Oh Lance. Did you drink too much?’ She looks up at Jim. ‘He’s not much of a drinker . . . thank God.’

  ‘No, I can see that. I think he had four beers.’

  ‘Two is his limit. Any more and he gets . . . like this. He will be alright after a couple of hours. What was he doing down the pub? He doesn’t normally go.’ She smiles at Jim as she straightens up. ‘Thank you for helping him home. I bet he talked a lot. He loves to talk. As I bet you found out.’

  ‘Oh well. I don’t mind. I like to hear what people think.’ Jim smiles back. ‘I better be going. See you later.’

  As he leaves he hears Debra call, ‘Thanks again, Jim. Bye.’

  He turns the corner of the house and begins to walk back down the driveway. As he does so, he sees Eve softly close the church door and begin to walk down the other side of the street towards her home. He doesn’t call out to her.

  The last four steps before you reach the tree trunk are the most important. And they need to be deftly executed just at the point that your body starts to react to the panic rising in your throat. Enough momentum must be gained so that the impact on the bark of the trunk is minimal. Scratches and indentations are some of the things looked for when a tree sniper is known to be about. As with an athlete’s preparation, it takes time and care to prepare oneself for the ascent, but Jim knows that this is an emergency—there is no time for mental preparation. He can hear the patrol as it makes its way through the rushes by the river. They are not far away and they are looking for him, that much he knows. Otherwise they would be keeping quiet and employing stealth. But when you are tracking a tree sniper you know that the panic provoked by the sound of voices is often the cause of an involuntary sudden movement. And that is the only giveaway needed. Twenty metres ahead of the patrol will be a silent scout, the soldier who is noted for having the best eyes. It is he who waits to pick up any panicked movement. Then he makes one call and the patrol closes in.

  Jim has heard of the things done to captured snipers and he always carries a pistol with one bullet should he ever be discovered. It is a tiny Chinese pistol made for ladies of the night in Shanghai to keep hidden in their clothing, in case they ever needed to protect themselves. Jim bought it in Saigon from a gun dealer as discreet as the pistol. The man told Jim that this was also a popular gun with high-ranking officers of the armies. Generals and colonels were never sure who they could trust among their support staff or for how long. And being in the High Command meant that you didn’t know whether that pistol would eventually have to be turned on someone else or turned on yourself. Such was the instability of being a general.

  Jim was pleased with the pistol’s weight and size, which meant he could climb a tree unaffected. It didn’t matter to him how accurate the aim was. And he carries it everywhere in his pocket as casually as he would a set of keys back in Currawalli Street.

  As he tries to scale the trunk without marking the bark, Jim realises with a sudden shock that he doesn’t have his rifle or his pack with him. He quickly looks down to check that he hasn’t left them at the foot of the tree, sees he hasn’t; then he has no more time to think about them and where they might be. He can hear the footsteps of the patrol now, and the scout must be closer again. He reaches for a strong branch above him and firmly pulls himself up onto it like a tree python. Steadily, so that no leaves are shaken by his movement. Deciding to keep climbing, he reaches for another branch above him, pulls himself up to this branch solely with his arms, keeping his legs still as if paralysed from the waist down. There are now leaves below him as well as around him and he begins to feel safer.

  He has been doing this long enough to know that feeling safe in these situations is dangerous—this is when lethal blunders are made—so he stops breathing and scans the area around the base of the tree. He can now make out soldiers’ voices more clearly but the sounds have little meaning. The scout may have already passed him by or he may be very close. Jim has no choice: he must climb higher. Sweat is beginning to run down his face and he wipes his cheeks slowly and delicately with his hand. This has the double advantage of rubbing off the dirt on his hand, making his face darker and ensuring that any loose bark he might touch will stick to his damp hands rather than fall to the ground below. Still, some drops of perspiration have run into his left eye; the salt stings and for a moment his vision is blurred.

  He has no time to wait for his eye to clear; he must keep climbing. With his left eye squeezed tightly shut, he looks around him to ensure his next movement isn’t going to brush against anything that could rustle or fall. Above and a little ahead of him he sees another branch, thicker than the one he is currently stretched out on. After quickly looking below, he reaches for it. As soon as his hands are clasped around it he begins to pull himself up, holding his legs out from the branch like a gymnast. Once he has pulled himself up to the branch and then pushed his chest and arms above it, he slowly draws in his legs.

  Now he has to breathe. He is careful not to gasp even though his body is crying out for oxygen. He knows that if he lays his face down on the branch and forces his mind into another space, a similar space to the one he sinks into when waiting for a target, he can suppress his body’s urgent need to gulp in air.

  He looks about, moving only his eyes. He is completely surrounded by leaves and can no longer see the ground. The patrol is approaching; he can hear the clinking of each man’s rifle and pack.

  Stay still.

  There is nothing more he can do.

  Still.

  Suddenly he hears movement on the branch beside him, jerky and unexpected. It is not the smooth movement of an animal or reptile for whom this tree is home. It can only be human. Holding his breath again, he continues to lie still.

  ‘Why are you lying there like that?’

  It is Rodney’s voice.

  Jim opens his eyes. There are three apricots hanging in front of his face.

  ‘Have you come up to look at the pub’s rose arch?’ the boy asks.

  ‘Um . . . I was just thinking about something from a long time ago.’ Jim shakes his head to clear his eyes. ‘Let’s see what this rose arch looks like. Then we can go inside and design one.’

  He holds Rodney steady as the boy squeezes past him. Even though it is a thin branch and they are up high, Jim can tell that Rodney knows he won’t fall with Jim holding him safe. Jim suddenly sees this knowledge as something important.

  From Rodney’s observation spot, Jim looks up and down the street. It is the street where he grew up, and where once he knew every tree, bush and stone; the street that he was once pleased to leave behind so that he could touch new things. Yet, now he knows that what he was hoping to touch were just exposed treasures, which are only shallow imitations of hidden treasures, he is able to look about him with different eyes. That is what the memory of M
ai’s heart beating against his chest is. That is what this apricot tree is. That is what this street is. That is what home is. Hidden treasures.

  He thinks a lot about the words scrawled in a man’s handwriting on the back of the photo of his grandparents, Johnny and Kathleen. Some of the writing is indecipherable, and he looks at the photo every night, waiting for its meaning to become clear. But he can make out a few words. They read: ‘the fine art of belonging’.

  Jan looks up from his desk in the church office. Next Sunday’s sermon is almost finished and so he allows himself a break from concentration. He looks idly at the last paragraph he has written, then leans forward, suddenly alert.

  He then rereads the whole sermon. Most of it is alright. Just the last paragraph. It is almost a confession. That’s how it reads. He doesn’t need to make a confession. Who should he make a confession to? God? The Bishop? Sally? Of course not. He rubs his forehead and squeezes his eyes shut. All he can see is the blue light of her earrings from the other night. There is a knock at the door. He looks up at the clock and pauses before answering it.

  *

  And so, as they have always done, the clouds run across the big sky. When the wind blows one way it brings the smell of the bush; from the other way, the smell of the city.

  Val no longer looks out her window for Thomas. She now gets tired at odd times and has taken to having a sleep in the afternoon.

  People still meet on Patrick’s platform—even people who don’t live in the street come to sit there. Mary still makes her coronation cake, Patrick still checks his watch to see that everything is running on time, the apostle birds still hop and play with one another in their tree, dust and feathers blowing down the street still come together to give shape to a tiny spirit flying away, the Lances still conduct their rubbish-bin warfare, the reverend still waits in his office after six every night and pretends to work on church records, people still look up at the same sky and think about the future. Rodney no longer sits in the apricot tree; he is too busy working with Jim. They are now building a new front fence for some people around the corner on Little Road.

  Parakeets still fly at ground level up the street, then lift themselves over the currawalli trees. And the smell of a distant bushfire is in the air.

  Jim has fallen for the second toe on Merryn’s left foot. That doesn’t make sense to him. It doesn’t make any sense to her either. Whenever they are lounging together—as they increasingly seem to be able to find time to do—his hand invariably finds its way down her brown thigh, making the tiny blonde hairs stand up, sometimes lingering underneath her knee where the skin is softest, maybe a circle two times around the base of the ankle, jumping over the silver Moroccan chain that sits underneath that ankle and runs along the side of her foot to loop around her toes. As soon as he finds the toe he loves, he feels some tension leave his neck; he suspects that he is leaving the jungle a little further behind each time he holds this toe.

  He doesn’t tell Merryn any of this because he thinks she might find it too weird.

  Today they are lying back on the grass next to the church, under the shadow of the silent soldier. Jim grew up playing around this statue but never climbing it, understanding without being told the significance of the soldier who stands with the butt of his rifle between his toes, his head bowed.

  Merryn allows Jim to play with her toe and absently touches his forehead, sweeping his hair back. She reads aloud the inscription carved into the stone underneath the soldier: ‘dedicated to the men and women from these streets and lanes who fell in the great war, 1914–1918.’

  Jim listens as if he has never heard it before, and says wonderingly, ‘I know every name written under that inscription. My friends and I memorised every word without knowing we were doing it.’

  ‘Tell them to me,’ Merryn says.

  Jim stops running his finger over her toe and looks at her and then up at the blue sky. She takes her hand from his forehead. She sees Lukewarm coming up the street from number fourteen, carrying three apples and his camera. He told Jim and Merryn he wants to take their photo. She’s holding a sprig of the honeysuckle in preparation for being photographed.

  Jim finds it hard to link together what his life was before, as a child, and what it is now. In some ways Merryn is a type of conduit. She wants to find out as much of his history as she can. What his favourite toys were, what his mother’s voice sounded like, what movie he took his first girlfriend to, when he met Lukewarm, why he keeps on the piano the old photograph of the two people.

  For her, to hear him recite something that he memorised as a child is like finding a beautiful shell on the beach. Not that she would tell Jim that. She could tell Lukewarm, though; he understands things like that.

  Jim sits up on one elbow and begins to recite the names. ‘Brady, Albert AIF Gallipoli 1915. Conte, William AIF Belgium 1917. Covey, Alfred AIF France 1916. Cummings, Walter AIF France 1916. Dunold, Eric RN Atlantic 1916. Jones, Cedric AIF France 1916. Lloyd, Morrie AIF France 1918. Tierson, Janet WRAN France 1917. Tierson, Thomas RFC France 1917.’

  ‘You missed one.’

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘You did!’

  ‘Did I?’

  ‘Yes. Oatley, John AIF France 1918.’

  Jim smiles. It’s a name he has never forgotten before. ‘My grandfather. Fancy forgetting him.’

  Merryn turns to look at him. ‘Hey, that photo on the piano—that’s your grandfather, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yep. Oatley, John AIF France 1918.’

  ‘And the woman is your grandmother?’

  ‘Yep. Kathleen. The photo was taken around the side of the house.’

  ‘Your house?’

  ‘Yep. Currawalli Street.’

  Jim smiles, happy that this street is his home.

  Always there has been this funny little hill. Always there has been a crooked path of some sort running along its crown. Sometimes it could not be called a path; sometimes it was just a break in the growth of the tree trunks where the wind had pushed them aside when they were saplings, like the part in a head of hair, for the wind always liked to run up this rise and sail over the crest; and it has always been a place to stop and be still for a moment. Wallabies climbed the gentle slope to reach the top and always looked around, for it was a good place to see if safety was still a companion. Dingoes used the top of this small hill to look back down the track in case there was anything small mistakenly thinking that it was safe to move. Kangaroos looked about from this spot to decide which way to go next; men stood here and looked for where there might be shelter. It isn’t a big rise, not really a hill, but the illusion of height is fundamentally important to all animals.

  I wish to thank Lyn Tranter, Stephen De Graaff, Helen Mountfort, Michael Hurwood, Howard Malkin and most of all, Claudia and Greta.