A Hundred Small Lessons

by Ashley Hay

  ‘It’s like mine—’ Lucy reached for it, and Ben saw her start. ‘It is like mine,’ she said slowly, turning towards her husband. ‘Look. I had this cover and then . . .’

  ‘Yes,’ he said quietly. ‘I see.’

  ‘Don’t know how Nan ended up with something like this,’ said the woman, passing the phone to Ben and standing at the foot of the stairs. ‘One of my cousins’ kids must have got it for her. And I should warn you, I hate having my photograph taken—you’d never believe I take pictures for a job.’

  Ben tensed his hands to stop them shaking as he stood to frame the shot.

  They swapped positions then, Lucy, Ben and Tom ranged up the stairs and Elsie’s granddaughter framing them on Ben’s phone. Ben felt his throat catch each time he swallowed—with excitement or fear, he wasn’t sure which.

  ‘That’s lovely,’ the woman called, ‘and another?’ Snapping five or six times. The garden beside them was bright with flowers, red and white.

  Passing the phone back to Ben, the woman took a deep breath and combed her fingers through her hair. She was taking in every inch of the house’s exterior—he could almost feel it being sucked towards her gaze.

  Gloria, he thought suddenly. Her name is Gloria. She knows my real first name is Alex. He stared at her, wanting to say something—wanting to say, It’s you; I think I know you; stay a while.

  ‘All right,’ Gloria said. ‘I’d better push on. Thanks for the photo—and for planting all these trees. It looks like an oasis.’

  ‘We love it,’ said Lucy.

  ‘Our home,’ Ben said, looping his arm around his wife’s shoulders and holding her close. ‘Or Lucy’s house. As it should be.’

  ‘That sounds all right too,’ called Gloria, halfway towards her car. Somewhere overhead, a kookaburra called, and she looked up to see it sitting on a cable beyond the yard, its feathers hunched and its tail swaying slightly to keep its balance.

  There you are. There you are. Safe and sound.

  She waved once as she drove down the street, glancing in the mirror to see the bird launch itself across the sky, and three people—Lucy, Ben and Tom—together on the grass, looking down at a picture of themselves.

  Acknowledgements

  This project has been assisted by the Australian Government through the Australia Council, its arts funding and advisory body, and I’m profoundly grateful for the grant which first allowed it to find its way. In 2014, I was awarded a Griffith Review residency at Varuna to complete a later draft of the book—many thanks, also, for that.

  My ongoing thanks to Jane Palfreyman, Siobhán Cantrill, Louise Cornegé and everyone at Allen & Unwin in Sydney, and to Sarah Cantin and Judith Curr at Atria in New York. Thanks to Jenny Hewson and Federica Leonardis at Rogers, Coleridge & White, to Zoë Pagnamenta and Alison Lewis at the Zoë Pagnamenta Agency, and to Alice Whitwham at Elyse Cheney Literary Associates.

  This novel grew from ‘Elsie’s House’, a short story published in Griffith Review 34, and I’m very grateful to that journal for the support and space it gives my words. An earlier version of ‘The Crow’ was published in The Best Australian Short Stories 2012. Several editors gave me the chance of writing articles and reviews that fed directly and indirectly into this book: thanks to Ian Connellan, Marieke Hardy and Michaela McGuire, Stephen Romei, Julianne Schultz, Susan Skelly, Sally Warhaft and Susan Wyndham for those opportunities.

  The epigraph on page xiii comes from the poem ‘III De Libero Arbitrio’ by John Burnside, copyright © Penguin Random House UK.

  The poem quoted on page 152 is from ‘The Story’ by Michael Ondaatje and published in Handwriting (Picador: London, 1998), copyright © Penguin Random House UK.

  The quote on page 303 is from Patrick White’s The Tree of Man, copyright © Patrick White 1955, reprinted with kind permission of Barbara Mobbs.

  This book has been fed by all sorts of conversations. For these, as much as for all sorts of practical, philosophical and literary support, many thanks to Alexis Beebe, Harriet Beebe, Sue Beebe, Tegan Bennett Daylight, Lilia Bernerde, Jemma Birrell, Ruth Blair, Ili Bone, James Bradley, Sarah Branham, Leah Burns, Ian Bytheway, Susan Clilverd, Sally Cole, Matt Condon, Angela Dean, Clare Drysdale, Chris Dudgeon, Daniela Flynn, Bill Genn, Stuart Glover, Marilyn and Les Hay, Alison Holmes, Bruce Ibsen, Afro Inglis, Annette and Mike Jarrett, Edwina Johnson, Shelley Kenigsberg, Matthew Lamb, Dick Leeson, Eleanor Limprecht, Stewart Luke, Rachel Mackenzie, Alison Manning, Robyna May, Jen McKee, Richard Neylon, Kim Offner, Denis Peel, Sean Rabin, Larah Seivl-Keevers, Robyn Stacey, Andrew Stafford, Fiona Stager, Thomas Suddendorf, Mark Tredinnick, Cory Unruh, Ally Wakefield, Stan and Janette Warren, Hannah Westland, Sarah Weston, Geordie Williamson, and Charlotte Wood.

  For their attention to these words, particular thanks to Krissy Kneen, Gail MacCallum and Kris Olsson, and to Clara Finlay, Ali Lavau and Virginia Lloyd.

  Most importantly, my thanks and love to Nigel Beebe and Huxley Beebe, who’ve had to live with this book for a while.