‘Oh, garbage!’
‘No, truth. It’s Booker boredom, too much hard work for the reader. You spend your day dealing with office bullshit and last week’s deadlines, you come home to a bitching spouse, three moronic kids, a lump of cat-shit on your favourite chair and a stranglehold mortgage, you want to escape, not figuratively ponder the world’s injustices. Vince, people don’t want to have to think too hard. They don’t want some high-brow diatribe on man’s inhumanity to man. What they do want is to read stories that are clear and accessible — twenty minutes per night, an hour on the beach every Sunday.’
‘You are ripping my heart out, you know that?’
‘And your melodrama is becoming tedious. If you’re serious about writing, you’ll pay attention to what I’m saying — for once.’
I knew he was right, indefatigably so, but pride, as the old proverb says, is the mask of one’s own faults. So, rather than admit his argument I stayed petulant, tried to brush his words away and look unconcerned, as carefree as a child catching butterflies in a meadow.
‘When I went to school,’ Stu said to the discordant sounds of my mock-groaning, ‘I hated Maths. Couldn’t do it, didn’t like it. Then I got this new teacher, a Mr Petty. Big bloke with boggly eyes. We’re going to do geometry, he said. Might as well do Ancient Urdu, I thought. Then he taught us all about Euclid and Ancient Greece. Told us how Euclid had discovered planes and solids, how he’d worked it all out. How he’d been thinking about numbers one day and come up with the idea that primes are infinite. Made old Euclid sound like a pretty reasonable guy, serious sort of knob but with a dry sense of humour. And I learned to understand geometry, remember it all to this day. Know why?’
A pelican glided overhead, its wind-smoothed belly like the undercarriage of a small plane.
‘Because he humanised it,’ I answered wearily, accepting defeat. ‘Professor Boggly-Eyes made a story out of geometry, right?’
‘Right. Finally. See, they’re powerful things, stories. Much more memorable, much more able to move men and mountains, than a fancy phrase or a scintillating sentence.’
Further down the jetty there was a buzz-flap-splash. I looked across, watched as the old lady reeled in a plump, gleaming bream with practised efficiency.
‘I hate fishing,’ I said to the ocean.
I’ve been thinking about stories ever since that conversation, thinking about how everything we do and have done is transmitted via story. Humans are best at understanding mythically; best when science is not science but a self-perpetuating gridlock of stories about inventions and discoveries, breakthroughs, relentless human endeavour, people in triumph (Madame Curie: ‘Ah … zis must be radium!’) and people in tragedy (Pierre Curie: ‘Ah … zat was a horse!’). And what is history if not a conscious choosing of stories that suit our various agendas? From the gazillions of narratives at our disposal, we elevate a chosen few and bundle them together as the history of the state, or of the nation, or of the nation-state. Jokes, anecdotes, family gossip, hearsay, legend, the retelling of famous occasions in our lives, whispers in the corner, newspaper articles, back-fence banter, TV shows and the Hollywood movie conveyer-belt … we live like bewildered possums in the bright light of story-surround. Little wonder that stories are so powerful, for they are the individual majesty in our lives and the lives of others, the secret, unique-as-DNA charts of our psychologies. And it is vital that they be experienced, told and retold to our children and then to their children too.
Our family’s story now includes returning from Brisbane and Peregian Beach. There is a refreshing calmness inside the car as we motor sedately north. We count overpasses, guess the colour of the next oncoming vehicle, listen to what Kaz used to call ‘sheep-shagger’ radio, watch the bitumen paddle dreamily within a mirage of heat. Soon we are sliding through the valley — deep implacable greenness, cockatoos settled like improbable snowflakes on distant trees — turning up the pot-holed dirt road, rejoicing when the farmhouse comes into view. I watch my children as they open the front door, open windows, open up rooms, open an airflow, let the sunshine splash on the kitchen tiles, blink at motes of dust dancing like tiny seahorses in the new light. Then together we strive: unpacking, rekindling, replacing, shouting instructions through the hallways and passages, making coffee, finding biscuits, returning, resettling.
It is late afternoon. The children are playing rules-free Monopoly with Daniel, Samantha, Jamie and poor Hortense. Otis is winning. Her business acumen is ruthless and she seems about to launch some sort of corporate takeover bid. Amelia is gravitating between refereeing the children and beginning a new canvas.
‘It’s called Kaleidoscope,’ she tells me. ‘Blank grey canvas with four touching circles — each one representing Child, Teenager, Adult, Aged — with changing shapes and colours inside. Neat, hey.’
‘Neat,’ I say obligingly, thinking: foul American word — we are being culturally subsumed. Since yesterday’s revelations I have tried not to stare at her in a father-daughter kind of way but it’s been difficult. It’s been difficult not to take note of the shape and dimensions of her: fine limbs, pale freckly skin, a slightly upturned nose that seems to turn away from her impish face. It’s been difficult not to search for the shared genetic imprint and it’s been difficult not to want to dive headlong into her mind, seek all that she has inherited, hope that her way of seeing things is somehow akin to mine.
It’s been difficult because I feel like the parent of a new-born: awestruck, recent witness to a miracle, wanting to hold her high above my head and bellow hallelujahs to a genuflecting world.
But I don’t. Instead, I somehow drift into my study. There I find piles of paper, some blank, some defaced by an unintelligible scrawl, some blocked with words — the beginnings of since-forgotten plots, once-familiar characters in momentary conflict, a love scene that I know I must have written but which now seems foreign, the contrived work of a stranger. Cut-outs from magazines, curly-cornered pictures of people who might one day have been ordained as characters, spilled boxes of paper clips, pens, broken pencils, thick patches of dust on the computer, a dictionary open to Egyptology | elaborate, an unthumbed Roget (it was a birthday gift from Bernice) supporting an orange glass paperweight — all evidence that someone once worked here, but that person has long since departed.
And none of it connected. None of it.
Knowing what I must do, I find an old packing carton, tape one end, plonk it in the centre of the study. I spend a glorious hour tossing stuff into the carton — all the useless paper (screwed to cricket-ball size), all the busted stationery, the dried-up pens, rusty clips, all the random, disconnected ideas — everything that was left by the previous occupant. Then I drag the carton outside and return with cloth and polish. Soon the computer shines, the desk gleams, the shelves smarten, the window-sill changes hue. I pull the curtains, shove the window upwards, spray some air-freshener, vacuum the carpet, punch and puff the cushions. And as I do all this, the man who used to sit in here, the man who used to slump down and contemplate and swear and perspire and jab the keyboard like it was his most malicious enemy, gradually, silently, like a whisper in a crowd, that man leaves … without comment, without fuss. Me — I keep doing what I’m doing because I don’t need to see him go. I can sense the new delicious emptiness of the room on the back of my neck, in my expanding chest, within my nostrils. Then the room is a void, newer and more promising than it ever used to be, and all my innards feel like they’ve been turned upside-down but they’re still more peaceful, like lake-water on a windless day.
And so I take his place, mould my back to the chair.
In the first drawer of the desk there are manila folders full of story scraps, fulsome words, semi-written poems which have stalled in their futile search for rhythm and meaning.
In the second drawer I see the original draft of Pears Amid Paradisio, corrections marked with broad, angry slashes of pencil.
In the third drawer there are many pack
ets of photographs.
‘Holiday job,’ Kaz had insisted. ‘We’ll go through all our photos, chuck out what we don’t want and put the rest in albums.’
‘Good idea. Better for them to be organised and never-looked-at, than disorganised and never-looked-at.’
‘Cynic. No, we have to do it. There must be at least five hundred of them stuffed in there. It’s a mess. They probably date back to when we first started seeing each other.’
I grinned, tickled beneath her breasts.
‘Ah, the grand euphemism. I just adore it when people say seeing each other when all the time they mean bonking each other.’
She pushed my hands away.
‘Are you helping or molesting? No, don’t answer that. Look, we’ll lay them all out, chuck what we don’t want, put the rest in chronological order. Actually, I might buy some of those sticky labels.’
‘Later Kaz. It’s too hot. The bio-rhythms are wrong.’
‘Honestly, Vince, you’re so … so —’
‘Magnificently unpredictable?’
‘Predictably painful!’
‘Sorry. But remember, despite it all, I love you … love you … love you … ’
‘Mm. Mm, all right — stop that! — we’ll do it later. As long as you help. You will help, won’t you?’
I never did, the photos never made it into albums, our story was never told.
There are two things left to begin before night finally falls. The first concerns the photos. I lay as many as can fit onto the top of the desk, scan them closely, see our farmhouse in another cleaner time, then a honeymoon shot of my wife, my lover with the red-raven hair smirking from astride a log in a rainforest, then a plethora of land photos with too much sky, and beach photos with too much sea. I delve further; find child photos with porcelain figurines in the foreground, their big summer-grins and saucy-chins, chumpy hands that waved madly at the camera. The more photos I lay out, the further back our story goes, to wrinkle-pink babies concertina’d in cribs and family portraits where we are formal, stiff, erect, uncomfortable. Like Forestry Commission trees, I think, these perfectly spaced people, perpendicular, plumbline-measured.
I dip my hands into old envelopes and extract early shots, laugh at the idealistic young couple in a restaurant, skinny me with ragged beard and a silver plate of ravished oyster-shells, Kaz with fresh lips and a glittering sapphire ring. I pick up the photo, touch the ring, wonder if its image might lift from the paper and scratch me. Then another packet; groups of young skinny couples flanked by brown bottles of beer and LP covers, other people’s weddings, too many of those red-eyed bourbon-fuelled shots of wild faces taken late at night.
The bottom drawer contains just one photograph, slid towards the back. I hesitate then bring it out, see Kaz again, snared the day before, in the barn, see her mobile face lifted from contemplation, her long body closed and folded as she leans down to pick up the detritus of yesteryear. I see her deep sense of satisfaction, her curls mussed by sweat, those hands, slender and elegant, close to the earth, perfect, unharmed, sculpted with a careful exactitude, and then I see the menace of the shears behind her.
This last is the photo that I hold closer to the light, the one that makes me shudder at both waste and brevity, the photo that I had developed that long-ago afternoon at the supermarket, the photo with which I will open the collection and craft the prologue to our story.
My second priority also concerns a story. After tea — proudly I present bananas with hot chocolate syrup — I herd the children into the circle of my arms, fix them with what I hope are serious but kind eyes.
‘Family meeting time.’ I squeeze their shoulders.
‘But we don’t …’ Milo’s voice trails to nothing.
‘Is this about Mum?’ Otis looks uncertain, begins to squirm.
Isn’t everything, I think. Isn’t she everywhere, watching us with her deep worried eyes as she asks for closure but softly, gently, perhaps even knowing how far we have come, and how far we have yet to go?
And that — unusually, it is for no apparent reason — is when I have the idea. It is the beginning of the story and it strikes like a tiny bell, muted but rapid-growing.
Let the children decide.
‘Yes, it is,’ I tell them firmly. ‘Now listen carefully. I want you to think of the two most beautiful things in the world. One each — and not just beautiful but the most beautiful.’
The boy stares at me for a moment then curls his fingers upwards, tugs his bottom lip absent-mindedly, just like his mother used to do.
Except this time I refuse to look away.
‘A leopard,’ he says eventually. ‘That’s mine. I love leopards. They’re cool.’
‘Leopards are fine things,’ I smile. ‘And definitely beautiful, as well as cool and fast and strong and sort of sleek. Now, Otis?’
She is grave-faced, smart enough to delay as she tacitly acknowledges the significance of her choice. I fidget; my impatience has been a lifelong curse. So, take stock, I think. Relax, my pixie, relax. Blink a little, enjoy the balmy air.
Let the children decide.
‘Um — maybe a flower?’ she says. Then, more confidently: ‘Mum loved flowers.’
‘Mm, a flower is good. What kind?’
‘A pansy,’ scoffs Milo quickly. ‘Go for a girly type.’
‘Shut up, Alex! It’s my turn.’
My outstretched hand is both a warning and a plea for this to be taken seriously. Again she hesitates, then a lightness flits through her.
‘A … a rose?’
‘That is,’ I tell her proudly, ‘without a doubt one of the two most beautiful things in the world.’
Milo presses forward impatiently.
‘I thought this was about Mum,’ he insists.
‘It is.’ I stand, walk towards the empty fireplace, turn and face them with renewed purpose. ‘Just be patient. If a leopard and a rose are the two most beautiful things in the world, what happens when we put them together?’
Silence. Pause for reflection.
‘Put them together,’ I repeat but their brows are furrowed.
Suddenly I can sense the quiet presence of Amelia behind me, breathing support.
‘It’s easy,’ I explain, using my hands to shape each word. ‘Put them together and we have … a rose leopard. A rose leopard — imagine it. The most beautiful, wondrous, magical creature that ever existed!’
It is Otis who speaks first.
‘Mum?’ she asks shyly.
‘Exactly,’ I say. ‘Exactly right.’
‘A rose leopard?’ says Milo, his mind configuring.
‘Yes.’ I look out the window to the night-sky, feel that familiar sense of bewitched humility that I always get, turn back to my children.
‘Dad?’
My voice, when it comes, is surprisingly strong. ‘Tomorrow,’ I tell them, ‘I’m going to tell you the story of the rose leopard. I’m going to tell you the story of the most beautiful creature in the world.’
Two
Somehow we end up in the barn. I don’t want to go there but Otis insists.
‘Why the barn?’ I squint directly into the late afternoon sun, see a blinding orb of blood then the old building squatted before us, its cold heart still beating: house of straw, house of canker.
‘Mum would understand,’ she says matter-of-factly, grabs my wrist, drags me past the clumps of grass and seething, powdery ant-nests, propels me through the creaking doors.
Inside the light shrinks and narrows. There is a musty animal-burrow smell emanating from an uneven dirt floor. The air is leaden, settled. The dankness makes my stomach cringe; I am reminded of churches, too much weight and sedentary, rain-rinsed England.
‘Where are we going to sit?’ I ask but they are already down, bums to the ground, legs crossed, hands smoothing over calves, their lithe bodies cast in classic primary-school storytime pose.
Amelia joins them. Her manner is brisk, efficient. The air lifts and disrupts. T
hree pairs of eyes watch me expectantly.
No choice. Bum to the ground, make a circle, let the children decide.
‘Is this a long story?’ Milo asks.
Don’t know. Don’t know, because it’s still inside of me, churning in tight circles like one of those olden-days cheese-makers. Gradually the story will solidify, lumps will form amidst the cream, then there will be a tang and evenness before it issues forth, the clean hard shape of a fresh block, this heady new creation, a story for Kaz.
‘Let’s begin,’ I say to no one in particular.
Once upon a time —
‘Why do stories always start like that?’ Milo asks. His fingers are fanned across his chin. ‘Every time I hear a story, it starts with once-upon-a-time.’
‘Well, I’ve never really thought,’ I answer. ‘I suppose … it’s probably like ancient pyramids, or moons. Mountains. Islands. The giant tortoises of the Galapagos archipelago. Once things have been around for a long time, it doesn’t matter why they were there in the first place. They just are.’
Amelia leans her face into the circle.
‘It means sort of — any time, any place,’ she says. ‘Like, the story could be here and now or it could be somewhere else in the past or somewhere else in the future, but none of that matters because it’s still a story.’
‘The story’s more important,’ I interject quickly.
Milo stares at us with huge saucer-eyes, nods his understanding.
‘Can we please get started?’ Otis, the Queen of LAA (Late Afternoon Angst), is fast becoming exasperated.
‘Sure,’ I say, again to no one in particular.
Once upon a time, a rose leopard lived in a garden with her children. Now, this was no ordinary, run-of-the-mill, Errol and Delphine type garden. It was called … the Garden of Replenishment, which is a long and rather complicated way of saying that things grew back again. Which happens anyway and is not particularly magical — except here, everything grew back really, really quickly. And it grew back better than before — bigger, bolder and brighter. So, every Autumn morning when the cool east wind blew petals from the flowers, they would automatically replenish by nightfall. Every hot Summer afternoon the leaves from the trees turned brown and fell to the earth, then at night they stood up, dusted themselves off, climbed back up to their tree branch, had a chat about things, reattached and became green again. It was like a permanent Spring-time, dying grass suddenly lifting into a thick wavy carpet, drooping stalks stretching back upwards to the sky. And the rose leopard knew that it was a gift to live there, because as long as the sun shone and the stars sparkled at night, the incredible beauty of the Garden of Replenishment could never be lost.
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