Something I'm working on. It's sort of like a blueprint, a dress rehearsal, for a novel in short story form. It's not perfect, and it's not finished. But here you have it.
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An Australian Gothic
Daniel Degraves was a measured man; a carefully considered construct. Meticulously attired, he spoke slowly - weighed each word in the palm of his tongue - before dispensing it, in a low, melodious rumble, to the wind and the wilds. His once-British accent had spent the better part of the last three decades steeped in whiskey and cured with smoke, so there was none of that high-polish sing-song about it, yet he spoke politely, with the good graces instilled in him from a privileged upbringing, as well as the intellectual authority granted him by a very good education indeed.
He had graduated from Cambridge University in the early 1980s, a Literary major. He had dreams, then, drawers and suitcases full of them. They spilled from kitchen cupboards and covered all the walls of his apartment. Occasionally he would find some inside his shoes or the refridgerator. He was constantly tripping over them.
And they would look up at him starry-eyed, whispering sweetly, promising him the world. His for the taking. His oyster. Full of promise. If he put his mind to it. No reason why not. He had time on his side, and time was all he needed...And on and on, fawning and pandering.
His favourite, the one true dream, was Daniel Degraves: critically-acclaimed, award-winning author and rising star of the literary scene. He yearned to pen an instant-classic; a novel that would bring the world to its feet. He believed, with every youthful, disillusioned fibre of his being, that he had one in him.
That early-Autumn, in London, at a publisher friend's picnic in a city park, he met the woman who would become his wife. Everybody was standing in small groups or sitting on checkered blankets, drinking mint juleps and talking. The girls were feminine in loose-flowing dresses, while she wore the armour of androgyny - a Patti Smith among the florals, sharp as a thorn. The late-afternoon sunlight ignited her hair, transforming it into a blaze of amber fire. Amber, his favourite stone.
The conversation seemed to go on around them – politics, popular music, human atrocities perpetuated at home and overseas – while he pulled at his overgrown moustache and stole glances at her, trying to form a complete picture and at the same time distinguish any fatal flaws. She didn't say much, but he got the feeling that there was plenty going on inside. Her eyes were calm. There was a definite mystery to her. He wanted to know more.
He discovered later that her name was Claire, and that she was a professional psychic. She even had a picture advertisement in the back pages of a popular women's magazine, and did quite well from it. For a fixed fee, she would conduct individual spiritual readings for a whole host of loyal clients, and sometimes, by special request, even attempt to contact their dead. What a fat load of horseshit, he thought, privately, before asking his informant for her number.
Of course, he never did end up finishing his debut novel. The fact was he never started it. Somewhere in between getting married and taking up the job at the University, the fire in him quietened, the urgency dissipated, and he slipped into another state entirely. Now he took deep breaths, ground his teeth and sipped continually from a silver flask hidden in the side pocket of his jacket.
His truly was a life of quiet desperation.
But that is not to say he didn't give it his very best-aimed shot. He did. But it was a kind of creative constipation - nothing ever came.
The words of Bukowski haunted his fruitless attempts:
if you have to sit for hours
staring at your computer screen
or hunched over your
typewriter
searching for words,
don't do it.
Don't do it. It was like the devil of his subconscious hissing in his ear, spitting poison into his bloodstream, clotting his thoughts, turning his ink dry. He tried to block it out because the other part of him - Hope, that stubborn angel - refused to admit defeat.
But the bludgeonings of time and inner mutinies took their toll, and the ink stayed dry, the pages unmarked.
He woke one Spring morning to find no love left in him. Overnight it had seeped out of the corners of his heart and into the marital bedsheets. His eyes fell strange to the figure moving about the shared room, and he could not place her – did not know the meaning of her presence there and in his life over the last so-many years. She was mysterious, all right, he had been correct about that. She was also utterly removed, guarded and, much like the city in which they had met, prone to spells of cold. The cold had crept in slowly, unnoticed, as cold does. Now he was so used to it he could hardly feel it. He could hardly feel... And that's when the second bomb exploded his consciousness. He was a writer that didn't write. He was a those that can't do, teach. Inside his house a permanent winter had taken up residence – and he had let in it; done little to quell the ice-capped tide. His true self had gone into hibernation decades ago. He had forgotten what it was like to be warm-blooded, to move with the freedom of heat and wild energy, to feel his heart skip over a sweet sentiment, to crave a meal, and so many other lesser things but these most. Reminders that you are alive.
And he realised with captive horror that his days of feeling passionately were through, and he was as good as dead.
*
Side-note:
The one he should, in the illuminative light of hindsight, have been with through life was an open book – unabashedly curious and full of wild desires; free from constraint or self-consciousness; overwhelmed by the beauty and magnitude of her dreams; someone with real feeling, who could be hurt on a level beyond the physical. She showed no sign of this, however, when he told her he wanted to see someone else after only a few short months of their being together – and not because of her pride, which was great, but because she really truly loved him. Well, she forced herself to reason at the time, he is breaking no promise to me. So she smiled back, a smile so heartbreaking in its understanding that it caused him to drop his head. There she stood - in the middle of his comfortable living room, still despite an inward teetering, suddenly aware that this was not simply the ending of a romance, but a goodbye for good and that something meaningful would have be said – if not now, then never. Her brown eyes fell to his black hair, as he sat, head bent, pulling at his fingers; that thick black brilliantined hair she had spent hours playing with when it was hers to touch...“You are beautiful; you will always be beautiful. I want you to know my life has been made the richer, loving you.” She was sincere. His shame did not allow him to raise his head and look as she let herself out the front door of the apartment. As a result the last memory he had of her was the slight - and instantly recovered - crumpling of her face when he said “I need to end this, with us. I want to be with someone else.”
*
That Someone Else was seated next to him now, in a cool rental car in the middle of the Australian desert. The holiday had been his idea, as an alternative to suicide. He had chosen Australia because of her interest in ancestral spirits.
The Claire of today had skin so pale that it possessed a translucent, fish-like quality; her hair was a dyed red-gold. She had a figure that was long and lean, like a greyhound's; a would-be source of envy amongst female friends, but the circles in which she mixed did not care for such inconsequential, worldly matters, and aside from that, she never dressed for show. Currently she was wearing an over-sized white blouse, similar in style to a painter's smock, buttoned to the neck, and sensible, tapered trousers of a tawny hue. Her long feet were encased in nude sandals, and her toenails lacquered a shade of burnt caramel. She sat in a silence characteristic of her personality; her gaze through the car window. Her face shone in the bright light of the overcast sky – it was a youthful face, for her forty-six years, smooth and tight and the result of a vigilant sun-care regime. And as for those eyes, they were an unblinking, faraway green, like sea foam whipped of a turbulent ocean. They mostly served as stone walls to keep the outside world outside, where it belonged.
The vehicle juddered down the dirt road and rose through the heat-waved air, a veil of dust billowing behind it. The two passengers both sat up a little straighter now, they could feel they were getting close to something – something resembling civilisation.
Further along the track, the far-off noise of the engine lapped at the ears of an elderly Aboriginal woman, who was seated there on a tree-stump. Her eyes were clouded over with cataracts. At her feet, the road-killed carcass of a grey kangaroo, bejeweled with flies and maggot offspring.
The cool rental car slowed in its approach, finally coming to a stop beside her.
“Hello there,” Claire sung, winding down the window.
But the old woman just stared past them.
Daniel leaned over to speak.
“How far to the township?”
In the silence that followed, the two foreigners studied the face before them. The woman's expression was set, carved out in deep lines and grooves, as though she had experienced more than her fair share of hardship and bad weather. Her unseeing eyes stared straight ahead, opaque and watering.
Just when it seemed they were going to be denied a response, her cracked lips parted and the old woman spoke.
“Nothing left for youse.”
“Beg yours?”
They waited, but that was the end of the conversation.
*
The community's watering hole had a scrap-iron/shanty town feel – an improvised, thrown-together-last-minute look. It seemed to hold up its hands and say “well, I did the best I could with what I had.”
Daniel, on his own now, entered and ordered himself a straight whiskey. He selected a suitable table and sat down to reflect on his new surrounds.
Inside the pub there were a smattering of patrons: shriveled, gap-toothed bushies and greasy, thick-legged stockmen, growing louder by the round. Some aboriginal children, someone's wife in the kitchen, and, tucked away in the corner, the most beautiful barfly he had ever laid eyes on.
She was a Monroe, as delicate and crumpled as a perfumed tissue; so sweet, and so used – unusual in one so young. Her eyelids hung heavy over dark eyes and she wore her eyeliner boldly, lashes thick with tar. She had the mouth too, the Monroe mouth – a plumped up, bloated thing that smiled false much more often than it did with feeling.
She saw the flame of curiosity burning him. He lowered his eyes, so as not to appear rude. She picked herself off the barstool, straightened up, and walked over.
He nodded his head as she took a seat opposite.
“I'm hiding out,” she answered, to the unspoken question.
“You're on the run?”
“That's right – a fugitive.” She drew out the 'oo' sound, seeming to enjoy the taste of it on her lips. “From my life. My life, not the law.”
Daniel did not want to ask the obvious, in case it was too personal a question. He sat with one arm on the table and his other hand across the top of his glass, turning it in a slow circle, wiping the condensation with his thumb. He cleared his throat and said:
“My wife and I are here on holiday.”
She detected the bitter note, and smiled to herself. There was no insolence or presumption in the smile; it was a sad smile of recognition.
“Were all the beach resorts full?”
His eyes crinkled at the corners and lips parted almost enough for a smile to show.
“My wife has an interest in the Aboriginal spirit-culture.”
“Ah.”
She cast her gaze around the pub, fishing for something of interest.
“See that young man over at the far table? He's driving the truck parked out front. Going all the way to the red centre. I was thinking of hitching a ride with him tomorrow...”
Daniel turned to look, more out of politeness than curiosity. He had noticed something American-sounding in her drawl.
“Do you have plans for when you get there?”
“'Stay alive'?” she offered. “No, I don't carry too many plans.”
She took a sip of her lemonade.
“Dreams, on the other hand...”
She let the sentence wander off into the warm air. Now it was his turn to smile that sad smile.
“Dreams. Yes, I think I remember those.”
*
Claire was already beginning to pick up on a strange and commanding energy. Pausing for a moment on a rocky outcrop, she drew breath and turned her face to the sapphire sky, marvelling at its million twinkling sequins. Her contact and tour guide, Glenda, a woman of indigenous ancestry whom she had met through an online forum, was taking her to a sacred site, home to some of the earliest examples of aboriginal rock painting.
Glenda, hearing her halt unexpectedly, turned around to see what was causing the delay. When she saw Claire, head back, admiring the clear and perfect night, she let loose a wide smile - white teeth glowing in the dull light of dusk.
“Bet you don't often see the sky looking like that.”
Claire stretched her legs.
“No. You don't. It's very beautiful.”
And they continued on, turning to their torches to light the path.
Claire had read many articles about these places and now she was going to see one with her own eyes. She breathed in the night, and felt its electricity. This is what truly enlivened her. Feeling connected with something beyond herself, like the aboriginal people to the land.
“Tell me another Dreamtime story?” she coaxed, and Glenda was more than happy to oblige.
*
Back in the pub, the conversation between Daniel and the mystery blonde was running express now, unencumbered by awkwardness or inhibitions – her switch to vodka-lemonade and his ordering of a second, third, fourth round helping to faciliate this. Earlier on he had asked for her name, but she had only laughed and said it was always changing. “If you like you can pick one, for me, for tonight.” But Daniel could not think of a name that fit just right.
Now she was explaining exactly what a sweetheart like her was doing in a middle-of-nowhere dump like this - the question Daniel had been too polite to ask in the beginning.
“Me, I've always had the feeling I'd end up a runaway horse. Always pawing the ground. It seems to me a very romantic notion – just taking off in the early morning sun, without prior warning to anyone, and no note.”
She sucked an ice-cube, eyes in a dream.
“You must have had reason,” he prompted.
“You know how it gets. It starts on minimum wage, in a job that likes to repeat itself. Add to it menial tasks and miserable middle-management. Every day you fight a blood-pounding inner rage. Then the blank impersonality of the city works its way into you, and you're mechanised. A robot. Buzzing around on autopilot. The radio spews the garbage that is popular music. Your friends never come through, because they aren't real friends. Some days you want to forget everybody you've ever known, and never see another face again. That feeling -”
She stopped suddenly, as if another thought had occurred to her. Daniel could almost see the indignation depart her body like a spirit, leaving her drooped over her glass like a deflated balloon-skin.
“Well, that feeling is what drove me here,” she adjoined, stirring the icecubes.
“And you told no one.” Daniel was incredulous. He shook his head, a filthy big smile pasted across it.
She shrugged, but there was a glint in her eye. He caught it and she grinned at him.
And all at once Daniel felt something he hadn't felt in a long time - a great longing; a reckless abandon. He saw the duplicate horizons in her eyes; tasted, for a moment, how she must live. Here was someone with freedom up her sleeve and youth on her skin, for whom the possibilities of life were as infinite as the dimensions of the universe; who knew her own soul, who still had a chance and by God, how he wanted one more for himself.
Adrenalin took hold and wild thoughts entered Daniel's head, a whole whirling carnival of them. It was dizzying. When he stood up, he had to place both hands on the table to steady himself.
The young woman looked up at him, only mildly surprised. She listened in silence while he bade her goodnight, nodding once and returning to that old conterfeit smile before turning back to her drink.
Daniel made his shuffling exit alone. He walked the long line of the floorboards deliberately, and with great concentration - pausing to exchange a few words with the young man at the far table. He worried, for a split-second, that his heart was going to beat a hole through his chest. Then he dropped from the door frame allowing the darkness to swallow him whole.
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