Night in the Guesthouse

                         Welcome!

last of the portulaca

Cooler days and a hint of rain. Now the garden can start to recover from the heat and dryness of summer with new growth for the evergreens and colour change for the deciduous. Our local garden centre sold off apple trees for a song recently, so I gladly bought two. They’ll be a surprise when they eventually fruit as we have no idea what varieties they are (the reason for the ‘fire sale’). In spite of possums, birds and unpredictable seasons, I love growing our own food. It hasn’t paid off this year except in the joy of the attempt. I’m still hoping the tomatoes will produce fruit before the weather gets too cold.

Another joy I experienced recently was the launch of the poetry anthology Women’s Work, including one of mine. This is an attractively produced volume, compiled by Libby Hathorn and Rachael Bailey, celebrating various arenas of women’s activities, with insight, humour, compassion, energy, and imagination in a diversity of styles.  Find out more here: Women’s Work.

You may recall I visited Cambodia earlier in the year. Here is a poem I wrote while there.

Night in the Guesthouse

Straight lines of light in the darkened room

remind me of the strokes of a dislocated Chinese character.

Where do they come from –

vertical streaks on the walls,

angled shafts on the ceiling?

Their ordered randomness in this unfamiliar space

disturbs me.

I prowl the room for understanding,

touching the luminous lines

as if the walls could reveal the physics of light

and dissolve the uneasiness of being a foreigner.

See you next time!

Claire Belberg

Paint Job (Part 3)

                         Welcome!

rock roses - like little suns

It’s officially autumn in southern Australia, but as usual we are having a hot spell in the first two weeks of March. Why doesn’t the weather read the calendar? The Australian Indigenous people have much more accurate seasonal calendars, with five or six seasons noted in each region and no dependence on dates – entirely sensible. Soon enough the weather will become cool, the days short, and these hot, steamy days will be forgotten. At any rate, the azaleas are confident of that as they push out buds in anticipation.

And now for the finale of the three part story, Paint Job.  I hope you enjoy reading the way it turned out as much as I enjoyed writing it!

Paint Job (Part III)

Pete didn’t have much stuff of his own but, even so, it seemed pretty slack to leave his packing till the day before we had to be out. He wasn’t around enough for me to point this out to him. It was almost as if he was avoiding me.

            On our last night at Davenlea Ma decided to seriously vent her stress on a three course meal. Pete turned up at the last minute and we tucked into the fruit of Ma’s genius as if we had something to celebrate. I focused on the food and tried not to think about the next day.

            Pete pulled out a bottle of champagne. ‘We need to commemorate the occasion.’ He left the kitchen to get some glasses and returned with three champagne flutes Ma had kept in the old china cabinet.

Ma’s frown was no deeper than usual. She took another bite of pie without comment. But my mouth must have looked like the cork had exploded from it instead of the bottle. I’d had enough.

‘You can’t just pretend it’s not happening, mate,’ I said to Pete. ‘We’re out of here tomorrow and you’re acting like it’s a party. I saw Ma pack up the china and all, so what do you think you’re doing taking our stuff out like that and making it harder for us? Dammit, Pete, this is it. This is it. It’s over. We’re leaving. Got it?’

Pete was leaning back in his chair grinning. The man was as mad as a hatter.

I pushed my chair back so hard, the screech ripped through the silence. I stumbled, my furious and embarrassed exit interrupted by the smugness on Pete’s face and the twitch of amusement in Ma’s.

I flung myself back onto the chair. ‘What’s the joke?’

‘I had my speech all ready, but your impromptu one was much more dramatic,’ Pete said as he began pouring the bubbly. ‘Actually, it really is a party. I’ve been trying to find a way to tell you but Rhoda knew all along and I couldn’t come up with anything brilliant. So here it is: I am the new owner of 14 Delamere Road, Davenlea.’ He beamed at me like Santa Claus.

            I looked at Ma and back at Pete, then down at my forgotten plate, trying to add up all the pieces of the past few weeks. It had knocked the wind out of me but it didn’t resolve the anger.

            ‘You? How could you do that to us? We took you in, made you part of the family. I thought you were like a brother to me, the best kind of brother. And you’re kicking us out. You’re as bad as the rest. I’m glad we’re leaving this town.’

            This time as I started to push back my chair, Ma put her work-worn hand on mine. ‘Stay, Matthew. You’d better hear the whole story so you know who to consign to hell.’

            Pete handed me a glass. ‘Here’s to brothers.’ I just shook my head but I took the glass. I wasn’t going to waste good champers just because he was a bastard.

            Somehow between Pete’s bonhomie and Ma’s bite I managed to piece together the strange saga of how Pete had found his way to us after his mother had taken up with a new bloke. Wanting to check out the story his new stepfather was telling, he’d come across a customer who knew the man’s abandoned family and Pete had taken his plan a step further. The customer had known that Ma was cash-strapped and had put the idea into Pete’s head that he should ask to board.

After digesting this extraordinary tale, I said, ‘You mean we really are brothers?’

Pete nodded. Ma snorted.

            ‘So why are we leaving?’

            Pete looked at Ma. Ma stared back and then dropped her gaze and slumped a little.

I stared at Ma. Had Pete just achieved the impossible? I’d never seen anyone have that effect on her. Ma didn’t back down for anyone.

She lifted her head and half-turned towards me. ‘Pete said we could stay. I refused.’

‘You what?’ I gave her a look that would have bored a hole in anyone less thick-skinned. ‘How could you? I’m sixteen, Ma. I’ve got a life too, and you can’t just make all the decisions like I’m a little kid who has to follow you everywhere. What if I want to stay?’

I didn’t have the same effect on Ma as Pete. She straightened up again and turned fully towards me. ‘Decisions like this aren’t just a matter of doing what feels good. How would you pay for board? I can’t support both of us in different places. What kind of life would it be for you without your mother? You’re only sixteen, Matthew. I’m still legally responsible for you. And…’

I waited, forcing my fists to unclench. ‘And?’ I repeated.

She swallowed. ‘And I didn’t want to lose everything all at once,’ she said in a small voice. She stood up to clear away the half-eaten dishes.

I stopped her taking mine. I was just starting to get an appetite again.

‘Rhoda, Mattie’s only got another year before he has to go to the city for uni. Is it really worth it for him to change schools, move to where he has no friends, start again for one year? I told you, he can stay here with me. He can give me what the government gives him for living away from home, and if that doesn’t work out, I’m sure we can twist Rod’s arm for support.’

I nodded furiously. ‘Yeah, Dad can pay for a change. This is perfect, Ma.’

Ma glared. ‘You’d better hope the government pays up, young man.’

‘Does that mean I can stay?’ The decision lay on the edge of a blade; I tried not to look too eager. As I watched her face, usually so closed and dark, I saw what I hadn’t noticed before. Ma looked lost. I had a glimpse of how hard it might be for a mother to leave her only son, and I steeled myself.

            ‘After all, a boy has to leave home some time’, she muttered, as if to convince herself.

See you next time!

Claire Belberg

Paint Job (Part 2)

                         Welcome!

Tomato promise

The vegetable garden is looking good but there’s not much produce. I only plant for the summer of the year we stay home for Christmas: tomatoes, basil, chives, and self-sown pumpkin (there’s always some of that going from the compost). We’ve had a few tomatoes, and the basil has been magnificent, but there just hasn’t been enough out of the vegetable garden yet to justify all the water and work that goes into it. Maybe with a few weeks of summer left we’ll start to get the productivity I’d hoped for. But maybe just having a happily growing green patch of garden is worth it anyway.

Here is the second instalment of Paint Job. I hope you enjoy it and look forward to the final part in two weeks’ time.

Paint Job (Part II)

Something wasn't right. Ma wasn't one to back down like that, even though it had her characteristic sarcasm.

            Pete was cutting himself half a loaf. 'Want some, Mattie? There's enough for both of us.' But I wasn't hungry.

            I walked into the lounge room, reaching for the light switch in the dark. The room glowed in its new rich colours, friendly, although it looked unfamiliar with the furniture missing or covered. We'd done a pretty decent job. Okay, we hadn't asked Ma's opinion before we'd launched in but that wouldn't usually send her off the deep end like this. There had to be something I didn't know that would make the equation work.

            And then I saw a piece of paper on the floor where Ma had stood to survey our handiwork. It had fallen, presumably, and had slipped most of the way under the dropsheet. I picked it up, and took it under the light, looking over my shoulder momentarily to be sure I was alone.

On behalf of our client, Mr Roderick Sidney Halston, we are informing you that the property in which you now reside at 14 Delamere Road, Davenlea, and which was solely owned by our client, has now been sold. You received notification, sent from this office on 23 September to the effect that the house was on the market. At your request, no signage was put up at the property, and a buyer was sought and found by a more discreet method. That sale having now been finalised, you have thirty days to take up residence elsewhere. The new owner will shortly contact you to make final arrangements. . .

            I also dropped the letter. It had to be a hoax. Why would my father sell the house from under us? We hadn't even known where he was; he'd never called or written. He might as well have dropped off the edge of the world.

            I couldn't begin to think about what this meant for me and Ma, and Pete. There were no words, so I just watched TV with Pete for the evening and said nothing.

            Ma appeared at breakfast the next morning looking her usual immutable self. She didn't mention the letter so neither did I. Pete and I spent the day on the second coat of paint, putting the furniture back again in the evening. The room looked fresh and warm. I felt I'd been evicted already.

            'He does a good enough paint job, for an electrician,' Ma commented, and Pete beamed. I looked out to the plain, neat front yard, imagining the 'For Sale' sign that had actually existed but been invisible to me and Pete.

            'Good enough to sell,' I mumbled and walked towards the kitchen. I saw the letter where I'd dropped it last night and I kicked it into a corner.

There wasn’t time to fix up more of the house before we had to leave, and why would we want to improve it for the bloody mystery buyer anyway? There was no time for anything except packing up my life into a few battered boxes. Ma wouldn’t let me take half my stuff.

            ‘How big do you think your aunt’s house is, Matthew? You’re lucky you’ll have a room. If Shane hadn’t already left home, you’d be sleeping in the shed with your boxes.’

            I wasn’t looking forward to moving three hours north to Ma’s sister Ruth’s. At least my cousin wasn’t there. Aunty Ruth was all right, but leaving Pete behind in exchange for a second mother wasn’t my idea of a move in the right direction.

            We didn’t see much of Pete in these last weeks. I was trying to work out how I was going to say goodbye to him, daydreaming that he might move somewhere near my aunt’s, knowing that he had no reason to leave this town with all the contract work he was getting. I wished we could have had longer together before life busted us up.

 See you next time!

Claire Belberg

Paint Job (Part I)

                         Welcome!

No place like home

How weird was it to return from tropical (dry season) Cambodia to find that our summer Adelaide Hills garden was green and refreshing! Thanks to our friend watering regularly and some cooler weather, home was truly a sight for weary eyes. This week’s cooler weather is a bit of a shock, with temperatures consistently in the low 20s (Celsius)/low 70s (Fahrenheit), but I’m not complaining. The koala pictured here lives in my neighbourhood, another welcome sight for a travel weary Aussie.

My new story will be rolled out over three posts, so enjoy the first instalment!

Paint Job

Part I

'He's an electrician, for gods' sake! What would he know about interior decorating?' Ma pressed her lips together and strode from the dropcloth-covered lounge room.

            Pete and I shrugged and said nothing. What was there to say? We'd known Ma would react that way – nobody knows anything more than Ma – and we also knew she'd vent her superiority on pastry and there'd be a grand supper tonight. We made ourselves scarce till it was time to eat.

            Pete had been boarding at our place for five months and my life had never been more satisfying. When Dad had shot through two years earlier, I'd been left to defend the reputation of the male of the species. It was a full-time job; senior high school was a breeze by comparison. And then Pete had turned up.

            I'd never quite worked out the pieces of his story – where he'd been before and why he was here now – but one thing was clear: he'd won Ma over, or she wouldn't have let him move in.

            Pete was about three years older than me, the brother I'd alternated between longing for and being grateful I didn't have. If I'd had a brother like Joe's, I'd have left home. But Pete more than matched the other side of my scale. As long as he stayed, I'd stay.

            Pete's electrical skills were a boon in the old house, with its dicky lighting that flashed as if it had ambitions to join the lightning it emulated. The switches sparked when we shifted them, and we never knew if the TV would work. Pete fixed all that in his first three weeks and Ma waived the board money.

            'Why don't you take up a trade, do something useful with your life?' she took to asking whenever I claimed schoolwork as my excuse for copping out of the dishes. Like going to university to study engineering wouldn't be useful.

            In all the time Pete had been with us, Ma had never spoken directly to him. Pete was always 'he', never 'you'. It was kind of freaky, but Pete didn't seem to mind. Pete didn't mind anything much, really, except hunger and police officers. He was adept at steering clear of both.

This particular weekend was the long one in June, the Queen's birthday. The weather was lousy: wet and windy. I was sick of all my computer games, and our internet connection didn't like rain.

            'You up for a bit of useful, Mattie?' Pete asked when we'd been doing nothing for a couple of hours.

            'What kind of useful?' I asked, thinking of the assignments I was avoiding and wishing he'd offered fun instead.

            'How about we fix up this room while Rhoda's busy with the oldies at the nursing home?'

            'Whaddya mean, 'fix it up'? It's okay as it is. Been like this as long as I remember.'

            'That's my point,' he said, slapping my back. 'Don't you reckon your ma would like a fresh coat of paint on it? Look,' he added, pointing at the bare patches around the light switch, 'there's hardly any paint left. What colour was it, d'ya reckon?'

            I looked, probably for the first time in the ten years since I'd scratched my name in the paint behind the sofa. 'Dunno. Can't remember. Maybe cream?'

            'Well, I figure we've got four hours. We can do one coat before she gets back, if we're fast. You in it?'

            Pete was already walking out to the shed as I muttered a half-hearted, 'S'pose so.' He came back with a couple of new tins of paint.

            'Corn chip. It's the latest fashion colour. I saw it in this house I was working on last week, and the woman there showed me one of those home decorator magazines. This colour was the hot favourite.'

            What did I know? I started packing up Ma's knick knacks and photos while Pete shoved the movable furniture into the corridor. We covered the heavy stuff with old sheets, brought in buckets of water and scrubbed the walls with sugar soap. There wasn't much paint anywhere on the wall when we'd finished.

            The time raced as we slapped on paint while the CD player thumped fast music to set our pace. Pete was up on the ladder painting the cornice a tomato-and-milk colour which he reckoned the magazine showed too, and I was tidying the edges and removing drips when we heard the slam of the back door. I turned the CD off and looked up as Ma stood in the doorway from the kitchen.

            'Whose idea?' she said hoarsely. I looked at Pete, who stood on the ladder grinning, his brush poised over the paint tin hanging from its wire handle.

            'Looks like a different place, huh, Rhoda? D'ya like it? We'll finish it off properly, like professionals. It'll be done by the end of the weekend.'

            I groaned – he hadn't told me that part.

            Ma made her comment and left. We cleaned up and spent the time before supper washing out paint-soaked brushes and wiping up all the drips and smudges that seemed to have spread themselves around.

            We sat down at the kitchen table at the usual time for supper, our hands raw from an hour in cold water and turps. There was something in the oven, but no sign of Ma. We waited a few minutes, but then Pete opened the oven.

            'Get the plates, Matt,' he grunted as he pulled out a baking dish. 'Oh-oh,' he added, 'we've got trouble.' He dumped the dish on the stovetop and stood looking at it, absently slapping the worn oven glove from hand to hand.

            I looked too. Corn chips floating in tomato soup. 'I guess she didn't like the colour scheme.'

            'Yeah.'

            Pete went to the fridge to find something more palatable.

            'There's a note,' I said, pulling a sticky note off the fridge door.

            Maybe he knows about cooking too. He's welcome to it.

Ooh, Ma is really riled. I wonder why? Read the second instalment next time.

See you then...

Claire Belberg

Echo

Welcome!

flowering eucalypt

My family and I are about to head off for a visit to Cambodia, and one of my concerns is how we’ll manage the humid heat. Adelaide enjoys generally low humidity, which is why so many of our homes use evaporative cooling instead of air-conditioning. This also satisfies the Aussie predilection for bringing the outside inside, since evap cooling requires windows/doors to be open. Fortunately (?) our evap cooling hasn’t been working reliably in the last couple of weeks, so we’ve been acclimatising to heat discomfort, the perfect preparation for our South East Asian jaunt!

Today marks the first half year of this blog, and ushers in a couple of changes. I’ll be posting half as often (i.e. fortnightly) from now on (I can’t write fast enough to do it justice weekly), and the mix of prose and poetry will be less predictable.

My offering today is a recently written free verse poem.  Whether you like it, hate it, or just don’t get it, why not leave a comment and share your thoughts with other readers?

Echo

I know what it is to be a ghost

 as insubstantial as a mist

where others look through to someone beyond you

and the only presence you have is as

a memory

an echo

 forgotten as soon as it is heard

overtaken by someone more solidly present,

louder, more demanding.

I stand, a shadow in a deserted temple,

where nothing moves but the wind

in the dry leaves gusting

here

             there

    grouped momentarily

and then scattered.

All is gone but the shadow

the memory

the echo

  fading

     into silence.

Until we meet again...

Claire Belberg

City Lights

Welcome!

summer plenty

Adelaide is famous for its summer heatwaves, days on end of temperatures over 35 degrees Celsius (95^o Fahrenheit). Just yesterday the mercury hit 44^oC (111F), a real scorcher. Our forecast was looking seriously hot for the next week, and I’m not sorry it’s been downgraded a little.

One of the delights of living in the Adelaide Hills is the gully breezes most hot summer nights, giving us overnight temperatures more comfortable than on the plains. But although our nights are mostly cool enough at the moment, I am puzzled by the winds – changing direction frequently, and very gusty all day and night, as if we were spinning around a gyrating compass. Unpredictability in unpredictable ways; all out of kilter. No matter how good we are at forecasting and explaining, the elements play with us and we just have to take it as it comes!

This post’s creative piece is a drama written to an ending quoted from DH Lawrence’s Sons and Lovers. Not having read the novel, I have no idea if my story has anything in common with the original! Sometimes it’s freeing not to know (but maybe now I’ll take a peek at Wikipedia!)

City Lights

           'Come on, Sven,' Lana called impatiently.

            Sven concentrated on following the clattering of Lana's ridiculous heels down the rough steps. He hadn't yet worked out how she managed to wander up and down the back streets and outskirts of the city without ever turning an ankle.

            She entered the poorly lit bar without waiting for him. Sven stood in the doorway, adjusting his eyes to the darkness and trying to assess the situation. He felt a familiar twinge of resentment at the role of bodyguard that seemed to define his relationship with her these days.

            Lana lit the darkness, her white blonde hair and long white satin evening dress drawing what little light the flickering lamps emitted, giving her an aura. As he drew closer to her, weaving his way between the patrons who deferred to his height and Western visage, he was reminded of a moth. No matter what crazy places she insisted on taking them, Sven found her achingly irresistable. He took up his place at her side, where she put a hand of ownership on his arm. Her slender white fingers showed no sign of the tension he could sense in her, the thrill of anticipation, the drive to extract every ounce of juice out of her unorthodox adventures, to ride the wave of risk that threatened to carry her too far only to be brought short at the last moment, leaving her satisfied and him weary. So weary.

            'Ah, Miss Raffen, you honour us with visit.' An old Chinese man bowed obsequiously to her. He turned to a young man – a boy, really – behind the bar, and snapped, 'Give her a drink.'

            Sven coughed slightly and addressed the boy. 'And I'll have a brandy on the rocks.'

Another evening spent as a spectator to Lana's escapades left Sven wondering what had happened to the beautiful and talented woman he'd fallen in love with. Now she stretched the boundaries in all directions as if the wealth and status of her life as a senior diplomat's daughter was a cage she sought to escape. Sven's ambitious dreams for his promising education consultancy firm were dwindling as rapidly as Lana's reputation.

Lana was sure she knew the way to a friend's house nearby. After all, she'd lived in Hong Kong most of her life. After several dead ends,  Sven was starting to feel nervous. He was sure he'd heard footsteps behind them.

Lana was complaining. 'You're no fun any more, Sven.You used to join in but now you just watch me with disapproval. You're getting as dull and boring as the rest of the pack. But Sandy will know how to live it up tonight. She's a fun girl, that one.'

            Oh my god, thought Sven. Sandy, of all people. Yes, of course she'd want to stay with that freak. It was probably Sandy who'd put Lana onto the old man. He'd plyed her with drink, set up the poker game that used every last dollar Sven had had on him, and given her a stamp-sized piece of paper. Lana's ticket to fun for the rest of the night.

            At that moment Sven's fears were realised. Three men, the old man's muscle men, pushed Sven to one side,  and surrounded Lana,.

            'Sven, do something, for god's sake,' Lana said, laughing nervously. She looked like a queen whose courtiers had suddenly turned hostile and even now she couldn't quite believe it. A smile, a look of camaraderie, but the muscle men paid no attention. They were deliberately steering her, without touching her, to a darker corner.

            Sven looked around for a weapon. He picked up a rust-ragged steel pipe in one hand and a broken brick in the other. He launched the brick at one head, and swung the pipe at another. The posse broke into fast motion. The brick missed, flying between the aimed-for head and Lana's shoulder, dropping into the third man just as he made a grab for her. It stopped him for a moment. The pipe struck, and one man was down. The others became more frenzied. The man hit by the brick was intent on dragging Lana around the corner, while the one the brick had missed was lunging at Sven.

            He called out Lana's name, and having activated his voice, strings of oaths followed as he dodged and punched his attacker. He received more than he gave and, with the wind knocked out of him, he stopped cursing. Finding himself on the ground, his head feeling split by the fall and a karate fiend launching itself at him, Sven was puzzled to find the world suddenly flooded with light. His attacker twisted away and disappeared into the dark.

            Sven pushed himself up on an elbow, shading his eyes to see where Lana was before making the monumental effort to stand up. He was sure his head weighed three times what it had, pounding like war drums. He staggered, but still he couldn't see Lana. He couldn't see anything, and pondered the irony that more light was less helpful.

            'I'm all right, Sven. Sandy saved the day.' Incredibly, Lana laughed, as if the events of the previous minutes were simply the highlight of an entertaining evening. 'See, I was right. She does live round here. You'd better come in and get cleaned up.'

            Sandy took up the invitation with a brusque, 'You look like someone chewed you good and proper.' Nevertheless she took Sven inside her two-roomed shanty and found some water and a cloth to clean him up with. She pushed him into a chair and gave him a cracked glass. 'Drink it. It will help the headache.' He did as he was told. It tasted foul.

            But it worked. Within half an hour he was ready to go home.

            'You can stay here,' Sandy offered, but Lana answered for him.

            'No, he'll go home, sleep it off and turn up bright and early tomorrow at work with a neat cover story. He's good for that, at any rate. You should have heard some of the whoppers he's told to keep me in the good books.'

            It was her nonchalance that made the penny drop. No recognition that she'd just about got him killed, that she'd given away over one thousand dollars to have her fun without even asking, risking their lives in her search for the perfect high. In privacy she had been honey and passion, but in public she had shamed and belittled him. He'd told himself for the past few weeks that it was just a phase, that she was testing his love, that she was covering up the depths of her feeling for him because she didn't want the gossip that inevitably accompanied romances in this hothouse expatriate community. But he'd been telling whoppers to himself, he now saw. He was possibly the only one he'd fooled.

            'I'm off then, Lana. Thanks, Nurse Sandy.'

            'See you tomorrow, Sven,' Lana called as he walked into the lane that would lead him to the main road and a late night bus.

            'No, Lana. Not tomorrow. Not any day. It's over.' He couldn't believe he was saying it. The words sounded feeble, like a bad movie. Humphrey Bogart might have pulled it off, made it sound manly.

            'Sure, Sven. Bye.'

            The door closed. He heard the giggles behind it. She didn't believe him. She knew he was in her thrall. The very risk-taking that disturbed him about her excited him. She was vivacity, charm and challenge, a siren. His siren.

He stood in the dim glow of a flickering street light, torn between the desire to escape and the anger that wanted to make her believe him.

He stood. Remembered. Ached with desire, with shame. Her image burned bright within, and once again he was blinded. And then the street light stopped flickering, and the darkness was complete. Beyond the shanties he could see now the glow of the city lights. Here was darkness. There was a light by which one might see.

He could stay, remain in the darkness of her light. But no, he would not give in. Turning sharply, he walked towards the city's gold phosphorescence. His fists were shut, his mouth set fast. He would not take that direction again, to the darkness, to follow her. He walked towards the faintly humming, glowing town, quickly.

Until next week…
Claire Belberg