Julia: a story

Welcome!

Spring delight

The first spring flush is passing now in the Adelaide Hills. I am trying to be diligent to remove spent flowers in the hope of a new flush in a few weeks’ time. I find it a challenge to manage that, weeding, fertilising, mulching and watering all at once! I don’t have a green thumb but I start each growing season full of hope.

The fruit trees are producing mixed results. Lemon – fabulous; one of the apples – very promising; nectarine – nothing at all after a serious infestation of aphids; apricot – a decent crop. Unforeseen disasters may occur, of course – growing things is a risky hobby.

Do you enjoy dreaming? I love it; it’s like reading without the book. Not always as satisfying but often intriguing. Today’s story is a drama that started with a dream I had.

Julia

He was looking directly at me as I stood in the phone booth, about to make a difficult call. He was the archetypal gentleman, from his well-cut suit and his neatly trimmed beard to the way he held his tall body with perfect ease and grace.

I banged the receiver down awkwardly and left the booth.

‘I hate strangers staring at me, ‘ I muttered, forced to walk past him to get to my room. Once I was around the corner, I ran, holding two thoughts at once. The first was to lock myself in my room and stay out of sight until I was sure he had left the premises. The second was his odd reply to my outburst: ‘I know what you mean.’

I knew who he was, though what he was doing in an ordinary London boarding hostel, I had no idea.

The hostel was pleasant enough, and I was one of the lucky two boarders who had ground floor rooms with big windows and a little patch of grass beyond the back door. I was careful to keep those big windows covered with their heavy drapes when there were strangers around, but as I slammed the door behind me and pushed the bolt, I realised that if I was to remain out of sight I had no time to close them again. I had opened them only a short time before to allow the rare sunshine in.

I heard his voice from my hiding place under the bed on the far side of the room.

‘Madam? Are you all right? I meant no disrespect.’

I could just see him as he stood on the little lawn, his handsome face filled with concern. I knew who he was and that he meant well, but I stayed where I was until he left.

Fate kept placing George and me in the same public locations for some months after that, as if London were too small for two strangers to not connect. I pretended not to see him on each occasion and, since I would not look at him after the first recognition of his presence, I could not know if he had seen me. Finally there came a day when we communicated, and for that I will be eternally grateful.

It was not fate that caused Wade to turn up at various junctures of my life. On this day, a brisk spring day with its usual dose of wind and rain, he ran into me as I left Sloane Square station.

‘Julia,’ I heard a voice say behind me. I froze.

He came around to face me, pushing me gently to the edge of the pavement where the eaves of an apartment block gave a little protection and the stream of commuters flowed past us without interruption. I stared at my feet, unable to think straight, which was typical when Wade was around.

‘You didn’t give me an answer after last time,’ he said. Even into the low voice he used to keep our conversation private, he managed to inject poison. I felt it leaking into me from my ears steadily towards my heart. I had no antidote; I just waited for it to take familiar effect.

‘You know my answer,’ I said, forcing the words from my lips.

But he knew my weakness. ‘You say that, but you’ll do what I say. If you don’t add my name to your account by the end of the week, I’ll make sure Alexa knows exactly what you did on the night she was conceived. Every bloody detail.’

Alexa was my five year old daughter, who lived in the care of my sister in a village in Devon. I didn’t put it past Wade to have worked out where she was, nor to tell a child things no child should know.

I had practised what I should say, but now I could not remember the words or any sense of how I could resist his threat. But before I was forced to respond, a third person joined us. George.

‘Is there a problem here?’ he asked in his fine English that made Wade’s private school accent sound common.

My fuddled brain had had no chance to plan for an event unforeseen. ‘He’s trying to blackmail me,’ I blurted, looking George in the eyes for the first time since our encounter at the phone booth. Then my eyes flew to Wade’s face and I blushed. Wade always made me feel that my actions were wrong.

Only this time it was Wade who did not know how to respond.

Before he could, George spoke again. ‘If anything suspicious happens in this woman’s life, ever, you will feel the full weight of the law.’ He looked directly at Wade for a moment that carried the significance of years, and then turned to me.

Handing me a business card, he said, ‘You can contact me any time if he gives you more trouble.’ Then he touched his right hand to his head in that ageless gesture of the English gentleman, and walked in the direction of all the other morning commuters. It struck me for the first time that George used public transport like the rest of us.

Wade found his words, and his venom. ‘Oh yes, he’s going to solve the sordid dealings of a bitch on the street.’ He had regained his usual place of power between us. ‘Who does he think he is?’

‘George Pennington, QC,’ I said, reading the card.

‘Some fancy lawyer type. He’ll have forgotten you by the time he’s finished reading the Times.’ He seemed to need to convince himself.

‘He’ll remember,’ I said. ‘We have met before. And he’s renowned for his memory of detail.’

Wade’s confidence was shaken, and in like measure mine was increasing.

‘You don’t know who he is, do you, Wade?’ I pressed. ‘He’s literally a QC – counsel to the royal family.’

And then I did what I should have done years earlier. I said, ‘Goodbye, Wade,’ and turned my back on him.

I walked in the direction George had walked, simply because he had; that was all the sense of direction I needed. Of course I did not see him. In fact, we never met again. Nor did I suffer further threats from Wade Chandler.

Have a happy November!

See you next time!

Claire Belberg

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

Brother Mine (Part 1)

                         Welcome!

blue passionflower

The blue passionvine is in bloom – a fantastical flower, if ever there was one. It’s unfortunate that a flower with such promise doesn’t fulfil it with fruit. This was the rootstock of a Nellie Kelly grafted passionfruit. The graft didn’t survive, and now we have rampant blue passionvine trying to overtake the garden, latching onto the orange tree and consuming the water meant for it. But I’ve always enjoyed the peculiarities of weeds, so for the time being the wild vine remains, and I’m enjoying the crazy flowers.

The story of this week began as an exercise with my writing group, where we had to start with the first paragraph of George MacDonald’s Phantastes. In recognition that 1200 words is a lot to read in one burst on the internet, I have divided it into two parts. The second will be posted next week (poetry readers will have to wait an extra week before their next ‘fix’.)

Brother Mine

I awoke one morning with the usual perplexity of mind which accompanies the return of consciousness. As I lay and looked through the eastern window of my room, a faint streak of peach-colour, dividing a cloud that just rose above the low swell of the horizon, announced the approach of the sun. As my thoughts, which a deep and apparently dreamless sleep had dissolved, began again to assume crystalline forms, the strange events of the foregoing night presented themselves anew to my wondering consciousness.

            I hardly had time to decide whether I believed in them before the rest of the household awoke with all the clamour and bustle that entailed. Sighing, I rolled out of my bed, gave myself a quick wash, and dressed. Just in case the events I imagined of yesterday had, in fact, been real, I took up my cloak and retrieved a small pistol from the back of a bureau drawer. I tucked the latter into a flap inside my jacket which could have been made for the purpose. One never knew quite what had been intended by my deceased elder brother, Jack.

            I headed downstairs as a bell sounded. I knew therefore that my father was already in the dining room, and I checked my appearance in a long and ornately ugly mirror in the hall before proceeding to his inspection. My short black hair was neat, the russet and dark brown clothes well-made and becoming, according to my mother; there was only the uneven features of my shadowed face to displease, and those I had long ago resigned myself to. At least I could remember my brother when I saw my reflection, for we had been as seeds from the same pod. I tried to arrange my face in an affable pose, and approached the dining table.

            'Look like you're only fit for a walk in the woods,' Father grunted. 'Don't you have business today?' He gave me a piercing look under his lowered eyebrows, and I shrank from it as usual.

            'N-n-no, that is tom-m-morrow,' I said, taking a seat at the far end of the table. I prayed my sister would come earlier than was her wont, for she had the knack of distracting Father from his black moods. No matter what I said, my very presence seemed to increase that frame of mind.

            The maid dished up sausages, eggs and the remains of last night's pie while the silence of the room deepened and my father's eyebrows fell so low they almost interfered with his mandibular motion. My sister did not show, and my mother was, I assumed, nursing her constant ill-health in her own suite.

            It was as I bit into the pie that I realised, with a lurch of my stomach, that nothing had changed. Last night's events could not have occurred; they had merely been the expression of my growing desperation to know my father's approval. That moment of despair rendered the taste of pigeon pie thereafter unpalatable.

            I escaped the strained silence of the dining room with only a handful of shattering observations from my disillusioned pater. I stood in the hall for a moment, trying to decide on a course of action that would keep me out of trouble for the day. At that moment the butler announced an arrival.

            Assuming it was one of my father's business associates, I turned to go through the drawing room and thence out of the house to the stables, but Poulton ahem-ed behind me.

            'For you, Master Richard. A—' and here he looked again at the calling card in his gloved hand, 'Lord Frederick Bryant. He says you are expecting him.'

            The fellow who had announced himself so boldly looked quite irregular. I supposed that being a lord and used to having his way, he had chosen his outfit for his own peculiar tastes rather than fashion. I was not enamoured of fashion myself, but I would have found it unthinkable to wear old-fashioned purple hose with black knee-high buckled boots and a red and orange embroidered waistcoat under an open surcoat of shiny black fabric. This too had buckles, polished to gleam even as they tinkled at the jerk of his stride.

Look for Part 2 next week.
Until then…
Claire Belberg

Lucky Beanie

Welcome!

Already the grass is drying out in the absence of rain. As much as I enjoy the weather warming up (and it has done this quite gently this year, unlike the typical skip-the-middle-numbers temperature spikes), the yellowing as the season marches towards summer is a bit depressing. It gets harder and harder to water the garden enough (while trying to be responsible with our limited water resources), and the risk of bushfire increases. Still, if the possums and parrots don’t get them first, we do have wonderful summer fruits to look forward to. It’s difficult to be too sad about summer.

The story for this week is a quirky play on a song my daughters sang as a warm-up exercise for choir rehearsals. Let me know if you recognise the song!

Lucky Beanie

I pressed the end-call button on my mobile before I let myself go.

            'I did it! I got myself a gig at the Crooked Crown. It's my break, Seona! Do you know who hangs out at the Crown? Talent spotters for record companies, that's who!' I whooped and danced around our flat like a tribal, singing an impromptu tribute to my lucky gig beanie. I just knew that beanie would give me the edge I needed to become a famous singer-songwriter.

            Seona just smiled, the crinkles at the corner of her eyes revealing her genuine, otherwise unexpressed, pleasure. 'Oh, and thanks for the idea,' I mumbled. Seona doesn't say much, but she's so smart, what she does say is worth more than I can think in a week.

            I stayed up late that night finishing off a song I thought I'd debut at the gig. I spent the next two weeks planning and rehearsing my bracket. I made flyers and handed them out to my friends, hoping they'd turn up to boost the friendly numbers. I even told my parents ─ and then had to invent a good line to prevent them from coming. I knew they'd be proud of me, but performing to old folk whose idea of real music is a violin virtuoso in a painfully silent room doesn't bring out my best.

            I should've realised the dream was doomed by the way everything rolled along so easily ─ until Friday.

            On Friday I thought I'd pop by the hotel to suss it out. It's one weird place.   While I was there, I had a chat with the manager who, after some checking and rechecking, finally accepted that it was me who would be playing between nine and ten the next night, and that, in fact, I would be playing a twelve-string guitar and singing original songs, not doing a stand-up comedy act accompanied by a trombone. It's all good, I say.

            At home I pulled out my guitar ─ my favourite, still-paying-the-mortgage guitar ─ to find pale green and black slime all over the fretboard and dropping in lumps into the sound hole. Ah yes, the snack I'd packed for my last band practice and forgotten to eat. Fortunately avocado doesn't smell too strongly.

            Yep, it's all good. Then, as I cleaned the strings, the top E-string snapped. Hurried phone calls to the guitar-playing friends since the shops had shut by then. They'd open the next morning to find a large number of guitarists keen on buying spare E-strings because it turned out that none of them had one. And to make sure they didn't sell out before I rocked up, I camped on the doorstep from six in the morning. Only got moved on twice by the police and once by a drunk who thought I looked like his last landlady.

            By 9:03 I'd been told that the distributors were currently having difficulty supplying steel strings. At 10:03 I found the spare E-string I suddenly remembered I had. Why I had hidden it in a hiking boot remains a mystery. It's just a good thing I tipped up all my shoes in order to find my beanie.

            You've got to understand about my lucky beanie. It's as ugly as heck, murky brown wool mixed with something like sludge green in a rough fibre. It was once my Great Aunt Farula's. I remember the way her eyes sank into the layers of wrinkled skin covering her skeletal head ─ and the beanie she always wore, which I studied intently to avoid looking at her face. Somehow I knew when I inherited it that it was going to change my life.

            I hunted through all my shoes, all my drawers, the dirty washing, the ironing pile and the bags of clothes waiting to be sent to the refugees. I found the much-needed E-string, but not my beanie.

            It was getting dark. I sat in the cramped lounge of our third floor flat, looking around the room at every picture, poster, photograph and ornament as if they might turn into the mysteriously absent beanie. I was out of ideas. I was working hard to push aside the terrifying thought of appearing at the Crown, on this, the night of my big break, minus the beanie. Deep, agonised silence. My thoughts had collapsed into a soggy formless lump.

            Who knows how long I might have remained in this state if my beanie had not inched its way, with jerks and jumps, before my initially unseeing eyes. It was most of the way to the kitchen before eternity thawed into a distinct now.

            I pounced. My beanie screeched. I picked it up. It shuddered. I dropped it. My beanie had never behaved this way before. In fact, it had never behaved. What had gotten into it? I flipped it over ─ and stared, uncomprehending.

            Clinging to the inside was a jelly-like purple thing with tiny nose, mouth, limbs and claws. It quivered but it wouldn't fall out no matter how hard I shook the beanie. I turned the beanie inside out; the purple creature stretched to cover what was now the outside. How dare it take over my lucky beanie! I put it under the tap, first the cold, and then, with a rush of jealousy, the hot water. It made no difference, other than the thing spraying me like a dog shaking to get dry.

            The time was nearing seven. I had to eat, dress, and catch a bus to the hotel by eight-thirty. I left the beanie on the kitchen bench while I prepared some food I had no appetite to eat. I wondered whether Seona would come home, turn up at the hotel, or spend the evening in the library as usual. I cooked her some fried rice anyway.

            I made a crucial decision while I was eating: I would wear the beanie, even with the purple creature inside if it came to that. The beanie hadn't moved for ages. Maybe the thing slept. Maybe it had gone when I wasn't looking. Anyway, I didn't have to wear the beanie until I played, so I stuffed it into my backpack.

            By 8:35 I was at the Crooked Crown. Not a lot of people yet. Which ones were the talent scouts? Couldn't tell, so I searched for faces of friends. Couldn't see any. I dumped my gear at a table near the corner where a couple of guys were playing bass guitars and singing tunelessly. I sat at the bar with a Coke, taking in the smell of stale beer and the distant clatter of poker machines, trying to tune into the mood of the place. Not much mood; everyone was ignoring the musicians. Good, I thought, they'll be fresh for me. I couldn't wait to get started.

            When I returned to my gear, I thought for a moment the backpack had moved. I intercepted a look from one of the bass players, whose gaze returned to the pack just as it lurched towards him. I looked inside, acting nonchalance. Everything seemed as I'd left it. The beanie was still and silent again.

            The guys finished their bracket to a few slow claps, packed up and pushed through the drinkers. I took a deep breath, said a prayer, and moved into the corner to set up. A couple of friends turned up, and sat at my table.

            'Hey, Jodie,' boomed Sasha. 'Looks like Mara's about to play. Should be a great show!' He winked at Jodie.

            I stepped up to the mic quickly. 'Good evening, all. My name's Mara Simbaya, and I'm going to entertain you with some of my original songs. I hope you'll enjoy them. I'll be around afterwards for a chat. So lean back and feel the flow of good vibes.' I pulled the beanie over my dark hair, strummed some chords and launched into an old favourite. It felt good, and the crowd settled to a quiet hum of contentment, while Sasha and Jodie clapped and cheered.

            As my confidence gained momentum and the audience seemed to be eating out of my hand, I tried a few one liners as I moved between songs. They went down well. But in my fourth song the mood shifted. The crowd were watching me closely but they seemed distracted. My song wasn't reaching them. Sweat trickled from my forehead into my eyes; my confidence leaked away. How had I lost my audience? And my best songs were yet to come.

            'Oh my God!' Jodie screeched. 'It's moving! Look at the beanie!'

            Her words drew me out of a desperate focus on the song to the strange sensation on my head. I realised it had been happening for a while. My hair was being nibbled and tugged, accompanied by a squelching sound. I quit strumming to peal the beanie off, intending to throw it aside. It wouldn't budge. I finished the song, and tried some banter into the microphone while I wrestled with my beanie, subtly at first, then with growing urgency. It was beginning to hurt.

            My audience was laughing, clapping and throwing comments to me. Sasha and Jodie had slunk away. I had attention; I wished I was invisible.

            Seona! I saw her at the edge of the crowd. I tried to telegraph her with my eyebrows to come and help me. She saw, watched some more, and then began an infuriatingly calm progress towards me. Nobody rushes Seona. When she reached my side she whispered, 'It's a purple people-eater. Loves hair. Very rare. I borrowed it from the laboratory but I've got to return it on Monday.' She slipped her hand under the back of the beanie, flicked, and removed the beanie without too much of my remaining hair being pulled out. I was free.

            I could feel the heat of the lights on a patch near my crown. I resolutely continued my bracket, but I had no energy for performing, and the listeners drifted away. The last twenty minutes dragged. I couldn't satisfy the half-hearted calls for jokes; I couldn't think. When the feature band of the night moved to take over, I fled to the bathroom. I couldn't see it but I felt a bald patch on the top of my head, and the slight dents of teeth marks in the tender flesh.

            I tried to sneak out the back way, but the manager caught me by the kitchen door.

            'It might have worked better with a trombone,' he said, his droopy eyes flicking past mine, cold as a lizard's. I left without answering. What can you say when your dream dies at birth?

* * *   

That was last week. Last week, last year, time frozen in eternal wastelands.

            I visit Seona at her laboratory on my way to the city, offering to donate the traitorous beanie to support her research on irritating jelly-like creatures.

            'So what's your plan?' Seona asks as she stares at the beanie, which still has a skein of my crinkly hair attached to it. I can see her mind is somewhere else.

            'Some woman rang and asked me to meet her at the Blue Fish Café for lunch. She didn't say much, just said she had an offer she wanted to put to me. No idea what it's about, but I haven't got a life anymore, and, hey, it's a free lunch.'

            Seona is with me now. She's grinning. She knows something I don't ─ so what's new? Her smile stirs hope in me though.

She offers me the beanie. ‘You’ll be needing this, Mara.’  

Until next week…

Claire Belberg

Illusion and choice - two poems

                   Welcome!

fig leaves unfurling

The garden is growing out of control as spring takes hold (actually, I’ve never really managed to order it). It’s exciting to see some plants that were new in autumn now flowering and sprouting young growth. Deciduous trees coming into leaf, fruit trees forming tiny green fruits, grass needing mowing every week, weeds scattering their seed freely. Delightful chaos of growth and life.

Two poems for you this week, one humorous  and one a free verse revision of Robert Frost’s famous poem ‘The Road Less Traveled’. Enjoy!

Illusion

I was in the eye of my mother

who should have looked elsewhere

For from that moment’s seeing have I

been her heart’s despair.

A kit so sweet to look on,

A pair of eyes to make men pause

And gaze in raptures of delight –

My ragged fur enhanced the sight.

I purred and made my point – with teeth and claws.

The Chosen Way

Golden woods

Two trails through undergrowth

Of varied depth and beauty

Each delighting my eye, calling my feet,

My heart, tearing

My will, my yearning

To explore all ways.

But I must choose.

If this, not that

but where and then

what if?

One lures with promises of glory and song;

Could I return to follow its bright thread

Another day? The one

I feel a stronger pull toward

Is subtle, silent; a lonely road.

I go. And looking far ahead

To years when everything that now lies

Unknown, yet to be done,

Has been done,

Is known,

I'll think back to the choice I made

To seek the hidden way –

A way few try and fewer still endure –

The way which made me.

Until next week…

Claire Belberg