Saint Ned

My winning flash fiction piece below...
Published in 1000 Words or Less (2) 2016

Saint Ned

Gentle voice, careful not to offend.

‘I think you’ve put sugar in your tea already, Gracie love.’

Thinks? He knows, but treads warily. Careful, Ned. She’s replenished her tea with two extra spoons of sugar twice already. A new need for sweet things can sometimes be a part of it, they told him. That and what else? He walks as if on broken glass every day, carefully, still taken by surprise by the occasional outbursts.

Grace looks at him, eyes bright, bird-like, but empty. There’s a vague smile, touched with challenge. She reaches again for the sugar bowl but he takes her hand, covering it with his own, all age-spotted and brown.

‘We’re off to see Kate’s new baby this morning, remember? We’ll go when you’ve finished your tea.’

‘Are we going to see a baby?’

‘Yes, love, Kate’s baby. Our daughter, Kate. She’s called the baby Grace, after you, remember?’

‘I want to have my tea.’

‘I know, Gracie love. Have your tea and then we’ll go see the new baby.’

‘Who’s got the baby?’

‘Kate has, remember? Our daughter Kate.’

She reaches again for the sugar bowl and stabs into it with her teaspoon.

‘No, you’ve put sugar in...’

But he’s said the no word. She snatches her cup away from his reach, spilling it onto her lap, then shoves her chair back and raises an arm in fury, as if to strike. Then tears spring to her eyes.  She looks first at the wet patch spreading across her dress, then stares at Ned, puzzled.

‘Sit down, love, finish your tea. There we go,’ and he refills her cup.

Grace sits but can’t take her eyes off her dress where the tea stain spreads.

There’s a silence spreading too, just like the stain.

Ned slumps forward and puts his head in his hands. Behind his closed and weary eyes, he sees the future stretching ahead, a long brown corridor along which he must plod, endlessly kind, infinitely patient. It’s not her fault.  He knows that, Saint Ned.

~*~

Olga Lorenzo - The Rooms in My Mother's House

What to say when a book leaves you silent? Profoundly, deep-in-thought, don't-speak-to-me silent.
Last semester I had the privilege of having Olga Lorenzo as my fiction teacher in the Professional Writing & Editing course at RMIT. I wasn't the only one in the class who didn't want it to end, wanted to stay on and do the whole thing over again. Like Oliver, I wanted more.

I had read Olga's latest book, The Light on the Water, and was affected by the portrayal of the protagonist's alienation, from some of those who should have loved and supported her in her time of crisis. So I badly wanted to read Olga's first novel The Rooms in My Mother's House, published in 1996. I'd previously made cursory searches on various online sources to no avail but one day, just before Christmas, as I browsed the shelves of one of my best secondhand bookshops, there it was, the pages browning at the edges but otherwise pristine and still with the Penguin's 20-year-old bookmark in the front. Where has it been all the years?

You can read in any reference that the story charts the lives of three generations of women—the Santiagos: Dolores, Consuelo and Ana—and their family's flight from Cuba as the revolution unfolds.

This does nothing to prepare you for being immersed in the relentless anguish of their lives nor for understanding the elements of love that prevail against seemingly insurmountable odds.


'But what was it like?' a reader friend persisted as I struggled to describe it.
'Okay,' I said. 'It was stunning - powerful, shocking, heartbreaking, gut-wrenching, tender, unfathomable, enlightening.'
I might need to read it again. There was shame, longing, injustice, loss, nostalgia, endurance, bitterness and love. Despite all that, love.
When I first (with a lot of help) created this website I had a section for Swooners - snippets of writing that stopped me in my tracks to read the words over and over again. I didn't keep it up for very long. My criteria were perhaps too stringent. But there were plenty off passages in this books that made me stop and mark the pages.

"...and you grip the chipped platter with the fading roses, the little china cup. They are testimonials to the past wealth of the family, to its substance, or merely to the fact that it was - there was a past, and here is the link, we've held on to this, this small piece of evidence.
The Santiagos had nothing like this."
How much does this say!

And later -
"Consuelo's grandfather worked slowly, in rhythm with the droning world, swing bend toss, slashing alone at the solid walls of humming cane, the stalks flying up, slapping his face and him slapping them back down, killing them for good."

Occasionally, a stark statement that stopped this reader in her tracks, making me stare off into the distance, wondering...
"It is an evil myth that the bad things that happen in your childhood strengthen you. They never do."

Startling images abound -
"Consuelo hummed bits of songs. She couldn't remember the words. She couldn't finish anything, couldn't connect. Words images songs memories and things she would have to do tomorrow passed through her mind like meteorites.." and ... pawpaws hanging off trees like hungry puppies.

The final pages I could quote in their entirety, knowing you too will swoon, but I won't because after all, they are the final pages.
I've spent much of this hot, hot day combing the internet for information about Cuba, the revolution, this book and what Olga is going to do next. I sat up very straight and very suddenly when I read that she is working on another novel - an ambitious novel - set in Cuba during the revolution.

While we're waiting for that, I hope you search for and find a copy of The Rooms in My Mother's House - because you're not getting mine.

~*~

Memories of Flowers

My Blueberry Ash tree is flowering again for only the second time in about 15 years. It's well worth the wait. They seem to appear suddenly and I greet the flowers with a gasp of joy when I first notice them.

En masse they appear like a pale pink cloud against the sky. Up close their detail is miraculous, each individual flower a tiny frilly skirt, a dancer's dress, a fairy costume.

That's what I decided when I was about 5 anyway, and first discovered such a tree on Mrs Brown's hill.

We lived out in the country with money and transport both in short supply but I had, since the age of about 5, a best friend, Denise, and together, even at that age, we were free to roam and explore as we wished. No-one seemed to worry much as long as we showed up before dark. So I think I was with Denise when the blueberry ash tree first showed itself.

Mrs Brown's hill was also home to the sweet-scented pittosperum,

Pittosporum

wild raspberries and finger limes that made us
screw up our faces and shriek at their sourness when we peeled off the bumpy green skin and sucked out the little spherical beads of juice. (Denise and I and 6 other friends from school hiked in northern Italy together a few years back, so those country friendships endured.)

But is there anything like flowers to bring back memories? Smells, yes, but the sight of flowers remembered from long ago is something else again.

My mother wasn't much of a gardener though she kept cut flowers in vases in the house at all times, as my sister and I still do. (She thought nothing of lopping off a few branches of the blossoming Anzac peach tree to fill a vase in the kitchen.) My Dad was the gardener, cultivating huge terraces of multi-coloured dahlias, a bright blue hydrangea hedge, climbing pink cottage roses and an enormous featured white azalea bush in the middle of the front lawn.

Mrs Brown, who owned the hill and the farm down on the flats, was the only person I knew who cultivated annuals in neat borders and artistic clumps. Frequently she invited me out into her garden to pick posies of purple bachelors buttons, violas and pansies to take home.

I'm transported when any of these things bloom for me now. Even the pittosporum, which I was told should be chopped out post haste, brings pleasure with its heady perfume and its flower heads full of bees.

Is it any wonder then that I spend much of my time in the garden, exulting over the offerings there, ignoring the broken, dirty fingernails and the detritus in my gumboots? It's all worth it when something like the blueberry ash decides to bloom, bringing with it memories of 2 bare-foooted five-year olds loose on Mrs Brown's hill.

~*~

Serendipity - the Story of Barney Rubble

'Reading, Writing & a Few Dog Stories' this blog is called and it's time to revisit this one.

In 2010 we booked a dog-friendly house on the Tweed Coast where we'd stayed before. Stella and Archie came with us, happily travelling in the car for all 1,800 kilometres. At the side of the house there was a separate unit, permanently let. Behind the large gate across the driveway there was big black dog—of unknown temperament—and it soon became clear that he was there on his own. No-one came near. He became the focus of my every waking thought. I gave him biscuits through the wire, pushed bowls of water under the fence and stuck a note in the gate so that if anyone came it would fall out and, hopefully, they would respond. The note stayed put for 4 days.
Then a vehicle started to come late at night. I became the best spy in the district and unashamedly monitored its every move. Each time the driver would spend half an hour or so at the unit then drive off. This time they'll have taken him, I thought every time it happened. I'd run down the stairs in my pyjamas, out into the front yard and shine a light up the driveway. There, inevitably, I'd see two sad eyes reflected in the torchlight, saying 'He's left me again.' It became unbearable.

Through the agent and then the owner of the house, I finally tracked down the dog's owner. Nice bloke, a tradie who'd got work in Brisbane and couldn't take the dog with him. No Plan B.

So it became my mission, with the owner's awkward support, to try and find the dog—then named Zahn—a home. Several times I came close but each time the potential owner pulled the plug.

The best was a retired eye surgeon whose own old dog had recently died. I met him on the beach several times as I was now walking Zahn with the others every day.

First run together on Pottsville dog-friendly beach

The doctor and his wife had a beautiful house with a huge garden just this side of the sandhills. He loved the idea of taking Zahn as his own. All was agreed; the owner was thrilled to bits, my husband and I both breathed a sigh of relief but when I went to take the dog's bowl and bed over, 'the wife' backed out. Lucky there were no weapons nearby when she  announced that. The doctor cried. I seethed and in a week we were due to head back to Melbourne.
So far, worst holiday ever.

Meanwhile my husband Philip had to fly back south for a funeral so I was there alone, weak with angst, grief and rage - all manner of things that don't enrich the soul.
But - praise be - (and here I remembered why I married him) in the course of yet another close-to-tearful phone conversation about the fate of Zahn—which was looking like the local pound—my treasured spouse said 'Oh for God's sake, just bring him home with us!"  Really?? REALLY?

And so, a few days later, Zahn was piled into the car with Stella and Archie for a very testing 1,800 kms drive back to Melbourne with a one-night stopover in a tiny dog-friendly unit in Sydney overlooking Lavender Bay. Our new dog looked like he was in 7th heaven. (He's still first in and last out of the car, always.)
A Border Collie/Kelpie cross he's as smart as a whip, obsessed with sticks and tennis balls (which we discourage because of damage to his teeth) and insists on playing with whatever toy he can find, every night just when we settle down to relax after dinner. We figure this must have been when his owner came home after work and finally gave him some attention.

'You'll play with me now, won't you.'

We sometimes ponder how this dog who (yes, 'who') seemed to have been reared largely on neglect could be so patient, calm, loving and clever - but he is. (We changed his name to from Zahn to Barney after consulting a linguist/speech pathologist friend who said the names were close enough not to bring about identity confusion provided he didn't see our lips move.)

And so we have had our Barney Rubble for 6 years. He's only now showing his age, 'going in the back legs' and losing his appetite. He's on the best geriatric dog care our lovely vets can provide and he will be denied nothing that will make his latter days easier.

This (left) is Barney today. The beard is greying, the energy is diminishing, though he still musters all he has to chase Stella at every opportunity. There's a bit of rivalry between them still, especially for important things like proximity to the fire...

Can I bump her off without anyone noticing?

All our friends love Barney. They fondle his ears and say 'Well, you landed on your feet, didn't you!' But in fact we are the winners. We'll be telling Barney stories long after he's carried his last big stick over the rainbow.

Meanwhile, if anyone should ask you for a definition of serendipity, I think Barney's story would be a good illustration.

~*~

Note: Barney died peacefully in his sleep, inside, on his own bed, in November 2016. He was hugely loved.

The Things We Keep

Today I set about cleaning up my study. I know. Again! But after term break, you can't start off with a messy desk. A small, extra desk buried under paper, books and journals, was moved out; a spare armchair moved in. (This is where I'll sit quietly and read in my soon-to-be-tidy study.) Piles of books had to be put somewhere other than balanced on chairs, all bookcases being full; mountains of lecture notes, journals, cards and souvenirs had to be thrown out, recycled or allocated a space. Lucky I knew about Sisyphus.

There was a throw-out pile, a recycle pile, an op shop pile, a 'X might like this' pile. And then there was the problem pile. What to do with all those things I had decided to keep because they were too pretty, precious, unusual or dear to my heart to throw away? And I'm talking years and years worth.

I'm talking about little things like this on a postcard (below left) from a Sydney Writers Festival some years ago:

Where that came from is anyone's guess. I've never been to the Sydney Writers Festival but the poem, by John Mc Mahon, is the kind I'd like people to recite to their 5 year olds at bedtime.

Amongst that same pile of small things was this tiny little book (right) devoted entirely to Longfellow's The Wreck of the Heperus.  A great and epic poem but again, origin of this book unknown. My mother was fond of telling us she felt like 'The Wreck of the Hesperus' if things were getting on top of her so I can't relinquish that, can I.

In the piles to be dealt with there were countless arty-crafty projects planned or started and never finished. Paints, collage materials, pressed flowers, beads, 2 polystyrene heads and packets of wooden dolly pegs I'd bought in case they ever became obsolete. (If they do, I have lots.) 

These (above) must have been from when I decided to resurrect a childhood activity of making treasure maps so authentic my 8 year old cousin and I easily fooled our mothers, on Bribie Island one weekend, into believing that we'd found a real pirate treasure map! Well, they said they believed us... It required a paper picture, the edges torn unevenly, then soaked in cold tea, dried and all the edges burnt over a lighted match.

No worries about playing with fire even then.

More difficult to dispense with was this supplement from The Times in, I think, 2003, following the discovery of a previously unknown novella by Charlotte Bronte.

I was sure it would be a literary treasure beyond imagining but who wants it now? It's no doubt readily available to one and all on the internet. Find it and hit print, I bet. But still I probably won't throw out this paper version from The Times.

Endless unused cards and postcards turned up, carefully preserved but obviously too beautiful for me to give away. How pointless is that? I suspect I feared that the recipient wouldn't love them as much as I did so instead they've sat unseen in a box for more years than I care to confess.

Here are two below. Maybe I'll frame them and swoon over them until, like many things we hang on our walls, I don't see them anymore. Better to find them like this every once in a while and appreciate them all over again.

The one above left is from a platinum photograph  by one P. H. Emerson, (1856-1936) in the Australian National Gallery called Gathering Waterlilies.

The other is a photograph by Frank Hurley - Gathering anemones at Belah, Palestine, 1918

And below, the one that stopped me in my tracks - a copy of the leaflet from my mother's funeral. Despite a haphazard education that ended when she was 13, Margaret Mary Murray (née Malone) loved poetry and could recite it till the cows came home. This, below, was one of her favourites - and one she lived by.

And how do you get back to the clean-ups when you find that?

I know the internet is the source of all things just waiting to be found. However, there is something tangibly beautiful about printed objects that we can hold - and keep.

~*~