No one wants her to be found one morning lying in a laneway, taken from all of us who care for her because she has overdosed.’
The preacher’s voice seemed to drop down to a strange mechanical whisper in Stephen’s ear, as quiet as the inner voice of self-doubt.
Stephen could not reply. The preacher turned and went back into the theatre, locking the door behind him.
Stephen’s wrist began to ache as the blood flowed back. He stood for a few moments nursing it then walked down the laneway back out to the street. He got into his car and drove to a place where he was certain the doors would be open to him: the Hampshire Hotel on Parramatta Road.
* * *
Stephen sat solitary in the saloon bar and, over a beer and a cigarette, tried to weigh up the man he had just met. The preacher had spun his words out well, like a spruiker fronting a sex show, or a used-car salesman or a politician. Just like his father. They all had that same sideways calculating and slightly anxious glance, asking the question, have I got away with it? They all had the gift of the gab, that inviting smile. They got under your skin and, once they had, they took more than they gave.
Stephen contemplated without joy how he was caught between two of them. On the one hand, there was his father, the local butcher. A successful man with a large and profitable shop and money in the bank, who had always greeted his customers with a grin and a slogan, something picked up from the radio that appealed to him: We’re pleased to meet you and we’ve got meat to please you. What can we do for you today? George Hurst’s patter was all picked up from here and there, scraps of wit glued together, a dazzling patchwork. He made the housewives laugh, and some of his regulars had cried when they heard he had cancer. His father’s days of persuasion were over now, he could not sweet-talk the disease out of his bones as the substance of his body consumed itself.
And on the other side was the preacher, a man with a cold fish smile who left behind an after-chill which grew stronger the more you thought about him. Stephen nursed his wrist and wondered: who and what are you? What does Lucy want with you?
He ground out his cigarette in the ashtray and held up his glass for a refill. The man beside him got up and left the afternoon paper behind on the bar. Stephen took another cigarette, reading the banner headlines and the opening paragraph of the story without moving his head. For a few short seconds, the cigarette hung from his mouth unlit. Then he pulled the newspaper towards him and read it over again.
When the beer arrived, the barmaid said, ‘That’s such a shocking thing, isn’t it? And just up the road here too. You don’t feel you’re safe any more, do you?’
‘No, that’s right, you don’t,’ he replied perfunctorily and lit his cigarette at last, staring across the bar at the music machine in a darkened corner.
There had to be certain things Lucy could never do, no matter what she had told him during these last few months. Stephen had to believe this, he did not have a choice when the alternative was unthinkable. He preferred things to remain unsaid: he found they were easier to deal with that way, and later he could forget they had ever happened. He thought about the preacher again. Lucy, you get yourself involved with some fucking weirdos. When are you going to realise no one out there is going to give you what you want? The words snapped angrily in his mind.
He pushed the newspaper away and sipped his second beer. He wanted to be practical, to stop thinking, to find her. To bring her home safely and bury the past with his father’s death, to have it finished with once and for all. To make it something he never had to think about again.
He finished his beer quickly and stood up to leave.
7
‘Amazing Grace. We don’t get many people like you in here. Come and talk to me. You’re going to like me. I’m a real sensitive New Age guy.’
Ian
The preacher’s voice seemed to drop down to a strange mechanical whisper in Stephen’s ear, as quiet as the inner voice of self-doubt.
Stephen could not reply. The preacher turned and went back into the theatre, locking the door behind him.
Stephen’s wrist began to ache as the blood flowed back. He stood for a few moments nursing it then walked down the laneway back out to the street. He got into his car and drove to a place where he was certain the doors would be open to him: the Hampshire Hotel on Parramatta Road.
* * *
Stephen sat solitary in the saloon bar and, over a beer and a cigarette, tried to weigh up the man he had just met. The preacher had spun his words out well, like a spruiker fronting a sex show, or a used-car salesman or a politician. Just like his father. They all had that same sideways calculating and slightly anxious glance, asking the question, have I got away with it? They all had the gift of the gab, that inviting smile. They got under your skin and, once they had, they took more than they gave.
Stephen contemplated without joy how he was caught between two of them. On the one hand, there was his father, the local butcher. A successful man with a large and profitable shop and money in the bank, who had always greeted his customers with a grin and a slogan, something picked up from the radio that appealed to him: We’re pleased to meet you and we’ve got meat to please you. What can we do for you today? George Hurst’s patter was all picked up from here and there, scraps of wit glued together, a dazzling patchwork. He made the housewives laugh, and some of his regulars had cried when they heard he had cancer. His father’s days of persuasion were over now, he could not sweet-talk the disease out of his bones as the substance of his body consumed itself.
And on the other side was the preacher, a man with a cold fish smile who left behind an after-chill which grew stronger the more you thought about him. Stephen nursed his wrist and wondered: who and what are you? What does Lucy want with you?
He ground out his cigarette in the ashtray and held up his glass for a refill. The man beside him got up and left the afternoon paper behind on the bar. Stephen took another cigarette, reading the banner headlines and the opening paragraph of the story without moving his head. For a few short seconds, the cigarette hung from his mouth unlit. Then he pulled the newspaper towards him and read it over again.
When the beer arrived, the barmaid said, ‘That’s such a shocking thing, isn’t it? And just up the road here too. You don’t feel you’re safe any more, do you?’
‘No, that’s right, you don’t,’ he replied perfunctorily and lit his cigarette at last, staring across the bar at the music machine in a darkened corner.
There had to be certain things Lucy could never do, no matter what she had told him during these last few months. Stephen had to believe this, he did not have a choice when the alternative was unthinkable. He preferred things to remain unsaid: he found they were easier to deal with that way, and later he could forget they had ever happened. He thought about the preacher again. Lucy, you get yourself involved with some fucking weirdos. When are you going to realise no one out there is going to give you what you want? The words snapped angrily in his mind.
He pushed the newspaper away and sipped his second beer. He wanted to be practical, to stop thinking, to find her. To bring her home safely and bury the past with his father’s death, to have it finished with once and for all. To make it something he never had to think about again.
He finished his beer quickly and stood up to leave.
7
‘Amazing Grace. We don’t get many people like you in here. Come and talk to me. You’re going to like me. I’m a real sensitive New Age guy.’
Ian
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