rid of the magazines and newspapers, shifting this or that piece of furniture into a more desirable arrangement, making the small adjustments that would erase all sign of him, of Mitch, from what had been so much of his making—from her life. Abruptly she threw the sock from her and stood there, shivering, hugging herself, in the middle of the room. Then, abruptly, sat where she had been sitting before. In the midst of it.
So what did she mean to do? Change nothing? Leave everything just as it was? The out-of-date magazines, that dead match beside the leg of the coffee-table, the bits of wire, the sock? To gather fluff over theweeks and months, a dusty tribute that she would sit in the midst of for the next twenty years?
She sat a little longer, the room darkening around her, filling slowly with the darkness out there that lay over the waters of the cove, rose up from the floaty leaves of the coral trees and the shadowy places at their roots, from around the hairy stems of tree ferns and out of the unopened buds of morning glory. Then, with a deliberate effort, she got down on her knees and reached in to pick up the match from beside the leg of the coffee-table. Shocked that it weighed so little. So little that she might not recall, later, the effort it had cost her, this first move towards taking up again, bit by bit, the weight of her life.
Then, with the flat of her hand, she brushed the strands of wire into a heap, gathered them up, and went, forcing herself, to retrieve the sock, then found the other. Rolled them into a ball and raised it to her lips. Squeezing her eyes shut, filling her nostrils with their smell.
Then there were his shirts, his shorts, his jeans—they would go to the Salvos—and the new things she had bought, which lay untouched in the drawers of his lowboy, the shirts in their plastic wrappers, the underpants, the socks still sewn or clipped together. Maybe Josh. She had a vision of herself arriving with these things on his mother's doorstep. An opening. The big man's pleasure as he stroked the front of his new poplin shirt, the sheen of its pure celestial blue.
She sat again, the small horde of the rolled socks in her lap, the spent match and the strands of wire in a tidy heap. A beginning. And let the warm summer dark flow in around her.
War Baby
C harlie Dowd spent the last weeks before he was inducted and went to Vietnam riding round town on a CZ two-stroke, showing himself off to people and saying goodbye.
It was August and cold: high dry skies, the westerlies blowing. He wore a navy blue air force greatcoat of his father's, who had been a Spitfire pilot in the war. It was belted and double-breasted with wide lapels, and when you turned the collar up your ears were covered. The skirts were so long that what Charlie saw in the long wardrobe mirror in his room (he'd been reading
War and Peace)
was a French cavalry officer in the Napoleonic Wars in flight from Cossacks. Anticipating his first day in camp he had been down to Sam Harker and had his hair cut short on top and shaved at the sides. When he stood and contemplated himself in the mirror, he really looked the part.
He had a routine. He got up late, ate the breakfast his aunt made for him, which doubled as lunch, then sat for a couple of hours in warm winter sunlight in the window of the pub. Always in the same place, looking out across the veranda rails to the median strip of the town's one main street, with a schooner of beer at his elbow on the chocolate-brown sill, and beside it, as a way of making himself at home, his pen, his wallet, the paperback he was reading, and the makings of the roll-your-owns he liked to smoke—papers, Drum tobacco in a plastic wrap, and an oblong tin not much bigger than a matchbox that contained the simple mechanism for turning them out. He took trouble over this, giving the roller a practised spin between forefinger and thumb, and when he ran his tongue along the edge of the paper, putting just
So what did she mean to do? Change nothing? Leave everything just as it was? The out-of-date magazines, that dead match beside the leg of the coffee-table, the bits of wire, the sock? To gather fluff over theweeks and months, a dusty tribute that she would sit in the midst of for the next twenty years?
She sat a little longer, the room darkening around her, filling slowly with the darkness out there that lay over the waters of the cove, rose up from the floaty leaves of the coral trees and the shadowy places at their roots, from around the hairy stems of tree ferns and out of the unopened buds of morning glory. Then, with a deliberate effort, she got down on her knees and reached in to pick up the match from beside the leg of the coffee-table. Shocked that it weighed so little. So little that she might not recall, later, the effort it had cost her, this first move towards taking up again, bit by bit, the weight of her life.
Then, with the flat of her hand, she brushed the strands of wire into a heap, gathered them up, and went, forcing herself, to retrieve the sock, then found the other. Rolled them into a ball and raised it to her lips. Squeezing her eyes shut, filling her nostrils with their smell.
Then there were his shirts, his shorts, his jeans—they would go to the Salvos—and the new things she had bought, which lay untouched in the drawers of his lowboy, the shirts in their plastic wrappers, the underpants, the socks still sewn or clipped together. Maybe Josh. She had a vision of herself arriving with these things on his mother's doorstep. An opening. The big man's pleasure as he stroked the front of his new poplin shirt, the sheen of its pure celestial blue.
She sat again, the small horde of the rolled socks in her lap, the spent match and the strands of wire in a tidy heap. A beginning. And let the warm summer dark flow in around her.
War Baby
C harlie Dowd spent the last weeks before he was inducted and went to Vietnam riding round town on a CZ two-stroke, showing himself off to people and saying goodbye.
It was August and cold: high dry skies, the westerlies blowing. He wore a navy blue air force greatcoat of his father's, who had been a Spitfire pilot in the war. It was belted and double-breasted with wide lapels, and when you turned the collar up your ears were covered. The skirts were so long that what Charlie saw in the long wardrobe mirror in his room (he'd been reading
War and Peace)
was a French cavalry officer in the Napoleonic Wars in flight from Cossacks. Anticipating his first day in camp he had been down to Sam Harker and had his hair cut short on top and shaved at the sides. When he stood and contemplated himself in the mirror, he really looked the part.
He had a routine. He got up late, ate the breakfast his aunt made for him, which doubled as lunch, then sat for a couple of hours in warm winter sunlight in the window of the pub. Always in the same place, looking out across the veranda rails to the median strip of the town's one main street, with a schooner of beer at his elbow on the chocolate-brown sill, and beside it, as a way of making himself at home, his pen, his wallet, the paperback he was reading, and the makings of the roll-your-owns he liked to smoke—papers, Drum tobacco in a plastic wrap, and an oblong tin not much bigger than a matchbox that contained the simple mechanism for turning them out. He took trouble over this, giving the roller a practised spin between forefinger and thumb, and when he ran his tongue along the edge of the paper, putting just
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