CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FOUR


Yeah, the old life. I can't remember exactly how it started, which particular conversation ended with me thinking "Enough". I don't even really remember who the conversation was with. Maybe it was a situation rather than a particular conversation. I don't know. Most likely it was a combination thing. It's strange. You start to think of these things and you think of something that at the time didn't seem death-ray pivotal, but it keeps poking its head into your thoughts. I remember there was this one exchange I had with Catherine ages ago. There were better ones in terms of fire and brimstone. There were funnier ones, sadder ones and ones that were more typical, but this one keeps raising its head. Maybe it’s just because of the stupidity of the whole thing. I don't know.

"Why can't we be more like the Aborigines?"
Ah, yes. The Aborigines. Why weren't we more like the Aborigines? If I was a betting man, I wouldn't have gone for the 66/1 shot that this would be an anthropological question. No, the clever money would be on the 4/1 on favourite. Grief. So, what critical jewel were we going to be treated to now? But that wasn't the real question. The real question was this. How to answer. Dull sarcasm?
"What do you mean? Volunteer to do the work of repressed minorities?"
Dull. A sharp stab with the fabled wit?
"Emigrate to Australia and volunteer to do the work of repressed minorities?"
Dull. A mildly disinterested nod?
"Oh?"
Ease of exit pointed the way to the mildly disinterested nod.
"Oh?"
"The Aborigines didn't have a written language so everything that they knew had to be passed on by word of mouth, by telling each other stories. Everything became a story and if anyone wanted to tell anyone anything or communicate anything they had to talk to each other. They couldn't send each other long, laborious letters full of circumstantial logic and circular truths. They had to talk."

We'd had this talk talk before. I had tried to explain that if we had anything to talk about, we'd talk. That was a stupid tack. It was easy for the row to follow. I had also tried to explain that it wasn't the quantity of your conversation that counted., it was the quality. What I should have done was said that we didn't talk to each other because we couldn't talk to each other because as soon as either of us opened our mouths, the other was gripped by a near murderous impulse. But I didn't say this. What I did was write letters. It had once seemed to be the only way to get a rhythm going, a flow. It was pointless. Rather stupidly, I noticed that I had left a window open.
"I read somewhere that the Aborigines were skilled painters."
I could never resist the dull sarcasm. And that was the end of that.

There were other conversations that came and went, but none of them ever seemed to do anything but confirm that doing what you wanted to do was the right thing to do. There was the work.
"I don't understand you. I mean, of course I understand that you want to travel and explore, but for you to do it now seems really stupid. You're just in the middle here. You've spent quite a bit of time, enough to get yourself known and to have a good reputation, but not long enough to make yourself indispensable. Why don't you reconsider, give it another couple of years. By then, you'll be able to call the shots, you'll be in a position to go away for a while and negotiate terms which will ensure you your job is waiting for you when you return."

Eminently sensible, every word. There was no arguing with the logic. But I didn't want sensible. I wanted out. Now.

"The dudong is fucked. I read only this morning that one was washed up on shore, death by oil. It's only the first one reported, but it can only get worse."
OK, I had a bit of a thing about dudongs. Dudongs and manatees – these beautiful subterranean creatures that, so the stories go, fuelled all those old tales of mermaids. Theirs was a singular beauty, a mother’s beauty, the beauty of age. The only thing was… my thing about dudongs was just another of those things we didn’t share. She considered it one of my strange quirks. I considered it vital.

I kinda knew that invoking the dudong was doomed, but – really, I mean this – it really did make logical sense to me. It was the type of logic that couldn't be argued against, unless you consider "Am I supposed to understand that? You don't want to talk to me? Fine. Don't talk to me." to be an argument.
"Look, I'm just being honest. All I mean is that if you stay too long in one place, you can get caught. If the dudong had kept an eye on the situation and been aware of what was happening, it would have been OK."
"I don't know what a dudong is and I don't suppose it really matters. You're making as much sense as a 4-year-old."
“Well, they say that as we get older we become more childlike.”


Everyone has their tales of glory, their tales of woe. "He's an ordinary geezer, doesn't seem to have any grief". But it's not true. Everyone has their grief. Well, everyone here does anyway. Everybody everywhere does. Family grief. Parental grief. Boy grief. Girl grief. Body grief. Mind grief. Grief grief.

I knew how I'd got there. It was more or less the same story of why I was leaving. I don't mean the cold, I mean the unnecessary agg. It wasn't just the woman thing. There was also the other woman thing. Names are so unnecessary at this stage. They merge into one more often than not anyway. And then there were the times when there wasn't a Kate or a Karen – fictional, of course - to give the grief. Maybe that was more grief.

The road out was ridiculously easy. It was just a regular meal out at a regular place with a regular mate, but it was one of those days. Biorhythms or something.

"I'm pissed off" I said.
"You're pissed off? You should sit in my office for day. Then you'd really know about pissed off."
"Why should I sit in your office? I sit in my office. I know about pissed off."
"And the woman grief?"
"The woman grief you know about. The woman grief's the woman grief which is the woman grief."
"Doesn't help, does it?"
"Is it meant to help?"
"No. I don't suppose it is. I don't know. I just don't know."

“You know something,” I said. “Do you ever get to feel that something’s passed you by?”
“Sure. What was her name last week? Emma. She passed me by, and as quickly as her little legs would carry her.”
“No, I mean it. Do you ever feel that something’s passed you by? That the world has changed and you’re not there.”
“Are you going to get serious on me here?”
“I think so. Listen. Switch on the telly and it’s all Ibiza this and Ibiza that. Go into any record shop and all you see is kiddie music, smug middle-aged music and dance compilations and I’m not a kiddie and the thought of listening to the Eurythmics greatest hits…”
“And?”
“And do you know the difference between underground garage and progressive trance? Have you ever danced all night off your head on E? Have you ever been to The Big Chill and tripped till morning?”
“The Big Chill?”
“Never mind. I read a review in the paper a while back. Burning Man.”
“Look. I know what you’re talking about, but it’s called life. You do things, you get older and then you do other things.


This went for, I don't know, maybe three double espressos. And then...
"So what are we doing here?"
And that was it really.

You always feel that you're alone in your grief, that other people don't know. What do they know? What can they know, with their dinner parties and their Clariss Cliff pottery? But they know. In their own ways, they know. It's quite at shock at first, but then when you hear them say "So what are we doing here" in exactly the same way that you've just said it, the shock goes. All it takes is another few doubles and then you say it. "Let's go." You say it and they say it and neither of you really believe it. If you were that type of person, you'd have done it years ago. If you were that type of person, you wouldn't be needing to say it now. But then the word gets around and then they all laugh and then you think "fuck them."

I remember my old man said that once. "Going's easy. It's staying that's hard." But then again, what did he know? He was the one who said my life was too easy. "The trouble for people like you is that you've got too many choices."