Limestone Man (14 page)

Now you don't want a guitar.

No.

First you want a guitar. Then you don't want a guitar. What do you fucking want then?

His son had choked again.

A fucking ukulele, he at last managed to say.

And they had dissolved for the last time.

V

But while Jack continued to sing their blues, his son grew quiet.

Parry looked about him at the other cars. He saw redbrick terraces, back
-
street foundries, tyre depots, Chinese chipshops. And everywhere the barbed wire that hung above the walls of The Works.

He wondered whether he would spend his life there. Or celebrate his escape from that future waiting for the children of the plain.

In fact, ‘Citadel' was a word Parry loved. It was the title of a song by the Rolling Stones.

Parry had once enjoyed that song. But only because it featured his favourite musician, Nicky Hopkins, who had played on the recording.

Yes, that Nicky Hopkins, Parry would smile at anyone he thought was listening. A genius. Yes, a session genius. But always in the background, as the classic sessionman must be.

Parry would explain this in his sitting room above
Badfinger,
in the shop itself, or The Paradise when ordering a bottle of red.

Nicky Hopkins? Parry would announce. What a musician. Could play all day. All night. But someone who never received his dues.

Then, poor bastard, he has Crohn's Disease. I'd say he was dead by fifty. Surely no more. And by then, he was alienated. Had a bellyful, if you pardon the expression. So he hated the industry.

You know, Parry would say, if he had drunk enough, I was going to write Nicky's biography. Got the title, the only title possible. ‘Sideman'. Like it? Yes, ‘Sideman'. Says it all.

And, remember this, Nicky Hopkins even played with The Easybeats. We had a poster of him in
Hey Bulldog
back in Oz. People used to ask who it was, this young man with muttonchop whiskers. Just a kid. Spare as a sparrow. Always bent over a white piano.

That Dutch couple who ran the Goolwa Motel? They thought Nicky Hopkins was wonderful. Understood about good and bad luck, see. Classic yin and yang. Yes, they'd say. Nicky, Nicky, poor Nicky. He wasn't famous enough. Yet maybe he was too famous.

Remember, he was the pianist on ‘She's a Rainbow'. And that's enough for some people. His role amongst the immortals is guaranteed by performing on that single track. Despite the harmonies.

Yeah, Little Nicky. With his dodgy guts. Being a genius and making it seem easy.Not everyone could forgive him that.

And Lulu? She loved Nicky as well. And if Lulu loved you, that was good enough for me.

Her eyes on the stars. Beautiful
-
looking boy, she thought he was. With great hair. Remember, he played the harpsichord on ‘Citadel'. Brian Jones was on that track too. Another angelic bastard. Brian played the mellotron. One of the first rock musicians ever to try that instrument.

Yes, poor Brian. Brian and Nicky, carrying their own doom. That pair, cursed by their own black magic. Gave their best away too easily. Not ruthless enough. Or perhaps too ruthless. Who's to say after all these years?

They weren't the inheritors, you see. Not the true inheritors. But we know the ones who cleaned up, don't we? The ones who kept their ears open. And are doing it still. That doesn't take much guessing.

Listen. Nicky Hopkins played on ‘Imagine'. And thirteen different albums by the Stones. Thirteen! That's more than Brian. The Stones thought he was the business.

Keith kept making the call. And Nicky kept answering. Got him playing on ‘Citadel', adding all sorts of colour. That was Nicky, see. Colouring the tone. Enriching it. Adding crimson where there was only the idea of red. Experimenting with scarlet. With cadmium red. Black keys and the white keys reversed. Remember they used to do that to harpsichords.

And the sound like gemstones. Or a fringe of firelight. Think of making a sound like that. Creating music like that. And that was why people like Keith Richards wanted his number.

VI

When Parry's phone rang there was no one there.

Hey, Dad, I know it's you, said Parry. Look, I'm coming round soon. I promise, Dad. I'm coming. Soon.

TEN

I

All those brassy trumpets, said Parry. The flowers were insane. But it was the heat that ruined it for me. Or made it too difficult. I was used to a sky the colour of oyster shells. But Adelaide was blue, accusing. The mirages in suburbia trembled like cellophane.

And Goolwa grew heavier as the river dried up. Soon the town was hot as a foundry. Even the tropical flowers were unbearable. Yes, brassy trumpets. All that molten growth.

One evening I went with Lulu down to the river and she told me what I'd see.

Quiet a moment, she said. Be quiet just an itsy bitsy moment.

Good advice. I'd been telling her it was impossible to keep
Hey Bulldog
running. I thought of the dust on the window. The red dust on the counter.

It was all costing money, though not what
the shop is setting me back here on The Caib. Yet it was a drain on my time. My precious time. But above all, it meant too many people were unhappy with me. That I was displeasing them.

And no, I didn't like that. Can't stand disappointing people. If you're an adult, you have to learn the dangers of upsetting others. How much you can get away with. How long you might dare.

Maybe I was tired. But I was asking questions that were unnecessary. Like, what was the point in it all? The point in keeping a junkshop open on a quiet street. In a one horse town. The point in building, no, creating a ‘scene'.

When anyone who cared had left for Adelaide, and was wearing mad mascara. And drinking cappuchinos on Gouger Street. Or talking about bloody Blur. Or even ‘Seventy One Fragments in a Chronology of Chance'. Imagine that on The Caib.

Yes, the real city. Not a back garden with tea candles and jacaranda blossom. Where ‘Wonderful Land' was played till the vinyl was white. Yeah, a wonderful land under the baffling constellations. Wonderful even with the red ants, the black ants. Like something Lulu's dad might have done. If Lulu had a dad.

II

Parry continued talking.

Now, said Lulu. Here they come. Right on time. For you.

It was almost dark. Maybe it was midnight, I can't remember. The night was full of green music, the river whispering, the current sliding by, thicker than oil. Thicker than blood.

Those Goolwa nights, when we ventured out, were always filled with mysterious sounds. With dangerous aromas.

Once I'd seen two camels in the paddock behind the barrage. The field rubbed bald. Not a blade of grass remaining. Just two camels, snoring on the red rubber racetrack where the athletes trained. And I had to remind myself, yeah, this is Oz. Summer in Oz. Where else?

All evening I'd seen dragonflies on the splintered waters of the Murray. Green dragonflies circling the flood, crawling over the dried pools. Those pools with bleached punky crusts. Green dragonflies, maybe a foot long. Even longer. Yes, definitely longer. Dragonflies uglier than iguanas. Dragonflies whose wings crackled and droned like something electric left on overnight.

To look at them, it was as if their bodies were made of glass. Or beads, or emeralds. Amethyst engines, Indian ornaments. Yes, glass beads held together by green cotton pulleys. Greener than jewellery boxes pricked out in green lacquer.

Green was the devil's colour in medieval times. All art students are taught that. On The Caib, the green woodpecker is the devil's bird. Because of its mad laugh.

And those dragonflies looked devilish. Think of the television wars. Army uniforms with their green stars. Those flags sewn full of green stars.

Yes, the dragonfly bodies rustled in the green darkness under the willow leaves. Below the gum trees with their peeling bark.

And every tree was wilting in the stagnant air. Because the air itself felt as if it was vanishing. And the camels snoring. The camels whimpering in their dreams. Imagine camel dreams.

Then imagine the air trembling with all of the nameless creatures that crept down to drink in the shrinking pools. All those animals sharing the atrocity of thirst. Creatures whose names I was afraid to ask.

Lulu laughed and told me to watch for snakes. She hissed her warning. Hissed and that's all I could hear, Lulu hissing, hissing, where the black water joined the black earth. Those disappearing pools black as tarsand.

Then Lulu touched my arm. I'll never forget that touch. She stroked me as a mother might stroke her child. As a lover might. But natural and innocent.

And rising out of the dust we disturbed I could see moths. Bright as tournament flags, those moths. Yet moths as pale as the inside pockets of best clothes. Clothes never worn.

And the Murray waters were suddenly deep at our feet. Green as baize, those waters. Green as shantung silk.

Then I saw the dragonfly hawks. Suddenly the hawks were there and out of nowhere they were feasting on the dragonflies. Sucking the dragonflies' green blood. Crunching the dragonflies' bodies like prawn crackers, the dragonflies' green bones splintering in the hawks' mechanical mouths. Until those bodies were like some Thai green curry paste.

Yes, when those hawks passed over us they were so close I could sense their wings beating. Sense the green gossamer of the hawk feathers.

I asked Lulu if there were any alligators and she laughed.

Other end of the country, she said. The rainy end. Good job you don't teach geography.

There was a full moon in Goolwa that midnight. And I could see the full moon's milk, its membrane on the Murray. That moonskin on the mirrors of the dying river pools.

Those pools were where the children always swam. That was where I watched Lulu shimmy out of her underwear and slip into the current, the riverwater warmer than bloodheat as she held her arms above her head. Such skinny arms.

Then Lulu was naked. Her breasts were unbroken buds. Buds never to burst. Boyish Lulu, red as Goolwa honey. Red as the hibiscus honey I once bought from that Dutch couple.

Yes, a rich river, the Murray. Delirious with drought. Dangerous with drought.

But the earth was dry. There was barely a skillet of dew to be boiled where the midnight dragons crawled in their cannibal carnival. And lay in ruin on the water.

III

Yeah, Lulu was quite a kid, said Parry.

Look, I didn't have time for the shop. Teaching had to come first. But for a while, for a wild eighteen months, it
worked.

And
Hey Bulldog
built a reputation for having let's say, intriguing stock. Postcards, posters, paperbacks. And events, always events. Launches and little festivals.

Okay, there was nothing coherent in what we sold. But endless fascination. There'd be piled up magazines from Australian poets, old tapes, art books. Anything vaguely alternative. Or self
-
improving.

Yes, including yoga. Sorry, not my idea. Some religious stuff got mixed in with it all. With the environmentalism and the more metaphysical material. Again, not my plan, But a garage sale for the soul, all right. A carboot jamboree.

You see, said Parry, I still believe in self
-
improvement.

In that I might conceivably somehow get better.

That's the giveaway morality that explains everything I've done. The clue to
Hey Bulldog
that was, and the clue to
Badfinger
which is starting out. My last wager. No doubting how it will end.

How did it end at
Hey Bulldog?
asked Mina.

Badly. Like all premature endings. Frankly, I couldn't keep up the pace. There was the job, which was more than enough. On top of that was the deadly commute. It was sixty miles into Adelaide, and I'd hit the road at 6.30am.

You know what I recall on that journey? Fields of sunflowers the farmers planted.

Then one day I was driving through those sunflowers. And I realised they were dying. The landowner must have sprayed them with poison. Perhaps so the sunflowers died at the same time. Sunflowers with faces bigger than television satellite dishes.

I stopped my car in the middle of the sunflower field. And the sunflowers went on for miles. Tell the truth, I was surprised they planted sunflowers. Don't they take all the water from the soil? Their rootballs are like huge fists.

You know, sunflower leaves are sharp. Rough and sharp like an old man's skin. No, rougher than that. Because an old man has gentle skin. Tender skin, like old stained satin.

But these sunflowers were dying together. There must have been a million sunflowers. Every sunflower face was green and black and swollen with seed. And every seed sharp in its satchel. All I could do was stare at those sunflowers stretching as far as the surf.