Limestone Man (30 page)

So the band became The Black Cockatoos. At least, that was one of their names. And they sounded like cockatoos. That typical echo you hear when they're flying.

But it was obvious that Lulu was ill. It was horribly hot, and her skin was dry. Soon she was vomiting. I bought a thermometer in the pharmacy and immediately her temperature went up to 103. Scared me.

She lay in my bed but couldn't keep her clothes on. The weather was impossible. I placed bowls of water around the shop, trying to cool the air, bathing her face, making her drink.

I'll never forget the worst day. She lay in the green light behind the sunscreens. A child on fire before my eyes, delirium's honey
-
thick sweat in the pool of her throat.

A green demon she looked to me. A gap
-
toothed green child, speaking an incomprehensible language. The alien in my bed.

I'd sit with her and bring ice and towels. Or make her take aspirin. While outside on the pavement and down the street, The Black Cockatoos were rehearsing their set. Just a bunch of children singing in the dust, ragged versions of
Louie Louie
and
Anarchy in the UK.

Their parents were there too, laughing, drinking beer. Two of the dads used to coach the kids. The rest of us listened to those children sing about being an Antichrist. Being an anarchist. You know that song?

Nuh … no, said Serene. Don't think so.

There they were, explained Parry, The Black Cockatoos. Twelve year olds let loose with mikes and amps. Then coming back to the shop for milk and biscuits.

Wasn't that what I'd wanted? What I had been working towards. Making a statement. Some kind of cultural manifesto.

But I'd wonder, there behind the sunscreens, in the afternoon glare, at the hottest hour of the drought, the worst drought of the century, what on earth had I done?

To make everything worse, there was Lulu. Her hair matted, an old Adelaide Crows shirt, just a sodden rag, on her back. Yeah, blue, red and gold, that shirt. Someone said it was an original. A first edition. Like a book.

What a day. That worst day I'd wring her shirt out like a dishcloth. And listen to Lulu's madness.

She was talking about her grandmother. Or telling me she was unravelling. Her whole body, as if it was wool, or thread, somehow unravelling. Like taking strings off a guitar.

I thought I knew how she felt. Because I was unravelling too. Listening to these baby punks in front of the motel. Their parents were determined to make a session of it, egging The Cockatoos on, spraying beer around.

And then, to crown it all, an official delegation arrived. Because of the racket.

But all day long, on the worst day, I stayed put. I sat in the shop watching ice melt in the ice bucket and ice water running down Lulu's face and belly. Lulu might have been my wife. And I should have wept.

Because I knew then I was mistaken not to have had my own children. It dawned on me as clearly as any lesson could. That I had been a fool. That I had been selfish.

There in the green afternoon. The afternoon of fever and anarchy. With a green child whose brow was burning under my palm. With a kid whose shirt was black with the froth of delirium. Yes, a child who was accusing me. While the other children, the antichrist children, told me I was guilty too.

Yes, there behind the screen I should have wept. But I don't think I did. No, I don't think I wept. As I never painted.

Instead I sat there while the ice melted. And watched Lulu pull the strings out of herself. And then, on the hottest day of the worst drought the country had ever known, you know what happened? Can you guess?

Er … don't think so, murmured Serene.

The ukulele band arrived.

II

The mist hung outside the Paradise Club. The friends were huddled in a corner by the bar.

Ever seen a film called
Storm Boy
? asked Parry. Made in the momentous year of 1976.

So what were you doing in '76? asked Mina.

Good question. Trying to work out all the punk stuff. Still listening with Gil and those to bands who played twenty
-
minute drum solos. Deciding I was good at art history, and that maybe I should be a lecturer. See, I was delusional even then…

And what happened?

Applied for jobs but they didn't quite … take. In the meantime, I decided to go back to The Works. To tide me over while I waited.

That carbon paper job?

It paid, love. Dad was right. Dead end work like that has an effect. It's comforting, you're never challenged. You understand exactly what the job means. Often it means nothing.

After college, I just walked into The Works one Monday morning. They said welcome back, what took you so long? It was that easy.

And you stayed for…

Four years. And eleven months.

Burning paper?

Look, it was a real job. Ridiculously well paid. After a while I moved to other duties, but, yeah, they were all pretty menial. Compared to history of art lecturing. Which I never did. Or compared to studying. Or teaching. Which I was good at.

After a while there was a clerical job on offer at The Works and I breezed in. Too bloody easily.

A month later I remember the department's Christmas party, trying the Grand Quiz. One of the questions was about the jobs people did before they became famous.

You know, like Kenny Everett, the disc jockey, working in a bakery. He used to scrape burned sausage rolls off the baking tins. These days people haven't a clue who Kenny Everett is. Such is fame.

Wanted to be famous did you? said Mina.

Parry paused. Didn't we all. Or should I say don't we all? And isn't that the trouble? We've been infected by the sickness.

And then you trained as a teacher?

Eventually. Could have stayed at The Works. They liked me there. But teacher training seemed the better bet.

You were all teachers, you lot, said Mina. That John Vine, Gil, Sian. All bleeding the country dry with your pensions.

It's different for the rest of us, she added. I'll be in Basement Booze till it closes. Which children, is only three months away. You're not supposed to know. After that, everything's a mess. Look, how old am I?

Thirty
-
two, said Fflint, through his glass.

Not so bloody old I won't have to try the Job Centre soon. Now they've changed the pension dates.

So, said Mina, it'll all be meaningless retraining. Then travelling to somewhere that's ninety minutes away by public transport. Then ninety back. It scares me.

That's why I've started
Badfinger
, said Parry. Christ, some places have to stay open. Caib Street's a disaster area.

But you don't pay, do you? said Fflint. You're running on volunteers. What's the good of that?

We offer expenses, insisted Parry. And listen, we're providing the experience of work, the community of work.

Yeah, I know the shop's small, he went on. But all it needs is vision. Okay, and a business plan. Don't tell me I should have stayed burning carbon.

Look, every record and poster in
Badfinger
has its own story. What I say to people like Glan and Serene is, learn that story. Make it your own. Come on, let's see
Badfinger
thrive!

Like your place in Oz? said Fflint.

Anyway, said Parry, you should try and catch
Storm Boy
somewhere. It's set in The Coorong. All sand bars and pelican beaks.

Now, The Coorong's near where I lived in Goolwa. The pelicans in the film had names. One died only recently in Adelaide Zoo.

I think it was on one afternoon, said Mina. When I had flu.

But you asked about the weather, shrugged Parry. That summer was so hot, we even called off school sports events. Rarely done over there. Then autumn stayed dry and everything was …
ominous.
It was one dry year after another in a disastrous series of dry years.

Libby used to tell me how worried everyone was. Because she was worried herself. But I was obsessed with starting
Hey Bulldog
. With finding stock, organising volunteer rotas and then rehearsals for The Black Cockatoos.

So it didn't really register with me. The weather, I mean. Yes, the whole state had become arid. A drought's not unnatural in South Australia. But I had to learn a drought can last years. And that's when it dawned on me that things were bad. That the country was in a crisis. But how was I to know? I'd arrived almost at the end of everything.

III

By then the ground was parched. Withered, I suppose. The look of a famished land.

Rain was expected, but rain wouldn't fall. Simply would not fall. And everyone was desperate for rain.

It was like an illness, a starvation of rain. People were rain
-
sick, cattle were crazed. It was the rain famine and I'd turned up in the middle. But as I said, it was difficult to tell, being an alien there. Because sometimes I felt an intruder, trespassing in another life. Which it was. Another life.

When it was windy there was too much dust. I remember the dust on the counter at
Hey Bulldog
. I could write my name, clean it off, then write that name again an hour later. Which meant dust all over the stock.

There was dust in my eyes and dust in my throat. Veils of dust drifting down the dirt roads around Goolwa. Some dust red, some dust grey. Riverbeds had disintegrated into dust. And that dust turned the sunset purple. Yes, tall indigo skies. Like a psychedelic album cover.

And you know, I could taste that dust on my tongue and the same dust sharp in my fillings. Ever seen a young trout with those red stipples on its belly? Or a foxhound with red sprockles on its paws? I looked like that trout at the end. A white man in a white shirt painted with crimson dust. Only this dust was brick
-
red.

We used to catch trout in Caib stream when I was a kid. Silver and red those trout. I can still remember tickling trout in the shallows.

IV

I'd already decided that anything was possible in that country. I spent my life being amazed. Yet though I depended on Lulu to tell me things, weather was unimportant to her.

For months, I was obsessed with the shop. Or the idea of
Hey Bulldog
. Once, we went to the library to look at astronomy books. To find The Pistol Star. But the real reason was for me to visit Gouger Street. To have another look at the market.

I was always trying to learn things for the shop. There was this café in the market and we ordered bowls of broth. Tofu, Chinese cabbage, something spicy like horseradish, which we'd grown on The Caib. Cheap, easy to make by the gallon. I thought, maybe we could serve food. Start a café.

Well, I remember Lulu's face. Grinning at me over the bowl, as she slurped her soup. Wild girl, making these sucking noises. So other people started to look. And the more they stared, the worse she behaved.

She had freckles, did Lulu. Darker on a dark skin. Like cappuccino chocolate. Not that she was black, nothing like. Lulu was mixed race, sandy
-
coloured. No, weak molasses, if you follow me.

That time she was ill she had this awful yellow tinge. Anyway, her hair was black hay. Yes, straw with a kink which she made even frizzier.

In the mornings she'd be walking around in these curlers she'd tied herself. Just rags, and a fag stuck on her lip. Her language first thing something ripe.

Yeah, Lulu, that little star. If she wasn't talking about stars, that is. Because stars were sanctified. Stars were sacred. On and on she'd go about The Pistol Star. How enormous it was. And what stars meant.

You what? I used to ask. No matter how big they are, stars don't
mean
diddly squat. Stars can't
mean
anything. Stars simply
are
. Nothing means anything. Or the other way about. But however you cut it, it's the same.

That surprised her, I think. But it's what I believed, and still do. Is there a holy principle in physics? I don't think so. Just things we haven't discovered.

But it's exciting to look, I understand that. Yet at the end, packing up the shop, all I remember were those copies of
Astronomy Today
that Lulu never returned to the library.

That was the hardest thing to do. Pack up
Hey Bulldog
without Lulu. Not knowing what had happened to her. Giving her things away. Her mug, her clothes.

What was I supposed to do? Lulu had vanished but nothing was resolved. There was no closure. Lulu was the missing particle we were looking for in the heart of the atom.

At the end, only Lulu could make sense of the country for me. She could be out in the desert still, for all I know. Gazing up at the skydust.