The two men had met many times. The writer had said what he wanted to say. Confessed and, in confessing, half made amends for the many faults of his life. All of it recorded in the biographer’s tight script. They sat together now in the minimalist beach house the writer had built himself, warmed by the sun blasting through the huge glass walls, below it the Tasman Sea and the orange coastal stone. Talk turned to old loves, heartbreaks, mistakes.
She was a friend of my sister’s from university, the writer said. Technical college it was back then. Girl by the name of Miranda Miller. Blonde. Never out of a skirt. The Whipsnake we called her.
Sounds like a real terror.
Let me give you the character sketch. There was one fellow, Pill was his name. He’d gone really head over heels for the Whipsnake. She played up to it. Kissing him and whatnot. But never more than that. Never anything you might call affection. It drove this Pill mad. One night he gets well and truly pissed, and he pulls the bar towel off the bar. Spills all the beers. Spills my beer. Then he throws the towel at her.
Jesus.
Yeah. Well, I saw a lot of that. Blokes she’d played up to. Left bruised and sour. And I was wary of her.
The biographer took this down in the leather-backed journal balanced upon his knee, the pen now and then making a scraping sound on the page. So she was interested in you?
Oh yes. She told me that a lot. She’d give me these kisses on the neck. On the ear. Tiny soft things. But I didn’t want to be another corpse in her flower-starred meadow, you see. I wanted to stop my ears with wax.
The biographer nodded as he wrote. Sounds like Miranda might have been sort of a model for Watto in Dark Black Days, he said. Watto and Johnny share a similar history. At least that’s my impression.
The writer stood from his recliner and walked away to the windows. This was his habit, gazing out across the bay to the headland, chin cupped in thought. In the bay stood a single dome of rock fouled white with bird leavings. Waves rose and shattered.
He put his hands in his pockets. You’re right about that, he said. He turned to his biographer. Am I that bloody transparent?
Whether it was meant as a question the biographer wasn’t sure. He waited, pen a finger width off the page.
The writer continued. It’s been years but I still feel the needle.
The biographer scratched this down. Needle. He put a question mark beside it, underlined it. He hoped he would remember the context.
As the writer stared at the mountainous coast curving off into a haze of oyster-grey sea he continued to speak. Wisdom begins at the end, he said. But I was too long in getting there.
In what way?
Her father had left early on. Out of the blue. She remembered it vividly. The way her mother had burned his clothes in a kero tin after he’d gone. Burned his craypots and his ring nets. We’d drink and she’d tell me about it. More than anything she wanted to be a success. To prove the mongrel wrong, she’d say. To show what a mistake it was to leave.
The writer stepped back from the windows and crossed the dark hardwood floor to the dining table. It sat twelve though the writer was childless and unmarried and who all these guests might be was a mystery. He pulled back a leather chair and sat.
That must have affected her, the biographer said.
Yeah. It was like I’d found her subclause. I could see in a moment how it had altered her life. See it everywhere. The carry-on around fellas. The hard yards she put in at school. Chasing a job. Saving money. It all fell into place.
He took an apple from the bowl on the table. Each one polished and stacked precisely. He did not bite but turned it in his fingers, assessing the colour. He replaced it with the rest, squared it. That story of hers drilled into me, he said.
What do you mean? You stopped resisting?
Yeah, I did.
Because she was not what I had imagined.
The biographer flicked to a fresh page and wrote on. And this was nineteen-seventy-one, he said. Two years before you published Dark Black Days.
Seventy-one. Yeah.
The writer rocked back in his chair and folded his arms, the language of a younger man. His eyes inside the crease lines were bright and searching when he spoke again. She stayed one night at my house. Just one. It was the only night we spent together. This was her idea. She wouldn’t have sex. Not under my parents’ roof. She wanted to treat me differently, she said. I was different to the rest. Better. Important. But we talked and kissed. I had by now begun to feel strongly for her.
The biographer was writing steadily. He looked up. So what happened?
Well, she found a bloody job. As far from Launceston as you could get. She was leaving a couple of days after our last exams. That was always her plan. She hated Tasmania. We all did, of course. Young ’uns do, don’t they? But she was steadfast about getting out. Absolutely bloody steadfast.
There passed a few moments of quiet as the biographer took this down. On the page was a pencil sketch he’d done of the writer at work, hunched over his old Olivetti, feeding in a new sheet from a paper stack. He wrote around the picture and under it. With the final word caught he straightened up, cleared his throat. And she just left? he said.
The writer leaned forward. I sat with her on the night before she flew out. The Mowbray Hotel it was. There were some others there too. I forget. It was loud. A band was playing. We drank cider, I know that. She kissed me a lot. Later I reached across the table and took her hand, and I looked at her and I asked her to marry me. She smiled and glanced around the room. I waited. It was very noisy. I wondered if she hadn’t heard. So I said it again. She was looking around and smiling. She didn’t say a word.
What did you do?
I got up and walked out.
You walked out?
My oath I did. She was so silent. So cold. I didn’t want to see her again.
Maybe she didn’t hear you.
The writer laughed and it was unpleasant. His face settled into a hard grin. And that there is the needle in my shoe, he said.
The biographer was nodding his head as his pen tracked across the page. The fact you walked out?
The fact I will never know. It drove me to drink for a long while after. Just the thought of it. Had she heard me? The music was loud. She wasn’t that cruel person I imagined her to be. She never was. If I had just stayed, if I had just talked to her, it would have been otherwise. But I had left. I was no better to her than her useless bloody father. By the time I understood her, she was gone. And so I wrote out of grief. Eventually all that became Dark Black Days. Other parts went into Under a Weight later on.
Pretty fruitful, said the biographer.
What’s that?
I mean that grief. It was useful. You wrote Dark Black Days and then Under a Weight out of it. They’re your best works.
Wasn’t much of a trade, if you ask me. For a couple of second-rate books. Not much at all.
Your whole career might have its genesis in that one moment at the Mowbray. Incredible.
Yes. But who would want it? A pain that leaves you drunk for weeks. Leaves you laid out like a boxer.
I reckon anyone would take it.
Then anyone can have it. I can think of a hundred better ways to live.
He found her in South Fremantle. Miranda Swan, née Miller. It was an expense he had not budgeted for, flying out to interview this woman. He extended the limit on his credit card. If she had no story to tell it was a dead loss. He was worried, but he went.
She was waiting in her front garden beneath a spread of green shade trees. An elegant woman, even in summer shorts, blonde hair salted with grey but her eyes lively and blue. He walked through the ground cover of leafy tropical shrubs. There was no fence, no path. She waved and showed him inside.
The day was hot and dry. He took a big glass of iced water from her and drank it all without thinking. Then he pulled out his journal and started making notes of what he saw. It was a grand place. Wide wandoo floorboards the colour of tea. High ceilings and pressed-tin dadoes. He wrote and sketched as she pegged out her washing.
They sat at the kitchen counter to talk, the marble cool on his arms. He put to her the questions he’d mapped on the flight so that one led naturally into another, the intent behind each concealed. How long had she been here. Why Fremantle. Her husband. Job. Tasmania. Her father.
He was a goodhearted old boy, my father, she said. He’s been dead ten years but I still miss him every day.
The biographer hesitated, then wrote it down. So you got on well with him?
Yeah. I knew what my mum was like. He left for a reason. I left too, in the end.
She smiled as she spoke, crossed her legs and uncrossed them. When he moved on to the writer, her manner grew more restrained. She remembered the writer, remembered him fondly. But she seemed bemused by the biographer’s questions.
He called me the Whipsnake, she said, ’cause I only looked harmless.
Yes, he told me that.
Why are you interested in him? she said after a moment.
The biographer closed his journal. It was a question the writer had never bothered to ask. Was it self-evident that people would be interested? Or did the writer suspect his biographer’s motives but chose not to pry?
I had a girl in high school, the biographer said. Natalie. She broke my heart. His books just came along at the right time for me. It helped me understand things when I was a teenager. Things you can’t learn.
She raised her eyebrows. Like what?
You know. Women. Love. The bullshit that follows.
What does he know about women?
The biographer shrugged. A lot of people think he’s Australia’s greatest writer.
I wouldn’t know, she said. I don’t read books much.
What did you make of him back then?
He liked to have fun, she said. He danced. He drank a lot, which was great ’cause I did too. I don’t know. He was a nice sort of bloke. But he wasn’t good with women.
How do you mean?
Are you married? she said.
No.
Then there’s no use telling you. You’re no good either.
The biographer glanced around the kitchen. On the walls were portraits of children and grandchildren, the sort done at Kmart. There were wedding photos too. In them she was young, and he saw now why the writer might have longed for her. She had a quality.
The night you left Launceston, he said. Can you tell me about it?
She laughed. Oh come on, that was years ago. How could I remember?
You went to the Mowbray. There was a band playing. You drank cider with him.
Did I? You are a little mole, aren’t you? Digging all this up. What else does he say about me?
Ah, well. You’ll have to buy the book to find out.
Oh, very canny, she said, and she laughed and it was charming.
The biographer smiled. Miranda, this Miranda, the Fremantle grandmum, touched him on the hand then the way a girl might. It gave him a thrill. Those eyes of hers like cut glass inside a tanned and freckled face.
She put her elbows on the counter and covered her face briefly, then steepled her hands before her mouth. Yeah, we did drink cider, she said. We did. And we had some fish and chips. Yeah. He paid. He was a nice bloke. He always paid.
Did he say anything to you?
She looked at him warily. Like what?
I don’t know. Anything.
He asked me to marry him. Asked me twice, actually. But he never said goodbye.
The biographer frowned, and nodded.
Is that so hard to believe? she said, studying him. I heard that a lot when I was young, you know. I love you. Marry me. All of it.
So you said no?
I didn’t say anything. He wasn’t serious. I thought he knew me better. But I was wrong about him.
Did you ever think about it later?
No. Not until you called. Tell you what, I wish I had though. He must be loaded by now.
Back in his hotel room he opens the journal and goes through it again, gets things straight in his mind. He pulls out his phone, brings up the number and hits it. He will tell the writer. She heard him.
As it is ringing, he thumbs through his notes. Needle in my shoe. Pain that leaves you drunk. And beside it another absentminded sketch of Natalie.
He lowers the phone. It is ringing still, an insistent sound like a child wailing in the distance. He hangs up.