Alone

I trail upstairs with my basket. The room has a hollow light, shadows brimming in its dusty corners. I know there is a half-empty bottle of port lying somewhere under the wardrobe. I kneel and roll it out and uncork it and pour out a glass and sip burning sweet dark red wine. The sun wobbles in it, my own dark eyes wallow and stretch as I peer in it. How wine stings the mind, like a great humming bee. Blonde abeille.

It’s getting late. Old Jerry, his bottle of piss standing under the bed, will be hunched at his peephole by now for a squizz at tonight’s sheilas, goggling and giggling and clutching himself. Old Grace sits snarling, pricking dirty ears by a dark wall. Mrs O’Toole having a smoke, painting up. Caulking her wrinkles. He’ll be in port tonight. What are you doing? You must be going to come! If I rang? No. Never.

Another burning gulp and my throat and jaw tingle and ache. And another. I have spirits of salts to put in this ruby wine, but not yet. Out of the splintered sheep’s skull staring at me now with one gold eye great black ants came stilting over their stilting shadows. I wind a bracelet of my hair around my wrist bone. What did it die of, and the worms have eaten it? I had its translucent shoulder blade, sunlight shining in it as in a sea shell, but left it behind in a semi-trailer. There is still time. I am surrounded by a flatulent stench. Cabbage.

Folded in her faded Dubliners I have left the short story I tried to write about Mrs O’Toole, typed in laborious triplicate. Slice of life style. Sedulous ape, mon semblable. Only the names have been changed to protect the innocent.

HEROES

By S.I. Nonne.

Well, in the kitchen old Terry and his sidekick Charl the demon orderly were just sitting down, backs to the door, to yet another cuppa tea. Just brewed, by the look of the steam coming out of the spout of my pot, and my tea what’s more. Course Terry put Charl up to it. Beer’s more in Charl’s line, I would of said. One thing I will say for Terry, he won’t have a bar of beer. Not even other people’s. More mug me, I suppose, for leaving things laying round.

Me eggs are always going off, too. I ought to have a bit more sense by now, the Lord only knows. That Terry thinks he can get around me any old time with that blarney of his.

Like last time telling me the Irish stew I was saving for Puss Cat was the best Irish stew he ever et an he oughta know being a connasewer.

– Oh, was it now, says I. A connasewer, are you? I knew you were some kind a sewer!

Talk about laugh. The bludgers, they’d bleed you dry if they could get away with it. If I’d a known what I was letting myself in for running a rooming house, I wouldn’t of taken it on for anything. I’m too soft-hearted, that’s my trouble.

– I should of kept my cupboard locked, shouldun I, gentlemen.

The splutters and clatters as they twisted round. Not like that pair of old coots to get caught red-handed.

– Cripes! It’s Mrs M! Terry choked on a swig.

– Well?

– Jeeze! An’ me with a weak heart. Ja hafta come sneakun up on a bloke like that? Ja want me to burn meself?

– I’ll tell you what I want. I want you to lay off my tea, that’s what I want.

– Nearly jumped outa me skin, grumbled Terry, and winked at Charl. Charl give me a big smile.

– Have a cuppa now it’s made, eh, Mrs M? Go on, be a devil.

– Think I’m made a money, don’t you?

– We only borrered a spoonful till pension day. Jeeze! Add it on to the rent, why doncha?

– Serve you right if I did. Pair of bludgers.

I turned my back on them. Out of the corner of my eye, as I filled my copper kettle and lit the gas, I watched old Charl shamble up beside to me to keep an eye on his sausages splitting all over the pan. He bent over and fat splashed in his eye. Old fool, he was full as a boot. Where did the money for that come from, that was what I would of liked to know. I’m a martyr to rheumatism, he tells me the other day, drink’s the only thing keeps me alive. Ask me mate Terry here. It was the War done it. I oughta clamp down of course. Can’t let them get away with murder all the time. The hard luck stories they try to put over me! They think I’m such a softie, well they’ve got another think coming. I’ve had my share of hard luck. You won’t catch me snivelling about it into me booze. Or nicking people’s tea either.

– I’ve poured you a cuppa tea, Mrs M, says Terry, all smiles and social graces.

– Thanks for nothing. What a cheek. I’ll have a fresh pot. You go and wash out my teapot.

So up the old scarecrow prances to the sink, swills out the last of the tea and a whole heap of tea leaves and comes and hands me the pot by the spout with a great bow and scrape.

– That’s how the sink gets blocked.

– Ow, sorry, Mrs M. Forgot all about it.

– What do you think the gully trap’s for?

I give up. The kettle was puffing steam, so I poured the water into my pot and while it drew I perched on the horsehair settle warming my hands. Fat red wrinkly paws they are now and I had such nice hands when I was a girl everyone remarked on my hands on the hot teapot. Rubber gloves, that’s the ticket. Winter’s setting in.

More chilblains. If you rub lemon on them it helps.

– We was having a natter about the War, Charl said. He bent and stabbed a sausage and rammed it in his mouth. Dripping and dribble ran down his chin. Me mate Terry here reckons I oughta get a medal. For knocking orf more bloody Germans than all them bloody generals that get all the credit an’ the ’ardware and the big fat pensions.

I caught Terry’s eye and we sighed in unison.

– Tipped me the wink on the sly they did. Them POWs, I was told, they’ll all die of wounds received. Get it?

I was always pretty quick on the uptake. Got to work with me eyeperdermic an’ the buggers died like flies.

– No! Go on! Terry marvelled.

– Too right they did! The buggers died like flies.

Charl roared laughing. Spit and sausage burst out of his mouth. We’d heard it all before, the saga of Charl the demon orderly. I poured my tea and stirred it. Ah the lovely smell of tea. Ah Roma. I gulped it down. Charl looked like choking.

– They couldn’t work it out! ’Undreds of the buggers! An’ you know what was in me eyeperdermic?

– Whiskey? wondered Terry. He’s a wag.

– Air, mate. Plain bloody air. One squirt an’ you’re gone. And it didn’t cost a penny. That’s the beauty of it!

– Mate, you’re a hero. Terry pursed up his sour old eyes.

– I did my bit.

– Yeah, I know. Give it a rest now, fair go, sport.

– Whadyer mean? It was orders.

– Yair, well you’re not down the RSL now, you know. Charl lumbered up to the table and glared at Terry.

– Who the bloody ’ell are you to sling orf at the RSL. Go on. Who the bloody –

– I aren’t slinging orf, you bloody nong!

– You weren’t even in the bloody war!

– I’m a pacifist meself, Terry smirked.

Well and truly riled, Charl rolled back his sleeves.

– There happened to be a War on, Charl pronounced.

– Yair, I read about that in the papers.

– Blokes died, you bastard, so you could sit on your fat arse and sneer.

– What blokes? Them German POWs? jeered Terry.

– You’re asking for it!

– Me? Not on your life, mate. I’m no hero.

Charl advanced on him, head down like a bull.

– I’ll bloody wring your neck, you dirty little louse!

– Help! squawked Terry, hopping behind me. Watch out for the Digger with his eyeperdermic!

– That’ll do! I snapped. Now cut it out.

– You keep out of this, Mrs Malone. This little bastard’s gunna learn to respect –

– I said cut it out. You heard. I run this place. (Gawd help me.) I’m sick an’ tired of you two brawling. One more peep out of either of you and I’ll ring the cops and get the pair of you chucked out. For good.

– Jeeze!

– Ow, now, Mrs –

– Go on. Out.

Hands on hips, I watched Terry waddle to the sink, swill out the three cups and the teapot – what’s the use? – and carefully turn them upside-down on the draining board, and strut out into the yard. Charl grabbed his pan of snags with a snarl and slouched out the other door. He still had a couple of snags left, wallowing around in the dripping.

It makes you wonder what we’re put on earth for, I don’t know. Heroes. We cheered them off to the War. They killed and they got killed and had their bit of honour and glory and look at them. We’ll all die soon enough. I don’t know. Heroes. You’re telling me.

by Simon I. Nonne
Poste Restante,
Carlton, Vic.

Mon frère. Sent back by the Women’s Weekly and Meanjin with polite rejection slips and hidden away ever since in abject shame. Object of shame? Scorn. My all too mortal prose. On my school satchel S.I.N. was stamped in gold. A piquant paradox, those initials and that surname, intones Miss Jones. Now she will never see it in print to rue the day. I’ll leave this in your Dubliners in case you come and claim your books when it’s all over. I can write here. I wrote To Catherine, and Night, as well as Heroes. I recite Night to myself, going out into the city on the prowl. I burnt Night. Who cares?

Violent death of promising young writer. In highly suspicious circumstances. Do I dramatise myself? Melodramatise myself? Very well, I dramatise myself. I’m a melodromantic person.

I pour a full glass of heavy wine. Groping in dust, the crimson tree flares. Beyond my open window, leafy in the mirror’s bronze, panes glitter from fretty balconies and dusty yards. Copper in the hot wine, the low sun sinks. Shakes. I sip it down.

The one golden eye burns in the skull’s socket. I drop that earring too into my woollen bag and sling it over my shoulder. I slam the door after me and lock it. No. Unlock it, and grope down the dark staircase and along the hall on to the grey street.

Impaled on a spire, dust-furred, the sun bleeds in water. Sunken lamps flame. Murmur my incantation.

For Mrs O’Toole, in flabby cerise bulging over the balcony rail belching tea and portergaff, I am a yellow plaited head on long black legs, just bound to get into trouble one of these days or nights, just asking for it if you ask me, wandering off at all hours of the night the Lord only knows where. But a nice type of girl when you get to know her all the same, not like some hot little bitches I could mention but won’t. Whose face between her forks presages snow. Why is her face between her forks, contorted line, when if it was whose face presages snow between her forks it would still scan?

The squat shadow lurking under the streetlamp detaches itself from all prowling shadows and saunters behind, intent. I hurry along the street surging with cars bright against the dim park opposite. Trams and dusty trees. A lit tram trundles past on blazing, blazoning rails.