Lovesick

As the word got around town that Kooka had hung up his boots and was lying in The Sewing Room, a few locals took the trouble to visit during the daytime and see if he was okay. In fact for a few days there I was quite flat out before opening hours with showing these familiar faces up the stairs. Joe Conebush, whose grandparents had taken Kooka in as their orphaned cousin from the city in the 1930s, was one who stopped in for a stickybeak, and also Dusty Miller, Prickly Moses, Penny Royal, Old Jack Heath and his daughter Erica, and even David Baird, Minapre’s fitness-fanatic postman, came running by one day to pay his respects.

Everyone was quite concerned about the dear old fella, until of course they saw how contented he was in the big lumpy bed in The Sewing Room. Propped up there, with his broad tanned head poking out of his light-blue collarless pyjamas, he’d welcome everyone in quite cheerily, enquire as to the health of themselves and their families, and chat pleasantly enough until they’d seen what they had to see and could happily go about their business, knowing Kooka was perfectly alright. Sometimes on these visits they’d talk a little history with him, offering tidbits that they were sure he’d add to his archive, even though it still sat unpacked in its boxes over near the ocean window. They were surprised when he’d nod and say ‘go on’ but not reach for a notebook and pencil to record a precise account of the information. Later on, as we descended the stairs, I’d explain that he’d not only hung up his walking boots but his history ears as well. ‘Is that so?’ the visitors would say, or, ‘You’re kidding surely?’, and some of them would grow almost anxious at the thought. ‘You’re sure he’s alright, Noel?’ they’d ask, to which I could only reply that his appetite for food and drink was as healthy as ever and he seemed far from depressed, just a little more thoughtful if anything, and occasionally perhaps a little weary of the trivial things in life.

So we went about the daily business of the hotel, serving drinks and food, balancing out the demands of the clientele with our own idiosyncratic foibles. Sergeant Greg Beer kept a close eye on things as usual, occasionally we’d have another paying guest upstairs in Room Two between The Lazy Tenor and The Blonde Maria, and of course Dr Bernard Feast made regular morning visits, ostensibly to check out Kooka but always in perfect time to catch some of The Lazy Tenor’s arias. After every visit he’d leave shaking his head and smiling with an enchanted disbelief.

One morning I explained how if he was ever to show up for a drink at the other end of the day, during Happy Hour, he’d experience a disbelief of an altogether different order. ‘How do you mean, Noel?’ he asked. I explained that in fact The Lazy Tenor was in residence at The Grand Hotel because he needed somewhere quiet to write up his memoirs, and that every evening around five the bar was treated to an account of what he’d been working on that day. I explained that many in the bar found The Lazy Tenor’s stories extremely distasteful, and that if he himself was to hear some of the ribald details he’d have trouble believing it was the same man who could sing like an angel.

The doctor shook his head knowingly at this. ‘Ah, but that’s where you’re wrong, Noel,’ he said. ‘The extraordinary thing about his song is that he sings not like an angel but like a man. That’s why it breaks my heart you see, and why it makes me so happy. The voice sings, Noel, the note is true, but the timbre and the emotion are textured with real experience. An ability like that almost goes beyond music – it’s a rare gift – and whatever else he gets up to is obviously good for it. With artists such as that it’s often as if they are two people. A little bit like being a doctor perhaps.’

‘A doctor?’ I said, confused.

‘Well, yes. As old Bill Dwyer used to tell me when I first showed up as his young understudy in Minapre, we all have our private lives, Noel. We minister to the sick andlose our temper at home. We listen patiently to the obsessions of the town’s hypochondriacs andstop in ourselves for a gloomy afternoon playing the pokies in Colac.’

‘You play the pokies?’ I asked him.

Dr Feast laughed, and waved his hand dismissively. ‘Oh, don’t take me literally, Noel. You know what I mean.’

By this time The Lazy Tenor had been at The Grand Hotel for over a month, but as yet I’d seen no sign of the manuscript of ‘The Tradesman’s Entrance’. Of course we were all still enduring the anecdotes that were to make up the book every evening at Happy Hour, although I had finally convinced him to tell these lurid yarns in The Horse Room on a permanent basis, for the sake of the other patrons. But I was beginning to grow curious, given his propensity to big-note himself, that we hadn’t yet been shown even one page from his illustrious manuscript.

One day after lunch I climbed the stairs to check the linen in the vacant middle room. When I got to the top, I found the hallway trees and ducks and platypus alive as ever in the afternoon light. Down the far end I could see the door of The Sewing Room shut fast, with Kooka no doubt snoring behind it. I knew that sometimes The Blonde Maria would sit with him in the afternoons, and seeing that her own door was flung wide open I imagined that was the case.

The Lazy Tenor’s door, however, was shut. Craning my neck forward like the brolga in the clearing, I listened for a telltale clicking sound from his laptop keyboard. I heard nothing. The whole hotel was quiet and peaceful, with almost the air of a hermitage. Very gently the willows of the wallpaper rustled in the light breeze coming through the open doorway of The Blonde Maria’s room.

I knocked gently on The Lazy Tenor’s door and waited. There was no answer, and still no movement from within. I found myself standing there indignantly, questioning whether the book we’d heard so much about was actually being written at all. So I knocked again, a little bit harder. But still no response. I wondered if he’d gone out but felt sure I would’ve seen him if he had. I’d been cleaning in the bar and in the sunroom all morning and he would have had to pass me to leave the hotel. I popped my head through the bathroom door next to his room to make sure he wasn’t in the bath but no, he surely wasn’t. And then, perhaps irrationally, given how happy and confident The Lazy Tenor always seemed and how quiet his room had always been in the afternoons, I worried that perhaps he might have done away with himself in there. Yes, the mind plays tricks, particularly in the memorial stillness of night or on a dreamy afternoon in an empty hotel. But, suddenly convincing myself that it was my proprietorial right to make sure things hadn’t gone astray in one of my rooms, I turned the door handle and pushed it open.

The room was dim, the curtains pulled across the partially opened sash window. Straight ahead at the desk under the window there was no sign of a laptop, just a half empty bottle of Laphroaig and a newspaper opened at the crosswords. The Lazy Tenor’s green suede jacket was on the back of the desk chair and his packet of cigarettes had fallen out of the pocket and was lying on the carpet beside the chair. There was a smell of cigarette smoke in the room but not a stale smell, rather an old attractive smell, with a hint of cigar about it.

Then, looking towards the bed against the wall to my right, I saw what I was in no way meant to see. Sleeping peacefully, with naked limbs entwined on top of a single sheet, were The Lazy Tenor and The Blonde Maria. Their bodies were glowing through the gloom, still luminous with sweat, The Blonde Maria’s spent form splayed languidly like a figure in a Bonnard painting across The Lazy Tenor’s rufous stomach and thighs.

It was a scene of great repose, great sensuality, and, needless to say, great privacy. I quickly stepped backwards through the doorway and hurried down the stairs. I felt foolish, and intrusive. I couldn’t believe that I hadn’t put two and two together. In my naivety, misled by The Blonde Maria’s recent monastic air, I hadn’t considered it possible that these two highly sexual musicians, alone in the upstairs floor of a country hotel, day in, day out, with only a sleeping local historian as chaperone, might somehow find their way into each other’s rooms. Well, that was exactly what had happened. I shouldn’t have been surprised, but I was. And yet that was nothing compared with the complicating surprise I was presented with later that same evening by Joan Sutherland.

It was a busy night, and now that The Lazy Tenor had agreed to hold court in The Horse Room rather than in the bar we all had a good time during Happy Hour with my brother Jim’s first non-musical contribution to the entertainment. He had put together a short mockumentary film, which we accessed on the big screen via YouTube, called ‘The Dying Gardens of the Great Ocean Road’. In it Jim posed as a celebrity gardener touring the private gardens along the coast, delivering an earnest narrative about the supposedly catastrophic effects of the Great Australian Drought. The joke was that despite him being dressed comically for ultra-parched conditions, in park ranger shorts and a bush tucker man hat, he described the devastation of the Great Drought with a background of Otway drizzle and from a series of lovingly cultivated and obviously flourishing green gardens.

The locals in the bar lapped up this piss-take of Jim’s. They were always ready for a parochial poke at the mainstream media’s expense, so the film set the mood for the night. The food was top-notch too: kangaroo steaks with mushroom sauce for the carnivores and leek and mushroom vol-au-vents for the vegetarians.

Around eight o’clock, after the fun of ‘The Dying Gardens of the Great Ocean Road’ and a hearty meal, Jim had happily swapped his cinematic for his musical hat and The Barrels were in full flight. I’d confided to him only the day before that I’d given up on The Blonde Maria ever descending the staircase again, and the new certainty of that unfortunate situation seemed to have relaxed the band. They were no longer anxious for her return, even though they would always long for another late-night party in her room. As far as their music went, well, they were not quite up to what I would have liked, but nevertheless they had improved since playing a few nights with an inspired expert. Either way both Jim and I were resigned to our self-sufficient fate.

Near the end of The Barrels’ first set I noticed Joan and Jen Sutherland having a disagreement just outside the door of the hotel. I could see Dylan and Dougie waiting forlornly under the pine tree and could feel the whole family’s tension. That was unusual, I remember thinking, they were typically a very harmonious outfit.

Before long Joan was waving his arms about and kicking the empty beer barrels near the back door. He shouted and gesticulated until eventually Jen took off in a huff with the boys. Big Joan stepped back into the hotel, shot a gruff ‘Don’t ask’ to me as he entered, and headed back to the bar.

Something was up so I followed him back into the bar only to find him pouring a double whiskey in a corner with his back to the clientele. He normally only drank Dancing Brolgas but he skulled the whiskey and turned around to continue serving, his face flushed, a barely suppressed look of anxiety in his eyes. I had noticed he’d been a bit tetchy of late but what with everything else that had been going on I hadn’t had the time to think about it. But now I made a mental note to talk to him when the time was right. The fact was I loved Joan Sutherland like I loved few men. He was a big giver, a loyal heart, who also had the indispensable knack of always seeing the best side of a situation.

Later on in the evening Rennie Vigata showed up with Lee, his girlfriend, which I was happy about because I’d been ringing him for the past week to come and take away the empty Dancing Brolga barrels that were piling up in the backyard. Rennie’s supply of the grog had been fantastic, and I let him know now once again what a consistent hit our Recommended Looseners continued to be.

‘You must be flat out up there, mate, coz they’re certainly drinkin’ the stuff down here,’ I remarked.

Rennie’s black underworld eyes and bushy single eyebrow sneered at me, somehow offended by my compliment, as if my surprise at the success of his beer implied some deeper doubt about his abilities. Lee, tall, skinny, in stretch jeans and leather jacket, replied for him, ‘He knows how to work, my Rennie. And beer’s in his blood.’

Rennie Vigata’s scary face broke out into a big smile at his girlfriend’s joke. It was obvious he adored her. They left me then to hit the dance floor in front of The Barrels. Tommy Collins, the keyboard player, was singing ‘Bend Down the Branches’ by Tom Waits. Rennie and Lee went into a tight black clinch in front of the band, their hips close and moving imperceptibly. They were a dark smouldering pair and I couldn’t help but wonder about all the wild nights they must have enjoyed up in those rainsoaked Poorool hills.

Rennie and Lee danced for ages, and The Barrels didn’t dare pick up the tempo, for fear of putting them offside. I left them to it and made a round of the premises, gathering up ashtrays and empty glasses, wiping tables and checking that everyone had had enough to eat. The lifesaving set from Boat Creek were ensconced as usual out on the verandah and called for more steaks, saying they were first rate. In The Horse Room I found The Lazy Tenor and four or five others sitting in silence as they listened back to the big fella’s latest oral instalment of ‘The Tradesman’s Entrance’. I groaned inside. Kooka’s abandoned Grundig had opened up a can of worms. The Lazy Tenor had purloined it from the bar and not only was he telling his nightly tale but now he was also getting whoever was in The Horse Room to spend the rest of the night listening back to it on tape, entranced by his own prodigious sexual capabilities and his brilliant ability to narrate them. Just to rile him, I put a dollar coin in the pool table and pushed the slot in. The balls came crashing down, drowning out his voice on the Grundig. He swivelled around on his chair, furious at the interruption.

But I was having none of it. ‘Cut it out would ya, Lazy? This is a pool room after all. Who’s for a game?’

‘Aw, come off it, Noel,’ he cried. ‘This is the best bit. I’m shagging this office girl from Bob Jane T-Marts. She’s half my age and boy has she got some unusual piercings!’

‘Well there’s a free game here if anyone wants it,’ I said, annoyed, picking up a pile of plates and leaving the room.

After returning the plates to the bar, I headed upstairs to check on Kooka. He was sleeping soundly, with his innocuous looking black tranny playing country songs on the bedside table. I took his empty dinner plate and, heading back past The Blonde Maria’s room, didn’t hear a sound. I snorted through my nose. Our holy guest was obviously busy praying in there.

When I got back downstairs, it was clear that Big Joan had partaken of a few more double whiskies. He had pulled a bentwood chair in behind the bar and was just plonked on it, his Otway dewlaps hanging morosely over the collar of his flannelette shirt, his big sideburns sagging, as he repeatedly smacked his lips and muttered to himself. Poor Darren Traherne kept pouring beers but didn’t know what to make of it. Without saying a word, he threw a querulous look in Joan’s direction, as if to enquire as to whether our head barman had lost his mind.

I shrugged. There was nothing I could do right then because Rennie and Lee had finished up dancing and were keen now to get a move on with the barrels so they could head home to the hills. They were expecting me to help load them into their van and, well, who was I to argue with Rennie Vigata?

We stepped outside and I laid the corduroy rolling planks out between the door and the driveway where Rennie had backed the van in. We set to work. Rolling barrels was usually first-thing-in-the-morning work, so it took a bit longer than usual, even with Lee’s help. There were about eighty empty barrels there, after all. By the time we were done and I’d said toorah to Rennie and Lee and headed back inside to check on Joan, he was a total mess.

At first, when I entered the bar, I couldn’t even see him; he was no longer on the bentwood chair. Discreetly Darren nodded down towards the back kitchen corner of the bar and said, ‘It’s hard to work with that in here.’

I peered down to see Joan Sutherland’s massive frame sprawled over the black and white checked lino. I was shocked. He’d taken his big Blundstones off and his socks stank. He was shaking his head disconsolately from side to side, tears were falling from his eyes, and he was muttering away to himself like a madman.

With Joan’s legs halfway across the floor behind the bar Darren was right when he said it was hard to work. Every time Darren turned around to get a spirit or a soft drink from the dispensers on the back wall, he’d nearly go flying as he tried to avoid the dairy farmer’s big red socks.

I knelt down and grabbed Joan by the hand. ‘What the hell has got into you?’ I said into his ear. There was no reply. ‘Come on, mate, you can’t stay in here like this,’ I said. ‘You’re in everyone’s way. Let’s go for a walk.’

Joan put up no struggle and, with Darren’s help, I hoisted him off the floor. He stood tottering like a power pole in an onshore wind, before sucking in a long whistling breath and letting me lead him out of the bar, through the sunroom and outside. I didn’t even bother trying to get his boots back on, and I figured he wouldn’t die without them.

We walked out under the pines and along the dirt road to the river, between the silent grassy ditches. On other nights walking between those ditches the natural world seemed to be in full chorus, but this time there was not even the intermittent hoot of an owl, just Joan’s histrionic breathing and the inexplicable gibberish he was muttering beside me.

We rounded the bend of the road and made it onto the riverbank proper. The river was flat and sheeny, slate-like, in an optical merger with the depth of the black moonless night. Ever so faintly I could still hear The Barrels playing off in the distance. I marvelled briefly to myself how we had never had even one complaint about the noise since we’d opened the hotel. Either people were scared of upsetting us or we’d gathered together quite a degree of local goodwill.

By the time we arrived under the canopy of the two old river red gums that my mum used to call The Twins, the big fella’s muttering had slowed down and the fresh air was beginning to have a beneficial effect. I couldn’t get him to prop under The Twins, though; now that he’d started, he seemed to want to keep going. So we continued along the bank and on towards the indoor creek.

Arriving at the infamous roofed section of the creek that had caused so much controversy and grief, we found Joe Conebush’s youngest boy, Kim, smoking a spliff with a teenage girl under the new gantry. As we approached, they pretended they hadn’t seen us but as soon as we actually entered under the roof they took off into the night like a pair of wood ducks.

Perhaps because of the air of vacancy left by the teenage departure, or more likely because of the broad bench seats the shire had provided under the roof, Joan all of a sudden decided he’d had enough of walking and flopped himself down.

If I thought it was dark out in the moonless night, it was even darker under the Colorbond roofing of the indoor creek. The lights under there had long ago been smashed, and without the radiance of the Milky Way I was struggling even to see my hand in front of my face.

I sat down beside Joan on the seat and for a few seconds listened to the poor fella just sniffing and breathing. Eventually I said, ‘Bloody shit in here hey?’

‘Can’t see a fuckin’ thing,’ was his reply.

‘Do you wanna sit somewhere else?’

‘Nah,’ he said. ‘This is as good a place as any to hide.’

I reflected on that comment for a few seconds, then took up the challenge. ‘What do you want to hide from?’

More sniffing came from beside me in the dark. Then silence. But then, ‘I want to hide from Jen. Nah, from myself more like it.’

‘Why? What’s wrong?’

More sniffing. ‘You don’t wanna know. Believe me, you don’t.’

The indoor creek smelt of cheap paint, piss and marijuana. I knitted my brow in the darkness, trying to ignore the aromas, concentrating hard. ‘Well, actually I do want to know, given that I’ve just had to scrape you up off the floor of the bar like a spilt parmigiana.’

A hint of mirth issued from the pair of nostrils beside me. Ah, I thought, that’s a bit more like it.

‘Have you got a smoke?’ he said then.

‘No,’ I answered. ‘But anyway, you don’t smoke.’

‘Well, I’ve really fucked up this time.’

‘Yeah?’

‘Yeah.’

More sniffing. Then he said something under his breath.

‘What was that?’ I asked.

‘I said she doesn’t fuckin’ deserve it.’

‘Who?’

‘Jen. Who else?’

I rolled my eyes in the darkness. I was getting sick of the riddle. ‘Well, what doesn’t she deserve?’

‘Can we walk again?’

‘What, now?’

‘Yeah. Do you mind?’

Fifty yards further down the bank we came out from under the roof to the galaxies blazing above us. It was as if a celestial jewellery box had been opened wide, purely to fling radiant stars across the universe to light our way. I could see Joan plain as day now, walking beside me in his socks. He no longer looked so messy either; rather, he looked as solemn as when he’d been a pallbearer at the mud-brick Barroworn church on the day of his father’s funeral.

We walked a little more along the bank in silence. The previously slatey rivertop now had creases of starlight reflected in it. I thought perhaps those lovely tricks of the light would relax Joan enough to tease the story out of him; but no, there was nothing forthcoming.

‘So why don’t you tell me what’s upsetting you?’ I said, eventually.

‘I’m rooting The Blonde Maria,’ was the big dairy farmer’s sudden reply.

Was it the tricks of light in the river or the sharp transition from dense blackness to the Milky Way that had me doubting whether I’d heard him right? After a few steps, however, an involuntary shudder went through me, and I knew I was not mistaken.

I couldn’t speak. Thoughts began splintering off in my brain like the space junk of some kind of small town Big Bang. How long had this been going on? What the bloody hell was he thinking? And had he any idea of what I’d discovered in The Lazy Tenor’s room just a few hours earlier that afternoon?

‘Well aren’t you gonna say something?’ Joan said eventually, in a bleak and desperate tone, as we reached the riverbend slope where a spiky layer of euca-mulch had been strewn by the shire.

I breathed out. ‘Fuck, mate. I don’t know what to say. Is that what you and Jen were fighting about earlier tonight?’

‘No,’ he said heavily. ‘She still doesn’t know. But I’ve been that stressed out about it I’ve been treating her like a dickhead.’

‘Well can I ask how long it’s been going on?’

‘For a while.’

‘What’s a while?’

‘Oh I dunno. Probably since that night we had the party in her room with Givva Way. She’s a great girl, Noel.’

‘Yeah sure, but that’s no reason to ruin your life.’

We rounded the bend in thoughtful silence. Now we had a choice. Either we continued along in a straight line on the ragged bitumen of the Dray Road or we straddled the paddock fence and followed the eely course of the river through the pasture of the flats. One thing was for sure, we both now needed to walk a little while longer.

In the end we straddled the fence, preferring the privacy of the river to the publicity of the road, even at night time. Immediately on our left the ducks that sleep in the open by the little soak there woke up and flew off, with tiny bird hearts beating fast. At the far end of the flats I could just make out a herd of steers bunched together under the red gums. I prayed they wouldn’t take exception to our nocturnal meander.

We followed the straight stretch of the river running westward from the bend. We clumped along over soft ground dotted with kangaroo poo, cowpats and shaggy-caps, and with occasional patches of pigface. Joan’s socks were no doubt getting a little dirty and moist by now but he wasn’t worried; he had other things on his mind.

As we walked along, he began to explain. Or tried to. ‘I’ve never, in all the years with Jen, even looked at another woman, Noel. I mean why would I? We’ve always been happy. But Maria, well, she’s a different kettle of fish. That first night up in her room, you fellas had all wandered off to bed. There was only me and her, and Givva and that Italian bloke Guido, just sittin’ in there with the lights out and the window flung open, waiting for the dawn. She started telling us how she loved to see the dawn but, to tell you the truth, I was the only one listenin’, coz Givva was sound asleep on the chair under the window and the big Italian bloke was slumped against the cupboard, obliterated by the booze. So it was like me and Maria were all alone.

‘Anyway, I was sittin’ on the end of her bed with me back against the wall and she was lying on the bed with her feet restin’ across my legs. And we were just talkin’. And smokin’. Yeah, I was smokin’. She makes it look so good, Noel.

‘She started telling me a few stories from the city, talkin’ too about how she loved the country life, and I was fillin’ her in about how we got off the dairy, and how Dad was the tallest bloke ever to run a place in the Stawell Gift. I even told her a bit about Jen and the kids. I felt so good, Noel, up in those second-storey rooms it’s bloody tops, and it was a beautiful still night, and she’s, you know, real familiar, like a little sister except totally exotic at the same time.

‘Anyway, we started talkin’ about the pub and that and I was fillin’ her in how I’d never been a barman before and she couldn’t believe it. She reckoned she’d played music in loads of pubs across Australia and never seen a better barman than me. Then she asked me if I’d like a foot massage while we waited for the sunrise, coz of being on my feet all day and that, and well ... anyway...’

Joan’s voice dwindled away as we trudged along the bank. He was devastated. I had to feel for the big bloke.

‘I shoulda said no to the massage I suppose.’

‘It was probably hard to resist,’ I said.

‘Too right it was. She’s such fun, Noel. It’s all so easy and natural with her. You don’t even have to try you know.’

‘Does anyone else know about this?’

‘No. No way. Definitely not. At least I hope not.’

‘So, if you don’t mind me asking, has it all been going on just in her room? Or elsewhere as well?’

‘For the most part in her room, yeah. Although with The Lazy Tenor and Kooka around it’s been a bit awkward at times.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘Well, you know, you have to watch your noise levels. You have to keep a sock in it.’

‘I see.’

‘Yeah, so a few times we’ve nicked off down to the caves after stumps.’

‘To the caves?’

‘Yeah. Well no one’s gonna bust us in there, eh? Remember those fires we used to have in the caves as kids, Noel? After climbing out our windows at midnight. Remember Spin the Bottle?’

‘Yeah, I remember.’

‘Anyway, come the cooler months we’ll have to find somewhere different.’

‘Hey?’

‘Yeah, well it’s bloody freezin’ in those caves in winter.’

For a moment Joan’s last remark didn’t compute. How could he be in a state of shame one minute and then planning their winter rendezvous the next? This was totally contradictory. But then, of course, I realised the obvious. Joan Sutherland was in love. Or, as the first whalers and sealers around these parts used to say, in a phrase not so much well worn as twisted with isolation, he was ‘cunt struck’.

It was obvious now that part of his depression was coming not only from his shame but also from the knowledge that it was destined to continue. He was helpless, flailing about between extremes of despair and bliss. I also understood now why he hadn’t wanted to talk about it. What was the point, if he wasn’t looking for a way back onto the straight and narrow?

Now, purely from expressing some of his pleasure with The Blonde Maria, he was all of a sudden a little buoyed up as he walked on the starlit bank beside me. For a moment the shame had been displaced. He started to talk, sixteen to the dozen, but I wasn’t listening. I could only feel disturbed at what The Grand Hotel had done to Big Joan’s life.

I realised that I couldn’t break it to him about The Blonde Maria and The Lazy Tenor. The mere fact that she was twotiming him made me feel coated in muck. If you wanted to talk rain, grass, cattle, or milk, Joan Sutherland had definitely not come down in the last shower – he knew the simple brutality of the food chain and the practical world of creatures – but I feared that when it came to romantic love in the big wide world, if you want to call it that, and the enticement of a thrilling new sexual experience, he was most certainly a babe. To tell him what I saw in The Lazy Tenor’s room earlier that day would be to change him. And frankly, at this point, I’d had just about enough of change.

So we walked along and I listened in silence to Joan’s effusions about his new romance. Eventually, probably because I didn’t sustain him by a response, his enthusiasm began to dwindle again, his mind turning away from the delights of The Blonde Maria and back to the betrayal of Jen.

As we rounded another curve in the river, we were now quite a distance from any houses, right smack in the middle of the riverflat, and he started to dwell upon his boys as well. Oh my God, it was torture. He was caught in a vice he couldn’t get out of. I began to try to dissuade him from his passion for Maria before it was too late; I even went so far as to betray Maria by intimating that she had a bit of a chequered history and perhaps would just leave him for dead. Her current shenanigans with The Lazy Tenor allowed me to justify the lie to myself. But Joan was having none of it anyway.

‘If I had a choice, Noel,’ he said, ‘I’d take it. But I don’t feel like I have. When I fell in love with Jen, I was a kid. Seventeen years old. But now I’m a man. I’ve never fallen in love as a man before. Doesn’t everyone have to fall in love as a fully grown adult?’

I scoffed. ‘The irony of that, mate, is that you’re not behaving like an adult. You’re carrying on like a seventeen-year-old. But worse. Coz of Dylan and Dougie.’

I felt him shudder beside me. ‘Oh the boys,’ he groaned.

We were out on that riverflat until three o’clock in the morning, walking, arguing, confessing, not even noticing the lightest of northerlies as it sprang up in the trees of the western hill on the other side of the river. By the time we’d said all that could be said, the warmer air was gusting in waves all about us and Joan in his fervour had stripped off and dived into the river near the old Bootleg Creek pontoon. He splashed and swam about in that unmistakable fashion of a man in love, sober now in terms of alcohol but drunk on the new quickstep in his heart.

He prowled around and shouldered himself through the water, eventually floating on his back and calling out to me on the bank to join him. I said, ‘No way.’ So he said he was gonna lie on his back in the river for as long as it took to see a falling star.

‘You look up too, Noel,’ he called, ‘and if we see it together we can both wish for the same thing.’

‘Oh yeah. And what would that be?’

‘For a cure, mate. I’m lovesick.’

As crazed as it was, it was the first sane thing he’d said all night. I lay down on my back on the bank, partly from exhaustion I must admit, and used Joan’s clothes for a pillow. Above our heads the galaxies seemed even brighter than before; the Milky Way could easily be defined in its cloudy clusters. There was Venus and Jupiter out in the west, the Pleiades low in the northwest, and the Southern Cross, of course, draped like a celestial beach-kite over the ocean sky to the south. Even without a moon the radiance of the night had managed to unite the land and sky. I marvelled again at the unpredictable nature of things, how something that at first could appear so dim was, just a short time later, as obvious as the nose on your face. And so together we lay, he in the river and me on a patch of kikuyu grass wildly sown, staring up to the heavens in the hope of a sign.