‘Imagine a million earths.’ The old man looks the barman in the eye and raises his brow. ‘Imagine a million earths all stuffed in a sack.’
The barman exhales and doesn’t lift his eyes from the form guide.
The old man continues, grinning. ‘That’s how big the sun is.’
The barman flicks his eyes briefly in the old man’s direction, then looks back down at the paper.
‘About time you got going, isn’t it, mate?’ he mutters. ‘If you want to catch the eclipse?’
‘Yeah, right. Thanks, champ,’ the old man replies, the grin fixed on his face. ‘I’ll just have a quick one before I go.’
‘Nah, mate,’ replies the barman. ‘That’ll do for today. Off you go.’
* * *
As he turns the corner by the train station, the old man passes a billboard. Standing six foot tall from the footpath up is a glass of ice-cold beer. The photo has caught the drips of condensation as they slip down the glass. The head of the beer is level with his own, and he fights the urge to suck the foam right off the papered wall.
* * *
The newspaper headline reads: LOCK UP CHILDREN DURING ECLIPSE—EXPERT.
It was an eye expert that said it. Not just a normal eye doctor. An expert. She has serious doubts about her family doctor, never picking things up, and being so flippant when she knows just what he’s missing. But this is the type of doctor that the newspapers go to. So she knows he can be trusted. She knows that she should heed him. ‘You will go blind!’ he warns.
She leaves her mother’s house in good time to catch the 2.52, which goes direct along the beach road, heading north around the bay. The eclipse is to start at 3.53, with three minutes of total darkness from 4.39 to 4.42. The bus will drop them back outside the Protestant church at 3.22 and then, even with Lolli walking and carrying her some of the way, they’ll be home by 3.35, well in time to freshen up and drink their milk before turning on the TV. The advice was clear and sound: ‘The only safe way to see the eclipse is on TV.’ And sound advice was what worked best for her, she’d found.
But then there was the unexpected incident. The unplanned-for and unwanted delay. The baby in the pram left behind by the bench that she can’t just leave alone. Has to wait for the mother to come back, all flustered and hysterical, muttering something about a leg of lamb. And then not even thanking her. Just grabbing the pram and rushing off. That means they miss the 2.52, and the next one isn’t for half an hour, so by the time they arrive at the church stop, it’s 3.52 and the eclipse is about to start. And they are out under the sky with unprotected eyes with the open expanse of the park to cross. She empties the bananas and biscuits from their paper bags and uses them as hoods for the children, at least while she heads for the public toilet block. As soon as they’re inside, though, the smell of urine is so strong she just can’t keep them in there.
And then she hears a shuffling in a cubicle, a man’s shuffling and breathing, and hurries them out without a word. Just a forefinger to her lips and feverish eyes.
Beside the play equipment before the park dips down to the beach is a barbecue shelter with a corrugated-iron roof. This will do, she thinks. We’ll miss the TV broadcast, but at least under here we’re safe.
She sits the children down at the wooden picnic table and hands out Tic Tocs and bananas. To distract them, she thinks. Lolli’s tissue-paper flower from Grandma’s blows off her lap and tumbles away in the breeze. As Andy rises to give chase, Lolli’s wail starts up. It’s cut short by her mother’s scream. ‘Leave it! Leave it! It’s not worth it.’ Andy stops dead. And as the flower skims the grass, then jumps and is trapped by the tea-tree shrubs, she adds, ‘Don’t look! Don’t look!’
The mother snaps her mouth shut and holds her head still as a form enters her field of vision, approaching from the toilet block. The old man carries a brown paper bag in which bottles clink together as he walks. ‘Just made it,’ he says, looking at the mother, then the kids. ‘Lost track of time in there. You out here to watch it too?’ The mother screens her horror behind deep breaths and the gathering up of banana skins. Don’t talk to him, children, she thinks, willing them to heed her eyes. He’s a bad man. Don’t talk to him.
‘You excited about the eclipse?’ he asks, lifting his chin at the boy.
‘What’s an eclipse?’ asks Andy, looking at his mum and then the man. The mother sits down on the bench, closes the top of the brown paper bag and looks up from Andy to the man.
‘We’ll see it on the news tonight,’ she says.
‘Yeah, well, my brand-new colour telly’s on the blink,’ says the man, winking at Andy, ‘so I might just watch it now if that’s okay with you.’
‘Watch what?’ asks Andy. ‘Watch what?’
‘The moon playing peek-a-boo with the sun,’ says the man, grinning at Lolli. She smiles back and waves. The old man steps out from under the shelter and glances up at the sky.
‘And it’s starting.’ He smiles.
‘What’s starting?’ asks Andy.
‘The moon’s taken a nibble out of the sun. And it’ll keep nibbling more and more. Like eating a bickie.’ Andy looks intently at the old man’s fingers as they hold an imaginary biscuit. ‘Just a little nibble from the side to begin with, then nibble by nibble until it’s all gone.’
‘All gone!’ yells Lolli, holding her palms out in front.
‘Come have a look, kids. Just a quick one. Don’t look too long, or it’ll hurt your eyes. But just a quick peek won’t hurt.’
‘No!’ squeals the mother. ‘Don’t listen! Look down! You’ll go blind.’
The man turns slowly to face her. She holds his gaze as best she can, looking not at his eyes, but somewhere just below them, in the fine crimson lines that inch down his cheeks. She’s aware her voice has risen and she feels a flush colouring her throat, but they need to see it’s serious. The article said that if you just glance up, look for just one second, especially at totality, it can make you blind for life. And the real danger is to children. The corona is so mesmerising, so inviting and so seemingly benign. And her children are just the sort to stare. So curious. Always peering. Always peeking. Never heeding her advice. They seem to take a perverse pleasure in making her uneasy. It’s becoming a kind of game. Let’s make Mummy squeal! they think, though she hasn’t caught them saying it. Like a frightened pig, they think and giggle to themselves. No doubt that’s what they’re thinking.
When she looks back at the man, he’s finished his explanation and is standing back under the shelter, watching Andy feed a Tic Toc to Lolli. After each tiny nibble, he holds it up to inspect her progress, then lowers it back to her mouth. Dogs around the park are starting to call to each other and birds flap hurriedly home. With the fading light, the air is cooling and she wishes she’d thought to bring cardigans. The man stands perfectly still in the pale grey glow. He stares at the sky and takes in the light as though it might never come back again.
The mother wishes he would leave. Just go back to where he came from. What is he doing anyway here in a park? Speaking to her children? Telling them what to do? He’s had his chance at family. He has no business here with hers. She blows the biscuit crumbs from the table and grinds them into the concrete. The old man watches her shoe, a clean cream-coloured pump, as it twists and screws the crumbs into oblivion.
As a passing cloud moves out of the way, through tiny holes in the rusted iron roof, pinpricks of light appear. The half-hidden sun squeezes its rays through the holes. It throws its negative self in dozens of shadow-suns onto the floor of the shelter. The man points at the tiny crescents peppering the concrete.
‘Look at the eclipse, kids. It’s like a pinhole camera. That’s the moon and the sun.’
Andy asks questions like only six-year-olds can. ‘What’s a pinhole camera? How big is the moon? Why is there an eclipse? Why is the sun so bright?’ They notice new images every second and run to point them out. There are dozens of crescent shadows all around their feet. Lolli crouches, stares, dribbling, and tries to pick them up, pinched between her tiny thumb and forefinger.
‘Don’t look up at the holes. Look down at the ground,’ warns the mother. The old man nods and raises a brow.
The mother is stiff on the bench, her knees pressed together, leaning slightly sideways to keep an eye on Lolli, but she can’t help glancing at the moon-shadowed suns on the ground. She extends a leg from under the bench and one falls on the top of her foot. She watches it, transfixed, while Lolli wipes a pasty mouth on her skirt.
* * *
The park lies cool as if under a great blue tarp. Light and sounds are muffled, and even the birds seem too stunned to sing. The old man walks out from the shelter and sits down under a tree. Leaning back against the trunk, he drinks from his bottle of beer. The children follow and lie on the grass, palms holding chins, and watch him as he closes his eyes and quietly belches after each long swig.
When he’s drunk about half the bottle, he starts on a slow, sad song.
In Nottamun Town, not a soul to be seen
Not a soul would look up, not a soul would look down.
The mother, her fingers absently tracing the tangled grain of the table, shivers and waits for the next verse, wondering what comes after.
At the moment of total eclipse, the old man walks further onto the flat grassy area, away from the trees. He beckons to the children and they start to head towards him. The mother calls them back, but her voice falls short. She pushes herself up with her palms on the hard, smooth bench and follows them out into the open, repeating, ‘Children. Children. Children.’ But they drift towards the man, like two small boats caught in a current. When they settle by his side, she stops nearby. The man looks out to the far end of the park, beyond the play equipment, where the grass gives way to coastal scrub and dips down to the beach.
‘Look at the sea,’ he says, as if to a large crowd. He raises a hand and points far out to the water. Just where the sea touches the sky, a narrow band of light is barely visible. ‘Look at the horizon,’ he says.
The mother has never looked that far away, even though she takes the beach road bus every Saturday to visit her mother. Her gaze has never gone beyond the careless children’s heads she sees down on the beach, turning red in the scorching sun, just visible over the tea-tree tops.
There’s nothing there, thinks the mother. There’s nothing there to see. She hugs her bare arms and stands with the inside of her knees touching and her shoes held tight together.
The children’s gazes follow the old man’s hand and they shiver with the cool as they wait.
‘That’s the faraway sea,’ he says to the kids, with the gravity normally reserved for adults.
‘It’s just beyond the path of the moon’s shadow. It’s not under the eclipse out there.’ Andy and Lolli stand side by side. Andy takes his little sister’s hand and points her biscuit-pasty fingers out to the horizon.
* * *
When totality has passed and the light is starting to return, the old man follows the mother and they walk in silence to the shelter. She resumes her place at the table and he slides onto the bench facing her. He talks as he does to the barman, not wanting interaction, just needing to say what he has to say. The mother sits and listens while the children play in the sandpit.
He tells her of his former job in a public library and how when he goes back there now to spend hours reading, his former colleagues don’t see it’s him. He tells her all he’s learned about eclipses: how the moon shadow moves across the surface of the earth at one thousand four hundred miles an hour, and that the temperature of the sun’s corona is a million degrees. ‘A celestial light show for free and for all.’
Pulling at the hem of her skirt and adjusting her position on the hard wooden bench, she turns her face towards him. She wants to say something courteous, to show she’s been paying attention.
‘You sound so happy,’ she says, but it comes out like an accusation. Why are you so happy? she thinks, and she actually wants to know.
Nodding before he answers, he says, ‘There’s nothing at stake for me.’
She looks up at him without pursuing her questioning, but she does long to ask him what he means.
‘I have no stake in anything, nothing to lose,’ he explains. ‘No possessions to be robbed of. No loved ones’ lives to fear for.’
‘That must be an empty life.’
‘Not near as much as you’d think.’
Her eyes seek the children playing in the sandpit and she feels their needy presence.
‘When you’re gone,’ she says, ‘you’ll leave nothing behind.’
‘Won’t leave any problems for others either.’
How very sad his life must be, she thinks. Then, with a bleakness that surprises her, ‘You’re just leading a life of nothingness.’
The old man shrugs. ‘What do you know of the life I lead?’
‘You drink beer out of brown paper bags.’
‘And what does that tell you?’
‘That you’re a drunkard.’ Her voice has turned harsh, but she feels a little sorrow for him also. ‘You’re as low as you can get.’
‘True enough,’ he says and looks her in the eye.
He picks up his paper bag, walks out into the park and looks up at the sun. The moon has moved across its face and is only a thin slice out of its flank. The glare is brutal and he can no longer see the sun’s gentle corona. It’s there, he knows, but it’s hidden by the rest. He squints and tries to focus on the edge of the moon, where the glare is still partly hidden. The mother looks at his blinking eyes and sees his yearning. The old man feels a searing but holds his gaze as steady as he can. He knows it could blind him. The reports are exaggerated but have a kernel of truth. A cloud has been moving westwards, bearing down on the sun, as if it’s scared it’ll miss the rendezvous. His attention is drawn to it and he feels a serenity knowing that there’s nothing he can do to stop it.
Off by the playground, Andy is climbing a tree.
‘Look, Mum! Look!’ he calls and calls.
Lolli toddles back towards the shelter, but stops and falls in the old man’s shadow. Down at his feet, she plucks off daisy heads from among the unmown grass. She makes small piles of pointy yellow flowers on the toes of his scuffed-bare shoes and sings a high-pitched tune. She looks up at him and pulls on his trouser leg.
Yes? he thinks, distracted, still keeping an eye on the sun. And he knows it’s not worth looking, but he looks down all the same.
‘Done!’ says Lolli.
The old man searches the ground where he knows her face should be.
‘Like a dog’s dinner,’ he says, his eyes twitching and swimming with blacked-out suns at every blink.