We publish quality short stories, poetry, extracts from forthcoming novels, and articles and essays on topics of social, environmental and cultural significance.ISSUE NO. 111
SUMMER 2007
FICTION
A Stranger in Paradise
The Stranger arrived in Paradise at the wrong time of year. Late spring, when the hordes of mosquitoes that keep visitors away during summer begin to hatch and prowl.
Paradise does most of its business during the winter, when southerners flee ice-thin air for north Queensland’s perennial sunshine. And for the most part they aren’t strangers, but people who return year after year. They’re gregarious and get on well with the locals, spending up at the pub and local store, which sells everything from trinkets to life insurance.
The Stranger is different. He hires an on-site van at the near-deserted caravan park and keeps to himself. In a town the size of a postage stamp this arouses comment, followed by suspicion. Fred, the caravan park caretaker who calls himself a manager, starts the ball rolling in the afternoon pub forum.
‘Fella can hardly speak the lingo. Wouldn’t think he’s got much in the bank either.’
‘What’s his business?’ Jim enquires.
Jim is the local copper, in his early fifties doing quiet time until retirement. Previously he’d been stationed in Brisbane for twenty-something years, but, wearying of high-speed car chases and drug crime, sniffed out a gentler pasture.
‘Didn’t say,’ Fred replies.
‘What’s he look like?’
Fred considers for a moment. Rendering physical descriptions is not his forte.
‘Short an thin as a rake. Dark. Ya know, black hair, black eyes. Looks like he hasn’t shaved.’
Doreen the barmaid leans over the counter with a contribution. Doreen’s husband holds the licence but is a sick man, at that moment resting in the lounge bar with a whiskey for company.
‘Came in here yesterdee an wanted a cup a tea. I kid you not.’
‘Did you make him one?’ Jim asks with mischief, setting Doreen off like a firecracker.
‘Course not. Told him to buy teabags from the store an make his own bloody tea. Sent him packin.’
For a moment Jim regrets egging Doreen on. Man only wanted a cup of tea. Not like he blazed in with a shotgun and demanded the contents of the till. Jim’s seen plenty of them in Brisbane – desperate druggies and rotten apples with itchy fingers. But he still wonders who the Stranger is, and why he’s in Paradise at the wrong time of year.
Clutching his beer he remembers when he was a stranger in Paradise, the new copper past his prime, the locals whispering conspiracies. He’d faced it out with the help of a uniform and handgun. They respected that.
As a rule the locals aren’t tolerant of newcomers. Tourists flashing credit cards are feted like royalty, but new arrivals intending to stay are eyed with suspicion, sometimes hostility. They have no background, no relatives or skeletons everyone knows about. They don’t belong in Paradise.
Perhaps, Jim muses, that explains why the town is a relic of the nineteen fifties, passed over by the world. The billboard five k out of town showing bombshells in bikinis and blond hulks having A WOW OF A TIME IN PARADISE is starting to peel.
Once it had been part of a gargantuan stretch of sugar cane, but now relied totally on its cadre of annual tourists. Every so often money from down south proposed some development, but the plans inevitably died on the drawing board. There was the plan for a new motel, another for an exclusive residential subdivision for retirees, complete with its own medical centre, and the millionaire’s marina with a high-rise block of luxury apartments. But something about Paradise inherently sabotages progress, leaving a place of rusting roofs and fading weatherboard covered in bougainvillea.
Amid the racket of clinking glass and raucous laughter Jim hears Doreen still muttering about the audacity of foreigners coming into the pub for a cup of tea. No one is paying any attention, calling her only when their glass needs a refill.
Later he strolls through the caravan park, swinging around the beach but keeping his distance from the mangrove swamp. The violent local assassins are gathering there on the wing. But no sign of the Stranger. Jim’s thinking about his barbecue dinner and decides the Stranger is probably harmless.
The next day Fred has more news.
‘He stays cooped up in the van all day – except when he brings out a little mat. Spreads it on the ground an starts prayin. He’s one a them bloody Islams!’
The regulars squatting on stools along the bar collectively shudder. They’ve all seen the type on TV. Speakers of suspicious languages. Eaters of smelly food. Haters of white men. Terrorists.
‘Better do somethen, Jim,’ Doreen counsels. ‘Before he blows the place sky high.’
‘No reason to think that,’ Jim admonishes.
‘What about them bombers in Bali?’ she continues. ‘Pretended to be locals. If they’d been locked up pronto nothin would a happened there.’
‘Alkyeeda,’ Fred shrieks. ‘PM says they’re everywhere.’
Jim wearily finishes his beer and stands to leave.
‘I’ll have a word. But don’t go getting worked up over nothing.’
It’s almost dark by the time Jim reaches the caravan park. And quiet. The only regular occupants are either in the pub or about to go to bed. The Stranger’s van is at the far end of the park, close to the beach. Jim knocks twice, the first time firmly and the second time louder. Unequivocal knocks announcing Police. There’s no answer. Jim peers through the window. It’s hard to see inside but he’s pretty sure the Stranger isn’t in there.
The caravan park perches on a headland with panoramic views, but there’s a precarious descent to the beach down a crumbling track. Directly below, waves that have journeyed across the Pacific fracture on a jigsaw of rock, bits of the headland that have succumbed to wind and rain, or just tired of being there and toppled into the aquamarine. Near the summit is a wooden park bench; with a plaque announcing the generosity of the local council placed it here. Jim wanders up that way and spots the Stranger sitting on the seat, staring out to sea.
‘Evenin,’ he drawls.
The Stranger seems startled at Jim’s sudden approach, managing a fragile smile before returning his gaze to the repetitive incoming breakers.
‘Nice spot,’ Jim continues, his own vision now locked onto the violence below.
Still no reply but Jim is persistent.
‘Here on holiday?’
The Stranger’s reticence begins to crack.
‘English not well,’ he mutters.
‘Couldn’t be worse than some of the locals,’ Jim jests, realising it is probably lost on the Stranger.
Jim surveys the Stranger with a policeman’s eye. The man is thin and wiry, dark in complexion, in his late thirties. Clothes are slightly odd – casual shirt and jeans but an expensive pair of black leather shoes. Jim concludes he’s unlikely to ascertain much from further talk, but he’ll check back at the station anyway.
‘Well, I’ll be on my way. Might see you later.’
The Stranger nods and smiles again.
As he walks back to the police station – a front room with living quarters attached – it is the Stranger’s smile that stays in Jim’s mind. The bloke just wants to be left alone and the smile is polite, but in it Jim senses something else. Fear. Policemen see plenty of it. Jim has a long acquaintance with it. Once met it’s always immediately recognised. He sleeps erratically, waking in fright from a bad dream in which his second wife screams at him to get out of the house. For good! The worst part of the dream is that it really did happen.
Next morning Jim puts the Stranger’s description into the police computer. It gets a result, a close match. Jim would have preferred it came back empty but figures he’d better act on the information.
Up on the headland the Stranger is still seated on the bench staring out to sea. Could be he’s expecting something, but Jim doesn’t think so. He approaches cautiously, like a wildlife rescue officer not wanting to spook a wounded animal.
‘Mornin. Remember me?’
The Stranger shrugs his shoulders to indicate he doesn’t understand, although Jim knows the gesture is one of apprehension. Coppers get used to bad receptions. He lets the minutes tick by, joining the Stranger in his surveillance of the deep water. Jim feels camaraderie with the Stranger, but can’t understand why. It’s as though they are the only two in the world, survivors of a cataclysm. As eternity looms on the horizon Jim breaks the silence.
‘Your name is Yousef Khan. The Immigration people turned down your claim for refugee status and were ready to deport you back to Afghanistan. You absconded from the Port Hedland detention centre last week. Correct?’
The Stranger shuffles uneasily.
‘You can drop the “I can’t speak English routine”. You speak it better than me. In Kabul you were a lawyer, human rights stuff. Two years ago someone put a rocket-propelled grenade into your house. You weren’t home, but your wife and children were killed. Two boys aged eight and ten. Then you went on the run, turning up off Christmas Island eighteen months ago. Since then you’ve been in custody as an illegal immigrant. Now they’ve decided to send you home.’
‘Home!’ the Stranger explodes. ‘I have no home.’
‘Things are better there now,’ Jim consoles.
The Stranger turns and looks him in the eye.
‘It is a death sentence.’
Jim knows the Stranger is right. It’s a wonder to him anyone survives in those places he sees on TV ripped apart by war. How many bombings and shootings and abductions does it take before there’s no one left?
He feels genuine sympathy for the Stranger. Although he’s been speaking about the Stranger’s past, it’s his own that lurks on the periphery of his consciousness. All those years in Brisbane chasing petty crooks and traffic infringements and cruelty you wouldn’t believe. Two marriages sacrificed to the job. Jim speculates that the women couldn’t take the hours but knows that’s a lie. It was him they tired of, his inability to leave the job behind when he came home, the bad dreams at night, his moodiness. Fear lurking behind every closed door. Thankfully they’d had no kids.
From down below a wave larger than its companions breaks Jim’s recollective dalliance.
‘How’d you end up here?’
The stranger smiles.
‘In an atlas at the detention centre. I saw the name. All us true believers are destined for Paradise. I thought I’d like to see it first.’
Jim shifts his feet uncomfortably. Was the Stranger mocking him? Or himself?
The Stranger brings their conversation back to a pragmatic plane.
‘What happens now?’
God, Jim screams inside, it’s always the same question. What is it about him and his job that always ends up here? People with no idea what to do next, looking to him for direction. Sometimes it’s simple. He’ll be stern and announce they’ll be charged with something and the court will take it from there. Other times it’s not so straightforward. He has to tell people to go home and take it easy after their wife or daughter has been mugged or raped or lies inert in the morgue. He’s fed up with it. But what will he tell the Stranger?
‘Can I contact anyone for you? A lawyer?’
It’s a weak reply and Jim knows it. The Stranger doesn’t bother to answer.
‘Leave it with me,’ Jim says, getting to his feet, feeling stiff in his joints.
All day he wrestles with the Stranger’s predicament that has somehow become his dilemma. Wild notions occur to him. He’ll get the Stranger a good lawyer who’ll fix everything, or the even more outrageous expedient of hiding him in the Police Station. Who’d think of looking for a refugee on the run in a country lock-up? The idea appeals to him but he knows it to be flawed. In a small country town you can’t fart without everyone knowing.
At dusk he drops a bag of groceries at the Stranger’s van. There’s no sign of him. Optimistically Jim thinks he may be down at the beach. He leaves the groceries on the doorstep, the sound of breakers on the rocks below compounding his irresolution. A mosquito nips him on the neck as he walks away. If he could he’d charge the idiot who put the caravan park next to a mangrove swamp. Hell of a place. Ecologically important and all that but dark, infested with every known insect, impossible to penetrate, and at low tide the stench is awful.
He gets next to no sleep that night, tossing about in bed wondering what to do with the Stranger. Way past midnight with no solution he goes into the kitchen and makes a cup of hot chocolate. In the process of warming milk his thoughts wander away from the Stranger and reappear with his first wife. Marie was a sweet woman, made him hot chocolate every night. What went wrong there? In his heart Jim knows but is reluctant to admit the knowledge: the isolation of being a policeman’s wife that became too much for Marie. Police social gatherings where she felt overwhelmed by burly men with even bigger wives. And one day she wasn’t there anymore. He hasn’t seen her since.
Dawn sees Jim grouchily contemplating his second wife. Tina was everything Marie hadn’t been, loud and pushy. She fitted in perfectly at police barbecues, so completely she took to having flings with other coppers behind his back. When he caught her at it she threw him out. He didn’t mind, he’d wed her on the rebound. But it isolated him at the Brisbane suburban station. Made him a bit of a pariah. Thinking about that he ends up where he began during the night, wondering what to do about the Stranger. Another outcast, isolated and vulnerable.
Before he is out of the shower Jim’s dilemma twists in upon itself. A knock on the bathroom window turns out to be a harbinger of news Jim doesn’t want to hear. Fishermen have found a body on the rocks below the caravan park. Listening to the report as he towels himself dry, Jim knows it’s the Stranger.
An hour later, when the mangled corpse is brought up the rough track, it is the black leather shoes that confirm Jim’s apprehension. He’s seen suicides before, always wrenching at a worm in his gut that tries but fails to understand the despair that drove the victim. It’s no different with the Stranger.
In the pub Fred revels in the notoriety associated with the caravan park.
‘Turn up here uninvited an get every bloody thing they want gratis. And whata they do? Jump off a cliff an leave us to clean up the mess.’
‘And tea,’ Doreen adds, ‘they all want free pots of tea.’
‘Pack ’em back where they come from,’ Fred concludes.
Caressing a glass of beer Jim reflects on the Stranger’s taut face. Fear sits next to him, moody and unsociable.
‘A death sentence,’ he whispers.
MICHAEL O’SULLIVAN Before becoming a full-time writer, Michael followed various occupations, including fencing contractor, carpenter and builder, university tutor, librarian and archivist. He has published two novels: Secret Writing (Interactive Press, 2005) and Easter at Tobruk (Interactive Press, 2007) and has written numerous short stories. He is currently working on a novel about lost books and displaced people.
GIRL WITH FAIR HAIR
It’s late winter. After weeks of rain, a few bright days. In the orchard the almonds are in bloom and the first, shy apricots. The peaches are already at pink bud-burst and I make my way to the shed to start mixing the bluestone and lime that I’ll need for spraying them.
There’s a girl at my gate watching me. I stop, frowning. Jeans, dark blue jacket, a tumble of fair hair; all at once she turns and darts away, a mongrel dog at her heels. I stand very still staring after her. The road, such as it is, ends at my place, there’s nothing past it except a stand of bedraggled gums and the empty creek bed, a tangle now of blackberries and coarse bracken. They diverted the creek years back when they put in the main highway to Hamilton.
I follow the girl into the road, closing the gate behind me. She’s stopped by the trees, her back to me, one hand holding back her hair, the other resting on the dog’s head. There’s a stillness about her, a waiting, and for some reason I feel my heart stop and then start to beat again very fast.
I go right up to her but before I can say anything the dog runs at me snarling. It’s a little brindled bitch with fly-away ears and mad eyes. The girl turns then. I see her face for the first time, wide eyes and tremulous mouth, a child’s face, unformed, and she snatches up the dog and holds it against her chest, panting.
‘It’s all right,’ I say, holding out my hands. ‘I won’t hurt her. Fierce little thing, isn’t she?’
The girl’s eyes meet mine. They are older than she is. ‘She doesn’t like men,’ she says. ‘She’s afraid of them. It’s because of my stepfather.’ The dog in her arms licks her face and she looks down at it and almost smiles. Then, abruptly, she turns away again. In the silence between us I hear a bird call out, shrill and unexpectedly sweet, and then it’s quiet again and there’s nothing but the beating of my own heart and the whisper of wind in the forgotten grasses by the fence.
The girl says suddenly, ‘Do you think there are animals down there? In the wild bit I mean. Not here. Here’s just the edge.’
‘I don’t . . . Rabbits, I suppose. Birds . . .’
She sets the dog down and pushes back her hair. ‘I’d like to live here. A place like this where it’s wild. Uncared for. We read about it at school, a hermit in the woods and he made friends with the animals, deer and squirrels and even a bear. I’d like to do that. Live alone . . .’ She turns to me again, her eyes unexpectedly bright. ‘Do you do that? Live here all alone like a hermit? Kerrin at school said you did. She said her mother told her. That’s why I came. To find out.’
My breath catches in my throat and for a moment I can’t answer. So many things, years of things, and she is a child. However old she looks, she has proved herself a child. I close my eyes against the things I won’t let myself remember, gunfire, the shouting of soldiers, a girl running, the stripped, grotesque forest.
‘I’m not alone,’ I say at last. ‘I’ve got my goat, Old Nannie, and Ladycat.’ I hesitate. I’m not used to talking. It’s not like thinking. Though lately even my thinking’s changed. These last few years thinking’s become just a series of pictures, good pictures because I know, most of the time, how to make the other ones go away and if they won’t, well there’s the tablets, the ones the doctor gave me . . .
The girl’s still watching me. She’s frowning a bit and it makes her look different, uncertain, so I say quickly, ‘I rescued Ladycat. She was caught in a trap. She’s all right now, though. Even got herself some kittens. I’ve put them in a box in the kitchen. They’re safe there.’
I shouldn’t have said about the trap, though. It’s in her eyes. She’s seeing that instead of the kittens, Ladycat in the trap, so I say, to distract her, ‘Come and see. Come and see Ladycat and her kittens. She’s never had a visitor.’
‘All right.’ Before I can move away, she reaches out and grabs my hand. I don’t want it to mean anything. I swear I don’t. But her hand is so small. It rests in mine as if it belongs there, as if . . .
The girl with the soldiers, her hands, her hands were small too, delicate and I . . .when it was my turn I had to close my eyes and Smithy, afterwards he made them all laugh at me . . .
I take a deep breath and we cross the road together and go in my gate. The dog comes with us. It doesn’t want to. It’s got its tail between its legs and it whines a little but the girl’s hand is in mine and though she glances down at it once or twice, she doesn’t say anything.
When we reach the back door I stop. ‘You’d better leave your dog out here. I’m not sure how Ladycat feels about dogs.’
The girl nods. She kneels by the dog and whispers to it and it settles itself down on the step and I wish I hadn’t said anything. It’s an ugly little thing. I could let it come in too.
The kitchen’s full of shadows. For a moment I see it as she must. An old room, weary with living. A pile of books on a broken chair, the ash-strewn hearth, the table with the remains of my breakfast, a clutter of dirty dishes and a loaf of bread. The girl makes no comment, though she’s taken her hand from mine. The loss of it is as real as pain, as real as metal torn from flesh and I shut my eyes again against the screaming voices in the jungle and the acrid smell of smoke.
When I open my eyes again there’s only the girl, an image of her against the light, running to the box in the corner. ‘Oh. Oh. Can I take them out? Will Ladycat mind? I won’t hurt them. Oh, Ladycat, you lucky, lucky girl.’
I sink down in the nearest chair. I’m suddenly very tired. The girl sits cross-legged on the floor, the kittens in her lap, and as she bends forward, crooning over them, her hair falls and almost hides her face. It’s as though I’m not there, as though I’m a long way off just watching, as though this is one of my pictures. Maybe it is. Maybe it happened a long time ago and I have just remembered or maybe it has yet to happen, a loop of time that will repeat itself over and over again. The girl and the kittens and me, watching. I shudder then. I don’t know why. It’s her hands I think, her little, delicate hands . . .
There are too many shadows. They confuse me. And voices. I hear them in the silence. It’s like when I wake up after one of the dreams. A girl cries out and some of the soldiers laugh when she tries to run from us. . . I didn’t. I didn’t laugh but I . . . I . . .
The shadows in the room stretch out toward me, they lie across the floor, the table, they touch for just a moment the girl’s soft hair. The girl with the soldiers, she’s got a child’s face too, a little half-open mouth and dark eyes. To begin with, she didn’t know enough to be frightened . . .
I stumble to my feet with a little incoherent cry. ‘It’s time for you to go,’ I say roughly. ‘It’s late. Your mother will be expecting you for your dinner.’ I wait for her to answer but it’s as if she hasn’t heard me. Outside, by the door, her dog starts to bark, once, twice and then it’s quiet again.
My mouth is full of the taste of blood. ‘Please,’ I whisper to the shadows. ‘Please.’
I hear myself start to shout. ‘Put the kittens back in the box. It’s time for you to go.’
Her eyes go wide. I can’t bear the sight of them. I turn away and busy myself with the dishes on the table. ‘I don’t want your mother to worry,’ I whisper. ‘It’s late. I told you. It’s late.’
She doesn’t say anything. She gets up obediently and puts the kittens back one by one and then she comes up to me and lays her hand on my arm. ‘Thank you,’ she says. ‘Thank you for showing them to me.’ The steadiness of her eyes reassures me. She’s a child, I tell myself, a child, she doesn’t know and I make myself walk past the shadows and open the door so her dog can run in.
We walk in silence to the gate. I hesitate, though, before I open it. ‘You can come back,’ I say. ‘Next week if you want. Ladycat and the kittens. They’d . . . they’d like that.’ All at once my throat aches so much I can hardly swallow. ‘I never . . . I never even showed you Old Nannie.’
She doesn’t answer. She’s got her head down so I can’t see her face but I know she won’t come back. The shadows, the treacherous shadows, they’ve broken the connection between us. I close my eyes and by the time I open them again she’s almost out of sight. All I can see is the little dog dancing round her feet and the light on her fair hair.
ZENDA VECCHIO is a South Australian writer living in the Adelaide Hills who has had many short stories published in a variety of magazines. She is working on a novel loosely based on her early life.
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