A brief autobiographic excursion…
With a splash
The summer of ’69…
It is summer. We are young and the world seems open and full of possibilities.
She is eighteen. Her voice still carries a hint of the innocence of her girlhood. Her long, dark brown hair hangs loose, her eyes big and brown, her voice soft and never raised in anger. Over the past few months we have formed a desultory kind of relationship. It was I who asked her along on this camping weekend.
I met Mandy’s parents. They are an easy going, middle-class couple whose manner discloses a comfortable satisfaction with life in their apartment in the distinctly middle class enclave of Woolstonecraft on Lower North Shore Sydney. Their life is one of workaday regularity centred around their family.
Now, here she is with a group of 20 or so, camping on the sandy shore of a large billabong, as waterholes are known in Australia. We are somewhere in the Blue Mountains, somewhere one of the others knew how to find.
Parking the cars at the end of a gravel road we descend a sandy track. It drops steeply through eucalypt forest to deliver us to the billabong. Ours is a mixed bunch of young men and women, the oldest of whom would be in their thirties, the youngest still in their late teens. Arriving on the shore of the billabong we seek out flat spaces on the edge of the forest and pitch our tents. Ours is a simple cotton A-shape held up by poles at either end guyed out to nearby vegetation. Maybe not the best pitch I have ever made, however it will do as there is no sign of rain and it is sheltered from any winds that might come up, down here by the creek.
It is a weekend without intention other than socialising by the waterhole… just hanging out is how we would put it. Tents erected, I sit with a few others on a log by the fireplace. Mandy wanders off.
Why she does it I don’t know. It is something spontaneous, something that comes into her mind as worth doing, one of those things we do without knowing why. Whatever her reason, there she is.
It was many decades ago that a tall tree fell into the waterhole. All that remains is a smooth grey trunk polished by the passage of high water and the years baking in the summer sun. It slopes gently from the shore to a little over half way across the billabong. And Mandy is unsteadily making her way along it.
She is maybe three quarters the way along the log, moving carefully, her arms outstretched either side in balance. She steps slowly and carefully… then… a wobble… she corrects her balance and takes another step. Again a wobble and again she leans the other way to regain balance, only this time she leans a little too far… totters… rebalances… totters again… and then she ever-so-gracefully topples into the still waters of the billabong and disappears with a loud SPLASH!
How deep is the billabong? Should I go help her? No matter. She reappears sitting in waist-deep water, her long brown hair bedraggled around her face and looking sheepish.
Months pass. We meet in that same desulatory manner that has characterised our relationship these past months. Not every week. Sometimes a couple weeks pass not hearing from each other. It’s that sort of relationship. There is a bond but it is not one of those intense bonds you sometimes experience. It is more relaxed, calmer, somewhere between a more-than-casual relationship and an intense one… more on the relaxed side, though.
When is is that I know that something is up? Is it when I realise that I haven’t heard from her for what must be a few weeks? Attempts at making contact are thwarted when her mother makes it clear that our relationship has ended.
The nineties
Decades pass. I move between states and back again. I find a job doing community relations for a national revegetation program. That takes me to the north of the state for a short course.
The course was in the backcountry a good 45 minutes drive from the city, in a place called Nimbin. It was about agroforestry— agricultural forestry — and new ideas about landuse design based on altitude, slope and ecological integration. Innovative, I thought, although my work was with an organisation doing mainly ecological restoration of farm and bushland in country and city.
I’ve booked on the overnight coach back to the city and have a few hours before it departs, so I aimlessly wander the business district of this small northern city. It is quiet in the late-afternoon. People are about but not all that many of them. Nothing much has changed since my last time here. The same businesses are still trading… Fundamental Foods, the wholefoods store that started here years ago, the same newsagency, the shop selling New age geegaw, the same hotel. But… what’s this? Something new in town… well, something new since I last wandered these streets. A bookshop. It is one of those bookshops that sell publishers’ remainders. I have found interesting and cheap books in places like this before, so I wander in.
I’m flicking through a book and this feeling comes over me as if I am being watched. You know what it’s like, you have probably experienced it too. It’s this awareness of another person, not just other people who might be in the store, there are none other than the shopkeeper, so it can only be her. I didn’t pay any attention to her when I walked in.
I look up. And there she is before me, after all these years, after all these decades. She stands behind the counter looking at me, a slightly older version of her former self but unmistakably recognisable after all this time. Mandy. We are both surprised as we stare at each other across the passage of years before that familiar smile spreads across her face, that smile in its fullness which suggests an inner softness I will never know again.
The summer of ’99
George Street on a hot, humid summer afternoon. The stream of congested traffic is hardly moving. I stand waiting for the pedestrian lights to turn green so I can cross to Martin Place and walk to the bus stop. Getting out of the city is my priority.
My appearance isn’t that of the suited business people who stand at the crossing that afternoon. Their dark suits make a stark contrast to my Tshirt, jeans and sneakers. It’s clear that I’m not a habitué of the central business district, more a creature of the coast. The smart briefcases they carry so importantly make my green canvas shoulder bag seem shabby in comparison. That, though, is deliberate. Who would want to steal a daggy-looking mouldy-green coloured shoulder bag? Who would notice that it looked that way so as to conceal the camera equipment inside?
Cameras. That is what brought me into town. I’ve agreed to photograph a event the coming weekend and I’m in town to pick up some equipment. Now, just a few minutes after walking out of Paxton’s Photographics, it sits inside that shabby green shoulder bag along with my Canon camera and flash as I stand waiting for the lights to change.
I look up and down George Street as people gather waiting for the traffic lights to change. Why do they take so long? I look down the street in the direction of the old GPO building again, scanning over the people waiting at the crossing before returning my gaze to the ‘walk’ sign across the road. Then, I stop. One of those people is looking at me. I turn my head and look. Our eyes meet. Could it be?
An unresolved past crashes into the present. After all these years, a smile that is somehow still familiar. I respond and walk up to her just as the lights change. We cross together and walk the few metres to Martin Place.
“You… you look just like the last time I saw you”. That’s no idle complement. She does, though in the way that someone approaching their middle years retains a strong vestige of their youthful self. Crows feet crease the ends of her brown eyes, eyes I remember as unnaturally large, like a child’s or those of an anime character. A few lines cross her forehead telling of too many days in the summer sun. Her long brown hair is as it always was, bushy and ending in the twists of curls. Her voice, though. It still carries those resonant mellow tones that were so soothing back in the days of our shared past. Her smile still has that fullness which suggested an inner softness.
We stand and talk. How long is it? We fill in the past in the way that people who haven’t seen each other for years do.
“There was a marriage then a parting”, she reveals. Why, I wonder. Why would anyone leave Mandy? Was it that she became restless? Was it that one day it dawned on her that this is how it would be… her husband and she, that is. Did she imagine them spending their lives there, still living in their North Shore home when they were old and retired? Did the thought make her feel trapped? Did she feel a sudden existential anxiety and realise she didn’t want to spend her life is so predictable a way? Was that why they parted?
“You know I could have happily spent my life with you”, I think but don’t say. I recall how after the adoption we had one final meeting, though we didn’t know it was final. “I was living in a sharehouse in Surry Hills then and you came around. remember?”. That, too, goes unsaid.
“And these orange clothes… have you joined… ?”. I don’t get to finish my question before Mandy interjects. “Yes, I’m their bookkeeper in the Paddington ashram”.
It’s strange. For someone I spent all that time with and whom I knew so well, I’m at a loss for words. Have the intervening years robbed me of things to talk about? Do we now have so little in common? Clearly, our lives have taken different paths. My main interest is her, her story over those years. I want to ask whether she has heard from the child. She left her details in case he ever wanted to meet his parents. I guess he doesn’t. Maybe he doesn’t even know. I want to ask about him but that would take a longer conversation, one we will not have. Not today. Probably never.
There are gaps. We have trouble finding the hook for a longer conversation. Both of us sense that it is time to go.
We say goodbye and walk off into our separate lives. My eyes follow her as she walks through Martin Place, Paddington bound, her orange clothing making her conspicuous among the drab business attire of the city workers, like a bright flower on an asphalt-grey city street.
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