MINE is an old Australian family. The family that moved in next-door was nevertheless much older. I saw them, emptying from a taxi: the man wore a football jumper; his wife a kind of a bestos overcoat, a child grafted to her hip. Tiny genitals hung from the child. I ran and told my wife.

“Oh dear ,” she sighed, putting Mozart on the earphones.

We live quite comfortably, on a large block, and seldom go out. Tradesman come. There are times, seeing ivy and rosebushes through our soft-curtained windows, when we could almost be in England almost.

Some nights the air was ablaze with voices: “By Jeez, I’ll give you such a clip! “ Pack it up, your kids!” radios whinged. “You Lock that bathroom door; Gary!” A smell of grilled thongs drifted in.

“Oh well,” said my wife, arranging her face to suggest fatigue.

Beyond my lawn their front yard seethed, dense as jungle.

I dreamed of bushfires. I expected to hear tom-toms. There were nights, the wind beating at our windows, you could imagine them out there. The neighbors, crouched beyond the yellow pool of our kitchen light, watching us.

Bare shoulders among the lupins, rabid with bloodlust. Knives flickering in the trees.

“Geoffry’s concerned about our neighbors,” my wife said over dinner.

“My dear, tell me all,” said our guest.

“They’re ethnic. We rarely see them.”

“How interesting!” elegant nose poised, facial decor set.

“We think they may be full-blood.”

“How fabulous.” A thrill of thinking jewelry over the lace table over the lace tablecloth.

“Of course, we keep to ourselves.”

“Very wise.”

Some evenings they lit fires in their back yard. I sat on the patio, guarding the fence, waiting for a picket to go: the space like a missing tooth, quivering with flame. I felt as an American pioneer must have done: wagon train surrounded. One’s possessions ablaze; loved ones scorched, raped.

“Their yard’s on fire.”

“Oh, I see.”

“You see?!”

Geoffry, leave them alone!”

A CAR began to grow in their front lupins. It didn’t grow much but, then, I never saw anyone water it.

“Never mind,” said my wife, planting a cigarette in her face. “It’s not our affair.”

“Are you mad?”

“Is that a rhetorical question?”

“You surely don’t expect they’ll stop at this?”

“Oh, Geoffry!” She stood. All her family come in six-foot lengths and use them to effect. “I wish you’d mind your own business,”

“Dawn, we must defend our way of life.”

“Good God! C’est tres ridicule.” She likes the effect of French words on her mouth. “Tres ridicule!” she repeated, banging the bathroom door. It’s where she retreats after putting her foot down. She’s a stickler for cleanliness. As a child, she had every illness her parents could afford.

ONE EVENING, someone started giving the front door the beating of its life. I flicked off the reading light and listened.

Short jabs soon gave way to welter of uppercuts, left hooks and king-hits. I imagined some fancy footwork out there on our welcome mat. There was a kind of pattern to it, like someone trying to make contact through a cell wall.

“Oh, God,” sighed Dawn. “You’d better intervene.”

A man stood panting on the verandah. “G’day.” Hair leaked from his face and overalls.” “I’m William.” He offered a kiln-fired first.

“How do you …”

“From next-door.” He pointed behind him. “Could I use your phone?”

“What for?

“To ring up.”

“No. Sorry.”

He flexed his brow. “Well, could you change a fever for me?” He flashed the note.

I thought of dawn, her face already greased for bed, her hair strapped up for the night. “I’m afraid not.”

He examined the corpse of his fiver. “Righto.” His forehead buckled. He stood sanding his check with one palm, as if someone had hit him on the jaw.

“Is it important?”

“Yeah.” He put one leg forward. A child was attached at the knee. “She wants to talk to her sick grandma.” The child gazed up. Its eyes were like pebbles of chocolate shining in cream.

“I suppose…”

“Ta.” He lurched across the carpet, the child causing a slight limp. “G’day, Missus.”

Dawn leapt up, clutching her throat.

“The little girl,” I explained, “wants to speak to her grandmother.”

Dawn blinked rapidly. “I’m afraid she’s not here.”

“On the blower, Missus.”

“Where?”

He took the receiver by the throat and sank into the lounge. “What number’s Long Distance?”

“How long?”

“Kalgoorlie.”

I explained and my voice seemed to be coming from a long way off – perhaps Darwin.

While he phoned, the child squatted on the lounge. It picked hungrily at toenail. Twin candles dangled from its nose.

I looked at Dawn. Her neck was at full stretch and a thin incision appeared where her lips normally were. One elbow rested on the chair arm, her wrist poised like a cobra.

“Thanks for the phone.”

“That’s….ah, alright,” I said.

“It’s real white of y.” He offered the fiver. Dawn lifted its crumpled body onto a table as if it were a dead mouse:

“Been here long?” He started to build himself cigarette.

“Too long,” Dawn said, clenching her jowls.

“Thirty years,” I said.

“Yeah? He lit the cigarette and spun the match into the fireplace. It landed on the bar heater. “That sure beats us.” He leaned forward, studying the cigarette, his skin the color of oiled teak. A blood vessel was scribbled o each temple. His eyebrows formed a verandah of bone.

Dawn took a deep, business-like breath. “Well…”

“Are you from Kalgoorlie?” I asked. He looked up. His eyes were like small beetroots. “I dunno for sure. We was tourists.”

“Oh. You toured, did you?” said Dawn. She opened a book and took a cigarette from it.

“Too right.” He flicked some ash into hand. “Directly we toured to one place, we had a tour to someplace else.”

She lit her cigarette with a small, silver pistol. “And why was that?”

“I suppose it was interesting, as a child,” I said.

He looked at his own child.

“Interestin’. Yeah.” He drew on his cigarette as if it were blocked ….”interesting;” He muttered, exhaling smoke. He ashed into his hand again.

Dawn slid an ashtray toward him. It was a favorite of hers, made in the shape of human foot. “Does your daughter go to school, Mr….er…?”

He sat on the lounge like someone crouched to take off. His body was rounded and withdrawn, as if he’d been tied up and rolled down a hill. He had that pulverized look his people sometimes get.

Dawn learned forward. “We are a child-free couple ourselves, Mr….er….We live a very private life here. We mind our own business. You know?”

“Nice painting,” he said, pointing at the wall behind us. “I like a nice painting round the house.”

We twisted to look. “Yes. It’s Van Gogh’s The Gypsy Camp.”

He studied the print for some moments, sluicing his lips in and out.

Then he took careful inventory of the commemorative china, the glass figurines and some conversation pieces of which we rarely spoke.

“Are you from Sothebys, Mr….?”

“Dawn!”

“Do you like art?”

“Ken who?”

He drew on his cigarette, assessing its artistic qualities, his eyes hidden in their dark crevices like night animals. From the shredded overalls, his face emerged like a bruised fist. It was the face, I realized, of poverty I know: I’ve seen documentaries.

“Are you working?” I asked.

He winced bravely. “Yeah. Mostly.”

“Do you need anything?”

I sensed Dawn’s chair grinding on its rollers.

“Er. . .” The wince vanished. Such is the elastic nature of flesh. “Well, yeah.” He scratched his raw cheek. “Could you lend us a hammer? I’m puttin’ wallpaper in me shed.”

Dawn fired off a quick cough. “I’m afraid we don’t have a hammer.” Her neck was up again, her eyebrows hovering like eagles.

“Yes, Darling. I saw one just yesterday.”

All the flesh on her face seemed to squeeze toward her eyes. “I’m sure you’re wrong. Darling.”

“I’ll go and check.”

On the back verandah, I found the hammer. Dawn found me. She filled the laundry doorway. “Geoffry. Put that hammer down.”

“They are neighbors, Dawn.”

“What?”

“Shh.”

“God!” she whispered.

“I mean, he’s alright, really.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

“We must be tolerant.”

“What?!” She stretched for the hammer. “It’s absurd for a man of your age.”

“I am not a man of my age!”

She stepped back. “Geoffry!” and her “ Geoffry” smacked me on the cheek. She spun and clumped away.

I started at my limp hammer. The head was like thin plasticine, the handle melting into the cracks of my hand.

“Sorry. We don’t have a hammer,” I told William.

“No problem, John.” He smiled with several good teeth. “I’m real grateful, anyhow.”

He stood and the child locked onto his knee. “You’re a good bloke. You too, Missus.”

Dawn nodded graciously.

At the door, we shook hands like the leaders of two great nations. I slipped the fiver into his hand, touched my lips.

Back inside, Dawn had retired to the bathroom. I poured an eyeglass of sherry and reclined. Around me, the loungeroom let out its breath. I watched some of the more vulnerable art pieces withdraw their claws and return to postures of delicate balance. So fragile.

 

(Published in The Bulletin, Nov 1, 1983)