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Knacker Brown, her grandfather, fed her on sights and smells and little presents of boiled meat hauled clean from the seething broth.
In winter, when the carcasses lay cold on the sloping flags, the boiler house breathed warmth; the fierce walls of the vats, thick with their years-old grease, rose into wreaths of steam. Drawn by their dangerous heat she edged carefully between them, hearing the comfortable bubbling she feared to see when lifted tall.
She grew up close-acquainted with blood’s many lovely reds and the sequence of its thickening: an opalescent stripiness that seeped in rivulets and slowed to form flat pads of solid-seeming matter: rubbery, perhaps possible to peel and lift? She prodded with her toe; never touched with fingertips.
Her hands stroked and stroked smooth quiet necks, so slack, deep knife-slits almost sealed. The bleeding done.
Damp heat and thick silence; bird-movement minimal—just butterflies, haphazard, diligent.
My baby, in her long-legged basket, sleeps on the verandah—shaded by blossom and drugged with the scent of frangipani.
She does not stir at the rifle-cracks I recognise from elsewhere, pictures deep-imprinted. I leave Lucy, pelt across wide space to next door’s empty bungalow.
Too late. No silence here—white-walled verandah splashed with blood, three pups already dead and the bitch, shot through the belly, screaming.
I shout at them, two startled Tamils, one Malay who holds the gun. I stretch for it—try to make him finish her—he shies back
from me: white woman, ranting gibberish— wilder than the bitch? I’ve no words to tell them all I want is her quick death.
They stare—somehow get a rope around her neck, drag her, writhing and half-choked, inside their truck; doors slam, they drive away. The air grows quiet.
Lucy is still sleeping. The red of bougainvillea hangs safely over her. One mason-wasp explores the whiteness of our wall.
Dear stranger on the Inter-City, forgive some cautious questions before this brief acquaintance gains significant momentum.
I already know I’m drawn to you: your smooth-worn Aussie hat shading well-travelled eyes; your handshake, courteous, but more a way to touch after close exchange of talk, phone numbers, e-mail details.
Well-met, no longer total stranger, you live wide-spaced hours from me. I find I want you near.
but
would you make me listen to Scott Joplin, barber-shop quartets or Welsh male choirs?
Or tell me how you don’t like dresses with buttons down the front?
Do your gardening-skills depend on mass-murder of wild life?
Could those lips make soggy sounds with cereal? Breakfast, day on day…
Would I still love your shoulder-curve if it dragged the duvet off me in the night?
This isn’t premature; think hard, write your list. Do we dare to start?
‘You mean you let him sleep?’ ‘No point in waking him. He was dog-tired.’ ‘But in your lesson!’ Her eyes don’t yet reflect that I am pleased. That class have let me in. We slam the door on seethings, apathy, explosions - all the negatives of school - policed by the prowling Deputies. This group has no feud that I can feel – doesn’t splinter dangerously.
There are off-days, some gloom; blessedly, no bloody-mindedness.
So when John laid his head on his spread arms while I held forth on Thomas Hardy, I’d seen his late night eyes: this wasn’t meant to undermine. Paul, beside him, grinned at me, signing should he prod him. I waved my hand to leave him be.
We talked on, over his dark hair flopped across one hand, the other flung to hang a little off the desk.
He looked childlike as he woke. But his grown-up self took over, came to murmur his regrets as 5B moved on out.
‘It’s a compliment,’ I told him.
(If the DES were different, I’d like it on my reference.)
‘You felt safe enough to sleep.’
*DES: Department of Education and Science |
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