A SOLITARY PERIOD

A letter from Louis arrives, it's there waiting in the cold metal mailbox when I get back from another day pulling out ivy cascading down a rocky embankment. It's written over three postcards, numbered, and placed in an envelope.

1 - JR - The entries in the journal I've been keeping - Since coming here again - To look for Susie - Have been getting shorter and shorter - And it's not a matter of finding the time - Oh there's time - I'm still at the hostel, and there's an arrangement now for board in return for helping clean the rooms - Vacuum the halls - Sign in new guests - Oh there's time - But still the entries are getting shorter and shorter - So I've stopped - Stopped before I make an entry under a date that has nothing more than a question mark - Or maybe not even the squiggle of a question mark - Just a period, a solitary period - She's gone - Susie - I don't expect to see her again - Or at least anytime soon - Maybe she's somewhere in London after all - I don't know - It doesn't matter - Too late - And yet still an old scene plays over - As I hand over a room key to a couple of Swedish girls in shorts and long shiny tanned legs

2 - An old scene - Back in London - Before all this unfolding - This unravelling - Leaving our London flat one night to follow a lead - A meeting in a hotel - When Susie wanted me to stay and talk it out - Sort it out - But there wasn't time - I had to go - They were waiting - No she said - Something's not right - There's too much left unsaid - Something's awry - Awry she said - Her fine senses kept speaking to her - Prodding her - They wouldn't shut up - She yelled after me down the hall - We haven't finished talking she said - Don't walk away we haven't finished - But to me nothing looked as if it was going to be resolved - It's hard enough to argue with a woman at the best at times - Impossible when time's against you - Everything has to be explained - Clarified - Laid out fully - But the cab was waiting - She yelled after me some more - South Kensington I said to the driver - And left - And the following week I was on a plane to Sydney - Susie was staying with her parents - Or that friend in Clapham Common - I don't know - She was somewhere - It was hard to say - There was no note - And no answer when I called

3 - I thought keeping a journal would help me find her - I was looking for an answer - But I should have listened more carefully on that first day when I wrote that first sentence - Outside at a pub on a headland in the dot town of Tathra - Overlooking the sea - The great heaving sea - The great heaving silent sea - I should have known right then - I should have let it all go - Go over the edge - Into the great heaving silent blue - When I wrote down those first words - Never never never never - That's what I wrote - Shakespeare it wasn't - But it was a start - And I drove on from there - And now here I am months later in Melbourne - Washing sweeping wiping mopping - Smiling - Making do - Like a determined monk - LA

SOME QUESTIONS FOR LOUIS

He's left no contact details. His phone he seems to have put aside, discarded, lost, I don't know. The occasional postcard comes, and that's it. I mention this because I was looking over his letter again and wondered why he was retracing the steps he said he took two years ago with his wife. Why come back and do the same trip? And it's been weeks, no, now months, that he's been down the south coast region. Doing what, I don't know. And I've been wondering about this a while now. I think about him.

I think about you, Louis, do you hear me? I've sat in six different cafes with the intention of making up some sort of review of each place, purely for practice, like you said, and such scribbling only left me deeply dissatisfied and desperate to leave. Instead I found myself pulling out your letter from a pocket, reading over again what you wrote, and then began transcribing the pages, between cups of tea or coffee, a sip of watermelon juice, a nibble of rosti with a side of pesto mushrooms on turkish, or a bite of a barramundi burger. Then the letter ended, and once again the cafe chatter was starting to close in. I couldn't concentrate. Surrounding spoken sentences were soon starting to seep into one another. The filter, for want of a better word, was failing. I had to get out.

Louis, I can't help but wonder what happened in Melbourne. Why did Susie leave all of a sudden? And did she or did she not return to London? I'm guessing, but it seems to me that she didn't, otherwise why would you return alone and repeat the route you took with her? I've been to Melbourne once before, I like the city, it's a place in which I could imagine living one day. The food is fabulous, the bars brilliant. We could meet there if that's where you plan to end up. Let me know.

Louis, where are you?

Shuffled scenes from our childhood are starting to come back to me. In dreams. The other night I saw again Lisa Hart, Ian Prince, Sanjeev Gurung, and Shaun Bright. Do these names mean anything to you? Sanjeev I know you remember, for that's who we talked about the day I saw you again, after so many years, walking down the street last November.

HAPPY CHRISTMAS YOU HEATHEN

The letter wrapped up rapidly. I half expected some more pages to promptly follow but nothing came in the post. Hastily scribbled in a red pen half way down the page, Louis brought it all to a close. He agreed to go on traveling the country with Susie but only if he could return first to Katoomba to pick up a manilla folder of papers he said he'd need. And once there, rather than repeat the drive north, they decided to head south. So that's what we did, he said, we drove down the south coast and stayed there a while, places like Tilba, Bermaguii, some place called Tathra I think, Eden, Wilsons Promontory, and then a hellish hot drive on to Melbourne, which is where she left me, making a few calls and then boarding a plane to take her back to London, or so I thought. Here comes the postman. Happy Christmas you heathen. Louis.

MANGLING THE REMAINS OF THE YEAR

Come the evening they were up and about again, hand in hand, nearing ever closer to the end of the year. The heat of the day had passed and the remains of his discomfort were seeping out of Louis and into the ground beneath his feet. At one stage he saw some strange metal creatures start coming to life, and he watched them a while, comfortable for once in the crowd. An impassive silver head of a woman atop a shiny silver torso caught his eye. Ominous looking long metal legs, like that of an enormous spider, shot out from her body. Fenced in, the moving metal limbs were soon mangling the remains of the year, accompanied by shooting flames, drumbeats and cheers. Otherwise, Louis said, the evening was more or less a blur, with chit chat and smiles and then the return of a devilish drowsiness that sent him scurrying back again to the tent, still a while before midnight, and this time with the welcome presence of his wife. The next morning, Susie said goodbye to those she'd met over the last few days while Louis set about packing up camp. He was baffled by her ability to acquire so much camping equipment so quickly but was grateful at least that he was taking down the tent and not putting it up. He thought back to London and the day he decided to leave for Australia. He had toyed with the idea through many a drizzly afternoon while working on his translations but it was only upon waking one morning with a vivid dream that he went as far as booking a ticket. In the dream, he saw great hulks of ships in gray heaving waters, docked side by side and enjoined by what appeared to be enormous shoelaces. Each vessel was populated by peasants as well as the plentiful others let down by lousy lawyers and corrupt cops bulging with cream. Countless legs were ringed with heavy iron anklets, in turn attached to great rusty chains. Not long after being led up the gangplank, he was restrained from behind and slammed to the floor. Lovely, lovely, someone said, what special pearl do we have here now? Legs and arms held him down and his hair was roughly cut from his head, leaving scratches that were soon sweating blood. Next the clothes were cut from him and he felt as if they were gutting some poor dinner plate destined beast. He was shoved into a sack with parts of words enjoined to others in the stitching, beyond his comprehension, as if he were not only near naked and shorn but also obliged to learn how to read all over again. Following the irregular rhythm of the slapping water below seemed at one point to be his only salvage, until a new strength seeped into him and he suddenly became determined to escape, however necessary, and kill whoever deemed it worthy to stand in his way.