The child came to the clinic each week to see Anna Oblotsky, the social worker. His world was a kaleidoscope of conflicting images of his mother: times when she lay in the wide bed and he would burrow into her warm flesh, intoxicated by the rich smell of lust and perfume, other times when she changed, due to a particular badness in him, he fancied, or perhaps it was that she told him it was his wickedness which transformed her. Then she became all bone and sharp angles, flashing eyes and scolding voice, and he would shrivel to nothing. Light […]

I am a shade, in the fields of asphodel. To the living, we shades appear to flit and twitter like pallid anomalous bats, wingless and humanoid. To us, the motions of the living seem suspended in unreality, stretched almost to eternity; floating and formal; their voices drag and drone and dawdle in lunatic languor. Any living creature who can please the ears of shades has performed a feat as miraculous as touching the hearts of rocks and trees with music, so that they sidle down from the mountains to listen; as touching the heart of King Hades. Orpheus and his […]

I am reading a new book by Hal Porter. I do not like his attitude. Small things upset me, like the scratchy remarks about other writers which intrude on his fictions, and his period-piece postures with their half-offensive diction, clearly there as a demonstration of distaste for the contemporary political sense which extends to language itself, or indeed for any political sense at all. If I can, on the other hand, relish a suspect simile like ‘foul-mouthed as a feminist’, it’s partly because I sense that his intentions (though baleful to a point) are at least ambiguous and partly because […]

We are not told anywhere, are we, that winters in the Garden of Eden were not cold? The olive and the lemon ripen in winter and it could not be Paradise without them. Lemon and olive, sour and bitter, my mother would say: they suit you, Manya. Mama misjudges me. I think as winter comes, why huddle here in three warm rooms? Why not go to Athens, say, and see Aunt Sophia? My dear old Aunt Sophia. Walk up to the Acropolis again. Order coffee and sit and watch the hollow city brim with a violet glow, and then lights […]

 This Tim Winton short story appeared in Meanjin shortly before the his first novel, An Open Swimmer, was published.   Did a man ever wish that he would be swallowed up? And now men cannot look on the light when it is bright in the skies, when the wind has passed and cleared them. —Job If I roll over I can see the shore where the old quarantine station still stands. Once, men dragged whales up that granite shore and cut them up and boiled them and left their skeletons to rot in the shallows. I speared fish here as […]

HUMPHRIES sits at a table. He wears a dark suit and cloak, bow tie, a monocle, and large black hat. He is engrossed in a book. RHUBARB enters as a waitress. RHUB: Good morning, Mr Humphries. He remains buried in the book. I said good morning, Mr Humphries. HUMPH: (looking up) Sorry. RHUB: Watcha glued to? HUMPH: (expansively) A book on the great Conder. RHUB: La Gioconda? HUMPH: (smiling) Conder. RHUB: Ah, them vultures. HUMPH: Charles Conder. RHUB: Why didn’t you say so. You should learn to articulate. HUMPH: You should rid your ears of wax. RHUB: Don’t get waxy […]

She sat at the desk in the window. The light was scarcely good enough to write, that hour of dusk when a startling blue flame seems anxious to consume the remnants of day before succumbing to the extinguishing flood of night. A beautiful wistful time, too soon to draw curtains and build a different sort of contentment in a closed room by lighting a lamp, putting a match to the fire, unstopping the decanter, resigning oneself to a lighted kitchen to brew up something with a good smell to be a welcome to the footsteps which might or might not […]

It was too early, the light still brazen, the glare strong enough to bleach the purple out of the sea. As they struggled up the road the dust shot in plumes from under their feet and settled where skin was bare and moist. They could feel it on their lips. Zoe who had fallen behind, because the bigger girls were walking so fast, watched the dust gathering on Thekla’s shoulder blades. In other circumstances she might not have approved of Thekla’s naked back, but accepted it since the occasion perhaps demanded it. Thekla had distributed the presents the four of […]

Evidence of dreams, dreams that were pleasurable and real but whose exciting freedom was forbidden her, hung in her mind as dust hangs in the air after a car has passed on a country road. This sensation settled, and she was awake. The meagre trees patterned silhouettes; her skin goose-pimpled under the shadows. Her tennis frock was creased, legs embossed by insect and weed, brown bits cling. She shivered the regret of waking. Or dozing. When she rose her head was in full sunlight and reflected in the window, flattered by the evening gold. She saw herself smile the smile […]

On the gold pastel scene of sea and sand, silver gulls and driftwood, one human may have seemed incongruous. But she was not. Gina Addams-Smith was tall. Forty. Grey hair, waving to her shoulders, framed an oval face, cool and smooth as if carved like glass in the ocean’s tumble. The one thing sensuous about her was the way she ate. Ripe pears, wounded by a deep, wide bite, would spurt juices to her cheek-bones and thickly down her chin. Grapes, held above her back-thrown head, were played with by teasing lips. Cherries tossed and caught. Pips spat. Chops, barbequed, […]

Her Name is Fifi, Fifi Mercier, but she says she is called La Grande Fifi; and that is what we call her among ourselves. If you met her on the hill, on the street, out shopping, you see in the distance a stout active little lady, in her middle fifties, with a broad pretty face, untidy white hair, dark eyes, a ready smile. She wears ah old blue dress, with a peep of petticoat behind, cotton stockings and canvas shoes. This is what she looks like; but you don’t know her. She is a romantic figure. She runs a students’ […]

The soldier has been on the line for two weeks. No-one has come. The electrified fence stretches across the desert, north to south, south to north, going as far as the eye can see without bending or altering course. In the heat its distant sections shimmer and float. Only at dusk do they return to their true positions. With the exception of the break at the soldier’s post the ten-foot high electrified fence is uninterrupted. Although, further up the line, perhaps twenty miles along, there may be another post similar to this one. Perhaps there is not. Perhaps the break […]