Joyous and Moonbeam Read Free Page A

Kinsville when we had lots of pets. Some of them not officially our own but adopted, like the ducks.Remember them? They used to walk in a line from the pond to the paddock then back again. Little ones following their mamma in the early morning. Once you said to me, Mamma, are the ducks happy? And I said, Yes, yes, of course they’re happy, because they’re doing what ducks do. That’s all that really matters, I suppose, do what you have to do and don’t let anyone else make you do otherwise. It’s not fair on a person to make them do otherwise, especially when being who you are born to be is so hard anyway. So, Joyous, I will use these letters to you to explain about how things came to be and how things will also be in the future and to give my view on events and happenings and on the way there might be one or two biggish surprises, so I’m sorry for that in advance but that is the way of the world.
    Every life has its number of little sadnesses and its one or two great big sadnesses and my great big sadness was certainly the day your dadda had his accident. I’ve said it before to you but I don’t believe I can ever properly tell of the love that lived between that man and I. Of course, as you know, we met outside the church just nearby my old home town and he was a tall man with slick fair hair and a smile that went with an attitude. He beamed, as I’ve always said, strong from the inside. I remember looking around at all those other people in their dark suits and long faces cause it was a Wesley church, you know, Methodists,and we never smiled too much except for your father with his inner beam. All these other people and they were shadows, like still grey trees in the bush, and your father all glossy white and like a bird. A male swan maybe, or even a cockatoo with its squarky laugh. I stood there with my new silver purse hoping he would pass by and perhaps greet me and when he did it was like a spirit or a spell. I can still remember the smell of him – coconut oil – and every time I smell that when someone passes me in our street or in the shops I am reminded and I want to cry even today at 54 years of age. So your father stopped and in those days in our little town it wasn’t proper for a young man to be too forward with a young woman, so we were very polite, not saying too much beyond the weather and things, but we both knew, oh, how we knew.
    His name was Thomas Bowen and he had been away for a long time down south with his father because his father was a fisherman who used to go out trawling. When Thomas was a little boy the Bowen family lived not too far away in a place called Wilton where they ran the post office. Then the mother died. Her name was Rene and she had a long sickness and history of cancer. So Murray Bowen sold the post office and went away in his grief and went out on the trawlers searching for a hard life, a man’s life, because he couldn’t stand the land or the hurting. The land was memories, I suppose, and I know the hurtof that feeling well. Thomas – your father – spent most of his time with an aunt by the name of Bella whom I never met because she passed on in 1968 after a kitchen fire accident. That was when Murray Bowen quit the trawler’s life and came back to his home town, Thomas saying because he just didn’t know what else to do. He was a lost man with a lost son and they lived together in a cottage near the river which is not there anymore. They had no money, just doing for work what they could. In 1972, in summer time, was when Thomas came alone to the church, not, as he said, hoping for some salvation but just to meet some new people. He met me alright. I was turned 18 and he was 23 and the most polite, sweet, good-looking man you could ever wish to meet. That’s all I did that summer, fall further and further in love with Thomas Bowen, the man with the coconut oil smell and inner beam walking by the river