North of Nowhere, South of Loss Read Free

reception, she’d told the saleswoman, seeing white linen and cake and champagne, and I think this little one , the saleswoman had said, adjusting a wisp of feather at her brow, this little number will be perfect. Just the thing for mother of the famous man. Just the thing for the scientist’s mum.
    It’s because I wore a hat, she thought.
    â€œLook,” Brian said, raising his arm, waving. “Here’s a Black and White.” He hugged her again. “Take care of yourself now, Dorrie. Go and put your feet up on the verandah for a while. We’ll see you later, okay?”
    He said something to the driver, gave him money, and we both waved. We kept on waving till the taxi disappeared.
    â€œDon’t look at me like that, Philippa.”
    â€œLike what?”
    â€œJust cut it out, okay?”
    â€œDon’t try and dump your guilt onto me .”
    â€œShe would have hated it. She’s terrified of social stuff, always has been. They never went anywhere. I was being kind, if it’s any of your business.”
    â€œJesus, Brian. That was brutal. And so totally unnecessary. I would have kept her under my wing.”
    â€œShe would have hated it,” he insisted. “Anyway, I’m not even going myself. I’m off to the Regatta. Let’s go.”
    â€œWhat? But it’s in your honour !”
    â€œI don’t give a stuff and nor do they. No one’ll even notice I’m not there. It’s the free booze and free food they’re after, that’s all. C’mon, let’s go. You got your car here?”
    *       *
    â€œYou think it’s because I’m ashamed of her,” Brian said moodily on the verandah at the Regatta. “But you’re wrong. It’s not that.”
    I sipped my beer and stared across Coronation Drive at the river. Two small pleasure craft, motorboats with bright anodised hulls, were whizzing upstream, and a great ugly industrial barge from Darra Cement was gliding down, shuddering a bit, moving its hips in a slow, slatternly wallow. The sight of it filled me with happiness. Good on you, you game old duck, I thought fondly, and raised my glass to it. “Probably the same rusty tub we used to see when we were riding the buses out to uni,” I said.
    â€œProbably,” Brian said lugubriously, slumped over his beer. “Everything’s stuck in a bloody time warp, it’s like a swamp” – he waved his arms about to take in the verandah, the Regatta, the river, the whole city – “it’s like a swamp that sucks everything under, swallows it, stifles it, and gives back noxious …” His energy petered out and he slumped again. “There was this funny little man in the front row who used to sit in on lectures when I was in first year. Flat-earth freak, or something, he used to buttonhole people in the cloisters. We all used to duck when we saw him coming. Must be ninety now, if he’s a day, and there he was in the very same seat. It gave me the shivers.”
    I squinted, and lined up the top of my glass with the white stripe on the broad backside of Darra Cement. “I saw in the paper that home-owners in Fig Tree Pocket and Jindalee and those newer suburbs are trying to get the dredging stopped. One of these days we’ll come back and the river won’t be brown anymore, it’ll be crystal clear. I suppose that’ll be a good thing, but it’s funny how I get pissed off when anyone tampers with Brisbane behind my back. God, I love being back, don’t you?”
    â€œI hate it,” Brian said. He’d thrown his jacket across a spare chair. Now he undid a couple of buttons on his shirt and rolled up his sleeves. “Look,” he said with disgust, raising his arms one by one, inspecting the moons of stain at the armpits. “A bloody steam bath.”
    â€œThat’s what I love. This languid feeling of life