bull and to grow his crops of pumpkins and tomatoes on the narrow acres of the creek flats. They had been happy, the pair of them, giving each other a hard time for the fun of it, believing all sound friendships improve for a good rubbishing. She would have loved to see the world herself. It was she who had bought the cartons of old
National Geographics
from the Salvos’ op shop in Moruya. When John was teaching in Melbourne she sent him cuttings from them, pictures of Patagonian glaciers and bird-eating spiders in the Brazilian jungle, just to encourage in her son the pursuit of the exotic. ‘Off you go then!’ she cried, delighted when he camehome for Christmas and told them he was going to Scotland. Glasgow wasn’t Patagonia, but it was a start. ‘Don’t you worry about me and your father. We’ll be right as rain.’
This morning, before driving off to make his deliveries, John lit a cigarette then switched on the single headlamp of the van and looked along the faltering beam of weak yellow light, the black cobbles of the laneway glistening, the rain whipping across the beam. It was all beautiful and strange still, all of it, and he loved it in a quite painful way and wanted to hold it forever in his memory. It was sacred, to be sure, but even if he lived in this place for the rest of his life it would never be real. He could not
enter
the reality of it. It stood away from him, and he was not admitted to it. It was joy enough most times to be helping his wife and her aunt to run Chez Dom, making himself useful with the handy skills he’d learned as a boy on the farm, and even to find his anxieties subdued by the routine of it at times, but he was not getting on with his own life. His reading was falling behind and the new theories of education were passing him by. Events were going on without him. He would be thirty this year and a new generation was already coming up behind him at home and getting on with it. He could feel the deepening of his isolation, his absence, his drifting.And at times it frightened him. His reality was waiting for him, his friends getting on with it without him. But how long would it wait? In Paris he would never be more than a transient. A man passing through. An accidental man. A man who got on the wrong train one day and fell in love. He cherished Chez Dom and his friendship with Houria, and he loved his wife, but Chez Dom and Paris were not his life. He often had the feeling he was living another man’s story. One life, he kept reminding himself. You’ve only got one life, John Patterner. For God’s sake don’t let it slip through your fingers. André, Houria’s landlord, was the only one he felt understood his predicament, and when they were fishing together at night on André's boat on the Seine he sometimes felt at liberty to confide his anxiety to the older man. And perhaps it was because André felt he’d let his own life slip through his fingers that there was this sympathy between the two of them.
John screwed himself around now, his cap pushing into the fabric of the roof, and he squinted back at the door of the café. Sabiha standing in the light waiting for him to get going, clutching her cardigan around her and watching to see him off. If only she would come home with him to Australia, his life would be perfect. Or near enough to perfect. There would still be the problem of the lack of children. He wanted childrentoo, but, unlike Sabiha, he was relaxed about having them, confident their children would come when they were ready to come. Whenever he thought of their children, which was more often than Sabiha gave him credit for, John imagined them running around the playground of the school he’d been teaching at before he came to Europe. He couldn’t imagine their children going to school in Paris. He had no images in his mind for schools in Paris. He didn’t know what the children of Paris did from day to day. He didn’t know their games, their slang, their secret
National Geographics
from the Salvos’ op shop in Moruya. When John was teaching in Melbourne she sent him cuttings from them, pictures of Patagonian glaciers and bird-eating spiders in the Brazilian jungle, just to encourage in her son the pursuit of the exotic. ‘Off you go then!’ she cried, delighted when he camehome for Christmas and told them he was going to Scotland. Glasgow wasn’t Patagonia, but it was a start. ‘Don’t you worry about me and your father. We’ll be right as rain.’
This morning, before driving off to make his deliveries, John lit a cigarette then switched on the single headlamp of the van and looked along the faltering beam of weak yellow light, the black cobbles of the laneway glistening, the rain whipping across the beam. It was all beautiful and strange still, all of it, and he loved it in a quite painful way and wanted to hold it forever in his memory. It was sacred, to be sure, but even if he lived in this place for the rest of his life it would never be real. He could not
enter
the reality of it. It stood away from him, and he was not admitted to it. It was joy enough most times to be helping his wife and her aunt to run Chez Dom, making himself useful with the handy skills he’d learned as a boy on the farm, and even to find his anxieties subdued by the routine of it at times, but he was not getting on with his own life. His reading was falling behind and the new theories of education were passing him by. Events were going on without him. He would be thirty this year and a new generation was already coming up behind him at home and getting on with it. He could feel the deepening of his isolation, his absence, his drifting.And at times it frightened him. His reality was waiting for him, his friends getting on with it without him. But how long would it wait? In Paris he would never be more than a transient. A man passing through. An accidental man. A man who got on the wrong train one day and fell in love. He cherished Chez Dom and his friendship with Houria, and he loved his wife, but Chez Dom and Paris were not his life. He often had the feeling he was living another man’s story. One life, he kept reminding himself. You’ve only got one life, John Patterner. For God’s sake don’t let it slip through your fingers. André, Houria’s landlord, was the only one he felt understood his predicament, and when they were fishing together at night on André's boat on the Seine he sometimes felt at liberty to confide his anxiety to the older man. And perhaps it was because André felt he’d let his own life slip through his fingers that there was this sympathy between the two of them.
John screwed himself around now, his cap pushing into the fabric of the roof, and he squinted back at the door of the café. Sabiha standing in the light waiting for him to get going, clutching her cardigan around her and watching to see him off. If only she would come home with him to Australia, his life would be perfect. Or near enough to perfect. There would still be the problem of the lack of children. He wanted childrentoo, but, unlike Sabiha, he was relaxed about having them, confident their children would come when they were ready to come. Whenever he thought of their children, which was more often than Sabiha gave him credit for, John imagined them running around the playground of the school he’d been teaching at before he came to Europe. He couldn’t imagine their children going to school in Paris. He had no images in his mind for schools in Paris. He didn’t know what the children of Paris did from day to day. He didn’t know their games, their slang, their secret
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