Archiwum
- Index
- Giovanni Guareschi [Don Camillo 01] The Little World of Don Camillo (pdf)
- Christine Young [Highland 01] Highland Honor (pdf)
- Angela Verdenius [Heart & Soul 16] Soul of a Guardian (pdf)
- Chalker Jack L W Świecie Studni 5 Zmierzch przy Studni Dusz (pdf)
- Dahlia Rose, Brenda Steele, Regina Paul, Dorian Wallace Mating Season (anth.) (pdf)
- Cooper McKenzie [Menage Amour 161 Club Esotera 03] Minding Mistress (pdf)
- Dena Garson [Emerald Isle Fantasies 03] Ghostly Persuasion [EC Twilight] (pdf)
- 33 1 3 087 Serge Gainsbourg's Histoire de Melody Nelson Darran Anderson (pdf)
- Alan Burt Akers [Dray Prescot 07] Arena of Antares (pdf)
- Lois McMaster Bujold 10 Mirror Dance
- zanotowane.pl
- doc.pisz.pl
- pdf.pisz.pl
- marcelq.xlx.pl
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
I couldn t be Mick. Never have been. Never will be. But there
was something inside me, something original that I couldn t sell
off, something true and Australian that I knew was better than
anything Mick had done. I just figured my time was yet to come.
But it would. It would come. And that was a large part of why
I hung in there as nothing more than Mick s dusty crusty fusty
frosty Old Australian sidekick because I believed the world
would turn again and my day would come. The times would suit
me. And they will.
That day, two days after I was hustled out of Steve Heath s
camp in Bluey Angell s twin-engine like a dirty secret (which I
was Bluey didn t want anyone to know Steve had needed to
use Mick Lamington s rigger), I did my standard three shows.
I was Ess-Haitch-One-Thompson, that s for sure. The kids weren t
laughing they rarely did, but this time even their mothers
weren t trying to make them laugh. They were sitting there clock-
watching. The happiest I made them was when I said I d finished.
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The ENDANGERED L I ST
I headed home after the five o clock performance to find
Sheena feeding the kids. We hadn t spoken since I d come back
from Silvercap. We hadn t had time.
The scene when I came into the demountable was the usual
bedlam. Rod was throwing stuff, Rosie was tipping her soup bowl
over her head. Sheena wasn t stoned yet but she d gotten into that
short-fused end-of-day rut where she d be more use to everyone
if she was. Stoned, that is. She was all curt efficiency, not picking
fights Rod, come on, into the bath. Rosie, let s shampoo your
hair because she just wanted to get them away and in bed so she
could fire up. Amid all this, as usual, I opened a beer and sank into
my rocker to watch the news. Rod and Rosie came to play with me,
which was just a stalling tactic to keep out of the bath. Rosie started
dancing around and singing a song by Pink Stupid Girls which
was pretty funny but also a bit weird coming from a three-year-
old. And I jiggled Roddy on my knee making him laugh himself
silly until I had to stop when he had a coughing fit. And so on the
daily witching hour of bringing up youngsters.
Once they were down, Sheena came and sat on the couch and
pulled her kit from under the coffee table. She had her papers, dope,
filters, matches and whatnot in an old-fashioned Arnott s biscuit tin.
Another great Aussie firm gone American. Another success story. It
stank like a rank old bong.
So, she croaked through her first and always happiest puff.
Sometimes I wondered what other employees thought of the smell
coming out of our place. Did they know it was only Sheena, not
me? Should I have put a sign out? It s not me, it s her ? I m with
Stupid ?
So?
So . . . a journo called today, wanted to talk to you.
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BRIAN WESTLAKE
Hope you told em to f. off.
Sure did. He said he was writing a story about the epidemic
of nature-presenter fatalities.
Hope it s not catching.
She smirked sarcastically, playing along, humouring me. That s
what I said.
Before you told him to f. off.
After. F. off was the first thing I said. But he kept talking. Spose
they re used to it. I said, how s it an epidemic? And he said, in jour-
nalism if something happens twice it s a trend, three times it s an
epidemic. We had a bit of a laugh at that.
Good for you.
Don t worry, Frost. Then I told him to f. off again. He said he might
try you tonight, but I said we d screen calls and not call him back.
I shushed her there was a news item about Steve. He hadn t
rated like Mick, top of the bulletin for the best part of a week. For
Steve Heath there was no CNN, no BBC World, no Ned Clegg. But
he got a respectable coverage on the locals. His funeral was going to
be the next day. There was the obligatory reference to Mick Laming-
ton and Glenn Mellon for anyone who d been on the moon for
the past couple of weeks and an expert, a uni professor, making
the astonishing claim that the natural world can be extremely
dangerous , which they must have put in just for laughs. And then
they were onto the cricket. That s the thing when you re famous:
your demise can be measured by the column inch, by the frames
of footage, and then, puff, you re gone. There was no mention of
me. Bluey Angell had said nobody would ever know I d been at
Silvercap. Good for him. Nobody not Blue, not anyone would
ever know I d had my hand down that hole a few minutes before
Steve. The only man who knew would tell no tales.
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The ENDANGERED L I ST
But then there was my wife, stubbing out her first doobie.
It always put her in a playful mood. She d made it to the end
of the day. Time for celebration.
You know what he was going to call his story? she said.
Who?
That bloke who rang.
I d forgotten about him.
Who s killing the great nature presenters of Australia? she
said, and laughed. It was a stoned laugh, hollow, more between
Sheena and herself than with me. As a joke.
We were sitting in our usual positions, like boxing opponents
with the television as referee: Sheena on the couch, me on my
rocker. Outside, cicadas were playing back-up to a whipbird in the
aviary and a pair of kangaroos fighting in the Marsuperdome. The
evening show: they put gloves on them. The Queensland night was
sticking to me, no end to it in sight.
A cockroach made its way out from under the couch. Cock-
roaches had been a bone of contention in our marriage since the
early days. Sheena hated them with a personal intensity, as if each
had done something to her, only to her. She d go out of her way
to chase them round the house and not rest until she d smashed
them under her shoe or pulverised them with a rolled-up TV guide.
I, on the other hand, am a live-and-let-live man. If Sheena doesn t
want to share the demountable with cockroaches then I will happily
gather them up and release them outside. But I won t kill them, and
she hates me for it.
Before she saw this one a big armoured-vehicle of an American
cockroach, the giant flying kind they d send into Iraq if they had the
balls I bent down and saved its life. Using a peanut bowl as a cage,
I trapped the cockroach, slid my hand underneath and held it in till
143
BRIAN WESTLAKE
I got out the door. I dropped it into the garden, so it can come right
back in as Sheena would tell me. Well, let it. Cockroach, there is
room enough in this world for you and me.
When I came back in she was giving me the beady eye.
What? I said, settling back into my rocker.
Amazing. She shook her head. She was onto her third joint
now, the point of the evening where the euphoria subsided into
the addict s quest, the ebbing into disillusion that can only be kept
at bay by upping the dose. I d never have thought a mere weed
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]