Street of Dreams

Street of Dreams

No one who actually lived there said ‘God’s waiting room’ but the population of the little coastal town was certainly skewed towards the senior citizen end of the demographic. And not a bad thing at all, I thought, although as a city girl born and bred there were times when I longed for the action and the colour of urban life with its big shops and their endless choice, the iconic buildings, the parks, the galleries, the theatres, a real library. Even the hustle and bustle of cars and trams. Oh, and being surrounded by young and beautiful people.

Well, maybe not too young.

Thing is, our particular sea change had seemed to me, well, just a bit drastic. But Graeme had been all for it from the moment he left the city office that he had begun to refer to as the ‘Baxter Detention Centre’.

‘I’ve found the perfect place,’ he had said, casting an oh-so-familiar glance of calculation in my direction, ‘and now’s the time to do it. And it’s the right thing for us. Even our daughters say so. You know, time to slow down and smell the roses.’

Salt air, he really meant. And maybe the last chance to get a deal. Good on deals, my husband. Eye for a bargain and always determined to get one. Goodness knows he’d been planning this for years—counting down to retirement, keeping a keen eye on the rising property prices along the Pacific coast.

Graeme did all the organising. I just did what was necessary, drifting along in line with his agenda despite a part of me hoping against hope that he would change his mind. I suppose could have just dug my heels in and refused to go. But to do that didn’t seem fair. It might be my life, too, but loyalty—inertia, more like—rendered me unable to blight his dream. So my hope was no more than a foolish notion that he in turn would just drift. Off the idea, that is, without the need for me to play the carping wife.

Just how passive can you get?

Before we met, my husband had spent his youth in the Air Force, flying hither and yon and being posted around the country and overseas every two years or so. To him this was merely another pack-up-and-go. Oh, Graeme made friends quickly enough, and just as quickly was able to wave them a cheerful goodbye.

Not so me. ‘Uprooted’ is a cliché, of course, but I can’t think of a better way to describe how I felt as I was driven—torn—away from our beloved family home and the friends I had so painstakingly garnered over the years. It took all my determination to convince myself this move was not only rational and sensible but the fashionable thing to do.

And when at last we arrived at our new house I had to start the process all over again. Of course, I knew exactly what we were getting into but as we drove up to the front door it seemed to me that we had well and truly burned all our bridges. We were not so much downsizing as nose-diving into a tiny cottage in an insignificant country community.

So Graeme’s cheery ‘Here we are, and about time too! That great house was getting you down. Much easier here!’ didn’t fall on the most sympathetic of ears.

As I said, maybe a bit drastic.

But our new home indeed had roses round the door and a beach just fifty metres away. So, as one does, I gradually learned to love it and the little port that became our town. And for one year it had been perfect. Graeme had been right. ‘Slow down’ was the thing here. With little effort he rapidly acquired a circle of friends for both of us, people in much the same position—retired and moved to the coast. And, it seemed, waiting more or less patiently to die.

But in Graeme’s case Death came calling without the courtesy of any warning.

‘At his age,’ people were wont to observe (but not in my hearing, although it was pretty obvious what they were thinking), ‘at his age, to go way out beyond the bar on that stupid board.’ Then they would shake their heads and add ‘and on a day like that’, as much in disapproval as in sorrow.

For, from the moment we’d arrived, Graeme had taken up surfing then sail boarding.

‘Keeps you fit,’ he used to say, almost daring me to do the same but knowing better, ‘keeps you fit and keeps you slim.’

As always, I disregarded that sort of suggestion and the implication behind it. Oh, I loved my husband dearly but I was well aware of the mixture of assertiveness and anxiety that is men’s character.

The sea, alas, had other ideas and far from ignoring him had tempted Graeme out on a morning when any real local would have told him to stay within twenty metres of the beach. It had been several days before he had been found five miles away, deposited on the rocks by the rip that had flicked his board then swept him away.

I was required merely to identify the body.



Winter had been so long this year! Weird weather patterns and even the suspicion of snow, a first for the little port that had always prided itself on its benign climate. Mind you, Melbourne got five centimetres on the same night—that had hit the news all right—so there was no point complaining.

Now, though, early spring sunshine drove away such memories. On the town’s only shopping street the brightly striped canopy above The Bakery Door beckoned, even more inviting than usual, and it looked as though Luigi had splashed out on a fresh set of checked tablecloths in honour of the new season. I stared a bit harder. And splashed out on a splash of paint, too. You could say the old place was as spick and span as one of those millionaires’ gin palace yachts that visited the tiny harbour on their way to Sydney in the racing season.

I stepped into the shop and was engulfed by the familiar and comforting odours of a working bakery. Luigi greeted me as always:

‘Madam, welcome! You take the seat; I take the order.’

And as always he beamed at me and the old joke.

Goodness! How many years have I been coming here? I smiled to myself. Too many for comfort, that’s certain.

With my—our—friends, that is. Well, some were friends; some just acquaintances, the sort of people who were nice enough for sure, but not regulars. Our off-campus department of the State university, a 1990s gift to regional development from a government desperate for votes, was only a walk away and Luigi knew well the sort of up-market coffee, baguettes and salads that appealed to the faculty set. The Bakery had become a sort of Mecca for those who relished civilised behaviour and, well, intelligent conversation. Not that I was a snob, far from it. My social position, if that term means anything much in Australia, derived from a hard-won part-time arts BA and Graeme’s several opportune stock market deals.

Graeme.

They were right, of course, you never get over it. Five years now and still the ache. A pain that dulled but slowly. Still looking over my shoulder, expecting him to be hurrying up to me, complaining at my habit of slipping into shops while he wasn’t looking. Five years of that tiny hesitation, sort of waiting for my husband to pick up my bags or even take out the garbage, two of the many chores that I was never allowed to do after he had retired. No longer the constant exchange of opinions on everything from world events to local weather, with ‘people’ somewhere in between. No longer the knowledge that someone else was doing all the planning for me.

But most of all, the long, long nights of mindless television, unreadable Booker prizes, dinners for one, the empty bed (here a tiny blush).

And no one to complain to.

Or was it all just habit? You know, thirty years of marriage takes thirty years to get over?

I’d tried—oh, how I’d tried—to travel. Most of South East Asia had seen me, at the behest of my friends, being dragged around the sights in the company of people I didn’t really want to be with. And even if twin share wasn’t a necessary option, I was always so relieved to get back to my little house, unpack (immediately, another Graeme-ism) heave a great sigh and put my feet up.

Right now, waiting for my latté and muffin, I sighed just such a sigh. Then, of all people, I spied Marcia threading her way through the tables outside, waving frantically to catch my attention. Marcia! Well, at least this morning wouldn’t be a dead loss. Seeing Marcia, for some reason that I could never quite identify, always made me feel extraordinarily glad (or was that ‘comfortable’?) and she was invariably good for a tasty scrap of gossip. Something that a bit shamefaced—but only a bit—I admitted to myself I enjoyed. And something about which Graeme had always held strong opinions. Not he and I gossiping—’in the family it’s OK, darling. Just the rat pack I can’t stand’. I managed a little grin at the memory as Marcia plumped herself down. Luigi, who cosseted his favourites, was behind her chair in a flash.

‘Luigi! How are the twins? Just the usual, please.’

The proprietor of The Bakery Door shouted at his barista, the delight in his voice unmistakable. Luigi’s grandsons were the light of his life and would, Marcia had whispered to me when we first became friends, undoubtedly become the beneficiaries of the baker’s not inconsiderable fortune.

‘Jack used to tell me—keep it to yourself—Luigi’s worth around five million. Must quite a bit more by now. And that’s without the business.’

A business, I observed to myself, which had grown to its present value due mainly to its owner’s judicious staffing policy—family and extended family (more or less free) and uni students (minimum wages). Even his coffee maker, one of the best I’d ever seen in action, was a relative. A relative with the added bonus of coming from Palermo, Luigi’s impoverished home city in Sicily. In other words, happy to be in Oz and happy to have a job, period. Luigi might sponsor with generosity but he always kept a keen eye on the bottom line.

Now, though, Marcia had something special to say. That was obvious by the gleam in her eye and the way she leaned across the table towards me. I braced myself ready for further delicious revelations. But this time was different.

Very different.

For, totally out of character, Marcia whispered words that were few and to the point.

‘Susan, I don’t know why it’s me who’s been chosen to tell you but,’ she paused, savouring the moment, ‘today it’s your turn. You’re going!’

And she sat back, triumphant.

I didn’t react. How could I? This wasn’t fun or exciting or threatening. It was just—nonsense. Going where? I’d never in even the vaguest of terms introduced the subject of moving away. To Marcia or to anyone. The simple reason was that I couldn’t leave Graeme—he was not only a part of me but a part of our cottage, the beach, the town and, most important, our life as a team.

How could I desert all that?

But wait; hadn’t Marcia said something about ‘your turn’? Surely—and here I began to battle with the logic, or lack of it—this implied I was waiting in some sort of queue to depart for a destination already known.

Scary or what?

So, betraying no emotion, for the concept of leaving was so alien to me, I merely said,

‘Going?’

But Marcia was gazing as though she had never before really seen me. A suggestion, just a flicker, of insight passed between us.

Something has changed!

But I had no time to unwrap this tiny parcel of new information because, abruptly, a very deep silence replaced The Bakery Door’s familiar hum of conversation. In some confusion, I merely continued to stare across the table. At last, in a voice that was still far removed from her usual boisterous delivery, Marcia spoke again.

‘Well, I’ve done my bit. Don’t look now, but here comes the real business.’

Then she lifted her eyes and directed a brilliant smile up and behind me.

‘Peter! Long time no see! Here’s Susan.’

She rose from her chair and flicked a glance back to me.

‘Got to dash, darling. See, when it happens, it happens!’

With that cryptic remark she left. Well, to be exact, she just ceased to be there. Or that’s what it seemed. One second Marcia was getting to her feet, the next she was gone.

But it was who took her place that caused my breath to catch and my heart to take its own very good time before deciding to resume its usual rhythm. For, standing in front of me, holding lightly to the back of the chair that Marcia had so recently vacated, was…was….was what?

My first thought, for I was female, was ‘How tall, how beautiful he is!’ My second, for I was the mother of two upwardly mobile Melbourne businesswomen, was ‘How much younger than Caroline and Lucy he is!’

What he was, undoubtedly, was the possessor of a demeanour so friendly, so open, and so all-encompassing that it seemed a cloud of instant stardust had descended tingling and sparkling about me.

I was in Hollywood and here was my leading man! But was the film comedy, drama or horror? That, indeed, was the question. A question that was answered in the crooked flash of a smile this Adonis then directed my way.

Robert Redford as the Sunshine Kid?

My knees trembled; the blood pounded in my head. I felt a dead giveaway full blush, that curse of all blondes, greying or no, sweep unhindered across my face.

At my age?

Robert Redford’s eyebrows rose. Eyebrow, actually, a la Clark Gable.

‘And why on earth not, my dear? You’re a woman, aren’t you?’

The Kid slipped uninvited into the seat so recently vacated by Marcia.

Marcia?..the go-between?

As my complexion struggled back to normality I felt that my head was being invaded by a swarm of bees. The humming in my brain reached a crescendo, telling me that right now all intellectual concepts were equally slippery so I might just as well cut to the chase.

Take charge, just as I should have done with Graeme.

Gathering myself, in mature amusement I returned the eyebrow quirk.

‘Do sit down, Peter.’

A gratifying flicker of uncertainty passed over those finely chiselled features as the youthful vision opposite me sat then shifted, as men in slight unease do, from one cheek to the other.

‘Susan…’

‘No, Peter whatever-your-name-is. I neither know whence you’ve come nor why you’re sitting opposite me but I should warn you that it’s not my custom to talk to strange men.’

But I will talk to Marcia later. At length.

A beautifully modulated whoop of pure mirth erupted from across the table. Then Peter, fixing me with a …what…hypnotic?...stare, started to speak in tones that were as mellifluous as his laugh.

‘Susan, I’m on a mission and only you can help.’ So saying, he squared his shoulders (even more), a gesture that disturbed not in the slightest the elegance of his suit.

Adonis in Armani.

‘First of all, I’m not a ‘strange man’. Give me your hand and I’ll prove it.’ He glanced around. ‘Go on, you’re quite safe. Plenty of people here.’

Indeed there were. And most, with cups or forks poised between table and mouth, were following this exchange with unconcealed curiosity. Something within made me submit and my hand was immediately enveloped in a grip so gentle, so all-understanding, and so comprehensively sympathetic that knees began to tremble all over again.

This man I can trust!

Now, where had that come from? Graeme would have had him by the scruff of his neck and out the door by now.

What was happening?

‘Susan, listen. Listen very carefully.’

You keep a-hold of my hand and I’ll listen for ever. Follow you even.

...What?! Too late, too late, I was lost!

‘Susan, what do you do each day?’

As if in a trance I recounted my familiar old routine.

‘I…I get up, have a coffee, listen to the news and then get ready to come out to Luigi’s for (another) coffee and a chocolate chip muffin (to keep my guilt complex in training).’

Peter leaned closer and I was near overcome by a scent masculine yet sweet, exciting yet comforting, outdoor yet with a touch of the boudoir. In short—may as well say it—sexy.

‘And then?’

‘And then I walk along the street to the jetty and…and…and…’

…and what in Hell do I do next?

For my brain had become a blank. I knew that I’d been away on plenty of holiday tours. Only too well, yuk! But within recent memory? I knew exactly what my movements were every morning and yet, and yet…

…I never get past the jetty! Then, oh my God, it all starts over!

Groundhog Day?

Because the next thing I could bring to mind was awakening each morning to the same birdsong and the same voice on the clock radio alarm announcing in disinterested tones the same disaster (there’s always a disaster somewhere to be reported in the early morning broadcasts).

And I always get into the same outfit—and it’s always clean! Then I always come to Luigi’s. And I’m always a bit surprised when Marcia, like the mini-whirlwind she is, always bursts in with the latest gossip!

But…

…Marcia’s gossip is always the same. OK, I know that gossip is gossip is gossip. I mean literally the same—word for word.

And I’ve never questioned any of this!

So what’s different today?

Well, here he is and he’s smiling again and I’m wafting away, towards him, into him, being him.

‘Peter!’

My head was getting seriously full of cotton-wool; I was fainting away.

‘Say, hold on, old girl!’ He dropped my hand (hot potato flashed into my reinstated mind) and leaned back in his chair. Now his gaze was more than just a little quizzical.

And calculating.

‘Big reaction, Susan! Haven’t seen that since…well, since a long time ago..,’ his voice dropped, as if he were communing with himself. ‘…a very long time ago.’

The comforting hum of human discourse again filled the best coffee shop in town as people returned to eating and drinking Luigi’s excellent fare. I felt restored, alive. But I was buzzin’ all right, and not from the bees. They’d departed, leaving a growing suspicion that, improbable as it might seem, something supernatural might be happening to little me. But what? I cudgelled my brain. Then it came.

Of course!

Peter? God’s waiting room?. That, too, came flooding back.

Could it really be? Was everyone in the town—well the mature majority, anyway— ‘waiting’? And was it truly now my turn?

Was I dead?

‘How y’doin’, Susy? Got there yet?’

Still the Sunshine Kid, but what a compassionate voice! And, as noted before, sexy as all get out.

But, but…surely there was something else I needed to tell Peter. Had to tell him! No good, it wouldn’t come. So I essayed an apologetic shrug across the table and was rewarded by a smile even more dazzling.

‘Good-oh! Because what you an’ me are goin’ to do, sweetheart, is get it on.’

Now all my limbs felt rubbery. At least a squadron of the bees had returned…down there!

I almost made to check that I wasn’t, in some mad escapade, using my vibrator. Oh yes, I had one—Mark 3, twin button, triple action, guaranteed to fly you to the moon then let you down, but lightly. And it had been Marcia who had slipped me Mark 1 in its sealed pack, just a few months after Graeme’s rather rude departure.

‘Mature don’t mean worn out, sweetheart. Give this a whirl,’ Marc had said, ‘and no worries, we all do it. Just between ourselves and the doona, so to speak.’

But right now it was just the bees. Which meant a purely personal physical response to the Viking opposite me. Who leaned yet closer. He was almost on my side of the table.

‘What we have to do now, Susie baby, is to depart this ol’ caff—don’t worry about Luigi, he won’t notice—an’ prom’nade down to the jetty...’

The dizziness returned. He’s going to say it!

‘…an’ jus’ wait for the Robert E. Lee.’

Sinuous and graceful he rose from his seat, grasping my arm. I made no resistance. The sensations were exactly as before. No, maybe just a bit warmer.

‘Just one thing, darlin’. We don’t look back. OK? We never look back.’

Instantly, struggling to be heard somewhere in my poor bemused head a famous contralto was singing an ultra-famous aria. And it was important. What she was singing about, that is. I gave the aforementioned head a violent shake but my stubborn brain was still in neutral, so thickly patina’d with guilt was my whole being. The contralto, as contraltos are apt to do, kept singing.

There’s a message there somewhere, if only I could decode it.

Had Peter sensed this unease?

Whatever.

What he did was lead me quite firmly out of Luigi’s, threading through tables that were now crowded with people who, I observed with increasing bewilderment, were not only staring at me saucer-eyed but once again remained frozen in mid-mastication.

Then we were walking at a smart pace along the street, passing all the familiar old shops, the reassurance of Peter’s arm—now about my waist—reinforcing the joyous feelings that coursed through heart and limb.

I felt sixteen and ready to go.

Go?

Where?

Well, where does this sort of Peter (quite obviously he was an angelic messenger/delivery boy) take one? To the other side, of course, presumably via the Robert E. Lee, plying her trade across what was obviously our local version of that fatal stream known to many (and all contraltos) as the Styx.

As the two of us approached the water a steam whistle’s distinctive double blast and the thrum, thrum thrum of paddle wheels announced the arrival of the midday shuttle. A delicious lassitude came upon me. So this is what going to Heaven is like!

And on the other side there will be Graeme, waiting for me. Ready with all the plans he has made for us over the last five years. Ready, with his ready advice, to look after me once more.

Ready to take over?

There was a pop! in my brain and I stopped short, causing my guide to stumble. Peter turned to me in question and suddenly Hannibal Lector had replaced the Sundance Kid.

‘Come on, come on! Move it! I have a schedule, you know.’ He caught himself and softened his tone. ‘You’re not the only one, dear lady.’

Uh-oh! Looks like I’m being taken to the other place. You know, where the lambs are always silent. And yes, Graeme’s probably there too. With the same set of plans.

God help me!

There was a sudden commotion behind us. Marcia—no athlete, far from it, but at all times valiant—was advancing along the street, stumbling, skipping, shouting.

And frantically waving a piece of paper.

‘Susan, stop! STOP! You don’t have to go! It’s all changed!’

As she came up to us a snarling Peter/Hannibal turned to confront his turncoat counterpart.

What happened next I, who was only an astounded spectator, always found hard to describe. Suffice to say that Marcia, in a typically melodramatic Marcian way, reversed the ostensibly blank sheet of paper she had been brandishing and thrust an extremely powerful image at the…man..? who was still grasping my waist.

I tell a lie. The likeness was not just run-of-the-mill powerful. ‘Conquering’ would be more like it. A representation as triumphant as it was mundane (in the sense that most everyone knew who it portrayed).

I was now well beyond any surprise, so I could only smile and nod at the profile of a bearded, benign old man trying to be stern but wearing an expression that I’d always categorised as ‘scarce contained amusement’. Only at one remove though. I’d never had the pleasure of personal dealings with this particular Australian icon.

Well, was that ever going to change!

Yet again Marcia’s cry rang out, as unambiguous in the tranquil mid-morning air as Dame Joan hitting top C.

‘Susan, you don’t have to do it! This has clear precedence!’

And she did a little jig, right there in front of us.

‘We’ve won! You and me! We’ve won! Jackpot! Thirty million!’

For a nanosecond she paused.

‘That’s fifteen million bucks each!’

There was a strangled scream, a rather loud explosion and a puff of dense black smoke. When it cleared, leaving Marcia and me breathing air that was only slightly sulphurous, Peter had vanished and the paddle boat had either been scuttled or in some sort of instant metamorphosis had become the port’s familiar old punt once again.

Another brain-click and there it was—the thing I couldn’t remember! Now my memory was being jogged all right and changes were afoot. I was buzzin’ all over, all over again. I knew it with the utmost certainty, even if I couldn’t define the overwhelming new emotion. But then I realised, with sudden and equal passion, that it did not concern money.

Amazing or what?

Thing is, in relating my daily round I should have told my pretty boy companion that Marcia and I bought a lottery ticket every week—just one, same numbers but still our big adventure. It was all coming back. How, over our coffee and muffins, we used to plan our silvertailed future. That would have aroused his suspicions, no worries, because it sure looked as though ‘future’ had just changed into ‘right now’.

But the old anxious me wanted answers. Was it I who one way or another made this happen? Or was some sort of Spring magic going on? Or was it that I ‘knew’ something all the time?

Birds (probably blue) certainly did. They were singing their hearts out. The morning, maintaining its balminess, was witness to the whole staff and clientele of The Bakery Door, led by the proprietor himself, streaming down the street shouting—bellowing, even—congratulatory messages at two of Luigi’s best customers.

Who, alone in our own little world, stood quite still and, again as if for the very first time, gazed deeply into each other’s eyes. Scales dropped away, that sort of thing.

‘Oh, Marcia!’

‘Oh, Susan!’

And in full view of the now-cheering mob, to the total delight of Luigi and open-mouthed incredulity of barista Rudolfo, we engaged in a close and prolonged embrace of quite unashamed intimacy.

‘Where shall we go first?’

‘Anywhere.’

‘Twin share?’

‘Oh, yes.’

‘First class?’

‘Is there any other?’