Caravan Story Read online

  Is this meant to be some kind of metaphor? says Büchner, standing behind me, arms crossed, watching the game. I don’t know what to say. Something’s going on over there, he says, pointing back in the direction of the changing shed: they’re getting something ready, just like I told you. I look back in that direction and see the ute pulling away: it drives around the gravel track, past where we are standing and out onto the road. There’s a dog in the back, a backpack spray kit, some four-litre plastic poison bottles and a petrol-powered whipper-snipper. The crowd out on the paddock roars—someone has kicked a goal.

  No, I don’t think I’m going to do very well out of this, says Büchner, seemingly out of nowhere. Is he talking to me? He’s looking out across the paddock but he doesn’t seem to be watching the game. What do you mean? I say. Do you remember when you asked for the cleaning things? he says, turning to me: you too made trouble once—but you’re smart, you know what side your bread’s buttered on; you’re fucking Polly, you’re doing your work, they’ll reward you in the long run. Out on the paddock a bell rings; the players and the crowd start milling around. Someone walks out with oranges on a tray; the two teams drift apart to either end of the ground where their coaches are preparing to address them. Anyway, good luck, says Büchner. He turns away. I watch him jump back across the boundary fence and disappear in among the caravans and tents. It’s anyone’s game, I hear the Poetry coach shouting from his huddle—he raises his volume but his next words are lost beneath the sound of his team roaring their commitment.

  The third quarter is a cakewalk, by the time the bell rings for three-quarter time the result is in no doubt. I watch for another five minutes or so then pack up my things. Across the camp the shadows are lengthening, a dull sun is hanging low down in the west. A flock of white cockatoos whirls around screeching overhead then lands softly in the branches of my tree. From behind me I hear the roar of the crowd—another goal. A chill is coming down. I walk around the gravel track then jump the boundary fence and make my way along the lane between two caravans.

  It’s not so silly to talk of lanes now; without any particular forethought a pattern of streets, lanes and narrow pathways has developed and now separates the dwellings crammed together within the confines of the boundary fence. Some people, for a joke, have given some of them names—Hope Street, for example—and most people, with the exception of the latest arrivals, know the pattern blind. All paths lead, naturally, in some way or other, to the open area in the centre of the oval where the meals are still served and from there back to the changing shed, with its cooking, showering and toilet facilities. Here and there, at street corners, in the slip of land between two caravans, you will find small open fires surrounded by rocks or bricks, some of which are still smouldering now.

  The camp is pretty well deserted, everyone seems to be out on the paddock, but as I turn from that lane into the adjacent street I see Polly, a clipboard resting on her forearm, a pen in her hand. She turns and sees me—I can hardly describe her look. Shame? She quickly scribbles something down, then turns away. Polly? I say. She half-turns towards me—her face is gaunt, hunted—and hesitates. Is she going to speak to me, tell me something that perhaps I don’t want to hear? Our eyes meet only for a moment, then she turns away again. I watch her walking—fine arse!—away from me down the planks (the street) between the caravans and tents. But she only goes a little way before she stops (she knows I’m looking), checks something on her clipboard, looks at the caravan she is now facing and writes something down. Then she is off again. I watch her go—stopping, writing something down, moving on—until she turns a corner about twenty metres away and disappears from view. Is she asking me to follow her? Was that swaying arse for me? I walk a little in that direction then catch a glimpse of her again—I’m looking down the lane between two caravans and see her at the end walking past. I hurry down that lane and turn right into the lane off that one. Now I see her again, turning left. I know I am heading back towards the centre of the oval, that the trestle table area with its tarpaulin cover is ahead of me somewhere to my left, but the further I go the less certain I become. I turn again and pass between two caravans parked very close together—there is barely enough room to squeeze between them. When I emerge at the other end of this narrow lane I find myself in an open, tented area that I’ve never really seen before: two-man tents mostly, some in neat rows, some arranged in circles and semi-circles with their flap-doors facing inward. Now I can see Polly very clearly again, head and shoulders above the height of the tents, moving towards the arc of caravans on the other side. The small tented area I’ve now found myself in is not so well served with streets and paths as other parts of the camp and I have to pick my way carefully around the mud, finding only the occasional sheet of cardboard or masonite to make the going easier. But Polly is still very easy to spot, she’s got her red cotton top on—a beacon in all this grey chaos and confusion. I watch her pass around the back of some tents then slip down between two caravans over near the outer wing.

  When I catch up with her again it is my caravan she is standing in front of. I stand a little way off; I don’t know if she’s seen me. I call out to her—Polly?—but again the same routine. I approach, she moves away, stops and half looks back, then turns and walks away again. I stand, undecided—what’s the point? what do I care?—then suddenly, there is Büchner. He’s just stepped out of our caravan; he looks terrible, his face is all flushed, his eyes are mad and faraway, his hair hangs askew over his eyes. He has a pillow in his hands. He sees me standing, Polly walking. Shannon, I say, are you all right? He looks at me, looks through me, then again towards where Polly is disappearing. What’s she doing? says Büchner. I don’t know, I say. Find out, he says—was she writing down names? Hurry, now, run and catch her, he says. Why? I say—what is it this time? Büchner doesn’t answer, just gives me that look. All right, I say. He goes back inside and closes the door behind him.

  I search the streets and lanes for another ten minutes but I can’t find Polly anywhere. I work my way back towards the changing shed—very distantly I can still hear the thump of leather and the occasional cheer from the crowd out on the paddock. The door to the storeroom and kitchen is open and the light is on inside: it’s getting dark outside now and the night air is coming down. I cross the storeroom and the kitchen, now stacked high everywhere with boxes, big tins, bottles and all the other paraphernalia necessary to keep three hundred hungry writers fed. Polly’s office door is open; I step inside, I don’t see her at first, then suddenly she steps out from the corner behind the door and puts the clipboard on her desk. Her office is no better than the storeroom, piled high with boxes and other junk—it’s just as I am thinking this that I see the new stack of four-litre plastic poison bottles against the wall beside her bed and that, simultaneously, as if reading my thoughts, Polly turns and looks at me. Her beauty was always skin deep, all surface, all hair and lipstick and clothes and tits, and now it’s all wearing away and there’s nothing underneath. She’s like a mannequin, stripped and thrown in the corner. I feel sorry for her, deeply sorry, but feeling sorry is a long way from loving.

  Polly, I say, what’s going on? She looks at me—she looks weak, vulnerable, defeated—and the most fabulously filthy thoughts pass across my mind. She is about to speak, she might have spoken, but then behind me is Judd, the factotum. The game is over, he says, they need drinks. At first all I hear is ‘game is over’ and for a moment I think he too has entered into the spirit of this pseudo-crime-novel denouement, but then I realise he is talking about the football match: the game is over, they’re waiting for drinks. I look at him: his ice-carved face, his gaunt good looks, his baggy black sweater and tight black jeans—and for a moment it becomes painfully clear to me where I stand. I see Polly bent over, me taking her from behind, but what I hear is not her moaning but the pleasure-grunts of Judd as she eagerly takes him in her mouth. I’m sorry, he says, I didn’t mean to interrupt; it’s just that there are a few hundred w
riters out there, waiting for a drink. I smile with him, or at him, I’m not sure. Polly pushes past me and follows Judd back out into the storeroom.

  For a while I stand where they have left me, staring at Polly’s desk, her bed, the four-litre poison bottles stacked against the wall. When I too go back out into the storeroom, Polly and Judd are gone—they’ve taken a stack each of wine casks and long tubes of plastic cups—and standing now at the trestle table along the wall beside the fridge, preparing what look like pastry shells, is the chef. He has his back to me, but he knows I’m there. Are you here for the shift? he says. Not really, I say. Still, you could help me anyway, couldn’t you? he says, with a sly questioning tone. I join him at the table; he’s covered it with flour and is rolling out small balls of pastry and shaping them into rough circles that he then presses into the little fluted aluminium pie dishes that are stacked high at the end of the table. I take over the last part of the job, pressing the pastry into the dishes. I’m not rostered on to dinner till next Thursday, but it doesn’t seem to matter any more. This day is already looking like no other. We work silently like this, he flattening the dough and sliding the circle along to me, me pressing it with my fingers into the dish, and I drift off for some time into my own thoughts. It’s very relaxing; there is something very comforting about working with your hands, I think, kneading dough—making clay pots might be another. Are you happy with the way things have turned out? I ask the chef, who seems also to have drifted off into his own thoughts. He looks at me a little strangely at first, then realises what I’m talking about. The job’s all right, he says, but any job is better than no job at all. I’ll admit it’s taken a little while to get on top of things: I come from a family that wasn’t that adventurous with its food—Jude herself was a meat and three veg person—so all this fancy cooking didn’t come naturally to me at first. But that’s the way it is—you’ve got to please your customers, I’ve learned that much at least. So with a bit of application (and a lot of work out of hours) I think I’ve managed to put together a pretty good menu now. Of course, it’s hard to get all the ingredients—galangal I can’t get for love or money—but I think that makes you more creative with your cooking in the long run. For example, that cassoulet I did last week?—I had no bay leaves, so I used a parsley substitute and I think it turned out nicely. I could do with a few more pots and pans, though, and a couple of new utensils, but you adapt your ways to suit your means. And I still get the best cuts of meat in the district, you’d have to agree with that.

  I smile. There is something so soothing about what I am doing—kneading the pastry, listening to his voice, seeing his happy ending—that everything now drifts and floats and almost lets me leave my body and hover up above. The one thing I want to get on top of, though, he is saying, his voice now far away, is matching the meal with the right kind of wine. I’ve talked to Polly about this, he is saying, and told her that obviously the cask wine we are serving undermines everything I am trying to do as a chef and of course she’s always said she’ll do something about it but she never has and it looks unlikely now. I’m listening to him, I am, in fact, hearing everything he’s saying, very clearly, but now that other part of me, that part outside my body, is roaming out the door across the camp. Out on the paddock it’s like a big party, everyone has a white plastic cup in their hand which the appointed waiters, moving among them, fill from their casks. The red cotton top of the arts-slut Polly dashes about, telling them all how much she loves their work, and how soon, perhaps tomorrow, it will open up previously unimagined doors for them. They will be like doves released, and only from a distance will Polly see her work reflected in them. At the back of the changing shed the big blue wheelie bin is too full for the lid to close and a jumble of papers cascades from it. Judd is out there walking with his hand on Polly’s arse.

  So anyway, the chef is saying, wine aside, I’m making a special effort tonight. Cook something special, Polly said, and I can’t tell you how many sleepless hours I’ve spent wondering what special might mean. And then it came to me, it’s so obvious, all this effort, all this hoo-ha, all this fancy international cuisine—but what sort of meal is going to be ‘special’ after a game of footy on a drizzly Saturday in spring? Meat pies, mashed potatoes, carrots and peas—if Polly wanted a surprise then I imagine she’s going to get it.

  We finish the flans and set them aside, laid out on the trestle table in rows. The chef is stirring the big pot of meat and gravy; I set to work peeling the potatoes. It feels like we’ve been at it a long time but the chef assures me help will be coming soon. They’re just finishing off the last of the wine, he says. The light is on in Polly’s office and a white glow spills through the open doorway onto the storeroom’s concrete floor. What was Büchner doing, back there in the caravan? I watch the chef stirring the big pot. He takes it off the stove. The help has still not arrived. I open the second sack of potatoes, cutting the string seam with my knife. Then I hear the hiss of air brakes outside. You can go now, says the chef.

  I turn. Judd is in the doorway. Come with me, he says. I go outside. About a dozen writers are gathered around the door of a big touring bus—I recognise the faces but the funny names have all escaped me. Polly arrives, she’s come from the paddock, she hasn’t stopped. Now Judd hands her a big armful of manila folders and one by one Polly hands them to us. It’s my Laburnum papers. The bus door hisses open; we’re told to get inside. It’s a big bus of the kind I remember travelling to Sydney in once a long long time ago. The lights inside are dim, there are lights embedded in the steps and in the overhead lockers; the driver watches diffidently each of our feet on the steps. There are far too few of us to fill the bus and as if by prearrangement we all spread out, one here, one there. I’m sitting about two thirds of the way back, on the left-hand side. I put my manila folder on the seat beside me. The last of the passengers take their seats and now I can see Polly, up the front, under the dim light, talking to the driver, her clipboard in her hand. She takes a few steps down the aisle and pointing with her forehead mentally checks us off her list. It is no accident that the last one checked is me: her look lingers, there’s something strange and hard to read in her eyes—is she kissing me goodbye?—then just before she turns away I see the hint of a warm smile pass across her face. She stops again beside the driver and holds the clipboard out to him—he’s signing us away—then she is down the steps and gone. The door closes with a hiss. The air brakes release, I can hear the soft clunk of the gears and the bus starts moving away.

  So here I am, I’m going: it happens to us all. There is no rhyme nor reason. Even when you’ve sucked the fingers of the hand that feeds you it can still turn around and grab you by the throat. Of course I’m not going to a better place, unless that’s what oblivion is, a few kilometres from here and the driver will pull over into a siding and ask would we like something to drink. He’ll take out the big bottle of pre-mixed orange cordial and pour us each a cup. And like all the others the system couldn’t handle—Polly, poor Polly! she tried—thus will end our relocation. They’re killing us, all those who go and don’t come back, all those who like the papers in the wheelie bin have become an extravagant waste. Polly, the Angel of Mercy, was all along the Angel of Death, with her clipboard marking up the fate of the condemned. I will not sit under the tree with my partner tomorrow in the early spring sun, watching the white cockatoos flap and roll—she will come back from her touring and find me gone, the table down, the bed unmade. He’s been relocated, Büchner will say, and she—sweet innocence!—will smile, believing that finally my time has come: I’m out there getting paid, one day soon she’ll see my name in the papers, they will have a photo of me, she’ll ring me up, I’ll hold her close, she’ll retire, I’ll pay all the bills, we’ll move to our own house in a leafy suburb and I will write in my office at the end of the yard where rosellas will peck seed from the sill.

  The bus is now crawling slowly around the gravel track towards the road. I look out the window:
the party on the paddock is winding down, people with torches and candles are moving up the grassy bank, some are drifting back down the track towards the shed, others are jumping the boundary fence and walking towards the centre of the oval. Some people pass very close to the bus—can they see me inside? They look up at the window but their eyes look through me. Am I dead already? There are so many of them, too many—can Polly really expect to get on top of the problem with mathematics like this? A dozen of us, while hundreds are still trooping towards the trestle tables, asking to be fed. Asking to be fed. I look out the window, look behind—hundreds of them, like zombies. Then it hits me. I’ve not been condemned, I’ve been saved! This is the denouement. No-one can provide support to three hundred aspiring writers. They’re walking to their deaths, we are driving to our freedom. Like zombies they walk in streams up the grassy bank, their faces ghostly, ready to sit down to their evening meal, never to get up again.