Crick struggled not to say something. He looked at the sea. He was learning to hold his tonguepark it quietly on the curb outside the conversation. Hed been wrong too often: savage, like a chariot from Ben Hur carving through a dinner party. Now he was going to be a nicer person. Glancing down, he saw a half rotted condom in the dusty grass. It looked delicate, like bird bones. The picnic was well underway. He rolled over to talk to Jenni.
Jenni was just getting the first line of a novel in her head: I became a tourist in my own lifetime. That was a good start. She gazed absently at Cricks lips as they bounced around. She was getting the next bit: although not as in the days of the P & O Line. Damn, Cricks voice was filtering through her creative spurt.
I mean youd think he invented the news himself!
Before Jenni could tell Crick she didnt know what he was talking about a child in a black dress bumped a pink mediball against Clarke Carsons face. Clarke stood up: loomed in fact, and pulled a face at the little girl running bawling towards her mother and a tattooed man holding a plastic bag.
Clarke Carson was a person Fiona couldnt see, well not when she wasnt looking at him directly. She just could never remember what he looked like, even though shed slept with him. She fixed her gaze deliberately on him now, trying to memorise every feature so shed never forget againsandy hair, freckles, banana yellow eyes, ears like Kerry Stokes Shed asked her friend, Chestor, who also slept with him, if he had the same problem. Chestor said no.
She rolled over to talk to Elle about her trip to Cairns. Elle was going on though, about the artsevery artist/writer should get a stipend from the state at least as big as the dole, like in New Zealand, or Ireland, or America, where even George Bush had contemplated subsidies for verse writers, as well as farmers. Fiona could get tired of writers she thought, but just then a quote from some book came uninvited into her headThey all looked at me, shaking their heads, their mouths full of cherry stones. She lay back on the rug. Where had that come from? Why would writing never leave her alone? Turning sideways, she could see at least 50 dogs in the park. One was nearly as big as a horse. She turned back to the sky and watched baroque, Vienna coffee clouds rolling over and over and over.
Bim, whod been talking to Alliana, poured himself another glass of red and picked up a copy of Spectrum. There was a review of a book about Sternea disreputable type, the reviewer said. It was the only thing in Spectrum worth reading. Bim would have liked to get back to London for the Sunday papers. He thought he knew a lot about Australiamore than any native whiteman. He liked to show off to his friends. So now was the time to launch into a history of the parkback as far as the fifties. Wirths Circus used to come here then but the elephant ploughed up the grass; and there were tram sheds over there and later, a bowling alley. They had a black chimpanzee rolling a golden ball down the lanes at the opening. It was the place to be in the sixties.
Like being in America, said a local.
Its like being in America now someone said.
Fiona was raising everyone up into the skyCrick, Elle, Joan, Tom, Camelia, Alliana, Jenni, Fay Allure and Chestorswigging macchiatos, flat whites, or chinottos. But Clarke Carson was not there. He simply would not rise from the rug. She screwed up her eyes to levitate him. Only neon shapeslike artworks in the Biennalefloated up.
Just then a huge black poodle leapt over the sea wall and everyone jumped up. It swam to the Point and disappeared from view. A voice was heard, screamingPluto. Pluto!
Do sharks eat dogs? Fay Allure worried. Nah, only people and pussies. Crick could not resist He was again looking out to seaat the sea rolling and rolling in its inimitable way. Somehow he knew that one day, sure as eggs, he would drown in it.
Fiona looked down towards Clarke Carson. He wasnt there. But he was there. He had just disappeared among the squares and zigzags of the picnic blanketlike one of those magic eye pictures in the Sunday colour supplement. She looked skywards againthe cafe was gone, in its place, a hanging rock, huge and towering, like a ragged mark.
Alliana drew her scarf over her face.
Looks like rain