I’m a dirty rotten thief and this is why.
Last month, while working words in the Blue Mountains, I returned to the place where I spent my childhood, a village, a post office and a public-phone booth making up the village heart. I hadn’t visited the village for twenty-five years, although I had thought about it. In fact I’ve thought about it often, every week, sometimes every day.
When I can’t fall asleep I recall the green-painted weatherboard cottage; it had once been used as an apple-packing shed. And the wood-chip heater in the bathroom, how it would puff-puff-puff when we’d get it really hot. And the fire-wood alcove in from the front door and the tool-room out the back. And the bedroom in which I once slept, how it had a view of the open-fire in the loungeroom. And the school friends I invited up there, one particular school friend, another boy, the event that happened one night in the bedroom, the event that suggested my life would take a different course.
So I did my trip back; I made a mix-CD for the purpose, songs from the last two decades, not songs from my childhood because that would have been too much. In the car I put on the CD and drove the twenty-five kilometres – one kilometre, I realise now, for each year that I’ve been away – to the old holiday mountain.
Everything was the same, everything: the hairpin bend, the tree-ferns like soldiers, the avenues of oaks and ash. I turned down the lane to the apple-packing shed. But the apple-packing shed: it was no more. In its place was a sleek, black, architectural creation, not ugly, but it shouldn’t have been there.
How could they do this? How will I be able to get to sleep now?
I got out of the car. I took quick photos for the family. But then I saw it: an old apple box half-covered in builder’s rubble. I exposed the box, carefully cleaning it of basaltic dirt. I felt sure it had once been inside the holiday house I used to know, either in the fire-wood alcove or in the tool-room. In a flash I had an idea. I grabbed the box and ran back to the car.
As I sped away I thought of Robert Frost’s ‘After Apple-picking’: One can see what will trouble/This sleep of mine, whatever sleep it is.
(First published in Panorama, The Canberra Times, 17 December 2011.)
5 comments
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December 18, 2011 at 9:16+00:00Dec
Gabrielle Bryden
Ah, such a scoundrel you are Nigel – hahahaha – and what a lovely tale with a very good ending. You must do whatever it takes to maintain good sleep – hahaha 🙂
December 19, 2011 at 9:16+00:00Dec
Nigel Featherstone
Hi Gabrielle, thanks, and yes it’s a good ending. But do I feel guilty? I’m not sure I do!
December 19, 2011 at 9:16+00:00Dec
Tristan
So good, Nigel.
December 19, 2011 at 9:16+00:00Dec
Nigel Featherstone
Thanks heaps, Tristan
December 22, 2011 at 9:16+00:00Dec
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