Goodbye Sweetheart by Marion Halligan

Author:Marion Halligan
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
Publisher: Allen & Unwin
Published: 2015-02-18T05:00:00+00:00

HELEN COMES HOME LATE

The winter night had come suddenly. Fallen, yes, that was the word. There’d been almost no twilight, it seemed, and now it was dark. Helen didn’t care for being out in the dark. She always arranged it so she was home before the light went. Shopping at the organic vegetable shop had taken an inordinate amount of time. She was cross, with the night, with Ferdie, with herself. Why had he gone off with Aurora? Why had she let him? She could have said, Darling, do wait and come down with me, and he would have, he did like to please her, but always she did this, pushed him to go when she wanted him to stay, and got angry when she had made what she didn’t want happen.

And now her street was full of parked cars. She could always get a spot outside her house; not tonight. Somebody must be having a party. On a Monday evening. She had to park several hundred metres away, and carry the food, and books, and marking, and walk. The footpath was old, cracked and bumpy; she made her way carefully, fearful of tripping. The street trees were strange bushy creatures, surviving in the sea winds, with many trunks and spiky leaves and half-dead branches.

There was somebody hiding in one. Crouched up against the prickly branches. Grey in the night dark, formally draped, one of the kneeling angels from the cemetery, head bent, grieving. Neither man nor woman, the angel sex. Helen was hurrying past, not looking, remembering what she’d said to Ferdie about them obliging people to join them—had she meant that?—when a clear voice said, I know I dropped a shilling here.

Not very encouraging, since you could think only ghosts would talk about shillings, but Helen stopped. The babble of the party came from a house over the road.

A shilling, the voice said. I don’t suppose it’s very much money for some people, but it’s a shilling. The shape moved. Helen saw a pale old face in the gleam of light that is always there in cities. Pale and old but childlike too. The voice wasn’t querulous, it was patient.

Shall I have a look? said Helen. She put her bags down and bent over; she wouldn’t kneel. I don’t know, she said, I think it’s too dark. Maybe you should come back in daylight.

Do you think so? But what if somebody else finds it first?

I don’t think that will happen. It’s quite a secret place. Hidden from an idle passerby.

I suppose it is just a risk.

You could go home and come back early in the morning. Which house do you live in? Shall I walk with you?

Ooh, I don’t know. I don’t live here. Do I?

Helen didn’t know. Years she had lived here but people kept to themselves. She supposed.

Can you stand up? she asked. Then you can tell me where you live.

It took a bit of doing. The old woman, that’s what she was, seemed reluctant to move, but it was because she was stiff from crouching.

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