Owen Marshall Selected Stories by Vincent O'Sullivan

Author:Vincent O'Sullivan [Vincent O'Sullican]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781869419585
Publisher: Random House New Zealand
Published: 2008-08-29T04:00:00+00:00

Tomorrow We Save the Orphans

My final voyage, a winter’s night, and Dubois accompanies me as a courtesy of farewell. After more than a year at Acme Textiles, I have been appointed a researcher with Statsfact Polling Agency. Dubois is piping me ashore. ‘I might do the same at your age,’ he says, ‘but later you’ll see the advantages of night work. Fewer people and more interesting ones.’ He’s right: they drop through the sieve of daylight employer to a nether world. The most fallible of fools and perverse of the profound.

The breath that forms Dubois’ words is a plume in the freezing air as we stand beneath the water tower and check the sacking on the pipes. Appearance is most marked and memorable on the day that we meet a person, and the day we part. Dubois’ continental good looks are in some way debased, the casual, toss away features of a circus rouseabout, but his eyes and hands have individual authenticity. Dog-killing hands, strong and supple, with muscle raised between thumb and forefinger, and eyes that will not tolerate deceit.

‘I’ve been reading more about castle development and the influence of the Crusades. Brattices and the advantages of circular masonry,’ he says.

I returned from Europe with an innocent bladder infection and a debt of over three thousand dollars to my parents. Acme Textiles was unimpressed with my education, but when I crooked my arm to make a muscle and talked of labouring in Wolverhampton, the personnel manager said okay, I’d got it, night work, but only if the caretaker liked the look of me. I never saw the personnel manager again. He was the Charon who delivered me to the underworld. His name was O’Laughlan. The managing director, whom I never met at all, was called Jim Simm, and the caretaker was N.F. Vincenze Dubois. Life is full of such splendid ironies.

On this last night, a winter round, Dubois seems willing to put aside all except that final cover which is the necessary reserve to keep the glare of other people from our soul. At farewell to comradeship and proximity, it matters little if some confidences are shared which might be awkward if you had to meet again. We all learn to jog along in our relationships, not expecting too much, not admitting ambitions we can afterwards be beaten with. ‘Have you really been here fourteen months?’ says Dubois. He has a muslin cleaning rag knotted around his neck for warmth and the collar of his tartan jacket turned up against the chill. ‘Fourteen months. Fourteen months,’ he says, ‘and I don’t remember more than two or three things in that time, apart from the Middle Ages, that I care a damn about. I hope it’s different for you.’

Night has a stark effect. A liposuction that removes the inessential until the bones, the sinew, the organs only of an impartial world remain. The dump skips cast perfect shadows from the moon across the frosted shingle and dirt of the yard.

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