Review of Australian Fiction, Volume 2, Issue 5 by Venero Armanno

Author:Venero Armanno
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Review of Australian Fiction
Published: 2013-06-30T04:00:00+00:00

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The extent of Duvall’s pleasure was completed by one more thing, and that was the dream that now came quite regularly, usually, he noted with interest, on the nights when he was alone, Sandy not with him. He would be in that countryside again, sometimes with the dogs, sometimes not, wind rising through the trees in the distance and a blue pall smudging the long irregular lines of the mountain range. From up high, standing at the peak of a hill, he again would see an almost infinite fall, a direct plunge down into nothingness, but when he took that deep breath and filled his lungs and leaned forward into space, the dead-drop became the grassy hillside’s gentle decline. He would descend, floating, enjoying every moment yet not being particularly shocked by the wonder of his ability.

One night the dream changed: Duvall didn’t float downward, instead he rose up. He ascended with the power of his own volition, and from up high, there with the spreading clouds, he saw the entire reach of his childhood home. The old house, the farm, the pastures, the fallow lands and rolling meadows. Just over there were the other farms—in reality long-gone, of course, but they lived forever in dream-memory—including the cow pastures owned by the Wiseman family. He remembered Mrs Melly Wiseman riding over on her chestnut mare pulling the wooden cart that carried the vats of that morning’s fresh milk. Little Mary used to come for the ride after milking; she’d been four years younger than him. When he was ten, she’d been six, and when the local community got together on Sundays after mass and members of different families played each other in one-set tennis matches in the school grounds next to St Patrick’s chapel, Duvall used to walk with Mary down to the nearby creek and they’d watch the tadpoles and frogs, and wet the soles of their feet still aching from their good Sunday shoes. Then, one by one the families sold up and moved on, the old community evaporated into the air, and it hadn’t been until the funeral of Walter Wiseman sixteen years later that Duvall met Mary again. He’d seen the obituary notice in the newspaper and had decided to go pay his respects, and to see how time had treated all the old faces—the ones still alive, that is. There Mary had been, now in her early twenties and lovely, wiping her eyes and holding her sister’s arm at the loss of their father.

‘Aren’t you—?’

‘And you’re—?’

When he awoke, the memory of the dream remained so thrilling that the next time Sandy came to the house, he said, ‘You know, I’m thinking of going back to visit the area I grew up in… would you like to come? We can drive out, it’s not far. Then we can stop for lunch on the way back. A bit of a country outing, it’ll be fun and not too long a day.’

Sandy didn’t quite stiffen. She was silent a moment, then said, ‘I come here…’ and that had been enough.

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