Six by Six by Bill Manhire

Author:Bill Manhire
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Victoria University Press
Published: 2021-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

O’Leary’s Orchard

After all the sun was shining. And Miss Bernstein was due at four. Even so a wind of incredible bitterness was blowing from the south west, carrying from grinding ice floes or the circle about the pole perhaps, a few penguin feathers and, from regions less remote, autumnal and rural smells. O’Leary raked up leaves and prunings, working with his back to the icy blast, preparing with a strong anticipation of pleasure another of his seasonal pyres. His plan was not so much one of smoking out the district as of rewarding himself with dense and pungent billows – and only incidentally getting rid of the orchard trash. These great white clouds of smoke were one of O’Leary’s addictions: another, at this time, was Miss Bernstein. He called her Isobel: she called him Mr O’Leary, or Gambo when they were alone.

It was as O’Leary, owner of the place, that he started the base fire of newspapers and dry stuff, waiting for the flames to take hold; but it was as Gambo, lively defector, that he began to pile on the debris of a fruitful year. He used a long-handled fork with curved tines. He took his time. Smoke began to rise in pleasing volume, white or dun.

The imminent visit of Miss Bernstein was a trouble at the back of his mind. Without it he would have been free to become totally absorbed in his present mania. Miss Bernstein was fixed in her expectation that he would seduce her: that was the trouble. But where she would limn simplicities or, worse, a casual unimportance, O’Leary’s greater age and more diverse experience had him with his foot on the brake. There were questions of age, discrepancies of May and December. He loved the autumn: she, he fancied, would favour blossom and warmth and downright sun. There were other questions also, among which Mrs Bernstein was notable. She would figure as widow, matron and mother: a sternness could be expected, at the least.

Moodily O’Leary added to the smouldering heap.

Oh he liked her – most immensely he liked her – the lush and lovely Miss Bernstein or Isobel. Better men than O’Leary, or worse, for both were to be found, would sing her praises in their differing keys. He could all but hear the contrapuntal paean. And wiser men, or more foolish, for both again were somewhere about on the unterminating camber of the globe, might find themselves similarly discommoded by Miss Bernstein’s headlong rush. She kept her foot down and took the sharpest bends at an undiminishing pace: the passenger seat and its occupant were a mere optional extra. So, at least, O’Leary saw it.

It was unsatisfactory. At first the smoke rose in languid volume and was comforting; but the wind began to gust and fan flames. Soon, where he’d hoped for billows and plumes, an obliteration of white, there was a trembling of fierce heat and no smoke at all. However much he heaped on damp leaves the flames burst through, sending blasts of heat between the fruit trees.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.