Comet

Perihelion

The Poet in me wants to write fiction. The fiction writer in me wants to write Poetry. This is one of their children....

Comet was published as the Title piece for a collection of short fiction by writers from Australia’s Northern Territory. (Fellowship of Australian Writers, Northern Territory. 1997).

At the time I was living in Alice Springs - that strange desert town where a dry riverbed pierces a mountain range and where cultures meet, and move past one another, often in mutual incomprehension.

The nearest ocean is 1200 kms (720 miles) away. My sandy desert joke back then was - “We have a great beach, but the tide is a long way out.”

Anyway - there was a comet coming into view the Southern Hemisphere and the astronomers suggested it would be visible to the naked eye in areas away from light - so I grabbed my bike and cycled out of town around 10pm, heading out along a winding track to a little rocky knoll nestled in a valley, surrounded by spinifex grass and ghost gums, with only the stars above for company.

Lying down on the wind worn quartzite stone I watched the comet, then fell asleep, waking after midnight cold but calm, with the arc of this story clear in my head.

I cycled home in the early hours, sat down, wrote this….

(Trigger Warning: self harm references).

COMET

She came to the cliff top in the hour before sunset, arriving at that sharp edge of the continent as if arriving at the terminus of her life. The last trees, a scattering of grass, twenty metres of smooth, wind scoured rock and then space. The brink like an interface between being, and not being - a fine but definite line, retreating slowly yet ever certainly before the encroaching sea.

Just like life, she thought. You walk on through, everything green and growing and apparently endless, then you start to notice the changes. The trees lower, twisted, cowed by the wind and stunted in their growth. The bushes sparse and the ground stony. In the end all that remains is bare rock, a harsh wind and empty space ahead. One more step is all it needs. Just a step. A step she could nearly take. Not hard you know. Not hard to do at all. She contemplated it dispassionately, quite removed from her own despair. It would not be a panic thing. Not desperation. Just a calm, reasoned decision. "If life's a lousy movie why not leave before the end?" She'd read that somewhere. Well why not?

But she did not take that step. Instead, removing her light pack and walking cautiously to the edge, she sat just short of it where she could see out across the sea and breathe the salt smell in the way she had so loved doing as a child, and older. Breathing it in like a disinfectant; a cleanser. Breathing out her anger and all the waste of her life and replacing it with the clean clear smell of the great salt water.

It reminded her of her father. Held close in his arms in absolute trust, too young to swim and awash with a delicious terror as a great green swell of water rolled in from the sea, looming imminent above her head, poised to break. Then his body bearing her up, rising with her up that slope. Up, up and flying over that crest to see for a moment the ocean unrolled to infinity and hear her own voice shrieking laughter at the feel of the water sucking them back down. Elemental, like the absolute certainty of his love.

Here comes another one, Annie.

Jump! Jump!

Its a big one too.

Jump Daddy!

Shall we jump it Annie?

Yes Daddy jump!!

Say go!

Go Daddy, go go GO!......

The waves far below seemed so small by comparison, flattened out like wrinkles in the skin of the world, and the setting sun at her back threw the cliff shadow far out to sea - like that other sunset, up on the Spire…

Annette

Yeah?

Its time to go. We're running out of light.

Not yet, Martin.

Yeah, mate. We gotta go. Its a long way down without a torch.

But look at the shadow.

Thats what I mean!

No. Look at it. The shadow of the mountain.

Yeah?

Its huge. Like a giant. Its swallowing up the whole valley.

Sure Anne, but I'm setting up the fucking ropes. Its down time.

So why did we climb it, Martin. Why did we come?

Exercise mate. Bloody exercise. Clip onto the rope and start abseiling, hey? We're going down....

By firelight that night, underneath the mountain, with the whole world now wrapped in shadow and the point of the spire a pillar of darkness jutting amongst the stars, she had held him close, felt his arm around her, his hand upon her breast. But even then she knew they'd each climbed a different mountain. The night was peaceful, but by morning Martin was angry again.

Well, tonight there was no-one to please. The stars would be there and the comet too. So the radio said. She hadn't seen one since she was eight, or nine. Something like that. Woken up in the middle of the night by Dad and hustled out into the freezing cold yard to peer, half asleep, through his precious telescope. It had looked better without it. You could see the stars all around and the comet like a badge pinned upon the sky.

Why isn't it moving Dad?

It is moving Annie, very fast, but its a long way away so you can't tell. Are you warm enough mate?

Look at the tail Dad. Look .....

I'm looking Annie.

But look ......

A year later he was dead. No comets in the sky then, just stars. Lots and lots of stars. So many stars.

Turning her back on the ocean she returned to the treeline, gathering armloads of the twisted, dry wood which lay scattered across the ground and heaping it in a pile near her pack. A depression in the rock near the edge of the grass made a fireplace and soon the flames were growing, curling and twisting about the wood in a soft caress. It was peaceful to watch, that transformation, from cold, grey, inanimate wood to a pulsing heart of orange, glowing coals. Entranced so, night arrived without her knowing and when at last she looked up the stars had come. So many.

Dinner was simple. The cooking itself was therapeutic. Unhurried. Slow and methodical in a way her life so seldom was. Predictable too. A formula repeated many times. In this setting, alone beneath the sky and bent above the flames it felt like ritual - the preparation of a simple magic; the magic of still being there. The magic of still being able to do this - such a plain and simple function of her life. And then the eating. A silent communion with herself.

Her father had loved such times, Martin too, but Anne had never learnt how to share it with him. Martin had felt her unconscious distance and slowly, over time, it had roused his anger. That and her refusal to contemplate children.

But why not, Annette?

Because, Martin.

Why because?

Just because... Because of you. Because of me. Because I think of my father and I know I could never match his patience. Because I look at you and I know you could never contain your anger. Because of my fear for them, Martin. Because of my fear of bringing them into this world and my fear of my inability to cope. I couldn't make it right Martin. I couldn't bear their love. Couldn't stand their pain..... Just because, Martin! Just because .....

The fire was dying fast, the last rice congealing on the plate. Because I'm getting older, and I'm going to die, and Martin never, ever even came close to understanding that. And always, at the end of every discussion, his anger flaring it into argument. Because.

Heaping the last wood upon the coals she leant back, using her pack as a support, and there saw the comet upon the sky, startling in its silence. Still low in the north-east it shone like a child's drawing of a comet, like Halley's Comet in the Bayeaux tapestry - a ball of pure, diffuse light and that long streaming tail behind. The only thing missing was movement. A thing of light it seemed but constant, unwavering, steadier than the fluttering stars which hovered in the background.

And yet she knew from her readings, from her father's teachings too, that it was indeed moving fast, heading in from the cold towards the still distant sun and vapourising as it came. Solid ice transformed to gas and streaming away on the solar wind - the long tail pointing always away from the sun no matter the direction of travel. At great speed it came, ever closer to the sun, inevitably drawn to perihelion and melting, like the wings of Icarus, as it came.

Perihelion. Closest approach. Then a quick turn around the sun, one last, fast burning and away, flung back into the darkness the cold and the emptiness beyond. Just as her own life had run, in great, erratic cycles. First the long approach, then the sudden burning of passion, and at last rejection, and the long cold flight away. Always that flight away.

Anne...

No Mum

Anne. Please

No! Go Away! NO!

She had not gone to the funeral. Refused. Had never gone back to that house. Living with Nanna till Mum sold up and moved. Entering the cold darkness of mortality alone. Knowing even then she would never have a child of her own.

The night was cool, but the wind had died. She cleaned up the plate, set the billy on to boil and walked to the cliff edge to watch the moon rise over the sea. Soon enough it hung high above the water, a cold white three quarter disk while she cradled the large tin mug in her hands feeling the warmth of it pass within.

She had had another warmth there, for a while. Till she discovered it and had it taken out. Aborted really. Ugly word. Terminated. Ugly too. And she'd felt ugly. Felt it even though she knew it was her right. Felt it and resented it - the way people judged and the way they refused to acknowledge her right. Her right to be alone! First Martin, then the pregnancy, then the whiole bloody country. Two weeks later on a plane to New Zealand. Sitting in a park in Christchurch, in bright warm sun beneath the greenest tree ever seen, tears leaking from somewhere, unexpectedly, like rain seen through a window at the end of a Summer day. That made her angry too.

Years travelling. Years working. The unconditional friendship of women. The unsought judgement of men. Time passed and ended up in this - an evening alone above the sea, the trail of a comet burnt upon the sky, a flood of memories washing down into sleep while the ashes of the fire glowed red and dull and almost spent within the peace and darkness of the night.

Annie slept. And the moon rose higher above, and the waves ebbed away with the wind, and the tide rose slow and full upon the dark wet flanks of the cliff, and the stars shone, inscrutable, while the comet tracked in towards the sun which hid behind the earth. Annie slept, and the world turned, and the thoughts and dreams turned within her, and far away those who had loved her dreamt their own dreams too. Annie slept, and woke at last at dawn, and knew that her despair was slipping away. Waking, lying still within the warmth and comfort of her sleeping bag, she could see at last her solitude and flight for what they were. Part of her. What she was. And in that morning, when at last she stood in the pre-dawn light, feeling awake and well and alive she felt a joy. The joy of being herself. The joy of being. And she smiled, and turned toward the east, and laughed in that place where no-one could hear.

The first bright needle of light appeared upon the eastern horizon. Grew. Became a glowing chord as she watched, and the placid surface of the sea took fire. Slowly the sun arose from the deep as the world turned. The earth turned its face to the day.

And as it did so she stood, feeling herself high upon the brow of the cliff. She stood and stretched, letting the light wash over her, through her, become her, till she stood tall and straight, arms upraised in wordless greeting, and knew that her sadness had gone, rinsed away, cleansed by the simplicity of light. And in that moment, knowing that, her despair evaporated - as the faint light of a comet is drenched and overwhelmed by the glare of day; not gone, but become invisible at last.

Without turning to look she could feel the moon behind her, sunk low in the west, like a counterweight hauling up the sun. The sun which rose now above the sea till at last it hung, a perfect ball of overpowering light, balanced upon the palm of the sea.

And in that moment, taking a deep breath, a child's smile of wonder on her face, she took a step, and another, and another, each faster than the last. And she ran. Ran forward to the brink. Cast herself from the edge into space. Into the sun. Arms outstretched. Falling towards that fire. Her long yellow hair streaming out behind like the tail of a comet as she fell.

* * * * *

What do you do with a story when it is finished? I had only just started trying to publish my poetry, and I had no contacts - nor any idea where stories might be published. However I had just joined the Fellowship of Australian Writers and their print newsletter told me about a project to produce a volume of stories by writers from the Northern Territory. Apparently there had been a workshop for participants, to refine their work. I had missed the workshop, but I posted off “Comet” anyway, and they made it the title piece for the collection. Marjorie Macrae created the lovely cover art, seen in the opening photo - my only copy of the book.