Stones Read online

  The patterns were all quite similar. As Bragg and Col went forward over the rock face in Nob’s direction, they encountered, over and over, the shapes of turtles, birds and sometimes snakes. The “beasts” turned out to be giant platypus. And everywhere, in a context with the animals—or totems—there were etchings of stick men and women—the sexes plainly and even grotesquely limned with oversize phalluses and breasts.

  One other feature ran consistently with the rest. There was always a moon—though never full. This moon was always in its quarter phase and it always shone in the sky directly above the figures of the men and women.

  “Over here!” Nob cried. “I’ve found it.”

  What Nob had found was a curious variation on all the other petroglyphs.

  For sure, the snakes and the birds and the turtles and the platypus were all in evidence—just as the moon and two stick figures, male and female were equally in evidence. But here, there was also another figure—of a kind that had not appeared before. It was a human figure—yes—but not at all the same as the others near which it had been carved.

  This human figure had long flowing hair—and the way it had been carved, with multiple streaks and lines, the hair appeared to be white and possibly the hair of an albino. One arm was stretched out sideways, one arm was held down flat against the figure’s side. One leg was longer than the other—and the shorter leg was resting on a sort of triangular shoe, or little box.

  “What does it mean?” Bragg asked—expecting Nob to answer with assurance.

  But—“nobody knows,” said Nob. “There’s been all kinds and every sort of conjecture. Most archaeologists think its a shaman figure—maybe a witch. It’s female, at any rate.”

  Bragg looked down at the magical figure cut at his feet and a curious, worrying noise set up in his mind: a kind of racket, like a buzz-saw carving trees.

  Nob said: “this is where she wanted to be scattered. Just here over these figures and in the sky.”

  He turned away—and so did Col as Bragg undid the hook that held the lid in place. Before he opened the lid, he kissed the box and then he withdrew Minna’s ashes handful by handful and threw them like an offering upon the stones.

  The plane was now approaching San Francisco and Bragg could see the Janis Joplin girl going into one of the washrooms or—as she would say—the head. The sight of her, so Minna-like, was jarring since he’d just finished scattering Minna’s ashes in his mind.

  Col said: “twenty minutes and we’re there.”

  Bragg wasn’t sure he wanted that.

  He could see the great grey fog that lay above the city and he thought of all the men and women living in its shadow. Here was a city, he thought, that once was the symbol of all the bright hope in the Western world. And now it was a city gripped by terror, numbed with the shock of AIDS .

  We have probably come to the end, for all we know—Bragg thought—of human congress. Certainly, it marked the end of human passion as it affected homosexuals—and, more and more, it affected everyone.

  All his life, he’d been taught that he was an outcast—part of a scourge upon mankind. All the offshoots of this thinking had always seemed, to Bragg, to be so ridiculous and paranoid, he’d never paid attention. Now, there were people down in that city who were dying because of sex.

  He tried not to dwell on this and he put it aside.

  The Janis Joplin girl came out of the head and she was barely recognizable. Somehow, she had managed a magical transformation and the cotton shirt and the frizzy hair had been replaced with a neat, black dress and a chignon. She was, in fact, quite beautiful and appeared to be serene about the prospect before her. “I’m going home, now, to be married,” she had said. “And I’m not allowed to be sad…”

  All at once, Bragg went racing back in his mind to the very first day he’d realized he was in love with Minna Joyce. She, too, had worn a neat, black dress and had put her hair up thus. How long ago this was, it hardly mattered. Ten years: twelve. How wonderful she was—had been—would always be, stepping forward into their lives together with so much confidence and joy.

  Dear God, he thought. I know now why she wanted her ashes scattered there at Ku-Ring-Gai. It was the joy and the liveliness—the sense of endless celebration that clung to all the figures in the rock. And the figures where the shaman stood—the very place where Minna’s ashes fell…

  It was not a shaman at all.

  He knew it, now, as surely as Minna must have known it the minute she encountered the crazy figure cut in the rock so utterly and absolutely unlike all the others.

  It was a child. A child. The child of the two stick figures rejoicing by its side beneath the moon. And the child had long, albino hair and one six-fingered hand stretched out for all the world to see forever—and it stood on one good leg and one short leg, for which her parents had made a loving box. Forever. And forever visible.

  A shiver went down his back. And he knew right then, as he waited to debark the plane, that he would return to Ku-Ring-Gai with Stella on his shoulder. Or his hip.

  A GIFT OF MERCY

  When Minna Joyce first laid eyes on Stuart Bragg, she told herself to remain calm. This was back in 1975 when she was still in her waitress phase and working for a man whose name was Shirley Felton. Shirley ran what Minna called The Moribund Cafe on Queen Street West. It was really called the Morrison Cafe, because it was in the Morrison Hotel—a rummy dive for drunks and crazies, now defunct, on the north-east corner of Shaw and Queen. Minna had been working there since late July of the previous year and the reason she gave for taking such a job was that she had to keep her eye on the Queen Street Mental Health Centre, just across the road.

  “You never know, my dear,” she had said to one of her park-bench friends, “what they’ll do behind your back.” Also, there was the vaguest hope that her mother—the newly remarried Mrs Harold Opie—might drift by one day and find her cast-off, screwed-up daughter working behind the counter in The Moribund Cafe—drop dead of shock and thus spare the world the continued menace of her presence. “And that, my dear, would be worth the price of admission!”

  As to why Mrs Harold Opie—the ex-Mrs Galway Joyce—might be adrift at all on Queen Street, only Minna Joyce could imagine. Perhaps her cool stability was really less than it seemed and she was looking for yet another masochist crazy enough to marry her. Galway Joyce and Harold Opie had both been mad enough to do so—and, from what Minna knew of her mother’s most recent marriage, Mister Opie was already on the way out the door. But whatever the reason might be, Minna Joyce was content to believe in its probability and dream of its eventuality.

  Now, in the depths of winter, Stuart Bragg had just walked through the door and Minna—who was leaning down to place a cup of coffee and a plastic spoon beneath the vacant stare of one of the Moribund’s regular customers—felt the draught and looked up to see who might have entered.

  There he was, and her body held its breath while her mind went racing.

  A blizzard was going on outside and Bragg had brought it with him through the door. His hair was white with snow and he wore a long, black coat. The storm raged up against the plate glass window at his back and the way it blew, it looked as if it had pursued him, eager to engulf him.

  Bragg had the look of one who bore a message—lost and uncertain as to whom the message must be given.

  Me, said Minna’s mind. He’s come here looking for me.

  But, of course, he hadn’t. He was just another stranger in from Queen Street and Minna was quickly reconciled to believing that was good enough. Strangers were her specialty and those who were pursued by storms and demons made the best strangers of all. She herself had once been pursued by storms and demons, and, even now, she was still in the process of firing at them over her shoulder—her aim perfected after many years of practice. Only three or four remained at her heels, and, of these, the most persistent were her love of dark red wine and her passion for the written word. This latter was a demon flashin
g sentences before her eyes with incomprehensible speed—and whose sibilant voice was lower than a man’s.

  Bragg’s eyes searched the restaurant for someone he could trust. Minna was used to this look. She saw it every day, when strangers walked in and were confronted by the faces of the regulars—the rummies and the drugged-out kids, the schizoids and the dead-eyed retainers whose job it was to sweep the snow and rake the leaves at the Queen Street Mental Health Centre. Bragg evaded all these people—caught Minna’s eye and turned away from her.

  Wait, she wanted to say to him. I can help you. Minna recognized the look in his eyes of unrequited sanity—the look of someone terrified of the light in a world lit up with stark bare bulbs. He even squinted, placing his hand along his forehead. Minna stepped forward—but Shirley was already marching down behind the counter.

  “Yeah?” Shirley said to Bragg—using his dishrag, polishing the soiled Formica countertop, rearranging the packs of chewing gum piled beside the register. “What can I do you for?”

  Minna listened, breathless.

  Please don’t go away, she was thinking. Don’t go away before we’ve made contact.

  “I need to make a call,” said Bragg. “Have you got a telephone?”

  “Sure I got a telephone,” said Shirley, “but it ain’t for public use. You wanta coffee instead?”

  “Thank you, no,” said Bragg. “I really do need to make a call.” He was eyeing the telephone behind the counter just the way a man who is starving eyes the food on someone else’s plate.

  “Sorry,” Shirley told him. “I got a policy here: no calls.”

  “Where, then? Where can I find a telephone?”

  “Cross the road in the Centre. Maybe there’s a pay phone there.”

  “Thank you,” said Bragg. And he turned to go.

  No, said Minna. You mustn’t. We haven’t met.

  But he was out the door and the storm was about to have its way with him.

  Minna closed her eyes. Why were the lost so beautiful? She couldn’t let him go.

  “Wait!” she heard herself calling.

  Shirley turned in her direction. “What the fuck’s with you?” he said to her. “Didn’t I tell you no one yells in the Morrison Cafe?”

  But Minna was already reaching out for the handle of the door and barely heard him.

  Out on the street she looked both ways and hurried to the corner.

  “Wait!” she shouted. (What if her mother could see her now?)

  Everything was white before her and blowing into her eyes. Peering through the snow, she saw the lights were about to change and she ran out, flat against the wind with her apron clinging to her legs like something desperate, begging to be rescued. Suddenly, there she was on the other side of Queen Street, blindly grabbing for the long, black sleeve of the departing stranger.

  “Stop!” she yelled at him. “Stop!”

  He turned, alarmed and tried to brush her off—but she dug her fingernails into the cloth and pulled up close to his arm.

  The man was truly afraid of her; the look on his face was unmistakable and one she had seen a dozen times before. What had he done that she should have followed him—attacked him in such a panic?

  “Please,” he said, attempting to be civilized. “Don’t.”

  There she was with her hand on his arm—a perfect stranger, standing in a blizzard out on Queen Street, wearing nothing but an apron over a magenta uniform—and Minna traced in thread across the pocket at her breast. And her hair was blowing across her face and he thought: she’s mad as a hatter—and beautiful as anyone I’ve ever seen.

  “All right,” he said—giving in because it was so evident she wouldn’t let go until she’d had her way. “Tell me what’s wrong.”

  “Your name,” she shouted at him—each word blown away in the wind. “Tell me your bloody name.”

  “What?” he shouted back at her. “What?”

  Several people, fully cognizant of where they were and what they might be witnessing out in front of the Queen Street Mental Health Centre, huddled on the corner waiting for a streetcar. The way this man and woman were holding on to one another, they looked as if they were locked in a deadly struggle. But she was only waiting for his answer and he was only trying to prevent her from being swept away in the Queen Street traffic.

  “Please,” she shouted at him—right into his ear. “I have to know who you are!”

  Bragg stepped back and stared at her as best he could through the storm. She was holding back the strands of her flowing hair and it was only then that he saw that she was smiling; laughing at her own audacity.

  “Oh,” he said. “I see.”

  Very slowly, he grinned, and three months later they were married.

  By the time Minna died, the marriage had lasted just over twelve years. During the final months they had lived apart; Bragg in Toronto, Minna in Australia: just about as far apart as a person can get, my dear, she had said. A gift of mercy for us both.

  Later, she had written in one of her final letters that it was more than likely fate was playing one of its better tricks when it devised this ending: terminating events before the thirteenth anniversary of their meeting on Queen Street. What do people give each other after thirteen years? she had written. A baker’s dozen of silver cups; one for each year they’ve remained on speaking terms? How do they celebrate? A game of Russian roulette? Thirteen guns and only one of them loaded? Yours or mine, Bragg? Yours or mine? We’ll never know, for which I’m glad.

  One afternoon, after Bragg and Minna had been married for seven years and were living on Collier Street, Bragg came home and found a stranger in Minna’s bed. This was in February of 1983.

  Bragg had just gone into the bathroom where he was soaping his hands when he heard somebody cough. At first, he paid no attention, assuming it was Minna. But when the coughing continued, and began to take on the characteristic sounds of someone who was choking, Bragg shut off the taps.

  Instantly, there was silence—broken only by the last of the water curling down the drain. Bragg closed his eyes in order to concentrate. There had been too much of this, recently; too many phantom coughers—too much offstage laughter—too many voices behind his back. At its worst, this paranoia prompted him to wonder if Minna was trying to disrupt his life in order to gain some sort of mastery over him.

  Pondering why Minna wanted to harm him always brought him back to his senses. No one had loved him more in all his life. Still, people do the strangest things for love, he would think, when he lay awake at four o’clock in the morning. People have killed and people have died for love, though I’d rather not do either…

  Bragg began to dry his fingers, one by one, with a Laura Ashley towel that Minna had given him for Christmas; a double set to go with the Bembridge paper in the bathroom—burgundy pearl-drop flowers with sprigs of dark blue leaves. Bragg would never have spent the money to buy such expensive towels—but Minna would, and had, and Bragg was secretly glad. He loved all things that had to do with water—bathrooms, bathtubs, basins; taps and showers and toilets. He loved the accoutrement of shaving gear and brushes—glass-stoppered bottles of cologne—soap that smelled of pine and cedar—steamy windows—toothbrush glasses…

  Bragg was looking in the mirror the way most people do who don’t really want to see themselves—eyes askance, afraid of meeting other eyes. He was just about to duck his head and turn the taps back on to wash away the film of soap in the sink when the second bout of coughing began. Leaving the taps to do their work, Bragg went and stood in the hallway, drying his wrists and listening intently.

  This time, the coughing did not abate.

  The door to Bragg’s own room stood ajar beside him, opposite the bathroom. He could see the comforting shapes of the cats where they lay asleep on his pillows: Morphine and Opium, named for their mother, Poppy, who had died on Queen Street. He could also see his wicker chair with its pile of folded laundry—the shirts and pyjamas he had ironed that morning.


  Down at the end of the hall, where Minna’s bedroom door was closed against a green satin shoe, the coughing became more violent.

  Bragg stepped forward.

  The green satin toe obtruded into the hallway, giving the impression someone was lurking there behind the door. “Hello?” he said. No one answered. The coughing stopped.

  Bragg screwed up his courage and—watching Minna’s door as if he expected it to wield a knife—he approached it, holding his breath, until he was toe to toe with the green satin shoe.

  He could see that no one was there—and he gave the door a push with his fingertips.

  Lying on Minna’s bed, more or less beneath the duvet—one foot and both hands sticking out—there was a tiny figure. It was small enough to be a child.

  Bragg could not reconcile the dreadful coughing he had heard with what he saw. Two-Ton Tessie might have coughed like that. But not a child.

  The room was lit with curtained light, and since the afternoon was drawing to a close, there was little enough of that to filter through the cotton drapes. The warm intensity of Minna’s perfume greeted him briefly—riding past him on the draught from the open door. As soon as he moved into the room, however, he was overcome with the stench of someone exhaling gin and sweating nicotine.

  To his left, the shape of Minna’s blue Boston rocker stood between him and the windows. The coughing had altogether stopped—and had been replaced with the sound of laboured breathing. Bragg went over and opened the drapes and then—despite the February cold—he also opened the windows.

  Turning towards the bed, he was able now to see that the shape he had thought might be that of a child was in fact the angular, sunken figure of someone very small and very old. Matted hair was spread across the pillows. Both hands, fisted, were raised above the figure’s head. Halfway down the bed, the extruded foot was clothed in a filthy ankle sock.

  Bragg went and stood as close to the bed as he could bear and he looked down into the face of a woman who was old and toothless.