A Ragged Sydney Melody

By Grant P Cunningham

This is a book of a wild time in a wild place. It is Australia and if that isn't bad enough in and of itself, Paul is working at the zoo, Ned is stealing studio time, Brendan can't kill himself properly, The Doctor has disappeared into his isolation tank and Kez is so beautiful that even the pavement sighs as she passes by.

Fast, funny and furious this novel captures the essence of a vibrant land.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Grant P Cunningham
• Release date: Feb 27, 2014
• ISBN: 9781311987761

Grant P Cunningham

Grant Cunningham was born in New York City in 1950 and immigrated to Australia in 1971. He has collected live animals in the wild, been a zoo keeper, research assistant in forestry, natural physician, sculptor, surfer and diamond hunter. He has also written a number of popular books including THE CROOK BACK BOOK, INNOCENT BYSTANDER, THE MARKS WE MAKE and THE LITTLE BOOK OF MEDITATION but hopes this will not be held against him. Isn’t it funny . . . here I am a writer and I do not like writing about myself. Yet I am told you are curious about me and there it is. I must I must I must . . . I was born in New York City General Hospital on the East River in 1950 to a large Irish Catholic family. Had a chaotic family life built around love and alcoholism, with wee bits of madness and some jail time too. The family moved to Westport, Connecticut around 1955 and ended up at Edgewater Hillside on The Old Mill Pond with the swans and the clams. Industrial grade Catholic guilt and the pursuit of the American Dream. Indeed we were McCall’s Magazine family of the year in 1956 just before the whole act fell apart. Divorce, madness, jail. The whole deal. I was raised by my brothers and sister Lee and I owe them my absolute love and affection. They have it. My father dried out with AA when I was 11 and I owe him and them my mind. I lived with him and my bother Noel in New York City for a few years. John was a Harvard boy and he gave me to the Jesuits while reading William Burrough’s THE NAKED LUNCH aloud to me when I came home. It was a fine and terrible thing to do to a child for which I am profoundly grateful. Ta Jack. My bother Sean and I were speaking not long ago and he mentioned that the thing about having alcoholic parents is that they promise to do this or do that or take you here or pay for that, and they don’t. Oh, they mean to when they say it but . . . So what it does is to train the children of drunks to realize that if they want something or to do something they better do it themselves because nobody else is going to do it for them. Not bad training really. Keeps all the equations about life simple. I attended either 12 or 17 different schools ( l lost count ) before I graduated from Berkeley High School in 1968 as a hippie and a rebel. Was living with my brothers Kevin, who was in the Marine Corps and stationed at Treasure Island, and Noel. Went to all the venues, saw all the bands with a lovely PhD student named Janice who took me to every Janis Joplin concert in the Bay Area. Country Joe and the Fish were the local band in Berkeley, Credence Clearwater Revival were up the road in El Cerrito, the Pointer Sisters were in Oakland and Santana were third billing at the Fillmore Auditorium and the Avalon ballroom. Traveled to Africa to collect live specimens of mammals, reptiles, amphibians and insects for the Steinhardt Aquarium and the California Academy of Sciences. Bill Gaynor and Ted Pappenfuss. Reality in Africa drains one of illusion. There is illness, there is death, there is war, there is this thing we call life and it is not as we would wish but rather as it is. I was 18. Got back to the States, worked in Mike Malkin’s singles bar on 77th Street, got itchy feet and immigrated to Australia. Good move. I was 20 years old and Australia is where I have lived my adult life. Worked for the Forestry Commission, Taronga Zoo, started a leather craft business with Errol, lived naked on an island on the Great Barrier Reef with Sue, went back to school to study osteopathy and found an isolated house by the sea where I have remained since 1977. Fancy that. Time to write and sculpt and, lucky me, have a family. The good woman Donna, three lads (Bracken, Liam and Brean) and the ocean. Got to help a few people, write a few books, make a few images. A small life. Works for me anyway.

Book preview

A Ragged Sydney Melody

by Grant P Cunningham

Smashwords Edition

Copyright Grant P Cunningham 2014

Grant Cunningham was born in New York City in 1950 and immigrated to Australia in 1971. He has written a number of popular books including THE CROOK BACK BOOK, INNOCENT BYSTANDER, THE MARKS WE MAKE, EMATND and THE LITTLE BOOK OF MEDITATION but hopes this will not be held against him.

My thanks to George Lambert for his editing skills, support and friendship.

CHAPTER ONE

Of course Rabbit wasn't strong enough. You couldn't expect a skinny glass worker with a lungful of glass particles and lips blue lined from careless handling of the lead channel to be strong enough. But Brendan was desperate.

'Give her another go,' said Brendan. Brendan’s hair was wet as he sat on the floor in front of the twenty litre bucket. 'Please mate.'

‘Gee Brendan, I don't know . . . My arms sort of give out. You’ve got a strong neck there. I've never been strong in the arms. That's why I became an artist. Weak arms.'

'Look,' said Brendan amenably, 'you have another drink. Me too. We'll have another drink, then we'll try again. Okay?'

Brendan poured two hefty tumblers of cheap sweet port. Both men drank deeply. They were sitting on a nice carpet in the office of the magazine that sometimes published Brendan’s poems. It was an upstairs office on the corner of Sydney Road and Pittwater Road in Manly. It was three thirty in the morning. Brendan had stolen the key to the office and somehow he and Rabbit had left a perfectly good drunk at Rabbit’s studio to come here. There on the walls were all the paste boards of the next issue. Words and pictures and pictures and words. And not one of them Brendan’s. That's why he decided.

'Okay, Rabbit me fine bucko mate . . . I am to believing I am ready. Soon as I have finished this . . . ' Brendan’s Irish accent became more profound in direct relationship to the quantity of drink he consumed. He finished his glass in a long hard pull. Then he started crying. As he blubbered, the tears coursed down his thick jowly cheeks. He was very happy.

'Thanks, Rabbit. I mean it. Thanks a lot. For being here at the end of all these things.'

'S'all right. You're me mate, aren't ya? S'all right. Are you ready?'

'No man is ever really ready, but I am ready as I'll ever be. Shake hands. Ta. I'll miss you. I will. I know that now. Goodbye.'

Neither man could bear the emotion of the moment. They cried leaning on each other’s shoulders. Brendan recovered first. Wiping the tears from his face with his hand Brendan said, ' Me poem! Me poem! I need to read me poem!'

Rabbit searched his own pockets. It took a while but he finally came up with a crumpled piece of paper which he gave to Brendan.

Brendan read it. You could see by the gleam in his eye that he liked it. He drew breath and in his best reading voice recited it:

Looked at Life around the Sun,

Loved here and there, loved on the run.

It wasn't worth it, so I said 'Up it!’

And put me head in the bucket.

Rabbit’s eyes shone in the dim light of the street lamp through the office window. He thought the poem was beautiful. Very Japanese. Brendan handed the poem back to Rabbit then thought better of the idea and instead climbed unsteadily to his feet and pinned it onto the centre of the cake book of the next issue of the magazine in the editor’s office. Then he went back shook hands quickly with Rabbit and stuck his head into the twenty litre bucket. The bucket was filled with water.

Rabbit grabbed Brendan by the loose clothing at his shoulders. Everything was fine for the first twenty seconds and Rabbit felt that here, finally, at last and eternally, Brendan’s meagre material but rich artistic life was over. He was glad that he could help.

As the seconds passed Brendan began to squirm. Rabbit decided that rather than risk to his arms he might try a bit of weight. Still holding Brendan’s shoulders Rabbit swung one leg up and over Brendan’s neck. The tendons of the sternocleidomastoid muscle stood out on Brendan’s neck like taut cables. Brendan’s legs flayed the floor.

'There there,' said a paternal and empathic Rabbit. 'There there, all over soon.' But he felt his grip slipping. He climbed up onto Brendan’s shoulders and held Brendan’s head with both hands clutching dark brown wet hair. 'There there, it's alright.' It was a pleasure for Rabbit to help a friend. He was that sort of guy.

But in the end it didn't matter what sort of guy Rabbit was. He just wasn't strong enough. Brendan arose a mighty geyser from the bucket scattering Rabbit, the bucket and the water everywhere. He sat there on the floor panting, desperately unhappy that he was still alive.

'Sorry Brendan,' said Rabbit from the corner. The cake board had fallen with his arrival against the wall. Paper and photos littered the floor and Rabbit. 'I'm so sorry. I mean that. I really do.’

'It’s alright, mate. It is.' Brendan reached for the bottle of port. 'Another drink?'

'Ta. What about the photocopier?'

'Well?'

'It’s radia . . . radia . . . radiation . . . I think it’s radiation, like at Mururoa. Up the French!'

It took a while to figure out how to use the machine. It was a new Toshiba. It certainly looked powerful. Brendan stuck his head in under the floppy cover and shook hands with Rabbit again.

'I'll set it for a 99 copies. That sound okay?'

'Right you are. Give'er the works.'

Rabbit hit the copy button. Two minutes later there stood the two of them knee deep in copies of Brendan’s profile. Brendan was alive, somehow, though he wasn't seeing too well. Had white flashes in front of his eyes. Boosh. Boosh. The spots made him focus on the port.

Then they tried an ancient IBM typewriter, an office relic. Brendan got his nose badly battered by the golf ball and bled all over the secretary’s desk but other than that . . .

Brendan laid himself out under the great blade of the paper guillotine, his neck offered to cutting edge. He and Rabbit had yet again made their fond farewells.

'Okay. Do it. Now!’

'Right,' said Rabbit. He grasped the handle of the paper cutter in both his hands. The blade hissed as it was drawn further upwards. Brendan shut his eyes. His heart leapt in delighted anticipation. He stopped breathing. And waited. And waited. And waited.

'Rabbit? '

'Yes mate.'

'Anything wrong mate?'

'Yeah. I am afraid there is.'

'Do you feel like telling me about it?’

‘Well . . . ‘

'Go on. It’s alright.'

'It’s the blood. I don't like the blood Brendan. You saw how I chundered into that waste paper basket when your nose bled . . . I just don't dig the blood. I don't think I can do it..'

'Not to worry. Here,' said Brendan getting up from the table onto which the paper cutter was secured, ' we'll have another wee drink, and a think on it. It's a problem.'

'You wouldn't be wrong there. I don't think I ever seen a man harder to kill than you. Do you think, we might, well, you know, give up on it for now?'

'A man never gets far in this word with an attitude like that Rabbit. You didn't get where you are today, a leading light in the world of flat glass, with that sort of attitude, did you? And I didn't get to write miles of poems with that sort attitude. For God’s sake man, this is Australia! Not England! We don't do that sort of routine here. Do we?'

'No! No we don't! We're dinki-di, true blue and giving up we don't do!' said Rabbit in a flush of patriotic fervour. Rabbit was filled with patriotism. He put flags and sheep in his work somewhere on each piece. He knew what Brendan meant and he felt the same.

'Right. Okay. Fine. Sure. Yep. Uh hungh . . . What'll we do?'

‘Don’t know.’

They drank on it for a while. The night was giving in softly to the new day as they stumbled down the steep flight of stairs to the street below.

With that great care that drunks have in their movements Rabbit tenderly helped Brendan lie on the road in the middle of a four way intersection. They shook hands again and wrapped their arms about each other briefly before Rabbit stood up and walked over to the curb and sat down.

'You don't have to stay,' Brendan said.

'It’s all right,' said Rabbit. 'I'd like to. Really I would.'

'It’s good of you. I won't forget that. I won't. The whole time I'm dead.'

‘Shouldn't take long.'

'No, I don't suppose it will.'

But no cars came down any of the streets now empty and peaceful. Brendan felt great.

Then some more cars didn't come.

After a long while Brendan spoke up. 'You know, Rabbit, this city is changing. A few years ago you couldn't lie here this way for say, ten minutes say, with out at least three drunks running right the way over ya.'

'Yeah, say ten minutes, yeah, say . . . It’s the breath testing I think'

'That would be right. The bloody breath testing. City's not the same. Nothing's the bloody same. Christ It’s cold down here.'

'Be patient. Someone will be along any minute to clean you up.’

‘Think so?'

'Sure of it.'

'Good.'

But it wasn't any good and nobody drunk or sober came by. It was as quiet as a graveyard. Disgusted the boys went back inside for another drink. At least the port never failed them in a pinch. They sat down in the office and put away the rest of the flagon in a timely way. They cried a lot and talked about how much they liked each other and each other’s work. It was a mutual admiration society. They looked carefully at each other through bloodshot eyes and saw the truth. It made them cry some more.

They tried the bucket one last time, but Rabbit had not the strength, though he had the heart. Brendan threw him clear across the room as he rose wet and spluttering from the bucket. Rabbit knocked over the new Apple computer when he landed. He passed out then. Brendan bravely crawled to his friend’s side and passed out as well.

And that's how the girls found them when they came into work. Dead artists everywhere. Amid the ruin of civilisation.

They called the cops.

'Your brown sandstone hills like huge legs and body bumps that roll through the valleys of water, your thick and squat landscape of fire and flowering wattles . . . To be a burner and a quencher to this fine and furious southern city . . . Sydney you towered and neon lit and red roofed town, hidden caves and fields of housing away for miles and forever, stately old charmer and secret rager and junk food junkie, hiding the misery beneath a shawl of rainbow colours, Sydney you old whore . . . who could resist you and your charms? Take me, take me, I'm yours for now in sweet abandon and watery love.' Brendan sipped deeply at his beer and let his red and baleful eye drift over the seated and well dressed matrons who had come to hear him read his poetry.

They were all nice ladies' ladies, dressed in their nice clothes and hoping to gain some nice culture or nice experience by listening to nice Brendan. He was being paid by the Australia Council.

Brendan finished his glass of beer and poured another. He rummaged through his notes, written on the backs of small pieces of paper he had found close to hand . . . but one of Brendan’s problems as a poet was that he couldn't always read his own handwriting if he wrote it when he was drunk and when he was drinking he couldn't read his handwriting either. It made an instant form of poetry, or at least a lot of words.

'Sydney was a woman to me . . . ‘ Brendan started. He looked around again and absent mindedly let a hand stray to scratch his bum. He needed a wash . . . 'Yes she was and is . . . The finest of the fine and the prettiest clean pinkish mawkish joyous young girl she is still. And if she does sell herself in a back lane for a knee banger or two, she does it with joy and for the fun of it. Some cities live in fear . . . Belfast the hard and brick retreat, citadel of guarded word and shame of night, cutting men who love ideas better than their families, take Belfast and wash him in the sea, but let's anoint Sydney with oil, feel her funny feet, the smooth calves and the knobbly knee, the little cuts from oysters and the hard thighs of a swimmer and a runner, the round high belly and the rest of her in slippery sliding soft touch and we should heat the oil so we can hear her purr and see her stretch her back and smile . . . In the heart of the night in her heart of the night she treats us right, as right as she can and if the troubles are there it might be that we won't let her treat us. Who could blame her? Though she has . . . though she did do, not once but again and again . . . The broken child on the road all blue in the face and so sweet and so dead and what is this fulfilment of life? But can you blame the city? Oh no, never her and never her harbours and her beaches . . . Cheering throngs in thongs of neon weariness, don't bury me in King’s Cross but dump me down slowly into the Harbour and tell me sweet Christian dreams and the love . . . the love . . . the love . . . tell me the love and don't sing too sad songs, sing me a Sydney ragged melody of ferries and fairy penguins, let me be tempted to the end for another verse, just another line of simple celebration of these fine acres of glorious heart of woman who receives in the moist softness of her thighs of union . . . another line, another . . . Oh God! Me beer! Where's me bloody beer!'

Brendan glared malevolently at his audience. Brendan’s main concern as a poet was to express man’s essential idiopathic loneliness due to his inability to communicate with other men. With women Brendan didn't generally have this problem. He thought he might not have been heard properly so he took at deep breath and shouted at his matronly audience. 'Where's my