BLACK DOG... A Marriage in Ashes

By John Biggs

Susan and Tom had it all...
Tom handsome, solid and successful; Susan was beautiful, artistic, reckless and lovable but they shared a secret – Susan was bipolar. Her domineering mother sent her into deep depression. But by moving to Hong Kong, they seemed to have left the black dog behind.

Both were happy until the irresistible and ruthless Oi Mei joined Tom’s firm. He was bewitched. She showed him a new world of sensuality; so different he thought his love for Susan would remain untouched. But Oi Mei had other ideas. Susan’s black dog jumped back onto her shoulders. Fatally.

Stricken with guilt and grief Tom returned to their native Tasmania, desperate for forgiveness.
But how can the dead forgive?

Had Susan found a way?

• Language: English
• Publisher: CUSTOM BOOK PUBLICATIONS
• Release date: Aug 23, 2015
• ISBN: 9781310133848

John Biggs

John Biggs spent his professional life as a psychologist and teacher educator in England, Canada, Australia and Hong Kong. He has published extensively as an academic. In 2017 he was invested as a Member of the Order of Australia (AM) 'For significant service to tertiary education....' He retired from Hong Kong University to settle in Hobart to concentrate on writing, both fiction and non-academic non-fiction. His writings increasingly reflect his concern about what is happening in state and federal politics. Further details at www.johnbiggs.com.au

Book preview

Susan and Tom had it all…

Tom handsome, solid and successful; Susan was beautiful, artistic, reckless and lovable but they shared a secret – Susan was bipolar. Her domineering mother sent her into deep depression. But by moving to Hong Kong, they seemed to have left the black dog behind.

Both were happy until the irresistible and ruthless Oi Mei joined Tom’s firm. He was bewitched. She showed him a new world of sensuality; so different he thought his love for Susan would remain untouched. But Oi Mei had other ideas. Susan’s black dog jumped back onto her shoulders. Fatally.

Stricken with guilt and grief Tom returned to their native Tasmania, desperate for forgiveness.

But how can the dead forgive?

Had Susan found a way?

About the Author

John Biggs was born and educated in Hobart, Tasmania, and is a graduate of the universities of Tasmania and London. He has held academic posts in several countries, ending up in the University of Hong Kong. He retired early and like the falling autumn leaf in the Chinese proverb, he fell to his roots in Tasmania in order to write fiction. He has published five novels, and an anthology of short stories. Much of his fiction he calls Sino-Australian fusion, which reflects his domestic life, his wife Catherine being Hong Kong born Chinese.

Also by this author

Fiction The Girl in the Golden House

Project Integrens

Disguises

Tin Dragons

From Ashes to Ashes

Towards Forgiveness

Nonfiction Tasmania Over Five Generations

Changing Universities: A memoir

Copyright © 2015 John Biggs

Black Dog is based on a short story Forgiveness previously published by Ginninderra Press 2012.

BLACK DOG

A MARRIAGE IN ASHES

by

John Biggs

Acknowledgement

I am indebted to many people in Tasmania and Hong Kong who have in various ways, often unknowingly, inspired my writing, and most of all to my wife, Catherine Tang.

Dedicated to the Black Dog Institute

Because everyone deserves peace of mind.

CHAPTER ONE

HOBART

Fifteen years ago, Susan and I fled the invasive homeliness of our home town, Hobart. Now, homeliness has hauled me back. Alone. Like a sick animal, I am returning to the primal cave wherein we both were born so that I may be reborn. Reborn to a life without Susan, a life in which I carry a mountain of remorse on my back.

The Chinese say that ‘autumn leaves fall to their roots’. I suppose I am a fallen leaf for here I am back in Hobart, but I’m not an autumn leaf. Not yet. I’d like to think of myself as a new spring shoot but I can’t because in my heart it’s winter still. The sun may be warm on my face as I walk hangdog along the Hobart waterfront, but my heart is frozen shut.

I have no intention of ending my days, as had Susan for one fleeting but irreversible moment. Her days ended not as a leaf fluttering gently to the ground, but as a boulder plummeting off a cliff. Or rather off the nineteenth floor of our mid-levels apartment in Hong Kong. Oh Susan, why didn’t you wait before you did the undoable, before finding out that things were not as they had seemed?

I know why you didn’t. In your state you couldn’t. Bipolar disorder they called it, quite mild, no need for medication. Just a change of locality, away from family pressures. So we were assured. We left Hobart for a new life in far off Hong Kong, and life did indeed begin anew. Yet it was in Hong Kong that I unknowingly had flicked my fingers at that black dog that eats all hope. He responded and leapt upon your shoulders.

Now I am returning to our shared childhood home. With me are your ashes and the hardest problems for erring humans to solve. How can you betray a loved one to whom you are totally committed? If you are totally committed then surely you can’t. Yet I was and I did. Then the problem that inexorably follows. How can the unforgiving shapes of love and commitment be reconciled with lust and betrayal? Forgiveness can only be the answer.

But how can the dead forgive?

*****

CHAPTER TWO

Susan’s tenth birthday, seventeenth of September, 1972. That’s where I’ll begin. That’s when she started to spin her crazy magic.

Her parents gave her a party at the Waterworks, a lovely bushland reserve beside a large reservoir on the outskirts of Hobart. They had booked a picnic spot with tables and a barbecue. My parents were there too, for we Langdons and the Thompsons were virtually an extended family. We lived only a couple of blocks apart in exclusive Lower Sandy Bay; we attended the same Parish Church, we were in the same social circle. We two kids, each an only child, went to Wellington College, a mixed private school, from kindergarten to Year 12.

But back to that birthday party. Suzie, with my help, had invited a dozen or so of our friends. Hobart City Council kindly provided parking bays beside the dark green painted tables and benches, and barbecues, with kindling and firewood. My Dad and Suzie’s Dad did all the man stuff, like getting the barbecue going, unwrapping the chops and sausages, greasing the hotplate before chucking the ready-chopped onions on, and putting a couple of bottles, wrapped in brown paper, on the table and sipping its contents from opaque plastic mugs. Our two Mums did what mums do: they laid large plastic plates on the table. They placed little white sandwiches with the crusts carefully cut off on one plate, pikelets, lamingtons, fairy cakes on other plates, and scattered on the table a few bottles of Cascade cordials, unwrapped. Suzie’s wonderful big double decker birthday cake with marzipan and fancy pink icing, stood proudly on a special cake stand. Cripes, we are never getting to eat all that, I thought. And we didn’t. Suzie didn’t even get to cut her birthday cake. And here’s why.

As soon as all the goodies were laid out, Suzie’s Mum fluted in her Pommy voice: ‘Now children, gather round. Here’s what we are going to do. First, we’ll have our lunch.’

Hooray, we all chorused.

‘Then Mr. Thompson will show you around the waterworks and tell you its history while we tidy up.’

‘Der,’ I heard my mate John Taylor mutter.

‘Then when we have cleared up and everything’s nice and tidy,’ she sang on, ‘we all come back here and Sooz’n cuts her lovely birthday cake. Won’t that be nice? Now, all find a seat. Dad, you say grace.’

Some of the kids exchanged glances while Suzie’s father mumbled something about being truly thankful, and then we tucked in. After an hour of eating and drinking, we were well and truly stonkered.

Suzie’s Dad, I call him Mr. T, stood up and said: ‘See that stone cottage over there, children? That is part of Hobart’s original waterworks system. A man called Peter Degraves had water piped from Mt. Wellington. The water flow was controlled in that cottage before it was piped down to Hobart. Degraves also founded the Cascade Brewery, you know, that big stone building on Macquarie Street? That’s where your cordials were made.’ He held up a half-finished bottle of ginger beer. ‘Now, let’s go to the cottage and I’ll tell you all about Hobart’s water supply.’

We dutifully followed him.

It was interesting, I suppose, if you like cold dark cottages filled with old pipes, water dripping everywhere and clouds of gnats. Mr. T then walked us to Gentle Annie Falls at the far end of the reserve. The falls were dry but you could see old steps cut into the rock beside where the falls would have been, with an old rusty iron railing. Thrills for one and all. As we were returning to the picnic spot for the cutting of Suzie’s birthday cake, Suzie tapped me on the shoulder, her blue eyes flashing wide with excitement.

‘Dare you to walk back along that pipeline,’ she whispered, her breath rushing into my ear. She pointed to a large waterpipe just across from the picnic table. The pipe straddled a deep gulley on its way from the waterworks to Hobart itself. I prided myself on my sense of balance. I used to walk along the top of the Thompson’s front fence pretending to be a tight-rope walker. But that was only a drop of a metre or so if I had lost my balance. Here the drop was more like eight metres. If you fell you would be hurt. But not seriously, I thought.

‘I will if you will,’ I said.

‘Done!’ she cried triumphantly. We left the others and sneaked across to the other side of the gully where the pipeline started. It ended on the side of the gulley near the table where the adults were sitting. I could see from this angle a beer bottle now openly displaying a Cascade label. No wonder Mr. T knew all about that Degraves bloke, I thought. The pipeline was screened by bushes at the far end so everyone was going to get the shock of their lives to see us walking towards them like we were walking on thin air.

‘Ladies first,’ Suzie said, her little nose tilting skywards.

She stepped in front of me and onto the pipe on the far side. I followed. The pipe itself was quite broad, black with rusty patches. I was sure we would not fall but when I looked down and saw the ground fall away as we walked, I changed my mind. I made myself stare at the square lines at the back of Suzie’s knees and at her skinny brown legs, not ever at the ground way below.

‘Sooz’n!’ her Mum shrilled while we were walking over the deepest drop. Suzie, startled, waved her arms around and staggered like she was