Postmarked Piper's Reach

By Adam Byatt and Jodi Cleghorn

“To send a letter is a good way to go somewhere without moving anything but your heart.” Phyllis Theroux

In December 1992, Ella-Louise Wilson boarded the Greyhound Coach for Sydney leaving behind the small coastal town of Piper’s Reach and her best friend and soulmate, Jude Smith. After twenty years of silence, a let

• Language: English
• Publisher: Vine Leaves Press
• Release date: Jul 21, 2019
• ISBN: 9781925417968

Adam Byatt

Adam Byatt is a high school English teacher, and drummer in a covers band, sifting through the ennui, minutiae and detritus of life and cataloging them as potential story ideas. He describes his writing as 'suburban realism'. He has had short stories and poems published in journals including Tincture Literary Journal and Vine Leaves Literary Journal, and short stories published in original anthologies with eMergent Publishing. He is a founding member of The JAR Writers Collective with Jodi Cleghorn and Rus VanWestervelt. Visit him online at: afullnessinbrevity.wordpress.com & thejarwriterscollective.com.

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Part One

More than kisses, letters mingle souls; for, thus friends absent speak.

John Donne

Friday 6th January, 2012

Dear Jude,

Please excuse the crappy yellow legal pad. Had I waited to find fancy stationery, I might never have sat down to write. Your parents are still listed at Blecker Street, so I’m sending the letter there and hopefully, they’ll pass it on to you.

Why don’t I just ring your dad, see if you’re alive and well, and get your phone number or an email address? I can’t. I need to write and do it old school with pen and paper. Think about each word before I put it down (and swear because my hand is already aching from writing more than I have in a decade). To send an email would be like warping the fabric of space and time. But then again, writing a letter to you after so long feels a little like that anyway.

When we sat at The Point watching the first sunrise of 1992, I believed in an eternity of New Year’s Eves with you, my best friend, by my side. I had no idea it would be our last.

Just so you know, it hasn’t taken me twenty years to forgive you for not showing up at my farewell party. Or at the bus the next day. You did me a favour. Had you come to say good-bye, I don’t think I would have had the courage to go and leave you behind.

I quit my job at the end of last year. Decided it was time for a sea change, to reassess what’s important in life. Important to me. I’ve bought an old weatherboard cottage just up the coast from Coffs Harbour. It’s not Piper’s Reach (I couldn’t go back there), but I’m near the ocean again. I can lie awake at night and hear the crash of the waves, smell the salt and seaweed.

Finding the shoebox with your letters and other teenage stuff (I still have the chewie wrapper you gave me the first day we met), it felt like no time had passed. But at the same time, I feel like I’ve lived several lives since then. Guess I have in a way.

Reading your old letters, there were events I remembered and others I’d forgotten—like the first thing I ever said to you was I didn’t kiss boys, so you thought I was a lesbian until I pashed Bart Lehmann at the Year 10 social. Shit! Some things and some people are best left forgotten. But you are not one of those people, Jude. Despite the years of silence, I never forgot you.

You always said The Waterboys wrote The Whole of the Moon about us, and while you said it was me seeing the whole of the moon, it was you who was the optimist. No one has ever filled those shoes since I left Piper’s.

I’m done with the wandering in the wilderness. I want to reconnect with what I left behind. I hope you have the time and inclination to write back. I could use a friend like you in my life (and no, that’s not code for I’m going through a messy divorce).

Always your,

Ella-Louise

xxx

PS: I realized I still press hard enough for your patented brand of reverse Braille. Some things never change!

PPS: Placebo’s Pure Morning is playing. The mention of stormy weather, friends in need, and thoughts compressing all seem rather fitting as I fold this up and go in search of an envelope.

Wednesday 25th January, 2012

Dear Ella-Louise,

Seeing a letter from the best friend I had in high school propped against the vase on the dining room table, just like you used to do almost twenty years ago, made it feel like no time had passed at all since you last left a letter here.

Dad phoned me the day it arrived and asked if I had heard from you since the end of high school and I told him I hadn’t. Dad chuckled to himself and said, You were always in love with Ella-Louise, weren’t you, but never did anything about it.

Sheesh. Thanks, Dad. Way to make a man feel like an awkward teenage boy again.

When I came to pick it up from Mum and Dad’s, I was alone in the kitchen with it in my hands, turning it over to read your address on the back.

Mum came in and filled the kettle. What does she have to say for herself? she said more as a statement than a question.

I don’t know; I haven’t opened it yet, I said, cringing at her tone.

The letter felt leaden in my hands, weighted with her displeasure and my guilt, not the excitement of unexpected correspondence I’d had minutes earlier. I pushed the letter into my pocket.

Dad came in from out the back as Mum busied herself with making tea and the conversation fell to the mundane. I wanted to slip away and go to The Point to read your letter in peace and privacy. Somewhere away from my mother’s disapproval and Dad’s jokes pushing me back into the skin of a teenage boy.

So, a sea change? Twenty years on and I’m still here in Piper’s Reach. The salt leeches into the cracks in your feet from walking barefoot everywhere until it flows in your blood. I remember you once said you were sick of the bloody salt blowing off the waves layering everything, especially with the winter storms.

But it seems like you’ve had enough salt leech into your blood to move to Corindi Bend. And I can’t believe you kept all our correspondence from twenty years ago. No, I shouldn’t be surprised. Sitting here writing to you brings back so many memories of late-night epistles and secret class letters. So many nights up writing or lost in D and M’s (or the Shallow and Meaningless as we used to call them).

You were always the hoarder (you kept the chewie wrapper?!). Some things in life serve as anchors in our lives; secure reference points to keep us from drifting away into oblivion. Other things are best left forgotten or secretly burned in the backyard incinerator. I’m not sure I want to revisit eighteen-year-old me.

I felt guilty for years about not showing up at your farewell party or saying goodbye to you at the bus stop, but back then, somehow it felt right even after what almost happened at the after formal party. I wanted to be there, and I even started walking to the party but turned around. I watched you get on the bus from down the street, holding a letter in my hand I wrote the night before. (If I ever get the guts, I’ll dig it out and send it to you). On that day, it seemed like you had a destination in mind. You weren’t running away from something; it looked like you were facing something inevitable. I envied your capacity to see beyond, to explore, to see what was on the other side while I made Piper’s Reach my security. Maybe you’ve found the peace you needed.

Man, you’re bringing back memories with The Waterboys. I’ve just jumped on YouTube and have it playing in the background. Still a great song. We used to argue whether it was David Bowie singing back-up at the end of The Whole of the Moon. Now, I’m thinking about other songs we listened to. My fave was Matt Finish’s Short Note. You always had the passion for music and I’ve not let it go, either.

Do you still have the mix tape I made you for Christmas at the end of Year 11 (the year you gave me the scarf you knitted, and Adrian dubbed it the fugly scarf)? I don’t have the scarf anymore, but I do have the back-up of the tape with all the cut-off songs, endings, and the DJ talking over the intro of the song.

Bart Lehmann and the Great Snog! There I was, comfortable around a girl who I thought was a lesbian, having her tonsils explored by Bart’s tongue. That changed everything.

There are so many things going through my head now, thinking of all the time we spent together. Some of which are too embarrassing to recount here and now.

It would be great to stay in touch again. Corindi Bend is a bit far for a day trip. Maybe we can continue where we left off and revisit it all in letters.

I hope to hear from you soon.

Always and ever,

Jude

PS: Hey, go check out Herbie Hancock’s version of Don’t Give Up, the Peter Gabriel/Kate Bush song. It’s sung by John Legend and Pink. New version of a classic we listened to.

PPS: Loved the pink envelope and yellow writing paper. Best I could manage was white. You’ve probably noticed I still use the same type of pen I used in high school.

Wednesday 1st February, 2012

Dear Jude,

I had to go and dig out our formal photo after finishing your letter. Your mullet is a classic (never as good as Iva Davies’ uber mullet, though!) and that silly, half-constipated look on your face, as though you weren’t sure whether to smile or grimace because the photographer was in a bad mood! And me, with the veranda fringe held in place by half a can of hair spray, in that crazy velvet Vogue dress with the foofy shot-green taffeta sleeves, melded to your side. Did you know I chose shot-green because it was your favourite colour? I remember getting you to help me unpick the stitching when I mis-sewed the boning, all the time giving you grief because velvet is unforgiving of mistakes. I took those taffeta sleeves off when I got to Sydney and just wore it as a sleeveless velvet slip with a pair of punk boots I picked up in a Vinnie’s store. Wish I’d had the guts to wear something like that to the formal. I just didn’t want to embarrass you by being different. Life’s too short to live your life to make others comfortable, keeping others happy. Wish I knew that then.

I’m not surprised you’re still, still, in Piper’s Reach. I knew you’d never leave. That’s why I never asked you to come with me (though I should have made you pinkie promise to at least visit). You wrote that you envied my ability to see beyond, whereas I envied the connection you had to Piper’s. Finding your letters while moving was the catalyst for writing again, but I used to think about you all the time. Wonder what you were doing (in Piper’s Reach?), who you were with, if Short Note was still your favourite song, if you still sat at The Point or the beach with your back pressed into the Norfolk Pine, lost in your thoughts … and if you did, if those thoughts were ever about me. I wondered if you missed me. Then, I’d really miss you and I’d crank up a shallow and meaningless in my head—just to hear your voice, arguing for Bowie!

In some respects, it would be so easy to pick up the phone and ring you, but I’m not ready yet. Plus, my new place doesn’t have a landline and I don’t own a mobile. I’m not even sure if The Bend has a public phone box. I can’t remember the last time I stood in one of those things and watched a stack of gold coins disappear, back when it cost a fortune to ring anyone who didn’t live nearby (oh the irony of that) and almost everyone had an STD bar on their phone.

I met with your letter via my new neighbour, Martha Cross. She handed me the small bundle of letters she’d retrieved from my letter box while I was away. Welcomed me to the neighbourhood—telling me they were very accommodating of folk like me. A saccharine sweet smile smoothed her normal set of wrinkles and created a whole new collection of them. I thought she meant out-of-towners: people who hadn’t been born there or conceived a baby on the banks of the Corindi. It was only as I walked off flicking through the envelopes it hit me what she meant by folk like me. I had mail addressed to me under two different names—she thinks I’m moving in with my girlfriend! And I’m going to let her think that. It did us okay, didn’t it?

And Bart—there is another memory to be burned in the backyard forty-four-gallon drum (do you think it would smell of burning rubber or offal like the incinerator over the back fence used to stink of?). Why I went out with Bart or cared about being dumped by a guy who opened with the world’s worst French kiss, I will never know. Did I ever tell you I’d never been kissed before that? Probably not or it would have messed up that illusion of me being really worldly!

What’s with the Dad radar? Did you—I mean, were you really in love with me? I thought the almost kiss, was, you know, just one of those things which almost happen in a moment. There and then gone. I wondered for years who was moving toward whom until I had shaped in my head it was you moving toward me, because that was how I wanted it to be. In those fantasies, Adrian didn’t vomit over your back.

You have no idea how many times, in the dead of night with nothing but the sound of a dripping tap or the companionship of late-night radio and a cold cup of coffee, I’ve pondered, What if?

But Adrian did vomit down your back (he always had impeccable timing) and we were forced next door to Paul Halligan’s to rinse out the vomit because every trough and sink in Johnno’s place was filled with ice and grog. Remember the Halligans still had a backyard laundry and dunny? We spent half an hour trying to wash the Southern Comfort and bile out of your jumper in their concrete trough. The pipes squealed and carried on so badly we were sure Paul’s parents were going to wake up. Some after-formal party, eh?

With so many memories, do you think it’s possible to really have a chance at making new ones?

The Christmas tape is missing. So many things lost between interstate moves and staying in dodgy share houses, where if you don’t nail it down in your room, it walks. Can you still even buy cassettes? If so, can you re-record the Christmas one for me and I’ll trawl the second-hand stores for a tape deck. As an aside, my days as a knitter peaked with that scarf. How I loved to see it wrapped around you, keeping the chill out.

The rain has finally cleared. One of those afternoon downpours that reminds me of the monsoonal rains in Far North Queensland. I think I might go replenish my salt levels with a walk on the beach. There might be something to your poetic theory (you still pen beautiful and ridiculous things).

Always your,

Ella-Louise

-xxx-

PS: Have you heard Stonefield’s EP Through The Clover? Those girls rock out like I wished I could at that age. xx

Thursday 2nd February, 2012

12:24 am

I can’t sleep, Jude. I would blame it on my genetic pre-disposition to insomnia, but I’ve actually slept well since moving here and letting go of everything. My brain won’t quieten. It’s like your letter set the tuner in my brain searching for the right station, but all I’m getting is static.

I was lying in bed, watching the crescent moon play kiss chasey with the thick cumulus clouds, but no storms. Just a storm in the teacup of my life. I’ve got Triple J on now, wishing I recognized something on it. I’ve listened to some shit in my time—stuck listening to country music, feigning interest and all the time just wanting to bust out Blues Brothers’ jokes about it.

There’s some band on now called The Shores and their song Poseidon. Kinda fitting because I feel turned upside down.

I’m so lost, Jude. You said I looked certain the day I got on the Greyhound. I thought I was. Looking out the bus’ window, out at the newly reconciled Mum and Phil, I was certain it would work out okay. How quickly it all unravelled.

I never found peace—didn’t know that’s what I was searching for until recently. But you always knew me better than I knew myself.

Will I find peace here? A new beginning? Makes me think of Birds of Tokyo’s Wild at Heart. I have to hope I’ll be released from the weight of my crimes; that these new tides will wash me clean for good.

… I can hope. Sea change. New me.

… drip … drip … drip

… I miss coffee—especially in the dead of night.

♥ Ella-Louise

Saturday 11th February, 2012

Dear Ella-Louise,

I scrounged a few pages together to write my last letter but now, I’ve bought myself a writing pad. Nothing flash, as you can tell, but functional. I remember passing notes and letters back and forth with paper scabbed from someone’s book or folder if we didn’t have some of our own.

Your first impression to almost everyone seems to be that of lesbian—first me, now your new neighbour. You’ll have to explain the two names? Actress name? Porn name? Perhaps it’s better not to ask!

Why am I still in Piper’s Reach? Good question. The salt and the sea become part of you the longer you stay. You left with purpose and direction; I felt the push and pull of the waves. Adrift. After school, I worked for a while: washed dishes, stacked shelves, mowed lawns with Dad; even tried a stint on one of the fishing trawlers. Total disaster. Spent more time hurling my guts up than working. Eventually, I went north to Brisbane, instead of Sydney, with a mind to study something science related. Eventually, I settled, after changing degrees and courses a couple of times, with environmental science, focusing on marine biology and ecology. Seemed a natural fit, coming from Piper’s Reach. Worked around the Great Barrier Reef based in Port Douglas and Cairns for a bit then found a post back here. We’re working on different ways to keep the fishing industry alive while still conserving the ecology of this stretch of coast, so it doesn’t go the same way as whaling. Still prefer terra firma than the rocking deck of a boat.

For me, Piper’s has always been about the stability of the place. I know it has a small town mentality about it and some are busting to cut loose and get away. Like Paul, who left right after you, though to Melbourne for university. For me, it was a reluctant decision to leave. I stayed close to the ocean, tasted the salt of home wherever I went. Coming back after FNQ, I went to The Point and stood there until my lips were caked in salt. I licked them and I was home. This is where my roots are deep and buried further than I can imagine. Like our place at The Point or under the Norfolk Island Pine. About three years ago, our tree was destroyed in a storm. After they cleared the debris, I bought a bag of hot chips from our usual shop and sat on the stump and reminisced.

Speaking of reminiscing … the formal.

I thought I was so cool in my MacGyver mullet and green paisley waistcoat. And yes, green is still my favourite colour. Apart from the vomit incident, I still have vivid memories of that night.

As an eighteen-year-old, I thought you looked stunning. Hot as if I remember the vernacular. You needn’t have worried about embarrassing me; I knew who you were, not who others thought you were. Everything about our friendship was comfortable. Not the right word, but to me, it was a safe place, familiar, yet pushed me to the edge of seeing beyond. Yours was the perspective of the future, the change, the way forward. Mine was of the present, if not the past. It was the security of what I knew against the fear of the unknown.

When I came to the front door to pick you up for the formal, your mum smiled at me with a nervous, almost apologetic smile and said, Thank you as she opened the door and let me in. I stood there in the tiny lounge room, with the corsage in my hand, unsure of how to respond. Your mother looked like she wanted to say something more as she looked at the ground between us then, as if deciding against it, called for you over her shoulder. You’d never looked so stunning and it was out of my mouth before I knew what I was saying. You blushed terribly, and your mother dashed off to find her camera while my hands shook as I pinned on your corsage.

The formal was a moment of critical mass. In the years I’d known you, we were affectionate, flirting even, and I enjoyed the strength of your hugs. (And what guy doesn’t like the feeling of being pressed up against breasts?) We’d watch videos on the couch with you lying against my shoulder or me with my head in your lap. These are the things I remember, the memories I cherished then and now. In my head the idea, the action, of kissing you would transgress the sanctity of our friendship. Even when I accidentally (sometimes on purpose) brushed your bum with my hand, it felt in violation of something sacred.

At the after party, I think I wanted to be the transgressor. Leaning in to kiss you, I could smell the sweetness of the West Coast Cooler on your breath and imagined the tang of it on your lips. Then, Adrian hurled all over me and the moment was gone. The smell of Southern Comfort still makes me feel ill.

We didn’t go back to the after party from the Halligan’s laundry, just walked around town, reliving the night’s events: who wore what, the fact Amy’s boobs were more out than in her dress, who was making out with who, and where everyone would be in five years’ time. It was then I realized to kiss you would have been a mistake. I wanted to but could not quench—or risk being burned by—the fire inside of you. Part of me always thought I would hold you back, keep you anchored to a place you didn’t want to be or had no connection to. No roots to put down.

That’s why, walking back to your place as the sun came up, I took your hand. Not to hold on, but to know I had to let you go. At your door, one final hug, a last embrace. But looking back over your letter, did I do the right thing? Twenty years is a long time to second guess yourself but back then, I was sure I was doing the right thing. I knew you, like you said, more than you knew yourself.

There will be a time when peace will come to you. It was one thing I knew I could not give you back in high school. I was there for you, but I sensed parts of you that were shut away like letters in a suitcase.

I hope you find the peace you are looking for. I can still be there for you. I haven’t changed much in twenty years. They don’t call me the Patron Saint of Lost Causes for no reason. I can still hear you singing the na na na nas of The Beatles Hey Jude to make me laugh, get me out of a funk, or to annoy the hell out of me.

Love,

Jude

PS: Remember that pool party at Johnno’s house just after exams finished, the night we ended up skinny-dipping? It was 2 a.m. and everyone else had gone home or gone to bed and we were at either end of the pool. You dared me to strip off. I watched you sink to your neck because you were in the shallow end and you dumped your cossie on the side of the pool. Didn’t take much more encouragement for me to strip off. We were naked in front of one another, hidden by a body of water, neither of us leaving the safety of our shadows.

Anyway, you said you were cold and going to make a dash for your towel and made me close my eyes and turn around. You always asked if I ever saw anything and I said, No. I must recant my testimony. Risking being turned to stone, I caught a glimpse of your bum as you wrapped yourself in a towel.

Forgive me for I have sinned.

Wednesday 22nd February, 2012

Dear Jude,

Walked down to the local café to write and arrived without my notepad. Luckily, I’ve struck up a bit of a friendship with the lady who runs the café—Ava Hudson. She moved from Melbourne with her family looking for a change of lifestyle. Gave up being an ambo to froth milk and serve all-day breakfast. Unlike me, she did it for her family. Cute kids, eight and eleven, and a hubby who owns the local solicitor’s firm. Always makes me laugh—no matter how small the place, there’s always the law mongers. Makes me think of Dire Straits’ Telegraph Road, of progress bringing the churches and schools, then lawyers and rules. Matt’s an okay bloke though—as far as his kind goes!

So, long story short—Ava found a half-used exercise book for me to tear some pages out of. You get classy and I get scruff!

Last night, I had a dream about Grace Wyatt (Bitches Incorporated). I don’t remember any of the specifics, just that heart-pounding wrench from sleep that leaves you terrified but you’re not sure why. Her name still smarts all these years later. Even before she destroyed my life, she’d been running a campaign of vile nastiness in my direction for years—saw me as being between you and her right from the beginning of our friendship, then the reason why you guys broke up. You never seemed to cotton