St James Infirmary

 

I don’t recall music at Bill’s funeral. Maybe the boys didn’t think of that. They – only mid-twenties – arranged it all.

I was one year married to Andrew by then, and we’d recently moved interstate. Not only that: in the middle of moving house. (The first was just temporary to get us here.)

 

They delayed the funeral for me. ‘You have to be here.’  

I supposed it would be odd if Andrew came too, and difficult for him. Anyway, someone had to finish our move.

The funeral felt strange. Some people didn’t know we’d ever parted. Others, because they did, didn’t know what to say. Two who never liked me stopped trying to hide it.

I couldn’t exactly play hostess. Not the grieving wife. (Did all my grieving over the divorce. Everyone thought that was my idea. No.)

A huddle of young Vietnamese women looked me over, whispering. Identifying me, I imagined.

I couldn’t guess which was the one he’d tried to brag about. (That didn't work. Someone already told me, and by then I didn’t care.)

Jim Cathcart (best mate) made the speech. Foster-son Robert, a parent himself then, sat beside me and sobbed. My arm stayed around his shoulders for the whole service. 

My youngest, who’d driven me there, latched on to an ex-girlfriend come to pay her respects, and disappeared smartly, taking her to the wake instead.

I stood on my own in the car park as everyone drove away. Hailed an old friend just in time. ‘Room for me?’

Ah yes, there WAS music. 

Much later. Unplanned. 

Dutch was there with his guitar. As he’d always been, throughout my life with Bill. Playing for free at our parties – children’s and grown-ups’. 

Some friends brought their kids this night. Late, when the youngsters were tired and fractious, he sang directly to them. ‘The fox went out on a chilly night …’ They listened with thumbs in their mouths, wide-eyed. 

At parties, whenever Dutch called for requests, Bill would beg, ‘Play St James Infirmary’. Of course I asked, that final night. And he did.

Now Dutch is gone, and Andrew’s gone. Jim Cathcart’s gone. All the children are grown. 

The music lingers on.

Form: prose poem

NaPoWriMo 2025, Day Twenty-Eight.

Prompt: to write about music at an event.

Linking to Poets and Storytellers United at Friday Writings #176: Slice of Life.  This little slice of death, written in April, is the nearest I can get to (my understanding of ) that literary style – which can also apply to fiction, but this is autobiographical.

The Smell of Suntan Lotion

The smell of suntan lotion, 

and I’m straight back

to that beach in Bali

that afternoon, with Bill

and our little boys.

It was 1973, our first

holiday outside Australia.

We were carefree, 

and full of wonder. 

We still loved each other.

Written for Friday Writings #93: Scent of a Poem at Poets and Storytellers United.

In Last Night's Dream

In last night’s dream I could talk under water.

oh, that makes sense (I suddenly realise now) –

the one I was talking to was Bill, who spent

half his life underwater: 

                        

                                         Bill the diver, to whom 

I was married for 26 years. We were good mates 

most of the time, and I loved his tales of the sights 

and adventures below the surface. He would 

have loved to take me diving too, but my 

water phobia…. 

                          

                             My other two husbands

(before and after Bill) loved ballroom dancing –

one was a champion, with cups and medals –

and I couldn’t dance at all, which must have been

a disappointment…. 

                                  Bill and I were equally 

hopeless at dancing and singing, so those things

we happily did together. Along with boating, and

travels around the country. Oh and of course, having 

children, loving them, delighting in them. 

                                                                    I wonder 

why we were chatting in my dream last night. Does 

underwater, below the surface, signify deep in 

the unconscious? Does he visit me often at some 

other level of reality, only I don’t usually recall? 

I know I was the love of his life, so it seems a bit 

sad that he was only one of mine. But we both 

always wanted more….

                                         I think, of course, that at 83 

I must be nearing my death. Maybe some part of my 

soul has decided to go out with a cleaner slate, tidying 

up loose ends, making sure of repairing any old hurts 

with any old husbands? We were always good mates

(except for the break-up, but we moved past that) and 

much in accord on many things….

Sharing this with Poets and Storytellers United at Friday Writings #83: The Finishing Touch, as it seems I might be putting the finishing touches to this relationship, or the memories of it, or my own coming to terms with it all.

The Blurring of the Days

The Blurring of the Days

To Bill

Each night the clicking comes
of the small gecko on the wall
outside my front door. I hear it
as friendly and comforting. A mark
of the progress of my day, the hours
of my day, each day the same
sound at the same awaited time.

It takes me back to those days in Bali
with the loud clack of the huge
geckos in walls of straw,
strange yet amusing, reliable
backdrop to steamy nights …
at the same time as it grounds me
here and now. How the days slip by! 

Written for Weekly Scribblings #48: Words of an Unprecedented Year, at Poets and Storytellers United. One of the words is Blursday, for days indistinguishable from each other. I have experienced some of this during the pandemic isolation – but that gecko, one of the things that gives my days sameness, took me somewhere else, to a different kind of blurring which is perhaps more common as we age.

Summer Love #2: Two Hearts Together

Two Hearts Together

I met a stranger

at a friend's summer wedding.

He had bright blue eyes,

sandy-blonde hair, and a voice 

light but husky – intriguing. 

In his tiny car,

a group of us crowded in

to get a lift home.

I was on some fellow's knee.

(That was back before seat-belts.)

Much later, he said

he was surprised by envy,

wanting me on his –

but he'd only just met me,

and of course he was driving.

When he asked me out,

he told me he loved swimming.

'Oh, teach me!' I begged.

He never did. At the beach

I got into the water.

He was used to girls

who claimed to love swimming, but

they never got wet,

instead lying on the sand 

all day, perfecting their tans.

We went on a boat,

not much more than a dinghy.

I sat on the side

with the spray striking my neck.

I'd grown up on fishing boats.

That was it for him.

A girl who liked the water

for real – a keeper.

Twenty-seven years married,

two sons, many adventures ...

He made his living

from the sea: a fisherman.

It provided well.

We liked the beach and camping,

boats and the ocean, summer.

For the Summer Love series at Carpe Diem Haiku Kai. Prompt #2 is a tanka suite: 6 - 12 tanka telling a story. 

This is the condensed  and simplified version of a true story.  (I'm afraid that in the interests of the narrative I've lost some of the more poetic qualities of the tanka.)

Sometimes Glad They Didn't Live

Sometimes Glad They Didn't Live

There was a time, after my second husband died –

to whom I was not married any more by then,

but to someone else, but still I hadn't wanted him dead

and it was a huge shock, and then to be dealing with

our sons' grief, their storms of sobbing ...

there was that time when Holland lost to Argentina

in the FIFA World Cup, after getting so far,

and I was glad he was dead, to miss that 

huge disappointment that it would have been for him

(Dutch till he was 15)....   Is that weird? Anyway I was.

And I caught myself feeling glad just now

that my dear third husband is not still alive to learn

that one of his favourite Aussie actors – the one we saw

walking along St Kilda Road after we'd been to the Art Gallery,

that last time we visited Melbourne together 

(we had sat to rest on the low concrete ledge

dividing pavement from Arts Centre precincts

near the bridge above South Bank, and there he was

coming towards us from the theatre complex. Yes, it was 

him! In the end, Andrew just called out, 'Good on you, mate!'

The tall man gave him a quick thumbs up,

a nod and a lopsided grin, as he strode past

heading for Flinders Street Station, or the tram stop, or

the Swanston Street shops ... wherever great people go

when they're being ordinary and just like the rest of us.) 

I'm glad, I say, that Andrew never heard the tales

of an Aussie icon revealed as predator. At first 

we didn't believe the one young woman; and other actors 

said they knew nothing of it – but now it begins to look true. 

If Andrew has to be dead, I'm glad he's spared this sad disillusion.


Sharing with the last Tuesday Platform for 2018 at 'imaginary garden with real toads'.