The Marguerite Flower

– for Nadia

I was staring at the back of the butcher’s shirt when I noticed the spots. They just appeared, one after another, clustering, spreading, then forming an even stain of moisture. The lady who did the herbs didn’t seem to mind. She was as still as always, and as always in a terrible jumper. Purple today, green yesterday, green like a mouth wash. And the tractor driver is sort of still, well as still as I’ve ever seen him, and he’s silent, a blessing, for I’ve never seen his mouth when it’s not opening like the lid of a broken cereal box. He doesn’t mind the rain but he never did. The little crayfisherman wouldn’t have noticed anything short of a gale although when he takes his daughters for a ride on their ponies there’s a solicitousness about him which you’d never suspect. In that face, with hair springing from it like a poor man’s sofa, there is the song of angels – and it’s there again – despite the rain. This man knows peace and by the look of his wife she knows him – there’s something almost sly in her happiness, but it’s not smug conspiracy it’s a look of surprise that such luck should befall her, the slyness is her fear that it may be snatched away, and it’s the snatching which has stilled the butcher in his wet shirt, bound the feet and flapping mouth of the tractor driver, dampened the mints of the herb lady. The Nyoonga builder is there too with the woman he married last weekend, his wife of twelve years, and in their awkward stance you can see the unease of another, different, celebration. He steadies his new wife with a hand that has known just how to do it. And there are the others I notice. The boy whose father drowned in a weir accident, locked into a drain by mistake, sucked against the mesh as a toy frog in an emptying bath. And the plumber’s boy, whose face is twisting and jerking with a peculiar gulping of his jaw causing the shoulders and feet to jump in a kind of glee, if you didn’t know that his twin brother died on his motorbike beneath a truck – two, three years ago. He’s been so steady since, so solid, so unmoved, it was possible to believe it hadn’t mattered – much – but we were stupid to believe that. And of course the councillor is there, the day before an election – where else could you see so many people? – but he knows he’s going to lose and he can hardly believe it. The people will turn against him because loyalty, kindness and a simple mind will not be enough, the people want someone to tackle the bureaucracies, a man who knows the ins and outs of the internet, someone not shocked by focaccia and sun-dried tomatoes, someone not fifteen stone overweight, someone who doesn’t need four and a half minutes to get out of their car. Yes, the people will get a quicker man tomorrow, but that man is not here – in the rain.

And there’s a hemline that was bumped together last night, the material pushed ahead of the needle. Nice legs in an awkward gumboot, thistle-paddock, duck-feeding kind of stance, farm legs, she’s with the bloke who drives the old red Bedford, daughter? niece? strange kind of lover? anything’s possible with those hill people, live like Tasmanians, sutures on their shoulders where the other head used to be, it’s the kind of thought that wouldn’t sneak in if he was your neighbour and the one to tow your car out of the drain or fix you up with water when your tank stand collapsed like he warned you it would two years ago. He’s got that kind of face, he’s not thinking about the Adelaide Festival but he knows rotten bearers when he sees them, although I have to suspect this because I’ve never seen his face before except framed by the rust red window of his Bedford. And over there, in twin shocking green are two women come late. They’re wearing the electric lime green smocks of the supermarket. I know one of them. She’s got terrific kids, a wonderful family, scratching and clawing to get on, but scratching and clawing at the scantling of their own new house – they’d never lift a hand against anyone else. I’ve watched them for years, in the town, at the football, sharing a rug, a thermos of tea, a team scarf. They’re united, sufficient in themselves but on the woman’s face is a very strange look. She’s afraid. I’ve never seen her afraid before, I’ve seen her fierce, always fierce, but not a ferocity directed at others, at things, the blocks and pulleys which are geared and tackled to keep poor people poor. This woman is always leaning into one or the other of the rich men’s ropes – but not today, today she’s terrified, because today it’s not the rich men, not the fat bastards who hate us, but fortune, luck, the chance beyond the strength of our shoulder to intervene – she’s powerless and she hates it – she swore to herself at sometime never to give up all power, never to be beaten. Give her a few thousand stray dollars and she’d run this town on her own – but maybe she wouldn’t see the importance of it beyond her own family – what business would it be of hers?

The butcher’s shirt is saturated and I can see the muscles in his shoulders gathering to refuse the discomfort they want to express. Dumb muscles, what do they know? It’s no time to shiver. And his wife has a marvellous arse it surprises me to notice, but on looking up her body I see the strained angle of her neck. She’s younger than I’d thought, the skin is smooth, girlish, the hair a wisp at her neck, but the cords are strung tight and have twisted her face away. She’s holding on to something and unlike her butcher hasn’t noticed the rain at all. The women are like that, I haven’t seen one of them touch their hair or raise a hand to the bodice to see how the satin is holding out. Never seen people more still. Even the Greek from the restaurant, all bluff and bluster and Mediterranean bonhomie, fishing village charm, even he is chastened and stands uncomfortable not to be able to greet people or have them greet him. But he knows too, I can see, he knows what is happening and like the little scratcher and clawer, hates the feeling of helplessness and slides away, eventually, not sure the people will care to acknowledge him today and what else is there really, but food and cheer and happiness? And what can we put on our tongue today without gagging? Oh, I’m seeing some peculiar things I never thought I’d see. I thought I’d see Jimmy Shamrock but I never thought I’d see him without a glass in his hand, canvassing the bar for an opinion about not much. I’ve never understood a word he’s said so no wonder he’s been at it so long. Everyone listens to Jimmy, bending politely to the short man hoping to understand a critical noun or two, like horse or house, Labor or Liberal, football or barge board. But are those really his shoulders? Where is his face? A short man to be sure, and we’re used to him looking up into our face, all white bristle and burst capillaries like a crook bit of tripe. But that great face is down and the shoulder skewed away from the half forward flanker, who is often by his side with lips flapping and raffle tickets and betting slips riffling between them. And that footballer who we never credited with a more complicated thought than catch it, kick it, drink it, bet on it – has lost his place in the form guide and is looking out over the approaching line of cars to the sea, great artichoke mitts clumped at his side. And then I see the coach’s face behind his shoulder, the eyes gimlet and screw back into his head and I know he’s looking at the first car where the passenger door has been opened by a man in a suit – but no-one gets out. The angle of my vision allows me to see the statues form beside that door but I keep my eyes on the coach’s face and watch as the jaw scissors out to the left and part of the bottom lip is bitten back into the mouth. I see, from the corner of my eye, hands reaching into the car and come out empty, useless and hanging, twitching for the want of something to do and then I feel my wife’s hair against my face and a wet cataract steals across my eyes because I know what she is thinking. My fingers fumble for hers and I hear her gulp and lean against me. I know what she’s thinking. We’re all thinking it. We’re glad it’s her they can’t get out of the car because we don’t want it to be us. The woman from the café, in what is probably her best dress, and a hat she’ll wear five more times in her life, is kneeling beside the car door and I don’t see, but I sense her lips parting and pleading and then there’s a bit of shoulder bumping and gathering as the Marguerite flower forms about her, the petals shuffling into place around their heart as whales are said to cluster about an injured mate to buoy her and stop her drowning. I glance across to the crayfisherman to see if it’s occurred to him but he’s obscured by a blur of house painters and short order cooks and when I look back the Marguerite flower is stumbling awkwardly up the path in their grotesque formation and that’s when you hear the organ and wish to Christ there was someone in town who could play it and then they leave us outside and you’d expect everyone to swap hands in their pockets, try to open up clammy tissues with clumsy fingers, loosen ties, anything to shift the weight, but no, we’re frozen. Fish can all turn and flit in absolute synchrony, iron filings will point to the pole, well we’re all arranged like that in a focus on the door, something has signalled to the herd that this is what we will do and we do it, we do not move even though the rain begins again and satins darken, shirts cling and faces mercifully run rivulets. We’re just petals after all, soft and fragile petals all. The hammer, torque wrench, skillet, spade, winch, mop, keyboard, cash register, fryer, paint brush, hook, scissors, scalpel, cloth and boot, all just petals come here to arrange the Marguerite flower, to lift our face to the rain, hoping, impossibly, to be always a petal and never the heart.