It's unseasonably warm.

            People often mistook me for someone still young, but I was never young. I still wear my flowery blue and pink dresses to town, but lately I’ve noticed that I get less curious stares from men.  My skin is no longer creamy and elastic. Women no longer veil the looks they cast at me now.  In the pub mirror I see that the bottom third of my face is becoming networked with tiny lines and is creased in ways that I cannot account for.  It is happening much more swiftly than I expected when I was a child. Small cuts and blisters on my arms take longer to heal and when I am tired the skin sags and my eyelids are heavier and my eyes can’t see things on the horizon now. 

            My house is quiet. There are too many rooms. They are becoming emptier and emptier. It’s better not to have things clamouring at you with their vacuous stories when you live alone. Every time I go into the town I take with me a few of the pieces still left to sell. It’s not so easy; what I have stored has little value in the market place.  Having a house of my own was something I longed for and when I finally I got it decorated it and filled it up with many beautiful pieces of furniture I selected carefully, the windows had rich drapes and the kitchen was stacked with shiny pots and pans. But to be full of things and empty of love is not a home.

            The house is quiet, but still, I keep myself busy during the day. There are the animals to feed and water, and the garden to weed, and the goat has to be milked. Whenever I can I take her out along the firebreaks for fresh green pick.  Sometimes in the evening I take the gun for a rabbit or two, and the dog will follow along behind me. 

            It is a very long time since the travelling singers were here.

            I never gave birth. Once I became pregnant, but it was easy enough to get rid of it when I was a youth. I never stopped loving him, but he’s gone now.  Of course, I’ve had many other lovers since.

            He used to come and go. He’d stay a few months then be off up north or over east. He’d come back in his slow, deliberate way and we’d go fishing together or he’d have a party and invite his friends and we’d have a good laugh. But he left a while ago and I know this time he won’t be back.

            I wrote a song for him, but he only played it once. I wonder how it would sound to my ears now, if I’d even recognise it.

           

            A week or so ago I thought I heard the players. I thought I heard music in the distance, perhaps down by the beach in the camping grounds. A sharp clicking and a deep droning beat. But it lasted only briefly then a gust of wind blew it away like a shadow. Each night this week I’ve sat out and listened but all I hear is the waves.

            The moon is almost full. The sky has been still and clear for the last two days and it rose huge and yellow. It’s unseasonably warm and I’m sitting out under the jarrah watching it get smaller and white.

            It’s tomorrow now and I’m in a rush because the goat has wandered off and I do not want to forget the night. I watched the moon rise higher and colder and as a cloud covered it I shook myself and the knee rug and headed for my bed, then in the bottom of the yard I heard a tune.

            He was heavy and slow and smelled of strong liquor and cigarettes. He came quietly to me, tho, stepping lightly through the leaves on the ground carrying a battered old guitar. I knocked the dog off the arm chair and we sat . He handed the bottle to me and I rolled a cigarette as he tuned his instrument. And then he sang to me, a song I didn’t recognise at first. He sang my song to me. How can this be? I do not know him. I’ve never seen him before.

            All night he played on and on, songs of the wars and old village chiefs and their wives and their lovers, we passed the bottle back and forth and he sang songs of love and time passing and fading youth. He sang songs of happy devoted lovers and my heart lifted up like the moon. All night he sang to me and my eyes wept and he sang and I laughed, and then I danced and he sighed. All night the beautiful music from his rough voice.

            Now the sun is rising. He lay himself down to sleep under the trees, and for a while I rested with him.  Then I had to get up and milk the goat. I am, surprisingly, not tired. I feel light. And hungry. I know where there are some late berries, I’m going to cook something in a moment, mushrooms on toast, I’m going out to pick a handful, and then I’ll go look for her.

            We had our breakfast; I ate mine up this morning and I feel fine. And he got up for his in the afternoon. He sleeps the whole day through and travels at night, like a dream. The afternoon is his dawn.

            I picked up his guitar while he was asleep. But it seemed to be so hard to find a tune on it. All the melodies it knew he must have played away in the night.             He has asked me to travel with him. He must have been walking a long time. I asked him, aren’t you tired of walking? He just smiled.  

            The sun is set and I have come in to boil up some milk for cheese. I can hear the wind is restless. The moon is big again now, just coming up.