Diana! Episode 6

7 "Becoming darker, better defined, and closing in."

The sun set two hours ago, and in some parts of the city, on the western horizon, the black sky relinquishes itself to a deep violet. But not by the harbour at Woolloomooloo Bay. Which waits, a black surface, for a certain man on a certain occasion.
This man does not go for after dinner walks. As a rule. His body is protesting. His day at work had been no harder than usual, but after sitting in front of the TV, and at dinner, his hips are stiff and his calf muscles hurt; as he walks he feels uncomfortable, awkward: he hopes that nobody is watching.
He and his wife and his three bits of trouble share a government town house four blocks behind him. Among the Abos and the Arabs. And this is where he is going to stay. There was a ministerial announcement last month: Who to? he wonders, because he only heard about it last week, and he only got the letter yesterday. There's been a policy change, and he has been taken off the waiting list for That Bigger Place he and Jane had hoped for. The kids will just have to make do with the one room. Katie and Andrew will just have to stop fighting. He tells himself: 'I will have to put a stop to it'.
The moon had been climbing the firmament since late afternoon. From the windy scaffolding he had got a good look at it, and it at him. Its darker regions dissolved into pale blue. But the sky is dark now and the white moon is big and grinning and bright. He gets a good look at it from the harbour wall, and it gets a good look at him.
He sees the harbour flotsam. There are blue plastic bags and white ones. Leaves and sticks, cigarette butts, and a plank with a nail in it. The slight harbour swell pushes this rubbish up and against the sandstone wall. Some pieces stick to the sea slime and are picked up again by the next surge. Up and down, against and away, like breathing.
He hacks and spits into the water. His spittle is white and holds together like sperm, and the tide guides it gently in amongst the rubbish. There is a sound overhead, a leathery, thumping sound, and he looks up to see a fruit-bat, one of several, making through the haze to feed on the giant figs of Sydney's Botanical Gardens. Light-posts mark the path ahead. As he walks this man has two shadows: the one in front of him which lengthens and becomes dimmer, and the one behind him, becoming darker, better defined, and closing in.
This man's certain death comes as no relief. He would just as soon it not have come. But now that it is here, well, what is he supposed to do? He struggles. Anyone would. He feels the pain as its grip tightens. Out of love perhaps, this man will not force his body to continue: his body, which is tired, stiff, sore, and soon gives up.
Water is all surface. Everywhere it touches you is where it begins. Like despair. There is so much of it inside him now that he sinks down and down. And now the sticky mud has hold of him and is washed across him and over him.
He is cold, remembers nothing. It will bury him.


8 "I have something that belongs to you."

A knot of blokes near the bar divided and reformed as Diana passed through. "Am I too late?"
"No," Christine had to yell, "they don't play it until the last set." Diana pulled up a chair. "Diana, this is Jonathan." Diana's handshake was good and firm. He liked that.
"Pleased to meet you again. Oh yes. I have something that belongs to you. Here," and she handed him his little plastic joint-lighter. Jonathan laughed as he tucked it away into a pocket. "And," she said, turning to Christine, "pleased to see you again also."
Christine reached for Diana's hand. Drawing her closer, she kissed her cheek.
Diana leant back into her chair and returned a smile. Christine licked her lips before taking another drink. She tasted something. Salt. But now the cold beer had washed the taste away.


Sunday 21 July

9 "It will suit that chain you're wearing."

Mr Travers' big lips separate from Diana's, then, separating, smile. "You must be feeling better. I'm happy for you." Diana takes a step back and Travers retains his hold on her hands before letting them fall. "Oh yes my dear, and I have something for you. Part of your inheritance." And he laughs quietly as he crosses the floor, taking a set of keys from his pocket and opening the lowest drawer of his desk. Inside, a circular shape, like a coin, lies upon a closely-typed contract that carries Jonathan's name and Diana's signature, still glistening and damp, in black ink.
She has barely changed position by the time Mr Travers is again before her, proffering his open hand. Without touching his skin, Diana picks the object from inside his pink palm. She inspects the little item of jewellery: a medallion slightly smaller than a twenty-cent piece, a polished disk of unadorned ebony.
"Thank you," turning it in the light, looking into its darkness.
"It will suit that chain you're wearing beautifully, don't you agree?" When she fails to answer, he continues: "I hope it doesn't make that boy of yours jealous. But it's not a gift you understand, it's simply what is due to you. You'll explain this to … to … "
"Jonathan."
"Jonathan, of course. Where was I now? Yes, my dear, this little trinket is simply what is rightfully yours, now that you have given me what is mine."
Diana presses her new possession against her lips, feeling its hardness and its coldness on the spongy warmth of her skin. She looks up. "You know it then. Last night. The first."
"Not the first, surely," he says through his fat smile, "but yes, the wheel is turning. Like the clock - four for the quarters …"
"Like the clock. I suppose."
"And look, dear girl, already your life is evolving as it should."
Diana follows his gaze down to the object in her hand. She had thought the disk was plain, blank as shut-in darkness, but now she sees, catching in the light, a slender gold thread, fine as the hair of a child, tracing a portion of the medallion's outline.
"The new moon," says Travers.
"The Queen of Heaven," whispers Diana.
"Waiting to be born."
Diana closes her fingers over the sliver of brightness, sliding the medallion into her pocket.
"You'll see him again soon? Jonathan?"
"This morning."
"Good," Travers says with finality, as he returns to his desk. Settling into his chair, leaning his head back, he draws his fingers through his close-cropped hair. The sound of it is brittle, abrasive. His Adam's apple, round as an egg, rises and falls as he swallows.
"Mr Travers?"
He looks across at her, brow creased in mock inquiry. "Yes, Diana. Is there something else?"
"It's just … " She takes a breath so that she can say, steadily, "I still cannot remember."
"What is it my darling, what is it that you cannot remember?" The word 'cannot' he twists with contempt.
"Everything. My life," Diana replies. "What have I done?"

The door closes behind her. Diana steps out into the street. The harbour wind hurries through the shadowy canyon of Bent Street. A tree has been transplanted into freshly dug earth at the entrance of a row of offices, tarted-up terraces, once the refuge of the crazed, the drug-crazed, and the hungry. As Diana walks by, she looks up at the highest branches that reach into the daylight. The tree sheds a dead branch, and Diana watches it clatter its way earthward. She picks it from the ground, rolls it in her hand, seeing that it is about twice the width of her thickest finger. The wood is grey and dry, and she feels its hard surface and its strange, sapless buoyancy.
A fluke gust pushes back Diana's black hair, and she squints against the dust. There is a crack as the branch snaps, and Diana looks down at the two pieces she now holds, and lets them fall. As she walks towards Macquarie Street the word she mutters under her breath is probably: 'Yes'.