I only ever loved your ghost

By Sal Balharrie
LYRICS by JENS KUROSS - I only ever loved your ghost

JULIAN, marooned in a bladeless paddock.

Driving back from an assignment in the Grampians, Western Victoria, this week, somewhere between Stawell and Ararat, I saw a boat in a paddock beside the highway. Despite the fast moving traffic I slammed on the breaks and took out my camera. How could I not? So how to use the images in SWS? Perhaps a call out for information? Perhaps a story on Portland’s Cray Boat fleet…. No! let’s make it a chance to tell a story! Perhaps SWS’ first intentional fiction piece!

I only ever loved your Ghost

She first met Julian, the man not the boat, at the Shakespeare Hotel - an irony not lost upon her, for Julian was a fisherman with a sonnet in his heart and his very own name on the stern.

Late in the afternoon, on the days she returned from her father’s warehouse, despising the fact she was an only child, and now an only adult, and the only person on whom her father could rely to help, she felt tired. Really, very tired and older than her days and filled with longing to get back to her own place, the grassless farm, deliberately distant from all this water. She hated the ocean. She’d rejected the brine of a sea breeze and traded it all to live in a dust bowl – at least that’s what her father told anyone who’d listen.

Gladys downstairs would say - take your G&T up there and for goodness sake, go and introduce yourself to Julian, what’s the worst that could happen - and then she’d wink and dip her chin, a dip loaded with what Gladys hoped might happen, later that night under the sheets of The Shakespeare.

Because each afternoon, after a catch, Julian would sit on the balcony, surveying the harbour with whiskey on ice, a small notebook and the stub of a pencil behind his ear, looking out to sea. Watching, waiting for a thought that, once formed would leave his physical body and find itself alive, as grey lead, on a page, in his spiral bound book.

Julian called The Shakespeare home. He paid his board in fish and crays. Turns out his missus had upped and gone, taking his two small boys - one day - just like that, packed up and followed some bloke to the big smoke and Julian, being unable to face an empty house without them, locked the door and along with his fox terrier, took up residence in room 9a, which by coincidence, happened to be next door to hers.

Room 9 and 9a shared an interconnecting door that, was of course, locked. She heard him talking to the dog, heard him hum and once, heard him throw or drop a bottle. Room 9 and 9a also happened to be the only rooms currently occupied at The Shakespeare Hotel.

Tried so hard, what remains?
Keep my letters, keep my books, forget my names
I'll keep your pictures in their frames
You loved them most
I only ever loved your ghost.

Such were the words she read, the day, she found his notebook unattended. There it was, on the table, out on the balcony, no doubt where he’d left it. What was she to do? She couldn’t leave it there, not with the wind. Not with an incoming squall. She reached out and picked it up. His hand was surprising, irresistible, large and loping, like a rounded hook, across the page.

 One more time, here we go
I can't face the face I asked you not to show
It's best for lovers not to know
Than sadly boast
It's always better loving ghosts.

She stood up. Looked behind her. Was this a lark? Had he left it there knowing she’d be unable to resist? She should; would; couldn’t place it back. The book was hers it had to be. His words had landed in her heart.

Walking mile after mile
Chasing romance, should've settled for a smile
These dreams were just too big, so I'll propose a toast
To ever only loving ghosts

She took the small spiral bound book back to her bedroom, his poems now hers. She flicked her bedside lamp and lay back on her pillow to read again and …

What was that?

She heard footsteps, his footsteps outside her door, she held her breath. She imagined him on the other side, his knuckles up, ready to rap. She thought she felt him lean in, she thought she could feel him listening. Gladys would have told him she was there, upstairs, inside. But then he turned, she heard him walk away, across to his own door and she, still holding her breath, traced her eyes along the wall, living an illusion that walls were made of glass and she could see clearly what he was doing on the other side.

She stood up.

She took the notebook. Ripped out a page and walked over to the interconnecting door and then did the most thrilling thing of her life. She tapped, three times and waited.

She heard him stop.

Walk over. She heard him push the dog away, and he too tapped, just quietly.

Then she slid the paper, the empty page, under the door and waited.

She heard his feet walk away, then come back, she waited, as if forever and there it was - the paper came back, to her side with two small but very large words:

Thank You.

And that is how a girl from a dust bowl met a boy with a cray boat. Two people whose hearts had been broken by salt air.

Julian the man traded crays for sheep and Julian the boat was to be perched on stilts, far away from the sea, floating in a grassless paddock, sailing a new life with water a distant memory, of a difficult harbour.