The Good Wife
On the plane the Irishman next to me helps with my seat belt because I’m fumbling, and I feel curiously young and old. He’s reading a thriller. In a jet plane, when the full throttle thrusts, it’s like a carnival ride and then in comes the hefty lift into the sky and we settle to wait for the earth again.
But we land with a deadly thud and lurch, and the Irishman says, ‘Jesus Almighty’ and we look at each other. His book skids off his lap. I expect something to be on fire or at least the oxygen masks to be dangling. But dread can steer you wrong as a wise woman once told me. My husband A, the frequent flyer, barely noticed.
At the Adelaide Writers Festival it’s hot, but not as hot as you’d imagine. Big blue sails soar over plastic seats and trampled grass. The audience is almost all Boomers though there are some young speakers. How did we all get so old? It took time. The young presenters subtly snipe at Boomer guests when they don’t want to hear them. There’s a set list of no-go subjects. Generation gaps are beyond time.
The festival is all about ideas and you’ve got to be quick to get a seat between sessions. I get fried watching A in a session. For another session we perch on a small brick wall. I’d thought there was padding on my rear end, but it failed.
The occasional bullet bird shoots through, dodging us and skimming across sunburned leaves. We see old friends and there’s a relief in that. The kindness of old knowledge with the memory of other days and other people.
At one session, a rumpled international guest has been up all night on a flight, then sleeping on seats at Melbourne airport and he’s still lucid. The occasional jet passes, belly low over the golden treetops. The jets remind me of geese the way one follows another. In the afternoon, the clock in the sky dials down but the heat notches up under our canopies and women break-out the handheld Chinese fans.
A signs lots of books for his publisher, he also talks to people who swear they’d bought the book when it first came out, but forgot to bring it. Adelaide Writers Festival is a free festival, so the mix of people is broad. One woman gets him to sign the program, another, a piece of paper from a notebook.
People try out their theories for saving the world on him. They believe they have the answers, and they want him to hear. Some are just fans.
One young man has a book published years ago to be signed. It turns out his name is Dylan. Is he named after the great man? He doesn’t know, so I say A had a dog named after Dylan. He wants to know what breed. ‘Border Collie,’ I say and the boy finches with pleasure and says he’s had four Border Collies and somehow we get to where maybe they’re all called Dylan. In these brief corners, it’s hard to be sure.
But the queue is long, and people are tolerantly standing in the sun in their Panama hats. And then there’s William who wears a pink shirt with palm trees. He’s big and sad, but he laughs about some of it and says he’d be in a pine box if not for the doctors. He opens his shirt to show me the scar running down the middle of his chest and asks if A has one of these yet? I blanch at that. The only time William’s façade cracks is when he talks about his daughter who died far too young. And his eyes seem to say that she often comes back to him. He craves signatures from anyone even mildly famous. Maybe it helps.
Famous authors are cast away by publicity people like sheep dogs. The rest just mix in and get the tram.
A festival guide says she used to live in Melbourne and now she hates it. I venture that perhaps we can be insular to newcomers. She drily replies that she was born there. Well gee.
Strange to think people believe A has the answers to their puzzled questions. I thought I was the only one onto that. He patiently helps the autograph hunters until he says, ‘gotta go’.
A tram slides from one end of town to the other. A man in a checked shirt and a tiny old woman wearing a flowery dress are trying to get on when tram locks the man out. He bangs on the door with his walking stick. Everyone rushes to his aid. We get going and pass people sleeping stretched out in alcoves on makeshift mattresses, no one rushes to them though. I guess you can’t help everyone.
Walking to dinner there’s impromptu drag racing in shiny cars clawing through the night. Exhausts roar over the polite streets. I stumble in my fancy sandals. We’re going go to a place in Paul Kelly Lane for old times’ as a small tribute to P.K. The beautiful city has wide footpaths and little lanes with warm twinkling lights strung up high. Scarlett crepe myrtles nod in the breeze. We get lost and ask a young couple wandering past and the young man whips out his phone and directs us, then says ‘Have a pleasant evening you two.’ Everyone waves goodbye. Was Melbourne ever like this? The restaurant is packed with happy people and staff. I eat South Australian whiting, all white and melty.
The next night, A gets bothered about the hotel front desk not picking up the phone. He calls the hotel on his mobile. Each room has a tablet and ours doesn’t work. He gets dressed and I think it’s probably accurate to say, he storms off. But downstairs at the desk, there are many before him, so he goes up to the restaurant with the doomed tablet and shoulders are shrugged. A resourceful waiter gives him a sheet of paper with the food menu on it. A comes back to the room and the waiter follows him and stays obediently outside while we decide. No pressure. The fruit was very nice.
Next morning we were woken an hour before we needed to be by the previously shy front desk. No one got much sleep though. Apparently, I’ve been snoring for years. And he’s only just told me. And when A turned over, I thought he was having a seizure (the mattress was odd) and it crossed my mind to call an ambulance, but I just drifted back to sleep like the good wife.
Coming home, I usually get sentimental and today, as we moved into the cloud ruffle that circled Tullamarine, was no different. The round hills draped with trees. The almost olive green of southern Australia. The distant You Yangs, folded like cloth, stand out there in the mist, witnessing. By the tarmac, clumps of tall lights with parasol tops stand around and underneath them, sneaker-shaped cars, flashing lights on their roofs, circle, and pivot. One hundred years ago, this airport would have been science fiction. What will be here in another hundred? Festivals.