Was it the Barrenjoey that picked us up or could I have called a ghost ship in from the Heads, what echoes, her hull clean of cement and what must be making itself felt as the no less speaking blubber/meat of that smallish but unhappy whale who would drag a vermilion zigzag through the harbour before failing, as a corpse, to stop washing up on the shore. Maybe the boat had already been condemned, it can be hard to keep count. Apart from the known survivors, which don’t tend to run into the pavement anymore. So many ferries since The Lump made her maiden voyage have gone under, smashed to matchsticks in the vanished smog. I thought I would like to remember all their names; that would have taken some distilling. This tide you used to wish you could drain away in your separate fantasy, at last hollow, and dry, and empty, and noisy with only the diggers of the molten vessel for the Cpt. Cook Graving Dock, like horrific, repetitive dentists pulling the stump of a bloodwood tree from the inaurous silt exposed forty eight feet below sea level. These estoppels and reversals won’t do forever. I am the skipper of something.
There was a shout. Some people came off the boat. The man in the sunglasses got on and we followed him, rolling our burden over the gangway ahead of us. The engine coughed up with a shudder, a yellow petrol cloud swirling over the water and we floated out, smooth, as if there were no longer an engine. Towards the Heads the ferry began to pitch. The spray hissed up the sides to strike our parched lashes. A little prosopopoeia. I have a vague notion about Manly. Once children used to sift in the long shadow of the pines on the beaches, wet hair making rosettes in the hot sand, for sovereigns and bones and older coins, and their discoveries were published in the daily papers. We turned into Henrietta Lane from the Corso, after which indeed I am obliged to stop labouring the loom. Needless to say, I didn’t write that either. Wherever they were, our terminal white gloves, which even looked like sails at first, reeking, roughly washed of their gore, belonged to a small antiques dealer’s, the kind you normally find in country towns, a maroon flag above the door with Antiques on it.
A handy cove. Didn’t know they kept such characters. Should help us when we’re back in the saddle, so to speak. I do not know what I can be hoping for from these inane citations but I draw the line at knicking, I mean stealing onelegged men’s crutches. Such quandaries as engulf the general user, fingers trailing in the ferried clews, the suddenly modern. Maybe if I slit my wrists, I almost said my correspondences. Could I have missed an appointment of some kind, with all this scurrying out of public exits. Let it be the unwound trammel of my braue Mayd’s original perdition, and me on her coattails, and see where that gets us. She mumbled to herself as we pushed the door open with the trolley and the tinkle of a real bell. At the Yass Historical Society museum there is everything from a Koertz wool press to a tiny trouser button stamped Bracken. This little shop was truly packed. From among the generic clutter a man with a kind face peered over his. He smiled, lifted what looked to be a thesaurus from his lap and laid it in the hollow he left in the seat of an easy chair. His quick, gentle eyes went to the trolley then met ours without flinching. Maybe in the bad light he thought he was on familiar ground. Do antiques dealers get visits from bag ladies. Eliza had been skipping showers to save soap. We introduced ourselves. He might have started then, his steady eyes deliberate. Yes yes, he said, welcome. You needn’t have come out here yourselves, I’m obliged. We told him what was in the trolley. Eliza unfolded the top layer of the blanket and Mr. Siv nodded in recognition.
The piece interests you.
Well, a long time ago now, Dodge and I discussed it, in relation to another deal, which went ahead anyway I believe. She must have made a note. I have to say I’m not really in that line anymore. It is a nice cabinet —
Bookcase.
Yes. It is very nice, you certainly shouldn’t have trouble finding anyone to buy it.
It’s very old.
Does seem to be. Georgian, by the look of it. But I’m not an expert.
There’s a lable.
A table?
A label.
Oh, the craftsman’s lable, that’s common. It should tell you how old it is, if it isn’t too damaged.
Why would it be damaged.
Because it’s so old, any reason. Can you understand it.
We couldn’t make out much. Would you like to see it.
I’m afraid if you can’t make it out I have no hope he said smiling and tapping his crow’s feet. Eliza looked embarrassed. We had forgotten to work out a price in advance. Would you be interested in buying it I asked.
He raised his eyebrows and pouted. I could give you two hundred dollars for it.
Eliza swallowed. She looked at me. That is, I said, quite a lot lower than we were expecting.
Siv burst. Ah it’s like that I’m afraid. Rotten business. People think there’s a fortune in it. I am sorry to disappoint you. He hung fire. Perhaps you would like a cup of tea.
We thanked him and he left the room still chortling under a very domestic tapestry that flapped back against the door jamb as he went. Eliza quietly ground her teeth. We waited a long time before we trusted him out of earshot. Do you think it really isn’t worth that much.
Eliza shook her head. He’s gurning.
Could she have said that.
A man looks at you like that wants your land or your daughter.
You think he’ll pay more.
Through the. Sh —
That’s continental direct speech for you. He was reversing into the room already, a kitchen’s halogen light streaming faintly through the brief aperture, slaver clinking with the essentials from a porcelain tea set and a plate of ginger nut biscuits between his hands. By the way, he said I remember now what Dodge was going to swap me the bookcase for. Couldn’t think for a moment. Hard to digest all of a sudden, the old thing coming back like that. Belly of the mind. I had a very nice set of ceramic tableware, cream. She bought it in the end. Is it still around.
I didn’t think so. Yes I will have a biscuit. I was getting delusional no, dizzy. No wonder the deal wasn’t going well we could hardly think straight. Eliza started laying it on with her mouth full. We came to you because you were one of the names we found associated with the bookcase. There were others.
There sure were.
Everyone gave us the same response, more or less, so we decided to do the rounds and settle it with someone today. Obviously we don’t plan on wheeling this thing back and forth across the city another time.
That’s understandable.
You’re our first customer. But we did talk values on the phone and we’re going on a ballpark figure of two thousand.
He crossed his fingers calmly and placed his hands in his lap. You do believe it is valuable.
Would you like to see the label.
No, I know what it says better than you do.
Eliza bit. What do you say Siv. You understand, we need to know if you’re still interested. We’ve made a late start as it is. We think we’re being very reasonable.
Narcissus let himself go in the fleshpots of afternoon tea, he peeped into his teacup, placed it back on the saucer. It can be surprisingly hard for us connoisseurs to say what a thing like this is worth. Once money enters into it. I won’t pretend it is not a very attractive object, certainly a, certainly a collector’s piece. Perhaps, if there was something here that interested you we could include it in the exchange.
We’re really not interested in old furniture.
What would you say to eight hundred. A predictable reduction I know, but I haven’t got more than a thousand in the shop. His hand strayed over the bench where he was leaning and it was hard to tell if he meant to indicate a repository, letting it come to rest somewhere between a clay vase studded with periwinkles and a ricket of pencils and old chewing gum wrappers.