Rip It Up (and start again)
Mark Liam Piggott

-May I sit?

Looking up from a story I’m trying to open I peer into a stranger’s sunny-wrapped face: twenties, dark, pretty. I shrug, the blush spilling across my pasty flesh accentuated by the awesome sunlight hammering on textured silver. There are empty tables all around the coffee shops of the Cappuccino Strip. I stiffen at her presence, her dress of pale flowers.

-Go right ahead.

The (Spanish?) woman sits at my table and dropping my own covered eyes to the dazzling white page I sense Iberian eyes x-ray for clues. To help her out I resume the futile scribbling in my little notebook, writing now about her, about what we could be doing together.

-Do you mind if I ask... what you’re writing?

Writing has always been the most subversive of the arts. If I was sat here sketching her, not simply sketching her with words, I could show her and she'd smile, buy the drawing to show her friends. I snap the ballpoint so the nib retracts, shrug in a bored gesture, and smile as easily as I can. Perhaps she’s Greek: some wondrous nymph of Cephalonia, trying not to forget Malcolm Lowry glowering beneath his volcano of words.

-Just a short story. For a competition.

I silently curse: too much revealed. I always reveal too much too soon, as a writer, as a man. For instance: the only reason I’m sat out in this heat with tea is because I’m waiting for the pub to open over the road. Skimpy hour: barmaids in negligees: a fine Australian custom.

-Oh. (Pause). -What’s it about?

I’ve been waiting my whole life for this, traumatised at night as I imagine the inquisitor’s questions: So, what’s the book about? (Why do all authors avoid the obvious answer, the only answer, those two surly digits: ME!)

I smile beatifically, as dazzling and as dangerous as the Australian sunshine we hide from beneath the Foster’s umbrella she is erecting without asking. Now I can see my page without hurting my eyes. Why did I think I could come to Australia and write when I failed in England? Does failure hurt any less beneath this remorseless sky?

-It’s about all this (waving my arms in the air in what I hope is a slightly mad, distracted, artist manner). She looks puzzled. Why do puzzled women seem so pretty? Moroccan?

-Er- what, exactly?

-This café. This town: Freo. This country.

-Oh? Anything else?

What else is there? That’s what I told myself back in England, uninspired by the drabness, the safety of its nature. I flew here to be inspired, to be prodded into producing something as vast as this island continent where endless plains of kiln-red sand collide headlong with Indian tides, miniature forests of shrub where wild cats prowl for alien prey, those wallabies in the parched thorns of the Abrolhos, the bleached grasses, the black earth, the empty beaches where miniature shells whisper ancient chants...

-It’s about- a man who meets a woman. Here.

In Fremantle: Freo to all. Freo: Spanish for cold. I wipe sweat from my forehead.

-What happens?

What happens here is you take me home.

-I haven’t got that far yet.

She appears nervous - Lebanese - a predatory waiter reassures her. I smile quite as expansively as that water you can’t see from here, in this polite little hick town with its chemist and tie-dye stalls, but you can feel:  the lava-swell, the salt-mass tides. When I’m in England I crave this place, yet now with my dual citizenship I don’t belong anywhere...

-What would you like? asks the waiter, avoiding my raised finger.

Australian Italian?

-I’ll have - cappuccino please. And an OJ.

OJ: Oh, Jesus. If she’s Italian she must be second, third generation. No marching behind blessed boats to the harbour for her; New World eyes screwing up in scorn at the ways of her tribe. She pauses.

-And a slice of cake.

I can tell she hates herself, feels she needs to lose a few pounds. I feel this need to reassure her, then become angry. Why should I? Why can’t she be happy? Why can’t I just tell her, even though she’s a stranger, “relax”?

-You’re not from here, are you? she asks. I sip my tea.

-No.

-Where?

-London. England, I add unnecessarily. Everyone knows where London is. They just don’t know what it is, the nature of the beast. You must inhabit a place for those insights. An aboriginal with a battered pink guitar exits the fish market and lurches past grinning to himself. He looks twice my age: bet he’s younger. The waiter brings the coffee and cake. We’re looking at each other through sunnies and shades, protecting our eyes, circling one another like scorpions in the blistering sand.

-Oh?

I sense excitement in her now: I said the right thing. I feel weary, the morning sunshine is too much, the tea too hot. In Australia, women and men can be friends. They date. They gossip. But we dance without touching, eyes hidden from one another, a turning world between us: Africa, India, oceans.

-How long have you been in Fremantle? She nibbles guiltily at her cake. A blinding white seagull hops towards us and beaks a chip, flies towards the docks where the Rotto Ferry bobs.

-Not long. A month, I add, having decided I’m being too mysterious, too much the great writer. The great unpublished writer. No need to explain that much...

-Do you like it?

-It’s... very nice. Nice cafes. Nice beaches. Nice people.

How nice, how nice; I won the lottery twice.

-How long are you staying? She has finished her cake, her sweetmeats - Turkish? I hope not, I have Armenian friends - and puts down her fork. I want to pat her hand. I want to write that I lick the cream from the tips of her fingers down to the sweating heel, but she might read me. Her lips close round the straw and orange orange spurts.

-Do you mind if I ask you a question? Nervous again. It’s rubbing off. All of a sudden I hate her, want to climb into my book.

-Well... go on then.

-Where are you from?

-Brisbane.

-That’s a long way away.

-What?

-You’re a long way from home.

-Oh no, she says hastily, -this is home. Has been for years.

I pick up my pen. She has chocolate flakes on her upper lip: that or a moustache. She looks round the indifferent café, put out. There’s less traffic as mid-day approaches: the high street siesta. Oxford Circus would be full of jabbing umbrellas, dirty drips, golf sales.

-Do you want to be in my story?

-I- don’t know. What do I have to do?

-Tell me about yourself. Why you live in this little town. Far from home.

-Oh, it’s... easy going, you know?

-Everything takes time?

-Yes. Her accent has a South African ring to it; perhaps New Zealand.

-That’s why I hate it.

She flinches: you don’t use words like “hate” on Cappuccino Strip unless you’re talking about the government. But I don’t hate the government - because it isn’t mine. I’m going home. She’s stupid. I don’t care where she’s from, she’s stupid. So am I. Here I am, in the sunshine, by the sea. Yesterday I saw dolphins from a commuter train over the Swan River. But it isn’t home. I need the purple smudge of murky London pubs. I want to walk in the rain through the Heath. I need to be alert. I won’t get that here. The sun makes me complacent. Her friend arrives, and I don’t look up when she leaves. I’m busy. When she disappears towards Coles Supermarket (“Our Goal: to give the people of Australia a shop they trust, delivering quality, service and value") I pick up her glass, lick round the rim tasting her lips, suck the straw she sucked. There’s nothing left: just a dribble of juice.

After a few minutes I rip out pages, start again.

The girl comes back, like she’s forgotten something. Seeing me she lowers her eyes and enters the pub.

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