Gerald Murnane - A Lifetime on Clouds

The boy told Adrian it was the stupidest idea he had ever heard. He started to explain something about light rays but Adrian told him not to bother. Adrian was glad he hadn’t hinted at what he really wanted to do with a periscope.

Adrian gave his three Man Junior pictures to Ullathorne, who collected bare-breasted women. He handed over the pictures in a back lane in Swindon, well away from St Carthage’s. It was well known that a boy had been expelled from the college after a brother had found dirty magazines in his bag.

One Friday, a few weeks later, Cornthwaite told Adrian that if he liked to turn up at Caulfield Racecourse on the following Sunday, he might meet a certain fellow from Cornthwaite’s parish who often sold second-hand copies of his big brother’s dirty magazines.

Adrian said he would only come if the fellow was likely to have some copies of Health and Sunshine. It was too far to ride his bike five miles to Caulfield just to buy Man or Man Junior.

Cornthwaite said the fellow could sell you any magazine you liked to name.

Sunday afternoon was cold and windy but Adrian didn’t want to miss the chance to get Health and Sunshine. He had the wind in his face all the way to Caulfield, and the trip took longer than he had expected.

The racecourse was a favourite meeting-place for the boys from Cornthwaite’s suburb. Adrian found Cornthwaite and a few others racing on their bikes in and out among the bookmakers’ stands in the deserted betting ring. Cornthwaite said the fellow with the magazines had sold out and gone home long before. He offered Adrian a few pages torn from a magazine and said, ‘I bought a Health and Sunshine myself. But then Laurie D’Arcy turned up and I sold it to him for a profit. But I saved you the best picture from it.’

Adrian took the ragged pages and offered to pay Cornthwaite for all his trouble. Cornthwaite said he wouldn’t take any money but he hoped Adrian would stop bothering him about pictures for the rest of his life.

Adrian took his picture to a seat in the grandstand and sat down to examine it. It was a black-and-white photograph of a naked woman walking towards him under an archway of trees. And this time there was nothing between him and the thing that his parents and teachers, the men who painted the Old Masters, the women who posed for Man Junior , and even Dorothy McEncroe at St Margaret Mary’s school years before had kept hidden from him.

The woman in Health and Sunshine strode boldly forward. Her hands swung by her sides. As calmly as he could, Adrian looked into the hollow between her thighs.

His first thought was that Health and Sunshine was a fraud like Man junior. The place was full of shadow. The woman had somehow managed to shield her secrets from the light. Even without a beach ball or a leopard’s skin she had still foiled him.

But then he realised it was an accident. The shadows came from the branch of a tree above the woman. The whole scene was mottled with shadows from the trees overhead. And there was something visible in the shadows between her legs. In the dull light under the roof of the grandstand he could not make it out clearly, but he was not beaten yet.

He took the picture out into the daylight and looked closely at it. He was even more convinced that a shape of some kind was concealed among the shadows, although it would take much longer to make out its finer details.

Adrian put the picture inside his shirt and stepped onto his bike. All the way home he was frightened of having an accident. He saw a crowd of doctors and nurses undoing his shirt on the operating table and discovering a page from Health and Sunshine over his heart. If they knew he was a Catholic they might tell the hospital chaplain who would discuss the whole matter with his parents around his bedside after he regained consciousness.

He arrived home safely and smuggled the picture into the bottom of his schoolbag. Next morning he took the last six shillings from his tin of pocket money. On the way to school he bought a reading glass in a newsagent’s shop in Swindon Road. He told the man that he wanted the most powerful glass he could get for his money because he had to inspect some rare postage stamps.

The picture was still hidden in his bag. After school that day he hurried to the toilet cubicle on the Swindon station. He held the reading glass in every possible position over the picture. He moved his head slowly up and down and cocked it at different angles. The trouble was that the glass magnified all the tiny dots in the picture. He was still sure there was something between the woman’s legs but the glass only made it more mysterious.

He remembered the story a brother had told about the scientists who searched for the indivisible particle that all matter in the universe was made of. The harder they searched for it the more it seemed to be made up of smaller particles that danced in front of their eyes.

Adrian put the reading glass in his bag and crumpled up his pattern of dancing dots and left it behind in the toilet.

The next time he went to the barber he read an article in Pix magazine about the trade in negro slaves that still flourished in certain Arab countries. There was a market in the Yemen where young black women were being sold openly for forty pounds each at the present day. The girls were paraded before intending buyers like so many cattle, and when a likely purchaser showed some interest, the vendor would fling back the gaudy robe from a girl’s dusky limbs and display every one of her assets for close inspection.

Adrian knew exactly what this last sentence meant. The Yemen was not too far from Australia. When he left school and started work he would soon save up forty pounds plus his fares. As soon as he turned twenty-one he would travel to the Yemen and visit the slave market and buy one of the young women.

Or he need not even buy one. He could simply rattle some money in his pocket to look like a customer, and wait until a gaudy robe was flung back. And if one of the girl’s thighs blocked his view or a shadow fell across her, he would pretend to be a very cautious customer who insisted on seeing every detail of the goods he was interested in.

One morning Brother Cyprian spent some of the Christian Doctrine period talking about dreams. The boys were unusually attentive. They could see he was nervous and embarrassed. While he talked he adjusted the pile of books on his desk, trying to make it symmetrical.

Brother Cyprian said: ‘At this time of your lives you might find yourself feeling a little sad and strange because you seem to be leaving behind a part of your life that was happy and simple. The reason for this is that you’re all growing from boys into young men. There are new mysteries to puzzle and bother you — things you never thought about a few years ago. And many of you no doubt are worried by the strange new dreams you might be having.’

Adrian Sherd recalled the strangest dream he had had lately. It had come to him after he had worn himself out with three consecutive nights in America. On the third of those nights he had gone with Rhonda and Doris and Debbie to the Badlands of South Dakota. The women were jaded and bored. To liven them up he got them to play the most depraved party games he could think of. The games turned into an orgy, with naked bodies rolling in the purple sage. Afterwards Adrian had fallen asleep exhausted and wondering what more America could possibly offer him.

Brother Cyprian was saying, ‘Chemicals and substances are being made inside your bodies ready for the day when you enter the adult world. These strange new substances help to put into your minds the images that might shock you while you’re asleep. Sometimes in your sleep you seem to be a different person doing things you’d never think of while you’re awake.’