Daniel Ducrou is a writer based in Melbourne, Australia. 

He has been mentored by best selling novelists: Linda Jaivin (Eat Me and The Infernal Optimist) and Marele Day (Mrs Cook: The Real and Imagined Life of the Captain’s Wife), and has worked with Varuna’s artistic director and manuscript developer, Peter Bishop. In recent years, he has worked on collaborative projects with people from a wide range of creative backgrounds including visual artists, filmmakers, web-designers and musicians.
 
His first novel, Conditions of Return, was shortlisted for the 2007 Australian / Vogel Literary Prize and the 2008 Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards for an Unpublished Manuscript.

One of the things I like about music is that it’s clean; it’s ordered. It makes me feel like there’s a pattern to things. That life can be neatly contained within a bar, a set time signature, an evolving theme that progresses and blossoms logically. It lifts me out of the mess; it sends my imagination flying; it’s absolutely beautiful.

Benny pulled out my earphones and the hum of air-conditioning and idle chatter replaced my dream infusion. He nodded at the flight attendant waiting in the aisle and I turned off my iPod and put it away. She continued through the cabin and Benny followed her with his eyes.

‘Are you going to tell me about yesterday?’ he asked.

‘There’s nothing to tell.’

‘C’mon, Andrew…’

‘I started celebrating a little early, that’s all.’

‘You celebrated yourself unconscious.’

‘So?’

‘So – what happened?’

I glanced across the city to the hills lining the horizon.

‘It’s nothing – seriously, Benny. Don’t worry about it.’

As soon as the flight attendants were seated, I pushed in my earphones and scrolled through my classical playlists to Henryk Gorecki. Life was filled with so much waiting, so many barren moments, so much awkwardness – and music cured them all. I felt like I could survive anything with this rich, expensive stuff pouring through me.

The plane accelerated. Finally. And oh, the wonderful, brutal force of it. The heavy, unstoppable power of it – straining towards that critical moment of lift. It tore strips off my old life; it blasted everything away and washed me clean. School, exams, family, memory –

The nose lifted and the land released us. It was magnificent. Music soared through me, I soared through the music, the plane soared through the air. I watched the city shrink to a manageable size. We punched through turbulence and rose higher; whisps of cloud streaked across my window. I sat back in my seat and started to relax. The suburbs faded behind us, the dimpled ridge of hills melted into farmland, and soon we were sliding over the desolate plains north-east of Adelaide. For one blissful week, I was going to forget everything that had happened.

I watched the plains slowly buckle into the Great Dividing Range, then level into rich green sections of bushland and rainforest. We passed over small towns and heavy, snaking belts of river until finally we neared the edge of the land, and the Pacific Ocean emerged from the horizon: immense, blue and wonderful.

P7

Surfers milled about the car park, leaning and sitting on their cars, talking, getting changed and waxing surfboards. I ran up the sand track and down the beach away from the headland. The sun was low on the horizon and it would soon be dark. Large waves broke out the back on a sandbar, but the water close to the shore was calm. A long way up, two girls around my age, probably Schoolies, ran naked across the wet sand and half-tripped, half-dived into the water. It was glorious the way they just threw themselves in – as though the ocean was the rest of their lives and they couldn’t wait to immerse themselves in it.

I let the lukewarm ocean swallow me, broke the surface then dove under again. Holding my breath, I pulled through the silky darkness towards deeper water. When my lungs could no longer bear it, I surfaced and rolled onto my back, gasping for air. Heart thumping, I lay in the ocean’s gentle rise and fall and stared at the faded blue sky. I felt baptised by the silence, by the freshness and cleanliness of the water. I lay for what seemed like a long time – cleansed of history and future – just a person, anyone, floating in the ocean, a lone cell amongst the world’s teeming billions. A light flashed in the corner of my vision and I turned to where the lighthouse stood, high up on the cape. Something inside me seemed to have shifted – the beginnings of a realisation, a half-formed decision. The lighthouse flashed again. I lay back in the water and closed my eyes, and each flash was like the slow, steady pulse of new life.

P13

The sausages hissed and sizzled on the hotplate and smoke wafted over the brush fence. Richie and Benny cracked beers and knocked bottles. I lay back on the hammock and closed my eyes. It was a perfect blue-skied morning; we had Bob Marley on the stereo, and all day to relax with no-one standing over us telling us what to do. No school or exams, teachers or homework. Just warm, still air, sunshine and palm trees.

And Richie had to go and ruin it.

‘So your mum, Andrew… that case she did recently…’

I hesitated.

‘I don’t keep track of her cases.’

‘C’mon, it was everywhere in the media. The murderer she got off –

‘He was acquitted, so technically he’s not a murderer.’

He smirked.

‘Yeah - technically… I just don’t understand how she does it.’

‘Does what?’

‘Defend murderers, paedophiles and psychopaths. I don’t think I could live with myself if I made a living from defending people like that.’

‘I guess that’s because you don’t know much about it.’

He stopped pacing and sipped his beer.

‘I am studying Law, Andrew – so I do know a bit about it.’

‘And I’m sure they go into a lot of detail in first year.’

‘Actually, in one of my units, we studied the moral dilemmas faced by criminal defence lawyers. It seems to take a special breed of person to do that kind of work –

He waited for me to reply, but I just stared at him.

‘My dad reckons all lawyers are alcoholics, and that’s how they preserve their consciences – in alcohol.’ He laughed, pleased with himself. ‘Is that why you’re not drinking? To show everyone that you’re different to your mum?’

Benny glared, but didn’t say anything. I sat up in the hammock and rested my feet on the ground.

‘The only reason you’re here is ‘cause Benny wants to do work experience at your dad’s firm.’

Benny glowered.

‘That’s bullshit.’

Richie glanced sideways at Benny before setting his sights on me.

‘Anyway, don’t go changing the topic. I’m talking about your mum. I just want to know how she sleeps at night, knowing –

‘What about your mum?’ I snapped back. ‘How does she sleep at night knowing that she lives such an idle, pointless fucking existence?’

‘Hey – you don’t know anything about my family.’

I stood up and shrugged.

‘I know your mum’s on Prozac and she’s fucking half the dudes in Adelaide behind your dad’s back.’

Richie licked his lips.

‘Hey, that’s funny. I heard it was the other way round; Benny told me your dad’s fucking all the fresh young first year students at uni behind your mum’s back. I guess at least your mum will be able to defend him when he gets done for paedophilia. She’ll get him acquitted on a technicality.’  
        I pushed him in the chest and he took a swing but missed. I swung back, hitting him in the ear, then tackled him onto the grass. It wasn’t a good fight. Neither of us landed any good punches. I managed to get on top of him and press his face into the ground, but Benny grabbed me and pulled me away. My arms were pinned to my sides when Richie rolled to his feet and punched me in the stomach. I dropped to the grass, gasping for breath.

‘Jesus!’ Benny shouted. ‘Why’d you do that?’

Richie pushed him.

‘Sorry dickhead, I didn’t realise you wanted some too.’

Benny fell silent and backed down. Richie paced beside me, coughed, cleared his throat and spat into the garden.

‘I booked this place, I think you better find somewhere else to stay, mate.’

I couldn’t breathe, let alone talk. Benny moved in to try and help me up, but I shrugged him off and stayed on the ground. As soon as I recovered my breath, I grabbed my phone, my wallet and the pot, and walked out.

* * *

Tim’s house was far more run-down in daylight than I remembered from the party the night before. The paint was faded on the corrugated iron roof, and was flaking off the outside walls. The garden was overgrown and stitched with spider webs. I knocked on the front door and waited.

P17

At the centre of a thick crowd, Heidi and Tim were in full flight – Heidi on a stripped-back drum kit, and Tim on a big African drum. The high-hat sizzled, the snare crackled, the bass drum kicked off the back-beat. Tim punctuated her rhythm with rapid-fire fills. He jumped around, spinning in circles and shouting out. I squeezed to the front of the crowd and set my eyes on Heidi, who, in spite of the heat, was wearing a white, long-sleeved shirt under her dress. Her eyes flashed as she glanced between Tim and the crowd. She held time beautifully; everything in its place, everything precisely portioned. Up until then, most of the girls I knew played classical instruments – viola, cello and piano. Yet here was this beautiful girl – from my home city, of all places – smashing the shit out of a drum kit. The rhythm ended and applause rippled, then broke from the crowd. A couple of sharp whistles lanced the hot, humid air. Tim lifted his hands and raised his voice.

‘If you like what ya hear, don’t be scared to come forward. Dance! Enjoy! Give gener–

Heidi cut him off with a galloping rhythm and when Tim glared at her, she merely looked away and kept playing.

P19

Heidi opened the door and walked in with the towel wrapped around her. I caught a whiff of honey scented soap as she pulled some clothes out of her drawer and dumped them onto her bed.

‘Can you just…?’

She indicated for me to look away, so I turned and moved towards the window. I heard her towel drop to the floor and stole the briefest of glimpses in the dresser mirror. I saw her long, dark hair draping over her shoulders and her small, lovely breasts. She had a spattering of moles on her chest and, I noticed, a long keloid scar running up the inside of her left forearm. She caught my eye in the mirror, and I looked away, heart thumping.

‘Sorry.’

She didn’t reply. I heard the snap of her bra, then the sound of her hurriedly putting on the rest of her clothes. I picked up a book by someone called Anais Nin and skimmed the back cover: the mysteries of a woman’s sensuality… a glittering cascade of sexual encounters…
‘Have you read it?’ she asked.
‘No… but I’ve read some of his other –
‘You mean her other?’
P20
        She lit a joint on the front verandah and we started walking. Dark clouds hung low and heavy in the south and I noticed the air was becoming thinner and beginning to smell sweet. She drew on the joint a couple of times before offering it to me.
        ‘You saw my scar, didn’t you?’
        I took the joint and drew.
        ‘Nah, not really… kind of.’
        ‘Well, just for the record, it’s not what it looks like.’
        ‘I didn’t think it looked like –
        ‘I got pushed into a window when I was a kid. I put my arm out and the glass sliced me open. I wear long-sleeved shirts ‘cause I get sick of people staring.’
        I drew on the joint again before passing it back to her. The smoke burnt my throat and I struggled not to cough. She glanced at me waiting for a response and I decided not to say anything, then replied a little too late.
        ‘I barely noticed it.’
        We crossed over train tracks and wove through a small carpark. She led me between some cars, stopped beside a silver Mercedes 3200 and glanced around to make sure no-one was looking. Then she bent the badge forward, snapped it off with the base of her palm and shoved it into her purse. Her technique was efficient enough for me to assume she’d done it before and I was about to ask, but she gave me a look that told me not to. We continued through the carpark, finished the joint and stubbed it out.
P23

She was watching something over my shoulder and I turned to see two of the café staff gently ushering a man out of the cafe.

‘What’s going on?’

‘He’s one of the local crazies. He comes here every now and then, trips out and starts upsetting customers.’

‘Who is he?’

‘He used to be a lawyer down in Sydney.’

The contempt in her voice was unmistakable.

‘And what happened?’

‘He fucked himself up on too many mushies and lost the plot. He mustn’t have had any close friends or family because no-one came to get him. Sometimes I see him walking down the street banging his hand against his forehead, shouting at the sky and crying.’

She glanced at him once more before setting her eyes on me.

‘It’s probably one of the worst things that could happen to you, don’t you think? Losing your mind like that? But like I said – he was a lawyer – so fuck him.’

I thought of Mum.

‘Why do you hate lawyers so much?’

        ‘They’re the scum of the earth.’

A tense silence fell between us and I was relieved when I heard the first rumbles of thunder – huge mountain ranges of clouds colliding in the south. There was a brief pattering of rain, then nothing. A moment later, the clouds broke open and great streaks of rain fell and shattered upon the roof. The sound of the rain dragged her out of some distant memory, and she smiled again.

‘I love it when it rains like this. You wait – in an hour it’ll be sunny again. It’s just so melodramatic, so Byron.’

And she was right – by the time we left the café, the sun was shining again. Steam curled and peeled off the hot, wet roads as we walked back to her house.

P29/30

Tim shook his head and smiled when I emerged from Heidi’s bedroom the following morning.

‘You Adelaide people just can’t resist each other, can you?’

Heidi turned to me, suddenly tense and off-balance. After talking and laughing in bed all morning, her sudden change in mood was frightening.

‘You’re from Adelaide ? Why didn’t you say?’

I raised my palms and nodded, confused. I could hear the house’s wooden framework creaking and groaning in the rising morning heat. Tim suppressed a laugh.

‘Sounds like you got to know each other pretty well before – ahem – getting to know each other.’

Heidi glared at him before dragging me back into her bedroom, closing the door and putting on a Ramones album.

‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ she asked.

‘You didn’t ask.’

She shook her head.

‘You should have told me.’

‘I mentioned Adelaide to you yesterday, but you clammed up and didn’t want to talk about it.’

‘I didn’t. I don’t.’

I sighed.

‘Why is it such a big deal?’

‘Well, we’re probably related by blood for a start.’

‘Second cousins would be okay though, wouldn’t it?’

She frowned so I quickly changed tack.

‘C’mon Heidi, the chances of us –

‘I bet we’re connected…’

She stared at the carpet shaking her head.

‘Fuck! I came to Byron to get away from all that.’

‘So did I.’

‘Alright – let’s get it over with.’

I hesitated.

‘Get what over with?’

‘You know what.’

‘What?’

‘Let’s find the connection; it’s the Adelaide way.’

P 35

Heidi and I paid a quick visit to the supermarket and returned to the apartment about fifteen minutes later. We parked around the corner, waited until the street was quiet, then jumped the side fence, removed the fly screen from one of the windows and climbed inside. We threw eggs, fish-sauce and chopped liver all over the walls and the carpet. I ran upstairs and tipped sauce all through Richie’s suitcase. I hesitated in front of Benny’s, then thought nah, fuck him, and tipped it all through his stuff too. I heard loud crashes coming from downstairs and I ran down to find Heidi smashing everything she could get her hands on. Plates, glasses, wine glasses. She threw a small marble statue that smashed the television before grabbing the next closest thing and smashing that. I called out to her, but she was going so crazy that she didn’t even hear me. I had to put my arms around her to stop her. She was quivering with excitement and I could smell the sharp pinch of her sweat. When I spun her around to face me, she was wild-eyed and breathless, almost unrecognisable.

‘C’mon,’ I said. ‘Let’s go!’

We climbed out the window and waited until the street was clear before jumping the side fence and heading back to the car. We forced ourselves to walk slowly and as far as I could tell, no-one took any notice of us. We unlocked Tim’s Valiant, got in, and took off hysterical with laughter. As we cruised the backstreets, Heidi kept leaning over to kiss me swerving all over the road in the process. At one point, we almost crashed into an oncoming car, and that only made her laugh harder.

P49/50

‘What was all that stuff about going to court?’ Tim asked.

I considered lying, then decided against it.

‘The rental apartment I was staying in got damaged and they’re trying to blame me for it.’

‘Did you do it?’

‘Heidi helped.’

‘Are you worried it’ll go to court?’

‘No. They won’t press charges.’

‘Why not?’

‘Mum’s a criminal defence barrister – one of the best in the state. Everyone’s too scared of her.’

Tim seemed impressed.

‘What kind of criminals does she get off? Rapists? Murderers?’

‘I’d rather not talk about it.’

‘Drug dealers?’

‘Yeah, maybe – sometimes.’

‘Does she have Mafia connections?’

‘Probably, I don’t know.’

Tim nodded to himself and smiled.

‘Man, that’s awesome…. So you can pretty much do anything you want and get away with it?’

I shrugged.

‘Not anything, but…’

‘Does Heidi know that your mum’s a lawyer?’

‘No – and I’d rather keep it that way.’

‘So you know she hates lawyers more than anything.’

‘Scum of the earth, I think she said.’

He nodded, looked up and studied the ceiling as though deciding something, then set his eyes on me.

‘Stand up.’

‘Why?’

‘Just do it. C’mon.’

I stood and waited, palms raised.

‘What?’

He motioned me aside.

‘Move. C’mon, get off the rug.’

I glanced at my feet and stepped off the rug.

‘What? Why?’

Tim dragged the heavy coffee table aside, then flipped back the rug underneath it. It took me a moment to realise what he was showing me: there was a cellar door cut into the floorboards.

You are cavanbah, a meeting place for all the world’s people, a town travellers come to talk about their homelands. You are a joint passed between seven nations slouched around a living room. You are a flesh-tease on a beautiful beach, a lazy congregation of sun-worshippers basking in the mindless heat. You are the quickening merry-go-round of tourist seasons & holiday weekends. You are the feeding frenzy of businesses like sharks tearing blubber from a whale’s back. You are pretty young touts on five dollars an hour offering backpacker-fliers to locals. You are locals who can no longer afford you, moving elsewhere. You are a Spanish guitarist sitting on a stool outside the bakery chopping big colourful chords into carefully portioned splashes. You are palm fronds bending outside a window, a neighbour’s music blaring in the background & dirty dishes stacked up on the sink. You are the eccentrics that flourish like wildflowers. You are Beautiful wrapped in a pink sarong near the beachfront showering passers by with compliments like flower petals. You are the Fluteman preaching to an imaginary congregation in the middle of the street, gesticulating to the empty blue sky. You are Dougie sitting on the club-house steps all day long listening to Led Zepplin, Bob Dylan and the Beatles on a battery-powered stereo. You are millionaires from the world’s big cities queuing up behind the struggling youth, drug dealers & dole-bludgers at the supermarket. You are pensioners, school kids & single mums hitching in and out of town. You are screeching lorikeets encrusted in the Norfolk pines at dusk. You are tumbling rhythms on cowhide drums beating back the ocean tide. You are the lighthouse’s pulsing glances. You are cold schooners, surf-films & lusty-eyed gazes at the Beach Hotel. You are a string of one-night stands, of slippery pounding sex; you are a town racked with orgasms and sexually transmitted diseases. You are a sprawling fight outside the Northern on a Friday night while everyone stands around eating pies & caramel slices. You are outdoor dance parties in obscure locations, three-day drug-benders fueled by ecstasy, speed, coke, ketamine, marijuana, acid & alcohol. You are Nomads Bikers with swastikas on their sleeves dancing next to Jews. You are a sensory banquet winding towards inevitable famine. You are this incredible flux of stories. You are the aboriginal dreamings – the jealous husband who threw his spear at the escaping canoe of his wife & her lover – drowning them where Julian Rocks stands today. You are a sanctuary within which the outside world is a momentous fiction; you are unread newspaper articles on coups, wars, riots, destruction & starvation. You are an all-consuming paradise. You are the ocean’s perpetual drama of winds, tides & swell. You are a mound of saltwater jacking on a sandbar at Tallow Beach , heaving into a cocoon & exploding into hedges of white-water. You are surfers running late for school, work, uni & meetings – walking home dripping wet through the streets with boards under their arms. You are endless speculation about the changing surf conditions. You are boats filled with scuba divers, negotiating the crowds at The Pass where long gentle waves are shared by first-time surfers, swimmers, body-boarders, wave-skiers, sponsored surfers & longboarders. You are the Catholic Mafia’s ownership and control of the CBD. You are illegal backpacker houses overcrowded with bunkbeds. You are the most litigious council in Australia , spending over thirteen grand in court fighting an appealed sixty-five dollar parking fine, and losing. You are Sannyasin. You are as mindless as the southerly wind resurfacing the dimpled sand. You are as forgetful as the tide sweeping away a slaughtered whale’s blood. You are the creased palm of the Jesus beggar sitting on a shop step, his vacant stare. You are the first patterings of heavy rain at the end of a long, thirsty drought. You are the first trays of mangoes for the season, handpicked by backpackers, arriving at the supermarket.

It was spring in Byron. The most pointless season of the year. Blustering northerlies, tiny surf. Bluebottles. No work. No money. Woolies was eerily quiet. Business owners whinged about lack of trade; workers whinged about lack of shifts. Old-timers shook their heads and grew misty-eyed about years past. Not like it used to be, they said.

The double room at my house had been empty for a month when Sebastian answered our advertisement. Neither Pete nor I liked him, but we were desperate. He told us his girlfriend was due to arrive the following week and he’d move in that day if he could pay a single room rate until she arrived. We agreed.

A week passed. Then another. He stayed up all night and slept all day. He left skiddies on the toilet bowl. He never showered or washed his clothes. He walked around the house naked except for a cheap sarong that fell open whenever he sat on the couch. He stank of rotten eggs and mouldy cabbage. Food fell out of his mouth when he talked. He was consistently late with the rent. He kept us awake at night listening to classical music and having phone-sex with his imaginary girlfriend.

Pete was over it. Summer was coming, he reasoned, and Sebastian was chick repellant; he was dragging us down with his filth and his stink. We had to get rid of him. We decided to give him one more week and if his girlfriend didn’t show, he was out.

I asked him to tone down the phone-sex thing. It was killing me. But Sebastian just thought it was funny. He said that was nothing; wait till his girlfriend arrived. I reminded him that we were waiting. But he didn’t get it.

She was insatiable, he told me, a nymphomaniac. She wanted it all the time and she screamed the house down when she came. Pete and I would probably have to buy earplugs.

‘Whatever,’ I said. ‘When does she get here?’

He frowned.

‘Soon.’

The rest of the week dragged by. She didn’t come. And everything Sebastian did fingered me. Everything he said was nails down a blackboard.

On the second to last day, he changed his name by deed poll. From Sebastian to Sebastian. Then he gave me a lesson on how to pronounce it correctly.

And that’s what finally snapped me.

            I told him that Pete and I couldn’t afford to go thirds anymore. We needed a couple to move in and pay the double room rate. I told him it was nothing personal; we wished he could stay – it was just a money thing.

Sebastian moved out the next day.

As soon as he was gone, Pete and I got drunk, punched bongs, cranked up the metal and jumped around the house. We made plans to poach hot euro chicks from the hostels. And overcharge them. It was going to be madness. Debauchery. A new beginning.

The next morning, we cleaned the house and took some photos with Pete’s digi-cam. It was decided that I would do the first hunt. Pete stayed on the couch.

‘Remember,’ he said. ‘Stay firm on the price.’

I nodded, put on my sunnies and closed the door. Determined, I set out for the hostels. It was time to rebuild our lives. Convert water to wine. Replace the slime Sebastian had brought upon us with hot euro chicks and lesbian sex.

I got kicked out of the first hostel. Tried another. Fired blanks the first couple of conversations.

Then I saw her. She was unbelievable. I was love-struck; get-married-and-make-babies-love-struck. Her eyes flashed like jewels, her skin was smooth and tanned, her nipples showed hard through her singlet. I cleared my throat, dropped my voice an octave and combed my fingers through my hair. I introduced myself. Her name was Sofia . She was German. She’d just arrived in town and yes, she and her friend were looking for somewhere more permanent. I told her about the room, showed her the pictures on Pete’s digi-cam. I did the hell sales-pitch: told her how cruisey Pete and I were; how we were sponsored surfers; how we loved teaching travellers to surf.

Two hundred a week. Twin share. Cheaper than the hostel.

She seemed keen. She thought I was funny too. She laughed at everything I said – this weird high-pitched hyena laugh. It was ridiculous. I was bubbling like a can of lemonade. I was Schweppervescent.

She stopped laughing.

‘But I am a flutist and I must practise every day for two hours. This is okay?’

I pictured her nude, serenading me, rubbing a flute against herself.

‘No worries; flute’s cool. I love the flute.’

Pete would adapt.

‘Also,’ she said. ‘If I get inspired, I must sometimes play at night. I am – how do you say – impul-sive…’

She laughed her hyena-laugh.

‘Don’t worry! Sometimes Pete and I are loud too! We’re impulsive too!’

She looked confused.

‘You and Pete are gay?’

‘No… well… Pete’s gay. But I’m straight.’

She nodded.

‘And from when is the room available?’

‘Right now; today.’

‘Really! This sounds too wonderful.’

‘Yes, it’s wonderful!’

‘But…’ she wavered. ‘The price is perhaps too much.’

I was mesmerized by her breasts and struggling not to stare at them.

‘I’m flexible on price.’

I was legs-behind-my-head-yoga-master-flexible-on-price. She tilted her head to the side.

‘So… one-sixty? This is okay?’

Pete’s warning flashed through my mind but I blocked it. When Pete saw her, he was gonna drop to his knees and worship me.

‘Deal.’

We shook. I was the king. Champion of champions.

Sofia motioned to someone behind me.

‘Hey! I found a room!’

I turned. The smell of rotten eggs and mouldy cabbage hit me like a truck. He was still wearing that same fucking sarong. I heard nails down a blackboard.

‘Well,’ he said. ‘Hasn’t this just worked out perfectly?’