Ruth Gilmour is an emerging Australian author and playwright from Gunnedah, NSW. She graduated with a Bachelor of Dramatic Art in 2013, and was tutored in scriptwriting under the celebrated Australian playwright, Donna Abela. Writing credits for theatre include The Drunk Diaries (Excelsia Theatre) and Cradle Me (Excelsia Theatre). Most recently, Ruth’s stories have been published in the 2017 Newcastle Short Story Anthology, Stringybark Story’s A Nice Boy and Hunter Writers Centre’s Grieve Volume 5. Her poetry has appeared in the Words of Wyndham Anthology. Ruth is currently writing and performing in shows for Babble Productions, a theatre company run by herself and her husband.
The
Town without Mondays
Not far from Ballarat, along the highway between Caralulup and Lamplough, on a road riddled with cracks and bumps, down a main street spanning the width of three road trains, in the finger-smudged window of a “Rare Books” shop, was a sign:
“Glouds’ bookshops are open all year long.”
The boast hung right above a yellowing scrap of paper that detailed the adhered-to business hours in Baskerville Old Face: Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday: Closed. Along the street, more signs were fixed to the storefronts with sticky tape or coloured blu tak; similar statements in similar fonts, and in varying degrees of shabbiness:
“We open on weekends.”
“No business Mon-Thurs.”
“Out – come back Sunday.”
Glouds was the name of the town, and it was widely acclaimed for its rich colonial history, as “an outstanding example of positive preservation”; meticulous, down to the smallest detail. Though barely significant enough to rate a mention in the Gold Rush history books, the town had been the site of a small Gold Miner’s strike in 1858, and the locals held onto this tiny piece of heritage with fierce pride. Shop after shop dripped with painstaking historical accuracy. A blacksmith, of course, with a working forge. A saddlery, oh yes, for the absent horses, for the boots that were never bought by the residents, who scuttled into Ballarat every few months to sheepishly shop at K-mart. A creek, naturally, rumoured to run rivers of gold and shroud the souls of expired prospectors, about whom any local could recite a few well-chosen verses of bush poetry. In this sort of colonial tribute there might have been the danger of an overstated touristy feel, but for the noticeable lack of tourists. The grey nomads, the nose-pierced backpackers, the honeymooners, the hipsters; they hadn’t found Glouds yet, it seemed.
But the Gloudsians were content with their little portion of history as it was; they had no need to share, no need to profit, no need to capitalise on the vintage, the quaint, the cute niceties about their town. They lived, for the most part, without drama, without trouble, without spats or grudges or debts or terror. Each did his or her job – see that was Di who ran the cafe, that was Bill who lopped the branches when they grew too far off the nature strip, that was Owen who was the Mayor and also bottled his own pears, and see over there, that was Jimbo, the town bum who carried plastics bags of tin cans and nails and most days got a free cuppa from Di – and it worked. It was the type of community, the type of family that was rarely seen; the kind of bucolic paradise that one imagines when dreaming of a simpler time.
That morning, the curling sign in the bookshop (Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday: Closed,) had peeled from the glass in one corner. A small pothole had appeared in the intersection near the Post Office, causing the few cars that traversed the main street to thwump ever so slightly. And a notice had appeared in the local paper. It was hiding in the classifieds, peeking from under the Public Announcements and nestled between an MTS Scrap Metal advert and a phone number for free solar power quotes. It simply read:
LEVEL 10 WATER RESTRICTIONS NOW IN PLACE
Information Night in the Town Hall on Thursday
to discuss our options.
***
“How’re you going Bill?”
“Oh not bad, for an old bloke.”
The man named Bill leant uneasily on the counter. Despite his still-abundant head of silver hair, he had a look about him, the look of a man who, whether through hardship or grief or merely years of physical labour, had aged young. Something melancholy about the eyes. He was tall, and carried an Akubra and a knobbly walking stick; the hat and cane of a true gentleman. He smiled at the woman who was now busy at the coffee machine, her face obscured by milky steam.
“Business going alright, Di?”
A guffaw erupted from the cloud of vapour, and a laughing face emerged.
“Not at all! God knows why I do this whole ‘buy four get the fifth one free’ nonsense, everyone’ll be getting their cuppa for nothing and I’ll be broke! It’s killing my till. Hold up love, sorry, the machine’s chucking a spaz again.”
The woman grabbed a dusty cloth and started scrubbing furiously at the boiling milk that had splattered every inch of the counter. She was plump and lined and had a sternness to her that could be perceived as a touch of the aggressive. But all who knew Di knew that this prickliness was just a shield. She always had time, despite her constant insistence that “she was run off her feet and heading to an early grave because of this thrice accursed cafe business!” If she liked you, she had your back. If not, she’d be at your back.
Luckily she liked most people.
“There you go, love.”
Bill took his chipped mug and gazed absently around the cafe. Di was faithful in keeping the place looking its best, circa 1858. “It’s all authentic, even the cobwebs have been there since the Gold Rush!” Di would always joke, wiping down the decorative barrels in the corner or stretching on tiptoe to dust the rusty horseshoe above the door. Some of the illusion was broken by the garish Streets ice-cream freezer in the corner and the radio blaring Classic Rock FM all day. But the place was warm, full of light, and always welcoming.
“Hold onto the word of God.”
The voice had come from the table by the window where an elderly woman sat, her shoes not quite touching the ground. Di looked up from the counter, Bill glanced over his coffee.
“You alright there, Joan?”
Joan nodded, her veiny legs swinging. She had tissue paper hands that looked ready to rip at the smallest graze; so thin that her tiny knuckles stuck right through, pale and stark. She had tufts of white hair and a bony body under a formless cardigan. But her eyes sparkled, chatoyant; gems in sagging skin. A newspaper sat neatly folded on the table. She had it opened at the weather report.
Everyone jumped as the cafe door swung wide open and a huge man with a bowling ball belly lolloped in, bellowing in a loud tenor.
“Made the front page again! I’ll be on it again next week too, I can guarantee that!”
Di rolled her eyes.
“All hail Glouds’ celebrity!” she cried with a mock bow. “You’re on the front page every bloody week, Owen, it’s not so impressive anymore.”
Owen beamed, his eyes disappearing beneath his round schoolboy cheeks.
“Just doing my mayoral duties, Di! You alright Bill? Joanie?”
Bill smiled and raised his mug in a salute. Joan tugged at a strand of hair and grinned with all her teeth, her soft little voice almost singing:
“And don’t forget to take the children to the train, they can’t be late, it leaves at eleven sharp, make sure they have their school uniforms ironed.”
Owen’s face softened.
“Of course, Joan.”
He pulled at his collar and accepted the takeaway cup from Di.
“And everyone make sure you’re at the Town Hall on Thursday. Exciting meeting happening!”
Brian looked up from the table.
“I saw something about that in the paper. It’s about the water, right? Because my water troughs haven’t been-”
“Yes, well, plenty of time to chat on Thursday, must dash, busy busy busy!” Still beaming, Owen bounced out of the cafe. Di shook her head.
“Honest to God, I’ve got about 20 odd papers around with his bloody face on it. I’ll take it home for me birds to poop on,” she grumbled, ambling over to the sink.
Bill watched as Di’s meaty hand twisted the cold faucet. Water trickled into the sink, hot, dusty brown, beading like sweat on the stainless steel. Di twisted the tap again. Nothing. A singsong voice was heard from the corner next to the window.
“I will consume them by the sword, and by the famine, and by the pestilence.”
***
Over the next few days, every mailbox in Glouds had received a glossy, three-fold pamphlet. No one knew who had been distributing the pamphlets; their appearance was a mystery, and was the cause of much whispering about the town. They were baby blue and navy, expensive-smelling, like the counter of an upmarket department store, unfamiliar and unnatural to the residents of Glouds. Emblazoned on the front, in both bold and italics, were these words:
From 1 February 2017, Level 10 Water Restrictions (in accordance with the VIC Water Management Amendment Act 2014) will be in place in Glouds and the surrounding region.
To find out whether you are eligible for compensation/exception/special consideration, a free information night will be held in Glouds Town Hall, Thursday 15 February at 6pm.
This information packet is authorized by the VIC Government Department of Primary Industries, Water Subdivision.
The people of the town discussed the pamphlets everywhere: on their way to work, whilst waiting in line at the convenience store, over the fence with a neighbour, at the pub with the tradies. The bright blue polymer paper could be found peeking out of handbags and coats and rolled up in back pockets, triggering speculation, criticism, scepticism and curiosity.
“Bout time they did something about the water, my shower hasn’t been more than a dribble for weeks!”
“I heard they’re environmental bigwigs from the city.”
“Probably tell us to stop wasting so much water on the cows.”
“What are they going to do next, tell us to stop breathing to reduce the carbon emissions?”
“Already getting in enough trouble for our cows crapping methane, aren’t we?”
“So they say.”
“That’s right, I’d like to actually see some of these ‘reports!’”
“Bloody greenies!” Jimbo the bum had cursed, accepting a milky tea from Di.
Owen assured the townsfolk that the meeting was a positive thing for the community, and encouraged everyone to attend. “In these hard times, we need to work together to find new solutions,” he had announced to a chorus of grumbles. The Gloudsians were famous for their distrust of city slickers, after all.
But the long and short of it is, something needs to happen, thought Owen, as his boots crunched on the brown lawn outside the town hall.
***
The farmers were lined up along the rail, arms slung over the top like schoolboys climbing a fence, their boots hovering a foot above the dust and cowpats and stomping hooves of the cattle yards. The heifers swatted at flies with their tails, the men swatted at flies with their hats, conversation weaving in and out of the cattle’s bawling and the auctioneer’s bellowing.
“Stock routes are busier than they’ve been in decades, and there’ll be more drovers coming, mark my words.”
“Even up north there’s not been enough rain.”
“But those drovers think they can just come from hell knows where and steal our feed, because that’s what it is, it’s plain stealing!”
“You reckon we’re getting ripped off Bill?”
Bill wiped at the perspiration already forming beads on the back of his neck. His hand came away gritty with dust. The dust that already filled his throat and nostrils, that settled over the heifer’s bronze backs like dandruff and that hung suspended in the rays of sunlight. The dust that crept under his back door at night, that was ingrained in the paintjob of his ute and that could never be completely shaken from his boots. He squinted back at the other farmers.
“Yeah, I reckon we are,” he said quietly.
The farmers nodded, their attention back on the sales. The auctioneer slapped his hands. The cattle snorted and coughed.
“Everyone going to the meeting tomorrow night?”
***
Full to bursting and stifling hot, it seemed that all 1327 residents of Glouds and its surrounds had packed into the Town Hall. The Thursday evening hung about the town like a fleecy blanket as the warm night air buzzed with chatter and scraping chairs and flapping-pamphlet fans. A coffee station had been set up at the back; despite the heat many of the townsfolk still sipped at foam cups of Nescafe and UHT milk. They whispered behind hands, marvelling at the bright posters and brochures and displays that had been set up on the stage. A blue banner hung taut, emblazoned with the words “Effective Water Saving Begins With YOU!”
A man stood at the podium, apparently in deep conversation with Owen. He was of slim build, not particularly tall, and had an odd dimple in his chin that moved as he talked. His dark hair was combed, his blue shirt buttoned up to his neck and his tie, trousers and shoes were of varied shades of navy and blue to match. The precision of the whole ensemble gave him an air of pizazz and authority.
Owen cleared his throat into the microphone and shushed the crowd. He gave a short introduction. The man in blue stood before the Gloudsians, warm eyes scanning the room. A reverent hush came over the people. And the man began to speak.
When asked later what was discussed at the meeting, many of the locals couldn’t give a clear account. Most people understood that it was three quarters of an hour of scientific waffle, interspersed with quotes from the Water Management Amendment Act and studies from the Victorian Government and facts and figures and statistics and census data. There were pie graphs and frequency charts and scatter plots and Venn Diagrams and bar charts tracking water usage. Phrases leapt out here and there: “catastrophic and unpredictable weather patterns…” and “new research on life expectancies and resource management strategies from this Harvard study…” and “humans are made up of 60% water, and if you take this into account the process is extremely quick and virtually painless…” It seemed that morality was “more relative in such hard times” and “the ideas we hold about the value of human lives are changing; it is 2018 after all!” Drawings were revealed, pictures of scientists waving from sterile white labs were displayed, video footage of towns that had implemented this new “process” and had benefitted greatly were shown.
The man in blue finished his presentation with a flourish of his laser pointer. No one spoke. Everyone was trying to process what they had just heard.
Bill stood up from his chair towards the back, his face a resolute frown.
“Correct me if I’m wrong, but it seems like you’re saying that if we trade in…people… people who we don’t consider useful to the town anymore –”
“The official term is ‘Ineffectuals,’” the man in blue cut in.
“Right so if we trade in these ‘Ineffectuals’, you do some sciency voodoo and we get increased water rations?”
“That’s right. Simple as that.”
Bill stared at the man in blue for three seconds, picked his hat up off the floor and exited the Town Hall. Others followed his lead, muttering angrily, kicking chairs out of the way. Owen was rushing about, attempting to reason with the locals. But they shook their heads and made their exodus into the night, heads lofty and hearts burning.
The man in blue smiled and watched the townsfolk file out of the hall. They moved quickly. They avoided his eyes. No one had any inquiries about the process, it seemed.
He slowly began packing away his display into plastic tubs. He couldn’t help but admire his handiwork. A panoply of files and brochures and legislations and government grants and studies and experiments and double-spaced reports and coffee-stained manila folders from binders and pigeonholes that had seen mahogany desks and fluorescent-lit offices and cold grey boardrooms.
The man in blue had brought a panacea to the little town of Glouds. They just didn’t realise it yet. This scheme was the future, and he was the harbinger. The Prophet. The Saviour.
***
It has been said that change is the law of life. It’s how we move, how we develop and evolve; the turning of the world, the miracle of shrieking birth, the quiet of final death, and every moment in between: the growing, the morphing, the learning, the forgetting. Change is inevitable. But the people of Glouds had never had much experience with change. Their pride lay in preservation, their comfort was in the familiar, the routine. “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it!” should have been the motto that hung beneath the “Now entering Glouds, Population 1327” sign on the highway. Monotony was comfortable. Monotony was safe. Change was unsettling.
But slowly, the little town of Glouds did begin to change. And like most change, it started in the small things, things that went by barely noticed at first. People walked looking down mostly, barely raising their eyes or the corners of their mouths in a smile as they passed in the street. No one had running taps now; everyone was required to report to the Town Hall once a day to receive their designated water ration, clutching buckets, jugs, watering cans, any kind of receptacle they could find. The young began watching the old in line, watching the folds in the skin, the limping legs, the cracking voices. The elderly began to leave their houses less. Shops started closing earlier. Ladies whispered in each other’s ears. Men glanced at each other solemnly. And everyone paused a moment when walking over their dying lawns, when lined up for their daily water ration, when showering in a bucket. Lost in a dark thought. Just for a moment.
Then, one morning, Jimbo didn’t come into the cafe.
Di had pre-emptively made his cup of tea, extra milk, extra sugar. Goodness knows he could use the calories. He’d always made a big deal about skim milk being little better than water, and was often heard announcing to anyone who’d listen that “full cream won’t kill ya! I grew up on milk straight outta the cow, look at me strong bones! They take all the good stuff outta the skim milk!”
But the tea remained on the counter all morning; growing colder and colder, the milk curdling and the sugar settling at the bottom. By lunchtime Di conceded defeat and drank the tea herself (she couldn’t afford to waste it.) This continued every day for a week. Di eventually gave up. When she asked the customers if they’d seen Jimbo wandering the streets lately, they’d all just shrug and blow breath onto their flat whites, now triple in price. No one would look at her.
The calendar that hung in Di’s cafe (she had acquired it from an online shop called Inspired by the Bard, – “To add a bit of culture to this den of philistines!” she’d screeched when Owen had laughed out loud at the November picture, a still of Romeo and Juliet) flapped in the sudden breeze. A photo of Hamlet, looking solemn and posed, sat behind the quote of the month:
“We know what we are, but not what we may be.”
***
True to name, the Tuesday evening Glouds Ladies’ Craft Circle was indeed operated in a circle. The women sat on plastic chairs in the middle of the Town Hall, balancing cross-stitch and crochet on their knees. There was Dilmah tea, homemade scones, raspberry jam, and plenty of town gossip to last the two hours.
“And Sharon’s sending her kids away to Melbourne for school, goodness knows where she’s getting the money!” tittered Jan, who ran the post office.
“Maybe they had a good crop last year,” said Anne the beautician. “Barry’s saying it was a good year for cotton.”
“Nonsense, with no rain?” Di was impatiently unpicking a mistake in an embroidered rainbow lorikeet. “No one had a good crop!”
The women all nodded, their blonde-foil hair and chunky beaded necklaces bobbing in unison. Di set down her embroidery with a sigh. She never had much patience for craft circles. She leaned across to Heather, the mayor’s wife, who was carefully casting on, her wool a fussy, feathery purple.
“Any more news from Owen about the water?”
Heather dropped a stitch. The craft circle fell silent. Sewing machines slowed to a stop, crochet hooks rested mid-air, needles stuck out of half-finished dollies like knives. Heather cleared her throat.
“He’s still considering our options. There is still some merit in what the nice man from the city was saying. We could benefit immensely from his program.”
The Town Hall was silent, silent enough to hear a pin drop (indeed Jan had just dropped a pin from her handmade doily). Di snorted.
“The day any local here trades a human life for a bit of water is the day I’ll eat my hat!”
The women went back to their craft. No one looked at each other. Heather kept casting on, her hands shaking under the purple wool.
Just a block away from the Town Hall, in the Mayor’s Federation-style house, Owen turned a tap in the kitchen. Water streamed forth. No quite a jet. But quite definitely more than a trickle.
***
“This is ridiculous! How am I meant to run a business like this!”
Di threw a soggy cloth down onto the counter. The espresso machine, usually covered in a thick layer of milk froth and coffee dust, was sparkling. The more-often-slightly-grimy-than-not cafe looked like something out of Country Style. Di had a lot of time for cleaning.
“I get that water’s scarce and precious and whatnot. But surely as a business owner I’m entitled to even a smidgen more than that measly water ration!” she griped.
Bill nodded from his bar stool at the counter. A blueberry muffin sat in front of him, barely touched. He pushed the crumbs around his plate with a fork.
“I’ve started washing my dishes in apple juice! Do you know how bloomin’ expensive that is?”
Bill put his head in his hands. His broad, farmer shoulders shook. A gasping, wheezing sob escaped his lungs. Di’s face fell.
“Don’t get down on me Bill, or I’ll have to slap you.”
The sobbing subsided, but his face stayed hidden, pressed through his arms against the plastic counter. A voice piped up from the corner near the window, echoing dissonantly through the near-empty cafe.
“And there went out another horse that was red, and power was given to him to take peace from the earth, and that they should kill one another.”
Di made her way over to the little woman, leaving Bill to the remains of his muffin.
“Joan, have you been taking those pills I told you about?”
“My hip is much better…”
“Nah these are for your mind though, love. They won’t hurt you, I got Beryl onto them.” She pushed a bottle of pills into Joan’s hand. Joan gazed at Di serenely, grey-blue eyes watering through pale eyelashes.
“The Lord God doth know. There he sits, a King, a Prince, a Princess.”
Di patted Joan’s hand. She went back behind the counter and lifted out a bottle of Jack Daniels. Bill lifted his head. Di muttered as she poured out two generous coffee-mugs, her beefy hands gripping the bottle tightly.
“No more water, fine, we’ll drink whiskey like old cowboys then.”
***
Joan sat at her usual table, the crumpled newspaper limp on the table in front of her. Di was out the back, prepping mince for the day. It was still early. Joan touched her papery hands to her eyelids, thin lips moving slowly.
“Good morning Year Four! Today we will be learning about Australian history. Oh come on now, I promise it will be fun… open your mouth properly when you speak Johnny. Now who can tell me the year that Captain Cook came to Australia? Emma please stop cutting up that eraser and pay attention… and Oliver said “Miss did you know if you leave frogs out in the sun they pop?” and I said Oliver that isn’t appropriate and he said “wasn’t there a frog in one of those stories you told us Miss? Tiddle Liddle or something?”
A man walked into the cafe. He was of average height. Dressed all in blue. Wearing black gloves. Joan looked past him. Her face sagged. A tear slid down her wrinkled cheek.
“…Tiddalik… The frog’s name was Tiddalik. It’s a traditional Aboriginal Dreaming story… A long time ago in the Dreamtime… no, the Dreaming? There lived a huge frog called Tiddalik. He was the biggest frog that had ever lived, and he woke up one day feeling really thirsty. He started to drink and drank until there was no fresh water left in the world. Soon creatures everywhere were dying and trees were wilting. All the animals pondered their terrible plight until a wombat suggested that if Tiddalik could be made to laugh then maybe all the water would flow out of his mouth. This was a good idea, all the animals agreed.”
Joan crushed the newspaper with a trembling hand. The man stood, gazing out of the window at the morning rising over the little town.
“You see? We just need to make Tiddalik laugh. Then the water will come back. ‘And as he laughed, the water gushed out from his mouth and flowed away to replenish the lakes, the rivers, the billabongs.’ He just needs to laugh again.”
She looked up at the man and then closed her eyes, her face ethereal in the first light’s sunbeam. She exhaled, a last breath that filled the tiny coffee shop.
***
The sun sat high over the little town of Glouds that morning, casting sharp bolts of light into each crack and crevice. Like ripples, like susurrus dominoes, the ancient parched pipes began to ooze and stream. The sprinklers at the Rotary Park squealed, the taps at the pub showered the sticky stacked glasses in the sink with rust and fluid, water flowed through the plumbing beneath the town, seeping, silent, under the main street and down past the cafe. Even the brown blades of grass on the nature strips seemed to lift their wilted bodies in unison, the deafening photosynthetic chorus of plants crying “Oh petrichor! Petrichor! Rain from below!” The earth was redolent with damp. The dust slept soundly, finally. The wet season had come.
But the inhabitants of Glouds were nowhere to be seen. The post office had locked its shutters to the morning, the bright red door absurdly lurid in the swelling sunlight. No smell of leather wafted from the saddlery. No tinkle of china from “Angie’s Antiques.” No raucous laughter from the pub. Not a sound. Not even a movement.
Di burst out of the cafe, spilling onto the street with exploding gusto. Her body was shaking with screams.
“JOAN!”
She froze, watching the council’s industrial sprinklers irrigating the park lawns. Drenching water seeped onto road, seeped into her shoes. She walked slowly down the street, moisture touching her face.
“…Joan?”
Di stopped, holding her trembling hands. She glanced at her reflection in the bookshop window; a pale face shining out of a first edition Chaucer, a display of vintage Enid Blytons for her body, Shakespeare’s sonnets on either side for her hands. The glass was sprinkled with mist blowing from the park sprinklers.
“Di.”
She turned to see Bill, hat clutched to his chest, eyes filled with tears. In that moment she saw water – water more precious than gold, costlier than diamonds and more beautiful than the floods that streamed down the main street gutters – soaking Bill’s cheeks. Wordlessly she pulled him to herself, feeling his battered body shake.
“We’ve got to fight them, Di. We’ve just got to.”
Di nodded.
They kept walking. They stood in the middle of the road, in the dead centre of town, the cacophony of running water in their ears. No cars knocked them down. Not a soul looked their way. Because after all, this was the little town of Glouds. The ghost town without ghosts. The goldfields without gold. The town without Mondays.
But whose bookshops are open all year long.