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About This Book
What really goes on behind the scenes in a big country town? A great deal more than you think!
These inter-related stories dramatize predicaments in the lives of people living in, or linked to, Ballarat, Australia in the 1960s. And do so on two levels - inner and outer.
Clint has had many stories published over the years but this anthology contains some of his most exceptional. His aim is to produce work with integrity and depth by expressing a level of perception beyond the mundane.
Individual stories in this collection have won two VFAW Awards, a Moomba Award, an Alan Marshal Award, four FAW Awards, a Shoalhaven COE Award and a Lane Cove Literary Award. He has also won the inaugural Mary Drake Award and a Bicentennial Literary Award for short fiction, an FAW award for a screenplay and has written several successful novels.
EXCERPT:
NIGHT OF CLEAR STARS
What Peter Sullivan, medical representative, did in the cemetery at night.
Once when frost was crisp across the lawn, he'd taken his child's spade and dug for the body of a dog. A brindle mutt with a collar of sharp spikes. Spikes on cracked leatherâ€"bright, conical and regular.
In his bed, with the cold end where his toes were and the misted window filtering the street-light, he'd remembered the dog. And lusted for its collar. He'd wriggled out to stand freezing on the floor, groping for his jumper and thick dressing gown.
The stairs creaked and the back door lock gave a rifle-bolt clack that woke the cat beside the wood stove. Outside the night was crystal with pendant stars.
He found the spot and dug. The buried rib-cage repulsed the prodding spade as if alive. He uncovered the head, sniffing for the smell he feared. But it was a damp fur smell, a compost smell. And the collar glinted like ancient plunder.
He remembered it now, appraising the coffin handles. Plastic made to look metallic and ornate. As the hearse crossed the gutter, the coffin shifted a little on its rollers, wreaths bobbing, lilies nodding, its dignity disturbed.
The deceased had owned the brewery. The cortege was of a size that only money, merit or influence attained. As he'd filed past the open coffin, he'd ignored the refurbished faceâ€"examining the rings and the diamond studded tie-clip. The clip was mesmeric, sent the temperature up in the room. Each mourner felt the urgent need to pluck it from its fate.
He sat in his company car, the funeral notice folded in his pocket... folded and ringed in pencil like a Positions Vacant ad. And his face was as blank, his headlights as bright, his intentions as hypocritical as anybody's there.
She passed in the leading car, the brewer's indiscretion, the brash Sydney woman who had never 'fitted in'. A shapeless wife had been recycled for that world-hardened face, expressionless today, implying something less than despair. She was too young for an old man's wife. But his widow? Young enough. Black did not suit her. Not so the event. Her posture confirmed it. She rode like a queen.
He'd seen her face in the paper often. The town's establishment of powdered crones, so polite to that face, jeered when it was turned. Men in pubs called her 'the bung-hole', making light of their desire, challenged by her frankness, envying her guts.
He edged his car from the kerb, joined the cavalcade well back. The hearse showed decorum for the first two blocks, then fledâ€"cruised past the old cemetery that had closed its book on death, to the field of stones and bones further out of town.
He followed the line of cars, skirting familiar potholes, parked along the hedge at a gap worn by boys and erratic dogs.
The sun warmed him as he stepped through the hole but he found this new place bland. Grass mown. Graves neat. On the headstones, life's footnotes gleamed with inlaid gold. Platitudesâ€"'Always in our hearts.'â€"matched by artificial flowers.
He joined the mourners at the grave. They stood appropriately, always did, aware others were aware
These inter-related stories dramatize predicaments in the lives of people living in, or linked to, Ballarat, Australia in the 1960s. And do so on two levels - inner and outer.
Clint has had many stories published over the years but this anthology contains some of his most exceptional. His aim is to produce work with integrity and depth by expressing a level of perception beyond the mundane.
Individual stories in this collection have won two VFAW Awards, a Moomba Award, an Alan Marshal Award, four FAW Awards, a Shoalhaven COE Award and a Lane Cove Literary Award. He has also won the inaugural Mary Drake Award and a Bicentennial Literary Award for short fiction, an FAW award for a screenplay and has written several successful novels.
EXCERPT:
NIGHT OF CLEAR STARS
What Peter Sullivan, medical representative, did in the cemetery at night.
Once when frost was crisp across the lawn, he'd taken his child's spade and dug for the body of a dog. A brindle mutt with a collar of sharp spikes. Spikes on cracked leatherâ€"bright, conical and regular.
In his bed, with the cold end where his toes were and the misted window filtering the street-light, he'd remembered the dog. And lusted for its collar. He'd wriggled out to stand freezing on the floor, groping for his jumper and thick dressing gown.
The stairs creaked and the back door lock gave a rifle-bolt clack that woke the cat beside the wood stove. Outside the night was crystal with pendant stars.
He found the spot and dug. The buried rib-cage repulsed the prodding spade as if alive. He uncovered the head, sniffing for the smell he feared. But it was a damp fur smell, a compost smell. And the collar glinted like ancient plunder.
He remembered it now, appraising the coffin handles. Plastic made to look metallic and ornate. As the hearse crossed the gutter, the coffin shifted a little on its rollers, wreaths bobbing, lilies nodding, its dignity disturbed.
The deceased had owned the brewery. The cortege was of a size that only money, merit or influence attained. As he'd filed past the open coffin, he'd ignored the refurbished faceâ€"examining the rings and the diamond studded tie-clip. The clip was mesmeric, sent the temperature up in the room. Each mourner felt the urgent need to pluck it from its fate.
He sat in his company car, the funeral notice folded in his pocket... folded and ringed in pencil like a Positions Vacant ad. And his face was as blank, his headlights as bright, his intentions as hypocritical as anybody's there.
She passed in the leading car, the brewer's indiscretion, the brash Sydney woman who had never 'fitted in'. A shapeless wife had been recycled for that world-hardened face, expressionless today, implying something less than despair. She was too young for an old man's wife. But his widow? Young enough. Black did not suit her. Not so the event. Her posture confirmed it. She rode like a queen.
He'd seen her face in the paper often. The town's establishment of powdered crones, so polite to that face, jeered when it was turned. Men in pubs called her 'the bung-hole', making light of their desire, challenged by her frankness, envying her guts.
He edged his car from the kerb, joined the cavalcade well back. The hearse showed decorum for the first two blocks, then fledâ€"cruised past the old cemetery that had closed its book on death, to the field of stones and bones further out of town.
He followed the line of cars, skirting familiar potholes, parked along the hedge at a gap worn by boys and erratic dogs.
The sun warmed him as he stepped through the hole but he found this new place bland. Grass mown. Graves neat. On the headstones, life's footnotes gleamed with inlaid gold. Platitudesâ€"'Always in our hearts.'â€"matched by artificial flowers.
He joined the mourners at the grave. They stood appropriately, always did, aware others were aware
