ANOTHER EDEN

by

RAYMOND DREW

Forty years later, he returned to the park. Not in commemoration, nor for that matter, in memoriam. He just happened to be travelling along the Eastern Highway. As the car climbed a rise in outer suburbia, he saw, down in a valley below, the old entrance gate, the picnic ground flanked by scraggly bush, the rim of the lake. And even though the place had been throttled by crowding houses, it jogged his memory. Jogged his memory, and at the same time it hurt. He'd put it out of mind for years. Perhaps he didn't want to think about it. After all, the park was bound to resurrect memories of his childhood, the miasma of adolescence - and the business with the girl.

He drove on a way, slowing the car to a crawl. The place had changed. Everything wilting in the same summer heat, but now a coppery haze hung over the picnic ground. And something had happened to the sky - the colour had been drained out of it. He was sure the sky was bluer then.

He stopped the car. He could see enough from where he was. No need to go down there and hunt around.

Maybe the park took him back, or the sudden onset of tiredness. He was gazing down at the distant thread of a walking track, tracing the line through a veil of scribbling gums, when he found himself, the boy in himself, standing in his grandfather's house.

The old man was there, lounging in his sepia armchair surrounded by his bookshelves and his cedar furniture, rimmed by the dark yellow lamplight. A tall, large jawed man dressed in a suit and striped slippers. He had just completed a reading of The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire when he looked across to his visitor and without any hesitation, went on to tell the story of Samson and Delilah, checking in a big black Bible to make sure he had the details right. The boy who sat before him already knew the story - his father's interminable Biblical lectures haunted his days. But he liked the way granddad told the tale, without a trace of strain and even with a sense of humour.

"You know Delilah?"

The boy nodded.

"Delilah," grandfather growled, "brought Samson to his knees. Salome, wanton, promiscuous... another seductress. There were many, many more in the history of the World." He plucked them out, finger by finger, as if he knew them all. "Helen; Circe; Cleopatra. But there was one other. One woman in particular. The most notorious seductress of them all. Do you know her name?"

The boy shook his head.

"You know her name. Everyone knows her name."

"Rita Hayworth?"

"God, no, James! Think about it. The first, the primal seductress was..."

"I don't know, grandpa."

"The first seductress was Eve." He opened the first chapter of Genesis, lit a menthol tipped cigarette, and squeezed his sinuses: "Quite a sinner. Perhaps the first sinner of the human race. Nevertheless, all things considered, she can't take all the blame. The serpent beguiled her."

"What about Adam?"

"Adam? Well, he was not without sin. He ate the forbidden fruit. And because of that, he suffered. Suffered a great deal, that fellow, and all men since, wandering this earth of ours, forever dissatisfied. But Eve's behaviour brought on the suffering of women. The pain of childbirth, for example. A sad business, dastardly business. Indeed, because of the whole damnable affair, nature itself has been defiled." He lowered his voice. Dolefully, he looked up to conclude, "We men, too, have to control our physical desires." And then came silence, he tilting his head quizzically.

His guest had the feeling he should populate the interval with questions, even suitable answers. He wanted to ask the old man all kinds of things about seduction and sex and women and love. He wanted to challenge a few things. But because of his fear, he said nothing.

The old man returned to a book. Then he looked up at the boy. "Parum magister."

"Pardon?"

"Little professor. You are a little professor," he muttered.

At the age of fourteen he sensed, no, he was sure that his grandfather was not the complete wowser; despite his bluster, he lacked the sour piety of his daughter and son-in-law. The old man really loved the women he read about, despite their sinfulness, from Eve to Delilah, from Circe to Helen of Troy. He certainly loved his wife, who had died the previous year. After her death he cried at night and, stinking of stale port, often fell out of bed, dead drunk. And grandfather had a fondness for women's bottoms. He surely loved breasts, too, as later, when they consigned him to a home, an outraged nurse would testify. The old man and his grandson shared a kind of silent camaraderie in their love of women.

The boy wanted to ask him what women looked like under their clothes. At the time the female form remained an undiscovered country; a topographic mystery, no less perturbing than the nature of the Holy Trinity. In primary school, a few years earlier, Tommy, the school bully, told him that sheilas were fucked through their open belly buttons. Dissatisfied with that explanation, the boy spent time in the National Gallery, eventually confirming the existence of breasts, but little else besides.

He knew his parents, God fearing to the marrow, would have strapped him if he dared broach the matter. The burning question remained, one more insoluble element in the furnace of his imagination.

Women. In the early days, before she came, he searched for softness. The older women in his life were tense and shrewd. Mostly his father's sisters, they scuttled like beetles out of the darkness of the Victorian era, tight laced and Bible blind. No softness there.

There were younger ladies, the boy in the dreaming man said: before she came, remember Margaret Bishop?

No, not that nyloned debutante, not that prim girl from Bible class. Remember? You called her "lemon face." There were others, mind you, beyond the family circle: freckle faced urchins who barracked for Collingwood, doe-eyed nymphs who dreamt of sailors and Hollywood.

The boy said, Mother. There was always mother.

Sometimes soft, he thought, sometimes fragile. Sometimes hurtful.

The boy remembered she had rounded, peach-pink breasts - a memory or a dream, the echo of a vision through the bathroom door one day long past, a form reflected in a misted mirror.

Women. Untouchable. Unreachable. But far into his past, an unutterable solace.

He was not long into primary school when he was torn from his mother's embrace and the childhood prayer, Gentle Jesus, Meek and Mild. Hell was close by: separated only by a cobbled laneway, his backyard almost backed onto the red brick nightmare known as Surrey Hills Primary School. For reasons he could not fathom, his presence there made him a target for all the ridicule and violence his fellow pupils could rally. Even the teachers seemed to single him out for punishment. They all said he was a 'dreamer.' In year one he was penalised for that aimlessness by being made to sit among the girls in class, a prospect which, for once, secretly, did not perturb him at all.

But the real pain came out on the concrete quadrangle, where he was thrashed, ridiculed, or humiliated on a daily basis by gangs of boys and smirking girls.

"Look, look," cried one of his tormentors, a scarecrow of a boy, "Jamee's fly's unbuttoned and his dick is hangin out!" And when he looked down, frightened that he was undone, "Ha ha, he believed us! Jamee the dick! Jamee the dick!"

And then came Tommy, the large thickset boy, the bully, to shove him on the ground and kick him in the stomach and say, "Jamee, you are such a stoo-pid dick!"

When he arrived home, his mother seemed not to notice his bruised, grazed knees and elbows, or even the occasional swollen lip. "Did you have a nice day at school, James?"

He was alone.

In his own childlike way, he sensed the fact that his death was necessary if he was to continue on in the world in any 'normal' sense. Death, that is, to the living boy. To surrender to the normal would only be a kind of numb existence. The self who felt close to nature, to animals, the self who tumbled in the grass and who wandered about at night dreaming at the Milky Way and who loved to visit the green, frothy sea, the simply living vibrance, that self was already seeping away. An invisible contract had been made, in which he would switch off his life, his beingness, for a secondhand existence. Detached from all the pain, in future he'd live by calculation, artifice, and a clever head. Automatically, like an injection of sleep, numbness crept through his body. He could almost feel the click of dislocation in his brain.

In 1952, in the second year at High School, they moved. The new house at Mordialloc, a bayside suburb, was touted by his mother to be the end of all their worries. Their brick veneer dream was 'airier' and they could go for a swim whenever they liked, she said. But to James, it felt just as grey and lifeless as its predecessor. Weeks after their arrival, his father was just as tyrannical, his mother just as witless, just as loving, and just as unintentionally abusive as before. His little sister had her room, and James was given the sleepout, a canvassed area on the front porch. There was one consolation: on a clear night, under the flapping eaves, he could hear the dull roar of the waves on the shore half a mile to the South.

But there may have been compensation yet: as he turned thirteen, and fourteen, despite his attempts to deny an ever growing genital excitement, he grew to secretly love girls, to love women. Their grace, their life and their beauty thrilled him. In some way, women, despite their occasional imperfections, oddly reminded him of a state of bliss, pure Nature, perhaps an untouched Eden, from which he felt removed, and yet lay waiting to be reclaimed.

His father had banned contact with girls, even the sourpusses at Bible Class. In fact, as his interest in girls blossomed, his father seemed to harden, despite the fact that he hid any interest in them.

At night, the boy slid deep down under his blankets with an old copy of his father's Australasian Post (bought "only for the crossword puzzle, not the pictures"), and by torchlight, savoured the bikini clad cover girls; or, without magazines, he dreamed that Rita Hayworth lay with him. Masturbation was sweet relief. It was his only escape from the hell of his life and the stare of his father's flinty eyes, the disapproving click of his tongue against his gums. He knew the man scoured his room for evidence of sex when he was at school - books, underwear, a diary - had been reshuffled, gone through. Some nights, he stood outside his sleep-out door, listening for groans of pleasure - the boy could see the shadow of his shoes under the door.

Once, he got permission to go to see Salome at the Rialto; after all, it was a Biblical film, his mother said. And there, perched in the front stalls, he relieved himself as Rita danced away her seven veils. He thought he was alone - until a dark shape, smelling of beer and menace, slid into the seat beside him and growled "I know what you're doing, sonny. Why don't yer do it to me." He ran, ran all the way home, frightened he was being followed and that he's pursuer might tell his father what he'd been up to. He never went back alone to the theatre. Another avenue of escape from hell had been closed.

But the event, or rather the series of events that surrounded the Event that he had never forgotten, began on Saturday morning in the summer of 1954, as the boy bussed eastward, the destination, Ringwood Park. He'd found a window seat, and yet, to his annoyance and discomfort, a large woman with a baby bustled down the aisle, sat down beside him and hemmed him in against the wall. The bus filled quickly. He scanned the crowd around him and saw no one of interest: a dismal collection, almost a haze, of snotty young Sunday School children, the sexless, sour girls from Bible class, their watchful parents, church officials, and a few babies. His mother, lost from view, was somewhere in the crowd at the rear the bus, or even on a second bus, and was, he guessed, chatting with her friends and talking about knitting. The woman beside him shifted in her seat, dumped herself against him, and he felt the weight of her thigh, hot and oppressive, against his hip.

He turned, then, to look out through the grimy window. The bus had gathered speed along the highway. The city houses shuttled past like grey filing cards. Flick, flick. Flick, flick. Grey cards. The cards shuttled by his window. Each card, interleaved, as time progressed, with the odd green card, grey cards, then green, a shuffle of green, a flash of grey reshuffled to green.

After Box Hill, paddocks sped before his eyes, here and there sprinkled with the pale grey confetti of grazing sheep. Then grassland gave way to scattered trees, dappled, crowding trees. Crowds, crowds, mushrooming umbrellas of leaves, crowds of eucalyptus trees.

Finally, the bus took a slow turn, made a jolting ascent up a dry, olive hill and shuddered to a stop.

For a moment, the occupants busied themselves in their seats, then, if triggered by an unseen signal, pushed out down the aisle. The boy squeezed by the woman with the baby, stumbled down the steps, and soon found himself, at last, in the yawning freedom and the eucalyptic perfume of the country air.

He looked up, squinting in the summer sun, to find himself below a banner looped between two tall gum trees. It read: St. Stephen's Presbyterian Church Sunday School Picnic: Ringwood Park.

As he descended from the hill toward the shoreside picnic area, Ringwood Park unrolled before his eyes. Below him lay the sea, or rather, Ringwood lake, immense, a bowel brown expanse of water, extending and finally merging with the horizon in a shimmering blue and copper haze. Out there, across the lake, strange birds clung to sunken trees and half submerged posts. Beside the picnic ground he saw an oval and a cricket pitch, fringed by drooping trees. In the other direction, several tracks led off to hills, and beyond the hills, to bush. The bush. All around, the grey-green bush scribbled away into that distant blue haze. The bush, thought the boy, alone and breathing.

He looked down to the picnic ground. The little congregation had already reached its destination and proceeded to disperse itself around the picnic tables. And he slowly rambled down to join them.

The picnickers were led by the Reverend Owen Moffat. The Owl, someone had disrespectfully called him. The nickname had some substance: black frames curved around those dark, impassive eyes, eyes magnified by thick optical lenses. He had, the boy reasoned, read many books. His shaven, domed head portrayed him to be both intellectual and ascetic. Even the sepulchral voice, too, seemed domed. A tall man, not of this world, black vested, dog-collared. He wore the dark uniform that day, even in the summer heat. When he prayed, he gathered his locked fingers over his heart and the vaulted face turned heavenward, into the bald blue sky. A moment of contemplation. "O Lord..." The imploration sped upward on the sure wings of the deep velvet voice.

Beside him stood Mrs Pauline Moffat, her blue eyes furrowing against the heat and glare. As she trod her way across the rude bush grass her shoes, though low-heeled and business-like, threatened to topple her. She wore a diamante broach - a butterfly, the boy thought - on her brown blouse. But she seemed to be a more a nervous moth, never a butterfly.

Sheltering in slivers of shade, the church ladies fanned themselves, laid butter on sandwiches and fed babies, while the men worked around the barbecue. The boy moved away to throw stones in Lake Ringwood. Across the lake, in the shimmering grey-green landscape, nature seemed about to expire; nothing of natural sense moved in the leaden midday heat.

For a moment, the boy dreamed himself across the lake. Canoeing to its furthest shore, he found the place where the water came to lap on pure white sands, flanked by a green and fertile forest. And in the bush, the savages, the animals, still wild... And he, the missionary...

"O Lord..." the Rev. Moffat intoned, ending the reverie. The boy turned. The minister had bowed his head in prayer, surrounded by the obedient assembly. Before their leader spoke again, he cleared his voice: "Hrrroom!" He always made that sound, hrrroom, the boy noted, before he spoke, not only to clear his bronchial passages, but to gain their respectful silence. "O Lord, we beseech Thee, look down upon Thy flock. Bless this day and make us truly grateful for what we are about to receive." After the congregation murmured "Amen," the Rev. Moffat moved out to mingle with the circle of parishioners and they began to eat.

Although a baby bawled and children by the lake side snickered, the congregation ate quietly, pausing occasionally to wave the flies away.

But when one of the girls from Bible class sat on a bull ant's nest, became hysterical and had to go to hospital, young Gavin Watkins laughed like hell.

After lunch, the word came down: the "older children" were permitted to go for a short walk. The boy rose to his feet, long bored by his immediate surroundings. His mother joined him, fussed, but gave her consent. She warned him to keep a lookout for snakes and to keep his hands out of hollow logs. A fat boy, Donald Batty, warned them all to watch out for the legendary hoop snake which put its tail in its mouth and bowled itself at you.

Permission granted, the boy set off, alone, toward a nearby walking track. Ahead, from the silent, distant bush, he heard the bell birds call, like clinking bottles.

"Heh! Jimmy! Goin' for a walk? G'arn." A voice, harsh and yet familiar, came up from behind, and he reeled around to confront it.

"Yeah, why not?" he blurted.

Not one, two people.

His eyes took in the boy before him, then moved to his companion. A girl.

"This is Eva. You know Eva, don't yer?"

"Uh, yeah?" His voice cracked when he saw the girl.

She smiled boldly.

He fumbled and pushed his hands into his pockets.

He'd agreed to walk along with Gavin Watkins and the new girl, Eva. Eva Scarlatti. On that day, the recent arrival at Sunday School, the "fifteen year old of Italian extraction" - the phrase muttered by a female parishioner - had undergone a stunning transformation. In blithe defiance of all tradition, she wore a purple party frock. The boy looked beyond the frock: her warm brown eyes, her body! seemed to conspire to undermine his cool facade, to taunt, seduce, excite him. She seemed so out of place, he shuddered, considering her partner's appearance. For Gavin's foxy face was covered in strawberry jam pimples, and at fifteen, a few months the boy's senior, he shuffled about in his grey flannel trousers like a wizened old man.

"C'arn. Let's get outta 'ere," growled Gavin.

And so they came together, the girl silent, pouting, now and then seeking out his switching eyes.

They moved off down the track, flanked by dry and spindly scrub, toward the distant bush. The boy looked ahead, but once he heard the girl's dress swish by his side, he smiled to himself, and he turned to speak to her. "Nice day," he said, reddening as he felt her hand brush his and with it, her warmth, but Gavin jostled in between them.

Soon, the track began to unravel into the dry forest, and taller trees began to multiply and flourish on either side. They pushed on through the heat, resting, for a moment, in a shady eucalyptus grove. And there, Gavin reached across and with practised nonchalance, pulled Eva close to him. She rolled her deep brown eyes, then shrugged him off. Gavin giggled. And the boy felt his teeth bite against his lower lip.

Before long (they were quite clear of the grown-ups), a packet of Turf cigarettes appeared in Gavin's hand, and with a sly look in his eyes, he looked to the boy to say, "Wanna fag?"

Afraid he'd make a fool of himself coughing, the boy answered, "Nuh. Thanks."

They ventured further down the walking track and on into the still deepening bush. When he stumbled on a bump in his path, Gavin Watkins cursed and spat gobs of phlegm at the evergreen tree ferns.

The boy flicked his eyes across to Eva's, and he took in, like air, the glitter in her dark, soft eyes, took in the rose-caramel bloom of her cheeks. He took in her mouth, her lips - that pouting lower lip of hers curved before him like a tantalising rosebud. And her plumping breasts, he imagined, could be the selfsame colour. She smiled: a brash smile, a provocation or an invitation? He'd never seen a smile like that. It shook him and he glanced away, then back again. Yes, a shining violet dress fluffed with petticoats danced above her sun tanned knees and legs and violet shoes. She was beautiful, the boy thought, not unlike the Mona Lisa's daughter - if the Mona Lisa had a daughter. And he was with her, not with some prim, flat chested girl from Bible class, but with her, a girl of fourteen, perhaps fifteen years of age, that girl, yet not a girl, a fully developed woman. And not a word from her mouth.

Gavin caught his eye, smirked and whispered, "She's a bloody dago," in his ear, and he crumpled into wheezing laughter. The boy found no humour in the remark. Eva looked around, and unsure of the joke, placed her hands on her hips and smiled politely.

He'd heard the "Eva" rumour: the girl's mother never came to church affairs. As Eva grew into a Delilah among women, her mother put two and two together and, for some strange reason, he'd also heard, had sent her off to Sunday school, a protestant school, to be with "the nice girls and boys."

Gavin passed a misshapen cigarette to the girl. They stopped again, and he cupped his old fingers around a burning match and lit her up. She drew in the smoke like a lady, straight and tall, and blew it out through her nostrils. The boy stood by as Gavin placed his arm around Eva's waist. Again, she pushed him back, but this time with a slight smile, rolling her eyes in the boy's direction. Gavin smirked again and swung around. "C'arn. Let's go this way," he said, pointing to a side track, and as Eva offered no resistance, the boy followed along.

The track narrowed, rose, then fell away down a bushy hillside. They moved along a creek bed, rose again, then threaded their way around several giant trees with branches looped by overhanging bark. For a moment, during a rest in breathy, apprehensive silence, the boy heard the sound of adults in the distance. A cricket game had begun. He heard the hollow bonk of bat on ball. At times the sound of muffled applause filtered through the trees.

The walking track dipped into a valley. Crowding trees, which seemed to climb to heaven itself, blotted out most of the light. Perhaps, the boy thought, they had reached his green and undiscovered country. They stopped to look around.

The girl discovered it. Five paces off the track, through an entranceway of leafy, smaller trees, a clearing. When she pushed in through a shower of leaves, they followed her into the glade. They stood there, for a moment, in awed silence, for above them loomed a dark cathedral of trees. A hollow tree, cloaked in emerald moss, lay across the ground, dappled in filtered sunlight. The scent of decay and eucalyptus filled the air. Small lime coloured saplings rose like springlets from a green and leafy forest floor.

Gavin flicked his cigarette into the leaves. "Look at all this shit," he said, souring, "someone oughta clean it up. I reckon the bloody timber might be worth a few quid." They watched idly as the butt glimmered like a ruby before it died in the dank earth.

Eva sauntered to the fallen tree, sat down, and frumped her skirts. For a few seconds, she gazed at the canopy above, and the boy followed with his eyes. When he looked down, Gavin had placed himself beside the girl. The boy approached, stood near them, hands in his pockets, shuffling his feet. The girl's eyes went to his directly, his heart pumped, but he looked down, feigning disinterest.

Gavin turned to the girl and searched her eyes. He whispered something in her ear. He touched her hand. She giggled. Gavin's face seemed to assume, more and more, the appearance of a fox. And Eva, in turn, began to look like a vixen, a vixen with wide, knowing eyes. She smiled. Then, casting a nervous eye in the boy's direction, Gavin placed his hands on Eva's shoulders and drew her close to him. She shook her head and muttered an audible "No." Her eyes looked up toward the boy's. He felt the blood rush to his face, felt his body tremble with excitement, but then everything - the girl, Gavin, and the encompassing bush, spiralled round him. He shook his head and looked again, lost in the whirl, a rush of overwhelming excitement and lust. But with it loomed the dark shadow of guilt. He remembered something from the Bible, something repeated by his father, his grandfather over the days and the years: 'Every man who looks on a woman with lust hath already committed adultery with her in his heart.' His vision cleared, and when he looked across at the couple, Eva seemed to beckon him. He moved forward, only to remember another line: 'If your right eye causes you to sin, better to pluck it out and throw it away.' Again his head whirled, and he felt himself step back.

And then he saw Gavin Watkins move over her.

She arched back, and looking for all the world like Rita Hayworth doing the dance of the seven veils in Salome, flicked out her tongue. Gavin lolled out his tongue without delay. His body curved around hers, and they began to kiss, first, sharing small sips of intimacy, and then as they grew to relish the feast, the boy cried to himself: Eva, how can you do that?

Within seconds, the boy saw Gavin Watkin's hands slide from the girl's shoulders to envelop her bosom; and then they moved down into the darkness under her petticoats. He pushed her back across the fallen tree. Eva went to push him away. Her eyes, at first downcast in self absorption, looked over to the boy. As Gavin made to kiss her again and again she averted her mouth from his. Gavin called out, "Someone's coming. Is anybody coming?" The boy shook his head and the glade spun about him. Beyond his beating heart, he could only hear the bell birds clinking in the distance. And for a second he closed his eyes.

When he looked again Gavin stood an arm's length away. James explored the wizened boy's face, and to his surprise, caught a tremor of embarrassment, even fear, masked only by bluster. Eva had turned on her side, smoothing her petticoats, looking sullen. Nothing, it seemed, had happened, not sex, just a tussle. There she sat, a small, composed figure without a trace of guilt or sin, under the high, dark canopy of forest. And her eyes were on his face, not Gavin's.

Gavin spoke. "You're too scared to do it, aren't you, Jamee?"

The boy's heart pumped.

" You got no guts, you fuckin' do-gooder. G'arn. You havva go. I dare yer."

The boy trembled. A sin.

" Jesus Christ, Jimmy," said Gavin. "What's goin' on? What are yer?"

No, not a sin, not here.

He found himself by her side. In one movement she removed her purple underwear. She threw them to one side where they hung, suspended, on a sapling. She placed her arms around him. He felt her cheek caress his, as warm and tender as a summer flower. His mouth met her lips, softly. Out of the edge of his eye, he saw Gavin retreating, smirking, watching with pleasure and disgust. The boy wondered if God, in His rage, would strike him down. And Eva simply smiled. Again he took in her scent - lilac, lavender, something.... Now, there was confirmation. It seemed - so natural. As he held her, her eyes pooled and she surrendered before him.

In that soft, consuming, velvet embrace, he knew he'd hardened, knew his desire for her was overwhelming, and at the same time his hands were fluttering around his trouser fly, seeking relief from a button cutting into his flesh.

He pressed inside her with a small cry of delight.

A twig cracked. They all heard it. And the sound of heavy feet.

He gave a shudder and cried out first: " Orr! Someone's coming!"

Eva jumped up. She had no time to pull on her pants. A purple flag on a tiny sapling, they hung suspended for all the world to see.

"Hroom!"

The boy turned quickly, shambled about, hoisted something, buckled something else, and realised his fly was still undone. The Reverend Moffat and his wife pushed through into the glade.

"There you are!" proclaimed the Reverend. "Didn't you hear my call?" The boy saw the others shake their pale faces. The minister peered toward the trio. "What's going on here?"

"It's all right, sir," said Gavin, suddenly strangely composed. He manoeuvred himself in front of Eva's underwear and at the same time, shielded James from the Minister's gaze. "Er," he said, "we was looking for snakes."

"Oh heavens!" said Mrs Moffat, and she gave a quiver. "Did you hear that, Owen? How awful! Snakes! I knew it was a mistake coming down to this dreadful place!"

"There sure is a snake 'ere, Missus," said Gavin. "A big fat one went right up that hole there." He pointed to a gap in the hollow tree.

"Snakes? You'd know if one bit you, boy - and you, too, girlie!" Moffat muttered. But Gavin's ploy had worked. Even behind the thick rimmed spectacles, all could see that the man's large eyes had glassed in fear. As Mrs Moffat began to leave, he turned to follow her departing heels. They stood there for a moment in a fearful cluster, but when Moffat called back, "Get away from there or I'll take a strap to you!" the boy shambled out of the place and the others followed.

When they'd all moved out of the glade, and someway up the dusty track toward civilisation, the minister pushed them together. His expression had changed from shock to rage. "Stop!" Through clenched teeth he hissed, "You're all liars! Something evil is going on between you three. Do you take me for a fool?"

Three heads waggled from side to side. "No sir," mouthed the boys.

"My wife and I know every trail in that forest, you know. James, isn't it? I know your parents. You, of all people. You should know better."

He felt himself redden, but at the same time a voice, a calm voice, reminded him that he had nothing to fear. He'd done nothing wrong.

The minister turned to Eva, his face glowering. Like a storm behind an accusing finger, he announced, "I know it's all your fault, girlie. You led these boys on! No one gave you permission to go this far into the bush!""

Eva looked across at Gavin, perhaps in expectation of a smart remark of rescue, but he said nothing. Her eyes appealed to James, but he swallowed his words. He wanted to say something. He wanted to defend her. "It's not her fault," he managed to whisper. But he cowered before the voice of authority.

Then Moffat said, "Get out." The old man pointed to the track ahead. "Get out of here! Go on, get back with the others! They've started the organised games!"

Eva had to leave her pants hanging on the sapling.

On the way home in the bus the children sang hymns. The Reverend Owen Moffat gave thanks to God for the successful day. The boy thought about nature, that clearing, and wondered if he truly had sex with Eva. Had he finished inside her? Maybe not, because he'd wet himself; his underpants were still a little damp. In any case, the feeling was beautiful - until the awful interruption.

He was not like Gavin. Gavin just thought Eva was a joke, something disgusting, something he owned. But the girl entranced him. Perhaps, somehow, somewhere, deep in his soul, he loved her. He looked back, down the bus, across a crowd of children. She sat in the rear of the bus with the other girls. Then, for just a moment, her eyes flicked to his, without expression. Gavin, his mouth open, slept on beside him, even snoring now and then. As night began to fall and everything turned grey, when the edgy heat gave way to mellow warmth, at the time they all began to sing "Jesus Wants Me For a Sunbeam," the boy looked back again to where she sat, curled up like a smile. She looked self conscious, but then she winked at him. Something strange had happened to him, deep down. Something strange and incomplete, like an explosion of inner fire.

For the first time in his life, he looked forward to Sunday school the next day.

His mother noticed. "You're looking rather pale," she said, one night at the dinner table. "You didn't drink the water from that filthy lake, did you?"

He shook his head. His father muttered, "He'll have to go to school, you know. Even when I'm feeling crook, I go to work. I've never missed a day. I have to do it. I make the sacrifices around here. You're going off to school, sick or not."

"I don't feel well," he murmured.

"You heard your father," his mother said.

But his grandfather, who was visiting for the night, boomed, "Perhaps he's lovesick," and gave a hearty laugh.

"Pop," his mother hissed, "Stop it! You'll spill your soup."

And his father stared into space, clicked his tongue, tightened his mouth and they were silent.

Later that night, the family in bed, the boy came out of his bedroom. And in the lounge, he watched his grandfather pour another glass of port. He smelled of port. The man looked up and said, "You ever read Josephus, James?"

"I tried. But he's hard to read."

The old man said, "You think so? Mmm."

Some time later, he turned to his grandfather to say, "What's 'lovesick', Gran'pa?"

"Lovesick? Lovesick? I'm not lovesick. Who said I'm lovesick? Your mother?"

"No."

The boy sighed.

"Lovesick means it hurts in here," his grandfather said, and thumped his heart. "The ticker goes. Nothing you can do about it. The heart, you know. Gets sick. But at your age you needn't worry."

"But if your heart hurts..."

"... It's probably a girl. When I was your age..." He peered across the room, above his spectacles, above his raised jaw, "I had Sally. Met her down behind the bull paddock. Almost married the girl. Damned heartbreak. Her parents broke it up. Don't tell your mother or your Nana."

"But Nana's...."

The man looked down. "They all say that," he said. "Damned young fool. Many are called, but few are chosen. You need more faith."

More faith. He'd prayed for faith. He prayed to God. He even prayed to Eva. He dreamt of Eva. The act of sex? No, when he thought of sex he saw himself with her and felt her lips, soft again his, but then Gavin Watkins, intruded, and the thought disgusted him. And yet, somehow, he felt, deep down, he'd made a contract with her. He saw it in her eyes, the way she'd looked at him across the bus on that long trip home. A wink of confirmation. As weeks passed, expectation turned to loss: a hundred empty nights and empty days were filled with dreams of Eva, her scent, her touch, dreams rehearsing courtship, conversation, engagement, and further acts of sex, and finally, of marriage, children, family and beyond. But not prayer, not hope, nor promises to himself or to a power beyond could flesh her out. He relived each moment of his time with her. Did she speak to him? No, he could not remember her saying a word; only a deep sigh as she pressed herself against him. Did she understand English? Did it matter if she could not speak the language? It did not matter. He simply wanted to be with her. He could teach her English. Could he marry a Catholic? Of course he could. Would they have children? Yes, they would. But as each day passed him by, his memory of their meeting faded and everything began to slide back into a miserable fog.

A week later, his birthday came. "You're fifteen now," he father said, across the fifteen candled cake. "And almost a man. But you're not hard enough to be a man yet."

His mother giggled as she cut the cake. "A man. Goodness, he'll be married soon!" She giggled, half laughter, half a shudder of disapproval. "Okay, everybody! Let's take our cake into the lounge room now!"

But after his only friend at Mordialloc, Donald Batty, vomited on the lounge room floor, his birthday quickly drew to a close. And he withdrew to his room to open the birthday present from his father: a black Bible and a booklet about Moral Health and the Evil of Self Abuse.

He thought again of Eva. And strangely, as his emptiness grew, so did his desire. He had to find her.

As days changed to weeks, the boy began to lose hope. As if to confirm his manhood, his voice had noticeably deepened, and the sense of wonder he once held began to darken into despair. But on an autumn day, after compulsory Bible Class, Donald Batty approached him to announce, rather lazily, in fact, that he'd seen Eva. "I saw 'er down the fish shop. That girl of yours. Eva Sc-Scarlatti."

At the mention of her name the boy woke to life. "At Smiths?"

"Nah. The one down the road. Down the hill from the pitchers. She works there with her mum. On Beach Road."

Perhaps there was a God.

That same afternoon he rode to Beach Road, then found the weatherboard corner shop facing the beach, but he could not pass beyond the banging flywire door. He had no money, he told himself. Instead, he slouched around across the road. He watched the neon sign, Fresh Fish, blink pink above a display window. He watched the fly wire entrance door slam endlessly, watched young men come and go. Above the window, on the second floor, a canvas awning slapped in the breeze. Once, he thought he saw her figure, a shadow of her figure perhaps, approach the shopfront window, look out, rearrange the fish display. He hid behind a telephone box. A housewife with a shopping bag approached, stopped, looked in, and entered. A two storeyed, run down building, corrugated tin roof, sparrows on the roof. A deep building, backing on a lane. Perhaps, he thought, she lives there as well, lives at the back of the store. Five days later he walked stiffly into the shop. He saw her there, serving behind the counter, turning every now and then to stir the fat, to dip the fish in batter. She hadn't noticed him. She served two greasy boys. They ogled her. She dismissed them with her eyes, wrapped their chips, gave change, they said something, crossed the room, and one of the boys slammed a coin into a pin ball machine.

That day, Eva seemed rather more diminutive than the Eva of his dreams. He could make out her well rounded breasts under a shapeless apron and a green pinafore. A large beefy woman with dark ringed sad eyes stood behind her, slopping battered fish into a vat of hot oil. Mrs Scarlatti, no doubt.

His eyes returned to Eva. Occasionally, she stopped to push her long black hair over her shoulders. She seemed strangely sullen. And older. He advanced to the counter and she looked up and recognised him. He smiled. She gave a start and her eyes widened. She smoothed her hands on her apron, flustered, then went to return the smile. A shy, rather painful smile, he thought, but then Mrs Scarlatti looked across and placed her hands on her hips. Eva's eyes flicked to her mother, and when she looked back in his direction, the smile was gone. As he asked her for sixpence worth of potato cakes he watched her, watched her brown eyes for a flicker of recognition and saw nothing but a shy ember of interest. The rosy glow from the picnic, and even from the previous week, had slid from her face like the dripping on the fried cakes she shortly placed before him. She added salt and vinegar. She held out her hand for the money, a soft, warm hand, the fingernails bitten close to the quick. He gave her a shilling. She slid the coin in the register. It flashed up No Sale, red. Their eyes met when she gave him sixpence change. The brown, soft eyes. Yes, she knew him, acknowledged him, but little more. She gave one last tiny pout, a shadowy smile to which he forced a smile in return. And left.

They'd got to her.

He called in for chips once a week, spending most of his pocket money there. She acknowledged him but on most occasions she seemed to be distracted, hurt, or dreaming. As the days passed, she became a rather shadowy figure, ensconced in the dingy lounge behind the slapping plastic curtains at the rear of the shop. He lacked the nerve to call across to her at that feeble distance, and he found it even more difficult to confront Mrs Scarlatti, who seemed to have taken over the counter duties.

He withdrew then, to spend more time at home, in study. He slept unsoundly. One night he heard, between the hourly chimes of the lounge room clock, the voice of his grandfather from the adjoining room. Apparently the man cried out and fell, with a thump, dead drunk to the bedroom floor. "He misses her, your Nana," his mother noted the next day. "If he keeps it up, he'll die of a broken heart. Your father and I can't cope. Red wine all over the bed, the floor. We thought he'd died."

It must have been the following Sunday night, because his father had switched off the lounge room radio after Hymns of All Churches had concluded on the ABC. Yes, after he folded his paper, his father left the room, bound for the lavatory. He would stay there for at least half an hour. Her mother, after discarding her apron, smoothed her autumn coloured dress as she settled into her armchair to knit. Grandfather hunched, grumping, in another chair, and began to leaf through a Webster's dictionary. James heard the front gate clang, and then footsteps down the front path. A lounge room window faced the street, a dappled window, and when the footsteps stopped on the veranda, the glass darkened. The bell rang, and his mother rose to her feet. After looking at the wall clock, frowning, and noting it was eight thirty, she went to the door and switched on the porch light. The boy heard a low exchange of voices, then his mother backed away to usher in a tall, dark figure.

The Reverend Owen Moffat stood in the room's centre and bowed tightly as his mother, smarting with servility, said, "This is my father..." Grandfather closed his book and went to rise but could not. "And James, you know, of course..." The boy paled and shuffled and nodded. His mother called out, "Arthur?" in a rather shaky voice, and after the lavatory flushed and a door slammed his father entered the room and shook hands with the cleric. Moffat lowered himself to the lounge, and then, in tight obeisance, they all sat down.

"I'm sorry to come so late," the minister intoned, "but I was hoping if I could talk to you about a rather private matter..." - he glanced across at James- "without the kiddie." His father signalled to him then, and he left the room. The lounge room door was closed, and from the dining room, he heard only the sound of muffled voices.

In short time, James found himself on the concrete path outside the lounge room window, and after straddling a flower patch, he strained upward to hear the ongoing conversation Despite the half-closed Venetian blinds, the window had been opened earlier that evening to cool the air inside. He crouched down in the darkness, stifled his breathing, and listened.

A voice boomed out, his grandfather's: "Too serious, you're taking it too seriously. I think so... Is she pretty? Pretty girl, heh? Pretty, you say?"

A pause followed by mumbled words.

Then Moffat's voice. "...I took the girl in hand... her mother entrusted me with her care... she could have gone to a convent, but I said no, let's..." Murmurings ensued, punctuated by a chorus of assent. "Her mother ... I found her... Wayward... When she came to ours.... Naturally... Wayward... Outrageous... Responsibility for her care... No."

His father murmured something.

And the reply came, "No, I'm sure James didn't... not to blame. The other boy... a difficult family background... punished by his father..."

His mother asked something.

"No. That won't be necessary. Steps have been taken... There's a distant... In the meantime, keep them apart, of course! An idea… an idea… marry her off... of course it goes without saying."

His father's voice said something. ".... I sacrificed myself...."

And the high voice of his mother.

And Moffat replied: "No, no.... But... There was a medical examination... Let us pray. Let us pray for his soul."

James leant forward. Through the Venetians, he caught a glimpse of the Minister and his parents, their heads bowed in prayer.

The blind rattled, he crouched down in horror, and the window closed above him.

"James!" his father yelled, and his mother scuttled out of the kitchen. "You're not to see that girl!"

"I dunno what- "

"You filthy, disgusting little.... I always knew you were full of filth... You're not to go near that ... see that... have anything to do with that girl! Come here!"

The man seized his arm, and bending it behind his back, forced him to the table. The remnants of the evening meal crashed to the floor. He found himself face down, his nose against a plate of torn roast lamb, and then he felt the strap, the searing pain across his buttocks, again and yet again. "You - will - not - make - a - fool - of - me - You - will - not - see - that - girl - again." Blow reigned down on blow, stroke followed stroke, and which each stroke came burning pain and tears of fear and rage.

"James, no one ever said you actually did anything," she said, placing her hat down on the Frigidaire and reaching for the tea pot. "We were just concerned, for you, and, of course, for the other boy's family."

James eased himself down to the pain of the kitchen chair and looked down at the table. "I'm not a bad person..." he began to say, and the tears welled in his eyes.

"We know, dear. But something could have happened. You, see, that girl is wayward."

"What do you mean?"

"A harlot. You understand?"

"No. Not really."

His mother took the kettle from the stove and poured boiling water into the pot, then wrapped it in a cosy. "A tramp. Apparently she's without a father, illegitimate." She paused, eyeing him tiredly. "And her mother, who hardly speaks a word of English, can't cope, I suppose. The girl is fifteen... going on sixteen and as I guess you've noticed, rather..." She searched for a word, abandoned "cheap," when the boy went to protest, and said, "Well endowed. Everyone noticed her - in that awful home made dress - talk about advertising herself! She's Italian - I suppose you knew that. Italians aren't like us. They have their own religion, their own customs... Most of them are dark skinned. They're nearly all Catholics. You see what I'm trying to say?"

"No."

She grew annoyed. "What's wrong with our girls, for God's sake? You're far too young to have a girlfriend, mind you. But if you have to have a... friend, what's wrong with Margaret Bishop? At least she's one of us. Her mother says she likes you."

He groaned.

"You've a lot to learn, young man. She's nothing but a tart. The minister's quite worried. He thinks she may be rather sick, disturbed you know, and he thinks she should see a doctor."

"A doctor?" he cried.

"Yes, a doctor. A brain doctor. Mind you, an ordinary doctor would do just as well - she could be carrying all kinds of diseases. I really don't think you realise, James..."

"What does grandpa think?" he murmured, seeking some relief.

"Your grandfather's barmy," she said.

"But what did he say?"

"He made a fool of himself. He embarrassed your father, he embarrassed me... He thought it wasn't serious -"

"He's right."

"He's not right. If only you knew about your grandfather. He's a wolf in sheep's clothing, if ever there was one."

"Grandpa? Mu-um!"

His mother glowered. "The voice of innocence. Your grandfather is a womaniser." She bit her lip. "The things he did to your Nana. And to me, for that matter. Disgusting things... We only have him here because we're Christian people... Don't talk to me about your Grandpa."

"What disgusting things?" he ventured.

Her mouth tightened. "Things. Unchristian things, that's all." She poured the tea, then went on, "You know, you really hurt your father. He's a Christian man, you know, a moral man... That's why I married him. I could've done far worse."

"You must have had some sex," he blurted. "You had me."

She reddened. "Stop it! You're right out of order!"

He sipped at his tea. "What happened to Gavin?"

She waved an arm dismissively. "He's gone, out of temptation's way. His father's moved him from the district. Now, he was most upset when he heard about it all. And at the picnic! The three of you, running around like wild animals, and what were you doing? Playing with snakes! I suppose you know Gavin's father blamed you for the whole thing. And Gavin, too. He said you led them all on."

"Me?"

"You can thank the minister for setting him straight on that."

"So what's going to happen to Eva?"

"We're not going into the subject." She sipped at her tea. "I couldn't care less. She's not coming back to church, of course. Maybe they'll put her in a Home. Maybe they'll marry her off. And as you're not going to set eyes on her again, I don't think you should care what happens to her." She eyed him tiredly. "Really James, she's just no good. You know that. Get one thing into your thick head: the girl's… If she keeps it up, one day, someone will get her into real trouble and she'll have - babies. If she isn't - you know - already. Look, I'm sorry, but do we have to talk about that kind of thing? Go read your Bible."

He looked away.

"Just promise me one thing. If you see her in the street, just look the other way. Don't approach her, don't talk to her, don't even think about her. Your father and I are willing to forgive and forget. But if you even cross her path or breathe a word to her, your father, oh my God... He'll kill you."

He cycled across the road and he made a slow turn into the lane. It had been raining, and his bike rattled across the wet cobblestones. He drew to a halt at the first back fence, a high paling fence, pressed the machine against the wall, raised himself on the cross bar and peeped over. He saw a small backyard of green unmowed grass, a scatter of trees, and sun dappled path leading to the house. Between two trees, washing - sheets, pillowcases, clothing, dresses - hung from a line. Womens clothing: two brassieres, one very large - no, too big, not hers. One smaller; maybe hers. White sheets, a cotton dress, three towels.

A ginger tabby cat slept on a path overhung by a camellia tree and flowering gums. The back door and much of the house were hidden from view, but he could see part of a peeling, weatherboard wall and a window box laden with pot plants.

The back door creaked. He ducked for cover but he soon found himself peering through a narrow gap between the slatted palings.

A voice called out, a girl's voice: "You there Teeny? Teeny?"

He had a view of a section of the backyard path.

The cat stretched, rose, and bowed. A tin rattled.

"Teeny?" The cat pattered up the path.

A sound, movement, a figure. He made out a bleary, oversized dressing gown. A girl in slippers. The girl knelt down to feed the cat, spooning out the contents of the tin held in her hand.

For a moment her face was lost to him behind a dark mop of hair. Then she looked up. Eva! She looked around the yard. The cat ate. She stretched, drew her arms above her head, threw them down, scuffed her slippers. She soon gathered up the cat, held it to her face, rubbed her face against the cat's, and murmured a few words. Then she began to walk along the path toward him. He stiffened, but held himself against the fence. When Eva sauntered closer, he froze. And not eight feet from him, she stopped, held the cat aloft before her eyes, smiled, and said something in Italian. "Io amo..." She murmured a word after that, "Teery," and when she giggled and rolled her eyes, the cat purred. She held the animal to her cheek, then she murmured a few words again, smiled, this time almost wickedly, he thought, and her eyes closed. She caressed the cat again, and then she began sway, the sway silky, sensual, from side to side. "Oh, Teemy, Teemy," she said. "Oh, I love you, Teemy." She smiled and nodded at the animal before her. "I love you, Teemy."

Or was it - Jimmy?

"I love you, Jeemy," she said.

A door slammed. A harsh voice, probably her mother's, called out, "Eva!" Then a gabble of abuse.

The cat sprang from her grasp. The girl's expression became sullen. She turned and, shoulders hunched, stalked back inside the building.

Mysteriously, the sea became a growing consolation. It stirred him to his essence. When he was not at the hateful school (and he now loathed it more than last one) he wandered along the beach, looking far out at the white frost on the deep green breakers, sucking in the sound of the fizzing surge of the wash on the sand. He'd grown to love the smell of the salty haze that often hugged the shoreline. Even in spring, the beach was nearly always deserted. Now and again, a stranger would trudge past and wave. One man, in particular, seemed to be there after school. He'd nod and wave but they never spoke.

But one wintry afternoon, after school, on the sand at Mordialloc beach, the stranger did approach. He was a man, perhaps in his late twenties or early thirties, with a plump face, tight lips, and all in all, with the appearance of a grown-up sissy. Thin, gold rimmed glasses encircled rather hard grey eyes. He wore a tight fitting fawn pullover tucked into his trouser belt, and it gave him an air of effeminacy. James had been throwing stones at the wave tops, when he turned to see the older man there, a tense smile on his face, remarking, "Joyce called it the snot green sea."

"Yeah?"

"James Joyce, a great writer. Never mind, it's more like a pea green sea today. I hope you don't mind me talking to you. My name's Vincent."

"No," he replied, with nervous embarrassment. "Yeah. I saw you the other day." A gust of wind blew fine sand in the air. "Jim."

"Perhaps we'd better move back to the grassy bit, Jim," said the newcomer, turning.

James followed on thoughtlessly, plodding after the plump figure, past the women's dressing sheds to a grassy picnic area. Not far away, the Ferris wheel from the Mordialloc Carnival slowly turned behind a crowd of white, spinning seagulls.

"What do you do?" ventured the younger man.

"Mm. That's a good question. I was a schoolteacher, and a cub leader with the Scouts. But these days I'm starting my own business - making shopping trolleys for housewives," he said in a sonorous voice. "I'm having a breather today. I don't live here. No, I live at Camberwell, but I drive out here for a break. Do you know it?"

He nodded. "We moved from near there."

"Well, I'd invite you there for afternoon tea, but it is a little far," Vincent chuckled stiffly.

They fell into silence, staring out toward the sea.

"You're about sixteen, seventeen?"

"Sixteen, just…"

"Sixteen. Do you have a girl friend yet?" Vincent said.

James squeezed his face together. "Um, sort of. Maybe. She works in the fish 'n' chip shop over there," he said, waving his arm toward the Esplanade behind them. He was surprised by the man's forwardness, and by his own abrupt retort: "Do you have a girl friend too?"

Vincent chuckled again, a nervous laugh. "No, I don't. I did once, when I was about your age. And then I stopped being interested in girls."

"Why?" He found it hard to imagine anyone other than the most religious having no interest in girls.

"You're embarrassing me," muttered Vincent. "But I like your inquisitive nature. Let's see… If you must know, my mother was very protective... a kind of bully. My father, too. They wouldn't let me see girls. They said I was immoral. Religion can be a terrible thing. Once she - my mother - caught me talking to one. And she punished me. Do you know anyone with parents like that?"

James nodded.

"About the age of fourteen… Something went click inside my head. I changed. And ever since... I feel nothing for girls. Not a thing." His face had hardened.

The younger man had heard of men who were like that, homosexuals, and who preferred men to women. After all, anyone who read books and who didn't join the Cadet Corps - himself included- could easily be called "poofter" at school. The Bible railed about them. But by an large, he was indifferent, because it was another world. In fact, because of his frankness, Vincent intrigued him. But he was sure he wasn't homosexual.

"I like girls," he said, rather forcefully.

"I'm sure you do, James. Don't worry, I only wanted to talk to you. Now and then, we get a bit lonely, don't we?"

He looked down and nodded. "Maybe."

"So tell me about your girl." He pronounced the word 'girl' with a touch of distaste and his eyes were as lifeless as lead.

"Well, I'm not allowed to see her."

"Why?"

"Like you, I guess. It's supposed to be immoral. And she's Italian. And they - my parents - are afraid of - of - that kind of thing, I suppose."

Vincent looked into his eyes. "Do you know what I think?"

James shook his head.

"If it feels right for you, go to her. Go. One day you'll have to make the break with your parents. I stayed at home too long. I can't undo things now. But follow the feeling in your blood, James, not religion, not morality. Try to be free."

When Vincent reached out to touch the his hand, he recoiled.

"I've gotta be going home now," he said.

"That's alright, Jim," Vincent said dryly. "Look, I'll leave you my name and address. If you want to visit me, one day, please come and we can have another talk." He drew a wallet from his trouser pocket and with it, a home made business card. "We all need friends, you know, and I'm happy to be your friend."

Vincent Bellamy. Shopping Trolleys.

James slid the card into his trouser pocket.

They shook hands and as they parted, waved goodbye. "Might see you on the beach next week," Vincent called. "Or come and see me."

James turned toward the beach. Then he glanced back over his shoulder. Vincent called from a distance: "Don't forget to come and see me any time!"

The older man had emboldened him.

The clock ticked on the mantelpiece. The old man read the Bible. He looked up at his grandson before he ran a drop of menthol down a home made cigarette. "Don't ever smoke," he growled. "Filthy habit, James." And struck a match. "Have you read Marcus Aurelius yet?"

"No. Is he good?"

The old man mused. "Very good. A good man. There were some good men who weren't Christians. Gandhi was another."

James nodded.

"When I go," he said, "when I go, don't give up love. I'll join your Nana in her grave. It should be good in there. We have a double plot, you know. A double plot. And we'll await the resurrection."

"You think it's true?"

"What's true?"

"The resurrection."

"Why, of course!" He shook his head, as if to disagree with himself. "Well, no one really knows. No one really knows. But while you're here, don't give up on love. Have you ever been in love, my boy?"

"I think so."

"Good. Nice girl?"

"Yes. Nice."

"Well, you have it then. Don't lose the darned thing."

The next day his parents sent the old man to a nursing home.

Why had he left it so long? Vincent was quite right. He'd go to the shop, and demand to see her and talk to her. He'd been a coward. He'd been acting like a kid. He'd take her out somewhere. They'd talk. She'd be his girl.

James dressed for the occasion in suit and tie, rehearsed a speech, and by late afternoon, set out, on foot, from his home in Canterbury Road toward her place. Descending the hill with missionary fervency, he looked over the sea, choppy and green that spring day, laced with white confetti. The southerly breeze rifled his face. Soon he saw the corner shop below, brilliant, neon-signed in the coming dusk, and full of promise.

He strode along the footpath by the beach, the shop approaching across the road, when he saw her - wonder of wonders! - a hundred yards away, edging stiffly out of the store, out of the darkness of the fly-wire doorway. He ran to greet her. For a moment he failed to recognise the contraption she awkwardly bore from the entranceway. Then, it all fell into place: what seemed to be, at first, a hearse-like object was, in fact, a large black pram with shining metal wheels, and in the pram, a baby and a small brown suitcase. His eyes fell on her face then, and he saw, in one moment, how the bloom had gone forever, although a pout remained, harder, a trifle more defiant. As she stood before him, just across the street, she flicked her eyes to his before she bent down to attend to the baby. He stopped, his belly now drum tight, in the middle of the road and backed away a step or two. It was enough. She saw him, focused, stopped, stared, shook her head fearfully, and walked away.

She turned the corner into Union Road.

He did not move. Then he stumbled ahead, followed, wheeled around the corner. Ahead, as in a mist, he made out the figure of an older man in a dark suit, bundling a pram into the back of a utility. The figure stiffly opened the passenger side door and Eva, with baby, slumped inside. They drove away.

He never saw Eva again.

Despite his father's threats of hellfire and the strap, the boy refused to go to Bible Class, let alone join the droning congregation at Church. He'd had enough religion, enough guilt and fear. As his father's moods grew ever darker, and as his father's siblings gathered around to pray for the boy's salvation, he resolved to go away, to leave school and home. Other boys had left home at fifteen. His father even started work at fourteen. And he was close on sixteen. But where could he stay while he looked for work? Would he sleep in a park? He could not bear to stay a day longer.

Then, the next morning, under his bed, he found Vincent's business card.

He looked across at Ringwood Park. Eventually, there had come other Edens, other Evas, punctuated by quite a few seasons in Hell. It was very hard when he was young, finding his way after the episode with Eva, discerning the true from the false. But then, there was once a holy brightness. Again, he peered across the freeway. The great lake had become the world's largest puddle. A few scraggly trees. A dust bowl. Was that the sacred place? No, not that. But there, before him, stood the distant sign at the entrance to the oval: Ringwood Park. But the change. No, the transformation! It was nothing like Eden at all.