<sample><id> W02 </id>

<note> 2010 words </note>

<source> Sister ships </source>

<bl> By Joan London </bl>

Kaye Garrett is late again.  She has rushed into the cabin in her bikini
and thrown her wet towel on my bunk.
  `Have I got time for a ciggie?' she asks, lighting up anyway though she
knows we are First Sitting.  Then she gets down to work.  She circles her
eyes with a sort of white lipstick and dots biscuit-coloured lotion onto
the compass points of her face.  I take this opportunity to slip her towel
onto the floor.  
  `I don't know why you go to all this trouble', Bar Holland calls down
from the top bunk.  `The people on this ship are only interested in food
and sexual intercourse.'
  `Oh?' says Kaye Garrett.  `Why do you say that?'  Her eyes are open very
wide in the mirror but she's not looking at us.  With a little black brush
she is grooming the wing of her lashes.  Does she know that as she does
this her mouth springs open like a fish?
  `Observation',  Bar Holland says.  I hear her yawning.  `I haven't put
it to the test.'
  The dinner chimes crackle over the P.A.  Doors slam up and down the corridor
and a great wave of people calling out and jingling keys seems to rush past
our cabin.  I stand up.  I have been ready for ages.
  Kaye rips off her bikini and reaches into the wardrobe.  `Oh Hull.'  She's
turning to me, she's holding my pink shirt, `Oh Hully, would you mind,
could I please...?'
  I take a breath.  I've practised this.  I was going to say, in a light,
pleasant voice, `Actually Kaye, I'd thought of wearing that myself tomorrow'.
But when she stands in front of me like this, naked, watching me, as if
she's testing me, I don't know where to look ...
  There is a quick knock and the door swings open.  Kaye screams and clutches
my shirt to her.
  `Sorry ladeez, so sorry ladeez.'  It is Taki, our cabin steward, with
an armful of towels.  He backs out, groping to close the door behind him.
  `Bloody Taki', Kaye says.  She's buttoning up my shirt.
  `Hot Greek blood', calls down Bar.
  `He must have thought we'd gone to dinner', I say.  `We are late.'  In
the mornings I find him waiting outside the door with his mop and duster.
I say, `I'm sorry.  The other girls are still slee-ping.'  I put my head
on my hands to mime a pillow.  He nods and smiles.  He understands.
  `Oh yeah?' says Kaye.  `He's always barging in.'  She's pulling on a black
skirt, tucking in my shirt.  The pink shirt is part of an ensemble my mother
and I bought after my last day at school.  `For deck games', my mother said.
Sometimes I think about the Trip as my mother planned it.  It is like another
ship travelling alongside this one, with all its passengers on deck waving
in a friendly sort of way.  There are bound to be some awfully nice types
amongst them, my parents had a ball on their Trip Out, they are waving
but getting hard to see now, the animal throb and grind of this ship is
leaving them behind.
  
The lights flicker in the narrow corridors.  We stagger a little as the
ship sways.  Voices are rising in the bars, `Aloha' and `Chelsea', where
the early drinkers have settled in.  As our heels clatter up the stairs
two stewards hiss from a doorway: `Psst!  I love you!'  We look straight
ahead but we giggle.  Don't they know that with us their case is hopeless?
  We part at the doors of the dining-room.  Kaye Garrett sort of glides
in past us, gone for the night.
  `I'll meet you here afterwards', I say to Bar Holland.  If I don't say
this she is quite likely to wander off in her absent-minded way, and then
I am alone for the whole evening.  `Here, okay?'
  `Okay', she says.  She brings her book with her.  She sits at a table
with a big family.  Quite often they are sea-sick and only the father is
there.  He is glad of a bit of peace and quiet, Bar says.  He's quite happy
if she reads between courses.
  My table is for four, on the far side of the dining-room.  I take my usual
seat, next to the German man.  I say Good Evening to him, I have never caught
his name.  He wears a white suit to dinner and has a short white beard.
He's about my father's age:  it is his eleventh sea voyage.  This is all
I know about him.
  `We thought you were going to miss out on the soup', Marie says from across
the table.  She is a secretary from Wollongong.  `Still not to worry, we've
only just got ours as usual.'  Marie is frustrated by the service on this
ship, especially at the table.  `It's the same old story', she told me,
`the quiet ones get overlooked'.
  `Hi', says Eric, who sits next to her.
  `Try and catch the waiter's eye', Marie advises me, `when he goes to that
big table'.
  But I don't want any soup.  I am trying to think of something to say to
Eric.
  `How did you go at deck-tennis this afternoon?'
  He laughs.  `I got a thrashing.  I'm out of the tournament.  I think I'm
going to have to invent deck-cricket.  Maybe I'd make a better fist of that.'
  I laugh, understandingly.  I know that Eric plays cricket in summer, swims
all year round, likes early Blues and opera, grew up on a farm in northern
New South Wales, has just finished his second year of Law.  I know because
over two weeks' meals I have asked him.  The trouble is, I'm running out
of questions.  He asks me questions too sometimes, often the same questions.
I've told him three times now that I've just done my matric, that I'm going
to stay with relatives in England.
  `Get a load of that would you', Marie says.  `That big table.  On to the
main course already and we haven't even ordered the entree!'
  `I met another girl from Perth today', Eric says to me.  His nose is
sunburnt, a big nose, he isn't really good-looking.  But the first time
he came to our table and smiled and pulled Marie's chair out for her, I
thought: He's nice. `A blonde girl, Barbara.'
  `Oh, Bar Holland.  She went to school with me.  She shares my cabin.'
  `She seems like quite an original.'
  `Yes.  Well I didn't really get to know her before this trip.  We were
in different classes ...'
  `You can't have any secrets when you share a cabin, I can tell you', Marie
says.
  `Do you share a cabin?'  I ask the German man after a while.  It seems
so terribly rude not to say anything to him for the whole meal.
  `I am alone', the German man replies.  `I prefer.'
  `I think I would too.'  I give a little laugh.  `Not that I've got any
secrets.'
  `Ah', says the German man.  `Without secrets nothing is possible.'
  `What is your cabin number by the way?' Eric asks me.
  

  `There she is', I say to Bar Holland.  We are taking our after-dinner
stroll around A Deck.
  `Who?'
  `Kaye.  It looks like it's Officers' Night tonight.'
  `Chelsea' is dimly lit, but the pink shirt, the white uniforms around
it, glow in the light from behind the bar.
  `I suppose it's a good way to learn Greek', I say, climbing up the ladder
onto Boat Deck behind Bar Holland.  There is a railing at the front of Boat
Deck, past the funnels, where we always stand.  It is as high and far as
you can go.
  I want to talk about Kaye Garrett with Bar, but something holds me back.
`All that make-up', I want to say, `do you think she looks hard?  Do you
think she looks older than seventeen?  I think swearing is unfeminine. 
Does she swear in front of men?  What is sex-appeal anyway?  She's got lots
of nice clothes herself, I don't know why she ...'
  It is quieter up here, we are further away from the engine, you can even
hear the crisp breaking of the wake, white in the black sea.  The wind blows
back Bar Holland's beach-white hair from her long, stern, chin.  Her eyelashes
are white too, so that her stare beyond the ship seems unblinking.  I wish
that I was like Bar Holland, my mind on higher things.
  `Think I'll go down and read', she says.
  `Yes', I say, `I must finish my letter'.
  Music has started up in the ballroom.  The soft thud of the drum, the
even ripple of the piano.  `Leesten', the singer's voice crackles as he
adjusts the microphone, `do you want to know a see-gret?'
  Corridor by corridor we descend the ship.
  We went to the ballroom once, on our first night aboard.  Kaye was with
us then.  We sat at a table by the dance-floor and ordered drinks.  `To
us', Kaye said.  The band, in midnight-blue tuxedos, winked and bowed at
us.  There was a solo on the electric guitar, the theme song from `Bonanza'.
A middle-aged couple danced a professional tango under the swirling gold
hexagons of the dome in the middle of the ceiling.  
  `Oh my God', Kaye Garrett said, `This is dire.'
  But after a while the ballroom filled with people, Second Sitting people.
The band took off their coats.  The dance floor thronged, lights dimmed,
shadows raced around the walls.  A white uniform bowed before Kaye.  She
got up slowly, her face was severe over his shoulder as they circled the
floor.  Bar Holland and I sipped our drinks, islanded amongst empty tables
and chairs.  Bar Holland stood up.
  `I'm going', she said.  `I'm bored.'
  We made a great show of fanning ourselves on the deck, of gasping for
fresh air.

`Who do you write all these letters to?' Bar Holland's bunk creaks above
me as she changes position, sighs, flicks pages.  I look at my watch.  9.30.
We have made our descent too early.  But there's no going back.  That would
be against our code, our anti-ship stance.  And I've already rollered up
my hair.
  `Oh - my parents mainly', I say.
  `S'pose I ought to drop the folks a line', says Bar.  `But what do you
say?  "I am eating, sleeping and reading.  Fondest regards".'
  `I'm sure they'd like to know how you are.'
  The bunk thumps.  Bar Holland's legs wave past me.  She crouch-lands on
the floor.  `They know I'm alive', she says.  `The rest is just - role play.'
  `But your parents - well, they feel for you', I say from the shadows of
my bunk.
  `Do they?'  She is walking up and down the cabin breast-stroking the air.
`How do you know what you feel if you just keep on spouting off your lines?'
Her voice trails off, she yawns.  `Anyway', she mutters, `I don't seem to
go in for feelings'.
  There's a knock at the door.  I shrink back clutching my rollers.  Bar
Holland opens it an inch.  Her blouse at the back is hanging out of her
skirt.  Her hair is fizzed into a little crown from lying down.
  `Oh it's you', she says.  She sounds almost angry.  `Oh all right, why
not.'  She reaches for her key on the dressing table.
  It's Eric.
 

You should see me now, I write, lying back next to the swimming pool!  I
pause.  This is more or less the case.  It was a relief to see this empty
deckchair as I picked my way through all those brown oily bodies.  `Yes
dear, come and join me', the old lady in the next chair said.  She's asleep
now.  We're not all that far from the pool.  The weather is perfect, everybody
is here.  I waved to Kaye Garrett but she didn't see me.  She's amongst
a very lively crowd of people.  Marie waves though, from under her big sunhat,
while another girl rubs cream into her shoulders.

</sample>



<sample><id> W05 </id>

<note> 2008 words </note>

<source> Ruth </source>

<bl> By Dorothy Johnston </bl>

Back at the refuge, Garry played with the other kids after school. He played
dispiritedly, wanting to be inside. But Ruth couldn't stand him hanging
around her. She shooed him away.
  Jean tried to tempt him with colouring books. He was `too old for that
crap'. Linda, a girl about his age, sat on Jean's knee, and Jean read to
her while Garry sat in a corner, listening, but pretending not to.
  `I get headaches,' he announced, `when I have to stay inside all the time.'
  `The doctor tell you that, did he?'
  Garry nodded. `He told Mum.'
  He took a step towards the door, saying `I'll go and look for some feathers.
I'll go by myself.'
  Jean shifted her cramped legs, longing to throw out her arms and gather
him in. Garry stood at the door, pulled up to his full height, frightened,
daring her.
  Miranda had her hair cut off.
  Ruth stared at her daughter, who stood in the doorway bran+dishing her
crew cut.
  `Where did you get the money?'
  `I took it out of your purse.'
  `Let me feel,' said Garry.
  Miranda bent down and the boy rubbed his hand over the black fur.
  `It feels nice.'
  He snatched up the chocolates they were supposed to be sharing. `They're
mine, meany meena!'
  `Shut up!'
  `Shut up!'
  He ran, shouting, `Meany, meany miny mo!' His heart was twisting. She
didn't chase him. When he got to the garage and was staring wildly for a
place to hide, he knew that she hadn't bothered to chase him.
  Garry wet his bed at night, and Ruth complained. Waking up to the smell
of wetness, Garry sulked and said he was sick and couln't go to school.
  One of the new residents looked after him so that Ruth could take Miranda
to the pictures.
  In the theatre, both were relieved to sit in the dark and not have to
keep up a conversation. The film wasn't particularly good, but Ruth didn't
mind in the least. She let herself relax in her seat and occasionally looked
across at her daughter, catching a glint of eyeball turned towards the
screen, an expression that might be one of concentration or boredom.
  When Ruth re-crossed her legs, Miranda immediately felt restless and did
the same. She produced the sweets they'd bought at interval and handed them
across. Miranda looked at her mother, but Ruth, at that moment, kept her
eyes turned towards the screen, unwrapping the sweet cleverly, without looking,
and dropping it luxuriously on the floor in front of her.
  The newspapers were full of politics now. They turned the news off in
the evenings because it was all about the same thing. Jean came out of the
office and turned it on again, saying she wanted to watch it if they didn't,
saying that if Labor got thrown out then it was good-bye to the refuge.
  Faces passed on the screen, interviewers with the taste of blood in their
mouths. They were interrupted by one child, then another. Someone said,
`Look at that. He's forgot to shave.' `Shh,' said someone else. `What've
they done that's so terrible?'
  Jean said, `And not only that. It's good-bye to your pensions as well.'
  They talked about it after Jean had gone home, divided be+tween those
who supported and those who condemned the government. It was Jean's way
of doing things; so often she was angry now, or appeared disdainful, which
got their backs up. 

It seemed like the first quiet afternoon for weeks. Ruth and Jean went out for 
a walk together.
  Across the road, the mass of the sea moved slowly towards the refuge.
  Ruth turned and looked back. `From the front, it looks like an ordinary
suburban house. But when you get inside, you realize it's not ordinary or
suburban at all.'
  Jean said, `No, it's not.'
  Ruth noticed, for the first time, that the creases around Jean's eyes
were permanent, and could only deepen with successive spring afternoons.
Weariness lined both their faces. A container ship was making for Port
Melbourne along the channel. Neat yachts danced. Ruth looked sideways at
Jean. There'd been no judgment, at least none that could, like a snake,
be grapsed be+hind the head with a forked stick. The residents were all
new. There'd been visits to the police, and legal aid. The date set for
the divorce was coming closer than she'd ever believed it could.
  Together they looked out over the bay, leaning on the railing in the
customary pose of travellers being photographed, those for whom the land,
invisible on the other side of the water, holds a common mystery. The sun
went in and out behind gathering clouds. They stared at a single stooped
figure, an old person in an overcoat pulled against the wind, scavenging
along the high water mark.
  Ruth said, `If I had to say one thing that was basic to human nature,
I would say the will to transcendence.'
  Jean asked again, `What really happened?' asking for the sim+ple truth.
Ruth had heard her asking it of others, while she sat in the living-room
with a book on her knees.
  Yet there was a clear line of truth, or purpose, or energy, that ran through
the place and the people there. To Jean they were the same thing and, though
she couldn't share the young woman's faith, for a moment Ruth saw things
as she did.
  Jean was talking and Ruth had missed the beginning.
  `- something else. A common purpose, not based on self-denial. Suffering
can bring women together and they can help each other.'
  Ruth listened without answering. She knew that Jean was reaching out to
her as she'd never done before.
  The wood sang under her fingers with a song of recognition from which
sadness lifted momentarily, blown away by the equinoctial winds. She looked
down at the old, many-times-painted wood. Sadness and homesickness blew
away.
  She said, speaking slowly, as if to herself, `The line between an imaginary
world and the world of common experience may be more fluid than we think.
It always has been so, for me.'
  The moment when the storm would break grew nearer. Past the end of the
pier, the swell rose. Ruth felt the push of it, beyond their narrow horizon,
from the ocean forced through a narrow gap in the land. And lording it over
that great moving canyon of water, behind a cliff top, was the home she
had left.
  `We're going to get caught,' Jean said. `Come on. Let's go to Leo's. I'll
buy you a gelati.'
  `Ice-cream? On a day like this?'
  `Let me shout you,' said Jean. `I'd like to.'
  They ran. The first big splotches of rain caught them as they waited for
a break in the traffic. Ruth laughed for Jean's sake and made a face as
she pulled at strands of hair.
  `Rain makes your hair curly,' Jean shouted over the noise of the 
semi-trailers.
  They reached the first of the shop verandahs as the sky opened, prepared
to let them have it.

Jean told Garry a story about a witch in a forest who was really kind and
good, but no-one believed her.
  `Ding dong, the witch is dead,' sang the little boy softly. He al+ready knew
the story, since they had so few books.
  `Read me the three pigs,' he commanded. `Little pig, litle pig, let me
come in!' he squealed, confusing the voices of storybook animals.
  Jean asked him questions, to which he answered no, or no+thing. He avoided
his sister whenever possible. He did drawings for Ruth, which she pinned up
over her bunk. One night, when he was tired, he called Jean Mummy, and later,
the next morn+ing, remembered and poked her in the leg with a biro.
  Jean took him for a walk to the pier. The sea was oily and had a bad smell.
Jean said it was the drain. Whether he believed in the power of the drains
or not, the smell entered the boy's head and stayed there, so that later,
when he felt sick, he blamed them.
  There was something else, a grey shadow at the end of his bed. He said
to Jean, `I saw Dad on the pier.'
  `No you didn't,' she told him.
  Garry found a place, beside the pier and often in its shadow, between
rocks where people sat dipping their legs with their jeans rolled up, that
reminded him of the swamp at home. It was nothing like the swamp to look
at, but he felt safe there, as he did nowhere else along that stretch of
suburban beach, or in the house or the park beyond it. It was a place where
you could al+ways find something new, usually rubbish brought in with the
tide, bits of clothing, buttons, bits of fishing line, once a kitchen knife
that he snatched up and cleaned back at the refuge, in the garage, keeping
it out of sight because if anyone saw him with it, it would be confiscated.
  It was as public as the swamp was private. Underneath, at low tide, the
sand stayed damp, and the green smell of the sea was mixed with those of
sweat and take-away food and diesel oil. Not truly alone; there'd be a group
of refuge women and kids up the beach, or a couple of roster women with
half a dozen kids who kept an eye on him from a distance. Garry looked about
for what was new, putting this or that in his pocket. There might be a man
or woman eating lunch out of a paper bag. People watched him. Sometimes
the lines of their gaze passed right through him and out into what his hands
were doing.
  The day he saw his father, he'd got away without anyone see+ing him. The
sea was blowing grey and ugly. He thought he'd wait for the tide to go out
far enough so that he could sit under the pier. On a day like this, there
wouldn't be anyone else. It was then that he saw Ken, walking down the road
to the pier and still some distance away.
  First he saw a man in a brown overcoat, walking the way his father walked.
He knew before he said to himself, it's Dad, that the man had been wearing
that coat all winter.
  He couldn't dash under the pier and hide, or even bob down. The sea hit
the stone wall. Garry put his hand in his mouth and bit it, then ran a few
steps along the road.
  `Dad.'
  Ken held out his good hand and Garry took it.
  `What're you doing here, Dad?'
  `I came up to see you.'
  `Does Mum know?'
  `Not yet.'
  Hoping Ken would follow, Garry began to head off along the pier. Some
of the men turned to look at them. Ken raised his eye+brows in a puzzled
way and his face, to strangers, might have looked as if it was appealing
to them.
  `Are you all right? What about Miranda?'
  `She's okay.'
  `Are you going to school?'
  `Of course.'
  `What about today?'
  `Today's different. Dad, did you know that here they use different rods?'
  `What?'
  `Rods. For fish. And they hardly ever catch any. Did you bring Collingwood?'
  `No, silly, of course not.'
  `We live in a white house. Have you seen it?'
  Ken hesitated, then gave a brief nod. By this time they'd walked to the
end of the pier and back. He said, `I'm going now. I think you'd better
be getting back.'
  `What for? I'm staying till lunch-time.'
  `Don't argue with me Garry. I'll wait here. Go on now.'
  They'd reached the intersection. Ken stood back for Garry to press the
lights at the pedestrian crossing.
  Garry looked back once, knowing his father would be watch+ing. At the
corner he hesitated again, then turned towards the laneway, the way he'd
come. It was right that his father should appear while he was thinking about
him.

</sample>


<sample><id> W07 </id>

<note> 2014 words </note>

<source> Novice death </source>

<bl> By Robin Gregory </bl>

  The bus drove through the quiet streets, unusually deserted. The sun shone
warmly through the windows. The wattles were just beginning to bloom with
the message that spring, at last, was spreading wings and would soon be
flourishing colour and warmth around the city. People at last coming out
of their huddles around fires and heaters into the open. Though this day
had not yet brought out many, except this tube filled with laughter, singing
and fervent yells. They felt the sunshine and lapped it up, they felt the
eager+ness and sang out with it.
  All alighted, still gabbling away, drowning out the chirping of the
neighbourhood birds. Banners were dragged off the back of the bus, the
women melted together and quickly organized. Like actors they went about
their business, each with her own task, each part of the ensemble.
  Cheers and protests broke the leisurely atmosphere. They moved en masse
to the clinic where Julie had been refused. The front line stood on the
steps staring into the dark and empty interior and read, `Closed on Monday
12th'.
  "Fuck. How dare they!" screamed Julie and gradually the word was passed
down the line.
  Somebody laughed alone. They swore and mingled and hesitated.
  Rachael took control deftly and simply. As soon as she spoke the voices
dropped. In a voice just louder than a whisper she said, "I brought along
some spray cans. It's a bit dangerous in broad daylight, but if anyone's
willing we should do it now."
  The small crowd nodded enthusiastically, only a couple were hesitant.
After all they had made the effort, they may as well do something for their
trouble.
  There were few cars around, and while the majority kept watch, Julie,
Rachael and a couple of others filled the glass panels with graffiti.
  `THIS CLINIC DISCRIMINATES BECAUSE OF SEXUAL PREFERENCE.'
  `LESBIANS HAVE THE RIGHT TO ARTIFICIAL INSEMINATION.'
  They drew numerous lesbian symbols on the glass.

  It was quite a sight to behold once they had finished with it. Only one
car had passed and the women held up their banners to hide the painters.
The women laughed and cheered when they had finished. They felt enthused
and ready for more of the same stuff. A splinter group disappeared with
the remaining cans while the rest rolled up the banners and trooped back
onto the bus. They would come again tomorrow, without Julie though, it would
be too dangerous after the writing on the wall.
  "Might be an idea if you vanished for a few days," Rachael suggested,
"I bet the pigs will be on to you quick smart."
  "I'm not worried," laughed Julie, "I don't mind going to court to prove
a point."
  "Don't be crazy Jules, you already owe them $500 from the last time. If
they catch up with you, you could be spending the next year in jail."
  Julie sighed. Rachael was always so sensible about these sorts of things,
it just pissed her off sometimes.
  "I'll see," was all she would commit herself to.
  Rachael returned to the office of the women's press called the Bronte
Sisters. She got caught up in discussions about the possibility of employing
a new worker. All the women there worked a great deal of overtime, but
they weren't certain the budget would support another member of staff. Women
were always dropping in for a chat too, and Rachael spent most of the afternoon
with a member of an incest group discussing the printing of a sticker, its
format, cost and amount. Each worker had a broad role and each was involved
in many of the processes of printing. The buzz never stopped until about
five, so Rachael stayed back, finally able to concentrate her energies.
All the others had left by six and she was left in the peace and quiet of
the large office, solitary at her small laminated table with a lamp her
only companion.
  All the anger and hurt she had experienced gave her power which drove
itself onto paper. After an hour and a half she re-read her essay.
  `Wimmin have been held in the pope's hand for centuries. Now is the moment
to break free - to destroy the illusion of his power+fulness and
self-righteousness.
  `Wimmin have been forced into submission through catholicism and been
abused by its system. For centuries men have decided the fate of wimmin
according to their desires. Wimmin exist merely to serve. This is evident
in the marriage ceremony when the bride says she will obey her husband,
making her the slave and the man the master. This agreement implicitly allows
a man to use any means to obtain discipline, for discipline requires
punishment. Since no rules are written regarding this, it is up to the
discretion of the master to use what means he sees fit or merely what he
feels like doing, whether that is rape, bashing or anything else.
  `The ten commandments do not contain any creed to which men are answerable
for their crimes against wimmin, or their children for that matter. `THOU
SHALT NOT RAPE' is noticeably lacking from the laws. `THOU SHALT RESPECT
THY WIFE AND CHILDREN' is nowhere to be seen. The whole bible is oriented
to men's interests, not to the welfare of wimmin and children.
  `Wimmin are used as objects who bear children and gratify men's imagined
sexual needs. Their other purpose is to work for their own salvation and
that of men's. For wimmin are seen as the evil-doers, while men are led
into sin by them. Men take no responsibility for their actions. If a man
committs*commits adultery it is because his wife has not served him well
enough and the other womyn seduced him. Men are innocent and wimmin are
either saints or sinners.
  `Catholicism has always ignored wimmin. It has been led by `celibate'
men who have no interest in or contact with wimmin. All through the ages
popes have not noticed how wimmin have struggled to survive and feed their
children. The pope of today still chooses to ignore. The pope with luxuries
enough to feed the starving wimmin and children of the world, must be made
accountable for his crimes against wimmin. We must use every bone in our
bodies to crush him, every strategy to rid the world of the oppression of
catholicism.
  `Now more than ever it is imperative that we attack religions and their
control over wimmin. The right-wing backlash is coming on strong, they are
getting more organized by the minute. They are an extremely powerful force.
We must present an equally, if not stronger group and fight back.
  `Especially at this time when wimmin are discovering their own spiritually,
their own religions, it is too easy to forget the rest of the world and
leave the fight. Do not forget all the wimmin in all countries who are brutally
oppressed. Catholicism, which is so much a part of our culture and our country,
still has as much power over wimmin as it did centuries ago. Remember those
wimmin and join us in the march to end catholicism.
  `Wimmin demand the right to control their bodies and to make choices
about their lives and those of their children.'
  Rachael leant back. It would need more work, but at least she had the
framework now. The hardness in her face, the tight mouth were as tenacious
as ever; the fight continued. Even in her sleep her face gave her no rest,
she lived with and through those lines.
  Rachael stood and stretched. The office was so silent a shiver travelled
up her back. Scowling, she told herself she was afraid of nothing. Still
the feeling remained and she made her way speedily out of the darkened
building, after pulling on her heavy black coat. She locked the building
and stood just outside. The air was good out here, it was too stuffy in
there.
  It was an easy walk to the cathedral from the Bronte Sisters. It was a
stunning building in Australian terms. The building of St. Patrick's began
in 1858 and was finally completed with the appearance of spires, on what
were previously gothic towers. They were noticeably an addition to the church
- white against the bluestone. Although by day the contrast seemed quite
clumsy, at night it gave the cathedral a mystical atmosphere. Those great
white spires rocketing away from the gloomy base.
  Inside, Rachael threw a cursory glance at the enormous ceiling with its
decorative timber beams. So much money, she thought, wasted on this pompous
church, paid for by those who could least afford it. And they were made
to believe it was the doorway to the after-life, that this was for the glory
of god, and bugger how hungry or cold they felt.
  The stained-glass windows were colourful and entrancing. Rachael walked
firmly down the aisle, scowling at the high altar*alter and the side chapels 
with their dramatic representations. She tried a door marked `No Admittance',
it was locked hard.
  A praying man watched her, ready to jump up and intervene. He tried to
catch the woman's eye, but Rachael took no notice of him, as she dodged
in and out of the confession boxes. They reminded her of too much. That
dreadful memory that bit at her soul every so often. The time when her father
had left her and her mother. Rachael had hated him so much. She had dreams
about killing him, walking in on him in the middle of the night, while he
was asleep in bed, and stabbing him with the kitchen knife. Other times
she hoped that her mother would just leave him, that he would no longer
be around. She did not expect him just to up and walk out, that had never
been one of her fantasies, but still she was sure she was to blame. God
knows all! How many times had that been drummed into her? When her father
had gone, and her mother was distraught, Rachael knew she was to blame.
She knew that god had punished her for thinking such wicked thou+ghts. She
had to confess. Afterwards she wished she never had. The priest agreed it
was her fault, obviously she had made her father feel how unwanted he was,
and she had destroyed her moth+er's life. The guilt she had felt was immense.
She prayed and prayed for forgiveness, cried herself to sleep every night,
even asked for his return, so that the ache in her brain would leave her
alone. Better to live with him and the fights with her mother than suffer
this agony. He never came back though.
  Outside, Rachael trode heavily around the cathedral, trying different
doors, none of which were open. She walked around the block a few times,
checking out all the buildings.
  On her third time around, the tall woman stopped at the Vic+torian Artists'
Society which was across the road from St. Patrick's. It was a
two-storey*two-story building where the conservative artists in Mel+bourne 
exhibited their pro-establishment work.
  "I wonder if Julie has been here?" said Rachael to the door. She studied
it carefully and then turned to the cathedral from its step. From there
she gained a view of the west doorway. The doorway where priests would come
and go. Ten minutes passed and still the woman in black stood transfixed.
  After yet another trip around the cathedral, into gardens, up steps and
back at the Artists' Society she finally nodded and headed past the towering
edifice towards the city. She passed a nun, who had a familiar face. Rachael
recalled the nun she'd had as a teacher in primary school, whose face reminded
her of a crow, wizened and hard. She had a sharp face, like this one and
the same beady dark eyes. Sitting in English classes and being whacked over
the knuckles with a thick steel ruler, for not spelling all her words
correctly. She could never do her tables either, and the fury of Sister
Angelina would fall upon her for that too.

</sample>



<sample><id> W08 </id>

<note> 2027 words </note>

<source> The Arrowsmith woman </source>

<bl> By Avigan </bl>

  Poitr came on the box in prime time, just after the news.
Not the Poitr of today. The one of six months ago. It was a film clip taken
of her singing in the cathedral, just before the choir's European tour. I
hadn't known it existed. Good TV, this. The researchers hadn't been sleeping.
No mistaking, either, what stance Mr. Les Mayberry was going to take. The
fallen angel. I hoped Poitr was strong enough. She'd need a cool head and
a tight arse. Shit, this was big league stuff.
  Unlike most chat-shows, this one was not done in front of a live audience.
Which was fortunate, I thought. From the safety of an auditorium the sneaky,
yellow bastards, and bitches - in fact, especially the bitches - could hurl
abuse. (Pearl one, plain one, like they used to do watching Dr. Guillotine's
nifty little invention going through its paces.) Poitr would have had to
fight on two fronts, and with the kind of blind antagonism you can expect
from the idiots who attend live chat-shows, the "blue-rinse" brigade, it
would just have been messy. No, in a one-to-one interview she was more
likely to accomplish something. Though it wasn't going to be easy. Goliath
had won the toss - by virtue of his position - so it was him to break. And
with that film clip, it was tantamount to sinking ten reds and leaving Poitr
with one helluva snooker.
  Abba, Poitr and I had been met in reception by a down-the-line public
relations officer, what is known in the trade as a flower arranger. She was
all plastic smiles as she led us through a maze of corridors, pointed out
the attractions like the giant props department, and deposited Poitr in
make-up. Everyone filmed in a studio has to be covered in a quarter inch of
grease.
  "And if you'll come this way," she said to Abba and me, "there is a waiting
room next door."
  She left us there alone, and twenty minutes later Poitr came in, hardly
daring to move for the pack on her face. She went to a mirror and patted at
it with a tissue. If she dug long enough, I thought, she might even excavate
her face. Then she sat down next to Abba, closed her eyes, and began to hum
softly.
  Abba did none of the things fathers would normally do if their fifteen-
year-old ward was about to go on television. Not a local, housewives' mid-
morning show. The top-rated, prime-time, nationally-televised, Les Mayberry
blood-and-guts show. You watched Les Mayberry if you liked watching the lion
eat the Christian. All Abba did was radiate his inner peace.
  A door marked "Personnel only" opened into the waiting room.
  "Well, well, well. So this is the young lady who's caused such a stir.
Couldn't very well miss you, now could we?"
  It wasn't Les Mayberry. There would have to be more handing up the line
before you met Him. This was just some guy out of a toothpaste ad. He took
us down more corridors till we got to a studio, where he introduced us to
the producer. From here on, Poitr was on her own. Abba and I were ushered
to the control room where we could look down on the studio through a large
panel of glass, or sit and watch a bank of monitors if we preferred that.
Until the show started, what happened down below was a silent movie.
  I was so damn nervous that time became distorted and the figures down below
moved in a dream. I saw Him come on, shake hands with Poitr, and motion her
to her seat on a rostrum. He sat down in the only other chair, half profile
to viewers when he faced her. Three huge cameras jockeyed at the starting
gate. There were hand signals everywhere, Mayberry did a last-second
superfluous adjustment to his perfectly knotted tie, jutted his jaw to pull
the loose skin out of a too-tight collar - that's where age really shows: in
the skin of the neck - and suddenly the monitors in front of us flared. There 
was the angel in white, singing in her virgin-pure voice. Ten seconds of that, 
and the producer cut to the studio, a close-up of Les Mayberry.
  "Good evening, viewers, and welcome to the Les Mayberry Show. You might
think that film clip fell into this programme by some mistake. After all,
what you were told to expect from us tonight was an interview with the
Minister for Overseas Development, on Biafra- No, that wasn't the Minister
you just saw."
  He paused, knowing there would be laughter in a million homes.
  "Our other guest here tonight is what lovers of Ionesco are calling The Bald
Prima Donna."
  I don't know why, but I had a feeling that line came from his team of
researchers. It just didn't sit well on his tongue.
  "Now that film clip is of the same lady in, what shall we say, happier
times?" Meaningful pause. "Before we bring you Miss Poitr Lefevre in person
- she's sitting right here in the studio with me - we'll show you another
film clip, this time taken at yesterday's Carnival procession."
  And there it was on the monitors. I have to admit, it was extremely well
done. The film ran at normal speed right to the moment her hand went up and
gripped the scarf. Then it jerked, freeze-frame to freeze-frame, the way
they do with footage of presidents being assassinated. They ran it through
twice like that, and the dramatic impact was enormous. Then came The Twist.
  The insiduous menace of television was demonstrated here to its fullest.
Once again it was the credibility of the half-truth that did the work. What
you saw on the box did actually happen. It's not a bunch of actors re-
enacting a scene so as to give it its slant. It is, very simply, the way it
is put together. You notice this ability of television to twist the meaning
of things if you were personally involved in an incident that is
then featured on the box. It is all done in selection and editing, and at
all film schools they have a course on how it can be misused, accompanied
by talks on ethics. It seems the ethics, most often, are forgotten.
  But the disease goes deeper still. Even people who themselves have been
slandered in one programme, will be sucked in and suckered by the very next
programme. But this is not credible, you'll say. For a while at least,
surely, they will be circumspect about anything that appears on television?
I'm afraid that in practice it does not work like that. Television is the
most powerful, the most addictive, and potentially the most destructive of
all drugs. If you think this is a load of crap, the maniacal ramblings of
some sort of nut with a grudge, then get a load of this: just recently some
TV programme did an expose of a hair spray that made people's hair fall out.
Now with that kind of damage to their product, you would have thought the
manufacturers would have gone into liquidation the very next week. Well,
what actually happened is documented, so you can check up on it. What
happened was, the very next week their sales doubled. Yes, doubled.
  Somehow, the visual image predominates, and while shoppers quickly forgot
the connection with the image, they remembered the image. So when confronted
by rows and rows of hair spray in the supermarket, they went for the
familiar one.
  Which brings us to the visual image which Mr. Les Mayberry chose now to
screen. It was of that tousle-haired, pasty-skinned, conscientiously
unattractive Women's Libber with her grotesque "up yours" gesture.
  Poitr was fully aware of all the manipulations and insinuations, even at age
fifteen. I know, because it was she who explained it to me afterwards. For
Poitr to try and out+gun Mayberry would have been as useless as farting
against thunder. So she stayed small, used silence to its full effect,
and waited for him to get reckless enough to fall into the pit he was
digging for her.
  The camera cut back to a long shot of him and Poitr - the audience's first
glimpse of her in the studio. As the camera zoomed in on her face, Mayberry's 
voice did the introduction. Poitr did not move or say anything, just looked 
demurely and calmly at her hands in her lap. She was wearing a plain, simple 
"teenage" dress. Her head was uncovered, there for a million or three viewers 
to stare at. The camera just stayed on her, demanding she say something, like 
maybe "Good evening" or "Glad to be here". Damn it, didn't she know the form? 
The producer caught up with the situation and pulled back to a long shot.
  Mayberry was made of harder metal. His smirk was in place as he goaded
Poitr.
  "Well, not very pretty when you have to look at it, now is it?" A TV monitor
stood in front of them and a little to the side, so they had seen the film
clips.
  Poitr raised her head slowly and though her expression was neutral, those
emerald eyes must have burnt him. It wasn't their colour he didn't like, it
was their confidence.
  "No," she said. "I would be gracious in victory." My phrase.
  "Then how come you are tied in with that lot? Tell us about it. We are most
curious. Not that I have anything against Women's Lib," he lied,
genuflecting invisibly to the ratings, "but the way you people behaved
yesterday, I must say ... But tell us all about it. When did you first join
their ranks, when did you first become, as it were, an activist? A
militant?"
  "Mr. Mayberry. I have as much connection with the Women's Libbers as you
have with the Southern Iranian Carpet Weavers' Association. None. I am a
member of a church choir, and of a conservatorium of music, and a college.
I am not a member of anything else at all. Nor am I a free agent for any
group, nor particularly sympathetic to any movement. What is more, what I
did yesterday had absolutely nothing at all to do with the liberation of
women."
  "Then what the - Why did you do it?"
  He was definitely off balance. Good. Poitr would use that. With a bounce off
the cushion she had managed to sink her first red and was all lined up on
the black. But she wasn't going to put it all out, right off. He would just
shoot it down. Let him see a bit at a time. That way he wouldn't know
exactly what he was supposed to be firing at. But she had even better than
that in store for him. She was going to let him fight on her side.
Unwittingly, of course. By the time he realised what she was doing it would
be too late, she would have won the day. Then it was up to his intelligence
whether he conceded graciously*gratiously, or went skittling back to his
corner. In a funny way, I began to feel sorry for Goliath.
  "Do what, Mr. Mayberry?"
  "Why, that!" He waved wildly at the monitor in front of them. He was
exasperated, he had nothing to hold onto.
  "Please tell me what I did, Mr. Mayberry."
  He would have to take up the challenge. He couldn't afford to have his
viewers see a kid deflate him. He answered quickly, because that is the way
with chat-shows: rapid-fire, slick repartee, especially at the level of the
Les Mayberry Show. If he had slowed down just a bit he might have caught
himself before he tumbled headlong, but old habits die hard.
  "You disgraced your university and humiliated the people who had elected you
Carnival Queen. You had been chosen to grace the main float, to be an attractive symbol, so that the people of your city would come and give money to a noble charity. 

</sample>



<sample><id> W12 </id>

<note> 2000 words </note>

<source> Island - Winter 1986 </source>

<h> A journey </h>

<bl> By Suzanne Edgar </bl>

The four-wheel drive carries the watchers through lemony evening light towards
the heart of the country where the green flames of little pines leap from
blond grass. Netta wants to arrest the steel cocoon; or force a window and
fly back to the red gums sculpturing the river banks, their gnarled fist
roots clutching soil sucked by the hungry Lachlan.
  At last they make camp and Netta, anxious to be helpful, takes a bucket
and stumbles into a lagoon. She emerges calmer, but slopping her water a
little. After dark they cradle full stomachs around the fire while Alex,
the leader, plucks songs from his guitar. Netta and the German girl Irmgard
stay up late, talking of why they've come; a half moon paints white slats
between the trees. In the morning dry light and space shimmer into Netta's
head and push away depression and doubt.
  Driving again, she dozes, chin lounging against the seat belt, and wakes
remembering her friends in the cafe, herself on the defensive.
  "Why's a townie like you going racing across the country with a mob of
bushies? You won't see much from the inside of a bloody great van," John
said.
  "You should take a fly net," Delia warned.
  "Where on earth do you buy those?"
  "Netta you're so impractical. I'll lend you one."
  Lal yelled from the machine where she was yanking levers to make cappuccino.
"You mightn't get on with the rest of the group. They won't be like your
gallery tour types."
  "That's a risk, but I'm hoping to meet some Aborigines up north. We'll
be at Yowah and Eulo for two weeks."
  "Woolly-minded liberal travels north to ease guilt!" John mocked. Anger
tightened through Netta's chest.
  Now she swats at flies sipping a bead of sweat in a hollow above her lips,
and looks out at glowing red earth stippled with yellow flowers. Netta's
thighs and the bench are sealed with sweat; a stubble sandpapers her legs.
  Why had she been so disorganised when it came to getting away? Even at
the clinic; Dr Moore had been irritated about the accounts she wouldn't
get finished.
  "Where's the bloody McCormack file?" he'd screamed - in front of the courier.
Netta stared into the filing cabinet. After the sniggering youth had gone
the boss nudged her.
  "Sorry Net. Have you found it?" Passing the file, their hands grazed.
He watched her affectionately and Netta trembled.
  "Wouldn't it be better to travel with friends, rather than total strangers?
It might be strenuous, you're not getting any younger old girl."
  How answer that there was no-one to go with? How say, I don't have holidays
because in that hotel on Fraser Island I barely spoke to a soul. Or, cocktails
and dinner in the revolving tower just aren't available to me.
  "I'd like some adventure, you never know what I might find out there.
Who I might meet. And I find nature ... refreshing. Your style of thing,
with boats and booze and teenagers all over the place doesn't really appeal."
That shut him up.
  But how would she manage in a tent with strangers? It was difficult to
sleep in her own flat. Perhaps the others would be tight little couples,
with smug wives boring on about children and extensions.
  Anything would be better than this dreary business, dwindling as the suburb
aged and people died. Last winter, in between patients, she'd knitted the
boss a jumper. She loved to see the soft wool, turned in her hands, wrapped
around his throat. Moore himself was concerned. He might move to a busier
partnership, or retire early. She needed to look for something else, but
put it off.
  At Yowah, Netta and Irmgard put up their tent where wild hops spurt among
the rocks. Netta finds a trail of glass and opal chips near a bower bird's
shrine. She brings out her hat decorated with silk poppies and Delia's net
fits around the crown.
  Burnt orange distance is a magnet and one morning Netta sets out on her
own. One can't get lost with one's feet on a track, she tells herself; Mulga
trees wind like ghosts of people the land once owned. Ahead, two great brolgas
appear, heads lifted to catch her slight scent and sound. She watches the
birds who move in a tantalising rhythm; dissolving in the haze when she
approaches; still and silver if she waits. Netta leaves her little drab
self scuttling along with shoulder bag, hat, and googly-eyed field glasses
and merges with the high-stepping birds.
  They lead her to a pool covered with tiny flowers where a small bird stalks
on stilts, darting at insects and staring into the water. A narcissus bird.
Netta flicks back the fly net and looks down at her own face, askew in the
brownish mirror, with circle of straw for frame and dark hair greeting its
image: a closed, self-contained look. Not so assured as the brolgas; more
like this solitary dot of a bird who makes do with very little, unperturbed
by an intruder kneeling in the clay. 
  Netta strips and wades in, splashing water over her arms and sinking a
little in oozing mud. Then she shoves her underwear in the bag, replacing
only her blouse and skirt. A change in the light switches her back to time
and other people's expectations; she heads for Yowah. Silky red powder silts
up the hairs along her toes and blows round her calves. Striking sharp chips
of fluted rock, Aboriginal flints, she selects one for a talisman.
  Eulo is a pub and a thickening of weatherboard houses beside the road.
One morning a voice in a megaphone swings through the bush to Netta and
Irmgard scraping eggs from frying pans.
  "Welcome ladies and gents to the World Championship Lizard Races get down
here early you've got to be in it to win it so place your bets on one of
our thoroughbred lizards assembled here from studs all over the south-west,
enter the log chopping and ladies' tug-of-war chicken wheels and steak
sandwiches refreshments no limit." Netta shudders.
  But Irmgard is keen. "Let us go Netta? We haf come all this way, we should
at least look. Also, some postcards I must buy."
  "I hate crowds, and the noise! It's bad enough from here. Besides, I've
got no clean clothes."
  "We can go to the river and wash our shorts. They will dry so very fast
in this heat."
  "Couldn't you go with Alex and the others?"
  "They are gone already. Come please Netta?"
  "All right, but I'm not staying long, I hate drinking in the middle of
the day in weather like this."
  Blacks, oil drillers, cattle men in tough hats and boots, out-of-towners
mill about the pub, and the verandah overflows with men lifting stubbies
to cracked lips. In the beer garden raw Queensland rump sizzles on barbecues
and the megaphone belts out starting times. Packs of men hunt together,
while babies crawl like blowies over their sprawling, slack-bellied mothers.
Netta's glad of her net and grins at a blonde teetering by on stiletto heels,
slapping herself.
  "You've got the right idea love. Next year I'm gunna come up here with
a truckload a them things to sell. Reckon you'd make a killing."
  "Maybe I'll do that myself."
  "Is that right? Well good on ya."
  Netta lets herself surge with the crowd. At the log chopping, bronze giants
in navy singlets hose down the arena and a sweet smell of soil and sawdust
rises. Irmgard has disappeared. After the lizard races, Netta heads for
a gin and tonic. A black woman sitting on the kerb catches her eye and waves
her over. They talk: Minnie Stevens, her niece Riena, and Netta the southerner.
  "You like me sing you corroboree? I sing you magic, woman's magic. Only
for woman." Netta sits on the grass.
  When Minnie sings her body sways and her eyes snap and glitter. Weaving
a high-pitched tune with voice and flowing hands, she seems to conjure powerful
rites; though Netta doesn't properly understand. The three women are in
a world apart, beside the old red road, beside the pub. Afterwards Netta
can never recall Minnie's face, so dominant are her black, conspiratorial
eyes. Deep, yellow-black eyes. The singing slows to a wail.
  "Let's have another drink Netta, you buy me a beer eh? Then I sing you
more songs." Netta brings a row of frosted cans.
  "Thanks darlin. Now I make you special love magic, get you boyfriends,
many boyfriends. I make you boyfriend stay only with you, never look at
other woman, come back you always even from far away place."
  Netta flushes behind her net. What boyfriend? "All right," she says, "but
you'll need pretty strong magic."
  "No? Doan tell me that. You beautiful woman, lovely hair", she reaches
out and strokes Netta's hair. "I get you much power, sing a rainbow roun
your face."
  The singing begins again. Each incantation ends with a strange
upward-twirling trill. Only this time the hands thread the air about Netta's
bare thighs, flit before her breasts. Dabs of spit are anointed, "ptht ptht",
on her cheeks, inside her knees, along her arms.
  "How old you are darlin?"
  "Forty."
  "No, that carn be true. You doan look it, same as me! You an me can be
good friends, we understand many things these young ones carn't, tee hee."
Minnie nudges Netta and winks to exclude Riena and also Irmgard listening,
intrigued but cautious, on the edge.
  "I love you darlin," Minnie hugs Netta. "You come to the toilet with me
eh?" Minnie gets up and hitches her dress with the faded pink roses. They
link arms for a journey to the ladies and gents leaning under a peppercorn.
Flies cluster on scraps of stained lavatory paper and it stinks of urine
spilled wide of the mark. Queuing for a squat over the pit, Min announces
Netta is with her. When they return, a young man is lowering himself on
to his haunches beside Riena.
  "Luke! Lukey, where you bin all this time? Haven been to see your old
auntie for months. Netta, this my nephew Luke. Luke meet my frien Netta.
She's from Canberra, can you believe it?"
  "Hello Luke."
  "Hi. Pleased to meet you, staying up here long?"
  "Only a week, worse luck."
  "I bin singin her magic, she's very powerful woman. You still got that
shirt I fix for you Luke? You doan wash it, do nothin to spoil its power
like I tole you, no dry cleaning?"
  "No no auntie, don't worry, it's in my cupboard. You don't go along with
this stuff do you Netta?"
  "Oh yes I do."
  "Go on, I bet you don't; white people never do, they think it's rubbish."
Luke is a little embarrassed by his Aunt Min and toothless Riena, as one
is at twenty, imagining he sees them through this stranger's eyes. But Netta
can't emphasise her belief enough.
  "I don't think it's rubbish," she says urgently.
  "I don't believe you."
  "But you must, it's true; I do believe, and I respect your aunt." For
some reason she cares intensely how Luke judges her. He wears a neat shirt
and shorts, a bush hat is pushed back over dark, curling hair; his eyes
are aquamarine. Black-fringed eyes in a golden face, searching hers, relenting.
  "Come up for the races did you?"
  "Yes, partly."
  "What do you think of Eulo?"
  "I love it."
  "He's a good boy, my sister's boy, you like im Netta?" Minnie turns away
to hector Riena, who has lit a cigarette, and Luke drops to one knee, hesitant.
  "Would you ... would you let me kiss you?" A rope in Netta's chest loosens
and drops. She looks around, sees the Mechanics' Institute with its banner
flapping over the porch: Disco Dance Sat 28th. Eyes plead.
  "I suppose I would, if you really want to."
  Luke removes his hat and leans forward. 

</sample>
          



<sample><id> W13 </id>

<note> 2015 words </note>

<source> Overland - September 1986 </source>

<h> Twilight hours </h>

<bl> By Ann Granat </bl>

"Have you been rushing? You sound out of breath." 
  Margaret's calm voice washes over me on the tele+phone, without cooling. 
I want to smash the receiver down, I want to scream, I want to splatter 
terrible words into Margaret's well-manicured universe.
  Instead, I mutter something about the heat and close my eyes. I imagine
Margaret in this twilight hour in her large, cool house, a gin-and-tonic in
hand. Her chil+dren fed and pyjamaed, her dinner-table prepared, in
anticipation of Robert, husband and father. He is on his way, a modern
messiah, manoeuvring the Volvo through the city traffic.
  I am being unfair - it's jealousy. I am jealous of Margaret and Robert,
jealous of their lives. They have order and control, the best of all
possible worlds.
  I could not imagine Margaret ever losing control. Her ancestors, solid
Anglo-Saxons, carefully guard her against any untoward show of emotions.
Unlike me, she has no melancholy middle-European ghost in her cupboard. My
latest one, an ancient Austro-Hungarian aunt, quite recently jumped off a
high baroque build+ing in Vienna. For the occasion she wore a red silk
kimono from the Thirties, with a large embroidered gold butterfly on the
back.

I don't ever confide in Margaret, I don't unburden. From our*out first meeting
at university, fifteen years ago, she pegged the boundaries of our friendship.
We walk in pleasant meadows, but never venture into the hot arid lands
beyond.
  The best she can do for me under the circumstances is another dinner-party
invitation. The conversation will be light, the food Provencal. "Don't
forget, drinks at seven."
  I am touched that she doesn't ask me to bring a part+ner. Being an unmatched
guest, the odd number out will surely spoil the symmetry of an otherwise
perfect dinner table.
  A gift of loyalty I hope to take with grace.

The twilight hours have almost passed. For us, they are the worst. Things
change in the twilight hours. The house is full of shapes out of control.
Shadows extend darkly. They threaten. They will swallow us if we let them.
  Now that the evening has come I turn on all the lamps. Yellows, saffrons,
reds - the small house is ablaze.
  A strip of gold shows under his door, but there is no sound - my son locks
himself into his room straight after dinner. He can barely wait to leave the
kitchen table, where we sit opposite each other. He says noth+ing while we
eat. He doesn't look at me. He swallows his food quickly without any show
of pleasure. His face is guarded, locked against me. "How was school to+day?" 
I ask. He doesn't answer.
  I keep up a false monologue, words burn my throat as they surface.
Aimlessly, like ashes, they scatter and fall. Green rattan mats on the
table, red roses in a vase, roast chicken with all the trimmings. These are
my offerings to him, my penance.

At home he spends most of his time in his room with his cats. He has
collected four since we came to live here, six months ago.
  The sleek black Tom reminds me of Mac, the cat we used to have in the other
house. This one has the same self-assured walk, the same smooth-soft coat,
unblink+ing green eyes that go right through you into an in+visible world
beyond. When we left, Mac was twelve, the same age as my son, but ancient
in cat-years. Too set in his territorial ways, he violently resisted our ev+ery
attempt to take him with us. In the end he had to be put down.
  The others are two tabby females, sisters from the same litter, and a ginger
male in constant competition with the black. My son brought them home one
by one, in spite of all my appeals and threats. He has given them names, but
he won't tell me what they are.

My son is usually well home before me. He rides his bike from the local high
school, just a few streets away.
  The school where I teach is on the other side of Mel+bourne, in one of the
western suburbs. My students are wary teenagers with bristly, multicolored 
hair and bad teeth. Restlessly they bide their time. They smash windows and 
smear graffiti on walls. Most come from broken  homes and have themselves been 
broken a long time ago. I was lucky to get the  job in the first place - I had 
not taught for more than twelve years, but my qualifications were still all 
right.
  For English I teach them survival skills, though they would rather be
watching videos. This week we saw two - on werewolves. They loved the second
one best because of all the blood and gore. It kept them order+ly and calm.

My grandmother believed in werewolves. She even knew one once. I used to sit
petrified on her wide black-skirted lap when she talked about it.
  There was a man who lived in her village when she was a young girl. A
farmer, an ordinary decent fellow, he `turned' one night without warning,
when the moon was at its most fearsome, its fullest. He howled so hor+ribly
that everyone in the village bolted their doors and put their lights out.
My grandmother just managed to catch a glimpse of him through a crack in the
door. He was a horrible sight: wild hair, fangs, red-hot bulg+ing eyes and
all. His wife, the fool that she was, let him in. "And what do you think he
did?" my grand+mother would ask, while I shivered. "He tore her into pieces,
limb by limb. Then he disappeared. No one ever saw him again."
  No full moon for me. I `turn' in the twilight hours, surely a time more
appropriate to life in the suburbs.

Driving home from work this afternoon I was full of good intentions. In
spite of the heat I felt almost serene.
  I stopped to get some ice-cream, his favorite, the layered kind with the
chocolate in the middle.
  We would go to the beach, I decided - it's only a few minutes by car. He has
loved the sea ever since he was a toddler. He can swim way out into the deep
now.
  Last summer we went to the beach a lot. The three of us. On Sundays we would
take a picnic lunch: fresh fruit, orange juice, sandwiches carefully wrapped
in foil, and a bottle of champagne. Sometimes we would stay all afternoon.
In this world of soft sand and ultramarine sky, my husband and I drank
champagne. When we playfully clinked our glasses I thought we were
celebrating life. I didn't suspect we were sealing my betrayal.

I arrived home around six. The twilight hours had al+ready begun. The day
had paled from the heat, leav+ing behind a dull, discolored image of itself.
Sprinklers hummed rhythmically on front lawns, cars pulled into driveways.
Husbands returned home from work, fam+ilies prepared for the evening.
Sheltered by rituals of habit, they were unaware of shadows growing.
  There was no sign of his bike. When I unlocked the front door, two of the
cats dashed out from inside, the ginger chasing the black. They jumped
across the side fence and disappeared. The two tabbies were asleep,
decorously curled up on my bed. My bedroom curtain was in tatters on one
side, the scattered pink shreds glinting in the sunlight.
  The house was filled with a pungent smell. He had locked the cats in again
this morning. They had been trapped inside the house all day. His clothes
were thrown all over the loungeroom, broken glass and corn+flakes littered
the kitchen floor, dirty dishes everywhere.
  A trivial situation. Most kids are untidy; they don't care, they easily
forget. 
  Yet I stood in the kitchen, crying. I couldn't stop the tears. They weren't
mine. They belonged to the other - to the one who lost control. Rough
fingers pushed her forehead from inside, any minute her head would explode.
She rushed to the bathroom for painkillers, tore at the tin foil. She scooped 
water into her hands, gulped it down, almost choking. The tablets scraped her 
throat like stale crumbs of toast. She felt dizzy, nauseated, her hands 
wouldn't stop shaking. She wanted to run, but the house trapped her inside. 
She ran from room to room, pushing up windows, throw+ing doors open. The hot, 
dry wind beat through, the old weatherboards rattled and creaked.
  In a frenzy she tried to tidy up, getting rid of the glass fragments, the
dirty clothes, the mess on the car+pet. But it was useless. She couldn't get
rid of the fear, the dreadful anticipation.
  She knew she was running out of time, the shadows were dangerously close.
Waiting. She had to put the house in order, restore it to peace, before the
shadows arrived.
  Full of familiar objects from the past, illusions of another life, the house
was one solid thing. It had to be kept whole, no matter what.
  Her son came home. She heard him whistle for the cats, she could see him now
in the half-light of the doorway: a tall, gawky boy with curly, dark, untidy
hair, carrying the black cat in his arms. The other cats pranced around him,
rubbing against his legs in ecstasy.
  He went past her without a word, his shoes leaving soggy, brown imprints on
the carpet. "Look what you have done!" she screamed.
  He ignored her and walked towards the kitchen with the cats in tow. She ran
after him, barring his way, but he pushed past. Humming an insolent pop
tune, he placed the black cat carefully on the kitchen bench and opened the
fridge. He began to rummage inside it.
  The pressure in her head exploded. Blinding red spots danced in circles, she
couldn't blink them away. Her heart attacked her rib-cage like some trapped
thing within. She recognised the howling sounds that came from her throat.
They belonged to a wild beast.
  She seized her son by the shoulders, ripping into his skin with her
fingernails. She could feel his blood in her hands. She pushed him against
the hard metal of the fridge, hitting him across the face, pulling at his
hair, clawing into his chest. It went on and on, she couldn't stop herself.
She couldn't see his face from the shadows that collected all around. His
body felt limp, it offered no resistance. Suddenly she became aware of a
shrill noise breaking through. It came from somewhere close. The phone.
Releasing her son, she picked up the receiver.
  "Have you been rushing? You sound out of breath." Margaret asked.
  The twilight hours were almost over.

Tonight is Margaret's dinner party. I am alone, get+ting ready. He has gone.
His father suddenly remem+bered him and claimed him for the weekend. He
wait+ed for his father all morning, standing outside with his overnight bag.
I heard the car pull up and watched from behind the curtain. I saw my
husband for a minute. He was suntanned and looked better than I had hoped.
  She was with him in the car, but I couldn't see much of her. When I believed
her to be my friend I thought her very beautiful. Large green eyes,
enigmatic mouth, soft relaxed body... She is the sort of woman men want
to look after. But underneath, like a cat, she is tough, shrewd and self-
reliant.

The dress I am wearing tonight is of cool black silk. Sleeveless, with a
large grey bird appliqued on the front. The bird is in flight, wings
extended, and gleaming sil+ver eyes. I hope wearing a dress like that will
give me confidence. At least it's a conversation piece.
  I have driven only a couple of blocks when I hear a noise from the back of
the car. It's the black cat. He must have climbed into the car through the open
window and gone to sleep. He is a young cat, not yet unsettled by change; he
seems to be enjoying this un+expected ride. 

</sample>



<sample><id> W14 </id>

<note> 2013 words </note>

<source> Island - Winter 1986 </source>

<h> Fugue on forty </h>

<bl> By Sara Dowse </bl>

<misc>1</misc>The man I am leaving has pale hair but interesting eyes. The kind that turn
green with yellows, browns or greens, and stay fixed a dazzling blue with
blue, like the sea on a bright spring day. They seem small, close together
when he's tired, as though he hasn't the strength to hold them in place.
Away from me, they are wide-spaced and large. Happy, innocent eyes. (I have
seen them at parties.)
  We fight, unhealthily. Crazy maelstroms that suck us in and blow us about
and leave the waters clotted with hatred and suspicion.
  I rarely sleep.

<misc>2</mic>  The man of my dreams has a pleasant, handsome face. Smooth in the centre,
hard at the edge. Warm brown eyes - no ambivalence there. Ruddy beige of
face. Curly black hair. A welcoming smile.
  He says he remembers me.
  I wonder.

<misc>1</misc>  Astigmatic, he sometimes shields his eyes with glasses. Heavy black rims on
his wide, long face. They accentuate a rabbit look in him. He suffers from
hay fever, wriggles his nose to keep them in place. When he wears them he
looks cold, professional. Yet one is conscious of a disguise.

<misc>2</misc>  He says he will ring me. I admire his clothes. Caramel-coloured, to go
with his face. He is an artist as I am. A musician. Baroque. We have friends
in common. He will be coming to Canberra and will look me up. Pink and
plump. A picture of health. He might fit well in Canberra.

<misc>1</misc>  Our connections are crossed with brambles. His naked eye is a thistle. When
we fight it's often because I wish it to end, or for there to be a sudden
awakening, a realisation of love, a discovery, like the bright infant,
floating pure and innocent through the bulrushes.
  We fornicate, through this. Often quickly, but if he is angry, long and
hard. I want love. He needs release.
  I lie underneath.

<misc>2</misc>  Waiting for his arrival. It is a secret, his presence, all that's
inviolable in me. He is zabaglione, sweet with civilisation. I want the
pleasure to last, of knowing he'll be here. In the same city. Accessible.

<misc>1</misc>  His arms are leaden weights around me. He tries to comfort though it pains
him. We are at truce, he brings me cups of tea. In the evening, by the
window flushed with cascading autumn foliage, he takes sullen sips of wine.
I cry from wounds the steaming tannin scours.

<misc>2</misc>  His viola is often with me. Light, insouciantly decadent, it trickles
through me, pouring out in a smile. In the sleepless hours, the suburban
hum of fridge and motor car smooth as nocturnal surf in my ear, I open the
case. Black leather frayed near the catch. Inside, the worn red felt. I play
a ponderous cello.

<misc>1</misc>  I am suspicious. He must loathe me. And I loathe his pale fire, a dry ice
that burns at a touch. I withdraw, determined to find a meaning outside
him. So, he has found another! I will too.

<misc>2</misc>  The tan bark outside Llewellyn Hall is slick and sharp underfoot. Tiny
native plants bend with the driving rain; the giant concrete walls are
streaked and steaming. The lights within glow as from a royal cave. I
imagine him by my side, discoursing on Telemann, Monteverdi, opera buffa.
  I breathe in the warmth from a damp wool coat. Giddy, I climb to the top
of the gallery, where seats are cheap and sound is best.

<misc>1</misc>  He wants to split, he says. We stand at the window, bleak of foliage; winter
lights and winter stars dazzling shards on a void. I nod, realising it is
so. The tears dry on my cheek, salt sharp. Suddenly he looks so beautiful
and sad to me.

<misc>2</misc>  I say to myself, why wait? Life if short should be sweet. I think of
brandy and pheasant as I reach for the phone, marvel at my luck when he
answers it. Then flounder, with nothing to say. He apologises for not
ringing. He has been sick, he says. He, sick? Embarrassed, I wish he hadn't
bothered to make excuses. I tell him I've rung to ask when he's going to
play. A pause. He clears his throat. "I may not be able. This sickness. Last
year I had hepatitis ... I think it's a relapse."
  "Oh, I'm sorry," I say, suppressing my anger with him for lying.

<misc>1/3</misc> The kilos shed off me. My life, it seems, has shrunken to this room
with its looming wardrobe and cereal stickers on the back of the door. And
cut-outs of Gonza and Alfred E Neuman. The room of a son of a friend. I
keep the transistor low so as not to wake her through the gyprock wall. I
try yoga, meditation, masturbation, valerian tea. At last, when dawn comes
the outline of a pagoda tree stark against an opal sky, I find a kind of
peace: the locked case propped against the wardrobe and me lying stunned on
the bed.

<misc>2</misc>  We make arrangements for dinner. "I'm almost recovered,' he says.

<misc>1</misc>  I pursue life, what it is to be human, mature, without ties or
responsibilities other than those I choose. I am determined. I am free now,
my friends tell me. So does he, when he condescends to meet. We are friends
now, he tells me. "Now we can fuck, without the hassles." He has a point,
and I give in. I go to films, meetings, dinner parties, pubs, concerts,
art shows. Alone. The nights are filled with sharp adult voices, warm wine
and frost. I must be determined, to brave the frost. By ten o'clock in the
evening, before the movie ends or the last cup of coffee is drunk, car
windows front and back coat with a thick crust of ice. On saying goodbye
the host hands you a bucket or saucepan of hot water. If you go to the
movies, you cover the windscreen with newspaper.

<misc>2</misc>  I rehearse our conversation. I am teaching more than playing, that is
true, but I still have ideas about the instrument and have begun to rough
out some compositions. The students practise on them. The students like
them, and I feel guilty, because I am jealous of their playing. I would like
to be playing instead of teaching. He has no need to teach, or if he does,
only occasionally. His music, lilting, almost pastoral in effect, begins to
sound shallow. I wonder if he is fussy about his socks. 

<misc>1</misc>  Midnight, maybe after, I leave the fire and the company and wind on my
scarf and tug on my gloves and march into the darkness with a potful of
boiling water. The frost melts in widening circles like portholes on the
glass, then slides in great drops on and under the bonnet. I jump in and
start the car, bless the heat from the engine. A quick goodnight from my
hosts and they rush inside with the empty saucepan and out of the cold.
Within blocks the water on the windscreen has frozen. A sheet of opaque ice,
pearled as the dawn. I stop the car, leave the engine running, leap out to
crack the ice with my fists. It splinters, that's all. I climb behind the
wheel and drive with my head out the window.
  Dangerous driving this way. I turn a corner and find I'm in his street.
Moving on, thinking I am crazy, and hateful, for spying on him like this.
But, mercifully, no unfamiliar cars stand in front. And now I am here, it
would be spying if I didn't enter. My house, not long ago.
  The side door is open, not even latched. As though in the kernel of the
cold dark night he is waiting. The glass panels sweat. A light burns in the
kitchen. Something propels me now, a sudden swelling of obsession takes
over from the first frosty steps, whether anger or desire or both. The bare
bulb in the kitchen kindles beads of light on the frozen glass, gilds the
wrinkled leaves of the African violet he has neglected to water. And on the
table, two crystal glasses, a gift from me. And next to one, a woman's bag,
the colour of wine.

<misc>2</misc>  The melody is fading.

<misc>3</misc>  She takes me in her bed, a foam rubber mattress shoved against the
cupboard. I cry: she holds me in her arms. "He isn't worth it," she says,
crooning it to me. "Am I brilliant?" I ask, stripped utterly bare, thinking
of the crumbling black leather, worn red lining, voluptuous cello standing
patient in the room next door. "No," she answers, with piercing clarity,
"not brilliant."
  She pauses to reflect. "Creative."
  She falls asleep, spreadwing over the mattress. I climb over her legs,
holding onto the cupboard, careful not to disturb her. In the room vacated
by her son I watch the parched bones of the pagoda tree darken against the
morning sky.
  At breakfast she expounds. Already, so young, her face is hardened about
the jaw, and then I remember she isn't young, I'm not young, though we have
started life anew, and that line of resolve round her chin would be scarcely
noticeable in a face whose flesh was firm. She butters toast. "It's their
fucking negativity. That's what nearly finished me off," she confides. "I
would say to him, every fucking week when you think of it (she laughs)
`look, do you love me, should we go on like this?' And the bugger would
never tell me, one way or another." She lays her knife on the side of the
plate after cutting the toast in four neat squares. "They want us to make
all the decisions for them."

<misc>2</misc>  I ring to postpone the dinner. "No, I'm not well," I say. "Nasty winter
flu," I tell him. He laughs. "When you're better we'll have a nice quiet time.
Two convalescents together".

<misc>1</misc>  "You don't have to talk to him," she says.
  He stands flooded in winter sunlight at the door. I see him as though from
the end of a telescope, as though contemplating a star. His hair, yellower
than I remember, floats from his skull like the ruffled hair of a waking
child, the prototype of haloes.
  "I'm sorry," he says, but doesn't move.
  I feel myself hurtle down the hallway, head down, arms flapping at my side,
some burrowing animal groping towards the sun. I cry and he soothes me with
caresses and I wonder whether it will be right again but I cannot take his
caresses and I want it to stop.

<misc>3</misc>  "You have to find a centre," she says. "Something inside yourself." I
agree, weaving her words in the concrete cubicle through the student's
rasping chords. The sound quivers and finally disappears, rising high to the
acoustical ceiling to hover in the air. The student flattens her back
against the chair, the bow loose in her hand, leaning on the cello. "You
okay, Maria?" The student loves me, mistakenly. I smile, heedless of tears.
Gingerly she raises the bow and plays on.
  "You know what happened to me." My friend states this, but it is a question.
She expects me to know yet wants to repeat it. Her sharp voice is quavering,
reminding me of the chin. She drinks milk coffee. "Let me tell you." How she
had left him, finally, because he wouldn't tell her to. And suddenly
everything was light and empty: "I had this peculiar sensation, like I was
skiing, so fucking fast I wouldn't be able to stop. And the wind was cutting
right through me." She drank a lot, sobered herself up with Panadols and
fucked a lot, with anyone willing. She smiles. "It helped." But then she
found a protector, a friend. He drank with her, the days ran into nights and
into days again and she knew it was morning only when it was time to take
another Panadol.

</sample>


<sample><id> W15 </id>

<note> 2027 words </note>

<source> Sibyl's stories </source>

<bl> By Carolyn van Langenberg </bl>

<h> The Girl in the Pink Swimsuit </h>

          <h> I </h>

    Above the dunes rose Sibyl, head bent, listening, to the squeak her
feet made as her toes poked into and her heels pressed heavily on sand.
She tossed and leaped at the sky, curled over, inspecting vines and flowers
and silver green tussocks.  A crab scuttled over her feet and she pounced
on it, smiling as she turned it loose.
    Suddenly she stood still, her straight sharp body alone on the most
prominent and high jutt of the dunes.  The beach behind her grandfather's
house glittered, the royal blue sea meeting the sky to mark the horizon,
an outcrop of rock at its centre, black and familiar.  A cloudless sky rolled
blue to blue, blueness breaking at the shoreline, the waves rushing greenly
over the white sand, sea washing in, drawing itself away, leaving behind
a trailing of pippies and periwinkles.
    Sibyl bounced on the dune, crashed to the beach in a pile of soft sand,
shrieking and laughing with the pleasure of breaking something.  Repeatedly
she ran up the sandy incline, stumbling, then leaped to the beach below,
repeatedly laughing as her body jerked and thrust into the giving sand.
Her hair, black and short, flicked with sand into her mouth.  Sand col+oured
limbs no longer pointed awkward to the sky.  She sprang to her feet and
strode, caught at tussocks and straying roots, fell back and, breathless,
deftly forced footholds.  Without pausing, she jumped, rolled and laughed,
cascaded with loose sand to her cushion of sand, onto the beach again.
    Over the dunes, following a well-trodden track through straggled banksia,
sharp edged grasses and broken bottles, the rest of the family padded -
moth+er, father and three small children.  They emerged complacently from
a valley onto the flat beach, and settled where the sand was soft and white,
not nearer the tide-mark where it was harder and closer to beige.
    The girl ran to join them, leaving her broken down sand dune for the
habit of their company.
    Sibyl turned ten that day, and her family gave her a swimsuit, her mother
exercising the authority to select for the girl a pink costume which puffed
over her slender hips and gathered into a rush between the expected breasts
down the centre bone to her waist.  Pink and red buds spread from the
gathering.  The puffed out pants section was plain pastel pink.
    Sibyl loved the costume.  Her mother always said pink suited her so
well, blending with her pale skin and setting off her dark hair.  She glowed
with the compliments, stretched and peered into mirrors to reassure herself
of her image.  Her grandfather laughed at her coyness and said, `Quite nice,
eh?'  Sibyl knew they had little faith in her pale skin, her thin body.
    But today her swimsuit was new and she wore it with pride.  Her father
smiled encouragingly, loving the beauty of his young daughter.  He tousled
her hair playfully, joking at her prettiness.  She scowled and chased him
into the sea, laughing at the cold spray salting her mouth, flirting with
her body as he splashed her until she feigned a collapse into the foam,
shrieking, helpless in the water which pushed and sucked her to his legs.
The sea squirted up around his calves, shallower, shallower, fountaining
low at his ankles, his feet buried in sand.
    He played, teased her to follow him further into the sea, `See who can
swim the furthest!'
    `Oh, no!  That's too far out!'  Moaning at her poor abilities.  `I wish
I could but, gee, Dad, I just can't!'
    She ran in and out of the sea, watching pink legs turn green then white
under water, the pants of her swimsuit balloon, diving under waves, struggling
under swells, coming up, gulping, air, succeeding to withstand the surge
outwards.
    She ran up the beach, impatient with the sand sticking to her legs.
Her mother cursed the way she flicked water and shook her towel free of
sand, `Too close to the baby!  Sand in his eyes!'  Sibyl sat still for a
few moments, lolled luxuriously, sunbaked, because she was learning her
pink whiteness was not conven+tional beauty, despite her mother's suggestions.
She stretched in her wet clinging swimsuit.  She loved the way it moulded
like a second skin.  She loved the salt stickiness of her body, the salt
grains on her lips.  She loved the sun, warm on her shoulders, drying her
back.
    A cool breeze stirred, the blueness enveloped them and shadows reached
across the beach to the sea.  `C'mon!' barked the mother, `Time t'go...!
Gettin' cold!'  There was a crease between her two well shaped eyebrows.
They were black, but her hair, long and wound into a bun at the nape of
her neck, was a coarse hard grey.
    She snorted contempt, groused at Sibyl who tried to pull a shirt on
one of the small children.  Sibyl folded towels to pack in the bag.  Her
mother un+ravelled them, critical of the sand embedded in the compacted cotton,
and of the assumption that the towels should be put in the bag she would
carry.
    `Spect me to do it all! ... Ungrateful! ... That's what! ... You all
are!'
    The baby cried, sand in his eyes.
    And another child yelled.  A soldier crab had scurried over his toes.
    Sibyl glanced at the sea, and sighed.  Pushed san+dals into her mother's
bag.
    Her father slowly wiped himself dry.  He pulled a shirt over his shoulders,
knotting the loose arms under his chin, watching the rocky outcrop on the
horizon, ignoring the small bustling around his feet.
    At a given signal, a jolt of an adult head or a throaty admission, the
family trouped towards the dunes where they disappeared and reappeared,
wending their way through valleys, up and down sandy slopes.  They walked
laboriously, led by the father and the girl in the pink swimsuit.  They
both carried towels over their shoulders.  Two small children, heads bowed,
tripped over tangling vines.  One fell, the sand pulling at her ankles.
The other bellowed fearfully and stopped.  An ant had run across his path.
The mother, coming behind him and struggling through the sand under the
weight of a bag and the burden of the baby, slapped him, ordering curtly
to get moving!
    The pound and the rush, and the pause of the sea.
    Sibyl could hear the waves break when she unlatched the gate to her
grandfather's garden.  She imagined the sea pulling, dragging over the sand
over the beach over the periwinkles, over the shells and the pebbles, pulling
back to a swell, and pound+ing the beach uproariously.  Again, and again,
and again.  The same rushing and scuttling backwards and breaking forwards,
she thought, I love it.
    She peeled off her swimsuit.  The crutch bagged with wet sand, grating
roughly the skin under the leg elastic.

                              <h> II </h>

  Everyone was consciously free out of school uni+form.  The science teacher
allowed himself covert pleasure in chaperoning to a beach picnic at Byron
Bay so many indiscreetly clad thirteen and fourteen year old girls.  They
rolled their eyes indifferently, sportively, fetchingly, and sat in giggling
huddles at the front of the bus.  The boys guffawed and gestured meaningfully.
They crammed into the back of the bus.  They shouted and sang to each other.
  Satisfied the sexes were not too close to each other, the teacher drove
away in his car, alone.
  The bus accelerated, sped through the countryside.  Wind whipped hair
at the windows, whipped away snatches of pop songs they shouted for communal
approval.  The semi-tropical lushness, spilling over the roadway, blocking
vision at sharp bends, re+mained incidental, a beauty they took for granted.
They hallooed and booed, screamed at the speed with which a sharp s-bend
was taken and, further exhilarated by the smell of salt, they hurrahed their
way into the sleepy beach town.  People raised weary heads to scrutinise
yet another crowd of young rat+bags shouting their way to the beach.  Yelling,
`Yah!' at the teacher.  `Beat yer!  Lose a tyre!?  Jeez, y`slow!'
  They parked at the main beach where new gaudy dwellings were under
construction.  An old brick kiosk at the centre of a bitumen turnabout had
its iron shutters closed.  Picnic sheds spread sedately under Norfolk pine
trees.  The sheds were cool, open on all sides to the breezes.
  Awkwardly, they waited for a signal from someone to tell them to bound
over the hot bitumen down the rocks to the sand, school obedience and group
con+trol their familiar.  Pausing, huffing, pacing, biting lips, they queried
each other's intention.
  Something broke free.
  With one leap, they ran at the beach, squealing, flinging towels and
possessions in disordered heaps, falling over friends and gasping with
laughter, mouths full of sand, and some plunged into the surf.
  One red-haired boy hung back.  He quietly picked his way down the rocks.
He kept his shirt on.  He sat with the girls and began to cover his legs
thickly with cream.  Hesitantly, he looked back to the stuffy bus, the picnic
sheds, a place away from the sun.
  `I burn badly,' he muttered to Sibyl.
  She watched him screw up his face, his freckles moving funnily across
his nose. 
  `I went to hospital once.  With blisters. I was there for days!'
  Bluntly she suggested he should swim with his shirt on.
  `They'll laugh!' he moaned, indicating the other boys with a nod of his
head.  She shrugged.
  `Better than stewing on your own!'
  He agreed, staring at the bus buckling crazily within dancing waves of
reflected heat.  Stared over the inflamed rocks where dunes once rose
gracefully.  The rocks prevented the sand eroding from under the kiosk and
a few weatherboard cottages perched pre+cariously along dunes ravaged by
tidal waves.  The newer shimmering holiday flats were apparently con+sidered
safe behind the Norfolk pines.
  Sibyl spread her towel, adjusted her hat and sun+glasses and commented,
`That house ... that one ... used to be further in!'  Her friend, Josephine,
sprawled on her towel, moved her lips, acknowledg+ing someone had spoken.
Sibyl rubbed suncream on her shoulders and lay beside her, pushing the straw
hat down over her nose.
  `Are you girls swimming or not!' The teacher called in ringing classroom
tones.
  They giggled and protested, `We're baking!'
  Sibyl saw him, wet from swimming, through the slats of her straw hat.
He stopped at her feet.  His eyes followed the contours of her body, her
thin criticised body which she decided was svelte and fashionable.  She
watched his eyes undress her.  She responded by slightly raising her knee.
His eyes rested on pink clad hips.  She took off her hat.  In a voice she
thought engaging and mature, she asked if the water were cold.  He looked
at the face, at the eyes behind sun+glasses.  He grinned at the face, at
the voice, at the pink swimsuit.  `Try it!,' he laughed, and looked up the
beach towards another group of his school kids teasing and pouring sand
over langourous girls, chas+ing them, squealing, into the sea.
  Sibyl stood and took off her sunglasses.  The sea was as always blue and
green, the sun yellow and sparkling on the restless water, white foaming
waves breaking, spreading, thinning thinning thinning in a race up the sand,
rushing rushing rushing back into another curling wave.  Forever moving,
ebbing, crashing, nervously under the sun, glittering, reced+ing to the horizon,
black rocks at the centre.  She pushed a forefinger under the thick brinylon
elastic cloth of her costume, snapped the material down over her backside,
and walked demurely down to the tidemark.
  In the sea other classmates leapt and crouched, performing corroborees
with the mad roar and turbu+lence.  The teacher leapt at and chased one of
the girls who had a Saturday night boyfriend.  He picked her up and dropped
her, splashing dramatically.  She screamed and pleaded and gurgled, her
mouth full of salty water.  Spluttering and giggling, she tried to knock
him over, but he turned and pulled her legs over his shoulders, hoisting
her up, and piggy backed her up the beach where he threw her on soft sand.

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