A storm

The light in the room faded. The curtains, as if breathing for the room, blew gently in and then out against the flyscreens. The air felt colder. He looked up. Outside the sky had darkened too. The gum tree so flaccid minutes before was starting to sway in the rising wind. All the leaves like little soldiers twirled in unison. A storm was coming.

The radio was playing quietly in the distance. Quite faint. His wife was sitting in the other room doing a jigsaw. He caught a familiar snatch from the song,”…across a crowded room….”. Yes. “South Pacific”. What a hit it had been. Such a success. His mother had sung all the songs while she cooked in the kitchen for at least three months. And his Dad had brought the record. What was it now? Shall we waltz? Some charming something? No, no! Some enchanted evening? Forget that when he watched the movie again years later it looked as camp as a row of tent pegs. Oh yeah. Forget that!

The curtains went suddenly limp again. They had stopped breathing. The soldier-leaves all hung desolate and unmoving  but the sky behind the old gum was darker, much darker. Rain?

The low rumble of the approaching storm echoed like artillery fire just beyond the low hills that surrounded the little house. Not that he had ever heard artillery fire. Well maybe the 21 gun salute for the Queen or some dead prime minister. Not like his dad. 

His Dad had heard artillery fire alright. In New Guinea. His Dad had written poetry from those worrisome times. The poems all spoke of the beauty of the tropical night and his father’s desire to go home to his wife. A wife then young and fragrant and not yet singing of some enchanted evening in the kitchen and far from the final days before he packed his suitcase forever and died in that godforsaken nursing home. By then she was a crotchety old soul who downed Nembutal and spoke bitterly of the men she could have married. But back then in the time of artillery fire, love crushed out all other feelings, as it does.

His Dad had stories too. Of working in a small radio shed in the jungle and hearing a rattling noise against the corrugated iron at the back of the shed. Nothing other than the troops returning from sorties in the jungle and running a stick over the corrugations just because they could. Nah! My Dad didn’t care. Too busy listening to that Morse code with his earphones on wasn’t he? Of course when he was relieved at the end of his shift everyone was pleased that he had survived the strafing the Japanese Zero had given the back of the shed.

Suddenly the storm broke. The rain came. Falling haphazardly at first then heavier and heavier until it drummed on the roof and his wife came in to ask him to light the fire.