A Tale told by an idiot

 Thirty five years ago the road to Crescent Head from Kempsey was narrow and winding. Part of it, just as you come down the last hill into Crescent Head, was dirt. The country you track through was wild and empty. They say Malcolm Naden, the murderer who evaded authorities in the bush for years, spent some of his time foraging there. This story is about something that happened on that road, but it’s about a lot of other things as well, some every them happy some sad and some scary.

I don’t need Malcolm Naden in my story to scare me. There is ancient Blackfella magic in that bush, and that is scary enough for me. 

Environmentalists are a sentimental lot. I think they like to imagine precolonial society as carefree and sylvan. Like the romantic poets liked to imagine the European Countryside. But my experience of Blackfella stories is of frightening hairy men and bunyips, and Blue Lights, and that is what this story is about. I have to say my experience of the bush itself includes lots of wonderful times, but also some frightening experiences I never saw a hairy man or a Bunyip, but I’ve seen a blue light and lived to tell the tale. Not everyone does.

You might think a story about the hairy man, a man-beast who comes out of the eucalyptus forest in the Upper Macleay River valley, and takes children from huts and shelters, is just nonsense. But try hearing the story camped next to the river with the forest lowering all around you, a mob of black kids all around you and Uncle George telling the story. The only light is the campfire and everybody feeling full from damper and mince (they call the mince gravy).

And George tells the story of when he saw one, just a few years earlier when he was cutting sleepers with a broad axe just three miles up the road next to the Bellbrook turnoff. The kids all want to hear about the sleeper cutting. How George would work for days with his broad axe, which he still kept sharp and shining at home, just to shape one sleeper, which would be used on the railways. The wood was so hard it would break the teeth of most saws. It was so dense it would not burn, except in a kiln with bellows. Then it burnt hot enough to melt steel. That was why Macleay River bushfires were so dangerous. Once the ironbarks caught alight, the fire could melt a fire engine.

Three weeks in the bush, five or six sleepers, $300 or $400, and back home for a week. But he didn’t last one night after he saw the Hairy Man. Straight down to the road and hitch-hiked back to Kempsey. Even the white sleeper cutters understood it. They stayed, but they had not seen the Hairy man. But they half believed him because they saw his fear was real.

And I half believed him too because I saw all the family, Anne, Little Greg (who was six foot three, but called little Greg to distinguish him from Old Greg), Janelle, Lynne Michael Matt, Kay, and Theresa believed him. And we all instinctively huddled more into the fire and into the warmth and safety of family. I am not going to tell George’s story of the Hairy Man. I have trampled enough through the lives and histories of Aboriginal people. I have learned, I hope, what is my story to tell, and what is not.

But all the same, I tremble at my audacity in telling this story. There are deep secrets in it. Deep hurt, deep sadness. But the story claws at my guts to get out. 

 

I think it was  that overwhelming warmth I felt in that family that was behind me getting into a relationship with, then marrying, Lynne. I was introduced to her family very early on  in our relationship. I was immediately made to feel welcome. “I’m Lynne’s boyfriend” was a path to immediate acceptance no matter what. Uncle Peter says “What you doing here. My son got no white friends” This is at a 21st birthday party. “I am Lynne”s boyfriend”. “Oh you should have said. That’s different.”

I rarely had to play that card. Uncle Peter was well known for not liking white people. The joke in the family was that every one of his daughters married a white feller. But mostly the racism I saw was against the black people, not from them. 

Sometimes the story is in what is not said, rather than in what is said. Some artists paint what is not there, and leave the viewer to fill in the truth. I will try do that about  the powerful, painful often ignorant racism I regularly witnessed. My own, and other’s. There are many things in this story I just need to trace around the outlines but casual everyday, privileged racism is one of the main ones. I tremble at my audacity.

If you want to know about racism in Australia you can’t find out just by asking a Black person. You need to listen to a Black person. It has taken me many years to learn this; and knowing is much easier than doing. It is much easier to listen to a story about another’s racism than your own. But even that is difficult because you want to jump in and tell the Black person how they have got it wrong. 

Lynne’s father Andrew died some years before I met her. His father, Lynne’s grandfather was only talked about as “old man Sutton”. He was a wealthy white man from Coff’s Harbour. Anne told me about him one day sitting at the Kitchen table at the old weatherboard in South Kempsey. He is mostly undrawn in this story. His importance is in his absence. Andrew met his father once. A taxi arrived at the Mission where Andrew lived with his Mum, stepfather and step siblings.

A whispered conversation occurred between the driver and Andrew’s mother. Money changed hands. Then Andrew was ushered into the cab and driven into town. He was taken to the best hotel in town. The taxi waited while a stranger said “Hello Andrew, I’m your father.” He took him from the kerb, into the bar where Andrew was introduced to a blur of faces. And then he was taken back out to the Taxi and driven home. He now had two bob in his pocket.

After that his father got on with the business of being white. And Andrew got on with the business of being black.

Anne told me a lot of stories of what it was like growing up on the mission. The houses were made of beaten down kerosene tins and hessian. There was a tap in the middle of all the houses where you wash and get water. Cooking was on campfires and the toilet was the bush. 

When I first visited in 1980 the family had moved into town. Various brothers and sisters lived in Aboriginal Housing dotted across Sth Kempsey. The house I always stayed at was a clapped out weatherboard. The hot water system was connected to the wood fired stove. The floors were unvarnished boards. A lot of cooking was still done on the campfire out the back. I remember offering to start the fire once, but was told “White people can’t make fires”. It was just a joke, but I was offended. Of course, just to prove them wrong I tried to make the fire, but of course I couldn’t get it to start and everyone laughed at me more. I had thought I was a bushman, my family had spent a lot of time camping and spending time fishing in the bush. I could not accept that these people knew more about the bush. Lucky for me I had gentle teachers. They gently educated me about my ignorance about this and many other subjects. Sometimes it was not so gentle, but eventually my skin thickened and I could take correction about subjects I obviously knew nothing about. Subjects where I thought I knew something; that took longer.

I heard many stories sitting around the Kitchen table in that old house. About mission life about the old days. Lynne’s mum, Jessica but known as Mumboy, had lived through hard times. She had a problem with the grog by the time I knew her, but she had not touched Alcohol for the first 30 years of her life. Before social security, mission rations were pitifully inadequate and she and Andrew would go vegetable picking. When there was no work around the kids would sometimes be woken in the middle of the night for a roast chicken dinner. Someone had stolen a few chooks in the middle of the night and Mumboy and Anne (who was the oldest, and Boss) Sister would cook them in the camp oven , furtively in case the mission manager found out.

You didn’t have to go far back to get to tribal times. I am not sure which one out of Nanna Jane and Nanna Flo was Lynne’s actual Grandmother. They were both treated with equal respect. Nanna Jane was well over 90 when I met her. She had Great Grand Children and Great Great Grand Children. She told me how, as a young child she witnessed the last corroboree on the north coast. Shivering in fear while the elders played out an ancient custom for its final time. And it was clear to me from what Nanna Jane said that everyone knew this was to be the last one.

When Nanna Jane’s daughter (or Nanna Flo’s) Bonnie was buried a few years later at Bowraville a snakeskin bag containing magical implements was thrown into the grave with the coffin. Jane’s other daughter Dulcie told me “The time for those things is over.” I tremble at my audacity.

Bonnie’s funeral was memorable for another thing. The catholic priest who performed the ceremony was staggering drunk. Shame on him.  The forest seemed to come closer in. I sensed some power was unhappy with the way Bonnie was being treated by the priest. Thunder rumbled and clouds moved in and the forest looked unfriendly and dank. I was glad to get out of Bowraville safely that afternoon. 

Michael, who was Lynne and Anne’s sister was the youngest of the family. He was still at school. He was a tearaway, but was at the centre of the family. He lived with Anne and George, Mumboy’s drinking meant she was no longer capable of looking after him. I was going to say he was treated as a member of Anne and Georges family. But that is just meaningless words. The reality is nobody at all saw anything unusual or wrong about about Michael being a part of the family. He was Anne’s brother and Uncle to kids older than himself. Little Greg, and Theresa were older and Matt and Kay were younger. Janelle, another sister of Lynne and Anne also lived in the house. She was still at school too, but was Older than Theresa. 

I have happy memories of sitting around the Kitchen with the caterers teapot being continually refilled, as the kids came from School.  Michael was already getting into minor trouble with the police, but he was well liked at the Catholic School he attended. A series of wonderful Priests and nuns had been appointed to Kempsey. There were others, but I can remember Steve Norton, Michael Casey and Anne Maguire. Lynne and I like Anne so much we named our dog Maguire after her. Aunty Dulce was sometimes known as Sister Dulce because she spent so much time riding around in Maguire’s car. And Steve Norton and Michael Casey included the family in all parish activities. Michael came home one day laughingly complaining that Father Casey had called him “Stonehead” because he failed to listen  to instructions. When Father Casey baptised Lynne and my son he brought a carton of cans around afterwards to the party. With all the allegations of abuse by Catholic clergy I have googled up their names to make sure there are no allegations against these people, and there are none. I know Maguire and Steve Norton left their orders and married (not each other). Father Casey, I don’t know what happened to him.

The relationship with the priests and nuns illustrates something I read about years ago, about how Aboriginal families take in as family government and religious officials. The Child welfare officer was in this category also. Her name was Sister Griffen. She had been instrumental in separating several children of Leah from her. She was now slightingly referred as Griffo, because she was seen as having betrayed the family. The family had thought she was there to help. Like the Priests and nun. It was astonishing that she turned on them.

A few years later, in 1982, I  read a headline in the Daily Mirror, “Sydney Nun Arrested in Commonwealth Games Protest”. It was Maguire, arrested in Brisbane protesting about aboriginal land rights.

The school, the church all tried with Michael. His crimes were minor, joy riding, shoplifting, that kind of thing. It was noticeable though because the other kids of Anne and George did not get into trouble. Through all this he remained cheerful, a source of good fun and cheek. He was always turned out neatly for school, like all the kids. The fact that he sometimes had damper and jam for lunch didn’t matter because the white kids would swap with him. The damper made by Anne in the camp oven on the fire out the back was highly prized.

Anne and George did not drink alcohol. Or I never saw them drink anyway. I drank and Lynne drank. We would walk into town over the railway bridge and go to Greens hotel or the RSL club. Greens hotel was an experience. Loud music, loud conversations and loud drunkenness. And Mumboy there with her crew of Aunty Sister and  Maureen and others. We called her Mumboy, they called her JK for Jessica Katherine.

Turns out that I have got as big a problem with alcohol as anyone in this story. And one of the symptoms of that was the sense of connection I got while drinking with other people. One of my many racist comments as a drinker was “I only like drinking with Black people, White people don’t know how to drink properly”. And the connexion I felt in Green’s Hotel, and later in the PO at South Grafton, The Empress and the Clifton was mind blowing. I would talk condescendingly about how the grog had got Andrew (Lynne’s Father)or was getting Leah or Mum-boy or whoever. I never saw my own problem. I would make jokes about race, safe with my “I’m Lynne’s boyfriend” card.

 Most of my heroes are Aboriginal women, and foremost among them is Anne Douglas. She was and is like a battleship of love. Nothing got in the way of her family’s needs. Anne and George’s house was a refuge. More than once I saw little kids make their way from relation’s houses  in the neighbourhood. Sometimes they were bleeding and bruised. They’d get a hot bath some bandaids, clean pyjamas and bed. The most important part was they got a kiss and a cuddle.

I last saw Anne a few years ago. I called in after I had visited Lynne to acknowledge the truth of some the things I had done in the past. As always she and George were happy to see me. They were minding some Grandkids. But there was a severely disabled niece there too, Sammi Jo.  Janelle’s daughter. Sammi Jo is dead now but she reached 21, after being given only a few months after her birth. Anne had to tell her she could not go outside in her high tech wheel chair. “ I know its unfair, that the other kids can go outside and you can’t. But I have to watch you and I need to sit inside.” Sammi Jo,  seriously mentally and physically disabled, accepted Anne’s word. And the thought occurred to me that if I was to ever be reborn severely disabled I would want to be in a family like that one. Sammi Jo had a life. She was surrounded by love, family and connection.

Early on in the relationship with Lynne we went to Central see some nieces and nephews off on the train back to Kempsey. Everyone was hugging and kissing each other and I couldn’t. I felt terrible but was unable to kiss or hug anyone. I was filled with shame at my inability to do this simple thing. I thought that if I stayed around these people I would learn. I didn’t really learn until I stopped drinking and gambling, but that is another story.

The other factor was that these people were tough. I had suffered bullying as a kid growing up in country towns . These people were so tough I knew no-one in their right mind would take them. Probably not a good basis for a relationship and there were many times over the years that I wished Lynne was not so bloody tough. I saw my mates bullying their obedient wives. I tried, god help us both, but Lynne was not easy to bully. There is a lot more to this than I am saying. I was a drunk, fill in the dots. 

Andrew had died five or six years before. I had always thought it was the grog that got him. The only photo I ever saw of him, he was holding a flagon of cream sherry leaning against an old Holden.  But when I visited Anne and George last she told me he had seen a blue light the night before he died. They had all seen it out the back of their camp on the mission. He had made fun of it and had danced on it. Next day he was dead. Yes, just a story told by someone else, but once you see a blue light yourself it is different.

So that’s the background to the night at the Crescent Head Sports Club. I drove my mini make out there. Lynne was in the passenger’s seat. We met a group of cousins and nephews and nieces out there. There was a band and we all played poker machines and got drunk. It’s hard to remember who was there. So many drunken nights, so many relatives. But eventually Lynne and I decided to go back to Kempsey. I was way too drunk to drive, but there was nothing unusual in that. I drank and drove thousands of times before I got sober about 15 years ago.

It’s 18 kilometres from Crescent Head to Kempsey. It takes about 30 minutes, because it is so windy and narrow. You go up from the coast then down into the Macleay River valley. It was near the top of the range that I fist noticed the light. It was following us like a car. But there was only one light, and it was always directly behind us. Slightly elevated and on the driver’s side. I could see it clearly in my side mirror.  It was bright white to my eyes. My thought was that it could be a weatherr balloon with a light attached. I was not concerned at first.

It was when I mentioned it to Lynne that the situation changed. 

“I have been trying to ignore that for the last five miles” she said.

“I was hoping you could not see it”

“What is it” I said.

“I think it’s a Blue Light”

I wish I had never asked the question.

“What is a blue light?”

“It’s a sign”

I could tell by her tone the answer to the next question.

“Bad.”

Lynne’s silence, and one word answers, drove  me crackers at times.

“What kind of bad?”

“Somebody is going to die, kind of bad”

I was drunk, and not properly in control of the mini more. I drove faster and furtively put my head out of the car, to see the side mirror more clearly. The light continued to remain behind us and in the air. The road gets really windy again as you descend into the Macleay valley. But the light behaved as though it was attached to us by string. Behind us, driver’s side, in the air.

Lynne’s curt answers had me worried one of us was going to die. And going to die now. Looking back it is hard to explain why I bought into Lynne’s fear so easily. My memory is that light gave off an aura of fear and awe so strong that I could not ignore it. I have experienced this on at least one other occasion in the Australian bush. Again, I compare this to the sylvan fantasies we are taught.

So getting away from the light was my main concern. I realised though that I risked killing us both if I kept going faster. So I concentrated my efforts on driving as well as I could. I tried to resist the temptation to look, but I had to know. It was still there. 

Lynne was silent next to me. How I kept driving I do not know. It was like a dream that where you are trying to walk through mud. It seemed like hours. We reached South Kempsey and I looked in the mirror for the hundredth time. 

The light was gone. I do not know when it disappeared.

“Its gone” I said to Lynne.

She said nothing, and I grimly drove up Middleton St to Ann and George”s.

We slept separately. Me in the boys room, Lynne in the girls room. In my Room that night there was me, Little Greg, Michael, Ron and Matt. In the Girls room was Lynne Janelle Theresa And Lovey. Plus Anne and George made  eleven people in a three bedroom house. There were three beds in my room. As an honoured guest I had one to myself and the four boys went two out. Uncle Hoonker turned up after us and slept on the back verandah. So that made 12.

I was hungover in the morning and did not feel like talking. Lynne did not mention the Blue light and neither did it I. In fact it was never mentioned again. 

Until I started talking about it 30 or so years later. 

That is almost the end of my tale. A Tale told by an Idiot. Full of sounds and fury. Signifying nothing.

Except for this.

It all happened so long ago. Did the Blue Light presage doom? Was it real or just a drunken misunderstanding of some natural phenomenon?

Lynne's brother Michael stole a car with some mates a few weeks after this. He was driving and he crashed the car. His mates got out of the car and ran off. The car caught on fire. Michael died in the burning wreck.

Greg Bond

 You don't seem to make as many new friends as you get older. People you ring up because you see something that reminds you of them. Or you ring them because you are bored. Or you see them, and you can't stop your face breaking out into a smile. Those kinds of friendships are rare. And the problem is, as you get older, your friends die. And then there is one less person to ring up when you're bored. Or you read something and start to dial the number, then you have to stop. 0439 700.... oh wait, he's dead. And for a moment you feel deeply lonely, until you distract yourself with something else. 

I have had a few of those friendships over the years. One of them was with Greg Bond. He's dead now. He died about six years ago, of skin cancer that got into his bones. I still feel the urge occasionally to ring him up and share a silly story. But then I remember, and all over again I feel the sense of loss. 

He died too young. He was sixty-something, I am not sure. But it came suddenly. He had a course of chemo the year before his death, and then he had seemed to be ok. I hadn't treated the course of chemo with the seriousness it deserved. In my heart, I "knew" that he was exaggerating, that it would all go back to normal. He was working at the Parramatta office and I was at Redfern when he had the chemo. He came and saw us a Redfern once with his wife Yayuk, while the chemo was going on. We talked for hours, and the illness seemed far away. He had lost weight, but he needed to lose weight. He looked fit and strong. 

But a couple of months after that I saw him for the last time, out of hospital. I had a hearing at Mt Druitt courthouse. Greg had been rostered to look after the list there. His managing lawyer had orgaised it so we could hang out for the day. There was only a few minutes work for Greg that day. So he sat in Courtroom number two and watched my case for most of the time. My client was a young woman who had allegedly stabbed her partner, with a pair of scissors. He was unwilling to come to court and the case was mainly about legal technicalities of whether he could be forced to come to court to give evidence. It took a few hours, but after that Bondy and I were free to hang out. 

We went over to Mt Druitt plaza. What a place that is. Westfield in the Bronx. Paradise in the middle of a swamp.  They moved Mt Druitt railway station so that it was closer to the shops. But that just attracted drug addicts to hang out at the entrance. We negotiated that game of snakes and ladders and found our way to the food court. Bondy, as usual, could not decide what he wanted to have. He always hesitated over his food choices. He was worried he would choose something and it would turn out to be not the best thing on the menu. As also usual, I got frustrated with waiting for him and had half-finished my lunch before he even ordered.

But my frustration soon melted away. It was always fun hanging out with Bondy. We talked about plans for a tourist business called Bondy's Boring Tours. That was a longstanding joke between us. Bondy had a habit, when he got you in his car, of taking you for long boring drives, often around Toongabbie, which was where he grew up. The scenery was boring, and the commentary was boring, but the conversation was always fun. We talked about office gossip. We talked about everything and nothing. 

Mt Druitt was a good place to have a final day with Greg, outside of hospital. We had spent a lot of time hanging out in Mounty County, as it known to locals. The Clock hotel at Bidwill, the Cedars at Emerton. But the courthouse was the main place we went. Greg used to love taking me for drives around the tougher parts of Mt Druitt. We would point out the places where particularly notorious incidents occurred. It was another, oft repeated, boring tour.  We ambled back to court and sat in ALS office while Bondy made sure he had no more bail applications. Then it was time to say goodbye. Bondy had told me over the course of that day his fears for the future. The prognosis for the future was guarded. The cancer may come back. The chemo had seemed to work, but only time would tell.

I went to shake his hand as I left to go my car. We were standing outside the office. Bondy kept his hands in his pockets. "I can't shake hands Jim. I lost my belt. If I take my hand out of my pocket my pants will fall down".

That was the last time I saw him out of hospital.

I had met Greg on about the 7th of January 2002. I had started work that day at the Blacktown office of the Aboriginal Legal Service. My life was in a bit of disarray at that time. I had recently got into recovery from compulsive gambling and was soon to go into recovery from alcoholism. I had very little money, virtually no possessions, and no car. I was living in a shack up in Springwood. I had been extraordinarily lucky to land a job with the Aboriginal Legal Service at their Blacktown office. Bondy had been an institution there already for some years.

 Because I didn't have a car, Bondy used to drive me places whenever he could. Sometimes that would mean I would be at Windsor court and he would be at Penrith. I might finish my case at midday and I would ring Bondy and when he finished at Penrith he would drive to Windsor and pick me up. But that would not be the end of the story. One glorious day we went out to Wiseman's Ferry and on over the river to St Alban's. We drove around Governor Macquarie's five towns for hours, then headed back to the office at Blacktown. Most people would pack up and go home at 5pm after a day like that. Not Bondy. He sat down and started work. I caught the train home to Springwood. 

I think Bondy loved company so much that he would put his other needs on hold for the chance to spend some time being with other people. He was not much of a drinker, but he loved those lazy Friday evenings after conferences in the city when he would sit in the corner of the Chamberlain Hotel, known as "The Dingo", and chat with other lawyers about trials and tribulations. He loved sitting on the sofas in the office "preparing" for court next day by chatting with his workmates.

I think Bondy had a difficult childhood. Certainly, his family life as an adult was difficult. His Mum and Dad were separated when I knew him. So things like Birthday parties and anniversaries were always rigidly segregated. Mum could come to this one, Dad to the next. In that way, I met all of Greg's family.

It was impossible to be friends with Greg, and not meet all the members of his family. There was his mum (Adelaide) his dad (can't remember his name), and his brothers Warren (the Wok) and Mitch. I also met his grandfather, with whom Bondy's dad and the Wok lived.  That house stank, all three were heavy drinkers and I don't think very much cleaning ever happened. I talked to Bondy about it, but he couldn't smell anything. He never could smell anything. His sense of smell had been permanently destroyed by some undisclosed incident many years ago.

But his family were a challenging group. Bondy occasionally let slip a snippet of information about his past that threw light on the person he became. The family had been dysfunctional from very early, and Bondy's dad seemed to have been an alcoholic. Like a lot of oldest children in a dysfunctional family Bondy became the caretaker for his younger brothers. That continued until his death. After his dad died, Bondy husbanded his brothers' inheritances to make sure they were properly housed. Mitch, in particular, had issues and Bondy made sure his money was invested in a unit in Lithgow.

Bondy retained friendships from his schooldays until the end of his life. I can't remember their names but there was at three of them who would turn up to Bondy's milestone birthdays and anniversaries. And friends from his early days in the Education Department would show up too. There was also a stint in the Land Titles office, Big Greg, a much larger doppelganger of Bondy was his friend from those days.

Greg was lucky he found the Aboriginal Legal Service. His career had not been good until then. On his personnel file at the Education Department were these words "Mr Bond is a mediocre clerk at best". He had an insurmountable problem with tardiness. In those days at the education department, he caught a train that should have got him in the front door at the education department at precisely 9am. It invariably ran late, and Bondy had to sign the "late book" at work. We were discussing his hatred of trains when this subject came up.

"Did it ever cross your mind to catch an earlier train?" I asked him.

"No, never."

And tardiness remained a problem for him till he died. In the weeks leading up to his painful death, he joked that at his funeral, he wanted his coffin brought in ten minutes after the service had started. So he could be late for that too. We tried to do it, but the chapel at Rookwood wouldn't let us. 

His continual catastrophic lateness caused enormous problems for those who worked with him. He used to try to joke about it, but it was such a problem that I, and some other lawyers, refused to work with him. Court starts every morning at 10am, sometimes 9.30 am. The hour from 9am till 10am is the busiest and most important of the day. Most of what is going to happen in a day is decided in that hour. Greg usually would not get to court until after 11am. When you were rostered on with Greg that meant you would do most of the running around work before he had even arrived. And you would be distracted from your urgent tasks by a phone call from Bondy 

"Could you let court three know I will be late. I am stuck behind this truck going twenty kilometres an hour on Mamre Road".

I got to the stage where I would just say

"No. Do it yourself".

He started ringing other people then.

I talked to Bondy about his chronic lateness. We all did, thinking that we could help him solve his problem. But none of us could. From our discussions, it seemed to me that Bondy was chronically anxious. He found it almost impossible to leave one place and go to the next because he kept finding things to finish. It meant he stayed in the office also, till all hours of the night driving his long-suffering wife, Yayuk, crazy. 

Yayuk was the main person who suffered from Greg's quirks. They had been married well over twenty years by the time he died. They had an intense bickering relationship. I remember once Yayuk rang me looking for Greg.

"Where is he? He won't answer the phone." It was 8pm.

"He's at the office, with me".

Greg was gesturing furiously at me, pointing at the phone and shaking his head.

"What's he doing there?" in a sneering voice, "Mucking Around?"

I had to lie, "No, he's working".  But, yes, he was actually mucking around.

Greg and Yayuk had met in Bali, during a time when Greg was traipsing aimlessly around Southeast Asia. He told the story like this. 

"She was a village girl, from Java, precariously earning a living in Bali, and sending money home as well."

"We hung out for a few days, then I decided to move on to the next town"

"But as I left I realized I liked the company so I came back".

They stayed together till Greg died.

But, gee, did they fight.  I never really got to know  Yayuk. I met her many times, but her heavily accented English made conversation difficult. Greg used to speak to her in Bahasa, or if they were in company with English speakers, in a form of Pidgin. I don't really understand why Yayuk's English didn't become better, she was intelligent and strong-willed. Her strong will often manifested itself in loud aggressive arguments with Greg. Usually about his lateness, or about his "wasting money" on books.

 I remember her at the funeral. She was waiting outside the chapel. She looked old and broken and lonely. I did not even recognise her, at first. Grief really affected the way she looked.

How I got diagnosed with Bipolar