Carole-Ann, My Neighbour’s Wife
I did not covet, but others had.
She chose actor Terry Gill, traded
West End showbiz for the new
life, Melbourne showbiz.
They kept going doing
December shows in malls -
whatever held kids still,
amused while parents shopped.
TV gave them bit parts -
when one worked, the other
minded the son and daughter
growing up into showbiz.
They were good neighbours.
Our homes above the Yarra
in a bush suburb, each summer
might have burned to ash,
had fire come our way.
Keep the vegetation down!
Terry bought a goat - any green
plant it munched. Me, its holiday
minder, when I shifted its tether
and peg and replenished its water,
it tried to butt. That hot summer,
goat and us - we weren’t roasted.
We’d warn each other: ‘neighbour,
watch for snakes in that border.’
My dog startled the Gill daughter
off her pony. Her arm fractured,
threatening her dance career.
Watched close by father and mother,
it healed, but Erin rode no more.
The December show had its star.
TV personalities
thronged their loud weekend parties.
Their big cars blocked my driveway.
Deathly silence all next day.
The former show-girl, Carole-Ann,
admired by many in the West End,
promised she would introduce,
when he visited from England,
her writer friend - ever since her
fan letter to him on his first book,
The Outsider. Did I know it?
Everyone knew it, I knew of it.
The tale I knew: slim bookish lad
sleeps rough, writes best-seller
both wide and deep, surveying
genius, on his way to being one.
He came, stout stolid stupefying
in his certainties, bestowing
on his hosts and Melbourne
England’s - Europe’s - bounty.
One of his biographers,
a Melbourne man, consulted;
corrected, corroborated,
enhanced his manuscript.
We shook hands - he resumed
his monologue. I lacked words
to make it dialogue. Home
beckoned. Too late for fandom.
But first I sat with Carole-Ann’s
Dad, retired London law clerk.
Such a nuisance - living his last days
on top of them, and useless.
Another monologuist! - but fun.
Tales of judges, barristers,
crims, molls and con-men. None
genius outsiders. But real.
I missed all their funerals.*
Carole-Ann survives - on film,
a toaster brings electric death
while she enjoys a showbiz bath.
*I may yet predecease C-A, whose happy 80th
is on Youtube, I now find.
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