Perth Voice Interactive

An entry from our Summer Reading competition.

SHELLEY says, “Bon Scott kissed me once. On the cheek.”

I look at her with my look of having heard it all before, although in this instance I haven’t heard it at all. 

I just don’t want to give her any satisfaction when it’s been a long morning. We’ve been waiting endless hours for our friends who are coming down the coast from Gero on the Carnival Princess. 

They sent a message to say the weather got rough and they had to stand off somewhere, so we’ve been filling in time since eight. 

Since we heard, I’ve been going on and on about how ships can’t stand off, only float off. 

Even though I could tell Shelley was sick of listening to me I just couldn’t stop.

“He was born in Forfar,” I tell her. “Bon. And lived in Kirriemuir until he was 10 and migrated here with his family.”

“Hmm,” says Shelley, who hates my little factoids. “Well it might have been him or it might have been one of his roadies,” she adds, “but I think it was him. He had a particular sort of smell.” 

Shelley leans up against the statue of the possible cheek kisser, and because he’s balanced on an amplifier she’s sniffing at his thigh, or maybe it’s his crotch. 

“Well, how does he smell then?” I joke.

“Brassy, kind of shiny; just like I remember.” She’s serious.

“Did you know,” I ask her, “that Fremantle derived from the name of a hamlet in France named Fromentel? Well not in the first instance, as it was named for Admiral Fremantle, but the origins of his name seems to trace back to the French words for cold cloak, and the hamlet Fromentel.” 

Shelley doesn’t even feign interest.

I’m not interesting to her any more, and I know I’m slowly losing her which makes me panic. 

“Something personal,” I tell myself, “say something personal, not just facts, facts annoy her”.

Then, while we’re looking at Bon and imagining our lives in the mid-70s, I say something personal but the minute the words are out of my mouth I know I’m done for. 

“Idiot, idiot. Idiot,” I chant to myself and I don’t want to look up and see her face because, like I said, I’m done for because what I said is, “Why would he choose you? Like, seriously, Shelley, of all the girls why would he choose to kiss you?”

So here we are, standing across from a famous fish and chip place, the fishing boats glinting their value back at us, and on the surface it looks like all is well with the world but I’ve just gone and stuffed it. 

I chance a look at her. I take in her so-soft skin and the pink flush that’s rising up her neck and colouring her cheeks and because I’m looking I can also feel, really feel, the way her softness sinks into my body when we sleep. 

I can hardly bear the thought I might have lost her forever because I’m an idiot who can’t say personal things and communicates through facts.

“Sorry, sorry, sorry,” I say quickly, “Didn’t come out the way I meant.” 

Now she turns to me and says she wished I had stopped talking. 

“Me too,” I say, ‘but it’s the Freo vibe, makes me ramble.”

“Fremantle,” she corrects, “not Freo,” because now everything about me annoys her. 

My breathing, my stance, my rants about the demise of the fifth estate, my fact filled responses. “And it’s Geraldton, not Gero,” she snaps.

Well she can say it easily enough but I’m always stuck behind anxiety that I will say it wrong. 

Never sure if it has lots of hard e’s like Freemantle, or if I should swallow the e and say Fr’mantle. Or now, Fromentel, which really does have a beautiful ring to it. 

We both stare at the water, chop-chopping near the edge of the jetty. 

Because I know she’s upset I try to explain; I think if I can make her pity me a bit we might get back on track. I also keep talking because if I don’t hurry and make this right I will be left here with the statues of the Italian fisherman and Bon, three lonely frozen-in-time men watching the water. 

I tell her another bit of my story, about how I came here as a kid, a migrant like Bon. 

How I asked the teacher to help me spell pier and she, young and blonde and immeasurably beautiful, didn’t know what a pier was. How the teacher had struggled to hide her resentment of the flies and our little town ways and that I knew a word she didn’t, so, to cover her embarrassment she attacked me. 

“You’re not in the East now Bruce,” she said. “Here we say jetty. And dance not darnce, and parsty not pastie.” 

That was how my first love/crush/romance got jumped on. 

Now, one particularly bright flash of sunlight bounces from a wave cap and hits my eye and I blink out a tear which leads a few more down my face and I’m nine again and humiliated because I don’t fit. 

Shelley looks at me and I sniff, pretending it’s hay fever. 

This is a pivotal moment, my mum would have said, this is where life can turn on a sixpence. 

“I’m really sorry Shelley,” I say again. “That must have been amazing, being kissed by Bon. Or even by his roadie. It must have made your day.” 

She looks me in the eye. And laughs. ”You’re a right idiot,” she says, and I know we’re okay again. 

Then we walk down the narrow streets of Fromentel and head towards the wharf where the Carnival Princess might finally be waiting, no longer standing off but standing by. 

I feel Bon watching us leave, feel the cold cloak lifting.

by THOM DAVIES