To Be In England In The Summertime...
by Ben Wooller

I woke up to a monochromatic world. Half light edging through the gap in the curtains. Although it was the same sky I’d grown up under, it had an alien quality to it. Eternal grey, not helped by fragments of a dream where I was running from the stilted house, across stabbing grass that smoothed and grew into hard cobblestone streets in what I took to be London. The original Smoke, a place I’d never been to, a place that felt so terribly out of my grasp, yet so utterly familiar.
     A short escape from the city had turned into a month of exile. Or maybe I was just hiding. If you ignore something, it’ll go away. If you can’t see it, it can’t see you. I’d thrown some clothes and books into my canvas satchel and my laptop in its battered leather case, and I was on the road, heading south, down the coast. I was looking for a sign, following a memory of a stilted house.
     My memories are always in 2D. Flat, muted colours and harsh black outlines. The pale blue paint of the house, and the large shapes it left as it flaked off, exposing white plasterboard, like islands on a strange map. The green of the sharp crab grass and the smell of the salty air. The pull and hiss of the ocean and the gentle purring of the chickens in my grandparents’ backyard.
     The stilted house was on the block next to my grandparents’ house, a small blue cube on four tall legs, in the middle of an expanse of grass with a thin gravel driveway and a solitary Illawarra Flame Tree for company. I was never sure why the house was on stilts. Janet Street was one street away from the beach. There was an entire row of houses between it and the ocean. I would look up at the stilted house and wonder why the stilts, and then be struck by a sudden fear of drowning, the resolute knowledge that the sea would rise up and I’d not get up the stairs in time. I thought I could climb the huge Flame Tree that sat near the kerb before the water came, but the upper branches were covered in thorns.
     Don’t worry, I was told. The sea never floods. Not here anyway. But the sea continued to worry me. I’d seen Jaws when I was five, and I couldn’t even bring myself to sit on the toilet, scared that the giant shark would find its way through the maze of pipes and shit, and bite me in half like it did Robert Shaw. Endless rows of razor-sharp teeth would slice into my stomach and I would spit blood out of my mouth, and be dragged to the depths of the toilet bowl, never to be seen again.
     The threat of phantom sharks and smothering water faded away when I realised I had never seen inside the stilted house. The door had never opened. I couldn’t peek inside the windows, and even if I could climb the thorned tree it was still too far from the house to see in. Sometimes there’d be a mysterious car parked under the house. When there was no car under it, I’d sneak around the low corrugated asbestos fence that separated the two properties and steal across the prickly grass and harpooned red blossoms. I did this in bare feet, running to the metal stairs, their own coat of pale blue paint worn through by hands and feet and the corrosive air. I’d start the slow climb. Each stair would give a low, metallic creak and echo under the house, among the exposed pipes. Each creak made me want to turn back and run thundering down the stairs. I’d get to the top of the stairs after what seemed like days with no Sherpa Tenzing to help me. I’d pause and look around, with the world laid out before me, and see only a smattering of red-tiled roofs from the street in front, with the blue of the sea behind them, the white curve of the bay as it arched around. Turning back to the front door, I’d reach out a trembling hand to touch the doorknob, but pull back at the last minute, running down the stairs and back to the safety of my grandparent’s house.
     In my memory, it’s always summer.

I sat in the car as rain bashed the windshield. The drive had taken an hour, different from the day-long journey I remembered. Miles of red-roofed homes, the suburb was now an estate, cheap housing for new families who wanted a seaside lifestyle. The bay, dim with the reflected grey of the sky, still arched around, with the ferry and sandbar with its weather-beaten sign warning of tides and drowning, something that scared me as a child, and tiny island. Driving past cafes down one side of the esplanade that I no longer remembered, I turned into the street.
     I shouldn’t have been surprised to see a set of duplexes where the stilted house should’ve been, but still I was, and something that felt like hope dropped away inside me. The flame tree stood there, immobile and defiant, more imposing than ever. In comparison, my grandparent’s former house, the red bricks newly rendered in limestone coloured cement, was tiny. It was bigger in my head. I sat staring at the now cream-coloured wall that I’d once fallen off, splitting open my right temple, amazed at the amount of blood, before starting the engine again
     I turned into the road that led past the northern curve of the Sound. The water was moving fast, white crests smashing up against one another, amid the sharp smell of rotting seaweed, dark shapes floating beneath the rolling surface, triggering memories of fishing. The old general store was on the corner. White, the door faced the sea. Posters of magazines and models in the windows, and glowing neon advertising Coke and bait. The salt wore down the metal frames that held in the newspaper headlines. Time was etched into flecks of rust. My grandfather used to take me to the shop, a short walk, but we’d drive because of his bad hip. I was driving the same car now, a Holden Gemini two years younger than me. Imperial Gold in colour, meaning a horrible shimmery shit-orange. Occasionally, I’d still find a Cool Mint or Humbug between the seats or under the handbrake.
     I’d visit my grandparents every month, and every month we’d go to the store, and buy lollies and a comic or two. The old store was, to my younger self, a gold mine. The wire racks held countless comics, by publishers long extinct. Gold Key, and dodgy black and white reprints of Superman. The newsprint rubbed off on your hands. Genuine Marvel comics: X-Men, Spiderman and Star Wars. Bright yellow Classics Illustrated. The dark blue powder coat on the racks was peeling, and the whole thing teetered and squeaked when turned.
     I didn’t dare to go in. I slammed the car in gear. I drove.

After a few hours of constant driving, inland then south along a main road, I stopped for petrol and a Red Eye. The town sloped down into a valley, divided by the bitumen. Buildings on either side, most old, dating back to the mid-40s and older, others newer but still ancient to my mind: garages, agricultural suppliers, a bank, arts and crafts, a cafe, and, to my pleasure, a tiny second-hand bookshop, in which I was greeted by the twin smell of lived-in tobacco and freshly spilt beer. The shop was two rooms, wall-to-wall shelves, some old and classy, polished, others hastily glued and screwed pine. There were still particles of plaster on the floor. Across from the entrance, the door to the attached house was wide open. Cricket blaring from a TV.
     “Hello?” I called out.
     “Just here for a look around, are ya?” a gruff voice called from the smoky room.
     “Yeah.”
     “Go ahead, mate.”
     Most of the books were older than the usual second-hand flotsam I was accustomed to in the city. Beautiful hardcovers I didn’t dare touch. Pulp magazines, in stacks taller than me, occupied one corner. I opened brown and brittle New Worlds from the 60s, with their wonderfully inventive covers – optical illusions before the age of flash-bang computer wizardry.
     The owner came slouching out of the house, a cigarette hanging from his lower lip, a can of beer in his hand.
     “See anything you like?”
     I had two thin novels in my hand, with names that evoked machinery, darkness, numbers and poetry, as well as a copy of Gravity’s Rainbow. On the first page, written in faded red biro was: Merry Christmas Gillian + Mel ’86 Love David.
     “Five bucks even,” he said as he took my money. “So, where’re you from?”
     “Sorry?”
     “I haven’t seen you around here before. I’m assuming you’re not a local.”
     “Oh. No. I’m from Perth.”
     “Ah. What brings you here?”
     I shrugged. “I just went for a drive.”
     “Pretty bloody long drive, if you ask me.”
     I shrugged again. “I lost track of time.”
     Some children ran past the windows then, a blur of green, laughter and shouting, slowly followed by more noise in the form of more children. They were wearing green and carrying branches still covered in leaves.
     The owner was watching me.
     “May Day,” he said.
     “What’s that?” I asked.
     “It’s May Day. Festival. You know. At the park down the hill.” He pointed where the children were heading. They had joined a larger group, all of them walking in the same direction, the rustling of leaves. “It’s the first of May.”
     I hadn’t realised.
     “I thought that was an English thing.”
     “It is. Old traditions die hard, you know.”
     I thanked him for the books and followed the children. They ran down the street, breaking off from the main group, scurrying like rats across the five pipes that ran alongside the small bridge. There was a park where the valley dipped filled with people, a Chinese take-away van and the sizzle of barbeques. As I got closer, my mouth watered at the smell of sausages. I expected to see a Maypole in the middle of the park, between the slides and see-saw, but instead, a tower of leaves, about eight feet tall, lumbered across the small stream that ran through the park. It was swaying, moving with the speed of a zombie. Children shrieked at it, before laughing and clapping. I realised it was a man in costume, with a crown of bright flowers and a strange wooden mask, carved leaves coming out from the eyes and mouth. Three men guided the giant, their hair, skin and clothes all the same shade of green. A girl, a lot younger than me, and attractive, accompanied them. She was dressed completely in black, carrying a bouquet of flowers.
     An elderly lady next to me touched my elbow.
     “That’s the Jack in the Green, dear,” she offered as an explanation. But I didn’t tell her that I wasn’t confused. Seeing the slow moving mass of vegetation had raised the hair on the back of my neck. My arms chilled with goosebumps. “He comes out every year.”
     I watched the Jack in the Green move down the street, seemingly unfazed by the fact the highway was a major trucking route, with the three green men and the sullen girl in black lagging behind. A group of people detached themselves from the crowd and started to dance after the Jack, hooting, laughing and drinking, a small town bacchanal.
     Turning my collar up against the cold, I followed the procession across the road, and towards the rusting railway tracks, old carriages frozen up ahead, dappled in graffiti and spider webs.