Reluctant Activists Read online

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  including the paperback editions, please visit:

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  Copyright © 2016 Helena Phillips

  ISBN: 978-1-925846-02-7 (ebook edition)

  Published by Vivid Publishing

  P.O. Box 948, Fremantle

  Western Australia 6959

  www.vividpublishing.com.au

  eBook conversion and distribution by Fontaine Publishing Group, Australia

  www.fontaine.com.au

  Version 1.0. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, printing, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the copyright owner.

  For Ross

  With thanks for the thirty two years

  And for all those ahead

  Contents

  Acknowledgements

  Author’s Invitation

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Acknowledgements

  When it began, I had no idea of the characters, plot or events and was often surprised at what came to me. My life as a psychotherapist has of course contributed to the insights into events but each character is unique to this story and bears no resemblance to anyone with whom I have worked over the years. Tegan Mumford, without your input this book would not be what it eventually became. Alison, Melissa Bantock and Maryanne Walsh, Kirsten Sheard, Brad and Paul M, particular thanks to you for reading this manuscript, making comments and asking questions which have helped me process. Maks and Andrew Walton, the chance to discuss it with you in its early days has been invaluable. Damian Tobin the Back Cover blurb reflects your considerable writing talent.

  My grateful thanks to you, Emily Ireson, for the cover artwork and your interest in the project.

  And to the Source. Thank you for drawing me into this story. What a wonderful and challenging journey it has been. My poor attempts to express your relationship with your creation are mine. It is only a story, and possibly bears little resemblance to the great reality in which your existence is centred. Perhaps, I have managed to express ideas about your nature which could decrease our distance from you. This, our religions have sometimes set in place, often with the best of intentions. My creative nature is part of yours and it fills me with joy.

  Author’s Invitation

  What if?

  What if the world was created fourteen billion years ago by a benign being: the first and greatest scientist, bestowing each and every particle of light with a place in the great order?

  What if the order of events resembles the artist painting a mural in intricate detail over decades?

  What if this designer of the universe has a nature for sharing the joy of creating, and so continues to create creative beings, spirit, human and animal, loving and delighting in their work?

  What if this Being is constantly pushing and pulling creation to recognise and use the Creator’s resources?

  What if this central organising force is centred in love?

  What if one of these creatures felt the urge to write about how that might look?

  I like to imagine a world filled with angels. But it’s difficult for me to write about perfection, or imagine such angels floating on clouds and generally leading a dull life. It makes sense that they might be given tasks to keep them interested, occupied and adding to creation in general. So I imagined Caretakers whose role it is to assist with maintaining the beautiful on this planet: Wind, Fire, Water and Earth. Each tend the planet in their individual ways, but are also attracted to humans because of their common elements. For example, these Caretakers are also growing, struggling with primitive natures and battling with the spiritual. But, and this is the big but, they have a deep and loving connection with their boss, the Source, which enables them to bring this into the human struggle. They have accepted an invitation to become (mostly unseen) companions to humans and have been doing this work long before the story begins.

  It begins after the small group of four Caretaker friends have been arguing about the state of the planet; how to rescue it from doom. The Source, it seems, is taking an archaeological view of time, while the Caretakers want to step in immediately and right some wrongs. It has been a grudging agreement of sorts which sets events in place. Homarta decides to choose two humans who have signed petitions about such matters and causes an earthquake to get their attention. They are, however, very Reluctant Activists. Rather than changing the world, the two are drawn into experiences of the spiritual which lead them along unexpected paths. It becomes a love story filled with challenge and hope.

  1

  Bridey

  The earth certainly moved, for both of us, the day we first met. If that’s what it takes to make a good relationship, then we had it in earth mover bucket loads.

  He was screaming at me. Well, maybe not at me precisely, but since there were no other people around, it felt personal.

  Outside the station, the ground was vibrating as it does when a train approaches, accompanied by the roaring of an engine approaching faster than it should have been coming into Clifton Hill station. Then the pavement under my feet began mimicking a surfboard action (only drier) and started to break up. My bike flew out of my hands, and at the same moment my ankle snapped. Although pain of a quality I hadn’t experienced before shot up my leg, there was so much happening, it was hard to focus on any one part of this.

  “What!” he screamed. “No, no, no. This is not happening.”

  If he’d asked me, which he didn’t, I could have told him that it was, but he just went on ranting into the air, filling it with words which would have had him arrested for breach of the peace, if there had been anyone else around. At the time, that aspect of the situation didn’t occur to me.

  All around us, the ground, pavement, whatever, was breaking into small pieces. Dust flew everywhere, particularly up my nose making me choke and cough my hands flying to my face whilst my foot stayed where it was, and the leg attempted to detach from the ankle.

  Then it was over.

  The need to sit down became urgent. But so was dealing with the threat in his face. It was full of loathing. He could have been Middle Eastern. Even covered with a fine white powder, you could tell his skin was darker, and the shape of his face screwed up in rage gave him a mean and violent look. Black shadows floated across my eyes. I was either going to faint or throw up; probably both. He started to head towards me. What he intended to do when he got there was a mystery.

  “I have to catch that train,” he was saying. Everything in me wanted this for him with great intensity, but that was impossible. Clifton Hill station had disappeared under the rubble, the facade cracked diagonally from the top corner right through to the ground. Attempting to step back from him was what did it. The ground rushed up to meet me.

  When I came to, he was right in front of me, bent over, throwing rubble behind him, and filling the air around us with his favourite few words. It was his rage which held me still. If he thought I was unconscious, maybe he’d move on. But he wasn’t interested. It was my bike he was after. It came out from under the rubble, intact. Not even a flat tyre. He pulled it up with one great heave and held it over his head. Then he looked around for a clear space to put it down again. He rode off.

>   My bike was an essential part of my whole existence. This one I’d found it on Gumtree two months ago, and it was the best one of the four I’d owned in my twenty-five years. Trips to Uni were three times shorter with a bike. Working without having to rely on public transport timetables was essential. The sense of freedom it had given me brought tears to my eyes as I lay there helpless, grit in them, wanting to vomit but reluctant to lie in it, so holding back and just wanting to be home. Even in the dark, I’d felt safe on a bike, as though nothing could touch me when we were together. Now it was gone. It had been my friend, and the six stitches in my knee from the time some idiot had turned left into Brunswick Road, right in front of me, was clearly not the fault of the bike; although my parents disagreed. The pain radiating from my ankle became unbearable. Holding back was no longer an option. Fortunately I hadn’t eaten much lunch.

  ***

  Pedalling at a speed which would qualify him for an excellent place in “Round the Bay in a Day” next season, he flew along, slipping through side streets and turning into major ones, desperate to make it on time. He had waited too long for this. So intent was he that he’d travelled several kilometres before registering the complete absence of traffic. No bicycles other than his. No trucks attempting to squish him between them. No pedestrians to curse. The world had stopped, and he hadn’t noticed.

  Over his thirty two years, he had sometimes wondered what that would be like; a freeze frame, or black devastation?

  He slowed a little, suddenly uncertain. What if he made it to Southern Cross, and no one was there?

  The text message read: Five o’clock the train comes.

  Actually no one was around anywhere.

  He pulled up in front of Parliament House. Cars were parked as they usually were, lining the footpaths, jammed in, meters apparently running. Four forty-five. No one on the streets!

  “I don’t have time for this,” he told himself, “can’t deal with it, makes no sense.” Taking his head in his forearms, he buckled down to rest them on the crossbar of his bike. (Well, her bike then.) A picture of a very grubby looking woman, with a strange stance, outside a silent station, shook him up slightly.

  “No time for that either”, he told himself. “This is an emergency. Focus Sandro!”

  Pushing off, he began to race down Collins Street, delighting in the completely clear run he was getting. He arrived at Southern Cross with minutes to spare and hardly short of breath, apart from the excitement, to complete and absolute silence.

  An unholy stillness.

  Dread was running cold fingers up and down his spine, and he felt the perspiration on his face cool instantly. There were going to be no trains to meet.

  ***

  Bridey

  Out of a corner of my crazed brain, I began to see things. Apparitions. There was movement. A very large, very fat woman was making her way across the rubble with extraordinary ease, as though she was floating over it. She wore one of those fixed bright smiles shop assistants get when you don’t want them to come over to you. She was heading straight for me. As she came closer, she grew bigger. She was huge, mammoth proportions - and wearing the strangest clothes. The thought that it would be hard to op shop for such bulk popped into my head. Stuck with this huge giant of a woman coming at me, and all I could think about was what op shop she would be using.

  But that wasn’t the worst of it. Other movements suggesting water, an undulating stream, slowly differentiated into a mass of tiny moving creatures. Not normally frightened by such things, the sheer volume of these filled me with horror. Arthropods, I thought. As you do. Some type of arthropod.

  While household spiders are always tolerated in my house, (and this is fortunate because they’re plentiful), the shelled creatures heading my way were neither normal in number, nor necessarily benign in intention. There were thousands of them, so that last point was important. In attempting to shrink, the slight movement aggravated my foot. Terror and pain were making war inside me with attempts to reassure myself that I was unconscious and hallucinating: that place where peculiar people, sudden major changes to the familiar, and a huge force of unknown arthropods were to be expected. The helplessness terrified me. I normally avoid all situations where danger is a given with the same commitment as it takes to avoid a terrifying theme park ride. Why put yourself in that position?

  Dirt was aggravating my eyes, and after receiving more dirt from my hands, they opened to discover the mammoth figure had almost reached me. Suddenly the advancing arthropods seemed safe. When this woman spoke though, her voice was friendly.

  “My humblest apologies” she said. “I had no intention of hurting you in my little tantrum.”

  You could say I was startled, and confusion strengthened the dream idea whilst a niggling thought kept interrupting. How could the pain be that intense in a dream?

  “Must set about fixing that foot,” the woman said. “Don’t mind my little helpers will you? They’re here to deal with the mess quickly. You might enjoy watching what they can get up to.” In what alternate universe could anyone have believed that?

  Everywhere, the arthropods were lifting two front legs to shift debris. This really happened. Even taking into account my fertile imagination, the sight was fascinating in a macabre way. Their sheer numbers were making light of the work. Where extra strength was needed they worked in teams. In any other situation, it might have been impressive.

  My attention snapped back to the woman who was approaching my left foot with alarming intentions. Completely ignoring my protests, she shifted the debris off it and lifted my leg, cradling the foot in one massive hand. Powerless to resist the ministrations of my giant “benefactress”, submission was the only choice. She began crooning some strange magic which sent shivers up the back of my neck. Her large fingers stroked over the ankle, backwards and forwards, pausing to focus intense rays of heat into one or two spots in particular. The pain began to ease.

  My distress increased. What was happening?

  I remember muttering, “Not here! Not now!” over and over again.

  It’s important to be firm when you feel like fainting. Who knows what could happen to you if you lose consciousness. Could wake up on another planet. Might be pinned to the ground like Gulliver.

  The woman placed huge, brown and rough, decidedly unwelcome fingers on one of my temples and an even larger thumb on the other. The smell of warm earth travelled up my nostrils bringing with it images of playing in the dirt on a summer’s afternoon as a four year old.

  Her concentration was intense, and she hummed while she worked. I gave up, deciding it no longer mattered what happened next. The pain was lessening, and the faintness had disappeared.

  “You’ll be treating that carefully if you are wise,” she said, pulling me to a seated position and placing the foot on the now cleared ground. “I’ll rig you up a pair of crutches.” These, when they appeared, were rough and a very odd shape.

  “Get up now. Walk around a little so I can make some adjustments.” This was a woman used to command.

  Resistance is futile! The thought made me smile, but inside. Obediently struggling to stand, and with extreme reluctance attempting to take some weight on my left foot, I made the welcome discovery that the pain level was now about a five; not strong enough to make me frightened but uncomfortable enough for me to obey her instructions, if only while she was there. These were to use the bad foot for balance. She seemed pleased with some tentative steps.

  “Good”, she said. “Now we can have a comfortable chat.” What on earth was she up to? How could this get any worse? Why didn’t she just evaporate? But the woman placed her vast bulk uncomfortably close to my hip on the one smooth surface remaining. This was a large lump of timber which hadn’t yet found a home. The small creatures had done a wonderful job of clearing the mess. Although the station was obviously still unusable, due to large cracks in the front wall, it was possible to imagine that no great disaster had taken place here. Just a small e
arthquake! Any efforts to move further away from the enormous buttock’s unwelcome warmth against my own skinny one, led to placing too much weight on the newly mended foot. I gasped, as pain shot up the leg, and had to quickly retreat. Just let me go home was the moaning mantra inside my fuzzy head.

  In some dreams you can wake yourself up when things get too rough. When I was little, nightmares often woke me. My parents had been less than sympathetic, not appreciating the disturbed sleep, and the advice had always been the same. “Have a drink of water and go back to bed.” How water was supposed to wash away the horrible feelings was always a mystery. Yet, here I was, in the middle of a very frightening dream, and the only thought that occurred was how much a glass of water would help. Being up close and personal with a total stranger was extreme on my list of horrors.

  “Firstly, Bridey,” the woman began, “you deserve an apology. Never at any time was a rock supposed to fall on you or your bicycle.” She sounded like a lawyer laying out the details of a case. “The earthquake was larger than planned.”

  She had planned this! But, the woman continued, smiling and nodding graciously. “The plan was to demonstrate my powers and get your undivided attention.” I twisted to look at her more closely, appalled.

  “You are an activist, are you not, Bridey?” I had to gather my thoughts to recall what an activist actually was. Thinking stops at times like these. That’s right, people who protested against the damming of rivers and stuff. My head shook vigorously keen to make it quite clear there had been some terrible misunderstanding. But it was useless. She took no notice at all.

  “Yes. It’s definitely you. Bridey McLeary. Your name was on the list of those in support of attempts to stop coal seam gas works. We made careful checks.”

  Into my head popped a terrible image. Myself, standing in front of the Sea Shepherd, cameras shooting, lights flashing, my parents mortified one morning on reading the Herald Sun. I felt it incumbent upon me to do all I could to disabuse her of any such erroneous ideas. Now my head was talking like a lawyer. I do that sometimes. It has entertainment value as well as helping me to ward off attempts of other people to control me. This was definitely not the right time for it.