Blue

The evening was ushered in, damp and getting colder. The man with short dark hair walking steadily through the bush was dwarfed by the gum trees all around him, whose loose bark shuffled and shivered as the cold wind blew the evening in. The forest was wide and tall. The man was thin and tall. A green rucksack weighed him down, and his fingers wrapped around the handle of a violin case were red and stiff from the cold and from holding the position. His steps were steady; not slow, but not fast. Earlier in the afternoon, when the light edged the trees in gold, he had looked around him as he walked, searching for the little birds that scuffle in the tops of trees, or for lyrebirds strutting in the understory, or for wallabies hopping past him on their way. But now his head was focused forward, direct, because it was late, he was tired, and he knew he had to reach the camping-spot before dark if he wanted to start a fire while the sun was still above the horizon. He walked on.

The path was narrow and unworn, just a thin strip of naked dirt winding through wild underbrush. Many people did not travel this path, for it was a long and lonely one that stretched through a quiet and untravelled stretch of bush. Because it was untravelled it was wilder than most sections of bush known to the man. He thought its wildness was beautiful because it was foreboding and foreboding because it was beautiful. The man cared for beauty. He was a violinist, and rather a good one, and on Sundays he liked to steal away into the bush behind his cottage and write poems about his surroundings, and by day he was a leatherworker.

The sun was sinking into the sky, and the trees’ once-sharp edges had become murky and indistinguishable from each other. The man quickened his pace. He had now given up hope of lighting a fire before dark. He was cold, and the dark sunk into him and made him heavy. His rucksack felt heavier now, and his hand gripping the handle of the violin case was redder and stiffer from the cold and from more time holding the position. He switched the case into his other hand and flashed his red fingers open and closed. He was considering shoving his way into the underbrush and setting up a makeshift camp on whatever flat ground he could find, but he saw a tiny light between the trees, and all thoughts of stopping at that moment were lost. It was red and flickering. A fire. But who else would be out here? He quickened his pace even further, but almost stopped when he remembered the tales his Scottish grandmother had told him of faeries who’d lure you deep into the forest with twinkling lights so they could kill you. But he dismissed that thought. Besides being appreciative of beauty, the man felt curiosity was a virtue bestowed to very few and that his own curiosity should be conserved by any means. And he was very curious. So he continued on quite quickly and reached the fire within minutes.

As he got closer, he saw the campfire was of good size; its roar and occasional pop told him it was well established. He turned the corner. Now he could see it: the campfire was in the centre of the camping-spot he had been trying to reach for so many hours. He set down his rucksack and case and moved to where the fire burned in the middle of the camping-spot clearing, warming his hands front and back, and he was so transfixed by the small luxury of a pocket of warmth in a cold dark night that he did not see the man on the other side of the clearing who was watching him. 

‘Hello, stranger.’ Said the stranger.

The man jumped and said, ‘Oh!’ 

Then, shaking his head a few times and half-laughing—more out of shock than amusement—he replied, ‘Hello. I should’ve known this fire couldn’t’ve built itself.’ 

‘No worries. I wouldn’t’ve expected to find anyone out here on this lonely path either. What’s your name, old boy?’ Said the stranger.

‘Thomas Parkinson.’ Said the man.

‘Well, Tom, pleased to meet you.’ The stranger stuck out a strong hand from within the folds of his long brown cloak, which Thomas shook. ‘I’m Blue,’ said the stranger. 

From what Thomas could see of him by the firelight, Blue was tall, taller than Thomas, and had straight red hair which was unfashionably long. His outdated brown cloak had a dark stripe along the bottom where it sat in the dirt, and Thomas could count three patches on its front alone. Thomas thought him a strange kind of man, what with his long hair and raggedy too-big cloak, and he smiled to himself imagining Blue wearing shiny black pointed boots and three different-sized guns at his waist underneath that great cloak like an adventurer from a children’s book. Still, you could never be too careful. 

‘I see you’re a violinist,’ said Blue. ‘So am I. Fancy playing a tune?’

Before Thomas could respond, Blue had turned away with a wave of his cloak into the darkness and re-emerged holding a violin. It was a pale yellow and had five strings instead of the usual four. Thomas noticed this and thought again what a strange kind of man Blue was. 

‘What a glorious instrument! I could hardly call that a violin myself. It looks otherworldly.’

‘Thanks, Tom. Had it made from huon pine when I was down in Tassie. Wonderful place, Tassie. You been?’

‘No,’ said Tom.

‘You should. Now, what do you play?’ Again, Blue didn’t wait for an answer. He launched into Waltzing Matilda, playing it slowly and beautifully, and the tune echoed out into the trees for miles. And as he played, he looked not down at the bridge or neck or fingerboard of the violin, but out into the darkness beyond the fire where the two men stood. There was something very lonely about it—about his look, and about that lone melody filling the depths of a shadowless dark. Some bats flew overhead. Tom scrambled to get his own violin, which had a chip off one of its pegs and an unevenly rounded chinrest. Halfway into the second verse he joined in, amplifying the tune and, still looking into the distant darkness, Blue seamlessly switched to a harmony as they moved into the second chorus. 

It would have been a strange thing to hear, were you camping nearby. The two violins, one pale, the other worn, together meshed into a hollow, haunting sound that the surrounding trees seemed to pick up and transmute between them, through their branches where birds crouched asleep and through their root systems underground where rabbits curled into each other for warmth. There was something different about the song; it was at once bright and dim, soft and harsh, joyous and sorrowful, confined to the spot beside the fire but echoing into the bush all around. And in his mind Thomas could hear the song’s lyrics as they played. He imagined the trees were whispering the words back to him.

Waltzing Matilda, waltzing Matilda,

You’ll come a-waltzing Matilda with me…

The last note faded into silence. ‘You’re not a bad player, old boy,’ said Blue. And then they played ‘The Road to Gundagai’ and ‘The Wild Colonial Boy’ and ‘Bound for Botany Bay’, and they sung along, too. And the sound carried for miles. The sound of old songs brought to life in their native land.

Once the music had dissipated, Thomas realised that he had become quite hungry and quite tired, and all his sense of self and of where he was returned to him. He went to search his rucksack for the dinner he had packed, and finding that he had forgotten to pack it, he turned around to ask Blue if he had any food to spare. Blue was crouched by the fire, grinning and watching a fat rabbit turn dark on a spit that seemed to have materialised out of nowhere. Thomas thought again what a strange kind of man Blue was. 

They shared the rabbit and it was good, better than what Thomas’ wife cooked at home. They filled the silence with light conversation about what they knew of the area, of the weather in the area, and of the people in the area. But Blue was getting tired of this kind of conversation. 

‘Don’t you think possibility is more exciting than reality, Tom?’ He said. 

‘Why—yes, I suppose it is.’ Thomas was caught off guard. ‘What makes you say that?’

‘Well, don’t you think it’s more exciting when you’ve got a whole future ahead of you than when you’ve already lived all your life? Looking back isn’t as good as looking forward, is it.’

‘Quite right. Yes, quite right.’ Thomas hesitated. ‘You know—I sometimes wonder if maybe our lives are nothing but stories being read by other people.’ Thomas did not often share such poetic musings.

Blue laughed. ‘I reckon you’re right on the money there, old boy. I bet all those ghosts and angels and all the rest of them just sit up there in heaven, all lazy, and just watch us do the real work. Ha! I like that. I like that very much, Tom.’ And with that he slapped Thomas on the back heartily, said ‘’Night, old boy,’ and went off to his swag and slept. Thomas slept soundly that night, for he felt safer with another person around, even though he was a stranger.

In the morning when Thomas woke, Blue was gone. He had left no trace but the pile of glowing embers from the previous night’s fire. 

Thomas lay on his back where he had slept on the ground under the quilt his wife had made him, and with his hands folded across his chest he watched the sea of leaves above him move about in all directions. The sky was cloudless. The wind whistled hollowly through the eucalypts’ branches and rustled their leaves. A kookaburra swept across his view and alighted on a nearby branch. Thomas turned to watch it laugh. What a strange and wonderful world, he thought. And he packed up his makeshift bed and continued on his way.

 The same morning, Thomas reached the town that marked the end of the bush through which he had travelled. There he stopped at his aunt Mary’s house, merely out of obligation, for he had little interest in hearing her stories about town gossip or her two little dogs’ backyard adventures. This day was no different; she was as talkative as ever and told him all about her new yellow window curtains which she’d had made for her by Tim the tailor who was in fact ‘a right gentleman.’ Thomas bore her talk well, nodding and smiling and saying ‘yes’ at all the right moments, until aunt Mary asked if it would be ever so much trouble for him to play her a little tune on the violin. He obliged, and played Waltzing Matilda for the second time in two days. As soon the last note sounded, Thomas said to his aunt, ‘I played this very same tune last night with a stranger I met in the bush.’

‘Good gracious!’ Exclaimed aunt Mary. ‘You know as well as I do that that bush is under-travelled—it is rare that one would find a companion in that place—and one with which to play music! I say, that is rather peculiar. Yes, rather peculiar indeed. Did he tell you his name, Thomas dear?’

‘Yes, funny sort of name—a nickname, I suppose. Blue.’

Aunt Mary’s teacup clattered into its saucer as her hand jumped to her mouth. Some tea had slopped onto the floorboards and her two little dogs waddled over to lap it up. ‘Why, Tom, my dear,’ she said, ‘I believe you’ve met a ghost!’

‘What? Oh, auntie. You can’t be serious.’

‘No, no, I really am serious—deadly serious, yes, deadly serious.’ 

The two were sitting on opposite overstuffed pink-and-white-striped couches in Aunt Mary’s lavish drawing room. Aunt Mary now leaned forward in her seat, looked Thomas in the eye and spoke with the tone and manner of a well-versed storyteller. 

‘Many decades ago, a young boy went wandering off into the bush alone to look for birds—kookaburras were his favourite, I do believe. He had been gone a while and it became dark, so his father went out to search for him. The boy was never found.’ She leaned so far forward she was perched right on the very edge of the couch and was so tense she looked as if she might fall off. ‘But the boy’s father never gave up looking,’ she continued. ‘The father’s name was Douglas Menzies. He was a peculiar sort—they say he always wore old clothes that were far too big, and that he played violin—just like you, Thomas. Yes, he was an eccentric sort of man. Not that I think you’re eccentric, Thomas dear,’ she added hastily. ‘He had bright red hair,’ she continued, ‘and because of his hair colour they used to call him Blue.’ And with that she leaned back into the couch, with her hands resting daintily in her lap, chin up, a little smile on her lips. ‘So, Thomas dear, you’ve met a ghost.’

‘Oh,’ said Thomas.