BED TIME STORIES
In that quiet time that was just for her, between the duties of the day & the soft dark of her shared bed, she sat at the kitchen table & worked on a quilt that might one day warm her grandchildren. The silky silence of her work was occasionally interrupted by the flutter of moths at the screen door.

When he was small he would make himself disappear by covering his face with the doona, reappearance always greeted by wonder & amazed smiles. Now, faced with the weariness that smothered the magic of each day, he pulled the covers over his head in a vain attempt to make the world disappear.

With heads wrapped in beach towels, fixed with dressing gown cords, they were sheikhs & sultans reigning over the . palaces of bedspreads between lounge chairs.

She wove together strange webs of coloured wool crocheted into little squares. The labours of loneliness spread around her like the intricate patterns of a spider’s dreaming.

When she was away he was mute in a noisy world. But upon her return in the stillness of their bed words poured from him, flooding the room like a drought-breaking rain, making little splashes where they fell.

In the middle of the night she would stand at the doorway of her child's room, the intensity of her stare wrestling the dark. She watched the covers rise & fall in a comforting rhythm. Her own breath stopped for a moment. Her mind touched that memory of a morning years ago, of drawing back a woollen blanket, to find the precious contents cold & still.

On the verandah, in the halo of an oil lamp, the sisters embroidered in honour of a monarch that ruled across the waves. They spoke softly & told stories of a home land that neither had seen, while their busy hands made shadows dance on the edge of the wildness that encircled them. Beyond, from the starless black mountains they could faintly hear the rustlings of unnamed animals & the growl of devils.
She asked her family to take her away from the smell of antiseptic, the echo of corridors & the hospital corners. Her nearly spent body lay for the last few days in a bed, in a home, crowded by the sounds of living & the voices of those who loved her.

A chill valley, covered by the weight of blankets, separated untouching, unspeaking bodies. During their cold wars one or other would pull at the bedding & icy air would rush & fill the void between them.

Under the quilt’s compass pattern he told nightly tales of adventure & distant places to a loved & eager audience. The threads of the narrative spun wildly as the needle point navigated them, safe & warm through imagined journeys.

The nightie, made from old parachute material rustled when she snuggled against her mother who told bedtime stories of her father. He existed for her only as an imagined character in a Boy’s Own Annual, fighting battles in a blue summer sky over a patchwork of green fields. Sometimes, in darkness, jolted from sleep, the billowing of silk on skin caught her as she fell from her dreams.

After many washes the red wine stain on the bedspread was nearly invisible. She could see it because she knew. It was her own secret blush of evidence.

On those trips from town he curled up on the back seat, wrapped tight in a tartan rug. The silhouettes of tree tops rushed by, in retreat along with the day. The moon played hide-&-seek as it followed them home. A faint glow from the dash board lit the dark shapes of his parents & the low murmur of their voices lulled him to sleep.

Before he was ready for the light to go off he lined up his troops on the pillow - Giraffe,
Roary the Velvet Lion & Burrows the Rabbit, whose button eyes never slept. Now he was guarded from the nightmares that lived in the shadows under the bed.

When a friend slept over they would top & tail in her bed. They chattered into the night about school & which movie star they were going to marry & whispered secrets to each other’s painted toes.

On weekends & school holidays, when it was his turn to be a parent, he collected his itinerant children. He unpacked bags while they, giggling, staggering & swollen by doonas & pillows under each arm dumped their permanent bedding on to part time beds.

Mother & daughter gathered the linen from the line. Each took a corner, folded & came together, performing a domestic square dance passed down through the generations. When the item was a little parcel it was slid into a drawer & the two grasped the corners of the next sheet, stepped apart ready for the next dance.

Staring at the ceiling that was too dark to see her thoughts roamed. They circled happiness & disappointments & all those things undone. With the insistent tick of his wristwatch keeping her awake she turned to her side, moving close to his warmth, her body paralleling his, & waited for sleep.

As her children became adults & one by one left home she made a quilt from scraps of clothes, now out grown. On winter nights she was kept warm wrapped in the fragments of her family's history.

In the gloom of an empty bedroom her other senses compensated. She heard the fumbling of keys in the lock, the sound of him undressing & the jangle of coins on the sideboard. The smell of alcohol & cigarettes slid into bed before him & as she felt the covers pull back there was something else, the scent of unfamiliar perfume.

They looked forward to the anarchy of evening when they shed the uniforms of the day & held each other close. Most nights they rolled together & messed up the sheets. In the morning they carefully straightened the pattern on the bedding restoring order from chaos.


The dream shattering buzz of the alarm heralded the coming of another day. His cold hot water bottle, pushed by startled feet, tumbled to the floor like a fish from a net. Both he & it were the catch of the day, dredged from the dark quiet of the bed.

On rare occasions her daughter would ring to tell her about the goings-on in her busy life. Mr Cheeky, unused to sharing his conversation partner, would squawk & call his name. With the phone at rest she covered his cage. The artificial day of the kitchen globe was replaced by the thick instant night of his special blanket.

Now he was gone she would put a few drops of aftershave on the sheets & pillow cases before putting them away. When she opened a drawer to use them the ghost from the bottle would rise gently to embrace her.