Imagine a hump of land surrounded on three sides by water. A long busy road of double lanes dissects it lengthwise while the flight of a spur-winged plover crosses it at right angles. It is on this road that all the shops and businesses of Dockside are located—except for the odd doctor’s surgery, corner market or modest office block. There are an extraordinary number of butchers and jewellers. The road is patched and uneven, suffering from the continuous, unforgiving and deafening traffic. A stranger, not knowing the ways of the inhabitants, might think they are all deaf—the roar of trucks making it impossible for shop assistants to hear their customers and vice versa, so that they constantly shout at one another which adds to the general assault. Pedestrians must wait a long time to cross the Great South Road, taking their life in their hands as well as their purchases. Some, running in desperation from the fish and chips shop, and almost knocked down, have slipped in a pouring rain, dropping their white paper packages. Later, others trying to cross this same road, finding prawns or tiny silver whiting flattened and mixed with oil slick or strewn generously in a gutter, wonder whether these too might have somehow fallen from the sky.



Each morning on the front porch of the surgery they gather like a crowd at Lourdes; sitting on benches, standing in tight groups, the men smoking cigarettes which they grind out on the footpath. There is little to distinguish between them: dark or greying hair, thick and cut short, stout bodies and wide sallow faces. They are clothed in shades of brown, faun cardigans worn by men and women alike; heavy brown or black shoes and the same air of hopeless resignation.

The voices too, reaching out into the suburb in endless discussions about Cousin Martha’s wedding, the weather, female problems and aching legs, the price of veal at Caminiti’s, the death of Ivanka Rizzo...

These are the sick, in need of comfort or help, with their ailments of living and age—suffering from the same disease that grows, either stealthily or rampantly, like a parasite in all.

On the brick wall, in place of the statue of the Virgin Mother, is a brass plate with the names of the doctors and the hours of the surgery. There is no rose bush, no miraculous spring; no crutches hang from the galvanised tin roof. The cars going past hardly slow down, even when the numbers of the waiting threaten to spill out onto the road.



Two long and equally wide streets run perpendicular eastward from the dividing line of the Great South Road. They are crosshatched by a series of smaller streets and gently fall to the point, embracing between them, like the two arms of the Tigris and Euphrates, a vast park encircled by ancient date palms. From a certain rise, before the streets descend, you can see the city with its aura of smog, the view becoming more difficult to glimpse the nearer you actually get to it.

At the point, named for the Todd family who once owned it, you will find a spot marked with a large cross hacked from a single piece of sandstone above a bronze plaque—


—surprising wind surfers, picnickers and dogwalkers with its grim iron-gated presence.

Starting in the opposite direction, on the other side of the Great South Road, one street also comes to a low rise before it begins to descend westward, but much more quickly, this being a sparer, more practical neighbourhood. The streets here are arranged terrace-like, ringing the hill, a series of asphalt necklets or lines on a topographical map, eventually reaching a smaller, less well-tended park and sliding into Half Moon Bay.

It is not difficult to speculate with some accuracy on the settlement and history of the suburb. The oldest buildings, including the red brick school house built in 1876, cluster behind the main road and crown the highest points on either side. Except for one or two—notably the novelist’s run-down cottage on the edge of the bay—the buildings become progressively modern, going through distinct phases of 50’s and 60’s architecture before reaching the foreshore, where the newest houses have been built over the bones of the old, clinging to any available space with a water view.



Half Moon Bay is both shallow and sheltered, distinguished only by the strong stink of rubbish, sewage, algae and mud. Rarely getting the cleansing swell of the more open beaches and rocky points, it collects the garbage and other debris that has blown off boats and from highways and other parks. But such is the persistence of some forms of nature that water birds still congregate here—ibis, godwit, cormorant, white egret, a reef heron—fishing the stagnant shallows and sifting the littered sand. Few people use the park; an occasional runner or dog-walker, lone mothers desultorily pushing strollers.

On this hot morning a young couple from the nearby high school meet under the shade of a stunted tea tree. They leave their bags where they have fallen and lie down on the prickly, almost non-existent grass without blanket or even a jacket beneath them, such is their urgency.

He begins by lying alongside her, kissing as the young do—as if eating each other’s faces, oblivious, insistent, their heads rotating in a continuous movement, repetitious but agitated. His hands move slowly down her body, stopping only briefly at the buttons and small breasts. She does not know what to do with her hands, her arms. There is not much time so he does not waste it with unnecessary gestures but quickly moves beneath the plaid skirt and into her childish white cotton underwear, grinding away at her with his finger, the palm of his hand pushing down on her pubis. There is no affection, no comprehension, only a kind of mute violence, the blind desire to discover and quell his own need.

She thinks nothing except whether this is the time... lying passive, almost inert, with her legs spread wide apart, naked to the brown socks and sensible shoes, her school dress bunched up around her waist. She keeps her eyes closed. His wander at one point to the walker who passes close enough to step on them and is both shocked and amused, quickly averting her eyes behind the dark glasses. Her curious dog sniffs at the strange smells and moves on.

Soon the boy, still fully clothed, sits astride the girl and she takes his entire weight and the ridge of his hard zipper until he comes, wetting his holeproofs and jeans.

A white egret remains motionless on the stump of a mangrove. The sky threatens rain. Down the street, in shirtsleeves and carrying briefcases, four men, no doubt of some strong religious persuasion, stand in confusion looking at pieces of white paper in their hands, unaware of what is going on so close by.

The woman finishes her walk. When she passes the couple on her way back, they are sitting up. They are not talking. The girl slowly reaches up to push a strand of hair from her face. No one’s eyes meet. It begins to rain.

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