Epiphany - the Silvering

Chapter One

Chapter One

The community hall quivered with gabble.

Rosetta Melki sat back and watched Darren, farther down the row, absorbed in reading the poem she’d volunteered to recite. She turned to Royston at her left to ask who would read first. He was busy talking to another poet in the row ahead of them, a frail and sombre-eyed woman named Valerie, his arms waving about with frenetic verve. Darren, on the other side of Royston, signalled to her. He reached past forward-leaning Royston to hand the poem back and gave a thumbs-up.

Eadie, seated at Rosetta’s right, related an incident concerning her runaway shopping trolley and an unfortunate carton of eggs. Halfway through, she lapsed into silence. Something, or someone, had caught Eadie’s attention.

Rosetta nudged her elbow. She hadn’t yet asked Eadie about her date three days earlier. ‘So, what’s your verdict on him?’

Eadie turned back to her. ‘Very nice. Oh, you mean him?’

Rosetta chuckled. ‘Who did you think I meant?’

Eadie gazed around the room and shrugged. ‘He was there a minute ago.’

‘The guy you went on a date with?’

‘Course not! Why do you think that?’

‘Think what?’

‘That he’d be here? This is the last place Carl would want to go. Carl’s not in the slightest bit sentimental.’ Eadie lifted a coy shoulder and stared blissfully into the distance, a tell-tale sign she was falling for someone. ‘And I think it’s kind of nice that he’s not poetic.’

‘Tell me more!’

Eadie cheerfully confessed that she and her date had very little to talk about. Despite this, there’d been an all-consuming attraction between them, so much so, it had overridden the need for words. ‘I mean, talking isn’t everything, is it?’ Eadie rationalised.

‘No, I guess it’s not,’ Rosetta said, trying in vain to adopt Eadie’s point of view.

‘I mean, it’s how they make us feel. That’s the most important thing, isn’t it?’

‘Well, yeah. Absolutely.’

‘And he isn’t down-putting with me.’

‘Eadie, darl, that can’t be considered a plus. It should be a given. Please promise me you’ll stop undervaluing yourself.’

‘No, what I really mean to say is...’ Eadie contemplated the speckled ceiling in her search for the right words.‘…He’s the opposite of down-putting. He’s sweet and encouraging and gentlemanly and protective.’

Striving to hear over the babble in the room, Rosetta listened intently to an account of a date Eadie described as ‘heavenly’. Carl had made Eadie feel utterly feminine. ‘Something to do with how he looked at me and listened to me,’ she said.

Rosetta smiled, nodded and tried to push away a c***k of sadness that had settled into the centre of her heart. Eadie’s last comment could easily have been a description of Matthew Weissler. The night of Adam’s tragic passing had been perversely enchanting. Vivid lanterns, fragrant flowers in a vase, the haunting notes of a well-meaning musician who Matthew had joked was following her. There’d been a sublime mix of laughter and heart-to-heart confidences. And Matthew, seated opposite, seemed to have exuded an aura of sunshine. Recalling Matthew as golden was an exaggeration, probably an idealised image of his face illuminated by the candle’s glow.

Eadie paused to wave off the cellophane lolly packet Royston offered and continued with, ‘And at one stage, Carl held my shoulder really gently to direct me to his car, and I just wanted to throw my arms around him and kiss him passionately.’

Rosetta thought back to that night again when Matthew, guiding her to the restaurant's exit, had momentarily placed a hand on the small of her back.

Claude, the Poets’ Garret host, began to ahem. The gabble died down. Members engrossed in the trestle-table display of local authors’ poetry books took their seats. Greetings and meeting notes rattled on inanely, and then Claude asked a man named Julian to read the opening quote for the Wise Words segment, generally something well-known and ancient. The quote Julian chose to share was one of Rosetta’s favourites, an observation by Taoist philosopher Chuang Tzu. In a voice that resonated with warmth, he read out Chuang Tzu’s story of having dreamt one night he was a butterfly, fluttering hither and thither, believing, to all intents and purposes that he was a butterfly and a butterfly only.

‘ “And now”,’ quoted Julian, ‘ “I do not know whether I was then a man dreaming I was a butterfly, or I am now a butterfly dreaming I am a man.” ’

A spattering of rhythmic applause and then quiet anticipation of the first poet. Distracted by a rustling sound, Rosetta turned to see a hand waving an open packet of Jersey caramels in front of her. ‘Royston, how wicked of you,’ she whispered, diving for one.

‘Don’t tell me, I already know. You’re going on that diet tomorrow.’

Rosetta winked, nodded and whispered, ‘Jersey caramels! A flabster’s nightmare.’ Taking one more, she added in an overdone Greek accent, ‘Ah well, I no complain.’

The host, about to introduce the first poet, grumbled about the inconvenience of small print, then hurried off to locate a pair of reading glasses.

Eadie turned to Rosetta and said dreamily, ‘As well as everything else, Carl’s lovely looking.’

‘Bonus,’ said Rosetta, trying to get her mouth around the second Jersey caramel. ‘Whatseerookrike?’

‘Nice. Really nice. Not geeky, or podgy, or too short or too tall, or too skinny. But not too good-looking either. Not as attractive, say, as the guy standing near the lectern. He was watching you earlier.’

‘Watching me? Who—’

‘In a yearning kind of way. The guy is hot! What’s a hot straight guy doing at a poetry night?’

Never one to let a man of superior looks escape her eye, Rosetta spun round to face the front but only saw Claude, the host, brandishing a pair of thin-rimmed spectacles and saying, ‘Vera Crompton has very kindly lent me hers.’

Lowering her voice, Rosetta said, ‘So where is this man? It’s been a while,’ and was annoyed to find her throat hoarse from the last Jersey caramel, turning her words into a blare that smacked of husky desperation.

Sombre-eyed Valerie in the row ahead swivelled round to face her with an aggressive swish of her black-dyed bob, lowered her pencilled brows and scoldingly told her to Shush!

Eadie fell into silent giggles.

The host scooted across to the lectern, head bowed apologetically.

Rosetta had only managed to glimpse the new poet’s athletic physique, jeans and purple paisley shirt before Royston’s lolly packet annoyingly spoiled her view.

She mouthed ‘No thanks’ to Royston. The waggling packet retreated. She turned her attention again to the poet and took in a sharp breath. Couldn’t be.

But it was.

The poet at the lectern was Matthew.

Matthew Weissler was in the room. Right now!

Wishing she could hit the pause button on her runaway pulse, Rosetta tried to make sense of it all. He’d told her at Amaretti’s that he’d gone to Poet’s Garret only once, to practice his public speaking, and would never go there again. He was more of a lyricist than a poet anyway, he’d said.

She went to whisper to Eadie, ‘That’s Matthew,’ but no words were accessible.

‘Our first up poet tonight is a second-time visitor to Poets’ Garret. I’m terribly sorry, Matthew, it appears Vera Crompton’s spectacles are useless on my vision. Would you mind telling us the name of your poem?’

Matthew’s eyes were wide. Much wider than usual. He ran a hand through his ash-brown hair, cleared his throat and said, ‘I wrote it the other week and meant it to be a song, so it’d actually sound better if accompanied by guitar.’

‘Does this mean you’re volunteering to sing it, Matthew? Acapella?’

Matthew grinned then sobered. ‘Sure, Claude, if you will first.’

Trying to slow her breathing, Rosetta gazed at him in awe, realising she hadn’t remembered the extent of his charisma very accurately at all. The Matthew she saw now was even better looking than the Matthew she remembered, and that was saying something. The shirt that clung smoothly to the angles of his shoulders was a conglomeration of swirling patterns: pink and aqua and yellow, against a background of hideous purple. On anyone else it would have looked ridiculous. On Matthew it looked amazing.

‘Shame about the shirt,’ Eadie whispered. ‘Do you think he might be a little bit crazy?’

Unable to tear her eyes away from the Poet’s Garret guest before them, intent on hearing what Matthew would say next, Rosetta shook her head from side to side, in a distracted effort to say he wasn’t.

Claude gave the audience a rundown of the difference between a sonnet and a poem, and Matthew said he wasn’t sure whether what his literary attempt was either.

‘And what did you say the title was, Matthew?’

Matthew unfolded a piece of paper, solemnly, as though about to reveal some really bad news. ‘It’s called “Mystery Woman”.’

‘Please put a big hand together for Matthew Weissler with “Mick’s Three Women”.’

Rosetta could understand the host’s error. Matthew had gulped between the first two syllables.

Valerie in the row in front was murmuring to her neighbour, ‘I suppose he goes by his middle-name. Introduced himself to me once. Greek name I’m sure. Sounded like “Tinnutis” but I can’t rely on my hearing.’

Matthew’s eyes were still possum-wide. His voice tumbled out in a rasp. ‘Um...it’s actually mystery,’ he said, and in a low mumble added, ‘Mystery woman.’

‘I’m sorry,’ said Claude. ‘Mystery Women.’

‘Woman. Just the one. Any more and I’d be in a constant state of confusion.’

‘Oh, woman is it? Singular? Gosh, it’s not just my vision tonight, it’s my hearing as well. Anyone could be excused for thinking I was losing my senses. A big hand for Matthew Weissler with “Mystery Woman”.’

Everyone clapped. Everyone except an open-mouthed Rosetta.