annanotbob2's Diaryland Diary
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Cass
In my writing groups recently we've been using paintings to spark ideas. This was today's, from the Women's Art Instagram page: Cass Railway Station 1936 by New Zealand artist Rita Angus, and this is what I wrote:
There he is, sitting. Waiting. He’s waiting for me. He can’t see me, I’m behind the trees. I can’t really see him, just the back of his head, the hat, the overcoat. When he first got off the train he looked around as if he expected someone to be there. I wanted to see his face first, before he saw me. I didn’t warm to it, his face, his eyes. He looked angry when the train pulled away and left him alone. He paced around for a bit, then sat down, quite upright and fidgety, but now he’s slumped over, as if he’s given up.
I don’t know what to do. There’s no train back for three days and I probably shouldn’t leave him with no food and nowhere to sleep. But I’m not going to speak to him. I’ll go and get Mum – she started all this.
She signed me up to an agency, an agency that finds partners for people like us who live in the outback and don’t get to meet anyone new. She told me I had four options: 1) stay single and die alone 2) marry Bruce – the only single adult male in Cass, a horrible piss head who passes out by the side of the road every Saturday night 3) wait for Jeb Stephens to grow up and see how he turns out, or 4) join the agency.
So here I am and here he is, Michael Ravens, the only one to answer my letter – well, Mum’s letter. She wrote it pretending to be me and I don’t even know what she said as I was too cross to read it.
And she was wrong, wasn’t she? I have five options – I can leave, head for the city, seek my fortune. Maybe I will. She can marry him, she how she likes it.
10:56 p.m. - 07.12.23
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