The Typewriter

The night Jim decided to quit he phoned Stella around midnight. "Don't wait up, I'm going to be late." he told her. "The bloody computer was down for almost two hours. What a shemozzle."

But she had waited up until he returned home around three. Over his second stiff brandy, he asked, "What would you say if I decided to retire early and we went bush again? It's not just what happened tonight, simply that it made me realise how sick and tired I am of fiddling around with other people's words on that bloody computer rather than writing my own stuff. And I've had a gut full of all this political crap we publish. I'd like to try my hand at a novel or two -- write the sort of thing I want to write while I'm still able."

Stella didn't take much coaxing but the sun was up by the time the decision was made and they crawled into bed.

For as long as he could remember, Jim had wanted to write. When he left school he was lucky enough to be taken on as a cadet journalist by The Gazette, the twice weekly local newspaper in the country town out west where they had both been born. After he completed the cadetship, as everyone expected, he married Stella, his childhood sweetheart. During their seaside honeymoon, to their mutual surprise, they fell in love in a creaky old double bed which sagged in the middle. They have been both friends and lovers ever since.

A few years later Jim succeeded in getting a reporter's job on a large Sydney morning daily. While their two kids went through school and university, he progressed through the newsroom and features to the sub-editors' desk, ending up as Chief Sub-editor. The only snag was the hours. He would leave for the office after an early lunch and not return until midnight at the earliest.

"Because it has harbour glimpses, I would recommend auction." the real estate agent advised. The house in the harbourside suburb sold quickly and the removalists came and packed everything to go into storage while Stella and Jim found somewhere else to live. They agreed it should be on the coast south of Sydney with more than just a glimpse of the sea.

"I love it. I don't think we'll find anything better," Stella whispered to Jim, even before inspecting the inside of the house.

The five-acre block was at the end of a gravel road a few kilometres from an old town, which sat beside a river and had the feel of the country town where they grew up. The house, with its wide verandas, sat on a small rise and looked out across a narrow strip of National Park to the sea. It was five years old, all the hard work had been done, and it offered the calls of birds in the trees and the resonance of surf on the beach to replace the screech of brakes and the scrunch of tyres on suburban roads.

"I'm really going to be able to write here," Jim told her as he set up his new computer in his study and workroom, which had formerly been the bedroom with the best view of the sea. The day finally arrived when all his books had been arranged on the new bookshelves and everything from paper clips to floppy disks stored in their proper place. Rubbing his hands together, he fired up the computer after breakfast and typed in the working title of his first novel. When she called him for lunch he was still staring alternately at the blank screen of the monitor and the view out to sea.

"How's it going, Dear?' she asked while she served the meal.

"Not too well at the moment. I'm a bit rusty and out of practice. But it'll come. It'll come."

After a second day mostly spent staring out to sea, he was not so confident. Perhaps he needed the break that driving Stella to town the following day would provide. There was shopping to be done at the supermarket, and she had an appointment with the hairdresser

When she returned to the car, displaying her new haircut for his approval, he excitedly opened the boot and said, "Look what I found in the secondhand shop while you were having your hair done. An old Underwood just like the one I used when I was a cadet on The Gazette. Even got a box of ribbons with it. Lord knows if I'll ever be able to get any more. Now I'll really be able to get stuck into some proper writing."

"You know," he told her as he moved the PC off the desk in his study to make way for the old typewriter, "I thought it was only that monster back in the office that intimidated me but it seems as though it might be all computers."

After spending almost all the afternoon lovingly cleaning, oiling, and polishing the old Underwood, he fed the first sheet of paper between the rollers and began to write. Now, on most mornings, the house echoes to the clatter of typewriter keys, the regular ting of the bell at the end of each line, the crash of the carriage return and his low, tuneless whistle. Often, while he is busy writing, Stella enjoys a long walk on the beach. Sometimes, as she leaves the racket he produces on the old Underwood behind her, she wonders if the person who coined the phrase 'pounding a typewriter' had ever heard Jim type.