Newcastle Herald short story competition 2022: Derek Fisher writes 'Short film about love'

Jim allows himself a chuckle, eyes squinting from sunshine, sweat and sunscreen. He looks quickly at Julie - sure enough she's smirking and just as sure he's pleased.

After so many years, still smitten. It's all in the details of course: her smile a smirk, her laugh a chortle, her eyes an invitation to spar. Her face all that's needed for the poster of a film about their love.

"What worries me is that there's more I can't remember than there is that I can."

Looking out at the ocean, Julie prefers the expanse of sea and sky to the strip of silt and sand. What she prefers most though is these hours of contentment. She'll often catch herself marvelling that such contentment can still be found but will immediately dismiss the thought, a tightrope-walker avoiding looking down.

Jim adjusts the angle of the umbrella to suit the shift of the sun, keeping Julie in shade. Those little things. "Have you sent your sister's Christmas present yet?" she asks.

"Ah. Not yet. I will. Soon . . . tomorrow."

A light breeze eases as seagulls glide by, taking a turn before dropping just behind Jim, perhaps aware that Julie's chicken rolls are nosing the top of her bag. Jim's looking forward to them also. "She's lucky to be getting anything. She's got you to thank that I'm even talking to her."

"Come on Jim, you just needed a nudge that's all. We're too . . . experienced to hold grudges."

"I know," he says, "you're right." He laughs, "You're always right!"

"Now that's the secret to our long relationship."

"That you're always right?"

"No, that you're able to see it."

Jim nods, thinking, for the umpteenth time, how deeply he loves this woman. Getting older has, he can admit, worked as a kind of sluice-gate, allowing long-dammed up emotions to flow a little more freely. Not fluent, mind. But certainly more freely. And times like these - a blue-sky day looking out at the ocean with Julie by his side - well, these are the times he feels most free.

He checks the shade of the umbrella again to be sure the angle is right.

Julie stretches her limbs as far as possible then holds before slowly stretching just that little bit more again.

Relaxing back into her beach-chair she is laughing.

"I forgot to tell you what happened to me yesterday when I was volunteering at the co-op. We're putting together Christmas hampers and I'm carrying cans of soup, walking backward while talking to Sheila. I come to an open esky and fall right back into it with my bum in the ice and my legs dangling. But I hadn't dropped a can - not one! We're both giggling about it then Sheila helps me up, saying "You didn't even drop a can," and, just as she says it, I drop one on her foot! She's wearing thongs so it hurts like hell but she's laughing so much the pain doesn't register. We'd just recovered from giggling when she finally feels she's hurt so she jams her foot in the ice of the esky. That's all Harold saw when he came in! We tried to explain but it didn't seem so special in the retelling - you know how it goes?"

Jim smiles, his eyes twinkling. "I certainly do."

And he does. He knows how it goes in Julie's life because she's generous with her stories and he's a good listener.

For more than 20 years, she's been regaling him with updates on everything of note occurring in her family, skilfully avoiding anything touching too closely on her husband. Jim offers as much as he can in return, similarly cautious in selecting from a broad range of social interactions, not wanting to draw attention to the great unsaid.

And so it has been, and so it is, that this couple, who feel such genuine love for each other, have remained as friends for so long. Their regular meetings, undisclosed to all who know them and so invisible in full view, are dots that connect to form a strong, straight line. It's an unwavering line resilient to all desires. Hers, acute in the beginning before he practicality subsumed them. His, a knot that always needs untangling until he realises that if the knot were to be at all loosened then she may likely slip away.

The question often crosses Jim's mind: are we a couple? He thinks of what they've done as a couple and mostly it's what he, and likely she, considers the most important thing. They've shared. Conversations, shade-umbrellas, chicken rolls. A shared secret life. Hidden in plain sight.

It strikes Jim that their matching beach chairs are the only items they ever purchased as a couple.

After years of struggling to stand after sitting too long on the sand, they'd decided to buy the chairs at the store across from the beach.

She'd picked and he'd paid, insistent to the last.

So now, after sharing lunch, they rise more easily from their comfortable chairs as, too soon, it's time to go. Julie shakes both towels while Jim folds the umbrella which he thrusts under an arm.

She pats his old towel into the top of his bag then folds her newer towel into her own bag.

"Well," says Julie, turning towards the steps, "have a lovely Christmas Jim."

"You too Jules. How's Tuesday week for you? Once Christmas is all packed up."

"Good. If the weather turns, maybe we can just sit up at that bench with the shelter?"

"Done."

As he watches Julie moving farther off upon the boardwalk, Jim imagines himself as he might appear in the film of Julie's life. Initially, it's as a montage of movie-stills sequenced for maximum effect. But as she fades from view, he knows he is an absence made of cuts.

***

Derek Fisher, the author of this piece, is a finalist in the 2022 Newcastle Herald Short Story Competition. Read the full list of finalists in this year's Herald Short Story Competition by visiting the Newcastle Herald website.