Rain on the Tin Roof: A Wet Season Night in Darwin

The build-up broke this afternoon. For weeks the air has been as thick as soup, the sky bruised purple every evening, everyone in town cranky and damp and waiting. Then, just after four, the first proper storm came through like a freight train. The lightning was so close I counted nothing between the flash and the crack.

By six, my phone had four cancellations, all apologetic. Roads flooding near the airport. A tree across a street in Nightcliff. I didn't mind. You can't be cross with the wet season. You can only put the kettle on and wait.

The one who came anyway

At seven there was a knock. He was soaked to the skin, laughing, holding his shoes in his hand. He had walked from his hotel six blocks away because the taxis had stopped and he didn't want to cancel on me. He apologised for dripping on the tiles.

I gave him a towel and a spare t-shirt from the cupboard. We sat on the covered verandah for a while with glasses of iced water and watched the rain come down in grey sheets, so loud on the corrugated roof we had to lean in close to hear each other. He's a geologist, up from Adelaide for a month. He'd never seen a tropical storm before. He kept saying "look at it" like a kid.

Inside

When we finally went in, the power flickered and died. I lit the candles I keep for exactly this, and the room went soft and gold. The ceiling fan slowed to a stop and the air grew heavy and warm. What happened next stays there, in the candlelight, under the noise of the rain. It was one of those rare evenings when the weather does half the work of making a moment feel set apart from ordinary time.

Afterwards

The power came back at ten with a clunk and a flood of harsh fluorescent light from the kitchen, and we both burst out laughing. The storm had moved off towards the sea and the frogs had started up, hundreds of them, a whole chorus.

He walked back to his hotel through ankle-deep water, shoes in hand again, waving over his shoulder.

I stood at the door for a while listening to the frogs and the dripping palms. I love this town most in the wet. Everything grows. Everything is loud. Everything feels alive. And sometimes the one person who braves the storm is exactly the right company for it.