How a friend to the stars followed his heart Down Under

Sick of cynicism and Covid? Thought so. Trent Dalton’s antidote is a smorgasbord of real-life love stories to make you grin and sob, all at once. Read his exclusive first extract here.

Fed up with a world full of cynicism (plus a certain pandemic), best-selling author TRENT DALTON spent two months asking 200 strangers one simple and direct question: “Can you please tell me a love story?”

The result was his new book Love Stories – an uplifting, moving dive into our most powerful human emotion. This first exclusive extract is just one of the many stories he found, which interweave into an extraordinary collection looking at love from all sides.

‘Love follows her around’ ... Robert McCulley shares his story. Photo courtesy of Trent Dalton

Cold morning wind pushing through the city and a large McDonald’s soft drink lid sliding along Adelaide Street. The clear plastic lid seems to roll for a magic trick moment on its

side like a wagon wheel. These are the John Lennon mornings of our lives. Just watching the wheels go round and round. We all love to watch them roll but where do we find the sacred

time? Guess that’s what writing the White Album buys you. The time.

Robert McCulley is taking his time because he bought it with a lifetime of work. He sips a takeaway coffee at a bench seat in Albert Street, waiting for his 10.30am appointment at the skin cancer clinic. “I’ve got a little thing here,” he says, pointing to the top of his nose where some skin’s peeling away. “It’ll be alright. They’ll burn it off.”

Monday. First day of Robert’s retirement. He’s spent the previous eight years of his 66 years on earth delivering letters across Brisbane on a remarkably reliable motorcycle serviced regularly by his employer, Australia Post.

Love your style ... Trent Dalton set himself up for days on end on a Brisbane street corner with a folding table, two chairs (one for him and one for anyone who wanted to sit and share their story) and a typewriter left to him by the inspirational late mother of a dear friend. Plus a home-made sign. Picture: Fiona Franzmann

He loved being the messenger. He loved nothing more than handing a letter marked, “To Granma”, to a lonely old woman waiting by her letterbox. The letters of love were the best. All those ones marked, “To Dad”, “To Mum”, “To Pop”.

“One of the sad things I started noticing toward the end was nobody seemed to be sending meaningful letters anymore,” Robert says. “You would occasionally see a letter addressed to,

‘Dear Dad’, and you would think about the whole journey of that relationship between sender and receiver, the lives they’ve shared.”

Robert shrugs his shoulders in a grey T-shirt. His hair is white and his eyebrows are black and bushy. “But all you see now are bills and corporate letters,” he says. “The romance is gone.”

But the messenger still knows a thing or two about love.

It’s essential to Robert that his skin cancer clinic appointment goes smoothly today because it’s essential to Robert that he spends every day of his retired life in good health beside his

wife of 31 years, Julia McCulley. He says I would understand how essential this is to him were I ever fortunate enough to meet Julia McCulley.

“She’s special,” he says.

“How so?” I ask.

“Love follows her around,” he says.

Big smiles and small tears ... Love Stories.

I smile at this unusual line and Robert the retired postman knows from the way I squint my eyes and bite my top lip and nod my head that I don’t fully understand what he means.

“If you have a lot of love in your life, if you put a lot of love out into the world, then love follows you around,” he says, with a knowing smile. “It follows.”

And I like this notion. What if love was less an idea than a physical thing, as real as air and just as visible? And then I see in my head Robert’s version of love as something that floats

above us all like some cartoon scent cloud following Pepe Le Pew through the woods. We all walk in our invisible clouds and some clouds are bigger than others; our clouds grow and expand with every smaller cloud they brush against and chemically blend with. That’s how Robert and Julia ended up together. He saw her face. She walked ahead. He followed her

cloud.

“Caring people have this sphere around them,” Robert says.

“People feel it and they want to be a part of that sphere. That’s how it works. That’s how caring people move through the world. That’s how Julia moves through the world.”

***

‘She’s a friend’ ... Robert left behind acting, alongside big names like Julia Ormond, to come Down Under to for a better gig in real life with his beloved wife – also Julia.

He was born in Wrexham, North Wales. His mother and father had met on a Wrexham dance floor. His father was a leather trader. Robert was in school when he met a classmate who was

part of an amateur dramatic society. Robert thought he wanted to be a physical education teacher but he soon realised he wanted to act. He later landed a place in London’s prestigious

Guildhall School of Music and Drama.

“You know Julia Ormond?” Robert asks.

“I frickin’ love Julia Ormond.”

“She’s a friend,” he says.

“You know Alfred Molina?”

“I frickin’ love Alfred Molina?”

“I went to drama school with them,” Robert says. “You know Art Malik?”

“You kidding me?” I say. “Brilliant. The villain in True Lies. Gets strapped to that missile when Arnie shoots it through the sky.” And now my best Arnold accent. “‘You’re fired’!”

“Art’s one of my best friends,” Robert smiles.

‘You’re fired’ ... Arnold Schwarzenegger with Art Malik and Jamie Lee Curtis in True Lies.

He landed some great acting roles over the years. He once trod the boards with the late Alan Rickman. He starred in the first episode of the BBC science fiction show, Red Dwarf.

But the best gig he ever landed through acting was a lifetime loving Julia McCulley.

It was the late-1980s and Robert was performing in a production of Much Ado About Nothing in Williamson Park, Lancaster, northwest England. Julia was singing in the theatre company’s choir. At post-performance drinks in a nearby pub called The Gregson, Robert stood transfixed as he watched Julia enter through the bar door and breeze like a crimson-brown autumn leaf up the pub stairwell to a second level dance hall. Her hair flamed red with an ancient Irish fire and Robert had to summon every sweaty hour of his Guildhall School acting study just to play it cool.

“She went up the stairs and I followed,” he says.

They had two kids together. Boy and a girl. They came to Australia via New Zealand, where Robert spent five years juggling part-time acting jobs with full-time postman work.

You never know where the next story will come from ... Trent Dalton in a quiet moment during his street-corner mission. Picture: Fiona Franzmann

Julia’s one of more than 300 Teachers of the Deaf working in Australia. Dedicated and tireless. She brings every ounce of her love to her job and her students. Robert remembers the love she gave to their son during an early battle he eventually won against childhood cancer. Damn, now he wishes he didn’t mention the C-word. Pancreatic cancer took his father’s life at the age of 56. Robert’s mum died in the UK last year and it’s been hell for him since because Covid-19 means he can’t get back home to bury his mum. All her possessions were sent to Australia and currently reside in boxes inside a Kennard’s storage shed in Coorparoo, south Brisbane, that he can’t bring himself to open.

“I’ll open all those boxes up and I’ll see my mum’s whole life,” he says. “The mixture of all those feelings. The past, the present and the possible futures.”

It starts with a question ... the award-winning author in action. That question sparked conversations of joy, laughter, sadness and wisdom.

But all possible futures are bright enough for Robert and Julia. They just sold their home in East Brisbane. They’re making a new start on a hectare of land at Boonah, a town in Queensland’s rural Scenic Rim. And true love will be the central theme of their coming months. Their son is about to marry. It was the darnedest thing, Robert says. His son fell in love with a woman he literally bumped into while walking down the street. Imagine the chances, Robert thinks. The terrifyingly long odds of true love. His son literally stumbling into love like that. The miracle of timing. It’s almost as if love was there just waiting to be found for his son, like it had been following him around like a cloud the whole time. Robert nods his head. “It follows,” he says.

Love Stories by Trent Dalton, published by HarperCollins, is on sale from Oct 27 and is available for pre-order now at Booktopia. Come join the conversation and tell us what you think of this extract at the Sunday Book Club group on Facebook.