4
Shoes And Ships And Sealing Wax
Uncle Don and Aunty Mary had been rallying round, but they were both getting on and besides, it wasn’t fair to ask them to have his brother’s widow sitting in their lounge-room more than once a week—she had always been the sort of person who didn’t comfortably sit in your kitchen with you, and growing looniness didn’t seem to have ameliorated this trait. But they were quite happy to have her on Wednesdays “to spell Harriet.” This was just as well, since by the end of the Christmas holidays it was horribly plain that Harriet would have to give up her job and live with Mum. The day after she, Steve and Trisha had mentioned her going back to Adelaide, since Mum seemed much brighter and had even been voluntarily making beds, dusting and microwaving, all without disaster, she’d set fire to the shed.
“Where the fuck did she get the MATCHES from?” shouted a red-faced and furious Steve when it was all over bar the shouting.
Taking this question unto himself, though it had perhaps been addressed more to Steve’s shrinking sister-in-law, the fire chief answered: “Don’t think it was matches. Bryce found this at what looks like the seat of the fire.” –Holding up an old-fashioned gas-stove lighter.
“Yeah,” confirmed a large, cheery-looking firie—presumably Bryce. “You don’t wanna leave this sort of thing laying round, mate. Alzheimer’s, is it?” he added kindly.
“And a half!” replied Steve bitterly. “And we thought she was getting better!”
“The have their ups and downs,” responded the fire chief. He then took a deep breath and launched into what was evidently the official spiel. All polysyllables, long-windedness, and hot air.
“Yeah, all right, mate,” said Steve tiredly, running a soot-blackened hand through his smoke-filled hair. “We know all that. Doesn’t help when it comes down to cases. I was under the impression the fucking shed was locked. It was the old joker’s preserve, see, she never went in there when ’e was alive.”
“The quintessential Aussie shed, in fact,” said Harriet, speaking for the first time in some while.
“Shuddup, Harrie, ya not helping.”
“Well, heck, Steve, I thought you’d checked it was locked!”
“I DID!” he shouted.
“Was it?” asked Bryce in friendly tones.
“YES!” he bellowed. When the echoes had ceased ringing he said sheepishly: “Yeah—no; sorry, mate. It was locked. Think she must of had a second key that nobody knew about. And ya might note,” he added bitterly, “that she had the nous not to set fire to the house and if you ask me, it was all DELIBERATE!”
“Um, I had to ring him at work,” said Harriet miserably into the tingling silence that succeeded this last shout. “Um, and they were in the middle of something.”
“Yeah—no; well, not only that, it’s been going on for months, now, ever since the old joker died. We hadda drag poor ole Harrie, here, over from Adelaide to keep an eye on her after she’d rung the cops once too often in the middle of the night about imaginary burglars in the attic. –Imaginary attic,” Steve amended sourly.
“Aw, right, she’d be the lady Dean Barraclough was telling us about, eh, Pete?” agreed the amiable Bryce.
Steve cleared his throat. “Uh—yeah, that’d be right. Know him, do ya? –Yeah. Decent bloke.”
“Yeah, well,” said Pete, the fire chief, lapsing rather from his previous official tones, “if ya can’t control her you’d be better putting her in a home. That Acacia Glen Lodge, it’s not bad, me old Aunty Jan’s in there. Give them a nice do for Christmas: turkey and a tree and everythink, too. Well, last Chrissie—before last, I mean—we all went to me sister Megan’s place and we had her over but she went into a screaming fit when Tommo lit the Christmas pudding—’e’d overdone the brandy, I grant ya that—and then she wet her pants in the car going back to the home—mind you, Megan had taken her to the toilet before we left—so we decided she’d be better off there this year. Dropped in to see ’er on Boxing Day—hadda drag the kids, of course, well, ya can’t blame ’em, she’s forgotten their names and last time Karen took Harry in she called him a piece of vermin off the streets—I did tell ’er letting the kid wear that stupid knitted hat pulled down to ’is eyebrows was a mistake. Didn’t recognise any of us at first, only when we left she chirps: ‘Lovely to see you, Peter, dear, and you too, Karen. Bring the kiddies next time, won’t you?’ So there you are.”
“But ya had the kids with ya, eh?” ascertained Bryce painstakingly.
“Yeah, ’course.”
“Yeah. –They’re all like that,” said Bryce kindly to Mrs Harrison’s relatives.
“Yeah. But how much does this Acacia Glen Lodge place set ya back, Pete?” asked Steve.
Harriet looked rather fearfully at the fire chief, but he seemed to accept both Steve’s use of his first name and the financial query as a matter of course. Okay, male peer groups were like that.
“Dunno.” Pete removed his impressive helmet and scratched his head. “She got the old man’s insurance, ya see, and Joe and Glenys, that’s me cousins, her kids, think they decided to spend it on the home. They got Power of Attorney, ya see.”
Steve’s face lit up. “We could do that, Harrie!”
“I would,” agreed Bryce.
“What about the mortgage, though?” asked Pete.
“Uh—well, sell the house? I mean, if we get Power of Attorney—!”
“If,” noted Harriet sourly.
“Yeah, well, Aunty Jan wouldn’t have a bar of it, but Joe and Glenys, they had ’er declared mentally incompetent in the end. Decided to let the house, the rent’s paying off what’s left of the mortgage and leaving them a bit over for maintenance.”
“You gotta have good tenants, though,” Bryce reminded the company.
“You’re right there, mate!” Steve agreed. “We’ll check it out, eh, Harrie?”
Harriet looked at the twisted mass of metal and ash that had been Dad’s shed, and sighed. “Yeah, I think we’d better.”
They checked it out but this resulted in the discovery that there wasn't any insurance: it had been cashed in some time since and the money put into Telstra shares—in Mrs Harrison’s name, not that that made any difference now. Steve’s conclusion was that it was one more thing she’d nagged the old joker into. It hadn’t amounted to very much, not nearly what it would have been if they’d kept up the payments, and as Telstra’s incompetence was now becoming glaringly apparent to even the great Aussie middle class, and the much-touted Broadband roll-out was a fizzer, the shares weren’t worth much. Certainly not enough to support Mrs Harrison at Acacia Glen Lodge or any of its clones for several years. Apart from the burgeoning Alzheimer’s she seemed horribly hale and hearty.
Steve, Trisha and Harriet then went over Mr and Mrs Harrison’s finances with a fine-tooth comb—mostly Steve and Trisha, Harriet was no good at sums—and discovered to their horror that (a) there was very little left of his superannuation pay-out and (b) there was a second mortgage on the house.
“Suckered by them fucking ‘Use your equity’ ads,” concluded Steve sourly.
“Eh?” said Harriet blankly.
“You know: with the brick!” urged Trisha, not reproving her husband for his use of language.
“Specially designed to sucker the grannies. Take out a huge great second mortgage and put the money into a fund for your grandkiddies’ education, was the line,” elaborated Steve sourly.
“I see. But where did the brick come into it?”
The Drinkwaters couldn’t remember, but there had definitely been a brick in it. Trisha thought it might of been something about a big egg but Steve vetoed this one with No, she was getting mixed up with that bloody stupid super ad.
Where the money had gone wasn’t clear but they decided that the new roof, the new body-carpet and the trip to England were all in there somewhere.
The inevitable conclusion was that they couldn’t afford an old folks’ home even if they sold the house, and Harriet would have to hang on here. Mrs Harrison was eligible for the pension and Steve and Trisha thought they could get a carer’s allowance for Harrie. The doc could write them a letter for Centrelink: it was obvious, after the shed do, that she wasn’t safe to be left alone. The doctor obliged, but no allowance eventuated. Harriet resigned her job in Adelaide for urgent family reasons, but urgent family reasons or no, she forfeited a month’s pay through not being able to give the notice her contract stipulated.
But at least when Aunty Mary and Uncle Don volunteered for Wednesdays she was able to accept some part-time tutoring at one of the Sydney unis. All day Wednesday, and Monday, Tuesday and Thursday evenings. Trisha, Steve and the kids came over on the Mondays. Thursday was Jimbo’s Scouts meeting, so Trisha and Kyla came over by themselves and Steve drove Jimbo to Scouts and picked him up afterwards—and probably took him to McDonald’s, but Trisha wasn’t gonna ask, they needed some bonding time together. Tuesday was Steve’s indoor bowls night, and it really wasn’t fair to ask him to give it up, especially as it was the only opportunity for exercise he got during the week. There was nothing to stop him getting up and jogging 10 K or so before breakfast but Harriet agreed with her sister that it wasn’t fair. She also didn’t think it was fair for Kyla to be dragged over three nights a week to spend time with a grandmother who refused to recognise her and on one hideous occasion had screamed: “Who is that slut? Get her out of here, I won’t have females like that in my house! George! Where’s George? Get your slut out of here, George!” This had possibly been prompted by the fact that at the time Kyla was wearing a bright purple plastic miniskirt of the minutest kind over heavy black tights, with glitter-covered pink high-heeled boots and a silver lurex top that she and Melanie Satterthwaite had found at an op shop and altered to the current In style, but no-one was inclined to excuse her on that account. The more so as the meek George Harrison had never strayed in his life. Though Trisha did remark that she’d told Kyla to take that make-up off.
Tuesdays seemed set to break the camel’s back and it began to look as if Harriet would have to turn down that job after all, but Mrs Williamson from next-door came to the rescue. The Williamsons were about the same age as the Harrisons and had known them all their married lives, and of course gone to the funeral, though it would have been going too far to say they’d been friends: Mrs Harrison didn’t make friends, though George Harrison and Fred Williamson had always got on well. Tuesday was Fred’s night for the RSL—he was a Vietnam vet, though not one of the traumatised ones you heard such a lot about on TV these days—and she’d only be sitting at home watching TV and doing a bit of crochet, so she might as well be doing it over here. Don’t worry, dears, she wouldn’t take a blind bit of notice of anything poor Pauline said, and she’d keep a sharp eye on her. And it just showed that the cat thing hadn’t been a one-off after all, and she’d been quite right when she told Fred it was symptomatic and she was afraid poor Pauline was going downhill.
“Cat thing?” said Harriet feebly to her sister after Mrs Williamson had been duly thanked and plied with tea and biscuits—everyone ignoring Mrs Harrison’s stern command not to give that woman from next-door the good shortbread—and had toddled off, beaming kindly.
“Eh? Aw, that! Actually she’s right, it was symptomatic, though mind you, none of us realised it at the time. Well, Mum’s always hated cats, hasn’t she? She reckoned Lucille Schuster’s cat—you know, next-door on the other side—that it was fouling her verge. So she reported it to the Council. There’s been a campaign to introduce stricter reggos in this council district, you see, like, um, microchipping them or somethink, and they all have to be registered and be neutered, I think.”
“Or else they get out, breed like cats, and ravage the native fauna,” agreed Harriet very drily indeed.
“Yeah, well, they’d do good trying to ravage a possum, all right, and I can’t see your average galah letting a blimmin’ cat get within cooee of it, let alone a good-sized cockie, though they don’t often get them round here, not enough tall trees.”
“What about the fruit bats?” said Harriet, still dry.
“They haven’t had any, thank goodness, it’d be another thing for her to go on about. Anyway, it’d be a good thing if they did let the cats have a go at them, if you ask me! Blimmin’ pests. Ya know they’ve got as far as the botanic gardens in Melbourne, don’tcha? –Yeah.” Trisha paused for breath.
“Have the Schusters got a cat?” asked Harriet dubiously. “I’ve never noticed one. Or did Mum succeed in getting it imprisoned inside, poor brute?”
Trisha looked very dry. “Wait for it. They sent an inspector or somethink, see, and he rolled up, looking all official”—Harriet thought she might possibly mean “officious”, but nodded encouragingly—“and there it was in the front window, all fluffy.”
Harriet’s jaw sagged. “Yes, but Trisha—”
“Wait for it! So Mum pointed it out, she was doing her holier-than-thou thing, really sickening—I wasn’t here but Pamela Schuster told me all about it, she was lurking behind her front curtains, ya see, killing herself—and the poor inspector turned purple and shouted it wasn’t funny, and she was wasting official time—think it was—and shot off like a rocket, threatening her with a fine into the bargain. Pamela didn’t open the front door, she’s not that mad, she’s seen Mum in a screaming fit before now, she just opened the window and picked the thing up and said really calmly—you’ve got to admire her, I’d of been splitting my sides—she said: ‘It’s all right, Mrs Harrison, it’s just Lucille’s toy.’ And then she squeezed it and it squeaked: ‘I’m Fluf-fy, mee-ow!’” Trisha collapsed in ecstatic laughter.
It was so awful that Harriet couldn’t laugh. Finally she said weakly: “She must have made it all up, about it fouling the verge.”
Trisha wiped her eyes. “Too right!”
“Jesus, that means she’ll have a reputation with the Council as well as with the cops and the firies!” said Harriet on note of despair.
“Um, Harrie, Dean Barraclough’s a really nice man, and Steve reckoned that the firies were really decent over the shed.”
Harriet sighed. “If you add up all the people that must work for the council and all the cops and their families and the firies and theirs—at least, I suppose they must have families, though the ones on that series way back mostly seemed to live above the fire engines—anyway, that makes half the neighbourhood that are gonna know that this is the house where the madwoman lives!”
“People are very understanding,” said Trisha soothingly. “Lots of families have rellies with Alzheimer’s, these days.”
Harriet tried to smile. “Yeah, I suppose so.”
“Um, Jenny Weintraub was saying she can sometimes pop over if you need an afternoon off. I mean, she does those lovely pottery fairies, but it’s not like a nine-to-five job.”
This was true, and as it was nothing like art, either, Harriet didn't feel it’d be interrupting the artistic creative process. “That’s really nice of her. Tell her I said thanks very much, Trisha.”
“I will. Everyone’s been very kind, really,” said Trisha in comforting tones.
Yes, except “everyone” was married with families of their own who had to come first, it was only the spinster daughter that ended up victimised, wasn’t it? Harriet didn’t say it, she could have refused to have anything to do with it, if she’d been as strong-minded as Mrs Harrison in her heyday. Or as mean-natured and selfish, you could’ve put it like that.
Whether or not the house was being pointed at, Mrs Harrison’s sad affliction was soon pretty well known in certain parts of the neighbourhood. The chemist down the mall was first—logically enough, Harriet had to go there to get her mother’s prescription. Although Sydney was a very big city, very spread-out, with a large population, this was an old-established neighbourhood without much internal movement, except perhaps when an elderly resident died and the section was turned into a block of townhouses, and many people spent all their lives here. Harriet was always bumping into people she’d known at school, and Wayne Macdonald, the chemist, had been in her class.
Wayne was a short, round-faced, rather robin-like man. He was broader in the beam now than he had been at school and his short, perky dark curls were greying but otherwise he hadn’t changed much. Cheerfully he ordered his assistant, Glenda, to “Look after this” and said, leaning his elbows on his counter as the white-coated Glenda trotted off obediently with the prescription: “So are these things doing your Mum much good, do ya reckon, Harriet?”
Uh—a chemist actually asking you if the muck he sold you was working? Even if he was an old schoolmate. Blinking a bit, Harriet replied: “Um, well, they’re quieting her down, I think, Wayne.”
“That’s good. Not much we can do for them, ya know,” he said kindly.
“We” being the entire medical profession, presumably? “No,” agreed Harriet, glancing around desperately for rescue. It was warm and quiet in the chemist’s shop and the Waratah Grove mall had been practically deserted this afternoon: no rescuers eventuated. Glenda and her white coat had completely disappeared. She knew that Wayne had married his childhood sweetheart—it had in fact been the great Bells Road High School romance of their generation—so she asked: “Um, how’s Melanie, Wayne?”
The robin-like little man made a sour face. “Don’t ask me. –We got divorced five years back, didn’t Trisha mention it? No, well, she reckoned the shop wasn’t giving her any scope or some such and I was spending all my time here—well, heck, when you own a business you can’t neglect it, and I wasn’t doing any longer hours than Joe Fisher over at Baker’s Delight—less, in fact: he always gets up at crack of dawn to get the first batch in—or Blake O’Mara at Waratah Stationery or the Di Nozzis at the greengrocers! And Andy Swayne at The Cheese Shop, he’s open till all hours, gets them coming off the train after work, ya see, and while I’m not saying he’s contravening the regulations, it takes him ages to clear up afterwards, you can’t leave food out all night, he’s here miles later than me every night except Saturdays!”
As usual in such situations Harriet didn’t know which part of the intel to reply to first. “Um, yes, you all work very hard,” she said weakly.
“Right: perils of running a small business,” said Wayne sadly, leaning heavily on his counter.
“Mm. Um, I’m very sorry about the divorce, Wayne,” she said shyly.
“Thanks. Well, we got married too young, y’know? It was dumb, really. Didn’t have anythink in common, as it turned out. She’s living with that Jim Roberts, now, he’s got his parents’ old house in Edward Street.” Harriet’s blank face registered. “You know: Robbo Roberts!” he urged.
“Robbo?” croaked Harriet. Robbo Roberts had been the school hero: captain of the footy team (Australian Rules, of course), six-foot-four in his football socks, and devastatingly handsome: a shock of black curls in that fetching Eighties style that featured a crest on top and a sort of curly tail trailing down the neck to well below shoulder level—it had had a name but it was so silly Harriet could never remember it. In his last two years at school he’d been going round with Sheilagh Chandler, the prettiest girl in the entire school. In fact the entire district: she’d been Waratah Grove Shopping Centre Beauty Queen three years running, Christmas Pageant Princess for the entire suburb in her last year at school, and played, variously, Mary Mother of Jesus or The Australian Spirit of Christmas in the end-of-year tableau (depending on whether the school was having a secular, non-partisan fit) every single year of her secondary career. Melanie had been quite a nice-looking girl but compared to Sheilagh Chandler she was a white mouse.
“Yeah. Got one of those Jim’s franchises—you know, lawn-mowing. Doing all right, but it’s hard yacker, and with the drought, he doesn’t get that much custom over summer. Does tree-lopping and garden clearing, too, that helps a bit. She does the books for him.” He sniffed. “If ya can call that scope!”
“Y—um, yeah, that’s right, she was good at maths at school. I always thought he might end up as a coach, didn’t he go into professional football?”
“Had a try-out for the Swans, but he never made the grade.” Wayne shrugged. “Well, always did imagine ’e could get away with murder, I’ve seen ’im drunk as a skunk before a big match with me very eyes. Had the natural ability, I’m not saying he didn’t, but he never bothered to work at it or keep fit. Paid for it since, mind you: after the footy fell through he went over to WA for a bit—they’ve got rellies over there, it gave him a base, ya see. Worked in the mines for a while, then he got a job driving for a courier firm.” Wayne shook his head, “Very sedentary job, driving is. You see it in the cops, too: often put it on while they’re still in their thirties, even. Most of them are really flabby by the time they hit forty. Spend all their time sitting round in their cars, ya see. Robbo was the size of a house when ’e came back, wouldn't of recognised him. Had a heart attack—let’s see, three years back, he’d of been thirty-nine, pushing forty, maybe: he’s a year older than us.”
“Wayne, how awful!” gasped Harriet.
Wayne looked superior. “Yeah, a real warning not to let yourself go, eh? But he pulled through, the surgeon told the family he was lucky, strong constitution apart from the heart and if he didn’t abuse it he could outlast us all—well, it might’ve been a bit of an exaggeration, his poor mum was in a dreadful state, but he was always strong as an ox at school, eh? So after that he saw the light and lost all the weight—went to WeightWatchers as well as the gym. I’ll say this for him, he’s got guts: there was just him and a load of ladies. So then he got a Jim’s franchise so as to be in the open air getting some decent exercise. Melanie met up with him at the gym: she was doing Reception and bookkeeping for them: they had these young kids on Reception, before, but they were hopeless, never turned up on time because they were on the rock wall or skipped it because they were in a marathon or somethink—you know, they’d be part-time instructors as well. So they gave it to Melanie. And she’s always been slim, not as if she was a bad advertisement for the place.”
“I see. Well, I’m glad Robbo pulled through.”
“Yeah, well, me too, and he’s welcome to ’er, she’ll be ruling him with a rod of iron, that’s for sure.”
Quiet little Melanie had never struck Harriet as that sort—but then, it was often the quiet people who turned out to be the most determined, wasn’t it? She nodded obediently. There was still no sign of dratted Glenda with the prescription—all they had to do was pick out a box from the shelves and stick a label on it, she was quite sure; and their blimming computer generated the labels, all they had to do for that was punch a few keys. Wayne was looking at her expectantly: it was obviously her turn to talk, oh, heck!
“Um, did you and her have any kids, Wayne?”
Phew! This the right tack to take, because he immediately told her all about Livvi, aged twenty-two— What? Uh, no, well, if you got married at nineteen—and Wayne must be forty-two now, or very nearly, same as her—and Neil, now twenty. Livvi had gone into physiotherapy and then sports medicine, had finished her diploma in the latter, and was doing very well for herself with a firm called Healthmates, Harriet might have heard of them, they had contracts with several of the big teams and ran several wellness centres in NSW. She had a very nice boyfriend who was with Healthmates, too, and it looked as if it was permanent but they weren’t going to rush into anything.—No, well, with the example of Livvi’s parents in front of them, good on them, thought Harriet.—Neil had inherited his mother’s mathematical ability and was doing an economics degree at Sydney Uni, was planning to go into merchant banking, and was aiming at an MBA after he’d got some solid working experience under his belt. Picture of your typical upwardly mobile dysfunctional twenty-first century family, in fact! Harriet was wondering if she was going to have to ask Wayne if he’d remarried, when fortunately Glenda resurfaced and she was able to grab the prescription and escape.
Halfway down the mall she remembered that her mother had demanded a roll of cottonwool as she left her in the library. She liked looking at the magazines, Harriet had discovered, and it was a sleepy little branch library, and the staff didn’t seem to mind her being left there for a half hour or so. They had no need of a roll of cottonwool, of course, but Harriet had taken the line of least resistance and said she’d get one. Oh, well, it was odds-on she’d have forgotten all about it.
Sure enough, when she got back to the library, she’d forgotten. However, one of the library staff came up and said with a very embarrassed expression on her face: “I’m awfully sorry, but I’m afraid your mother can’t take any books out until she renews her library card.”
She wouldn’t read them, Harriet knew that. She’d never been much of a reader, except for the Australian Women’s Weekly, even in her heyday. “Um, okay, how much is it?”
“No, it’s free if you’re a ratepayer. Um, the thing is, you have to have your photo taken for our new system—it only takes a minute, it’s all digitized—but she started saying it was aliens probing her brain, and, um, got very agitated, I’m afraid.”
“There isn’t much brain left to probe,” said Harriet very drily indeed.
The librarian—she was only a young thing—gave a startled laugh and gasped: “Um, I see! Well, um, could you persuade her it’s quite safe?”
“Not if she’s taken it into her head it isn’t. We won’t argue with her, she might start shouting. She’s usually quite quiet but if you contradict her she gets upset. Look, can I join? I’m a resident, though the rates are in her name.”
“Same address? Yes, that’s no problem.”
So Harriet joined the local library, not pointing out that somewhere in their records they must already have her details, as she’d always belonged when she was at school, and was rapidly issued with a brand-new digitized, brain-probed library card cum ID card with a hideous photo on it.
“Help, I look like Dracula’s mother!” she gasped, collapsing in giggles.
Giving a relieved smile, the nice librarian said: “Mine’s even worse, I’m afraid. It’s something to do with that flash it makes, I think.” And the other nice librarian, behind the desk working the thingo, chimed in with: “Yeah: Gayle, that’s the boss, she said hers makes her look like the Bride of Frankenstein!”
Mrs Harrison had been sitting quietly absorbed in the National Geographics all this time. Harriet went over to her with a very dry look on her face: when Dad used to read them she’d stigmatised them as filthy things that she wouldn’t have in the house—however. She asked her what she wanted to take out, hoping she’d changed her mind, but no, she had a pile of books, all large print, largely adventure stories and murder mysteries, two genres which she'd always loathed, added to which her eyesight was pretty good and she didn’t need her glasses for reading, but too bad. Harriet duly got three National Geographics and the books out.
“Nothing for yourself?” said the cheerful girl behind the desk.
Harriet was so unused to thinking of herself, let alone reading for pleasure, that she just looked at her blankly.
“This has just come back, if you like modern novels!” she urged, producing something from behind the counter.
It looked modern, all right: in fact it looked both ethnic and pretentious, and that was just the cover and the first few words of the blurb; but, taking the line of least resistance as usual, Harriet thanked her and accepted it.
They went home and as Mrs Harrison decided to have a nice lie-down before tea, ordering her not to do anything in the kitchen, she was gonna get the tea—something she'd undoubtedly have forgotten about by teatime, but never mind—Harriet went and sat in the lounge-room and looked limply at her book. “Well, okay, here goes nothing,” she muttered.
… It was ethnic and pretentious, all right. Added to which it was a translation. It was written by an affluent middle-class Iranian woman, who had doubtless had a hard time of it when her family was kicked out of Iran, true, and it was all about the intense struggles of an Iranian girl growing up in a very traditional, conservative working-class household—dazedly Harriet looked at the potted biography on the back cover again: the beautiful, well-dressed, smiling author’s father had been a surgeon, for God’s sake! She flipped through it. Help, now she was being forced into a distasteful marriage... The husband wouldn’t let her read, uh-huh... The husband wouldn’t let her listen to the radio—oh, she’d been listening to Western propaganda, well, she was pretty stupid to have let him catch her at it, wasn’t she? ...The husband was rough and uncaring in bed—par for the course, Harriet could sympathise with that, but funnily enough this somehow didn’t jell with that beautiful, poised face on the back cover. Oh, well: artistic licence... Ugh! Revolting blow-by-blow description of the birth of her first child. Uh—stillborn. Okay, her fault: the husband beat her up on the strength of it... She flipped over. Ran away; where to, for God’s sake? Aw, gee, starving in the gutter when just coincidentally an affluent French attaché at the embassy—had they still had one in Iran? Must’ve—picked her up, literally, took her back to his flat, and once she’d recovered from the starvation installed her as his housekeeper, blah, blah. Oh, Mr Rochester! Mills and Boon disguised as High Art—yep! Humbly serving him and his posh friends, yeah, yeah… Humbly reading all his books when he was out at work, yeah, yeah—who had taught her French, in this repressive household she’d grown up in, not specified—and gee, now he caught her bathing—pouring water over herself, horridly slimy description—leading inevitably to bed. Jesus! The description of the bloody orgasm was practically clinical! Even worse than the birth scene, ugh! What was wrong with these women, why didn’t their minds rise above their waists? Okay, was it gonna be happy ever after with suave Frog or dumped, deserted and back to humiliation and starvation? Odds on the latter, as it was High Art and had almost been a top contender for some prize or other—she looked at the back again: aw, yeah, in France as well—if the Prix Femina was anything like its name surely that clinical orgasm scene shoulda done it? Incidentally, it wasn’t clear if or when the bloke had actually come, but then, in feminist literature, could this matter? She turned to the end. Right: this being High Art, degradation and starvation and death in the gutter. Probably a woman’s life could turn out like that in Iran, give or take the odd suave Frog, but good grief! She flung it on the coffee table, where it fell open at a page featuring the much-repeated word “masturbation”. Eh? Before or after the suave Frog? Harriet peered... Ooh, heck, simultaneously with; he was teaching her! It was revoltingly clinical again: the thing read like a sex manual! Alas, Harriet collapsed in helpless giggles.
Teatime managed to distract her successfully: Mrs Harrison started to cook the tea, turned a microwave dinner to concrete in said microwave, accused Harriet of doing it on purpose, had a crying fit and retired to bed in a dudgeon, then demanding a pot of tea and Vegemite sandwiches. Harriet provided these, made herself a quick omelette and then, as it was Thursday, Trisha and Kyla turned up and she had to hurry off to the uni. She got back about ten, at which time Trisha reported that Mum had accused her, Harriet, of starving her and demanded a pot of tea and Vegemite sandwiches—she’d made her some more, it hadn’t seemed worth arguing about, and at least Vegemite was full of Vitamin B. And what on earth was this book on the coffee table? Kyla said it was full of rude words!
“It is. It’s a feminist novel that the nice girl at the library thought I’d like. If you wanna know how to masturbate, read it.”
“Honestly, Harrie!” cried her sister, very red.
“Blame the author, not me. It’s practically a clinical tract. Minus the diagrams,” said Harriet drily.
Kyla had picked it up again. “Lame. We had a better book at school,” she decided, discarding it.
“You let her foist it on you,” discerned Trisha with a sigh.
“Yeah, well, I was in a bit of a hurry: Mum had decided the photo thingo, you know, for the library ID cards, was aliens probing her brain.”
Kyla went into a delighted spluttering fit, gasping: “What brain?”
“That’s what I said,” agreed Harriet, smiling at her. “Well, I’m not gonna read it. I glanced through it but it’s highfalutin’ tripe of the worst order. Though I dunno that those Jack Higginses that Mum chose are any better.”
“This one here’s an Inspector Morse book,” discovered Trisha limply.
Harriet made a face. “Yuck. Have it, if ya like.”
“No, I’ve tried them before, I don’t like him. John Thaw made him much nicer.”
“Well, ya could sort of see him as human, yeah. –I hadda let her take them, I didn't want a scene in the library.”
“No. Um, maybe you better not take her there again, Harrie.”
“The alternative is to take her into all the shops and have her start buying crap that we can’t afford,” Harriet reminded her.
“Mm. Um, could you do the main shopping on the day Mrs Williamson comes over?”
“I do. This was for the prescription that had run out, and some greens—she chucked out the silverbeet I bought yesterday, I dunno why—and more milk, she poured out all yesterday’s. And it’s cheaper at the supermarket than the corner deli.”
“There’s the servo.”
“Last time I took her there she nearly got run over,” said Harriet dully.
Trisha bit her lip. “I’m sorry, Harrie, it’s awful for you... If only we could afford to put her in a home!”
“You could sell their car,” offered Kyla suddenly.
Trisha sighed. “You don’t get much for a five-year-old model, love. Well, every little helps, I’ll see what Steve thinks. Or you could learn to drive, Harrie,” she ventured.
Harriet sighed. “I can’t, I’ve had three lots of driving lessons and the last teacher told me I must have a neurological defect. Um, I drove right into a parked car when I was supposed to be going straight. The road was empty except for a dog on the footpath. I was afraid it was gonna run out, but... I dunno, I think he was right, actually, my feet won’t seem to work the thingos when I’m looking at the road at the same time: I can feel my brain sending messages to them but they won’t do anything!”
Kyla was looking at her mother in horror. “Mum, that’s not how Alzheimer’s starts, is it?”
“No, of course not!” replied Trisha hastily. “Actually, she’s always been like that, that’s more or less what she said when they tried to make her play netball at school.”
“Ooh, heck, wouldn’t your feet move, Aunty Harrie?”
“No. Well, usually my arms wouldn’t, either. Well, sometimes I could work one or the other, but never both.”
“It’s a matter of coordination...” said Kyla thoughtfully. “Yes, I think it is neurological,” she decided.
“Yes, so selling the car’d be the go: every little helps, as the fly said as he pee-ed in the ocean!” said Harriet cheerfully.
Trisha gave a startled laugh. “Dad used to say that!”
“Yeah, and she always said it was common. I try to say it as often as possible, it startles the ultra-nice idiots at work like billyo.”
“Um, ya don’t mean your new work, do you, Harrie?”
“No, I meant the old work, but actually if the opportunity ever arises at the new dump I promise to take it: they’re all ultra-nayce as well!” said Harriet cheerfully.
Trisha had decided that the new uni would be just the place for Harriet to find a nice man. She had sort of had a feeling that this notion might be rubbished by Steve, so she’d fallen back on sharing it with Kyla. She looked at her uneasily, only to find that Kyla was looking at her uneasily. “Don’t be silly,” she said feebly. “You don’t want to give them the wrong impression from the off.”
“No, it’d be the right impression,” replied her sister calmly. “That reminds me, I must get on with my cushion! I’ve got much more time to do some tapestry work, now!”
“Well, yes, but why are you doing it in such awful colours?” asked Trisha faintly.
“I think it’s ace!” cried Kyla loyally.
“There you are: ace. Pre-Raphaelite ace,” said Harriet with relish.
“I told Mrs DiMaggio about it and she said it sounded great! Surrealist, y’know?” Kyla continued eagerly.
Gee, maybe Harriet had better marry Mrs DiMaggio, then. “Did she? Good,” she said kindly. “And she’s a real artist, isn’t she?”
“Harrie, the woman had the art class doing graffiti, for Pete’s sake!” cried Trisha.
“It is art: possibly the only genuine modern art.”
Trisha picked up her handbag. “Rubbish! It’s encouraging vandalism!”
At Kyla’s school this was probably true. Certainly the bus shelters and railway stations round their way were all well decorated. The one did not, however, negate the other. Harriet didn’t make the point, and Trisha chivvied Kyla briskly out to the car.
It wasn't until she was in bed and nearly asleep that it came back to Harriet that Crispin had said he found modern novels both pretentious and artificial—and that he hated translations, same as her. And that ruddy thing had certainly been a translation—not even from Farsi, please note, but from French! And certainly both pretentious and artificial... Far from following the lady author’s clinical advice on masturbation, which she’d sort of thought she might do at one stage, before she’d decided she was far too tired to bother, Harriet turned her face into her pillow and cried and cried.
It was some weeks after the freezer had gone to Cash Converters and Steve had sold Mrs Harrison’s car for a very good price, considering, that there came a knock at the front door on a Saturday morning. Who on earth—? It couldn’t be anyone about the car, at this late stage. If it was Jehovah’s Witnesses or Mormons she was gonna give them a flea in their ear— Harriet marched off to the door looking militant, pursued by her mother’s screech of: “I won’t have any floozies in my house!” Why would floozies be knocking at your door at nine forty-five of a windy autumnal Sat— Oh, forget it! She opened the door to a large, be-jeaned and tee-shirted male figure that was about as unlike a Jehovah’s Witness or a Mormon missionary as was possible within the parameters of the human race. Wearing that amiable but sheepish Aussie male grin that was as far removed from the righteous smirk of the Mormons et al. as could be imagined. Within the parameters of the human face—yes.
“Gidday,” he said, the sheepish grin well to the fore. “You Harriet?”
“Yes,” said Harriet numbly. The more so since he was, though pretty obviously fairly thick, and with about the usual male Aussie complement of social skills, extremely good-looking, with a mop of short, just silvering black curls, a wide, tanned face with very even features, and sparkling hazel eyes with enormous curly black lashes that no male creature over the age of about six oughta have.
“Mike Barraclough.”
For a moment this strange concatenation of syllables made no sense. “Oh. Hullo,” she managed, blank but polite. The name “Barraclough” did seem very vaguely familiar, but... “Can I help you?
“Come about the bathroom.”
Harriet took a deep breath. On a Saturday? She had had a few of them since she’d taken up residence. One hopeful idiot had wanted to core the lawn. Core it? Harriet couldn’t even afford to have someone come and mow it—though at one stage she had reflected, rather guiltily, that she really oughta ask Robbo Roberts to come and do it. But she’d rung Jim’s Mowing and the girl on the phone—it seemed to be the phone for the entire franchise, very confusing—had given her a price that was way out of her budget. So she and Jimbo had an arrangement. He came over every second Sunday morning unless the weather was very dry or too wet, ostensibly to mow the lawns, and what actually happened was he did the small front lawn, then took the mower round the back for her and got it started—Harriet couldn’t make it go by herself and Jimbo was very proud of this skill—gave her the heavy boots his father insisted he wear when mowing, and retired inside to the TV set and a video game which was evidently better on Grandma’s big screen. And a Coke and biscuits, of course. Then when she’d finished he put the mower away, reclaimed the boots and had another Coke and, if he hadn’t eaten them all, some more biscuits. It was working out very well and they were both very pleased with the arrangement. And his grandmother mostly seemed to recognise him.
Redoing the bathroom was about as barmy as double glazing, and they’d had one of those, too. And a solar panels guy!
“No, thanks, we can’t afford a twenty-first century space-age bathroom.” Too late, she realised this was inviting him to offer any style she liked—
“No, I know, Steve explained all that. Rip the bath out for you,” he offered.
Steve had explained—? “Are you a mate of Steve’s, then?” said Harriet dazedly. “He never told me you were coming.”
“Nah, ’e wouldn’t of: didn’t know when I could manage it. –Mike Barraclough,” he repeated.
Harriet’s eyes had now cleared sufficiently from the initial shock to perceive behind him at the curb, well, at either side of the muscly bulk, really, a ute with ladders and stuff sticking out at one end of it. What had dratted Steve said about the bathroom? Ages ago—back in summer, wasn’t it? Somebody’s brother, hadn’t it been?
“Um, I dunno what Steve said—”
“Wants the bath ripped out, few handicapped rails put in,” he interrupted cheerfully.
“Y— Um, yes, that was ages ago, he hasn’t mentioned it lately. Um, look, whatever he told you, I can’t afford it.”
“Nuh! Mates’ rates.”
“Yeah—no, I’m sorry, whatever Steve told you, I can’t afford mates’ rates either, Mr— Sorry, what did you say your name is?”
It must finally have penetrated even the typical thick Aussie mate’s skull that she didn’t have a clue who he was, because he went rather red and repeated: “Mike Barraclough.”
The only association she got from that was a very vague one with the police: she must be going barmy! Which after going on six months in the same house with Mum wasn’t that surprising. “Well, it’s very kind of you, Mr Barraclough, and I’m sorry Steve gave you the wrong impression—”
“No, look,” he said, starting to look really hot and bothered, “you got the wrong end of the stick! I rip out the bath for you and take it away, see, if I can get anything for it I will, and do the bathroom up a bit—no real plumbing involved, Steve said, but if you’re worried, I am a registered plumber—and Steve pays for the fittings—trade, they won’t set you back much, prolly under thirdy dollars, or a bit more if you need a bit of new vinyl, but I can get an offcut, no worries—and we call it quits. See, if it’s a nice bath I might get quite a bit for it, and Dean, he said next thing ya know the old lady’s gonna let it run with the plug in and flood the house, so I better fit it in now.”
“Dean?” groped Harriet.
“Yeah. Me brother. Dean.”
How illuminating. No, hang on... “Dean Barraclough?” said Harriet slowly.
“That’s right. Me brother. Said the old lady called them out in the middle of the night three times about burglars in your roo—”
“Oh! The cop!” cried Harriet.
The burly Mr Barraclough looked pleased. “That’s right. Dean.”
“Yes, sorry, I wasn’t here then, I never met him!” she gasped. “Yes, the poor things came three times, and it was all in her head!”
“Yeah, well, these ole ladies, they get like that,” he said kindly. “Don’t worry, the cops are used to it. Had one ole joker—when was, it, ’bout three years back? Used to call ’em up regular about aliens in ’is peach tree.”
“Possums?” ventured Harriet, smiling.
“Nah—that’d be logical, eh? No, Dean finally figured out it was this ruddy plastic bag the old joker had put up in the tree ’imself.” He looked at her blank face. “Bird-scarer, they do that.”
“Oh, good grief!” cried Harriet. “I’ve seen a tree like that down the road! Not a peach, though, a plum tree, a huge old one. Help, whenever I walk past there I wonder if I oughta tell them there’s rubbish in their tree!”
“Right, ya would. Looks awful, eh? Untidy. I know the place ya mean: Number 73: nice old bungalow, lovely wide verandah. Did it up for ’em not long since: put in a new kitchen. Hadda rip all the old cupboards out—don’t look at me, it was their idea. Well, most ladies don’t like those old-fashioned cupboards, do they? But I had a customer who was restoring a lovely ole villa, they were just what she wanted.”
“I see,” said Harriet very weakly indeed. “Well, it’s very kind of you, Mr Barraclough. Um, you’d better come in and look at it. Um, if you’re sure you want to?”
“Yeah, no worries. –Mike,” he corrected her, stepping in past her.
“Mike,” repeated Harriet limply, closing the door and following him down the passage. He made unerringly for the bathroom—well, if he was a builder he must be used to the layout of Sydney suburban houses, of course.
“When was this done?” he croaked, staring round the pale green bathroom—everything pale green, except for Harriet’s faded terracotta towel that she’d brought from home and Harriet’s brand-new red face-washer that she’d bought on special at the supermarket quite recently on purpose to spite the bathroom, which she’d always hated.
“When they moved in, I think. Um, well, I’m forty-two this month and Trisha’s forty-three now, so, um, forty-four years back?”
“Nine’een sixdy-four,” breathed the plumber and master builder in awe. “Untouched.”
“Um, it’s pretty solid,” ventured Harriet. “I think Mum would’ve had it done up—well, she’s had everything else done, several times in the case of the kitchen, but Dad suggested it off his own bat, so of course she hadda veto it.”
“Yeah—that right? Yeah,” he breathed.
Light dawned. “I see. It’s got collectible, has it?”
“Uh—well, yeah,” he said, looking extremely sheepish. “This’d be about the first coloured stuff in Australia, ya see.” Suddenly he burst out with the full intel about a Greek bathroom he’d ripped out recently that had had a real terrazzo floor and all pale blue porcelain and a white statue of a naked lady stuck on the wall!
“Really? Was it a bas-relief?” asked Harriet, forgetting her company in the interest of the topic.
“Eh?”
“Um, was it—was it, like designed as a—a wall sculpture?” she faltered. “Flattish?”
“Aw! Nah, think the old joker had found it somewhere—garden shop, prolly—and stuck it up there. Woulda been nearly life-size. Kind of from the knees up.”
“Help,” said Harriet in awe.
“Too right! Me and Dez, that’s my obbo, we thought ’e prolly put it up there to— Uh, never mind,” he said, going a dull red and stopping hurriedly.
To jerk off to? Yes, that would spring to mind. But there was no way Harriet could have said this aloud to a pleasant Aussie builder—it would have embarrassed him to death to have a lady come out with something like that, and his embarrassment would have embarrassed her. So she just said: “And did you rescue the fitments?”
“Eh? Aw—yeah. The son had taken the place over, ya see, and he wanted everything modern. One of those shallow oval pedestal basins, y’know? Me ex, Noelene, she had one put it—drove ya mad, could never get more than four centimetres of water into the ruddy thing. And one of those free-standing baths. Well, got it trade, of course. But I tell ya, there was no ruddy holiday in Fiji that year for Madam!” he said with feeling.
It was evidently a sore point. “Oh, yes, I saw one of those in a bathroom shop once, it cost the earth. Thousands,” she said kindly. “Someone I used to know”—it had been Sean Nesbitt, actually, and by this time she was quite used to referring to him as “someone I used to know”—“he used to say they looked like the ruddy Queen Mary.”
“Yeah,” he agreed, grinning. “And then you gotta walk round the thing all the time!”
“Ooh, yes, you would have to, it must be very inconvenient. Well, I’d be quite willing to let you take all this green stuff if you want it, Mike,” she said kindly, “but with Mum in the house it might be a bit much having the bathroom ripped out. Especially the toilet.”
He brightened terrifically. “No worries!” Rapidly he explained how very, very quickly the toilet could be ripped out and replaced. They could do the whole job in a day, easy, Steve’d give him a hand. Or if it’d be easier for the old lady, do it a bit at a time—like, start this weekend, get the toilet done, that’d be the worst of it over for them, then the bath and that’d only leave the handbasin!
“Yes, but what about putting things back?” said Harriet dubiously,
“Uh—do ’em at the same time, Harriet. Get you a nice plain modern toilet and a new cistern, one of those double-flush ones, ya don’t wannoo waste water, shoulda had this old cistern replaced yonks back—if you wanted to keep everything matching, a decent plumber coulda replaced its works, no sweat. Well, we don’t usually, but ya can.”
“Um, yes, of course, you wouldn’t leave us without a toilet,” said Harriet dizzily, “but, um, what about the hole where the bath was?”
“Tile over that, no problem. –Could rip out all these old tiles for ya,” he offered, eyeing their pale green sheen hungrily.
“I thought tiling took ages?” said Harriet suspiciously. “Don’t you have to cut them to fit the corners? Anyway, I hate tiles, they’re stupid, time-wasting things that spout mould like crazy however much you try to keep them dry. Yet another thing invented by men to enslave women.”
He blinked. “Well, uh, I could replace them all with Formica, if you like, but it’ll lower the resale value of the house, nobody wants it these days.”
Harriet sighed. “To tell you the truth, Mike, it hasn’t got any resale value, Mum went and took out a huge second mortgage: we’re not gonna make a thing out of it.”
“Shit, did she? That’s no good. Sounds like Noelene’s Aunty Bernice, she took out a second mortgage and blew it all a on ruddy trip down the Rhine.”
“Not on one of those awful great cruise boats?” gasped Harriet. “I’ve seen the ads, they cost a fortune!”
“Too right. And that’s without the fare to Europe!”
“Um, well,” she said limply, since he was looking hungrily at the green tiles again, “I think I’d better ring Steve.”
“Yeah, righto,” he agreed, hauling a giant tape-measure from his back pocket. Harriet went rather red: the jeans weren’t exactly loose, the tape-measure was evidently a very tight fit, and the manoeuvre entailed rather a lot of writhing of the hips. He went over to the bath and started measuring.
She rang Steve. The upshot of this was, as anyone but a mug would have realized, she recognised ruefully later, that Steve fully agreed with every syllable his male peer proposed, up to and including ripping all the tiles out. Noting by the by that that green was enough to drive anyone nuts and it was probably a contributing factor, and if Harrie wanted some nice sheets of white Formica—when had she said white?—it’d be a lot less work than new tiles. And actually, he had seen a bathroom done like that, all white, and the Formica had had a bit of sparkle in it—Harriet winced horribly—and it hadn’t set them back much at all and had looked really good!
In spite of the measuring the toilet went first, not the bath. That very day. Steve turned up twenty minutes after Harriet had hung up the receiver, regardless of what school sports fixtures he might be supposed to be taking the kids to or fetching them from. Mike shot off in his ute and came back with a new white toilet—well, perfectly clean but even Harriet was aware that it was a recycled one—plus and a new cistern.
Naturally Mrs Harrison objected strongly to having the house invaded by horrible workmen in their great boots—Mike’s were but Steve was just in his normal sneakers—and even though Harriet forced her to go to the toilet just before they started, and refused to let her have a cup of tea afterwards, needed to go again half an hour later. Well, it was a choice between the obliging Williamsons, where they’d be sat down in the kitchen, which Mum would inevitably express her disapproval of, and have cups of tea forced on them, or the Schusters, where there was no doubt whatsoever that Pamela would want all the gen in the intervals of giving them huge mugs of coffee, and that Lucille, who had a wicked sense of humour for a thirteen-year-old, would come in looking very innocent carrying Fluffy... Okay, it had better be the Williamsons: at least Harriet wouldn’t risk breaking down in hysterics there. And as diuretics there was nothing to choose between tea and instant coffee, really.
Mrs Harrison had used the Williamsons’ toilet and the first round of tea had been downed and Mrs Williamson had dragged all the details about the bathroom “makeover” out of Harriet, not noticing her cringing as the dread word was uttered, and now it was time for lunch and it’d be no bother to give Pauline some, Harriet, dear—no, she understood that it might just be you-know-what sandwiches—but hadn’t Harriet better pop over and see about the men’s lunch?
Well, yeah, Harriet had always known she was like that, but for a moment her ears actually rang. Two great able-bodied hunks—Steve was almost as big as the burly Mike—why in Hell couldn’t they feed themselves?
“Fred likes quiche,” Mrs Williamson prompted kindly.
The wizened little old Fred winked at Harriet. “Real men don’t eat quiche.”
“Don’t be silly, dear,” said his helpmeet placidly.
Harriet got up. “It won’t be quiche unless Steve’s got the stove fuse in his pocket,” she said drily. “Um, I’ll have mine over there, Mrs Williamson. And thanks very much.”
“That’s all right, dear, she’s much better off over here!” she chirped.
And Harriet staggered off to feed two huge great able-bodied men.
Oh, blast, she didn’t have her keys! And the back door’d still be locked, there had been an episode of Mum wandering outside in the wee small hours. Fortunately she hadn’t gone further than the ruins of the shed, but since then the door stayed locked and the key was in a canister marked “Milo” on top of the fridge. It had come as one of a set with “Coffee” and “Tea” and had always, in Harriet’s lifetime, been empty: Mum didn’t approve of “artificial drinks” for children. But she had always refused to “break the set”. Well, it just showed that everything came in handy if you waited long enough, didn’t it?
She rang the doorbell, perforce. The door was opened to her by an extremely good-looking, burly, tee-shirted and be-jeaned man with a mop of short, silvering black curls, a wide, tanned face with very even features, and sparkling hazel eyes with enormous curly black lashes...
But it wasn’t him! Harriet just stood and gaped.
“Yeah, gidday,” he said, not interrogatively on the “Yeah.”
Harriet was used to this form of greeting, which was endemic to Australia. At uni in Adelaide they had once had a very pleasant young New Zealander as a junior tutor, who had assured her it hadn’t yet crossed the Tasman, and Harriet had almost thought she might turn out to be a kindred spirit, only then she’d revealed herself to be a great fan of Andrew Lloyd Webber.
“Are—are you Mike’s brother?” she quavered.
“Yeah, that’s right. Dean. You’d be Harriet, then?”
Harriet nodded limply. She could now see he’d be a few years older than Mike, his hair had more silver in it, but he was every bit as handsome. “I—I thought you were a policeman, Dean,” she managed.
“That’s right. Just come off duty. Thought I’d come and give Mike a hand. Might as well, nothink else to do with me Saturday arvos, now the kids don’t need to be driven to their ruddy footy and netball no more,” he said with a shrug.
“I—I see. Have they left school, then?” said Harriet limply.
“Yeah, yonks back. Damian, he’s twenny-four, working over in WA, driving heavy machinery for one of the big mining companies. And Tracy, she’s married now, I’m a granddad,” he said making a face. “Works part-time at Snippets—know that? Down the big Westfield complex on the Victoria Road intersection. Got her qualifications, ya see, they were glad to take her on.”
“Oh, yes, I know, Trisha has her hair done there! That Westfield shopping centre’s quite near their place. –My sister.”
“Aw, yeah, Steve’s wife, that right? Met her,” he agreed, grinning.
Harriet went very red. “You would of, yeah, over that stupid business of Mum’s with the so-called burglars in the attic.”
“That’s right. And the time she pranged the car,” he said cheerfully.
“Was that you as well?” she gasped in horror.
“Don’t worry about it, we’re used to it. Lot of retired people round here, now. Get at least one a week.”
“Accidents?” croaked Harriet.
“Accidents caused by elderly people that didn’t oughta be behind the wheel no more—yeah.”
“We’ve sold the car!” she said quickly.
“Have ya? Didn’t you wannoo drive it, then?”
Harriet swallowed a sigh. She wasn’t gonna say she couldn’t drive: she’d been down that route before with your average Aussie bloke. “No. Um, thank you for coming over to help out, Dean.”
“Heck, that’s okay. Not that I’m that good with me hands, that’s Mike’s department. I just supply the muscle,” he added with a grin.
She looked at the bulging muscle within the faded blue tee-shirt and swallowed involuntarily. “Well, thanks. I—I thought I’d make a bit of lunch. Is the water on?”
“Dunno,” he said, standing aside to let her in at last. “’E can always turn it back on for you. –Oy, MIKE! Is the water on?”
A rude reply incorporating, as to the less rude parts of it, the words “ya silly bugger” was heard clearly from the bathroom. The burly Dean went very red. “Shit, sorry, Harriet! –HEY, there’s a lady here, ya big-mouthed nit!” he roared.
Mike appeared in the passage. “Sorry, Harriet, didn’t know you were there!” he gasped.
Harriet took a very deep breath. “That’s quite all right, Mike: I perfectly understand that the vernacular of the male peer group is neither fit for, nor intended for, a lady’s ears.”
The Barraclough brothers gaped at her, red to the tips of, talking of which, their ears.
Abruptly Steve emerged from the bathroom. “Ignore ’er, she’ll go on like that for hours if ya don’t shut ’er up,” he advised, without heat. “Ya want the water turned back on, Harrie, that it?”
“Only if you mob want some lunch. Though it’s probably possible to prepare even a lunch suited to the male peer group without—“
“Knock it off,” he advised, without heat. “I was thinking of pizza, but there’s no oven. Well,” he said to the puzzled faces of the Barraclough brothers, “it’s there, but I’ve taken out the fuse, the ole bat thinks we’re still on Fahrenheit and she bloody nearly set the place on fire on Christmas Day.”
“She tried to turn the oven up to two seventy-five,” said Harriet in a small voice into the somewhat blank silence that followed this speech.
“Cripes!” gasped Mike in horror.
“Aw, yeah: Pete Frears, he was telling me about that. So that was her again, eh?” recognised Dean.
What? The whole bloody neighbourhood ruddy well did know about the madwoman at Number 45! “Who on earth is Pete Frears?” said Harriet crossly.
Steve cleared his throat. “The firie, love: the fire chief.”
“The fire— Who told him about that?” she gasped.
Steve scratched his chin. “Dunno. Musta been at the time of the shed do. Well, you or me, Trisha was at work, and Mrs W. from next-door, she was inside with her.”
Well, it hadn’t been Harriet! She gave him a bitter look. “It certainly wasn’t me. So,” she added with awful irony, “unless Fred Williamson told him about it down the RSL—”
“Pete’s not a member,” interrupted Dean. “Plays bowls, though.”
“Indoor, Dean,” corrected Mike.
“Yeah, that’s right: indoor bowls: ten-pin.”
“Indoor bowls?” cried Harriet. “You ruddy big-mouth, Steve!”
“Look,” he began heatedly, “I’m not the only one, Clem Schuster, he pl— Aw. Um, yeah, coulda been me, now I come to think of it. See, Clem—he’s next-door on the other side,” he explained illuminatingly to the Barraclough brothers, “he was there one night, and Pete’s team—they’re all firies, of course—they come over for a friendly game, mind you they could wipe the floor with us, they’re competition-level—and I dunno how the subject come up—”
“But it inevitably did,” said Harriet heavily. “Yeah, all right, Big-Mouth. Are you quite sure there isn’t anything else the rest of the neighbourhood doesn’t know about?”
Steve grinned uneasily, obviously not sure if she was really wild with him or not. “Aliens in the library ID camera?” he ventured.
“Eh?” said Mike involuntarily.
“You know, Mike. Digital,” explained his brother kindly. “Good safety precaution, that is. We advise all the bigger businesses and the Council offices and so on to get them put in, and get us to run security checks on their personnel, you can’t be too careful these days.”
Harriet sighed. “I don’t see how a digital photo on your digital ID card is gonna stop you blowing up the library, Dean.”
The burly Dean flushed. “Well, ya haveta be a ratepayer to get a card!”
“Mm, theoretically. I grant you they had looked at Mum’s old card before they issued mine, but all I hadda say was I was at the same address. And she was manifestly out of it, I could have been anyone.”
“Bullshit,” said Steve on a tired note. “Stop talking crap and go and make the lunch.”
“Um, yes,” said Harriet in a small voice. “Sorry. It’s just—well, everyone seems to know, even the hairdresser when I made an appointment for her— Sorry. Um, well, it’s hard to know what to make, without the oven. Um, well, there’s plenty of eggs, I could do a frittata, I’ve got my little single-burner thingo that I had in Adelaide, and, um, well, with a salad?”
“Just sandwiches’ll do us, Harriet,” said Mike quickly.
“Nah, let ’er cook, she’s quite a good cook, when the old bag’s not here nagging ’er to death,” said Steve on a tolerant note. “Not sure what it is, but it’ll be good!” he assured them as Harriet, with a relieved “Righto, then,” crept off to the kitchen.
Even with the kitchen door closed she could quite clearly hear Steve saying cheerfully to the Barraclough brothers: “Just ignore ’er, it’s ’er age. She’s all right, really, but looking after the ole bitch has been a bit much for ’er. And—well. Not saying she hasn’t had a boyfriend—and a useless prick he turned out to be!—but she’s been living on ’er tod for twenny years, now.”
Not surprisingly, this speech was followed by silence. Then one of the brothers ventured: “I thought she might be divorced.”
“Like most of us,” added the other one sourly—that must be Mike.
“Nah—never been married. Bit of a waste, eh?” Steve conceded. “Nah, thing is—you wannoo turn that water on, Steve? –Yeah, like I was saying, she couldn’t see past this married bugger—” His voice retreated up the passage.
Harriet got on with the frittata, her cheeks bright red. Honestly! And their side claimed women were gossips!
Next chapter:
https://trialsofharrietharrison.blogspot.com/2023/09/cabbages-and-kings.html
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