The Legacy

6

The Legacy

    Mrs Harrison’s will left her china figurine of a dancing lady to Trisha, the barometer which had been Mr Harrison’s to Harriet, and everything else to her “dearest grandchildren”, Kyla Mary Patricia Drinkwater and James Stephen Harrison Drinkwater. Trisha went very red.

    “WHAT?” shouted Steve, bounding to his feet. “Poor Harrie’s been looking after the ole bitch for two flamin’ years!”

    Mr Meiklejohn, the solicitor, looked somewhat limply at the heirs’ male parent. “Er, the will was made not long after your father-in-law passed, Mr Drinkwater.”

    “When, for Heaven’s sake?” said Harriet dazedly. “She only ate Vegemite sandwiches and complained about the mess in the kitchen for months afterwards.”

    “Well, I—uh—” Limply Mr Meiklejohn read out the date on the will.

    Steve counted on his fingers, breathing heavily. “Sodding Miriam,” he discerned, breathing heavily.

    “You mean Aunty Miriam? Mum’s cousin, Miriam Barker?” said Trisha dazedly. “That time Jenny Weintraub asked me and Harrie over for her youngest sister’s baby shower? She only had her for a half-day, Steve.”

    “Right, and what did they do? Went to town, eh?” he said, eyeing the city solicitor balefully.

    “She did come home with a DJ’s bag, but there was nothing in it,” recalled Harriet on a weak note.

    “That’ll be it! Aunty Miriam’s always hated us, she’ll of given her the DJ’s bag as—as camouflage!” cried Trisha.

    “Look, Mr Meiklejohn, Pauline was totally out of it by that time, can’t we break it on the grounds of being incompetent?” asked Steve grimly.

    Mr Meiklejohn stuttered, not to say blathered, but the gist was no, they couldn’t: they couldn’t prove she hadn’t been mentally competent at that time, especially since they had never had Power of Attorney.

    “Didn’t need to, the ole bitch suddenly went downhill,” explained Steve glumly.

    “Mm. Um, but it doesn’t matter, Steve,” ventured Harriet.

    “Of course it bloody well matters! You gave up your career to look after her!”

    “Yeah—no, not that. I mean, she obviously thought she was spiting us, but there’s no cash left, and there’s that huge second mortgage on the house,” she reminded him. “You said yourself there was practically no equity left in it.”

    “That’s true,” Trisha admitted.

    Steve gulped. “Yeah—well, yeah, but it’s still not fair!”

    “The word ‘fair’ wasn’t in her vocabulary, Steve,” said Harriet calmly.

    “I’ve always hated that china lady with the green skirt,” said Trisha dazedly.

    “Yeah,” Harriet agreed. “And after Dad died I tried to give that barometer to Jimbo and she wouldn’t let me, ’member?”

    “So it’s the only thing she hasn’t let him have!” cried Trisha loudly. “Typical!”

    Harriet bit her lip, as she inadvertently met Steve’s eye. “Mm.”

    Steve gulped.

    “Don’t start,” she warned unsteadily.

    “I can’t laugh, actually,” he discovered. “Heck, I thought at the very least it’d be split between you two girls!”

    “Never mind, there should be enough to help Kyla and Jimbo pay off their HECS debts, if they wanna go to uni.”

    “I suppose that’s true,” agreed Trisha without much enthusiasm. “Some, anyway.”

    “Madam’s gotta get through Year Twelve yet,” Steve reminded them sourly. “And how many unis let you do degrees in scrapbooking?”

    “Probably most of them, these days,” replied his sister-in-law drily.

    “There are art school courses,” offered Trisha on a wan note. –They had had this conversation before.

    “Art schools require a decent portfolio and marks!” Steve reminded her loudly. “Yeah, well, never mind that now. Thanks for seeing us, Mr Meiklejohn. You can charge yer time for this to the fuckin’ estate, because believe you me, none of us are gonna award you a red razzoo: why couldn’t you of stopped the ole bitch?”

    “That’ll do,” said Trisha tiredly, getting up. “It’s not his responsibility to tell his clients what to do, he’s just a servant. Come on, let’s go.”

    And with that the relatives of the Harrison heirs departed, leaving the red-faced, stuttering Mr Meiklejohn to his real leather suite, his real wooden desk, his real wool carpet, his narrow Venetians with their view of a slice of high-priced Sydney high-rises, and his silk tie and “flamin’ Armani suit”, as Steve put it sourly over the restorative cappuccinos.

    “Was it? How can you tell?” asked Harriet with interest.

    He made a sour face. “General look of the thing. Whaddelse do up-themselves downtown Sydney lawyers buy?”

    “Mansions on the harbour and Ferraris?”

    “Yeah, hah, hah.”

    “Stop brooding about it, Steve, I don’t care. And you said yourself that after the land agent’s fees and everything you didn’t think the house’d clear as much as fifty thou’.”

    “Maybe not, but heck, I thought you’d at least get enough for a nice holiday! I mean, shit, it’s been a good two years now—no, more: best part of two and half, and you haven’t had any sort of a break!”

    “I hate holidays anyway, you always have to plan stuff and wait for taxis that never turn up and go in horrible planes, it’s completely draining.”

    “We’d of taken you to the airport,” he said, scowling horrifically.

    “Steve, this is silly! I don’t want a holiday!”

    “You need one, though,” said Trisha anxiously. “These last six months have been awful. I’ll never forgive that beastly hospital—or Dr Hastings! I thought he was a nice man!”

    “Look,” said Harriet heavily, “the hospitals are overcrowded, there was nothing they could have done for her, and he was faced with a ready-made spinster daughter at home, what did you expect the average suburban doctor to say? They’re only technicians, you know. A ruddy bachelor’s degree in medicine doesn’t make them God.”

    “Right,” agreed Steve sourly. “Far’s I can see all the real work’s done by the labs—any diagnosis sure as Hell is.” He began ticking stuff off on his fingers. “Pill-pushing, flu jabs, take blood, and blood pressure—that’s all the bloody quacks do. And as a great concession take yer temperature if you’re about to drop dead in their ruddy waiting-room.”

    “Mrs Wakefield—you know, Harrie, over the road, she’s Jim Wakefield’s mother, she’s got their granny flat—she said that when she went in with a temperature last month he made the nurse take it,” reported Trisha dully.

    “There you are,” said Steve with sour satisfaction. “Technicians. Good word for ’em.”

    “I think you ought to have a holiday anyway,” worried Trisha.

    “I’m broke,” replied Harriet flatly. “I hadda give up my tutoring, remember?”

    “We can—”

    “No, you can’t, Trisha!” said Harriet loudly.

    “Look,” said Steve slowly, “how’s this? We were thinking of driving up to Queensland this Christmas anyway—it’s getting a bit much, flying, that’s four adult fares, ya see—so why not come with us?”

    “It is a five-seater!” said Trisha quickly.

    “Right. We know ya chunder on long trips, you can go in the front and we’ll take it slow, all right?” said Steve on a firm note.

    Oh, help. That’d mean she’d be on edge all the way, afraid she’d be sick in their car, and it was an awfully long way. And she knew his parents only had the one small spare room, the kids always camped in the tiny garden of their neat retirement unit.

    “But—but your parents won’t have room, Steve,” she faltered.

    Steve and Trisha exchanged glances. Then he said: “It’ll only be for a couple of nights, we’ll take the blow-up mattress for you, you can kip in the lounge-room. We’re just gonna have Christmas Day with Mum and Dad, then we’re gonna go up and stay with good old Uncle Ben, see?”

    “There’ll be stacks of room at his place!” Trisha assured her.

    Harriet had heard of Steve’s old Uncle Ben, but only just. She’d certainly never met him, and she was pretty sure Steve hadn’t laid eyes on him for years.

    “Where—where does he live, again?” she faltered.

    Steve and Trisha exchanged glances again. Then she said soothingly: “A bit further north.”

    “Near Big Rock Bay, you won’t of heard of it. Madam’s keen to go there because it was in some dumb film or other. We haven’t let on that Uncle Ben hasn’t darkened a cinema’s door since 1960,” drawled Steve. He winked at Harriet. “Ben-Hur. It come out in 1959—I looked it up on the Internet—but it wouldn’t of hit Oz till 1960. Well, stretch a point: 1961, maybe.”

    “That’s over forty years!” gasped Harriet.

    “Closer to fifty,” Steve replied calmly.

    “He’s making it up. Ignore him,” sighed Trisha.

    “No, I’m not. He told me the last flick he went to was Ben-Hur.” He winked at Harriet again. “’Is considered opinion was that it was Yank crap and the book was better, apart from the actual chariot race. Then ’e come out with something techo about the chariots that I didn’t get, but it woulda been spot-on: ’e’s like that.”

    “I’ve always thought that about Ben-Hur,” said Harriet dazedly. “None of the main characters could act. Or else Messala was meant to be gay.”

    “Yeah—well, yeah, Uncle Ben said that, too. Well, ‘a raving pansy’ was how he put it, but given the vernacular,” said Steve with relish, “of his generation—yeah. You should get on well with ’im, then. Apart from being a female, of course. Still, if you don’t try to fill ’is house with frilly cushions or wash ’is curtains ’e might overlook that.”

    “He’s not that bad,” said Trisha weakly. “I mean, your mother says the house is clean.”

    “—ish,” amended Steve thoughtfully.

    “Shut up, Steve. It sounds a bit basic, Harrie, but it’ll be a nice place for a holiday—very laid-back; and see, it won’t cost you a thing!” She beamed at her.

    Except, presumably, the strain on her nerves, cooped up in a car all that way—and back. With a visit to a strange old misogynist in the middle of it. Queensland at Christmas would be streaming with humidity, too. And if they were really lucky they’d get a cyclone—there’d been a couple of shockers just a few years back.

    They were now both beaming at her. Harriet smiled weakly. “Mm, lovely,” she croaked.

    “Where the Hell are we?” croaked Steve. He pulled in to the side of the long, empty road.

    “Don’t ask me, you’ve got the map!” snapped his helpmeet from the back seat.

    Kyla unplugged one ear from its electronic equipment and asked eagerly: “Are we anywhere near Big Rock—”

    “NO!” roared her father. “Go to sleep again!”

    Shrugging, Kyla plugged her ear in again.

    Harriet had helpfully got the map out of the glove compartment and unfolded it.

    “That’s upside-down, you nong!” cried her brother-in-law, wrenching it off her.

    Harriet subsided, muttering: “Sorry.”

    Steve breathed heavily over the map for some time, occasionally uttering words like: “Flamin’ by-passes, they won’t be on this bloody thing,” and: “The bloody highway’s supposed to of been finished yonks back, why are they muckin’ round with flamin’ by-passes?” And: “By-passes where to, for God’s sake?”

    Finally Trisha leaned forward. “Steve, let me—”

    “No!”

    Harriet began on a would-be bracing note: “Well, we know it’s not behind us, it must be in front—”

    “SHUT UP!” he roared.

    Harriet subsided again.

    “These look like banana trees,” offered Jimbo unexpectedly.

    “Banana palms,” said Steve through his teeth, “and shuddup, if ya can’t be helpful!”

    Ignoring this injunction, Jimbo added thoughtfully: “I mean, it’s not the rainforest. Those fields back there were full of celery, didja notice? Funny, eh? I mean, in Queensland? Hey, we’re not going backwards, are we?”

    “SHUT UP!” he roared.

    Jimbo shrugged, and returned to his piece of electronic equipment.

    “It’s a pity we haven’t got a compass,” noted Harriet thoughtfully.

    Steve took an amazed and wrathful breath.

    “Look, Steve,” said Trisha quickly, “let’s just go on and see where this road takes us. I mean, it was the only road out of that other place, we can’t have gone wrong. Distances are huge up here, you said so yourself.”

    “Ole Ben reckons ya go through some rainforest,” he said grimly.

    “Then we can’t have come far enough,” replied Trisha soothingly.

    “All right, I’ll keep going, but don’t blame me if we end up on Cape Flaming York.” He pulled out.

    “And don’t go too fast, or we’ll miss the road signs,” she added, perhaps unwisely, as he put his foot down.

    “Will ya SHUDDUP!” he roared.

    Trisha subsided.

    They drove on through endless miles of banana plantation interspersed with endless miles of celery interspersed with endless miles of—“Are those macadamia trees?”—“Shuddup!”—endless miles of some sort of cultivated trees interspersed with—“Ooh, look! Are those eggplants?”—“Just drop it, Trisha!”—endless miles of putative eggplants...

    “Stop!” shrieked Harriet.

    Steve braked violently. “What the fuck—?”

    “We passed a road sign!” she gasped.

    “What? Ya stupid cow, ya coulda caused an accident! I thought we’d hit somebody!”

    “Um, no, a road sign,” she mumbled.

    Muttering under his breath, Steve backed up... “Johnsons Farm,” he discerned grimly. “Hand-painted. And that’s a track.”

    “Um, yeah, sorry,” she mumbled.

    Muttering about cretinous sisters-in-law not fit to be let out without a leash, Steve drove on into the endless vista of pumpkin fields. No-one dared to point out that these were probably Queensland blues.

    ... “I need to go to the toilet, Dad,” whinged Kyla.

    “YES! We know! Ya can hold on or go behind a lime tree or a pumpkin, take ya choice!” shouted her father.

    Harriet peered out of her window. “Actually I think these ones are zucchini— Sorry!”

    “I’m not going behind a tree!” wailed Kyla.

    “All right, hold on,” replied her father unpleasantly.

    They drove on...

    “Thank God! A servo!” cried Trisha.

    “I’m going first!” warned Kyla.

    “All right, Kyla, no-one’s arguing with you,” said her mother tiredly. “But take the roll of toilet paper, you know what these Outback places are like.”

    “She does now,” conceded Jimbo, emerging from his piece of electronic equipment.

    “And you can go, too,” warned his father.

    “I don’t need—”

    “You can go, or ya don’t get a Coke,” he said flatly.

    After everybody had been and the kids and Steve were drinking Coke and Trisha and Harriet were drinking bottled water, which surprisingly enough the place did stock, Steve admitted: “I asked the bloke. He reckons this is the right road for Big Rock Bay.”

    “Oh, good!” beamed his wife.

    “How much further is it?” asked Harriet.

    Steve had been silently wishing nobody would ask that. He gave her a bitter look. “We’re about halfway.”

    “Halfway from Brizzie?” asked his son clinically.

    “NO!” he shouted. “Halfway from that dump before all them banana palms and fucking pumpkins, and will ya just shuddup!”

    Everyone shut up, though Jimbo might have been observed counting on his fingers, his lips moving silently. And they drove on...

    “I’m hung-gree!” whinged Jimbo.

    “Pick a banana,” replied his father unpleasantly.

    They were in the middle of the rainforest. Well, forest, it wasn’t all that lush, though at the moment it certainly looked as if was gonna rain. Jimbo subsided.

    They drove on...

    “Mum, I’m starving! Where are we?”

    Trisha peered at her watch in the gathering murk. “Um, well, we must be nearly there, Jimbo,” she said without conviction.

    “We haven’t reached the fork, yet,” noted Harriet.

    “Just shut up, Harrie,” she sighed.

    Harriet subsided...

    “THERE!” shouted Jimbo.

    “YES!” bellowed his father. “I can see it!”

    “Go left, Steve,” Trisha reminded him anxiously.

    “YES!” He bore left at the fork and they drove on through more dark trees...

    “Maybe it was right, not left. I mean, some people do get them mixed up,” offered Kyla.

    “It was LEFT!” shouted Steve.

    “Not you, Dad, Uncle Ben. Maybe he said left when he meant right.”

    Certain other people had been thinking this for some time. “’E’s navigated ’imself all over the Outback, not to say the rest of the fucking world, he KNOWS ’IS LEFT FROM ’IS RIGHT, HOW DUMB ARE YA?” he roared.

    A ringing silence succeeded this bellow. Even Jimbo didn’t dare to say: “Pretty dumb.” Finally Trisha said tiredly: “There’s no need to take it out on the kids.”

    “No. Um, could we stop for a minute, Steve?” asked Harriet in a tiny voice.

    Steve took an amazed and wrathful breath.

    “I think she’s feeling sick,” said Trisha quickly. “This road is a bit bumpy.”

    “Just a bit,” she mumbled.

    He pulled in hurriedly. “Get out.”

    Miserably Harriet got out into the streaming tropical downpour.

    “Honestly, Steve! Where’s that umbrella? –Kyla! Give me that umbrella! –It’s behind you!” shouted Trisha.

    With some difficulty in the nominal five-seater, Kyla squirmed round and fumbled in the pile of junk illegally stacked behind her, blocking the rear window.

    … “Are you gonna be sick?” asked Trisha.

    “I don’t think so,” replied Harriet in a small voice.

    Trisha peered at her face. As the umbrella they were now both cowering under was green, it looked greenish. “Um, it can’t be much further.”

    “You said that six hours ago.”

    “Not six!” Trisha peered at her watch. She swallowed. Harriet was exaggerating, but it was certainly more than six hours since they’d left Brisbane, never mind Steve’s Uncle Ben’s claim that the whole trip only took a bare four. Unfortunately Steve had believed him and so they hadn’t made an early getaway, in fact they’d been so late starting that his mum had started suggesting they might as well stay for lunch. Well, there’d been several hold-ups, what with loads of unexpected by-passes, and road works, and a pile-up with loads of cars backed up behind it, and at a couple of these Steve had thought he’d found a quicker way that hadn’t been, and then, looking for somewhere to have lunch and getting lost once they were off the highway…

    “Could you maybe just leave me here, and I’ll walk on slowly, and, um, after you’ve found the town you could maybe come back for—”

    “Not in the middle of nowhere! Anything could happen!”

    Harriet sighed. Since leaving the last town they’d seen only a handful of cars on the road, and nothing at all since that last servo where they’d had the Cokes. “All right, then. Um, could he maybe go slowly?”

    “Yes, and you’d better keep your window open.”

    The window would let in wet, warm air but as the air-con hadn’t noticeably been coping very well in the tropical downpour, Harriet just replied glumly: “Okay,” and they got back in. And Steve drove slowly on with all the windows open...

    “I’m soaking!” gasped Kyla.

    “Shuddup, you are not, it’s not coming in at all,” he lied, wincing as a gust blew right into his face.

    “Not the rain, I’m sweating all over, Dad!”

    “Ugh!” said Jimbo hoarsely, with a horrible chuckle.

    “Look, shut up the both of you, we’re nearly there,” he sighed.

    “I hope so,” said Trisha anxiously, peering. “I can’t see a thing.”

    “I’ve got me headlamps on full, what more do ya want?” he snarled.

    “I was just saying! –Don’t go too fast in this awful rain.”

    Steve took an amazed and wrathful breath, but restrained himself with a superhuman effort; and they crept slowly on...

    “This is it!” he discerned with unconcealed relief. “Big Rock Bay pub.”

    “The sign says ‘Hotel’,” corrected Jimbo pedantically.

    “It’s the pub, moron,” he groaned, pulling in.

    Trisha peered. “Well, it’s been done up quite nicely, but yeah. Help, there’s not much here, is there?”

    “The pub and a servo, what more do ya need?”

    “Steve! Somewhere to buy food, for Pete’s sake!”

    “Uh—think Uncle Ben said the nearest supermarket’s back in the town.”

    “What town?” she gasped. “I thought Big Rock Bay was a town!”

    “Nah. Well, this is it. Not the bay itself, that’s about twenny K further on.”

    “What?”

    “Give or take. Anyway, we’re not going there.”

    “You promised we could!” wailed Kyla. “You promised, Dad!”

    “SHUDDUP! We can go there, but not tonight! Uncle Ben’s place isn’t at Big Rock Bay, it’s at Sandy Cove.”

    “Gloriously imaginative geographic nomenclature they have, up here in Queensland,” noted his sister-in-law.

    Steve gave her a filthy look. “Well, you’ve perked up.”

    “You’ve stopped,” replied Harriet simply.

    The fiftyish lady behind the bar featured tinted auburn hair in a short, well curled style, a shoe-string-strapped pink top considerably smarter than Kyla’s, a dark green lace stole-like garment—Harriet blinked—and quantities of expertly-applied makeup. Plus giant magenta fingernails. They must be Ben’s relations! she recognised immediately in response to Steve’s feeble “Gidday, um, I was wondering if you could tell us the way—” So after a cold one (Steve), a hot lemon and lime (Trisha, nobody making the mistake of assuming the “hot” referred to the temperature rather than the alcoholic content), Cokes for the kids and “just something refreshing, please” for Harriet which turned out to be a lemon, lime and bitters because lots of the city ladies liked that, in fact when they’d had the film crew here a few years back—after all that, plus the inevitable bags of reconstituted, extruded and deep-fried potato solids soused in salt—ersatz chicken flavour, barbecue flavour or vinegar optional—they headed for Sandy Cove.

    “This can’t be it!” gasped Kyla in horror, peering at a makeshift house that you would’ve called a shack only it was a fair size. Nobody replied: it was obvious it had to be it, it was the only house here. And Steve’s headlights had just lit up what was undoubtedly a cove. Besides, the dirt road didn’t go any further and the sign at its head had definitely said “Sandy Cove”. Well, “andy Co-e”, close enough.

    “Look, I think that bit’s made of packing cases,” said Jimbo with interest.

    Ignoring these remarks, Steve said heavily: “He’s expecting us, or the verandah light wouldn’t be on. Anybody who wants tea tonight had better get out.”

    As they piled out a thin man in jeans wandered out of the open front door and stood on the verandah, watching them.

    “Gidday. Got much luggage?” he greeted them.

    Steve hauled a case out of the boot. “Why? You done yer back in?”

    “Nah, strained me arm.”

    It wasn’t bandaged—this was extremely obvious, as the jeans were his only garment. Harriet eyed him suspiciously but said nothing.

    “We can manage,” said Trisha quickly. “You must be Ben, then! It’s lovely to meet you at last, Ben. I’m Trisha.”

    He scratched his chin. “Right. Steve’s wife, that right? –Yeah,” he conceded as she nodded weakly, failing to maintain the polite smile. “So who’s the one that doesn’t believe I’ve done me arm in?”

    Trisha gulped and failed to reply.

    “Harriet,” said Harriet calmly. “I’m Trisha’s sister.”

    “Yeah, I remember that. Just couldn’t remember your names. I mean, I could remember all the names but not which was which. So the little girl’s Kyla, then.”

    Kyla went bright red and glared furiously. “I’m not a little girl, I’ve finished Year Twelve!”

    “By the grace of God,” noted Steve to the velvety black Queensland night.

    “You’re a little girl to me, love,” replied her great-uncle calmly. “Got something for ya.” He dug in the pocket of his jeans—left-handed, so possibly the story about the arm was true and not a leg-pull, but Harriet still wasn’t taking any bets.

    Kyla came up to the bottom of the uneven verandah steps, looking wary.

    “Here,” he said, holding it out.

    It was a necklace. Trisha and Harriet exchanged anguished looks: there was no way a man of his generation, without children and grandchildren of his own, could ever have second-guessed what would appeal to a kid of Kyla’s age—even Trisha had trouble in keeping up with the teenage fashion fads.

    Kyla mounted the verandah steps and took it eagerly. “Ooh, tha-anks, Uncle Ben! Ooh, it’s lovely! Look, Mum, all carved!”

    “Whittled, really,” he said modestly.

    Trisha staggered up the steps. “It’s really beautiful, Ben,” she said weakly. “Did you make it yourself?”

    “Yeah. They’re seeds, mainly. I was just gonna string them all together only Laverne down the pub, she said separating them like that on a piece of black twine’d be the go, these days.”

    “Ooh, yes, it’s ace,” sighed Kyla, putting it round her neck and looking down at it admiringly. “Look, Mum, these shiny ones are real gemstones!”

    “Uh—come off the beach. Polished them up a bit. Looks uneven to me—unbalanced, but that’s what they’re wearing, is it?”

    “Yes,” said Trisha limply. “You’d pay a fortune for something like this at DJ’s.”

    “I wouldn’t,” said Harriet wryly.

    Ben Rivers gave her a dry look. “Thanks.”

    “No, I mean, everything at blimmin’ DJ’s is too expensive!” she gasped.

    “Aw, right. –Oy, Jimbo, gimme one of those bags, me left arm’s okay.”

    “I can manage!” gasped Jimbo, bright red in the face.

    Ben shrugged, and stood aside for him. “Your parents are in the front bedroom and Harriet and Kyla in the one next to it. You and me are in the sleep-out on the side verandah.”

    “Neato!” he gasped, staggering inside.

    “But— We can’t take your bedroom!” gasped Trisha.

    “Yeah, we can,” said Steve stolidly. “Usually sleeps on the verandah, anyway. ’Tis an enclosed sleep-out, ’e had a couple of the other sort but they fell down. Cleared them away, have ya?”

    His uncle eyed him sardonically. “Well, they didn’t walk off of their own accord.”

    “Yeah. You can grab that pink thing if you’re keen, but I’m warning you, it’s got Madam Kyla’s fashionable wardrobe in it, it weighs a ton.”

    “I’ll leave it for you, then,” rejoined his uncle sweetly. “The bathroom’s okay, Trisha, if you need to have a piss,” he added kindly.

    “Um, us it? Um, thank you!” she gasped, very flushed.

    “It must be the way you’re standing with your legs crossed,” noted Harriet drily.

    “No, in this instance it’s merely long years of experience with the combination of the female bladder and long car trips,” drawled Ben.

    “Your diagnosis is substantially correct, but further application of male logic,” replied Harriet with relish, “would surely have suggested to you that we all went at—”

    “At the pub!” he gasped, breaking into a roar of laughter. “You’ll do, Harriet! –Eat fish, can ya?”

    Harriet was now very flushed, but she replied with commendable dignity: “Yes, I like fish.”

    “Good, well, there’s a couple of nice big ones in the fridge, you wanna haul them out and gut them?”

    “No, thanks, I hate handling fish, I only eat them.”

    “Honestly, Harrie!” gulped Trisha. “I’ll do it, Ben.”

    Ben straightened, grinning, with a large carryall in his left hand. “Nah, they’re done, actually, thanks, Trisha. I was just testing her.”

    Trisha attempted to smile, failed, said weakly: “I’ll just unpack, then. Come on, Kyla,” and hurried inside.

    “Conventional, isn’t she?” noted Ben Rivers cordially.

    “They all are, ”replied Harriet simply.

    “How did you escape, then?”

    “Dunno. Just born like it, I think, though that doesn’t mean it was easy. How did you?”

    “Nonconformity in the male tends to be labelled eccentricity and tolerated,” he replied calmly. “Did she actually bring the kitchen sink as well?”

    “What? Oh, sorry, let me take that thing.” Harriet grabbed a hamper. “She didn’t want to rely on picking up food at the servos and so forth on the way. Just as well, as it turned out. Though I suppose we could have stolen a dozen or so celery plants, if desperate. Or pumpkins.”

    “They export them,” replied Ben in a completely neutral voice.

    “Of course, yes!” agreed Harriet cordially. “To New South Wales. Or sometimes even as far abroad as Victoria.”

    He grinned. “You got it. They export the limes, too. You never see a lime in the local supermarket. They’re all exported to Sydney for the mineral-water set with the funny sunnies.”

    “Shut up,” she said weakly.

    Ben smiled. “Sorry,” he said meekly. “Got carried away at the discovery there’s one other person besides me in the whole of Australia who not only notices our local usage but recognises its incongruity.”

    “It’s a case of the outsider seeing most of the game,” replied Harriet on a dry note that failed to hide her pleasure. “You can leave that esky, it had the drinks and snacks in it, and we finished them hours back.”

    “Come on, then. Uh, they are all hungry, are they?”

    “Starving.”

    “In that case I’d better insult me superb fish with those frozen chips I got at the supermarket. –Julie Green was on the check-out,” he added reminiscently, as they headed inside, “and she was really surprised to see me buying processed food, and immediately assumed I must be having visitors!”

    “Shuddup, ya bugger,” replied Harriet in strangled tones.

    Grinning, Ben Rivers merely returned mildly: “That’s your room, the bathroom’s next to it, and the kitchen’s at the back, here.”

    They went down to the kitchen and Harriet, who had been expecting a pretty basic lean-to affair that would certainly have gone with the shabbiness of the rest of the house and its owner, looked around her in amazement.

    “Only a lean-to,” said Ben modestly.

    “Technically, maybe! Ooh, genuine old cupboards, with the little round air vents, aren’t they lovely!”

    “Poncy colour, though,” he murmured.

    The cupboards were a pale salmon pink and their handles were genuine little old round brass ones. The walls were fully lined with narrow vertical boards, lots of different sizes and styles, and very clearly all different woods: they were all covered in clear polyurethane. The windowsills and skirtings were painted a dark chocolate brown. Normally Harriet didn’t like brown but the combination of the chocolate with the salmon pink and the golden glow of the assorted woods was charming.

    “No, it’s a lovely combination!” she beamed.

    “Thanks. Uh—happenstance—serendipity, if you like. The pinkish stuff was on special. The brown set me back a bit but I had to have it, once I’d spotted it. Didn’t want anything that would clash with the view—you’ll see, when it’s daylight. That’s the sea out there.” He nodded at the rank of windows above the sink and the long benches flanking it.

    “Lovely,” said Harriet with a deep sigh. “It’s all higgledy-piggledy.”

    “Uh—yeah!” he agreed with a startled laugh. “Picked the window frames up here and there, ya see. The original lean-to had a blank wall facing the sea, wouldja believe?”

    “Yes, the house faces away from it.”

    “Mm.” Ben leaned against his long bench. “One can’t imagine the sort of mind that could build here facing away from the view.”

    “I can,” replied Harriet grimly. “Mum was exactly like that.”

    “I see. In that case I won’t express a conventional sorrow for your loss.”

    “No, don’t: it was a blessed relief. For all of us; Trisha loathed her, too, and she was really mean to Steve and the kids. Well, not as mean as she was to Dad, but bad enough.”

    “Mm. Well, never mind, presumably you two girls have come in for the lot.”

    “No. I’m surprised Steve didn’t mention it.”

    He pulled his ear dubiously. “Uh—don’t think so. Might not of been listening, of course. What’d she do, blow it all on a trip to Europe with a crowd of other ignoramuses?”

    “No—well, some of it. Just England, she didn’t like foreigners. No, she took out a second mortgage on the house, we can’t figure out exactly what she blew that on, but it’s all gone, and she made Dad cash in his insurance and blew most of that on Telstra shares, and then she left what was left to Kyla and Jimbo.”

    “The kids? Thought you said she was mean to them as well?”

    “Yes, she was. She did it spite me and Trisha, of course.”

    Neither of them had noticed Kyla standing in the kitchen doorway during the latter part of this exchange. “Yes, but I’m giving my half back to you as soon as I turn eighteen, Aunty Harrie!”

    Harriet swung round with a gasp. “No, you’re not, Kyla!”

    “I am! You deserve it, not us! –She hadda give up her job, Uncle Ben, and she was stuck with her for nearly three years and when the beastly hospital wouldn't have her she hadda do all the nursing and everything!” she burst out.

    “She was gaga by that time, she couldn’t have made a will,” said Harriet calmly. “You’re not giving me anything, Kyla, we’ve talked it over and if you do get anything out of the house it can go to pay off your and Jimbo’s HECS debts.”

    Kyla scowled mutinously. “I’m not going to uni, so I won’t have a stupid HECS debt!”

    “Uh—is this for your university fees?” groped Ben.

    “Yes!” she snapped. “Don’t you know anything?”

    “Don’t be mean to him, Kyla, he hasn’t got any kids or grandkids to keep him up to date, and he made you that lovely necklace,” said Harriet with a smile.

    Kyla reddened. “Um, yeah. Um, sorry,” she growled.

    Ben eyed her drily. “That’s okay, Kyla, there’s no need to treat me with consideration on account I’m  an elderly great-uncle.”

    She looked at him uncertainly. “Um, no, okay. How old are you, anyway?”

    Harriet had been wondering that. He wasn’t young, but he certainly didn’t fit the picture conjured up by Steve’s references to “old Uncle Ben”. He had a wiry, very tanned figure, and very short, bristly grey hair—bald on top but he was so tanned that this look wasn’t at all unpleasant, most unlike the pallid heads seen behind the “funny sunnies” in the trendy Sydney cafés.

    “Sixty-five,” he replied without emotion. “Pension age, now.”

    “That’s not so old,” nearly-eighteen conceded kindly. “Grandma was eighty.”

    “Yes, she was already thirty-five when she had Trisha,” said Harriet on a weak note. Sixty-five? Heck, ruddy Sean Nesbitt was older than that, he was twenty-four years older than her, he’d have reached retirement age just over three years back!

    “That’s too old to start a family,” said Kyla judiciously. “Maybe that’s what made her so mean. Anyway, I’ve decided, I don’t want anything from her, and if there is any money you can have it, Aunty Harrie!”

    “What money?” said Jimbo’s voice suspiciously. He came into the kitchen, chewing.

    “Are you eating?” demanded his sister crossly.

    Jimbo swallowed with difficulty. “Just a bit of my Mars Bars, I saved it. What money?”

    Scowling, Kyla replied: “You know very well! Any money we get from Grandma’s house!”

    “What about my HECS fees?”

    “Exactly,” said Harriet with a sigh. “I’m not taking anything from either of you, and that’s that.”

    Ben leaned against his bench, sucking his teeth. “Yeah,” he drawled, “you got the choice, really, young shaver: start yer adult life with a load of debt like the rest of ’em, or start it with a bloody great load of guilt on yer conscience because you done yer aunt out of what shoulda come to her.”

    “See?” said Kyla swiftly.

    Jimbo was very red. “I don’t want it, but they all said we hadda use it to pay off our HECS debt!”

    “Yeah, but soon as we’re eighteen it’s up to us, see?”

    Kyla’s birthday was next February, but in Jimbo’s case eighteen was still a fair way off, and it was clear, certainly to both Ben and Harriet, that he couldn’t really envisage it. “Um, yeah. Um, well, yeah, in that case I’ll give you mine as well, Aunty Harrie.”

    “You won’t, because I won’t accept it, Jimbo,” said Harriet with a sigh.

    “Hang on,” murmured Ben. “It’s mainly the house, is it?”

    “Yes, all the money went on the trip to England and new body-carpet and crap,” said Harriet heavily. “Not to say the ruddy mortgage repayments.”

    “Yeah, got that. Well, why not live in it rent-free? The kids could still own it, but it’d be some compensation for you.”

    “Yeah!” cried Jimbo. “Hey, she could do that, Kyla!”

    “Ooh, yes!” she cried.

     Harriet passed her hand over her hair in despair. “You’re as unworldly as they are,” she said limply to Ben Rivers. “It’s got two bloody great mortgages on it. What’s gonna pay them off if I’m not paying rent?”

    “Uh—bugger. You’re right, I am as unworldly as them.” He made a face. “Sorry.”

    “If this is bloody Pauline’s bloody house,” said Steve heavily from the doorway, “we been there, done that. And nobody’s giving Harrie anything, we’ve discussed that as well.”

    “I haven’t!” cried Kyla indignantly.

    “Look, if there’s anything left once the mortgages are paid off and the bloody lawyer and land agent have taken their whack it’s going in the bank and once Jimbo turns eighteen the pair of you can decide what to do with it. We’re not discussing it any further, you’re upsetting yer aunty, are you blind? –You as well,” he added evilly to his uncle.

    “Um, no,” said Harriet, smiling mistily and blowing her nose, “I’m not upset. They were very sweet about it, Steve. But I can’t accept it, it’s when young people are starting off in life that they need some cash.”

    “Uh—well, yeah, wish I’d of had a few thou’ in the bank, it woulda been a real help when me and Trisha got married.”

    “So what are you going to do, Harriet? Go back to your old job?” asked Ben.

    Steve put his arm round his sister-in-law’s shoulders and glared at his uncle. “She hasn’t decided, she’s exhausted after looking after that ole bitch Pauline, she’s having a holiday first, or trying to! Just shut up about it, will ya? You got a right to talk, considering ya never held down a decent paying job in yer life!”

    “Heck, didn’t you, Uncle Ben?” gasped Jimbo.

    “Not really, no. Not decent,” he said in a bored voice. “There’s a couple of nice big fish in the fridge, haul ’em out, will ya, Jimbo? We’ll do ’em on the barbie.”

    “Ooh, a barbie! Righto!” Jimbo headed eagerly for the big old-fashioned fridge.

    “The original Frigidaire,” noted Steve drily to his sister-in-law.

    Harriet smiled. “He’s painted it salmon-pink, though, Steve!”

    “Yeah. Dee-cor.”

    “It’s all lovely, I love it!” she said eagerly.

    He squeezed her shoulders gently and released her. “Thoughtcha might,” he said on a smug note.

    “Steve,” said Trisha in a very much lowered voice next day as Harriet and Ben were observed to be heading off along the beach towards the far point of the little cove, “did you suggest bringing Harrie up here on purpose?”

    Steve lay back on the silver sand and linked his hands behind his head, meditating several obvious replies, all of which would be guaranteed to get up her nose. On the whole, however, he was too glad to be here and too full of his uncle’s idea of breakfast—bacon and pineapple grilled on the barbie, half a gallon of milky coffee, and white bread with real butter—to bother.

    “More or less—yeah. Well, thought it’d give her a nice holiday, if nothing else, but—yeah. Why not? It’s working, too: they’re getting on like a house on fire.”

    “Steve, he’s twenty years older than her!” she hissed.

    “No need to whisper, they can’t hear you. Well, yeah, must be, he’s on the old age pension now. So what? That Sean stinker, he was twenty years older than her, too.”

    “And look how that turned out!” she hissed.

    “Don’t spit! Well, yeah, but Ben’s not a stinker. Added to which, ’e’s not a suburban poseur with a wife and three kids and a job that he doesn’t wanna risk by dumping ’is family right under the nose of the professor he’s hoping’s gonna promote ’im.”

    “Where did that come from?” she said weakly.

    “What?”

    “That ‘suburban poseur’.”

    “Aw, that! Good, eh? Got it off Harrie, of course.”

    Trisha raised herself on her elbow and took her sunnies off in astonishment. “You don’t mean she said that about him?”

    “Yeah. Why not? She’s not blind, she could always see what he was. Trouble is, it apparently doesn’t stop you.”

    “Not if you're human, no,” said Trisha with a sigh, replacing her sunglasses and lying down. “Oh, dear...”

    “There’s nothing wrong with ole Ben,” he said on a defensive note.

    “For pity’s sake don’t keep calling him old! I got completely the wrong impression!”

    She’d just been objecting, more or less, that he was old! But for once Steve refrained. “Sorry. He has been me uncle all me life, ya know.”

    “Mm... Gee, he’s so different from your mum,” she said in awe.

    “Different from the rest of the Riverses, as well. Aunty Daphne won’t have him in the house.”

    Trisha and Harriet were agreed that Daphne Phillips, née Rivers, was the most ladylike woman they’d ever met—and there were plenty of contenders. “I can’t say I’m surprised, Steve.”

    “He is clean.”

    “But she wouldn’t see it like that, especially not if he rocked up wearing those awful shorts he’s got on this morning!”

    “Everybody’s got a bum, Trisha,” he said mildly.

    “Not everybody wants to see other people’s, though,” replied Trisha, almost equally mild. “I suppose he usually doesn’t wear anything, when he’s on his own.”

    Steve squinted at her cautiously. “What makes ya think that?”

    “It’s tanned,” she said briefly.

    He went into an agonised spluttering fit, finally gasping: “Ya noticed!”

    “Hard not to,” replied Trisha drily.

    He was almost hoping she’d been distracted from the topic of Harriet and Ben, but no: she returned to the attack.

    “He is too old for her, Steve, and too—too eccentric!”

    “She’s pretty weird, herself.”

    “She is not! And she doesn’t need to tie herself up to a—a weird old man that wears holey shorts and keeps a boat in his lounge-room!”

    Ouch! He’d sort of thought that might get to her. “He tried building it on the beach and some yobbos from the camping ground down at Big Rock Bay vandalised it.”

    “Nobody builds a boat in their house!” she snapped.

    On the contrary, she was always glued to NCIS, in which bloody Whatsisface was building a boat in his flaming house! In his basement, what was more, not a hope of getting ’er out without knocking a ruddy great hole in the wall and hiring a crane: a small point that the cretinous writers had deliberately ignored—spoilt the whole thing for him, that had. Well, that and that barmy Goth bunny masquerading as a forensic scientist. Plus and they’d only been on two ships so far in the whole thing. It was supposed to be about the ruddy naval intelligence service, if ya could spell!

    “Steve! Don’t just ignore me!”

    “Eh? Uh—sorry, love, thinking about NCIS.”

    “What?”

    “Well, he was building a boat in ’is— Sorry. Ben reckons he can take a section of that side wall out easy as anythink, it’s only bolted in, ya see. Get ’er out that way.”

    “When’ll that be, in the twenty-second century?” enquired Trisha arctically.

    “Look, when bloody Jethro Whatsisface kept on stroking his boat’s bottom for yonks you thought it was sweet!” he said heatedly.

    “Stop talking rubbish, Steve! I’m talking about Harrie!”

    Apparently—yeah. Steve sighed. “Go on, then.”

    “He’s too old and too odd,” said Trisha definitely. “No woman wants to live like that on a permanent basis.”

    “She lapped up that weirdo salad he made last night.”

    “I’m not talking about—” She broke off. “No, well, that’s part of it, too! Grated green pawpaw? Honestly!”

    “Uh—thought it was a foodie thing, these days?” he groped. “Yeah: wasn’t it on SBS? I said it was bound to give ya the shits, and you said it was Vietnamese, and a delicacy.”

    “I dare say it is Vietnamese, but you’re not wrong about the other thing! With her stomach?”

    “She wasn’t up all night, we’d of heard her, that passage floor creaks like buggery.”

    “And that’s another thing! That toilet sounds like the crack of doom!”

    And what woman wanted to live with that? Steve sighed. “At least it’s inside, and it works. Pawpaw’s full of enzymes, didja know?”

    “Eh?”

    “Read it somewhere,” he said vaguely. “They use it to tenderise meat.”

    “Stop changing the subject!”

    Actually, if you analysed it, it tended to prove her point, far from changing the subject. “No, all right,” he said peaceably. “His diet’s as weird as the rest of him. All I’m saying is, she seems to like it so far. It is just a holiday, love; may come to nothing.”

    “I—I don’t want her to get hurt again, Steve.”

    There had been a distinct wobble in her voice. Steve swallowed another sigh. “No, well, nor do I. But none of those other jokers were right for her, were they? Well, Mike Barraclough’s not a bad bloke, and Dean’s really decent, but Harrie’s too brainy for them. Ya know Dean told me down the pub he couldn’t understand a blind word she said to him? –Yeah. Ben may not have anything else, but he’s got brains, all right. Give it a chance, love, let them get to know each other a bit. Like I say, it’s just a holiday.”

    “It’s just a bow at a venture, you mean!”

    “Uh—mm. Well, heck, Trisha, what’s left for her back in Sydney? She gave up that job at the uni and now they’ve filled it with someone half her age! Likewise the Adelaide one, if you remember. And she’s got no money, thanks to your bloody mother.”

    “Yes,” said Trisha tightly. “It is all bloody Mum’s fault, when you come right down to it.”

    Steve wasn’t gonna go into that one, thanks—though it was pretty plain to him that being left skint wasn’t Pauline Harrison’s only legacy to her second daughter. Done her best to ruin the poor girl’s life since the day she was born, if you asked him. Trisha was tougher, she’d just ignored her when she was told she was no good at this, that, and the other thing, or that nobody took up whatever-it-was in Australia—she’d tried the same trick with Kyla, it had been nobody made a living from art in that case, but Kyla was so used to ignoring her that it had been water off a duck’s.

    “Pretty much, yeah,” he agreed. “And even if it doesn’t work out, Ben’ll give ’er a bloody good time! They may not be able to hack his lifestyle, but the ladies all love him, ya know!”

    “Mm.” Trisha smiled suddenly. “Well, that’s something, I suppose!”

Next chapter:

https://trialsofharrietharrison.blogspot.com/2023/09/anticlimax_22.html