3
No Weddings And A Funeral
The plane got in to Sydney at some ungodly hour of the morning. Harriet had spent the entire flight wedged into a row with the eager scrapbookers, Daphne Hatton and Janette Connors. It could have been worse: being next to the Perkinses would have been much worse, but Louise and Vincent of course were going on to see her ancestral home in Scotland. They had only paid for the Oxfordshire part of the package tour, but for very little more had got an excellent offer on their tickets which allowed them to—blah, blah.
Daphne and Janette were pleasant enough women but they would have had to be superhuman—or at least to have had excellent manners, the two things being equally prevalent in Australia—to have restrained their avid curiosity about Harriet’s Oxford acquaintance who was a Crispin Narrowmine just like the wonderful portraits at Blefford Park. Jessie Craig of course had faithfully imparted the intel that Harriet hadn’t spent that night with him, but nevertheless the springs of the tour group’s curiosity had flowed and Daphne’s and Janette’s thirst for knowledge was not yet assuaged, as Harriet, who always got thirsty on planes in the blimming air-con, recognised with a certain grim humour.
The scrapbookers had been thrilled to discover that the Blefford Park gift shop had a great assortment of postcards and had both bought copies of both the Elizabethan and the Georgian Crispin. Janette was planning to encircle her Elizabethan Crispin—she might cut it into an oval, they had some nice templates—with gathered pink satin ribbon and as her quilling was getting better, thought she might surround it with some of that as a frame: a darker pink, she thought. The writhing Harriet attempted to divert her by asking what quilling was, not having to pretend to ignorance, and was duly enlightened, but the tactic didn’t work. Daphne then actually produced her postcard of the Georgian Crispin from her handbag—the capacious sort, fully fit for carrying the odd kilo or two of Semtex, and Harriet was dully surprised the airport security man hadn’t taken it off her. Blue, to set off the waistcoat and the lovely blue eyes, would be the go, and did Harriet’s one have those lovely blue eyes? The red-faced Harriet was driven to say between her teeth: “He isn’t mine, Daphne.” At which Mrs Hatton, who’d be sixty-six if she was a day, gave a very silly laugh and said coyly: “Oh, well—you know!” From which Harriet could only conclude that they blimming well did know. But as she hadn’t told anybody, not even nice Mary Lou Wiedermeyer—who might have let it out to her friend Suzie O’Callaghan, but she was bloody sure wouldn’t have to anybody else—how the Hell could they? Though women like that always did.
What with the combined effects of Mrs Daphne Hatton and Mrs Janette Connors and the long flight, she just stumbled into her kind brother-in-law’s car—she’d told them not to bother to meet her, but they’d ignored her, in the way of relatives—and fell asleep like a stone. At Trisha and Steve’s place she managed to down a glass of orange juice, with the remark: “The first real orange juice I’ve had since I left: the stuff on the plane tasted like reconstituted sawdust, and the Brits have never heard of it” before tumbling into bed and going out like a light for twenty-two hours.
“We were quite worried,” said Trisha placidly as she finally surfaced, yawning, at around ten the next morning—Sunday, so they were all home. “You’ve just about slept the clock round.”
“Jet-lag. I’m awfully thirsty, is there any more orange juice?’
There was, of course, or she could have orange and mango, Jimbo liked that, or orange and pineapple, Kyla liked that but personally Trisha thought it was too acid.
“Pineapple? What’s that?” said Harriet wildly.
Her sister looked at her uncertainly.
“Spiky things. Grow in the ground,” offered Steve helpfully, wandering into the kitchen and peering hopefully into the toaster. “You gonna make some breakfast for Harrie, darl’?”
“For her, not for you,” replied his helpmeet repressively.
Steve just grinned and got the sliced bread out.
Meantime Harriet had found the Golden Circle orange and pineapple and was pouring herself a huge glass.
“Oy, that’s Madam’s,” warned Kyla’s doting father.
“Ignore him,” said Trisha briskly.
Harriet looked dubious, but sipped the juice. “Aw, cripes, that’s good!” she admitted with a huge sigh.
“I toleja the food in Pongo’d be—“
“Yes,” said Trisha firmly. “Shut up, Steve.”
“—bloody horrible,” he finished, unmoved.
“You were right. Pressed ham, frozen peas, instant mashed potato or antique frozen chips, I think they must have heated them in the microwave, they were really peculiar, and slime puddings. Three sorts: brown, pink or yellow.”
Steve went into a helpless spluttering fit, slapping his thigh delightedly.
“Harrie, it can’t have been that bad!” protested Trisha.
“Yes, it was. It was the sort of hotel that doesn’t have any stars. There were ten guest rooms and only two bathrooms between the lot of us.”
“Eh?” said Steve, his jaw dropping.
“Yes. Well, the toilets and the bathrooms were separate, thank God, but there were only two of each between the lot of us.”
“Well, it was a cheap ticket, I suppose you can’t expect too much, for that price,” said Trisha weakly. “But was Oxford nice?”
“Yes, it was, it was lovely, and the stately homes round about were mostly lovely, too,” Harriet admitted.
“That’s good. So you saw lots of nice antiques, did you?” she said kindly.
“Mm.”
Her relatives waited but she didn’t burst out with an ecstatic description of anything. And as she was rather given to bursting out on STD calls to Sydney with ecstatic descriptions of stuff she’d seen on the blimming Antiques Roadshow—it was on far too early, they were never home that early and they knew Harriet wasn’t either, but she recorded the ruddy thing—they exchanged very cautious glances indeed. Finally Steve rushed in with: “Anything in particular?”
Silence.
“A nice painting, maybe?” prompted Trisha kindly.
“Yes,” she said hoarsely.
“Well, come on, Harrie, don’t keep us in suspenders, what was it like?” said Steve jovially.
Harriet licked her lips. “It was a Sargent. One of his later portraits.”
“Aw, yeah?” he said kindly, if blankly, what time Trisha, though looking blank, nodded kindly and got out the eggs and the pancake mix.
“A blimmin’ earl,” said Harriet sourly. “The guide reckoned he was in the First World War only she didn’t say he got killed in it, so I suppose he was keeping his head well down like all the bloody British officers.”
“To be fair, lots of the officers got theirs as well, Harrie,” said Steve.
“Our lot, yeah! Anyway, it was—he was—it was sensitive, I thought,” finished Harriet in a very low voice.
Steve shot his wife a puzzled glance but Trisha was concentrating firmly on her pancake mix. “Uh—yeah. Well, good, glad you saw something you liked!”
“Yes. And there was a photograph of a little boy with fair hair...” Harriet’s lips trembled. “It was sickening, I suppose,” she said quickly. “Is that toast burning?”
Steve leapt on the toaster. “Bugger! The bloody kids have been fiddling with it again! Shit!”—as it sent up smoke signals. “It’s flaming Jimbo, he always forces the thingo up!” he gasped, eyes streaming. He switched it off, unplugged it and attempted to extract the blackened toast. “Fuck!”
“Don’t say that!” said Trisha sharply. “The kids’ll copy you.”
“Hear worse in the playground every day of their lives,” he grunted.
“And don’t stuck a knife into the toaster!” she said loudly.
“Trisha, I’ve gotta get the f—bloody stuff out somehow! And the kids aren’t here, what the eye doesn’t see— Bugger! Think I’ve busted the bloody element!”
Trisha put her pancake pan carefully aside and came to peer into it. “Yes, you have: you idiot, Steve!”
“Takes one to know one!” he said jauntily, with a wink at his sister-in-law. Harriet gave a startled giggle and then looked apologetically at Trisha.
“Thinks he’s witty,” said that matron on a grim note, returning to the stove. “Chuck it out, Steve, we’ll get a new one at Kmart. A nice cheap one, not one of those fancy ones,” she added in an iron voice.
“Wasn’t me bought this one, it’s the one your flamin’ mother gave us for Chris—“
“Yes. Put some bread under the grill. And don’t do too much, I’m doing her pancakes and bacon.”
“For me?” said Harriet numbly.
“Why not? You are human, aren’tcha?” said Steve with a grin. “Mind you, ’snot necessarily a guaranteed antidote to Pommy slime.”
“I think it is!” said Harriet with a laugh. “Thanks, Trisha.”
Steve was investigating the bread packet. “Bugger. Did we get any more bread yesterday, darl’?”
“No, the flamin’ supermarket was out of the sliced wholemeal again. That place is useless! They know they get crowds on Saturday morning, why do they always let the bread run out?”
Steve winked at Harriet again. “Want you to buy the dearer stuff, thass why!”
“Well, it’s not gonna work. You can get some down the servo later.”
“Uh—they might not have wholemeal or wholegrain,” he noted cautiously.
Trisha sighed. “All right, sliced white if they haven’t. Only if they haven’t, Steve.”
“Yeah, righto,” he agreed amiably. “Shall I get the bacon out?”
“Yes—thanks, love. Put it in the big pan. –Not that much!”
“Aw, heck, Trisha! Can’t I have some?”
Trisha looked at her watch and sighed. “All right, we’ll call it brunch. Where are the kids?”
“Kyla’s over at Miss Melanie Satterthwaite’s exchanging notes on teen fashions, we aren’t gonna see hide nor hair of her for the rest of the day. And Jimbo’s supposed to be clearing out the loft, but as there’s a huge pile of old comics up there, you can guess what he’s doing.”
“How did they get up there?”
“School fair. Yonks ago. I tell a lie—at least three school fairs. ’Member that one where Jimbo bought the giant plastic cactus? Boy, that’s not easy to say, eh?” he noted. “Giant plastic cactus, giant plastic cactus, giant plashtic cac— Blast!”
Harriet dissolved in giggles. Trisha looked grimly pleased and ordered: “Well, set the table, then, Steve!”
“Aw, right!”
“I’ll fetch Jimbo, shall I?” offered Harriet.
“Righto—thanks, Harrie. Make sure he washes his hands,” warned his mother.
“I’ll order him into the bathroom but I can’t guarantee anything,” replied Harriet with a smile, going.
In her wake there was a thoughtful silence in the Drinkwater kitchen. Finally Steve, eyeing his helpmeet sideways, ventured: “Something up?”
“Mm. Well, that woman in the pink tracksuit was pretty bad, Steve; I suppose they were all like that.”
“Eh? Aw, the dame that was on the plane with her—yeah. Well, we did warn her.”
“Mm.”
Another silence.
“Woulden of been a bloke, I s’pose?” he offered cautiously.
Trisha whisked the bacon pan off the heat and slammed it down on the steel bench. “I only wish it was! If you ask me, she’s been and gone and fallen for this picture of this blimmin’ earl!”
Steve’s jaw sagged. Even his mad sister-in-law couldn’t be that barmy! “She couldn’t of,” he croaked. “Not even her! I mean—!”
“Oh, yes, she could,” said Harriet’s sister grimly. “It’s her age.”
Steve cleared his throat. Trisha was a year older than Harriet. “Uh—yeah. Well, that and being a spinster, I s’pose—could be, mm. But a picture?”
Trisha sighed heavily. “You’ve forgotten—no, maybe I didn’t mention it to you, well, it was embarrassing. She found this old book in a second-hand bookshop—yonks ago: it was that time she was up here on holiday and Jimbo had that busted arm, that time he fell off—”
“The bloody garage roof that I’d told him not to go up on: lucky not to’ve killed himself, stupid little sod!” interrupted his proud father. “Yeah. He was only six, wasn’t he? –Yeah.”
“Yes, and I suppose back then,” said Trisha, suddenly giving him a brilliant smile, “I hadn’t absolutely adjusted to being married to a person as sane and—and understanding as you, Steve!”
“Hadn’tcha, darl’?” he said proudly. “Woulden like to award me an extra rasher on the strength of that, wouldja?”
“No. –So I didn’t let on, you see. But there was a picture of a little boy in this book—I admit he was a dear little boy, he looked a bit like Jimbo before he got those awful front choppers like your father’s. He can’t have been more than four, I should think. Wearing a sort of dress, I thought it was really peculiar but she reckoned they did in Elizabethan times. And she went absolutely goopy over it, Steve! I really began to think she’d lost it. She took it to one of those copy places and got them to do a huge poster-size copy of it—they had to do it three times before she was satisfied; it was somewhere near the Powerhouse Museum, I think, she took Jimbo there a couple of times, he was already as mad on it as she is—mind you, this was before the mania for those dratted steam engines had struck.”
“Stationary engines,” he murmured.
“Yeah, those stupid thingos—and of course I thought that was what they were doing, but he let it out that they’d spent ages in this flamin’ copy place, ya see. She reckoned she was gonna get it framed when she got it home to Adelaide and hang it in her bedroom where she’d see it when she woke up—and she did, Steve, she rang me up and earbashed me about it! And she even gave it a name! I mean, I suppose he had a name but she didn’t call him that. She called him Bruno.”
Steve blinked. “Uh—Italian picture, was it?”
“No, I don’t think so,” said Trisha with a sigh. “But she went completely nuts on it.”
“Love, she didn’t have any kids of her own, I suppose it was compensation,” he said uneasily.
“Yeah? Look, you know she was seeing that married creep Sean Whatsisface at that stage? Evidently he laughed at it, so she told him it was him or it and if he didn’t like it he needn’t come round again! I mean, over a picture?”
“Well, good riddance. Um, so was that when ’e slung ’is hook?”
“No, he apologised, it dragged on for ages after that. Anyway, the next thing I hear, she’s having a birthday party for Bruno— Yes! That nice lady that used to work with her, the one that left, she invited her—Kathleen, that was it! She rang me up quite disturbed about it because she had a cake with candles and they had to sing Happy Birthday dear Bruno!”
Steve gulped. “I’m not surprised ya didn’t tell me, darl’. I mean, that really is barmy!”
“Mm. Well, you’re right, dear, it was compensation and this’ll be the same thing only with a picture of a bloke!”
Steve winced. “Yeah. Just have to let it blow over, eh?”
“Mm. –I invited that nice Murray Watson round and all she said was he had a mind like cold porridge!” she reminded him crossly.
“Well, ’e has. –Uh, sorry, Trisha. Um, Jack Winters? The divorce has come through.”
Trisha sighed. “Ask him round if you like, but I don’t think it’ll work. He’s mad on cricket, isn’t he? Harriet’s convinced that men who like sports are morons.”
“He’s not the brightest of the bright, but he's not thick, and he’s a really decent joker. I’ll ask him!” he decided.
Trisha sighed again: it wasn’t gonna work.
Trisha was right. It didn’t.
Harriet had only been back home in Adelaide for a month when Trisha rang her up in a panic. She was bawling down the phone so much that Harriet couldn't understand a word she was trying to say. But after a few moments Steve came on the line and said grimly: “It’s your dad. Had a bad stroke and your mum’s in an awful state—gone to pieces completely. I’m sorry, Harrie, but the doctors don’t think he’ll live. Can ya come over right away? I mean, normally Trisha’d cope okay and I’ll take some time off, but Kyla and Jimbo have both got really bad colds. They had flu shots but the muck doesn’t seem to work with colds.”
There was the small point that Mum hated her, but— “Yes, of course I’ll come,” said Harriet numbly.
“Get an electronic ticket—do ya know how to do that?”
No, of course she didn’t, but Steve said reassuringly that was okay, he’d do it for her and email her the print-out. Harriet didn’t know if that was even possible but she thanked him and went to pack. Then the phone rang again and it was Steve, saying he’d done it. So she sat down at the computer and there it was. It didn’t look like a ticket but since Steve had done it, it must be okay. As it was Saturday—still morning, in fact, though it felt like half-past forty-two—all she had to do now was get to the airport, supposing that a taxi called by H. Harrison would ever arrive, it was completely hit-and-miss in Adelaide—and go.
She was on the flight to Sydney before she realised she hadn’t let them know at work that she wouldn’t be in for a while. Help! But then, how could she let them know anyway, in the weekend? By the time she got to Kingsford Smith she was really panicking but Steve was there, with two snuffling, red-nosed, remarkably silent kids bundled in parkas and dunas in the back of the car, and he just said reassuringly: “We’ll send ’em an email.”
“But Andy, the new prof, he never looks at his emails!” she wailed.
“Whadda they pay ’im for, then?” asked Steve logically. “—I know you’re thirsty, we’ll stop for a Coke on the way home, okay?” he said over his shoulder to the whining that had started up. Jimbo subsided and he added to the whingeing counterpoint: “Never mind if you’re too hot, Kyla, keep that duna over you, it’ll be my neck if ya come down with pneumonia. –It doesn’t matter if you haven’t got your computer, Harrie,” he added firmly to the faint objection she'd lodged: “we’ll use mine.”
“But he screens out emails from names he doesn’t know!” she gasped.
“Can’t see why, if he’s not gonna read ’em anyway. Okay, we’ll get on the Net and do it through your ISP. –Yes,” he said firmly as she wondered in quavering tones if that was possible. “It doesn’t matter if he doesn’t read it, Harrie,” he said firmly as she repeated her earlier protest. “The thing is, you’ll have sent it—covered your back, see?”
Harriet subsided, nodding, and not pointing out that her ISP had been taken over a few years back by a firm with a funny name that she couldn’t remember, it was stupid initials, and though she did pay her account to them, that was, under the new name, she did it online and once she’d put the BPAY number in, the bank account thingo had recognised who they were automatically. Because it was quite certain that Steve would be able to solve that one, too.
She’d already asked how Dad was and the answer had been no change but the prognosis hadn't improved, so now she said glumly: “How’s Mum?”
“Out of it,” replied Steve flatly. “She was so hysterical the doc hadda give her a pill. Well, she’s at the hospital still, she wouldn’t let Trisha take her home to bed, but she’s not taking much in. –Keeps calling ’im Georgy, never heard ’er do that before, have you?”
“No, it’s usually ‘your father’—usually ‘your father’s useless’, actually. And when she does address him it’s ‘George’ or ‘Don’t be ridiculous, George’ or ‘Certainly not, George’.”
“She said: ‘Go and sit down, George, you’re hopeless,’ last Sunday when he offered to get the afternoon tea,” offered Jimbo.
“Ugh, were you over there for afternoon tea?” asked Harriet in sympathetic horror.
“Yeah, she made us,” he replied glumly. “I never saw Gramma bawl before,” he added in awestruck tones.
“Gone to pieces,” affirmed his father with a shrug. “Well, maybe she’s fond of him, after all.”
There was a dubious silence in the ageing Holden that Steve had been intending to trade in for a decent-sized station-waggon for some time, only the state of the Drinkwater exchequer preventing this move.
Finally Kyla offered in a small voice, most unlike her usual bumptious, know-it-all tones: “At least we saw him.”
Steve sighed. “That’s true, lovey. And he was always genuinely fond of you kids.”
“Yes, he’s always loved kids,” agreed Harriet.
“He wanted to take us to the park but she wouldn’t let him!” burst out Jimbo aggrievedly.
“Uh—last Sunday, Jimbo? Was it raining?” replied Harriet limply.
“No, an’ anyway, we had our parkas!”
“The park is pretty boring,” said Kyla fairly. “But Pop and Jimbo were gonna kick his soccer ball around and he reckoned there’s a big flock of galahs nesting there this year and we were sure to see them; I was gonna take a digital photo for my ‘birds’ scrapbook!”
Harriet had to swallow: shades of Daphne Hatton and Janette Connors! “I see, Kyla. That would’ve been nice. So you’re into scrapbooking now, are you?” she said kindly.
“Sort of—yeah. We did a project on Australian birds for school, you see.”
“They call it Biology or somethink,” interjected her father drily.
“Shut up, Dad. Anyway, they’re so lovely, aren’t they?—I mean, I’d never really looked at the birds before, y’know? But they are! And Miss Sharples said that some of my photos were really first-class, even though I hadn’t managed to observe all that many, and I found a really lovely bird calendar, so I suddenly thought, it’s a pity to waste it all, and I could do a scrapbook!”
“Soppy,” explained her brother briefly.
Managing to ignore this remark, heartily though she agreed with it, Harriet replied to her niece: “Yes, our Australian birds are lovely. I think that’s a great idea, Kyla.”
“Did you see any birds while you were in England?”
“Quite a few, but they’re really boring. Sparrows and starlings, mostly.”
Jimbo gave a huge snort. “Sparrows!”
“Shuddup, Jimbo, or I’ll make a managerial decision that Coke doesn’t go with that cold muck your Mum gave you to dry you up—didn’t work, eh?” Steve went into a wheezing fit at his own wit.
Even though it was a family crisis and she shouldn’t, Harriet laughed, too.
“I tell you what I did see, though, Kyla,” she recalled, “and that was some lovely white swans on the river.”
“White swans! Ooh!” she breathed.
“Don’t swans have to be black?” ventured Jimbo, for once in his life sounding uncertain.
“Only our Aussie swans. English swans are white,” replied Harriet mildly.
“Like, albinos?”
“No, naturally white, Jimbo. They’d be a different variety.”
“S’pose they’d be native birds over there, would they?” ventured Steve.
“Yes, that’s right. English swans,” said Harriet in a very dry tone, “are the property of the monarch.”
“Eh?” he groped.
“Yeah. In the old days it was the King’s prerogative to eat them.”
“Eat beautiful white swans?” cried Kyla in horror.
“Yes. Well, not only the kings, presumably the queens as well: in fact Queen Elizabeth I probably quite often had a roasted white swan served up to her. With the feathers replaced for presentation, of course. The Elizabethan chefs were even madder on presentation than the twenty-first century ones, though after those blimmin’ TV shows you wouldn’t credit it.”
The Drinkwaters were reduced to silence, for once.
Finally Jimbo rallied to say: “That Gordon Thingo, he says—“
“Yes!” snapped Steve. “And don’t you say it!”
“—all the time,” he murmured.
“What is his surname?” wondered Harriet.
Oops, nobody could remember the celebrity chef’s surname, though Kyla did come up with: “Mum calls him Gordon Nasty.” Well, so much for fame!
The canny Steve didn’t go to the drive-through McDonald’s for the Cokes, he stopped off at a servo. True, it did sell pizzas but Jimbo wasn’t as keen on those as he was on hamburgers and only lodged a token complaint at being deprived of this necessary nourishment at three-thirty in the afternoon.
Steve hadn’t been able to find any drinks in the service station’s ranks of fridges that weren’t fizzy, so Harriet sipped Coke cautiously: it always gave her burps, especially straight from the bottle.
“Hey, was that true about the kings and queens eating the swans?” he said in a lowered voice as the kids embarked on a wrangle over the rival merits of Coke and those new power drinks that Mum wouldn’t let them have.
“Yes,” said Harriet very sourly indeed. “Only the monarch was allowed to shoot the poor creatures. Typical of the ruddy English class system, of course! Do you know you could get transported in the 19th century for shooting a bloody rabbit?”
Rabbits of course were vermin in Australia. “Eh?” he croaked.
“Yes, the class system in action: all the game animals were the property of the ruddy landowner!” Harriet belched loudly. “Ooh, pardon!”
“That right? Can’t be still like that, though, talking of celebrity chefs—dunno why they always have to have their paws in the food, makes ya feel like chundering, eh? Saw that ponce Whassname Oliver on TV just the other day, shooting rabbits in, uh, well, it was somewhere in England, anyway. Maybe it was ’is mate that actually shot ’em, they could of fudged that, but definitely shooting them.”
“I’m sure it is still like that. They’d have had the ruddy landowner’s permission.” Harriet belched loudly again. “Ooh, help! Pardon!—I dare say he was a ruddy earl,” she ended viciously.
Steve eyed her cautiously, with some vague recollection of his wife’s burbling on about Harrie falling for a picture of an earl—had it been? No, couldn’t of, she sounded pretty sour about it. Well, could just be the wind, of course.
“And incidentally, what they were gaily shooting was their native fauna!” she added viciously.
“Yeah—s’pose it was, yeah.”—Must be the wind.—“Don’t gulp that muck, it’ll make ya burp more.”
Mr Harrison died without recovering consciousness at eleven-thirty that night. Steve and Trisha were both there with Harriet, they’d managed to offload the kids for the night on some sympathetic friends who had a kid in Jimbo’s class. But as they had three large boys of their own and only three bedrooms it was rather a tight fit, with Jimbo squashed in with his mate Larry and his little brother Damian, and Kyla, to the younger boys’ annoyance, being honoured with the sofa-bed in the lounge-room. The oldest boy, Harry, who was in Year 12 this year and far, far above noticing a fifteen-year-old girl with strange spiky pigtails and three hoops in one ear, would gladly have given up his room and taken the sofa-bed but his mother vetoed this one with: “No, you’d watch the big screen all night.”
Mrs Harrison still seemed bewildered by it all and when they finally got her home at some ungodly hour in the morning asked in quavering tones: “Where’s George?” but they ignored this and got her to bed with another pill. Trisha in person standing over her to make quite sure she swallowed it—there had been an episode last year, when she’d refused to have flu shots because of some fad of the moment, and had come down with an awful dose and been really feverish. She had cunningly held the Panadol Forte in her mouth until she could spit it out. As Trisha had got it for her specially—on prescription, too, adding insult to injury—this hadn’t gone down too well. Steve’s verdict had been it was galloping Alzheimer’s and Trisha had been so cross with her mother that she’d agreed with him.
Next morning she seemed equally vague and wandery.
“Perhaps it’s a defence mechanism,” said Harriet cautiously as the three of them foregathered in the Harrison kitchen.
Steve sniffed. “Doing it on purpose, more like, so as someone else’ll take the responsibility for it all. Well, heck, darl’, ’member that time she pranged the car?” he said as Trisha frowned and opened her mouth.
“Oh, yeah,” she said slowly.
“What? You didn’t tell me about that,” protested Harriet.
“No, no point in worrying you,” replied Steve calmly. “The cops gave up trying to get to the bottom of it, in the end. We reckoned she was doing her usual thing of trying to cut the other driver off at the intersection, eh, Trisha? But the old bloke she hit was about as out of it as she was—or pretended to be—so the poor buggers couldn’t make head or tail of it. No witnesses except a ten-year-old kid wagging school with so-called earache and all he could say was there was a really loud bang.” He shrugged.
“Was that why she gave up driving?” said Harriet dazedly.
“Sort of. In the end the cops took both their licences away. The sergeant come round to see us, see, and he said there’d been too many of these accidents with barmy old nits over seventy behind the wheel, and he was gonna ask the magistrate to take their licences away, only trouble was, the magistrates were too pussy-footing and he’d probably let her off with a fine if she could produce a doctor’s certificate that said she was fit to drive, so me and Trisha, we said, No, way, mate, we won’t let on she needs a doctor’s certificate, and we’re backing you all the way—didn’t we, darl’?”
Trisha nodded hard. “Too right! She took Kyla to ballet one day, and honestly, the poor kid came home white and shaking, and ya know how much they notice!”
“She told me it was because of her new glasses,” said Harriet dazedly.
Steve snorted and Trisha produced a sound that was possibly what was generally meant by the transcription “Pooh.” More sort of halfway between “Pooh!” and “Huh.” “Puh!” really.
“Goddit,” Harriet conceded.
Trisha then refilled their coffee mugs, though noting in passing: “That’s the flamin’ Wedgwood thing you’ve got, Steve, she’ll go berserk.” And a thoughtful silence fell.
Finally Steve admitted: “It looks like you might be lumbered, Harrie. I mean, heck, with the best will in the world, me and Trisha simply can’t—”
“No, it’s okay,” said Harriet quickly.
“The thing is, with Alzheimer’s it often starts off this way—little things, ya know? And a lot of stupid pretending, at least Dad’s Aunty Bess was like that. Then they get to the stage where they genuinely can’t remember stuff. Well, could just be shock. She might pull herself together, given a bit of time.”
“The fact that she made his life a misery and always gave the strong impression that she couldn’t wait to get rid of him isn’t a factor, of course,” said Harriet grimly.
“Um, I don’t think it is, Harrie,” said Trisha anxiously. “Um, I mean, I think it's making her worse—guilt, you see.”
Harriet would have take a large bet that Mrs Harrison had never felt a single instant’s guilt over anything in her whole life—she was always sure her attitudes and actions were the right ones—but she sighed and said: “I see. Well, we’d better see how it goes. If she perks up a bit she probably won’t want me.”
No, but she might need her. The Drinkwaters exchanged glances but didn’t say so.
Steve then got up and rang his father, who lived in Brisbane, to ask how to go about the funeral arrangements. On Mrs Harrison’s phone, pointing out that if she did her nut about the unauthorised STD call it’d show she was her old self again, wouldn’t it?
Mr Drinkwater, Senior, was very sympathetic and helpful, and in fact decided he and Maeve’d come down right away, there was nothing to stop them, Roseanne’s little Myrtle was over that bad cough and it hadn’t turned to whooping cough after all, and they’d persuaded her to get all her kids vaccinated for everything in future and stop listening to that mad moo Raelene McEldowney from next-door. Yeah, including the home birth nonsense, thank Christ.
“I dunno how anybody as lovely and sane and—and capable as your parents could have produced someone like Roseanne,” admitted Harriet at the end of his report.
“Me neither,” grinned Roseanne’s brother. “Anyhow, they’re coming. Dad’ll be on top of everything, don’t worry!”
And so he was. Everything went off very smoothly, and Maeve Drinkwater managed the wake superbly, Mrs Harrison didn’t have to do a thing, and Harriet just gratefully followed orders. Reflecting as she tried to smile at kind neighbours, distant relatives not seen for years and old friends of Dad’s, that possibly piles of homemade lamingtons were the norm at wakes—likewise the towering homemade sponges and pavlovas, and deliciously oozing hot homemade sausage rolls. Certainly everyone seemed to be eating them up eagerly and shouting their heads off and—and generally enjoying themselves. Wasn’t it odd? Only Kyla and Jimbo, though they'd eaten more than their fair share of the lamingtons, pav and sausage rolls, Jimbo into the bargain getting round the best part of a plateful of crackers spread with pâté that Harriet would have taken her dying oath he’d have spurned with sick noises under normal circumstances, seemed as stunned by it all as she was. After a while, since Dad’s old mates all seemed to be happy with their beers and their chat about the old days, their wives all seemed to be absorbed in happy gynaecological or culinary reminiscence with their peers, and Trisha’s friends and neighbours had gathered together, possibly in self-defence, and were discussing the virtues of sit-on-lawn mowers, the wisdom and cost of installing solar panels on one’s roof, and the dubious safety standards of baby pushers and/or modern cots (the younger ones), she went quietly into the kitchen and started on the piles of washing up.
After a while Kyla came in and stood silently by her elbow. Finally she ventured: “You could use the dishwasher, Aunty Harrie.”
“For these few dishes, child?” replied Harriet in Mum’s very accents. “What did the Good Lord give you hands for?”
After a bit Kyla got it and gave a startled giggle. “There are loads, though,” she pointed out.
“Yeah, but I wanna live to see tomorrow, I’m not going near that monster.”
“Nah, you’re right. Hey, she’s barmy, eh?” she offered, picking up a tea-towel.
“Yep, I’ve always thought so,” replied Harriet cheerfully.
“Hey, do ya think she is coming down with Alzheimer’s?” was next.
Silently cursing her brother-in-law’s loose tongue, Harriet replied as calmly as she could: “Well, I dunno, Kyla. I suppose it’s on the cards.”
“Yeah. Doraine Sadler’s Nanna, well, she’s got that. She’s like, in a home. She reckoned Doraine nicked her specs and they were hanging round her neck all the time, and whenever her mum makes her go to see her she calls her Carol!”
“They get like that. Who’s Carol?”
“Nobody knows, that’s the really barmy thing, see?”
Harriet winced. “Yeah.”
It wasn’t quite like that Mother and Son thing on TV, but it came close. Harriet hadn’t watched it much, she’d felt it had been too close to the bone and now she was bloody well proved right, wasn’t she? Mum got more and more wandery and slyer and slyer—well, she had always been sly, only when she’d been, um, in command, it hadn’t shown so much—and more and more spiteful, and she’d certainly always been that. In the old lady in the TV series it had been funny—well, supposed to be, and Harriet had sometimes laughed. But when you had to live with it, it wasn’t funny at all. She did go back to Adelaide after two months but it was no go. Steve rang her up six weeks later to say that Mrs Harrison had called the police in the middle of the night four times since she left and the sergeant—they were getting to know him—had said they’d better do something about her. Burglars in the attic was the story. The house was a typical Fifties Sydney bungalow, with no attic. It did have a crawl space, of sorts, not big enough to stand up in, but after the exasperated Steve had sworn his life away trying to convince the cops that there were no gaps up there that possums could get in through, and no rats, everyone was finally convinced that there were no possums—the usual explanation for strange noises above one’s head in the night, even in the suburbs only twenty-five minutes from central Sydney on the train—and no rats, and that it was all in her imagination. That or, Steve’s explanation, she was deliberately making it up to get some attention because she didn’t feel they’d made enough fuss of her when the old boy went. Sergeant Barraclough—they were getting to know him quite well—agreed with this masterly psychological diagnosis. Harriet suggested maybe something was loose up there and Steve replied on an acid note that the cops had said that, too, but there were no loose tiles, as it was colour steel, not tiles, and she’d made poor old George have the whole thing replaced three years back, if she recalled. At huge expense—yeah. Took a hefty slice out of ’is super. What was left of it, after her trip to England—yeah, Harrie, he knew everybody went on trips once they retired, but she hadn’t let the old joker go to that steam train museum thingo that had been the only thing he’d been keen on, and he’d hated every minute of them ruddy London musicals and garden shows she’d dragged him to. Anyway, Dean’s brother was a master builder and he’d got him to cast ’is professional eye over the roof and she was sound as a bell. This was a new name, so Harriet asked. The answer was aw—Dean Barraclough, funnily enough they’d got to know him quite well, by now.
It was nearly Christmas, anyway. Harriet sighed and said okay, she’d come over straight away, they’d had their last marking meeting and the results were all finalized and she’d almost finished her preparation for next year, at least, she could always use the same basic tutorial stuff as last year but any work to be handed in had to be new, or they’d find someone that had done it last year, and cheat. No, it was all essays and continuous assessment, Steve, not exams, she revealed glumly. How many pieces of marking did that add up to, over the year? her brother-in-law demanded grimly. Harriet revealed wanly that’d she’d never dared to count them up but it must be well over six hundred. Her brother-in-law breathed deeply for a bit, silently reflecting that bloody though looking after her mother would undoubtedly be, at least it wouldn’t be such a slog as that.
Trisha decided they’d better have Christmas dinner over at their place, rather than go to Mum’s like they always did when they were in Sydney instead of up in Brizzie with the Drinkwaters, and all concerned agreed this was sensible—except Mrs Harrison, who appeared not to understand. Everybody had a go at convincing her, even the kids.
“You’re gonna come to us for Christmas dinner, Gramma!” said Kyla brightly—and perforce loudly: she was claiming to be hard of hearing as well, though Trisha had taken her to the doc three times and to a specialist once, and she wasn’t.
“Turkey, of course, dear, the same as always,” was the reply.
“Um, that’s right, Gramma, turkey, only at our place!”
“And if George asks for a leg again, too bad, a turkey’s only got two legs, I keep telling him, and there’s your Uncle Bert and Fred to be considered, you know!”
Kyla had never met the late Bert Pinkerton, who had been her mother’s and aunt’s uncle, and incidentally Mrs Harrison’s brother. And his son, Fred, had emigrated to New Zealand yonks back and was running a motel somewhere completely obscure in the middle of the North Island—nowhere exciting with geysers and mud pools or glaciers and mountains, typically of the Pinkerton side, it was felt by the Harrisons and Drinkwaters. According to Steve he got the dirty-weekenders from Wellington—be about four hours’ drive, maybe—and the exhausted tourists that had come down from Auckland or all the way over from Rotorua on that ruddy horrible road—all right, Trisha, everyone had told him not to go that way, will ya just shut up about it!—and decided they weren’t gonna make it to Wellington before midnight or starvation or both, take yer pick.
Kyla looked round wildly for help.
“Not this year, Mum!” said Trisha loudly and clearly, what time Steve advised sourly: “Ignore ’er, Kyla, love. Knows perfectly well ole Bert’s long gone, she made Harrie take ’er to put flowers on ’is grave day before yesterday, and last Sunday she was showing Jimbo them snapshots she took the time she dragged yer poor ole Pop over to stay with ruddy Fred in the flamin’ Kiwi woop-woops in midwinter.”
“I’ll tell her,” offered the valiant Jimbo. “Hey, Gramma, you’re coming to us for Christmas dinner this year! That’ll be good, eh? We’ve got an ace tree, it reaches the ceiling!”
She shrank. “Who is this boy?” she quavered.
Poor Jimbo retreated, very red in the face, lip quivering.
“That’s Jimbo, Mum!” cried Trisha crossly, what time Steve put a supportive hand on his son’s shoulder and advised: “Ignore ’er, ole mate. Doing it on purpose. It’s like I said, galloping Alzheimer’s. Next thing she’ll be accusing you of stealing ’er specs, like Kyla’s mate’s Nanna.”
“Um, yeah,” he said uncertainly, trying to smile.
By tacit consent Mrs Harrison’s relatives then retreated to the kitchen, leaving her in sole possession of her roomy lounge-room.
“You see?” said Trisha fiercely and bitterly to Harriet.
“Yes, I do. That’s the last thing you want in the same house as your kids,” she replied frankly.
Trisha sagged. “Yeah. The thing is, she, um, she sounds as if she means it, and I have tried to make them understand, but it still hurts their feelings.”
“Pooh! I don’t care!” cried Jimbo sturdily, if untruthfully.
“Me neither, mean ole thing,” agreed Kyla.
Trisha sighed. “Her mind’s going, Kyla, love. She isn’t being mean, she doesn’t know what she’s saying.”
“Not half,” muttered Steve sourly.
“Will you just stop trying to undermine me, Steve?” she said tiredly.
Harriet took a deep breath. “Trisha, I think Steve’s right: she does know, in a way. She was always really mean and spiteful—well, what about that time you had that lovely lemon party frock and she went and dyed it dark green just before Janyce Manson’s party and then tried to claim she thought it was an old dress? Doesn’t Alzheimer’s often exaggerate a person’s innate characteristics?”
Steve put his arm round Kyla. “Yeah. She’s getting meaner and spitefuller—uh, can’t say that, eh? More spiteful. Not trying to stop ’erself any more.”
Trisha was very flushed at the memory of that lovely lemon frock. “Stop herself?” she cried indignantly. “I never noticed much of that going on, and I did live here for eighteen years!”
“Yeah. –Got out of it: went flatting with some mates the minute she could scrape a bit of dough together,” Steve explained to the offspring, seeing Jimbo was looking dubious and counting on his fingers. “That got right up ’er nose, of course—well, I wasn’t around in them days, but reading between the lines—and she turned round and took it out on poor ole Harrie!”
“Um, yes, she tried to make me leave school instead of sitting Year Twelve,” said Harriet, flushing as the attention of her young relatives became fixed on her. “But Dad stuck up for me. He always wanted me to go to uni, you see.”
“Yeah, well, only time ’e ever stuck up for anyone in ’is life, poor ole bastard,” said Steve to the dumbfounded young faces.
“Yeah, like, that last time we were round here, he give in when she said we couldn’t go to the park and then he let her take my soccer ball away!” Jimbo recalled.
“Mm. ‘He gave in’, Jimbo,” murmured Trisha.
“Right, he give in—see?”
“Mm.”
“You just have to try to ignore her,” Harriet finished on a weak note.
“Ye-es... What about you, though, Aunty Harrie?” said Kyla on a fearful note.
Everybody looked at her fearfully.
Harriet shrugged. “She’s always hated me, what difference can it make now? And I’ve never liked her.”
“Aunty Pob always said it was because you look so like Dad’s mum,” recalled Trisha with a reminiscent smile.
“Hey, funny she didn’t she come over for the funeral, eh?” noted Jimbo.
Mr Harrison’s youngest sister, “Pob” for reasons lost in the mists of time, her name was Eileen, which couldn’t possibly explain it, lived in the Cook Islands, having, to the loudly expressed disapproval of Mrs Harrison, married a widowered Cook Islander at the age of fifty, when she herself had been a widow for some years, and gone back there with him.
“Can’t afford it,” said Steve briefly.
“They’re poor but happy, Jimbo,” added Harriet, smiling at him. “You save up and maybe you can go over there to see them when you’re old enough.”
This was the wrong thing to say—or possibly the right thing, if you considered a diversion was needed.
“I’m old enough now! Jase O’Malley, well, he went on a plane by himself! All the way to Malaysia, see, his dad, he was working over there and his mum, she said—“
When that was over, which wasn’t for some time, especially as Kyla pointed out that he had ten dollars in his bank account and owed her five of that, and Trisha reminded him he was supposed to be saving up for those fancy trainers she’d told him he’d have to buy himself, there was no way she was chucking good money away on stuff like that—and the plastic was money, Jimbo, it all had to be paid for in the end and if you let it pile up you were paying off the interest for the rest of your— When that was over, they decided that they might as well have some lunch and if she didn’t like it, too bad, she could go without. And never mind if it was December and hitting thirty-three out there, Trisha, let the kids have bacon if they wanted it, they deserved it, in fact they all did!
Trisha then discovered a pineapple in the fridge, had Harrie bought it? Harriet admitted that no, she hadn’t, but she hadn’t been able to stop Mum. The family gaped: Mrs Harrison disliked fresh pineapple and considered it a waste of money, you had to cut so much off the things it wasn’t worth it. So Steve decided unilaterally that all right, they’d have fried pineapple with bacon and she could choke on it! Uh, yeah, Jimbo (weakly), you could fry up the rings as well as do ’em on the barbie—yeah. Well, no, there was probably no hope she’d forgotten she’d told the old joker he couldn’t have a barbie because the smoke stunk the place out. Not yet. What? Look, if your Aunty Harrie wanted a barbie she could come over to our place, and just drop it! We’re doing ’em on the stove!
Of course, no sooner had the smell of frying bacon begun to percolate the house—even with the door shut and the extractor-fan on—than Mrs Harrison marched militantly into the kitchen—this morning’s frail, tottering gait vanished entirely—and demanded: “What on earth is going on in here? Bacon? Nobody needs all that salt and saturated fat!” –These last two strictures might, perhaps, have struck as odd in one of her generation, all of whom had grown up on roast lamb, dripping, full cream milk, and salted butter, but as a matter of fact, as Harriet and Trisha silently acknowledged, exchanging glances, they were precisely the sort of thing that women like Mum did seize on as fresh sticks to beat their spouses and offspring with.
“You don’t have to have any, Mum. You can have a nice sandwich with low-salt marg and Vegemite,” replied Trisha with the utmost tranquillity—Mrs Harrison had been pretty well living on Vegemite sandwiches since the funeral.
“That’s right, starve your poor old mother!” she retorted bitterly. “When I think of everything I’ve given up for you ungrateful girls! –And where’s Harriet?” she demanded aggrievedly.
Kyla opened her mouth indignantly, but Steve’s hand came down hard on her shoulder. “Leave it. –Come on, let’s set the table. Jimbo, you grab the cutlery, wouldja?” Mrs Harrison was now telling Trisha officiously she’d used the wrong pan for the bacon and was burning it, so he added loudly to his mother-in-law: “Oy, Pauline, where’s that big stainless steel platter George give you last Chrissie?”
That did it. She wailed: “Who is that man? Trisha, who is that man? Why are you girls always inviting dreadful strangers into my house? Where’s George got to? George!” The wail devolved into a mutter: “Never here when you want him.”
“Go and have a nice sit-down, Mum, you look tired,” said Harriet on a firm, if uninterested note. “I’ll bring you a nice cup of tea in a bit.”
To everyone’s astonishment, she went. Muttering: “Nobody cares about me, I could die and none of them would notice. And that girl always stews the tea.”
“She must remember who you are, if she remembers you always stew the tea,” noted Trisha drily as Steve leapt to close the door behind her.
“Yeah,” Harriet agreed.
“Aunty Harrie, I thought you liked your tea very weak!” gasped Kyla.
“Yeah—does. Dishwater,” agreed Steve. “—That’s the good cutlery, Jimbo, old mate. Oh, well, too bad, with a bit of luck she’ll stay in the other room.”
“I do,” said Harriet calmly to her niece. “She always used to scream at me if I made it too weak, so I suppose I overcompensate when I make hers. But it comes out the same colour as hers does.”
“Of course it does,” agreed Trisha loyally. “The only tack to take is to ignore every blimmin’ syllable she says!”
Actually for the last twenty-odd years—certainly since the girls had left home, and for all of the kids’ lifetimes—everyone pretty much had been, as far as was humanly possible. But they all agreed gratefully: “Yeah!”
The ignoring, as Harriet was to admit, worked pretty well—you kept your sanity. But coping with what Mum said and coping with what she did were two different things, as she was very soon to discover. The episode of buying a pineapple had only been a minor incident and as it had got eaten, it hadn’t been wasted, had it? But worse was to come, and it started on Christmas Day itself.
Harriet surfaced groggily at around eight-thirty—Steve had had a special bottle of something last night; something horrible, actually, but it had been extremely alcoholic and she’d finished it when the Drinkwaters had dragged the kids off home to bed. Help! Something was burning! She shot out to the kitchen.
“What are you doing, traipsing round the house in your pyjamas?” her mother greeted her in annoyance.
“Mum! What are you doing?” gasped Harriet. The kitchen was like a furnace and the oven was on full, as high as its setting would allow. She leapt on the switch and turned it off.
“What do you think I’m doing, you lazy lump? Cooking the turkey, of course! If you and your sister ever lifted a hand round the house, you’d realise that cooking a decent Christmas dinner takes work! –Don’t touch that blimmin’ oven, there’s something wrong with it, it won’t go above two-fifty and you can’t cook a turkey at under two seventy-five, haven’t they ever heard of salmonella?”
Harriet turned the extractor fan on and into the bargain switched on the reverse-cycle, which was off—one mercy, at least she hadn’t put it on at hot. Setting it at cold and readjusting the temperature setting from twenty-six to twenty-one.
“We haven’t got a turkey,” she said flatly.
“Rubbish, Harriet, we always have turkey for Christmas Day, whatever your Aunt Doreen may think fit to do!” –One of Dad’s sisters. She had once—once in Harriet’s lifetime—had duck.
Harriet opened the door of the fridge. “There’s no turkey, Mum, see? We’re having it at Trisha’s house. Let’s just have breakfast and then we can get changed and go over there.”
“The turkey’s in the oven, you idiot!” she snapped.
Harriet rushed to peer into the oven door’s window—she didn’t dare to open it in case the blimming thing burst into flames. Phew! There was nothing in there except a large baking dish. “Yeah, righto. Why don’t you have a nice cool shower and change into your lovely blue silk frock? You always look nice in that.”
Miraculously, Mrs Harrison trailed off to the bathroom, though muttering sourly: “I haven’t had a new dress for years, your father begrudges every penny he gives me.”
Harriet sat down limply at the dining table. How the Hell could she stop her? Um... After some time of mulling it over she went and looked earnestly at the thingos in the fuse box in the passage but it was N.B.G., she couldn’t make head nor tail of them. She could hear the noise of the shower, so at least the old bat was having it. That or she’d turned the water on to fool her, but who cared, she was in there and at least she wasn’t filling the bath to overflowing—there had been one incident of that, but as it had only been two weeks after Dad died and she was on the dope the doc had given her they’d all decided it was understandable and she’d genuinely forgotten she’d turned it on.
She rang Steve.
“Merry Christmas and what’s she done now?” her brother-in-law greeted her.
“Oh, hi, Steve, you are up,” said Harriet in relief.
“No, well, I’m awake, Jimbo’s new electronic gizzmo’s seen to that. Not to mention Kyla playing something putrid by Pink at full blast—none of us did it, we’re not barmy, it was a prezzie from Miss Melanie Satterthwaite. Go on, what’s she done?”
“Put the oven on full blast to cook nothing—well, an empty baking dish. That’d be mad enough,” she admitted over Steve’s choking fit, “only she was going on about the oven not being able to reach two seventy-five to cook the turkey when the whole kitchen was like a furnace, Steve!”
“Fah-ren-heit!” he choked, collapsing in a wheezing paroxysm.
“Eh?”
Steve was heard to blow his nose heartily. “Boy, that’s done me good! She must of been thinking of Fahrenheit. The scale’s like twice what Celsius is, see? Mum’s old oven went up to about four hundred, if I remember rightly.”
“Four hundred?” she gasped in horror.
“Two-fifty Celsius—geddit?”
“Oh,” said Harriet limply. “Yes, that old Jane Grigson cookbook of mine’s got— Um, yes. But it’s not really funny, Steve: what if she’d put something in to cook? It would’ve burst into flames. Is there any way we can turn the whole stove right off?”
“Uh—that’s pretty drastic.”
“Not as drastic as burning the house down!”
“No, you’re right. Well, yeah, pull the fuse out, I s’pose. –Don’t you touch anything, I’ll come over and do it!” he added quickly. “Um, that’ll mean you’ve only got the microwave.”
“That’s okay, her and Dad have been living off microwaved muck for the last ten years anyway.”
“Right. While I’m at it, I’ll see if there’s anything else she might... Hang on, she always keeps candles in one of the kitchen drawers, doesn’t she? You’d better grab them, and the matches.”
“Yep, better stumbling around in a blackout than burning the house down!”’
“What’s she up to now?”
“Having a shower.”
“Good. Look, we might need to rethink the bathroom too, Harrie. It’ll cost a bit—Dean Barraclough’s brother might be able to do it at mate’s rates, though, or at least put us onto a bloke that can. I was thinking of those safety bars, y’know? Like, handicap bars, to grab in the shower. But while we’re at it, maybe rip the bath out? A flood’s not as bad as a fire, but once the whole house is soggy it takes weeks to dry out—and that body-carpet she’s got in the lounge-room set the poor old joker back a fair whack, ya know. Not that there was anything wrong with the old stuff, far’s I could see.”
“No, it was only about seven years old. But once she makes up her mind she has to have something... Yeah, you’re right, redoing the bathroom might be the go.”
“Mm. Uh—look, we’ll see how it goes, eh? If she gets any barmier maybe we oughta think about getting her into a home.”
This happy thought had occurred to Harriet, too, but there was no way they could swing it. “On what? You and Trisha have got two kids, a massive mortgage and a car you can’t afford to replace—”
“And two maxed-out credit cards,” he added mildly.
“Yeah. And I’ve got two thousand in the bank and my super that I can’t touch.”
“Only two thou’?” he said numbly.
“Yes, my rent’s astronomical and that stupid trip to England cost a fair bit, even though it was a special offer.”
“You hadn’t had a proper holiday for years,” he said kindly.
“No. Well, you can’t count coming up here whenever she ordered me to. Actually,” said Harriet, swallowing, “that’s been helping to keep me poor, really. I mean, if she hadn’t made such a fuss I wouldn’t have had to come up every Easter and mid-year break as well as Christmas. And the airlines only seem to have special offers between the capital cities when nobody wants to travel, don’t they?”
“Too bloody right.” Privately Steve was thinking if they got Power of Attorney off the old bitch—and getting her to give them that was gonna be a real hassle, he was in no doubt whatsoever—they could sell the bloody house out from under her and use the capital to shove her in an old folks’ home. Well, at least Trisha and Harrie were both realistic enough to see that it'd be the sensible option: there’d be no weeping and wailing over “can’t put poor Mum into a home” like there had been when his brother Tim’s ma-in-law went loony.
When he got over there old Pauline was sitting up like Jacky in the lounge-room in her best blue silk dress, clutching the flaming handbag that she’d forced the old joker to disgorge megabucks for on her last birthday, looking sour as Hell—so what was new?—and Harriet was— Fuck! Mopping out the freezer.
“When’d she do that?” he croaked.
“Dunno. A while back, it musta been. Thank God there wasn’t much in it.”
No, this was true, but a fortnight’s worth of frozen microwaveable muck was worth a fair few bucks. Steve sighed. “You’re just gonna have to switch it off and leave it off, love.”
“Yes. –I was thinking of selling it,” she admitted,
Steve brightened. “Too right! Cash Converters, eh?” He sniggered. “The ownership papers’ll be in that bloody drawer of hers, too!”
“Yep. The only problem is,” said Harriet, straightening and smiling at him, “will Cash Converters ever be able to stand the shock of being offered something that’s actually got papers?”
Steve shook all over for some time. Well, he reflected, at least she seemed to be keeping cheerful, and so far the old bat didn’t seem to be getting her down.
Next chapter:
https://trialsofharrietharrison.blogspot.com/2023/09/shoes-and-ships-and-sealing-wax.html
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