The Golding

by Sonya Deanna Terry

  ‘Duh!’ Izzie said again. Why hadn’t Eadie at least popped on some specs before getting into the car? Feeling bad about eavesdropping on, and scoffing at, someone’s account of their own bad luck, Izzie resolved to focus on the winter corner of her collage.

  Poor Eadie was always getting into scrapes, similar to Izzie’s mother in that way, only flightier. Funnily, this was not where their similarities ended. Both had flowing hair and olive skin tone. Both had in common the characteristics of generous features within a broadish oval face, although from Izzie’s portrait-painter perspective, the differences would show up on a sketch-pad if each likeness were broken into grids. Rosetta’s mouth was wider and fuller than Eadie’s, as were her eyes, which although dark, were known to display golden glints that Royston considered to be ‘tigerish’.

  ‘You’ve gotta have a bit of Maori in your background,’ Eadie would tell Rosetta, but Rosetta wasn’t so sure. She had her heart set on one day finding out that she had some indigenous Australian in her blood—like Craig, whose grandparents were Aboriginal—because the idea of ancestors who’d lived through the Dreamtime appeared rather glamorous to her. People had usually assumed Rosetta to be Greek because of her mama and baba’s ethnicity but even now, twenty years after she’d left home, remarks that she looked Mediterranean weren’t uncommon. Rosetta had put it down to being brought up amid warmly demonstrative mannerisms often seen to be typical of her foster family’s culture. ‘But I doubt that I am Greek,’ she’d say.

  With the silent ten minutes of their ‘World Peace’ prayer complete, the voices had risen over the charp-de-woop-choo of the reggae that Craig would have brought.

  ‘Amazing what happened to Rosetta last Sunday, Craig.’ This was Lena. ‘Did you hear about it?’

  ‘Nope. What happened?’

  And so the hostess embarked on the story that Izzie now endured a fourth time, about the tinkly voiced lady on the phone, and the nap she’d had when she dreamt she got locked out and encountered a tarot reader of indigenous Australian origin. She’d gone to the netball courts in this dream and had been given a lift home.

  Previously, Izzie hadn’t seen significance in the anecdote. Its continual playback meant she could just about mouth everything from memory. Tonight, though, while she listened more attentively to the events, she realised that what happened two Sundays ago did in fact have a spooky quality.

  Craig and Eadie, new to the story, said things like ‘Wow,’ and ‘No way’ over and over, which, Izzie supposed might have swayed her to empathise with her mother’s amazement.

  ‘And that’s not all,’ Rosetta said. ‘But the last thing we want is burnt vol-au-vents, so we’ll break for a commercial while I go and rescue them.’

  ‘Wait,’ Lena ordered. ‘Let me get them out of the oven. And keep talking!’

  The kitchen clattered with the oven door opening and the retrieval of a baking tray.

  The story rolled onwards from where its narrator had chased after someone’s rabbit.

  Best part: the part I’m starring in, Izzie thought with a smile as her mother related in minuscule detail how ‘thoughtful little Izzie’ had offered to make her a cup of cocoa.

  Izzie had never bothered to hang around and overhear this bit of the story. It embarrassed her too much, recalling how her friend and friend’s father had reacted when they’d driven up Ashbury Avenue only to see Rosetta prancing about the road and stooping forward, grasping stupidly at the air. Charlotte’s dad had said ‘What the...?’ in the same way he had when they’d found her asleep on the verandah muttering about a rabbit. And then she’d rambled on, again, about a rabbit, this time to the driver of a stationary car, telling the man she’d been mistaken, that there hadn’t been a rabbit at all.

  To hear the story’s conclusion now was freaky. ‘Speak louder,’ Lena called above her own cling-clanging, obviously trawling the cupboards for a savouries platter.

  ‘It disappeared! The rabbit had actually vaporised!’ In quieter tones, Rosetta told them she’d been terrified she was losing her marbles. ‘Poor Izzie,’ she said between laughs. ‘She’s convinced I’m going senile. And whenever I try to explain the real reason for waving my arms about on the road, she escapes to her room with the excuse of having to do homework.’

  Lena, Craig, Royston and Eadie reassuringly insisted that she’d witnessed an apparition. Spirits, they said, were capable of crossing dimensions. The rabbit must have not only visited her in the sleep dimension—when she’d dreamt about the Molly woman—but also during her waking hours.

  ‘If I’d been there, I would have told the rabbit to go to the light,’ Royston said.

  ‘I think it did anyway,’ Rosetta said, ‘without any prompting from me because it vanished in the blink of an eye.’

  ‘I feel sure Molly and her rabbit are ghosts trapped between worlds,’ said Eadie. ‘I mean, it’s not hard to imagine they’re no longer alive if Molly drove as recklessly as you say. And I realise this is a really sad thought, but you did say her car lacked seat belts.’

  ‘I’d happily argue that there’s no way Molly could be a ghost. Dreams are supposed to be the result of our imaginations shedding their garbage, but I can’t be so sure anymore because there was another weird thing in all of this.’

  ‘And what was that?’ said Darren.

  ‘Something that happened when I got changed for bed.’

  Craig’s voice chimed in again, this time huskily. ‘Just forming a mental picture of that,’ he said. ‘Right, gotcha. Go on.’

  ‘I plumped up one of my pillows, and...you won’t believe this! Underneath it was one of my tarot cards.’

  ‘Which one?’ said Eadie. ‘Not the King of Cups!’

  ‘That’s exactly what it was. I rushed out to the sitting-room and went systematically through each of the tarots. The card was definitely one from my pack, but how could it have got under my pillow?’

  * * * *

  Rosetta gazed around the room with a pride that bordered on motherly. The Friday Fortnight group. Friends who shared her passion for Lillibridge’s book. Five faces aglow with dancing orange light. Craig had made the hearth’s flicker of flames possible with the firewood he’d brought.

  She was pleased her guests had backed her up on the conclusion that Molly and her rabbit might have been real, in some dimension at least. They continued discussing the dream-woman and Curry the way others might discuss celebrities, analysing, re-analysing and singling out parts of the dream, some of which Rosetta argued weren’t relevant at all.

  ‘Like my old man might say, it’s not a Bob Dylan song,’ Craig pointed out. ‘I think the major message concerns Rosetta not allowing herself to lose hope in finding a soulmate. Forget all the other stuff.’ He then asked Rosetta, as he often did, how her love life was faring.

  ‘Not good at all,’ she said, ‘but then, since I hit my late thirties it’s been slim pickings. Men prefer slim women.’

  Craig was quick to disagree. ‘Not every guy wants someone stick-insect thin, Rosetta. Plenty of us go for brunette bombshells.’

  Rosetta couldn’t help laughing at Craig’s exaggerated view of her. ‘I’m not sure “brunette” could ever precede “bombshell”.’ To Lena, she said, ‘Isn’t the term only ever used for blondes?’

  ‘Generally speaking.’ In an effort to look the part, Lena adopted a hand-on-hip pose and fluttered her eyelids at the ceiling. ‘Although, foils aside, I think I’d have to be buxom to comply.’

  They returned to discussing the princess feeling alien to her family, and the friendship she’d formed with the elf and rabbit. Royston and Lena speculated on what royal Eidred must have meant in Chapter XXVIII when she referred to a random quake as ‘the Backwards-Winding’.

  Rosetta and Craig threw in ideas as to who the mysterious Det-ah-Wise-la might have been and which timeframe in the sprites’ future she might have lived in if credence were ever given to the crazy rumour that Lillibridge’s book was an authentic account of ancient event
s and not just a quaintly fanciful fairy tale.

  Rosetta thought Det-ah-Wise-la might have been a code name for Joan of Arc. ‘She freed her homeland of domination. Maybe that’s what Maleika meant by restoring the world’s former beauty.’

  ‘Nah,’ said Craig. ‘Too warlike. I reckon Det-ah-Wise-la was someone whose actions never reached the history books. Will we start up the coffee now?’

  ‘Sure,’ said Rosetta. ‘But I just want to let you guys know about the launch of yet another overseas Friday Fortnight group. It’s in the United Kingdom, and it’s to be run by Glynis and Dudley Hampton of Tintagel in Cornwall.’

  ‘Haven’t been to England in years.’ Craig flicked his iPod onto French Classics. ‘One of these days I’ll plan another trip.’

  ‘Visit that new group, then, if you do,’ said Lena. ‘And ask them where in Cornwall Reverend Edward Lillibridge was supposed to have lived. And died...although I doubt there's any record of his death.’

  ‘Absolutely I will!’ Craig fine-tuned the volume, and the sounds of a lone accordion bounced into life.

  Eadie had already put the kettle on. Rosetta buttered scones, sliced the cake Darren had brought and readied the cups and saucers while the guttural strains of Edith Piaf rolled in from the sitting room. She sang along, uttering gobbledy-gook in place of lyrics she didn’t know, and whipped up a brew on Royston’s borrowed espresso machine. A comforting aroma of roasted coffee beans wended its way through the kitchen. Royston and Darren wandered in from the sitting-room. She poured them each a cup.

  ‘Smoky tones with a unique brand of melancholy ardour,’ said Royston after taking a sip, and Rosetta was surprised to learn that it wasn’t the coffee he was talking about but her singing. ‘Sounds like a velvet-voiced blues singer, doesn’t she, Darren?’

  Looking impressed, Darren nodded a series of nods.

  ‘Even with my pseudo French?’ Rosetta pretended to look injured. ‘You’re not having a go at my language skills are you, Roystie? I did happen to learn French. At school.’

  ‘It was your voice I was talking about, not your crazed attempt at masking the words.’ Addressing Darren, Royston added, ‘She was definitely one of those cabaret artists from the golden age of jazz.’

  ‘We should talk Rosetta into entering that comp my brother hosts at the Bondi Diggers,’ Darren said to Royston. Turning to Rosetta he said, ‘So you were a sultry songstress in another life!’

  ‘If reincarnation happens to be real, then apparently I was. I crooned my way through the art-deco era, but only according to Royston.’

  When the evening came to an end, Rosetta told Darren how happy she was to meet him finally and agreed to be his guest at a poetry club get-together. ‘I’ll try to dig up some verses I wrote, back when I was my daughter’s age,’ she said when they walked through to the hallway.

  ‘Please do,’ said Darren. ‘Look at that! How beautiful.’ He gestured to the hallway’s floorboards turned into a pool of reflected colour from the front door’s stained-glass. ‘Hm! Must be the placement of your verandah light globe. Yes, definitely come along to Poets Garret, Rosetta. We love having guests who recite their work.’

  After the door had thumped shut behind them, Rosetta rinsed out the cups and wineglasses. The phone rang when she was settling them into the dish rack.

  ‘Just checking what you’re having for breakfast tomorrow.’ Craig on his mobile.

  Aware Craig was referring to the command in her dream to not ‘aban­don eggs’, she said, ‘An omelette. Free-range of course.’

  ‘Just as well. You don’t want Molly haunting your dreams again. Hey, I reckon I’ve worked out the symbolism in that statement.’ He asked what she and Lena had settled on for the name of the charity they hoped to form.

  ‘We were thinking of calling it Promoting Peace on Earth.’

  ‘PPE?’

  ‘Yeah, but we’ve since decided on Ending Global Suffering.’

  ‘Aha! I was pretty sure that was the name you chose. Well, there you have it.’

  ‘Have what?’

  ‘Where Molly Carr’s reference to a non-vegan diet came from, although as it turns out, it’s nothing to do with food. It’s a message to persist with Ending Global Suffering. EGS.’ Craig laughed at her expression of surprise, said goodnight in a whisper and ended the call. Encouragement to do with Ending Global Suffering? If her friends were right, if the dream was in fact an encounter with someone from another dimension, then perhaps a gift had been presented, an insight into her future.

  She moved to the sitting room, peeked through the curtains as she was in the habit of doing nowadays before bed, humming a power anthem and whispering: ‘Scram’ when the intruder images threatened to encroach on her tranquil state of mind, then ambled to the bathroom.

  While brushing her teeth and dissolving, with her cheap-and-cheerful cleanser, the gunk resembling boot-polish that caked her lashes, she mulled over Izzie’s birthday picnic. The dining room clock had chimed midnight ten minutes ago. Her daughter’s birthday had just moved from eight days away to seven. In a week little Izzie would be sweet sixteen! Rosetta scowled into the mirror. Her cleanser-foamed face scowled back. ‘You should be in a position to afford more for her,’ she said. ‘Why couldn’t you have found an extra job?’

  The sooner she managed to get back to her uni course, the closer she would be to a nicely paid law career. Being on Jack Barnaby’s roster was fine for now, but it got degrading when staff at the offices she cleaned scribbled down tense little complaints. M.P.W.’s gripe the week before was a prime example of this. A Post-it note stuck to an empty desk had read: Cleaner, Please don’t miss the floor. M.P.W. Jack had given her strict instructions to clear the bins of the office only. Nothing more. Jack’s workers were not required to tidy under desks, disappointing news to anyone too squeamish to do a quick check of their misses at the end of the day. Inflamed at receiving the anonymous command, Rosetta had seized up a pen and written underneath: Banker, Please don’t miss the bin. R.M.

  The idea of an additional job as a nanny had gained traction since she’d spotted the newspaper ad two Sundays back. On Tuesday she was off to Cabarita Heights for a meeting with Bernadette Weissler, who explained in a businesslike return call that an unavoidable trip to Vanuatu over the school holidays had necessitated the search for a ‘firm but amiable stand-in mother’.

  A job like this for up to a fortnight wasn’t so bad. Small amounts of temporary work might eventually lead to something permanent.

  It was the silver-edged stars of lemon and pale-purple that had done it. The optometrist had since peered at her over his tortoiseshell half-specs and declared her vision perfect. A day later, she’d remembered two previous instances when she’d seen those ethereal blobs and wondered whether they might be a lucky omen, courtesy of her guardian angels. They’d appeared years ago when she’d read Jack Barnaby’s ad. She hadn’t thought of cleaning at the time, but despite an abysmal lack of experience, Jack had told her the job was hers. Four years on and she was yet to thank those lucky stars for the stream of regular work that followed.

  Those same stars had hovered jubilantly around a rental notice until she’d taken a second look. Her landlord had decided to sell, and she’d had to find somewhere fast. Admittedly, living in the Punchbowl block of flats had been anything but cosy. The creepy guy in the laundry had seen to that, as had the barking blue heeler and rubbish-dumping neighbours, but a friendship had sprouted—Grant Belfield phoned her fairly regularly these days—and Izzie had done beautifully at Punchbowl High. Getting to be Year Nine Captain didn’t happen to everyone. So if Rosetta’s guardian angels were responsible, the focus had been more on neighbourly spirit and scholarly accolades than on boring old security.

  After those stars made their most recent appearance, a wholly unwelcome one when ghostly ‘Curry’ lolloped with staccato speed onto the unlit road, their reason for showing up had remained a puzzle. Something significant might still happen. Perhaps the inciden
t was just training, a quantum kind of rehearsal for saving the life of a real animal someday.

  Would going to Bernadette Weissler’s interview for the child­carer’s position also lead to a happy result?

  She splashed off the cleanser’s glinting bubbles and drifted off to bed.

  Chapter Nine

  <><> XXIX <><>

  The Devic Pre-Destruction Century

  Or ‘The Pre-Glory Century’ to those

  of the Empire

  THE TIMEFRAME IN WHICH

  THEIR PALACE NOW RESIDES

  The precious gems the body kings had moved so very long ago were a source of fascination for Pieter.

  Because he was familiar with the rocks and minerals of his native surroundings, Pieter felt sure that if he garnered more awareness about the gems Eidred mentioned, he would understand their importance to gold-skins. He wondered what the body kings were like in that prism of time when they first invaded Norwegia. He knew little of their origins. He knew, for instance, that their skin tone was the result of the dragon blood they consumed and that their original countenances were grey, but their lineage remained a mystery.

  He had heard that the troopers who weren’t gold-skin hybrids, like the eagle-winged guards and the Solen’s family, were in fact a type of vulture, ‘pterodactyls’ according to Eidred; guards of a higher order, referred to by those at court as ‘the Grudellans’, some of whom were Eidred’s minders. This mass of hideously snatching, squealing, power-squandering one-mind was divided into many angrily inhabited bodies. The chilling unison in which they spoke was a terrifying sound to poor Fripso.

  Eidred continually reassured Pieter. ‘Never mind,’ she would say, before emphasising that no-one in the palace, other than her, had faerie sight. ‘They have to rely on the luminaries to see anyone of your heritage. None of them will see you when they stomp into my room, but they will see Fripso. You must always ensure he stays hushed beneath his blanket.’