The Roadhouse

by Kerry McGinnis

  ‘She’s worn out, Miss Carver. It seems to me what she really needs is a week’s bed rest.’ The nurse had a soft, measured voice. I pictured her as firm but kind. ‘Look, try not to worry too much. Whatever caused her collapse, sleep can only help. When she wakes I’ll tell her you rang, shall I?’

  ‘That would be great. Thank you.’ I replaced the handpiece and went to reassure Bob.

  A day spent weeding, watering, wiping down the dusty shelves in the roadhouse and rearranging the stock showed me just how much my mother’s hands had slipped on the reins of management. The work had plainly been getting beyond her for some time. Bob watched my progress through these chores with a sort of dour jealousy, relieved on the one hand to see the place being restored to some of its former order, but defensive about the need for my intervention.

  ‘For heaven’s sake, Bob,’ I said at last, tiring of his sniping and black looks. ‘It’s not Mum’s fault, or yours, so cut out the dog-in-the-manger act, will you? I want the Garnet sparkling for Mum when she gets home. Ute’s scouring the kitchen right now – that last cook you had can’t have cleaned the stove once! And seeing I’m quite capable of serving behind the counter, I don’t see why you can’t make a start on a bit of outside repair work tomorrow. If we all pull together we’ll have the place sorted in no time. It’s what you want, isn’t it?’

  He glowered at me, grey-haired and hard-eyed, his heavy shoulders stooped from age and past labour, refusing to agree. Instead he growled, ‘You’ve changed, Charlie. Bloody oath, you have.’

  ‘And not before time,’ I snapped, exasperated. ‘You can thank Annabelle for that. Now, are you going to quit sulking and get behind me, or what?’

  He surprised me then with a grudging smile. ‘Oh, yeah – you’re Molly’s girl, all right. What d’yer want done, then? That gutter I suppose, and the loose sheet of iron on the shed?’

  ‘They’ll do for starters,’ I agreed, enormously relieved that he’d come round. I knew I couldn’t manage without him. ‘There’s the garden fence – one good push would have it over, and I noticed the side of the steps are pulling away from the verandah out front. I think the screws have gone. The whole place needs painting but we probably can’t afford to do more than the timber work right now. And if that isn’t enough, there’re more weeds than gravel around the fuel apron. That’s got to be a fire risk …’

  ‘Righto, righto – I get the idea.’ Almost apologetically he added, ‘When you can’t do nothin’ about it, after a bit you stop noticing. I reckon the punters don’t, but.’

  ‘No.’ I sighed. ‘Well, if you’re willing, Bob, we’ll see what we can do to straighten things out. God knows Mum doesn’t need the worry, or the extra work that Sunday, for instance, is going to make. We’ll have to try and keep her from doing too much when she gets back. I’ve already decided I’ll do the eulogy. Maybe I can ask Rae Thornton to help keep Mum occupied and sitting down?’

  Bob snorted. ‘Chance’d be a fine thing. That young copper find you, did he?’ It was his way of asking why he’d come.

  ‘Mmm. He wanted Annabelle’s letter. I told him not before Mum had seen it and that won’t be soon. God knows what she put in it.’

  He scowled. ‘Blamin’ Molly most like, for what she was gonna do. Wouldn’t put it past her. Maybe,’ he added bluntly, ‘you oughta read it first.’

  ‘No, I can’t, Bob. It’s private. Besides, she knows it exists, so even if it says something like that, I couldn’t destroy it.’ I glanced at the wall clock. ‘Well, I’d better get that washing in, and you’ve got a customer.’ A vehicle had pulled into the bowser and a family were decanting themselves from it. ‘I’ll leave you with it,’ I said, departing once more for the garden.

  That evening, having made a list of the numbers to call, I sat down and began ringing the neighbours. Many of them had probably already heard the news of Annabelle’s suicide; all the local station people would have known her, and those who hadn’t, like the stockmen and contractors whose work was seasonal, knew my mother. They would come for her sake.

  I started with the closest – the Webbs’ place, Mt Farlow – and worked east and north through the rest: Abbey Downs, Upatak, Penny Hills, Red Tank, the Red Tank Store, Kharko and Arcadia. The phone rang out at the latter station, and I would have to try them again later, while at Kharko, the biggest company property in the district, I got the bookkeeper rather than the manager or his wife. They were both in the Alice, he said, but would be home tomorrow and he’d pass the message on. I thanked him, took a deep breath and tapped in the number for Red Tank, the Mallorys’ property. If Bryan was still at home and chanced to pick up the phone I would hang up. I could always call again tomorrow, but to my relief it was his mother, Kathleen, who answered with her husky smoker’s voice.

  ‘Hello. Kathleen? Charlie Carver from the Garnet.’ I gave her almost no time to offer her condolences or ask, in the circumstances, the usual inquiries. ‘I’m fine, thanks. How are you? Oh, you’ve heard? Yes, yes – a terrible shock. Actually, it’s about Annabelle that I’m calling. We’re holding a memorial service for her at the roadhouse, next Sunday. About two-ish, we thought, if you’d like to come? And if you wouldn’t mind passing the word on to the store? Anyone who knew her, or knows Mum, is welcome. Padre Don will be running things. My mother? No, sorry, she’s not here – in hospital at present, I’m afraid. Her heart. Mmm yes, look, sorry but I can’t stop to talk, a million things to do. Bye.’ I put the phone down, cutting her off mid-sentence before she could mention Bryan or ask anything further.

  The Mallorys had five sons, of which my erstwhile fiancé was the youngest and the apple of his mother’s eye. She had deplored the breaking of our engagement, seeming to think Bryan’s behaviour a mere peccadillo, and one easily forgiven. I, on the other hand, had maintained with some heat that ‘Boys will be boys’ was neither an excuse for his actions nor a basis for forgiveness. This was the first time we had spoken since.

  The house was very quiet without Mum’s presence. I picked up the phone again, rang the hospital and asked for Mrs Carver. The receptionist put me through immediately. There was a click, a burst of television noise that sank away and then her voice. ‘Bob?’

  ‘It’s Charlie, Mum. How are you feeling?’

  ‘Oh, Charlie. I’m fine. I slept most of the day so I’ve had a good rest. That was probably all I needed, but they’re not letting me out till I’ve seen this blasted doctor on Wednesday.’

  ‘That’s why you’re in there, Mum. How’s the food?’

  ‘It’s all right. More to the point, how are you all managing? The new cook – is she worth paying?’

  ‘Definitely. She’s reorganised the fridge, and the kitchen hasn’t had such a going over for years. Look, about Wednesday – do you want me to come in, be there with you for the op?’

  ‘Of course not! It’s only a local anaesthetic, the nurses tell me. Before I forget, make sure you order extra loaves this week. We’ll need heaps of sandwiches for Sunday. Have you rung people yet, to tell them about the service?’

  ‘All under control, Mum. You don’t have to worry about anything. I’d better go, but Bob’d want me to tell you hello from him, too. Love you, goodnight.’

  ‘Goodnight, Charlie. I know I can rely on you. I always could.’

  I had scarcely hung up when someone rapped decisively on the frame of the screen door. I opened it to find Ute there. She switched off her torch and entered, saying, ‘The time now is good, yes? I wish to make the menu, you understand, for this tea you will be having on Sunday.’

  ‘Yes, of course. Sit down, Ute.’ She had brought pad and pen and now squared them on the table before her. ‘Well, I thought —’

  ‘For how many?’ she interrupted. ‘First the numbers I must know. Then we put the heads alongside for what is possible to make, yes? There is no pâté, no – no little goods.’ She frowned. ‘This is what you call the specialist meats? No olives, and the cheese —’ She grimaced, unimpressed it se
emed by Kraft’s ordinary Processed. ‘So, how many come, and what should you wish I make?’

  ‘Twenty?’ I said. ‘Maybe more. Let’s work on thirty, say, because the three of us have to eat as well. And I thought mainly sandwiches – plates and plates of them. I’ll order extra bread, and eggs. We’ll have lettuce, cold meat, pickles, cheese, cucumbers, hard-boiled eggs. It’s not deli stuff,’ I said, ‘but it’s what people eat in these parts. And if you could make some slices and cakes to round it out – maybe a big custard tart too? It’s a lot of work but I’m happy to help. I can chop and spread and wrap for you, and wash up. We’ll use the big urns for tea and if they want cold drinks they can buy them.’

  ‘So, you will not have the little fancy hors d’oeuvres with the fruits and cheeses, and smoked meat?’ She frowned disapprovingly.

  ‘Just something filling that’ll see them through until they get home. It’s a long drive for all but a few.’

  ‘Threw?’ she said uncertainly. ‘This I do not know. Where will they see, please?’

  ‘I mean, food that will satisfy – fill them up, you know. See them through to the next meal.’

  ‘Oh, through – yes. And all these peoples know this girl – woman – who has herself killed?’

  ‘Some did. The rest will come out of respect. It’s what you do out here.’

  ‘I understand.’ She regarded me with her piercing blue eyes, her head on one side. ‘And you, Charlie, you were close, yes? You feel the sadness for her? I am sorry for you.’

  ‘Thank you, but you needn’t be,’ I said. ‘I hadn’t even seen her in five years. Annabelle and I, we weren’t close at all.’

  ‘But she is your family.’ The disapproval was back.

  ‘As to that, we have a saying: you can choose your friends but not your family. If it was up to me, I wouldn’t ever have chosen her to be either.’

  Chapter Six

  Wednesday morning dawned clear and cool with the early sunlight painting the range ochre and orange. I stood in the garden sipping a second cup of tea, staring at its plateaued top and worrying about Mum. I wished now that I had driven in to be with her. It was all very well to dismiss the procedure as mere day surgery but I had never known Mum to be ill with anything beyond a dose of flu, and the mere thought of her in theatre frightened me.

  Bob, who was tackling the garden fence, limped into view carrying a crowbar and shovel. His repair work had got as far as the homestead and now that he was freed from helping in the roadhouse and the care of the poultry, which I had also taken over, the effects of his uninterrupted labour were becoming noticeable.

  I said abruptly, ‘I think I’ll order five litres of paint for the front. Do you reckon that’ll be enough – just for the uprights and railings?’

  He squinted into the distance as he considered the question. ‘Should do it. It’ll need undercoating, mind. And a new paintbrush wouldn’t hurt, neither. Anything in the shed’ll have fallen to bits years ago.’

  ‘Okay. You have a colour preference, Bob?’

  ‘Yeah, not white. And not too bright neither, it’ll show the dust.’ Gruffly he added, for Bob could always read me, ‘She’ll be fine, girl. A pacemaker’s nothin’ major.’

  ‘I’m not worried.’

  ‘Course you ain’t. Ute’s lookin’ for you by the way – something about the gas.’

  ‘Okay.’ I tossed out the last of my tea and went off to deal with it and to ring the hospital. Mum, when I was put through to her, was thoroughly exasperated.

  ‘It isn’t,’ she snapped when I asked when the op was scheduled for. ‘I’m waiting on the damn doctor, and he’s not starting his rounds till eleven.’

  ‘But why? What’s going on, Mum?’

  ‘Why would they tell me?’ she asked. ‘They did some sort of test yesterday, putting a line up through a vein to my heart, but all I was told – and that by a nurse, mind you! – was that maybe I wouldn’t be getting the pacemaker just yet. Doctor will explain, she said. Like I was a child.’

  ‘Right,’ I said soothingly. ‘Well, I’ll ring again after lunch. Perhaps you’ll know what’s happening by then.’

  Unable to decide whether this was good or bad news, I said nothing to Bob, resolving to phone the moment lunch was over, but long before then Ute put her head through the kitchen hatch to call me.

  ‘Is the telephone rings for you, Charlie.’

  ‘Thanks.’ I picked up the handpiece. ‘Good morning. Garnet Roadhouse. What can I do for you?’

  ‘Miss Carver? It’s Doctor Spears, from the RFDS Base.’ I froze and, taking my silence for incomprehension, he continued. ‘The Flying Doctor. I was out there the other day to pick up your mother —’

  ‘Yes,’ I swallowed. ‘Of course, doctor. What’s wrong?’

  ‘The cardiologist who is treating Mrs Carver has sent me the results of some tests that they’ve run. I’ve been looking over them and I’m afraid her condition is a little more complicated than we all originally thought. As a result of that he won’t be implanting the pacemaker. In fact —’

  I interrupted his careful discourse. ‘How bad is it, doctor? What did the tests show?’ My own heart seemed to have slowed to a crawl, its loud, doomful thumping at odds with my gasping breaths.

  He said crisply, ‘It’s not her heart so much as her arteries. The angiogram show that three of them are dangerously narrowed and she needs bypass surgery. It’s a fairly common procedure these days. Of course it can’t be done here – we haven’t got the facilities – so she’ll be transferred to Adelaide, which is where the specialist comes from. He’ll make the arrangements and find a surgeon and schedule the op for sometime next week. It’s that urgent, I’m afraid, Charlie.’

  A part of me wondered how we had progressed to first names so quickly, while another section of my brain understood that it was a professional ploy to help cushion the shock of the news. Terror gibbered at the edges of reason and with an effort I pushed it back. ‘That means open heart surgery, doesn’t it? The risks —’

  ‘Are far greater if intervention doesn’t occur, I’m afraid. Dr Symes will have gone through it all carefully with your mother, but she really has no option – she must have the procedure.’ His voice went on and on, listing the positive outcome likely for a non-smoking, non-drinking patient with good muscularity. Well, Mum certainly had that. She’d worked as hard as any man and her reward was a hospital bed and a dangerous, possibly fatal, operation.

  When he’d finished counselling me, I thanked him for phoning and sat down limply on the low stool beside the workbench, thinking that I needed to ring the hospital. I’d have to go to her, and Bob would have to be told, and there was the service on Sunday, and dear God, what if the operation killed her …?

  ‘This news is bad, Charlie?’ Ute’s question dragged me back to the Garnet’s kitchen.

  ‘What? Oh, yes, I’m afraid it is. My mother is far sicker than we thought. Look, can you just watch for customers? I have to —’ I left without finishing, wondering if it was too late to cancel the service, and whether the two of them could manage without me for – how long? A week, ten days? And, meanwhile, what would I be using for money? The flight to Adelaide, food, accommodation – I couldn’t afford it and neither, I suspected, could the Garnet.

  Bob had the rails of the garden fence staggered across the lawn and was levering a leaning post back into an upright position. Seeing me come he thumped the point of the crowbar into the earth and dragged a wrist across his sweaty brow.

  ‘What’s ’appened now?’ he demanded wearily. ‘A blind man could see somethin’ has.’

  I told him and watched the shock settle on him. ‘Christ!’ he muttered. ‘It if ain’t one thing it’s another. Seems to me Molly never caught a decent break in her bloody life. But she’ll pull through, Charlie. She’s strong and a fighter. Kilkenny cats ain’t got nothin’ on Molly.’

  Distractedly I grasped at the allusion, a bit of doggerel he used to recite to my younger self when spat
s with Annabelle had taken me to him in tears … ‘They fought and they fit, they scratched and they bit, till ’stead of two cats there weren’t any.’

  ‘I’ll have to go to town, Bob. If I take the station wagon – just there and back before Sunday – could you and Ute manage till then?’

  ‘Course, Charlie. But wait a bit. Ring Molly first, find out when she’s going south. She’d want you to keep yer head over this. Not go rushin’ off for nothin’.’

  ‘It’s not nothing, Bob – it’s her life,’ I said sharply.

  ‘The Garnet’s her life, girl. That’s what she’ll be worryin’ over. You ring her, see what she wants. Seems to me you ain’t been bothered much about that these last five years.’

  There was enough truth in his words to stop the furious reply on my tongue and I swallowed, saying feebly instead, ‘She wanted me to leave.’

  ‘Yeah, she did. Yer needed recovery time, she said. But did it have to take five years – and in all that time not one visit? So now you’re back, you listen to what Molly wants for once. Seems to me I’m the only one round here ever thinks about her needs.’ He glared at me, his mouth as tight as a trap.

  ‘Are you?’ I spat. ‘Well, let me tell you, Mum never needed anyone. Even you. You think I wanted to stay away? That scraping by on shitty part-time jobs, and knowing I was getting nowhere because I haven’t any real talent for acting, was fun?’ What had he expected me to do, I wondered wildly. Come running home and by so doing admit to failure in yet another sphere? ‘I stayed because I had to.’

  I was shouting, I realised. And I could tell by the flash of hurt in his eyes that the thrust about not being needed had hit home. I was suddenly horribly ashamed of myself. He had been with us forever, as faithful and uncomplainingly loyal to Mum as the guard dog he sometimes resembled. He loved her, I saw then. How blind was I not to have seen it before?

  Bob treated my tirade with the contempt it deserved. He turned his shoulder and picked up the bar. ‘Ring her,’ he repeated stolidly, and resumed work with the post.