Blueberry

by Glenna Thomson

  ‘What’s this about the grass?’ Shane said looking around the studio, taking in the evidence of Charlie’s trespassing.

  Charlie stared back at Shane with sad, watery eyes. ‘I’m not going back.’

  ‘Well, come to my place then. Until we sort this out.’

  ‘I didn’t tell you I was here because I knew you’d say that. I’m staying.’

  Shane glanced at me, eyebrows raised, disbelieving.

  ‘Charlie, going to Shane’s seems like a good idea. I think you should to that.’

  He looked at me and repeated that the only place he wanted to stay was where he was standing.

  ‘This is ridiculous,’ Shane said, raising his hands. ‘I’ve got a heifer in the yards so I’ve got to go. But as soon as I can, I’ll call Warren. This is for him to decide.’

  Charlie straightened, trying to make himself taller. ‘You listen to me. This is for Greer and me to work out. It’s our business.’

  ‘I don’t know what’s got into you,’ Shane said over his shoulder as he walked away.

  When the door closed, Charlie gave my hand a squeeze.

  ‘We’ll get on all right,’ he said. ‘They’ve just got to get used to the idea.’

  ‘You’d better come in to dinner,’ I said.

  I wasn’t sure about having him join us in the house. Even so, the idea of not being so alone in this strange and isolated place made me feel braver.

  The fire was blazing and the house creaked as it thawed.

  Sophie played with her pasta and interrupted with baby-talk – she’d had me to herself for so long she kept trying to distract me from talking to Charlie. He was telling me he had grown up in Coburg and had tried to make a living from his paintings in the city. ‘Very tough going, it was. Even worse when Audrey and I got together and Warren came along.’

  ‘How did you end up here?’

  Sophie started to softly kick the table leg with repeated little taps.

  ‘This house and orchard was given to us,’ he said. ‘A fifty-acre title carved out from her family’s five thousand acre estate.’

  ‘Next door, you mean.’

  He nodded. ‘The eldest son inherits. That’s how it works. The girls are supposed to marry well.’ He blew a silent whistle.

  ‘But you were happy?’

  ‘We were. Best wife I could’ve had. Audrey supported me all the way through.’

  ‘You only had the one child?’

  ‘We lost a couple – you know, before their time.’

  ‘So Warren and Shane are first cousins?’

  Sophie dropped a piece of penne onto the table. I wiped the splattered sauce up with a tissue.

  ‘Shane’s father and Audrey were brother and sister. They’ve both passed on.’

  ‘So are there other cousins?’ I asked.

  Sophie’s fork clanged to the floor.

  That’s when Charlie stopped trying to answer me. He sat back and stared across the kitchen, perhaps seeing Audrey at the bench among their familiar clutter of appliances, vases with long-stem roses, bowls of fruit, eggs, papers, a radio.

  When I started to clear the table, he asked for some paper and a pencil. With a page from my notebook and a blue pencil, he glanced at Sophie and started sketching. When she realised what was happening she took on a stiff pose, darting glances to see how it was turning out without looking at him directly. When he finished he pushed the portrait across the table and she stared at the small lines of angles and shading. It was her.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said and Charlie’s dimples flashed. But he looked away quickly as if shy of her, too – or maybe he understood the capriciousness of small children, that Sophie could reject him with a single slow turn of her head.

  ‘I’m going to bed, love. Thanks for a lovely meal.’

  ‘You need more clothes.’

  ‘And you need to get the pruning on the way.’

  Pruning wasn’t theory any more, and I still didn’t own a pair of secateurs.

  He headed off through the front door, stooped and laboured.

  ‘Charlie.’

  He turned.

  ‘Does it feel weird to be in the house with all your things gone?’

  He looked around. ‘This is home to me. That tiny place in Euroa felt weird.’

  When he left, I settled Sophie in her bed. I read to her, pretending to be a good mother – I was tired and had other things to do so I skipped pages, hoping she wouldn’t notice. When she finally turned on her side to sleep, I went into every room and checked that the windows and doors were locked. The house felt too big, the ceilings too high, the walls too far away and I wanted to somehow bring it in all around me, to make it smaller. It was in front of the glowing firebox that I finally relaxed. Not because I had secured the house, but because I knew that a frail old man was two hundred metres away in a prefab studio. I didn’t feel so alone.

  9

  FROM the corridor window, I watched Sophie place her pencil case and exercise books into the compartment of a green cabinet. She looked small in her blue tunic and matching windcheater. What solemn hugs her friends had given her when they said goodbye in Melbourne – and now here she was, shy and nervous, waiting for some new girls to claim her.

  The teacher, Mrs Barrett, call me Louise, put her hand on Sophie’s shoulder and guided her to the front of the class. My heart ached then, watching her stare down at her shiny black shoes while the other kids moved around her as if she was invisible. She glanced over to see if I was still there. I blew her a kiss and she shyly smiled, and without lifting her arm gave me a secret wave from the side.

  Part of me wanted to slide the door open and sit on one of those squat seats and pull her onto my knee. Mrs Barrett had expected me to stay – had seemed surprised when I said I couldn’t – but it wasn’t possible for me to sit still and drift with the early morning settling of a classroom. Since going back to work when Sophie was six months old, I’d developed a sort of compulsion or drive to always be on the move so I could get everything done.

  Mrs Barrett said something and the children dropped to their red mats and crossed their legs. And there was Sophie, one head among thirteen. I bit down hard to cramp the emotion of it, and strode along the short draughty corridor, lined with a confusion of coats and backpacks. Sophie’s hook, holding her stiff new backpack, was marked by a picture of a dolphin. Ten minutes earlier I had snapped a photo of her standing there and she’d asked me to send it to Nick, and I also posted it on Facebook. Sophie’s first day at … It would be a popular post – I’d already heard the soft notification bleeps arriving.

  Outside under the white dome of sky, I squinted as I groped in my bag for my sunglasses. Other mothers, four or five, were chatting at the edge of the quadrangle, a garden of native plants beside them. In slow motion recognition they turned to me, the new mother in town – the woman from Melbourne who had bought Charlie Chandler’s place.

  I had never been any good at the childcare or the school gate small talk. I was always in a hurry, or more like I never knew what to talk about with strangers if it wasn’t related to a specific topic. With clients I could talk about work, and Nick had always been social enough for the both of us. I felt entirely lost trying to find something to say to these new women.

  If the cluster of mothers in the quadrangle waved or tried to say hello it was too late. I quickly pressed the remote, the car squawked, and in one fluid movement I was behind the wheel and driving away.

  In twenty-five minutes I was in Euroa, crawling along the narrow avenues of Maygars Retirement Village, looking for Charlie’s unit. Every building was the same beige brick and, as if to remind every resident that no independence was permitted, a single crepe myrtle stood in the front garden of every unit. The grass was as evenly short and shiny as Charlie said it would be.

  An old man wearing track pants with his legs splayed was sitting on a plastic chair on his tiny front porch. He watched with suspicion as I drove past and pulled up in front
of Charlie’s roller door.

  Walking up the front path, I felt a terrible strangeness, a sense of unreality. I had hardly accepted that I lived in this part of the world yet, but here I was, staring down at Charlie’s keys, trying to decide which one would fit the lock.

  Charlie had refused to come. I had tried to bribe him with lunch at the pub, and could tell by the way he hesitated that he was tempted.

  ‘What’s holding you back?’ I’d asked.

  ‘Nervous.’

  ‘Of what?’

  ‘Don’t exactly know. Just worried I won’t get back here.’

  ‘You think I’m going to leave you there?’

  ‘I didn’t say that. How about I just give you the key?’

  ‘I don’t want to go through your drawers.’

  ‘You’ve seen men’s jocks before.’

  ‘Not yours, I haven’t.’

  I opened the door and stepped inside a gypsy caravan. Charlie’s furniture, paintings, CDs, books – all his bright treasures had been squeezed inside this boxy two-bedroom unit. The place still had the raw synthetic smell of fresh paint. The pale beige walls were mostly hidden by his paintings. The laminate benches were laden with appliances, newspapers and packaging. His Persian rugs covered the carpet.

  In his bedroom, I tried to be quick, pulling armfuls of clothes out of his drawers straight into two sports bags. His singlets, t-shirts and socks were all worn – tatty and not quite their original colour. Then I opened the wardrobe and saw his suits. Running them between my fingers, I felt the fine soft fabrics, the wide collars and the padded shoulders. There were tweed jackets, dark-coloured shirts and several silk ties. I laid an armload on the backseat and left the rest hanging, waiting for whatever was going to happen next. And on the floor of the wardrobe were his leather shoes – different styles and shades of brown, some black. There were no casual shoes, sandals or thongs. I took two pairs.

  On the bedside table was a framed black-and-white photograph of a young woman who must have been Audrey. She had long smooth dark hair, painted full lips and a kerchief around her neck. She was holding a cigarette between her fingers; her nails were short and blunt. I zipped her in the bag. I paused, looking for anything else he might want, but there was too much to choose from, so I left.

  The only set of traffic lights in Euroa were green. I indicated right, waited for a white ute, then turned.

  The road to Shepparton was long and monotonous. Red box and blue gums filled the scrubby space between the paddock fences and the bitumen. There were sheep, some horses and a stretch of black stubbly pasture, perfectly burnt clear of the fences. The radio ads on every FM station were for fertilisers, building supplies and cattle drenches. A cold front was coming through; the westerly clouds were dark and moving. I turned the heater up.

  At Kitchen Masters, a tall friendly woman wearing a name badge that said Cheryl followed me around as I pointed to samples, catalogues and display units. With every choice I made she persisted in showing me alternatives, but I was determined because I knew what I wanted. For years I had dreamed of this kitchen and for two months I had been filling a folder with ripped magazine pages of kitchen designs, colours and brands that I liked. I knew exactly what I could afford – I’d done a budget on a spreadsheet, factoring in wages for labour, blueberry labels, punnets and trays, and general things like food, power, fuel, my phone and internet.

  By lunchtime, I had ordered my new kitchen. For the benches I had gone for an earthy speckled granite with a wide vein of soft pink, like a merlot stain. The glossy cream cupboard veneer was toned with clear glass tiles with an off-white base. The German-made oven with five stove elements had a stainless steel flashback. The double sinks had a swan-neck mixer tap. And the dishwasher had ten different wash programs, a water-saving sensor and an eco-friendly brushless motor designed to keep energy consumption low.

  That night, when I was almost asleep, my phone rang. It was past eleven and I felt muddled answering before I was properly awake and found myself in the middle of a conversation before I’d found out who was calling.

  ‘We’ll set a room up where he can paint,’ he said.

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘Dad. A room where he can paint.’

  ‘Warren?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You’ve got a different place?’

  ‘Mark Palmer has found a two-bedroom unit in Euroa. We’re getting everything organised – Meals-on-Wheels, a cleaner, a taxi service.’

  I didn’t like his efficiency or lack of concern for Charlie’s feelings. And yet, perhaps him being hard-nosed was the best thing? I put the lamp on and looked away from the light.

  ‘He won’t agree to go,’ I said.

  ‘Of course he’s going. But if you can cope with him till everything is sorted out, that’d be good. I’ll transfer some money for your expenses.’

  He was on the move, perhaps getting out of a car, a door closing.

  ‘I’m not really comfortable with this,’ I said.

  ‘With what?’

  ‘Forcing him.’

  ‘I want you to know I appreciate what you’re doing. And I apologise that Dad’s imposed on you. But he’s a sick man. He’s got advanced prostate cancer. It’s in his bones now. He gets back pain and needs regular medication. He’s had surgery and chemo, the whole box and dice. But his PSA levels have more than doubled in the past three months. His oncologist wants him to have radiation treatment for his bone pain. The point is, he’s got to be closer to where the treatment is. And I don’t want him driving anymore.’

  I stared up into the petal-shaped curves of the ceiling dome; there was a small chip. A single cord hung from its centre, holding an amber glass light fitting. Charlie had prostate cancer and it was now in his bones. My dad had died from the same cancer, so I knew how it was going to go for Charlie. And I remembered how it had been for me, trying to somehow finally connect with him, with Alison hovering around. The moment when I’d looked into his gaunt face and realised he didn’t really care if I was there or not.

  ‘I didn’t know Charlie had cancer,’ I said.

  ‘Why would you?’

  ‘Is he going to die? I mean, what’s the prognosis?’

  ‘It’s unknown. But he’s been ill for about five years.’

  ‘Who’s going to tell him about the new unit?’

  ‘When everything is in place, I’ll call to tell him and let him know when I’ll be arriving.’

  ‘I might mention it,’ I said.

  Someone interrupted him; I could hear the offline whisper. There was a pause and when he came back to me he seemed to have forgotten what I had said, and he wrapped up like this was a business call: ‘Very good then. Thanks for your time. Goodbye.’

  Next morning, after I dropped Sophie at school, I went to the studio to see Charlie. He was in the garden with Blondie, sitting on one of the wrought-iron chairs under the magnolia’s bare branches. I made us tea and joined him.

  ‘Nice here, isn’t it?’ he said, warming his hands on the mug.

  ‘Yes.’

  I looked at Charlie differently. His shoulders were too narrow and his clothes were big on his thin body. Perhaps he had always worn his hair long on his collar.

  ‘Audrey and I spent time in the garden.’

  ‘Tell me about her.’

  ‘Too much to say.’ He wiped his lips on the back of his hand. ‘She was a country girl who wanted to make something of herself, but she didn’t know what. She was a secretary for a group of Melbourne lawyers and hated it. Then we hooked up and ended up at the place she’d wanted to escape from.’ Charlie eased himself up straighter and crossed his legs. ‘She was happy. We’d sit right here and discuss it, that we didn’t want to be anywhere else.’

  I lifted my face to the winter blue sky. Birds fussed in the leafy shrubs.

  ‘Are you okay?’ I said.

  ‘Now I’m back here I am. It’s all a bloody mess, really.’

  ‘Warren phoned last n
ight.’

  Charlie looked wary.

  ‘He’s suggesting you move out of the retirement village into another unit in Euroa.’

  He spoke as if to himself, looking across a row of azaleas: ‘No one asks me what I want.’ Then he put his mug down on the garden table and, getting his balance, he pushed himself up and turned down the path towards his studio in his hobbling stride.

  I went after him.

  ‘Charlie?’

  But he didn’t stop.

  I watched him shuffle his way through the rose garden to his studio. Then I went to the orchard.

  10

  CROUCHED inside a blueberry bush with my knees pressed to the cold ground, holding a tiger-tooth saw in my right hand, I tugged my caught hair free. Then I steadily sawed through the gnarled and mossy generations of grandmother canes. When I’d pulled these oldest canes out of the bush, their two and three-year-old daughters became the new mothers providing the structure for the babies, the newest dark-pink outer canes that were as fat as my middle finger. The bushes were bare of leaves, so it was easy enough to see what to do. From YouTube demos, I knew the goal was to sculpt a vase shape, and that the bush wasn’t meant to be more than one-and-a-half metres tall. I dropped the saw and with my new eighty-dollar secateurs I started snipping on either side of the bush, trying for balance.

  After three bushes, I rolled my stiff shoulders and neck and looked up. An Airbus from Melbourne to Sydney flew overhead; its vapour trail cut a white line across the clear sky. I sat down and leaned back to watch it. I had been on that 9.30 am flight too many times and could picture myself up there with the passengers – a business-suited woman napping, half listening for the rattle of the trolley coming down the aisle. The tea would be unsatisfying and too strong but I would drink it anyway and I would eat the rubbery muffin that didn’t make crumbs. Not once did I look down to the patchwork of roads and farm fences, the snaking line of the Seven Creeks or the tiny boxes that made up Euroa. And there I was on the ground, dressed in a thick green waterproof coat, my oldest jeans, Blundstones lined with two pairs of socks, and secateurs in my gloved left hand. Buying all the work gear in the only department store in Euroa had been dreamlike, as if it were somebody else’s hand reaching forward, selecting sale items off the shelf. Everything was dull colours and solidly practical, but I was warm.