Blueberry

by Glenna Thomson

  ‘Here, love,’ he said, and as he pushed it across to me, his hand trembled. Always there were traces of paint on his fingers, this time yellow and green.

  I’d already guessed it was a cheque.

  ‘It’s compensation for the floor and all the hassle,’ Charlie said.

  The cheque was with CAP, yet Charlie had always banked with RCU.

  ‘You changed banks?’

  I stared into the familiar fluoro-green-and-blue logo and could hardly imagine those days when I had worked in their head office, the forty-sixth floor. Charlie’s signature was a thick inky flourish. The zeros were drawn with precision.

  Twenty thousand dollars.

  ‘I’ve wanted to do this for a long time,’ he said. Charlie was smiling. His blue eyes creased and his mouth was wide in that cheeky way that made the indent of his dimples so attractive. He wanted me to be excited or thankful. How easy it would be. But I wouldn’t take a pensioner’s money.

  ‘I appreciate this so much. But I can’t accept it.’

  ‘Why the hell not?’

  ‘Because it’s your money and it’d be wrong to take it.’

  ‘But, love, I’ve been freeloading off you for months. That’s wrong.’

  ‘I’ve been happy to have you.’

  ‘I’m not a visitor. This is my home. So I’m paying my way. If it wasn’t for you, love, we both know where’d I’d be. And the business with the floor, well that’s just plain shameful. I didn’t know it was such a big problem.’

  ‘I bought the house, floor and all. It’s my responsibility, not yours. But if you want, I can open a separate account and transfer a monthly amount for your board.’

  ‘Stop mucking around and just cash the bloody lot.’

  He closed his eyes like something had suddenly overwhelmed him.

  ‘Charlie.’

  He was slowly inhaling through his nose.

  ‘Do you need a Tramal?’

  ‘Probably.’

  We kept his opioids in a kitchen cupboard, out of Sophie’s reach. I pressed a tablet out of the foil and poured a glass of water.

  ‘You’re only on fifty milligrams. There are higher dosages.’

  He moved in the seat, looking for comfort, and had nothing to say.

  ‘I’ve been thinking,’ I said, as he pushed the tablet into his mouth. ‘We probably need to manage everything with your doctor. I’m worried about your pain. Should we have a regular appointment with her? Or get a nurse to come here?’

  ‘Not now. I just want to enjoy spring with no one bothering me. And just cash that goddamned cheque. I’m sick and tired of arguing with everyone.’

  He left me then, almost dismissively, like there was something important calling him away. He walked through the lounge room and I heard the front door open and close. I had put a camping chair out on the veranda and he sat there in the late afternoons to catch the light as it changed. The daphne bushes perfumed the garden, and the azaleas along the path to the roses were in tones of pink, mauve and red, and were frilly and bright like the petticoats of a row of Moulin Rouge dancers.

  I looked at the cheque. It was fair enough that Charlie paid for his food, and Blondie’s, yet they ate so little. And as for his room, if he wasn’t occupying it, no one else would be. So I folded the cheque in half, and again, and tucked it into the side of my wallet. I liked him being around, that’s all there was to it. And with all of that confusing sadness, and my money worries, and having no car, I stood up to see what Sophie was doing.

  Standing on the back step, pulling on my Blundstones, a small flock of white cockatoos, fifteen or so – low-flying and unhurried with their shadows travelling across the paddocks – were returning to their nests in the state forest behind Shane’s paddocks. The light was flat, yet strangely sharp, like a Photo-shopped picture it didn’t quite look real. It was the most beautiful, quiet and calm time of day and I understood then why Charlie had set himself up on the front veranda.

  Sophie was still in the chook pen. She had put a bowl of water in the corner near the roosting nests and thrown pellets on the ground along with some grass and dandelions from the garden. Wearing her school uniform, she was sitting in the dirt, cross-legged, holding a small brown hen in her arms.

  ‘What’s her name?’ I asked.

  ‘Ella Fitzgerald.’

  ‘What are the other names?’

  ‘I don’t know yet. You can choose one.’

  ‘Amy Winehouse.’

  ‘That’s a nice name.’

  21

  WE lit the bonfire. Perhaps it was more of a ceremonial pyre for the old life-giving grandmothers that had produced years of blueberries. The full moon, a large golden ball suspended above the packing shed, added to the sense of occasion. Silver clouds floated in the blue-black sky. There were stars. The night was beautiful and I was happy.

  Progress had been made. We had emptied all the canes out of the sixty rows, and they were now almost all burned to nothing. The Chinese supplier had confirmed the blueberry packaging was underway. I was now an accredited grower – a certificate had arrived in the post. Charlie had shown me how to start the irrigation pump; it had thudded to life as loud as a freight train.

  And Shane had come tonight. He was talking to Enrico, the two of them facing the glow of the flattening and smouldering wood. I liked the line of his shoulders, his straight back, and the dip where his jacket met the top of his jeans, the slight curve of his arse, his legs spread apart. I slyly studied him while sipping my wine, trying to put all of him together in a package, his body and everything else I knew about him. I was suspicious, for no other reason than he looked so good with his long sideburns and the styled beard around his mouth. Enrico was waving his hands, raging about the salaries the European major league soccer players received.

  Sophie and Freya were crouching down, holding bamboo sticks with marshmallows above the heat, being careful as I’d told them, and giggling and sidling into each other.

  On the camping table were the dirty dinner plates. We had eaten a sort of beef bourguignon pie, rich in wine and onions, that had worked nicely standing up with a fork in the cold air and heat from the fire.

  So Charlie was now ready for his bed. I helped lift him from the chair and waited till he was balanced before we turned away. He glanced over his shoulder, a silent goodnight. Enrico saw, and came.

  ‘Papa, it is bed for you.’

  He helped Charlie climb into the rusted blue van to drive him back to the house. I had been driving it myself, to take Sophie to school and back.

  Shane and I stood there, staring into the smouldering fire. And, as if that was too truthful or difficult, the two of us alone, he went to the camping table and picked up the wine bottle and refilled our glasses. Then it was awkward. I wanted to say, Thanks for coming, but that was stupid so I asked him about utes, and told him I was thinking of buying one.

  ‘I can’t put those stinking irrigation filters in the boot of my car,’ I explained.

  ‘Audrey had a Subaru Brumby,’ he said, turning to the orchard as if he could see her driving around. ‘It was a good size and did the job.’

  The little girls ran away, back to the house, calling something about watching a DVD, and I found I hardly cared what they did.

  Charlie’s vacant seat was the only one, so we couldn’t sit together. We had already discussed every possible subject – Charlie, the orchard, and Shane’s day trip to speak at a seminar in Wangaratta about methane-reducing practices, which had led to climate change and research work he was interested in. So he should really be going now, or we needed to go inside. But we kept standing there intensely focused on the drying red and black embers.

  ‘There’s a small cinema at Swanpool that’s only open on weekends,’ he said. ‘It’s across Earnshaw Track and takes about thirty minutes to get there. They’ve got pretty decent films, mostly arthouse.’

  So the feeling I had about him was real. He was asking me to go to movies, which was like
a date, or if not that, it was definitely something to pay attention to.

  He said I should check online to see what movie appealed, and we would go from there. ‘There’s a pub not far away. We can eat there first, if you like.’

  After that, everything felt slow and too deliberate – the way he put his head back and swallowed the last of his wine, as I took a full deep breath while turning to watch him tip the glass to the ground to be rid of the dregs.

  He looked at me and I wondered what else there was to say. ‘I’ve got an orphan calf and thought Sophie might like it. What do you think? She’ll need to bottle feed it twice a day.’

  So it was agreed.

  We walked back to the house.

  ‘Night,’ he said.

  He left too quickly, as though he was running away. I stood in my backyard, staring at the orange bauble in the sky, the darker shadows at the bottom of it, and breathing in the tinged air of burned canes.

  22

  WHEN Nick phoned, I was in the packing shed pulling cobwebs off the bottom of an old broom. My insides tightened and I pressed the phone hard against my ear, and away to check it really was his name on the screen. He only ever called when Sophie was home from school, usually around bedtime. As I fumbled, trying to put the speaker on, I thought I heard him say he was in Melbourne and something else about Sophie, so I asked him to repeat it.

  ‘How about tomorrow?’ he said. ‘I’ll pick her up from school.’

  I couldn’t bear it, the school mothers piecing my life together. And knowing Nick, he’d stop and have a chat.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because it’s too sudden. She hasn’t seen you all year.’

  I stared into a laminated poster with photo examples of the blueberries that have to be sorted out of the long trays. It was hanging on the wall by two pins, and one corner was curled forward.

  ‘I’d rather you come to the house after school,’ I said. ‘Or come on the weekend.’

  ‘I fly out on Saturday.’

  ‘So you’re already in Melbourne?

  ‘I asked Sophie to tell you.’

  ‘She didn’t.’

  This was old and sad ground, the months and years of Nick being caught between his fabulous career and us. The truth was, his passion for his job and his love of Sophie and me had always been at odds. I couldn’t count the time I had spent staring at the photos of the three of us on the pin board behind the computer monitor while I waited for his Skype call, email or phone call, getting so angry it became terminal.

  ‘You’ve got the folders of negatives, and cameras?’

  ‘Everything’s in a cupboard.’

  In the time it took to drink a bottle of red – or slightly more than that – I packed up his things. I had studied the dog-eared pages from his notebooks, lines of almost illegible writing and the precise capital letters he had drawn to be certain he got the spelling of something right, a name or place. I had pressed my hands onto the pages, hoping to feel something, but all that had come back was the same boring grief and an urgent need to move on like he had.

  When the removalists had carried the boxes in, each marked with his name, I had placed some of his things around the house. The Bangladeshi tapestry was a favourite, but none of it fitted into my new life, so I had shoved them all back in the cardboard boxes and shut the hall cupboard door on them.

  ‘See you tomorrow,’ he said.

  After the call, I stared into the timber wall of the shed trying to recover, to think. A daddy-long-legs appeared on an invisible thread close to my left shoulder. I caught it on the broom and started sweeping again. Nick’s voice came at me as I worked, replaying the old arguments.

  ‘You can’t Skype fatherhood,’ I’d accused.

  ‘And I can’t live in this cell anymore.’

  Those evenings when I had pushed the apartment key in the door to find Nick at his alcove desk, working up a story with Sophie on his lap, both of them waiting for me to get home from work.

  Then that final time, about thirteen months ago, after I had put Sophie to bed and I told him to go. ‘Just fucking go then, because we don’t need you.’

  And he’d left. Except I was wrong. We had needed him.

  Sophie insisted on her hair being braided. There was a fuss between us in the bathroom when she didn’t like my first attempt and I had to start all over. And even though it was too cold for it, she refused to wear anything other than her shoe-string strap white dress with the row of pink silky bows around the hem. Having not seen her dad in a very long time, she was acting differently, excited and also tense, and I sensed she might burst into tears if I wasn’t gentle with her.

  When she was ready, she went to my bedroom, spun in front of the mirror and stared very seriously at herself in a way I had not seen her do before. Watching her, I thought she looked like a little bride, except this one was nervously anticipating the arrival of her father.

  Two small wrens, one blue, the other brown, flitted and danced at the end of the stone wall where Sophie sat waiting. She was lightly humming a made-up tune, while playing with a small flinty stone, scratching it against a larger one. Blondie trotted down to her and she picked her up. Her dress would now be dirty.

  She called, ‘How much longer?’

  ‘Any time now.’

  ‘So what’s all this about?’ Charlie asked.

  We were sitting out on the front veranda – he in a soft padded cane chair I had bought with his money when I was in Shepparton picking up my car from the panel beater. For days, at every cup of tea, Charlie had kept on about it, so I had given in and deposited his cheque in a new account. A weekly transfer of one hundred and fifty dollars was now covering his board and costs. I was thankful for it, and the new chair was soft on his bones.

  ‘Sophie’s dad’s coming,’ I said.

  ‘Is he now?’

  We looked at each other, eyebrows raised.

  ‘What for?’ he asked.

  ‘To see her and pick up his things.’

  ‘So what’s the story? Is he staying?’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Here,’ he said.

  ‘Why would he? No.’

  The yellow climbing rose that ran along the edge of the veranda needed pruning again, long stems had sprouted outward and many roses had shrivelled into brown whiskery buttons. If my secateurs were handy, I would tidy them up as something to do. I needed a distraction – I was nervous and didn’t want this intrusion. Yet I was no better than Sophie, waiting.

  She was not the only one who had gone to trouble for the occasion. I had washed and blow-dried my hair and put on my best jeans. I had ironed a shirt – the blue one Nick might remember because we’d bought it together. But I had caught myself yearning for what was long-gone between us, and put on a regular white shirt with a pale-blue cardigan. My eyes looked browner because of the barely visible liner and mascara I had applied, and my lips were smudged pink from the lipstick I had put on, and wiped off.

  ‘I’m having a cuppa, want one?’ I asked.

  ‘Whiskey and a tablet.’

  ‘You’re not supposed to drink with them.’

  ‘Who cares?’

  ‘I do.’

  ‘Don’t.’

  I was unscrewing the cap off the Jack Daniels when a vibration crossed the cattle grid. I paused to look out the back, but the car had stopped midway down the driveway. Nick was here. I opened the fridge and grabbed the milk and walked back to the bench. I watched my fingers squeeze the teabag and drop it into the sink. I put the milk back in the fridge. Then with both hands full, and the Tramal in my pocket, I walked towards the voices on the veranda.

  Nick was introducing himself to Charlie, and Sophie was staring at Nick.

  When I pushed the flywire door open with my foot and stepped out, Nick took the mug and glass off me.

  The camellias and rhododendrons at the end of the garden were a force of reds, mauves and pinks. The grass needed mowing and the azaleas
and daphne along the path to the roses were beautiful and overgrown. The trees went deep into the garden and across to the orchard and the sun filtered through the climbing rose where Nick stood.

  He smiled and there he was, old charming Nick, flirting without even trying. He had changed – was thinner and harder, muscle toned, and the creases on his face were deeper. He looked older. His hair was shorter than I had ever seen, now with tinges of grey in his sideburns.

  ‘What would you like to drink?’ I asked him.

  ‘Got a beer?’

  And so I got him a beer, water for Sophie, a plate of macaroons, and two dining chairs. When we were all settled, I handed Charlie his tablet and he drank it down with a long mouthful of whiskey. Nick glanced at me. So I told him Charlie had been the previous owner and he had stayed on. ‘It’s fantastic having Charlie’s experience and knowledge in the orchard.’

  And while that was going on, Sophie sat on her straight-backed dining chair and stared timidly at her father, who seemed more interested in the property and asking questions about blueberries than in her.

  Enrico entered the garden from the orchard and when he saw us, he stopped and gave a gummy grin. Dressed in his bright baggy clothes, with his hair bundled up in the orange scarf, he was a living scarecrow.

  ‘This is a party?’ he said.

  I struggled to come up with an answer, confused, but Enrico continued, pointing. ‘Sophie has her special dress on and her hair is very pretty today.’ Nick turned to her then and she blushed and looked across at me, asking silently for help.

  ‘How about you take Dad to see your chooks?’

  She was off the chair and beside Nick in an instant, waiting as he sculled the last of his beer. When he stood, she reached out her hand and he took it, and together they stepped off the veranda and walked around the side of the house.

  While Sophie was showing Nick her bedroom, I cleaned out the cutlery drawer, and emptied the bin and relined it. I rinsed the coffee machine drip tray, and swept the floor. And all the while I could hear Sophie’s soft child’s voice and the deep murmur of his, floating out of her door and down the hallway to me. Then Nick was singing, an old song from when she was a toddler, ‘Itsy Bitsy Spider’. I stood poised, holding the broom, waiting for Sophie’s laughter when he tickled her. Then it came, and he sang it again.