by Sally Piper
‘Maybe I should heat up some baked beans for you.’ Susan put her napkin aside and looked set to get up from the table.
‘Don’t give her baked beans again. They make her fart.’
Jorja flashed green eyes at her brother. ‘They do not. You’re the family stinker.’
‘Now, Jaxon. You know wind’s a normal part of bodily function. It’s where we choose to release it that leads to social problems.’
Jaxon rolled his eyes at his father.
‘And for him it’s, like, everywhere,’ Jorja said.
‘So does Tom.’ Meg nodded her head up and down fast, in cahoots with Jorja.
Tom was quick to defend himself. ‘The gas poisons your blood if you don’t let it out.’
‘And poisons your sister if you do.’ Jaxon accepted a triumphant high-five from Tom.
‘Is there any chance of changing the subject?’ Susan took up her napkin again, held her plate out to Peter and he placed a slice of lamb on it.
Meg obliged. ‘Did Mummy tell you I’m learning the violin, Grandma?’
‘No. She didn’t.’
‘I was leaving it for you to tell Grandma the big news, sweetie.’
‘And I’m learning the trumpet,’ Tom said.
‘Which sounds like a bag of spanners when he gets it going.’
‘Oh, Pete, it does not.’
‘Better than her violin – it sounds like a cat getting neutered.’
‘Now, son, watch your mouth.’ Peter raised an eyebrow at Tom.
‘What’s neutered, Daddy?’
Richard saved Peter from having to answer Meg. ‘Give me an acoustic guitar any day,’ he said, plucking the air.
‘Nup. Percussion.’ Nick played a riff on the table with the index fingers of both hands.
‘I played a mean triangle when I was younger,’ Kath offered. ‘I always timed the ting just right.’
Grace’s favourite instrument was the harp – an erotic instrument, she thought: to see one played well was like watching lovers. That was how Filip had played her body. He embraced her wholly as though she was that grand instrument and she allowed his fingers, encouraged them even, to whisper across her skin.
‘Would one of your Macedonian girls do this?’ It was fear that had prompted the question; fear she was no better than any of the girls Mother had helped stare out of town.
‘Never,’ Filip said, and he guided her hand a little lower.
‘Never?’ Her fear escalated.
‘No. But only because they are not permitted to leave the sight of their parents.’ He laughed then, and she relaxed.
They were lying under their favourite tree, a wide and droopy old willow whose branches swept at the ground like the hem of a long skirt. There was a creek below the tree’s feet but it hadn’t run since the previous winter. Transparent-winged dragonflies and water striders hovered or skated over the stagnant pools. Occasionally a bullfrog broke the surface, snatched at one that lingered too long, then plopped back underwater with a satisfied croak.
Grace propped herself up on one elbow and looked at Filip. She traced a finger along the soft line of his jaw to the small cleft in the centre of his chin. There, she felt the tiny cluster of bristles that hid in that hard-to-shave dip. He ran his hand up and down her back, slowed as he passed the two small raised moles near her shoulder and circled them with a finger in a figure of eight before his hand moved on.
‘Do you ever feel guilty about us?’ she asked.
‘No. Guilt crushes the spirit, where love nourishes it. So let us feel only love.’
‘I feel guilty sometimes.’
‘That is because you have lived always in this small town. Here, guilt is used as power over others.’
‘I don’t have much choice but to live here.’ Grace rolled on to her back and looked up through the mosaic of leaves.
‘There are always choices, but not always enough courage.’
Grace couldn’t see that there were too many choices open to her. Or was Filip right, was it only courage she lacked? Could that be Harvest’s secret in keeping generations trapped in the town – a collective mistrust and fear of anything beyond it?
‘So what brave choices have you made?’ she asked.
Filip turned on his side and faced Grace. ‘To teach in a town where people call me dirty wog behind my back.’
‘I don’t,’ she said, hurt for him.
‘That is because you do not fear things that are different.’ He ran his finger along the V of breast above her bra. ‘Or that give you pleasure.’
He kissed her on the forehead, as Pa had when she was a child.
‘Do not listen if people try to control your life through guilt, Grace. Listen only from here.’ He flattened his hand across her chest to cover her heart. ‘It will show you a better life.’
Afterwards Grace would question whether she should thank or curse Filip for the things she’d learnt under his touch. Much later, when she was married to Des, she often cursed Filip. Partly because she didn’t want to be reminded such touches were beyond her reach, but more because Filip had been proved wrong: sometimes guilt made you act.
‘I prefer the saxophone, myself,’ Peter said. ‘It takes a big fella to get enough um-pah to blow a horn that size.’ He did a phallic thrust of his forearm.
‘Oh, darl,’ Jane squealed.
Susan rolled her eyes.
‘But because you can’t play the saxophone you drive a big flash car instead?’ Nick rocked back on the hind legs of his chair with a satisfied smile.
Peter ignored him. ‘Now, Jorja, are you going to try some of your grandma’s lamb?’ He cut a slice off the diminishing leg, a thick cross-section of fibrous muscle, stabbed it with the carving fork and poked it towards her. It dripped pink onto the tablecloth. ‘Get a whiff of that. Don’t ya just love it?’ He moved the fork backwards and forwards in front of Jorja. She reared back.
‘Dad! Not cool.’ Nick rocked forward on his chair with a thud and pushed his father’s hand away from his cousin.
Peter shrugged and added the slice to Richard’s plate.
‘That’ll probably do me, thanks Peter. Got the coronaries to think of, you know, and it’s all about moderation when it comes to those little fellas.’ Richard tapped his chest with an index finger.
‘If I couldn’t have meat – good meat – I reckon I’d starve,’ Peter said. ‘Coronaries or not.’
‘I’d rather starve,’ Jorja said.
‘Is it the flavour you don’t like or the killing?’ Nick asked.
‘Both. Plus I don’t like the thought of eating anything with a face.’
Jaxon and Tom set up a chorus of distressed baa-ing down the other end of the table.
‘And …’ Jorja scowled at the two boys, ‘I’m bothered about what livestock does to the environment. Not that I’d expect you two cretins to understand anything about that.’
‘Not wind again!’ Peter looked to the ceiling and the fan ruffled his hair.
Jorja’s fringe started to slip.
‘Can everyone, please, just change the subject.’ Susan snapped her napkin out flat and laid it across her lap.
Kath reached over and gripped Jorja’s hand. ‘At least you’re true to your beliefs, Jorja. It’s admirable. Maybe we could all take a lesson from you.’
Grace admired Jorja’s stand as well. For a young voice to remain strong in the midst of what was proving a hostile, meat-eating majority showed real commitment.
‘You know, Peter,’ Grace said. ‘I might just pass on the lamb today too.’ She poked her fork into the slice on her plate and placed it back on the serving platter. ‘There’s plenty of other goodies on the table to keep me alive, and healthy.’ She winked at Jorja, who tried hard to hide her pleasure.
‘Don’t encourage her, Mum. She’ll
tell us she’s going vegan next.’
Grace ignored Susan and thought of Pa instead, of the lambs he’d slaughtered in the barn. She felt his old bones turn in their grave.
‘You know what, Gran. I might join you.’ Nick passed his meat back too.
‘Looks like there’s mutiny in the Meat Works,’ giggled Jane.
‘Great. All the more for me.’ Tom licked his lips.
Peter had sat down, burying the carving fork in the lamb, where it stood upright like Excalibur’s sword, and clattered the knife onto the platter.
‘So is everybody going to hand back their lamb? I needn’t have carved at all!’ He crossed his arms, daring other dissenters.
‘I’m rather partial to roast lamb and I don’t have it often, being on my own, so I’ll keep mine, thanks, Peter. But I’ll eat respectfully afterYC what you’ve had to say, Jorja.’ Ada saluted Jorja with her glass.
‘Thanks, Aunty Ada.’
‘Ditto,’ Kath said, also raising her glass.
‘You other three just aren’t true Bakers.’ Peter took up the carving knife again and used it to hold down the joint as he extracted the fork.
The three dissenters laughed. ‘Maybe that’s where you’re wrong,’ Grace said, ‘maybe we’re more baker than butcher.’ She reached for the basket of dinner rolls, took one and passed it along.
Pulled apart, the roll revealed a soft, white centre. Against all the dark meat on plates around the table the bread looked pure, a symbol of goodness among the blood. Des had used bread to mop up such juices on his plate; it would end up sodden and soiled. Grace tore a small piece from the roll and put it in her mouth. It tasted innocent.
When the bread basket made its way to Susan, she refused it: ‘I’m trying to cut back on the evil white carbs.’ And she passed the basket on to Peter.
Quiet came over the table. It was broken only by Could I please have or Would you mind passing requests and the clatter of serving spoons as people helped themselves to vegetables and sauces. The long wait for the meal meant appetites depleted the piles quickly. Jorja shared her vegetarian gravy with Nick and Grace. She passed it to each without request or show.
Strangely, Grace didn’t miss the colour of meat on her plate. Nor the taste, which sometimes smelt so strongly of earth, grass and grain that she imagined the animal’s last meal still making its way through the fibres as she chewed. She’d always taken meat in small quantities anyway and had cringed at the way the juices soaked into mashed potato, tinging it pink, or bathed lettuce in a dressing of animal fat and blood. As she added the various vegetables to her plate from the bowls that came her way, she imagined again how Pa would be turning in his grave, but she could also see Des’s bony knuckles rapping on his coffin, demanding he be let out to put a stop to her tomfoolery. She smiled at his powerlessness.
‘Joke to share, Grace?’ Richard had taken one of his regular pauses between mouthfuls, knife and fork neatly crossed in a space he’d created on Bev’s fine white china plate – he was the only person Grace had trusted with its care.
Grace looked at her son-in-law, momentarily caught for what to say. She didn’t think Susan and Peter would appreciate their mother smiling at thoughts of their long dead father made powerless by the grave.
‘I was thinking of a patient I had once.’ The man who sprang to mind justified her smile. ‘He was a funny fellow. An old headmaster or government official – I can’t remember exactly which now. Anyway, he took issue with the meals at Moreville.’
‘I can imagine most people taking issue with the meals in a nursing home.’ Richard took up his knife and fork again. ‘The one hospital meal I ever had, when I had the old snip-o, smacked of cheap cuts and mass production.’
‘Well, if you’d had it done under a local anaesthetic like everybody else then you wouldn’t have had to stay in overnight.’
‘Some acts on the body are best experienced subliminally, Susan.’
‘Like to hear you say that on a labour ward.’
‘This man’s issue,’ Grace continued, ‘was more to do with the colour of the foods. For some reason he couldn’t stand green anywhere on his plate. He’d eat the greens if they were served on a side plate, but not if they came out on the main one.’
‘He sounds just like me. I can’t stand greens on my plate either but it doesn’t stop Mum putting them there.’
‘And I’m glad she does, Jaxon,’ Richard said, ‘green foods are nature’s special little powerhouses.’
‘Reckon they’re Devil boogers,’ Jaxon said.
Tom, quick to add visuals, picked up a pea from his plate and placed it inside his left nostril. ‘Beware the Devil booger,’ he growled.
‘Tom – you are such a pig.’ Meg scowled at her brother.
Tom closed his right nostril off with a finger and snorted the pea in his left back onto his plate.
Peter’s laugh was loud, hearty.
‘Well, for this man, peas were a no-no, as were broccoli, cabbage, beans.’
Jaxon’s head looked set to nod off his shoulders.
‘Well, one day cook had made parsley dumplings on top of a braised steak dish.’
‘Braised because they were cheap cuts.’ Richard nodded knowingly round the table.
‘The trouble was you couldn’t really see there was parsley in them until they were cut open. Well, when he did. Nur-rse! he bellowed, fit to wake the dead. Let me remind you of the rules.’
‘Must have been a headmaster,’ Tom said, with some authority.
‘He banged his knife on his plate,’ Grace rapped hers for effect, ‘until I thought it was going to break. All the other residents were watching by this stage, mouths open in a great show of mashed food. No greens on the Governor’s plate, he yelled, and turned the whole lot upside down on the table and stormed out with as much dramatic effect as a walking frame permits.’
Jaxon nudged Tom. ‘I’m gonna try that.’
‘What about green jelly, Grandma, did he eat that?’
Grace laughed. ‘You know, Meg, I think he did.’
‘So it was a control thing,’ Susan said.
‘Psychotropic drugs are my guess.’
‘Or maybe he was just plain angry,’ Kath offered, ‘about where he’d ended up.’
‘Nah – just another old kook if you ask me, like most of them in that place.’
‘That’s not fair, Peter. A lot of them weren’t kooks.’ Many had been forced into Moreville by circumstances other than broken minds.
‘Not as unfair as you having to work at a place like that aged fifty-something.’ Peter reached for the gravy boat and poured more over his meat. He wiped the spout clean with his finger then licked it.
‘Only fifty. And besides, I didn’t have a choice.’
‘I wish I’d been in a position to help you out,’ Peter said.
‘It wasn’t your job to help me. It was mine. And it’s something I wish I’d done sooner.’
The prospect of losing your home is a powerful motivator, Grace had learnt.
Peter took up his wine glass, sat back in his chair and looked at Grace. ‘But it was a miserable place to work. The few times I went there it smelt so bad. People called out all the time. Strapped in chairs. Made me think of POWs.’
‘I admit it was no five-star resort.’
But neither was ageing a five-star experience. Some days when Grace entered the facility, she felt as though a crystal ball was pressed up close to her face, demanding she look into it, closely. The future could be a painful place to spend too much time.
‘He should have provided for you better. It was his job.’
Peter’s comment surprised Grace. It suggested a rub she didn’t know existed.
‘He probably thought he’d be around long enough to do just that.’ Susan rounded on her brother. ‘Dad didn’t have the bene
fit of the big income you have now. Money to throw here and there on trinkets and cars.’ Susan flipped her hand in the air as though tossing gold coins.
At least Peter had something to show for his spending, Grace supposed. Des had thrown his money away on sure bets and hot tips. But Grace decided to be kind.
‘Maybe you’re right, Susan. Maybe that had been his hope.’
Peter shrugged, unsure or unprepared to commit either way. But his face looked troubled as he brooded over the possibilities.
‘And they weren’t all like the man who had a thing about greens. I met lots of nice people too – ones who really appreciated what I did for them. Some even became friends, so it wasn’t all bad. In fact, Peter, a lot of it wasn’t bad at all.’
Peter looked at Grace over his glass, still not convinced.
‘Did you meet any boyfriends, Grandma?’
‘I made lots of friends, Tom, some of them boys.’
‘Ooh, Grand-ma’s got-a boy-friend,’ Meg sing- songed.
‘That’ll be enough, you two!’
There was another rub. This one Grace knew about.
‘Never would’ve said anything like that when I was a kid.’ Peter brought his glass to his mouth. ‘Never would’ve had cause,’ he mumbled into it.
Grace had never expected to find a lover either, long after she was forced to find the job. Not that she’d ever described Jack using such a word. She considered it a term best left for young girls. She’d declared to Ada and Kath, ‘I have a new companion.’
Kath, sharp when it came to matters of the heart, and loins, said, ‘Companion, eh? Does that mean you haven’t slept with him yet, or that you have and he was crap so you plan on sticking with just going to the movies together?’
Grace blushed like a girl, which she supposed answered the first part of Kath’s question. ‘I feel stupid calling him my lover. I’m too old,’ she said.
‘But not too old for the sex?’ Kath’s laugh was rich, dirty.
‘Well, you’re looking better for it.’ Ada had nodded approval. ‘It was getting so I could barely see you side on. You’re looking womanly again.’
And she felt it. She had thought she’d seen the last of that sexy woman, even before Des had died; the one who’d once kissed her way round a man’s body. Neither Grace nor Des had ventured a hand across the chasm that existed in their shared bed for several years. She’d wake in the night sometimes with an ache, but knew Des wasn’t the man she wanted to soothe it. She’d roll away from him and pretend desire no longer existed. It was good to roll into a man again.