But old Jack never forgot—Jack Gray never forgot anything. Which reminded her, she had promised to take him over some apricot jam. That would be the last of it this summer as there would be no apricots left on the tree after this storm passed. Giving up on her daily meditation, she performed her usual ritual, imagining white light creating a protective cocoon around her entire body. Feeling more peaceful, she went into the kitchen and found Jack’s jam. She’d take it over to him later; he didn’t like being disturbed too early.
They’d been neighbours for over forty years. The day she and Frank moved in was her twenty-first birthday. Frank had picked her up like a baby and carried her over the threshold. She recalled the intensity of their lovemaking as he softly dropped her onto the bed and the thrill of realising they could make as much noise as they wanted, and they did. They’d been married two years but that was their first time alone. The deposit was saved by living with Edna, Frank’s widowed mum. She had learnt a lot from Edna but she’d counted the days and the pound notes till they could buy their own home. Frank earned more money than most by working underground—danger money really; he worked at the stope, cutting into the face of the ore body. Machine mining was a strong man’s job. Frank had huge arms from the digging and he was proud of his skills. Which made it all the more shocking for her when his body wasted from the lung disease and it was her and Jack who carried Frank over the threshold, after his naps under the apricot tree.
Jack lived alone except for a succession of dogs. The last one, Kelly, was a red cloud kelpie. Jack was sentimental and openly cried every time he lost a mate, human or animal. Until Jack retired ten years ago, his dog had accompanied him to work. While Jack tarred the roads for the council, the dog would sit patiently in Jack’s sky-blue Consul parked in the shade outside the council yards; back for crib breaks, Jack would fill a battered old hubcap with water and let the dog out for a drink and a run around.
Now they were both alone. ‘No more dogs’, he told her, after losing Kelly.
She stared out the door at the thick red curtain drawing across the sky. Although it had been nine years she still expected Frank to walk in the back door, steel crib box in hand yelling out ‘Aggie, where are you, Aggie I’m home,’ even though they both knew she would never be far away. ‘I’ve run away with a kiltie’ was her stock reply and they would laugh as they wrapped their arms around each other. It had been like that the thirty or more years they’d shared. Never a night apart and they had never gone to sleep on an argument—sage advice from her Irish grandmother the night before their wedding. They never had children though they’d tried hard enough and after a while she began working as a nursing assistant at the local hospital but she was always home before Frank knocked off.
She stopped when he fell ill and the only work she did now was reading tea-leaves. Well, not exactly work. Frank hadn’t really approved of her doing readings for strangers but he’d respected her gift and as long as they weren’t there when he came home it hadn’t been a problem. On her Mondays off, she’d do three readings at home for a small donation, half of which she always gave to charity, usually her local church benevolent fund. Now she was busier than ever. People from all walks of life rang her up, finding her through word of mouth because, of course, she never went looking for them. She had learnt to read the tea-leaves from her grandmother. It wasn’t the only gift inherited from Nanna MacKinnon—her ‘gift of the gab’, as her mother called it, had also skipped a generation and landed on her. She loved company, and reading teacups provided her with plenty of that.
Although nothing would ever make up for the loss of Frank’s.
Her spirit guide had forewarned her several months before, but she was unprepared for the overwhelming grief of an empty bed and her empty arms. She knew something was wrong when his winter cough lingered on through the summer but you can’t work underground without your ‘ticket’—your clean bill of health—and he had that from the mine’s doctor, so she’d pushed away her concerns. After they found his cancer Frank only lived five months. She couldn’t go back to nursing after that. A light within her had dimmed and for a while she was no company for anyone.
Except for old Jack. He came over every day with some excuse—could he have a loan of a cup of sugar, borrow the colander, give her some grapes off his pergola, have a cup of tea—until it became a daily ritual that she looked forward to and they took turns now. It helped her come back to herself—that and seeing Frank at the end of her bed four months after he died, looking tall and strong, dressed in a fine suit. She felt his love wash over her and knew then it was time to get on with things.
Which reminded her—she needed to check who was coming for a tea-leaf reading today. She reached up for the little book she kept on the shelf above the yellow kitchen bench; two regulars and a new one, with a first name only—Lori. She felt her body tingle. It was always like that with the new ones. She looked out the window and hoped the storm wouldn’t keep them away.
CHAPTER THREE
Aimee peered at the blue proformas and white sheets of instructions stuck on the wall of the long, narrow duty office—how to complete a housing application, who to contact for adoption inquiries, where to send court documents, which shops take vouchers. It had been a busy few weeks of induction since her arrival in Kalgoorlie. She straightened up the forms and voucher books on the desk, lining them up neatly between the phone and the clean sheet of paper newly inserted in the green leather corners of the blotting folder.
‘A clean sheet,’ she said softly, running her hands over the thick paper. ‘Like my new life.’
A knock on the open door startled her.
Lori stood leaning against it, grinning.
‘Are you all ready, then? Ten minutes to opening time. Now are you sure you know everything?’ she teased.
‘Nick off, Lori! Or I’m not coming to your soiree tonight.’ She grinned back. ‘I’m nervous enough as it is. Honestly, I’ve never had to get my head around so many forms before. And please God, don’t let there be any indigent burials—Patrick didn’t get around to those.’
Lori laughed. ‘Don’t worry. We only have a few each year. It’s only when someone doesn’t have the means to bury their family. Anyway, I came to wish you luck. If there’s anything I can help you with, ring me.’
‘Thanks Lori, I’m really grateful for all your help.’
Over the past few weeks, she had spent part of every working day with Lori trying to get a handle on procedures and finding out who was who, both in the town and in the office. Lori was a local, third generation—her curly black hair, staccato speech and gesticulating all clues to her Italian heritage. They’d liked each other instantly. They were around the same age and soon discovered they both loved swimming. Lori had taken her on a tour of the town last weekend, followed by four hours at the local pool, half swimming, half sunbaking on the grandstand. Lori had laughed at Aimee’s full-piece bathers despite having to pull up her own bikini bottom every time she dived off the springboard.
Aimee had laughed it off. She’d been seventeen the last time she wore a bikini. It was blue with tiny pink and yellow flowers, the underwire creating soft-skinned mounds whose beauty caught her breath. She had to keep going back to look at herself in the full-length mirror in her mother’s bedroom. She left home the next year, went up north to Perth to do uni.
There were no more bikinis.
Lori had invited her home for dinner where she’d met her youngest sister, Sophia, a nursing aide at the local hospital. The three of them ate huge bowls of spaghetti and drank two bottles of Riccadonna while playing Fleetwood Mac way too loud. It was the most fun she’d had since the night after the hockey finals last year when she and Lee got drunk down at Freo, eating fish and chips from Kailis Brothers down on the wharf, watching the fat blood-red sun melt into the Indian Ocean and singing Rod Stewart’s ‘I Am Sailing’ so loud an old fisherman on the boards below told them to shut up.
‘You are still coming ton
ight?’ Lori said, interrupting her thoughts.
‘Can I bring a plate or anything?’
‘No. Just yourself and two dollars to have your teacup read.’
She had no idea what she was letting herself in for but last weekend, after the second bottle of Riccadonna, she’d happily agreed to participate. Between mouthfuls of spaghetti, Lori had reeled off psychic predictions from a tea-leaf reader called Aggie, her words coming faster and faster as she read from a sheet of scribbled notes. All she could remember was something about Lori having someone new coming into her life (which Lori insisted was her) and something about watching her back at work (which Lori thought might be Maureen). Now Lori was hosting a tea-leaf reading night.
‘Should be fun, eh?’ laughed Lori. ‘There’s six of us all up. You and me, my next-door neighbour Joan and my three sisters. They’re all looking forward to meeting you. Sophia’s told them all about you.’ Lori looked up at the duty room clock. ‘Oh, shit, it’s five to nine. Got to get organised. I’m doing the minutes upstairs for Adoption’s staff meeting and it starts at nine. Catch ya later.’
She felt her stomach knot as she realised her first appointment would soon be here. She’d been on duty before, eight years ago as a new graduate in a city office but it was nothing like this. There were a dozen other social workers then to call on and six weeks orientation. She’d handed out food vouchers for poverty and homelessness; everything else was referred to specialist sections. Three years was enough.
The past two years she’d spent working with a cash-strapped community agency fighting for a better deal for battlers ousted from their boarding houses down in Fremantle, south of Perth, because of new developments going up to host the America’s Cup yacht race next year. For the first time in 132 years, the local papers had bragged, the race would be defended by the Royal Perth Yacht Club not the New York Yacht Club, thanks to renowned entrepreneur Alan Bond winning it off the Yanks in ’83.
That’s how she’d met Lee Cohen.
Lee had provided legal services pro bono when the agency challenged the evictions. They worked together for a year before she moved in. Lee’s previous housemate, Tim, had accepted a job in the new Labor government and moved to an inner city apartment on the edge of Kings Park, in Perth. They’d laughed later when Tim’s boss turned out to be her father. Lee lived just south of Perth in an old weatherboard house with a front verandah overlooking the ocean. They’d walked through each other’s lives on that verandah, sitting on wicker chairs, feet up on the railing, the welcome breeze of the Fremantle Doctor cooling their toes and the wine warming their friendship.
She jumped as the phone rang.
‘Your first appointment’s here, Aimee. Mr Paul Steele and his wife. It’s an IPTAAS claim.’
‘Thanks, Hayley. I’ll be out in a minute.’
Flicking through the forms she found the blue one titled ‘Isolated Patients Travel Assistance and Accommodation’. She’d never done one before, no need to in Perth. The specialist health services were all there. But not here in the bush. The past month had been a culture shock; she’d already rung her mother twice hoping her stories of families living in dusty gullies on the outskirts of town would get through to her father, have him use his influence to address the lack of suitable accommodation. ‘We need a different model of housing,’ Patrick told her, when she asked what could be done.
She took a deep breath and strode out of the office, into the already packed waiting room next door. Each wall shouted welfare messages at its occupants, muffled where poster corners sprang free of unsticky tape. She looked around the windowless room, cheered up by a single light, a large white orb suspended on a long black cord, and gently called out for her first appointment. She scanned the expectant faces.
‘Mr and Mrs Steele, please.’
Kerry looked up at the woman standing in the doorway. Young to be a welfare officer, she thought, admiring the woman’s dark, high ponytail as it swung from side to side. Her own thin, blonde hair had never been long enough to put up; it took forever to grow and looked better short. She used to tease it on top, with a full fringe, and liked it when Paul came back from Vietnam and reckoned she looked like the singer, Little Pattie. He’d seen her in concert over there. Kerry hadn’t changed her style in over ten years, except for a moment of madness a few years ago when, listening to her friend Rhonda, she got a perm and a caftan to wear to the mine’s Christmas social. She’d looked like her grandmother, it took weeks for the perm to drop and Paul hated it. She ended up having it cut out and it took a year to grow back to normal. Between that and believing Rhonda that she looked good in a caftan she’d never taken fashion advice again. She could laugh about it now.
She remembered the first time she came here with Paul—she was the one who’d felt young. Everyone else in the little room at the top of the stairs had grey hair. She remembered the date; the night before she’d made a wish and a secret promise as she blew out the candles on the twenty-first birthday cake her mum had baked and spent all day icing. Wishes come true. So be careful what you wish for, her mum always said.
‘Mr and Mrs Steele?’
She jumped up in response to Paul tugging her arm. They followed the woman into the office next door and sat down where she indicated, side by side, their backs against the wall.
‘Hello, I’m Aimee McCartney, the duty officer.’ The young woman smiled gently, extending her hand to Paul. He carefully shook it. ‘How can I help you?’
Paul turned to look at her.
Kerry was always good at organising things. He loved that about her, she knew. Their wedding, the war service loan, buying the house. They all happened within two years of his return from Vietnam. If there was a form to be read, Paul didn’t want to know about it. He happily signed whatever she told him to. He trusted her. She’d sort it out. Her thoughts raced.
Sorted, aborted, thwarted.
Paul’s hand pressed softly on her bouncing knee. She took a deep breath, forced her leg to be still and leant forward. ‘My husband has to go to Perth, Aimee, for medical treatment. I have a referral here from Dr Robinson,’ she said.
She handed over the sealed envelope, closely watching Aimee’s face, seeking out her eyes as she read the words exposing their lives. Aimee looked up at her. Kerry wasn’t prepared for the kindness she found there. It caught her breath. The eyes looking back held no veil; they saw her and for a moment she felt naked. Her eyes welled up. She blinked several times then coughed. Paul looked at her nervously then back at Aimee.
‘I’m sorry to hear about your illness, Mr Steele.’
‘Aw, no worries. A trip to Perth’ll fix it. Good job they have this IPTAAS thing though. Not cheap, travel.’
She locked eyes with Aimee again. This time she couldn’t keep the tears away; she was grateful that Paul was still looking at Aimee. She quickly wiped the tears with the back of her hand.
‘Will you both be travelling? There’s provision for an escort.’
‘No,’ she answered quickly, ‘we’ve an eleven-year-old daughter and I work three days a week at the library. If Paul has to go again I’ll have more notice and can make arrangements.’
‘I don’t reckon. Once should do it, eh?’ Paul looked around at her and smiled.
She managed a smile back. She watched Aimee fill out the forms and responded to her requests for answers qualifying Paul for a return train trip to Perth, a taxi voucher to the hospital to see the specialist and twenty dollars cash for incidentals. As they got up to go, she was surprised when Aimee reached out to shake her hand too. Paul was already halfway out the door. She’d never shaken hands with a woman before. Aimee’s hand was soft and warm, her handshake firm. Aimee looked directly at her. This time she looked away; her thoughts bouncing she hurried after Paul.
Rushing out of the reception area, she failed to see the woman with an armful of files, struggling down the stairs. They collided as they both stepped into the foyer. Manila folders flew past her head. Paul, standi
ng in the entrance, holding open the glass swinging doors, let in a gust of wind that picked up loose file notes and danced them back up the stairs.
‘I’m so sorry,’ she blurted, and grabbed at a sheet of paper as it blew past her face. Then fearful someone’s life might be written on it, she dropped it.
The woman in front of her fell about laughing. ‘No, no, it’s okay, Mrs Steele. I should have looked where I was going. I’m sorry, Mr Steele, but would you mind closing the door,’ she called out, before scrambling around on all fours, gathering the scattered files.
She looked again at the laughing figure on the floor. She remembered her now.
Paul let go the glass door and stepped in to help. ‘Hello, Lori, how’s it goin’. How’s your dad?’ he asked, bending down to pick up several folders. ‘Haven’t seen him since he retired. How’s the old squeezebox? Still pushin’ out a tune, I bet.’ Paul piled his collection on top of Lori’s.
‘Come on Paul, we need to go,’ Kerry urged, walking towards the door.
When to tell, when to tell, when to tell.
Oh, why hadn’t she listened to those grey-haired women.
CHAPTER FOUR
Lori looked around the tiny office then up at the round wooden clock on the wall—a quarter past five. Time to go home. She filed the last of the papers, locked the filing cabinet and picked up a handful of keys from the adoption officer’s tidy desk. A posy of flowers in a crystal vase sat neatly positioned between a silver-framed photo of the adoption officer, Carol Hinkley, and her husband, David, and a jagged lump of amethyst. She smiled at the laughing couple. Unlike her desk, Carol rarely looked neat. Her silver-grey hair never managed to remain in the loose bun on top of her head, and her flowing skirts and floaty tops rarely matched—leftovers from her hippy days, Lori’s mother said. The Hinkleys were their neighbours and she had grown up with their daughter Marnie, who’d recently moved away. David, a carpenter, was Mr Fix-it in their street, never out of his overalls and always willing to lend a hand.
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