Diamonds in the Mud and Other Stories

by Joy Dettman

  I’m really looking forward to that flat and, as Wilma says, it will be wonderful living side by side with the natives, shopping where they shop – and actually eating a home-cooked meal for a change, and having a room to myself. She takes sleeping pills every night and she snores. I don’t know how Max puts up with that snore. Maybe they don’t share a room.

  By the way, I’ve sent an overnight bag home. I shouldn’t have packed any summer clothes. It’s very wet and cold here – oh, and speaking of wet, I meant to tell you not to over-water my African violets. Love, Alice.

  Dear George,

  More castles today, in Scotland this time, or on the way back from Scotland. There comes a time when you run out of superlatives and just stand in awe, Wilma said. Which doesn’t mean I’m prepared to stand in awe gazing at every castle ever built. To tell you the truth, I’m getting sick of castles and cathedrals. Save card, Alice.

  Dear George,

  I refuse to argue via mail, and what do you want with your parka? It’s summer over there. And if you hadn’t closed your mind to that microwave for five years, then you’d know how to work it, wouldn’t you? What the hell have you been eating? If you’re reading this, then you’ve got your glasses on, so go and have a look at the damn thing now and read the instruction book! It’s in the bottom kitchen drawer, below the tea-towels.

  We don’t have one at the flat. We don’t have a shower either, or a lift – and we’re on the fourth floor – forty-nine steps up and forty-nine steps down. So much for the posh flat Max booked. I’d hate to see the one that wasn’t posh. The washing machine is in the kitchen, George, and the kitchen is about as wide as our passage. And we were supposed to have two bedrooms but one of them is a walk-in wardrobe with bunk beds in it. Guess who gets to sleep in the wardrobe? Which I must admit is better than sharing a room with her. My God, her snore would wake the dead. I had to buy earplugs.

  I won’t be sorry to get back on that tour bus and get out of London. If it’s not raining, the smog is unbelievable – a sort of misty yellow. Wilma’s asthma is playing up or her lungs are cracking up with all the climbing of stairs.

  She’s out of the bath. Don’t know how she gets in it. Have to go. Love, Alice.

  George,

  This is one of their old pubs. They’re everywhere. Wilma likes old pubs. She’s jiggling the keys, wanting to go out for dinner. She always carries the keys. Our caravan fund paid for half of this flat but I get the walk-in wardrobe and never get to carry the keys, and I do all of the cooking. She prefers to eat at pubs because she drinks like a fish and if I don’t want to go with her, she gets niggly. And the price of things, George! I’m not going to have enough money to last me three more weeks. Alice.

  George,

  You are the most thoughtless, useless, most unreliable fool of a man anyone ever had the misfortune to marry. How can you kill thirty African violets in three weeks? Less than three weeks if your letter took a week to get here. And after you go and kill them, how dare you tell me while I’m on holiday – my first holiday away from you in thirty-five years but, by God, not my last. You are a penny-pinching, pitiable apology for a husband and I rue the day I ever met you, and I don’t care if it was our anniversary yesterday. As Wilma said when I broke down and howled after I read your letter, so many women spend their lives locked into dysfunctional relationships until something jolts them out of their domestic stupor. Well I just woke up, George, and I stopped crying.

  What did you do to them? Did your cat get at them? I told you to keep him out of the sunroom. I trusted you to look after those violets and you probably sprayed them with weedkiller, just to get back at me. A.

  George,

  Catching the ferry today and I’m dying of some virus and I’ll probably be seasick, and I’m sick of it, sick and tired of looking at strangers’ faces, queuing with the multitudes. I want to come home, die in my own bed, and never see another queue, another crumbling castle. You’re probably laughing right now, aren’t you? You’re sitting over there in the sun, your rotten cat on your lap, saying, ‘Serves her right, puss.’ If I die over here, you’ll probably tell her to burn me and send my ashes home in one of her empty cigarette packets – or you’ll let them stick me in an unmarked pauper’s grave. You care more about your mongrel cat than you ever cared about me. Save the card. Alice.

  George,

  Wilma asked me today why I bother sending you these cards. Well, I keep buying them, that’s why, and I’ve got no one else to send them to, that’s why. You never gave me children, and it was never proven that it was my fault. She said that the male is responsible in as many cases as the female. I should have left you like Wilma left her husbands when she got bored with them. Oh no, I was too loyal. I’ve wasted my life being loyal. You’re just a bad habit, George. Alice.

  George,

  Of course plastic containers melt when you put them in the oven. I told you to PUT THEM IN THE BLOODY MICROWAVE, you fool of a man, and how would I know if it will poison you? If you’re reading this, then I suppose you haven’t been poisoned, have you? Though you deserve to be after what you did to my violets.

  I shouldn’t bother telling you this, but I want to tell someone, so it will have to be you. Wilma has taken to her bed with the sulks. We were sitting at a café in Paris having coffee – it cost a fortune, and the coffee wasn’t any good anyway – when this American chap, who is on our tour, sat down with us and said, ‘It looks as if your mom could use an early night tonight.’ Wilma gave me the filthiest look and she hasn’t spoken to me since. I didn’t say it. He said it. Anyway, she does look old, and after four husbands, who wouldn’t look old? And she’s smoking like a chimney and puffing on her asthma inhaler and she’s too fat. Remember how we used to wonder how anyone could eat herself into that shape? Well four weeks of living with her has answered that! You should see what she can put away.

  I’m writing this at the laundromat, doing her washing as well as my own, trying to get on her good side, but my God, George, her underwear would fit a camel, and you should see the size of her bras.

  Are you quite certain you killed all of those violets? If you haven’t thrown them out, then don’t, and don’t give them any more water. They don’t like wet feet. Alice.

  Dear George,

  Note Eiffel tower. It looks like a pile of scaffolding someone forgot to pull down. I almost got crushed to death trying to get into the lift. Just as well Wilma was in front. Mona Lisa at their Louvre is only a little old painting half hidden behind thick glass. I’ve seen better prints of it at the trash and treasure market. I’ve had Paris. No one will speak English and a cup of coffee cost me ten Australian dollars! I’m drinking water, filling up my bottles at the hotel each morning. I’m running out of money.

  You ought to hear Wilma trying to speak French – no one can understand her. To use your own words, George, she’s a promiscuous, overbearing, overfed, interfering, loud-mouthed, sulking bitch of a woman. Anyway, today I told her what you thought of her, and I also told her that you said she should let Max book one more posh tour and one more posh two bedroom flat then hang himself in its walk-in wardrobe, from the top bunk. Save card, love Alice.

  Dear George,

  Pleased to get your letter. Sorry about your cat, but look on the bright side, love. We’ve got nothing to keep us at home now, have we? No violets and no cat. You should have tossed that meal in the bin instead of giving it to him. He’s probably eaten that melted plastic and it twisted around his intestines – or solidified in his stomach. Anyway, no use blaming me for it. I’m not there. And you murdered my violets anyway. Let’s try to look on the bright side. I mean, we could still afford a second-hand caravan. Only a fast trip through Germany, Switzerland and Holland now, then home. Love, Alice.

  Dear George,

  This is a shot of some famous mountain in Switzerland on a sunny day. We didn’t see it. Didn’t see anything. It poured rain for the day we were there. Bus windows foggy today. I can’t see out, and
I’m refusing to get out and get wet again. Save card. Love, Alice.

  Dear George,

  Shot of the Berlin wall before they pulled it down. More castles. I’ve seen enough castles to last me a lifetime. Five more days. Love, A.

  Dear George,

  Not much choice of cards here, it’s either windmills, prostitutes dressed up like dolls in windows, or tulips. I told Big W she should hire herself a window while we’re here. With her experience, she could make a fortune, actually pay for her next trip. Did you know that travel agents get free trips? I didn’t until yesterday, when I heard her telling some woman. Max got her trip for free! That’s why she’s been spending money like water.

  The good news – we haven’t seen a castle today. Maybe Holland was too soggy to hold them – or they built them but they sank. The entire place looks as if it’s likely to sink. It’s a wet green bog. Lucky I brought your parka with me. I haven’t taken it off since I arrived.

  We’re still forced to share a room at night, but we’re no longer speaking. I sit down the back of the bus and she sits up the front. Back to London tonight, two nights in a hotel then off to Bangkok for two nights then home, thank God. Love, Alice XXX.

  Dear George,

  Saw Buckingham Palace again, without the tour this time. Note red bus in foreground. Note very narrow steps to upper level. Guess who got stuck halfway up? Guess who nearly killed herself laughing? Love, Alice. I’ll be home before you get this card.

  FAX

  ATTENTION: GEORGE JONES

  Dear George,

  I’m booked in at the above address, on the 44th floor, and I’m not allowed to leave Bangkok, George. I admit we had words and that I might have threatened to push her, but I didn’t, George. She was leaning over the balcony, looking down at the swimming pool and she always was top heavy. But the people on the next balcony told the police they heard us arguing so they’ve taken my passport. Please get the first plane out. Use the rest of the money from the caravan account and bring that overnight bag I sent home. It’s stinking hot here. Can’t wait to see you. As ever, love, Alice.

  Dan Nation

  At ninety-nine, Granny Jordan was losing her marbles, and no one knew where to find them. This made the grown-ups very angry. They had been talking century party, talking spring, and Aunty May icing the cake, and Uncle Henry coming all the way from Hay with his new wife and some mallee roots.

  ‘Maybe we should tell him,’ they said. ‘No use him coming all that way if she doesn’t know him when he gets here.’ They spent their days tut-tutting, and discussing Granny and Abby Rations, and no one even bothering to look for her marbles. I didn’t know Abby Rations, but there were many relations coming to the party who I didn’t know.

  I searched for those lost marbles though, hoping they might be on the floor in the passage where naggy Nanna would put her foot on one and go for a ride. They weren’t there, but I found the wedding ring that had slipped from Granny’s finger weeks ago. It didn’t make the grown-ups happy. They tossed it in a dish on the windowsill and muttered about the century party and what the doctor had said.

  Everybody who belonged to me lived in that cold brick house at number forty-two Station Street, where I spent the winter of my first memories. Everyone called someone else Mum, until it got to Granny Jordan, who naggy Nanna called Mum. We fitted in, and it wouldn’t be forever, the grown-ups kept saying. We all had to live together because of Costa Living. He was very dear, and he wasn’t coming to the party but Aunty Alice was.

  I slept alone in a green metal cot, in a room filled with many beds. The other occupants of that room rose early and disappeared off to school where I must not follow. My place was in the kitchen with the black stove and the singing kettle – and Granny. It was a dark and cosy place when the winter winds wailed around the chimney and rattled that back door, a smoky place that smelled of hot sultana cakes and fried onions, of roast lamb and Granny’s camphor. She always wore a block of camphor stitched into a little bag hung like a long pendant around her neck.

  She lived in the kitchen, her cane chair claiming a corner close to the stove so she could watch for bad omens in the twisting coils of smoke. She told me tales of black witches and white wolves, told rambling stories about Charlie and when she was a girl – never told me to run away and play, and she wasn’t mean with the Arrowroot biscuits either. In time, I moved my own small stool to her side.

  Granny and I were never invited to sit in the parlour before the log fire. We had no respect for fine vases, and Granny laughed at the grown-ups’ rules – because she had lost her marbles, though she never missed them. The priest was allowed to sit in the parlour, and I sometimes crept in there to hide beneath its big polished table while naggy Nanna and the priest sipped tea from fine china cups and ate sultana cake with a fork. One day they spoke about me.

  ‘She’s Granny reborn, the little minx. That black hair, those wicked black eyes. And those hands –’

  Hah! A blind man could see that Granny’s hair was as white as snow, even her prickly chin whiskers were white. And her hands? They were mallee roots, wound around the twisted handle of her walking stick. I liked that walking stick, and wanted my own when I grew big. It was a handy thing. It could thump Pa, and trip naggy Nanna with its handle; it could scratch our favourite cat’s belly, and walk alongside Granny’s broomstick legs when we escaped via the back door to toddle off about our important business.

  Granny Jordan had her good days and her bad days, the grownups told the doctor when he came to call, and they couldn’t even tell the difference between good and bad. On the days they called good, Granny sat by the stove reading ill omens into every puff of smoke. These were the days she used her walking stick on the ones she named ‘them-in-there’, tossed her broth onto the floor, demanded dry wood for our stove, and cursed the grown-ups until they gave us Arrowroot biscuits to dunk in her tea. Those biscuits tasted better dunked, and when ‘them-in-there’ were not watching, I too learned to dunk, then bite fast before the soggy bit fell into Granny’s cup.

  Them-in-there burned mallee roots and big fat logs in their open fireplace, but they measured mean green sticks into our firebox, until they wanted to cook – then they used the good wood, and when them-in-there went back where they belonged, we opened that oven, propped our feet on the shelves and talked and talked, all toasty and warm while the soles of our shoes cooked.

  ‘I’ve lived too long, lassie. I wish I was dead and roasting in hell right now. Least they’d keep me bleedin’ old joints warm, not like them-in-there, planning their cakes and parties while freezing an old body into an early grave.’

  ‘Does the train go to hell?’

  ‘That’s where they send the sinners to stoke the fires of eternal damnation, lassie, and for all their priests and their prayin’, that’s where them-in-there will end up come judgment day. You mark my words.’

  ‘I like Dan Nation, Granny,’ I admitted, creeping closer to her skirts. To stoke a winter fire until its face was red hot sounded like a fair occupation to me when Granny was having one of her miserable good days.

  We didn’t feel the chill on the days the grown-ups named bad, because Granny and I always found a way of escaping watchful eyes. These were the magic days when Granny’s name was Becky, and I was Katey-me-darlin’. We tried to catch trains, but the man in a uniform wouldn’t let us, so we roamed the neighbourhood, dragging a galvanised bucket behind us because there was scrubbing to be done at Charlie’s house so it would be ready when he came home. I knew he couldn’t really come home, because he was only a photograph on the wall with a mouse moustache but Granny couldn’t remember that on those days. I thought Katey-me-darlin’ was a fine name, so I walked with Granny and searched hard for Charlie’s house wishing that all of her days might be such magic bad days. She was happy then, and her eyes, though searching faraway places for things I could not see, were cheeky black beetles, full up with life and living.

  ‘We don’t wish you was dead and
stoking Dan Nation’s fires today, do we, Granny?’ I chattered as we toddled down unknown streets.

  ‘Ah, me wishing never bought bread to fill your little belly, Katey-me-darlin’, though I done enough of it in me day. Charlie is always telling me, “Wish in one hand, Becky, and spit in the other – you’ll see which fills up first”.’

  We were never lost, although we never knew quite where we were, something them-in-there did not understand. They sent policemen to find us, they trained neighbours to tell tales on us. Someone was always out there waiting to bring us back to our kitchen. Our very finest finder was the red-headed baker, who twice tempted us on board his van with a sticky bun. He and his black pony always took us riding before delivering us home with the bread.

  That winter was slow to wear itself away. Even the grown-ups said they’d never known a longer winter, which was because of the calendar and the crosses they had to make on it every day.

  Then one day came that wasn’t a good day of thumping them-in-there and of tossing her broth, or even a good bad day of wandering. Granny had gone to a place of dreaming and drooling where I couldn’t find her. Still, I stayed close by, wiping her mouth with a handkerchief, as she had once wiped mine.

  The grown-ups watched her, and made crosses on the calendar with a red pencil. They propped Granny with pillows, and made their crosses. They spooned soft boiled egg and tonic into her mouth, they spring-cleaned the parlour, because most of the calendar was red crosses now.