Diamonds in the Mud and Other Stories

by Joy Dettman

  ‘I’ll drop him off then come straight back and have some lunch, Poll. That fog isn’t lifting. Rotten weather to be bringing people up here for a funeral.’

  The old man’s chest stills and his aging offspring look at him, then at each other, hope in their lifted chins. But in the park the seesaw squeaks and the old man’s lungs wheeze, take in air.

  Polly walks to the fence, sees the fog shrouded silhouettes of the duo standing on the seesaw keeping the plank steady with the backwards and forwards rhythm of their feet.

  ‘Go and play somewhere else. Go and play on the swings,’ she calls to them. ‘You’ll make yourselves sick with all this jiggling.’

  Bone grating against bone, Herb’s hips walk him to her side, his hand again fondling the soft leather cover of his little black book. He wants to make those phone calls and get it done. He needs that operation, wants his mobility back, wants to drive up to Queensland where it’s warm, maybe take young Poll with him for company. He needs a smoke too, and that he can have. He lights one, leans a while, dreams of Queensland and warmth. A few more minutes of sitting in a cold car won’t do the old bugger any harm.

  ‘Who are you talking to, Poll?’

  ‘Those children. They’ve been playing on that seesaw all morning.’

  ‘There’s no one there. It’s too bloody cold for kids to be out there today. You’re seeing things, girl.’

  The children laugh, stare at her, the dark one holding a finger to her lips. ‘Shush.’ Perhaps she is older than Polly had previously thought. Such an odd little face.

  ‘You should be at school,’ she calls.

  They don’t reply, but sing on.

  See saw, open the door,

  Here we go faster and faster.

  Who can say, who will win today,

  And which one will have a new master.

  The hands of the clock have turned a full circle. There are five minutes left to midnight. Only one small globe sheds its light in a room unaccustomed to light. Herb drove his father to three hospitals then had to bring him home. No beds at the hospital for pensioners. Bloody hospitals. Too busy practising their computer and robot surgery to worry about old buggers dying.

  They’ve put him in the spare room, plenty of spare rooms in this house. Next door, three heaters work overtime drying out his old room. The vinyl hospital mattress has stood up to a thousand minor floods and some major scrubbings; they moved it to his new bed. His colour isn’t good, but he’s still getting a breath in every minute or so, sitting propped high on dry pillows, wearing his colourful beanie. Down the hall in the laundry, the dryer works on. It’s had a long hard day of drying, hasn’t stopped since the first load of towels. It has dried sheets, blankets, now it’s working on wet pillows. They’re fibre filled and seem to be drying well – as his room is drying well – apart from the carpet.

  They got their story worked out, worked it out for the doctor, who called in around five. Said he’d had a major accident, made a terrible mess – it was either rip up that carpet or scrub it. He knows this family well. He swallowed their lie.

  Herb sits turning the pages of the newspaper. Polly is still counting stitches, listening to the squeal of that seesaw, moving slowly now, keeping time with the old man’s reflex gasps for life.

  Click-click, click-click. She knits a row between his breaths, knitting fast, praying he won’t draw the next. The doctor told them it would be over before midnight. It’s almost midnight and they’re still waiting. Polly has finished the front of that little sweater and started on the back.

  ‘He’s ninety-eight, Herb.’

  Click-click.

  ‘He’s had a good life, Poll.’

  Click-click.

  ‘He should have died when he had that pneumonia two years ago. Me and Moni thought he was a goner.’ That’s when they’d opened the will, found out he’d left the lot to the RSL. ‘He should’ve croaked that time he fell and broke his hip – or when he had his first stroke.’

  ‘That was fifteen years ago, Herb.’

  ‘Yeah. I was only fifty-five, still working then. Nancy was alive and well. We still had our youngest living at home. Christ. It only seems like yesterday, Poll. A man might have done a lot if he’d been free of the old bugger back then.’

  ‘I might have got married if he’d died then, Herb. I was only thirty-five. Remember Alan Cooper, how he was going to Tasmania and he wanted me to go with him?’

  ‘He was a nice bloke, Poll. You should have gone with him.’

  ‘I might have had my own children now to knit for . . . ’

  ‘You might have. You should have.’

  Polly sighs. ‘It will be nice to see everyone again. Do you think they’ll bring little Pollyanna up for the funeral?’

  ‘I reckon they will, Poll. I’m hoping they do. I haven’t seen them for six months. That drive down there with my hips the way they are is getting too bloody long.’

  ‘I wonder if Bill and his wife will come down?’

  ‘It’s a longer drive from Queensland.’

  ‘Yes. Remember when Father had his stroke? They all came to be at his deathbed. I had most of them staying here and the house was so full and happy.’

  ‘I remember. For three days we sat around his hospital bed, then Arthur keels over outside while he’s having a smoke. Dead of a heart attack in front of a bloody hospital. He was only two years older than you, Poll. Then Janette went. Then Louise. Then Norm – and they say poor old Robert is on his last legs, and him two years younger than me.’

  ‘Louise went when he had his pneumonia, didn’t she?’ Stitches fly from needle to needle. ‘Janette went on his ninetieth birthday. Arthur when he had that stroke –’ She stops knitting, stares at Herb, her eyes wide, her mouth round. And she’s on her feet.

  ‘He’s reabsorbing us, Herb.’

  ‘Sit down, Poll.’

  ‘No. He gave us life, now he’s taking us back, one by one!’ Polly walks to the door, her knitting in her hands, the wool spinning, bouncing behind her. ‘It’s them. The children. They’re waiting for him to reabsorb you, Herb.’

  ‘You’re losing your marbles, Poll. Your brains are getting as tangled as that bloody wool. Sit down, girl, and I’ll make you a cup of tea.’

  ‘I knew I knew them. When I saw them this morning, I knew I’d seen them somewhere. They were playing marbles in the hospital corridor the night Arthur died.’

  ‘You’re raving – not that I blame you, he’d drive anyone around the twist, but there are no kids out there. It’s damn near midnight, black as pitch, and the fog is thick enough to cut with a knife.’

  ‘They were playing cards in the waiting room when he had pneumonia and they’re standing out there now waiting for you. Don’t you worry, Herb, I’ll fix them. I’ll hose them.’

  ‘You’re tangling your wool. Come back here!’

  But she’s gone, out that door and down the passage, three shades of blue trailing behind her as she steps out into the garden and the cold dank night.

  The hose isn’t where she usually leaves it. She feels for it with her feet. Can’t see anything, can’t see where she’s going, but she sees the seesaw clearly, sees the misty shape of the children, hears their song.

  ‘Go away. Get out of here,’ she yells.

  Their rhythm increases, their voices grow louder.

  ‘You’re not taking Herb, so get back to where you belong.’ She looks around, seeking that hose. Her knitting in her hand, two lengths of wool lead from the back door to the fence. One ball, the dark blue, has followed her. It’s soiled, dampened by the wet lawn. She picks it up, aims it accurately at the one in glistening white.

  The player’s concentration momentarily broken, the narrow plank wobbles. Arms spread wide, the child teeters, falls, and the seesaw stills.

  ‘You lose, Jes! You lose.’

  ‘It wasn’t my fault, Luce. She hit me with something.’

  ‘And you fell off the seesaw.’ Jes clambers back onto the plan
k, but Luce has lost interest. ‘Call your pick-up crew. I’m going.’

  ‘I’m not taking him.’

  ‘You won him fair and square. Enjoy.’

  ‘She hit me. It wasn’t fair, I said.’

  ‘There’s nothing in the rule book that says it’s got to be fair. You fell off first, so go get your booby prize.’

  ‘I’ll give you two of anything you want. You can pick anything I’ve got due in tonight – if you take him too.’

  ‘You haven’t got anything I want. I told you at dawn that I needed a refrigeration mechanic, and you wouldn’t give him up.’ Luce is eager to leave but Jes follows, arguing his case.

  ‘He was a lay preacher, for God’s sake. I’ll give you the next two on my list, and throw in an air conditioning expert due in next week. I promise. Please, Luce. We wrote the rules of the game, so we can change the rules. Right?’

  ‘Wrong. He’s yours.’

  ‘I’ll toss you for him then.’

  ‘Tossing coins is gambling, you said this morning, an offshoot of one of the seven deadly sins,’ Luce says.

  ‘Well you tempted me into doing it. Heads I take him, tails he’s yours.’

  Luce removes an ancient coin from her pocket and tosses it high. It glows red in the gloom, then falls at Jes’s feet. It’s tails.

  ‘You lose, Luce.’

  They walk through the mist to the window where they peer in at the old man. His chest rises and falls, an old hand moves on the coverlet.

  ‘He’s not dead yet,’ Luce says. ‘It’s almost midnight.’

  Every year for fifteen years, the Flinders name has been cropping up on their pick-up lists. He’s well past his use-by date.

  They don’t see poor Polly, prone on the lawn. Not until Jes skips off to redirect his clean-up crew to the next job does he see who they are collecting. She’s sprawled headlong in the grass.

  ‘Oh, holy shit. He’s gone and done it again,’ Jes squeals. ‘It’s that same old switcheroo. That old life force suckaroo, Luce. Death by metal knitting needle, in through the eye and a direct hit to the brain. Lethal Weapon, 3.5.’

  ‘Well, that changes everything. I can’t take her downstairs. What am I supposed to do with a martyr?’

  ‘Start a knitting circle,’ Jes laughs, then with a wave of his hand, he skips off into the mist, singing in a voice that would charm the angels, ‘Little Polly Flinders, sits among the cinders, making her pretty little clothes –’

  Inside that house, the clock strikes midnight. The old man opens his eyes and rises from his pillows. ‘I’m peeing,’ he whines. ‘I’m peeing me bed, Herb.’

  Like a Lady

  I’d gone to see an old bloke about a dog; his kelpie bitch had a litter of six and I needed a good dog. There were black ones and red – I was thinking black, thinking male, but while I squatted there, watching that bundle of pups playing, one of them waddles over to check me out. She sniffs at my hand, then sits on my boot, studying me, her little head cocked to the side.

  ‘I’ll take her,’ I grin, scooping up a red female with a white bib. ‘I reckon you chose me, didn’t you, pooch?’

  The old bloke reaches for my pup, takes her and lets her lick his face. Then he looks at me, shakes his head. ‘Pick another one, son,’ he says. ‘This one is . . . she’s family.’

  I stand, step back. Having seen her, I want only her. Maybe if I offer an extra fifty. He looks as if he could use it. His shack is ancient and it smells of dog, and he looks older than his shack, looks as if he’s got a thousand tales to tell and no one left to tell them to. I want that pup, so I reach across, give her a scratch on the belly.

  ‘Family?’ I say. ‘Is that right, old-timer?’

  ‘It’s right all right. Sit down,’ he says. ‘The world’s in too much of a hurry to get to a worse place than where it’s already at. Different when I was a lad.’ The pup is sitting on his hand, chewing at his shirt buttons. ‘Me and my brother Jack – he’s gone now – they’re all gone now. Any rate, back in thirty-one, me and Jack and the old man had took a mob of sheep down to Mortlake. We was on our way home when the old man’s horse stuck his foot down a rabbit hole and threw him, broke my old man’s leg in two places. We cart him off to the hospital, and before they take him away, he gives Jack the cheque he got paid, plus five bob. “Take this home to your mother, lads,” he says. “Tell her I’ll get home when I can.”’

  ‘We had two old nags, one for riding and one to pull the wagon, we had an old dog, and the fearlessness of youth, so off we head for home. We’re about five mile outside of Ballarat when this red kelpie bitch starts slinking along behind us. She was a nice looking dog, shy like, but she had good eyes, like this little girl. She was whip smart too. We knew someone would be missing her, so Jack tried to hunt her off. She stayed well back, but kept coming after us. When we camped that night, she camped ten feet off, just laying there, head on her paws, sort of watching us eat.

  ‘We hadn’t thought much about tucker when we left the town, but we had tea and water and a bit of bread and jam, which was a better tea than many we’d had on the road.

  ‘My old man and lady were battlers, always struggling for a crust. Me and Jack was their oldest, thirteen and fifteen at the time, and there were five more at home, just as hungry as us, so we were gunna get that cheque and that five bob home to Mum or bust doing it. Five bob was a fortune back in those times, you know. Now you can’t buy a beer unless you’ve got six of them.

  ‘Any rate, come the next morning and the rains set in. We harness up the nags and head off, taking turns driving or riding, that red kelpie still tracking us. She tracked us all that day. And Christ, me and Jack were dog lovers from way back. By this stage we’re thirty-odd miles out of Ballarat, and not a soul in the world bar us, so I offer her a bit of bread. She licks me hand, her eyes sort of saying, thank you very kindly, much appreciated. Then she takes her bread away and eats it like a lady.

  ‘The next morning we share what’s left of the bread with her and our dog, then we all head off into the rain, and haven’t gone more than a mile when two coppers turn up in a car.

  ‘“Where did ya get that red dog?” the old copper says.

  ‘“She followed us,” Jack says. “She’s been following us since a few miles out of Ballarat.”

  ‘“Where’d you get your rig? Get it a few miles out of Ballarat too?” The coppers are both looking at the horses, checking out the old wagon.

  ‘“It’s our old man’s,” Jack says. He’s doing all the talking, him being the oldest. “We took a mob of sheep down to Mortlake, then the old man broke his leg, so we’re going home to Mum,” he says.

  ‘“You’re not going nowhere,” the old copper says. “You’re coming along with us while we do a bit of checking up on your story.”

  ‘“What about the horses? What about me dogs?”

  ‘“You only got one dog. The other one is evidence,” the old bugger says.

  ‘Any rate, they tried to take the little kelpie, but she kept backing off, showed them her teeth, then she turned tail and went bush. Rain was bucketing down and the coppers were getting wet, so they tell us to drive our rig to a property a mile or two back. We’re used to doing as we was told, so we did it. The property owner says he’ll look after our dog, if he’s tied, so we chain him to the wagon, let the horses out in a paddock, and off we go for a ride in the copper’s car.

  ‘First time me and Jack ever rode in a car, so we was like kids at the fair, until the old bugger locked us in a cell. After a bit we didn’t mind that too much either. It was dry and they give us this meal of corned beef sandwiches and mugs of tea, then a couple of scones with thick plum jam on them. Best scones I ever ate, they were. I never forgot them. Anyways, we settle down on the beds, one each we had, and we slept and waited to see what was gunna happen to us next.

  ‘They fed us again that night, a proper meal with potatoes, gravy and meat, and plenty of it, and this bloody great big bowl of plum jam roly-poly and cu
stard which I’d never tasted the likes of before – or since. Come morning and they’re at it again, big bowls of porridge and toast too, plum jam and tea. Me and Jack had never had it so good. To tell you the truth, we didn’t know there was that much flamin’ food left in the world.

  ‘Well, around ten that morning, we’re sitting there, rubbing our hands and wondering if they’re serving morning tea, when the old copper comes in and lets us out.

  ‘“On your way,” he says.

  ‘“Why did you lock us up?” Jack asks.

  ‘“Get going before I change me bloody mind,” he says.

  ‘“How we gunna get going? Our rig’s thirty mile out.”

  ‘“The best way you can, I s’pose,” he says.

  ‘We start walking. We’re six or eight mile out when this horse and buggy comes up behind us and stops. We climbed up, and he turns out to be one of them blokes who never stop talking, and maybe the reason he picked us up was to have someone to talk at, but we were pleased to be sitting, so we listened and said “yeah” from time to time.

  ‘So, after a few miles he gets around to telling us how an old bloke got himself murdered down near the five mile bridge, and how this morning they’d found his rig, and the bloke and his missus who had done the murdering. He told us about the missing red kelpie too, and how it would probably end up a sheep killer – told us a lot of stuff before he dropped us off, still five miles short of the property where we’d left our rig.

  ‘It’s late before we get there, and they’re all in the kitchen, eating dinner, which we could smell from halfway down the track. We were planning to thank the owner very much, hitch up our horses and get back on the road, except the big bastard who’s chewing on a rabbit’s spine isn’t going to give up our horses, is he?

  ‘“You owe me money for your dog and your horse feed, boy,” he says to Jack as he wipes gravy from his whiskers.

  ‘“The copper told us to leave them here.”

  ‘“You don’t pay me, I keep your horses.” He stuffs half a spud in his mouth, talks and chews. “You get yourself in trouble with the law, then don’t you come looking to me for handouts.”