The Three of Us

by Kim Lock

  But Elsie wasn’t sure she was entirely comfortable with the newest development in her daughter’s life.

  ‘It’s not that I don’t trust her, of course not,’ Elsie was saying, the window rolled down a crack to let the wind freshen the inside of the car. ‘And I really do like him. You know that.’

  ‘It sounds like you don’t,’ Aida said from the back seat.

  ‘I’m surprised, is all,’ Elsie said.

  Aida sat forward, her head and shoulders appearing between the two front seats. ‘I’m not. They’ve been together for a long time now. Way longer than the other guys she’s gone out with. She’s not interested in anyone else. Plus, she’s finished uni, and she’s got a good job at the clinic, so why not live together?’

  Elsie looked into the rear-vision mirror mounted outside the passenger door and saw Joseph’s ute following a safe distance behind. She tried to make out the dark outline of their two heads through the windscreen, but the car was too far away.

  ‘Why indeed,’ she echoed.

  *

  Thomas pulled off the road onto a rusty-coloured strip of dirt that ran alongside the river. Elsie rolled the window down and breathed in the fresh tang of warm eucalyptus and cool muddy water.

  Beneath a high midday sun the river was a broad glistening stretch of blue-grey, pressing back the dusty scrub crowding its flanks. At the far bank a pillowy clump of willows sighed into the water. Pelicans skimmed across the water, balanced on enormous spread wings.

  The car rolled past a handful of other boats, lined up nose-in to the bank like animals feeding. They passed a large, modern houseboat, a couple of smaller vessels, and then Arthur cried, ‘There it is!’

  Sitting languid on the rippled surface of the Murray River was their home for the next four nights: an eight-berth floating house named Be-Haven.

  ‘Woah, it’s huge!’ Arthur burst from the car almost before Thomas had brought it to a halt. Elsie got out and stood with her arms crossed, gazing down the length of the river. Aida’s door thudded, and then she was alongside her, lighting a cigarette. They watched a pair of ducks trail a clutch of peeping ducklings into the reeds, dragging their bobbing babies behind as though on invisible strings. Elsie heard the quiet rumble of another engine and looked over as Joseph’s ute pulled off the road and juddered along the dirt track. Aida exhaled a plume of smoke.

  The owner of the houseboat appeared, offering enthusiastic greetings, and Thomas and Arthur followed him along the gangplank and aboard the boat. Elsie unpacked the car while Aida finished her cigarette.

  Millie, wearing a baggy Coca-Cola t-shirt tucked into stonewash denim jeans, strolled up and surveyed the boat. She said, ‘Bloody hell, it’s big.’

  Aida said, ‘Not as big as your hair,’ and Elsie laughed so hard she dropped the esky.

  ‘I got it, let me help you.’ Joseph’s voice came from behind Elsie. She stood up and watched as he bent down to pick up the esky. He hauled it to his chest and smiled at her. Joseph Baker was that unremarkable height that is neither tall nor especially short, with the effortless, unassuming musculature of someone who works outdoors all day. He had wavy blond hair that he kept short and practical, allowing himself the luxury of a thick, dark blond moustache. Wide face, wide forehead and neat ears tucked back; he had the smiling air of the perpetually cheerful, and it wasn’t an act. That was one of the reasons Elsie liked him so – he was always happy, seemingly unflappable. It complemented Millie’s more impulsive, mercurial nature.

  Elsie gave Joseph a prim smile and thanked him. As she watched him carry the esky along the gangplank with Millie following behind, exclaiming over the rooftop deck, she felt Aida watching her.

  ‘What?’ she said.

  Aida grinned and shrugged. ‘Nothing much. It’s just now you’re looking at him like he’s a fox outside the hen house.’

  ‘I am not,’ Elsie snapped.

  Aida slung an arm about her shoulder. ‘Come on, old Mum. Let’s go check out this boat. Four days crammed together in that thing and you’re bound to feel better about their living arrangements.’

  Be-Haven was a rectangular shaped vessel whose deck sat above the surface of the water. At the rear of the boat was a step down onto a swimming platform, and overhead was a rooftop deck that ran the length of the boat. Inside, the front of the boat was an open-plan kitchen and living room surrounded by windows that brought in the river and its landscape, with four small double bedrooms in the back. Its fixtures were practical, sturdy and modern enough. It wasn’t sumptuous, but it was clean, airy and quiet and when Thomas, sitting at the helm mounted in the front corner of the living room, took the boat out onto the water and they – what, sailed? Steamed? Drove? Elsie would have to learn the lingo – onto the river, Elsie loosened her grip on her misgivings about her daughter moving into a house with a man to whom she was not married.

  *

  They motored upriver for three hours. The houseboat was a floating brick, burring slick and slow through the opaque river. Overhead the sky yawned pale blue with white smears; the river carved a path of teeming life between red cliffs and flat expanses of creaking, ticking scrub. Elsie, Aida and Millie sat on the rooftop deck and watched the river roll away beneath them. Joseph was inside, keeping Thomas company at the helm; Elsie knew he was biding his time and hoping for a chance at driving. (Skippering? Captaining? Boating language really did escape her.)

  They passed a stand of dead gum trees, silver-white trunks soaring up from the water. The trees were ancient victims, marooned as the river rolled out into a tributary over their roots. In what remained of their branches a flock of sulphur-crested cockatoos perched and chattered.

  ‘It is ridiculously peaceful,’ Millie said. Her chair was pushed back from the table and her feet rested up on the railing that surrounded the deck. She had tucked a headband over her hair in an attempt to keep her permed frizz out of her face in the breeze.

  Elsie took the leisure of the moment as an opportunity. She said, ‘So will Sally and Emma miss you at the flat?’

  ‘Nah.’ Millie tipped her face to the sun. ‘It was always a bit cramped there, anyway.’

  Elsie remembered being secretly pleased that Millie hadn’t had to go all the way to Adelaide for her degree. Since the Agricultural College had opened a few years ago, she was able to stay and study in Gawler. Millie had, however, moved out of home and into a shared flat not long after returning from her trip and starting college – a place that frankly, Elsie thought, the fewer stories she heard about the better. Car races, piss-ups in paddocks, young men baring their buttocks from cars at . . . well, other cars. Still, Elsie wondered now, she had no idea what on earth Millie planned to do with a Bachelor’s Degree in Applied Science of Agriculture. It was ironic that Millie would choose to study something that Elsie, growing up, had essentially done everything she could to ignore and eventually escape from: farming animals, farming lands, farming and goddamn farms.

  Millie went on, ‘Besides, now that we’ve graduated, Sal’s planning to move to Victoria for work, and I think Emma’s going to marry her fella soon enough.’

  ‘Oh,’ Elsie said, casually, ‘so Emma’s getting married?’

  Millie shrugged at the same time as Elsie heard a soft cough from Aida.

  ‘And you’re sure you and Joseph can afford the rent? It’s a much bigger place. And there’s only the two of you.’

  Millie smiled. ‘I know that. And yes, we can. I’m working full time now, don’t forget.’

  ‘And have you been busy at the clinic?’ Aida broke in.

  ‘Flat out,’ Millie said. ‘Last week we had five horses with sand colic. Five. And I went out with Matt to AI over two hundred head of dairy cattle –’

  ‘So are you and Joseph planning on getting married?’ Elsie cut in.

  Millie looked at her sharply. ‘No, why?’

  Elsie said, �
��I thought . . . with you moving in together . . .’

  ‘It’s 1988, Ma,’ she said, ‘not 1958. Why –’ she pushed a fluffy curl away from her face ‘– are you worried about my soul?’

  Elsie glanced across the table at Aida, whose face was unreadable, backlit by a blazing late-afternoon sun.

  ‘Well,’ Elsie said, ‘I’m not exactly saying that . . .’

  ‘Don’t you like Joseph?’

  ‘Of course I do, he’s a lovely young man.’ The boat throbbed dully beneath them. ‘I don’t know. I suppose I expected differently, that’s all. You live at home, then maybe you have a transition period until you meet your future spouse – like you did, while you were at college – then you get married, then you move in together.’

  ‘Absolutely,’ Aida said. ‘And no one ever deviates from that doctrine. Like, I don’t know, getting pregnant out of wedlock and being squirrelled away from your family, your baby adopted out, and falling in love with a married woman and living with her and her husband and their kids for decades. Imagine something like that, huh?’

  ‘Ay,’ she said gently, ‘you know I’m not –’

  Aida said, ‘I know. This isn’t about me. It’s about you.’

  ‘No, it’s about Millie.’

  Her daughter laughed. ‘It really isn’t, Mum. I’m fine; I’m happy. Ay’s happy for me. The only one having the vapours over me living with Joseph is you.’

  Elsie’s jaw sagged, and she looked between the two of them. Millie’s face was pursed in a wry half-smile, Aida was looking at her warily, distant. Part of her wanted to apologise but another, self-defensive part of her grew angry at that feeling of regret. Frustrated, she shook her head, as though trying to dislodge the crummy, crumbly thoughts.

  ‘I know I sound horrible,’ she said. ‘I didn’t know I was this traditional until you said you were going to live together, and I realised there wouldn’t be a wedding and a honeymoon to see you both off on, first.’

  ‘I’m confident you’ll get on board with it,’ Millie said.

  ‘I wanted to look for bridal dress patterns.’

  ‘I look idiotic in lace.’

  ‘I wanted to paint “Just Married” on the back of your car.’

  ‘What a shame.’

  ‘Maybe when you have a daughter of your own, you’ll understand.’

  ‘Else,’ Aida broke in, and now there was a severity to her tone, ‘I don’t think Millie’s ruling anything out –’

  ‘Actually,’ Millie said, ‘Joseph has already proposed to me, twice, and if you must know I said no. Both times.’

  Chug-a-chug-a-chug-a went the boat; an eagle screeched forlornly from the sky.

  Aida said, ‘That’s news.’

  ‘He’s proposed to you?’ Elsie grabbed at her blouse buttons. ‘And you said no?’

  Millie sighed. It was a long, patient exhalation. ‘Mum, no offence, I know you and Dad are married and you love it, but I’m not terribly enamoured of the concept. What about all those unhappy couples, stuck together because they’re terrified of the stigma of divorce? And what about women stuck with arseholes they can’t leave because their priest says so? And, you know,’ she took her feet from the railing, one at a time, ‘people who reckon marriage is the only thing that makes you a proper adult is the reason Aida went through the bullshit she did. Sorry, Ay.’

  Aida held up her hands. ‘Hey, don’t hold back.’

  Elsie didn’t think it was the right time to be perturbed about Millie’s choice of language.

  ‘If someone wants to get married, then go right ahead. That’s great. For them. But I’m not . . .’ she shrugged. ‘It’s not something I’ve ever dreamed about. White dresses and flowers and cake and all that? It’s not me.’

  Elsie looked at Aida and said, ‘Our daughter’s a women’s libber.’

  Millie laughed. ‘And proud of it.’

  They went quiet, looking out over the unfolding water. Aida lit a cigarette, shifting her chair so the smoke would blow upwind. They were rounding a long, lazy bend in the river and the boat had drifted towards the willows. A man in a tiny boat zipped past, outboard motor zinging like an oversized mosquito. The man lifted his hand; the three waved back.

  ‘I guess that’s that,’ Elsie said. Sunset was only an hour or so away; she wondered if Thomas would find somewhere to stop soon.

  *

  Despite how quickly the evening chilled as the sun dropped away, they decided to eat tea on the rooftop deck. After finding a grassy bank to nose the boat up to, Arthur had sloshed ashore, barefoot, his pants rolled up, and tied the mooring ropes around two sturdy gums. Aida had donned her hiking boots and disappeared into the bush for forty-five minutes, and when she returned, Thomas, retired from his skipper duties for the day, cooked sausages on the gas-ring grill and Elsie and Aida carried Tupperware tubs of potato salad and coleslaw up the stairs.

  The sun folded into the treetops in a blowsy shimmer of pinks. The grill sizzled and smoke wafted as galahs yawped and the river licked at its muddy banks. Joseph opened six stubbies of beer and roused them all in a toast, and their voices carried out over the water.

  The houseboat was Thomas’s idea. Elsie and Aida, even the kids, had tried to talk Thomas into having a big party to celebrate his fiftieth birthday. Invite all your colleagues, Elsie said. Invite the rellies and your old school mates, Aida said. Put on a bath full of booze, Arthur said. But Thomas had been insistent: he wanted only his family, and he wanted somewhere they could be free to be themselves. He’d heard about houseboat rental from a customer in the shop and within a few days it was decided: in honour of completing his fifth decade on the planet, Be-Haven for the six of them for four nights it would be.

  ‘Happy birthday, Thomas,’ Joseph finished. ‘Hip, hip, hooray!’

  Six bottles of beer were lifted and they all cheered. Elsie folded a sausage into a slice of bread, added a spoonful of coleslaw and watched Joseph as she ate. He appeared so comfortable, unrestrained in the way he laughed with his whole body, the way he wiped tomato sauce from his lip with the side of his hand without pausing in conversation. And clearly, he was contented enough to readily agree to spend four nights on a boat with his in-laws. Well, technically not in-law, Elsie thought.

  The sky darkened and they lit a couple of gas lamps, until the mosquitoes began to swarm and feast despite everyone’s best efforts with the Rid and they retreated inside. Arthur fished around in a cupboard beneath the bench seat at the window and came out with a tattered-looking Monopoly box. Within ninety minutes, Millie had cleaned them all out with a hotel smugly lazing on Park Lane and the first yawns began. In the contagious manner of yawning, the weariness spread and Arthur was the first off to bed: he was excited to be spending his first night on a boat and Elsie suspected he would read and fiddle about in his room for a couple of hours before falling asleep. He was almost eighteen now, but Elsie couldn’t help but kiss the top of his head and remind him to try to get some sleep. He smelled of beer and musty, oily hair. Where had her baby boy gone?

  So it transpired that Elsie sat with Joseph at the small table in the living room. The lamp whooshed as it gave out its yellow light and the windows that brought the river inside during the daylight were black, the river outside disappeared as though it no longer existed.

  ‘I’m glad Thomas talked us into this,’ Elsie said.

  ‘Millie told me he wasn’t interested in a big party,’ Joseph replied. Silently Elsie smothered amusement at the way the lamplight caught the blonde filaments in his moustache.

  ‘No, he wasn’t,’ she said. ‘Thomas has never been one for big parties – likes to keep it simple and quiet.’

  He nodded. ‘I can understand that. Plus, I guess it’s easier to keep it quiet, right? Just close family.’

  Elsie studied him. Although it made Elsie nervous, gave her a slightly motion-sick feeli
ng, once Millie had grown out of her teen years and understood more of the nuances of their dynamic and their reasons for discretion, she had allowed herself to trust Millie’s judgement. It wouldn’t be possible that Millie would tell someone unless she thought very highly of them. And looking at this young man across the table from her now, Elsie knew that her daughter thought very highly of Joseph Baker indeed.

  ‘You have a great family,’ he said, and it didn’t feel like a cliché or a platitude. It was as though he truly meant it, a statement of a fact, like one would genuinely comment on beautiful weather.

  ‘That’s kind of you to say. And of course I agree.’

  ‘I hear Millie told you about my thwarted proposals.’

  Elsie was grateful for the dim lamplight, hoping it would hide the warmth that sprung into her cheeks. ‘I must admit I don’t know many men who could handle two rejections and stick around.’

  ‘What can I say?’ He laughed. ‘Ring or not, I’d follow Millie anywhere.’

  They were quiet for a time. Elsie was considering heading off to bed, when Joseph spoke up again.

  ‘Mrs Mullet, has Millie told you about my family?’

  ‘Let me see,’ Elsie said. ‘Your parents emigrated from England before you were born; your father’s in construction.’

  ‘Ten-pound Poms.’ He smiled. ‘That’s the basics. Did she tell you about my uncle?’