‘Thirteen?’
‘Yep.’
She shrugged her shoulders, picked up the bucket and walked off.
I hadn’t been home long when there was a knock at the door. It was the old woman. She had an empty bucket in each hand. A man in a checked flannel shirt, work pants and muddy boots was standing behind her, leaning on the wooden ladder. She introduced him as her husband.
They had come to see my olive tree.
When I opened the side gate and took them into the yard, they smiled with joy as they walked around the tree, admiring the abundance of fruit. I watched from the kitchen window as they worked together. They spoke in Italian, English and, occasionally, something in between. I went out into the yard and lit a smoke. One of the buckets was full. They were busily working away, shaking at the tree like a frenzy of birds. I didn’t want them thinking I was spying, so I pretended to tidy up around the yard. I picked up a broken terracotta pot but didn’t know what to do with it and put it down.
I wandered over to the corner of the yard and stopped outside the garage. In the two years I’d been with Rachel I’d never been inside. I forced the wooden door open. The room was empty except for a piece of furniture sitting in the corner. It was an ancient record player — a ‘three-in-one’.
The old woman called out to me from the yard.
They’d finished picking the fruit from the tree. Her husband, who didn’t say a word, had the ladder slung over his shoulder. He was carrying the fuller bucket of olives in his other hand. She tried explaining the process of washing and preparing the olives to me, only some of which I understood.
She smiled at me as they were leaving.
‘I will come back, a week, maybe two. I have olives for you.’
I stood outside the garage and watched as they walked from the yard. He was a little taller than his wife. Carrying her bucket in one hand she reached up and rested a hand on his shoulder. They rhythmically waddled from side to side as they left.
That night I dragged the record player into the kitchen with the idea of listening to the radio. It would keep me company. The three-in-one was covered in dirt and cobwebs. I cleaned it with a damp cloth. As I wiped its smoked-plastic lid I noticed an album sitting on the turntable. I plugged the player into the wall socket and flicked the switch, half expecting an explosion or an electrical short at the fuse box. Nothing happened. For the next hour or so I tried everything I could to get the radio working, pulling wires out of sockets and checking loose connections, with no success.
While mucking around with the wires I accidentally knocked the arm of the record player. The turntable began turning. It was not until I moved the needle across to the vinyl and heard the crackling notes of the first track that I remembered that my parents had once owned the same album.
I picked up one of the wooden chairs, placed it in front of the record player, sat down and listened as the album spun around. The music saddened me a little. Not particularly because of the words or the melody, but the memory of my parents arm in arm together in my childhood lounge room, a place full of people and the sounds of life.
True to her word, the old woman knocked at the front door a fortnight later. It was a Saturday morning. The jar of olives she nursed in her arms was enormous. I stepped onto the porch.
‘Your husband? Where is he?’
‘Oh, he fell down from ladder. Sore back.’
‘I’m sorry.’
She waved my concern away. ‘Better soon.’
I invited her into the house. She hesitated before following me down the hallway. She looked around the near-empty kitchen, and her eyes settled on the record player and chair in the middle of the room. She was not impressed.
‘The house is empty. You live alone?’
‘Yes. Alone.’
She shook her head. She looked as sad as I felt.
‘You’ — she pointed — ‘enjoy the olives. They bring peace. They bring luck. They bring happiness. Eat.’
Before I was able to comprehend what she had said she turned around and marched out of the house.
I had no idea what to do with the jar. As I didn’t want to offend her I hadn’t told the woman that I didn’t eat olives. I’d always thought they were a little too exotic. I rested my back against the kitchen sink and looked across to the jar. I walked over, bent forward and peered through the glass. There were hundreds of olives in the jar, along with pieces of chilli, peppercorns and delicate flakes of sea salt.
I unscrewed the top of the jar, reached in, took out an olive and rested it on my tongue. It tasted both warm and fresh. I bit into it. The olive held many flavours, but most of all it tasted — not like the sea — of the sea. I ate a second olive, followed by a third.
I quit smoking the next day, and not because I’d taken a pledge to give up. Each time I took a puff on a cigarette I could taste burned rubber in my mouth. I also decided to weed the garden; I stocked the fridge with food. I even picked up a comfortable two-seater couch from the Salvation Army store.
Within a week, just as I was fishing around the bottom of the jar for the last of the olives, the old woman returned with a fresh supply. She told me I looked a lot healthier. ‘More fat,’ she said, laughing, as she grabbed her well-proportioned stomach and jiggled it up and down. ‘Yes, more fat,’ I replied, as I showed her out of the house.
Not long after she left there was another knock at the door. I was surprised to see Rachel standing on the doorstep. She looked different. Her hair had blonde highlights through it, and she had lost weight, a little too much, if you ask me. She was dressed differently too. She wore tight jeans, black leather boots and a T-shirt with bold letters across the front — LIVE FOR THE MOMENT.
Before she could say anything I pointed to the T-shirt.
‘What’s that mean?’
She tugged at the letters. ‘It’s sort of like a Buddhist thing.’
I was surprised. Rachel had been more secular than Richard Dawkins.
‘Have you become a Buddhist?’
‘No. I said like a Buddhist. You know, the idea that what’s happening now is what matters most.’
There was a car parked in front of the house, a late-model sedan. A man was sitting behind the wheel.
‘He with you?’ I nodded in his direction.
There was a nervous twitch in her eye. ‘Yes. That’s Robert from the front office at work. You know him. He’s been fabulous, helping me get resettled. That’s why we’re here. I don’t know if you remember, but I had an old record player in the garage. We saw one just like it at a garage sale last weekend, and Robert thinks it might be worth something. I’m going to auction it on eBay.’
Robert got out of the car. He rested his hands on the roof as he watched me closely. He appeared concerned, like maybe I was going to abuse Rachel. In an attempt to reassure him I smiled and waved. He appeared relieved and waved back.
‘I’m real sorry, Rachel, but I did a clean-up after you went and gave stuff to the Salvos. I gave them the record player. I thought you’d taken everything you wanted. I’ve still got your bed here. Maybe you need that?’
‘No. Just the record player.’
‘Well, if it’s any help I think the van was from the Salvos store down on the highway. Maybe they haven’t sold it?’
‘That’s okay. It was just an idea.’
She looked me up and down. ‘You well? You look like you’ve put on weight.’
‘Yeah, a little. I’m good. Keeping myself busy at work.’
‘At the car park?’
‘Yep. At the car park. It’s always busy. Cars coming and going.’
I waited until they’d driven out of the street before closing the front door. I unscrewed the lid on the fresh jar of olives and scooped a few into a teacup with a large spoon. I sat down in front of the record player and moved the needle to my favourite track. I tapped my foot to the beat and waited for the chorus. When it came I joined in, singing as loudly as I could.
Indigestio
n
PETA MURRAY
She was the childless aunt, and at the children’s parties she was never quite sure where to stand, so, over the years, she had settled for a place in the kitchen. It was so much quieter there, away from the inevitable tears and collisions, and more tears, and the shock of the balloons bursting like random gunfire. They made her jump. In the kitchen she could hide from the small talk and the inane games, from the terrible moment when her own inappropriate gift was opened in front of the entire family. As a reward for her initiative, she became known as the catering aunt. She would arrive just a little bit early, pop her apron on and power up the urn — her sister had one, naturally, for large gatherings — then get the oven warming, and find a large enough pot to heat the pink saveloys through, starting them off in cold water, and easing the flame up under them, so they didn’t burst their skins. There was nothing more unappetising than an exploded saveloy. But when heated correctly, and with toothpicks offered beside them in a small pottery dish, and the brilliant red sauce, they could be quite appealing. There was an art to it.
There were perks, of course, to her title. A hot cup of tea with her sister before the trays were passed round, and if her brother-in-law remembered her, a glass of champagne. And even if they all forgot about her, as they had, it seemed, today, there were other compensations. The hundreds-and-thousands that stuck to her buttery fingers as she plated up biliously cheerful little triangles of bread. The honey joys that she stuffed into each cheek, as she doled out the licorice allsorts. If she kept her head down, she could eat one after another till they melted away. Still more could be slipped into apron pockets, or into her handbag while no one was looking. They would do for later, and they always kept well.
But best of all, as the catering aunt, she was in charge of sausage rolls.
They had always been a weakness. It had started in childhood, with tuckshop lunches on Mondays. A sausage roll and a cream bum. How they’d trembled with laughter, she and her sister, as they scribbled their orders on their brown paper bags in 2B pencil. They never wrote the rude word, but they always had to say it out loud. The cream bum was over-rated, really, just a vehicle for a groove full of whipped cream and jam to probe out and lick from a finger. But a sausage roll? Warm, plump and greasy, the pastry flaked in your mouth, and the meat left a peppery smear on your lips and a coating of fat on your tongue to comfort for hours after.
She could smell them now, which meant they were almost ready. She took up her tongs and her oven mitt, lowered herself gingerly, opened the oven and slid out the rack. There they sat, party-sized, row after row of proud little pillows, irresistible. She popped one into her mouth, for a test, and then another, and then, because there was still room, three more.
Party’s started, has it?
She looked up. Her sister was standing at the door, champagne flute in one hand, pinwheel sandwich in the other, watching. She stood, as elegantly as she could, picked up a single pastry, extended her tongs.
Sausage roll?
Small flakes of spit and dough bounced from her mouth.
Cream bum?
Her mouth was too full of sausage mince to let any sound through, but she laughed, a silent, quivering laugh. Cream bum. Cream bum? Tears brimmed, and her whole body shook with helpless laughter. She waited for her sister to join in.
Oh, for Christ’s sake, Glenda, look at you. You’re the size of a house. Do you think you could leave some party food for the children this year? Or is that just too much to ask?
Her sister swivelled on a heel and left the kitchen.
Honest to god …
The catering aunt popped another sausage roll in her mouth. These days they gave her terrible indigestion. But so did life, for the most part. She found it utterly indigestible. Yet she kept on living, didn’t she? So, she reasoned, there was little point trying to avoid the sausage rolls. They were required to be eaten, as life was required to be lived, and one must simply go on, knowing there would be consequences.
She replaced the rack and turned the heat up to high on the oven, then did the same at the stove. The gas jet flared under the glistening saveloys. They bobbed and bumped against each other in their pale pink soup.
She popped a honey joy in each cheek, picked up her handbag, and sashayed to her car.
Exotic Animal Medicine
FIONA MCFARLANE
The wife was driving on the night they hit Mr Ronald.
‘My first drive since getting married,’ she said.
‘First this, first that,’ said her husband. He looked at her, sitting high in the seat: her hair was flimsy and blonde in the late sun. It was ten-thirty and still light. These were the days for marrying — the long days, and the summer. It hadn’t rained.
‘You’ve got to be thankful for the weather,’ the registrar had said to the husband. The husband was thankful for the weather and for everything else. He carried his shoulders inside a narrow suit and his wife wore a blue dress. They came out of the registry office into the pale summer, and St Mary’s rang the hour.
‘Listen!’ said the wife. ‘Just like we’ve been married in a church.’
It was midday, and because they were in Cambridge, the college bells rang.
Their witnesses — two friends — took photographs. The four of them went to a pub on the river to celebrate among the tourists and the students who’d just finished exams. The tourists pressed around them, clumsy at the bar; the students slipped in and were served first. The bride and groom were rocked from side to side in the crush of people. They cooperated with the crowd, and liquid spilled over their glasses.
They began to drink.
Their friend Peter swayed above their table. He motioned over their heads with his benevolent arms.
‘I suppose I’m best man,’ he said. ‘By default. So, a toast: to David and Sarah. To Sarah and David. I’ll make a statement about love. I’ll say a few words.’
‘You’ve already said more than enough,’ said the other witness, Clare.
‘Not nearly enough,’ said Peter, and sat down. By now it was four in the afternoon, and the June town was keeping quiet. The scent of the roses in the college gardens increased, and the black East Anglian bees responded, hanging lazily above the scent. The lawns maintained their perfect green. The river was laid out straight like a track for trains. David and Sarah and Clare and Peter walked along it to find another pub.
The swans idled on the brown river, the ducks chased punts for food, the geese slid against the wet banks. Tinfoil barbecues were lit on Jesus Green, one by one, and the smoke hung in morose columns above each group, never thick enough to form a cloud. The husband and wife and their friends picked their way among the barbecues. They encountered dogs, friendly and wayward.
‘Stay well today, canines,’ said David. ‘Stay happy and healthy.’
Sarah was on call that night.
‘I’m not worried about them,’ said Sarah. ‘It’s the Queen of Sheba I’m worried about. But he’ll be good.’
(At the surgery, the Queen of Sheba lifted his haunches and lowered his head to stretch his grey back. He walked figure eights in his cage the way a tiger would.)
‘He’d better be good,’ said David.
‘That bloody cat,’ said Sarah, happily.
(The Queen of Sheba sat in his cage and looked out at the ferrets and iguanas. He looked out at the tanks of scorpions and turtles. He settled, sphinx-like, and crossed his paws. The nurse poked her fingers through the grille as she passed Sheba’s cage and Sheba, blinking, ignored them.)
The crowd at the pub seemed to part before the bridal party, and they found an outdoor table, newly abandoned. Their happiness was good luck. Sarah said, ‘Just one more drink. I might have to work.’
‘You might,’ said Peter. ‘And you might not.’
‘Remember, this is your wedding reception,’ said Clare, and she placed her arm around Sarah, coaxing.
Sarah looked up at David. ‘Just one more then,’ she
said.
‘We’ll make it vodkas,’ said Peter.
‘My first vodka as a married woman,’ said Sarah. She sat against David and felt the day carry them towards each other. The hours passed at the pub, and they didn’t think of going home, although this was what they looked forward to: the privacy of their bed against smudged windows, its view of small gardens and the beat of trapped bees against glass that shook as the buses moved by. Their bed was a long way from the colleges and the river, but the bells would still come over the roads and houses, and they would be alone, and married. The day moved them both towards the moment in which they would face each other in bed, utterly familiar, and see that despite their marriage there was no change, and that this was just what they wanted.
Sarah’s phone rang. She knew it would be work, and so did David. He creased his face at her, disbelieving, but found that he wasn’t disappointed. This way he would have her to himself. They would drive in the car, and she would tell him her impressions of the day: the mannerism she had disliked in the registrar — a tendency to blink too often and too hard. He would rest his hand on her warm leg and lean his head back on the seat and watch the way her driving forced her to keep her usually animated hands still. This animation would pass instead into her face, where her eyebrows would knit and rise across her forehead. She would crane forward to look left and right at intersections, as if she needed to see vast distances. Sarah drove as if she were landing an enormous plane full of porcelain children on a mountaintop.
‘What a surprise,’ said Sarah. She placed her phone on the table. ‘The Queen of Sheba needs a catheter.’
Clare said, ‘There must be someone else.’
‘No one else,’ said Sarah, standing now, slightly unsteady on her feet, but graceful. ‘Sheba’s all mine. He’s a friend’s cat.’
‘And does this friend know you got married today?’ asked Clare.
Sarah laughed. No one knew they had been married today.
‘Your wedding night and you have to go stick something up a cat’s dick,’ said Peter.
(Sheba rolled in his cage, snapping at the nurse’s fingers. The pain felt familiar to him, but newly terrible, a hot pressure. He flicked his paws to shake it off, shake it off. He couldn’t.)
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