‘Pikelets!’ Clover said. Mum handed her a big knob of butter, and she grasped it in her hand, curling her fingers around it so little curves of yellow oozed between her fingers.
‘Pop that in the frying pan, my love.’ Mum held Clover – who had a very serious expression on her face – above the stovetop.
After Clover let the blob drop into the pan, Mum put her on the floor and she ran straight at me for a cuddle. ‘We making pikelets! Cos you’ve been at work all day.’
‘Gross, you’re all greasy.’ I held my hands out, trying to ward her off.
She grabbed at the front of my legs, a kind of hug maybe, then dashed out the back door. Craps. I poked at the butter smears. Oh well. There comes a time when you have to wash your jeans.
Mum started flipping the little pancakes, all golden brown. She was concentrating really hard, and each time she flipped one she poked at it gently with the egg flipper, like she was nudging a small creature to check if it was alive. She was wearing her voluminous apron that made her look like an eccentric old-timey woman. It had smears of flour all down the front. But her phone stuck out of the breast pocket, spoiling the effect a little.
When I was little all the mums made pikelets after school, but I hadn’t had them in ages.
‘How was today?’ she asked.
‘It was okay,’ I said slowly, coming forwards into the kitchen so I could lean on the island bench. Then I stepped on something, something squishy. Lifting my foot, it was a greasy knob of butter. Using just the big toe of my other foot, I pinned the toe of my sock to the floor and pulled my foot out, like a snake shedding its skin. ‘They still don’t really get me to do anything.’
‘Get much study done?’
‘The latest pack arrived. And we’ve got a group chat thing tomorrow.’ I slid onto one of the tall stools, put my head on the counter and groaned.
‘You’ve got the brains to do anything you want. I have faith in you. Turn it around, my girl.’
‘But I just don’t know what I want to do.’
‘You don’t have to know right now. Give it time.’
‘I do! I do have to know. We’ll have to put in our uni applications soon and what if I railroad myself into doing something I hate?’
‘I thought you didn’t want to go to uni.’
‘But you said I should cover all my bases!’
It wasn’t a conversation that had anywhere to go. Mum stretched her arms up in a surrender. I knew I was bordering on shrill.
I shoved three pikelets into my mouth at once.
When I wasn’t at the historical society, I pretended to study. I was taking English, legal studies, history (revolutions and Australian history) and literature – the distance ed people said languages could be hard, so I dropped German. I tapped out a few essays and read most of what I was meant to read.
While autumn rumbled by, I also read The Pursuit of Love. I adored it. The children of Alconleigh – a big, rambling, shabby estate in the English countryside – were completely bonkers and spent hours squirrelled away in the heated linen closet (the Hons’ cupboard) talking about all manner of subjects – taboo and not.
How I longed for a Hons’ cupboard to take refuge in during these ever-shorter days – a hidey-hole where I could gather with my siblings and cousins and talk of shoes and ships and sealing wax, of sex and drugs and rock ’n’ roll. Alas, as adorable as Clover was, she was not the appropriate kind of sister – yet. She was good at cuddling and kissing and saying funny things without meaning to.
Instead I settled for a patch behind the big couch in the lounge room, where one might lie lengthways, parallel to the wall, and eat Granny Smith apples while reading for at least two hours straight without being discovered. I didn’t do so much of the homework, though, and I could tell my mother was concerned I wasn’t studying enough or helping enough and she thought that it was all going to fall apart.
Mum would eventually interrupt me. ‘Can you let the chooks out?’
‘In a minute.’
‘Want to help Clover clean out Ears’s hutch?’
‘Do I have to?’
Then, ‘Why don’t you go for a bike ride?’
‘I don’t feel like it.’
Or, ‘Give me a hand in the garden, Addiekins.’
‘Do I have to? I’m studying.’
‘You’re not. You’re reading.’
‘Still learning.’
‘Poppycock.’
‘Poppycock,’ Clover parroted, and sat on my back. ‘Giddy-up!’
I couldn’t help but laugh.
I wandered through town and watched Emyvale shut up shop for the evening. As I began to head homeward, I texted Mia to catch up on news. She had been so helpful and packed all of the things from my room at school into bags and boxes for Gran and Grandad to collect, so I didn’t have to go. It would have been good to see her, but better not to have to see the boarding house.
I leaned against the wall outside the bakery so I could concentrate. The plastic strips slapped against each other as people came and went.
Your mum’s bf in town yet?
Yup. Is touring Aus for few months so going to be here a bit.
U like him?
He’s cool. Like really cool.
Cooler than you.
I laughed out loud. For sures.
Just then the plastic strips parted again and a tall girl in a school uniform burst through, holding a loaf of bread.
‘Hi.’ I smiled an unintentional grin, borne of surprise and excitement.
‘Hey,’ she said, with a polite, kinda cold, smile. I wondered if the warm, kind Jen of our childhood was still under there or if only this new, cold Jen remained.
‘Are you heading home now?’ I asked, and feeling awkward, added, ‘Maybe I could walk with you for a bit.’
She put the bread in her schoolbag and pulled a surf brand hoodie on over the top of her dress. ‘Yeah, okay. If you want to.’
Was that a breath I’d been holding?
We trudged along the side of the road, the grass starting to encroach on the bitumen in this place that had never heard of a kerb. The route took us past our old primary school and as we approached I meandered off the street and clambered over the low fence.
‘Come on a nostalgia trip with me,’ I urged Jen.
She dropped her schoolbag in the grass, jumped the fence easily and there we were. There, among the mishmash of buildings where I spent six long years of noisy play-lunches and cool, quiet hours in the library. Emyvale Primary School was tiny, had always been. There had been about seventy kids when I was there – apparently up to near one hundred now.
We stood on the slope above the oval. ‘It all looks pretty much the same, doesn’t it?’ Jenny said.
‘I only remember running around like a headless chook, like, all the time.’
She smiled. ‘My mum still talks about the grass stains. “Jennifer, if you ruin one more pair of school shorts!”’ It wasn’t the greatest impression of her mother, but it was enough to make me laugh, make us both laugh. Some ice broke.
I’d been playing footy on that patch of grass when they came to tell me my dad had been in an accident down at the McElliot Farm, and Mrs Looby, the year six teacher, drove me to the hospital. Dad had died at the scene, but they left the telling of that to Mum. Jenny and I didn’t reminisce about this out loud, but I wondered if she was thinking about it too.
‘Remember when Sam broke his collarbone and they banned us from playing British Bulldogs?’ I said instead. We walked up past the library to the adventure playground. ‘Hey, they pulled down the rope swing.’
‘Yeah, and the wobbly bridge thing. Bec McElliot fell off, whacked her head and got concussion.’
We clambered to the top of the climbing frame. ‘Remember when I fell from here and landed on my bac
k and got winded for the first time?’
‘And we all ran around shouting for the teachers. You just lay there blinking.’
‘But I remember the way I bellowed so loudly when my breath finally came back. And how much I cried. I was a bit pathetic.’ I balanced on the top bar and asked as casually and as offhandedly as I could: ‘How’s it at Emyvale High?’
‘Oh, it’s fine. School’s fine.’ Jenny was always practical. Straightforward.
‘Yeah?’
‘But I’m not one of the popular kids so don’t ask me about gossip and stuff.’
I laughed. ‘That’s not important to me.’ As soon as I said it, though, a million gossipy questions sprang to mind. I tried to quash them. Faces and names raced through my mind and I suddenly wanted to know all about all of them. Who they were now, what scandals had rocked the town.
Jenny deftly swung down and landed on her feet in the chip bark. ‘I’m glad it’s coming to an end, of course.’
‘You’re telling me.’
‘Are you going to finish then?’
‘Yes,’ I sighed. ‘We’ve made a deal. I’d like to get a job and save up some money so I can go travelling or something, but they want me to finish year twelve.’
‘But you’re not coming to school?’
‘Nah, I’m doing it by correspondence. It’s set up like some kind of gathering of home schoolers and misfits.’
‘You’re not a misfit,’ she said.
I kind of felt a little offended. I could be a misfit. I mean, I ran away from school – that’s badass. ‘I’m totally a misfit,’ I said. And laughed, to try and give myself an ironic vibe.
‘Oh, of course.’
‘Remember when we explored underneath the hall?’
‘That was my idea!’
‘Bull.’
There was an old hall next door to the school that they used to use for concerts and drama and sports when it rained. Back before my time, before my dad’s time, back in the days when men and women had manners and weren’t supposed to consort with each other unsupervised or without their clothes on or whatever, I think they used it for chaste dances and other social gatherings. If I asked my grandad, he’d know, being the king of knowing heaps of crap about Emyvale.
Anyway, by the time we were in year five the hall was all run-down. Paint peeling, boarded-up windows, the works. It was fascinating, this gorgeous old wooden building; it seemed like such a waste to let it go to ruin.
Memories threw themselves at me as we walked through the hodge-podge of original weatherboard buildings and portable classrooms. I remembered little things we had done as primary kiddies – the skipping competitions, the games of kiss chasey, the secrets told under the half-fallen tree which we’d burrowed out for a cubby, Miss Nell coming to the fence to talk to us kids.
Jenny was a constant in all of these memories. I remembered crying with her on the last day of year six when we realised we wouldn’t be at school together anymore. I vaguely recall asking her if she’d sit for a scholarship too. But I didn’t have any memories of discussing it ever again.
Then I remembered my awkward holidays from St Thomas’s and how quickly we ran out of having things in common. I had felt excluded.
But I knew, right then, that it had been me. I’d alienated myself. I’d ruined everything.
I looked down as I swung my foot back and forth, shifting the earth, scuffing a ditch with my shoe. ‘It’s really nice to be home.’ I lifted my eyes, but her face was half turned away. ‘I have missed you.’ Like I was trying to convince her, and me.
She didn’t turn back, but she smiled. She let out a breath. ‘I’m glad you’re back.’
Jen walked me home. We stepped around the edges of gossip, talked about Daniel Price and Emma Garnett. ‘They’re always in each other’s pockets …’ she said, ‘and mouths.’
I looked over with a grin, but her gaze was at the ground. I did, however, peek a small smile on her lips. ‘How about you?’ I asked. ‘Are you still going out with Sam?’
Jen shook her head and laughed a little. ‘No. Wow, that was ages ago. I have to get good grades this year.’
I was getting a guarded vibe from her, a veneer of protection. ‘There’s no one you like?’
‘No one I like enough.’
I was reading Love in a Cold Climate. I felt a little bit in love with poor old Linda. She couldn’t recognise love when she saw it and she got swept up in the moment and kissed the wrong people.
‘I know the feeling. I don’t have a boyfriend either. I did for a bit, and he was nice, I guess, but just not right for me.’
We shared a knowing, understanding smile, she and I. And I think this is where Jenny and I found some common ground. There was definitely a part of me that ached to fall in love, but I couldn’t help thinking I had a hard little heart.
Late one afternoon I wandered into the kitchen, searching for a delicious snack. I rifled through the fridge and fossicked in the fruit bowl. After popping a handful of almonds in my mouth, I investigated the sourdough culture that Mum kept on the ledge by the sink.
Mum called out from the pantry. ‘Did you finish the Mitford yet?’
I popped my head in. She was sitting on an upturned crate, peeling potatoes.
‘I did! I read them both!’
‘And?’
‘I loved them. I loved them so much.’
Mum’s smile was supremely joyful. ‘Isn’t she the best? You know her sister was friends with Hitler.’
‘No way! But wouldn’t you love to live at Alconleigh?’
‘I don’t know. Would you get along with Uncle Matthew?’
‘He was my favourite!’ I declared defensively.
‘You would hate him if you met him in real life. Condescending, dismissive, rude.’
‘But he played with them, the whole hunting-the-children game. He would have been so much fun. And I would like to sit in the Hons’ cupboard and talk about …’ I faltered.
‘What would you talk about?’
‘Ah, shoes and ships … Just things.’
Mum gestured around with the potato peeler. ‘A Hons’ pantry?’ she suggested. ‘We’ve got it all, baby. Now, what’s on your mind?’
That evening was the monthly meeting of the historical society and something had been weighing on me. I told Mum about it and asked, ‘When Grandad says I’m “encouraged” to attend …?’
‘You go,’ she finished firmly.
I knew it. ‘Well,’ I said, ‘it will be an experience.’
Mum laughed, dumping the potato scraps into the compost bucket, while I took the bowl of naked potatoes, slid them onto the bench and went to get changed.
The night’s theme was ‘Photographs of the Region’. The guests sat in the chairs I’d laid out, three rows of five, and we almost had enough people to fill them. I recognised many of the members as they arrived, most just by sight, or by some vague long-ago connection: the lady who had been a teacher at my primary school; Jenny’s aunty Nolene; the man who used to farm with my dad.
There was tea and coffee before the meeting began. Mrs Dobbs manned the urn, distributed tea bags and swept up any spilled grains of International Roast. I floated about and offered to fetch drinks for the very old, and took dirty cups into the kitchen, where they were left atop the glass display cabinets.
In trying to act grown up and not embarrass Grandad, I felt myself slip into my private schoolgirl self: faultless posture and a smug, smug face. Horror! I hated that it was so easy to wear this disguise again.
As Grandad stood at the front and welcomed everyone, I sat up the back and tried to look appropriately interested, twisting my hands together behind my back just for something to do that wasn’t leaving.
‘Photographs of the Region’ consisted of fifteen minutes of Bill showing the group all the la
test photographs he had discovered in the depths of the filing cabinets and was preparing for a new archive, and maybe a new display. ‘If you know anyone in these photos,’ he said. ‘Give us a shout. We’d like to be able to put some names to these faces from the area’s past …’
I zoned out. I was practically zen – I seriously could not have told you any thoughts I had during this time. I could have been asleep, but I think I had my eyes open. The sound of applause brought me back to life. The presentation part of ‘Photographs of the Region’ was over, apparently. There was to be a discussion. I sat up, rolled my shoulders a few times and blinked. Wake up, wake up, I told myself.
Someone thought that might have been Philip Moss in the tennis photograph. Perhaps from the Emyvale Tennis Tournament in ’44. Someone else thought Philip Moss had been flying Liberators in Darwin in 1944 so it couldn’t possibly have been him. Perhaps it was his younger brother, Richard Moss. They did look very similar, someone else agreed.
Then a slightly younger member of the audience (and by younger I’d have estimated around seventy years old) suggested they make a website. ‘My boy Simon has a website for his earth-moving business,’ he said. ‘It would be marvellous to have Emyvale on the line.’
‘Adelaide could help there,’ suggested Grandad. ‘What do you think, Addie?’
I wanted to be helpful. Surely I could do this. ‘We could make a website,’ I said. ‘There are templates online that are free and apparently really easy to use.’ People nodded and murmured things like: ‘That will be nice’ and ‘So very modern’ and ‘She’s always been a smart one …’
Soon after this the meeting broke up and people filtered out. Mrs Dobbs took off to the kitchen and started washing the dishes. If it had been up to me I would have left them until the next day.
When I suggested this, she shook her head. ‘I don’t want to do them tomorrow,’ she said. ‘It won’t take a moment. Swing on a tea towel.’
‘And I’ll run you home afterwards,’ Grandad said, picking up a mug and beginning to dry it.
As we left, it was really cold. Winter really was starting to butt in on our golden autumn.
Untidy Towns Page 5