I was also in charge of answering the phone. I had thought the phone was part of the exhibit at first. It was a big, clunky old thing – a rotary dial, Mrs Dobbs had explained – and when I answered I would say, ‘Emyvale Historical Society and Museum, (pause), Adelaide speaking.’
The voice on the other end was nearly always slow and frail and by the time they had finished the question – frequently with ‘dear’ and ‘you know what I mean?’ – I had usually forgotten what they were asking.
The first call was like this: all I could catch was a couple of keywords and I felt a little chill of panic. I looked around. In my St Thomas’s public-speaking voice, I said, ‘Just a moment. I will get someone who can help you.’
Then, without waiting for a reply or anything, all in a rush, I said, ‘I’ve just started here. I’m sorry!’ and I gently put the phone down so it wouldn’t crash in their ear (even though they were probably deaf, it might have made their hearing aid shriek).
I went over to Grandad. He was sorting through some files.
‘There’s someone on the phone.’
He looked up at me.
‘I don’t … Can you help them … please?’ I felt bad that he had to get up, but was grateful that he did.
Soon, nothing was new or exciting. Days started blurring into one another, but on one particular day it got to 11.22 and no one had made tea yet.
I was supposed to be writing notes on a book for school, but I couldn’t concentrate, so I just gazed around the room. As Miss Clavel might think at night – something was wrong! Bill was at the computer tapping away with his files. Grandad wasn’t in today. And no one had had a cup of tea.
I tapped my pen on my notebook. Tap, tap, tap, tap. ‘Aren’t you having a cup of tea, Mrs Dobbs?’ I asked.
‘Ooh, that’d be nice,’ she said, as she rested a box on the table and began to rummage through it.
‘Right-o.’ I felt so awkward. I could surely make a cup of tea. It was just tea. I had seen it done many a time. But real teapot tea? Why not a tea bag? It’d be so much easier.
I pushed myself forward and walked across the room and into the kitchen. And why was I thinking, Why can’t you make the tea, Mrs Dobbs, like always? I felt so lazy. Why would I be afraid of making tea?
And so I made the tea. I didn’t think I had done such a bad job and at the very least everyone had their cuppa and a bikkie and when I sat back down a large part of me had this strange sense of achievement. There was some part that felt – I don’t know – more capable?
I hovered the cup near my face and the steam coming from the tea warmed it. It didn’t taste the same; though it didn’t exactly taste bad. Too weak? Too strong? Who knew?
‘Thank you, dear.’
‘It’s not very good. I’m sorry.’
‘It’s fine. Hot and tastes like tea. When you’re brewing, just remember: one scoop for each person, and one for the pot.’ Mrs Dobbs took another sip. ‘For next time.’
Incredibly, there was a little bit of sunshine when I left to go home. It wasn’t real warm-making sun, just limpid winter late-afternoon light. But I stopped in my tracks, stood on the scrappy front lawn and raised my face to the sky.
‘Do ya need a lift home, young Adelaide?’ asked Bill, as he scratched his big belly through the patchy jumper he wore day in, day out.
‘No, I’m fine.’
‘Long as you’re sure …’ he said.
I nodded and waved my hands about. ‘It’s such a gorgeous evening. Thanks, though.’
He nodded back to me, a bunch of times, and headed off to his car, hoiking up his pants as he went. One day they would dig into his armpits. Bill lived out on Old Vale Road. He drove an old red hatchback and lived alone.
I felt sad for him as I watched his car tootle around the corner by the pub. He should go in and have a drink after work, make some friends!
I turned my trusty bike homeward. I took a roundabout way because I was determined to enjoy myself. The tree branches stretched nakedly upwards. The leaves were quietly composting in the grass and in gutters and I revelled in the raw, thick and enveloping country smells. St Thomas’s felt delightfully far away.
Nick had gone to meet his bandmates in Sydney and they were off on tour until sometime in July. I liked him; I liked the way he made my mum laugh. But it was kind of nice to have the place to just us girls again.
Out the front of my house I let my bike fall softly on the grass. I turned a cartwheel on the nature strip. I felt all my vertebrae elongate and click back into place. I turned another and my arm muscles stretched out as my legs went skyward. When I landed both feet at once the spongy grass was soft beneath my boots. I was as relaxed as a rag doll.
There was dirt on my hands and the home lights were on.
On my way into work one day I stopped at the supermarket and when I came back out someone had chained their bike to mine. It was stuck there, with a thick heavy chain looped around both crossbars and around the loading zone signpost – as if Emyvale needed a loading zone. I looked up and down the street, grabbed the handlebars and, when I couldn’t see anyone who appeared to belong to the bike, started shaking it slightly. The chain made a rattling noise, but still no one came running to claim it.
‘Bloody hell,’ I said. I’d have to leave the bike and come back for it after work. This annoyed me a lot. I rattled it some more, and huffed.
‘Careful,’ said a blokey voice.
Bloody Jarrod. I shook the chain again and glared at him.
‘Cool yer jets, Longley,’ he said.
‘Dude, I didn’t even lock mine.’
‘I know – did you want it to get stolen?’
‘Like anyone would steal a bike here.’
He stood over the bikes, but didn’t move to unlock the chain. ‘You’d be surprised,’ he said.
I looked him in the eye and kicked at his bike tyre. ‘Are you going to set my ride free?’
‘Oh, yeah. Sorry. So where are you going?’ he asked.
‘I have to do a few hours at the museum,’ I said.
Blank stare.
‘The local museum? Next to the info centre?’
‘Yeah?’
‘Yeah. Just a bit further on down from here?’ I pointed. ‘Across from the pub?’
‘Oh, yeah. Can I ride with you?’
My stomach did a funny turn. Which just made me feel even weirder. ‘If you want.’
He unlocked my bike and we rode slowly, side-by-side, down the road. Partly on the gravel, partly on the road proper. I couldn’t remember if it was illegal to ride like this.
‘Where’s your car?’ I asked.
‘At home. Got a flat battery, so I’ve put her on the charge.’
It took us all of three minutes to get there. When we pulled up, Jarrod braked late and hard and sprayed up an arc of gravel with his wheel, which clattered through my wheel spokes and pinged off my crossbar, rat-a-tat-tatting across my jeans.
‘Maybe see you later,’ he said.
‘It’s a small town,’ I replied. Then, for some unknowable reason, I saluted him. I instantly regretted it. Feeling stupid, I blurted out, ‘I finish at five.’
He smiled this kind of smile that – for just a teeny, tiny moment – made everything else go blurry.
I turned and walked as quickly as I could into the building. Catching sight of my face in the display case reflection, I blamed my flush on the bike ride, on the blast of historical society museum heat.
He was there when I came out after work, riding in tight circles on the side street.
‘Don’t you have a home to go to?’ I asked.
‘What are you doing now?’
‘I’m going home.’
‘But it’s Friday night.’
He didn’t ask to come over, but we pedalled slowly through town together
, riding in the direction of my place.
‘Have you decided what you’re going to do next year, then?’ he asked.
‘Maybe. Yes. No, I don’t know …’ Going to uni had always been the plan. At first I was going to do medicine, kind of because I wanted to make people better, but more because I loved the idea of cutting them open and looking at their insides. Then my plan became law, or their plan for me became so when we decided humanities were my real strength. ‘We’ meant my teachers, the careers counsellor and occasionally me, usually Grandad too. But there were so many things you could do and now it seemed stupid to narrow it down.
‘I was going to apply for law,’ I said. ‘But I don’t really want to be a lawyer, in a courtroom or doing deals for people or handling divorces or whatever. Politics, maybe, but how do you get into that?’ I was just riffing, riding with one hand and flapping the other about to make my points as dramatically and grandly as possible.
‘You’re so smart, I guess you could do whatever course you want,’ he said.
‘No, I’m not.’
‘Ah, yeah, pretty sure y’are,’ he said. ‘You studying a lot?’
‘Not enough, according to mothers and grandads,’ I said, gritting my teeth. But then I offered, ‘I read a lot.’
‘I’m not really into reading. I’ve never been any good at it.’
That didn’t surprise me, though I could never understand a person who disliked books. ‘Haven’t you?’
‘I’m pretty good at being bad at things.’
‘Like what?’
‘School. Fixing cars. Being a good son.’ He pedalled a little faster and I couldn’t see his face.
Things had taken a turn into the deep, for which I was ill-prepared. ‘Well, what things are you good at?’ I asked. I felt like Pollyanna, but I couldn’t help it. I rode faster to catch up.
‘I dunno.’ He looked over my shoulder, past me. ‘Nothing. No good at maths, can’t spell or remember the periodic table.’
‘Like any of that’s important. What about outside-of-school type stuff? What do you do when you’re not working?’
‘I play games.’ He lifted his hands from the handlebars and mimed using a video game controller, maybe in case I’d think he played hide-and-seek, or Barbies. ‘Help on my grandparents’ farm.’
‘Do you play an instrument?’
He shook his head.
‘Can you run really fast?’
He laughed. ‘Yeah, pretty fast.’
‘Recite poems?’ I suggested with a laugh.
He hauled on his brakes, put his feet on the ground astride the bike and struck a macho pose.
I skidded to a stop, too, and watched him.
He began to bellow the opening lines of ‘The Man from Snowy River’. There was movement at the station, for the word had passed around …
I couldn’t stop watching him, an uncontrollable smile forcing its way onto my face. An odd warm feeling around my chest and stomach area unfurled like a bloom or a smoke cloud.
He recited almost five verses before he trailed off, laughing at himself.
‘Why do you know all that off by heart?’
He shrugged. ‘It was printed on a poster on the wall of one of the classrooms at school.’
Amazing. We stood staring at each other awkwardly for a bit.
‘Good to see the people of Emyvale can leave posh Melbourne people speechless from time to time,’ he said with a laugh.
‘Hey! I’m Emyvale born, remember.’
‘Yeah, yeah.’
‘I am!’
And then, without completely meaning to, like some kind of irrepressible word vomit, something about him opening himself up to me, I started blathering. ‘I feel kinda guilty for letting my friendships here slide. I’ve been thinking so much about the everywhere else, the after all this. I need to think about the right here right now. I know I still need to make amends. I’m rebuilding some bridges.’
Jarrod looked thoughtful for a moment. Then he applied his weight to the pedals and shunted forwards. ‘Make them suspension bridges. They’re a whole lot of fun.’
Of course Mum was in the front garden when we got to my house. ‘Making the most of the last light?’ she called.
‘Mum, this is Jarrod.’ I felt busted for something. Embarrassed. I hated that I felt both of these things, as though all of a sudden things were changed or out of my control.
It was just a bike ride. Just a conversation. Just a poem.
‘I know,’ she said, ‘you duffer.’ And she laughed at me, shaking her head like I was a fool. ‘Hi, Jarrod. Thanks for the extra load of wood the other week.’
The fact they knew each other made me reel just a little.
‘No worries,’ he said.
‘Where’s Clover?’ I interrupted.
‘She’s out the back. Hey, do you think you’d be able to help me with the veggie garden sometime? I’ve been madly pulling the summer things out, but I do need to get organised for the winter.’
‘By herself?’ I asked, trying to insinuate this was a terribly irresponsible thing to do.
‘Have you mulched yet?’ Jarrod was all business.
‘She’s with her pony. No, I haven’t even started! I’ve got a few ideas of things to do differently, though. I’d like to change it up a little this spring. Change is as good as a holiday, you know.’
I cringed. When had she started using all these terrible old-man dad-isms? Why couldn’t she take a hint and leave us alone?
‘Yeah, I could come round Thursday,’ he said.
‘Wonderful! Now, come on in and have some dinner with us. Adelaide and I made soup yesterday.’
‘Actually Mum made soup,’ I corrected. ‘I was allowed to watch, hold the recipe book and carry the peelings to the compost bin. Is Clover okay by herself out there?’
‘She’s fine. And it was because you were being very silly with the sharp knife, Adelaide.’ She started gesturing to the door. ‘Come in, come in.’
He came in. Mum bustled us all towards the kitchen like a good mother hen.
I pushed all the crap on the table to one end to make room for the four of us to sit down. It was mostly my crap; I’d been reading Howl and had left it upside down, splayed open to the page where those best minds of Ginsberg’s generation despaired, singing out of windows. It would be kind of freeing to be mad. For a little while. Let the crazy out, be uninhibited.
Jarrod picked up the book and flipped through it casually. I’d found it on the shelf one long night when I was loafing, floating, killing time. I was trying to do monotonous things, so I would get tired and feel like sleeping. I walked laps of the lounge room and, like a child running a piece of stick along a picket fence in a movie set in America in the 1950s, I ran my fingertip along the spines. I liked the little fwhop-click-fwhop noises as my finger traversed the tiny gap between tomes. This was just a tiny book and my nail had caught on it.
There was a clunk and a rattle as the back door swung open, then a snuffle and a huff and then a clop, clop, clop. For a second I wondered who was banging coconuts together.
Mum, Jarrod and I all turned around as one as Clover led Tim right into the middle of the kitchen, a determined and pleased-as-punch expression on her fat little face.
Tim stood there, a doleful look in his big horsey eyes.
Mum put her hands on her hips. ‘Now. Is the kitchen a good place for a pony?’
‘He want come inside,’ explained Clover.
Jarrod must have thought my family belonged in the circus.
‘Does he really?’
Clover stood and looked, a cross between uncertain, busted and defiant.
Then Jarrod stepped forward unexpectedly. ‘I’ll help take him back outside, if ya want.’ He put the book back on the table, splayed exactly where I’d had it (I che
cked).
And off they went.
Mum grinned at me and I pretended not to notice. Meanwhile, the soup reheated on the stove in its big cast-iron pot. While Mum dished it up, I carried out the big loaf of bread on a heavy wooden chopping board and the table was set before Jarrod and Clover came back, this time without bringing a pony into the house.
We ate too much, but with little talking. Once she’d finished eating, Clover was carted bath-wards, leaving me and Jarrod in the kitchen on our lonesome.
I sat nervously, trying not to think of why I would be nervous.
He held Howl up beside his face. Earlier I’d spotted he had an arc of small pimples across his forehead, just under where his lazy-boy faux-surfer hair flopped. But I was surprised to notice the way his cheeks hollowed below the kind of cheekbones you might see in a men’s perfume ad.
‘Are you reading this?’ he asked.
‘Yeah, just in bits and pieces. It’s pretty amazing.’ I recited the opening few lines, then faltered, then tried to hide it by throwing my arms up dramatically (the spoon clattered to the floor with a glob of pumpkin-orange, which I ignored too). I then rushed on with, ‘It’s kind of mind-blowing. I’m not sure I totally get it, but I’m really loving it.’
He nodded, looking down, flicking through the pages.
‘So …’ I started, after a moment of silence. My finger worried the blind pimple on my chin.
‘Hey, so …’ he started. ‘Wouldya … Do you want to go—’
I didn’t wait to hear what or where. ‘Yup.’
‘What’ was a party. ‘Where’ was on the abandoned bowling green down on McElliot Street.
‘Someone’s cut the fence so we can get in and out. It’s pretty cool,’ Jarrod explained, as we rode down.
Twenty or thirty people sat around, drinking from cans and laughing. The cyclone wire fence was curled back on itself by one post and held by bright blue binder twine. I hardly had to duck to get through it, only slide through sideways.
Untidy Towns Page 7