Season of Shadow and Light

by Jenn J. McLeod

  Now you can add Mother of the Year to your list of achievements, Paige.

  Alice wolfed down every last morsel of the chicken breast stuffed with macadamia, brie and goji berries, while Paige preferred picking the pine nuts and chunks of goat cheese out of the basil and tomato pasta. She should have been hungry. The menu description had impressed her, with top marks for the meal’s presentation, making her certain the taste would be right up there as well; the sort of meal the Going Gourmet Food Editor might have written about in her monthly column a couple of years ago. For some reason, Paige couldn’t bring herself to eat tonight. Her fork landed on the plate with a clatter as she shoved the meal aside, eliciting the usual concerned comment from Alice.

  ‘You can’t live on that amount of food, Paige.’

  ‘I’m resting. I’ll have more later.’

  ‘Well, I can’t be sitting around twiddling my thumbs. Today has been quite exhausting.’

  Paige chewed on her lip. ‘You can trust me to eat more. No need to check, Alice. I’m a grownup, remember?’

  ‘Hmm,’ Alice said through a yawn. ‘I’m sure I shouldn’t go to bed on top of that meal, but my legs are asleep. Little Miss Matilda isn’t helping.’ Alice adjusted the sleeping girl’s head where it lay on her lap under the table. ‘The rest of me will be asleep in no time. You want me to take her for the night?’

  Paige shook her head and smiled. ‘No need. Things could get ugly once all the snack food and lollies from today mix with the hot chips.’ Paige knew she should have stopped her daughter squeezing the little portion-controlled ketchups over all the remaining chips, but she was too aware that the child had endured enough parental constraints of late, particularly following the Mr Whippy scare. ‘How’s your room?’ she enquired.

  Alice’s wide eyes said more than any words.

  ‘Sorry about all this, Alice, but thank you for coming with us, even though you didn’t have to. I didn’t think you even wanted to—not really—or what changed your mind, but I’m glad of the company.’

  ‘Yes, well . . .’ Alice slipped her legs out from under Matilda’s head, letting it rest back on the white cardigan she’d scrunched up as a makeshift pillow to cushion the bench seat. ‘I’ll be happier tomorrow when we get to Saddleton. Are you sure about Mati tonight? That was a big drive today and more tomorrow. You’ll need to be rested.’

  ‘I’m sure. Looking at her makes me wish I could sleep through anything. You go on up. I won’t be far behind.’

  For a while Paige sat at her corner seat and watched the eighteenth birthday bash at the reserved tables. How did she know it was an eighteenth? If the numbered balloons, cake’s candles, and the language at the big tables didn’t give it away, the constant trips to and from the adjacent main bar did. They might have looked like kids but they drank like camels, the alcohol making them rowdier by the minute, their impassioned speech more slurred. Occasionally, a young couple would slip away and Paige would glimpse them kissing a little too enthusiastically under the dim lights of the veranda, reminding Paige of her mother’s favourite saying. ‘There’s a lid for every pot,’ she used to tell her, ‘but sometimes you have to search deep in the darkest corners of the cupboard to find the right one.’

  And through it all, Grumpy Drawers’ pot banging and bell ringing from the kitchen continued.

  Paige noticed the cook’s stare sweeping the dining room, pausing in her general direction. Was he staring at her? She couldn’t be certain and she didn’t allow her gaze to linger long enough to figure that out. However brief, there was something intense about the stare, the well-shaped brows pulled towards his nose in a quizzical gaze—or a disapproving one perhaps.

  ‘I hope my leftovers didn’t offend,’ Paige said as the waitress collected the empty glasses. She’d earlier seen the cook inspect her barely-eaten meal, before jettisoning the remainder into the kitchen bin.

  ‘You mean Aiden?’ Sharni chuckled. At least that’s how Paige would describe the distinctive laugh—the cross between high-pitched machine-gun fire and a bleating lamb definitely not in keeping with the woman’s appearance. ‘He’s having an extra-bad night. Has one every now and then. I’d say about 364 days of the freakin’ year. You know men! Precious at the best of times, pains in the freakin’ arse the rest. Add chef into the mix and you’ve got Aiden with all the sweetness and charm of a stinkbug on a lemon tree.’ She made a theatrical arm-wave towards the kitchen. ‘I’m joking, of course. He’s not so bad—for an old bloke.’

  An old bloke? The man was probably no older than Paige.

  ‘The guy’s a freakin’ princess in the kitchen. Chefs like Aido bring a whole new meaning to walking on freakin’ eggshells.’

  So, Sharni had goddess looks and a gutter mouth. Alice would not be too impressed. Maybe that’s why Paige had warmed to the girl instantly.

  ‘Can you tell him I . . . the cook, that is . . . I’m sure the meal was lovely.’ Paige saw the flash of confusion on the waitress’s face as the black, perfectly groomed eyebrows dropped beneath the line of blonde fringe. ‘What I mean is, I wasn’t as hungry tonight as I thought.’

  ‘No worries. Was about to make myself a camomile tea. Can I get you something to drink? On the house, to make up for having to endure this mad mob.’ She flicked her head and the blonde fringe did the pointing towards the eighteenth birthday tables.

  ‘Camomile would be great,’ Paige replied. Even though she wouldn’t taste it, herbal tea’s therapeutic benefit was never in dispute, unlike a shot of caffeine. Coffee she missed more than anything. Having adored her affogatos and loved her lattes once, coffee remained a waste of money these days, an unnecessary assault on her body and, no matter how great the barista or how inspired their coffee art, a bland poison. And yet Robert had insisted on a state-of-the-art home coffee machine.

  Sharni returned and slipped the tray with two pots and cups across the table, and then slipped her feet out of her black moccasins to wiggle her toes and stretch, almost on point, as if she’d studied ballet.

  How she didn’t topple over with those breasts!

  ‘My feet are killing me. Mind if I sit for a bit?’ The waitress dropped into one chair and repositioned another on which to rest her heels. ‘Banjo tells me you’re from Sydney. I’d love to go there one day. It’s such a long way though, and probably not the best place for Liam at his age. That’s why I left Bris Vegas.’ She hardly stopped for a breath, while managing to keep a watchful eye on the birthday table, the bar and the bell-ringer in the kitchen. ‘Bet it’s nice in summer with the beaches and everything. Do you live near the beach?’

  Paige tapped the teaspoon three times on the rim of the teacup. ‘I used to, yes. As lovely as Sydney is it’s also good to get away for a while. Something different.’

  ‘The grass is always greener, eh?’ The girl smiled.

  ‘That’s what they say and from what I’ve seen it’s all pretty green around here. Not at all what I expected in the outback.’

  ‘We’re hardly the outback,’ Sharni said, doing a bad job of hiding her amusement. ‘But, yeah, we’ve had enough rain these past two years not to have to worry about the tanks and the troughs. Banjo reckons he’s going to build a rice paddy out back if we have a repeat of last year.’ She chuckled. ‘All I remember about this place when we were kids was dry, brown dust. When I eventually moved to Brisbane I think I had a million baths in the first month. Out here we’re too far west to be coastal and not west enough to be called the outback. Coolabah Tree Gully has always been a good, old-fashioned country town and it’s good for Liam and me now.’

  ‘This place has a catchy name.’

  ‘You mean the restaurant? Hmm, not sure who called it The Tucker Bag. Never known it as anything else, but I s’pect it was the same person who called the pub The Billabong Hotel.’

  ‘And Banjo’s name?’

  Sharni gulped her mouthful of tea down before she spluttered and wiped her mouth with the back of her wrist. ‘I wouldn’t put it p
ast old Banjo to nickname himself. He’s clever enough to cash in on the whole ‘Waltzing Matilda’ theme all on his own. Bit of an entrepreneur, our Banjo.’

  ‘I noticed. The pub is his?’

  ‘Ours. Banjo is my dad. He inherited the business from his parents.’

  Paige knew her face must be saying, ‘Oh?’ as Banjo wasn’t a young man and Sharni was a twenty-something beauty with big, almond shaped eyes, wide-set and overdone with black kohl to make them distinctively Asian-looking.

  The teacup swallowed Sharni’s smile as she slurped the last dregs.

  ‘Sharni!’ came the voice from the kitchen. ‘These dishes don’t wash themselves.’

  ‘Yeah, yeah,’ the waitress called back, slipping into her flat black pumps and returning the footrest chair to the next table. ‘Nice chatting with you, Paige. I’d better get back before Aiden picks up his bat and ball and goes home. Oh, by the way, brekkie in the morning is do-it-yourself style, served in this room, or on the veranda if it’s not raining, from six o’clock.’

  Six o’clock? Paige stifled a grin, thinking about Alice at that hour of the morning. That’ll be interesting.

  4

  Alice

  Alice was no longer tired.

  She couldn’t afford to be tired—not here in this town and not even in the solitude of her little guest room on the top floor of the pub that, right now, was doing a good job of impersonating an oven. At her feet, an untethered Toto lay splayed out on his belly and panting, exhausted from the day’s travel and heat. The fresh bowl of water Alice filled from the stained ceramic washbasin in the corner of the guest room did no more than cause him to prick his ears when she placed it nearby, which was just as well, because he’d only have to be taken downstairs and outside to pee if he drank too much too late at night.

  She patted the poor dog. ‘I’d rather not be here either, fella,’ Alice mumbled, sliding the poorly set aluminium window open over a track filled with moribund bugs and decaying moths.

  How Alice had allowed herself to be here was hard to understand. Usually so calm and in control, she’d lost all composure the day she arrived unexpectedly at Paige’s house to find her daughter so preoccupied with her iPad that she hadn’t heard Alice let herself in with the key.

  ‘You startled me.’ Paige flattened a palm to her chest. ‘I didn’t hear the door.’

  ‘What’s so interesting on that thing?’

  ‘It’s an ancient photo of Mum for Mati’s craft project,’ Paige explained as Alice leaned over her daughter’s shoulder from behind to kiss her cheek.

  ‘Oh! Yes, I see.’ Alice stepped back as a memory of Nancy laid a painful punch to her heart. For the next few minutes she tried distracting herself: filling the kettle, wiping sticky fingerprints from kitchen cupboards, silently urging the water to boil.

  As she emptied a batch of Christmas rum balls into a Tupperware container, Paige explained how The Toy Box television program had suggested its young viewers make a collage by using something on the computer called Pinterest—the subject being a woman they admired. Mati had chosen her Grandma Nancy.

  ‘Robert has the hide to tell me watching too much television is bad for her,’ Paige was complaining. ‘So what’s he do? He lets her have his old computer. What about too much social media at six?’ she scoffed. ‘I had to explain the word “admire” to Mati, but not “Pinterest”.’

  Paige stood up from the kitchen table and walked over to the hallway, calling out. ‘Mati, sweetie, Nana Alice has brought rum balls.’ Then she shook her head as Matilda rushed into the kitchen, snapped up the iPad and two coconut-covered chocolate balls and skipped into the adjoining sunroom, flopping her little body onto the sofa. ‘I mean, we’re handing down laptops and iPads with finger-painting apps to our kids, Alice. What happened to textas and paper, Perkins Paste and pictures of simple houses with smoking chimneys and garden paths lined with smiling daisies?’

  ‘Same thing that enables you to work from home,’ Alice replied. ‘Technology.’

  ‘Hardly the sort of work I enjoy, spending my days building less than average brands and spruiking untruths about food products I wouldn’t serve my own child. As for these little balls of fun you’ve made . . . Yum!’ Paige inspected the treat she’d plucked from the box before Alice snapped the lid in place. She held the chocolatey confectionery to her nose as if trying to recall the delicious Christmas tradition that had once—pre-Mati—contained real rum, rather than cooking essence. These days, Robert and Mati were the only ones to enjoy the results of Alice’s baking. With up to ninety per cent of the sense of taste coming from the sense of smell, and with Paige’s olfactory defect, these days she experienced very little in the way of flavour. At least she could enjoy the velvety sensation if she held the fudge long enough to let it melt in her mouth.

  ‘Paige?’

  ‘Hmm,’ was all Paige managed as the gooey chocolate gummed her tongue to the roof of her mouth.

  ‘I was wondering . . . What are you planning to do with that photo now it’s on your iPad?’

  ‘Hmm, well,’ she swallowed hard. ‘Mati wants to populate her Pinterest board with Grandma Nancy things,’ Paige explained.

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘Sorry. What I mean is, the project requires pictures. She’s already sourced some of Mum’s favourite things from the web: lilies, sandcastles, seashells, dancing shoes. Mum did love to dance.’

  ‘Yes. Yes, she did.’ Despite Alice having two left feet, they’d made perfect partners. ‘But the photo, Paige?’

  Her granddaughter’s next words, sung out from across the rumpus room, might have toppled Alice had she not been able to brace herself against the breakfast bar. ‘My pictures might be on the telly, Nana.’

  ‘On the TV?’

  ‘Only the top ten entries emailed in will be shown on air, sweetheart. But you never know.’ Paige sipped her tea, switching briefly to check her emails. ‘We were looking for a couple of Mum’s favourite knickknacks to photograph and Mati wanted more pictures of her, and there are those boxes in the hall cupboard. You know the ones. I didn’t think you’d mind us going through them. When Mati found a photo with horses in it as well as her grandma, well, there was no talking her into any other shot.’

  Alice knew the box, one of several she’d left behind after a brief period living with her daughter while they built the new house at the back. One carton was the size of a milk crate, maybe a bit bigger, and crammed with trinkets. The contents were mostly things that would be of no real value, except to the original owner—the kind of paraphernalia one discovers when clearing out a deceased person’s cupboards; things that must be kept because letting go is too sad, too unthinkable, or just not right. Alice had forgotten all about slipping that photograph in the box and out of sight.

  ‘Mati has three pictures, Alice, but this one is now her favourite ev-ar!’ Paige mimicked her daughter. ‘Mati, sweetie, bring the iPad back over. Show Nana properly.’

  Alice was trying to calm her pounding heart when Mati’s finger tapped and swiped and the same photo again popped into place on the iPad.

  ‘See?’ Paige said. ‘Before I knew it, my clever girl had used the iPad to photograph the original, opened it in iPhoto on Rob’s MacBook Air, cropped it . . . Yes, a six year old who doesn’t know the meaning of “admire” can upload, crop and manipulate a photo on a computer. Can’t you, my clever girl?’ Paige turned to Matilda, clamped her knees around her daughter’s small body, drew the red-coloured band from the ponytail and gripped the elastic between her teeth. Then she finger combed the stragglers into place and plaited the lot in seconds, the red band back in place.

  Under normal circumstances, Alice would be interested in her granddaughter’s project, while happy to ignore Paige’s tech talk. But there was no ignoring this inanimate gadget today. Not now.

  ‘Where’s the original photo, Paige?’

  ‘I made her put it right back. Relax, Alice, the box is in the hall cupboard again.
Unless you were wanting to take it home. I can have Robert drop it over to you.’

  ‘I should’ve got everything out of your way already.’

  ‘We have so much more storage room here. Besides, I’m glad you didn’t, or I may never have found this. A horse of all things. I thought Mum was allergic to horses.’

  Paige’s mouth was moving, but Alice heard nothing except the sound of her own heartbeat banging in her ears, along with Nancy’s plea and the secret she’d forced into Alice’s safekeeping all those years ago.

  ‘Let Nana see,’ Alice said. She pulled out a stool and lowered her body onto the seat before she fell.

  Why had she been so reckless with this photograph, the only remaining picture of Nancy as a young woman? Alice had thought she’d been clever by mounting it in a frame one size too small, requiring part of the picture to be folded under in order to fit. But why fold when she could have cut off one side completely? This one reminder of a beautiful young Nancy that Alice had never had the heart to dispose of was now staring back, taunting her. It had been years since she’d looked at the photograph herself, now there it was—all of it—on Paige’s iPad, a gadget suddenly alive and dangerous, with its computer chip heart breathing fear into Alice.

  ‘Okay, Miss Matilda,’ Paige’s palm patted her daughter’s bottom. She’d no doubt detected something in the way Alice had reacted. ‘Let Nana Alice have a minute. Find something else to do for a little while without the iPad. Off you go.’

  Paige took over the tea-making process, pouring more steaming liquid into cups, stirring in milk for Alice and tapping her spoon three times after stirring her own.

  Then, in a soft voice she asked, ‘Any idea where that picture was taken? Mum said she never left the Northern Beaches. She was also allergic to animal hair, which was why we could never have a dog or a rabbit.’

  ‘That’s right.’ Alice’s eyes blurred, making the image on the iPad harder to decipher, although not the signboard in the background: Saddleton Campdraft.