by Susan Tarr
Finally Sister Evans said, “That’s more than enough, Lizzie. Smartly now, what’s wrong this specific week? And get to the point.”
“Well, it’s not that I’m trying to be critical – or hurt Bob intentionally – on purpose. I’m just showing him – helping him – when he does things wrong,” Grey Lizzie mumbled. Then added loudly, “He’s filthy.”
A grin stretched Malcolm’s face. How carefully Grey Lizzie chose her words to forestall the moral dilemma of her attack. This was going to be very interesting.
Bob hauled himself to his feet, planted his hands on the table, his long fingers stretched wide apart. His face bulged and dark red, and spittle shot out of his mouth as his teeth clacked away.
“Ya shut the hell up, ya rotten grey bitch!”
And that’s when the real fighting began. Lanky Bob with the grizzled ginger hair and dour Scottish temperament lammed into Grey Lizzie.
“Ya dare call me filthy in my kitchen! Ya bloody newspapers put ink all over the show. That’s filthy, that’s what it is,” he raged. “I’m sick to death of ya snivelling and whining about every bloody thing I do. First it’s too hot then it’s too cold. Ya don’t like my Neenish tarts and ya don’t like my rice puddings. My sago’s got lumps in it. My gravy’s got lumps in it. If it’s got no lumps it’s burnt or it’s too runny. Or it’s full o’ germs! Go back then. Go back to the bloody building so we can all get some peace. Or shut the hell up, ya devil-bitch woman!”
Grey Lizzie constantly moaned about Bob’s lack of hygiene in his kitchen.
“We-ell,” she said, slowly and deliberately, “your lemon Madeira cake was dry and your rice pudding was burned. I couldn’t eat a mouthful.”
She lifted her teacup to her mouth, her hand ingrained with printer’s ink, a smudge on her forehead.
Malcolm watched Julie. Her head darted this way and that as each person spoke. Kinda like she was watching a game of ping-pong.
“I like it burned,” he said suddenly. He liked Bob. “That’s exactly how I like it.”
“But it was completely burned, wasn’t it?” Grey Lizzie smirked maliciously at Malcolm, wanting to draw him to her side of the argument. “I couldn’t bear to eat it. Not a mouthful of it.”
He again sought to rescue Bob. “Just the bottom.”
“It was not burned,” Bob said ominously, smouldering, his internal combustion slogging away.
Someone else rallied to further support him. “I like it burned too.”
But Grey Lizzie was unable to contain herself any longer. “Burned!”
The whole problem, Sister Evans said, was that they had two cooks in one house. “Perhaps you can share the cooking.”
But that was the last thing Bob needed to hear.
“With her? All she’s good for is peeling spuds!” Righteously indignant, he sprayed spittle over the lot of them, and his false teeth landed on the table to grin mockingly up at Grey Lizzie.
He bawled gummily, “See what ya done now, ya pernickety scheming bitch!”
“Robert Millar, you are not to use that kind of language in this house,” commanded Sister Evans, not unreasonably, and she slapped the table so hard the milk sloshed out of the top of the bottle.
Julie nearly fell off her chair. She hadn’t expected that volume of discussion. Grey Lizzie sucked back her next words and her bottom lip, and Malcolm held his breath, watching Bob turn his most brilliant puce yet as he pulled himself to his full height.
Bob gripped the edge of the table in white-knuckled fists. “She can do the whole bloody lot then and go to buggery as well!”
Grey Lizzie made gagging sounds, ready to cry for real, holding her hands to her ears, shaking her head sideways. “Can’t hear. Can’t hear. Can’t hear.”
Sister Evans calmly ordered Bob to apologise.
Bob looked first at Grey Lizzie then back at Sister Evans. He took a precautionary step back from the table. “It’s my kitchen! She can be damned!”
Grey Lizzie scarpered off to her bedroom.
Malcolm knew exactly how she’d ease herself through the narrow gap between her door and the jamb, her room being crammed wall to wall, floor to ceiling with newspapers dating back a decade. Whenever she got up to her shenanigans, she always scuttled away to hide in her paper lair.
Sister Evans closed the meeting as if nothing had happened. All sorted. No changes necessary. See you next week. Goodbye, then.
The next Monday, when Sister Evans arrived all starched and clean, she sat at the kitchen table to work out new rosters so as to spread the housework more evenly, though ultimately each person did what they wanted to, what they could. For the most part it worked all right. And Bob continued cooking and baking. They all knew, and occasionally said, he was a damned fine cook and generous with his servings. The kitchen was his domain.
Someone else was in charge of dusting, sweeping and polishing the front porch. Grey Lizzie was in charge of keeping the bathroom clean and dry. This she did only when somebody complained about the mess, and then she laboured on about all those germs mixing up together and not wanting to touch other people’s doings.
Each evening Malcolm and Julie did the dishes. And he collected and bagged dirty laundry for Mondays as well. He also brought in the daily milk, along with Grey Lizzie’s newspaper, which he thrust into her impatient hands.
CHAPTER 5
Talking
Wednesday was coal day. As soon as Malcolm heard the truck, he ambled off to open the gate ready for the burly coalman. Once he’d got the first sack hoisted, Malcolm led him past his bedroom window and Julie’s corner room, along the cold concrete path to the coal bin by the washhouse.
The coalman dumped his load into the bin.
Malcolm was in charge of the wide-mouthed coal shovel so he shovelled up any scattered coal. Each evening he filled Bob’s coalscuttle and set it by the range ready for Bob to bank the fire for the long night. And he filled it again first thing in the morning.
It was in the lee of the house, by the coal bin, that the early morning sun first took hold on the coldest of winter days. In these pockets of faint heat, he let the warmth stroke his ankles.
In the sitting room there was a gramophone and some black records. Malcolm and Julie often listened to the music, existing in the security of their private world. But when there were hot scones to pull apart, they joined the others at the kitchen table.
Julie asked Malcolm about his parents.
“Did you have any?”
She snipped the coupon off the yellow tea packet. As if each of her fingers had an eye sewn into the end, she was methodical in her snipping.
When he didn’t answer, she said, “Some people don’t, you know,” and she spread all the saved coupons onto the table and counted them. “There’s three dozen now. Did they tell you how you got to be at Seacliff? Why you got there?”
He thought hard and then told her what little he could remember. How his mother was ‘slowly fading’ in their house where he lived when he was little, up the steep street where nearby pine trees grew tall and swishy in the wind. He recalled the grownups saying the words ‘slowly fading’. He told her how he’d go to his mother’s bedroom before catching the school bus at the corner, how it was his job to dust her neck with rose geranium talcum powder.
“And you did that every morning? Dusted her neck with the rose geranium talcum powder?”
“Yes.”
He stirred his tea, first to the right and then to the left with a definite pause in between when, absolutely still, he held the spoon straight up. Stirring helped him remember.
“I had a stick sword. I made shields from rhubarb leaves. Bella came to live with us,” he ended abruptly, a scowl on his face and in his voice.
“Bella?” The hot scones distracted her, her nose twitching at the enticing aroma.
“She was my cousin.” He spoke flatly. “She came to help with the dishes and things.”
“Oh, dishes.” Julie slid her hand in search of plum jam and butter
.
He helped himself to a scone. He didn’t help her. He didn’t need to. She mostly did everything for herself. He chewed sullenly.
“I saw them.”
Part of the scone broke and fell to the floor. He stared at it, and then ground it into the linoleum beneath his boot. Bob wouldn’t be happy since he’d already mopped the floor. But, right then Malcolm didn’t care. The darkness swooping…
“Uh?”
“I saw them,” he growled. He wished she would stop inviting the darkness in. Daddy and Bella…
“Where did you see them? What were they doing?”
“Things. Nothing,” he mumbled, thoughts clouding…
After a long pause it was light again. Calm and safe. The thoughts trapped inside.
“So that’s how you came there, then?”
He grabbed another scone, heaped butter and plum jam on top with a knife, and squashed it down.
“Yep. That’s how.”
“Brothers and sisters?”
He focused his full attention on a third scone and chewed noisily, crumbs spilling onto his trousers as he ignored her question.
She pressed on, rewording and fine-tuning.
“Was it just you, then?”
“Yep,” he said shortly, through a shower of crumbs, before draining his cup down to the tealeaves, his hand shaking. “Just – me.”
He sat on the concrete wall while Bob dug over the garden in the backyard. Birds sang and the days were clearer now after a harsh winter.
Bob said, “Ya gotta get rid o’ the couch grass and dock before ya can grow spuds, carrots, parsnips and silver beet. Maybe a cabbage or two. But the white butterfly…” He straightened his back, shaking his head. “Reckon Sister Evans will get me derris dust?”
“No.” Malcolm was emphatic. They’d been through this a million times. “It’s poisonous.”
He followed Bob inside. He liked listening to Bob.
“…and then they took the tower down off the main building. They said it was too dangerous. Ah, but what a sight that must o’ been. I wish I were there to see it come down. So how long ya been here, lad?”
“Two years this Christmas. I like Christmas. All those decorations and things. And the special grub you make us. Little crossed tarts and steamed pudding.”
Each year, Sister Evans brought in the almond icing and the tree for them to decorate. Christmas was always a good time.
“Ya watch Grey Lizzie with the mistletoe. Don’t ya go getting caught out again.”
With that Bob slapped his thigh real hard and guffawed loudly. Malcolm remembered how he’d spent the whole week avoiding Grey Lizzie and her puckered lips. Yeah, they were good times all right.
“Mal, if ya grab those bottle tops from the shed ya can string them across my garden to keep the birds off. Reckon ya can give threading a crack if I get ya started? Fourteen silver to one red.”
That was how much milk and cream they went through in a week. Bob showed Malcolm his hidden stash, though Grey Lizzie had burned some more of them.
“Silly bitch thinks I don’t know,” Bob grumbled. “A handful here, a handful there, but I’m on to her. I got too many reds, not enough silvers. I’ve a mind to burn her bloody newspapers.” Bob was fair stewing now. “Light the whole bloody lot right there in her room. Her in it. That’ll teach the meddling bitch.”
Bob grabbed Malcolm’s sleeve, such was his agitation, and Malcolm listened as Bob worked through the various tortures he’d like to exact on Grey Lizzie. He finally settled on one, and they both agreed it was the best.
At dinner, Bob stood at the head of the table prior to serving. Sometimes someone might say grace. But he thumped his fist on the tabletop, startling everyone, cutlery clattering. His face wasn’t even red. He just grinned shrewdly, staring down at Grey Lizzie until she averted her eyes.
“Some folk collect things we want and need so ya better keep an eye on ya newspapers. I got matches.”
Whilst Malcolm and the others sat in morbid anticipation, Bob dished up slices of succulent roast mutton, crisp roast potatoes, onions, pumpkin and parsnip, gravy, to everyone – except Grey Lizzie.
In tears of rage and frustration, she raced down to her room bellowing like a hungry calf.
Bob grinned from ear to ear.
“My bottle top stash will start to grow pretty quickly now.” He spooned out bright green peas.
Malcolm did the dishes, while Bob hummed Ghost Riders in the Sky. They’d heard that on the radio all week. The radio alone was democratic, making no distinction between those diminished or undiminished. The notes of the music or the words of the singer or speaker did not alter for anyone. But it could be turned off. Bob was oddly unaffected by Grey Lizzie striding down to turn the radio off in a way that would normally annoy him. He just mentioned he was going to build a chook run from a stack of old timber and netting out back.
“From now on we’ll have fresh eggs for sponges with whipped cream on Sundays. No roosters though. They be noisy critters. I can’t abide the noise.”
Malcolm agreed with a vigorous nod of his head, forking leftovers into his mouth. He imagined fat brown hens squatting in the dust, sleepy and squawking as they fluffed themselves up. Bits of straw, feathers and invisible grains of pollen floating in the air. It would be like that at nesting season. Or at least when it was warmer. Or whenever it was those chooks might lay their brown eggs.
Sundays Bob fried bread in dripping for breakfast.
“I’ll wring their bloody necks if any o’ them chooks turn out to be roosters.”
Malcolm guided Julie into the sun, past the washhouse and the dunny draped in succulent, ripe yellow passionfruit.
Once they were settled, she said, “Did you remember more about your daddy and Bella?”
He scuffed his wired boot in the freshly dug dirt. A worm. He watched it for a moment as it wiggled and squirmed. He didn’t want to talk about – things.
Do you remember…
“Do you?”
“No.”
“So you don’t remember?”
He squashed the worm beneath his boot, slime grinding into slime, as the blackness came over him. He got up and went to his room where he stared through his window at the knotholes in the fence.
Weekly, now that the weather had settled, they extended their walks to farther parts of the town. He talked softly all the time.
“…either fast or slow, the Leith River is sometimes brown and churning or clear and shallow, as it flows out to the harbour, out to the sea and beyond…”
This time they walked all the way north to Wilson’s Distillery so he could count some more bricks.
Facing up into the valley beyond the brick factory, he said, “The river starts up there.” And he guided her hand in that direction. “It flooded, you know. The Leith. Years ago, in 1923. I think they said that, but anyway they told me about it. I was little.”
Julie smiled.
“Wilson’s,” he said. “Built in 1862 by George Duncan. It burned down in 1872 and they rebuilt it from stone. But the three-storey malt house and kiln weren’t built until later in 1876.”
As they crossed the busy road to the Botanical Gardens, Julie sniffed the air.
“Polyanthus,” she said. “Sometimes our summers are like that. Days after days of flower smells.”
He watched as her nose twitched and her blue eyes glistened. Though he was silent from then, still he watched her. He always watched her. He didn’t speak again until they were inside the Begonia House.
“The roof is high.” He said this suddenly without looking up. “It’s made of curved glass. Built in 1863. That’s well before we were born.” He paused for a moment, stilling her by touching her arm. “And now we have to be very quiet, Julie.”
He was not about to tell her how he’d careered into the goldfish pond the year before, breaking exotic begonias and water lilies, splashing noisily, terrified of drowning. The glasshouse keeper was fearsome as he hauled him
out, and he didn’t mince his words either. Even when he’d explained about his boot, how he’d slipped on the wet concrete.
“Blathering idiot! Get out of here!” the glasshouse keeper bellowed. “And don’t you come back, you hear!”
But he did go back when he’d seen there was a new glasshouse keeper. Now he vividly remembered that wet trudge home, the people pointing, laughing, him like a wet scarecrow, the water in his socks blistering his feet. Yes, he clearly remembered the wet walk.
To Julie, he described only the fish, glinting and slippery. Its cold eye fixed on him through the water, watching him. A memory poised in his brain. Was it slippery? Could he catch one and rescue it from the water? Elusive memory…
Julie spoke in her soft musical way as she wandered along in the wet humid air. “I love hearing the water, and the silence beyond the water.”
Outside the main gates of the Botanical Gardens they walked on, winding around the streets in no particular order. Past Speight’s Brewery, Malcolm touched her arm again, to stop her. He had something special to tell her.
“This is how I count bricks on the street wall.”
He scratched with an old nail on the first brick.
“Hear that noise? That’s me. I’m counting and writing my name.” Most of the bricks already had M on them. “I count off twelve bricks then I scratch my name on that brick. The most I’ve counted to is twelve. Not sure what comes next. Just lots, because that’s what’s left over after twelve.”
When they had left the house that morning, Bob had been in a surly grump. Even so, he packed them a picnic lunch.
“She’s prodding my plants with her stick, Mal. We strung those bottle tops to keep the birds from doing just that. Ah, but she’s ya sweetheart, so keep her off my garden, eh.”
Now they fed their crusts to the squabbling ducks before they crossed Princes Street, Malcolm dragging Julie by the hand, her other hand clutching her white cane.
“Idiots!” A motorist yelled at them, tooting his horn, shaking his fist. “You loonies should be locked up!”
Malcolm tugged at his cap.
“Was that us? Idiots? Loonies?”