Transformation of Minna Hargreaves, The

by Beale, Fleur

  He waited till Noah got his butt on to a chair, and then he waited some more.

  For chrissake, Dad — open your mouth and speak. Hit me with it, let me get used to it. After all, what’s one more body blow?

  He banged a closed fist on the table and eyeballed us, first me and then Noah. ‘We’re going to have to stay. At least for a while.’

  I swear I went dizzy. I’d been so sure he was going to cut and run. I pulled the chair away from the table and collapsed on to it. ‘All of us? You too, Dad?’

  He snapped at me. ‘Of course me too. I can’t leave the pair of you here with …’ He broke off and sucked in a huge breath. ‘We all have to stay until your mother is fit to travel.’

  I was shaking and if something didn’t happen soon, I was going to cry. Something did happen. Dad stood up. ‘Come on kids — let’s see what we can do with that damned meat.’

  It was funny. I started to laugh. Meat! Dad’s voice hit me like a slap. ‘Stop it, Min. This second.’

  I gasped and hiccupped and I wasn’t laughing because tears were streaming down my face. I stopped. It took a huge effort, but I did it. Amazing what you can do when you know cameras are on you.

  ‘Good girl,’ Dad said. ‘Come on, let’s get the job done.’

  I gulped a couple more times and picked up the camera. Dad halted at the door. ‘You too, Noah — come and lend a hand.’

  ‘Get stuffed,’ said Noah.

  Dad went over and sat down beside him. ‘You’ll feel better if you do something.’

  Noah snarled, but stood up — possibly because even he could detect the steel under Dad’s calm and patient. We trailed out to the freezer shed without saying anything to Mum. The chooks muttered as we passed. Noah and Dad ignored them.

  Inside the shed, Dad opened the freezer and we stared at it with its shelves full of meat. Already the bacteria would be having a party in that little lot. I filmed it, Dad prodded it and Noah turned his back on it.

  I sighed — in my mind I could see all those steaks, sausages, chops, burgers, roast chickens dripping with gravy, and even Mum’s chuck-it-all-together stews. Every single one of them a gone-burger. ‘What are we going to do with it all?’

  Dad rubbed his head. ‘We could try drying some of it — the stuff we can cut into strips. Have to bury the rest I guess.’

  Noah spoke. ‘I vote we have a roast tonight.’

  Dad was chuffed. The alien speaks. He grinned at Noah. ‘Pick one, son. You can have your choice of chicken, pork, lamb or beef.’

  ‘Pork,’ said Noah. ‘With crackling.’

  Dad scrabbled around in the shelves, tossing packages of soft, squidgy meat on to the floor. ‘Aha — pork!’ He handed it to me. ‘Here you are, Min. All ready for you to transform into succulent, tender meat and crackling.’

  I shoved it right back at him. ‘Why me? I’ve done everything around here so far. You cook it. Or Noah. He hasn’t done a damned thing yet except yell and get high.’

  Dad got all miffy. ‘Noah can cook when he’s recovered. And in the meantime it’s up to you.’

  I folded my arms and glared at him. ‘Is that so? How d’you figure that one?’

  He must’ve used up all his calm and patient because there sure wasn’t any hint of it now. ‘Don’t be dense, Min. You must see that I can’t be in the same room as your mother any more than is absolutely necessary.’ He amped up a glare of his own. ‘And I’ll thank you not to make things more difficult by encouraging her to stay in the living area.’

  That was too much. ‘Don’t punish me for what she’s done! I’m the only one making sure she doesn’t die.’ He was so unfair. ‘I don’t see you getting her drinks or food. Why should I have to run backwards and forwards to that fridge that’s supposed to be a bedroom?’

  I reached out and grabbed the nearest roast, checked that it wasn’t pork and waved it. ‘Lamb.’ I smiled the sweetest arrangement of stretched lips that I could manage and hit him with, ‘I think Mum will find this easier to digest than pork.’

  He was not pleased but I stalked out and left them to it. Then I had to turn back and get the camera, which diluted the effect, but I did get to hear Dad snap at Noah to stop dreaming and get to work so on balance it was worth it.

  Blissful days stretched ahead of me in a parade of endless hours.

  It wasn’t an afternoon to cherish in the memory. Dad and Noah carted in a basket of roasts and steak. They sat at the table and sliced them into strips.

  ‘Lend a hand, Min,’ Dad said, busily ignoring Mum on the sofa.

  I smiled at him through clenched teeth. ‘I don’t touch raw meat. It’s one of my unbreakable rules.’ One that I would have to break when I cooked the lamb but I intended to get around that by handling it with gloves.

  He took a deep breath and treated me to a fair dose of calm and patient. ‘Look, Min — we’re in this together. Cooperation is the name of the game.’

  ‘Cooking is cooperating,’ I said.

  His teeth looked pretty clenched too, but he didn’t yell or say anything at all actually.

  So Day Three wandered on by. I made a late lunch with salad veg I found in the fridge.

  Dad said, ‘Great, Min. How about making some mince patties to go with it?’

  ‘Good idea, Dad. The stove’s all yours.’ Write household drudge on my forehead, why don’t you?

  Stalemate.

  Noah ignored the salad and cooked more bacon which he slapped between slices of bread. He didn’t wash the pan.

  Mum turned greener at the prospect of lettuce, she’d gone off spud but she did manage a bit of the leftover chicken stuff. I, using my own initiative, retrieved another chicken carcass from the freezer-that-wasn’t and made a new brew for her. As I walked past the chooks carrying a thawed body of one of their sisters I yelled ‘Sorry chooks! Don’t look.’

  They ran up to me, clucking in a very friendly way. I stopped and scritched Izzie on her head. ‘I’ll come back and pull out the hugest weed for you,’ I promised.

  Oh great — Minna Hargreaves; chicken conversationalist. This, no doubt, is what extreme isolation can do to a girl. But I kept my promise and they went mad over the leaves, the dirt, the roots and the odd snail. I watched them for a while and then an equation filtered through my brain: chooks equal eggs.

  ‘You realise,’ I told Izzie, ‘that if I go into your yard I’ll get my beautiful new boots all icky?’

  I held out the shiny black boot for her inspection but she didn’t seem that fussed. I let myself in through a door in the netting. Where did chooks lay eggs? The door to their coop was about half as high as it needed to be for humans and the inside was full of perches but I fought through to the nesting boxes against the wall. Yay! Eggs! Nine of them all snuggled up together in two of the four boxes. I made another discovery — the boxes had lids that opened into the freezer shed.

  ‘Collecting your eggs is going to be a breeze, chooks,’ I told them as I backed out. I felt like a thief, taking their potential babies. I bent and patted Bizzie. ‘But they’re not really going to be babies. Didn’t your mother ever tell you about roosters?’

  I let myself out of the coop and leaned my head against the wire. ‘Yes, you poor ignorant chooks — it takes a mummy and a daddy to make babies. Any old daddy, actually.’

  The rest of the day was — different. I’d never seen either Dad or Noah ever in their lives pegging washing on a clothesline and I’d never imagined I’d see both of them slaving away with a box of meat, pegging it strip by strip up there to wave in the breeze. But it made excellent television. Dad hammed it up (ha ha, although there was no ham, only pork). He was all bright and happy, but Noah wasn’t. He pegged one gory strip to every six Dad managed to get on the line.

  I left them with a pan shot of the entire length of the line which stretched from a tree on the fence line to the verandah of the house.

  ‘What are the odds on that little experiment working?’ I asked the camera. I did another shot of
Dad and Noah slaving away. ‘You wouldn’t put your last cent on it, is what I reckon.’

  I sat on the verandah and watched them. Why was Dad bothering? How long would we have to be here? Another week? Two? We’d be out of here before we’d even noticed we’d turned into tree-hugging vegos.

  And then what would happen? We had no house to go back to until the year was up.

  We. Us. Our. What were those dinky little words called? I shrugged. Who cared? I looked at Dad — first time he’d done stuff with us for god knows how long, not that it was prime stuff, except where the prime beef strips were concerned.

  Oh god, concentrate, Minna!

  But I couldn’t. Didn’t want to think of Life After Island because one thing was for sure and certain — Dad wouldn’t be part of it.

  I hated my mother — hated her with a burning, fierce, passionate hate.

  No wonder Dad wouldn’t talk to her.

  Then I started to laugh. I focused the camera and called out, ‘The birds are a friendly lot here, don’t you reckon?’ I zoomed in on the kingfisher feasting on a strip of meat, then the two blackbirds and a couple of others I didn’t know the names of.

  Dad spun around, and groaned. He flapped his arms a few times but that didn’t bother the birds. He eyed them for a moment or two and his brain whirred so fast it’s a wonder they didn’t hear it. Then he rushed into the house, came back with a newspaper and three of my magazines.

  ‘Hey! What are you doing with those?’ I yelled.

  He grinned at me. ‘There are times, Min, when we all have to make sacrifices.’ He sacrificed my magazines by ripping them up, page by double page. Then he put the pages over the meat and clipped them in place with more pegs. ‘Come on, Noah. Lend a hand here.’

  The hand Noah lent wasn’t the most enthusiastic or busy hand in the world.

  If I was a blessing-counter I guess I could count the odd one or two: Dad was still here; Mum might be okay to fly tomorrow; I had chooks to talk to.

  See why I’m not a blessing-counter?

  fourteen

  Dinner was late. I stared up at camera number one. ‘Did you know roasts take hours and hours to cook? Welcome to the crash course in practical skills. Gran Hargreaves — you will be so proud of me.’

  It was lucky she wasn’t there to eat it because it was a different variation of disastrous from the sumptuous sausage meal. The meat was red in the middle and I don’t care what Dad says about meat being all the more tasty when it’s rare, I like it when it doesn’t bleed all over the plate. And the spuds were rare in the middle too. He didn’t say they were nice.

  Day Three bit the dust. I did a video diary so blah it’s a wonder the camera didn’t die of boredom. Then I wrote to the girls. I poured my heart out, and my eyes too but it didn’t matter because this was another letter I wasn’t going to send. Likewise the one I wrote to Seb. Dear Seb, you are the star that keeps me going. Only the thought of you loving me keeps me sane in this madness. I will be faithful always. I wish I’d given you a ring too. Don’t forget me.

  Tomorrow I’d do the full hair and make-up routine before I did the video diary. Maybe I should make more of an effort anyway. Look bright and cheerful as well as sounding it. I thought back over the past few days and cringed because there were a few instances where I had not sounded bright and cheerful — actually quite a few. Bloody Cara. I drifted off to sleep not with Seb’s image in my head, but with a picture of Cara falling off the cliff and turning the shattering waves to red. It was very satisfying. I slept well.

  In the morning I jumped out of bed. Maybe today we’d go home. Did I even want to go home? Of course I did. I turned on the shower so the bird-shit water could wash me clean, yeah right. Who wouldn’t want to go home away from this?

  But Dad — when we got home, he’d vanish. I’d never see him again except on Sunday afternoons so foul that not even he would be stupid enough to head for the hills.

  I dressed and hit the kitchen, half expecting Mum to be up and dressed and clacking around cooking. She’d have the dreamy look on her face that meant her mind was deep in some arty project. She’d smile at me and say Morning Minna sweet girl, and then she’d put muesli in the toaster and pour milk over a slice of toast. I’d tip the muesli out of the toaster, watch her drag her mind into the real world and then I’d ask her what she was working on.

  She wasn’t in this kitchen and neither was Dad. I tiptoed up to the bedroom. I don’t know what I was expecting — some miracle reconciliation? Dad would be lying on his side of the bed smiling and Mum … Forget it. Mum was there, by herself and as sick as ever.

  I stood for a second or two watching her. I tried to remember when we’d last done a morning chat. Prepregnancy? I didn’t want to think about it. I crept back to the kitchen and ate muesli that hadn’t been put in the toaster.

  When Dad did show, I took reconciliation off the radar. It wasn’t going to happen. A chill settled in my chest. ‘Dad …’

  He glanced in my direction but his mind was definitely somewhere else. Not the best time to talk, but there was never going to be a best time for this, so what the heck. ‘Dad, what’s going to happen? When we get home? Will we still see you?’

  He kept on piling cereal into his plate. ‘Of course you will. Don’t be dense, Min.’

  ‘But Dad, we hardly see you now, and …’

  He spared me a glance, a mighty irritated one. ‘Don’t fuss, Min. We’ll sort it out. Now leave it.’

  I left it but I wasn’t convinced and I wasn’t happy even though I was practically an adult and wouldn’t need him because I had Seb and my friends. Damn it, he was my father. He was supposed to stick around — according to all I’d ever heard, sticking around was part of the job description.

  He stuck around long enough to do the morning listening watch.

  And so began another day.

  Weather: Cloudy but dry with a slight wind.

  Tempers: Ranging from foul to very foul to breezy to not known.

  Occupations: Well, who would know what Dad was going to do with the day but, apparently, Noah was going to do it with him. Dad must’ve decided Noah was his Big Project for the duration. Glad it wasn’t me. Especially as it looked like the project was going to involve hard physical work judging by the gear Dad put together — slashers, protective gloves, spades and boots of the work variety. Noah jibbed and bucked, but Dad held the reins tight and steady (see how I extended that metaphor, Mr English Teacher who put on my last piece of writing that I’d better leave metaphors to those who could use them without mixing them) and the two of them left the house, Dad lugging the gear while Noah exercised his muscles by carrying half the food from the pantry.

  So. They weren’t coming back for lunch. Just me, Mum and the chooks then. Great.

  Dad came running back. ‘Nearly forgot! Have to check the meat.’

  He checked. (Coming along nicely.) They went.

  Well, hello Min, the day’s all yours.

  What do you do with a day? Damned if I was going to hit the correspondence work and anyway, I’d be back at school before I missed too much.

  I fed the chooks.

  I made Mum a cup of tea. She asked if I’d boil another spud and mash it for her. She ate two teaspoonfuls.

  I talked to the chooks and collected five more eggs. I held them in my hands and they were warm and perfect — just like a family was supposed to be. I walked to the fence where the chooks couldn’t see me, and I hurled each of those perfect eggs at the wall of the garden shed. Splat. Splat. Splat. Splat. Splat.

  Satisfying, but it didn’t help.

  I walked past the meat strips dangling on the line with their paper covers over them. By the look of it, the covers hadn’t been one hundred per cent successful.

  I looked at the vege garden behind the shed — things looked droopy. Aha! Water! I gave them water.

  I played the guitar.

  It was only 10am.

  I wandered through the house. What with one
thing and another, I hadn’t even been in all the rooms yet. I filmed my explorations.

  ‘Mum’s room. Boxes still packed. That’ll be useful when we do get to go home.’ Noah’s room was next, but I turned the camera off while I searched it. Somewhere, Noah had to have more drugs, but if he did I ended up being ninety-nine-point-nine per cent sure they weren’t in his bedroom.

  The spare room was the final one on the tour, especially saved for last because I hadn’t been in it yet and who knew what treasures it might hold? ‘Hmm,’ I said to Lizzie, Jax and Addy via the camera, ‘not all that exciting. But behold — the father has made it his own.’

  He’d made up a bed by chucking the mattress that should have been on the bed on to the floor. I did a shot of the sagging old wire on the bed. ‘Can’t say I blame him. This would not be the last word in comfort.’

  The rest of the room could not be said to contain treasure although there was a bookshelf. ‘Gardening books, sheep books, bird books, chook books, fish books, cookbook.’ I pulled it out. ‘Behold! The one and only cookbook on this island and what is it?’ I showed the cover to the camera. ‘The good old Edmonds, that’s what. And even I, Minna Hargreaves, non-domestic goddess, have heard of the Edmonds.’ I stuck my face in front of the lens. ‘I shall take it with me. It could be useful.’

  There was a cupboard with a bundle of greyish sheets and a couple of moth-eaten blankets, four empty boxes and a lot of dust. And that was it. End of tour.

  10.30.

  Doesn’t time fly when you’re having fun?

  I wondered if Dad and Noah were talking about The Situation.

  Noah: Bit of a surprise, eh, Dad.

  Dad: You could say that, son.

  Noah: Think you’ll stay together, Dad?

  Dad: Don’t think so, son.

  Noah: I’ll live with you, Dad.

  Dad: Don’t think so, son.

  Noah: Sweet. Whatever.

  Dad: Glad you see it my way, son.

  I shut the door on Dad’s room. I’d be astonished to death if either of them even mentioned The Situation. I went back to the kitchen. ‘Mum? You want anything? I’m going out for a walk.’