I understand the problem.
A moment passes.
‘I’m not helping in the yards, Ross.’
My son leans back in his chair, frowning. He’s about to say something, but Stella is quickly on her feet, an overly dramatic gesture, and we all stare at her.
‘I’ve got twenty-four hours to get this thing done,’ she declares. ‘So. I’m letting you all know that under no circumstances am I to be interrupted until further notice. Isobel and Jem, you’re old enough to get yourselves to bed. And Ross, I won’t be helping with the preg testing or getting our children off to school in the morning. Whatever emergency occurs on this property, I will not know about it. And another thing, my darling’ – she points at him – ‘attend to your mother because from this moment on, I am unavailable to you all until the submission is uploaded.’
I bite my bottom lip and glance around to find something else to look at. Never have I heard anything like it.
Jemima says, ‘Mum, but –’
Stella raises her hand. ‘Tell your father.’ And she turns and heads to the dining room.
Ross flicks his iPad cover shut. He slowly stands and follows her.
The shape of his body, the line of his shoulders. Ross is taller, but it could be Norman walking away from me.
The swing door closes behind him.
I look at the girls and they shyly look back. Jemima giggles, rushes from the table, plonks herself on the couch, opens her iPad and stares deeply into the screen. I am thinking of what to say to Isobel when she stands up, telling me she’s going to the piano. She does play a lot; it seems a bit unnatural.
Ross and Stella must be having one of those whispering fights because I can’t hear anything. Stella is in the wrong. This carry-on with the play isn’t going to pay any bills. And now Ross, at the last minute, is left without help.
From my sitting position, I lean across the table and gather up the plates.
Then Ross is back in the room. I try to read his face: he’s tight-jawed, definitely unsmiling.
‘Have you had enough to eat?’ he asks.
‘Perhaps some toast. Is there any jam?’
There is no jam, only Vegemite and peanut butter.
Quince and apricot jams are my favourites. I’ve noticed the quince tree near the laundry has gone to the pack, infested with cherry slug and unpruned. I used to get on with things early, always up with the sun rising behind Mount Glencoe. Sunrises are quite beautiful here and it’s been a very long time since I’ve seen one. I resolve to get up early and sit outside in the courtyard to watch the dawn arrive. I’ll have a little conversation with Dot; sometimes I still think of the cruise we were planning and where we might be if she were still alive, which country we would be at now. And I’ll think of Chester – that dry kiss in the hospital, his touch on my back the other night. It is true that Laura has more than her dead son to hold against me.
‘What time is sunrise tomorrow?’ I ask Ross.
‘Why?’
‘Just a question.’
He looks at his iPad. ‘Six thirty-five.’
‘Goodnight,’ I say.
‘It’s only seven-thirty.’
‘Doesn’t matter.’
‘You right there?’ he asks, but he makes no attempt to lend assistance as I push up from the chair to my crutches.
‘I’m perfectly fine.’
And I refuse his offer of a cup of tea, yet I would like one very much. I’m being contrary, but suddenly it is more important to get away from them all. From Stella’s little speech ordering Ross to look after me. I hate it here, but don’t know where else I want to be.
I recall the question Stella asked me at lunch in the café: ‘Do you care about me?’ And my tearful and devastating realisation – she is the only person concerned for me. Not Caroline. Not Ross, sitting there with his head in his iPad before I’ve even left the room.
I shut the bedroom door behind me and exhale with the utter relief of being in the sanctity of my own private space. It exhausts me to undress; the cautious way I have to move to protect my hip wears me down. I lift myself into bed thinking it would be convenient for everyone if I died. Yet I reach to the bedside table and take my rainbow of tablets: orange for blood pressure, yellow for arrhythmia, white for cholesterol and blue for pain.
Outside is the trilling call of a willie wagtail. And there are magpies too, four or five. The room is too light and I cannot sleep. It isn’t hot or cold and I’m comfortable enough in the storeroom. I listen to the birds while staring into the ceiling, the hideous paper-and-wire light fitting. A white-browed scrubwren has joined the choir. I drift away to the memory of a dark olive-brown woollen coat my mother made for me – the same colour as the wren. She adapted the pattern and gave it a belt, and a Cossack collar so I didn’t have to bother with a scarf. My mother was full of surprises like that.
Chapter 9
Stella
ROSS comes into the dining room and sits on the chaise lounge. Its green silk upholstery is two-toned because the afternoon light has bleached the lower end to nothing. He tells me the girls are asleep, and when I ask him about his mother he says she went to bed at seven-thirty.
‘Did she take her tablets?’
He shrugs.
‘You need to take more interest.’
‘She said she was fine.’
‘When she says that, she doesn’t mean it.’
‘If someone says they’re fine, they’re fine.’
He’s drinking a beer, leaning back. I go and sit with him and he hands me the bottle. I take a mouthful.
He puts his arm around me. ‘How’s it going?’
‘Crap. I’m exaggerating everything.’
‘You’ll be right.’
‘Were you able to change the preg testing?’ I ask.
‘Now next Tuesday. No drama.’ He takes the beer back. ‘When are you coming to bed?’
‘Don’t know.’
‘Can I get you anything?’
‘Don’t think so.’
He kisses my hair and stands. ‘Night, babe.’
I’m left on my own with the staring dark eyes of the portraits. I love this room; its faded beauty feeds my imagination. It’s a creative space like the old Robinson Street bakery, with those crumbling brick ovens, the floorboards that had carried a million feet.
I look around and imagine the Ballantines in their party garb, someone tapping a cigarette in the silver ashtray. Laughter; people holding glasses of wine. The fires roaring with split red box. But I’m not actually sure they were that cheerful – not if Margie and Caroline are anything to go by. In the end, though, it doesn’t matter. I think we all pretty much want the same things: to be loved and have a special place.
I light the candles in a five-pronged silver candelabra – the one that Caroline didn’t take – and place it on the table. I re-read and edit my answers before moving on to the question about the long-term outcomes of the project. That’s easy: I want the Yellow Box Players to go on forever.
When I moved here from Melbourne in the winter of 2002, I was lonely but also happy to be with Ross all the time. We’d been miserable each time he’d left my place in Brunswick to come back to this farm that I’d never really seen and could hardly understand. That first winter, he showed it to me. Instead of taking the quad bike, we walked. Rugged up in coats, gloves and a double layer of socks in our boots, and with the chill on our pink faces, we tramped the paddocks, over rocks, through fences, across the creek. We sat and ate sandwiches, drank hot tea from a thermos and watched the cattle grazing with white frost on their backs, the rising mist and lacy clouds drifting slowly along the vast open sky. We checked pregnant cows, some with new calves standing on wobbly legs and nudging along their mum’s belly, looking for their first drink.
I was pregnant too, with Isobel. She was born in the middle of October, just as the first perfect roses were blooming, and the rhododendrons and azaleas were out. It was then, being a mother, that I fel
t like I belonged at Maryhill; that I wasn’t just Ross’s live-in lover. I didn’t change my name – I’ll always be Stella Adams – but living in the big old house, walking down the hallways and entering the large rooms with a baby in my arms, it was like I was in the company of the other Ballantine mothers that had done what I was now doing. And yet, in all of the goodness, I missed the theatre, the process of creating something from inside myself.
In the few years I had been with the Robinson Street Theatre Group, I’d wanted to advance my career: do bigger productions, establish a reputation for myself, even work in London or New York theatre. But it didn’t happen. Perhaps it was about timing. Because after I met Ross, in a way there was no choice to be made. He was the laid-back guy sitting in Dudley’s All Day on his own, nursing a house lager, watching me. As his waitress, I asked if he wanted something to eat. I told him the daily specials. ‘The lentil hamburger,’ he said. Not quite love at first sight, but there was something different about him, and when my shift was finished and we went around the corner to the Lex Bar, I found out he really was different. A cattle farmer. I’d never met a farmer before, let alone one who ate lentils.
And so, with Isobel in the bouncer at my feet, I set up camp in the old dining room and starting writing I Did My Best, a story I’d been wanting to explore and tell since Mum died. I’d never written anything before, only ever produced and directed other people’s work. It was a private thing, in a private space: an abandoned chandeliered room in an ancient house, on a three-thousand-acre farm, two hundred kilometres north-east of Melbourne.
It’s after midnight when I answer the last funding question. Then I start going through CDs and photos of old performances, trying to work out which support material will make an impression. I re-read my CV, hoping it will impress them. The wind has picked up; the trees make a hushing noise – I could be close to the sea, hearing waves falling onto a beach. It’s chilly and I drape the throw rug over my shoulders.
At 2 am I give in to tiredness. The chaise lounge is soft and comfy. I’ve slept on it before, sneaking a daytime nap in between jobs, kids and Ross. I turn off the lights, blow out the candles, lay the rug over me and sleep.
Carolling magpies wake me. I’m cold and stiff and go to the kitchen to make coffee. Diva is mewling at the back door, so I let her out. There’s been a light rain, or perhaps it’s dew. The birds are waking and I imagine them in the trees, nests, branches. The sun is rising; slashes of iridescent pink are cresting over Mount Glencoe. I put on Ross’s coat and leave the house to bask in the solitude and watch the sky. The coffee mug warms my hands.
The sandstone path has cracks; moss grows in them. A long stem of dill pushes between the pavers and rock borders. Pink geraniums clash with red. The lavender is ragged. Hydrangeas droop and are yellowing from lack of water. It’s been a dry summer, but these past weeks the weather has been turning. Ross is waiting for the autumn break when we’ll get a good few inches to kickstart the pasture growth. I lean into a dark pink rose; the perfume is intense.
When I look up, I see Margie. She’s sitting on the stone bench; the crutches are on the ground beside her. She’s staring ahead, dressed in trackpants and only a light cardigan. She looks thin, the way she’s hugging into herself to keep warm. She shifts her weight and I wonder about her pain.
She doesn’t hear me approach. I take off Ross’s coat.
She turns to me and speaks like we’re in church, hushed. ‘What’re you doing out here?’
I reply the same way. ‘I saw the sunrise from the back door and came for a better look.’
I tell her it’s Ross’s coat I’m draping over her shoulders because I know then she won’t reject it. I sit beside her and we look forward. The whole sky appears water-coloured pink, grey and silver, and the sun’s globe is gold. In the foreground are the ragged and overgrown vegetable boxes. A walnut and chestnut tree. Brown fairy-wrens dart between a tomato trellis and mildewed zucchini leaves. The basil has gone to seed.
I sip the coffee and am cold.
‘Are you okay?’ I ask.
‘Not really.’
It’s because it’s quiet and beautiful and we are both looking forward – and because she’s so desperately lonely – that she is speaking to me this way.
I say, ‘I’m sorry that I’m so busy with the funding. It’s boring for you, I know.’
‘In some ways I admire you,’ she says.
I’m stunned to hear this and want to ask why, but hesitate.
‘Norman wasn’t an easy man to live with.’
‘In what way?’ I ask, bracing at this first intimacy between us.
‘He was demanding. Things had to be done his way.’
I press the coffee mug to my face, and we’re both still looking ahead as if we’ll break a spell if we turn and face each other.
‘What if it wasn’t done his way?’ I ask.
‘He’d get angry.’
Then she does turn to me, a direct, defiant gaze from her sad brown eyes. Ageing is a curiosity to me – I see it beginning in my own face – and I notice how Margie’s sagging skin has formed wrinkles, especially around her eyes. The lines that moulded her features have worn into deep creases. I wait for her to say something, but all she does is glare at me, and I know she is telling me not ask her any more questions.
When she reaches down for the crutches, Ross’s coat falls off her shoulders.
‘Put it on,’ I say.
‘No, I’ll go in now.’
I put the coat on and follow her up the path. At the step into the back porch, she holds on to the doorframe and struggles to pull herself up. She doesn’t shy away or flinch when I lean forward to help her balance. The house is quiet; everyone else is still asleep. As she walks across the floorboards, the rubber stoppers on her crutches make an uneven and muted clomping noise. She closes her bedroom door softly.
I find Ross on his side, an arm exposed. His tattoo says something I don’t think he agrees with now. It was an impulsive holiday thing and at least looks good: All that I have to learn is within me. He always sleeps so well – deeply, for hours of peaceful unconsciousness. I undress, lift the doona and climb in. Even in sleep he opens his arms for me.
Chapter 10
Margie
IN my bedroom I turn many circles with the crutches. I sigh, squeeze my eyes shut and shake my fist. It is all rubbish. At my age. You’d think the struggle would be over, yet I’m in the frontlines, battling life. It never ends.
Fully dressed, I drag my body into bed, swallow two blue tablets and pull the blankets over me. The light coming through the hessian curtains is bright, but when I shut my eyes it’s dark. I am determined to return to sleep, to fill time, to never wake up – or wake up to something different to this.
And I do.
There’s a firm knock at my door.
‘Margie?’ Stella opens the door, hesitant as if walking into a cave. ‘It’s ten. And you’re still sleeping.’
I blink and stare up at her face. She’s too close and I pull back into the pillows. Even at this time of day she is wearing perfume, jasmine or lavender.
She opens the curtains then stands back, arms folded, and waits for me to sit up. ‘Are you okay? Would you like breakfast in bed?’
She has hit a note: the luxury of breakfast in bed. I’ve only had it in hospital, yet I remember my mother sitting up with a pale-green tray, metal legs splayed across her legs, the dome of an egg in a cup, dry toast, a small pot of tea. Dad would say, ‘Here you are, my-Lily.’
‘No,’ I say to Stella.
‘Bad luck. I’ve already got the tray sorted. So stay put.’
But she doesn’t leave and I stare at her.
‘I’ve had two phone calls,’ she says. ‘One from the physio to say the X-rays were all normal and that you can now use the walker and resume your exercises.’
She pauses. I sit up.
‘The rehab hospital in Wangaratta also called. They’ve got a place for you. I said
I’d ask you. But they can only hold it till one this afternoon.’
I clench my teeth to keep my face still, to hide my shock and disappointment. Yet already I see myself there: the room is white and plain, with no adornments; it’s a hybrid hotel room for people like me. The staff will be kind as they come and go from the room. I will be served scones and jam, shiny apples – better food than here – by cheerful people with dark skin.
‘You don’t have to go,’ Stella says. ‘When this funding crap is out of the way, I’ll be able to pay you more attention.’
I don’t like her free language, or want her charity or permission to live here in this house. So I will go to rehab. I feel something shrink – hope, happiness – that I know will never return. I close my eyes to stop the welling of tears.
‘I know you’re lonely, Margie. We’ve had stuff between us, but I think you should stay here. Ross will accept it. I’ll talk to him.’
So that’s it. My son is not happy with me being here. I am his needy, sad old mother. I will resign myself. Rehab first, then back to Bishop Street.
‘I will take the bed at rehab,’ I say.
‘That’s bullshit, Margie. You don’t want to go.’
‘I don’t like your swearing.’
She smiles. ‘Come on, Margie, say you’ll stay.’
‘Ross doesn’t want me here.’
She sighs and shrugs, as if to say, What can I do?
‘I think I should go, yes. Tell them.’
And suddenly it is a relief; I can see the freedom, the detachment; no expectations. There are advantages in being alone – you don’t have to try.
‘I want you to stay,’ Stella says.
I shake my head.
‘This is your home.’
‘Not anymore.’
Stella looks tall from where I am in bed. ‘I’m not letting you go to some sterile hospital when we can work things out here,’ she says. ‘I’m just crazy-busy until five today. But after that, it’s you and me. Will I tell them you’re coming or not?’
I will not tell her I want to stay. So I say nothing.
Stella and Margie Page 9