Stella and Margie

by Glenna Thomson

  Isobel plays something classical, slow and even – the sound is wonderful – then shifts to a lower key and the mood of the piece makes me breathe in. Lower and higher notes together, and I close my eyes and think of birds. The tempo seems perfect, and she goes on and on.

  A little trill and she stops. There is silence, and I’d like her to play it again.

  And she does. I imagine her green-polished fingernails; her fingers seem to find the notes easily. I wouldn’t have thought it was possible for anyone to play so well at her age. Tears come to my eyes again, and it occurs to me I’m emotional today. I dab my eyes and press, as if to stop bleeding. I’ve underestimated this child and incorrectly judged her because she’s aloof. Perhaps she is like me, the way I separate myself as a way of protecting against anything I don’t know or understand.

  She is playing something else now; it’s very slow, and I wonder if perhaps she’s staring at the music, working it out. It’s ‘Ave Maria’, I realise, and I’m pleased. She plays it too deliberately.

  ‘Hi, Nan.’

  Jemima is standing in my doorway, grinning, that shock of red hair.

  I can hardly tell her to go away, so I smile.

  ‘Look,’ she says, coming to me. She opens the cover on her iPad, presses a button at the bottom, and the screen comes to life with a rocket moving in outer space, then a cartoon man walking in the air.

  ‘What have you got this time?’ I ask.

  ‘An app that explains how the universe works.’ She puts the iPad on my lap and tells me to ‘have a go’. She’s tried this before and I don’t know why she persists.

  ‘No, thank you.’

  Her fingers are moving on the screen – as her sister’s are moving across the piano keys through the wall – fast, with purpose. Planets spin and move. ‘I’m making a solar system.’

  ‘That’s enough, pet.’

  ‘Dad says you’re negative,’ Jemima tells me, sidling along the bed; she gives me a sly glance because she knows she’s saying the wrong thing.

  A burst of rising heat. I’m humiliated because a child is admonishing me.

  But it is the unfairness of that comment that hits its mark. My son has been talking about me to his children. Stella will be in on this, too. And so judgement never ends, even at eighty. This isn’t a surprise, of course. I just want to know when it’s safe to be old and accepted for being flawed, stupid and human. For doing my best. I’m well past expecting anyone to acknowledge the effort and struggle. The several decades of work: the meals, bed-making, laundry, cleaning, running around – all of it while coping with Norman’s peculiar personality and the cruelty he was prone to. How I’ve suffered, the secrets I have, the trap I’ve lived in – wanting to be me and never getting the chance. And the wash-up is I’m a negative person.

  ‘Perhaps you’ve got something else to do now,’ I say.

  ‘And he says you take no interest in us.’

  ‘In whom?’

  ‘Me and Isobel.’

  ‘Off you go now.’

  She moves slowly; the flick of the iPad cover, a step and twirl, and she backs out of the room, looking at me as if daring me to say something. The little brat, but I admire her spunk.

  I feel my weary old bones on the mattress. Through the window the gleditsia gently sways with the breeze. I planted it in the winter of 1986 on the first anniversary of Mark’s death. No one else knows about this: it is my private memorial to him. It’s a good tree selection because it provides shade in the summer and lets light into the room in winter. Shoots from the pink climbing rose along the veranda need cutting back.

  I listen for birds, but it’s Isobel I hear. She’s playing a new piece, something familiar, and I vaguely think of a television advertisement, but can’t quite place what for – perhaps a car or aeroplane. I hear a rising chorus, and see autumn leaves and flying swans. And then I remember a long time ago, in spring, when I spotted a lone black swan in the north dam. It stayed for about a month, then one day it was gone.

  Chapter 13

  Stella

  I’M walking along the dirt laneway that cuts through the property and ends at the cattle yards. Dust puffs from under my workboots. The tall dead tree on my right always reminds me of a statuesque mannequin wearing a skin-tight silvery dress; the black crimping around the hem is from a fire she survived. A branch is stretched upward as if she’s in a jazz bar posing with a cigarette in a holder. One day the wind will push her to the ground, or she’ll just collapse because it’s her time – and if the borers haven’t eaten her insides, then Ross will cut her up with the chainsaw and we’ll feed her to the fire. There’s enough wood in her to keep us warm for a whole year.

  The track is dry, in parts deeply rutted from decades of cattle treading single lines that have been made worse by rain. Tufts of grass poke up here and there and along the fence line, especially at the base of every star picket. There are dry cow pats, dandelions, a broken bungee rope.

  I hear a faint gas-gun explosion from over at Eddie and Dianne’s walnut orchard. From here I can’t see the cockatoos soar.

  From down past the cattle lick-feeders comes the high-pitched whine of the tractor’s drive-shaft working the pump that Ross is using to spray the blackberries. Then I see the red roof of the tractor cabin rising from the creek bed. That’s where Ross is.

  He said today was perfect for spraying, no breeze. That’s a fact; everything is perfectly still. But what is also true is that we had a fight over his mother and he’s not come back to the house for morning tea. So he is hiding down here in the tea-tree. And Margie is holed up in her bedroom; she only leaves for the bathroom and hasn’t showered since she’s been in Mark’s old room. For three days I have been delivering all her meals on a tray. That’s the problem. Ross says I’m not to do it anymore; he forbids me – for the first time ever, he forbids me – saying she’s perfectly capable of coming to the table. But as I said to him, she refuses to join the family until he speaks to her and apologises.

  ‘Apologise for fucking what?’ He was wide-eyed, waving his hands, imploring me to tell him.

  I counted the reasons on my fingers. ‘For not making her welcome. For not making any effort with her. For basically being a rude, self-righteous prick.’

  The sky is mostly white, as if covered by an enormous flat sheet. Circling above is a small prey bird, I don’t know which one, but Margie would. Further along is the old stone ruin: the first Ballantine house. The two crumbling chimneys – one for cooking, the other for warmth – are a Ballantine monument, a legacy to the early settlement when the land was cleared with that Scottish determination I sometimes see in Ross – when he won’t give in, even though he’s hot, hungry and dehydrated. Beside the ruin are a peppercorn tree and a conifer that drops hundreds of pine cones that we collect each year for kindling. Whenever I’m here, I imagine William and Alice – as if seeing real-life ghosts moving around – planting those trees that are now towering, bedraggled, half-dead. I don’t actually wave or speak to the ghosts, but I acknowledge them, an internal salute, a kind of nod that says, Hello.

  At the creek I climb the fence on a strainer post, careful not to touch the electrics. I can’t see Ross yet. Thousands of ants are busy scurrying in and out of a hole the size of a pea. It’s snake territory down here near the water, browns and tigers. I stay close to the fence and follow a narrow track, probably made by the swamp wallabies that live in the scrubby bush and tea-tree. As I walk, crickets bounce from the track.

  Up past the granite boulders, the tractor is in full view; a yellow 600-litre water tank is clevis-pinned on the back. The drive shaft drones. Ross is surrounded by tussocks, leaning in while he points the long rod attached to the hose and squirts the herbicide over the blackberries. He steps along, patiently working, pointing, spraying.

  I take the backpack off and set it down in the shade of a tall, draping peppermint gum. I wait for him to turn. The hose gets caught on the branch of a currant bush; he jiggles it free, t
hen looks up. He sees me.

  Just watching him walk to the tractor – removing the safety earmuffs, opening the cabin door to turn off the crankshaft – I know there’s been no softening in him. And trying to tell him that we are arguing over the welfare of his eighty-year-old mother somehow doesn’t cut through. I don’t like that about him, and told him so this morning. ‘I thought you were better than this,’ I said, flat-faced and meaning it.

  I put tea bags in the mugs and open the thermos. Ross sits beside me; he’s stiff in the back from all the bending. I don’t look at him while I pour the water and add milk. He takes the mug from me. ‘Thanks,’ he says.

  Ross and I never really fight; we’re patient with each other and when something goes wrong we can mostly make each other smile.

  ‘We need to sort this out,’ I say.

  He looks at me side-on. ‘Run after her if you want, be her nurse, knock yourself out. Your choice, but I’m not playing her games.’

  ‘Why do you hate her so much?’

  He rolls his neck and looks up into the peppermint gum, its leaves like tiny draping fingers. ‘I don’t hate her. I just don’t like her.’ He tries to smile, as if that will somehow help explain. Then he sips the tea, and I realise he’s got nothing else to say.

  ‘What was your dad like with her? How’d they get on?’

  I’ve heard a few things about Norman, snippets, never one complete story. That he was more of a farm supervisor than a farmer and, impossibly, his clothes never got dirty. That he used a leather strap on Ross once because he’d left a paddock gate open. And one time, Norman and Mark squared up to each other in the backyard, but Ross doesn’t know why.

  ‘Did your dad used to get angry with Margie?’

  ‘Stell,’ Ross says, ‘just don’t get carried away with all of this.’

  ‘What do you mean? Nothing is resolved. Your mum has taken to her bed because you won’t speak to her.’ I know not to touch him. So I speak gently. ‘Ross, I love you. But I don’t get this. It shouldn’t be a big deal your mother staying with us for a few weeks. I can’t see the reason you can’t poke your head through her bedroom door and talk to her about what you’ve been doing on the property. She’d love that. This is all out of proportion.’

  ‘Dad had a temper, took stuff out on her.’

  Magpies warble.

  ‘Tell me,’ I say.

  He shrugs and looks around, as if distracted. ‘Dunno – yelling at her, stuff like that. I never really saw; it was more hearing things. I’m pretty sure he used to hit her. Once in the kitchen, he had her arm up her back, hurting her. I can’t forget that.’

  ‘What did you do?’

  ‘Mark was bigger. He was with me.’

  Poor Ross, the smaller boy. He bows his head and breathes in. And all I can think is that I have been in this family for a very long time and didn’t know.

  ‘Did the police get involved?’ I ask.

  Ross laughs silently; his shoulders move. ‘Ballantines don’t go to the police.’

  ‘So what are you going to do now with your mum?’

  He looks at me, sad eyes. ‘Mum and I never got on. That’s not going to change just because she’s living in the house.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes, really.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  He tips the tea on the ground, it splashes, and we watch a tiny stream flow on the dry soil and pool by a dead leaf.

  ‘Now what?’ I say. ‘Nothing’s decided.’

  ‘I want our life back, just us, you and me and the kids.’

  ‘That’s not possible until she’s well enough to leave. In the meantime, she needs to be treated with respect.’

  He stands. ‘She doesn’t respect you, Stell.’

  He walks to the tractor, opens the door and turns the crankshaft back on.

  So there I am by myself. I finish my tea, watching Ross drag the hose through the tea-trees. And I see Norman pressing Margie against the kitchen bench, pushing her arm up her back. She’s bending forward, her legs and back braced against the pain. I hear her begging cries – or maybe she’s silent. Her sons appear and see. Mark steps forward and does what?

  My mouth is open with the shock of it.

  Chapter 14

  Margie

  LYING here, I’ve been thinking about the past, staring into the avocado-dip walls, watching the lace curtains move any time a breeze builds up the strength. Well, I have always had time to think, but not like this, here in this special room where there’s space to breathe. Stella is taking care of things, so I have no worries. She doesn’t linger but is efficient in coming in and out, filling the water jug, taking the empty tea mug away.

  She is onto me about doing my exercises. I don’t agree with the physio that my hip is fine, healing as normal; if it was I wouldn’t limp so much. Yesterday Stella stood beside the bed, arms crossed, waiting for me to lift my right leg. I closed my eyes to shut her out and eventually she went away. And yet, I’m warming to her. I haven’t been looked after since I lived with my parents in Benalla fifty-five years ago.

  When I married Norman, it was a significant thing to happen in my family. I was considered special, chosen, the one who had succeeded and made them proud. Dad was the local bank manager in Benalla where the Ballantines did their business. There was always a fuss in the house when Freddie Ballantine had an appointment with Dad. Mum carried on about starching Dad’s shirts, cleaning his shoes, brushing down his suit. Dad always left for work early on those days – to give himself time to prepare, straighten the pens on his desk, check things, write notes.

  It’s understandable, then, that I was caught up in the fame of the Ballantines, as much as in Norman’s attentions. It has surprised me over the years that I wasn’t more curious about who he was as an ordinary man. I was a pretty girl with a nice figure, attractive enough to turn heads. Back then my ambition in life – aside from travelling to England – was to marry and have children, so what was better than to walk down the aisle with a handsome bachelor from one of the biggest farming families in the district?

  I had once fancied someone else and we’d seen each other regularly for a while. Laurie Mills was a shearer’s son, the only boyfriend I had before Norman. We used to kiss behind the rotunda in the Benalla gardens, and even now I remember his lips were startlingly soft. I don’t know what became of him because when my parents found out about him I was forbidden to see him or take his phone calls: ‘Not Max Mills’s boy!’

  If I were to dream now, I would say that after I left school I should’ve kept on with my typewriting and shorthand, then gone to Melbourne and worked in one of the big legal firms or perhaps a bank. Or, if I had been brave enough, boarded a ship and gone to London. I wish I’d had the courage. When Susan, my school friend, moved to Melbourne to train as a nurse and sailed to England before she was twenty-one, my family seemed shocked, as if she’d done something shameful. And so I obeyed my parents and sat at a small desk at Ralph Wilson’s Real Estate Agency making tea and typing up the descriptions of new houses and farms coming onto the local market. When I think about it, my parents never explicitly said I had to do anything: it was more about an unspoken correctness, about what was expected. Perhaps I’m passive by nature, and if I take on that line of thought it explains a great deal.

  After our wedding reception at the Rose Hotel, Norman drove us three hours to Melbourne and we spent our first night together at the Windsor Hotel on Spring Street. Two days later, we continued on down the Great Ocean Road to Portland for a week at the beach. We had a nervous honeymoon, both of us awkward with each other, realising for the first time we were virgins, and strangers. Very quickly I learned that going with Norman to watch a Gregory Peck and Jean Simmons movie, and feeling his wet kisses in the front seat of his car, was entirely different to sharing a bed with him.

  I hear cicadas in the garden beds. Their sound belongs to these long, warm and dry days, and the anticipation of rain. It is now the beginni
ng of autumn and the ground is stone-hard. Freddie Ballantine used to say not to worry too much about rain until the Labour Day weekend in March – that it was a bonus if you got it before then, but that you should never count on it because it’s natural to have dry spells this time of year. Freddie knew what he was talking about. So it’s troubling that the Weekly Times says the forecast is for no solid rain until May. All this talk about climate change. It’ll be worrying Ross. If he’s not already feeding hay to the cows, he soon will be; the six hundred bales he cut in the Tully paddocks in December need to be carefully portioned because they have to last through winter and he won’t want to buy any.

  It’s past seven and Stella hasn’t brought in my evening meal. They might have been doing the preg testing on the cows today, but I’m not sure. The house is quiet and I wonder if I’m alone, yet Stella would have told me if she was going to be late, and left me a tray.

  I make a play at doing my exercises, waggling my feet forward and back. Then lifting my right leg, holding, lowering. Then the other leg. I find it boring and tiresome, so I stop.

  I start to feel that I’m definitely alone in the house, and it makes no sense. I sit up and face the door. I wait a little longer. Then I climb out of bed, cloak myself with the dressing-gown and push my walker down the hall. I can’t help but see myself walking here as a young woman, strong and capable, carrying a baby on my hip or a laundry basket full of clean clothes to be put away. Now I’m struggling to walk those same steps. This strikes me as very strange, the young and old me, as I push into the family room.

  And there’s Dot’s cat. The wretched thing is staring at me again, like Ross, also thinking I shouldn’t be here. It stands and lazily stretches; its tail gives me a dismissive flick before it runs out to the back porch. I think it wants to go outside so I push across the room and down into the porch. It’s waiting for me and, as I open the door, I give it a helpful kick outside. Yet I worry about birds; the cat should have a bell around its neck.