At the mention of Chester, I stare out the window. After the rain there’s no dust, yet everything is yellow and dry down on the flats. A P-plater passes at high speed, well above the limit. I’m noticing all these things, even though inside I’m ready to die, too. Perhaps Chester will come to my funeral as well. My hand is on the armrest, and I wonder what will happen if I undo my seatbelt, open the door and let myself fall out. I’m seeing and feeling it – the slamming into the gravel, the air knocked out of me, my body brutally crushed and destroyed. It’s not dying that bothers me, but what if I live?
‘Did you know Laura very well?’ Stella asks.
‘No, not really.’
She glances at me. ‘Everyone knows everyone up here.’
I’m feeling agitated and rub my hands together like I’m putting on hand lotion. ‘Not necessarily,’ I say.
‘But wasn’t Chester and Laura’s son Mark’s friend? They died together in that crash?’
‘It was a very long time ago,’ I say, closing my eyes so she stops talking about Chester and Laura.
At home Stella hangs my clothes in my wardrobe and puts the shoebox with my new gold-buckled flats at the bottom. She slides the door shut. I’m sick with worry about all the money we’ve spent. And I consider what a folly it was to buy them, some ridiculous idea that I should look my best for Chester, who is so devastated by his wife’s passing he cannot now work on the play. I am ridiculous. At my age, for heaven’s sake, I still can’t get out of my own way and find peace.
The next afternoon Stella walks into my room with my lunch on a tray: an avocado, ham and tomato sandwich, a small bowl of red grapes, and a cup of white tea. She has worked out just how much milk I like and has it the right colour. She’s all dressed up in a fitted black dress that comes to her knees, and the tan and black high-heeled ankle boots that she seems very fond of. Her blonde hair is brushed and flows around her face and shoulders; her lipstick is magenta – there’s a rose just like it beside the magnolia not far from the pergola.
‘We’re going to Laura’s funeral,’ she tells me.
I’m beyond surprised and have nothing to say.
‘We’ll be back before dinner. The girls won’t be on the bus.
I’ve made other arrangements. Will you be all right?’
I stare at her, and stop breathing. I want to ask why. Why are you going to Laura Sullivan’s funeral?
The faint blast from the gas gun, a signal I need to take a breath.
There’s pity or sadness in Stella’s eyes, and I think she is about to ask a question when we hear Ross calling her from the hallway.
‘In here,’ she calls back.
‘We’ve got to go, come on.’ Ross glances at me, perhaps with a slight smile, but it all happens too quickly to tell. He’s fresh out of the shower, his hair is damp, and he hasn’t shaved for at least two days – yet I think it’s deliberate, as if it’s the fashion to go around looking untidy. His charcoal-coloured suit fits snugly, and he’s not wearing a tie with the white shirt. I think to tell him he should wear a tie to a funeral, but I remain silent.
When Stella leans down and kisses my cheek, his eyes widen as if seeing something that surprises him. ‘Enjoy your lunch and have a lovely afternoon,’ she says, traipsing from me to my son, then stretching out her hand to him. He clasps it and they disappear through the door.
It takes a few minutes for me to settle down after they leave. Her perfume lingers, perhaps blending with whatever after-shave Ross is wearing.
A sticky fly is pestering around the cling-wrapped sandwich. I shoo it away and decide I will not sit in bed like an old frump on the afternoon Laura is being farewelled from this earth.
At the wardrobe I pull out the grey shirt and black pants. I put them on. The tan shoes are quite comfortable. Then from the jewellery box I put on the pink sapphire earrings; my fingers tremble pushing on the clips. In the bathroom I brush my teeth and pull a wet comb through my hair. The shirt is lovely and I believe that I look good enough.
Without the walker, I unhurriedly wander the house, looking for a place to settle. I quite like having the run of the house. After that good soaking rain, the house seems to shift into itself as if settling down; all the trusses and joists are getting comfortable again after a big upset.
In the sideboard cupboard, I discover bottles of wine beside tall and squat bottles of spirts, brandy, tequila, whiskey, gin. I find a glass and pour a good shot of Jack Daniel’s. In the kitchen I add a little water. The cat is on the couch and I don’t want to be near it. There’s a magazine on the table, and I take that with me through the swing door to the old dining room and sit on the green chaise lounge. I hear a white-naped honeyeater and a yellow-rumped thornbill in the garden, perhaps a fantail, too.
I open the magazine and find advertisements for cruises. I follow the arrows that circle countries.
Laura’s funeral will now be underway. I picture the crowd; there won’t be many there. Yet Ross and Stella have gone, perhaps out of respect to Chester for his involvement in the play, although that seems a weak motive to me. The service will surely be at St Joseph’s, the Catholic church in Arundel Street. Religion was behind Chester’s commitment to her, his devout belief that his marriage couldn’t be dissolved for any reason: till death do us part. He was always resolute, even though the conflict was bizarrely obvious – rejecting divorce, but enjoying and accepting the sin of adultery.
I close my eyes and sip the whiskey; it heats my throat on the way down.
It was only when Laura visited her mother in Geelong or caught the train to attend a botanical drawing class in Melbourne that Chester and I saw each other. Sometimes months passed between our meetings. I would wait for his note to arrive in the letterbox at the top of the driveway, formally addressed to Mrs Margaret Ballantine in a sealed envelope: audacious, vague and illegible enough not to cause suspicion, and always signed with the single letter C – all of it clear enough to me. And, anyway, I was the only one to collect the mail.
I don’t know how to describe the attraction between us; a glance that somehow communicated desire. In 1975, I saw him in the supermarket carpark and he asked me to have coffee with him. I was too shy, surprised and afraid, so I said no. But from then on I looked for him – up the street, in the shops, driving along the roads.
It was on the oval sidelines, watching our boys play football, that we spoke again. A cold winter’s day, but a clear sky. We stood side-by-side, hands in our coat pockets. Our spouses were elsewhere, so we were just two parents watching our eleven-year-old lads play. It was in the third quarter, while staring forward onto the footy field – kids running and collapsing into a scrum, a whistle blowing – that Chester mentioned Laura was in Geelong visiting her mother, and perhaps I would like to have morning tea with him sometime in the coming week.
How shocking of him to suggest it. Lovely Chester. What a terrible, foolish thing. I glanced at his profile, the line of his neck, the navy collar of his coat – all of it was somehow familiar.
‘If you’d like,’ he said, turning to me with a roguish smile.
Chester was very handsome. I don’t know how I answered, but it was agreed that we would meet two days later, on the Monday morning. And to avoid any neighbourly suspicion or detection, he suggested it might be best if I approached his place from Hoskins Lane, and he’d leave the back gate open.
At exactly ten that Monday, I entered his house, Laura’s home. It was the one and only time I ever went in there. The house was rustic, made from natural timbers and stone. The central room had a feature wall of local granite with a firebox in the centre and a cavity to store logs. He’d built the house himself, he said. Everything was neat and the furniture was much more modern than in my home.
On the walls were botanical drawings of fruit in identical frames: a red Bartlett pear, a medlar apple, a quince, a pomegranate and a blueberry. When I asked him who had painted them, he didn’t answer. Later, when I thought about it, I realised tha
t of course Laura was the artist. How odd it seemed, then and now, that he didn’t own up to his wife’s talent, as if mentioning her name would somehow break the bubble we had enclosed ourselves in.
We didn’t drink tea or eat the butternut snaps he’d put on a plate. Somehow we just stepped towards each other, and within a few quick minutes retreated to the sleep-out, a room unprepared for us. The mattress on the pine bed was bare and covered with plastic bags of old clothes and a box of wire coathangers, all of which we quickly removed. We flapped a white flannelette sheet loose to float down for us to lie on.
It remains my most precious experience, his arms around me, our twin breaths, and just being loved, sincerely. And it was, shall I say, the first time I had known pleasure.
Afterwards, my head against his shoulder, he held my hand and kissed each fingertip and had something to say for each one: ‘Margie is gorgeous. Margie’s got a beautiful body. Margie’s skin is like velvet. Margie is strong and courageous. Margie is a special person.’ And when he finished with my left hand, he did the same to my right: ‘Margie has beautiful eyes. Margie is my adored lover…’
I lived on those words and memorised them every day, until one day I stopped because it hurt too much, and because our sons were dead. And what was the point of it all, anyway? Waiting for his notes, frequently being disappointed and finally, whenever he beckoned me, sneaking around like an eager whore, when afterwards all he did was hitch his trousers and kiss me goodbye until the next time.
The whiskey has made me sleepy, so I kick off my shoes and lie on the day bed. Magpies are carolling – and, as I drift to sleep, I think Laura’s body will now have left the church. I see Chester, the grieving moustachioed husband, shaking hands in that sincere way of his, holding the wrist with his left hand, ‘thank you so much for coming’.
And I decide I hate Chester, and it blossoms in me and feels very good.
Chapter 23
Stella
AFTER the funeral we want to stay out and have dinner at the local pub with the kids. Except Margie is at home expecting our return and her evening meal. We all feel it, a silent resentment that our fun is taken from us because she is waiting for us.
We buy Chinese takeaway. And as Ross powers us up the mountain – sugary red sauce leaking from the plastic containers, rice sweating and bulging, and Isobel and Jemima gorging themselves on prawn crackers – I try to explain to them how it must feel to be Margie, old and alone. But my voice falls flat. I’m tired of the story myself and want her to be more positive, brighter, different to who she is.
I think of my own mother, Grace, and consider that I wanted her to be someone other than who she was. And here’s a question: what opinion will my girls have of me when they’re adults? Already, I have my answer prepared for them: this is who I am and I’m doing my best. But my mother said the same thing to me and I judged her harshly. When she died I was still angry with her, and right now I’m sad. Perhaps I’m depressed because I’ve just seen Laura Sullivan’s solid oak casket put inside a hearse and driven away. Poor Mum. I was too hard on her, and I whisper ‘sorry’ into the air, to her memory.
And so I resolve once again to be kinder to Margie.
At home it looks like we’ve rehearsed it, the way Ross gets the plates, Isobel clears the table and Jemima puts the forks down. But only for four.
‘I’ll get Margie,’ I say. ‘Set another place.’
They stare at me as I leave the room.
Margie is sitting straight-backed on the cane chair, like the matriarch she thinks she is, wearing pink lipstick that is too bright for her. For a weird moment I think she must be going out somewhere, in the grey blouse and black pants, the tan flats on her feet.
‘We’ve got Chinese,’ I say.
‘Who?’
‘Chinese takeaway for dinner.’
She’s on her feet. ‘Dot and I used to go to Tamarind Thai regularly. I quite liked the sweet-and-sour pork. I’ll need a fork because I don’t use chopsticks.’
She pushes the walker down the hall, yet she looks spritely enough, as if forgetting her lame leg.
Ross has a beer. He’s poured a glass of white wine for me.
The food by now is lukewarm, a bit soggy, but we’re ravenous and there’s too much food on the table for five. I take Margie’s plate and serve her. She stares at what I give her, like it’s beyond Chinese food, more foreign than that. Perhaps she’s never had crispy-skin chicken or king prawns with ginger and shallots. Ross offers her a glass of wine and she surprises us by saying she’d prefer a beer.
Margie is in a good mood and seems interested when Jemima shows her a photo of a guitar she plans to make out of recycled material.
‘What’s the point of it, pet?’ Margie asks.
Jemima grins. ‘For school.’
‘But you can’t play a cardboard guitar.’
‘We’re having an orchestra.’
Margie can’t fathom what Jemima’s said, so she turns her attention to Isobel – yet she seems even more perplexed by her. She knows only one question to ask her – that is, what is she now playing? And the answer is always unfathomable: a Chopin ballade, a Mozart sonata, a Prokofiev piece.
So it’s Ross and me that Margie speaks to. There’s lipstick on her front teeth when she reminds us again that she and Dot used to go to Tamarind Thai once a week. And with the mention of Dot’s name, one thought links to another, and she’s telling us about the cruise they planned to go on and that today she saw a magazine advert for one just like it. Then she looks at Ross and tells him about the problems Freddie Ballantine had with the titles when he bought Tullys. She thinks this is very important information that Ross really needs to know. He necks his beer while listening and I know he wants her to be quiet.
When she stops talking, there’s a hush in the room. We want to eat and be light among ourselves, but Margie’s presence stops us. It’s like we’re back in church, at Laura’s funeral. And so I talk about the funeral, telling Margie that about a hundred and fifty people were there. ‘Laura’s sister and her husband from Perth are staying with Chester for a few days,’ I say. ‘It’s good he’s not by himself.’
Margie puts her fork down and sits up.
‘Did you know she was a botanical artist?’ I ask. ‘We have one of her pieces in the front room. A persimmon.’
‘Yes, I know she painted fruit and flowers.’
There’s a definite shift in Margie’s mood; she seems distracted and starts fidgeting with the edge of the placemat. I notice again the thin gold band is missing from her left hand.
‘Are you okay?’ I ask.
She nods, then slowly rises from the chair. With the walker, she pushes towards the hallway. I watch until she’s out of sight, then glare at Ross to let him know I’m unhappy he’s not talked to his mother. He shrugs, as if to say, What the hell did I do?
Like Ross, I want our life back, how it was before she came to live with us. I’m finally resigned to speaking to the orthopaedic surgeon about her returning to Bishop Street. I’ve got a list of services and things she’ll need. Margie will be all right; somehow she always is. And she’s more mobile now, moving better, and I wonder if she even needs the walker, but then I don’t want her to have another fall.
The girls are in bed and Ross is in his study, drinking his coffee, looking at cattle prices, markets, weather, god knows what interests him half the time. I pour a good slug of Jack Daniel’s and go to the dining room.
I log on more out of habit; it’s something to do. I open Outlook and wait to see what drops into my inbox. I sip the whiskey, feel the lovely burn. Various newsletters, and a chain of community messages on a CFA dinner auction. I reply, saying we’ll all attend and also donate six bales of hay with a reserve of three hundred dollars on them; we do it every year.
I sip my whiskey, glancing at the portraits, the missing Norman – and raise my glass in defiance because he’s now covered in an old blanket, hidden behind the tool cupboard in the tra
ctor shed.
An email from Felicity asks if I’ve heard about the funding; I reply saying no. A message from friends over on Barry Mill Road, Erin and Steve, inviting us to dinner on Saturday the ninth; I answer saying we’d love to. I delete a catalogue for kids’ clothes.
Then. I stare.
Victorian Rural Arts have snuck in, they’re about six emails down, and I’d missed it.
I know the funding has been rejected. So when I open it I’m prepared, braced, ready to be devastated and spend the night getting drunk, deciding what the purpose of my life is if I can’t even get this gig up. But it says:
Congratulations, the Yellow Box Players have been granted six thousand dollars.
There’s a long unnecessary spiel on why my request for fifteen thousand was rejected. Six thousand is enough.
I stand, raise my arms and explode the air from my lungs in a happy scream. Already I know how the money will be spent. I need Chester to do the sets because he’ll do them expertly and cheaply. We won’t advertise in the local paper but will do black-and-white posters, put them up all over town and everywhere else. We’ll post regular Facebook updates.
Ross is rushing to me; the swing door opens. ‘Jesus, what?’
I tell him.
‘Bloody beauty, my darling.’ His arms are wide.
And I fold into him and do this sort of crying-laughter while he gently rocks me from side to side.
Monday morning, Margie asks me what time the theatre group meeting is. Then she asks me again after lunch, but this time she wants to know who is coming. I tell her, yet she looks at me like I’ve not answered her properly.
Later in the afternoon, I discover her napping in the pergola; her lipstick-painted mouth is slightly open. She’s wearing the grey blouse with the black pants and runners, and she looks smaller, or perhaps more compact with clothes that fit properly. It’s warm and a pleasant place to sleep.
Stella and Margie Page 18