Jacaranda Blue

by Joy Dettman

  ‘It’s chicken, followed by apple cobbler, Mr Bryant. I became involved in a lengthy task and ran out of time,’ she apologised as she handed the old man his meal at the door. He was near blind, and an excellent choice for her first delivery.

  ‘Never look a gift horse in the mouth, my dear,’ he said.

  The peanut-pillow queen took Meals on Wheels, and Mr Macy, Mrs Morris and her husband, Mrs Murphy and Dave. They all took Meals on Wheels. In Maidenville, age had its fringe benefits.

  Stella handed Mrs Morris two meals at her front door.

  ‘You’re late, and what’s wrong with you?’

  ‘I . . . had a fall. Hit my head, then slept too long. I . . . I had the very strangest dream. You were in it, Mrs Morris,’ Stella said as she turned away.

  ‘Yes, well you’re lucky you can sleep in. Some of us can’t get to sleep at all. And you were supposed to be here at twelve-thirty. We have to go to bowls this afternoon and we’re going to be late.’

  ‘We require more assistants with the Meals on Wheels. Perhaps you have some free time.’

  ‘No I haven’t. Did you hear about the Spencer boy?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘He’s nicked off. Rode to Dorby on his bike, they say. Ruined him, they did. You know they paid six hundred dollars for that bike. One from the local bike shop wasn’t good enough for him – ’

  ‘His bike? Yes, of course. I must go.’ She was halfway down the drive. Mrs Morris’s voice rose to compensate.

  ‘He left on Monday night after Spud had a go at him. And young Kelly Murphy. Did you hear about young Kelly Murphy –?’

  But Stella was away. She took two meals from the polystyrene container and walked up the drive next door to Mrs Murphy’s door.

  ‘You’re very late today, aren’t you?’

  ‘Yes. I had a . . . a long call from Father – ’

  ‘Did he have anything interesting to say?’

  ‘He’s missing Maidenville.’ Stella was backing away, thinking bike. Bike. Dorby. Spud. Kelly. Time. Can’t run. Always a word or two at the front door. Bike. Have to . . . have to . . . drive it to Dorby. Yes.

  Mrs Murphy lifted the lid of her hot meal as she pursued Stella down the drive. ‘It’s supposed to be roast lamb today, with mint sauce. I was looking forward to a nice bit of lamb, dear. What happened to the lamb?’

  ‘Blown fuse.’ Then Stella was walking away. She was in her car. She was driving away and back to . . . that.

  The neighbours met at the fence when she was gone. ‘What’s got into her? She’s got some bee up her bum today. Hair all over her head like a wet teenager . . . trying to do a Garbo in her big sunglasses. Wait till Martin Templeton gets back. Won’t he be in for the surprise of his life.’

  ‘They say Steve Smith’s ute was in her drive till all hours on Sunday night, and Mary Owen’s girl saw them in Dorby on the night of the funeral. Dancing! I mean to say, Mrs Morris – ’

  ‘I heard, my dear. They say she was drinking like a fish, and dancing cheek to cheek with him too. A dark horse, that one.’

  ‘While the cat is away, the mice will play, Mrs Morris.’

  ‘They say she’s spending money like water too. I was in the electrical shop when she ordered a brand new stove.’

  ‘It blew a fuse. That’s why we didn’t get our lamb with mint sauce.’

  ‘What was wrong with their old stove, that’s what I’d like to know? If they’ve got that sort of money to waste, then I don’t see why the church had to buy them a new airconditioned car.’

  ‘And did you notice her neck? She had a love bite. I’ll swear to it. And her clothes, Mrs Morris?’

  ‘That was one of Miss Moreland’s shirts, or I’ll eat Parsons’ hat and have his socks for seconds. I wondered what she’d done with the old girl’s clothes. I’ve been keeping my eye on the op shop, but Glenda said that none of the clothes have come in yet. She’s kept them for herself, Mrs Murphy. As if they, with all their money, need second-hand clothes.’

  ‘I always said Miss Moreland was mutton dressed up to look like lamb, and if you ask me, Mrs Morris, Stella is heading down that very same path,’ her neighbour replied.

  ‘Mutton, lamb, or bloody chicken, she’d have made someone a bloody good wife if she’d stood still long enough for them to catch her,’ Bert Morris replied, a chicken drumstick in his hand.

  ‘That’s one of them chickens from the Charcoal Chicken place. She didn’t even cook it. Her fuse blew. That’ll teach her to go throwing money away on new stoves. My word, but Martin Templeton is in for a terrible shock when he gets home.’

  A Timely Influenza

  At two-thirty, Stella returned to the shed and to the shallow grave, its contents now well covered by her sheets, pillow, quilt cover and an under-blanket. She had changed her clothing, her old friend’s outfit was far too fine to soil with labour, but she was not wearing beige. She had resurrected a much patched pair of stretch jeans from beneath her bottom drawer, her secret place. They smelt musty. They were dusty, but the zip still closed. From the same hiding place, she’d taken an old favourite T-shirt, a faded apple green.

  She felt cleansed, and her head was clear. The long hot shower had helped, the washing of her hair, the washing away of clay and perspiration and worse, had helped, but the need to force herself out, out there, where she must, by need, respond to greeting, react to situations, had helped her more.

  Perhaps too it was the clothing she wore.

  For the first time in years she felt like herself – like the self she had abandoned years ago, discarded in favour of a shadow self, deemed fit only to wear her mother’s second-hand skirts and maidenly blouses.

  She would empty her wardrobe, burn Angel’s clothing – when she had time. She’d burn them slowly, piece by piece, and delight in the burning. But that was for later. There was the bike to think about now.

  Still much to do.

  But how much better it was that she had been seen around town, going about her normal business.

  ‘So much better.’

  The theory was that Thomas Spencer had nicked off to Dorby, and with Spud Murphy’s publicly made threats being rehashed on every corner, who could blame him? He wasn’t the first, nor would he be the last youth to disappear from Maidenville, but now his bicycle must also disappear. Stella was thinking logically as she wheeled it from the storeroom. Still new, it was a feather-light thing, and as Mrs Morris had said, expensive.

  She opened the car boot, easily lifting the bike in – half in.

  ‘Darn it!’

  She had been planning to drive it to Dorby, after dark, leave it leaning in some park. But the car boot was too small, and other than to leave one wheel out, and tie the boot down with rope, this could not be done. Someone would be certain to sight her on the road. And fingerprints too. Again she had forgotten to use her gloves.

  Such a waste, she thought, as she went for a shifting spanner and began to disassemble the bike. Seat, pedals, handlebars came off and were positioned low in the pit. Again she wished she’d dug it deeper.

  ‘What is done cannot be undone,’ she said. It was a sentence she had repeated and repeated in the past two days, and she said it again as she freed the wheels and dropped the frame into the pit. Gingerly then she slid a wheel down each side. They were big wheels. Tall. Too tall. She tried to hammer them in with the head of the axe but the axe kept bouncing off. She turned it, cutting into the tyres with the blade, flattening them before hammering again. One sank low, but the other wheel must have hit a root, or rock. It would not budge. She leaned it towards the centre, low enough, and when she was done, she wiped her father’s tools before putting them neatly away in his tool case. She placed the axe and the pick in their corner, but kept the spade nearby. She would need it a while longer.

  A bag of gardening lime caught her eye. She dragged it to the hole, where she up-ended it, sprinkling it there. It was supposed to do something. She had read it . . . somewhere. Working from left to righ
t, she began moving the mountain of clay from the tarpaulin back to the pit, shovel-full by shovel-full.

  ‘What is done cannot be undone,’ she said, but the words were losing their power, so she began singing, filling her head with words to still her thinking.

  One more journey, and we will cross over,

  over the river to dwell with Thee.

  One more journey and we will cross over,

  over the river, and safe in Your love.

  Trials and tribulation, they will pass away.

  Troubles disappear in the light of newborn day.

  One more journey, and we will cross over,

  over the river and safe in Your love.

  It was almost done. One more hour and she could rest. The promise of rest kept her moving clay. Backwards and forwards, backwards and forwards, and when her back refused to lift one more spade of clay, she kneeled and shovelled, forcing unused muscles to take up the labour until the hole was filled.

  Exhausted, her concentration was slipping by the time she drove the Packard into its old position; the vehicle didn’t go in straight, but she called it good enough and left it there.

  ‘Tomorrow,’ she promised. ‘Tomorrow.’

  Like one of the dead, Stella slept that night in a spare room, in a bed unused for decades. It sagged in the middle, its pillows were hard, its blankets heavy, but barely had the thought time to form, and she was away. Her limbs down, they didn’t move her from her back during the night. She slept late too, but woke with a rigid neck and a pounding headache. She woke sore, stiff, but mentally rested.

  ‘What is done cannot be undone,’ she said, clawing her way out of the central sag and gaining the floor. She showered, allowing the too hot water to play on her shoulders and back, then she dressed again in her jeans and T-shirt.

  Aspros were kept in the top kitchen cupboard. She peeled two, tossing them into water, then she added a third. How many more hours did she have to call her own? Martin’s plane left Heathrow Airport at around 7 a.m. Wednesday, Maidenville time. Now it was Thursday, 9.15 a.m.

  ‘God, how did I sleep so long? Father is probably already over Australia. If his flight connects with the bus, he could be home before evening.’

  But he couldn’t come home yet. She could see signs of her actions everywhere, and when she walked to the shed, she noticed the level of the clay had dropped beneath the Packard where the front wheel had edged onto the soft earth. The mutilated bike tyre and the silver rim were protruding.

  She started the Packard, fearful that its front wheel would sink lower, bog in the soft clay, but it lifted out. She’d have to wash that wheel. But later.

  ‘So much to do.’

  She’d have to vacuum the house, change her father’s sheets, wash his quilt cover. She’d have to move her mattress onto the spare bed. She would not sleep in her old room again. Never again. The alien earth in the garden would have to be dug in, or covered with mulch. She could see the heaps of clay everywhere. Others would too. Had Bonny seen it yesterday? Had she seen the trailer’s tyre marks near the window, the broken shrubs –? God, what have I done?

  ‘What I had to do.’

  By ten-thirty, her head was clearing, and her aches had somehow distanced themselves. ‘Good little Aspros. When all else fails me, I have you. How does the Aspro know where to go?’ she said.

  She washed the Packard’s wheel with the help of her straw broom. She filled the wheel indentation with clay, then she swept the shed floor. She brought the hose into the shed, hosing the earth, attempting to wash the dirt cleaner, and water pooled in the rear storeroom, as it had always pooled in the storeroom, so she turned the hose onto the pit, and for minutes left it running there while she moved the bale of polyester filling to safer ground. When she returned to the hose ten minutes later, its water had soaked deep into the clay, disappearing into the earth, into the pit, into the soup of he who had been, and the clay had sunk low, the wheel rim jutting high.

  He is pushing it up, trying to get out, she thought.

  ‘Save your melodrama for where it is worth something,’ she ordered, setting the hose on the trailer, scrubbing it down with her broom.

  A barrow-load of earth reclaimed from the garden, she heaped it over the wound, then she placed the tarpaulin over it, and stamped on the grave, stamped up and down the length of it, attempting to flatten it. It had a strange unstable feeling. Wet pillows and fabric do not make for good foundations. The earth was pillow-spongy.

  ‘What is done cannot be undone,’ she said.

  The wide end-boards of the trailer, placed lengthwise over the mound, she drove the Packard’s passenger-side front wheel onto them and walked away. The old car had shown her the way by accident. Its weight might compact the soil, might push the bike wheel down.

  Thursday. Today was Thursday. The church guild came today to stitch the clowns. She’d have to put them off, keep them out of the shed.

  ‘Call Bonny. Have the meeting at her place. Call her now.’

  ‘Can you call the others please, Bonny? I’ll bring the boxes around at two.’

  ‘Did Ron call you, Stell? He had to get Parsons around to Marilyn last night. She went off her head and they took her over to Dorby, to the psychiatric hospital. He said he’d been trying to call you.’

  ‘I might not have heard the phone. I’ve been busy in the garden,’ Stella said.

  ‘You’ve changed.’ A long silence followed. ‘I mean, I thought you would have been worried sick about Tommy. You used to be – I don’t know. He was more like your kid than hers when he was little.’

  ‘Children grow up. They . . . they choose to cut old ties. I . . . what can I say, Bonny?’

  ‘I dunno. It’s just . . . just that you seem so disinterested. It’s as if you’ve got more important things on your mind lately, that’s all. Is it true what they are saying about you and Steve Smith?’

  ‘It’s Father. For some reason he has cut his trip short. He’ll be home sometime today.’

  ‘Scared of his reaction to your new stove?’

  ‘Perhaps.’

  ‘Too bad. Let him blow a gasket. Now fill me in on you and Steve.’

  ‘He came to discuss Miss Moreland’s party, and he stayed for dinner, Bonny. And that is all.’

  ‘Yeah? I believe you, Stell, but there are thousands that wouldn’t. I still want to know who you had holed up in your shed yesterday.’

  ‘Holed up?’

  ‘Something was going on in there. You’ve never locked those doors in your life, and I’ve known you too long to be conned.’

  ‘You’ve been watching too much afternoon television, Bonny. I’ll call Beth and Liz and Lyn. Can you call the others? Tell them we’re meeting at your place.’

  ‘Okay, but you’d better do Mrs Morris, or I might tell her it’s been cancelled,’ Bonny said. ‘See you at two.’

  The phone rang as Stella placed it down. She picked it up on the first ring.

  ‘Stella Templeton.’

  ‘Miss Templeton? Yes. It’s Patrick O’Sullivan,’ the voice said. ‘I’m in Sydney, calling from the hospital.’

  ‘Father?’

  ‘Yes. He’s been admitted.’

  ‘Father? In hospital?’

  ‘I tried to get him to a doctor before we left Germany, but he’d have no truck with German doctors. Determined to see Churchill’s bunker, the old coot – ’

  ‘What . . . what . . . ?’

  ‘Some flu complication. Gone to the lungs.’

  ‘Is he . . . in danger?’

  ‘He’s not good. I won’t lie to you. We had a doctor on the plane. He gave him oxygen. The airline wanted to off-load him in Bangkok but I talked them out of it.’

  ‘Thank God for that.’

  ‘The ambulance met us at Sydney Airport and rushed him off to RPA. I’m waiting there now.’

  ‘Should I be there?’

  ‘They’ve got him in intensive care. He’s no chicken, Miss Templeton.’

  �
��It’s Stella. Please call me Stella.’

  ‘Estella? He always did like that name. As I was saying, Estella, he’s no chicken, and he’s pretty low, but I’ve known him a long time. It will take more than the flu to bring down Martin Templeton.’

  ‘I’ll come.’

  ‘Not much you can do here. I’ll have a word to the doctors later, and call you again tonight.’

  They spoke for a minute more, then Stella made the calls to the guild women.

  She couldn’t go to Sydney. Not yet. Not today. She had asked for more time. So she had been granted more time and she would use it well.

  ‘His will, or his God got him on a plane and home. Father is not ready to die.’

  She worked on the hole after an early lunch, filling it, then driving the Packard backwards and forwards over the clay, compacting it. When the town clock struck one, she was reclaiming the top layer of earth she had emptied onto the vegetable garden. It was from the first barrow-load and she hoped it would cover, or blend in with the scar. Once more she flattened the dirt with the Packard’s wheels.

  ‘Tomorrow, I’ll tidy the garden, do the house. There is a train to Sydney in the morning – but that is too soon. I’ll take the bus – no. I’ll wait for Patrick to call tonight. I’ll get the hospital’s number. Then tomorrow – I’ll worry about how I’ll get there tomorrow.’

  She dressed carefully in Miss Moreland’s slacks and shirt. Her eye was still swollen, and ringed now by a yellow and blue bruise. Her left cheek was bruised also. And her throat. From her dressing-table drawer she took the bag of make-up her old friend had bought at the chemists that day, and she smoothed on a dash of foundation, then added more around the eye, and to her throat. It looked odd, but how well it covered. She lined her eyes with the eyebrow pencil, as she had at sixteen, then used the pencil to add a light brown shadow to her lids. She added blusher high to her cheekbones, and she took up the lipstick, carefully painting her mouth.

  ‘God. I look like one of my own clowns.’ With the tips of her fingers, she rubbed away a little of the blusher; she blotted the lipstick with a tissue, added a dot of foundation to the cut on her throat, working it with fingertips. It looked well enough.