by Judy Pascoe
‘No,’ I said. ‘I was, wasn’t I?’
‘I dunno, I’m nobody’s favourite.’
‘Yes you are,’ I said. ‘You’re Mum’s favourite.’
‘Who cares anyway,’ he said. ‘Two more years, then I can move out.’
I knew he meant it; how would I ever see him again?
‘Don’t go,’ I said pathetically, as if the wishes of his creepy sister, as he often called me, would make him stay. I was turning a flat rock over and over in my hand wondering what it would take to make him stay. I couldn’t contemplate living at home without Edward, I’d go with him. I couldn’t live with my mother, that man and my other two brothers.
We built a stone wall with the smooth rocks that poked out of the sand like lumps of butterscotch. Our medieval wall extended and curved to enclose some sheep we made with burrs from the eucalyptus bushes. I fantasized it was just us in the world working in the sand creating a scene of early settlement. It soon deteriorated into a more abstract piling of the rocks that was less functional. Our medieval farm in the burning sand had been the starting point for our stone art. The second paddock lost its form and the stone walls began to slide into other shapes, lines that bent and turned in on themselves, coiling into tight circles. It began to incorporate the scrubby trees. We tied grass around the lower branches. We climbed up to get some perspective on the area under construction. It was fragile work, it had the intricacies of a mosaic floor but no chance of that sort of permanence. We left it, eventually, knowing it wouldn’t be there the next day, but we accepted its fate. We had accomplished what we needed to do. We had fertilized this spot together and used the obsessiveness of creation to block out the real world.
21
We returned home a week later and found the tree in our back yard was a burgeoning umbrella of lime-green feathers, the roots now a complete hairy claw clutching at the foundations under the house. I sensed apprehension in the long grass that knocked in the wind against the paling fence. A hoop of climbing rose had fallen from a rotting trellis that arched from the side of the house to the fence. The overgrownness had made the garden come alive. Dad didn’t bother to enquire about our absence. There was no mention or inkling of any interest in where we’d been.
I could still feel the cushion of his affection holding me in the cup of the tree, but I felt the elastic between us was stretching and pulling us further apart. Also I felt he was more eager for my mother, and I was eager for him to want my mother. Or impatient for my mother to behave as she had when she first found him in the tree, when she had slept with the mattress of foliage by her side, when she had paced the base of the tree, when we had found her asleep by the trunk. I wanted to see that longing again because it had made me feel safe. My mother walked out into the back yard. She had just seen the hairy claw under the house. She thrust her face up to the tree. I could feel her eyes searing through the leaves. The tree breathed, I felt it. It sighed and she ran up the back stairs, forgetting how lethal they were, and she shut the door hard.
Then I saw the mule-like legs of Gladys, step-stepping down the drive, like a donkey picking its way along a stony path. Over her arm was the communion dress, the white of it muted by the dense green light radiating from the poincianna tree. Down the driveway she kept pick, picking. She stared up as she came into the back yard, into the realm of the tree, because the tree was a sight to behold. It was like another life form multiplying. The tap root ran its reckless course towards the house and a smaller vein snaked away from the trunk towards the clothes line. Each finger of the tree’s roots looked as if it could rub out any part of us, push out a wall, lift the clothes line, pluck us from earth, curl a tentacle around us. It felt so thin, the house and its walls, like it would only take one surge from the tree to consume it. The tree had power and weight and it was going to destroy us. Gladys looked shocked, amazed, furious and satiated all at once.
I wanted to stop her going any further, but too late, she donkey-stepped across the cracking path, and I knew if Gladys saw the hairy claw under the house we’d be doomed. There was complicity between us and the drain man, even, but if an outsider witnessed the damage, it would exist properly. I only then realized the severity of it as Gladys’s nose turned to the ground and followed the roots towards the house. I knew then we were done for. She step-stepped closer to the house and dared to stretch her neck through the opening that led under the house. I could tell by the way her shoulders flexed back that she had seen the gnarled hand of the tree grabbing for the foundations. She had seen it all right and made it real.
By the time I got to the bottom of the tree Gladys was gone. Mum caught sight of her tail as it disappeared around the edge of the garage. ‘What’s that old hawk up to?’ she said. Standing below her at the bottom of the steps, I pointed under the house to the evidence that proved our collective madness. The unbelievable sight of the tree’s roots strangling the wooden stumps of the house.
‘She saw,’ I said.
‘I don’t care,’ Mum replied, but I knew she did and she would when Gladys took whatever action it was I knew she would inevitably take.
22
The house was disintegrating and so were we, but not without a party, Uncle Jack had said when he came to stay from up north where it was hot with snakes. He was tall and lean like a stick of sugar cane with a merry smile and hands like wooden pallets.
‘The house is falling down around you,’ he said. He’d come down to see a doctor about a crook knee. ‘Drag them over. ‘I want to see all the old girls. This may be my last chance. They can’t have that many years left in them.’ So my mother went to the phone to ring all the old aunts.
When Jack saw what was going on under the house he called out to Mum. He sat her down and told her they had to call someone immediately. She shook her head.
‘We just need a little rain,’ she tried nervously. ‘That would shift things a bit.’
‘Shift things,’ he said. ‘What are you looking for, Dawn? A bloody miracle?’
‘I don’t know.’ Her voice was breathy.
Jack took all ten fingers and scratched his scalp with the irritation of it.
‘I can’t make any decisions about anything, right now,’ she said.
‘I will if you don’t,’ he said. ‘Dawn.’ He leant forward. ‘Let me do this.’
‘No,’ she said. ‘Give me another day.’
‘What for?’ he demanded.
‘I need it.’ She looked him straight in the eye.
‘You swear to me tomorrow you’ll get someone out here or I’ll cut that ruddy tree down myself.’
She curled forward in her deck chair and dragged her knees up like a child. The rest of us breathed a sigh of relief, Uncle Jack was our Saviour. When the drain man had tried to be assertive it had never worked, but he was too close and he was part of the problem. Jack could push in a different way and we were so grateful. We were tipsy with his playful energy, light headed with the relief that he seemed to have replaced the drain man who hadn’t been near the house since Jack arrived.
He pulled her out of the chair and pointed to where the floor had begun to sag by the back door. It wasn’t difficult to imagine the weight of a foot forming a valley in the linoleum that could collapse into a deeper ravine and create a chasm that would fall through to the world outside.
‘I know.’ My mother sounded apologetic.
‘I’m going to the timber yard tomorrow.’
‘Thanks, Jack,’ she said. And he did. He went to the mill the next day with Edward and they brought back a pile of wood and they nailed and sawed all day until the steps were braced and the floor at the back door reinforced.
Then in the late afternoon just as the breeze began to blow in from the bay, scattering the smell of the newly sawn wood fixed to the back stairs, a taxi pulled up outside. They were on schedule, all the old aunts. They stepped across the footpath gingerly as if the blades of grass had been sharpened specifically to pierce the soles of their shoes. Th
en we noticed the reason for their caution, they were all wearing heels, high heels! High heels for Uncle Jack. They were all in their seventies.
Auntie Mary, brittle boned and wily, who slept on a board, like Uncle Fester I always imagined, but without the nails. Aunt Cath who wore a black eyepatch and had her hair pulled back so tight in a silver bun I thought it would tear away from her scalp. Auntie Flo, an old trade unionist, and her husband Uncle Val, the drunk.
They took up their seats at the kitchen table and remained there for hours, squashed together in the middle of the tremendous heat, drinking tea laced with slivers of brandy.
‘How are you feeling at the moment?’ They all took mother to one side to ask her.
She bit back the tears for each of them and accepted a lacy hanky from Flo.
‘The place is falling down,’ Uncle Jack reiterated as he took his cold beer out to the screen door at the top of the back steps.
‘It’s that tree,’ said Cath, looking over the top of her teacup across the oval pond of murky brew lapping at her lips. ‘Chop it down, you’d get that much more light in here.’ Forever practical, Aunt Cath.
‘She’s right. It’s that dark in here I can’t think,’ said Mary.
‘Can’t think?’ scoffed Flo.
‘I can’t see your lips, so I can’t hear what you’re saying.’
‘Put your hearing aid in,’ Flo teased her younger sister.
‘I will if you put yours in.’
‘It shades the house, the tree does,’ said Flo. ‘It’d be hotter than hell in here without it.’
‘It’ll pull the house over,’ said Cath, joining cup and saucer together. ‘You’ve got to do something, Dawn.’
We all waited for mother’s reaction. She deflected confrontation by refilling the teapot. The steam hit her face and she pulled back.
‘I can’t,’ she said, grinding the lid on to the pot. ‘It’s where he is, in my mind. He’s in the tree.’
There was a beautiful silence, not awkward or uncomfortable, filled with minute sounds from the air that joined us, for they were all Irish, all Catholic and all cursed with superstitious minds. They believed in ghosts and if there was one in the tree, in their niece’s back yard, so be it.
‘I didn’t think he’d go off to the other side that happily,’ said Cath, leaning over to the sink to toss the dregs of her tea out.
‘He’s not ready yet,’ said Mary. ‘And why should he be, I’m not either and I’m almost twice his age.’
That was all for a few moments because they understood the dilemma utterly. On the one hand they were all of them perfectly pragmatic, not a sentimental bit of bone between them, so I thought surely house would win over tree. But then again this was their niece’s dead husband lingering on in an ancient tree. They shuffled their feet and downed their drinks. It was tricky.
Now that Jack understood the puzzle, he moseyed back to the screen door to take a fresh look at the problem. He stared for a few moments then pointed down the twenty-two back steps into the back garden. ‘Who’s that?’
‘Who’s what?’ the old aunts chorused.
‘There’s some OAPs hovering in your back yard, Dawn.’
They were on their feet, all the old girls, tottering around the edge of the kitchen table to take a look. The shuffling and the commotion, so we could all fit at the back door and see what Jack was talking about, it was like a bunch of teenagers vying for the front row at a pop concert. I was being suspended in the middle of the scrum between the front row, my three Aunts, and the back row, my mother, Uncle Jack and the rest of the boys. It wasn’t until I begged for some air that I was passed to the front and found myself pinned to the fly screen, somehow supported by the weight of them pushing from behind. Then I saw what they were all looking at – a group of strangers fanned around the base of the back steps.
Once my eyes refocused from the mesh of the fly screen a millimetre in front of me to the bottom of the steps, I realized it was the Neighbourhood Watch women, headed by Gladys. They were taking turns to peek under the house to see the site of the potential destruction. The next thing Mum pulled the door open, capturing me and the three aunts in one decisive movement, and squashing us against the wall as she flung the door back so she could fly down the back stairs, flapping her arms like a mad bird about to attack. On seeing the approach of my insane mother the women parted, revealing for the first time that two official-looking men were inspecting the tree. One was bent over an electronic device pointed at the tree while the other measured the large tap root that ran in the direction of the house.
Uncle Jack took that as his cue to get involved. He opted, however, not to take any chances with the back steps and he rushed through the house and down the front stairs.
What my mother couldn’t believe was that they had assembled on the back lawn without permission. ‘You should have knocked,’ she said.
‘We were just about to.’ Gladys spoke up.
‘You weren’t, you were snooping.’ My mother’s neck and chin jutted forward like she was straining for an imaginary finishing line.
‘Well, this affects all of us.’ Another of the Neighbourhood Watch women stepped up beside Gladys.
‘I’m sorry, madam, we didn’t think anyone was home.’ It was one of the council men trying to explain their predicament.
‘Well, we’ve been here all day. You should have knocked.’ Mum spoke straight back. The sparks were flying from her tongue. Ages they were arguing at the bottom of the steps before we all, one by one, made our way down. It took so long to move all the aunts to the back yard using the front steps. We had to find their walking sticks and guide them through the house, down the front steps, along the drive, over the cement block that led out of the garage and finally into the back garden.
It was pensioners’ showdown when we arrived. The two lines of old women faced each other. My mother was trapped in the centre of it and she ranted and raved and spun about angrily. The Neighbourhood Watch women brayed and backed away and left the two council men to deal with my mother.
They stood for a long time, the two men taking turns to lean on one leg then the other. It was true the house was falling down. That much they could verify, but there was nothing they could do they reported to the assemblage. If the tree were on council land then things would be different, but it wasn’t, so maybe there was a case for health and safety. They could refer it on, that was all.
And the relief at not hearing the ultimatum she was expecting had an odd effect on my mother. I could tell that she was devastated. The decision had almost been taken out of her hands, but not quite. Her eyes looked empty. She must have imagined this showdown with the neigh-bours, but this wasn’t the outcome she was anticipating. She would have expected to be told that the tree would have to go, then she’d be forced to cut it down and she could blame everyone but herself.
‘Help,’ I wanted to yell as the two council men packed up and left.
‘I didn’t hear what they said.’ Mrs Drummond looked bewildered.
‘They can’t make her cut it down.’ Mrs Layton mouthed the words out to her, over emphasizing the shape of each sound so Mrs Drummond could hear.
Uncle Jack returned down the drive having escorted the council men to their van. He dared to place himself between the files of opposing pensioners. My mother was dazed like a coconut had just landed on her head. She only had a gram of energy left and with it she whispered to Jack. ‘Sort it out, Jack.’
Not that it seemed Uncle Jack was waiting for her permission.
23
‘You know how we sort out a dispute like this up north?’ Jack presented his rhetorical question with a lazy grin. They waited for the answer, the gathering of old women, curving around Jack like an awakening smile.
‘Get a pack of cards,’ he said to Mum.
Jack had taken centre stage and he was loving it.
‘Choose your game,’ he challenged Gladys. His voice was as dry and flat as a northern river
bed.
I hoped he knew what he was doing. The column of rheumy eyes before him belonged to women with few passions other than cards and gossip.
‘Bridge,’ said Gladys.
‘Bridge it is,’ nodded Jack.
So our fate was to be decided by a deck of cards and a bottle of brandy.
‘The winner is the winner,’ Jack said outlining the rules. ‘And that’ll be the end of it. If you lose, Dawn,’ he threatened Mother with his bushy eyebrows, ‘you lose the tree.’
My mother took a moment to accept the fact that the method of arbitration over this long running dispute was to be a card game. She nodded, why not. It seemed fair. What other process could there be that was as just as a game of bridge?
‘But if you lose,’ he turned on Gladys, his mono-brow signalling an equal warning, ‘you’re to leave Dawn to decide her own fate. I know you’ll keep your word.’
‘Of course,’ said Gladys, feigning offence but at the same time trying to find a loop that might give her a second chance if she lost. I watched her mind work – best of three, she was thinking, but she didn’t say it, I knew she was storing it.
‘And that’ll be the end of it,’ said Jack.
And so they shook on it. Jack, representing the interests of our family, and Gladys, heading the case for the neighbourhood.
‘Pair up then,’ said Jack. The family closed in around him ready to discuss tactics, but this wasn’t going to be a democratic process.
‘Cath and Flo,’ said Jack, and he wrote their names down on the blackboard he’d sent Edward off to get from our room. I saw a necklace of flesh around Aunt Cath’s throat tighten. She and Flo had fought for years over the subdivision of a block of land they’d inherited together. Jack was clever. He wasn’t making this easy for anyone.
‘Mary and Val,’ he wrote next. They hated each other. They had been childhood sweethearts, but when Mary outgrew Val and moved on to her next boyfriend, Val only swapped sisters. He took up with Flo and Mary had never forgiven him for the lazy trade, and Val had never forgiven Mary for dumping him in the first place.