Good News, Bad News

by Maggie Groff

  ‘No, I’m still working out how best to do that. As I said, I don’t want to involve the boys. I made Andrew sleep on the sofa last night.’

  ‘Did he ask why?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘What did you say?’

  ‘That I needed space.’

  ‘Is he there now?’

  ‘No, he’s on call and gone in to the hospital. He said he’s going to stay there for a few days to have some space himself.’

  ‘Who’s with you?’

  ‘Jack and Fergus are downstairs. Jack’s making tacos. Sam’s with you, isn’t he?’

  ‘Yep. He’s gone for a bike ride with Chairman Meow.’

  Harper laughed, but there was no mirth in it.

  ‘What did they say at school about your new look?’ I asked.

  ‘No one mentioned it, so I didn’t either. The principal is probably gluing a black star into my file as we speak.’

  ‘Did Andrew say anything?’

  ‘Uh-huh, he told me I looked beautiful.’

  ‘And what did you say?’

  ‘To go and stick his head in the garbage disposal.’

  Despite the seriousness, I couldn’t smother a giggle.

  We chatted for a while about other things. I told her I’d bought a pretty bag for her to give to Mum, which pleased her. She said, and I understood, that she wasn’t in a present-buying mood.

  Suddenly I heard her gasp.

  ‘What is it?’ I asked, concerned.

  ‘Scout, are you sitting down?’

  As sitting down is usually the prerequisite to the delivery of bad news, I took a deep breath and asked, ‘What’s happened now?’

  ‘Things have just sort of got a bit more complicated,’ she said.

  ‘How?’ My mind sped through the full kaleidoscope of possible complications.

  ‘I’m pregnant!’ Harper announced.

  My hand flew to my mouth in disbelief, which was fortunate as it curbed the desire to speak the negative thoughts that were shooting through my head. Harper was forty-six, worked full-time, already had four sons and her marriage might be in trouble. What could possibly be good about this?

  Finally, I recovered and asked, ‘How long have you known?’

  ‘About twenty seconds. I was doing the test when you called.’ She sounded happy, almost elated.

  ‘Are you pleased?’ I ventured.

  ‘I am. I can’t explain it, but I feel euphoric.’

  ‘Will you tell Andrew?’

  ‘God, no, only you and I will know for the present. Oh, Scout, I hope it’s a girl.’

  ‘Me, too,’ I said, surprising myself with a warm rush of sibling love.

  Although we had never discussed it, as Harper would never utter a single word that might make any of her sons think they were a disappointment, I knew my sister had always wanted a daughter. And I suspected that was why there was a large gap between her three older sons and seven-year-old Fergus.

  ‘Do you think I’m too old?’ Harper asked.

  ‘Yes and no.’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘It means I do and I don’t.’

  ‘Jesus, Scout, I don’t know how this happened.’

  ‘Think real hard,’ I told her, ‘and it’ll come to you.’

  Chapter 17

  It was 9 pm; three hours until the GKI meeting and mission.

  Sam and I were sitting on the sofa in my living room. Chairman Meow was between us, snoozing. A rugby game was on the television with the sound off and a Jack Johnson CD was playing in the background. Our feet were up on the blue steamer trunk and we were both knitting.

  I couldn’t stop thinking about my sister’s dilemma. Various unpleasant truths were presenting themselves. Harper’s age put her at increased risk of miscarriage or having a child with a disability; and, horror upon horror, if Andrew was sleeping with another woman, Harper would have to be tested for sexually transmitted diseases. She had also had a lot of alcohol the other night, which, come to think of it, was also Andrew’s fault.

  ‘I hope Needles remembers to bring cakes,’ Sam said, interrupting my thoughts.

  ‘She will. And Old Blood and Guts is bringing pizzas. You won’t starve,’ I reassured him, ‘especially as you’ve just eaten most of a curried chicken pie, two baked sweet potatoes, half a baguette and an enormous salad.’ Feeding young males, I’d learned, was a whole different ball game to cooking for young women. My daughters, at the same age, had eaten like baby birds.

  I had shown Sam how to increase a stitch at the beginning and end of each row, and he was getting the hang of it, albeit excruciatingly slowly.

  I leaned over and checked his progress. ‘I wouldn’t give up your day job,’ I teased.

  Casting off the final stitch on a large knitted rectangle, I cut the wool and sewed the loose end through the last row. Spreading it across my lap I admired my handiwork. Using large needles, or fat needles as Sam called them, I’d made the rectangle with garter stitch, which is continual rows of plain knit stitch. It was the size of a pillowcase and diagonally divided into two colours—bright yellow and black.

  The artwork for this mission required four rectangles of the same size. Needles would arrive later with a rectangle identical to mine, and Purl One and Old Blood and Guts would also be bringing a knitted rectangle each, but their diagonal colour scheme was red and black.

  As Bodkin was defending an ‘entrepreneur’ in the Brisbane courts, he had been given time off from knitting duties, although he would be participating in the mission. Sam had made the required infrastructure to support the artwork, and members at the meeting would inspect his practice knitting.

  ‘Did you call Mum?’ Sam asked.

  I nodded and told him she was okay but unhappy. No way could I tell him his mother was pregnant. And it wasn’t easy not to tell. When someone is expecting a baby it’s natural to want to share the news and, even though I had reservations about this pregnancy, I found it difficult to refrain from throwing open the windows and shouting to everyone that my sister was up the duff.

  Sam put down his knitting and looked at me. ‘None of it makes sense,’ he said. ‘Dad worships the ground Mum walks on, and he’s such a stickler for integrity and rules that I can’t believe he cheated. It’s out of character.’

  ‘I agree,’ I said, relieved that he was, at last, giving his father the benefit of the doubt.

  I reached forward and pushed Sam’s feet off the steamer trunk and undid the padlock. As I raised the lid it made a wonderfully eerie creak, like an old iron gate in a cemetery. We both peered inside, and even though we knew the contents, it was still a guilty thrill.

  The steamer trunk had been my grandfather’s when he was in the British Merchant Navy, and somehow it had been handed down to me. In the grip of an interior design frenzy, precipitated by some reality TV nonsense, I’d painted the trunk Wedgwood blue and now, to the outside world, it was simply a makeshift coffee table.

  Inside, things were not so commonplace. These days the trunk served as a repository for the Guerilla Knitters Institute paraphernalia, hence the padlock. If anyone ever asked about the padlock, I’d say that the trunk was full of junk and I’d lost the key.

  As GKI’s official secretary it was my duty to collect photographic evidence of our missions so that we had a historical archive of our activities and their post-mission impact. Our charter, which we make up as we go along, forbids written records, and I don’t minute meetings, but I do collect newspaper cuttings where our missions have been mentioned.

  All this evidence was in the trunk along with photographs, wool, knitting needles, pieces of artworks left over or recovered from previous missions, and patterns we’d created that might be useful in the future.

  There was also a large number of black wool balaclavas that we wear on missions. Needles knits them during meetings, and the spares will come in handy if we ever go into the mail-order felon-wear business. Sam counted out six balaclavas and put them to
one side.

  My other secretarial tasks involve organising and allocating the correct colour wool for each activity, ensuring all knitted objects are ready prior to a mission, organising meetings, checking there’s enough Vermouth for the gin slings and reminding Old Blood and Guts to pick up pizzas prior to meetings.

  Needles had been GKI’s previous secretary, but she had resigned from the position when her daughter had twin boys, making Needles the grandmother of five small children. As Needles also worked at a Gold Coast bakery (hence Sam’s concern about the cakes), she had felt overwhelmed with her responsibilities and the secretarial position had become vacant. I was thrilled to have been formally voted in by a panel of my peers and chose to ignore the fact that nobody else wanted the position. Go with the positive, I say.

  During summer months GKI usually meets by candlelight on my back verandah. In winter we congregate on the much tonier covered patio outside Bodkin’s pool house, as he has an outdoor heater. Currently his pool was being re-landscaped, which was why everyone was coming to my place tonight.

  ‘I think it’s a bit cold to hold the meeting on the back verandah,’ Sam informed me. ‘How about we use the kitchen table?’

  I stifled a grin. Although I’d been thinking the same thing, I was waiting for Sam to have the idea.

  ‘Good thinking,’ I told him, trying to look impressed. ‘You tidy the kitchen and set it up while I see to things in here.’

  Without a whine or a huff or a can’t somebody else do it, Sam disappeared off to the kitchen while I saw to things in the lounge. Switching off the TV, I put my feet up on the couch, snuggled Chairman Meow onto my chest and pulled the woollen throw rug over my legs and feet.

  ‘Aunty Harper’s having a baby,’ I whispered into the Chairman’s ear. Lord knows, I had to tell someone.

  Then I closed my eyes.

  It was nap time for secretaries, although I doubt I would have been so relaxed had I known what the night had in store for me.

  Chapter 18

  Sam, who was already dressed in a black sweatshirt and jeans, woke me with a cup of tea half an hour before midnight. I had a quick shower, checked that my blood sugar levels were okay, brushed out my hair, retied the plait and dressed in similar attire to Sam.

  ‘It looks like Renaissance Man stopped by,’ I told Sam, smiling approval as I surveyed his efforts in the kitchen. ‘Of course you’re sunk now that I know what you’re capable of.’

  He grinned proudly at me and I gave him a peck on the cheek.

  On the table he had placed an antipasto platter of cold meats, gruyere cheese, brie, babaganoush, olives and dolmades, a basket of water crackers and a bowl of roasted macadamias from Daisy’s farm. My French koala, Charles de Gaulle (a relic of a previous GKI mission), was sitting on one of the kitchen chairs. Boys can be disarmingly sweet sometimes.

  At midnight Sam switched easily to his GKI alter ego, Headlice, and started calling me Adam’s Rib. I was both delighted and impressed that he took the rules of play so seriously.

  As always, the rest of the GKI members arrived bearing gifts. Purl One and Old Blood and Guts were the first ones through the back gate. Friends since childhood, they both lived and worked in Brisbane and had driven down to Byron Bay together. Purl One, an attractive and vivacious jewellery designer with a lot of blonde curly hair, had the Vermouth for the gin slings. Old Blood and Guts, the tall, super-slim lady surgeon with short, elegantly coiffed brown hair, had the pizzas.

  Needles was next to arrive with the cakes. A handsome woman in her fifties, she is comfortably plump with purple streaks in her short grey hair. Bodkin, bringing up the rear, is a fiftyish roly-poly male with sparse grey hair and more chins than Winston Churchill. He carried the gin.

  Purl One, Old Blood and Guts and Needles had knitting baskets resplendent with balls of colourful wool. Bodkin, to our endless amusement, keeps his knitting in an important-looking black leather briefcase with the initials GKI embossed on the side.

  Everyone was dressed in dark clothing and we were all talking at once.

  As we made the gin slings Purl One and I chatted about her latest jewellery exhibition. Old Blood and Guts was cooing loudly over Chairman Meow while Headlice was telling her that university was great, except for the lectures and the assignments. Above it all I could hear Bodkin’s thick Yorkshire accent telling a delighted Needles that, by gum golly, the baby twins in the photo he was holding were healthy-looking bairns.

  Ten minutes later, looking like a bunch of happy undertakers, we all sat down at my kitchen table. Chairman Meow, who had recently become an honorary member for meetings only, was enjoying a temporary suspension of the kitchen furniture rules and was sitting on the same chair as Charles de Gaulle. From Chairman Meow’s sideways glances, I didn’t think the French connection would be participating for long.

  GKI meetings are usually chaired by the member who created the mission, so Bodkin was overseeing this evening’s proceedings—a task he undertook with suitable probity. At 12.30 am he banged my soup ladle on the table and declared the meeting open.

  The first item on the agenda was to recognise who was in attendance and who was absent. As we were all present, at 12.31 am we got stuck into the gin slings, pizza and the antipasto platter. The cakes, which were the day’s leftovers from Needles’s bakery, consisted of Danish pastries and chocolate éclairs and Headlice was eyeing them keenly. We never go to war on an empty stomach.

  The next agenda item was business arising from the previous meeting.

  Bodkin addressed Headlice directly. ‘Let’s have a look at your homework then, lad.’ As Bodkin can never remember our tags, he refers to us all as either lass or lad.

  Headlice passed his three ten-by-ten-inch squares of practice knitting to Bodkin, who checked them carefully and then passed them round the table for the rest of us to inspect.

  Old Blood and Guts, who was sitting on the chair next to Chairman Meow and Charles de Gaulle, thoughtfully showed the squares to the Chairman. He sniffed them and then gave an approving lick to Old Blood and Guts’s hand. Sensing our delight at his response, Chairman Meow puffed up and promptly headbutted old Charlie off the chair.

  ‘Don’t laugh,’ I warned. ‘It only encourages him.’

  ‘This work is coming along nicely,’ Needles said, examining Headlice’s knitting. She pursed her lips and nodded slowly. ‘You’ll be making babies’ booties soon.’

  The others laughed and Headlice looked proud. I, on the other hand, felt as though I’d swallowed a camel, floored by the irony of Needles’s throwaway comment.

  ‘Any other business arising?’ Bodkin demanded.

  ‘I’ll have another gin sling,’ Needles said.

  ‘Me, too,’ Old Blood and Guts echoed.

  I nudged Headlice and he stood up and made two more gin slings.

  The next item on the agenda was the current mission.

  Bodkin is a stickler for meticulous preparation and he ran through the process to install tonight’s artwork as if he were commanding an intergalactic raid by the Starship Enterprise. One day, I’m sure he’ll introduce a GKI death grip.

  Purl One and Old Blood and Guts were to complete one installation with Needles as their lookout. Headlice and I would complete the other installation with Bodkin as our lookout. We don’t usually have lookouts, but as we would be in the main street of a well-lit Gold Coast beach suburb, we were erring on the side of caution.

  Bodkin passed each team a metre-long white plastic curtain rod that Headlice had provided. Taking two matching rectangles per team—my team the yellow and black ones and Needles’s team the red and black ones—we threaded one short side of each rectangle onto our rods by poking holes in the knitting with our fingers. When we’d finished I held up a set of yellow and black hanging curtains and Needles a set of red and black curtains.

  ‘Brilliant,’ Bodkin said with satisfaction. ‘Bloody brilliant.’

  Headlice then handed out small white decorative finials, wh
ich we attached to each end of the curtain rods. Then he handed out two brackets per team, to which he’d attached strong double-sided adhesive. There followed a brief demonstration by Headlice on how to remove the adhesive from the back of the bracket and attach them firmly to the wall either side of the target. Between us I hoped we had enough postgraduate qualifications to handle that part.

  Satisfied that due process was adhered to, Bodkin ran through the checklist.

  ‘Is anyone carrying ID or a phone?’ he asked, looking around the table.

  We shook our heads.

  ‘Does each team have a camera?’

  Needles and I nodded.

  ‘Balaclavas?’

  We nodded.

  ‘Gloves!’ Bodkin exclaimed as if they were an afterthought. He looked directly at Old Blood and Guts. Rummaging in her knitting basket, Old Blood and Guts produced six pairs of new surgical gloves. We didn’t want our fingerprints anywhere near tonight’s target, and we each gladly took a pair.

  Bodkin opened his briefcase and extracted six pairs of black swim goggles. ‘Owing to the fact that our faces will be in close proximity to a closed-circuit camera,’ he said, ‘I ask you all to slip these on over your balaclavas for additional disguise.’

  With appropriate solemnity, we each took a pair of goggles.

  ‘The post-mission rendezvous point,’ Bodkin went on, ‘will be the car park at the Coolangatta Pizza Hut. Do you all know where that is?’

  We nodded enthusiastically, bristling with anticipation and keen to get going.

  Bodkin looked expectantly around the table. ‘Any questions before we leave?’

  Headlice raised his hand. ‘Is anyone going to eat that last chocolate éclair?’

  Laughing, we raced out the door.

  Chapter 19

  Bodkin and I are both fairly well known around Byron Bay, which was why this mission had been planned for installation in another town.

  Before leaving I’d grabbed my diabetic kit, which I had packed into a black leather bag that fitted neatly around my waist. I never go anywhere without a kit that includes sugar pills, insulin, syringes, alcohol wipes and an emergency glucagon injection to reverse a dangerous drop in my blood sugar level, otherwise known as a hypoglycaemic attack.