by Robin Klein
‘She doesn’t sound cute at all,’ I said crossly. ‘She sounds like a beery old derelict at the TAB.’
They invited me to go along to the races, too, but the only thing I liked doing there was watching the rich people in the members’ stand. I was positive that I would have fitted into a rich, racehorse-owning family much better than into my Barringa East family. Sometimes I wondered if there’d been a muddle at the hospital where I was born, and I’d really been a posh baby belonging to someone else. But last year when I went to visit my Aunty Val at the same hospital, I saw straight away that rich people wouldn’t go there to have their babies. They’d go to a private hospital. Mum always said that the only decent thing on the menu at Barringa Community Hospital was braised rabbit, and you had to queue up for the showers.
I just couldn’t imagine the women in the members’ stand at the races eating braised rabbit or queuing up for showers. I spent a lot of time studying the way they talked and greeted each other, and the way they dressed. Mum got all dressed up to go to the races, but she never did manage to look anything like those ladies. ‘Wouldn’t want to,’ she said. ‘They’re crazy. Fancy having all the cash you want to spend on clothes, and buying something as plain as a nun’s nightie.’
The dresses in the members’ stand didn’t look a bit like nuns’ nighties, and their wearers always had magnificent suntans, beautiful huge sunglasses and swoopy brimmed hats.
‘I don’t want to go to the races today,’ I said. ‘I’ve got to get my things ready for the camp.’ I didn’t explain that it was because I felt I really belonged over in the members’ stand instead of with Mum and Lennie and their crowd. I didn’t want to hurt her feelings.
After they left, Valjoy went off to her Saturday milkbar job. ‘I won’t be home for tea,’ she said. ‘Tell Mum I’m having tea at Julie’s, and then we’re going to a church fellowship’s young people’s social.’ That meant she was scheming to go to some party Mum wouldn’t have let her go to if she’d known anything about it.
I did my dismal weekend jobs, such as scrubbing out the bathroom basin and tub, and tidying up my part of the bedroom. It was pointless vacuuming the floor. Jedda had made it into a racecourse, using great slabs of bright-green artificial grass, like the stuff they line butcher-shop windows with. Lennie had given it to her.
Then I did my packing for the camp. Mum had got together a pile of my oldest shirts and jeans she thought would be just right for a school camp. I dumped most of them in the bottom of the ironing basket. That was the best place to hide stuff at our house, because Mum thought ironing was the most boring job in the world next to cutting school lunches.
I took the suitcase into Valjoy’s room and started packing properly. I packed Valjoy’s blue satin shirt that tied in a knot above the navel, and her new shiny jeans, though I had to take the hems up with sticky tape. I borrowed her black transparent nightie, which Mum wouldn’t let her wear round the house or anywhere else for that matter, and its matching transparent dressing-gown that Mum wouldn’t let her wear, either. And a pair of patent-leather disco shoes with silver stiletto heels, and also a shoebox full of her make-up. And her strapless jungle-print dress with the slit sides, though I wasn’t sure if it would stay up. I also packed her bottle of Charlie perfume, which she’d given up marking the levels on.
Then I filled the spaces with some of my own clothes and put the suitcase by the front door. After that I sat on my bed and sank into my usual Saturday-afternoon gloom. Life was sometimes difficult if you didn’t have any friends even though you’d been going to the same school for six years. The whole dreary afternoon loomed ahead, with nothing to look at except a grass floor, and nothing to think about except what Valjoy would do to me for taking her clothes.
There was a permission form that had to be handed in on Monday, signed by our parents, and if we didn’t bring it, we wouldn’t even be allowed on the bus.
I opened my school bag to get it ready for Mum to sign as soon as she came home from the races. And right on top of my school things was Alison Ashley’s folder, with her permission form tucked inside the cover.
I turned over the spotless pages in her folder. Handwriting is supposed to reflect your personality. If it slopes backwards and is small and thin, you’re a mean secretive creep. On the other hand, if it’s like mine and races light-heartedly over to the right-hand side of the page, it means you’re generous, warm-hearted, interesting and dynamic. But Alison’s tidy vertical writing, neat as a scalloped picket fence, didn’t give anything away. Every so often, where Miss Belmont had corrected work, there was a big red tick, or an A, or an excellent. I shut the folder jealously and glared at the stylish cover with its marbled paper and her address on a white sticker in one corner: Alison Ashley, 23 Hedge End Road, Jacana Heights.
Not Jacana Heights anymore, I thought with satisfaction. Not since they put the freeway through and you got stuck in the Barringa East Primary School zone, Alison Ashley.
She’d be in a flap about her permission note; if it wasn’t signed and delivered to school on Monday morning, Miss Belmont wouldn’t let her go to the camp. Good.
Not unless I took it around to her house.
And why not? I thought. I had a right to walk along Hedge End Road if I wanted to, specially as it was part of Barringa East.
I took along my secret Barry Hollis repellent in case he was roaming the streets. It was a spray bottle of really strong-smelling perfume that even Valjoy pulled a face at. It had shifted our cat when he jumped into the fridge after a frozen chicken and wouldn’t come out.
I set off for Hedge End Road: Alison Ashley territory, where lawns looked like still green pools, and every house in its pretty garden had gleaming wide windows, as though the people in Hedge End Road had no skeletons rattling around in their cupboards. I stopped now and then and pretended to be fixing my sandal, so I could have a good look through all those house windows. There were lounge suites with striped satin covers and velvet cushions, and Siamese cats sunning themselves, not common old evil toms like our Norm. There were coffee tables with big glass-bottle gardens on them. I could imagine what would happen if we got one of those bottle gardens at our place: it would be used as an ashtray by Lennie.
The cars parked in the driveways were all like Alison Ashley’s family car; polished twentieth-century magic coaches.
I found number twenty-three and stood staring at the front door. It was the most beautiful front door I’d ever seen, carved wood with amber glass panels on each side. After I’d examined it for a long time, I realised how dumb it was to feel inferior to a door, so I walked up the drive and rang the bell. A set of chimes rippled and I rang again straight away, just for the pleasure of listening to them. The door opened and Alison Ashley looked out at me.
I wished I’d tidied myself up a bit. She wore a green batik-print skirt, a silky top, and gold thongs. Her hair was hanging loosely around her shoulders, brushed smooth as a shell. She looked like an elegant mermaid.
I scowled at her. ‘I found your work folder and your form for the camp,’ I said. ‘Somehow they got muddled up with the things in my bag.’
‘Oh, thank goodness you brought it over!’ she said. ‘I was wondering what I was going to do. Mum wouldn’t have been able to come to school early on Monday to sign another copy. Thanks, Yuk. Come in.’
‘Only for a minute,’ I said stiffly. ‘I never have much time on Saturday afternoons. My sister’s in the swimming team training for the next Olympic games, and I help coach them. I hold the stopwatch and keep a clipboard record with all their times written down.’
‘Do you?’ said Alison. ‘I was just making myself a milkshake. Want one? Only if you don’t mind, we won’t talk until we’re in the kitchen. Mum’s asleep. She has to work late tonight, so she’s having a sleep now. She doesn’t like . . . I mean, I don’t want to wake her up. The kitchen’s this way, Erica.’
Light filtered through the amber glass panels and it was like being inside
an aquarium. Alison floated down the hallway, with her long gold hair streaming behind, and I floundered along after her, trying not to make a noise. She swam off the carpet and on to cool green tiles, and shut the kitchen door behind us. I didn’t know kitchens outside magazines could look like that. There were trailing ferns in baskets, copper pots hanging on the walls, and about a million dollars worth of electrical appliances.
‘Strawberry or chocolate milkshake?’ she asked.
‘I thought you said you never ate junk food.’
‘Homemade milkshakes aren’t junk food. Mum buys special flavourings without sugar.’ She pressed a button on an enormous blender and it hummed softly, though I was expecting something that size to sound like a pneumatic drill. She poured out these marvellous milkshakes, with a metre of foam on the top, into two tall glasses. They were very plain glasses, but it was obvious they hadn’t ever contained peanut butter or instant coffee. Alison rinsed out the blender and put it upside down to drain on a paper towel. Then she wiped the bench top, even though it was perfectly clean, and finally she sat down opposite me and drank her milkshake. ‘My mother’s a bit fussy,’ she said. ‘I always have to clean things up straightaway. I suppose it’s the easiest way, really, to keep a house looking tidy.’
I wondered suspiciously if she’d said those last words in insulting capital letters, but her eyes were as innocent as daisies. I drank my milkshake and inspected the kitchen. Then I looked from all that gleaming splendour at Alison Ashley and climbed inside her mind and inspected her thoughts. ‘Go ahead and look, Erica Yurken,’ they clearly said. ‘That dishwasher over there is the latest model. So is the fridge. Only, my mother BOUGHT it, she doesn’t have to win kitchen equipment in a football club raffle. Would you like to have a look inside it? Maybe you’re hungry. Oh, sorry, can’t help you, we never have junk food and frozen pies in our fridge. I could run out the back and get some grass clippings and pop them in a plastic bag.’
‘I’m certainly glad we haven’t got a dishwasher at our house,’ I said tersely. ‘I feel really sorry for people who wash up with a dishwasher. They kill family conversations. We have terrific fun at our place while one’s washing and one’s drying and the others are putting the dishes away.’
Actually, it wasn’t a bit like that. Mum washed up every night. She had to stay in the kitchen to stop Valjoy, Harley, Jedda and me from murdering each other. Cleaning up always seemed to bring out the worst in our characters. (Harley, it’s your turn to dry up, you big slob! Mum, make Jedda stop giving Norm the saucepans to lick out! It is not my turn! Keep your nails to yourself! Take that and that and that!)
‘Yes,’ I said, eyeing Alison’s mother’s sparkling white dishwasher with loathing sprung from jealousy. ‘I’d hate it if Mum bought a dishwasher. We have really interesting times over the washing up at our place. We play word games.’
‘Do you?’ asked Alison. ‘You mean like I Spy?’
‘Certainly not. We play this intellectually challenging game called Hats.’
‘How does it go?’
‘Everyone has to think of a hat in turn, such as a police helmet or a nurse’s cap, only it’s got to be something different each turn. And if they can’t think of one by the count of ten, they have to drop out.’
‘It sounds fun,’ said Alison politely.
‘It’s a very witty game,’ I said. ‘When my father was in the Antarctic gathering rock specimens for the museum, all the men stationed there used to play Hats when there was a blizzard on and they couldn’t leave the tents. My father was a world expert on rocks.’
‘I thought you said he was a test pilot,’ said Alison Ashley.
‘He was a geologist as well,’ I said crossly. I watched her clean the glasses. First she washed them in warm water. Then she rinsed them in cold, wiped them with one cloth, polished them with another. Then she put them neatly away in a cupboard. I wondered why she didn’t ever fall asleep from exhaustion at school, if she had to work like that every day of her life.
‘Haloes and beekeeper nets,’ she said suddenly.
‘What?’
‘Bank-robber balaclavas and Viking helmets with horns sticking out at the sides.’
I was very annoyed with her for listing all those hats straight off like that without permission, especially as they were ones I hadn’t ever thought of. The hat game was my own private invention, which I played by myself when I couldn’t get to sleep. We certainly never played it as a family around the sink while washing up. Everyone was always too busy yelling at each other.
‘Pirate hat,’ I said.
‘Fireman’s helmet,’ said Alison Ashley.
‘Riding cap.’
‘Baby’s bonnet.’
‘Surgeon’s operating cap.’
‘Diamond tiara.’
‘Those lace things that Spanish ladies wear on their heads.’
‘You mean mantillas,’ said Alison Ashley. ‘Cafeteria lady’s hat.’
‘I was just about to say mantilla. I knew those lace things were called that. Red Indian feathers. There, beat that one.’
‘Executioner’s hood with slit eyes,’ said Alison Ashley.
‘I don’t feel in the mood for playing Hats right now,’ I said. ‘It often makes me feel depressed when I do. It reminds me that my father’s not here to join in.’
‘You’re not the only one who hasn’t got a dad,’ said Alison abruptly. ‘Mine’s not around, either. They got divorced last year.’
‘That’s not as bad as losing your father in a tragic plane crash,’ I said. ‘You can still go and visit him, can’t you?’
‘Not when he’s gone off to Canada and hardly ever writes or anything.’
‘At least you’ve still got your mother.’
Alison didn’t say anything. Her face had its shutters down, and it was clear that she regretted allowing me to catch a glimpse of her private life. ‘I’d invite you in to my room to play records or play Scrabble or something,’ she said. ‘But we’d better not. I don’t want to wake up my mother. She works very long hours at the weekend. We could sit in the family room instead.’
The family room was bigger than our kitchen and living room stuck together. It had off-white carpet, which seemed to me to be just plain showing off, though probably Alison never ever did anything or went anywhere messy enough to get dirt on the soles of her shoes. There was a huge television against one wall, but Alison said we’d better not turn it on because her mother was a very light sleeper. I sat in a cane hanging chair. All my life I’d wanted to sit in one of those and gyrate, but now I had the opportunity, I found myself sitting just as quietly and decorously as Alison, with my hands folded in my lap.
I looked around the family room. It was really beautiful, with massed pot plants at the window. There was a coffee table holding one big book about art, and a white telephone on a pedestal thing in a corner, and a white fleecy rug in the exact centre of the carpet. In the whole room there wasn’t one thing out of line, or one speck of dust. Even the divan cushions looked as though they’d been set there by computer. It was definitely not a room to gyrate in.
Family room wasn’t a proper title for it, unless it was for a family of shop-window models. I couldn’t imagine people eating apples there, or slippered feet resting next to bowls of hot popcorn on the shiny coffee-table top. The whole room made me conscious of my terrible old ripped jeans. Mum had stapled the rip together because she hated mending so much.
Tears in Alison Ashley’s clothes were probably invisibly mended at a drycleaners, though most likely she never tore her clothes in the first place. I figured that her mother might be a nursing sister, from the odd hours she worked. That would explain why Alison always looked so germ free and why she always ate healthy wholesome food and had sterilised-looking fingernails.
‘Which hospital does she work at?’ I asked.
‘Who?’
‘Your mother.’
‘She’s not a nurse. She’s in partnership with someone. They ow
n a restaurant.’
‘Like a pizza parlour?’
‘No, it’s a proper licensed restaurant with waiters. It’s lovely inside. They have silver candlesticks on the tables and velvet chairs. Mum’s the hostess there and she helps order the food and run it and everything. She’s very good at things like that.’
I had an embarrassing memory of me telling her that I was allowed to work as a waitress at Mum’s hotel and serve alcoholic drinks. And all the time she must have realised, with her sneakily concealed knowledge, that it wouldn’t be possible for me to do any such thing.
‘I’d better go,’ I said with dignity, getting out of the hanging chair. ‘I’ve got to go down to the racetrack and get my mother’s friend’s horses loaded on the float.’
‘Oh,’ said Alison. ‘What about the Olympic swimming team?’
‘I do that every second Saturday,’ I said. ‘I just remembered that today is my racetrack Saturday. The Olympic team’s not till next weekend.’
‘Oh. Well, you can go out the back and round the side if you like. Thanks for bringing back my folder. See you on Monday, then.’
‘Yeah, Monday.’
We went through a laundry, the first one I ever saw that had colour-coordinated electrical equipment. There was an enormous clothes dryer, so probably Alison Ashley had never been hollered at for forgetting to run out and bring in the sheets before it rained. There was a patio with redwood garden furniture and a door to a double garage. As well as all the usual things you see in a garage, there was a bicycle, Alison Ashley sized, and a shelf stacked with sports gear. My eyes skittered along the shelf, filing things under a mental heading of ‘Things to be jealous about where Alison Ashley is concerned’. There were skis, and rollerskates, the expensive white-boot kind, and a new basketball in a plastic bag. And a fabulous skateboard that looked as though it was never used.
I took it down and flipped the wheels around. ‘Your driveway would be fantastic for a skateboard,’ I said. ‘You’re nuts keeping this up on a shelf. Fancy having a sloping driveway and not making use of it. I bet I could coast down to the street corner without having to stop once. Want to see?’