by Joy Dettman
Wally Johnson
The market will be crowded today, due to the sun is out. The kids don’t need anything, except potatoes, but they’re in a celebratory mood so they take off early, all of them. Those social workers might have been pains in the bum, but they’ve made the twins free, and free together for once. People are staring at them too when they meet head on, on the bridge. Mick is scooting along on Lori’s bike, the two little ones are in the pram and the rest take turns at pushing it.
And typical, what happens when you go to the market when you’re not looking for anything? You find everything, that’s what happens.
At the first stall Mick pounces on a little bike with training wheels and it’s exactly what he wants for some experiment. It only costs five dollars. About two stalls up from the bike, Lori finds a roll of patterned curtain material with birds on it, which they can use for the little kids’ room; their curtains are pretty much rags. They’ll have to do something about that room eventually because it looks like crap beside those other rooms.
‘Cheep-cheep,’ Eddy says.
It’s cheap all right, and sort of water damaged, but the lady gives them the whole roll for twelve dollars. They have an early lunch, a burned sausage on bread, and they walk again, head for the vegetable stalls, get their potatoes and Mavis’s celery.
Then Eddy goes and finds a stall with boxes and boxes of old wallpaper. He digs around there for half an hour until he digs out five rolls that actually match. Twelve dollars the lot, the lady says. Eddy offers her ten and she takes it; the sun has gone, black clouds are blowing in, and rain and wallpaper stalls just don’t mix, due to the glue on the back of the rolls.
They’re in the last row and heading home to feed Mavis when they see the lounge suite. It’s on a trailer and it looks almost new with its bright grass green knobbly material. The guy has got ‘$150’ on it so nobody wants it – except Eddy. He’s got his ivy and bamboo wallpaper in that pram, which he’s going to stick around the top bit of the little kids’ room above the panelling – so he says.
‘That green suite will match the ivy. We’ll turn it back into a lounge room.’
‘And what do we do with the little kids’ beds?’
‘Get rid of them,’ Jamesy says. ‘And the kids.’
‘You and Mick have got your own rooms, and we’ve got three in ours. That’s discrimination. You take one little kid each and we’ll put Neil in with Mavis,’ Eddy says.
Neil nicks off, gets lost and they have to separate, spend the next half hour looking for the little bugger. And they haven’t fed Mavis. She’ll be yelling her lungs out.
‘We’ve got to go. Come on. It’s going to rain.’
But that lounge suite is still sitting on that trailer, so bright that it keeps drawing the eye. Maybe it’s one of those fate things. Maybe the kids are still on a high from yesterday, but they start walking around it, talking around it and watching for other buyers. Not one person even looks at it.
‘If I can get it for a hundred, can I have it?’ Eddy says.
‘Don’t be stupid. And he won’t let you have it for a hundred.’
‘Want to bet?’
Like a school of sharks rounding up a diver, they circle that trailer, their circle growing smaller, like the price tag on the green suite has grown smaller. It’s down to $120.
‘How much?’ Eddy asks as soon as rain starts spitting down.
‘What’s it to you?’
‘My mother needs a new couch.’
‘I’m giving it away at a hundred and twenty and I’m not splitting it up.’ They can see his price tag, they can also see he’s wanting to toss a tarp over the suite. Eddy pokes at the couch, then the bloke says: ‘She can have it for a hundred and ten and that’s as low as I’m prepared to go. It was my mother-in-law’s and it’s hardly been used.’
Eddy shrugs. ‘She said not to get green. She reckons green is unlucky. How long did your mother-in-law have it before she died?’ Eddy asks.
‘I told you. It’s damn near brand new. If your mother is interested, you’d better get her because I’m packing it in for today.’
‘We’ll take it off your hands for fifty and we’ll dye it.’
‘Stop wasting my time, you cheeky little bugger,’ the guy says.
Eddy walks away, but the spits of rain are getting bigger. The weather is bargaining for him. The guy gets the tarp over half of his trailer then the wind whips it back, flips it. Mick holds one end, but Neil has climbed up to one of the chairs. He jumps on it, and they discover its wobbly leg.
‘Get off, Neil. It’s broken. You’ll break your neck,’ Lori yells.
‘It only needs screwing in,’ the trader says. ‘Where is your mother?’
‘Sick, and she’s pretty weighty.’ Eddy is on the trailer, upending the chair with the wobbly leg. Lori has claimed Neil, and she’s threatening to put him in the pram with the celery.
‘She can have it for ninety-five.’
‘How much extra to deliver it?’
‘Ninety-five and I’ll deliver it when I finish up here,’ the trader says.
‘Sixty-five and you’ve got a deal,’ Eddy bargains. That’s what Eva would have done.
‘Piss off. You’re keeping the serious buyers away.’
‘Okay. We’ll go to seventy-five and that’s our top offer. Take it or leave it.’
‘You cheapskate little bugger.’ He’s looking at the couch, looking at the junk set out on a second tarp, looking at the sky. The kids are not moving. ‘Show me the colour of your money and I might start taking you seriously,’ the guy says.
Eddy pulls out a five and some change. Lori digs deep for two fives and a handful of coins. They pool it, count it. ‘We can make almost twenty dollars deposit to hold it and my sister will go home and get the rest.’
‘Where do you live?’
‘Down the end of Dawson Street. Out the East.’
‘Oh, you’d be Mavis’s tribe,’ he says. ‘Why didn’t you say so? She can pay me the rest when I get there.’
It’s funny the way he sort of changes his tune. Like, everyone seems to know Mavis, but they don’t hate her. Maybe it’s pity. Lori doesn’t like pity. She eyes the guy up and down, watches him pocket the notes, count the coins.
‘Do you want me to bring your other stuff over for you?’
Jamesy is pushing the new bike, Alan has got the roll of bird material on his shoulder. Matty and Timmy are sharing the pram with vegetables and wallpaper. Where’s Neil?
‘Neil. Get back here!’
‘Thanks,’ Eddy says and he starts unloading the pram. Jamesy’s not too sure about giving up the bike, but it gets tossed on the trailer, which the guy has now stopped trying to cover with his tarp. That’s their lounge suite and too bad if it gets wet.
‘How’s Mavis doing these days?’ he says.
‘She’s sick. Got a bad heart. We have to do all the shopping.’
‘Yeah? I’ve heard a bit of talk about her being crook. I’m real sorry to hear that. You give her my regards and tell her Wally Johnson said they miss the laughs at the pub.’
Miss the laughs? Five sets of eyes stare at him, but he’s loading his other junk now, and on top of their shopping. They walk off.
‘Is he talking about the same Mavis?’ Jamesy asks.
‘Seventy-five dollars. It’s a steal,’ Eddy says. ‘So, what are we going to use for the rest of the money?’
‘What are we going to do with a lounge suite, more like it?’
‘What if Wally gets there before we do? What if Mavis hears him – or if he hears her?’
‘What if he nicks off with our twenty dollars as well as our other stuff.’ They are circling that trailer again, watching their new lounge suite get wet, Jamesy giving voice to what a few of them are thinking. They haven’t had much of a chance to learn trust.
Lori shakes her head. ‘He’s okay,’ she says. ‘And if he’s not, then I think I know one of his daughters from school.’ She turns
the pram for home. ‘I’m pretty sure he’s Wendy Johnson’s father and I know where she lives. I chased her home from school one day when we were about seven.’
The spitting rain has turned to a gusty shower, which looks as if it might last for a while. No one is dressed for wet weather. ‘Someone take this pram. I’ll dink Mick home and we’ll call in at the ATM and get out the rest of the money.’
‘Make Mave a medicated coffee before Wally gets there,’ Eddy suggests.
The suite is dripping on the front verandah, but it will dry; they’ve moved the little kids’ beds and cot into the middle of the room, due to Eddy wants to start wallpapering, like, yesterday. He hasn’t got a clue how to do it, wants to run the paper around, horizontal, not bother cutting it. Mick and Lori have seen it done before. Henry and Martin were good at wallpapering.
Mick’s bad leg being no good for climbing ladders, he gets the job of measuring and cutting the paper on the kitchen table, then Lori rolls it, wets it in the bath, runs with it to Alan, who is halfway up the ladder. He hands it to Eddy and the two of them flatten it on the wall, which isn’t easy. There is a picture rail halfway up and brown wooden panelling below it, so it’s only the bit above the rail they have to paper. They rip the first bit, wreck the second, get the hang of it with the third and by the time they hang the fifth, they even start cutting the top and bottom bits off almost straight.
It’s faster than painting; it’s magical stuff, because when it’s done, which isn’t until after school the next day, it looks truly excellent – once the bubbles and wrinkles dry out. They wish they’d painted the ceiling, which probably hasn’t been painted in fifty years. It’s a dirty brown.
Pension day, and white paint is on special at Kmart. It takes two coats to cover up most of the dirt, but it doesn’t take long to paint it with all the mobile big kids taking turns up Henry’s ladder. They’ve got paint left over too, so they paint the passage ceiling, only one coat, which doesn’t cover up all of the dirt, but the passage is dark unless they put a new globe in the light; they don’t put in a new globe.
But that lounge room! They can’t stop looking at it. Every morning when they get out of bed, they look at it; every night when they come home from school, they look at it. The wallpaper has got a green ivy pattern with brown bamboo on white and with the white ceiling, it looks like a proper room.
So the little kids get evicted the next Saturday.
Matty, who has grown heaps, has been rattling the bars of his worn-out cot for a year, so they toss it and move him and Timmy into Mavis’s bed, then squeeze a single bed in beside it for Lori. Mick cops Neil. Having Mavis only one wall away might scare some sense into him.
It’s a bit like the old Henry days, playing musical beds. They get to talking about him, like how, in the old days, Henry used to cook rotten stews and cook bugs in the silverbeet and how Martin always called it bug stew. They talk about Vinnie and Greg, just memory stuff, and for an hour Eddy sits listening; he can’t join in, due to he didn’t know Henry, Vinnie or Greg.
Then Alan starts on about Henry’s flowers, Henry’s songs, and Eddy gets up and walks to the bathroom, has a shower, like for half an hour.
He’s a hard one to work out, so quick-witted that it’s like living with an out-of-control computer sometimes; he’s not scared to hit buttons just to see what happens, but he goes quiet too, and he disappears into the shower or to the shops, just takes off to be by himself sometimes.
‘You’ll wash yourself down the plughole one day,’ Alan yells.
Our Own Faces
The old wardrobe that has lived forever in front of the lounge-room fireplace almost flattens Lori when they’re trying to turn it on its side so they can get it out the door. It’s huge and heavy and it takes them half of Sunday morning to rehouse it in Mick’s room – against the dangerous wall, beside the other wardrobe, so he’s now got almost matching wall-to-wall wardrobes, which he glues and screws to the floor, wall and each other, which might slow Mavis down if she ever comes through those weatherboards. This means they have to move Mick’s bookshelves into the passage, which also means that they’ll have to put a globe in the passage light so people can see what book they’re looking for, which means another coat of paint for that passage ceiling. It’s never-ending once you start on cleaning up a house, and that’s why people don’t start doing it.
The lounge room is big once all the junk has been cleared out, but the carpet looks terrible, stained and faded into odd rectangles and blotches, white paint spills and bits of stuck-on wallpaper. Eddy won’t have a bar of it, or of trying to scrub it clean.
‘Pitch it,’ he says, and he and Jamesy start ripping it up before anyone can stop them. They find wide, dark-stained boards beneath it, like the floor in the bunk room, and like the bunk room floor, it washes clean after about ten buckets of water.
They start on the fireplace then, start wiping away years of dust, picking dust off in furry clumps. They find a few dusty books and Henry’s old wallet with his driver’s licence and seven dollars in it, which he lost, like, years ago, then had to get a new licence. They find a hired video that got lost one year, an old dummy melted into the wood. They find a really nice glass or crystal vase and two dollars twenty in coins, and also Martin’s old swimming trophy, but best of all, beneath the dust and junk and cobwebs, they find the mantelpiece and a long oval mirror which hasn’t got a crack in it.
It’s a true lost treasure. It’s something grand and it belongs to them.
‘It’s an antique,’ Eddy says, up on a chair, reaching high to drag down an old shirt someone must have pitched up there; he uses it to dust the carved bits of wood, right at the top. ‘How come no one ever noticed this room, never knew about this fireplace?’
‘We knew it was there. Henry put the wardrobe in front to stop the wind blowing down the chimney,’ Mick says. ‘The top was always there. You papered around it. You saw it.’
‘I didn’t know it was there,’ Jamesy says. He’s climbing too, wiping at it. ‘Look at those fancy carved bits around the frame.’
‘If we had a bit of furniture polish we could get those scratch marks off. Mum got a really bad mark out of the dining room table with a bottle of furniture oil.’ Eddy’s hand is running over the timber, sort of loving it, then he heads for the laundry to find an old bottle of O-Cedar oil he’s seen in there someplace, and he finds it – probably left there by the last person who owned this place. They spend the next hour sloshing it on panelled walls and fireplace, spilling it on the floor, then taking turns at sitting on an old pillow while someone drags it around and around the lounge room, rubbing the oil in. They use so much of the stuff that they have to go out on the verandah to dodge the smell.
Their suite is still a bit damp and one chair leg still wobbly. Mick fixes it by screwing it in and it’s solid as a rock, which they discover in the hour it takes to haul that suite inside and move it around until it looks just right. The couch is against disintegrating curtains, hiding the worst of the bottom bits. The two chairs are in the corners, one each side of the fireplace. It looks seriously excellent – except for the curtains.
‘We need new curtains, a classy picture for over the mantelpiece and a shade for the light globe,’ Eddy says.
‘I’ll order a chandelier tomorrow,’ Lori says. ‘And a Rembrandt.’ She’s been studying famous artists at school this term.
It’s when she’s cooking Mavis scrambled eggs that she thinks of Henry’s potting shed and remembers an oval picture frame the last owner left in there, and she’s over the fence, running through the rain to retrieve it, wiping off a hundred years of dust and spiders. Lori always liked that old oval frame, which is still intact, even the glass is intact, and the hanging wire. Even the photograph is intact.
‘That’s an antique, or the old dame in it is,’ she says, presenting it to Eddy.
They hang that hard-faced old dame high over their mantelpiece and she glowers down at the group now testing their lou
nge suite, and maybe they know why whoever dumped her in the shed dumped her there. She’s making this room feel freezing cold, or that damp suite is.
Eddy wants to light a fire. Lori and Mick tell him he’ll set the chimney alight and he’ll burn their new lounge room and them too.
‘We’ve got to dry out the couch. My bum’s wet,’ he says and he goes out back and gets a huge block of wood that’s always been too hard to cut. It’s soaking wet and so is he, but he gets some dry kindling and a pile of newspaper and he’s setting light to the lot. That block sputters itself dry then the flames catch on and the fire starts tossing out heat. It doesn’t even smoke.
Late now, bedtime late; no one wants to leave that fire, but they get rid of the little ones, tuck them in tight, tell them an old fairy tale that ends with ‘and they lived happily ever after, now go to sleep’. When Lori returns to her place on the couch she’s got the box of photographs from the top of Henry’s wardrobe. They sit close, shuffling photographs like cards, just looking at them.
There’s one of a beautiful girl with a mop of long, fluffy hair.
She’s holding a rose.
‘Who’s that?’ Jamesy says.
‘I don’t know. Probably from Henry’s England. She might be an old girlfriend or something,’ Lori says.
‘It’s Mavis,’ Alan says.
‘Crap.’
‘It is. When she was seventeen,’ Eddy says. ‘We’ve got a big one of that same photo in St Kilda. It’s coloured. The rose is orange. It matches her hair.
They all hush as they pass the photograph around and stare at it. Martin would have known Mavis when she looked like this, Lori thinks. Martin would have remembered her like this. That’s why he used to get so mad about her being fat. He could remember what was lost.
It is her. Lori can see it now she knows. She can see it in the eyes and the hand holding the rose. ‘My God!’
Mick finds a photograph of Henry, the one Lori has always loved. He doesn’t look much older than Martin, and he looks a bit like Martin – except he’s dressed old-fashioned posh. ‘That was taken before he left England.’