The Year's Best Australian SF & Fantasy - vol 05

by Bill Congreve (ed) (v1. 0) (epub)

  “Newly-weds?” Sharon frowned at Gary. “What’s going on?”

  “I don’t know.”

  The old lady smiled and placed the tray across their laps. It contained buttered toast, jam, hot coffee and two bowls of cereal, with freshly-cut fruit and a boiled egg each.

  “I simply wanted to get breakfast for my favourite son and my very favourite daughter-in-law,” she said, her eyes gleaming contentedly. “So they’ll know how much I love them.”

  The old lady kissed Gary gently on the cheek before he could draw away, and then left the two of them alone, instructing them to relax and enjoy the morning. “I’m going to make a start on this house,” she said. “It’s an absolute shambles. I don’t know, I take a holiday for a few days and when I come back, nothing’s where it should be. Still, not to worry. I know you young people have other things on your minds.”

  Gary sat unmoving after the door had closed behind the old lady, too stunned to react properly. He’d wanted to question her, but she’d been so earnest, so happy to be there, that he couldn’t bear to break the illusion. For her to be in the house - Gary and Sharon’s house - seemed natural, and he felt anxious about upsetting her.

  “Who is she, Gary?” Sharon touched him on the shoulder to focus his attention.

  “I don’t know, but she seems to feel she belongs here.”

  “She must be senile or something. This is our house. Why didn’t you ask her to explain herself?”

  “She thinks I’m her son.”

  “Gary, she’s out there wandering around our house. A stranger. We’ve got to get rid of her. Go and tell her you’re not her son and that she has to leave.”

  Gary folded his arms defiantly. “Not me. If you want to get rid of her, you do it.”

  Sharon scrambled out of bed. Her fuzzy black hair sprayed outward, giving her a wild look. “For god’s sake!” she said as she grabbed her dressing-gown and swept out after the old lady.

  A few minutes later she re-entered the bedroom, looking thoughtful. “Is she gone?” Gary queried.

  Sharon collapsed into the bed next to him. “I couldn’t do it. She was so concerned about me ... Gary, I think maybe this is her house.”

  “What?”

  “Remember Mr Sutherland? The man we bought it off. He said the house belonged to his mother, who’d been sent to a nursing home and didn’t need it any more. She’d lived here for fifty years or something. His name was Clive and the old lady keeps calling you that.”

  “Maybe we can find out if Mrs Sutherland’s gone missing?” Sharon nodded. Gary fossicked through his sock drawer. “I’ve got her son’s number somewhere.”

  Just as Gary was about to hang up, convinced there was no one home, Clive Sutherland answered the phone. He sounded puffed and was surprised when Gary told him who was calling. “Lucky you caught me,” he said. “I was just on my way out.”

  Gary apologized and quickly outlined their problem. “She’s back there?” Clive Sutherland exclaimed, and added: “Stupid old cow!”

  “We’re not positive it’s your mother.”

  “Who else would it be? She disappeared from the Home last Thursday ... they’ve been looking for her everywhere. Didn’t occur to me she’d go back to Collington. I wouldn’t have thought she had the presence of mind. God, I hoped I’d seen the last of her.”

  “Oh ... um ... She thinks she still owns the house, and that, well ... that I’m you.”

  “Me?”

  “Her son. She called me Clive.”

  There was silence for a long moment, so long that Gary began to wonder whether they’d been cut off. “Hello, are you there?”

  “What’s happening?” asked Sharon, nudging his elbow.

  “Look,” said Mr Sutherland suddenly, “She’s not causing any trouble, is she?”

  “Um ... not at all. As a matter of fact she ... um, made us breakfast in bed, and at the moment she’s tidying up the house.”

  “Well, I can’t fetch her right now. I’ve got a brokers’ conference in Newcastle today, and an important lunch. I have to leave pronto. I’ll get her on Tuesday. Latish.”

  “Tuesday? That’s three days —”

  “No problem with that, is there?”

  “Um -”

  “I mean, if there is, you can ring the cops and they can collect her. In fact, that might be the best idea ... I don’t like her being back in that bloody house. Might give her ideas.”

  Gary was horrified. He imagined the sweet little old lady being dragged from what she thought was her own home by a couple of gruff policemen. The picture filled him with guilt. The policemen were shoving her into their wagon, while she gazed back at Gary helplessly.

  “We’ll look after her,” he said.

  “You sure?” Mr Sutherland chuckled. “I should’ve guessed we’d have this problem eventually. She didn’t want to leave the house, you know. Put up a bit of a fuss, but the old dear really couldn’t handle it any more. Genevieve and I weren’t about to move in to look after her.”

  “Couldn’t you get somebody else?”

  “Do you know what a live-in nurse costs these days?”

  “She couldn’t live with you?”

  “I’m a busy man, too busy to have old ladies underfoot.” He laughed, as though remembering the happy days of his childhood. “You know, they told me at the Home she’d sit in the lobby all day, dressed and packed up, ready for the bus to take her back to Collington. Kept saying her holiday was over. They’d put her to bed each night, but next day she’d be in the lobby again. Nothing they said would convince her.”

  “That’s sad.”

  “You think so? She bullied me for twenty-five years in that house of hers. Now it’s her turn. Pity she can’t just accept what’s what, you know?”

  After Sutherland had hung up, Gary looked at Sharon helplessly. Once he’d explained what the old lady’s son had said, she felt as sorry for her as Gary did.

  “Her son must be a great disappointment,” she said. “You did the right thing, Gary. She can stay here till Tuesday and we’ll look after her.”

  Gary nodded, “It might be fun.”

  It was, too. Emma was a dear woman whose major concern seemed to be the welfare of her ‘son’ and ‘daughter’. The mess that had filled the house gradually disappeared before Gary and Sharon’s eyes, everything moving into recesses and cupboard space they hadn’t known existed. During the afternoon Emma organized Gary to clean the windows and fix up holes here and there in the ageing walls of the house - though, of course, she had to give him instructions on how best to go about it. Sharon was directed to manhandle the kitchen into “fit shape for cooking”, as the old lady put it. Later Sharon and Emma made curtains. “Heavens knows where my old ones got to,” Emma said. “They were quite nice and there was no call for anyone to throw them out.”

  They sat down to a magnificent supper that evening, “one of my specialties,” Emma said proudly as the ‘newly-weds’ tucked into the huge pile of roast lamb and vegetables that covered their plates. They drank wine - “once a week is good for the health,” Emma explained - and relaxed to the music of Peter Dawson, the old lady’s favourite. Afterwards Emma reminisced about the happy days when she and Clive’s father had been courting - summers of another age; that made her happy and even more content.

  That night the noises that had kept Gary and Sharon awake so much began again, a rustling, scratching movement beneath the floorboards and occasionally, to their horror, inside the roof. Gary felt his despair and helplessness returning, but Emma knew what to do. Gary heard her get up and bash the ceiling and floor with what was probably a broom-handle. “Be quiet!” she ordered. There was increased flurry and soon after that, silence.

  “She got rid of them,” whispered Sharon, incredulous.

  “How does she do it?”

  “She just knows what’s what, I guess.”

  But there was more to it than that, they knew. There was a strength in her that transcended the agein
g of her mind and body. Her will-power dominated the house and all its surroundings, both of which knew their place and, generally, kept to it. So long as there was someone there to look after forces from outside the home - bills, Council officers, repairmen - and someone who could do the actual physical things her ageing body forbad her from doing, she was in complete control; and Gary and Sharon felt so safe during her visit that they couldn’t even discuss with each other the possibility of its ending.

  She even controlled their neighbour, Mr Blewett.

  Blewett was a large, red-faced man with a foul temper and a belief that he was always right - the sort of bloke who tossed his junk into their yard and then accused them of malicious injury when they attempted to toss it back. Everyone in the street hated him. Gary suspected that he often stole their newspaper, and twice Sharon had seen him sneaking into their overgrown vegie garden in the late evening to pinch cabbages and carrots. His pig-dog would dig up their flower beds, and when they tried to chase the animal away it’d get nasty and chase them into the house. On the day Gary and Sharon had unloaded their furniture to move in, Mr Blewett had harangued Gary for half an hour about the noise they were making, accusing them of being junkies who were going to pollute the neighbourhood with their modern goings-on. “Flamin’ outsiders!” he’d yelled. “Why don’t ya stay in the city where ya belong? We only want decent folk in Green Street.” Twice he had called local police with a story about wild orgies, when Gary and Sharon had simply been playing music - and not very loudly at that. Luckily the police knew what a ratbag he was and ignored him. Only last week he had threatened to come over and smash Gary’s head in if he didn’t “watch his manners”. All Gary had done was wave a good morning at him as he walked up the driveway.

  Early on the Monday Emma was visiting, Mr Blewett began screaming over his fence at them. “Turn off that bloody racket!” he yelled, referring to the radio, which Emma had put on in order to listen to the breakfast show. “Man can’t sleep. If you don’t turn it off right now I’m gonna come over and turn it off meself. With an axe! Ya hear me!” The axe was his favourite threat. Everyone in Green Street had been threatened with that axe.

  Gary was getting dressed ready to head off for work -Sharon, worried about leaving Emma alone, had called up her office and told them she wouldn’t be in. They glanced at each other fearfully when they heard Mr Blewett’s rough voice, but Emma just huffed in an exasperated way, mumbled, “Silly man!” and headed for the door.

  “Emma!” said Gary, “where are you going?”

  “To give that stupid man a piece of my mind.” Before he could stop her, she was gone. Gary and Sharon rushed to the kitchen window and watched as the fragile old lady approached the big, red-faced man. They were afraid for her. But Mr Blewett was obviously surprised to see her; he stopped bellowing straight away and flushed a deeper red. Emma talked at him animatedly for about a minute and then retraced her steps. Mr Blewett slunk back inside his house.

  Gary and Sharon were amazed. “We won’t be hearing from him again,” was all that Emma said.

  On Monday night Sharon found Emma sobbing in the spare bedroom, where she was sleeping. She tip-toed up to her and put her arm around the old lady’s shoulder. “What’s the matter, Mrs Sutherland?” she asked.

  “I’m afraid,” Emma said weakly.

  “You? Really? What are you afraid of?”

  The old lady looked at Sharon with eyes full of tears. “All my things,” she said. “They’ve disappeared. I don’t know where they’ve gone. I’m scared of the people ... the ones who took me away last time ... I’m frightened they’re going to come and take me away again. The bad man will come. The one who hates me. I’ll have to go somewhere dark.”

  “Dark?”

  “Dark and horrible. I hate it. Don’t make me go.”

  “We won’t let them take you anywhere,” Sharon said without thinking.

  “Won’t you?”

  Sharon swallowed. The old lady smiled encouragingly. “Of course not,” Sharon said, feeling trapped.

  “Of course not.” Emma nodded to herself. “It would be an evil son and daughter who’d send their own mother away, wouldn’t it?” Suddenly she gave Sharon a look that had stone in it.

  ~ * ~

  Tuesday morning came like a brooding thunderstorm. Gary and Sharon knew that Clive Sutherland would be arriving soon to collect Emma and take her back to the Home, and they couldn’t bear to see her betrayed again. The thought of it made them anxious and fidgety. Sharon would burst into unexplained tears at the slightest provocation. The old lady caught their mood and was nervous and glum.

  “What are we going to do?” Sharon whispered to Gary.

  “What can we do? She’s not our mother and she has to go back.”

  Their anxiety got so great that by eleven they felt they couldn’t stay there waiting any longer. Both would have liked to go somewhere else - to work or just to the local shops - so they wouldn’t have to deal with Clive Sutherland or the tragedy of Emma’s departure. But they couldn’t abandon her like that - even though abandoning her to Clive was what they must inevitably do.

  Emma seemed to pick up on their mood. She came to them when they’d lest expected it and hugged them.

  “It’s only Clive,” Emma said, suddenly more lucid than she’d been at any other time over the past few days. “I’ll make sure he doesn’t steal anything. You can say goodbye to me now. That way our stay together won’t be sullied by memory of that ghastly man.”

  “We’ll miss you,” Sharon commented tearfully.

  The old lady smiled. “And I’ve loved living here with you. I love you and Gary ... both. You’re my children now.”

  “We’d really,” Gary said spontaneously, overcome, “we’d really like you to stay.”

  “I know you would, Gary. You are a good man. Knowing that gives me strength.”

  “Perhaps he’ll let you stay.”

  The old lady’s intense blue eyes studied him, wrinkles settling around them like webbing. “He won’t. He’s an evil, heartless goon. He doesn’t love me. He doesn’t want me to be happy.”

  “Surely you could get him to cooperate. He is your son.”

  Her jaw firmed. “No son of mine.”

  Gary gazed at her for a moment, then looked at Sharon, who shrugged. There was desperation in the shrug. He recognized it. In the few days that the old lady had been with them, the atmosphere of their life had changed utterly. Deterioration had been replaced by renewal, despair by hope. There was an orderliness, not just to the house, but to their lives and thoughts, that had never been there before, that, in fact, neither of them had been able to achieve since leaving their respective parental homes. What would happen without the old lady now? The creatures under the floorboards, sensing the departure of the force that kept them at bay, would begin their nightly scratchings; dust would settle, in thicker and thicker drifts; and Mr Blewett and his dog would descend upon them like predators.

  “We’ve got to do something,” Sharon said, as though reading his thoughts.

  “What can we do?”

  “Tell him to go away.”

  Gary knew, like the old lady, that it wouldn’t work. There was something in Clive Sutherland that would insist the old lady should return to the powerless life she had escaped from. He’d forced that life on her - perhaps because she had always been so powerful here, in her environment, and the child Clive had struggled resentfully against it. Now he sought revenge. Why should he let Gary and Sharon thwart him?

  “What can we do?” muttered Gary again.

  Suddenly he felt the old lady’s hand, firm now, touch his cheek. He looked at her, fearing what she was about to say. She smiled, her wrinkled, grey lips flushing with blood. “You need not worry,” she whispered. “I’ll wait upstairs. When he comes, send him to me. I’ll deal with him.”

  “But-”

  “No buts.” The hardness was there again; they couldn’t resist her. “Send him to me, then go ou
t.”

  “Out?”

  “Shopping. Have a coffee. Can you do that?” Emma’s eyes were like hard coals. “Give me two hours. When you return, it will all be over.”

  ~ * ~

  Clive Sutherland turned up later than they’d expected. He was large and sweating, his red face a puffy caricature of the old lady’s. He was wearing an ill-fitting beige suit.

  “You must be the ones that called me,” he said, without proper introduction.

  Gary nodded, unable to find words to speak.

  “Sorry about this fuss.” Sutherland glanced around almost furtively. “Hope you haven’t be fretting. I’ve just come for some ... personal items the old ... dear left upstairs.”