Water under the Bridge

by Lily Malone

  ‘Stubborn bugger,’ he replied.

  ‘Can you go any higher, Henry?’ Ella said, because she would kick herself if she got back to the office and hadn’t asked the question.

  ‘I’ll think about it. Have to talk to some people.’ Henry rang off, leaving Ella looking at her phone screen in the bright sun, tilting it to make sure the connection was actually at an end.

  ‘Didn’t even say goodbye,’ she said to her screen.

  ‘They never do, love,’ cackled a voice from behind her at the same time as a little white dog on one of those extendable leads trotted past on Ella’s left.

  ‘Good morning,’ Ella greeted the owner of the cackle and the dog, an older lady with a thatch of copper-coloured hair and, judging by the lopsided way she walked, at least one dodgy knee.

  ‘Isn’t it just? It’s lovely. I’m Rene. Irene Loveday. We live on Lilac Hill Loop. You’re the new girl at Harvey’s office, aren’t you? Helen Nillson said you’re that swimmer lady selling houses now. We got your flier at Christmas.’

  ‘I’m Ella,’ Ella said, holding out her hand, not at all sure about being labelled swimmer lady. It looked like word was out; her cover was definitely blown. Hadn’t Harvey mentioned he wanted to talk with her about swimming too?

  Maybe if she did one story for the local newspaper, one interview. Maybe one chat up at the school about training hard and setting goals would do. Then she’d be old news. She’d get everyone off her back and she could go back to being just Ella.

  Irene swapped the dog lead to her opposite hand and the two women shook. The dog doubled back and Ella stepped over its leash, silently congratulating herself on not getting tripped.

  ‘So are you selling much? There’s a heck of a lot of For Sale signs around town. It’s the economy, they tell me. Or it’s the New Zealanders,’ Rene said.

  ‘The New Zealanders?’

  ‘Taking all the jobs.’ Rene nodded in a way that made her hair whip above her eyes.

  Ella tried to think if she’d run into any New Zealanders in Chalk Hill, and couldn’t recall any.

  ‘I should get you around to look at my place,’ Rene said.

  ‘Are you thinking of selling?’ Ella asked.

  She batted the question away with a snorted laugh. ‘God no, love. I wouldn’t sell. But it would be practice for you, you know? For when you get a real house to sell? I could ask the neighbours. They’d let you look in their houses too.’

  ‘Ok-ay,’ Ella said, listening to the tick, tick, tick of the lead device in Rene’s hand as the dog took off to investigate a patch of leaves at the base of one of the street trees. Between the ticking lead, the scratch of the dog’s paws, Rene’s heavy breath and the clack of Ella’s heels, they made quite the orchestra.

  ‘Phew. I might just stop here for a moment in the shade, love,’ Rene said, and she halted under the awning of the liquor store, right in front of an A-frame sign that offered a special on any Export slab.

  ‘Are you okay? It’s warm this morning. I’ve been told this might be the last of the hot weather.’ A girl was always safe talking about the weather in the country.

  ‘I’m fine, love. Just not as young as I used to be. Not as slim as I used to be either, just quietly. Doctor told me I had to lose some weight before they’d do my knee. One of those replacements jobs, you know? But I have to be five kilos lighter. That’ll kill me before I get the new knee, I reckon. Whoo, boy.’ Rene fanned her hand to cool her face.

  A driver tried to pull in to the drive-thru and had to brake to avoid squashing the dog. Not that Rene seemed overly worried. She reeled the pooch back with her extenda-lead as if the white dog were a four-legged fish.

  ‘Sorry, Arthur,’ Rene waved at the man in the ute. He waved back and drove right on by and Ella could hear him greeting the drive-thru attendant and ordering a slab of Tooheys New. The attendant told him about the special on Export.

  ‘So. We could do it next week then?’ Rene said, resting her backside against the window, which had a thick ledge at the perfect height.

  ‘Sorry?’ Ella had visions of dog-walking with Rene.

  ‘The appraisal on my house. Me and the neighbours. There’s Sally Huxtable and Loraine McCormack. They’ll be in it for sure. Sally loves showing off since they got a pool, and you’d know all about pools. I told her that pools are known to be the greatest waste of money when it comes to value-adding to a home. It’s much better to add another bedroom. But she didn’t want to listen. They have grandkids, you know, and the grandkids love the pool. One thing Chalk Hill doesn’t have is a pool. Shame, I say. I’d use a pool. It would help me lose weight. All that exercise. We did have a pool once but it got shut down when a little toddler nearly drowned. Not me and Perry, I don’t mean. Chalk Hill town pool is what I’m talking about.’

  Above Rene’s head a line of gold globes flashed around a two-bottles-for-one sign in the liquor store window. Ella didn’t think it was a good time to mention it was New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc, but she did make a note-to-self to come back later.

  She could hear the continuing conversation between the customer in the drive-thru and the attendant. They were talking sport and beer. Beer and sport. And something about Pickles’ dam in today’s paper. Ella frowned. Where had she heard Pickles’ dam mentioned before?

  ‘If next week doesn’t suit, we could do it this Thursday. Friday’s no good. Friday is bowls,’ Rene said, leaning down to untangle the dog’s lead because he’d run a loop around the Export slab sign. ‘I’d say tomorrow because it wouldn’t worry me—my house is always on the messy side of a bomb hit it— but Sally and Loraine, they get very house proud. They’d want a day to tidy up.’

  ‘Thursday would be fine. I’d love to,’ Ella said, because there was no way to get out of it without causing offence, and Harvey would say she needed to get out and meet the locals, and Harvey would be right. ‘What time?’

  ‘How about ten in the morning? That’s perfect for a cuppa, and I’ll be back from my walk.’

  ‘Lovely,’ Ella said. ‘I’d better keep moving, Mrs Loveday—’

  ‘Oh, call me Rene, please!’ the older lady interrupted.

  ‘I’ll see you on Thursday. It’s been lovely to meet you, Rene.’ Ella stepped carefully around the dog, the leash and the beer sale sign.

  ‘Did I tell you which house is mine, Ella?’

  ‘I’ll find it. Lilac Hill Loop will be on my flier list.’

  ‘Number seventeen if you have any trouble, love. Don’t bring anything.’

  ‘See you then,’ Ella said, moving off down the street towards the office, thinking, country towns, gotta love them. Appraisals conducted outside the liquor store, while walking a lady and her dog down the street.

  * * *

  The Begg & Robertson office felt like a refrigerator after the heat of the street, and Ella sighed gratefully as she said good morning to Gina, who’d arrived for work while Ella had been visiting (let’s call it kissing) Jake and chatting (we’ll call it networking) with Irene.

  ‘Are you the dark horse or what?’ Gina said, pulling up from her typing, hands resting on her keyboard like a pianist on a break. ‘I’ve never met an Olympian.’

  Not you too. ‘Hate to tell you, lovely, but you still haven’t … I never made the Olympics. I got knocked up and had a baby instead.’

  Gina flicked her fingers in dismissal. ‘You’re still a star to me. I can’t swim a lap without stopping. I bet you can do butterfly. If I could do butterfly, I’d take out an ad and tell the world.’

  ‘I’d sink if I tried it now,’ Ella shrugged, trying not to make it a big deal. She could see the shadow of Harvey through the glass, getting up from his chair, coming out for the talk about swimming Ella didn’t want to have. ‘Believe me, selling houses and raising a ten-year-old is heaps harder than doing butterfly!’

  Gina laughed. Then her laugh morphed into more of a quizzical smile as she studied Ella’s face. ‘Everything okay? I didn’t mean to embarrass y
ou.’

  ‘I’m fine. It was a long time ago. I don’t talk about my swimming much. It feels like another life.’

  ‘Okay.’ Gina returned her attention to her computer screen, letting it go, and Ella thanked her lucky stars Gina was sensitive enough to see through Ella’s shell.

  Ella liked Gina Scarponi; she was a breath of fresh air in their office. She worked part-time, a girl as Aussie as they come—blonde-haired, blue-eyed, with a tan-line that hinted at hours spent outdoors—Gina married the fourth son of the Mount Barker Scarponis a couple of years ago, and that made her an adopted part of the biggest Italian vegetable farming family in the Great Southern. Gina said she came into Begg & Robertson to get away from the smell of tomatoes and onions, and her mother-in-law’s hints about how she had too many eggplant and zucchini growing and not enough grandchildren.

  Harvey approached the reception desk. ‘So how did it go with Jake?’

  Ella shook her head. ‘No deal.’

  ‘Bugger.’ Harvey frowned. ‘I thought we might have something there, Ella. What did he say?’

  ‘He took a look and said it wasn’t enough, and he gave it back to me, like last time.’

  ‘No counter?’

  ‘Nope.’

  ‘Bugger,’ Harvey said again, hands on hips, staring at the tiled floor. Then he brightened. ‘Ah well, never mind. So, Ella, what’s this about you being the queen of the pool? Meg says it’s all over town. Her card ladies were all over it yesterday afternoon. You were the hot topic at the Bridge table.’

  Harvey had a twinkle in his eye and no idea about the lump his words wedged in Ella’s throat.

  ‘I’m not the queen of the pool. Not anymore,’ Ella said. ‘I was just saying to Gina, all that was a very long time ago. It was a different life for me and Chalk Hill is a long way from the water.’

  ‘Ah, and about that. You know what we should do?’ Harvey’s enthusiasm could match the mums on pool deck, cheering their kids up and down the lanes. Well, most of the mums. Not Ella’s. Ella’s mum had her own stop watch and wrote down all her times.

  ‘What?’ Ella said, holding her phone like it could yank her out of this mess, if she held on and didn’t let go.

  ‘I can see it now.’ Harvey splayed his hands wide, indicating billboards and spotlights. ‘Begg & Robertson Stingrays … or Dolphins. Begg & Robertson supports our town dolphins … We can get the town swimming pool up and running again.’

  Ella got that sinking feeling. Like a mud pie thrown into the pool, spreading on the bottom. Rusted brown sludge.

  ‘I thought the pool was closed,’ Ella said, shifting her weight, clenching her phone.

  ‘It is, but that’s not a problem. We can get it open again, now that you’re here.’

  ‘You’d need council approval surely? Who owns the pool? Who’d administer it?’

  ‘It was built when we had a football team here. You and Gina wouldn’t know about that, but back in the old days we used to have a Chalk Hill team in the Manjimup league. Then the mining boom took all the blokes up north and made it hard to keep a team together and it got let go. Footy team built the pool for rehab, recovery and pre-season training, but when the team shut down, tennis and basketball courts got built on the old oval but the town decided not to fill the pool in.’

  Ella said, ‘I heard a child nearly drowned.’

  He nodded. ‘True. Jake dragged him out in the nick of time.’

  Ella’s heart skipped a beat. ‘Jake Honeychurch saved the child? He’s never said anything to me.’

  Harvey gave her a why would he look, and kept talking. ‘Yeah, anyway. Good warning for everyone, that. We drained the water after. See skateboarders in there sometimes. Carving up, or whatever it is the young ones do.’

  ‘There’s an idea, Harvey. Why don’t we sponsor a skate park for the town instead?’ Ella suggested, forcing her fingers to relax.

  Gina added, ‘That could work.’

  Harvey’s mouth screwed up as he considered that, head tilted to one side, making his pudgy cheek droop. ‘That’s not a bad idea …’

  Ella pounced. ‘Fencing. Gates. All the pumps and equipment, running costs. Pools are so expensive to run. You don’t have to run a skate park once you build it. You don’t need a lifeguard for a skate park.’

  ‘Yeah, that’s true,’ Harvey admitted.

  There was a scrape and a whoosh of hot air filled the office as the local newspaper delivery guy pushed through the front door.

  ‘G’day, Pete. You got our papers?’ Harvey greeted the guy, rubbing his hands together. Harvey loved Tuesday morning when the local paper came out. He’d spend an hour with his 10:30 am coffee, poring over the pages, commenting on the golf and bowls results.

  ‘You’ll like the front page this week, Harve,’ said Pete.

  ‘Yeah? What mischief are they cooking up?’ Harvey stepped close to the bound stack of thirty or so papers Pete hefted on the top of Gina’s counter.

  ‘You know how Pickles has been working on his dam out Chalk Hill Bridge Road?’

  ‘Yeah,’ Harvey said, squinting as he tried to see the paper. ‘Can you get me some scissors, Gina?’

  ‘He’s got an application in for a water park out there. That’s why the damn thing looks like Lake Argyle. He’s gonna do a water ski park. Reckons tourists will flock to it.’

  Gina handed over the scissors and Harvey snipped the straps binding the paper so he could take the top one off. Gina picked up the rubbish, and Harvey and the newspaper delivery man stepped back. Ella grabbed herself her own copy of the paper before Gina took the bundle out to the stand at the front of the office.

  ‘Be good for you, eh?’ Pete said with a wink. ‘Sell more land. Flog a few more houses.’

  ‘Always love the idea of more people coming here, mate. Can’t keep paradise a secret forever,’ Harvey said, scanning the front page. Then he glanced at Ella. ‘If there’s a water park, locals need to know how to swim. Hey, Ella?’

  She didn’t say anything, just examined the smudge on her fingers where the newsprint had stained.

  ‘We’ve been talking about reopening the old pool, Pete. Turns out our Ella here is a swimming champ from way back. Be able to get swimming lessons started for the school kids, therapy sessions for the oldies. Be a great idea. Ella will be the face of it. It’s like having our own Shane Gould.’

  ‘So you’re the swimmer lady the whole town’s talking about, hey? Nice to meet you,’ Pete nodded at Ella and she returned his smile; at least she hoped she did, her face felt frozen. Pete kept talking. ‘Sounds like a good plan, Harve. My kids would be in it.’

  ‘I mean, we’ll talk about it more, of course,’ Harvey said, nodding to Ella, straightening his newspaper and shaking it into a neat shape.

  Pete backed out of the office, opening the door for Gina as they crossed paths. ‘See you Friday at scroungers, Harve. See ya, ladies.’

  ‘Bye, Pete,’ Ella and Gina said in unison.

  ‘Right. Time for coffee, hey? My buy. Who’s in?’ Harvey looked at Gina and Ella, and they both said, ‘Me. Thanks, Harvey,’ watching their illustrious leader walk out of the office on his way to get takeaway cups from Coffee on Chalk.

  ‘How about that then,’ said Gina, sitting at her desk. ‘Never a dull moment in sleepy Chalk Hill, hey?’

  ‘You can say that again,’ Ella said, retreating to her space so she could check and return her emails. She’d wait till Harvey came back with her coffee then she’d read the newspaper.

  * * *

  The headline read:

  ‘Ski Park Plans to put Town on Tourist Map’

  A development application for a water ski park on Chalk Hill Bridge Road is expected to be approved when the council meets at its March district council meeting in Mount Barker, with most councillors canvassed by the Courier indicating they were in favour of the plan.

  The proponent of the water ski park is second-generation farmer, Dylan Fields, who has been extending the natural dam on
his 250-ha sheep and canola property in anticipation of a positive council vote.

  ‘We’ve had meetings with the environmental authorities, town planners and councillors, and they’ve all indicated support,’ Mr Fields told the Courier on Monday. ‘The ski park will bring tourists to the area, giving visitors another place to stop on the way to the Porongurups, Mount Barker and Albany.’

  One of the key facets of the application includes an undertaking from the developer for a contribution towards the upgrade of Chalk Hill Bridge Road—

  ‘By the living Harrys!’ burst Harvey from his office loud enough to make Ella jump, and she stopped reading.

  Harvey came out of his office like a shark smelling blood.

  ‘They’re gonna upgrade Chalk Hill Bridge Road. Says here it will become a through-road joining the Muirs Highway and the South Coast Highway. We’ll have a north–south corridor that will come out not far from Walpole. People could come from the Tree Top Walk straight through to Chalk Hill.’

  Harvey’s face purpled. ‘A bloody bitumen road, Ella!’ He slapped the newspaper page with one hand, sending the smell of newsprint swirling towards her. ‘They’ve been talking about this for years, but we never thought it would happen. This is why Henry Graham wants the Honeychurch property. He knew about this.’ Harvey slapped the page again. ‘Bet this is why I’m hearing those rumours about bloody Leo Vesper trying to get a sneaky foot in the door here too, ‘cos they think real estate is gonna go through the roof.’

  If her boss got any more excited, he’d pop a blood vessel.

  ‘Where’s Bob at, Gina?’ Harvey called towards the front office.

  There was a pause as Gina consulted her calendar, or roster, or whiteboard—wherever she kept her information on the staff comings and goings. ‘He’s doing an appraisal on a farm out Rocky Gully way. He said he’ll have lunch while he’s out and should be back about one.’

  ‘Okay,’ Harvey mumbled.

  Because she hadn’t spent the amount of time in the area, not like Harvey or Gina, the news about the road didn’t grip Ella quite so tight, but she’d been in real estate long enough to know this was a game-changer. All the people she’d spoken to in her time in Chalk Hill lamented the long distance they had to travel if they wanted to get to the south coast, whether for the beaches or the towns. When she, Erik and Sam went to visit the Tree Top Walk at the weekend they’d had to go almost all the way to Mount Barker, then south on the Denmark to Mount Barker road, then west on the South Coast Highway.