by Sasha Wasley
I wanted to thank her but I couldn’t speak. Zoe checked my face, gave my hand a squeeze, and moved on to someone else.
‘That’s just about it, I think.’ Mrs Brooker was running her hands over the final few shoes in the bottom of the case. ‘They can all go. Burgundy! Nobody wears burgundy shoes nowadays, do they? And look at these – toss these in the bin, love, the suede is cracking. Oh, wait.’ She reached in and retrieved a pair of glittering dark heels. ‘Oh, my goodness. I wore these to the Orchardist Association Awards once in the 1990s, I think. Or 1980s. Such wonderful shoes. Look at them, like a galaxy. I only wore them once but I couldn’t bear to get rid of them.’ She sighed. ‘Let’s keep these. I don’t know why but they still give me joy. The rest can be donated.’
I followed her directions. ‘So, what about the suitcase?’
It was a neat grey one, zips in good condition. Definitely of this century. Mrs Brooker ran a hand over the inner lining.
‘I got this for Angus when he graduated. I hoped he would travel, but he didn’t. He and his father found peach spot in our orchards that first year after he finished school, and Angus worked terribly hard with the Orchardist Association, trying to convince them to remove tainted trees. He did an awful lot of research and campaigning. Colin Dalgety wanted to treat the trees with chemicals, like he’d always done for disease, but Angus had looked at some case studies – from America, I think. He said the only way to really stop the disease was tree removal. He convinced Ted to cut down dozens of our trees. An entire orchard full. Then he convinced other people in town. Some people followed Colin, but in the end, they all had to remove their peach trees. Angus was right. It was a vast lot of work, though – cutting down, stump grinding, removing the roots, then treating the soil and planting new trees.’ She sighed. ‘I hardly saw Angus for a couple of years while he was trying to save our orchards. Or Ted. He and Angus would be up at night talking about what to do.’
I was silent.
‘I know it’s silly, but let’s keep that suitcase,’ she said, her bright blue eyes on mine. ‘I still hope Angus will let go of all this one day and go exploring.’
‘Maybe you could use this suitcase to hold your memories – things that don’t have another place. Like Long Bunny. We can pack them inside and put it up the top.’ I indicated the big wardrobe. ‘To get them out of the way.’
She nodded, the ghost of a smile on her face. ‘Pack up my memories.’ Mrs Brooker stood slowly. ‘Time for a cup of tea.’
As I followed her out of the room, I noticed the Christmas tree behind the door. I was startled to realise I’d been staying with the Brookers for almost three weeks now. Surely they would want me out of their way soon.
‘We still need to put the tree up,’ I said, pushing the thought to the back of my mind. ‘I’ll help with that this afternoon, if you like.’
‘Come and have dinner with us tonight,’ she said. ‘You and Angus can do the tree together afterwards.’
I pictured Angus’s unfriendly gaze. ‘Umm …’
She headed for the kitchen. ‘It’s chicken casserole,’ she called back over her shoulder.
Chicken casserole? All I had in my caravan was instant noodles and those interminable tins of baked beans. I could suffer under Angus’s grumpiness for an evening if it meant a decent meal.
I took the rubbish around to the bin and loaded up my car with more donations. I paused to look at my car for a minute. Sitting there in the dim vine-covered garage, looking dusty and with old bags of charitable donations all over the back seat, it could almost be a regular Bonnievale girl’s run-around.
Maybe I didn’t need to sell it, after all.
Chooky’s abdomen did not refill with fluid, as far as I could tell. Her comb still drooped a bit, but she was eating well and getting feistier every time I stuck a big antibiotic tablet down her beak. Angus came for me around six in the evening. He knocked on the caravan door while I was lying on my bunk, attempting to read one of Mum’s books in the softening light.
‘Lottie, Mum wanted me to call you for dinner.’
‘Okay, coming.’
I clambered down and stepped out of the van. Angus was still there, snapping dead flower heads off the rosebushes by the caravan.
‘How’s the chicken?’ he asked.
‘Good. She’s doing okay.’
He snapped off another desiccated rose. ‘I’ve noticed some stuff from the spare room in the bin.’
‘Yeah. Your mum’s clearing stuff out.’
‘Why?’
‘I’m not sure. Did you ask her?’ He didn’t answer. ‘She’s choosing what to keep and what to chuck,’ I added in case I’d inadvertently thrown out something that belonged to him.
He looked at me for a long moment. ‘Okay,’ he said at last. ‘I was just wondering what she’d said to you about it.’
‘She said she needs to clear out the room and wanted to try a decluttering method I told her about.’
Angus nodded and examined the rosebush with exaggerated nonchalance, a shaft of afternoon sunlight falling across his brown hair. He shot a glance my way.
‘Food’s ready,’ he said, whipping around quite suddenly to stride into the house.
I followed. Mrs Brooker had set the kitchen table with three green placemats, a board holding bread and some hot corn cobs, as well as all the requisite crockery. There was a slab of real butter there, too. The casserole smelled home-cooked, and amazing.
‘Here’s the honey for your quiz night,’ Angus said, indicating two enormous tubs on the end of the bench.
‘Thanks.’ I smiled at him. ‘You don’t have a label? Like, Brooker’s Honey, or whatever?’
‘No label. There aren’t any other ingredients. It’s just pure honey.’
‘Oh – yes, I figured that. But I thought you might have your farm name on it.’
Mrs Brooker spooned the casserole onto plates. ‘That’s a nice idea, Angus.’
Angus looked at me, then at the tubs of honey, as though I’d suggested he mark them with demonic symbols in his own blood. I sank into a chair.
Mrs Brooker placed a plate in front of me. ‘Could you get drinks, Angus, love?’
He went to the fridge and got a jug of water and a bottle of beer, hesitating as he looked back at me. ‘Beer?’
‘No, thanks. Not a beer-drinker,’ I said.
‘We don’t have anything else.’
‘That’s fine.’
We ate. Mrs Brooker talked about how it was expected to cool down on the weekend, so perhaps Angus could have a bonfire. She said Aunty Pris was coming over for tea tomorrow night and she might do a sticky date pudding since it was Pris’s favourite. She checked that I liked sticky date pudding, too, as if I was also invited. Then she remarked that she hadn’t seen much of Toby lately.
‘Toby is Angus’s closest friend,’ she explained to me. ‘Why hasn’t he been around?’ she asked him.
‘They’re busy with harvest and the baby,’ he answered.
‘Baby?’ Mrs Brooker looked startled.
Angus kept his eyes glued to his dinner. ‘You know, Mum. Toby and Jo’s baby. Amelie.’
‘They had a baby, did they?’ She stared into the mid-distance. ‘How old is it?’
Angus shrugged. ‘Few months.’
‘Well, now. That’s gone quick.’
I wondered again about the accuracy of Mrs Brooker’s memory. She’d told me such detailed stories – her story of Angus spotting a rare bird with his dad’s binoculars; her description of old Cecil Brooker’s foibles. And yet, she’d forgotten that Angus’s best friend had a child and sometimes, in the mornings, it was as if she didn’t know who I was. She’d called me Penny so many times now, I’d lost count. Were her stories real or was she making stuff up? Why would she do that – to fill the hole where her memories should be?
After dinner, she asked us to go and set up the Christmas tree while she did the dishes. I offered to do the dishes so she and Angus could decorate th
e tree together, but Mrs Brooker was adamant. Eventually I gave up, shooting Angus a helpless look. He tipped his head towards the lounge room to indicate I should follow him, but when I got there, he didn’t offer any kind of explanation.
‘Where’s the tree?’ he said.
‘In the spare room, behind the door.’
He fetched it and a box of Christmas decorations. I was ready to help but Angus didn’t seem to want it. He untied the twine wrapped around the plastic tree and grimly began slotting pieces and branches together. I went through the items in the cardboard box, sorting it into piles of tinsel, baubles and miscellaneous – a couple of stuffed felt partridges and a goodly collection of children’s handcrafted ornaments.
‘Oh, wow,’ I said. ‘Blast from the past.’ I held up a red popsicle stick star with a photograph of Angus aged around nine in the middle. ‘I remember making these. Year three, Mrs Stout, right?’
‘Yeah. Your parents still got one, too?’
‘No, I haven’t seen it since I was in primary school. They would’ve chucked it years ago.’
Angus nodded but seemed a little taken aback. ‘I think my mum kept everything.’
I picked up a fragile paper chain, each link coloured in with red or green crayon. ‘This looks like you did it in kindy. Your mum really did keep everything. Must be an only child thing. Remember the paper doily snowflakes we made one year? Izzy Banner tore hers, then stole mine and said she made it.’
Angus shrugged.
‘She was always a bit that way inclined,’ I said. ‘Remember Izzy in high school, stealing Roisin Bryant’s boyfriend? That was the talk of year ten.’
‘I don’t remember,’ he said stiffly. Too superior to take notice of gossip or high-school drama?
‘Yeah, you do,’ I said, watching him untangle some tinsel. ‘It was at Farrah Spiteri’s birthday party. You were trying to calm things down. Roisin was going mad at Izzy and you were in between them, stopping them from scratching each other’s eyes out.’ He shrugged again. ‘We kissed at that party.’
Angus’s hands stopped and he shot me a startled glance.
‘True story,’ I said, pleased to have rattled him.
‘You and me?’ He wore a doubtful expression.
‘Yeah. Spin the bottle.’ I smiled. ‘It obviously made a big impression on you.’
He was still frowning, as though trying to remember. ‘At Farrah’s birthday party?’
I nodded confirmation. ‘Three-second kiss. Three seconds is surprisingly long when it’s being counted out loud by everyone in the room.’
‘Are you sure it was with me?’
I laughed. ‘Yes, I’m sure. My best friend had a crush on you. She didn’t forgive me for a week. I kept trying to tell her it was just a game, but she was devastated. She’d been waiting for that party, hoping the bottle would land on you and her. You started going out with Bianca a little while later, anyway, and you two acted like you were already married, so she had to get over you.’
He’d gone red in the face, which was kind of cute. ‘Sorry. I don’t remember.’
‘I’m not offended,’ I assured him. ‘I was a townie; you were a farm boy. I knew the score.’
That stopped him. ‘What?’
‘You know.’ I studied a yellow pipe-cleaner star that had seen better days. ‘Farm boys never go out with town girls. Well, not the quality ones, and you were quality – good-looking, founding family, good at sport, could string a sentence together and had all your teeth.’ Angus didn’t crack a smile. ‘Obviously the teeth thing was a joke,’ I added.
‘Is that how the town kids saw us?’ he said.
‘Yeah, of course. You guys were far too good for us. All that old money. You were the landed gentry and we were the new money merchant class.’
He took the yellow star from me and tossed it into a pile of ornaments past their use-by. ‘We thought the town kids were too good for us,’ he said. ‘They thought we were country bumpkins. Inbred and only good for driving tractors.’
‘That’s probably what we said but it wasn’t what we thought.’ I surveyed the stack of ornaments. ‘Are there any lights? I think lights are supposed to go on first.’
Angus dug a package of ancient Christmas tree lights out of the box. He extracted the plug, his expression dubious, but when he plugged them in, the lights blinked into colourful life.
‘Vintage 1980?’ I said. ‘Hopefully they don’t short circuit and melt your tree.’
‘I’ll get a power board with a safety switch.’
While he was gone, I eased the lights from their packaging. Each had its own spiky plastic icicle covering the globe and these were annoyingly fragile, coming loose from their bulbs every time they were touched. The spikes hurt my fingers when I tried to push them back over the globes. The string was too short for them to go around the tree’s circumference more than once, so I hooked the middle light at the top and let the others fall down each side. By the time Angus got back, I’d started winding spindly ropes of silver tinsel around the tree. He got onto hanging baubles. The two of us worked like a machine to get the tree decorated, neither taking pleasure in the task. Within minutes, it was done, and Angus was packing up empty packets.
‘Have you got something for the top?’ I asked.
‘In there.’ He pointed at a little white box.
Inside was an angel. She had a soft, fuzzy face like a peach, pale-yellow hair arranged in a silky swirl on top of her head, and a silver-wire halo. Tiny arms had been painted onto her body, a stiffened fabric cone in pale blue, flanked by silvery wings. She had her eyes closed in peaceful piety, her mouth opened in song.
‘She’s so sweet,’ I said, manoeuvring her out of the box. ‘You don’t get angels with faces like this any more. Probably because she looks a bit like an inflatable sex doll, with her mouth open like that.’
Angus laughed in spite of himself. I handed the angel over.
‘You do it.’
He took her and gazed down at the tree for a moment. ‘When did our tree get so short?’
‘When’s the last time you did this?’
He fitted the angel over the spiky top branch and stood back to eye her critically. ‘Years, I suppose. Mum doesn’t usually bother me with it, but she really pushed this time.’
‘Maybe she didn’t want to interrupt your work in the orchards before,’ I said. ‘It’s a busy time of year for you, and she might have thought doing this was frivolous, or whatever.’
He shrugged. ‘Could be.’
‘So, what’s changed?’
Angus shot me a quick look and pushed the angel more firmly into place. ‘Nothing.’
‘Does she want you to slow down and smell the roses, or something? Is she re-evaluating things? The declutter – she seems pretty keen to get it done. Is she okay? Is—’
Angus turned a full-strength glare on me. I recoiled.
‘What are you really doing here?’ His voice was cold. ‘Did Pris put you up to this?’
‘Put me up to – to what?’ I stammered.
He stood and watched me for a long moment. ‘Mum,’ he called at last. ‘We’re finished.’
Mrs Brooker appeared, puffing as though she’d rushed in to see something spectacular, drying her hands on a tea towel. ‘Oh, that looks nice!’
I was still staring at Angus, flummoxed by his accusation. He avoided my gaze and adjusted the angel again.
‘I’m glad you did it together,’ she added. ‘Was that fun, Angus?’
‘Yeah,’ said the bullshit artist.
‘Did you have fun?’ she asked me, turning that soft gaze onto my face.
No lying. ‘I had a lovely dinner. Thank you so much. I might head off to bed.’
I would have made my escape but Mrs Brooker’s eyes had become worried and I felt horrible. ‘Wasn’t it fun for you, love – decorating the tree?’
I was trapped. I searched for something to say and even Angus turned to look at me, surprised by my silence.
‘No.’ I forced the word out. ‘Sorry.’
‘I’m sorry to hear that. Why not? Was Angus unpleasant?’ She shot a reproving glance his way. He waited, his eyebrows creeping downwards.
‘I promised myself not to lie, remember?’ I mumbled.
Angus’s mouth fell open.
‘That’s a very moral thing to do.’ Mrs Brooker seemed surprised, like we hadn’t had a conversation about me begging at the train station that very afternoon.
I was sure my face had turned scarlet. ‘My personal declutter. You know.’
‘Oh, yes, that’s right. No lying or faking.’ She looked at Angus the way a mother looks at a son whose friend knows how to keep his bedroom tidy. Angus wore an incredulous expression.
I attempted to explain. ‘I’m trying to get back to basics.’
‘How very brave,’ she said.
‘I think I’d like to go to bed now.’ I was practically burning up with the need to get the hell out of there. ‘Thank you for dinner. It was really good.’
She nodded. ‘You’re very welcome. I like your promise, love. We should all take a leaf out of your book.’
I walked until I got outside, and then ran across the lawn to the caravan and shut myself inside.
I woke at around six and lay there on the hard bunk, enjoying the warmth of my heavy blanket and the cool air on my face. Chooky was in her box on my table, making the occasional pecking noise as she ate her breakfast crumble. Something like happiness shot through me when I realised she was on track for recovery.
The screen door to the Brooker house banged. ‘Yep. Back in twenty,’ Angus called to his mother.
I lifted my head to peer through my window. I had a good vantage point in my caravan, raised slightly above the fence line. Angus was in beekeeping getup: a white full-body suit, gloves and broad-brimmed hat, with a dark veil draped over his shoulders. In his hand was something like a cross between a tin funnel and a piano accordion. He glanced towards the caravan but didn’t appear to see me through the disintegrating lace curtain.