Diamonds in the Mud and Other Stories

Joy Dettman, a Melbourne writer, was born in country Victoria and spent her early years in towns on either side of the Murray River.

She is an award winning writer of short stories and the highly acclaimed novels
Mallawindy
,
Jacaranda Blue
,
Goose Girl
,
Yesterday's Dust
,
The Seventh Day
,
Henry's Daughter
and
One Sunday
.

About the Author

Also by Joy Dettman

Title Page

Copyright

Seashells and Bottle Tops

The Gravedigger

One Small Potato

No Harm in Looking

The Khaki Flannel Dress

Scattered Cinders

Cultural Exchange

Dan Nation

The Coupon Bearer

Her Name is Karli

Slayer of Vanity

Happily Ever After

What Big Teeth

Diamonds in the Mud

The Third Eye

On Harper Land

Between a Rock and a Hard Place

The Small Weed

Good Publicity

Potato Love

Summer Pink

The House Raising

The Interrupted Circle

Two Gifts for Annie

Of Myths and Seesaws

Like a Lady

Each day my neighbour sells the loaves and fancy cakes her husband has baked the previous night. I watch their changing of shifts from my kitchen window. Between seven thirty and eight, their battered green Valiant limps home, disgorges a slim, white-clad male, then minutes later the woman slides into the driver's seat and the car roars away.

Only a five foot paling fence separates our properties, but she is a stranger to me, distanced by language and culture; she has been my neighbour for five months and I don't know her name.

 

August has come to my suburb. Its winds are wild, but sometimes blossom-scented. My clothesline, filled each day with napkins, bath towels and tiny frocks, overlooks my neighbour's back yard, its clothesline spinning a similar load. I believe she has two children.

For several days I have noticed shards of broken glass on the rear steps; now a child sits there, weeping soundlessly as her blood paints the concrete red.

I know her mother is at the shop, still I say, ‘Get your mummy.' Her small chin lifts, displaying black eyes swimming in oversized tears. Concerned, I climb onto the fence rail as I see an older child emerge, a roll of toilet tissue in her hand.

‘Get your daddy,' I urge her, unsure if I am being understood. ‘It's a big cut. Too much bleeding. You must get your papa.'

‘We're not allowed to wake him up.'

The child speaks my language. Relief floods my limbs. At least my neighbour's daughter speaks English.

‘The cut is too deep,' I say. ‘Perhaps the doctor will need to fix it.'

‘We're not allowed to play out here,' the small spokeswoman informs me as a third dark-eyed mite tosses a jagged shard of glass into the forest of grass growing beside the fence.

‘Can you telephone your mummy?'

Three shakes of three heads, and soon I find myself helping three fine-boned creatures scramble over my fence. I line them up at my kitchen table while I bandage my first alien foot.

 

‘I am Tessa.'

From behind my flyscreen door, I study the Greek woman, dark as her husband is fair. Her arms loaded with plastic wrapped parcels, she is attempting to hold back her trio with streams of vociferous Greek. A plump sparrow of a girl, she has the voice of a startled crow, but her English is slow, heavily accented.

The oldest girl translates. ‘Mummy said for you to have some things – from the shop – for fixing Thea's foot. She said thank you for helping her.' The spokeswoman has already been inside my house. She swings my screen door wide. The woman's arms are full. Her mouth chastises and the child steps back.

I too have backed away from the door and, silently, I thank the telephone god who chooses this moment to page me. I excuse myself.

The woman won't accept refusal of her gifts, and my children, still peering out at the near-new neighbours, find their own small arms loaded with expensive pastries until the Greek woman's hands are empty and her account is settled. Then she is gone, herding her trio before her, words still spurting from the jet of her mouth.

 

Summer has come. I am pregnant and my temper is frayed. Months have passed since the day of the cut toe. Now it's their leaking sewer.

‘Your sewer is blocked – your toilet pipe is blocked. It's been flooding our drive for two days. I can't let my children outside to play.' I am at her door, armed with disapproval, clad in my steely cloak of distrust, yet I am drawn inside a lounge room lined by giggling girls and plastic parcels of pastries.

‘My husban' is . . . is . . . how you say?' She uses a Greek word I do not understand, then shrugs, picks up pastries. ‘He cooking too much of this thing. Is go rotten. Here. You got freezer? You take.'

‘No. No, thank you.' I try once more to explain that this is not a social visit. ‘I came about your sewer – your toilet. It is broken. It is leaking. Do you have the phone number, the emergency phone number? Have you called them?' I am speaking slowly, over-enunciating, simplifying my language as I hide behind the small piece of paper I attempt to push into her hand.

‘Angela. She is put in the . . . how you say?' She turns to the tallest child, spurts a stream of Greek.

‘She put her doll on to wee and it fell in and she pushed the water thing.'

‘Perhaps you should ring your agent.'

‘Agent? He is shit man! He tell me, you go, three week. Man want to selling.' She shrugs. ‘Is Christmas. We not go. We buy him.'

My sigh may have been for the weather, or for this piece of bad news. It dies unheard beneath a torrent of Greek aimed at the tallest child.

Again the six year old translates. ‘Mummy said, you telephone that man on the paper and say how much to fix it.'

Talk of payment reminds Tessa of the roll of notes in her uniform pocket; she reaches for a rubber banded wad, tosses it onto the hall table where small hands reach for it. A shot of aggressive Greek scatters them before she turns to me.

‘You making telephone. I get drink.'

‘Not for me, thank you,' I say, but I follow her to the telephone. Tomorrow I
will
have that blockage cleared and my driveway clean.

‘You sit.' She points to my stomach, and to her own. ‘We get son this time, eh? My husban' want the son very much. Sit. I make Australian coffee.'

I sit. I make the phone call, drink the coffee, and tell her my name.

Every year it is the same in my suburb. All winter we hibernate in our pink triple-fronted but on those first warm nights of summer children emerge to play in our court while hopeful gardeners come forth to sprinkle lawns and poke at the soil, to prune back shrubs and torment a weed or two.

Tessa's children are playing with mine. She is in her front garden. I watch her hacking at the overhanging shrubbery, her tool more fitting to a woodsman than a suburban pruner.

‘Do you want to borrow a pruning saw?' I offer. We always nod a greeting at the dividing fence and have swapped a few ‘good mornings' at the clothesline.

‘Bloody tree,' she comments, swiping at the main trunk with her axe. ‘I tell Chris, cut this tree. It is come inside. In window. Oh yes, Tessa, he say to me. He never say, no, Tessa. Very clever man, my husban', he just do nothing.' Her conversation is punctuated by axe strokes and, as a dripping tap will wear away stone, Tessa wears away the trunk and the large shrub falls – and fells her.

‘Shit thing!' she comments, head emerging from the greenery. ‘When he is come down, he is the bigger one than when he is up there, eh?'

 

It is a morning in late March. There is a sting in the sun. I am at the clothesline early. She is there, dressed in her work uniform.

‘Is bad day for shop,' she greets me as she shakes a uniform free and pegs it to the line.

At first my eyes ignore what they see. A fifty dollar note is pasted, or pinned, to the lapel. Then I see a pair of her husband's white baker's trousers already hanging upside down there, a similar note stuck to one leg.

‘Tessa?' I point.

She meets my eye, sees my pointing finger. ‘Yes?' She is waiting. Her eyes tell me she has no time to wait this morning.

‘On your uniform. Is that a –?'

Her laughter struggles a moment before it breaks free. I lean on the dividing fence, smiling, listening, surprised that her laughter carries no alien accent. Soon I am laughing with her as she darts and dives around the garden, picking up notes from the fence, from the long grass. She runs inside to the laundry and emerges, head shaking, her hands full of notes, while I lean on, weak now with laughter.

‘You come. You help me find more. I forget his money is in my pocket when I washing. You come. Christos, he will come soon. Maybe hit me for losing this money.'

 

‘My husban', is got very bad manner with customer but he is make the beautiful pastries.'

It is the beginning of the third year. A fourth dark-eyed mite at her knee, she is pregnant again, the plump sparrow now an overweight hen. They have employed a woman to take her place in the shop.

‘I think I make him the son, and he will be . . . how you say? Not fusterated?'

‘Frustrated,' I offer.

‘Yes, that one. You know, he want other womans too much. I am no good for his bed. Too fat with his baby. I thinking bad thing. I say to Christos, you get that old lady for shop. You know, the ugly one.' Her face contorts into something resembling an obese bullfrog. I laugh at her face, then we laugh together, and we drink more coffee and smoke cigarettes she has stolen from her husband's packet.

‘When we come Australia, we got no money, no family, no English. We work in factory, live with some friend. We buy dictionary, and the player for making talk.'

‘A tape recorder.'

‘Yes, tape recorder. Then Marina is come. I am taking her to creche when she is only one month, and I working very hard in factory for getting money for my house. Is important to have house for my children.

‘Then our friend, is go back to Greece. He say, “At my shop I making pies. Everybody in Australia is liking pies and tomato sauce. I am a rich man”.

‘We go to bank, and we buy. Already we pay for shop and this house and still we got too much money. Christos is prepare ticket for me. I take our daughters to Greece so he can do things with that lady he got for shop.'

 

We have discovered the common bond of humanity, Tessa and I. We talk together, work together, laughing now at the false barriers of language and culture. Today her kitchen is a bloodbath. We are bottling tomato puree. She is angry. Each tomato she puts through the juicing machine is her husband's head.

‘He is a good looking man, yes? Is my husband making sex with that woman?' Another gout of red pours into the bucket. ‘Answer me, my friend.'

Though she is badgering me for a reply, I work on, filling sterile beer bottles with the bloody brew, but remaining noncommittal.

‘I tell to myself, he is just like touching young girl on the bum,' Tessa says, another handful of overripe tomatoes tossed down the throat of the machine, and his blood spurts from the spout of this male shredder, powered by a blood-soaked demon. The bucket is close to overflowing. Still he is bleeding. My jug dips and fills, dips and fills, it doesn't miss a beat.

‘Slow down,' I plead.

‘What you think, eh? You can say truth, say, Tessa, you are bloody fool woman and you husban' is bloody big liar. Tell me, ah? If he touches other woman's bum, then he does fugs with her.'

‘What?'

‘He does fugging her. How you say? Fug. Fuckey. You know.'

‘Tessa! That's not acceptable language.' Mouth gaping, my rhythm is lost, but her hands move faster, keeping time with her words.

‘Is your bloody Australian word. Is say what I wanting to say. How you say it?'

‘I don't say it!'

‘What word you say, then? He makes the love with that woman. Men do not make love with prostitute woman. They make fugging.'

‘Stop swearing, and slow down,' I warn her.

‘Yes, yes, yes, but you know I say what is truth.'

‘He's a hard worker, Tessa.'

‘Yes, yes, yes. Do I not work hard also? He is a shit man. He has got no things inside his head to see I work too hard. He just sees that bitchy woman's hair is looking like gold and her body is very slim and her head is full of . . . of lies.'

 

My entrance hall is lined with mirror tiles. Tessa helped me place them there six years ago. Recently she has taken a dislike to my mirrors. Each time she comes for coffee, she stands before them, pulling grey hairs from amid the black.

‘You bloody mirrors,' she comments. ‘I help you taking them off. We will paint it white. Yes?'

‘No.'

She shrugs. ‘I might go to Greece again,' she says, still searching out grey hairs. ‘Perhaps he will come too. Do you think he will come and we will be young again, in love again? What you think, my friend?'

We have been neighbours for fifteen years. From my kitchen window, I have watched the battered green Valiant replaced by an almost new Falcon. I saw the Falcon give way to a bigger and better model. Tessa now drives an imported thing, with air conditioning. My neighbours make frequent but separate trips home to Greece. They've built a twenty square holiday home at Inverloch, only a stone's throw from the beach. They use it, but separately.

From my kitchen window, I watch a marriage self destruct while children grow into adults on either side of a paling fence.

 

We are at the beach, Tessa and I. She walks as she talks: fast. I seldom see the ocean and when I do, I like to watch the colourful sails bob-bobbing where the blue meets the blue, and to savour the sand beneath my feet. I like to listen to the waves, but today I hear only her words as she kicks at the shells and seaweed, and she talks and she talks.

‘So what I am doing that is wrong? Tell me, my friend. Is my fault that we have nothing left of our marriage? Chris, he says is my fault. He say I am too fat, I wearing wrong clothes, I doing my hair wrong. He buy the diamond earrings and I don't wear them, because I know why he is buying them. All day I am working. What for do I need earrings? I want to walk on the beach with him and hold hands with him. Do you think I am talking like a crazy woman?'