Diamonds in the Mud and Other Stories (18 page)

I called a taxi and when I got there I found Peggy standing at the restaurant window, alone. Mick, her new temporary male, had gone home. There was no need to enter the restaurant. I could see the meals on their table, see the woman, sixty if she was a day, see her hand – and Mother's diamond and ruby ring!

I ran for my car, Peggy behind me. The spare key was in my bag, but too upset to drive, I handed it to Peggy. She drove me home and stayed on, spending the night in my spare bed.

Still awake at two-thirty, I heard my front door squeak open, heard his footsteps in the passage, heard the shower's hiss. I rose and walked to the bathroom.

‘Forgive me, my darlink. I try not vake you. Ah much trouble I 'ave tonight. I vas in country for interviewing and vas have car stole.'

‘Did you get the position?'

‘No. My hand . . . is restrict my performing. So sorry, darlink. I vill get good job soon.' I drew back the shower curtain and stood a moment, looking at his beloved naked form as he offered a weary smile. ‘Look as much as you like, darlink, but I am too exhaust for the lovink. Too many train. Too many bus. Much vorry for you,' he explained, stepping back to evade my seeking hand.

I wasn't reaching for him, but for the cold water tap. I turned it off. My laughter was a mite maniacal – as was the scream of a scalded rat.

Here the tale should end, with Zolton Verona running into the night, wet, naked as a babe, a shoe clasped to his more vulnerable protuberances, Peggy pursuing him, clad in a floral bedsheet, well matched to her colourful adjectives. But it did not end there.

A long week passed during which Peggy located mother's engagement ring. The elderly blonde refused to return it and as the police showed little interest, Margo's sister-in-law's young neighbours again proved helpful – and for a mere five hundred dollars. Mother's ring is safe again in her jewellery box.

The aging blonde, also unable to gain satisfaction from the police, went to a current affairs program, and for some weeks their cameras were focused on me. The publicity delighted my publishers, and the week of its release, my new novel hit the bestseller list.

His abusive phone calls had been ongoing for some time before I reported them, but the calls were traced to various mobile phones, none of which were registered in his name. The following month, my little Honda was stolen and torched. It was fully insured so I bought a new Merc, silver grey. In March, he broke in to and defiled my house, though took little of value. Mother's jewellery now resided in the bank.

Again I accused him, but apart from his fingerprints, which of course could be explained, there was no evidence. While a team of cleaners cleaned and painters painted, I moved in with Peggy – a pleasant interlude; however, on my return home, the harassment continued.

It happened on a Saturday in mid July, almost a year to the day after our first meeting. When I arrived home from the library at two pm, I found my bathroom tap dry. At the same instant I became aware of a scraping coming from beneath the newly tiled floor. Rats, I thought. Some years ago I had been troubled with rats in the ceiling; rat bait had quickly fixed that problem. I found an unopened packet on my laundry shelf and walked with it to the rear of my house where I found the small access door wide open! At that moment, I identified the rat beneath my bathroom floor.

Crouched low between the branches of the daphne bush, I waited unmoving until, in the darkness, I sighted his head. I tossed the packet of rat bait at it before slamming the access door and slipping the sturdy bolt home.

Much noise followed, but my CD player was a powerful model and the overture from William Tell had always been one of Zolton's favourites. I played it for an hour while walking the brick walls, listening at the air vents set into the lower brick work. At one of the vents his roar overrode the overture.

A novelist is a fictional problem solver. My mind working overtime, I loaded six disks into my player, turned the volume up a notch and considered the situation from a fictional viewpoint. Police? Peggy? Pepper.

Where there is a will there is a way, my father had often said to me. A liberal tablespoon of pepper, when impelled on its way through the air vent by a hair-dryer plugged into a long extension lead, took only seconds to turn his roar into frenetic sneezing.

Pepper is not sold by the kilo, which necessitated my visiting three supermarkets in order to obtain a reasonable quantity. I also bought three twenty-litre containers of spring water, having previously turned the stop tap off at the meter.

Bathing was not possible, nor could I use my sink. Given that rat's versatility and the possible tools he'd taken with him beneath my house, I did not doubt he would gain access to my wastes. I bathed in a bucket, then recycled the water into the toilet cistern – the toilet being on an outside wall, the pipe work is all external.

Thankfully, towards the evening of the second full day, there was barely a croak out of him. My block is large and well removed from the neighbouring properties, thus I felt confident in lowering the volume of my CD player and unplugging my hair-dryer.

How often dear father had said to me when discussing his share purchases, ‘What looks too good to be true usually is.' He had also said, and as regularly, ‘What does not kill us makes us stronger.' I felt empowered, and each day my resolve to rid the earth of a rodent grew stronger.

There was some timid tapping at the pipes when I went about my bucket ablutions on the fourth morning, then all fell silent. Did he grow hungry, eat the rat bait? It has an odd effect on rats; their flesh is somehow absorbed from within, leaving only the skeleton and no odour at all. This might also apply to the two legged variety, it seemed, for on the seventh morning when I opened the access door, there was no odour – though it might well have been too soon. The cavity beneath my house is quite cool.

But I've had very little time to concern myself with that problem. My telephone has been running hot all week, then at midday yesterday, Peggy called to tell me she was again between jobs.

‘What wonderful timing,' I said. We spoke for an hour, and during the conversation I invited her to accompany me on a world tour, coinciding with my novel's release in several countries and culminating in London, where we will spend the English summer. We leave on Friday and will be away for six months.

Certainly when I return I will need to employ a plumber, who may well find a dead rat beneath my house, but by that time there should be insufficient left of it for the forensic detectives to determine exactly when or how it died. If I am wrong in my assumption, I may well find myself penning my next novel behind prison bars. Wonderful research of course, and as my publisher says, all publicity is good publicity.

Hot, steamy love. She sniffs at the heady aroma, ready. For too long she has had no love. Her thighs spread, red lips open, she trembles, gasps in ecstasy as avid eyes absorb this feast of the gods.

Then her loaded fork is lifted. Coleslaw tart, potato hot, bacon bits wrapped soft in a poultice of sour cream, her tongue makes room as her teeth close and a squish of errant cream dribbles down her chin. She reclaims it with a finger, slides it seductively into the pool of masticated flavour where red lips suck that finger clean.

A swallow. Throat wide. Eager. Piquancy passes unhindered down the gullet to the whimpering gut, while a second fork is loaded, fed into her creamy maw. Too fast, the climax. Her last swallow slow while her eyes – small, voracious insects – seek more.

The skin of memory is scraped while weasel fingers burrow to extract the last white flakes. And it is done. Her plastic plate is clean. Unwillingly she stands, walks away, memory lingering on the tongue that flicks and licks at sucking lips. A brief glance behind, a slow smile, a hand lifted to her brow in unconscious salute, a promise:
I will return
.

 

A promise made. A promise kept. Again and again to the banquet of love she comes, her pouting lips, moist with want. Again the hot potato, the glut of cheese. Again the lush cream, the crisp bacon. She licks the fork, priming it, her tongue pink, long. And she tastes.

Perhaps it needs a sprinkle of salt? The merest touch of pepper? Tomorrow she'll ask for pepper. Today she eats swinishly. And finishes too fast.

 

Each day she comes to wallow in the trough of love, but that first joyous meeting cannot be repeated. The coleslaw is a little stale, the potato far too small. Too much cream perhaps? Not enough? Next time she will ask for less . . . or more. Perhaps more. Yes. More.

Give me more
.
Feed me love.

She eats, and remembers the first day. Holding fast to memory, her tongue mashes the morass of flavours against the roof of her mouth, attempting to arouse that first sweet delight, but it is gone. The potato is cold, the cheese unmelted. It lies in lumps and sour clumps, and the cream, a half-serve, has been placed on top of the cheese.

She wanted it on the coleslaw. On top of the coleslaw.

I wanted it on top!

Eat and run. No time today to dwell on imperfections. She hurries away, still believing in tomorrow's potato.

But tomorrow is a fable. It becomes today.

Not that one. No. The larger one.

A finger points. Her eyes, small cockroaches, no longer fear the light of day. They hunger. Scuttling things, darting, ranging wide.

Pepper. Yes and a little salt. Put the cheese on first, then the bacon, the coleslaw, then the cream. The pepper goes on the potato. Not on the cream! Not on the cream!

Then comes that final day of love when the fork bites deep. Potato blight? Grey-black amid the white of cream, undisguised by bacon bits, and that mound of coleslaw, fresh on some lost yesterday.

Push it away. Push it across the table, out of reach. Still that wilful fork picks and pokes, it prods in search of pleasure. It isn't there. Was it ever there?

Savage lips suck sourly on coffee now gone cold, while she stares at that plastic plate newly set on the next table.

Fried rice? Yes. Oh, and golden chicken floating in an uncharted sea of sauce. It drips to the table, overflowing with promise.

Her chin rises. Her head turns. Darting cockroaches search the food hall. She stands, sniffs the air, picks up her plate of blighted potato with its coleslaw, its unmelted cheese and bacon bits congealing in sour cream. She'll take it back, get a refund. She is on the scent of a new and more fulsome love.

‘I say . . . I say . . . ' Granny tried to gain her son's attention while her cup dribbled tea onto her lap. ‘I say. It was George Potts. George Potts. Ah, you rowdy mob of sods,' she muttered.

The babble of a hundred and fifty guests spilled through her Camberwell house – half-forgotten grandchildren, great grandchildren she had never met, in-laws she had no desire to meet: they were all here. They'd sat their offspring on her lap, coerced them into kissing a shrunken curiosity while cameras clicked and flashlights blinded. The newspaper photographers had been here, wanting a shot of her holding on to Lizzie's telegram.

‘Everyone shoving cameras up my nose just because an old body's turned a hundred. Might as well hang a sign around my neck. Get your last chance photographs here,' she muttered. For an hour she had been the centre of attraction, now she was forgotten, left alone in her wheelchair in front of her cake.

She scratched at her chin then her hand reached higher to scratch at her ear, her brow. No amount of scratching could relieve that itch. It was an internal thing, deep beneath her skin where she wasn't a hundred years old, where she was still Kathleen.

‘I say, I say . . . ' Again she tried, determined to capture a listener before the minute hand passed twelve. Clocks obsessed her. Fifty times a day she asked the time, driving Dora, her daughter, mad, but from her chair, she could see that marble clock, perched on the mantelpiece like a malevolent god, counting her life's seconds down to nil. Its chimes in the night were a death knell. She'd told Dora not to wind those chimes, but each week she turned that key, wishing it was a dagger in Granny's failing heart.

Dora was her last born. Of the nine children she'd given life, only three had survived beyond sixty. They were here today, the two boys and Dora, their eyes never leaving the diamond and ruby brooch pinned to Granny's lapel. Each considered it his own property though they had no claim on it. Maybe she'd find a way of taking it with her when she went. It was all a matter of willpower, and though Granny's legs had given up the struggle twelve months ago, her will had not.

‘I say. I say.'

A child, a small thing of three or four, sidled closer to her, or to her cake. He looked like her second born, a wee mite she'd lost to diphtheria.

‘You tell 'em for me, laddie, that they dunno what they're talking about. It was George Potts who used to be the milkman here during the war. He married Lou Evans, who used to run a stall at the old market. She had a club foot, wore a built-up shoe.'

The boy was more interested in her cake.

‘Her old mother always blamed the priest we had here during that time. Swore he put a jinx on her for marrying out of the church. He had a club foot too, you see. They reckon Lou's father also blamed the priest, but not for the same reason. If you get me drift, laddie.' She jabbed the boy with a witch's finger and chuckled.

‘Can I watch TV, Gwanny?'

‘What do you want with that ratbag thing?' She had captured her listener and wasn't about to let him get away. Sucking in a breath, she readied herself for the next instalment of yesterday. Today was aches, pills, napkins and wheelchairs, and a daughter who wanted her in her grave. Yesterday was the only thing worth living for.

‘Time waits for no man, laddie,' she said, glowering at two youthful females now standing in front of that clock, hiding time. ‘What's the time? Can you see the clock?'

‘It's play school when it get on fwee.'

‘What's it on now?'

‘I don't know yet.'

Granny leaned to the side. She had to keep her eye on time or it got away from her. Every minute was important. Then a baby cried and the women moved, just as the small hand jerked forward, deducted another second from Granny's life.

‘Babies,' she muttered. ‘Each one that comes moves an old body one more rung down the ladder to her grave.'

‘My pussycat got dead and Mummy put him in a gwave and we put some flowers on.'

Granny nodded, spilled a little more tea onto her dress bought new for this day. An ugly dress, it looked like Dora: mean, grey, stale. ‘I wanted to buy my own dress for the party, laddie. I told her to take me to that little shop in Burke Road. I bought my first party dress there. Pink. Summer pink, it was. She wouldn't take me. She hasn't taken me out of this house in three years – I'd be better off in a home for old codgers,' she said as Dora reached for the cup, wiped at the spill with a serviette.

‘Be a bit more careful, will you.'

The cup handle, gripped by Granny's twisted fingers, spilled the last of the tea onto her bitter frock. ‘For goodness sake, give it to me, Mum, and let me put that brooch away. There are too many strangers around today.'

‘I didn't invite 'em, and time enough to hide it away when I'm dead,' Granny said, giving up the cup, then reaching with those twisted fingers for her lapel, her old jaws gnashing, ready for war.

‘You're a cantankerous old bitch,' Dora hissed. ‘Look what you've done to my carpet.'

‘It's my carpet, girl, my house, and don't you go forgetting it.'

‘I put myself out today to give you this party.' Dora swiped at the dress with the serviette. ‘And do I get one iota of gratitude for it? I don't know why I stay here with you.'

‘Because no one else will give you house-room – so stick that in your pipe and smoke it.'

Dora walked away and the old dame turned back to the boy. ‘Sticks me in my chair in my grey dress and me napkins and expects me to shut up and do as I'm told, laddie. There was a time when no one ignored me. I was the belle of Camberwell when I was a girl. Hair down to me knees, I had.'

‘You haven't got no hair now, Gwanny,' the boy said, eyeing the pink skull beneath white cotton wool wisps.

‘And isn't that the truth,' she cackled, aiming her hand at a bowl of chocolates and handing him the spoils. ‘I was always one for the truth, laddie.'

An unfamiliar face leaned close and a stranger's fingers reached for her brooch. They all knew about it, though few had seen it before. ‘Having a good time, Granny,' the stranger said.

Granny slapped at the hand. Jamey had given her that brooch when she was seventeen. It was one of his family's heirlooms, worth a fortune back then, worth a king's ransom now.

‘I only wanted to look at it, you niggly old bugger,' the stranger said. ‘Aunt Dora is a bloody saint to put up with you.' She moved away, but Granny's hand remained, patting her brooch, her eyes seeking, finding Saint Dora, seated on the couch, a new infant flopping around on her lap.

‘It won't bite you,' Granny said. ‘It's got no teeth yet.' No one heard her. Old age made her invisible, except to the three or four year old who had attached himself to her chair. ‘I dressed my babies in white, laddie. Wore me knuckles to the bone keeping them in white. Now they put 'em in football colours. Want 'em to grow up fast, free 'em to go out to the dance halls, get another man to warm their beds.'

‘Can I have a' nover chocolate, Gwanny?'

‘Take what you can get while you can. You'll be a long time dead. Go on, take a handful, put them in your pockets.'

She cackled as she watched him fill his pocket with chocolates. Plenty more where they came from – half of the guests had brought her chocolates and the other half brought flowers. They could have brought her a pretty scarf or a nightie with lace on it, a nice bit of music to listen to. Oh no . . . that would have taken time, that would have taken thought. Dora would eat the chocolates, sit in front of the television, watching her soap operas and stuffing chocolates. They wouldn't sweeten her up.

‘Peel me one, laddie. My old fingers are not much good these days.'

Impatient then, she watched small fingers struggling with purple foil, her mouth opening, closing, eager for those little fingers to feed her a sweet. Her lips closed over it and her tongue caressed, pressed it. Content a while, she sucked on sweet, savouring sweet while squinting at one of the grandsons sorting through the telegrams.

‘I see you got one from the Prime Minister too, Gran,' he said.

‘Bleeding telegrams. I never liked telegrams.' The brooch. She'd forgotten the brooch. Her arm jerked up and her fingers found it. She sucked in a breath, eased it out, felt her heartbeat skip, still, then flutter into life again. That brooch was all she had left of Jamey, her first husband, dead since a bleeding telegram.

‘He was coming home to me, laddie. He lived through that war and was coming home when he got struck down by the Spanish Flu on the ship bringing him back.'

Telegrams – death bringers, that's all they were. What right did Lizzie and what's-his-name have to send telegrams? They could have sent a nice card with something pretty on it. Jamey used to send her pretty cards, and she'd kept every one, in her box, with her brooch. They'd sell them when she was gone – sell them for a pittance to some collector who'd read Jamey's words. They wouldn't mean a thing to him.

The boy wriggled from foot to foot, then quickly left her side to walk tight legged to one of the great granddaughters. She watched him tug at her skirt.

Granny lifted her left buttock, scratched. The itch wasn't there. It was in her back, her neck, her elbow. She was tired now, and those pastries and chocolates grumbling in her bowel. She'd have to go soon.

Alone in the crowd, Granny closed her eyes and dreamed a while of a buggy ride to Box Hill with Jamey. Her dress was pink, light pink for summer. Her heavy hair pinned high, his engagement brooch on the shoulder of her gown. Katherine Stuart, barely seventeen and she'd won the prize of Camberwell. How she had loved him. He'd taken the pins from her hair on their wedding night, surprised it was so long, and he'd unbuttoned her gown. Lord, how they had loved. ‘What a handsome pair,' everyone said. ‘What a fine –'

Dora jolted her chair and Granny was old again, Jamey dead once more. It was time for her heart pill.

‘Didn't I take that one, Dora?'

‘Just take it and don't argue with me, Mum.'

Blue pills, pink pills, white, orange. They'd had a busy morning, folk ringing up, folk turning up with flowers. Hard to keep track of those pills. She opened her mouth, washed the pill down with water – washed it halfway down.

Then she remembered taking that phone call from New Zealand, remembered how that blue pill had stuck in her throat. Those blue ones tasted bad.

‘I say, Dora, I took that blue one . . . ' But Dora was gone, and from nearby a baby bellowed. ‘I took it when I was on the phone.' Cackling laughter to the left, nasal tones rising and falling, television in the next room, droning on like the city's heartbeat. ‘I say, Dora.'

What did it matter what an old body said these days? She looked at her mutilated cake, her hand considering a snatch for the final slice, needing something to wash the taste of that pill away. Too hard. Life got too bleeding hard when you turned a hundred and you'd buried those you'd loved too many years ago.

Poor old Dora. What age was she now? Born when I was thirty-seven, one of Bert's. Damn fool of a woman I was, marrying him. Her eyes searched the crowd, found Dora standing beside the passage door, staring at her, or at her brooch. ‘Mean as a meat axe, old Bert was, and that girl is her father reborn,' Granny muttered. ‘Lost him to a heart attack back in fifty-five, and glad to get shut of him too.' Old eyes searching found her two surviving sons. They were born to Robert, her second husband. He'd given her four sons then died under the wheels of a truck, leaving her to raise them. She'd been tempted to sell that brooch a dozen times. Couldn't do it. Jamey, her first and only love, had given it to her.

She scanned the room, seeking his finer stock, and she found that wee laddie again. He was somehow connected to her Jamey, she knew it. He had his eyes. Wide open, honest eyes.

‘I say . . . I say. The laddie wants to wee. Are you all blind to his needs?'

They were ignoring him like they ignored her, letting him wet his pants. She watched his little face, wishing for the use of her legs, or for her eyes to be veiled by cataracts, to not see so much, or for her brain to be muddled, to not know so much. But she did know. Her memory never failed her.

And she knew she'd taken her blue pill this morning too; she'd spilt her apple juice all over the telephone table while she talked to her granddaughter in New Zealand. She didn't often get apple juice. She knew too that one of those blue pills could keep her old heart beating and two could stop it.

There was a dark stain at that little laddie's feet now. One of the great granddaughters looked down at that stain. She turned to the boy, shook her finger at him, then stepped quickly away. The boy, his wide eyes, tear filled, wandered back to the comfort of Granny and her cake.

Her gums gnashed as Granny aimed her hand at the cake, snatched the last slice and pushed it at the boy. Then her weary old hand fell to pat the seat of his wet pants, leaving cream and cake crumbs there.

‘Mummy's going home 'cause I wetted my pants,' he explained.

‘Never you mind, laddie. I do it myself regular.'

Too tired, just too damn tired, but that hand moved up to her diamond and ruby brooch. She couldn't find the pin and the boy's mother was calling, so she tugged at it, ripping it from the cheap grey lapel. ‘Here, my very dear little laddie. Stick it in your pocket with your chocolates. Quick. It belonged to your great, great granddaddy. Take it home and keep it till you're a big boy.' He took it, put it in his pocket and walked to his mother, waiting beside the door, and Granny's old heart pained for the loss of him.

Then she jerked forward in her chair. The door was open and she wasn't seeing what she should have been seeing on the other side. She could see Jamey out there. And didn't he look the fine gentleman amongst the rest of those louts.