Diamonds in the Mud and Other Stories (6 page)

She ran the business now, her business, as the house was hers. Her father's will said so, and in time the courts had agreed.

Fifteen year old kids can't live alone. She'd shared her house with the steps. It had been that, or fly over to New Zealand to a mother who hadn't wanted her as a two year old, and wasn't likely to want her at fifteen, and she knew her father had planned to make his union with the dragon permanent.

‘How did you get the grease off?' Ben asked, looking at the clean hand while twirling her into the centre of the circle as everyone started grabbing at new meat.

‘Good old kerosene.'

‘They missed a bit under your eye.'

‘Bloody mascara,' she said, giving her pantihose a hitch while he guided her expertly around the floor. And where the hell had he learned to dance? Maybe his oldies had taught him before the fire. Again he swung her out of the circle, then cut back in after the partner swap. He did it four times before the dragon got onto him and damn near wrestled him away from Danni, who found herself back in the arms of pasty faced George the goonsman from Canberra.

‘That waterbed is calling, babe. I always wanted to lift one of those skirts.'

She did something she'd been dying to try for ages, and if he hadn't been falling down drunk it may not have worked. She placed an ankle behind his knee; for a second he thought he'd got lucky, until she gave him a shove in the chest and he went sprawling.

And she was away, disinterested in the outcome. She was heading for freedom, and bugger cutting up and passing out the wedding cake. High heels clicking, she ran for the stairs. And she tripped. Didn't know how it happened. Head over heels she tumbled, feet entangled in petticoats, one second at the top of the stairs, the next flat out on the footpath below. No time to wonder if her back, her legs were broken, she was up and running, down the main street, around the Kmart corner, one sandal on, the fake flowers in her hair wilting in the last of the rain.

‘Christ,' she said, safe in the shadows, taking time to feel her head. ‘Ouch,' she yelped, removing her remaining sandal and delving beneath her petticoats, ripping off her pantihose, chucking them over a front fence. Her knee oozing blood, she limped on her way, hired petticoats dragging in the puddles.

She was approaching the corner when the red utility pulled in to the kerb. ‘Hop in, Marshall. You're getting wet.'

‘Who bloody cares?' she said, but she got in. Ben drove her to her house.

No key of course. It was with her car keys, wasn't it? Locked inside. She hadn't expected to be home before Darlene and the dragon.

He followed her down the narrow cement path to the rear of the house. ‘Have you got a hidden key?'

‘No, but I've got a window and a convenient drainpipe. Ta for the ride, Ben. See you round.'

‘You're not going to scale a drainpipe in that rig?'

‘Don't bet on it.' She stepped over a puddle, and it was a very bad move. A garden hose lay forgotten across the path. She trod on it, and as her right foot rolled, her gashed knee gave way. Reflexes threw her weight back onto her right foot, which sank in ankle deep mud. No options left but to grab for what she could. Him.

He caught her, held her, remembering near forgotten nights when he'd held other girls in his arms. She felt light, but firm; she smelt of clean earth with just a whiff of kerosene.

The moon chose to peer out at the rain-soaked land at that moment, lighting the right side of his face and leaving the left in darkness. He looked like a stranger, a tall, dark Prince Charming, and she stood pigeon-toed in the mud, gaping up at the perfect side of his face.

He broke the clinch, lifted her with ease onto the windowsill. ‘Watch your feet. I'd hate to get mud all over Uncle Norm's second best suit.'

‘It looks better on you.'

He picked up her lone sandal from the mud, looked for its mate as she slid the window wide and scrambled inside, hauling her petticoats through.

‘I could have sworn you had two feet when you were dancing. What happened to the other shoe?'

‘Personally, my dear, I don't give a damn. Ta for the boost up.'

He waved a hand and backed off into the shadows.

 

He found her at the garage on Sunday afternoon, and heard her cursing like a truckie as she struggled with the front cross member of a good looking Ford.

‘You again,' she said, rubbing aged grease onto her nose as he proffered the missing sandal.

‘I tried it on every foot in town. You're my last hope.'

‘I bet Darlene cut off her big toe,' she said, adding grease to her chin.

‘The dragon lady did, with her carving knife – but the sandal still wouldn't fit. It's got to be yours.' His grin was wide.

‘I'll tell you what, Priestly, you give me a lift with this cross member, and I'll shout you a beer. You can drink it out of my shoe.'

‘You're on, Cinders,' he said.

Dear George,

 

You'll find tonight's dinner in the freezer. All you need to do is take it out of its plastic bag and put it in the microwave, in its plastic container. Give it five minutes on medium, and another three on high. I'm sorry for doing it this way, George, but you'll find forty-six dinners in there, all numbered. If you start at one and work your way through to forty-six, you won't be eating the same meals twice in a row.

I know I should have told you, but if I had, you would have convinced me again not to do it, and I want to do it. Wilma and I have been best friends since high school and back in form five we promised ourselves we'd go to England one day. As Wilma says, the bond that joins women is not a man-made ligature of gold, but an invisible non-restricting bond of mutual respect, trust and equality.

I've used part of the money from our caravan account. I put half of it in, so it's not as if I'm using your money, and we'll never buy that caravan, because you'll never leave your cat. Anyway, by the time you read this I'll be on the plane. Wilma and Max are picking me up at six. My itinerary and the details of my travel insurance are in the green plastic folder you'll find beneath this letter.

Well, goodbye, George, and please write to me and tell me you forgive me for deceiving you, otherwise I'll worry the whole time I'm away and won't enjoy myself. The addresses of our hotels are all there. You'll need to send your letters airmail, and allow a week for them to get there, so choose an address at least ten days ahead of the posting date.

If you happen to be speaking to any of my workmates, don't tell them you didn't know I was going. They think you're shouting me the trip for my birthday. Wilma thinks you paid for it too, so if Max happens to call, don't tell him you didn't. He paid for her, and booked everything too. It's going to be a wonderful trip. Look after my African violets and don't let your cat into the sunroom.

 

All of my love, Alice.

 

Dear George,

 

We've arrived and are in the hotel. Wilma is sleeping. I'm too excited to sleep. Seated high in the clouds for twenty-six hours was a truly spiritual experience, though the seats were very restricting. It's amazing what old friends can find to talk about. We talked all the way. We were inseparable at school, and the years just fell away.

Wilma is so worldly and well read. She went on to university, you know, only for six months, but it really shows. As she said to me on the plane, these weeks away from you will be a great learning experience for me.

Don't forget my African violets and please put the cat out at night. Love, Alice.

 

Dear George,

 

I'm writing this on the tour bus. We saw Windsor Castle this morning and I took a few photos. Wilma took an entire roll. Max bought her a new camera. It cost six hundred dollars. She said I can have her negatives if I want any prints. She's very generous and she knows everything about everything. Please keep card, and do write to me, George. Love, Alice.

 

Dear George,

 

You could have written by now. I'm beginning to worry that you had a heart attack the morning I left and you're lying there dead. Wilma had three letters waiting for her when we got to the hotel in Dublin. You know Craig, the oldest boy from her second marriage, well he's got a boyfriend instead of a girlfriend. He said he wasn't game to tell her at home, so he let her read it in a Dublin hotel – and sent her a photo. She says it doesn't worry her, but I don't know. And her youngest from her third marriage has got three children out of wedlock. I didn't know that. I'm finding out a lot of things I didn't know about her. We've booked twin share all the way but we're having a week in a flat between tours, so that will be good. I've enclosed its address, so stop your sulking and write to me.

I'm really looking forward to that flat and, as Wilma says, it will be wonderful living side by side with the natives, shopping where they shop – and actually eating a home-cooked meal for a change, and having a room to myself. She takes sleeping pills every night and she snores. I don't know how Max puts up with that snore. Maybe they don't share a room.

By the way, I've sent an overnight bag home. I shouldn't have packed any summer clothes. It's very wet and cold here – oh, and speaking of wet, I meant to tell you not to over-water my African violets. Love, Alice.

 

Dear George,

 

More castles today, in Scotland this time, or on the way back from Scotland. There comes a time when you run out of superlatives and just stand in awe, Wilma said. Which doesn't mean I'm prepared to stand in awe gazing at every castle ever built. To tell you the truth, I'm getting sick of castles and cathedrals. Save card, Alice.

 

Dear George,

 

I refuse to argue via mail, and what do you want with your parka? It's summer over there. And if you hadn't closed your mind to that microwave for five years, then you'd know how to work it, wouldn't you? What the hell have you been eating? If you're reading this, then you've got your glasses on, so go and have a look at the damn thing now and read the instruction book! It's in the bottom kitchen drawer, below the tea-towels.

We don't have one at the flat. We don't have a shower either, or a lift – and we're on the fourth floor – forty-nine steps up and forty-nine steps down. So much for the posh flat Max booked. I'd hate to see the one that wasn't posh. The washing machine is in the kitchen, George, and the kitchen is about as wide as our passage. And we were supposed to have two bedrooms but one of them is a walk-in wardrobe with bunk beds in it. Guess who gets to sleep in the wardrobe? Which I must admit is better than sharing a room with her. My God, her snore would wake the dead. I had to buy earplugs.

I won't be sorry to get back on that tour bus and get out of London. If it's not raining, the smog is unbelievable – a sort of misty yellow. Wilma's asthma is playing up or her lungs are cracking up with all the climbing of stairs.

She's out of the bath. Don't know how she gets in it. Have to go. Love, Alice.

 

George,

 

This is one of their old pubs. They're everywhere. Wilma likes old pubs. She's jiggling the keys, wanting to go out for dinner. She always carries the keys. Our caravan fund paid for half of this flat but I get the walk-in wardrobe and never get to carry the keys, and I do all of the cooking. She prefers to eat at pubs because she drinks like a fish and if I don't want to go with her, she gets niggly. And the price of things, George! I'm not going to have enough money to last me three more weeks. Alice.

 

George,

 

You are the most thoughtless, useless, most unreliable fool of a man anyone ever had the misfortune to marry. How can you kill thirty African violets in three weeks? Less than three weeks if your letter took a week to get here. And after you go and kill them, how dare you tell me while I'm on holiday – my first holiday away from you in thirty-five years but, by God, not my last. You are a penny-pinching, pitiable apology for a husband and I rue the day I ever met you, and I don't care if it was our anniversary yesterday. As Wilma said when I broke down and howled after I read your letter, so many women spend their lives locked into dysfunctional relationships until something jolts them out of their domestic stupor. Well I just woke up, George, and I stopped crying.

What did you do to them? Did your cat get at them? I told you to keep him out of the sunroom. I trusted you to look after those violets and you probably sprayed them with weedkiller, just to get back at me. A.

 

George,

 

Catching the ferry today and I'm dying of some virus and I'll probably be seasick, and I'm sick of it, sick and tired of looking at strangers' faces, queuing with the multitudes. I want to come home, die in my own bed, and never see another queue, another crumbling castle. You're probably laughing right now, aren't you? You're sitting over there in the sun, your rotten cat on your lap, saying, ‘Serves her right, puss.' If I die over here, you'll probably tell her to burn me and send my ashes home in one of her empty cigarette packets – or you'll let them stick me in an unmarked pauper's grave. You care more about your mongrel cat than you ever cared about me. Save the card. Alice.

 

George,

 

Wilma asked me today why I bother sending you these cards. Well, I keep buying them, that's why, and I've got no one else to send them to, that's why. You never gave me children, and it was never proven that it was my fault. She said that the male is responsible in as many cases as the female. I should have left you like Wilma left her husbands when she got bored with them. Oh no, I was too loyal. I've wasted my life being loyal. You're just a bad habit, George. Alice.

 

George,

 

Of course plastic containers melt when you put them in the oven. I told you to
PUT THEM IN THE BLOODY MICROWAVE
, you fool of a man, and how would I know if it will poison you? If you're reading this, then I suppose you haven't been poisoned, have you? Though you deserve to be after what you did to my violets.

I shouldn't bother telling you this, but I want to tell someone, so it will have to be you. Wilma has taken to her bed with the sulks. We were sitting at a café in Paris having coffee – it cost a fortune, and the coffee wasn't any good anyway – when this American chap, who is on our tour, sat down with us and said, ‘It looks as if your mom could use an early night tonight.' Wilma gave me the filthiest look and she hasn't spoken to me since. I didn't say it. He said it. Anyway, she does look old, and after four husbands, who wouldn't look old? And she's smoking like a chimney and puffing on her asthma inhaler and she's too fat. Remember how we used to wonder how anyone could eat herself into that shape? Well four weeks of living with her has answered that! You should see what she can put away.

I'm writing this at the laundromat, doing her washing as well as my own, trying to get on her good side, but my God, George, her underwear would fit a camel, and you should see the size of her bras.

Are you quite certain you killed all of those violets? If you haven't thrown them out, then don't, and don't give them any more water. They don't like wet feet. Alice.

 

Dear George,

 

Note Eiffel tower. It looks like a pile of scaffolding someone forgot to pull down. I almost got crushed to death trying to get into the lift. Just as well Wilma was in front. Mona Lisa at their Louvre is only a little old painting half hidden behind thick glass. I've seen better prints of it at the trash and treasure market. I've had Paris. No one will speak English and a cup of coffee cost me ten Australian dollars! I'm drinking water, filling up my bottles at the hotel each morning. I'm running out of money.

You ought to hear Wilma trying to speak French – no one can understand her. To use your own words, George, she's a promiscuous, overbearing, overfed, interfering, loud-mouthed, sulking bitch of a woman. Anyway, today I told her what you thought of her, and I also told her that you said she should let Max book one more posh tour and one more posh two bedroom flat then hang himself in its walk-in wardrobe, from the top bunk. Save card, love Alice.

 

Dear George,

 

Pleased to get your letter. Sorry about your cat, but look on the bright side, love. We've got nothing to keep us at home now, have we? No violets and no cat. You should have tossed that meal in the bin instead of giving it to him. He's probably eaten that melted plastic and it twisted around his intestines – or solidified in his stomach. Anyway, no use blaming me for it. I'm not there. And you murdered my violets anyway. Let's try to look on the bright side. I mean, we could still afford a second-hand caravan. Only a fast trip through Germany, Switzerland and Holland now, then home. Love, Alice.

 

Dear George,

 

This is a shot of some famous mountain in Switzerland on a sunny day. We didn't see it. Didn't see anything. It poured rain for the day we were there. Bus windows foggy today. I can't see out, and I'm refusing to get out and get wet again. Save card. Love, Alice.

 

Dear George,

 

Shot of the Berlin wall before they pulled it down. More castles. I've seen enough castles to last me a lifetime. Five more days. Love, A.

 

Dear George,

 

Not much choice of cards here, it's either windmills, prostitutes dressed up like dolls in windows, or tulips. I told Big W she should hire herself a window while we're here. With her experience, she could make a fortune, actually pay for her next trip. Did you know that travel agents get free trips? I didn't until yesterday, when I heard her telling some woman. Max got her trip for free! That's why she's been spending money like water.

The good news – we haven't seen a castle today. Maybe Holland was too soggy to hold them – or they built them but they sank. The entire place looks as if it's likely to sink. It's a wet green bog. Lucky I brought your parka with me. I haven't taken it off since I arrived.

We're still forced to share a room at night, but we're no longer speaking. I sit down the back of the bus and she sits up the front. Back to London tonight, two nights in a hotel then off to Bangkok for two nights then home, thank God. Love, Alice XXX.

 

Dear George,

 

Saw Buckingham Palace again, without the tour this time. Note red bus in foreground. Note very narrow steps to upper level. Guess who got stuck halfway up? Guess who nearly killed herself laughing? Love, Alice. I'll be home before you get this card.

 

FAX

ATTENTION: GEORGE JONES

 

Dear George,