Jacaranda Blue (21 page)

He thought on that one, then decided not to reply. ‘Like you, lass, I expected her to make her century and a decade more. A wonderful old bird. A wonderful gutsy old bird. The world would do all right if we had a few more like her in it.'

‘I will miss her terribly. Terribly. And Father. What a time for him to be away. We can't even say our goodbyes to her the way she planned. You know she spoke to us about her funeral several years ago. She made us promise not to speak of her as if she had been some decrepit old woman. Father was to speak of her youth. No morbid hymns, she said. And she said, no-one had ever given her a bon voyage party. She was to leave me a thousand dollars so I might throw her a wild bon voyage party and invite the entire town. And she bought this dress – a positively dreadful dress, Doctor Parsons. It was reduced to twenty-five dollars at the department store. Dreadful.' Stella turned away, chewing on her lower lip now, attempting to steady it with her teeth. She would hold her grief inside until he left. She would. She would. Hadn't she always?

‘It's been a shock to most of the town, lass. She was the last one the old busybodies expected to go. They had their money on Jim Bryant. Speaking of going, I'd better get a move on myself. Too much to do and no time to do it in. You'll be all right here?'

‘Yes, of course I will. I'm . . . I'm just terribly, terribly saddened. But she wouldn't want me to weep for her, would she? She said, no tears necessary, that I was to wave her goodbye and wish her a wonderful journey. And I do, and I do. But – excuse me now, please, Doctor. Thank you for – excuse me.' She escaped to the bathroom, closed the door.

Parsons let himself out. The front door had a modern lock, but he checked it before walking to the shed where he peered through a crack in the side door. He could see the shape of the Packard against the light from a small window. Everything looked in order. He straddled his bike and rode away.

 

Her tears wouldn't, couldn't dry. She walked the house while they rolled down her cheeks and she wiped at them, swiped at them, denied them.

‘How am I going to survive this town without her? Why should she die? It's too fast.' She wandered the kitchen, picking up, putting down, hoping the workmen did not return and find her weeping uncontrollably.

Her head ached with it. Her nose was blocked and her sinuses heavy with weeping. She caught a glimpse of her swollen eyes in the bathroom mirror as she washed her face for the umpteenth time. She looked terrible. Terrible. Her face was shiny, her nose red. What if they were to come back? What had they said? They'd called out that they were leaving, but she had been too absorbed. What if someone were to come?

She splashed cold water on her eyes, held the cold facecloth there, then wept into it until it was cold no longer.

‘Stop this. You must stop this,' she ordered, but her tears would not listen. ‘How can I stop? I need you, my dear friend. I need you. I am not weeping for you, but for myself, for my loss.' She lay on her bed, muffling her grief in the pillow.

It was near five when she walked downstairs, took two Aspros and made a cup of tea. Her head aching, but still denying, her tears still leaking, she let them leak, bored with the futile attempt to wipe them away.

The telephone rang, it caused her to jump, again splashing tea to the table. She shook her head, but the phone continued to ring. There was only one way to stop it.

‘Marilyn?'

Her friend wanted to talk about the news and to seek out more information to pass on with her change. In a voice, not quite her own, Stella cut the conversation short.

Five times in the next hour the phone rang as the news swept through the town, scattering yesterday's news before it. Five times she spoke a few words then hung the phone on the cradle. It was after six when John Parker, solicitor and husband of Lyn, got through.

He was accustomed to having people listen, so a murmured yes or no was all he required. He spoke until the sun began to go down, go down on Miss Moreland's final day. Go down. Stay down.

‘Oh, God, John,' she said, and she blew her nose. ‘Why now?'

‘Bad timing,' John Parker said, and Stella leaned and listened. Her tears slowly dried.

Perhaps she had known she would be named in Miss Moreland's will. There was no-one else. Perhaps she had known, but there was nothing she wished to say to him about it. That was for another day, if there was another day.

‘Can I come around, Stell?'

‘No. Not now.'

‘You're one of the executors.'

‘Yes,' she said. ‘Yes, I know, but there is nothing I can do. Not now. Not yet. It is too soon to think of her as gone. I don't want to do anything. Not yet. Please – '

‘Are you also aware she left some pretty weird instructions as to –?'

‘I know. You have her instructions in writing, John – and we will follow them to the letter, otherwise she will return to haunt me. She made me promise. Spit my death and hope to die.' Again the tears welled. She shook her head, shook them away.

‘It's all here, Stell, but Christ – has she got any family? How are they going to take it? Won't they have some say in it?'

‘I'll talk to you tomorrow. It can all wait until tomorrow. Thank you for calling.'

‘Okay. I'll be there around ten.'

‘Yes. If you must.'

‘Before I go, can you tell me where I can contact the family?'

‘She said I was her family. She has two nieces somewhere in Sydney. She hasn't seen them since Cara, her sister, died in . . . in the sixties.'

‘I'll have to try to contact them.'

‘Surely they will receive something.'

‘There's not a lot left to receive. The flat, a few thousand in the bank. I'm afraid you're it, Stell. The only mention of family is – ' She heard the shuffling of papers, then he added. ‘To my nieces, Marie Connor and Raelene Mackenzie, I leave the bill for my funeral, and my insincere condolences.'

‘Oh, my God.' Stella laughed and the tears rained down. ‘Oh, my dear, dear, wicked lady.'

The solicitor remained silent until he heard her blow her nose. ‘She had a good life, Stell. The best any one of us can wish for is a fast death. Better for her than dying like Mum did, an inch at a time for two years. Try to look on the bright side.'

‘Somehow a good death doesn't seem to hold a lot of meaning for me at the moment, John. Maybe tomorrow. I have to go. Please excuse me now.'

‘Are you all right? Do you want Lyn to come around for a while?'

‘No. Of course I am all right. It's just the shock. Totally unexpected. Do forgive me. I'll see you in the morning. At ten.'

See you at ten. Get down to the business of burying. Off with the old and on with the new, but Miss Moreland hadn't belonged to him. She was just another high school teacher, just another client. He hadn't known her friendship. He didn't know that she had filled the place of mother, of friend and confidante. He didn't understand that a raw gash had opened up in Stella's life, a gaping space which now threatened to swallow her. He didn't know that.

She shouldn't have died in her bed in the middle of the night. She shouldn't have died alone. No-one should die alone. Had she tried to call Stella? Had she tried to climb from her bed, reach for the telephone?

‘God! How dare you do the things you do?'

Night had drifted into the rooms while she'd been speaking to John Parker. Now she turned the lights on, flooding the house as she wandered, breathing in the scent of its age and old memories. She had wept herself dry. Perhaps the Aspro had helped, but she didn't want to sleep. Perhaps she was afraid of sleep tonight. Somewhere that dear lady was laying cold and dead. How could she sleep and forget that? She took up her knitting, but couldn't settle to it. She picked up the plastic bag, half filled with clown heads, and she took it with her to the lounge room where she turned on the television, let it flash its nonsense before her eyes as she stitched.

These small clown faces she stitched by rote. A mindless task, but that was what she needed tonight. She felt mindless, empty of emotion now, empty as the old house. Empty head. Empty heart, just empty. For two hours she sat stitching empty faces on her clown head while some inane show played its faces on the screen. She didn't know which of the males was villain, and which the hero. They were taking turns sleeping with the same naked woman. Or were there two naked women? She didn't know.

Her clown faces all looked the same when she was done. She picked them up, one by one. Bland, staring things. She'd hate them in the morning. Yawning now, she turned the television off, leaving the villain/hero and the blonde rocking their bed, then she tossed the clown heads into their plastic bag and walked to the twin glass doors.

It was black outside, sullen black, waiting to pounce on her, wrestle her down. She drew the drapes. Faded, musty. No sun to fade them – not in the past forty years. When had they become faded? Why are they still hanging there? God. How time has stood still in this house, she thought.

But it was catching up now, spinning, ticking, gobbling up all the years of unchange. Like the vampires in – what was that film? A stake through the heart and the vampire began his aging, flesh decaying, his skull turning to dust to be blown away by a puff of wind. She stood staring at the brown velvet curtains, expecting them to begin their rot before her eyes. Small holes would melt into the larger, join. Slowly the metal rings would shed the fabric, and it would fall to the floor. A small heap of dust to be sucked up by the vacuum cleaner. Gone.

‘But who will vacuum up the dust?' she said, ‘My own small pile of dust may be beside it in the morning.'

She turned away then, stiff with sitting, drained by spent emotion, and she walked slowly upstairs, forcing blood to flow.

The typewriter was on her father's desk, her stack of completed pages at its side. She sat, seeking words, words to fill the blank paper and the blank space inside her.

 

Time remained motionless, trapped in the darkrooms. He stood in the doorway, holding time back with his will, and with his massive frame.

‘She was not the mother I had hoped she'd be,' he said –

 

Stella's fingers stilled. They hung over the keys, like birds, frozen in flight.

These had been her father's words.

‘She is not the mother I had hoped she'd be.'

Her father's words.

She sat back, her heart beating like the motor-mower engine as she looked at the words that had come from some too full page buried deep within herself. She could remember hearing those words. They had been spoken once in this very room. Long, long, long ago.

And Doctor Parsons had been here. The tiny man, smaller still because he stood beside her father. And her hands. Her hands were . . . were blistered. Her small finger like a parchment balloon. Water-filled. And her palms. Seared. Raw.

‘No. No.' She shook her head, shook the words away. This was fiction, only fiction.

‘Put it away. I am becoming caught up in fiction. And perhaps it is not the sort of tale to become involved in at this time. She pushed her chair back and walked across the hall to her own room where she sat on the edge of her bed, wishing her father home. Her hands came together, as in prayer, then they separated, and she stared at her palms. They had always been scarred. Ever since –

Again she shook her head. ‘Put it away.'

Don't put it away. Look at it. Look at truth. Learn from truth.

‘No. I will crack,' she said. ‘The shell I have built around me is already fracturing. My tears have weakened it and I am breaking up. I must get my mind onto something else. The computer. Lyn Parker. Yes. I will speak to Lyn. She is a wizard on John's computer.'

Poor hands. Again she stared at her palms. They were scarred, ridged, toughened unnaturally, as she had been toughened unnaturally. For minutes she sat staring at her hands, the sound of her own breath loud in the room.

I'm going to crack. I must sleep. Turn my mind off.

Tired now, tired beyond tiredness. She rested it on the pillow, still damp from her afternoon of tears. Perhaps she slept.

 

‘I want to get up, Mummy.'

‘You want a lot of things, don't you? Do you want to feel the fires of hell?'

‘No, Mummy. Please, I just want to get up now.'

‘Sit there and don't you move.'

‘The clock made four. Daddy might come home soon. Please can I open the gates for him.'

‘You haven't said the magic word.'

‘I said, please, Mummy.'

‘Please what?'

‘Please, my dearest darling good Mummy. Please may I leave the room now?'

‘You didn't say the magic word. You'll sit there until you do.'

‘I don't know the today magic word, Mummy. You say it first, then I will say it, and we'll be very happy, Mummy.'

‘You listen to God. He will tell you the magic word. Listen to him. Let him save you from the burning fires of hell – if it is his will.'

 

Her own scream woke her, but she'd bought part of her dream back with her. She could see her. She could see her clearly. For the first time in years, she could see her mother. A screaming, foot-stamping virago, her hair uncombed, her body unwashed, her face mad. Her mother had been mad. No precious Angel, hanging on the wall, with her fine eyes and her arms full of flowers. Not that fake portrait kept in Martin's room, a vase of flowers always there, beneath it.

Mad. She had been stark raving mad.

‘But dead,' Stella said, breathing out the dream. ‘Dead now. Dead. Dead. Dead. Dead. Dead.'

There was no way to escape the morning and responsibility. The workmen arrived before nine to complete the installation of the stove, and by ten John Parker had wandered in with his papers. Then Steve Smith arrived, and minutes later Chris Scott turned up to measure old doorframes for new security doors. And the kitchen and laundry floors – finally they would have new coverings. Never had the old house seen such activity.

She had risen early that morning, dressing carefully in beige. Pantihose, sensible shoes. She had tamed the too short hair with pins above her ears, and appeared composed as she sat with John and Steve in the study, all doors closed between them and the workmen.

John had given her much to do today. Steve, the second executor, would be tied up at his one-man business until five. Near eleven when they left, she handed the back-door key to the electrician and asked him to lock up, and to drop the key into Miss Moreland's flat.

‘Do what must be done,' she said. ‘Go. Life goes on. Go.' Thus she steeled herself to leave the house and drive alone to Miss Moreland's unit where she must set about packing up a long and wonderful life.

Johnson and the new constable were there when she arrived. The older man left soon after, but his colleague remained in the bedroom, behind closed doors. Stella was given leave to sort through the drawers and personal files in the lounge-dining room. She did not ask her questions aloud, but her mind kept asking, why?

A death no doubt had to be investigated – even the death of an elderly woman who had gone to sleep one night and never awoke. A massive heart attack was the probable cause of death. So Johnson said.

‘Instantaneous,' he said.

Stella crept up on the drawers in the old writing desk, feeling like a thief, and too aware of the other presence that had been behind the closed door. Her sleep had been broken by the strangest dreams, fiction and fact intersecting in the night. This morning she could not shake the memory of wild grey hair, and those eyes. Ice blue, and wide. Wild. Angel had been a crazed thing near the end, locked in the small downstairs bedroom, hidden while the hedge grew ever taller. Why? Why had her father keep his wife at home?

Her fingers in her hair, she massaged her scalp and breathed deeply. This was no time for such thoughts. There was a task that must be done today. That is why she was here. No time to question insane decisions made on some lost yesterday.

‘His false pride,' she said. ‘Perhaps she could have been helped.' Then she shrugged. ‘Probably not. Not back then.'

Another drawer was opened. She took from it a box of old postcards, and stood scanning for names and the addresses of the missing nieces. There were many old letters, though none from a Marie or Raelene. She glanced at each one, but briefly, then she tossed them into a large plastic bag.

It was twelve before the young constable exited the bedroom with his own items in his own plastic bags, but Bob Johnson had returned. She made them tea, and the younger man asked her if she knew of any male friends Miss Moreland may have had.

‘She was on good terms with many – ' She looked up from her teacup, caught his eye, and understood. ‘She was ninety-six!'

‘I've known a few who wouldn't let that hold them back, Miss Templeton,' he said.

‘She was a flighty old bird. I wouldn't put it past her,' Johnson added.

Stella flashed him a look and Johnson had the decency to blush.

She left them drinking tea while she emptied the refrigerator, but there was a feeling of unease about her now. She followed their backs with her eyes as they walked out the front door, then from a window she watched them knock on the doors of other flats, then return to walk around Miss Moreland's unit. She sighted them in the shrubbery beside the lounge room window, and again at the bathroom window. Then they left, and she went about the business of searching.

At one, she called John Parker and gave him the names and addresses of Miss Moreland's two nieces.

Empty, wrung out and squeezed dry, Stella worked on, functioning on a different level, as if lost in some never-never land where death is not yet complete, where life has gone but the presence remains, until church ritual and cemetery give release to the living. The wait until Thursday was too long.

‘Get me in the ground as fast as possible,' Miss Moreland had said many times. ‘Don't leave me languishing in a freezer like a side of old mutton.' But Thursday was the earliest they could put her to rest. Thursday afternoon. They'd had to get a minister from out of town.

It was too long.

She washed the refrigerator shelves with water and a drop or two of vanilla essence then she propped the door wide. So empty, so lonely, its contents tossed to the bin, or placed on the bench. The flat offered no solace today, and Stella wept again for the empty refrigerator, the old supplier of countless luncheons, a thousand cool drinks. She had loved this place. So many wonderful afternoons spent here. So many meals eaten at this table.

Through the kitchen window, she saw the young constable poking at the soil beside the neighbouring flat. Her stomach grumbled. She had eaten little since breakfast yesterday. Stomachs make their own demands, lost energy must be replenished. She looked at a tomato she had given Miss Moreland on Saturday, picked fresh from her garden.

‘I must eat something,' she said. ‘Life must go on, my dear lady, but only God knows how.'

The town clock struck two as Stella ate alone at the dining room table. She ate the tomato, she ate cheese and a small can of leg ham. She used the last of Miss Moreland's milk in a cup of tea, then she washed the dishes and packed them away.

An apron, hung lonely, waited in vain on the kitchen doorknob for her old friend's return. She picked it up and held it to her face a while, breathing in the odour of kitchen and luncheons, then like a thief, she folded it quickly and tucked it in her handbag. In the laundry, a basket sat patiently waiting on the ironing board, damped down and rolled up in the old-fashioned way. Stella found a task for her hands, something unfinished, something to be done, something that might keep her out of the bedroom. She didn't want to go in there where the men had been. What had the young constable taken away? What tales might that bed have told?

‘No-one should die alone,' she said. ‘No-one.'

Busy hands, they pressed and folded, they spent time over that red and grey blouse, and when it was done, all done, again she wandered, just touching things, creeping closer all the time to the bedroom, trying to find nerve enough to enter.

‘It is just another empty room,' she said, and she was in there, standing before the dressing-table with its large mirror. ‘I always like to keep mirrors around me, girl. They tell me the truth when no-one else has got the gumption to,' Miss Moreland once said.

All the scents, all the memories of Miss Moreland were in this room, but there were other odours here too. She opened the window, then again turned to the mirror and she saw her dark-rimmed eyes and fading hair, pinned behind her ears. Truthful mirror, as its owner had been truthful. She pulled the pins from her hair, and stood combing her curls with Miss Moreland's comb.

‘Mirror, mirror, on the wall, who's been the greatest fool of all?' she said.

The built-in robe bulged with barely worn garments. She scanned its contents, searching for the gown Miss Moreland had stipulated in her will. Red satin with matching shoes. Stella knew all about it – and about the shoes. She'd been with the old lady when she had seen the dress.

‘I always wanted to wear a red satin ballgown. I think I'll buy it for my funeral,' Miss Moreland had said. And she did. She'd had to order the matching shoes. It was eight or more years ago, but they'd be here somewhere.

A black and white check suit hung over a red silk blouse. Stella had always loved it. Now she placed it on the unmade bed. She stood staring at the mattress. Someone had stripped it bare. She moved the suit, walked to the linen closet and found the spare bedspread, tossing it over, and covering the naked pillows before again searching the wardrobe.

So much of everything. ‘You extravagant lady,' Stella whispered, taking up the white satin blouse with its embroidered front. Perhaps she should package everything up as she went. Give the clothing to the opportunity shop.

‘Oh, no. Oh, no. I do not want to see others wandering around town in your beautiful things, my dear. They wouldn't wear them with your style,' she whispered and she sorted on.

The satin shoes were in their box on the top shelf, and in one shoe was a pair of red and gold patterned sunglasses, and a note.

You'd better believe it, Miss. Now don't you chicken out and let me down.

Stella laughed. She put the glasses on and looked at her image in the mirror, and she tried to stifle her mirth with her hands.

‘God. If someone should hear me, they would think I'd lost my mind.'

The wicked red dress was hiding inside a grey zip-bag. She laughed again as she opened the bag, freeing the rich satin thing. Its neckline was low and heavily beaded in gold. The frock held before her, she stood again before the mirror.

‘Perhaps I should be a little wicked too. Lend me some of your gutsiness, my dear friend. Of late, I have been sadly lacking in the guts department.' She fitted the frock to her waist, studied her reflection. ‘I'm not so old, am I? I used to wear red, once, a long, long time ago. I could still wear it. I am not so old,' she said. ‘However, you wicked woman, as I told you the day you bought this . . . this abomination, it would better suit a lady of the night working a shift at Kings Cross.'

The bed became lost beneath the pile of clothing. It was near four when she took a large case from the hall closet and began packing.

‘For your trip, my dear. I am packing this for your trip. You'll need some casual clothing for the days, and something nice for the evenings. Perhaps your embroidered sweater, and the grey slacks, and the black. You'll need the white skirt, and your black and white check suit. And certainly the black suit and the white satin blouse. And the red jacket, definitely the red jacket.'

It wasn't so bad after that. She near emptied the wardrobe and several drawers, filling two cases which she carried out to her car. Then she returned and emptied more into a carton. The rest could go to the needy.

So many scraps of a lifetime of hoarding. It was lucky that Ron Spencer had thought to drop off half a dozen boxes mid afternoon. She thanked him profusely, but did not invite him in, as she did not invite Mrs Murphy and Mrs Morris inside when they came to offer their help.

The best of the old china she wrapped carefully in newspaper. Much of it had belonged to Miss Moreland's mother. It would have value, as would the few ornaments and a very elderly marble clock. She packed efficiently now, marking each box with texta before moving on. The nieces would probably appreciate the family heirlooms. The photograph album she packed also. Before sealing that box, she glanced again through the album. Strangers' faces. They had meant something to Miss Moreland. Perhaps they would to the nieces. There were very few faces Stella recognised. She turned to the photograph of Cutter-Nash, and she looked at his eyes. Jaguar eyes, Miss Moreland had said.

‘I wish you had told me all you knew of him, my dear. Now their secrets will truly die with you. He looks so familiar, but he was dead before I was born. How could he look familiar? Perhaps his eyes are a little like – no.' She shook her head. ‘I will not think of him, and I will not allow my imagination to run away with me.' The album closed, she sealed the box, and scribbled
Album, Old China
on its lid.

‘So much,' she sighed. ‘How do we accumulate so much in one short lifetime?' She lifted a piece of patchwork to her face – tiny hexagons made from all the fabrics of Miss Moreland's life.

‘Every dress I ever loved, since my sixteenth birthday, is in there. I've saved a bit from each. One of these days, you might have to finish it for me, girl.'

The old lady's words were like the whisper of the wind in the wires. They still lived in this flat and in Stella's memory. The dead are not lost, only the ones who remain are lost.

‘I will finish it, my dear, and I'll treasure it. It will have a place forever in my life.'

She stood looking at the fabric for minutes, then she took up a pair of scissors and returned to the bedroom and to the pile of clothing she'd placed to one side for the needy. From the sleeve of each favourite frock and blouse, she cut a fifteen-centimetre square.

 

As she sat at her writing that night she allowed new emotion to flow to paper, and when she read her evening's work, she knew it was good. On Wednesday, she began again while Chris Scott worked downstairs, stripping away the worn-out brown linoleum, hammering a backing board to uneven floors. What a noise. But she needed that noise. Now she transferred noise to her pages.

Wednesday died too quickly, and Thursday dawned with a clear blue sky for Miss Moreland.

The town stood still. Shops closed their doors at midday, and the people came to the church to fill it, and to spill over to footpath and lawn where Steve Smith had set up large speakers.

There were many tears, but no more from Stella. This was a time for strength and efficiency, and certainly no time for sadness. The service was as Miss Moreland had planned it, and a riot. The only strangers there were not amused; still, the one who had demanded she be present at her own funeral, just to keep an eye on proceedings, looked wildly wonderful in her cheeky sunglasses and red frock, her red-as-sin hat. She appeared to be enjoying the farce.

When the coffin was carried from the church, and orderly crowds slowly emptied the front pews, Stella sat on. She tried not to see . . . see him. He was one of the pallbearers. Pale. Surly.

Ron had wanted it. He had been fond of Miss Moreland, and he'd wanted his son at his side. How could she say no? Steve and Chris Scott made up the four.