Jacaranda Blue (22 page)

She glanced up, and caught the eye of Miss Moreland's long-lost nieces. If it had been possible to walk out of a funeral in disgust, Willy Macy and the nieces would have walked. Of that, Stella was certain.

‘Who am I becoming, Miss Moreland? You are changing me in death as you tried in vain to change me in life. Who will I be tomorrow? Will I be tomorrow? Or without you, will this town wear me away? Have I left already? I certainly don't feel like me today.'

‘Time to go, Stell.' Steve Smith walked back to her pew. He thought she was crying and his hand reached out to comfort her, but she turned to him with a smile, and his hand withdrew.

The church bells were tolling out their own goodbye. ‘I'll sit for a moment longer, thank you, Steve,' she said. ‘I'll just sit here a while and say my own goodbye while the crowd clears. Sit with me.'

‘Did you see old Willy Macy's face when he got a load of her rig-out – and that pair of prune-faced old tartars? I was expecting them to start spitting pips.'

‘Oh, I did. I certainly did, but I promised I'd do as she wished. You had better keep me away from Mr Macy, too. If he attempts to chastise me today, I may say something I could be ashamed of later.'

‘You and me both, Stell. You and me both. You'd better watch out for that pair of prunes. I think they've got their knives out for you.'

‘I was not sure what to expect – after all, they are her blood. But how? How can they be her relatives, Steve?' She shook her head. ‘Goodness me. Where is my charity today? I'm afraid that I'm feeling rather un-me, but I don't quite know who I am.'

‘Want to ride with me to the cemetery – or give me a lift? Mum's gone off with Bonny and Len.'

‘Yes. Yes, thank you, Steve.'

 

Miss Moreland's nieces waited until their aunt was safely underground before they made their joint attack.

‘We are upset, and with good cause, I may add. My aunt made a laughing stock at her own funeral – '

‘We are all upset, so perhaps we might leave this discussion until a more appropriate time and place,' Stella replied, standing before the duo, her eyes shielded by large sunglasses. She was breathing deeply. Anger, too long swallowed, was eager for its freedom, but she controlled it. She always controlled anger.

‘The service was a mockery. A cruel mockery.'

‘It is sad that you feel that way. It is what she wanted. Perhaps if you had known your aunt – '

‘What are you trying to say? What are you trying to say, you uppity little bitch?'

‘What I am attempting to say perhaps, is that my dear friend was not quite so popular, nor so revered by her family in life as she appears to be in death. I do not recall seeing either of you in town before. But perhaps you were not aware of her great age.'

‘We live in Sydney. It's a long drive and we're not as young as we used to be.'

‘No, you are certainly not, and you still have a long drive home, so do take care.' Stella turned away, but the smaller of the prunes followed her, grasped at her arm. Stella shook off the hand and continued walking.

‘We'll break that will. You see if we don't. We are her closest relatives, and entitled to inherit all she owned. We'll take it to the courts. You see if we don't.'

‘That is, of course, your prerogative.'

‘You wheedled your way into a senile old fool's life. I know your type.'

‘Which, thankfully, is not your type, Mrs Mackenzie. Good afternoon,' Stella said and she walked briskly away.

Steve had been behind her, now he walked with her to the near empty car park, his smile wide. ‘Good one, Stell. Good for you.'

‘I behaved badly. I should not have allowed – darn them.'

‘I didn't know she'd bought that flat. I thought she was renting, like old Mrs Thomson. What's the situation? I mean, can you move into it, or do you need to be over sixty-five?'

‘Who knows? I . . . I couldn't leave my garden. John Parker suggested I rent it out. You know Doctor Parsons has been advertising for an assistant. It would make an ideal doctor's residence, John said. Perhaps. Perhaps the nieces will break the will. Who knows.'

‘Buckley's hope I'd say – the way it was worded.'

A shrug her only response, Stella unlocked the car and slid in as Steve folded his limbs into the passenger seat.

‘I don't suppose you'd like to go and grab a bit of dinner somewhere, would you Stell? It's after five.'

She looked at him, then back towards the town, and she shook her head.

‘Up to you. But I sort of feel a bit queer going home. It's like a day off from . . . I don't know. I don't get many days off. God it was a riot. The best funeral I've ever been to.'

‘I think this has been the strangest day of my life, Steve. No doubt tomorrow I will be feeling very . . . very guilty about that attack. I'll sit stitching my clowns, feeling terribly wicked about the entire day.' She looked at him.

‘Then why not give yourself something to feel wicked about? Come and have a drink with me.' Again she shook her head. ‘We'll wish her a good trip. We've got to get on to that party too. Throw her a real wing-ding. Do one of those whole life videos. You know, with old photographs. Mum reckons Miss Moreland was a raving beauty in her day. Has she got many photographs?'

‘Heaps. I was going to give them to the nieces. But – ' She shrugged. ‘Perhaps I won't – as for the party, we'll wait until Father comes home. He was fond of her – in his own odd way. I know he'd want to . . . to feel a part of it. He may disown me of course.' She looked up at Steve, and shook her head. ‘Was it so wrong, what we did today? The service, the frock, those glasses?'

‘I work on the principle that you go with what feels right at the time, Stell. It felt pretty right to me. She was there too, and loving it. Christ, I won't forget that look on Willy Macy's face until the day I die.'

‘What is he going to say to Father?' Again she looked at Steve. ‘Oh, why not? Let's have that drink for her, Steve. I know, I know she'd approve of that – but perhaps not in town. Could I suggest we go to Dorby, far from the disapproving crowd?'

‘You're on.'

She started the motor and pulled away from the kerb, feeling strange, nervous, but so brave.

‘You're looking good today. A bit more like the old Stell I used to know. It's nice to see you in a bit of colour for a change.'

Stella pulled at the lapel of her red silk blouse. ‘It's one of Miss Moreland's. I felt if she was determined to wear her scarlet ballgown then I couldn't embarrass her by wearing the old beige.'

 

They spoke of many things that night, of stoves and planes and tours and Martin, and they spoke of Miss Moreland. Stella drank peach cooler, and Steve drank beer. Slowly their conversation altered. They began laughing about the old days, and the old band, and the Saturday nights when they had sung a duet in this same club. The crowd was younger then. They were younger. They talked and ordered more drinks while the hour grew later and the band played on.

‘Feel like a dance, Stell?'

‘Dance? Good Lord. I haven't danced in a millennium.'

‘It can't be that long.'

‘It certainly feels like it. I'm sure I've forgotten how.'

But she hadn't forgotten how. Steve had a fine sense of rhythm and it only took a few minutes for Stella's white sandal-clad feet to find their own rhythm.

Foolish, foolish woman, she thought. You are making a complete spectacle of yourself tonight. You are talking too much, laughing too loud. Perhaps the peach cooler is not lolly water after all. Just a mote afraid of her laughter, when Steve ordered more beer, she ordered coffee. ‘Miss Moreland might enjoy the joke, but I don't really think I want to get booked for drunk driving,' she said. ‘That may be carrying things a little too far, do you think?'

They outstayed the band. They sat on drinking coffee until the weary workers began moving chairs back for the cleaners.

‘I think they want us to move, Stell. They're going to vacuum us out in a tick.'

She stood, and she wasn't quite sure which way to walk. He took her arm, and held it as they walked down the steps and across the car park. It made her feel so young. So delightfully young and silly.

‘I think Miss Moreland would be proud of me tonight,' she said.

‘I was proud to be with you tonight. Real proud. You should wear red more often. It does something to you.'

She felt sixteen. Foolish, gauche. Drunk on four glasses of peach cooler and an old friend's company. She didn't quite know what to say so remained silent until she found her key, until she unlocked the car, until they were both seated, until she found her own way back to the highway, until the dark countryside began slipping by and memory of the nights of long ago and driving home near dawn in the old band van, urged her to sing as she had then.

It started small. Steve joined with her. Their first attempt to harmonise raised safe laughter, but they tried again. She let him choose the key and she hummed along until she found the old mellow blend. They sounded good. They still sounded very good together, and she'd always had an ear for harmony.

‘Do you remember, “Send in the Clowns”, Stell?'

‘That was my swan song,' she said. ‘That last night, remember?'

All the way home they sang the old songs, and when she pulled the car into the churchyard beside Steve's utility, and the night was over, and in the distance old Wilson's rooster was signalling dawn, they sat on.

‘We ought to do it again some night – if you feel like it, that is.'

‘Perhaps we will, Steve. Perhaps we should. Thank you so very much for today – for yesterday,' she corrected. ‘Thank you so very, very much.' And she drove away, grateful her father was safe on the other side of the world.

It was Monday night, and the seventeenth night Stella was to spend alone in the old house. Martin had sent two more postcards, one of Paris, a city of lights, and one of a castle in Germany. Uncertain of where he might be at any given time, and of how long it may take her letter to reach him, she chose not to write back, not to tell him of Miss Moreland's untimely death. Time enough when he returned on next Sunday's bus, and time enough for the wild party she and Steve Smith were planning to host at the shire hall.

Steve had come around to discuss the plans yesterday, and to collect some old photographs. He dabbled in photography, and was intent on creating a video of the old lady's life. For hours they had sat, selecting, rejecting. There were photographs too of the old town when it was young, photographs of the old school. The album was a historical documentation of Maidenville, Steve said.

He had stayed so late that Stella asked him to join her for dinner, cooked on her wonderful new stove. And afterwards –

She smiled, and her hand holding the long embroidery needle stilled as she sat a moment, staring at a small clown eye. Then she shrugged, slid the needle beneath the round nose and commenced working the second eye. Her mind free to roam, returned to Sunday night.

After dinner, Steve had washed the dishes while she dried, and there was something about washing dishes with a companion, a task she'd always done alone in that kitchen. There was a closeness about it.

He had started the remembering games. ‘Remember the old van? Remember the night the tyre blew and we were stuck thirty kilometres out without a spare?'

Remember. Remember. So fine to remember the good times.

And they had sung again, right there at the sink to the clatter of crockery, the jacarandas their only audience, and when the dishes were done, Stella had hunted out her own old photographs.

They'd laughed then at Steve's hair; he had allowed it to hang free back in those days, and they'd laughed at baby-faced Chris Scott. So much laughter. What a night, and what on earth would the neighbours have thought of her?

It was well after midnight when he rose to leave, the selected photographs in a large envelope. She had walked him to the front door, flooding the drive with light, flooding her garden with light, which got them started again.

Then he'd spoken of a booking he'd taken for his aging band.

‘It's in three weeks, Stell. Come with us. We still sound good together,' he said.

‘What a lark, Steve.'

‘Do it.'

‘I'm too old. I'd look ridiculous.'

‘You'd look far from ridiculous. Age is all in the head of hair.'

‘Father will be back in Australia next Saturday. He'll come through on the Sunday bus.'

‘So it's back into the cage, eh?'

‘Back to normal, I suppose, Steve.'

‘I always reckoned our band could have made it big if you'd stayed with us back then. We might have been a second Seekers.'

He'd kissed her cheek when he was leaving. Just a brother's kiss. He'd always been like a younger brother, always there – at the same children's parties, always around, but in the background. He'd helped carry home the small jacarandas and suggested she plant them between the house and shed. A born planter of seeds, his hands more at ease in the soil than at the dinner table. His blond hair was greying at the temples, but he still wore it long – as he had back then. Now he tied it back with rubber bands. A strange boy, and they did sound so well together.

‘What am I thinking of?' she said. ‘Father will return and bring reality back with his case full of washing, and I will pin up my hair again and Miss Moreland's colourful shirts will be packed away in the cases.'

But it had been a good night. One of the best. Laughter so readily raised, and eager to rise. He was so darn easy to be with.

‘Lord. What would Father think of me? “Entertaining a man in my kitchen, singing love songs until midnight with that long-haired lout. Wandering the garden at 1 a.m. You must ask yourself, Daughter, is it seemly, with Miss Moreland barely cold in her grave?”'

Probably not, but that dear lady would have been delighted. Stella smiled as she turned the radio volume a little higher. They were playing the song she had sung at Miss Moreland's funeral. It was one of the old favourites from the seventies.

Leave my worries far away in another time and place.

She hummed along with it now, thinking of her old friend who had always turned the volume up when they played that song.

It was odd. Several times since the funeral, the Dorby radio station had played that song – as if they knew, even though they couldn't possibly have known. Each time it played, Stella's thoughts went to Miss Moreland. And what better way to be remembered, she thought?

She stitched the round eye on the face of a clown, then peered closely at it, before changing her thread. Writing had taken over her days; the clowns were a chore she resented.

Let someone else do them, girl.

‘Would that I could, my dear,' she said. The song had ended, but Miss Moreland was still close. There were moments when Stella could almost hear the comments spoken in her mind, as if Miss Moreland had not truly left yet, but taken up residence in Stella's right ear, determined to change her, to have her will.

 

It had been obvious to all that Ron had forced his son to be one of the pallbearers. The teenager hadn't looked well on that crazy day. His face had been pale, and his eyes had the look of a wild thing, trapped. A surly jaguar, pacing the bars of his too small cage, and wanting out.

He had strange green eyes – Marilyn's eyes. There had always been talk in town about Marilyn's mother. Marilyn and her brothers had grown up with many short-term uncles. Was it possible? Was that what Miss Moreland had been hinting at?

Stella had spoken to Steve of Cutter-Nash. They'd studied his photograph together, and she'd removed the shot of her grandfather. Perhaps she'd have that one enlarged. No photograph of old Randall De Vere hung in the house – even his wedding photograph had been cut in half, leaving only his ghostly hand on the shoulder of his bride.

‘I'm sadly lacking in relatives,' she told the finished clown face, and she dropped it into the plastic bag beside her bed. ‘We were not a family of breeders. No uncle, no aunt, no cousin or niece, parents a generation removed from the parents of my friends.'

She took up a blank face, trying to see the personality hidden behind it. Sometimes they suggested themselves, or they had once. She was doing too many lately and they were all beginning to look much the same.

‘Green eyes,' she said, ‘with a glint of yellow, and a golden collar.' Again she began stitching, her mind once more free to roam.

Miss Moreland's nieces had taken the jewellery. Some of it had antique value, as did the old china and ornaments. They had demanded a tapestry and a large painting from the lounge-dining room, the antique mirror in the hall. They had claimed an antique coffee table and the bedroom chair, but made no mention of the family album. Which was as well. Stella had no intention now of parting with it.

John Parker, a born diplomat, suggested Stella allow the nieces to go through the flat, and to take any of the older family items. They'd settled for that, but only after having shown a copy of the will to their own solicitor. ‘Don't give them the key, Stell. Go with them, keep your eye on them,' he'd said. ‘Lyn will go with you.'

The prunes had arrived with a small van and a large son on the Saturday, but Lyn was a match for any man. Bonny had come too. The friends followed the trio from room to room. By the time the van left, the flat looked a little bare, but Stella had a receipt in her hand, all items had been listed by Lyn on her laptop computer, then printed out on her tiny portable printer. And what a wonderful machine it was.

Until Sunday, no conversation had been complete without a mention of Miss Moreland, then old Joe Martin, a lost soul since the death of his wife, died peacefully, and the old-timers in town began looking at their neighbours for the one most likely to make up the third. In Maidenville, deaths always came in threes.

Funerals, weddings and births formed much of the news, but in recent months there had been more funerals than births, and even less weddings. The young ones were leaving the town in droves.

‘
Sorrows shadow drapes no more, or cowers the dear heart
,' she sang. ‘Desist,' she said. ‘You've become a singing fool. But you've left your run too late. Anyway, it would interfere with your writing time. You have enough on your plate without attempting to play middle-aged vocalist.' Her needle slid into the featureless face and she began to create a character.

By running threads from side to side through the fabric, she lent shape to the clowns' faces. She pinched up small noses, holding them high with invisible stitches. She fashioned ears, large and small, she stretched mouths into wide smiles or cheeky grins. The idea had come from the Cabbage-Patch dolls, fashionable many years ago, and many failures evolved before she perfected the art. Her hands were swift, and a small face once started, was quickly finished with a dimple in the cheek, and wide-set eyes. This would be the best face she'd worked tonight.

She had two dozen in the plastic bag beside her bed, but endeavoured not to count, allowing her hand to feel out the blank heads from the finished. Sooner or later, someone else would have to learn to work the faces. There were orders coming in from all over. Less than twelve months ago, she had sent out letters and photographs to craft shops all over New South Wales and Victoria, and for months had received no replies; then out of the blue they received an order from Echuca, and a second from Swan Hill. Since then it had snowballed.

‘Too big, too fast, and the worst part about it is, I have lost interest. Lyn is good with a needle and thread. I'll teach her to work the faces, and maybe Liz Holden.'

Writing. It was a demanding occupation. It stole time from her garden. There was much that needed to be done. Each day since the funeral she had promised herself a day in the garden, but somehow she didn't get there.

She ate her breakfast with her typewriter, and her lunch. This unfolding tale was a force she could not hold back, so she was not holding back. She had written a sex scene that darn near made her blush!

Each evening she wrote, filling her blank paper with words, living her characters, speaking their words aloud. In her fictional world, she was in charge of who died, and how they died, and she killed at random, or her violent
Seraphani
did.

But inactivity had given her a neck-ache, so tonight she had closed her door on the typewriter, showered early, eaten a light dinner then climbed gratefully into bed. Propped high on pillows, she stitched clown faces, the small transistor radio beside her. It had earphones, which she would use when her father returned, but here in her own room, she allowed the radio freedom to sing.

Music was wonderful company. When the old radio in the lounge room had made way for a television set, she had missed it. Her father enjoyed his television shows, but she could always pick holes in their plots. Loose ends. She loathed loose ends, and she smiled now, her mind with the end of her novel, mentally tying up loose ends as she tied off the end of her green thread and chose one already threaded with gold. Her pincushion was filled with threaded needles.

A tuft of hair, a mouth of red given. Two questioning eyebrows, brown freckles on his nose and cheeks and he was done, dropped overboard into a plastic bag and a new face selected.

The last of fear had left her. Perhaps the tears she had cried that day had been inside her for too long, had filled her; the old lady's death had released a plug, emptied the barrel. Now a part of that dear woman had crept into the hollow, filled it up with something more positive than tears. And Thursday night at the club in Dorby, the dancing, the singing all the way home, had been cathartic.

And she'd almost said no. Almost.

Why?

‘No fool like an old fool,' she said.

She was feeling better tonight than she'd felt for years and years, and younger, so much younger, stronger. Free.

It was odd, really, this sense of freedom. Had it been bought by her money, Miss Moreland's wardrobe, or by the haircut? She ran her fingers through her curls. Perhaps she'd have a little more cut off – and get a rinse. Bonny kept her hair vibrant with a rinse she bought at the supermarket. Stella had actually browsed in the hair-care aisle this morning, but she'd had no idea of what she might buy. There was such a choice.

She'd popped in for some cereal. Marilyn had had an X-ray appointment in Dorby, so Ron was alone. He always looked at her differently when Marilyn wasn't around. Previously, this had pleased Stella. She had once lived for a week on those stolen glances, those stolen smiles.

‘I hope it's nothing to worry about, Ron,' she'd said to him this morning.

‘She's always worrying about something,' he said. ‘You look good today, Stell. I like your haircut.'

He never made personal comments when Marilyn was on the checkout, and the old pleasure had attempted to rear its head. Instead, Stella could only wonder how he had managed to spawn a rapist.

Not wanting to be long away from her writing, she'd walked quickly to the cereal department where she'd picked up a packet of toasted muesli. At the refrigerated section, she'd been studying the frozen meals, single serves; they were quite tasty and saved time in the kitchen. Then she'd looked up at Ron's reflection in the long mirror. She hadn't recognised him. He looked so old. For a split second, she'd believed she was looking at his father, dead these many years. He was the living image, and like his father, wed to a tyrant.

Ron had wanted to talk. He had taken his time at the cash register, but eager to get away, Stella cut the conversation short, took money from her handbag, surprising him with a fifty-dollar note, and she'd stood hand out, waiting for her change.