'And how many, Angela, who'd want no spies in their shearing shed or the sale yards, or snooping all over their property, or right in their house? No one, Angela, trying to earn a crust needs a bunch of spies around the place.'
She wasn't looking at me now. Just Brett.
'Smart boy, this Jerry. Told us something he got from Abraham Lincoln, and that man knew government. "You can kill some of the mice all of the time, but you ..."'
'Can't kill all of the mice all of the time,' Brett smiled.
'Too right!' she exclaimed.
'And how do they report?' he asked.
'Nanotransmitters. Programmed to transmit straight to the tax office, the Lands Board. My word! Wherever they tell them. And, no offence, Angela, but some jumped-up Bettawong bureaucrat telling us—'
This was too much. 'Codswallop!' I yelled.
Mum and Brett regarded me politely. This made everything much,
much
worse.
'Mum,' I said. 'I know more than you do about these new mice. It was
one
mouse. Only one mouse's picture that went around the world. And it was a
hoax
, Mum. It was a plastic ear. Glued on that mouse, and it
fell right off
after that picture was taken.'
Mum's face fell. Brett looked at his hands.
'Well, I guess we're pretty isolated out here,' she said. 'And you in the city—'
'And another thing,' I said, as this contrition of hers was a new slap in my face. 'That's typical of these big-city plastic surgery miracles.'
'Oh,' she said, taking up her knitting again, and looking at Brett. 'I shouldn't have been so ... things just fall off?'
'Yeah, Mum,' I said. 'All the time.'
'I guess progress is never what it's cracked up to be. Doesn't seem to be any better than your false eyelashes. Remember—'
'More tea?' I asked Brett.
'Angela once cut the eyelids off—'
'Mum!'
'What, Angela. Do you want tea?'
'No, Mum.'
'Well then. Angela once—'
'Tea, Brett?' I asked, getting up.
'Strewth, Angela!' Mum plonked her knitting on the table. 'I can't afford you to burn out another element. Two sugars is it, Brett. And white?'
~
We all had another cup of tea.
Fly settled at Brett's feet, to which Fly formed a curious attachment. He followed Brett as Brett went to the toilet
'Down the hall, first door on your right. Don't flush if you only pee,' I yelled, to Mum's mortification.
Mum didn't make a mention of the boots, though she did blink.
The dog followed Brett back to the table, and settled again at Brett's feet.
We sat together at the table tapping our nails against the empty teacups for a few minutes, with the dog being a welcome distraction, as he moaned in a sort of ecstasy.
'How long you here for?' Mum asked.
'Only a couple days,' I said before Brett could reply.
'She wanted to see you after hearing about her dad and brother,' Brett said, pipping me at the post yet again. I could have screamed—but couldn't.
'That reminds me,' said Mum.
She moved her chair back with a clumsy scrape on the lino, and went to the desk. She opened the top drawer, took out an envelope, and dropped it off on the table in front of me. She was halfway down the hall already as she said, 'I'll make up your room.'
The envelope was plain and un-addressed—just a holder for its contents. It was not gummed down, so I opened it and took out what it held. A dirty, torn receipt almost two years old from the local farm coop for a pair of work gloves. I turned over the receipt, and in the flesh-pink of local, soft stone was a scrawl, partly torn through the paper:
Little Blossom
Sorry I hurt your feelings.
Im sorry.
I loved you
Dad
—40—
I nearly broke my ankle getting down the veranda steps in the dark in my stocking feet, but the water tank was just behind the house.
Where Dad used to stand and cry, not knowing that anyone knew, I cried.
~
That was
such
a mean thing for her to do. It was that thought that enabled me to make my way back to the house quickly, and dry-eyed.
Voices were coming from Mum and Dad's room, and then Brett and Mum came back into the lounge.
'I've made up my room for you,' she explained to me. 'And sorry, but don't turn the hot tap on at the bathtub. I'll fix it tomorrow.'
She came over and kissed me on the forehead. 'I'm sorry, but it's past my bedtime. Nightie night.'
'And pleasant dreams,' I said, reverting to five-year-oldness.
She slapped her thigh for the dog to go with her. 'The lights,' she said.
'Yeah, Mum.'
They entered one of the bedrooms, and she closed the door.
I walked down the hall to my bedroom and opened the door. My bed was still there, tipped up against the wall to make room for junk—a broken concrete sink, a box of firewood, those old metal and plastic chairs I remembered, the old formica table ...
Brett was in the lounge, looking at the family photos.
'Isn't it your fly time?'
He nodded.
'Well, then do it,' I said. 'And Brett,'
'Yes?'
'Friday. That's it.'
'Yes, my dear.'
He dawdled, so I turned off the light and went down the hall, had a quick pee into a toilet bowl already yellow with lots of it, didn't brush my teeth, and entered my parents' room and shut the door with a decisive click.
The room stunk of mothballs. On the bed was the counterpane that had been a wedding gift from Mum's aunt. Quilted eucalypt-green satin, the centre was decorated with a red and peach dahlia worked in ruched taffeta. Dad hated the thing, so it had lived in a tea crate along with Mum's wedding dress, which had also been her mum's wedding dress.
I stripped the counterpane off the bed and took it to my bedroom. Then I thought of the dust, so I carried it back to my parents' room, laid it across the foot of the bed, and opened the window all the way. The sheets reminded me of fine lawn, they were so thin. No wedding gifts that she could pull out for that part of the guest arrangements.
In one way, it was nice of her to assume, and in another way, I was angry she had presumed. This was the only double bed in the house, and the only room big enough for more than one single bed.
Brett's little black bag and his trunk had been neatly placed against the wall, and from the shiny state of the floor there, it looked as if Mum had swept a pile of dirty clothes away just where Brett's things sat now.
I took off my clothes and got into bed naked. Brett had forgotten to leave me a nightie.
I lay awake listening. Fly's claws scratched floorboards as he hunted for a flea. Outdoors, a fretful wind whinged, carrying with it the deep, neurotic where-are-you's of ewes, a horse's raspberry, the castanetting clapper of some local frogs that only clap after there has been some rain.
~
I woke to the gunshot pops of the tin roof announcing a summer day.
Brett was at the table tucking into a breakfast of Weet-Bix and milk.
Mum was in the kitchen. She immediately asked what I wanted, and was ready to make 'anything I have, but...'
'One toast is all,' I said, grabbing a piece of bread before she could.
She wouldn't let me make my own tea, but did the same thing as the night before, our three cups on saucers being carried out by her. An upside-down mug gathered dust on the drainboard.
It seemed as if they were both looking to me for the lead, but I had to find out something first.
'How are you managing?'
'Fine,' she said.
'No. What I mean is, who's running it? Why're you running around? Where's the hands?'
'The Trevithick boys. You remember them?'
'Of course.' Geoff and Des Trevithick, our neighbours—and also, being the same age as Angus and Stuart—my childhood playmates and teenage tormenters.
'They've bought the stock now.'
'Oh, good idea.'
'Glad you think so,' she said.
'But what you doing helping them?'
'I like to, Angela. And I may not have forever to do it.'
That took me aback. It was unlike her. 'You're healthy, aren't you?'
She was, if anything, tougher-looking than ever. No taller than me, she looked nothing like me otherwise. A wiry woman with long white lines radiating out from the edges of her eyes, where the hard brown leather of her face shadowed its creases.
'Aren't you healthy?' I repeated. 'What's this doomsday stuff?'
'Nothing doomsday about it,' she snorted. 'We're talking. They may take over the place. It mayn't work out, is all. Me staying on.'
'Wow!'
I picked up my cup to have a sip, but it was dry.
'You, too,' she said, flicking at a fly.
'Me, what?'
'Stuart's been at me to sell.'
'Don't you want to? You could finally ... Have you had an assessment?'
Brett coughed.
'Excuse me,' I said to Mum, and turned to Brett.
'If your mother needs help,' he mumbled. 'I'd like to—'
'Her mother needs no help, but thank you for your concern,' Mum said, not unkindly.
'She's got the ears of a bat,' I said to Brett, knowing she wouldn't feel prickly about that.
'But Mum, you don't sound happy. What's Wooronga worth these days? You
have
gotten a proper assessment, haven't you? I mean ... don't worry about Brett. He won't say anything to anyone. But what, a million and a half?'
'A little more.'
'So you're laughing! Even if Stuart hits you up for a few quid, you can go to Venice and Rome and London and New York, and drink good coffee and eat veal scaloppini for the rest of your life!'
I turned to Brett. 'She's made! And she doesn't know it!'
She suddenly grew taller as her spine went rigid. A muscle twitched in her cheek.
'They'll take the dog, Mum!'
A tombstone in Siberia was a cheerier sight. And more alive. I racked my brains to think what the hell was
bothering
her.
'Is it the horse? Or—'
'Angela,' she said, her jaws still clamped. 'What made you think I ever wanted to leave? To go see those places. That I want your food?'
I was speechless.
'I was born in this house. On that bed you slept on last night. I
love
this land. Those sheep aren't mine any more, but that doesn't mean I don't feel my most alive, out there.'
She flung her arm out so violently that her cup spun around, tinkling inanely against the saucer.
'But every one of our phone calls! And you sent me away.'
'Angela. From the time you were five years old, you told us in every way that you wanted to leave. We tried, Dad and I, to help you follow your dreams. I was
supporting
you, Angela. I was trying to be a mum. You've always needed an uncommon degree of listening to.'
Brett had the intelligence to imitate that Siberian tombstone in silence and movement.
There was no way I could escape this, except with a lucky bolt of lightning.
Finally, she patted my hand. 'I'm happy for your happy life, but I don't want it.'
'Her dad worshipped her,' she said to Brett.
She pushed her chair away from the table and put on a let's-change-the-subject face. 'What you folks want to do today? I just have to phone the boys about some wethers needing moving, and then I can ... or you came wanting time to yourselves? Did you want something, Angela?'
'No, Mum.' I wanted to be able to breathe somewhere away from here, without my throat constricting.
'I think I'll drive into town,' I announced. 'Brett, you want to explore here?'
'Could I?' he asked—a little boy asking whether it is really true that he has been offered a whole birthday cake to eat.
'You know how to ride?' Mum asked him.
'No,' I said.
'No problem,' she said to him.
'I'll be back tonight,' I said.
The door slammed louder than I had meant, which made it worse now that I had to go back in to ask Brett for money.
He reached into his back pocket and pulled out a wad.
'Be ready for that meeting tomorrow,' I said, as I looked the money over before I left this time, to make sure it was for the right country.
~
The radio kept me company till I realized that
On the Land
, 'Stuart Pendergast's award-winning single' played with the monotony of a refrain on the only two stations that I could get. Then I drove to the sound of rain squalls and the regular squeak of the left windscreen wiper. Mostly I drove to the sound of myself crying.
I had planned to avoid Bunwup, in case I met anyone who recognized me, but by eleven o'clock I found myself in front of its library. It was open for another hour, so I went in. No one recognized me, though I recognized one of the librarians, now gone fright-wig-white. When I searched in Fiction K, and then looked up
Barbara
, I had expected it to be gone from the shelf, but I was shocked to find it wasn't in the collection. I shouldn't have been shocked. The only newish books in the place were used Barbara Cartlands.
There was a small bookstore open across the street.
Barbara
was not in the window, and I didn't want to browse, so I asked the sole person in the shop (a retired teacher?).
'We couldn't sell that here,' she answered automatically. But then she looked closer at me, and then out the window, her glasses rising on her nose as her head scanned the unbustle of the centre of town. Finally, she turned to me. 'You
are
from a bus tour?'
~
Mid-afternoon, I stopped at a petrol station, filled up and bought a bag of Minties. Once parked on a patch of oil-blackened gravel off to the side, I regretted my choice, as each toffee had to be unscrewed from its paper wrapper. Throwing the bag on the floor, I kicked the engine back to work.
Through squall and sunburnt sky I went, through my own sometimes blinding tears, and once, almost through my life when I left the road altogether while speeding round a gravelled bend.
All too soon it was time to drive back, and this needed some attention to map and route, which took my mind away for a while.
Before I was really ready, it was 7 pm and I was back at the front gate of Wooronga Station.