Waiting (33 page)

Eventually the train stops at Gawler. It must be 35 degrees in the main road leading away from the station and she cannot think, she cannot, she is all sweat. Melbourne will be cold and wet!

Her headache is a firm arrival, it is more sure of itself than she is.

The taxi driver opens his boot and stands impatiently. He wants to be back in the air-conditioning and driving to wherever and making money but she is stationary and poor. Manners perhaps, would help, but pragmatics are even better: he grabs up her bag and drops it into the boot, slams the lid and is inside with his door shut before she can even open the rear door. Do the aunts know she is coming, has her mother told them, will they be there to resist her? She feels like turning around and in a long mysterious zoom reappear at home greeting Big as he grins on the left side of his mouth. But into the taxi she goes and out at the small guest house she has stayed at before and then into her room and onto the bed. She lays to rest her thoughts. The long hot Gawler streets in her head.

Her mother is a larger woman than one might expect, going by Little. She is sitting leaning forward, her osteoporosis position. Her spine is curved and her wrists, while bony and noticeable in a skin-crinkly way, somehow suggest resilience, even strength, and though her eyes are deep-set and the eye lashes and eyebrows have gone… is there anything in her appearance to suggest she is dying? Little is surprised, her poor thoughts worry her with why it isn't worse, why her mother is so alive and what sort of person is Little anyway to think like this?

Her mother smiles and pokes out a cheek for kissing and, that done, inspects this shirt-and-jeans daughter of hers. She likes to say to people, especially now that she is so old and enjoying some nostalgic contrasts, how Little was the late mistake of her middle-aged womanly sex life, how she never required much of either contraceptives or operations (she is a rationalist not a Catholic), horrible things both of them, and how – a lucky thing brefor a woman with a noticeable lack of feeling for children – her body clock had remained resolutely unwound.

Then outoftheblue whowouldbelieveit she was pregnant and, falling so, was as fertile at 49 years as an awful little 20 year old.

She paid for her hubris. She grew she distended, she was a cow. This then was her calf. Blarrrh! It made one thing less likely – grandchildren − and thank God, what a blessing that was, to be having none of those. It has more amusement in it, this story, for her than for others. Unless Little reverted to type and sprang a pregnancy like a leak. The lupus making this unlikely.

Forgot to book well before Xmas, Little explains. And it took this long to find cheap seats.

Fares, dear. Fares.

It means you get a special visit really, doesn't it?

Clearly the old Mrs Little has time to consider this eccentric.

Well, I am pleased to see you, Agnes, regardless of when it is, and you may prefer to live in that sprawling place with trams everywhere, absolute chaos if you ask me, but you do call me up and it is… nice to… talk.

She cannot think of expressly affectionate statements, so awkward, so unlike her, a one who all her life has disliked small talk.

Agnes? As if that isn't bad enough, Little's middle name is Mathilda. In her ears the stupid song, the billabong. She has become accustomed to the house names now, her everyday Little to his Big, and Little will not translate, as Big and Ag, without sounding variously Big and Nag, say, or Biganag and then, adding Tillie – he had once tried calling her Tillie – well, BigandTillie sounded like an Indonesian fish curry. A vaguely Spoonery anagram of Ikan Bilis.

Your aunts are keen to see you while you're over.

I don't want to see them.

Quite. All the same.

No.

Julie in particular wants you to call in. You know very well she will be awful about the house but there's no way around it, I'm afraid. And Meg is in town too, I think.

My cousin Meg?

Meg and Ag, she says to herself. It was always Meg and Ag.

There is silence. Silence is there. It feels to both of them more real than abstract, this thing they have in common, a willingness to remain present without speaking.

Occasionally her mother asks about something and Little answers briefly and it has to said plainly before another silence and then her mother asks after Big for the second time, Big, whom she has met just the once, shaven and under duress wearing a kaftan as compromise above his sweet little flatties. He wasn't and couldn't remember ever being the shape that clothes came in. The hippie era a sadly short-lived fashion, he added. Except for him. And the theatrical bling and kaftan crowd in the 70s. Little's mother was alarmed by his shoes, all the same, even if he was playing or dressing more or less straight he was a social horror, but she liked the tone of his voice and its mordant expression was extremely pleasing. Bling and (as she said) male ornament irritated her inordinately. Her little dash at the old onomatopoeia.

Little waits in the less verbal present tense.

My sisters do look after me a bit, her mother adds. But they are making my life a nightmare. So, Agnes Matilda, my dear, you really must see them if only to give me some rest from it all. They are such nags. Such self-centred sisters, they think they're fooling me as I get older and weaker but I may die tomorrow. Yes, I may, no need to look so shocked, the doctors have said my system is sort of slowing down, taking its leave apparently. Though it never asked my permission.

This is becoming a speech.

Julie is the worst of them, she adds. A tyrant. Not very bright. She has talked May and Vicki into thinking they can talk me round, or if that doesn't work, to shame me into signing my entire estate over to them. Shame me. Can you imagine it? Not even over my dead body, I would love to tell them. They are like hyenas.

Little is amazed as well as distressed. Somewhat. Her mother may be the better sister but there is not a lot of empathy in the family.

Well, the problem is they do attend to me and I like that. If they know there's not a chance in hell they'll be off like the thieves they are and I'll not see them for dust. I suppose they are owed something, however. And for the paperwork, the rental things with the house and… You're safe and, after all, you are almost out of the picture.

What can I do? They'll try to force me to… They are…

Scary? They are scary. You are not wrong. Blatant self-interest is always scary.

They sit staring at the old biddies seated along the corridor, some knitting but mostly bent in that iconic curve of old ladies, and their expressions blank.

The way they gang up on me. And you, I suppose.

Oh, not me.

Anyway, I don't like them.

No. I liked young Angus by the way. Your cousin. Sensible fellow now he's grown up a bit.

Yes, he is. We've met. He told me he saw you, he told me… he said you spoke about me.

Oh? I can't remember.

Mrs Little is not going to be personal.

I don't know who fathered them, I must say, my sisters. I feel like Cinderella and I always have, just a pity they didn't cut their toes off trying on the glass slipper. Or their tongues. If only they would stop haranguing me over this and how much help they have been. And it's worse that they are right. Somewhat. I do have a debt to them. If they shut up… Would they shut up if I changed my mind, I wonder.

Is she vacillating? Little is sure her mother is watching her more acutely than usual. She is uncomfortable with conscience. Feeling she knows too little, duty and obligation have always confounded her. Her mother seems unable to talk about anything else and that is unusual too.

I don't think so.

No. Nor do I.

Then without lead-up her mother begins describing her bowels. She is not happy with them, mainly the gas distention and the inner burbling, loud enough for people to hear its inner rumbling. Its varying life of bubbles and, worst of all, the doubt – should she sit there on her chair and let it blow? It is not to be trusted. Is it fart or flump, in other words. Sometimes it is the reverse – constipation. It makes Little think of Big and his high blood pressure and gas pressure.

Way down in my bowel, Big has said several times, there are annoying things happening. He suspect there are unhappy little animals down there. When he sits down the gas simply trans­mogrifies, it begins barking, or things start hissing and hissing air and disrespect oh it's not happy. He once said it's a big Harley Davidson chugging its slow V-twin, or a V8 something but with slashed tyres, it's humiliating except, well, it's sort of amusing. Sometimes it sounds like Paul Robeson and that's alright. Just as long as it isn't George Beverly Shea.

Big is always keen on descriptions, especially of bodily functions. He called his farting the sound of a swan honking with a stutter. A bird that large down in his bowels? Little's mother would not have imagined this.

In another state altogether her mother's intestinal mysteries have gone dry as a topic. She glances over at Little and smiles for a second or so her face returning slowly to neutral.

You've changed, dear. You are more independent than I'd ever imagined you could be.

Little flushes with pleasure, then feels the patronising side of it.

That's a nice compliment, mum. If it is a compliment.

Her mother thinks about it. She isn't sure. There is not much more to say.

Well, there you have it. See them in the morning then call on me again before you go.

Them? Oh my aunts. Allright Mum.

Good girl. Now I want to sleep.

Mum, you haven't told me. Are you really so unwell?

Yes. Well, who knows? I must be.

But…

Let's leave it at that.

And she did.

Big

Back in Melbourne the hidden scenes play out as they always do. Julia sneaks in one day and is sneaking out again when Big and Tom walk out from the kitchen, early enough to have eaten before any of the others fuckers have risen. She has forgotten their differences are as nothing compared to their early morning hungers. They see a different hunger on her face: her bottom lips is split and her left cheek and eye are not reddish blue from make-up even if there is pasty stuff layered all over her face.

Jesus, curses Big. That bastard boyfriend of yours.

Even Tom wants to say Jesus.

It wasn't him, it was, you know, a fella I was with last night… She rushes the words. But it was him, they know.

Then she is off, outside, striding to the tram stop. Her car hasn't been seen for weeks.

Our man Big has been more than usually active, and not just breakfasting; he has been living in the state of Mischief While Little Is Away. On the first morning he went down to the Mission to the good people of the Sacred Heart, the wonderfully generous Catholics he has no time for in matters of faith but much stomach for when it comes to hot roast dinners. For lunch. For free. There he met a certain Jimmy, over a bowl of soup and a pork pie, it being, most unhappily for Big, only pork-pie-day on Tuesday. Pork pies are not a pie to send him into rapture. Pork pies are squalid little things. Mostly he thinks their filling are like those awful pink blocks you smell in urinals.

More to the point, he met up with Jimmy. His old long-lost mate of the Cards. Aka Poker. So it has to be assumed Big went to the Mission with a mission and not merely for his gustatorial urges. It is rare now for his two desires to meet, food and poker, and just hours after the meal both are catered for. In Jimmy's dishevelled flat. At the small table, Big's pleasure frowning over cards in one fist and ciggie in the other, with two other big-headed men, like many at the Mission: big-headed men who came in lost but with money enough for gambling at cards.

Big has in the raggedy cook-and-cards past been in trouble with the cards, as he puts it, cards meaning the addictive and the gambling kind, and trouble meaning – he loses. Jimmy is a man built on a scrawny set of ethics, a man who has a memory for men who are obsessed with the impossible, with tricking back over losses they cannot truly reclaim.

Just can't work out why it's gone all rainy, mate, Jimmy the Cards said to him, with hardly more than a glance at him as Big sat down, as if the two had been talking all week.

Rain, um, yes, low pressure systems. We always tapped the barometer at home, when I was a kid. Dad went up to it every morning after breakfast. Tap tap.

Still. Been missing you, mate. It's not everyone can hold a hand of winners back the way you do. No silly stuff. It's that calculator you got up here (tapping his head). No giving into temptation, beyond, I mean, the sudden shot at a bitta wealth.

Mmm. True enough, said Big, Been a lot more domestic lately, you know. Neither of us is young and healthy but…

She away, is she mate?

Big looked up and Jimmy nearly grimaced at his loose line.

I mean, you're the boss mate. A free man if ever there was (in a bloody dress, he thought, just as proof). I seen a lot who aren't if you know what I mean. You're different. And I have gotta game on today, if you'd like to steal back a bitta my luck.

Jimmy's job is to bring them back to the table.

He has to make them happy, have them do it all over again. Eternal recurrence and all that, the cards fanning above the thumb and missing, by one chance, the big thing when the big thing is needed. Money on the table. Big will draw on The Kitty by then, and well before he can wake from his intensity, he will be waylaid. Little will be and then, she is, denied – nah, it's a bit of freedom. For a chance at this return.

Being back in the Mission reminds Big of the many people who come down to Mission lunches and sit alone, hands shaking as they spoon up soup, or encountering solid food which their body needs but has trouble handling after long days and usually years of alcohol, and sometimes even anabolic not metabolic development, and sometimes catabolic digressions of the kind the Mission has heard of but can never quite imagine. These men, and they mainly are men, sitting at tables, also the large number who as regulars encompass a diversity of lives and passions, who know each other and who form friendships like any other group of people, comparable or not. Who have time and plenty of it and, in sadder cases, having no good use for time… they have too much of it.