Blueberry

by Glenna Thomson

  Magpies were carolling in the eucalypts on Josephs Road and other birds were chirping inside the bushes, like an orphanage of babies calling for food. Silver threads were in the grey clouds and two brown speckled ducks, their wings rising and falling in perfect unison, flew overhead towards the dam.

  Coming from the north, I heard the drone of an approaching car. It slowed, then its tyres slapped the cattle grid, and I quickly headed back to the house.

  Charlie’s 1979 cream Mercedes was parked in front of the garage and Shane was standing on the back step with his head inside the door.

  ‘I’m here,’ I said.

  He turned.

  ‘You’re keen?’ He glanced behind me to the orchard.

  ‘I’m trying to understand the different varieties.’

  ‘Why’s that?’

  ‘I want to know which ones have the best yield and perform better in the heat. Water uptake, that sort of thing.’

  He studied me for a moment. ‘You’ve become an orchardist.’

  I looked at my watch, thinking of Sophie and school.

  ‘You want me to drive you back?’ I said.

  ‘I’m not walking.’

  I sat behind the wheel and while I was putting on the seatbelt, which didn’t automatically slap back into position, I shook my head. ‘I haven’t driven a manual in fifteen years.’

  ‘It’s like riding a bike.’

  I turned the key and released the handbrake, pushed in the clutch, put the gearshift in reverse, then pulled back on the clutch too fast. It stalled.

  ‘Just ease it back.’

  ‘I know what to do.’

  The seat felt too low or the steering wheel too high and I tried to sit higher. Slow with the clutch and a touch of acceleration and the car reversed, and I pressed the brake. I worked through the steps and the car moved forward. I glanced at Shane, who was watching me carefully.

  ‘Stop watching me.’

  Up Josephs Road, we passed my smashed car. For the two kilometres between our driveways, I didn’t get past sixty kilometres or out of third gear. The car was heavy, the steering unwieldy. When I flicked the right indicator on, the wipers came on. It took the length of his driveway, all the way up beside the tall hedge, before I worked out how to turn them off.

  ‘Good job,’ he said.

  As I accelerated to leave, I was too quick with the clutch again – the car lurched forward and the motor loudly and abruptly stopped. I didn’t look up at him, but turned the ignition, and worked through the steps until the old Merc steadily moved forward.

  Out on Josephs Road, I felt there was something regal about the Merc, a faded elegance like Charlie had. It wasn’t easy or comfortable to drive, but I imagined how Charlie’s hands would have proudly gripped the over-sized steering wheel as he drove around the local roads and into town and beyond, making a statement about his vanity and creative independence, those things that separated him from everyone else.

  When the builders left, taking their deafening tools, rubbish and rap music away, Charlie’s furniture was delivered. He asked for his old leather chair to be positioned by the window in his bedroom. Then he sat and closed his eyes and became very still, letting the morning sun seep into his bones, like he was somehow trying to heal himself. In the afternoon, he went to the lounge room and sat by the west-facing window to capture the afternoon sun that dappled through the yellow climbing rose. He seemed content and I left him be.

  When he noticed Marilyn was missing, he toured the house, checking the walls and out in his studio.

  ‘Greer, where is she?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Who took her?’

  So I told him about the removalists and how the art crate wasn’t big enough so they had wrapped her in a white sheet with foam rubber and cardboard. He bowed his head and closed his eyes and I watched the slight rise and fall of his chest. There was a small gash on his jaw below his ear, where he had nicked himself shaving.

  With one arm outstretched for balance and the other pressed hard into his back, he moved slowly to sit by the window and stare into the distance, beyond the veranda and rose garden and out into his private thoughts. Perhaps he was remembering all those years ago when he had painted her.

  ‘Are you all right, Charlie? Do you need any Tramal?’

  ‘I’m right, love. Pills won’t fix how I’m feeling.’

  ‘I’m sure if you ask Warren he’ll return it.’

  ‘He won’t.’

  ‘But you’ve not asked him.’

  ‘Don’t need to.’ His face was set in resigned discomfort or grief. ‘I’m sorry, love. Warren said some things. He doesn’t think much of me, and probably for good reason. It’s hard to see yourself as others do.’ Then he looked down into the soft leather of his hands and started turning his gold wedding ring around his finger.

  ‘If I set up the studio for you, do you think you could paint Marilyn again? Exactly the same?’

  He turned to me and licked his lips, thinking.

  ‘I used a ladder when I did her the first time.’

  ‘Then make her smaller.’

  ‘Maybe I will.’

  He looked straight at me and smiled, and the soft, pale folds of his skin rearranged to show his dimples and his eyes brightened and shone.

  20

  I flicked the old Merc’s left indicator and turned into the driveway. The tyres burred across the cattle grid. Then down the liquidambar tunnel, so lush and dense I could only see the dry stone wall and the lower limbs of the rhododendrons with their bouquets of purple, pink and red.

  Sophie was in the passenger seat beside me, and in the back were two boxes of pullets – young chickens that Freya’s mother, Renee, had just given us.

  ‘You’re doing me a favour,’ she’d said.

  The girls had had an after-school play date because I had driven to the Yarra Valley to a blueberry growers’ field day. I’d loved meeting friendly experts eager to share. Lumbering all the way home in Charlie’s car, I had thought about the long term – bird-netting and micro-sprays and planting another ten acres to boost my scale and make more money.

  Sophie was naming the chooks.

  ‘There’s a rooster, as well,’ I said. ‘You need a boy’s name.’

  ‘Nick.’

  ‘You can’t name a chook after your dad. Choose something else.’

  ‘Louis Armstrong.’

  ‘How do you know Louis Armstrong?’

  ‘Charlie told me. He plays the trumpet.’

  I smiled. ‘He played the trumpet. It’s past tense because he died.’

  ‘Did he?’

  I parked in front of the garage and got out. Towels and sheets were on the clothesline. A line of daffodils decorated the length of the back fence. A kookaburra was sitting in the fig tree, looking at me with its side-on stare. Then something made me alert, a sound. I turned. The breeze caught my hair and it fell across my face. And in that moment of pulling my hair away, a police car quietly slid in behind Charlie’s Merc.

  The uniformed copper didn’t move, but sat there taking his time. His dark tinted sunglasses hid the full view of his face, but I knew he was watching me.

  I went to him. ‘Can I help you?’

  His manner was deliberately unhurried as he got out of the car, wearing his bullying dark uniform. He lowered his meaty hands to his belt buckle and nudged it to the right, then back to where it was. He wasn’t fat so much as heavyset in that beefy, rugby-player way. At a guess he was mid-fifties, with oily brown hair, or it could have been gelled.

  He stood beside Charlie’s car. ‘You driving this?’

  ‘Yes.’

  He leaned down and scratched his fingernail in the tyre tread.

  ‘I thought I’d come say hello to Charlie,’ he said. Then he turned and stared at me, the slow once-over.

  ‘So you know Charlie?’

  ‘Where is he?’

  ‘Inside.’

  He strolled around the car.
r />   ‘Charlie’s had this car a long time. What do you drive?’

  ‘A VW Golf.’

  ‘Colour?’

  ‘Black.’

  ‘Year?’

  ‘2013. Why are you asking?’

  ‘You’re Greer O’Reilly?’

  ‘How’d you know?’

  ‘Seen you. So where’s your car?’

  ‘Panel beater.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Hit a kangaroo.’

  ‘So you’re driving this with no tread on the back tyres. No left side mirror. This car isn’t fit to drive.’

  I smiled, trying to appease. ‘It’s only temporary, a fortnight at the most.’

  ‘You put your kid in a car that shouldn’t be on the road. That’s pretty poor. You’ve been warned. Do not drive this vehicle again. Now where’s Charlie?’

  ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘Sergeant Doug Murray.’

  He opened the back door.

  ‘I’ve got chickens in the backseat. I can’t leave them there.’

  Feeling his eyes on me as he took in the shape of my backside, I leaned in and pulled the boxes out and sat them in the shade beside the porch. But Sophie wanted them in the chook pen. So I turned to the copper.

  ‘Take your time,’ he said.

  At the chook pen, I stooped through the door and stepped in. Sophie pulled the tape off the boxes and the chooks flapped and squawked and ran to the far end of the pen. She wanted to stay, so I left her.

  The copper was reading the Merc’s rego sticker, a pen in his hand. He followed me to the back steps and didn’t wipe his shoes on the mat. His tread was heavy as we crossed the unpolished floor.

  Charlie had started working in his studio in the mornings and resting in the afternoon, so I expected he would be in the lounge or sitting out on the front porch.

  We found him foetally curled and asleep on the couch, and even though it wasn’t cold, he had pulled the throw rug over himself. He was making a throaty sound, slowly gasping for breath. I knew all about that, the minutes I had hovered over him worrying, double checking and waiting, then finally leaving him. But right then, the way he looked in a deep sleep, with his sunken eyes and open mouth, it was a private thing. At his socked feet, Blondie lifted her head in question.

  ‘He’s asleep,’ I shushed, stepping back.

  But the copper’s bulk shoved in front of me, and I caught a whiff of his sweat. He filled the whole space as he leaned down and shook Charlie’s arm.

  ‘Hey, Charlie. It’s me, Dougie.’

  Poor Charlie. He opened his eyes, blinked at the ceiling and his body shuddered with fright. Then he turned to the closest face and cringed back, not recognising it.

  ‘It’s me, Dougie.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Thought I’d stop by and say g’day.’

  ‘How do you know Charlie?’ I asked.

  ‘We go back a long way,’ the copper said. ‘How’re you doing, Charlie?’

  He struggled to sit. We looked on as he went through the motions of legs first, then twisting around and slowly sitting upright. I wasn’t expecting him to be dressed in one of his shoulder-padded suits.

  The copper turned to me and stretched his dry lips into a smile. ‘How about a cuppa?’

  I didn’t want trouble over Charlie’s car, so I turned away as he did that obsessive thing with his belt buckle, hands down, tugging it into position.

  From the kitchen, I heard him questioning Charlie – not the words, only a modulated tone, as if he was trying to cajole and pry. Blondie trotted out and crouched under the kitchen chair.

  Back in the lounge room, I put a tray on the coffee table with three mugs of tea and a few macaroons on a plate. The copper was sitting beside Charlie with his arm along the back of the couch, leaning towards him, trying to make eye contact.

  ‘Do you have milk or sugar?’ I asked.

  ‘Black,’ he said with a go-away flick of his wrist.

  Then he noticed the three mugs.

  ‘Mind if I have a few minutes with Charlie?’

  ‘Is there a problem?’ I said.

  ‘Actually, Doug, I want you to go,’ Charlie said, pushing himself forward, trying to stand. I gripped his arm while he balanced. When he was on his feet, the copper stood up, head and shoulders above us and he felt as wide as the two of us together. I kept my hand on Charlie’s arm.

  ‘Haven’t had my cup of tea yet, Charlie,’ he said.

  ‘Go on, get out of here. I’m not having your talk.’

  ‘What talk?’ I said.

  Charlie spoke into the copper’s face. ‘Doug is an old mate of Warren’s from school. He’s run around this room often enough. So, Doug, this will be the last time you’ll visit. I won’t have you interfering in my business. You know where the door is. Now go on with you.’

  The copper shifted, as if trying to release some pressure in his neck. ‘Fair enough, but I can’t promise I won’t be back.’

  Then he turned to me. ‘Can I have a word?’

  Facing each other in the porch, he said, ‘So what’s all this about?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘This thing with Charlie.’

  ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘I’m just asking a question. What’s your interest in him?’

  ‘It’s none of your business.’

  ‘Is that right?’ He smiled widely, showing small, even teeth. ‘See that car there, Charlie’s old Merc? I remember when he bought it. Don’t reckon it’s had a service in ten or more years. It’s got me thinking. I’m changing my mind. I’m charging you with driving an unroadworthy vehicle. That’s a seven-hundred-dollar fine and three demerit points. And I’m issuing a Defect Notice on it. If this car isn’t made roadworthy within fourteen days, the registration will be cancelled. I’d like to see your driver’s licence, please.’

  I stared into the thick, dark bulk of him, deciding how to report him. Yet the back tyres needed replacing and there wasn’t a left-hand side mirror. So I was in the wrong, but this was punishment for going against Warren and it had just cost me seven hundred dollars.

  My wallet was in my bag in the car. He followed me outside and I gave him my licence. He took his time behind the wheel of his car, noting the rego number, doing something, staring at the dash, perhaps an iPad. I grabbed the straw broom and swept the back steps, trying my best to appear blasé about it all.

  Then Charlie came out. ‘What’s going on here?’

  ‘Nothing,’ I said.

  He carefully lowered himself down the steps.

  ‘What’s he doing?’

  ‘The car’s unroadworthy,’ I said.

  ‘I’m not having this.’

  A few hobbled steps and Charlie hit his fist on the bonnet of the police car.

  Doug Murray opened his door, got out. ‘Hey, Charlie.’

  ‘What are you doing?’ Charlie growled.

  ‘I’m doing my job.’

  ‘Go on. Get out of here.’

  ‘Settle down, I’m heading off. No one’s to drive that car. He turned to me. ‘Miss O’Reilly, you’ll get official notification through the post.’ Then he handed me my licence, neatly between his pointer and middle finger.

  When we heard him cross the cattle grid, Charlie put his arm around me.

  ‘Sorry, love.’

  ‘Why did he have to do that?’

  ‘Some things are unexpected.’

  ‘Was he always a bastard?’

  ‘I wouldn’t have thought so.’

  ‘Why are you all dressed up?’

  ‘Let’s make a fresh cuppa.’

  Waiting for the kettle to boil, I looked through the kitchen window. Enrico was in the orchard, moving along a row, his orange cap like a beacon in a vast sea of green bushes. The problem of not having a car and the creeping debt I was building was now making me sick, a stomach cramp whenever I let myself think about it.

  My clever spreadsheet, with the pages of line items, was not close to
meeting all the expenses. I had not factored in the purchase of digital scales that measured to the exact gram, new picking buckets, or the bee hives that had been positioned around the orchard to guarantee pollination, or the tensiometres to measure soil moisture. The condenser in the cool room had been serviced. And then there was all the money related to the kangaroo – insurance excess and now a fine for driving an unroadworthy car.

  I had applied for a second credit card. Everything hinged on the harvest going well. For the first time since I had moved, I thought about the security of living in Prahran, the simplicity of having a regular income. The traffic along Chapel Street now seemed such a minor hassle.

  I sat opposite Charlie and set the mugs down.

  ‘So, Charlie?’

  He took a mouthful.

  ‘I’m only having the pain medication from now on. I’ve made up my mind. It’s just dragging the inevitable out.’ He looked directly at me, waiting for me to understand. ‘I’ve lived my life. We’ve all got to go sometime. But when things start to go bad, I’ll go to the palliative care place in Shepparton. I want that. They’ll have the drugs and things to knock me out, and if they do their job properly they’ll finish me off sooner than later.’

  I had nothing to say. I supposed I either agreed with him or that it hadn’t sunk in. I was thinking about what was before me, watching Charlie getting smaller and thinner, and I saw him asleep in a chair with a blanket wrapped around him and I wondered how I would know if he was breathing or not. And I remembered the thin contour of Dad in his dying bed, hardly a breath left in him, and then it came, and another, the slight lift of his chest.

  ‘Shane took me to a solicitor today to sign some papers. Then we went to the bank. He’s taken over from Warren.’

  He pushed his hand inside his suit coat, to the inner pocket, and pulled out a neatly folded slip of paper.