Stella and Margie

by Glenna Thomson

  My play is beside her, and a pen and ruled pad. At first I think she’s taking this very seriously, writing notes about what she’s reading. But it looks more like a letter: there’s a salutation at the top; whole lines have been filled with her spidery cursive lettering. There’s scribbling out and tiny words in the margins. For fear of waking her, I don’t step forward to see who she’s writing to; perhaps Caroline or some relative she still keeps in touch with.

  I leave and make tea for us, and when I return she’s awake, staring across the garden. I follow her gaze and see three red-breasted robins in a row on the fence. The lipstick she’s wearing isn’t as bright as the birds, but even so I must get her a lighter one. She turns to me and doesn’t smile – Margie rarely smiles, but I know she’s not unhappy I’m there. She takes the tea from me and blows into it, checking the heat. There’s something going on with her, more than just the clothes. She’s less sullen and more alert. The pad is now facedown, and I’m curious about who the letter is addressed to.

  ‘Where are you up to?’ I say, pointing to the play.

  ‘Everyone is worried that the pizzas haven’t arrived. The son has opened another beer and is in trouble.’

  ‘Act One, Scene Eight,’ I say.

  I sit so we can face each other, and I ask her what she thinks of Grace.

  ‘She’s distracted with a magazine and doesn’t listen to what she is being told. She’s quite frustrating.’

  I nod, pleased. ‘And are you enjoying it?’

  ‘It’s all right.’

  I wonder if Margie just doesn’t know how to make conversation, or is it that she can’t give in to me for some reason?

  ‘Is Chester coming tonight? To the theatre group?’ she asks, like she’s accusing me of something.

  ‘I don’t know. Why?’

  She seems to want to say something else, the way she’s shifting in her seat.

  ‘I’ll phone him now and find out,’ I say.

  And my thumbs are in Contacts and I’ve pressed his number before I notice her hand is to her neck, and she’s shaking her head.

  He doesn’t answer. But I leave a message, saying I’d love to see him tonight. ‘But of course I understand if you can’t make it.’

  Margie is gripping the mug with both hands, leaning forward as if she’s cold.

  ‘Are you coming to the meeting yourself?’ I ask her.

  ‘Perhaps,’ she says.

  ‘I’d love it if you would. Given you’re reading the script.’

  She shrugs lightly and tries to smile, a closed-mouth effort. And, as I turn, I hear her softly say, ‘Thanks for the tea.’

  We eat an early dinner of reheated lasagne so I can get organised for the theatre group. Ross takes the girls up to Tullys to see if a cow has accepted her twins and to give Isobel some more practice behind the wheel of the ute.

  At seven-thirty Felicity arrives with a bottle of prosecco; ‘to celebrate,’ she says. And Noah walks in with Amber, and they’re standing close in a way that makes me wonder. Holly enters with her arms wide and does a little dance. Owen is himself, shy and self-conscious; he only ever seems relaxed when he’s performing. The backstage helpers stride in, Mandy and Justine. We open the bubbles and I cut slices of a flour-less chocolate cake I made with figs, a shot of brandy and espresso.

  We clink glasses and hug, Owen too, and I think we all want to be here. The group is working.

  The swing door opens. Margie steps through without her walker, standing straighter; the new bra gives her a good shape. She’s changed, now wearing her navy dress with pantyhose, and the brown flats and lovely earrings I’ve not noticed before.

  She glances around the room and towards the back as if looking for someone, and I know it’s Chester she wants to see. She’s wearing the dress and walking freely to impress him. Perhaps I’m wrong.

  I introduce her as our new member, and because the prosecco is finished I rush to the fridge for a bottle of Lilly’s Lane sparkling. She takes a glass from me, but even with all the cheer and warmth around her, she only nods, with a thin-lipped smile, and takes a seat. She refuses a slice of cake.

  Margie stares as we cluster together and sing Madonna’s ‘Give It 2 Me’. Owen’s got the best singing voice and carries us. He wants our next production to be a musical, but I only do drama. We always sing together to get our lungs open and minds focused. We shake our arms, twist, stretch and bend our bodies. We know the routine.

  Only then do we read through the first act; the lines are paced well, the beat is right. Noah’s more confident on the violin. Amber’s lines are great.

  Felicity stumbles over saying ‘fucking bullshit’ and asks if it can be changed to something more family-friendly. I hesitate because I understand where she’s coming from; but the answer is no, and I explain that we have to be true to the character. So she says it with exaggerated fury and we all laugh. Margie is stone-faced but continues to read along.

  Holly gives us an update on the poster and tells us she’s got another story in the local paper. Amber is going to update the Facebook page every day. Already we have more than eight hundred followers.

  We decide to meet again on Sunday for a full run-through.

  ‘How’s Chester going?’ Felicity asks. ‘Is he working on the sets?’

  ‘He’s started on them,’ I say. ‘And if he can’t keep working on it, Ross said he’d finish them, but he’s not very handy with a circular saw.’

  Margie stands while I’m passing around the budget updates: printing, ticketing, hall hire, canteen supplies, miscellaneous. She bows her head and, almost in a whisper, says goodnight and leaves quietly. We all watch the swing door noiselessly flap. Something is wrong, but I can’t leave the group to go to her.

  Chapter 24

  Margie

  BACK in my room I sit at the small table. I like the feel of this navy dress, so rather than take it off and put on my nightie, I leave it on. And the pantyhose holds me in firmly so I can pretend I’m in better shape around my middle. It’s nice to remember how my body once was.

  I turn the lamp on. The letter I’m composing to Chester is before me. My handwriting has been inelegant since my Grade One schoolteacher forced me to write with my right hand, though I was born left-handed. Over the years my script has become delicate long lines and small curves, like the footprints of a silvereye. I’ve noticed Isobel is left-handed and has been allowed to write her natural way.

  I’ve been drafting this letter in my mind for a few days, ever since I heard of Laura’s passing. An envelope arriving in Chester’s letterbox from me will no longer present a difficulty for him. The communication between us was always one-sided, from him to me when he dropped an envelope into our letterbox. I suppose I’m reaching out to him, wanting to reconnect for no other reason than perhaps we can discover a proper friendship. I would like that very much.

  Chester’s face is before me, as though I’m talking to him. I read the words that I’ve already written on the lined pad and see I’ve been free in my disclosures, saying things that are too private and after all these years are best forgotten. I’ve scrawled out words and made a mess of the page, so I’ll have to rewrite it. Perhaps I won’t send it at all.

  Since returning to Maryhill, Chester, I’ve been thinking about many things. How I suffered with Norman. The loss of our beautiful boys. My happiest memories are with you…

  I hear the caw of a raven. The mournful sound comes through the open window and makes me sit back. It’s only a bird; even so, I feel unnerved. I pick up the pen, turn to a fresh page and, in my blue-inked clawed handwriting, I write the first thing that comes to mind.

  I was hoping you’d be at the theatre group meeting tonight. Stella’s play is quite interesting. It makes me think of my own children. Ross had it the hardest…

  Aah-aah-aah. The raven is in the gleditsia outside the window. Mark’s tree. I can’t see it in the mass of leafy green fronds. A blowie darts around the lamplight and across the table
. I slap at it, but miss. I wish for a cup of tea, but I won’t go down the hallway now. I persist with the letter.

  Today, I saw an advert for a cruise in the RACV magazine. I’ve always wanted to go to England.

  Even as I write this, I know I’ll never go anywhere on a ship. But I visualise Chester with me on a big liner, the two of us sailing away. In the early days of our long affair, he said he’d like to kidnap me, that we’d drive off together, never to return to the tableland. But we couldn’t leave our children, our reputations. Maybe we were cowards.

  Of course, I’m a stupid, senile woman. These thoughts. It’s just that now, after all this time, we are both free.

  The idea of rewriting the letter and giving it to Chester excites me, but I’m unsure. So I fold it and tuck it away in the shoebox in my wardrobe. Then comes the worry of it being discovered, so I look around for another hiding place. Stella is in and out of my drawers with the laundry. Perhaps under the mattress? Or should I tear it into little pieces? But, in the end, I leave it where it is, and go to bed.

  Chapter 25

  Stella

  EVERYTHING on my phone is telling me Ross wants me. The radiate ringtone, his name on the screen and his photo: grinning at me across the table in the beer garden at our local, with that relaxed expression, the light in his eyes.

  I ignore it.

  Pressing my lips together, I’m not convinced that the old trick of blotting my painted lips on a tissue and reapplying the lipstick to make it last longer works. Leaning closer to the mirror, I paint on another coat. Joli Rouge.

  Ross phones again. He really wants me. There’s a predictable pattern to these things: most often I’m needed minutes before I’m about to walk out the door, showered, dressed, lipsticked, focused. Today I’m taking Margie to see her surgeon.

  I answer.

  ‘Bringing a calving heifer to the yards,’ he says.

  ‘What’s wrong with her?’

  ‘She’s stopped trying. I tried Eddie – he’s not answering.’

  ‘Smart bloke.’

  I’m already reordering the morning. ‘There in ten,’ I say.

  In the ensuite I change out of my linen pants and t-shirt, then pull yesterday’s work clothes from the laundry basket. I tie my hair up, out of the way.

  Margie is sitting at the family-room table, waiting for me, inscrutable.

  ‘Want to come?’ I ask. ‘We’re pulling a calf.’

  ‘What about my appointment?’

  ‘We’ll see how we go.’

  She stands, and I’m now moving fast.

  ‘Meet you at the shed,’ I say.

  The calf puller is leaning beside a pallet stacked with bags of annual rye grass seed. It’s a boat winch bolted onto a heavy iron plank. I heave it onto the tray of the ute. A litre bottle of vegetable oil. Nylon straps with metal hoops. It’s been a while since we did this so I stand and think, What else? Gloves.

  I’ve got the ute up to sixty before we turn to the yards, dust flying. Margie is stiff, holding the armrest.

  ‘Have you ever pulled a calf, Margie?’

  ‘That was men’s work. Keith Sanders took care of things like that.’

  It reminds me of Norman, that he always had someone else do all the work.

  At the yards I position the ute so Margie can watch without getting out.

  The heifer is caught in the head bail, standing calmly. A broken amniotic sac, pink and grapefruit-sized, bulges from under her tail.

  Ross is all business, securing the winch in the race, loosening the strap and pulling it forward. Then he rolls up his sleeves and I wet his hands with oil. I lift the heifer’s shitty tail. We’re like doctor and nurse.

  As Ross pushes his right hand and forearm into the cow’s vagina, he tells me he doesn’t know how long she’s been calving. ‘Might’ve started anytime overnight. Touch and go.’ He’s feeling for the head, front hooves, checking everything is in the right place.

  ‘What?’ I ask.

  ‘Seems all right.’

  Ross nods and I hand him a strap. He pushes his hand and arm back inside the poor young cow – strains, grits his teeth, neck tight, turns his wrist, and he’s got the hoof forward and with his left hand tightens the strap above the hock. Same for the second hoof. But the first strap loosens and drops to the ground.

  ‘Shit,’ Ross says.

  My fault; I should’ve held it tight. We start again. I’m holding the cow’s tail up as he reattaches the first strap, then the second. He fastens the winch hook to the straps, and I move back into the race and look up, waiting to be told to start winding. The calf’s black front legs are partly out, two pearly hooves pointing straight, straps taut on the winch line.

  ‘Go for it,’ Ross says.

  I wind, easily at first, but the tension builds fast. I know Ross is keeping the angle of the winch line downward, controlling how the calf will fall. The heifer, birthing her first calf, stands compliant, silent. I’ve got no clue what it’s like for her. The calf needs to be born. I glance up and see the front legs and calf’s nose, a long pink tongue. I keep winding.

  ‘Head’s out.’

  It’s much harder for the shoulders. Ross yells for me to hurry up.

  ‘Fuck off,’ I shout back, breathless. I’m going as hard and fast as I can. We’ve talked about swapping places because he’s stronger, but I don’t like being so close to the action in case the cow drops to the ground or kicks, or the calf doesn’t present quite the way we expect.

  Both hands now, another turn, another, another. I’m heaving for breath.

  And then there’s lightness. The easy flop of the winch handle. The calf slithers from its mother’s warm insides. Head, shoulders, hips, it crashes to the ground. Steam rises from its wet, warm body. Mouth open and nostrils flared, taking in first air.

  ‘Alive,’ Ross calls, already pulling the straps off its hooves.

  He drags the calf close to the head bail. It’s all big bones and slimy hair, long in the body and hollowed out – too big for its mother to push out. Seconds old, and the calf is already raising its head off the ground. I lift its tail: a boy. Good. They’re worth more at market because they weigh more.

  We step out of the pen. Ross opens the head bail. The new mum comes out, sniffing. And there, after four steps, she puts her head down, makes that lowing sound and lovingly breathes in and licks her baby, glancing at us with a warning in her eye to now leave her be.

  I lift my face. Ross kisses me lightly on my Joli Rouge lips.

  ‘Back at lunch,’ I say.

  A heavy watery gush. We turn. The placenta has come away. On the ground behind the heifer is a mass: glistening pink membranes, cotyledons, bloody fluid. She temporarily diverts her attention from the calf and starts eating.

  At the ute I pull the bloody and shitty gloves off and toss them in the tray. Margie watches my every move.

  Behind the wheel, I turn to her. ‘Don’t worry. A quick shower. We’ll make it.’

  Chapter 26

  Margie

  ABOVE the cattle yards a wedge-tailed eagle is being chased by two magpies. The eagle’s wingbeats are slow, making it vulner able to attack. I’ve never seen anything like it. Perhaps it is injured, and I wish for my notebook so I can record this remarkable thing. The pursuit carries on while Ross and Stella winch a calf from an exhausted cow. The eagle is immature, less than five years old – I know this because the back of its neck and wings are pale gold. And, not for the first time, I admire magpies for their courage and community; presumably they are protecting their territory.

  It is only when I hear Stella’s foul mouth, yelling the four-letter word at Ross, that I turn to them. The calf drops to the ground. It looks alive, so this will be worth being late for my visit to the surgeon.

  Out across the lower paddock and a copse of eucalypts, I look for the magpies and eagle. They’ve gone now, over the rise towards Tullys, and I feel a terrible sadness for the plight of the eagle, yet uplifted that I saw such
an extraordinary and rare thing. I remember seeing three magpies chase a fox across a paddock once, swooping low and determined.

  Ross and Stella kiss on the lips, so I don’t understand what her vulgar language was all about. Then she’s back in the ute, driving up the laneway like a crazy person. We bump and sway and any moment we’ll crash into the fence. I’m holding the armrest for dear life. She thinks we’ll be on time for my appointment, yet she’s going to have a shower.

  We pass Chester’s place on Black Wattle Road. The tinge of red on the row of lilly pillies is berries. Crimson rosellas are feeding on them; a cuckoo-shrike dives in. My mother used to make a very nice lilly-pilly berry chutney.

  Smoke is coming from Chester’s chimney, which surprises me because it’s not cold enough yet for a fire. We pass Hoskins Lane. For ten years I manoeuvred the car between those weathered pine posts and past the rusted gate Chester had left open for me, always expectant and elated to be meeting my lover at his work shed, our private world – and I see how it was all those long years ago when I drove down there like a brazen fugitive daring anyone to catch me. And on the way out, I’d often be weeping with the misery of not knowing when I’d see him again. I wonder about that younger me and feel deep sadness for her. It would’ve been wonderful to have lived a life knowing that kind of happiness as a standard way of being, like Laura did, like most people seem to. Like Ross and Stella do.

  The letter I wrote yesterday is safely hidden in the shoebox in the bottom of my wardrobe. I wonder what Chester’s reaction would be if I dared to rewrite it neatly and post it to him. But these are dangerous thoughts connected to long-gone fantasies. The past cannot be resurrected and brought into the future, not after all these years. Writing the letter was cathartic and I’ll destroy it first thing.

  Stella is pressing buttons on the steering wheel. Then the car is filled with the sound of her phone ringing, and not for the first time I’m in awe that it works when the phone itself is actually in her large handbag. No one is going to answer and I wonder how she will hang up.