Then Chester’s voice is inside the car – the way he drawls his name as though it’s two words: Ches-ter.
Stella is cheerful and talking into the windscreen as if he’s on the bonnet. She smiles at him when she says, ‘What’s with the fire on a day like this? Are you all right?’
‘I’ve cleaned the chimney, checking to see if there’s a blockage. I can tell you’re in the car. Where’re you off to?’
And she tells him she’s taking me to Wangaratta, and he must know I can hear because he says hello to me.
I stare around, unsure where to give my reply.
Stella carries on before I work it out. ‘No pressure on you, Chester, but the play is only three weeks away and there’s work to be done on the sets. Ross says he can try to do it. What do you think?’
I grip the armrest and stare across the valley, down at the row of windswept golden poplars winding beside the creek. An echidna waddles along the side of the road.
Chester is hesitating and I cannot think what his problem is. Most of his farm is agisted, and if he had time for this before Laura died, then surely he has more time now.
‘I’m planning on going to Perth with Laura’s sister and brother-in-law,’ he says. ‘Stay a couple of weeks.’
Chester and Laura used to holiday with Julie and Ian at their place in Cottesloe. Chester is being selfish: Ian sails a forty-two-foot yacht off Fremantle – that’s the attraction, not a need for consolation. Sometimes the visits were reciprocated with Julie and Ian coming to the tableland. I was never told directly, but I believe they all went on daytrips, sometimes to Melbourne. Chester always reported that Julie and Ian were dull. There was the time I was having a quiet lunch by myself at Minnie’s in Benalla, and the four of them walked in and took a table not two metres away. Chester positioned his back to me. I sat there unable to finish my sandwich, while they talked and laughed among themselves. That day Laura wore a very nice fitted tweed jacket in the colours of an olive whistler, and her fair hair was brushed across to the side and behind her ears. For a short time afterwards I experimented with doing my own hair that way, but it didn’t suit me.
Even though I don’t want those distressing memories, I’m struck with renewed resentment that Chester is going to the west, carrying on as if Laura was still alive.
‘I understand,’ Stella says. ‘It’d be good for you to have a break.’
‘But perhaps I’ll hold off until the play is out of the way,’ Chester says.
‘Are you sure? I feel I’m putting pressure on you.’
‘I’d only do it for you, my Stella.’
I know Chester is smiling, flirting and being himself, the foolish old rogue that he is. And Stella is grinning back at him through the windscreen. Her sunglasses are very modern, large like Jackie Kennedy used to wear.
‘So, Chester,’ she says, ‘would you like to come to dinner one night this week to discuss it all? Especially the dimensions of the back shelving. And I’m uncertain about the kitchen layout and how we’ll organise the water.’
We are now on the Hume Freeway; flat monotonous double lanes stretch to the horizon. I rub my finger where my wedding ring once belonged – its absence makes that little part of me feel strange. Something is missing, which reminds me I am alone.
‘How about tomorrow night?’
‘Lovely,’ Stella says.
They agree he will come over around seven and bring a bottle of wine. Then she presses a button on the steering wheel and he’s cut off.
It is thrilling and unbearable to know Chester is coming to dinner. So I decide then that I should return to Bishop Street as soon as possible. For the next twenty kilometres, while Stella swoons at that soulful female singer’s voice, I put myself back in my house. Another winter is coming and how will it be without Dot next door? She used to drive a little silver Honda; that’s how we got around. Now I’ll be housebound. Some of the old folk have gophers, but they look ridiculous whooshing along the footpaths. There is the retirement village, but I am loath to live in a commune of old people, everyone with their aches and pains, knowing each other’s business.
I’m caught up in myself; this long-gone business with Chester is unsettling. The expectation of contact with him brings a baffling sensation of joy and despair that I seem unable to cast off. If I return to Bishop Street, I won’t see him again.
And the children have become an unexpected pleasure. Jemima has been showing me how to press buttons on her iPad so I can look things up. Last week she showed me how to press a blue square called Safari that changes the screen. Then at the top she typed in a question I had about the difference between a female scarlet robin and a female flame robin; I’ve often mixed them up. She told me to lightly touch a button, then the whole screen suddenly changed again and filled with lines of information and photos. I was astonished. She did something to make the scarlet robin start singing. I could hear it. The same for the flame robin. Seeing and hearing them like that, it was so obvious how different they are, yet for years I’d been confusing their calls.
Isobel worries me. She practises on the piano as if she’s got nothing else to do; as if she might be lonely. A pretty girl hiding behind those dark-framed glasses, I suspect she doesn’t have any friends. I do enjoy listening to her, and a couple of times I’ve sat in the front room and watched her hands move across the keyboard. She concentrates very hard and doesn’t seem to mind me being there; I know to remain quiet and not ask questions. It’s not natural for a child to be so driven, and I think Ross and Stella should pay more attention to this obsession she seems to have. At that age, Caroline was outside with her horse, or at a girlfriend’s house – that is, until she became interested in boys. I found a packet of contraceptive pills in her underwear drawer when she was only sixteen.
‘Are you all right?’ Stella says to me.
‘Of course.’
‘You seem upset about something?’
And so I take a deep breath and clasp my hands and do my best to appear myself. I look ahead, not just up the freeway but also into my future, knowing that Stella is about to speak to my surgeon about putting me back in Bishop Street and I have no say in it.
The surgeon is half my age and it is Stella he talks to, not me, as if it was her hip tendons he repaired and joint he replaced.
‘So how’s it going?’ he asks.
‘Not too bad,’ Stella replies. ‘In pain for the first fortnight, three weeks, but in the past week she’s picked up. Do you think, Margie?’
‘I’m doing quite well,’ I say.
He tells me to stand, to stretch my right leg to the side, forwards, backwards, to lift my knee. I don’t know if I’ve passed his test, but he tells me I can sit down.
‘Do you need anything for the pain?’ he asks.
I would like some more blue pills, but I will not ask in front of Stella. Sometimes if I take one in the middle of the night it helps me go back to sleep, but Panadol also helps, so I’m not sure what’s going on. I think it’s all in my imagination, that every pill is a placebo and I should try to do without them.
‘I’m fine,’ I say.
Any moment Stella will ask her question about me returning to Bishop Street. I stare at the green leather inlay on the surgeon’s desk. Alicia still comes to help me shower, but the truth is I can probably manage well enough on my own. It’s the shopping that will be a worry, getting up the street. And the housework and garden. Cooking for myself again will be a pleasure. I feel the shallow rise of my chest, breathing, waiting.
‘When will I bring Margie back?’ Stella asks.
‘Three months,’ he says, telling her that I should continue with the physio for the time being and that exercise in a swimming pool would be a benefit.
She gathers up her bag and stands.
Nothing is said about me going to my house, and I feel indignant because decisions have been made about me and I don’t know what’s going on.
‘But I’m returning to Bishop Street,’ I
say.
They look at me.
‘Do you want to?’ Stella asks. ‘I thought we’d wait a bit, until the play is over.’
I can’t stand it, being at her mercy. One minute I’m going, the next staying. I hear the false conviction in my voice. ‘I would like to return to my home as soon as possible.’
‘It’s just there’s a lot going on right now, Margie. I won’t have time to organise everything. Can’t you wait until the play is over?’
I stand as straight as I can, poised.
The surgeon looks at a pad on his desk.
‘It’s only another three weeks,’ Stella says.
My mouth betrays me with a sudden weakening, the urge to weep. I’m confused. No one wants me.
‘Do I have a choice?’ I say.
‘Margie, stop it.’ I look at her and she’s smiling. ‘Three weeks is nothing.’
She waves at the surgeon and goes to the door.
I follow.
So it is decided, without me answering, that I will be at Maryhill until the play is finished.
As I’m clipping my seatbelt on, Stella turns and says, ‘Hell, Margie, your place is so bloody depressing. It’s not only the play – I just can’t see how I can leave you there.’
I don’t mean to, but I nod.
When we’re on the freeway, with an esky and a boot full of groceries, her chatter roams from one topic to another. One minute she’s telling me Ross is taking Jemima to have her plaster cast removed after school. Then, would I be up to making dessert for when Chester comes to dinner tomorrow night? And can I please proofread the flyer and media release she has written for the play? ‘Any suggestions you’ve got would be great.’
‘Very well,’ I say.
She takes the short cut up through the logging plantations. Since the deluge, the road is rutted and potholed. It’s not worth driving here for the sake of fifteen minutes. I don’t know why she does this. A wallaby lopes across the road in front. A fallen gum tree has been chainsawed and pulled away for clear passage.
She’s thinking about something and I can’t imagine what.
‘This morning when you and Ross were pulling the calf,’ I say, ‘there was a wedge-tailed eagle being chased by two magpies.’
‘Really? Above our heads?’
‘Yes. Then they disappeared over towards Tullys.’
‘That’s awesome.’
As if to prove how special a day can be – I’m not going back to Bishop Street – out in front of us, above the pines in the clear white sky, two wedge-tailed eagles slowly glide on upswept wings, circling, and I can only suppose there’s a rabbit below, a possum, or perhaps an injured kangaroo.
I point them out. Stella stops the car in the middle of the road. We stare up through the windscreen, through the gap of trees, and watch them for minutes until they drift away.
Chapter 27
Stella
AFTER dinner I remind Jemima that her recycled-material guitar is due at school in the morning – as if she doesn’t already know this. I’m sick of the project and tell her the easiest instrument to make would be a handful of rice in a plastic bottle with a lid. Maracas! She whines, telling me this isn’t allowed, that it has to be made of at least five things. I’m sidestepping to the dining room to print the play’s promotional material off when she starts crying.
Ross is reading his iPad. He turns to me deadpan and says, ‘Rock. Paper. Scissors.’
We’ve done this many times, but I’m not in the mood for it. I’m tired and want out. Tonight, though, he’s doing our BAS statement and updating the stock records. So I go along with it. On the count of three – he puts his hand flat as I open my fingers. I win. He loses. That quick. If it was the other way around, I’d insist we do best out of three.
Without complaint, he goes with Jemima to the back porch bench to build a guitar. I hear him say he’s got a length of poly in the shed that will make a good neck and irrigation taps that are the right size for tuning pegs. And Jemima, cunning child, is now quiet and standing back, allowing her father to build the whole damn thing. ‘We need a small box,’ he tells her. ‘That’s your job. Find something for the body and soundboard.’
I push through the swing door with a glass of red wine. It’s cool in the dining room and I think about a jumper, but shrug the feeling off. All the beds now have an extra blanket. Ross and Eddie have been chainsawing and splitting fallen peppermint and blue gum, and some stringybark eucalypts. The woodshed is already half-full, and when it’s full I won’t care about the approaching cold months. In many ways, I prefer those closed-in grey days and icy winds to the relentless dry heat and dust.
I open the I Did My Best Word file and print the flyer, poster and media release for Margie to proofread. I think they’re okay; it’s simply an experiment to see if I can engage her, help her feel connected to our theatre group. That’s what the Robinson Street Theatre was for me when I was a troubled seventeen-year-old: a quiet and simple oasis. Well, it was that before I climbed into Erik Kozlov’s bed and let him do what he wanted. I suppose everyone has things in their life they’re ashamed of. But it’s more about sadness, that I was so vulnerable then. I know what loneliness is.
Mum stares back at me from my laptop screen. She’s the signature image for I Did My Best, an angled sepia photo of her lovely face – head tilted slightly to the right, eyes wide and steady, lips curved, perhaps a smile. She’s on everything. I feel a pull in my heart and a vacancy, the reminder that the writing and producing of this play has gone on for too long. I’m done with it. Other plays are calling me. Ghosts by Henrik Ibsen looks interesting. Alexi Campbell’s Apologia would be brilliant. And I’d like to write another play, something on patriarchies and how a capable, independent girl feels about them.
The printer is on the other side of the dining table. While I wait for it to click to life, I look across at the portraits. The picture frames are all different, each of its generation: walnut fretwork with gold inlay, a fussy pattern in tarnished silver, rosewood with raised leaf clusters, and plain gilded oak. The empty space where Norman once hung throws all the others out of balance. I wonder, then, if it was my right to take him down and hide him away. Perhaps it should have been Margie’s decision about what should be done with him. She might’ve wanted him to hang at Bishop Street. I’d not thought of that.
The printer clunks, paper slides.
Shoulder first, Ross bashes through the swing door.
‘Jesus,’ he says.
My open mouth, a waiting question.
‘Check this out.’ He pushes folded pages into my hand.
‘What?’ I ask.
He whispers, ‘A letter from Mum to Chester.’
‘Chester?’
‘Read it.’
I look sideways at him. ‘Where’d you get it?’
‘A shoebox.’
‘What shoebox?’
‘Jem said she found it in the bottom of Mum’s wardrobe.’
‘Did she ask first?’
He shakes his head.
‘What the hell?’ I say.
‘Just read it.’
Ross has lost his usual calm: he’s wired, his fingers move, a slight quiver around his mouth.
I sit in my tasselled, red-cushioned chair and unfold the letter. Ross leans behind me. Margie’s handwriting is familiar, spidery with loops and long lines. If you could guess someone’s personality by their handwriting, you would expect this writer to be creative, flamboyant. It’s too untidy for Margie.
From the appearance of the paper, the way it’s set out, my impression is that it’s the letter she was working on in the pergola yesterday. It’s wrong for us to be reading it, and I’m scanning, not taking anything in.
‘There,’ Ross says, pointing. ‘Mum and Chester.’
Then I do read.
…you kissed my fingertips. How precious that was.
I feel the distressing weight of Maryhill’s history; in this house, in Margie, her kids – and
the whole business with Chester, only a few kilometres down away on Black Wattle Road. And what was going on there between Chester and Laura? They had a good marriage, so everyone said at her funeral, over and over. Chester was too choked up to properly speak. His face was blotchy from crying.
This news about Margie is unreal, and I feel insecure at the deceit people are capable of, like nothing can truly be known or trusted. That feeling I always had when Dad was still living at home and Graham would visit Mum. ‘Only a good friend,’ she’d say. Then Dad left, and Tommy barricaded himself in his room. I remember one day, close to Mum’s death, watching Graham bend over her bed, his body racked with sadness, and Mum’s hand pulling through his hair. Funny. In all the years I’ve unpeeled Mum’s life for the play, I’d not considered that dimension. Grace as lover.
Well, then. Margie and Chester.
I turn a page.
That time you made me a birthday cake. Lemon icing. Thank you again. It was such fun, wasn’t it?
Ross’s breath is warm and fast on my neck.
Living with a violent man was my terrible misfortune. Now our spouses are both gone…
I lean in closer, as if that will help me read faster, but I’m missing words, worrying that any moment Margie will push through the door and demand to know where her private letter is.
…the idea that after all this time we can become proper friends. It would mean a great deal to me.
‘Shit,’ I say.
After the first page, the letter doesn’t flow: topics shift before one thought is complete. She wants to go on a cruise to England. She thinks Isobel plays the piano too much and has no friends. Words are scribbled out; arrows lead to sentences in the margins.
‘Where’s the shoebox now?’ I ask Ross.
‘Painted purple, with a sound hole in the lid.’
‘I’ll just drop this letter in the back of the wardrobe, like it fell out.’
Stella and Margie Page 20
