by Joy Dettman
‘Turn the gas off,’ someone suggested.
Her husband encouraged to leave the premises, the singed female was back for her chicken. ‘You’ve got a bloody oven in there,’ she said to Cara.
‘As did the lodgers until you blew it up,’ Miss Norris said. She had been trained to raise her voice to obstreperous children. ‘This door will be locked until we find the problem.’
‘Our food is in the fridges,’ someone said.
‘Then I suggest you take what you require before the door is locked.’
‘It will be a gas build-up in the oven,’ Myrtle said. She had her head in the oven, sniffing for a leak. Robert was leaning against a table, watching her, perhaps waiting his turn to put his own head into a gas oven.
‘Find me the right key, Daddy,’ Cara ordered. He looked at the cluster of lodgers, at his daughter, then he did as she instructed.
Bill Bertram and Mr Waters carried the smaller of the two tables out to the laundry. Mrs Collins took her milk and butter upstairs. Miss Robertson asked if she might make a phone call. She made several before locating a hotel with an available twin room. Fifteen minutes later, she and Mrs Collins left in a taxi.
For an hour Cara guarded the kitchen door, informing late arrivals of the gas problem, and offering any resident who chose to permanently vacate the premises a refund of a week’s rent. There were no takers. The position was good, close to train, bus and shops. At nine she increased her offer to a refund of the last fortnight’s rent.
And she got a taker. The male member of the objectionable duo wanted his. Myrtle found the chequebook. They woke Robert to sign one. He didn’t ask why. He signed half-a-dozen then went to bed to sleep while one cheque was exchanged for the key to the storeroom door. Cara saw the duo off the premises. She locked their door and, at ten, locked the private door to Myrtle and Robert’s private quarters then went to her room to sort through the smaller of her two cases, tossing items out, tossing items in. The black high-heeled sandals she’d bought to wear to Gran’s funeral were packed, then her claret dress. She was going to Ballarat.
She’d need to get to a bank as soon as a bank opened. Her signature had been registered up here, at Robert’s old bank. She couldn’t remember how to get there, if she’d ever been there. Knew where the banks were in Melbourne. Robert had paid for her return ticket on the train. Tomorrow, if the railway office was open, she’d see if she could change the return date on the ticket.
A second cheque changed hands at nine the following morning. She got rid of two women from upstairs. Four from nineteen equals fifteen, take away Miss Robertson and Mrs Collins, if temporarily, and that made a near-manageable thirteen.
Myrtle caught her on the telephone at ten, attempting to change the date on her ticket. Couldn’t get a sleeper south.
‘What are you doing, pet?’
‘Going down to spend New Year’s Eve with Cathy.’
‘You just got home!’
Home? She dared call this home? They’d returned to a madhouse. ‘Just for a couple of days, then Cathy will drive me back.’
‘We can’t have her here!’
‘We’ll put one of the old beds back into my –’ And their eyes turned to their private door. Someone out there knocking. ‘Was it always like this, Mummy?’
Myrtle shook her head and walked back to the parlour, to Robert, glued again to his easy chair.
Cara unlocked the door. Only the two-legged cockroach. Hoped he’d come for his refund. He hadn’t. He apologised for disturbing her, but could someone please show him how to work the new washing machine.
Cara walked with him to the laundry where a young married couple were attempting to make breakfast. They gave up and asked if they might please make a long-distance call home. They’d pay for it. Cara led them back to the house, to the telephone, and didn’t make them pay, and at midday, the wife’s parents arrived. The young couple took their refund and went home – the parents didn’t look old enough to have a married daughter, and Cara envied their daughter. Robert had retired from teaching to read a thousand books, to do all of the things he’d never had time to do. Instead he’d become the new Gran Norris, sitting, swallowing pills.
Bill Bertram fixed the upstairs toilet. He unscrewed an external pipe, shoved a long wire up it, down it, and whatever had been causing the blockage decided to move on. He tested the gas oven and pronounced it as safe as a bank. The lodgers’ kitchen door was unlocked and a form of peace settled over Amberley.
Until Cara phoned the bus depot.
‘You’re not still thinking about going, pet?’
‘If I can get a seat I’m going.’
‘Try the airport,’ Robert said. ‘We didn’t buy you a present this year.’
She got an early flight on the morning of 31 December and rode alone to the airport in a taxi.
BALLARAT
Two hours after leaving Sydney, Cara was queuing at her own bank in Melbourne, and twenty minutes later she was on the train to Ballarat.
An old town, rich in its heyday, its station still whispering tales of gold for the taking. Traralgon had been built on brown coal, by brown coal, in a hurry, and therein lay the difference.
Cathy and her little blue box on wheels was waiting for her, Cathy full of Gerry, Cara full of her first flight, of Amberley’s manager and the nineteen lodgers.
‘That red MG is Gerry’s . . .’
‘One crazy dame blew up the gas oven on Christmas Day . . .’
‘He’s had it since ’56 . . .’
‘Someone blocked up the upstairs loo . . .’
‘He took me for a couple of rides in it when I was a kid . . .’
They had the house to themselves until Gwen and Len Bryant came home from work. A different life, Cathy’s, a different world. She had a home, had a modern bathroom, a separate shower room next door. Amberley bathrooms had been built before showers were thought of, the showers later installed over aged bathtubs. Cathy’s bath was a shiny white, her shower room was white-tiled. So much light in her house, so much noise, good noise – a television set, a classy radiogram, hundreds of records and a telephone that rang every five minutes.
‘Grab it, will you.’
Cara grabbed it. Only Gwen Bryant reminding Cathy to put a casserole into the oven or there’d be no dinner tonight.
It rang twice more, one call from a Meg, a girl Cathy had started school with, one from her grandmother, who lived less than a block away, who was making her a black dress to wear to the dance tonight and she still had to put up the hem.
No sign of Gerry, or not until a little red sports car pulled out of the drive across the road.
‘That’s him,’ Cathy said. Cara sighted the backs of two heads, one blond, one dark.
They put the casserole in then drove half a block to her gran’s house where a hem was pinned while Cathy stood on the kitchen table, then they peeled potatoes and got the washing off the line while Gran stitched the hem.
*
Eight-thirty when they left for the dance, a pair of claret baubles pinching Cara’s lobes. She hadn’t argued about wearing them, hadn’t argued about the eye shadow, the eyeliner, guaranteed not to run.
‘They’ll swarm you,’ Cathy said. ‘Just keep your eyes off Gerry.’
‘Obsessions are dangerous, Cath.’
‘Love isn’t,’ Cathy said, expertly slipped her blue box into a narrow parking space, not much of it to slip but Cara envied her skill anyway, envied her gran, her house, her parents – and her trust in mankind when she placed her car keys into her purse then left the purse on the cloakroom bench.
‘Someone will steal it!’
‘I always leave it there – anyway, Jeff, the mechanic from Dad’s place, fitted a switch under the dash that cuts off the power to the ignition or something,’ Cathy said, leading the way into the hall.
‘Who died, Cath?’ a male greeted her.
‘My love for you,’ Cathy said, smoothing the narrow black skirt a fractio
n lower. ‘Cara, meet Frank. One of my exes.’
He wanted to dance with Cathy. She told him she’d promised the first dance to Gerry. Cara danced with him and he asked her why Cathy was wearing black. He worked at a bank, seemed nice enough. She’d danced with a less memorable partner before Cathy gave up waiting for Gerry, who must have had a better offer for New Year’s Eve. He wasn’t in the hall.
Eleven o’clock and he still hadn’t arrived, they were dancing – Cara with a long lean bloke who had a style midway between marionette and whirling dervish. If she expected him to step back, he stepped forward; if she expected him to whirl to the right, he went left; if she took evasive action, he took the same action. She dodged left, he kicked her exposed toe; she took evasive action, one of her too-high heels slid, and when she attempted to dance on, the heel wobbled.
‘The classic country dance,’ he said. ‘Five-piece band up one end, the males at the other, cliques sitting in their reserved corners as if their cultural rankings were engraved there.’
And he had a Pommy accent. Was he the fabulous-looking friend of fabulous Gerry, the one she was supposed to keep occupied while Cathy set her trip wires? He couldn’t be. He had a huge pus-topped pimple on his jaw.
‘Have you booked the last dance?’ he said.
‘Yes,’ she lied. In Ballarat, booking the last dance meant you were agreeing to allow the dance partner to walk or drive you home.
She glanced at his face, attempting to see some reason why Cathy might think he was good-looking. He was as pale as washed suet, except for his pimple, a red and yellow blot on washed suet. Not enough sun in Pommy-land? He was well dressed, had hands as soft as a baby’s backside. Had no sense of rhythm.
No sign of Cathy’s black. She’d pinned her hopes on tonight. Wondered if fabulous Gerry was amongst the dancers, if he looked like washed-out suet after two years in Pommy-land. Her mind far away, her partner swung her into an uncoordinated series of back steps, and the wobbly heel wobbled – which might teach her not to buy shoes from bargain tables but probably wouldn’t. The earrings pinching her lobes had come from Coles.
‘An aging flock of ewes waiting in the stockyards for a purchaser,’ her pale partner said as they gyrated by a row of wallflowers. Amused by his description, his cheeks stretched in a smile, and Cara dodged, expecting pus to fly, then she left him stranded in front of his wallflowers and escaped to the cloakroom where she hitched her stockings up and her skirt down.
Loved that dress, had at first sight, but could have done with a size larger. It clung to her hips and was too short, according to Myrtle, and like the college head, she believed that only scarlet women wore red. Cara was combing her hair when the dance ended and a horde of girls came in to queue for the toilets. Cathy wasn’t with them. Probably out in her car having a breakdown, Cara thought.
Outside the hall two dozen males congregated, leaning against walls, on cars, in groups or alone. Four dozen eyes turned to stare at the red dress or what was beneath it. Cara changed her mind about finding Cathy and returned to the hall where an aging Elvis claimed her. She’d danced with him earlier. He knew how to dance.
Then midway through the bracket the music stopped and one of the band members called a progressive barn dance. If there was a dance Cara loathed, it was the progressive barn dance, where the females were passed from hand to hand like the collection plate in church.
Dancers were forming a circle when Cara caught a flash of black. Cathy was dancing. She kept her eye on her until the first partner change, then made a beeline across the dance floor, creating confusion, but the little bloke Cathy had been dancing with claimed her and she danced on.
Danced with a dozen pairs of hands. Interesting things, hands. They told the age of their owners, and sometimes their occupations. She began picking her partner’s occupations by his hands, sorting the farmers’ sons from the bank clerks, the mechanics from the shop boys. Ian, a sandy-headed kid she knew from college, greeted her like an old friend.
He was midway through a story when she swung away from him and into a pair of chubby hands attached to an overweight fifty year old who stunk of nicotine. His hands went for the bare flesh of her back, then held her against him in a gorilla embrace. She danced with a pair of lily whites she pegged as belonging to an undertaker’s son, who passed her to a pair clean enough to belong to a bank clerk, large enough to be a farmer’s – and he knew her name.
‘You look bored out of your brain, Norris,’ he said.
She looked him in the eye, aware she was supposed to know him. Cathy had introduced her to a dozen groups tonight, and two dozen more last Christmas. She couldn’t place him, and at the partner change he danced her out to the centre of the floor instead of on to the next pair of hands, then tried to do the same at the next swap. She sidestepped him, her heel wobbled, and for the second time she almost lost her footing.
‘Born with two left feet?’ he said.
‘My heel is loose. I need to sit down.’
‘It’s socially unacceptable to leave your partner stranded in the middle of the dance floor.’
‘It’s also socially unacceptable not to change partners in the progressive barn dance,’ she said and left him stranded.
Cathy joined her in the cloakroom. ‘Did Morrie introduce himself? You danced with him.’
‘I just danced with every sweaty coot in the hall, and how dare you bring me all the way down here to entertain that pus-faced Pom?’ Cara said, pulling the earring clips from her lobes and reaching for Cathy’s purse to drop them into.
‘They’re all pus-faced to you,’ Cathy said. ‘What did you think of Gerry? You danced with him too.’
‘I need some fresh air,’ she said and walked outside again.
Cooler air out there, air laced with the scent of tobacco smoke, and she wished she had a smoke. The one thing her parents and Cathy’s had in common was their aversion to cigarettes. She was looking across the road to Cathy’s little blue box, dreaming of owning her own, when a kid who might have been sixteen approached her, his packet of smokes open.
‘They’ll ruin your lungs,’ the schoolmistress said, accepting one anyway, and a light. And Cathy came out and caught her.
‘I’ll dob to your mother, Stevie.’
‘I’m old enough,’ he said, but whether he was or not, Cara lost her companion. She didn’t waste her smoke, smoked it down to the butt, then pitched it into a trough-sized ashtray.
‘What did you think of him?’ Cathy asked.
‘Give him a year or two –’
‘Gerry. I was dancing with him when they called the barn dance. He danced with you after me.’
Cara couldn’t remember who she’d danced with. ‘My heel is wobbling, my middle toe is broken and I’m ready to go home.’
‘I would have gone ten minutes ago, but he had to put in an appearance at the Hill-Jones party – and he’s going back there after the dance. So are we.’
‘You weren’t invited.’
‘Was so, except Mum and Dad were going out there so I came here.’
The band was playing; Cathy went back to the hall and Cara returned to the cloakroom to remove her stockings. Her toenail had cut its way through one and she could feel a ladder crawling up her shin. They were throwaway items now, bought in packets of three from Coles. She tossed them into a bin then went back to the hall, wanting to be there when they welcomed in 1965. She’d be employed, and the first thing she’d buy with her own money was driving lessons.
Found a seat amid the wallflowers. Pus-face eyed her as he danced by. The wet behind the ears kid raised the nerve to come inside and find her.
‘How about it?’ he said.
‘My heel is loose.’ She demonstrated its wobble. He ogled the bare leg it was attached to, then asked the next wallflower. She danced with him.
The drum roll, the deafening communal countdown to midnight, the bunches of balloons festooning the hall, popping, whistles blowing as the sweating men on stage put eve
rything they had into the last dance. The saxophonist, a master of his tool, had it weeping for the wallflowers who waited or quietly wandered out to the cloakroom. The trombone came in, deriding the youths who had stood outside for most of the evening. She was tapping her foot to the rhythm when the last bloke from the progressive barn dance approached her. She beat him to the punch, lifted her foot and wobbled her heel.
‘Good dancers dance on their toes,’ he said, and not too unwillingly she got to her feet. It was a quickstep. She loved the quickstep.
‘You can dance, Norris.’
‘I had lessons in Sale,’ she said.
‘On a boat.’
‘Sale, the town,’ she said. And the band started playing ‘Goodnight Sweetheart’.
The cloakroom was packed solid, but Cathy had found an edge of mirror where she freshened her lipstick for the party.
‘Drop me back at the house, Cath.’
‘Stop being a party pooper. It will be fun. The last time they threw a party we came home at dawn.’
‘I was up early.’
‘I told Gerry we were going.’
‘I’m not going. You go.’
‘I’m not walking in by myself. Come for half an hour and if you’re not enjoying yourself I’ll drive you home.’
They left the hall with a crowd and were crossing the road when Cathy deviated and walked across to her neighbour’s red sports car. Up close, its hood folded down, it looked like a toy. A blond-headed bloke was behind the wheel, Cara’s last partner was stepping over the passenger door.
‘Cara is being a party pooper,’ Cathy told them.
‘My heel is hanging on by a thread!’
They worked it out, or Cathy did. Morrie didn’t know anyone and he’d done enough celebrating. Cathy would drive Gerry out to the party and Morrie could drive Cara home.
‘I learned early not to argue with her,’ Gerry said to his mate, and he got out of the car and handed his keys to Morrie. Cara shrugged and got into the passenger seat, to do what she’d been brought here to do, to keep Gerry’s mate occupied.
Glanced at Cathy and Gerry, standing side by side. They could have been brother and sister with their blond curls. Gerry, barely of average height, in Cara’s view, was a long way from fabulous. The two stood together until the motor roared, until Morrie backed out to the road, found a forward gear and roared away.
