Tumbledown Manor

by Helen Brown

  Nothing. She coughed. The pine trees shooshed. A breeze set a shirt moving on the clothesline. Its sleeves seemed to be warding her off.

  ‘Oh well,’ Lisa said loudly enough to be heard through the door. ‘I’ll just leave this here.’ She lowered the cake onto the concrete step. As she hurried back up the driveway, she could swear she was being watched.

  She arrived back at Trumperton feeling spooked. An urge to get away overcame her. She climbed into Dino and drove into town. She needed to go to the supermarket, anyway.

  As she was wheeling her trolley down the aisle, ahead of her, a couple in their mid-fifties bickered. ‘When I said corn I meant fresh corn, not this frozen muck!’ the woman snarled.

  The man scurried back to the freezer like an obliging retriever.

  It made her think: had Jake done her a favour? Maybe people weren’t designed to stay married for a lifetime.

  She turned into the pet-food aisle. Supreme Imperial Kitty Treats were on special. She turned a can of Tuna & Prawn in her hand. It looked appetising enough to spread on crackers and serve to her non-existent friends. But the manufacturer was ahead of her—‘Not for Human Consumption’. She placed it back on the shelf.

  Although her relationship with Skinnymeals was officially over, thanks to the new oven, she tossed one last Boeuf Wellington de Luxe into the trolley just in case, followed by toilet paper, protein bars (she’d half-hoped they hadn’t made it to Australia), biscuits, eggs and special treats to hide from herself when she got home. As she was about to head for the checkout, something drew her back to the pet-food aisle. A can of Supreme Imperial Kitty Treats tumbled into her trolley. She added three more.

  After she’d loaded the supermarket bags into the back of Dino, she wandered over to Togs for a latte.

  There she noticed a new addition to the community noticeboard. The Women’s Monthly Book Club was looking for new members. While a few people had started recognising her and saying hello, she was a long way from being embedded. Perhaps joining the local book club would help. She tapped the number into her phone contact list.

  On the drive home, she felt the magnetic pull of the garden centre. Hundreds of plants would be needed to make any impact on the front paddock. Still, there was no harm looking . . .

  A pretty woman, probably in her early thirties, with a crest of purple hair and a nose stud, was aiming a hose at a forest of camellias. ‘Can I help you?’ the woman asked.

  Lisa noticed the woman’s alabaster skin and eyes the colour of Sri Lankan sapphires. ‘Just looking.’

  ‘You’re new to the district, aren’t you?’ the woman said, lowering her hose and offering a hand. ‘I’m Juliet Fry. Sing out if you need me.’

  Lisa thanked her and wandered down an aisle of gardenias. But any attempt to create the English garden that Trumperton’s first owners longed for would be futile. So Lisa made a beeline for the Drought Resistant section, where coppery succulents spilled out of their tubs, and green rosettes tipped with purple clustered alongside vivid yellow fingers. The colours were astonishing.

  ‘Wait till you see them in flower.’ The voice emanated from a giant cactus.

  Lisa peered around the spikes.

  Teeth white as pumice glowed back at her. ‘I wouldn’t shop here,’ Scott said. ‘Not at these prices. I buy wholesale.’

  ‘So what are you doing here?’

  ‘Keeping an eye on trends,’ he said. ‘Not that Juliet’s going to set the world on fire with these things.’ He stepped through a cluster of tiny imitation Swiss chalets with perches for front doors. ‘These’d look good at your place,’ he said, lifting a pot of fleshy leaves, each ending in a point. ‘Agaves do well here. They’re from Mexico.’ He turned the plant in his large bronze hands.

  ‘Is it a cactus?’ she asked.

  ‘More of an aloe. No prickles. Good for the grandchil . . .’

  Lisa wondered why Scott’s mouth wasn’t stretched from the number of times he’d put his boot in it. He was too tanned for her to tell if he was blushing.

  ‘Oh, don’t worry,’ she sighed. ‘Gay people can have kids these days.’

  His eyes crinkled into a smile. ‘I’ve been thinking about that front paddock of yours. You could do great things with mass planting.’

  ‘It would have to be low-maintenance. I don’t want to spend the next twenty years chained to a lawnmower.’

  ‘Goes without saying.’ He scratched his chin. ‘We could bring in some boulders to give it structure, then create avenues of native trees and grasses. Have you got a pen?’

  Lisa fumbled in her handbag, but it was a writer’s curse to never have a pen.

  Scott loped over to the woman watering the camellias and returned beaming. ‘Paper?’

  She handed him the supermarket receipt.

  ‘Anything bigger?’

  She dug out a fresh tissue.

  ‘Here’s the house,’ he said, drawing a line at the edge of the tissue. We’d arrange the boulders around the edge of the property like this. The effect would be informal, very Australian. We’d hang onto most of the trees and natives to keep the local wildlife happy—clumps of kangaroo paw here along this path . . .’ He etched a line curved from the front of the house to form a rough circle inside the ring of boulders. ‘Every garden needs a secret,’ he said, drawing a branch off the main path into the top right-hand corner. ‘From the house and the road, it would look like just a clump of trees. But if you were in the garden, this little path would curve off here, into the bush, see? It would draw you in. You’d turn this corner and find—I dunno . . . an outdoor spa tucked away under a pergola.’

  The man was a genius.

  ‘You mean pergola,’ Lisa said.

  ‘That’s what I said.’

  ‘No, you didn’t. You said. Pergola. You’re confusing it with pagoda, which is pronounced the way you were saying pergola.’

  ‘What are you, a school teacher?’

  ‘Sorry, no. I write books.’

  ‘Like Dan Brown?’

  ‘Not exactly.’

  Their conversation had meandered off on a side path of its own, not nearly as magical as the one he’d just described.

  ‘And the paths? What are they made of?’ she asked, trying to claw back his vision.

  ‘Just gravel with weed mats underneath.’

  Whatever controlled her body heat had lost its switch-off mechanism.

  ‘Good time of year for planting,’ he added offhandedly.

  Lisa shook herself into reality. ‘Yes, but the cost.’

  ‘No pressure,’ he said, squinting into the sun. ‘I could leave equipment in your stables and do it in stages, if you like.’

  ‘Which reminds me. You didn’t leave an invoice.’

  He blinked. ‘For the other day?’ he said after a pause. ‘Just think of it as a welcome present.’

  She thanked him. Her temperature was starting to return to normal. ‘Your ideas are great,’ she said.

  ‘Yeah, I like cactus plants the way I like women,’ he grinned. ‘Prickly on the outside, but squishy on the inside.’ He nudged his boot against a fountain into which a concrete cherub was peeing. ‘Have you heard about the fundraiser at the town hall next Saturday? It’s for spinal injuries . . .’

  A charity event. Turning it down would risk being ostracised.

  ‘Want to come along and meet some locals?’

  ‘I’d love to,’ Lisa lied. ‘Is it a trivia night?’

  ‘Bush dance.’

  Oh god. Happy couples, drunken strangers, some weird form of dancing. ‘You mean line dancing?’

  ‘Easier than that. There’s a caller who tells you what to do. Everyone muddles through.’

  Lisa cast around desperately for an excuse. Oven cleaning? Too soon. Besides, her new stove had some kind of self-cleaning thingie. Work? Only a tragic would slave over a computer on a Saturday night.

  ‘No need to be shy. I’ll pick you up. Say around seven?’

  ‘What should I
wear?’

  ‘Something comfortable.’

  Gripping the steering wheel on her way home, Lisa’s head spun with visions of the paddock transformed into a blaze of colour. She imagined following the secret path to a pool shimmering under a pergola dripping with grapes. Her conscious mind wanted it to stop there, but the reptilian quarter went into overdrive. It envisaged a semi-naked Scott rising from the water and shaking his torso in the sunshine.

  As she turned into her driveway, she laughed at her stupidity. Still, it was good to know her hormones hadn’t shrivelled up completely. The other business was altogether more worrying. Had he tricked her into what could be a date? Surely not. She was at least five years his senior. He was just offering country hospitality.

  She parked Dino outside the stables, and spotted a familiar shape on the doorstep. With his back to her, the cat was bent in concentration, his tail pointed skyward. She prayed he hadn’t brought another rat.

  She opened the driver’s door and called gently.

  He swivelled and stared unblinkingly at her through the eye. Then he tensed and raised his front paw, preparing to make a run.

  ‘It’s okay, puss.’ She stood still while the cat assessed her sincerity.

  She needed a friend. So, from the look of it, did he.

  The cat put his head down and reverted to his previous task of licking the icing heart off the carrot cake. Someone had returned it and left it on her back doorstep without even a note.

  Chapter 19

  Lisa wriggled her toes inside her ugg boots. She squared her shoulders in front of the computer screen. It was about time Emily Brontë got down and dirty with Frederick the stablehand.

  Writing about squelching, writhing bodies used to be pleasurable, if not—as some critics had pointed out—her forte. Lately, it had become a chore. She could barely remember the mechanics of it, let alone the out-of-body highs she used to experience when she was younger. Every time she tried to conjure up a sexy man he ended up wearing enormous work boots and a goofy smile. Readers had also become hardened, lately. Even literary writers were churning out porn to give their sales a boost. Depravities that were barely legal were now in demand. She’d heard throttling was in vogue.

  The computer screen fixed her with its empty eye.

  ‘Anal?’ she typed tentatively.

  ‘Not disturbing you, are we?’ Ron said, peering over her shoulder.

  He’d been startling her in all sorts of places since he’d bought a pair of trainers. She quickly typed a ‘C’ in front of the ‘A’.

  ‘We thought we’d start in here today,’ he said, lowering a paint tin onto the floor. ‘Are you sure you want Racing Green?’

  Ken swung into the room and with matador flair flourished a paint-speckled dustsheet. Doug appeared with a stepladder. Next to it he placed a ghetto-blaster permanently tuned into a talkback station favoured by racist homophobes who believed in alien abductions.

  ‘What? Oh yes.’

  ‘The colour’s a bit dark, if you ask me,’ Ron grumbled. ‘Turn that thing down, Ken. She’s writing about boating in Europe.’

  Lisa made her excuses and moved her laptop downstairs to the kitchen table. She usually needed chocolate for sex scenes. Protein bars didn’t cut it. Black and Green’s white chocolate was good for extra marital affairs; 80 per cent cocoa for enduring passion. Warm feet were also essential, hence the ugg boots. Happily, they doubled as insulation against the bluestone floor.

  She opened her laptop and glanced over her shoulder.

  Frederick thrust her against the hay bales . . .

  Emily was about to get spikes of straw digging into her backside.

  Lisa stood up and opened the back door. A shaft of sunlight stretched suggestively across the floor. She stirred two heaped teaspoons of instant coffee into a mug and waited for the caffeine kick.

  Her knot of hair unravelled against the straw . . .

  She scanned her abdomen for erotic sensation. The only identifiable pressure was from her bladder. Lisa wasn’t up to it. Glancing over her shoulder to ensure Ron was safely upstairs, she googled ‘How to Write a Sex Scene’. A tidal wave of advice poured onto her screen.

  Never use the word ‘penis’. Lisa agreed it was an ugly noun. She ran through some alternatives—cock, dick, manhood, prick, schlong. Penis didn’t seem so bad in comparison.

  She flicked to Portia’s Facebook page. There were three new photos—two of Portia laughing maniacally with two young men, the veins in her neck standing out. The third photo was of a meringue cake drowning in berries and cream. Portia had typed ‘Yum!’ for a caption. As if the child would allow that number of calories anywhere near her lips.

  Sighing, Lisa returned to ‘How to Write a Sex Scene’. Attention to detail is essential. Let the reader know if buttons and/or zips are involved. Frederick probably had buttons.

  Make sure the man removes his socks.

  Good point.

  Don’t forget contraception. Maybe Frederick could be expert at coitus interruptus.

  A battalion of black ants marched in single file across the floor towards the pantry. Lisa gnawed her thumbnail and checked her emails. There were two new messages. One was from a reader in Germany who wanted to know her shoe size. He claimed the sensuality of the female foot, the toes in particular, was overlooked by the mass media. A woman’s foot was nothing to be ashamed of, especially when the toenails were painted bright red.

  Frederick, a foot fetishist? It would solve the contraception problem.

  The second email was from Vanessa, asking if the manuscript was on track for delivery the following month.

  Lisa drew a breath and settled her mouth in a line. September had come around too fast. She flicked back to ‘How to Write a Sex Scene’.

  Couples seldom climax simultaneously in real life. Decide who’s going to come first and why.

  Frederick would be first over the finishing line because he was so masculine and physical. But that would leave Emily stranded. Lisa decided to make him a kind of tantric master. Sighing, she willed sentences to straggle across the screen. She could feel his throbbing member . . . How could she sink to such a creaky cliche? The folds of her brain pleated in on themselves as she hammered the delete button. There was no option but to raid her Liqueur Chocolate stash.

  She went to the pantry and stood on tiptoe. As she ran her hand along the top shelf, she could hear her laptop making underwater noises—the unmistakable sound of a Skype request.

  Jake’s face flickered into view.

  ‘Where are you?’ she asked, fingering a brandy cream.

  ‘Bangkok Airport.’

  ‘Has Belle finished the retreat?’

  ‘Tomorrow.’

  Jake ran a hand through his blue-black hair. If Belle felt an ounce of kindness towards him she’d explain how older skin requires softer tones.

  ‘I’ve been thinking about Ted,’ he said, clearing his throat. ‘It can’t be easy for him.’

  Lisa slid the brandy cream between her lips while pretending to wipe her mouth thoughtfully.

  ‘And you’re right about love. It’s not easy to find.’

  Was this a coded message? She let the brandy cream slide to the back of her mouth. ‘How’s Belle?’ Why did she always ask that, when all she really wanted was for Belle to climb onto the roof of a Thai temple and impale herself on the spiky bit?

  ‘She wants to go to Provence as well as Tahiti next year to keep up her French.’

  ‘Magnifique,’ she said, swallowing the chocolate.

  ‘How are you?’ he asked.

  ‘Fine. Just fine.’

  ‘Still wearing those ugg boots?’

  ‘They weren’t mine. They were Maxine’s. I bought a new pair.’

  ‘Are you wearing them now?’

  She glanced down at her feet.

  ‘Let me see.’

  ‘No, Jake.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous.’ Giggling, she lifted the
laptop and pointed it at her boots.

  ‘They’re kind of sexy.’ Clearly Jake wanted to eat his cake and have yesterday’s bagel as well.

  She placed the laptop firmly back on the table.

  ‘I miss you,’ he said.

  He was toying with her. In truth she missed him, too. Not the cheating, lying Jake but the Jake who’d hire a horse and buggy in Central Park just for the hell of it, the Jake who tap-danced down Broadway after they’d been to a revival of Singin’ in the Rain.

  Fall was her favourite time in New York. Central Park would be draped in curtains of red and gold right now. It wouldn’t be long till the Thanksgiving Parade and the first snowfall. A dull pain nestled in her rib cage. Did she belong nowhere?

  ‘Remember that time we took Ted to the movies and there was that terrible stink? We thought the kid next to us had farted. Then Ted turned to me, looking angelic, and said: ‘Dad, I just breathed through my bottom.’

  ‘What about the time we took Portia to the child psychologist because we were having trouble potty training her?’ Lisa said. ‘He asked her why she refused to give up nappies and she said because they were advertised on TV.’

  They smiled fondly, not at each other but into the pool of memories they shared.

  ‘Twenty-five years is nothing to sneeze at, Lisa.’

  But Lisa no longer trusted nostalgia and the way it wrapped the past up in gift boxes festooned with paper flowers. As she grappled for a reply, a shape appeared on the doorstep. It threw a monstrous shadow across the floor.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ asked Jake.

  ‘Oh nothing. Just a cat that’s been hanging around.’

  ‘New friend?’

  ‘More of a frenemy.’

  Her visitor sailed lightly over the threshold. Crouching close to the ground, he glowered up at her, every muscle tensed to turn and run. He was waiting for her to shoo him out.

  ‘Are you hungry?’ she asked gently.

  ‘Nah, I had a good meal on the plane . . . but I could do with a snack,’ Jake said, warming to her maternal tone.

  ‘I was talking to the cat.’

  ‘Oh.’

  The feline cruised the perimeter of the kitchen like a shark.