by Phyllis King
‘Orright! Let’s just leave him there. What’ll happen now with no body?’
‘I might be able still to get his pension?’ Iris mused, until she saw the look on my face. ‘No; I’ll report an accident. Don’t worry, Beryl; of course there’ll be talk.’
I dare say stories ran like wildfire around the community, of us old-timers at any rate. But I didn’t hear it. I don’t get about much and have my few groceries delivered up to my old miner’s cottage. I managed to shove some wall flowers and daisies up by the mine shaft, and repair the cover; but I couldn’t do any more for Gordie, it’s been that hard a winter and cold and wet.
In a way, it was nice knowing that he felt he could come home, and that now he was not too far away. I can see the shaft from my kitchen window and can chat to him when I’m doing the dishes. Iris had more time to visit me too and that was nice, though, like I said, she gets a bit domineering at times.
I got a shock one day when there was a knock at the door. Iris hasn’t bothered to knock since my husband died and the last of the kids left home. With my troubles, she says, I wouldn’t be doing anything she couldn’t see.
It wasn’t Iris, as it happened. It was Gwen Tregowan standing on the front doorstep. I hadn’t set eyes on her for years.
‘I heard about the mine shaft.’ She was dead-white and out of breath.
‘Oh, yeah?’ I eyed her off.
‘I was wonderin’ if it could take another?’
‘What!’
‘I’m in a terrible lot of pain, Beryl. The doctor says I haven’t got long; but I don’t want to hang about. I’m a burden to myself and a drag on me daughter. I want to chuck meself down your shaft; but I thought it only right I ask you first. You know I was always sweet on Gordie, before Iris got him.’
‘No; there’s no room down there, Gwennie. We can’t go filling it up with all the sick people around town. The authorities would start to suspect. Anyway, it’s a grave for me brother, sort of like the US Arizona.’
‘What the hell are you talkin’ about Arizona for? I haven’t come up here to watch bloody Rawhide. I don’t care what the authorities think. I want to take my life back. Have you ever stopped to think, Beryl, that one of the very few things in this life that a person can rightly call their own is their death. The authorities are takin’ it away from us with all these rotten ways of keepin’ us old sick ones alive. I can guess what Gordie did, and I respect him for it.’
‘You better come in, Gwen.’
Over many cups of tea Gwen told me her various troubles. She had a bad heart, couldn’t hardly breathe, had no energy, got dizzy, had very bad pain at times, and a different tablet for all of them.
‘They say if you take too many pills you feel crook, so they give me another one to stop me feeling crook, and then I feel worse. Fair dinkum; I’ve had enough, Beryl. I tried to stockpile Valium to go out easy that way; but they got wise to me.’
‘What do you want me to do?’
‘That rhubarb you got growing around the old mine shaft?’
‘Yeah; I sometimes still cook up a little tart or a pie. Not too often these days. You gotta be careful. Even them stalks have absorbed a bit of the metal workings, I reckon. I got sick one time. I mostly just let it run wild since then.’
‘You gotta whole hillside of it. Can I have some?’
‘I told you; it could have metal in it. You could get…oh, Gwen!’
‘I don’t want the stalks. I want some leaves.’
‘They’ll kill you dead for sure, with your heart. Besides, they’d taste awful. How’re you gunna get them down?’
‘A nice sweet crumble. I’ve always liked fresh rhubarb. No-one’d know.’
‘There’s plenty of rhubarb growing around town.’
‘Not like yours, from up around the metal workings. Make a sure thing of it.’
S’elp me; she wouldn’t let me go until I give her a big bag full of rhubarb leaves. Then she wafted down the path. There was so little left of her I wasn’t sure she’d make it back to her house. Half hoped she wouldn’t, poor old thing. But she did get back to her slab cottage, and then she must have made herself a big rhubarb crumble, and sat there and ate the whole dish with a bottle of sweet sherry to help it down. The combination alone would be enough to kill you, even if she hadn’t made the crumble out of the rhubarb leaves.
Next day she was found dead. Not a skerrick of rhubarb in sight, just the empty dish with bits of burnt sugar stickin’ to it. So, she was good about it, like she’d promised. No-one could trace it back to me.
Iris came up a few days later.
‘Gwen Trethowan died of heart failure,’ she announced, with her eyes boring into me like they did.
So did I, nearly, the way she said it. There was something in her tone.
‘Been eatin’ rhubarb, poor old thing. I found a ruddy great leaf in her waste bin when I went around to pay my respects. Wonder if she got muddled and put them in her crumble?
‘Mum used to say rhubarb poisoning was like heavy metal poisoning: nausea and pain, and it can stop your heart stone dead if it’s weak like Gwen’s was. Lotta people got it here in them early mining days when food was scarce and they were all livin’ on top of the diggings. Died of it too, the young and the old, especially. Just look at your spread of it up there!’
‘What of it?’
‘’Nothin’. Except I found a Target bag in Gwen’s waste too that looked like she’d used it to carry them home in. Same as what I got that cardigan for you in.’
‘Target bags are like bottoms: everyone’s got them.’
‘Not one with a dated receipt in it for your cardigan.’
I slumped at the table. ‘Yeah, well; she practically begged me for some.’
‘Damn good idea. Wish I’d thought of it meself. But why did the poor thing have to come all the way up here and beg? We should be doin’ this as a community service.
‘Since Gordie died, I’ve had that many come and ask me how they can go without a big hoo-hah or bringin’ disgrace and expense on their families. They come to me, one by one, often at the dead of night, pleadin’. It’s humiliatin’ for them. They don’t want to leave their homes. They don’t want to go into the hospice, or have any of that carry-on.’
‘Old Joe Wilson’s just gone in.’
‘He wanted to,’ said Iris shortly. ‘That’s okay. I’m talking about the others.’
‘What exactly are you talking about, Iris?’
‘A community service, like I told you. Cook’em up something, and send’em off happy. Betcha we don’t get no complaints.’ She looked triumphant.
‘We’d never get away with it.’
‘Sure we will. I’ve got it all worked out. You do the cookin’, because people know you’re good at it. Say you’re startin’ up your business again; but on a small scale from home now, because you can no longer run a shop. I’ll handle the orders.’
‘Won’t people suspect when every one of our customers dies?’
‘I thought of that. I got the idea from that drug-running pizza parlour that got slammed in Ballarat. Sometimes it pays to get the local rag. See, not all the pies will pack a ta-ta dose. We’ll have a code. You want a rhubarb pie, you get a rhubarb pie. Want a good-bye pie you put in a special order: for a rhubarb pie plus extras. Only we won’t be like them drug peddlers: we won’t charge for the extras.’
‘You mean the leaves?’
‘You got it! Leave with leaves.’
Sisters-in-law can be the very devil, and sarcastic into the bargain.
‘And what will you do?’
‘I told you, I take the orders and make sure they don’t get mixed up. I’ll also go around and clean up the dishes afterwards, so the powers-that-be don’t catch on.’
‘They will in time.’
‘Yeah; but what’s that to you, Bez?’ Her blue eyes sized me up carefully.
So, Iris and I started our little take-away business specialising in rhubarb pies, crumbles, tar
ts, and a couple of other items. I had always been known as a good cook. We asked that customers provided their own dishes. That way, Iris could whip in and clean up the ones that had been used for ‘special orders’ when their owners no longer needed them, and there wouldn’t be a dish that didn’t belong in the house to start with.
We did what we could for the poor old souls we had grown up with. If we didn’t love them all, then at least we could like ‘em, respect ‘em, and most of all, understand ‘em. Among those in the know, ‘Beryl’s Takeaway’ got to be called the ‘Do-away Café.’ Iris was tickled to death when she heard it.
Of course, the doctors and district nurses finally got suspicious.
Iris left last week to go and live at her youngest sister’s place in Queensland. She offered to take me with her; but I can’t abide her sister, and never have. Besides, it’s too late for me to relocate.
I just went up the hill to chat to Gordie.
‘I’ve done all I can here about dementia and cancer,’ I told him. ‘But I still don’t know what to do about chlamydia, Gord. It’ll just have to keep running wild down by the RSL!’
Silly bugger, he was. What laughs we’ve had; what good times.
I picked some rhubarb on the way back and made a pie. It’ll do for me supper.
No point tryin’ to buck it when it’s bucket time.
<
Undeceive
Eveylyn Tsitas
Bad news
The kid is sick. Vomit.
Splashes, droplets on my office clothes.
‘It’s okay, darling, mummy’s home’
Burning skin, the red face.
Feel so guilty.
But carefully spread my stilettos away
from the falling puke
Must get him into the bath,
change into track pants.
Phone rings, I ignore it.
But my husband runs in -
‘Answer this!’
I shake my head - ‘tell them to call back’.
Juggle plastic bucket,
cheerful red among the ruins.
‘No!’ he thrusts the receiver into my hand.
It is my mother.
Too preoccupied, I do not catch the sob.
Then silence.
A small voice.
‘I have some bad news’ she says.
All Alone
My sister. Charlotte.
A fragile bird on a broken branch.
We waited for this day
since the voices called.
She was full of promise - university, arts degree.
The doctors gave it a diagnosis.
Tablets, shock therapy.
Finally
we gathered her around,
safe, like a toddler in a playpen.
But she left.
‘I need to live alone’, she said.
And we grew old in her wandering.
Stories half written, books half read, she fled.
‘They found her -’
My mother says.
The sounds in the bathroom swirl and cascade.
I am in a vortex of the fear
we would never name.
And all I can think of is that I haven’t seen her in a week.
‘Where?’ I ask.
‘On her bed.’
Three days dead
Three days it took
to find her body.
Charlotte worked in an opportunity shop
down by the beach.
They rely on her to cost the books.
Sort the Joan Collins from the Peter Carey.
Realise the worth
of first edition Len Deighton
from the Reader’s Digest collected edition.
On Monday morning
she didn’t turn up.
Dot went with Maurice.
Charlotte’s address carefully written
on the back of an envelope.
Lead pencil, copperplate.
Charlotte’s doors were locked.
Blinds down. Papers on the doorstep.
The cat hungrily weaving through their ankles.
Did they notice then the padlocks?
The foil covering the gaps between the curtains?
Tape around the windows?
The police wouldn’t break in until they pleaded.
A fragile bird on a broken branch.
Everyone expected the worst.
Kavanagh Street
I drove to Kavanagh Street,
Mum next to me
‘It must be a mistake,’ she says
‘How do they know it’s her?’
We didn’t say what each was thinking.
Strangers found our Charlotte
in the early morning.
The police had knocked on Mum’s door.
It took 36 hours to track her down.
Charlotte was good at hiding her traces.
We didn’t know where she lived.
But Dot and Maurice did.
Before the city fully wakes,
we are far too awake.
I help mum from the car.
This part of Southbank is one I never wanted to see.
Forensic pathology.
Coronial services.
Identify the body.
‘It can’t be her; she’s gone to Byron Bay again,’
Mum says. The building is warm and quiet.
People are kind and warm.
But we must go to a cold room.
‘She would have let one of those strays in her home, she
always did,’
Says Mum. I agree.
My Other Half
Charlotte.
It is you.
Lying still.
As if sleep sat too deeply.
There is only the slightest mark on your unlined face.
A bruise perhaps.
Or is that your brush with death?
‘That’s my daughter,’ Mum says.
It’s a small voice and she has shrunk.
In five minutes age snatched away the grip she had,
pushed her body into the ground.
She’s now bent double and wheezing,
an old woman.
I look for the small mole on Charlotte’s earlobe.
She hated it.
Couldn’t get her ears pierced properly.
It is there.
She is there.
Cold on the table.
My sister.
A crowded mind.
This ghost who now
inhabits my other half
The Photo
The policeman wants to know
‘Was she married? A boyfriend?’
A laugh escapes me.
No one would ride the rocking horse of her mind.
Highs to fast, lows scrapping through broken glass, drugs,
despair.
‘She was alone.’
He shook his head. ‘There was a photo -’
He gives it to me.
‘She was holding it when she died.’
I look at the face.
A bit like George Clooney. Strong, handsome,
square jaw and good teeth. Intelligent. Well dressed.
‘I have no idea who it is,’ I say
He tells me he checked the inside of the frame.
On the back the photo reads ‘Matthew’.
It is in my sister’s handwriting...
Who is Matthew?
Full Body Scan
The officials have told Mum
a full body scan will rule out
need for police investigation.
She signs a form.
Machines will tell us
where life went.
And why.
I want to know
did she make this trip down the River Styx alone?
Or was she helped?
Charlotte’s House
We don’t go home.
We g
o to Charlotte’s house.
A place we have never been.
A drive across town.
‘She always liked the beach’ Mum says.
How can one city be so many different fragmented pieces?
It’s a long way from Camberwell.
Rosebud, retirement homes, holiday houses
and welfare mums.
Low rent peninsula, seagulls and fish and chips.
And discount $2 shops.
‘She was a private person’ says Mum.
The doors are padlocked.
Windows taped.
It is her keep.
We look for clues.
Books, neatly stacked, fill the space.
The smell of time and careless neglect hangs
off the mildewed pages
But the choices are bold, eccentric.
The shards of a mind that could glow
when the pills wore off.
Michael Ondaatje, A.S Byatt, Kevin Rabalais, Amanda Lowrey
Tama Janowitz, a slender book of poems by Miles Gibson,
The collected works of Zoe Fairbairns.
The copy of In the Cut I gave her
after we went to see Meg Ryan in Susanna Moore’s book.
