Jacaranda Blue
Page 9
He always went to church too, and she always went to church – always and forever and he was always and forever in that same seat. His wink made her feel better – even if he shouldn’t have done it – and then it was time to sing the solo, she sang it very well, because it was about Jesus’s pain, and she looked at the glass window while she sang and she pretended she was singing it to him. She knew all the words – she knew all the words of all the hymns, because the singing was the best part about going to church, except Doctor Parsons. He was the extra best part.
She had to sit beside precious Angel. She didn’t like sitting there, because sometimes, if her smile just got a bit tired, or if it slipped into a yawn, precious Angel squeezed her hand, or pinched her leg, and her father without even stopping his sermon said things like, ‘We give our smiles to God and our yawns to the pillow, Daughter.’
This morning she didn’t let her smile slip, because she didn’t want Angel to squeeze her hand.
After church was the very extra best time, because sometimes Doctor Parsons came for dinner after church, and he stayed all afternoon and played chess with Daddy, and he talked to Stella, and sometimes he let her show him her garden, and sometimes he sat on the lawn with her and let her tell him all the stories about how she got the flowers, and he let her show him the birds’ nests that were in Mr Wilson’s forest of trees on the other side of the fence.
One day Stella planned to fly away with the birds . . . to climb the very tallest tree in Mr Wilson’s yard, and flap her arms and fly away – to somewhere.
‘The sermon, Daughter. Time is wasting.’
‘I’m sorry. I . . . I was miles away, Father.’
She took time with her dress that morning, and though her hair still hung long, she turned it under, subduing it with pins. It looked different but almost modern. She needed colour. Her complexion was naturally fair, but today it looked like marbled clay. She needed a touch of lipstick, or a blusher like Bonny used, but it had been years since she’d bothered with make-up. She searched her dressing-table, found some flesh-tone zinc cream, and applied some to the scratch beneath her ear. It stained her collar, drawing attention to the scratch. She changed her blouse, turned the collar up at the back, then searched her wardrobe until she found a small hat. It was the colour she had called burnt orange at eighteen. Just a scrap of a thing, it looked well enough with her tan and grey check skirt, but ridiculous with the green scarf. She found a pink thing, then a scrap of blue.
‘Daughter. We are going to be late.’
‘Coming.’ She snatched up a string of large amber beads. The telephone rang as she walked downstairs, fastening the necklace.
‘Get that damnable thing, while I get the car out,’ the minister called. ‘Don’t become involved. We are late enough already.’
Stella approached the phone as if it were capable of biting her. She snatched it, held it far from her ear.
‘That you, Stella? I need more stuffing for my peanut pillows. Can you bring some to the church?’ It was Mrs Carter, the church guild, peanut-pillow queen. The shed was already storing garbage bags full of these little travellers pillows that hadn’t sold at the last fete. And still that woman made more. Stella did not reply.
‘Did you hear me Stella? I need more stuffing. Ronald Spencer said he delivered two bales to you yesterday afternoon.’
‘I . . . ’
‘You are on your way to church and so am I, so if you can bring me up a couple of supermarket bags full then you’ll save me coming around there this afternoon. I’ve got my granddaughters up for the weekend. They’re going to stuff peanuts for me.’
A long silence followed. Stella was picturing the shed and the contents of the shed. She didn’t want to go inside it. Bonny’s pots too. She promised Bonny some pots.
‘Well, can you or can’t you bring it with you to church?’
‘The shed is locked.’ She was unaccustomed to lying – and what a stupid lie. The shed was never locked. Keys hung undisturbed on rusting hooks. This was Maidenville, where country habits had not changed in decades, where violence and robberies were still city problems. But Maidenville was changing. Maidenville had spawned its own rapist, and Stella Templeton had told her first lie.
‘Well, can’t you unlock it? I don’t have a church-supplied, airconditioned car, like some.’
Stella took a deep breath, she held it, held her words.
‘Are you there? Are you there, Stella? Stella?’
‘I’m sorry. It’s a bad line. Call me back.’ She placed the phone down and ran.
‘Who was it, Daughter?’ her father called as she flung the front gates wide.
‘A bad connection.’ Lies are like rabbits, they multiply, Stella thought.
Martin drove as he had at twenty, but in that era, his had been one of the few cars on the road. He diverted, without signalling his intent, and he pulled into a no-standing zone to reach out and post his letter. Then he made a screaming U-turn, barely missing a lad on a cycle as he roared away to Hospital Street.
Miss Moreland was waiting at the kerb, dressed this morning in a skirt of black and white hounds-tooth, a short red jacket, and white silk blouse. Stella vacated her front seat, admiring her old friend’s new outfit that made her own more drab.
‘What a beautiful blouse. You look stunning as usual, Miss Moreland,’ she said.
‘I’d like to return the compliment, girl, but in truth you don’t look much better than you did yesterday. What is ailing you? What’s ailing her, Martin?’
‘I’m fine. Perfectly well, Miss Moreland. Perhaps the humid weather has an effect on my complexion.’
‘You can fool some of the people some of the time, girl, but you never could fool me. You look like you’ve been to hell and only come halfway back.’
Martin left them to it as he drove the near straight line down to where Main Street intersected with Church Street, aptly named. The two main churches had been erected on opposite sides of the street. The Catholic’s steeple was two metres taller than the Anglican. Their stained-glass windows were larger too, and more ornate, and the Catholic pews of English oak were polished by more behinds than the Anglicans. But too long banned from breeding, priests were a dying race. Maidenville’s Catholics had no priest in residence, tall steeple or no tall steeple. They made do with spiritual leaders, married men, who could perform neither marriages, baptisms nor burials. They imported their priests from Dorby. Not so the Anglicans. For over sixty years, Martin Templeton had been marrying, baptising and burying his congregation.
He parked the car in front of the new church hall, in the shade of a tall gum. He pulled on the handbrake, then noticed his passenger staring at the previously dull mission-brown door. His eyes followed her gaze.
STELLA WEARS FRILLY NICKERS had been painted there by someone adept with a yellow spray pack.
‘My God,’ he said. ‘What young scoundrel is responsible for that?’
Stella leaned forward, peering between the two heads in the front seat. A cold hand grasped her throat as her heart turned to ice in her chest. Would it never end? Would he not let it end?
They turned to her, spoke together.
‘I’ll take you home, Daughter. No-one has seen you. I’ll explain that you are unwell.’
‘Ignore it,’ Miss Moreland commanded. ‘Ignore it I say, girl.’ Swinging the car door wide, Miss Moreland placed her shoes purposely on the ground, effectively breaking Martin’s escape.
‘Stella is the one we must think of in this instance. We will deliver her home.’
‘Run from some young scallywag? It’s probably the same one who’s been making those nuisance calls. He’s looking for a cheap thrill, and if he sees you scuttling for home, then he’ll get his cheap thrill and he’ll do it again. Come along, girl.’
Cold. Stomach. Limbs. Scalp. Cold. Stone cold. Stella made no reply. Let them decide between them. I no longer care. Let someone else argue the matter for me, decide the matter for me, she thought, he
r eyes focused on the mission-brown door with its message. He would never let it end. He would paint his signs and hound her, drive her from the church, and from the street, and from the town. Or make her a prisoner in her house, locked away . . . locked away from . . . from what?
From a life I have never had. Haven’t I always been locked away by decisions made for me by others? By mother . . . and then by him.
She looked at the minister’s heavy face, now turned to her. His mouth was moving, creating words that could not penetrate the ice of mind. The motor still running, his foot tap-tapping, the accelerator was growing heavy with his own desire to escape. He needed escape.
But what about me? What about me, she thought? What do I need?
I have no needs. I am a cardboard character, placed in fiction to fill any given function. I remain faceless, only given name so I may be quickly identified, then dismissed.
Stella wears her mother’s clothes.
Stella satisfies a youthful greed.
Stella moves to her father’s will.
Stella is forty-four, or sixty-four.
It is unimportant. Stella serves.
Nurse needed to care for the invalid. Male lead wishes to escape from the responsibilities of his wife. Give the part to the Stella character. Female lead not cut out for motherhood. Let Stella look after the boy. She’ll handle it. Dress her in background beige. Free them to play their more important roles, to continue the plot without complication.
And if the Stella character becomes a complication, then write her out. No-one will miss her. Let her smash the car up on the highway, or just lock her up at home, safe behind the cypress hedge – as precious Angel was locked safe behind the hedge when she became a complication.
Stop this. Stop it now.
Why should you stop? Don’t stop. Look at her. Look at precious Angel, recognise his lie.
Ugly Angel. Too sick to sing the solo any more. But never sick enough. Not until the day she died. Until the day Doctor Parsons came with his bag, and his smile, and his baggy shorts, and pronounced her dead.
That wonderful day. Think of that day of rejoicing. That day, when the Stella character wrote her own brief lines. Stella character dancing a crazy dance, barefoot in the garden, wearing a garland of salmon rosebuds in her hair, and when the minister came searching for her, and found her barefoot, bare legged in the garden, she hid her smiling face from him and she handed him the garland, and he had named it a fine wreath.
Martin’s voice rose above the hum of the motor. Had a minute passed or an hour? How long? Stella looked at the back of his head, then at Miss Moreland’s moving mouth, and she strove to force the faces into focus.
‘Will you be cowered by some vicious child? I think not. On your feet before anyone sees you trembling in there like a mouse in its hole. Move your feet, my girl.’
Stella’s hands still gripped the front seat. Her feet refused to respond to the order.
Miss Moreland opened the back door and took Stella’s arm. ‘Out of there. I gave you credit for a bit of guts.’
‘One of the young hooligans from your youth group, perhaps, Daughter. Have you given any . . . cause to . . . ?’
The abused fictional character found her voice and it was high in its own defence. ‘Father?’ Tears rose with it – tears still too close to the surface; she would break down soon, and then it would all end.
Fictional character screams rape in churchyard, and is carried off to a psychiatric ward.
‘Be off with you and your damn fool questions, Martin Templeton. Take yourself into your church. We won’t be far behind you.’ Miss Moreland slammed the front passenger door with a vicious swing – enough to make the car and Martin shudder.
Another vehicle pulled into the shade beside them. Martin nodded to the driver, then turned to take one last look at the sign. He flinched, turned off the motor and climbed from the car, closing his own door with a gentle click. His back to the church hall door, he said, ‘Perhaps if we march in together, show a united front, Daughter.’
‘United front? Against some little scoundrel who needs his bum paddled?’ The old lady nodded towards the church. ‘Off you go. Stella and I will speak a moment, as we usually do, then we will mingle a while. Buzz off Martin Templeton.’
He locked his door, checked the rear passenger side door. ‘Don’t forget to lock up, Daughter,’ he said.
‘No, Father.’ The character had learned her few lines well.
As the minister walked across the yard towards his church, Stella climbed from the car. Two more cars had pulled in. The Scotts, Steve Smith and his mother. Steve with his still long blond hair tied back with a rubber band. All eyes were on the sign.
‘You’ve been chosen this week, girl. If you can ignore his game, let the cheeky little beggar see you laughing about it, then he may move on to someone else.’
It was the obvious explanation. No-one knew of the rape. This was just the work of any one of a dozen youths with a spray can. Why was she cowering here from a popular game? Hadn’t the supermarket windows been sprayed over on New Year’s Eve? Stupid woman.
She stood, her legs barely capable of supporting her. She breathed deeply, making much ado about collecting her handbag. No-one knew. No-one would ever know – unless she told them. And she would never tell them, except by her behaviour. Her life had been one of control. Angel’s control. Her father’s control. She had learned mind control, she could and did choose a face to fit the situation. Her back to the sign on the church hall door, she sucked in a deep breath.
‘Good morning, Miss Moreland, morning Stella,’ familiar voices greeted the duo.
Stella turned to a speaker, and with lifted chin, forced her facial muscles into a smile. ‘Good morning, Mr Scott. It appears that we have a new sign-writer in our midst. We’ve just been admiring his handiwork,’ she said, then at Miss Moreland’s side she walked to the church door, nodding to family groups, stopping to chat a while with the elderly, taking the arm of near blind Mr Bryant, and guiding him to his seat. She nodded to Ron Spencer, already seated at the organ, but she didn’t meet his eye, then she took her place with the choir, between Mrs Morris and Miss Moreland.
‘Did you see it?’ Mrs Morris’s beetle eyes were seeking prey.
‘We certainly did, Mildred Morris. As did the entire congregation. Someone with a penchant for clotheslines. It wasn’t you, was it? As I recall, your spelling was always creative. Knickers with a K, Mildred.’
Mrs Morris peered closely at her neighbour. Her eyes, darting, fleet things, searching for a weak spot, an entrance to the new victim’s juices. ‘Do you?’ she said.
Stella turned to her in amazement. ‘Do I what, Mrs Morris?’
‘Gord love me. That came out all wrong, didn’t it, dear? What I meant to say was, would they have seen . . . you know? I mean, your smalls. Lace?’
‘I don’t hang my underwear on the cypress hedge, Mrs Morris, nor do I hide it in my wardrobe. Perhaps you should join our new sign-writer at the clothesline one Monday. Some time after ten-thirty. I usually have the underwear out by then. Shall I expect you for morning tea?’
Miss Moreland let loose one of her frequent belly-laughs. It brought the wrath of Willy Macy down on her.
‘Knickers to you, you old wowser,’ Miss Moreland hissed over her shoulder.
Safe laughter was just one small step away from tears, and Stella gave in to it gladly. She became caught up in the blissful relief of safe laughter, and received a near forgotten nod of disapproval from the minister.
‘And knickers to him, too.’ Miss Moreland whispered. ‘Frilly ones.’
Separated by fifty years, the friends hid behind hymn books, valiantly attempting to compose their features as the organist began to play the first hymn.
It has been too long since I felt his disapproval, Stella thought. I have been too good at my fictional role, too pliant, bending too easily to the director’s will. Why?
Habit, her inner voice replied. Bu
t habits can be broken.
She sang her solo. It was not her best rendition of ‘Amazing Grace’. She caught Miss Moreland’s eye during the third verse, and it was enough. Anything would have been enough. Though she strived to continue, laughter was infectious, others began smiling, giggling behind hymn books. She had to cut the solo short with a coughing fit, excuse herself, and go in search of a glass of water.
‘Brazen,’ Mrs Morris muttered. ‘Her poor mother would roll over in her grave.’
Willy Macy nodded his mute agreement.
Yellow Fingernails
Steve Smith and his aging band were still popular with the older generation. They played at the hotel on Friday nights, and they supplied much of the music for weddings and twenty-first parties, but there was little money in it. Steve’s living came from the nursery and gardening supplies. He never went to church, but he drove his widowed mother there each Sunday then filled in an hour at his business until it was time to pick her up again.
This morning he was using his hour well. Having sandpapered the vandal’s handiwork on the church hall door, he was slopping a rough coat of paint over the faded sign when Stella and Miss Moreland returned to the car.
They stood talking with him, and were joined there by the minister and the entire Spencer family.
‘G’day Aunty Stell,’ the rapist smiled his most winning boyish smile.
Stella ignored him and turned towards the car. The laughter had helped, and the Aspro, swallowed with church water, had taken away the ache in her back. ‘Do you have the keys, Father? I need a tissue,’ she said, searching her handbag.
‘One moment, if you please, Daughter.’ He stood with the youth, smiling benevolently. ‘As I said to your father, nice of you to grace us with your presence this morning, young Thomas – and some time, if I recall correctly, since we last sighted you in church.’
‘Yes. It’s been quite a while, sir,’ the youth agreed. ‘I was half expecting the roof to cave in on me.’
Marilyn laughed. ‘Quite some time, Mr Templeton. I was as surprised as you when he said he was coming with us this morning.’ She reached for her son, brushing his long hair back from his brow, but looking by him at the door, the yellow near hidden now beneath a fast coat of brown.