by Joy Dettman
All control lost, her hands dragged the wine cask close and it knocked the salt shaker to its side, spilling a small trail of white onto the table. She pinched a pinch, flicked it over her left shoulder to ward off bad luck. Mrs Bertram had done that, and Mrs Mason. She picked up the pepper, stared at it, then placed it on the opposite side of the table, and she named them Ross and Matt, raising her glass to both.
‘Eeny, meeny, miney, mo, catch a tiger by the toe. If he hollers, let him go. Eeny, meeny, miney, mo.’
Ross won, so she tried it again, slowing the game, pointing her glass to each in turn, spilling wine, but no more tears. Ross, salt of the earth, the winner.
‘Eeny. Meeny. Miney. Mo. Catch a tiger by the toe. If he hollers, let him go. Eeny, meeny, miney, mo.’ She finished fast. ‘Each, peach, pear, plum, out-goes-old-Tom-Thumb.’
Matt, hot black pepper, lost.
The salt and pepper left eyeing each other from opposite ends of the table, she picked up her new photograph, and her finger touched the child’s face and wandered across to the hand, and up to the man who held the hand.
Then someone knocked at her door.
Just a little knock, not Matt’s possessive rat-a-tat-tat. Not Cocky’s cocky rap-rap. It was more like Sleiman the sleaze’s rat-atat-tat tat-tat.
Funny the way people knocked on doors. Sue didn’t knock at all. She belted the door and yelled, ‘Let me in. I smell men.’
And again. An apologetic little tat-tat-tat. Then the voice. ‘Have you got a drop of spare milk, De Rooster? I need a coffee.’
‘Drink it black,’ she yelled. ‘Whoops! Black people are allowed to say white, but white people aren’t allowed to say black,’ she told the child in the photograph. ‘Political correctness happened while you were lost, baby.’
‘Just enough for one cup, De Rooster. I’ll say please.’
She stood then, and wiped at her face, her nose, with her hands, then with difficulty made it to the door. Hadn’t put on the safety chain. It swung open as she weaved her way to the fridge.
‘Just a drop.’ Her head swung around, almost swung her off her feet. He’d followed her in. ‘Been hitting the happy juice?’ he said, picking up the wine cask.
‘Not so’s you’d notice.’ She sniffed and took it from his hand, lifting it high. It felt lighter than when she’d poured her first glass.
‘I’ll have a coffee if you’re offering,’ he said.
‘I wasn’t offering. I was weighing it.’ She found a serviette and blew her nose.
He looked bigger up close – like a car in a showroom always looks bigger than when it’s in a yard. She eyed him, up and down. He was inches taller than Matt, heavier too. He filled the small space between bed and kitchen.
Bedsitters were bad, bed waiting there, ready for use. She ran her fingers through her hair, wishing she hadn’t tossed down so much wine. Didn’t want to turn her back to fill the jug, so she filled it side on, splashing water on herself and the floor. It took a while to find the right holes to plug it in, turn it on. She opened the tin of coffee, one eye on her visitor, then she noticed the fridge door hanging open and she slammed it. It rocked.
‘Buy a fridge and you won’t have to keep borrowing my milk.’
‘I meant to get some on my way home, De Rooster.’
‘Only wimps drink their coffee with milk anyway.’
‘You drink yours black, I take it?’
‘Because we owned the least-used thirty-year-old fridge in existence. And we still got seventy-five dollars for it – which proves it, doesn’t it?’
He stood there, taking in the swollen eyes and papers strewn on the floor, the wine cask and the single glass. ‘What have you been celebrating?’
‘Birth. How much coffee?’
‘A round teaspoon. Two sugars.’
She glanced at her wineglass, then took out a second mug, added coffee, and placed two slices of bread in the toaster. Black coffee and toast might soak up some of the wine. A stupid move, opening the door.
Silence. Only the hum of the traffic, the sound of the wind. What do you say to a big black bikie in a bedsitter at midnight? He wasn’t saying anything. Just standing there, filling up the space.
But . . . but he’d scaled a drainpipe for her. He’d changed a tyre, and she’d ridden on his bike, hadn’t she? She’d left her handprints on his shirt, for Christ’s sake.
Not in a bedroom.
She eyed him as the toast popped, then she took her sharp knife from the drawer, using it to spread butter thick. It didn’t do it very well. She added peanut butter with the point. Had to dip it often. Dip and wipe. Dip and wipe, and the jar fell over. He caught it, then held it steady while she dipped and wiped some more.
‘You’re a patriot,’ he said.
‘What?’ She looked where he pointed, at the jar. Its label was an Australian flag behind a familiar smiling face. ‘No. I’ve just got tastebuds. He uses salt and gives the plastic peanuts a miss. It’s all I can eat these days. Anyway,’ she said. ‘Anyway, why aren’t you out dealing drugs or cards or something?’
‘I’m working a day shift until May.’
‘Everything hinges on May.’ She offered a slice of uncut toast, no plate, but he took it and demolished it, so she made more, safe with the bench between them and the knife on the sink. The toaster was good too. Hot. It would singe his long hair if he tried anything.
Another slice down and he wasn’t trying anything, but he wasn’t going back to his flat either. She knew he didn’t like smoke, so she edged her way by him to the wardrobe where she searched her jacket pockets and struck gold. She lit the cigarette on her gas ring, singed her hair, but it didn’t smoke him out. He’d made himself comfortable on her kitchen bench.
‘Why did you come to Melbourne?’ she asked.
‘To know what it looked like. Why did you come?’
‘To find room to bloom, but Melbourne is a forcing ground. Like . . . like at those hothouse nurseries; they get all the African violets – I didn’t say African because – Oh, shut up.’
‘I didn’t say a word, De Rooster.’
‘No. That’s the trouble. Anyway, what I’m trying to say is, they get all of those flowers blooming for Mother’s Day, and you buy them, take them home and give them to her, and a week later they’re dead. All forced out. That’s me. All forced out.’ She glanced at the long black-clad legs and at the boots. Big. ‘You can sit on a chair. That’s what they’re for.’
‘I broke the habit a while back.’
He made the second cups of coffee and he sat on her floor, his back against the bench. His boots were too close so she moved to the side of the bed nearest the door. It was still open.
He spoke about the casino, said he’d worked at casinos in Launceston and Darwin, that he’d done a short stint in Perth.
‘Have they got dragons?’
‘Dragons?’
‘You know. That fire dance. It’s that Sean Connery dragon, from Dragonheart. The casino has got him and his family imprisoned in a cave beneath the Yarra, and between dusk and dawn a cruel dragon master whips them awake, every hour on the hour, just to say, you killed ’em.’
‘Killed who?’
‘Everybody. Let them out before you go.’
‘I’ll slip them a hacksaw in a cake.’
‘They don’t eat cake. Give them some bolt cutters. Set them free to fly.’
They talked for an hour, about Dragonheart and the casino, and she told him that pokie machines saw her coming, that the noise they made turned into hysterical laughter as soon as she sat down in front of one, so she didn’t sit down any more.
‘But I love the magic of that place. I can stand for hours watching the water dance, and I walk up and down that staircase and I feel like someone else, like the someone else I always wanted to be.’ She looked up and caught his eye. ‘That’s why it works. It offers ordinary little people magic so the fat cats can fleece them.’
‘You weren’t born to be a cyn
ic, De Rooster.’
It was after one when he stood and washed his mug, returned the milk to the fridge. He found space there for her cask of wine too, then he wiped the bench. A house-trained bikie with no furniture?
He looked at her new photograph before he left.
‘See. I was right. There are stars in those eyes.’ Then he frowned, took the photograph to the light. ‘I know him,’ he said.
She walked to the light and leant close, looking at the face of the male. Too wrapped in looking at the Sally child, she’d barely glanced at the out-of-focus male. Didn’t know him.
‘Stick a pair of black-rimmed glasses on him, De Rooster, give him grey hair, and he’s the little bugger who’s counting cards, robbing my table blind. I’ll swear it’s him.’
On the Right Track
May 2000
Beautiful April had led into May with its warm, clear days and moonlit nights, and the rich smell of autumn. It was in the air of Bollinger Street, that ancient earthy scent of decay as Melbourne’s leaves fell to feed the buds of a new beginning.
Sally felt so pregnant and well. She was going to have this baby. It was going to be a little girl who looked like the one in the photograph, and she was going to raise it the way a little girl should be raised.
Seated by the window, her hands busy crocheting a white layette, her mind visualising the arms that would fit these miniature sleeves, she hadn’t seen the black Honda stop out front. But she saw him.
Her chair pushed back, she stood, watching the little leprechaun walk to the letterboxes, a white envelope in his hand. She watched him stand a moment, glance up, then over his shoulder before he delivered his mail. Quickly then, he walked back towards the road. Fast little steps.
It was the walk. It was the way he turned his head. The way he looked over his shoulder, his hand raised in a half-salute.
Her crocheting tossed down, she was out the door, the white wool catching beneath her high heel, tailing her. She shook it loose at the stairs and ran, her door left wide open. The Honda was completing its careful three-point turn when she ran out to Bollinger Street, and into its pathway.
The driver braked and she walked to his window. ‘I know who you are.’ Glass between them, dark glass, and she slapped at the glass between them, hitting out at the one behind glass. ‘You’re Papa. You’re Papa O’Leary.’
The rustle of autumn all around. Skittering, scattering leaves chatting on the footpath, playing on the road. Tiny tumblers, chuckling as they raced headlong into the mulch of winter.
She was in his arms. Didn’t know how, or who had made the first move, or how she’d got him out of the car, but she was holding someone of her own, being held by someone of her own and she was bawling like a baby, holding on too tight. He was so little and too skinny to hold so tight, and her tears or her arms were going to break him.
Black-rimmed glasses knocked askew. Navy-blue eyes, like her own, swimming. Little hands, like her own, patting.
She was talking. He was talking. They were standing on the road, saying little words, silly rushing words. And ‘sorry’. He said it and she said it, and then they said it together. And a car beeped them, so they told the car sorry and moved to the kerb.
Do you remember, he said, and she said no, and they couldn’t stand on the kerb all day.
‘Come inside, Papa.’
He shook his head. ‘I left you a letter, little one. I’ve tried to explain.’
‘I don’t need a letter. That’s just an excuse for you to disappear again, and I won’t let you.’
He wiped tears from her face with the palms of his hands. ‘You don’t know me. Read my letter. Don’t make a decision now that you might regret tomorrow.’
‘You come inside and have a coffee then, and you let me get to know you – or I’ll rip up your letter and throw it in the rubbish.’ She wiped at her dripping nose with her wrist, searched for a tissue in her pocket and blew her nose. ‘I don’t care who you are or what you’ve done or haven’t done. All I know is, I belong to someone. I haven’t got anyone else.’
He blew his own nose while overhead leaves chattered impatiently, eager for their turn to fall and join the play.
He looked at the trees, then towards Toorak Road. ‘There’s a little coffee shop just down the way. They make a nice vanilla slice.’
She lifted her head then, wiped her nose with her fist, and she sniffed and pointed her finger. ‘When they were building that Geelong house. Vanilla slices. You brought vanilla slices in a white paper bag and Grandma put a red checked tablecloth on the grass. See, I do know you. I do remember you.’
They sat long over their coffee, two cups, and she read his letter, all the while remembering more of this little man who had been in the car with Grandma when Sally was three and Shane was two and there was no Robby or Nicky. Grandma with the pretty always on her lapel. Papa singing nursery rhymes. Sally coveting that pretty on Grandma’s coat. He had remembered. He’d given her the gold and ruby brooch for her birthday.
His letter was all apology. Two of a kind, Walter O’Leary and Sally De Rooze, always apologising for being alive. Two of a kind. Just like Mummy had always said. Both suffocated by guilt and rejection, they’d run away to find air enough to breathe.
His handwriting, like her own, was small, an apology in itself.
The brooch is a family heirloom, our good luck charm. Wear it always, my dear. It has been in the family since 1785. Some of your ancestors were a little wild, a little to the left of the law. The brooch was stolen from a fine English house, or so the story goes. And five brothers fought for five days over it. The youngest won it and gave it to his sweetheart as a wedding gift. My old Dada gave it to my mother. I gave it to your grandmother, Elaine, on our wedding day, then to Marian, my second wife. Your mother never forgave me for that.
You must never blame her. What I did to my two daughters was unforgivable. The brooch should have gone to Bernice, then to your mother, and so to you. It is now with its rightful owner.
He’d written that he’d been at her mother’s funeral, and they spoke of that day while they ordered a second coffee and vanilla slice. She told him she’d seen him seated on a toadstool, that he’d looked like a little leprechaun, then he’d disappeared.
He spoke of his two married sons, Craig and Glen. Since Marian had died, he’d been living in a caravan behind his oldest boy’s house.
For my size, I inherited a large portion of the family’s wild streak, as did my youngest, Dean. He has spent the last twelve months in a corrections centre. His mother died while we were in Melbourne for his trial in May. He blamed himself for her death, and has tried to cut himself off from his family, but tomorrow I am taking him home.
Melbourne was no good for him, and not so good for me either. I have what could be termed an obsessive personality. I do nothing by half measures. When I gamble, I do little else. I need the stability of my oldest boys to keep me on the straight and narrow. They are Marian’s true sons.
‘You play blackjack. Down at the casino,’ she said.
‘I followed you there one night, and I won seven thousand on the roulette wheel. It was my undoing. I’d given most of it back then, after Christmas, I took away enough to buy my little car.’
‘Did you ever own a green car?’
‘The old Holden. I’ve had it since ’74. Two hundred and fifty thousand miles on the clock and it’s never had the head off,’ he said proudly. ‘I’ll give it to my boy when I get him home.’
Your forgiveness I do not ask for. I deserted you when your need was greatest. So much I could have, should have done, for you. I did try in those early years. Many times I begged your mother to allow me to raise you with my boys. She refused to see me, to speak to me.
For years I kept track of you by your letters to your little friend, Raelene. The Masons were very understanding, but each time I found you, your mother took you away again. Then you stopped writing to Raelene and I lost you for years.
&nb
sp; In May, when Marian died, I received a condolence card from Glenda and I was able to read the postmark on the envelope. I saw her twice in Lakeside. She told me that you had no desire to see me, but I saw your address on the refrigerator, and I have this obsession with numbers. Flat 11/18 Bollinger.
My dear little girl, it saddens me to write these words, and I write them only because I am leaving in the morning and I won’t be coming back. I can understand that you want nothing to do with me, and I write this not to change your mind, or in defence of my neglect, but to make you know that I do love you, that I have never stopped loving you and your mother.
I do not ask for your forgiveness, but to leave Melbourne and lose contact with you again – this I cannot do.
If one day you can find it within your heart to forgive the unforgivable, then at least you will know where I am.
My love to you always, Papa O’Leary.
‘I forgive,’ she said and she folded his letter, placed it in her bag. ‘So what’s to forgive, and I still like vanilla slices.’
Count His Claws
Her high heels rang on the concrete stairs and her heart sang. No purse, no keys, luckily she’d been wearing shoes when she’d run from the flat. And she’d left her television on, and her door wide open, and thank God it hadn’t blown shut.
She hit the light switch, then cursed the light fitting that ate globes like a kid eating Easter eggs. No use calling the agent about it; instead, she bought her seventy-five watt globes in half dozen lots.
The bathroom light was on. She pushed the door wide, and by its borrowed light, snibbed her safety chain and opened the slats of the venetian blind. The street lamp sent its light through to paint stripes on the floor, bench and wall.
‘Subdued lighting,’ she said. ‘Some people pay a fortune for it.’
A strange, still night, but it had been a strange day. She’d stepped out of her old world and into fantasy. Old Papa, what a funny little man. What was it about blood that led to total acceptance? He had three sons, two married and living in Gladstone, Queensland. Sally De Rooze was no longer the last survivor of her clan; she had a whole nest of relatives.
