Odd Socks

by Ilsa Evans

  Another option would be a visit to the Tim Neville Arboretum, which is just around the corner, and has some lovely walks that would use up time. If, that is, I felt like taking a lovely walk – which I most certainly don’t. Then I suddenly come up with a brainwave. I’ll visit Camilla, who lives only about ten minutes past the Arboretum. Apart from the fact that I can regale her with my stint as an obstetrician, I’m absolutely dying to bore someone to death with how damned gorgeous the newest member of my family is. And as the newest member of my family also happens to be the newest member of hers – well, it’s perfect.

  The only drawback to visiting Cam at this time of day is that at her house it’ll be akin to feeding time at the zoo. Except it’s like you’re in the animal enclosure, not just watching. However, my desire to discuss Sherry and avoid Fergus is currently greater than my aversion to children and animals en masse. So I veer into the adjoining lane and take the next corner at a sharp angle that a lesser driver than me would have found positively risky. A few minutes later I’m pulling into Cam’s driveway and parking behind her old Holden.

  I run my fingers through my hair to comb it smooth before ringing the doorbell and then waiting patiently. But nobody comes to answer it. This is very unusual for Cam’s house, so I walk over to the lounge-room window and press my face against the glass to peer in. I can’t see anybody watching television but I can hear some music in the background so there’s definitely somebody home. Most probably Cam herself, judging by the car in the driveway. I walk back to the door and give the doorbell another try but still no answer. However, my heart is now set on unburdening myself, so I’m not giving up without a fight. I try the door handle and it turns easily so I push the door open and call out softly.

  ‘Hello? Anybody home?’ I venture inside and step over a pile of school shoes in the hallway. ‘Hello?’

  The music is coming from the kitchen area, so I wander up there and check it out. On the radio Roy Orbison is pleading with a pretty woman to look his way, but there’s nobody around. Just a large pot of something simmering on the stove and a glass of wine sitting on the bench. I take a look out of the kitchen window into the backyard but it too is deserted. Except for Murphy, their Border collie cross, who is lolling on top of a double-decker hutch containing some rather lethargic-looking rabbits. I pick up the glass of wine and, sure enough, it’s still chilled. This is beginning to feel like the mystery of the Marie Celeste.

  ‘Hello? Cam? Anybody?’ I meander into the lounge-room where, from its glass tank on the sideboard, a blue-tongue lizard flicks a moist dark tongue in and out and watches me suspiciously. As I stand there, trying to ignore the tongue and work out where everybody is, I suddenly realise I can hear some muffled noises coming from the other side of the house. At last. I head back over into the passageway and towards Cam’s bedroom where, sure enough, I can hear her murmuring.

  ‘I’ve been looking everywhere for you!’ I exclaim cheerfully as I push the bedroom door open. And immediately freeze in shock – because I can’t be seeing what I think I’m seeing. I just can’t.

  There, on my best friend’s bed and in full festive regalia, is none other than Santa Claus. And he’s not there stuffing stockings either. As I’ve flung the door open, he has leapt up and, with his bright-red fur-trimmed trousers hanging around his ankles, has executed a perfect tuck and roll and disappeared over the far side of the bed. But before he vanished from sight, I saw enough to be able to vouch personally and definitively for his cheeks being extremely flushed and jolly.

  Left on her lonesome in the middle of the bed is my best friend, Camilla Riley. She is sitting up with both hands holding a sheet to her neck, and is staring at me with a horrified expression. In fact, she’d look exactly like some Victorian virgin protecting her modesty if it weren’t for one little anomaly. Which is the pair of red and green reindeer antlers firmly attached to the top of her head.

  ‘Terry!’

  ‘I’m sorry! I’m so sorry!’ I try to back out but my feet are frozen in position. After all, it’s not every day you get to see Father Christmas delivering his presents. Even if it is July.

  ‘I didn’t hear you come in!’ Cam says, appalled, as her antlers wobble with agitation. ‘Where did you come from?’

  ‘I rang the bell! I called and called!’ I say hysterically as I realise with a surge of relief that my feet have started working again. I immediately back straight into the doorframe, bounce off it, and rebound into the hallway.

  ‘Terry! Hang on!’ Cam calls and I hear her jump off the bed. Then she appears in the doorway dressed only in a half-buttoned pyjama top and with the antlers still firmly in place. Blushing madly, she looks at me with embarrassment. I look back, with equal embarrassment.

  ‘I’m so sorry!’

  ‘Hell’s bells! So am I!’

  ‘I thought you’d all be at home! I never thought that you’d . . . that is, it never occurred to me that –’

  ‘No, I never usually have the house to myself at this time! I can’t believe that the one time I have – my god!’

  ‘But I rang the doorbell! Twice!’

  ‘It’s not working!’

  ‘Oh, I’m so, so, so sorry.’

  ‘Don’t be. You weren’t to know.’ Cam takes a deep breath, glances behind her into the bedroom and then turns back to me with her antlers wobbling. ‘Um, do you want a glass of wine or something?’

  ‘God forbid!’ I say with feeling because the only thing I want to do is get out of here and rid myself of the visions of Christmas, past, present and future. ‘But, Cam – Santa Claus? It’s July, for heaven’s sake!’

  ‘I know. Tacky, isn’t it?’

  We both look at each other in silence for a moment, and then suddenly burst out laughing. I hold on to the wall as I laugh so hard my side threatens to split.

  ‘I can’t believe you saw that!’ Cam puts her hands over her face. ‘God!’

  ‘I wouldn’t believe it either,’ I say, trying to stop laughing, ‘if you didn’t still have those bloody antlers on your head!’

  ‘What!’ Cam puts her hand up and, with a shriek, rips the antlers off and flings them back through the bedroom doorway. Then she looks at me and we both break up again. From the bedroom, a deeper voice joins in the laughter. After a few minutes, I finally get myself more under control and look at Cam with a grin.

  ‘That reminds me. How’s Alex? I haven’t seen him for ages.’

  ‘Fine. I expect he’s just fine.’ Cam stops laughing and looks at me with narrowed eyes. ‘Why do you ask?’

  ‘No reason,’ I reply with a smile because I don’t have to see Santa’s face to know exactly who he is. Alex Brown is Cam’s first ex-husband and the father of her two eldest children. He’s also a genuinely nice bloke who came back to Australia in February after some years spent overseas, and became Cam’s next-door neighbour and a little bit more. That little bit more has now escalated into a full-blown affair with both participants acting like lovesick teenagers with a first crush.

  The most entertaining thing about the situation is that both Cam and Alex think they’re being totally clandestine. Whenever they’re in the company of others they go out of their way to avoid contact but, every so often, they can be seen giving each other long, dark, passionate looks which speak volumes about what they’re going to get up to as soon as they have the chance. The whole thing is amusingly ridiculous because, with the exception perhaps of Cam’s children, everybody knows exactly what’s happening and, furthermore, everybody totally approves. Perhaps they simply like all the secretive extramarital side of things. Maybe it turns them on. Obviously, odd things do.

  However, this is the first time anybody has actually caught them in the act, and I don’t think Cam will be all that pleased about having their relationship exposed. So, if it makes her happy, I’ll just go along with the notion she’s having an affair with Father Christmas. Although, personally, I think I’d prefer Alex.

  ‘Humph,’ says Cam, wh
o is looking rather embarrassed again.

  ‘Well, tell Alex hi from me next time you see him,’ I say as I head for the front door. ‘And while you’ve got Santa in a good mood, could you tell him I’m after new wall-to-wall carpeting for Christmas?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Never mind. I’ll explain later.’ I back out the door and wave politely. ‘Merry Christmas!’

  MONDAY

  1735 hrs

  It’s still too early to go home so I drive aimlessly in the direction of the mountains until I come to the Ferntree Gully National Park lower picnic grounds. I’m not sure if there are any higher picnic grounds – if there are I’ve never found them. I put my blinker on, turn into the park and coast into a spot opposite the children’s playground. Then I unbuckle my seatbelt, wind down the window slightly, stretch out the kinks in my back and prepare to waste time.

  About twenty or so people have braved the July cold for some sort of celebration, judging by the balloons and streamers that adorn the rustic wood shelter they’re clustered underneath. And if the raucous laughter coming from that direction is any indication, alcohol has been flowing freely for a large part of the afternoon. It’d need to, otherwise the partygoers would be frozen. Apart from that group, the park is only occupied by one hardy family enjoying a midwinter barbecue tea and the playground is crawling with their numerous offspring. There’s just a small amount of light left in the day and the sun has already begun its slow descent, bathing the treetops in a soft crimson glow that makes them look almost luminescent.

  I watch the sun setting for a few minutes while I run over the scene I just witnessed at Cam’s house. And, as soon as I get to the part where I push open the bedroom door, my face goes as red as the sunset. But one thing’s for sure, after I’ve stopped feeling so embarrassed, I’m going to be able to get an awful lot of mileage out of this. Santa Claus indeed! Who on earth deliberately chooses a guy who only comes once a year? I chortle to myself at my wittiness.

  But at least Cam has got someone. Not that I don’t, but spotting Fergus outside the unit depressed me in some indefinable way. Either that or my reaction to spotting Fergus outside the unit has depressed me in some indefinable way. Whichever – I’m still a tad depressed. In some indefinable way.

  I frown and then chew my lip thoughtfully while I mull this over for a while. And it hits me. I’ll bet my bottom dollar that, subconsciously, I remembered that the carpet was a mess and so was I. After all, I’ve been running around all day and I didn’t get much sleep last night so I’m feeling very tired and not at all up to entertaining. Yes, that’s all it was, and nothing more serious. Amazing how the subconscious can work.

  I smile happily and resume feeling content once more. What’s not to feel content about when you’ve got a few days off and don’t have to get up each morning and work away at your career? Well, if you could call it a career, that is. But I’ve got no one except myself to blame for the fact I’m destined to remain on the bottom rung of the library ladder.

  Unlike my brother, who towed the parental line and became a lawyer like our father, I felt the need to rebel somewhat and joined the services instead. Unfortunately, the irony of my escape from one form of heavy-handed discipline straight to another eluded me at the time. But my three years in the Royal Australian Air Force were some of the most fun-filled of my life. For starters, the ratio of men to women in those days was about one hundred to one and, if I say so myself, I looked very good in uniform. I smile with reminiscent pleasure before moving back to the present and sighing.

  Because the end result of all this disciplined frivolity is that, while my brother Thomas enjoys high-powered, well-paid employment, I labour in the local library for a rather average wage. And I’m not even a librarian because that requires a degree. I’m a Library Officer. A lowly position that’s too far away from the glass ceiling even to throw rocks at it with any hope of success. Instead, I’m required by my job description to maintain a helpful demeanour and ensure the requisite smile is plastered on at all times. And, to be frank, my facial muscles are getting very, very tired.

  I look at my watch to find that all this deep and meaningful thought has only taken twenty-eight and a half minutes. But the night is rapidly approaching and the picnicking family has begun the long process of packing up and finding children. The father lugs a bag of rubbish over to the bin near my car and glances in at me curiously. I stare straight ahead and avoid eye contact. Then it occurs to me that this probably makes me look even weirder, or perhaps spaced out on drugs, so I whip my head around quickly and grin at him in a reasonably friendly fashion. I immediately realise this was a mistake because he looks back at me askance, shoves his rubbish in the bin and hastily rejoins his wife. They begin a rapid conversation punctuated by several telling looks in my direction. He probably thinks I was trying to pick him up. Huh! He should be so lucky.

  And then there’s Bronte. Bronte is the most loving, kind, thoughtful daughter anybody could ever want. I can count on one hand the number of problems I’ve had regarding that girl in the entire time she was growing up. She cleaned her room, studied hard, had nice friends, confided in me – and totally lulled me into a false sense of security. Which was abruptly shattered when she turned twenty, met Nick, fell pregnant and dropped out of university. So now, just like her mother before her, she’s a twenty-one year old degree-less parent with a fragile, or at least fledgling, relationship.

  But then again, I’ve got to remind myself that Bronte is not me. As Cam has pointed out numerous times, what didn’t entirely work for me may well work for Bronte because we are very different. In fact, I sometimes think Bronte is like a six-foot, slightly more highly-strung version of my mother. And my mother married young, had children early and lived a very contented life. Still does, actually.

  Besides, no matter what does or doesn’t happen between Bronte and Nick, they’ve still managed to create something pretty damn special. It’s all rather ironic, really, because when I first heard about the baby’s existence, I was devastated – even apart from the realisation I was about to become what is known in certain circles as a grandmother. But who’d have guessed that they would produce such a delightful, delectable, utterly gorgeous little mound of brand-new humanity? I suppose that’s what they mean by silver linings.

  I glance back at my watch and note that forty-two minutes have now passed since I parked here. Dusk has given the playground an eerie, deserted look and the only people still remaining are the stalwart party residue, and even they’re in the process of gradually packing up. I push my hair behind my ears as I yawn sleepily and then stretch. It occurs to me I’ve been up for over fourteen hours and it isn’t even teatime yet.

  A warmly coated elderly couple with a golden retriever walking obediently at their side stroll slowly past, gloved hand in gloved hand, and head towards the thousand steps at the rear of the park. As they pass the playground, the woman turns to her partner, who is wearing a bright-red cloth cap, and says something indistinguishable. Without even looking at her, he raises their joined hands and delivers a kiss to her glove. I smile as I watch them go and then lean back in my seat. Only a little while longer and it should be safe to go home. I put the radio on and Kylie Minogue’s voice warbles out so, even though she is a better singer than she is a tennis player, I turn it off again. Instead I decide to close my eyes for a minute, or perhaps a second.

  Yep, just a second.

  MONDAY

  2010 hrs

  I sit bolt upright in shock as a sharp knock echoes right next to my ear. Then I blink several times and, staring straight ahead, try to place myself. All I know is that it’s pitch black and bitterly cold.

  ‘Lady? Hey, lady? Excuse me?’

  Still confused, I turn to the source of the gravelly voice and immediately jump as I see a rather distorted face pushed very close to the glass. My adrenalin speeds as my heart threatens to jump out of my mouth and race screaming off into the dark. Then the face backs off a bi
t and becomes relatively normal. It seems to belong to an elderly gentleman with snow-white hair and a red cloth cap. And I recognise suddenly that it’s the same guy who went strolling past with his partner just before I closed my eyes for a second. My heart starts to return to its normal rhythm and I stare at him, still open-mouthed.

  ‘Are you all right?’ he asks with concern, his voice muffled by the window-glass.

  ‘Um, yes. Yes, of course.’ I wind the window down and slowly realise I must have fallen asleep out here, so I glance quickly at the clock in the dashboard and register that it’s past eight o’clock. ‘Hell! Look at the time!’

  ‘Exactly,’ says the face by the window. ‘Bit late for a young lady like you to be out here alone, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes, it is,’ I agree. ‘I must’ve fallen asleep.’

  ‘Well, perhaps you’d better head home then.’

  ‘I will. And thanks.’

  ‘No problem.’ He straightens up and walks over to join his wife, who is standing on the path holding their dog on a lead. Obviously he’d left them both out of harm’s way just in case I was a raving maniac. I wind my window back up as my heart warms to him and I smile in gratitude. They both smile back and raise a gloved hand each in farewell. Then, hand-in-hand, they stroll down the path to the outer reaches of the park and back towards suburbia. I turn the ignition over and put the heater on full as I rub my hands together and watch the couple go. Every bone in my body aches from cold and stiffness. Forty-one is clearly too old to be able to fall asleep in a car and suffer no ill effects. I might seem like a young lady from that old guy’s perspective, but it sure doesn’t feel like it from mine. I stretch out painfully and groan.