‘Got it in one,’ said Sam. He glanced at the horizon. ‘Any minute now . . .’
The sky turned from dim grey to cream then faintly pink. The pink turned to psychedelic red. Jed turned back to the container on the ute as the first flicker of sunlight edged above the horizon’s lip.
‘What is supposed to —?’ She stopped: the bucket had come alive. It buzzed as a million tiny wings confined in the small space began to beat, making a noise so loud and so insistent she almost expected the container to take off into space.
Sam lifted off the lid. Beetles rose in a brown cloud that evaporated into hundreds of tiny flights across her garden and into the paddocks beyond. Two or three sluggards remained, investigating the back of the truck. Jed bent to look at them. ‘They’re just brown beetles.’
‘Dung beetles,’ said Sam with enormous satisfaction. ‘I got them from a bloke I used to be at uni with. He’s at the CSIRO now. These are South African dung beetles. Our native ones are too small to cope with dung from sheep or cattle. These beetles are going to get into every blob of poo around Gibber’s Creek, break it up and bury it before the bushflies can breed. By this time next year you’ll be able to leave the back door open. There won’t be a fly in sight. Well, maybe a few houseflies. But not the sticky bushflies in your eyes.’
‘Dung beetles,’ said Jed wonderingly. ‘Beetles to get rid of my flies.’
‘Exactly.’ He hadn’t pulled his hair back in its usual ponytail. It hung like a halo around his head, winter-grass coloured, backlit by the rising sun. Even the edges of his beard glowed with sunrise. How could you not love a man who brought you dung beetles?
Love, thought Jed. Love of a different flavour. Five years ago she had never tasted love at all. Now it came in a Scarlett flavour, a Nancy flavour, Matilda, Michael and, yes, Nicholas.
But not this flavour. Not the love she felt now for Sam.
And Scarlett was inside. And possibly, probably, looking out the window, watching everything.
‘I think we need to celebrate the beetles,’ said Jed thoughtfully.
‘A cup of coffee?’ Sam asked hopefully. ‘Breakfast?’
‘Too early for breakfast. How about a platypus hunt? Down at the river.’
Sam paused in the act of putting the lid back on the bucket. ‘You think there might be platypuses out now?’
‘I think we need to go and see,’ said Jed. She held out her hand. Sam’s was grubby with dung beetle muck as she took it. But the river would clean that. Such a firm, warm hand.
‘The track’s muddy. You’ll get your uggs mucky. I could sling you over my shoulder.’
‘You could,’ said Jed. ‘But don’t. I’ll get my boots.’ Boots did not go with a green silk dressing gown with embroidered dragons. But then she wouldn’t wear either for long.
The dung beetles sang a contented buzz of sheep droppings as they began to conquer their new manure empire, and the two humans walked hand in hand towards the river.
Chapter 43
Gibber’s Creek Gazette, December 1973
Labor Passes Record Number of Pieces of Legislation
In its first year in government the Whitlam government has passed 203 bills, more than any other government in a single year. See Editorial, page 8.
For sale: One share in a communal block, Halfway to Eternity. Includes dome with council approval pending, composting toilet, water tank, four acres for personal use and a share in 200 acres communally. Call . . .
Earl’s Court, London
Darling Jedster,
I don’t know whether to say ‘thank goodness you’ve let a man into your life’ or jump on a plane and haul you out of there before you are mired in sheep and kids forever. The only thing that’s saving you is that I can’t afford even a one-way ticket.
I hope you have a wonderful time with your Sam. But not too wonderful, because there is a big wide world still waiting for you. Australia might have come up with a movie or two of its own these days, but Alvin Purple can’t compete with Serpico or The Sting. And until it does, Australia is probably not going to see your worried but happy-for-you friend,
J xxxxx
JED
‘Look!’ said Sam, perched in the back of Boadicea with Scarlett’s wheelchair as the car bounced down the Dribble track to the main road. ‘It’s raining on the other side of the river again.’
‘At least the river’s getting rain even if we don’t,’ said Scarlett, next to Jed in the front seat. ‘And the party will be inside. You’re going to LOVE the café, Jed. Sam has made it WONDERFUL.’
‘I just followed orders,’ said Sam.
Jed glanced at the white curtain of falling rain, almost but not quite reaching them, then up at Sam’s hairy face framed in the rear mirror. She looked back at the road, grinning.
It felt surprisingly good to be a couple. To feel Sam’s warmth at two am when she woke from a nightmare. During the day she might be Jed Kelly of Dribble, Drinkwater and Overflow. In the dark fingers of night she once again became Janet Skellowski, terrified and friendless. But even the nightmares ebbed with Sam’s furry presence.
It was gently, deeply good to walk hand in hand along the river, genuinely watching for platypuses, or tracking echidnas in the snake-long grass as they trundled back to their puggles.
It was even good to be expected to bring Sam to the dinners at Drinkwater and Overflow, though the speed with which joint invitations were issued made her faintly uncomfortable. It had only taken three days for everyone in her extended family to talk of ‘you and Sam’. And now there they were, heading to the opening of the new Bluebell Café, which everyone in Gibber’s Creek had already seen, it seemed, except her, despite her ownership of the building.
‘I got a letter from Mum,’ said Sam’s voice behind her, as if he’d been reading her mind. ‘She sends you her love.’
Did she now, thought Jed. How long did it take an air express letter to get to Scotland, where the two McAlpine families were looking at Angus cattle, castles and whiskey distilleries, and a reply back to Gibber’s Creek? Matilda must have written as soon as gossip’s cockatoo call reached her.
Or had Sam written? But if so, what had he said? Jed and I went platypus hunting, and now we see each other nearly every day. I usually have dinner there, courtesy of Leafsong’s pre-opening café experiments, and also stay the night . . . ?
Because that was what it was. Usually, not always. They were not living together, as Nicholas had once asked her to live with him. Sam’s clothes still hung in his adobe cottage at Halfway to Eternity. He spent most days installing solar hot-water panels across the district — where Drinkwater led, Gibber’s Creek followed — as well as helping Carol and Leafsong renovate the café.
But other days Jed would wake, even if Sam hadn’t spent the night, to find him finishing a small terraced herb garden, begun at four am to surprise her at breakfast, or turning on a new tiny gravity-fed fountain that now bubbled outside her living-room window, trickling down into the new drip irrigation system to feed the vegetables that Sam had also planted.
Dear Lord — which as Nancy used to say was a prayer, not blasphemy — please let this café work. Work as in ‘not a complete utter mess with half the customers not served’. Work as in ‘kept going for at least three years’ so that Jim wouldn’t think it a complete mess and a total waste of money and say, ‘That girl has been given far too much money far too young.’
Especially that, thought Jed, for it’s true.
Boadicea whizzed through the new housing development, Gibber’s Creek’s first brick houses strangely like every new suburb being built in every city from Melbourne to Brisbane. She pulled Boadicea in to the kerb, and stared at what until recently had been the faded Bluebell Café.
Scarlett laughed. ‘Like it?’
‘It . . . it’s amazing,’ Jed spluttered.
A vast and glorious mermaid, at least three metres of bare flesh before her glittering, blue-spangled tail, with long blonde hair d
iscreetly hanging over her bare breasts, gazed seductively across the town.
The Bluebell had become the Blue Belle.
‘It’s Sam’s mum,’ said Scarlett. ‘We had it copied from an old photo of her.’
‘Your mother . . .’ Jed couldn’t quite say, ‘had bare breasts for everyone to see?’ And extremely good breasts too, covered with only the smallest wisp of hair.
‘When she was in the circus,’ agreed Sam. ‘Dad has the photo in his top drawer. She wore a flesh-coloured chemise though.’ He grinned. ‘He had the photo in a frame on his desk till Mum made him put it away in case he shocked his patients.’
Jed had known Mrs McAlpine had been in a circus. Had even known she had performed as a mermaid. She had not quite realised what that had meant. Sedate Mrs McAlpine in her twinsets and pearls? Sam’s parents’ tolerance of his hippie lifestyle began to make more sense. ‘Will she mind when she sees this?’
‘Mum? She’ll love it. I sent her a photo in my last letter.’ He grinned again. ‘Dad will like it even more. It really does look just like Mum did when they first met. Blonde wig and all.’
‘It’s even better inside,’ said Scarlett, expertly hauling down her wheelchair, then leading them into the still-empty café.
Jed stared. A mermaid mural on the ceiling, complete with fish and, for some reason, small swimming elephants. A miniature rainforest of ferns suspended from the ceiling by multi-coloured macramé. Mismatched chairs, from old floral armchairs to faded bentwood ones, every table elderly, sanded back and revarnished but not enough to hide its age . . .
‘But I said you could buy all new furniture . . .’ began Jed. Then stopped. This worked. You had to sit up straight, keep your elbows off the table in a ‘proper’ café. The Blue Belle felt comfortable.
And it was fun. White walls with a frieze of gum leaves along the skirting boards. A dancing line of small toy sheep along a shelf, crayons on each table with a sheet of butcher’s paper for kids to draw on, or teenagers to scrawl love poems, or play noughts and crosses. More shelves of home-made jams, chutneys, jars of honey. And the scent . . .
Cinnamon and mint, a perfume of biscuits so strong you could climb up it to the painted ceiling boards. A tall, glass-fronted cupboard with glass shelves holding plates of melting moments oozing lemon icing, chocolate nut squares, a classic sponge cake filled with cream and strawberries, tiny macaroons dotted with commune-dried cherries, plum tarts — each halved plum sitting on what smelled like perfect vanilla custard and the thinnest of walnut crusts. And baby apple pies too, each one no bigger than a twenty-cent piece.
‘Sit,’ ordered Scarlett.
Jed sat, brushing a fern frond from her face. Sam sat next to her.
Leafsong gestured to the menu on the blackboard. There was no sign of Carol. Presumably she’d come later, with the other guests. Mushroom and barley soup, corn and tomato chowder (vegetarian), corn and peanut soup (vegan).
Vegan food in Gibber’s Creek? She didn’t even know of a vegan restaurant in Canberra. Vegetarian, but not vegan. And corn and peanut soup? What about tomato soup, or chicken noodle, or cream of mushroom . . . ?
Jed was about to study the rest of the menu when Scarlett put two bowls of something brown with yellow lumps in it in front of her and Sam.
‘You don’t get to choose in this café?’
‘This is what Leafsong thinks you’ll like. But people order at the counter,’ explained Scarlett. ‘It says so on the sign. Glenys and Dianne from Form Six will come in for a couple of hours each afternoon to help wash up and clean the place, and Mrs Haddock, she’s Dianne’s mum, will work Saturdays and Sundays. I’ll help too, of course.’
And the tables were far enough apart for a girl in a wheelchair to collect plates and deliver orders and wipe tables.
But corn and peanut soup? Jed took a cautious spoonful.
Hot! Spicy hot, not just stove hot. But after the first shock, hot was good. A tingle of both fire and flavour, a little like the kind of peanut butter angels might eat, but somehow it worked as soup. And there was tomato in it too.
The doorbell tinkled. Tourists, not locals, a couple like a pair of matched budgies, him short and big bellied in green shorts and a shirt, her fluffy, fat and short in blue. They had obviously not known the café wasn’t officially open.
Jed waited for Scarlett to say that the café was closed. Instead Leafsong grinned, taking her notebook out of her apron pocket as the couple inspected the menu, then brightened as they saw something they recognised. ‘Two Devonshire teas with coffee, please.’ The woman’s expected bird chirp was a surprisingly deep alto. ‘And two chicken and leek pies and a banana milkshake.’
Which explained their rotundity. And also demonstrated how a girl who could not speak could take orders, with a smile and an enquiring tilt of her head, and another smile and a nod as she waved them to a seat. Possibly the couple hadn’t even noticed her lack of speech. As Matilda said, few humans truly saw or listened.
Jed spooned up the last of her soup, then exchanged a grin with Sam as Scarlett took their bowls and returned with a plate of what looked like brown rice with vegies but was crisp and spicy with a faint tang of cheese. Then apple pie . . .
‘Well?’ Only one girl spoke the words, but both asked the question, Leafsong standing by the wheelchair, her hand resting on the back, in such an easy acceptance of Scarlett’s necessary bond with it that Jed felt tears spread across her eyes.
She spoke fast, to check the tears. ‘Wonderful. I love it all.’
‘Magnificent,’ said Sam.
A small sun shone from each girl’s face.
Jed glanced at the budgie couple, now scraping up the last of their pies, the milkshake still to be drunk. They looked deeply happy, as if they had been given more than food.
‘Leafsong wants to play something for you,’ said Scarlett. ‘It’s her way of saying thank you.’
Jed nodded.
Leafsong vanished into the kitchen, then came back with her instrument in one hand, bow in the other. She gave a short and surprisingly professional wriggle of the bow across the strings, tightened a couple of pegs, then settled her chin into the chin rest.
It would be a folk song again, thought Jed. Something everyone could dance to, like the End of the World party where she had first met Sam. She glanced at him and smiled. So perfect, to have found Sam at the end of the world. He seemed to feel her smile, as he met her eyes, just as Leafsong put her bow to the strings.
And played a tune like nothing Jed had ever heard before. Nor was it even a tune. For a few seconds she wondered if the girl had forgotten how to play.
Then she stopped thinking, for the music had caught her, wound her in. She was drowning in joy, the wind laughing about the gum tips, the river’s deeper song, of aeons of slow water and manic floods. There was a kookaburra and then there was Scarlett, the courage overlaying the sorrow Scarlett never allowed the world to see. And that was gratitude and laughter, because Leafsong had known that Jed had expected failure, for both the café and the music. Only Scarlett had trusted both.
Leafsong lowered the violin. The budgie couple stared, their milkshake forgotten.
‘That was . . . too wonderful for words.’ Of course it was, thought Jed dazedly. Because Leafsong created it to say more than words could ever have allowed her to express.
‘The playing or the apple pie?’ asked Scarlett flippantly, trying not to show how much this means to her too, thought Jed. She hadn’t realised that in giving Leafsong this place she had also given her adopted sister a place to hang out too.
Jed flicked her fingernail against the metal of the wheelchair. ‘That’s enough from you, brat. Truly,’ she added to Leafsong, ‘it’s incredible. You should be at the School of Music. Composing, playing for audiences.’
The smile vanished. Leafsong met her eyes, her face expressionless. And Jed looked at her, really looked at her for the first time since she’d accepted her as Scarlett’s friend.
&nbs
p; Leafsong was ugly. A tough word, but one that too many people used and thought. The strange disproportion of Leafsong’s face that meant people’s eyes shied away from her, if her smile didn’t disarm them first.
The girl could never play for an audience, despite her brilliance. No mentor at the School of Music would advance her career as a composer, nor could she even manage in the world of composing background music for films or the television, not if she could not speak.
And Leafsong must know it. She had the commune, where no one noticed her ugliness any more. She had Scarlett. She had Jed as a patron and she had this café, where the eccentricity and playful toy sheep as well as the scent of apple pie so enchanted the customers they didn’t shy away when they noticed her odd face and dumpy body.
‘I’m sorry,’ said Jed, and knew both girls knew exactly what she meant.
Scarlett’s face was hard to read. ‘We have to get used to what we can never have.’ She hesitated, then wheeled close enough to Jed to take her hand. ‘Thank you.’
Was there something forced about the ‘thank you’? ‘It’s just money —’ began Jed.
‘I didn’t mean the money,’ said Scarlett.
Leafsong nodded.
It had felt good getting her degree. Taking her place on the board of the family firm, having her motion carried despite Jim’s shock, changing the working culture of the entire Thompson’s Industries before lunch.
But this? Pride and humility jumbled in one deep rich well of joy. ‘Thank you,’ she said.
Two hours later people were spilling out onto the footpath, not just the Thompsons and Carol, but Sam’s sister, Jane, down from Sydney where she was studying medicine, neat hair and neat glasses — a complete contrast to Sam, though Jed liked her. There was Mrs Weaver, knitting what might be a small purple alien, and her usual shoulder bag containing a sleeping joey. Mark arrived, looking uncomfortable in the crowd, with one of his white-clad colleagues, an older woman, smiling, watchful, as well as a clutch of Lees and Sampsons and every other old family name in Gibber’s Creek, and . . .
If Blood Should Stain the Wattle Page 26
