‘Get off the bloody road, Pop!’
Stan jerked his head round and found a big red utility almost on top of him; an outraged young face glaring from the driver’s window.
‘“Sir”, to you! I’m no pop of yours, ya little bugger! Have some respect, why don’t ya!’
He got the finger again. The utility roared off. In the front room of 5 Firth Street he glimpsed a curtain twitch. Someone had been watching him!
It could even be the girlfriend.
Stan took to his heels.
Up in the hills, May walked slowly round her garden. The lawn, thanks to winter rain and Stan’s new mower, was soft as velvet underfoot; and if there was no frost this week, those buds on the wisteria might bloom early and by the weekend of the party become long mauve sprays of flowers. The last two days had been mild and sunny, the foggy dew melting away by mid-morning, the blue folds of the mountains etched clear and sharp against a cloudless sky. At midday you could feel a real warmth in the sun where it fell on your face and arms.
May hoped for two such days for the party weekend: ‘Two perfect, cloudless days,’ she said to Sef, ‘That’s what we need.’ Two perfect, cloudless days when Stan and Lonnie would make it up, and Clara would be welcomed to the family. May drew in a deep, excited breath. Only a couple of weeks to go! A wave of happiness washed over her; she felt like dancing! She had a sudden bright memory of dancing with Sef in the hall of the Home: round and round they went, hair flying, skirts billowing (Christmas, it must have been), faster and faster, the sunlit windows flying past like dreams . . .
One of the good things about getting old was how these happy moments from the past returned to you: the scents and sounds and colours, the feel of everything. In the bright garden May held out her arms. ‘Let’s dance!’ she said to Sef, and, slowly, because after all she was seventy-six next birthday, slowly but gracefully, back straight, head held high, May began to dance across Stan’s lawn.
Rattled by his visit to Firth Street, Stan lost his way in the back streets of Toongabbie and wandered for a full half hour. Then at the station he got confused and went to the city side. He didn’t even notice the train he boarded was going in the wrong direction till it stopped at Strathfield, and there he got out and stood on the platform, lost in a daze.
He should have left a note for Lonnie. ‘Thanks for remembering Ratbag!’ or something of that kind, enough to show there were no hard feelings anymore. Five Firth Street was a boarding house; there’d have been a place where you could leave mail . . . ‘Should have walked right in,’ mumbled Stan. ‘Should have.’
Someone tapped him on the shoulder. Stan turned and saw the Chinese lady he’d met in the park last month; the one with the daughter called Clara. She was breathless, beaming at him. ‘Saw you,’ she gasped. ‘Saw you, and ran.’
‘Ran?’ Struth, was he that bad?
‘I was over there –’ She waved towards the opposite platform. ‘And I wanted, so much, to thank you –’
Eh? ‘Thank me?’
‘Remember how I wanted to go and see my daughter’s place, and you said I had a right?’
‘And you went, eh?’
She nodded.
Braver than he was.
‘She wasn’t in. But I saw her friend next door, and she said her room was just like Clara’s, so now I can picture her, you know? And if it wasn’t for you, I don’t think I’d have gone! I’m going to go again! I’m going to ring her and – you know what? I think she’s got a boyfriend!’
‘Boyfriend? Look, is his name –’
A train thundered into the station on the opposite side of the tracks, drowning out his words. She whirled round. ‘There’s my train!’
‘Lonnie?’ finished Stan. ‘Is your daughter’s boyfriend called Lonnie?’
She didn’t hear him; she was running for the stairs. His own train slid to a stop beside the platform. It was dark already, getting late up at Katoomba. May would soon start to worry. Stan stepped on board.
‘My grandfather?’ Lonnie stared at Mrs Rasmussen, appalled. She’d caught him the moment he came through the front door, her face radiant with news.
‘Pop’s been here?’ he quavered, glancing nervously round the hallway into shadowy corners he’d barely noticed before. ‘Here?’
Mrs Rasmussen nodded happily. Lonnie could see she thought this was something to be glad about. She didn’t understand the complications of his family.
Why had Pop come? Was it to make up their quarrel? Or to bawl him out again? Had Lily passed on the news that he was engaged? Of course she had.
‘What did he say?’ he asked Mrs Rasmussen.
She shrugged. ‘Ah, nothing.’
‘Nothing?’ That didn’t sound like Pop. Pop was like Lily; when they got worked up, they went on and on and on.
‘He didn’t come inside,’ explained Mrs Rasmussen.
‘He didn’t?’
She shook her head, pointing towards the footpath on the other side of the road. ‘He stood there,’ she said, ‘and looked towards this house for a very long time, as if he wished to come in. He even crossed the road, halfway, only I think he was –’
‘What?’
‘Shy.’ Mrs Rasmussen didn’t mention how the poor old man had almost been run down. The truck had missed him after all, so why upset the boy?
Shy? Pop? Lonnie couldn’t imagine that. How could someone like Pop be shy? Perhaps Mrs Rasmussen had got the wrong grandpa; there were a lot of old people in this neighbourhood.
‘What was he wearing?’ Because Lonnie knew that on a cold day like this Pop would have been wearing his old green jacket, and the brown felt hat he and Lily had often giggled about, because surely it was left over from the days when Pop had been a cop.
‘A green jacket,’ replied Mrs Rasmussen promptly. ‘And a funny hat – like detectives wear on the TV. In those old movies they show late at night. You know?’
‘Yeah,’ mumbled Lonnie. ‘That was him.’
Right, thought Lonnie. Right.
37
HOPES, DREAMS AND A NIGHTMARE
When Stan reached home after his visit to Firth Street he found May at the kitchen table, making place-cards for the party. Yesterday she’d been making party baskets. ‘You sent an invite yet to Lon and Clara?’ he asked gruffly.
May smiled and patted a small stack of envelopes on the corner of the table.
‘Sending them tomorrow,’ she said. ‘That’s Lonnie’s one on the top. I didn’t seal the envelope, just in case.’ She picked it up and took out the card.
Stan plucked it from her fingers and grabbed a pen. He opened the card and wrote, ‘Thanks for remembering Ratbag! Looking forward to seeing you and Clara at the party.’ Then he passed it to May. ‘That do you?’
‘I knew you’d come round!’
‘Didn’t know I’d been unconscious,’ said Stan smartly.
That night Stan slept soundly.
Lonnie couldn’t get to sleep at all. He lay awake for hours, wondering and worrying, thrashing about beneath the doona, wrenching his pillow this way and that, trying to find a comfortable place for his head, which was buzzing with thoughts of Pop’s visit. Why had he come here?
‘Did he look angry?’ he’d asked Mrs Rasmussen, but she could only repeat that she thought his Pop had looked shy. Lonnie twisted and turned, twitched at his pillow, kicked the doona down and dragged it up, until, in the early hours, he thought he saw Emily Bronte, in her long brown gown, standing by his bed. ‘Stop it,’ she said sharply. Was he dreaming? The stuff of her brown gown looked so real he felt he could reach out and touch it . . .
‘Stop what?’ he whispered, but he couldn’t hear her answer, which he thought might be important, because his eyes were growing heavy and she was turning into mist . . . ‘Wait,’ he whispered, ‘wait.’ She didn’t wait, and it didn’t matter because quite suddenly, Lonnie was sound asleep.
On the other side of the city, in her small room at the top of Mercer Hall, Clara
too was wide awake. She lay in the dark and pictured her mother setting out to visit her last week. Even though, on certain clear days, you could see the tower of Mercer Hall from the front porch of Clara’s old home, by public transport her mother’s journey would have taken a long, long time. She pictured Mum closing the front door carefully behind her, walking down the path and through the gate, round the corner, on down Harkness Street towards the station. She saw her sitting on the train, and then standing waiting at the cold bus-stop on Eddy Avenue, the box of spring rolls, still warm, lying heavy in the bottom of her bag. She imagined her walking across the windy campus, tall buildings all around her, so that Mum would have seemed very small.
Then Clara heard her own voice scoffing and scolding, telling Mum how she shouldn’t put up with Dad’s sulks and bossiness: ‘You’re too soft on him, Mum! Stand up for yourself!’
And then, like a weird stranger walking through a door, an odd idea stole into Clara’s mind. It was this: how towards her mother, alone of everyone else on earth, Clara was – a bit of a bully, just like Dad.
In the room next door to Clara’s, Jessaline was dreaming of the restaurant she’d have one day: she saw its walled courtyard and pink flagstones, its blue doors and the blue wooden tables and chairs. ‘Chez Jessaline,’ she murmured. That would be its name.
Jessaline’s mum woke suddenly and nudged at Jessaline’s dad. ‘Victor!’ she said.
‘What?’ replied Jessaline’s dad sleepily.
‘Victor, do you think our Jessaline is happy doing Linguistics?’
‘Happy?’ mumbled Jessaline’s dad. ‘Did you say “happy?” What’s that got to do with it?’
Jessaline’s mum spoke as if she’d had a revelation. ‘A lot, I think!’
Only a short time back, Lily had longed to dream of Daniel Steadman – even resorting to Bestie magic, writing his name out and sliding it beneath her pillow. Now she didn’t want to dream of him; she wanted to dream of Madame Curie instead, strong and distinguished in her white lab coat, wearing her sweet calm smile.
And wouldn’t you know it! Because she didn’t want to dream of Daniel, for the very first time she did. It was the most peculiar dream: he was wearing striped pyjamas, he stood in a gateway, holding a rolled up newspaper in his hand. ‘Oh, hi!’ he said, and smiled.
Daniel dreamed of the beautiful voice again.
Marigold dreamed that Lonnie walked into the house carrying the biggest pumpkin she’d ever seen. ‘Hi, Mum!’ he greeted her. ‘I’m engaged. And here’s Clara!’
‘Where?’ asked Marigold, and then Lonnie touched the pumpkin and it burst open and a tiny slender girl stood there.
Clara’s dad was having a nightmare. It was terrifying. He was back at school, in Year 12, in Mrs Nightingale’s English Honours class. He was climbing the stairs to her scary little room when he realised he hadn’t done his homework: he hadn’t analysed and compared the three versions of Robert Burns’ The Banks O’Doon.
Oh, heaven save him! She’d skin him alive; she’d have his guts for garters; she’d drain and drink his blood!
Aargh! Charlie woke and groaned in gratitude as the furniture of his bedroom appeared in its familiar shadowy night-time shapes. Safe! He was middle-aged and married; his daughter had left home and was carrying on with a long-haired Australian lout; his wife was behaving strangely; his clients were cheating on their tax – but all of this was nothing, nothing at all compared to the ferocity of green-eyed Mrs Nightingale when you failed to hand in homework.
How thankful he was to be out of school, to be safe: to be forty-five years old instead of seventeen.
Old Mrs Nightingale dreamed she was dancing with a person much shorter than she was. Someone whose small head reached barely to her shoulders.
‘Robbie Burns!’ she whispered excitedly in her sleep. ‘It must be Robbie Burns!’
38
NONE OF OUR BUSINESS
Two weeks passed by. It was Saturday the sixteenth of September, the day before Pop’s party.
And in a tall brick house at the top of the only hill in Lidcombe, Clara’s mum had decided to ring her daughter at Mercer Hall. Rose reasoned that on a Saturday, if she rang fairly early (say at nine o’clock) she’d have a better chance of catching Clara at home.
But it was Jessaline, on her way back from the bathroom, who heard the phone shrill out along the corridor. And when she heard it, Jessaline stood very, very still, while her heart gave a big bound and then settled coldly down beneath her ribs. There were fifteen other girls with rooms on the twelfth floor, yet Jessaline was absolutely sure this call was meant for her. Yesterday morning, sneaking past the building where her parents worked, the hood of her parka drawn close about her face, Jessaline had finally found her way to Admin. and filled in forms to change her course from Linguistics to Hospitality. Her hand had trembled as she signed her name and printed her student number; and her bottom lip had been drawn in so sharply beneath her big front teeth that she could still see the marks there in the evening when she got ready for bed.
The woman behind the counter at Admin. had worried Jessaline. Her face had seemed familiar, as if Jessaline had met her before. Not in the Admin. office, but somewhere else – somewhere like home, where her parents were always having dinner parties for their colleagues, hosting educational committees and entertaining scholars from overseas. When she’d lived there, Jessaline had often been called on to hand round plates of savouries and cups of coffee and tea, so that all kinds of people at the university knew she was the daughter of the two Professors O’Harris.
When she’d left the Admin. building Jessaline had circled round the back of it and concealed herself behind a tall bank of rhododendrons. After ten minutes, she’d sneaked back into Admin.: she wanted to see if the familiar-looking woman was talking on the telephone, reporting her to mum or dad. But although the woman had been innocently sifting through a set of colour charts (perhaps searching for that elusive right shade for her living room), Jessaline hadn’t felt reassured. Once the contents of her new enrolment form began to circulate, it wouldn’t be long before her parents came to know, and this ringing phone, so loud and insistent on the twelfth floor of Mercer Hall, could very well be them. Jessaline put her hands over her ears and hurried into her room. The phone kept ringing; she could hear it through the door.
She couldn’t bear it. She knew her mum and dad: they were the kind of people who would keep on ringing till they got an answer, and if there was no one to answer, then they would get into their car and come right round. They’d knock on the door until she opened it. ‘Jessaline!’ they’d exclaim. ‘What’s this we hear?’
Jessaline thought of the beautiful courtyard she’d glimpsed in that dream she’d had a while ago: the courtyard of Chez Jessaline. Once again she saw the pink flagstones, the blue doors, the scented jasmine climbing up the wall. Then she squared her shoulders and approached the telephone. She’d have to have it out with them some time, so why not get it over with? ‘It’s my life, not yours!’ – that’s what she’d say.
She picked up the receiver. ‘Hullo?’
‘Is that Mercer Hall? Floor twelve?’ That light sweet voice was definitely not Dad, or Mum.
‘Yes,’ said Jessaline.
‘Could I speak to Clara Lee?’
‘Mrs Lee! It’s you!’ Jessaline was delighted. ‘Mrs Lee, guess what? You know I told you I was going to change my course to Hospitality? Well, I’ve done it! I really have!’
‘That’s wonderful, Jessaline. I’m so glad you’re happy.’
Why couldn’t her own mum be so nice? Why couldn’t her own mum, or even her dad, ever say, ‘That’s wonderful!’ or ‘I’m so glad you’re happy!’? Jessaline sighed. ‘You’re looking for Clara, aren’t you, Mrs Lee? I’m afraid she’s gone.’
‘Gone?’ The word sent a chilly tingle creeping down Rose’s spine. What did that mean?
‘You mean she’s left the Halls? Gone to live somewhere else? Left – left the univers
ity?’
‘Oh, no,’ replied Jessaline, surprised. ‘Nothing like that, Mrs Lee. She’s just gone away for the weekend with her fiancé, you know? They’ve gone up to the mountains to visit Lonnie’s grandparents. It’s his grandfather’s birthday. His eightieth, imagine!’
‘Fiancé?’
‘Oh!’ gasped Jessaline. She’d done it again! That big mouth of hers! She’d forgotten how Clara’s engagement was a secret, from her parents, anyway. ‘I’m going to tell them later,’ Clara had explained. ‘After the party. After I’ve met Lonnie’s family, and things have sort of settled down.’
‘What things?’ Jessaline had asked, but Clara hadn’t told.
‘Where does he live?’ Mrs Lee was asking on the phone. Her voice had gone all funny; the lightness had leaked right out of it. She sounded suddenly businesslike, almost stern.
‘Lonnie? Um, I don’t know exactly. I think it’s out Toongabbie way. But they won’t be there, Mrs Lee, they’ll be up at Lonnie’s grandfather’s place.’
‘That’s what I meant. Where do the grandparents live?’
‘Oooh,’ breathed Jessaline. ‘Are you going to go there?’ She was shocked. Even her parents wouldn’t do a thing like that. Jessaline frowned. Or would they?
‘I might,’ replied Mrs Lee. ‘Where do they live?’
How could such a nice lady suddenly turn so scary?
‘Jessaline!’
‘In Katoomba,’ she answered hopelessly. ‘I don’t know the exact address.’
‘His name? The grandfather’s?’
‘Stan. I don’t know his last name, Mrs Lee. Honest. Only I don’t think that matters, because Clara says Lonnie told her everyone in Katoomba knows his grandpa because he’s such a loudmouth; he says you can ask anyone in the street for Stan, and they’ll know who you mean.’
One Whole and Perfect Day Page 18
