by Sasha Wasley
‘Caroline Piggett,’ I said.
‘Piggett, yes.’ She smiled at me. ‘I was quite glad to change my name when I got married.’
‘My mother wanted to keep her name, but she took Dad’s anyway. That’s always confused me.’
‘I remember Penny telling me about that,’ Mrs Brooker said. ‘She agonised over it, but she wanted all of the family to have one name, and she didn’t want a double-barrelled surname. Richard was the last of the Bentz line whereas Penny had siblings. She did it to continue the Bentz family name.’
‘Yes, she said the same to me,’ I said. ‘It still confuses me, to be honest. It seems hypocritical to not let her father walk her down the aisle, but then to take her husband’s name.’
‘Perhaps not hypocritical, but a compromise.’
I closed the book and stroked the cover. ‘My mother read this story to me and Elizabeth when I was about nine or ten.’
‘Did you like it?’
‘I loved it. I looked forward to it all day. There’s something about that book.’
‘Anne was a misunderstood girl who felt she didn’t fit in – who longed for magic and beauty,’ Mrs Brooker said, smiling. ‘It must have touched a nerve for you.’
‘Do you want to keep it, since it was a prize?’ I asked.
She shook her head. ‘No. They can all go.’
I refilled the boxes and pushed them into the hall to load into my car.
‘Right, shall we tackle these papers, then?’ I said, coming back into the room.
‘I suppose we must.’
The paperwork was tax stuff, we discovered: fertiliser and pesticide receipts; sales agreements with shops and distributors. I found a manila folder in the filing cabinet and wrote Tax on the cover in marker.
‘That was easy,’ I said. ‘So now we just have the video player and that old sewing machine. The fringed floor lamp can probably stay as part of the spare room furniture, do you think? There’s room for it, now.’
‘Yes, why not? The girl who’s staying here could probably use it.’ She looked at me and her face grew pink. ‘Oh, that’s you, isn’t it?’
I laughed and her face relaxed into a smile. ‘Yes, I’d like to have it in here. Do you ever use the VCR?’
She shook her head. ‘We had some videos, but I think Angus must have tossed them all away. Do people still use VCRs?’
‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘And I don’t think they’re old enough to have retro appeal yet, like record players. We could see if St Edna’s wants it and if not, throw it away.’
‘Yes, do that. Ted had some video collections. Fawlty Towers, F-Troop. And he loved The Beverley Hillbillies! I wasn’t much interested in them, but I did like to hear him laughing in the lounge room while I pottered around.’
‘Is this your sewing machine?’ I asked, pulling it out of the corner.
‘Yes,’ she said as I unclipped and removed the hard cover.
We examined it together. It was army-green, metal and looked like it meant business. This wasn’t a sewing machine that was about making cushion covers or doll’s clothes. This was a sewing machine intended for constructing worker’s overalls or repairing curtains.
‘It’s a good one,’ she said. ‘A Singer. My parents gave it to me for my twenty-first birthday. I got a lot of use out of it for a while, but eventually Kmart came to Wallabah and it was more cost effective to go and get clothes and linen from there. I did still use it for repairs, but every time I switched it to zigzag stitch the needle would break, so I just packed it away in the end.’
‘With a service, it might work,’ I said.
‘I don’t sew these days,’ she said. ‘Too fiddly. It seems odd, though, to have a house without a sewing machine in it.’
‘Not these days,’ I said, smiling.
‘Yes, I can have a modern home!’ She chuckled. ‘No VCR or sewing machine.’ She put a hand on the top of the sewing machine like you would put your hand on the shoulder of an old friend. ‘Thank you for your service, machine. You really did work hard for me over the years, even if you didn’t like zigzag stitch.’
‘Should I donate it, then?’
‘Yes, but make sure you tell them the needle is broken.’
I clipped the machine away in its cover again and took it to join the books. ‘I think we’re done! Oh, wait, there’s something else. We nearly missed this old picture frame.’
I went to fetch it where it was leaning against the wall, only the rear with hooks and string visible. I turned it around. It contained a print artwork of an overly cute, chubby black child stuffing his mouth with an enormous peach in the shade of a laden fruit tree, surrounded by wooden buckets of peaches. The caption read WHO ATE ALL THE PEACHES? I stared at it.
‘It’s from America,’ she said. ‘Someone bought it there and gave it to Cecil. It hung in the lounge room for years. He liked it. He said there used to be little black children – not negroes, obviously, but Aboriginals – who would raid the orchards when he was a child, and they would have to fire a shotgun to scare them off, and it reminded him of that.’
‘Um.’ I had literally nothing to follow it up with.
‘Angus took it down years ago. He said it was racist.’
I nodded.
‘I suspect he’s right,’ she added. ‘Although I’m not clear on why. But it feels a bit racist, don’t you think? Anyway, I wanted to keep the frame. The one with my wedding photo in has gone a bit rickety.’
‘I can put your photo in this one, if you like?’
‘Can you, love? That would be very good. Angus said he would, but never found the time.’
‘Not a problem at all.’ My fingers itched to get rid of the print. ‘Where’s the photo?’
She grunted and groaned as she got to her feet. In a moment she was back, carrying a framed wedding photo, yellow-tinged and sitting crooked beneath the glass. She held it out, sinking onto the bed.
I recognised Mrs Brooker by the gentle smile and bright eyes. She wore the fitted white satin dress, very pretty, with hooded cloak. Ted wore his brown suit with flared trousers, horn-rimmed glasses, and a tie that was very likely green with a paisley pattern. In fact, the bridesmaids had long gowns of the same fabric. It was all exactly as she’d described it, as if her memory was still perfectly sharp and clear.
‘Gorgeous couple,’ I commented, putting it on the floor beside the other frame. I knelt before them, studying the photo. ‘You look happy.’
‘We were happy,’ she said, smiling at me. ‘We were lucky. We didn’t know each other terribly well when we got married, but it turned out we were really quite compatible. We were united in our exasperation with Ted’s dad, that’s for certain.’
‘There’s nothing like a tyrant to bring people together,’ I said.
‘Just so. That’s how revolutions start, isn’t it? But it wasn’t only that. We got along together in many ways. And Ted liked that I was impulsive sometimes. Do you know what I did on our wedding night?’
I waited, a little apprehensive.
‘We went to Wallabah for a little honeymoon and on the wedding night, and when everyone else in the hotel was asleep, I made Ted come with me, creeping out in the darkness to swim in the pool. It was freezing and pitch-black, and our teeth were chattering. When we looked up at the sky, we had never seen so many shooting stars. After we got back to the farm, I sometimes woke him up in the middle of the night and made him sneak down to the lake with me – do you know the lake at the corner of Brooker Road, love? On a hot night I would rustle him out of bed and we would sneak down there for a moonlight swim – his parents never even knew. Ted pretended to think I was a lunatic, but I could tell he loved it. It didn’t last forever, of course. One grows tired of romantic moonlight adventures as one grows older. But every now and then over the years, when Ted and I found ourselves outside at night for some reason or another, he would put his arms around me and we would look up at the sky and I knew we were both remembering those swims under
the stars.’
Blue and Bundy were barking, and Mrs Brooker rose, knees creaking, before I could tell her what a beautiful story it was.
‘Someone’s here, I think,’ she said.
There was a bang on the door frame. ‘Hello?’
Oh, lord, that was my mother’s voice. I scrambled to my feet and looked around at the bits and pieces on the bed and floor. Why did I feel like I’d done something wrong – like I should conceal what we’d been doing?
‘Penny, what a lovely surprise! Come in, come in. We were just about to have a cuppa.’
‘I can’t stay long. I just wanted to drop this off.’
‘Oh, thank you! You didn’t have to do that.’
They appeared in the spare-room doorway. I stood there, rigid – a boarding-school girl at dorm inspection.
‘Lottie.’
‘Mum.’
‘I’ve brought Caroline’s subscription—’ She stopped, staring at my face. ‘What have you …?’
‘I fell out of bed,’ I said quickly.
Mrs Brooker was shaking her head. ‘Poor love. I don’t know how she managed it.’ She looked at the green carpet and the spare room bed. ‘She must have knocked herself on the bedside table as she tumbled.’
‘I thought you were staying in the caravan.’ Mum’s tone was almost accusatory.
‘I was but …’ It was all too difficult to explain and Mrs Brooker appeared to have completely forgotten I’d ever stayed in the caravan. ‘Should I put the kettle on?’ I said.
Mum’s gaze was shrewder and more intense than I’d ever seen it. It was as if she were creating an elaborate story to explain my presence inside the Brooker home; my facial injuries; my ‘fall’; the objects and paperwork scattered around the spare room. She was building a monster, I realised – constructing a fantastic beast that was slapdash, lazy and self-centred: a troublesome freeloader taking advantage of a gentle old woman from a respectable farming family. And I was powerless to do anything about it. I begged Mrs Brooker soundlessly to stick up for me. She wore a benign smile.
‘Do stay,’ Mrs Brooker urged Mum. ‘I’d love to catch up.’
‘I will next time,’ my mother said. ‘I’m honestly in a rush. I’ve got to drop off Mr Lutich’s Tractor Trader next.’
They went out the front door. I trailed behind at a distance.
‘Oh, wait!’
Mrs Brooker dashed back past me, leaving my mother and me in uneasy proximity. We watched each other, standing still. Mutually distrustful.
‘Caroline’s a kind person,’ she said. ‘Mind you don’t overstay your welcome.’
‘I won’t.’ It came out indignant – hurt. I sounded about fourteen.
Mum blinked and looked away. Mrs Brooker came trotting back, breathing heavily, and clattered through the screen door.
‘Here. I always keep one for you.’
‘Apricot jam!’ Mum smiled at her. ‘You never forget my favourite.’
They embraced fondly and my mother met my eyes over Mrs Brooker’s shoulder.
‘I hope your face heals quickly, Lottie,’ she said, and turned for the car.
Within moments she was through the gate and inside her car, backing out of the Brooker driveway. Mrs Brooker waved, then brought her gaze to mine.
‘Oh, dear. She really is in a bother over all this, isn’t she, love?’ She gave me a slight grimace. ‘Come on. Let’s go and have a cup of tea.’
After our tea break, Mrs Brooker had a lie-down. I used the opportunity to pull everything out of the filing cabinet’s stationery drawer so I could sort through it all. If there was one thing growing up in a newsagency had instilled in me, it was a love of well-ordered stationery.
I dropped some old photos into a plastic sleeve for the Brookers to go through. I paused again over the big yellow envelope marked Policy, flicking through it. It held a mismatched, random collection that really ought to be properly filed: some bank statements and insurance papers; an odd collection of photos, too. Angus’s wedding; Mrs Brooker smiling on the verandah; old Mr Brooker’s headstone. And Angus’s divorce certificate along with a swathe of stapled pages bearing the court seal: Final Orders. The financial settlement, I guessed.
Part of me was disgusted that Bianca had taken the big payout. Didn’t she understand that what Angus brought to the marriage wasn’t just his, but also belonged to his ancestors and descendants? And that farmers didn’t earn salaries like normal workers?
But didn’t I also know that farmers’ wives earned squat? They were usually too busy holding together families, farms and communities to have careers or be able to prove an income. And when they got divorced, the women who’d married into the families usually walked away with pretty much zip while their ex-husbands had generations of security, like sovereigns buried in the farms’ nutrient-stripped soil.
I didn’t know what was right in this situation. I put the envelope on my bed with a few other papers to file later. At least no one seemed pissed off at anyone else – and yet, it felt like something had gone down in the Brooker family. Something that broke them.
Angus came home at midday while I was checking to see which pens worked. He paused at the doorway to my room.
‘Hi, bruiser. What are you up to?’
I raised an eyebrow. ‘Sorting your paperwork.’
Angus looked at the files and stationery spread across the bed. ‘I guess you know all about me now.’
‘Like I’d give a shit.’
That made him grin. ‘Lunch time. Come and eat.’
Mrs Brooker appeared in the kitchen just moments after us and pulled sandwich ingredients from the fridge. Angus switched on the kettle.
‘One week till Christmas,’ he said. ‘What are we going to need from town, Mum?’
‘I’ve been wanting to get a turkey,’ she said, buttering bread. ‘It doesn’t need to be a big one. It’s only you and me and Pris again.’ She looked at me, her eyes lighting up with hope. ‘But you’ll be having lunch here, won’t you, love?’
‘Sorry, Mrs B. Family duty calls.’ I made a face.
She was plainly disappointed. Angus messed with mugs but I got the vibe he felt the same.
‘I’ll get away as early as possible,’ I added. ‘I’d rather be here.’
‘Do you mean that?’ Mrs Brooker asked, her eyes opening wide.
‘Lottie’s not allowed to lie,’ said Angus, watching me.
I shrugged. ‘What he said.’
She buttered bread. ‘Well, I wish it were more pleasant for you at home, but I can’t deny that it’s nice to hear you’d like to be here.’
Angus kept his beautiful chocolate eyes on me and the kitchen became abruptly rather warmer than it had been. I sliced cheese, happy despite the physical aches from my injuries, that permanent scar on my chin, and the apprehension of Christmas with my family.
‘You know, she is really still very competent,’ I said, trudging along beside Angus as he walked back to his ute after lunch. I had his green gumboots on. He wore steel caps.
‘I know. She surprises me every day. But then she spooks me by trying to light our electric oven with a match.’
‘Jesus. Okay.’
‘Those moments are few and far between,’ Angus added. ‘But they happen. And they’re happening more and more.’ He gave a barely audible sigh.
‘I’ll be here,’ I said.
‘It’s not your problem,’ he told me.
‘I know that.’
Angus climbed into his ute and sat for a moment, apparently fascinated by the steering wheel.
‘Cheers,’ he said without looking at my face, and drove away.
I went back to the house and surveyed the spare room. All that was left to do was change the photo frames and file the random collection of paperwork in the big envelope. I used my car key to lever up the clips that held the cardboard in place at the back of the frame. Changing the pictures was simple – the thing that took the longest time was cleaning the inside of the g
lass. Mrs Brooker’s wedding photo looked much better sitting straight inside the sturdy wooden frame when I’d finished. It gave me some satisfaction to rip up the racist print and toss it into the recycling bin.
Now the yellow envelope. I extracted a letter, dated eight years ago from Entrust Insurance.
DEC’D – BROOKER
Final disbursement of monies
Dear Mrs Brooker,
Enclosed please find a cheque in full discharge of all claims against Life Insurance Policy number 0067384-JL-1XP. The full value of the claim, including interest of $874.30 accrued in respect of the delay whilst the claim was processed, is $755,874.30. The cheque is made out in the name of stated sole beneficiary, Mr Angus Edward Brooker.
The policy is now closed.
Please note that cheques over the value of $1000.00 not banked within two months of issue will be withdrawn and you must contact Entrust Insurance’s Claims Department to organise reissue.
I read the letter over again. That was a big payout.
I picked up Angus and Bianca’s final orders from the Family Court. They were several pages long but towards the end I found the bit I was interested in.
Within six (6) months of the date of these orders, the respondent to pay the applicant the amount of $700,000.
As though I couldn’t stop my own hands, I went through all the papers from the yellow envelope. There was a bank document showing a mortgage on the farm of $678,000, dated just after the final orders. More riffling and I found another bank letter dated shortly after the insurance letter: mortgage fully discharged.
Christ. Not long after the divorce that cost them so much, Angus’s father had died, and his life insurance refunded them the payout to Angus’s ex-wife. Ted Brooker’s death had cleared the mortgage on the farm.
‘What are you doing there, love?’
I almost dropped the paper in my hand, Mrs Brooker made me start so violently. She was standing in the spare room doorway, her bright blue eyes studying me where I sat surrounded by the Brookers’ personal papers – reading a letter addressed to her son from her bank. Heat rushed into my cheeks.
