Jacaranda Blue (14 page)

‘We're going to drown. We're going to drown,' cried timid Mousy One.

‘Oh goodness gracious dearie me, our little lives are done.'

‘We'll discuss it later, Daughter.'

‘I would like to discuss it now. What is the actual balance of these accounts?'

‘They vary – from month to month. Enough of this now. Do I deny you, Daughter?'

‘I'm middle-aged, Father, and still dependent on you for my every need. I'm living in the past. This is the nineties. If I have no income of my own then I must be eligible for some social security payment. Everyone else in town appears to be.'

‘Are you destitute? You are certainly not.'

‘What qualifies as destitute? It may have been well enough in your youth for maiden daughters to remain dependent on their parents, but I would like a little independence now. Freedom.'

‘Freedom?'

‘Freedom to – ' She almost said it – almost said, to run from Maidenville, but she caught her tongue, and added, ‘Freedom to walk into . . . into the hairdresser's, have my hair cut. We don't have an account there. What if I should like to have it washed and set each week like Mrs Morris?'

‘God forbid it, Daughter!'

She had never before expressed interest in her bank accounts, so the minister had never been forced to lie. And he did not wish to lie to her. Always content to live the way he dictated, Stella had previously shown little regard for the papers he placed beneath her nose for signatures. Martin's problem now was how he might wriggle out of this one, and get things back the way they were. Her bank accounts were overly healthy at the moment. As investments came due, he'd been cashing them in, building a pool he intended investing in shares. Interest was too low for his liking. Hang the young home-buyers.

Halfway through the back door, he turned, returned to the room, allowing the door to slam shut behind him. ‘A woman's hair is her crowning glory; however, this . . . this leaving of it loose – as you have been doing these last days. It is not for me to say, but you must ask yourself, isn't that sheepdog style more suitable for a teenager?'

‘It's quite comfortable, but I've been thinking that perhaps I should have a little of it trimmed off.'

‘Anything but Mrs Morris's starched wig. Shall I leave an extra twenty, fifty dollars?' A conciliatory smile, a grand offer.

She rejected his offer. ‘I have no idea of what it might cost, and that perhaps is the point I am trying to make, Father.'

‘Then let us get to the point, and quickly.' He checked his watch, looked at the kitchen clock, stepping from foot to foot, eager to go, but forced to remain.

‘The point is, that I am out of touch with living. At the auxiliary meetings, women in their sixties and seventies consider me to be of their generation, but they know more about managing money than I. I don't know the price of things, Father. I've always bought what was required, no prices asked. I walk through the supermarket and never look at prices. I trust Marilyn to bill me – to bill you, for the correct figure. The accounts are sent to you. It is as if I don't exist. Mail comes addressed to me, from the banks, but you handle it. I don't dare to open my own mail! I am forty-four, and a reasonably intelligent woman . . . or I was once. And this floor. I want to buy a new floor-covering for in here. It's disgusting. It's . . . it's revolting. As you say, we are not destitute, so if I have the money in my accounts, then I'd like to spend some of it on a floor-covering that I have some chance of keeping clean. Why can't I?'

‘Come, come, Daughter. This argument does not suit you – and if I might say – is perhaps a mote extreme.'

‘Perhaps. Perhaps it is. But . . . but you tell me you are flying off on a tour. Did you ask my opinion? No, you did not.'

‘So the father must now ask the daughter's permission?'

‘No. No. I don't know what I mean, Father, but can't you see that a little money of my own might help give back to me some self-worth?' She had gone too far now and endeavoured to step back. Her head bowed, she looked at her hands . . . scarred, ringless, aging hands.

‘A new floor may give you self-worth?'

‘Yes.'

‘Self-worth?' He stood shaking his head. ‘Surely it is not self-worth we seek, but what we are worth in the eyes of God! Do you think he cares if we have floors or not?'

‘I care. God doesn't have to clean it. I do – and, as always, you confuse me with your arguments.'

‘Confusion this morning is a two-way street, Daughter.'

She sighed, turned away, accepting defeat. What was the use? But the worm of rebellion still lived within her. A deep breath, and she turned to him again. ‘What I mean, Father, is that a little independence, might, at this particular stage of my life, be in order – a safety blanket against some emergency.'

‘Emergency?' Martin could not perceive of any emergency in Maidenville that might require the outlay of hard cash.

‘I'll be out of touch with you for three weeks. In that time anything could happen. A broken window – as when the bird flew against the lounge room doors last summer. A minor accident in the car. What if something should happen while you are overseas, if I had to go to you?'

‘God forbid! And the glazier would send an account.'

‘Yes. Of course he would. You have all the answers, and I have none left.' She turned on her heel, and her rubber soles squealed against the aging floor.

His face had turned red, his jowls were swelling. Her attention on the sink, she let the hot water run over plates.

‘Planes are safer than the average family car, these days – they say.'

Safer than the average family home, she thought, as she turned the water off. ‘Of course planes are safe, and of course there will be no emergency.' She knew him too well. He might profess total faith in his God, but he had no desire to walk through the pearly gates and shake his maker's hand. She spoke on quickly, pacifying, calming a frightened child. ‘I use that only as an example, Father. It will be a wonderful trip, and I'm pleased that you decided to go. I suggested that you go originally, if you remember.'

‘Yes. Yes you did. We are flying Qantas. They have the best safety record.'

‘They certainly do.' She began clearing the table. ‘What are you doing about a passport? You need a passport to travel.'

‘I sent off the forms on Monday with a confounded photograph. George Jones, the tour organiser, is rushing it through. They lined me up in front of a screen at the chemist's and snapped before I was composed. I look like a criminal. All it requires is the number and the arrows on my jacket. Now I really must be on my way. We'll have to leave this discussion until later. Perhaps we'll talk about some new linoleum when I return.'

‘Yes, Father.'

‘I assume the department store will have suitable luggage.'

‘I was looking at a rather attractive case there some time back.'

‘And I must get some new spark plugs for the Packard. I'll get the car into A-one order before I leave.'

She nodded, tame again, the way he liked it.

‘Not good for a fine old car to sit idle. Motors, as mankind, have a habit of dying when unused. Far better to wear away than to rot away.'

‘I can run the Packard for you while you are gone.'

He laughed. ‘You would remember how to drive it?'

‘I was driving it at seventeen. For years I drove Mother around town in it.'

He shook his head, dismissing the idea.

‘Have you really forgotten the past, Father? Have you been able to erase it totally from your mind – ?'

He cut her off mid-sentence. ‘Indeed you did. Indeed you did. I have not forgotten, Daughter. Your dear mother liked the Packard. It came to me with her, you know. I only allowed the registration to lapse when she no longer had a use for the vehicle. Never learned to drive it herself, of course. Your mother was never one to demand her independence.' It was a good line on which to make his exit. He opened the door.

‘About the credit card, Father.'

He looked heavenward. ‘You are determined to have it, Daughter?' Frustration, and the desire to escape this house and be about his business was threatening capitulation.

‘It would give me a feeling of security while you are away.'

‘Then damn it all, I cannot deny you that security. We'll go into the bank before I leave. Get it underway.' Capitulation could be delayed. Decisions could be made tomorrow, next week, but after he had transferred some of her money into a small account. Perhaps a thousand, or two thousand. Yes. Two thousand. That would be the way to go, he thought. Present her with the book, rather than a confounded card. Give her some small independence, if her desire for independence was so great that she should stand here and argue for it. What in God's name has got into this girl? And the timing of her rebellion is not good, he thought. ‘I should be back by eleven, Daughter. If young Cooper and his intended arrive before I return, give them tea.'

‘I'll come with you. We can look at the cases together.'

‘In that outfit? You look like a floral bouquet.' He eyed the shirt.

‘Miss Moreland bought it for me at the department store. She said it looked like my garden. I thought perhaps they may have another, and we might see a nice light jacket for you there. I feel I would like to get out of the house today, and I have nothing more pressing to do.'

‘The dishes, perhaps. And the young couple will be here – '

‘Dishes have a habit of waiting for me, Father, and Mark Cooper and his bride will surely wait for you.'

The night throbbed with silence, or perhaps it was his own heartbeat. Nothing moved. The town was stone cold dead. Keeping away from Main Street and the streetlights, Thomas Spencer had ridden his bike out to Boundary Road, then cut back via the river road, his only light, a slim pen-light torch he'd helped himself to from the shop.

They won't miss it, like they never missed the bottles that walk out of the liquor store, the youth thought. He had a good business going with black-market booze and cigarettes.

It was sort of eerie, riding through the trees along the river, sort of like a science fiction show, he thought. A sky of stars, but no moon. This slim channel of light slicing its way, like a laser knife, through the pitch blackness, leading him on, and into – ‘The outer limits,' he said.

Rabbits scuttled from the road as he passed by. He swung his torch onto them, attempting to get their eyes, dazzle them. He nearly got one too.

He and Kelly had got a rabbit that way one night. Hypnotised it with the torch, then grabbed it and wrung its neck while its little chin trembled. They sprayed a yellow stripe down its back, and hung it from a noose on Kelly's old man's front porch – like a voodoo sign. Like saying ‘Lay off us, man, or we'll send in the zombies to do you.'

The old bastard just cut it down and gave it to his dog – paint and all. Free tucker, he reckoned, or that's what Kelly said. Kelly wasn't a bad-looking babe, but how she got that way with her gorilla old man and his emu wife, Thomas never could work out.

He caught the eyes of a second rabbit, but it blinked, hopped. ‘If I used me big light, I'd could get you, you jumpy little shit,' Thomas warned.

So far the calici rabbit virus hadn't reached Maidenville. Maybe it never would. Nothing else ever got this far away from civilisation, he thought. ‘Flat, red, dusty, dead shit hole. Only thing it's any good for is for bike riding. Look, no hills,' he told the land around him.

The nearest hill was sixty kilometres away. Every year the state school took a bus load of first grade kids there for a picnic, just so they wouldn't start believing the bloody world was flat and that they were all going to fall over the edge of the earth if they ever left Maidenville. He'd gone there with the school, and he'd wanted to see what was on the other side. He still wanted to see what was on the other side, and one day he would too. Just take off, and ride. That's what he told his mother last night.

‘Fat old cow,' he'd told her. ‘One of these days I'll just take off and ride.'

Freedom. That's what he needed. Cut loose. No more supermarket shelves, no whingeing, no-one telling him what to do and when to do it.

‘Freedom, man. Just gone, man.'

He shone his torch into the trees. ‘Pow. Pow. Pow,' he said, picking up the twin green eyes of some night thing, probably a feral cat, also out after prey.

He had a big modern light on his bike. His parents only ever bought him the best, but he didn't use it when he went wandering in the night. It was a dead giveaway – lit him and his bike up like a moving Christmas tree. Anyway, he liked the dark. He couldn't see the flat, and the dust, and the pathetic bloody town that didn't even know how pathetic it was. Tight-arsed bloody hole of a place, seething with secrets hidden beneath its respectable skirts. He knew its secrets, heard most of them from his mother, and nosed the rest out like a bloodhound.

Kelly was supposed to call for him at midnight. He'd waited out front until one, but she hadn't turned up. Either she was trying to make him beg for it, or else her old man had locked her in again.

‘He's jealous that she's putting it out for everyone and he wants some himself, but he hasn't got the guts to take what he wants. Gutless old shitter,' he said. ‘I'd like to do him, cut him with my knife. Slit his fat old gut and let it all spill out. Here dog. Come and get some free food – choice gorilla belly.'

The river road brought him in at the top end of town. He circled Murphy's block, but there was no sign of Kelly. Maidenville was locked up, battened down for sleeping. It belonged to him tonight. He rode down the main street, wishing he had a brick to toss through the supermarket window, but he didn't have a brick. Then he was at Templeton's hedge, and he skidded to a halt, leaning his bike against it while he peered over the top of a gate as tall as he. Just like old Templeton to have a two-metre gate nobody could see through. He's got a privacy complex, old bull-moose guarding his virgin heifer . . . virgin no more. Thomas chuckled.

He liked old Stell's garden. It was cool, green – like one of them oasis things that they have in the middle of deserts. You come on them when you're dying of thirst and you bury your head in cool. Slake your thirst, he thought. He had a thirst tonight that needed slaking real bad, but it wasn't for Kelly. He was glad she hadn't shown. She was too easy, boring after a while. She'd do it any which way, and once you'd done it every which way, what else was there to do?

‘Plenty.'

He couldn't get old Stell off his mind lately. The little breasts and the big hard nipples. ‘Wow. Power, man. You've got the power. May the force be with you,' he said. With old Stell it had been like . . . like the power, like something else . . . like doing it to your mother, or to a little kid. ‘Yeah.' Like watching a stupid little kid's mouth tremble, its big innocent eyes blinking at you, pleading for one more chance . . . then you socked it to them, then crunched their necks. It would be like crunching a rabbit's neck.

‘Snap. Crackle. Pop.'

Templeton's house stood out like a tall dark lump against the lighter dark of sky. It looked like it was staring down its nose at the Wilsons' and old Bryant's low-brow squats, like old Templeton stared down his nose at half the town. ‘Superior fat old fart. You wouldn't be looking so superior if you knew where I've been,' he said.

The gate was easier to scale from the inside, but he wouldn't let that stop him. Grasping the top, he heaved himself up, the soles of his sneakers walking wood. He gained a toehold in the slot for the letterbox and in the hole where the bolt ran. Then he was straddling it, and jumping lightly to the ground on the other side. He laughed. That miserable old fart's gate couldn't keep him out. Not any more. No-one could keep him out – not if he wanted in, wanted to slake his thirst.

His sneakers on gravel made no sound; he crept down the drive until he could see Stella's bedroom window, sort of ghosting with the light from the street. It was open too. He knew which room she slept in, he'd been in there with her plenty of times when he was a stupid little kid. He stuck a toy mouse in her knickers drawer once, hid it under her frilly knickers. She always wore frilly knickers – black ones, pink ones, blue, and soft little bras that made his mother's look like they were made to hold up a cow's udder.

Only the night before last, he'd sat for hours in the big jacaranda, watching Stell brush her hair, watching her take off her little bra, and put on a nightie. The light played her shadow on the blind and it was like watching a giant television screen. It turned him on, just watching her. It was sort of like watching blue movies in black and white, but knowing it was all there behind the screen waiting for you, waiting for you in true and vibrant flesh tones, and when the show was over you could walk around to the back of the television and go for it. Stick it to her while her trusting old eyes blinked and begged. Give it to her until she went limp.

He started wanting it real bad, wanting it at the back of the television, wanting it in colour, wanting it so bad he had to take her once-white knickers from his pocket and create his own patch of colour with them.

He'd kept the knickers with him for two weeks now. Kept them in the pocket of whichever jeans he was wearing. Used them for –

‘Remembering,' he said. They were getting past their use-by date.

Standing now beneath her window, he unzipped his jeans, and he remembered the Packard and the dirt floor again . . . remembered it good.

The knickers were silky stuff. Real slow, he rubbed them up and down, up and down, building the vision in his head, building it until he was ready to explode with it, but he held on to it, never wanting it to end. Sometimes, lately, the visions in his head were better than the real thing with Kelly. He couldn't get rough with her, or she'd set her old man and uncles on him, but in his head, he could get as rough as he liked with old Stell.

Tonight he was changing the story. He'd tamed her with his knife, and now she was licking him, licking him good. He sucked in a long breath and let the pictures grow. She was up on her knees now, straddling him . . . backwards, and he'd put his knife down, and his two hands were around her, pinching her little boobs with their big nipples sticking out like stalks out of green apples. He was driving her into a frenzy, and she was moaning and begging him and licking him, up and down, up and down, her tongue was silk . . . warm silk. She was –

‘Shit.'

He finished too soon, and held the knickers high. I ought to put them in the wash for the old man. Might bring back pleasant memories, he thought. Placing his foot in the fork of the jacaranda closest to Stell's window, he began his climb, high into the tree, his pen-light gripped between his teeth.

They were good climbing trees. He knew where the branches forked, and which branches leaned across to her room. He could easily get in her window from this one. It was wide open tonight. She always left her window open, except in the rain, but even then she left the top down. Still, it might be pushing his luck with her old man only three rooms along the passage.

He thought of the top floor layout as he moved further out on the limb. There was a long dark passage with rooms both sides. Old Templeton's room was over the front door, Stella's at the other end of the passage, down the back. Plenty of space in between, as long as he shut her up fast.

The limb swayed. His weight gain in the past twelve months had its downside. Too thin to hold him, the branch groaned and its leaves swished against her window.

Then it cracked.

‘Shit!' he hissed, moving quickly back, her knickers in his hand.

‘Maybe I'll hang them on the tree,' he thought. ‘Or . . . or nail them on the church door. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Nail them on the church door next Sunday.'

A light came on at the front of the house, in old Templeton's room.

‘Shit man. Must have a hundred-watt globe in that bed lamp,' Thomas muttered, freezing back against the trunk. He clung there, watching the window, half expecting to see the old bull-moose's head emerge, almost hearing the bellow. The town kids knew that bellow well. It used to be a dare in grade four, to climb in and pinch the minister's apricots.

The light in the bathroom was turned on. It bathed the foliage above Thomas, turning it from black to a bower of soft green, scattered with jewel-like blue.

A long intake of air and a slower release. ‘Far out,' he whispered. ‘I'm in the magic faraway tree, Aunty Stell, with old Saucepan Head and what's his name. Far out, man. Far out.'

In silence he waited until he heard the cistern's hiss, heard the water sluicing down the sewerage pipes only feet from him. He waited until the bathroom light was off, and the night, and the tree, black once more before he began the climb down.

But the soles of his expensive runners were thick, spongy; his left foot wedged in the fork of the jacaranda and Thomas, thrown off balance, fell heavily to the earth, his ankle twisting as his foot was dragged free of the shoe.

‘Fucking tree. Fucking old maid bitch with her fucking tree,' he hissed through gritted teeth as he rubbed the ankle, soothed the raw skin. Minutes passed before the pain abated and he was able to stand, to climb, to retrieve his shoe then limp slowly down the drive.

It wasn't until he was on the footpath and mounting his bike that he thought of it. He pushed the frilly knickers into the letterbox. Still cursing, he peddled away, one shoe on, and one shoe off, the bike labouring now as it followed the slim pencil of light home.