Flying the Coop (5 page)

‘
Mum
! C'mon!' Grace, who was already on the uppermost front step, leant over the balustrade to call to her mother before turning and running along the veranda and pressing her face against the windows, one by one.

As Chris was about to remonstrate with her, she heard a car slowly making its way down Zoello Road. Grace stopped what she was doing and they both turned to watch a silver sedan come into view and then, shortly afterwards, pull into the driveway and come to a stop by the letterbox. The real estate agent better known as Frank got out of the driver's side and, slamming the door purposefully, advanced on her with a huge grin.

‘Christin!' He grasped her hand and shook it vigorously. ‘Well? What do you think?'

‘Nice,' Chris replied weakly. ‘Ah . . . very nice. But I –'

‘Excellent! Then how about I show you inside?' Without waiting for an answer, Frank strode towards the house as he dug in one of his pockets for the key. After a moment or two, Chris followed, quite taken aback by the drastic transformation that seemed to have occurred overnight. From the ineffectual man of yesterday, Frank appeared to have metamorphosed into a super-confident, determined salesman bent on completing a sale. Even his toupee appeared sleeker, and more attached.

‘Ta da!' he announced, opening the heavy front door. ‘Prepare to be impressed!'

Chris cast an appreciative glance up along the deep, shady stretch of the veranda before stepping over the threshold and entering the farmhouse behind the other two. She noticed three things simultaneously. The first was Grace's booted heels fast disappearing up an L-shaped staircase that dominated two sides of the large entrance. The second was the faint but distinctive smell of cigarette smoke, a pungent mustiness that seemed to make
the house feel even older. And the third thing was the carpet – a hideous expanse of brown and cream swirls that covered every floor surface within sight, including the stairs.

Wrinkling her nose in response to both the smell and the carpet, Chris took stock and realised that there was a choice of directions from the entry. Apart from the staircase, there were doorways both to the right and to the left, and a passage that went straight ahead underneath the curve of the stairs. Feeling a bit like a game-show contestant, Chris chose the doorway on the left and walked through into what was obviously the lounge-room. This was a large L-shaped room, made even more spacious by the lack of any furnishings except some heavy brown and orange striped curtains that clashed badly with the carpet. There was a large double window by the doorway, through which Chris could see the front veranda, and, in the middle of the adjacent window-less wall, a brick fireplace that was topped by a beautiful mahogany mantel-piece. At the top end of the room, which was probably used as a dining-room, was another window and a plastered archway to the right that led directly into the kitchen. There, Chris was pleased to finally see a room that was
not
graced with the god-awful carpet. However, her pleasure only lasted as long as it took for her gaze to travel up from the white linoleum floor. The room was revolting – unutterably, inexorably revolting. Yet amazing at the same time. From its yellowy-orange pots and pans wallpaper, to its yellow kitchen cabinets with matching push-button handles, and even the white formica bench-tops with little silver flecks, the room was a time capsule from the 1970s. Chris opened a cupboard in wonderment and stared at the yellow daisy-patterned lining within.

‘Well maintained, hey?' Frank came down a set of plain, wooden, non-yellow stairs set in the far corner of the kitchen. ‘You don't often get kitchens as neat as this one.'

‘True,' agreed Chris, closing the cupboard and staring at the old upright stove with its faded yellow metal hotplate covers. ‘Very true.'

‘Hey, retro!' Grace came leaping down after Frank and gazed around the kitchen with admiration. ‘Very cool!'

‘It's foul,' said Chris flatly, suddenly remembering that she was supposed to be expressing an aversion for the house. ‘It's like being stuck inside an egg yolk.'

‘Retro's
in
, Mum,' said Grace disparagingly. ‘Anyway, you should see upstairs! There's two
huge
bedrooms at the front with those sort of set-in windows with seats, and I'm going to decorate mine like a padded cell. You know, like in an asylum. Oh, and there's another smaller room on the other side that we could maybe turn into a bathroom?'

‘It's a boxroom,' explained Frank, as proud as if he had put it there himself. ‘And look, have you noticed the passageway to the front door?'

Frank flung open a dark walnut door set next to the kitchen stairs and both Chris and Grace dutifully peered through, seeing a narrow strip of the same brown and cream carpet ending in the front entry. Chris was beginning to realise that what she had originally thought was a simple design was really made more complex by the sheer number of entries and exits. The kitchen alone had a staircase and three other entries – the archway she had come through, the passage door that Frank had just opened, and a sliding one set in the far wall.

‘The bathroom's off to the left down there.' Frank waved his arm down the passage. ‘We'll look at that later. You'll love it though, it's huge, and all done in a nice green colour. Avocado, I think they call it. Then there's the entry, which you've seen, with a door to the lounge-room and a door to the main bedroom. Anyway, how about we take a step outside, hey?'

‘Avocado,' repeated Chris slowly, as she tore her eyes away from the passage and gazed around the kitchen once more.

‘I
love
avocados!' said Grace, with more enthusiasm than her mother had seen her show since the time Cynthia had been bitten by a stray dog and had to be tested for rabies.

‘Since when do you like avocados?' asked Chris irritably. ‘Stop making things up.'

‘Relax, Mum.' Grace grabbed her mother's hand and propelled her across the kitchen and through the sliding door that Frank had opened. They joined him in what was clearly the farm office, judging by the furniture. The room itself was square, with a door leading out the back, and louvre windows along one side looking onto the side veranda. The office housed a desk, a filing cabinet and a bookcase filled with lever-arch files dating – judging by the neat black texta on the spines – all the way back to 1968. Chris guessed that the same person who'd maintained the kitchen had also been in charge here – everything was pristine but outmoded, the only technological gadget in sight being a rather ancient Imperial typewriter that squatted on a corner of the desk.

By the time Chris took all this in, Grace had exited the room and was peering in through the side louvre windows, shouting to her mother.

‘Come out! You've
got
to see this!'

‘Excited, isn't she?' Frank grinned. He held open an old, wooden-framed screen door for Chris. ‘After you, Mrs Beggs . . . Christin.'

Chris paused to look at him. ‘If you're going to insist on calling me by my first name, for god's sake call me Chris,
not
Christin.'

‘Oh – ah, sorry.' Frank flushed and glanced away, all his bravado disappearing in an instant. In fact, he looked far more embarrassed than the occasion warranted and Chris decided
that the super-salesman act was just that – an act. And not a terribly tenable one either. After a few moments of silence, he muttered something unintelligible in her general direction and headed down the steps and across the yard to join Grace, who was peering through a metal gate and clucking. Chris stifled a grin and wandered over to the edge of the veranda to lean against the post and rail balustrade.

The veranda itself ended just past the kitchen window with an enclosed area that Chris guessed was the laundry – an
outside
laundry. To her immediate left, in line with the screen door, were three broad wooden steps leading down into a small garden that, like the one next door, was well vegetated with rhododendrons of all colours – Wedgwood-blue, crimsony-red and sunflower yellow. But these looked as if they hadn't been tended in quite some time, giving the garden a rather neglected look that was echoed by a lopsided Hills hoist, empty except for a large plastic peg caddy. Yellow, to match the kitchen.

The row of white pickets that separated the farm from its neighbour at the front continued up alongside this little garden, the only difference being that these had obviously missed out on the last coat of paint and, as a result, were clad with flaking grey-white. Directly opposite, marking the boundary of this farm from the one with the grazing sheep, was an expanse of plain chicken-wire type fencing. Then, at the rear of the garden, and holding the actual farmland at bay, was a long, tall and bushy hedge that extended all along the back and up to the huge barn in the far right corner. This long hedge had only one break, which framed a fairly wide, old metal gate through which could be seen the occupants of an enclosure beyond. And it was these occupants that had obviously caused Grace to abandon her usual methods of communication in favour of a steady clucking noise.

Of course, Chris had noticed the increase in background
noise as soon as she left the house and, of course, she had realised what was
making
this background noise. However, it still gave her a bit of a thrill to actually see the chooks, even at a distance. And there seemed to be quite a lot of them, too. Clustering around the gate and looking very much as if they were chatting with Grace, they were all a white-flecked chestnut-brown colour, with snowy white tail feathers, red fleshy combs and brownish-yellow feet. But to Chris's surprise, the sound they made was nothing like the raucous cackling she had expected. Instead, it was more like listening to a television with constant interference creating a muted backdrop to the real action. A sort of sociable chattering resonance that brought to mind a dozen low-level, gossipy conversations going on all at once, with lots of interruptions but no one person raising their voice louder than anybody else. And, as she listened, Chris realised that this soft background chook chatter just seemed to
fit
the whole rustic serenity of the countryside.

She smiled, without even quite realising it, and then watched as Grace abandoned her attempts at poultry communication and instead headed with Frank along the hedge towards the barn, which was also desperately in need of a lick of paint. Or two. While waiting for them to return, Chris left the veranda and wandered down a well-worn dirt path to the chook enclosure. A few curious hens dashed over to the gate and stood blinking at her as she approached. Chris nodded cordially and made a few experimental clucking noises. The chooks seemed to enjoy this, their level of noise immediately increasing as about a dozen others ran over to see what was going on. They crowded the gate, each jostling for position as they chattered at her nonstop.

‘Sorry. No spreichen de chook.' Chris smiled at them apologetically and then lifted her gaze to examine the area
beyond the welcoming committee. And the smile slowly slid off her face as her mouth dropped open in shock. Because her easy assumption of one pen, one herd of chooks, was totally, utterly erroneous. Instead, stretching past this initial chookyard, were many, many more, each with their own dilapidated corrugated iron shed, each with their own huge dirt patch, and each with their own gregarious gathering of poultry. Thousands and thousands of chickens. Nor did the enclosures appear to be in any semblance of order, like a neat row all in a line. Instead, they were scattered over the property as far as Chris could see, as if some giant hand had tossed them onto the landscape in a godly game of knucklebones.

Raising both hands to clutch the metal mesh of the gate, Chris systematically tracked her gaze across the entirety of the farm beyond the hedge. And knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that she was out of her depth. Steadily accumulating thoughts of ‘what if?' – fostered by the peacefulness, the cheerful chooks, and memories of a dream once shared – vanished as her stomach clenched with the full realisation of how unrealistic she'd been. Garth had been right – again. Overcome with a sudden sadness that surprised her in its intensity and almost, but not quite, brought tears to her eyes, Chris turned her back on the maze of enclosures, with their free-ranging occupants, and walked slowly back across the yard and up onto the veranda. Then she continued around the corner by the office until, even if she turned, she would no longer be able to see the hedge, and the gate, and the poultry.

Once there, she resolutely pushed the whole chook bit of the farm out of her head. So what if she'd been a fool? Nothing was ever a waste if you learnt something along the way – even if what you learnt
was
that you were a fool. And that was that. Mentally, Chris washed her hands of the whole thing and leant against the weatherboards between the louvre
windows of the office and a set of frosted windows that she assumed belonged to the bathroom.

Forget the chooks – this
veranda
was her favourite part of the entire property. Running along three sides of the farmhouse, it was wide and deep and conjured up images of Scarlett O'Hara settled on a porch-swing fanning herself while some good ole boy sat on the railing playing to her on his ukulele. And that's just what the veranda needed, Chris decided – not a good ole boy or a ukulele, but a porch-swing. Something wicker, perhaps, with deep Brunswick green cushions and a thick chain anchoring it to a roof beam. The owner could settle out here with a glass of wine on a mild evening and slowly rock to and fro while surveying their own slice of Australia.

In her mind, Chris fastened the wicker swing to the veranda roof just beyond the corner, and then positioned a series of large potted plants along the perimeter and hung a pair of luxurious maidenhair ferns to trail their feathery fronds down and over the railings. Just as she placed a cane outdoor setting outside the main bedroom windows, a cat crawled out from under the house and then, after stretching, rolled on its back in a patch of dappled sunlight. It was a short-haired black cat – a male, judging by the size – and as Chris walked over to the balustrade to watch, he finished his aerobics and settled down to clean his paws. Leaning against the railings, Chris turned back to the imaginary cane setting and sat Garth down on one of the chairs with a crystal goblet in his hand. He immediately smiled at her as he raised the glass in a salute.