New Australian Stories 2 (6 page)

‘I'm real sorry, Rachel, but I did a clean-up after you went and gave stuff to the Salvos. I gave them the record player. I thought you'd taken everything you wanted. I've still got your bed here. Maybe you need that?'

‘No. Just the record player.'

‘Well, if it's any help I think the van was from the Salvos store down on the highway. Maybe they haven't sold it?'

‘That's okay. It was just an idea.'

She looked me up and down. ‘You well? You look like you've put on weight.'

‘Yeah, a little. I'm good. Keeping myself busy at work.'

‘At the car park?'

‘Yep. At the car park. It's always busy. Cars coming and going.'

I waited until they'd driven out of the street before closing the front door. I unscrewed the lid on the fresh jar of olives and scooped a few into a teacup with a large spoon. I sat down in front of the record player and moved the needle to my favourite track. I tapped my foot to the beat and waited for the chorus. When it came I joined in, singing as loudly as I could.

Indigestion

PETA MURRAY

She was the childless aunt, and at the children's parties she was never quite sure where to stand, so, over the years, she had settled for a place in the kitchen. It was so much quieter there, away from the inevitable tears and collisions, and more tears, and the shock of the balloons bursting like random gunfire. They made her jump. In the kitchen she could hide from the small talk and the inane games, from the terrible moment when her own inappropriate gift was opened in front of the entire family. As a reward for her initiative, she became known as
the catering aunt
. She would arrive just a little bit early, pop her apron on and power up the urn — her sister had one, naturally, for large gatherings — then get the oven warming, and find a large enough pot to heat the pink saveloys through, starting them off in cold water, and easing the flame up under them, so they didn't burst their skins. There was nothing more unappetising than an exploded saveloy. But when heated correctly, and with toothpicks offered beside them in a small pottery dish, and the brilliant red sauce, they could be quite appealing. There was an art to it.

There were perks, of course, to her title. A hot cup of tea with her sister before the trays were passed round, and if her brother-in-law remembered her, a glass of champagne. And even if they all forgot about her, as they had, it seemed, today, there were other compensations. The hundreds-and-thousands that stuck to her buttery fingers as she plated up biliously cheerful little triangles of bread. The honey joys that she stuffed into each cheek, as she doled out the licorice allsorts. If she kept her head down, she could eat one after another till they melted away. Still more could be slipped into apron pockets, or into her handbag while no one was looking. They would do for later, and they always kept well.

But best of all, as the catering aunt, she was in charge of sausage rolls.

They had always been a weakness. It had started in childhood, with tuckshop lunches on Mondays.
A sausage roll
and a cream bum.
How they'd trembled with laughter, she and her sister, as they scribbled their orders on their brown paper bags in 2B pencil. They never wrote the rude word, but they always had to say it out loud. The cream bum was over-rated, really, just a vehicle for a groove full of whipped cream and jam to probe out and lick from a finger. But a sausage roll? Warm, plump and greasy, the pastry flaked in your mouth, and the meat left a peppery smear on your lips and a coating of fat on your tongue to comfort for hours after.

She could smell them now, which meant they were almost ready. She took up her tongs and her oven mitt, lowered herself gingerly, opened the oven and slid out the rack. There they sat, party-sized, row after row of proud little pillows, irresistible. She popped one into her mouth, for a test, and then another, and then, because there was still room, three more.

Party's started, has it?

She looked up. Her sister was standing at the door, champagne flute in one hand, pinwheel sandwich in the other, watching. She stood, as elegantly as she could, picked up a single pastry, extended her tongs.

Sausage roll?

Small flakes of spit and dough bounced from her mouth.

Cream bum?

Her mouth was too full of sausage mince to let any sound through, but she laughed, a silent, quivering laugh.
Cream
bum. Cream bum?
Tears brimmed, and her whole body shook with helpless laughter. She waited for her sister to join in.

Oh, for Christ's sake, Glenda, look at you. You're the size of
a house. Do you think you could leave some party food for the
children this year? Or is that just too much to ask?

Her sister swivelled on a heel and left the kitchen.

Honest to god …

The catering aunt popped another sausage roll in her mouth. These days they gave her terrible indigestion. But so did life, for the most part. She found it utterly indigestible. Yet she kept on living, didn't she? So, she reasoned, there was little point trying to avoid the sausage rolls. They were required to be eaten, as life was required to be lived, and one must simply go on, knowing there would be consequences.

She replaced the rack and turned the heat up to high on the oven, then did the same at the stove. The gas jet flared under the glistening saveloys. They bobbed and bumped against each other in their pale pink soup.

She popped a honey joy in each cheek, picked up her handbag, and sashayed to her car.

Exotic Animal Medicine

FIONA M
C
FARLANE

The wife was driving on the night they hit Mr Ronald.

‘My first drive since getting married,' she said.

‘First this, first that,' said her husband. He looked at her, sitting high in the seat: her hair was flimsy and blonde in the late sun. It was ten-thirty and still light. These were the days for marrying — the long days, and the summer. It hadn't rained.

‘You've got to be thankful for the weather,' the registrar had said to the husband. The husband was thankful for the weather and for everything else. He carried his shoulders inside a narrow suit and his wife wore a blue dress. They came out of the registry office into the pale summer, and St Mary's rang the hour.

‘Listen!' said the wife. ‘Just like we've been married in a church.'

It was midday, and because they were in Cambridge, the college bells rang.

Their witnesses — two friends — took photographs. The four of them went to a pub on the river to celebrate among the tourists and the students who'd just finished exams. The tourists pressed around them, clumsy at the bar; the students slipped in and were served first. The bride and groom were rocked from side to side in the crush of people. They cooperated with the crowd, and liquid spilled over their glasses.

They began to drink.

Their friend Peter swayed above their table. He motioned over their heads with his benevolent arms.

‘I suppose I'm best man,' he said. ‘By default. So, a toast: to David and Sarah. To Sarah and David. I'll make a statement about love. I'll say a few words.'

‘You've already said more than enough,' said the other witness, Clare.

‘Not nearly enough,' said Peter, and sat down. By now it was four in the afternoon, and the June town was keeping quiet. The scent of the roses in the college gardens increased, and the black East Anglian bees responded, hanging lazily above the scent. The lawns maintained their perfect green. The river was laid out straight like a track for trains. David and Sarah and Clare and Peter walked along it to find another pub.

The swans idled on the brown river, the ducks chased punts for food, the geese slid against the wet banks. Tinfoil barbecues were lit on Jesus Green, one by one, and the smoke hung in morose columns above each group, never thick enough to form a cloud. The husband and wife and their friends picked their way among the barbecues. They encountered dogs, friendly and wayward.

‘Stay well today, canines,' said David. ‘Stay happy and healthy.'

Sarah was on call that night.

‘I'm not worried about them,' said Sarah. ‘It's the Queen of Sheba I'm worried about. But he'll be good.'

(At the surgery, the Queen of Sheba lifted his haunches and lowered his head to stretch his grey back. He walked figure eights in his cage the way a tiger would.)

‘He'd better be good,' said David.

‘That bloody cat,' said Sarah, happily.

(The Queen of Sheba sat in his cage and looked out at the ferrets and iguanas. He looked out at the tanks of scorpions and turtles. He settled, sphinx-like, and crossed his paws. The nurse poked her fingers through the grille as she passed Sheba's cage and Sheba, blinking, ignored them.)

The crowd at the pub seemed to part before the bridal party, and they found an outdoor table, newly abandoned. Their happiness was good luck. Sarah said, ‘Just one more drink. I might have to work.'

‘You might,' said Peter. ‘And you might not.'

‘Remember, this is your wedding reception,' said Clare, and she placed her arm around Sarah, coaxing.

Sarah looked up at David. ‘Just one more then,' she said.

‘We'll make it vodkas,' said Peter.

‘My first vodka as a married woman,' said Sarah. She sat against David and felt the day carry them towards each other. The hours passed at the pub, and they didn't think of going home, although this was what they looked forward to: the privacy of their bed against smudged windows, its view of small gardens and the beat of trapped bees against glass that shook as the buses moved by. Their bed was a long way from the colleges and the river, but the bells would still come over the roads and houses, and they would be alone, and married. The day moved them both towards the moment in which they would face each other in bed, utterly familiar, and see that despite their marriage there was no change, and that this was just what they wanted.

Sarah's phone rang. She knew it would be work, and so did David. He creased his face at her, disbelieving, but found that he wasn't disappointed. This way he would have her to himself. They would drive in the car, and she would tell him her impressions of the day: the mannerism she had disliked in the registrar — a tendency to blink too often and too hard. He would rest his hand on her warm leg and lean his head back on the seat and watch the way her driving forced her to keep her usually animated hands still. This animation would pass instead into her face, where her eyebrows would knit and rise across her forehead. She would crane forward to look left and right at intersections, as if she needed to see vast distances. Sarah drove as if she were landing an enormous plane full of porcelain children on a mountaintop.

‘What a surprise,' said Sarah. She placed her phone on the table. ‘The Queen of Sheba needs a catheter.'

Clare said, ‘There must be someone else.'

‘No one else,' said Sarah, standing now, slightly unsteady on her feet, but graceful. ‘Sheba's all mine. He's a friend's cat.'

‘And does this friend know you got married today?' asked Clare.

Sarah laughed. No one knew they had been married today.

‘Your wedding night and you have to go stick something up a cat's dick,' said Peter.

(Sheba rolled in his cage, snapping at the nurse's fingers. The pain felt familiar to him, but newly terrible, a hot pressure. He flicked his paws to shake it off, shake it off. He couldn't.)

Sarah led David from the pub. He leaned against her the way he did when he was on the way to being very drunk. In fact, he was just perfectly, amiably, generously drunk, inclined to pause in order to kiss his new wife. He looked at her and felt grateful. He felt an expansion in his brain that he enjoyed — a feeling that finally he had found his life, or was finding it, was on the verge of finding it, although he was still a graduate student and suspected he always would be. He said to himself, ‘This is my youth, at this moment, right now,' and because he was drunk, he also said it to Sarah.

The walk home wasn't far, but they took their time doing it. Sarah felt a sense of urgency about Sheba but couldn't translate that urgency into hurry. She felt the way she did in those anxious dreams when she was due somewhere important but was unable to find the items she needed to bring with her. They spent whole minutes standing on the side of the road in order to watch a woman move around her lit basement kitchen, ironing.

As they approached their apartment, David said, ‘You know I'm coming with you,' and she didn't argue. They changed their clothes, and it felt to Sarah, briefly, as if it had been David's suit and her dress that had married each other earlier in the day. David followed her to the car. Before lowering herself into the driver's seat she shook her head, just a little, as if she might clear it. She didn't feel drunk.

It was an old car, friendly but unreliable, that flew with dog hair when the windows were down. It required patience, particularly in the winter; even now, in June, it demonstrated a good-natured reluctance to start. Sarah turned the key; the engine kicked in and then out. David played with the radio to find a good song and when there were no good songs, he turned it low. As if encouraged by this decrescendo, the car cooperated. Cambridge was lit with orange lights. They passed through the city with exaggerated care and were in the country very suddenly, with the lights of airplanes far overhead. England became a long dark road, then, with bright windows visible across wet fields and trees against the sky.