Tree Palace (9 page)

Today was different. The loft was empty and Alfie wanted to keep it that way. He stood in the yard, his hand visoring the sun from his eyes, and complained about do-gooders. Historical Society snobs who called abandoned homesteads ‘heritage’ and wanted them protected by the state as if we were England. ‘I’m sorry, Shane, but they’re clamping down on illegal stripping of places.’

‘I got prime iron lace work.’

‘Sounds lovely. However—’

‘Hand-carved mantelpiece.’

‘Superb.’

‘That place near the state forest.’

‘A splendid homestead.’

‘I took some of the walls. Cedar panels, Alfie.’

‘Outstanding. But I can’t take it at the moment. All these do-gooders.’

Alfie wore his watch on a chain not his wrist and flicked the lid open when he was thinking business. Flicked it open then shut again, slid it into his trousers and took it straight out and flicked some more. A gold lid that made a click. Open, shut, open. He was flicking it now, which made Shane fancy that he could be talked around. He was also smoothing his bald head thoughtfully—another business habit. And pushing his tongue into the gap in his front teeth.

Shane kissed his fingertips as if praising a meal. ‘Cedar panels and hand-carved mantelpiece. Beautiful, aren’t they, Midge?’

‘Too right.’

‘Show him how wide.’

Midge took three strides, stopped and considered the distance, and took another stride. ‘This wide,’ he said, looking down.

‘We almost had to split it in half at the joins.’

Alfie’s watch lid clicked faster. ‘That’s all very well but I’ve got to be careful. Truth is, as well as the do-gooders I’ve got police asking if I sold a rifle. I don’t have a licence to sell a rifle.’

‘Did you sell a rifle?’ asked Shane.

‘That’s not the point. I can’t conduct the homestead-stripping side of my business as normal with do-gooders and interfering police.’

He said he was sorry. If it was any compensation he’d put his hands on a generator. ‘You wanted a generator, if I recall?’

‘We do,’ said Shane.

‘We really do,’ said Moira, wheeling the pram into the yard.

‘Well, I’ve come across a nice diesel one. Weighs only seventy-eight kilos and powers 240-volt bulbs easy. Nice red colour, missus. It’ll be here in my shop next Tuesday.’

‘Price?’ said Shane.

‘Let you have it for four hundred.’

‘Four hundred!’ Shane waved his hand as if fending off flies.

Midge did the same.

‘We wanted a second-hand one,’ said Shane.

‘This is a second-hand one,’ Alfie said, giving his watch lid some quicker clicking. ‘I can let you have it for three hundred. As a favour. Can’t be fairer.’

‘Still steep,’ said Shane. ‘Especially when you’re saying you won’t take my goods.’

The watch lid went quiet. Alfie patted his bald crown. The watch lid started clicking slowly. ‘Carved mantelpiece, you said?’

‘Yip.’

‘Lacework in good nick?’

‘Perfect nick.’

‘How many trailer loads you got stored?’

‘Two trailer loads.’

‘Yours is not a big trailer. That’s hardly worth the risk for me if you’ve only got two trailer loads. Two trailer loads won’t fill up my truck. By the time you add petrol, the profit is—’ He gave a shrug to indicate minimal profit. ‘Tell you what. You heard of Bonham Estate?’

Shane looked at Midge and they both shook their heads. Moira too.

‘Down near Mortlake. Big farm the Chinese bought last year. The whole homestead is just sitting there, empty, of no interest to the current managers. I’ve seen photos of the place in its heyday. It’s got these old leadlight doors and windows through the place. They’d be very fragile but very saleable. And the old-style pressed metal ceilings. And those little fireplaces in the bedrooms. The little black ones like arches. You interested?’

‘Sure,’ said Shane.

Midge stepped out a rectangle of strides and squinted as he counted the measurements. ‘Doors would stack in the trailer easy, but no more than six, I reckon.’

‘Six would be fine,’ said Alfie.

‘And three fireplaces could fit in the car, if they’re little ones and we put the seat down.’

‘If three’s what you can fit, then three it is.’

Shane held up his hand. ‘Wait a sec. What happens then? You say you don’t want stuff lying around here. That means
we
got to store it?’

Alfie shook his head and gave Shane a matey tap on the chest. ‘I’ll hire you my big truck and you can do the transporting to Melbourne. Nothing to do with me what you use the truck for. That’s your business. I’m just hiring it out.’ He held up his hands innocently and laughed.

‘What’s the hire fee?’

Alfie grinned. ‘I get sixty-five per cent of the profit.’

They haggled a moment. Shane wanted the generator included for nothing. He got Alfie down to $150. Moira leant close to Shane and asked him to ask Alfie for a floral cup and saucer for nothing. Alfie said she had good taste and wrapped them in newspaper.

8

The welfare office was open but empty of clients so Shane didn’t go in. If you went in and you were the only person you were the centre of attention and could not be discreet. He wanted to thumb through forms on the racks and choose the right one relating to Zara and hand his own form in. On one occasion when it was his turn to go on the welfare rotation they wouldn’t let him just thumb through the racks and hand in the forms. They made him sit down and said it was new policy to discuss retraining.

He got an hour-long lecture and had to pretend he was engrossed. They asked him what skills he had and he wanted say thief, but of course he couldn’t. Not that he was ashamed of thieving. He was proud that he could take a crowbar, screwdriver and wooden wedges and ease a window away from the frame without wrecking it. He took care when chiselling out ceiling roses. They could be a hundred years old but they were safe with him. He was more a recycler than burglar, that was his view. He stole from other people the things they didn’t seem to be using. He was his own man. Worked his own hours. He liked the feel of being an outsider. Midge had been trained once, to ride a horse, and where had that got him—a Swan Hill winner and a buggered hip.

So, no, he wouldn’t go in when it was empty.

Instead they drove to the laundromat and parked out front under shade. Moira told Midge to watch Mathew and to give her a yell if he stirred. She took the washing in and divided it into two loads.

She put in the coins—three dollars a load—and picked the soggy fluff out of the machines from the people before her. Why they couldn’t clean up after themselves, she didn’t know. All they had to do was look inside once the machine was emptied and there it was. It made her disgusted to do it for them. Blue fluff like a cat’s fur ball mixed in with shredded tissues.

She added detergent from the dispenser on the wall. It gave complimentary powder, not a fragrant brand but it was free.

She pushed the buttons for go.

Next stop was the supermarket.

The sun was still blowing a sweet breeze. Shane and Midge stayed in the car to receive it, their elbows resting across their wound-down windows. A sheet of warm light over their laps. On hot days they went inside for the air-conditioning but this was perfect.

Moira usually took a trolley but today she had the pram. There was a metal basket welded in under the pram’s frame, not big enough for major shopping but plenty of room for a tray of sausages and tubs of instant noodles. Two cans of chilli beans, three bottles of Coke. She put two containers of baby formula in the space around Mathew’s feet. Bulky enough that no one could accuse her of trying to hide them by using baby feet.

It was tempting to do it, hide things, in these newer-style supermarkets. In the older ones with a single cash register the person serving you took time to look you in the eye, glance for any unusual bulges in your clothing. A smiling game of interrogation. In these newer places with three checkouts with beeping scanners the girls were young and hardly looked up. They passed the goods across the infrared and said, ‘How’s your day been?’ You could have pockets full of chocolate and they wouldn’t twig.

The owner was an Indian fellow Barleyvillers called Mr Dixchit, his surname, instead of Habil, his first. You couldn’t use his colour or mention
curry muncher
for a nickname, not to his face, but his surname sounded as rude and he answered to it with a polite bow of his head. He must be doing well for himself to put in scanners, people nattered. Two new aisles and a wall-long refrigerator unit. And fresh linoleum. The butchers and grocers had closed down for miles around and he’d got the benefit. Calling him Mr Dixchit was a kind of revenge. If he was struggling they would have used Habil.

The girl who served Moira was the tall, black-haired one with braces on her teeth. The fastest to scan your purchases and pack them into plastic bags. She spoke so softy you often missed her greeting. You had to say, ‘Pardon?’ so she’d repeat it. But today she was louder, not so stooped in the shoulders to shrink her embarrassing height. When Moira said, ‘You’re chirpy today,’ the girl grinned so wide Moira saw all her rubber bands and wires.

This was her last day working here, she said. She was off for a holiday before school starts. ‘There’s a bunch of us,’ the girl said. ‘We’re doing VCE this year and we’re quitting work.’

‘Good for you,’ said Moira, and then joked, ‘Who’ll do the serving?’

‘Don’t know. New girls, I guess. I think he’s doing interviews, Mr Dixchit.’

Moira stood there a moment, midway between taking baby formula from the pram and placing it beside the scanner. ‘You need anything special to be a new girl?’

The girl tipped money into Moira’s palm. ‘Just what I’m doing. Pack the bags. Count the change.’

The girl said Mr Dixchit did not have an office so much as a storeroom with a table and chair and he wasn’t in there much. You had to catch him while he was ticking off deliveries or stocktaking shelves. Moira couldn’t find him but spoke to an Indian woman she presumed was his wife. Dressed in a drapery way—shiny orange cloth tossed over the shoulder. A dot of red on her forehead. Her halted, foreign way of speaking made her words sound exaggerated but proper. Better than most people sounded in Barleyville.

Moira felt terrible standing there in her grimy frock before drapery and good speaking and yellow-gold bracelets and necklaces. The only decoration she had was an eagle tattoo across her shoulder blades, and time had blurred that old thing hazy and creased. This lady’s hair was plaited perfectly, a black and grey rope of it tied with a ribbon of blue. Moira’s hair was not even brushed and was itchy at the scalp and this was no time to scratch. She tried to compensate by copying the lady’s speaking. She sucked the edges of her lips in against her teeth and dropped her register a notch to be more plummy. ‘I have a daughter, you see. And I think she’s at that age when work is calling her.’

The lady smiled and suggested Moira provide a résumé. Moira didn’t know what a résumé was but she nodded as if she did know and asked what else should be done. ‘I expect you’d want to speak to her. She’s a very well-spoken girl. She’s not like you get round here. Not, you know, rough.’

Mrs Dixchit said there’d be interviews next Tuesday at 11 a.m. If the girl would like to be in attendance she’d be more than welcome.

By the time Moira got back to the car park she was wheeling the pram so quickly from excitement Shane thought she was being chased. He sprung out to get beside her and ward off any threat. She waved him away and told him to help with groceries. Fold the pram. Lift the seatbelt up—it was hanging over the little bed. She lowered Mathew in and settled herself next to him. But even as Shane started the car and asked, ‘What’s the excitement?’ Moira was having second thoughts.
She
might be excited but what about Zara? A job was nothing but a harebrained scheme.

She didn’t answer Shane until they’d gone past the silos and the swirling pigeons. Out onto the open road between wheat-stubble fields and cockatoos walking the roadside as if they’d lost something.

‘I was thinking,’ she said. ‘Zara’s fifteen now. I thought maybe she should try and get a job. Get herself out and active.’

There was no response from the front seat so Moira said, ‘You know, a job?’

Shane and Midge gave each other a look, their bottom lips floppy with puzzlement.

‘We heard what you said. What sort of job? Not much of them round here,’ Shane replied.

‘The supermarket.’

Midge shook his head once. ‘That’s aiming pretty high.’

‘Hold it minute,’ Shane said. ‘You serious, Moira?’

‘Yeah,’ she said, unsurely.

‘Her bring in her own money?’

‘Yeah.’

Shane put his elbow out the window so he could hold his chin and consider. ‘We leave her off our forms it makes things straightforward with the government. We just stick to the old rotation system.’

‘Wait on,’ said Midge. ‘What about Mathew? How’s he get fed and watered? I bet she wouldn’t earn enough for two.’

‘I’d take care of him, wouldn’t I, Mathew?’

She reached into the little bed and touched him. Skin so pearly smooth it felt more like water than flesh. As if her hand would scoop some up if she wasn’t careful. His fingers and toes small enough to still be in the womb, pre-human.

‘You reckon she’d go for it, a job?’ said Shane.

Moira shrugged. ‘Don’t know.’ She flicked a fly from Mathew’s nose. The damn thing kept coming back and she wound the window down more and patted and pushed at it to climb up the glass and get out.

More of those cockatoos bobbing this way and that as if they’d dropped money. And seeing them reminded her—the laundry!

Shane turned the car around and just for a second Moira was distracted by the petty dilemma she always had with the laundry. Does she leave her soggy fluff in the machines to teach a lesson to people who leave theirs in? Or take it out as an example to them? She always took it out but no one learnt.

9

Those fake sort of clouds had come. The ones that looked like someone drew the shapes—head-and-shoulder pictures by the dozen. They lurched eastward and fell down behind the back of the world. The air following them was gaining heat but not like northerly furnace air. It burnt into you pleasantly, not cruel.