The Fine Colour of Rust. P. O’Reilly A.
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I’m going to buy him sunscreen and make him wear it, especially on those sticking-out ears of his. I’ll buy him a hat and long-sleeved shirts. I can’t imagine life without him.
‘Mum, I found some flat tin.’ Melissa is in the doorway, shading her eyes with her hand and watching Jake teetering on top of a beaten-up caravan, his arms whirling like propellers.
‘Jake, don’t move,’ I scream.
My toe stubs a railway sleeper as I bolt towards the caravan.
He was probably fine until I panicked. His eyes widen when he looks down and realizes how high he is. His first howl sets off the guard dogs. His second howl sets off car alarms across town. By the time Norm and I coax him down we’ve both sustained permanent hearing loss. I hold him against me and his howls ease to sobbing.
‘Come on, mate, it wasn’t that bad.’ Norm lifts Jake from my grasp and swings him down to the ground. ‘I’ll get you a can of lemonade.’
Jake takes a long, hiccupping breath followed by a cat-in-heat kind of moan as he lets out the air.
‘Mum! I told you, I found some.’ Melissa pulls me, limping, to the back of the yard.
My toe is throbbing and I’m sweating and cross. I wonder why I don’t buy a couple of puce cardigans and sink back into the land myself, like Brenda or that truck.
We drag the bits of tin to the shed where Jake is sitting on the counter listening to the golden oldies radio station while Norm scans Best Bets.
‘Have you got any paint for this tin? I’m going to make signs for the school.’
Norm shakes his head. ‘You’re a battler, Loretta. And I suppose I’m expected to put them up?’
‘On the fence.’
One of my best dreams is Beamer Man. Beamer Man powers his BMW up to the front of the house and snaps off the engine. He swings open his door, jumps out and strides up my path holding expensive wine in one hand and two tickets to Kiddieland in the other.
‘We’ll need the children out of the way for a week or so,’ he explains, ‘while I explore every inch of your gorgeous body.’
‘Taxi’s here. Have a lovely week.’ I can feel his eyes on my effortlessly acquired size-ten torso as I give the kids a gentle push out the door.
They run happily to the taxi, clutching their all-you-can-eat-ride-and-destroy Kiddieland tickets, then Beamer Man closes the front door and presses me against the wall.
‘Mum, you’ve painted “Save Our Schol”. And you’ve got paint on your face,’ Melissa interrupts to tell me before I get to the good part.
Why did I decide to do this in the front yard? My arms are smeared to the elbows with marine paint, and I’m in the saggy old shorts I swore I’d never wear outside the house. Imagine if Harley Man or Beamer Man went by.
I have a terrible thought. Did Norm mean battler or battleaxe? The school had better be worth all this.
3
Norm’s come by to drop off more lemons and pick up a few of my lemon tarts. He leans in an old-man-at-the-pub kind of way on the mantelpiece and picks up a postcard I’ve propped against the candlestick.
‘Who’s this from?’ he asks, turning it over without waiting for an answer.
‘My sister, Patsy, the one who works at the uni in Melbourne. She’s on a research trip to Paris.’
‘She works at the uni?’ He props the card back after he’s read it.
‘Yep, she’s a lecturer there.’
‘She must be pretty smart. What happened to you?’ Norm winks at Jake, who giggles and scratches his face the way he’s been doing since he got up. I know what’s wrong but I’m trying to pretend it’s not true. Even though the kids in his grade have all had the vaccine, some have still come down with a mild case of chickenpox.
‘Dropped on my head as a baby. So did you get the windscreen?’
‘Didn’t get it, but tracked one down. A new bloke is doing car repairs out the end of the Bolton Road. Set up the other week. Actually, he’s about your age. Not bad looking either. Good business. Nice and polite.’
‘Beautiful wife, six well-behaved children,’ I add.
Norm leans back and frowns. ‘Really?’
‘No, but probably.’
‘I don’t think so. He smelled of bachelor to me. Divorced maybe. Anyway, he quoted me a good price, said to bring the car and he’d put in the windscreen straight away. So you can take it down whenever you like.’
‘What’s his name?’ I ask Norm.
‘Merv Bull.’
I shake my head. Only in Gunapan. Merv Bull sounds like an old farmer with black teeth and hay in his hair who scoops yellow gobs from his ear and stares at them for minutes on end like they’ll forecast the weather. The image keeps replaying in my mind as I finish wrapping the lemon tarts in waxed paper.
‘You can’t judge people by their names, Loretta, or you’d be able to carry a tune.’
‘That’s unkind, Norm. I may not have turned out to be the talented country-singing daughter my mother was hoping for, but then, neither did Patsy or Tammy. We haven’t got the genes for it. I don’t know why Mum keeps up these crazy fantasies.’
A week and a half later, after having been held hostage in the house by a child even more itchy and irritable than normal, I set out to get the new windscreen.
It’s years since I’ve driven down the Bolton Road. I remember when we first moved to Gunapan I got lost down here. I was heading for the Maternal Health Centre. My first pregnancy. My face was so puffed up with heat and water retention I looked like I had the mumps. I took a left turn at the ghost gum past the stockfeed store as the nurse had advised on the phone, and suddenly I was in another world. Later, of course, after I’d found my way back into town, I realized I’d turned left at the wattle tree past the Pet Emporium, but anyway, it was as if I’d magically slipped out of Gunapan and into fairyland. The bush came right up to the roadside, and in the blazing heat of the day the shade from the eucalypts dropped the temperature at least five degrees. I got out of the car, waddled to a picnic bench in a clearing and sat drinking water for twenty minutes. Hope bubbled up in me. The baby would be fine, my husband Tony would turn out not to be a nong, we would definitely win the lottery that Saturday.
Only one of those things came true, but I’ve always loved that bit of bush. I’d come out here with the kids sometimes in the early days and walk the tracks, listening to the sound of the bush, when I could hear it above their endless chatter, and smelling the minty eucalypts.
We’ve just swung into the Bolton Road when Jake asks if he can have a Mooma Bar from the supermarket. His chickenpox has dwindled to a few annoying itchy spots, but they won’t let him back into school yet, no matter how much I beg. He’s bored and tailing me like a debt collector. Any excuse to get out is good.
‘There’s no supermarket out here.’ The moment I speak I see a shopping trolley on the side of the road. Someone must have walked that trolley five kilometres. Unless it was tossed in the back of a ute and driven here. Further along the road is one of those orange hats they use to steer drivers away from roadworks. A couple of minutes on we see a load of rubbish dumped a few metres off the road. A dozen beer bottles lie around the charcoal of an old fire with what looks like bits of an old picnic bench sticking out of it. A heap of lawn clippings moulders beside a brown hoodie and a pair of torn-up jeans. I slow down, pull the Holden over to the side of the road. The trees still come right up to the roadside, but behind them is light, as if someone is shining a torch through the forest.
‘We came here on my birthday,’ Jake reminds me.
He’s