I'll Tak' The Low Road

3

I’ll Tak’ The Low Road

    Funnily enough relations between George MacMurray and his sister Susan remained strained for quite some time after Jack had pushed off to WA. Even though Susan maintained that it was not her fault and the man had behaved indecently. George wouldn’t have said it was indecently, exactly. Like a tit—yeah. His idea had been he’d get him up to Dad’s dump at Potters Inlet for a bit—a bit of beer drinking, according to Susan—and, well, just see how things turned out. Well, heck, Susan had been moaning on for years about how the old joker oughta spruce up that dump of his, maybe Jack could do that!

    He did eventually come back, after about six months.

    “Hullo, it’s Jack Jackson here,” said a cautious voice in George’s receiver.

    “Gidday, Jack! Where are you?”

    He was in Sydney, at a motel— No, he wasn’t, he was gonna stay at George’s place and no arguments, and he’d pick him up right now.

    … “See, what it is,” George explained earnestly after the ritual throat-rinsing, “Susan’s driving Dad nuts with this renovation shit, so I thought you and me could spruce the old place up a bit for him—shut her up. And it could do with it. Last time I was up there a bit fell off the verandah.”

    “White ants?”

    “You have got indoctrinated!” said George with a laugh. “No, just dry rot and neglect. Anyway, how about it? The old joker’d give you your keep, of course—well, you’d be company for him, Jack, I don’t mind telling you it’s getting a bit of a worry, him stuck up there on his ownsome. He won’t have a bar of living in town—well, can’t blame him—but he’s in his eighties and the nearest neighbours are about half a K up the road. It’s a bit more developed compared to what it was, further up there’s a nice B&B with a crafts centre attached, but it’s ruddy isolated. Bloody Susan’s solution is to bung the poor old joker in a home, of course, but he’s still got all his wits about him, and he’s pretty spry. –Look, mate, it wouldn’t be charity, you’d be doing us a favour! Well, at least come up for Queen’s Birthday weekend,” he ended weakly.

    So they did that.

    It only sort of worked. Jack agreed to accept room and board with Dad—they got on really well, George had known they would—well, same type, when you thought about it: solid working-class stock, but bloody bright with it and both fond of a good read. True, nothing Dad had on his shelves dated much later than 1970, except those Dick Francises he’d taken a liking to after George gave him one for Christmas, but Jack didn’t seem to mind. He refused to take more than pocket money on top of his board, though. Still, that wasn’t too bad. But George’s other little scheme didn’t come off at all. He made sure they went over to the next property, the old Jardine place, and Jack met Honey Jardine, but it fell flat. Blow! In his heart of hearts George had been convinced that good old Jack would be just right for Honey. She was a nice woman and she’d had a really hard life. Well, not so much hard, compared to some, and you couldn’t actually say she’d had a lot of bad luck, but she’d certainly never had any good luck! Yeah, that was it: never had any good luck. No, well, the son was living with her now and they seemed to be getting on okay, but apart from that—

    There was nothing much to do fifty K past Outer Woop-Woop on a Sunday evening—Dad did have a TV but the reception wasn’t that shit-hot up here. Added to which the old joker didn’t much like TV anyway. Maybe if he got the full story Jack might see that Honey—well, it sounded barmy, but that she deserved a decent bloke, so why shouldn’t it be him? George sat him down in front of a roaring log fire in Dad’s apology for a lounge-room—they could do that now, Jack had swept the chimney first thing this morning—and gave him the dinkum oil about Honey Jardine.

    “Ya see, she’s got this kid. Grew up in England. Um, no, well, he’s out here now, but— Well, it’s a bit of a long story…”

    “There is no bus to Potters Inlet,” repeated Honey sourly. “No—bus. Read my lips: N—”

    “Yes!” shouted her sole offspring crossly. “I get it! No bloody bus!”

    Honey looked sourly at him. Why had she ever had him? No, well, besotted by his bloody father, too young and innocent not to believe the sod when he said he’d look after her, and too young and innocent to rush off and tell a string of lies to her unfriendly local GP and get an abortion after the sod had vanished to bloody Britain and his bloody family. The reason she hadn’t then had the privilege of bringing up Master Philip Julian Persse Sotherland being that she’d been too young and innocent to doubt Julian’s bloody father when he subsequently turned up with the sod in tow, explaining that as he wasn’t yet eighteen he had to have his permission to marry, which he did have, and here was the ring—do NOT speak, thank you, Julian!—and his lawyers had arranged it for next Thursday. And had trustingly signed all the papers that General Sotherland-pronounced-Sutherland had produced for her to sign, which, it was revealed in something under nine months’ time, included one signing over Master Philip Julian Persse Sotherland to his bloody father’s English family forever and a day.

    But as she, Honeybunch Jardine, was also seventeen without a red cent to her name, and without the prospect of earning any, that had possibly been just as well. Especially as the benighted romantic who’d produced her had momentarily vanished to the wilds of PNG in the company of a Baptist missionary who ought to have known very much better than to take up with anything that called its kids Anne with an E, Honeybunch and Bobbsey out of the old books it had read in its childhood and, never mind the ostensible conversion to Baptist doctrine, earnestly consulted a crystal before it took any life decisions.

    The misguided missionary had married Honey’s mum, yes: Baptists of the opposite sex didn’t take you off to the wilds of PNG unless they were married to you; but after about six months of it she returned to Australia with a deep tan, a nasty infestation between the toes, and a selection of interesting native artefacts—modesty girdles, penis sheathes and the like—which these days would probably be considered irreplaceable examples of autochthonous culture and not let out of their country of origin. Just in time to agree that their sensible Aunty Kath was quite right in refusing to let Honeybunch leave school before she’d finished Year 12: what were you thinking of, Honeybunch, darling? To the which enquiry the abbreviated Honey and the original Anne had replied in chorus that she’d been thinking of having to bring up a kid as a solo mum, Mum! (Bobbsey was out of it: he’d long since opted to call himself Bob and live with Dad.) And as Aunty Kath was now, and ever had been, solidly on General Sotherland’s side, she simply squashed any feeble protest that Verity Jardine Corbett, née Vera Jardine, might have been about to make.

    Rob Evans, the father of her three kids, had never actually married Verity Jardine. But he had stuck it out past her naming his son “Bobbsey”, yes. Up until his enthusiasm for bead necklaces on both sexes, Flower Power, unwashed dishes, dangly earrings in the long, unwashed hair, incense sticks, dirty feet in the genuine Roman sandals, and beds unmade since the word “duna” had first been introduced into Australia had worn off. Round about the time he decided to go into his dad’s real estate business after all. Verity hadn’t missed him: she’d always believed in free love, or, as she was wont to put it these days, had never believed in exclusive relationships, and in fact considered marriage to be an anachronistic and unnecessary institution. Perhaps just as well, since the twin rings an artistic friend had made for them with his pliers for their Flower Power “mutual vows” ceremony had long since turned black and come unwound.

    All that was of course years in the past and by dint of firmly not thinking about him for eighteen years, Honey Jardine, who’d been divorced from Julian Sotherland as soon after their son’s birth as was legally possible, had almost managed to forget she’d ever had Philip Julian Persse Sotherland at all. Until very recently, when a letter had come from England and then Phil had arrived in person.

    Given that he’d had all the advantages a wealthy British family could give him you might have expected him to be a really nice boy—well, something along the lines of the two young princes, was how Honey thought of him in the secret recesses of her mind. Or at three in the morning when the upstairs flat’s stereo was making the whole block vibrate—that sort of time. Prince William, really. Nicely spoken, lovely skin, a caring sort of boy. Hah, hah. Well, goodness knew what the real prince was like, either, an awake, possibly more rational Honey had reflected, but what Phil Sotherland was, to all appearances, was an up-himself, spoilt brat. He’d come out to see her very largely because he’d had a big row with his grandfather over his choice of career, the grandfather’s being eminently sane, sensible and traditional for young male Sotherlands—fancy that—and his not. And, presumably, because he was a spoilt kid that did things on impulse and had a giant limit on his credit card, ’cos how else could he possibly have afforded the fare? No, well, some people’s kids might work their passage round the world on merchant ships, in fact Marg O’Donnell from the next-door flat had a kid who was doing just that—but not Philip Julian Persse Sotherland. Had he expected Honey to take his side? Goodness knew. Well, she was all for people doing their own thing but as she had no money and no influence whatsoever with his father’s family it seemed pointless.

    Then he revealed the second reason.

    Honey looked limply at his piece of paper. “Phil, we all got a dumb letter from Great-Uncle Dave’s lawyers.”

    “Yes, but it says the country house is left jointly to you and me, Mummy!” he said eagerly.

    He was quite a good-looking young man: very slim, with a fair skin, the same rather odd amber eyes his father had, and fair hair, not Honey’s mad mass of light-brown curls that had an odd greenish tinge to them in some lights. Honey looked at him limply, reflecting not for the first time that he must have been a very pretty little boy, which no doubt had been one of the reasons why he seemed to have had his own way all his life. “You don’t have to call me that, Phil. Just call me Honey, everyone does.”

    Phil had already realised it seemed to be first names all round in Australia, but he hadn’t thought it extended to one’s mother. But as they didn’t know each other he nodded obediently, adding eagerly: “A real stroke of luck, just at his point, don’t you think, Honey?”

    No, actually. “No. He always said he’d leave it to me, ’cos—”

    “Well, there you are!”

    “’Cos I was the only one that ever bothered to go and see him. He never married and he couldn’t stand the rest of the Jardines, so there wasn’t really anybody else to leave it to. And when I told him about your father’s family he said it’d be better be you and me jointly, ’cos— Um, never mind. Phil, just what do you imagine this so-called ‘country house’ to be?”

    The letter that had gone to Phil in England had merely said the country house was the principal part of the estate, and the copy of the will which had been enclosed hadn’t elaborated, except to give the address and something that was presumably some sort of Australian legal description of the land involved. Phil looked at her blankly. “Well, a country house, Mu—Honey! Near Potters Inlet!”

    “It’s a weekender,” said Honey heavily. “A weekender, get it?”

    “Er—oh, you mean he didn’t live in it!”

    “No!” shouted Honey. “This is a weekender! A flaming shack, you idiot! Have ya got ‘shack’ in the English upper-class dialect? Shack! Dump! Millstone round our necks that we’ll have to pay the flaming rates for! Geddit?”

    “But—” He looked at her weakly. Finally he said: “Surely there’s the land, though?”

    “Yeah. Scrub, boulders, dust, parts of it vertical. It’s not a farm, Phil.”

    “Um, a country cottage, then?” he ventured.

    Oh, God! “If you’re thinking of those tartified dinky horrors that ya see on those Midsomer Murder things, no.”

    To her surprise he laughed and said unaffectedly: “They are tartified dinky horrors, aren’t they? Well, what?”

    Honey sighed. “Just an old Australian house, probably half eaten away by white ants by now—termites to you. Well, bits of it are brick and stone, but I won’t guarantee they haven’t been munching at the rest. It’s bigger than some: four main rooms and a lean-to kitchen.”

    Phil had gone very red, she wasn’t all that sorry to see. “This is a joke, right?”

    “No,” said Honey flatly.

    It took ages but it finally seemed to sink in that the place was a dump and that as she hadn’t laid eyes on it for nearly ten years, since old Great-Uncle Dave had had to go into the nursing-home, it could only have got worse. But he still wanted to see it. At which point she had to reveal that as she didn’t have a car it would be very, very difficult to get there. Even though as the crow flew it wasn’t that far out of Sydney. But there was no bus.

    No—bus.

    After a certain amount of sour looking at her son on Honey’s part and cross glaring at his new-found mother’s on Phil’s he offered: “Well, what about a train?” Her expression registered. “I’m not saying there’s a station there, but if we got the train to the nearest—”

    “There is no train! Not to Potters Inlet, not to anywhere nearby, no TRAIN! This isn’t England! There are the suburban trains in Sydney itself and the big interstate lines between a handful of the largest cities and apart from that, NO TRAINS!” shouted Honey.

    “Then how do people—”

    “They DRIVE! They take their CARS, Phil, or their expensive bloody four-wheel-drives that cost an arm and two legs and that I can’t AFFORD! Geddit?”

    “Yes, um, sorry,” he said feebly.

    Silence fell. Honey breathed hard and Phil looked glum.

    “Surely everyone doesn’t own—”

    “YES! Australia has about the highest number of cars per head of population in the world! Why do you think ruddy John Howard refused to sign the Kyoto Accord on greenhouse gases?”

    Phil chewed on his pouting lower lip. “Could we hire a car?”

    “On that credit card of yours that your flamin’ grandfather has just cancelled?”

    “Um, no. Sorry. Um, not cancelled as such, I am of age, Mum—Honey.”

    “Refused to pay off, then.”

    “Mm.”

    “What happens?” asked Honey thoughtfully. “Does the interest just go on piling up and up until they realise you’re never gonna pay and take you to court?”

    “Um, probably,” admitted Phil uneasily.

    “Serve them right for issuing you with the thing, then!” said Honey with relish.

    “Yes!” he agreed, very startled. “Um, Daddy went bankrupt, you know.”

    “I’m not surprised: he must be the most feckless human being that ever lived.”

    Phil bit his lip. “Mm. Grandfather always dominated him, you see.”

    “Yep, and now he’s on course to dominate you! I suppose he can’t last forever, though. How old is the old bugger?”

    “Um… Well, Daddy’s thirty-five, the same age as you. Um, well, actually Grandfather’d be sixty-eight.”

    Honey’s jaw sagged in undisguised dismay.

    “He’s not that bad!” said Phil with an uneasy laugh.

    “Phil, he is! Don’t you want a life of your own?” she cried.

    “Well, um, yes, rather! Partly why I came out here, y’know!”

    Oh, cripes. “Phil,” she said carefully, “believe me, I don’t want to pour cold water. You’re welcome to have the whole of Great-Uncle Dave’s property to do what you like with, but like I say, it’s just a—a shack. There isn’t enough land to support livestock and probably not enough water, either. Well, there’s a creek running into the inlet, but some years it dries out. And the section’s really terrible. Huge rocks everywhere. It’s only about, um, I think Uncle Dave once said it was about fifty acres.”

    “But that’s a really good-sized—”

    “No,” said Honey flatly. “It might be if it was flat, with good alluvial soil and you wanted to grow vegetables. But this is very poor, rocky soil that's only ever supported a few scruffy eucalypts. In that sort of country it’s hect—acres per head of sheep or cattle.”

    “No, numbers of livestock per acre!” he corrected her with a laugh.

    “NO! This is Australia, you demented gosling!” shouted Honey.

    The shabby little lounge-room of her shabby little Sydney suburban flat rang with silence.

    “Demented gosling, eh?” said Phil with a silly grin. “That’s a good one. Must be you that I get my liking for words from, then, not from Daddy’s side.”

    “Very likely,” said Honey limply. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to shout. I wish to God old Uncle Dave had left us a viable cattle station—though the way the country’s going, it’d have to be the only one with any water left: we’ve been having terrible droughts.”

    “I see,” he said humbly.

    “You’d better read some Arthur Upfield,” said Honey heavily. “Never mind he dates back over fifty years, that’ll tell you about the Outback. Just multiply the racism he describes by about a factor of fifty and you’ll be right, too.”

    “Um, I have read Nevil Shute’s A Town Like Alice,” he ventured.

    “Mm. That station Joe Whatsisface was on ’ud be about average. The only thing that’s changed is the fact that no-one’d be shocked if he had his girlfriend come to live with him, these days. Though actually I think they would expect him to marry her. I can’t remember whether it was sheep or cattle, but I think about fifty acres per head wouldn’t be far wrong.”

    “Fifty per—” Phil broke off. “I see,” he said in a stifled voice.

    Oh, dear; yes, it looked as if he did, poor boy. “Um, if we had some money,” said Honey cautiously, “the very most we could do would be to turn Uncle Dave’s place into a B&B. There are a few out that way these days. They’re very popular with the comfortably-off middle class that likes to drive up into the bush in its four-wheel-drives, not getting off-road or anything like it, sleep in air-conditioned and centrally-heated luxury, preferably with a few genuine old rugs and highly polished antiques in the offing, and eat five-course gourmet dinners with those funny little skinny white Japanese mushrooms.”

    Oddly, Phil collapsed in wheezing giggles at this point.

    Grinning, Honey said: “No, honest! –I s’pose we could try hiring a car, as long as it isn’t too dear, but I haven’t got a licence.” She looked at his face. “Go on, tell us the worst.”

    “Suspended,” he said, making a face. “Only for six months, though.”

    “Ouch. Um… well, if we can get to Potters Inlet itself, it’s quite an easy walk to the house. Um, hitching really isn’t safe.” He was nodding fervently, so he must’ve heard about that dreadful case with the English boy. “Mm. Um, the thing is, it isn’t the real Outback, so it’s almost impossible to get around. No mail deliveries that’d take us or that sort of thing. Um, well, we’ll get a map of the bus routes, eh? That’ll be a start.”

    They managed to get an ordinary road map, but there was no map of the bus routes. But by dint of phoning all the bus companies and waiting an interminable time for an actual person to pick up they did eventually work out which bus would get them nearest.

    “How did you get there before?” asked Phil at his point—though possibly he should have asked before.

    “Uncle Dave used to pick me up from Barrabarra,” said Honey, showing him on the map. “It’s a fair way from his place but quite a straight drive. I suppose it might be possible to get his old ute going again. Are you any good with engines?”

    “No,” he said sadly.

    Somehow his mother hadn’t expected something that wore very dark Sixties-style Polaroid sunnies, flowing white pants smothered in pockets, which she had yet to break to him she had no intention of ironing for him, and designer tees to be much of a mechanic—no. You could probably discount the small gold ear stud, most of the kids wore studs these days and in fact it was a mercy it wasn’t in his nose, his lip or his tongue, but—no. Not mechanical.

    Silence fell. Honey looked glumly at the map and Phil looked hopefully at her.

    “Um… well, I could try ringing a neighbour. The thing is, I don’t know any of them that well, ’cos since Uncle Dave had to go into the nursing-home I haven’t been up there. They did all use to be really easy-going, so if anyone’s going down that way they’d pick us up, but…” He was looking at her hopefully again. “Don’t suggest your Uncle Bob’s car, your Aunty Sue by marriage’d put the kybosh on that idea.”

    “Mm. Um, Aunty Anne?” he ventured in a small voice.

    Phil had already met Anne with an E, so Honey looked at him with considerable sympathy. “Well, no, ’cos she’s really pissed off that Great-Uncle Dave left the property to us, even though it’s not worth hardly anything and she never went to see him in the nursing-home after he told her she was a bossy cow.”

    “Mm. Granny?”

    Verity Jardine Corbett, after several ventures into cohabitation which hadn’t worked out—she was very good at latching on to blokes but not much good at keeping them—was now living with the latest bloke in the sunshine of Byron Bay: in her heyday, a mecca for the long-haired, ethnically-beaded brigade, but now a very choice place indeed, full of the well-off, no-longer-young middle class in search of a “sea change” within easy distance of the amenities of Sydney and an alternative lifestyle incorporating little organic food cafés and numberless facilities offering massages with scented oils and body wraps in fully organic substances and/or very special mud, and which they were determinedly keeping to themselves by raising the rates to enormous proportions and getting up well organised, successful protests against the encroachments of supermarkets, shopping centres and such-like. Ordinary citizens need not apply, in short. Verity and the partner had managed to get in while the going was still good and were now running a so-called spa which specialised in native lemon myrtle aromatherapy, Hydro Yo-Chi and Floated Guided Meditation classes (water came into it somewhere). Brian, the partner, called himself “Brother Brian”, wore a robe with a long string of amber beads and a neat beard, and had an array of framed certificates, all about as impressively genuine as Verity’s own. Well, Honey knew for a fact that she’d done that so-called Hatha Yoga qualification down the road at ten dollars a class with a roomful of pregnant mums, so— Yeah. It went over a treat with the Byron mob, though.

    Not breaking the news that his grandmother would probably tell him to call her “Verity,” not “Granny”, as the kinship terms of the traditional nuclear family were so ageist and spiritually stultifying, Honey replied: “Um, well, she does want to meet you, but Brian’ll never let her lend us anything. He’s a complete control-freak. Anne and me’ve come to the conclusion that she must’ve been looking for one all her life and that time she went off with the Baptist, it wasn’t an aberration, it was indicative.”

    “I see.” He already knew his mother didn’t have a boyfriend or any close women friends. She worked for a pair of gays who ran an antique shop—having now seen it, Phil had privately classed it as a junk shop, but its stock apparently passed for antique, out here—and her rôle was to stay in the shop serving the customers while Barry and Kyle raced around the countryside buying up junk. They were both far too busy to drive her anywhere, and their vehicles were always in use. “Well, then, try calling a neighbour?”

    “Yeah.” After some fumbling around in the overflowing drawer in her nasty second-hand battered sideboard—warping plywood and yellowish pine, dating from approximately 1979 and thus not even fit to be rescued by Barry and Kyle and sold as “distressed”—Honey produced an ancient address book. The first number she dialled resulted in a cold recorded voice message from Telstra followed by a voice, possibly the same, possibly not, saying slowly and nastily: “Double-you, ay, en, kay.” Honey gaped incredulously at the phone. Then she hung up and dialled again, handing the receiver to Phil. “What do you reckon it’s saying?”

    “‘The number you have just dialled’— Christ!”

    “Yeah. That was what I heard, too.”

    “Uh—ring Complaints?”

    “You gotta be joking!” With a certain relish Honey embarked on one of her Telstra sagas. She had several; most people did. Some people’s dated back to the relatively brief period when it had been Telecom Australia, and some to the very long period when it had been part of the Post Office, but they differed not at all in kind, and very little in horror value.

    “See, the weekend they came and did something to the box down the side of the flats—they never come during the week, that’d mean they wouldn’t get time and half and the moos on Faults, they’re all their wives and girlfriends, they won’t letcha make a booking for during the week—well, they cut me off. So I went down the road to the phone box near the corner, only it was out of order. So then I rang from work and first off they swore the phone box was in working order and then they swore nothing was wrong with my phone and when I said it was since their man had been working down the box at the side of the flats over the weekend and he must of cut me off by mistake ’cos Flat 4 was empty and it must have been it he was trying to disconnect, they swore blind he hadn’t. But I finally got them to agree to send someone, but they reckoned it wasn’t enough notice for him to come during the week and he’d have to come during the weekend—see, by this time it was Tuesday and they haveta have three working days’ notice. They don’t count the day ya ring, geddit? And the reason I never rang them on the Monday from work was I was hoping they’d reconnect me, see?”

    “And did they come?” he asked weakly, as she’d paused for breath.

    “Yeah. Sunday lunchtime. See, I’d never of known he was there if I hadn’t of kept popping out and looking round the corner. He wouldn’t admit there was anything wrong and he never came inside and tested my phone or anything but when I picked it up it was working again.”

    Phil nodded numbly.

    “So it’s no use complaining about anything, ’cos they’ll never admit it,” she concluded.

    “Oh! Yes, right! But surely you have laws in Australia about indecent phone messages?”

    “Dunno.” She looked in the address book again. “I’ll try old Martin Springer, he was quite a mate of Uncle Dave’s. –Whether or not there are laws, if they won’t admit anything, what can ya do? –Read this out for me, wouldja?”

    Obediently Phil read out the number, watching her hopefully.

    “It’s ringing…” she reported.

    The phone rang for ages and Honey was about to give up when suddenly a young female voice said briskly: “Springer House, Deanna speaking. The B&B is not yet open but we are taking bookings for next year; may I help you?”

    Honey’s mouth just opened and shut numbly.

    “May I help you?” the voice repeated politely.

    “Yes, um, who is that?” she gasped.

    “Deanna Springer. We can take a booking as from Easter of next year.”

    There was no Diana Springer: old Martin had had a nephew that lived in Sydney, but that was about it. “No, I, um, I think I must have the wrong number: sorry! I was looking for Martin Springer!” she gasped.

    “I’m so sorry, but Bob’s Uncle Martin died last year,” said the voice kindly but firmly.

    “Um, yes, Bob, that was his nephew’s name,” said Honey numbly. Shouldn’t it be her that should be saying she was sorry? Only now the girl had said it, she sort of felt she couldn’t fit it in, it’d sound silly. And what a business-like girl that sounded as if she oughta be wearing one of those frightening office-girl dark suits you saw all over downtown Sydney at lunchtime was doing at old Martin Springer’s place—!

    “May I ask what it was about? Would you like to speak to Bob?” the girl was asking.

    It was very hard to know which of these questions to answer. “No, um, he won’t remember me!” gasped Honey. “Um, my old Uncle Dave, he was my great-uncle really, he used to live down the road a bit from Martin—I mean Mr Springer!”

    “Yes?” she said nicely.

    Help! Honey had expected she’d just say she saw and let her go. “Um, well, um, it doesn’t matter.”

    “My husband’s just working in the kitchen: it’ll be no bother to fetch him,” the girl assured her.

    “Um, y—um, no, that’s all right—I mean, who?” said Honey feebly.

    “Bob Springer. My husband,” said the girl clearly but still politely.

    Eh? She couldn’t be Mrs Springer! She sounded far, far too young! Bob Springer was older than Honey was! And his wife was an awful, bossy, managing middle-class moo! The horribly competent sort, that knew all the best places to shop to get a bargain and always told you which huge and unnecessary (and unaffordable) appliance she’d got at the sales. Old Martin Springer had cordially loathed her but hadn’t had the strength of character to stop her from coming up with Bob and cleaning his house from top to toe. He’d come over to Uncle Dave’s the weekend she washed his curtains: Honey remembered that very, very clearly. Little Kyle had, too: that was right! He’d been about eleven and under orders to do his maths homework: the poor little sprat was so scared of his commanding mother that he’d sat down at the kitchen table and got on with it, while his father and old Martin sat on the verandah with Uncle Dave, smoking pipes, drinking beer and telling fishing stories. Honey had offered to help him but actually, his arithmetic was better than hers was—

    “Um, yes; are you Kyle’s Mum, then?” she gulped, so flustered that she didn’t stop to think.

    There was a little pause and then the girl said, sounding as composed as ever: “No, actually I’m Bob’s second wife. He and Kyle’s mother divorced quite some years back.”

    “Oh,” said Honey feebly. “I see. Sorry. It’s ages since I’ve been up that way, ’cos Uncle Dave had to go into a nursing-home.”

    “I’m sorry to hear that,” she said nicely. “What was the name again?”

    Honey was almost sure she hadn’t actually said her name or Uncle Dave’s surname. She was about to ask her miserably whose she meant, when a voice in the background said loudly: “That strip of paint ya got onto that door’s drying nicely: you want it to stand out like a sore thumb for all eternity? Just tell ’em we’re not open yet! Or is it ya bloody Aunty Allyson again? ’Cos ya can tell her—”

    “No! Ssh! It’s a niece of one of your Uncle Martin’s old friends!” she hissed.

    “Eh? Why didn’tcha call me? Give it here! –Hullo, it’s Bob Springer here; who is that?” he said cheerily.

    Honey remembered him quite well, now. He always had been a cheerful man, except when Mrs was nagging him, of course. He was quite a bit older than she was: he must be well into his forties; he’d had brown hair, rather red cheeks, and, except when Mrs was nagging him, a cheery grin. A bit plump: Mrs used to nag him about that, along with the rest.

    “Um, yes: hullo, Bob! It’s Honey Jardine!” she gasped.

    “Old Dave’s niece? Hey, sorry to hear he passed, Honey,” he said kindly.

    “Yes, me, too, about your Uncle Martin,” said Honey shyly.

    “Thanks. Well, ’e was old as the hills—they’d of been contemporaries, more or less, eh? Had a good innings. But yeah, I miss the ole bugger,” he said, sounding as cheerful as ever. “So, what can we do ya for, Honey?”

    “Nothing, I just thought if Martin might be coming down to Barrabarra— It doesn’t matter!” she gulped.

    “Need a lift? No worries!” he said cheerfully. “When are ya coming up?”

    “Um, we thought tomorrow—I mean, you don’t have to!” gasped Honey, turning puce.

    “Rats. Pick up a few supplies while I’m at it,” said Bob breezily. “Sandpaper, undercoat, that sorta stuff—brought up a load of stuff from the shop but I miscalculated how much sandpaper the place was gonna need.”

    “Um—oh, yes! You run a Mitre 10!” remembered Honey.

    “Used to. Given it away: me and Deanna are opening a B&B here—with a little help from our friends,” he said with a smile in his voice. “–YES!” he bellowed, to the faint voice from the background. “Mellow Huckleberry is the maroon! And don’t blame me, you picked it yaself! –Okay, what time’s the bus get in, again, Honey?” he said cheerfully.

    “Um, I haven’t been up there for about ten years: it always used to get in around nine-fifteen but if that’s too early—”

    “No worries! I’ll check with the bus company, okay? And when the bus gets in, I’ll be there, okey-doke? If I’m late it’ll only be because I’m down the road in old George Kelly’s hardware place.”

    “Thank you very much. Um, there’ll be two of us!” she gasped.

    “That’s okay, I’ve got the waggon. See ya tomorrow, then!”

    “Yes; thanks, Bob,” said Honey dazedly. “Bye-bye.”

    “Ooh, is it okay?” asked Phil eagerly as she hung up.

    “Mm,” said Honey dazedly. “It’s not old Martin Springer, he’s dead, it’s his nephew, Bob. I thought he was a Mitre 10 man.”

    “Er—what?”

    “You know. Hardware. Well, the modern version: they seem to sell all sorts of stuff these days, paint and—and car stuff… Though I suppose the servos sell hardware, and pizza, and bread and milk, that’s even madder, when you think about it. But he’s given it up, him and his second wife are gonna open a B&B. But—but old Martin Springer’s house was almost as bad as Uncle Dave’s,” she ended dazedly.

    “Funny little skinny white Japanese mushrooms!” he gasped, collapsing in giggles.

    “Yeah, hah, hah,” said Honey feebly. “...Martin Springer’s dump? Heck.”

    “Ooh, if they can do it, so can we!”

    “Mitre 10 managers earn good money,” replied Honey flatly.

    His face fell.

    “Talk your flamin’ grandfather into making us a huge loan, Phil, it’s the only way either of us is ever gonna get cash dough short of winning the lottery. Or failing that, you could slave for thirty years at an ordinary job like Bob did, and save up.”

    He glared.

    “Yeah. Well, never mind, it’ll be a nice day out in the country.”

    “Yes, and we could go up there for Christmas as well!” he said eagerly.

    Honey sighed. It was only late October. True, she had annual leave due that Barry and Kyle were only too eager to let her take at Christmas, which was a very slack period for them, with most of their clientele off on expensive holidays in the Daintree (ecological with tree-top bush walks and Jacuzzis), Tasmania (gourmet food and great scenery; bush walks, canoeing and/or white-water rafting optional), or the resorts of the Pacific (five-star or at the least three-star luxury, and guaranteed to offer optional massages, exotic drinks in an endless stream, even more sweltering humidity than Queensland, and doses of green, seething jealousy for the neighbours back home).

    “On what, Phil?”

    “Well, the bus!”

    What? Unfortunately he wasn’t joking, so he’d certainly inherited more from his sod of a father than the fair hair, the amber eyes, the straight nose and the inability to hold down a paying job. “I meant what’d pay for us both to spend several weeks up Potters Inlet,” she said heavily. “Presuming ya do wannoo eat?”

    “Oh, Hell,” replied her sole offspring in dismay. “Am—am I eating you out of house and home, Mummy?”

    Not telling him again not to call her that, because it had now dawned that that must be how the demented gosling had thought of her all his life, Honey replied glumly: “Yeah. I don’t begrudge it, Phil, but once I’ve spent it all, that’ll be that. I mean, I can put stuff on the plastic but it won’t be long before I’ve reached my limit, ’cos I hadda replace the fridge last summer. I was only gonna buy a little bar fridge but that monster that’s dominating the entire room was actually cheaper. Under six hundred, while the bar fridge— Australia’s mad, put it like that.”

    Phil nodded dazedly. After a moment he ventured: “Um, could I get a job, do you think?”

    The short answer was No. He’d left school and wanted to do a degree, not at a uni Honey had ever heard of, like Oxford or Cambridge, in art history, which even out here was considered by her generation to be only a sort of subject—though pretty normal compared to what the kids did these days. His grandfather was radically opposed to the idea, of course. His bloody father had covertly encouraged him, though not to his grandfather’s face, and not to the extent of coughing up any dough. He could work here legally, that was wasn’t the problem: he had travelled, astonishingly enough, on an Australian passport—apparently they’d demanded his birth certificate when he applied for a British one and told him he was an Aussie, so he’d taken the line of least resistance. So theoretically he could get a job as a waiter or kitchen-hand. She put this to him, though without hope.

    Sure enough, his face fell and he bleated: “But I thought perhaps something in a gallery?”

    Honey sighed. Where did ya start? “The art and antiques world here is pretty much a closed shop. It’s not what ya know, it’s who ya know. There are quite a lot of little galleries in Sydney but they’re all run either by gays who only employ their gay mates, or by couples who only employ their arty mates, that is, in the unlikely event the galleries can even pay for an extra bod, geddit? The antiques mob are an even tighter ring, if that’s possible.”

    “But you got a job!” he cried.

    “Sheer luck. And I wasn’t even looking for work. I just used to go into the shop and look at things, and once or twice we got talking, and the week Barry was down with the flu I happened to be on holiday and Kyle asked me if I could possibly fill in at the shop for a couple of days because there was a big auction he wanted to go to down in Melbourne. And it was only luck that I managed to sell a giant wardrobe that they’d had in the shop forever. Well, it was Huon pine, it was a lovely piece, and I had polished it up with some beeswax, but I didn’t make the customer walk in, did I? Then they offered me a part-time job and I was so fed up with my office job at the uni that I decided to take it. Well, to tell you the truth it was very long hours for peanuts, and I had to field all the students’ queries and into the bargain solve half their problems because the professor and the flaming senior lecturers were never there. And I only got it because Anne had been having a thing with the ruddy professor and more or less blackmailed him into it.”

    To her astonishment Phil replied grimly: “Good for her! Married men who victimise young women deserve to be taken advantage of!”

    “Um, yeah,” said Honey limply. “Well, I wouldn’t call Anne a victim. Only after that she dumped him, ’cos that reference he’d written for her for a better job at another uni worked, and then he hit on me.”

    “Ugh, Mummy!”

    “Uh—he wasn’t that bad. Well, good-looking, most of the female students had crushes on him,” said Honey weakly. “But don’t worry, I gave him the brush-off and there was nothing he could do about it: I had the job by then and luckily Anne had wised up a mate of hers that was on the uni sexual harassment in the workplace committee, or whatever they called it, that he was that sort, so she came and gave him a warning that if he sacked me he’d be for it—not actually putting it like that: it was awfully clever, actually,” she added thoughtfully. “So I was okay. Well, after a bit she tried to hit on me, but—” She broke off, Phil had collapsed in helpless giggles. “Yes,” she concluded sheepishly, grinning. “I was really glad to shake the dust. And after a bit Barry and Kyle made me full-time. But like I say, it was pure luck.”

    “But haven’t you got contacts?” he asked wistfully.

    Her? She was only Barry’s and Kyle’s dog. They didn’t even bother to introduce her to any mates that came into the shop. “No. I’m not an owner, ya see. Um, but actually I do know someone who might need some help in their shop—but it isn’t an antique shop,” she added quickly.

    “Never mind! What it is it?” he asked eagerly.

    By late October—or earlier, depending on the weather—the pavement-café-sitting trendies of Sydney had pretty much got into their strides, with a consequent increased demand for waiting staff, and Phil had already greatly admired several of these trendy little establishments and, indeed, urged her to spend inordinate amounts sitting under the sun umbrellas that advertised Perrier and various brands of coffee in order to sip minute cups of lukewarm short blacks or large cups of fluff supported by a few milky spoonfuls of pale brown fluid and misnamed cappuccino. So if she said it was job in a lunch place he would undoubtedly think she meant one of those. Only it wasn’t.

    “Um, it’s a sandwich place,” she admitted uneasily.

    “Ooh, a café?” he said eagerly.

    “No,” said Honey, trying not to clear her throat. “A sandwich place. They make takeaway sandwiches for the lunch trade and they've got some clients that they deliver to as well—you know: they take orders and then deliver the lunches. Just on a small scale, just the offices nearby. They need someone to help make up the sandwiches and deliver them.”

    “I could do that! Oh, but what about my licence? Won’t they want to look at it?”

    Honey gave in and cleared her throat. “Um, no, ’cos see, it’s just the offices and shops nearby. They want someone to carry the baskets and, um, wear an apron with their logo on it. And a cap.” The last sandwich-maker and deliverer had objected both to the early start and to the apron and cap. The outfit was admittedly pretty silly, but you saw miles sillier sights downtown, what with bicycle couriers in skin-tight lurid stretch-nylon. “Um, it’s Sal’s Sandwiches,” she admitted. “Three doors down from work.”

    Phil’s jaw had sagged. The thoroughfare which featured Barry’s and Kyle’s Grimalkin Antiques—named in a fit of whimsy and since regretted—was one of those typical semi-commercial streets in which the great sprawl of metropolitan Sydney abounded. It was a long road, merging at its farther end into an area of light industry and general grime, and at its citywards end into blocks of car sales yards before devolving into ranks of featureless, shiny office towers, and divided by a series of large cross-streets into quite discrete neighbourhoods. Their bit contained a lot of office buildings, none more than about three storeys, most full of little office suites where the names on the doors changed every five years or so, apart from the solider enterprises such as accountants, solicitors and a real estate agency that was part of a very large chain, and quite a few shops, mostly catering to a rather more specialist clientele than the supermarket crowd. There was a second antique shop, much junkier, a small art gallery (run by a youngish couple and showing exclusively the work of their former art school mates), two hairdressers, one unisex and aimed at the younger, trendier set, of whom there were plenty in all the little offices, one ladies-only and catering to the middle-aged and elderly who still desired layer cuts, mahogany or silver rinses and perms, and who were to be found in the ageing apartment buildings just a block back, one small bank branch (two others having closed down over the last six years), three small employment agencies, only one of which was a branch of a large chain, a do-it-yourself beer supplies shop (very specialised, yes, but it had been there for some years, so presumably it did all right), a hobby shop catering exclusively to male fans of model trains, model boats and model aeroplanes (also there for years, in fact possibly the oldest shop in the area), a computer shop that was part of a very large chain, an independent computer supplies shop, much smaller, that mostly sold inks and toners, a bike shop with a large, shiny front window but that usually only seemed to have a couple of the assistants’ bike-riding mates in it (in their skin-tight lurid stretch-nylon, yes), a strange little place that offered heart health and all sorts of semi-medical tests, an emporium full of shop dummies that presumably sold to the trade, another emporium that was usually full of white cartons, advertised import-export services and services for non-English speakers and had notices in what was possibly Korean all over its windows, a Thai restaurant that was only open for dinners, not lunches, and a cake-decorating shop with its windows full of plaster cakes liberally decorated in paper flowers. Plus two narrow holes-in-the-wall, one of which was occupied by a silversmith who was starting to do very well for himself with his modern, largely made-to-order jewellery, and the other Sal’s Sandwiches.

    For the office workers who wanted to lunch out there was also an establishment which might have been called a coffee bar if your definition was on the generous side: not open before eleven or after three. It offered made-to-order sandwiches or rolls with excruciatingly slow service and a fairly dull choice of fillings, pressed smoked chicken being about as daring as they got, with chips and hamburgers all year round. Within one of the office buildings was a ground-floor sandwich shop offering the traditional Aussie meat pies and Cornish pasties as an alternative to its sandwiches and commercially baked sweet muffins. The trendier or more dietary conscious office workers had by this time discovered that Sal’s Sandwiches offered a much tastier and more nutritionally balanced choice, provided that you wanted a sandwich in a variety of breads ranging from yeastless and low-carb “wraps” to your traditional sliced white or wholemeal or rather less traditional rye, by way of single- or double-cut white or wholemeal rolls, lepinja rolls, and focaccia.

    “Sal wants someone reliable that’ll get there by seven-thirty, ’cos it takes ages to make up the sandwiches—you have to slice the ingredients, you see, it’s not just sticking them together—and take the deliveries round and make sure the people get the right lunch.”

    “But surely she can’t know by seven-thirty what people will want!”

    “For the orders? No, but she’s got a good idea, ’cos she analyses what they all order.”

    “Analyses,” echoed Phil limply.

    “Mm. And see, some people buy their sandwich or their roll on the way to work and if she hasn’t filled her display counter by eightish she loses custom. It slackens off after nine, they’re all at work by then, and that’s when you have to take the orders and start making them up for each office. They all know orders have to be in by ten-thirty. That’s a heavier trade in winter, of course, but there’s not all that much choice, so she still does pretty well in summer.”

    “I don’t see how she can possibly anticipate the orders accurately, Mummy: doesn’t it lead to wastage?”

    Honey blinked. “Um, no. She can’t guess them down to the last sandwich, but anything left over goes in the window for the takeaway trade!”

    “Yes,” he said limply. It was only a window, really: a booth with a refrigerated glass-topped counter, about seven feet wide. Behind the horribly efficient yellow-haired Sal was only serried ranks of bottled water, all the same brand, and a selection of bottled fruit juices. “Is there a working area behind it?” he said feebly.

    “Mm, quite long, but narrow, of course. Their door’s at the back of the block,” explained his mother kindly. “The pay’s reasonable for that sort of casual job. And you’d be free by two or just after.”

    He brightened. “Really? That sounds all right! Would she take me, do you think?”

    “Only if I guarantee to get you out of your pit and round there by seven-thirty.”

    Phil flushed. “Have you already discussed it?”

    “I did ask Sal if she had any jobs going and she said she’d talk to you and warned me about the early start. Um, she wants someone hygienic.”

    Her son goggled at her. “I think I’m hygienic!”

    “Yes, ’course you are, that’s the point. She had lots of applicants before but most of them were grimy, she couldn’t possibly have employed them in food preparation. It took her ages to find that idiot Brent, and then he got fed up with wearing the uniform and started turning up late.”

    “What is the uniform?” asked Phil cautiously.

    Honey sighed. “It’s a perfectly ordinary white apron, full-length, with ‘Sal’s Sandwiches’ embroidered on it in blue—she knows a lady that does commercial embroidery to order—but it’s quite big, from a distance it does look like a dress, and she wanted something on the cap that’d stand out, so the lady just put ‘Sal.’ –Same as her one that she wears behind the counter, Phil,” she prompted. “A plain round white hat with straight sides.”

    “Er… Oh! This tit Brent didn’t like being called Sal by the tits in his peer group, that it?”

    “Mm. The apron made it worse, too.”

    “I quite see that,” said Phil politely, the amber eyes dancing. “I assure you, I have no objection to wearing a hat with ‘Sal’ on it.”

    “Yeah,” said Honey limply. “Well, good. Um, I wouldn’t recommend going down the pub wearing it, mind— Mind you,” she finished feebly over Phil’s agonised spluttering fit.

    “I promise I won’t wear it down the pub,” he agreed, blowing his nose. “I feel ever so betterer! I don’t think I’ll ask why being shamed in front of the peer group outweighs a paying job.”

    “Eh? Oh, that nong, Brent. No, don’t. Well, he’ll just tell a lie to Centrelink and go back on the dole, whaddelse?” His puzzled expression registered. “Um, that’s the, um, I’ve forgotten what you call them in England, Phil. The place that doles out the dole and snatches back six thou’ that you’ve spent on your fatherless kids when your new boyfriend moves in with you.”

    “Er—yes. Labour exchange?” he suggested feebly.

    “Yes, probably. Though they don’t find you a job.”

    “Don’t find you a job?” he echoed dazedly. “What are they for, then?”

    “I just said: to catch you out breaking their pettifogging rules and grab back six thou’ or so! This is John Howard’s Australia, not Tony Blair’s Britain!”

    “Cor, and I thought that was bad enough!”

    “It isn’t funny,” said Honey grimly. “You try being at the bottom of the heap for once!”

    It sounded as if he was about to. “Mm. Ah—phone Sal on Monday?”

    “You can phone her now, I’ve got her home number.”

    Phil watched resignedly as she looked through the notebook again, and duly phoned Sal Remington. She was home and immediately ordered him to come over for an interview.

    “It’s only two blocks away: go on.”

    “Well, uh, do I look all right?” he said feebly.

    “Yeah. Very hygienic. Go on, she’s expecting you!”

    Resignedly Phil went, a lamb to the slaughter. Well, for God’s sake, he had to do something to earn some dough if Mummy was that broke, and it was pretty foul realising at the age of eighteen that you were living off your mother. True, Sal’s sandwiches were delicious: he’d had one mixture with avocado—the things must grow like weeds here, it was no dearer than any other filling—cream cheese, walnuts and rocket that was out of this world, and another, very different, but almost as good: thinly sliced rare roast beef with crunchy mustard, alfalfa sprouts and sun-dried tomatoes. But Sal herself was frankly terrifying: a slim, brisk woman—he’d have said working-class but he wasn’t yet sure of the Australian gradations in the matter of class, though he had become aware that, contrary to his expectations, they did exist—with very yellow, very well controlled, thick, wavy hair that her “Sal” cap didn’t hide, and enough energy, not to say strength of character, to command an army. Or, looking at the mess currently going on in Iraq, two. With both hands tied behind her. She was probably just on forty, not so very much older than his mother, but that counted for precisely nothing.

    There were a lot of flats in Honey’s area, which was only a few blocks back from the antiques shop and Sal’s Sandwiches—just as well: he wouldn’t have fancied a journey across the city for a seven-thirty start—but also a lot of houses on fairly large sections, all detached bungalows, none very large and varying from shabbyish but neat to horridly done-up with some sort of terracotta or cream smooth finish over possibly plaster, or even more possibly concrete. The gardens were all horribly neat, the grass razed to almost nothing. A few were real gardens, with flowers and pretty shrubs, but the majority seemed only to exist for the purpose of neatness, featuring at the most a row of shaped-into-submission standard roses along the front path, while a whole third of the front lawn was sacrificed to the paved drive leading to the giant garage. Okay, Mummy had said everyone drove, and this must prove it.

    Sal Remington lived in a sort of middling house. Not smoothed-out, sill-less terracotta or cream livened up by the addition of a huge arched front porch, but not shabby, either. A brick bungalow, neatly painted turquoise, with a neat white trim, and a new-looking roof in what his mother had informed him was still referred to as “corrugated iron” by most of the country when they didn’t think about it but these days was actually colour-steel. It was certainly corrugated, and a dull grey in colour. The white wooden shutters at either side of the front windows with hearts cut out of them were a nice touch, though personally he would have dispensed with the giant striped awnings—possibly also steel?—that loomed, no, glowered, over these windows. Dark blue and white stripes, perhaps they didn’t come in turquoise? The front lawn was scrupulously neat and did not feature even one martyred standardised rose, and to either side of the front door sat a white-painted rock. Quite small, about eight inches across. If Phil hadn’t already put Sal down as the world’s greatest control freak these rocks would certainly have done it. He took a deep breath and rang the bell.

    He couldn’t honestly have said afterwards what the place looked like inside except that all the walls were very pale oatmeal and the furniture was ugly but neutral in colour—he'd expected more turquoise—and everything was spanking clean. True, Sal had a small dog but it was clean as whistle, too. In fact she’d just finished washing it and was blowing its fur dry with a hair-drier when he arrived. A Peke, with a turquoise collar. It didn’t look prepared to like him so Phil, who rather liked dogs, kept well clear.

    She seemed to think he’d already accepted the job and having given him a close once-over and stressed the seven-thirty starts, warned him that the delivery clients wouldn’t want to be chatted up and they didn’t need any of his English humour! When he had ever made a joke in front of the woman? He’d merely bought a few sandwiches from her! And having inspected his hands and approved of them and his nails, further warned him grimly that he’d have to wear a hairnet and rubber gloves when he made sandwiches for her clients—ye gods, wasn’t that the norm, here, then?—and then produced a lot of papers for him to fill in. And yes, he did have to get a Tax File Number because if he didn’t, this was how much tax she had to take off his pay, compared to this, see? Humbly Phil saw.

    He was too shaken to remember that if you went down thataway and headed for the street where the antique shop and the sandwich shop were, there was a pleasant old wooden pub on a corner. He just tottered straight home and got Mummy to explain it all to him over a nice cup of tea. –She did have nice tea: Twining’s English Breakfast. She’d explained that it was her one extravagance but after his first two days in her tiny flat Phil had realised that, actually. He wasn’t much given to considering anyone other than himself but he had begun to have some very hard thoughts about bloody Grandfather and useless Daddy, unrelated to his own concerns. Jesus! Couldn’t they at least have brought her home and—and looked after her? Given her a chance at a decent life, at least! He was, of course, sublimely unaware that to Honey, like all the post-War generations of Australians, Britain did not mean “Home” and the colonial mentality was long since gone and not regretted.

    Since it was Saturday Honey thought they could have fish and chips for tea for a treat! She meant dinner, of course: Phil had worked out that it was her vernacular, and apparently the norm, not a class thing, though he had heard “dinner” used instead on a cookery show on television. But even Barry and Kyle, who were manifestly very much more up-market than Honey, used “tea” when they weren’t thinking. For example: “Must dash, I’m late for tea!” Or: “Now what on earth are we going to have for tea, Kyle, you were supposed to buy a nice piece of salmon at lunchtime!” As opposed to: “We’re giving a nice little dinner next Tuesday, dear; now what do you think about sushi starters, or is that too obvious?”

    Cautiously he agreed that fish and chips’d be nice, but where was the chippy? After a certain confusion of vernaculars she revealed it was down past the pub. Phil was about to suggest eating at the pub instead—there was quite a pleasant dining-room and the menu wasn’t too bad at all: certainly it featured salmon steaks, though not sushi, not being quite in Barry’s and Kyle’s socio-economic bracket, though they had been known to stagger off there and collapse into the lounge bar after a hard day amongst the antiques. Then he remembered the state of their finances and agreed quickly to fish and chips. Did they do mushy peas? She didn’t know what those were but they did lovely pineapple rings. You know: in batter. So be it. They marched off in search of fish, chips and battered pineapple rings.

    “We’d better go to bed,” decided Honey after they’d finished their repast, washed down, in view of the finances, with instant coffee, not beer, and watched something putrid on the television. –There were several commercial channels, all putrid, something that purported to be a national broadcaster, rising tonight to the heights of The Bill, which they hadn’t watched, as to his relief his mother disliked it as much as he did, and another channel that purported to be up-market, and on which he had seen a very earnest and depressing Danish film one night but which tonight had been screening some sort of frightful Japanese cookery show dubbed into frightful American. Possibly not intended by its makers to be kitsch but intended by the channel to be viewed as such? Who knew, they also screened the Eurovision Song Contest and World Cup Soccer, according to the TV guide.

    “It’s nine-thirty,” said Phil feebly, consulting his watch.

    “Yes, and we’ve got to be up at five tomorrow.”

    “Five?” he quavered.

    “To catch the bus up to Barrabarra. It leaves at six-thirty and we’ll have to get into town to catch it and there aren’t any buses from here on Sunday until six-ten, we’ll never make the connection. We’ll have to walk. Don’t worry, it’ll only take an hour.”

    “Mummy, that time we caught the bus into town after work, it took an hour!”

    “That was the rush hour. If we leave just after five, that’ll give us plenty of leeway.”

    “Couldn’t we take a taxi?” he said faintly.

    “It’s not worth it, we haven’t got any luggage and the weather’s decent.”

    And that seemed to be that. Numbly Phil went off to wash. When he came back she’d made the divan bed up for him. So he got into it.

    “Phil! Phil! Wake up!”

    He woke up with a start. “Is it morning?”

    “No, you clot! We’re here!” hissed Honey,

    He looked round dazedly. Oh, God—the bloody bus. Somewhere amongst all those bare hills and lonely gum trees he must have dozed off.

    “It’s our stop next!” said Honey loudly.

    “I get it,” he agreed, yawning. The view from his window was not enticing. A lot more dust, about summed it up. “Where’s the village?”

    “Don’t call it that! Here!” said Honey crossly.

    Very well, it was here. The bus drew up and his mother got up. “Come on!”

    “I’m coming,” said Phil resignedly, following her off. Nobody else at all got off, that was promising. Not.

    Honey looked at her watch. Gone nine-thirty. Where was Bob Springer? She looked round uneasily. Was she even gonna recognise him after all this time? ’Cos while she thought she remembered him, it was over ten years, people could change a lot in—

    “Is that the Springer fellow?”

    Reddening, she hissed: “Don’t call him that!”

    “Uh—Mr Springer?” he groped.

    “No! Bob! No, it isn’t, that man must be about seventy, don’t be silly, Phil!”

    They watched as the elderly man with a parcel under his arm slowly crossed the road in the direction of what was possibly a small news agency or possibly a post office, or— “What is that shop, Mummy?” said Phil feebly.

    “It’s one of those stupid farmed-out post offices that disclaim all responsibility for anything to do with a postal service!” she snarled.

    Er—yes. It did have a sort of, um, Western-looking sign, really, in which the word “Post” was incorporated, but as it was preceded by the word “Trading”, um…

    “Ya see them all over the place!” said Honey crossly.

    Phil was quite willing to take her word for it. “Mm. I see, they sell stamps, do they?”

    “And they let ya pay ya bills unless ya try to pay with a perfectly good credit card like what all the other shops not only accept, they’re busting to give you cash on, but don’t ask me what they think are, ’cos all I know is they’re not a post office and half the time anything ya try to post to Centrelink in their flamin’ box the buggers claim never got there!” she snarled.

    “Oh,” said Phil numbly, looking at the scarlet box, it certainly looked like a mail box, outside the so-called “Trading Post.” “So, er, would one be able to post a parcel from there?”

    “Dunno. Wait and see if he comes out without that parcel he was lugging.”

    They waited…

    “Mummy—”

    “Mm?” replied Honey mildly.

    Rather relieved to see she’d apparently calmed down, Phil asked: “About this Centrelink business; I mean, that is the place you said is in charge of the dole, isn’t it?”

    “Mm.”

    “So, er—well, it’s none of my business, but you seem to have had a fair amount to do with them: have you been out of work?”

    Honey swallowed a sigh. Half the country had been out of work at one time or another. Not the smug professional classes like the shits she’d had to work for at the uni, no. The rest. “Yeah. Before Anne found me the job at the uni. And then when I started working part-time for Barry and Kyle I didn’t have enough to live on so I hadda go cap-in-hand to the buggers again, geddit?”

    “And did they make you an allowance?”

    “Eventually,” said Honey heavily. “After six weeks. See, I had two thou’ in my bank account, so they weren’t in any hurry. They didn’t ask me what debts I had at the time, mind you, so that three thou’ debt I’d hadda run up on my credit card to pay for groceries didn’t count.”

    “What?” he gasped. “But didn’t you tell them?”

    “There was nowhere on their flaming form to put it. But actually, Anne dragged me back there and made me tell them about it and at that stage,” said Honey very sourly indeed, “their ruddy officer, so-called, informed me that that was an unsecured debt and it didn’t count. Not to them, that was; it was just driving me into the ground, they didn’t give a stuff about that.”

    “That’s totally unjust!” he gasped.

    “Tell us about it. See, what I shoulda done was pay off the credit card and then have nothing to buy groceries with,” said Honey sourly.

    Phil swallowed. “Mm,” he said, suddenly taking her hand and squeezing it hard. “I’m terribly sorry, Mummy, about—about everything. Well, bloody Daddy and Grandfather, mainly.”

    “Thanks,” said Honey gratefully, squeezing back.

    “Is that them?” panted Deanna as they emerged from Barrabarra Hardware laden with bags.

    “Probably. Well, nobody else standing at the bus stop looking as if they’re waiting for us, eh?” replied Bob equably.

    Deanna peered. “That boy that’s holding her hand looks awfully young; didn’t you say she was in her late thirties?”

    “Yeah, think she would be. Hang on,” he said, grounding the bags. “I better tell you this, I s’pose. I could be wrong, but I think that must the son.”

    She brightened. “Well, that’s all ri—”

    “Will ya just hang on! I dunno that I’m supposed to know this: Honey told old Dave all about it and he let it out to Uncle Martin.”

    Deanna was less than half Bob’s age. Nevertheless she eyed him tolerantly, in the time-honoured manner of Aussie women eyeing their deluded menfolk, and said: “And he let it out to you. And they say women gossip!”

    They did. About all she did when one of her bloody cousins foisted themselves on ’er. Oh, and sometimes they did each other’s hair. “Yeah. Well, if that is the son, she had him when she was about sixteen or seventeen, and the father was a Pom that turned out to be from a la-de-da family that didn’t want an illegitimate descendant—shut up, I’m getting there,” he warned, “so the boy’s dad come out and forced them to get married and then adopted the baby, lock, stock and barrel and took it away to Pongo. The last I heard—mind you, this was ten years or so back—she’d never even set eyes on the kid since.”

    “Heck!” she breathed, the big dark, slightly slanted eyes as round as saucers. “That’s terrible, Bob!”

    “Yeah,” he agreed. “I’d say the kid must of found out who his mum was and come out to see her now he’s grown up, whaddaya think?”

    Deanna nodded hard.

    “Mm. So, uh, don’t say anything, eh?”

    “No, of course not! Poor girl!” she said with feeling.

    Honey Jardine must be about fifteen years older than Deanna, who in fact wasn’t much older than the son, but as Bob thoroughly approved of them sentiments and in fact shared them, he just agreed: “Too right. –Those bags not too heavy for ya, love?”

    Deanna had done ballet since she was four and attended the gym regularly since she was sixteen, so although she was very slim she was also very fit and wiry; so she replied with cheerful scorn: “’Course not! Come on!” And forged off eagerly in the direction of the probable Honey Jardine—Bob sorta thought he remembered that mass of untidy curls, funny colour, not fair but not really brown, either; actually it had a bit of green in it, if that didn’t sound too fanciful—and her probable, well, possible son.

    They were: as he came up slowly Deanna was just launching into the name not being Diana spiel and her mum being a great fan of Patrick Stewart though she’d never actually admitted she’d got the name off—

    “Yeah,” he agreed, grounding the bags and putting an arm round her waist. “Mind you, never named the twins what come after her Data and Riker.” Managing to ignore Deanna’s startled giggle, he added: “Gidday, Honey. You haven’t changed.”

    “Nor have you, really, Bob,” said Honey gratefully, shaking his hand. His hair was grey and cut a lot shorter than it used to be, in quite a smart modern cut. In fact, though he was only wearing old jeans and a grey sweat-shirt labelled “YALE” in red he looked a lot smarter altogether.

    “Lost a bit of weight, though, eh?” he said proudly. “That’s Deanna’s doing: made me go to the gym, didn’tcha, love?”

    “Yes; he needed to,” she said seriously. “This is Honey’s son, Bob: Phil Sotherland.”

    “Good to meet you, Phil!” beamed Bob, shaking hands excruciatingly hard.

    “Uncle Dave left us the property jointly, so we thought we’d have a look at it,” explained Honey.

    Bob scratched his chin. “Cripes. Well, it hasn’t fallen down.”

    “That’s about what I thought,” she said placidly.

    “Uh—there’s nothing much in there, don’t think. Well, Dave’s junk, I s’pose, nobody will’ve touched it. Think ya shoulda brought a couple of sleeping-bags, Honey.”

    “Um, but we’re not staying: I’ve got work tomorrow—we both have,” said Honey, going very red as it dawned they had no way of getting back down to the bus.

    “Well, good, we can give you a lift, we gotta get into the city tomorrow, too!” he said breezily.

    “But I have to start at seven-thirty,” said Phil faintly.

    “Don’t worry, we’re not proposing to start at six in the morning, son: thought we’d leave around nine tonight,” said Bob cheerfully.

    “Yes,” agreed Deanna. “We have to pick up something for my sister and her fiancé.”

    “Well—thank you very much,” faltered Honey.

    Bob hefted his bags again. “Just grab one of them bags off her, wouldja, Phil?” he said on a tolerant note, under cover of Deanna starting to tell Honey the whole saga about her sister.

    “Oh! Of course! Please, let me, Deanna!”

    Deanna surrendered half her bags, gave one of the remaining lot to Honey, who was already carrying a plastic carrier bag, and they set off for the station-waggon which Bob had parked round the back of the hardware store for reasons which were about to become apparent.

    “What is it?” gasped Phil.

    “What’s it look like?” replied Bob placidly.

    “Well, a—a giant cupboard,” he said limply.

    “Help, it’s even bigger than that Huon pine wardrobe I sold for Barry and Kyle!” gasped Honey. “Ooh, look, there’s a door, too!”

    “That’s right,” confirmed Bob placidly. The trailer hitched to the back of his ageing station-waggon was very full of large cupboard and large wooden door.

    “No handles,” discovered Honey sadly.

    “Nah, they’ll of long since been souvenired by the arty-tarty antiques lot,” replied Bob calmly.

    “Um, Mummy works for an antique dealer,” said Phil faintly.

    Mummy, eh? Bob eyed him tolerantly. Him and his designer jeans, about as smart as Deanna’s, and his pink tee-shirt. “That right? Then you’ll know exactly what I mean, Honey.”

    Honey nodded hard. “Yes, Barry and Kyle’s shop’s got a whole section of door furniture! –Grimalkin Antiques,” she explained to Bob.

    “Yeah? Don’t think I know it. Mind you, we can’t afford to shop at the real antiques places, eh, love?”

    “No, that’s right,” agreed Deanna. “George Kelly, he owns Barrabarra Hardware, he got the door for us off a man he knows, and the cupboard came from an old house that’s been pulled down, two blocks away: we happened across it quite providentially, didn’t we, Bob?”

    Bob winked at Honey and Phil. “Yeah. Very providentially, given that she’d let me off the leash while she went into the city to have her hair done and I was propping up the bar in the pub here when the blokes that were working on it came in.”

    Deanna had long, straight black hair that came almost to her waist. “You need a professional trim at regular intervals: it strengthens the growth,” she said firmly.

    “Yeah, and fortunately she’s got these mates at Snips downtown that give her mates’ rates, or I’d be at it with the kitchen scissors,” noted Bob. “Bring anything to eat, didja?”

    “Yes, some sandwiches and a thermos,” replied Honey quickly.

    “After getting up at sparrow-fart to catch the ruddy bus? That’s not enough! Tell ya what, we’ll drop you off at old Dave’s, you can have a bit of a look round the place, and then get over to our place, we’ll have something hot, dunno what, but we been up since sparrow-fart ourselves. Fried cholesterol, if all else fails.”

    “Not bacon and eggs,” said Deanna firmly, not smiling. “Bacon and tomatoes with wholemeal toast, if you like.”

    “Yeah, that’ll do,” he agreed mildly.

    “And I think there’s some of that nice soup that David made in the freezer.”

    “Ooh, good! We’ll have that for starters, then! –See, what we slightly overlooked when we decided to turn Uncle Martin’s dump into a B&B,” Bob informed them cosily, opening the back door of the station-waggon: “In ya hop!—What we slightly overlooked was that neither of us can cook.”

    “No,” agreed Deanna placidly, getting into the front passenger’s seat. “It was awful, wasn’t it, Bob? I tried and tried,” she said, turning round and smiling as Honey and Phil seated themselves numbly, “but I was hopeless! Well, I can do a nice stir-fry, but we wanted to offer proper meals.”

    Bob got into the driver’s seat. “Yeah. –Do ya seatbelt up, Phil: dunno what the regs are over in Pongo but here if ya don’t do ya seatbelt up, we don’t go. –Not that I’ve ever seen a cop up here,” he noted by the by. “Seen plenny of cretins driving like they own the road in their fucking four-wheel-drives they can’t control, though.”

    Limply Phil did his seatbelt up.

    “Anyway,” said Deanna, turning away to do hers up but continuing the narrative, “one awful weekend—well, it was a lovely weekend, really, wasn’t it, Bob? Anyway, we had some friends up, and my sister, Dot, and her fiancé, David, and I was bawling over the stove—what was that I was trying to make, Bob? –Anyway,” she said as he shook his head blankly, “I was bawling ’cos I’d burnt it—I think it was a sauce—but anyway, David said what say he did the cooking for us? He’s a marvellous cook, practically professional class. ’Cos the thing is, in the wine districts and like that, the guests can rely on finding a lovely little restaurant not that far away, but round here there’s nothing!”

    “No, right,” agreed Honey faintly, as she’d paused.

    The bus certainly hadn’t passed anything before he fell asleep and he’d observed nothing since—small shops, tumbledown wooden houses, a big old single-storeyed pub, was about it—so Phil also agreed: “No.”

    “So we agreed that Dot and David’ll settle up here, too, and he’ll do the lunches and dinners for us. Dot’s into database design, so she’ll probably do some of that free-lance, but they’re planning a family, you see! And our other friends, Ann and Bernie,” she went on before Honey could manage to say that was nice, “they’re going to open up an art and crafts centre in conjunction with us, and he’ll give lessons—you know, painting weekends or even whole weeks, that sort of thing’s very popular these days—and I’ll teach fabric art!”

    “It sounds lovely, Deanna,” said Honey faintly, wondering how on earth six adults—help! and Dot’s and David’s kids, presumably—would manage to live off that sort of thing.

    “Plus the whole bit,” elaborated Bob: “fancy guest soaps in odd little shapes, deep old antique bath—I know a place that manufactures them, claw feet an’ all—and a bit of yer aromatherapies thrown in. And if you’re really lucky a classical concert as well! David plays the piano a treat and his sister, she’s musical, too.”

    “When’s the first concert, Deanna?” asked Phil with a grin.

    “Well, when we open at Easter, we hope, Phil,” she replied seriously.

    “Good show. We’ll come!”

    “English, though, aren’tcha, mate?” said Bob. “Will your visa let you stay that long?”

    “He’s got an Australian passport, ’cos he was born here,” explained Honey.

    “Eh?” said Bob weakly.

    “Yes!” cried Deanna. “You remember, Bob! Just like that lady Aunty Kate met! She came out to New Zealand when she was four, and it wasn’t until she was married and had grown-up kids of her own that she applied for a passport—her and her husband wanted to come over to Adelaide at Christmas to see his cousins, you see—and they wouldn’t let her have a New Zealand passport, they said she had to be British!”

    “Yeah, be the same sorta thing, I s’pose,” he conceded.

    “It’s mad,” admitted Honey, “but it works in our favour in this instance, only are they gonna let him back again?”

    “He’d be a British resident, that’d count,” decided Bob. “Only what’d ya wanna go back for? I mean, rotten weather, eh? Dot couldn’t take it—had a short-term job over there—”

    “Consultancy, Bob.”

    “Right. Really good pay, too, and they’d of taken her on full-time, only she couldn’t wait to get back to Oz. See, we thought her and David might settle there, he was born there, but he can’t see past Dot and what she wants is good enough for him, so he come back with ’er.”

    “Bob, it wasn't like that! He’d adjusted to our lifestyle!” She plunged into the whole bit.

    Honey and Phil listened dazedly. After a while Honey found that he was eyeing her cautiously. She smiled feebly. He winked. Honey clapped her hand over her mouth. She had had time to work up quite a case of nerves over meeting the Springers, but very clearly there had been no need to at all!

    The station-waggon with its load on behind had ground through a little settlement—not much different from the one where the bus had let them off—and then ground up a little way into some low hill country. “This is it,” said Bob, pulling up at a gap in the three-foot clay bank to their left. It was topped with scattered scrawny eucalypts and some scraggy grey-green undergrowth, a quantity of untidy grass, and rather a lot of rocks, at an angle of approximately forty-five degrees. In the gap itself a dusty, rutted track wound up the rise. It was the Jardine place, all right: there was a rusting metal barrel on legs, with its flat end featuring a mail slot and, in flaking white paint, the legend “Jar___c”.

    “If there’s any mail it’ll be bills and circulars,” noted Bob.

    “Um, yes,” agreed Honey uncertainly. “Um, there was something about the bills the lawyers paid attached to that letter they sent us, eh, Phil?”

    “I’m not sure,” he admitted.

    “Any cash come to you?” asked Bob clinically.

    “No,” replied the Jardine heirs in chorus.

    “No, right. See, what usually happens with small estates like ole Dave’s and Uncle Martin’s, somehow or other the legal costs coincidentally come to what the cash amounts to.”

    “Help: ‘in Chancery!’” said Phil with a startled laugh.

    “That’s just what I was thinking!” agreed Honey. “Sorry,” she said, as the Springers were looking blank. “Bleak House. Um, Dickens.”

    “Aw, right, in a book, eh?” said Bob tolerantly. “Anyway, I’d toss out anything that’s trying to get money out of ya. ’Specially if it’s a bloody electricity bill,” he noted grimly.

    “Bob, that was a mistake,” murmured Deanna.

    “You can say that again! Tried to gyp us for six months’ ruddy power, when it had been off since the poor old bloke went into hospital! So we’re having solar panels.”

    “Good on ya!” cried Honey.

    Bob sniffed. “Yeah. Well, sorta thing that seems like a brilliant idea at the time—this’d be the time ya cop a gander at the power bill,” he explained—“only it costs an arm and leg. Anyway, I’m working on a way to disconnect from the bloody grid entirely. Meantime, we’re gonna put in a pot-bellied stove, eh, love? With a wet-back, see?”

    “Um, sorry, I don’t understand,” said Honey limply.

    “It heats the water for you and you don’t need a stupid Rheem or anything!” beamed Deanna. “You have this sort of pipe that connects the stove to your hot-water taps!”

    “Right, that’s the scientific explanation!” agreed Bob with a grin. “Thing is, to get the hot water, ya gotta fire up the stove, and funnily enough ya don’t wanna do that in our summers.”

    “They throw out a tremendous lot of heat: some friends of Aunty Kate’s stayed at a lovely ecolodge in New Zealand that had one, and see, they’d piped the hot water through to the kitchen!” she beamed.

    “I see,” said Honey, smiling at them. “That sounds really great. And they do say that the savings with solar panels pay off the installation costs over time, don’t they?”

    Bob sniffed slightly. “Ten years—yeah. Thought we might throw a party when that day dawns! –You wanna hop out? Better not risk the waggon on the driveway with this load on behind.”

    Quickly thanking him, the Jardine heirs got out.

    “Lunch in about an hour, eh? Just wander over when ya ready!” he said cheerfully, driving off up the road with a wave and a toot of the horn.

    “He’s nice, isn’t he?” said Honey as the dust cloud dissipated slightly.

    “Yes!” agreed Phil, coughing. “Gosh, she seems to be completely on his wavelength, doesn’t she? How old is she, do you think?”

    The young voice on the phone hadn’t belied Deanna Springer. “Um, a bit older than you?”

    They looked at each other limply.

   “A marriage of true minds,” concluded Honey feebly. “Come on.”

    Obediently Phil trudged up the steep clay track with her, past more high verges, decorated with more scraggy eucalypts and so forth, and round a bend and up further and—

    “See?” said Honey as the silence lengthened. “I did try to warn you.”

    The Jardine country place was a shack, all right. Though possibly only the verandah and those strange, saggy bits at either side were being eaten by white ants, the main structure seemed to be… mixed brick and stone? Some wattle and daub as well? Possibly once whitewashed, in the very dim, distant past. The wooden bits had possibly once been painted.

    “The roof looks all right,” said Honey in tones of relief, squinting at it. “He had it redone in colour-steel about fifteen years back. The red was cheap.”

    Nobody else wanted it—quite. Phil tried to smile.

    Honey felt in her handbag for the key. “It’ll be pretty basic inside.”

    She was right. It was.

Next chapter:

https://theroadtobluegums.blogspot.com/2022/11/gils-decision.html