Cool Bananas (7 page)

‘I don’t know what’s worse,’ sighed Liz.

‘What are you two raving about?’ Rob was eavesdropping as usual. ‘If you’re talking worse, I’ve just seen the worst dunny blockage in me entire life. You shoulda seen it. There was —’

‘Stop!’ Kay roared round the side of the servery. ‘I don’t want to hear this filthy talk in the middle of my shop, thank you very much. It’s enough to put my customers off their food for life. So please order what you want and you’re welcome to eat it here or take it away, but no more toilet talk. Do you understand me?’

Rob gaped at her. He knew she had a sharp tongue because she’d told him off before, but never in front of a shopful of customers.

‘I take umbrage to your remarks,’ he said, puffing
himself up like a cane toad, ‘and from now on I’ll take my business somewhere else.’ And with his nose in the air he sauntered out. They could see him making his way down the road towards the hot food van.

‘Omigod,’ said Liz.

‘I didn’t think he knew a word like umbrage,’ said Flick. ‘Just shows, you can’t judge a book by its cover sometimes.’

‘What’s it mean?’ asked a surfer who’d been standing by the door throughout the exchange.

‘It means … um … like, take offence.’

‘Rob take offence? That’s a joke. He’s gotta be the walking offence expert of Coolini Beach — he’s always giving it.’

By the time everyone was served and order restored, the first bus for the morning tea run had arrived, and Liz and Flick were too busy to worry about Rob or any other male on the planet. Angela was in one of her dreamy moods, Roxie seemed to be hungover and couldn’t get anything right, Sophie had phoned in with a cold, Tania hadn’t bothered phoning in at all and Kay was going to sack her, Braden had a late shift, and Cam had dropped a gas bottle on his foot because he’d gone to work still weak from the flu when he should’ve been home in
bed, and now his foot was in plaster, so he couldn’t come and help out.

‘I should be glad that half my customers are going to the opposition,’ Kay growled, as the northerly wind rattled the roof so hard it sounded like it was going to get ripped straight off and flung in the sea, ‘because my staff are losing the plot!’

‘I hate this wind,’ said Liz.

‘Is that smoke or dust?’ Kay shaded her eyes with her hands.

She was paranoid about bushfires, having survived a big one in Lorne a few years ago by sheer luck. She’d been trying to rescue the family dog when she’d been told to evacuate but she was still in the garage coaxing the animal to come to her when the fire front came through driven by a forty knot wind and her house and the two houses either side exploded into massive fireballs.

As she said, if she hadn’t been in the garage, which survived the fire, she’d have been burnt to death. So little wonder she got freaky when the word
fire
was mentioned.

‘Don’t worry, I think it’s dust,’ said Flick comfortingly, but she wasn’t sure.

Kay sniffed. ‘There’s a burning smell in the air.’

‘It’s a fire all right, but it looks like it’s a long way
back in the hills,’ said a man who’d come in to buy sandwiches.

Kay knew what he said could be true. Ashes were sometimes blown for kilometres from a bushfire. The tourists looked nervous, however, and the bus driver went out to use his mobile to check with the depot whether they had any news about the location of the fire. He wasn’t going to risk the lives of his passengers if there was any chance the fire could be heading this way. He’d turn the bus round and go back to Geelong. He came back into the store looking apprehensive.

‘It’s in the hills behind Wye. Yesterday’s fire’s flared up again. And with this northerly,’ he paused and looked at Kay, ‘it means it’s heading this way.’

‘Well, the koala colony’s in the opposite direction to Wye,’ said Kay. ‘Why don’t you give the folks a five-minute look then go back to Geelong.’

‘I don’t fancy getting trapped up the Grey River road,’ said the driver.

The passengers started to mutter among themselves. The koalas were one of the big attractions on the tour. They’d already stopped at the Anglesea Golf Club to see the kangaroos hopping nonchalantly round the fairway, they’d seen the beauty of the Great Ocean Road, and now they wanted to see those cute
furry koalas and then travel on to see the Twelve Apostles and Lochards Gorge.

‘You’ll be all right to go there,’ said Nathan, wandering in. ‘That fire’s got a long way to come before it hits here, if it ever does. And there’s a big firebreak behind those hills, so we’d have to be really unlucky.’

Liz looked at Flick. Unlucky in love, unlucky in bushfires?

‘A big firebreak means diddly in these winds,’ said Kay shortly.

Nathan knew zilch about it. After all, he wasn’t in the CFA and Cam was, and he and half-a-dozen men had burnt the break in spring. You could only burn a strip, you couldn’t burn hundreds of hectares to protect a town. All the break did was stop the undergrowth catching on fire. If it was a grassfire then you had a hope, but if it was a crown fire it would leap across the tops of the trees and keep going.

The bus driver decided to press on. After all, he said, if worst came to worst, he’d be better at Apollo Bay if the Otways were on fire. No one wanted to point out that a whole town the size of Apollo Bay could go up in flames just as easily.

‘When I lived in Geelong once, it was completely
ringed by fire on five fronts,’ said Kay as the bus drove away. ‘The township of Lara was practically wiped out. And the only reason it wasn’t worse was that the wind swung south and the fire had to burn back on itself. And of course it couldn’t because there was no fuel for it.’

‘Why all this talk about bushfires?’ said Angela. ‘I’m not gunna panic till I see the flames coming over that ridge. Then I’m outa here.’

‘To where?’

‘To the beach, of course. I can’t get burned if I’m sitting in the sea, can I?’

‘It’s the smoke inhalation that gets you,’ said Nathan. ‘Your lungs pack up. You need to have a wet tea towel or something.’

Angela smirked beguilingly at him. Theirs was an off-again, on-again relationship, and right now it seemed like it was hotter than the approaching bushfire.

‘I’ll get two then,’ she said, and swiped up two of Kay’s clean tea towels.

Kay grunted.

‘I’d rather stay and fight,’ said Liz. ‘Mum and Dad are away but you’d help me save the house, wouldn’t you, Flick?’

‘You don’t know what you’re talking about,’ Kay
gritted her teeth as she put hot potato cakes and dim sims in the baine marie. ‘That place of yours is a tinderbox. Facing north, trees hanging over the eaves and undergrowth everywhere. And you’ve got western red cedar stained with that oil-based stuff, you’re built on stilts which creates a nice updraft, there’s huge windows that would shatter in the heat, and that’s only to mention a few. You wouldn’t have a hope, girl.’

Liz looked fierce. ‘We’ve got the CFA Guide to Bushfires on the wall,’ she said. ‘They say remain with the house and put out spot fires.’

‘That’s if you’re in the middle of nowhere with your own generator,’ snapped Kay. ‘The first thing that happens in a fire is the power goes off. And you need the power to run the water pump, because your tank’s under the house, not higher than it, same as most new places round here, so you haven’t got gravity feed. No power means no water. So how are you going to put out the fire? Pee on it?’

Liz gaped at her. Kay was really steamed up.

‘And I ought to know, because I had mains pressure in Lorne, and I followed all the CFA instructions. I soaked everything I could with the hose, I put tennis balls in the drainpipe outlets and filled the gutters, I stuffed wet towels under the gaps in the doors,
I taped the windows, I did everything. But in that heat it was hopeless. If I’d been inside I would have exploded with the house. So no way would I fight to save this place. I’d be down the beach with a spade, a woollen blanket and some water and snacks, dig myself a hole in the damp sand, pull the wet blanket over myself, and I’d wait it out.’

‘What would you do, Flick?’ asked Angela, leaning on the counter. While this animated conversation kept going, she could slack off work. That morning she’d painted each of her fingernails and toenails a different colour, and even with the quick-drying varnish it had taken forever. After all, there were only so many jobs you could do wearing gloves. If Kay made her do any jobs that resulted in wrecked fingernails she’d feel like killing her!

‘I don’t know,’ said Flick. ‘After what Kay’s just said, I don’t think I’d want to burn to death at Liz’s place. I think I’d try and help save the vans and get the tents down and help people pack their stuff. Then I’d go to the beach.’

‘Noble and self-sacrificing as usual.’ Angela’s mouth curled.

‘Well, I’d have to do
something
. I couldn’t drive the bus away, could I? It might be a mobile home, but the
wheels are up on chocks, so it’s immobile. The bus would have to take its chances.’

‘It’d probably survive unless a tree branch fell on it,’ said Kay. ‘There’s nothing to burn really.’ She sighed. ‘I’d probably be in the camping ground helping too. First I’d get the store as fire-proof as I could, which it virtually is, seeing as Cam’s so fire-conscious. We built on low ground facing east and the back’s got that high steel fence with mowed grass next door. I’d move the boxes and crates, bring in the outdoor furniture and that’s about it. We built the place with concealed eaves, and got those aluminium shutters put on after the last robbery. There’s wall-to-wall gravel and concrete outside and only the one tree nearby. You can’t do much more than that.’

‘You’ve done a good job,’ said Flick gently.

It was obvious to her that Kay still had a lot of deep-seated anger and fear after her experience with the bushfire that had destroyed her home. The more she talked openly about it, which she’d never really done like this before, and the more her suppressed fears were voiced, all the pent-up stuff was being released. Flick knew, after her own sessions with Dr Fordham, that talking was a healthy way to heal yourself. The customers who’d been meandering around getting groceries off the shelves and dairy
products from the fridges began to look anxious as they listened to Kay.

‘Do you really think a fire’s going to come this way?’ said a woman with a baby in a sling-affair across her chest who was clutching a two litre container of milk. Two young children were clinging to her skirt.

‘It’s hard to tell with a bushfire,’ said Kay. ‘We think that one’s way back in the hills. But I’d be prepared just in case.’

‘Maybe I should pack up the tent and leave,’ said the woman, looking scared. ‘But my husband’s back in Melbourne working and he’s got the car.’

‘By being prepared I meant have your things bundled up just in case you’re instructed to move to a safer place,’ said Kay. ‘You know, just so you don’t have to go scrambling round for things at the last minute.’

She knew that camping with young kids could be pretty chaotic and there was probably clothing and toys all over the tent, because this particular woman never seemed to look very organised, always trying to juggle her purchases instead of bringing a large bag, and sometimes the kids were still in their PJs.

‘How should she bundle everything up?’ asked Angela, trying to milk the moment.

But Kay saw through her ploy and asked her to slice ham out the back for the sandwiches and rolls. Angela looked mutinous but did as she was told. Liz and Flick quickly busied themselves serving the other customers, who didn’t seem too worried about the event of a bushfire.

‘We’ll just sit in the sea. Everything’s insured,’ said one man to another.

‘There’s no need to panic,’ said Kay to the woman who was looking more and more frightened. ‘The fire won’t get here. I’m just saying that in bushfire season, it’s a good idea to always be prepared because you never know what might happen, that’s all.’

‘In that case I’d better read our stars for the day,’ said Liz, picking up the
Sun Herald
.

She flipped to the astrology section.

‘Capricorn. Today will be fortuitous for you. Money will come your way and you will reap the benefits of your hard work.’ She looked at Kay. ‘Nothing about bushfires or anything like that, so stop worrying. Now, let’s see. The birthday girl. Aquarius. Lucky in love and lucky in life, your birthday sign is in line with Mercury over Mars and only good things can come your way today.’

‘Good,’ said Flick. ‘I like the word
good
, whatever that means.’

‘Well, it doesn’t mean bad, that’s for sure. Now, Taurus. That’s me. It says, “there is some confusion in your love-life at the moment, but you can’t make a decision unless you face it and keep that appointment”. Omigod, Flick, I’ll have to do it.’

‘Do what?’ asked Kay.

‘Oh, nothing.’

‘Hmmm,’ said Kay. ‘You can’t run your life on what the stars say. Do what you think is right at the time, young Liz.’

‘Trouble is I don’t
know
what’s right,’ muttered Liz, putting the paper back on the shelf before Angela and the part-timers wanted their stars read too.

The day grew hotter. When it was time for her break, Flick decided to go for a swim. The beach was packed with families. Kids were jumping up and down in the waves or swerving and dodging the swimmers as they rode their boogie boards.

The surfers weren’t allowed near the swimmers because only last week a girl had been hit on the head by a feral board and had to go to hospital to get stitches, so now a notice warned surfers to keep to the right-hand side of the beach. In the main this suited the surfers anyway because that’s were the top point breaks were.

Taking off her shorts and shirt, because she’d put
on her bikini that morning underneath intending to have a lunchtime dip, Flick twisted her shoulder-length hair into a top-knot and jogged to the edge of the sea. Then taking a few running strides, she did a shallow dive neatly into the surf. The tide was high so she knew there was no danger of hitting her head on a sandbank. The shock of the icy-cold water made her gasp, but it was so cool and refreshing that she stayed in for longer than she’d intended.