Four Fires (27 page)

The banging stops and this lady looks around and sees us and smiles. 'Hello, boys, wrong lady, I'm the cook.'Then she comes to the door and opens it and indicates we must enter. She sees me looking at the meat mallet she's holding. 'Oh, just tenderising a bit of mutton for the dogs, they're too old to chew it unless it's practically mince.' She puts the mallet down on the chopping block, 'Wait on here, boys, and 111 call madam.'

I can't believe my eyes. On the kitchen counter next to the chopping block is what looks like a dish of raw tripe. The Barrington-Stones are supposed to be worth a fortune and they're having to eat tripe for their tea!

'Crikey!' I whisper to Mike. They've got a flamin' cook, so how come they're on an offal week!'

'Probably for the dogs!'Mike says out of the corner of his mouth.

Nah, she said they've got no teeth, tripe's bloody tough raw.'

'So, simple, she'll cook it,'he says.

I don't say anything, even Bozo's Bitzers don't like tripe all that much and who'd bother to cook trine for a A™ I -„.----by Mike's explanation. Maybe they need new tyres for the Piper Cub or something?

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I can see why we would have mistaken the cook for Mrs Barrington-Stone because when she comes into the kitchen she's about the same size. But she's dressed in moleskin pants and brown boots and a blue open-neck shirt, same as any big hat at the Wangaratta Show. 'Good afternoon, boys, you've come from Nancy Maloney, have you?'

We nod, holding out the two big brown-paper parcels. 'Oh, you'd best bring those into the dining room. Mrs Jackson is tenderising and we don't want a lump of mince to land where it shouldn't, now do we?'

We follow her through and she takes us into a dining room that's twice as big even than Philip Templeton's lounge room and it's only the dining room. The lounge room stretches halfway across the countryside, which you can see through this huge glass window at the end. The dining room has a long table that must have twenty chairs around it. In the centre is this silver candlestick with about ten branches for candles.

'How very exciting!' she says, 'I can't wait!' Pointing at the polished surface of the table, she shows where to put the two parcels we're carrying, 'Do put them down, please. This is such a nice surprise.' She stops and looks curious, 'I didn't hear a car coming up the drive? Is there someone waiting for you outside?'

'We walked, madam,' Mike says all proper, calling her 'madam' just like the cook did.

'Walked? You walked the seven miles from town? My goodness! You must be exhausted. You must have some tea.'

'No, no, it's okay,' Mike protests, 'our tea will be waiting for us when we get home.' I'm glad Mike said that because we'd have to have tripe for their tea and it ain't an offal week at home. It's only half-past five, they must eat real early, even we don't have our tea until half-past six.

'No, I won't hear of it, my boy. It's a hot day and you shall have some refreshment. What say lemonade and biscuits, there might be a bit of chocolate cake left over?'

I look at Mike and hope to hell he don't say no, now you're talking lemonade, biscuits and cake. A far cry from tripe. He sort of grunts, 'Thank you.'

'Good! Then why don't we all go out on the verandah where there's usually a bit of a breeze at this time of the day. Walked? I do declare!' Mrs Barrington-Stone has got this posh accent like she could almost be from England but you know she isn't because you can see she's Australian.

We sit around a big low wicker table looking out onto the garden and directly down at the splashing fountain with the stone boy pissing. Each of us is in a large wicker chair that's big and not broken like ours at home and has soft green canvas cushions you sit on and from which air escapes when you lean back into them.

Mrs Jackson brings in a tray with two king-size bottles of lemonade from the soft drink factory, three bread 'n' butter plates, white with pink roses and a gold edge sort of scalloped on them, there's a big plate of Brockhoff's biscuits on a silver stand as well as two slices of chocolate cake.

There's two glasses and, also, there's these two starched white damask serviettes. I know they're damask because the cot covers we sometimes have to embroider are often made of damask.

Mrs Jackson the cook then says, 'Madam, we have a nice bit of tripe or will I do a roast for dinner?'

'Tripe? Oh, lovely, that's Jim's favourite, he will be pleased. With white sauce and onions, is it?'

'Yes, madam,' the cook says, a trifle scornful, because even I know you always get white sauce and onions with tripe. Yuk! Mrs Jackson leaves and I bet she's disappointed about the tripe against roast beef because she probably has to eat it too.

I'm nervous and a bit confused about this tripe incident. There's something very wrong with someone who chooses tripe when they could just as easily have a roast dinner. But I must say, Mrs Barrington-Stone is not up herself and seems a pretty normal sort of a person all round. She speaks a bit loudly but then so does Nancy, so you can't hold that against her.

She now points to the bottles of lemonade, 'Bottoms up, boys, you can't leave until each of you has finished your very own bottle. Have a piece of cake. You can leave the biscuits if you wish
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but you simply

must eat the cake, you can't refuse it or Mrs Jackson will be very upset. She doesn't always feel appreciated and, as you would know, one must never ever upset the cook, a homestead is run on its stomach and I simply wouldn't be able to cope without her.'

'Yes, I know,' says Mike, who doesn't know at all, because he's never even seen a cook except Nancy and Sarah and that's not the same thing, they don't get paid.

'Well then, go ahead, tuck in, boys, I'm sure you're starving after that awfully long walk. You'll excuse me not joining you, but I had a cuppa just a few minutes ago.'

She's not wrong, we're both real hungry and you never know when your next slice of chocolate cake is going to come along and so we reach over and get going on the cake and soon there's sticky chocolate icing over my fingers and I can sense it's around my mouth because Mike's got a chocolate moustache already.

Oh shit, I think to myself, I'm going to have to use one of them starched damask serviettes, which you only see in the movies, folded and standing up like a little white tower. There's going to be chocolate cake all over it, like skid marks on undies. In the movies, all people ever do with them is pout their lips and then touch them ever so lightly with the corner of the damask serviettes before they put them down again on their lap. When they get up from the table the serviettes are never there. I can't use the back of my hand neither, because I know that's bad manners and we can only do it at home if Sarah isn't looking.

But then Mike picks up his serviette and unfolds it and wipes his mouth casual as you like. I look up at Mrs Barrington-Stone to see if -he's done wrong and she's looking directly at him and chuckles and, pointing to his nose, she says, 'There's a blob of chocolate on the very tip of your nose, Michael. Mrs Jackson will be so happy you're enjoying her chocolate cake. It's her pride and joy so you'd better tell her how much you've enjoyed it before you leave.' She doesn't seem to mind that Mike hasn't pouted his lips and that he's mucked up the serviette a treat. So I do the same and there's smears of chocolate all over the starched whiteness.

'Oh dear, you must please excuse me for just a minute,' Mrs Barrington-Stone says, rising from her chair. 'I simply can't contain

myself any longer, I must see what you've brought me. I know I should be patient, but it's not every day one has a lovely surprise like a new baby in the family, is it?'

'You're bloody right there, madam,' I think to myself, but I'm not so sure about the lovely surprise.

I'll be back with you both in a couple of minutes,' she says. 'In the meantime I expect most of those biscuits to be missing by the time I return.'

Mrs Barrington-Stone is a real nice lady and I think she might have left us just so we could bog in without being polite only eating one biscuit each. Not every day you can eat biscuits bought in a shop, maybe at Christmas if you're lucky. Past Christmases, Oliver Withers the magistrate has always left us a big packet of Brockhoff's Chocolate Creams. Except last year when we got there, all there was, was the packet with one biscuit left which his Alsatian dogs missed because it rolled to the other side of the gate. Being the last garbage before Christmas we hadn't lined up the Bitzers to mock his dogs and, I must say, they looked a bit smug when they came round the corner to bark at us. Nancy said she wouldn't be surprised if he hadn't done it deliberately, Oliver Twist being the mean bugger he is. But I don't think he would've, it was just bad luck.

Mrs Barrington-Stone comes back about ten minutes later when we've had a good few of the biscuits and she sits down and clasps her hands together in front of her chest like she's praying, only she's cracked a smile that's practically spilling off the edges of her cheeks. 'My enormous and sincere congratulations! The work is simply marvellous! Please tell your mother how very, very delighted I am. Oh, and your sister too, I believe they work together. Sarah, isn't it?'

'Yes, madam. Thank you, I'll tell Mum,' Mike says. He's getting saying 'madam' down pat. I know
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he'd love to get some credit for doing the embroidery, but he can't and it must hurt a helluva lot deep inside. Bozo, the Boy Boxer, is winning every fight he's in and is a bit of a hero with the yobbos who hang around the Parthenon cafe and even at school for a change. And I've just got a bottoms-wiping certificate and my name in the Gazette. It's not fair. Mike's won the biggest prize you could ever win in your whole life at the Royal Melbourne Show and he can't tell about it or get any of the glory that's coming to us. All those blue ribbons drawing-pinned to the picture rail in the front room, and he can only look at them but can never hear people tell him how clever he is.

The embroidery, in particular, such fine delicate work,' Mrs Barrington-Stone says. Her eyes show she's excited, 'It's astonishing that your mother's eyes have kept up, it's quite the best work I've ever seen and hardly surprising that your mother and sister won Best of Show in Melbourne.

'Mike done it!' I blurt out, not thinking, because I've just been thinking about Mike not getting any glory. It just come out. A silent thought that's come out said out loud when you didn't want it to. Shit! Shit! SHIT!

Mike has blushed. He's going to bloody kill me. Nancy will slaughter me when she hears! I'm scared to look at my brother, knowing how I've just gone and humiliated him.

'Well, I never! Why, that's simply marvellous, Michael, you did that exquisite embroidery? How wonderfully talented you are.'

Mike looks down at his shoes and I can see he doesn't know what to say. They are the words he's always wanted to hear but knew he couldn't ever and now she's said them.

'It's a secret. You mustn't tell anyone,' I quickly say to Mrs Barrington-Stone. 'He's a boy, see!' It's much too late an attempt to make up to Mike for what I've said and he gives me a look that's not real hopeful for my future welfare.

'You are a talented boy, Michael,' Mrs Barrington-Stone exclaims. 'Of course, I read about your mother and sister winning at the Royal Melbourne Show. I was very excited for them and said so at the Country Women's Association regional conference in Shepparton in November. I told them it was good for Yankalillee and good for country people to know that we still have some of the British Empire's great craftswomen living in the Australian bush. And now the sorcerers apprentice has become the master himself!'

The truth is, that Mrs Barrington-Stone is so nice and doesn't seem to care a bit about Mike being a boy who does embroidery and soon there's talk tumbling out of us like we've been friends for years.

She fetches the christening robe and Mike explains the various bits to her and, without thinking, says, 'we used all twelve wicked witches' britches stitches on it.'

'Wicked witches' britches stitches?' she claps her hands together and throws her head back and laughs. 'How jolly, but you'll have to explain.'

Mike explains that there's twelve major stitches in embroidery and that's what we call them.

'That's lovely, but why?' she asks again.

'So we can remember them all. It's an old rhyme we do,' I say.

'A rhyme, will you say it for me?' she asks.

So I do. Going real fast, which is showing off, but that's truly how you're supposed to do it.

'Wicked witches wear pretty britches

Made from silk with fancy stitches

Bullion, back stitch, crafty fishbone

Scattered from the knee to hipbone

With knots colonial all tight tied

Enough to send you glassy-eyed

Back stitch, hem stitch, lazy daisy

Stitches meant to send you crazy

Stem stitch, straight, fluffy feather

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All those stitches worked together.

Cretan, pistil, chain for hitches

Stitches for wicked witches' britches.'

'Well done, Mole,' she says and claps her hands. 'If my very life depended on it I couldn't recite that. My, what fun. You really are a very clever family.'

'Only Sarah is and Mike with embroidery,' I say, which is the dead-set truth, because Tommy ain't except for eucalyptus trees and the bush and Nancy ain't 'cept for smocking and Bozo and me sure ain't going to turn out to be brainy by some fluke of nature.

Mrs Barrington-Stone appears to be thinking for a moment. Then she says, looking serious, 'Am I right in supposing that Sarah and Dora

Templeton's boy had a contretemps'? And that he's been sent to Duntroon to get away from the mess?'

She says 'mess' instead of 'scandal' and she doesn't mention the word 'pregnant' but you know she knows Sarah is up the duff. Now everyone knows from the bottom to the very top of Yankalillee and there's not much use denying it. There is silence between Mike and me, because we don't know what to say to her.