Monterra's Deliciosa & Other Tales & (6 page)

The Afterlife at Seahorse Drive

"Merrymook! What are you waiting for? Death?"

If there were billboards to attract, this could be Merrymook's successful appeal. This is a take-no-chances heaven by the sea, the first glimpse of it being those honeymoon days in gypsum weekenders, now remembered with clouded eyes reflecting romance enhanced by forgetfulness. Indeed, so many couples have chosen to return to Merrymook for their duration, that today this little etheria is an earthly looking suburb with a golf course and large brick houses built on the sites of the old sea-coloured shacks.

Bede and Coralee Dinning live at number 26 Seahorse Drive, so close to the course that Coralee could watch the whacking of balls from her lounge window, if she'd a mind to.

The air here feels so different from Girilambone. The breeze comes inland, sea-smelling—telling different tales to the hot wind blowing where the Dinnings were born, where the overland comes rushing hot pushed and parched—running over the dusty land like a kelpie-dog over the backs of sheep.

~

The kids were shocked when the station was sold. Though why they should have been, was a hard one.

Donna (the oldest)—a mum on a station in Narrogin out in Western Australia. Sue left for Canberra soon as she could type. Angus—now calling himself CJ for some reason—somewhere in Melbourne with his friends in that band.

"What put their noses out of joint?" Bede asked Coralee the night before the auction. "They never wanted to stay."

Even the green nylon bedspread they sat on would be on the block tomorrow morning, come 10 a.m.

Coralee shrugged, running her finger over the ruches of a rosette. She felt a little guilty. "We never discussed it with them, Bede. Maybe we should have. Angus—"

"Angus! When was that lad last in the shed? One clip and he's gone, that bludger. And I suppose he shed tears over Emoh Ruo?"

Coralee's shoulders pulled themselves up around her ears till she looked like a bedraggled vulture. "You get a bit cross at times and he's a sensi—"

"Sensitive boy, sensitive boy. You can dip my arse!" Bede pushed himself too violently off the bed to suppress a grunt of pain—his hard heels bit the floor, and he banged his fist so hard against the edge of the LOT23-stickered wardrobe that a crackle of split veneer answered back.

When the kitchen door slammed, Coralee relaxed enough to crawl into bed. She dreamt of a slab of white beach, dolphins looping in and out of a sparkling sea; of her naked body glistening under a pulsating chrome shower head—source of a clear endless waterfall regardless of the weather; she dreamt of an emerald-green lawn, automatic sprinklers spraying fans of rain against a real brick house with a picture window glinting out over the sea; the slap slap slap sent by the sprinkler against the tight-pressed mob of dahlias.

To Bede, a weekend away from Woororra was about all he could take. He'd been born in this room, on this bed, fifty-five years ago. The back of his neck had only known the same scouring sun. His hands had felt like unkempt leather as soon as his growing juices stopped flowing; and for as long as Coralee could remember, Bede had smelt like a combination of White Oak rollee, kelpies, sweat, and sheep.

~

"You're bloody crooked, you are, Bede. Look at yourself. A gorilla on the left side and a roo on the right. And that Ki-ro—yeah, I know about him. That crack-yer-bones guy you're sneaking off to. He can't keep popping you forever. I'm not gonna tell you again, mate. Pack in your boots and buy a fishing rod."

Bede grunted. Fishing was for people who sat all their lives. But there was something to what the man said.

Doctor Swain wasn't a real doctor, not like the type that sends you off to Wagga for tests, or that you think Second Opinion. Swainy and Bede had gone to school together. And though Bede had tried young Tudhope in desperation, his pulling and cracking had done about as good a job as taking a deep breath, and blowing the blowflies off a stricken ewe. And crikey, Swainy was right. Bede gazed at himself in the doctor's full-length mirror, and he did look crooked, and he didn't need a mirror to know that he felt so crook that even the dogs slunk clear of him now.

~

The pre-auction chatter was as pitiless as pre-auction utterings always are. The prime merinos sneered at openly, coveted secretly. The battered formica dining table that was once Coralee's pride, now part of a job lot, leaned against to check for wonky legs. The milling crowd before the auction is always the same. Bede had often been one of them. But to be on the other side ...

The speaker coughed, the gavel clapped, and the auction began. The unimportant stuff first—as far as the auctioneers are concerned. For the sellers, the heart of memories—"household assorted".

" ... Lot 5, children's bunk bed, toy box, phonograph player and ten records ... highchair ... double bed, original condition iron, missing one ball ..."

The auctioneers were friends, Bede had thought, until today. Sure they talked up everything, but they settled too quick, didn't really try. Couldn't they see real worth?

Bede's insides felt pretty watery. It was his idea to sell pretty much everything. Coralee had argued, but he saw the gleam in her eyes at the prospect of everything new. "What'd the place look like with our tatty old duds?" he'd asked her. "Old mutton," he'd declared. But he had his reasons. Now, here, with it flowing away at the worth of water in a flood, he felt panic. Never was Bede Dinning a man to change his mind. But Stewart McKell had been right, he mused. Should've gone anywhere today but here.

" ... Lot 31, Green vinyl sofa and matching chair..." Clive McKell glared at Bede, stomping around with his hard face. Clive had also told Bede to spend the day in town. Take the wife shopping. Treat her to tea. But no. There's Bede, just like the rest of these selling buggers—overflowing septics all. Long green face, muttering outrage, stinking fear.

The usual crowd was here today. The professionals, the neighbours, those newies who think they'll make a go of it, if it is a "bargain"; that young Ickersly fellow and his wife. Looks like a young Bede, and those size-up eyes.

It turned out to be Ickersly's day, or maybe Bede's, after all. Ickersly bought the wool plant, the this, the that, at cruelly low prices. But for the sheep he paid top dollar. The station itself went to him in a surprisingly tense duel between him and a total unknown. And the dogs—no one sells dogs this way the McKells swore to Bede, but acquiesced to his insistence. The dogs were a bared-tooth brawl, a real pack fight. Someone said Ickersly actually growled at one point. In the end, Ickersly ended up with all the dogs, even old Louie; every one of em—excepting of course Coralee's Snowball, the house poodle that wasn't on the block.

He paid too much for the dogs, everyone agreed—especially for Louie who only had a season or two left and hardly heard a thing.

And by two o'clock, tea being served at break, it was over.

Throughout the whole auction, Bede lurked silent on the edge of the crowd. His face only turned from green to its normal meat-pink once.

Six p.m.—Bede, Coralee and Snowball are on the road. Snowball, smart dog, curls up on Coralee's lap and puts himself to sleep immediately. There are no sounds to wake him up.

~

"But I put a down payment on it. I counted on it! I—"

"Well, you can stop counting now!" Bede grabbed the phone from Coralee's hand and slammed it down so hard that it jumped out of the cradle and yelped back beep beep beep beep until Coralee shepherded it back with both hands into a position of silence.

"Be more convenient if we were dead. Divvied us up, they did. It's obscene!" An innocent pencil was grabbed up by Bede's left paw, and with a splintering crunch, suddenly became two stubs. "Sound system now, huh? Like he needs one. When that boy wants something, I can bloody hear him from the loo!"

Coralee stood with her back against the counter in the beachside caravan, just a step away from a husband hot enough to fry eggs on.

The house plans, large as a coverlet, slithered in noisy folds to the floor, just within stomping rage.

She couldn't breathe.

Bede reached over and quietly picked up the plans as if they were a lamb, neatly folding them again. He handed them to her.

"I'll ring this lot in the morning. They better get started right away."

She wanted to touch him, put her arms around him, kiss him perhaps, but just stood as she was, to attention.

He wanted to cry. "Expect you need milk," he said. "Wanna go for a drive?"

~

The house, like all the neighbours', has four bedrooms, a separate dining room, one huge window in the lounge looking onto a yard that no one ever uses; heavy, full-length curtains for privacy; and a lovely small private back garden fronted by the toilet and laundry.

No seasons that make any difference to the year's activities. Summer and winter both mild. The land, something to be mowed by a lawn mower and whipper-snipped into shape. Slash the tops of those hedges. Neaten those errant grass stems that would lean rampant over the concrete curb with the same hand-held gadget and its spinning nylon line.

No clip here, except the snipping of flower stems for the vase sitting on the TV.

The dairy farmers, the few left, gather in the carpark of the old co-op, but there isn't a farm-parts dealer in town. The rolling hills that were so green, are growing black lines now, and sprouting brick. The necessary shops sell postcards, fishing tackle, golf balls, antiques, goat cheese and artwork, teddy bears, lots of medications and arthritis cures.

The animals: dogs, cats, "pet" kangaroos, parrots, possums—those pests in the roof.

Snowball is exhibiting increasingly spoilt characteristics as Bede has begun to take him in the car for drives, take him on walks with a lead, and pet him of an evening.

Sue came to visit once. Soon as she left the car, Coralee whisked her into her new bedroom—where Coralee had fussed half the night before till Bede dragged her away with a quiet "It's beautiful, blossom. Come to bed, or you won't be able to keep your eyes open to look at her."

Sue held her suitcase in her hand. "Where's my bed? And my horses? And Winnifred? And the pink table?"

When told that all the stuff she had long abandoned at Woorora, including Winnifred, the doll—that it had all gone in the auction, she mumbled something about "hotel room."

She had a big suitcase, much bigger than for the two nights she'd stayed.

Angus rang one afternoon, asking if his band of five guys could stay for a week. "Heard there's some gigs there while the surf's up—"

"Sorry," Coralee cut in, chasing her apology with a barely audible "We can't."

With that No, she felt something break, or maybe just wear away in the cool silence of the air between her son and her ear, followed by a too-casual "Just great!" and from his end, the stub-out crash of the connection. She never told Bede.

Donna came once with her two children, and her being six months due again.

Bede doted over his granddaughters, delighted in telling them silly stories, to the amazement of Coralee and Donna herself. He could hardly stop asking Donna about home—her home in WA. It was almost like being home again for him, hearing Donna tell about their latest crutching dramas, the price of wool, the stockpile, drought and all.

But most of all, he wanted to hear about Molly—star kelpie of the district—her exploits, and the antics of her apprentice pups. "Tell me another," he'd say, and Donna smiled. He was worse than the girls with their bedtime stories. Donna exhausted her memories and her father still panted for more. She stooped to inventing, and resolved to jot things down in the future, her father had blossomed so much at "storytime". Molly, Biff, Star, and Ringo's adventures had to vie with the vividly recalled memories of fifty years of dogs for Bede

On the morning she left, he pressed a Smarties box filled with ten $100 bills into her hand with a conspiratorial, "Don't tell Mum."

The next day, Snowball felt positively smothered by all of Bede's smarming over him. Coralee felt relieved at the restoration of peacefulness, as the children had been more tiring than she remembered, and now that I finally have nice things ...

~

But that was five years ago already.

Donna wants to come again, but is needed at home. She has tried for years to convince her folks to visit, but Coralee always says she's too busy, and as to Bede—"I'd be under everyone's feet," he always replies. "Punctured spare tyre." She has almost given up arguing.

Coralee spends most of her days watching TV and cleaning house, with a spot of gardening. But really, Why bother gardening? she asks Bede—Since no windows look onto it. Somehow, she hasn't made new friends. The neighbours scurry from their cars into their houses so fast that you'd think it's a downpour. The noisy neighbours are the birds. You can hear them on those rare occasions when there's a power failure in town.

Bede has become a hypochondriac about Snowball. They're a fixture at the vet's office, the plump but otherwise vibrantly healthy middle-aged Snowball sitting bolt-upright and totally self-assured on Bede's lap.

And since the restoration of Bede's health, he has taught himself to play golf. It only takes Bede a couple of minutes to stroll over three times weekly—his clubs, both of them, thrown like two rifles onto his shoulder.

He's a funny bugger on the course. Doesn't seem to want a partner. And fanatic about finding the one yellowing ball he always plays. Hits the strangest shots, too. Swinging with a look of enviable control, you'd think maybe he was getting somewhere ... But look at that ball. Never seen anything like it.

The man sizes up his hole, and then, with a sweep of his club, the ball is suddenly in the air, flying out in what could only be a pear shape sweep of a curve, and—would you credit it, somehow ending up behind the hole.

And the man is smiling. You see him move his lips the same way every time he swings. Too hard to hear properly even with the hearing aids turned up full blast, but it seems like a whistle, followed by other complicated tweets, all under his breath.