CHAPTER 33
DONNA HAD ORGANISED the tennis ladies into a
working bee to stitch up a big red and black banner that stretched
across the front of the Mechanics’ Institute: Karakarook Pioneer
Heritage Museum. Mr Cutcliffe had got all the children into
period clothes: the boys in their fathers’ waistcoats, and the
girls in bonnets made out of cardboard and crepe paper. Music was
provided by the young man from the garage and a few others, playing
bottle-tops and washboards and saws. They were in period clothes
too. Under home-made cabbage-tree hats, their faces were straight
out of Freddy Chang’s old photos. On the patch of grass next to the
Mechanics’ Institute, Chook had a demonstration of Bush Crafts
going: a man with a big thick pioneer beard was turning chair-legs
on a foot-operated bush lathe, and Chook himself had an array of
axes and adzes and was making crude chairs and tables out of
buttery new logs.
At the gate of the Mechanics’ Institute, Harley
glanced around as if she had heard someone calling her, but no one
had.
She had missed all the excitement: must have slept
through the sirens, too far away in her peaceful sunroom. But
Coralie had told her all about the fire, when she had driven over
with the quilt, because Chook was the Fire Chief, and had been the
one to go up the ladder to get Douglas Cheeseman down from the
window.
She had not asked how it had been done.
There had been a picture in the paper of Chang’s
shop with the back all burned away into a ragged hole, the curls of
roofing-iron hanging down, the gaping window where Douglas had got
the quilt out, and a big headline: HERO!
Not such a heroic thing really, Coralie said. The
fire escapes that close to the window, you can just about walk
straight in.
It would take more than that for Coralie to forgive
Douglas Cheeseman.
Bloody Main Roads, she grumbled. Who needs heroes
like that?
But Harley remembered what he had told her about
having to be sedated, up on some bridge or other. He had laughed
that embarrassed laugh. She wished she had not laughed, and then
had to pretend to be coughing, when he had got to the bit about the
stretcher.
She had thought of telling Coralie about all that,
but decided against it. In telling her, he had given her a weapon
that she could use against him if she wanted to. But she did not
want to.
Out the front of the Mechanics’ Institute, where
the colonnades had been before they filled them in with fibro, she
could see the urn rumbling away on a trestle, sending up wisps of
steam. Beside it Mrs Fowler was making salad sandwiches, plying the
tongs in and out of shiny metal bowls as if playing on some
complicated musical instrument. Next to her Merle — or possibly it
was Helen, she had never really got them sorted out, but they
seemed not to mind when she mixed them up — was dealing saucers on
to another trestle like a hand of cards, talking to Mrs Fowler.
When she turned her head Harley heard her exclaim: But I said to
her, Mrs Davey always does the pumpkin scones! Leith, with a
serious expression, pressed a pink plastic food cover against her
big soft bosom and made it unpop like a little umbrella. Beside her
Helen — or perhaps it was Merle — picked up a knife and sliced
across a big pink cake with a grand gesture.
Donna was sitting behind the table in the entrance
selling the raffle tickets. The patchwork hung from a stand behind
her. In the crowd of bright fresh clothes it looked drab and
shabby, and Harley’s heart went out to it, hanging lonely from its
rod, being stared at by eyes that were used to Log Cabin and Bow
Ties. She loved it in a particular, protective way, the way you
might love a homely child. She had called it Under the
Bridge, to help people get the idea, but she did not think it
would help much.
Inside the hall, the crowd was so thick no one
could move and there was a high excited buzz of talking like at a
party. She had begun to think she knew everyone in Karakarook, and
now she was astonished at how the seemingly empty landscape had
produced all these other people she had never seen before. There
were men in tee-shirts and baseball caps. There were older women in
flowered dresses, and young ones in shorts, and children running
around everyone’s legs. There seemed to be a lot of men in hats.
Big beefy ones, little skinny ones, ones with little pea-heads and
big beer-guts that strained the front of their shirts, tall ones
with smiling brown faces.
Not a single one of them was Douglas
Cheeseman.
She stood looking into the crowded hall. Each time
she saw a flat hat she started a smile and a movement of her hand,
but each time it turned out not to be Douglas Cheeseman’s face
underneath, and she closed down the smile.
After the day at the river, she’d assumed that
she’d simply bump into him, though perhaps not literally this time.
He would be coming out of the Caledonian, or picking up the paper
at the Acropolis, or the brown Datsun and the white ute would pass
each other on Parnassus Road and they would stop, the way people
did here, to have a conversation through their wound-down windows
in the middle of the street.
But in spite of Karakarook being such a small
place, it was amazing how you could not find someone you were
looking for. After the first couple of days, when she had kept her
face prepared for him as she went about her day and gone to bed
with her prepared face still unused, she had finally gone to the
Caledonian. She had blushed ridiculously, leaning over the bar to
ask for him, with all the drinkers turning to stare, and the
publican shaking his head. She could see how it looked. She had
wanted to say, It’s not what you’re thinking.
But of course, when you came right down to it, it
was.
She had not thought beyond the moment when they
would be face to face. Words would have to be produced, and smiles
would have to be created, that said what you wanted them to say.
That part would probably bring all the usual difficulties.
But first, she had to find him.
She tried to push through the crowd, but did not
get far before her way was blocked by a group of women staring at
the mangles and galvanised washing tubs in the WASHDAY
exhibit.
Blue bags, one of them said in the resonant
authoritative voice of a deaf person. A small tight perm sat on her
head like a tidy brown animal. Without actually pushing at her
large flowered bottom, Harley could not get past.
Fancy that, Olive, remember the old blue bags. And
look, Empire Starch. Remember starching?
Harley stood on tiptoes and looked over the heads
in front of her. All over the hall, flat-topped felt hats were
moving slowly around.
The woman with the perm had moved on now to the
kitchen behind its red rope, and Harley let herself shuffle along
behind. She looked in as if she had never seen it before. The
basket of kindling was very life-like, even though there seemed to
be more aprons hanging from nails than an average kitchen might be
expected to have, and rather more tea-cosies than tea-pots.
Oh look, Olive, the old range. Takes you back,
doesn’t it?
It was interesting being a stranger in the crowd
again. It was like a rehearsal for being back in the city. It would
seem odd to be where no one knew you, and no car would ever stop in
the middle of the street so the person inside could talk to
you.
Lot of old rubbish if you ask me, a man just behind
her said sideways to the woman with him.
He leaned in, right over the red rope, and picked
up a toasting fork from the kitchen table. She knew without needing
to look what the card said: Toasting Fork Made from Fencing
Wire, about 1910.
Bloody rubbish, the man said.
He was talking out of the corner of his mouth, but
loudly. He was only pretending that he did not want to be
heard.
Used to have one just like it at home, the woman
said.
She laughed in a snort.
Chucked it out, soon as we got the power on.
She took it from him and ran a finger along one of
the bent tines.
Rusty. Can you believe it, putting this in a
museum?
In her hands, the fork had a pathetic home-made
look. Harley watched as she flexed it carelessly. The red rope and
the labels were supposed to stop people doing that. It was supposed
to re-contextualise things — that was the term for it at the
Museum in Sydney.
The woman put the fork back on the table next to
its card.
Heritage!
Somehow, she made the word sound ridiculous.
Peering around above the heads of shorter people,
Harley was pleased to see that the cadet from the Livingstone
& Shire Weekly Clarion was there, with a camera around his
neck and a spiral notebook in his hand. He was Coralie and Donna’s
brother’s brother-in-law on the Fielding side, or some such
connection. There would be a nice big splash on the front page.
Coralie was there, standing in front of AND SO TO BED, getting
ready for him to take her photo.
Freddy Chang had come up with the idea of putting a
window frame on the wall and he had supplied a big glossy coloured
photo of a view of paddocks and rather overly green trees, which he
had cut up and carefully glued into the window-panes. The effect
was quite realistic. Under the peaceful scene, Coralie’s old wagga
looked endearing. It was easy to imagine getting in under it,
feeling the warmth of all those old socks and woolly
singlets.
Anything that was wool you never threw away,
Coralie was telling the cadet, scribbling into his notebook.
It was like a crime to throw away wool.
She was getting herself ready for the photo, making
sure the wagga was visible behind her, getting her smile ready, but
she suddenly held out a hand.
Stop! Chook’s got to be in it with me! Come on,
love!
Chook was there then, huge beside her, still in his
singlet from the woodcraft demonstration. He put his arm around her
shoulders, squeezing her so tight Harley could see the breath was
pushed out of her. Harley could see how embarrassed he was, out
there with everyone staring at him and Coralie and the wagga, but
she could see he was proud too, looking down at his wife with a
sort of grimace of tenderness. Coralie looked up into his face with
a shy, pleased look, a look just between the two of them, in the
moment that the camera flashed.
They were looking deep into each other’s eyes, but
Harley saw that what they were doing was not the same as looking
deep into each other’s eyes. The fraction of a second that the
camera had captured was a fraction of a second of simple love.
Their love for each other was at least as complicated as most
people‘s, but just for that moment, it was the simplest thing in
the world. That ought to be enough. It did not have to be simple
for every single minute of every single day.
She went back out to the porch and sat down behind
the table with Donna. There was quite a crowd, pushing around to
look at the patchwork. Not everyone liked it.
Oh, she heard someone say, on a surprised and
disappointed downward note. It’s very original, isn’t it?
Harley kept her head down.
Don’t know that you’d want it on the bed, though,
would you?
She opened the little tin box the money was in and
rattled around, pretending to count it.
I wonder if they washed the old suits first. And
look, the seams don’t line up properly.
It was one thing to know that people thought it,
but it was nicer not to have to hear them saying it.
She looked up, and there he was, Douglas Cheeseman,
right in front of her, holding a handful of change and saying
One, please.
When he saw that it was her, he dropped all the
money. It bounced and rolled under the table, around the feet of
people waiting to come in.
Sorry, he said. Sorry.
He was awkward, stooping and kneeling for the
coins. She could see the top of his head, bobbing around on a level
with the table. He was not wearing his hat, after all.
Sorry, he kept saying from underneath the
table.
When he stood up, she could see that the knees of
his pants were picked out in a brown circle of dust. He was red in
the face, flapping at the dust on his knees, and his ears had never
looked so big.
His mouth was forming words, but as if by remote
control. The words did not seem to match the look on his
face.
Oh! he was exclaiming. Hello again! Fancy bumping
into you here! Terrific!
He laughed, but he did not sound happy.
I’ve been looking for you, she said.
It seemed important to say it all straight away,
while he was here, but everyone was watching.
To say thank you.
A listening silence had fallen around them, as if
they were on stage.
Oh, that was nothing! he cried. That was
easy!
He choked on the word, and had to cough, and that
made him redder in the face than ever.
No, she said, it wasn’t nothing.
She wanted to say, I remember about the
vertigo, but could not go on, with all the silent people
watching.
They had to carry me down on a stretcher. It
was a vivid picture in her mind, Douglas Cheeseman injected full of
valium, strapped on to a stretcher, his eyes staring upwards at
nothing.
Yes! he cried loudly and quickly, as if thinking
the same thing, and not wanting her to say it. No worries! No big
deal!
They sounded like another man’s words in his mouth.
He glanced around at the people waiting behind him, everyone
looking from him to her and back again like people at a tennis
match.
Look, I’ll have ten, he said.
Suddenly he was a man in a hurry.
How much is that?
Harley could not seem to get her brain to do the
arithmetic of it, but Donna had the answer.
A dollar a ticket, or six for five dollars. Take
the dozen, pet, and that’ll be the ten.
Involved with the change in his hand, he glanced
up, startled, at that pet and met Harley’s eye. Her mouth
jumped into a smile, all by itself, and he looked away as if he
thought she was laughing at him. She bowed her head to the little
book of raffle tickets, smoothing out the dog-eared corners,
ironing them flat. She felt herself frowning down at them as if it
was important, watching her fingers flatten the corners over and
over again.
Then she remembered she could start writing on the
tickets.
The Caledonian, isn’t it? she asked, as if she did
not know.
Caledonian Cheeseman. Caledonian Cheeseman.
Caledonian Cheeseman, she wrote on ticket after ticket. No one
had bought so many before.
Oh, I never win anything in raffles! he said,
watching her write.
He laughed, although it was not actually funny. She
glanced up and he stopped laughing, as if she had accused him of
lying.
Well, once a set of pewter mugs, he admitted.
He looked at her helplessly. She smiled, and nodded
encouragingly, but could not think of anything to say that would
rescue him. He floundered on.
They made everything taste funny.
But now there was a family, all in check shirts,
that had just come in and not seen that there was something being
watched. They were pushing up behind him, with a child nudging at
the back of his legs, and the edge of a stroller knocking into his
knee, so that he was more or less propelled away from the
table.
She took the money from the man in the check shirt,
and tried to write down the name he was spelling out. It seemed to
have too many ms in it, and he was determined that she get
it right. Oh, forget it, she wanted to say. Who cares how
you spell it?
Suddenly she realised that Douglas had forgotten
his tickets. She jumped up so quickly she knocked against the stand
where the patchwork hung, making it tremble and nearly fall.
Whoops! she heard someone call out and laugh, as if
this was the best bit of the show.
Douglas! Douglas! Come back!
She had not used his name before. It sounded
terribly intimate, although she tried to make it casual. He turned,
and suddenly the space between them was empty, and she felt as if
she was shouting his name across it. She thrust the tickets at
him.
Look, she started, I was —
But he interrupted.
Listen, he said, urgently, and she listened.
I’ve been thinking about the bridge, he said.
Then he seemed to lose heart.
She tried to help.
How do you mean, exactly, the bridge?
Well, he started, but suddenly another lot of new
arrivals was coming in the doorway between them, saying Hello,
Harley! and How are you, Harley? and Congratulations,
Harley! and crowding around, blocking her off from him.
I said, tomorrow, he said loudly, around the heads.
After lunch. At the bridge. I’ll show you.
A woman buying raffle tickets heard and looked over
at him, smiling as if amused, looking from him to Harley.
Harley stared back into her face. Yes, he was
arranging a rendezvous.
And that was perfectly all right, because she was
going to say yes.
