The Fine Colour of Rust

3

Norm’s come by to drop off more lemons and pick up a few of my lemon tarts. He leans in an old-man-at-the-pub kind of way on the mantelpiece and picks up a postcard I’ve propped against the candlestick.

‘Who’s this from?’ he asks, turning it over without waiting for an answer.

‘My sister, Patsy, the one who works at the uni in Melbourne. She’s on a research trip to Paris.’

‘She works at the uni?’ He props the card back after he’s read it.

‘Yep, she’s a lecturer there.’

‘She must be pretty smart. What happened to you?’ Norm winks at Jake, who giggles and scratches his face the way he’s been doing since he got up. I know what’s wrong but I’m trying to pretend it’s not true. Even though the kids in his grade have all had the vaccine, some have still come down with a mild case of chickenpox.

‘Dropped on my head as a baby. So did you get the windscreen?’

‘Didn’t get it, but tracked one down. A new bloke is doing car repairs out the end of the Bolton Road. Set up the other week. Actually, he’s about your age. Not bad looking either. Good business. Nice and polite.’

‘Beautiful wife, six well-behaved children,’ I add.

Norm leans back and frowns. ‘Really?’

‘No, but probably.’

‘I don’t think so. He smelled of bachelor to me. Divorced maybe. Anyway, he quoted me a good price, said to bring the car and he’d put in the windscreen straight away. So you can take it down whenever you like.’

‘What’s his name?’ I ask Norm.

‘Merv Bull.’

I shake my head. Only in Gunapan. Merv Bull sounds like an old farmer with black teeth and hay in his hair who scoops yellow gobs from his ear and stares at them for minutes on end like they’ll forecast the weather. The image keeps replaying in my mind as I finish wrapping the lemon tarts in waxed paper.

‘You can’t judge people by their names, Loretta, or you’d be able to carry a tune.’

‘That’s unkind, Norm. I may not have turned out to be the talented country-singing daughter my mother was hoping for, but then, neither did Patsy or Tammy. We haven’t got the genes for it. I don’t know why Mum keeps up these crazy fantasies.’

A week and a half later, after having been held hostage in the house by a child even more itchy and irritable than normal, I set out to get the new windscreen.

It’s years since I’ve driven down the Bolton Road. I remember when we first moved to Gunapan I got lost down here. I was heading for the Maternal Health Centre. My first pregnancy. My face was so puffed up with heat and water retention I looked like I had the mumps. I took a left turn at the ghost gum past the stockfeed store as the nurse had advised on the phone, and suddenly I was in another world. Later, of course, after I’d found my way back into town, I realized I’d turned left at the wattle tree past the Pet Emporium, but anyway, it was as if I’d magically slipped out of Gunapan and into fairyland. The bush came right up to the roadside, and in the blazing heat of the day the shade from the eucalypts dropped the temperature at least five degrees. I got out of the car, waddled to a picnic bench in a clearing and sat drinking water for twenty minutes. Hope bubbled up in me. The baby would be fine, my husband Tony would turn out not to be a nong, we would definitely win the lottery that Saturday.

Only one of those things came true, but I’ve always loved that bit of bush. I’d come out here with the kids sometimes in the early days and walk the tracks, listening to the sound of the bush, when I could hear it above their endless chatter, and smelling the minty eucalypts.

We’ve just swung into the Bolton Road when Jake asks if he can have a Mooma Bar from the supermarket. His chickenpox has dwindled to a few annoying itchy spots, but they won’t let him back into school yet, no matter how much I beg. He’s bored and tailing me like a debt collector. Any excuse to get out is good.

‘There’s no supermarket out here.’ The moment I speak I see a shopping trolley on the side of the road. Someone must have walked that trolley five kilometres. Unless it was tossed in the back of a ute and driven here. Further along the road is one of those orange hats they use to steer drivers away from roadworks. A couple of minutes on we see a load of rubbish dumped a few metres off the road. A dozen beer bottles lie around the charcoal of an old fire with what looks like bits of an old picnic bench sticking out of it. A heap of lawn clippings moulders beside a brown hoodie and a pair of torn-up jeans. I slow down, pull the Holden over to the side of the road. The trees still come right up to the roadside, but behind them is light, as if someone is shining a torch through the forest.

‘We came here on my birthday,’ Jake reminds me.

He’s right. We came out two years ago with green lemonade and presents and a birthday cake in the shape of a swimming pool. Kyleen and Maxine and their kids came, and we played hidey at the old shearers’ hut. Three kangaroos burst out from behind the hut when we arrived and crashed off through the bush. We called them ‘shearing kangaroos’ and Jake thought that was a real kind of ’roo till Norm put him right. But now I can’t make sense of where that hut might be. The face of the forest is completely different. Ahead of us, a wide dusty dirt road leads in through the trees. I can’t see the picnic area. And that light through the trees is wrong.

I drive along the bitumen to where the dirt road enters the bushland.

‘I don’t want to go in there,’ Jake says.

More rubbish litters the side of the track – plastic bags and bottles, juice containers, old clothes, building materials – as if this piece of bushland has become the local tip. I peer along the track. It seems to lead into a big clearing that wasn’t there before. The bush used to stretch way back. I would never let the kids run too far in case they got lost. Now if they ran off they’d end up standing in a flat empty paddock the size of a footy field.

‘Footy field,’ I mutter. ‘Maybe they’re building a new footy field.’

That can’t be right, because even the old footy field is in trouble. The footy club has a sausage sizzle every Saturday morning outside the supermarket to raise money to buy in water. All the sports clubs around here are desperate for water. Some have had to close down because the ground is so hard it can crack the shins of anyone landing awkwardly on the surface.

‘Let’s go. I’m bored.’

‘Hey, Jake, open your mouth again and show me your teeth. I think it might be time for a trip to the dentist.’

That always shuts him up. We climb back into the Holden and reverse into the Bolton Road to continue the journey to our new windscreen.

4

‘Look at all these cars, Jake.’ We pull in with a mighty shriek of brakes at Merv Bull’s Motor and Machinery Maintenance and Repairs. ‘Why don’t you hop out and have a look around while I talk to the man. Look at that one – a Monaro from the seventies! You don’t see those much anymore. Especially in that dazzling aqua.’

Jake purses his lips and rolls his eyes and waggles his head all at once. He keeps doing this lately. I wonder if he’s seen a Bollywood film on the diet of daytime television that filled up chickenpox week.

‘Are you trying to get rid of me, Mum?’

‘Yes.’

He sighs and swings open the car door. He slouches his way to the shade at the side of the shed while I quickly pat down my hair in the rear-view mirror before I step out of the car. I can’t see any sign of Merv Bull. A panting blue heeler stares at me from the doorway of the shed as if I’m a piece of meat.

‘Hello?’ I call. ‘Mr Bull?’

The blue heeler slumps to the ground and lays its head on its front paws, still staring at me. The sign on the side of the shed says Nine to Five, Monday to Friday. I look at my watch. Ten fifteen, Tuesday morning.

Jake scuffs his way over to my side. ‘There’s no one here, Mum, let’s go. Let’s go to the milk bar. You promised that if I…you would…and then I…and then…’

As Jake goes on with his extended thesis on why I should buy him a Violet Crumble, I shout ‘Mr Bull!’ one last time. A man emerges from the darkness of the shed. The first thing I notice is that he’s hitching up his pants. He strides forwards to greet me and stretches out his hand, but I’m not shaking anything I can’t be sure was washed. When my hand fails to arrive he pulls back his arm and wipes both hands down the sides of his shirt. He’s standing between me and the sun. I can’t see his face let alone its expression.

Jake’s jaw has dropped and he’s staring at Merv Bull as if he’s seen a vision. He’s this way with any man who’s around the age of his father when he left.

‘Hi,’ Jake whispers.

‘Hello.’ Merv Bull leans down to shake Jake’s hand. ‘I’m Merv. Who are you, then?’

‘Jake.’

‘Pardon me?’

Jake’s awestruck voice has soared into a register that only the blue heeler and I can hear.

‘This is Jake,’ I step in, ‘and I’m Loretta. I think Norm Stevens told you I was coming?’

‘Ah, you’re the windscreen.’

‘That’s me.’

‘Can’t do it till this afternoon, sorry. But you could leave the car here and pick it up at five.’

‘Sure.’ I put on a bright fake smile. ‘Jake and I’ll walk the five kilometres back into town in this thirty-degree heat and have a pedicure while we wait.’

‘We could stay here and look at the cars,’ Jake whispers.

Merv Bull shades his eyes with his hand and looks down at me. I can see him better now. Norm was right, he’s handsome in a parched rural bloke kind of way. Blue eyes and dark eyelashes. Looks as if he squints a lot, but who doesn’t around here. He’s frowning at me like a schoolteacher frowns at the kid with the smart mouth.

‘I do have a loan car you can use while yours is in the shop. To get you to your pedicure, that is.’

‘Ha, sorry, only joking.’ I’m turning into a bitter old hag. I’m reminding myself of Brenda. Soon I’ll become strangely attracted to beige. ‘That would be great. Any old car will do. I mean, hey, we are used to the Rolls Royce here.’

‘Mum! That’s not a Rolls Royce. It’s a Holden!’ Jake beams proudly at Merv.

‘You certainly do know your cars, mate.’ Merv pats Jake on the shoulder.

Now I’ll never get Jake out of here. Merv, to be addressed hereafter as God, goes back into the shed to get the keys for the exchange car, and Jake and the blue heeler trot faithfully after him. I watch his long lanky walk. My husband never walked that way, even though he was about the same size as Merv Bull. My husband Tony – God love him wherever he may be and keep him there and never let him come back into my life – was a stomper. He stomped through the house as though he was trying to keep down unruly carpet; he stomped in and out of shops and pubs letting doors slam around him; he stomped to work at the delivery company and stomped home stinking of his own fug after eight hours in the truck; and one day he stomped out to the good car and drove off and never stomped back.

We’d been married ten years. I never dreamed he’d leave me. After the second year of marriage, when I fell pregnant with Melissa, I settled down and stopped fretting that I’d married the wrong man. It was too late, so I decided to try to enjoy my life and not spend all my time thinking about what could have been. I thought he had decided that too.

A month after he’d gone a postcard arrived. By that time I’d already finished making a fool of myself telling the police he must have run his car off the road somewhere and insisting they find him. The postcard said he was sorry, he needed to get away. I’ll be in touch. Cheque coming soon.

Still waiting for that cheque.

‘It’s the red Mazda with the sheepskin seat covers over by the fence.’ Merv Bull hands me a set of car keys on a key ring in the shape of a beer stubby. ‘She’s a bit stiff in the clutch, but otherwise she drives pretty easy.’

‘Been getting a lot of business?’ As I speak I take Jake’s hand in mine and edge him quietly towards the Mazda before he realizes that we’re about to leave his new hero.

‘It’s been good. They told me it’d take a while to get the ordinary car business going again, especially since no one’s worked here for a few years, but I guess I’ve been lucky. I’ll probably have to get an apprentice when the big machinery starts arriving.’

‘Big machinery?’

‘For the development. Whenever it starts. I thought it was supposed to be in Phase One already. That’s what they promised me when I bought the place.’

‘Right.’ I’ve lived in this town for years and I still haven’t got a clue what’s going on. ‘So that big hole in the bush on the Bolton Road is the development?’

‘Yep. But for the moment what I’ve got is cars, and there seems to be no shortage.’

I look at him again. I want to ask if it’s been mainly women customers but I don’t. I will have to tell Helen about Merv Bull. If Merv is single and if he doesn’t hook up with anyone in a hurry, he’ll be a rich man in this town. He’ll be mystified at how many parts appear to have simply fallen off cars. I inch closer to our loan car, still not letting on to Jake what I’m doing.

I stop as my arm is yanked backwards. Jake has caught on and he’s trying to pull his hand out of mine.

‘Can I stay here, Mum? Please!’

‘No, Jakie. Mr Bull has to do his work.’

‘I’ll be quiet, I promise. I’ll look at the cars. You go and I’ll wait here.’

Merv Bull looks at me.

‘He can’t bear to spend a minute without me,’ I say.

‘I can see that,’ Merv answers.

Finally we manoeuvre Jake into the car with a promise of a workshop tour when we return.

‘How much will it cost?’ I remember to ask as I pump the accelerator and turn the key the way I would in the Holden. The tiny Mazda lets out a roar of protest. ‘Sorry, sorry!’

‘Might drive a bit differently to your car.’ Merv calmly waves the exhaust smoke away from his face. ‘Should cost about a hundred dollars. Maybe a hundred and twenty, but no more.’

While the magically vanishing husband was not good for much, he did know how to change the oil in the car and do a few odd jobs. He probably could have managed fitting a second-hand windscreen. Now I have to pay for everything. And with Jake sick I’m taking time off work, and I have even less money than usual.

‘Feeling better today? Ready to go back to school?’ I ask Jake with a frisson of desperation as we drive along in the Mazda. The ride is so smooth we don’t even have the sensation of movement.

‘Can we have a car like this?’ Jake asks. ‘When’s Auntie Patsy coming to visit? How long will we be in town?’

‘No. Soon. Until I’ve finished photocopying the Save Our School flyers and it’s time to pick up Liss.’

Helen’s waiting to pick up her neighbour’s boy at the school when Jake and I zip down the road to collect Melissa. I execute a neat U-turn, a feat impossible in the Holden, and pull up at the gate. Helen almost falls out of her car.

‘Oh my God! A new car! Where’d you steal it?’

‘It’s a loaner from the mechanic.’

‘Oh.’ She screws up her face in sympathy. ‘Hey, a letter arrived for you at the school. Melissa’s probably got it. Another one from the minister about the school.’

I don’t ask how she knows. I never ask how she knows what we watched on television the night before and what brand of hair dye I use and how Melissa’s grades are going. But now I know something she doesn’t. I decide I’ll wait and see how long it takes her to find out about the new mechanic.

‘Do you know what the letter says?’

‘Loretta! As if we’d open your mail! But we’ve all guessed. It says, “Thank you for your recent letter. I’d like to take this opportunity”…da de da de da.’

Melissa appears at the car door holding out the minister’s envelope as if it’s a bad report card. I take it and fling it on the front seat and Melissa leans through the passenger side window and peers inside the car. ‘Is it ours?’ she asks.

‘Nope.’

‘Actually,’ Helen calls out on the way back to her car, ‘I’ve booked in to that new mechanic for a service, too. I’ve heard he’s very good.’ She waggles her bottom and kicks up a heel. Of course she knew.

Poor Giorgio, I think. Giorgio is the old town mechanic, pushing eighty, bald and bowlegged. We’ve all used him for years to keep our cars running with bits of string and glue. I decide I’ll keep going to him for my servicing, even if he is getting so absent-minded that last time he forgot to put the oil back in the engine. Luckily Norm noticed the car hadn’t leaked its normal drips on to his driveway.

When I get back to the garage I’m devastated at having to return the keys to the Mazda. We’ve been around town ten times playing the royal family, waving at everyone we know.

‘That’ll be eighty dollars. Didn’t take as long as I thought.’

Jake’s rigid beside me as I hand over the cash. Melissa stands next to him chewing her thumb. I’ve had words with Jake in the car about not nagging Merv for a tour.

‘Mr Bull’s a busy man,’ I said. ‘He doesn’t want to be bothered by little boys. You don’t want him to think you’re a whining little boy, do you? So you wait and see if he offers again.’

‘Anyway, mate, bit of bad news.’ Merv crouches down in front of Jake. ‘I’m sorry, but I have to get away early tonight. Can we do our tour another time?’

‘Yes, please,’ Jake whispers. Melissa puts her arm around his shoulders and they turn away and scramble on to the bench seat in the back of the Holden.

‘I mean it,’ Merv says to me. ‘I’d love to give the little bloke a tour. Another day. Give me a call anytime.’ He reaches into his back pocket. ‘Here’s my card.’

Something’s odd when I drive off: my vision. Through the new windscreen I can actually see the white line in the middle of the road. The Holden throbs and rattles down the Bolton Road and I find myself humming to an old song that I can hear clearly in my head. I can hear it so clearly that I’m singing along with lyrics I didn’t realize I knew. Even Jake seems happier. He and Melissa are bopping their heads along to the beat. Melissa leans over and turns up the volume on the radio and the tune bursts out of the speakers. We look at each other. Merv has fixed the radio. No more race calls, no more protests, no more ads for haemorrhoid cream.

‘I love this car,’ I sing.

‘Me too!’ Jake shouts over the pumping beat. By the time we’ve reached the supermarket, we’re all singing along at top volume, windows rolled down, faces pushed out of the car like excited Labradors. Brenda, who happens to be getting out of her car in the supermarket carpark, hears us roar up, turns, frowns and purses her lips. I’m convinced it’s because we’re exhibiting signs of happiness, until I pull into a parking bay and Brenda comes over to commiserate.

‘I heard there was a letter from the minister. Never mind, Loretta. We knew it wouldn’t work.’

Once we’re inside the supermarket, I tear open the envelope while the kids do their usual wistful lingering in the snack foods aisle. The letter doesn’t say I’ve saved the school. No surprise there. But there is another big surprise. On the way home we drop into Norm’s.

‘Guess what?’

Norm’s running his hand over my smooth windscreen.

‘Nice. The old one had as many craters as the surface of the moon. It was a wonder you didn’t run into a truck.’

‘I got a letter. The education minister’s coming to Gunapan.’

‘Whoa. Here comes trouble.’ He reaches up and fingers the ridge of scar on his forehead. ‘I can feel it in my engine.’

5

Over the next week, the heat builds until at eight thirty on Monday morning it’s already so hot that the birds are sitting on the fence with their beaks open. I walk out of the house with the children in tow and pull open the driver’s door. It squeals as usual.

‘Bush pig!’ Jake shrieks. He opens the back passenger door, which also squeals.

‘Bush pig!’ Melissa’s shriek is even louder. They fall about laughing, swinging their doors open and shut and imitating the squeals of metal against metal.

‘Get in the car.’ No one should be laughing in this kind of heat.

The road to town is flat and empty. As we bump over the pitted tarmac, sprays of pink-and-grey galahs explode into the sky from the fields beside us. On a low hill to the north I can see Les on his tractor, motoring along in the leisurely fashion of a man on a Sunday drive. The sun picks out a shiny spot on one of his wheels and it flashes in a radiant signal each rotation.

‘Mum, what’s the collective noun for bush pigs?’ Melissa asks and Jake bursts into giggles that he tries to smother with his hand.

‘I don’t know. The same as domestic pigs, I suppose. What is that? Is that a herd?’

‘A herd of bush pigs,’ Jake shouts.

‘A pog of pigs!’ Melissa says.

‘A swog!’

‘A swig! A swig of pigs!’

I wind down my window and push my arm out, leave it there for a moment so Les can see my wave.

‘Is that Les?’ Jake asks.

‘Mr Garrison to you.’

‘All the other kids call—’

‘I don’t care.’

We pull up at the school gates. Melissa and Jake sit silently in the back seat as if they’re hoping I’ll turn around and announce a once-in-a-lifetime no-school day.

‘What’s all this about bush pigs anyway?’ I look in the rearview mirror and see Melissa shaking her head vigorously at Jake.

‘Nothing.’ She catches me watching her and blushes. She has her father’s colouring, pale skin that stays freckly no matter how much suncream I slather on her, and sandy red hair. When she blushes her face blooms like a scarlet rose.

They jostle their way out of the car, mutter a goodbye, and run through the school gate, separating at the scraggly hedge and bolting away to their respective groups of friends.

Bush pigs, I think and head off to work.

Gabrielle, the Chair of the Management Committee at the Neighbourhood House where I work, can’t answer when I ask her the collective noun for bush pigs. She has dropped in unexpectedly. The Management Committee consists of volunteers from the local community, most of them women from the larger, more wealthy properties outside Gunapan. Supposedly their role is to steer the direction of the Neighbourhood House, to use their skills and contacts in developing the profile of the house in the community, to oversee the efficient management of the house finances and so on and so forth. In reality, they meet once a month to hear the report of the House Managers and drink a glass of wine before they start talking about land values and the international wool and beef markets.

‘Flock?’ she guesses. ‘Herd? Posse?’

‘Herd, that’s what I said.’

‘Darling, I really haven’t got time to chat about this. I’m on the trail of a wonderful opportunity. Very hush-hush, from my sources.’

A thought occurs to me. ‘Are you talking about that development thing?’

‘No, not the development. I’m talking about wool. The finest merino. I have access to a flock that these people need to sell immediately at a very nice price. Buy, agist, shear and sell in a month. A business proposition that could make someone a lot of money.’

‘I’ll do it.’ A lot of money – exactly what I need.

‘Oh, darling, if only you could. Except it will take about twenty thousand to get this thing off the ground.’

‘Ah.’ I am not surprised.

‘So you carry on and I’ll pop on to the computer for a moment. We have the contact details of the committee members here, don’t we?’

‘About that development—’ I start to say, but Gabrielle waves me away.

‘Sorry, darling, I must get on with this.’

Gabrielle logs on to the computer and I go back to my work of sorting the donations for our book exchange. The covers are embossed in the silvers and royal blues with scarlet blood spatters that attract the average literary type here. Everyone in Gunapan obviously loves horror. Perhaps that’s why they live in this fine town.