Actually, I think we were quite spoiled really. I didn't think until I was much older how hard our Mum must have worked and how tired she must have been. Dad couldn't get any work, you see. He was a butcher before the war but he couldn't find a job when he came back, which was just as well, Mum said, because she was sure he'd chop off his fingers, with his bad eye. He was fighting the Repatriation for years to get a pension. I can still see him at the kitchen table, angrily dictating letters to Mum because he couldn't see well enough to write. Mum had to work to support us. She had a job at a clothing factory in the city and she'd come home and Dad would be there leaning on the fence waiting to have his tea cooked for him. It never occurred to him that he could have helped around the house. Never occurred to us either. It's just the way it was. But Mum never complained. She always had such funny stories to tell us about her day. Connie and I would be in stitches. She was always losing things. She was hopeless! She would lose her train ticket and have to sweet-talk her way out of it with the guard. Well, she was so pretty, with all that curly blonde hair! That probably helped. Once she accidentally posted her pay-packet with some letters and she had to wait for hours until the postman came to empty the post-box. Oh, she was a character!
She was a wonderful cook. Better than all of us. Even Connie. And such a talented seamstress too! She made all our clothes without patterns. For Christmas each year I would draw a sketch of the dress I wanted and she'd make it for me. Well, one night in August, Mum left her only warm jacket on the train and came home chilled to the bone. Her teeth were chattering so hard it was making her giggle. She was making 'brrrr' noises with her teeth. Connie was cross with her. She said, 'You'll get sick, Mum,' and sure enough she did. There wasn't enough money for another coat for her and Mum did feel the cold. It started out as just a sniffle and then it turned into a serious chesty cough. She'd lean forward with her hands on her knees and cough and cough and cough. Well, she needed a dose of antibiotics! By the time Connie and I took her off to the hospital in Glass Bay it was already too late. She died of pneumonia a few days after. She was thirty-seven. Whenever I get a prescription from the doctor for antibiotics I look at the pack and I think, That's all Mum needed. I think, This ordinary box of pills would have saved her life. I remember Connie and me standing there at the hospital, looking at each other, not touching, not crying, just completely and utterly shocked. Our mother was too busy to die. The only time I can remember seeing her lie down was in the hospital. Is that the phone again, Sophie, love? Do you want to get it?
'It's OK.' Sophie gives a dismissive wave of her hand. 'This is more important.'
Rose smiles at her, takes a sip of tea, clears her throat and continues.
It was just one month later that Grandpop died too. I think it was the shock of losing Mum. He loved her. I think he was probably in love with her, actually.
Well, all of a sudden everything was different. Nothing looked familiar any more. I can remember walking out the front door and looking at the river as if I'd never seen it before. Everything was menacing and grey. My whole world looked and smelled different. There was only Connie, Dad and me on the island and it felt so empty. It needed more people to fill it up. It seemed like Mum had created enough energy and jokes and stories for ten people. It was an awful time, Sophie. We were all grieving and we didn't really know how to do it, so we just flailed hopelessly about. It was so cold too. I remember that. Connie and I couldn't get warm.
Dad went all religious in an angry sort of way. We'd always been Catholics, of course, but now Dad was reading the bible out loud every night and wanting Connie and me to kneel down and say the rosary with him. He went on and on about how Mum hadn't been to confession before she died, and Connie yelled at him, 'What would she confess? That she lost her good coat? Was that a mortal sin?' Dad slammed the bible down on Connie's knuckles and she just laughed. This horrible, bitter laugh.
We soon found out that we were in terrible financial straits. Connie had to forget about doing her Leaving Certificate and try to get a job. She walked around the city for weeks and weeks, lining up in endless queues and coming home with puffy blisters on her heels. I don't think I'd even heard the word 'mortgage' before. We didn't know we had a mortgage, or that Dad's wireless was on a time-payment plan. We didn't know it was going to take us years to pay off what we owed the grocer. We had no idea Mum was only barely keeping us afloat. She protected us from all that.
So, Connie became obsessed with money. All she could talk about was ways to make money. You know Banksia Island, of course? Just north of us? Well, during the Thirties, Banksia Island was a very popular picnic destination. It had quite a successful tea house. And the scones there were dreadful! So heavy and lumpy. Connie kept saying, 'If people tasted our scones they'd never go back.' But nobody had even heard of Scribbly Gum Island in those days, and why would people come to us when they could go to Banksia Island? We had to give them a reason-and of course we did, eventually, and the poor old Banksia Island Tea Rooms went out of business quick smart. Although those scones were really unforgivably bad, so we didn't feel that guilty.
Dad said Connie should stop jabbering about scones and just get tenants into Grandpop's empty house. He seemed to think it would be so easy. I can remember him shouting at Connie, 'Just go along into Glass Bay and organise for someone to let the house. We'll charge them fifteen shillings a week! That's more than fair!' He was quite oblivious to the fact there were empty houses all over Sydney because no one could afford to pay their rent. There were evictions every day. I can remember walking through the city and seeing people sitting outside their homes, surrounded by all their possessions, lamps, cushions, saucepans. But you see, Dad never left Scribbly Gum. He barely left the house. He was in his own dream world.
Well, one day Connie got sick of Dad haranguing her and told him that she'd found tenants for Grandpop's house and their names were Alice and Jack Munro. She said the Munros were good Catholic people and they were paying five shillings a week, and here was their first rent money. I remember Dad saying, 'We're not a bloody charity! They must think it's bloody Christmas!' But he seemed to accept it, and seeing as he never took the boat around to Grandpop's house he wasn't ever likely to notice that Alice and Jack were never home. Connie would chat on and on about this mythical Alice and Jack Munro. She seemed to get a kick out of conning Dad.
The rent money really came from Connie's new enterprise as a bookie. The railway workers would come down and meet her at the wharf and place their bets with her, which she'd record in a book with a red cover. It was illegal-she was breaking the law, you know! I was frightened for her but she loved it. Of course, she didn't make nearly enough money. We weren't starving, not like children in Africa. But you know, there were some days when we went to bed quite hungry. I can tell you, we never took food for granted again.
One day, a friend at school said that her sister could help me get a job at a big department store in the city working behind the cosmetics counter. So of course, I had to leave school and take it. We needed the money too badly. I hated it. I was so shy. It was agony for me to talk to those posh ladies each day. I missed my mum dreadfully.
Well, Sophie dear, you're probably wondering if I'm ever going to mention the crepe de Chine. Do you want some more scrambled eggs? No? Yes, of course you do. Help yourself. There's plenty.
I'd been working there for a few weeks when I happened to see a roll of fabric when I walked by the haberdashery department. It was the colour that caught my eye. I've always had an interest in colours. Certain colours make me feel like I've heard music. Mum was the same. She understood. Connie had no idea, practically colour-blind that girl! Well, this was deep turquoise, and because it was crepe de Chine it had a rich, satiny feel to it, like a jewel. I could imagine Mum saying to me, 'Oh Rose, it's so pretty!' For some reason I became quite fixated with that fabric. I sketched the summer dress I would make with it. Just something simple with an A-line skirt and a round neckline. It seemed like if I could make that
dress, I could get back my old life. I felt like it would make me closer to Mum. Well, to be honest, I don't know what I thought really. I think I just went a little mad. I lusted after it. I even dreamed about it, for heaven's sake. And of course, I didn't have a snowflake's chance in hell of getting it. It was expensive fabric. We didn't have enough money to eat. We certainly didn't have enough money for fabric.
Well, I may as well just come out and say this: I stole two pounds from the till.
I know. I don't look like a thief, do I? But that's what I did, and my mother would have been absolutely horrified. I didn't even think much about it. I didn't even feel guilty. I just wanted that fabric. And of course, I was caught, by the floor supervisor. I thought of him as an elderly man but he was probably forty at the most! He was a short man with a pear-shaped body and an egg-shaped head. I didn't like him at all. I secretly called him Mr Egg Head. I thought Mr Egg Head would sack me for sure, but instead he took me to the storeroom out the back and said he had a proposal for me. He said he'd be prepared to overlook what I'd done and even let me keep the money if I was prepared to perform some extra services for him every now and then.
Yes, darling, I can see by the look on your face that you've guessed what those services were. Well, I was such a dreamy, naive girl. I was just so relieved that I wasn't going to lose my job or go to jail! And I could still buy my precious fabric! You know what I actually remember thinking? That Mr Egg Head had been sent by Mum to keep me out of trouble. Like he was my guardian angel. I thought I'd have to make him the occasional cup of tea.
Mr Egg Head took it very slowly. I had to meet him in the storeroom and he'd make me close the door behind me and then it was down to business. At first it was just a kiss on the cheek and I thought, Oh, gosh, that's not so nice, I'd much rather make him a cup of tea! But then I thought, after all, I had done the wrong thing. I probably deserved it and it wasn't that bad. Of course, he started doing more and more and I started to feel so ashamed of myself. I truly believed I was a disgusting person. A dirty thief. And of course, one day Mr Egg Head, ah, took advantage of me, during the morning tea-break. Well, technically he raped me, but then again I never said no, of course. It didn't actually occur to me to say no. I was the bad person. I was the one being punished. I just tried very hard to think of something else.
52
Margie is bathing Ron's black eye with saline solution. He sits slumped at the kitchen table, while she stands next to him and looks dispassionately at the top of his head. That luxuriant dark hair is starting to thin so she can see his baby-white vulnerable scalp. When she first met Ron she thought he was so good-looking she was embarrassed to even meet his eyes. That was the problem. She'd thought he was too good for her and that she should be eternally grateful to him for choosing her. In fact, he was quite lucky to have her! When she'd shown Sophie the old photo of her in her red bikini she'd wolf-whistled and said she was like a supermodel, and then she'd said, 'No, Margie, I'm serious,' in that funny way of hers.
Ron winces heroically as she dabs at the cut on his eyebrow, and says, 'Do you want to go on a picnic today?'
Margie stops dabbing while a bubble of laughter inflates in her chest. 'Oh, that's OK, I don't think you're in any condition for a picnic.'
All those times he'd sneered when she tentatively suggested they take a bottle of wine down to Sultana Rocks! All those times when the children were young, when at the last minute he'd say Daddy had to stay behind and do some work in his office because Daddy made the money that paid for the nice food they were taking on the picnic, as if Mummy and Scribbly Gum Island didn't contribute a bloody cent.
'I'm OK. If you feel like a picnic?'
'I don't feel like a picnic.'
'Right. You know what I could do today?'
'What?'
'I could put that picture up for you. That one with the flowerpot.'
'Actually, Debbie saw that and she thought it might be nice for Lily's room, so I gave it to her. About a year ago.'
'Oh, did you?'
There is silence. Margie gives his forehead a last dab and says, 'Right. That should do you.' I think it's too late, love.
'So-ah-you had fun last night at that thing? With your friend? With...Ron?'
'Loved it. Can't remember the last time I had more fun.'
'Great! It's great to have an interest!'
'Of course, it would have been nice to win first prize, not just runner-up.'
'Oh yes! Trip to Venice. Wonderful. You always wanted to go to Italy, didn't you?'
'You're thinking of Laura. She was the one who always went on about going to Europe.'
She notices he doesn't ask what they would have done if they had won first prize, which was a trip for two. Actually, she and Rotund Ron hadn't ever properly discussed it. Sometimes, their personal trainer, a blonde Amazonian called Suzie, would say, 'So what happens if you win? Are you two going to run away together to Venice?' and Ron would waggle his eyebrows suggestively and pretend to speak in an Italian accent and Margie and Suzie would make fun of him, because he sounded Indian, not Italian at all.
Last night Rotund Ron and Margie had been first runners-up in the National 'Bulges to Biceps' Beginner Body Building Competition for Couples, sponsored by a low-fat Italian pasta sauce company. Ron had heard about the competition and suggested to Margie that instead of going to their Weight Watchers meetings they hire themselves a personal trainer and enter the competition. 'We'll probably lose the same amount of weight,' he'd said when he presented his proposal over their skim cappuccinos, 'but we'll have much more fun!' He told her that he'd picked her out of all the ladies at Weight Watchers because she looked like someone with a good sense of humour, and Margie, who had never thought of herself as having any sense of humour at all, was ridiculously flattered. To enter the competition they had to take a 'before' photo of themselves in their swimming costumes, holding up newspapers to prove just how fat they were on that particular date. Margie came out of the changing room with her robe pulled bashfully around her, ready to display the appropriate shame of a fat person, but Rotund Ron wasn't having any of that. He came strutting out like he was Mr Universe and soon had Margie quite weak with laughter and even striking Miss Universe poses herself, perhaps because she wanted to prove that she did have a sense of humour. It was as if she'd started to become an entirely different person, a flippant, confident, funny person-the sort of person Rotund Ron believed her to be, and damn it, maybe he was right.
Over the next eight weeks they'd met Suzie three times a week, sweating and puffing and chortling at each other. They shared their ecstasy as their bodies began to change. They tried to out-do each other when they did their sit-ups and push-ups and tricep dips and bicep curls. When it hurt too much they made very rude comments about Suzie under their breaths. They knew each other's bodies as well as their own. 'Feel that!' Ron would say, pointing at his thigh. 'Nothing but solid muscle, baby.' After each training session they'd have a protein shake in the park, sitting on a bench, red-faced, dripping with sweat and laughing, always laughing.
Margie had not had an affair with Rotund Ron. They'd never so much as kissed, but in some ways it felt like the whole experience of transforming their bodies had been more intimate, more physical, more sexy, more spiritual than any old affair involving middle-of-the-day sex in horrible sleazy highway motels and...well, whatever else those affairs involved.
On the night of the competition held at the Hilton Hotel, the 'before' photos were displayed on a giant screen behind each transformed couple flexing their spray-on-tanned biceps and triceps and quadriceps in a carefully choreographed routine. Rotund Ron and Margie had to avoid eye-contact while doing their routine-to 'Eye of the Tiger' - because otherwise they were liable to dissolve into laughter and Suzie said she was going to be furious with them if they ruined her hard work with an attack of the giggles. But on the night they'd both got caught up in the adrenaline-charged atmosphere and got all trembly and competitive before they
went on stage. Afterwards they were euphoric with their achievement, even when a ferociously muscular pair of born-again Christians from Baulkham Hills won the first prize. Margie and Ron won a flat-screen TV, which they agreed to donate to a centre for kids with cancer, because Ron's best friend's son had died of cancer twenty years earlier.
It was when Rotund Ron, Suzie and Margie were all sharing a celebratory glass of champagne that Margie got the phone call from Ron and learned that he'd got into a violent argument with a taxi driver at Glass Bay who didn't want him dripping river-water all over his cab and couldn't care less that Ron was trying to get to the Hilton to drag his wife from a Jacuzzi. Unfortunately the taxi driver happened to have started an introductory course in Tae Kwan Do at the Glass Bay Evening College and after Ron threw his first clumsy punch the taxi driver executed a perfect kick to Ron's temple. The police were called, and when Ron wouldn't calm down they decided he was drunk and disorderly and threw him in the back of a paddy wagon which was jam-packed with excited, swaying young men from a drunk and disorderly bucks party. Margie, Rotund Ron and Suzie drove over to the police station to pick up Ron, and all the drunk bucks got to hear them explaining to Ron that no, they weren't having an affair; they'd been entering a body-building competition and they'd won a flat-screen TV. The glassy-eyed groom, who didn't seem to Margie to be in any state to get married the next day, became quite emotional, grabbing Ron's arm and slurring, 'She wouldn't cheat on you, mate. She loves you. She made a solemn vow to you. She's your wife, man! She was just doing a bit of innocent body-building and now you've got a flat-screen TV,' while the rest of the bucks competed to get Suzie's phone number by offering to arm-wrestle her.
It was all a bit embarrassing. The Glass Bay police thought it was hilarious.
She and Ron had taken the boat back over to the island in silence. Ron held an icepack to his eye, while Margie steered the boat and looked up at the stars and thought what a funny old world it was.