Coping

5

Coping

    “I don’t care,” said Rose dully. “Let her go to model school, if that’s what she wants.”

    Linnet looked at her anxiously. Since the car crash and the deaths of Kyle and their parents, Rose had lost interest in everything—even Fergie. She spent large parts of the day lying on her bed. If asked she would claim to have a headache but unless asked she offered no excuse. It was just on five months since the tragedy—in fact it was Buffy’s mid-year break, hence the crisis over Miss Barbara Muller’s future—but Rose wasn’t apparently getting over it.

    The family, of course, had rallied round magnificently—at first. Almost everyone had turned up for the funeral and Aunty Mim had stayed on for several weeks, “helping the girls out”. Even though it rather rapidly became apparent that she bore them a grudge for having got Uncle Jim’s fortune out of him. Which was most unfair: she was a very managing woman, not unlike her managing French mother, and Uncle Jim had never been able to stand what he had called “interfering women”. Marion, of course, had been just as likely to clean up Uncle Jim’s kitchen when she came to stay, but Jim was used to that. Marion, unlike her mother and sister, had never tried to force him to open up the sitting-room and use it and she had never nagged him. Occasionally she’d done things behind his back like washing his bedroom curtains, but Uncle Jim had been pretty well inured to that sort of thing from his female well-wishers.

    By mid-July, even though Mémé’s death had come hard upon the heels of the family tragedy, the relatives on both sides appeared to think that Rose should be getting over it all. Well, they’d stopped rallying round. Privately Linnet considered that it was now that Rose needed help: when she had to cope with the day-to-day reality of life without Kyle, and without Mum and Dad to fall back on for advice, practical help (Len had known all about clearing leaves out of the guttering and Kyle hadn’t known anything, not even that that was what was wrong with the downpipes), baby-sitting, and even, when the Meyer account had come in on the same day as the Visa account and the blimming electricity bill, the occasional quiet loan from Marion. (“What else have we got to spend it on but you kids, dear?”)

    Of course the Bayleys had rallied round too, at first, but by the time Aunty Mim had bustled off back to Queensland Linnet at least had realized that Mr and Mrs Bayley blamed the Mullers bitterly for the death of their only son. Added to which, Mrs Bayley had actually said to Linnet and Buffy over the teacups as she sat, large as life and twice as natural, on Rose’s pale green leather couch in Rose’s own sitting-room: “I can’t help wishing Fergie had been a boy. It would have been a consolation, in a way.”

    Linnet had been too stunned to speak. It wasn’t so much that Mrs Bayley had had such a thought—Linnet was rarely shocked by the revelation of other people’s thoughts, perhaps because so far society hadn’t managed to brainwash her into believing there was the right sort of thought to have and the wrong sort of thought—but that the woman had voiced it in Rose’s own house, with Rose lying down in the next room! Not to say in front of Fergie—though fortunately she was too young to understand.

    Buffy had turned scarlet, bounced up shouting: “We LOVE Fergie! And you’re a mean old PIG!” and run out of the room.

    Linnet had then had to cope not only with Mrs Bayley’s tears but with Mrs Bayley’s righteous indignation.

    They hadn’t seen much of Mr and Mrs Bayley after that and in fact just recently the pair of them had taken off for a protracted holiday on the Sunshine Coast. And they were thinking of retiring up there—well, Daddy’s arthritis would probably do better in a warmer climate.

    There weren’t any Muller relations left in Adelaide—Len’s brother Ted was down in Tazzie, also an orchardist, but in his case it was apples. He and his family had come up for the funeral but of course they couldn’t stay long.

    By the time Aunty Mim had bustled off back to Townsville Linnet had also realized that Aunty Mim blamed the Mullers for Mémé’s death—in spite of the fact that her mother had been an elderly woman and not very strong. Aunty Mim having declared once too often in Linnet’s hearing that seventy-two wasn’t old, these days, the penny had dropped. So what with that and the managing, which ranged over everything from forcing Rose to go for walks as fresh air would do her good, through changing Rose’s brand of laundry detergent, buying a cheap brand of tea that Rose hated, and decreeing that Fergie should have a regular nap at such-and-such an hour even though that was when Rose always let her watch a TV programme she was addicted to, to urging Jimmy to use Kyle’s jackets as they were going to waste, dear... Ugh. Linnet had never been able to like Aunty Mim and though she was grateful to her for doing what she had obviously truly believed was helping them, she was very glad to see the back of her.

    So now there was no-one to rally round except Linnet. Jimmy, though his leg had been very badly shattered and he’d only just graduated from an elbow crutch to a walking-stick, had gone back to university and buried himself in his swot, determined to catch up on the stuff he’d missed while he was in hospital. Buffy had gone back to school and Jazzercize—it was much easier for her to go to after-school classes now: there were a lot more buses coming out to Rose’s suburb than there had been going up to the hills—and was now burying herself in the Jazzercize and her exercise videos. She had Len and Marion’s TV in her room at Rose’s and spent her spare time in there exercising in front of it or practising make-up and hairdoes. Perhaps an older woman would have worried that Buffy seemed to have no friends of her own age but Linnet, who had never had friends of her own age, didn’t realize there was anything wrong with, not to say obsessive about, her little sister’s behaviour. When they lived on the orchard she’d played netball—not with much enthusiasm, true, but there had been a group of netball girls she’d gone round with. She’d dropped the netball and never saw the girls now. Normally Rose would probably have realized that Buffy was friendless and never even went out to the cinema, and tried to do something about it; but at the present time Rose was too miserable to notice.

    Linnet herself had turned down two job offers from CSIRO so as to stay in Adelaide with Rose. One of them was with the gene-shears team and she had really wanted that job—though she hadn’t thought she’d get it—but it was pretty clear to her that Rose couldn’t manage on her own. And she couldn’t just go off and leave her in that state! –At about this point it suddenly became clear to Linnet just why Marion had rushed up to Queensland when Aunty Mim had gone into hospital. She had accepted before that that was the thing to do. But now she understood that Mum hadn’t done it because it was the expected thing to do, she’d done it because Mim was her sister and there was no way she could have stopped herself doing it.

    Jimmy hadn’t tried to talk Linnet out of her decision: he’d just been frightfully relieved that there was someone else besides him to cope with Rose and Buffy. Because Buffy never had taken a blind bit of notice of anything he said to her and he couldn’t see her doing it now. And what if she suddenly—well, turned round one morning and refused point-blank to go to school, for instance? And Jimmy didn’t know what to do with a person that cried half the day and the rest of the day just lay on their bed. It never occurred to him that Linnet didn’t, either, and that being female didn’t automatically give you a diploma in handling such life crises. And although he could cope with ordinary things like putting the dustbin out and wiring up the front gate so that Fergie couldn’t work the latch, which she’d suddenly discovered how to do, and cleaning the pool (Rose and Kyle hadn’t quite managed a creepy-crawly), there was no way he could do the family shopping for them all or look after Fergie if she got sick or see that Fergie ate the right stuff and didn’t eat the wrong stuff—or—or anything like that. It didn’t occur to him, of course, that Linnet didn’t have a diploma in these matters, either, merely by virtue of being female and some years his elder.

    By now several kindly people, not least Rose’s neighbour on one side, Monica, who was a few years older than her, Rose’s newish neighbour on the other side, Josie, who had a grown-up family, and Belinda from Linnet’s Department, who, to Linnet’s surprize, had rallied round and been very kind indeed, had suggested tactfully to Linnet that it was time Rose started coping again. And that perhaps if she was left to cope for herself—now, she knew this sounded brutal, dear (Josie); um, it sounded cruel, Linnie, only maybe it was the only way (Monica); well, maybe it was mean, only sometimes ya had to be, y’know? (Belinda)—she might start to pull herself out of her depression. Perhaps needless to state Linnet was constitutionally incapable of walking off to the gene-shears job and leaving her sister in the state she was now. Added to which she had no inner conviction that these ladies’ version of current pop psychology’s version of shock therapy would work. It certainly did sound brutal, cruel and mean, and there was nothing of any of these traits in Linnet’s nature.

    Belinda hadn’t really believed her suggestion would be accepted: she’d worked with Linnet for eighteen months, after all. So she had then proposed, on a wistful note that Linnet missed, that perhaps Linnet might like to come up to the Alice on the Ghan with her, so as Rose could try out being on her own for a week: she had a bit of leave due and she’d never done the trip. Not noticing the wistful note, Linnet had replied that she couldn’t afford it and couldn’t leave Rose, and asked: “What about your boyfriend?” To which Belinda had returned that he didn’t want to come, he saw enough of the country on his job. Linnet knew that the boyfriend (who was a live-in boyfriend, a divorced man with three kids that he only saw on the weekends) was a long-distance lorry driver, so she’d just nodded. Belinda had then noted that anyway, at this time of year it’d probably be freezing at night up there. And that had been that.

    Belinda still popped in occasionally at lunchtime—she usually couldn’t manage the weekends, what with the netball and the boyfriend—and she still made helpful suggestions about things that Linnet and Rose might do together that would help to pull Rose out of her depression: but the suggestions were made with less and less conviction and the visits were tailing off, now that Rose ought to be getting over it.

    The fact that Rose manifestly was not getting over it did not appear to weigh with any of these people who thought she ought to be. Linnet of course was very much aware of this, and of its total illogicality: what was the point of saying that things ought to, when clearly they weren’t? People, concluded Linnet once again without surprize, were very odd.

     Linnet, Jimmy and Rose, on a cold July afternoon during mid-year break, were sitting round Rose’s large heater on Rose’s pale green leather suite. Bought at one of the endemic Adelaide sofa sales but still very expensive: Rose had believed in buying quality that would last, and Kyle had believed in agreeing with her.

    Buffy had defiantly announced her intention of leaving stupid ole school and going to model school next semester. And it was her money, why couldn’t she do what she liked with it!

    She had meant her share of what had been left over when the orchard had been sold up and the Mullers’ debts paid, not of Uncle Jim’s fortune. No-one had had the time, let alone the inclination, to do anything much about that. Though Jimmy and Linnet had notified the Sydney solicitor of the old man’s death and sent him the relevant documents; Mr Bayley, back when the Bayleys had still been rallying round, had told them that was the thing to do. Jimmy and Linnet hadn’t let on to Mr Bayley about the tontine: Linnet because she was scared of him and didn’t like him and Jimmy partly because he hadn’t been thinking straight, what with his leg, and partly because he was an innately cautious person.

    Buffy had pointed out this afternoon that a quarter of those shares of Uncle Jim’s were hers and she was gonna spend them on model school, too! Jimmy at least had known enough to tell her she couldn’t touch them until they’d got probate. Buffy had retired to her bedroom, whence the sound of Cher’s exercise video could now be heard. Even though there were two closed doors and the passage between them.

    Jimmy watched Linnet watching Rose anxiously and as his oldest sister didn’t seem to be going to say anything, pointed out cautiously: “Miss Ferguson says she’s never gonna pass anything this year, even if she does stay on.”

    Linnet sighed. “Yeah.”

    Jimmy unfolded the letter Buffy had had from the model school. “They reckon they’ll take her. They reckon those photos she sent were good.”

    “They’ll take her money, you mean,” said Linnet tiredly.

    Jimmy waited but Rose didn’t contribute anything. “Um—yeah. Um—this Mrs O’Donaldson, she sounds all right.”

    “If Aunty Mim let Angela stay with her, she must be,” admitted Linnet. –She had been driven to ring Aunty Mim and ask her about the lady that Angela had stayed with when she’d gone to uni in Sydney. Driven by Buffy’s constant nagging, that was. Aunty Mim had put her through an intensive interrogation but had coughed up the name and address. And Linnet had written to Mrs O’Donaldson and got a very kind letter in reply saying that of course she would look after Buffy as if she was her own daughter. Curiously no-one had mentioned the facts (a) that Mrs O’Donaldson’s own daughter was a thirty-year-old unmarried mother struggling to cope with a job and a kid in a dingy flat in a dingy suburb of Sydney and (b) that Angela, having got her degree and teaching qualification, had chucked in a perfectly good teaching job to go and live on the Gold Coast with a man to whom Aunty Mim persisted in referring as her “fiancé”, even though he had a wife and kids somewhere in Victoria. The two of them earned a living making arty pottery souvenirs to sell to unwary tourists. Linnet had concluded this reticence was just another demonstration of the oddness of humanity.

    “Angela reckoned the food was ace,” recalled Jimmy.

    “What? Oh. Yes. If she eats it,” said Linnet grimly.

    “She’s been eating,” he said tolerantly. “Works it all off with the ruddy Jazzercize.”

    This was true. “Yeah,” agreed Linnet, grinning.

    “Well, do you think we oughta let her, Linnet?” he said.

    Linnet was silent. Jimmy watched her hopefully. Rose watched her dully.

    Finally she said: “I don’t see that we’ve got the right to stop her. It’s her life. And she’s miserable at school. She’ll be okay with Mrs O’Donaldson.”

    “Sydney’s a big place,” quavered Rose.

    Jimmy returned: “Yeah, but she can get the train just down the road from Mrs O’Donaldson’s and that’ll take her practically straight there, Rose!” –Mrs O’Donaldson had explained this. Possibly she was more eager for another boarder than her letter had let on.

    Rose looked at Linnet. Jimmy also looked at Linnet.

    Linnet sighed. “I wish there was someone we could ask about the model school. Whether it’s any good, I mean.”

    “Ye-ah... Only if it isn’t,” said Jimmy thoughtfully, “maybe it’ll get it out of her system.”

    “It is,” said Rose unexpectedly. “It’s the top model school.”

    They looked at her dubiously.

    “I read about it in a magazine.”

    “That sounds all right, then. Um—whaddaya reckon, Linnet?” said Jimmy.

    Linnet bit her lip. “Yes—um—if you think it’s okay?” She looked at him plaintively.

    Jimmy nodded.

    “Let her, if that’s what she wants,” said Rose with a sigh.

    Linnet got up. “All right, I’ll tell her.”

    She went into Buffy’s room and told her.

    Buffy didn’t greet the news of permission from her legal guardians to fulfil her dream with any cries of joy. She just replied: “Good. I was going anyway.”

    Linnet could see she was: she was all packed except for a small pile of videos and two sets of clothes laid out neatly on the bed.

    “Yes. Um—we’ll buy you a plane ticket, Buffy,” she said weakly.

    “I’ve already booked.”

    Linnet winced. “Um—good. Well, we’ll pay for it, then.”

    “Out of your money?” she said keenly.

    Linnet nodded feebly.

    “Good.”

    “Um—well, um—will you ring Mrs O’Donaldson or shall I?”

    “I’ll do it.” Buffy marched out to the phone.

    Linnet tottered back to the lounge-room and reported.

    Jimmy replied: “Wouldn’tcha know it!”

    Rose replied: “I think I’ll just have a lie-down...” And drifted off to do so.

    There was a short silence in Rose’s comfortably appointed warm sitting-room. Linnet sat down weakly on the hugely expensive pale green leather couch.

    “Um—Linnet,” said Jimmy cautiously.

    “What?”

    “Um—’ve you seen those bills?”

    She gulped. “Mm.”

    “Didn’t they pay for anything?” he said on a desperate note.

    “No. Apparently people don’t, these days.”

    “How the Hell are we gonna— I mean, Jesus, the Visa card alone! And it’s not as if she’s used it for anything in the past few months—well, I mean, she never goes anywhere, does she? Well—um—well, shit, Linnet, what are we gonna do?”

    The expensive pale green leather suite on which they were sitting was not paid for. Kyle and Rose had got it on the Visa account. The lovely new cream body-carpet on which the pale green leather reposed was not paid for, either. Kyle and Rose had got it on the Visa account, too. The sitting-room curtains—heavily swagged in floral pinks, greens and creams on a smart black background—weren’t paid for: Rose had got them on her John Martin’s card. The genuine Chinese rug before the big heater, fawn and cream roses on a pale green background, wasn’t paid for: Rose had got it at John’s last sale on her Visa card. Even the twin china lamps, a floral pattern in greens and pinks on a white background, and the dull-rose lampshades that went with them, were not paid for: Rose had got them at Meyer on her Meyercard. In fact as far as the horrified Jimmy and Linnet had been able to discover, absolutely nothing in the big room was paid for.

    The adjoining kitchen-dining room was almost as bad. In the dining annexe there was a smart smoked-glass table with tubular steel legs and four matching tubular-steel chairs—Rose had gone all modernistic in there—and they, together with the large abstract painting on the dining annexe’s wall and the plain modern sideboard in there had come from Freedom Furniture—effing and blinding ensuing from Kyle as he discovered, not what the things had cost, but that bloody Freedom’s bloody delivery men just dumped their gigantic items, boxed and hermetically sealed, and exited, refusing to unpack the bloody things. They had gone, for a change, on the MasterCard. The reason that there wasn’t more furniture on the MasterCard, Linnet and Jimmy had discovered the awful day that that bill came in, was that Kyle had put his boat on it.

    The situation in the kitchen was marginally better. Most of the smaller appliances had been wedding presents, as had the two stainless steel cutlery sets, the two dinner sets, and the five sets of crystal glasses. Rose had got the microwave at Meyer on her Meyercard but, thank God for small mercies, Len and Marion had given them the stove as a wedding present. The immense fridge-freezer had been bought on hire-purchase but it had just been paid off.

    Out in the garage next to the unpaid-for boat lurked a huge freezer, with very little in it except some fish Kyle had caught in the boat and packets of TV dinners. Not paid for.

    The Bayleys had given Kyle and Rose the bedroom suite as a wedding present. All the pretty bedding, however, had come from Meyer on Rose’s Meyercard and even though she had conscientiously got most of it on sale and in fact had started buying it even before she and Kyle were officially engaged, the last lots were still not paid for. And Meyer’s bedding prices were not cheap, even at their sales. The same applied to most of the huge piles of towels cramming the linen cupboard. The washing-machine and the dryer had been bought on three-year hire-purchase agreements and were, thank God, paid off. The air-conditioning wasn’t, though. And poor Jimmy had nearly passed out at the sight of what still remained to be paid on the patio pool. Which, in case anybody hadn’t noticed, couldn’t be returned.

    Linnet now replied dubiously to her brother’s enquiry as to what they were going to  do: “Could we give some of it back?”

    “Not the ruddy pool, that’s for sure!” he retorted bitterly.

    “No. Um—well, what about the boat? He’d hardly used that.”

    Today was Sunday; Jimmy replied gloomily: “I’ll give them a ring tomorrow and ask them if they’ll take it back.”

    “Yes. Tell them we haven’t got any money.”

    “Uh—yeah. The freezer’s pretty new, too, maybe they’d take it back.”

    “Maybe we could give all the stuff back,” said Linnet hopefully.

    Jimmy made a face. “Nah. Well, the sofa’s got that mark on it where Fergie spilled her Ribena, ’member?”

    “Aw, yeah. I’d forgotten about that. It’s not a very bad mark, though.”

    Jimmy shook his head. “They won’t take it back, though.”

    “Well, what if we just stop paying?” said Linnet angrily.

    Jimmy thought about it. “I think what they usually do is take ya to court, Linnet, if ya stop paying. To make you cough up.”

    “But we can’t cough up, if we haven’t got it!” she cried.

    “They sell you up, in that case. –They’d make her sell the house,” he explained.

    “Oh,” she said, scowling.

    Jimmy sighed. “I’ll ring up tomorrow about everything that looks as if it’s good enough to go back, okay?”

    “Yeah. –I sent that lawn-coring man away,” she remembered dully.

    He shuddered. “Good on ya. Shit, the lawn’s not even paid for, yet!”

    “No,” agreed Linnet simply.

    “Why did they have to do everything the—the most expensive way?” he wondered aggrievedly.

    “Well, to be fair, they didn’t really, Jimmy. I mean, they got the suite on sale, and the duna and the towels and stuff. And that rug, I think.”

    Jimmy gave it a jaundiced look. “What’s she wanna go and put a rug on top of the carpet for, when she’s just spent a bomb on the carpet!”

    “Don’t ask me. I suppose it does look quite pretty.”

    “Yeah. Um... Maybe we could sell some of the stuff. We won’t get much for it, you never do, with second-hand stuff,” he warned.

    “No. But it’s worth trying. –Isn’t it illegal, though? I mean, if it’s not paid for?”

    “Who cares!” replied Jimmy fiercely. “At least it might help us to pay for some of it!”

    “Mm. –I know, Jimmy: let’s sell the stove!”

    Jimmy gulped. “Um—ya have to have a stove, Linnet.”

    “No, we don’t! We can do everything in the microwave! –We do anyway.”

    “Um—yeah. Well, practically everything.” He thought about it. “It is in pretty good nick, eh?”

   Linnet nodded. “Spotless. Well, she hardly ever used it.”

    “No wonder poor ole Kyle used to like coming up to Mum and Dad’s for a roast on Sundays!” he said with feeling.

    Linnet smiled. “Yeah.”

    “Um—well, yeah. Yeah, you’re right, let’s flog the ruddy thing. –People’ll say we’re mad, though,” he warned her.

    Linnet replied grimly: “People aren’t paying Rose’s mortgage.”

    Jimmy shuddered. “No. Or the flaming rates. Not to mention the water bill!”

    “Mm. –Look, sell the dryer, too, Jimmy. There’s no need for it, in our climate. And it isn’t as if Fergie’s in naps.”

    “No. Well, never was, didn’t Rose always use those disposable ones?”

    Linnet nodded.

    “Righto, the dryer’s had its chips. Um—what about getting sheets and stuff dry in winter, though?” he said cautiously.

    Linnet sighed. “There’s enough linen in this house for all of us to go six weeks before we need to get any sheets dry. –Or towels,” she noted. “And I can’t see Meyer taking any of that lot back!”

    “No. Well, it’s all been used, hasn’t it? –Tell ya what, though: we could take some of it to one of those car-boot markets!”

    “What? Oh, yes, I know what you mean. Would people buy that sort of thing?”

    “Yeah! –Wouldn’t get much for it, mind, but every little helps. And—uh—” He looked at her cautiously and lowered his voice. “We’d better sell Kyle’s clothes, too.”

    Linnet swallowed and nodded.

    “Have to get her out of there, eh? Um—I could take her for a drive, and you could nip in and—um—stuff them into the wardrobe in your room, okay? Then we’ll get them out to the garage when she’s lying down.”

    “Mm,” she said, nodding.

    Jimmy looked at her anxiously.

    “At least we’d get something for them. All those leather jackets and stuff,” she said.

    He nodded.

    “It—it won’t be enough, though, Jimmy, will it? Even if we sell everything we can...”

    “No. And we’ve still gotta have something to sit on and sleep on. –Why the fuck did they have to go and get a second mortgage?” he said bitterly.

    Linnet flushed. “Don’t say that, Jimmy, Mum wouldn’t have liked it. Um—I dunno. Why do people live like that?”

    “I’da said he put it towards the boat, only he can’ta done, it’s on the Mastercard!”

    “Mm.”

    “Maybe he put it towards the car. And the down-payment on the pool— Aw, and the air-conditioning; yeah, that’d be it.”

    Linnet nodded dully. Kyle’s life insurance had paid off the first mortgage on the house but not the second. Both his and Len’s cars were write-offs. However, the insurance had paid off what was owing. The trailer the Bayleys had been towing had not suffered at all, but as, for a miracle, Kyle had got it cheap second-hand and paid for it with cash, that didn’t count one way or the other.

    There was a long silence in Rose’s warm, luxurious and unpaid-for sitting-room.

    Finally Jimmy said: “How much is in the bank? I mean, if we scrape up everything we can. –Minus her quarter share, of course,” he noted bitterly, wincing as another exercise video started up.

    Linnet went over to Uncle Jim’s escritoire that Marion had intended for Fergie and which, having been on the trailer, hadn’t even been scratched in the crash, and got out the bank statements.

    “Shit,” said Jimmy, going very white.

    “There’s my savings,” Linnet reminded him anxiously.

    “We may have to use them,” he admitted bleakly.

    “I’ve been using up everything in the cupboards,” she said in a trembling voice, “and there are some frozen dinners in the freezer, I think, but—”

    “Mm. It’s not so much the grocery bills. Have you seen the flaming phone bill?” he asked grimly.

    Linnet’s eyes filled with tears. She nodded.

    “All those bloody calls Aunty Mim made to Queensland! Why the Hell couldn’t she put them on their ruddy account?”

    Linnet thought about it. “If she’d asked herself why, I think she would have claimed to believe that she just didn’t think about it. But underneath, I think she did it to spite us because she blames us for Mémé’s death. And because Uncle Jim left everything to us, of course.”

    Jimmy’s jaw had sagged. “Uh—yeah,” he said faintly. “You could be right.” He gave her an odd look which Linnet didn’t notice: she was cautiously blowing her nose.

    He began going over the bank statements, muttering to himself.

    “I could get a part-time job,” said Linnet soggily.

    “No, ya couldn’t: in the first place there aren’t any: there’s a recession, in case you and flamin’ Paul Keating hadn’t noticed it,” he said grimly. “And in the second place, someone’s gotta look after Fergie.”

    “Ye-es... What about the evenings, though? I mean, if you’re home doing your swot, I could be out working.”

    Jimmy himself had been lucky enough to land a part-time job at the service station down the road. Only three nights a week, but it was better than nothing. It wasn’t paying the grocery bills, but it was helping. “Only four nights a week,” he pointed out.

    “Yes, but I could probably get a cleaning job. You know: offices.”

    “No,” he said, frowning.

    “Lots of people do it.”

    “No: you’d be dead beat all day.”

    “We’ve got to do something!”

    Jimmy scowled. He got up and, going over to the desk, retrieved the letter from the Sydney lawyers.

    “All they want to do is take our mon—”

    “Shut up. I’m thinking,” he said.

    Linnet looked at him without hope.

    “Look, it’s logical, Linnet,” he said at last. “If we want anything out of Uncle Jim’s estate, including those shares that Buffy keeps going on about, we’ve gotta let them prove that Joe Sneed’s dead. I mean that he died before Uncle Jim did. We’ve gotta let them advertise in Southampton, like they want to.”

    “Couldn’t we get our own twenty percent, though?”

    “Uh—yeah. Of the farm and that?”—She nodded.—“I suppose so. But it won’t amount to much, you know. And they’ll have to find a mug that wants to buy it, first. I dunno about the shares... Twenty percent—well, that’d be a fair amount, yeah.”

    “Dave Hordern said not to sell them,” she remembered.

    “Uh—oh. Bugger. He’s right, ya know.”

    “Beggars can’t be choosers,” said Linnet firmly.

    Jimmy sighed. “No. Um—well, look, Linnet: we’re running ourselves into the ground, as it is. We don’t want to spend all your savings as well as what Mum and Dad left and end up with nothing. I reckon we’d better tell this lawyer type to go ahead.”

    “Yes.” Linnet blew her nose. “Okay. Tell him to sell the shares and give us our twenty percent. Tell him we need it, Jimmy. And tell him to go ahead and advertise in Southampton.”

    Jimmy sagged where he sat. “Righto.”

    “And tell him,” said Linnet, putting her handkerchief away with a frown, “that if we don’t make something out of the tontine, we won’t be able to afford to pay him!”

    Jimmy gulped. “Uh—better not. Um—he might hold back on the share money, if we said that.”

    “Oh. Righto, don’t let on.”

    “No. I’ll— No, bugger; I won’t ring him tomorrow,” he said, making a face.

    “Is it a legal holiday or something?”

    “No. We can’t afford to make interstate calls any more at the drop of a hat, remember? I’ll write to him. That’ll be more official, anyway. –You can sign it, too.”

    “Okay,” she said obediently.

    Jimmy went over and sat down at the escritoire. They’d cleaned it and Linnet had rubbed a lot of polish into it and they’d put all Rose’s business things into it, in the hopes that seeing it there all nice and pretty might encourage her to take an interest, but of course it hadn’t. He searched for paper.

    “Help, all the writing paper’s pale green with little roses at the top,” he reported in a hollow voice.

    “Yes. She got it at Meyer.”

    Jimmy winced.

    “Use it, Jimmy, we can’t afford to waste it.”

    Sighing, Jimmy wrote to Morpeth, Swale of George Street, Sydney, on Rose’s rose-headed notepaper.

    The winter wore on. Linnet learned how to make soup out of almost anything. Anything that was cheap at the supermarkets. Jimmy put his clapped-out car in the garage and took the bus: with a student’s concession, it was a lot cheaper than wasting money on petrol. It meant he got back shockingly late the nights he stayed late at uni, because there were only two late buses, but that couldn’t be helped.

    Buffy duly went off to model school. Linnet wrote to her regularly: boring, dutiful little letters, Linnet’s existence was so monotonous that she didn’t have anything interesting to say. After a while she got into the habit of sending Buffy a drawing every week which took the place of most of the boring letter. Sometimes it showed Fergie, sometimes it showed a flower from the garden (not that there were many flowers at this time of year), sometimes it was a sketch of an orchid from one of Uncle Jim’s sample books. Whether or not they had the legal right to do so, Linnet had brought, not just the albums of specimens, but most of Uncle Jim’s books home with them. Weighing down the boot of Len’s car: very likely they had been a factor in explaining why she, Jimmy and Buffy, in the back, had suffered between them only one broken leg, severe bruising, and a mild concussion. Sometimes the sketch was a little vignette showing something interesting that they had done in the weekend—on the rare occasions when they did anything except put on layers of woollies and huddle over the small heater in the kitchen in order not to subsidize the electrical supply authority by running the big heater in the sitting-room.

    Buffy wrote back regularly, to everyone’s astonishment. It never got beyond the “Today we did make-up. Jocelyn says I’ve got a good face,” level but still, at least she was keeping in touch with her family. From time to time Mrs O’Donaldson dropped them a note to tell them how hard Buffy was working at model school and that she was eating well and being such a good girl. They concluded she was still spending all her spare time with her exercise videos, but that was better than wandering round Sydney on the loose. Eventually Buffy seemed to have made a friend: Marilu.—Not quite a made-up name: off the TV, they concluded resignedly.—Marilu was apparently as dedicated to her chosen career as Buffy was. Occasionally Buffy would report that they’d been to the pictures but it was usually more on the lines of: “Marilu came over and we did makeup in my room. Marilu says I’ve got a good face.”

    Buffy, incidentally, was costing them, even with only the occasional visit to a Sydney cinema with Marilu, far more than her quarter share of their meagre income, and Linnet’s savings were being severely eroded. No-one was under the impression that Buffy the Supermodel would pay back a penny of what she’d had out of them but no-one really grudged it to her. Well, Linnet certainly didn’t, and even Jimmy was heard to remark: “Well, at least she’s out of our hair.” Rose appeared to be totally indifferent to the whole thing.

    Rose also appeared not to have noticed that Linnet and Jimmy were scraping along on the smell of an oily rag in order to pay her credit card bills, but both Linnet and Jimmy took it entirely for granted that Rose and Fergie were their responsibility and never gave the matter a thought. Rose was, however, improving, very slowly. Her crying jags had tapered off, and though she still spent most of her day lying down, as the short-lived South Australian spring dawned she would sometimes go out to the shops with Linnet and Fergie. Not to offer any advice and not to actually choose anything, but at least she’d come. Once she burst into tears outside a supermarket but apart from that she really did seem to be getting very slowly better.

    Linnet had got used to her dawdling way of life by now, and what with spending ages comparing bargains at the supermarkets, and walking there and back, and doing all the washing and cleaning for the household and keeping Fergie amused and trying to make sure she learned something and played plenty of games and didn’t just sit in front of the TV all day like a little red-headed pudding (a phenomenon which the rest of the country referred to as “couch potato”), more than managed to fill her days.

    When Fergie was napping or allowed to watch TV she usually read Uncle Jim’s books or sketched. With the approach of spring came the spring sales and the ads in the local paper for people to deliver leaflets relating to these sales, and Linnet got one of these jobs and, once she’d got used to the unaccustomed exercise, became very fit on account of it. She did her deliveries on foot, pushing Fergie in her pusher. It was a time-consuming business but if she’d used Jimmy’s car her pay would have gone on the petrol and defeated the whole object. Besides, she was a very bad driver.

    Jimmy got the car out of dock one weekend and drove them all up to the hills to see the blossom, but it wasn’t a total success: Linnet and Rose both cried and Fergie joined in out of sympathy. Finally, at his wits’ end, he drove them into Hahndorf and shouted them to Devonshire teas for their afternoon tea. Everybody enjoyed the afternoon tea, especially Fergie, who couldn’t remember ever having had scones before in her short life, and Rose actually cheered up so far as to tell Linnet they were easy to make, you could get a packet-mix from the supermarket. But Jimmy spent the next couple of weeks anxiously counting his small change and going without coffees at uni.

    The bills kept coming, but at least they weren’t growing. The actual credit cards were in Jimmy’s wallet, welded to Jimmy’s person, just in case Linnet lost control of Rose and she went whacky and went in to Meyer or something. The electricity bill had dropped remarkably after the dryer disappeared. Not to say after they’d decided not to use the big heater in the vast spaces of the lounge-room. Jimmy had done his nut on discovering that Rose’s electric blanket was running all day, but after all, as Linnet pointed out, she was on the bed most of the time. And it was a lot cheaper than if she had a heater going in there, wasn’t it? Jimmy had had to concede that that was right, as this had not been a rhetorical question.

    Of course none of the Mullers were having anything approaching a social life: not even Jimmy. When he was at uni he was too busy working and when he wasn’t at uni he was too busy with his job at the service station or mowing Rose’s expensive lawn and clearing Rose’s guttering and tidying Rose’s garden and cleaning Rose’s picture windows and trying to get some swot done. Rose was still far too stunned to notice anything, much, let alone the monotony of their lives. And Linnet had never had a social life anyway. And perhaps in any case neither Linnet nor Jimmy was yet emotionally capable of dealing with new people or new friendships or anything of that nature.

    Of the three Mullers left in Adelaide, it was Linnet, oddly enough, whose horizons were beginning to be broadened. Not by having to make cabbage soup and pumpkin soup, obviously: no, by Uncle Jim’s books. He had quite a large collection, heterogeneous and somewhat old-fashioned. Some of the scientific stuff was really weird, fit only for a museum, and Linnet left it severely alone. But the botanical books were lovely. At first she opened only the old friends that she’d discovered during her childhood and teens, but after a little became bolder and began to make new discoveries. There were lots of art books, few of which showed anything later than the Impressionists, but Linnet had never knowingly laid eyes on anything later than the Impressionists, let alone the Impressionists themselves. Uncle Jim’s books were an eye-opener to her. He’d also owned lots of novels: full sets of Dickens, Trollope, Zola and Balzac, as well as most of the other English and French classics up to the end of the nineteenth century. Plus a hefty collection of drama, starting with Shakespeare and actually going as far as Ibsen and Shaw. Both of which Linnet read with tremendous interest and passionate partisanship. Uncle Jim had only a small selection of poetry, however: several of the War poets from his own era, a slim volume of Yeats, Shakespeare’s sonnets, Burns, Keats, Palgrave’s Golden Treasury, and volumes of both the Brownings. Poetry was a closed book to Linnet: or rather, when she opened it and looked at the way it was all set out in funny lines her head went sort of funny. So she didn’t try it. Even though the fact that the volumes were mostly well-worn should perhaps have suggested to her they might be worth the effort.

    It would not have been true to say that Uncle Jim’s books were making up for twenty-seven years of cultural wilderness, but at least they were helping. Linnet, without thinking about it, was quietly happy.

    Life went on in this peaceful way for some time. The relations more or less left them alone: occasionally Aunty Mim would ring up to earbash them about something or other and tell Linnet it was high time Rose pulled herself together. In the intervals of these calls she wrote Linnet long, detailed letters about nothing in particular. Len’s sister-in-law wrote chatty, cheerful letters full of nothings from Tasmania; and the cousins in New Zealand wrote about once a month in similar style. Linnet tried to reply in the same vein to these conscientious correspondents, who very obviously were forcing her to take over where Marion had left off.

    Then the peaceful little household in Adelaide received some very different letters: letters which were to have a drastic impact on the Muller siblings’ futures.

Next chapter:

https://frazerinheritance1-adelaidesdaughters.blogspot.com/2024/06/news-from-big-smoke.html