Diamonds in the Mud and Other Stories Read online

  The front door opened and a head popped through the gap. ‘Danni. Maurice will be here in five minutes to do your hair.’

  Ben nodded to the speaker, then left the shelter of the carport to offer his gift.

  ‘Thank’s very much, Ben. Gee, I hope this rain lets up soon,’ she said to his belt buckle.

  ‘They’re forecasting a cloud burst at four o’clock,’ Danni yelled from the carport.

  ‘You’re impossible. I asked you to have a bath and wash your hair an hour ago.’ No reply. ‘She’ll do something to ruin my day, I just know it,’ Marlene said, now studying the gift wrapping and knowing the parcel wasn’t large enough to be the saucepans.

  ‘I don’t think I’ll be able to make the reception, Marlene –, ’Ben started, but the dragon-lady was out. She took the toaster, gave it a look usually saved for diseased rats, gave his left ear a forced, thin-lipped smile.

  ‘We do understand, Ben dear.’

  ‘One less to pay for,’ the one in the rain yelled, and with a wave of his hand, Ben made his escape back to the carport. Seeing two greasy hands now battling with a determined bolt, he considered offering his muscle. That girl had a lot of height but little flesh to support it.

  ‘What’s your problem, Marshall?’

  She glanced from the water pump to him, then back again. ‘Mainly, how to catch double pneumonia before four o’clock. Got any hints?’

  ‘You look as if you’ve got it well under control. Put a coat on.’

  ‘What? And defeat the object of this exercise?’

  He left her to it.

  The sky looking darker by the minute, he started his motor and considered his options. There’d be little chance of getting any work done today. ‘Want to go out and see Uncle Norm and Aunt Beth?’ he asked his dog.

  Uncle Norm had a tasty labrador. Fred laughed his assent.

  Danni Marshall had no luck with double pneumonia, but she caught the edge of her stepmother’s tongue when Maurice and the clean-up crew arrived to work their magic. They washed her hair, took to her fingernails with kerosene, creams and prods, did a full paint job on her face then bolted her into a cage that shaped her nonexistent boobs into something resembling twin padded humps. They swathed her knees in petticoats, lifted the hired bridesmaid’s dress over her head, then told her not to move.

  Move? She was hogtied, her feet hobbled in stiletto heeled silver sandals. Bloody ridiculous. She looked like a telegraph pole with a curly wig on top, clad in something halfway between Cinderella and Scarlett O’Hara from Gone with the Wind.

  ‘The town is in for hysterics,’ she said to Darlene, clad in an identical froth of petticoats and lilac satin. She was six inches shorter, definitely not undernourished and also teetering on four inch heels.

  ‘They’re hurting already, Mum.’

  ‘Then grin and bear it.’

  They were herded to the church on time, petticoats prickling, those crazy heels lifting Danni high above the crowd. She was seven years Darlene’s senior, but relegated to second bridesmaid, and teamed up for the day with George, a pasty faced cousin of the goon. Her pantihose slipping, her smile fixed, she tailgated the wedding party down the aisle, gave one of her giggling mates a look at her thumb, then stood, waiting for it to be over. And by the time it was, and the photographer, who was costing a fortune, had done his worst, her pantihose elastic struggling to get a grip on her hips had allowed the crutch to work its way down to her knees.

  She did it with as much decorum as possible, given the situation. She backed up to a wall, hauled up the rear of her skirts and petticoats and hitched the elastic high, or as high as the boob cage allowed.

  ‘Will you try, for one day, to act like a lady, Danielle,’ the step dragon nagged.

  ‘I’ll look like a bloody lady when they work their way down to my ankles and I trip over ’em, won’t I?’

  The reception was at the Central Motel and they’d booked the local band. Now Danni was supposed to dance while some dead whale’s bone took revenge on humanity and her pantihose elastic clutched at the final straw: her scrawny bum. She grabbed a handful of dress and petticoat and hitched, which gave the pasty faced goonsman ideas. He tried to do his own hitching but she got him with a sharp left elbow jab to the ribs, and he got her back with a foot applied to a silver sandal.

  ‘Try sticking to the floor, will you? I could have bought a new water pump for the FX with what I paid for these sandals,’ she said.

  ‘No one told me I was supposed to dance,’ he said.

  For two hours she behaved herself, keeping a metallic grin screwed securely in place, but by nine, her cheek springs were losing tension. Then she was harassed into getting up to form a circle so the oldies could have their progressive barn dance, pass her from hand to hand like the collection plate in church.

  ‘How much longer do these things go on for?’ the goonsman asked.

  ‘This is the country, George. We all turn into bumpkins – or is it pumpkins? – at midnight.’

  ‘Want to take off, do something, babe?’

  ‘Do what?’

  ‘We’re booked in downstairs. We’ve got a room with a waterbed. Ever done it on a waterbed?’

  ‘Done what, George?’

  ‘What else do you do in this place for entertainment?’

  ‘Dodge creeps like you, mainly,’ she said.

  Her usual hairstyle involved a rubber band and greasy cap, but that hairdresser had left it hanging long and loose, then wound flowers in it. She yanked at a string of the things, got them free and tossed them at the bride.

  ‘You’re not much like your sisters,’ George said, feeling for flesh but only finding whale bone.

  ‘What sisters? My father drove under a semi before he made an honest woman of their mother – not that I blame him.’ Maybe she lied. Maybe she did blame him. Five years ago she’d blamed him daily.

  George was desperate, or drunk. She’d insulted his aunty, and he was still trying to find a backside beneath slippery satin and petticoats. She disengaged his clutch and moved willingly into an old bloke’s arms. One of Elvis’s original fans, he rocked her off to a pair of hands belonging to the dragon’s younger brother, Uncle Ronnie, who’d hated her guts since she’d dobbed on him for feeling up Darlene. She got him in the instep with a stiletto heel before escaping into the bank manager’s hands.

  ‘You come along to keep an eye on my overdraft, did you, Bert?’

  He gave her a sleazy smile, and passed her along.

  After the first dozen swaps, she tuned out, gauging by her partners’ sweat factor whether they were worth a fatigued-metal grin or not.

  The sandy headed kid from the newsagent’s greeted her with glazed eyes. ‘You scrub up well, Marshall,’ he said. ‘Hardly recognised you.’

  ‘You look the same as usual. Blind drunk.’

  ‘You know when you slugged Davo with that bottle of Coke the other night?’

  ‘It was only plastic, and so what?’

  ‘It was full, and you cracked a bone in his wrist. He’ll be out for a month. You’re on the coach’s shit-list, Marshall.’

  ‘Tell him to join the queue.’

  Everyone had it in for her tonight. She could see murder by nagging written in the dragon’s eyes every time she hitched. Marlene had been on the war-path all week. Darlene – she was just a typical sixteen year old blob with blistered feet.

  Danni dodged the football coach to dance with the goon’s father. He came up to her shoulder but the stink of his sweat drifting higher. He passed her to a ham of a hand whose suit smelt of mothballs instead of sweat, but at least his hand was dry. She offered a grudging smile, then realised who she was smiling at and flapped her elbows, made a loud chicken squawk. ‘You chickened out, Priestly.’

  ‘And you didn’t have any luck with double pneumonia, Marshall.’

  ‘You can’t win ’em all.’

  She hadn’t won many – maybe not any. Her mother had had enough sense to get out of this to
wn young – if you didn’t get out young, you got stuck. Danni had been raised by her grandmother, but she’d died, so her father had to take her. She’d considered him some sort of grease-scented god until he’d taken up with the dragon and her daughters, then moved them in. He hadn’t married her. Couldn’t. He’d never got a divorce, though he had discussed the possibilities with Danni two nights before he ran under that semi.

  She’d thought the steps would move out when he died, hoped they would. They hadn’t. For twelve months or more the dragon had been calling herself Mrs Marshall; she’d enrolled her daughters at school as Marshall. When you’re on a good thing, stick to it; only weeks after Danni’s father died, the step had hired an out-of-town solicitor to go after the house and business.

  Danni, barely fifteen, had left school – or hadn’t bothered going to school – she’d spent her days in her father’s garage, just smelling the grease, the scent of Dad. Old Joe, mechanic extraordinaire, had suggested she do an apprenticeship instead of sitting around moping, wasting her life. It had been a legitimate excuse to leave school, and it stopped the do-gooders sticking their noses into her life. She hadn’t planned to finish the apprenticeship. Every night she’d decide to pack her bags and get the hell out of this town, then she became hooked on grease and petrol fumes, but mainly on the intricacies of her father’s old Holden – maybe because it had retained the scent of him.

  She ran the business now, her business, as the house was hers. Her father’s will said so, and in time the courts had agreed.

  Fifteen year old kids can’t live alone. She’d shared her house with the steps. It had been that, or fly over to New Zealand to a mother who hadn’t wanted her as a two year old, and wasn’t likely to want her at fifteen, and she knew her father had planned to make his union with the dragon permanent.

  ‘How did you get the grease off?’ Ben asked, looking at the clean hand while twirling her into the centre of the circle as everyone started grabbing at new meat.

  ‘Good old kerosene.’

  ‘They missed a bit under your eye.’

  ‘Bloody mascara,’ she said, giving her pantihose a hitch while he guided her expertly around the floor. And where the hell had he learned to dance? Maybe his oldies had taught him before the fire. Again he swung her out of the circle, then cut back in after the partner swap. He did it four times before the dragon got onto him and damn near wrestled him away from Danni, who found herself back in the arms of pasty faced George the goonsman from Canberra.

  ‘That waterbed is calling, babe. I always wanted to lift one of those skirts.’

  She did something she’d been dying to try for ages, and if he hadn’t been falling down drunk it may not have worked. She placed an ankle behind his knee; for a second he thought he’d got lucky, until she gave him a shove in the chest and he went sprawling.

  And she was away, disinterested in the outcome. She was heading for freedom, and bugger cutting up and passing out the wedding cake. High heels clicking, she ran for the stairs. And she tripped. Didn’t know how it happened. Head over heels she tumbled, feet entangled in petticoats, one second at the top of the stairs, the next flat out on the footpath below. No time to wonder if her back, her legs were broken, she was up and running, down the main street, around the Kmart corner, one sandal on, the fake flowers in her hair wilting in the last of the rain.

  ‘Christ,’ she said, safe in the shadows, taking time to feel her head. ‘Ouch,’ she yelped, removing her remaining sandal and delving beneath her petticoats, ripping off her pantihose, chucking them over a front fence. Her knee oozing blood, she limped on her way, hired petticoats dragging in the puddles.

  She was approaching the corner when the red utility pulled in to the kerb. ‘Hop in, Marshall. You’re getting wet.’

  ‘Who bloody cares?’ she said, but she got in. Ben drove her to her house.

  No key of course. It was with her car keys, wasn’t it? Locked inside. She hadn’t expected to be home before Darlene and the dragon.

  He followed her down the narrow cement path to the rear of the house. ‘Have you got a hidden key?’

  ‘No, but I’ve got a window and a convenient drainpipe. Ta for the ride, Ben. See you round.’

  ‘You’re not going to scale a drainpipe in that rig?’

  ‘Don’t bet on it.’ She stepped over a puddle, and it was a very bad move. A garden hose lay forgotten across the path. She trod on it, and as her right foot rolled, her gashed knee gave way. Reflexes threw her weight back onto her right foot, which sank in ankle deep mud. No options left but to grab for what she could. Him.

  He caught her, held her, remembering near forgotten nights when he’d held other girls in his arms. She felt light, but firm; she smelt of clean earth with just a whiff of kerosene.

  The moon chose to peer out at the rain-soaked land at that moment, lighting the right side of his face and leaving the left in darkness. He looked like a stranger, a tall, dark Prince Charming, and she stood pigeon-toed in the mud, gaping up at the perfect side of his face.

  He broke the clinch, lifted her with ease onto the windowsill. ‘Watch your feet. I’d hate to get mud all over Uncle Norm’s second best suit.’

  ‘It looks better on you.’

  He picked up her lone sandal from the mud, looked for its mate as she slid the window wide and scrambled inside, hauling her petticoats through.

  ‘I could have sworn you had two feet when you were dancing. What happened to the other shoe?’

  ‘Personally, my dear, I don’t give a damn. Ta for the boost up.’

  He waved a hand and backed off into the shadows.

  He found her at the garage on Sunday afternoon, and heard her cursing like a truckie as she struggled with the front cross member of a good looking Ford.

  ‘You again,’ she said, rubbing aged grease onto her nose as he proffered the missing sandal.

  ‘I tried it on every foot in town. You’re my last hope.’

  ‘I bet Darlene cut off her big toe,’ she said, adding grease to her chin.

  ‘The dragon lady did, with her carving knife – but the sandal still wouldn’t fit. It’s got to be yours.’ His grin was wide.

  ‘I’ll tell you what, Priestly, you give me a lift with this cross member, and I’ll shout you a beer. You can drink it out of my shoe.’

  ‘You’re on, Cinders,’ he said.

  Cultural Exchange

  Dear George,

  You’ll find tonight’s dinner in the freezer. All you need to do is take it out of its plastic bag and put it in the microwave, in its plastic container. Give it five minutes on medium, and another three on high. I’m sorry for doing it this way, George, but you’ll find forty-six dinners in there, all numbered. If you start at one and work your way through to forty-six, you won’t be eating the same meals twice in a row.

  I know I should have told you, but if I had, you would have convinced me again not to do it, and I want to do it. Wilma and I have been best friends since high school and back in form five we promised ourselves we’d go to England one day. As Wilma says, the bond that joins women is not a man-made ligature of gold, but an invisible non-restricting bond of mutual respect, trust and equality.

  I’ve used part of the money from our caravan account. I put half of it in, so it’s not as if I’m using your money, and we’ll never buy that caravan, because you’ll never leave your cat. Anyway, by the time you read this I’ll be on the plane. Wilma and Max are picking me up at six. My itinerary and the details of my travel insurance are in the green plastic folder you’ll find beneath this letter.

  Well, goodbye, George, and please write to me and tell me you forgive me for deceiving you, otherwise I’ll worry the whole time I’m away and won’t enjoy myself. The addresses of our hotels are all there. You’ll need to send your letters airmail, and allow a week for them to get there, so choose an address at least ten days ahead of the posting date.

  If you happen to be speaking to any of my workmates, don’t tell them
you didn’t know I was going. They think you’re shouting me the trip for my birthday. Wilma thinks you paid for it too, so if Max happens to call, don’t tell him you didn’t. He paid for her, and booked everything too. It’s going to be a wonderful trip. Look after my African violets and don’t let your cat into the sunroom.

  All of my love, Alice.

  Dear George,

  We’ve arrived and are in the hotel. Wilma is sleeping. I’m too excited to sleep. Seated high in the clouds for twenty-six hours was a truly spiritual experience, though the seats were very restricting. It’s amazing what old friends can find to talk about. We talked all the way. We were inseparable at school, and the years just fell away.

  Wilma is so worldly and well read. She went on to university, you know, only for six months, but it really shows. As she said to me on the plane, these weeks away from you will be a great learning experience for me.

  Don’t forget my African violets and please put the cat out at night. Love, Alice.

  Dear George,

  I’m writing this on the tour bus. We saw Windsor Castle this morning and I took a few photos. Wilma took an entire roll. Max bought her a new camera. It cost six hundred dollars. She said I can have her negatives if I want any prints. She’s very generous and she knows everything about everything. Please keep card, and do write to me, George. Love, Alice.

  Dear George,

  You could have written by now. I’m beginning to worry that you had a heart attack the morning I left and you’re lying there dead. Wilma had three letters waiting for her when we got to the hotel in Dublin. You know Craig, the oldest boy from her second marriage, well he’s got a boyfriend instead of a girlfriend. He said he wasn’t game to tell her at home, so he let her read it in a Dublin hotel – and sent her a photo. She says it doesn’t worry her, but I don’t know. And her youngest from her third marriage has got three children out of wedlock. I didn’t know that. I’m finding out a lot of things I didn’t know about her. We’ve booked twin share all the way but we’re having a week in a flat between tours, so that will be good. I’ve enclosed its address, so stop your sulking and write to me.