‘That her?’ Noah asked, scuffing over to Maggie on the pub veranda. He swung an arm over her shoulder with ease. In the last six months her son had shot up to—in the old measure—just on six feet tall, dwarfing Maggie’s very average five-foot-eight.
‘Sure is, bud.’
The young woman behind the wheel of the canary-yellow convertible now parked parallel to the kerb—taking up three nose-to-kerb spaces—seemed much younger without the harsh hairdo, the hat, and the ever-present glass of champagne. After a glance in the rear-view mirror and a quick fluffing of her hair, Fiona slid dark sunglasses onto the top of her head, holding back the frizzy, fiery mane of curls.
‘Here I am,’ she called, smiling and waving.
Indeed! But where was the surly, spoilt brat from the funeral? This girl looked all private school charm and compliance. Except for the parallel park. What had made the difference? Maggie doubted a stern talking to from Phillip would have made any impression on the girl, much less found its way through the veneer of mineral makeup powder and London-look mascara so thick the girl’s gluggy lashes were visible from ten paces. With the same natural Nicole Kidman curls Amber had hated, and the next-to-nothing waistline, Fiona Blair looked remarkably like the woman she’d openly blamed for—what were the words Fiona had blurted the day of the funeral? Oh, yes—ruining her life!
The girl hardly looked ruined in her flowing sensation of a shirt and with legs of a praying mantis poured into designer jeans, not that Maggie knew too much about designer anything. She knew enough to know the things she couldn’t afford and anything starting with the word designer was right up there on the top of her list. Most people around here weren’t into designer anyway. In contrast to the comfy country curves of most Calingarry Crossing locals—one of whom Maggie now considered herself to be—there was very little of Fiona.
‘Nice wheels,’ Noah said to Maggie.
‘If you say so. Hardly practical for the country.’ Obviously it was appropriate to despise your dead mother and still take ownership of her car. ‘Remember what I said, Noah. She’s a city girl and she’s just—’
‘No wuckin’ furries, Mum.’ Noah nudged his mother’s arm playfully.
Maggie nudged him back with a warning squint. ‘Please don’t say that. You know I hate it.’ Her arm twitched, itching to smooth the over-gelled hair, the latest addition to her son’s gradual transformation from uncool, clean-cut kid, to something from a Twilight movie.
Generation Y. Why indeed? Why so much black, and why was it when kids wanted to fit in they did everything they could to make themselves different? How he even tolerated wearing black in these temperatures bemused and bothered Maggie, until she recalled the number of times she’d let vanity keep her warm—just barely—when she was young and night-clubbing in the middle of a Sydney winter, wearing very little of everything in order to achieve maximum impact.
‘Now, what about helping Fiona with her suitcase?’
‘Suitcase-es,’ Noah grumbled. ‘How long’s she planning to stay?’
‘Go. Now,’ Maggie growled, distracted by Fiona applying a dab of lip-gloss and the notion that perhaps all the girl’s fat had gone looking for her lips—and found them.
Noah leapt the two steps, hitched the waistline of his jeans up, and swaggered over to the Saab convertible. How long was she planning to stay? The invitation, which Maggie had been kicking herself over after finding out Fiona intended on accepting, was not meant to be a two-suitcase arrangement. Calingarry Crossing was sweltering, with higher than average temperatures for this time of year. One bag would have been ample for a short stay: a few light tops, shorts, sandals. Although Maggie had initially offered for her to lodge at the pub, she’d thought the girl might have chosen to stay with her grandmother, rather than a stranger. Fiona was five star and Maggie’s pub would be lucky to be awarded one. Then again, Fiona’s grandmother—the one Fiona hadn’t known about until recently—was as much a stranger as Maggie was.
You’ve got a big mouth, Maggie.
She groaned at her son’s body language: the puffing up of a budding chest and the flick of his head that momentarily shifted the one gelled clump of fringe from his eyes. From memory her son’s eyes were a cerulean colour, like his father’s, only it felt like she hadn’t seen them for so long—his or Brian’s.
Ethne came from inside and sidled up to her boss. The brash British barmaid had somehow become sister, aunty, mother and friend, her fleshy, flabby proportions strangely comforting whenever Maggie needed a hug.
‘Awright there, love?’ she asked Maggie. ‘Bit of peacockin’ going on over there, I reckon. Makes you realise how grown up he’s gettin’ now. Not sure which one’s puffin’ up more, though. Sure is a pretty Miss Priss, and a tempting one I’d say.’
‘Oh please, do not let my mind go there. Besides, she’s too old for Noah.’
‘Hmm, yes, older woman and younger man. Never happens.’ Ethne nudged Maggie’s shoulder.
‘He’s hardly a man.’
‘Look again, love.’
Maggie knew how fast Noah was growing up without looking. The signs were everywhere. ‘Don’t suppose it’s legal to chain your son up to his bed at night, is it?’
Ethne’s trill when she laughed always sounded at odds with the woman’s very generous proportions. She stood there in the purple promotional T-shirt like a bulging signboard for bourbon whiskey, hair like grey fairy floss, a flowing purple peasant skirt and a sleeveless patchwork vest with buttons that had no hope of ever buttoning.
‘It is the first day of October,’ the barmaid said, looking up at Maggie over her half-glasses.
‘What’s that got to do with anything?’
‘Summer storm season officially starts today.’
Maggie did know that. Tracking weather patterns was part and parcel of life in the country where one intense event could mean the difference between bumper crops or no crops at all. They’d had so much rain already this year. One extreme, then the other. Politicians were gleefully announcing, ‘No more drought’ and ‘The drought is over’. The reality was though, now they’d finished lamenting the dry, locals were cursing a new menace …
Too much blasted rain.
If the early heat first thing in the morning and the increasing grey clouds each afternoon hadn’t been enough to let Maggie know storm season was close, the half-dozen men in orange in the beer garden yesterday had reminded her. The week before, there’d been a briefing for the local State Emergency Service volunteers and Ethne had needed time off work to attend. What a remarkable sight. Ethne in the bright orange SES overalls, which she wore with pride and always kept handy so she’d be ready when needed.
‘And what’s the official start of storm season got to do with anything right now?’ Maggie asked, looking at a Wedgwood sky—blue, patterned with white. ‘Looks like a perfectly beautiful day to me.’
‘No time for complacency. The SES suggests people batten down and prepare when storms are due, and it’s looking like we might be seeing our first-ever inland cyclone—called Fiona.’
‘Very funny.’
‘Thinkin’ I might look up the manual to see what the SES suggests you do with your son when a Category Five storm like that one hits town.’
‘Even funnier. Thanks. You’re a lot of help.’
‘I try. Come on. Best prepare to welcome your guest.’
That night was the quietest dinner on record: Maggie angry at herself for having created this situation, Fiona apparently angry at the peas for refusing to stay on her fork, and Noah? He seemed different from the sullen, silent son he’d been morphing into over the last year or so, angry at the entire world.
‘All settled in, Fiona?’ Maggie enquired.
‘Yes. Thanks,’ she added as an afterthought, or perhaps because her attention was on something more interesting on her mobile phone.
At the last minute this morning, Maggie had changed her mind about putting Fiona in the residence, instead preparing a single room at the far end of the first-floor accommodation. Calingarry Crossing’s hotel was much like every other two-storey country pub: a corner position on the main street, decorative balustrades, weathered boards on the outside, high ceilings and fancy cornices inside, and small but comfortable upstairs guest rooms. In addition to Fiona’s pub room having a single bed, it was one of two rooms with a private bathroom, which meant no sharing the common facilities. Maggie had already cleaned the room, aired it, and added a small vase with lavender stems she’d picked from the bush growing without much attention at the back of the hotel.
As Maggie had left Fiona to settle in, the vase of lavender was the first thing pushed aside without regard in order to make way for the Gucci carryall. She could only pray that after familiarising herself with the town and her grandmother in the next day or two, the girl would feel comfortable enough to move in with her and out of Maggie’s pub. Until then, Maggie would have to practise patience.
‘How was school today?’ she asked her son, hoping for more than a one-syllable response.
‘Same.’
‘Did you remember to feed the dogs tonight?’
‘I’ll do it after X Factor.’
Maggie was learning to dislike reality TV shows, particularly those that fed false hope to people seeking stardom. What was it her father always said? ‘A person can’t be a star. The only stars are God’s creation and they are firmly set in the sky.’ Reality never lived up to the dream, in Maggie’s experience, but at the same time she didn’t want to quash her son’s enthusiasm for his music. While he had talent, she wanted him to see there was more he could do with that talent than sing on a stage.
‘Dogs first, homework, then television,’ she said. ‘In that order.’
‘Geez, Mum, give me a break.’ Noah glared, first at Maggie and then in Fiona’s direction, his cheeks red. What had once been an adorable blush on her baby boy was suddenly an agonising flush of embarrassment.
Maggie took a deep breath. ‘I’m sorry, Noah, but you do have homework, don’t you?’
‘I’ve done most of it.’
‘Well, the rest shouldn’t take too long then.’
With a groan, Noah picked up his plate and left Maggie alone with Fiona, who had one hand still poking peas around the plate with her fork while the other hand poked her phone.
Even from her seat on the opposite side of the table Maggie could smell a strong perfume, the scent of a woman bathed in lotions and potions meant to allure as much as beautify, a trifecta of sickly-sweet fragrance, hair product and moisturiser. She’d noticed it waft by as Fiona swept past her on the way into the hotel earlier. Unlike Amber’s classic sophistication, Fiona’s beauty was in her bohemian look, exaggerated by big gypsy earrings, eyeliner that turned up at the outer corners of big, blue get-whatever-you-want eyes, and a tiny nose stud—diamond, of course—in the crease of one nostril. Then there was the tattoo of a feather Maggie spotted on the back of her neck. Not hard to miss tonight with Fiona having pinned up her hair with what looked like two small gem-encrusted chopsticks.
They probably weren’t chopsticks any more than they were fake gemstones, Maggie surmised. She was, after all, Amber Bailey-Blair’s daughter.
‘Fiona?’ Maggie tried again. ‘Did you want to talk about anything?’
‘I have a call to make,’ she said, pushing the plate with her half-eaten meal into the centre of the table for the invisible servant to carry to the kitchen and wash up. ‘I’ll be in my room.’
Open-mouthed, Maggie watched the girl leave before letting her own knife and fork drop heavily, the clunk of metal on ceramic disguising her huff.
That went well, Maggie.
‘Here ya go, love.’
A glass of red wine came from behind and slid under Maggie’s nose.
‘Thanks, Ethne. I shouldn’t.’
‘Yes, you should. Medicinal.’
‘Hardly.’
‘Drink it down. I’m trained in emergency situations and this is an emergency. No different to giving brandy to someone unconscious in the snow.’
Maggie stared up at the woman. ‘Our local emergency service training teaches you what to do with unconscious people in the snow?’
‘Of course not. This one’s from my own personal remedies. I figure you’ll be unconscious soon enough if you keep hittin’ your head on that brick wall.’
‘You heard, huh?’
‘Heard what? The sounds of shitty-livered silence?’ Ethne waved her cleaning cloth in the air before focusing on a red-wine stain on the adjacent table. ‘You know it can take a few days for the new chick to settle in.’
‘Hmm, yes, but she’s not my chick. Not my problem at all.’
‘I sure hope, for your sake, she’s not going to be a problem.’
It had been a quiet night in the dining room with only a few locals dropping in and an older couple who were passing through on their way to relatives at one of the stations further west. Maggie had told them about the state of the pot-holed local road and the number of gates they’d have to access, offering them a room if they wanted to wait until morning. They did. The couple told Maggie they were touring the state. ‘Having ourselves a little adventure and spending the kids’ inheritance,’ the man had explained with a chuckle. Then the pair had kissed and giggled like newly-weds, while Maggie watched from the bar, envy dragging her down.
‘So mother bird, you want me to stay on ’til close tonight?’
‘Would you mind, Ethne? I’m in no mood to be chatty and no one wants a grumpy barmaid.’
‘You best get some sleep. You’ve got that brekkie meeting about the centenary fair day tomorrow. More brick walls to hit your head against there too, I reckon.’
‘I’d prefer to stick my head in the sand until it’s all over. Why did I volunteer?’
‘You were volunteered, as I recall, and sticking your head in the sand ’round these parts will only get it bit by bull ants.’
‘Like I said … that sounds preferable to me.’
Ethne sniggered. ‘Awright now, you go on, love. Old Barney’s out there. He’ll be holdin’ up the bar ’til close. He can make himself useful and help me lock up.’
‘Old Barnacle Bill? He’ll probably help you do more than that if you let him.’
Ethne chirruped. ‘Yeah, like that’s ever going to happen at my age.’
Or mine, Maggie mused, heading off to an empty bed with hopes of something that resembled sleep.