The full mechanics of a swift departure
Suddenly, Marie. Suddenly, Marie, wobbly on her feet, holding on to the screen door. She stood as straight and tall as she could, conscious only of overcoming her embarrassment. She had fixed her hair as best she could and rehearsed both her entrance and the full mechanics of a swift departure. What she had not reckoned on was such a crowd, an audience comprising half the population of The Landing. She had an advantage, though, the noise of the crying children being so loud she managed to assess the crowd before it assessed her.
‘Good morning,’ she announced to the startled audience. ‘Your entertainment has arrived, but I fear it will not be as amusing as last night.’ She looked at Jonathan. ‘Forgive me. I was under the impression it was only drunken teenage girls who put on such an impressive display.’
He smiled, protesting at once; Penny leaped up and Scarlett rushed towards her, crying, ‘Grandma! Are you all right?’ Everyone made a fuss, Celia with her flowers, which she insisted everyone admire; Phil with his collection of red-back stories, with his unwanted spidery advice. She was made to sit down, she was made to accept a cup of weak camomile tea. Then Penny raced off to bring back the car and it was straight to Gympie Hospital, tout de suite, Scarlett insisting she come along too, together with her two impossibly behaved children. Marie loved her granddaughter, but her love did not yet extend to her wailing great-grandchildren, who were altogether too grimy, perpetually covered in dirt and snot. In her day, children were clean, freshly scrubbed, and did not wrestle interminably on the floor or fight over every single thing. Penny and Rosie never fought in their entire lives, not once.
At the hospital, Penny watched with a sort of grudging, withheld respect as her mother resumed command. Yes, she wore a hat to sit out in the sun in the garden of that abominable retirement home from whence she came. No, she had not felt a bite; the stupid nurse at that abominable place thought she had an eye infection! The spider was possibly a resident of her hat; the doctor advised that on her return home she should turn out her hat, all her clothes, give everything a good shake.
‘You might check the bedsheets, too,’ the resident emergency doctor added; he was a personable, smiling young man from Kenya. ‘They are devilish little fellows.’
When he momentarily stepped from the room, Marie said in a loud stage whisper to Penny—who insisted on coming into the room with her—that she had never seen such black satiny skin in her life. ‘Black as the ace of spades,’ she said.
On his return, she gave him a grilling, designed to make sure he had not bought his medical degree over the internet. Satisfied as to his credentials, she clearly remained unconvinced about the extent of his grasp of Australia’s native wildlife.
‘Do you have red-back spiders in Kenya?’ she enquired.
‘No, ma’am, we do not,’ he replied. ‘We have funnel-webs, however—though unlike yours, our funnel-webs are harmless. Our dangerous creatures are usually larger.’ He laughed, showing all his teeth, dazzling against his black skin.
Marie hoped he knew what he was talking about. She still felt slightly nauseous, and the lump on her eyebrow throbbed. She was not dying after all; today was not her moment.
In the waiting room, Scarlett was having trouble controlling her children. ‘Oh, please sit down,’ she said in a hopeless sort of voice, as if she did not expect them to pay the slightest attention. They were in the children’s corner, playing with the toys, which meant they were chucking things at each other. An exasperated nurse kept shooting hard glances at Scarlett, which she either did not see or chose to ignore.
‘Come on, Scarlett,’ said Penny in a cross voice, picking up Hippy, slinging him on one hip. With her free hand she tried to guide her mother and her frame out the door; Scarlett fell behind, trying to round up Ajax, who was evading capture, shrieking, running around hysterically.
‘I’m going to buy you a blue heeler, Scarlett,’ Penny said. ‘A cattle dog could do a better job than you.’
Now it was Scarlett’s turn to fling a hard glance at her mother. ‘Don’t give me the evil eye, young lady,’ Penny said.
By lunchtime, order was restored; restored as far as it could possibly be. Both boys were asleep, collapsed like puppies on a rug in front of the television. Further up the corridor, Marie was asleep too, floating upon brand-new sheets, carefully checked for devilish fellows. There was a knock at the door. Annoyed, Penny moved as quietly as she could up the corridor.
‘Can I play with the babies?’ Giselle asked loudly, her anxious little face a triangle of hope.
‘Sorry, sweetie, they’re asleep,’ Penny whispered, making a shushing shape with her fingers and lips. She smiled, shutting the door.
‘When will they wake up?’
Penny opened the door a crack. ‘I don’t know. We’re pretty busy today, Giselle. Why don’t you try another day, sweetheart?’
The child did not move.
‘Off you go, love,’ Penny said encouragingly.
With a sad, solemn acknowledgement of her head, Giselle turned away.
Inside, Penny wordlessly indicated to Scarlett they should move away from the sleeping children and into the kitchen. Fortified by coffee and Panadol and water and fizzy vitamin pills, Penny had started to revive. She shook the image of Giselle from her head: some watermark of shame was upon Penny still but, now, in the quiet gloom of the shuttered house, no-one present other than her own family, she allowed herself a moment of respite. What could she possibly do for the poor child? She had enough problems of her own: for some time she had wanted to talk to Scarlett about going back to study; she wanted not to erase her daughter’s mistakes, but to adjust them; she knew enough about mistakes to know some were incurable, even fatal. Penny would live forever with the sight of Scarlett emerging through the arrivals tunnel at Brisbane International Airport, her face anxious, puffy, her belly full of baby, her life undone. She and Paul, back at The Landing, not in glorious triumph but because Scarlett was, after all, only a frightened teenage girl, suddenly in need of her mother.