DAVE
Dave’s Volvo pulled up outside the NorMel Community Legal Centre, across the road from Mrs Hipsley’s high-rise government flats. The wind was whipping its way through the canyon between the buildings and a couple of women with shopping bags were clutching at their flapping burqas.
He and Nickie were here to deliver Mrs Hipsley’s cumbersome doll’s house. After yesterday’s effort in the semi-final, Dave reckoned his daughter had earned the right to just flop around and commune with her iPhone, but she thought Mrs Hipsley was ‘cute’ so she’d wanted to help. Dave saw this as a sign of a nascent social conscience and he was pretty chuffed.
‘Okay, sweetie?’
‘Yep.’
‘You’re a star, Nicks.’
They climbed out of the car, and as Dave opened the boot he spotted Chris Tatarka through the NorMel window, working at his desk. That’d be right, thought Dave, the guy’s a saint. He went over and tapped on the glass.
Chris looked up and waved cheerily. He got to his feet and opened the window. ‘Dave, mate. What brings you to these parts?’
‘Special delivery for a friend. You working on a Sunday?’
‘Why would I have a fucking life when I can draft an affidavit?’ Chris grinned. Then, spotting Nickie behind Dave, he called, ‘G’day.’
Nickie waved.
‘This is my daughter Nickie,’ Dave said pointedly, hoping that Chris would curb his language.
‘Nickie, good to meet you. Your old man’s our best fucking volunteer—and I’m not bullshitting.’
Nickie giggled.
Chris watched as Dave and Nickie tried to lift the unwieldy doll’s house out of the boot, then offered to lend them NorMel’s document trolley, which made things a lot easier. They wheeled the doll’s house across the road and into the building. Then they caught the lift up to the ninth floor and found Mrs Hipsley waiting in the drab corridor, atwitter with excitement about surprising her neighbour, Zafeera Kuoth, and her little twins.
‘Oh, David, Nickie, thank you. I can’t wait to see their faces!’
She rang their doorbell. Dave smiled. She was such a frail little thing, but her heart was bigger than Phar Lap’s, to coin an exhausted phrase, and Dave thought this Zafeera Kuoth was pretty lucky that Mrs Hipsley had taken her under her wing.
The door was opened by a young woman with a big beaming smile. Dave felt his own smile widen. She was wearing a brightly patterned dress (in ‘happy colours’, as his mum used to say), and sparkling disco ball earrings were swinging above her shoulders. Dave wasn’t normally the type of bloke who noticed earrings, but these were impossible to miss. Zafeera—that must be who she was—saw the doll’s house and her eyes lit up.
‘Mrs Hipsley! What’s this?’ she yelled.
‘It’s all right, Zafeera, I’ve got my hearing aids in,’ said Mrs Hipsley, and then she proudly performed the introductions.
‘Come in, come in,’ Zafeera cried warmly. ‘This is so awesome.’ As Dave squeezed through the door with his bulky cargo, she turned and called, ‘Amira! Tahani! Come and see this, quickly!’ She cleared some space on a table. ‘You can put it here.’
As Nickie helped Dave to transfer the doll’s house onto the table, two little girls in yellow dresses burst into the room.
‘What, Mummy?’
‘What is it?’
Dave’s heart flipped. They looked like bright little bookends.
‘Oooh, they’re so gorgeous.’ Nickie exclaimed.
‘Hello, my little poppets!’ said Mrs Hipsley.
Zafeera clapped her hands together. ‘Amira, Tahani, look what Mrs Hipsley and her friends Dave and Nickie have made for you.’
The girls squealed with delight and pored over the doll’s house, examining every nook and cranny and fingering the tiny furniture with awe. What was it about the sound of kids’ laughter? Dave thought there was no better sound in the world.
‘Isn’t it beautiful?’ said Zafeera. ‘What do you say?’
The girls dutifully tore themselves away from the doll’s house and trotted over to Mrs Hipsley. ‘Thank you, Mrs Hipsley,’ they said in thoroughly Aussie accents.
‘You’re welcome,’ said Mrs Hipsley, who was smiling so broadly that Dave thought her face might crack. ‘Can I have a kiss?’
She proffered a papery cheek and the little girls pecked it.
Zafeera nudged them in Dave and Nickie’s direction. ‘And what do you say to Dave and Nickie?’
‘Thank you,’ they mumbled, bowing their braided heads bashfully.
Dave would have liked to pick them up and toss them into the air, but he didn’t want to terrify them.
‘Our pleasure,’ he assured the girls.
He was impressed by Zafeera’s insistence on manners, especially as so few people seemed to teach their kids common courtesy these days. That probably made him sound like one of those grumpy old blokes on Sesame Street, but as far as he could see it was true. ‘Please’ and ‘thank you’ seemed to have become optional even in the most middle-class of families, so good for Zafeera.
Glancing around the small flat, Dave noticed that nothing was new but everything was in an immaculate state. He was starting to sense that Zafeera was one of those incredibly capable people, and he wondered how much she really needed Mrs Hipsley ‘looking after’ her.
Zafeera made a pot of tea and gave them all a slice of bishbosa, which turned out to be a delicious semolina cake, and as Dave cadged a second slice, Nickie rearranged miniature furniture with Amira and Tahani.
‘How can I ever thank you, Mrs Hipsley?’ Zafeera said affectionately. ‘I don’t know what we’d do without you.’
Mrs Hipsley’s concave chest swelled before Dave’s eyes.
‘Have you taken your warfarin today?’
‘Oh, I think I forgot.’
Zafeera tore a strip of paper from a magnetic notepad on her fridge and wrote Warfarin. She put the note into Mrs Hipsley’s hand. ‘Try to do it as soon as you get home. This will help you remember.’
Mrs Hipsley nodded obediently. ‘All right. Thank you, Zafeera.’
‘Mummy, look,’ called Amira or Tahani—Dave wasn’t sure which. ‘Come and see the baby toilet.’
Zafeera went over to join Nickie and her daughters, exclaiming over the doll’s house. A ray of sunshine danced through the window and her disco ball earrings caught the light. There was something inexplicably cheering about it.
‘Your earrings are awesome,’ Nickie said.
‘Thanks. My brother bought them for me. He’s a DJ.’
‘Yeah, DJ Kariem. He wanted me to wear these so people will ask about them and it’ll be free advertising for him. I told him he was an idiot, but it’s starting to look like he was right.’
Dave laughed. ‘That’s very enterprising. You should write DJ Kariem on them.’
‘No way. Don’t give him any ideas.’
Dave turned to the little girls. ‘Hey, what do you reckon? Would you like a disco ball for the doll’s house?’
‘A disco ball?’
‘Yeah.’
Zafeera shook her head. ‘I’ve only got one pair.’
‘No, I meant I’ll make a disco ball,’ Dave said. He could already feel his creative juices flowing as he thought of potential raw materials.
‘Dad’s good at that kind of stuff,’ Nickie said loyally. ‘He once made me an awesome crocodile out of a sock.’
Dave beamed at her, touched that she still remembered the crocodile—it wasn’t one of his better efforts. He spent the next fifteen thoroughly enjoyable minutes fashioning a disco ball out of Blu Tack and foil, and hanging it from the ‘living room’ ceiling with dental floss.
As they were leaving, Zafeera opened her freezer and pulled out a few home-cooked meals, handing them to Mrs Hipsley.
‘Here’s your kajaik, and your chicken pie.’ She went to a cupboard and took out a tin of baked beans and a can of sardines. ‘And here, take these too.’
Mrs Hipsley gave Zafeera a kiss. ‘Thank you, love.’
Dave smiled to himself. In spite of what Mrs Hipsley thought, it was obvious who was being looked after.
He and Nickie shepherded Mrs Hipsley back down the corridor, and the poor old thing shuffled along so slowly that Dave was half tempted to pop her onto Chris’s trolley. They deposited her in her poky flat, crammed with piles of romance novels. Dave found the sight oppressive, and the glumness he’d been trying to outrun since yesterday caught up with him. He attempted to shake it off.
‘Mrs Hipsley, why don’t you take your warfarin while we remember?’
He helped Mrs Hipsley with her medication and put her meals in her ancient freezer but, when he turned back, Nickie’s nose was stuck in a book called Bride for a Price.
‘Would you like to borrow that, love?’
‘No, she wouldn’t,’ Dave snapped. He whipped it out of her hands and Nickie rolled her eyes in teen disgust.
‘I’m going to, like, wait in the car. Bye, Mrs Hipsley.’
‘Bye-bye, love. Thanks for everything.’
Dave was about to say, ‘Wait, I’m coming too,’ but Nickie had already flounced out the door. He turned back to find Mrs Hipsley regarding him sympathetically.
‘How are things with you, David? Have you found yourself a nice lady yet?’
‘Oh, you know,’ replied Dave, but of course she didn’t, and he didn’t elaborate because there was nothing else to say. ‘Well, I’d better head off in case Nickie decides to drive home alone.’
Mrs Hipsley laughed with such appreciation that Dave could have sworn he was Oscar Wilde.
‘Oh, David!’