‘No long faces like old busted elastic,’ Dad said. ‘Mum’s chuffed at the chance of dropping in to see Gracie on the way. She’ll be back next week, and you’ve got me home to see to things till then.’
Heather, Cathy and Vivienne eyed each other glumly and re-read the telegram calling Mum away to look after her sick brother.
‘Bit of luck I was here when that came,’ Dad said smugly. ‘Otherwise you’d have been Orphan Annies for the week.’
‘I always think orphanages sound well run and lovely,’ Heather said. ‘Don’t take this the wrong way, but you don’t really know much about housekeeping and cooking, Dad.’
‘Nothing to know,’ Dad said. ‘It’s all commonsense and planning ahead, like making the porridge the night before and not wasting time on fancy stuff. Take what I’m making for tea now…spuds baked in the ashes, then scoop out the guts, plonk in bacon and a dollop of chutney, can of peaches to follow—and Bob’s your uncle!’
The meal, despite their wariness at having him home in charge of things, turned out to be delightfully like an indoors picnic, and afterwards he played Five Hundred with them all evening, using the contents of Mum’s button jar as betting money.
‘I think it’s high time you let one of us have a go at shuffling,’ Heather said.
‘Girls shouldn’t know how to shuffle. It doesn’t look ladylike.’
‘Better than having the same person getting the Joker four deals running!’
‘Cheating—me?’ Dad said, examining the beautiful hand of aces, kings, queens and jacks he’d just dealt himself, but a knock on the door interrupted the game.
It was Dad’s Aunt Ivy, and he immediately looked a great deal less pleased with life. She was the one person in the world who terrified him, and Heather, Cathy and Vivienne understood why. Aunt Ivy’s eyes were like little blue Bunsen burner flames as they flickered from the card game to the bacon-and-potato plates left carelessly on the hearth. Heather self-consciously put the cards back in their box and tried to push the plates under the hearth mat with her foot. She wished that the room looked more presentable, for as well as the clutter that was always there, Mum had added to it quite spectacularly in her rush to pack and catch the afternoon train.
‘I’ve come all the way down from Baroongal to lend a hand here even though it’s not convenient,’ Aunt Ivy barked. ‘I know my duty. Got a neighbour to drive me straight down soon as I heard about Connie’s brother being laid up with the pleurisy.’
‘It’s amazing how fast news travels around this town,’ Heather said. ‘We only got the wire ourselves just before lunch. It’s very kind of you, Aunt Ivy, but you needn’t have bothered. Dad’s got a free week, so he’s going to be home looking after us…’
‘Leighton? No one in their right mind would call him responsible enough to be looking after anyone!’ Aunt Ivy said crushingly. ‘One of you fetch my bag in from the veranda and put it in Grace’s old room. I suppose you’ve taken that over, Miss Heather, but you can just move right back in with your little sisters while I’m here. I certainly don’t intend sleeping on that old horsehair sofa—and would someone mind telling me why there’s a great pile of laddered stockings draped all over it?’
‘A whole week of being minded by her!’ Heather whispered, trying to find places in Cathy and Vivienne’s room for her hastily retrieved personal belongings. ‘If Mum had wanted her down here, she’d have sent a message. We could easily have coped on our own, anyway, or gone down to Isobel’s. Meddling old bossy boots, she’s just like in that poem—“The Assyrian came down like the wolf on the fold…” and we’re the poor sheep!’
‘Never mind, I expect she’ll nick off back to her own place soon as she tastes Dad’s porridge in the morning,’ Cathy said.
But Aunt Ivy was up before anyone else and had breakfast ready on the table. It was like nothing they’d ever seen before in their household—thin toast cut into triangles, a boiled egg at each place, the teapot wearing its cosy, and honey in the hive-shaped china container instead of a glass jar with buttery dribbles down the side. The revolting oatmeal porridge which Dad had made the previous evening and left simmering lumpily at the side of the stove all night had been thrown out to the ungrateful chooks. Amazingly, he didn’t bellow about it or even demand to know why the chutney wasn’t on the table, though he liked chutney over practically everything including boiled eggs.
‘Hurry up and finish your breakfast, girls, then get ready for church,’ Aunt Ivy said, emptying the teapot before anyone could pour second cups.
‘Church?’ Cathy said. ‘But…Heather’s the only one likes going to church! We were planning to go fishing with Dad this morning…’
‘Indeed?’
‘Oh yes, he had this plan worked out. Viv and me were going to keep lookout down in the cornfield while he pinched Mr Sylvester’s rowboat, and…’
‘They’ve got hold of the wrong end of the stick,’ Dad said hastily. ‘I’m always telling them they should turn up at that little church more often and listen to the padre instead of larking about on Sundays. As a matter of fact, I’d come along myself and set them a good example—only it just so happens my suit’s laid up in mothballs.’
‘It just so happens you’ll find it sponged and pressed and airing on the line,’ Aunt Ivy said. ‘I attended to it before breakfast.’
In church she knelt longer than anyone else, as though pointing out to God how she personally would have handled all the various catastrophes going on in the world that week. Vivienne considered that the hat she’d been forced to wear was one of them, imagining that everyone was staring at it and laughing. She’d been elated when no hat could be found for her, thinking she might be allowed to stay home, but Aunt Ivy didn’t acknowledge defeat in any form whatsoever. She’d unearthed a terrible old sun-hat from the laundry and given it a quick iron, but in spite of that, its red polka-dot brim dipped up and down like a fever chart.
To take her mind off the hideous hat, Vivienne gazed around the church, at the light filtering through the stained-glass windows, the carved lectern with its polished brass eagle, and the gold letters above the arch which said ‘Reverence My Sanctuary’. When she was small she’d never known what those words meant, but the syllables repeated inside her mind had always reminded her of the deep rich chime of an enormous bell. She looked at Mrs Robinson sitting importantly at the organ, and the snowy surplices and black mortar-boards of the choir. Anyone, even Heather, could look holy with an elegant silk tassel dangling over one eye, but red polka-dots were another matter altogether…
‘Stop fiddling with your hat in church,’ Aunt Ivy whispered, giving her a sharp nip on the arm. Vivienne sat up straight, feeling badly done by. If anyone deserved that pinch it was Cathy, who was playing with the alphabet game she’d got for Christmas under the cover of a hymn book. The alphabet game was small enough to be held in the palm of one hand, with sliding squares which had to be arranged in order, but Cathy was just composing rude words.
Dad, sitting next to the aisle in a glowering sulk, was obviously thinking them. Vivienne felt sorry for him, knowing how much he detested being forced to wear a tie, which he regarded as the equivalent of a hangman’s noose. A tie, and instead of his beloved elastic-sided boots, laced-up shoes to go with the suit—he kept eyeing the shoes balefully as though his feet were being held to ransom. Vivienne suspected that if he’d had a pocket-knife handy, he might very well have used it to carve his initials on the seat in frustration. He hated being made to sit still anywhere, and brightened up only when everyone rose for the first hymn. Community singing was something he adored, and not knowing the words or tune to anything didn’t ever stop him from joining in. His voice thundered out now, swamping even the choir baritones, and Mrs Robinson at the organ kept skipping whole bars to catch up with him. But in between hymns he returned to his sulking, and when the service finished he darted out of church before anyone else and made for the gate. Aunt Ivy hauled him briskly back and made him chat to the ladies she met once or twice a year when she left her property to come to town. Dad hovered on the edge of the little group, twirling his hat around by the brim and looking desperate.
Next morning, getting ready for school, it was Heather, Cathy and Vivienne’s turn to feel desperate.
‘Catherine Melling, you’re certainly not going anywhere looking like a prisoner in a dungeon,’ Aunt Ivy said. ‘Come here while I plait your hair.’
‘Only little primary-school kids like Viv wear plaits!’ Cathy protested, but Aunt Ivy made a determined grab and manufactured two plaits as stiff as antlers. Heather, sidling hurriedly from the house, was called back and ordered to change her socks for the black ribbed stockings she loathed, for Aunt Ivy had apparently made it her business to know just what was the proper high-school uniform. Aunt Ivy also noticed the artistic wristwatch and ring Vivienne had inked on her hand last night, and the whole lot was sandsoaped painfully off over the laundry trough.
‘There,’ Aunt Ivy said triumphantly. ‘You’ve got to get up early in the morning to put one over on me, I can tell you. Off you go, girls. And Leighton—you can just stir your stumps, too. I’ve noticed quite a few odd jobs needing to be done around this place, inside and out!’
Odd jobs didn’t seem an adequate description, as they saw when they got home from school that afternoon. The broken panel in the front door had been replaced, the veranda steps scoured with a wire brush down to their original coat of paint, also the concrete path around the side of the house. They followed it, discovering other marvels. The sagging fowl-yard fence had been mended, the lantana cut back, there were new props under the washing-lines which creaked under a vast burden of drying clothes.
‘My goodness!’ Heather whispered. ‘There’s those flared shorts we haven’t seen since last year and accused Isobel Dion of pinching! And look—Aunt Ivy’s even made Dad hand over his riding breeches to be washed! No one’s ever managed to do that before!’
‘You can have a glass of milk and a rock cake, girls, then get changed out of your school uniforms,’ Aunt Ivy called from the back steps. ‘Tell your dad he can stop for a cuppa, too—he’s whitewashing out the cowshed.’
There were more marvels inside the house, which sparkled like a waterfall. The scrubbed floors smelled of pine disinfectant, the kitchen stove was freshly blacked, every shelf lined with clean newspaper, the rocking-chair turned upside down and all the dust hooked from its curlicues, even the draught-stoppers had been taken from the doors, washed and hung to dry over the veranda rails.
Cathy greedily put a whole rock cake in her mouth, but scooped it hurriedly out, deciding that it tasted like ammunition. She felt Bluey’s cold nose nudging at her ankle and was able to whisk the spitty rock cake under the table without being seen. Bluey choked and gagged, drawing attention to himself. Aunt Ivy grabbed up the broom and swept him down the back steps and under the tank-stand. He crouched there sadly, his whole universe jumbled, for as far as he could fathom his sole purpose in life was to move in a small fixed orbit with Dad as its sun.
‘Hurry up and finish, girls, I want you to get started on that room of yours,’ Aunt Ivy said.
‘Our room?’
‘Your rubbish tip, more likely. I want that chest of drawers tidied out completely, all the walls scrubbed down, and those books taken off the window ledge and put back neatly in the lounge-room cupboard. I don’t know what your mother’s thinking of, letting you ruin your eyesight reading in bed! After that you can wax the lino, maybe we’ll find out what colour it is.’
‘It’s not really my room any more,’ Heather said sneakily. ‘I don’t have to help them, do I?’
‘Satan finds mischief for idle hands—you can clean the windows in there, Miss Lazy. And Leighton, don’t think you’re going to be sitting there swilling tea all afternoon, either—you’ve still got that mail-box to fix. It’s an utter disgrace having an old bread-box nailed to the electricity pole, and a mystery why Connie’s put up with it for so long.’
‘Dad likes that old bread-box,’ Vivienne said indignantly as they toiled away in the bedroom. ‘It’s what they used as a mail-box when they married and it’s been at every house they’ve ever lived in. How would Aunt Ivy like it if we went up to her place and started telling her how to do things?’
‘Maybe we can get away with just pushing everything under the wardrobe and wiping over the walls so they look wet and shiny,’ Cathy suggested, but Aunt Ivy brought dustpan, broom, dusters and mop to supervise their work personally. To Heather’s shame, Lady Regina came to light in the upheaval. Lady Regina was a peg doll living in a shoebox fitted with silver-paper mirrors and a matchbox dressing-table. Aunt Ivy upended it on to the floor and demanded, ‘What on earth’s all this?’
‘That’s Lady Regina Lombardy—Heather made her up,’ Cathy explained treacherously. ‘She’s an adventuress travelling around the world and it’s supposed to be the cabin in her private yacht…’
‘You fibber, I haven’t played with her for years!’ Heather cried. ‘And it was Isobel invented her in the first place, not me…Anyhow, I only do it to amuse Cathy and Vivienne.’
‘Rot, you never even let us touch her! That red wool’s her hair, Aunt Ivy. Heather crimps it up on wet matchsticks and pretends Lady Regina’s just gone to a beauty salon. She’s got a whole lot of strapless cocktail dresses, too, and Heather reckons she doesn’t even need a bra underneath.’
Heather made a red-faced dive at the scraps of satin and the miniature stoles made from chicken feathers.
‘Lady Regina’s been engaged seventeen times so far on her cruise, and she’s only got as far as Monte Carlo yet,’ Cathy added gleefully. ‘Heather says a handsome naval officer’s turning up soon and he’s going to be Lady Regina’s Mr Right—or at least Mr Right until something richer and better comes along.’
‘I think you read far too many trashy books, young lady, and you’re far too old to play with dolls,’ Aunt Ivy told Heather severely, tipping Lady Regina and her glamorous wardrobe out with the other rubbish.
Heather went out on a secret rescue mission after tea, but the cow had trodden on Lady Regina and snapped her in two. She stood looking at the peg doll for a few minutes, knowing that Aunt Ivy was quite right—she was far too old for such games. Grace, for example, at the same age had enrolled in a correspondence course for typing. She tossed Lady Regina over the fence, feeling as though a link in a chain had been broken, then went back inside to an evening that was almost unendurable.
She and Cathy did their homework in unaccustomed silence without their usual territorial battles over table space. Vivienne, homeworkless, was made to help wind Aunt Ivy’s wool. She wished that someone would invent yarn that came already prepared, instead of long, seemingly endless skeins that had to be held tautly on outstretched arms. Whenever she lowered her aching arms, Aunt Ivy, winding each skein into a neat ball ready for knitting, clucked in exasperation and said that girls these days were bone lazy. Dad sat gloomily by the fire, at a complete loss because Aunt Ivy wouldn’t let him listen to his favourite serial which he’d been following for years. She claimed it wasn’t suitable for young girls to listen to, and none of them liked to say that they, too, had been following it for years. At nine-thirty she made everyone go to bed without supper, for she didn’t approve of snacks before bed-time.
At nine forty-five, feeling lonesome for Mum in the bleakly clean and bookless room, Heather, Cathy and Vivienne crept into the kitchen to comfort themselves with French toast and egg nog. Dad was there before them, claiming that he couldn’t sleep either because the whole house reeked of pine cleaner.
‘I’m not going to be able to stand that old lady wolf for even one more day!’ Heather said, hunting for cinnamon to put in the egg nog. ‘Everything’s changed about and awful—just look in the cannisters for instance!’
They inspected the cannisters above the stove and found that each held exactly what the label on the outside claimed—flour, sugar, rice, sago and tea. In their collective memory such a thing had never happened before. With Mum in charge of those cannisters, you never knew just what you’d find inside—lost keys, ancient Rice Bubbles, fossilised lemon peel, bits of string saved to tie up plants—and once, Vivienne reflected, a little bird with an injured wing being nursed tenderly back to health.
‘Five more days to get through!’ Cathy said sadly. ‘Dad, you reckon you once fought off a whole enemy platoon single-handed in the desert—why don’t you just tell her to go home?’
‘Have a heart,’ Dad said. ‘Aunt Ivy’s a different kettle of fish. I’ve seen her wade in and bust up a barney in a shearing-shed with only a little rolling-pin.’
‘In other words we’re expected to just lump it till Mum comes home,’ Heather said. ‘Well, count me out! I’m inviting myself down to Isobel’s after school tomorrow night and every other night until Mum gets back!’
‘Me too!’ Cathy cried.
‘And me!’ Vivienne said.
‘That Isobel’s a dingbat and so’s her mother, barmy as bandicoots the pair of them! You don’t want to camp down there…’
‘Better than up here with Aunt Ivy.’
‘Listen, you can’t do this to a bloke! If you all nick off, there’s only going to be me here to get picked on!’
‘Better you than us,’ they said heartlessly, but because he looked so miserable, they made him an extra round of French toast.
‘Bloody woman, why couldn’t she just stay up the river and get on with her feud?’ he muttered crossly, refusing to cheer up.
‘What feud’s that? There wouldn’t be anyone brave enough to start one with her!’
‘Old Mrs Gammon who lives down the road from her did. One of them won a prize in the Show for a cake ten years back and the other one reckoned there’d been a mix-up and she should have got it instead. Jealous, just like two squally cats, and they’ve been at it ever since…’
‘What may I ask is going on out here?’ Aunt Ivy said at the door, making them all jump. ‘Leighton Melling, I’m surprised at you letting these children get up and ruin their digestions in the middle of the night—not to mention joining in yourself!’
‘Me? I only came out to send them back to bed with a flea in their ear,’ Dad lied.
They all gasped at his craven deceit and still weren’t speaking to him in the morning. He deserved to be left alone with Aunt Ivy, they decided, but their personal escape plans came to nothing. Aunt Ivy spotted pyjamas and toothbrushes in various school-bags and said she certainly wouldn’t allow them to spend the night at any other house, especially not Isobel Dion’s, while she was responsible for them in Mum’s absence. And besides, they had to come straight home after school to give Dad a hand cleaning all the rubbish out of the shed. Heather, Cathy and Vivienne turned pale at the prospect, but Dad, oddly enough, didn’t react, even though no one was ever allowed to touch as much as a roofing nail amongst all his years of jealously hoarded shed junk.
‘I’ll make a start on the shed right after breakfast,’ he said virtuously. ‘Been meaning to do it for months, really. Oh, by the way, Aunt Ivy, you know that old feller Bert Gammon lives up your way?’
Aunt Ivy glanced at him with irritation. ‘Naturally I do, seeing he’s a neighbour. Now, about that shed—you’re going to have to make a whole lot of trips to the tip. I counted four rusty old ploughs in there and what looks like a complete tractor taken to pieces…’
‘I was having a bit of a yarn to Bert over the front fence before I did the milking this morning,’ Dad said. ‘He came downtown early to pick up a new sawblade.’
‘I’m not particularly interested in those Gammons and what they do with their time,’ Aunt Ivy said. ‘When the shed’s cleared out it could do with a lick of paint…’
‘Bert said to give you his regards. Oh…and his missus sends hers and wants to know just when you’re planning to sell up.’
‘Sell up? I’m certainly not planning to sell anything! Why on earth would they have such a stupid idea?’
‘Well, as far as I can make out they seem to think you’re planning on living down here permanently. With us, to be close to the hospital. Bert says he was very sorry to hear about your ticker, but his missus wasn’t surprised—she thought you’ve been looking a bit pale round the gills lately.’
‘The nerve of that Agnes Gammon—I’ve never had a day’s sickness in my life!’
‘Aunt Ivy, I’ve really got to hand it to you,’ Dad said admiringly. ‘You’re a real old battler, and even if you had double pneumonia you’d just pass it off as hayfever. You should have told us you’ve been crook, you know. Tearing around doing all the work here, it’s not right, specially if the old ticker’s mucking up on you. I don’t think you should walk up that hill to the hospital for treatment, either—one of the girls can nick up there and get a lend of a wheelchair…’
‘I’ve never ever been to hospital and I don’t intend to!’ Aunt Ivy said with scorn. ‘Illness is all in the mind. Why, that time I gashed my leg out in the paddock I just boiled up a needle and thread and stitched it up myself! Looking poorly, indeed—I can run rings around Agnes Gammon any old day! Gossip-mongers, that’s all they are up in Baroongal. Leave that place for five minutes and they’re all hard at it, ripping people’s reputations to shreds! There’s nothing wrong with my heart…’
‘Well, I’m pleased to hear it. The way Bert was telling it, you wouldn’t even be up to putting your cake entry in the Show this year.’
‘Oh, won’t I, indeed? If Agnes Gammon thinks that, she’s in for a very nasty shock!’
‘I’m pleased to hear there’s nothing wrong with your health,’ Dad said. ‘They’re a lot of blabbermouths up there, just like you said. I know what you mean about that Mrs Gammon, she sounds the type can do you serious dirt if you’re not there to keep her in check. Take that other thing Bert mentioned, those little frippery icing things you put on cakes…’
‘Just what are you talking about, Leighton?’
‘Not me—Bert’s missus. She reckoned to Bert you’ll probably be buying a packet of those little icing things ready-made from the bakery on account of your arthritis. To put on your Show cake, if you can manage to get one made in time this year…’
‘Ready-made cake decorations from the bakery?’ Aunt Ivy said faintly. ‘You girls—I don’t know why you’re all still sitting around when it’s time you were off to school. You’re big enough to get yourself off to school without being stood over…and as a matter of fact, Leighton, I don’t see why on earth you couldn’t all manage on your own till Connie gets back.’
‘I suppose I could,’ Dad said. ‘It’s just a matter of keeping noses to the grindstone. I’ll get on to those bone-idle hussies soon as they come home from school, make sure none of the chores get skimped. Too much larking around and frittering away their time, that’s the trouble…’
‘I’d stay a bit longer, of course, but there’s a few things I have to get done up at my place. My little fondant icing flowers I make every year, got to get them just right. More than right—perfect. What time does the mail-van pass by here?’
‘About twenty minutes,’ Dad said. ‘You girls, where’s your manners, look lively and give your aunt a hand with her packing.’
‘Dad,’ Cathy said, cunningly staying behind to unbraid her antler plaits. ‘You went straight out the back to do the milking this morning—I saw you.’
‘So what?’ Dad asked, whistling.
‘So—how could you possibly have talked to anyone over the front fence?’
‘Hold your gabby tongue,’ Dad whispered. ‘Or I won’t let you wag school and come fishing with me.’