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29. Citizens’ Action

(for Nicky)

Gemma is a regular tram commuter. She comes home late from work on a Friday, tired and more than usually irritated by the design of the pedestrian access paths, redone only a few years ago. At her stop pedestrians are now channelled onto the road at a point where it is almost impossible to see cars coming from the direction of the city.

The stop is a popular one and the regulars have made their own decision. They leave the city tram in their dozens and inch along the edge of the platform ignoring the official exit altogether, hopping across a path and along beside the tram tracks to the boom gates at the level crossing. From here it is possible to see in both directions. And there is an island, pedestrian haven, in the middle of the road.

The only disadvantage of this route is for people like Gemma whose legs are not long. The step down from the platform beside the track is uncomfortably steep.

 Gemma, never one to tolerate loose ends, has thought of a solution. On a neighbour’s verge there is a throw-out, a large block of heavy-duty composite, probably designed to hold a market umbrella or perhaps a temporary barricade. It is the perfect size but awkward to handle alone.

Gemma rings Julia. ‘You busy?’

‘No. I’m trying not to watch Silent Witness. I hate Friday night on the tele.’

She agrees to come straight over and hops on her bike.

Between them they get the block into Gemma’s boot and drive it down to the tram stop. The only place to park is some distance away so they take it in turns to carry the block to the crossing.

‘What if a tram comes?’ Gemma asks.

‘Look official,’ Julia advises. ‘People only notice what you’re doing if you act furtively.’

Gemma giggles. ‘What could possibly be official about carrying a great block around in the middle of the night?’

‘We are dedicated tramline workers,’ Julia says seriously. ‘When it comes to the comfort of the travelling public, no effort is too great for us.’

‘Day or night,’ Gemma puffs, taking a turn with the block. ‘No job too small.’

‘Or too dirty,’ Julia adds.

They scuff the ground next to the platform to make a base for the block.

‘We should have brought a trowel,’ Gemma says.

‘It’ll be okay. By the time a few hundred people have jumped on it.’

They are admiring their handiwork and Gemma has stepped up and down onto it a few times when the level-crossing bells start up and the lights flash. The two women retire across the road to see what happens.

The city tram stops and a single elderly man gets out. The tram moves off and he walks to the end of the platform, steps onto the block without showing the least surprise at its presence and crosses at the boom gates.

Gemma and Julia high five each other and go to retrieve Gemma’s car.

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28. Educational Entertainment

Sarah’s fifteenth birthday has finally arrived and Anne has offered an outing for the two of them to somewhere of Sarah’s choice.

What Sarah really wants to do is go to BlackMarket. She has heard that this is the place to be on a Friday night, especially for a young Goth. It’s at the old Colonel Light Hotel and, unbeknown to Sarah, was once the site of a weekly women’s night. She could dance the night away with the ghosts of her grannies’ younger selves.

But Sarah is oblivious to herstory. She is considering the crucial gap between fifteen and eighteen. Fifteen is under-age. Could she borrow someone’s ID? With her face made up she could get away with it. But she needs a companion for that adventure and that companion is clearly not her grandmother. Sarah might pass as eighteen, but Anne is way too old. Over-age.

Sarah turns over more appropriate ideas for an outing with an aging granny. It will have to be Turner at the Art Gallery. Sarah was home sick when her Art class went and she imagines that Anne will want to see it.

Actually Anne would rather go to Les Miserables with a box of popcorn and a stack of hankies. But she is impressed by Sarah’s choice of an exhibition and always eager to foster artistic inclinations in her grandchildren.

They drift apart after the first room. Anne’s feelings are mixed. The explanations about the painting of light are interesting, but she thinks that framing unfinished experiments is pretentious. She remembers the Muddle-Headed Wombat at the museum, helping himself to mummified bread from an Egyptian tomb and then being disagreeably surprised at how stale it was.

She is charmed by the detail of the small watercolours, but disconcerted all over again by one of the large sea paintings. The life boat in the foreground is in grave danger of plunging into a deep hollow between mighty waves.  But in the background the mother-ship sits serenely upright on flat water.

Anne looks around but Sarah is nowhere in sight and the other patrons are deeply and respectfully engrossed.

Anne waits for Sarah in the last room and they go off to the coffee shop together.

‘What did you think?’ Anne asks.

Sarah licks cappuccino froth off her spoon. ‘Yeah,’ she says, ‘good.’ She doesn’t want to sound ungrateful.

Anne sees that the girl is less than enthusiastic. ‘I wasn’t sure about some of them,’ she offers. ‘Those colour washes.’

‘They’re not finished!’ Sarah is indignant. ‘Like he hasn’t even begun, hardly.’

Anne laughs. ‘Yes. I thought they looked silly in frames. But what would I know?’

Sarah weighs her reactions. ‘I like the big ones that are all sky,’ she says.

‘Yes. Me too. Wonderful colours.’

On this happier note they go to Eckersleys and Sarah buys fabric paint with a birthday voucher from Julia. She and Anne make a date for the following week. Les Miserables has finished so they decide on the theatre instead. They will go to Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.

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27.  Slaughter of the Pumpkins

Anne comes home in great indignation from the working bee at the Community Garden.

‘You wouldn’t believe it,’ she says, filling the kettle. ‘Want a cuppa?’

‘No thanks,’ says Julia.

Anne ignores her, bangs two mugs down on the table and plonks a tea bag in each.

‘What wouldn’t I believe?’ Julia asks.

‘You know the pumpkin patch the kids have been working on?’

‘Yep.’

‘Six pumpkins. Good big ones.’

‘Great,’ says Julia.

‘No. Not great. A couple of weeks ago some bastard picked the lot. Cut them off the vines.’

‘No tea for me thanks,’ says Julia.

Anne pours boiling water into both mugs and grabs milk from the fridge. ‘They weren’t bloody ripe and they don’t improve off the vine.’

‘The pumpkins?’

‘Of course the pumpkins. They’re still green.’

‘Perhaps they have a special recipe for green pumpkins?”

Anne pushes one of the mugs across the table to Julia, glaring.

‘They haven’t taken them,’ she says. ‘They haven’t even taken them away. Just left them lying there.’

‘Oh. That’s a bummer.’

‘The kids were beside themselves.’

‘What about making lanterns?’

The tea is beginning to have the desired effect on Anne. She sips appreciatively.

‘That’s not a bad idea you know. But it’s not Halloween till November. Or is it October?’

‘Either way it’s the wrong time of the year. We need a pumpkin festival right now.’

‘What is Halloween anyway?’

‘All Saints isn’t it? The dead rising and all that. Skeletons dancing on graves.’

Anne frowns. ‘That doesn’t sound very Christian. Skeletons.’

‘Don’t you believe it. It’s the unsanitised version.’

‘Well we won’t call it Halloween.’

‘We could have it instead of Anzac Day. Pumpkin Day. Still have the Last Post and all that. At the going down of the sun …’

‘It’s just Harvest Home really. Gathering in the sheaves. Autumn fruits.’

Julia stands up. ‘I can feel a school concert coming on.’

‘Hmmm.’ Anne is off, ideas shooting in all directions, giant pumpkin costumes, hay bales, winter rain drops. She looks up and sees Julia pushing in her chair, and the mug of untouched tea. ‘Don’t you want your tea?’

‘No thanks love.’

Anne pulls the mug towards her and sips absently, clearly still in the grip of creation.

Julia makes her escape before any stray ideas can involve her.

She fires up her computer, thinking about the untimely death of the pumpkins. She can feel nothing but relief. She knows her feeling is shameful and that all over the world people are starving. But all she can think is that twelve fewer pots of pumpkin soup will appear on dining tables near her. Six pumpkins … possibly even eighteen fewer pots.

She must tell Maddie.

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26. Loving Care and Pumpkin Soup

Maddie is home and has never liked her house more. It is warm, cosy, and filled with soft chairs and beds and lovely un-hospital colours and fabrics. A ruthless clean-up by Cassie has removed the layer of dust and cat hair that Maddie usually enjoys, but that will soon be put right. In pride of place on the sofa is Raggles, who indicates with a gracious arch of the back and a purr rivalling that of a lawnmower that she is pleased to see Maddie and that the interim foster-carers have been grossly inferior in their attentions.

Julia, bedroom door heartlessly barricaded against Raggles, is staying for a couple of nights till Maddie gets used to being home with crutches. There is no need to cook however. Anne has organised a roster for meals and the fridge and freezer are already full. Each member of the sisterhood has brought food enough for a hungry family of ten.

Julia has checked out all the chairs and chosen one that Maddie has some hope of getting herself out of.

‘I’d prefer the sofa,’ Maddie says.

‘Yeah but you’ll never get up and down. Give it a few days. This one will be okay with a footstool. Here, have some more cushions.’

As a sop, Julia has lit the combustion heater, the first fire of the winter. The effect is pleasing and Maddie is delighted but the room is soon stifling. Julia, stripped down to tee shirt, leaves Maddie dozing and retreats to the garden to get rid of the old tomato plants, pick the last pumpkins and put in some winter greens. She supposes that Maddie won’t actually suffocate or die of heat stroke.

 She comes in at lunchtime and puts the kettle on. Maddie, she is relieved to discover, is not only still breathing but is awake.

‘Fancy some lunch?’ Julia asks.

‘Yeah great. I’ll just go to the loo.’

She levers herself out of the chair, balances her crutches and with a little help from Julia manages the whole business of getting down the hall, lowering herself onto the toilet and off again without mishap. 

She settles herself on a kitchen chair.

‘What’s for lunch?’

Julia contemplates the contents of the fridge.

‘Well … there’s pumpkin soup with dill. Or pumpkin soup with orange. Or pumpkin and red lentil soup. Or vegetable and pumpkin soup. Or pumpkin, sweet potato and coconut milk.

Maddie laughs. ‘I know. Let’s have pumpkin soup.’

‘There’s pumpkin pie if you’d rather?’

‘No. no. We’ll keep that for a treat.’

Julia is stirring soup when the front doorbell rings. It’s Cass with a plastic container in her hands.

‘I made extra soup,’ she says. ‘You can put it in the freezer.’

‘Thanks,’ says Maddie. ‘You’re a darling.’

‘Um,’ says Julia, ‘I don’t suppose it’s pumpkin?’

Cass looks surprised. ‘It’s potato and leek. Did you want pumpkin? I can make some later.’

‘No,’ Maddie says, frowning at Julia. ‘I love potato and leek. Thank you so much.’

Julia is penitent. ‘Have some lunch with us now? There’s plenty.’

The three women make a start on the heroic task of soup-eating.

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25. Narrative

(for Obi)

James is reporting on recent dramatic events in his Writing Book. This requires actual writing on actual paper in an actual book.

My Grannys friend Maddie he writes, then pauses.

One Granny, two Grannies.

He rubs it out and starts again.

My Grannies friend Maddie

He feels uneasy about this. Somewhere, he knows, there ought to be an apostrophe. He rubs out the s.

My Grannie’s friend Maddie

But that doesn’t look right.

He rubs out again. The paper is starting to tear so he moves down a few lines and, like many before him, takes the coward’s way out.

My Grannies have got a friend called Maddie. He is on a roll now and finishes in a rush and she fell over a saucer and broke her ankle.

That’s the Orientation taken care of. And it brings him to the mysterious heart of the story.

James has fallen over many times in his life. His knees and elbows are usually and satisfyingly scabbed. He and his friends accept that any headlong rush across the playground or the oval may end in a sprawl. But nobody in his hearing has suggested that Maddie was running when she fell over.

He thinks about saucers. He used to have a miniature tea set which Victoria has inherited but those saucers are only a couple of centimetres across. Obviously it would have been an adult-sized saucer but even those are barely higher than the tabletop. Perhaps it was the table that she fell over? But you can’t fall over a full-size table. Maybe the saucer was on a coffee table? But then you’d say that she fell over the coffee table, not that she fell over the saucer.

Maybe, and he is hot on the scent now, maybe she was standing on the coffee table and then fell over the saucer. James himself has had the experience of standing on the coffee table and overbalancing and though he didn’t break his ankle he did break some glasses and get into a lot of trouble.

She was standing on the coffee table he writes and then sits back.

Now for the exciting part, though it’s an uncomfortable sort of excitement. The broken ankle.

 James knows that bones can break, though it hasn’t happened to him yet. But every now and then someone appears at school with an arm in plaster and once a boy in the year above him hobbled around for ages with his leg in plaster. James looks at his own leg. Between the scabby knee and the knobs of the ankle it’s thin and straight and it isn’t hard to believe that it could snap in half and have to be put back together with plaster.

But the ankle is another matter. Where would it break? If all the knobbles came apart then there’d be nothing to hold the foot on.

Maybe it would be one of those things where they have to find the foot and pack it in ice so that it can be sewn back on. 

The ambulance came he writes. They put Maddie and the foot on a stretcher and went to hospital.

Not bad he thinks. He smoothes the page, which has become strangely rumpled and grubby.

My Grannies have got a friend called Maddie and she fell over a saucer and broke her ankle. She was standing on the coffee table. The ambulance came. They put Maddie and the foot on a stretcher and went to hospital.

Now for the Resolution.

The saucer and the ankle broke he writes but the cat is okay.

24. The House Book

(for Roxxy, Chia, Sal, Dinah, Madder and all)

With one friend stowed safely in hospital, and the day almost over, Julia decides to give up on work and drop in on another friend. Ro will provide good coffee and light relief.  

Julia’s ruminations about phones spill over into their conversation and Ro, squirrel or archivist (depending on your point of view), remembers that she has a treasure to show. She has unearthed an old house book from a communal household of thirty odd years ago. A lost world is revealed, with the house book at its throbbing heart.

‘There was one phone in the house,’ Ro points out. ‘I can remember when we got it. Luxury. We didn’t have to go down the street to the phone box in the rain. Or to that box outside the Norwood Post Office where you could make free interstate calls.’

‘I remember. But how did they do that?’

‘There was a way of jamming a super-glued coin in the works. Then word would get around.’

The first page of the housebook lists essential phone numbers for a feminist household: Hindmarsh Women’s Health Centre, Rundle St Women’s Centre, Women’s Information Switchboard, Women’s Art Movement, St Peters Women’s Centre, other households.

On the following pages dozens of different hands have written phone messages, hellos, goodbyes, pleas, exhortations, cartoons, shopping lists:

The landlord came today to say the Housing Trust is coming at 10.30am Wed to assess the cond of the place.

I’VE GOT A CRUSH ON EVERY WOMIN IN THIS HOUSE TONITE & C & R WHO AREN’T HOME YET. NITE NITE.

Hilton is on a Wednesday. Off today to the art gallery. Tonight in search of Brideshead Revisited and then to the Mars Bar. See you round 6(?)

Gone to Laundromat back ASAP – probably 6ish.

I’ve put the bread in the frig and the butter in the yellow cupboard cos of a plague of ants.

A rang to say the posters are not ready so there’ll be no pasting tonight.

CAN PEOPLE PLEASE CHECK IF THE TOASTER IS OFF!

I should be home by 6 – but I won’t have much time to talk – I have to finish my flag. Thursday?

M phoned to say come over Wed arvo to go through things she’s leaving behind. She’s off on Friday (!) PS rent due this week.

There’s a nut roast and pumpkin pie & pumpkins cooked in the oven – we’re at A’s for dinner see you later. Nice you home tonite!

Hello! Hello! Hello! I am in love with my bike I had a great top terrific really good fun fantastic weekend.

Dags are safe in town. Round at D’s.

M – where are you? Love T.

I’m sorry about the fed cop. I said it was police harassment and that if he came near the place again, or did any more snooping, I was going to the media.

Bye bye darlings, I have enjoyed and appreciated your company and calm hysteria very much. Am looking forward to returning too. Love youse.

Brought around the drop-sheets, brushes, paint, and one slightly-charred-on-one-side pie. Luv A

Thanxs lovelies had a great space here, started a Lesbian novel and enjoyed being in a totally new unknown place for a minute. Take care. K

I MUST, I MUST, DECREASE MY LUST

Thanks for the $10 – I forgot the saw but shall get it back to you.

BUMMER: The canoes are being used by the school that weekend!!!

‘It reads like texting,’ Julia says. ‘Or Twitter.’

Ro is affronted. ‘Much more interesting. You don’t get cartoons and coloured pencils in texts. And what about the biographers of the future? No records from social media.’

But Julia is unmoved by the challenges of biography. She is thinking about super-glued coins and other appliances.

23.  Telephones

Julia wakes to the insistent buzz of her mobile. All she can hear when she answers is sobbing.

‘’Lo?’ she mumbles.

Anne rolls away and pulls a pillow over her head.

‘It’s me,’ says the sobbing voice.

‘Maddie?’ Julia swings her legs over the edge of the bed and sits up. ‘What’s wrong?’

‘I can’t move.’ Snuffle snuffle.

‘What do you mean you can’t move?’ Now thoroughly alarmed Julia walks through to the kitchen. Without thinking she puts the kettle on, a kneejerk reaction to crisis.

‘I fell over. It hurts like hell.’

‘Where? Where does it hurt?’

‘My ankle.’

‘Is that what you can’t move?’

There is a pause and then a sustained ‘owwww’ and a gasped ‘yes’.

‘Where are you?’

‘On the back steps.’

‘Shit. Are you warm enough?’

‘Got my dressing gown. Mobile was in the pocket.’

‘Listen I’m going to call an ambulance. Don’t hang up. I’ll use the landline.’

Maddie wails. ‘No. I don’t want an ambulance. Oww.’ There is an interlude of gasping. ‘Shit it hurts.’

Julia picks up the landline in her other hand and dials 000. ‘Hello? Yes I’ve got a friend on the other line. She’s had a fall …’

There is a strangled cry from the mobile. ‘But what about Raggles? If they cart me off?’

Julia juggles phones.

‘Maddie. I’m just putting you down for a minute.’

‘Juliaaaa!’

Ruthlessly Julia ignores this while she talks to the ambulance people. She hangs up the landline and swaps back to the mobile. In the bedroom Anne is sitting up looking sleepy.

‘Maddie? You there?’ Julia asks.

‘Yes.’ Maddie’s voice has shrunk.

‘I’m just going to hand you over to Anne while I get dressed. Then I’m coming over.’

Anne, realising all is not well, makes soothing noises into the phone. ‘What is it lovie?”

This produces a flood of tears, gasps of pain and a tangled story about the cat’s saucer. Twining violets, now broken.

Anne is too experienced to think that the pain is due to the loss of a saucer even if it is one of Maddie’s favourites and even if she did get it from the best Salvo op shop in Adelaide, the one in Goodwood Road. She lets Maddie ramble and gasp and signals to Julia with her eyebrows.

Julia goes back to the kitchen and fishes round in Anne’s bag for her mobile.

She takes it back to the bedroom. Anne nods approvingly. ‘Listen Maddie,’ she says. ‘just hang up and I’ll ring you straight back. Then Julia can take her phone with her.’

‘No. Don’t go,’ Maddie says.

Julia swaps phones with Anne. ‘Maddie. Two seconds. Anne’s dialling you now and I’ll see you very soon.’ She disconnects.

Anne frowns at Julia, phone to ear. ‘That was brutal,’ she says.

‘Love you too,’ Julia says and kisses the top of Anne’s head. But Anne is already back with Maddie.

Julia pockets her phone and goes out to start the car. In reckless defiance of road rules she drives with one hand and rings Cass with the other. Cass lives much closer to Maddie and could be there in five minutes.

 With that organised Julia can relax a little. It is early still and the roads aren’t busy. Julia thinks about emergency bracelets. She recently tried to persuade her mother to get one, but Zelda dismissed the idea. ‘I can always get you on the phone.’

And indeed this is true. Julia is no Luddite, but even she is sometimes nostalgic for the days when it was possible to be out of contact.

She shakes her head impatiently and turns her mind to the design of a clockwork phone charger. The challenge is to make the winding mechanism small and light enough …