Review of Australian Fiction Volume 12 Issue 1

  Review of Australian Fiction

  Volume Twelve: Issue One

  Zutiste, Inc.

  Review of Australian Fiction Copyright © 2014 by Authors.

  Contents

  Imprint

  It Just Takes A Bit Of Care Rosalie Ham

  The Gift Of Roses Ellie Nielsen

  Published by Review of Australian Fiction

  “It Just Takes A Bit Of Care” Copyright © 2014 by Rosalie Ham

  “The Gift Of Roses” Copyright © 2014 by Ellie Nielsen

  www.reviewofaustralianfiction.com

  It Just Takes A Bit Of Care

  Rosalie Ham

  When Mavis was eighteen, she married a boy she had known at Primary School and started a new life three streets away from her parents’ humble home. She returned home shortly after her nineteeth birthday because she woke her sleepy husband one morning and asked him if he’d like a cup of tea, and he replied, ‘No thanks, Betty, I’ve got to get home to the bloody wife.’

  ‘Mavis,’ her mother said, taking the suitcase from her daughter, ‘there is a reason for everything. He had a clubfoot and his grandfather on his mother’s side had a humpback. Pick quality next time.’

  But Mavis had loved him. She had been a caring wife.

  Soon after, it was discovered that her mother had cancer and Mavis retired from her job as laundress at the local nursing home. Her mother finally died, and Mavis then cared for her father. When his third stroke killed him, Mavis settled into her new free life with the first of many cats. One day, the family doctor looked at the worrisome patch of dry skin on the back of Mavis’ hand, and said, ‘You were in last week—’

  ‘That was the suspicious mole on my cheek, right there,’ she said, pointing to a freckle under her eye.

  ‘And there was—’

  ‘Another mole,’ she said, pulling up her sleeve. She pointed at a harmless brown age spot. ‘My mother had a nasty mole.’ With the knowledge acquired working at the nursing home, Mavis added, ‘She had it exercised.’

  ‘I remember.’

  ‘She still died of cancer.’

  He rubbed some cream on her dry patch and wrote Lanolin on a notepad, tore off the page and told her to buy a tube at the dispensary then asked her if she liked to cook.

  ‘Oh, my word,’ she said, ‘Course there’s no one to cook for these days… I learned to cook for my husband, but he was a selfish, heartless man, I’ve come to realise.’

  ‘So you’ve said.’

  Mavis read the address again. She turned and looked at the park opposite. Dr Bolton had relatively good handwriting and it definitely said, ‘The Parade, North Carlton, opposite park,’ right there under the word ‘Lanolin’. It was an Old Money house from the weathercock atop the cylindrical-roofed tower to its mossy mosaic paving tiles and the tumbling wisteria clogging the lychgate. Puss Cat would love this grand house and garden, being such a grand cat.

  The front door swung open before her facial expression was quite ready but there was Mr Pendergast, a small man in a pale yellow sweater and beige pants. He was smiling, but beyond him, she knew, within that sumptuous interior was Mrs Pendergast, fatally ill. ‘Paralysed,’ Dr Bolton had said.

  Mr Pendergast stood back and bowed slightly and Mavis was grateful she always made an effort for doctors’ appointments. She had a fillet of smoked cod and frozen potato wedges in her bag but she summoned the deportment advice her mother had given her, squared her shoulders and stepped across the worn, bluestone stoop into the wide, elegant vestibule. The familiar crane-like shape of a lifting machine parked beneath a painting of an ancestor told Mavis that she was destined to step into Mr Pendergast’s life and save him and his poor wife. Her marriage to a half-cripple, her years of experience at the nursing home and then more years caring for her incapacitated parents would now be put to use for this poor man and his tragic wife.

  Mr Pendergast had been a handsome man, anyone could see that. Cleft chin—very masculine—lovely eyes, slightly rheumy, but still discernibly brown. Nothing remained in his wife’s face to tell Mavis that Mrs Pendergast had once been appropriately beautiful. Perhaps if Mr Pendergast had known his bride would develop a progressively debilitating incurable disease, he might have married someone with quality genes. Or, perhaps he loved her regardless of her disability? None the less, it was caring of Mr Pendergast to marry someone who wasn’t quality, and how loyal he looked smiling down at her in her padded Cozie chair. Mrs Pendergast was very thin, which was a bonus. Mavis’ father had been a big man, difficult to manage in the later stages of his stroke, but he’d had an excellent lifting machine. And Mrs Pendergast was clean, nicely groomed, though her perm had frizzed. Her eyes were fixed on the ceiling and her mouth open, her teeth dry, breath scraping in and out. Someone kind had taken the time to coat her stretched lips with a light shade of pink lip-balm, but actually, she was just a bit like a well-dressed branch in a wheelbarrow. Awful really, poor thing. Her appendages were contracting too, her hands curling like orange peel and her feet like hooves in pink cotton socks. One bent knee lifted her blanket high and the other leg stretched stiffly out, like a boom gate. Tendons retracting all over her. Painful. Mavis looked at the rigid woman and smiled—perhaps her ex-husband’s club foot might be causing him pain?

  Then Mavis saw that Mrs Pendergast’s clear, green eyes were looking straight at her. She stepped towards the thick orchids bowing from pot stands either side of the bay window. Mrs Pendergast’s green eyes followed her, and she made a bored, exhausted sound that came from the back of her throat and out through her peaked nose.

  Mavis walked over to the mantel piece to study the photo of Mrs Pendergast. Again, the clear eyes…

  ‘Childhood sweethearts,’ Mr Pendergast said, and Mavis said, ‘Aaww,’ as if she was looking at a basket of kittens.

  ‘She was a beautiful bride.’ Mr Pendergast moved her chair, its wheels squeaking, so that she could see her own photo, but Mrs Pendergast turned her eyes to the ceiling.

  ‘That portrait was taken by Helmut Newton.’

  ‘Such a clever man,’ Mavis said, though she had no idea who he was.

  Mr Pendergast patted the headrest in his wife’s fat, foamy chair, ‘This is a top-of-the-range Cozie chair. The casters are rust proof and it’s fully adjustable. We can raise it up with this foot lever and move her across to the bath chair and wind her down into her bath. All these machines cost a lot of money.’

  Mrs Pendergast made a noise in her throat, like a mildly agitated bee.

  The Cozie chair had been top-of-the-range about twenty years back. Mavis’ father’s Cozie had a button you pressed and up it went, or down, forward, back, all sorts of things. No need to pump or wind any levers.

  Mr Pendergast explained that a cleaner came twice a week, in the mornings, so Mavis would not see her, and a nurse came each morning to shower and dress Ottoline, and again at 6.30 to prepare her for bed. Mavis’s job wasn’t anything she hadn’t done before—washing and ironing, hand wash woollens and delicates, and she was to prepare an evening meal for Mr Pendergast leaving some for his lunch the following day. It was not required that Mavis vitamise the food, ruin it totally, as she’d done for her parents.

  Mr Pendergast would administer his wife’s feeds, use a 60ml syringe to push the thick, liquid super-food into the tube to her stomach.

  ‘A peg feed,’ Mavis said, knowledgably.

  ‘Ottoline and I dine during the news. Do you watch the evening news, Mavis?’

  ‘Yes. Six-thirty.’

  ‘Me too! I watch the SBS news as well! More comprehensive, don’t you think? And not so many ads.’

&n
bsp; Mavis smiled back at him. She had never watched SBS in her life. He touched the small TV on the kitchen bench next to the fridge. ‘You’ll eat your meal at 6.30 and clean up before you go at seven-thirty.’

  ‘That’s quite suitable,’ she said, thinking that her own television screen was much bigger.

  He pointed to a clipboard hanging from the mantel above the old stove and told her he’d consult her menu—detailed, two weeks in advance—every second Friday.

  ‘Do you like to have sweets? A dessert?’

  ‘Ottoline made sweets,’ he sighed. ‘I make do with a little ice cream, these days.’ He raised and dropped his shoulders, poor me.

  When Mavis opened the door to her little house that afternoon she called, ‘Yoo-hoo,’ and Puss Cat appeared at the kitchen door. He circled and walked back to his dish and Mavis served him his Kitty Food, ‘You think I went out this morning for a doctor’s appointment and a cup of coffee, don’t you? Well, I did, but I have come back a different person. You are looking at an employed woman.’

  She spent the evening planning a menu, writing a shopping list, and a list of implements she had been unable to find in the kitchen cupboards. ‘It’s a bit of a foreign world to me,’ Mr Pendergast had said, looking lost.

  ‘My,’ she sighed, seeing Mr Pendergast’s sad, handsome face. ‘This time, Puss Cat, I’m caring for the carer.’

  Mavis spent Friday shopping. She purchased a blue uniform and white aprons—she had always fancied wearing a white apron and it was that kind of house.

  On Monday, Mavis arrived at the stately home promptly at 5.00 with the ingredients for three small steak and mushroom pies, as agreed. As soon as she hung the menu under the mantel above the old stove, Mr Pendergast took it away. He returned it to her an hour later, with ‘amendments’—no brussel sprouts, and no custard. Ever. And what about some cauliflower cheese, rather than macaroni cheese?

  ‘This cook book is highly recommended,’ he said, handing Mavis Classic Favourite Recipes. Someone else’s name was pencilled onto the front page. Pauline.

  ‘And there are several more.’ He pointed to a line of books on the mantel. Mavis flicked through them, all with other people’s names, and studied her revised menu. That night, she put her own cookbook into her basket to take Tuesday—it was one her mother gave her as a wedding gift.

  By the end of her fifth day Mavis had started to relax and Puss Cat was resigned to the new routine, Mavis describing her new life to him as he ate.

  ‘We’ll watch SBS news from now on,’ she said, pressing the remote. ‘Less ads.’ But it was the newsreader Mavis found interesting, a small Chinese woman with exotic taste in clothes. ‘Her news is more comprehensive,’ she told Puss.

  At the end of day ten, Mavis was in full command of her kitchen and timed the presentation of her carefully prepared meals according to the squeak of Mrs Pendergast’s Cozie chair casters. She allowed time for Mr Pendergast to prepare and administer his wife’s Ensure Plus, then he would turn her chair to face the TV and Mavis would arrive with his tray as he settled with a glass of wine, his napkin spread across his lap. He would then toast his wife, ‘Cheers, dear,’ and tuck into his roast beef and crusty Yorkshire pudding, or rissoles with homemade tomato sauce and creamy mashed potato, or crunchy pork chops and applesauce. Mavis always smiled at Mrs Pendergast, knowing that in her stomach, the cold, white liquid was warming and curdling.

  Though she sensed movement she had not seen the nurse. Sounds told her a bath was being run, a bed made, but the halls were gloomy and she had never quite been able to make out an exact figure, an actual person. She was eating her dinner one evening, the Chinese newsreader annunciating beautifully on the TV, when she became conscious of someone in the laundry. Again, she couldn’t see anyone, just some pale trousers moving, and then the light in the laundry flicked on and she saw that it was a man. A black man, and he was shoving Mrs Pendergast’s petticoat and a singlet into the washing machine. ‘Hello,’ he said, without turning to look at Mavis. She realised she was staring.

  ‘I’m Kwezi,’ he said, and came towards her with his pink palm extended.

  ‘Kwezi,’ she said. He was tall and well built, his handshake was strong and she could see that he was a firm-fleshed man, like some of the refugees you saw from time to time. ‘You could sweep a few girls off their feet, I bet,’ she thought.

  ‘I am the nurse,’ he said, in soft, deep tones. ‘I have been coming for many years. At first Mrs Pendergast did not like the colour of my skin, but now she likes me very much.’

  ‘Very good.’ He was nothing like the nurses who had helped her care for her parents.

  ‘You are Mavis?’

  ‘I am.’ She smiled.

  ‘And you do not have someone at home to eat dinner with, Mavis?’

  ‘No. Do you?’

  ‘Yes, my wife and I have seven children.’

  ‘A very busy man, then.’

  ‘And very lucky, and satisfied.’ And then he was gone, walking softly from her kitchen in his quiet shoes and his pale clothes, and she felt a little fluttery at the thought of him and his wife and all those babies. They’d be healthy; a strapping, handsome man like that, and her able to just pop them out one after the other.

  Sunday night on SBS, Mavis encountered a 1900s TV drama about some filthy rich people in England and their problems managing their vast estate and mansion. There were problems with matters of inheritance, marriage, scandal, heartbreak, bankruptcy and hierarchy. ‘That’s like where I work,’ she told Puss Cat. ‘Mr Pendergast is like them, ’cept he’s got a black servant. Kwezi. Black as pitch, but he’s what I call a man. Seven kids.’

  But it was Mr Pendergast who Mavis dwelled on. As she waited for slumber to claim her at night, Mavis liked to go over his meals, how she would add the ingredients, picturing him weeping with gratitude. Each morning she woke, threw back the bedcovers and set forth into her day with purpose, an air of importance, her white apron starched and folded in her basket. She lovingly folded his underwear, taking comfort in the knowledge that he changed it every day, noted he wore size M singlets when, really, SM would have been more snug, and she was impressed that he cared enough to change his trousers every second day, even if they weren’t grubby. With her white apron tied in a bow in the small of her back, Mavis ironed creases into his pyjamas and imagined him standing at his wife’s bedrails weeping, patting the hair spread like a dinner plate on the back of her head.

  On her third Monday of cooking her very best meals, Mr Pendergast returned to the kitchen with his empty dinner plate and asked what was for dessert. ‘Peach Melba.’

  ‘Well, Mavis, I think you’re a bit of a peach.’

  ‘Aw,’ she said, and felt her skin warm all over.

  He touched her arm lightly, ‘You put love into your cooking, don’t you?’

  She put her hands to her cheeks, knowing they were burning red, and said feebly, ‘I try.’

  In the dining room, Mrs Pendergast started making gurgling noises. Mr Pendergast’s eyes stayed on Mavis, his smiled fixed, but he raised one eyebrow, like a dog swivelling its ear to a far-off whistle, and went to her.

  Mavis found it even more difficult to fall asleep that night. She imagined sitting at Mrs Pendergast’s big dressing table in a white lace nightdress, a maid brushing her hair while another stoked her fire and another poured hot water into a tub. They undressed her and she sank into hot water and the maid sponged her back. She spoke of her day riding with Mr Pendergast, and then Mr Pendergast appeared in his silk robe and the maids left and he washed her back, and they spoke of their children – six of them – and their eldest daughter’s proposal from Mr Darcy. Mavis knew that all those years in her parents’ tiny house with her cats, one after the other, were because fate had been saving Mr Pendergast for her, that fate had awarded her the necessary experience at the nursing home, and then caring for her dying mother, then her partially paralysed father, and now here she was in a beautiful house with a kind man…
who would soon be all alone.

  On Tuesday, Mr Pendergast appeared in her kitchen carrying his tray. He had eaten every bit if his roast and mopped the gravy with his bread. Mavis stood and took the tray from him. ‘I appreciate it, Mr Pendergast, but there’s no need. I’m here to do that for you.’

  ‘Mavis, I just want you to know that I appreciate your quiet competence and the kind but discreet way you conduct yourself about our home.’ He looked at the floor and Mavis saw he was struggling for words.

  ‘Oh, Mr—’

  ‘No no,’ he said, ‘I have a lot to deal with and you are… well… I’m comforted by your quiet presence.’ In the dining room, Mrs Pendergast gurgled. Mr Pendergast touched Mavis’ upper arm, then went to his wife. Mavis’ upper arm glowed.

  That evening, she turned at the gate to look back at the house with its warm yellow window light and its fairytale conical tower and she imagined Mrs Pendergast, in her big, ugly chair, her warped arms and her knee contracted up to her thin pointy nose, her stretched mouth with its rattling breath, and the noises she made when Mr Pendergast thanked Mavis for her loving cooking. Mavis was glad Mr Pendergast was trying reach out to her, that he knew, finally, that someone cared about him.

  ‘She always stops him,’ she said to Puss, ‘All that snorting and jerking. Selfish to stop him living just because she’s unable to, and tolerant of him not to just wheel her outside into the ruddy garden for everyone on the tram to gawk at.’

  Kwezi paused in the kitchen door the next day and said, ‘I have soaked Mrs Pendergast’s nightdress and it would be very good if you would let it soak until tomorrow, thank you, Joyce.’ Then he realised what he’d said. Tapping his fingers on the doorjamb, he apologised, ‘Joyce was another cook.’ As his dark fingers vanished from the doorjamb, he added, ‘The one before Elsie.’