R. Allinson: The Last Day on Earth

“Uh, I came the back way and may have taken a few liberties… ones that you will not repeat.”

“Do as I say, not as I do?”

“Exactly.”

Mitch coughed behind her.

“Oh! Dad, you remember Mitch, don’t you?” Lucy stepped back and pulled Mitch forward. “Mitch, this is my Dad, Bill. You met him at my birthday party a few years ago.”

The two men nodded and shook hands.

“Okay then, Mitch, can you carry this jerry can for me, I’ll take the other one.” Lucy rolled her eyes at her father’s back. She was perfectly capable of carrying a jerry can. She trailed after them as they took the cans over to her car. Her father had started pouring the petrol directly into her tank when the crying woman noticed him. Lucy watched as her eyes widened and she scrambled to get out of her car.

“Oh my god, please, please, can you please sell me some of that petrol?”

Bill looked sharply up at the woman, then warily around at everyone else. Lucy looked too, but no one else seemed to have noticed them yet.

“I’m sorry, this is for my daughter.”

“Please, I’m begging you, I’ll give you all my cash, I need the petrol.” The woman looked like she was about to start crying again.

“So does my daughter.”

“My mother, you see, my mother, she’s in a nursing home. I need to go and get her. All the staff have left. There’s no one there to look after her. I need to get her and bring her home. I need to get her.” The woman really was crying now.

Bill looked uneasily at the woman, then at Lucy.

“Dad… maybe… umm,” Lucy looked helplessly between her father and the distressed woman.

“Mitch, where do you live?” Bill asked.

“Just the other side of Geelong.”

“How about this. Mitch, I give you enough petrol to take Lucy’s car to your parent’s home and, Lucy, you can come home with me and, ma’am, I’ll give you the rest and you can go and get your mum.”

The woman blinked rapidly a few times then leapt forward and hugged Lucy’s father.

“God bless you! You’re a lifesaver! Thank you so much!” she exclaimed and went over to her car and pulled out her purse and a wad of fifty-dollar bills.

“No, no need for that.” Bill waved her away.

Lucy stood back beside Mitch as Bill helped the woman pour the petrol into her empty tank.

“You’d better take good care of my car,” she said to Mitch.

“Don’t worry, I will. I’ll even wash it for you.”

“Good. ’Cause I’ll be wanting it back when all this blows over.”

“Uh huh.”

A man wandered over just as Bill finished pouring the last of the petrol into the woman’s tank.

“Hey! Do you have petrol? I need some! My kids are at boarding school, I need to pick them up!”

“I’m sorry, mate, I don’t have any left.” Bill held his hands out. The man eyed the woman’s car.

“You should probably leave now,” Lucy muttered to the woman. She nodded and scampered around to the driver’s door, thanked them again and drove off.

The man swore.

“I hope you get your kids, I do, but I’m sorry. I can’t help you.”

The man swore again and kicked Lucy’s tyre.

“Hey!” she exclaimed.

“Lucy,” Bill warned. “Mate,” he said to the man. “We’re all in the same boat. I’ve just come to get my own daughter,” Bill nodded towards Lucy.

“I know, I know, I just…” the man let out a frustrated growl and stalked off.

Lucy warily watched the man, but no one else approached them. She opened the back door of her car, pulled out her two bags and put them in the back of her father’s ute.

“Okay. Well.” She handed Mitch her keys. “Be careful.”

Mitch slowly reached out and took them.

“Yeah. Thanks. You too.” He looked down at his feet, then up at the sky. “Keep in touch okay?”

Lucy nodded and after a slight hesitation, leant in and gave him a hug.

“It’s not the end. It can’t be,” Mitch whispered, and then let her go.

Bill offered Mitch his hand again. “Take care of yourself, Mitch.”

“I will, sir. Uh, thanks for coming to our rescue. And I’ll take good care of Lucy’s car ’til this all blows over and she can come and get it.”

Bill nodded. Lucy waved as she climbed into the ute, and kept waving as her dad started the engine and drove off down the highway.

“How are you, Lucy?” her father asked once they’d been driving for a while and Lucy’s eyes were dry again.

“I don’t know, Dad.”

Present…

The dining room was rarely used. When Lucy was a child, the large, bright room with its huge mahogany table had only been used on special occasions; Christmas, Easter, and the odd dinner party her parents had thrown for their friends or visiting relatives. As a family they had usually eaten in the warm, cozy kitchen, seated around the old wooden table that Bill had inherited from his great-grandfather.

Tonight they sat in the dining room.

The large table was heavily laden with mounds of delicious looking food. The table was set for three with the family’s best china dishes and bowls, and the good silver cutlery that had been a wedding present when Lucy’s grandparents married. A sudden memory of summer mornings spent polishing the silver under her grandmother’s demanding gaze flashed through Lucy’s mind. Lucy sat in the seat her grandmother had always occupied and took a deep breath. Her mouth started salivating immediately and her stomach grumbled loudly.

“This smells delicious, Mum,” Lucy told Liz when she came into the room carrying the last dish from the kitchen.

“Thanks, love, I hope it tastes as good.”

“I don’t even know where to start.” Bill sat down at the head of the table and eyed the table with a gleaming eye.

Once they were all seated, they paused and looked around at each other.

“I feel like we should say something,” Liz said.

“Oh! I almost forgot.” Bill stood up and went to the wine cabinet that had always been out of bounds to Lucy and Claire. He fumbled with the key that was kept hanging next to the cabinet. Lucy had always wondered at her father’s security sensibilities. He carefully pulled out a dusty bottle and placed it on the table in front of Lucy. She eyed it. Penfolds Grange . Expensive.

“Wow, Dad. Going out in style!”

“I bought this the year you were born. I was going to give it to you on your 30 thbirthday.”

“Wow, Dad,” Lucy repeated. “I hope it’s not corked,” she added with a grin.

“Let’s find out, shall we?” Liz handed him the bottle opener. He wrestled with the cork, and then took an appreciative sniff of the wine. He reached over and went to pour Lucy the first glass.

“Wait, shouldn’t we decant it?” Liz stopped him.

“Too right, love. Where’s the decanter?”

“In here somewhere.” Liz crouched down in front of the crystal cabinet that was full of inherited crystal. Lucy had never bothered to give her parents wine glasses for Christmas — they could stock an antique store with the amount of crystal that had ended up in their house, it had trickled down from various grandparents, great-grandparents and spinster great-aunts.

“Aha!” Liz carefully manoeuvred the decanter from the back of the cabinet and managed not to knock anything else over. “Here we go.”

Lucy watched as her father carefully poured the bottle into the old decanter.

“How long are we meant to wait?” Lucy eyed the wine, and then looked at the food.

“No idea. Liz?” Bill looked over at his wife. Liz just shrugged.

“You can see we got a lot of use out of that decanter. I think Auntie Mildred gave it to us as a wedding present.”