P. O’Reilly - The Fine Colour of Rust

‘Oh my God! A new car! Where’d you steal it?’

‘It’s a loaner from the mechanic.’

‘Oh.’ She screws up her face in sympathy. ‘Hey, a letter arrived for you at the school. Melissa’s probably got it. Another one from the minister about the school.’

I don’t ask how she knows. I never ask how she knows what we watched on television the night before and what brand of hair dye I use and how Melissa’s grades are going. But now I know something she doesn’t. I decide I’ll wait and see how long it takes her to find out about the new mechanic.

‘Do you know what the letter says?’

‘Loretta! As if we’d open your mail! But we’ve all guessed. It says, “Thank you for your recent letter. I’d like to take this opportunity”…da de da de da.’

Melissa appears at the car door holding out the minister’s envelope as if it’s a bad report card. I take it and fling it on the front seat and Melissa leans through the passenger side window and peers inside the car. ‘Is it ours?’ she asks.

‘Nope.’

‘Actually,’ Helen calls out on the way back to her car, ‘I’ve booked in to that new mechanic for a service, too. I’ve heard he’s very good.’ She waggles her bottom and kicks up a heel. Of course she knew.

Poor Giorgio, I think. Giorgio is the old town mechanic, pushing eighty, bald and bowlegged. We’ve all used him for years to keep our cars running with bits of string and glue. I decide I’ll keep going to him for my servicing, even if he is getting so absent-minded that last time he forgot to put the oil back in the engine. Luckily Norm noticed the car hadn’t leaked its normal drips on to his driveway.

When I get back to the garage I’m devastated at having to return the keys to the Mazda. We’ve been around town ten times playing the royal family, waving at everyone we know.

‘That’ll be eighty dollars. Didn’t take as long as I thought.’

Jake’s rigid beside me as I hand over the cash. Melissa stands next to him chewing her thumb. I’ve had words with Jake in the car about not nagging Merv for a tour.

‘Mr Bull’s a busy man,’ I said. ‘He doesn’t want to be bothered by little boys. You don’t want him to think you’re a whining little boy, do you? So you wait and see if he offers again.’

‘Anyway, mate, bit of bad news.’ Merv crouches down in front of Jake. ‘I’m sorry, but I have to get away early tonight. Can we do our tour another time?’

‘Yes, please,’ Jake whispers. Melissa puts her arm around his shoulders and they turn away and scramble on to the bench seat in the back of the Holden.

‘I mean it,’ Merv says to me. ‘I’d love to give the little bloke a tour. Another day. Give me a call anytime.’ He reaches into his back pocket. ‘Here’s my card.’

Something’s odd when I drive off: my vision. Through the new windscreen I can actually see the white line in the middle of the road. The Holden throbs and rattles down the Bolton Road and I find myself humming to an old song that I can hear clearly in my head. I can hear it so clearly that I’m singing along with lyrics I didn’t realize I knew. Even Jake seems happier. He and Melissa are bopping their heads along to the beat. Melissa leans over and turns up the volume on the radio and the tune bursts out of the speakers. We look at each other. Merv has fixed the radio. No more race calls, no more protests, no more ads for haemorrhoid cream.

‘I love this car,’ I sing.

‘Me too!’ Jake shouts over the pumping beat. By the time we’ve reached the supermarket, we’re all singing along at top volume, windows rolled down, faces pushed out of the car like excited Labradors. Brenda, who happens to be getting out of her car in the supermarket carpark, hears us roar up, turns, frowns and purses her lips. I’m convinced it’s because we’re exhibiting signs of happiness, until I pull into a parking bay and Brenda comes over to commiserate.

‘I heard there was a letter from the minister. Never mind, Loretta. We knew it wouldn’t work.’

Once we’re inside the supermarket, I tear open the envelope while the kids do their usual wistful lingering in the snack foods aisle. The letter doesn’t say I’ve saved the school. No surprise there. But there is another big surprise. On the way home we drop into Norm’s.

‘Guess what?’

Norm’s running his hand over my smooth windscreen.

‘Nice. The old one had as many craters as the surface of the moon. It was a wonder you didn’t run into a truck.’

‘I got a letter. The education minister’s coming to Gunapan.’

‘Whoa. Here comes trouble.’ He reaches up and fingers the ridge of scar on his forehead. ‘I can feel it in my engine.’

Over the next week, the heat builds until at eight thirty on Monday morning it’s already so hot that the birds are sitting on the fence with their beaks open. I walk out of the house with the children in tow and pull open the driver’s door. It squeals as usual.

‘Bush pig!’ Jake shrieks. He opens the back passenger door, which also squeals.

‘Bush pig!’ Melissa’s shriek is even louder. They fall about laughing, swinging their doors open and shut and imitating the squeals of metal against metal.

‘Get in the car.’ No one should be laughing in this kind of heat.

The road to town is flat and empty. As we bump over the pitted tarmac, sprays of pink-and-grey galahs explode into the sky from the fields beside us. On a low hill to the north I can see Les on his tractor, motoring along in the leisurely fashion of a man on a Sunday drive. The sun picks out a shiny spot on one of his wheels and it flashes in a radiant signal each rotation.

‘Mum, what’s the collective noun for bush pigs?’ Melissa asks and Jake bursts into giggles that he tries to smother with his hand.

‘I don’t know. The same as domestic pigs, I suppose. What is that? Is that a herd?’

‘A herd of bush pigs,’ Jake shouts.

‘A pog of pigs!’ Melissa says.

‘A swog!’

‘A swig! A swig of pigs!’

I wind down my window and push my arm out, leave it there for a moment so Les can see my wave.

‘Is that Les?’ Jake asks.

‘Mr Garrison to you.’

‘All the other kids call—’

‘I don’t care.’

We pull up at the school gates. Melissa and Jake sit silently in the back seat as if they’re hoping I’ll turn around and announce a once-in-a-lifetime no-school day.

‘What’s all this about bush pigs anyway?’ I look in the rearview mirror and see Melissa shaking her head vigorously at Jake.

‘Nothing.’ She catches me watching her and blushes. She has her father’s colouring, pale skin that stays freckly no matter how much suncream I slather on her, and sandy red hair. When she blushes her face blooms like a scarlet rose.

They jostle their way out of the car, mutter a goodbye, and run through the school gate, separating at the scraggly hedge and bolting away to their respective groups of friends.

Bush pigs, I think and head off to work.

Gabrielle, the Chair of the Management Committee at the Neighbourhood House where I work, can’t answer when I ask her the collective noun for bush pigs. She has dropped in unexpectedly. The Management Committee consists of volunteers from the local community, most of them women from the larger, more wealthy properties outside Gunapan. Supposedly their role is to steer the direction of the Neighbourhood House, to use their skills and contacts in developing the profile of the house in the community, to oversee the efficient management of the house finances and so on and so forth. In reality, they meet once a month to hear the report of the House Managers and drink a glass of wine before they start talking about land values and the international wool and beef markets.