P. O’Reilly - The Fine Colour of Rust

‘Flock?’ she guesses. ‘Herd? Posse?’

‘Herd, that’s what I said.’

‘Darling, I really haven’t got time to chat about this. I’m on the trail of a wonderful opportunity. Very hush-hush, from my sources.’

A thought occurs to me. ‘Are you talking about that development thing?’

‘No, not the development. I’m talking about wool. The finest merino. I have access to a flock that these people need to sell immediately at a very nice price. Buy, agist, shear and sell in a month. A business proposition that could make someone a lot of money.’

‘I’ll do it.’ A lot of money – exactly what I need.

‘Oh, darling, if only you could. Except it will take about twenty thousand to get this thing off the ground.’

‘Ah.’ I am not surprised.

‘So you carry on and I’ll pop on to the computer for a moment. We have the contact details of the committee members here, don’t we?’

‘About that development—’ I start to say, but Gabrielle waves me away.

‘Sorry, darling, I must get on with this.’

Gabrielle logs on to the computer and I go back to my work of sorting the donations for our book exchange. The covers are embossed in the silvers and royal blues with scarlet blood spatters that attract the average literary type here. Everyone in Gunapan obviously loves horror. Perhaps that’s why they live in this fine town.

Norm has knocked us up a bookcase from the old floorboards of the Memorial Hall and each time I slide a book on to the shelf a cream-coloured puff of powder drifts from below the shelving. He said the insects are long gone. Powder post beetles, he called them. They sound exotic, like tiny rare insects making dust fine as talc, flitting away when they are grown. I told him I could imagine them with transparent iridescent wings, perhaps a glow like fireflies in the forest. ‘Nah, love,’ he said, ‘they’re borers.’

I shelve Prey and The Dark Rider and Coma and Pet Sematary and soon I can’t bear to see another cover promising supernatural thrills and chills. As I am about to check the spelling of cemetery in the dictionary – was all that schooling wasted? – I see a different kind of book in the pile. The cover has small writing and a picture of a woman in a dark red dress. She’s lying on a couch. But when I look closer, because the picture is also small, I see she’s not, in fact, lying on a couch. She’s from a different world. Her world has divans, not couches. And she isn’t lying on the divan. She’s reclining on the divan. Her dress is draped in elegant folds across her slender thighs. Her high-heeled shoe dangles from her foot. I bet she never wears knickers with stretched elastic that slither down and end up in a smiley under each bum cheek.

After I’ve wiggled my hands down inside my jeans and hauled my undies back up to their rightful position, I open the cover. Inside is an inscription:

To my dear M, remember Paris. With love from Veronica.

I’ve never met a Veronica in Gunapan. I know a Vera, who makes the best ham sandwiches at the CWA but wants to sniff everyone’s breath before they go into the hall because she’s the last standing member of the Gunapan Temperance Union. But no Veronica. Maybe the ‘M’ lives here. Could it be Merv Bull? He doesn’t seem the type to recline on a divan in Paris. I flip the book over and read the reviews on the back.

An elegiac work that brilliantly explores the chiaroscuro of love. Hmm, I think. Elegiac. Exactly what I would have said. The dictionary is on the upper shelf of the bookcase and I pull it down.

‘Gabrielle,’ I call into the office. ‘Have you read The Paper Teacup?’

‘No, darling. Why?’

‘Oh, well, it’s absolutely marvellous, Gabrielle, you must read it. I found it rather elegiac.’

Gabrielle doesn’t answer. I wonder if I pronounced the word correctly. I tiptoe over and peer around the doorjamb to see if she’s doubled over with laughter at this idiot who can’t pronounce elegiac. Over her shoulder I see her typing elliejayack into the computer’s search engine. I creep back to the bookshelf and start shelving more Night of the Beast and Death Visitor books.

Ten minutes later Gabrielle leans out through the doorway. ‘I don’t like sad books. Give me a good thriller any day.’

Once she’s left with the information she needs, I finish up my work and make a phone call to the office of the Minister for Education, Elderly Care and Gaming. The night after I got the letter, I rang the SOS committee members to tell them that the minister was coming to Gunapan. It took a while to convince some of them.

‘Is he coming for the BnS Ball?’ Kyleen asked. She’s been talking about the Lewisford Bachelors and Spinsters Ball for a while, usually bringing it up during completely irrelevant conversations. It’s not the biggest BnS ball in the state, but it is known as the one with the lowest dress standard. A frock from the opportunity shop and a pair of boots is acceptable attire, which suits Kyleen well because that’s what she wears a lot of the time anyway. I’m sure she mentioned the ball because she can’t find anyone to drive her the hundred kilometres to Lewisford, but I doubt the minister would give her a lift, even if he was a bachelor and on the lookout for a country spinster.

The letter had said to ring the minister’s office to arrange a date for his visit. I organized an emergency SOS meeting where we got through two packets of Jam Jamboree biscuits and four pots of tea and argued about the merits of an earlier visit or a later visit, as if we’d have any say in the matter anyway, and didn’t decide anything except that there was less jam in a Jam Jamboree than there used to be.

Maxine had the answer. ‘Give him a call. Sort it out over the phone.’ As if calling government ministers is an everyday chore of mine.

The minister’s assistant answers the phone.

‘Gunapan,’ he repeats slowly, as if he is running his finger down a long list.

Surely not that many people write letters to the minister every second week?

‘OK, here we are. Correspondence Item 6,752/11. Yes, action required. Schedule a ministerial visit. So, how many minutes do you want him to speak for?’

‘I don’t want him to speak. I want him to save our school.’

‘Ah, you’re that lady.’

‘Yes, I am.’ It’s good to take a firm stand, even though I suspect ‘that lady’ is ministerial office code for raving lunatic.

‘And he’ll need a half-day to get there and back…’

I can hear him flipping through pages.

‘All right. It could be either June 27th or July 19th.’

‘But you’ve threatened to close the school by the end of the second term in April. Not much point in visiting a school that’s already closed.’

I hope he’s blushing. He reluctantly suggests a day in March, complaining all the while that he’ll have to reschedule appointments to make it happen. I complain back that we all have commitments and it’s not so easy for us in Gunapan to rearrange things either. I don’t mention that he’s proposed the visit for a pension day, when the whole town is aflurry with shopping and bill-paying. It’s very hard to get anyone to do anything else. But since there’s no other possibility we agree to set the date.

By mid-afternoon even more birds are sitting stupidly in the trees with their beaks open. This is one of those days when they might fall stone dead to the ground, heatstruck. On the horizon a thin column of grey smoke rises and forms a wispy cloud in the pale sky. The start of a bushfire. Or some farmer trying to burn off on a day when leaving your specs lying on a newspaper could make it burst into flame. There’s no way to be in a good mood on a day like this. No way, when the air conditioning in the car is broken and the steering wheel leaves heat welts on your palms. Days like this it seems as if summer will never end. We’ll go on sweltering and we’ll cook from the inside out, like meat in the microwave. They’ll cut us open at the morgue and find us filled with steak and kidney pudding. On the outside we’ll be nicely pink.