P. O’Reilly - The Fine Colour of Rust

The Japanese have a word, sabi, which connotes the simple beauty of worn and imperfect and impermanent things: a weathered fence; an old cracking bough in a tree; a silver bowl mottled with tarnish; the fine colour of rust.

Cover

Title Page

1

Norm Stevens Senior tells me I’ll never get that truck…

2

When I show the committee members the letter at the…

3

Norm’s come by to drop off more lemons and pick…

4

‘Look at all these cars, Jake.’ We pull in with…

5

Over the next week, the heat builds until at eight…

6

A good mother would be culturing organic yoghurt or studying…

7

‘What’s that noise?’ Jake has an unerring knack for asking…

8

My sister Patsy has only been in the house for…

9

The next morning at seven o’clock, mouth gluey, skirt rucked…

10

At ten thirty-four on the day chosen for his Gunapan…

11

The headmaster’s taken my signs off the school fence. I…

12

‘He’s got a bloody cheek.’ Tina’s talking on the phone…

13

The next day I’m on the phone first thing. ‘Helen,…

14

The next night, Norm arrives on my doorstep and tells…

15

The shire meeting last night was a distraction, but the…

16

‘What the hell am I supposed to do?’ Norm says…

17

As we head off to Halstead along the road where…

18

The Bolton Road seems particularly long today. My foot lifts…

19

It’s uncanny seeing Norm and Justin together when I drive…

20

When I arrive, bawling, at Norm’s yard, Justin is by…

21

Norm turns up at nine in the evening with a…

22

The next day is the last day of term and…

23

Yesterday I drove down to Melbourne, dropped the kids at…

24

‘Looking a bit the worse for wear,’ Norm says when…

25

Norm’s news has given me the strength of seven Lorettas.

26

It’s dark in the Community Centre car park. We’ve asked…

27

‘Stop it,’ I tell Norm.

28

When I wake up the next day, the house is…

29

I remember Norm saying to me once that he wished…

30

The women who go to the day spa would never…

31

The kids sit quietly in the back on the way…

32

The mail Melissa brought in is fatter than usual. I…

33

At six thirty, the Gunapan pub, once called the Criterion,…

34

Norm Stevens Junior (aka Justin) says I’ll never sell my…

Acknowledgements

Copyright

About the Publisher

Norm Stevens Senior tells me I’ll never get that truck off my land. He says it’s too old, been there too long, the hoist will try to lift the thing and it will break apart into red stones of rust.

‘Leave it,’ he says. ‘Let it rust away. One day you’ll look and it won’t be there anymore.’ He gives me a sideways glance. ‘Like husbands. You look away and when you look back they’re gone, right?’

‘Right.’

‘So have you heard from the bastard?’

‘Nope.’

‘And you’re getting by all right? For money?’

‘I’ve got more money now than when he was here.’

We both laugh.

‘Now, Loretta, you know I can take the kids for a night if you need some time off.’

‘I might take you up on that. I’ve got a prospect. A biker, but a nice one, not a loser. On a Harley, no less.’

‘A Harley?’ He raises his eyebrows. Whenever he does that, a pink scaly half-moon of skin above his left eyebrow wrinkles. He reaches up to touch it.

‘You should have that looked at, Norm.’

‘Yeah, yeah, and I should give up the spare parts work and get out of the sun too.’

He gestures around his junkyard. There are tractor parts, rolls of wire, tyres, motor mowers, corrugated iron sheets all rusted and folded, bits of cars and engines, pots and pans, gas bottles, tools, toys, bed frames, oil drums, the chipped blades of threshers and harvesters. Some of the machinery is so bent and broken you can’t even tell what it was meant for. In the centre of the yard is a lemon tree, the only greenery in sight. It always has lemons. I’m sure I know what Norm does to help it along, but I don’t ask. He’s got four guard dogs too, tied up around the yard, vicious snarling things. As if anyone would want to steal any of this crap.

‘Well, I’d better pick up the kids,’ I say. I don’t want to pick up the kids. I want to send them to an orphanage and buy myself a nice dress and learn to live the way I used to, before I turned into the old scrag I am now.

‘Don’t you worry about that truck.’ Norm stretches out his long skinny arm and pats me on the back. ‘It’ll go back into the land.’

I get into the car, pump the accelerator like I’m at the gym and turn the key three times before the engine fires. I should have that looked at, I think. There’s half a kilo of sausages on the seat beside me, and I realize they’ve been sitting in the sun for half an hour. When I unwrap the paper and have a sniff I get a funny sulphur smell. They’ll cook up all right, I tell myself, and I gun the Holden and screech in a U-turn on to the road. I can’t get used to this huge engine – every time I take off I sound like a pack of hoons at Bathurst.

It’s three thirty already and Jake and Melissa will be waiting at the school gate, ready to jump in and whine about how everyone else’s mum always gets there before I do. Maybe I will drop them off at the orphanage.

When I get to the school gate the kids are both standing with their hands on their hips. I wonder if they got that from me; old scrag standing with her hands on her hips, pursing her thin lips, squinting into the sun. You could make a statue of that. It would look like half the women in this town. Dust and a few plastic bags swirling around its feet, the tail lights of the husband’s car receding into the distance. They should cast it in bronze and put it in the foyer of Social Security.

‘Mum, we have to have four sheets of coloured cardboard for the project tomorrow.’

‘All right.’

‘And me too, Mum, I have to have a lead pencil and I don’t want bananas in my lunch anymore because they stink.’

‘All right.’

As I steer the great car down the highway towards home I have a little dream. I’ll swing into the driveway and sitting next to the veranda will be a shiny maroon Harley Davidson. I won’t dare to look, but out of the corner of my eye I’ll see a boot resting on the step, maybe with spurs on it. Then I’ll slowly lift my head and he’ll be staring at me the way George Clooney stared into J. Lo’s eyes in Out of Sight and I’ll take a deep breath and say to him, ‘Can you hang on five minutes while I drop the kids at the orphanage?’

What I actually find when we get home is a bag of lemons sitting on the veranda. Norm must have left them while we were at the newsagent.

‘Who are these from?’ Jake asks.

‘Norm.’

‘How do you know?’

‘Oil on the bag.’

I bought Norm a cake of Solvol once. Delivered it to the junkyard wrapped in pretty pink paper with a bow. He rang to thank me. ‘I think you’re insulting me.’

‘It’s for your own good, Norm.’

‘You’re a minx. If I was thirty years younger…’

‘Fifty more like,’ I told him, ‘before you’d get those paws on me.’

That night, when the kids are finally settled in their rooms doing their homework, I get on the phone for the usual round of begging.

‘Are you coming to the meeting tomorrow?’