The Fine Color of Rust (11 page)

“We have to do something to convince him,” I say. “What? What?”

The strains of “I Still Call Australia Home” are drifting from the classroom window. Helen winces.

“I knew they'd never hit that high note. Well, look over there. Who might that be?” Helen nods at Nick, the driver, who is still reading the paper. He must be memorizing it.

“The charioteer. At least that's what the minister calls him. Ministerial driver.”

“So maybe Ben-Hur will have an idea. He probably knows this minister fella better than anyone.” Helen turns
away from me and pokes around in her handbag for what seems like only a moment. When she turns back, her face is fully made up and she's dabbing at her fresh lipstick with a tissue.

Nick watches us warily as we approach the gleaming chariot. He pulls a chamois from his back pocket and erases a fingerprint smudge from the passenger door. The performance reminds me of the way dogs sniff around the grass with feigned nonchalance when another dog approaches. He's a big man with thick upper arms and a sumo-wrestler kind of sway to his body when he walks.

“The car looks beautiful,” Helen says to him. “Must be hard work keeping it so—”

“Ladies, no need to beat about the bush. How can I help you?” Nick's voice is deep and throaty. He flicks a mote of dust off the windscreen with the corner of his chamois before he leans back against the driver's door and folds his arms across his chest. I can tell Helen has taken a fancy to him by the way she's clutching my arm so tightly gangrene is setting in. He's a good-looking bloke, all right, but I don't think she should get her hopes up—after all, he's leaving town in one hour and fourteen minutes. That's even faster than your average Gunapan husband.

“Well, it's just that . . . well, you know, the minister is here because my friend Loretta”—she gestures back at me, even though I have become nothing to her in the presence of this shining knight—“organized all these petitions and letters and everything and got the headmaster and the mayor to sign and all that to try and stop them closing Gunapan Primary School.” She pauses to take a deep breath. “And now the minister's here and we want to get him to change his mind, but he's had some bad experiences and we don't know
what to do.” Another breath. “And we thought that since you drive him around you must know lots about him and stuff and maybe you could, you know, give us some hints on how to—”

Nick raises his hand, which I notice is muscular also.

“I'd love to help. Especially when I'm asked for assistance by a stunning lady like yourself . . .”

I'm sure I hear Helen simper. I never knew how a simper sounded before today. She's going to start fanning herself and talking in a
Gone with the Wind
accent next.

“What can you do?” I ask. “I've been on the case for seven months and all I've got is a visit.”

“Leave it to me. I'll have a word with the big man.”

Right. While Helen continues her flirting I sigh and turn to watch the minister being herded down the steps of the school by the headmaster and the grade-three teacher, who's still talking at an incredible speed. I want to cry. All those months writing letters and calling people and chairing meetings that hardly anyone came to. And for nothing except a chance to see Hector disassemble a cow in record time. Which actually was amazing but doesn't help my kids.

The minister folds back into his car and reappears at his final destination, the Criterion, which used to be all green tiles and ancient toothless farmers propping up the bar, but has been renovated and is now pink and lemon with a new menu that includes confit of duck as well as some old favorites like surf and turf. The ancient toothless farmers have moved to the gambling machine room out the back.

We're having a set lunch in the dining lounge, paid for by my fund-raising efforts with the chocolate drive back in November, but I don't have any appetite. Helen's in the bar with Nick. I can see her through the servery hatch, simpering and
fanning herself with a beer coaster. Nick notices me watching and gives a thumbs-up. I wonder if he's indicating his chances with Helen. He'd better get a move on. The minister's schedule has him out of here in eleven minutes.

When the minister stands up to give a speech, which he promises will only take a few minutes, I keep poking at my chicken parma. I think about what will happen to the school grounds when the school closes. Maybe they'll build a housing estate on the site. Couples will move in. They'll grow vegetable gardens and paint their houses and have babies. The mothers will start a campaign. A school for Gunapan! They'll paint signs and write letters and one day the Education Department will send a portable classroom and a teacher. Meanwhile, because it's Gunapan, the husbands will have mysteriously disappeared.

I only notice the minister's gone when Helen claps me on the back and sighs.

“That chauffeur! What a man. I'm in love.”

I sniff and poke a little harder at the parma sauce.

“Aren't you excited?” she asks.

The headmaster and the mayor come back inside and order beers. It's the middle of the day. I've never seen the headmaster drink, even at night.

“To Loretta!” they shout, and raise their glasses.

“And to Nick!” Helen calls out, and swigs from her wineglass.

“Who?” the headmaster says.

They're crowded around me, laughing and talking about Heck's show and making plans for the biggest fete in the history of the school.

“It's not closing?” I say.

“Didn't you hear the minister? Changing demographics,
supporting the country constituency, the last meeting of the education advisory committee, blah blah blah. You did it, Loretta!”

The grade-three teacher bounds into the pub's dining room, brandishing a letter.

“They're not closing us down! This arrived today!”

“Old news, mate,” Mario Morelli says. “Have a beer.”

“That must be why the minister kept staring at me with this meaningful look,” the grade-three teacher says musingly. “I'd finish saying something and he'd stare as though I was supposed to add something else, and it made me prattle away as if I was on speed. He must have been expecting me to say thank you.”

Helen looks longingly through the open door at the puff of dust left by Nick's chariot. Even though the decision must have been made weeks ago, she clearly believes Nick rode in to save us.

“What's the catch?” I look around. I've lived in Gunapan for thirteen years. I know things aren't this easy.

“Catch? What catch?” the headmaster says, stretching his mouth in an unconvincing smile. “Drink up, Loretta.”

“You'll have to tell me sometime.”

“Let's have a nice drink and enjoy your victory.”

Usually the headmaster enjoys the job of predicting dire consequences. Usually you can't stop him spreading bad news like jam on toast.

Something else occurs to me. “What's this about the development and Samantha Patterson?” I turn and ask Vaughan, the mayor. “What's going on?”

“Samantha Patterson? She's not involved with the development. That portfolio belongs to Chris Dunn. By all accounts the development is going to be great for this town.
So don't start on that, Loretta. Look! Here's Hector, the other man of the moment.”

The headmaster pours champagne into my glass, and it froths over the rim like the lacy dress of a Southern belle.

“To us,” I say to Helen, raising my glass.

“To Gunapan,” she answers, and we down our drinks.

Don't start on that
, the mayor says. But I can't help myself. Something is wrong with that development. Someone has to act. I'm the Gunna Panther.

“HE'S GOT A
bloody cheek.” Tina's talking on the phone when I walk into the Neighbourhood House office. She glances over her shoulder at me and smiles, then says, “OK, gotta go, talk to you soon,” and hangs up the phone.

“Getting cooler at last,” I remark as I hang my jacket on the peg behind the door. “How come you're still here?”

“Have to get this stuff out to the parents.”

With five teachers and three part-time staff in the tiny office of the Neighbourhood House you'd think we'd be falling over each other, but our schedules rarely cross. Apart from running into her when I was dragging the minister around town, I haven't spoken to Tina for a month. She comes in to teach the Basic Education students who arrive by bus once a week to learn cooking and housekeeping skills. They race up to the office counter and push their round grinning faces in through the window. They are always laughing and joking except when they throw a tantrum and Tina has to physically restrain them.

Her son, Damien, sits beside her now, stuffing envelopes and licking the flaps with his sloppy tongue.

“Hi, Loretta,” he says, smiling with drool running down his chin.

“Damien, clean up your face for heaven's sake.” Tina holds out a tissue to him.

“Do you ever go to shire meetings?” I ask Tina.

“God no, why?”

“Just wondering. I'm trying to find out about this development and no one knows anything but gossip.”

“I heard there's some commercial secrecy thing.”

“See? I bet you don't even know what it is.”

“It's a resort with a golf course and a spa and accommodation. Everyone knows that.”

“But we've got a golf course!”

“It's not for us, Loretta. It's a resort for rich people. From outside, you know, who come to the resort and stay a few days and get pampered and go home.”

“That's crazy. Gunapan's an ordinary town in a dry country on a dry road that's been in drought for seven years. Why would anyone want to come here?”

“Loretta, stop being dense. I told you, they won't come to Gunapan. They'll probably come by helicopter or limousine or something. We'll never see them. Don't worry about it.”

“But the water!” I'm almost shouting now. “They're taking the water!”

“No, they've got their own spring,” Tina says, sounding as cross as me. “They're not touching our water.”

“But . . .” There's no point shouting at Tina. Doesn't anyone understand that the water under the ground should be ours? For Gunapan people and the farmers around us, water is life: water is crops, it's native animals surviving drought, it's one swimming pool for a thousand people. It's community. Those wealthy people will pour the water into perfumed spa
baths and carve it into ice sculptures for parties. They'll use it to wash their already pristine recreational vehicles and hose stray leaves off the driveways of the resort.

“They say it'll generate twenty jobs for locals.” Tina nods. “That bush land was a tip anyway. People dumped their rubbish there. It stank.”

“Not before, it didn't. It used to be beautiful. It was green and quiet and cool.” Of course, I get it now. It was green and cool when everywhere else was dry and hot because it had water underneath—the spring. Smart developers.

“Oh my God, he's back,” Damien says to me in a monotone, still with a goofy grin. He's obviously repeating what he's heard, and Tina flushes a deep red.

“Did I tell you to clean up your face?” she says sharply.

“Who's back?” I ask.

“I can't bear it, I'll have to do it myself.” She stands up and grasps Damien's hand to pull him toward the bathroom.

The phone starts ringing as soon as I sit down at the desk.

“Do you have patchwork classes?”

“I can't pay my power bill and they say they're going to cut me off next Monday.”

I wander out to the kitchen for a cup of tea and stand by the window while the kettle boils. Sometimes this job wears you down. Everyone wants something. Outside the window a horse is straining over the barbed-wire fence of the paddock next door trying to reach a clump of green grass. The fence is decorated with shredded plastic bags that have been caught there in the wind. The earth of the paddock is baked like the brown dry top of a burned pie.

Back in the office, the phone rings again.

“Is that you, Loretta?” Helen asks.

“Mmm,” I answer, my mouth full of teddy bear biscuit.

“He's back.”

“Mwah? Phoo?”

“Him! The bastard!”

“Phoo oo meem?” I don't want to believe her. Why would he come back?

“I saw him. He was driving down past the supermarket toward the bridge. He's cut his hair, but it was him. Same car, the CRX.”

For a moment there is silence on the line.

“I'm coming to the House. Don't move.” Helen hangs up.

I can't move. I can't even swallow the teddy bear biscuit that's turned to dry crumbs in my mouth. What will happen when Jake and Melissa see their father? Does he want to take them? Would they go with him? Does he want to come back to us?

By the time Helen arrives I'm molded to the orange plastic office chair. My husband's return has flipped me back into the old Loretta, the Loretta who fretted and chewed her fingernails and smoked a packet of Winfields a day and rang around people's houses trying to track down her husband to ask him to bring back some milk, but in reality to find out where he was. The Loretta who nagged her children and let her hair go lank and was too nervous to even try to find a job because she knew she was too stupid to keep one. Just like that, the old Loretta is back because her husband is.

“Whatever you're thinking, you're wrong.” Helen plonks a second strong cup of tea on the desk in front of me.

The tea is too hot to drink, but I take a scalding sip anyway to loosen the biscuit clag welded to the roof of my mouth.

“I'm not thinking anything. I can't think,” I tell her. My scalp is so tight I feel like a ballerina.