Each Way Bet (17 page)

‘What – me?’

‘Don’t care who makes it,’ yelled a gruff voice from the lounge-room, ‘as long as I get fed soon! Have to take medication, you know!’

‘No kidding,’ muttered Emily.

‘Hey!’ Jill jabbed her lightly in the shoulder, but grinned anyway. Then she turned her attention back towards the kitchen and looked slowly across from James Carstairs’ platter of sandwiches to Megan’s platter of pikelets – the only food in evidence. Everyone remained silent while they watched Jill, as
if waiting for her to wave a hand and perform the miracle of the loaves and fishes.

‘I thought Corinne was sending something?’

‘That’s right!’ Emily beamed at her sister and then bounced across to the fridge, flinging it open. ‘She sent some taco mince and all the trappings! Look!’

‘Mummy, I’m really bloody hungry.’

‘That’s a mark for you.’ Jill watched Jack add another black cross to the whiteboard and then turned back to Cricket. ‘And lunch will be ready any second. Auntie Emily’s just getting it ready.’

‘I am?’ asked Emily, picking up a large Tupperware container full of what looked like lumpy mud and tipping it from side to side as she looked at it doubtfully. ‘Um . . . how?’

‘Oven,’ said Jack emphatically.

‘Good god.’ Jill looked from one to the other and shook her head incredulously. ‘And you two hold down responsible jobs? I tell you what, I’ll take over lunch – stop!’ She wagged a finger at Emily’s grin of relief: ‘You’re helping. And I’m not doing any dishes, or cleaning up, or any of that. And straight after I’ve finished lunch, I’m sitting down to be waited on.
That
was the deal. The only reason I’m doing this is because I’m starving and, if I leave it up to you, I’ll never get fed.’

‘No problem,’ said Emily, nodding her head in agreement. ‘Where do we start?’

‘And can I help?’ asked Sybil unexpectedly.

‘Firstly, what are all these papers on the bench?’

‘They’re the horse quiz answers.’ Emily took them from her sister and rolled them into a tube. ‘I haven’t got round to marking them.’

‘Don’t forget mine!’ called Mary from over at the table. ‘I’m awake to you lot! Oh, hello, Jill dear. Have you been here all morning?’

‘No, Mum,’ Jill smiled at her mother, ‘but I gave you a kiss before when I came in here. And I’ll come and sit with you as soon as I finish up lunch. Now –’ Jill turned back to the kitchen – ‘Jack, would it be too much to ask you to mark the horse quizzes for us?’

‘Of course not,’ Jack replied stiffly, taking the rolled-up papers from Emily and disappearing with them into the lounge-room. Tim, who had been hovering behind Emily and Jill for the past ten minutes, now took a surreptitious step backwards and then four steps sidewards, a manoeuvre that swiftly and relatively silently took him into the lounge-room as well. Matt stuck his head around the doorway just as Tim disappeared through it.

‘Lunch ready yet?’ he asked hopefully.

‘No, but you can –’

‘I was gonna get the next game ready,’ Matt interrupted quickly, ‘seeing as we haven’t played one for ages.’

‘Fine, you do that.’ Jill turned her back on him. ‘Now, let’s see. Sybil, do you think you could possibly take those sandwiches there into the lounge-room and offer them around? That should take the edge off everyone’s hunger pains while we get the rest of this together.’

Jill slid off her stool. ‘Good to see you did the dishes at least. Now, we’re going to lay a smorgasbord out on the table over there. What the hell is that?
Punch
? Good god. Anyway, Megan, I want you to get a pad and go take drink orders. And find Kate and tell her to get out here and help. She can put out plates and stuff. Cricket, I want you to get serviettes and cutlery and put them on the table. We’ll take care of your clothes after lunch. And your hair. Emily, get every bit of salad vegetable you can find and chop them up for platters.’ Jill opened the fridge, gestured towards the vegetable crisper and then pulled a packet of rolls out of the freezer. ‘And grate some
cheese. Then put some sour cream into a nice bowl, and also some taco sauce. I’ll fix up the mince because Corinne always does it so blandly, and I’ll also heat the taco shells. And the rolls. That should just about do it . . .’

She closed the fridge then looked across at them: ‘Well, what are you all waiting for? Me to do
everything
? Go on, get to it!’

Jill wiped her mouth with a serviette, crumpled it up on her plate and then leant back, sighing contentedly as she looked around her. Lunch had brought with it a bit of a hiatus, with everybody needing to stop talking long enough to fill their mouths. This had given Jill a chance to think, and she had decided a couple of things. One was that breast-fondling definitely did not count as adultery. After all, since her marriage her breast had been fondled by countless other people. Even apart from her four babies, there were the nurses who when Matt was born had had to teach her how to attach him. And then there was that mammogram she had had last year. Her entire chest had been manipulated more than a pile of pastry that day.

Having decided this, Jill had moved on to the positives. Like the fact that Tim, who could be assumed to have had some experience, couldn’t tell
her
breast, which had fed four children, from
Emily’s
breast, and both of Emily’s breasts, she had noticed earlier, were disgustingly perky – presumably because they had been used for entertainment purposes only. This thought had made Jill straighten her back and decide that tomorrow she would go out and buy some more flattering clothes. After all, if you’ve got it, why not flaunt it.

Lunch had also brought a clear division of the sexes. All the males had gravitated instinctively towards the lounge-room, where the television was displaying the preliminaries for the next race, while the women had automatically pulled out chairs around the dining-room table, where the food was spread out before them and they could continue to help themselves. The only exceptions to this rule were Kate, who was kneeling at her father’s feet working out the adjusted odds for each horse, and that ghastly cousin of Will’s.
She
had settled herself on the couch beside Jack with a plateful of lettuce and two miniscule slithers of avocado. Jill decided that if there was one thing she despised more than attractive, middle-aged predators, it was attractive, middle-aged predators with self-control over their food consumption.

‘So how’s it been so far?’ Jill turned to Emily, whose overflowing plate displayed her lack of solidarity with the predator. ‘Any problems?’

‘None whatsoever,’ replied Emily airily, spooning sour cream into her taco.

‘Except for the dog,’ said Charlotte helpfully, ‘and the window.’

‘And Matt hanged me by my foot again,’ Cricket pouted. ‘I nearly died. And Kate brushed my hair and it hurt. A lot.’

‘And Cricket wet herself,’ added Charlotte, earning herself an outraged glare from her youngest cousin.

‘And Cruella –’ Megan, who had been uncharacteristically quiet thus far, inclined her head towards the next room – ‘who’s a serious pain in the butt.’

‘And I seem to have run out of green wool,’ said Mary, rummaging around in her crochet bag.

‘And I
mithed
you,’ said Cricket, leaning her head against her mother’s shoulder and gazing up at her with open-mouthed adoration.

‘Tell her to close her mouth!’ yelled Kate from the lounge-room. ‘I can see her food from here! Totally gross!’

‘What
about
the dog? And the window?’ asked Jill, closing Cricket’s mouth gently.

‘Matthew threw a carpet bowl through it.’ Charlotte smiled at first one aunt and then the other. ‘But I’m sure it was an accident. Although I can’t be one hundred percent sure as I seem to remember that that may have been when I was busy looking for the piano.’

‘The window that the couch is pushed against?’ asked Jill, ignoring the bit about the piano because she had no desire to discover why her niece would have been searching for a piano in the first place – she felt only relief that it wasn’t likely she would find one.

‘That’s the one,’ Emily sounded upbeat, ‘but it’s only a window. And Jack said he made enough in the first race to cover the cost anyway.’

‘Oh, good,’ Jill said dryly as she gazed over towards the window. ‘Bloody Matt.’

‘Bloody Matt!’ repeated Cricket happily, spitting masticated taco shell over her mother’s left sleeve in her excitement.

‘Dum-diddle-dum-diddle-dum . . . how
much
is that do-ggie in the window?’ sang Jill’s mother tunefully as she tied some purple wool onto her crochet hook. ‘Did I win that quiz?’

‘I don’t know.’ Emily put her taco down and called to the lounge-room, ‘Jack! Have you finished marking those quiz answers yet? Who won?’

‘Just finished!’ Jack called back before appearing in the doorway and holding up a sheaf of papers. ‘And there was a draw for first place between the bloke who came and then saw and then conquered – and my mother. Well done, Mum!’

‘My word!’

‘I take it you mean me?’ asked Adam with a self-satisfied grin. ‘Excellent! I
knew
this T-shirt’d give me an edge.’

‘What?’ Jill’s mother laid down her crocheting and glared narrowly across at her son-in-law. ‘Have you got mine there?’

‘Sure have.’

‘Did you double-check it?’

‘Sure did.’

‘Oh
I
see,’ Mary Broadhurst nodded sagely and then narrowed her eyes at everyone in turn, ‘it’s like that, is it? Can’t win by fair means so you have to win by foul. First the pen and now this. Disgusting.’ As soon as she spat out the last word, Mary rose and, ostentatiously looking over everybody’s head, thudded from the room with her poncho floating regally behind her.

‘Oh, Jack,’ murmured his mother.

‘What do you mean, “Oh, Jack”?’ asked her son indignantly. ‘How is it
my
fault? She didn’t even get one answer right! Not one!’

‘But still .. .’

‘Okay, listen to this.’ Jack pulled out one sheet of paper from the sheaf and waved it in the air. ‘For the question “What is an each way bet?” she crossed out all the multiple choice answers and wrote “bisexuality”!’

‘You should give her a mark for that!’ Adam joined Jack in the doorway. ‘It shows definite originality. And it’s not exactly wrong either.’

‘She said that Mr Ed was a past winner of the Melbourne Cup!’

‘Isn’t he?’ asked Matt, shoving his way into the family room.

‘Her drawing of a gelding has a three-foot –’

‘We get the picture,’ interrupted Jill quickly.

‘No you don’t.’ Jack waved a remarkably accurate picture of a well-endowed horse in front of her. ‘
I
did!’

‘But look, mate,’ Adam put his hand on Jack’s shoulder, ‘the thing is that I think Corinne just lets her think she’s won anyway. It makes her happy.’

‘And it’s not like it hurts anyone,’ added Jill.

‘That’d be right. It’s always my fault, isn’t it? No matter what I bloody do.’ Jack flung the papers down on the table in front of Jill and gave her a disgusted look before stalking into the passageway after Mary.

‘
Everyone’s
swearing today,’ commented Cricket conversationally.

‘Margaret and Adam – you might as well pick a prize,’ said Jill, getting up from the table and starting to stack dirty plates. ‘After all, you two
did
win. So well done.’

‘Excellent,’ said Adam, rubbing his hands together as he headed over towards the prize table.

‘Hey, Adam,’ Emily called, ‘what’d you do with those pens you had earlier?’

‘I’ll get them for you in a tic.’

‘Can I help anyone?’ Sybil joined the company in the family room, closely followed by Tim, who took Adam’s place lounging in the doorway.

‘You could pick your prize.’ Charlotte folded her serviette neatly and placed it on top of her cutlery. ‘You won flapjack before but no-one told you that there’s prizes.’

‘That’s fine. I don’t need a prize.’

‘No,’ Emily leant back and rubbed her stomach happily, ‘you won fair and square. Go over there and pick a prize. Quick, before Adam pinches the best one.’

‘And you too, Grandma,’ Megan said to Margaret, ‘you deserve it.’

‘As do I.’ Mary flounced back into the room and beamed at everybody as she headed over to the prize table. ‘Told you there’d been a mistake, didn’t I? And now that stupid boy
admits he didn’t check mine properly. It was a three-way draw. I
knew
it.’

‘I’m taking this.’ Adam held up a slim navy-coloured book with a gold printed title:
How to Pick a Winner
. ‘I desperately need this – both for my betting
and
for my love-life.’

‘Who doesn’t?’ said Tim darkly.

‘Hey!’ Emily glanced at him with surprise. ‘I’m right here, you know!’

‘And I’ll have these seeds.’ Margaret held up a bundle of plant seed packets. ‘Lovely, Jill, thanks.’

‘Oh, look!’ Sybil’s low-modulated voice suddenly shot high with excitement. ‘I haven’t seen one of these since I was a child! My goodness, it takes me back!’

‘I wish,’ muttered Kate.

‘I
have
to have it! Unbelievable – a slinky!’

‘
Fuck
it!’ screamed Cricket wildly.

‘That’s it! You’re going to bed!’ Jack, who had just reappeared in the family room, hoisted his small daughter out of her chair so quickly that her mouth was still open as he carried her out of the room.

‘My word,’ said Margaret faintly.

‘Get her changed into something decent while you’re there!’ Jill called after him quickly, before turning back to the assorted company. ‘I’m so sorry, everybody! I can’t think where she heard that, really I can’t. We
never
say that word!’

‘That’s okay,’ said Emily magnanimously, ‘kids pick up the weirdest stuff. Probably not even your fault.’

‘Tsk, tsk – that stupid, stupid boy,’ Mary muttered as she continued to peruse the prizes, totally oblivious to anything else. ‘Just goes to show that if you want a job done properly, you’re better off doing it yourself. Can’t trust anybody. Relatives, hah!’

‘That daughter of yours is an interesting character,’ Adam grinned at his sister.