Jacaranda Blue

Joy Dettman was born in Echuca in Victoria and now lives in Melbourne.

Joy, a mother of four, is a full-time writer and a published author of several award-winning stories and the highly acclaimed novels
Mallawindy
,
Jacaranda Blue
,
Goose Girl
,
Yesterday's Dust
,
The Seventh Day
and
Henry's Daughter
.

About the Author

Also by Joy Dettman

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

The Funeral

Keep Your Mouth Shut

Boiled Eggs

The Black Packard

An Ill-Planned Escape

The Grand Old Dame

The Tour

Frilly Knickers

Yellow Fingernails

Doctor Parsons

Delayed Rebellion

The Rapist Rides

Pondering Underwear

The Twisted Clowns

All Tuckered Out

The Hedge Fire

The Birds

The First of Three

High Heels on Concrete

A Flighty Old Bird

So Many Clowns

The Blue Jeans

Cooling Flesh

London Calling

The Safe Compartment of Self

Meals on Wheels

A Timely Influenza

Just a Fanciful Thing

Metal Screenings

A Game of Chess

On the Scent of a Decomposing Bone

Differing Versions

Epilogue

It happened on a Friday, on a day like any other. Stella Templeton spent the morning starching and ironing the minister's vestments before preparing an early lunch. Her father had another funeral at three, and this one was fifty-five kilometres away, in Dorby. Stella was concerned. Her father was well past the age of driving long distances. Still, he wouldn't be going alone.

By one o'clock that Friday, four cars were lined up on Templeton's drive, and a crowd of Maidenville's elderly citizens had gathered there. Stella watched Mrs Morris and Mrs Murphy make a beeline for the minister's airconditioned vehicle. Four more headed for a new Ford, also airconditioned. Five took their places in Percy White's middle-aged sedan, and the rest piled into Willy Macy's kombi van. The mood was not sombre as the convoy headed east for a day out in Dorby.

Stella waved them away then returned to the house where she washed the lunch dishes and polished the kitchen floor. By two-fifteen she was dressed for town in a beige linen skirt, a cream blouse and sensible brown walking shoes. Her hair still damp from the shower, she pinned it back in the usual severe bun, applied sunscreen to her face and arms, then, donning her wide-brimmed hat and sunglasses, she walked downstairs.

Back in the kitchen, she glanced with disdain at the linoleum. It was worn, brown and rippled beneath the table, ripped before the sink, and almost through to the floorboards in front of the refrigerator. She wanted a new floor covering, but her father refused to spend money on the house.

Having taken her beige shopping buggy from the utility room beside the kitchen, she left the house via the back door and set off to walk the block and a half to town.

February was nearing its end. She would be pleased to see the last of it. The promised cool change had arrived last night, weakening as it blew north; there had been little cool and less rain in it. Now the early clouds had cleared and the sun was again beating down. Maidenville needed rain. Today the town looked brown, dusty, the street trees grey with dust, as weary as Stella for winter. She crossed over the road at the school's pedestrian crossing, stopping two cars on their way to somewhere better, then she walked on to the town centre, her hand brushing the sticky flies away.

Subjected to frequent facelifts, Main Street looked prosperous enough, but any character it may have had in Stella's youth was now well lost behind the facade of each modern fad; still, the business community was undeniably proud of their town – as the new sign near the park suggested.

WELCOME TO FAIR MAIDENVILLE, POPULATION 2,800.
STAY A WHILE
, it pleaded in small embarrassed letters.

Many of the surrounding farmers educated their children at the boarding school, and a few still used Maidenville's banks; enough did their weekly shopping at Spencer's supermarket, and on the nights of the school plays and concerts, the boarders' parents filled the two motels, but few passing travellers accepted the invitation to stay a while. Dorby was larger. Dorby had eight motels and the pokies, and the RSL Club; it had a K Mart that never closed its doors. The road between the two towns was well used at night, with early local traffic all heading east.

‘What's your hurry?' Bonny Davis called as Stella entered the greengrocers. Bonny was a vibrant redhead, and dressed today in orange shorts and a multicoloured shirt. She too was in her mid forties, but few would have questioned her word had she claimed to be thirty-five. She fairly flared with colour and vitality. Beside her, Stella in her cream and beige faded clean away.

‘I was hoping I'd run into you today, Stell. Have you got any spare pots in your shed? Just little ones.'

‘Piles of them, Bonny. How many do you want?'

‘A couple of dozen. I've been potting out those junipers I was telling you about and I didn't know I had so many. I've used up every pot I own.'

‘I'll get Father to drop some around tomorrow. I think they breed in our shed.'

Templeton's shed was a town joke. A huge barn of a thing, it had been standing for over a hundred years, and in those years had accumulated two hundred years of junk.

‘Have you thought any more about the raffle?' Bonny asked.

‘I'm making a large clown. He's almost done, and a fine fellow he is too. I've been calling him Willy.' Stella smiled, and walked to the swedes, selecting two. ‘It was accidental, I promise you, but he looks very much like Mr Macy.'

‘That will go down well. The winner can stick pins in him.' The women laughed and began filling plastic bags.

‘I used most of the filling on him, but there is more on order. I hope it arrives before the meeting on Thursday.'

Bonny's shopping was as colourful as her clothing. She purchased orange pumpkin, red strawberries and yellow bananas. Stella chose potatoes, brown swedes and greying brussel sprouts. They were the minister's favourites. Together still, the friends walked down to the butcher where Bonny bought orange frankfurts, pink chump chops and red minced steak. She paid cash. Stella chose lamb's fry for the minister's breakfast, and tripe for his dinner. Her purchases were jotted down on the minister's monthly account. At the supermarket, Bonny stocked up on specials for her tribe of growing boys. Stella chose tea, plain flour and floor polish.

The shopping bagged, the friends stood on, discussing the purchase of a new organ with Ron Spencer, owner of the supermarket, also the church organist. They were speaking of the two new bales of polyester filling, now overdue, when Marilyn, Ron's wife, finished with her customer, and leaned across the checkout counter.

‘The third pin has fallen. Old Mrs Martin died,' Marilyn said.

The friends moved closer to the register.

‘Died in her sleep this morning. They say that Joe got out at around nine, and he left her sleeping while he fed his chooks and had a shave. He went in with her breakfast at eleven, and thought she was still asleep. It was close to one when Liz got there with their dinners. She took one look at her and called Parsons around. Anyway, she was long dead.'

‘It's this weather,' Bonny said. ‘God, I wish it would rain.'

‘That poor old fellow. How is he taking it, Marilyn?' Stella asked.

‘They've got him up at the hospital. Liz was saying that the family don't think he'll ever come out either. He doesn't know where he is. Doesn't know she's dead. He keeps saying that he's got to get home and get Molly's breakfast.'

‘Age is cruel. They've kept each other alive these past ten years,' Bonny said.

‘Yeah, it's cruel all right. They've tried to talk to him about the funeral, but it's just going over his head. Liz said they want to do it Monday.'

That was the way of things in Maidenville, where everyone knew everyone else; no need for a death notice in the newspaper, word of mouth was swift. Before Stella and Bonny left the supermarket, the funeral plans were passed on by Lyn Parker, the Flag motel owner, and wife of John, the local solicitor. She was also president of the church guild. The conversation then turned to who would cook what, and who would make the sandwiches. The guild ladies always put on a light afternoon tea for the mourners.

At four o'clock, Bonny and Stella parted at the minister's tall cypress hedge, Bonny continuing on two blocks to her modern home, her supermarket bags swinging.

‘See you Monday, Stell, if not before.'

‘Bye, Bonny.' Already Stella's hand was reaching through the slot in the tall green gates. Now the bolt slid back, the gate squealed open, and she entered, bolting it behind her.

Her garden was a riotous blaze of disorganised blooming, a veritable jungle of flowers she kept locked away from Maidenville. This was her place, her escape from drab, and from community. She smiled now at her flowers and her birds flitting there, and her face lost its contrived years. She removed her sunglasses, the better to see the colours as her footsteps slowed on the long gravelled drive.

‘Oh, you dear things,' she said, halting her shopping buggy and standing motionless there. She could see the small blue finch and his mate. They were the first pair she'd sighted in many years. She'd have to keep an eye out for cats. She didn't like cats, didn't like their eyes, and she delighted in turning the hose on any trespassing feline.

A single salmon-pink rose drew her glance, and drew her nose to breathe in its perfume. She nipped a few spent heads, eased an audacious weed from the earth. She filled the three bird baths, sprayed the ferns, then continued on down to the house, a staid, two-storey red brick construction built before the turn of the century. It had belonged to her maternal grandfather. Stella had never known him, but in her mind's eye, she always saw him as large, staid, red.

The old timber shed stood at the rear of the house, its high peaked roof overlooked by Stella's bedroom window and shaded by three giant jacaranda trees. Built to house both horse and buggy in some past era, the shed still gave shelter to a horse collar, and harness, along with a 1936 Packard, a modern wheelbarrow an ancient wooden trailer, a cluttered workbench, and, when in residence, the minister's modern, church-supplied sedan. The walls were hung with cobwebs and the residue of years. Cycle wheels and car fenders hung from high rafters, ladders leaned, and boxes of the unnamed supported other boxes of the unknown.

A former horse stall, separated from the main shed by a partial door, was storeroom for the church guild. The polyester filling was usually kept here, its white snow bursting out of a hessian bale, but today the bale was sagging, near empty. There was a large plastic bag, overflowing with multicoloured wool. There were boxes of lace on a shelf, well off the floor, and two dozen completed clowns, packed in cartons, awaited their delivery to craft shops hundreds of kilometres away.

For twelve years Stella had been making her clown dolls, but they, unlike their creator, had escaped the boundaries of Maidenville. With the many hands of the guild ladies now knitting and stitching, the clowns brought in hard cash.

It was a busy shed, tool-filled, earthen-floored, its doors flung open to the garden. Stella spent much time there. In spring both front and side door looked out on a bower of blue but today the jacaranda trees were tired, their fern-like fronds drooping.

The town clock struck its long and painful five as she entered the shed that Friday. Her watch was one minute slow. She adjusted it, then took her rubber gloves from the workbench, carefully checking them for spiders before pulling them over her fingers. A new spray pack of weedkiller in hand, she stood reading the directions for use. There was a patch of couch grass growing against the paling fence her garden shared with Bill Wilson's neglected forest. Each summer she eradicated it, but each spring, devious roots burrowed beneath the fence to re-infest her garden beds.

‘There are more ways of killing a cat than choking him with cream, Mr Wilson,' she promised, marching purposely towards the side door.

Movement of shadow caught her eye. She turned, smiled. ‘Good afternoon,' she said.

The shed's front doors, warped by a hundred years of rain storms and hot summer winds, sagged on aged hinges. Each closing dug two quarter-circles deeper into the earth, creating hollows where water lay all winter. They were rarely closed. Her visitor stood in the doorway, a tall silhouette against the white light of hard afternoon sun. He was tracing a muddy half-circle with his sneaker, pressing his footprint into the ooze.

‘Father left the hose running while he was washing his Packard,' she offered, taking two steps to the left, attempting to see the face of her visitor. ‘He's gone to Dorby for the funeral.' Then she smiled. ‘Oh, it's you, Thomas. I didn't recognise you. You grow taller every time I see you.'

‘G'day, Stell,' the youth replied. ‘How's it going?'

‘I'm well. And you, Thomas?' He was Ron and Marilyn Spencer's handsome son, and a long-term member of the youth group, a tall and well-built lad, barely sixteen. Although he had, up to twelve months ago, called her Aunt, she actually liked this youthful familiarity of the nineties, and thought of her own youth when young males would never have dared call an unmarried middle-aged woman by her Christian name.

‘What time will he be back, Stell?' he asked.

‘Who knows once they get to talking? The funeral was at three, and quite a crowd drove over. Father took Mrs Morris and Mrs Murphy, so I can't see them letting him get away much before six. Can I give him a message for you?'

‘Na. I just thought I'd have a look at his old car.' As he walked towards her, he slapped the vehicle on its wheel-arch then kicked a tyre.

Stella flinched. It was her father's prized possession and he didn't encourage hand marks on the shiny black paintwork. She placed the weedkiller on the bench and walked to the car, offering the Packard her slim protection. ‘You'd be welcome to come back tomorrow, Thomas. Perhaps the minister might start it up for you. He loves an excuse to show off his mechanical skill.'

‘Does it still go?'

‘Oh, my word it does. It's started up religiously every week. I tell Father he is like a little boy, playing with his matchbox car.' She smiled again.

‘Do you still go?' the youth said. ‘Anyone ever try to start you up, Aunty Stell?'

‘Pardon?' Her smile now tempered with a frown, she stepped back from the youth.

‘Do you still go?' he repeated.

It happened too fast for her conscious mind to accept, to assess. Her secure little world tipped, it tilted, it slipped into reverse. Too slight, and he too strong, she was flung to the floor, and all she had known became the unknown, and the unknown now became the known.

Boy. Child. Son of her friends. Ron's precious boy. Marilyn's baby.

The doors were wide open. The birds still chirped in the trees. Trucks rattled down the road, and Murphy's dogs barked.

This wasn't happening.