The Idea of Perfection (16 page)

Sorry, he said, and smiled. Just sold the last yesterday.

He sounded pleased. The glasses were slipping and he screwed up his face to push them back.

But, she said, and turned side-on to the counter, so that the buckets in the window were directly in his line of vision, the white glare of the street beyond them.

She did not want to be rude.

I
thought
I saw some in the window, she said doubtfully, as if the six plastic fly-swats might have caught the sun in a funny way and looked like six buckets.

Oh! he cried, and released his face so that the glasses slid down his nose again. Oh, those. They’re the display.

He stood smiling at her, very much at ease. The silence extended. She imagined plucking the mole-hair on his earlobe and seeing him wince. She was surprised to find that she had said, Well, can’t I buy one?

The frown returned to his face.

Buy one?

She nodded and he sighed a big heavy sigh.

That’s the display, he said again, patiently.

This is the bush, they do things differently here, she reminded herself. But she heard her voice louder, sharper.

Why can’t I buy one?

He shot back with the answer like a snake striking.

That’s the display, he said. It shows what stock we carry.

She was getting hot. She could feel herself filling with rude things to say to him. She made an effort to speak very calmly.

Okay, but can’t I buy just the one? Any colour will do.

No, see, he said, patiently, but with an edge of determination in his voice. It may not matter to
you
what colour it is, but there might be someone needs a particular colour, yellow for example, he might need
(he
or
she,
she corrected in her mind), or red, or whatever, blue. Now if he
(or she)
looks in the window and sees no yellow, or red, or whatever, blue, he’ll think
(she’ll think)
we don’t carry it, when we do.

But you don‘t, she said, too loudly.

Oh yes we do, the man said, smooth and quick. She saw that he’d had conversations like this before. We just don’t happen to have one at the minute.

They faced each other across the counter, the light reflecting off his glasses. A car revved up juicily across the square and drove away. A distant dog barked twice.

She could feel the rage rising in her chest, hot like brandy fumes, up into her face. The muscles in her arm were getting ready with a little extra load of blood, to slap her hand on the counter. Her voice had the words ready.
Come ON, for God’s sake,
it would shout.
Just sell me one of your bloody buckets!

She waited, breathing, thinking of nothing but breathing, reminding herself that this was the moment when bureaucrats behind desks reached into their drawers, pulled out a different kind of form and said,
Now I might be able to do it if you were a P-85.
You were in business then, the bureaucrat’s power established, and you could be oozily grateful to be a P-85.

But this was the bush and they did things differently here. Instead of the bureaucrat getting out the P-85, and everyone going home happy, the man with the mended glasses and the strangely red-faced woman continued to stand with the counter between them.

 

 

She left the shop, blind with irritation, and almost tripped over the dog as it came forward with its tail beating the air, sniffing at the string bag. She did not look down, but she knew it was there, following a pace behind, as she walked stiffly away from the Mini-Mart.

There was a fellow watching her over outside the Caledonian, a long lanky fellow curved against the wall. She stared back rudely, and he looked away.

It was true that a leaf had two sides, but when you
turned over a new leaf, the new leafwas
very like the
old leaf.

Jay-walking recklessly across the empty space of Parnassus Road towards the Cobwebbe Crafte Shoppe, she tried to breathe steadily. She clenched the hand not holding the basket.
Tight, tight, tighter.
Doing it out in public she realised it was the same as making a fist.

She was determined to start off on the right foot with Coralie this time. She would not mention
family,
and then clam up about it. She would not say how hot it was, either. That was stupid in a place that had been hot for three months and would go on being hot for another three.

Coralie was behind the cash register again going through dockets. She looked up and smiled when she saw who it was.

Hello, Harley said.

That sounded all right, but before she could stop herself, she went on.

Hot, isn’t it?

But Coralie did not seem to mind.

Bushfire weather, she said, and went on counting dockets. When she had counted the last one she looked up and smiled over the tops of her glasses.

Not to worry, she said. We got the blue ribbon for Hose-Rolling last year.

Harley did not understand, and thought Coralie must be making some kind of suggestive joke. She laughed politely, feeling her face stiff with the false smile.

The bright red glasses must have seemed cheering, original, when Coralie had bought them. She would have smiled at herself in the optician’s mirror. Harley could imagine her thinking the word
zany.
Now they were a joke that had gone on too long.

Under the glasses, crow’s feet were etched in hard around her eyes from a lifetime of squinting at the Karakarook sunlight, and the skin there had gone crepey. But her breasts poked out jauntily under her tee-shirt and her hips were round in the tight jeans. Harley thought Coralie could be as old as she herself was. But Coralie had made a different decision about how to present herself to the world. Harley would never have tried
zany
red glasses or tight jeans. For years she had always chosen clothes that made no promises.

Coralie was smiling now, a complicated sort of smile that did not want to embarrass Harley but did not want to seem to laugh at her either.

No, look, she said, and pointed up behind her on the wall, above a dinner-set in the shape of black and orange pumpkins, at a row of pennants.

See? Karakarook Volunteer Bush Fire Brigade. Hose-Rolling. First Prize.

Oh!

It was foolish and patronising to have laughed.

But you’re right, Coralie said quickly, and smiled a simpler sort of smile, and winked. There’s a bit of off-duty hose-work goes on, too.

They could have a good laugh together about that.

 

 

Someone in Karakarook seemed to like padded coat-hangers. There were a lot of crocheted ones in orange wool and a lot more in pink, with white ribbon threaded along them. There were some more done in ruched pink satin trimmed along the bottom with lace. The expensive ones were done in hexagon patchwork. There was an abundant supply of glasses-cases, too. You could get them in crocheted wool, crocheted cotton, hexagon patchwork, satin embroidered with flannel flowers, or petit point.

When she picked up one of the coat-hangers and squeezed the foam padding, it was nasty: flabby, like something left too long in the sun, and she felt her face draw down in disgust. Remembering Coralie was watching her, she made the corners of her mouth turn up, but then she thought she might look as if she was laughing.

She coughed, and tried to start again with the shape of her mouth.

Picking up a full-skirted doll she recoiled as her hand disappeared under its hollow skirt.

That’s for your spare toilet roll, Coralie said. Don’t go in for them myself, do you?

No, Harley said.

The way I see it is, we all go to the toilet, Coralie said.

Harley picked up a big striped bedsock that stretched in her hand into a huge thing like a Christmas stocking.

Mrs Stott, Coralie said. Well, she knits a bit on the loose side.

She opened the till with a ping and started sorting the money.

So you’ve got family out this way, did you say? she asked.

But as if to soften the intrusive sound of this, she took off the
zany
glasses and polished them on the hem of her tee-shirt. Without them, she looked like someone who could have worries of her own.

It made Harley feel she should make an effort.

I had my Gran and Grandpa, she said. Out Boolaroo way.

This was true, although not what she had been thinking of, that first day, mentioning
family.
But it struck the right tone, that
out Boolaroo way,
and it was nowhere near Badham. Her connection with Badham was no one’s business but her own.

But they’re long gone.

Coralie glanced at her.

Dead and gone, like, do you mean? she asked.

Then she bit her lip as if regretting the phrase. To reassure her, Harley spoke quickly.

That’s right. Dead and gone.

It was a funny phrase, when you thought about it, but of course it was right.
Dead
was not always
gone.
You could think about the
dead
every day of your life, so that it seemed they would never, ever, be truly
gone.
Philip, for example. She went on quickly, to forestall any thoughts about him.

They got very old, she said.

Philip had not been old, of course. He had not been as old, when he
took his own life,
as she was now. And of course it had been a mystery to everyone.
Out of the blue
was another phrase she had taken refuge behind. No one had ever been able to make any sense of it, although she was weary now at the thought of how everyone had endlessly tried.

He had left a note. The police had found it on the bench: the writing pad that he used for personal letters, and one of the special disposable fountain-pens he liked. They had been disappointed because they did not think it went very far towards explaining anything.

Dear Harley
, it said, and a comma. That was all.
Dear Harley
,
comma
. He had shaped the comma, with the special black pen that he bought by the dozen, in his orderly way, putting the receipt away carefully, and in the time it took to write
Dear Harley
and the comma, he must have thought about her, because that was what you did when you started a letter.
Dear Harley, comma.
As he wrote, he must have seen her in his mind’s eye as she was to him.

Whatever he had seen, it had made him put down the pen and get on with the thing he had so carefully planned.

The comma had never stopped haunting her. It did not explain anything for the police, and she let people go on saying it happened
out of the blue.
But she knew it had not happened
out of the blue,
but because of her.
Dear Harley, comma.
She was that dangerous, that a man could go and do to himself the thing that Philip had done rather than go on thinking about her.

Coralie had her head in the till again. There was a silence in which she flicked at banknotes to get them all the same way up, slid them into the till, flipped down the clip to hold them in place.

Harley felt the story of the grandparents ought to be finished off. At least it would fill the silence for a moment.

And then they died, she said. Just, you know, of natural causes.

It came out sounding a bit funny. Thinking about Philip, and trying not to think about it, had somehow made the words come out not quite right. If there was someone else here with Coralie now, they would be making rueful frog-faces at each other behind her back, faces that said,
Bit of a funny one, isn’t she.

And she - she would tighten herself up against being worked out. There were too many things she did not want to have to remember, too great a sense of needing to be wary. Her mouth would never look right.

It was a kind of fear, but they would think she was being haughty.

She was tired, thinking about it, and moved away to the shelves. Buying something was at least a way of not having to go on talking. It would show
her heart was in the right place,
even if it was not.

There were several shelves of unattractive khaki-coloured pickles and some kind of intensely black jam, but under that there were some jars of marmalade of a jewel-like amber hung with fine curls of peel.

These are good, aren’t they, she said, holding one up to the light. Real Show quality.

Coralie laughed, a big hard surprised laugh like a sneeze.

Oh, that was me did those, she said. I did them.

She sounded almost angry.

1 couldn’t get anywhere with the sponges, not fluffy enough, and Marj Pump always wins the Preserved Fruit, so I thought I’d have a go at the marmalade.

She held a jar up to the light and frowned at it critically.

It’s darker than you’d really want it, she said. The blessed sugar got too hot.