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CHAPTER
21
Immersing himself in the bosom of the family had proved harder than Joey had expected.
Monday arvo he called into Bangadoon with a batch of pumpkin scones but the van wasn’t there. The house he’d grown up in was unlocked (of course) with every window wide open, but of Patty and Robbo, no sign.
He left the scones under a tea towel and scribbled a note:From Joey.Felicity’s barb at the bank replayed in his head, so he dug a little deeper.Thanks for all the help at the farm.
On Tuesday he discovered lace grub had chewed up half a tree’s worth of leaves, so he spent the morning panicking and the afternoon up a ladder dousing the remaining leaves with pyrethrum.
Wednesday he finally made contact with his elusive parents on the phone, and when he asked them point blank if something was up, his dad said, ‘Well, son,’ and his mum mowed over Robbo’s words with a monologue on which volunteers from last year’s muster were turning up in October for a repeat performance.
Cagey? Yes.
Butwhy?
‘Do you guys want to come to dinner?’ he said. ‘I can try out the barbecue plate I’ve just built.’
‘Oh, pet, we’d love to, just not tonight.’
By dawn on Thursday he had convinced himself that his parents really were hiding something, but he had chores on the whiteboard that couldn’t be ignored, starting with an urgent trip to town.
He checked the cattle, fed the chooks, threw on a load of laundry, and before his watch hand had found eight o’clock, he was pulling his ute up to the defunct fuel bowser out front of Hogey’s workshop. As much as he’d love to give the old mechanic a chance to have a dig at him for cruising the Clarence streets on an aqua moped, he needed a ute tray today. When he’d been strolling through his neatly furrowed rows with the ever-happy Gus by his side, the irrigation pump that serviced his southern fields had made a hideous noise. The stench of burnt rubber followed.
He needed his pump up and pumping again, and so here he was lugging the infernal thing into town because Hogey was the bloke to do it.
Joey stepped under the roller door of the workshop and peered through the strings of Castrol flag bunting that had decorated the ceiling since the 1980s by the looks. An ancient kelpie opened one eye. What the hell? He’d been expecting disassembled motors and a grease-stained mechanic, not … what was this, a morning tea party?
Half a dozen Clarence residents were sitting on plastic chairs around the empty car hoist. A whiteboard had been strapped to a display pillar of Bridgestone tyres, and on it was drawn a flow chart of boxes labelled inscrutably with phrases likeBump InandZeroStraw TargetandCatering Foil for Pie Warmers.The lettersMFJwere written in faint red near the bottom.
Huh. He must have stumbled on a committee meeting for the Annual Clarence River Bush Poetry Muster.
Perhaps his pump crisis wasn’t the worst timing after all. If the bush poetry mob were mustering, his mother couldn’t be far off. He scanned the dimly lit interior and spied Hogey holding a mug of tea in one hand and scratching his armpit with the other. The bald bloke with a moustache the size of a platypus was Ken from the Clarence Hotel Motel, and Vonnie from the supermarket was there, wearing a no-nonsense safari suit that wouldn’t have looked out of place in an outback wildlife special.
He was about to head in when he saw movement in the tiny little office to the side where Hogey kept his calculator and his ancient desktop computer. Daisy and his mother … and his mother was wiping a tear from her eye. What the heck? He moved to the doorway but Daisy’s voice stopped him.
‘Everyone will understand if you need to take a lesser role this year, Mum.’
Patty was shaking her head. ‘I couldn’t, Daisy. The muster is my contribution to the community. This is just a little setback, that’s all.’
Their faces were turned away from him, so he only caught part of his sister’s response. ‘Mum, callingmumble mumblea setbackmumble mumblenot so little.’
Joey frowned. What setback were they talking about? He ducked through the flags and into the dim space of the office. ‘Hello,’ he said. ‘You two are a long way from Bangadoon.’
Daisy and his mum exchanged a look which apparently was as good as a conversation, because his mum handed the greasy kettle she was holding to his sister and bustled over.
‘Joey. My lamb, my heart. What are you doing here?’
He narrowed his eyes and pointed to the sign hanging above the cluttered desk. ‘Gav Hogan.Clarence Mechanic.Utes,Mowers,Anything,’ he read. ‘I’m here for the “Anything”, otherwise known as a faulty irrigation pump. What are you doing here?’
‘Bush Poetry Muster committee meeting. We won’t be more than an hour. Maybe you could pop back later.’
Daisy brushed past him with the kettle and a plate of biscuits … a Robbo recipe for sure, crammed with as much home-churned butter and Bangadoon bee honey as his dad could force into a mixing bowl. ‘I can stick around for the meeting. Snaffle a bickie or two, make cups of tea for everyone.’ Ferret out exactly what it was his mum and Daisy had been whispering about in the kitchen.
‘Um … I don’t think so, son. Just pop back in an hour, there’s a dear.’
He was being given the brush off. From the woman who’d given birth to him, nonetheless; the same woman who’d spent the last thirty plus years telling him he was the apple of her eye. The sun in her aura. ‘I keep asking you if everything is all right, Mum, and you keep saying yes.’
