The Pig’s Arms welcomes our new contributor – Nan

It was a hot, dry, dusty Christmas day. My mother, as usual, rose early and caught a chook before it left its night perch. She carried the squawking bird to the wood heap. Dangling its head onto a supporting log, she decapitated it with one blow of the blade of the axe left leaning in readiness against the side of the fowl house.

From her pinny pocket, she took a ball of already-doubled and rolled-up binder twine that she plied in a draw string fashion around the legs of the headless bird to hang it from the clothesline to bleed. The washed axe accommodated back in its place around the corner of the wash house door, she returned to the kitchen.

The wood stove was burning and the water pots boiling.

“Come and stir this pudding.”

I peeped through the orange, tan and cream stripe basket weave curtain hanging across our bedroom door.

“I can’t find any Christmas present.”

“Well, help me get this pudding on and we’ll look together while it cooks.”

I climbed to kneel on the cushioned, old green chair my mother usually sat on, took the huge enamel spoon and whipped the sugar, butter and boiled water into a frenzy. I struggled and sweated in my nightdress.  Mum added ingredients.

“Here’s your porridge,” she changed the subject.  “I’ll finish stirring and get the right consistency.”

Carefully melded into the calico cloth that was draped over the tin colander, our austere plum pudding was contained by a tie of string from the huge John Martin’s parcel that came in the post last week. Plopped into the boiling-hot black pot of water, it would be carefully watched and simmered through the morning.

“What’s the time, Mum?” I ventured through a mouthful of the porridge my Cornish father fondly labelled “burgoo”.

“Shoosh!” Mum warned. “You’ll wake everyone up. I want to get this bird dressed and stuffed. You bring in the empty wood bucket. Put it here.” She motioned towards the cooking table under the north window and dived out of the opened south-facing doorway. When she came back in again, she had the hen she hoped had not laid yesterday’s one and only egg.

Choose a fat, lazy one was a well-known doctrine; it was said the under carriage of a layer was scrawny and wrinkled.

Hot water was poured over the whole feathery mess to soften it for plucking. The porridge downed, one found it easier to withstand that irksome smell. I worked with small and nimble fingers to pull the few remaining feathers off the skin. My mother approached with the butcher’s knife to gouge out the few stubs of feathers left, the last blueys in the tough spots like the backbone and upper legs. She severed the neck from the body, the legs at their first joint, and cut away the wing ends.

Paper the fowl had been laid out on for the operation and the feathers went in the tin wood bucket. They were set on fire and Mother turned the bird’s carcass above the flames to singe off the long hairs remaining on its skin. More paper was spread on the table. The anus end of the hapless hen was cut open to reveal liver, lights and intestines. The chosen parts were extracted and put into a saucepan to make Mum’s special soup for tea.

I put my hands through wet bread in a crockery bowl, mashing the bread and adding the egg with chopped onion and herbs selected from the bottles and packets of condiments collected in the back of the safe. The bird was stuffed with the mixture and trussed with string. Wrapped in the brown paper bag the rolled oats came in, it was placed into the roasting dish, in a swamp of melted mutton fat off last Sunday’s roast.

The sun as it rose glowed into the south-east verandah corner of the porch. Mum took the wood bucket out with the milking bucket, disappearing towards the shed south of the house. I ran after her. Darkie, the Jersey cow, grazed step by step closer to the house and Flossie, the red Kelpie, barked her approval. Small and rotund, my parent crouched on her stool, her head into the flank of the cow to keep its right leg back and herself comfortable. She rinsed the four teats with a wet rag, readjusted her stool and reached to begin to milk and strip the udder dry. I waited nearby for the first contribution of about a gallon of the warm milk to take inside to make a junket.

A murky pall of cloud cover obscured the sunrise. The fowls, their feathers blown upwards and fanned into a barrier, stood against a breeze of increasing strength that swirled dust from the clothesline path. They were pushed into a quiet spot near the wood heap. An egg might be laid there. Voices sounded from the kitchen doorway.

“MUM! Marrrrrm?” yelled my two sisters. “The baby’s crying!”

“Your father’s in there! He can get him up out of bed!”

“He’s asleep still!”

Christmas Day that year had brought father’s shearing week to an early close. All the clothes discarded from last night’s bathing were swinging on the line, done while Mum waited for Dad to arrive home, although in the middle of the week.

“Gilham, get out of bed and fix the baby! I’ll be there in a minute!” Mum continued to strip the last milk out of the cow’s udder. “He can feed the calf and pigs!” she murmured, carrying the bucket of new milk housewards.

The dust made visibility poor. I held my nightie collar close and went inside. The north wind belted down the hill behind the house and started the chimney rattling.

“I’ll get some wire and tie that chimney down!” Dad exclaimed.

“Eat your porridge and eggs first!” Mum dared.

Dad sank gratefully into Father’s chair at the head of the table, nearest the fire and offered his first spoonful to the baby propped in the white cane pram.

“Burgoo! Good old burgee,” he grinned at his son.

Mum put the frying pan on the middle of the black cast-iron Metters stove top, stoked the fire and added more boiling water to the bubbling pudding. The frying eggs and toast smoking over the hot coals shone an extra patina of red on her face.

I had changed out of my nightdress into the cotton frock left on my bed the night before. My sisters settled to play with the sewing kit and doll’s set Father Christmas left for them. I still hadn’t found my gifts so Mother left the dishes to set our room straight, folding clothes, putting toys away and smoothing our beds. I grabbed at my fallen quilt. My new painting book and stocking full of goodies fell from the tangled folds.

A sudden noise sent us tearing to the stove where large and small quantities of black soot were now descending from the heaven-held flat iron chimney flue.

“Wait up!” Mum yelled as she recognised Dad had thrown a stranglehold of wires over the creaking, groaning chimney piece. She grabbed at her precious pots of hot water. “I’ll just get the water off the stove top to do the dishes!”

“I’ll fix it this time!” Dad yelled back.

“What are you doing?” Mum screeched.

Dad yelled again. “I’ll need your help!”

“Here, sweep up that soot while I go out there. Mind the hot water pots on the table!”

Mum hurriedly left us as she went outside and took hold of the guy wires to keep them taut. Some time later, she reappeared in the doorway with a huge bundle of the clean clothes off the clothes line. She threw the burden onto her bed covering of the beautiful white Marcella quilt she took great care of all the years of her marriage.

The gale brought on a heavy cloud cover. Large summer raindrops pounded onto the galvanised iron roof. You could barely hear the bubbling of the pudding simmering on the heated stove top, or the sizzling of the fats around the browning poultry in the oven. Crisping potatoes, carrots, pumpkin and onions were crammed in the roasting dish.

By midday, the chimney’s creaking had desisted. The dust settled and the last of the soot was swept onto the ashes of the fowl-singeing bucket.

A change of wind direction came in from the west. It brought with it a cool breath of fresh air along with much needed water for the tank supplying the household water, the farm pastures, and animals’ trough. The Yorkshire pudding batter was poured into the fatty gravy in the roaster and the dish returned to the smouldering oven. The roasted fowl waited steaming in its bag to be carved onto dinner plates. The roasted vegies were dished up onto an enamel plate.

The white Christmas cloth enhanced the old wooden table as we fought to set cutlery and bring edibles out of the food safe, to be ready for the feast. The baby had been fed again and put to sleep, following his daily bathing.

Mum was relieved to unbind the chook from its string. She rolled the pudding out of its calico moulding, an effort in itself to achieve.

Again, I knelt on the cushioned chair, this time at the side of the stove, mixing gravy with creamed flour in the baking dish and pudding sauce in a milk saucepan. Mum went to and fro, watching me with a sharp eye.

Another well-prepared meal was about to be served. We set out the crisp clean glasses for the bubbly lemonade, a yearly delight especially purchased for the day for here was Christmas.

Previously published in: Women’s Voices. A Newspaper for Women in the South. A Project of Southern Women’s Community Health Centre, Noarlunga, S. Aust./15^th Edition December 1998. Category. Geraniums Writing Group.

By Sandshoe

25/11/2010

Driving into a glare of headlights on the Tullamarine freeway at 5.30 am, this the dead of winter in Melbourne and I am talking on a mobile phone to a client parked by Ayers Rock whose kids won’t “go” behind it, who is demanding instruction on what to do when the council toilets are locked, the motor home’s toilet blocked and “the wife” insists I send the van doctor. “She” will otherwise, logically, file for divorce.

The van doctor knows everything, I agree. You will need to learn, a sales manager told me, years ago as we were about to parachute together out of a plane, how to diffuse argument. I hope, first, diversion of my client from his anxiety attack. We discuss the pedestal on which I place the van doctor. The latter, I recall, I refered to at the depot as knowing everything anyone can, although I meant about vans not absolutely everything.

The contrast between the results of my solicitations (but don’t give anything away, I was told by the same sales manager) and my client’s original disinterest in niceties between us lends me belief a moment suggested no other before than his life’s entirety in vain. “Wow,” later in the day he yells into his mobile, “The van doctor is a helluva good bloke. Now about the toilet?”

I hasten to recommend my readers make LifeLine a primary source of reference in crises. I’m no counsellor. You might say Pete’s a roadie, roughly. Fact: anything that’s got wheels, I drive, although done my share of rigging. Six months shooting crocs I don’t usually let on about in a fit. I unlock the depot, thinking what it was like in the Daintree those days, check the night’s vehicles in and the early morning’s out, and in.

Time to traverse the gleaming rows of snub-nosed metal hides, check the polish before helter skelter take vehicles to mechanics, for tyres, petrol, clients at the airport and fax service sheets. I’m literate. Writing a book in my spare time. Easy, service sheets. Fax refrigeration unit details, diagrams of accident damage. I stock take linen, cutlery, frypans, saucepans, microwave dishes… check diary and ring the van doctor. See if he’s a deal on the toilet valves.

A mechanic two doors down is dropping dead of a heart attack in the late afternoon, just before sunset fades. The junior calls by to advise in of course, the retrospect. Tears trace in the oil on her face. “I kissed him,” she says, “I didn’t know what else to do.”
That’s right, the van doctor… He’s always under a motorhome, seems, his arm is up the sewerage outlet. I’m stretched out, flat on a ground cover in the loom of the home. My head is pillowed on a knee pad lying next to the sink fill unit with the glue still drying on the old outlet ring seal and it’s 3.00am.

“I see you did the flyscreens in 531. Any hope of this working?”
The answer is a bout of swearing. I reel off lists of alternative parts distributors.

Check statements of monies owing.

The van doctor and I leave the depot at 4.30am to drive in convoy to my unit on Ascot Vale Road and déjà vu, steak and eggs. I brew coffee. My mobile rings, repeatedly. Tempted crack a tinny. Jim’s wife wants to know where is he. I say, “Here.” She doesn’t believe it. She is at the end of her tether and Jim at his.

Jim muses, “It’s my birthday, Pete.” I retort how amazing it is. “No, every year today,” he snaps and swears, volubly, the minute I tell him it’s my birthday. I think he is kidding he is upset. No, he is upset. Thinks I made up that it’s my birthday. Bloke’s nerves are shot.

The new ‘John’ is at the foot of my ladder. I’m washing a home. No small deal on an hour’s kip. “Who knows,” I hear and look down on my swirl of drive-wayed suds. ‘Jack’, in its middle, personally would, cunning, if he could for me, but no guarantee… best friend… boss… years… watch the water… bloke changes his mind like underwear… every day sometimes… business comes first! The spruiker brandishes a knife out of a hip pocket, shouting he hates Melbourne. The shout is at his mobile even as it rings and he queries, “Van? Doctor?” The thrown knife embeds in the wall of the motor home.

“Where? Who? What? Why? Strikin’? Parts? So’s Santa Claus! S’up the LADDER!”

The mobile sinks under white froth, tossed to the ground.

‘Jack’ turns my way. Least s’pose he did, chewing over this bit. I’m out of the equation, closest reach. Gone. Done a scarper. Quick and the dead.

By Sandshoe

Previously published in: Creative Writers: anthology of poems and stories/edited by Christina Wilson, 1950-/Noarlunga, S. Aust./Christie Downs Community House 2003, [34] p. ;21cm

Corner walked down the hill to The Castle. Black was outside on the cement driveway entrance with the Balloonettes in the sun.

Corner wanted something.

Black was himself wondering what he should do about the day. He looked straight up at the sun.

“Oink,” Corner announced. Hardly customary. “Oink,” rejoindered Black and added an oink. “Oink!”  To be fair. To be fair, Corner needed to be given a lot of field. He wouldn’t get it if Black was suddenly off the jokes. Like a lot of night club operators and day-time saloon frequenters, Black was good for the jokes. Corner was an isolate.

“Seen the other boys much?” This was Corner at his best. Corner was a drama queen short of a John Paul Young. Mind you he had one in the old vinyl record hold-all at his mother’s place. Love is in the Air. “Mind if we go in?” he enquired looking meaningfully at Black. They went to school together.

“Naah,” stretched Black and uncurled from where he had dropped into a half-crouch position with his arms resting lightly over his blue denim knees.

“Those jeans aren’t tight,” laughed Corner. Black growled and laughed an easy laugh. “You never can resist, Corner,” he said, stretched, scratched and yawned. “They’re spray-on these days. Left me short a week’s.” He followed Corner through the entrance to the house. The bare wooden boards without any treatment and no finish on their surface to make a conventional floor looked like a consignment of recycled and untreated timber. Freshly delivered and stacked dusty. The sound they gave off when walked over was a strangely comforting subdued tread. Evidence the plain room, empty other than for a couch, had begun with considered design. Love. Money. “Get on with it. You here because you’re a space or here because you want something to do. You can get these girls who live here some help. Dunno what you blokes do.” Black, lean and tense could look pretty well annoyed when he was useful and he flushed angry. It was all a game.

Corner saw the keg and acknowledged it by walking over to it and giving it a slap. ‘Nice to see you fellers are into the good stuff, eh?” Here was ritual. “Do y’want a taste,” scowled Black. “I’ll get you a glass. Spose y’re gonna tell me y’re on the day.”

“I’m on.”

A women’s voice, tired, slurred and floated in a whine from somewhere above them. “You black egg, don’ give arse sucker any of piss.”

Black ignored the directive. “C’mon,” and he got a glass off the bench that was covered in a towel and on it a batch of clean glasses from various hotels. “You don’t want one of these?”

He poured the glass full to its top and, extending his tongue out of his opened mouth, licked the rim in a seductive circle like a lover offering the first challenge of a new partner, never taking his eyes off Corner.

“Pffftt, not me, is the woman here?”

“Who and why? Dammit, don’t… .” Black was looking as if he would reach out and take hold of Corner like a wriggling piglet and carry him outside around the belly. Black never looked threatening to anybody other than his enemies.

Corner responded quickly and stepped backwards towards the door he had entered the premises through. “The woman with the Australian accent.”

Black was on the tips of his toes and moving almost like a cat when a cat scampers sideways in war play. His legs were stiffened in a manner he adopted to sustain his athletic balance and momentum in a challenge directly aimed at the man who had become, again, his adversary. “Why!” he demanded, startling, his face suffused with the characteristic black of the experience of his rage. “You don’t want to make any mistakes, Simon.”

Corner had exited the door and was on his way off the property. He was no equal to Black. He hesitated, eyeing the Balloonettes. The young women giggled. One was braiding another’s hair. The third painted their client’s fingernails on a hand extended at flat rest on a river rock. Where the women had moved to sit cross-legged by it on the ground. They had been able from there to witness something of what happened in the house when Corner and Black had gone inside.

“Come back here,” demanded Black. He was taking off his silver skull ring and sliding it with one hand flattened into the fob pocket of his jeans. Corner whirled. “Keep your hair on, Black” he managed to hiss in time as his opponent drew close enough to hit him, “She telephoned the Station she left that black leather coat in a phone booth.” Black pulled up sharp. He rested back at ease on the heels of his sneakers,

“Whaa, man? O, you’re a sleaze. Phone booth. Why didn’t you say so. She’ll be looking for that. Gee, that was stupid. Here. Give me your details so I can get her to ring you. Geez, you should say.”

“Don’t worry, Black, it was you I came to see. She knows where we are. You know she knows where we all are.”  He smirked, cocky again. “That’s all, but tell her I came to see her.”

Black didn’t say anything. He was surrounded by the women and fussed to join them by the rock so he could braid the hairdresser’s hair. Corner swung the height of the drive. He had a distinctive lope.

“What would you be?” Siratha, the talented beauty artist now having her hair braided asked Black. She had sat as pretty as a picture on the rock and was still. “What would you be if you had not been… what you are?”

“When I went to Sydney I was running that brothel in a week, it was when I first realised what I wanted to really be. It doesn’t matter now. Give me the band. Here. Have mine. I never got around to it. Business. I was only 16. It doesn’t matter.”

Siratha stood and faced Black where the sun was a rivulet of sheening over the face of the bodice of her gown. Tiny metallic trinkets sewn by her into the fabric played at the sun. She lifted the hem of her skirt and extended it in a drape as a dancer would to make a curtsey. She bobbed. Straightened. “Say what would someone be if… they weren’t a bank robber,” she giggled in a rush of infectious laugh and stood closer in response to being waved by Black to him so he could tidy a strand of hair. “I will tell you as long as you don’t laugh,” he said, grave. He stepped back.

“I won’t laugh,” she giggled, and he frowned so she stopped.

“A florist. I would have liked to have been a florist. That seems to me to be a perfect, lovely way to make a living.” The pealing laughter of the three women as they scampered and rolled on the excavation dirt to collect it in their hair and rough house each other as they rolled caught an eventual echo that was returned them by their play. They lay entwined sharing the liberation of their philosophy and the warmth of the earth on their skin and in the dirt in their hair. Black had left to go to the shop.

Sandshoe

21/11/10