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title: '2010-09-28-i-never'
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This doesn't belong to me, and might be copyrighted, but I strive to
emulate this style of writing. Its bleak and terse nature fires up the
reader's imagination, and they fill in all the gaps, and it keeps them
reading and reading. It's power to pull at your emotions is also very
surprising.
[Elizabeth
Jolley](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Jolley "Elizabeth Jolley")
(1923-2007)
In the home science lesson I had to unpick my darts as Mrs Kay said they
were all wrong and then I scorched the collar of my dress because I had
the iron too hot. And then the sewing machine needle broke and there
wasn't a spare and Mrs Kay got really wild and Peril Page cut all the
notches off her pattern by mistake and that finished everything.
'I'm not ever going back to that school,' I said to Mother in the
evening. 'I'm finished with that place!' So that was my brother and me
both leaving school before we should have and my brother kept leaving
jobs too, one job after another, sometimes not even staying long enough
in one place to wait for his pay.
But mother was worrying about what to get for my brother's tea.
'What about a bit of lamb's fry and bacon,' I said. She brightened up
then and, as she was leaving to go up the terrace for her shopping, she
said, 'You come with me tomorrow then and we'll get through the work
quicker.' She didn't seem to mind at all that I had left school.
Mother cleaned in a large block of luxury apartments. She had the keys
to the flats and she came and went as she pleased and as her work
demanded. It was while she was working there that she had the idea of
letting the people from down our street taste the pleasures rich people
took for granted in their way of living. While these people were away to
their offices or on business trips she let our poor neighbours in. We
had wedding receptions and parties in the penthouse and the old folk
came in to soak their feet and wash their clothes while Mother was doing
the cleaning. As she said, she gave a lot of pleasure to people without
doing anybody any harm, though it was often a terrible rush for her. She
could never refuse anybody anything and, because of this, always had
more work than she could manage and more people to be kind to than her
time really allowed.
Sometimes at the weekends I went with Mother to look at Grandpa's
valley. It was quite a long bus ride. We had to get off at the
twenty-nine mile peg, cross the Medulla brook and walk up a country road
with scrub on either side till we came to some cleared acres of pasture
which was the beginning of her father's land. She struggled through the
wire fence hating the mud. She wept out loud because the old man hung on
to his land and all his money was buried, as she put it, in the sodden
meadows of cape weed and stuck fast in the outcrops of granite higher up
where all the topsoil had washed away. She couldn't sell the land
because Grandpa was still alive in a Home for the Aged, and he wanted to
keep the farm though he couldn't do anything with it. Even sheep died
there. They either starved or got drowned depending on the time of the
year. It was either drought there or flood. the weatherboard house was
so neglected it was falling apart, the tenants were feckless, and if a
calf was born there it couldn't get up, that was the kind of place it
was. When we went to see Grandpa he wanted to know about the farm and
Mother tried to think of things to please him. She didn't say the fence
posts were crumbling away and that the castor oil plants had taken over
the years so you couldn't get through to the barn.
There was an old apricot treat in the middle of the meadow, it was as
big as a house and a terrible burden to us to get the fruit at just the
right time. Mother liked to take some to the hospital so that Grandpa
could keep up his pride and self-respect a bit.
In the full heat of the day I had to pick with an apron tied round me,
it had deep pockets for the fruit. I grabbed at the green fruit when I
thought Mother wasn't looking and pulled off whole branches so it
wouldn't be there to be picked later.
'Don't take that branch!' Mother screamed from the ground. 'Them's not
ready yet. We'll have to come back tomorrow for them.'
I lost my temper and pulled off the apron full of fruit and hurled it
down but it stuck on a branch and hung there quite out of reach either
from up the tree where I was or from the ground.
'Wait! Just you wait till I get a holt of you!' Mother pranced round the
tree and I didn't come down till we had missed our bus and it was
getting dark and all the dogs in the little township barked as if they
were insane, the way dogs do in the country, as we walked through trying
to get a lift home.
One Sunday in the winter it was very cold but Mother thought we should
go all the same. We passed some sheep huddled in a natural fold of furze
and withered grass all frost sparkling in the morning.
'Quick!' Mother said. 'We'll grab a sheep and take a bit of wool back to
Grandpa.'
'But they're not our sheep,' I said.
'Never mind!' And she was in among the sheep before I could stop her.
The noise was terrible but she managed to grab a bit of wool.
'It's terrible dirty and shabby,' she complained, pulling at the shreds
with her cold fingers. 'I don't think I've ever seen such miserable
wool.'
All that evening she was busy with the wool, she did make me laugh.
'How will modom have her hair done?' She put the wool on the kitchen
table and kept walking all round it talking to it. She tried to wash it
and comb it but it still looked awful so she put it round one of my
curlers for the night.
'I'm really ashamed of the wool,' Mother said next morning.
'But it isn't ours,' I said.
'I know but I'm ashamed all the same,' she said. So when we were in the
penthouse at South Heights she cut a tiny piece off the bathroom mat. It
was so soft and silky. And later we went to visit Grandpa. He was
sitting with his poor paralysed legs under his tartan rug.
'Here's a bit of the wool clip Dad,' Mother said, bending over to kiss
him. His whole face lit up.
'That's nice of you to bring it, really nice.' His old fingers stroked
the little piece of nylon carpet.
'It's very good, deep and soft,' he smiled at Mother.
'They do wonderful things with sheep these days Dad,' she said.
'They do indeed,' he said, and all the time he was feeling the bit of
carpet.
'Are you pleased Dad?' Mother asked him anxiously. 'You are pleased
aren't you?'
'Oh yes I am,' he assured her.
I thought I saw a moment of disappointment in his eyes, but the eyes of
old people often look full of tears.
On the way home I tripped on the steps.
'Ugh! I felt your bones!' Really Mother was so thin it hurt to fall
against her.
'Well what d'you expect me to be, a boneless wonder?'
Really Mother had such a hard life and we lived in such a cramped and
squalid place. She longed for better things and she needed a good rest.
I wished more than anything the old man would agree to selling his land.
Because he wouldn't sell I found myself wishing he would die and whoever
really wants to wish someone to die! It was only that it would sort
things out a bit for us.
In the supermarket Mother thought and thought what she could get for my
brother for his tea. In the end all she could come up with was fish
fingers and a packet of jelly beans.
'You know I never eat fish! And I haven't eaten sweets in years.' My
brother looked so tall in the kitchen. He lit a cigarette and slammed
out and Mother was too tired and too upset to eat her own tea.
Grandpa was an old man and though his death was expected it was
unexpected really and it was a shock to Mother to find she suddenly had
eighty-seven acres to sell. And there was the house too. She had a
terrible lot to do as she decided to sell the property herself and, at
the same time, she did not want to let down the people at South Heights.
There was a man interested to buy the land, Mother had kept him up her
sleeve for years, ever since he had stopped once by the bottom paddock
to ask if it was for sale. At the time Mother would have given he right
arm to be able to sell it and she promised he should have first refusal
if it ever came on the market.
We all three, Mother and myself and my brother, went out at the weekend
to tidy things up. We lost my brother and then we suddenly saw him
running and shouting, his voice lifting up in the wind as he raced up
the slope of the valley.
'I do believe he's laughing! He's happy!' Mother just stared at him and
she looked so happy too.
I don't think I ever saw the country look so lovely before.
The tenant was standing by the shed. The big tractor had crawled to the
doorway like a sick animal and had stopped there, but in no time my
brother had it going.
It seemed there was nothing my brother couldn't do. Suddenly after doing
nothing in his life he was driving the tractor and making fire breaks,
he started to paint the sheds and he told Mother what fencing posts and
wire to order. All these things had to be done before the sale could go
through. We all had a wonderful time in the country. I kept wishing we
could live in the house, all at once it seemed lovely there at the top
of the sunlit meadow. But I knew that however many acres you have they
aren't any use unless you have money too. I think we were all thinking
this but no one said anything though Mother kept looking at my brother
and the change in him.
There was no problem about the price of the land, this man, he was a
doctor, really wanted it and Mother really needed the money.
'You might as well come with me,' Mother said to me on the day of the
sale. 'You can learn how business is done.' So we sat in this lawyer's
comfortable room and he read out from various papers and the doctor
signed things and Mother signed. Suddenly she said to them, 'You know my
father really loved his farm but he only managed to have it late in life
and then he was never able to live there because of his illness.' The
two men looked at her.
'I'm sure you will understand,' she said to the doctor, 'with your own
great love of the land, my father's love for his valley. I feel if I
could live there just to plant one crop and stay while it matures, my
father would rest easier in his grave.'
'Well I don't see why not.' The doctor was really a kind man. The lawyer
began to protest, he seemed quite angry.
'It's not in the agreement,' he began to say. But the doctor silenced
him, he got up and came round to Mother's side of the table.
'I think you should live there and plant your one crop and stay while it
matures,' he said to her. 'It's a gentleman's agreement,' he said.
'That's the best sort,' Mother smiled up at him and they shook hands.
'I wish your crop well,' the doctor said, still shaking her hand.
The doctor made the lawyer write out a special clause which they all
signed. And then we left, everyone satisfied. Mother had never had so
much money and the doctor had the valley at last but it was the
gentleman's agreement which was the best part.
My brother was impatient to get on with improvements.
'There's no rush,' Mother said.
'Well one crop isn't very long,' he said.
'It's long enough,' she said.
So we moved out to the valley and the little weatherboard cottage seemed
to come to life very quickly with the pretty things we chose for the
rooms.
'It's nice whichever way you look out from these little windows,' Mother
was saying and just then her crop arrived. The carter set down the boxes
along the edge of the verandah and, when he had gone, my brother began
to unfasten the hessian coverings. Inside were hundreds of seedlings in
little plastic containers.
'What are they?' he asked.
'Our crop,' Mother said.
'Yes I know, but what is the crop? What are these?'
'Them,' said Mother, she seemed unconcerned, 'oh they're a jarrah
forest,' she said.
'But that will take years and years to mature,' he said.
'I know,' Mother said. 'We'll start planting tomorrow. We'll pick the
best places and clear and plant as we go along.'
'But what about the doctor?' I said, somehow I could picture him pale
and patient out by his car out on the lonely road which went through his
valley. I seemed to see him looking with longing at his paddocks and his
meadows and at his slopes of scrub and bush.
'Well he can come on his land whenever he wants to and have a look at
us,' Mother said. 'There's nothing in the gentleman's agreement to say
he can't.'