Rat?
Both types. Native and rattus rattus.
Oh.
I wondered if there was a difference. Only in price, she told me, scanning the rest of the room and chewing her gum. The native rat, antechinus, was five dollars more, and it wasn’t written down because Parks and Wildlife might be alerted and even though it was genuine roadkill, guaranteed one hundred per cent fresh…
Look, could you come back in a few minutes?
It had been a long day’s drive, and I had barely eaten, and should have been hungry. But the whole place and menu had changed. It used to be called Mitchell’s café, just like his place in town was Mitchell’s bar, though neither had a sign to explain that. People just knew. But it didn’t surprise me to find a marginal sort of dining experience here, this strange diner that fed its patrons off the very road that brought them to its doors. Amethyst had always been like that. Nothing ever conformed. It was one reason why I chose to stay all those years back.
I studied the menu again, hoping to spot a salad or soup. Apart from the thought of eating any rat, the threat of the Parks and Wildlife department was off-putting. Would they raid the café and confiscate my meal between mouthfuls, prosecute me for eating a national or state emblem? Or worse, a sports mascot? I thought about taking out my mobile phone and turning it on. It had been four days and I expected the message I’d written for Archie and the girls was by now insufficient. I took the phone out of my bag, stared at the blank unlit screen for a few moments, then replaced it. Not yet. Not until I was really there.
The waiter was getting annoyed.
Is Mitchell around? I asked. A foolish question. She was probably two years old when I was last here.
Mitchell? Never heard of him. Steve might know, he’s in charge.
Could you ask him?
Sure. Steve! She yelled so loudly I thought the gum would shoot from her mouth.
A man appeared through the fly strip curtain, wiping what looked like fresh blood from his hands onto a tea towel.
Hi. I was wondering if Mitchell was still around. I used to work for him.
I took over the place from him, Steve said. But that was over ten years ago. Not sure where he is now. I’m from Garnet, back down the highway. But he could still be in that bar in town.
Sure, I said. Thanks.
Are you ready to order yet? the waiter said.
No thanks, I said, getting up. Sorry, I’ve changed my mind.
I passed Lazarus’s Vehicles again. It had barely changed. The same collection of shabby trailers and caravans sitting at angles, having been left by their previous owners without the bricks to prop them up. Peeling reminders of holiday aspirations, plans and dreams that were never realised.
When the bus had dropped me off some twenty years ago, it wasn’t a scheduled stop. The driver had said he couldn’t take me any farther, but that I could get to where I wanted to go if I waited here by the side of the road. Someone would soon drive past and give me a lift for the final few kilometres into town. He’d seemed very confident of that.
I waited for an hour, then, hot and thirsty, started to walk. I eventually came to Lazarus’s yard. He agreed to take me into town when he shut up shop at five. He dropped me at the Kingfisher Boarding House, a block from the main shops and just shabby enough for someone of limited means.
Early the next morning I started looking for Van. Three days later I checked out and returned to Lazarus’s. This time I had a proper look, walking around the whole site, investigating cluttered corners of the yard and peering into vans and trailers I doubt he remembered he had. I spotted the most endearing caravan I had ever seen. A comic book caravan. Curved, aluminium, a dull sky blue. It was perched on tufts of grass amid the graveyard of vehicles, most of them decrepit. This was old, but it looked sound enough.
How much? I asked him.
That? Not much use to you, he said. It won’t travel, not far anyway.
What about into town?
Well. He scratched under his bandanna. There is a caravan and camping park, a few people live there. Some holiday units, a couple of old-timers in vans. A guy called Mitchell runs it.
I’m staying on for a while, I said. I’ll need a place to live.
He looked from me to the caravan, then back to me again.
He’s a decent guy, he said, I reckon he wouldn’t charge you too much to rent a site.
I gazed at the van. The modest curves, the unrelieved shabbiness, the air of simple hope. I asked him again how much, and it was a matter of moments before he told me I could have it for one hundred dollars. I’d be doing him a favour.
I could tow it in for you, he said.
So, that very evening, I had become a caravan owner. For one hundred dollars it was empty, apart from a thin mattress on the bed, but I made do without a blanket or towel until the next day. Inside it was not nearly as dirty as I’d expected, having been shut up tightly for years. The stale air vanished soon after I opened the door and prised apart the doll’s house windows on each side. Over the following weekend I walked into the centre of town and back, gradually stocking up on the essentials, which, I discovered, were few when you stripped life down to the most important things. What I needed, more than anything, were books, and by the time I was ready to have the baby, the second-hand bookshops had supplied enough to line the caravan. It was like living inside a cubby house. Surrounded by books, I felt safe, secure.
Dear Delia
Do you have a good recipe for a wedding cake? I’ve tried several but found them dry and tasteless.
Mother of the Bride.
Dear Mother of the Bride
Dried fruit, obviously. Raisins, sultanas, mixed peel. Preserved ginger if you like. Brown sugar, flour, spices…Oh, for god’s sake, do I need to list everything? Surely you can work it out. And don’t ask for weights and measurements. That is tedious in the extreme. In fact it’s probably why your cakes have always failed. By the way, several cakes? How many weddings have you had?
Modern mothering was a snap.
Here I was agonising over my daughter’s wedding at least twenty years too early and trying to decide between linen napkins (more stylish, but more laundering) or paper ones in shades matching her outfit (it would be palest pink, more cream than pink, like the flesh of a white peach) that would be much less stylish but more efficient (no ironing), and then I recalled Jane Austen’s Mrs Bennet.
I often thought of Mrs Bennet when the going got tough in the blood sport that the game of raising daughters had become. Mrs Bennet’s daughters might have displayed more respect for their mama, might not have spent hours in their bedrooms plastering their faces with gooey make-up, rereading the same Girlfriend or Total Girl magazines over and over, or listening to obscure punk bands; they might not have insisted on dressing like child prostitutes from the moment they could do up buttons on their own, refused to eat meat from the age of eight and made prepubescent demands to have their navels pierced. But I had to admit there was a plus side to my experiences.
First, she had five daughters, and I only had two. And poor Mrs Bennet’s entire commission in life was, after raising them, to marry them off to suitable husbands. I might have been planning a wedding, but it was in an age where husband hunting had long dropped off