Chapter Five #2
Jodie wasn’t sure what would happen if she rejoined the world. Did stuff. Let herself be relied upon. She’d found comfort in seclusion, but maybe Carol was right. She’d grown too comfortable.
She pushed the biscuit tin away and made a decision. ‘I accept your terms,’ she said. ‘I’ll go see the publican this afternoon.’
‘That’s my girl.’
Because the threat of Janelle’s involvement was still lurking, she added, ‘But first, let’s check out this place Mum wants you to move into. Give me ten minutes to shower.’
Clarence Gardens was not awful. A modest row of self-contained villas in a reddish brick lined either side of a narrow, landscaped cul-de-sac, and where the rows met was what must have been the property’s original house, a two-storey building with a little more age on it than the villas.
When they’d parked and made their way into the main building, they were welcomed by an on-site manager, who took them on a tour.
In the house, they found a lounge and dining room on the ground floor set up for communal use, a library space in a nook under the stairs with a desk and computer, and a half-door to a reception area where a bell sat next to a handwritten card Ring Bell For Assistance .
Upstairs were two high-care rooms, according to the paperwork Jodie had brought along with her, but Carol refused point blank to go view them.
Behind the building were raised garden beds where tomatoes and flowers were growing. Park benches sat under trees. The place reminded Jodie a little of the sort of old-fashioned boarding school she’d read books set in when she was young.
The manager, who was a gaunt fellow with a habit of rising and falling on the balls of his feet as he talked, brought their whirlwind tour to an end by inviting them to stay as long as they liked, making a long speech about means-tested care fees and government rebates, and then leaving them to it.
‘What do you think?’ Jodie said.
‘It’s all right, I suppose, for anyone who doesn’t already have a perfectly good home of their own.’
‘But no mowing, Auntie Carol. No steps to climb up and down.’
‘And how would I get to the Historical Society? To my meetings at the pub? To the bakery? On Lillypilly Street, I’m so close to everything.’
‘Don’t taxis offer special rates for seniors?’
She snorted. ‘How many taxis do you suppose there are in Clarence?’
Carol sounded irritated and a little tired. Perhaps their morning tour had been more of an emotional hurdle than Jodie had considered … ironic, since she was an expert on emotional hurdles these days.
Their pace as they returned from inspecting the garden had slowed to a moody inertia.
‘I’m struggling in this heat,’ Jodie lied.
She fanned her face with the Clarence Gardens newsletter sign-on form the manager had offered to Carol, which Carol had studiously avoided taking.
‘Let’s sit inside out of the sun for a minute before we head home. ’
They made their way up a short ramp that led to the back door of the house, and found the lounge and dining area they’d seen earlier.
Sofas and reading chairs were arranged in groups, and a few tables were in use by the windows, with a jigsaw puzzle underway on one and a game of cards happening at another.
In a homey kitchen area to the side, three women were sitting at a large old pine table with a man who had marked curvature of the spine.
‘I didn’t see an exercise area, did you, Carol?’ Jodie said, eyes on the man. Osteoporosis? Disc degeneration?
‘No idea, pet. I was too busy reading all the rules. Signs everywhere, did you notice? No parking of mobility scooters in front of the house, no dog-earing pages in the library books, no pinching of other people’s tomatoes. It’s all very draconian.’
Jodie let Carol grumble on while she considered the man. Lumbar decompression, gentle back extensions, heat application … old age was no time to be ignoring the therapeutic benefits of physica—
‘Oh, crap,’ said Carol.
Jodie looked at her, then back to the group of people in the kitchen, who were now all looking up. One of them, a tall woman who had the same masterful demeanour as Dorothy in The Golden Girls , was waving.
‘We’re being summoned,’ Jodie said. ‘Will we pretend we’ve not seen them?’
‘Too late,’ said Carol.
The tall woman was on her feet and heading their way. ‘Carol Wallace,’ she said as she reached them. It wasn’t a greeting, more like an opening statement in a high-stakes prosecution.
‘Joan Sloane,’ replied Carol. Again with the inflection.
A pause, while Jodie stood there, apparently forgotten. There were definite Wild West vibes going on. Gunslinging vibes. Any minute now, Joan and Carol were going to back up twenty paces and haul six-shooters out of the pockets of their floral dresses.
‘I didn’t know you were thinking of moving into Clarence Gardens,’ Joan said into the silence. Like it was a personal affront.
‘I’m not,’ said Carol. ‘Good heavens, no!’
The tall woman’s lips thinned.
‘I’m giving my great niece a tour. She’s thinking of setting up a physiotherapy practice in Clarence and I’m showing her around. I can’t believe the residents’ association hasn’t set up an exercise room here, Joan. A foolhardy oversight, surely?’
Luckily, Jodie wasn’t engaged in doing anything more rigorous than standing on greige linoleum, because if she had been, she’d have fallen over. She was setting up a what ? Where?
And was Carol deliberately provoking this woman?
Joan’s face had moved from thin lips to full frown. ‘I was going to invite you to sit down and have a cup of tea with us, but I can see that you’re far too busy finding fault, so—’
‘We accept,’ said Carol.
Whatever was going on, Carol would have to explain to Jodie later. Social undercurrents running deep and all that.
‘Hi, I’m Jodie,’ she said when they had taken a seat at the table.
Joan was at the head, pouring tea out of a large pot, and the man—Campbell?
Cameron? She hadn’t quite caught it—had taken the lid off a plastic container and was busy cutting fingers of fruit cake and placing them on little plates to pass around.
His hands, both of them, had a distinct tremor.
Marcia and Annie, the two women, seemed to be in charge of milk and sugar respectively.
‘Just milk,’ Jodie said.
She accepted a plate with a slice of fruit cake on it from Campbell’s (or Cameron’s) wavering hand and took a bite.
‘Delicious,’ she said, more to break the loaded silence than because she had any great opinion. Cake was just cake, wasn’t it?
‘Thank you,’ Joan murmured.
Apparently this cake was not just cake. As she was taking a second bite, Jodie noticed Carol was inspecting her slice with the air of a nanophysicist inspecting an atom.
She was lifting the plate. She was sniffing the brown, fruity mass.
Jodie knew she was staring, but she’d never seen such concentration over baked goods.
‘… an old family recipe with quite a story attached,’ Joan was saying. ‘But with no children to pass the stories along to, what was I to do?’
Carol was now divvying up her slice into fruit chunks and cake crumbs and pressing them between thumb and forefinger. If she was listening to Joan’s monologue about tins and old-fashioned cursive and the pain of parting with one’s precious family history when downsizing, she wasn’t showing it.
Everyone at the table, Jodie noticed, had their eyes on Carol as she inspected … dissected—whatever the heck she was doing—the cake.
Finally, after what seemed like breaths had been held by every person there for so long that lungs, young and old, would soon fail, Carol lifted the unbroken chunk to her lips and sank her dentures in.
And that was when all hell broke loose. The sugar bowl was flung across the table, an innocent and unsuspecting floral plate was smashed to the ground and an accusation was sent spinning into the air.
‘You,’ said Carol, her voice breaking, her twig-thin chest heaving, her gnarled index finger pointing shakily at Joan, ‘have stolen my recipe !’