Free A Descant for Gossips by Thea Astley Page B

could not fathom. She felt, too, a curious stirring jealousy as she, the acolyte, watched them, the priests, performing a wordless, actionless rite in front of her.
    The sky was nearly dark now, only hachured by drizzle that had whispered across them since passing the Buderim plateau. The ginger and pineapple farms lay mistily under the quiet rain through which they could still see the big sawdust mulch heaps lying damply along roadside and paddock fences. Moller set the windscreen wiper going and they drove for a long while in silence under the steadily increasing rain that barricaded, with points of quiet on the canvas roof, the car and its three occupants. Rain stipple and trees and the sudden chromatic gurglings of a creek freshet. Ngungun loomed up in the rain, its huge hump of trachyte theatening the sky, and then Tibrogargan and Beerburrum crowded in upon them, black and ugly and well loved by Moller, who passed them every week-end with a sense of journeying half done.
    Today each familiar section of road, each familiar action with the car whose foibles were old friends, had become endued with a newer connotation. The lights of Caboolture, blurred and wet, sucked them into the main street, and by a corner store the car shuddered and pulled up in the racing gutter. Moller dived out his side and splashed into a bright doorway, reappearing in a short time with pies and chips. Helen wiped his shoulders and hair with a scarf she had tucked in her coat pocket, and then they ate noisily and happily in the half-light, with the roar of the storm-water drains right below them.
    â€˜A pity,’ Helen said as the rain thudded and thumped on the roof of the car and splashed in under the mica window screens. ‘But we shan’t let it spoil our two days, Vinny. Never fear.’
    â€˜I like it,’ Vinny said. She bit off half a chip. The hot potato burnt her tongue and she let it fall back into the paper. ‘I feel cosy like this. I wish this journey could go on for hours.’
    â€˜It will if this rain keeps up.’ Moller glanced at his watch. ‘We’re twenty minutes behind on my normal schedule. I shall have to put my foot down and keep it there if we’re going to reach the city by seven-thirty.’
    â€˜Must we?’ Helen was surprised that anyone so normally uninterested in routine or the appearances of it should have this particular compulsion.
    â€˜Helen. It’s my old bomb’s reputation that’s at stake. And besides, I forgot to ring my people and let them know I was coming. It’s unlikely, but they may be out after eight and I’ll be left homeless in this filthy weather until they return. Unless you like to take me in.’
    He crumpled the newspaper from round his chips and tossed it out of the window where the rainwaters snatched it away in a flash.
    â€˜There she goes,’ he said, peering out after it in the darkness, ‘running a banker.’ He watched the sadness of the runnels under the lamplight awash with twig and paper and leaf, the exhausted cartons of week-old theatre crowds damming the gratings in grimy piles. He rolled himself a cigarette, lit it, and turned to Helen and then to Vinny. ‘Well, you girls? Are you ready?’
    Helen nodded with her mouth full and Vinny said, ‘Yes’, as she scooped up a lump of pie gravy from her skirt and popped it into her mouth. She had never been so happy. Absent-mindedly she rubbed at the stain with a corner of her coat and then abandoned the idea as the car spluttered and started. Taken hold of by a common feeling of irresponsibility they sang current popular songs loudly for most of the way.
    â€˜ “I don’t wanner set the world – on – fiyuh,” ’ Moller roared through the beating rain. ‘ “I jus’ wanner start – a littul flame in your heart!” ’ He accelerated sharply with each strong beat. Vinny giggled delightedly and timorously