Free Monterra's Deliciosa & Other Tales & by Anna Tambour Page A

the floor, just within stomping rage.
    She couldn't breathe.
    Bede reached over and quietly picked up the plans as if they were a lamb, neatly folding them again. He handed them to her.
    "I'll ring this lot in the morning. They better get started right away."
    She wanted to touch him, put her arms around him, kiss him perhaps, but just stood as she was, to attention.
    He wanted to cry. "Expect you need milk," he said. "Wanna go for a drive?"
    ~
    The house, like all the neighbours', has four bedrooms, a separate dining room, one huge window in the lounge looking onto a yard that no one ever uses; heavy, full-length curtains for privacy; and a lovely small private back garden fronted by the toilet and laundry.
    No seasons that make any difference to the year's activities. Summer and winter both mild. The land, something to be mowed by a lawn mower and whipper-snipped into shape. Slash the tops of those hedges. Neaten those errant grass stems that would lean rampant over the concrete curb with the same hand-held gadget and its spinning nylon line.
    No clip here, except the snipping of flower stems for the vase sitting on the TV.
    The dairy farmers, the few left, gather in the carpark of the old co-op, but there isn't a farm-parts dealer in town. The rolling hills that were so green, are growing black lines now, and sprouting brick. The necessary shops sell postcards, fishing tackle, golf balls, antiques, goat cheese and artwork, teddy bears, lots of medications and arthritis cures.
    The animals: dogs, cats, "pet" kangaroos, parrots, possums—those pests in the roof.
    Snowball is exhibiting increasingly spoilt characteristics as Bede has begun to take him in the car for drives, take him on walks with a lead, and pet him of an evening.
    Sue came to visit once. Soon as she left the car, Coralee whisked her into her new bedroom—where Coralee had fussed half the night before till Bede dragged her away with a quiet "It's beautiful, blossom. Come to bed, or you won't be able to keep your eyes open to look at her."
    Sue held her suitcase in her hand. "Where's my bed? And my horses? And Winnifred? And the pink table?"
    When told that all the stuff she had long abandoned at Woorora, including Winnifred, the doll—that it had all gone in the auction, she mumbled something about "hotel room."
    She had a big suitcase, much bigger than for the two nights she'd stayed.
    Angus rang one afternoon, asking if his band of five guys could stay for a week. "Heard there's some gigs there while the surf's up—"
    "Sorry," Coralee cut in, chasing her apology with a barely audible "We can't."
    With that No, she felt something break, or maybe just wear away in the cool silence of the air between her son and her ear, followed by a too-casual "Just great!" and from his end, the stub-out crash of the connection. She never told Bede.
    Donna came once with her two children, and her being six months due again.
    Bede doted over his granddaughters, delighted in telling them silly stories, to the amazement of Coralee and Donna herself. He could hardly stop asking Donna about home—her home in WA. It was almost like being home again for him, hearing Donna tell about their latest crutching dramas, the price of wool, the stockpile, drought and all.
    But most of all, he wanted to hear about Molly—star kelpie of the district—her exploits, and the antics of her apprentice pups. "Tell me another," he'd say, and Donna smiled. He was worse than the girls with their bedtime stories. Donna exhausted her memories and her father still panted for more. She stooped to inventing, and resolved to jot things down in the future, her father had blossomed so much at "storytime". Molly, Biff, Star, and Ringo's adventures had to vie with the vividly recalled memories of fifty years of dogs for Bede
    On the morning she left, he pressed a Smarties box filled with ten $100 bills into her hand with a conspiratorial, "Don't tell Mum."
    The next day, Snowball felt positively smothered