The Listmaker Read online

  ‘You’d better attend to it, Aunty Nat. I’ve got homework to do,’ I hedged, because that was one list I really didn’t want to get involved with. It would be an insult to Piriel, suggesting that she might like to have her wedding at a dumpy old house like Avian Cottage!

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  Christmas list ideas

  Aunty Nat: New recipe file. Flowery notepaper. New Gilbert and Sullivan cassette (yuk!). Silver lyrebird bracelet charm she’s been admiring in Parchment Hills jeweller’s window (aaaargh!!!).

  Aunt Dorothy: Pair of proper slippers. (NB So she can throw out those grungy old plastic thongs!) Something for the garden – plant, gardening gloves? OR – book on how to quit smoking once and for all!

  Darling Horace: Gourmet sardines. Smart new collar. Big packet of Kitty Krunchies.

  Card-gang sharpies: Sheila Trenton – 4711 cologne; Derek Trenton – box of soft fudge suitable for denture wearers; Joan Cordrice – spectacles chain; Eileen Holloway – potpourri.

  Dad: Tie? Socks? Hankies? Travel alarm clock? (No good; he prefers wake-up calls. Plus there’s already an alarm-clock thing on his watch.) Nice pen? (But he’s got heaps of them.) What do you buy for a person who already has everything?!

  Piriel: ?? What do you buy for a person who already has everything?!

  Christmas cards

  Mrs H. at school.

  Belinda Gibbs, Tara McCabe, Marnie Kydd. (But all three of them still owe me cards from last Christmas!)

  Corrie Ryder ??

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  ‘Tagging along wasn’t my idea,’ Aunt Dorothy said mildly. ‘Nat didn’t want you going all that way on public transport by yourself. She feels responsible. Anyhow, I’ve got Christmas shopping to do, so I’ll probably beetle off once I’ve handed you over to Piriel.’

  I was relieved to hear that. Piriel wasn’t expecting anyone except me, and might feel humiliated to be seen with someone else who looked so scruffy. (Aunt Dorothy had actually rustled up a pair of ladderless pantyhose, but then spoiled the effect by bringing along a gross shopping bag made of camouflage canvas.) I still had some Christmas shopping of my own, too. If we finished looking for clothes early enough, I thought, Piriel might be able to help me find a wonderful Christmas present for Dad. Presents for him were always difficult. Every year I racked my brains, but usually ended up getting hankies, ties or socks. Piriel had the whole day off work; she’d said so on the phone. It shouldn’t take more than an hour to choose something to wear to the wedding. She’d probably be the first one to suggest that we spend the rest of the day Christmas shopping together.

  ‘If you’ve forgotten anything, there won’t be any time to go back for it,’ I said impatiently, because Aunt Dorothy had just backed the car out of the drive, then stopped again. ‘Piriel’s expecting us at ten on the dot. We’ve got to meet her in the lower mall next to the –’

  ‘Next to those automatic-teller machines. Yes, I already know, dear. You’ve mentioned it quite a few times already. And you can stop fussing, because we’re just waiting for that little girl from next-door. Nat told her mother we could give her a lift.’

  ‘Corrie Ryder? What a nerve, cadging lifts all over the place when we hardly even know them!’

  ‘Where she’s going is just round the corner from the Moreton Centre, so it’s not even out of our way.’

  ‘Their living room’s messy. I saw through the window last night when I was checking Eileen’s car. They even had food sitting around on plates on the floor. Well, I’m just glad I didn’t have to eat any of it!’

  ‘Sarah, don’t be such a toffee-nose. The Ryders seem very nice people.’

  ‘Their house isn’t. It’s even more run down than Avian Cottage.’

  ‘They probably can’t afford to do it up. They’ve put all their money into buying a plant nursery, and good luck to them. Corrie’s a pleasant enough kid. When she brought that goat over before breakfast …’

  ‘Meg’s a dumb name for a goat,’ I said, turning a little red.

  ‘… I really think you might have shown some interest. She was just about to show you how to tether it, only you’d already nicked back inside. And it doesn’t matter what that goat’s called, as long as it gets rid of some of the blackberries.’

  I could think of plenty of reasons for not showing more interest in Corrie Ryder. While we waited, I went over some of them in my mind.

  She was a pain in the neck.

  She had a laugh like a kookaburra’s.

  She poked her nose into things that weren’t any of her business.

  She was tactless about people’s names (ie Piriel’s).

  If I was too nice to her, she might get the idea I actually wanted to be her friend.

  Corrie came hurtling out, not even shutting their gate behind her. She didn’t close the door of the car properly, either, so we had to stop further along to fix it. She was off to this place where you could climb walls studded with rocks. Even though she had a grazed knee from her last visit there, she sounded as though she could hardly wait to have another try. (I felt amazed that anyone could not only want to do something like that, but also pay to get in!)

  ‘It’s awesome! I’ll probably go again before Christmas,’ she said. ‘Want to come along if I do?’

  ‘Thanks all the same, but I don’t think I’m going to have any spare time before Christmas.’

  ‘There’s a big water slide up in the lake park. That’s great, too. Now it’s swimming weather, maybe we could –’

  ‘I’ll be very busy,’ I said, cutting her off short.

  Aunt Dorothy, who was being decidedly irritating this morning, butted in with, ‘Get along with you, Sarah. You sound like a company director. I could always drop you and Corrie off at the lake park and pick you up again later. Or the wall-climbing place, if you’d rather have a shot at that.’

  ‘I’ll have masses of cards to send out. And Christmas shopping to do, if I don’t finish it all today,’ I said curtly. Corrie’s exuberance was already driving me up a wall! It was hot in the car, but the air-conditioning was out of action. (It had been like that ever since Aunty Nat let Scott and Cameron tune it instead of having it done at a proper garage.)

  ‘My Christmas presents were a breeze this year,’ Corrie volunteered. ‘I just bought a lot of old books at the junk shop, then hollowed out the pages with a Stanley knife. You make a kind of little pit for hiding valuables, but it still looks like an ordinary book. I thought I’d fill the cut-out spaces with gold chocolate coins, so everyone will get the general idea.’

  ‘Goodness, I remember making one of those when I was a kid!’ Aunt Dorothy said. ‘I’d forgotten all about it. Except I got into a row over mine, because I’d used a library book by mistake. But what a super idea for Christmas presents! It shows you must have loads of imagination.’

  I felt a little twinge of something that felt almost like jealousy. It wasn’t just because of the compliment about having loads of imagination, though I couldn’t help thinking that Aunt Dorothy had never said anything like that to me. It was more because she was chatting so easily to Corrie. Usually she didn’t strike up conversations with people she’d just met. If she was collecting me from school on Fridays instead of Aunty Nat or Dad, she preferred to wait in the car until I came out with my bag. She said it saved time, but I knew it was to avoid any stray parents, teachers or kids. But now she and Corrie Ryder were crackling away at each other like a house on fire. They were talking about gardening, of all things! Corrie not only sounded as though she knew quite a lot about it, but was actually interested.

  ‘If it’s ideas for hedges you’re after, you should check out our nursery,’ she said. ‘Dad’s got all sorts of hedge plants.’

  ‘Does he have jacaranda trees, too? I love them.’

  ‘If he hasn’t got any in stock right now, he can always order you one. And if you like azaleas …’

  It almost felt as though I was the one being given a lift instead
of Corrie. I stopped listening and concentrated proudly on what kind of outfit to buy for the wedding. It would have to be very special, something that would make Dad and Piriel pleased to introduce me to their friends. Something that made me look glamorous and interesting …

  When we dropped Corrie off at the indoor rock-climbing place, she waved goodbye from the entrance, but I didn’t react until she’d gone inside. My mind was still full of the wedding. I kept seeing myself, beautifully dressed, mingling with all the guests and knowing exactly what to say to each one. Putting last-minute touches to Piriel’s hair before the official photographs. Piriel and Dad insisting that I should be included in all those photographs. Offering to get people fresh drinks, and not spilling one drop. Except Avian Cottage somehow kept appearing as the backdrop for all those delightful images, which was perfectly ridiculous!

  ‘That was kind of rude, Sarah, not waving back to Corrie,’ Aunt Dorothy remarked, turning left for the Moreton Centre.

  ‘You just missed the arrow lights,’ I said distractedly. ‘We’re going to have trouble finding a parking spot.’

  We cruised around all the car-park levels twice. Aunt Dorothy wasn’t aggressive enough to thwart people stealing spaces from right under her nose. I began to chew at a fingernail, but even when we finally wangled a space, she stopped to look at a bank of native plants. Heat blasted across the enormous car park like dragon’s breath, but I still couldn’t hurry her along. She took no more notice of heatwaves than she did of being punctual for appointments! I might as well have tried to shove Mount Kosciuszko another metre further along to the left.

  Piriel, dressed in white and looking as cool and unruffled as iced milk, swept aside my flustered apology about being late. She even smiled at Aunt Dorothy as though it was a pleasant surprise to have an extra person on our shopping trip. (She didn’t flinch at the sight of the camouflage bag, either. The way Piriel managed that, I saw with keen interest, was to glance at it once, then pretend it wasn’t even there.) And most graciously of all, she wouldn’t hear of Aunt Dorothy going off on her own.

  ‘Oh, you must stick around while we shop,’ she said. ‘Sarah will need shoes and a bag to go with the new dress, and it will be more fun deciding all that between us. Pity it happens to clash with the pre-Christmas rush, though. Aren’t the decorations vile, all those ghastly chiming bells strung up everywere? They only seem to be programmed for “Joy to the World”. I thought I’d go crazy while I was waiting, having to listen to that over and over again.’

  I’d been just about to mention how pretty the bells looked, and felt glad I hadn’t. (I didn’t mention the heralds with their gold trumpets, either, in case Piriel thought they were ghastly, too.)

  ‘I had an idea about your dress, Sarah,’ she said. ‘How would it be if we search for a pattern instead of buying a ready-made one? The summer fashions this year all seem so ugly, specially for your age group. It would be much better to choose a pattern and some lovely material, and I’ll make it in time for the wedding. We want you looking your very best, don’t we?’

  I felt elated, knowing that anything made by Piriel would turn out to be stunning. She made a lot of her own clothes, and they always looked wonderful. The shop she took us to had one whole large section set aside for patterns. Piriel began to flick through the heavy albums, as though she knew exactly what she was hunting for. I glanced at Aunt Dorothy, suspecting that she really would have preferred to beetle off on her own. She was always bored by anything to do with clothes.

  ‘They’ve got a craft section over there,’ I said, inspired. ‘Maybe you might find a Christmas present for Aunty Nat.’

  It wasn’t such a brilliant inspiration. Aunt Dorothy used the aisle behind the counter as a direct route to get there. One of the busy shop assistants had to shoo her out from underfoot, and it was a disaster when she finally reached that craft section, anyway. She set her bag down on the floor, and someone immediately tripped over it. Straight after that she knocked over a stand of embroidery kits, flattening somebody else. Piriel, with great presence of mind, called her back and asked her to go over to the far side of the shop to see what they had in the way of small white buttons. She made it sound as though it was a vital mission, but winked at me secretly as Aunt Dorothy trotted off. It felt wonderful, the two of us sharing a conspiracy, left in peace to look at patterns together.

  ‘Between you and me, I’m rather glad Nat didn’t decide to come along, too,’ Piriel said. ‘Poor old Dosh is quite enough to be getting on with, but at least she never pretends she knows anything about clothes … Aha, search over! Something in this style is what I had in mind for you.’

  I inspected it doubtfully. It wasn’t really the sophisticated sort of thing I’d been imagining on the drive down from Parchment Hills. In fact, it seemed a little on the young side for someone my age, vaguely like something you’d see on an old-fashioned porcelain doll.

  ‘Now it’s just a matter of finding the right material,’ Piriel said. ‘Which shouldn’t be any problem. They always have a great range here – that’s if Dorothy hasn’t managed to demolish their whole stock by now. Let’s go and find something really gorgeous for you, sweetie. Didn’t I tell you this would be fun?’

  Piriel had perfect taste and knew all about fashions, I thought. There was no need to feel anxious about my new dress. I followed her through the shop, hoping that people would see we belonged together. But I didn’t like to get too close. Piriel had a strong invisible boundary, which somehow made getting close to her seem like an intrusion. The aunts didn’t have any boundaries to speak of, even Aunt Dorothy with her ship-in-a-bottle daffiness. It always felt the most natural thing in the world to help Aunty Nat fasten a necklace, rub sunscreen lotion on Aunt Dorothy’s back at the pool, get splinters out for them if they couldn’t find their reading glasses. But Piriel was different, and the zone around her somehow demanded respect. Aunt Dorothy, however, suddenly bounced into it, flourishing a long roll of buttercup-yellow material as though she was conducting an orchestra.

  ‘Look what I found!’ she beamed. ‘It’s on special, too, marked down half price. Not that I’ve got any clues about girls’ dresses, but don’t you think the colour’s just –’

  Piriel didn’t care for it at all (maybe because Aunt Dorothy accidentally swiped her on the chin with the roll). She said that yellow always reminded her of thick banana custard. Aunt Dorothy seemed a little downcast and didn’t offer any more suggestions. They weren’t necessary, anyway, because Piriel chose an ivory-coloured cottage print, scattered delicately with lilac flowers. She was quite definite about it.

  ‘It will suit Sarah perfectly,’ she said. ‘She’s such a quaint little article.’

  I felt the tiniest bit doubtful again, because I wasn’t sure I was a cottage print kind of person. (Or a quaint little article, either, for that matter!) But trusting her judgement, I was happy to let her pick out shoes, too, after we’d bought the dress material. Aunt Dorothy didn’t come with us on the rounds of shoe shops. We lost her at the first one, and had to backtrack to where she was riffling through a stand of books outside a newsagency. (She’d heard somewhere that detective stories made good reading for long plane trips, so that’s what she gave Dad every Christmas. I never had the heart to tell her he didn’t like them.)

  ‘The rest of this business might take a while. We must be holding you up, Dorothy, with the Christmas shopping you wanted to do,’ Piriel said tactfully. ‘If you’d like to get on with that now, we could all meet again in the café next to the fountain, let’s say in about forty-five minutes. Would that be the best plan – what do you think?’

  It was remarkable, the smooth way she could get rid of someone and sound polite about it at the same time. Aunt Dorothy loped off quite obligingly, and we were able to look for shoes with no interruptions. The ones Piriel liked best were very plain ivory leather, with a narrow buckled strap.

  ‘You don’t think they’re maybe a bit too much like … well, like little
kids’ party shoes?’ I asked hesitantly. ‘And they’re terribly expensive …’

  ‘They’re just right for the dress, Sarah,’ Piriel said. ‘So is this nice little matching bag I’ve just found on the other counter. And not to worry about how much it all comes to. I’m paying by credit card, and Brett will reimburse me for whatever I’ve spent. We can’t have you turning up at our wedding wearing cheap trendy rubbish, can we, honey? There, that’s everything taken care of, so now we can go and treat ourselves to a delicious lunch. I think we deserve it.’

  Aunt Dorothy was ten minutes late meeting us at the café, and when she did show up, knocked over the sugar bowl by dumping a large wooden doorstop on the table. The doorstop was a goose wearing a painted bonnet and apron.

  ‘Christmas present for Nat!’ she said triumphantly. ‘Seeing she’s so keen on bird things because of the house name … oh, that reminds me, did you pass her message on yet, Sarah? About the wedding reception being at Avian Cottage?’

  It wasn’t nearly as awkward as I’d thought (maybe because that goose was so hideous nothing else seemed quite as bad). Piriel dealt with it skilfully.

  ‘That’s generous of Nat. Tell her I’m very grateful for the offer, but I’ve already made a tentative booking at a restaurant one of my friends owns.’

  ‘Bet they can’t make wine trifle as good as Nat’s,’ Aunt Dorothy said. ‘People always have trifle at weddings, don’t they?’

  ‘Well, not everyone, not these days, anyhow. The restaurant might be closed for renovations early February, though, that’s the only hitch. Look, don’t go damaging Nat’s feelings or anything. It’s not that I’m completely ruling out the Avian Cottage idea, but I don’t even know if it’s feasible or not, do I? It’s not as though I’ve actually seen the house yet.’

  (I stored ‘feasible’ away in my mind to look up in the dictionary later, perhaps to use myself when I found out what it meant. Piriel’s words always sounded somehow exactly right, like pearls graded in order of size.)