The Listmaker Page 8

  ‘How about a brooch?’ Corrie suggested. ‘That’s what I got Mum last year. A leaf brooch, it was, because of buying the nursery. Dad reckoned I should have bought her a gag instead for egging him on.’

  ‘Piriel doesn’t wear brooches,’ I said, secretly wiping off some of the Santa Snow. They’d had it plastered all over the Christmas trees at the Moreton shopping centre, too. Piriel had remarked how silly it was, using snow as a decoration for hot Australian Christmases.

  ‘Oh drat, are you sure? I thought everyone liked them,’ Aunty Nat said. ‘Maybe something for the new flat, then. I could always give Eileen a ring and see if she still has some of those unicorn bookends.’

  ‘Piriel wouldn’t like those ghastly bookends. It’s an apartment, anyway, not a flat.’

  ‘What’s the difference?’ Corrie asked inquisitively.

  ‘Not a great deal, except for the price,’ Aunty Nat said, frowning at me a little. ‘And I’ll have you know, young lady, Eileen’s unicorns sell like hot cakes as fast as she can dab the glitter on their collars. All her ceramics do. I was thinking about buying a set of her Camelot wine goblets as a wedding present.’

  ‘Piriel wouldn’t like those any better than the bookends. Anyway, Dad says it’s a crime to serve wine in anything except proper glasses.’

  ‘There goes that idea, then. Oh, and speaking of the wedding, you haven’t told me much about your dress pattern and material yet. What with Horace just rescued out of the wall when you came back from Moreton yesterday, we never really got around to it.’

  It was odd, but I suddenly developed a mental block, unable to remember more than sketchy details. Aunt Dorothy’s attempts weren’t much better. ‘It was kind of old-fashioned, like the little girls wore in that TV series about the early American settlers,’ she said. ‘Little Town on the Prairie or whatever it was called. Sarah used to watch it when she was small. She liked the log cabin they all lived in.’

  ‘Little House on the Prairie,’ I said, displeased. ‘And it wasn’t anything like those dresses, Aunt Dorothy!’

  ‘Well, that’s what the pattern reminded me of. The material did, too. It was all-over violets or something.’

  ‘You’re making it sound yuk! And it wasn’t, it was excellent material!’

  ‘Well, the shoes and bag are nice enough,’ Aunty Nat said. ‘Though I would have preferred something fancier myself. Maybe you could tizz that handbag up a bit, Sarah. I’ve got a sparkly buckle that might do the trick.’

  ‘No! Piriel has perfect taste and those things are just right the way they are!’ I snapped, then wished I hadn’t in front of Corrie Ryder.

  She looked as though she never growled at anyone. No matter how irritating people were, she’d probably just sit there with that sunny expression plastered all over her face. And it wasn’t surprising she was so unflappable, I thought crossly. Anyone would be if they’d always lived in a boring little place like Parchment Hills where nothing exciting ever happened! Even so, nobody had any right to look so relaxed all the time, to act so contented with life and everything in it. She even thought the five gold angels were beautiful, and suggested dangling them from the light fitting as a special feature. (Just as she’d pushed in earlier by fixing a crooked branch on the Christmas tree. She’d splinted it with a chopstick and fuse wire, before I’d had the chance to think up a remedy.)

  ‘Those angels have always gone in a line along one wall …’ I began, just to remind her she was only a visitor.

  ‘What a good idea! They’d look so pretty underneath the light,’ Aunty Nat said at the same time. ‘Grab a chair, dear, and I’ll pass them up one at a time.’

  I wasn’t sure which one of us she meant, but as I’d had quite enough of Corrie raking in praise for good ideas, I got there first. It wasn’t a job to improve anyone’s mood, though. Cotton had to be looped through each halo, and Aunty Nat, who wanted a kind of mobile effect, kept making me shorten or lengthen the threads. Negative thoughts kept fluttering about inside my mind, one for each angel I hung:

  I might look really stupid in a dress nearly down to my ankles, with little violet flowers all over it. [‘Be careful with this one’s wings, Sarah,’ Aunty Nat said. ‘Some of her feathers seem to be moulting.’]

  Piriel, just possibly, might have made a mistake choosing a pattern and material like that. [‘Oh, thank you, Corrie; what a bright girl you are! I would never have thought of holding feathers in place with hair spray.’]

  Those new shoes definitely were the tiniest bit like little girls’ party shoes. [‘Should be some hair spray on my bedroom dressing-table, dear, left-hand side next to the hand lotion …’]

  How was it that some kids could walk into a place, immediately feel at home, and everyone automatically liked them straight off? [‘You should have come over for dinner, Corrie, as well as staying overnight. It wouldn’t have been any trouble at all. We just had ham and salad, anyway, because of the heat. There’s still plenty left over in the fridge, so if you get hungry in the middle of the night, please feel free to help yourself. Sometimes it’s very hard to get to sleep in hot weather like this.’]

  How would I get to sleep with someone I hardly knew in the same room? (Sharing with Tara McCabe at school was difficult enough! For instance, she wasn’t the least bit grateful whenever I tidied up before room inspection. So we wouldn’t lose marks, I’d dash around to pick up her dropped socks from the floor, smooth both our bedspreads, hang up her blazer, put her slippers neatly under the bed where they were supposed to be kept – and I’d never get any thanks for it! She usually just slouched in the doorway glaring at me.)

  ‘All done,’ Aunty Nat said. ‘Those sweet little angels almost look real floating around up there. Now all we have to do is find the pine wreath for the front door, and we’re all set for our very first Christmas in Avian Cottage!’

  ‘I have a feeling I might have seen it somewhere or other downstairs,’ Aunt Dorothy said drowsily. ‘Which is where I’m heading now, if nobody minds. I’m ready to hit the sack. Yanking out all that ivy today was hard work, even though Ed Woodley gave me a hand with the worst bits.’

  Aunty Nat, noticing that it was after ten, suggested bedtime for everyone, but first she followed us downstairs to hunt for the lost wreath. (It was slung up behind the bathroom door, being used by Aunt Dorothy as a temporary towel hanger.) After Aunty Nat found it, she had a sudden inspiration about louvred doors for my wardrobe. I was secretly relieved when she began to fuss around with a tape measure, because it meant I didn’t have to make stiff conversation with Corrie while we were getting ready for bed. She didn’t seem to feel ill at ease, though. She was chattering away to Aunty Nat like an old village gossip.

  ‘… no need to go all the way down to Moreton. The local cinema gets all the new movies at the same time they do. Plus there’s a half-price double feature every Monday.’

  ‘Really? Well, I’ll certainly take advantage of that.’

  ‘And the best video shop is the one next to the newsagency. It’s got a bigger range than the arcade one.’

  ‘Thanks, dear. Next time we hire videos, I’ll check it out.’

  ‘The Wilkinsons own it. They live out near the reservoir, and Dad’s going to landscape their backyard when they get around to deciding what they want. Mr W. likes traditional gardens and she likes bush ones. Tim Wilkinson – that’s their kid – delivers the local paper in this street. He’s in the archery club I belong to.’

  ‘Sarah, wouldn’t you like to try archery? It would be a nice hobby for the holidays,’ Aunty Nat said, but I just made a sound that could mean yes, maybe, or no way.

  ‘There’s plenty of other things to do up here as well as archery,’ Corrie said, still waffling on about Parchment Hills. ‘They’ve got canoes for hire up at the lake this year. The Quigleys run the kiosk up there. I take their dog for a walk every afternoon, because they don’t get home till late in summer. They live down the hill in Number Eleven. Oh, and I’d better tell you the b
est place to park if you ever have to go to the hospital in an emergency. That hospital car park’s only tiny, so it’s always full up. But if you drive further round the corner into Ganan Street, there’s a …’

  None of it interested me; Parchment Hills wouldn’t even be part of my life very soon. I gave my pillow a good thump, thinking how easily Corrie Ryder seemed to slot into everything, as though the whole area was just an extension of her own house! Perhaps she saw the whole world like that, too. If she ever found herself adrift on a raft, no doubt she’d feel completely at home there, and probably just look forward to the experience of eating raw fish! And the way that prize traitor Horace had been slurping up to her from the moment she’d set foot in Avian Cottage, you’d think she was raw fish!

  ‘Well, I’d better let you girls get some sleep,’ Aunty Nat said, tucking in my bedspread, brushing back my hair, kissing me on the forehead, then giving me a little pat on the cheek.

  For as long as I could remember, that had been a kind of ritual whenever I stayed with the aunts. Aunty Nat’s hands always smelled of jasmine lotion. She kept jars of it all over the house, so she could pamper her hands every chance she got. (Eileen Holloway made the lotion as a ceramics sideline.) It was babyish, but being tucked into bed last thing at night was something I quite often missed when I was back at school. Once, I’d secretly taken a jar of that hand lotion back with me, and when I felt miserable at night, I’d take off the lid to smell the jasmine.

  ‘Night, Sarah. And thanks for letting me stay at your place,’ Corrie said, after Aunty Nat had switched off all the lights and gone away upstairs.

  ‘That’s okay,’ I said politely, though it wasn’t anything to do with me and had just happened because Aunty Nat was being neighbourly over the fence. Horace, who’d parked himself on Corrie’s mattress, stirred at the sound of my voice but was too lazy to jump back to where he rightfully belonged. (Which was in his sleeping basket next to my bed.)

  ‘You’ll have to come over and sleep one night at our house. Only if you want to, of course. Mum reckons you probably get sick of being around other kids all the time because of boarding school.’

  As soon as she came out with that, I knew they’d been talking about me behind my back.

  ‘Not really,’ I said swiftly. ‘I’ve got stacks of friends there, and I never get tired of them. As a matter of fact, I’d be staying at my friend Tara’s place these holidays, only I thought I’d better stick around here to help my aunts get settled in. Tara lives way out in the country. We would have gone horse riding every day.’

  ‘There’s a riding-school place in Parchment Hills. If you feel like it sometime, maybe we could –’

  ‘Thanks, but I’m going to be flat out for the whole holidays. It’s just as well I didn’t go off to Tara McCabe’s, with all the things I’ve got to do before school starts again. There’s the wedding –’

  ‘I just had a good idea for that. You could tie a white ribbon on Horace and have him sitting by the front door when the guests show up!’

  ‘The wedding reception’s probably not even going to be here. Aunty Nat would like it, but nothing’s decided yet.’

  ‘But I thought it was kind of definite. I mean, Aunty Nat’s getting a loan of some garden urns from our nursery. She’s already told Dad what she has in mind; cherubs on the sides, I think it was. They’re for white flowers to go on the porch steps.’

  ‘It’s going to be in the city somewhere,’ I said, annoyed about her saying ‘Aunty Nat’ casually like that, as though she had some personal connection. ‘Most likely at this restaurant Piriel’s friend owns. And as well as the wedding, there’s another reason why I won’t have time for archery or any of those Parchment Hills things you were talking about. I’ll be too busy helping fix up our apartment ready for us to move in. Lorraine will want me there when she’s choosing furniture and stuff …’

  ‘Lorraine?’ Corrie asked, yawning. ‘Who’s Lorraine?’

  ‘I meant Piriel. And maybe we’d better not chat any more with Aunt Dorothy just down the hall. We’ll be keeping her awake,’ I said, although Aunt Dosh always fell asleep the minute she got into bed and stayed that way until morning. (Even a huntsman spider waltzing across her face probably wouldn’t have woken her up.) It was just that the stupid blunder of mixing up those two names made me want to pull the sheet over my head.

  Lorraine was someone Dad was married to before he met Piriel. It had happened in London, when they were both working over there on a long-term project. She wrote to me a few times, saying how sorry she was that I’d missed out on the wedding, and how much she was looking forward to us all being a family when they came back. And that Dad said to pass on the news that we’d be getting a terrific house somewhere, maybe near a beach. I’d told everyone at school that I probably wouldn’t be there next term, that I’d be moving. The marriage had only lasted seven months, though, and they’d come back separately. I’d never even met Lorraine.

  Corrie Ryder had fallen asleep, I could tell by her breathing. Trying to get there myself, I began a list of phrases, using the last word to make a following one. Christmas tree, tree house, house guest, guest room, room to move, move over, over the hill, hillbilly, billy tea, tea for two, two’s company three’s a crowd …

  Usually it was quite a good method for falling asleep. Sometimes, though, the list petered out and you couldn’t get anywhere with it. I tried some more.

  All systems go, go for your life, lifeblood, blood is thicker than water, water pipe, pipedream, dreamland, land on one’s feet, feet first, first off the mark, marksmanship, shipboard, boarding school, school friend, friendless …

  They didn’t seem to travel anywhere, either. I came up from under the sheet and gazed at the stars instead. Now that Aunt Dorothy had cut the ferns back from around the window, you could see a great dazzling sweep of night sky. There might be a book about astronomy in Parchment Hills library; maybe I could learn how to find the different constellations. Though there wasn’t much point, really, not when I was moving to the city so soon. There were so many other lights in the city, you wouldn’t be able to see the stars clearly. This end room had a magnificent view of them, but it would be wasted on Aunt Dorothy if she changed her mind and shifted in here when I left. She didn’t lie awake at night. Corrie Ryder seemed to have that same ability to fall asleep with no trouble at all. It must be a handy knack, I thought, to be able to put yourself to sleep and dodge your thoughts for a while.

  7 ∙ ∙ ∙ ∙ ∙ ∙ ∙ ∙

  Piriel

  P is for polished perfect personality possessing poise plus.

  I is for impressive intelligent individual.

  R is for remarkable real estate agent running rings round the rest.

  I is for idol!

  E is for excellent, elegant executive.

  L is for leading lady.

  Sarah

  S is for sulky, stupid show-off.

  A is for article (quaint little), and awful nails.

  R is for really really really boring.

  A is for average at all things.

  H is for hateful horrible hideous hair; hard to get along with; hopeless.

  ∙ ∙ ∙ ∙

  ‘It’s a wonder you didn’t invite his plumber mate while you were about it. Not to mention that other guy who helped him with the new wiring.’

  ‘Well, I did, actually, but they’ve got families of their own,’ Aunty Nat said. ‘For your information, Miss Scrooge, Ed Woodley hasn’t. How would you like to be by yourself on today of all days, eating something heated up in a microwave? And no one to chat to because of not liking to intrude anywhere on Christmas –’

  ‘That didn’t stop him intruding on us.’

  ‘It’s not intruding when you’ve been asked. Same as Piriel’s been asked, so instead of acting uncharitable about poor Ed, you can make yourself useful and try ringing her. She really ought to be here by now. Oh, and you might check the table first, just to make sure I haven’t
forgotten anything.’

  She hadn’t. All the glasses had ivy twined around their stems and the rims frosted with eggwhite and castor sugar. There were red Christmas-theme embroidered tablemats, candles in snowball holders, a gingerbread-chapel centrepiece with another candle inside to light up the coloured windows, and place-tags made of star biscuits glazed with each person’s name in green icing. It looked very festive, but I suddenly saw it through Piriel’s eyes. She might think it was all ridiculously over-the-top, like a float in a parade. A parade float, complete with visiting clown.

  I frowned at the biscuit that said ‘Ed’, tempted to scrape off the icing and pipe his name over again using strong mustard. No risk of him being late – he’d arrived ages ago, and was outside in the garden talking to Aunt Dorothy. He was doing most of the talking; I could see them both through the dining-room window. She was just nodding every now and then, most likely feeling bored to death. If Aunty Nat was going to invite strangers at Christmas, I thought resentfully, she should have at least made sure they had some stylishness about them. Piriel would be bored to death by Ed Woodley’s conversation, too.

  I dodged through all the renovation muddle in the hall and dialled her number. No one answered, which must mean she was already on her way. Going back through the living room, I retied the bow on the present I’d bought for her. Aunty Nat hadn’t liked my choice of raffia cord and plain brown paper, either, and she’d offered me some of the partridges-in-pear-trees wrapping paper which was her own choice this Christmas. But I was proud of how artistic my presents looked, so I’d turned it down. Ed Woodley had also brought gifts for everyone, putting them under the tree when he’d arrived. They were latticed all over with sticky tape, just as incompetently as Aunt Dorothy’s. Even though he’d also brought a bottle of champagne, I didn’t approve of the way he was muscling in on our Christmas!

  As far back as I could remember, there’d always been this leisurely annual ritual at the aunts’ place. We gave each other one little token present at breakfast, but the proper ones were saved for after lunch. Morning was for going to church, with everyone joining in the carols, and when we got home, I’d help Aunty Nat get the enormous meal ready. It always ended with coffee and cake around the tree, and opening the presents seemed to take up the rest of the afternoon. Later on, Aunty Nat would make a wonderful supper, and we’d have a traditional game of Scrabble. Spread over the whole day and evening like that, Christmas with the aunts felt unhurried and somehow gentle. The best Christmases, of course, were the ones when Dad was home, though they really didn’t happen very often.