Oh here comes… um… what is her name? Mrs Gafoops from the bakery, the one with the rather nice looking husband, Mathew, and the delinquent son, Jeremy. I don’t know how she does it. The son is completely, what is it that Felix says, of chops. Yes, poor lad is of chops on ice.
“Hello Bunny, lovely day.”
“Oh, yes, lovely,” said Bunny. “Just going for my constitutional.” Big smile, just as her knee twinged badly. Hold it. Hold it. Hold… exhale.
“Yes, quite,” said Mrs Gafoops, as she passed by.
Bunny exhaled.
Oh here comes Obese Gayhale – the ‘h’ is silent, but it has a rich ‘a’ sound, not nasally. Gahyle turned off to the bakery, crisis over. Should have seen that coming. Bunny still remembers the night Gayhale gave her a lift home from Sam’s the mechanic, when Gayhale had to rather shamefully grab for all the bakery bags in the passenger footwell and toss them in the back, when Bunny got in. You can’t even say that you can see the pretty girl under the fat girl just waiting to be let out. You can’t. There is no pretty girl. Poor lass is only in her twenties.
Bunny was grabbed suddenly around the waist from behind. She instantly tensed up, protective of her injury.
“How is my favourite MILF?” the voice whispered.
Bunny shrieked. It scared the hell out of her. Whoever it was, they smelt of sherry, reminiscent of Marge Dohongies English Trifle, although that couldn’t possibly be what was involved here, one wouldn’t have thought.
“OMG!” shrieked Father Brown, the man instructing at the forthcoming wedding, for whom Bunny was playing piano. He was the parish priest. There were rumours. This is the point where the nice ladies of the parish stopped using words, instead going for “the” hand gesture, that he drank. Tip the glass over, cat’s arse mouth. Ella went as far to say he couldn’t be trusted even after Sunday communion, but Ella always had a strange relationship with the opposite sex. There was the Guytano Poynton incident.
Father Brown seemed so normal when they met on church business, and now he was slobbering like a spaniel. “Long Brunch, Father Brown?” asked Bunny.
“I’m terribly sorry,” said Father Brown. He was clearly embarrassed. Lost his head, in one of those inexplicable moments. “What can I do…?”
“Nothing,” said Bunny. “There is nothing wrong with me, take more than that.” She was concentrating on getting back to the car, barely putting any thought into her words. Father who?
“Okay.” Father Brown looked up and down the street. “I am SO sorry, I thought you were... oh, um, I thought you were, um… someone else. I’m sorry. Please excuse me Mrs Robertson…” He danced around her like a boxer.
Who did he think I was, thought Bunny? Who was he grabbing? “Perhaps, it is time for a stop at the optometrist,” said Bunny. Her knee hurt, she was aware that she was talking gibberish. She would usually laugh heartily after such a quip, just to show she was only half serious, but her knee hurt too much for that and she thought bugger it. “See you on Sunday… father.”
“Oh? Um? Ah. Yes, ah, quite.”
Bunny thought her footwork was pretty slick, not one stumble.
“So sorry.”
Bunny brushed at her skirt, as if there were something there, as she watched Father Brown make his haste exit. My favourite what? She thought. Oo, she visibly recoiled at her next thought. The thought of bloated red faced old men being touchy feely, it made her shiver. It is too old. She tells Carl to come to his senses now a days.
“Bun!”
It was Kylie Kloppers, there was no mistaking it. Bunny had never been able to certain if Kylie was some how touched, as Carl would say, “That girl’s touched, if ever there was one,” or if she was just socially awkward. She is not a pretty girl, none the less.
“Bun? What’s wrong with ya leg?” She had a mouth on her like a foghorn.
Dear Lord.
“Bunny, ya stocking’s got a bloody run in it,” said Kylie. “In the street?”
She always seemed to breath though her mouth, thought Bunny. “Has it.” Bunny did her best ballet movie, gracefully looking down the back of her stocking. She tried to appear nonchalant. The run was on her knee and she couldn’t see it, but what did it matter. “So it has Kylie, I shall attend to it as soon as I get home. Nice seeing you…” She wanted to say dear, but it suddenly struck her as something her mother would say, her 105 year old mother, if she’d still been alive, so she didn’t. Her voice just trailed off awkwardly, and she was too preoccupied to care.
“It is so not like you, Bunny Robertson,” said Kylie.
“Me? Oh Kylie, I have draws full, at home, of old laddered hose.”
“Nasty way to meet yous end, hey, if you knows what I mean? Ho’s. Down a ladder.” Kylie laughed like an emphysemic steam shovel.
“Kylie, you kill me. Where do you get them from?”
“Me better half, me brother…”
“I don’t really want to know… er… Kylie.” Bunny continued with her walk towards her car. Did she say her better half is her brother? Can never be too sure.
“Good seeing ya Mrs R.”
“Yes, Kylie, always splendid.”
Finally, she rubbed her fingers across the back fin of the Humber. The paintwork was smooth, like silk, thanks to Carl. One of life’s sureties, she thought, with her fingertips. She leant against the smooth duco and fumbled with the large collection of car keys. She flipped the silver lock cover up and inserted the silver-faded-to-brass key into the key hole. The door opened silently and smoothly. Bunny slid in on the smooth red seats. She smelt the leather perfume and felt safe.
She sat for a moment. She slid the keys into the ignition. She closed her eyes and listened to her breathing. Her bag and cardigan slid from her left hand onto the seat next to her, as her right hand reached for her knee, hitting the hanging keys first, “jangle”. She pulled the keys from the ignition and tossed them on top of her bag and cardigan. She rubbed her knee, it felt better.
She breathed in audibly.
She slid her stockings off, she giggled as she did it, she heard strip music in her head. “La-la la la.” She thought to herself, she had never been nude in public. “Running down the main street with your stockings off.” She’d never been skinning dipping with friends in mountain pools. She laughed at the thought, as she struggled to get her stocking clear of her toes.
Of course, she and Carl went skinny dipping, in their courting days. In the damn, down the back paddock, it was one of the few places she and Carl could get any privacy, out in the middle of farm land for as far as the eye could see. But, never other than that, with anyone other than Carl. She’d never been to one of those topless dance parties her grandson Felix and his friend Blake are so fond of attending. Something about foam. Her mind boggled at the thought. What would it be like, she thought? Once, with a school group one very hot day in Kalista, she and her friends bathed in the creek in their pants and bras, but that was it.
Nothing more. She peeled the end of her stocking over her foot with great difficulty and day dreamed about being arrested for public nudity in Tijuana, or some where exotic. And the look on Carl’s face when he comes to bail her out. She giggled. She looked over the drivers side window door frame like Foo. Her eyes look up and down the street.
Her knee began to feel stiff and restricted.
She hobbled to the doctor. Young Christine on reception fitted Bunny in between Mrs Jago from the hardware and her possible 7the pregnancy and Barry Baxter’s boils. “He’s got them on his…” Christine points to her bottom. “Arse. Nasty.” Christine grimaced. Bunny grimaced at the sour look on Christine’s face. The doc seemed distracted. He told Bunny it is just strained and bruised. “You’re not as young as you used to, to be doing floor plunges.” He bandaged Bunny’s knee like a kebab, just like the one's she buys late with Felix and his friend Blake, when she visits them in Fitzroy. It’s Felix’s place, but Blake just always seems to be there. The doctor told her to take Panadol.
Panadol? thought Bunny.
The Humber started up with its familiar, reassuring, burble. Bunny rapped a scarf around her hair. She slipped on a large pair of sunglasses. There was only one thing for it. She pulled the Humber out on to the road and she accelerated up the hill, the walnut and leather cossetted her as her English stead put in the heavy lifting. Across the top of the mount, Bunny accelerated even faster as she came around Hobbson’s Corner, where the road flattens off and heads across Jacob’s Ridge to Mount Potty. Most say that in the beginning, Mount Potty was so isolated that that is what it did to its first settlers, sent them potty. Most would say that it has nothing to do with the proliferation of hippy types who have made Mount Potty home ever since. The Humber took up speed with a hardly noticeable push in the back.
A slow car fast approached the scalloped front of the Super Snipe. Quickly the back of the car approached. Bunny checked her mirrors and with a hardly noticeable kick from her right leg, or a hardly perceptible movement of her right pinky, as she selected her right hand blinker simultaneously.
The English six cylinder immediately took up the call, with a dignified change to a higher gear, the smooth increase rev sound from the engine. The wind noise picked up, a surge forward, as the big sedan slide to the right hand side of the road. The emerald green indicator light flashed in the walnut dash. The Humber’s growl crescendo’d as the small Japanese hatchback slid across the passenger side windows, as though it was going backward. The Humber shot passed, it sashayed back to the left hand side of the road, its growl less and less noticeable the further and further it got away.
Bunny slowed momentarily at the large round about enough to swish, swish the Super Snipe through and straight on up Mount Potty hill. She accelerated hard down with her right foot. The Humber snarled again, as it took up speed. Bunny was hammering her old Humber, but it was not the first time, not the 10th time, that Bunny has had to track across country in an emergency situation in her old English sedan, and the Humber had never backed down from a challenge, the Humber has always been able to get through, with Bunny at the wheel. Bunny laughed to herself. Admittedly, some days it was just for cream cakes before the bakery closed. The Humber had always tackled every road and a couple of streams in her time, and she had never fail to march forward with the Buckingham Palace Beefeater-like genes that she possessed.
Bunny pushed her foot down on the accelerator. She shot up Mount Potty. Selby Gillup’s place is on the other side of the Mount, the north side, or something. Good for growing. Selby went to school with Bunny’s Neil, how many years ago? Selby was voted mostly likely to end up in jail, at school. And while Selby has done some time, he had generally done well for himself on his 100 hectares of land on the north side of Mount Potty. Better than some, she could name.
Bunny always had a soft spot for Selby. He was a good looking boy until he started to drink too much.
The S bend in the road, then straightening out to a straight stretch, the bird feeder in the tree. Bunny slowed the Humber down considerably. She put on her left indicator. She braked and pulled the Humber into an almost concealed drive way on the left. Stones hit the underside of the car as Bunny slipped onto the gravel drive. Bunny kicked the Humber up a gear and accelerated down the driveway. Stones flew out behind her. She’d never tell Carl, but she liked that sound. “Slow down, Jees, slow down will you woman,” Carl would wail from the passenger seat. Bunny did it on purpose, because she liked it, not because it pissed Carl off.
Selby had re-met one of the girls, FayAnne Heathcliff, who Neil and Selby went to school with at one of their school reunions, their 10th anniversary. Selby had accompanied Bunny to her 50th school reunion, because Carl didn’t want to go. Carl had no problem with it.
“That is what I am saying,” said Carl. “If you can hitch a ride with Selby, I’m all the better for it.”
“Suit yourself, Carl luv.”
“Carl,” said Selby, when Selby came to the door for Bunny
“Selby,” said Carl.
“There is golden syrup dumplings in the saucepan on the stove,” said Bunny. “Get the vanilla ice cream, and the pure cream if you must, from the freezer and fridge. The vanilla ice cream. Don’t wait up.”
“Oh, I won’t wait up woman,” said Carl. “I won’t.”
“Carl,” said Selby, as he followed Bunny out the door.
“Selby,” said Carl.
That was 20 years ago and Selby and FayAnne are still going strong. Selby found that elusive thing that half of the smarties who put him down in high school, by labelling him so cruelly, would still be looking for, happiness.
Bunny parked next to Selby’s beaten, what was once yellow, Toyota HiLux. FayAnne’s 4WD was no where in sight.
“Around here, Mrs R,” boomed Selby’s voice.
Bunny hobbled around to the front of the house, where the decking and pergola were, Selby was settled in a large out door seat, half in the shade and half in the sun.
“What have you done to yourself?” asked Selby
“What are you sitting here for?” replied Bunny.
“Well, I’m not as young as I used to be,” said Selby. “And now a days around midmorning I need to have a sit down and a cup of tea. The pot is hot and I have a spare cup?”
“I don’t mind if I do,” said Bunny. “And me?” Bunny flopped down in the next large round outdoor chair next to Selby’s. She pulled her sunglasses from her face. “I’ve done something to my knee, and it is now giving me billyo.”
“Go to the doctor.”
She pulled the scarf from her hair, which she shook free. “I’ve done that.”
“What did you do?”
“It was during my juggling the plates on sticks on my unicycle routine, I must have just caught it…”
“You poor… thing.”
“The doctors have been no help what so ever, so I thought there was nothing else for it.”
“You need a little of Selby’s Cure…”
“That is exactly what I want, hon.”
“I’ve got a cheeky young number in called Papua New Guinea Gold that I am trying out for myself, if you would like. Or there are all the usual home grown favourites.”
“Papua Guinea what’s it, that sounds like just the ticket.”
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