Illywhacker Read Free

“I guarantee you.”
    Later, when she was in Sydney being notorious, Phoebe went around telling people that she had “foreknowledge” of the event. She had known she would see my aeroplane suspended in the sky above Vogelnest’s paddocks at Balliang East. She convinced many people, and I won’t say it can’t be true. In any case, it is a pretty story, so I will leave it hovering there, like an aeroplane, alone in the sky, gliding towards her with a dead engine.

3
    Phoebe sat on the big kitchen table and kicked her legs and listened to the commotion, the little cries of pleasure, as her mother and Bridget set about packing the hamper. Phoebe frowned and bit her nails. She watched her mother like a parentwho knows a child will shortly stumble. In that odd household it was the parents who were the children: Jack and Molly fussing over each other, touching each other, walking around the roses hand in hand, turtle-doving and cooing at fifty years of age while their only child watched them, nervous lest they hurt themselves.
    They did not understand Geelong society. They were friendly and neighbourly. They offered hatfuls of hens’ eggs across the fence.
    Phoebe understood Geelong all too well. She shuddered when she heard that her mother had invited the A. D. Collinses to a picnic at Balliang East. Molly and Mrs Collins were on the committee for the Wyuna Nursing Home, and although they were both on the committee because their husbands were rich, in Molly’s case this was the only reason. Molly did not know the other reasons even existed. She thought she could ask Mrs Collins to a picnic.
    It was perfectly clear that the A.D. Collinses would not come and then there would be food not eaten and her mother would become brighter and brighter, chattier and chattier, and the moment would come when a particular laugh—Phoebe would recognize it instantly—would shudder and twitch and then fall apart in tears.
    Phoebe jumped down off the table and embraced her mother. Molly was white-skinned and ginger-haired, sweet and soft as roly-poly pudding.
    “Isn’t it lovely?” Molly said. And Bridget stood back so that they might admire the hamper.
    “Yes,” said Phoebe. “It’s lovely.”
    It was probably just as well the Collinses would not come. The McGraths always picnicked at the most dreadful places. They picnicked without shame; they picnicked thick-skinned and jolly at places Phoebe would not have stopped to spit at.
    Phoebe no longer pleaded and no longer sulked. She understood the parameters of the picnics all too well. E.g. they could not go to the beach because of the sand. They must keep away from areas frequented by mosquitoes, trees with limbs that might fall, forests through which bush fires might suddenly sweep, places known to be frequented by bull ants or similar in soil or vegetation to places where bull ants had been observed. Last, and most important of all, there must be plenty of running water, water of impeccable credentials (a river, with the constant risk of dead heifers just a mile upstream, was quite unacceptable).
    A good brass tap was, to Molly McGrath, the thing around which a good picnic could confidently be built.
    They all knew, or thought they knew, that there was something wrong with Molly’s brain. Neither father nor daughter mentioned it, but why else did they pamper her so, bring her bowls of bread and warm milk, and fuss over her like an invalid when she was—anyone could see—strong as an ox. Molly worked at her picnics like she tended her roses or worked on her veggie garden, breathlessly. Phoebe could feel terrors in the air when the cries of delight were loudest. Her mother was a creature building a fragile stick nest on a beach that will shortly be deluged by tide. She made happy optimistic cries but a practised observer would see she did not quite believe them.
    However, the first time I saw the ritual of picnic preparation, I saw no terrors. I saw Molly’s fine green eyes alight