‘You’ve already talked to her.’ He stood in front of her and for a moment she thought he was going to block her way. He was frightening – big, and emotional, like a horse that might do anything.
‘Come with me, Morty.’
He shook his head, but he stepped aside and held the door open. ‘You told her you didn’t need her. That was the message you gave her. If you want my opinion, you are incorrect …’
‘If I’m incorrect, then help me talk to her.’
‘No, Mum.’ He shook his head with those big teary eyes, like his father.
‘You don’t know anything about Cathy and me. You never did understand.’
‘You’ve got her like a monkey on a stick.’
‘Rot and rubbish.’
‘You’re very cruel, Mum.’
That hurt her, hurt her more than she could imagine being hurt but she did not show it.
‘You always panic,’ she said. ‘You’re like your father.’
That made him sniff and put his mouth into a slit. ‘You’re the one who should be panicking,’ he said.
She let that pass.
‘Walk me down the stairs?’
‘No,’ he shook his head.
So she walked by herself and left him sulking.
She met her daughter in the old lube bay, carrying a big cardboard box of papers. Cathy brushed past, saying nothing. She passed the box to Steven Putzel and then hurried back across the cracked, oil-stained lube bay floor where Benny had painted the skull and cross bones and the Day-glo no admittance sign. Frieda remembered when that concrete floor was wet and new. You could have written anything in it. Cathy began to go up the metal stairs to the flat. Frieda followed her.
Half way up, Cathleen stopped and turned.
‘Just leave me alone,’ she said.
‘I’m not stopping you,’ Frieda said, but she saw then – in the way Cathy was standing – that it was not too late to stop her. She started feeling better than she had.
‘You’ll fall and break your hip.’
‘I’ve every right to see my house.’
‘It is not your house any more.’
But she had invented it. There had been nothing there before she started. She had chosen that red marbled Laminex, that lemon wall paint. The floors were strewn with newspaper, record covers, sheet music. In the middle of the room was the yellow vinyl chair she had covered for Cacka. He used to sit in that to listen to his records. She loved to watch him listen. His big eyes would fill with moisture – glistening like in the movies when people were in love. Now it was his daughter who stood before her, red faced, her hands on her hips, her lips parted.
‘You know I won’t live too much longer,’ Frieda said.
‘Don’t start that …’
‘We got through this far …’
‘Just don’t, O.K.?’
Howie came into the living-room. He stood back in the corner as if none of this was to do with him.
‘You never had children, Cathy,’ Frieda said. This was not exactly aimed at Howie. She did not mean it this way, but she glared at him when she said it. ‘Unless you’ve been through labour you couldn’t understand.’
Cathy began to give that nervous laugh and shake her head like she had water in her ear. ‘Listen, Ma – it’s not going to work …’
She got that ‘Ma’ from Howie. It was common. Frieda hated it. ‘You’re going to be alive a long time yet, Cathy. You’re the one that’ll have to live with the guilty conscience.’
‘Mrs Catchprice,’ Howie said. He was leaning against the door frame with his arms folded. ‘You’ve got no right to say these things to her.’
He was a no one. She had made him, invented him. He came into her shop with his greasy hair and brothel creepers and a note from the police sergeant.
‘I’m her mother, Howie.’
Cathy said: ‘You never did what a mother should have done.’
‘You mean that business with Mr Heywood’s cat?’
‘You know I don’t mean that. Don’t make me say it. Just don’t make it hard for me to go.’
Howie spoke out of the shadow near the bedroom door frame. It was so dull there you could not even see his eyes. ‘He used to rub her tits,’ he said.
Frieda felt she had missed something.
She looked up. Steven Putzel was there at the doorway next to Howie, listening.
‘How dare you speak to me like that,’ she said, but she was confused by the circumstances and did not speak with her full force.
‘He used to rub her tits.’
‘You little filth.’ She could not believe the
‘He’s not a filth,’ Cathy said. ‘He’s a decent man.’
‘He is a filth, all right,’ she said. ‘I knew he was a filth when I saw him. I thought I could change him but look how wrong I was.’
‘He used to lie on top of me so I could not breathe.’
‘You were the one who wanted to marry him.’
‘Your husband. My father. He used to lie on top of me so I could not breathe.’
‘He loved to tease you,’ Frieda said.
‘For Christ’s sake, Mother, our father was a creep. He used to touch my tits. He used to lie on top of me. You saw him do it. You used to watch him do it.’
‘I did not.’
‘You did, you old fool. You used to sit there, in the same room. He used to do things to me while you were
Cathy had her by the arm, squeezing her, pulling at her, shouting about ten hours of labour, but Frieda had already slipped away. She was running through the ring-barked trees, down the wet clay road. Walking towards her was Cacka, smiling, in his Magpies jacket.
She had the gelignite in her handbag when she met him. She had it in the butcher’s. The detonators clinking around her neck. She had it there from the beginning.
51
Ghopal’s was hot and busy when Govinda-dasa took the call. When he heard the old woman’s voice he had a mental picture of a demon with tusks, one of the servants of Yamaraja, the lord of death, who came to claim the soul of Ajamila.
‘O.K.,’ he said to Vishnabarnu. ‘It’s her.’
Vish picked up the phone and cradled it between his big smooth chin and yellow cotton shoulder.
‘Hi, Gran.’ He continued to ladle out the Sweet and Sour tofu. He passed the plate to Ramesvara and then began to fill a blender with banana and milk, yoghurt, cinnamon, honey.
‘Vish,’ Gran Catchprice said, ‘I need you out here.’
‘Oh no, Gran,’ Vish said. ‘I’m sorry. One sec.’ He turned on the blender and mouthed to Govinda-dasa: ‘It’s O.K.’
‘I don’t think there’s too much I can do about Benny any more, Gran,’ he said as he poured the smoothies into their tall green glasses. ‘I think he needs to see a doctor.’
‘I’m the doctor,’ Gran said.
‘Good luck, Gran.’ He smiled. He handed the glasses to Govinda-dasa who added the mint sprig and placed them on the counter top for Ramesvara.
