Read Online Diamonds in the Mud and Other Stories by Joy Dettman - Free Book Online Page A

never taken to Marlene, didn’t like the bloke she was marrying and couldn’t stand her dragon of a mother. He chose a toaster for twenty-nine dollars.
    Funny, folks’ eyes – the way they stared at him until he turned to face them, giving them a better view. Funny watching those eyes whip down to his shirt.
    â€˜Good morning, Ben. A nice bit of rain.’
    Ben found a sheet of wrapping paper, selected a card and a roll of sticky tape, stood in a queue for ten minutes, scared the tripe out of the check-out girl when she looked up to say, ‘Have a good day,’ and made a kid drop an ice cream when he walked back to his ute, where he and Fred did a semi professional sticky-tape job and signed the card.
    The Marshall house was barely a block from the Kmart. He drove around there and sighted young Danni, standing beneath the meagre shelter of a carport, tinkering with the motor of a Holden even more ancient than his own. Ben tucked the toaster beneath his jacket and ran down the drive.
    â€˜Give this to Marlene for me, will you, Marshall? Tell her I’m not sure I’ll be able to make it tonight, but all the best and so forth.’
    She held up two hands that made his own look like his banker’s. ‘Want these all over your pretty white paper?’
    â€˜I thought you were supposed to be one of the bridesmaids.’
    â€˜Ha,’ she said.
    The front door opened and a head popped through the gap. ‘Danni. Maurice will be here in five minutes to do your hair.’
    Ben nodded to the speaker, then left the shelter of the carport to offer his gift.
    â€˜Thank’s very much, Ben. Gee, I hope this rain lets up soon,’ she said to his belt buckle.
    â€˜They’re forecasting a cloud burst at four o’clock,’ Danni yelled from the carport.
    â€˜You’re impossible. I asked you to have a bath and wash your hair an hour ago.’ No reply. ‘She’ll do something to ruin my day, I just know it,’ Marlene said, now studying the gift wrapping and knowing the parcel wasn’t large enough to be the saucepans.
    â€˜I don’t think I’ll be able to make the reception, Marlene –, ’Ben started, but the dragon-lady was out. She took the toaster, gave it a look usually saved for diseased rats, gave his left ear a forced, thin-lipped smile.
    â€˜We do understand, Ben dear.’
    â€˜One less to pay for,’ the one in the rain yelled, and with a wave of his hand, Ben made his escape back to the carport. Seeing two greasy hands now battling with a determined bolt, he considered offering his muscle. That girl had a lot of height but little flesh to support it.
    â€˜What’s your problem, Marshall?’
    She glanced from the water pump to him, then back again. ‘Mainly, how to catch double pneumonia before four o’clock. Got any hints?’
    â€˜You look as if you’ve got it well under control. Put a coat on.’
    â€˜What? And defeat the object of this exercise?’
    He left her to it.
    The sky looking darker by the minute, he started his motor and considered his options. There’d be little chance of getting any work done today. ‘Want to go out and see Uncle Norm and Aunt Beth?’ he asked his dog.
    Uncle Norm had a tasty labrador. Fred laughed his assent.
    Â 
    Danni Marshall had no luck with double pneumonia, but she caught the edge of her stepmother’s tongue when Maurice and the clean-up crew arrived to work their magic. They washed her hair, took to her fingernails with kerosene, creams and prods, did a full paint job on her face then bolted her into a cage that shaped her nonexistent boobs into something resembling twin padded humps. They swathed her knees in petticoats, lifted the hired bridesmaid’s dress over her head, then told her not to move.
    Move? She was hogtied, her feet hobbled in stiletto heeled silver sandals. Bloody ridiculous. She looked like a telegraph pole with a