Read Online The Fine Color of Rust by Paddy O'Reilly - Free Book Online Page A

doesn’t creak! Champagne and sloppy French cheese and pâté! Silk knickers!
    â€œI expect you’ll want to spend it on the kids, but keep acouple of dollars for yourself, won’t you. You could use a bit of smartening up. Any men on the horizon?”
    â€œActually,” I say, “there’s a rather good-looking mechanic who definitely has eyes for me. He keeps himself quite clean, too.”
    â€œAs opposed to that grubby old junk man you hang around with?”
    â€œYes, as opposed to Norm, who has his own special standard of hygiene.”
    â€œAnd has this bloke asked you out?”
    â€œNot yet.” Needless to say, he hasn’t recognized yet that he has eyes for me. I wonder if I am talking about Merv Bull. Have I developed a crush? Am I becoming Helen?
    From down the corridor, the howling and sobbing is growing louder. I can’t avoid it now.
    â€œYou need to look for your mother,” I can hear a woman telling Jake. “Open your eyes, dear.”
    â€œLoretta, you should give up that political hocus-pocus you’ve got yourself into. Put your energy into finding a partner and a father for those children.”
    â€œThe Save Our School Committee is precisely for ‘those children.’ Anyway, we’ve had a win. The minister for education’s coming to Gunapan in a few weeks. We’ve got a chance to change his mind about closing the school.”
    â€œIs he married?”
    Jake’s sobbing, very close now, startles awake the man in the bed across from Mum. He raises his spotty head and shouts, “You buggers! You buggers! Get out of it, you buggers!”
    â€œShut up,” my mother calls over at him, and he stops immediately.
    â€œNutcase,” she says to me. “Every time he wakes up hethinks the Germans are coming for him.” Mum lets her head drop back onto the pillow and stares at the ceiling. “The Gold Coast. I can’t wait.”
    â€œSo when do you go?”
    â€œMummeeeeeeee,” Jake screams as he runs into the room and flings his round little body onto my lap. He buries his face in my shirt, covering me in snot and tears. Melissa strolls in behind him eating a chocolate bar.
    â€œThe lady says she’s going to clean up Jake’s chips.”
    With Jake in my arms I stagger out to the corridor and call out thanks to his rescuer, a woman in a blue cleaner’s uniform who is hurrying back toward the lift.
    â€œWhat were you doing on the second floor, Jakie?”
    â€œIdroppedmychipsntheysaidicouldn’teatthemoffthefloor ndicouldn’tfindyooooooo.” His sobbing is slowing now. “So, so so Itriedtofindyouand, hic, Icouldn’tfindyouandIwent, hm, downthestairsand, ugh, theladysawmeand . . .”
    â€œSsh, ssh.” I squeeze him tightly to me.
    â€œI’m tired now,” my mother says from the bed. “Thanks for visiting, darlings.”
    On the way back to the motel I ask the kids what they’d buy if they had a thousand dollars.
    â€œA motel!” Jake screams.
    â€œWhat would you buy, Liss?” I can see her in the rearview mirror. She looks out through the window for a while, down at her hands, back out through the window.
    â€œI dunno.”
    â€œGo on, a thousand dollars. What would you get?”
    She sighs a great heaving sigh and writes something on the car window with her fingertip.
    â€œSome proper clothes. From a proper shop so I’m not the world’s biggest dork.”
    â€œDon’t be silly, you look beautiful. You could wear a sack and you’d look beautiful.”
    We pull into the motel car park to pick up our bags from reception and have a toilet break before the long drive back to Gunapan. Once we’re on the highway I drive for an hour, and when it gets dark we stop at a roadhouse. We order the lamb stew with chips and milkshakes and sit down at a table beside a man who resembles a side of beef and who