One Sunday by Joy Dettman Page B

roof was low, its rooms small and its veranda floors rested against the earth. The floors inside were not much higher, and the place smelled of age and beer, tainted by mushrooms. Out here, the air was thick with the scents of her garden.
    Tom watched her fill a bucket from the tank tap then meter out good drinking water to pot plants, pouring a little around the roots of a wisteria that formed a solid green wall on the western end of the veranda and was well on its way to taking over the north side. A nice spot this, and that cane lounge waiting in the shade, inviting his legs to sit a while. He didn’t sit, but walked determinedly into the sun.
    Verandas sheltered all four sides of the hotel. Harry Dolan had put in six big water tanks, needing a reliable supply of water for his lodgers. She’d evicted them and was now using that water to keep the close surrounds of this place blooming – and tank water as precious as liquid gold these days, and him not having any.
    He sniffed at the air. That circle of belladonna lilies had no fear of drought or sun. In full bloom, their perfume this morning resurrected memories of a small back yard in Melbourne, which he didn’t want to think about.
    â€˜There are families in town dipping their drinking water from the river and lugging it home in buckets, Mrs Dolan.’
    â€˜What do you want me to do about it? Buy a Furphy and start deliveries?’
    He walked away from her, walked down the eastern side of the building; she followed him with a second bucket of precious water. Plants by the dozen down this side, strange plants he couldn’t name, bearing strange flowers he’d never seen before.
    â€˜Were either of the Reichenberg boys at your party last night?’
    â€˜Ask Len Larkin who his mother invited.’
    He took a tobacco tin from his vest pocket, prised the lid off and packed a tight pipe, his mind pondering the pros and cons of coming to the point and telling her about the Squire girl. He wouldn’t get any information out of her unless he told her. What to do next, that was the question.
    She emptied her bucket and placed it down, her hair falling forward as she bent, her hand going to that hair, finger-combing it from her brow, her arm bare to the elbow. She was in her early forties, but that arm was still as firm as a girl’s, as was the rest of her. Gutter-born, maybe, but a raving beauty in her time – certainly, the years were starting to show, though not forty-three years, and given the early life she’d led, the years should have been showing more. Time had stayed well clear of those amber eyes. They were looking at his pipe, looking at his matchbox. She liked a fag. He sighed, took the cigarette packet from his pocket and offered the lone white cylinder.
    â€˜As you know, officer, I was never a one to take the last lolly out of a baby’s mouth.’
    He kept offering it. She shrugged a shoulder and took it. He lit it for her then lit his pipe with his last match, letting the match burn down, curl, turn black before tossing it. Turning on the heel of his boot he followed a narrow path to the cider pit, scattering a motley assortment of chooks pecking for what they might find.
    The cider pit door, designed for broad midgets or fat barrels, was padlocked. A man had to bob his head low to get inside that door. Plenty didn’t mind bobbing.
    The widow hadn’t followed him. She leaned against a veranda post, drawing on her fag and holding her gown around her, holding most of her in. All greens and reds and blues, that gown. Colour. The last Mrs Dolan had been a black-clad toothless mouse.
    He turned to Reichenberg’s land, looked at the whitewashed buildings. No sign of life over there – other than the red steers and those horses, beautiful animals, in beautiful condition. Tom wasn’t in the mood to face their owner, not before breakfast.
    Making a wide circle around the widow, he was on his way back