Ripples on a Pond by Joy Dettman Page A

I’ll eat my hat.’
    â€˜That’s the trouble with red hair,’ Georgie said.
    â€˜Mary Willis,’ the woman introduced herself, then turned to identify Teddy. He was almost two years Georgie’s senior but had gone through primary school with her.
    â€˜I can’t pick you,’ Mary Willis said.
    â€˜I doubt you’d want to,’ he said. ‘I’m one of Harry Hall’s half-breeds.’
    Bloody stirrer, Georgie thought and stepped across the gutter to the road.
    She’d met a few tonight who had called her a bastard in grade one but now claimed her as a long-lost friend. She’d done her bit. Railroaded by Jenny into wearing a ‘hostess’ badge, she was counting down the minutes to nine when her shift ended and the adults’ concert began. A row of seats had been reserved for the hostesses.
    Amy and John McPherson had organised a lot of concerts in their time, schoolkids’ and adults’. Georgie had been in a few – in the school choir one year. She couldn’t hold a tune to save her life but Margot could. Wouldn’t though, not unless Georgie had stood at her side.
    She wasn’t in here tonight. Elsie had tried to get her out of the house. Georgie had told her that she was going and that’s all there was to it. Wasted effort. Most was with Margot. Margot had expected Elsie to give in and stay home with her. Georgie had half-expected it. She hadn’t. Every one of her kids was in town tonight – seven of them, plus three wives, two husbands and umpteen kids, and Joey, who had flown down from Queensland.
    Georgie looked at her watch and it was close enough to nine for her. She removed her badge and walked across the road to the town hall where a crowd queued to get in. A second shorter queue waited to buy one of Jim and John’s books. The Willama bookshop owner had set up his stall in the foyer – Jim and John were seated behind a trestle table, pens at the ready to sign what he sold.
    Expensive books, considered by many to be worth the money; the bookseller had started the night with two dozen cartons stacked behind the table. He was currently battling the crowd to haul in more. Georgie was watching him, hoping he didn’t drop a carton on someone’s head, when she felt another tap on the shoulder.
    Look, no badge, she thought, then recognised Katie and Tom Thompson.
    â€˜If it isn’t my second favourite redhead,’ the old chap said. Katie’s frizzy hair was as red as it had ever been, if not as abundant. A kissy pair, Georgie copped two, but copped them sweet. She’d liked Jack’s parents when she’d met them in ’59. For a time she’d considered marrying him for his parents. They were what she’d considered to be normal, back when her life had seemed too far outside the range of normal. They owned a hotel in Molliston, sixty or seventy miles east of Woody Creek.
    â€˜What are you doing in my neck of the woods?’ Georgie asked.
    â€˜Jack brought us up. He’s here somewhere with his family,’ Katie said.
    â€˜I spotted him earlier buying fairy floss,’ Georgie admitted, didn’t add that she’d changed her mind about buying a stick of the spun sugar. Good memories of the one Willama show she’d been to as a kid lived on in the taste of pink fairy floss – and celluloid kewpie dolls clad in frilly tulle.
    â€˜Have you got tickets?’
    â€˜Jack and Dianne have got them,’ Katie said. ‘We’re holding their places. What a crowd.’
    â€˜It’s bigger than everyone expected,’ Georgie said, glancing at Tom’s walking stick. They’d been elderly in ’59. They had to be well into their eighties. Her own feet were looking forward to sitting down, as theirs must have been.
    â€˜We heard your mum singing at a talent quest once, way, way back in the thirties,’ Tom said.
    â€˜She’s still good,’