The Fine Color of Rust: A Novel - Softcover

O'Reilly, Paddy

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1451678169 ISBN 13: 9781451678161

Verlag: Washington Square Press, 2012

Inhaltsangabe

Set in the Australian outback, a wryly funny, beautifully observed novel about friendship, motherhood, love, and the importance of fighting for things that matter.

Set in the Australian bush, a wryly funny, beautifully observed novel about friendship, motherhood, love, and the importance of fighting for things that matter.

Loretta Boskovic never dreamed she would end up a single mother with two kids in a dusty Australian country town. She never imagined she’d have to campaign to save the local primary school. She certainly had no idea her best friend would turn out to be the crusty old junk man. All in all, she’s starting to wonder if she took a wrong turn somewhere. If only she could drop the kids at the orphanage and start over . . . But now, thanks to her protest letters, the education minister is coming to Gunapan, and she has to convince him to change his mind about the school closure. And as if facing down the government isn’t enough, it soon becomes clear that the school isn’t the only local spot in trouble. In the drought-stricken bushland on the outskirts of town, a luxury resort development is about to siphon off a newly discovered springwater supply. No one seems to know anything, no one seems to care.

With a dream lover on a Harley unlikely to appear to save the day, Loretta needs to stir the citizens of Gunapan to action. She may be short of money, influence, and a fully functioning car, but she has good friends. Together they can organize chocolate drives, supermarket sausage sizzles, a tour of the local slaughterhouse—whatever it takes to hold on to the scrap of world that is home. Warm, moving, and funny, The Fine Color of Rust is “a story about love: where we look for it, what we do with it, and how it shows up in the most unexpected packages” (Big Issue, Australia).

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Paddy O’Reilly is the award-winning author of the novels The Factory and The Fine Color of Rust, as well as the short story collection The End of the World. She lives in Victoria, Australia. Find out more at PaddyOReilly.com.au or follow her on Twitter @Paddy_OReilly.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

1

NORM STEVENS SENIOR tells me I’ll never get that truck off my land. He says it’s too old, been there too long, the hoist will try to lift the thing and it will break apart into red stones of rust.

“Leave it,” he says. “Let it rust away. One day you’ll look and it won’t be there anymore.” He gives me a sideways glance. “Like husbands. You look away and when you look back they’re gone, right?”

“Right.”

“So have you heard from the bastard?”

“Nope.”

“And you’re getting by all right? For money?”

“I’ve got more money now than when he was here.”

We both laugh.

“Now, Loretta, you know I can take the kids for a night if you need some time off.”

“I might take you up on that. I’ve got a prospect. A biker, but a nice one, not a loser. On a Harley, no less.”

“A Harley?” He raises his eyebrows. Whenever he does that, a pink scaly half-moon of skin above his left eyebrow wrinkles. He reaches up to touch it.

“You should have that looked at, Norm.”

“Yeah, yeah, and I should give up the spare parts work and get out of the sun too.”

He gestures around his junkyard. There are tractor parts, rolls of wire, tires, mowers, corrugated iron sheets all rusted and folded, bits of cars and engines, pots and pans, gas bottles, tools, toys, bed frames, oil drums, the chipped blades of threshers and harvesters. Some of the machinery is so bent and broken you can’t even tell what it was meant for. In the center of the yard is a lemon tree, the only greenery in sight. It always has lemons. I’m sure I know what Norm does to help it along, but I don’t ask. He’s got four guard dogs too, tied up around the yard, vicious snarling things. As if anyone would want to steal any of this crap.

“Well, I’d better pick up the kids,” I say. I don’t want to pick up the kids. I want to send them to an orphanage and buy myself a nice dress and learn to live the way I used to, before I turned into the old scrag I am now.

“Don’t you worry about that truck.” Norm stretches out his long, skinny arm and pats me on the back. “It’ll go back into the land.”

I get into the car, pump the accelerator like I’m at the gym, and turn the key three times before the engine fires. I should have that looked at, I think. There’s half a kilo of sausages on the seat beside me, and I realize they’ve been sitting in the sun for half an hour. When I unwrap the paper and have a sniff I get a funny sulfur smell. They’ll cook up all right, I tell myself, and I gun the Holden and screech in a U-turn onto the road. I can’t get used to this huge engine—every time I take off I sound like a pack of hoons at Bathurst.

It’s three thirty already and Jake and Melissa will be waiting at the school gate, ready to jump in and whine about how everyone else’s mum always gets there before I do. Maybe I will drop them off at the orphanage.

• • •

WHEN I GET to the school gate the kids are both standing with their hands on their hips. I wonder if they got that from me; old scrag standing with her hands on her hips, pursing her thin lips, squinting into the sun. You could make a statue of that. It would look like half the women in this town. Dust and a few plastic bags swirling around its feet, the taillights of the husband’s car receding into the distance. They should cast it in bronze and put it in the foyer of Social Security.

“Mum, we have to have four sheets of colored cardboard for the project tomorrow.”

“All right.”

“And me too, Mum, I have to have a lead pencil and I don’t want bananas in my lunch anymore because they stink.”

“All right.”

As I steer the great car down the highway toward home I have a little dream. I’ll swing into the driveway and sitting next to the veranda will be a shiny maroon Harley-Davidson. I won’t dare to look, but out of the corner of my eye I’ll see a boot resting on the step, maybe with spurs on it. Then I’ll slowly lift my head and he’ll be staring at me the way George Clooney stared into J.Lo’s eyes in Out of Sight and I’ll take a deep breath and say to him, “Can you hang on five minutes while I drop the kids at the orphanage?”

What I actually find when we get home is a bag of lemons sitting on the veranda. Norm must have left them while we were at the newsagent.

“Who are these from?” Jake asks.

“Norm.”

“How do you know?”

“Oil on the bag.”

I bought Norm a cake of Solvol soap once. Delivered it to the junkyard wrapped in pretty pink paper with a bow. He rang to thank me. “I think you’re insulting me.”

“It’s for your own good, Norm.”

“You’re a minx. If I was thirty years younger . . .”

“Fifty, more like,” I told him, “before you’d get those paws on me.”

That night, when the kids are finally settled in their rooms doing their homework, I get on the phone for the usual round of begging.

“Are you coming to the meeting tomorrow?”

“Oh, Loretta, I’m sorry, I completely forgot. I’ve made other plans.”

I can imagine Helen’s plans. They’ll involve a cask of white and six changes of clothes before she collapses on the bed in tears and starts ringing her friends—me—asking why she can’t find a man. Is she too old, has she lost her looks? It helps to leave the house occasionally, I have to remind her. She certainly hasn’t lost her looks. Auburn hair without a single gray strand. Straight white teeth. A country tan. Unlike mousey-haired skinny scragwoman me, she even has a cleavage.

“The grade-three teacher’s coming,” I tell her, certain this will change her mind. “And Brianna’s offered to mind all the kids at her place. She must have hired a bouncer.”

“He’s told you he’s coming?”

“Yeah, he left a message on my machine,” I lie.

So Helen’s in. After I herd up seven others with more lies and false promises, I put the sausages on. Sure enough, the sulfur smell fades once they start to burn. I used to enjoy cooking quiche and fancy fried rice and mud cake. Gourmet, like on the telly, the boyfriend would boast to his mates. Then we get married and it’s, “Listen, darl, I wouldn’t mind a chop for a change.” Now the kids think gourmet is pickles on your sandwich. They won’t even look at a sun-dried tomato. Last time I tried that, Jake picked them out of the spaghetti sauce and left them lined up like red bits of chewed meat on the side of the plate. “Gross,” he said, and I had to agree, seeing them like that.

• • •

THE MEETING’S IN the small room at the Neighbourhood House because the Church of Goodwill had already booked the large room by the time I got around to organizing tonight’s meeting. We’re sitting pretty much on top of each other, trying to balance cups of tea and Scotch Finger biscuits on our knees. Maxine is supposed to be taking the minutes.

I thought I’d made it up, but the grade-three teacher has come, and Helen’s paralyzed with excitement and terror. She’s wearing enough perfume to spontaneously combust, and...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Washington Square Press
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2012
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 1451678169
• ISBN 13: 9781451678161
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 304
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: preigu; mail@preigu.de; ; Lengericher Landstr. 19; Osnabrück; 49078; Deutschland