A Matter of Love and Death by Carmen Radtke

Author:Carmen Radtke [Radtke, Carmen]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2019-10-01T04:00:00+00:00

When Frances came home, Bluey loomed large and lonely in the kitchen, while animated laughter wafted from the parlour. ‘I thought I’d rather wait here, if you don’t mind,’ he said with a sheepish look on his face.

‘Of course it’s all right,’ she said. ‘Oh drat. I forgot to ask Uncle Sal and Phil to lay the table.’

‘I’ll do it.’ Bluey seemed relieved to have something to do other than stand around.

She pointed out the China cupboard and the drawer with the ordinary cutlery – not the silver, not this time. She took the cover off the hot plate and put the kettle on top.

Bluey licked his fingertip and touched the kettle. It sizzled. He pulled back the finger in an instant, shaking the hand. ‘She’s still burning good and hot. I put her to the boil while you were gone, Miss.’

It was hard to guess how old he was, with his wide impassive face, but Frances took him to be about Jack's age.

He wiped his forehead with a handkerchief. ‘The air’s getting a bit close. We’ll get a thunderstorm all right.’ He tapped his left shoulder. ‘That bit of shrapnel there’s never let me down yet, giving me fair warning.’

‘Uncle Sal says the same about his ankle.’

Bluey nodded. ‘If he’s got some bit of metal stuck in there it would. I reckon it’s the magnetism as does it.’

The kettle began to hum. Frances grasped an iron hook and dragged the kettle off the hot plate.

‘Let me do that for you, else you’ll scald yourself.’ He demonstrated surprising dexterity when it came to brewing the tea, Frances thought. Or he’d volunteered because he needed to feel useful to lose his original shyness.

‘Thank you,’ she said, hoping they wouldn’t be interrupted for a bit longer. Bluey was opening up fast, and it was fascinating to watch this heavy-set man bustle around the kitchen.

He caught her look. ‘We got the same kind of stove at home,’ he said. ‘The missus was all set against getting an electric one, what with the bills and the fire hazard and all.’

‘That’s what Mum said, too, when Dad asked her.’ Frances walked to the pantry and took an iced pound cake from a shelf. ‘Instead, we got a lovely indoor bathroom, with hot and cold water from the tap. Heaven.’

She cut the cake into generous slabs.

‘Hard to remember how we used to fill the tub out of the rain butt. Gosh, did the missus go on when she caught a frog hopping out of it.’

She gulped. ‘I would, too.’

He scratched his chin. ‘Makes you wonder where it ends with all this change, it does. I reckon that’s what went wrong in the first place, us getting a taste of the soft life after the war, and then we got a hankering for more.’

He fished the leaves out of the teapot so they could be used again. ‘Mr Jack says, people came to thinking that Australia’s roads were paved with gold, but instead they’re paved with money borrowed from London.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.