You found me!
This comment section is such a bloody joy. I am fascinated by tarot too (my daughter is designing her own cards). Mark Seymour's voice sums up everything I love about Australian music, there is an urgency to it that hits you right in the solar plexus. And "That rubbery smell" and" "Enjoy your marzipan, Gil!" had me wheezing!
Thank you, k.
11
In the morning all the Blythes were tiptoeing around the house thinking Teddy was still asleep. They had been that way with Jem as well. He slept a fearful lot in the days after he came home because, he said, his body clock was at sixes and sevens. Whatever a body clock might be.
His littlest sister thought it aptly described the feeling pulsing through her since the moment she had made up her mind. Throb, throb. Throb, throb. Her blood was running hot. Yet how she trembled all over.
She broke a cup and saucer from her parents' sixteen-piece dinner service. Her mother didn't mind too much, her father didn't notice, and their housekeeper, Susan, was away - thank goodness. Nan and her twin sister, Di, helped her clear it up by handing her the dustpan and brush and then standing in the kitchen complaining.
Typical Ken, they said, couldn't he have warned them. May and June had been an absolute snooze and then just when they were about to go off to Avonlea for a change of scene (Jack Wright had just come home) Ken turns up with designs on Baby Rilla and brings an interesting chum with him. Teddy Willoughby was an utter dear!
Rilla reminded her sisters to hush before scooping up the broken shards and taking them outside. She would have to trek all the way to the junk pile by the compost heap to dispose of the broken dishes and she had already changed into her white suede boots.
She walked on her tippiest tip toes which is hard to do when one is throbbing; her balance was all over the shop, her mind reeling with those certain possibilities. She got within a fair distance of the junk pile and tossed the shards high in the air. Would she have time to get that smudge of mud off her left toe, should she change her boots for some elegant slippers?
"Bloody hell shittin' fuck!"
Teddy Willoughby staggered out from behind the pile of junk. There were drops of blood on his khakis, and drips running down his jaw, and a shard of Royal Worcester blue chintz sticking out of his eyebrow.
Rilla stood there, her kidskin boots slowly sinking into the red earth rutted by Susan's wheelbarrow. She did not know what shocked her more, his bloody eye, his disgraceful language, or the unbuttoned fly that was clutched in his hand. The other hand was smudged in blood too, hovering near the brittle protuberance as he tried to work out what was lodged in his face.
"What is it?" He darted toward Rilla. "Was that you?"
Rilla's hands went to her mouth, the most useless place that they could be. What had she done, and to Ken's dear friend, how was she going to explain?
It took three tries before she could make him understand he had been stuck with a piece of broken plate. It took him two to convince her to remove it.
"Just get it out," he said and when she wouldn't, "Get it out, get it out, GET IT OUT!"
"All right," she conceded before approaching him with the quiet command, "keep still."
And he was. No one can maintain stillness like a soldier. Even when she had plucked out the shard, he remained unmoving for several moments.
She offered her handkerchief and then turned her back with the suggestion that Teddy might want to button up. Only then did he remember his trousers undone, though this didn't embarrass him the way his squealing did.
"Pardon, Miss Blythe. I was looking for your outhouse."
"We have a bathroom, Teddy."
He could hardly say he was reluctant to use it because he knew he was about to explode after eating all that rich food last night. His arse was shooting out glace cherries like a Lewis gun. No, he could hardly say that.
"Really? I was thinking since this was a country house it was more like a farm."
"Poor Teddy." Rilla was the picture of contrition. "Let's go to the stump over there and I'll take another look at your cut."
She had him sit upon it then she raised his head and forced herself to have a proper look. The moment the pressure was taken off the wound it oozed with dark red blood. Her handkerchief was soaked with it, so she took the end of her apron and pressed that on his head instead. All the while she was begging his forgiveness for being such a thoughtless little goose as Teddy nodded in a daze of overwhelming adoration.
It had come on like the fever the moment he was introduced to her, and he was all too ready to misdiagnose it. Then later at dinner he stuffed down so much grub as though stuffing down his feelings for her. But now with his hot head in her cool, sure hands it was clear that his sickness only had one cure.
My word this is bad, he was thinking as his beautiful nurse prattled on. This is about as bad as bad gets.
"I feel better now," he lied and leaped up from the stump. "I best go look for that bathroom."
He tottered off in the wrong direction and Rilla chased after him.
"The house is that way, behind the holly hedge."
Her flushed cheeks made her hazel eyes seem golden, and tendrils of her chestnut hair flew across her face. A curl caught on her plump bottom lip. Every instinct within Teddy Willoughby wanted to brush it away, but he knew he never could.
"Teddy?" said Rilla shyly.
"Hmm?"
"What would be the best way to explain this to Ken?"
"Explain-" his voice cracked, "explain what exactly?"
"Oh, I don't know," she pursed her lips and looked down at her boots, her lashes in thick, dark fans, "the fact I nearly took your eye out."
"Oh that." The blood was sticky when he touched it and his brow felt hot and tight. "Don't worry. I can say I tripped on something. Cap'll believe that."
"You mean," said Rilla "you'd be willing to keep it a secret?"
"Yeah, sure. I s'pose."
Her lips spread with a grateful smile, and her lashes lifted as she looked at him revealing those golden eyes.
"Deal," she said and shook his hand, the one with all the blood on it. "But don't forget I owe you. If there is anything I can do for you, just say."
He returned the shake, her small hand lost in his big sticky paw. It was still hanging in the air when she skipped away. Her loose hair swayed with her every movement; her apron stained with his blood.
His handkerchiefs! They were still balled up behind the junkpile, near a pail of rusty rainwater that he had used to wash his hands.
He was darting back there when Rilla called out, "Don't forget!" before disappearing behind the hedge.
...
