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"Is that you, Sheryl? It's me! Hey, guess what! Jason's gone back to live with his father again and they're cutting my benefit! My case officer says I gotta go back to that counsellor woman and he keeps asking if I get any support from my family. As if! With a mother like mine, two brothers in the slammer and a druggie for a sister! Anyway, I gotta go now, the bus's stopping. Catch ya later."
An elderly man, who'd been holding a pole near the stairwell, struggled down the bus steps with a full supermarket bag. Determined to get away from that woman with the strident voice on the cell phone, who was now behind him, he caught the bag on the edge of the kerb and it split, spilling groceries in all directions. The woman bent down and helped him pick them up.
Nothing could be done for the runaway onions and oranges in the gutter that the last wheel of the bus ran over as it pulled out. They looked at the mess, and then at each other, and laughed.
"Can I help you carry these home, mate?" asked the woman, hitching her handbag over her shoulder.
"That would be very kind," the man said. "Home's not far away. The name's Bert, by the way." He offered a floury hand and they laughed again.
"Ok, mate," said Dot, as he wiped the hand on his trousers, covering them in white dust. "I'm Dot."
"Would you like to come in for a cuppa?" Bert asked, as they reached his front door.
Dot was middle-aged, wearing green jeans, a red leather jacket and a snake tattoo on her right cheek. She reminded Bert of a woman from a motorbike gang, Barb Dwyer, a rough diamond who'd found God at his last parish.
Bert made a pot of tea, found some unbroken wine biscuits, and sat across from Dot in his modest lounge. He asked her if she lived nearby.
She burst into speech. Words spilled from her lips, like marbles from a bag. Bert listened, nodding from time to time, recalling the word 'logorrhoea' he'd come across in yesterday's crossword. His head began to ache.
"It's a bit warm in this sunny room," said Dot, her face flushing. "Do you mind if I take off my jacket?"
"Not at all."
Dot peeled it off, panting, to reveal a pink chemise.
Bert averted his eyes.
There was a loud knocking at the door and before Bert could get to his feet, a tall, erect woman wearing a pleated skirt and brown cardigan burst into the room. She looked Dot up and down, and glared at Bert.
"Morning, Priscilla!" exclaimed Bert, leaping up. "I'd like you to meet Dot. She helped me carry the groceries home from the bus stop. The bag had split open. I couldn't manage by myself."
"Oh, really? Listen, Father, I'm in a frightful hurry. Just came round to measure up for that window. There's thirty percent off at Curtains for Certain, today only."
"I'd better be going," muttered Dot, starting to get up.
"No need to leave on my account," snorted Priscilla. "I'm nobody special, just the daughter who looks after him."
Plucking a tape measure from a pocket, she measured width and length of the window frame, then scribbled numbers on the back of her hand with a pen snatched from Bert's top pocket.
Thrusting the pen back at him, Priscilla cast Dot a baleful look and left, banging the fly screen after her.
Bert glanced at Dot, who was staring at him, eyebrows raised. They heard a car start up and race away.
"I really had better be going," said Dot, looking at the time on her cell phone.
Bert escorted her to the door.
"Lovely to meet you, Bert," she smiled, as she left, reaching out to touch his hand
*
That night, a plate of ham sandwiches in one hand, cup of tea in the other, Bert settled into his desk to read the Old Testament in Hebrew. The greatest pleasure of his retirement was to read it in the original language, enjoying its earthy richness and rhythmic harmony. He turned to the Song of Songs, Solomon's book of love poems.
He could feel himself back in the pulpit, looking over an ocean of blurred faces, preaching the words he knew by heart from a sermon he had frequently delivered:
'Relationships, writes Solomon, are to be celebrated, the joyful coming together of man and woman in the blessed connectedness that we all yearn for. How different that is from the disconnection and loneliness which we so often feel in our day to day lives!'
The image of his wife, long dead, arose in Bert's mind: an unhappy, righteous woman, bustling with good deeds and snide remarks. Now Priscilla had gone the same way.
He closed his eyes and a montage of faces appeared: friends, relatives, parishioners and colleagues in the ministry.
And the feeling came to Bert, not for the first time, that in the whole of his adult life he had never fully connected with another human being, and that the things which had sustained him - his views, his faith, his ministry - were now nothing, like communion bread covered with ants.
He went to bed early, but lay awake for hours. His thoughts turned to childhood, to the farm, the river with its swimming holes and Father's laughing presence.
And Mother, one night, when he was gasping with asthma, her fingers soft on his brow till his body calmed and he drifted off to sleep, waking later to find her still sitting at his side, looking down with love, holding his hand.
Dot had reached out to touch him. The first meaningful touch he had felt from another human being since God knew when.
A dream woke him. He went to the bathroom and washed his face, peering into the mirror. Then he made herself a coffee, which he sipped, frowning, both elbows on the kitchen bench. Only fragments of the dream remained. Soon they, too, vanished, but their footprints lingered in his mind, like the lasting feelings aroused by a forgotten, exciting story.
*
The next afternoon, Dot pushed open Bert's squeaky gate and strolled towards his front door. Weeds had sprung up on the crumbling path, along with self-sown pansies. The heat of late spring carried the scent of violets. Bert was sitting on his veranda.
"G'day, Bert," Dot said. "Just passing. I've gotta go to the supermarket today. Wondering if I can get you anything to replace the stuff that got munted yesterday."
Bert chuckled. Munted. That was a good word. He stored it away in his mind. It might crop up in a crossword one day.
"Some oranges and onions would be a good start," he grinned. "Sit down and put your feet up for a bit."
Dot seated herself on a wicker chair beside a rose bush in a terracotta pot with apricot blooms, its petals tinged with pink, and a bright yellow centre.
She leaned over and sniffed.
"Man, that's awesome!"
"Thank you!"
"What's it called?"
"Whisky Rose," Bert chuckled.
"Ooooh," grinned Dot, wagging a finger.
"Did you grow it yourself?"
Bert's face lit up. "Yes, I did! From a stick. A cutting I took from the manse at my last parish."
"Oh, were you a minister? Good on ya, mate. How'd ya like being a minister?"
"It was ok. But I don't know that I did much good."
"Hey, cut that out, Bert. You were real good with me yesterday, when I was going on about all my stuff."
"Really? I didn't say much, did I?"
"Nuh, that's the thing. You listened, let me get it out of my system, let me talk. Everyone else says I'm just hard and angry and I should shut up, pull myself together and get a job. But I sure ain't gonna take any notice of people I don't trust, who just wanna judge me without bothering to hear me out."
Bert frowned. "You do come across as angry, but nobody's got the right to judge you."
"You're darn right there!"
"From what you told me yesterday about your life, I think you've got a lot to be angry about," murmured Bert, "and I'd say your anger's helped you to survive in an unloving world."
A soft light appeared in Dot's eyes. "Yeah, mate, you're onto it."
The two fell silent. Bert gazed at her, his face reddening as he remembered last night's dream.
Dot stared at him.
She turned away and appeared to be watching a bumble bee disappearing into the trumpet of a blue flower. A butterfly fluttered by. She looked up.
"You can't fool an old bloke like me," Bert said. "You're not hard. You're just a turtle, soft inside, with a hard shell."
He reached over and touched her arm.
*
Dot and Bert didn't hear the key in the door that evening when Priscilla let herself in with the new curtains, but when she entered the lounge, the people in the next street heard her screams.
The End.
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