I Have a Bed Made of Buttermilk Pancakes

  Jaclyn Moriarty grew up in Sydney and has lived in the US and England. She spent four years working as a media and entertainment lawyer and now writes full time so that she can sleep in each day. She and her Canadian partner divide their time between Sydney and Montreal.

  Also by Jaclyn Moriarty

  Feeling Sorry for Celia

  Finding Cassie Crazy

  First published 2004 in Picador by Pan Macmillan Australia Pty Limited

  This edition published 2005 in Picador by Pan Macmillan Australia Pty Limited

  1 Market Street, Sydney

  Copyright © Jaclyn Moriarty 2004

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher.

  National Library of Australia

  Cataloguing-in-Publication data:

  Moriarty, Jaclyn.

  I have a bed made of buttermilk pancakes.

  ISBN 0 330 42207 3.

  I. Title.

  A823.3

  Internal design by Melanie Feddersen, i2i design.

  Typeset in 11.5/15 pt Bembo by Post Pre-press Group

  Printed in Australia by McPherson’s Printing Group

  This is a work of fiction. All characters, events, names and places depicted in these pages are products of the author’s imagination, and any similarity to actual persons, events and places is unintended and coincidental.

  Papers used by Pan Macmillan Australia Pty Ltd are natural, recyclable products made from wood grown in sustainable forests. The manufacturing processes conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin.

  These electronic editions published in 2004 by Pan Macmillan Australia Pty Ltd

  1 Market Street, Sydney 2000

  The moral right of the author has been asserted.

  All rights reserved. This publication (or any part of it) may not be reproduced or transmitted, copied, stored, distributed or otherwise made available by any person or entity (including Google, Amazon or similar organisations), in any form (electronic, digital, optical, mechanical) or by any means (photocopying, recording, scanning or otherwise) without prior written permission from the publisher.

  I Have a Bed Made of Buttermilk Pancakes

  Jaclyn Moriarty

  Adobe eReader format 978-1-74197-082-1

  Online format 978-1-74197-685-4

  EPUB format 978-1-74262-587-4

  Macmillan Digital Australia

  www.macmillandigital.com.au

  Visit www.panmacmillan.com.au to read more about all our books and to buy both print and ebooks online. You will also find features, author interviews and news of any author events.

  To Colin with love

  Acknowledgements

  I would like to thank the extraordinary people at Pan Macmillan, especially Anna McFarlane and Cate Paterson, for making the experience of publishing so delightful. Thanks also to my agent, Tara Wynne, and to my generous readers, Liane Moriarty, Nicola Moriarty and Corrie Stepan. My greatest thanks are to Colin McAdam who knows this book by heart.

  Contents

  Cover

  About Jaclyn Moriarty

  Also by Jaclyn Moriarty

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Acknowledgements

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  1

  THE HOT AIR BALLOON

  Once upon a time there was a watercolour painter who thought he could invent a parachute.

  This was in the early days of parachutes.

  Out in the meadow with his easel and his brushes, he saw an early parachutist dripping from the sky.

  ‘How was it?’ he cried, jogging up to the gathering crowd.

  ‘Oh,’ cried the parachutist, tangled in the parachute: ‘I feel sick.’

  But this was in Paris, so they spoke in French.

  Those days, parachutes had a design flaw: they did not float gently to the ground, they spun through the air at dizzying speed, and parachutists turned an olive green.

  So, the watercolour painter went home and put up his feet for a coffee and a think. ‘How can we stop these brave falling men feeling sick?’ is what he thought.

  After thirty-five years of thinking, he figured it out. He put down his coffee, picked up his sketchpad, and called to his wife.

  ‘Look,’ he said, calm with pride as he tilted the sketch towards her.

  His wife squinted, and her eyebrows bounced, for his parachute was upside down! Instead of being shaped like an ‘n’, it was shaped like a ‘u’.

  ‘Will it work?’ she mused.

  ‘Of course!’ he exclaimed. He made a parachute out of her handkerchief to prove it. The handkerchief flopped to the floor, but, as he pointed out, it didn’t spin.

  So convinced was he that this was the solution to the spinning parachute, he decided to make one of his own. He ran it up on his wife’s sewing machine. Next he persuaded a friend to let him try it, by jumping from the basket of the friend’s hot air balloon.

  He was so excited that he didn’t test it first with a dummy (or a cat), which would have been the custom in those days; he just strapped himself in and jumped.

  He plummeted straight to the ground – like a vase knocked from a shelf – and was killed.

  When she first heard this story, Maude Sausalito (aged eleven at the time) felt a cold gust of sadness for the painter. Then she imagined (yearningly) the things he might have landed on which would have saved his life.

  A haystack; a pond; a freshly turned garden bed!

  A vat of mulberries!

  A gigantic banana milkshake.

  A stack of blueberry muffins.

  (She was hungry.)

  If only, she thought – and she still thinks this often, even now – if only the stupid, overexcited man, could have caught an up-draught in his useless parachute! If only the up-draught could have carried him high into a zinging blue sky, over a hill of whipped butter, across a maple syrup pond. And finally, gently, deposited him on a buttermilk pancake bed.

  Parachutes are vented at the top these days, and it is this which prevents them from spinning.

  EXTRACTS FROM THE ZING

  GARDEN SHED (Burnt Fragments)

  THE SPORTS CARNIVAL

  Cath Murphy (teacher, Grade 2B) holds one end of the finish line ribbon, and scans the carnival crowd for Zings.

  Ah-hah. There’s a Zing reclining on a picnic blanket and trying out the ring tones on her mobile phone.

  Over there! A little Zing lining up to race.

  That could be a Zing, that plump woman carrying the cranberry muffin –

  No.

  That’s not a Zing.

  That’s Miss Heather Waratah (teacher, Grade 4C).

  A year ago she didn’t even know the Zings. Today, she gets a spasm in her right eye when she sees one. (The letter ‘V’ has the same effect.)

  Also, she has lost her personality.

  She lost the personality a few months back.

  To be specific, it was burned to ci
nders in the Zing Garden Shed.

  So, that’s it for me, she thinks grimly as the finish line ribbon falls from her wrist to the feet of a tumble of children.

  Fancy Zing pauses at the south-east corner of the oval. She has just collected bandaids from the glovebox of her car.

  From here, she can see her daughter lining up to race. The starting gun cracks and Cassie takes off at the pace of Fancy’s heart. The other children, Fancy thinks, move like frantic puppets. Cassie stretches smoothly away from them.

  Fancy’s gaze shifts to the finish line where Cath Murphy waits: her hair cut sharply across her neck; her excellent posture; her expression of mild exasperation. She feels a surge of love for the ribbon in Cath’s hand. It has such power! A child need only brush against that ribbon and the adults must drop it at once.

  Her eyes follow the lane markings beyond the finish line, to the other side of the oval where four blocks of colour have appeared. They seem to be enormous flowerbeds.

  Amazed, Fancy turns back to watch her daughter’s race.

  Marbie Zing listens to the chanting of children. They have gathered into their four team colours to practise for the cheering competition. She sits on a nearby picnic blanket, sometimes pressing her fingers to her ears.

  Her niece has just finished a race, and is catching her breath a few feet away from Cath Murphy. Cath says she’s lost her personality. When Marbie heard this, she telephoned Cath to advise that she go for a drive. ‘That’s happened to me before,’ she said. ‘A lost personality. At job interviews and kitchen teas. But I always get it back on the drive home.’ Cath hung up immediately.

  On the oval, a girl is lining up for the long jump. The girl is so small she hardly exists, as far as Marbie can tell. Her arms and legs are slender to the point of translucence. She is wearing a sunhat tipped so low she has to tilt her chin upwards to see. Nearby, parents smile broadly at one another, about the girl. But the girl shakes out her limbs. She squats and stretches her knees. She squints down the sandpit, strategising.

  Watching, Marbie thinks about how often children slip into adult worlds, and then – as a teacher rushes to measure the girl’s jump – how frequently we find ourselves in theirs.

  She is startled by two sets of footsteps thudding to a halt on her picnic blanket. It’s her sister, Fancy, returning from the car, and Cassie, arriving from the opposite direction, a flutter of blue ribbon in her hand.

  2

  CATH MURPHY

  A year ago now, Cath Murphy stood on the 2nd grade balcony, blinking and smiling in the morning sun, her hands in the pockets of her new baggy trousers, her neck feeling warm beneath her short blonde hair.

  It was the first day of term, and the children were gathering downstairs.

  The new guy, Warren Woodford, was at the other end of the balcony, outside the 2A classroom. He leaned his chin towards the railing and gave Cath a firm little nod: Yes, there they are, gathering.

  She responded with her own solemn nod.

  The new guy was sure to be a hit with the kids. He was very tall, so he would be able to reach up to touch the ceiling, or to tack paintings high on the wall. Also, he could pull down one side of his mouth while raising the opposite eyebrow. Kids think that kind of face, especially when done to tease them, is the essence of grown-up humour.

  Cath looked back at Warren and he was making that exact face at her.

  It was actually funny, and she surprised herself by imitating him. He smiled softly, looked away, and then called something that sounded like: ‘From the highlands.’

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘Aren’t the highlands!’

  ‘Yes,’ she agreed, tentatively. Then she really wanted to know, so she ran a few steps along the balcony towards him. ‘I’m sorry?’

  He waved her back. ‘I only asked if you were frightened! Are you scared?’

  ‘Of course I am! Aren’t you?’

  Then she ran back to her spot to wait again, and felt awkward and foolish, but also she felt this: quirky, cocky, small, funny, wicked and extremely blonde.

  In fact, she was not really frightened, more excited. But, as her mother liked to say, all meetings with new people, even locksmiths or seven-year-olds, can make you a little afraid.

  Cath had been teaching for two years now, and had a reputation among the children as very nice and pretty, can be strict sometimes, but mostly nice. She was known to be generous with gold stars and SUPER WORK! stamps.

  Among teachers, she had a reputation as serene and conscientious, perhaps a little shy, but prone to fits of giggling.

  She ate a Granny Smith apple at lunchtime each day, and believed in smiles which continued for 5-4-3-2-clear! after corridor nods. She had a Mary Poppins glint in her eye, but not the Mary Poppins spots on the cheeks, or the carpetbag.

  Now, as the children filed up the stairs, jostling and excited, chatting with each other and at her, she herself chatted back: Good morning! and There you go! and Just leave your bag on the bag-rack, that’s a good girl! and Oops! It’s a bit early in the day to be tripping on your shoelace, isn’t it, okay there?

  But she noticed, as she chatted, that the new guy, Warren, was welcoming his class in silence. He was holding one arm high in the air and using the other to wave them into his classroom. He was like a stately policeman. The children, she noticed, were obeying him in wide-eyed wonder.

  Later, as she spent the morning playing educational welcoming games (Luke’s name begins with the same letter as Lion! Scary!), Cath was conscious of long periods of silence in the classroom next door. The silence was interrupted now and then by storms of laughter.

  The next day, Tuesday, Cath got a chance to talk to her friends Lenny D’Souza (teacher, Grade 6B, School Counsellor) and Suzanne Barker (teacher, Grade 1A). This was at recess.

  Cath told them that, at the start of the summer holiday, she had broken up with her boyfriend from last year. Lenny and Suzanne said, ‘Oh’, sadly, but Cath just laughed and said she couldn’t even remember his name. Suzanne reminded her what the name was. ‘Thanks,’ said Cath. ‘I never thought he was right for you,’ Suzanne offered. ‘You didn’t have the aura of someone truly loved.’ ‘Thanks,’ said Cath again. Lenny told them she had been out to dinner with, guess who? And Cath said, ‘Who?’ and Lenny said, ‘Guess,’ etc. Then Lenny admitted it was Frank Billson (School Principal).

  Cath and Suzanne shrieked and, when Lenny ran to get her sandwich, they lowered their heads and said, ‘Oh my God’ and raised their eyebrows: ‘What is she thinking?’ Lenny came back and they straightened their faces and shoulders again.

  Lenny asked Cath what the new guy, Warren Woodford, was like, and Cath was about to reply, but Suzanne interrupted to say she’d heard he studied acting before teaching.

  And Cath found herself thinking: Actually, Suzanne, the new guy belongs to ME.

  Because she was the 2nd grade teacher.

  On Wednesday, arriving home late after a K to 6 Values and Goals meeting, and tossing her keys and sunglasses onto the table, Cath caught a glimpse of her busy, thoughtful face reflected in the dining room window. She paused to consider the face. ‘You wouldn’t know,’ she said to the window, ‘that my heart was broken not so long ago.’

  The heart had been broken by last year’s boyfriend, despite what she’d said to Lenny and Suzanne. He had left her for a job in New Orleans. He brought the job to her place one evening; it was in a small white envelope, and was very enthusiastic about the boyfriend’s environmental science degree. ‘When do you leave?’ she asked, making her voice as amazed and excited as his was. ‘Next week!’ ‘And how long is it for?’ ‘Indefinite!’

  He then spent the evening hunched over Cath’s dining table, tracing scenic routes on a Louisiana Road Map with his thumbnail.

  ‘Are you sure you can see in this light?’ Cath had said, coldly.

  But he was too excited about the alligators, and only seemed to remember her at the airport. By then, of course, it was too late. H
is luggage had been checked in.

  Could he really have broken your heart? said Cath’s reflection, skeptically. But then she thought of the nights after he left, how she cried herself to sleep in her empty apartment, kicked the telephone across the room, mistreated the flowers that he sent from New Orleans (she left them to die in their wrapping), cut her hair short, and enrolled in a part-time law degree. Whether or not he was worth it, he had certainly broken her heart. (He had added a ‘Cheer up!’ note to his flowers from New Orleans.)

  ‘But now,’ she announced to her cat, Violin, as he twirled between her ankles, ‘I am recovered!’ The bell on Violin’s collar tinkled faintly.

  She gazed at herself in the window, thinking of how good it was to be single. Just last night, for example, she had made chocolate chip cookies at midnight, to celebrate the start of the school year! And tonight, she planned to have Vegemite and grilled cheese on toast for dinner. And then watch MTV for as long as she liked. (Most boyfriends get restless and want to try the cricket instead.) And then go to bed and stay up late reading a novel. Lovely!

  And plus, said the tiny, secret voice at the back of her mind, and plus, I am sure to get a new boyfriend now that I feel this way! Whenever I get to the stage of happy, independent, singlehood, THAT’S when I meet a new boy! It makes me ATTRACTIVE, being happy with JUST ME, I’m about to –

  ‘HUSH,’ she said firmly, and turned away from her reflection. Then she found that she was jittery and had to take a walk to the corner store.

  On Thursday, she thought: I like being single! as she walked around the classroom, complimenting children on the pompoms they were making. I’m going to study law part-time! Some of the children smiled back at her. A girl named Lucinda kept smiling for such a long time that Cath asked if she was all right. ‘No, because I’m not allowed to call the teacher that,’ said Lucinda.