Page 84 of Weekends with the Sunshine Gardening Society
The market conveniently operates on a Wednesday as well as a Saturday. Kathy hasn’t been able to make it here on a Saturday since the Sunshine Gardening Society is taking up her weekends,which she’s happy about. It’s keeping her in shape, all that bending and squatting and pulling and planting.
There are so many people here that Kathy immediately feels sweatier. How to avoid all the bodies? She aims for the row of stalls that looks least crowded and turns her head from side to side, assessing the wares. Some fine-looking pineapples – she might come back for one of those. Ceramics, honey, macadamias … and Lorraine. Chomping on a macadamia sample and offering one to an older woman beside her.
‘Hi,’ Kathy says as she walks up to them.
‘Kath!’ Lorraine looks delighted to see her and Kathy takes it as a great compliment. ‘This is my mum, Rose. Mum, Kathy is one of the gardeners. And she moved here from Melbourne. Right, Kath?’
‘I did. Hello, Rose, lovely to meet you.’
‘I’ve heard about you,’ Rose says, and as she smiles Kathy can see the resemblance, even though Lorraine is taller and more tanned and her hair isn’t as neat. ‘You’re the lass who met them in the park.’
‘I am.’ Kathy feels quite chuffed to be the subject of a Lorraine family conversation.
‘Do you come to the market often?’ Rose asks, then she pops a macadamia into her mouth.
‘First time.’ Kathy eyes off the macadamias but decides against taking a sample. There may be other things she wants to eat here so she shouldn’t get ahead of herself.
‘Mum and I come here often,’ Lorraine says. ‘She lives close by.’
‘I do my fruit and veg shopping here,’ Rose says. ‘Thebestpineapples.’ She taps the side of her nose.
‘Come on, there’s a baker in the next row,’ Lorraine says.
‘You’re not buying nuts?’ Kathy asks.
‘We may come back for them. They’re pretty good. But the baker has these cinnamon –’ She stops, her eyes wide. ‘Oh. My. God,’ she breathes, then she puts her hand over her mouth and starts to laugh.
‘What is it, Loll?’ Rose says.
Lorraine catches Kathy’s eye and her shoulders shake with mirth. ‘Kath!’ she says, jerking her head towards a massive fig tree. ‘Kath – look!’
Kathy tracks her gaze along the same line as Lorraine’s and sees a card table under the tree covered in a purple cloth that’s catching the sunlight – it must have sequins on it or something. There’s a woman sitting behind the table, her spine ramrod straight, her hair neatly pulled up, and she’s talking earnestly to the young woman across from her and tapping a pile of cards.
Taking a couple of steps closer – mindful that her long-distance vision isn’t what it once was – Kathy can now see that the straight-spined woman is Barb, and she gasps.
‘No!’ she says, turning back to Lorraine.
‘Lorraine, what is it?’ Rose sounds irritated.
‘Mum,’ Lorraine says, still shaking with laughter, ‘that woman under the tree, with the tarot cards, is Barb. She runs the gardening society. And she’s the mostproperbloody person you could ever meet – but there she is reading tarot! Kath, you wouldn’t read about it, would you!’
Kathy shakes her head because the situation is indeed extraordinary and she’s not sure whether she can believe her eyes. Barb, who seems like such a rule-follower, everything done right, not a hair out of place, is a psychic? Or clairvoyant? What’s the term these days?
‘Do you think …’ Kathy starts but then laughter overtakes her.
Lorraine grabs her shoulder. ‘Isn’t it unreal?’ she says, doubling over.
‘Do you think she reads Shirl’s tarot?’ Kathy finally gets out, then she too doubles over.
It’s the improbability of it that makes it so funny. The scenarios that are now filling Kathy’s brain – wondering if Barb has this whole secret life that’s completely different to anything she might suspect – make her laugh even harder.
‘Sh-shhh,’ Lorraine says. ‘She’ll hear us. Let’s head back this way.’
She tugs on Kathy’s T-shirt and, still giggling, they go past the macadamias, the honey and the pineapples, Rose not far behind.
‘I can’t wait to tell the others,’ Lorraine says gleefully.
‘Oh, we can’t!’ Kathy says. ‘She’s never told us so she mustn’t want us to know.’
