Page 55 of Special Delivery
CHAPTER 25
The Bustle was heaving. The food festival always brought a few thousand interlopers into town who worked their way through a checklist of Orange’s most Instagrammable hangouts. Winery with Shetland ponies: check. Pub with open fire and Chesterfields: check. Coffee-shop-slash-art-mecca: check. There was a distinctly Sydney vibe in the air. The leather caps and Balenciaga sneakers were a dead giveaway.
‘Reckon it’s worth trying Coffee Bucks?’ Henry was standing by her shoulder in an olive green wool jumper.
‘Depends. Are you comfortable with arsenic in your coffee?’
‘Fair comment. I rue the day I was introduced to good coffee. I never used to mind a Coffee Bucks flat white. Amazing how they could press a button and that frothy goodness would magically appear.’
‘I hear they have a vegan menu now. You could try that out?’
‘Nah, if I went back, I’d have to go a vanilla slice, for old time’s sake. Sometimes I actually miss that taste of rubber.’Henry sighed. ‘I guess I’ll have to wait in line like the rest of these Eastern Suburbs plebs.’
‘Did you have a good Easter?’ asked Poppy as they waited.
‘Nice enough,’ replied Henry. ‘Mum made too much food. Dad fell asleep watching television, snored like a foghorn, got grumpy when we tried to wake him up. Pretty standard Marshall behaviour really.’
‘Did Willa enjoy it?’
‘Oh.’ Henry paused. ‘She had Easter with her family. Not married yet, so we decided to divide and conquer before the “one-off-one-on” starts for good, you know?’
‘Of course,’ Poppy agreed, her brain replaying that look of unease which had flitted almost imperceptibly across Henry’s face.What was going on there?
‘What about you?’ asked Henry. ‘Did you do the obligatory photo shoot of Maeve wearing bunny ears? My feed was clogged with stacks of that content so I might have missed your post.’
‘Shame,’ deadpanned Poppy. ‘We went the whole hog. Got Maeve in a bunny suit, in an Easter basket, surrounded by live ducklings, doves flying overhead.’
‘Gutted I missed it.’
They grinned at each other; another one of those ‘I know you get it and I love that you get it’ moments that always gave her a slightly teenage rush.
As was their rhythm, they neutralised the moment by moving on to generic topics: Henry’s nieces and nephews becoming extremely hyperactive and then sugar-crashingly depressed after gobbling all their chocolate; modern kidsgetting fruit from the Easter Bunny; the guesstimated annual turnover of Coffee Bucks. After they’d finally ordered coffees, they went to find a table.
‘You’d think we were at a yacht club,’ said Henry, looking around at the crowd as he sat down and Poppy parked the pram. ‘I’ve never seen so many pairs of white jeans in a confined space.’ It was true; there was an excessive amount of slim-legged white denim surrounding them. ‘Are they the people who actually buy this stuff?’ he asked, tipping his head towards the artwork-laden walls. ‘Most of it looks like a four-year-old painted it.’ He pointed at a canvas on the wall behind them, a jungle of pink lines on a lime green backdrop. ‘I could do that in ten minutes. It looks like fingerpainting.’
‘As if, Henry,’ said Poppy. ‘That composition is genius. And besides—who cares if it looks like a four-year-old painted it? Maybe that’s the point.’
The art was one of the main reasons Poppy kept coming back to The Bustle. It was like having coffee in a gallery without all the self-conscious white space and echoey austerity. Looking at the canvases was meditative and restorative somehow, like therapy by osmosis.
Henry looked confused. ‘I don’t get it. Why would you buy something that looks like a kindergarten project?’
‘Because it speaks to you. Art doesn’t need to fit a definition, Henry. It’s about how it makes youfeel.’
She glanced at one on her left which she was desperately hoping no-one would buy. It was a swirl of pink, orange and yellow on a crimson background. The colours were startling but beautiful and the lines were hypnotic. Sometimes she thoughtit looked like a giant flower in the breeze; at other times it looked like a cyclonic whirlpool. Blossoming, drowning, it was all so similar.
‘Myfeelingis that someone is making a lot of money ripping off kindy kids,’ said Henry. ‘I will save my money for a framed Wallabies jersey, thanks.’
Poppy rolled her eyes. ‘Then I sincerely hope Willa is in charge of your home decorating.’
Henry smiled but it didn’t reach his eyes. ‘Definitely.’
Poppy’s phone pinged with a new message and it vibrated across the table.
‘Unknown number,’ Henry said, pushing her phone back towards her.
Poppy picked it up.
Hi Poppy. James here. Been on night shifts so haven’t been doing the golf course loop but realised the Block finale is this Sunday. Let me know if you’re keen to watch. J
