Member-only story
Heartland Montage
A lyrical personal essay
How old am I? Three? Four? My memory’s a 70’s film all hazy and sunlit. Red HD Holden Kingswood 100 miles an hour on a country road kicking up dust.
Mum is driving and laughing with Margaret Niven. Rod Stewart on the radio. I’m sitting between them on the red bench seats. I see Mum’s dark blue slacks, synthetic and tight, on her thighs and her hair in glossy curls from fat furry rollers. Mrs Sliven, busty starlet, in shades and silk scarf.
We are traitors towing a trailer of household goods including a brand new deep freeze. Margaret leans forward to peer through the fly splattered windowscreen, up into the sky, where a top-dressing plane swoops on us. The pilot is Margaret’s husband. We are leaving him and heading north.
Abandoning him with abandon.
Now I am six. The car is a Madonna blue HD Holden station wagon. Mum’s boyfriend isn’t Dad anymore, not that the men are around anyway. Just us kids. Glen and Brendon in the back with the Sliven boys and Carol and me in the boot, sitting backwards watching the road and our past recede out the rear window.
We’ve been to Invercargill to visit the Queen. She touched my hand. I peed. And there was a toy shop. Margaret Sliven wants to buy me a present. Anything I want. I can’t think. I say Barbie. Mrs Sliven’s lovely…
