Listening to Mondrian Read Online Free PDF Page B

it was just an old woman wearing a yellow baseball cap and a blue tracksuit and eating a green apple.
    The woman’s lips moved, but Liv had gone deaf. The lips moved again and the woman threw an apple at her. Then Liv realised that she’d turned the sound off but left the headphones in. She pulled them out now and heard ‘Don’t you?’
    ‘Yes,’ Liv said, wondering what she had agreed to, and bit into the apple to be polite.
    The woman sitting cross-legged on the top step was skinny, and really very old, Liv saw, and her hair was long and there were yellow streaks in the white and her lipstick was as red as the poppies that she indicated now.
    ‘Thought you must’ve been into these,’ she said.
    Come again?
    ‘When you slept so sound.’
    Liv didn’t have a clue what the stranger was talking about. She had seen the poppies growing around the edge of the ruins but they were just – ‘Opium poppies,’ the old woman explained. ‘Mind you, I only pick ’em for the colour, I like flowers, but there’s others who might use ’em for, you know.’
    ‘Not me,’ Liv said quickly.
    ‘There’s a good girl,’ the woman agreed. ‘What you say your name was again?’
    ‘Olivia Doyle.’
    The woman’s forehead creased. ‘Doyle. Doyle. Wouldn’t be Charlie Doyle’s girl, would you?’
    ‘No. Sorry.’ Doyle was Mum’s name. Liv didn’t know her dad’s name. That was all long gone and best forgotten, Mum always said in the days when Liv used to ask. ‘I don’t come from round here.’
    ‘Tourist job eh?’
    ‘No, I mean . . . I live across the block there. At Gordons’. Bruce Gordon. He’s my’ (choke on the word) ‘stepdad.’
    The woman creased up her face again. It was as if it were vital for her to place Liv. ‘ Bruce Gordon? Bruce Gordon ?’ The light seemed to dawn. ‘That wouldn’t be Menie Gordon’s boy, by any chance?’
    Liv tried to think. She was just Gramma. Or Old Mrs Gordon. On her tablet bottles the initial was W. ‘Menie?’ Liv asked.
    ‘Short for Wilhelmina. We called her that because she was such a bitch. Oh! Pardon my French!’
    ‘That’s her,’ Liv said.
    ‘Well fancy! Menie Gordon still alive and kicking! Course, I am myself, but then I haven’t stopped in the one place long enough for Death to catch me.’
    Liv was a bit embarrassed by someone saying ‘Death’ like that. ‘Don’t you live here now?’
    ‘Me? Here?’ The stranger snorted. ‘Oh no, the world’s my oyster, love. Here today, gone tomorrow, that’s my motto. Why, only ten days ago I was up at Kakadu – that was for my annual holidays, mind. Coupla weeks before that, I was in Kununurra for the mangoes. Month before that, it was Nambour for the strawberries . . .’
    Liv was mystified.
    ‘I’m a picker, see, love?’ the woman explained. She reached in her pocket and lobbed a tiny green booklet over the gap to the platform. ‘Here, this is my Bible.’
    Oh no, thought Liv, she’s going to ask me to love Jesus.
    But the booklet was called Harvest Table Australia, Summary of Seasonal Crops Requiring Labour . Inside, there was a calendar for every state, with lists showing all the crops and where they grew. Liv didn’t usually like books but this one was poetry to her. As she scanned the lists she could smell the fruit, feel the morning dew, even hear the laughter and friendship of the other pickers as they worked their way along the rows:
    Peaches Pears Apples Oranges
Apricots Tomatoes Zucchinis Cherries
Ginger Grapes Onions Capsicums
Lettuces Potatoes Bananas Berries
    And when the abundance became too overwhelming she could see the country towns with their wide main streets and lacy pub verandahs, as the rhythm of the place names built a pattern of its own:
    Griffith, Orange, Leeton, Batlow,
Stanthorpe, Berri, Robinvale,
Coorow, Collie, Moora, Wagin,
Grass Patch, Dalmore, Innisfail!
    Moora, Northam, Wee Waa, Williams,
Red Hill, Silvan, Manjimup,
Scottsdale, Ingham, Invergordon,