“Don’t think I don’t know who’s been spreading gossip about me. After all the nice things I’ve said about…” Lillian looks at Amy. “When I get hold of her, I’ll tear out every hair of her… moustache!”
Lillian looks in the cupboard but there aren’t any clean glasses.
“I hope you don’t mean me?” says Amy.
Lillian finally picks up half a glass of wine left over from the night before.
“Depends,” says Lillian. “What have you been saying?”
“Saying? I don’t know what you mean?”
Lillian lifts the wine glass to her mouth and washes the Panadol down.
“Someone has being saying that I took the money, again.”
“Who’s been saying that?”
“That is what I am asking?”
“Me? I hope you aren’t saying it was me?”
“I’m just trying to get to the bottom of it.”
“But, you did take the money.”
“Yes, yes,” says Lillian exasperated. “I’m just trying to find out who knows about it?”
“Oh, who knows about it?” says Amy. “Nephew Charlie knows about it.”
“Nephew Charlie?”
“Yes, Nephew Charlie.”
“Who says Nephew Charlie knows about it?”
“Nephew Charlie.”
“Nephew Charlie?”
“That’s who says he knows about it.”
“Nephew Charlie says he knows about it?”
“Yes, Grandma Tito confided in him, that she knows what you were up to,” says Amy. “But it is now up to everyone else to fight you, as she is to old and tired, or some nonsense.”
“Nephew Charlie, why that little rat!” says Lillian.
“Does Tito have a current competency test?”
“How she passes competency tests is anyone’s guess,” says Lillian.
“Well, she must answer the majority of the questions correctly…”
“She still goes to old Doc Burns…”
“He must be 100…”
“102,” says Lillian. “That’s how she does it, they had a thing when they were teenagers, Doc Burns still sees the 18 year old he once knew.”
Lillian picks up her phone. She dials. “Reggie?... It’s…err…. um Faylene.”
“Faylene?” Amy questions out loud.
“You still in contact with Rupert?... He still in the same line of business?... excellent… Yes… Two on the nose?... Yes, I’ll pass the information on that way… Lovely, Reggie, yes, we must catch up soon… yes, it’s been too long… Denis… no… no… nothing anyone can do.”
Lillian pushes end on her phone.
“Faylene?” questions Amy.
Lillian pulls what looks like a hand rolled cigarette from her handbag, she puts it in her mouth. She flicks the lighter. The cigarette doesn’t light. She stops momentarily. “Don’t questioned me.” She flicks the lighter again, the cigarette lights. She inhales and then exhales a cloud of cigarette smoke.
Lillian and Amy are seated in the front pews of a church.
Lillian has Adele hair. “Yes, I said just make me look like that fat singer,” says Lillian. “And this is what I got.” Lillian has over-sized black sunglasses and a fascinator in her voluminous blonde hair.
Amy had on oversized tortoise shell sunglasses, he hair is in her usual all-one-length-bob.
They each have a cigarette in their hands.
“How was I to know that the brat had a heart condition?” says Lillian.
“Wasn’t he the delicate one?” says Amy. “Wasn’t he the one to whom they always referred to as delicate?”
“Oh yes, but what is delicate, Amy? What does delicate mean?” says Lillian. “It says malingerer, in my book, that’s what it says.”
“Fragile, I would have thought.”
“It’s not my fault…”
“I heard you on the phone, dear,” said Amy. “Two on the nose, you said, two on the nose.”
“Oh, yes, that… err… that was my tips for the Melbourne Cup.”
“In July?”
“Ladies and gentlemen, we are gathered here today to celebrate the short life of Charlie Hunter Ziegfried Starman Barrington-Smythe, after his unfortunate accident with a … err… combine harvester.”
Amy looks over the top of her glasses at Lillian.
“After they said boo, he fainted and fell into a… err… combine harvester… um… ah… allegedly,” Lillian says. She grimaces, she can feel the creases in her face.
There is one sermon, by Father Bob, and seemingly, never ending testimonials. The service goes well over an hour and well over time. The next funeral’s hearse is doing laps of the drive in drive out driveway, it appears passed the large side windows at regular intervals.
“Have you got your solid silver nip flask strapped to your inner thigh still?”
“Lillian, I never,” says Amy.
Amy and Lillian are finally standing on the front porch of the church in the morning sun. The “other side” of the family aren’t happy with what has gone down, and they are just firing a warning shot not to come looking for them.
Three masked men in hoodies. I guess this would be a good juncture to give you a few facts.
“Watch ya back, Missy,” says Grandma Tito, watch your back.”
“What was that all about?” asks Amy.
“Just my family’s insanity bubbling to the fore,” says Lillian.
As young girls there wasn’t so much to do around the Burlington-Smythe, Regis-Porter mansions, as their husbands took up CEO postings of large corporations, not a lot for two high spirited young ladies to do, so they took up martial arts. They are, in fact, grand champions of the ancient art of Tong Do.
“That was a breeze,” said Lillian when they got their first belt.
“Shall we continue,” asked Amy.
“Let’s shall,” says Lillian. “I’d miss it anyway.”
So they studied and progresses to the most qualified female Tong Do Grand Masters. Stay at home mums, they needed something to fill their days.
“Ah! Ah! take that every bastard man that ripped me off,” says Amy. She throws a fast right and a hook left.
“Steady on, Mohammad,” says Lillian.
It has been a while since either of them “shook a leg” but, it was another one of those things like bike riding.
The three thugs came at the two, say we say mature aged, ladies in the car park of the church, down the back by the big oak tree, the place bad kids would go to smoke, if in fact, St Aloysius had any bad kids. Our two gals hitch up their skirts and take up the praying mantis position, from there, apparently, it was pure poetry. Amy spun, upward leg kick. Lillian let out a guttural growl and then let fly with the lethal back hander, she was known for, then the point of a stiletto,
“Right in his “bung hole,” says Lillian.
“He’ll be lucky to be walking in a week,” says Amy.
Kick, punch, the last guy standing is flattened by both of our gals, with two deftly landed helicopters. The three thugs are flat on their backs within seconds, never really quite knowing what hit them. They were still out cold when the cops arrive.
“They are all yours, boys,” says Lillian.
“What?” The copper rubs his head. “What happened here?”
“I have no idea,” says Lillian graciously. “Just your regular mugging, I should suspect.”
“In a church car park,” says the big burly copper. “What happened to them?”
“A girl’s go to know how to defend herself in these difficult times, officer,” says Lillian. She batted her eyes. “I’m sure you could defend a girl.”
The second, younger, more muscular, but red-haired, copper and one of the thugs, approach. The thug seems to have a bad limp, the second copper is holding him by his wrists, secured behind his back.
“Macko we need to take a statement.”
“I just, I just,” says Macko. The second police officer walks him too close to Lillian, and he recoils and puts his hands over his arse.”
“Grrrrrr!” says Lillian.
“Keep her away from me.”
Lillian’s phone rings. “Heelllooo,” says Lillian in a deep, low voice. “Reggie … Reggie … Reggie … Reggie …” her voice sharpens off to a grunt. “Family… Reggie… What is done, is done… Double cross? …family, Reggie, does for family?… It’s all been a big misunderstanding… And if you do, next time, I will kill you… me… oh Reggie.” Lillian laughs. “Vendetta is such a ugly word.”
“I need a drink,” says Lillian. “He was saying very ugly things about me, darling.”
“That you got your mother to leave her entire 100 million dollar fortune just to you?”
“Yes, precisely,” says Lillian and quite frankly the less people who know about that, the better.”
“But, that is true, darling. Isn’t it?”
“So, I got mama to leave everything to me, I was, am her only daughter, after all.”
“But she was going to leave it to you and your brothers and their families,” says Amy. “She said there was more than enough for you all to share equally.”
“So, I remind mum’ont, that I was her, wery, wery favourite,” says Lillian. “I was the only girl,” Lillian’s voice became shrill. “I was mummies favourite.”
“What about all her grandchildren?”
“The boys worked in the family business,” says Lillian. “That made them all rich, what do they want?”
“They want their family inheritance, for their children.”
“Let them eat cake,” says Lillian in a breathy voice. “It’s mine and I am not giving it up.”
“There was enough for everyone.”
“I had to be sure,” says Lillian. “What would I do if I ran out? I’d have no one. I had to be sure I’d be okay.”
“And are you?”
“Oh, yes, very much sweetie.”
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