The Tying of Threads by Joy Dettman

chicken wire fence and across the now raked ash of what had once been Gertrude Foote’s bedroom, to the site of the kitchen Bernie and Shaky Lewis had designed and built. It halted beside an old iron chimney, lying flat on its back.
    Bernie remembered its weight from the days of the working bee. ‘It took ten men to put the big bastard up,’ he said.
    ‘It’s been the bane of my life,’ Harry said. ‘I must have crawled around the roof fifty times trying to plug its leak. It’s going today if I have to take to it with the axe.’
    They tested its weight. Harry found a crowbar and, with a bit of leverage, they got it standing on edge. A lot of heaving got half of it loaded. They tossed the metal frame of Gertrude’s treadle sewing machine on top to keep it stable, then Bernie walked to the stove, unmarked by the inferno.
    Harry rolled a smoke as he watched him lift one side of it.
    ‘Leave it,’ he said. ‘It seems somehow sacrilegious for it to end its life at the tip. Let her rest in peace.’
    Or rust in peace.

S HOCK T HERAPY
    B ob Menzies died in May, and to Jenny it was like losing a family member. He’d been around for as long as she’d been voting. Prince Charles flew over to attend the funeral, and seeing him on the television screen made Jenny feel so old. She’d watched him grow from baby to boy, from boy to a man. Hadn’t been allowed to watch her own son grow into a man.
    Thought of Jimmy that week. Walked the house at night thinking about him, wondering where he was, what he was doing, whether he had sons who looked like him. She tried to talk about him to Jim, but there were things Jim preferred not to remember.
    A bad, bad week that one.
    Then winter hit a week before it should have, and on a day when the wind blew sleety rain in from the South Pole, Emma came to work with the news that her husband wanted to take the caravan up to Queensland, that they’d be leaving the first week of June.
    ‘I can’t do it alone, Jim.’
    She didn’t want to do it, alone or otherwise. Jim’s interest in the shop extended no further than the bookwork. She rang the agent the following morning and told him that if the Wallis woman was still interested in renting, to give her whatever she wanted.
    ‘I want out,’ Jenny said.
    They moved in with a cash register which spat out strips of paper, N. and B. Wallis’s Supermarket printed at the top, and within a week, a wet and muddy week, they were complaining about a minor drip in the storeroom Georgie had handled with a strategically placed bucket. N. and B. Wallis weren’t interested in strategically placed buckets. They wanted the roof repaired. They wanted two leaning veranda posts replaced.
    Jenny wanted a briquette heater installed in the sitting room. She didn’t get it, and N. and B. Wallis didn’t get their repairs. Amy wanted a goblin and witch rhyme. She didn’t get it either. Jenny’s teeth wouldn’t stop chattering long enough to find a rhyme for witch – other than the obvious, which she now reserved for the Wallis woman.
    ‘I want a caravan, Jim. I want to go somewhere warm.’
    ‘All things pass, Jen,’ he said.
    ‘My life included,’ she said.
    *
    Maisy had developed a habit of calling in for a cup of tea on Tuesdays, on her way home from her Weight Watchers meeting. They sat in the kitchen. It was warm. On a Tuesday in July, she arrived with a purple brocade suit Jenny had sewn for her several years ago.
    ‘I’ve got Donna’s wedding next weekend. It hasn’t gone around me for a while, but I’ve lost a bit of weight so I got it out to try it on, and the skirt slid down to my hips. I was wondering if you could run the side seams in a bit for me, love, before next Saturday.’
    Jenny knew she’d been dieting, but with so much to lose, her weight loss hadn’t been obvious, or it hadn’t until she tried on that skirt.
    ‘You’ve lost inches, Maisy.’
    ‘I must have.’
    Gough Whitlam resigned from federal parliament before