M first saw the van on a Sunday morning.
The local service club took over the supermarket car park every first Sunday of the month for its fundraising market. The stalls were supposed to be “boot sales”, just private citizens clearing out a few things, but in reality they were a mix of cottage industries (knitted babies’ woolies and homemade jams), purveyors of items bought in bulk at auction (cheap washing detergents and teatowels) and semi-professional secondhand dealers who seemed to spend most of the day unpacking or packing their multiple boxes of china, glassware and tarnished metals and hanging out mothballed vintage clothing.
The customers arrived in BMWs and 4WD behemoths, or on foot pushing the latest brand of baby pram, steaming takeaway lattes in hand. The vendors’ vehicles, standing behind the rows of card tables, clothes and makeshift changing rooms, were all at least ten years old: a motley mix of ex-courier panel vans with faded spots on the side where signage had been removed, overstuffed sedans and camper vans inhabited by shaggy dogs.
M fingered a chenille bedspread that reminded her of a bed she’d slept in once, long ago. The worn pile was white, or close enough, with a sprightly pattern of green-leaved yellow and pink daisies scattered across the fabric.
“Fifty dollars,” sighed the vendor from her camping chair. The past wasn’t as cheap as it used to be, M thought, walking further along the row of tables.
A harlequin display of tall coloured glasses flashed in the 8am sunlight. T was still at home, of course, drinking coffee and reading the whole of the Sunday paper, the only one he got time to more than glance at, he always said.
Next to the glasses there was a handwritten cardboard sign, propped up against a chipped china poodle.
“Campervan 4 sale, fully equipped, ready to go, gas stove, all cuttlery, plates, etc, good fuel economy, small library. $7,000 ONO.”
Library? She looked up. Behind a rack of jewel-coloured, elbow-worn velvet jackets was a light blue van, a rectangular metal box with its side flung open. Sitting just inside the door, smoking, was a pudgy woman, thirtyish, holding a sleeping baby wrapped in a rainbow bunny rug.
“Is that the van?”
“Are you interested in it?” Clearly she wasn’t. She was a middle aged housewife shopping for knickknacks, not the buyer of a freedom machine.
“There’s no room for a library in there.”
“Look.” The woman flicked a dark ponytail towards the inside of the van, and M stepped inside.
She couldn’t quite stand upright, but as her eyes adjusted she felt a sense of desire come over her. The van was standard in its layout – a double bed behind a curtain at the rear, miniature cupboards, a fold-down table and a tiny gas rangetop next to a half-size kitchen sink. But the expected neutral creams and browns of a production-line mobile home had been replaced with deep, bold colours and hundreds of painstaking additions to the décor and equipment. The curtain across the bedroom doorway was deep purple velvet; the bedspread itself a starry expanse of deep blue with silver embroidery. Along the walls above the lozenge-shaped windows, timber shelves had been bolted into place, and studded leather straps secured bunches of old orange-spined paperbacks in bunches of ten. The kitchen resembled a well-run workshop – a bit like T’s shed, she thought – metal clasps fixed to the wall held eggbeaters, spatulas, pastry brushes and serving ladles, each surrounded by a golden halo that was its image painted on the cream vinyl skin of the van’s interior.
The cupboards’ slatted fronts had been painted with the spectrum, violet low and red high. Spots on the ceiling of the van glowed faintly even in the morning light, and she recognised the Southern Cross.
She opened a cupboard; more books, these larger and heavier and secured with Velcro bands, a carved wooden chess set with little holes for the bases of the pieces to fit into, three packs of cards with worn edges, and a small CD player, apparently fixed to the bench with brass screws.
Over the portal into the cab – also curtained in velvet, but red and restrained by two golden cords holding the two sides apart – a map of Australia had been painted; an impressionistic swathe of reds, yellows and greens floating on an azure sea. She stepped closer, and laughed aloud at the tiny frolicking sharks and stingrays inked around the coastline. A thin black line cut through the landscape, beginning at Darwin, meandering down the west coast of the country and across the Nullarbor, suspending Tasmania like a jeweled locket beneath Melbourne, then rising unsteadily up to Sydney.
“You haven’t gone all the way around,” M said.
“No, that was it,” the woman’s voice came from behind her. “Have you got kids?”
“Yes, two, pretty much all grown up now though.”
“This one’s got problems,” the woman said. “She needs operations. We have to stay in Sydney.”
“I’m sorry.”
“It’s OK. She’s going to be fine, they’re doing a great job with her.”
“But your trip.”
“It wasn’t a trip, really. It was our home. Sits in the driveway most of the time now. I want to buy a little Barina, a hatchback.”
“And you only want $7,000?”
“No one wants to pay for the extra decoration. My partner did most of it. She’s a qualified carpenter, it’s all really solid.”
“She’s an artist, too.”
“You should see Chloe’s room!” The little girl in the blanket squirmed, and M realised she wasn’t a baby, just very small.
“How old is she?”
“Two. She’ll catch up when her heart’s fixed. She’ll be fine.”
“Oh, OK. Well, the van is lovely. I wish I could buy it from you. I’m sure someone will want it.”
“Eventually, yeah.”
A woman had picked up one of the harlequin glasses. M recognised Tricia, from the church, and buried her face in the velvet jackets.
“Well, I’d better take care of business. Nice talking to you.” M mumbled in what she hoped was a friendly way, and slipped out into the neighbouring stall, where she could have bought a packet of six new spark plugs for one third retail, if she’d wanted to.