“We’ll get a nice nurse, dear. Now, apologise to Kennedy’s visitor. It’s not nice to go around calling people dumb.”
“He wouldn’t have known I’d called him dumb if you hadn’t explained it to him.”
I find myself stifling a smile at the real-life female version of The Muppets Waldorf and Statler, only the silver-haired one is maybe a bit nicer. Smilier, at any rate. And maybe a bit delusional, considering the way she’s patting her hair smooth and waving kind of girlishly.
“Kennedy’s visitor is a very nice looking young man,” she says, pulling on Betty’s sleeve. “Very nice looking.”
I stand, still holding the photographs, and amble over to the edge of the deck. “Morning, young ladies.”
The silver-haired one titters. “He’s better than nice looking,” she pseudo whispers, hanging onto the sleeve of Betty’s mint cardigan.
“Never mind about that,” Betty grumbles, yanking her sleeve back. “Did you see that dang crow?”
“Crow?” I repeat, glancing over my shoulder and half expecting to see The Crow, rather than a little black thing with wings. Because why else would an old lady be risking life and limb to balance a high-tech-looking paint gun on the top of a tall hedge.
“There is nothing wrong with your hearing. Brain,” she adds, giving me an appraising look, “that I can’t be sure about.”
I offer what I imagine looks like a bemused smile. “My old mum always told me I was the sharpest tool in the shed.” Although she might not have meant tool in the politest sense of the word.
“Wait, I see it!” Betty and the gun disappear in an “umph!” and a rustle of leaves.
“Excuse us,” the silver sister offers, ducking a little before adding, “I’m Ursula, by the way.” She wiggles her fingers in a wave again then she’s gone. Not for long as a tall gate in the hedge creaks open, covered with fake grass and plastic vines. But is the camo gate supposed to keep Elmer Fudd’s sisters in or out, I wonder.
“Betty, dear, you know Kennedy already said you’re not allowed in here with a loaded weapon.”
This could be interesting.
“Well, Kennedy isn’t here,” the curly-headed one, Betty, mutters before she takes aim at the big oak tree behind me.
Thwap! Thwap! Thwap!
She lets three successive shots off over my head.
I swing around and take in the damage on the tree’s expansive trunk. “Well done,” I say, turning back. “It’s sort of paintball meets Jackson Pollak.”
“Huh?” But Betty isn’t really paying attention, her head tilted to the higher branches. “That little ass is laughing at me.”
“The crow is?” Kookaburras sound like they’re laughing, but I’ve never heard a crow with a fit of the giggles. And I kind of wish I hadn’t asked that question the way her attention swivels to me.
“Do you think I’m staring up at that tree for no good reason? That I walk around armed just for the heck of it?”
“She used to have a shotgun, you know,” Ursula cuts in, “but Kennedy persuaded her to hand it in. It’s her eyesight, you know.”
Interesting. I wonder how well they know Kennedy.
“Says the woman who refuses to wear her eyeglasses,” Betty retorts.
“Oh, I don’t need them,” Ursula says defensively. “Only when I’m reading.”
“Or driving.” Betty scowls. “Or shopping. Or cooking. Or just whenever you need to see, I guess.”
“Maybe when I’m as old as you, I’ll wear them all of the time,” she snipes.
“You are eighteen months younger,” Betty replies crankily. “And still way north of seventy.”
So much for getting the skinny on Kennedy. I can’t get a fucking word in.
“Listen!” Betty hisses, holding up a finger and cocking her ear.
“I can’t hear anything.” Ursula purses her lips. “Maybe it’s time to get fitted for a hearing aid.”
“If I can hear the thing mocking me and you can’t.” Betty swings around to face her sister, “who does it sound like has the problem?”
“You do.” Ursula presses a soothing hand to her sister’s shoulder. “Your blood pressure. You know what the doctor said.”
“That dang crow is to blame.” She swings the gun up like she’s starring in the Mookatill production of Bonnie and Clyde. “And I’m gonna kill it!”
“Steady on, love.” I hold up my hands as though directing traffic because I don’t want to find the cost of stripping this deck added to my credit card when I check out or be accused of vandalising a tree. “Why don’t you put the gun down for now?” Betty growls, but whether at the compliment or the instruction, it’s hard to tell. “Please?” I try next.
And stone the crows, as my old dad would say, she does.
“The crow wakes her up every morning,” Ursula says, rubbing a comforting circle on her sister’s rounded back. “Every day at 5am. Without fail!”
“The same crow?” I feel my eyebrows creeping northwards. Looks like both of them are a few planks short of a full fence.