Some houses in Merrimba.(Short story)

Some houses in Merrimba seem to be unlucky houses. Perhaps I should say that they seem to shape the lives of their inhabitants.

For instance, there is the big house in our road. It has always been called Merrimba House. New owners come and go but the name stays the same. Maybe because the name plate is an appealing, old style one, firmly screwed into the weatherboard. It used to be a boarding house. Run by the local midwife. Fettlers on the railway would stay there. But ever since we have lived in the town it has been a private residence and it makes divorces.

Twenty years ago, when we came to Merrimba, Joe lived there. He was in the middle of a hard and desperate divorce and if he did not sell the house by a certain date his wife's lawyer would walk in and sell it for what he could get.

Joe would not leave the yard. As I walked down to the shop I would stop to talk to him over the fence, out of charity, but if the phone rang he would just vanish. It could be a buyer.

He did sell the house and so he vanished.

The next people were a nice couple and they renovated and put in a tennis court and their daughter was married from the house with a croque-en-bouche wedding cake. They seemed to get on so well.

But he got religion in a very strange way--and they headed down down down into a strange and bitter divorce.