Sixty Summers

by Amanda Hampson

  Peter was unfazed by the news that Rose was pregnant and took it for granted that he would marry her. In fact, he seemed quite pleased with himself for having accomplished that particular life feat with minimal effort. Rose cried for three days before she adapted to the idea. She’d always wanted to be a mother; it had just happened ahead of schedule. It was a sensible solution and Peter was a good catch. He was decent looking and intelligent. He would be a reliable breadwinner. Her parents were disappointed. She’d been the first in the family to go to university and she’d blown it. She swore that she would finish her degree, but somehow never did.

  Under Peter’s direction, Rose had ghosted numerous papers and three well-regarded history books. For years, she had longed for her own project, and when she met the artist Inge Bryant, she knew Inge was the subject she had been waiting for. In the sixties, Inge’s work had been collected by rock stars. She had lived in the Chelsea hotel in New York for two years and fraternised with such luminaries as Leonard Cohen and Andy Warhol. In a haze of wine and bonhomie, Rose had offered to write Inge’s biography. This would be Rose’s own work, with her name writ large on the cover.

  Rose had been to Melbourne half-a-dozen times and recorded extensive interviews with Inge but still couldn’t find the spine of the story. It was a patchwork of anecdotes that changed each time they were told. Inge didn’t care that much about the book – perhaps doubted she would live long enough to see it – but liked having an audience and talking about her life. She was now in her eighties and there was less interest in her work. Rose vacillated between feeling the story should be told and Inge’s talent and fascinating life acknowledged, and a growing realisation that too much time had passed and, really, no one was interested. Rose had stopped talking about the project, annoyed by scepticism in the blank looks of friends and family.

  As she lay in the dark listening to Maggie’s soft breathing, Rose wondered if the whole project was really a way for her to be acknowledged, for people to recognise that she was intelligent and talented. That she was not actually championing Inge, but using her in the same way Rose had been used by Peter. It was a difficult way to get attention and this dawning awareness of her true motives made her doubt if she had a genuine commitment to the project. But she saw herself as a finisher. She was not someone who took up projects and abandoned them. And so it went on. Click click, click – the positions on the cube changed but not the elements.

  Rose would not leave Peter for Fitz. She had no plans to give up Fitz. She would not abandon Inge. She would support Max, who was beautiful and intelligent, but had never quite grown up, at least until a capable and patient girlfriend arrived to take over. This was her role in life and she was doomed to play it out to the end. She tried to think of a tune to hum in her head and coax herself to sleep. But there was nothing but the annoying whistle of her tinnitus, which sounded like an old wireless stuck between stations.

  When Rose woke, the room was bright with sunlight. It was after eight and Maggie was still asleep, so she went to the kitchen and made them both tea. She put Maggie’s on the bedside table and stood at the window watching puffball clouds drift across a blue sky, hoping they hadn’t already missed the best part of the day.

  Maggie groaned and rolled over. ‘Is it morning?’

  ‘Yes. It’s morning.’

  ‘Thank God for that. I thought that night would never end.’ Maggie pushed herself up against the pillows. ‘What do we have to do today?’

  Rose turned to look at her. ‘Have you looked at the itinerary?’

  ‘I haven’t studied it … okay, no, I haven’t looked at it.’

  ‘Why not? Aren’t you even curious?’ Rose couldn’t decide if she was annoyed or not.

  Maggie pondered the question. ‘No, it seems not. To be honest, I just can’t take anything in at the moment. My concentration is shot. I’d actually prefer that you just took care of everything and I’ll follow you around.’

  Rose sat down on the bed facing her. ‘So you’re happy to bob along like a cork on the ocean, are you?’

  ‘If you’re that ocean, yes. I trust you, Rosie. This whole thing was your idea. I still don’t know if there’s a point to it. I just needed to get away from my family for a bit. Even if I just lay here for a month, that could be helpful.’

  On the bedside table, Maggie’s phone pipped with a message and they both watched as a string of texts from Elena ghosted onto the screen in quick succession. Then another pip and a series from Anthea began to pile up.

  ‘Why don’t we put our phones on silent?’ suggested Rose. ‘So you can get a break.’

  Maggie’s face was expressionless as she scrolled through the messages. ‘It seems Aaron made some comments at counselling that the girls have taken exception to.’

  ‘Are both girls going?’

  Maggie laughed grimly. ‘Can you even imagine? No, Anthea gives Elena a blow-by-blow after the session. Her version, obviously.’

  ‘Mags, it’s not your problem. You have no control over it. They can sort it out.’

  Maggie flicked the phone to silent and placed it screen-down on the bed. ‘That invisible umbilical cord just stretches and stretches through the years, across oceans and skies … we can’t escape it.’

  ‘Would you have done anything differently, if you’d known that it was a job for life?’ asked Rose, sipping her tea.

  Maggie sighed. ‘I think things would have been different if I’d had another one. The twins got too much attention when they were small. As you know, Kristo wanted to try again, but I really didn’t have the strength for it after Kal.’

  ‘Of course you didn’t. They were lavished with attention by everyone because of losing Kal. You’re a good mum and a good wife and a good daughter-in-law and a good daughter. Jesus, it’s a lot, isn’t it? Like being chairman of the board for four different corporations.’

  ‘That would be easier,’ said Maggie. ‘Quite a lot easier.’

  ‘I’m not all those things. Not half as good as you. I just fob everyone off, so things end up going round and round.’

  ‘You’ve been very good to Pete. And a wonderful mum to your boys,’ said Maggie. ‘Don’t be so hard on yourself.’

  Rose had long believed that if you truly wanted to keep a secret, the key was to tell absolutely no one. Resist the urge to ease the burden of guilt. It went against everything in her nature but she had never breathed a word about Fitz to anyone. There was too much at stake. She had no idea how Peter would take it, but she didn’t want to put him to the test. The boys would not understand, and it’s not as though she deserved understanding. For a moment, she felt an overwhelming desire to clear her conscience, but she was too good a friend to burden Maggie with that right now.

  Chapter Seven

  In preparation for minding Fran’s flat while she was away, Louis arrived at dinnertime with a large suitcase and a carton of Spanish red wine under his arm. Fran had half-hoped that he would make himself available to meet Maggie and Rose, but it was logistically difficult and she didn’t want to make a big deal of it. He hadn’t taken all that much interest in the arrangements but, as they sat down to dinner, he revealed that it still bothered him that her friends were paying Fran’s share of expenses for the trip. He seemed to take it as a personal slight, raising subtle objections as if it were an elaborate plan to make her – and, by association, him – feel inadequate.

  ‘I wouldn’t let someone pay for me like that,’ he said. ‘They might, you know, take advantage, like.’

  ‘What do you mean, “take advantage”?’ asked Fran.

  ‘You know, treat you like a second-class citizen or something.’

  ‘Have me carry their bags and mop their brows, you mean? I don’t think that’s going to happen. Maggie and Rose are both quite well-off, and they want us to go together.’

  ‘I wouldn’t want to go to all them different places neither,’ Louis countered, coming at it from a new direction. ‘I prefer to really get to know a plac
e. I’m more into slow travel. Stay a month or two. That’s what Barb does, goes to Spain and does like the Spanish.’

  In the past, when Fran had suggested a weekend in Paris or Prague, he was dismissive of these ideas. One of his exasperating habits was to denigrate other people’s plans in comparison to his own more expansive imaginary itinerary. He had suggested that, for example, they could go to Africa or South America. He enjoyed arguing the merit of these more ambitious destinations over a mere weekend in Paris, as if he and Fran were the sort of people who had the means to choose one over the other. He wasn’t deterred by the fact that none of these plans ever went any further and he never went anywhere. She wondered now, with some irritation, did he even have a passport?

  For one discomforting moment, Fran saw him with Rose’s more critical eye as he sat hunched over his dinner, his shirt straining at every button, his pectorals like two sandbags resting on a round belly that protruded abruptly from his torso. But his troubled expression touched Fran’s heart and she rushed to allay his fears.

  ‘So you think I shouldn’t go?’ she said, allowing him room to come around to the idea of his own accord. ‘It’s a bit late to change my mind now.’

  ‘I didn’t say that,’ he said quickly. ‘Nice to go off with your old friends. Nothing wrong with that, is there?’ And, after a moment, wistfully, ‘What am I gonna do?’

  Fran knew now was the time to address that question. ‘I haven’t seen that much of you recently, Louis. I got the impression you were spending more time with Barbara.’

  ‘Now and then. We’ve got history, you know that. The kids and everything. She doesn’t want me there all the time, though. Hanging around.’

  ‘And if she did, Louis? If she did want you around?’ Fran didn’t want to have this conversation she had so recklessly encouraged but it was too late to scramble out.

  ‘Don’t get jealous. I told you from the start me and Barb got on all right.’

  ‘Just be honest with me, Louis,’ she said gently.

  ‘You know I don’t like —’

  ‘Upsetting people? You’re upsetting me by not being honest.’ As though sensing she was needed, Gigi leapt onto Fran’s lap and made herself comfortable.

  ‘I’m here now. That’s what counts, in’t? Who knows where the highway of life will take us? Eh? Eh, love?’

  Fran almost smiled. Easy Rider had been the most profound film that Louis had ever seen. He quoted it often and had the ability to reference it in almost any discussion. Two hippies on Harleys searching for spiritual enlightenment on the highways of America – it expressed everything he believed in. The repression of the ordinary man by the system. Man’s desire for freedom. The inevitable crushing of the rebel. It spoke to him in a way that no other film ever had. His belief in life on the metaphorical open road was entirely theoretical. Louis had worked for the same insurance company for twenty-two years, yet he somehow imagined himself as a maverick; a man in search of his own America. Normally Fran humoured him, but not tonight.

  ‘Louis, we can decide where life takes us. You’re not a helpless victim of circumstance. And the time will come when you need to make a decision. For both our sakes.’ She hesitated, but now she had come this far, asked, ‘Can you answer one question for me, honestly?’

  ‘Depends on the question, love.’

  ‘Are you considering going to Malaga with Barbara? Yes or no.’

  His blank look revealed the truth but he replied grudgingly, ‘Depends.’

  Fran told herself that he was the insecure one. He was afraid of ending up alone, that’s why he was hedging. In some way, she’d be relieved when he committed whichever way it went; it was this state of limbo that bothered her.

  Mr Elcombe wasn’t happy about her trip either. She hadn’t taken holidays for several years and he must have imagined that she’d lost interest in the whole idea. Fran was confident that she was a valuable employee, not easily replaced, otherwise she never would have risked asking for the time off. Mr Elcombe recognised that she had been pivotal in the shop acquiring a website and the ability to sell books online. He knew that she was patient and kind during long, tedious phone calls from elderly customers, and that she responded to enquiry letters with handwritten replies on shop stationery. These postal transactions were inevitably protracted and she suspected that many of these regulars had need of a penpal. The acquisition of a book was a side issue.

  Since Mr Elcombe had neither the desire nor the expertise to use the computer, let alone the patience for letter-writing, he decided to close the shop for the period that Fran was away. When she asked him about Gigi, he looked puzzled. ‘Who’s Gigi?’

  Fran pointed to the cat, spotlit in a patch of sunshine in the front window.

  He shrugged. ‘The cat is here to do a job. It’ll just have to work a bit harder.’

  He couldn’t know that Fran had been using catch and release traps, setting the mice free outside. Gigi had been redundant for a long time. Fran would have to make sure she was looked after.

  It all worked out in the end. Now the cupboards were stocked with cat food for the month, she had left plant and cat care instructions for Louis, and could only hope for the best.

  It had never occurred to Fran to go back to the places she had once inhabited. If she set out to revisit everywhere she’d lived in London, it would keep her busy for weeks. But retracing their earlier journey was all part of Rose’s master plan and, as a guest on the trip, Fran didn’t feel it appropriate to question her decisions, especially at this early stage. And she was curious.

  There was a light drizzle as they set off to their first stop in Earl’s Court. The B&B on Hogarth Road looked no more or less run-down than when Fran and Rose stayed there. Ragged lace curtains were tugged at odd angles across the windows and a thick crust of dirt adhered to every horizontal surface. Fran got out her camera and took a couple of shots to record the moment.

  After barely two minutes of observation, Rose pronounced the experience underwhelming. Maggie, for whom this place meant nothing anyway, suggested they go somewhere dry and get a coffee. But Fran felt the moment warranted more effort and tried to garner some interest. ‘I remember we paid thirty pounds a week between us for that room, Rose. With breakfast. Half our wages.’

  ‘That breakfast was dire, as I recall,’ said Rose. ‘I wonder if old Mrs Whatsit is still living in the kitchen.’

  ‘How old do you think she actually was?’ asked Fran.

  ‘We thought she was an old woman but I reckon she’d have been … maybe fifty?’ said Rose. ‘A mere child, in fact.’ Her jacket had a rain hood and she pulled it over her head as the drizzle set in. Maggie opened up her umbrella and beckoned Fran to take shelter.

  ‘We used to think she was hilarious the way she would only ever open that door a crack,’ said Fran. ‘I wonder what her story was.’

  ‘She was probably frightened of you,’ suggested Maggie, glancing around. ‘Why don’t we explore this further in a cosy café?’

  ‘We were insensitive beasts, weren’t we?’ said Rose, warming to the subject. ‘Poor woman probably lost her husband in the war. Lonely war widow forced to let out rooms to obnoxious Australians.’

  ‘I can’t even picture her now,’ said Fran. ‘Don’t you think it’s strange how people can be a part of your life – you see them every day, they’re so vivid and present – and then they’re gone. Forever. Like when you’re on a train trip and sit opposite someone for hours and their face becomes indelibly imprinted in your mind and you breathe the same air … then you never see them again.’

  Rose gave her a dubious look. ‘Are you saying you miss every person you’ve ever sat opposite on public transport? You could add them all on Facebook.’

  ‘I know what you mean, Fran,’ offered Maggie. ‘A better example is when you work with someone you dislike and obsess about them in the middle of the night. Then the person leaves and you never think about them again. The connection is broken and it’s as if the
y never existed.’

  ‘And then, sometime later, you bump into them and are pleased to see them,’ said Fran.

  Maggie nodded. ‘Makes you wonder why we expend so much energy on people we dislike … and magnify their faults to a ridiculous degree to justify hating them.’

  ‘Now you’ve had that insight, what does this mean for Yannis?’ asked Rose.

  Fran looked at Maggie. ‘Who’s Yannis?’

  ‘Kristo’s cousin. He refers to himself as the Assistant Financial Controller,’ said Maggie. ‘Anyway, don’t get me started on him.’

  ‘Maybe one day in the future when he’s out of your life, you’ll see him in the street and be like, “Dude! Let’s get a beer and catch up”,’ suggested Rose.

  ‘I doubt that,’ said Maggie. ‘Now, let’s get coffee. Please.’

  As they sat in the café with mugs of coffee, Fran watched people hurry past and tried to convey herself back to those first months when she found London exciting and everything wondrous: the queues of double-decker buses like conga lines of giant red playing blocks, the diesel throb of the black cabs, the sudden thrilling glimpses across the skyline to St Paul’s or Big Ben. But, try as she might, that enchantment had dissipated years ago. She had changed and so had the city. Now everything was ordinary. Worse than ordinary – dreary. She was tired of London’s restless energy. She was exhausted by the constant roar of traffic, jackhammers, leaf blowers and street-cleaning machines, and wondered when it had become so loud. She felt a creeping sense of despair knowing that the time was coming for her to leave simply because she couldn’t handle it any more. The only reason she hadn’t left yet was that she was afraid and had no idea where to go. Afraid of everything that starting again entailed, and the realisation that she would probably be leaving alone.