Sixty Summers

by Amanda Hampson

  ‘I know you’re not well right now,’ Rose continued. ‘But at some point we have to make a decision about where to go or where we can’t go. So it would be helpful if we knew what’s going on. We’re your best friends. We’re not going to hold anything against you.’

  Maggie stared blankly out the windscreen. ‘No. Never.’

  ‘Well, that’s a good start. You think he’s come over here because of you?’ asked Rose.

  ‘I don’t know. I don’t know what I think. Kristo said he’s gone away. And if you saw him in Bologna —’

  ‘That was a random sighting … it could have been an Italian guy who looked like a Greek guy. So what does it all mean?’

  Maggie turned and looked at her. ‘If it was him, then he has our itinerary.’

  Rose didn’t know where to start. Was this real or imagined? It made no sense that Nico would fly across the world to trail around after them.

  She remembered a recent interaction with him at the Easter lunch that Maggie and Kristo put on every year for family and friends. Maggie would cook for days beforehand and Rose always made a point of arriving when the family got back from church to help with the preparations. They even had a spit barbecue contraption that got wheeled out once a year to cook an entire lamb.

  Yia-yiá would be there helping but also pointing out any aspect that wasn’t up to her standard. This year, Rose was fed up with it and said, ‘Maggie is the best cook I know. Look at this spread!’ She gestured towards the huge spinach pies, their filo golden and crackling, and trays of rosemary potatoes and roast vegetables. Rose would have just bought taramasalata at the supermarket, but Maggie made everything from scratch.

  Yia-yiá pursed her lips and turned to Maggie. ‘What that girl say? I not understand.’

  Maggie, one minute drizzling sugar syrup over the baklava, the next, rushing to turn the potatoes in the oven, pretended she hadn’t heard the exchange.

  ‘Mrs Dimitratos, you know my name is Rose. I’m Maggie’s best friend. And you do understand —’

  ‘Rose, please leave it. You’re not helping.’ Maggie glanced over her shoulder and Rose noticed her expression change. Nico was leaning in the doorway watching them. Rose dropped the subject, but when she walked past him to take food out to the table, he turned and followed her. ‘You should have some respect,’ he said. ‘You don’t speak to our mother like that.’

  Rose remembered Nico as a bit of a spunk when he was young, but there was a coldness about him now and he seemed more hostile as the years went on. He was standing so close she could see every follicle in the shadow of his beard. The moment felt both sexual and threatening, and even though there were twenty people in the room, it felt very uncomfortable.

  Rose said half-heartedly, ‘Just sticking up for Maggie.’

  ‘We can look after Maggie. We don’t need your help,’ he said. He stood there waiting for a response, perhaps an apology, but Rose had scurried back to the safety of the kitchen.

  Now, sitting in the van watching the sun break through the mist across the fields, Rose realised that none of them really knew the truth of each other’s lives. They had an occasional peek through the windows but they were not inside those rooms when unforgivable things were said, when hearts were irreparably broken. Wounds inflicted that would never heal. Each of them had their cache of secrets, too painful to reveal. Places they didn’t ever want to revisit, Rose included.

  ‘I agree with Maggie. We’ll talk about this some other time,’ said Fran. ‘And, if it’s private, then you can keep it that way.’

  Maggie sipped her coffee, her eyes looking dead. ‘It doesn’t matter. We can go to Siena. Anywhere you want. I don’t care.’

  Fran rubbed Maggie’s arm in a motherly way. ‘Mag, we’re not going to go anywhere you feel uncomfortable. It’s not that important.’

  ‘I will tell you. It’s a long story.’ Maggie’s voice was thick with tears. ‘I’m just not up to it at the moment. You do whatever you think.’

  Rose took the map from Fran and studied it while she drank her coffee. ‘We’ve got plenty of time. We could go down to Naples and then back up to Rome. We don’t have to make a decision now. Let’s just get off the Autostrade, take the back roads and find a place to camp – and chillax this afternoon.’

  Maggie nodded. ‘I’m sorry I’ve been such a liability on this trip.’

  ‘It’s fine,’ said Fran. ‘We wanted to have no plan.’

  Rose started up the van. ‘Should we just chuck our cups out the window like everyone else?’ she asked, pointing out the litter in the car park.

  Fran took the cup from her and put it in a carrier bag. ‘I never really trust that you’re joking, Rose.’

  Rose crunched the van into gear and reversed out of the parking space. ‘That’s my dry wit for you.’

  ‘Perhaps. But you’re a tiny bit crazy too,’ said Fran with an indulgent smile.

  ‘You don’t know how relieved I am to hear that,’ said Rose as she took the entry to the Autostrade and put her foot down.

  They took the next exit and headed inland. The cloud lifted and green undulating fields, woods and hills spread out before them. The narrow country roads were almost empty and not so winding as to make driving arduous. Maggie stared silently out the window while Rose and Fran talked in low voices, making navigational decisions as they went. They stopped in a village and bought provisions: sweet strawberries and tart apples.

  An hour or so after they left the village, Fran noticed signposts to a lake down a gravel road and suggested they could see if it was suitable to wild camp. They followed the road for a kilometre or so through a forest and came to a picnic area beside a lake with a small, picturesque jetty. They had the place to themselves and Rose parked the van in the trees, tucked away from view. She would be the last to admit that she was a bit uncomfortable about being in an isolated spot. They had bought a good torch but she regretted that they didn’t have a trusty hatchet as before.

  They opened up the back doors of the van, took out the bedding and draped it over bushes to air out after the damp night. Fran lit the camp stove and boiled water for tea.

  The lake was bordered by a narrow beach with round grey pebbles the size of marbles that crunched and rolled underfoot, beyond which was woodlands all around. The weather was warm enough but the lake still chilly. They stripped to their underwear, spread out their towels and lay on the grass in the dappled shade of a tree.

  ‘I haven’t missed London for one minute,’ said Fran. ‘It’s sort of good that I’m being pushed out of the city, in a way. It’s so hard to make the decision to leave.’

  ‘It’s always the decision that’s hardest,’ said Maggie.

  ‘Decisions are not my forte,’ Fran admitted.

  Rose was now tired of all the reminiscing and self-recrimination. It was getting them nowhere. The past was dead and gone and she had already wasted too much time wondering what could have been and never would. She felt they were on the cusp of something now. Something precious and full of possibility. She worried that they would end up squandering this opportunity for adventure because they were too afraid to truly embrace it, constantly looking back.

  ‘I think we’ve done enough wallowing in our past mistakes,’ she said. ‘The idea of this trip was not to castigate ourselves for not living up to our own expectations, it was to try and remember what they were.’

  ‘Yes. Agreed. And let’s stop talking about men altogether,’ said Fran.

  Maggie rolled over onto her stomach and rested her head on her arms. ‘Fran’s right. We talk about men way too much. That’s something we never did before.’

  ‘We used to talk about imaginary men,’ said Rose. ‘We were sold up the river by all those movies with happy endings, imagining ourselves as those heroines.’ She thought about this for a while. ‘I reckon Maggie’s alter ego was Grace Kelly in To Catch a Thief. I could see you artfully twisting Cary Grant around your little finger.’

  Maggie grunted, a
lmost amused.

  Fran asked, ‘Who’s mine, Rose?’

  Rose thought for a moment. ‘Audrey Hepburn in Roman Holiday with Gregory Peck on the back of your scooter, and a cute tiara at the end.’

  ‘You’d be one of Katharine Hepburn’s characters,’ suggested Fran.

  ‘Nope. Jane Fonda in Barbarella. Oh, how I wanted those thigh-high silver boots.’

  ‘Those movies were remnants of the past, even when we watched them,’ said Fran. ‘And all made by men back then.’

  ‘Or to titillate men, in the case of Barbarella,’ said Rose.

  Maggie seemed to have lost interest in the conversation and withdrawn into herself. In a desperate attempt to distract her from the state she had fallen into, Rose spontaneously leapt to her feet and struck a dramatic pose. ‘Rose McLean is Barbarella!’

  Fran gave a start. ‘Rose, you’re not very relaxing to be around.’

  Maggie looked up with a faint smile, inciting Rose to further excess. She tore off her bra and flung it on the grass.

  ‘Oh God, Rose,’ said Maggie. ‘You always go too far.’

  Fran laughed. ‘Do not take your knickers off, please!’

  Rose had no plans to go that far. ‘Fran Fisher is the Black Queen!’

  Fran looked nervous. ‘Do I have to take my top off?’

  ‘No, that’s my domain. You just wear an eye patch.’

  ‘I didn’t think to pack an eye patch.’

  ‘Do you remember Barbarella had a top with a see-through section over one boob? How come that never caught on? What I need is a laser gun.’ Rose picked up a stick and pointed it at imaginary combatants. ‘I can’t remember any of the songs, unfortunately.’

  ‘Do I have lines?’ asked Fran.

  ‘You say things like “pretty, pretty” but menacingly. Then we fight.’

  ‘Oh no, I’m not fighting you topless, Rose. It’s too much.’

  Rose launched into a rendition of ‘Goldfinger’ – the only relevant song she could think of – strutting and posturing until Maggie smiled, despite herself.

  ‘Rose! Rose! Stop!’ Fran tossed a sarong at her.

  ‘What?’ Rose looked around and realised a car had pulled into the parking area. An elderly couple sat in it, watching her impromptu performance with interest.

  ‘Whoops, busted!’ Rose wrapped the sarong around herself, took a bow, and sat down on the grass. She lay low until the elderly couple realised the show was over and drove off.

  The evening was warm and they sat on the ground around the stove and cooked dinner together. The vegetable and tuna stew was unceremoniously slopped into bowls, they tore up stale bread and mopped up the sauce, and Rose was surprised at how good it tasted. As the moon rose over the lake, she was aware that, before long, this experience would become a vague memory. It was like a feeling of pre-nostalgia, an odd sadness at the passing of time.

  Rose and Fran chatted about where they could go the next day. Maggie, who had been quiet all evening, had gone back to being distant. Lost in thought, as if she was alone.

  ‘I want to tell you about Nico,’ she said, out of the blue.

  ‘You don’t have to —’ began Fran.

  ‘He has been stalking me for years. I almost can’t remember a time when I didn’t have to watch out for him.’ Maggie didn’t look at them but gazed out towards the lake.

  ‘Oh, Maggie,’ said Fran, distressed.

  Rose felt nothing but fury. ‘Years?! Why didn’t you ever say anything?’

  ‘I have never told anyone. Not a soul. Ever. For a long time I didn’t believe it myself. And I knew no one else would believe me.’

  ‘We would have!’ insisted Rose. ‘Of course we would.’

  Maggie turned to her. ‘But there’s nothing you can do that won’t make things worse.’

  ‘Tell us how it started, Mag,’ said Fran. ‘Tell us whatever you want.’

  ‘It was after we lost Kal. Nico came around to the house one day when I was alone; the girls were at school. I made him coffee and we sat and chatted. He’d never been friendly towards me before; he was always a bit hostile. He seemed genuinely heartbroken for us … one minute we were celebrating our beautiful baby boy …’ Maggie’s voice became a whisper and she was silent for a moment. ‘We were both a bit teary and emotional. It felt like things would be different between us in the future. When he was leaving, he gave me a hug. I had this wonderful feeling of being cherished and cared for by Kristo’s family, for the first time.’

  Maggie started to cry. She paused and took a deep breath. ‘This hug went on for a bit too long, and I started to feel uncomfortable. As I pulled away, he pulled me to him and kissed me on the lips. I was so shocked. He was holding me really tight … and this is what I can’t understand. I didn’t kiss him back but I didn’t push him away either. I let him kiss me! As if he had the right to do that. I didn’t want to hurt his feelings. That’s all I could think about at the time … not offending him! Wondering what I’d done to encourage it. How do I explain that? What is wrong with me?!’

  ‘You did nothing wrong, Maggie. That’s a completely natural response,’ said Fran. ‘We’ve all been there.’

  ‘So it started then?’ asked Rose. ‘Maggie, that was twenty years ago! I don’t understand —’

  ‘I’ve thought about this a lot. I think he was infatuated with me right from the start. I just didn’t see it for what it was … I thought he was being competitive with Kristo.’

  ‘He was there with Kristo, that night at Selina’s,’ remembered Rose.

  ‘I was stupid and weak. I didn’t say a thing and he seemed to assume there was some special bond between us. He goes out of his way to catch me alone. He often turns up places, as though he’s following me, or knows I’ll be there. He’s forever making inappropriate comments. I’ve made it very clear I’m not interested … but it’s like an obsession for him.’

  ‘He really has a screw loose,’ said Fran.

  ‘He does,’ said Maggie. ‘He enjoys having this power over me. That’s why he’s been calling me, to scare me. And punish me. He wants to come between me and Kristo.’

  ‘You have to tell Kristo,’ said Rose. ‘You have to.’

  ‘This is why I’ve never told you!’ said Maggie. ‘You don’t understand the situation. That comment you made at Easter? He’s still talking about that. He told Kristo you were disrespectful to Yia-yiá and shouldn’t be invited again. He’s manipulative. You can’t just blunder in and sort it out.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Rose. ‘You’re right. I didn’t realise.’

  ‘I couldn’t tell Kristo at the time, and it would be so much worse now that I’ve hidden it all these years.’

  Fran put her arm around Maggie’s shoulders. ‘Are you afraid of Nico?’

  ‘Of course I’m afraid of him. He’s unpredictable. I’m scared of the damage he could do, of losing my family, Kristo, the girls, Yia-yiá. Everyone would blame me. I’d be ostracised. I just can’t take that risk.’

  Rose could see her point, but felt that Maggie underestimated how loved she was by her family. But in the end it was her decision.

  ‘I don’t know what to say, Maggie,’ said Fran. ‘I just wish we could fix this for you.’

  ‘It’s unfixable,’ said Maggie wearily. ‘Unfixable. All that can happen is it gets worse.’

  ‘I’m not so sure about that,’ said Rose. ‘We’ll think of something.’ She helped Maggie to her feet and gave her a hug.

  Rose wasn’t sure how long she’d been asleep when she woke, feeling cold, and realised that Maggie was gone. She could see the back door had been opened and not closed properly. Maggie had probably gone for a pee.

  She crawled over, pushed the door open and looked out to the lake, waiting for Maggie to come back. All was still and quiet, the lake silver in the moonlight. She noticed a shadow, movement on the jetty, then the sound of something heavy falling into the water. Dark ripples ruffled the mirrored surface.

  ‘Fran! Wa
ke up!’ Rose scrambled out of the van and sprinted across the grass to the jetty. ‘Get the torch!’ she screamed. ‘Quick!’

  As she ran along the jetty, she could see a vortex of bubbles rising to the surface. Without a moment’s thought, she jumped into the lake. The chill of the water was shocking. She came to the surface, took a deep breath and dived down, her arms flailing around, frantically searching for a warm body in the cold blackness. In a moment she felt something brush her arm. She grabbed a handful of hair and jerked it towards her. She managed to loop her arms under Maggie’s armpits and tried to drag her bodily up to the surface, but her friend struggled against her grip, fighting her off.

  The bright light of the torch suddenly appeared above them. Fran was shouting, ‘Maggie! Let Rose help you!’

  Maggie struck out, trying to swim further into the lake. She was a strong swimmer but Rose quickly grabbed her ankle and pulled hard. Maggie tried to kick her off but Rose kept her grip. She lunged towards Maggie, who pushed her away, but she managed to get an arm across her chest and tuck one hand under her armpit.

  As Rose began to paddle back towards the shore, Maggie stopped struggling but her body became a dead weight. Finally, Rose’s feet found solid ground and she helped Maggie wade out of the water onto the rocky shore, where Fran stood with the torch, and together they helped Maggie back to the van.

  Rose was deeply shocked and confused but she pushed her own emotions down, focusing entirely on Maggie, who said nothing as they pulled off her wet things, dried her and helped her into warm clothes. They got her into bed and tucked her in. No one said a word. Maggie seemed dazed. Fran was crying softly and Rose didn’t trust herself to speak.

  Only when Maggie was asleep did Rose think to strip off her own wet pyjamas and put on trackpants and a fleece. Fran hung their wet clothes over the bushes to dry out. She lit the stove and made Rose some chamomile tea.

  ‘What just happened?’ asked Fran shakily, as they sat down together. ‘I can’t believe it. Was she awake? Or asleep?’

  ‘She must have had some kind of brain snap,’ Rose said with a sob. ‘This whole thing has become a complete nightmare. I just want to go home.’ She was trembling all over with shock and cold. Fran got a blanket and wrapped it around Rose’s shoulders. The tea began to warm and calm her. ‘Do you think she told us that story about Nico tonight because she’d already decided … or do you think telling it made her realise, you know … She kept saying it was unfixable.’