‘It’s called art under pressure,’ Erik says. ‘Also known as Alex cracking the whip.’
‘Hey, it’s for a good cause,’ Alex says. ‘This is all being done for a legend among men. Grandad being the exception to the general rule.’
‘The only exception,’ I say.
‘Hey,’ Erik says. ‘I feel the need to defend my gender. Us lads can be loveable. Even you loved me once, Ruby Matthews.’
I feel myself blush. ‘I did not!’
‘Erik, you’re practically her cousin!’ Alex says.
‘Practically, Ally, but not.’ Erik flicks his brush in my direction and a bit of paint catches in my hair.
‘You just declared war.’ I dip my brush in the paint tin and shake it at him. Gold paint spatters across his forehead and hair.
‘Well, this looks like trouble.’ A deep voice comes from behind us. We spin around. ‘Triple trouble.’
It’s Grandad. I feel the colour drain from my face. It’s been so long since I’ve seen him it’s a bit like seeing a ghost. Alex isn’t the only one I cut contact with when our friendship fell apart. Does he hate me for how I treated them all?
‘Ruby.’ Grandad opens his arms to me. ‘I’ve missed you, rapscallion.’
And without thinking about it, I drop my brush and let him wrap me up, paint flecks and all. He smells exactly the same, faintly cologned. He holds me at arm’s length.
‘Yep, still the same devil,’ he says. ‘Good to see the three musketeers back together.’
Then he takes in Alex’s sculpture. ‘What’s all this?’
‘Well, you weren’t meant to see it yet, but I made you a little party decoration.’
‘Little? That’s quite spectacular.’ He does a walk around the sculpture, looking it up and down, touching the wings. I glance at Alex and she’s biting her lip, but I can see her pride.
Grandad puts one arm around Alex and the other around Erik. He looks across at me. ‘You know, I tell them not to make a fuss. Then they do this. All this effort. It’s just a birthday . . .’
‘We have the right to celebrate you, Grandad,’ Alex says. ‘You’re going to have to suck it up.’
He raises his eyebrows. ‘See what I have to put up with? Ruby, will you be there to suck it up with me? I wish your nan could be there. Now she’d have had her dancing shoes on. Brought a bit of zing to any party, she did.’
Until now, I’ve managed to avoid committing. But I know he’s right. Nan would have been there. And if things hadn’t fallen apart between me and Alex, Mum and I would have been there too. Awful things happen, but a party for Grandad is not one of them.
‘I’ll be there,’ I say.
And I feel all lit up inside after uttering the words. I catch Erik’s eye and he’s smiling too.
‘So where’s my paintbrush?’ Grandad asks. ‘Can’t be a lay-about. I’m not even seventy yet.’
We all chat as we finish the first layer of the sculpture.
Then Grandad looks up at the eagle and sighs. ‘I wish I were like this guy. Birds don’t need to pass medicals, do they? They just fly.’
There’s longing in his words, and we all fall silent.
‘I know you miss it, Grandad,’ Erik says.
‘I do, course I miss it. Guess I was lucky to fly as long as I did, considering. I almost gave it up when I was a pup. Probably around the age of you kids.’
‘No way,’ Erik says.
Alex shakes her head. ‘You would never have given it up.’
‘I came within a whisker of it actually,’ Grandad says. ‘And not without reason. Every year there are incidents up at the airfield – forced landings, engine failures, electrical failures. And every few years, those incidents are fatal. Things go wrong up there. And when they go wrong, they can go very wrong, very fast.’ He sounds matter-of-fact. ‘Something went very wrong for me.’
‘Engine failure?’ Erik asks.
‘Not exactly.’ Grandad taps his brush against the sculpture. Purses his lips together. ‘I was flying with a mate when the weather turned. I was only young, and back then we didn’t have radar and satellite imaging. So we wound up smack bang in the middle of a storm. The sky, black as night. Lightning splitting the night apart.’
My dream of falling flashes through my mind. The feeling of helplessness, stomach in my mouth, out of control as I plummet to the earth below. This must have been how Grandad felt. No use crying or screaming for help.
‘Next thing, we had an electrical failure, comms went down. We had no instruments and no way to communicate. I got scared. I choked.’
‘Who wouldn’t?’ Alex says.
‘Up there,’ he squints into the blue cloudless sky, ‘you can’t afford to choke. Panic means death. But I did. I became useless. It was my mate who got us down safely. If it had been up to me, that would’ve been the end.’
He looks through Alex’s hedge, to the forest beyond. ‘After that, I decided I wasn’t cut out to be a pilot. Was going to give it away. But my father wouldn’t hear of it. He’d not had an easy life himself, and he told me people are not born, but made. And pilots are made by storms and lightning, engine failures and botched landings. As long as you can walk away from it, you’re still a pilot.’ Grandad smiles wryly. ‘He wouldn’t let me give up on myself. He told me to get back up there. Eventually, I did. But that’s all ancient history now.’
It might be ancient history for him, but for the rest of the morning, I can’t get his words out of my mind.
People are not born, but made.
Awful things break people and make them weaker. Not stronger.
Don’t they?
Back home that afternoon, I try to distract myself, but I’m obsessed with the arrival of my period. Each hour that drags by, I can think of nothing but blood. Never have I wanted anything more.
On one of my trips to the bathroom, Mum asks if I have a stomach bug.
‘No,’ I say. ‘Must be all that tea.’
I limit the bathroom trips to every two hours now that Mum’s become bathroom monitor and make myself busy. Scrub the bathroom, sweep the back deck, wipe out the fridge, the microwave, Jiff the sink.
As I’m dusting Mum’s room I find her copy of The Great Pianists of the Twentieth Century where she’s left it on her bedside table. I pick it up, flick through it. Towards the end, the book falls open at the final chapter. ‘The Twenty-first Century – A Look Ahead’.
The twenty-first century isn’t even halfway through. I read the opening paragraph, by two music critics, who debate which musicians will make up the greats of the first half of the century. Country by country in alphabetical order, they lay out the possibilities.
And there, between names that are still up in lights, is a name the world has forgotten – Celeste Matthews. One of the finest technical players, a passionate yet delightfully precise pianist, is the young Celeste Matthews, a maestro in her own right, and arguably a pianist we will watch with interest in the decades ahead.
I wonder if Mum is reconsidering Robbie’s offer. Maybe she’s realising it’s not too late. Normally, I’d bury a book like this at the back of the bookshelf in the living room so Mum will stop torturing herself. But this time, I leave it by her bedside. It’s never too late to hope for better things.
As I dust the living room, Mum stops her yoga mid-pose.
‘Who are we preparing for?’ she says. ‘The Queen?’
Can I not even clean now without being interrogated? It’s my job on a weekend anyway.
‘I’m procrastinating – I can’t seem to study.’
Mum returns to her pose, arms arcing across her body. And I go back to being eaten alive by the need to know. I’m just late because I’m stressed, I tell myself. If my period doesn’t arrive today, it surely will tomorrow.
I sneak to the toilet again. Study the toilet paper, angle it this way and that in the light. Searching for a streak of colour. Nothing. In this case, nothing could mean a very big something.
B
y dinner, I decide on an early night. I’ll put myself out of my misery and wake a day closer to my period. Mum’s in the shower and I’m washing the dishes when the doorbell rings.
I pull back the door, anxious that it could be Robbie. Unsure whether to let him in.
Only it’s Erik, black hair falling across his forehead. Smiling shyly.
‘Hey.’
‘Uh, hi.’
He’s holding a bunch of garden flowers. Looking sheepish.
‘Aunt Susan asked me to bring these over for you,’ he says. ‘For all your help this morning.’
‘I didn’t do much.’ After painting Alex’s sculpture, I just helped her ice Grandad’s cake and chose more tracks with Alex’s dad for the playlist. ‘Tell her she didn’t need to. But, thanks.’
He hovers awkwardly on the step a moment. ‘I told her you were never really the flower type. She said, nonsense, all girls like flowers. I said, yeah, not this one.’ He laughs awkwardly.
But he’s wrong. I do like them. Does he remember the last time he gave me a flower – the purple fairy flower in the forest?
‘How’s it coming along, anyway?’ I ask. ‘All ready for tomorrow?’
‘They’ll be at it till midnight, I think.’
‘Maybe I should’ve stayed longer.’
He’s not making a move to leave, and I catch him looking past me at the house. ‘Did you want to come in?’
He looks me over, dishcloth still in my hand.
‘You look . . . busy.’
He couldn’t be further from the truth.
‘No, not at all. Actually, I could use a distraction.’
‘Is that what I am?’
I feel myself blush as I step aside. He walks in and places the flowers on the dining table.
‘Jesus,’ he whispers. ‘This place looks tiny now.’
‘Well, thanks,’ I say. ‘We never thought it was a palace.’
‘No, but I mean when I was a kid everything looked bigger. You still have the same room?’
‘Yeah. Bit different now, though.’
He follows me down the short, narrow hall, past the bathroom and Nan’s vacant room. I shut her door as we pass. I’m not sure why.
Erik stops at my bedroom doorway and looks in. The same room he and Alex played with me in as kids.
‘You can come in,’ I say.
A second after I’ve said it, I’m filled with regret. My walls are covered in lyrics. My soul is blu-tacked to the plasterboard. But it’s too late. I stand to one side and his body brushes mine as he enters.
He’s taking in my room, looking around at the posters on the wall, the messy scraps of scrawled writing, the sheets of music and pictures of my favourite musicians.
‘Are these your lyrics?’ He’s pointing at the wall alongside my bed where multicoloured notebook pages of my writing are stuck.
‘Maybe.’
He leans closer to read some of them, and I hold my breath. It’s like I’ve just given him x-ray vision to my soul.
He’s studying a song I wrote about Joey, about kissing him. He opens his mouth to ask something, so I rip it off my wall and scrunch it up. Toss it in the bin.
‘That’s a bad one.’
‘Right.’ He takes a step back.
But his body freezes as his eye catches on a small frame wedged between my doorway and the light switch.
He takes a step closer, reaches out, and gingerly touches the frame holding the dried fairy flower.
‘You left it on the ground,’ he says softly.
‘Yeah. But when I went back that afternoon, it was still there. A little crushed and bruised. But kind of perfect.’
‘You never told me,’ he says.
‘You were gone.’
‘That’s . . .’
‘Sad, I know. Pathetic. All these years later . . .’
Suddenly I feel foolish for framing this flower. Foolish for keeping it at all. I reach for it, lift the frame off its hook. I’m about to throw it into the bin too, but Erik catches my hand.
‘Don’t.’
I could tell him how Nan helped me press it. How I left it for months between the pages of a heavy old dictionary, before carefully pulling it out, all dry and crisp, the colours locked inside the petals forever. His touch locked in its stem.
I let him take the small frame from me and put it back in its place beside my door.
‘I never wanted you to leave,’ I say. He surely knew it anyway, but he wouldn’t know the pain was still only a couple of layers deep seven years on.
‘Me either,’ he says. Then he smiles. ‘You know I haven’t given flowers to a girl since. I was so scarred.’
We leave my room without speaking another word about that day.
Mum and I fill the car’s tank on our way to the party. The needle riding high instils me with joy, makes me feel rich.
We travel the Old Ghost Road to the airport, pulling in at the Club building, just before the hangar. It’s a small demountable with a sign that says Aero Club – blue and red stripes splayed at either side of the word.
I look across at Mum, beautiful against the golden afternoon light. She’s wearing a black skirt and a button-up shirt with scalloped arms.
People are trickling into the club as I pull Mum’s chair out of the tray. I open it up, and wait to feel the usual eyes on me. But it’s not like it is at school. Or outside the supermarket or in front of the chemist. When I glance at the open double doors of the Aero Club, nobody’s paying us any attention at all. In fact, a few of the guests are using walking sticks.
I catch Erik’s eye. He’s standing on the steps at the door, greeting Grandad’s friends as they arrive.
Mum shuffles across into her seat, and wheels towards the Aero Club. She reaches the base of the steps.
She spins around and I take the handles.
‘Hey, let me help.’ Erik steps behind me. ‘I can do this easy,’ he says, and his hands brush mine on the handles. There’s a tingle in my blood, and I’m so surprised that I let go, let him help. Erik pulls Mum up the stairs and spins her around to face the doors.
‘Thanks,’ Mum says stiffly.
Erik takes his place back at the front of the club again, and I watch him just a second longer than I should. Tall, confident, clean-shaven. Handsome.
‘Who was that charming young man?’ Mum says under her breath as we enter the club.
‘Erik,’ I say.
‘Oh, he’s back? Well, the uniform’s a nice touch.’
I can’t tell if she’s being facetious. I’m pretty sure she is. But I have to admit to myself that I kind of like it on him. Because he’s wearing it as a sign of respect, not a sign of authority.
The club is bustling with people, music and laughter. The front wall is all glass, looking over the aerodrome, with Alex’s sculpture standing in the middle. Two of Grandad’s friends are taking a selfie before the sculpture, with the planes as their backdrop. Each side wall of the aerodrome is strung with fairy lights, there’s a grazing table full of cheese and dips, fruit and chocolate to the left, and a bar manned by older guys to the right.
Alex hurries towards me, soda sloshing over the rim of her glass. ‘Ruby!’ she says. ‘You came!’
We hug, and she bends down to give Mum a quick cuddle before leading us to the bar. A glass of juice for me and a red wine for Mum.
‘You go,’ Mum says. ‘I’ll find Susan.’ She waves us away.
Alex links her arm in mine and guides me to the window overlooking the airstrip.
The sun hovers above the mountains, orange as an egg yolk, rays reflecting off the top of the light planes parked beyond the cyclone fence. Alex finishes her drink and rests her head on my shoulder.
‘Where do you think we’ll be next year, Ruby?’
‘Here,’ I say. ‘I’ll always be here.’
She laughs. ‘No, you won’t. None of us will be. We’ll grow up and move away and, one day, all of this,’ she looks around, ‘most of these people, and
the Old Ghost Road and everything in this town will be just a memory.’
‘Sounds divine,’ I say wistfully. ‘If not entirely unrealistic.’
‘Ruby, you won’t be stuck here forever. I promise you. You’re going to go on to big things. I can feel it.’
I smile. It’s a nice idea.
‘And you? Where will Alex Lorenson be?’
‘The Royal College of Art in London, of course! I’ve already applied.’
‘Really?’ I feel my colour drain. A sense of panic takes hold. She’s already got one foot out the door. Alex will leave. I wasted a year of my life without her.
And maybe she reads my panic, because she grins and says, ‘No matter where I go in the world, we’ll never lose touch, Ruby Tuesday. I promise. I’ll always be lurking in your life somewhere, if you’ll let me.’
I hug her then. ‘I won’t let anything come between us again. Between your art and my music, we’re the perfect, mad little duo. Made for each other.’
She pulls away. ‘We’re mad and brilliant,’ she says, and we laugh.
By the time Mum finds me again, Alex is being called up the front for speeches and the music has been turned off. Grandad gives a short speech about how unnecessary the party is, before Hal gets up to say the exact opposite. Alex and Erik stand together, alongside Erik’s parents and Susan, and when Hal mentions what a wonderful childhood Grandad gave them, Erik puts his arm around Alex and draws her to his shoulder and Alex jabs him gently in the ribs.
I feel a wave of jealousy.
What would that feel like? To be drawn close by a big loving family? To be surrounded by parents and aunts and uncles and cousins. I imagine Nan by our side. And I feel a pinch in my guts. It’s been weeks without Nan now. I’m not in shock anymore that she’s gone, and the shock has made way for a kind of empty acceptance. At every celebration, there will be an ache, a space beside me in place of her.
As the speeches end, the lights are dimmed, the blinds are pulled down and a projector lights up the wall.
Soft delicate notes of a violin play as photos begin to flash across the screen. Black-and-white pictures of a baby boy, a knobbly-kneed school kid with scruffy hair and a wicked grin. A lanky teen, hair parted to one side, grinning before an ultralight plane.
Ruby Tuesday Page 15
