by Meg Bignell
But I shouldn’t complain about Hugh’s elsewhere focus. There are probably women everywhere who wish their husbands would do something handy for once and stop hanging about, getting in the way with their fawnings, their interest and their meaningful words. Hugh and I had a conversation about gravel today.
Oh, I know that it’s unreasonable to expect that fluttery, in-love feeling all through marriage, and that there’s every chance the butterfly-in-tummy thing isn’t love at all, just a fleeting chemical response to heightened emotions. It wouldn’t be normal to have them all the time. Howsoever, I don’t want normal. Normal is too close to ordinary, which is too close to ornery, which I am rather too often these days.
Oh, for a few butterflies. Or one. They were there once. The first time I ever saw Hugh, I had a full-sized philharmonic orchestra of the bloody things in my stomach. A proper kaleidoscope of butterflies. And I couldn’t take my eyes off him, I really couldn’t. (Is that some sort of romantic music tinkling in my imagination; Elgar’s ‘Salut d’Amour’ for viola?) And I’ve never been the same again …
University of Tasmania, 1992 (Oh, time, you speedy old bugger)
Ria and I had just started full-time at the Conservatorium of Music in Hobart – me to study viola while Ria chose piano among the fleet of instruments she’d already mastered. We’d barely even left school before Ria talked her way into a job for each of us at the university shop (or, rather, played her way in – she was a bit of a celebrity even then). We were hopeless with the cash register but quite good at stacking shelves and creating window displays. Our displays went down in University of Tasmania history. The shop manager had a thing for classical music and thought we were artistic geniuses, so gave us free rein. I even found a battered boutique mannequin at the tip shop, which we fixed up and named Caroline Smedley-Warren. Ria said this was the perfect name for a striking woman with good bone structure and a sense of humour. By the time our first orientation week came around, Caroline was in the window with a new perm, a UTas-emblemed tracksuit, Wayfarers and a placard saying, ‘Your future is so bright I have to wear shades.’ It was from this window, at the end of O week, that I first encountered Hugh Parks.
I was arranging a pile of textbooks into a student desk tableau when I glanced out the window and saw a boy standing at the bus stop chatting in a group. He was wearing a blue T-shirt with red trim around his shapely upper arms. His hair was black and thick, and long enough to be wavy. Thick black wavy hair was, from where I stood with my wispy red auburn hair, the ultimate human plumage. And then I saw his eyes. Oh, those eyes! His hazel eyes in that particular light, with an autumny tree above him, were sort of amber. I stared at them and they reminded me of how tiny ancient insects get trapped and fossilised in amber; I wondered about what secrets might be hidden in those eyes. I’m not sure how long I stood there frozen, imagining his mysteries, when I realised the eyes were looking straight back at me! For an insane instant I considered staying frozen, to blend into the tableau with Caroline (who was by then dressed as a nerd and holding a sign saying, ‘I bought my books last September, hurry up and get yours’), but he smiled at me and I jerked my gaze away. Then, realising how rude that was, I looked up at him again, smiled an awkward smile and did a little wave. He waved back, laughed and returned to his friends, leaving me with my embarrassment pulsing in my face.
I glanced at Caroline Smedley-Warren, as if she might offer me solace, but her expression was unforgiving. It said, ‘You, my dear, are a prize berk, and for God’s sake, put a comb in that baby fluff you call hair.’ My traitorous eyes returned once more to the boy and he’d turned away, giving them licence to linger. If he were mine, I thought, looking at the dark curve of hair at the nape of his neck, I’d never feel grumpy ever, ever again.
Then Ria poked into the moment and said, ‘I found a desk lamp,’ which was quite apt given the light that had switched on inside me, but then she peered at my red cheeks and said, ‘Jesus, Lobster Chops. What’s happened? Did you wet yourself or something?’
‘What?’ I said. ‘No. I don’t know, bit hot in here. Good lamp. Very good lamp.’ I busied myself with books while she studied me suspiciously, looked at Caroline and then back at me.
With narrow eyes she put the lamp on the table and backed away again. ‘I have to get an extension cord; can I trust you two to behave?’ I ignored her and used all my willpower not to look in the direction of the bus stop.
A minute or so later, I was buttoning Caroline’s cardigan when there was a knock on the window. I turned with a start to find myself face to face with the amber-eyed boy. He was smiling again (I hate to think what my face was doing). He said something but I couldn’t hear him through the thick glass.
‘Pardon me?’ I mouthed, with what I hoped was a friendly but cool look on my face.
He pointed towards my shoulder and mouthed, ‘The bee. There’s a bee,’ in exaggerated fashion.
I swiped violently at my shoulder to brush away the offending bee, whacked Caroline in the jaw, lunged to catch her as she toppled over, lost balance myself, knocked the desk lamp and crashed to the floor in a pile of books, broken lamp, nerdy mannequin and utter, extreme mortification.
As the sounds of the shattered lamp died away, I peeked out from under Caroline’s synthetic curls and wondered if I could possibly stay hidden there for the rest of my life.
Ria was first on the scene. ‘Fucking hell, Susannah. Are you alive under there?’
I hoped I wasn’t.
The amber-eyed boy was next. I could see the edge of his T-shirt and I knew it must be him because when he said, ‘Are you okay? Here, I can help,’ his voice was lovely, with a sort of clip unique to Tasmanians who surf. It matched his eyes and that unfairly sublime hair.
‘I’m fine, I’m fine,’ I said from under the rubble, then scrabbled about with Caroline to recover myself.
They lifted her off me; she was surprisingly heavy.
‘What the hell happened?’ asked Ria. ‘I knew there was something going on with you and Caroline.’
‘There was a bee,’ I said. ‘I’m allergic to them, and things went a bit …’
The boy started to laugh. I felt indignant and thought, Of course, the handsome ones are always arseholes. ‘I can die from a bee sting,’ I said. This was a lie an exaggeration. I just swell up a bit.
‘I’m sorry,’ he replied, ‘but there wasn’t a bee.’
‘What? You said there was a bee. You pointed to my shoulder. That’s why —’
‘No,’ he interrupted, not laughing now but wearing that infuriatingly wonderful smile. ‘I was pointing at the sign. There should be a “b” in “September”.’
The three of us looked at Caroline’s sign. It said, I bought my books last Septemer, hurry up and get yours.
‘I just didn’t think a spelling mistake was in keeping with the whole geeky theme,’ said the boy. Then he laughed again. ‘I’m sorry. Susannah, was it? I’m Hugh.’ And he shook my hand.
I can clearly remember (rememer) the feeling that shot up my arm from my hand when he touched it. ‘There was a fizz right to my core,’ I told Ria afterwards, once she’d got fed up with my dazed state and cross-examined me.
‘A fizz right to your floor, more like it,’ she said in disgust. ‘Your pelvic floor. It’s not love, you knob. It’s lust. You can’t love someone you don’t know.’ (How can someone so unromantic play ‘Meine Freuden’ with such feeling?)
‘But it is,’ I said, more to myself. ‘It is love.’
She snorted, ‘Look, he’s gorgeous. I give you that. Definitely you should bonk him, but don’t be dumb about it.’
But it was love, as it turned out. And absolutely I was dumb about it.
How do people make that feeling last? The butterflies, the fizzy core (and the fizzy floor)? Mum and Dad, for instance, have been married for over forty-five years and there is still obvious chemistry between them. Mum can be so infuriating sometimes but Dad’s pride in her is evident. Sometimes he
watches her for long moments before saying, ‘Look at your mother. Isn’t she lovely?’
Alison and Laurence have been married for longer still. (Gosh, is there a milestone coming up? Must check. Alison will be incorrigible furious if we forget.) And they have endured. At least Laurence has. On his birthday in December Alison gave a surprisingly tender speech and Laurence held her and kissed her head, then she gave him a butterfly kiss on the cheek. It was like a secret handshake imbued with deeply ingrained love. I shed a tear, perhaps because I realised even they still had life in their love while Hugh and I forget to touch for days and can’t think of conversation in the car. I don’t necessarily want the intensity of feeling I had in my uni days. I’d never get anything done. About the level of Isobel and Josh, perhaps, who look at each other’s faces a lot, rest their arms on one another and spell ‘healthy sex life’ with their body language. From where does a marriage derive its stamina? Perhaps some research is required.
SATURDAY 7th JANUARY
It rained all day today so, after three games of Uno, one batch of brownies and Hugh trying to teach everyone to yo-yo, I suggested we go and see Mum and Dad. Hugh shuffled and said, ‘Would you be able to drop me at the office, then? Just to check on things? I’ll bring dinner home.’
I just knew he wouldn’t get to Monday without going back to work. But, ‘Sure!’ I said brightly (because light in voice). ‘Dad would just rope you into sorting out the sound system anyway.’
He chuckled (weakly) and said, ‘Tell him I will next time.’
In the car on the way I compensated by turning up the radio and singing along to Lorde. Even Eloise looked up from her book long enough to appear impressed. At the office, Hugh got out of the car and said, ‘Tell Frannie I’d love another jar of her relish.’
I said breezily, ‘Will do, byeeee,’ and drove away without turning down the music, checking if he had his keys or asking how he was getting home. In the rear-vision mirror I’m almost sure I saw Hugh gaze regretfully after us. Nonchalance is key to allure.
When we got to Mum and Dad’s, we found Dad standing underneath the plum tree with a bucket of peaches. ‘Before you say anything,’ Dad said when he saw us, ‘she insisted. And my hips are four years older than hers.’
‘What?’ I said, just as Jimmy yelled, ‘Hello, Granny Frannie!’ and waved into the tree at Mum’s blue gumboots.
‘Yoo-hoo,’ came her voice from above the gumboots. ‘Wonderful timing. The chookies have been on a laying rampage and I’ve made three egg and bacon pies.’
‘The plums!’ shouted Dad. ‘Concentrate on the plums! One thing at a time, woman.’ He looked at Mary-Lou and said, ‘She’s not right in the head, your grandmother. She’s already been up the peach tree and before that she had a go on your swing.’
‘You’ll catch me if I fall, darling,’ Mum called.
‘Or you’ll squash me flat and we’ll both be dead,’ said Dad. ‘Fast-track your inheritance, Zannah. How are you, sweet pea?’ He gave me a squeeze.
‘Granny!’ yelled Jim, always willing to help when there are new feats of balance to be attempted. ‘Come down. I’ll get up there for you.’
‘I’m done, Jimmy, thank you,’ she said and, on cue, a full bucket of plums whizzed down on a rope. ‘Plum, anyone? They’re delicious – all the nicest ones are up the top.’
When Mum had clambered down, Dad patted her bottom and said, ‘Quite the nicest plum I’ve seen.’
Bottom pats annoy me. Too often they come unexpectedly with no chance to tighten gluteal muscles, so they turn into a wobbly bottom-fat pat. Much like those hugs-with-groin-thrust Hugh used to give me. They were annoying too. (Why can’t he just hug me without involving his penis? I used to think.) But these days I’d quite welcome a thrusty hug.
Mum looked pleased with her bottom pat, though. She laughed in a flirty way. And I felt such a tug in my chest for all the familiar comfort of it all, along with a homesick sort of ache, as though all the good things are memories.
Later, when the children were with Dad in the garage, playing their way through his record collection, and Mum and I were cutting yellow pictures out of her old magazines for a chair she wants to decoupage, I grasped a rare moment of silence, summoned an earnest voice and said, ‘Mum?’
She took off her reading glasses, set down her scissors and said, ‘Yes, I’ve had a little bit of botox in my frown lines; yes, it was expensive; no, I don’t regret it – I feel terrific; and yes, your father knows.’
‘What?’
‘What?’
‘You had botox?’
‘What were you going to say?’ She put her glasses back on and did a little hum.
‘Gosh.’ I peered at her face. ‘You do look fresher.’
‘Yes, and apparently there’s a study somewhere that claims that facial expression is linked to the parts of the brain that control emotions, which means that if you freeze your frown, you freeze your grouch. Genius!’
‘You’ve never been very frowny, though, Mum.’
‘Not when I see you, darling. Now, what was it you were going to say?’
‘I was going to ask how you and Dad have managed to stay happy for so long.’
‘Oh.’ She gave me a suspicious look.
‘I just want to keep my marriage as strong as it is. Always.’
‘Right. Good. Well, we love each other, so that’s the principal requirement, I’m told. And we don’t eat in front of the telly, we don’t wear pyjamas and we don’t keep secrets.’
‘And botox?’ I laughed.
‘No, that’s just a happy little addendum. There is one other thing, though.’
‘What?’
‘Terrence Squirrel.’
‘Who?’
‘He was a little crush I had once. A friend of Dad’s who came to stay in 1986. Nothing ever came of it, just some heart flutters, nothing bedroomy. He’s married and lives in France now but he still sends me gifts now and then. Keeps your dad on his toes.’
‘Mum!’ I was astounded. ‘Dad knows about this?’
‘Of course. That’s the point. No secrets, remember.’
‘He doesn’t mind?’
‘Well, he had a bit of a thing for the woman in the bakery so all’s fair. I think it put a bit of vim in our relations, actually.’ She left the kitchen to get more magazines, and I was happy to leave the discussion there.
SUNDAY 8th JANUARY
It’s still raining, so today we fetched Valda over to watch Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. She didn’t like my sandwiches and kept her trademark grumpy face firmly on, but she was tapping her foot through all of the songs so I know she enjoyed herself.
When the film was done and the fates of Truly and Caractacus were nicely entwined, I sighed loudly and asked her how she managed to stay married to Neville for sixty years. She said, ‘Sixty-three years, eight months and four days.’ And then she gazed up at the ceiling, as if Neville was watching, and her face shifted somehow, so that her eyes widened and seemed very blue. ‘The trick to a lasting marriage is mutual respect, gentle handling, kindness and conversation.’ Then she closed her eyes and a tear ran down her cheek.
‘Oh, Valda,’ I said. ‘That’s lovely. I’m sorry you don’t have him any more.’ And I put my hand on hers but she pulled away and said, ‘Oh, he’s still here.’
Raffy and Jim peered at the ceiling in alarm and Mary-Lou asked, ‘Where do we go when we die? Where’s Neville?’ Her face was full of thinking; she rubbed her little freckly nose and I had one of those mothery pangs of love.
‘He’s someplace where there’s no music and a lot of stout,’ said Valda (which was a bit drab, I thought). ‘Where will you go, Mary-Lou?’
‘To somewhere with no spinach and a lot of puppies,’ said Mary-Lou, before adding, ‘and no stinky brothers.’ Jimmy gave her a shove, she yelled and the moment was ruined. Children are so careless with moments. Adults are too, I suppose.
I knew Neville Bywaters was a kind man. Hugh wasn’t so sure abou
t him. He was always wary because once he saw Neville lose his temper with the wheelie bins. He was very well built, tall and imposing: a man of much presence but few words. But he was so attentive with his roses that I knew his heart had to be good. This confirms it. Respect, gentleness, kindness, communication. I will add them to the passion armoury. Some fruitful research (especially if you include Mum’s plums and discount her Squirrel revelation; I don’t think extramarital dalliances are the answer).
WEDNESDAY 11th JANUARY
We’re just home from two days at Opossum Bay. It was getting to that stage of the holidays when the children were starting to manhandle time in ways that drive me mad. I am a firm believer in boredom as an essential brain exercise, but there are limits. It’s a rare phenomenon these days, boredom. It’s probably about as outdated as the Jane Fonda workouts, but just as good for you. But when boredom leads to arguments, balls on the roof, defaced business documents, fridge gazing and the disappearance of the condensed milk, it’s probably time I put something into their hours.
So we found a tiny house right on the water at Opossum Bay and I took the children there. What a gorgeous little town! As a special treat we got Hugh to drop us at Wrest Point and we took a water taxi over. How could I have ever missed going there when it’s so close to Hobart? Makes me wonder how many little hamlets there are on this island that I’ve never visited.
In the spirit of sparkle, I gently asked Hugh whether he could get time off work to come with us, then when he gave us the inevitable no, I didn’t make a fuss. I just made him a pot of chicken noodle soup and tidied a lot, so he wouldn’t have to worry. Actually, to be honest, this was probably more about me trying to make him feel guilty, which is hardly kind, but it was for a good cause. I also spritzed my perfume around a bit so he’d return home to the scent of me and possibly feel some yearning. Nothing like a good old yearn to soften the heart.
