The Sparkle Pages

by Meg Bignell

  ‘All of us?’ said Eloise with a wrinkled nose.

  ‘Of course. Why not?’

  Instead of ‘Because romance’, I said, ‘Where are we going?’ and then hoped it wouldn’t be somewhere fancy on account of having nothing left to wear, not even a featureless black skirt.

  ‘What about the old Traveller’s Rest?’ Hugh said. ‘Show the children one of our old haunts.’ This was a nice thought except that the Traveller’s Rest is where I got fanny-grabbed by an acquaintance of Hugh’s who thought he was magnificent and handed out sexual violations like party favours. Hugh pushed him and called him a cockhead so the bouncers threw us all out. I never felt the same about the Traveller’s Rest after that.

  ‘Hmmm,’ I said.

  ‘Oh, I know!’ said Hugh with glee. ‘How about the Ball and Chain?’ which was a little bit funny but mostly not.

  But the Ball and Chain is happily casual and their steaks never disappoint so along we went. We shouldn’t have bothered, as it turns out, because Mary-Lou lost her temper with Jimmy for taking the last of the corn chips at the salad bar and upset his plate all over the carpet. Hugh dragged her screaming through the restaurant to the counter to apologise and she spent the rest of the meal facing the wall. We were home by quarter to eight.

  Once the children were in bed, I leaned on Hugh, sighed and said, ‘Ah, family life.’

  ‘Never mind,’ he said. ‘There’ll be another anniversary next year, and we’ll leave the little arseholes at home.’ Then we had a bit of a laugh and a moment with some warmth in it and I made him a cappuccino with a wobbly heart in the top but he stirred it without looking and it disappeared …

  I thought about following up the warmth with some anniversary seduction but Mary-Lou tiptoed in with a letter that said, ‘I love you Mum and Dad and sorry sorry and sorry.’ It had a picture of our family with hills and flowers and a giant sun in the corner. She cried a bit and I had to put her to bed and remind her that we love her even when we’re cross. That took a while so that when I finally got to bed it seemed more appropriate for Hugh and me to give one another a little pat of solidarity and drift off to sleep.

  It was a school night, after all. We can have belated anniversary sex at Brynkirra.

  THURSDAY 6th APRIL

  The third bad thing happened. I should have known. Ria phoned about Pollyanna.

  ‘The fuckwits have canned the film,’ she said. ‘The co-producers had a massive barney. It’s the talk of London. Dammit, I thought it was a definite.’

  ‘But weren’t they in production?’ I tried to keep my voice from sounding desperate. ‘All that work.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Helen. These things fall over at the eleventh hour all the time.’

  ‘Maybe my music’s cursed,’ I said.

  There was a static huff through the phone, then, ‘Yeah, I reckon you’re right. The actress playing Pollyanna will probably fall off London Bridge tomorrow; I’d better warn them.’

  I sniffed.

  ‘Cheer up,’ she said. ‘There are better places for “Starlit”. It’s an elegy, not a nocturne. I’ll put it back in a minor scale and sell it to Tim Burton.’

  Thankfully she called well before my shopping appointment with Ellie, so I hadn’t yet belted the credit card and caused untold damage. I phoned Ellie to cancel.

  ‘I just need a bit more time to think about what sort of message I want to send with my look,’ I said, which probably isn’t a lie.

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Very important to do some self-analysis. I can help with this too so we can fit a conscious reflection appointment in before the style shop.’

  For goodness sake. I should have just told her I’m in a period of sudden financial stress. I should have cancelled Brynkirra too but I can’t bear to just yet. All those sumptuous figments of us running through the woods and skipping down staircases. Thank goodness I’d kept it all a surprise. No one need ever know.

  LATER:

  I’ve cancelled Brynkirra. I’m so steeped in disappointment that my toes hurt. I tried to cheer myself up with a spot of op-shopping. People are passionate about op-shopping so I was hopeful I could be too. I’m not. But I did find a Joan Sutherland Sings Bellini album for Valda and a leopard-print dress, which I bought as a sort of nod to Ellie and her efforts.

  I gave up then and went to help with Easter craft in Jimmy’s class. ‘Easter is about new beginnings,’ the teacher said, which felt hopeful. I cut out a pile of rabbit ears and blew some eggs and felt much cheerier. A little flaring of inner glow. Also, blowing eggs is very satisfying.

  Further disappointment lies in the fact that Hugh still hasn’t noticed my hair, despite the distinct tempering of the red and the bloodcurdling cost of it. The children noticed my other hair, though. This morning Mary-Lou barged into the bathroom and yelled, ‘MUM! Where’s your woof-woof gone?’ (Woof-woof meaning furry patch between legs that could be mistaken for a small hairy dog, according to Eloise when she was three.) Mary-Lou, on this occasion, yelled out to the rest of the family, ‘Come and see, come and see. Mum has a boiled (bald) woof-woof!’

  Eloise popped her head around the corner and gasped in what can only be described as horror. ‘Oh my God. Can’t be unseen, can’t be unseen,’ she said, as if she wasn’t the little girl who only about six months ago didn’t bat an eyelid if any of us were in the nude. Thankfully Hugh had already left for work and Raff and Jimmy knew full well they didn’t want the slightest glimpse of my boiled woof-woof.

  Valda noticed my hair (head hair, obviously). Raffy brought her over for afternoon tea and she looked at me and said, ‘Are you going for a job in a bank?’

  FRIDAY 7th APRIL (GOOD FRIDAY)

  Valda sold the Valiant. The detailer evidently fell in love with it and within moments the deal was done. I stood with Valda on her verandah as the car drove out of her driveway, venetians winking in the sun. She sighed deeply and, to my surprise, put her hand on my arm and left it there. After a long moment, she said, ‘There we are, then,’ went back to her chair and picked up her book. I gently offered a cup of tea and she barked a ‘No’ that was harsh even for her. I left her to it. I’ll send Raff in the morning with an Easter bun. I made them this afternoon for the Hadleys as an Eastery love-thy-neighbour gesture (glowy glow glow).

  SUNDAY 9th APRIL

  We had an Easter lunch with Mum and Dad today. Mum made a trifle with hot cross buns (it had far too much cinnamon but points for creativity). Soon after we arrived Mum took me aside and, with a mysterious smile, showed me a little box filled with chocolate hearts wrapped in pink foil.

  ‘An Easter gift from Terrence,’ she said. Her cheeks were as pink as the foil.

  ‘Terrence?’ I asked.

  ‘Terrence. Terrence Squirrel,’ she said. ‘They’re from La Maison Dujardin in Paris. Exquisite.’

  I didn’t like her whispery tones. ‘Mum, please don’t involve me in your secret squirrel love affair.’

  ‘It’s not an affair. And there’s no secret, I told you that. Dad loves these. They have absinthe in them.’

  ‘Absinthe? Doesn’t that make you hallucinate?’

  ‘Yes, the green fairy! Just one of these innocent little hearts will have you galloping about humping the furniture in no time.’

  ‘Oh, Mum, please be sensible.’ I laughed, though.

  ‘Darling, as Eloise says, lighten up. We don’t all feel the need to get about in hair shirts. Be done with this guilt, darling, please. It’s very depleting. No wonder you get shoulder pain, carrying that guilt around all these years. Throw it in a box, lock it up and throw away the key. Actually, throw away the box. Good for nothing.’ And she unwrapped a heart, popped it in my mouth and said, ‘Absinthe makes the heart grow fonder.’

  Later, when I was helping Dad retrieve pumpkins from the garage (we’ll all be orange-hued by next week – must find that rosemary pumpkin bread recipe), I said to him, ‘So, Dad, Terrence Squirrel …’ I watched for a reaction but he continued with his pumpkin selec
tion. ‘Mum told me about him.’

  ‘Mmm,’ said Dad when he realised I was waiting for him to contribute, ‘Mr Squirrel.’

  ‘You don’t like him?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes, I like him. He’s an old friend,’ said Dad.

  ‘It seems that Mum likes him very much,’ I said.

  ‘Seems so,’ he said, then put a butternut and two sugar pie pumpkins into a box. ‘Beauties,’ he muttered.

  ‘You don’t mind?’

  ‘No, got plenty. We always overdo the pumpkins.’

  ‘I mean Terrence Squirrel, Dad.’ Being deliberately obtuse is one of his favourite things. ‘Him sending Mum presents, et cetera.’

  ‘There’s no et cetera. He just sends presents and a bit of a card now and then.’

  ‘You don’t mind?’

  ‘Nope.’

  ‘I feel as though I might.’

  Dad sighed and gave me a weary smile. ‘Look, I’ll let you in on a bit of a secret – there is no Terrence Squirrel. Well, there is, but we haven’t heard peep from him since the eighties.’

  ‘What? So who sent the absinthe chocolates?’

  ‘I did.’

  ‘You’re Terrence Squirrel?!’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘You can see how pleased she is today. Does her good. She’ll be cheery for weeks.’

  ‘Why can’t you just give her the chocolates?’

  ‘Well, that’d be too strange. I’ve never been one for romance and other exotic things. I’m just the home paddock. But I do like to see her so chuffed.’

  ‘How do you do it?’

  ‘My friend Louis in the post office has a mail order catalogue, a Paris postmarker and a nice copperplate.’

  ‘And the woman in the bakery? Did you have a thing for her?’

  ‘Ah, Rosa Bianchi. No. Just for her vanilla slices. Doesn’t hurt your mum to think otherwise, though.’

  ‘Jeepers, Dad. What tangled webs we weave.’

  ‘We’ve got to play the game, Zannah-doo.’

  On the way home in the car I thought about playing the game, concocted a plan to pose as a penpal from the South Pole, scrapped the plan and just said to Hugh, ‘If you really want to go back to Antarctica, you should.’

  And he said, ‘It’s okay. I can’t now.’

  ‘Why not?’

  He stayed silent so I tried to be light. ‘Do they have a cut-off age?’

  ‘No.’ He laughed but his eyes didn’t crinkle.

  ‘Too busy at work?’

  ‘Something like that,’ he said, with an underside of char.

  ‘What do you mean, Hugh?’ I felt the prickly onset of anger.

  He tapped his fingers on the handbrake and said, ‘They asked me for this coming season. And I declined.’

  ‘What?’ I couldn’t believe it. ‘You didn’t say. You should have talked to me.’

  ‘You’ve made it pretty clear how you feel about it so I didn’t think it was worth ploughing it all up again.’ Then he turned the radio up and said, ‘Hey, Jim, this is the perfect rev-up song for footy.’ And I was dismissed in favour of ‘Eye of the Tiger’.

  I will have to find out more about this Antarctica offer at a later date, sans children.

  Hugh and Jimmy cooked dinner tonight: Hugh’s suggestion. They made hamburgers. Hugh’s still making up for the car-yelling incident. I wish he’d just yell at me over the Antarctic thing. He might be compelled to try harder with me. Perhaps I should scratch ‘I hate Antarctica’ on the driver’s door and we can just have a yelling match and be done with it.

  If I was a truly selfless person, I would play Dad’s game and make Hugh go off to the South Pole. Or dammit, if I had that money, I could buy him a flight to Antarctica for a few days, just so he could scratch his itch. Ice is good on a mozzie bite. And other associated ineffectual thoughts.

  FRIDAY 14th APRIL

  I was just rocking the wardrobe chair so vigorously that it banged into the wall and made a small dent. So now there’s a new dent in here. This wardrobe is certainly seeing some changes … I’ve made some changes … For instance, we are going to Brynkirra – the whole family, including Barky. I fixed things. Here’s what happened:

  I spent the early part of the week trying to make people feel happy, trying to shiny myself up, shed my grief, etc. Then on Wednesday, just as I was trimming the parsley and trying to visualise what my guilt box looked like, school phoned to say that Mary-Lou had had a bump on the head, that she was fine but they were obliged to let me know, and she’d like to talk to me.

  ‘Mummy?’ Mary-Lou’s phone voice was very small. It felt a long, long way away. My heart gave a little kick.

  ‘Are you all right, Mary-Lou?’

  ‘Yes, thank you.’ But her voice wobbled.

  ‘Brave girl. You don’t need me to come and get you, do you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Okay,’ I said. But I lingered.

  ‘My head aches,’ she said, ‘and I want to show you my bump.’ Her little faraway voice made a sob.

  And so I collected Mary-Lou, rubbed her bump and put her to bed with the telly. She perched herself up among the pillows and looked thoroughly content. Then I felt worried that I’d overreacted and been too coddly and that she’ll be wailing for her mother every time she gets a paper cut.

  ‘For HEAVEN’S SAKE,’ I said aloud. ‘Now my guilt is making me feel guilty.’

  My eyes rested on my viola case, on its shelf, sealed and locked. My box of guilt. I gave it a little poke. I wanted it to react. In the glasspaper silence there was an image of Eloise as a baby, lying awake in her cot, looking blankly at the ceiling.

  ‘Mummy?’ came a voice from the door. Mary-Lou. ‘Can we do something?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Yes, we can.’ And I picked up the viola, found my keys, took her hand and marched us out the door.

  Charmian was at the counter when we got to Lettercello. She gasped when she saw the viola case and clapped her hands.

  ‘Promised I’d bring it in to show you,’ I said, putting the case on the counter.

  Henry appeared from a back room, with a cobweb in his hair. ‘Ah, there she is,’ he said to the viola. To me he said, ‘Susannah, your hair! So sun-kissed and swishy.’ And to Mary-Lou, ‘Hello, Fairy-Mary. Would you like a marshmallow?’

  ‘It’s beautiful,’ said Charmian once I’d opened the viola case. ‘Can I touch it?’

  ‘Of course,’ I said, and she caressed the old wood. I wondered whether the instrument felt a stirring of hope. Those smooth hands.

  ‘I read a book once,’ she said, ‘about how they’re made. Such craftsmanship. It must be worth a fortune.’

  ‘I don’t know, really,’ I said. ‘It cost me everything I had when I bought it, but I’m not sure these days. Henry, I was wondering if you’d get it valued, actually. And sell it for me too?’

  He said, ‘Absolutely not. This is your voice.’

  ‘Did I say that?’ I said. ‘God, I can be such a twat.’

  ‘No, I’m saying that.’ He swiped some invisible dust from the bench.

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘You should hear, Charmian, the things Susannah can say with that instrument. Such cantando in her hands.’

  ‘But please, Henry, this is the first very important decision I’ve made in a long time. Can you help me?’

  He shook his head. ‘No.’ And he turned his attention to some bookwork.

  I wasn’t giving up. ‘It’s part of a grand plan of self-expression. Voice lessons, of a sort. Please, Henry, this viola is wasted on me.’ And I’m wasting away with it here. I felt a wobble of tears.

  He looked at me, softened. ‘Look, how about you leave it here for the weekend? I’ll soap the pegs for you, give her some TLC. She can stay with my cello in the sitting room. They’ll have a lovely time. You can see how you feel without it, come back and collect it whenever. But I won’t put it up for sale.’ He nodded a firm full stop.

  Then this mornin
g, Henry phoned. ‘Susannah?’ His voice was serious.

  ‘Henry?’ I asked.

  ‘I am obliged to tell you this but I know it won’t matter either way.’

  ‘Tell me what?’

  ‘Someone has offered $40 000 for your viola.’

  ‘What?’ My heart did an enormous leap, right up to my throat.

  ‘I told them no, of course, but there are a few things I should tell you. Firstly, they want it very badly.’

  ‘Oh my God. Obviously. Why?’

  ‘That’s the other thing; the buyer is Mr Elliot Driscoll, Eloise Driscoll’s grandson.’

  And because he knew it was all a bit much to take in without the comforts of his shop and a cup of peppermint tea, he said I should probably come back over.

  It turns out that Elliot Driscoll is the friend of the local priest, Father Graham, who is a Lettercello regular. Father Graham saw the viola, and the name on it, and phoned his friend immediately. Elliot paid a visit and couldn’t believe his eyes.

  ‘He was in raptures,’ said Henry. ‘You should have seen him. It was like a reunion.’

  ‘It made me cry,’ sighed Charmian, with a dramatic swoon.

  ‘Don’t mind her,’ said Henry. ‘She’s fallen in love. Again. It’s the plumber’s apprentice this time. I blame the romance section.’

  And so I said, ‘Right, then. It should probably go back to where it belongs.’

  ‘No,’ said Henry. But he looked at me and said no more. Decisiveness must be striking in an indecisive person. ‘I can’t take all that money, though,’ I said. ‘Too much.’ I can’t charge anyone to take away my remorse.

  ‘Apparently Elliot is super wealthy,’ said Charmian. ‘I think he’d pay a lot more.’

  ‘I certainly don’t want more.’