This Has Been Absolutely Lovely

by Jessica Dettmann

  ‘He didn’t care about most of these people,’ Molly continued, as if Diana hadn’t spoken. It was the best way she had found to deal with her sister-in-law.

  When it became clear that neither Diana nor her mother was going to agree with her about this, Molly changed the subject. ‘Is there anything I can eat? Are there any more cheese triangles?’

  ‘Nope, they were snaffled up by Pa’s friends,’ said Annie. ‘Goodness knows what they feed them in their retirement homes.’ She offered Molly the tray of sandwiches instead.

  ‘I’m not supposed to eat premade things with mayonnaise in them. Or lettuce. Salmonella and listeria risk. Salmonella isn’t so bad — that will just make me really ill, but listeria will straight out kill the baby.’

  Annie opened the fridge again. ‘There’s not much to eat besides the food for today, love. I cleared out the fridge last night so we could fit all the platters of sandwiches. There’s cake. Is that safe?’

  Molly sighed. ‘Yes, it’s safe. But it might give me gestational diabetes.’ Her mother didn’t need to know she was too full of cake to eat any more cake.

  ‘My goodness, Moll,’ said Annie. ‘These food restrictions are quite something. Sometimes it sounds like the safest thing would be to eat only hot chips!’ She turned to Diana. ‘Are they this strict with food during pregnancy in Germany? We didn’t have to worry about any of it when I was having kids. We were just told not to drink so much that we crashed the car. Mine turned out all right.’

  ‘It seemed like common sense for me,’ said Diana with a shrug. ‘I didn’t feel like alcohol or coffee, and my body just told me what to eat.’

  Molly wrinkled her nose at the back of Diana’s spiky head. She was a pain in the arse. But then so was Simon. They deserved each other. Such a pair of know-it-alls. Molly took a lump of sandy almond cake from the box on the counter and went looking for her husband and the car keys. It was time to wrap this up. Sitting around there would only mean having her blood pressure driven sky-high by Diana’s Teutonic nonchalance.

  Simon was back from the shop. She knew the errand was a matter of five minutes’ work. It was just like him to have argued with her for so long about something that ultimately took practically no time. Molly found him with Jack, sitting in the right of way beside the enclosed verandah on a garden bench they had dragged around from the backyard. They were drinking bottles of beer and idly watching the old man next door, Ray, through his kitchen window.

  It was a strange set-up — Molly had always thought so. Her grandfather’s garage was in the backyard, but his house ran the full width of the block, leaving no room for a driveway to access it. Somewhere in the dim distant past, an arrangement was made with the original owner of the house next door for Pa’s house to have a right-of-way access down the side of the neighbour’s block. It was enshrined in the deeds for both houses. Whoever lived in Pa’s house was permitted to traverse the land to get to their own garage and back garden, but they weren’t allowed to block it with anything. Like a garden bench. Where Jack and Simon were sitting was technically Ray’s land.

  Ray, who had lived next door for as long as Molly could remember, had always resented this situation.

  ‘There’s Right-of-Way Ray,’ Pa used to say when he drove along the strip, past Ray’s kitchen window and into the garage where he would park his old EH Holden beside the dust-sheeted replacement kitchen. ‘Wave to Right-of-Way Ray, kids!’ They’d all wave and Ray would scowl and turn away from the window.

  Now Molly felt sorry for Ray. It was a pathetic thing to hold a grudge over. Imagine hating your neighbour that much because you didn’t like sharing a tiny strip of land. He’d always seemed old and miserable. Her mum said he was married once, but his wife ran off, taking their baby son with her. The wife had been nice, apparently. Heather was her name. She’d been friends with Mum, although she was a few years older. And Pa and Granny and Mum hadn’t realised anything was wrong until one day Heather and the baby were gone.

  When pressed about why Heather might have left, Mum had only ever replied, ‘You can never know what goes on in a marriage.’

  Molly felt a sudden rush of fury towards Ray. How dare he have been so rude to Pa? Pa had never been anything but a good neighbour. And now Pa was gone and bloody Ray was still there. There was no justice.

  ‘Hey hey, Molly Jones,’ said Jack when he saw her. His smile was crooked, and she could tell from this and the particular pink of his face that he was on his third beer. He moved over to make room for her on the bench and she sat, pulling his arm around her like a shawl. The beer smell was strong, but she nestled into his shirt anyway. Somehow it was appealing.

  Her brother raised his bottle in greeting. ‘Arseface,’ he said.

  ‘Arseface,’ she replied. ‘What are you two doing?’

  ‘Just having a drink to your pa,’ said Jack.

  ‘Yep,’ said Simon. ‘A farewell to him in his sunny spot.’

  There wasn’t any sun now, but each morning their grandfather had read the newspaper there in the company of one of his indistinguishable series of tabby cats named Richard. The Richards had ordinal suffixes, like Kings of England. When Pa died he was up to Richard V, outnumbering the real kings by two.

  He’d dragged around a chair from the patio and set himself up with a cup of coffee and the newspaper, every morning, for half an hour after breakfast and before work. Once he retired it was after breakfast and before golf, or working in the garden.

  ‘His sunny spot,’ Molly remembered. ‘It’s not like it’s the only sunny spot. Why did he like it here so much?’

  ‘Probably because it was both a genuinely sunny spot, and because it pissed Ray off,’ said Simon. ‘He was such a shit-stirrer, Pa.’

  ‘He didn’t start it. Ray was always horrible to him.’

  ‘Do you reckon old Right-of-Way Ray will be happier now your pa’s gone?’ said Jack.

  ‘Probably. But maybe not. He might just be miserable forever. He’ll probably hate the next owners just as much,’ said Simon.

  Molly looked sharply at him. ‘What next owners? Mum is the next owner. Or us. But probably Mum. She’s an only child. It’s all got to be coming her way.’

  ‘Well, yeah. But what would she want with a massive place like this? She’s on her own. She’s got her flat to go back to. She can kick out her tenants now. I reckon she’ll sell the house.’

  The baby did a backflip inside Molly.

  Jack squeezed her shoulder. ‘It’s all right, Moll, nothing’s going to happen straight away. I’m sure Annie will discuss her plans with you all before she makes any decisions.’

  Molly nodded. She didn’t trust herself to speak. It hadn’t occurred to her that Mum might sell up. This house was their whole history. When she pictured having her baby, she imagined bringing it here. She’d known Pa wouldn’t live long enough to meet her child, but the house wasn’t going anywhere. It couldn’t. Her mum wouldn’t sell it. This was Annie’s home.

  ‘Did she ask you to come to the solicitor’s tomorrow?’ asked Simon.

  Molly nodded.

  ‘Do you reckon there’s more in the estate than just the house?’

  Molly had been wondering the same thing but it was crass of her brother to say it out loud. ‘I’ve no idea,’ she said haughtily. ‘I imagine he might have had some super. But it’s not really my business. I’m going tomorrow to support Mum. Not because I’m expecting a bequest.’

  Simon looked her straight in the eye. ‘That,’ he said, ‘is bullshit.’

  Molly looked away from him, and watched Jack take another swig of his beer, then hold up the bottle and assess it. There was a warm inch left — had anyone in the history of bottled beer ever finished that last inch? — which he poured onto the gravel before offering Molly a hand up.

  ‘Shall we head home? You look ready for an early night. Work tomorrow.’

  ‘That’s right,’ said Simon. ‘People’s undies aren’t going to fold themselves.’


  ‘That isn’t what I do,’ Molly said.

  ‘Have you given that up already? I thought you’d be about ready for a change.’

  ‘No, I mean, it is still what I do, but that isn’t what I do.’

  ‘It is. Oh no, wait, my mistake — I’ve seen that show. You don’t fold the undies, you roll the undies.’

  ‘Well, it’s better than working for Nazis.’

  ‘They’re the second biggest construction company in Germany. That doesn’t make them Nazis.’

  Molly was already walking towards the house, hand in hand with Jack, but she looked back to say, ‘It actually probably does. When was the company founded again?’

  ‘Nineteen twenty — oh fuck off, Molly.’

  ‘Gute Nacht, mein Bruder.’

  * * *

  Annie and Diana were still in the kitchen, and the number of old people in the lounge room seemed unchanged. Sunny and Felix had come inside now, and were attempting to unpack the dishwasher, under Diana’s supervision.

  ‘Goodbye,’ Molly said to her mother, leaning in to have her forehead kissed. She thought about her mum, moving in there to look after her sick parents. Five years she’d been back in the house, nursing them. Molly didn’t think she’d be able to do that. It was a lot to ask of your kid. But her mother was an only child — there wasn’t anyone she could share the burden with. As annoying as Molly’s own siblings were, she was grateful they’d be equally responsible for dealing with their parents if they got sick. If that day ever came, her plan was stay very quiet and pretend to help from a distance. Naomi would be much better at the full-on bedpan-and-morphine end of things. Simon would stay in Germany being no help at all: that was pretty much a given.

  ‘Will you be all right here, alone, without Pa?’ she asked her mother.

  ‘I’m not alone. Simon and Diana are staying, and Felix, and Naomi and Sunny.’

  ‘The spoons all cuddle each other like that,’ Diana told Felix, as he put the cutlery away. No one but Molly seemed to be watching Sunny add a sixth water glass to the already teetering stack she was holding. On discovering the tower was too tall to fit in the cupboard, she carefully laid it on its side and gently closed the door. Molly could see it would probably roll out and smash the next time anyone opened the cupboard, but she didn’t say anything.

  Jack nodded in the direction of the sitting room. ‘Do any of them need dropping back to anywhere?’

  Molly held her breath. Please say no. Please say no. She didn’t want old people in her car, leaving it smelling like all the worst biscuits in a family assortment.

  Annie patted Jack’s cheek. ‘You’re a good boy. Simon and I can drive them back later, or put them in taxis. I’ll let them stay as long as they want. They don’t get out much. They love a good funeral.’

  ‘See you tomorrow then, Mum,’ Molly said, deeply relieved.

  ‘The meeting with the solicitor is at nine thirty. I’ve texted you the address.’

  ‘Right-o then,’ said Jack. ‘Hooroo, everyone.’

  Diana looked confused. ‘Hooroo?’

  ‘It means goodbye,’ explained Annie. ‘It’s quite old-fashioned.’

  ‘I like it,’ Molly said loyally, even though that was only true about half of the times Jack said it. He had grown up in the country, but, still, he wasn’t eighty years old. Quite often it made her shrink with embarrassment when he cracked out a ‘hooroo’, but if Diana thought it was strange Molly was automatically prepared to defend it. ‘It’s important to maintain linguistic connections to our history.’

  ‘Okay,’ said Diana, and Molly left, feeling like somehow her sister-in-law had got the better of her in a competition neither of them was prepared to admit they were having.

  Chapter 4

  Annie carried the last box of empty wine bottles through the still night air out to the backyard and placed them quietly beside the recycling bin. Everyone else was asleep, but she wasn’t tired. After the old people had finally finished drinking everything they could lay their hands on and gone home, she’d cleaned up and one by one her houseguests had retired to their rooms.

  The light was still on in Ray’s kitchen. It was the only window on that side of the house. A small panel of fence ran from the end of Ray’s house on an angle to Pa’s garage door, and continued down the boundary to the back fences. This part of the fence was neat and solid, but there were still broken palings in the section behind the garage. She used to slip through them to visit Heather.

  She rarely thought of Heather any more. It felt like someone else had been friends with the young woman next door, but she could remember meeting Heather as if it were a book she’d read over and over for comfort.

  * * *

  Annie was seventeen when Heather moved in. Ray, who’d lived next door forever, would have been in his mid-thirties, a single man who worked long hours. Annie didn’t know what his job was, but he wore a smart suit and his shoes were always shiny. He mostly kept to himself, but gave a cordial wave or a polite nod whenever Annie looked out of the enclosed verandah windows or happened along the right of way while he was at his kitchen sink. He wore pink washing-up gloves, a fact that in combination with his established bachelorhood and the care he lavished on his rose garden caused Annie’s dad to class him firmly in the No Threat To My Womenfolk camp, and for a long time no one in the family gave him much thought.

  One Friday evening, just before seven, Ray had rung the front doorbell. Jean was clearing away the dinner, scraping congealed tuna mornay into the bin before handing the plates to Annie, who was waiting in front of a sink of hot water.

  ‘Will you please get that, Robert?’ she called to her husband, who was in the front room, a glass of beer on a coaster beside his armchair, about to switch on the ABC news.

  ‘If I must.’

  Annie heard the door open; voices. A woman and a man.

  Robert’s head suddenly popped around the kitchen door. He raised one eyebrow. ‘Ray’s got a wife,’ he said. ‘He’s come to show us.’

  Annie and Jean dried their hands and followed him back to the front hall, where Ray and a young woman were standing, each looking as uncomfortable as the other.

  Ray lifted one hand and placed it nervously on his new wife’s right shoulder. Annie could see he was accidentally pulling on a tendril of the woman’s long strawberry blonde hair, which was parted in the middle and smooth in a way Annie’s never was. Annie thought she was the prettiest girl she’d ever seen.

  ‘This,’ Ray said proudly, ‘is Heather. My wife, Heather. She’s my new wife. We’ve just got married.’ He beamed at them.

  Heather offered a warm smile. ‘Hello,’ she said, and reached out to shake hands. Her skin was soft, but her grip was strong. ‘It’s really nice to meet you.’

  Jean had been all dithery and overly welcoming. ‘Hello, Heather love,’ she’d said. ‘Welcome. I’m Jean. It’ll be lovely to have you as a neighbour. Pop in whenever you like. I’m always around. It’s a pretty quiet street, mostly, but there’s always a cup of tea to be had with me.’

  Robert, who was leaning against the living room doorway, his arms folded, nodded in agreement. ‘Always a cup of tea,’ he echoed. ‘And it’s quiet enough, unless madam here and her band of minstrels are at it on the verandah.’

  Heather turned to Annie. ‘Oh, yes, Ray said you’re in a band. How excellent. I can’t wait to hear you play.’ It was like a blessing from the sun. Annie felt herself blush, and she knew what came out of her mouth next would be nonsense.

  ‘We’re nothing really, not so much a band, more a musical collective, well, actually I guess that’s just another word for a band, isn’t it? We’re probably not very good — we’d be better if we played other people’s songs but we just like making up our own stuff. It’s just me and my friends, Paul and Brian. Well, Brian’s just my friend but Paul’s my boyfriend. Now, at the moment, I mean.’ When she finally made herself stop talking, Annie would have quite liked to die.

  But Heather smi
led at her again. ‘Are you about my age, Annie? I’m twenty-two.’

  ‘Well done, Ray,’ said Robert, before Jean shot him a reproving glance.

  ‘I’m only seventeen,’ said Annie.

  ‘You look older,’ said Heather, setting a seal of approval on their friendship.

  For a while there had been a quiet competition for Heather’s affection. Jean made sustained overtures of friendship — offering recipes, tips on stain removal and the care of Ray’s precious roses, and inviting her in for tea several times a week — but every time Heather popped round, Annie would wander in and before long the conversation would move to musicians Jean hadn’t heard of and shops she never went into. Annie had much more in common with Heather than Jean did.

  Eventually Jean stopped asking, and Heather just came over most afternoons anyway, to lie out on the grass with Annie, flipping through copies of Juke while Jean pushed her carpet sweeper over already clean rugs.

  Annie knew she’d been victorious when her mother started making little comments about Heather. Jean wasn’t given to snide remarks, but she nonetheless said occasionally that it was terrific how young women these days were able to do what they liked. And if that meant not wearing a bra then more power to them. If Heather didn’t care that her nipples sometimes showed through her top, then why should Jean?

  Annie and Heather giggled at Jean when she wasn’t around. ‘She wants you to have a baby so I’ll settle down and do it too,’ Annie told her new friend. ‘She’s dying for you to get pregnant.’

  But Annie had other plans. She didn’t think it should have been as much of a surprise as it obviously was when about a year later, the night after her last exam, she announced at dinner that Love Triangle was moving to London.

  ‘London?’ Her mother was aghast. ‘What on earth for?’

  ‘So we can become famous,’ said Annie. She saw her mother look to Robert for support, but he was smiling at Annie. He had known about the plan for ages.