On Top of Everything

by Sarah-Kate Lynch

  Mum and Dad were there positively brimming with pride; Stanley Morris was there with his daughter; Marguerite with her husband and twins; Charlotte and Martin and the girls came (and brought a pockmarked French jardinière of course). We’d made friends again, Charlotte and I, partly because life was too short to keep grudges and partly because Abigail was very good at washing dishes.

  Crystal invited her Earls Court crowd who turned out to be from her banking past and quite presentable, plus the exact types who might like a spot of afternoon tea by the canal on a regular basis.

  Rosalie, the cat woman, who used to come into the antique store to look at picture frames, arrived with Julia from the real estate agency. They’d started a film club together and got chatting with Rupert, the schoolteacher, who said he’d love to join and the three of them retreated to a corner to debate Five Easy Pieces.

  Even Whiffy turned up.

  I’d given him his invite at the Formosa Street skip, and while he wouldn’t come inside or sit at one of the tables in the courtyard, he drank a cup of lapsang souchong sitting on the kerb and ate three wild duck sandwiches in quick succession before making a very polite thank you and peeing through the rails on the bridge into the canal.

  More exciting than that, though, and infinitely better smelling, Will’s ex-wife Natasha came. He’d asked her to but she’d given him every reason to think she would rather stick needles in her eyes so it was an extra thrill to see her climb out of her car with Terry, her husband, and the three children. Will’s two girls were beautiful, just like their mother. Terribly polite, especially towards him, but I suspected they had inherited his kindness and compassion just by the way they treated other people, and he was amazing with them. I know he must have wanted everyone to leave so he could just concentrate solely on them, not waste a precious moment, but he stayed low key, subtly getting them to help so they were always near, but not making a fuss that would embarrass them, or Natasha.

  ‘They take after you,’ I said to her as I offered her a cupcake. ‘What beautiful children.’

  ‘Thank you,’ she said and we watched Will pour a cup of tea for Edith, of the bad mornings, whom I’d bumped into at Tesco and invited along, to her great joy. She had a gentleman friend, Ted, who she’d met at the library.

  ‘He’s so different now,’ Natasha said, looking at Will, with perhaps a trace of wistfulness. ‘I wish he could have been like that …’

  I knew what she meant. I’d done more than my share of wishing things could have been different. As if to prove this point, Charles and Harry arrived and I pointed them out to her.

  ‘My ex,’ I said, ‘with his boyfriend.’

  Her mouth dropped open, but she had the presence of mind to close it as Charles and Harry came over to kiss me hello.

  ‘You get on so well with him,’ she marvelled when they moved in the direction of Poppy who was surrounded by children. ‘How do you do it?’

  ‘Well, once I finished hitting him with bananas, hating him, resenting him, and, oh, did I mention hitting him with bananas? I had to admit that he was happier and so, the way things have worked out, am I.’

  Natasha looked at her husband, Terry, who was wiping raspberry jam off the hands and face of their littlest girl and smiled.

  ‘You might just be on to something there,’ she said, and then she got a look on her face I had well become accustomed to. ‘And you,’ she said, her head listing to one side, ‘are you all right? Will said you’d not been well.’

  ‘I’m well right now,’ I said. ‘And that’s what counts.’

  I couldn’t tell her that as long as Will was with me, telling me he loved me, that I was beautiful no matter what scars, internal or external, I bore, I was all right. He and the moment we were in were all that mattered. Everything else was a bonus.

  Life wasn’t perfect, of course it wasn’t. I was moody, sometimes scared, sometimes angry. Will did his best to stay on an even keel but I drove him mad sometimes, I knew that. He told me. We argued. We made up. We expressed our feelings!

  Natasha and I watched as he picked up his younger daughter Ella and sat her on a table to do up her shoe.

  ‘I am a bit carpe-diem-ish these days,’ I suddenly said to her, ‘so forgive me if I am speaking out of turn but Will would love to see more of the girls and so would I. The odd weekend, perhaps, or a few days in the school holidays, if you thought that was appropriate? Whatever you think. We’d fit in completely.’

  I knew what it felt like to let go of anger, resentment, hurt. I knew how hard it was.

  ‘He always had it in him to be a good father,’ Natasha said, softly. ‘I suppose the timing just wasn’t right. Let me talk to Terry.’ We smiled at each other and it was a rather lovely, hopeful moment.

  I sat down then, a familiar tired-but-happy feeling washing over me and I watched Poppy dance around with one of Marguerite’s twins: the one that looked less like mothball Granny.

  Will took the opportunity to sweep Ella up in his arms then and danced her over to my sister, where the four of them did an impromptu family waltz around the cosmos she had planted and he had fertilised.

  I caught Monty’s eye. He was sitting on the steps in the sunshine and when I looked at him he smiled at me and I felt so loved, so understood, I wanted to weep tears of sheer gratitude.

  Here was my family, drinking tea and eating cupcakes in my grandmother’s garden and together we could face whatever rotten things came our way.

  Because if I’d learned anything in recent months it was that there really is no escaping the fact that life can simply be horribly unfair.

  In the past I think I had corralled rotten things into groups of three because at some level it gave me the impression I was controlling them, keeping track of them. In my world I believed the universe would only dish out so much shite before it realised it had overdone it and corrected matters.

  That, of course, turned out to be nonsense.

  The truth is that sometimes the shite just keeps on coming and that is what is so unfair. But here’s the thing: it’s never all shite. If you can wake up in the morning for just long enough to breathe in and out and see the sun shining, you’re already surviving it. You’re already if not getting around it, at least getting over it, getting past it.

  And who knows what can happen then?

  Just look at me. I was on the biggest roll of rotten things known to mankind when I met the love of my life. The love of my life! Had I not been fired by my partner, abandoned by my husband, heartsick over my son and struck down by measles, would Will and I still have found each other? And if we had found each other, would we still have ended up together?

  I don’t know, and in many ways it doesn’t matter. Will is right, every moment is precious, too precious for questions that can’t be answered. Really, you’re better off just looking at what you’ve ended up with (however you’ve ended up with it), trying to ignore the rottenness of that and celebrating the wonderfulness of something else.

  ‘On top of everything, how can I bear this?’ I used to ask myself in bleaker days.

  On top of everything. Looking up from the bottom of a half-empty glass, it’s a pretty grim place.

  But looking down from the rim of a half-full one? That’s a different story.

  On top of everything is exactly where I was that afternoon in Rose’s garden.

  Will and Poppy, still holding the children, danced around the new jardinière — a little bit of Provence in Little Venice, oh well! — the dappled light of the tree of heaven picking up the coppery glint of Poppy’s hair, sliding over Will’s broad shoulders as he waltzed with his daughter. Sparky licked my toes and looked mournful. My mother kissed my father. Crystal went and sat on Monty’s knee. A warm feeling so delicious it could have been hot chocolate mousse suddenly surged through me, starting at my toes, my fingers, the top of my head, and rushing towards my heart.

  I looked at Will, so ready to be a good father, and Poppy, so desperate to be a mother,
dancing past each other in the sunlight and I had the most wonderful idea.

  If ever there was a man to bring an angel into the world, it was this one. He wouldn’t be doing it with me, for many reasons I was past that, but maybe with my blessing, if he was willing, while her ovaries were still in good operating order, he could do it with Poppy. He was the perfect non-puppy-killing flesh-and-blood man, after all.

  They both laughed at something, then looked over at me.

  Moments like that, I truly treasured.

  MONTY

  There’s a great deal of talk at film school about influences, about inspiration, but every time I think about the guys I consider the directing heroes — the Coens, Scorsese, Quentin Tarantino — I still go, ‘Yeah, fantastic, but that’s just film-making, isn’t it, that’s make-believe. It’s life that really counts. It’s living.’

  My mother, Florence Petal Rainbow Dowling, worked out how to live better than anyone else I have ever met, which is why my graduation project is about her. Not the coolest thing in the world, admittedly, to make a film about your mum, but she taught me more about following your heart than anyone else ever could, and what better inspiration could a filmmaker, a son, a person, hope for?

  Actually, my mother said she only really started to live when the opportunity to keep doing so was taken away from her, which in her opinion showed that it’s never too late.

  She was a great wife — both her husbands tell me — and a wonderful mother, a good daughter, a devoted sister and a truly nice person, which doesn’t sound like much but it was one of her ambitions, to be a nice person, and she really got there, I think. She was always there. Or close, anyway.

  Of course, she did spend her first thirty-nine years worrying too much and waiting for rotten things to happen to her. Then when they did, and some of the things were obviously, really, truly rotten, she realised she could have a lot more fun not waiting for them.

  So, you know what she did then? She just stopped seeing the rot.

  This is a woman whose career and marriage ended basically in one day, after all, but who then turned her rather falling-down old house into one of London’s top tearooms. Not only that, she fell in love with the builder who helped her. She married him. She had the time of her life with him, as she was so fond of saying.

  As time went on, despite the circumstances, her appetite for — well, cakes, obviously, and slices and biscuits and anything covered in chocolate — but also for life just grew and grew and grew.

  She went on safari to Africa because she wanted to see the zebras, she went to Australia because she wanted to meet my in-laws, she went to Paris because she wanted to have macaroons at Ladurée, she even went to Greece on holiday to do nothing at all although Will, the builder, says it was the most exhausting holiday he’s ever been on.

  And despite the fact that physically she weakened and waned, often in front of our very eyes, her capacity for sheer joy outweighed anything else about her and I think this helped all of those who loved her, actually, to deal with the inevitable: her leaving us.

  ‘I’m just so lucky,’ she would say to me, over and over again even on days when she could barely open her eyes, let alone get out of bed.

  Lucky? The woman was dying.

  ‘Yes, but not today,’ she’d say as she reached for a cherry truffle or a brandy snap or Will.

  She never wanted to be the star of this show, by the way, partly a hair issue, she told me, but partly because she was too busy baking for the tearooms, packing picnics, swimming at the Heath, helping Poppy make dreamcatchers for her stall, learning reflexology, darning holey caftans.

  ‘Don’t ask me!’ was her response when I asked what it was like having Stanley Morris turn up just after her life-changing roll of rotten things started spiralling out of control. ‘Ask Stanley Morris!’

  And so I did. And so this is how we, her family and friends, saw her during this crucial turning point, when she basically chose the joy of living over the fear of dying.

  She saw a rough cut, by the way, before she became too ill, which made her laugh so much I nearly had to call an ambulance.

  ‘I’m such a nitwit,’ she said. ‘But a nice nitwit, don’t you think?’

  So this is it, a film about my mum. She is missed. God, how she is missed. But she is remembered. Having just become a father myself — twin boys, she would have been mad about them — I feel even more inspired now to be like her, to seize the day, to choose life, as her hero George Michael might put it.

  Or, just as apt but maybe not quite so ’80s boy band, to choose living.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  I feel like I have been researching this book my whole life in which case I really should have kept better notes as I can’t quite remember whom to thank.

  I will start with my late grandmother, widely known as Lil, because I associate memories of her so strongly with the smell and taste of good old-fashioned baking. Whenever we visited her little house in Alexandra, Central Otago, she would be pulling something delicious out of her oven, be it afghan biscuits, Neenish tarts, caramel slice, spiced apple shortcake, kiwi biscuits, Louise cake and Belgian biscuits (just like the bought ones!) to name but a few.

  And as my mother (no slouch on the baking front herself ) reminded me recently, my grandmother didn’t even have a whole oven to pull the delicacies out of. It was what I think was called a rangette — a free-standing mini oven with two hob elements and a small cooker. This did not stop her from filling the cake tins and, subsequently, her grandchildren.

  There seems to be some sort of common connection with grandmothers and afternoon tea. Maybe it’s because seeing Grandma is usually a treat? Or maybe it ‘s because Grandma doesn’t want to be anywhere near the vicinity at proper mealtimes when the hysterics and mashed parsnips are flying.

  Anyway, afternoon tea seems to be enjoying something of a comeback as does home baking. I baked quite a bit when I was younger but then went on a diet for the next 30 years so didn’t bother. After researching my novel, By Bread Alone, however, I got the bug for making bread; cakes, slices and biscuits soon followed and continue to do so.

  My chocolate and banana cake with fresh raspberries (see page 183) even managed to take out the top prize in the ladies’ cake section at the 2008 Lake Hayes A & P show, I’ll have you know. Never has my chest been quite so puffed up with pride. Nor my waistband, from repeatedly testing the recipe.

  Taking afternoon tea is, in my opinion, one of life’s great pleasures and therefore the perfect topic to research. I am eternally grateful to the people who have helped me explore the intricacies of this most delightful of snacking opportunities.

  George Peacock at Peacock’s in Ely, near Cambridge, did indeed turn his daughters’ bedrooms into tearooms and his bustling riverside premises provided much inspiration for the fictional Rose’s. Claridge’s remains my favourite London tea spot, although the Wolsele isn’t too bad and it’s hard to beat Patisserie Valerie in Old Compton Street for its amazing window display of cakes and pastries.

  Ladurée in Paris just has to be visited for the macaroons, but don’t miss the hot chocolate at Angelina’s and, whatever you do, make sure you go and get talked into buying $75 of Darjeeling first flush from the delightful boy in the linen jacket at Mariage Frères. It makes about two cups of tea but you will so enjoy the experience of meeting him.

  Stephen Twining from Twining’s Tea was crucial in providing a tea and food matching session at the company’s English headquarters — plus two lunches. This puts him at the top of my list for people to research things with.

  Jane Pettigrew and Tim Clifton from the UK Tea Council provided a most enlightening few hours of hard-core tea tasting in London and Bonnie Kwok proved to be a delightful companion for one of my most heavenly afternoon teas ever, at the Peninsula in Hong Kong.

  Harriet Allan at Random House New Zealand has done a wonderful job of not hitting me on the head with a cricket bat for repeatedly missing my deadlines, whil
e Jennifer Balle has worked her usual magic on the publicity (not to mention tea and sympathy) front.

  Then there’s Ann Clifford, who has edited five of my novels now, and is still an outstanding editor and irreplaceable support but also, more importantly, a trusted and much-loved friend. Plus, this time, we went all modern and edited on the computer. I miss the red wine stains but not having bits of paper fly away in the wind (or the dog).

  Last, but by no means least, this book is dedicated to anyone having a bad day, and we all know they exist, but it’s also dedicated to all the real-life Wills out there, about whom some of you may be a little more doubtful.

  My sister-in-law Nicki Robins died of colon cancer in June 2007 but not before she fell in love with one such Will. He never made truffles, as far as I know, but according to Nicki, when she finally told him she had a terminal illness, he simply said: ‘Girlfriends: there’s always something wrong with them,’ and got on with the business of being her boyfriend.

  That, in my mind, means he whips Indiana Jones’s butt in the hero stakes.

  Yes, if ever there was a girl to laugh in the face of life’s unfairness, it was Nicki. And while unfairness, curse it, ultimately got the better of her she proved above all — to me anyway — that it’s not how much time you have that counts; it’s what you do with the time you have.

  About the Author

  For her sixth novel, Sarah-Kate Lynch travelled to London, Paris, Hong Kong and Muriwai in search of the world’s best afternoon tea emporiums. As a result of her tireless devotion to such research, she can now only eat things that are bite-sized and come in stacks. There must be chocolate on one level, cucumber on another, and raspberry jam in between.

  You can find out more about Sarah-Kate by reading her column in the New Zealand Woman’s Weekly (although most of it is made up) or by visiting her website at www.sarah-katelynch.com (although most of that is made up, too).