Poppy's Return

by Pat Rosier

  Too late to ring Joy? Nine-thirty. Yes for some people, no for others. Poppy picked up the handset and heard the pips that told her a message had been left while she talked to Martia. It was from Joy.

  ‘Hi there. I’d love to chat. Any time before ten-thirty. Cheers. Oh. it’s Joy.’

  ‘Hi, it’s Poppy. I was on the phone to Martia. We talk for ages.’

  ‘Good friends, huh. And hello to you. How’s your week going?’

  ‘Fine. Good really. I’m not so tired. And yours?’

  ‘A bit down and a bit up…’

  ‘… Do you want to …?’

  ‘… Shall I tell you about it?’

  ‘Yes.’ Forcefully. ‘Please do.’ Warmly.

  ‘Twenty-four hours in Chris’s company and I wonder how I put up with her for all those years. No, not fair. I wonder why I stayed so long in that relationship. Have I changed so much? Don’t try to answer that, I will, and I have. Changed that is. Being sober, you see a different world and the not-sober one looks like shit. But I liked it when I was in there. Sorry, I’m babbling…’

  ‘That’s okay. I’ve never been much of a drinker so I can’t say I know what you mean.’

  ‘It’s more I needed to say it, I guess. How did the evening with your niece go?’

  ‘Uh,’ Poppy was disconcerted by the change of subject, ‘It was good actually, she –,’ remembering just in time that she wasn’t to talk about Annie’s abortion – ‘looked at some old family photos with me. It was good to talk about my father.’

  ‘Aunty stuff, eh? I’m good at that, too.’

  ‘I don’t know anything about your family,’ said Poppy, ‘how many brothers and sisters have you got.’ There was a pause.

  ‘I walked into that, didn’t I?’

  Poppy was miffed, ‘You don’t have to say if…’

  ‘No, no, it’s just – well, there’s family stuff,’ Poppy heard Joy take a deep breath. ‘Four brothers,’ she said, ‘Andy, Si, Fred and Walter in descending order. And me smack in the middle. Ni…’ Another pause. ‘No, ten nieces and nephews.’

  ‘Whew! I’d never remember their…’

  ‘Birthdays? Yeah, I’ve been pretty bad at that. But I was always good for a note or two when I saw them.’

  ‘A note…?’

  ‘Yeah, money.’

  ‘Oh, of course.’ Poppy wanted to say tell me about your family, all of them and what it was like growing up with four brothers and do you get on with them now…? She had lots of questions and didn’t ask them because Joy seemed reluctant… If the conversation ended now, she thought, she would feel miserable, but this was the longest pause yet.

  ‘What are you doing tomorrow?’ she asked. ‘After work.’

  ‘Nothing special.’

  ‘Come round and I’ll cook – something.’ She ploughed on. ‘A thank you for, for – your help in my garden.’

  ‘There’s still a ways to go, I seem to remember a gathering of plants by your steps. And yes, I’d love to come to dinner. What time?’

  Chapter Seventeen

  Poppy thawed pumpkin soup and planned a stir-fry with vegetables and chicken to follow; she had lit the open fire. Joy insisted on helping to chop vegetables and Poppy could see the two of them, side-by-side at the kitchen bench, reflected in the window against the dark outside.

  Over dinner they chatted about their work, and Bessie’s plans, and how Martia was doing and Rina’s latest bulletin from the bookstore. When they settled back in front of the fire, replete, Poppy said, she hoped lightly, ‘I’m on a promise to hear about how your lesbian crowd spent weekends in Napier,’ and quickly went on, ‘and I’d love to hear more about growing up with four brothers. You choose.’

  ‘I think I’ve pretty much given you the picture of lesbian life – well, the one I had – in Napier. Growing up was Havelock North – do you know…’

  Poppy nodded. ‘I know where it is,’ she said, ‘near Napier. I never went there, though, maybe drove through.’

  ‘My Dad worked for National Tobacco in Napier, which became Rothmans. He – there’s a whole history about that, which I’ll spare you for now.’ Joy looked at Poppy. ‘Is this …?’ Poppy nodded again. ‘Mum stayed home and cooked and cleaned and made our clothes and let us do pretty much as we liked. Me and my four brothers. I come bang smack in the middle. We had a horse, a dog, chooks, a vegetable garden, chores to do and what seemed then like endless sunny days rushing about outside.’ She paused. ‘Is this just too boring?’

  ‘Not at all.’ Poppy was vehement. ‘The only thing that could get boring is…’

  ‘Me going on about being boring. Okay. We went on picnics, mostly to the beach. Dad taught us all to swim, he said so we’d be safe, Mum said we were already too confident by half in the water and he really wanted to see if at least one of us would take to it like he had and then he could be our trainer. He swam in competitions when he was young, there was a shelf of championship cups. I suppose he was disappointed, but he never said so.’

  ‘Mmm. Parents,’ said Poppy. ‘Would you like coffee or anything?’

  ‘I’m fine thanks.’

  ‘Go on, then, tell me more.’ Poppy smiled. ‘Just think of me as incurably nosy.’

  ‘I guess I can’t complain about that.’ Joy smiled back. ‘Well, the three older ones took to rugby. Walter – the baby – and I played hockey. I’d have preferred rugby, but being a girl … in the sixties… never mind of small stature.’ She squared her shoulders and sat tall. ‘Though I always thought of myself as big, and ex-treme-ly strong.’ Poppy laughed at her puffed out chest and grim expression.

  ‘All up though, the word had to be “idyllic”, at least until I was twelve.’ Joy let out a big breath and sank back into her chair.

  ‘What happened then?’

  ‘I had my first period and started to grow breasts. I didn’t want either. I was very angry and my mother said I might as well get used to it, being a woman was all about getting used to it. I had no idea what “it” was but I knew it involved having breasts and getting periods.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘What for?’ The question was clearly genuine.

  ‘For it being awful,’ Poppy said.

  Joy shrugged. ‘No worse than a lot and better than some. I dealt with it by playing sport. Hockey in winter and tennis in summer. Fiercely. I was better at hockey and made the A team at Napier Girls when I was fourteen.’

  She was a good goalie she told Poppy, but longed to play at centre, she loved to run around the field, and finally got a chance in her last year at high school.

  ‘Then I blew it.’ Poppy waited.

  ‘Sixteen, I got pregnant. To a friend of my brother’s. Who took off when he found out.’ Her voice was unusually flat. Poppy waited again, held Joy’s glance for a moment when she looked up from drawing circles on her knee with her finger. Joy finally continued in the same expressionless voice.

  ‘My father hit me for the first and only time and talked about his shame. My mother endured, as always. My brothers?’ She shrugged. ‘They didn’t seem to take much notice, except Andy who was twenty and marrying Penny, his pregnant girlfriend. Andy wanted to beat him up, maybe that’s why he scarpered. I think Penny’s father did hit Andy once.’

  ‘What happened?’ That person would be in his? her? thirties now, Poppy was thinking.

  ‘I dropped out of the sixth form and hockey when I started to show, helped Mum around the house, nearly went mad with boredom and not doing anything, read lots of rubbishy books. Everyone else decided the baby would go up for adoption. I didn’t have any other idea. Mum said she couldn’t “start again” with babies. Nobody, including me, ever suggested I might keep it.’ Joy’s words were getting choppier, faster. She wants to get to the end of this, Poppy was thinking.

  ‘Anyway, Andy and Penny’s baby was stillborn and they adopted Diane. It was Penny’s idea. I would have agreed to anything, so it was decided to tell Diane she was adopted but not that I wa
s her mother. Until she was eighteen. So I was a not-very-attentive aunty. Still am, though she knows now.’

  The phone was ringing. Poppy waved it away, saying, ‘answer-phone,’ and gesturing to Joy to continue. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Penny’s her mother, Andy her Dad. She wasn’t that interested, really, when she found out I was – am– her birth mother. Now she’s married herself, with a couple of daughters who also call me aunty. I don’t know if they know or not.’

  ‘That is so sad.’

  ‘Is it? They were – are – good parents. Andy’s the only one of all of us who’s stayed with the same partner all through. I think they’re even happy. Childhood sweethearts who made it work.’

  ‘Did you ever, you know, try to get closer to your daughter?’ Poppy hoped that wasn’t a thoughtless question.

  ‘Not really. She knows I’m lesbian, doesn’t really approve, doesn’t want to rock the boat, wants an “ordinary” family and I don’t have the right to disturb that.’

  Poppy wanted to ask more, but couldn’t think what.

  ‘You look disapproving.’

  ‘Sorry, no, not disapproving, more disconcerted.’ She would love to talk about colluding with Annie in her abortion, but she’d promised, only Martia. ‘Do you see her – Diane?’

  ‘Family gatherings – not that there’ve been any since Mum died. She sends a Christmas card, I send money for the kids to spend like I do all of them ’til they’re grown-up.’

  ‘What happened after the ba – Diane had gone to your brother?’ This is too many questions, Poppy thought, but I really want to know.

  Joy smiled, briefly. ‘Get it all over with, eh,’ she said. Poppy wanted to demur, it wasn’t like that, she wanted to hear it all, she wanted to know how Joy had felt, how she felt now… So she smiled back and nodded.

  Mrs Mudgely got up from in front of the fireplace and stretched. Poppy and Joy both noticed the dying fire, both stood up; Joy was nearer the woodbox, so Poppy sat down again while the other woman carefully placed some smaller pieces on the embers with two logs balanced across them. ‘Hello Mrs Cat,’ she said, ‘thanks for the reminder,’ as Mrs M recurled herself in the prime spot.

  ‘Where was I,’ Joy said as she returned to her chair. ‘Oh yes, post parturition. Are you sure you want to hear – ?’

  ‘Yes,’ Poppy was definite, ‘I do.’ She had watched Joy, concentrated for those few moments on the fire, placing the fuel deliberately, standing almost into a stretch. Strong, tidy movements, she thought, attractive. Am I –? Joy was talking.

  ‘I got a job in the library. With hindsight I think that’s surprising and I wonder if one of my parents… Anyway, to work, back to hockey and there I found sex with girls.’ She grinned at Poppy and did a thumbs up. ‘And after-match drinking. Then eventually Chris, and a house in the ’burbs and the hockey stopped and the drinking didn’t.’ She was looking off into the distance. ‘I played for the club and Hawkes Bay for two years, and once was up for national selection but didn’t make the team.’

  Poppy opened her mouth to speak. She thought she might say, ‘Can I kiss you?’

  But Joy held up a hand. ‘Enough already, no more questions. I don’t usually talk about myself so much,’ she said and quickly followed it with, ‘you know one of our women’s hockey players in Sydney is the daughter of a woman I played with in the Hawkes Bay team.’ Poppy had been ignoring the Olympics as much as she could, apart from seizing the opportunity for some geography with her class. She barely registered Joy’s words. Entranced by the other woman’s enthusiasm, which became more and more apparent, she found herself thinking she could at least take a look at the opening ceremony.

  They cleared up the remnants of dinner together, Poppy drying and putting the dishes away. No, she wasn’t bothered about not having a dishwasher, she said, she rather liked doing dishes. ‘But I’d like to kiss you more,’ she added, and felt herself blushing. Joy turned, flicking soap suds off her hands and a glob landed on Poppy’s nose and slid down her face making her splutter. Neither of them laughed. Poppy didn’t remember ever feeling so embarrassed.

  ‘No.’ Joy said eventually, then, ‘Oh shit.’ Poppy took a step back to stop herself taking a step forward; she could barely believe she’d been told ‘No’.

  ‘Oh shit,’ Joy said again. She leaned forward to take the tea towel from Poppy, dried her hands on it, and kept drying them, looking down while she said, ‘Please don’t get me wrong, it’s just that I have to – I promised myself a year, a year on my own in the big city, a year without any – you know – and it’s only six months!’ she ended.

  They looked at each other. ‘I didn’t say I wanted to get married, just that I wanted to kiss you,’ Poppy managed. ‘No big deal,’ she added, and wished she hadn’t. ‘Well, a medium-sized deal. But look, not a single bruise.’ She held her arms out from her body and twirled around. ‘Okay,’ she said when she was facing Joy again, ‘rewind and let’s finish the dishes.’

  ‘All right…’

  ‘Don’t you dare apologise,’ taking back the tea-towel, ‘and please don’t abandon me and the plants.’

  ‘Saturday morning, barring only a storm. I’ll bring my gumboots and a spade, you haven’t got one.’ Of course, she knew what tools Poppy had from her earlier efforts in the garden. Her voice was more or less normal.

  As soon as they finished Joy said she’d go. ‘Thanks for a great meal and evening,’ she said at the door, with a bit of a smile.

  ‘Me too,’ said Poppy. ‘And I’m not sorry…’

  ‘Me either,’ and Joy touched her briefly on the arm and was off down the steps.

  ‘And I’m not at all sorry.’ This to Mrs Mudgely as she held the door open waiting for the cat to move her tail from the gap. ‘Though there was a bad moment there. Come on, let’s you and me have the rest of the fire.’

  ‘I don’t want to shock you Mrs M, so soon after Jane, but I definitely fancy that woman.’ The cat kept both eyes closed. ‘I don’t think you like her as much as you did Jane, she doesn’t suck up to you, you old sucker-cat.’ Still no response. ‘Well I may have to give up any ideas about her if you don’t approve.’ Nothing. ‘I’ll take that as a “do as you like” then,’ and she flicked on the television news to a panel speculating on New Zealand’s medal prospects, and flicked it off again.

  At school the next day everyone, staff and pupils alike, seemed to be buzzing about the Olympic opening ceremony that night. It would be late of course, with the time difference between Australia and New Zealand. Some children in her class, Poppy discovered, would be ‘camping out’ with sleeping bags in their living rooms in front of the television. She declined an invitation to join a group of colleagues at a sports bar with a big TV screen; it was harder to not ring Joy at the library at lunch time to – well, check out gardening arrangements for the morning. Asking if she wanted to watch the games opening together was definitely not on, she thought, not after such a definite ‘no’. Intimate twosomes were out in the meantime, unless they were initiated by Joy.

  Poppy did not understand why she didn’t feel miserable. It was true that she understood Joy’s reason, wanting to keep faith with something she had undertaken to do, but still, she had been firmly rejected; she had expected that in itself to give her a stomach ache and it didn’t. She didn’t want to try and analyse her feelings and after all, lack of anxiety was hardly something to worry about. What she was noticing, she decided, was that she was ‘falling in love’ whatever that meant – falling was accurate, but she was falling gently, pleasurably, and believed that whatever the outcome, and so far she had only a clear refusal, she would have a soft landing, or at least one that would leave her on her feet and intact in her life. What about the anguish that went with ‘in love’, at least in the early, uncertain stages? Did it’s lack mean that ‘in love’ didn’t apply. Obsession was missing, too; she certainly thought of Joy a lot, remembering her small, compact body, her energy, expansive gestures and whole-he
artedness about whatever she was doing. Joy’s image would appear in Poppy’s mind and she would be smiling and Poppy would smile back.

  ‘I’m glad someone’s enjoying this.’ Poppy started and became conscious of the staff meeting she was in. Yet another emergency staff meeting on a Friday afternoon. Everyone had been speculating about it all day. ‘That was a beatific smile,’ Tracy, year-two teacher, whispered, ‘it can’t have been pleasure at being here.’ Poppy willed herself to not blush, unsuccessfully, she thought from Tracy’s knowing smile. The deputy principal, Ian Brownley, had called the meeting; Moana was on sick leave for the second week, and Ian was dotting ‘i’s and crossing ‘t’s in areas where he had previously made it clear he thought Moana gave too little attention. She’s a big-picture, education-focused leader, he’s a get-the-details-right-and-the-rest-will-follow manager, she was thinking when raised voices got her attention. I have the concentration of a flea this afternoon, she chided herself. Apparently Ian had proposed a roster of teachers to patrol the grounds for fifteen minutes after school ended each day. He was being asked, forcefully, for justification of this new measure.

  ‘Two schools in this area have problems with after-school bullying, and on the basis that prevention is…’

  ‘And both those schools are run by bullies.’ That was Hugh, year-six teacher, who hardly ever spoke at all in the staff-room. ‘Bullying doesn’t even get started here,’ he went on, ‘we’ve already got much better prevention than policing the playground would ever give us.’

  ‘Go Hugh!’ said someone.

  ‘Sorry, kids to pick up,’ said someone else, and left.

  Ian put the proposal to the vote and lost and was clearly miffed. He left the staff-room quickly.

  ‘Anyone know how Moana is doing?’ someone asked as they were leaving, and Poppy felt bad that she hadn’t.

  ‘Better,’ said someone else, ‘her ’flu ended up being bronchitis. She’s been ordered to stay off until Monday.’