by Meg Mason
Phil shrugged her off. ‘Yes, I’m an enormous fan of surprises. It’s one of my foremost traits.’
Abi did not know where to look as the mother–daughter pantomime played itself out. Was she meant to insinuate herself into it, join in the fun? How, when they didn’t leave any gaps? Instead, she dropped her eyes to the carrier and pretended to adjust Jude’s sock. Phil crutched awkwardly over to the kettle and Brigitta’s gaze returned to Abi. ‘You look so familiar. We haven’t met though, have we? I can’t think.’
‘No, I don’t think so. No.’ Abi willed her not to remember. ‘I’ve seen you in those photos, but you definitely won’t have seen me anywhere.’
‘Oh, do you mean the shrine?’ Brigitta spun around to the dresser, diverted for now. ‘We’ve begged her to put a few away, haven’t we Mummers? Makes you look a bit desperate. Could you at least rotate them? You could have child of the week, or just devote the entire thing to James.’
‘Thank you Brigitta for your kind input.’
Brigitta appeared to have touched a nerve, and tried to smooth it over with a lot of loud, trilling laughter that sounded exactly like Phil’s.
‘Abigail lives in the flats up here,’ Phil said as Brigitta settled down.
‘Oh brilliant. And who’s this little person?’
‘This is Jude,’ Abi said, stepping nearer so Brigitta could get a glimpse of him, asleep now in the carrier. ‘He’s nearly four months. The time has really flown. He’s a Capricorn, so he’ll probably be quite loyal.’
‘Gorgeous. What a pudding.’
A moment passed before Abi realised Phil and Brigitta were waiting for her to explain her reason for coming. ‘Well, I just thought I should pop, um, over and see how you were going, Phil. With your foot and everything. But I should get going really.’
‘Have you made us something?’ Brigitta asked. ‘Your bag looks quite heavy there.’
‘Oh, I tried to just make soup but I don’t have one of those processors. You don’t have to eat it or anything.’
‘You are so sweet. Isn’t that so sweet, Mum?’ Abi could not tell if Brigitta was teasing.
‘Yes, very kind,’ Phil said, as the kettle reached its high note. In a single movement, Brigitta went from standing to sitting on the table with her legs crossed.
‘It is sweet. Poll’ll be glad to know you’ve got someone looking after you, Mum, if we’re having falls now.’ Brigitta extended her leg, long like Phil’s, and prodded her mother on the bottom.
‘Don’t let us detain you, Abi, if you need to be getting on,’ Phil said, crutching back to the table with one cup and then another. ‘You’re ever so kind to inquire after me.’
‘I’ll probably see you again while I’m here if you’re just next door,’ Brigitta said. ‘I’m barely staying and I only want a bit of Sydney autumn sun and a zizz. Although I expect Mum’ll have me on bedpans and rolling over duty, won’t you?’
‘I’ll be sure to telephone, Abi, if I need to be rescued from my daughter’s ceaseless tongue-lashing.’
‘Learned at my mother’s breast. Were you meaning to leave that here, Abi?’ Brigitta gestured towards the soup bag.
Reluctantly, Abi let the bag slide off her shoulder and tried to push it back against the wall with her foot, hoping it might be forgotten. ‘I’ll just leave it there.’
‘All right then,’ Phil said.
‘Okay well, I’m glad you’re all right and everything, Phil. Nice to meet you, Brig-Brigitta. Okay then . . . off I go.’ She backed out of the kitchen, cheeks burning. As she hesitated at the back door – close it, or leave it as it was? – she heard Phil say, ‘That’s the girl who’s become a sort of chum. I’ve mentioned her to you before. I wasn’t rude, was I? Only we had a rather vexing moment the other day and I find myself rather abashed.’
‘Oh right, of course! Was that the cohabiter?’ Brigitta asked. ‘You were a bit brisk, Mother, but I expect she’s used to you. She seems very sweet. I do feel like I know her from somewhere though . . .’
‘The point is, I have moments of grief for Daddy that send me quite mad. So I can’t always be on my best behaviour.’
Abi listened on, willing Jude not to let out a cry that would give her away.
‘And you were mad already,’ Brigitta went on. ‘Truly though Mum, we all think you’re bearing up pretty well, all things considered. Don’t you remember one night after James, you tore out every rosebush in the garden till your hands were ribbons?’
‘Ah, did I? Yes, how shaming. Lord, Brigitta, do you forget nothing?’
The conversation dropped below Abi’s hearing after that, and she turned to leave. But as she reached the gate, Brigitta shrieked, ‘I’ve just figured out where I’ve seen her before! Or I think. No, I have! We were both stranded in Singapore that time, when I flew back after Dad. She had the wrong money and needed baby things. I knew it, I knew I’d seen her.’
‘How extraordinary, are you sure? It seems fairly unlikely to me.’
‘No, definitely it was. Poor thing. No money and a tiny baby.’
Abi turned and dashed out. If they discovered her there now, they could ask to be repaid and Abi knew that all she had in her purse was her change from Supa FoodBarn. It was all right, she told herself on the walk home. It was all right. Until Brigitta left and she had a chance to apologise to Phil for coming upstairs, she could try to be invisible.
37.
A stitch of harm
Later that night, Jude settled in his cot, Abi peered down at the big house and saw Phil and Brigitta sitting on the window seat, holding glasses of wine. She wrapped her arms around herself, and alone in the darkness of her living room, she watched Brigitta stretch out and lay with her bare feet in her mother’s lap. At one point, Phil said something so funny that Brigitta had to sit up and hold her wine away from herself, to stop it spilling all over the squab. Abi knew they would be talking about her. The soup had been such a stupid idea. Who would even try to make something when they didn’t even have all the right things? She tried to cry but nothing came. She was too tired. After a few moments more, she broke away from the window and went to bed.
Too soon, Friday morning came, disappointingly bright and clear. She wanted the miserable grey of Croydon. With effort, she got up and then, realising Phil wouldn’t be walking to the kiosk, decided it was safe to push the pram to the end of the point and back.
All the way, she made up stories for him about things that lived in the trees and under the water. He gurgled and held his feet. Then, as she came down the ramp, she saw, too late, Phil and Brigitta sitting side by side on a pair of crates, talking intently. Phil was leaning against the glass, with her foot stuck up on another crate, and the crutch tucked in behind.
Abi took a short step backwards and began to reverse, but Brigitta leaned back in laughter and saw her. She waved. Abi waved back and forced herself to continue down.
‘Hello again,’ Brigitta said. ‘I’ve brought mother out for her constitutional. It only took us forty minutes to get here. Do you want to join us? We’re only gossiping.’
Abi shifted her weight from one foot to the other, jigging the pram in a rapid back and forth. Phil turned away from her without expression. ‘I can’t,’ Abi said. ‘I am, I was just off to baby music. Yes. Little Movers. Jude loves it. His favourite day of the week. So I’m just here for a takeaway.’ Abi had not returned since the first session, but faintly remembered it being on Mondays and Fridays. Either way, the walk to the church and back would pass an hour.
‘Gosh, you’re such a doer.’ Brigitta patted Phil on the knee. ‘Did you take us lot to baby classes, Mother, or did you have one of your heads?’ She began to laugh. ‘Solidly, for a decade.’
Brigitta smiled back at Abi, inviting her into the joke. ‘Mum was more about sending us out to roam the streets of Cremorne until nightfall, that sort of thing.’
Phil folded her arms. ‘That is rubbish. I played with you constantly.’
‘Any game tha
t let you be prone. Poll and I had to do a lot of doctors and dentists, Abi.’
‘If letting you fossick around in my mouth with a cake fork wasn’t adequate maternal sacrifice, I apologise, Briggy. It certainly felt like it from where I was . . . lying.’
Brigitta let out a fresh gale of laughter. Abi wished she could make the warm, teasing reminiscences stop, although she tried to look as though she was enjoying it as much as they were. When it got so hilarious Abi felt like weeping, she knelt down to find something under the pram.
‘Has Mum told you about the time I had a sleepover in the car?’ Brigitta said, forcing Abi to reappear.
‘Oh Briggy, please. Abigail doesn’t need all the family secrets.’
‘Mum and Dad had been to someone’s for dinner and taken the four of us in our pyjamas. I was only a baby.’
Phil rolled her eyes elaborately. ‘You were two. Freddie was the baby.’
‘Either way, Mother. When we got back, Mum and Dad carried us in one at a time but they both thought the other had got me. They didn’t realise until the morning when Mum came into my room and my cot was perfectly made.’ Brigitta folded her long hands in her lap, vindicated.
‘And it didn’t do you a stitch of harm. In fact I’d say you’ve rather prospered from it, since you jolly well bring it up every time you need a bit of sympathy.’
‘I used to love being carried inside!’ Brigitta said, appearing overcome. ‘I used to pretend to be asleep just so Daddy would.’
Phil’s eyes welled up and she reached for a paper napkin. ‘I must apologise, Abigail,’ she said, pressing it to each eye in turn, ‘we seem to be in the throes, again.’ Turning to Brigitta then, she said, ‘Darling, are you going up to Mosman to get lunch things because if so I’d like to start hobbling back now.’
Brigitta stood up and brushed out her lap. ‘Gosh, you must think we’re such disasters Abi! Oh, but guess what, I figured out where I –’
‘I should get cracking for Little Movers!’ Abi said, backing away as quickly as she could, knocking the pram into abandoned crates in her haste. ‘All the other mums will be wondering where I am. Nice to see you again!’
38.
There is no Monique
Little Movers was nearly finished by the time she arrived. Abi paid anyway, and carried Jude past the milling mothers to the morning tea table. They would not have talked to her anyway. She leaned across a platter of fruit kebabs and thought briefly of Tiffany.
‘Excuse me,’ said a mother. ‘I was here. I’m trying to get at the mini-muffins.’
Abi turned to apologise, and the woman’s face lit up.
‘Oh you. Hiya. I haven’t seen you here in ages. I thought you must have moved. I’ve gone and forgotten your name. I’m a shocker with names.’ The woman squinted at her. ‘I never forget a face though.’
‘Abi.’
‘That’s it. And this is?’ She looked at Jude, twisting a hand through Abi’s hair.
‘Jude.’
‘That’s right. I knew it was a girl’s name. That I do remember. He’s grown, hasn’t he? You remember Lydia? She does her wees on the potty now, don’t you Lydia?’ The little girl appeared from behind her mother’s hefty legs and lifted her skirt above her head. ‘That’s right. Those are your big girl undies. So, have you been back at work or what?’
‘No, I’ve just been really busy,’ Abi said. ‘You know how it is.’
Without meaning to, Abi found herself following the woman to a chair and sitting beside her.
‘Oh, I do know. Believe me.’ The woman massaged her lumbar. ‘I’m hardly ever here either, now that I’ve upped my hours at – do you know Beauty by Monique? Near Supa FoodBarn. You know, right there.’
She whirled one of her thick fingers over an imaginary street corner. ‘I do three days now, including Saturdays because it’s like, the richest day in terms of hourly rate. But to be honest, I do it for myself.’
‘Brilliant,’ Abi said, trying to concentrate as an image of Phil and Brigitta sitting down to a lunch of posh sandwich fillings formed in her mind’s eye.
‘Guess what?’ The woman straightened up in her chair. ‘There is no Monique.’
‘Pardon?’
‘Beauty by Monique? There is no Monique. The owner just came up with that. Her name’s really Dawn.’
‘Oh, right. How funny.’
‘Do you want to have lunch after this or what?’
The woman closed her mouth around an entire mini-muffin. ‘I’m so fat. Lydia’s just given up her sleep.’ With the other hand, she put two fingers to her temple like a gun. ‘I still make her go in her room for two hours for what I call downtime. But to be totally honest, that’s for me. I can’t have her on at me all day. We could come to you for lunch. I’d have you to mine but it’s a tip at the moment. We’re painting. Off white, nothing crazy. You’re down at Cremorne aren’t you? I drove.’
The woman’s prattle had become infuriating, interrupting Abi’s concentration on Phil and Brigitta.
‘That’s right. I am. But we can’t though, unfortunately.’
‘What’ve you got on?’
The woman held her gaze, Abi held it back. ‘I’ve got to get some things. From Mosman.’ A charge went through her as she continued. ‘For my mother.’
The woman looked doubtful. ‘I thought all your family was overseas.’
‘No. My mother lives next door to me now,’ Abi said, as her eyes filled with tears that soon began cascading down each cheek. ‘In a big, huge house. Arts and Crafts if you know what that is. She had a fall the other week, so I’ve been on bedpan and rolling-over duty. But luckily my sister has just arrived to help me out.’
She spoke faster and faster, feeling as if she had left her body and was watching herself from above. ‘She’s an actress, in plays. My sister. You’d know her if I told you her name. So anyway they gave me a list, all the expensive things we eat. Olives and whatnot. And trout. We don’t even eat bread in my family.’
‘Yeah, all right,’ the woman said, getting up to leave.
As quickly as she could, Abi took Jude out to the pram and let it drag her down the steep hill home. She would not let herself stop until all the morning’s misery had been burned away.
39.
Bed of peace
There was really no need to feel quite so guilty about Abigail, Phil told herself, as she performed her nightly ablutions and then, with some difficulty, got into bed. Why she couldn’t budge the feeling was quite beyond her, especially with Brigitta in the house to enjoy. Their awful encounter in the hallway though. It was still mortifying to recall. As she fossicked around in her bedside drawer for the television remote control, Phil wondered if a certain amount of boundary setting was now required. Frederick was always leery of so-called ‘entanglements’ and although Abigail was terrifically useful for company, Phil worried she would never touch the bottom of her fairly obvious reservoir of need. And it was hardly fair to rely on Abigail always being so lively and diverting, when Phil was in no position to be relied upon herself. It was only that Abigail’s funny ways, her peculiar expressions and lusty laughter were always such a tonic, and not to mention the darling baby.
Phil turned on the small television which sat on a dresser some distance from the bed, and flicked back and forth for something to put her to sleep. She was usually strict about night-time aids of any kind, having become too dependent for her own liking on a finger of Frederick’s whisky and one of the Valium tablets a hospital doctor prescribed her for the dreadful first days following Fred’s death. When they eventually ran out, Phil made an appointment to get more, only to lose her nerve when the moment came. In panic, she asked for a breast examination, the violation of which made her weep all the way home.
By comparison, a little bit of television with Briggy next door was simply luxury.
There was an arts programme on SBS and Phil lay back into her pillows to watch a man talking about a play. He wore a fine knit V-neck without a s
hirt underneath it and sat in a high-backed leather chair, with one foot laid rakishly over the other knee. It appeared he wasn’t wearing socks with his leather loafers either.
‘Briggy!’ she trilled after a moment’s watching. ‘Are you awake, darling? Come in here. There’s a man on and I think he’s talking about your jobby, your play.’
Brigitta appeared in the doorway, in an eye-catching pair of knickers and a large T-shirt. Phil waved the remote control at the screen. ‘Isn’t this your man?’
‘What?’ Brigitta asked, caught visibly off guard.
‘Isn’t this your director, Guy something?’
Casually, Brigitta drew her hair back into a low pigtail and released it, although to Phil’s eye she looked oddly pale. ‘Oh yes, it might be. I can’t really tell.’
She held back the bedclothes, and after a brief hesitation, Brigitta got in beside her. Phil put the sound up a few notches and settled in, enjoying the loveliness of the moment. ‘He seems very charismatic. Is this like him, from what you know? I expect there’s not much interaction, is there, with the downstairs players.’
Phil felt Brigitta turn rigid beside her. ‘Darling? Briggy?’ Phil bonked her on the shoulder with the remote control. ‘He is your fellow, isn’t he?’
Instantly, Brigitta threw back the covers and marched towards the television, wrenching the plug out of the socket. ‘So Polly’s told you everything, then. You could have said, Mother. This whole time! There was no need to string me along, that’s really quite vicious. Is that why I was dragged out here in the first place? For a telling off? Twenty-four hours in economy class!’ Brigitta put her hands on her hips but Phil could see they were shaking.
