by Meg Mason
‘Stu designed this bit,’ Abi said. She leaned against the kitchen bench and tried to see it with Phil’s eyes. It was high-ceilinged and light, gently cluttered with the colourful accessories of childhood. ‘He and his dad did all the building. While we were living here, which was a bit mental, with a baby and toddler. I don’t really know why we did that, now I think about it.’
Abi opened the cupboard above the kettle. ‘I’ve got normal, Lady Grey or some herbals.’
‘Whichever, dear. Anything loose.’
They fell silent as the rising whistle of the kettle made it too difficult to hear, and while Abi ran hot water into the pot and set a tray, she saw Phil turning to watch the children. They had turned on the hose and shed their clothes. Their bodies shone as they ran in small circles, laughing as the hose flailed and sprayed the doors, making the sound of small stones tossed at the glass.
‘I can’t quite get used to seeing you,’ Abi said, sitting down. She busied herself with cups and spoons so as not to be overcome by the fact of Phil, the real person of Phil, in her very own kitchen. After Stu taught Abi to drive, she had occasionally taken herself as far as Milson Road, but only to drive past the big house, never to park and knock.
And whenever she took the children on the ferry, she would stare at the long, thin line of green water low against the harbour’s edge, and try and point out the pool. But they could never see it. ‘It’s only trees, Mummy. Silly.’
‘I find my senses somewhat overwhelmed also,’ Phil said, without taking her eyes off Jude and her granddaughter.
‘How have things been?’ Abi asked.
‘Ah. Well.’ Phil returned her attention to Abi. ‘What’s the lovely Lady Bracknell line? It’s been “crowded with incident”. Indeed. Age is a bugger. Very little to recommend it. I haven’t been especially well but . . . goodness, I sound like Noel!’ Phil reached out and put a hand on Abi’s arm. ‘Who is fighting fit, you’ll be pleased to know.’
‘Noel! Oh gosh!’
‘Barb and Sandy moved off the Point a while ago, to a sort of community in the Southern Highlands. Like-minded, you might say. They took Domenica Regina with them, at my behest. I imagine the poor animal’s had to withstand another name change. Vita Sackville-West, the bichon frise.’
‘And Valentina?’
‘Ah yes, well, she became so disconsolate after her son moved out, she booked a cruise and never got off. Our Lady of the Perpetual P&O. You can’t imagine how very quiet it’s been, Abi.’ Phil shifted in her seat. ‘I should say, I found your letter dear. In a cupboard I was doing out long after our annus horribilis. I did intend to respond.’
She inspected the back of a liver-marked hand. ‘Although of course, I never did. We all look back on it as the most dreadful year of our lives, Abi. But in many ways, you and Jude were the currant in my cake. I apologise now, for every bit of awfulness. You were much wronged. By all the Woolnoughs.’
Abi bit her lip. ‘How is everyone?’
Phil looked again at Sadie, who was trying to do a forward roll and listing sideways every time. ‘Polly finally made partner, which seemed to give her a measure of psychic relief. She talks of coming home but I’m not stringing up the bunting quite yet. Mark remains utterly unchanged, a rock, you know. The boys are giants. Toby has lost his thistle and we continue to mourn it.’ She smiled dolefully and continued.
‘Brigitta found a chap. They’re having a baby after Christmas.’ Like Phil of always, her voice dropped to a whisper, warm and conspiratorial, and she touched Abi’s hand. ‘Although not married I might say. He’s also in the arts, so I expect they’ll lumber the poor do it with some invention of a surname. They’re still in London. And –’ It was clear that Phil would have chosen to stop there, but she took a breath and plunged on. ‘And Freddie is – Freddie is very much still Freddie. He met a girl of some South American extraction, shortly after . . . well, you know.’
Phil looked drawn. ‘Abi, I did want him to do the right thing by you. Or at least by Sadie, but of course, he’s never had a vigorous sense of duty and I let myself be talked out of it. Much too easily, I can see now. I really believe I fell into some sort of fugue state after losing Fred, but again, that’s no excuse.’
In all the time that Abi had lived with her own singular guilt, she’d never thought to consider whether Phil would carry a burden of her own.
‘It’s all right,’ Abi said. ‘It’s okay. It’s better this way. For Sadie, and for Stu as well.’
‘She is legally adopted as I understand it. Polly explained it all at the time, but I refused to be shown the papers. I have felt wretched about it every day since, Abi. Truly wretched.’
Phil’s shoulders slumped. She was a hollowed-out version of herself, and Abi longed for the old Phil to come back.
‘It was Stu’s idea, Phil, the adoption. I was grateful that Freddie agreed to it. And Kelletts always do the right thing, so –’
‘I’m glad someone has done right by you, Abi. We Woolnoughs all turned out to be so criminally disappointing.’ She smiled wanly and let her eyes wander around the kitchen again. On one wall Abi had made an arrangement of family photographs and children’s drawings. In the centre hung a study of nasturtiums.
‘You’ve created rather an idyll.’ An aeroplane passed low overhead and Phil paused until the noise died away. ‘If rather an urban one.’
‘After my mother died . . .’ Abi stopped short, the force of an old habit. But Phil had read the letter. She knew the whole story of Rae, yet here she was. ‘She died a few days after I took Jude back to London. Which is a bit ironic, I suppose, but at the time it seemed so unfair.’ Abi began fiddling with the tea things again. ‘I think she would have been pleased that her house helped us get this.’
‘Well. I’m very glad you’ve found your own corner of the world. Relieved in fact, after the way my lot put the mockers on your previous arrangement.’
Abi looked momentarily confused.
‘Ah. I thought you would know about that. It was Polly and Mark, in fact, who offered Stuart’s parents the really ludicrous sum for their flat.’
‘Oh, right. No, they never told us.’
‘Mark will have done it through a trust, so perhaps they themselves didn’t know. It was sold on fairly quickly, at my behest, because looking up at your windows, well, you can imagine my chagrin.’
‘That’s okay,’ Abi said as it all fitted together like the pieces of a broken plate. ‘It doesn’t matter. I couldn’t have gone back there anyway, and Elaine was never happier. She got an even bigger conservatory out of it.’
‘The dear Brush,’ Phil said, clasping her hands together. The layered rings on her wedding finger dropped away from the atrophied knuckle with a faint clink. ‘I’m sure it’s rammed with Lladro, is it, or must it be kept out of direct sun?’
They laughed in mutual relief. There was always the Brush.
‘And we’re happier here anyway. Phil, I did an arts degree, would you believe? I turned into a finisher.’ She stood up and took a thick folder out of a sliding cupboard.
‘I did English, with a bit of creative writing. You gave me such a taste for it, with that Fictive Self, do you remember? I went back as soon as I could.’ She slid the binder towards Phil, who opened it to the first page.
‘This is a work of fiction, is it?’
‘Well technically. I suppose. Although really I just changed all the names. My tutor said he’ll put it up for an anthology if I do a bit more work on it, because it’s still too sad in places.’
‘Well, if you’ve told the truth, I expect that could have been the title.’
‘Too Sad in Places, by Abi Egan. It was for you, of course. I wrote it for you, and my mum.’
Phil reached into her bag. And while Abi watched and the children hollered outside, and a twisting ribbon of steam rose from the teapot and coiled up towards the skylight, Phil drew out a pen and wrote at the very top of the page in her lovely looping script, ‘P. Woolnough, A
nnandale, December 4th, 2015, having just found Abi.’
‘Now,’ she said, folding her hands on top of the typed pages, ‘will we pour that tea before it stews?’
Abi turned the pot by its handle so it faced Phil.
‘No, no,’ Phil said, turning it back. ‘You be mother.’
100.
It means we have made it
In the last months of Phil’s life, Abi visited nearly every day and helped her out to the garden, where they sat side by side on the wicker chairs and watched Sadie play on the grass that sloped away to the harbour. Jude had started school and the little girl occupied herself by rolling down the hill until she was covered in grass clippings and too dizzy to stand up. Abi stayed at Phil’s side, filling in the crossword or reading out loud all of that year’s Booker. Set in a village, but no mango tree. ‘Thank heavens for small mercies.’
‘Gradually, then quickly,’ Phil said of her decline. ‘Like that ruddy Hemingway says a person loses their fortune, do you remember? Gradually, then quickly.’
Sometimes, Abi managed to get the three of them down to the pool, Sadie streaking ahead with her goggles already on like flying glasses, and Phil making her way carefully along the winding path, leaning on Abi’s arm. ‘All right, Mrs Woolnough? Mind your step,’ Abi said once, to be swatted with a rolled New Yorker.
Phil never swam anymore, but she seemed happiest on those days, with her face shaded by the enormous sunhat and a breeze mussing up the harbour. ‘Ferry!’ Sadie shouted, every time she saw one. ‘What one is it called, Mum?’
It was usually the Friendship.
Brigitta came out to show her mother the baby, a plump, black-haired boy they had called James, which pleased Phil immensely, both as a memorial and because she’d been bracing herself for something much more theatrical. ‘Benvolio Binney-Woolnough would be such a cross to bear.’
Polly came and went as often as she could, but it was Brigitta who went upstairs to check on their mother when she didn’t come down for breakfast one warm, clear September morning.
The family gathered for a private memorial in the Bible Garden at Palm Beach. Abi had not expected an invitation, but one duly came and when she arrived there on a blustery Friday morning, she was directed to a reserved seat in the front row. Polly had done the seating.
Freddie arrived halfway through ‘It is Well with My Soul’, forcing the hasty addition of a folding chair at the farthest end of the row, beside Mark. Abi looked towards the commotion and turned back quickly, still catching the look of deep resignation which passed between the sisters, as Mark handed Freddie an order of service already opened to the right page.
Abi stared resolutely ahead, listening to the words. ‘When peace, like a river, attendeth my way, when sorrows like sea billows roll . . .’ She had no wish to talk to him, to have her presence there force him to an awkward apology. Worse, to see traces of her daughter’s face in his, when Sadie’s energy and mad passions, her intense if fleeting attentions, had come to seem so much like Stu’s. She was a child entirely able to defy biology. ‘Whatever my lot, Thou hast taught me to say, it is well, it is well with my soul.’
As soon as the service was over, Abi left without saying proper goodbyes, although Brigitta, then Polly, waved warmly from where they were cornered in conversation with Noel et al. ‘A French exit, dear, is what that’s called. The only sort in my book,’ Phil had said once. ‘Why must things be allowed to drag on?’ Abi smiled to herself as she paused at the bottom of the narrow rock staircase back to the road to remove her heels. Then, from a short distance away, she heard Freddie call out.
Abi squared her shoulders and turned as he took the final steps towards her. He held out his hand. For once, no golden grin.
‘I hope you are well,’ he said, shaking, then holding onto, her hand. ‘And your children. I hope she . . . they, I should say, I hope they are very, very well.’
* * *
Brigitta stayed on in Sydney for some weeks, and together she and Abi packed up the big house. The rugs were rolled away, the pictures and china wrapped for storage. Polly and Mark had decided to move back and take over the big house before the start of the next school year. ‘I will do Dad’s wardrobe then,’ she told Polly on a late night call. It turned out Phil had never quite got around to it. ‘She always was a terrific rester,’ Brigitta said, reducing them both to tears.
On her last day, Brigitta asked Abi to help with the books.
‘You should take one of these,’ she called down from the stepladder, holding a faded paperback in each hand. ‘What do you prefer? Pursuit of Love or Cold Climate?’
Abi was stacking le Carrés into a box labelled ‘Crime and Misc’. ‘Whichever one you don’t want. I don’t mind.’
‘Between you and me, I never finished either.’ Brigitta tossed one down. ‘I expect I will now.’
* * *
After Brigitta had gone, Abi closed up the big house, locking windows, drawing curtains and hiding the key for Polly. Before bolting the French doors, Abi stepped out onto Phil’s patio and breathed in the sweet honey-scent of wattle that hung in the air. She glanced up at her old window, and back at the harbour, violet under a darkening sky. ‘That, Phil, is wattle. And it means we have made it. Or near enough.’
Acknowledgements
I’ve always wondered what novelists mean when they say writing is a lonely business, and now I know. It means being shut in a dark room for two years while everyone else is at the beach. But I also know now that when you’re finally allowed out, there they all are, lined up in the hall, waiting to read your manuscript, fix it, and get you something for rickets.
So thank you to my people. At HarperCollins, the amazing Catherine Milne who believed in this story before it was even a word document. When it nearly got too hard, she didn’t let me give up, return my advance or fake my own death. She also told me to trust my instincts which turned out to be the best advice I’ve ever been given, apart from dust first, then vacuum. Nicola Robinson, Julia Stiles, Bronwyn Sweeney and Catherine Dunk have the hardest jobs in the world, and have done impossible things with my mistakes, made-up words and time-zone abuses.
Ceri David was my treasured first reader, willing to rest a 10lb ring binder on her pregnant stomach and come back with the most thoughtful suggestions. Writers Angela Mollard, Lauren Sams, Clare Press and Annabel Ross read and endorsed the roughest draft. I’m so grateful. And God bless my mother, most valued research assistant (uniform supplied), and Kate Gibbs who never arrives without a scalding Le Creuset in her mitted hands.
In my day job, I have the kindest editors, Claire Bradley and Virginia Jen at InsideOut, Justine Cullen and Genevra Leek at ELLE, Sarrah Le Marquand and Jess Montague at Stellar, Shelley Hadfield at Weekend, thank you. And as always, to Anne Spackman and Tomaso Capuano for giving me my start in words.
In life, Tiffany Zehnal, Mia Ward and Nikki Byrne have given me hours on our crates. Tiffany once sent me a text that said, ‘You can and will and must do this. This is your dream and you’re doing what so many of us wish we had the nut sacks to do. Even if you have doubt, I don’t. Love, Oprah.’ One day I will turn it into an embroidery sampler.
Thank you as well to my favourite literary ladies, ever present on Sylvie Plath’s Whatsapp group and Hagseeds text chain, my Northside massive and Graeme and Bronwyn Hughes for giving me a week of hotel-like conditions at a critical moment.
Last and best, on the home front, thank you Andrew for every single time you stepped in, came to our book club of two, and texted me photos of fag ends and band-aids in the sand at Bronte, so I didn’t care so much that I couldn’t go. And the babbies. You put up with the world’s dreariest, dinners for so long and at least tried to respect the sign on my door that said ‘Stop! Before you knock, ask “can I sort this out for myself?”’ I love you both so hardly.
And I know it’s a bit odd, but I would also like to thank Phil for being the pleasure of my life to write. I can’t believe you don’t exis
t.
About the Author
MEG MASON is a journalist whose work has appeared in the Sydney Morning Herald, Cosmopolitan, Grazia, Sunday Style, RUSSH, The Financial Times and The Times, London, where she began her career in 2001. For four years, she was GQ’s SheQ columnist, and is now the agony aunt for InsideOut magazine. She is a regular contributor to ELLE. Her first book, a memoir, Say It Again in a Nice Voice, was published in 2013. She lives in Sydney with her husband and two daughters. This is her first novel.
Praise for Say It Again in a Nice Voice
Mason is a comic natural, her admissions of ignorance are achingly funny and provide a tonic for anyone feeling the struggle
– Better Homes & Gardens
. . . hilarious and beautifully honest. If you don’t break into audible giggles at least once while you’re reading it, better check your pulse
– SHOP Til You Drop
Part memoir, part parenting guide and wholly self-deprecating, unmitigated anecdotal pandemonium, the book . . . is a string of mishaps, faux pas and un-PC clangers that only a new mum with a ‘despotic little toddler president’ could get herself into
– Sydney Morning Herald
Mason’s approach to parenting is refreshing and hilarious. Thanks to a kindly neighbour, Meg discovered that convincing her newborn to take a bottle by getting it to first lick a Dorito Chip so as to ‘get more thirsty’ wasn’t quite orthodox. I like her already. If you’ve ever questioned your own skills as a mother, Say It Again in a Nice Voice will put everything nicely into perspective
– Vogue Australia
Back Ad
‘Mothers. those women with purses the size of meat trays that hold an entire deck of school portrait photos and a chequebook, make a casserole without a recipe, make the tightest bed you’ll ever sleep in and only swear under extreme duress. How, how, would I go from me to that?’
