Christmas Under the Stars

by Karen Swan

  Talking of which . . .

  Q: Why did the astronaut leave the restaurant on the moon?

  A: There wasn’t much atmosphere.

  J

  (*) Get it?

  Friday 26 May 2017

  I’m sorry, I didn’t realize this was a competition. You may be further north where it’s colder and darker but we still win on the dangerous wilderness scale.(*) We have bears. And wolves. And elks that could break your foot if they trod on you!

  So – you were only up there a month when we first ‘met’?

  Meg / D-D-E.

  PS

  Q: Did you hear the one about the astronaut in a bulletproof vest?

  A: He was protecting himself from shooting stars.

  (*) I’m not actually Canadian by birth. I’m English but my family emigrated here when I was sixteen.

  Saturday 27 May 2017

  Yes. I’d been up here six weeks and it was the first time I wished I wasn’t up here.

  J

  PS We have polar bears.

  Sunday 28 May 2017

  The first time? So there have been other times when you wished you weren’t up there?

  M

  PS I’ll give you the polar bears. But my jokes still trump yours.

  Monday 29 May 2017

  Yes. And increasingly so.

  J

  Chapter Fourteen

  Sunday 23 July 2017

  ‘You know, if there was more of a view, I think I’d find this easier,’ Lucy puffed, lagging ever further behind their little group.

  Dolores, Barbara and Meg stopped and waited again.

  ‘It’s just all these . . . trees, you know?’ she panted, waving her hands around distractedly at the towering pines around them. ‘There’s nothing to see but trees. So . . . so . . . boring. No impetus to really . . . get going . . . you know?’

  She reached the others and put her hands on her knees, trying to get her breath back.

  ‘Come and sit for a moment,’ Meg said, taking her by the elbow and guiding her to a boulder by the side of the trail. ‘You’re carrying two up this hill, remember.’

  ‘Yeah, right . . . ’cause it’s so easy for . . . Mom and Dolores.’

  ‘Excuse me! What’s your point?’ Dolores asked, hands on hips and elbows pointed like arrows. She was wearing tan hiking shorts and a khaki vest, her skinny arms and legs nut brown from a spring and now summer being spent outdoors, her floppy sunhat secured with a string under the chin.

  Barbara looked as though she was off to the country club, a tinted visor keeping back her champagne-white bob and her tennis trainers on, an ice-blue gilet folded over one arm. She didn’t ever break out in a sweat unnecessarily, preferring to look the part, but even she was faring better than her daughter and to add insult to injury, as Meg handed Lucy the bottle of water, she lit up a cigarette. She wouldn’t have looked at all out of place if she’d been holding a glass of wine either.

  ‘When are you going to quit those things?’ Dolores scolded, as she always did, taking advantage of the pit stop to reapply sunblock to her T-zone. ‘They’ll kill you.’

  ‘Something’s got to,’ Barbara shrugged. ‘I don’t want to outstay my welcome.’ She wrinkled her nose. ‘There’s nothing worse than not knowing when to leave the party.’

  ‘Nonsense. I’ve got seventeen years on you and I’m nowhere near done.’

  Meg smiled as they bickered, looking waifish in short denim dungarees, proper hiking boots – as if Dolores would have let her walk in anything less! – and a green V-neck T-shirt. ‘Think this’ll be us in thirty years?’ she murmured to Lucy.

  ‘Ha, we wish!’

  Meg looked up and then down the path, wishing she’d been able to bring Badger – he’d have loved darting up and down the forest but no dogs were allowed in the springs. They had been going now for forty-five minutes but it felt longer with all these breaks. It was just an easy hike to the hot springs, they could usually do it in less, but Lucy had slowed down a lot since her bump had popped out with Porsche acceleration, going from zero to sixty in the past couple of weeks, even though the baby wasn’t due until the very end of November, still a good four months away.

  It was true there was nothing to see but trees, the sparkling sun rays unable to penetrate the dense canopies and illuminate the forest floor, but then Meg had always rather liked that – the mossy rocks and star-shaped lichen ground cover had been the land of fairies to her girlhood self and her imagination had always been attuned to the idea of underworld adventures springing from those shaded glades. Then again, she lived with a view – she was spoilt on a daily, hourly basis with vistas of stunning sunrises and sunsets; perhaps if she was living in a courtyard bungalow with a view up to the back of a hotel, she might crave an open aspect too.

  ‘Come on, you’ll feel better when you’re in the springs,’ Meg said, standing up and tightening the straps on the backpack that contained their brunch.

  ‘No, I won’t, they’re far too hot – my doctor’s said I can’t go in,’ Lucy moaned, getting up anyway.

  ‘But you can still put your feet in,’ Meg shushed her, knowing how much Lucy had begun to suffer with swollen ankles. Linking her arm through her friend’s, she led her up the trail again, pulling slightly.

  They walked for a few minutes in silence, Barbara finishing her cigarette, Dolores setting a steady pace and jabbing her Nordic walking pole into the ground every few seconds.

  ‘Did you hear about the grizzly spotted down by the Cave?’ Dolores asked over her shoulder.

  ‘I know,’ Meg said. ‘They’ve set up an exclusion zone all the way to the Cascade trail.’

  ‘You’ll never believe this but I had a man come back yesterday saying he went down especially trying to find it,’ Barbara tutted. ‘Damned fool. I think half these people confuse ’em with teddy bears. What do they think is gonna happen if they come across one?’

  ‘I came across a bear once,’ Lucy said, already panting again.

  ‘You never told me,’ Barbara scolded, whipping round to face her daughter.

  Meg was surprised too. She didn’t know about it either and she thought she knew all of her friend’s stories and secrets.

  ‘It was a couple of years ago. Me and Tuck went over to Vermilion Lakes for an evening walk and it was making its way down to the water.’

  ‘Well, what happened?’ Barbara asked, concern in her voice.

  Lucy shrugged. ‘We just . . . stayed in the car till it was . . . gone.’

  Everyone groaned.

  ‘Honestly, Lucy,’ Barbara tutted, turning back.

  ‘That is hardly what I’d call a bear tale!’ Dolores said, shaking her head and picking up the pace.

  They walked along, passing through shadows and cooing at the view in every break in the trees.

  ‘By the way, Meg, when exactly is your flight?’ Dolores asked. ‘Because Amelia can’t cover until Wednesday.’

  ‘Uh, next Friday,’ Meg replied, shooting Dolores a cross look, and then Lucy a nervous one. Dolores knew perfectly well she was worried about telling her friend she was going to Toronto after all. This was no innocent slip-up.

  ‘Oh good, that—’

  Lucy stopped walking. ‘Where are you going? And why haven’t you told me about it?’

  Meg took a deep breath. ‘I’m going to Toronto for a long weekend next week.’

  ‘To see Ronnie?’

  Meg nodded. Why else would she go there?

  ‘Even though all she ever does is upset you?’

  Meg smiled, holding her hands out appeasingly. ‘She’s my sister, Lucy. That’s . . . what sisters do. It doesn’t change the fact.’

  ‘Fact?’

  Meg shrugged. ‘That I love her. She’s the only family I’ve got left.’

  ‘Oh, thanks, thanks very much.’ Lucy began walking again, with rather more vigour than she had hitherto mustered on the hike.

  ‘Luce, you know what I mean!’ Meg called after her.
<
br />   ‘Do I? And where’s she been for the past few months then, whilst I’ve been scraping you up off the floor and trying to put you together again?’

  ‘I . . .’ Meg gawped, losing her stride. Had she really been that bad? She thought she’d been doing OK. Not great, admittedly, but it had only been four months since she’d buried Mitch. She resumed walking. ‘Lucy, listen, it’s just for a few days, not even a week. I’m coming back! It’s no big deal, I’m just seeing my sister.’ What was so wrong with that? she wondered as she watched Lucy’s retreating back.

  With the new pace, they reached the springs a quarter of an hour later; were it not for the plumes of steam rising from the water, it would have looked just like a regular swimming pool. There were a dozen or so people there but it was far from crowded, precisely why they’d come now. The lunch visitors usually liked to take in the views on Sulphur Mountain first and then stop here later when they stepped off the gondola.

  Meg shrugged off the backpack, rolling her shoulders to ease the tension and slipping out of her clothes. Barbara, looking regal in a floral underwired swimsuit with a criss-cross detail across the front, was first in, using the stairs and careful not to get her hair wet. Dolores was in her black Speedo costume with the light blue trim, the same style she’d been wearing since the seventies. Lucy, wearing navy Bermuda shorts, had to make do with sitting on the side, dangling her legs in and looking sulkier than ever.

  Meg felt sorry for her as she slipped into the hot waters. It couldn’t be easy being pregnant in this heat and she increasingly suspected there wasn’t going to be a ‘blooming’ stage in this pregnancy, just alternating symptoms and discomforts that had to be endured as the weeks counted down.

  She gave a small shiver as she walked through the water. It was a hot day but the pool was hotter still and her body reacted almost instantly to the mineral-rich water, the tight muscles slackening. She had visited infrequently as a teenager, but Dolores had been coming several times a week ever since Jed had developed early-onset arthritis in his forties, and the habit had stuck even after he died. Since Mitch’s death, Meg had begun to accompany her more and more too. She couldn’t say exactly why it appealed to her now but it soothed her at a level that went further than skin deep. Lying with her arms stretched back on the stone wall, her body floating and her eyes on the mountains opposite . . . perhaps it was the closest thing she felt to being held.

  Meg closed her eyes and felt the steam cleanse her skin, her cheeks flushing as her body grew warmer and heavier.

  ‘Heavens, girl, you are far too thin!’ Barbara said with a gasp and Meg was shocked, as she opened her eyes, to find that the comment was directed at her. ‘I had no idea you’d lost so much. When did you last eat?’

  Meg’s mouth parted in surprise. The only mirror at the cabin was at head height in the bathroom and although she knew her clothes were too big at the moment, she hadn’t particularly thought about her weight loss. ‘This morning,’ she relied defensively, crossing her hands over herself and ducking a little lower in the water.

  ‘Don’t worry, Babs, I’ve been keeping an eye on her,’ Dolores said, as she swam past in a neat backstroke, droplets splashing Barbara’s hair. ‘She is eating – it’s just the nervous energy burning everything off. She’s as nervy as an antelope in the pride lands. You don’t trust the world not to hurt you again, do you, chicken?’

  ‘Well, you’re to have seconds of my banana bread,’ Barbara said cluckily. ‘With a bit of luck, it’ll still be warm. Nothing better.’ She glanced at her daughter. ‘Although not for you, madam – you need to keep an eye on your sugar levels. I had gestational diabetes carrying you and the way you’re shaping up, I wouldn’t be surprised if you get the same.’

  ‘Mom!’ Lucy scowled, kicking her leg in the water so that it splashed up.

  ‘Hey, that’s a nasty bruise,’ Meg said, noticing a dark mark on Lucy’s thigh, just peeping through at the bottom of her shorts. ‘How’d you get that?’

  ‘What?’ Lucy asked sharply. ‘Oh, I don’t know. It’s nothing.’ She tugged down on the hem.

  ‘It doesn’t look nothing. It looks sore.’

  ‘It’s fine. I didn’t even know it was there.’

  ‘How could you not know about it? It’s huge! What did you do – take on a car?’

  Lucy rolled her eyes. ‘Look, I don’t know, all right? I must have knocked into something. What does it matter? Don’t make such a big deal of it. You’re just trying to get the attention off of you and onto me.’

  ‘I’m not!’ Meg said, laughing and gasping at the same time. ‘I was just—’

  ‘Well, don’t,’ Lucy snapped, her eyes glittering dangerously as she glowered at her. Meg bent her legs, ducking so low that her chin skimmed the top of the water. ‘I’m going for a swim,’ she muttered, hurt that her concern had been twisted into something selfish and untrue.

  She swam away, Barbara’s hushed, annoyed tones drifting to her ear. ‘. . . what you’ve done . . . nly being kind . . .’

  She let herself drift to the far end, her eyes sliding from the hazy mountains on the other side of the valley to the airy clouds that stretched and spun in the sky, Mitch walking through her thoughts every few minutes like a casual rambler who’d taken residence in her mind.

  Barbara and Lucy were sitting together by the plunge pool but Dolores had moved off to chat with a group of friends who were also regulars, their baggy arms, white-haired chests and atrophied legs belying the fact that theirs were the most frequent and infectious laughs. Meg floated past on her back without interrupting, smiling as she heard Dolores deliver the punchline on her latest joke, which she herself must have heard fifty times. Meg was proud of her friendship with the older woman – loved her strength and defiance and determination to live life on her terms. Dolores had known hard times – unable to have children, Jed’s premature death leaving her a young widow – but Meg had never known her to complain or bemoan her lot. Dolores was strictly of the view that adversity was good for you, that struggle was a requisite for happiness and as such, problems were merely opportunities in disguise. It made her uplifting to be around and it was perhaps no coincidence that Meg had been so ready to go straight back to work, just to be near her.

  When she finally swam back to the others, Lucy splashed water in her face – a token of affection, she knew, and Meg smiled, her hurt feelings smoothed again. They might bicker but they could never stay mad with each other for long. Besides, Meg knew it wasn’t her Lucy was annoyed with but her mother; Barbara was a kind-hearted woman and a loving mother but she could be heavy-handed in her comments to her daughter and had always seemed oblivious to Lucy’s sensitivity about her size – warning Lucy off the cake, just now, would have hurt.

  Shrivelled like dates, they climbed out and dried off, eating their brunch in the picnic area. The banana bread, thankfully, was still warm and the four of them ate the entire thing there – Lucy didn’t have seconds – along with a plate of peaches and a flask of coffee.

  ‘Think we should get moving?’ Barbara asked, adjusting the position of her visor as Meg repacked the empties in the food bag and Lucy borrowed some of Dolores’s sunblock. ‘I’ve got a coach party booked in for after lunch and I don’t want Nancy checking them in. Last time I left her alone, the dratted girl put a woman in a wheelchair on the fourth floor and oversold two rooms.’

  Meg chuckled and stood up. ‘Come on then. I’ve got some calls to make, anyway.’

  ‘Have you heard from Jonas?’ Dolores asked, tapping her walking pole against the soles of her boots.

  Meg smiled. ‘This morning, actually.’

  ‘Yes? And what’s he got to say for himself?’ Dolores asked, throwing a wink to Barbara.

  ‘He said he saw the bush fires in Australia.’

  ‘Oh, my Lord,’ Dolores tutted. ‘They’ve been so bad. Have you seen them on the news, Babs?’

  Barbara didn’t appear to hear her; she was watching Lucy, who was trying – ra
ther gracelessly – to stand, the shadowy bruise on her thigh clearly visible as her shorts rode up.

  Dolores looked back to Meg with a tut. ‘Did he take any pictures?’

  ‘I don’t know. Probably.’

  ‘Well, ask him to send them if he did. I’d be intrigued to see it from that vantage point.’

  Lucy, now standing, slapped the grass off her shorts and they began to walk, the steam from the spring rising behind their backs as they headed back towards the forest trail.

  ‘Is this that astronaut man Lucy was telling me about?’ Barbara enquired curiously, joining the conversation now.

  ‘Yep,’ Lucy replied, looking visibly more comfortable now that they were out of the direct sun and back in the shade of the forest. ‘And he’s not an astronaut man, Mom. He’s just an astronaut.’

  ‘But he’s a man, isn’t he?’

  ‘Yes, but you don’t . . . you don’t say both, Mom!’ Lucy said, rolling her eyes. ‘You just say astronaut.’

  ‘Well, that’s what I did say. Honestly, I don’t get why you’re splitting hairs?’

  Lucy groaned, making Meg and Dolores laugh.

  ‘Well, anyway, he also did another spacewalk yesterday,’ Meg continued. ‘He gets really nervous about those. One wrong move and . . . hello, eternity!’

  Lucy gave a shudder. ‘And to think I can barely do a forest walk.’

  ‘Did it all go OK?’ Barbara asked.

  ‘I don’t know yet. Hopefully he’ll have emailed by the time I get back.’ She checked her watch, counting forward eight hours. ‘It’s . . . quarter to nine at night up there. He’s usually got some free time in the evenings. His days are so busy.’

  ‘Really? What do astronauts do, exactly?’

  ‘Well, he says he’s effectively a glorified lab assistant, but I think he’s being modest. The ISS is basically just a giant laboratory, doing all its testing without the effects of gravity. They’ve got over a hundred and twenty experiments on board right now, all of which require monitoring and reporting, plus he and his colleagues have to test the effects on themselves too.’