Twenty years was a long time and Amber was seeing the town with adult eyes. Age exaggerated its imperfections—weathered timbers, cracked curbing, rusted gutters—although to some people, such things would be considered quaint.
Shame the same can’t be said for human flaws.
It was just a short drive between town and the small house in which she’d grown up. Strange how after all this time she still struggled to call it home. The word home suggested some sentimental attachment; there was definitely none of that. She’d been an only child in an ordinary asbestos shell that echoed with slamming doors and bitter fighting in hushed voices, and she was always on the other side of those closed doors—locked out, frightened, confused, angry. Boarding school would have been preferable to witnessing the ugliness of married life; Fiona should have been grateful Amber and Phillip chose to send her away to school—although there was no greater oxymoron than a grateful Fiona.
Amber’s gaze darted up and down the street. Cheryl Bailey was so near, yet so distant. What if Amber were to pass her mother in the street right now? This wasn’t how she’d imagined their first meeting. Not until two grey-haired ladies had bumped into her in the doorway to Harvey’s store had Amber even thought to question whether she’d know her mother. Worse still, what if the woman failed to recognise her own daughter? The way the ladies eyed Amber as she excused herself sent a wave of adrenalin barrel-rolling through her stomach, flipping it inside out—the kind of dumping wave that turns you in every direction and leaves you gasping for breath.
She had to get out of town and back to the house.
She wasn’t ready to face Cheryl yet. Seeing Will had shaken her enough for one day.
What would Amber talk about with her mother after all this time anyway? Her father? Would she tell Cheryl about his latest Barbie doll and brag about his overnight success in the Sydney property market? It had seemed like overnight. Within no time after moving to Sydney, he was mixing with millionaire property developers and all the glitterati high society attracts, determined his daughter would do the same.
Enter Phillip Blair. Potts Point plastic surgeon, widowed and twenty years Amber’s senior.
Poor Phillip.
Jack Bailey had cast his net to catch a shark. He caught a dolphin—gentle, trusting, agreeable. Once snared, Phillip fell in love easily. Although had Amber been listening carefully to the marriage celebrant, she might have heard the woman say, ‘I now pronounce you, Jack Bailey, Phillip Blair’s father-in-law.’ And while Amber heard, ‘You may now kiss the bride,’ her father had no doubt heard the words, ‘You may now use your new son-in-law’s connections to further your wealth.’
Jack played the society circuit like he played golf—to win—winning a reputation as a Potts Point playboy in the process, which meant as Amber grew older, Jack’s girlfriends grew younger. She started distancing herself, retreating from Jack’s spotlight. What her father got up to was of no significance to her. Amber Bailey-Blair didn’t need anyone. She was living her own dream existence. Small-town glamour girl strikes it lucky.
‘How is it possible to have everything and nothing all at once?’ she’d asked her therapist one day.
She never did get an answer.
*
Amber’s car seemed to find its own way to Konjulup Road, and to the house her father had started renovating the year she began high school. A spot of paint, a spruce up, a few fancy touches, and the old fibro facade had looked like new on the outside, while inside remained unfinished, unloved and unwelcoming. But as Jack used to tell his daughter, Looking good on the outside is the only thing that matters. No need to let people inside.
‘Humph! Sound familiar?’ Amber scoffed, as she tucked her expensively coiffed hair behind pearl-studded ears and checked her lipstick in the rear-view mirror, at the same time as pulling up on the far side of the street.
Number twenty-one Konjulup Road still looked reasonable, despite its age. The jacaranda trees that shaded one side of the entire street had grown, of course, and where multiple front yards had once formed an endless play area, now side and front fences on each property set less neighbourly demarcation lines. A woman in a straw hat popped up from behind the front fence directly opposite Amber’s car.
‘Oh, damn!’ Amber slumped in her seat.
The woman brushed dirt from both knees, shielded her eyes with a gloved hand and peered briefly in the direction of the car before picking up her gardening implements and shuffling back towards the front porch of the old house.
Amber’s old house.
And Amber’s mother and town drunk, Cheryl Bailey, was …
Gardening!
The woman had stopped at the front door and was looking again at the unfamiliar car, this time a little more intently. Curiosity eclipsed any hesitation and Amber stepped from the vehicle.
‘Hello,’ Amber called out, her arms rigid by her sides, her feet moving awkwardly across the narrow, rough-edged strip of bitumen.
The older woman laid the garden tools on a table by the door, then with a couple of swift swipes, dusted the dirt off her hands before removing her hat and attempting to straighten her dishevelled mop of grey curls.
‘And what brings you here after all this time?’ Cheryl Bailey called back. There was no surprise in her tone, as if she knew this would happen one day, as if she’d been waiting.
Amber faltered briefly before realising she was at a point of no return. She could hardly turn around, wave goodbye, say she’d made a mistake. This was about resurrecting whatever was left after a lifetime of bad decisions.
While this was far from the kind of welcome she’d dared imagine, Amber straightened her frame, lifted her chin and said, ‘I’ve come to see you.’
‘Why?’ Again, no accusing tone, just curiosity.
‘To talk.’
Cheryl said nothing and Amber continued the daunting walk, passing the dented tin letterbox, the familiar, now faded, family of garden gnomes, and a healthy-looking vegetable garden—the type that only came from love and care and the perfect north-east aspect of the Baileys’ front yard. A cat, overweight but happy, wound itself around Amber’s ankles, repeating its furry figure eights much to her annoyance. She didn’t particularly like cats, or dogs for that matter. All that hair and constant whining for attention. Animals had no place in Amber’s world.
Well, not until yesterday!
‘Molly likes you,’ Cheryl said. ‘You’d better come in and have a cup of tea.’
Tea? Amber wanted to ask. Since when? Instead, she stepped over the cat and whispered, ‘Thanks for the welcome, puss,’ as she walked the five steps up to the tessellated tile landing and through the front door. The wooden screen door snapped shut behind her and she jumped as if something was nipping her heels. Silly really. She should have been used to it. It was the sound of her father storming out of the house, her mother’s garbled warning, ‘And don’t slam the … BANG!’
Amber’s edginess wasn’t about the bang of a screen door at all, but the unexpected lack of nostalgia as she stepped inside the house. She’d expected a rush of memories from the sad, lifeless interior of her childhood. This house was far from lifeless, or sad.
‘Can I help with the tea?’ she asked from the doorway.
Cheryl Bailey shook her head and disappeared into the kitchen, leaving Amber to contemplate the vaguely familiar surroundings. Ribbon now held back drapes that had once stayed drawn to make day night, and in place of the La-Z-Boy recliner with its cracked and dented vinyl was a floral-covered settee with matching armchairs and a neat row of decorator cushions. The chunky old television her mother had found preferable to conversation about her daughter’s day at school was gone. In its place were a desk and computer, neatly set in the corner. There was no television, just a simple but smart sun-filled room with framed needlecraft on the walls, fresh flowers in a vase, a full bookcase and a sad few framed photographs on the little chiffonier Amber remembered.
Cheryl was pouring tea
into an infuser and setting a tray with cups and saucers as Amber moved into the archway to the kitchen.
‘Black for me,’ she said, taking in the dried herbs and seasonings on a shelf above the sink.
And she cooks!
‘The house looks good,’ Amber added. ‘I hardly recognised the place.’
‘Oh? Is that right?’ Cheryl didn’t turn around, concentrating on the tea. ‘And I hardly recognised you. I did hear you’d arrived in town, though.’
Guilt heated Amber’s cheeks for the second time that morning. Of course her mother would have heard.
Cheryl must have noticed Amber peering at the glass of the oven door, because she laughed.
‘You won’t find anything hidden in there anymore,’ she said, referring to more than one Coolabah cask that had been accidently baked at 180 degrees when she preheated the oven. ‘As a matter of fact you won’t find anything anywhere. It’s tea or tea these days. Has been for a while. Are you staying long?’ She indicated for Amber to sit in one of the two chairs at the small wicker dining table and set down the tray.
‘I’ll pour,’ Amber said, not knowing how to feel about her mother’s question. Did Cheryl mean now, as in how long was she planning to stay today? Should she rush to drink her tea and go? Or was her mother asking how long she planned on staying in Calingarry Crossing? Either way, did she want Amber to stay?
‘A half cup for me, thanks.’ Cheryl tidied a few items at the centre of the table and Amber spotted the small purple puffer she concealed in one hand.
Looking at her mother properly for the first time, she noticed the short, shallow emphysemic breaths from a lifetime of cigarettes. Aside from that, Cheryl looked surprisingly well, with a healthy makeup-free glow, bright eyes and a thick, bouncy mop of wavy grey hair falling around her face and sitting neatly below her ears.
‘I can’t remember who told me you’d be coming home,’ Cheryl said.
Home.
Even spoken by her mother, the word remained sadly unfamiliar to Amber.
‘How have you been?’ Amber asked, trying not to stare at her mother’s tremor that explained the need for a half-full cup of hot tea. ‘Are you—?’
‘Happy? Hurt? Disappointed?’ The rapid fire of words held no emotion. ‘I feel all those things,’ Cheryl said. ‘It depends on the day.’
‘Is that all? Aren’t you angry?’ Amber instantly regretted her words when the woman let her cup land heavily on the saucer.
She had her daughter’s attention.
‘Isn’t that enough? I won’t be angry or resentful. They are wasted emotions. And I am not weak either, not anymore. So …’ She forced a sigh, pressing her body to the back of the dining chair and crossing her arms over her chest.
Cold? Concealing her shakes? Protecting herself, perhaps? Amber couldn’t know which. She couldn’t know anything about this new improved version of her mother.
Cheryl squared her shoulders to stare directly at Amber. ‘Now we’ve got that straight, tell me why you’ve agreed to come back for that old house of Gypsy’s, when you already have so much. What do you hope it will give you?’ Cheryl left no time for an answer, flapping a Just forget it hand in Amber’s direction. ‘Oh dear, listen to me! You’re not two minutes in the door and I’m interrogating you.’
‘It’s okay. I’ve asked myself the same question a hundred times, and I shouldn’t have dropped in unannounced. Sorry. That wasn’t very polite.’
Amber noticed the wryness in her mother’s small smile; lips no longer forced to be Fuchsia Pink or Candy Coral. She was giving her daughter one of those looks, as if Amber was still ten.
‘What?’ she demanded, irked by the shaking of Cheryl’s head and the obvious holding back of her smile.
‘Oh, I was just thinking. I’m not sure when anyone announced themselves before dropping in around here, that’s all.’ After another sip of tea she added, ‘I’m sorry. I should’ve offered you something to have with your tea. I baked scones yesterday. Would you like—’
‘No, thanks, I don’t need anything. Just tea is perfectly fine.’
There had been more apologies flying around the room than flies on a Calingarry Crossing Christmas dinner, the silence now thick as they sipped their tea.
Cheryl at last eyed the wall clock over the rim of her teacup, saying, ‘Well then …’
‘Yes, I … I should go.’ Amber rose quickly and collected her handbag from where she’d dropped it at the foot of the chiffonier by the front door like she’d once done with her schoolbag. Something made her hesitate: the memory of her schoolbag, or waiting for her mother to say stay. ‘Maybe …’ Amber turned back to Cheryl, still seated at the table. ‘Maybe we can do lunch or something—sometime. Just a thought.’
Cheryl didn’t answer and Amber’s heart sank a little. What had she been thinking just turning up like this? Twenty years ago she and her father had walked away, happy to lump the blame on the weakest member of the family.
‘If you’d rather not … I … I’d understand.’
‘No!’ Cheryl coughed, flattened a hand against her chest, her struggle to catch her breath painfully obvious. ‘I’m feeling a little overwhelmed. That’s all. Perhaps you need to give me a couple of days.’
Amber’s stomach pitched. Remorse or relief, she didn’t know.
‘Of course,’ she said, noticing the gold-coated plastic picture frames on the chiffonier. There were three, positioned on a lace doily and in a semi-circle around a vase of white Marguerite daisies. One picture was almost the same as the nameplates she’d seen on the four bedroom doors at Gypsy’s: a child’s drawing of stick figures, hands linked in a simplistic view of a happy family. The other two frames held photographs. One was a faded black and white image showing three babies, the oldest one propped up on a cushion between two newborns. One baby she recognised, the fuzzy halo of hair clearly her own.
‘I don’t remember seeing this photo before. Who are the others?’ The look on Cheryl’s face showed a mind struggling for an answer, then pain. Amber recognised the expression. Not so long ago she had seen it on her own face each time she looked in the mirror, before the Botox stopped her showing much expression at all. ‘Is he one of them?’ Amber persisted, picking up the other framed picture of a boy of about ten or twelve, with curly red hair and big blue eyes. ‘Who is he?’
Any pain Amber had thought she’d seen in her mother’s face evaporated.
‘He’s my saviour.’ Cheryl beamed.
‘Your—?’
‘Oh not like that!’ her mother clucked. ‘I haven’t quite turned to God. But in a way this little one did save my life.’ She moved quickly over to the display and took the picture back, touching it devotedly. ‘A friend showed me a photograph of a young boy living on a cattle station out west. He has the most amazing red curls and big blue eyes—the kind of face that makes you smile, don’t you think?’ Cheryl repositioned the frame with the same precision afforded a prized masterpiece and fussed with the flowers. ‘Anyway, the boy had never been away from his family’s property, no friends or kids his own age to play with, nothing other than the School of the Air. So I raised money to sponsor a trip from there to here so he could experience a regular school like other children. I’ve taken the boy in on three occasions so far. Well, me and the ladies from the CWA. That reminds me, I must sell you some jams sometime. I have a new batch ready to go for the Calingarry Crossing Easter Fair next week.’
Jams?
Easter Fair?
Her mother was now a sober, scone-baking, jam-making CWA member?
‘I’d be happy to buy some … jams from you. Maybe I can drop by again in a couple of days.’ Silence. ‘Or not.’
‘No, no, of course, of course,’ Cheryl finally said, and Amber knew then that mother and daughter did indeed share something—the same coolness and contrition, the same aversion to affection.
‘Good. Well then, I should go. I have a few appointments.’ She wasn’t about to tell her mother she had c
hooks to feed and troughs to fill.
‘So, you’re staying at Gypsy’s old place on your own?’
‘Not by choice. The will requires the four of us to spend time out there alone. We apparently get together at the end for reasons still unclear to me. Not that I can see us doing that too easily. Why we weren’t just allowed to sell the place without this whole—’
‘You mean all three of you will be together?’ Concern wrinkled Cheryl’s brow. ‘You mean Sara, Poppy and—’
‘Not three. There’s four. Remember Caitlin?’ Amber corrected. ‘It’s been left to the four of us. Sara, Poppy, me, and—’
‘Caitlin. Oh yes. Dr Wynter’s girl,’ her mother said dreamily, as if weighed down by a load of memories. ‘Have you seen them … the girls? How are they? Well, I hope. I saw Sara working at Will’s café. What a pretty girl. I always knew she would be once she broke out of her cocoon. She looked happy.’
‘I can’t say I know,’ Amber said, her tone steely. ‘They all looked fine to me.’
As am I, thanks for asking, she wanted to add.
Instead, Amber buried her irritation at her mother’s interest in old friends and said sarcastically, ‘I was also fine until I discovered Gypsy’s place came with a farmyard full of animals. Do you know there are still chickens and sheep and God knows what else out there?’
Her mother wouldn’t know about the Dandelion House. Her husband’s intense dislike for Gypsy, who he claimed selfishly sat on acres she’d never use, had meant a subservient Cheryl would never have ventured there. For the most part, her mother remained blissfully ignorant of the goings on around town. At least that’s what Amber remembered.
‘Perhaps I know someone who can help out with the animals,’ Cheryl offered.
‘You do? Really?’ Amber pounced on the suggestion. ‘Like a farmhand, you mean? Fabulous. Have you got their number? I’ll pay them whatever it takes. Money’s not an issue.’ Amber cringed, and Cheryl’s smirk said her snobbery hadn’t gone unnoticed.
House for All Seasons Page 28
