by Liz Byrski
‘So, there it is,’ she says finally. ‘I’m coming to terms with it, trying not to reproach myself, and to remember that the shame lies with him. That’s hard when each time I think of him it is as he was on that last day. Trivialising me, dismissing my reactions, my questions, and failing to accept any responsibility. He reduced me so much. Shame is a limpet, it clings on contact and hangs on. It is so hard to break free from it.’
‘You were in love, Polly,’ Joyce says. ‘You were authentic, which, as you told him so clearly, he was not. You followed your heart and that takes courage, especially at our age. I am so sorry you’ve been so hurt, but you have nothing to be ashamed of.’
They talk on and eventually Polly slides off her stool. ‘Thanks for listening, Joyce. I’m so glad I’ve told you at last. Would you tell Mac and Gemma for me?’
‘Of course.’ Joyce puts the mugs in the sink, walks towards the door with her. ‘Not long now,’ she says. ‘In one way it’s lovely having Gem and Nick here, but we’ve grown accustomed to having the house to ourselves, and so it all seems a bit much. Lord knows what it’ll be like when the twins arrive. Nick wanted them to rent a place, but Gem wants to be nearby. I think she’s more anxious than she appears.’
Polly stops at the kitchen doorway and turns back. ‘D’you think they’d like to stay in Stella’s house? Or would that feel odd? I mean, it has everything they’d need, all the furniture, crockery, linen, everything still there . . .’
Joyce stares at her in silence. ‘Stella’s house?’
‘Well yes, why not? I should have thought of it before. It would give you all some space but they’d be right next door.’
Joyce’s jaw drops. ‘Really? You wouldn’t mind?’
‘Of course not, I’d love it. I hate it being empty, have done since the day Stella went to hospital, but I haven’t known what to do with it. If you think they’d like it, they could stay there for as long as they want.’
They step outside the back door and Joyce closes her eyes, takes a deep breath. ‘It would be the perfect solution. Gemma’s always loved that house.’
‘Well then . . .’ Polly begins.
‘Joyce! Joyce!’ Mac calls suddenly, appearing at the side-gate to Stella’s garden. ‘Come quickly, Joyce, Gemma’s in labour.’
They run down the back steps, across the terrace and in through the gate, looking around them.
‘Quick,’ Mac calls from the studio doorway. ‘I’ve called the ambulance. I was in the garage and Marla called me. She’s in the classroom with Gemma, they were repairing some of the textbooks and Gemma’s waters broke.’
Polly sees that the colour has drained from Joyce’s face. She hesitates at the door and Polly puts her hand on her back. ‘Go on, Joyce,’ she says, ‘you can do this.’ And she pushes open the door and Joyce walks into the classroom.
Mac catches Polly’s arm. ‘What should I do?’
Polly stops, looks at him. ‘You’re asking me? Crikey . . . um . . . well, clean towels, I should think, lots of them. Boiling water – I’ll boil the urn in there, you do the kettle and some saucepans – and loo rolls probably, lots, for mopping up the . . . well the . . .’
‘The blood,’ Mac says. ‘I’m onto it.’
Polly takes a deep breath and pushes open the door.
Gemma is on her hands and knees, panting in unison with Marla, who is on her knees alongside her. On her other side, Joyce, also kneeling, is making comforting noises and rubbing Gemma’s back. ‘Any sign of the ambulance?’ she calls to Polly, who goes back out of the door across the front garden and into the street, scanning it in both directions.
‘Nothing yet,’ she says.
‘You forget ambulance,’ Marla says, ‘these baby don’t wait for no ambulance. They be borned in this classroom. Come now, Gemma, when I tell you push, you gotta push . . . steady now . . . wait . . . wait . . . now push.’
And with a scream that makes Polly’s blood run cold, Gemma pushes, and pushes, then pushes some more.
*
‘I see you’ve got new neighbours,’ Dennis says. ‘Met them yet?’
‘Not yet,’ Mac says, snapping the top off a beer and handing it to him. ‘They moved in on Monday, only saw them from a distance. Youngish, they look. About time, the place has been empty for more than a year.’ He raises his beer. ‘So, two granddaughters, what d’you reckon?’
‘I reckon it’s bloody marvellous. They’re very small, though, aren’t they? Do you think that’s okay?’
‘I think we’ve just forgotten how tiny ours were,’ Mac says. ‘These girls are fine. The hospital wouldn’t have let Gemma bring them home if not. Cheers – I think this makes us grandfathers-in-law.’
‘Cheers. You don’t think they’ll give them silly names, do you?’
‘Like what?’
‘Well, Beyoncé or Taylor or what’s that other one, comes from Cyprus. . . Oh I know, Mileage.’
‘Mileage?’ Mac says, shaking his head, then gives a sudden snort of laughter. ‘D’you mean Miley Cyrus?’
‘That’s her. Fancy calling your kid Miley or Beyoncé.’
‘I doubt that either of those is on the cards,’ Mac says.
‘I’m glad we got the house ready in time for them,’ Dennis says, leaning back in the big cane chair on the terrace. ‘I thought they’d keep Gemma and the babies in hospital longer, it was a bit of a rush, but we’re pretty good at this decoration and renovation lark now. A crash team.’
‘You’re not half as glad as I am,’ Mac says, laughing. ‘I was working out how to soundproof our bedroom. I’m too bloody old for night-time feeds and teething.’
‘I wish Helen was here,’ Dennis says suddenly. ‘Not with me, I don’t mean that. I just wish she could’ve seen Nick and Gemma together. She always said they’d end up together. Said they were made for each other.’ He shakes his head. ‘I just wish she could see them now, with the baby girls.’
*
‘Estelle is such a lovely name,’ Polly says as a tiny hand grasps at her finger.
‘It is a lovely name,’ Joyce says, ‘but that’s actually Helen.’
‘I don’t think so,’ Polly says. ‘This one is Stella’s namesake.’
Joyce shakes her head. ‘Polly . . . I’m her grandmother. I can recognise my own granddaughters.’
Polly laughs. ‘I know you recognise them, Joyce, but you can’t tell one from the other.’
‘And you can?’ Joyce sounds a little affronted.
‘I can because I am the godmother to both of them, and I’ve memorised Gemma’s instructions on distinguishing marks. Estelle has a small mole on the back of her neck.’
‘Yes, I know that,’ Joyce turns the baby on her side and puts on her glasses, ‘and I think you’ll find that . . . uh-oh! Sorry, you’re right. This is Helen.’
Marla laughs out loud. ‘You two, so funny.’
‘I hope you dames aren’t squabbling,’ Gemma says, appearing in the doorway. ‘Look, I was taking the stuff out of the top of Stella’s wardrobe, and on the very top shelf I found this.’ She walks into the room, kneels down on the floor, and puts a large photo album, bound in faded red leather, onto the coffee table. ‘It was tucked away, right up the top at the back.’
‘I remember Stella looking for this album,’ Joyce says.
‘Me too,’ Polly says. ‘I think she was looking for photographs of Annie at the time, or her aunt Nancy.’ She takes the album from Gemma, and opens it to a photograph of a slim, attractive woman, hair piled on top of her head, holding the hand of a small, plump girl in a smocked dress, standing outside this house. The child’s head is tilted to one side, her face screwed up against the light. In one hand she holds a toy sized trowel, and her knees and socks are grubby with earth.
‘Stella with Nancy,’ Polly says, choking back a sob. ‘Look at her, she looks so grumpy,
she always hated gardening.’
‘I bet she was a real handful as a kid,’ Joyce says.
And they turn the pages slowly, watching as Stella grows through adolescence and teenage years to a twenty-first birthday party, as she poses with Annie on the Manly ferry, to her first leading role on stage at His Majesty’s theatre, to leading roles, taking a bow, in Paris with Annie and . . .
‘Oh my god!’ Polly says suddenly, at a shot of a very young Stella, backstage, laughing, clutching a bouquet, and alongside her, a man. An older, debonair looking man with a fine black moustache. ‘It’s him, that’s Neville Sachs.’
And they pore over the photograph, Polly, Joyce, Gemma and Marla.
‘So what is this man?’ Marla asks.
The others exchange a glance. ‘A bastard,’ they say in unison.
And Marla laughs. ‘They everywhere,’ she says. ‘All over the world.’
Polly rocks back on her heels, still studying the photographs. ‘She had such an extraordinary life,’ she says. ‘And so did Annie, who of course was better known than Stella and died in her early sixties. In fact,’ she hesitates, a shiver of excitement running through her, ‘I could write their stories, two friends, both actors, eccentric, talented women who made it in the theatre and on the screen. This is it, this is what I need to do next.’
*
‘I can’t believe that I got so caught up in Leo that I didn’t even see the story in front of me,’ Polly says later that evening when she and Joyce are sitting out by Joyce’s pool, wrapped in big scarves, gazing up at the clear sky of a mid-winter night.
‘Sometimes the most precious things are right under our noses,’ Joyce says. ‘Those small things that matter so much, the things you can barely put into words, a moment, a feeling, a glimpse of the past, and suddenly it all falls into place. And you see the whole picture. Sometimes what we need is right in front of us and it just takes time to recognise it.’
They sit there in silence until a sound floats out on the still air, the sound of a baby crying, softly at first but soon gathering volume and energy, and then another baby starts. A light goes on in Stella’s house, and then another.
‘Hmm,’ Polly says, ‘they’ve got fine pairs of lungs, your granddaughters.’
‘They sure have,’ Joyce says. ‘But you need to remember that when they wake half the neighbourhood at night, they’re your goddaughters. It’s when they are being adorable and perfect – that’s when they’re my granddaughters. Time for bed, I think, and I don’t feel in the least bit guilty.’
*
On a bright, cold morning a couple of weeks later, Gemma, having struggled with the seemingly endless morning routine of feeding, winding, washing and dressing the babies, perches briefly on the edge of a chair at the kitchen table and tucks into a bowl of muesli, as her daughters are falling asleep. It’s ten-thirty and she’s already exhausted. A shower if I’m lucky, she thinks, and maybe if they’re still asleep, I might get an hour of sleep myself. But by the time she is showered and dressed, little grunts and moans from Helen, the more restless of the two, tell her that there will be no peace this morning.
‘I think we’ll go for a walk,’ she says, picking Helen up and kissing her, just as Estelle starts waving her arms and kicking.
She wraps them warmly, puts them into the pusher, and makes her way out through the front door, down the path and turns right at the gate. Ahead of her she sees someone coming out of the house where Nick’s family used to live.
‘Signs of life,’ she murmurs to the twins. ‘Interesting.’
The woman is backing out of the front door, just as she does, manoeuvring a pusher down the steps.
‘Hello,’ Gemma says, stopping at the end of the path.
‘Oh hi!’ the woman says.
She looks younger than me, Gemma thinks, and fitter. ‘I’m Gemma,’ she says, ‘next door but one.’ And she points back to Stella’s house. ‘How’s it going, settling in all right?’
‘Sort of,’ the woman says. ‘But I don’t think a new house and a new baby are an ideal combination. I’m Stephanie, by the way. Oh my god, you’ve got twins, they’re gorgeous. But however do you cope?’
‘Who says I’m coping?’ Gemma says. ‘But I’m lucky, my mum lives here, and she points to Joyce and Mac’s house.’
‘Lucky you. My mum lives in Barcelona with her third husband.’
They both laugh.
‘You walking this way?’
Stephanie nods. ‘Yep, to the bakery on South Terrace.’
‘Me too.’
They walk in silence for a moment.
‘I’m so glad we’ve met,’ Stephanie says. ‘I was feeling a bit bleak, not knowing anyone. My husband’s away quite a lot.’
Gemma smiles. ‘Then you’ve come to the right place,’ she says. ‘You’ll be fine here, we’re big on neighbours in Emerald Street.’
Acknowledgements
Cate Paterson you are a legend! Thank you for rescuing me when I was drowning. Special thanks too to Mathilda Imlah for coming in at a late stage with wise and thoughtful suggestions and, as always, to Jo Jarrah for applying her forensic editing skills to get me out of trouble. And to all the staff at Pan Macmillan who work so hard to turn a story into a book and get it out there on the shelves. You are simply the best.
About Liz Byrski
Liz Byrski is the author of eight novels and a number of non-fiction books, the latest of which is In Love and War: Nursing Heroes.
She has worked as a freelance journalist, a broadcaster with ABC Radio and an advisor to a minister in the Western Australian Government. Liz has a PhD in writing from Curtin University where she is the Director of the China Australia Writing Centre.
www.lizbyrski.com
Also by Liz Byrski
Fiction
Family Secrets
In the Company of Strangers
Last Chance Café
Bad Behaviour
Trip of a Lifetime
Belly Dancing for Beginners
Food, Sex & Money
Gang of Four
Non-fiction
Getting On: Some Thoughts on Women and Ageing
MORE BESTSELLING FICTION FROM LIZ BYRSKI
Family Secrets
When patriarch Gerald Hawkins passes away in his Tasmanian home after ten years of serious illness, his family experiences a wave of grief and, admittedly, a surge of relief. Gerald’s dominating personality has loomed large over his wife Connie and their children, Andrew and Kerry, for most of their lives.
Connie, whose own dreams were dispensed with upon marriage, is now determined to renew her long friendship with Gerald’s estranged sister. She travels to France where she finds Flora struggling to make peace with the past and searching for a place to call home. Meanwhile Andrew’s marriage is crumbling, and Kerry is trapped in stasis by unfinished business with her father.
As the family adjusts to life after Gerald, they could not be more splintered. But there are surprises in store and secrets to unravel. And once the loss has been absorbed, is it possible that they could all find a way to start afresh with forgiveness, understanding and possibility? Or is Gerald’s legacy too heavy a burden to overcome?
PRAISE FOR LIZ BYRSKI
‘Her plots and characters get stronger with each book’
THE SYDNEY MORNING HERALD
‘Liz Byrski has a guaranteed cheer squad for her novels which champion...women taking charge of their life and growing old creatively’
DAILY TELEGRAPH
In the Company of Strangers
Ruby and Cat’s friendship was forged on an English dockside over sixty years ago when, both fearful, they boarded a ship bound for Australia. It was a friendship that was supposed to last a lifetime but when news of Cat’s death reaches Ruby back in London, it comes a
fter a painful estrangement.
Declan has also drifted away from Cat, but he is forced back to his aunt’s lavender farm, Benson’s Reach, when he learns that he and Ruby are co-beneficiaries.
As these two very different people come together in Margaret River they must learn to trust each other and to deal with the staff and guests. Can the legacy of Benson’s Reach triumph over the hurt of the past? Or is Cat’s duty-laden legacy simply too much for Ruby and Declan to keep alive?
‘Liz Byrski is a writer, journalist and academic with a solid and growing reputation as a writer of accessible fiction about women in their later years, and her plots and characters get stronger with each book.’ THE CANBERRA TIMES
Last Chance Café
Margot detests shopping malls. Any distraction is welcome, and the woman who has chained herself to the escalator, shouting about the perils of consumerism, is certainly that. She recognises Dot immediately – from their campaigning days, and further back still, to when Margot married Laurence.
Dot is in despair at the abandonment of the sisterhood, at the idea of pole dancing as empowerment and the sight of five-year-olds with false eyelashes and padded bras. She’s still a fierce campaigner, but she isn’t sure where to direct her rage.
Meanwhile Margot holds a haunting resentment that her youthful ambitions have always been shelved to attend to the needs of others. And as the two women turn to the past for solutions for the future, Margot’s family is in crisis. Laurence travels in a bid to repress his grief, daughter Lexie loses her job after twenty years, and her younger sister Emma hides her pain with shopping binges.
With aching empathy, Liz Byrski assembles a fallible cast of characters who are asking the questions we ask ourselves. What does it mean to grow older? Are we brave enough to free ourselves from the pressure to stay young? And is there ever a stage in life when we can just be ourselves?
