Food, Sex & Money

by Liz Byrski

  ‘I came to tell you,’ Caro said, stretching out among her mother’s discarded clothes with an infuriating air of satisfaction, ‘that I won’t have a taut midriff much longer because I’m pregnant. Mike and I are having a baby.’

  In the restaurant car park Fran stared at herself in the driving mirror. Her face was still essence of beetroot; the gym, the unseasonal heat, her own bad timing and Caro’s news had all conspired to ensure that she would arrive looking like one of those rosy-cheeked Russian dolls that were as broad as they were tall and contained two other dolls within them. Surely the air conditioning would be good here? She’d reviewed this place once years ago for Eating Out magazine, and remembered saying it was pretentious and overpriced, but did that also mean cool?

  Fran felt a mix of excitement and anxiety. It wasn’t that she didn’t want to be a grandmother, but it had come as such a surprise – a shock, really. And while part of her was thrilled at the prospect of a baby, she couldn’t help wondering if her daughter was really ready for motherhood; maturity seemed to be a long time coming. Caro and Mike had met ten years ago when they were both eighteen, and they’d been together ever since. Fran was constantly surprised that the relationship had survived the residual streak of adolescence that was a particularly annoying aspect of Caro’s personality. She foresaw chaos, more chaos than usual, and that was really saying something.

  She pressed a cooling Wet One on her forehead and glowing cheeks, wondering if she had arrived last or if she’d wait a bit longer in the car before going in, wondering what Sylvia would be wearing; something tailored probably, subtle colours, and not new. Even at school she’d had just a few carefully chosen and well-cared-for outfits that never seemed to crease. She’d never had any money to spare but her mother had been a dressmaker, and Sylvia had started designing and making her own clothes at the age of thirteen and had always looked good. As for Bonnie, she’d probably be wearing one of those classic suits, with an edge-to-edge jacket, very European and costing a fortune. Ah well, that was Bonnie, the rich widow now, which was probably why she picked this restaurant, with no idea how ill-equipped she and Sylvia were to pay for it.

  A silver grey BMW slid into the shade in the far corner of the car park and Fran’s heartbeat quickened. This was the sort of car that Bonnie would have, not a middle-aged Camry stuffed with old issues of Gourmet Traveller and Eating Out and Eating In and a bin bag full of clothes she ought to drop off to the Salvos. A man in a dark business suit got out of the BMW and strolled into the restaurant. So it wasn’t Bonnie’s, after all. A trickle of sweat crept down the middle of Fran’s back. It was too hot to stay in the car. She swung the door open and stepped out, looking anxiously towards the restaurant. There was still time to pop into the toilets to check her appearance. And at least she’d have exciting news, something more interesting than the usual sagas about the agonies of freelancing, attempts at weight loss, and buying clothes that might one day fit but never actually did. She wondered if Sylvia was a grandmother yet. A grandmother! Now, that was dignified. No reasonable woman would refer to a grandmother as Podge. Fran locked the car and headed up the steps into the restaurant.

  Sylvia had arrived at the restaurant twenty minutes early and was relieved to have time to sit alone at the window table that Bonnie had reserved, gazing out over the river, trying to calm herself. The morning had been so appalling that she had barely given a thought to meeting the others again. She had thrown on her black linen dress and stormed out of the house, leaving Colin standing open mouthed in the bedroom, almost white with shock. Sylvia could see it all in her mind like a scene from a movie; she was in the bedroom searching for something to wear and Colin had wandered in to change for the Dean’s lunch.

  ‘We should leave at twelve,’ he said, stepping into his black trousers and watching himself in the mirror as he did up his fly.

  ‘I told you last week,’ Sylvia said, ‘I’m not going. I’ve got other plans.’

  He looked up in alarm. ‘But whatever will they think? After all, Bill is the Dean and this lunch is especially for the senior clergy and their wives.’

  ‘I’m sure they’ll understand,’ Sylvia had said, containing her impatience by brushing her hair vigorously, twisting it up and fixing it at the back of her head with a large tortoiseshell clip. ‘Just explain that I’ve a previous arrangement for lunch with friends whom I haven’t seen for thirty-seven years.’

  ‘But they’re expecting you.’

  ‘They’re only expecting me because you accepted the invitation on my behalf after I’d told you that I was meeting Bonnie and Fran. This reunion has been arranged for four weeks, it’s been marked on the kitchen calendar and the one in your study, but you ignored it thinking you could pressure me into going to this thing at the Deanery. Well, you can’t!’

  Colin, struggling to fix the stud on a clean dog collar, adopted the injured, sulky look that he had perfected for occasions when he wanted to pressure her into doing something he considered was the province of a Canon’s wife. ‘That thing in your hair looks like a giant bulldog clip,’ he grunted. ‘You are so unreasonable, Syl. Why can’t you come to lunch today and meet your friends another time? Surely it’s not too much to ask?’

  It was at this point that the mind movie went into slow motion and Sylvia saw herself swing round, grab the Lladro shepherdess and hurl it across the room so that it hit the door frame and smashed onto the floor. She had never actually thrown anything before, although frustration had often taken her dangerously close to it. She wasn’t sure now whether she had meant just to throw it, or to throw it at Colin. The moment, thirty-two years earlier, when he had given it to her for their fifth wedding anniversary, flashed briefly before her eyes as they both gazed at the shards of pale blue, grey and white porcelain scattered across the polished floorboards.

  ‘Yes, it is!’ she said in a low and dangerous voice. ‘It is too much to ask. I spend every damn day being Mrs Reverend Canon Colin Fleming. Well, today’s different; today I’m Sylvia, Sylvia Lowry, and I’m doing something I want to do, so you can just stuff the Dean’s lunch wherever you wish to stuff it.’ And reaching out for the string of amber beads, she slipped them over her head. ‘I’ll be back late this afternoon, and you can tell the Dean and his apostles that it’s your own stupid fault that led them to expect me in the first place.’ And, grabbing her bag from the bedpost, she swept out of the bedroom.

  ‘What about the Lladro?’ Colin called lamely. ‘I bought you that.’

  ‘Yes, and you can clear it up,’ she said, slamming the front door behind her.

  The restaurant was deliciously cool with pristine white linen, sparkling crystal and deferential waitstaff who kept refilling her glass with iced water. It was much more formal and expensive than the sort of place that Sylvia usually went to eat, either with Colin or with friends, and the calm elegance was just what she needed. Trust Bonnie to book somewhere like this. Normally Sylvia would have balked at the price but this was a special occasion, more special, actually, since the Lladro incident. Bonnie had probably given little thought to the cost, anyway; she had doubtless spent much of her life in expensive European restaurants while Jeff was alive.

  Sylvia wondered briefly what it felt like to be a widow and flushed at the realisation that the only emotion she could summon at the prospect was one of relief. Surely she didn’t wish Colin dead? No! No, of course not, she just wished that she wasn’t married to him and to the tedious, seemingly endless responsibilities of a clergy wife. Smashing the Lladro was a reaction to more than three decades of faithful, albeit resentful, service to his career choice – or vocation, as he liked to call it. The waiter filled Sylvia’s glass again and she smiled her thanks, sipped the icy water, and then took a long deep breath and exhaled slowly, trying to breathe away her tension and concentrate on the occasion.

  Bonnie and Fran, what would they look like? She often read Fran’s column in the newspaper and it had a small, grainy portrait at the top. A few times Sy
lvia had considered calling her or sending a note to her at the newspaper but had always backed off. Fran was obviously successful and busy and probably wouldn’t want to be bothered, and Sylvia dreaded the prospect of being ignored or getting a dismissive response. But she’d really longed to make contact. They’d been best friends, after all, and that was why she’d registered with the website; maybe, she thought, one of them would go online and register too. It took almost two years and she’d forgotten about it until a few weeks earlier, when there’d been a message from Bonnie.

  Bonnie – elegant as ever, no doubt, oozing European chic. Jeff had made a fortune and his death in January had been all over the business pages, alongside incomprehensible graphs showing what effect it was having on the share prices of the international merchant bank he had headed. And now here was Bonnie, a widow, presumably a very rich widow, home in Australia, living with her mother in that lovely old house in Gardenvale, where the three of them used to sit in the apple tree and speculate about which one would be the first to get a proper tongue kiss.

  Sylvia leaned back in her chair feeling a little more relaxed. It was twelve-thirty, they’d be here any minute – well, no, not Fran of course, she would be late. Fran was always late. And as she glanced up, Sylvia saw a woman hesitate at the entrance to the restaurant; a woman of medium height, with short, beautifully cut dark hair, dressed in cream linen. Sylvia gasped in shock because the woman was in her fifties and she had been expecting someone in her twenties. She stood to greet her and saw the same time-lapse surprise cross Bonnie’s face as she made her way to the table.

  Irene Masters sat in the living room in her favourite chair, listening as her daughter started the car, reversed down the drive and out into the street. She sat tense and upright, waiting for the pause as Bonnie changed gear and accelerated up the hill, then, with a sigh of relief, Irene leaned back and closed her eyes, relishing the stillness of the house. She had the place to herself at last, for – what? Three hours at least, maybe more. It seemed like the greatest luxury. Irene thought ruefully of the selfishly peaceful years she had spent alone in this house, reading, sewing, pottering around doing jobs, listening to music, playing the piano, entertaining her friends, without ever fully appreciating the joys of solitude. But in the three months that Bonnie had been home Irene never seemed to get any time to herself.

  It wasn’t that she didn’t love her daughter, and she was delighted to have her back after all those years on the other side of the world. It just seemed that Jeff’s death had led Bonnie to embark on a mission of looking after her mother. Perhaps it was to be expected, Irene reflected; for years Bonnie had focused her efforts on looking after Jeff, providing the sort of home where staff, business associates and clients could always expect a warm and gracious welcome. Now that he was gone she clearly needed another target for her energy. Once the funeral was over she had put the apartment in the hands of an agent and announced she was coming home to live.

  Bonnie hadn’t actually asked if she could come home but that, Irene thought, was understandable; it had been the family home for decades. She and Dennis had inherited it from his parents, their children had been born and lived here until Simon left at twenty-one, and two years later, Bonnie, by then also twenty-one, graduated from her accountancy training and moved into a shared apartment. The two of them had always treated it as home, coming and going when it suited them, until Bonnie married Jeff and went to Hong Kong and then to Europe. Simon had moved back when his marriage broke up and he had to sell his house. He was in his forties and ended up staying a couple of years. So it was natural for Bonnie to assume she could come back, and Irene had not been averse to the idea of their living together while Bonnie sorted out her future. But in the last few weeks it had become clear that Bonnie was home to stay.

  Irene got up, found her favourite CD, and skipped to the second movement of Rachmaninov’s second piano concerto. It always sent a shiver down her spine, transporting her back to the first time she heard it with Dennis, in the cinema when they went to see Brief Encounter. The trouble with Bonnie, Irene thought, was that she had never learned to love classical music. She treated it as background sound, turning the volume low and then talking over it. Sacrilege as far as Irene was concerned, and she turned the volume up now, letting the music take control of her, letting it blot out everything else until the concerto finished.

  What was she to do about Bonnie? Irene knew it made sense for them to share the house; she was, after all, eighty now and before long she might actually need to be looked after. But this wasn’t right, she wasn’t ready for it yet, and it wasn’t right for Bonnie either. She needed a life of her own. Irene knew several women of Bonnie’s age who were dreading the day when they might have to take on the care of one or both parents. But here was Bonnie hurling herself into it well before it was necessary. If Bonnie could live her own life while sharing the house Irene would have been delighted to have her there, but not like this; not this uneasy, unnecessary care relationship that Bonnie had established as soon as she set foot in the place.

  ‘It’s driving me right round the bend,’ Irene had told her friend Marjorie the previous day on the way home from their art class. ‘She won’t leave me alone, wants to cook for me, keeps asking me if I’m all right, wants me to go shopping with her. She’s never out of the house for more than an hour at a time and when she gets back she looks at me as though she’s wondering if I contracted some fatal disease while she was out. I just don’t know what I’m going to do.’

  ‘It’s early days yet,’ Marjorie said, pulling into the café car park. ‘Let’s go and have a cuppa. Sounds like she’s displacing the loss of Jeff onto you.’

  Irene nodded. ‘Yes, no more Jeff to look after so she’ll look after me instead.’

  ‘More than that,’ Marjorie said thoughtfully, locking the car door. ‘She’s lonely and frightened. Jeff’s been ripped away from her, now she’s worried that you’ll be next. Fairly natural, really, if you think about it. Simon’s dead, and Dennis, and … and she doesn’t have children of her own. And now Jeff. But the overprotectiveness must be a nightmare for you.’

  ‘It is, and I do understand the reasons,’ Irene said. ‘But you’re the analyst, what’s the answer? What am I to do?’

  ‘I was the analyst,’ Marjorie corrected her. ‘I’m retired now.’

  ‘You’re a Jungian, they never retire. Tell me what to do.’

  ‘We don’t tell our clients what to do, we encourage them to find their own solutions.’

  ‘Encourage me, then.’

  ‘Well,’ said Marjorie, selecting a corner table, ‘I think the answer could be in the Greek tour.’

  ‘The Greek tour?’

  ‘Yes, it’s twelve weeks and it is something you’ve always wanted to do. In fact, you only cried off because Bonnie was coming back and you weren’t sure how she’d be.’

  ‘You mean go on the tour after all and leave her in the house alone?’

  ‘Exactly. Come with us as planned. It’s enough time for her to feel the pinch and kick-start herself into something else, but not so long that she’ll get depressed.’

  ‘It seems a bit unkind,’ Irene said, ‘bearing in mind what you said just now. I am her mother, after all, maybe she needs me right now. Especially if she’s lonely.’

  ‘By the time we leave for Athens, Jeff will have been dead for five months, time enough for her to start to get a grip on her own life. This is not healthy, Irene, not healthy at all. You’re not geriatric yet, and you’ve been wanting to do this trip for years. It was your idea in the first place. Give yourself this chance, and you’ll be giving Bonnie a chance to find her own way too.’

  Irene hit repeat on the remote control and the concerto began again. Maybe Marjorie was right. Time alone might well be just what Bonnie needed, and the tour was certainly what she needed for herself. She had suggested it to the historical society and it had been planned at the pleasant meandering pace that would suit her perfect
ly. No one else had stepped up to fill the place she’d relinquished when Bonnie had called to say she was coming home. Maybe tomorrow she’d call the secretary and pop in with her deposit. Meanwhile, though, she’d make the most of having the house to herself for another couple of hours, make something for supper without Bonnie looking over her shoulder, trying to take over.

  Outside the window she could see the apple tree where Dennis had built the platform for them to sit and they had draped the surrounding branches with old curtains. Sylvia and Fran – such nice girls. Maybe they’d get Bonnie involved in something if Irene wasn’t around. The more she thought about it, the more Irene felt that the Greek tour might be the answer to her present delicate situation.

  ‘I’m home, Mum,’ Bonnie called. ‘Sorry to be so late …’ Her voice faded away as she popped her head around the living room door.

  ‘Mum! Mum? I’m home, where are you?’

  The house was incredibly still. The red light flashing on the CD player indicated that Irene had been listening to music and the frame that held her tapestry was pulled close to her chair. Bonnie felt the anxiety grip her as she ran through the dining room to the kitchen, and then up the stairs. She paused outside her mother’s bedroom door, wondering if she might be asleep, and then tapped gently. There was no sound. Bonnie opened the door slightly to find the room empty, the bed smooth and unruffled. She called out again, but as she ran back down the stairs, past the window on the half-landing, she noticed movement in the garden. Irene was picking her way over the stepping stones through the rose bed to the herb patch at the rear. Bonnie sighed with relief. Of course she was fine, just look at her now. Thank goodness she hadn’t rushed out there in a panic calling her – that wouldn’t have gone down at all well. She went on down the stairs and into the kitchen to switch on the kettle.

  ‘So, how was your lunch?’ Irene asked, putting some parsley and a few sprigs of rosemary on the kitchen table.