by Liz Byrski
‘I didn’t say much because I was so intimidated by you,’ Fran said, smiling at the irony of it.’You were so full-on, Lenore, that mask is one hundred per cent effective. I came out of that meeting needing artificial respiration. It’s really only since you arrived here that I’ve stopped being scared of you.’
They stared at each other in the half-light. ‘Well,’ said Lenore, ‘I still have a way to go with that.’ She laughed. ‘Hey, can you imagine two blokes doing this, talking to each other, admitting their insecurities?’
Fran shook her head. ‘No way. But I gave up trying to understand men years ago. Even the ones I like and love are like another species. Aren’t you glad you aren’t one?’
‘Ha!’ said Lenore, throwing back her head, the depth of her laughter caught in the wind. ‘Aren’t I just. Although I do envy the head start they seem to have with other women!’
FORTY
Lila was confused and rather irritated. This was the third – or was it the fourth? – time she had found herself in the garden in her nightdress in the middle of the night. She had no idea how long she’d been there. It was a bit of a worry, really: if you could wake up to find yourself in the garden you could, presumably, wake up and find yourself more or less anywhere. At the shops perhaps, or waiting at the bus stop. She sighed, looked around, noticed that she was holding an egg whisk. Now, why on earth … ? Oh well, maybe it didn’t matter too much. Good thing no one knew about it or they’d really think she’d lost it. There were a lot of funny things going on at the moment and Lila felt she needed to keep her wits about her. The family was all over the place, obviously; was it the Boatshed or the baby that had made everyone so odd and confused?
‘You remember Lenore, Mum,’ Fran had said a few days earlier, and this woman that Lila had never seen before waltzed in and gave her a red hat.
‘It’s smaller than your other one,’ the woman had said. ‘This might be better for the cooler weather, but I thought you’d like the net and the feathers.’ And she’d given Lila this very nice hat, a little red pillbox, not unlike the one she’d worn at Fran’s wedding, except that one had been pale blue. This one had a veil of speckled net at the front and three red feathers curled around the side. Avery nice hat, but what sort of behaviour was that, giving a red hat to a perfect stranger and saying that it was smaller than the one they already had?
Lila had pointed out, politely of course, that she didn’t own a red hat, and then Fran got all hot and bothered and made her go and look on the top shelf of her wardrobe, and there, to Lila’s great surprise, was a big red hat with a lot of chiffon on it. Gremlins, she thought, but Fran and the other woman had just smiled and asked her to try on the pillbox hat. Suddenly, family responsibility seemed to weigh heavy on Lila. She loved them all so much, but really – you sorted out one problem and then there’d be something else. Didn’t it ever stop?
Over in the corner of the garden, her scooter sat hunched and broody under its waterproof cover. Lila pulled off the cover and, putting the egg whisk in the basket, she climbed on. It was a beautiful clear night and quite mild now. Perhaps it wasn’t so bad being out here, after all, no harm in it. Lila leaned back in the comfortable circle of the seat and closed her eyes. It was nearly two weeks since she’d been out on the scooter. David had said there was something wrong with one of the tyres, and he’d taken it off and promised to get a new one. But it had happened the day after she lost her way back to the unit, and Lila had a sneaking suspicion that it was a plot hatched by Fran to stop her riding it at all.
She stood up for a moment, lifting the seat to get to the storage compartment, and took out a thing called a Walkman that David had given her for Christmas. He’d put in a cassette that had Marianne Faithfull on it singing the Lucy whatsit song; he’d recorded it for her, over and over again.
‘You can put the little earphones on and play it while you’re riding, Gran,’ he’d said.
And Fran had said, ‘Oh, for goodness sake, how will she hear the traffic, David? She might have an accident.’
‘I think she’ll be all right, Mum,’ David had said. ‘You’ll be all right, won’t you, Gran?’
‘Of course I will,’ Lila had said, putting on the earphones and waiting for David to show her how to switch on the music.
She put it on now and sat back in the delicious silence and stillness of the night, watching a shooting star flash across the sky, humming along with the cassette. In the past Lila hadn’t thought much of Lucy Jordan, believed she was a bit of a quitter. Now she could understand how Lucy might have felt. There was so much to do keeping everybody going, especially when they kept getting things mixed up. These days Lila sometimes thought it wouldn’t be too bad to climb up somewhere and be whisked off by the man in the big white car, or on a scooter even. It sounded rather liberating.
David pulled on his leather jacket and opened the front door, waiting for Jodie, who was searching for her phone.
‘C’mon, Jode,’ he called. ‘Let’s go.’
She emerged from the bedroom checking her battery and put the phone in her bag. ‘I don’t think I’ll stop for coffee this morning,’ she said, reaching up to kiss him. ‘My turn to go to Hawthorn.’
David glanced at his watch. ‘I can come with you, if you like. My first class isn’t till nine-thirty. You can drop me off at the tram on the way back.’ They made their way through the early traffic in the fine drizzle that had come with the dawn. Now the sun was breaking through with an almost blinding intensity.
‘She might remember you today,’ David said hopefully.
‘Don’t worry about it,’ Jodie said. ‘The main thing is that she always remembers you and Fran and Caro …’
‘And Rebekah, of course,’ he added. ‘She remembers Mike too, although she calls him Nick and thinks he’s a lawyer.’
Jodie shrugged. ‘Recent memory is always the first thing to go, Dave, she can’t help it. She and I got on well for a long time; you don’t have to feel offended for me, I’m not taking it personally.’
They parked in the drive and it was just turning eight o’clock when David knocked on the front door. Lila was always an early riser, awake by five and up and dressed by six, but there was no answer and the bedroom curtains were closed.
David felt a twinge of anxiety. ‘Round the back?’ he suggested, and went to the side gate, only to find it locked.
Jodie bent and peered through the letter box. ‘Hello, Mrs Whittaker,’ she called. ‘It’s David and Jodie.’
They stood side by side at the door, listening for sounds of movement within. David pulled a face and got out his key. Fran had given them all keys for use in an emergency and using his for the first time seemed like a horribly significant step.
‘Gran,’ he called, opening the door slightly. ‘Hi, Gran, are you there?’
‘Let me go first, Dave,’ Jodie said gently but firmly, moving past him into the house and making for the bedroom. He followed her cautiously, dreading what they might find, but the bed, which had obviously been slept in, was empty.
‘Must be out the back,’ he said with relief, looking through to the kitchen where the back door to the garden stood open. ‘Hey, Gran,’ he called, as he reached the open door, ‘it’s us, David and Jodie – ’ He stopped suddenly, captivated by the sight of Lila in her nightdress, sitting on the scooter, the Walkman in her lap, headphones on her ears, an egg whisk in the basket. ‘Ah, look Jode,’ he said, putting his hand on her shoulder. ‘There she is, she’s fine, she’s listening to her song.’ He made to cross the lawn but Jodie put her hand on his arm.
‘Let me go,’ she said.
He looked at her and then back again at Lila, and this time he saw the unnatural stillness, the rigid smile and the awkward tilt of her head. ‘No,’ he said firmly, holding up his hand to stop her, goose bumps rising on his skin. His shoes left flat dark prints on the silvery damp surface of the grass as he made his way towards her, and he reached out to touch her arm. Lila’s skin was co
ld, the sleeve of the nightdress soaked. ‘Gran,’ he whispered. ‘Oh no, Gran, please no.’ Her face and hair were coated with a misty glow of moisture that seemed suddenly to blaze with light as the sun emerged from the shadow of a cloud.
Leaning forward, David took the headphones from Lila’s ears and put the Walkman into the basket. Standing on the running board of the scooter, he bent over and kissed the cold, wrinkled cheek. ‘Oh, Gran,’ he whispered, ‘I’m so sorry. We should have been with you.’ He paused as the first tears began. ‘I love you. I don’t know if I ever told you that.’
‘She knew,’ Jodie said, gently touching his arm. ‘And she was so proud of you.’
He nodded, reaching out for her, sobs rising in his throat. ‘But I didn’t do enough. I wasn’t here, I was always going to spend more time with her, ask her things. But I just never did.’
‘We never do,’ Jodie said, holding him. ‘But she knew, just the same, she knew.’
As the organist began the first bars of the Twenty-third Psalm they rose to their feet, voices wavering at first then gradually coming together in greater harmony. Irene glanced at Bonnie, who was standing quietly beside her, hymn sheet in one hand but not singing, just staring ahead in silence. Three weeks earlier they had gone together to mass at the convent chapel, something they hadn’t done for decades. Bonnie had felt it was what she wanted and needed to do on the anniversary of Jeff’s death. It had surprised Irene; she couldn’t remember the last time she’d been to mass and she had found it profoundly moving.
She had been brought up a Catholic and for many years her faith had been central to her life, and part of the structure of her marriage to Dennis. But in the years since his death she had come to feel that it was ritual without substance. She wasn’t sure what she believed these days; sometimes she felt she had a simplistic, childlike faith, and sometimes none at all. But she was thankful that Bonnie had found some sort of solace in the service and the peaceful sacred space of the chapel. They had sat in silence after the mass, mourning lost husbands, allowing themselves to feel their absence, and Irene had felt closer to her daughter than she had for years. Bonnie had seemed a little different after that, as though she was putting something behind her, but now Irene was anxious that Lila’s death, following so soon on that anniversary, might disrupt this new equilibrium.
She stared ahead to where Lila’s coffin, draped in deep purple brocade and topped with a simple bouquet of white roses, stood at the altar steps. The voices around her soared as the mourners joined in the familiar words. ‘In pastures green he leadeth me, the quiet waters by,’ sang Hamish, in what had once been a striking baritone. A tear escaped from Irene’s eye and she reached for his hand. Hamish gripped it firmly, smiled at her, and continued singing. Quite suddenly she was reminded of a party fifty years ago, Hamish and Dennis singing ‘Bye Bye Blackbird’. He’d had rather a good voice. How strange that she should only recall it now, how much they still had to learn about each other. On Hamish’s other side, Sylvia sang confidently without a hymn sheet, watching Fran, who was in the front pew flanked by Caro and Mike, and David and Jodie.
‘Such a peaceful way to go,’ Irene had said to Bonnie when Caro phoned to tell them the news. ‘She just loved that scooter. Imagine her there, listening to her music like that.’ And as the tears poured down her face she was struck with the terrifying reality of her own and Hamish’s ages, and fear of her own mortality intruded ruthlessly on her grief.
‘Apparently the doctor said she wouldn’t have known anything,’ she went on, hugging Bonnie. ‘It would have happened quickly. I’m glad she was still in her own place. Poor Fran, she was so dreading having to move her. She’ll be thankful for that, at least.’
Fran was indeed thankful that she had been spared the awful task of moving Lila to a hostel, but she was also bereft. For as long as she could remember, Lila had been the strong and guiding presence in her life, always supportive, often wise, sometimes caustic and uncompromising, but always loving and, most of all, always there.
The crematorium chapel was packed. It was strange, she thought, how people turned up at funerals, people you didn’t expect, people you didn’t even know. There were residents and staff from the retirement village, a few old familiar faces from Lila’s days at the post office, some neighbours from fifteen years ago. But there were others she’d never seen before, strangers from corners of Lila’s life of which she knew nothing. And at the back of the chapel, a small cluster of women in purple with red hats.
Since the moment that David had appeared at the Boatshed to break the news, Fran had felt as though the solid block on which her life had been built had been kicked from under her and that she was now swaying perilously above a great void. To those around her, Fran’s behaviour seemed natural. She wept long and often and, with her children and friends around her, made decisions about death notices, the funeral and the flowers. She was clearly devastated, but she was freely expressing her grief, not bottling it up in an effort to be brave. But what they couldn’t see was the agonising combination of grief and fear, the sense that without Lila she would not know who or what she was. While she grieved for Lila, Fran feared for herself and doubted her ability to respond to the challenge of this loss.
She looked around the chapel. There would not be one person there who had not suffered the loss of a loved one, and probably been changed by it. Many, like her, would have felt suddenly orphaned by the death of a parent, a feeling so intensely disturbing that she could not describe it without embarrassment. If others managed it, Fran supposed she too would adjust in time. Meanwhile, she felt that Lila’s dementia had robbed them of precious time, and she was crushed by guilt about all the times that she had not done enough, had spoken harshly, or simply not bothered to understand.
FORTY-ONE
‘Lenore tells me she’s staying on for a while,’ Bonnie said, perching on the edge of Fran’s desk. ‘Is that okay with you? She can stay with Mum and me if you prefer.’
‘It’s fine,’ Fran said, shaking her head. ‘We’re getting along very well. Having her there has really helped since Mum died.’
The phone rang and she signalled Bonnie not to leave while she answered it. Bonnie slipped off the desk into a chair, watching Fran as she talked. It was three weeks since the funeral and Bonnie thought she detected more than grief. Fran was afraid, and Bonnie knew that feeling inside out.
‘So how are you going?’ she asked as Fran put down the phone.
‘Okay, I suppose,’ Fran said thoughtfully. ‘Sad, terribly sad, but grateful that Mum died without knowing what was happening, that she didn’t have to go into care. But I miss her terribly.’ She shrugged. ‘I spent so much of my life responding to her or reacting against her. Now it’s hard to know who I am without her as a reference point.’
‘But she’s still your reference point,’ Bonnie said, ‘if you want her to be. I felt the same when I lost Jeff. Who am I without him around? I’m still struggling to find out, and he’s still the reference point; too much so, really, although you probably already know that.’
Fran smiled. ‘It must be harder for you, because it was so unexpected. Jeff was young – it always seems worse.’
Bonnie pleated the fabric of her skirt between her fingers. ‘It’s hard, isn’t it, all this change just at the time when you expect to be sitting back and taking things a little more easily.’ She paused, looking up. ‘Sylvia says we have to be our own reference point, that’s the battle … the challenge is to become central in our own lives.’
‘I said it, but I didn’t say it was easy,’ said Sylvia from the doorway. ‘Can I join in?’
‘Sure.’ Fran gestured towards the other chair. ‘All our upbringing as good Catholic girls was focused on not being selfish,’ she said. ‘It was always about someone else being central, deferring to others. Parents, husband, then children – ’
‘And God,’ Sylvia cut in. ‘God, most of all. Remember the Princess Diana interview when she said, “There
were three people in this marriage”? I was sitting watching it with Colin, and I just wanted to yell out welcome to the club, darling, there are three of us in this one too, and Himself is a far more terrifying third party than poor old Camilla.’
Bonnie nodded in agreement. ‘That must be so hard. Jeff was a humanist and so I just took on his views – not that it bothered me. But it’s like you giving up your Catholicism to marry Colin. We’re so willing to do as we’re told to please men. Or, at least, we were.’
‘Fran wasn’t,’ Sylvia said, looking at her. ‘You made what you wanted for yourself.’
‘In a chaotic sort of way,’ Fran said. ‘I couldn’t cope with Tony’s assumptions that his opinions, his needs, his everything came first. And Mum was the example that women can do fine on their own. But she was always in my head, the Lila-filter. What would she do? How would she do it? What would she think?’
‘What a year,’ Bonnie said with a sigh. ‘This time last year we hadn’t met, we didn’t even know we would … deaths, a birth, a divorce, a business …’
‘You just never know what’s around the corner,’ Fran said, glancing out across the car park where Lenore was rummaging for something in the boot of her car. ‘And there’s Lenore too,’ she said, ‘what a surprise gift she’s turned out to be.’
Bonnie laughed. ‘That wasn’t what you said the first time you met her!’
‘No, strange how things happen, isn’t it?’ She sighed. ‘And David and Caro, I got them back in very different ways, and Rebekah.’ She picked up the framed photo on her desk. ‘When I get bogged down in grief about Mum, I keep thinking about Rebekah and how lucky I am …’
