Walking on Trampolines

by Frances Whiting

  I stocked up on Ben’s favourite foods, put a sixpack of beer in the fridge to chill, threw some blue irises in a vase because someone had once told me they were ‘manly’ flowers, and then, in another frenzy of delayed guilt, I picked up the phone and called Simone and Stella.

  I’d neglected them, I knew, had pushed them aside once more for Annabelle and Josh, but when Stella picked up the phone she just said, ‘Lulu, how lovely to hear from you – I was only just saying to William the other day’ – Stella started calling Billy ‘William’ just after his short-lived stand-up comic career, in an attempt to give him back some of his dignity – ‘that we haven’t seen you in a while, the kids have missed you.’

  Simone, however, was more direct.

  ‘Oh,’ she said when she heard my voice, ‘back from the Bermuda Love Triangle, are we?’

  We met the following day at Gottardo’s, ordered toasted sandwiches and fat chips with our coffees, and settled into an initially easy conversation about Simone’s new producer, who she hated, Riley’s new teacher, who Stella loved, and Thomas’s tap recital, which I had missed.

  Thomas was Stella’s first boy, my godson, and I had been – unless I was sick or looking after Rose – to every concert he’d been in, and either Rose or I usually made his costumes as well.

  ‘I’m sorry, Stella,’ I said, ‘when was it?’

  ‘Last Friday,’ she answered. ‘I did leave you some messages, but don’t worry about it – Simone came instead.’

  Simone came?

  I looked at her, smiling at me across the table. ‘Auntie Simone,’ she corrected Stella, ‘the one who doesn’t drop her friends like a school bag the moment Josh and Annabelle blow back into town.’

  ‘I didn’t drop you, Simone,’ I protested. ‘I just wanted to spend some time with them, I haven’t seen them for years . . .’

  ‘No, not since Annabelle “stole your life” – I think that was what you used to wail at me.’

  ‘Don’t fight.’ Stella put one hand on each of our shoulders. ‘I hate it when you two fight.’

  ‘Stella,’ Simone said, ‘you’ve been as pissed off as I am at Lulu, and don’t pretend you haven’t. You should tell her how upset Thomas was that she didn’t show up, instead of pretending you didn’t mind.’ Simone looked directly at me. ‘It was really shitty of you, Lulu, and you know something? I really thought you’d got past all that, you’re behaving like we’re back in high school.’

  ‘Well, so you are you,’ I shot back at her, unsettled and angry at the sudden lurch in our conversation. ‘You’ve always been jealous of Annabelle.’

  ‘That’s not what this is about and you know it,’ Simone said, ‘this is about you putting yourself at their disposal – you’re making a fool of yourself, Lulu, only this time it’s much worse because we’re not in high school any longer, and none of us bounces back like we used to.’

  Stella burst into tears.

  ‘Like my breasts,’ she said to no-one in particular.

  *

  When Ben came home, he looked around the flat, took a beer out of the fridge and said: ‘So you missed me?’

  ‘I did,’ I answered. ‘I’m sorry about that night with Josh and Annabelle, I was rude to you, I think.’

  Ben nodded. ‘Don’t worry about it, Lulu.’

  We watched the football together, Ben’s arm around my shoulders, his feet up on the coffee table, a beer in his hand.

  ‘This is nice,’ he said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘This,’ he answered. ‘You and me.’

  Later when we went to bed I tried to apologise for my behaviour again, but he said, ‘It’s okay, Lulu, look, I’m completely shagged, and it’s been a really good night, so let’s just not go there, all right?’

  I nodded my head against his chest, not telling him I had already been.

  *

  On a roll of atonement, I left Ben at home to rest from his trip for a few days, and went to visit Harry and Rose.

  I hadn’t been home for a month, and although Harry had told me how well my mother was doing, I wanted to see for myself.

  I parked the car outside the house, gave Harry’s sign a ritualistic pat as I passed it and headed up the path to the front door.

  ‘Rose?’ I called out, ‘Rose?’

  ‘Lulu,’ Rose said, rustling across the lino in Madeleine’s red and green checks, and putting both hands out to me. ‘It’s so lovely to see you. Your father has just gone down to the office for a bit, and then he’ll pick up some dinner on the way home.’

  ‘Pick up some dinner?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘From a takeaway?’

  ‘Yes, people do it, you know, Lulu.’

  That was true, lots of people did it – I did it a couple of nights a week – but Rose, endless purveyor of the cooked meal? ‘What are we having?’

  ‘Thai, I love it.’

  ‘You love Thai?’

  ‘Yes, Lulu, I love Thai, why do you keep repeating everything I say?’

  Because my mother was wearing Madeleine, because my mother was ordering Thai food and there was no flour on her hands. Because my mother looked happy.

  The twins were away at a uni soccer camp and the house was quiet without them, smaller somehow without their long, rangy bodies filling every corner of it, sprawled out on couches or swinging their legs at the breakfast bar.

  Sometimes, when Rose was depressed, the house needed their noisiness to fill it, the way couples who are no longer talking use their children to colour in the lines between them.

  But this time it was Rose’s voice that carried down the hallway and into the garden where she watered the strawberry plants, humming to herself and reminding me of a story Harry had once told me about when they were courting.

  They had gone swimming at an out-of-the-way swimming hole, and Harry, shy about Rose seeing him in his swimmers, had been astounded when she had slid out of her dress in one easy movement, laughing up at him: ‘Come on, Harry, get your gear off, or are you afraid the eels will get your gilhooleys?’

  Now, hearing her singing in the garden, I could easily imagine that Rose, the one who just dived right in.

  Later that night, Harry and I sat swinging in the dark.

  ‘She’s doing so well, Lulu,’ he said, ‘best she’s been in a long time.’

  ‘That’s great, Harry.’

  ‘It is, Dr Reynolds, that’s the new bloke we’re seeing, she likes him, seems to trust him; she hated Dr Shaw, she called him Dr Not So Shaw.’

  ‘I know,’ I said, laughing.

  ‘Anyway, we’ve been to the pictures a couple of times, and yesterday she nipped down to the newsagency.’

  ‘On her own?’

  ‘Yeah, came back clucking like a broody hen.’

  ‘Did she take the car?’ I asked, thinking of Rose’s station wagon, sitting on its haunches in the garage for what felt like forever.

  ‘No, she walked down – one step at a time, Lulu.’

  ‘I know, I’m just glad she’s getting out.’ I put my head on his bony shoulder. ‘I’m sorry I haven’t been down much, Harry, I’ve just been so busy at the station sorting out all of Duncan’s stuff.’

  ‘He’s on his way out, isn’t he, Lulu?’

  ‘Yeah, he is. Cancer, throat cancer – it’s terminal.’

  ‘Better for you to be there with him then, love. We’re right, Rose and me, I think she’s really coming good, she’s been giving me a hard time about all sorts of jobs around the house, and that’s always a good sign.’

  ‘I’m so pleased, Harry.’

  ‘Me too, love – do you want to turn in?’

  ‘I do, I’m pretty tired.’

  ‘Want me to carry you?’

  I smiled, remembering long ago nights of flannelette-pyjama-clad arm
s wrapped around his neck, fingers clasped at the back, legs hooked to his waist and Rose saying, ‘For goodness’ sake, Harry, bring her inside, she’ll get a chill.’

  ‘I wish you still could.’

  ‘I’d give it a go.’

  ‘I know you would, you lunatic, come on, let’s go in.’

  We walked through the garden to the back door and I looked up to see Rose watching over us from her bedroom window, hands deep in Madeleine’s pockets.

  Leaving my parents, Rose in Betty, Harry in his boilersuit, both of them waving me off from the driveway, I headed back to the city, letting myself into the flat and throwing my keys on the hallway table.

  A white envelope sat in our mail basket, with embossed and scalloped edges, two wedding bands in the corner, and my name in a silver pen across it.

  I picked it up, running my fingers along the scalloping, as Ben entered the room.

  ‘Hi,’ he smiled, ‘so, who’s the lucky couple this time?’

  ‘Not sure,’ I said, although I had known straight away, recognising the familiar, broad loops, ‘but I think it might be Josh and Annabelle.’

  I opened it, and one tiny, perfect, blush-pink rosebud fell out.

  Annabelle and Josh, the card said, were getting married on 27 August at five pm at St Alban’s Church in Juniper Bay, and afterwards, guests were invited to join them for a party at the Hotel du Laurent.

  They had booked the entire hotel out for the night, so everyone was also invited to stay for a celebratory breakfast the next morning.

  There was a note as well, which I didn’t read then, not in front of Ben, but saved for later, when he had finally left the apartment to meet some friends from work for a drink, and had stopped looking at me from every angle, checking if I was all right but never asking.

  When I was sure he was gone, listening for the click of the downstairs door, I went to our room, lay on the bed and took it out.

  Tallulah, Annabelle had written, I hope you will come, we would really love you to be there, but if you can’t for any reason, I want you to know we completely comprestand. Love always, A.

  I put the note down on the bedside table, rolling the tiny rosebud between my thumb and my finger.

  Stupid really, to feel like this, as though someone had, as Rose would say, ‘knocked the wind out of my sails’.

  But I did feel like that, I felt stupid, and foolish. I turned my face, buried it deep into the pillow, and let go of the stupid, bloody rosebud.

  What had I been thinking? That Josh would leave Annabelle for me? That Annabelle would leave Josh for me? That they would take me with them wherever they travelled to next? That they would realise that out of all of us, I was the one worth hanging on to?

  No, but they would love me to come, and if I didn’t, they would completely comprestand.

  Well, how very genanimous of them.

  I turned off the light and closed my eyes, hearing Ben come in a couple of hours later to lie beside me and say with his beery breath that he understood why I was ‘a bit upset’.

  ‘We don’t have to go, Lulu,’ he said, ‘I’m in Hong Kong that week, anyway, you could come, bit of retail therapy.’

  But I had already made my decision.

  *

  ‘You can’t go, Lulu,’ Stella said, ‘it will only upset you.’

  ‘Jesus, Lulu, why don’t you just wear a sign that says “kick me”, and save yourself all the trouble?’ said Simone, somewhat less diplomatically.

  ‘Just come with me,’ Ben tried again.

  ‘You have to go, Lulu,’ Rose said firmly, ‘it’s the right thing to do.’

  ‘I think you should do want you want, love,’ Harry said.

  ‘You could always poison her on her hen’s night,’ Duncan said.

  *

  In the weeks leading up to the wedding, I didn’t really have time to think about it; I was too busy trying to calm down Duncan – who, unsurprisingly, was not going gently into that good night.

  He had begun to rail against his treatments, refusing to have any more chemo on the grounds that he was not going to lose one more single strand of hair – ‘A man’s hair is his strength, Lulu, look what happened to Samson’ – demanding I come to the island, announcing that no, he was better off alone, then summoning me once again, meeting with Andrew Lyons, his long-time lawyer, to sort out the minutiae of his life to such an excruciating degree that the usually indefatigable Andrew had taken some stress leave.

  He would be serene one minute, agitated the next, panicking wildly over the smallest things: ‘Lulu, I can’t find Barney’s striped rubber ball, we’ve got to find that ball for him,’ he barked one day, and sent me down to the beach to search for hours. When I finally returned, sunburnt and empty-handed, he had looked at me and said dismissively, ‘What are you so upset about, Lulu? It’s only a ball.’

  He was losing weight and had taken to tying a bit of rope around his falling-down tracksuit pants to hold them up; his skin was sallow and his step unsure; sometimes when he opened the door to me I would wonder who this old man was.

  But other times, if one of his former wives or colleagues – especially if it was a former colleague – visited, the slackness of his jaw would tighten, the roped tracksuit pants would be replaced by a pair of perfectly ironed jeans, his back would straighten, his hair would be concealed by a white cricketing hat, his smile would be welcoming, and he would become the suntanned retiree, hale and hearty and stronger than any of the winds that whipped at Lingalonga.

  He would walk on steady legs beside his guests on the sand, arms out wide, face turned towards the sun, an old conjurer pulling out one last hoax from his bag of tricks.

  When the children came – and they came most weekends – he would rest in his bed right up until the minute he heard the car in the driveway, and then be at the door to greet them as they tumbled out of their mothers’ cars: Duncan Junior, Rhees, Jasmine and Jarrod, racing to get into the house first and the room with the bunk beds in it.

  ‘Bags it,’ Jarrod would shout from the top bunk.

  ‘You did not, I got here first.’

  ‘That’s not fair, you always get it.’

  ‘Da-aaad!’

  On hearing the familiar wail, Duncan would dive in, Barney right behind him, and enter the fray.

  When they left, leaving their trail of sand and sticks and half-eaten lollies wrapped in waxy paper stuck under pillows, Duncan would wave them off, turn and go inside, close the door behind him and sleep for hours.

  I spent most of the next month on the island. Ben was away and Rose, Harry reassured me again and again, was doing well, so I criss-crossed back and forth on the ferry, sipping lukewarm coffee out of polystyrene cups, surrounded by bags of fruit I knew Duncan would refuse to eat and knowing that, no matter how much I wanted to, I could never bring this particular ship home to shore.

  Duncan, I discovered, had made a new life on Willow, one that had nothing to do with who he was on the mainland. People always seemed to be popping in and out – Will, the deckie I’d met on the barge, often sat with Duncan poring over blueprints for goodness knew what – a boat probably – the people from the post office hand-delivered his mail, and a salty collection of fishermen could usually be found there at sunset, waiting at the back gate for a beer and a chinwag with the man with now not-so-platinum tonsils.

  I hung around for as long as I could, just drinking Duncan in.

  *

  Rose made me a dress for Annabelle’s wedding.

  She was not up to coming herself, but had made me a pale pink, knee-length lace shift with three-quarter sleeves and a Chairman Mao collar. It had a matching cream bolero and a pink lace flower I could pin on it, or in my hair – ‘Whichever you like, darling,’ she said – and I knew my mother could not have taken more care with it if it had been my wedding gown.
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br />   Harry and I had mostly listened to the radio on the way to the church, and when we pulled up outside he had given my hand a squeeze and said, ‘Your turn next, Lulu.’

  My father, the man with no idea.

  The church was beautiful. Someone – Frank, I thought – had tied bunches of tiny pink rosebuds to every pew and set out sandalwood candles with rings of ivy at their base.

  I stood at the door, Harry’s hand on my arm, and took it all in.

  ‘It will be all right, you know, Lulu,’ he said as we walked in, and just as we did Josh had turned his head and smiled at me.

  I smiled back, and somewhere inside the look that passed between us, I left the church to go to a corner store where my brothers were curled like question marks around my legs, and a boy in a sky-blue T-shirt was pushing the hair from his eyes. Then Harry pulled at my arm, and we sat down between two groups of people I didn’t know. A woman with a red face and a puffy skirt asked me if I was a friend of the bride or the groom, and I told her truthfully that I didn’t know.

  A harp began to play on the balcony above us, and Christa walked in, wearing another kimono and a complicated hat, followed by Fergus in a white linen shirt and khaki trousers, Annie in her layers, swaying slightly as she made her way to the front, too much jewellery, too much make-up – too much scotch, everyone would say later.

  Josh’s mother, Pearl, walked in quickly and scurried to her seat at the front, not looking at anyone. As she passed I got a strong, sharp whiff of the cigarette she had just put out, her lipstick smudged from its tip.

  Then Annabelle, on Frank’s arm, Frank in a suit and his fisherman’s cap.

  Beautiful, tall Annabelle in a full-length, aquamarine vintage gown and lilac coat, shimmering in its folds and holding a bouquet of tuberose and ivy. Someone – not her, Annabelle could never be bothered with make-up – had painted her eyes and given her lashes; her curls were dark and loose about her face, and she was as beautiful to me as she was the day she first sat down beside me, one of Sister Scholastica’s finest flowers.