Trip of a Lifetime

by Liz Byrski

  TWENTY-FOUR

  Jill put down the phone and walked back into the kitchen.

  ‘Well?’ Barbara said, looking up from the toaster. ‘How is she? Did Ellis come back?’

  Jill gave an all-embracing shrug and sat down at the table. ‘She’s fine, or so she says, although I must say she sounds incredibly hyper. Ellis came back. Ellis is wonderful, verging on sainthood. And she’s resigning.’

  ‘What?’ Adam said, dropping his spoon into his muesli.

  ‘She’s resigning,’ Jill repeated. ‘Apparently, she’s been thinking about it for some time. She mentioned it to Shaun just before Christmas, and last night she made up her mind. She’s inspired by you leaving the orchestra, Adam. She’s been given a wonderful second chance with Ellis and she’s going to take it.’

  ‘What, live with him? Marry him?’ Adam asked in horror.

  Jill shrugged. ‘I didn’t ask, I was too stunned. She just said she’d call the Premier and the party secretary tomorrow and meet them later in the week. But we mustn’t talk about it, because they won’t want it to leak before they’re ready.’

  Barbara, who had allowed the toast to burn, tossed the charred remains in the bin and slipped two more slices into the toaster. ‘I’m glad she’s decided to get out, but not if it’s for Ellis’s sake rather than her own.’

  ‘The party will flay her alive,’ Adam said. ‘The election’s not far off, her name will be more than mud. After everything she’s done, all those years of commitment, and the shooting as well. She’s going to go out with this big black mark against her.’ He pushed back his chair and got up. ‘I’m going to call her now –’

  ‘No!’ Barbara and Jill chorused.

  ‘You can only make it worse, Adam,’ Jill said. ‘She says she’s forgiven you, she wants to put it all behind her and move on into a new life.’

  ‘Jill’s right,’ Barbara said. ‘You mustn’t call, Adam. What you say is right, but it’s also good news. She’s exhausted, she needs a break, and you can’t tell me that, even besotted as she is with Ellis, she’s going to disappear into some domestic arrangement with him. No way. There are heaps of other things she’ll want to do, but it’ll mean she has a life as well as a job.’

  ‘A life with him,’ Adam growled.

  ‘Well, if that’s what she wants . . .’

  Adam tossed his serviette on the table and stalked out to the deck, where Daisy and Toby were arguing about who got the best presents.

  ‘I didn’t know what to say to her,’ Jill said, looking up at Barbara.

  ‘There’s nothing much you can say, dear,’ Barbara said. ‘She has to find her own way through this. But my gut instinct tells me that this is a good decision. It’s Heather looking after herself, and if she’s doing that she’s eventually going to see that being with Ellis may not be the best thing for her.’

  Jill took a piece of toast and reached for the butter and Vegemite. ‘I really hope you’re right,’ she said, ‘because the way she sounds this morning, Pollyanna simply isn’t in it.’

  Heather walked out of the conference room into the corridor and leaned against the wall. It was over, she’d done it. They’d shredded her but she’d survived. Her legs trembled with relief as she took the lift down to the ground floor and stepped outside to dial Shaun’s number. He had offered to come with her to Sydney when he learned she was going alone, and she had welcomed his company and the prospect of debriefing with someone who would understand every complicated nuance of what had happened.

  ‘I’m at your favourite café at The Rocks,’ he said when he answered.

  ‘Great,’ Heather said. ‘Stay there and I’ll be with you shortly. We can have lunch and I’ll tell you everything.’

  ‘The candidate?’ he asked.

  ‘Sorted,’ she said. ‘Mary Fraser, as we’d hoped. They’ll push that through as soon as possible and we’ll make the announcement soon. Won’t be long, I’m starving.’

  The city centre was teeming with shoppers heading into the post-Christmas sales or out of them loaded with carrier bags. What fun it would be, Heather thought, to have time to shop at leisure, rather than racing somewhere between meetings. It would be just one of the many things she’d have time for, and not just time but energy too. Energy to go to the theatre, to have a holiday, take up painting or dancing or rock climbing or reviving her long-forgotten attempts at the piano. There would be time to read books, watch movies, relax over long lazy lunches with the friends she’d neglected, all against the background of her relationship with Ellis. Her sense of freedom was growing by the minute and she headed swiftly for The Rocks, feeling lighthearted and almost light-headed.

  It was nearly six by the time Heather had dropped Shaun off and arrived home, and Ellis was working diligently at his laptop on the patio table. Her heart sank a little at the sight of him so engrossed in what he was doing. That was the next hurdle, the dreadful Head to Heart. She was going to have to confront that before long. She could see now that he might be able to help some people with this idea, but the business plan was hideous, such an obvious rip-off. Luke Scriven with his huge fees was probably at the bottom of it, but easing Ellis out of it should be easier now, now that he knew how fully committed she was to him. She might be able to involve him in something of genuine value – working with asylum seekers, perhaps. His legal background could be really useful there.

  Sometimes Heather felt Ellis lived in a fantasy world, what with his Head to Heart stuff and the hideous underwear. It was years since she’d received a gift from a man and she’d been thrilled by the promise of the silver box with its red and silver ribbon, but she had almost choked when she saw the contents. What was he thinking? She was paralysed by his failure to understand that it was all so entirely at odds with her sense of herself. There were suspender belts and black stockings – even a thong, of all things! All she could see as she carefully unpacked each item was how utterly ridiculous she would look and, worse still, feel. She imagined her cellulite-ridden thighs against the scarlet lace, her stomach bulging over the low waistband of the French knickers, rolls of fat on her back billowing over the bra. She was both shocked and hurt by a gift that seemed to demonstrate how little Ellis knew about her. Did he really think she would appreciate this or was this for his own gratification? Neither prospect was particularly palatable.

  And yet . . . and yet she’d felt incapable of disappointing him and had dissembled to please him; his blunder over the sizes had been a godsend. But Heather knew that the lingerie, like the spectre of Head to Heart, would haunt her until she could be honest with Ellis, until she could remind him who she really was, not who she used to be or might be in his fantasies. The prospect of that confrontation made this morning’s meeting with the Premier and the party power brokers seem like child’s play.

  ‘You’re very late,’ Ellis called. ‘I expected you hours ago.’

  From the kitchen window she saw him save what was on his screen and get up.

  ‘I was worried about you,’ he said, walking into the kitchen. ‘You could’ve let me know.’

  ‘Sorry, darling,’ Heather said. ‘We went to . . .’ She hesitated, quickly editing out lunch at The Rocks and the subsequent browse around the nearby shops and a gallery. ‘We went to great lengths to get everything organised. It’s pretty messy, as you can imagine.’

  ‘Well, you should have rung to let me know what was happening,’ Ellis said, still looking rather stern but kissing her forehead. ‘It was hard to concentrate while I was so worried about you.’

  It was a reminder that while the charmed circle of a relationship had an awful lot going for it, there were also distinct disadvantages, among them the fact that one was always responsible to someone else. She should have called, but on the other hand if he were really so worried, wouldn’t he have called her? She went upstairs to change her clothes, checking as she did so whether there were any missed calls on her mobile. There were none. But she was in the wrong again, no getting away fr
om that. She must try to remember that she was one half of a couple and to make this second chance work, she needed to be more considerate.

  Diane found the street quite easily and drew up in front of a tiny weatherboard cottage which was almost hidden by two rambling old lemon trees. Beyond the white picket fence were great clumps of lavender, and purple and white bougainvillea careered up the verandah posts and over the side fences. It was the humblest of the lovely old houses in this quiet suburban street, but undoubtedly the most appealing.

  She took a deep breath to calm her nerves, opened the gate and strolled up the brick-paved path. She had been in this state of nervous anticipation since Christmas Day, since Stefan had finally said goodnight, kissed her cheek and reminded her that she had promised to visit him on Thursday. It was years – no, decades, since she’d felt like this. Loyalty had always been important to her and although she had sometimes been attracted to other men while she was married to Gerry, she had never acted on it, and since he left she had felt sexless; immune to both the idea and the reality of being drawn to a man. Only a couple of weeks earlier she had thrown away Stefan’s number, and now she felt like a teenager on her first date.

  ‘I am so happy,’ Stefan said, opening the screen door and drawing her through into the cool, dim hallway. ‘I think perhaps you find some excuse not to come.’

  ‘I’ve been looking forward to it,’ she said in an understatement so massive it made her blush.

  ‘Then I am even more happy. But it’s a long drive. Would you like some tea, coffee, perhaps a cool drink?’

  She opted for green tea and Stefan led her through to the back of the house, to a minute kitchen with an old Metters stove under the arch of the chimney piece, and curved-edge cupboards picked out in deep blue and white.

  ‘It’s perfect,’ she cried, taking in the white jug filled with blue cornflowers, the pots of African violets on the sunny window ledge and the framed photographs of Glebe dating back to the turn of the twentieth century. ‘It looks like a feature from a homes and gardens magazine.’

  Stefan laughed. ‘It is pretty but it is also cluttered. I collect too much, fill every space.’

  She sat at the small, scrubbed pine table while he made the tea and told her that the cottage belonged to his widowed aunt who had lived in Australia for most of her adult life. He had stayed here with her when he first arrived from Kosovo and within a few months she had suffered a stroke and was now in a nursing home.

  ‘So I am very fortunate she lets me stay here,’ Stefan said. ‘I pay rent and she is happy to know it is cared for. I pick her up and bring her here for the day sometimes, and she can sit on the deck and enjoy the garden.’

  ‘What if something happens to her?’ Diane asked. ‘Will you have to leave?’

  ‘Who knows?’ he said with a shrug. ‘She and I are all that is left of the family, but the house – I don’t know. I don’t need to know. I have learned to be in the present, it is the present that interests me, not so much the future, and so I just enjoy it.’

  As they walked out to the deck, Diane gasped at the beauty of the garden. ‘It’s nothing like I expected,’ she said.

  ‘What did you expect?’

  ‘Something formal, I suppose,’ she said, unsure really what she had expected. ‘Beds of colour-coordinated flowers, a manicured lawn, nothing like this.’

  ‘The olive tree, the orange and grapefruit, they were all in place a long time,’ Stefan said, putting their tea onto two old milking stools that stood alongside a couple of wide-backed cane chairs. ‘They make the structure for the garden.’

  Diane went down the steps from the deck and followed a path that curved between clumps of lavender, cornflowers, white daisies and wax plants, to a corner where, in the shade of two frangipanis, water trickled over tiers of flat stone speckled with moss and bordered with vivid blue lobelia. ‘I suppose that, in spite of what you said, I still expected it to be like a cemetery,’ she said, ‘but the colours, the greenness, the abundance – it really is all about life and celebration.’

  Stefan, standing behind her, put a hand on her shoulder. ‘I made the garden to remind me that, although I lost so much, there is still so much to live for.’

  Diane felt dizzy at his touch. ‘And your cello?’ she asked, having seen the case standing in the hall. ‘Is that a celebration of life too?’

  ‘Sometimes,’ Stefan said with a small shrug, ‘but a lot of the time it is just my job. It is the finest instrument because it mirrors all the range and subtleties of the human voice, but I am not the cello tragic person like Adam.’ He paused and reached for her hand. ‘You realise that the garden is a trick?’

  ‘A trick?’

  ‘To get you here. When we are in Barbara’s garden I am so much wanting to see you again but I think if I ask you, you say no.’

  Diane laughed. ‘So you use the garden to lure women to your home?’

  ‘It is a good idea, no?’ he said with a smile. ‘And you see it worked. But it is not a habit, only this one time I have this feeling . . .’ His voice faded and he seemed to run out of words.

  Diane squeezed his hand. ‘It feels very special for me too,’ she said, and she slipped her hand into his as they walked together back up the path and settled on the deck to drink their tea.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  In the first week of the New Year, Barbara was clearing out the jumbled top cupboard in her spare room. It was a horrible job that involved much going up and down on the kitchen steps, and packing long outworn clothes and household clutter into plastic bags to take to the charity shop. She hated jobs like this but there was enough of her mother left in her to compel her to get everything in order before she went away, and this was first on a list of jobs to be done over the next few weeks.

  The compulsion annoyed her. It was, after all, no more risky to fly to China than it was to drive down the Pacific Highway to Sydney, or even, as George had pointed out, to step outside your own office on a rainy evening in Newcastle. But there was something about embarking on a trip like this that made her feel she shouldn’t leave a mess behind her. And then there was the added incentive that it was something to do while she felt so restless. Barbara understood that most people find it possible to live with a level of cognitive dissonance, but the more she thought about Heather, particularly her behaviour on Christmas Day, the more she worried, so that she had now reached the same level of concern that Adam had expressed when he heard the news.

  ‘And you’re sure this is right for you, Heather?’ she had asked her on the phone, ‘the right time, and most of all the right reasons?’

  ‘Absolutely right,’ Heather had said. ‘I can’t tell you how liberated I feel by this decision. You were right, I should have done it ages ago. And Ellis is being wonderful, so supportive.’

  In any other circumstances, Barbara would have got straight in the car and gone to Newcastle to see Heather, to quiz her about her plans. But Ellis was still there and apparently likely to be for the next week or two, and Barbara didn’t want to risk being drawn into a three-cornered conversation.

  ‘We could nip up to Byron and saw through one of the stilts holding his house up,’ George said. ‘Then he’d get an urgent message summoning him home. Should keep him out of the way for a while.’

  ‘I believe they’re brick stilts,’ Barbara said. She pulled a rather smart winter coat, a throwback to her city days, from the cupboard and shook it out. She hadn’t worn it for years, and wouldn’t wear it again, so she stuffed it into a bag with some shoes and a handbag. What she needed was a new warm anorak, or perhaps a polar fleece which was very light to pack.

  ‘I do have a sledgehammer,’ George volunteered. ‘But try to think of it this way. Adam and Jill have sorted out their problems. Kirsty has a job. The little kids are fine. You and I are about to have the adventure of a lifetime. You can’t have everything go right all at once. By the time we get home, Heather might have kicked the bastard out of her life and got herself a to
yboy.’

  The day Barbara watched Heather on the morning news with the Premier and the new candidate, she’d looked happy, but hyped up, and not really like herself. George might be right but Barbara hoped Heather would come to her senses soon, then she could set off for China with an easy mind. From the top of the ladder she could hear George calling her from the kitchen door. Cautiously she came down the steps one more time.

  ‘We could go for a ride,’ he called. ‘It’s quite nice and cool now. What do you think?’

  ‘Okay,’ she said. ‘Good idea, I’m sick of this. I’ll meet you outside in ten minutes.’ A bike ride was just what she needed and there were still a couple of hours of daylight left.

  They chose a new route that took them parallel to the river and then branched away from Morpeth.

  ‘Lovely riding in the evening,’ George said. ‘Thank heavens for daylight saving. We should do this more often.’

  Barbara looked across at him riding as he always did with an energy that made her struggle to keep up. ‘In China,’ she said, ‘we’ll need to pace ourselves. Some of those rides are very long.’

  ‘Right,’ he said, hunched forward as they pedalled hard towards the brow of a hill. ‘You can set the pace then, but right now I’m freewheeling. See you at the bottom,’ and he pedalled fiercely on until he reached the downward slope and then straightened up, resting one hand on the point at which the handlebars joined.

  Barbara watched him affectionately as he bowled on down the hill, the unbuckled straps of his helmet flying out behind him. He was halfway down when he hit the pothole. Did he misjudge it or just not see it? She saw him wobble dangerously and swerve towards the edge of the road and, as his wheels sank into the deep gravel and locked, she watched in horror as he was hurled clear of the bike and crashed onto the Tarmac, his helmet bouncing away.