by Judy Nunn
Jools had helped Maggie with the laborious preparation of vegetables, thankful that her parents had maintained the baked dinner tradition. She recalled how she'd tried to nag her mother into switching to salads and seafood. She was glad that Maggie hadn't. Jools wanted everything to be the same as it once was.
They drank champagne and opened their presents, Allie demanding the privilege of handing them around as she always did, and Jools giving in with good grace, remembering that it had once been her job.
Then they adjourned to the table where Jim carved the turkey and Mike opened the wine.
'Look, Jools.' He held up the bottle.
'Oh my God,' she shrieked, 'sparkling burgundy! I haven't had sparkling burgundy for years!'
Maggie smiled; nor had they. 'Mike bought it specially for you. I didn't even know they still made it.'
'The purple stuff that jumps.' Jools beamed as she held out her glass.
They pulled their Christmas crackers and wore their silly paper hats and gorged themselves on turkey, and after the sparkling burgundy Jools segued on to the shiraz. She was drinking far too much, but who cared? She felt she couldn't be happier.
Shortly after lunch, Mike and Allie went over to the beach for a swim, but Jools didn't join them. She weaved her way off to the spare bedroom instead.
Jo helped Maggie with the washing up, Jim too having wandered off for a lie-down, and they talked about Jools.
'She's actually very unhappy,' Maggie said. 'She sees herself as a failure with a second marriage going down the drain, but I think she's giving up too soon. She's so proud of Henry and his work – he's a very successful playwright – and they have such a lot in common. It's a marriage well worth fighting for in my opinion.'
Jo felt sorry for Jools and was glad Mike had invited her to stay with them in Nedlands for a few days, so Jools could explore her old home town.
'Are you sure you don't mind having Jools with us?' Mike asked as they drove back to Perth. 'She can be a bit much, particularly when she hits the grog, and she can always stay on at Mum and Dad's, you know.'
'Of course I'm sure, I'm looking forward to her company.' Mike's ambivalent attitude towards his sister intrigued Jo. On the one hand he was so critical and on the other so caring. Baxter's gravestone . . . the sparkling burgundy . . . They were a strange pair, Mike and Jools, she thought. She rather envied them their differences. She would have liked to have had a sibling.
'So what did you have in mind for today?' Jo asked as she and Jools sat over coffee at the kitchen table the following week.
'I thought I'd catch the bus to Freo. Mike drove me through on the way in from Shoalwater Bay and I can't believe how the place has changed.'
'I've got a better idea. Why don't I drive us into Fremantle tomorrow? We can go to the Saturday markets.'
Jo seemed genuinely keen, so Jools nodded happily. 'Great,' she said.
'And I need to pop into town this afternoon, do you want to come with me?'
'Sure.'
'There's only one catch.'
'Oh?'
'You have to have coffee with my mother.'
'Oh no, I wouldn't want to intrude.'
'You won't be intruding, believe me,' Jo said drily.
The comment sounded caustic and Jools raised an eyebrow.
'Mum comes in from Mount Lawley for her shopping fest each Friday, which I avoid like the plague,' Jo explained. 'Shopping with Hillary is an absolute night-mare. But I do feel obliged to meet her for coffee, and sometimes even that's an uphill battle. I could use a bit of back-up. Is it a bargain?'
Jools had never heard Jo speak of her mother before, and the arch tone was so uncharacteristic. How intriguing, she thought.
'It's a bargain,' she said.
'Good. I'll take you for a drive around first, and we'll have a bite of lunch in Northbridge'
'Northbridge?' Jools was surprised. 'That used to be North Perth, didn't it?'
'Yes, it's the trendy place to dine these days.'
'Really? It was the grotty end of town when I was at tech.'
'Not any more. Come on, get your gear together and I'll show you your old home town.'
Jools studied Hillary closely, looking for the telltale signs of a facelift. She could usually pick them; she'd worked with any number of aging actresses who'd had nips and tucks. But she couldn't find one giveaway trace. Jo's mother looked no more than fifty at the outside – how was it possible? She did a quick bit of arithmetic. Jo herself had turned forty last year . . . she was two years younger than Mike . . . that meant Hillary had to be in her sixties . . . unless she'd given birth at some ridiculously young age, and even then . . .
'Excuse me, dear,' Hillary said tightly, 'but do I have a smudge on my nose or lettuce in my teeth? I wish you'd tell me.' She found the way Johanna's sister-in-law was staring at her frightfully rude.
'No. No.' Jools was appalled, she hadn't realised she'd been openly gawking. 'Oh God, I'm sorry. It's just that you're so incredibly beautiful and so unbelievably young.'
'Oh.' Hillary laughed and flicked back her hair, which she wore shortish to mid-length these days. She'd eschewed the stark blonde coiffure, adopting a warm honey colour and a more casual style which she knew suited her well. 'How kind.'
Well, you've won a lifelong friend there, Jo thought. Good work, Jools.
'It's all in the genes,' Hillary said, and she smiled at her daughter. 'Johanna will age well too.'
'Yep,' Jools agreed, 'I'd go along with that.'
Hillary decided, after all, that she very much liked Johanna's sister-in-law, although the tomboyish look in a woman of her age, presumably late thirties, really should be avoided.
'How's Basil?' Jo asked, changing the subject.
'As well as can be expected for a man his age with high blood pressure,' her mother answered dismissively.
Hillary had finally married the man who had loved her dearly for the past five years. She'd met Basil, a widower, at a book club she'd joined and they'd discovered they had a great deal in common – they shared the same taste in music and they both loved the theatre and the cinema. Hillary's life had become a social whirl of activity, but she'd kept Basil firmly at arm's length, refusing to marry him, while at the same time intimating that perhaps one day she might. Jo had considered her behaviour disgraceful.
'For God's sake, Mum, either marry him or get out of his life,' she'd said. 'The poor man wants a wife, can't you see that?'
Hillary had eventually succumbed, for fear that Basil might start looking elsewhere.
'I see that you're married, Jools,' Hillary now said. She always took note of a woman's ring finger.
'Yes.' Jools's answer was glib, she didn't want to talk about her marriage. 'Second time around.'
'Oh, I'm one step ahead of you, I'm afraid. I'm on my third.' Hillary gave one of her girlish laughs, then leaned forward conspiratorially. 'And which one was your great love?'
'I beg your pardon?' Jools said, bewildered.
'Which of your husbands was your great love? The first or the second?'
'Well . . .' Jools didn't know what to say, she found the question highly intrusive. 'I loved them both.'
'Ah,' Hillary smiled knowingly, 'a woman has only one great love in her life.'
Here we go, Jo thought. She'd been waiting for the inevitable.
'My second husband was mine. Of course, I loved Johanna's father deeply,' Hillary added, 'but I was young, so very, very young . . .'
What a terrible phoney the woman was, Jools thought as she listened to Hillary ramble on. And how awful of her to dismiss Jo's father like that, in the very presence of his daughter.
But the comment had gone unheeded by Jo. She was only thankful that her mother had a fresh audience, and that she didn't have to listen to Hillary's romantic nonsense, which she voiced to all and sundry, even her own husband.
It was obscene, Jo thought. Hillary had seen Darren just once in the past ten years, and that was only because
he'd heard that she'd married. He'd fronted up demanding the return of the flat in Victoria Street, and Hillary would no doubt have signed the place over to him – she'd accepted his story of having 'fallen upon hard times'. But fortunately Darren had been too late. Basil had sold the flat and invested the money in his wife's name. It was 'her own little nest egg', he'd said, and no-one else was to touch it. Good old Basil, Jo had thought. He wasn't stupid.
Jo had long ceased worrying about her mother. She suffered the filial duty of a weekly coffee in the Hay Street Mall, but the only feelings she could muster were for her mother's husband. Basil was a fine man, and one who deserved a far better wife than Hillary in Jo's opinion.
After their coffee and cake, Jo and Jools saw Hillary and her shopping bags into a taxi, then walked the several blocks to where Jo had parked the car.
As they set off for Nedlands, Jools supposed that she should make some comment about Hillary, but she wasn't sure what to say. How very unalike Johanna and her mother were, she thought. Apart from their beauty, they had nothing at all in common – the practical, unpretentious daughter and her preposterous caricature of a mother.
'Hillary's very beautiful,' she said, but as it turned out, she didn't need to go any further.
'Hillary's deluded, she lives in her own world.' Jo smiled reassuringly. 'There's really no need to say anything, you know.'
The following day, the two of them explored Fremantle, enjoying each other's company as they visited the markets and wandered down High Street, stopping off for a coffee in one of the cafés. They admired the maxi yachts in the huge marina and had lunch at the nearby fish markets, which had become very fashionable with outdoor restau-rants overlooking the water.
'How amazing,' Jools said, 'the good old Freo fish markets, who would have believed it? This place used to be the pits.' That's what she'd loved about it, she thought, remembering when she was ten how they'd bought their fish and chips rolled up in newspaper and how they'd sat by the sea wall throwing the remnants to the seagulls. 'Fremantle's certainly changed.'
'They're gearing up for the America's Cup,' Jo said, 'only a year or so to go now.' She had to admit that even she was surprised at the apparent overnight change in Fremantle; she hadn't visited the port for some time. 'It'll change even more over the next twelve months.'
'The whole of Perth's changed,' Jools said thoughtfully. 'The very feel of the place is different. It's more than just the new buildings and the modernising of the old parts of town, it's something in the air – the pace of the place, the people themselves.' Mike was right, she thought. Perth hadn't been her home for twenty years. Her Christmas visits hadn't kept her in touch with the city's progress; they'd merely enhanced the memories of her childhood. She no longer knew Perth.
'You can't go back, can you?' she said. 'It's silly to try.'
The remark was puzzlingly enigmatic and Jo looked a query.
'Sorry.' Jools smiled, she hadn't intended to sound mysterious. 'I've just realised the futility of what I've been doing.'
'And what's that?'
'I've been clutching at the past to avoid the present. I can see that now. It's time I moved on.'
Jools, the ultimate party girl, surprised her brother by declining his invitation to a New Year's Eve party in town, choosing instead to return to Shoalwater Bay and see in the new year with Jim and Maggie. A party was a party was a party, she said, and she'd planned to spend the last few days of her holiday with her parents anyway.
Three days later, Mike picked her up to take her to the airport. The farewells were subdued.
'You look after yourself, Dad,' Jools whispered as she hugged first her father, then her mother. 'You too, Mum.'
As Maggie returned her daughter's embrace, she said with heartfelt meaning, 'Give my love to Henry, won't you?'
'I will.'
During the drive to the airport, Jools seemed in a contemplative mood, and Mike, having expected the customary ceaseless chatter, was surprised and somewhat concerned. 'You're very quiet,' he said. 'Are you all right?'
'Yeah, fine. Sorry, I was a million miles away.' She hadn't meant to be rude, she was grateful to her brother. 'Thanks for everything, Mike, all the ferrying around, looking after me the way you have. You've been really terrific.'
'What are big brothers for?' he grinned. 'Hey!' He clicked his fingers as he suddenly recalled his promise. 'I forgot the bombies off Claremont jetty. Why didn't you remind me?'
'I forgot myself.' She smiled. 'Don't worry, it was only a momentary whim.'
'Next time, eh?'
'Yep, next time.'
'Are you sorry to be leaving?' he asked. She was once more looking pensively out the window.
'No, I'm rather looking forward to getting home,' Jools said. She'd been thinking of Henry.
Mike didn't reply, but he found the reference to 'home' a healthy sign.
When they arrived at the airport, Jools was adamant that he drop her out the front of the terminal. Much easier, she said, otherwise they'd have to park in the car park and it was all too complicated. She was accustomed to travelling by herself, she was perfectly self-sufficient, and besides, she hated airport farewells. Jools had reverted to her old self.
'Now, Mike, I want you to do one thing for me,' she said when he'd lifted her suitcase out of the boot.
'What's that?'
'I want you to promise me you'll get Dad to see a doctor.'
'Oh, come on, Jools, you know Dad. You can't get him to do anything he doesn't want to do, and he doesn't want to see a doctor – he's made that quite clear.'
'So Mum said, but someone has to –'
'Have you been worrying Mum?' he demanded.
'What?'
'Have you been nagging her about getting Dad to a doctor?'
'No, I haven't been nagging her!' Jools took offence at the accusation. 'I just said a couple of times that I thought he didn't look well.'
A couple of times, Mike thought, that meant she'd been nagging. She just couldn't help herself, could she? He took a deep breath and tried to keep the irritation from his voice.
'Look, Jools, I'll have a word with Dad, one on one, I promise.' Fat lot of good it'd do, he thought, his father wouldn't listen. 'But please, please don't nag Mum about it when you speak to her on the phone. You'll only worry her. Dad accepts the fact that he's growing old, and you have to too.'
Jools knew that once again she'd exasperated him, but too bad, she thought.
'He's not growing old, Mike,' she said. 'He doesn't know it, but he's sick. I can see it in his eyes. Promise me you'll speak to him.'
'I just said I would, didn't I?'
'Right.' There was a moment's tense silence. 'Well, thanks again for everything.'
They shared a perfunctory hug and Jools wheeled her suitcase through the terminal doors without looking back. She'd said her bit, it was over to Mike now. She had a marriage to sort out herself, and it wasn't going to be easy.
Bloody Jools, Mike thought as he climbed into the car.
