After Cleo (6 page)

‘Have you seen a map of Sri Lanka?' I asked, barely able to conceal my alarm. ‘It's a dot in the ocean. The North and South are as close together as Melbourne and . . . Warrnambool.'

Warrnambool is a coastal town about three and a half hours' drive away from Melbourne. We'd taken a French exchange student there to see some whales. It'd rained and our guest hadn't been impressed.

In the face of Lydia's silence I asked her exactly how long she intended to be away.

She was vague. Months, possibly.
Months?!

‘And what does Ned think about it?' I asked.

‘He'll be fine without me,' she said, studying a crack in the floorboards.

‘What about your study course? And your scholarship?'

The second hand on the kitchen clock froze. A spider sidled across the ceiling.

‘They can wait,' she said quietly.

‘
Wait?!
' my voice rose to a quavering crescendo. ‘You mean you're going to throw away your
scholarship?!
'

Her eyes were damp and swollen. I couldn't remember the last time I'd raised my voice at her – possibly never – but a few tears weren't going to make me back down.

‘You don't understand . . .' she muttered.

Three little words every mother loves to hear.

‘This is something I need to do.'

When did young people start
needing
to do things? Most previous generations counted themselves lucky if they lived long enough to raise a family.

‘Why put your life at risk?'

‘Plenty of my friends are doing volunteer work overseas,' she said with infuriating serenity, as if I was the one being difficult.

‘But there's a
war
going on in Sri Lanka!' I snapped. ‘They have
bombs
going off and terrorist attacks. Foreigners are being targeted. Can't you wait till the fighting's over? Or at least go to a country where people aren't killing each other?'

She looked at me as if I was an inmate of a mental institution in need of medication.

‘You can't go,' I added. ‘I
forbid
it.'

Forbid? The word resonated back through decades to a similar situation, except it had occurred in another kitchen with wallpaper featuring hundreds of wicker baskets, and miniature prints of Hogarth's London on either side of the fireplace. Mother and daughter were locked in battle, though back then I was playing the role of impossible youngster and Mum was doing the yelling. ‘You're not even eighteen. You're just a child!' I remembered the anger on her breath and how I'd thought that in her teeth-gnashing, eye-rolling anguish she looked like one of Picasso's women. Her rage worked like a pitchfork, jabbing me into a corner. ‘I
forbid
you to get married!'

Dad was noticeably absent while this was going on. He was probably at work, or playing chess with his friend across town. Men are masters at keeping a low profile on these occasions. Mum's forbidding had made me all the more determined. Still, I hadn't been heading off to a war zone.

‘The tickets are booked and paid for,' said Lydia coldly.

Booked and paid for? I'd said exactly the same to Mum all those years ago just before my eighteenth birthday.
My tickets to
Britain are booked and paid for. I'm flying across the world to marry
the man I love. Defy me at your peril, old woman.

Lydia's eyes had darkened to hazel blended with olive green. Maybe it was a trick of the light. For the first time I noticed her eyes were exactly the same colour as Mum's.

‘I'm leaving in three weeks. Good night,' she added before fleeing upstairs.

Alone in the kitchen in anaesthetised silence, I swallowed an urge to rip plates out of the cupboard and smash them against the walls. Much as I wanted to chase Lydia upstairs, grab her by the shoulders and shake sense into her, I held back.

Lydia was determined to have her way. She'd made up her so-called mind. I knew the pattern from conflicts we'd had in the past, even over little things like choosing clothes. If I gushed enthusiasm for the pretty floral skirt, she'd inevitably want the plain linen one. The more I spurred her on, the more deeply she'd dig in her hooves.

A friend had drawn up her horoscope soon after her birth. He'd laughed and said he'd never seen anything like it. Lydia was a Taurus born in the
year
of the Ox and in the
hour
of the Ox. A triple whammy of bullishness. He said we were destined to lock horns.

I hurried to the computer and looked up Travel Warnings. It was not reassuring bedtime reading: ‘You are advised to reconsider your need to travel to Sri Lanka at this time because of ongoing civil unrest, the volatile security situation and the very high risk of terrorist attacks. Attacks could occur at any time, anywhere in Sri Lanka, including the South.'

I printed it out twice and forwarded it to Lydia by email in case she tossed the printed version in her bin.

Two hours later, Philip and I lay side by side staring at shadows on the bedroom ceiling.

‘Where do you think she got the airfare from?' he asked.

‘Her father, probably. Hang on. Remember that money we gave her for her twenty-first?'

‘You mean the study trip to China that never eventuated.'

‘She's not going to Sri Lanka. I'm forbidding it.'

‘Impossible,' said Philip, the frustrating voice of reason. ‘She's over eighteen.'

‘I'll hide her passport.'

‘That's not going to get us anywhere,' he sighed.

‘She'll get herself
killed
!' I said, tugging the sheet into my neck and turning over to face the wall. It was all very well for Philip, I fumed. He hadn't carried her in his womb for nine months and nursed her with milk from his own body. He wasn't even her biological father. That was an unworthy thought, however. Even though he was Lydia's stepfather, there'd never been any dividing lines in his affection. His was as devoted to her as he was to his biological daughter.

Still, I thought, anger rising again, why couldn't he put his foot down and stop her?

Silent accusations hung in the darkness.

I blamed myself. If Lydia's father and I hadn't split up, she wouldn't be so reckless and defiant. On the other hand, if we'd stayed together one of us would probably be dead by now and the other in prison.

I blamed Lydia. The cheek of it; sneaking off to buy airline tickets.

I blamed the monk. How dare he lure our daughter away to his war-torn island?

I blamed television travel shows that present the Third World like a theme park offering endorphin highs along with extreme sports, booze and everything else Generation Ys crave.

But I said nothing. Neither did he.

Even though Philip remained silent, he probably had accusations of his own to make. After all, whose fault was it for introducing Lydia to the monk in the first place?

He started making the whooshing noises that meant he was falling asleep. I was furious he could drop off so peacefully.

Thoughts spiralled as I lay awake. I remembered vowing I'd never behave like Mum when she'd tried to stop me going to England. Yet here I was in a similar clash of wills with my own daughter: me, convinced she was about to ruin her life; Lydia determined to go ahead and do it anyway.

Then again I shouldn't have been surprised. Lydia sprang from a long line of headstrong women who'd found ways to upset their mothers. Before she'd married, Mum had been ‘engaged' to another man and there'd been a scandal. Her cousin Theodora went to Paris in the 1920s and returned to live in sin with a German at the beach. Great Aunt Myrtle had smoked a pipe and advised me to do anything for love. And
her
mother caused ructions marching down the street of her country town demanding votes for women.

On the rare occasions Lydia's friends had confided in me about struggles they were having with their mothers, I'd always said the older generation had to give way. The younger woman must be free to carve her future. It's nature. In a pack of animals, the older ones lose pace and are devoured by predators. For the species to survive, youth must triumph. Confronted with the real thing from the old animal's perspective, I hated it.

Mum taught me how to deal with a woman whose strength matches your own. Yelling doesn't work. To handle another powerful woman you sometimes have to avoid confrontation and be stealthy. Rather than share information, it's better to make your own mind up and go ahead and do what you want. That's what I did when I wanted to get married too young. And exactly what Lydia was doing now.

I reached for the earplugs in the bedside drawer and willed myself to sleep.

Visitation

Good comes from good

What does a good man do when he's worried about his wife freaking out over her daughter going to Sri Lanka and being her son's self-appointed wedding planner? He takes her to a wellness retreat in New South Wales. Even though Philip would've much rather have been in a tent fending off crocodiles, he agreed to succumb to several days of detoxified living with me.

The wellness retreat was everything I'd hoped for: a combination of luxury, nature and nurture. Grimy after a day's travel, we climbed the steps to a marble foyer that gleamed wholesomeness. We'd made a pact not to talk about weddings, Sri Lanka, or in fact any of our children for the next few days. This was a perfect environment to forget all that.

New Age didgeridoo music mumbled over the speakers while fountains chattered over volcanic stones. Staff flashed smiles that implied we too would be young, tanned, slim and beautiful if only we could be disciplined and sensible.

I sucked my stomach in and bared unwhitened teeth in a middle-aged, overweight, city living way.

Those health freaks didn't fool me. I knew the self-loathing it took to look like that. The exhilaration of losing ten kilos a while back had been obliterated by the defeat of stacking them back on again, plus a few extra kilos I didn't have when I
thought
I was fat.

Then there was the revelation that I didn't actually feel that much better when I was thin(ner). In fact the ‘thin' version felt worse because I lived with hunger clawing my stomach all the time, and in fear that I was going to get fat again. After years of neuroticism I'd finally understood those who loved me would continue to put up with me fat or thin, and those who didn't ignored me. As a middle-aged woman I was pretty much invisible anyway. To pass unnoticed through an image-obsessed society is surprisingly liberating.

Refugees from the land of meat-eating, coffee-drinking and wine-swilling hedonism, Philip and I were made to promise we hadn't stowed any caffeine or alcoholic contra in our bags. I immediately wished we had.

The wellness retreat was famed for its week-long boot camp involving dawn to dusk physical challenges interspersed with soul-searching workshops.

Personally, I couldn't think of anything worse than a twenty-year-old Bear Grylls clone shouting me through an obstacle course. I wouldn't have gone near the wellness centre if it hadn't offered the alternative ‘individual' package, where you could take part in workshops if you felt like it, and spend the rest of the time being massaged and aromatherapied to a pulp.

Bands of pink and orange stretched across the sky as our suitcases kerplunked over the gravel path to our villa. Spacious and modern with views over a valley, it was perfect. Oh yes, and the toilet paper was folded into a point and the towels were extremely fluffy. Opening the doors on to our deck, we let the warm night breeze comb our hair.

A group of kangaroos preened themselves before hopping lazily out of sight. I'd learnt to love the Australian landscape with its giant skies and ancient, crumpled hills. The red earth and silver trees that had once seemed ugly and foreign now possessed unique beauty for me. No longer threatened by the emptiness of this land, and its potentially deadly wildlife, I savoured the scent of eucalyptus gum on hot dry air.

Is it all right to mention here that we kissed? Not in a creepy, please-don't-go-there-old-people way, like when an old walrus of a Hollywood star lunges at a cosmetically renovated diva and makes the entire theatre cringe over their popcorn.

This was simply the kiss of a man and woman who've known each other for twenty years, during which time they've spent most of their waking hours putting other people first. Who were just grateful to spend time alone together and have a conversation without someone else listening in and offering an uninformed opinion. It was bliss to lie in bed between Egyptian cotton sheets and use two towels each after a shower – none of which had to be put in the washing machine later. Not by me, anyway.

This place would purify our bodies, soothe our souls. We'd be soaked and stroked, massaged and mentored in methods of healthy living. After five days here we'd return to everyday life happier, more balanced human beings. Our worries would evaporate.

Wind whistled a lullaby down the valley on our first night as we slid between 1,000-thread counts of indulgence and slept like stones.

It's hard to write about what happened that night except to say it's one of the strangest events of my life. I've never been particularly psychic, and yet . . .

Before dawn I woke to the sound of wooden blinds slapping against the window. The wind had worked itself up into a tantrum and the air was hot and restless. Rolling over to find a more comfortable position, I became aware of a human figure sitting in a chair across the room. It was – of all people – Mum.

My chest melted at the sight of her. Even though she'd died several years earlier, she seemed very much alive, her eyes blazing with love as she looked at me. In front of her a black cat kept galloping impatiently across the floor, moving too fast for me to figure out if it was Cleo.

Aware that this encounter with Mum might be short, I seized the chance to ask her some questions. The cat zigzagged across the room, as if urging me to hurry up.