Mothers and Daughters (10 page)

Someone shut her up, Bronte thought, push a towel in her mouth or offer her a drink.

But to her surprise, Amira sounded interested.

‘How many stitches? I had twelve with Tess. I had to sit on one of those donut things for a week.’

‘Sixteen,’ Fiona replied, clearly proud to have bested her. ‘It was so bad I didn’t just have the donut. They also gave me a condom full of ice.’

‘Huh? A condom? What on earth for?’ asked Morag.

Caro joined in, her voice lit with glee. ‘Easy to see that you
had C-secs. It’s to soothe the inflammation. You put it on your sore bits, you know, inside your . . . oh, I can’t say it!’

‘Prude,’ Fiona remarked, though fondly. ‘You shove it up your vajayjay. The ice cools everything down, makes you feel better. Or so I’m told. I threw mine in the bin. After all nine and a half pounds of Dom pushing his way out, the last thing I was going to do was put anything back in there. I told Todd that too.’

The four women erupted with laughter. Bronte stifled a groan. They were carrying on like idiots. Worse, teenagers.

‘You must have, though,’ said Caro slyly. ‘You had Bronte, didn’t you?’

‘Immaculate conception,’ Fiona answered. ‘I wasn’t there for it, anyway. I must have been asleep.’

‘Was Todd with you when you had them?’ Amira asked, then went on without waiting for a response, ‘Davis stayed, which was all well and good, but then he insisted on coaching me through labour. That was fine in the early stages when he could rub my back and get me cups of tea, but by the time I reached transition I just wanted to shove his CD of humpback whale songs down his throat. And forget the condom. When it was all over he handed me this jade crystal and told me that if I focused on it all my pain would be gone.’

Morag giggled. ‘Fat lot of good it was then. If it was so powerful, why didn’t he give it to you when you were still pushing?’

‘Exactly!’ shrieked Amira. ‘Probably because he was too busy waving herbs under my nose. I mean, yes, we had discussed it at antenatal classes, that we were both going to be calm
and say no to drugs and just sort of draw the baby towards our energy . . . but I don’t think anyone told the baby that.’ Her voice sobered. Bronte could picture her looking around at them all, brown eyes serious. ‘I had no idea. Neither of us did. I mean you don’t, do you? No one would go through with it if they knew what it was like.’

There was a silence, predictably broken by Bronte’s mother.

‘I reckon one day scientists are going to work out what those whales are saying and all you hippy types are going to be disappointed. It’s probably just: “This water’s cold” and “Christ, I could go some krill right now”.’ She chuckled to herself. ‘Or, if they really do have higher intelligence, it’ll be: “Get the hell away from me. I might be a humpback, but I don’t want to hump you.”’

Bronte jumped to her feet and ran towards the water, looking for Janey and Tess. She couldn’t take any more. She’d rather be subjected to Janey’s snarky prattle than have to hear her mother talking about sex for a moment longer.

Morag rinsed the conditioner from her hair, but then stayed there, under the shower, with her head tipped back and her eyes closed. Were there water restrictions at Kalangalla? Surely not, given Amira had said that their wet season lasted three or four months. She sighed gratefully. There was no hurry to get out, and she luxuriated in the moment, in the rare experience of not having anyone to please but herself. It had been fun on the beach that afternoon. The four of them had shared their birth
stories when they first met, a bonding ritual women seemed unable to resist, but that had been years ago. Morag counted them up in her head: eight, nearly nine. No doubt the details were the same, but the telling had changed . . . Amira letting loose about Davis; Fiona and her iced condoms; Caro confiding that her greatest fear regarding childbirth wasn’t the pain but that she might defecate on the bed while she was pushing. Then she’d leaned in and whispered, ‘And I did! I nearly died. As soon as I knew it had happened I sent Alex out of the room so the nurse could clean me up, and I didn’t let him back in again until Janey’s head was crowning and I knew there was nothing left in me except her.’ Caro’s cheeks had been red but her eyes sparkled, high on the thrill of sharing a confidence. Oh yes, their birth stories had definitely improved with age, Morag thought, their defences worn down by years of shared tuckshop duty and Friday night drinks and checking each other’s children for lice.

Ten minutes later she was combing her hair, towel wrapped around her, when there was a knock on the door.

‘It’s me,’ Fiona sang out. ‘I need a favour. Can I come in?’

‘Sure,’ Morag called back. ‘It’s unlocked.’ Amira hadn’t even given them each a key when she’d shown them to their rooms earlier that afternoon. ‘No-one locks their doors here,’ she’d said, ‘though I’m sure I could find keys in the office if you wanted to.’ Morag had said she was fine. She hadn’t brought much that was valuable, other than her camera, and she expected that that would mostly be with her. Besides, her room was between Fiona’s and Caro’s. If anyone did want to steal anything there’d be much richer pickings in those.

Fiona shuffled in, also wrapped in a towel, clutching a plastic bottle to her chest. ‘I think I got burnt,’ she said, ‘on my back, but I can’t see it. Can you rub some moisturiser on for me?’ She handed the container to Morag and turned around. The skin from her shoulders to her lower back was a bright angry pink.

‘Ouch,’ Morag said, tipping some cream into her hand. ‘How did that happen? We spent pretty much all of the afternoon under the shelter.’

‘Swimming,’ Fiona said glumly. ‘I didn’t expect to stay in that long, and I thought I’d be OK if I kept my shoulders underwater. It’s not as if I’m as fair as Bronte.’ She groaned. ‘I’m an idiot—and there I was thinking what a berk you looked for wearing that rash vest.’

Morag smirked. She’d noticed Fiona’s disparaging glance when she’d pulled on the vest before their dip, but it hadn’t bothered her. If Fiona thought her rashie was daggy, so be it. Morag would be wearing it regardless—and she wouldn’t be the one miserably dealing with first-degree burns. She gently put the back of one hand to her friend’s scapula. Fiona winced.

‘This looks really sore,’ Morag said.

‘You’re telling me,’ moaned Fiona. ‘It goes with my head.’

‘Spread out your towel and lie down on the bed. I’ve got a spray in the fridge that always helps when I get burnt. It’s even better when it’s cold.’

Fiona hesitated. ‘I haven’t got anything on,’ she said.

Morag laughed. ‘You, going all coy? Is this the same woman who was flashing her breasts to half of Broome last night?’

Fiona coloured, but only from the neck up, where she had applied sunscreen.

‘I just don’t want to subject you to the sight of my great big arse. Do you think you can cope?’

‘I’ll try not to ravage you,’ Morag said, moving across to the wardrobe in the corner of the room. She shed her own towel and pulled on a singlet top and undies. Though the light was fading, it was still too hot for anything else. Next she opened the small bar fridge beside the handbasin, glad she had filled the jug in there earlier. She poured two large glasses of water, grabbed the burn spray and returned to the bed.

Fiona was lying face down, her back appearing even redder in contrast to those areas of her body that had been covered by her swimsuit. Morag put the glasses of water on the bedside table next to her.

‘Drink up,’ she said. ‘Both of them. You’re bound to be dehydrated.’

Fiona obediently reached for a glass, drained it, coughed a bit and lay back down.

‘I’ll have the other one when you’ve finished. Otherwise I’ll need to piss straight away, and you probably don’t want that on your bed.’

Morag smiled. ‘You’re all class,’ she said, spraying Fiona’s shoulders.

Fiona moaned, but in gratitude this time.

‘Fuck, that feels better. It’s so lovely and cool. What’s in it?’

‘Papaya,’ Morag replied, working her way down Fiona’s torso. Just below her burn line, at the top of her right buttock, was a small faded tattoo. She bent down to inspect it.

‘You never told us about this,’ she said.

Fiona peered over her shoulder to see what she was talking about, then slumped back onto the bed.

‘You never asked,’ she said, then sighed. ‘God, it’s ancient. I had it done when I was still in my twenties, before I was married. I’d almost forgotten about it.’ She paused. ‘Don’t laugh, but Todd has one too, just the same. It’s our initials. It was his idea. I went along with it because I was drunk.’ Another pause. ‘Among other reasons.’

Morag studied the blurry lines, trying to make sense of them. Eventually it came to her.

‘Oh, I can see it now . . . There’s the T, and the F.’ She traced the blue swirls lightly with her finger. They were like runes, she thought, all that was left of another time, another language. ‘They make something, don’t they? Is it a flower?’

‘A rose,’ Fiona confirmed. ‘Last of the original thinkers, weren’t we?’ She moved her arms up beneath her head and turned her face so that she was staring at the wall. ‘I haven’t looked at it in years. They’re supposed to be capitals, but I bet they’re lower case now. Everything drops. I hate this ageing shit.’

Morag straightened up.

‘You’re doing OK. Your arse hasn’t sent me screaming from the room yet.’

‘Huh,’ Fiona grunted. ‘It’s not what it was though. Neither’s my stomach, or my legs, or even my brain. At work, when a patient comes in I used to be able to say “Hello, Mrs Kerfoops” straight away. Now I need a good few minutes to dredge
up their name, or I have to go and look at the appointment schedule.’

‘Yeah, but you deal with a lot of patients. Yours has to be the busiest practice for miles around. They’re lucky you remember them at all.’

Fiona closed her eyes as Morag sprayed more of the liquid along the length of her spine.

‘So what about you, then? Doesn’t it bother you, getting older?’

‘I’d massage this in, but you’re so burnt I might hurt you. Just lie still while it dries.’ Some of the spray had ended up on her own hands. Morag crossed back to the basin and washed them before answering. She glanced in the mirror, at the fine lines around her eyes and mouth. Were they deepening? But she was fair, she chided herself. Of course there were lines. ‘Yes, it bothers me,’ she replied eventually. ‘I work in aged care. I know what’s coming. We have a joke in our department, that if any of us sees one of our colleagues collecting plastic bags or hoarding empty cans, they are to apply the Tontine treatment immediately.’

‘Tontine treatment?’ asked Fiona.

‘Put a pillow over their face. End it all.’ Morag smiled ruefully. ‘It’s a bit grim, but that’s how you manage it, the things you see every day.’ She picked her towel up off the floor and slowly dried her hands, thinking. ‘I’m not all that fussed about my appearance, you know that. That part of ageing doesn’t bother me—when my bum goes, it goes. What I do worry about is ending up like some of my patients. I never want to
get to the stage where the most meaningful thing I can do with my days is to organise all my bits of string by length.’

She opened the fridge to put away the spray and brightened. ‘Hey, this will cheer you up. Look what I got. Want some?’ She held out a chilled bottle of vodka.

Fiona groaned. ‘Urgh. Not now.’ She frowned. ‘But you don’t even like vodka.’

‘I know,’ Morag said, putting it back in the fridge. ‘I got it for you when we stopped at the supermarket. I knew you’d regret not having something later.’

‘Thank you,’ said Fiona, surprised. She sat up, pulling the towel around her. ‘What do I owe you?’

‘Oh, it’s on the house. Come and grab it when you feel up to it. Now let’s get dressed. Amira said to come over about seven, and it’s almost that.’ Morag took a sarong out of her beach bag and tied it around her waist. ‘And don’t worry about your arse,’ she added ‘Your boobs are still bigger.’

Fiona laughed. ‘Thanks again,’ she said. ‘Maybe I
could
manage a drink.’

‘Don’t tell anyone,’ Janey said, ‘but I’m thinking of going on the pill.’