One Whole and Perfect Day (26 page)
And then Rose thought of her own parents. She thought of them dying, drowning, the sea surging round them, the broken ferry going down. She knew, now she was a mother, that they would have thought of her; they’d have worried, even as the water filled up their lungs, about what might happen to their daughter in her life. They would have wanted her to be all right, to be loved, to be strong and brave.
‘Okay, I will be,’ said Rose. And she straightened her shoulders and walked up the path to the door.
Lily couldn’t get her head around it all.
First there’d been the encounter with Daniel, so magical and unexpected that had it not been for those small knowing smiles from Mum and Mrs Nightingale, she might have thought it had been a waking dream – or a sudden hallucination brought on by reading
Bestie
.
And now, on this evening before Pop’s party, there was her family. Could this actually
be
her family all together in one room, with no one quarrelling or threatening or criticising? Pop and Lonnie talking to each other, and Clara actually wearing Pop’s wedding dress, because, as she’d told Lily, ‘Pop wanted me to try it on. He said I looked like it was made for me. Wasn’t that sweet of him?’
Sweet? It wasn’t a word Lily normally associated with Pop. ‘He said that? Are you sure it wasn’t Nan?’
Clara had laughed. ‘Of course not.’
And Pop had been right, because the wedding dress fitted Clara perfectly: the beaded band framing her throat and circling her slight shoulders, the creamy silk flowing like water down her slender body to below her knees.
So Pop wasn’t a bigot after all? Well, Lily wasn’t entirely convinced about that, but at least he wasn’t behaving badly.
And Nan? Nan wasn’t a batty old lady with an imaginary companion because Sef was real. She was old Mrs Nightingale, she was Serafina, who’d been Nan’s friend at the Home, over seventy years ago. It was wonderful, but weird all the same – the kind of miracle that happened in fairytales, and certainly never occurred in families like theirs. Strictly unmagical, the Samsons. Except on this special evening, with the light fading over Nan’s beautiful garden, and the fairy lights winking on in the trees, it was possible to believe that the Samsons might have their share of magic too.
Like anyone else, thought Lily sensibly. Why shouldn’t we? Just once?
She glanced across the room at Pop. He was standing by the window, twitching the curtains aside every now and then, peering out into the dark. She’d noticed him doing this for the last half hour, almost as if he was expecting another guest to arrive. Now he raised a spotted old hand and rubbed at his forehead like his head was aching and it suddenly struck Lily that he’d be eighty years old tomorrow. Eighty! Lily hurried across to him.
‘Are you okay, Pop?’
He turned and stared at her blankly for a moment. It was almost as if he didn’t know who she was.
Then he recovered. ‘Right as rain,’ he answered. ‘Only –’
‘Only?’
‘I can’t help thinking there’s someone missing from this room, if you know what I mean. Someone who should be here, and isn’t –’
Lily looked round. Everyone who should be here was here: Clara and Lonnie over there talking to Mum, Nan and Sef with their heads bent over Nan’s photograph album, she and Pop – so who could be left out? Who could he mean?
An idea came at her suddenly.
It couldn’t be.
Surely not? Surely Pop couldn’t be thinking of – Oliver DeZoto?
Though on such a night even this might just be possible. ‘You mean my – ’ Lily struggled to get out the word – ‘my dad?’
‘What?’ Pop turned on her a look of incomprehension.
‘I mean,’ she stumbled, ‘Lonnie’s dad?’
‘Eh?’
‘Our, um – father. You know.’ The one Mum married for his coat, she thought. The one who always gets my birthday three months late.
‘Him!’ roared Stan. ‘’Course I didn’t mean that shifty hippy bugger! What’s come over you, girl? You going soft on me, Lil?’
Lily grinned at him. This was more like it. ‘’Course I’m not.’ She dug him slyly in the ribs. ‘But what about you, Pop?’ she said, jerking her thumb across the room at Lonnie. ‘I thought
he
was never going to be your grandson anymore.’
‘No good keeping up quarrels at my age,’ said Stan sheepishly. Then he lifted his head and listened. ‘Is that someone at the door?’
Lily had heard it too, a knocking so light it was almost furtive, as if the person on the other side of the door felt they had no right to be there. She followed Pop out into the hall.
He swung the door open. A small Chinese lady stood on the doorstep – no, perched on it, thought Lily, perched ready to fly away.
Except when she saw Pop she smiled, and Pop smiled right back at her. ‘I’ve had this feeling all evening someone was missing,’ he said, holding the door wide for her.
Lily felt her knees go watery as she followed them back into the living room. She’d known all along it was all too good to be true! Of course the Samsons couldn’t have a special perfect day like other families! Of course they couldn’t! Now look what had happened! Pop had gone and found himself a Chinese girlfriend. No wonder he wasn’t a bigot anymore.
Oh, poor poor Nan! Lily glanced across the room at her. Look how she was smiling, chattering away to Sef; it was obvious she hadn’t caught on yet. She didn’t know a thing.
Clara had caught on though; she was staring at the newcomer, and her face above the lovely wedding dress had gone white with shock.
‘This is a friend of mine,’ announced Pop. And then he glanced at his friend enquiringly.
‘Rose,’ she said shyly. ‘I’m Rose.’
‘And I’m Stan,’ Pop told her.
Lily stared, bewildered, as the two of them shook hands.
Not a girlfriend, then. Otherwise, surely, they’d know each other’s names? Wouldn’t they? She felt like crying, because how could you tell? In their family? How could you ever tell what was going on?
‘Mum!’ It was Clara. Clara in a blur of creamy silk, flying across the room, Clara flinging her arms around the stranger so fiercely she almost knocked her from her feet.
Okay, Lily got it now. This Rose was Clara’s Mum. So why hadn’t she come with Clara and Lon? Why had she arrived in the dark and all alone? And how come Clara hadn’t known she was coming? Why were they crying?
Dysfunctional, for sure, sighed Lily. The Samsons had acquired a second dysfunctional family. Where was Clara’s dad, for a start?
Clara’s dad was at Central station. He’d spent the afternoon in his study, pacing up and down. Every ten minutes his anxious steps would take him to the window, where he expected to see Rose, returned to her senses, coming back home again. Because how could Rose, who had always been rather shy, go off uninvited to intrude upon a houseful of strangers? A house whose location she hadn’t seemed quite sure about, except that it was somewhere in Katoomba and its occupant had the first name of Stan?
No, Rose was a sensible woman, Charlie told himself. He knew she was upset. He realised the sudden news of Clara’s engagement must have been unsettling, but when she’d had time to reflect calmly on the matter, she’d come round to his opinion: that Clara’s engagement was no real business of theirs. Rose had gone somewhere to think, he decided. She’d have gone to some quiet, leafy park, or the kind of tea-shop frequented by ladies of a certain age, where she’d calm down and realise he was right. Then she’d come home again.
The afternoon went on and on. Lights came on along the street. Then it grew dark, and Charlie knew Rose wasn’t coming home. He pictured her walking into Central station, hesitating a moment by the ticket machine, still a little unsure. Then she’d make up her mind: he saw that sudden determined tilt of her chin, the same small movement he’d often seen on Clara. Very carefully Rose would press the buttons for her destination, scoop up her ticket and change. He pictured her entering the train, standing on tiptoe to place her bag in the rack, sitting down on the seat, leaning her head back, closing her eyes. Abruptly, he remembered the fierce look she’d given him when he’d said, ‘It’s no business of ours!’
Charlie left the study and hurried down the hall. He grabbed his coat from its hook by the door and checked the pockets for his keys and wallet. Then he left the house.
At Central he found his hands were trembling so much he couldn’t press the right buttons on the ticket machine. He went to the window.
‘What can I do you for, mate?’ asked the man behind the glass.
‘Return ticket to Takoomba,’ said Charlie solemnly. The worries of the afternoon had caused him to misplace syllables; stress occasionally had this effect on him.
‘Takoomba?’ the ticket seller queried. ‘You mean, ah – Toowoomba?’
‘No I don’t. I mean, I mean, Koo, Koo –’
‘Kooweerup? Down in Victoria? Long trip, that, mate, and you’ll have to change at Melbourne. Reckon you wouldn’t get there till tomorrow afternoon.’
Charlie shook his head impatiently. ‘Not Kooweerup. Kat, Kat –’
‘Cattai Creek?’
Charlie knew the man was trying to be helpful, knew he thought this Chinese person might be having trouble with the language. Be calm, Charlie told himself silently. Think of something peaceful and perfect and soothing. He took a deep breath and slipped into the daydream he often used to send himself to sleep: he pictured his office, neat and orderly, a row of perfect clients waiting on chairs outside his door; truthful, tidy people who had all their details ready and never became angry or confused . . .
‘Are you all right, mate?’
Charlie opened his eyes. ‘Katoomba,’ he said quite clearly. ‘Return to Katoomba.’
‘Katoomba! Off to the mountains, eh?’
Charlie didn’t know what came over him. He told the man proudly, ‘My daughter has become engaged.’ He felt his lips stretching in a foolish smile.
‘Congratulations!’
‘Thank you!’
Charlie found a seat at the back of the carriage, hoping no one would come to sit beside him. Someone did come; right at the very last moment, as the train began to move. A young girl dressed in dusty black, and pregnant, Charlie saw with some alarm. Her pale face was oddly streaked, as if she’d tried to wash it without soap and only made it dirtier. In one hand she carried a battered knapsack, which she placed carefully beside her feet; in the other she held a ticket to Katoomba, and the piece of crumpled paper that Lonnie had given to her that morning. The paper was warm from her fingers, where, after reading its message and taking in the address, she’d clutched it tightly, all those long long hours till at last she’d made up her mind.
Her name was Lucy. And as the train sped westwards through the dark she had the unaccustomed feeling that she was going home.
It was almost dawn on Sunday the seventeenth of September, the day of Nan’s party for Pop. Pop would be eighty today.
Lily had woken early. Now she sat out on the front steps breathing in the heavy scent of dew-soaked grass and flowers. They had a bigger family now, she thought. Not only Clara had been added, but Clara’s mum, and even her dad, who’d arrived last night on the very last train, bringing with him – of all people – the beggar girl in black whom Pop had been worrying about for weeks. Her name was Lucy, and somehow Lily knew Lucy was with them to stay, and her baby too, when it came along. There was even talk of Sef moving up into the hills. Did a big family make things better or worse? Saner or more crazy? Lily didn’t know, and she wasn’t going to think about it today. Except – why did Clara’s dad seem so frightened of Mrs Nightingale? Why did he stammer when she spoke to him? And even once (Lily had heard him quite plainly) say, ‘Sorry, Miss,’ when he hadn’t done anything.
Then there was Daniel. He wasn’t family of course, he wasn’t even her boyfriend, not yet; but she was going out with him next Wednesday after the
Hamlet
rehearsal. The weird fizzy feeling Lily had experienced that time she’d seen him walking down the corridor at school swept over her again; as if some fundamental law of Physics had been breached and she and all her thoughts were floating way above the ground. She hadn’t been sure she’d liked the feeling then and she wasn’t sure even now. Had Madame Curie ever felt this way? Perhaps she had – because it wasn’t simply fizz or air-headedness, it was as if the ordinary world had mysteriously expanded, revealing all kinds of possibilities you’d never known existed, or at least not for you.
Lily had thought she was first awake this morning; that behind her in the solid little house everyone else was sleeping. But now she became aware of a faint sound, like far-off whispered conversation, and light steps on the grass. She held her breath and listened. The sound was coming from the very bottom of the garden, from behind the shed, where there was a velvety square of lawn which Nan said had once been a croquet lawn.
Lily got up from the step and crept down the narrow path beside the hedge. She peeped round the corner of the shed and saw two old ladies in dressing gowns and slippers, dancing slowly round the lawn. It was a sight that would have made Tracy Gilman burst out laughing, and yet Lily thought Nan and Serafina’s dancing sort of
fitted
: fitted the beautiful garden and the whole perfect day she knew was coming after all. The sky was lightening now; in the distance the mountains were suddenly outlined with precious gold. Somewhere in Nan’s garden the first bird began to sing boldly, high up in the trees.
And from deep inside the house the telephone shrilled. At 5 am on a Sunday morning, who could this be, when all of them were here?
Lily smiled. She knew who this would be.
Not Daniel. Daniel didn’t have her number, and besides, he would wait till Wednesday.
It was someone who knew to ring here at weekends if no one answered back home at Roslyn Avenue.
Even if Pop bawled him out, called him a shifty hippy bugger or simply hung up the phone.
Someone who lived in Keene, New Hampshire, USA, where at this very moment it would still be Saturday afternoon.
Someone who was always promising to visit, and so far never had.
