One Whole and Perfect Day (3 page)
Sarah was sorting through a lapful of shiny travel brochures.
‘Going on holiday?’ asked Marigold.
‘Oh, I hope so.’ Sarah’s eyes grew large in her little pointed face. She lowered her voice to a whisper. ‘If we can find someone to look after Mum. It’s a second honeymoon, see? A romantic long weekend . . .’
Jokes were made about taking mothers on your first honeymoon, and obviously it was the same second time round, though Marigold found it a little puzzling that they should need a carer for so brief a time. Old Mrs Nightingale was one of the daycare centre’s most independent clients – mobile, all faculties intact, perfectly able to spend a few days alone. ‘Doesn’t she like being in the house by herself?’ she asked.
‘She loves it!’
‘So?’
‘She’d burn it down, Dr Samson! Leave something boiling on the stove! Or flood it! Leave the bath taps running!’
Marigold frowned. ‘Do you think so? She seems so capable to me.’
Sarah’s eyes grew even larger. ‘Oh Dr Samson, you don’t
know
.’
‘Don’t know what?’
Sarah twitched her tiny nose. ‘She gets so
immersed.
’
‘Immersed?’
‘In her card games. Or in those books of hers! She can read all day, Dr Samson. Isn’t that strange?’
‘No.’
‘On and on and on she goes. I honestly don’t think she knows she’s in this world.’
Marigold thought of Lonnie as a little boy, curled up on the sofa, reading and reading and reading. Anything he could get his hands on, except school readers, which he left strictly alone. Marigold had once found three of them – three! – in the garbage bin.
‘Ticket to Outer Space,’ whispered Sarah.
‘What?’ Marigold was still thinking of Lonnie.
‘Those books of Mum’s, the way she reads. Outer Space, you know? La La Land?’ Sarah twirled a finger at her forehead.
Marigold was beginning to dislike Mrs Nightingale’s daughter-in-law, even if disliking clients’ children was unprofessional. ‘I think it’s perfectly normal to read a lot,’ she said coolly.
‘Do you?’ Sarah rolled her eyes. ‘But Dr Samson, if you call her when she’s reading, if you say, “Mum, it’s dinner time, now put that book away!” she doesn’t answer! Even if you shout!’
And good luck to her, thought Marigold, though all she said was ‘Mmm,’ before changing the subject smoothly. ‘So – this holiday?’ she asked, nodding towards the shiny brochures in Sarah’s lap.
‘My sister said she might be able to take her,’ whispered Sarah. ‘It’s only a “might”, mind you, because Janet’s a bit scared of her –’ Sarah’s eyes flicked nervously towards her mother-in-law, and then back to Marigold. ‘Mum can be quite sharp-tongued, you know. Comes from all those years of being a teacher, I think.’
‘Does it?’ said Marigold.
‘So – so we’re not sure yet if we’ll be going,’ said Sarah, and she looked down at the glossy brochures and sighed, the tiniest, saddest sigh that Marigold had ever heard, and which, ordinarily, would have been the signal for her to say, ‘Oh, look, if you can’t find anyone, and it’s only for a few days, your mother-in-law can stay with me . . .’
Now she remained guiltily silent: only last week she’d promised Lily she wouldn’t bring any more lame ducks home. ‘It’s not
professional
, Mum!’ Lily was always pointing out. ‘And I’ll tell you something else.’
‘What?’
‘You’re going to get stuck one day.’ There’d been an edge of triumph in Lily’s voice.
‘Stuck?’
‘Yes! One of those carer-kids will go away and not come back and you’ll be left holding the oldie.’
Marigold had laughed, a little uneasily. ‘Of course they won’t.’
‘Of course they
would.
You’re such a softie, Mum. Don’t you read the papers?’
‘I haven’t got the time.’
‘Well, old people get abandoned every single day! Left on park benches! On railway stations! Without even a label round their neck to tell people who they are!’
There’d been a silence then. Marigold might not have time to read the paper every day, but she knew from her work that this was true.
‘Promise me!’ Lily had demanded.
‘Promise what?’ Marigold had asked, though indeed she’d known.
‘That you won’t bring home any more lame ducks –’ Lily had paused to calculate, ‘for at least a year.’ A year and she would have got out of the habit, that’s what Lily had been thinking.
‘But –’
‘Mum, it’s
unprofessional
!’
‘Oh, all right.’ Marigold had given in.
A promise was a promise, so now she said briskly, smiling falsely at Sarah, ‘I’m sure it will work out and the pair of you will be off on your lovely holiday.’ And though poor Sarah didn’t seem to notice, Marigold thought her voice sounded false as well – brummy as a two bob watch, as her dad would say.
As Marigold drove down the highway towards home, full winter night began to close about the city, creeping down from the mountains where Lily’s Nan and Pop lived, spreading an inky stain across the suburbs on the plain. Lights came on in the streets and houses: in Lily’s place and Lonnie’s Boarding House for Gentlemen; and in Mercer Hall, where, as the students returned, the windows lit up one by one until the hall of residence was a tall bright tower against the darkened sky.
‘Brummy as a two bob watch,’ typed Clara Lee in her small room on the twelfth floor. Clara was writing her fourth year thesis on Australian slang. ‘Flash as a rat with a gold tooth,’ she typed, and smiled. Now wasn’t that a kind of poetry?
Her dad wouldn’t have agreed. Her dad had wanted her to study Medicine instead of Arts. Medicine was what he’d wanted to study when he’d been young, only his elderly parents had forced him to do Accountancy instead.
‘I want to study what I
like
,’ Clara had insisted, almost adding, ‘I don’t want to end up like you!’
Her dad had given in, though he’d started up again when she’d begun her thesis.
‘If you’re doing Literature, why not choose something proper?’
‘Proper?’
‘Something – poetic.’ As he spoke the word a faint flush had risen to her father’s sallow cheeks. And no wonder, thought Clara, for Dad was the least poetic person you could imagine; it was even possible he didn’t possess a soul.
‘Poetic?’ she’d said again, teasingly. There was a boy in her Lit tute who looked poetic: tall and pale and thin, with a lock of long fair hair that fell across his forehead. His name was Lonnie Samson.
Her father had cleared his throat. ‘Something like Shakespeare, for instance, or the Romantic poets, or even – er, Robert Burns.’
‘But Dad, this kind of language I’m studying
is
poetic. Listen to this: “
Cold as a stepmother’s breath
”
. . .
See?’
Her father hadn’t seen. He’d kept on nagging and trying to boss her round. Clara didn’t have to take it; she had her scholarship, she didn’t have to live at home. She’d left. There was nothing to it. You simply tossed your clothes in a bag and walked straight out the door. Easy.
Clara’s fingers stilled on the computer keys. An image of her mother’s face rose up: her soft brown eyes, that little tremble at the corner of her mouth when she got upset and didn’t want you to know. ‘No,’ said Clara. ‘No. Go away, Mum.’ She shook her head sternly and banished Mum, and then, slowly, began to type again.
In the room next door Clara’s friend Jessaline O’Harris was checking through her notes for the test tomorrow. Every word she read made her feel sick. She hated Linguistics, hated it, hated it, hated it. Tears formed in her eyes, her thick glasses steamed up so that she could barely see. Jessaline chucked the heavy folder on the floor and reached for the book her friend Mrs Murphy had loaned her this afternoon. Mrs Murphy was in charge of the kitchens in Mercer Hall, and the book was
The Alice B. Toklas Cook Book.
‘I think you’ll enjoy this, dear,’ Mrs Murphy had said, and Jessaline knew she would, because she loved cooking and she loved reading about cooking; even a simple list of ingredients could hold her spellbound. Yet as she opened the book to chapter seven (
Treasures
) Jessaline’s gaze flicked nervously towards the door, as if she expected her parents – two tall slope-shouldered academics with big round heads – to burst in and demand to know why she was reading cookery books instead of studying for her exam. Jessaline felt her parents knew every single thing she was doing, even before she did it. She felt they could read her mind.
Suddenly she remembered they were both away at a conference in Armidale. Clutching
Alice B. Toklas
to her chest, Jessaline sprang up from her desk and threw herself onto the bed. She wiped her steamy glasses, snuggled back against the pillows and began to read:
A Hen With Golden
Eggs. Put a hen in a saucepan over very high heat. It should be
covered with cold water, and when it is about to boil
. . .
In his room at Mrs Rasmussen’s Boarding House for Gentlemen, Lonnie was reading too. His book was a Life of his favourite writer, Emily Bronte, and the further he read, the more convinced he was that if Emily Bronte had been his contemporary, alive and young and studying at the university, he’d have fallen in love with her. But would she have returned the feeling?
Somehow Lonnie knew she wouldn’t have. He could imagine her gaze on him, stern and clear-eyed, a little like his sister Lily’s. She’d gaze, and turn away, something that seemed to happen with girls Lonnie fancied, not at first, but after a little while. ‘It’s the way you toss your hair back,’ Lily had informed him not so long ago. ‘That droopy bit that falls over your forehead. There’s a boy at school has hair like yours, and he tosses it back – but only once, Lon. You keep on doing it and doing it, as if you haven’t got the
strength.
It makes you look like one of those nodding toys people keep in the back of their cars. It makes you look lacking.’
‘Lacking? Lacking in what?’
‘Just lacking,’ his sister had replied.
The night grew deeper. The lights in Mercer Hall went out one by one and the tall tower darkened and merged into the sky. Clara slept soundly and so did Jessaline; Clara’s parents lay awake and thought about her; old Mrs Nightingale sat up all night and read the poems of Robert Burns.
Wee, sleek-it,
cow’rin, tim’rous beastie, O, what a panic’s in thy breastie!
she read, and smiled to herself, thinking how very exactly Burns’ description of a mouse fitted her poor daughter-in-law.
Lily turned and twisted beneath her doona, dreaming anxious little dreams of shopping lists and overdue bills and a washing machine that kept on breaking down. One bare arm hung outside the covers, growing colder, and the small movement she made to draw it back into the warmth half woke her, and in that strange enchanted landscape between consciousness and sleeping a face hovered – the face of Daniel Steadman, whom the girls in Year 10 had voted most handsome guy in Year 11. They hadn’t used the word handsome – ’tasty’ was what they’d said, which Lily hated. It made him sound like a meal, or some kind of snack waiting to be devoured. Or – ‘Whatever,’ Lily murmured, sleep closing in on her fast. ‘Whatever –’
Daniel Steadman was nothing to do with her; she doubted he’d ever noticed her.
Up in the mountains, her nan and pop were dreaming too. In their dreams they were very young: May was in the Girls’ Home where she’d grown up, and her best friend Sef sat on the edge of her bed and whispered, ‘One day we’ll have a celebration.’ May was so little she didn’t know what ‘celebration’ meant, though she thought it had the sound of bells. ‘Bells,’ she said in her sleep, out loud, so that beside her Lily’s pop grunted and turned over, and, falling deeper into sleep, he heard his mother’s voice quite plainly.
‘Stanley? Stanley?’
‘Yeah?’
‘I want you to mow the lawn tomorrow. It’s getting out of hand.’
‘But tomorrow’s
Saturday.
I was goin’ down the creek with –’
‘No buts, Stanley. I want that lawn done first thing, do you hear?’
Stan grumbled and turned over again. ‘Yeah, I hear,’ he muttered, and then he woke and sat up straight in bed. It suddenly came to him that he couldn’t remember the colour of his mother’s eyes.
In the morning, though he had no memory of his mother’s voice from his dream of the night before, Lily’s pop decided it was time to mow the lawn. There’d been a mild spell last week and the grass, dormant all through winter, had begun to grow again. ‘Spring’s on the way,’ he said to his wife, May, and besides, he had a brand new mower he was eager to try out.
‘A
new
mower, Pop?’ Lily had exclaimed when he’d mentioned it on the telephone, and her voice had been incredulous, as if Stan had proposed something young and outrageous, like getting his navel pierced or paddling a plastic bathtub down the Amazon. ‘But Pop, why do that? Why not get someone to come in and mow the lawn for you?’
Stan loved Lily, and since he’d written her hopeless brother off, she was his only grandchild. All the same, when she’d suggested he get someone in to do the mowing, a small spurt of rage had flared hotly up against his ribs. She thought he was past it! He could hear it in her voice. Past mowing a bit of grass himself! Past buying a new mower! A new mower which at his age Lil obviously thought would be a waste, because he’d have kicked the bucket before it was broken in! It was as painful as the time his daughter Marigold had suggested he and May get Meals on Wheels. Meals on Wheels! What did she think they were? Even gentle May had protested. ‘Why, Marigold! Meals on Wheels is for
old
people!’
They hadn’t got Meals on Wheels. May still did the cooking, and they managed their own shopping up at the New World, every Saturday afternoon. And Stan had bought his mower and found a place for it in the shed, because you couldn’t leave a brand new mower, with its optimistic scents of fresh oil and sweet new paint to rust away in the damp air of the mountains; the mist that May always called (after a song a childhood friend had taught her) the foggy, foggy dew.
The shed was crowded with all the bits and pieces of their earlier lives. May couldn’t throw a thing away if it might hold some old memory, so boxes and barrels lined the walls, cases were stacked in the corners, odd bits of furniture took up centre space: a worn old sofa from their first house in Five Dock, a set of kitchen chairs, their daughter Marigold’s old cot, a battered wardrobe with a tricky door Stan had never been able to fix. Now, as he tugged at the mower, the tricky door swung open and he saw the trunk inside: a small trunk, which had the familiarity of an object once known and long forgotten. Mum’s, was it? His sister Emmie’s?
