Sixty Summers

by Amanda Hampson

  Looking only mildly offended, he shrugged and wandered away. Maggie snorted and thanked Rose. ‘See what I have to put up with?’

  ‘There’s your bad apple,’ said Fran, unamused by the exchange.

  Maggie wanted to know how Rose and Fran were settling in and they regaled her with stories of their adventures with Mr Ainsworth and Mrs Bishop and the strange landlady who lived in the kitchen. By the early hours of the morning, they had agreed to team up and look for a place together. Maggie was more cashed up than they were, and she was more motivated and organised than the two of them put together. Within a week they had a two-bedroom flat on the seventeenth floor of a tower block in Battersea, looking over the Thames and half of London, for twelve pounds a week with a garage.

  Maggie brought a different sensibility to the group. Rose was the reckless, impetuous one; Fran was more considered and cautious, but Maggie was entrepreneurial and had a natural authority. She made things happen. They would never have bought the Kombi and set off to explore Europe that summer without her.

  When their working visas expired, Maggie and Rose went back to Australia to start the next phase of their lives: university, work, marriage and family. Fran’s mother had recently remarried and Fran didn’t feel she had a home to go back to any more. She had deferred her Arts degree to come with Rose – she wanted to do something creative and London offered more potential. She feared domesticity, imagining a life of romantic bohemia.

  Fran had discovered an interest in live theatre and, as well as the West End, she attended performances at the nearby Battersea Arts Centre. She offered her services on the production side, painting the canvas backdrops and helping with set construction, and soon found a community within the theatre. She left the advertising agency to work in a bookshop and have more time for the theatre work but, in the mid-nineties, the shop closed and the arts centre burned down. If she was ever going to go back to Australia, she should have gone then, when she was young enough to start something new. She just didn’t realise it at the time.

  These days she worked in a second-hand bookshop in Kennington and, the way things were going, it would probably be her last job. The owner, Mr Elcombe, referred to it as antiquarian, selling ‘rare and fine books’, but that market was dying and most of them were just old. She spent long days in the shop alone. Sometimes a bona fide customer would appear but often it was local eccentrics or homeless people. If Mr Elcombe was away, which was often, she would let them sit by the gas fire and read. The shop had a cat called Gigi, whose job it was to keep the mice under control, but sometimes Fran smuggled her home and spoiled her with chicken livers and fresh salmon. They had a special understanding and, without her, Fran’s job would be almost unbearably lonely.

  Her relationship with Rose and Maggie had never really changed despite how differently their lives had turned out and the physical distance between them. It was only at the ten-year mark that the trio began to take the anniversary of their friendship seriously. Back then, a ten-year friendship seemed an extraordinary length of time. Now it was almost forty years. At first they had exchanged long letters, then they recorded rambling cassette tapes, later it was faxes, but now they were more connected than ever through social media. These days Fran got to see more of their lives and their children’s lives as well, but increasingly it was having the effect of making her feel more alone and detached from their worlds.

  The three had managed to meet up a couple of times and celebrate their anniversary together. One time, by sheer luck, Rose and Maggie’s travel plans intersected and they were both in London at the same time. There was a week in Lucca when they all turned fifty and Maggie had rented a villa to mark the occasion. Fran had taken her boyfriend at the time, Steven, who was quiet and aloof with Maggie and Rose’s rowdy families. He kept slipping away to work on his novel in their bedroom and she felt obliged to make excuses for him, citing his shyness and dedication to his writing, but felt torn the entire time between her friends and her lover.

  Maggie’s husband, Kristo, was loud and energetic, directing everyone with great enthusiasm. Fran found him tiring to be around. Peter, Rose’s husband, was more peaceable but, as an academic and lecturer, he had an expectation that when he spoke, a hush would fall and he would have everyone’s rapt attention. He and Kristo were not ideal holiday companions but, like good husbands, they made it work.

  Later this year, Rose, Maggie and Fran would all turn sixty. It seemed inconceivable. Fran wished she could afford to make the trip home so they could spend it together, but unless she had a lottery win, that was not going to happen. She wondered if Maggie would think about renting a villa again. Louis wouldn’t come. She’d have to go alone.

  Fran finished her tea, had a shower, brushed her hair and applied mascara and lipstick. Not so much for her own vanity as to make her friends feel less depressed about the passing of time, although both seemed to be coping with the ageing business better than she was. She put on her black skirt and jumper so she was ready to walk out the door when the call was over. The shop didn’t open until 10 a.m., so there was no real rush.

  She opened up her laptop and sat quietly, waiting for the familiar faces of her dearest friends in the world to magically appear. The cracked William Morris mug sat on the table. Bloody Louis. But for some reason, she couldn’t bring herself to throw it out.

  Chapter Three

  In an old hall in Glebe, women’s voices rose as one and divided into harmonies as the sopranos soared above the altos and tenors. Rose felt her spirits lift and glide overhead on a thermal of sound, her voice indistinguishable as it melded with the others. She was transformed into an instrument, only the tiny tremors of vibration throughout her body connecting her spirit with her material being.

  The thought entered her head that when you feel like screaming, singing is the antidote – a harmonious release of pent-up emotions. Screaming shatters and breaks you, not to mention pissing other people off. Singing nurtured the body and fine-tuned the world around you.

  The song, an African a cappella entitled ‘Freedom Is Coming’, felt like her own personal anthem right now. She was aware of the irony of appropriating a sentiment related to freedom from the oppression of apartheid, but she felt a growing desperation for a different sort of freedom. Rose felt as if she had been waiting her entire life to be free, and she worried that by the time it was there for her, she would be too old and afraid to grasp it. Realistically, she could never be truly free while Peter was alive. Not that she wished him dead – he was her husband and she was fond of him. But still, she had a pervasive feeling of being trapped.

  When the song finished, a faint reverberation hung in the air as each voice returned to its owner and they resumed their individuality. The women gathered in a circle, held hands and made a moment of acknowledging each other. As each set of smiling eyes met hers, Rose wondered if anyone else heard that song as a siren call beckoning them away from all that was safe and comfortable.

  The choir leader thanked them and confirmed the details for a performance at a cultural event the next week. On parting, the singers always hugged one another. Not an air kiss or a cursory hug, a good, solid heart-to-heart embrace. Rose loved this tradition and enjoyed sharing an embrace with someone who wanted nothing from her but human contact.

  Out in the hot afternoon sun, she strapped on her bike helmet, feeling that she was being physically torn from that melodic utopia and dragged down into the hell realms of the real world. The sounds of the traffic and smells of the street were all the more offensive to her sensibilities as the high she had experienced only moments before evaporated in the wet heat of the afternoon.

  Home was a ten-minute ride away and she stopped on the way to pick up the last bits and pieces for dinner, cheered by the thought of spending the evening with her two oldest friends, even if one was on the other side of the world.

  As she walked up the front path to the stone and timber house that she and Peter had lived in for the past thirty-
five years, she cast a critical eye over the front garden. Weeds pushed up through the paving of the front path and dandelions were taking over the two patches of lawn either side. Too late to do anything about that now. Not the sort of thing Maggie would care about anyway.

  Rose chained up her bike on the covered front verandah. It could do with a sweep if she had time later. It was only occasionally, when someone was coming over, that she noticed that the house looked not exactly abandoned, but certainly neglected. At those times she would often get stuck in and mow, weed and sweep and would love how smart the place looked until it reverted to its natural state.

  She hung up her helmet and walked down the wide hallway that divided the front part of the house in half, past the bedrooms on either side, to the open living room and kitchen that ran the full width of the rear. The house was silent. Was it remotely possible that Peter had already left and she had the place to herself? Yes? Yes! No. There he was in the back garden battling to separate two old fishing rods that had become entangled with each other. She went out onto the verandah. ‘What are you doing, dear?’

  He glanced up briefly. ‘What does it look like? Do you want to give me a hand?’

  She absolutely did not, but left to his own devices, he’d still be there this evening. ‘You haven’t used those rods in twenty years. Why not just buy a new one? You probably won’t even do any fishing while you’re there. You know the boys don’t enjoy it.’

  ‘Rose, I’m not going to buy some cheap nasty Chinese rods when I’ve got two perfectly good ones right here. Aren’t you the one always telling me to reuse, recycle, repurpose?’

  They could bicker about this for hours. It was a delaying tactic. Don’t argue, she told herself, just untangle him and set him free. ‘Have you packed your bag?’ she asked, already knowing the answer.

  ‘I don’t need very much,’ he said. In other words, no.

  ‘What time are you picking the boys up?’

  Peter gave his watch a long blank look. ‘An hour ago.’

  Rose took her phone out of her pocket. She’d set it to silent during choir practice and now a stack of messages awaited her. One from Elliot asking where his father was, a voice message from Peter asking where the overnight bag was (only the same place it had been kept for thirty-five years) and one from Max saying he didn’t feel well. Every year the pattern was the same.

  Rose went inside, got the overnight bag down from the wardrobe, packed Peter some underwear, socks, spare shorts, an extra T-shirt and fleece. She put it on the floor near the front door and went back out to the garden.

  ‘Leave the rods to me, dear,’ she said. ‘Just get your toiletries and put them in the bag I’ve left by the door.’

  Peter obediently let her take over and went inside. Rose laid the rods on the ground, thoroughly examined the problem and set about quickly separating them. She went indoors to get something to wrap them up in and saw Peter wandering down the hallway carrying his toiletries bag and looking lost, as though she had set him an impossible task. ‘Which —?’

  ‘Front door!’ she called in a tense singsong voice.

  Finally, Peter was installed in the car. Rose slung the fishing rods in the back and gave him a farewell peck on the cheek. ‘Have fun, Prof.’

  ‘You know, Rose, I’ve never been able to decide if that moniker is vaguely hostile or genuine affectionate teasing. In any case, at the end of the month it will become an irrelevant title and you’ll have to think of something else.’

  ‘I’ll call you Professor Emeritus from then on,’ Rose said kindly.

  He gave her a wan smile. ‘That’s something to look forward to at least.’ He always seemed so dejected when he talked about his retirement. She did feel sorry for him but felt so much sorrier for herself that it cancelled out all sympathy for him.

  ‘Give my regards to Maggie,’ he said. ‘I’ll see you late Sunday.’

  ‘Off you go, drive carefully and please don’t call unless it is a genuine emergency, in which case ring emergency services.’ And then, to be absolutely sure, she added, ‘Triple zero.’

  He nodded and started the car, his expression one of suffering and forbearance. He loathed going away without her and she had to appreciate the effort it took to allow her this one weekend a year. Elliot was now thirty-five with his own family, and Max four years younger, but the boys continued to cooperate with this long-standing tradition, having given up trying to convince their father to try a different destination or, at the very least, a different cabin.

  She watched the car disappear down the street and turn the corner onto the main road. She waited a few minutes, half expecting to see him coming back under some pretext. The street remained empty. It was safe to assume he was gone. She was alone. She walked through the house singing ‘Freedom Is Coming’ at the top of her voice, wheeling around, arms outstretched to embrace the rooms emptied of human habitation. She half thought of doing a cartwheel down the hall but reconsidered at the prospect of spending the rest of the day in Emergency. Her cartwheeling days were probably behind her now.

  It wasn’t as though Peter took up much room. He was relatively compact, but he was like those pop-up ads you couldn’t seem to get rid of. One minute he needed her help to find something – he spent most of his waking hours searching for mislaid items, both virtual and real – the next he had a paper needing writing or her feedback on a lecture or her opinion on some faculty politics. There was never a moment when they were both in the house that she could settle down to a task without the fear of interruption hovering over her. Soon he would be at home all day asking where she was going and when she was coming back, and what she had planned for lunch. Her life would become intolerable.

  Her phone buzzed with a message. She willed herself not to look at it, wanting to continue revelling in solitude. It buzzed again. It could be Maggie – she had better not be cancelling! The first message turned out to be from Elliot’s wife, Prya, wanting to know if Rose could babysit Austin this evening since Elliot was away – seemingly having forgotten the whole point of the exercise was that this was Rose’s night.

  Rose constantly had to battle the urge to silently criticise or find fault with Prya, who was actually flawless, except for being a tiny bit self-absorbed. She led the sort of life that people idealise on social media – but for real. You could send a surprise drone through her house and find everything in perfect order. Beds neatly made and cushioned up. Wildflowers in interesting vintage jars dotted about. Every drawer and cupboard compliant with surgical standards. Prya and Elliot never needed to declutter because clutter never crossed their threshold. This orderly approach was the antithesis of Rose and Peter’s house, which had become untidy-able; everything was clutter. It wasn’t that they were hoarders, it was just an accumulation over time and the fact that, when offspring leave home, they leave their clutter behind and are touchy about anything being thrown out. There were books stacked here and there because the shelves were full, paintings that no one had ever got around to hanging leaned against the walls and a patchwork quilt that Rose had begun several years ago but hadn’t completed – yet – draped over one end of the dining table. Rose could see the muddle of their house made her daughter-in-law twitchy but Prya also had beautiful manners and was far too polite to say anything.

  Prya had a masters degree in pharmacology and was employed by a company that regularly allowed her to work from home and offered free yoga classes. Her exotic ancestry had bequeathed her an almost exquisite beauty: dark eyes, burnished copper skin and silky black hair. She had a knack with clothes and was always beautifully groomed. She was the financial strategist of the family – all expenses were spreadsheeted and analysed. She and Elliot owned a lovely unit in an up-and-coming suburb and employed a cleaner. On the days when Prya worked, they paid so much for childcare, it would be cheaper to book Austin into a five-star hotel with room service babyccinos.

  On the days Prya was caring for Austin, who was about to have his first birthda
y, she would occasionally invite Rose to join them on one of their excursions. Rose enjoyed the cultural ones like the Babies Proms at the Opera House but the more athletic ones involved a toned squad of mothers in lycra with shiny hair and strollers that folded up like origami swans to fit neatly in the back of their SUVs. Surely, Rose thought, somewhere there were still mothers wandering around in a weepy daze wearing baggy-kneed, milk-stained tracksuits? Or had women actually nailed this now? Were women allowed to be this efficient and flex their organisational muscles without apology? Had women stopped apologising full stop? Or was there another tribe hidden away indoors who were not coping, crippled by self-loathing that was further exacerbated by these frisky super-mums?

  Prya was the new breed of wife who had established ground rules for Elliot right from the start. Rules that he respected and adopted without question – and good on her. Peter once commented that she kept Elliot on a ‘short leash’ and Rose had pointed out that apart from a few notable exceptions – such as Joan of Arc and Boudicca – women had been on a short leash en masse since the dawn of time. It was about time that situation was reversed.

  Rose didn’t begrudge Prya living the feminist dream, so why did it niggle that the martyrdom had been eliminated from motherhood and marriage? It wasn’t as though Rose thought suffering was a badge of honour, or even necessary. Elliot had a demanding corporate job that Rose didn’t quite understand, but he never seemed to resent being left with Austin while Prya went out to her many social events and fitness classes – even the occasional ‘pampering’ weekend away! The longest Rose had ever left the boys with Peter was to rush to the supermarket for a last-minute item. In fact, Elliot was full of praise and admiration for his wife’s talents and capabilities, which was more than Rose could ever say for Peter.