Sweet Home Summer

by Michelle Vernal

  Bridget donned her glasses and read the verse in this year’s card out loud.

  ‘There is a special place within my heart

  That only you can fill

  For you had my love right from the start

  And you always will.’

  He’d written beneath this that he would dearly love to visit her and that all she had to do was call and tell him yes and he’d book a flight. Bridget felt the familiar roiling in her stomach at this request. ‘Oh Charlie, how did I get it so wrong?’ she asked the empty kitchen. The phone began to ring making her jump at the sudden intrusion, and she swore softly as she got up from where she was sitting. A split-second later, Bridget winced for the second time that morning upon hearing Margaret’s not so dulcet tones informing her she’d collect her in five minutes. ‘Good-oh,’ she said hanging up and retrieving her cup from the table. She tipped the dregs down the sink before picking the card up once more. She would tuck it away in the top drawer of her dresser where she put all of her life’s flotsam and jetsam, and try to forget about it.

  It was a victorious Bridget who was dropped home from bowls by a po-faced Margaret. She didn’t even toot as she reversed back down the driveway in her cobalt blue Suzuki Swift. She’d always been a sore loser, Bridget thought, giving her a cheery wave before letting herself in the front door. She’d better rattle her dags and get the dinner on because Joe would be calling in soon on his way home from the wood-processing plant where he worked in Greymouth, hoping to be fed.

  The packet of beef sausages were where she’d left them defrosting on the bench in the kitchen. Back in the days when Max had still prowled the premises, she wouldn’t have dared leave meat out on the bench; she’d have come home to find the greedy old tomcat had mauled their dinner.

  Joe enjoyed bangers and mash; he was a good man her son-in-law and Bridget liked a man who enjoyed his food. What was that phrase? Salt of the earth. She always thought it suited Joe down to the ground. He came to have his tea with her on a Thursday night when Mary swanned off to her dance in the dark session at Barker’s Creek Hall. He’d tuck into the meal she’d put down in front of him with relish, reckoning it was slim pickings on the home front with Mary not wanting a full stomach for all that dancing.

  Bridget shook her head, as she unhooked her apron from the back of the kitchen door and slipped it over her head before tying it around her waist. A brief search for the vegetable peeler ensued and after locating it in the compost bucket along with last night’s carrot peel, she set about scraping the spuds. She didn’t know what a woman past her prime was doing jiggling about in the dark with a group of other women who should know better! What was wrong with a brisk morning stroll?

  Bridget had been doing the same circuit each morning for years unless it was wet or the frost was particularly hard. Off she’d march, what was the point in dawdling? Down the High Street and passing by Banbridge Park, she’d always be sure to pause by the Cenotaph. It was her way of showing respect for the young men listed on the monument. The Great War was before her time, and she’d been too young to feel the effects of the Second World War. She’d known heartbreak in her time though. Her gaze would drift past the stone edifice and over the tops of the swings to the back of the park as she remembered stolen kisses under the Punga trees.

  She’d continue on her way, the Coalminer’s Tavern looming on her left. It always made her grimace when people referred to the old pub as the Pit even if it had seen better days. Then she’d get to School Road. It was the road on which she’d grown up, and it pleased her to see a swing and slide set in the front garden of what had been her family home. The house, long since sold, was rented to a family, which was nice even if they didn’t keep it to the standard her parents once had. Her eyes would inevitably flit to the upstairs window above the thorny rose bushes that needed a jolly good prune, and she’d feel a pang for the girl who’d once occupied that room.

  So many hopes and dreams but life hadn’t turned out how she thought it would. She’d stand there on the pavement of her youth lost in her thoughts knowing the woman with the unruly tribe of under-fives who lived in the house these days probably thought she was potty. She’d caught her peeping through the Venetian blind slats once, and had tried to imagine how she must look to her but had found she didn’t care. She’d stopped caring what people thought of her a long time ago and as the wind began to blow and the leaves to swirl, her mind would return to the night she’d met Charlie. She was once more that young girl twirling with joy.

  1957

  Bridget spun around and around, her arms flung wide. She was young and free, and in half an hour she would be off to dance the night away at Barker’s Creek Hall. The evening that stretched ahead was full of new possibilities and lots and lots of fun. She enjoyed the way the powder blue, poodle skirt she’d sewn for herself, under her mum’s helpful guidance, swung out high around her thighs. She’d spent the morning dipping her petticoat in sugar water, before ironing it over a low heat to give her skirt the fullness that was all the rage. Her mother had thought she was mad! Bridget was surprised, after all she should be used to such carry on from her older sister, Jean.

  She had teamed her skirt with a crisp white blouse that suited her dark colouring, a blue scarf knotted jauntily around her neck to tie her outfit together, and on her feet, she had a pair of white kitten heels borrowed from Jean. They made her feel ever so grown up. They’d come at a cost, mind; she’d had to loan her sister her brand new Bill Haley and His Comets record to take around to her friend Edith’s house, before she’d even had the chance to listen to it herself.

  She did have her new stole, though. She’d saved hard to buy it from the shillings her mother handed back from the wage packet she brought home once a week. She had worked since leaving school six months ago, as a secretary in the administration area of the Farmer’s Department Store on the High Street, and as such was entitled to a small instore discount. She’d put this to good use with the purchase of her first lipstick. It was tucked away inside her purse ready to be applied when she was a safe distance away from the house and her father’s eagle eye.

  Speaking of whom, he rattled his papers just then and her mother poked her head around the kitchen door. ‘Bridget, don’t you be throwing yourself about like that on the dancefloor tonight young lady; I saw your knickers then.’ She tried to look fierce, but her mouth was twitching. Dad looked over the top of his paper, a plume of pipe smoke rising above him and filling the room with its distinctive aroma. He shot her a disapproving look before raising his paper once more. Bridget decided it would be wise to take herself off before he changed his mind about letting her go.

  It had been touch and go as to whether his youngest daughter would be allowed to attend the Valentine’s Day Dance at Barker’s Creek Hall. He was convinced young people were being led astray by that music they were all going silly for. ‘Rock’n’Roll has a lot to answer for.’ He’d been heard to mutter more than once. He’d only agreed to Bridget going to the dance tonight because their parish church was organizing it as a fundraiser and Jean had said, under duress, that she would keep an eye on her. Jean could twist their father around her little finger; she could do no wrong in his eyes with her nice young man who had good prospects in the office at the mine where both men worked.

  Mum, Bridget knew, was putting a dollop of jam and cream on to each of the pikelets she’d made for the girls to take to the dance as an offering for supper to be held later in the evening. She didn’t want to run the risk of marking her blouse or skirt by helping, but she would go and keep her company while she waited. So picking up her stole from where she’d draped it theatrically across the back of the settee, she pulled it around her shoulders and went through to the kitchen and sat down at the table, safely out of her father’s line of sight.

  Jean’s boyfriend Colin was calling for them both shortly, but Jean was still upstairs in the bathroom fiddling about with her hair. Normally Jean would sit on the handlebars of h
is bike risking life and limb on the gravel roads, but Colin had managed to borrow his dad’s car. Jean had only consented to take her sister and friend because Bridget had threatened to tell their parents that she had seen her parked up with Colin last week when she’d told them she was going to the pictures at the Town Hall with him.

  Mum chattered on about what the dances had been like in her day when ‘swing’ had been all the rage and Glen Miller the star of the day. She was about to demonstrate her jitterbug moves, jammy spoon still in hand, when they heard a toot, followed a moment later by a knock at the front door. Bridget looked on with amusement as her father folded the paper, leaving his pipe to smoulder in the ashtray as he got up from his seat to open the front door. She knew he would shake Colin’s hand with a vigour that left no doubt that he had high hopes his eldest daughter would have a ring on her finger by the year’s end.

  Jean came skipping down the stairs in a cloud of Arpege perfume, an expensive gift from Colin for her birthday, and Bridget, carefully holding the supper plate her mum had placed in her hands, followed her out the front door. She barely heard the instructions her mother was reeling off for how she should conduct herself with decorum or her father’s watch-tapping instructions for curfew, as she settled herself into the back seat of the Holden FJ, arranging her skirt just so. She did not want it crushed by the time she got to the hall! Colin, she knew would have to hose the car down in the morning because it would be covered in dust by the time they navigated the shingle road leading to Barker’s Creek Hall.

  They picked Bridget’s best friend Clara up on the way, and the two girls sat giggling in the back as they bounced along, their conversation full of excited chatter over who they thought would be there tonight and who they’d like to dance with and who they most definitely would not! Their hands nervously smoothed the folds of fabric in their skirts in anticipation. Jean shot them both the odd, ‘oh grow up’ look over her shoulder before rolling her eyes and saying, ‘Kids,’ to Colin. He’d reached over and patted her knee with a smile. Bridget suspected it was just an excuse for him to touch her sister’s knee.

  Present day

  A toot and a wave from someone she knew driving past would invariably drag her back from her remembrances. ‘You’re a nostalgic old fool, Bridget,’ she’d tell herself before carrying on down the road and coming to the local school. Mary and Jack, then Isla and Ryan had all gone to Bibury Area School. She’d gone there too but in her day, there’d been a wooden schoolhouse plonked in the middle of what was now the sports field. It was long gone, cleared away to make room for the new like so many other pockets of Bibury’s past.

  The pavement forked a short way past the school, and she had the choice of following the path by the Ahaura River or the roadside footpath. She always walked down by the river remembering how she’d sat on the banks, hidden from view as she kissed Charlie. The memories of those kisses would fade as the path forked once more and she found herself almost reluctantly following the footpath that looped around back to High Street. She’d inevitably also find herself wishing that she’d been brave enough to choose a different path back when it had mattered.

  It was a walk filled with memories and ghosts, but Bridget was sure it was the only thing that kept her hip from seizing up completely, and it gave her the edge she needed to beat Margaret at bowls.

  The potatoes were bubbling in the pot, and her eyes were beginning to smart as she chopped the onion. She didn’t know if it was the onion that was making her want to cry or the memories evoked from the card she’d received that morning. She blinked them away upon hearing the front door bang shut.

  ‘You can’t beat the smell of frying onions,’ Joe called out from the hall, and she smiled. He said the same thing every Thursday, bless him.

  They’d settled into an agreeable routine of a Thursday evening with Joe always washing the dishes after they’d eaten. He’d moan and groan about how full he was while Bridget dried and put away.

  ‘Pudding, Joe?’ she’d ask when the last of the dishes were cleared.

  ‘Ooh, I don’t know if I can.’

  ‘Are you sure? I’m having some.’

  ‘Ah go on then, I might be able to make a bit of room.’

  Tonight, she’d found a bag of stewed black boy peaches from Margaret’s tree in the freezer, and so she’d whipped up a crumble. Having dished two bowls up with a dollop of ice-cream, they went through to the living room to eat off their laps while they watched Seven Sharp. Mary had harrumphed upon hearing of this arrangement.

  ‘You always made me and Jack sit up at the table, Mum.’

  ‘Seven Sharp wasn’t on when you and Jack lived at home, Mary,’ Bridget replied. She didn’t like to miss an episode. It was the show’s host Mike Hosking she was fond of, having listened and argued with him for years on talkback radio. It was like letting an old friend into her living room each evening.

  Joe, however, was on the fence. ‘He wouldn’t last five minutes in a real job,’ he’d say. ‘Look at all that crap he puts in his hair.’

  Bridget would tell him to pipe down and eat his pudding.

  Joe would head home at half past seven when the current affairs programme had finished. He would get home just as Mary was heading off to her dance class. They were ships passing in the night which suited him fine once a week. ‘It means I can work on the bike in peace without Mary going on about how I spend more time with it than I do her.’ He’d kiss Bridget on the cheek and thank her for looking after him before revving the engine of his ridiculously oversized motorized beast, and heading home in a cloud of exhaust fumes. Bridget would close the door thinking her daughter was right, she had married a petrol head but a petrol head with a heart of gold.

  This evening however before the credits rolled on Seven Sharp, Joe and Bridget looked at each other startled as they heard the front door open and Mary call out.

  ‘Is everything alright?’ Bridget looked at her daughter seeking reassurance as she barrelled into the living room.

  ‘Everything’s fantastic, Mum. Guess what?’

  ‘What?’ Joe and Bridget chimed.

  ‘Isla arrives home in two days. Isn’t that just the best Valentine’s Day present ever?’

  Chapter 4

  ‘You’re not cold are you love after all that Californian sunshine? It gets a few degrees warmer there in the summertime than it does here, I dare say.’ Mary swung her gaze from the road in her daughter’s direction, and the car swerved accordingly.

  ‘I’m fine Mum, keep your eyes on the road, and it was winter over there. Well, as close to winter as California gets.’ Isla had been heartened when she’d stepped outside Christchurch Airport’s terminal building to see the cloudless blue sky. It was a perfect Canterbury summer’s day, and it felt like she was being welcomed home. She opened the shoulder bag resting on her lap and felt around inside it until her hand settled on the book of affirmations that her counsellor at Break-Free, Rita, had given her when it was time to leave. It was comforting to know it was there and she knew too, thanks to her time at the lodge, that whatever happened next, she would be okay.

  The drive to Bibury was long, and she sat listening as her mum told her she was worried about Bridget living on her own especially since she’d had that fall a month back. ‘If your dad hadn’t called in on her – well, it doesn’t bear thinking about. You know what your gran’s like though, she refuses to admit she’s getting old and she was back taking her morning constitutional, as she calls her walk within the week.’

  Isla did know what her gran was like, tough and stubborn being the first two words that sprang to mind.

  ‘It’ll be strange not having you at home now you’re back, but it’ll be a relief to know you’re keeping an eye on Mum for a bit too. She always seems invincible and then to realize she’s not, well it scared me.’

  Isla nodded, she struggled to think of her gran as anything other than a force of nature too. Mother and daughter knew only too well that were Isla to move
back in under her parents’ roof there would be fireworks before long. So, staying with her gran was the perfect solution. Isla and Mary got along like a house on fire in small doses, but both were secretly relieved when Bridget diplomatically suggested Isla stay with her. ‘If Isla’s there with me, it’ll mean you’ll stop running across the road like a headless chook on your tea breaks Mary, to check up on me.’ Yes, it was a win-win situation for all.

  ‘It’s not like it used to be, Bibury you know,’ Mary announced, her orange face earnest. She’d been keeping up a steady monologue since they’d exited Christchurch. Isla felt a sense of sadness that her old stomping ground of the Garden City would be one she’d no longer recognize when she returned to explore Christchurch beyond the airport. She’d kept track of the post-earthquake rebuild online and had been amazed at the change to the cityscape. Over the ensuing years since the ground had shaken with an unfamiliar wrath, the familiar had been cleared to make way for the new, not because of progress but because of necessity.

  They’d been driving for over an hour now, having passed Castle Hill with its otherworldly moonscape, and the road they were on was nearly empty as the car began to wind through Talbots Pass. Isla tried to fight off the fatigue that hovered after the flight and look lively as her mother’s voice intoned.

  ‘You only have to read the police report in the Bibury Times to know crime’s on the up.’ Mary’s sigh was heavy with the weight of it all.

  ‘Did Sheree Davies get her knickers pinched off the washing line again then?’ Isla asked with a smirk to lighten the sombre mood Bibury’s crime spree had evoked.

  Mary shot her a sideways glance through suspiciously thick eyelashes, and the car veered over the centre line.