by Sally Piper
Wouldn’t have seen the city like this twenty years ago.
Never had so much to throw out, I suppose.
Not half as much.
Ah yes, times that weren’t so good were lauded, proudly, as obstacles unique to a different generation, for building character, as if it were a construction project finally completed.
But Grace had grown from a family, and a community, where flaws and failings and wrong choices were worn like a hair shirt, suffered privately in fear of pull yourself together or you’ve made your bed gibes from people for whom stoicism was a way of life. But there had been Arnott’s biscuits, strong tea and the indirect counsel of friends.
‘What’s the old maid doing here?’ Des had asked Grace, more than half a lifetime ago, on finding Kath sitting in his lounge room one Saturday afternoon.
Des wouldn’t have believed Grace if she’d told him of the lovers Kath had had, was still having. Depending on his mood, he could only see her friend as either a barren crone or a cigarette-rolling dyke.
‘Shh – she’ll hear you. The girls are coming in for afternoon tea, that’s all.’
‘Bloody hell. Don’t any of you have jobs to do?’
‘Des, please, keep your voice down,’ Grace hissed. ‘Besides, do you work every minute of the day?’
‘No, and I shouldn’t have to. Don’t forget who puts the meat on the table.’
Bev’s head bobbed past the kitchen window and along to the back door. ‘It’s only me,’ she called, and opened the screen door to let herself in. ‘You still here, Des. Thought you’d be long gone by now, knowing we were coming round.’
‘No one informed me you were, otherwise I would’ve.’
‘Consider yourself informed now.’ Bev gave Grace a peck on the cheek and a wink.
Bev got away with more than most women around Des because of the shape of her arse. Des slapped it now and took himself outside. His jaunty whistle suggested he thought he’d got the last word – or hand – on the matter.
‘He’s no quality bottle of red, that one,’ Bev said, rubbing her rump. ‘Not likely to improve with age at all.’
Embarrassed, Grace changed the subject. ‘Come through to the lounge. Kath’s already here. Ada shouldn’t be far away.’
‘Don’t you reckon thirty-eight’s a bit young to be classed an old maid?’ Kath asked, as Grace and Bev entered the room.
‘You heard.’
Kath gave Grace a how-could-I-not look.
‘Is that what he called you?’ Bev looked at Kath, amused.
Grace distracted herself by clearing a place on the coffee table to make way for the tea tray they would share later.
Kath, dressed smartly in a fashionable scoop-necked frock, her curvy calves shiny in nylons, got up and did a hunched old-woman-walk across the lounge, stooped over an imaginary cane, one hand pressed to her back. Grace wished she could relax into the laugh along with her friends.
‘What am I missing?’ Ada came through from the kitchen.
‘The wisdom of Des,’ offered Kath, still chortling.
‘Looked as though he was setting the shed alight when I came in.’ Ada took a seat beside Bev on the sofa.
‘That’s where Des and I do understand one another.’ Kath removed a slim and colourful tin from her handbag. Inside was a neat row of cigarettes she’d rolled earlier. She took one out, lit it up and blew a perfect smoke ring into the air with her first breath out.
‘Those things are no good for you.’ Grace passed her friend an ashtray. ‘I wish you’d listen to me where Des won’t.’
Kath scrutinised the smouldering tip. ‘Maybe they aren’t. But if I give them up, what will I have in common with him then?’
‘You could start slapping my arse.’ Bev’s comment set off another round of laughter.
Grace envied much about Kath’s life. In many ways her friend was living before her time, something Grace thought might be both frightening and liberating. With both parents dead early, Kath, an only child, had been left the family home, which had given her more than familiar surroundings and fond memories. It had allowed her to flout convention too, as only women of independent means could. Grace had often tried to put herself in Kath’s shoes, to try on singleness, childlessness, not having to answer to anyone – but the fit usually pinched. On the days her children came home from school excited, not knee-scraped and grumpy, and Des walked in the door with the teasing smile and playful eye he’d worn when they first met, Grace felt her family around her like a warm blanket. At these times she didn’t envy Kath her dinner for one or her big, lonesome house. But on the bad days, Grace would fantasise about those shoes of Kath’s and imagined them feeling as comfortable as Cinderella’s slippers.
Just then Kath slipped off her high heels and tucked her feet beneath her on the lounge chair. ‘Bloody shoes are killing me,’ she said.
Grace laughed suddenly and the others laughed reflexively with her. Then she started to cry, and all fell silent.
‘Time for tea.’ Grace got up quickly and left her friends slack-jawed. In the kitchen she leant against a bench and focused hard on the bold patterning of the linoleum. The flooring was a good distraction – she’d always hated the brown and green design but it had been cheap, half-price in the sales. It reminded her of the rows of onions her mother had strung up in the shed, brown bulb riding on top of brown bulb. But now, through damp eyes, the design blurred into something more pleasing, the colours softer, the pattern less ordered.
Grace wiped her eyes on a tea towel, wrangled the cupboard door that always stuck, and took out the good china teacups. She felt the greater wrestle within, though, for allowing herself to act such a fool. But misery had a way of bubbling up like a gassy drink when least expected.
Bev came out, as Grace knew she would, but only after a decent amount of time had passed. Time enough for Grace to pull herself together.
‘Need a hand in here?’
‘I think I’ve got it under control.’ Grace clattered the lid back onto the tea caddy then started laying the cups and saucers on a tray. Bev sat down at the kitchen table. She rested her generous hands on the grey and white Formica surface and waited. Grace knew Bev could wait any amount of time if she had to.
‘There’s nothing I want to talk about so you may as well fill your time putting these out.’ Grace passed Bev a packet of Monte Carlo biscuits and a scalloped-edged plate.
Bev shrugged and took each. ‘Nothing like keeping busy during times of despair.’
Grace gave her friend a sidelong glance, but Bev was concentrating on opening the packet of biscuits.
‘I love Monte Carlos,’ Bev said. ‘Such a flashy name, don’t you think?’
Grace didn’t answer. The kettle whistled. She took it from the stove and poured the boiling water into the teapot. She slipped a knitted cosy over the top.
‘But when all’s said and done,’ Bev went on, ‘the biscuits themselves are really quite plain.’
Grace, her back to Bev, could hear the biscuit packet rustle as Bev removed each one to put on the plate. She knew she’d be doing it with care.
‘It’s what joins them that makes them special,’ Bev continued, ‘that seam of jam running through the white icing. That’s the Monte Carlo’s secret.’
Grace rested her hands on either side of the teapot. It was July and cool in the kitchen. She enjoyed the warmth of the teapot through the tea cosy and sleeves of her cardigan while she listened to Bev’s talk of biscuits.
‘I bought a packet once and they were missing the jam. Can you believe it? All icing, no jam.’
‘Did you take them back?’ Grace asked.
‘No. We got through them, but I felt cheated.’
‘You should have taken them back.’
‘Ah, but you see, I think I got those jamless Monte Carlos for a reason.’
‘No, to remind me of what they tasted like without the jam.’
Grace brought the tray over and placed it on the kitchen table beside Bev’s plate of neatly laid out Monte Carlos. ‘I’ve gone off jam lately. I find it sickly,’ she said.
‘Well, that’s a problem if you happen to have a packet of Monte Carlos in the cupboard.’
‘Are you suggesting I buy a different biscuit?’
‘Only if you can’t stomach the ones you’ve got.’
The bus continued its stop-start journey towards Kath’s.
‘Arnott’s have been good to us over the years,’ Grace said to Ada.
They’d each had a few Arnott’s moments in their day, and Ada nodded her head in quiet understanding.
‘It’s the shared biscuits I miss most about Bev,’ Grace went on.
Ada nodded.
‘She loved her Monte Carlos,’ said Grace, still remembering.
Grace and Ada sat in comfortable silence as they travelled further up the mountain. Fewer people got on and off the bus, but when the doors opened for those who did, the air that came in was fresher each time. By the time they pulled into Kath’s stop they were the last two passengers on board.
At Kath’s they sat on the back deck and took in the view across eucalyptus trees. Grace breathed deeply of the musty smell of the forest floor, with the occasional waft of cigarette smoke (Kath had moved on to tailored cigarettes when she turned fifty, worried she’d outlived her role as swinging sixties icon and looked more like an old hooker with her tin of rollies). They shared a bottle of wine and ate sandwiches with the crusts cut off, like children. Then there were biscuits, of course – Scotch Fingers and Ginger Nuts. Ada dunked hers in her tea, as she always had.
To Grace’s ear their conversations moved seamlessly, but to a stranger’s she supposed they would sound disjointed and cryptic.
‘Another birthday,’ Kath said. ‘One remembered and celebrated.’
‘Yes, reach seventy and I finally hit the jackpot. Maybe I should deduct the others from the tally, pretend I’m younger.’
‘Not so fast,’ Ada laughed, ‘we’ve kept count.’
And they had. But not so much kept count of the years as marked the day firmly in their diaries from one year to the next as Grace had theirs, even Bev’s, still.
‘You managed to talk Susan out of a restaurant then?’ Ada asked.
‘Only just. She had the thumb screws on me there for a while. Pulled the mother-guilt thing a few times. It’ll make it so much easier for all of us,’ Grace mimicked. ‘But I played the daughter-guilt one right back at her.’
‘It could be the last time I have the whole family round my table,’ Kath chanted in her best old-lady-hard-done-by voice.
Grace laughed. ‘Something like that.’
‘Can’t let them bully you,’ Ada said. ‘God knows it’s a full-time job keeping my lot off my back. I’ve started teaching the grandchildren how to make papier-mâché masks out of the retirement home brochures I keep finding on the kitchen table.’
‘Do you make sure the snowy-haired couples in the matching tracksuits are stuck on the outside?’ Grace had yet to find the same kind of reading material left on her kitchen table, but she knew the pamphlets Ada meant. They were marketed like holiday brochures, except the faces at the destinations had more wrinkles and less cleavage on show and the highly whitened teeth weren’t necessarily their own.
‘Smack bang on the forehead,’ Ada laughed, ‘more noticeable there.’
‘At least I don’t have to put up with any of that crap.’ Kath lit up another cigarette.
‘Well, they can keep hinting and I’ll keep pretending I’m good with glue and paper.’ Ada dunked the last of her biscuit in her tea.
The three sat quietly for a while, listening to the hush of the bush. The loudest sound was of Kath’s breath. Each exhalation rattled softly with damp. Grace kept quiet about her friend’s habit nowadays, even though she’d seen the consequences of it often enough. Dusky-lipped men and women, whose stomachs were caved in and chests barrelled out, laboured to pull breath as though the air was being sucked through a pinhole in plastic wrap. Grace could still picture them, each sitting on the edge of a hospital bed, spindly legs dangling, shoulders hitching with effort. Some days she’d unintentionally set her respiratory rate to match theirs, compelled to breathe for them, compelled to ease their burden.
But Kath liked her vices, so who was Grace to deny her friend? Besides, at seventy-six, it was too late for Kath to go back; too late for Grace to make a difference. But she imagined trying to breathe for her friend when the time came, sucking the air in sync, wanting to ease her burden; pretending she could.
A distant grunting noise sounded from somewhere in the bush, eerie like the devil’s laugh. They all strained to listen.
‘Koala?’ Ada asked.
Kath turned her good ear towards the stand of eucalypts at the back of her house. ‘Wrong time of year.’
Then there was a new noise, almost like a child giggling. To Grace it sounded as though the bush was haunted.
‘Lyre bird,’ Kath announced. ‘You hear them occasionally.’
They sat very quietly, hoping to hear more. It was a privilege to eavesdrop on such a secretive bird. But after the distant sound of what might have been a car alarm, which could have been the lyrebird or just a reminder that the city wasn’t so far away after all, the bush fell silent again.
‘I swear I heard one mimic a steam train once,’ Kath said. ‘God knows how old that bird must have been.’
The friends’ laughter echoed across the trees.
Ada turned to Grace. ‘Do you remember that time when the children were small and we took them to the zoo? Claire spent the day mimicking animals and you called her a lyrebird?’
Grace smiled, remembering, easily.
‘She got so indignant,’ Ada continued. ‘I am not a liar. That is the sound it makes. She didn’t half stamp her foot.’ Ada shook her head, laughing with the memory.
‘So very young, but so very righteous,’ Grace said.
‘A noble trait.’ Ada took another Scotch Finger, broke it in two on her plate.
Noble seemed a word better suited to the aged than to a little girl. But Grace knew what her friend meant.
*
The bus journey back off the mountain that afternoon had been a rewind of the morning, only faster. It wasn’t because the heavy vehicle was going downhill, Grace decided, but because the undesirable had a way of presenting itself with sudden force. The bush gave way to streets and kerbs and rubbish and cars all too quickly. Each time the bus doors opened, the buzz seemed cacophonous after the quiet of Kath’s deck and the whispering eucalypts.
When they reached their stop the sun was almost through its arc across the sky. Despite her short legs, Ada managed an uneventful step down from the bus after it had settled itself like a fat yet graceful lady at the kerb. But then she slipped a little as her heel found a clump of litter, so Grace linked arms with her till they reached the nearby T-junction. There Grace unlinked her friend’s arm and each stood on the edge of the footpath, Grace in the dip, Ada on the higher ground, reducing the height difference between them. They waited to cross the road.
Neither could have predicted the white delivery van would cut the corner in order to get its bulk round the narrow intersection, any more than they could have predicted which one of them would stand on the left to take the blow from its wide side mirror. That day it was Ada’s turn to be on the wrong side of luck. The van’s mirror struck the side of her head as she poked it out to check for traffic and she was reeled backwards by the force of it. Too shocked even to cry out, she lowered herself to the ground strangely, gracefully. Grace followed, coming to her knees, to comfort Ada, remembering fleetingly, shockingly, another ti
me like this.
A crowd soon gathered around them, two aged women on the ground, one bleeding down the side of her face, the drops spilling onto her ecru blouse. Grace heard snatched words – ambulance and elderly and mustn’t have looked. A hand came into view to press a wad of tissues to Ada’s wound, another offered up a bottle of water. Ada stared up at Grace, abruptly searching for recognition in a face she’d known for decades. It unnerved Grace to see how the memories and the strong connection could be severed so easily. She was reminded of the mind’s capacity to withdraw during times of deep shock.
Finally, the reality of pain, perhaps, told Ada she was alive and that she could come back to the here and now and she clung to Grace then like a terrified child.
They must have looked a strange pair, Grace thought later. She refused to take her arms from around Ada. She pressed her against her chest, protecting her, protecting herself, from their fear. And Ada, bag still clutched to her lap, didn’t indicate she wanted to be released. It would be that first look on Ada’s face that Grace would relive that evening and several after it, more than the kindness shown by strangers.
They waited like that, together, until an ambulance could make its way to them.
*
‘Is Ada going to make it today?’ Susan asked.
‘She said she would. Her son is going to drop her over.’
‘It was lucky she wasn’t hurt more seriously by the sounds of things.’
‘The bruising’s bad enough. Looks like she’s been in a boxing ring.’
‘Still, it could have been broken bones, or worse.’
The measure of worse could be interpreted in odd ways, Grace had come to realise since the accident.
‘I’m worried about her,’ she said to Susan, tipping the drained potatoes back into the pot and covering them. ‘Today’ll be the first time she’s left the house.’
This past week had taught Grace much about the fragility of confidence. She’d seen Ada every day and each time she’d listened to a once-robust voice cowed and quavering. To have trust in your body one day, know it would take you where you wanted it to, only to have its reliability cheat on you like a whoring husband the next, was enough to bring confidence to its knees. So how was worse to be measured? Could being in a coma for a week be worse than having your vulnerability exposed? Once she’d have said an emphatic Yes, but now she wasn’t so sure. Ada had been forced to face her future, and what her friend saw was how short and unpredictable it could be.