by Pat Rosier
‘Um,’ Poppy was struggling to find the right words, ‘What’s it going to be like for you if I see Alexa? Not that I’d repeat anything you’ve said,’ she added hastily.
‘All right. She’s your friend too.’ Apart from the tears, which she had allowed to happen without paying them much attention as far as Poppy could tell, Bessie was passive, lacking in any emotion. Flat was exactly the right word.
‘Do you think you’re depressed?’ The words were out before she had given herself a chance to decide whether it was a good idea to ask.
Bessie shrugged. ‘The doctor offered me pills, you know, Prozac or something. But I don’t want pills.’ Now Poppy was in well over her depth.
‘What can I do?’ she asked. Bessie shrugged again, and sighed. ‘Put up with me a bit,’ she said, ‘interfere. Distract me. Any damn thing you feel like.’ She visibly pulled herself together and stood up. ‘Come on. Let’s go get comfortable in the other room and you tell me all about everything in your life.’
When Martia came back from her mother’s she joined them and eventually they ordered in pizza and she made a salad. When they had eaten Poppy gave up and went to bed. Seven o’clock was as good as she could do. ‘It is so good to be home,’ she said as she went. ‘There is nothing in the world as wonderful as old friends.’
Lying in bed, with Mrs Mudgely, who seemed willing to return from the spare room she had been sharing with Martia, she thought about Jane and Héloise, living in Middlesbrough all those years without women – lesbian – friends. Except Rachel. Then she was asleep. Six hours later she was wide awake; one o’clock in the morning. It took her two hours to finish Flight of the Swan, a science fantasy story set in the twenty-third century when people lived in small units assigned at their birth and spent every second adult year working in food-growing hoppers, then she dozed on and off until daylight.
Over the rest of the week Poppy worked herself back into her own world. Friends and family came and she visited them telling and retelling George’s illness and death and the loop her relationship with Jane had taken, bringing them back to more or less where they had started, as warm friends. Alexa was elusive. At Martia’s suggestion Joy was coming around for dinner on Friday.
Chapter Thirteen
Dear Poppy, Jane had written in her first email from London.
How are you? I wish you were here. The NHM, as I am learning to call it, is fantastic, so is London. Talk about a change of worlds. Apart from an occasional panic I am loving every bit of it, including the – seasonal I am told – hordes of young European tourists.
She would move into a flat – well, bedsit really – from the (modest) hotel the museum was paying for during her first few weeks, in a few days. And so it went on, a lot of detail about establishing herself in London, as well as what her lawyer said and what Héloise’s lawyer said back. Poppy skimmed to the end and read,
We would be having so much fun if you were here! There is such a lot going on. I found the gay café and may even have made a friend (yes! just a friend!), a Yorkshire woman who works there. Averil comes from Hartlepool.
Please write soon, dear Poppy. I miss you. How about coming over in (your) summer as you had originally planned? Jane
Poppy sighed with relief that she was not in London, but exactly where she wanted to be. Going back to school after the weekend, would be a reality check; she’d spoken to Stephen, who said everything was fine in her class and she would be able to walk in and take back over. He was thrilled to have another relieving position at the school, for Amelia was moving south with her husband, to his new job in Wellington. Ah, Amelia, thought Poppy, remembering the carry-on nearly a year ago when Amelia had had an affair with Tony, another staff member.
Poppy wrote a quick reply to Jane, first saying she doubted she would come over again so soon, then changing it to say she definitely would not. She also read and answered a message from Sylvia; Susanna was low but managing, and she, Sylvia, was looking forward to a star-gazing trip to Scotland at Bank Holiday weekend.
Dinner on Friday had expanded to include Bessie. The day was cold and miserable so Poppy was making onion soup and Martia roasting a chicken.
Joy and Bessie arrived at the same time, introducing themselves, they assured Poppy, on their way up the stairs. Martia took their coats. ‘Whew, it’s good to be in the warm,’ said Bessie, ‘it’s freezing out there.’ Joy put out a hand to Poppy, who had been hugging Bessie, so she shook it while Joy checked that it had been all right for her to tidy Poppy’s garden. ‘I miss having an outside so much,’ she explained, ‘I think I’m going to have to change flats.’ She refused the wine Martia was offering around and took a bottle of cranberry juice from her back-pack. ‘I’m still trying to find something non-alcoholic that isn’t too damn sweet,’ she said, passing it to Martia who was offering to open it, ‘and this is the best I’ve found so far.’
During the meal Joy did speak freely about what she called her ‘past life’ in Napier and her sudden decision to stop drinking. ‘I never drank much during the week,’ she explained, ‘but at weekends Chris and I and our friends would start on Friday night and keep at it until Sunday afternoon.’
Bessie said that she had thought that heavy-drinking lifestyle had been a thing of the fifties and sixties.
‘Some of us didn’t get into either gay liberation or feminism, you know,’ Joy pointed out. ‘In fact we thought you made our lives more dangerous with all that coming out, for us there was safety in the closet. Especially around keeping our jobs.’
‘I think we – the ones you might have called “political” – rather took the moral high ground, but then without that revolutionary fervour…’
‘Oh, absolutely!’ interjected Joy, ‘I’m describing, not criticising. Without gay liberation and feminism would we all be sitting around this table having this conversation? I don’t think so.’
‘Some of us were quite timid at the time,’ said Poppy, ‘like me for instance.’
As the conversation bounced around the table Poppy, adding a comment here and there, thought that this was what she had expected Jane’s life to include, this companionship with people who shared a history, or as in Joy’s case had a parallel one. She had been shocked, she realised, at the isolation of Jane and Héloise’s life together, presumably an isolation they had chosen; there were bound to be lesbians like the four of them here tonight all over England, how had Jane not become part of that?
‘Poppeeeey, Hellooooo.’ Martia was waving across the table at her.
‘Sorry. I was miles away for a minute.’
‘In London with the lovely Jane, perhaps?’ That was Bessie.
‘No, well, kind of, but not really,’ Poppy laughed, slightly embarrassed. ‘I was just thinking that Jane didn’t have many lesbians in her life and what a pity that was.’
‘Amen to that. But Joy was asking if any of us knew anything about what’s happening at Hero.’ Poppy knew only what had been reported in the paper as money troubles and differences among the organisers, putting the annual gay festival and parade in doubt for the following February.
‘What float would you most like to be on in a gay parade,’ Joy asked, and was made to answer her own question first. ‘A fairy float,’ she said, to general laughter.
When they all agreed they had had far too much to eat Bessie and Joy insisted on doing the dishes as the other two had cooked, so Martia and Poppy bustled about putting things away, Poppy making sure that a few chicken scraps made their way to Mrs Mudgely.
When the cleaning up was done and they were sitting around in the living room Joy asked if they would mind all doing a short history of their working lives. ‘Call me nosy and refuse if you want,’ she said, ‘but I would like to hear.’ Then she offered to go first and talked about being a library cataloguer – ‘what I don’t know about the Dewey decimal system isn’t worth knowing and I can do Library of Congress as well’ – who in the last three years had been applying those abilities to
the various kinds of electronic information systems and was now ‘a bit of a whiz on finding stuff on the internet.’ Bessie at once started to ask her a technical question and Martia and Poppy groaned.
‘Okay, I’ll save that for later. Me and work.’ And Bessie told the others how she had started as a wages clerk and ended up a chartered accountant, and was piloting an intraweb accounting system with two big clients at her firm.
Martia quickly owned up to being an internet-free zone and talked about her voluntary and paid work with Rape Crisis and various other jobs she had done to ‘pay the bills’. They all looked at Poppy. ‘Primary School teacher for,’ she hesitated a moment, ‘twenty-eight years. Yikes! And I still love it,’ she ended slightly defensively.
Joy looked around at them all. ‘Thanks,’ she said. ‘I’ve been finding the “getting to know you” thing a bit intimidating, haven’t had to do it for a while, so I thought I’d try the direct approach.’
‘Good on you,’ said Martia, ‘for the direct approach. I guess we’ve all know each other for ever and have lots of shared history. That must be hard to break into.’ Joy was nodding, then blew her nose.
‘Sorry, I’m not really the teary type, I guess it’s been a bit hard and lonely, the last few months. I hadn’t realised.’ She sat up straight. ‘Now don’t go feeling sorry for me, or trying to “help” she went on. I’m a big girl and I’m starting to get the hang of the big city.’
Poppy smiled at her, liking her.
‘I think Alexa and I have made it harder,’ Bessie was saying, ‘our friends have been laying low, not doing their usual winter round of shared meals, ’cos they don’t know whether to invite one or both or neither and don’t want to take sides.’ Martia nodded. Poppy guessed she hadn’t noticed on account of being away. Now Bessie was tearful.
‘Whoa,’ said Joy. ‘Blame isn’t in it. I’m the one who’s learning how to meet new folks without a crutch.’ She indicated the wine bottle.
Poppy was thinking of Jane again, on her own in London. Mind you, she has found a friend in the café, she reminded herself.
As they were milling about in the hallway, saying goodbyes, Joy and Bessie putting on coats and scarves against the cold night, Poppy surprised herself by saying to Joy, ‘Would you like to come around some time over the weekend, and go over what you’ve done in the garden for me?’
Joy gave a small hop, grinning. ‘Sure would. Tomorrow morning, latish suit you?’
‘Yeah, that would be good.’
With a farewell gesture and a cheerful, ‘Night all, and thanks for a great evening,’ Joy bounded down the steps.
‘I’m off too, see you guys.’ Bessie’s step had no bounce.
‘I like the way Joy puts herself out to find out about us,’ said Martia as she closed the door on the wintry night. ‘What do you make of her?’
‘I thought it was a bit much at one point, asking us for work histories, as though she was a career counsellor.’ Poppy followed Martia into the living room. ‘But it is true that we all know each other so well we take a lot for granted.’
Walking around the soggy garden in a cold mist the next morning, Poppy found Joy’s enthusiasm stimulated her own interest. Up until now she had done nothing more than maintain her garden, not bothering to find out which plant was what, just pulling out what died, keeping what grew trimmed into some kind of order and dragging out honeysuckle wherever she saw it.
‘That’s one plant I do know the name of, except I think of it as bloodyhoneysuckle. It would take over given half a chance.’
‘You need to eradicate it at the roots…’ Joy started, then said, ‘oops, you nearly got a lecture there.’
After an hour they agreed that in spring Joy would show Poppy some tricks and suggest some new plantings that would help keep the weeds down. Joy declined a coffee, saying she was off to meet up with a woman from the library and her husband who were looking for extra crew for their yacht for summer weekends. Poppy shuddered. She hadn’t liked sailing before Kate’s fatal accident on the harbour and she still felt menaced every time someone mentioned it. Joy didn’t appear to noticed her reaction.
By the end of the weekend Poppy had thoroughly re-entered her life; she had had a meal with her brother and his family, Katrina had come by and on Sunday she spent several hours at school getting ready for the coming week. The reliever, Stephen, had done good enough plans so she could see what he had covered. There was little evidence of an active art programme in her absence, but that wouldn’t be hard to pick up again, especially in the winter term. The school principal, Moana, was concerned about the effect of the new government’s proposal to abandon bulk funding of schools; Poppy had never seen her so stressed. It was all a matter of the school board keeping on top of things, Moana explained, and she was not confident that the current chairperson had either the ability or the inclination to examine the small print and make sure the school didn’t lose out, so she was doing it herself.
The weather carried on being typical for August, cold and wet with some fog, and extremes of snow and gales further south. Poppy received a letter from Susanna, who said she was ‘managing’ and several emails from Sylvia who said her mother was ‘barely holding on’ and Oliver, the beloved son was ‘as big a prick as ever’. Messages from Jane decreased in number and got more frenetic in content; London was fabulous, she was out several nights a week, pubbing with the ‘girls from work’ which she loved. ‘I’ve never done this before,’ she had written, ‘just gone out to be out with people. I’ve developed a taste for vodka slammers.’
Martia’s move to set up the craft store in Maungawhai was set for the first week in September.
‘I’m excited and scared at the same time,’ she told Poppy. ‘I’ve never sold anything. And Gloria and her friends will be depending on me selling their stuff.’
‘It’ll sell itself,’ Poppy reassured her, ‘and you will have everything wonderfully organised.’
‘There’ll be plenty of passing traffic at least. Note to self; make sure there’s good signage. And hey! I am excited!’ They both laughed for the pleasure of Martia’s new beginning.
Poppy left home for her first day back at school in fog. Welcome back to an Auckland winter she said to herself, and then was touched by the warmth of her colleagues; she was glad of the few hours’ preparation she had done the day before, as many of them stopped by her classroom before class to offer their sympathies and welcome her back. Even Amelia, who had in the end found Poppy ‘heartless’ regarding her affair with Tony and subsequent recommital to her marriage, had stopped by. Amelia did manage to say how sorry she was about George before she went on in detail about her impending move south for her husband’s new, important – of course – job.
The children, too, were pleased to have her back. Two of the boys tried ‘Mr Cummings said we had to,’ – or, ‘let us’ – but she soon stopped that. By the end of the day Poppy had some niggles about incomplete records and areas of disarray, though on the whole she was happy to report to Moana that Stephen Cummings had indeed done a good job during his two months in her class, and she saw every reason to have him back as a reliever when Amelia went.
Poppy drove home in a grey, bleak drizzle but was cheered by the thought of Martia being there when she got home, and Mrs Mudgely – ‘Sorry Mrs M, I should have thought of you first,’ she murmured to the furry frown over the rear-vision mirror. And the cat was just inside the front door when she opened it. She could hear Martia’s voice on the phone so popped her head around the dining-room door and waved before she went into her bedroom, carrying the cat at her shoulder, to change out of her work clothes. Martia knocked and came in as she was pulling a faded, favourite woolly jumper over her head.
‘Hi, how was your first day back?’
‘Fine, though I’m tired now.’
‘You will be, you know, for a while. Death, grief, loss, we get tired right through to our bones.’
‘I know, I must remember. And that I p
robably won’t like being in groups of people, especially if they don’t know my father just died.’ All three were sitting on the bed, the cat between the two women. ‘Anyway, how was your day.’
‘Okay, phone calls, arrangements, my stint at the local shop, and then in the last hour a call from Queer Line. They’re looking for volunteers who’ve done the phone line training to go to Tauranga for a few days and help on their Gay Line. They’ve only got a couple of people and since that gay man was beaten up last week they’re barely coping with the calls.’
‘The one just after I got back? He died, didn’t he?’
‘Yeah. And I said no, but I found a gay man who’ll go and a straight woman who’s done Lifeline who will if they want her.’
‘You’re such a brick, you know.’
Martia reddened. ‘And you’re the president of my fan club,’ she said back.
They sat for a few moments, not needing to voice their outrage and unease at the hatred that crimes like this reminded them was still out there. Neither mentioned, either, the violent deaths of two gay men in Fiji barely a day earlier. Then Poppy stood up, putting her hand on her friend’s shoulder. ‘Cuppa?’
‘Please. I’m cooking. Martia’s marinara, thanks to some fresh mussels from the village fish shop.’
‘Yum.’ And by turning their attention to satisfying everyday details of their lives they could bypass the sense of helplessness hanging in the air.
Cleaning up after the meal while Martia made much of sitting, ‘with my feet up as they say’, with a cup of herb tea, Poppy was happy. ‘Tired, but happy,’ she said, loudly so her friend in the next room could hear, then joined her with ‘a cup of real tea, I can’t be doing with those herbals.’
‘I can’t help saying it again, I’ll miss you,’ she said as she sat in an armchair. ‘It’s been so good having you here since I got back. I could really get used to us living together.’ She settled into the chair, patting her lap for Mrs Mudgely, ‘we could grow old together, best friends, and never mind the gossip.’