The Pearl in the Attic
Page 17
Then of course there’s Aussie Aunt Angie, and Angie back home, Great-Aunt Sita who I’m named after and Mr Spinks who I’m not. Ha!
Families are funny, fragmented things, aren’t they?
Look at Ruby and Pearl, who went on to make their own, here in this sunny city by the sea. And now I’ve found my jumble of mismatching sorts of relatives.
It’s like that nurse said, back in Nana’s ward when she was poorly: someone really does need to invent a new batch of names to describe everyone we love.
And in the meantime, I need to order some cake…
Epilogue
Melbourne, 1954
Ruby placed a little fan of apple slices and a tiny pot of honey beside the pancakes on both the plates, then stood back to admire her handiwork.
Making food pretty: it was a habit she couldn’t get out of, even though she and Pearl had finally sold the café and retired a few months back.
“Here we are!” she called out to Pearl as she walked through the French doors that took her out on to the veranda of the old wooden house.
Pearl looked up from the morning paper and smiled in delight.
Her hair was still long, but faded to a pale strawberry blonde that was streaked with white. She wore it bundled up loosely, with a mauve chiffon scarf tied around her head. Ruby’s dark hair was steely grey, but she’d long ago cut it short, and wore it wavy, with kiss curls at both temples, copied from her favourite Hollywood movie stars.
It’s what the customers of the Gem Girls café had loved; not just the food and the fabulous cakes, but the two wonderful women who ran the place for nearly forty years, full of character and warmth. They’d become quite the institution in the neighbourhood, children coming for years who’d take their own children in turn to meet the remarkable Miss Ruby and Miss Pearl…
“Did you know,” the mums and dads would say to their little ones, “that Miss Ruby and Miss Pearl were once upon a time quite famous? That they hung on to a hot air balloon that took them high into the sky, then floated down on silk parachutes?”
The children would smile, but were never that impressed. And why would they be? So many wonders they quite took for granted now. Amelia Earhart and Amy Johnson and all those other aviatrixes had long since flown over oceans and continents single-handedly. Nowadays, it was even possible for ordinary, if rich, people to fly all the way from Sydney to London in just a few days, with stop-offs in fascinating countries, instead of the weeks-long journey by boat that had taken Ruby and Pearl and the show company to Australia all those years ago. There was even talk that one day in the not too distant future there’d be rockets built that could take you into space. The Americans and Russians were working on it already, Ruby had read in the paper…
Before she placed the plates down on the little table, Ruby drank in the view over rooftops and trees of the morning sun glinting on the sea. For nearly forty years they’d run the Gem Girls café, and they’d loved every tiring, busy minute of it. But to slow down and have this view to enjoy was really wonderful.
Now and again, when the crickets stilled, the golden light transported Ruby back to the days when she was a child, standing looking over the wafting, waving cornfields of Kent.
“Look at this!” said Pearl, holding up the paper for Ruby to see as she sat down. “There’s been a new world record set in running; an Englishman called Roger Bannister has run a mile in under four minutes!”
Ruby picked her specs up off the table and read the story.
“What an achievement!” she remarked. “What’s the date? It’ll surely go down in history…”
Both woman glanced up at the top of the newspaper, and then grew quiet.
They were both thinking the same thing, remembering the most wonderful day that had turned into the most terrible, and changed the course of their lives.
“Fifty years ago to the day…” Ruby said finally. “Can you believe it?”
“Seems like forever ago,” murmered Pearl, smiling sadly, though her cheeks still dimpled.
“Yes, it does,” Ruby agreed, taking her glasses off again, and thinking of Aunt Gertrude, who’d been so kind in her own way. Ruby always hoped life had turned out well for her in the end. She’d have loved to know; had even sent Aunt Gertrude a letter once (without letting her know where she and Pearl now were) and she hoped she got it. Ruby had never told Pearl she sent it; Pearl still, even to this day, occasionally had nightmares about being hunted down and caught.
“Well, look at us now,” Ruby said cheerily. “We’ve not done too badly, have we?”
“No. No, we haven’t,” said Pearl, her smile brightening as Ruby reached out to her.
The two women sat hand in hand, staring out the horizon, where the blue sky met the blue ocean, both lost in memories of a different sky they saw from an attic window a whole lifetime ago…
Also by Karen McCombie:
After leaving her friends to move to a crumbling Scottish mansion, Ellis is overcome by anxiety and loneliness. Then she hears whispers in the walls … and finds herself whisked back in time to 1912.
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