Heartlines

by Susannah McFarlane

  I give the hare Tim’s number.

  Susannah

  Robin seems reluctant to give me the number. Now it’s my turn to press. She concedes and I send Tim a text. I’m more than a little chuffed when he replies, saying he is delighted to be in contact. Apparently not a man for texting, he asks for my email address, and an amusing if careful exchange of emails ensues. Before I know it, we seem to have agreed on a day and a place to have lunch in Melbourne on my return. And far away in Sweden, that seems a brilliant idea too.

  Family Christmases

  Susannah

  On Christmas morning, the whole family walks through the forest to a small, whitewashed sixteenth-century church that perches on the coast, outside the town. We visit my mother-in-law’s burial place. As was her wish, there is no stone but she is buried in a shared plot overlooking the beach she used to love to walk on. No one talks much: everyone has their memories of Mamma, Bette, Farmor and, together, we each remember.

  We return home and the Christmas table is set, first with the hand-embroidered cloth that Bette made and then the special dinner plates and glasses. Candles are lit throughout the house, meatballs are warmed, herring after herring dish is laid out and, as the Christmas smorgasbord builds, so too does the sense of celebration. Once all is ready, everyone goes to change into their Christmas best ready for champagne and oysters. Sten’s sister and husband arrive: more family into the fold.

  God Jul! Merry Christmas!

  We drink, we eat, we laugh, we talk, we eat. Living so far away from each other, we all know how few Christmases we spend together and everyone embraces the time. There are speeches and songs, as there must be in Sweden, and when everyone can eat no more we move into the living room and sit around the Christmas tree for presents. The teenagers become children again as they wait for their gifts and somehow yet more food is eaten. Hearts and stomachs are very, very full.

  I send a text to Robin wishing them all a very happy Christmas.

  Robin

  The Christmas scene back here in Oz couldn’t be more different than that in Sweden. Given that Matilda’s wedding to Jason is to take place on 3 January, our celebration this year is more low key.

  We have customarily celebrated the feast along the lines of the English model – roast turkey with all the trimmings, plum pudding implanted with tiny treasures and accompanied by cream, ice-cream and brandy sauce – but this year we go for the informal barbie. The venue is Susan’s very large back garden and the scene is quintessentially Australian.

  I love it. The weather is perfect and a summer heat haze shimmers over the wide lawn. The table is laid in the green mansion of the huge peppercorn tree and I can’t resist breaking off a small sprig to crush in my fingers, releasing the deliciously spicy smell of the leaves and berries. Lounging back in my chair, I idly watch the menfolk in aprons, beers in hand, tending the meat on the barbecue. I’m glad not to be cooking this year.

  It is wonderful to have Anna and her family back from Vanuatu, and home to stay this time. Jason’s son, Jake, has come over from America for the wedding, so he is also with us. A spreading family – my vision again – and now including Susannah, my reclaimed first daughter, and her family. A Bible verse comes to me (as they tend to do): ‘In my Father’s house are many mansions’. Room for everyone. Welcome one and all.

  Susannah

  On New Year’s Eve my little family of four is in an igloo deep in the Arctic Circle. Watching for northern lights that never come, it is still entrancing to be in this snow-covered forest. It’s almost impossible not to think back over the year and look to the year ahead, and my thoughts inevitably turn to family. These three precious people standing in the cold preparing to watch the midnight fireworks are my family. Duncan in Cambridge is family, Dad and Sophie back home are family and the Sörensens in Sweden are family. And now I have more family. The concept is as small or as expandable as you and your heart want to make it. Standing in pristine snow at the top of world everything seems very simple, uncomplicated. I resolve to not get so worked up about things when I get home and to try to just enjoy all these lovely people in my life, regardless of where they fit and how long they have been there.

  But, as we all know, New Year’s resolutions aren’t always so easy to keep.

  Back together – and falling apart?

  Susannah

  We arrive back home and I am really looking forward to seeing Robin again but it seems almost impossible to find a day when she is available. My excitement, mixed with jetlag, soon moves to a deflated disappointment. In the end I have to settle for joining her while she babysits Levi, who today seems to have the edge on me in maturity.

  I feel like I have been fitted in. When we meet, while she seems pleased to see me, I don’t get much of a hug. She seems happy enough with my gifts but it feels like she hasn’t really missed me that much – and once again I feel like the needy one in a much-too-lopsided relationship. So, I decide it was a mistake to come: I should have waited for a day when I could have her undivided attention. At least now, thanks to my holiday reading, I am beginning to understand what might be going on in my messed-up, regressed mind even if I can’t always control the reaction.

  So, I decide to leave rather than hang around waiting for scraps of attention. I say I need to go and Robin, understandably preoccupied with her very mobile grandson, says goodbye. I give her a rushed kiss and leave – I cannot get out of there quickly enough.

  Robin

  It was lovely to see Susannah again; I am very glad she is back and am looking forward to having proper undistracted time with her on Thursday. I may be imagining it, but she seemed a little strange with me. I have the vague feeling I have done something wrong, but I don’t know what. Perhaps she thinks I didn’t focus on her enough after her absence, but I just couldn’t with Levi demanding my attention.

  Maybe I should text her.

  Sorry it was so busy today. We will have our time together soon.

  Susannah

  I ignore Robin’s text. I cannot believe this is happening again, that I am going nutty, feeling unsettled again; what a blow for my igloo resolutions of calm, and so soon.

  So, I message my third sister Anna, now returned from Vanuatu, and we arrange to meet over dinner. Perhaps, as with Tim, another biological friend will provide some distraction from Robin and the intensity of our reunion.

  Throwing an Anna in the works

  Susannah

  Anna and I have agreed to meet at a restaurant halfway between our two homes. I arrive first and she soon after. We give each other a tentative hug and sit down.

  ‘Drink?’ I ask.

  ‘Just the one,’ says Anna. ‘I’ve got the car.’

  ‘Oh,’ I say. I have to say that I’m a little gutted. I admit I was hoping that we would make a night of it and while I know alcohol is not essential to that, driving does seem un-encouragingly cautious of Anna. She must sense (she will later claim that she is psychic when it comes to me) my disappointment.

  ‘Didn’t you drive?’ she asks.

  ‘No, taxi.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘Oh well, not to worry,’ I rally as I pretend. ‘It’s not a problem.’

  Drinks are ordered and the conversation starts, politely to begin with, about each other’s work and our kids, but it soon dives deeper and we talk about everything – the reunion and the weirdness, her childhood, my childhood, Robin, my mum; no area seems off limits and we are both completely relaxed with that. It is also clear that a short dinner and two drinks will not be long enough, so we concoct a cunning plan.

  We drop Anna’s car back at her apartment and plot our next move in an unremarkable wine bar nearby. There’s nothing wrong with the bar, it’s completely fine, but we are both feeling we need something so much more than fine.

  ‘We could,’ I suggest, ‘go to my favourite place in Melbourne, possibly the world.’

  ‘Where?’ asks Anna, clearly up for it.

  ‘It’s ca
lled Siglo,’ I said. ‘It’s this really beautiful rooftop—’

  ‘I know!’ breaks in Anna. ‘That’s my favourite place!’

  Of course it is, it makes complete sense and we gleefully leap into a taxi and head off into the city and to our favourite place.

  We laugh a lot and cry easily, often at the same time and, without thinking, touch each other’s arm or take a hand in moments of intensity or hilarity – it is strangely and strongly familiar and I feel, I know, I’ve just met a new best friend. No, scratch that, a sister.

  Ten hours later we both decide it’s probably time to go home and, at 4am, we have no problem getting a taxi. Anna sends me a text while I am still in the taxi.

  That was wonderful. I am so happy to have you in my life xxx

  The feeling is completely mutual.

  So happy, in fact, that I feel that Anna needs to be shared immediately with my family, so I suggest to Oskar that she, her husband, Dominique, and their two young sons, Matthieu and Theo, come for a casual dinner at our place on the Friday. I think it’s a brilliant idea.

  ‘Yes!’ says Emma.

  ‘This Friday?’ asks Oskar. ‘Yes,’ I confirm.

  ‘You will really like Anna.’

  ‘This Friday before we go to Matilda and Jason’s gig on the Sunday and before you meet Tim on the Monday?’

  ‘Yes,’ I say, slightly less confidently. ‘But you’re just doing two of them,’ I venture.

  ‘You don’t think that’s overdoing it, even for you?’ ventures my husband.

  It had never crossed my mind. It does now, briefly, but then flies out again.

  ‘Well, might as well make it a festival,’ he says with only the smallest of sighs.

  ‘Exactly!’ I cry, exultant, and with what I hope is a very grateful look at my biologically bombarded husband. ‘It will be fun! I promise.’

  And my promise is easily kept. The initial mutual shyness at the front door between children and adults alike lasts approximately ten minutes, blasted out by the warmth and desire to connect and enjoy. Emma, normally reserved when meeting new people, especially adults, embraces the conversation. Anna declares that she and I are identical. She genuinely believes this and is utterly immune to any argument to the contrary: that her hair is dark brown and mine is fair (neither, I hasten to point out, naturally anymore) and that her eyes are brown and mine are blue are, apparently, technicalities of interest only to the pedant. Anna loves that we are identical: I love that she loves it, however deluded that may be.

  Emma is not completely convinced and begins questioning her newly acquired aunt on the issue. The ensuing verbal joust delights them both – and me, who can’t resist joining in. Oskar and Dominique stand back in amused amazement and then Theo, Anna and Dominique’s four-year-old, climbs on to Emma’s lap and stays there.

  Sometimes four-year-olds just cut through stuff.

  Lying in bed later that night, I realise that there isn’t and doesn’t have to be anything complicated about Anna and me. We just get each other, without having to try. And while we both seem to carry the needy good-girl desire-to-please gene we don’t have to try with each other – we just make each other happy.

  Am I finally getting the hang of this biological-friend thing?

  Meeting Tim

  Susannah

  Two days later and after a sleepless night I call Robin on the morning I am due to meet with Tim. I seem to have lost my biological-friend bravado.

  ‘Robin, will you be disappointed if I don’t go to lunch?’

  ‘What? Why don’t you want to go to lunch?’

  ‘I don’t think I can.’

  ‘Why not?

  ‘I won’t know what to do.’

  ‘Let him do it.’

  ‘But you won’t be angry if I don’t go?’

  ‘No, of course not, darling!’

  Sorted. But then I picture an elderly man sitting alone in the restaurant and realise that, of course, I have to go – it’s too rude and too unfair to bail at the last moment.

  So, we head off. Oskar drives me and we do blocks around St Kilda until it’s ten minutes after one o’clock. I don’t want to be the first one there: I have completely over-analysed it and decided that that would appear too needy. No, he definitely needs to be the one to arrive first.

  Tim

  Charmayne drops me off at the bottom of Fitzroy Street, after a kerfuffle concerning wrong turns down Beaconsfield Parade and a U-turn into a 96 tram brought on by my inner tension, not unlike that before attending auditions or a blind date.

  So, I get out on the wrong side of the road and jaywalk into the traffic over to where I know for sure Di Stasio is. It isn’t. I walk back a bit till I think that no way is it this far up, and then I walk down again until finally, right outside Di Stasio, I desperately ask a passer-by where it is.

  After only a minor contretemps with the door as I step into the posh, poky, crepuscular L-shaped joint, I am sat down at a lamplit little table for two with a view of the entrance, the first to arrive, reluctantly refusing a drink, or perhaps not, and trying to collect myself.

  I have decided to dress Somerset Maughamy. Graham Greenish, a touch of the Old South from where we share a gene pool. Cool, gravitas. I have brought along some photos of my mother. I drop them on the floor. Gathering them up I notice a stain on an inside sleeve of my beige, Maughamy–Greenish jacket. Largish. Cacky, some copious regurgitation from a feeding parrot, dried stiff. The occasion is taking a Kingsley Amis direction.

  I may well have called for chardonnay at this point.

  Susannah

  I walk into the restaurant and croak out my name to the waiter.

  ‘Oh yes,’ a croakless waiter replies. ‘A gentleman is waiting here for you. This way, please.’

  I swallow. Okay, this is it, I think. Let’s do this.

  As the waiter brings me into the restaurant my eyes dart and then lock on an elderly not-un-Santa-like man with a white beard, who is rising from a table and looking at me with a sort of smile. I hope I smile back as I approach him.

  I put out my arms and nervously offer a hug.

  ‘Hello.’

  ‘Hello, Susannah.’

  We hug a little awkwardly and then sit down. We look at each other, perhaps both relieved that we have both shown up, that the first hurdle is over. The waiter returns.

  ‘Will you be having wine with lunch today?’

  Oh yes bloody please and really quickly, I think but manage to ask for the wine list sounding, I hope, a little less desperate.

  ‘Would you like a glass of wine, Tim?’ I ask.

  He doesn’t need time to consider. We order a bottle.

  Now what do we say? Tim apologises for what he thinks might be a bloodstain on his jacket. I say I hadn’t noticed it – which I hadn’t – and ask him how his appointment was. It was with a heart specialist, which strikes me as slightly ironic. All went well, so I hope that’s an omen for the lunch.

  Tim then offers me a copy of a book he’s written, a history of the Pram Factory, a Melbourne theatre collective in the 1960s and 1970s. I am touched. I open it and see it is inscribed. I am about to be touched again when I see it is actually inscribed to someone else. I look a little quizzically up at Tim.

  ‘Yes, feel a bit of an idiot, I didn’t notice that when I picked it up. I’ll take it back and give you another one.’

  ‘No, don’t worry,’ I say. ‘Perhaps we can adjust the inscription?’

  It is Tim’s turn to look quizzical.

  I take out my pen. ‘Well, we could convert it, draw over it?’

  Tim seems game but then I remember that I have absolutely no artistic ability whatsoever and, while I didn’t suggest the activity as a platform for showing off to Tim, nor did I mean to create one to expose just how deeply bad I am at something.

  ‘Um, I can’t actually draw but perhaps we could just draw over the “Merry Christmas Penny” part with some flowers or something.’

  What am I
saying?

  ‘Okay,’ he says, slightly unconvinced.

  I start to ‘draw’ and Tim looks even less convinced. Perhaps he thinks I am now just defacing his book?

  Wine arrives, thankfully, and with a gulp I continue scrawling over the original message with stem-like lines atop of which I draw flower petals: I am going for whimsical sketchy but it is just coming off messy scribble. Tim now has a bemused or possibly amused look on his face. I draw a square and write inside it: ‘Tim’s bit here.’

  ‘Off you go,’ I say, offering him my pen.

  Tim draws something, a kind of beast moving into a slightly Picasso-esque female form and writes a speech bubble: ‘Who are we?’

  I am out of my depth. I panic, take another sip (gulp) of wine and respond by drawing one of the three things I have ever drawn with any confidence – a cartoon of a bearded man with glasses wearing an academic mortar board. It looks like my father, circa 1980s, when he received his Masters degree; that, along with a be-hatted penguin and a packet of McDonald’s fries, are my go-to drawing set pieces. I think I should have gone the penguin, but the appalling drawing does lead to a conversation about fathers.

  ‘I never thought fathers mattered as much,’ offers Tim. ‘More the mothers.’

  ‘Well, you wouldn’t, would you?’ I reply gently, knowing from Robin that Tim never met his father. ‘But I think they do. All types.’

  And with that we continue to draw – well, one of us does – until our meals arrive.

  Finally Tim signs the book: ‘To my long-lost, new-found daughter Susannah, love Tim?’