After ten days, this sterile room is closing in – it’s too familiar and has always been boring. The roses on the shelf in the blue glass vase are from Ross and Stella. No one has topped up the water, so they’re almost dead. I know exactly where Stella picked them, all from her home garden – that was once my garden. Buff Beauty is from the bush outside the main bedroom window; the others are Peace, Queen Elizabeth and Admiral Rodney, from the courtyard outside the dining room. I say the dining room, but last time I pushed the swing door and looked in, the room wasn’t fit for formal eating. The long mahogany table was covered with folders, newspapers, CDs and empty mugs. Even a television.
I press the buzzer. I want the roses removed before the next bunch arrives this afternoon with my visitors. No one comes, but I hear nurses moving around in the hallway. I’m jaw-tight angry with the incompetence around the place. If only I could toss back the bedcovers and sort it out myself. I waggle my foot, a private test to make sure my leg still works. I keep glancing at the door, still hopeful for a nurse. And it’s still an hour before the family will arrive.
I eat everything on the tray and am disgusted with myself. There is nothing else to do but fall into the self-serving hospital routine. How strange is this place of medicine and healing – you’d think they would have different mealtimes and healthier food. Here in East Ward, Room 17A, I am served three meals in nine hours, precisely at eight, twelve and five. For the rest of the time, I get nothing except cups of tea and cream biscuits, sometimes a scone with translucent apricot jam. I know the menu cycle. Tonight’s dinner will be heated canned soup, a square of dry cake and a small shiny apple. Prisoners in jail would riot if they were served this food.
The bed beside mine is empty and I’m happy about that, although I wish Dot was here. She was my neighbour for fourteen years in Bishop Street, but she died five months ago on the coldest-recorded day in north-east Victoria. It wasn’t that specific weather event that took her away; she had a chesty cough that developed into pneumonia. I imagine her being in the other bed, just three metres away. It’s a ridiculous thing to do, but I give her a little wave. The bed is flat, its pillows crisp, waiting for someone else.
Dot and I always did our grocery shopping together, and once a week we’d go to Tamarind Thai for dinner. Three months before her illness, we started Thursday morning yoga, but I didn’t continue after she passed away. Most days we had morning tea in her glassed-in back porch so we could feel the warmth of the sun. Her cat, Diva, was always on her lap or around her ankles, though I never felt comfortable about having a cat so close. Dot made me promise to care for it ‘if anything happens to me’. So I fed it for those days she was in hospital. But I detest cats and certainly had no feelings for that one, with those all-knowing, staring eyes. Stella caught it for me and put it in a box. I asked her to take it to the vet. ‘A good home,’ I said, although I didn’t hold out much hope for it.
I’m so bored.
I stare into my hands, looking to see if anything has changed. My wedding ring is loose as if my fingers have become smaller, yet my knuckles are large, swollen. I glance at the side table, hoping for a nail file even though I know there isn’t one and I don’t know who to ask. The nurses said to get someone from the family to bring one in. I mentioned it to Caroline, my daughter, but she won’t remember. My nails aren’t very strong; they tear easily and need regular tidying up. Overall, I appraise my hands as ugly. But I’m not ashamed of them. They remind me of the good things in my life: gardening, knitting, fruit bottling, preparing meals, writing in my bird books. Holding my babies. My hands caressing a man’s body, holding tight – and I can hardly believe that was me. I’m in awe. More like shocked disbelief. When I remember those years, it’s a relief to be an old woman.
I turn my wedding ring around and remember the day in 1961 when Norman and I were married at the Holy Trinity Anglican Church in Benalla. It’s as though I’m viewing the home movie my cousin filmed – there I am, walking up the aisle. The organist is playing Wagner’s bridal march. All the guests are standing, staring at me. A tulle veil covers my face, the gown flows and I am beautiful. The bodice of Alençon lace is firm – my waist measures twenty-two inches – and the full-length skirt hides my satin shoes. And there’s Norman, stiff-backed with nerves, waiting for me at the altar. He turns. There are two large vases of white lilies, and I try to remember who would’ve arranged them. My father releases my arm and sits down. I wish he’d never let me go.
It is now two o’clock, visiting hours, and no one is here. I’ve had enough of myself; this rumination gets tiring. I flick back the bedcovers and twist around, thinking I might go to the toilet. Apart from wanting to empty my bladder, I’d like to tidy my hair, but it’s a long way from here to the floor. My right foot tingles, and suddenly I’m not brave enough to make the leap for my crutches. If I fall, then what? My hip has been replaced with a metal and plastic one that was made in England. ‘A nasty fall,’ the surgeon said. ‘Tendons were torn and had to be repaired too.’ Those back steps at Bishop Street were always waiting for me, I knew it. But the surprise was falling on a dry sunny day. I’m sure I was looking down, watching. A split second, and the terrible feeling of knowing. I heard the bone snap.
To the left, towards the window, I hear the call of a rufous whistler. I close my eyes and see its small tan body, white bib, black mask and breast band. But I’m unsure if I really hear it, or if the sound and image are inside me, a random memory. I don’t like this strange reality or the confusion that comes with ageing.
And now, for some reason, my thoughts switch back to Dot. She was my only real friend and she wanted me to go on a cruise with her. We’d even been to the local travel agent to see about a ship that was leaving in January for lots of places including England, where my hip prosthesis comes from. In 1954, when I was eighteen, Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip visited Benalla. I was front row in the crowd at the railway station and saw her close up: her pink silk dress with a pleated skirt, white pillbox hat, long gloves and white slingback shoes. For years after I thought of nothing else except going to London, to see Buckingham Palace, Windsor Castle and the real Monopoly board – Mayfair, Piccadilly Circus, Oxford Street, Old Kent Road, Trafalgar Square. Susan Kissock, a friend from school, went to England in 1959; I don’t know what happened to her, because after a couple of years she stopped replying to my letters. Anyway, my dream of travelling to England never came true and my only chance was going on the cruise with Dot. The ship would’ve set sail a couple of weeks ago and god knows where it is right now. Dot’s buried in the local cemetery. Perhaps when I leave here, I’ll visit her and take some flowers. She used to jolly me along and I miss her terribly. If she’d survived that bout of pneumonia, she’d be visiting me here and saying, ‘We’ll be back at Tamarind Thai for dinner in no time.’ But then if she’d lived we’d be on the ship, maybe even in England by now.
‘Mum.’
I open my eyes and see Norman at the end of the bed. No, it’s Ross, my youngest son. But it’s Stella, his wife, who comes and kisses my cheek. She always wears nice perfume.
The girls are already backed against the wall, staring as if they’ve never seen me before and glancing around as if to find an escape route other than the door they just walked through. I wave for them to come to me, but I’m suddenly unsure of their names. Then I remember that Isobel is the older one, today wearing brown-framed glasses that don’t suit her. Her fingernails are painted dark green. She has the Ballantine face: pale skin, slightly hooded eyes, and light, curly brown hair. I quite like the little ginger-haired one; she’s got something about her that I’m attracted to. I’ll wait till I hear someone else say her name. It starts with … and I fly through the alphabet, waiting for my youngest grandchild’s name to find its way from wherever it’s hidden in my brain. I’m at the letter J when she smiles into my face and I remember she’s Jemima. ‘Thank you for coming to visit me, Jemima,’ I say. She feather-kisses my cheek. Lovely child.
My daughter, Caroline, strides into the room. ‘Happy birthday, Mum.’ Her lipstick is too thick and dark, and she avoids smearing any on my face by only pretending to kiss me. She’s put on weight, or perhaps it’s the black dress – you’d think she was attending a funeral.
I push back into the pillows and smile across the room. As I’m doing this, I realise they will think my cheerfulness is because I love them dearly and am glad they are visiting. That is partly true. I would much prefer to be on the cruise with Dot, not bothered with this charade of happy families. Caroline hates Stella. Ross doesn’t have time for Caroline. Caroline’s boys haven’t bothered to come. But we pretend none of that is happening.
There is only one chair and Caroline sits in it. Ross leans against the wall, folds his arms and crosses one leg over the other. It is Stella who’s talking to me, wearing her typical garb of tight jeans and a silky blue shirt with too many buttons undone. I’ve always considered her look cheap – the untidy way she wears her hair, the high-heeled boots – over-the-top and inappropriate. But she’s got a nice figure, I’ll give her that.
‘I could only find five candles,’ Stella says. She lights them and holds the cake near my mouth. I do my best and blow three out. She waits for me to do the other two.
When I turned fifty, I didn’t think I would be in hospital on my eightieth. I try to remember what we did to celebrate my fiftieth. If it was observed, I would’ve made my own cake. It was the year that Mark, my eldest son, died and everyone’s life changed after that.
They’ve only been in the room a few minutes and they’re already singing ‘Happy Birthday’. Ross has his hands in his pockets and Stella’s are raised; she’s acting like a conductor, always the show-off. I have never really taken to her. She’s not a farmer’s wife, I know that much. It is a mess, really. I’m glad the other Ballantine wives can’t see from their graves the woman who is now running the family home – it would reflect poorly on me, as if somehow it is my fault. I wanted Ross to marry Alison Clarke, a pretty girl from the Wagyu beef property over on Barry Mill Road. He seemed keen on her for a good while. But it was Stella he brought home, with her bottle-blonde hair and jeans low so we all got a good look at her pierced navel.
‘Hip hip … hooray!’
Stella hasn’t brought a knife and runs from the room to find one.
I ask Ross about rain.
‘Nothing coming. Only one hundred and thirty mils this year.’
There’s nothing that I can say. It’s the ongoing worry of a farmer.
Then I ask Caroline about the nail file. She looks at me blankly, then shakes her head.
Stella is hacking into the cake with a breadknife, cutting large slices as if we are all starving. She pulls paper plates from a cane basket and asks the little one to hand them around with plastic forks. Someone says her name. Jemima. I try to rhyme it so I won’t forget, but I can’t think of anything. Jem-ima. Jem-ima. I press my fingers into my arm as if that might help me remember.
I position my smile to appear grateful for this birthday celebration. The cake is quite nice, especially the icing. There are no gifts, and I forgive my family because they think I have everything I need. A birthday card with a big gold 80 sits on the cabinet beside my bed. Inside is Stella’s large handwriting, and a row of kisses and smiling faces that strike me as juvenile. Caroline’s card is from her gallery and so abstract I can’t make sense of it.
‘When are you going home?’ Caroline asks.
I stare at my children, Ross and Caroline, exasperated because they already know this. I’m sure of it.
‘There’s rehab first,’ I say.
‘But the rehab place is full,’ Stella says, looking at me as if I might disagree.
‘It is,’ I say.
‘How is it here?’ she asks.
I wonder what she means. ‘It’s a hospital,’ I tell her.
She glances at Ross. ‘Do you want to come home to us?’
Ross shrugs and doesn’t look at me, which is not enough for me to consider the offer.
‘Absolutely not.’
I know the house where they live. It was my home for forty-one years. I am the longest-serving Ballantine wife: from when Norman and I returned from our honeymoon in Portland until 2002 when I left so that Ross and Stella could move in. Norman died in 1988, so it was just Ross and me for about fourteen years – although I didn’t see much of him. He was either out on the farm or flying aeroplanes. And when he took up with Stella he spent all his time driving up and down the Hume Freeway, to and from her place in Brunswick. In the end, it was a relief when they married and moved to Maryhill because he’d finally settled down. Plus, I think she was pregnant; the first girl came along pretty quickly.
‘It’d be easier, Margie,’ Stella says. ‘It’d save us having to travel up here to visit.’
‘You’re all too busy to be looking after me.’
Caroline is staring into her phone. She’s divorced and lives in Eltham with her sons, Timothy and Adam, dull-eyed from staring into their computers. I am relieved she’s not making a show of wanting me.
‘Trust me,’ Stella says. ‘Having you in the house with us would be a hell of a lot easier than driving an hour up here to check how you’re going.’
It’s not been put like that before, what a burden I am. I shake my head, no. ‘You don’t need to check on me. The nurses do that.’
‘Think about it,’ she says, smiling, and I can’t help but think she’s quite striking-looking in a fashion-magazine sort of way.
I turn to Ross, wanting some acknowledgement or enthusiasm from him. But he’s talking to his daughters. And there before me is another problem. Ross doesn’t have a son. I don’t know why they didn’t try again after the second little girl. It took Norman’s parents five goes to have a boy. I think it’s too late for Stella now: she’s forty-two. I can’t put my mind to what that means for Maryhill with only girls. It feels like a tragedy.
‘When are we going?’ Isobel whispers to her father. She’s been having piano lessons since she started school, and remembering that gives me something to ask her.
‘Are you still playing the piano?’
‘Yes,’ she says.
‘So you’re having lessons?’
‘Yes.’
I’m really not interested in her one-word answers, so I turn to Caroline, letting the child know she’s dismissed.
My daughter is on her feet, saying she needs to go. ‘The boys are on their own,’ she tells me, as if I haven’t worked that out.
‘But they’re fifteen and seventeen,’ I say.
‘All the more reason.’ Caroline swoops on me and blocks my view of the room. She gives me a sort of hug, barely touching me. ‘Bye,’ she says. ‘Take care.’
She leaves with hardly a backward glance and suddenly there’s more space in the room, more air. I take a breath.
‘I’ll look after you, Nan,’ the little one says. Lovely red hair. Freckles on her nose. Already I’ve forgotten her name. She’s a beautiful, innocent child with her whole life ahead of her. I can’t imagine what the future holds for her – all the talk about climate change and terrorism. Hostages and haphazard bombings and refugees storming country borders. By the time she’s old enough to really wonder about me, I’ll just be a name in the family tree. Margaret Jean Ballantine.
‘Thank you, sweetheart,’ I say. ‘But I’ll stay here until a place becomes available in rehab.’
‘Think about it, Margie, it’d be no trouble,’ Stella says, gathering up the dirty paper plates and dropping them in the basket. The way she does things bewilders me. Why not put them in my bin?
When the four of them leave, the room is very quiet. There is some upset further along the corridor; I hear the fast pacing of people in the distance. The old roses are still in the blue vase – Ross and Stella didn’t bring me a fresh bunch, and I feel let down. I close my eyes and put myself in their garden, my old garden. The padded lawn under my feet. I breathe
in the fresh air, lemon, dust, the hint of distant cows. I wander under the oak and claret ash where hundreds of daffodil bulbs are buried in the cold ground, dormant until early spring. Then across to the pergola, where the grapevine is lush and shady. Past the clothesline to the south side of the house to the rhododendrons, each bush as big as this hospital room. There’s daphne, gardenias, camellias, azaleas. It’s my favourite place in the garden, so I pause and put myself on the concrete bench. I see the wisteria and know it needs pruning at this time of year. Then I’m at the roses. My head against the pillow, I wince, knowing Stella hasn’t tended them, no pruning or spraying, and there will be black spot and aphids, and the hybrid tea bushes will be covered in powdery mildew. Fourteen years ago I willingly divorced myself from this house and garden, but it’s suddenly a fresh insult that all my hard work has been let go by her. I imagine turning to the house and admiring the row of hydrangeas – that I propagated and planted – along the base of the veranda with its fluted posts. The red Japanese maple, the snowball tree, the mauve crepe myrtle. I hear an eastern rosella call – its song and habits are recorded in the books I once kept.
I open my eyes and am dazed by the sudden sterile white of the room. I wish for Dot, so I can tell her how I feel: that I’m lonely and my children don’t like me.
And then the nurse is beside me, checking my blood pressure and temperature. She pumps the velcro sleeve up twice. ‘A bit high,’ she says.
I’m waiting for the rattle of the dinner trolley when one of those happy refugees pushes in a bed carrying a white-haired woman on her back, eyes closed. She seems very thin; her skin has the translucence of white crepe paper. A nurse swipes the curtains closed around her bed, and I listen to their murmurs, but can’t make out what is being said. When the curtain is pulled open, I glance across at my new neighbour. She’s asleep.
Stella and Margie Page 2