by Wendy Harmer
Finally! I get to 25 Buckingham Street after trudging from the bus stop. The weather has changed and it's really warm. It feels like mid-summer instead of mid-spring and I'm loaded down with a million bags and books.
Our letterbox is cringe-making! Dad had it made in the shape of a golden royal carriage pulled by four tin horses with plumes on their foreheads, which are now scungy and half-chewed by possums. I sort through the usual pile of bills and furniture catalogues that have been stuffed into the carriage. Blah, blah, blah!
And then I see an Express Post letter addressed to me. I tear it open and inside – OMG! – there's an envelope addressed to me. Not some stupid advertising thingo or a catalogue, but a real letter addressed to Ms E Pickering. Turning over the back, I see it's from: C Martinez, Toledo Nut Farm, Mooloowah.
Carmelita has actually written me a letter! I carefully unstick the flap of the envelope and there's a whiff of gardenia perfume. Even the notepaper is decorated with pictures of gardenias.
Hello beautiful girl!
Who would have thought I would ever write you a letter? I sent a crucial eye2eye on Sunday and didn't hear anything. I know you don't have a mobile, so I thought I might as well do the old-fashioned thing and write.
Do you like the notepaper? I always remember that you love gardenias. (I put some of Mum's Chanel gardenia eau de toilette in here!) Mum says she'll send this express post and it will get to you tomorrow (Tuesday). That's exceptionally fast, dontcha reckon?
I wanted to tell you the BIG news. I am coming to Oldcastle! Truly!
The family is flying down on Friday afternoon to see my Auntie Isabella for her birthday party on Saturday afternoon. And that means I can come to the dance with you on Sat night.
I know I won't have a date, but, hey, who cares? Maybe you can be my date?
I'm desperate to see you, so I'll come over to yours on Friday night at about 7 pm. OK?
Write back, or call any time.
Love ya,
Carmelita X0X0X0X0X0
PS: I have enclosed some pics of Viscount the pig. Looking great, dontcha reckon?
Yahoo! This is the best news, ever! This is my first letter, ever! And how good does Viscount look – for a pig!
Inside the Palace I dump all the stuff I have bought to make dinner tonight – frozen (well, it was frozen) puff pastry, minced steak, garlic, onions, peas and curry powder. I'm going to make curry puffs. I watched Jasmine make them often enough and I can't go wrong.
And then in the delicious cool shade of the empty kitchen, with no-one home except me, Camilla and Harry, I pour myself an icy cranberry juice and let myself think about Will.
Today has been an extraordinary day.
The journey of a thousand miles starts with one step. So says one of Mum's inspirational writings she's stuck on the fridge under a frangipani magnet. So let's start with my first step into the quadrangle this morning.
Imagine the scene: It's a calm and clear, sunny Tuesday when Bianca runs at me, full bore. I see that her hair, weirdly, is as flat as the Nullarbor Plain – with what looks like the odd clump of spiky spinifex grass sticking up. (Without my expertise, Bianca's hair is always going to look like a disaster area and this gives me some satisfaction.)
'You won't guess what, Elly!' she squeals as she takes my arm in a wrestling hold and pushes me behind some rubbish bins on the terrace outside the first-aid room.
Try me. I'm beyond guessing. I couldn't have predicted anything that's happened to me over the past eleven days.
'LILY AND JAYDEN ARE BACK TOGETHER,' shouts Bianca, her blue eyes wide with the thrill of this information.
Whaaaa? Honestly. This is the last thing I was expecting.
I see the school nurse, Mrs Parker Bowles, scowling at us through the venetian blinds and mouthing at us to keep the noise down. How can anyone be sick at this hour of the morning? Unless it's one of Mrs Ferguson's 'morning migraines' (AKA hangovers).
'It's so true. They are going together again, I swear,' crows Bianca. 'Jai told me last night after school. That's why none of us went chasing Will down at the beach last night. Jayden told everyone that Lily told him, to tell us, to lay off – so we did.'
I remember the hideous car trip last night with Tilly and the time I spent looking out for Will, not to mention the torturous hours imagining him and Lily together. If I'd had a mobile, Bianca would have told me the latest and I would have been saved all that brain cell trauma.
Hold on. Did Lily dump Will? Or did Will dump Lily? Or is there something else I should be thinking about? Why were both of them so sad under the jacaranda tree yesterday? I just can't figure it out and I'm sure that Bianca doesn't have the first clue.
'I know everything!' she declares.
I see dozens of shiny, jewelled bracelets slide down from under the sleeve of her white shirt and over her wrist to where her busy fingers are tracing the keypad of her mobile. Am I holding her up from something? Even as she's talking to me she's imagining who she might talk to next.
'What happened was, Lily crawled back to Jayden because she realised Will just wasn't good enough for her. Will's kind of weird and doesn't have that many friends. He was desperate to get a girlfriend as cool and popular as Lily, but in the end . . .'
IN THE END HE COULD ONLY GET SOMEONE AS UNCOOL AND UNPOPULAR AS ME?
Is that what Bianca's saying?
If I could tip my water bottle onto her empty yellow-carpeted head, I reckon Bianca would screech: I'm melting. I'm melting! She'd end up a steaming yellow-greenish puddle under the rubbish bins.
'No! No! What I meant was . . .' Bianca stutters and trips and fumbles and . . .
Bing-bong! She's saved by the bell. Lucky for her!
'Anyway, see you after school,' she trills. 'We're all going to Palatial Pizzas again . . . I was going to say I'll ring you, but you haven't got a mobile so . . .'
Oh, what a shame that Bianca won't be able to reach me. I'm so sorry I won't be able to sit there trying to imagine which pizza Jai reminds me of. But I'll have a guess – a Jumbo Scumbag Special with extra anchovies!
For the rest of the day I couldn't concentrate on anything. At lunch I peered around the corner of the tuckshop again and saw Will under the jacaranda tree. He was talking with Bombie Logan – one of his surfing mates. Bianca's talking total crapola. Will's got heaps of friends – he just doesn't choose to hang with most of the dead heads at Bogan Central Oldcastle High, that's all.
I wanted to go and see him with every tiny atom of my body, but maybe what Bianca said was right, and Will's already moved on. Which is, sadly, what I have to do too.
Later I was walking past the oval and saw Lily and Jayden sitting way out there in the middle by themselves, their heads together, so I knew what Bianca said about them being back together was true at least.
Would I want Will back if I could have him? If he asked me? My heart said 'yes' but my head said 'no'. My stomach couldn't give me an answer and turned end over end all afternoon.
Of course what Bianca said chewed away at me all day, like little teeth gnawing at my elbow. (She really does remind me of a guinea pig.) Am I really uncool and unpopular?
So this afternoon, sitting at the kitchen bench, I pick up Carmelita's letter and re-read it. I love her gorgeous handwriting. It slants a little bit to the right, the letters are rounded and even and she decorates some of them with curly bits. I'm no graphologist, but I'll bet it means she is a generous, thoughtful and kind person, because that's what she is.
She's always been there for me. Even back at Big-Ears Day Care she'd have given me her blankie if I'd needed it. I've always been cool with her and she's all the friends I need in the world in one.
I unpack all my shopping and start on my curry puffs. One sneaky part of me is thinking that if Will and I ever did get back together, I could make him curry puffs. And then I realise that, despite all the lectures I've had, I'm still a total doormat – or should I say, a limp sheet of puff pastry.
And then I remember – I still haven't posted Nan's invitations!
Tuesday. 5.30 pm.
PM. AW. PPC.
I'm standing in Kensington Street, outside the post office. Weirdly enough it's right here in between Footman Shoes and Excellency Hardware and I've never noticed it.
Pushing through the front door, I see that there's a long line of people in front of the counter. Blah! Who's got the time to be standing here for hours on end? I wonder how much time has been wasted standing in this queue, among the stacks of lame greeting cards and crappy pen and pencil sets?
But then I see Tenzin Choepel. I haven't seen him since yesterday, when he asked me to the dance and I ran away. I'm sure he thinks I'm a rude, ungrateful weirdo, but he waves and makes a space in front of him and I slip into the queue.
'It looks like you have some special letters to post,' Tenzin smiles, and I can tell he's forgiven me.
I explain that it's my Nan's seventieth birthday coming up and I've got 35 stamps to buy and lick and stick. I'm not sure how long that will take. For-ev-er, by the looks of things.
'You're lucky to have your grandmother living near you,' says Tenzin. 'All four of my grandparents are still back in Tibet. But we write every week,' he says, waving a fat letter in my face. 'All of us, my mother and father and two sisters, sit down every Sunday and write a page each. And we send cards and photographs. Although we have to write the addresses in the Chinese language – not in Tibetan – or they won't be delivered. We are very much hoping that they can come and live here with us in Britannia one day.'
I ask Tenzin if he ever calls his grandparents.
'Oh, they've never had a telephone,' he laughs. 'And we can't ring any of our other relatives because just one phone call could mean serious trouble for them. Our letters are carried to our grandparents' village in the mountains on the back of a yak.'
Hah! Yak mail? That's awesome! Sure beats my Dad driving his van around Oldcastle for Ascot Couriers. I ask Tenzin if they've had to sack any yaks because of the GFC and everything.
Tenzin giggles and his laugh reminds me of the ringing brass finger cymbals he played for us in last year's school concert. He wore a traditional embroidered costume and played while his sisters performed a Tibetan folk dance. I remember Carmelita nudging me and telling me how cute he was. He has incredibly white teeth and sparkling dark brown eyes set in a face the colour of sugar toffee.
'I'm going to ask you something, and I hope you don't run off this time,' he grins.
I duck my head; the memory of that moment is still excruciating.
'Would you like to come with me to the Tibetan Freedom Festival next Sunday? The Buddhist monks are making a sand mandala in the name of peace at the Gummy Beach Surf Club.'
I look at him blankly.
'A sand mandala is a healing circle. The monks have been there all week making a beautiful picture by pouring coloured sand onto a table. There are representations of deities, monkeys, victory banners and patterns of the five elements – wood, fire, earth, water and metal.
'On Sunday morning they'll have a special ceremony and gather all the sand in jars. They'll make a procession across the beach and say prayers as they tip all the sand into the water.'
I can't believe all that work just gets dumped into the ocean. Why?
'To symbolise the cycle of life and the impermanence of existence.' Tenzin holds up his letter and smiles. 'We write letters and take photographs to remind everyone who we are, and what we are thinking, but one day everything will be swept away.'
It all sounds so amazing. I find myself telling Tenzin that I would very much like to go with him to see the ceremony.
'That's great. So I'll ring you,' he says.
I explain that it might be difficult to get in touch because I don't have a telephone . . . or a computer.
'Then I shall send a yak!' Tenzin declares.
And we are both laughing so hard that the old lady in front of us turns and gives us an evil stare.
Soon enough I'm at the counter and I pay up for a sheet of stamps with Russell Crowe's face on them. I wasn't looking forward to licking the back of his head, but these ones are self-adhesive.
It's all a lot easier than I thought it would be and there's something so satisfying about lifting the lid on the metal post box and hearing the envelopes flutter into the heap below. I can't quite believe there are so many letters still migrating around the globe. I wish my envelopes bon voyage and let the lid go. It shuts with a clang!
Tenzin and I stroll together to the end of Kensington Street and exchange addresses.
'And the dance on Saturday? Do you have a date?' he asks.
I tell him that Carmelita's coming down from Queensland and that we've decided to go together.
'My mother wants me to take my younger sister, so I'll be free to have a dance with both of you,' he grins.
I nod, that will be great. Then Tenzin walks away with a long and easy stride – head up, facing the afternoon sun. There's something about that boy I like very much.
I head back along the other side of the street, thinking about what Tenzin says about the impermanence of life. All the photographs I had on my computer were like a sand mandala. Gathered over ten months and swept away in a moment.
I wonder how long I'll remember all the great times Will and I had together if I can't look back at the photographs of us hanging at the skate park or in his front yard at Hammerhead. When I'm as old as Nan, will I be able to remember the tiny globs of salt in his hair and the minuscule drops of water on his eyelashes? I won't even have a crumbling bunch of roses to remind me of my boy.
I should start making my own box of memories to treasure. Something I could take with me if I ever had to leave my home and cross a river in the dead of night. My christening bracelet and necklace and a couple of baby teeth are in my ballerina music box. I know Mum's got my old school reports and some of my first bits of art and craft packed away somewhere. I had lots of things stored on my hard drive that maybe should have been saved and stored in a box, or at the very least in my head.
I've stopped in my tracks thinking about all this and when I look up I find myself outside the narrow shop window of Royal Seal Stationery. When I step inside I see it's absolutely crammed with divine writing paper, envelopes, stamps, inks, pens, cards and ribbons. I adore every single thing and spend ages poking through all the shelves.
In the end I choose some thick notepaper decorated in the left-hand corner with a tangerine tree and a bluebird sitting in the branches. It's in a lovely box, with matching envelopes, tied with striped orange ribbon. I also choose a white fountain pen and a bottle of Jewel Green Old English writing ink.
Then I head home to finish making the curry puffs for tea.
Tuesday. 8 pm.
PM. AW. PPC.
I've written one letter to Carmelita and one to my cousin Anne in Toolewong. They should both get a surprise when they open their letterboxes and see the pale orange envelope decorated with tangerines and bluebirds and addressed in green ink!
I wonder what my handwriting says about me? Then I decide to write Nan a note too and I'll ask her what she thinks when I'm over there next Sunday.
Mum enters The Dungeon and leans over my shoulder.
'You're writing letters with a fountain pen? Good for you, Elly,' she exclaims. 'Truly, I never thought I'd see the day!
'I used to have pen pals when I was your age.' Mum chuckles at the memory and sits on the bed. 'I remember buying teenage magazines and there would always be this page headed "pen pals wanted". I wrote for years to a boy in Brussels and a girl in Hong Kong!