‘Can’t you just complain directly to each other?’ Lola said once. ‘Cut out the middleman?’
Carrie and Matthew were fine too, Lola knew. A marriage on traditional lines, Carrie the housewife, Matthew the breadwinner. It wouldn’t have been Lola’s choice, but it seemed to suit them. In the past month, Carrie had also started selling make-up on the side. ‘Marvellous idea! Play to your strengths,’ Lola had said when Carrie called around to Margaret’s – to Lola and Margaret’s – to give them a free demonstration of the products. She’d been a bit too light-handed, Lola had thought – what was the point of wearing make-up if the effect was subtle and ‘barely there’, as Carrie had put it, reciting the lines. Lola had reapplied a few more layers after Carrie left.
In recent weeks, the weather had started to turn cooler. After the long hot summer, the autumn was spectacular, the vines bright red and orange. She’d described it to Alex. They often spoke about the places they’d both lived in and visited, cities he’d been to around the world, or towns in Australia she and Jim had worked in. Places they’d both like to visit. ‘Where will we go this week?’ she’d ask. She’d pick a city, Venice or San Francisco. Next time they spoke he’d have a few facts about each place to tell her.
In the past month they’d spoken more about meeting up in person. In the Clare Valley or in Melbourne? Melbourne, they decided.
‘Wouldn’t it be fun to go to Brighton one more time?’ he’d said. ‘Re-enact that day we had, perhaps?’
Alex told her that his daughter Rosie had said she’d collect Lola from the airport and drive her and Alex anywhere they wanted to go. Rosie had said the same thing to Lola, when she answered the phone once. Lola liked the way she called her father Papa. ‘Papa always met me whenever I came home from any trip, and he always drove me to any place I needed to go, too. I’ll be good to return the favour.’
The flight to Melbourne was only an hour long. She should have come long before today. Should have, could have, would have. Didn‘t. And there it was. She couldn’t change anything. She couldn’t make time stand still, go backwards or slow down and let her savour good times. She just had to go where it took her.
‘Stop saying sorry,’ she’d said to Alex during their fifth, or perhaps it was their sixth, phone call. ‘We can’t change anything. Let’s just be glad we’ve got this chance to talk again.’
But if it was possible, of course there were things she would change in her life. Anna’s death, first and foremost. If there’d been anything she could have done to stop that happening, she’d have done it. It still made no sense. Nothing had ever seemed so unfair, for Anna, for Ellen. For any of them.
And if she could stop the pain she knew Alex’s family would be feeling now, she’d have liked to have done that too.
Rosie’s call had come before ten a.m., three days earlier. Lola had spoken to Alex the night before, for an hour. They’d discussed politics, argued about religion, talked about their families and finally said goodbye.
‘Talk to you again tomorrow,’ he’d said. ‘Goodnight, Lola.’
‘Goodnight, Alex.’
They didn’t say ‘I love you’, but she knew she loved him and she knew he loved her. When you got to their age, you knew these things.
The call had come in on her mobile phone. ‘Lola, it’s Rosie.’
‘Rosie!’ Her voice sounded strange, as if she had a cold. ‘Darling, are you all right?’
‘It’s Papa. Lola, it’s Papa. He’s —’
‘He’s what, Rosie?’ Please be sick, Alex. Be sick, be in hospital, be in an ambulance, be anything but —
‘He’s dead.’ Rosie was crying so hard she could barely speak. ‘He died in his sleep. I went down this morning and he —’
Lola waited. She didn’t breathe, didn’t move. She just waited.
Rosie couldn’t stop crying. ‘Lola, I’m so sorry. I’ll have to call you back.’
Lola stayed where she was. For the next hour, she sat there on her bed, the phone beside her, waiting for Rosie to call back. She didn’t cry. Not yet. She didn’t go out to the kitchen, though she could hear Margaret moving around, hear the kettle boiling. As she waited for Rosie to ring again, she sat still, listening to all the sounds of life around her. The birds outside her window. A tune playing faintly on the radio. She wouldn’t cry. She wouldn‘t. Not yet.
Rosie was only slightly calmer when she called back. ‘I’m so sorry, Lola. I’m so sorry.’
Lola chose to believe she was apologising for crying. ‘You mustn’t say sorry for that. Of course you have to cry. You have to make all the noise you can about your papa, laugh and shout and cry and —’
‘He was so happy these last few months. He was happy anyway but he was different happy. He loved talking to you so much. Thank you, Lola.’
‘You don’t have to thank me. It was the easiest thing in the world.’ She said it out loud then for the first time. ‘I loved your father very much, Rosie.’
The words triggered Rosie’s tears again. ‘I don’t want him to be dead, Lola. I want him here. I want him back.’
She was saying all the things Lola couldn’t yet, putting words to her feelings. It made it easier to hear Rosie say them, to be the one saying the soothing things, to tell her that Alex had said so many times how much he loved his daughters, his whole family, how proud he was of them, the joy they’d brought him.
‘Will you come to his funeral, Lola? Please. So we can meet you?’
‘Of course,’ she’d said.
She cried alone, many times, during the three days that followed that call. She cried for all that would be lost to her and Alex now, the conversations, the memories. She cried for their lost years. For the lonely nights that she knew would now lie ahead.
She also cried tears of gratitude. For the unexpectedness of life, bringing them back together again, even briefly. For all the small, seemingly unconnected events that had come together to allow her and Alex to reconnect. She traced it back and back, marvelling even through her grief. If Patricia and Luke hadn’t moved to Clare five years earlier, none of this would have happened. If Luke hadn’t become interested in computers, it wouldn’t have happened. If he hadn’t set up that system in the charity shop for them all, if he hadn’t installed that photographic program, if Lola hadn’t kept that photo of Alex, if Luke hadn’t known how to use the internet to find people, if Alex hadn’t tried to ring her on Christmas Day …
So many tiny steps coming together to make so many other wonderful things happen. Was it fate, or magic, or both?
As the flight attendant announced they would soon begin their descent into Melbourne, Lola felt a touch on her hand.
‘You okay, Mum?’ Jim asked.
‘I’m fine, darling, thank you.’
She leaned forward and watched through the window as Melbourne appeared in the landscape beneath them. She pictured the scene in the airport, Rosie waiting at the gate, checking the monitors for their flight arrival. She had insisted on coming to collect them. ‘Papa would kill me if I didn’t,’ she’d said.
The next day, after the funeral, Ellen and Glenn would fly into Melbourne airport too. That had been Bett’s idea. They were all staying in the same city-centre hotel for three nights. They’d go and see a musical one night. Take a tram ride one day. Perhaps a museum, an art gallery. They would also take a day trip to Brighton together. Bett’s idea again. In the past three days, Bett had been a constant presence by Lola’s side, listening to her talk about Alex, the man she’d known all those years ago, the man she’d connected with again, too briefly. About all she had loved about him, had been loving again, about what their plans would have been if they had managed to meet in person again.
‘Let’s still do them,’ Bett had said. ‘In his memory.’
Lola knew that today would be a very sad day, for Alex’s family, for herself. But there would also be laughter too, she hoped. Shared memories of him – a loved father, grandfather, friend. Perhaps there would even
be new friendships made, between her family and Alex’s family. And who knew what small event would happen today that would set all sorts of others in train in the future? In the way something as small as a brief conversation in a supermarket queue with Alex fifty years ago had somehow led to her being here, on this plane, her son on one side, her granddaughter on her other side, about to land in Melbourne for his funeral.
Yes, life really could be extraordinary, Lola thought. She gazed around the plane. All these people here together, so ordinary on the surface, but who knew what each of them had done in their lives or hoped to do in the future? She knew a little of what was going on in Bett’s head, in Jim’s head, in both their lives, but surely they had their secrets from her too? If she was able to ask every single passenger what their greatest hope in life was, or their greatest fear, would there be hundreds of different answers? She was sure of it. And what about all the hotel guests she had met in her life? People she’d had the briefest of dealings with, a greeting at the reception desk, a casual conversation in the dining room? All those different lives and loves and fears and hopes and dreams. Perhaps it was as well people kept their inner lives secret. Imagine the cacophony if all their hopes and dreams and worries were being broadcast. ‘Will I ever fall in love?’ ‘Will I get the job I want?’ ‘Will I have children?’ ‘Will I be rich?’
What would be the most common thought? she wondered. ‘Will everything be all right?’
There was no way of telling. Lola knew that from experience. But yes, the chances were everything would be all right. It was just a matter of taking the good with the bad – not only in life’s experiences, but in the people you met, in the luck you had, in the thoughts you had. There was no secret to a perfect life, because there was no such thing as a perfect life. It was a matter of finding a place for yourself in your own particular galaxy, a spot in your own solar system of family and friends. The freedom to move in and out of each other’s orbits, pull towards each other sometimes, away from each other at other times.
That was how it had been for her, Lola realised. For all of her family and friends, too. All of them leading their own separate lives, yet always staying connected. All of them alone, with their own fears and worries and hopes, yet finding comfort, entertainment and, yes, love, in the closeness of others.
The plane began its descent. Lola took Jim’s hand and then Bett’s hand in hers and squeezed. She felt their squeezes in return.
She didn’t know what today would bring, but after eighty-five years, she could predict it a little. There would be sadness and sorrow, but perhaps there would be some happiness and joy too. They would all meet new people. Hear stories. Share thoughts. Eat a little, drink a little.
Lola shut her eyes, knowing one thing for sure. Moment by moment, layer by layer, new memories would be made today, for all of them. And what more could anyone ask of a day – or of life itself – than that?
Acknowledgments
My big thanks to:
John Neville, Noel Henny, Padraig O’Sullivan, Anthony Murphy, David Healy, Rachel Tys, Marylou Jones, Frances Brennan, Kate Strachan, Dominic McInerney, everyone at the Clare Library in South Australia, especially Heather Lymburn, Candice Ellis, Charles Cooper, Lurlene Simpson, Trish Jones; Val Tilbrook, Claire Giles, Alda Jones, Suzanne Uphill, and all the Friends of the Library, Mayor Allan Aughey, Jo Kelly and all at Melrose Rural Women’s Gathering.
My two McInerneys, and all my friends, with special thanks to Max Fatchen, Austin O’Neill and Lee O’Neill.
My agents: Fiona Inglis, Jonathan Lloyd, Kate Cooper, Gráinne Fox, Christy Fletcher and Anoukh Foerg.
My publishers around the world: everyone at Penguin Australia, especially Ali Watts, Arwen Summers, Gabrielle Coyne, Bob Sessions, Peter Blake, Louise Ryan, Sally Bateman, Carol George and Debbie McGowan; Trisha Jackson, Helen Guthrie, Ellen Wood, David Adamson and all at Pan Macmillan in the UK and Jen Smith and everyone at Random House in the USA.
My big thanks, as ever, to my sister Maura for all the help, laughs and encouragement she gives me.
And finally, and as always, my love and thanks to my husband John.
Also by Monica McInerney
A Taste for It
Upside Down Inside Out
Spin the Bottle
The Alphabet Sisters
Family Baggage
Those Faraday Girls
All Together Now
At Home with the Templetons
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First published by Penguin Group (Australia), 2011
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ISBN: 978-1-74253-407-7
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