Mimi and the Blue Slave

by Catherine Bateson

  ‘I’d never think you were losers,’ I said. I was crying, too, and trying to hug Mum through Aunty Ann’s hug. ‘I love you, Mum. I loved Dad, too. More than anyone else in the whole world.’

  When we’d all dried our eyes and shut up the shop properly, Aunty Ann said she wanted to take us to dinner. Not, she said, to the Wok Off, but somewhere more special. So we dressed up and Mum loaned Aunty Ann some lipstick and mascara because hers had all been cried off, and I wore my embroidered top and Aunty Ann showed me how to wrap my hair in the scarf, which looked amazing, and it was pretty interesting that Aunty Ann knew how to do that because it was more of an Aunty Marita thing, I thought.

  We went to the Toucan, a brand new bistro in the restaurant strip. They had toucans – which are pretty much like parrots, so I was happy – everywhere, even on the napkins. Aunty Ann ordered me a Toucan Mocktail which was the nicest drink I had ever had. It was so pretty I didn’t want to drink it, but I did get to keep the cocktail swizzle stick, which had a star on it.

  ‘You know, seeing Marita with this man,’ Aunty Ann confided – after she’d had a Grasshopper, which was as green as its name suggested and not a mocktail but a proper grown-up cocktail – ‘just makes me wonder. Marita’s always been open to experience. I never have been.’

  ‘To be fair, Ann, Marita being open to experience got her married to that madman.’

  ‘Being closed to experience got me married,’ Ann said. ‘Remember?’

  ‘It didn’t last that long,’ Mum said and patted Aunty Ann’s hand. ‘You don’t have to count it, if you don’t want to.’

  ‘I do have to count it,’ Aunty Ann said, waving the waiter over and ordering another Grasshopper. ‘It’s the only marriage I’ve had. If I don’t count it, I’ve got nothing.’

  ‘Ann! You’ve got friends, your work, us. You’ve got a lot of things in your life.’

  ‘I meant, no past. It may not have lasted long, but it still counts as a past.’

  ‘Of course it does,’ Mum soothed her, while she raised her eyebrows at me. ‘If you want it to count, it counts.’

  Fortunately our food arrived – lots of different plates of different things – and we had to work out what they all were, so we could stop talking about Aunty Ann’s past and concentrate on our present. The food was mysterious and wonderful.

  ‘I might go to Spain,’ Aunty Ann said, ordering her third Grasshopper. ‘I should break out. Do something really, really different. I should be more like you, Louisa. I need to learn a lesson in living from you.’

  ‘Mum hasn’t been doing that particularly well lately,’ I said, my mouth full of what might once have been a very small bird. I felt sorry for it, but it did smell delicious. ‘Oops, sorry, Mum. I didn’t mean to say that.’

  ‘What?’ Aunty Ann turned to Mum. ‘Lou, you’ve been okay, haven’t you? You’ve done a course. You’re doing another one. You’ve got a little dog. I want a little dog. Or a cat. Or even a budgie.’

  ‘You shouldn’t get a budgie,’ I said, ‘you should get a pirate’s parrot.’

  ‘I don’t like birds in cages, really,’ Aunty Ann said, examining the toucan on her paper napkin.

  ‘Parrots sit on your shoulder,’ I told her.

  ‘Louisa, what does Mimi mean that you haven’t been living well lately?’ Aunty Ann got back to the original topic with some persistence.

  Mum shrugged. ‘I’ve been a bit ... depressed. After the Drew episode.’

  ‘Well, I knew that upset you.’

  ‘She stayed in bed,’ I said. Aunty Ann needed to know. She couldn’t go around thinking Mum had it all worked out. If Aunty Ann wanted to change her life, she should do it herself and not copy Mum.

  ‘She was always up whenever I dropped in. Louisa? I did wonder about the changed opening hours, but it’s so hard to manage a business with a child.’

  ‘I was only in bed for a while. I still opened the shop.’ Mum kicked me under the table.

  ‘You were shipwrecked by despair,’ I told on her, moving my feet out of her reach.

  ‘Temporarily.’

  ‘Lou. I had no idea. I was so busy with the barista course. You should have told me sooner, Mimi. You could have told me.’

  ‘Why should I have to do everything? I did what I could. I got us Pippi.’

  Aunty Ann swooped on me from across the table, clumsily, and gave me a one-armed hug. ‘You’re a treasure,’ she said. ‘Louisa, you’ve got the best daughter in the world!’

  Mum raised her glass. ‘I’ll drink to that,’ she said. ‘I’ll drink to Mimi and change – good changes!’

  That was weird, I told Ableth while I cleaned my teeth and washed my face. Pippi was sleeping on the end of my bed and Mum was making Aunty Ann a cup of herbal tea downstairs. Aunty Ann was staying the night. She was a little bit wobbly after three Grasshoppers and she was also determined to make up for neglecting us. She’d hugged Mum about a hundred times and I was wearing her lipstick kisses all over my face. She and Mum had said wise and loving things to each other. They’d also praised me a lot. It had been a night to remember.

  Ableth shrugged. She’s not a bad old stick, he said. This coffee thing’s been good for her.

  I don’t think it’s the coffee, I said. I reckon it’s Aunty Marita and her beau.

  Rattled her timbers and shaken her sails, Ableth agreed.

  She’s nicer now, I said.

  She’s just showing you more of her, Ableth said and I let him have the last word on the subject, because I suspected he was right.

  The next morning, Grasshopper Aunty Ann had gone and in her place was normal Aunty Ann, being normally bossy. She ironed my school uniform and plaited my hair so tightly my eyes pulled back. She told Mum to get her hair done properly and informed Pippi that she needed to go to dog school. Pippi sat down and begged when she said that, as though to say that she could already do many clever things and maybe dog school would be a waste of time. Aunty Ann packed my lunch, checked that I had a hat, signed an excursion form and was sweeping the shop floor when I left for school. It was comforting to know that normal Aunty Ann could come back at any time.

  I was surprised, however, when she volunteered to come to the auction with Guy and me.

  ‘Mum! She can’t come.’

  ‘She’s pretty determined.’ Mum ran her fingers through her hair and squinched up her nose. ‘Would it do any harm?’

  ‘They’re my family,’ I said. I wasn’t sure why I was so unhappy about it. ‘Guy said so.’

  ‘Just think of it as your family suddenly getting larger?’ Mum said unhelpfully.

  ‘But she’s my family already – just in a different way. I don’t want them mixing like that. It isn’t fair.’

  Calm down, pirate queen, Ableth murmured. Surely there’s room in the big blue ocean for all those little craft?

  I glared at him. She’ll take over, I said. I won’t have a chance to find anything by myself. It will all be different.

  Mum must have worried about Aunty Ann going, too, because by the time Aunty Ann arrived, Mum was dressed and ready to go.

  ‘I thought I’d come along,’ she said, ‘get back on the horse.’ She gave us both a tremulous smile. She’d put on make-up and her eyes and mouth looked big and tender. She was wearing her silver sandals and a white dress with a red wrap. I felt so proud of her. She looked so brave.

  ‘My goodness,’ Guy said when he arrived, ‘I’m escorting a bevy of beauties. My reputation will soar – but I won’t get good prices anymore. Ladies, you’ll be the downfall of my little stall.’ But he opened the car doors for us all the same. Mum and Aunty Ann had a polite argument about who was sitting in the front and then off we went, Mum, me and Pippi in the back.

  When we got to the auction, I felt as though Mum was the queen or something. Everyone crowded a
round us, kissing and patting and exclaiming. Mum was lost in the centre of it all. When she emerged again, her mascara was a little smudged and there was lipstick on her cheek, but she was smiling.

  I looked at Guy and he gave me the thumbs up. I found myself taking a deep breath as though I’d forgotten how to until that moment.

  The hours flew by. Aunty Ann behaved herself and wasn’t bossy at all, but asked lots of questions about everything, even bid on something for herself – a three-tiered cake plate, of all things – and was delighted when she got it.

  ‘It’s perfect,’ she kept saying, ‘and what a bargain. Oh, I must do this more often!’

  Guy and I rolled our eyes at each other, but secretly I thought it was a bit sweet and knew exactly how she felt because I’d been the same about the Christmas decorations the week before.

  I didn’t find anything as exciting, but I did suggest to Mum that we buy Edie a funny black cockatoo ornament for a Christmas present. I thought it might go with her angelfish and make her smile.

  ‘It does look like Edie,’ Mum said when we examined it. ‘It’s got her style, hasn’t it? Okay, I’ll bid for it. It feels weird that we’re buying Christmas presents already.’

  When we got home with the cockatoo, Mum looked at the calendar.

  ‘We’ll have to put up your decorations, Mimi,’ she said. ‘We’ll have to make the shop look beautiful.’

  ‘Marita and I will come and help,’ Aunty Ann said. She was wrapping her cake tier in bubble wrap so it wouldn’t break on the way home. ‘We’d love that, Lou. Please?’

  ‘Of course. Of course.’ Mum sounded a little dazed.

  ‘What will we do for Christmas?’ she asked me later on, when she tucked me into bed. ‘Gosh Mimi, it will be school holidays soon. What will you do?’

  ‘What I’ve always done,’ I told her.

  ‘But your dad used to take you to the beach and – oh what are we going to do?’

  ‘Don’t have a relapse, Mum,’ I said, holding her wrist tightly. ‘You’ve been so good, coming to the auction and dinner with Aunty Ann. Don’t go to bed, will you?’

  ‘No.’ Mum straightened up. ‘Of course I won’t. We’ll be fine, Mimi. We’ll think of something.’

  ‘You know how you didn’t want me to have a Pippi naming day?’ I said, taking advantage of the fact that she was stroking Pippi, who was on the end of my bed as usual. ‘Well, if Aunty Ann and Aunty Marita are helping with the Christmas decorations, couldn’t we get Fergus and Edie to help, too, and have a kind of shop party? It’d be more fun? Then we could just sort of sneak in the fact that Pippi was Pippi? Maybe give her a special dog biscuit? The Very Veg sells organic ones with carob?’

  ‘Yeah, we could do that,’ Mum said. ‘We could do that for a very special dog, a very special girl and some very beautiful Christmas decorations.’

  So that’s what we did. We closed the shop for business, but opened it for everyone, even Mum’s old ladies. Everyone got to hang some tinsel or put a decoration on our tree. The old ladies loved the cat with the mandolin and said those decorations, in particular, reminded them of being young women. Aunty Ann lent us her cake tier and Mum and I made cupcakes. They were delicious, although some were a little lopsided.

  Fergus and his mum came and she brought some banana bread and told Mum about the council’s Christmas holiday program which included going out on a yacht, so I said yes, even though it sounded very organised and I wasn’t sure about batik dyeing or clay modelling. Fergus said you didn’t have to go to everything. You only paid for the days you went to and on the other days we could both have our own adventures. He said we could ride our bikes along the bike path. I said I didn’t have a bike, except my baby one that I’d long outgrown. Mum heard me and I knew, just by the look on her face, what I was going to get for Christmas. So I told Fergus later, when we went to get soft drink, that I thought we probably could go bike riding in the holidays and we both agreed to train Pippi to run along beside the bikes.

  At the end of the afternoon, the shop looked magnificent. We turned on the Christmas lights and most of my painted bulbs worked, which was a miracle really, considering how old they were.

  Mum broke open a bottle of lemon squash for me and Fergus and champagne for everyone else and we had a toast to the shop and the Christmas decorations, and then Mum declared Pippi named piratical Pippi after the famous Pippi Longstocking and we all drank to that.

  When everyone went home, Mum and I had sandwiches outside. We were too full from lopsided cupcakes to eat anything else. Pippi curled up at our feet and started to whimper in her sleep.

  ‘I’m going to garden this summer,’ Mum said. ‘I’m going to plant some herbs, a rosebush and some lavender.’

  ‘That was so much fun, the shop decorating. It almost felt like Christmas Day or something.’

  ‘It did, didn’t it? And now, with sandwiches for dinner, it feels like Christmas night. A pity there’s no pudding. Not that I could eat it after all those cupcakes!’

  ‘Maybe we should do something like that for Christmas?’ I said. ‘Then it would feel like Christmas and be Christmas at the same time.’

  Mum looked at me. ‘In the shop?’ she said. ‘With lots of people?’

  I shrugged. ‘Not lots, maybe. Fergus and his parents go to his Uncle Hugo’s. But the aunts could come here, and maybe Aunty Marita’s beau, unless he goes somewhere else. What does Guy do? Where does Edie go? Particularly now that Jed’s up north with his ex.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Mum said.

  ‘What about Crane and Audrey and Miriam? They’re all family, Mum.’

  ‘I suppose they are. I don’t see why we couldn’t. We’d have to get that old trestle table in from the shed. But we could do that.’

  ‘We needn’t have it in the shop,’ I said.

  ‘But that’s where the tree is,’ Mum said. ‘We might be outside one year, when the garden’s done, but no, this year I think we should have it in the shop. There’s no reason why we can’t move the cabinets. There’s plenty of room in the front, really, with everything shifted. I bet Edie and I could move most of it ourselves. I think that’s a brilliant idea, Mimi. I think that’s a fantastical idea. The best you’ve ever had so far in your entire life.’

  I wasn’t sure about that, because privately I thought Pippi was the very best idea I’d ever had, but I could understand how perhaps Mum didn’t think Pippi was an idea, but rather more like fate.

  ‘We could do invitations,’ I said. ‘Maybe we could do photos of Pippi – the cheap shop has dog reindeer antlers in it. I bet she wouldn’t mind wearing a pair, just for the photo.’

  Admittedly, Pippi wasn’t that impressed with the antlers. I had to sit next to her, wearing a pair of large-sized ones, and hold her bottom down firmly with one hand while still smiling at the camera as though we were both enjoying ourselves. The invitations, though, looked fabulous. Mum photoshopped them in her course.

  I’d got back on the horse, although it was touch and go the first night because silly Fergus suggested we watch Treasure Island and it frightened both of us so much that when Mum came home we had all the lights on (Fergus’s idea) and were sitting on the floor next to the phone with Pippi between us, in case a burglar tried to steal her (my idea). Mum laughed at us, made us hot chocolate and then we all walked Fergus home.

  ‘I’m never watching Treasure Island at night again,’ I told her. ‘I don’t care who’s at home. It’s too scary.’

  You didn’t need me, Ableth said sadly after she’d tucked me in. What’s happened to old Ableth, eh? I think I’ve earned my freedom, Mimi, queen of my heart. I could be sailing away soon, my lovely.

  No, I said, don’t go, Ableth. I love you. You know that. You’re my blue slave.

  You can set me free, queen of the blue. You can let me go now.

  I won�
��t. I need you, Ableth.

  I’ll stay for a little while longer. Just to make sure everything’s shipshape, he promised. Just for a little longer.

  Forever, I said, but the word just echoed around in my sleepy head and Ableth didn’t answer me.

  We gave out invitations to nearly everyone – to Crane and Audrey, Miriam, Guy and the aunties and to Edie.

  On Christmas Eve, we shut the shop late because all the old ladies came in with little wrapped presents that smelt of lavender or ginger, to put under the tree while Mum and I handed out pieces of lemon tart and Aunty Ann’s chocolates which were decorated with blobs of snowy icing – except Aunty Ann called it fondant which sounded much more posh. We sold stuff, too, right up to closing, practically. Troy’s mum came back and bought the set of fish knives we’d had forever.

  ‘I’m so pleased I found you,’ she said to Mum breathlessly, as though she’d run from the car park to the shop. ‘This is for a particularly difficult aunt. You don’t giftwrap, do you?’

  ‘Sorry, not this year.’

  ‘Shame. Never mind. They are perfect. Thank goodness. Nearly done. It’s so exhausting, isn’t it?’

  Our exhaustion hadn’t started. We had to move all the shop furniture – well, I sat and directed. Edie, Mum and Guy did the hard work. It was really late when they’d finished and then Mum made rum eggnog. I had a tiny sip – mainly because of Ableth. He always drank at Christmas. And other special occasions. Then Guy went home, but Edie stayed the night in my bed because she didn’t want to wake up on Christmas morning on her own.

  As soon as I woke up on Christmas Day I could feel the difference. The air was silent.

  Ableth? There wasn’t even a whistle in the wind.

  We had breakfast outside – Mum had found an old folding outdoor table right at the back of the shed and fixed it up. We admired the herb seedlings and the little rosebush that had a few roses even though it was so new. They were a kind of pinky yellow and Mum said they were called Peace. Which was lovely and very Christmassy.