by Wendy Harmer
Claire stood blinking through the frame Charlie had wiped onto the wet surface of the mirror.
Fuck! What did she ask that for? She cursed herself for her stupidity. Now she was caught. Break the pact with Connor or break the faith with Charlie? Aaargh!
She was still thinking about Connor two hours later as Charlie parked his black BMW outside Phil and Helen’s house, an impressive sandstone pile in Rozelle. They had been invited to Phil’s fiftieth birthday party.
Two white rose bushes in massive terracotta pots were on sentry duty by the front step. Charlie sought Claire’s hand and threaded his fingers through hers. She stood on tiptoes and kissed his cheek. They presented a picture of perfect marital harmony as the front door was opened wide.
Claire had found herself at a lot of fiftieths lately and she had decided they were her favourite birthday parties. By this age you could look back and clearly see the arc of your life. You were hopefully old enough, and wise enough, to be contented about where life had led you, but young enough to make a change if you weren’t.
Of course, every fifty year old Claire knew was fond of saying that fifty was the new forty. Was that just wishful thinking? Maybe it wasn’t. As Meg had said that afternoon, almost every fifty year old she knew still had children living at home. The kids kept you young . . . and exhausted . . . and poor.
There was always plenty to complain about. But the best of it was that the children kept your mind occupied so there was no time to dwell on your failing eyesight, greying hair and thickening waistline. An old friend of her father’s had once said: ‘Life is like turning the pages of an interesting novel, but once you have children it becomes a thriller.’ And so it was. Watching your friends’ children’s lives unfold was a book you just couldn’t put down.
A golden-haired apparition in a pair of jewelled high-heeled sandals, tiny white miniskirt and silver lurex midriff top stood in the doorway. Her smile was a flash of dazzling white intensity. ‘Claire, Charlie. Hi! Welcome. Come in. Grab a glass of champagne! Dad’s out the back.’
‘Gemma? It is you? You look . . .’ Claire was stunned.
‘She looks twenty-five is what you mean,’ Gemma’s mother called from the hallway.
Gemma giggled and sashayed back down the hall. Claire and Charlie watched her go and then looked at each other in openmouthed amazement.
‘I know. It’s terrifying,’ said Helen. ‘She’s sixteen. Phil’s had the baseball bat near the front door to keep the boys away since she was thirteen. Come in, come in. Lovely to see you.’
‘She’s gorgeous, Helen,’ said Claire.
‘But not as beautiful as her mother,’ said Charlie at his smooth best. It was true. Helen was a Vogue portrait of how to look glamorous in your fifth decade. She was blonde on blonde. Her hair was cut in a chic short style. An embroidered white slip dress showed off slim, toned and tanned limbs.
‘You’re especially welcome, Charlie,’ she laughed. ‘Gosh it was a beautiful wedding. Have you heard from the lovebirds?’
‘Not yet—but we’re taking that as a good sign,’ said Charlie.
Kisses and presents were offered up and accepted. Helen led the way down a tunnel of cream carpet and milky walls. The volume of the party increased with every step and so did Helen’s voice.
‘Can you believe the injustice of it?’ she shouted over the music.
‘When I was Gemma’s age, of course, I had the flattest tummy in the world but no one would have dreamt of showing it off in a midriff top. Now that everything’s going south, they’re in fashion. Arrgh!
‘Oh, there’s the door again—see you in a moment.’
Helen left Claire and Charlie to survey the party landscape. The living room had been overrun by the teenagers, who were bopping beneath the mirror ball to a dance track. Looking past them to the sandstone terrace Claire could see the twenty- and thirty-somethings had gathered near the bar.
The older men were leaning over the swimming pool railing looking into its translucent aquamarine depths as they talked. The older women had obviously decided that the light from the pool wasn’t doing them any favours and were standing by two tall glowing candelabras. Looking past them, Claire could make out the grandmothers and great-aunts sitting under a pergola threaded with coloured lights and magenta bougainvillea. Claire recognised a good many faces. Quite a few had been at Claire and Charlie’s wedding. This was one of the things you gained as you went along. Long and loyal friendships. She must remind her husband of that on the way home.
And, she reminded herself as she looked at a wall clock, she didn’t need to keep one eye on the time. She had left a message on Connor’s mobile that she wouldn’t be able to contact him tonight. And while she would miss the call, the erotic exchanges of the past few days were enough to make her feel light-headed still. As if millions of tiny bubbles were coursing through her veins like . . . champagne. And here it was in front of them on a silver tray.
Claire and Charlie took a chilled glass each. They clinked the rims together, smiled and wandered off in different directions. That was one of the other benefits of being an older married couple, thought Claire. There were many fabulous encounters to be had this evening. Flirting, sharing secrets, reminiscing. All with the security of knowing who you were going home with.
Claire headed for the birthday boy. She found him in the garden beyond a bed of massed gardenias supervising the roasting of an entire lamb on a spit.
‘Phil! Hello, darling. Happy birthday!’ Claire raised her arms in extravagant greeting.
‘Claire, you lovely thing. Look at you. You get more gorgeous every time I see you. How do you do it?’ He swept her into a bear hug and kissed both cheeks.
Claire mentally ticked off her gruelling beauty regime. Yoga, exercise bike, facials, pedicures, waxing, eyebrow shaping, haircut and colour, aromatherapy massage, low-carb diet, make-up, and replied, ‘Champagne, of course! You’re the one who looks great. I can’t believe you’re turning fifty!’ Claire shook her head with genuine amazement. But then again she couldn’t believe she was forty-five.
‘I know,’ said Phil. ‘I wouldn’t believe it myself if the girls didn’t look like a couple of old slappers.’
‘Phil!’
‘It’s true! My daughters look like the Banger Sisters—you know, in that Goldie Hawn and Susan Sarandon movie?’
‘Well, I hope you haven’t found any phallic plaster of Paris casts in their rooms. Any obscene doorstops.’
Phil laughed and slipped his arm through Claire’s as they walked back to the terrace.
‘My God, Claire. Imagine if they end up doing half the things we did?’
‘But they’ve got AIDS and herpes and all that stuff to contend with now. It’s different. And they’ll probably still be living at home until they’re twenty-five.’
‘Yeah. I don’t s’pose there’s any chance of them racking off to Queensland with a surfie in some old clapped-out Kombi. Do kids still do that stuff?’
Claire took a sudden interest in her toenail polish as they walked. Maybe kids didn’t, but that was what she was thinking of doing. What an embarrassing adolescent fantasy!
‘I don’t know what kids do anymore, Phil. I just hope that, by the time Maddie’s playing loud music and talking to boys all night, I’ll be sitting in my bath chair with my crochet and be half deaf,’ she said brightly.
‘Yep—here’s to senility.’ He clinked his beer bottle against Claire’s glass.
‘So, how do you feel about the half-century?’ She searched his face for any sign of uncertainty.
‘I’m a happy man. I love my life. Bring it on!’ He leaned back and looked to the stars. ‘Did you hear me? I’m ready for the next fifty. Bring it on, baby!’
Claire looked at the heavens with him. ‘Baby?’
‘God’s a woman, Claire. Gotta be. You can’t live in an all-female household and come to any other conclusion. And, uh-oh, I can see The Goddess Who Walks looking for me. Talk to you later, b
eautiful . . .’ and he strode across the lawn to the crowded terrace.
Claire watched him go and reflected that she had just been talking to a man. Not a boy or a man-boy, but a real grownup man. In his fifty years on this earth he had created all she saw about her. This house, this family, these friends.
Phil had a confidence about himself and where he was in life that Claire admired. And when she talked to him she felt like a grown-up woman. Whereas with Charlie . . . as his confidence in himself oscillated, so did her age. With Charlie she felt like either his wayward teenage daughter or his mother. Lately she felt more and more unsettled. She just knew that she didn’t feel forty-five—whatever that was supposed to feel like. And, quite frankly, if she didn’t look forty-five and she didn’t feel forty-five, who was to say she wasn’t thirty-five? Her gynaecologist, for a start.
Looking around her now, Claire wondered where she fitted in. She could choose between the maidens, the mothers or the crones, each gathered in their own corner. She chose the crones and walked towards the pergola. The grandmothers and great-aunts were pleased to see her.
‘Oh my goodness, Claire, hello. Let me introduce you,’ said Phil’s mother, Patsy, extending her wrinkled hand. Claire took it and felt the surprisingly firm grip of her bony fingers through the warm, papery skin.
‘Now, this is my eldest sister Olive and my youngest sister Ruby. This is Helen’s mother Katherine and her sister Leila and their friend Cosima—that’s a Greek name. And this is Ivy who lives next door and Mavis from across the road. This is Claire— a lovely friend of Phillip and Helen’s.’
The ladies all chorused ‘Hello’. Claire had already lost track of who was who.
‘There’s eight of us sitting here,’ said . . . was it Olive? ‘We’ve just been thinking we’re a sort of witches’ coven sitting here under the coloured lights.’
‘Although,’ she was corrected by Ruby, ‘there’s too many of us to be a coven because I think I’m right in saying there has to be only seven of us. So someone is a good fairy in disguise.’
The ladies all laughed. ‘Or,’ Mavis (?) continued, ‘we’re all good fairies at the ball and one of us is an evil stepmother in disguise.’
Claire immediately thought that if anyone was malevolent, it was probably her.
‘Oh,’ said Patsy, ‘you do look lovely, Claire. Isn’t that a lovely lace on that skirt, Ruby?’
‘Beautiful. Is it Chantilly?’ Ruby inquired.
‘I’m not really sure,’ said Claire as three different hands reached out to feel the fabric.
‘It’s Duchesse,’ it was definitively announced. ‘Oooh, lovely . . .’ the ladies cooed like a flock of grey doves.
‘I wore that at my wedding,’ said . . . er . . . Ivy? ‘I love the way the young ones now can wear the lace and the beads just for everyday. I think it’s marvellous to see all the beading coming back in, all the craft that goes into the fabrics.’
‘It’s all made in China these days, Ivy,’ Olive commented dryly.
‘Do you have any children, Claire?’ asked Cosima. ‘I have six,’ she went on, not waiting for the reply. ‘Six children, nine grandchildren and a great-grandchild on the way.’
‘Congratulations!’ Claire exclaimed. ‘I have one 29-year-old stepdaughter who says she doesn’t want children until she’s in her late thirties—’
‘Oh, too old,’ Cosima interrupted and shook her head. ‘These girls! Ridiculous! There’s no chance to have a whole family at that age.’
Claire certainly knew the truth of that. Rose had told Claire that she didn’t feel ‘maternal’. Well, there weren’t that many women who did at twenty-nine. But it was a feeling which began as a small niggle and grew and grew until . . . there you were at thirty-five, contemplating snatching babies out of prams and running off down the street.
‘At that age your eggs have gone off,’ declared Olive.
‘And,’ Claire added, ‘I have one six year old. I think I was lucky to have her. I’ll be even luckier to have any grandchildren from her, let alone great-grandchildren.’
‘Why? How old are you?’ asked Cosima.
‘I’m forty-five,’ Claire replied. There was a clamour at this revelation.
‘Forty-five?’ No one could believe it. The general consensus was that Claire looked at least a decade younger. The women all instantly did the maths as if they were a gathering of shopkeepers. Then they debated the likelihood of Claire being a granny, as if she wasn’t standing right in front of them.
‘Oh, there’s plenty of time for her to be a grandmother. The older one will come to her senses. And with the younger one— when she’s in her thirties Claire will be just seventy. So she won’t have any worries there.’
‘But she might have a bit of trouble being a great-grandmother. With the way the young girls are putting off being mums these days, she’ll have to be a hundred!’
‘My daughter’s forty and she still wants to have a family. I’ve told her she’ll be lucky. There’ll be no grandchildren for me.’
‘The way these girls are going, grandmothers will be extinct. That will be dreadful. It really will.’
‘They won’t know what they’re missing. I couldn’t have coped without my mother. The children loved their Nonna. God rest her soul.’
There was a pause while all the women thought of their mothers, and their mothers before them. It was as if a minute of silent remembrance had been declared. Claire pondered what the extinction of the grandmother would mean. Who would buy violet-scented bath cubes? Who would make padded coathangers and gumleaf earrings? More than that. Who would take young children on their knees and let them lean out the window to catch a precious glimpse of the past gone from view. And of the future just beyond the curve of the earth?
Claire recalled that as a little girl she and her big sister Louise would be put on the train at Central Station in Sydney to travel to her grandparents’ sheep station. A parcel of land which had once been part of the grand holding of the Dundullimal run. They would get off at Dubbo railway station with their cardboard suitcases full of Christmas presents. They would wait for Pop to pick them up in his old red Holden and then drive to the property along dusty tracks through the paddocks to the festive sound of the carolling cicadas.
Claire remembered looking up into the velvety folds of her grandmother’s face. Her green eyes were faded to the shade of saltbush and her red hair had gone to ochre. She remembered hearing Nanna’s tales of the wonders of horse-drawn trams and gaslights in the city streets. The hard times of The War. She remembered how her grandmother could walk through her kitchen garden and name every plant that grew there. Borage, chervil, angelica, sorrel, curly endive, patty pan squash, red-topped turnip. But most of all, she remembered her Nanna Claire’s pantry.
Claire was eight years old and in the vastness of the western plains, where the sky vaulted from horizon to horizon, she found a refuge in the dim confines of the pantry. She would steal into that fragrant and mysterious place, locking the door behind her. The pantry was lit by a single globe, with shelves from floor to ceiling. And every shelf was full. The fruit and herbs from the garden were candied, crystallised and glacéed. They were pickled, preserved or made into relish, sauce, chutney, marmalade, cordial, jam or jelly.
There were biscuits in tins, slices in trays, sponges under lace covers and pies in deep dishes. On another shelf were spiced vinegars and dried herbs. And, above that, bunches of desiccated flowers, plum puddings. Highest of all were Christmas cakes and tantalising jars of coconut ice and toffee . . . sadly out of reach. The pantry was home for saved paper bags, string, corks, rubber bands, candles, jars of leftover soap and the trusty Fowlers Vacola bottling outfit. And, of course, Nanna Claire had a calendar in there—a free one from the butcher of black and white kittens in a basket.
Nanna Claire loved her pantry. It wasn’t until Claire was a grown woman and had her own walk-in cupboard that she understood why. Nanna knew the deep satisfaction of feeding an e
ntire shearing shed for a week from its stores; the comforting quiet refuge where a few tears could be shed for no particular reason as the shelves were methodically rearranged; the triumph of emerging with a jar or two of homemade quince jelly to press upon relatives visiting from the city.
Never was there a room so full of love. And of all the places in the world Claire had been, there, among the bunches of dried lavender and tins of Anzac biscuits, was the place she was happiest. Her heart felt heavy with the memory. She missed her grandmother. She had never realised with such force that she wanted to be a grandmother herself.
There was silence as the women around Claire entertained their own private memories. The spell was broken as the dance music cranked up again. Cosima was the first to speak.
‘You know, I didn’t really understand the point of my life until the grandchildren came along. I was so busy when my children were little, but now they have their own. And a great-grandchild! A true blessing! Finally I can see why God put me here. You sow the seeds and many, many years later you reap the harvest—you see how life continues. I know there’s a part of me in them and I now can see that I will be walking the earth forever.’
Claire thought this was a beautiful piece of wisdom and she wished Charlie could hear it.
‘Oh that’s wonderful,’ she exclaimed. ‘I know someone who’s depressed about getting older. He says that you just lose everything as you go along.’
‘Oh that’s nonsense, you don’t at all,’ clucked Patsy.
‘I’ve lost my car keys,’ said Olive.
‘And we’ve all lost our husbands,’ said Leila.
‘But the difference is,’ said Olive, ‘I don’t know where my car keys are. I know where Lionel is. He’s in Hobart with his third wife—and I’m not going looking for him!’ The ladies hooted appreciatively.
A tray of champagne and savoury tarts arrived and Claire took the opportunity to make her excuses and circulate.
Where to next? Claire felt she wasn’t ready for the reality check she would no doubt get from the middle-agers near the candles. She decided to plunge into the midst of the singles. As she walked up the terrace steps towards this bunch of hothouse flowers she could hear their conversation.