by Liz Byrski
Caro sighed, ran her finger along the calendar counting the days, and stopped at the date of her mother’s birthday. Only two weeks away. She circled it – better not forget it, not when she so desperately needed to find some way of mending her fences. So much for her grandmother’s advice. It was going to take more than rolling up unexpectedly and trying to apologise to put things right.
It was later, when she was lying on the bed flipping through the pages of a Mother and Baby magazine, that she had the party idea. There was an adorable picture of a baby in a tiny striped t-shirt and paper hat sitting alongside a birthday cake with one candle on it. ‘Celebrate that special day’ the caption said. It was an advertisement for disposable nappies but it got her thinking. As far as Caro could remember, Fran had never had a party, not any real sort of celebration on her birthday. She flushed with guilt at the realisation that year after year Fran had organised parties for her and David, even up to twenty-firsts, and then her wedding. This had to be the way to show her that she really did want to put things right. The trouble was that Caro had no idea what Fran would like. Of course she’d want the family and these new – old women friends, but what else?
She got out a pencil and paper intending to plan it but half an hour later all she had was the date at the top. She needed help. David would be at work, Mike was on the evening shift, and anyway, what would they know? What she really needed were these women, Bonnie and Sylvia. Caro sat at the table doodling, wondering how to find them without tipping Fran off, and then she remembered that Lila was friendly with the mother of one of them who’d just come back from Greece. With a sense of triumph she dialled her grandmother’s number.
‘Well, of course I’ll give you Irene’s number, dear,’ Lila said, and Caro could hear her rustling through paper at the other end of the line. ‘But why do you want to talk to her?’
‘Erm … I just wanted to ask something about Greece,’ Caro lied. If she let Lila in on the idea at this stage, Fran and everyone else would soon know about it.
‘Oh yes, Irene had a lovely holiday. She’d probably show you her photographs if you want,’ Lila said. ‘Here it is. By the way, Caro, I’m getting a scooter,’ Lila said, lowering her voice as if wary of eavesdroppers. ‘What do you think of that?’
‘Really, Gran?’ Caro said distractedly, imagining the shiny bright aluminium job that the twelve year old next door was constantly racing up and down the street. ‘Do you think it would be safe for you, pushing yourself along on one leg like that? Suppose you had another fall?’
‘Oh, not that sort of scooter! A proper scooter, a grown-up scooter.’
Caro rolled her eyes, imagining Lila on a Vespa. She’d never get a licence, so no worries there – anyway, she’d probably forget about it in a couple of days. ‘Oh, a proper scooter, silly old me,’ she said.
‘That’s what your mother says to me, Caro. She says it when she actually means “you silly old thing”, so please don’t talk to me like that.’
‘Sorry, Gran,’ she said. ‘Can I get the number from you now?’
Lila read the number to her and then read it again in case she hadn’t got it down the first time. ‘And you don’t need to mention the other business to your mother,’ she said.
‘Other business?’
‘The scooter, of course. Whatever is the matter with your memory, Caro? It’s worse than mine.’
*
‘What a lovely idea,’ Bonnie said when Caro called. ‘Sylvia and I were thinking of doing something but this is a much better idea. What can we do to help?’
‘Tell me what she’d like …’ Caro paused. ‘I know I ought to know that myself but I don’t,’ and, to her horror, she burst into tears.
‘Why don’t Sylvia and I pop over?’ Bonnie suggested. ‘I’m sure we can sort something out. Sylvia’s here. We could come now, if you like. We’ve both been dying to meet you, Caro, and we won’t breathe a word to Fran.’
‘I’m not sure Fran will be too happy about this,’ Sylvia said as they made their way through the rain and the rush-hour traffic to North Melbourne. ‘She’ll think we’re interfering. She and Caro are going through a difficult time. She mightn’t appreciate us taking Caro over like this, rescuing her.’
‘We’re not rescuing her,’ Bonnie said, switching lanes rather erratically, ‘or taking over. We’re helping Caro to organise a surprise birthday party for Fran. It’s just that she sounded very upset, and Fran is not in a frame of mind to do peace deals at the moment.’
‘And you think the party might help?’
‘It’s a start. It’s a genuine effort by Caro to bridge this awful gap. I think it’s worth a try.’
A phone rang and Bonnie reached automatically for the button on her mobile in its cradle on the dashboard. ‘Oh, it’s not mine,’ she said, and Sylvia reached into her pocket.
‘Hi,’ she said. ‘Can I call you back?’ There was a pause and Bonnie strained to hear the voice at the other end, without success. ‘A couple of hours, maybe? Okay, talk to you later.’ She ended the call, switched off the phone and slipped it back into her pocket.
‘I noticed you’d got a mobile,’ Bonnie said. ‘I don’t know how I’d manage without mine. Did you get it in Hong Kong?’
‘Yes,’ Sylvia said, thankful that Bonnie couldn’t see her blush. ‘It’s one of those that you buy cards for. I’ve put the number up on your phone list in the kitchen.’
‘Oh good. I love those earrings too, freshwater pearls are my favourite.’
Sylvia touched the earrings that were Will’s birthday present to her, and which she had barely taken off since she got home. They had cost a bomb – Bonnie would know that and was probably wondering why she had spent so much money at a time like this.
‘I loved them too,’ she said. ‘Loved them so much I just couldn’t resist them.’
‘We have to treat ourselves sometimes, Sylvia,’ Bonnie said, ‘especially when there’s no one special around to do it for us.’
Sylvia felt as though a neon sign above her head was flashing ‘Liar, liar – pants on fire’ in big red letters. Lying was not something she was good at, and although she acknowledged that for a large part of her married life she had been living a lie, lying to Bonnie now seemed a worse offence. ‘I think we must be nearly there,’ she said, changing the subject. ‘Yes – that’s it, next turning on the left, and from the directions you wrote down it should be the third on the right with a white gate.’
What Caro couldn’t understand was how it was so easy to talk to these women. From the minute they arrived at the door and hugged her she burst into tears again and began to pour out everything: how she hated being pregnant, how scared she was, all her guilt and confusion about her mother. Until then she’d felt a faint sort of hostility towards them, perhaps even a jealousy that Fran seemed to enjoy them so much, and to be closer to them than to her. In fact, she realised that while things had been difficult between her and Fran for years, they had definitely deteriorated since the reunion with Bonnie and Sylvia had taken place around the same time she had found she was pregnant. Caro felt a deep hot flush of shock at the thought that she had resented her mother’s friends returning just when she was expecting to be the centre of attention. She was thankful that she had called them – it felt as though they were on her side.
‘But, Caro, there aren’t any sides,’ Sylvia said. ‘It’s just that all relationships are really hard work and the longer you hide from the problems the more difficult they are to deal with. Take it from me, I’ve spent an awfully long time hiding from problems.’
They must have been there for over an hour before they actually got around to talking about the party, to helping her draw up the guest list, decide on the food, the music, the birthday cake, and how to keep Lila from spilling the beans. It was ten o’clock when they got up to leave and Caro, exhausted by the relief of unburdening herself, fell quickly into bed and fast asleep.
‘Well, we’re in it up to our ears now,’ Sylv
ia said as they drove home. ‘Let’s hope the party does the trick. If it doesn’t, Fran will just see us as interfering and duplicitous.’
Bonnie nodded. ‘I see what you mean. We can only do our best. Don’t you think she’d understand that our intentions were good?’
‘I hope so,’ Sylvia said, unnerved by the fact that not only was she caught up in the lies surrounding her relationship with Will, but now she was also entangled in this precarious situation between Fran and Caro. ‘I certainly hope so, or we’re going to be in deep shit.’
Lila had spent a long time considering the various merits of canary yellow versus purple. Once she had had a ride on the demonstration scooter she was convinced that it was just what she needed; only the serious matter of colour remained. Eventually, she had opted for the yellow.
‘That’s a surprise, Mrs Whittaker,’ Ray Barton had said. ‘I thought you were the all-purple lady for sure.’
‘Can’t be too predictable, Ray,’ Lila said, stroking the shiny black control levers affectionately. ‘I’ve always liked a bit of contrast and yellow is the colour of new life.’ She was disgusted that she had to wait two weeks for delivery but she crossed the days off on the calendar and thought of the satisfaction she would get from not relying on other people.
One day she took the bus up to the shops and in Dymocks she bought herself a street finder. There was a storage space under the scooter seat where she would be able to keep it. Meanwhile, she sat at her kitchen table plotting routes from Hawthorn where she lived, to Fran’s new house in St Kilda, David’s in Collingwood, Caro’s place in North Melbourne, and Irene’s in Gardenvale. Some of the trips looked as though they might take a while, but she was in no hurry, and her time was her own. At her age, Lila thought, it was important to enjoy the journey as much as the destination.
The scooter was delivered quite late in the day. ‘It’s a good idea to keep your first trips really short, Mrs Whittaker,’ said the nice young man who delivered it. And he went on to demonstrate the controls.
When he had gone, Lila settled herself in the leather seat and took a gentle turn around the village. The next day was Saturday and she was getting her hair cut and set in the morning ready for Fran’s party in the evening, so she would ride into the outside world and down to the salon. When Caro had phoned her, swearing her to secrecy and promising that Mike would collect her, Lila had thought she might volunteer to get there under her own steam, but she had thought better of it. It would be night time and she might want to have a drink or two at the party; she shouldn’t drink and drive.
Despite the threat of a storm later in the day the morning was glorious, small white clouds scudding across the sky, and as she cruised out through the village gates Lila felt a huge surge of delight in her own freedom. It was years since she’d driven a car and she’d never enjoyed it much but this was exhilarating, and she increased her speed down the quiet, tree-lined pavement. Ahead of her two boys were messing about on skateboards and Lila tooted her horn. They turned and stared at her, pausing at first as she bore down on them, and finally jumping out of the way.
‘Go, Granny, go!’ one of them called, and Lila tooted again, waved and sped on.
She was at the top speed now, testing it, tingling with delight at the freedom and the sensation of the breeze rushing through her hair – she’d have to take it slower on the way back if she wanted to preserve her shampoo and set. It reminded her of a song, something about being thirty-seven and realising that she’d never ride through Paris in a sports car with the wind in her hair. Lila tried to sing it but couldn’t quite remember the words. When she reached the hairdresser’s, she dismounted, locked the scooter and gave it one final loving look before she went in to the salon. The song kept on buzzing through her head while the young apprentice washed her hair, and she was humming it when Sandy the stylist arrived to start her cut.
‘D’you remember this song, Sandy?’ Lila asked, singing the Paris in a sports car bit.
‘“The Ballad of Lucy Jordan”,’ Sandy said, drying off her hair and running the comb through it. ‘Fancy you knowing that, Mrs Whittaker.’
‘That’s right,’ Lila said, ‘Marianne whatsername …’
‘Faithfull,’ Sandy supplied. ‘It’s such a sad song, about that woman’s life.’
‘I never thought so myself,’ Lila said. ‘Life’s what you make it, Sandy, thirty-seven or eighty, just what you make it.’
Lila had been a good bit older than thirty-seven when she first heard ‘The Ballad of Lucy Jordan’; in fact, she’d been nearly sixty, and she’d realised many years earlier she wouldn’t be going anywhere with the wind in her hair. She had married Mal Whittaker in a rush in nineteen-forty, when she was twenty years old and pregnant, but the baby was stillborn, and Fran didn’t arrive until eight years later. After the war, Mal had been full of plans. He was an ideas man, or so he said, couldn’t be tied down, so he ended up as a salesman, travelling around with a case of samples – cheap perfumes, face and hand creams, and home perm kits. He was away most of the week, returning home on Fridays to do his paperwork and spend most of the weekend at the pub, and at the footy in winter and the cricket in summer.
‘Business, Lila love,’ he always said. ‘Got to keep up with what’s going on.’
‘I know just what’s going on,’ Lila had told him. ‘A lot of drinking and a good bit of betting. Business, my foot; you’re a big waste of space, Mal Whittaker. Who knows what you get up to when you’re away? At least you could stay home at the weekends. What about little Fran? She waits around for you all week and then all you can do is go down the pub.’ But it made no difference and when it finally became clear that he had done a moonlight flit to North Queensland with a woman half his age, Lila breathed a sigh of relief.
During the war she’d worked in a factory, but by this stage it was 1959 and she was nearly forty and she wanted something better. She’d always been good with figures, and meticulous in the way she managed things, and she got a job in the post office. The following year, when Fran got the scholarship to the convent, Lila had been over the moon, although she knew there would be extra expenses – uniforms, books and outings, and other bits and pieces – but there was no way that she would have Fran going without anything that the fee-paying girls had. When Fran first brought Sylvia home, Lila was relieved to find that she was another scholarship girl, but she worried when they got involved with Bonnie.
‘Just be careful,’ she’d told Fran. ‘They’re a different sort of people to us. Don’t go getting any ideas, she might be just …’ But she wasn’t quite sure what she was trying to say. ‘Well, she might just drop you,’ she finished. And Fran, who at twelve was already familiar with the process of dropping and being dropped, just shrugged and, as time passed, Lila’s fears about the rich girl slowly faded away. The hard work had paid off: Fran had a good education, good friends, and prospects, the sort of prospects Lila had never had.
It was Fran who had been playing ‘Lucy Jordan’, while she contemplated ending her marriage.
‘Don’t you ever play anything else?’ Lila had asked one day when she turned up to sit with Caro while Fran went out with a friend.
‘Hardly ever,’ Fran replied. ‘Not at the moment. I seem to need to keep playing this one.’
‘She’ll have me singing it next,’ Lila grumbled as she dished out beans on toast for Caro and David.
And sure enough it had seeped into her consciousness and haunted her for weeks. Lila liked the earthy rasp of Marianne Faithfull’s voice but she thought that Lucy Jordan was a bit of a wuss; you took your life in your own hands and made it into something. That was what she’d done, and eventually Fran had done it too. Lila was proud of her daughter. She kept scrapbooks of all her columns, and the magazine articles, and filed her recipes in a set of dated folders. But more than anything she was proud of the person Fran had become.
For the seventh time in half an hour, Will dialled Sylvia’s mobile and was diverted to message
bank. In frustration he threw the mobile onto the couch and slumped down after it. Friday afternoon – he had a briefcase full of work, half a dozen telephone calls that needed returning, and he hadn’t even bothered to look at the previous day’s close on the Dow or the NASDAQ. The truth was, since he’d got back from Hong Kong he hadn’t been able to concentrate on anything. He’d start reading a contract or going through correspondence, and his thoughts would just drift off to Sylvia, and then he couldn’t get his concentration back. He would fall into bed exhausted, longing for the sleep that continued to evade him, reliving the nights in Hong Kong, driven mad with desire and haunted by loneliness. When he did fall asleep he would wake with a start a few hours later to the miserable emptiness of his own bed, aching to feel her there beside him. Sometimes he was convinced he could still capture the scent of her body on his skin, but as swiftly as it came it would evaporate and he would go to the wardrobe and pull out the jacket he had worn with her and bury his face in it, hoping to find it once again.
He had tried to get on top of his feelings with exercise, with long, punishing runs through Kings Park at dawn, swimming laps or relentlessly pumping iron in the gym. But each time he returned to the emptiness of his apartment, it seemed barren and lifeless because not only was Sylvia not there, she had never even seen it.
‘Just come over here for a few days,’ he had begged her that morning. ‘I can show you Perth, we can have more time together.’
But she had made a commitment to Bonnie and she wouldn’t budge. ‘I’ll see you soon anyway,’ she said. ‘You’ll be over here early next month.’
‘Too long,’ he replied, knowing he sounded childish and petulant. ‘It’s almost four weeks since Hong Kong. I may have to jump off the Narrows Bridge – that’s where desperate Perth lovers go to top themselves.’