Trip of a Lifetime

by Liz Byrski

  It wasn’t. Daisy slumped over the table. Too many cards, she wanted this last one out of the way. The worst thing was she didn’t even like Ellis. She thought he was rude and sulky. He’d mostly ignored her at the party and he sounded really horrible when he was talking to Adam or George. It was confusing that old people could get away with stuff that children got into trouble for. But Daisy was a great believer in fairness and she knew that Ellis had to have a card. She yawned a few times, folded her arms on the table and rested her head on them, chewing the end of a felt-tip pen. She’d have to find something, any sort of man’s thing would do – a car, perhaps; a dog; a cricket bat? And then she remembered: a couple of days ago she had been lying on her bedroom floor reading Girlfriend with the door open, when she’d heard Jill and Adam talking next door in their own room.

  Daisy sat up. Of course, that’s what she could put on Ellis’s card, and she knew just where to find the picture. Reaching for the magazine she flicked through until she found the advertisement, and cut carefully around the picture. Then she stuck it onto the already made card below Ellis’s name and attached a blue ribbon to the top.

  ‘Mum,’ she shouted, ‘can you come and look at this picture for Aunty Heather’s friend?’

  ‘Later, darling,’ Jill called from the laundry. ‘You just go ahead, I’m sure it’ll be lovely.’

  Daisy sighed. Parents never did what you wanted. It had been easier when they had that funny gap between them. Now they were stuck together again. It left very little room for a person to worm her way in between and get what she wanted. The only thing was that it did feel better without the gap, although she wasn’t sure why. Daisy took a final look at Ellis’s card and thought it looked very pretty. She tucked it in among the others and then put the lot in the plastic folder that Jill had given her to take to Heather’s house on Christmas morning.

  Adam had ruffled Jill’s feathers with his household blitz. Her relief at not walking into chaos was eclipsed by a feeling a child might experience coming home to find that someone had messed with her toys. To respond with anything less than gratitude seemed churlish, but her immediate reaction was defensive: it seemed like a monumental act of criticism. But more shocking still was when she had said it seemed as though she didn’t own it anymore and he’d said, ‘No, you don’t, we own it together.’ Jill couldn’t have been more shaken if Adam had punched her. Indeed, that was rather how it felt, except in that case she could have punched him back. The children’s rooms were war zones which she’d constantly shied away from tackling; now they were reasonably tidy and showed signs of logical organisation. It was hard not to see this as some vast takeover in response to her own shortcomings as a housekeeper. What would her mother have thought if she’d been alive to see it?

  Daisy had come rocketing in from school as Jill emerged from her survey of the bedrooms.

  ‘It was terrible,’ Daisy said, relating the drama of the last two weeks. ‘Dad made us do housework.’

  ‘So I see,’ Jill said, ‘quite a lot of housework.’

  ‘I had to do dusting, and tidying, and Toby did vacuuming, and taking the bin out, and we had to take turns to load the dishwasher and then unload it. So I’m really glad you’re back.’

  Jill knew a watershed when she was faced with one. She glanced up at Adam and saw his jaw tighten, saw him looking at her, challenging her.

  ‘Well, that’s wonderful,’ she said, stroking Daisy’s hair. ‘Now we can all share in looking after the house.’

  ‘No way,’ Daisy said, slinging her schoolbag onto the floor. ‘I don’t like it at all.’

  ‘That’s a shame, Daisy, because I don’t like it much either but Daddy’s right – everyone who lives in the house should do something to help look after it.’ She saw Adam turn back to the tea he had been about to make when Daisy came in, and then he looked over his shoulder and smiled at her.

  Now, two weeks later, Jill was still adjusting to the fact that Adam had not tripped up on reality, he had simply grasped it. She was the one who was tripping, who kept stubbing her toe on her old habits. She had been home for five days when it dawned on her that she hadn’t heard the Bach suites coming from the music room. Realisation swept over her like a hot flush: it wasn’t just the state of the house that had changed.

  The day Jill went back to work after her stint in the mountains she learned that her position had been reviewed. She was to be promoted with an increased budget and wider responsibilities.

  ‘Community Development Director,’ Renée had said, ‘congratulations. Here are the details of your new salary and benefits. You need to go and see the salary packaging people.’

  ‘That’s wonderful, darling,’ Adam said when she told him. ‘Congratulations, you clever thing.’

  The two weeks before Christmas were particularly busy for Adam. There were Christmas concerts, carols by candlelight, and rehearsals for a special series of concerts early in the new year. As Jill contemplated the benefits of her promotion, she also watched as Adam’s job began to take its toll. She watched as the bright edge of energy and enthusiasm that she’d seen the day she got home began to fade. These concerts mostly featured music he really enjoyed, but even so his manner was more subdued, and his energy level dropped. She listened nervously for the return of the Bach suites. The orchestra was casting its shadow once again and Jill started to feel guilty about enjoying her own good fortune.

  On the Friday evening of the weekend before Christmas, they were hiding in the bedroom wrapping presents for the children when the phone rang. The fourth cello had had a car accident and wouldn’t be able to make any of the pre-Christmas or New Year concerts. Adam sank down onto the edge of the bed and put his face in his hands for a moment, then went through to the music room to make the calls to find a replacement.

  Jill tied red ribbon around a parcel and dragged the scissors along the ends to make them curl.

  ‘Do you hate your job?’ she asked jokingly when Adam returned, trying to keep it light.

  Adam glanced up at her. ‘What if I do?’ he said bluntly, and Jill sensed this wasn’t the moment to take it further. ‘I got hold of Sandy,’ he went on. ‘She can do it, glad to have the work. She’s on her way over to pick up the scores. Have to leave the rest of the wrapping to you, I’m afraid.’

  It was almost midnight by the time they got to bed and a perfect new moon, clear and sharp in the darkness, was framed in the window space.

  ‘Look at that,’ Jill said. ‘Isn’t it beautiful? Do you remember that night on our honeymoon when we made wishes?’

  Adam nodded. ‘I do. I wished that we’d live happily ever after.’

  Jill laughed. ‘Let’s do it again,’ she said.

  ‘But I’d have to get out of bed and find coins.’

  ‘I’ve got coins here,’ Jill said, reaching towards her bedside table. ‘Come on, grumpy.’

  Adam pushed back the bedclothes. ‘You are such a bully.’

  ‘I know. Here you are.’ She put some coins into his hand. ‘Okay, ready? Bow three times, turn your money over and make a wish.’

  Side by side they bowed to the moon and the coins chinked in their hands.

  ‘What did you wish for?’ Jill asked as Adam handed her the money and got back into bed.

  ‘I wished that we would live happily ever after again,’ he said, ‘like we have, like we are. What about you?’

  ‘I wished for something that would make that even better,’ she said.

  ‘You can’t have better than happy ever after,’ Adam said. ‘That’s just silly.’

  Jill climbed into bed beside him and thumped him on the arm. ‘No it’s not. I wished for something that would make it easier.’

  ‘Go on then,’ he said. ‘What?’

  ‘I wished that you would think about resigning from the orchestra.’

  Ellis’s noble offer to drive through the night from Byron Bay to Newcastle had been made on the spur of the moment. Since the first couple of weeks in Sydney
, Heather’s commitments and her infernal independence had left him feeling confined to the edges of her life. But that Saturday evening it was clear that she needed him and he responded with the grand gesture. It was after nine by the time he left and by ten thirty he was fighting sleep and wishing he’d waited until the morning. It was a long drive and frequent stops at petrol stations for cardboard cups of coffee that tasted like drain cleaner made it seem endless. It was almost daylight before he arrived, and Heather got up to make coffee and cook him a substantial breakfast. He then retired to bed and slept until midday, by which time Heather was on her way out to open a Christmas bazaar.

  ‘Tell them you can’t go,’ Ellis said, ‘it’s Sunday, for heaven’s sake.’

  ‘It’s a charity and I’ve promised,’ she said. ‘This is not a nine-to-five job, Ellis, you know that. Have a shower and come and meet me about two thirty. I’ve got some Christmas shopping to do, we can go together.’

  Ellis grunted; he gave her a grudging kiss, then had a sulky shower, unpacked the rest of his things, and read the Sunday paper until his irritability wore off. Temporarily.

  As they made their way through the Christmas shoppers he started to enjoy the feeling of being a couple, walking hand in hand, being stopped occasionally by Heather’s constituents wishing them happy Christmas, but by the time Heather had found gifts for three of the thirteen people on her list, he was getting bored.

  ‘Can’t you get the rest in the week?’ he asked.

  ‘It’s a busy week, I’ve got meetings most days and –’

  ‘You mean you’re going to work?’

  Heather stopped and looked at him. ‘Of course.’

  ‘But I’ve come to be with you,’ Ellis said. ‘I drove all this way, all night.’

  ‘I know, darling, and it’s wonderful of you. I feel so much better having you here with me, but I still have to go to work.’

  Shoppers pushed past irritably as they faced each other in the narrow space between lead-cut crystal wine glasses and sleek Swedish vases. Ellis sighed theatrically and gave an exaggerated shrug.

  ‘So the job comes first again,’ he said, ‘even when you’re in such a state that I have to race down here to look after you.’

  ‘Well,’ said Heather, pausing, ‘actually, yes, it does; it has to. But your being here makes everything easier to cope with, especially right now. Come on, you know what it’s like to have a demanding job with big responsibilities.’

  Ellis gritted his teeth. ‘But I was so looking forward to spending time together.’

  ‘And we will,’ Heather said, taking his hand again. ‘Look, let’s go home now. I’ll try to sort out the shopping during the week.’

  He’d won this round, and now that yesterday’s news made history of the shooting, his time was coming; time to change the rules. Heather couldn’t expect him to go on taking second place to a whole constituency of people about whom he didn’t give a shit.

  Heather was profoundly moved by Ellis’s willingness to rush to her side. The mere fact that he had dropped everything to drive to Newcastle had soothed the rawness of discovering she’d been shot for all the wrong reasons. The sound of Ellis’s key in the door, his footsteps on the stairs and then the feel of his arms around her restored her confidence and her spirit. After he’d eaten scrambled eggs and toast and retired to bed, Heather had made his favourite carrot cake with a tangy lemon frosting, and cut some sandwiches for his lunch. The knowledge that he was sleeping peacefully in her bed had assuaged her loneliness, but she still felt a sadness and confusion akin to grief.

  ‘I still can’t get my head around it either,’ Shaun said when she called him. ‘It’s not just the deed itself, it’s everything we talked about, took for granted. It even had you questioning yourself. And all for nothing.’

  ‘I know,’ Heather said. ‘I could never have imagined that I’d feel so weird finding out that it wasn’t meant for me.’

  ‘No relief, then? Not even the relief of knowing that there’s no one waiting to try again?’

  ‘No, and this must sound ridiculous, but being shot by mistake is such a smack in the face with reality. A reminder that the present is all we’ve got. You can protect yourself all you want but certainty and safety are just myths. We’re all on borrowed time.’

  ‘You are the cheery philosopher this morning,’ Shaun said. ‘But I see what you mean.’

  The phone rang immediately she put it down and she snatched it up in case it woke Ellis.

  ‘Just wondering how you are today,’ Jill said, and Heather dropped down onto the settee, wishing that Jill lived close by, so that she could see her and talk to her face to face.

  ‘Confused, and sort of grieving,’ she said, ‘but Ellis drove down last night to be with me. He says he’s going to look after me.’

  ‘That’s lovely of him,’ Jill said. ‘I actually rang to suggest you should come here rather than being stuck there on your own. And listen,’ she said, lowering her voice, ‘I must tell you, things have changed dramatically since I got home, and for the better. I’ll call you on Monday; it’ll be easier to chat then.’

  Heather was almost ready to leave for the bazaar when Ellis emerged from the bedroom. He looked vulnerable in his boxers and t-shirt, still half asleep, yawning and rubbing his eyes. She felt such tenderness for him that it brought a lump to her throat and she put her arms around him, inhaling the warm scent of sleep, enjoying the feel of his body against hers.

  ‘I won’t be long . . .’ she’d started to say, but by the time she did leave the house, that moment had evaporated and she knew she was, once again, in the wrong. That night, curled against Ellis’s back as she waited for sleep, she told herself that the next few weeks were a sort of test. A chance to see how it felt to spend a longer time together under the same roof, and a time for her to make some decisions. She could hardly expect Ellis to accommodate her job constantly if she wasn’t even sure she wanted to accommodate it herself.

  ‘Aren’t you glad you’re old?’ Barbara asked as they chained their bikes outside the coffee shop. They had started riding early in the mornings before the heat built up.

  ‘Not particularly,’ George said, looking startled. ‘Should I be? My memory is dodgy, agility is a thing of the past and when I look at attractive young women they look back at me as though I’m a pervert or just pitiful.’

  Barbara unbuckled her helmet. ‘Well, I suppose there are negatives,’ she said, ‘although I don’t have the slightest interest in looking at young men, but there’s something so free about it. I can be as scruffy as I like, be totally unfashionable, not turn up to boring functions because no one even notices I’m not there. I can be myself now in a way I was never able to be when I was younger.’

  George grinned. ‘You women make everything so complicated,’ he said. ‘I would still like women to look at me and fancy me, crave my body, try to seduce me. No chance of it happening, of course, and if it did I’d probably have enough performance anxiety to bring on a heart attack.’ He put his helmet on a chair. ‘I’ll go and order. Same as usual?’

  Barbara watched affectionately as he made his way through to the counter. A week ago they had collected their certificates from the language school.

  ‘An A is really unusual, Barbara,’ Robert had said, handing her the envelope. ‘We don’t get many – maybe five a year. Congratulations, you’re a star!’

  ‘I’m always telling her that,’ George said proudly, planting a kiss on her cheek. He had a B, which Robert said was very good, and was what most people got.

  They had come home elated to find that the other good news was a reply to their joint email to Robert’s contact in Beijing, offering them both two classes a week in the same company. George would work with the chemists, Barbara with a group of managers. And George had promptly turned his rarely used dining room into a workroom where they could sit at the table to write lesson plans and make some teaching aids.

  ‘It’s devious of me,’ he’d told
her. ‘This way I get you to work with me because you’re far better at it than I am.’

  ‘Sure you don’t want to compete to find out who’s really best?’ Barbara teased.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘I graciously acknowledge your superiority in this area. When it comes to bike riding, however . . .’

  ‘When it comes to bike riding, some of the things you do are totally ridiculous. All that freewheeling down hills, and the other day you were trying to let go of the handlebars. You’re just a big kid.’

  ‘A boy’s gotta do what a boy’s gotta do,’ George said. ‘It’s wonderfully exhilarating. And this is big-kid stuff too,’ he added as they cut pictures from magazines, stuck them on coloured cards and printed up word cards to go with them. ‘We’ll be making paper chains next.’

  Barbara looked out from the balcony to the river and thought about paper chains, something she’d never made as a child: they would have signalled frivolity. She’d been lucky, she thought, incredibly lucky to escape into a life that opened doors into so many different worlds, so that even now, at seventy-six, she was planning a new adventure. She wondered what Roy’s old age would have been like had he lived to see it, and she thought that perhaps it was a blessing that he hadn’t.

  ‘I suppose it is pretty pleasant,’ George said, coming back to the table now with their coffee. ‘Getting older, pleasing oneself.’ He put the cups on the table and sat down. ‘The Chinese, of course, have great respect for the elderly, so we’ll be a hit there.’

  ‘Life is so much simpler,’ Barbara said. ‘I used to think I needed so many things. Now, unless I’m sure something is going to contribute to my long-term health and happiness, I don’t buy it. The things one appreciates with age are rarely bought with money.’

  George nodded, raising his cup as if in a toast. ‘Like the company of a beloved friend.’

  ‘Indeed,’ Barbara said, raising her own cup. ‘Just like that.’