In the Company of Strangers

by Liz Byrski

  ‘Okay,’ she says, ‘well let me know. Better get on now, bit behind today …’ and her voice fades as she starts to walk away.

  Alice slips out from behind the tree and watches as Paula walks back down the track towards the house, the phone still clapped to her ear. Distracted now by what she’s heard, she takes a deep breath and begins to make her way back to the café.

  ‘There you are!’ Fleur says as soon as Alice walks in the door. She is standing at the counter with a menu in her hand. ‘I popped over for some lunch, hoped we might eat together?’

  Alice hesitates. She ought to get back into the kitchen, but Fleur so rarely comes to the café and Alice would like to know her better. Fleur is, she thinks, a person she could confide in. She’s younger, more like Jacinta’s age, and Alice likes her forthright manner and her sense of humour. She glances around the kitchen to see if the staff can manage without her a bit longer.

  ‘Sure,’ she says, ‘that’d be lovely. Give me your order and grab a table, and I’ll be with you in a minute.’

  It’s more like five minutes before she gets to the table and flops into her chair.

  ‘Sorry – there’s always something.’

  ‘No worries,’ Fleur says. ‘I thought you might not be free at all, it’s just that we’ve all been so busy since … well, for the last few weeks. I just thought it’d be nice to get to know each other a bit better.’

  ‘Absolutely,’ Alice says. ‘It’s a shame you’re going, though. Ruby and Declan will really miss you … we’ll all miss you. What are you going to do?’

  Fleur shrugs. ‘Who knows? When Catherine died I felt it couldn’t be the same for me. It seemed like time for a change.’ They sit in silence as Leonie puts their meals on the table.

  Alice bites into her sandwich and chews on it for a moment. ‘Mmm,’ she says, ‘I can see that you’d feel like that. But you never know, it might be better. I don’t mean that to be critical of Catherine, she obviously did a fantastic job. But with other people here it might be different, possibly even better.’

  Fleur looks down into her soup and stirs it slowly. ‘That’s more or less what Todd says.’ She laughs, looking up. ‘He’s trying to talk me into staying, mostly for his own sake, I think. He reckons I’m his safety net, probably because I’ve told Paula to wind her neck in a few times when she’s been having a go at him.’

  ‘Well you could think about it a bit longer,’ Alice says, ‘stay on a bit and see how you feel – unless Declan and Ruby have found someone else.’

  Fleur shrugs. ‘Not that I know of. They’ve asked me to stay and I said no, but since then I’ve been wondering whether it was the right decision.’

  Alice opens her mouth to say something and then hesitates. Gossiping is dangerous, particularly in a small community like this one, but she’s still concerned about Paula. ‘Between you and me,’ she says, ‘Paula’s got her eye on the job.’

  ‘Paula!’ Fleur almost chokes on her soup and holds the paper napkin up to her mouth. ‘Don’t make me laugh. That’d be like Mother Teresa hosting What Not to Wear – instant ratings disaster. You’re not serious, are you? I mean, did Ruby or Declan tell you that?’

  Alice shakes her head. ‘No way, and please don’t mention it to them. I heard it … look, to be honest I accidently overhead Paula on the phone, but then that’s Paula. Probably just wishful thinking.’

  ‘Well I bloody well hope so,’ Fleur says. ‘I’ve put a lot of work into the lavender business and there’s no way I’m going to hand it over to just anybody and particularly not to Paula. Catherine would turn in her grave. She was fond of Paula, she made a lot of allowances for her because she thought she was a bit of a lost soul, but she was very clear about her limitations.’

  ‘She must have had the patience of a saint then.’

  ‘She did with Paula, more than with most others.’

  ‘So did she start the business with her husband?’ Alice asks.

  Fleur shakes her head. ‘They were living here, and he’d been talking for years about turning it into a winery, but then he took off out of the country somewhere with some other woman. I think Catherine must have got Benson’s as a divorce settlement, or maybe inherited it because he died a few years later. Anyway, it all came to her – the house, the land, everything.’

  Alice smiles, raising her eyebrows. ‘Lucky Catherine!’

  ‘Indeed. From what she told me it seems that Catherine could either have sold and got out or turned it into a business. Everyone else was planting vines so she thought she’d do something different.’

  ‘That must have been a bit of a risk at the time,’ Alice says.

  ‘Yes, but she was like that. She’d make up her mind she wanted something and then go for it and she’d read how in the Middle East lavender was used for healing and calming. People were really getting interested in natural products then, so she thought it was worth a try.’

  ‘But did she know anything about it? I mean, how did she start it all on her own?’

  ‘Apparently there was a woman who lived in an old bus on the outskirts of the town,’ Fleur says. ‘Local people went to her for herbal ointments and so on. She called herself Cassandra and no one knew much about her but she seemed to know what she was doing. So Catherine went to see her and it turned out that Cassandra not only knew a whole lot about lavender, but years earlier she’d worked for Elizabeth Arden in New York and was a fount of information on skin products and their constituents.’ Fleur takes a final spoonful of soup, pushes the plate away and leans her elbows on the table. ‘What Catherine learned from Cassandra enabled her to make the first Benson’s lavender products. She started out buying in the lavender, and it worked out well, so she had the fields planted and before long she had her own crop. Over the years she tweaked the formulas that Cassandra had given her, experimented with different components, and developed new products, but that’s how it all began. She was selling the lavender products through shops in the town and in Bunbury and Busselton, and then she was sending them up to Perth. But the tourist trade down here was growing and I think she may have inherited some money, enough to enable her to take a risk, so she borrowed more money and built the cottages, and then the café and shop.’

  ‘So when did you come along?’

  ‘Six – almost seven – years ago. She couldn’t manage it all on her own and the lavender side of things was really important to her so she wanted someone that wouldn’t just make the products but would take over running the whole thing.’

  They sit for a moment, silent amid the noise and bustle of the café.

  ‘She was pretty amazing really,’ Fleur says eventually. ‘She put her heart and soul into this place to the exclusion of everything else. And she looked after Cassandra, who hadn’t got two pennies to rub together. Had her living here at the end, looked after her for about a year before she died. Catherine didn’t make friends easily but she was a good person to work for – and with. I was very fond of her.’

  ‘But she seems to have been very much alone at the end,’ Alice says. ‘I mean, locking herself away in that room …’

  ‘It was her choice,’ Fleur says. ‘I think she couldn’t bear people to see her as less than she had been. She just withdrew and became quite prickly and difficult. It was heart-breaking, really’ Fleur is silent again now and Alice can see that she is struggling with her emotions.

  ‘You must miss her …’

  ‘I do. She was a bloody good woman, and she worked her guts out here. The lavender business was Catherine’s starting point and it meant a lot to her. That’s why it needs to be run by someone who cares about it and believes in it, someone who cares about the history and wants to preserve it. That’s why I hope this is just Paula’s fantasy, because I don’t believe that Paula could or would do that.’

  Lesley is listening, once again, to the silence, but it’s a different sort of silence this time, as though the house, on which she has lavished care and attention for more than tw
enty years, has turned against her and is emanating its disapproval. Gordon’s absence, for which she had at first been thankful, has now become a burden. There is a sense of finality about this silence, as though something is coming to an end but is taking a very long time about it. A few days after her return home she had started to compose an email to Gordon. It had taken ages, days, to get the tone right, conciliatory but not submissive, apologising for her sharpness and extended absence but at the same time not apologetic (did that even make sense?). Time apart, she had added, was probably the best thing for both of them right now. She had ended it by wishing him a good trip and asked him to let her know how it was going. So far he hasn’t replied, although this is just as likely to be due to his location as anything else. She imagines him up there, somewhere in the north west, probably sleeping rough and loving it, doing the sort of work in the same sort of conditions he had enjoyed so much when he was younger, and for which he had since, so often, longed.

  She feels a sliver of envy that he has so much passion and purpose. It was something she had loved about him when they were younger and, she realises now, something she had forgotten in the strange dislocated months that followed his retirement. Her passion had always been the family, the whole edifice with herself at its heart, and for so long it had been all that she wanted. But now it seems as though everyone has moved on, stretching out the ties of love, of blood and duty to the furthest possible distance, connected still but in absence rather than presence.

  This morning she had taken her grandsons to the little park by the river for a picnic. Lucy is home now and much better after the wretched drama of the burst appendix, but she tires easily and the boys can be exhausting. Lesley had piled them into the car and unpacked them again at the park where they had raced around discovering a few brown ducks on the riverside beach, several snails, and a ladybird. When the wonders of the park began to pall the three of them had walked together barefoot along the beach where the shallow water lapped towards a spidery line of foam littered with tiny stones and fragments of shells.

  The exuberance and boundless energy of the children nourished something in her, but more precious was the feeling that they loved her and approved of her. She might have stuffed up as a wife and mother but as a grandparent she seemed to be doing fine. It was a relief to feel she was getting something right. She had thrived for so long on the knowledge that she was essential to and loved by Gordon and the children. For decades she had taken the decisions about what they would eat each day, what they wore, where they would or wouldn’t be allowed to go, and what Gordon needed or didn’t need to know. Slowly, as if by stealth, all that power, because that’s what it was, had slipped away as first Karen, then Simon and finally Sandi left home. Lesley thought she had managed the ‘empty nest’ thing rather well. She had even felt somewhat superior to acquaintances who were struggling to come to terms with the fact that their centrality was diminishing, their opinions, advice and presence not always required. But perhaps she hadn’t managed it at all. What if the yoga, the tennis, the little helping out job in the boutique and everything else was all just cover for the underlying fear of her own irrelevance?

  Watching her grandsons splashing through the shallows, greeting passing dogs and assessing other small people who might possibly be worthy of their interest reminds her of walking here with her own children when they were small. She was busy then, someone always wanting something – food, clean clothes, a lift, help with homework, a friend to stay. It was endless but purposeful. It was leading somewhere – to the time when they would be self-sufficient adults, when they would have homes and children of their own and she and Gordon would stand back, taking pride in what they had created, enjoying each other’s company. She had thought that Gordon himself was the problem but the events of the last few weeks have made her question just how much of what has happened between them is due to her.

  She had left the house this morning with the distinct feeling that she was falling apart, and that she was the least suitable person to be looking after two small children. But the twins, with their sunny enthusiasm for the small things, and their delight in the very simple picnic, had gone some way to reassembling her. After the picnic she had taken them to Target to buy new tshirts and hoodies and when, just after four o’clock, she had finally delivered them back to Lucy, they were pleasantly tired and ready to flop down in front of the television.

  ‘You’re a lifesaver, Lesley,’ Lucy had said as she filled the kettle. ‘I slept for four hours and feel like a new woman.’

  ‘Good,’ Lesley said, slipping into a chair at the kitchen table, ‘but you still need to take it easy.’

  ‘I know. I’m so grateful you’re here to help out. I don’t know how I’d have managed without you. You’re not going back to Margaret River again just yet, are you?’

  ‘Not until you’re really back on your feet,’ Lesley said, hoping she didn’t sound as fed up about it as she felt.

  Lucy put a cup of tea down in front of Lesley and joined her at the table. ‘Are you okay? You haven’t seemed yourself for ages.’

  For a brief moment Lesley had thought she might burst into tears there and then, simply because Lucy was asking her about herself. Her approval rating with her own children is at an all-time low. Karen has not called once since their tense exchange on the day Lesley got back, and while Simon is fine with her and is grateful for her help with the children, she senses that he has taken a backward step, not knowing where to position himself in this awkward gap between his parents. As for Sandi, she’s far too busy with her new life in Canberra to do more than send an occasional text or email, sometimes accompanied by a picture of herself pulling a weird face for the camera.

  ‘It’s just a very difficult time,’ Lesley had said. ‘Gordon and me, you know …’

  ‘You’ll work it out,’ Lucy had said, resting her hand lightly on Lesley’s arm. ‘We’re all thinking of you – you and Gordon. You’ll sort it out, I know you will.’

  Lesley is touched by Lucy’s affection, and her hostility towards Gordon has dissipated, but this evening, sitting alone on the verandah, she has no idea how this might be sorted out. Everything is different since Declan walked into her life. She’s made a fool of herself, no wonder he stopped answering her calls. She would have scared off the most confident and ardent of men, let alone such a cautious one. But he has given her a glimpse of something different – an adventure at a time in her life when she had thought adventures were over. She’s always been conscious of her appearance and with Declan she had felt younger, attractive, sexy, and as though age didn’t really matter at all. She wants that sense of herself, wants it so much that she can’t really focus on anything else and she can no longer sit still. Getting up from her chair she gathers the empty wine bottle and her glass. Not long now and she’ll be back there and they can see each other again, talk about it. She stares at her silent phone lying on the table. Could she try calling him again? ‘No,’ she murmurs, ‘no, I won’t call until I can tell him I’m on my way,’ and sighing she puts the phone in her pocket and goes back into the house.

  eclan is totally into the mood of the festival. All the anxiety and the pressure of the last few weeks have floated away in a cloud of anticipation and excitement. He knows he ought still to be anxious, to be scurrying around checking his notes, doing all sorts of stuff, but all he can think of right now is how brilliant it all is. For a short while, at least, this feels like his place, his thing, his festival and as though he is recapturing a part of his youth – the good part, while he was at university and before he started on the long and painful downward slope into drink and drugs. It starts tomorrow and all day people have been arriving, cars, campervans and people movers have formed a continuous slow stream of traffic along the track that’s been railed off for them. The fields are scattered with small tents, and caravans and the campers are pumping up their oil stoves and spreading their sleeping bags. Not far from where he’s standing near the café a
n elderly couple wearing Jackson Crow tshirts are draping a set of fairy lights around the entrance to their tent and connecting them to their car battery. Further up a young woman strums a guitar, while others unfold camping chairs and tables, and pull stubbies from ice-packed Eskys.

  Declan has happy if somewhat hazy memories of music festivals in Australia and Europe from the year he spent travelling with a couple of uni mates when they’d graduated. He knows a good atmosphere when he sees one and while this festival may be small it feels really special.

  ‘Hey, man!’ Todd says, appearing beside him. He’s wearing a baseball cap that one of the musicians had given him earlier in the day, and proudly fingering the festival lanyard with his official pass that says he’s the runner for the musicians. His eyes are bright with excitement.

  ‘Hey man, yourself,’ Declan says, grinning back. ‘How’s it going?’

  ‘It is totally mega cool. I got to help with testing the sound equipment, and I unloaded a set of drums, and I’ve been doing all sorts of stuff for the guys.’

  ‘Good man,’ Declan says. ‘How’s the ankle holding out?’

  Todd picks up his foot and flexes his ankle. ‘It’s okay, bit achy. Good job I got rid of the crutches before all this started.’

  Declan nods. ‘It is, but don’t go mad. We don’t want you ending up in plaster again. I was just going to get something to eat and then take a walk around. Want to join me?’

  Todd nods. ‘I’m starving. Are we going back to the house?’

  ‘I thought we’d get something in the café. Burgers maybe?’

  The café is packed. Alice’s decision to take on some extra casual staff and stay open in the evenings for the weekend is paying off. It’s almost seven-thirty and they’re flat out. Todd and Declan join the queue and as they wait Declan watches the action in the kitchen, Alice, he thinks, has done an amazing job, beyond what even he had hoped. In fact, if he’s honest, he hadn’t had any idea of what he’d hoped for when he asked her to come here. He’d just known that with Alice here, he’d feel better, more confident, that he might actually be capable of behaving like an adult with a business to run rather than a hopeless case floundering about in chaos.