by Liz Byrski
‘We’ll know,’ Ruby had said, and even now she can remember the conviction with which she had said it. ‘I’ll know, I’m sure I will. It’s like that song, you know in the movie, in South Pacific.’ She had struggled for the words then. ‘About some magical evening when you see a stranger across a room, and you know that he’s the one. It’ll be like electricity, like being struck by lightning.’
Catherine had rolled her eyes. ‘You mean “Some Enchanted Evening”, when you went all dopey about Rossano Brazzi? But he’s so old. Oh well, I’ll write it down anyway, you never know when we might need it.’
‘You can’t, a journal is to write down what you’re doing, what happens to you, not stuff about men we haven’t met yet.’
‘Now you’re being boring, Rube. Like I said before, when we’re old we’ll want to read this. We’ll want to see what we thought and how we felt – how we feel right now. And we’ll be able to see if we ended up with the right man.’
‘And what if we haven’t?’
‘Well, that’ll be just too bad, won’t it?’ Catherine said, sighing with exasperation. ‘But at least we’ll know.’
Not that knowing after the event is a lot of use, Ruby thinks now, finally finding the page she was searching for. She reads it through twice, leans back against her pillows and closes her eyes, remembering Rossano Brazzi’s face, his voice. In that moment in the cinema, she had felt herself softening and opening, felt her senses spring overwhelmingly into life in a way that was as thrilling as it was unnerving.
‘You are totally ridiculous,’ Ruby tells herself now, opening her eyes, sitting up straighter. ‘You were a teenager then and now you’re sixty-nine – pull yourself together.’ But somehow she can’t. Somehow from the moment she looked up and saw Jackson Crow standing in front of her she might as well have been back in that dark little cinema, the music soaring in the background, naive, impressionable, totally disarmed but utterly certain. She has butterflies in her stomach now, her heart races, slows and races again, and until she got off them her legs had been trembling. Could he tell the effect he had on her? Was it written all over her face? Could Declan see it when he came into the office?
Her restless imagination is now unbearable and Ruby throws off the bedclothes, gets up again and begins to pace the room as though the exercise might burn off the heat of her body. ‘Ridiculous,’ she says again. ‘You are a ridiculous old woman, overcome with … well what? Lust? Desire?’ But alongside her dismay is the conviction that something powerful had happened and not just to her – as though a connection had sparked and crackled into life. She had gasped for breath at the power of it, and through the conversation that followed, through the pleasantries, through the condolences about the loss of Catherine, and the process of checking Jackson and his band into their cottages, it continued to burn.
And what is she supposed to do with this? Ruby is a realist – or so she has always believed. Scorched by the disaster of her first marriage she had been cautious when she met Owen. She had taken time to trust him and then to risk loving him. There had been no lightning bolt at Glastonbury, no swooning, no aching, just a sense of something special and safe, something to nurture and tease into life; together they had grown into love. But that was decades ago. Love and desire is everywhere – on screens, on billboards, in magazines, advertisements and song lyrics – but all its images, its enactments, its literature and music are about youth, young love, first love. Even mature lovers are beautiful, firm, and either surgically or photographically enhanced. It is all about beautiful bodies and fierce sexual passion, not about old people gripped with desire and bodies soft, slack and wrinkled with age. It is about a particular sort of look, a look Ruby knows she never had even when young. She had always been uncomfortably aware of how little she resembled the images of female beauty all around her.
‘I should’ve been around in Rubens’ day,’ she had once said to Owen. ‘I’d have been a hit with him. He had an eye for generous proportions like mine, for dimples and pale skin.’
‘Well you may have come along too late for Rubens,’ Owen had said, wrapping his arms around her, ‘but fortunately you are here now, and you’re a big hit with me.’
Ruby drags her nightdress over her head and stands naked in front of the long mirror, staring at her reflection. Her blood is racing through her veins with the heat and power of youth, but what she sees is the body of an old woman. What was she expecting? That the lightning bolt would have made her young again, lifted and firmed her breasts, flattened her stomach, dissolved several rolls of fat, smoothed and tightened her skin and bleached the age spots? She looks away, pained, then back again, remembering the other times she has studied her body in a mirror trying to imagine how a man might see her. In her twenties, at thirty and forty, and terrifyingly at fifty, even then she had gazed at herself in fascination, at the curve of a shoulder, the soft pale flesh of her inner thighs, the outline of a breast. She has looked at herself through the decades and always, despite her misgivings, seen herself as a lover. She has seen swells and curves, smooth lines, tenderness, a willingness to melt into another’s flesh. She has imagined how she would look lying beneath a man, considered her breasts as they might appear when she was above him, how they might feel against his face.
A lover, always a lover. Was this how other women experienced themselves, the way they measured themselves as women in the silence of their rooms with just a mirror for company? ‘In the end,’ she thinks, ‘we are all the same, old women, fat or thin, loved or unloved, past the bloom, decaying fruit ready to drop from the branch.’ How long has it been since she made love to a man? Ten – no, more like fifteen years, so long it seems unreal, unrelated to her and who she now is.
Had she thought then that it would be the last time? Why would you? You don’t ever think that it might be the last time you will make love, the last time you will feel the stroke of a hand on your thigh, the brush of lips on your breast, the weight and warmth of another body. Slowly, Ruby picks up her nightdress from the bedroom floor, pulls it back over her head and, crawling slowly into bed, puts out the light and lies there in the darkness, struggling with the reality that part of her is suddenly young again, hungry, yearning, ready to take risks, flushed with desire. Twisting and turning she drags a pillow to her chest, rolling onto her side to hug it, and as she eventually begins to relax and sink towards sleep she is still waiting: waiting and wondering whether, not so far away in his cottage, Jackson Crow feels this restless, longing, waiting energy and, if he does, whether he or she will have the imagination and the courage to do anything about it. I’m too old for this, Ruby thinks, too cynical, too sensible. But of course she’s not, in her heart she knows that one is never too old for this, never too old to be yearning in the darkness for the word or the touch of a stranger who has glimpsed your soul.
‘And … that’s it, really,’ Lesley says, her eyes fixed on the paper napkin that she has folded into a long strip and is now weaving nervously between her fingers. ‘I guess you have Billy Fury to thank for bringing me back to my senses.’ And she gives a nervous laugh and looks up at him again.
‘“Halfway to Paradise”, we used to sing that at school,’ Declan says, but he doesn’t add that it had been the boarding school version that one of the boys had learned from his father. The whole conversation has been awkward and embarrassing and he’s hugely relieved it’s over. The woman he had talked to that first day seems to have returned, and he likes her much better than the one with whom he had dinner, and who has haunted his conscience in the last few weeks.
‘So back to square one, or at least back to where we were before we—’
‘Yes,’ he cuts in, ‘before that. And what about your husband?’
Lesley inhales deeply. ‘I don’t know, really I don’t. I thought it was all his fault, that he was trying to take over my life. But now I’m not so sure. We had so many plans, you see, we always talked about the things we’d do when the kids had left home and he�
�d retired. I think now that perhaps he was just trying to make that happen. The trouble is that he wants that but I’ve changed, I don’t want it anymore.’
‘So what do you want?’
She shrugs. ‘I’m not sure but what I do know is that I want something that I can feel passionate about, something that gives me a sense of purpose, makes me feel useful again, but I haven’t found it and I don’t know where to start looking.’
‘Mmm. Well maybe Gordon actually wants something different too,’ Declan says, and he sees the shock register in her face.
‘You mean another woman?’
‘No, of course not. I mean like the thing he’s doing up north. Maybe he was just trying to do what he thought you wanted – all those plans – but perhaps he’s really moved on from those too. Have you talked to him about it?’
Lesley looks at him, not speaking, just staring hard for a moment. ‘You mean … no … actually no, of course I didn’t ask him.’
‘So maybe you should,’ Declan says. ‘I mean, maybe you both just need to talk about it.’ He leans back slightly in his chair as Alice brings their breakfasts to the table.
‘I take it yours is the full English?’ she says.
‘’Fraid so,’ Declan says, grinning up at her. ‘Heart attack on a plate for me.’
‘And scrambled eggs for you, Lesley. Coffee will be along in a minute. Sorry for the delay, we had a problem with the machine but it’s okay now.’ And she puts Lesley’s breakfast in front of her and heads back towards the kitchen.
Declan looks down at his plate. They eat in silence, Declan devouring his eggs and a sausage in a few mouthfuls. His discomfort is not only about the earlier conversation with Lesley. He’s not sure why it seemed okay last night to walk in here with Todd and wait while Alice prepared their burgers, and yet it feels all wrong to be sitting here with Lesley this morning while Alice cooks their breakfast. He pushes his bacon around the plate, needing to deal with something else before he can give it his attention. ‘Look, I need to tell you about Alice, although I think Paula may already have … ?’
‘Ah yes, Paula, she did mention something … well, she actually said that Alice had been in prison.’
Declan clears his throat. His face burns with anxiety, his knife and fork are trembling in his hands. He had thought that he would have to tell Ruby about Alice, but in the event it had all been dealt with in his absence. He’d certainly never given any thought to the fact that he might have to explain to someone else. And it’s suddenly so important that he gets the right response, that Lesley doesn’t say anything judgmental or negative. But what if she does? He can hardly get up and walk out. He’ll just have to set her straight, but that might be …
‘Were you going to tell me something?’ Lesley asks.
He clears his throat again. ‘Well, it’s like this …’ he begins, and falters.
Lesley swallows a mouthful of scrambled egg threaded through with smoked salmon. ‘It’s okay, Declan,’ she says. ‘I do know what happened. Paula didn’t tell me the details, but yesterday when I had that near-miss on the way here I was thinking about it and I remembered Alice’s case. It was her granddaughter who was killed, wasn’t it? I thought that could have been me, driving, not thinking. It happens in a split second. I was lucky it was just a stray dog, not myself or, worse still, someone else, especially a child. It’s terrible for Alice. I don’t know how you ever get over something like that.’
Declan nods. Is it really going to be as easy as this? He wants to leap up and tell Alice, wants to race into the kitchen and hug her. He wants to tell her that it’s another sign, another hurdle out of the way, first Ruby, now Lesley. ‘You see,’ he wants to say, ‘you can have a normal life, you don’t always have to be looking over your shoulder.’ But instead he returns to his toast and the remaining bacon – crispy, just as he likes it.
‘Ah, there you are, Declan,’ Ruby says, appearing suddenly alongside him. ‘Good morning, Lesley. Sorry to interrupt but I need to talk to Declan about Plan B,’ and she slips into a chair and leans forward, elbows on the table.
‘Do we have a Plan B for something?’ Declan says around a mouthful of bacon, and he feels the anxiety building in the pit of his stomach.
‘Unfortunately not, and that’s the problem. We should have had a Plan B for staffing this weekend. Kim rang. She’s got another job in town and she’s starting today. She’s known for two weeks but didn’t know how to give in her notice. She was so nervous I hadn’t the heart to insist she work another two weeks.’
‘Shit!’ Declan says, pushing his plate aside. ‘So we’ve no one to run the shop?’
‘No. I just told Alice.’
Alice comes out from behind the counter and joins them at the table. ‘Do you think Todd could manage it?’ she asks.
Declan shakes his head. ‘Todd’s the runner for the musicians and he’ll never forgive me if I take him away from that. It just wouldn’t be fair and, anyway, someone’s got to do that job.’
Alice looks nervously across to the counter where several people are now waiting to place their orders. ‘Well who? Because it can’t be anyone from here, we were flat out yesterday and it’s building up again right now.’
Declan rubs his hands over his face. ‘I suppose we could ask Paula.’
‘No,’ Alice says quickly. ‘Please don’t do that. You can’t, not after … well, not after what we talked about last night. You can’t ask her to help today and then reprimand her for … for the computer thing.’
‘Definitely not,’ Ruby says. ‘And also, Paula would take it as a sign that we were going to give her the job. We have a responsibility to manage Paula’s situation properly.’
Declan shrugs. ‘Then maybe we just have to close the shop.’
‘But we can’t,’ Ruby says. ‘It’ll be a terrific trading day, and it would look pretty silly for the shop to be closed.’
‘Well Fleur can’t do it, she’ll be flat out too,’ Alice says. ‘She was doing demos in the workroom and chatting to visitors all day yesterday.’
‘Well then …’ Declan begins.
‘I could help if you like,’ Lesley cuts in. ‘I mean, I don’t want to interfere, and I don’t know much about your shop, but I’ve helped out at a friend’s shop from time to time so I know how to do all the EFTPOS and credit card stuff.’ She looks from one to the other. ‘I assume everything is priced, and I could always yell for help if I needed it. It might be better than closing it.’
There is silence around the table. Declan sees that Alice is looking at Lesley, probably remembering the incident she’d told him about last night, but also perhaps the apology. And now both Ruby and Alice are looking at him, waiting for him to make a decision. His stomach turns to water and he feels the sweat breaking out on his neck. How he hates decisions. In view of everything that’s happened this one is particularly sensitive. He looks back at Alice and she gives him a tiny, almost imperceptible, nod. Women, he thinks, they do this subtle messaging stuff, stuff he’s been misreading all his life. Ruby had warned him off with just a glance when they had been talking to Paula. He simply must get better at it.
‘Are you really serious?’ he asks, turning to Lesley.
‘Of course.’
‘Could you start soon?’ He glances at his watch. ‘Like right now?’
She nods. ‘Why not?’
Declan looks back to the other two women. ‘Then I think it’s a good idea,’ he says.
‘Thank goodness,’ Ruby says, getting to her feet. ‘And thank you, Lesley. You’ll really be getting us out of trouble. I need to get back to the office but just ring across if you need anything and I’ll lock the office and come straight over. Alice, would you be able to show Lesley—’
‘Of course,’ Alice cuts in.
And Ruby heads for the door, patting Declan on the shoulder as she passes his chair.
‘If you’re okay to start now,’ Alice says to Lesley, ‘I could talk you through it, before it gets
too busy in here. The shop doesn’t open until ten so you’ve got time to feel your way around.’
‘Let’s do it,’ Lesley says, grabbing her bag. ‘See you later, Declan, and thanks for the lovely breakfast.’
Declan watches as Alice takes out her keys, unlocks the door to the gift shop, and she and Lesley disappear inside. So that’s it then, he thinks, fixed, panic over. Did I do that? But he knows he didn’t – the women did it. Somehow they had decided what would happen, the three of them knew it, they even knew what was in his head, but they let him think he was making the decision. Women! He doubts he’ll ever understand them. He shakes his head, gets to his feet and walks over to the counter to pay for breakfast.
t’s two o’clock when the music begins and Ruby, hearing the roar of the crowd, leaves the office to see what’s happening. On the stage the Watermelons, a local band that was a big hit at last year’s Bridgetown Blues Festival, have launched into the first set and the audience is ecstatic. The sooner it starts the sooner it’ll be over, she thinks, her own impatience and anxiety now expressed as hostility. So this is how it will be, today and most of tomorrow – music, the swaying joyful crowd, hundreds more cans of beer and casks of wine turning some people feral as the afternoon and then the night wear on. But as she stands there, determinedly grumpy, something in the music lightens her mood and she leans forward, resting her arms on the verandah rail, and allows herself to listen through an unfamiliar song. She’s about to turn back to the office when the singer, a slight young woman who looks not much more than a teenager, launches into ‘I Am a Single Woman’. The depth and resonance of her voice seem to belong to an older, larger body and she sings with such passion and intensity that Ruby is lifted briefly out of herself and into the music.
‘Pretty good, isn’t she?’ says a voice behind her, and for the second time in less than twenty-four hours Ruby jumps out of her skin. ‘Whoa! Sorry, not again,’ Jackson Crow says, grasping her arm as she sways perilously near the top of the verandah steps.