Page 75 of Birds of a Feather

‘I can’t help but wonder how this is all going to work,’ I said eventually.

‘You know, my dear, take it from me.’ Gerry’s words were slightly clumsy, providing irrefutable evidence that the day, and the gin, had indeed caught up with her. ‘Don’t let your head get in the way of your heart. Elise and I both saw the way you two were together. It was lovely. She said she couldn’t remember seeing you like that before.’

I felt my cheeks flush again at the mention of Nick, and then a fresh pang of sadness that Gran wouldn’t be around anymore to observe me doing anything again.

‘I’ve known him since he was born, and I could tell he was smitten too. Who knows …’ she continued, boisterously gesticulating with her glass in a way that seemed contrary to her usual refinement, ‘maybe you and Nick were the reason Elise and I reconnected after all these years. Perhaps our love story was just the prelude to yours. Our affair sixty years ago had to happen, so you two would meet today. Maybe it was written in the stars.’

She arced her arm above her head to highlight the twinkling night sky above. The ice in her glass clinked as though providing a sound effect for the sentiment.

‘I suppose that makes Elise and me star-crossed lovers,’ she said, her voice quivering as she slumped further into her chair.

‘You don’t really believe all that, do you, Gerry?’ I asked, curious that a science brain as brilliant as hers would entertain supernatural theories. Of course, there were plenty of esteemed scientists who believed in gods, in their various forms. But surely astrology stretched the notion of faith too far for most.

‘We have to believe in something to make sense of all this,’ she said wistfully. ‘Besides, astrology was science once upon a time. Astrologers were highly respected scholars, and astrology was thought to influence everything from the weather and crop health, to personalities and human medicine. In fact, astrology was still used in medicine until the end of the seventeenth century. Did you know that?’

I nodded. ‘And of course, Australian First Nations peoples have turned to the stars for stories about creation for millennia.’

I didn’t know whether it was the lotto win, finding out about Gran and Gerry, meeting Nick, the gin, the fact that someone other than Jarrah was pointing to the stars for meaning, or just the overwhelming yearning I had to make sense of it all, but I was a lot less sure it was all nonsense than I had been a month ago.

I looked up, willing the stars for a sign that Gran was out there somewhere looking down on me. I realised it was the first time in more than eighty-two years that night had fallen on a world without her in it.

‘Have you thought about where you might like to stay tonight?’ I asked, trying to distract myself with other thoughts before I dissolved into a puddle of salty tears to be absorbed into the weedy grass of my parents’ backyard.

She looked befuddled.

‘I mean, where you’d be most comfortable. Obviously, you’re welcome to stay at Gran’s for as long as you’d like. But if you’re not keen to stay there alone, there’s a bunch of spare beds here, if you can handle them.’ I gestured towards the house, and my family in it, with a nod of my head. ‘Or you’re welcome to stay at my house. It’s nothing fancy, but I do have a sofa bed. I could sleep on that, and you could take my bed. Or I could come and stay with you at Gran’s … if you’d like some company there.’

I hadn’t given it a lot of thought before now, but in offering to stay at Gran’s, I realised I was desperate to spend time in her space. I wanted to smell it before her scent had dissipated and surround myself with the memories that were housed within the walls.

‘Thanks, Beth. That would be grand. I’d love some company tonight. It would be nice to stay at your gran’s together.’

‘You let me know when you’re ready to leave, then,’ I said, rising to go back inside. ‘It’s been a massive day; I’m ready whenever you are.’

‘I’ll be in shortly. I’ll just polish this off and make a wish on one or two of them.’ She lifted her quart-filled gin and tonic in a wobbly salute to the stars twinkling above.

Chapter 34

Beth

By 9am the day after Gran died – when I finally dragged myself out of the spare bed at her place – word of her passing had well and truly spread. I had accompanied Gran on many of her volunteer trips, so several of her friends and acquaintances I knew from the herbarium had reached out with messages of condolences. There was also one each from Alannah and Geoff from work.

The texts contained variations on the same themes: shock of hearing the news, admiration for Gran, and thinking of our family ‘at this sad time’.

One of the more irksome statements that appeared verbatim in at least a couple of the messages was that ‘we must be glad she died doing what she loved’. There was, I supposed, a comfort in knowing she had died in the bush near her childhood home on the country that coursed through her veins, doing what she enjoyed, with someone whom she loved. But the suggestion that any of this made me ‘glad’ was preposterous.

What did make me glad was seeing that there was also a message from Nick.

I hope you managed to get some sleep. I’m thinking of you. x

I put my cursor in the reply box.

Thanks. I slept a bit. The hard part was waking up and realising that it wasn’t all just a bad dream. We’ve got a day of funeral planning ahead of us, so that should add a new layer of heartache. I imagine it will be like a bad group assignment, but with my family, who have less decorum or reliability than uni students.

It was the middle of the night in London, so I knew he wouldn’t reply right away.

I heard a commotion at the front door and knew my family had arrived. When Gerry and I had left Mum and Dad’s place in an Uber (my car was still at work, since I hadn’t made it back to the office from our site visit yesterday), we agreed they’d come around to Gran’s to plan the funeral.

I pulled on yesterday’s pants, and fastened my bra under the T-shirt I’d slept in. I opened the spare bedroom door quietly, so I could sneak to the bathroom to brush my teeth and splash some water on my face before I saw anyone. As I crept down the hallway, I passed Herrick and noticed that a spider had added a web to the beads that hung from his antlers. How dare it just assume permission to make its home on Gran’s beloved jackalope, I thought irrationally. Then, as I reached the bathroom, I heard Mum say that someone had sent her a link to a company that did open-air cremations – like a big bonfire. I felt myself bristle; it would be a testing day.

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