Page 11 of Weekends with the Sunshine Gardening Society
Shirley puts a hand on Elizabeth’s shoulder. ‘You were looking after him.’ She nods at Charlie. ‘And him.’ Now she’s patting slowly. ‘Not so much yourself, though.’ It isn’t a question.
‘Now, why don’t you tell us about the garden?’ Shirley prompts.
Elizabeth gazes at Jon’s great project, then slides open one of the glass doors so they can all go outside.
There are steps leading from the kitchen down to a patio, and beyond it is a lawn, mostly weeds now, with two long rectangular garden beds on each side and a shorter bed at the far end. She knows the names of the plants, because Jon would tell her: mandevillas, begonias, gardenias, gerberas, pansies and petunias, hydrangeas, hibiscus, zinnias. Colourful plants, meant to bloom together and create something beautiful. Jasmine climbs up the fence to her left, bougainvillea in the back corners, and down the right a row of camellias provides privacy from the street, as there’s only a low fence. Where the camellias end there’s a gate, then another length of fence before another gate, which leads to the entrance of the house. Incongruously, a gum tree stands against the fence, a relic of whatever this land looked like before. Of all the plants and trees in this garden, only the gum is in good shape.
‘Jon loved colour,’ Elizabeth says. ‘Everywhere. Paintings on the walls, bright curtains. So he wanted a garden with lots of colour.’
‘That explains the pansies and those pink hibiscus,’ says Shirley. She squints. ‘And what are those – zinnias?’
Elizabeth nods.
‘This will look spectacular,’ Barbara breathes, ‘with some TLC and time.’ She catches Elizabeth’s eye. ‘With your permission, of course. We will only return if you want us here.’
There’d been days when Jon was so weak he could barely make it to the bathroom but he still wanted to be in this garden. He’d try to pick up the hose or the watering can and Elizabeth would pretend that he was strong enough to keep the garden alive.She’d tell herself that it was a sign he was improving, even though she knew that was impossible. This garden represents all of Jon’s hopes and ambitions and also his decline. She feels so conflicted about it she can hardly bear to look at it, yet she knows that the last thing she can do for him – her last way to love him – is to take care of it, if only to show Charlie that she won’t give up on something his father wanted. And so that Charlie can have this garden to remember him by.
Yet it’s such a big task. Too big, perhaps, even with help. These last few years have taken so much from her and she’s not sure if she has the wherewithal to rebuild this garden as well as her own life.
‘I can’t ask you to do that,’ she says, offering these kindly women an easy way out.
‘You’re not,’ Shirley says, looking amused. ‘We’re forcing it on you. Rev’s orders.’
‘How do you know him?’ Elizabeth says. It didn’t occur to her to ask before.
‘He was very good to me,’ Barbara says, ‘when my son died.’ She looks at Elizabeth meaningfully.
Elizabeth goes to sayI’m sorrythen stops herself, because Barbara will know, as she does, that it doesn’t need to be said. They understand each other.
‘Far be it from me,’ Elizabeth says instead, ‘to go against the reverend.’
She glances at Charlie, who looks quite pleased as he skips around the patio.
‘So we’ll see you Saturday,’ Shirley says gleefully. ‘Goody – I love a big project. And Barb’s a whiz at garden design. She’ll know exactly what’s going on here. See ya, Charlie!’
Shirley is back up into the house before Elizabeth knows what’s going on.
Barbara squeezes Elizabeth’s arm and follows her. ‘Don’t worry,’ she says over her shoulder, ‘we’ll bring everything we need.’
As the front door closes behind them Elizabeth stands in the doorway between the kitchen and the sitting room, looking at it. She doesn’t know what to make of what just happened, or whether to thank the reverend or chastise him for it.
When she feels a breeze at the back of her neck, though, she wonders if it’s Jon, reminding her to accept help, the way he did in those last days. That breeze finds her in all rooms of the house, even with all the doors closed. It’s one of the mysteries of her life after his death. That and the way he visits her in dreams, holding out single-stemmed flowers, smiling, healthy. She never had those dreams when he was alive.
‘Charlie!’ she calls, although he could be deep in the garden by now. Sometimes she finds him sitting on the stone seat down the far end, talking to the air. Or to his father. He has told her more than once that Daddy is in the garden.
When she hears no movement she walks back to the kitchen and, looking out, sees him on the bench, cross-legged, smiling to himself, and decides to leave him there.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Oh,this is awkward. Waiting to see your former best friend who you haven’t seen in yonks. It feels like waiting for a first date. No – like waiting to give birth.
Giving birth was not an experience Lorraine enjoyed. ‘Just go with it,’ the midwife had said to her when the contractions really kicked in.You go with it!Lorraine had wanted to yell back.You go with it right out the door and take the bloody contractions with you, and the baby too while you’re at it!By that stage Lorraine had realised it was too late to change her mind about having a baby, and while she didn’t regret it she had really, really wished she could come back and do the birth thing some other time. Or have someone else do it for her. And the worst bit was that by the time she got pregnant with Simon she’d forgotten how bad the first birth had been and she got to do it all over again.
‘Get you anything?’ says the waitress in this little coffee shop in an unremarkable shopping area near the Ken Rosewall Tennis Centre courts on Hastings Street. Not that long ago you would have been able to see the river from the street. It was one of the features of the place: beach on one side of Hastings, river on the other. When she was a kid there were people living in tents on this side of the street, right next to the river. Looking back, she can’t believe it happened, because imagine it! Just livinghere, on one of the best pieces of land in the country, in a tent! She also remembers the bull that someone up on the hill owned. Big fella. Used to take up a position in the middle of the street and intimidate people into not passing by. That was the pitfall of living in a tent: no protection against the bull.
The tents are long gone now, as are most of the original buildings, and these days the beach side of the street has apartment buildings no more than three storeys high and the river side has the courts and some shops, and it’s not so easy to turn your head one way to see still water and another to see waves.
The waitress is giving her a look, which is how Lorraine knows she’s let her mind wander off.
