Page 117 of Weekends with the Sunshine Gardening Society
‘Great,’ she says. ‘Because Simon has silkworms and I want to tell you about them. And Mum and Cora want to take the boys to Expo 88 and I’m scared they’ll get lost in Brisbane.’
Cynthia laughs and it’s big and hearty, which makes Lorraine smile long enough to forget that they still have about forty-five minutes left of this walk.
MAY 1988
SWEET WATTLE
CHAPTER SIXTY-TWO
Forall the Saturdays and the occasional Sunday they’ve spent together, this is the first time Elizabeth and Cynthia have had a proper conversation – and it feels apt that it’s about the house, and its garden, that caused them to meet in the first place.
Cynthia went about the purchase in the appropriate way, contacting the real estate agent with whom Elizabeth had decided to list the house, since he was so firm about the prospects of sale. She didn’t ever find out if there really was a potential buyer when he approached her, but it didn’t matter, because the approach itself helped her make up her mind: it was time to find a place that was just for her and Charlie.
Her parents said that if necessary she and Charlie can stay with them while she looks for a new home, whether that’s to buy or to rent. Elizabeth has toyed with the idea of returning to Brisbane, although as winter starts to lightly touch the Sunshine Coast, changing it only so as to enhance it, she thinks, the prospect of returning to a city where she may lose this connection with the natural world has less and less appeal.
That’s something she’s realised since she moved here, and more since she’s been spending time close to the bush and the gardens of this area: she is not as much of an urbanite – even a suburbanite – as she thought. As her mood has waxed andwaned over the past year or so, she has increasingly found that the remedy is to be in nature. Some days when she needs a lift she simply sits in the garden for ten minutes and she feels better. This is nothing that anyone has prescribed for her; it’s something she has discovered, but she has wondered why more people don’t know about it.
‘You’re looking well,’ Doctor Lopes said to her the other day, and she told him it was because she’d been spending more time with trees and flowers.
He’d looked at her quizzically. ‘I haven’t heard of that before.’
‘Maybe no one’s mentioned it,’ she replied. ‘Because it’s not an official medical treatment. But it works. Or it’s worked for me.’
‘Do you have a favourite spot?’ he asked, and she was about to say ‘Jon’s garden’ when she realised that it wasn’t his any more. It was hers and Charlie’s.
‘Our garden,’ she said.
‘I’d like to see this garden,’ he’d said with a slight smile. ‘Since it’s such a tonic.’
‘You’ll have to be quick,’ she said, ‘because I’m selling the house.’
That was the moment at which she knew she’d made up her mind.
So when the real estate agent called and said he had a real potential buyer, she was interested. Then when Cynthia told her it was her, she felt so relieved she wondered what kind of worry she’d been holding onto.
She asked Cynthia to come over and have a proper look at the house, like any prospective buyer would want to do, because she doesn’t want to take Cynthia for granted just because she knows the house already. The agent would no doubt have preferred to be there, but their friendship entitles Cynthia to a private showing.
‘I could have come straight to you, I suppose,’ Cynthia says as they sit in the living room looking out onto the garden. ‘Buthaving the agent involved means that if there are other interested parties you will receive the price you should.’
‘I don’t know if there are,’ Elizabeth says. ‘I appreciate you doing that, though.’
Cynthia smiles. ‘This is a business transaction, Elizabeth. It needs to be done fairly. So I don’t want you thinking I need to be treated differently.’ She turns up her palms. ‘Apart from today’s visit, obviously.’
‘It would mean a lot if the house goes to you. I’d feel like …’
Her gaze drifts to the garden, to the ordered beds, to the lavender bushes in pots closer to the glass doors that were Cynthia’s suggestion, actually, over Shirl’s loud protests. The lawn is neatly mown; Elizabeth has been paying a local lad to do it each couple of weeks because the humidity makes it grow quickly. She hopes Cynthia will keep him on.
‘I’d feel like it will be taken care of,’ she concludes.
‘I’d make sure of that,’ Cynthia says. ‘Although I plan to ask Odette if she’d like to move in too. The house is big enough, and Jordan will enjoy that lawn once he starts crawling. So while I’ll definitely take care of it, it may not be kept as neatly as it is now.’
Elizabeth smiles sheepishly. ‘It’s only neat because I made Charlie pack away his toys this morning.’ The place is usually strewn with schoolbooks and LEGO and anything else Charlie finds of interest.
‘I’d love to think another little boy will grow up here,’ she continues.
She’s tempted to ask if Jordan’s father will also be living here but it’s none of her business. Cynthia only mentioned him around the time of the birth, and she hasn’t heard of him living at Cynthia’s father’s. Initially Elizabeth found herself starting to judge this: that Odette would be a single mother, and how Jordan really needed a father. Then she remembered her own circumstances. It’s not for her to say that Odette has any more choiceover being on her own than she does. For all she knows Jordan’s father has disappeared.
‘And I’d love to think that you and Charlie will visit,’ Cynthia says. ‘If you wouldn’t find that odd.’
