Page 15 of Weekends with the Sunshine Gardening Society
Kathy hasn’t yet worked out why he’s so kind to her but she suspects it’s because she reminds him of his mother or something. She can only hope that Grant is as gracious to older women.
‘Thank you,’ she says, holding the containers aloft like trophies before she tucks them into her voluminous bag and heads for her car, parked two streets away where all the staff park.
The drive home to her little house in Noosa Junction is quick. Every drive around here is quick. Melbourne, with its criss-crossing roads and spread-out suburbs, seems like the most difficult place in the world compared with the Sunshine Coast, where if something is a ten-minute drive away everyone thinks it’s a major inconvenience.
Walking to the front door Kathy notes, again, that the bushes in the front garden need watering. They never seem to get much rain so they require extra attention, but she’s just not in the habit of it yet. Same with the back garden. It’s not as if either garden is huge, so it wouldn’t take her long to water. She just has to remember to do it. And she doesn’t want to do it now, when she’s tired.
So instead she goes inside and walks to the kitchen and puts the food in the fridge. Osso bucco and mashed potato by the look of it. She’ll enjoy that tonight.
First, though, she’s going to have a drink. It may be only 4 p.m. but she’s been on her feet for hours and she deserves a little treat. Even if she knows that starting at four means she’ll be drinking for longer than she should. One glass of wine turns into half a bottle. Sometimes almost a whole bottle. Or that’s how it seems to go. Not every day. Some days. Most days, if she’s honest.
She’s made the excuse to herself that she needs the comfort, because she’s on her own and everyone needs something, don’t they? The danger is in the fact that it’s threatening to move beyond comfort to companionship, and that’s because she hasn’t made any friends here. If she had somewhere to be at night she wouldn’tbe drinking. She’s just soboredof herself and wine makes her less bored. And boring.
After two large glasses, and with the osso bucco warming in the oven, she does what she usually does at this point in the bottle: she pulls out her most recent photo album. She has a few albums with photos of Grant and his sister, Michelle. Older albums feature their father, Owen. But none of them appears in this newer album. It’s reserved for Jemima. Or Jem, as she liked to be called, except Kathy always preferred her full name. It sounded so lovely.
It was the shock of Kathy’s life when she fell for Jemima. There she was, married thirty years, fond of Owen and he of her. They were companions; that’s how she learnt the habit of not being alone. They liked to go rock’n’roll dancing from time to time, and to the pub on Sundays. He liked the cricket, and she could tolerate it. She liked the tennis, and he didn’t mind it. Their older middle age was nice. They had made plans for retirement, when it came.
Then Jemima started working at the restaurant Kathy was managing and from the moment they met Kathy knew she was in trouble. The way Jemima smiled at her – it made her feel something she hadn’t felt ever. Giddy.Lovestruck. She used to think that was a ridiculous term. Only teenagers get lovestruck, and when she was a teenager the boys hadn’t impressed her enough for that. It was only once she met Jemima that she realised why that might have been the case.
Jemima was younger than her by twenty years and infinitely cooler. She had a sharp haircut and clothes that looked like she spent time thinking about what she wore but not so much time that it was a preoccupation. And she was fun. She laughed a lot and Kathy laughed with her.
It took all of Kathy’s self-control to not let on that she was attracted to Jemima, that she thought about her all the time when they weren’t together, and that when they were in the same placeat the same time all she wanted to do was gaze at her. Not because she was worried about what it meant – it felt sonormalin some ways that Kathy couldn’t believe she hadn’t worked out before that she wasn’t really attracted to men. But first of all because Jemima was so much younger and she knew it was ridiculous to even think romantically about someone that age; also because she was Jemima’s manager; plus she had no idea if Jemima was attracted to women herself. Or, if she were, that she’d ever consider Kathy as a prospect. Kathy had never considered herself as any kind of prospect, not even when Owen asked her to marry him.
One night she and Jemima were both closing up and Kathy had told Jemima she could go home, she didn’t have to stay.
‘What if I want to?’ Jemima had said, stepping a little closer to Kathy, who had the credit-card receipts in one hand and half a glass of wine in the other. A little tipple while closing up had been her ritual for a while.
‘Um,’ Kathy had said, because what elsecouldshe say? She was flustered, with Jemima standing next to her, looking at her with those big brown eyes, smelling of some perfume Kathy couldn’t identify because she wasn’t the perfume-wearing kind herself, but it was rich and slightly cloying and to this day when Kathy smells it on some other woman she can remember how she felt as Jemima took the receipts and the wine out of her hands, put them on the table, and kissed her.
Thrilled. That’s how she felt. And relieved. Because Jemima liked her back.
Or that’s what Kathy thought at the time. Because after she left Owen and moved in with Jemima, after they had several glorious months together and Kathy felt like the world was brighter and wider than she could ever have imagined, Jemima left her for someone else. Someone around her own age. And Kathy never knew if Jemima had ever cared for her, or if she was just a way station while Jemima looked for the person she really wanted to be with.
That’s when Kathy fled north, driving from Melbourne to Noosa, crying most of the way. Somewhere past Tenterfield she realised that perhaps it didn’t matter if Jemima had never loved her back, because the way Kathy felt was all she could ever know, and that was all that was important. She loved Jemima; she loves her still. That is what she knows to be true, and that’s what she can hang on to.
It doesn’t comfort her, though. At night, after work, when she’s at home alone, trying to focus on a book or do a crossword, trying to not think about Jemima and how much she loves her, there’s no comfort.
That’s another reason why she’s been drinking. Wine lulls her into thinking that everything’s all right. She knows it’s a falsehood; she knows that in the morning it won’t be all right. But, oh, she gets those few hours of forgetting and right now that’s what keeps her going. That and the idea that maybe, one day, she won’t need to forget any more and Jemima will be just a nice memory.
It’s a good dream. She’ll wait to see if it becomes real.
CHAPTER TEN
‘Whendid you move here?’ Cynthia says, squinting out through French doors at Von’s neat back garden.
Von walks slowly towards her, using a cane. When Cynthia left Australia Von was upright and strong; so was her father. Now both of them take longer to move around and enjoy it less. Old age is no fun, Cynthia has decided.
She can see pigface and beach flax lily in the garden beds. Her mother used to grow the same flowers, always a fan of natives and less fond of flowers from the northern hemisphere. ‘Not our kind,’ she would say whenever Cynthia asked why there were no camellias or azaleas or roses in their large garden.
On a trellis by Von’s side fence there are tomato and passion-fruit vines, and a bird bath next to a garden seat. The whole thing looks like a lovely haven. The house itself has the same feeling to it: a small weatherboard cottage painted white, with white interior walls and cane furniture, books and lamps and cut flowers in vases.
‘Six years ago,’ Von says, putting one hand on Cynthia’s shoulder when she arrives. ‘The children thought I should have a smaller place. Never thought I’d live in Tewantin.’ She shrugs. ‘But it’ll see me out.’
‘Nonsense!’ Cynthia chides. ‘You’re not going anywhere.’
Von smiles wryly, her eyes almost disappearing inside folds of skin that she’s had as long as Cynthia has known her but which have grown more pronounced. ‘I will eventually,’ she says. ‘We all do.’
‘I suppose so.’
