Page 18 of Weekends with the Sunshine Gardening Society
‘I have no idea what that is.’ But Cynthia wonders why not, when clearly it was something Von was involved with for years.
Von gives her a funny look. ‘I was one of the founders. In, ooh …’ She scrunches up her eyes. ‘Nineteen fifty-four. We were a small group. Mothers. Our children were in the same year at the primary school, and our husbands …’ Her smile is sad. ‘I waslucky with mine but the war did him no favours. Some of the other women had a terrible time. Those men – they were damaged, but they wouldn’t speak of it.’ She shifts her cane further along the couch. ‘We needed something positive to do. And we wantedbeauty. Do you know what I mean?’
Cynthia isn’t sure she does – not in the way Von seems to mean it.
‘We all need beauty and passion in our lives, don’t we?’ Von is animated now, sitting a little further forwards. ‘Otherwise why are wehere, Cynthia? What is the purpose of it all?’ She doesn’t appear to want an answer.
‘Some of us got talking. We liked gardens but we couldn’t grow anything we wanted to. This climate,’ she gestures towards the French doors, ‘isn’t conducive to several types of plant. Or flower. So we swapped tips about how to grow things. Then we started hearing about the occasional person who needed a hand with their own gardens. The elderly.’ She snorts. ‘Probably younger than I am now. Or a young mother who had her hands full. We thought we could do some good.’ She gestures to the scrapbook. ‘So we became the Sunshine Gardening Society. And it’s not what you think – one of the founders lived in Sunshine Beach. Just as well, or we might have been the Peregian Gardening Society, which doesn’t quite have the same ring to it. And we quietly went about our business, helping out locals, then the council. We were quite the thing.’
‘I …’ Cynthia smiles weakly. ‘I had no idea. How can I not know this about you?’
Von gives her that funny look again. ‘But your mother was in it,’ she says. ‘That’s how we met. She joined after I’d been in it for a while. We were happy to have her. She was younger than the rest of us, and she was passionate about native plants when none of us knew much about them.’
This revelation makes Cynthia’s stomach drop. Her mother? In a group with Von? How could she not knowthattoo?
‘I can see you’re confused,’ Von says. ‘Diane never told you, clearly.’
Cynthia shakes her head.
When Cynthia was a teenager and spent most of her weekends on the beach, her mother would occasionally insist that they go for a walk, just the two of them, into the bush on the Noosa headland, where she’d point out native trees and flowers. Cynthia barely paid attention – partly because anything her mother was interested in was inherently nothing she liked. Moreover, it wasn’t really the sort of information her adolescent brain wished to take in. But she wishes now she had.
She wishes too that she had come back more than once when her mother was sick, instead of being wrapped up in her Los Angeles life. She was trying to polish the veneer of her existence, going to parties, being bright and sparkly and winsome, letting everyone think she was fabulous and charmed. It was a shallow existence, and meanwhile the substance of her life was here. As Odette seemed to have detected on her own, right before she moved back. At least Odette had been close by as her grandmother ailed. Cynthia had let them both down. Except no one had told her how sick Diane really was. When she called – infrequently, yes, but often enough to make it clear she wanted a report – her father said her mother was ‘fine, just fine’. The last time he said that was a week before she died.
‘But you probably neverasked, dear,’ Von says. ‘We mothers like to have our secrets – as I’m sure you know – but we get away with so many of them because no one everaskswhat we get up to in a day. When your children and your husband think you’re just their servant, they overlook you.’
‘I didn’t – ’
‘You did,’ Von says firmly. ‘Wealldid. We take them for granted, our mothers. But they were people too. You and I are people too, are we not?’
Regret grabs hold of Cynthia again. She never spent the time she should have with her mother. Now, there might be a way to redress that.
‘So you think I should join this Sunshine Gardening Society?’
Von nods. ‘I do. And I can put in a word. They need members. Everyone’s so busy these days. No time to help anyone else.’
‘You’re not a member any more?’
Von gestures to the stick. ‘Not for a while. But I know what’s going on.’
Cynthia laughs. ‘I would never suspect otherwise.’
Von shuffles to the edge of the couch. ‘Come on – I’ll show you my garden. Get you used to the idea.’ She looks up as Cynthia stands. ‘Because mine is one of the gardens you’ll be working on.’
Cynthia laughs again. ‘Ah – an ulterior motive.’
This time she gives in to her impulse to help and offers her hand to Von, who takes it and hauls herself to standing.
‘Always,’ Von says, squeezing her hand, ‘and never.’
Cynthia keeps hold of her old friend as she leads the way to the French doors and out into the sunshine.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Thefirst day Shirley and Barbara arrived to work in Jon’s garden, Elizabeth thought she may explode with worry. She was grateful for the help, yet the second Shirl brandished her trowel Elizabeth felt a weight of responsibility for ensuring that the garden be taken care of the way Jon would do it, if he were here.
Not to mention that she would be spending time in the company of strangers. She’s never been one to be overly familiar. Or casual. She’s always been slow to make friends and slower still to lose them – or so she thought. Jon’s death appears to have swept a few of them away on a tide of not wanting to witness her grief. So instead of friends in the garden there were strangers, prodding the dirt with tools and pulling at branches, and she wanted to yell at them and say it was like they were poking and prodding Jon – except she knew she was being melodramatic, even if it was just in her own head.
That first day Elizabeth mainly watched and tried to catch whatever it was Shirley and Barbara were muttering to each other. That’s when they weren’t reminding her to call them Shirl and Barb. Which she just can’t. Not yet. Nicknames are for friends, and they’re not her friends. They’re kindly neighbourhood ladies who feel sorry for her and her half-orphaned child.
