Page 21 of Weekends with the Sunshine Gardening Society
‘Right. Long shot anyway.’ Lorraine fakes a sigh. ‘How’s your day going? No, wait, don’t tell me: you read the paper at leisure, made a pot of tea then decided to read a book.’
‘Again with the hilarity. No – I was clearing out some stuff.’
Lorraine thinks about this. ‘Is that some kind of code for Odette getting rid of the baby?’
There’s another pause. Longer this time. Lorraine considers the possibility that she’s overstepped.
‘Nothing like that,’ Cynthia says quietly. ‘I believe she’s still with child.’
Cynthia hasn’t told Lorraine much about Odette and her situation, but Lorraine remembers how fraught it was for Cynthia at the time. As much as Cynthia loved Odette when she was born – as did Pat – being a young mother was hard. Lorraine often thought that Cynthia had put her dreams and plans on hold, even if she never complained about it. Or maybe moving overseas in pursuit of that fella was her way of complaining.
Thinking about Cynthia leaving Pat reminds Lorraine that she hasn’t yet told Cynthia that she and Pat are friends, kind of. That is, Pat and Mike are friends. They met completely separately from Lorraine, at the Noosa Surf Club, and Lorraine feltawkward about it but she can hardly deny Mike his friends. And she and Pat might have then consoled each other over the fact that Cynthia had cut them both out of her life. So she knows that Pat is over the moon about Odette’s baby and that he hopes Cynthia will be too, eventually. And she really should say something to Cynthia about that but is now the time? On the phone? Lorraine can’t see her face. She needs to see her face so she can work out if Cynthia is cross.
‘Fair enough,’ is what she says instead. ‘So what was the stuff?’
‘It was from a garden. I’ve joined the Sunshine Gardening Society.’
‘The what?’
‘It’s a gardening society. Named after Sunshine Beach. Von told me about it.’
‘Von!’ Lorraine smiles into the phone. She remembers Von well with her naughty sense of humour and her strict rules about piano practice. A real one-off, as her mother would say. Strident and outspoken before that became the fashion for women for a few years in the seventies. But ever since Nancy Reagan and Hazel Hawke came to prominence, everyone expects women to put up – silently – with men doing silly things like using the word ‘bum’ and cackling about it on national television. And mostly they do. Lorraine is willing to bet Von doesn’t, though.
‘Yes, I saw her the other day,’ Cynthia says, ‘and she told me about this society she founded. Or helped found. In the 1950s. Local women doing the gardening for people who need it. Sort of like good works. Actually, I suppose they are good works.’
‘Wait.’ Lorraine is having a memory and hoping it will fully form before it slips away again. ‘Wait … I think I know about them! My mother-in-law said something once about how when Mike was young and his father had taken off, she needed help around the place and these ladies came and raked up her leaves and pulled out her weeds. They’d have to be the same group, right?’
‘Where did Mike grow up?’
‘Cooroy.’
‘You mean he grew up in Cooroy and you’re living there now?’
‘Yes … why? You’re back in Little Cove.’
If Cynthia thinks she’s going to get away with implying that Mike doesn’t get around much or something, she can have a dose of pot-calling-kettle-black from Lorraine.
‘All right, all right. It was worth a shot.’ Lorraine swears she can hear Cynthia smiling.
‘Nice try,’ she says. ‘So, yeah. Cooroy. Not the same house he grew up in. But I wonder if Von helped his mum back then?’
‘You can ask the gardeners yourself.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, I’ve gone twice now and I like it. It’s … rewarding. We’re helping this young woman whose husband has died. He built this wonderful garden but it’s fallen into ruin. She’s working on it too, but we could do with another pair of hands.’
‘I don’t have time,’ Lorraine says quickly. Because it’s true. She can barely take care of her own place – why should she take care of someone else’s?
‘I know. But I’d like you to make time. I think you’d enjoy doing something that’s not for your husband or your boys. And it would be a way of spending time together.’ Cynthia pauses. ‘I really have missed you.’
‘Good.’
Now it’s Lorraine turn to pause because she feels a bit emotional. How silly. Cynthia ignores her foryearsand now she says one nice thing and Lorraine turns to water.
‘I’ll think about it,’ she continues.
‘Well, I asked Shirley about it and she said you can join us next Saturday at ten at Elizabeth’s house. That’s the place I was talking about.’
