Page 82 of Weekends with the Sunshine Gardening Society
He nods. ‘I do. But I didn’t have to take advantage of it the way I did.’
She sighs and watches a couple of bodysurfers catching a neat wave, laughing as they end up in the white water. This beach has always had these lovely waves, just right for riding. So she understands why Pat would spend hours here and further around the point. It was the way he wanted to live. It just wasn’t the wayshewanted to.
‘I don’t know that you did,’ she says. ‘We just wanted different things.’
‘Yeah.’ He taps her arm lightly, as if they’re mates and he can just do that. ‘You wanted a husband who put his wife and child first.’
Her face tightens. ‘It’s not an unreasonable expectation. When children are small they’re vulnerable and so are their mothers. Why do you think Odette wanted to move into Little Cove? Her grandfather and I can protect her.’
‘And I can’t?’ he says, his voice hard.
‘Clearly she didn’t think so. And you can’t blame a mother, Pat, for doing what she needs to do to protect her child. You also have to respect her decisions. We’re happy to have them both living with us. That doesn’t mean she won’t come back to you, and I’ll be happy about that too, if it’s what she wants.’
Pat’s name is called by one of the group – Blue, she thinks, given his red hair.
‘Go,’ she says. ‘Your mates want you.’
He flashes her a look – of anger, or dismay, or regret, she’s not sure. ‘I’ll pop round later,’ he says. ‘If that’s all right with you.’
‘You’re welcome anytime. I mean that.’
He nods, then picks up his board and walks across the sand. She decides to walk back in the direction of the breakwater to have her swim, far from Pat and his feelings.
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
Elizabeth’sfondness for the Sunshine Gardening Society has somewhat crept up on her. Considering she never intended to join, even when Shirl and Barb were standing in her garden, looking at her expectantly, she is surprised by how much she looks forward to working with the others as well as having time for herself. Not timetoherself – she has enough of that at night, after Charlie goes to bed and it’s just her and the radio. But time in which she can do something that is not only meaningful but verging on joyful. For that’s what she’s found as she works in other people’s gardens and in her own: joy in small, considered actions; in effecting change that will benefit others – even if that only means making a corner of a garden bed weed-free and knowing she’ll have to come back another time and do it again.
When she told her mother how much she liked being part of the society and the work they were doing, her mother smiled and patted her cheek and said, ‘You’ve always been kind-hearted.’ Which took Elizabeth by surprise, because there are so many days she doesn’t feel that way – when she feels mean-spirited and pessimistic; when she doesn’t think she pays attention to other people at all and is instead wrapped up in the tiny dramas swirling inside her head, which she pushes aside reluctantly when Charlie needs something or when Doctor Lopes asks her to type up a letter orthere’s a load of washing to be done or dinner to make. Kindness has never been, or so she thought, in her character.
She certainly doesn’t feel that it’s kindness that’s brought her to this garden in Doonan this morning, standing with her gloves on and secateurs in hand. It’s selfishness. Because this is something she’s doing just for her; the fact that it may help someone else is secondary. What she’ll get out of it is company and laughter, and a sense of having achieved something other than just making it through the day.
‘Dear me,’ Shirl says, shaking her head as she comes up next to Elizabeth. ‘Dear, dear me. This place is a mess, isn’t it?’
Then she grins and her eyes shine, and Elizabeth knows it’s because Shirl loves nothing more than a mess that she can transform into something lovely.
‘Bit of work here, girls,’ Shirl continues. ‘It’ll take us all day just to figure out if this is a garden or a jungle.’ She clips on her tool belt and brandishes the machete. ‘We few,’ she says with a wink to Elizabeth. ‘We happy few.’
Elizabeth laughs as Shirl plunges into the overgrowth that looks like forest oak and acacia, with some ferns and barbed wire grass thrown in. She wants to warn Shirl about the grass but that could be seen as condescending: Shirl knows more than any of them about the vegetation around here.
‘Have you ever met anyone so happy to destroy things?’ Lorraine says as she puts on her gloves. ‘Then make something lovely afterwards?’ She shakes her head as she smiles. ‘She’s a card, that Shirl.’
‘I don’t know where she gets the energy,’ Elizabeth says. ‘I think she’s about thirty years older than me and I’m not that energetic now.’
‘I know what you mean.’ Lorraine’s smile is swift and sad, and Elizabeth is taken aback. Lorraine is usually as lively as Shirl.
‘Anyway, how areyougoing?’ Lorraine says. ‘And we can start over here, I think.’
She moves towards a part of the garden that hasn’t yet been attacked by one of the others, then turns to look over her shoulder, as if to check that Elizabeth is still there.
Elizabeth isn’t sure how to take the question: does Lorraine want to know the nitty-gritty, like how she still cries at night sometimes when she tries and fails not to think of Jon? Or does she want the superficial answer that goes along the lines of, ‘I’m fine, work’s good, Charlie’s happy at school’?
The enquiring look on Lorraine’s face tells her that she’s waited too long to answer.
‘It’s a genuine question,’ Lorraine says. ‘I want to know. You’re grieving. Sometimes it’s good to talk about it.’
Elizabeth talks to her parents regularly about how she’s feeling or coping or not coping, and Olive has been great, but she’s not used to answering a direct question from someone she’s not even sure is a friend. Or maybe this is Lorraine’s way of making friends?
‘I’ll go first, if you like,’ Lorraine says as she kneels down. ‘Which is not why I asked you – to talk about myself, I mean. But sometimes it’s easier to talk when someone else tells you something, right? So here’s my situation: my husband’s lost all our money and then some.Poooof– gone.’
