Page 88 of Weekends with the Sunshine Gardening Society
Cynthia is now forming an idea of how high the stakes of the relationship with this Jemima might have been, which would understandably add to Kathy’s distress at the end of it.
‘Did she sweep you off your feet?’ Cynthia smiles to show Kathy that she would understand if that had been the case.
‘Bowled me over,’ Kathy says, sounding relieved. ‘I was so shocked.’
‘You must have been. That sort of thing tends to be a surprise, no matter who causes it.’
Cynthia gestures to the path ahead to show they should keep walking. She doesn’t want them still out here picking up rubbish in the middle of the day, when it will feel like a wet blanket has been laid over everything.
‘Was your …’ Cynthia considers how to say the next bit.
‘I left my husband for her,’ Kathy supplies, saving her the trouble.
‘Then she left you?’
Kathy nods quickly, trying to be brave, Cynthia can see, but failing.
She stops again and picks up Kathy’s hand, patting it. ‘I’m sorry to upset you.’
She releases the hand, never one for lingering gestures of affection. She’s made her point and that’s enough.
‘No – it’s fine.’ Kathy wipes her eyes with the backs of her hands. ‘I’m really glad you brought it up. I didn’t know how to.’
Cynthia nods and walks on. ‘It’s funny,’ she says, ‘how these decisions of the heart can be so clear in the moment and so hard to talk about later.’
She glances at Kathy, who seems to be okay. Certainly there are no more tears.
‘I was so sure that I fell in love with a surfer I met right about here,’ she goes on, gesturing to the ocean and remembering the lanky American who walked up to her while she sat on the rocks with Odette, waiting for Pat to come in from a surf. He’d asked her name and Cynthia felt like the world had shifted off its axis. ‘I left my husband for him. Moved countries.’
Kathy looks shocked.
‘Once we were in the United States, though, I couldn’t explain why I’d thought it was such a good idea to follow him. I still desired him. But it wasn’t enough. What I felt for him only made sense while I was here. And by then it was too late. I’d changed too many lives to go back.’ She glances quickly at Kathy. ‘Not that I think you should go back to your husband. The circumstances are quite different.’
‘I still changed a few lives, though,’ Kathy says.
‘We can do that even without trying, you know. And there’s a lot to be said for trying, as a woman, to claim happiness for yourself. We’re so often told our happiness only comes from serving other people. It’s not true. Some things we have to take or create for ourselves.’ Cynthia pauses. ‘So I guess it’s no wonder we sometimes make mistakes when we try. We don’t have a lot of practice.’
They have reached the patch of bush that she chose the other day. ‘Here we are,’ she says, and she moves off the track and into the scrub.
She’d told Kathy to wear socks and sneakers and long pants if she could bear them, because their legs could get scratched otherwise.
‘Not everyone is like Jemima,’ Cynthia says as she takes a large plastic bag from her pants pocket, ready to put rubbish into it. ‘I hope you won’t give up on creating some future happiness for yourself.’
Kathy looks wistfully to the ocean, then back at Cynthia. ‘I won’t. Although I sometimes think I’m never going to meet someone I like as much.’
‘It’s a common problem,’ Cynthia says. ‘I have it myself.’
They both laugh and Cynthia feels relieved that the conversation hasn’t gone as awkwardly as it could have.
‘Do you have somewhere to go on Christmas Day?’ she asks, which was something she had already planned to ask. Nothing quite as wretched as spending Christmas alone, as she knows.
‘No,’ Kathy says. ‘I mean, I think my children will be in Melbourne. We haven’t actually talked about it.’
‘You’re welcome to join my rabble,’ Cynthia says. ‘You know where the house is – we worked near it recently.’
Kathy nods.
‘We eat lunch around two. Just come over whenever you feel like it before then.Ifyou feel like it, that is.’
