Page 99 of Weekends with the Sunshine Gardening Society
‘Are you struggling?’
The question is so bare – so frank – that Elizabeth doesn’t know if she’s ready to answer it. Except Lorraine is, as she said, trying to be her friend and Elizabeth could use her friendship.
‘Yes,’ she says.
‘You know what? I’d think something was off if you weren’t. Your husband hasn’t been dead that long.’
Elizabeth flinches.
‘Sorry,’ Lorraine says. ‘I use the D word. “Passed away” always sounds like someone’s dissolved rather than died.’
‘No, it’s all right.’ Elizabeth sits with it.Dead.Said out loud. By someone other than her. Yes, he’s dead. She’s relieved that Lorraine has said it, because even her parents are given to saying ‘passed away’ and it’s always felt too soft for what has actually happened.
‘But I don’t …’ She closes her eyes and remembers a hymn from this morning. ‘Jerusalem’ – somewhat clichéd now, yet it almost invariably makes her cry. As the lines rang out, ‘Bring me my bow of burning gold/Bring me my arrows of desire/Bring me my spear’, she wished, in that instant, to have those weapons.If she were so armed – by God, or by herself – she would have more courage to face each day. She doesn’t know how to come by them apart from through prayer, and her wish for them isn’t something she wants to share aloud. Not yet. And unless she can tell Lorraine that part of what went on in church, she doesn’t think she should tell her any part.
‘I don’t think anything that happened in church today was particularly interesting,’ she says. ‘That’s why I said “fine”.’
Lorraine looks at her askance. ‘Sure,’ she says.
Elizabeth smiles. ‘The boys sound like they’re having fun.’
For another few seconds Lorraine stares at her, then she too smiles and pushes herself up to standing. ‘They do. My version of fun is eating some of that cake you brought, so let’s put on the kettle and get into it.’
Elizabeth stands too. ‘If you give me a knife I’ll cut it up.’
‘And I suppose we should take some into Her Majesty in the sitting room,’ Lorraine says with a sigh.
‘Who?’
‘Mike’s mother. Don’t worry, she won’t bite – she likes strangers because they’re people who don’t yet know what she’s really like.’
Elizabeth laughs. ‘Is she that bad?’
‘Only if you’re her daughter-in-law!’ Lorraine says with false cheer. ‘Actually, we’re getting along better now. She, uh … stood up for me, to Mike. Never thought I’d see the day.’
Elizabeth is tempted to ask what happened but Charlie and Simon appear at the door, breathing raggedly and asking for cordial.
Lorraine pours the cordial and prepares the tea as Elizabeth cuts the cake, working in tandem as they have done in gardens, no effort, just easy in each other’s company, and it occurs to Elizabeth that this right here, these seemingly unremarkable moments, might be the crown of life she has been waiting for.
FEBRUARY 1988
GOLDEN EVERLASTING PAPER DAISY
CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE
‘Thisroom looks exactly the way your mother kept it,’ Von says as she glances around the sitting room. ‘I meant to say that on Christmas Day.’
All the doors to the outside are closed, to keep out the summer heat – not that it’s really helping. There’s a small fan going in one corner that provides not much relief, and Cynthia is holding a fan which she uses from time to time. She’s talked to her father about installing air conditioning but he thinks it’s ‘unnatural’. After years spent living in Los Angeles, where everyone had every mod con, Cynthia thinksnothaving it is unnatural. But it’s not her house – or ‘not yet’, as her father likes to say.
‘I didn’t realise you’d spent much time here when Mum was alive,’ Cynthia says, searching her memory.
She always went to Von’s house for piano lessons, although she had a piano here.Hasa piano here, because it’s still in this room, although she hasn’t touched it since she returned. She’s both scared she won’t have any skills left and scared she will, because if she starts playing she may become as obsessed as she used to be, fixating on one Chopin piece after another until she got them ‘right’.
‘Your mother would sometimes have the society ladies over for …’ Von raises an eyebrow.
‘You were about to say “tea” when you meant something else, didn’t you?’
‘Drinks, Cynthia, that’s what I was really going to say.’ There’s a twinkle in Von’s eyes that Cynthia can’t ever remember seeing in her mother’s eyes. Perhaps she had it when the society ladies visited. ‘We had some raucous times.’
