Freia Lockhart's Summer of Awful (27 page)

I hardly ever catch trains, and I've never caught one outside the city except for when we had an excursion to Ye Olde Towne in Year Five, to learn about gold panning and convict flogging. My main memory of that train journey is of puking all the way home after eating too many ye olde lollies. Gran, on the other hand, is a seasoned rail traveller, as she tells us at length in the car. She and Grandad once took the Ghan all the way from Adelaide to Darwin.

After Mum drops us off, we get our tickets and find the platform for the coastal line where the train is already waiting. I go to get on the first carriage we come to, eager to put down the heavy backpack, but Gran yanks me back and leads me all the way to the other end of the train. She walks the length of the empty carriage before selecting seats in the front bank of four.

“Golden rule of train travel, Bloss,” she says as she takes the window seat and puts her bags on the one facing it, “always sit as close to the front as you can. All the lazy people get on at the other end, so the carriages are more crowded and the loos are used by more people, too.”

Her words are still hanging in the air when the carriage fills with other voices. I look round to see a crowd of silver, grey and lilac heads. It seems every pensioner in town knows the golden rule.

The oldies take forever to sit down. There's a lot of chatter about who's sitting with whom and who needs to be on the aisle because they have a weak bladder and who gets travel sick if they face backwards. It's pretty much a replay of the Ye Olde Towne excursion, except this lot doesn't have a teacher with them to tell them to sit down and shut up. They're still negotiating the seating arrangements when the train pulls out from the platform.

“Excuse me, ladies, but is that seat free?” asks a man, pointing to Gran's bags.

“Certainly.” Gran puts her handbag on her lap and wedges her tote between us. “I'm Thelma Beauford and this is my granddaughter, Freia.”

“Stan Majors,” says the man, shaking hands with each of us before sitting down. He tells us that he's with the other seniors, on a University of the Third Age trip to investigate tidal pool erosion. (So I wasn't that far off with the school excursion after all.) As he talks, I can't help staring at the silver tufts of hair sprouting from his ears. They wave mesmerisingly in the breeze from the train's air conditioning.

Stan and Gran trade stories for a while. She tells him about moving to Queensland and that she's come down to support her daughter through her “women's troubles”, and Stan tells us about his dear-Marjorie-may-she-rest-in-peace, and the obligatory photos of grandchildren are pulled from wallets. Gran obviously feels that Ziggy and I can't compete with Stan's six grandkids, so she plays her trump card and tells him that she and I are on a daytrip. She even makes it sound like it was
my
idea.

“It's our special day together, isn't it, Bloss?” she says, reaching over the tote to squeeze my shoulder. “We're going all the way to Little Ridge.”

At the mention of our destination, I turn my head so fast that I snap a muscle in my neck. Gran takes advantage of my wincing to avoid eye contact, quickly asking Stan about dear-Marjorie-may-she-rest-in-peace to keep up their conversation.

I rub my neck with my left hand and use my right to root around in Gran's tote until I find the train timetable. The station map on the back confirms that Little Ridge is where the coastal line terminates. My stomach gurgles loudly. It's either sick at the thought of how Dan's going to react to me showing up unannounced or a reminder that I didn't have a chance to eat breakfast this morning. I open the trail mix in the hope that it's the latter.

By the time the built-up outer suburbs have given way to fields and paddocks full of sheep, I've eaten about half a kilo of nuts and seeds. When the train lurches around a sharp bend, the trail mix threatens to reappear. I know I have to stop eating and calm myself down so I close my eyes and try to remember the positive-thinking visualisation we learned in Health and Development last year. The idea is that you imagine yourself succeeding at whatever the big scary task ahead of you is, and that makes you feel like you can do it. I count to five as I inhale, hold the breath for a beat and then exhale for five. After a few deep breaths like this, I conjure up an image of Dan. He's coming out of the surf, his wet hair slicked back from his face and droplets of water running from his broad shoulders and down his chest … hang on, I'm veering out of positive visualisation and into steamy fantasy here. Time to focus. I take a few more deep breaths until I see Dan on the beach again. This time he's fully clothed, which is much less distracting. He's walking towards me, smiling. This is going well, so far. He gets closer and closer to me, grinning happily. Then, when he's close enough to touch me, he keeps walking. Straight past me. I turn towards where he's going and see a blond girl standing on the beach behind me. Kristy. When Dan reaches her he stops.

“Are you all right, Bloss?” I open my eyes to find Gran and Stan staring at me. Gran must be worried because she's paused her knitting mid-stitch.

“You sounded a bit funny,” says Stan. “Like you couldn't catch your breath. Is it asthma?”

I shake my head and straighten up in my seat. “I'm fine. I must've dozed off.”

Obviously, thinking about Dan is not going to help me at this stage. What I need is distraction. I glance around the carriage, hoping to spot a discarded magazine or newspaper, but there's nothing. In desperation, I reach into Gran's tote and pull out the wad of bright blue. I put the right needle into the back of the first stitch and begin reciting the rhyme about the bunny.

I'm so engrossed in repeating the rhyme that it seems way too soon when a crackly voice announces over the intercom that the next stop is Little Ridge.

Little Ridge train station is a weatherboard hut in the middle of a short platform. On the front of the hut is a handpainted sign that says Stationmaster and Tourist Information Office, under which a chubby chocolate-brown labrador is fast asleep, its eyes and legs twitching as it chases something in its sleep.

We follow Stan and his cohorts off the train, out into the blazing midday sun. I'm keen to ditch the others ASAP so I can ask Gran what the hell she thinks she's playing at and demand we get on the next train back to the city. Maybe one day Dan and I will look back fondly on my grandmother's attempt to interfere in our relationship, but for that to happen we still have to be in a relationship, and I'm pretty certain that won't be the case if he finds out I'm stalking him, even if it wasn't my idea. I trudge behind the silver-haired crowd, waiting for Gran to notice that I'm not with her.

“Stan's invited us to join their group for the afternoon,” says Gran, dropping back a couple of steps. “What do you say? I've always wanted to find out more about tidal pool erosion.”

We're out of the station by now, standing at the top of what appears to be the main street of the town. On one side is a neat row of shops, on the other is a grassed path beyond which lies the beach. The crystal-blue water is dotted with wetsuited surfers paddling their boards out to sea and little kids playing with the inflatable toys that Santa brought them.

“What are we doing here?” I ask her.

Gran widens her eyes in fake surprise. “We're having a lovely day at the seaside.”

“Yeah right. A lovely day at the bit of the seaside that just happens to be where Dan's mum lives.”

“Does she, Bloss? Well, isn't that a coincidence! I thought the name Little Ridge sounded familiar, but I couldn't remember where I'd heard it. Perhaps you should give Dan a call and see if he wants to join us for lunch? It'd be a pity to come all this way and not see him.”

I pull my arm out of Gran's grip and stop dead, dropping the backpack on the ground in front of me. The oldies behind us swerve left and right to pass. A woman who's forced to put the brakes on her walker pauses to give us the death stare. Gran gives her one right back.

“What were you thinking?” I ask Gran, not caring who hears me now. “I don't even know where Dan's family lives, let alone where to find him during the day. And if I wanted to visit him, I'd come on my own. Just because you've been around for a long time doesn't mean you know what's best.”

Gran looks hurt. “I'm sorry, Bloss,” she says, taking a crumpled, lipstick-stained tissue from her pocket and dabbing her eyes. “I just wanted to help. You're obviously miserable without Dan, and he sounds pretty much the same, so I thought if the two of you could just talk–”

“How do you know what Dan sounds like when he's miserable? You've never even met him! And what makes you think that me turning up unannounced is going to make things better? If anything, it'll make me look so crazy and clingy that he'll never want to see me again.”

Gran puts the tissue back in her pocket and holds up her hand to stop me talking. “Okay, Freia, that's enough. I thought I was doing something nice because I can't bear to see you suffering like this, but obviously I thought wrong. I'm sorry.” Her voice has the calm-but-angry edge that Mum's gets just before she sends you to your room. She pulls out the timetable and studies it. “The next train back is in an hour and a half. Why don't we have some lunch and a walk on the beach while we wait for it?”

I'm tempted to say no on principle, but she does look genuinely remorseful, and the train station would be a pretty boring place to kill time. In any case, the chances of bumping into Dan in the next ninety minutes are virtually non-existent – from the way he talked about Little Ridge, I can't see him hanging around the beach.

I pick up the backpack to indicate that I'm willing to go along with her suggestion and Gran loops her arm through mine again. “If we hurry, we can catch up to Stan.”

Luckily for Gran, a large group of pensioners on a beach is hard to lose. We spot them sitting along the stone wall that separates the beach from the grassed path. There's a chorus of grunts and groans as socks and sandals and various styles of orthopaedic footwear are removed. I wait on the grass while Gran goes to see Stan. I keep my back to the group, partly to avoid watching Gran flirt and partly to avoid giving passers-by the impression that I'm hanging out with a bunch of nannas by choice.

“Stan asked if we'd join him for a picnic lunch,” says Gran when she returns a few minutes later. “You don't mind, do you? It's not as if we've got anything better to do, and he's such a nice fellow. He said the shop across the road does the best fish and chips he's ever had – shall we put it to the test?” She pulls out her wallet and hands me a note without waiting for me to answer, then heads back to where Stan's waiting for her.

The fish and chip shop is called Sharky's. Either they really do make great fish and chips or there's nowhere else to buy lunch in Little Ridge, because there's a queue. While I wait to order, I scan the locals in the line ahead of me. Board shorts, thongs and sun-bleached hair seem to be the uniform for teenagers of both sexes. Dan must get some pretty harsh looks walking down the street here in his tight black jeans and vintage T-shirts. The only people that'd be more out of place are the poor guys behind the counter who have to wear caps with sharks' teeth on the brims and pointy fins on the tops.

I place my order with a bored-looking girl who hands me a receipt and tells me to wait until my number's called. Then she calls for docket number twenty-two to collect their order. My docket says thirty-seven. I decide to wait outside.

I know I told Gran that I don't want to see Dan, but of course a small part of me can't help fantasising that he'll happen to be passing while I'm standing outside Sharky's. He'll do a double take and say, “Freia? What are you doing here?” Then we'll fall into each other's arms and he'll tell me how much he's missed me. Confronting him about lying to me doesn't really fit the scene, so I push the thought aside. There'll be plenty of time for that when he gets back to Parkville. Assuming he's ever coming back to Parkville.