The Last Anniversary (21 page)

I
t’s Sunday on Scribbly Gum Island. Rose sits on her back veranda with an old shoebox filled with photos on her lap. She can see the ferry, a speck in the distance, on its way over from Glass Bay, filled with visitors and their cameras and their picnic baskets and their shouting and their litter…and their purses and wallets, Connie would say, so stop your complaining.

Rose picks a photo at random from the box. Connie and Jimmy on the dance floor on their wedding day. Enigma was flower girl and Rose was bridesmaid. Jimmy is looking adoringly down at Connie’s dark head. What would it have been like to have a man love you like that? Would it have changed something fundamental in your psyche to wake up each morning knowing that you were loved, that someone wanted to touch your body even when it got all old and wrinkly?

But the thought of a man touching her hand, her shoulder, her breast, as if they were all separate possessions of his, makes Rose want to gag. Move this way. Move that way. Open your mouth. Lift your hips.

She pushes the box off her lap, so that some of the photos fall to the floor. A breeze snatches up the photo of Connie and Jimmy and twirls it whimsically away down towards the river. She lets it go. It seems nice to let them float away together on the breeze.

She is going to make herself a nice cup of tea, but first she will clean her teeth again to take away that unexpectedly nasty taste in her mouth.

So much to do. So much to do. Margie slides her marble cake in the oven and tears her floury apron over her head as she heads up the stairs to get dressed. She’s on the roster to give the Alice and Jack tour this morning, and before that she has to pop around to Rose’s place to drop off her prescription from the chemist.

Also, she’s going to have a chat with Rose about hiring a cleaner. A lovely girl called Kerrie. She’s Rotund Ron’s daughter and she’s starting up her own business called Ms Mop-it’s and Margie wants to encourage her entrepreneurial spirit. Connie always disapproved of hiring cleaners but Margie has had enough. Even her mother has started injecting an old-lady tremor in her voice and innocently suggesting that Margie might like to help her out by just ‘running the vacuum around’ for her. Kerrie can come once a fortnight and do her house, Rose’s house and Enigma’s house. They can afford it!

She notices she flies up the stairs two at a time. When she walks now her steps seem longer. She gets places faster.

She pulls off her about-the-house dress and grabs that nice skirt from last winter. She zips it up and it falls straight to the ground around her ankles.

Goodness me.

Dumbfounded, Margie stares at the skirt.

She reaches down and pulls it up. Did she not zip it up properly? No, it’s zipped all the way up. She lets go and once again the skirt slides straight to her feet. It’s far too big for her.

Last winter that skirt was too tight. She’s going to have to take it in, or even better, give it away, airily and generously, to somebody fatter than her!

Light-headed with elation, she swings her new hips from side to side and then she dances around her skirt, singing softly at first and then louder and louder.

Enigma is on her way out the door to go to a Tennis Club do. She and the girls kept playing tennis until well into their sixties, but then they decided it was getting too hard to hear what someone was saying if you were right down the other end of the court and trying to have a chat, so why not forget the tennis part and just go to ‘interesting’ functions instead.

Today they’re seeing some woman speaking about her autobiography, which describes growing up on an Italian vineyard, or something foreign like that. It doesn’t sound especially amusing to Enigma. Her own autobiography would be far more intriguing.

She has made an appointment to have her hair done at the hairdresser’s in Glass Bay beforehand, just in case the vineyard woman writer is really a cover-up and Mike Munro is going to appear on the stage and say into the microphone, ‘Enigma McNabb, this is your life!’ and shine the spotlight on her. For the last few years she has been convinced she is going to be on
This is your Life
any day now. After all, she’s the Munro Baby! She’s an Australian celebrity. It would make a very good, inspiring episode. There have been far less interesting celebrities on the show. It’s getting a bit stressful, though, wondering when they’ll surprise her, and making sure she always looks her best.

The phone rings and she nearly doesn’t bother answering it, but she does just in case it’s a journalist or something who wants to do a profile on her.

It turns out that it’s Veronika, who does want to write a book about the Munro Baby Mystery, but that’s hardly the same thing as a journalist, because it’s just
Veronika
; and also she’s far too intent on actually
solving
the mystery, which is, of course, problematic.

‘I was just on my way out, pet,’ says Enigma impatiently.

‘OK, Grandma, but can you just tell me when you’re free so I can come over and hypnotise you?’ asks Veronika.

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘Well, I realised the other day that it’s very likely you have repressed traumatic memories which could be brought to the surface under hypnosis. I could probably solve the Munro Mystery just like that.’

There is a clicking sound as if she has snapped her fingers.

Well, for heaven’s sake!

‘I’m not going under hypnosis, thank you very much. I don’t want to go under anything. I have high blood-pressure! It could be extremely dangerous for my health. Anyway, what makes you think you can hypnotise me? What do you know about it?’

‘I’ve read up on it. It seems like a piece of cake to me. It’s perfectly safe, Grandma, and who knows what could come out.’

‘No, thank you very much indeed. I don’t like the sound of that at all. And don’t you secretly try to hypnotise me when I’m not looking, or I’ll be very cross with you! I have to go now, Veronika. You can come and interview me with your tape recorder, but that’s it!’

There is silence and Enigma immediately gets suspicious. ‘You’re not hypnotising me now, are you?’

‘No, Grandma, I was just thinking. OK, don’t worry, it doesn’t matter. I’ve got another idea.’

Sophie has Grace, Callum and the baby over to her new house for lunch on her balcony. She spent hours agonising over what food to serve, looking through Connie’s old recipe books, and finally just played it safe and bought some mushroom soup and crusty bread from the takeaway section of Connie’s Café.

It’s a beautiful day and her guests seemed happy enough with their soup. Now she is serving them Belgian chocolate and Grand Marnier, her own area of expertise.

‘Do you believe in public or private education, Sophie?’ asks Grace.

Sophie has noticed Grace has the oddest habit of suddenly focusing her attention on Sophie and asking her opinion about a subject seemingly unrelated to anything they’ve been talking about. She listens carefully to Sophie’s answer but then doesn’t seem to want to proffer her own opinion on the matter, changing the subject or immediately moving on to something new. It makes Sophie feel like she’s attending an ongoing job interview.

‘Why is that on your mind? Are you thinking about enrolling Jake in school?’ Sophie tries to make it more like a normal conversation.

‘Oh, I’m just interested in whether you have any philosophical views on the subject,’ says Grace, and Sophie notices Callum, who is holding Jake, giving his wife a gentle puzzled look.

‘Well, I guess it depends on the child,’ says Sophie. ‘I think you should find the right school for your child’s personality and ability, the one which will be the right environment for them. I think too many parents pick schools as if they’re ordering a certain brand of child.’

‘
Exactly
!’ says Callum. ‘That’s exactly what I think. Some kids thrive in big, competitive schools with lots of activities, and others need a smaller, friendlier school with more one-on-one attention.’

They both look at Grace expectantly but she doesn’t say anything, just nods her head in a satisfied way and looks back out at the water.

Sophie stands up to go and put the coffee on and Callum’s mobile phone begins to ring. ‘Hello? Oh, right, yeah, hi, just a sec.’ He hands the baby over to Sophie without asking and walks off to the other end of the veranda to take the call.

‘It looks like a stressful phone call.’ Sophie watches Callum gesticulating.

‘It’s the builder,’ says Grace. ‘I could tell by the way his voice dropped an octave when he took the call. The house is taking much longer than they promised.’

‘I hear they always do.’

‘Hmmm.’ Grace’s thoughts appear to drift off. She is very difficult to talk to at times.

‘Oh, look, Jake,’ says Sophie to the baby. ‘Here’s our kookaburra arrived for a visit.’

‘He’s got a friend with him,’ comments Grace.

They watch the two kookaburras in silence for a few seconds.

‘Umm, what are they doing?’ Sophie turns her head on one side.

‘Are they fighting?’ Grace also turns her head on one side.

‘Oh!’ says Sophie suddenly.

‘Aha,’ says Grace.

The kookaburras are having furious, pornographic sex on the balcony railing. Sophie puts a hand over Jake’s eyes and Grace starts to giggle helplessly in a way Sophie has never heard before. It’s contagious and soon they are both laughing that silly, adolescent, stomach-hurting laughter you can only share with another girl. Sophie has always thought that the first time you get the hysterical giggles with a new female friend is like the first time you sleep with a boyfriend; it takes your relationship to a new, more intimate level.

The two kookaburras are certainly taking their relationship to a new, more intimate level.

Callum comes back from his phone call, just as the male kookaburra finishes off with a violent thrust and flies off, leaving the female kookaburra looking ruffled and dazed.

‘Talk about wham bam, thank you, ma’am,’ says Sophie, which isn’t funny at all really, but is enough to set them off on a new wave of laughter. Grace puts her hands on her hips and bends forward to catch her breath as if she’s been running a race. Sophie’s eyes stream as she hugs Jake to her.

‘What?’ Callum raps his knuckles against the table with a sensible-man expression. ‘What’s so funny?’

But that just makes them laugh even more.

It’s later that night. Callum is marking assignments and Grace is trying to settle the baby, but he is in a tetchy mood, and nothing she does pleases him. He keeps behaving like he’s absolutely starved, sucking feverishly at the air, but then as soon as she gets him on her breast he gives up after a few seconds, turning his head disgustedly as if he hates her. He does hate her, she knows it. She’s tried rocking him in a dozen different positions, bathing him, putting him in the stroller and pushing it up and down the hallway, giving him the dummy, taking the dummy away, closing the door and leaving him in his cot, but he just cries and cries.

It’s a pity, because on her way from Sophie’s place this afternoon Grace had felt almost normal for a few minutes. That silly hysterical laugh over the kookaburras had somehow cleansed out her head, and when Callum put his hand on her shoulder it felt comforting, not like a heavy weight. On the way home she had decided to make salmon pasta for dinner, because she knew Callum would be starved after only having soup for lunch, and that felt like a good, definite, controllable decision. She knew exactly how she would make it and she had all the ingredients, and maybe she’d have a glass of wine while she cooked.

And maybe she didn’t need to go ahead with the Plan after all. Maybe it was going to be OK. Maybe that clamping sensation around her head was gone.

But then, as they opened the front door, the baby started crying, and hasn’t let her be since. Callum said he didn’t really feel like dinner anyway–he’d had enough to eat at Sophie’s. (Soup, with a couple of bread rolls!) He was in a bad mood because the builder had called with more problems, something to do with the bathroom tiles, and the budget isn’t looking good, and he sat for ages reading the building contracts at the coffee table with his back hunched, chewing nervously on his bottom lip, while the baby cried and cried.

Now Grace’s thoughts are a tangled black mess again, and the clamping feeling is worse, more painful, because of the promise of relief earlier in the day.

‘Well, what do you want then?’ she hisses at the baby.

‘
What
? I’ll do it!’

Friends have told her that sometimes babies simply refuse to settle, and you just need to be calm and wait it out, but she didn’t realise it would feel like he was doing it deliberately. She knows she is imagining that malicious satisfaction in his cry. She knows he is a baby, not a person–he is not making a conscious decision to do this–but it doesn’t matter what she knows because she believes in her heart that he is mocking her efforts. He doesn’t like her, and she doesn’t like him, and if he doesn’t shut up soon she might throw him against a wall. Hard.

‘Callum!’

He comes out of the study immediately, looking startled.

‘What is it?’

‘I know you’re working but I just have to go for a walk. I’m really sorry, but I have to go for a walk right now.’

Your son is not safe with me
.

‘That’s OK,’ he says soothingly. ‘Get some fresh air.’

He is a much better husband than she is a mother. She dumps the baby in his arms and virtually runs for the door.

‘You’d better put something warmer on,’ calls out Callum, but she pretends not to hear and it takes a super-human effort to close the door, not slam it.

The cold air makes her eyes sting as she half-walks, half-runs down the steps and out onto the paved footpath that circles the island. It’s like the yellow-brick road, Rose always says, but didn’t the yellow-brick road go somewhere, not just round and round in an endless suffocating circle?