L and E took me to see Florence Foster Jenkins for Mother's Day. I thought it was a comedy, but came out in a very reflective mood.
Florence Foster Jenkins was a very wealthy woman who lived in a hotel in New York and patronised the classical music scene. The film explores the last few years of her life, in the 1940's, when she was in her 70's and very ill. Her illness, however, was not made much of in the movie. She had a passion to sing on stage, and despite the fact that she couldn't sing a note in tune, persisted with her efforts, taking on the most difficult of coloratura soprano arias, until finally hiring Carnegie Hall and singing to 3000 people. It was at Carnegie Hall that the 'but the Emperor has no clothes' moment finally arrived. It was, apparently, the first public concert she gave, all previous concerts had been by invitation only, and therefore excluded music critics. This time, a music critic from the New York Times attended, and spared nothing in his review. FFJ not only loved to sing, but believed that she had true talent. She appreciated other opera singers, such as Lily Pons, and had trained as a classical pianist, so it's interesting to wonder why or how she failed to hear how tragically bad her own singing was. The illness she had was syphilis, and herein lies the clue as to her remarkable self delusion. She had had it for forty years, in fact, and was into the third stage, and treating herself with mercury and arsenic. I haven't thought about syphilis for a long time. It's one of those illnesses which has receded into the past, thanks to the advent of antibiotics. An STD with initially relatively mild symptoms, it emerges like a monster in a horror movie after decades, attacking the brain and nervous system. Degeneration into madness is relentless, and death inevitable. I remember a number of patients in the back wards of the old psychiatric hospital I worked in in the 70's who had end stage syphilis. It was called dementia paresis, and was not pretty. One of the very characteristic symptoms was delusions of grandeur. Patients would think they were members of the Royal family, or that they were immensely wealthy, or that the plastic beads around their neck were diamonds. They would believe themselves adored and admired, and saw themselves as dispensing largesse to everyone around. (FFJ gives 1000 tickets for her Carnegie Hall concert to war veterans - a very typical gesture.) They would think they were beautiful, when in reality their faces were ravaged by their illness. It is plain to me that FFJ's belief that she could sing opera was a symptom of her illness. It was a pathological delusion. Had it not been for the protection afforded her by her actual wealth and an apparently doting husband/partner, she no doubt would have been incarcerated in an asylum like so many others were. Much of the tension in the movie comes from the elaborate and sustained effort by those around FFJ to collude in the pretence that she can sing. They support her delusion, encourage it. Anything that threatens to confront it is smoothed over, blocked, or explained away. Everyone around her tells lies, big and small, in order to support the central, grotesque delusion. The rationale for this is that 'we love her.' Also, there was the unspoken threat of financial support being withdrawn if anyone ever confronted FFJ with the truth. Self delusion of course can exist without an obvious underlying medical cause like syphilis, although the clarity and totality and distinctness of it's manifestation in third stage syphilis makes me think that all forms of self delusion may have a pathological cause, albeit unknown. Sometimes people may believe that they are doing a good job, when in reality they're performing poorly. People may think they are the most amusing person in the room, whereas in fact everyone is bored witless by them. Someone's conviction that they are right about something may resist all evidence to the contrary and all efforts to convince them that they're not. I wonder if being deluded about yourself is similar to having a false body image, for example, an anorexic who actually weighs five stone, may have an unshakeable conviction that they are overweight. Could it be some actual neuronal trick of the brain that makes us have a perception of ourselves that doesn't accord with reality? We used to be taught in psychiatric nursing that the right way to respond to a patient's delusions was basically, 'I understand that you believe X, but in fact that is not true.' It's the opposite approach of course, from the way the people around FFJ treated her. Their failure to reflect the truth about her exposed her to ridicule and notoriety, although she was apparently blissfully unaware of this. She collapsed and died very shortly after reading the NYT critic's review. It is of course the nature of delusions to make you blind. How can you even know you have one if no one tells you?
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January this year was wet and cool. January in this part of the world is usually hot and dry, of course. It was a very unexpected turn of events. The garden soaked up the rain, but normal plant development was out of kilter. Plants got bushy, but didn't flower.
In February, the rain dried up and the temperatures rose. It was an unprecedentedly hot end to summer, with weeks of temperatures in the high 30's and 40's. Autumn began unusually warm, and has stayed warm. There was a second crop of raspberries, which was prolific and still continues. The tomatoes suddenly went mad, and produced a bumper crop. But I was watering, of course, with water pumped from the river. Without this, there wouldn't have been much of a garden at all. The plants hated the scorching sun, and many frizzled up, even when they were watered. It's hard not to love a prolific second crop of raspberries, or the sight of a couple of jonquils flowering already, or the daffodils I have planted only a month ago already popping shoots up. It's a version of the pleasure people express at the 'lovely weather', that means extra time at the beach, or sitting late outside a café in April because it's still so beautifully warm. Perhaps too a microcosmic version of the excitement some multinational companies are feeling at the thousands of kilometres of new territory that is being opened up by the melting of the permafrost. People in the Maldives losing their country because of rising seas are not excited. Nor are people living in northern Alaska who are losing their homes and livelihood because of the melting permafrost. I wonder if there was once a time, perhaps not so very long ago, when they were happy that their summer went on longer, perhaps the children could play out of doors for a few more days, and they didn't have to rug up quite so much. At what point, I wonder, did they stop loving the long summer, and start dreading it? This is what I feel at the sight of the daffodils pushing up now in the garden. Alarm, concern, dread. Delight is what you feel in Spring when the bulbs come up, signalling that winter is coming to an end, that nature's sure diurnal round brings new life again, and that the knowledge you have about growing things (not just decorative plants either, but FOOD) is still good. This morning, I woke up to rain. I could hear it, lying in bed in the dark. I got up and pulled the curtain, and saw grey clouds hanging low over the whole, valley, and the rain falling like a mist. Years ago, such a morning as this was not such a welcome sight. You'd have cursed having to change plans, stay inside, battle heavier traffic. You'd have been glad when the rain stopped. Now, I am happy when it starts. Now, I long for an end to the relentless march of hot sunny days. I check the weather forecast nearly every day, (something I never used to do), and my heart sinks. I check the sky for the clouds that often drift past, disappointed and anxious that they are so rarely rain clouds. We check the pasture - the grass is not growing, the ground is dry as a bone. We worry about the cattle - will they have enough to eat through winter? Now this morning, rain! Relief, happiness! I go out and feel it on my face. I listen to the water trickling down the pipes off the roof on its way to the rainwater tank. I check the rain gauge - only 5 mls so far, but I am superstitious about saying its not enough; I'm grateful for any at all. A faint rainbow forms briefly, then a much heavier shower chases it away. Up in the top of the huge old eucalypt at the back of the house, a group of galahs look as if they are being blown about by the wind. But then I see that they are actually hanging upside down quite deliberately, spreading and flapping their wings, then righting themselves, shaking themselves off, and then doing it all again. They are bathing in the rain! By lunchtime, we have had 10 mls, the sun is out again, and I know that's it. My anxiety about it - about climate change in my own tiny part of the world - does not blow away with the clouds, but is a settled and permanent part of my life. We haven't been to the coast much since moving to the country, but when son and daughter in law, E and F, invited us to join them on their seaside holiday for a couple of days, we eagerly accepted. F had sold some puppies for an outrageous amount of money, and went online looking for somewhere at the coast to take the kids for the whole school holiday. She found the very house at Lake Tabourie where we used to go for our holidays, years ago! When E was a baby, we did a camping holiday at Termiel, just down the road from Lake Tabourie. No disposable nappies in those days. I had three buckets on the go, (no running water), with Nappy - San and cold salt water, and quite a lot of sand. Never again. Our camping days were done for a while, (30+ years, as it turned out). Friends took us for a weekend to a house they'd found through the ANU at Lake Tabourie. We fell in love with it. It became our 'little house by the sea', and we had several holidays every year there, until E and C were well into their teens. Could a more perfect place for a holiday with children be imagined? The estuary teems with fish and bird life. You can sit on the rocks right outside the house and fish, or launch the kayak and potter off upstream if you're old enough. A little path winds along the side of the estuary through the bush to the beach. It's sandy and strewn with leaves, and can easily be managed barefoot. You can take the path up over the sand hill to the ocean beach, a broad sweep of golden sand, unspoilt bush and sand hills, and the huge, sparkling Pacific. Or you can take the left hand path along the estuary, with endless possibilities for play - in the shallow, clean water, or climbing the steep sand hill right at the edge and sand surfing down into the water, or making sand pies and castles, or sand gardens among the reeds, or burying your Dad in sand, or digging the biggest hole anyone ever dug before. Or you can walk on across the sand bar to the Island, waves from both sides washing round your legs - sometimes higher! - the dogs barking in excitement, your Mum with her bag on her head to keep it dry. And you're there, on your own island! The only other people usually to share it with are a few fishermen round on the rocks. Sandy bays, rock shelves, friendly waves, shady caves, and finally, the place you go to every time, where the rock makes a natural wall that defines your magic world - of a tall, bush clad cliff, and a generous stretch of sand, and a big rock pool with a sandy bottom, shallow at the edge, then suddenly quite deep, with corners, and nooks and crannies that seem endless, and full of tiny fish and sea creatures of every kind. This is where Mum and Dad and Grandma and Grandad sit and lean against the rock wall, and watch you catching fish with your net, and draw your attention to any pelicans and sea eagles flying overhead, and doze. Nothing has changed. Among all the busy, almost urbanised South Coast holiday spots, from Tathra to Milton, this place remains a backwater. Possibly because there isn't a single shop. 'Julie's Corner', at the turnoff on the highway, closed down years ago. It was always pleasantly shabby, a treat to take the children for a walk there for ice creams; later, they would take themselves. Good for bread and milk. Now, the site is derelict, and most people roar past at 100kph, and don't know Lake Tabourie even exists. How sweet to return to a place that seems to have entirely missed out on progress and improvements! The house is still owned by the same people. It has undergone some improvements, but to my relief and delight, they only enhance comfort and accessibility. The relaxed, informal, family feel is exactly the same. I go from room to room in wonder - still the same green bath! and the yellow and green mosaic tiles that hardly showed the sand and dirt all week! Repainted, but with the same bright yellows and blues. Still the wooden floorboards, the screen door crashing every time you went through it, the dark pantry full of the owner's rather interesting crockery and staples. And the broom cupboard. (My daughter L, who has come down with us, opens the door of it and says, 'There used to be another world in here!') I have a photograph of my mother, in her floppy sunhat and skirt pulled up to her thighs, sitting leaning against the rock wall, legs stretched out - how she loved to sunbathe! She's smiling. I sit now in the same spot, where I have sat many times. It is a grandson, H, who I watch. He has a net, and he's waded in up to his thighs already, too late to take his shorts off. There are tiny pale grey fish with spots, and black and white striped fish, and shrimps. Some much bigger fish come out from their hiding place, see H, and quickly go back again. Some crabs crawl over the rocks. He swishes the net, intent on the clear depths of the pool. 'Oh look, what's that bird?' I say. He looks up briefly. 'It's a pelican, Grandma,' he says, and goes back to the task. He comes wading out with his prize in his hand, not smiling so much as shining with the pleasure of it, and shows me - a large star fish, playing dead. We all admire it, then he carries it carefully back into the pool. His Dad watches, tells him to be careful with it, tells him to put it back where he found it, gazes out at the sea. Five o' clock is the hour. Aldi's Precious Earth sauvignon blanc is the bottle. I pour a glass, and I swear it makes a sound like no other liquid. The first sip is always the best, by far. Cool, sharp, and tangy, it seems to burst in my mouth like a sherbet lolly. All subsequent sips fall short.
I rarely have more than two glasses, and unless I'm having lunch with a friend, I don't drink at any other time of the day. (Christmas morning excepting. There may be other exceptions.) I look forward to this time of the day though. I'll survey my progress through the day from time to time - time for a nap, good job done in the garden, what to take out of the freezer for dinner? - and I'll think of 5 o'clock, anticipate it, as if it might be a reward for my endeavours during the day. 'I just like to have a glass while I'm getting the dinner,' I tell anyone who I feel needs an explanation. No one really does. Sometimes, I miss a day. Usually when I've been in to town all day, and I get home tired and not feeling at all like cooking, and somehow all I really want is toast and a cup of tea. (I think this phenomenon may have its roots in childhood, when we had been out all day on a Sunday drive, picnicking, blackberrying, picking flowers and the rest, and when we got home, Mum would serve 'tea' instead of dinner, and in the lounge by the fire instead of in the dining room, and it would be hot buttered toast, homemade jam, and a pot of tea.) People say you should have one or two alcohol free days a week, and if you can manage this without feeling strung out, you're probably OK. After the family returned to the N.T. a few weeks ago, I had four straight alcohol free days. It was fine. Really. I drank sparkling mineral water. There was a bottle of wine left in the pantry, but it was a quite expensive one, and I didn't want to open it 'just for me.' I felt happy, and relieved, that I didn't miss my little five o'clock pleasure at all. When I next went up to town, I restocked with Precious Earth, and got right back to where I had been. Years ago, when the kids were little, or thereabouts, I would drink sherry at 5 o'clock. Sherry! What kind of an oldies, outdated, weirdo drink is that? Well, the one my mother used to drink. And cheap. And amazingly pleasant and drinkable. And a pretty small amount can make you quite squiffy, (as my mother used to say she was, after a few.) I used to just have one glass of sherry. Part of the pleasure used to be the glass, actually. I would either use the sherry glass that my father hand painted with delicate coloured flowers round the rim, or one of the cut crystal glasses that my nephew gave me once. (I have this one present from him, and one from his father, and I value them both very highly.) It was so nice having that glass of sherry, that I started having another one after it. And at some point I noticed I was having a third, and I said, 'This must stop.' And I did stop entirely, for a long time. Then I discovered wine. I have been reading the writer Joyce Maynard's recent articles about her 'relationship' with wine. She too was drinking two, sometimes three glasses every night. She decided to give it up completely, and now describes herself as 'a hundred days sober.' Although she stops short of defining herself as an alcoholic, she does raise interesting questions about where the line lies between her kind of drinking and alcoholism. Sometimes, reading her, I thought she was making a song and dance out of not very much. I read articles on health sites that tell me a glass or two is actually good for you, (I'm vague on the details.) I could stop, just like Joyce Maynard, and like I have already done, several times, in the past, without any difficulty. But its too nice a little thing, why should I? The old apple tree fell down. I was standing quite close to it on the lawn, pondering some question about the garden-in-my-mind, which flourishes everywhere in the years ahead of me. An odd cracking and creaking noise brought me back to the present, but I'd hardly had time to wonder what it was when I saw the tree fall, gracefully and slowly, in an arc of fluttering leaves and snapping branches.
'Oh no!' I said, 'oh no!' But there was no denying the reality of a very large old tree lying on its side. Its torn roots snaked in the air, still dripping a bit of soil, and there was a large hole in the ground. It was, of course, my favourite tree. When we first bought the property, I worked out that the group of old fruit trees must have been planted in the early 1890's. This was when the writer Miles Franklin lived here, as a little girl of about 9 or 10. She came here with her family from Talbingo, and although she was only here for a couple of years, she loved Brindabella all her life. Her father built a house in the place where our house now stands, and I still find bits of pottery and glass from that time when I'm gardening. I don't know whether it was her mother or her father who planted the fruit trees - apples, pears and quinces - and perhaps other kinds as well, but along with the elms, these are the only ones which have survived. One hundred and twenty five years of growing and bearing apples! Every year, about Christmas time, the cockatoos would begin checking to see if the crop was ripe yet. I soon learnt that they like their apples slightly under ripe, so managed in some years to pick a few before the birds stripped the tree. What a delightful surprise when I first stewed some! Knobbly and green and small as they were, as soon as the peeled slices reached boiling point they transformed into the most luscious, soft, creamy-yellow frothy apple stew. Modern so-called Granny Smith apples almost never do this, and I am endlessly disappointed by them. What a treasure these unprepossessing little apples were! Now I'm kicking myself for not saving any seed. The tree had grown into a fairy tale shape, leaning slightly, whorls and scars of old branches along its trunk marking events in its history I had not witnessed, and gnarled branches drooping heavily to the ground. I had planted violets underneath it. My neighbour came over and said I should make a fairy garden in the hollow under the roots. I started to imagine children climbing up the trunk and jumping off the end, and making cubbies under the splayed out branches. I wondered about planting another tree close by - an old fashioned apple perhaps? Or a liquidamber? And I wondered, as I often do, how old the trees I have planted here will grow. In another hundred years, will someone be walking underneath them, loving them, and wondering about who planted them? Will someone see them fall? A parcel came today. Narjip, our lovely, obliging postman, came all the way down the drive with it, 400 metres off his route, and tooted the horn at the gate. A very large cardboard box! I knew what it was - the bulbs I'd ordered from Melbourne.
I put it on the dining room table, and took to the box with scissors. All so carefully wrapped. Some little green plants, secure and upright in their plastic moulds, appearing not to have minded their 4 day journey in the dark at all. And packages of heavy bulbs. Big, brown, fat jonquils and daffodils. Bearded iris with bright green shoots already sprouting from their sawdust packing. Tiny, plump crocus and feathery light-as-butterflies Bethlehem stars. Smooth, hard Dutch Iris to plant among the lavender bushes. I could not wait until tomorrow. Got the dinner organised quickly, and went outside with the packet of mixed crocus. I knew exactly where I wanted to put them - among the little nooks and crannies and corners in the rocky 'dry creek bed' that E made for me along the front of the house. I have now, finally, almost finished planting this particular garden bed. Many of the plants have been replaced twice, sometimes three times, giving up to the frost, the scorching afternoon sun, the relentless rabbit attacks, or just simply deciding the rocky surroundings and shallow sandy soil wasn't for them. Now at last, a garden is emerging here, lots of creeping thyme and oregano, a hibertia, a scrambling rose, the beautiful green succulent roses from my grandson's Dad's cactii collection (which I inherited), and blue convolvulus clambering about. I planted crocus in this bed last year. The first bulbs to emerge in late winter, the vivid purples and yellows against the grey river rock and dull mulch were a thrilling surprise announcement that Spring was near. Next year, I said to myself, I will plant more. Now it is early Autumn, and the time is here. Late afternoon, the sun still warm, but a sharpish breeze tells that the night will be cooler. I get down on my kneeler, pull the mulch away, and break the soil with the trowel. The rocks are like a shelter, a built garden place that nevertheless looks like just the kind of place my crocus might choose to start a new life, if they could. I push them carefully into the holes I make with the trowel, making sure they're the right way up, cover them over with soil, and replace the mulch. A magpie is chortling somewhere. A large black cricket rushes away from the disturbance in the soil. Orange tinged clouds fan across the sky. The breeze stirs the old elms. Down in the dark, moist earth, something will stir in the crocus bulbs soon. I will look every day, as I pass in and out of the front door, thinking of it, and waiting for the first sign. We don't see many movies these days, but I was determined to see The Lady in the Van. Maggie Smith is one of my all-time favourite actresses, and I have laughed and cried over Alan Bennett's writing for many years.
The shorts for the movie emphasised its comedic aspects, honing in on Maggie Smith's ridiculous, cavalier, cantankerous attitude to everything, and the witty one liners. Of course, Maggie Smith would sell any movie. Its got to the point now where she only has to raise an eyebrow to get a laugh. (Bill Nighy has a similar effect - watching the shorts of the new movie he is in, 'Dad's Army', I was in stitches every time he appeared, even though he didn't say a word, and did nothing.) I wonder if many modern Maggie Smith fans have seen 'The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie'? - a very un-funny film, as I recall. At turned 80, she is a most amazing actress, to still have the stamina alone - turning up, learning new stuff, being a completely professional participant in a lengthy team process, going through hours of gruelling make up and wardrobe stuff day after day, being in almost every scene. Doesn't she get tired? I have read a review of this movie that says Maggie Smith 'rescues' it. That it would be some sort of confection without her. That it has virtually no plot, and is generally lacking in substance. So why did I enjoy it so much? - apart from watching Maggie Smith? What engaged and fascinated me was (playwright and screenwriter) Alan Bennett's exploration of the constantly shifting line between 'real life' and 'fiction.' I can't recall another movie in which the screenwriter is also the protagonist. Plenty of first person narrators, but that isn't the same thing at all. This is a movie about how you write a story. There are two Alan Bennetts in the movie - the Alan Bennett who is having the real life experience of Miss Shepherd and her dreadful van parked in his driveway for 15 years, and the Alan Bennett who is writing about it. The 'real' story is constantly filtered through the writing. Alan Bennett the writer takes notes of the day to day occurrences between Alan Bennett and Miss Shepherd, but what does he choose to include? What 'angle' does he put on it? What story, in the end when she has died, does he want to tell? As a writer, the process of how you use real life experience in works of fiction has teased and tormented me from the beginning, and it was intriguing to see the whole dilemma laid out here. The writer self and the self who is living real life are in constant communication, making assessments, judgements, ignoring the obvious to focus on a jewel-like detail, leaving out huge chunks of living, searching for meaning. Bennett is courageous enough to even ask how much being a writer actually influences what writers DO in real life. How far would the thing with Miss Shepherd have gone if it weren't for his writer's curiosity to see where the story went? The real life story is a 'vehicle' also for an exploration of the writer's self. Bennett constantly questions his motives and feelings about Miss Shepherd, and invites the audience to do the same. 'I am not a carer!' he almost shouts at the social worker. 'I am not caring, I don't care!" It is funny, but also deeply puzzling. What is caring, if not this? Who does care, if not Bennett? He denies any relationship with Miss Shepherd, and yet he does all the things that a very good friend, if not even a son, would do. The writer carefully contrasts his relationship with his actual mother, who he puts into a nursing home, with his not-a-relationship with Miss Shepherd, and asks by what means you can judge how much anyone cares for some one else. He judges himself harshly. 'You're just timid,' his writer self concludes, when he questions why he has made no real attempt to move Miss Shepherd on. But timidity and tolerance are shown as two superimposed faces. How much does motive matter in the end anyway? asks the writer. There is much guilt and self recrimination in Bennett the writer's view of himself. He rings his mother infrequently, does not want her to visit, does not show affection to or even ever touch Miss Shepherd, except in a moment of atypical rage when he manhandles her. 'I'm just raw material', says his mother, and I flinched at the writer's honesty at showing us this. The ending of the movie, which might otherwise be seen as frivolous and over-the-top, is a perfect and perfectly logical conclusion to the story of how to write a story. Miss Shepherd appears in the graveyard after her funeral, as large as life, and meets the young motor cyclist who she inadvertently killed in a crash years before. This incident had been the trigger for her becoming homeless and identity-less - she was in fact a woman on the run from the police, and haunted by guilt about what she had done. But the writer exonerates her with a stroke of his pen - 'it wasn't your fault,' the young man says, 'I ran into you.' There is nothing to forgive, and they wander off chatting happily arm in arm. But why not have her completely exonerated by God as well? the writer asks. One in the eye for Catholicism, the punishing practice of which has done Miss Shepherd no good at all over the years, and the writer has her suddenly ascending to a gloriously opening Heaven, to be received by a genial, generous and open-hearted God. It is what writers do. If you can arrange the facts of a woman's life, unchronologically, selectively, and always with a judicious eye to telling the story YOU want to tell about it, why not also engineer a fairy tale ending - the one Miss Shepherd herself would have wanted? It works in the film because it is as funny and incongruous and unexpected as everything we have been shown of the life of The Lady in the Van. Real life rarely evolves in the form of a satisfying plot. Making sense of it usually involves mental acrobatics of some sort. Whether or not we are writers, we are forever sorting and rearranging the facts to form the narrative of our lives that we want to tell. The Lady in the Van provides a fine and witty example of how this is done. In the dark of the night, I woke up very suddenly. From a deep dreaming sleep, to wide awake in an instant. I knew what had woken me - not a noise, or a bad dream, but a question. It was a fully formed question, although not one I had ever asked myself before, and it seemed urgent. It was this: How is it possible that I only ever saw my grandmother once?
I lay half in a panic in the dark, dredging up every scrap of memory and every bit of information about my grandmother. There wasn't much. This was my father's mother - my other grandmother died when I was a baby. My father was an only child, so there were no uncles and aunts or cousins on his side of the family, and his father had died before I was born. So the only family he had, that I knew about, was my grandmother, living on her own about five miles away on the other side of the Potteries. Try as I might, I can only remember seeing my grandmother once in the ten years from my birth to the time we emigrated to New Zealand. The occasion was this: my mother took my sister and I over to see her for a 'fitting.' My grandmother was a seamstress, and she was making my sister and I winter coats. And as soon as I start to remember this, I hits me with the force of a revelation that this was a ruse on the part of my grandmother to get to see us. For all I know, she might have made up many schemes and plots over those ten years to get to see her two little granddaughters, but this is the only one I remember ever worked. We take the bus to the other side of Hanley. It must have been a Saturday morning, as we don't have school, and my father is at work. There is a strangeness to the whole thing, we've never done this before. 'Where are we going?' I'm sure I said. 'To see your grandmother,' my mother would have replied. 'I didn't know we had a grandmother. I thought Grandma died when I was a baby.' 'This is your father's mother, not mine.' 'Well, why are we going to see her now?' 'Because she is making you both coats for winter, apparently, and they're an expensive item and not to be sneezed at.' I have made up this rather waspish tone of my mother's, but I'm sure its pretty accurate. If she had liked her mother in law, I surely would have had a relationship with her of some kind. We walk down a long road of old brick terrace houses. When we get to Grandmother's front door, my mother says, 'Behave yourselves now, your Grandmother is not well.' The material of my half made coat is green, and coarse. It prickles my skin. It has a waist, and flares out. Its full of pins. My mother says, 'Stand still!' She was always saying this. I was no novice to having clothes fitted, my mother sewed all my dresses and knitted cardigans and jumpers, even bathing costumes! But she had never attempted a coat. My grandmother is fat, at least, this is what my sister and I say afterwards. She is fat, and her house smells. What does it smell of? Small dark rooms, and things that haven't been moved for years, and grease used over and over again, and of course, loneliness. She measures the hem from the floor. My legs are bare and cold. My Grandmother's head bobs about below me, grey curls drifting rather wildly about her shoulders. She has a grey cardigan on. 'Oh dearie, its all higgledy piggledy!' she says, 'I'll have to go round again.' 'For goodness sake Stephanie, stand still,' says my mother, ' or we'll be here all day.' Could she have been so cruel? Yes, because she couldn't have my Grandmother thinking there was going to be a repeat visit. Afterwards, my Grandmother makes tea. We stand and watch her while she bustles about with a big green teapot and a tea cosy. We sit at the kitchen table, perched on the edge of the chairs. There are some yellow, sticky, soft things to eat. 'I thought the children would like these,' my Grandmother says, passing the plate. 'No thank you,' I say, remembering my manners. Perhaps I have made up the memory of my father coming home with the finished coats one night. I do remember that we wore them. I didn't like wearing mine, because the material prickled my skin. I have no way now of solving the riddle of why it was like this. My mother was an independent, reserved person, who didn't like interference, Perhaps she had an early experience of her mother in law that made her decide - never again! But if so, why didn't my father take us to see his mother? Did he even go to see her himself? I don't know. There's a thin light spreading across the top of the mountain to the east. Its five o'clock, and my head aches with questions, and a yearning sadness. I have one other clear memory about my Grandmother. A year after we went to New Zealand, I saw my father crying. Not open, loud sobs, but his eyes overflowed silently, and his cheeks shone with tears. He was lying on the couch in the sun room, and he'd been reading a letter, which he held crushed in his hand. My mother told me to come out of the room, and hush. 'Your Daddy has just had a letter from a solicitor,' she said, in a whisper, 'to say that his mother has died.' On the Antiques Roadshow, people are always saying, 'Oh, this was passed to me by my Grandmother,' or 'my Grandmother gave it to me many years ago.' There is nothing in my house that came from my Grandmother, nothing at all. The green coat, of course, was left behind when we left England. I never wanted it, until now. As each new stage of life rolls round, I recognise the same period in my parents' lives, and I see it with fresh eyes, and understand my parents better.
Right now, I'm remembering how my Dad used to complain all the time about his aches and pains. He took to groaning and sighing loudly when he had to get up from his chair. He'd heave himself up, bent double, face furrowed, rubbing his legs for intolerable minutes on end. You couldn't look, it was so irritating. You never asked, 'What's the matter?' or you'd get a long, sorrowful account of each ache and pain, its history, and most particularly, its mystery. What could have caused it? And why did nothing he ever did seem to help? Mum had no patience with it at all. Sometimes she'd ask him to go for a walk with her as they'd always used to do, but he'd shake his head and say his legs hurt too much, or just that he was 'full of aches and pains.' She really didn't believe in his aches and pains, she thought he was putting it on, although now I don't know why she - or we - thought that. If it was a play for sympathy, it was spectacularly unsuccessful. I'm remembering about this now because of the arrival in my life of the same stage -the stiffening of muscles and tendons, the soreness of feet, the consciousness of moving carefully, the general slowing down of everything. My right leg aches, (femoral artery being irritated by old back injury? ligament damage? - there are varying opinions); I have an intermittent shooting pain in my left arm, (old bike accident); my fingers and toes seem to have lost their flexibility and become stiff and sore, (arthritis?); and my lower back pain has returned after years in remission (bending double with garden shears snipping edges for a couple of hours). You move more slowly, because something hurts, or you're afraid if you not careful, it will. But there are only so many times you can tell people about it. With most, probably once. Your aches and pains are a very, very boring subject for other people. Adult children in particular want you to be upright, mobile and conscious, and showing minimal signs of mortality. As with my father years ago, people can be impatient about what's causing the problem, and what you're doing about it. There's an implication that there must be a remedy, you can't keep on complaining about the same thing. But the remedies have very little efficacy, because the cause really is just getting older. Things are simply starting to wear out. Once, I could walk really fast, leaving everyone behind, long, sturdy strides, firm, solid steps. I could walk for miles and not get sore feet or aching legs. I could climb mountains. I could pick up children, and not only carry them on my hip, but pack a lunch box at the same time. I could push a shopping trolley through a car park without endangering life. I could ride a bicycle, paint a ceiling, and jump - literally - in and out of a car. Now, I can garden for several hours at a stretch. I can walk down to the river, and back up the hill. I can sit on the floor and play games with the children. I can cook dinner for fourteen people. I can write, shop for birthday presents, and sew a quilt. In his last years, my father seemed to get a new lease on life. He bought himself a brand new car, made new friends, and learnt to shop and cook for himself. He took to exploring the country roads around the city, and investigating old pubs. He complained very little. Perhaps he had learnt to live with the aches and pains. Or perhaps he just finally took my mother's advice and started counting his blessings. My eldest daughter has been having an extended holiday with us, thanks to her partner's long service leave. Next week, they're off back to the Northern Territory, and I don't know when I'll see her again.
We've crammed a lot into the time, but somehow it never seems long enough. Last week, we decided to have a mother/daughter day, and she and I went up to town together. First we shopped for birthday presents, trying to find a make up bag for the other daughter/sister. and a copy of Winnie the Pooh for my granddaughter. (I actually found a nice copy in what's left of the book department in David Jones! Very much looking forward to reading her the first few chapters before she goes.) Then we had lunch at the Portrait Gallery - delicious; and we looked at all the nice things in the extremely nice shop there. Bought a couple more birthday presents. Then we went to the Tom Roberts exhibition. It was blissfully quiet. We talked softly together about the paintings of Rickett's Point and Mentone, and I told her about how her Dad and I used to spend hours on those bayside beaches as teenagers. I stared at the brown, muddy rocks in the painting, remembering how soft and crumbly they are. I could almost feel the texture of them, and the briny smell of the tame little waves. The little figures were doing just the same things we used to do, paddling, sitting on the rocks, picking up shells. We admired the portraits, gesturing to each other to come and look at our latest finds. 'You can feel how thick her hair is!' 'What an extraordinary face!' 'How respectful he seems to be towards all those women he painted!' She wandered into the Childrens' Activity Room, and didn't come out for a long time. I found a chair and sat, thankfully, and gazed at a picture of boulders above a pool in the bush, and a horse looking strangely discomposed in one corner, (he has apparently just heard a shot fired, I read later!) I wondered how TR had managed to paint the HEAT. My daughter came out eventually, very pleased with herself, as she'd spent the time making a birthday card for her little girl. As we left the exhibition, she took my hand - she often does this when we're walking in the street. She said how glad she was that she had seen the paintings, - thanks to my persistence, she said. We stopped in Manuka, me to Coles, flagging a bit now, thinking of what supplies we needed to take home, while she had a last look for the make up bag. It was not to be found, but another gift was. I waited outside the shop, while the assistant made a major performance out of wrapping it up. We made faces at each other through the glass, it was taking so long. 'Like Rowan Atkinson in that scene from Love Actually' we giggled when she came out. She had to stop at the bank in Woden. I waited for her outside again, watching the people going past. An elderly woman was approaching, she would have been in her late 70's perhaps. She had seen me before I saw her. She was looking straight into my face, and smiling a searching, gentle smile. I smiled back, and she walked right up to me. 'I was looking at you,' she said, 'and I thought for a moment you were my mother. But my mother's dead, of course.' She touched my arm softly; she was leaning in towards me, her face quite close. 'Oh, I'm sorry I wasn't!' I said. We both laughed quietly, as if we were old friends. There was a sort of confusion of hands and arms as I touched her too. Then she walked on. It has happened to me, of course. Once it was the hair of a woman sitting with her back to me at a concert. Soft, greying, close cropped waves, exactly so, but the moment she moved her head the illusion was lost. Once it was a whole person, a little woman in a crowd, walking briskly, her face turned away from me. Again, the rush of recognition dissolved in a heartbeat. When my daughter came out of the bank, she took my hand. 'Let's have a coffee,' she said, 'before we head home.' I didn't mention my encounter with the elderly daughter. |
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