What she really wanted to say was: Dear Nick, I miss you terribly, I know I wasn’t your girlfriend, but we had such a good time the day we met in Sydney last September holidays, and you said I looked like the girl in the painting and bought me a pie in the Rowe Street tea room. I wish I could see you again, and dance with you again, and I hope you can ride Toffee again soon ...
Oh Nick, I miss you. All those Saturday mornings I waited for you at my window, longing to speak to you, and you had no idea.
She regarded her reflection in the mirror. The same old face stared back. Same long, fair hair and urky brown eyes, same skinny self, not even a little bit taller. Turning side-on, she surveyed her profile, but the small rise of her bust remained the same small rise. You would think, she reasoned, that after all I’ve been through I might look a bit different, sort of more grown up. Oh well, I’ll be fifteen in April, there’s still hope!
Aunt Meredith was magnificent the day the Abbotts arrived in Sydney. Sleek in black Capri pants, crisp blouse and a skitter of high heels, red hair flying, she whirled into their new home with an armful of yellow roses, her wrists a jangle of bangles amidst the boxes of china and saucepans surrounding Angela in the kitchen. ‘Dinner at my place,’ she insisted. ‘I’ll drive over and get you at six sharp.’ And, heels clicking, she skittered out the gate, Angela giving a sigh of relief as she gathered up towers of discarded newspaper. ‘If only Meredith would just quieten down a little. Your father will get here tomorrow with the cat. We can manage.’
‘We can’t,’ Sandra objected. ‘We haven’t unpacked half our things yet. I want to go.’
Thank goodness for auntie!
At dinner, as Meredith poured a glass of wine for Angela and herself to toast a welcome, she summed it up in a few words: ‘Life is full of variables. All our paths – both real and imaginary – criss-cross down different roads.’ She sipped her wine, with a knowing smile. ‘Make of it what you will.’
To a background of piano music, seated under the climbing roses in her courtyard garden, Meredith served quiche au fromage with salad in painted Spanish bowls, and the promise of cassata for dessert.
Starving, Sandra immediately sliced her tart. Prue always ate like a pig, she thought, watching her sister across the table. She envied Prue’s ability to slide unruffled into any situation – there seemed nothing that she regretted. Sandra glanced at her mother, fussily picking at odd bits of salad on her plate.
‘Artichoke hearts,’ Meredith enlightened her. ‘I cooked them myself ... from the thistle family,’ she added, over Prue’s smothered laughter.
Unconvinced, Angela pushed the odd little vegetables to one side of her plate. There was something about her sister-in-law that she couldn’t understand. ‘Flighty,’ she’d once told Don. ‘Generous, but flighty.’
No matter how Angela phrased it, commenting: ‘Meredith lives very comfortably, but she hasn’t a job, so how on earth does she manage?’ Don brushed the question away. Or Angela would hint, ‘She’s never married, I can’t imagine how she provides for herself.’ With a shrug of his shoulders, ‘Meredith has always had private means,’ was all Don offered. ‘She did some dressmaking when she was younger, but our father didn’t believe in women working.’ So that was the end of it. Meredith kept her secret.
Sandra probed her salad for the tiny sweet tomatoes, still pondering Aunt Meredith’s earlier remark about how all our paths criss-cross ... What paths, real or imaginary?
She would think about it later in bed.
15 Bentley St.,
Curradeen, N.S.W.,
17th December, 1960.
Dear Sandy,
Thank you for your letter. I hope you are well. I miss you too, its not the same now your gone. School has broke up and I have to work in the shop like always. Lucky you to miss some school, nothing happens at the end of term, its all muck up days.
My Nonna (mamma’s mother) is coming to live with us because my grandpa is gone all strange and dont know who she is so his in hospital. I rode my bike to the cemetry on Sunday like we use to. There were people there so I didnt stay and I didnt see Angus’s grave.
I never saw Nick yet but I will tell you if I see him. The new people in your old bank have a little kid. It’s nearly Christmas and I wish you still lived here. I’m sorry I dont write real good letters in English, I never wrote one before.
Love from Emilia xxx
P.S. Yes I remember our pact XOX
Once upon a magical time the Abbots lived a half hour drive to the Denalbo polocrosse field. Now they lived a ten minute drive to the beach. Strange to live so near the sea.
Oh, it was fun for their annual family holiday at Aunt Meredith’s home in Bronte: packed into the car with beach towels, buckets and bathing caps, to drive to Bondi or Bronte beach every day, becoming salty-skinned and brown as toast, noses plastered with zinc cream. Best of all, on a low tide in the early morning, Sandra loved to search for pearly jingle shells on the smooth, washed-clean sand.
Although she ventured into the surf readily enough, trailing after her father, she never lost her fear of sharks. She hated the shriek of the siren when lifesavers spotted a dark shape cruising in the swell, the mad rush of swimmers to get out of the water. The thought of tiger sharks kept her close to the shore, itchy with sand in her bathers, picking at the sunburned flaking skin on her arms and legs, ignoring Prue’s shrill insult, Sooky baby!
Encouraged by the beckoning arms of her parents, Sandra would gather her courage and – dodging between the colourful umbrellas and sunbakers sprawled glistening with coconut oil – return to the hushing, lapping waves.
It was always the same. Maybe one day she would get used to the beach – give up comparing it with the essential freedom of the bush.
Sandra’s memory of an earlier home was hazy. It was as if she’d always lived in the small town surrounded by bushland and farms, being part of the small town bustle, and getting home early from school with time to do whatever she liked before piano practice.
Long ago she had promised herself to strive for the day when rainbow-coloured ribbons of music sang from her fingertips as easily as the songs she made up: to be the best possible pianist, invited to play in recitals and concerts all over the country – all over the world! She’d excelled in the concert last August, and everyone said her Clair de Lune was beautiful and by far the best performance of the evening. Her elderly teacher, Miss Brooks, resplendent in black with a crystal choker, her white hair rinsed blue, had almost cried.
Sure, when she left school, she’d want to go to university and study at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music – but not yet, not yet! She was just getting to know Nick, they’d even had that one perfect day in Sydney when Nick’s father sent him to enquire about the School of Agriculture at university, and she had cleverly wangled a visit for the same dates, to stay with Aunt Meredith. She and Auntie had visited the Conservatorium – Sandra’s excuse to her parents – while seeing Nick was a secret.
Together Sandra and Nick had explored Rowe Street, the inner city narrow lane lined with enticing little shops and arty studios that Aunt Meredith called a bohemian cosmopolis. Best of all, they’d visited the Art Gallery ... and while wandering the halls, Nick told her she looked like the girl in the painting, and when they said goodbye, he had kissed her on the forehead.
It had been so wonderful – she was sure it was the beginning of something special – until Nick’s accident drew a curtain across her happiness, and her family packed up and moved to Randwick. Flung there, ready or not, she was faced with a new school, no