‘What a relief to be out of there,’ Margot says as she and Lexie stop off for a walk and a coffee at the Boatshed Café on their way back from the hospital. ‘I don’t know how Phyl can bear it but she won’t budge. How long do you think they’ll let this go on?’
Lexie shrugs. ‘Hard to tell, but not much longer I suspect.’
Margot nods and they walk in silence along the path, disturbing a flock of seagulls that rise in unison heading out over the choppy water. ‘I was going to say it feels as though everything has come to a standstill waiting for Donald, but of course it hasn’t.’ She hesitates, choosing her words carefully. ‘Rosie, who has a particularly good nose for news for one so young, tells me you’re going back to university.’
‘Ah!’ Lexie says. ‘Sorry about that, I was going to tell you myself, this morning actually.’
‘She blurted it out while we were doing our survey of the Botanic Gardens,’ Margot says. ‘Naturally I pumped her shamelessly for details but you know Rosie, she only provides the headlines. Was it a secret?’
‘Not really a secret,’ Lexie says. ‘Rosie must have overheard me talking to Wendy. I wanted to get some advice from her and make up my mind before I told anyone.’
‘I think so. You know, Mum, if the practice hadn’t collapsed I would probably have stayed in the same rut, but it happened and now I’m forty-eight and unemployed, and it can either be a disaster or a chance to start again. Do something new.’
‘Would you do the same degree?’
Lexie shakes her head. ‘No. I know I did well in the sciences at school but it wasn’t what I was most interested in. I’m going to do art history.’
‘Art history?’ Margot stops walking and turns to her. ‘Lexie, how wonderful. It’s been your passion for so long. Of course that’s what you should do.’
‘Really? You don’t think I should be a bit more responsible, go for something vocational where I can get a job when I graduate? After all, by then I’ll be over fifty. I’ll get something part-time of course . . . while I’m studying.’
Margot laughs and slips her hand through Lexie’s arm as they walk on. ‘I’m sure you will, and you’ve spent more than twenty-five years being hugely responsible in every way. Now it’s time to do something you really want to do. I’m delighted, Lex, really I am, and your dad will be too. Will you get any credit for what you did before?’
‘Probably not, it’s too long ago. But Wendy’s arranging for me to talk to a colleague of hers at university to get some advice. Oh look! There’s a table free on the deck. You grab it and I’ll go and order the coffee. Will you be warm enough out here?’
Margot nods and claims the table, watching as Lexie disappears inside the café. It’s such a relief to have her back, and not just back home but more like the old Lexie, the one she was before Ross, before she embarked on the struggle of trying to make that relationship work. Well now she has the chance to start again and no one, in Margot’s opinion, deserves it more.
‘I’ll have to get a part-time job,’ Lexie says, bringing the coffee back to the table, ‘but I’ll be okay. All these years I’ve been putting my money away and now I feel as though I know what I was saving for. So you really think it’s a good idea?’
‘The best. And we always said we’d go to Florence together, so now we absolutely have to!’
‘We certainly do. But first of all we just have to hope they’ll let me in.’
‘Of course they’ll let you in,’ Margot says, scooping the froth from her cappuccino. ‘I’m so pleased for you; it’s the next best thing to doing it myself. I always wanted to go back and finish my degree.’
‘So why didn’t you?’ Lexie asks. ‘I mean, I know you dropped out when you got pregnant with me, but couldn’t you have gone back later, when Em and I were at school?’
Margot shrugs. ‘It wasn’t that easy. Laurence and Bernard were in Europe and I was on my own with you and Emma. It was all a bit of a struggle. I did think about it in the late seventies after Whitlam abolished university fees. There were a lot of women my age who went back then and I actually got accepted.’
‘I remember that now,’ Lexie says. ‘I remember you talking about it and asking me how I’d feel if my mum was a student.’
‘That’s right.’
‘What did I say?’
Margot smiles. ‘You were horrified. You said you’d be terribly embarrassed and you wouldn’t know what to tell your friends.’
Lexie groans and hides her face in her hands. ‘Oh, Mum, I’m so sorry. How awful of me. That wasn’t what stopped you though, was it?’
‘No,’ Margot says, laughing now. ‘I thought you’d survive the embarrassment. What stopped me was the money, or rather the lack of it. Laurence was paying maintenance but Emma wasn’t far off high school and you were a teenager and planning on going to uni yourself. I think I was just kidding myself when I applied; I needed to keep working. I was working for Derek Matthews at the time, the lawyer, do you remember him? He was a lovely man and it was a good job with decent pay. It was him who pushed me to do that paralegal training in the eighties, a bit like Dr Faraday sending you on the management course, so I just stayed on there and kept working.’
‘And you never made it back to finish the degree.’
‘No, too late now.’
‘You must have felt terrible when I dropped out.’
‘Oh well, it was a bit disappointing but I kept hoping you’d go back. And now you are. And what about Ross? You’re still sure you did the right thing?’
‘Absolutely sure,’ Lexie says. ‘The right thing for both of us.’
‘You’ve seen him then?’
Lexie nods, and sips her coffee. ‘He rang and asked if he could come by and pick up a few things he’d left in the garage. It was really weird, we actually had a proper conversation, something we hadn’t done for ages. I think we were both just relieved that we didn’t have to pretend anymore.’
‘So, no regrets?’
‘No. But I do feel quite sad about wasted time, and about the fact that I’ve got to this age and still can’t get the relationship thing right.’
‘You’ve got plenty of time,’ Margot says. ‘And you know, Lex, some people are actually better on their own. Being single has quite a lot going for it. Anyway, there are other things to think about now – being a student again, what a challenge that’ll be.’
Laurence seeks out a flat shelf of rock near the lighthouse and sits on it. It’s a relief to get away from the rest of the party. Tempers have been wearing thin over the past weeks and exhaustion, blisters, cuts, torn muscles and aching limbs are only a part of it. It’s the sociability. Friendships pushed to the limits by too much time spent together in strange and difficult circumstances, but most of all, he thinks, it’s the Camino itself; the very nature of the country, the tracks, the history and the traditions around it do seem, inevitably, to create the sense of a pilgrimage. Even those, like Laurence himself, who began as sceptics seem to surrender to it as though recognising that it really was the emotional and spiritual challenges that brought them here. It’s decades since Laurence gave up on religion and started speaking of himself as a humanist, but now he’s not so sure. There’s something about the places they’ve passed through, the peaceful villages, the cool and silent interiors of the churches at dawn, the swish of cassocks and rosary beads, the incense curling blue-white above altars, the stillness of the countryside. And there’s the obvious, unapologetic faith of the people – the locals and the pilgrims themselves, their commitment, their respect for the journey and what it means, people doing this for the third or fourth or, in a couple of cases, the eighth time – that has made him think again. From the end of the first week, as he struggled with pain, exhaustion and many dark nights of the soul, Laurence has felt himself drawn into the spiritual power of the Camino, and its consolations and challenges have made him question what he does indeed believe.
He leans back again against the rock enjoying the silence and the cold salt wind off the ocean. Finisterre. The edge of the world some guide books call it, the most westerly point of Europe: finis terre, the end of the land. Before him the ocean stretches westward to the coast of America. He had thought he might have to give up once they made it to Santiago, the final destination of pilgrims, but once there he knew he wanted this, this strange remote fishing village perched high above the Atlantic on the edge of the continent. Somehow he’d convinced himself that if he made it here it would be a significant marker – an epilogue to his life with Bernard, a sign that it was time to start again. And so, he thinks, he will leave it here, the burden of loss and sadness, and when he turns away from the ocean to the land a new stage begins, the solitary life which he must now learn to live after almost half a century of being a husband and then a partner. Tomorrow a bus will take them back to Santiago and from there a coach trip and the start of the tedious airborne journey home.
‘One hundred bucks,’ Griff says, appearing alongside him and choosing a slightly lower level of rock. ‘I suppose I’ll have to pay up. I honestly never thought you’d make it, mate. I thought we’d be shipping you off home by the end of the first week.’
‘To be honest so did I,’ Laurence admits. ‘In fact I was desperate for an excuse to escape in the first few days, but pride got the better of me.’
Griff nods, looking out across the ocean. ‘Thought so, but I’ve got to hand it to you, Laurence, as the least fit, most underprepared person in the group you’ve made a fist of it. Better than some of the others.’
‘Odd, isn’t it,’ Laurence says, ‘the effect it has, the power of it. I feel changed by having done this.’
‘I said that to Sheila just this morning,’ Griff says. ‘And she said “Oh you’ll soon forget all about it when you get back home.” But I’m not so sure. I’ve thought about things, felt things these past weeks on the road that I’ve never thought about or felt before. I don’t want to forget about it.’ He clears his throat and his voice is gruffer when he speaks again. ‘I want to use it . . . for the future . . . for as much of it as we have left at this age.’
In all the years he’s known Griff, Laurence has heard him talk about almost everything. He could probably recite Griff’s views on foreign policy, the future of China, the need to develop a nuclear power industry and everything that’s wrong about soccer and right about Aussie rules, but he’s never heard him talk like this before.
‘That’s just it,’ he says. ‘And you know what? From the minute I got that sense of what I was really doing, I wished I’d done it years ago. But now that it’s over I’m glad I did it now, when I can appreciate it in a way that I think I could only do at this age.’
‘Last chance,’ Griff nods. ‘Know what you mean.’
They sit in silence for a moment and Griff lights up a small cigar. The bluish smoke drifts past Laurence reviving a memory of Bernard, years earlier when he was only in his thirties, reluctantly accepting a cigar pressed on him by a colleague in a Prague café, and almost passing out as he took his first draw.
‘Anyway, Laurence,’ Griff says, ‘a bet’s a bet. Will you have it in dollars or euros?’
Laurence hesitates, thinking, and he’s about to tell Griff to forget about it and then he changes his mind. ‘Euros, please. I’ll match it with the same amount and we’ll put it in the collection box in the church in Santiago, a parting gift. I think it would be a good way to wind things up.’
‘They all look so young!’ Lexie says, glancing around at the students wandering the paths with backpacks and spreading themselves across the low stone walls and seats beneath the trees. ‘Some of them look as though they should still be in Year Ten.’
‘Mmm,’ Wendy agrees, ‘and frankly that’s where some of them belong! But I think it’s more a sign that we’re getting old.’
They are on their way from Wendy’s office to meet her colleague in the café and Lexie is suddenly daunted by the size of the place and the casual confidence of the young people around her. ‘Don’t remind me!’ she says, her own confidence sinking lower by the minute. ‘I’m going to stick out like a sore thumb if I do this.’
Wendy stops walking and turns to look at her. ‘You won’t, I promise.’ She glances around, craning her neck to get a better view, and then points towards the library building. ‘Look,’ she says, putting her hand on Lexie’s arm, ‘over there, that woman on the steps of the library, the one in the green shirt – see her?’
Lexie looks to where she is pointing and sees a woman with long grey hair and a backpack sitting on the steps talking to a couple of younger women.
‘Enid,’ Wendy says. ‘She’s sixty-four and five years ago she was doing just what you’re doing now. Her husband had just left her for a thirty-two-year-old nail technician with plastic breasts, so her confidence was at zero and she was very fragile. I really don’t know how she got herself here to enrol but she did and she stuck with it; started from scratch like you, and now she’s onto her PhD. You won’t be on your own, Lex, there’s plenty like you. Every class you take you’ll find two or three mature-age students and they’re most likely to be older than you.’
Lexie watches Enid, talking and laughing now with a couple of young men who have joined her and her companions. It’s obvious that she fits easily in this group, seems, in fact, to be at the heart of it. She stretches her arms behind her head, picks up her hair, twists it into a knot and fixes it in place with a chunky clip taken from her bag, then moves off with them up the steps and into the library. Lexie struggles to visualise herself on those steps, with that same confidence, the same air of fitting in, but somehow she can’t quite see it. It’s not only the predominance of all these smart young things, so much smarter, she is sure, than she is, and with the advantage of recent study experience under their belts, but it’s also the numbers and the way they are wandering vaguely around the campus. There is no sense of order.
‘And don’t think these guys are smarter than you because they’re young,’ Wendy says, as though reading her mind. ‘They’re not, and they’re often paralysed by shyness, and really worried about looking stupid and uncool. You’ll be surprised, Lex. Most of the older people who enrol totally underestimate the value of life experience in a university, but the younger students recognise it and appreciate it. Despite what you see the classroom is where the age barriers really will dissolve – if you let them.’
Lexie nods, not entirely convinced, and they walk on, weaving their way between the students chatting in groups, or strolling alone, their ears glued to mobile phones or plugged into their iPods. It seems chaotic, such a culture shock. She had been telling herself that going to uni would also bring shape and order to her life, the sort of order that she was used to at the Faraday practice. But of course it’s not like that at all. At Faraday’s she created and maintained the order, she had employed and trained the administration staff, she had run the place like clockwork, and even the nurses and partners did as they were told on things relating to the organisation and running of the place. She was, as they’d constantly told her, an outstanding business manager and manager of people, but she wouldn’t be managing anything here except herself, and for a moment Lexie pauses at the edge of the brick path, stunned by her own naivety. At Faraday’s the only really unmanageable elements in terms of her responsibilities were the patients, and even they were to some extent manageable, dependent as they were on the goodwill of the admin and nursing staff and anxious to gain access to the doctors. This huge, unruly place, the systems, the timetables, the people who work here, is another world, one in which she will have no control, and the prospect is completely unnerving.
‘You okay?’ Wendy asks, glancing up at her. ‘You’ve gone a bit pale.’
‘It’s just . . . well, I’m realising how totally different life will be if I come here. How different I’ll have to be.’
‘Well that’s what you wanted, isn’t it?’ Wendy says. ‘New start, new direction? And stop saying “if”. You’re coming, and you’re going to love it.’
Lexie manages a smile. ‘If you say so, mein führer.’
Wendy laughs and takes her arm. ‘Sorry, I don’t mean to bully you, but I really do believe this is right for you. You’ll love it and you’ll do really well. Anyway, what about the rest of your life – Ross, have you seen him?’
‘Only once,’ Lexie says, and relates the occasion of his visit as she had done to Margot. ‘I think he’s as relieved as I am that it’s over, and over in a civilised way.’
‘Really? Not too civilised, I hope – after all, he was cheating on you.’
Lexie shrugs. ‘Oh well, that’s history now and, like you said, a new start. But what about you? No one gorgeous on the horizon?’
‘I wish! Oh there he is,’ Wendy says, spotting her quarry at a nearby table. ‘No, I swear this must be the only campus in Australia that’s full of straight women. Not another dyke in sight, with the exception of the vice chancellor, and she’s not my type. Besides, she wouldn’t fancy me if I threw myself naked at her feet. Here we are, Patrick, sorry we’re late. I got caught up on the phone. Lexie, this is my colleague, Patrick Kelly; and, Patrick, this is my friend Lexie, who’s thinking of enrolling. At least she was until she set foot on campus, so I need you to reassure her that it’s not as intimidating as it looks.’
‘It certainly isn’t,’ Patrick says, getting to his feet and shaking hands with Lexie. ‘It’s actually much worse, but Wendy and I are experts in the art of pretending we understand it. Great to meet you, Lexie. I’ve met Grant and the formidable Rosie a few times, and a couple of weeks ago I met your mother when she was here with Dot Grainger, so I seem to be working my way through the family. Who’s next, I wonder?’
Several days have passed since Margot’s conversation with Lexie but the emotional aftermath still haunts her. It niggles at her as she drags a bag of potting mix out onto the back verandah and tips the contents into the waiting pots. It interferes with the pleasure of pressing the moist compost around the roots of the geraniums and finally, unable to concentrate on what she is doing, she straightens up, pushes her hair back from her face streaking it with traces of compost, and stands, hands on hips, looking out at the garden. It’s taken decades of hard work for her to end up owning this small weatherboard cottage and it’s been worth the struggle, but now that she does own it not a month seems to go by without the need for some sort of repair or maintenance. It is frequently too hot or too cold, new draughts or leaks appear as if by magic, but she loves it, and on days like this, when the sun fills the house with light and the garden seems to sigh with joy after the first autumn rain, the gaps in the skirting, the flaking paint and the clunky noises in the plumbing don’t seem to matter. What does matter is that she has acquired a space for her old age – it feels like an achievement. Margot drags a chair into the sun and sits down thinking that this is, in fact, her only achievement. What else does she have to show for her life?
‘But your lovely daughters,’ a friend had once said when, flushed with wine, Margot had disclosed her feelings. ‘Beautiful women, they’re your achievement.’
‘They are their own achievement,’ Margot had said. ‘And yes, they bring meaning to all those years and I’m tremendously proud of them. But I was going to do so much more.’
So where did it go, the intellect, the talent, the drive of that young woman who leapt the puddle into Laurence’s car all those years ago? Dot has achieved so much and continues to generate the sort of energy that indicates she is about to do a great deal more. Even Phyllida has her time as senior mistress at a prestigious girls’ school to look back on, and now, as president of this and chair of that and member of so many things that Margot would actually hate to be involved with, her sister is nonetheless a reminder to her of all that she herself is not. Phyllida, although now, of course, dealing with such terrible worry and uncertainty, still has the satisfaction of a long and largely happy marriage, and the reassurance of financial security, wealth even, to sustain her.
Margot reviews her old dreams of a life as a writer, a successful writer, shortlisted for awards, occasionally winning one and being photographed in the kitchen of a large family home full of children and dogs, or in a sunlit study, its shelves crammed with books, sitting at a desk piled high with papers and copies of her own books. It was not a dream that lacked foundation – a couple of awards for short stories, a university scholarship, a publisher showing an interest in the first few chapters of a novel – but now, at sixty-eight, there is no place for Margot to hide from her own reality; she has even wasted the years since the girls grew up, the time and space that came as they left home, time that she could have filled with writing.
The ‘ifs’ of Margot’s life torment her: if only she hadn’t got pregnant, if she had finished her degree, if she had not always had to put food on the table, buy children’s shoes, pay the rent. But her true frustration runs deeper; if only she had brought the politics of the women’s movement to her own inner journey, rather than simply articulating it to others. If only she’d had the courage to make the political personal and change herself, then perhaps things might now be different.
‘What I don’t understand, Mum,’ Lexie had said that day as they drew up outside the house, ‘is why you stopped writing. You were always at it – at night when we’d gone to bed, Sundays in the garden, on holidays. What happened to it all? What happened to all those Moleskine notebooks? You used to take it so seriously.’
The question had felt like a blow to the chest and Margot had caught her breath. ‘It was just scribbling,’ she said. ‘I can’t imagine that anyone would be interested in anything I’d write. Anyway, too late now,’ and she opened the car door and got out.
‘Mary Wesley was seventy when her first novel was published and she wrote dozens more after that,’ Lexie had said, looking out at her across the empty seat. ‘It’s never too late.’
Margot shrugged. ‘Mary Wesley is the exception that proves the rule. Thanks for the lift, darling.’
‘Everything I’ve ever read about writing says that most people do their best work beyond middle age,’ Lexie called, starting the engine.
‘Not this far beyond.’
Reliving the conversation now, Margot hears her own resistance, her stubborn refusal to contemplate the possibility, and she hates herself for it. Why did she stop? Getting up she goes back into the house, to the cupboard where her Moleskine notebooks, in neat chronological order, occupy several shelves. She runs her hand over the leather spines, remembering the joy of starting a new one, the strong, silky quality of the pages, the thrilling sense that this notebook might just be the one in which she would discover what it was she was meant to write. Taking the first notebook from its place on the shelf, she slips off the elastic and opens it to see a Christmas sticker which sends her back to the bedroom for her glasses.
To the Greater Spotted Margot, for your writing. Happy Christmas, Love, Donald. Christmas 1958.
This reminder that her first Moleskine had been a gift from Donald fills Margot with guilt. He had introduced her to the literary tradition of the Moleskine, given her the first one.
‘Never compromise on the things you need to help you do your best work,’ he had said. And for a long time he had continued to supply her with Moleskines and she had greeted them with mixed feelings. They were the notebooks she most wanted, hard to find and never cheap, but rather than gratitude she had chosen to believe that she registered so little on Donald’s radar that he couldn’t be bothered to come up with a different gift. In fact many of these Moleskines came to her as gifts, from either Donald or Phyllida, and from Laurence, who sent them from Prague when he and Bernard were working there. What strikes Margot now is the recognition that back then they had taken her writing seriously, but she herself has never taken it seriously enough to develop anything substantial or complete. And how long is it since she stopped keeping them? How long have the new notebooks, still in their cellophane wrappers, been sitting unopened on the shelf? Margot takes out five more notebooks at random and returns to the verandah where, back in her chair, she opens the first, flicking through, reading extracts, rediscovering long-forgotten ideas and random thoughts, laughing at cruel character sketches, cringing at observations about herself, remembering who she was, and who she had imagined she might become.
It is late afternoon when finally, shivering in the chill, she stops reading, returns the notebooks to the shelf and takes out a new one. And settling herself in a warmer spot she once again begins to write on one of those pristine pages. But after a few minutes she stops, reads what she has written, slaps the notebook closed and throws it aside.
‘No!’ she says aloud. ‘No, not again,’ and getting up she goes to the spare room which doubles as a study, switches on the computer and, after staring for several minutes at the blank space of a new document, she begins to type.