On Thursday, Rubble Jones, an industrial artist with a passion for creating pieces that fused art sculpture with functional furniture, ushered Lincoln into his dilapidated BMW—a car that had to be worth a total of four dollars, in Lincoln’s estimation. Lincoln settled himself on the ripped seat and shoved the McDonald’s detritus out of the way with his foot.
A pleasant drive through the countryside later, they found themselves in the sunny courtyard of Rosevears Tavern, looking out over the black mud sliding into the choppy, steely blue water of the West Tamar River. Across the expanse of water, green hills rose upwards, spotted with trees, houses and an elderly church down at the water’s edge.
‘Welcome home!’ Rubble held up a schooner of amber liquid. ‘It’s good to have you back.’
‘Thanks.’
‘So what’s next on the horizon for you, my friend?’ Rubble said, leaning his bulk back in the seat.
‘Not sure. I’m here to spend some time with Nan, mostly.’
‘How is the old girl?’ Rubble asked fondly.
‘She’s okay, I think. My dad’s being a bit of a tool.’
‘Nothing new there.’
‘Nope. Nothing new.’ It was a relief not to have to explain himself. Rubble had been there throughout his childhood and had seen enough of Tom’s temper tantrums, sullenness and snide remarks to understand. And he’d been on the receiving end of more than a few cutting remarks from Tom too, particularly when his weight had started fluctuating in his teenage years. ‘But I downloaded some job applications today, more research, similar fields.’
‘The jungle’s been good to you, then?’
Lincoln looked out across the water, still adjusting to the cool air and open spaces of home. ‘It’s fascinating. It never sleeps.’
‘Like New York,’ Rubble said, taking a handful of the hot chips that had just been delivered to their table.
Every part of Rubble’s body wobbled as he moved—he must have put on fifteen kilos since Lincoln last saw him. A sure sign he was in ‘famine’ mode. Not literally, obviously. His popping shirt buttons and the flesh gathering under his chin were testament to that. It was the famine of artistic flow. Petulant silence from The Muse, which led to eating. And more eating. Until finally, usually at the point when Rubble had begun to despair of hearing from her again, The Muse (known to Rubble as Lydia) ended her punishing sulking and began to court him once again. Then it was nonstop, rampant creative union. Rubble would work feverishly day and night, channelling her siren song, forgetting to eat, sleep and (regrettably) shower, ultimately shrinking in size until his fretting agent began leaving frozen lasagnes on his doorstep. So it was necessary, this eating phase. It gave him reserves for the frantic pace to come. He was a grizzly bear, preparing for hibernation in his creative cave. And by the size of him, that was sure to happen any minute.
Rubble moved on to the calamari, shoving several greasy rings into his mouth. He licked his shiny fingers.
‘What are you working on right now?’ Lincoln asked.
Rubble screwed up his face. ‘Nothing. I’m creatively constipated. Can’t you tell?’ He patted his girth.
‘Maybe you should come to the jungle with me when I next go,’ Lincoln said, suddenly realising, with a shock, that while he loved the jungle and his work, he did actually miss his family and friends quite a lot.
At the research station he was never alone. The Neptune team was big and always changing. On his last trip he’d made friends with Ernest, a German economics analyst, and Jasmine, a young New Zealand agribusiness researcher who’d also partnered with Lincoln on a project the year before. She was analysing a plantation in Costa Rica that had been planted with a new variety of cacao developed in West Africa that grew faster than the traditional varieties in South America. Jasmine was a fast, efficient researcher, an approach that transferred easily to her pursuit of love interests, among whom Lincoln had numbered for some months before she met a cacao trader from Switzerland and swiftly and good-naturedly moved on. The researchers were fun, easygoing, and they all passed their downtime pleasantly in each other’s company. But no one knew him like Rubble, or Jen, or his mum, or his nan—especially his nan.
Rubble considered the suggestion. ‘Huh. A trip to the jungle. How exotic. Maybe you’re onto something there.’
They raised their glasses in collusion and Lincoln felt some of the tension of being between worlds ease just a bit.
•
To: Evandale Fairy Godmother
From: Dennis Chamberlain
Subject: Proposal
Godmother, I want to ask my girlfriend to marry me but I’m no good at romance.
————
To: Evandale Fairy Godmother
From: Veronika Lambert
Subject: Washing machine
Help! I’m pregnant with our sixth child (I know . . . don’t ask!!) and my washing machine’s broken and we don’t have a dryer and I’ve got morning sickness all day long and I’m DROWNING in washing and I can’t cope anymore. We’re broke, obviously. Please, please help!
•
Lulu Divine shouldn’t have been in a nursing home. Not at her age. But here she was as usual, with pink lipstick and her long fair hair brushed till it shone. Must have been a benefit of never having children, Elsa thought. Her own hair had never recovered after the third baby.
Tom. Elsa felt her lips purse at the mere thought of his name.
Lulu tapped impatiently on the metal rims of the wheelchair, her single gold ring—worn on the middle finger of her left hand—clattering against the aluminium. Her copy of Twilight sat on her bony knees. As always, she’d been first into the room. Lulu was competitive about everything, from bingo to grabbing the salt shaker at dinner. Every book club meeting, she raced against imaginary competitors, spinning her chair from Potoroo Bungalow across the lawn and into the main building, zooming down the hallway with alarming haste to get the best position in the blue common room—the spot that commanded the view over the creek at the edge of the grounds.
Elsa tapped her false teeth together. She found herself equally annoyed with the bossy and combative Ms Divine and envious of her brazen candour and total commitment to her ideas, be they right or wrong. To admit uncertainty or error showed weakness, and Lulu was not one for weakness. Which was exactly why Elsa knew that Lulu would hate Twilight and the fainting Bella Swan.
Most of the residents of Green Hills had by now let go of at least some of the social niceties, and Elsa often found herself wincing at sharp words, dogmatic arguments and out-and-out insults. But with Lulu it was clear she’d always been that way.
Maybe Lulu should write a book. It seemed to be the thing to do in the twilight years. Ha ha. She chuckled at her own joke and parked her wheelchair next to Yvonne Murphy, former state parliamentarian and now forgotten great-grandmother with Alzheimer’s.
‘Do share the joke, Elsa,’ Lulu snipped, her false teeth shiny in the fluorescent lights. ‘We’re all dying for a good story, some of us a bit more rapidly than others.’ She glanced down towards the intensive care rooms where two old souls had begun their journeys homeward. ‘God knows we didn’t find it in this rot.’ She triumphantly held up her copy of Twilight, commanding attention from the slowly forming circle.
Doris Laherty arrived to Elsa’s right, having been wheeled in by Sarah, the youngest nurse in the home.
‘Hello, Sarah.’ Elsa smiled. ‘How is your brother going?’
‘Much better, thanks. The doctor says he’ll probably have some relapse effects but the worst of it should have passed.’
Elsa tsked. The poor boy had picked up malaria on a trip to Papua New Guinea. His condition had been pretty serious there for a while. It made her queasy to think of Lincoln at similar risk.
Sarah stepped on the brakes and patted Doris lightly on the shoulder, leaving her with her head dropping to the side, her mouth open and snoring gently.
Lulu sucked in her cheeks in disgust. ‘Old queer,’ she muttered.
‘What was that, dear?’ Elsa asked, leaning forward with her hand behind her ear. She wasn’t deaf. Not in the slightest.
‘I said I’d love a cold beer,’ Lulu said. Her eyes darted towards the window. ‘Might get them to call me a taxi later.’
‘You can’t go out unattended,’ Robert Graham (seventy-four, former civil servant, stroke victim, daily visit from wife) said with practised authority, though its gravity was undermined by his slurred speech. He had also lost much of his sight in the stroke, and he listened to the club’s books on audio CDs, which his wife patiently tracked down for him at great expense so he could participate in the group.
Lulu studied Robert’s lopsided face and smiled serenely. ‘How can they stop me?’ she said. ‘This isn’t jail, or had you forgotten? I’m not a ward of the state. I’m a paying customer.’
Yes, she was. The question of how each resident paid for their accommodation and care was always of interest to Elsa, and Lulu’s situation fascinated her the most. Lulu’s lips were tight as a drum when it came to sharing anything about herself other than her rodeo and trick-riding career. She never let slip personal information about family or the like. But she didn’t seem to have any family, at least none that came to visit. As she was in the detached bungalow next to Elsa’s, Elsa knew exactly how many dollars a day Lulu paid to stay here while she waited for her double knee replacement. Granted, it wouldn’t be forever, unlike Elsa, who wasn’t allowed a double knee and hip replacement due to her age and the potential anaesthetic complications—something that ignited a spark of jealousy towards the Lulu girl that sometimes kept Elsa tossing and turning at night. One day Lulu would walk out of here to get on with the rest of her life. But Elsa would not.
‘Perhaps we should get started,’ said Rita Blumberg (eighty-eight, widow, four children of varying levels of commitment, unknown number of grandchildren). Rita had been quite a successful painter, with a number of works hanging in galleries around the country. Though, as seemed so often the way with the arts, that public recognition didn’t necessarily translate to dollars earned. She was now the unfortunate recipient of Parkinson’s disease, and she shook and ticced and tremored in her seat at Lulu’s left. Rita occupied one of the two slots in the home allocated for full grant assistance to the financially disadvantaged.
‘So the book was ridiculous, obviously,’ Lulu began, sitting up as straight as her arthritic back would allow. ‘What a pathetic excuse for a woman Bella Swan is. Who would write such appallingly weak female characters these days? Haven’t we come further than that? The popularity of this book is truly disturbing. The leading man is a murderer, and she can’t do anything other than faint and mope and beg him to kill her so she can be like him.’
Lulu was one of those feminists who had emerged during the eighties and nineties, Elsa realised, the kind that gained power by dominating and outsmarting men. She’d obviously missed the goddess revolution of the new millennium, which seemed to be all about embracing and celebrating one’s femininity. As for Elsa, her version of feminism was quite simple: let every person’s true character show for what it was.
The way she was standing up to Tom, for example, might actually be applauded by the likes of Lulu. Her youngest son was being a brat and a bully, and the shame of her poor mothering lay heavily on her shoulders, as she was at great pains to admit. But she wouldn’t let him manipulate her. She might be of advanced years and less mobile than him, but she still had all her faculties, and while there was breath in her body she wasn’t going to let him push her around.
He wanted money. Well, in her day, if you wanted money you went and found a job and made it. He wasn’t infirm. He wasn’t useless. He might not be able to find work as a lumberjack anymore but it was up to him to direct his life. She’d worked hard, giving the better part of her productive years to the dairy farm she and Ebe ran, working in the rain, snow and wind all year round, from dawn till dusk and beyond, and the nest egg she now held, in the form of her house at Western Junction, was there as her insurance for a rainy day. If there was one thing she knew for sure it was that you could never know what was coming in the future.
At his core, Ebe had been lazy and dishonest. If there was a shortcut, he’d take it. If he could sell a twelve-year-old cow as a three-year-old breeder and get away with it, he would. If he could ‘accidentally’ send the cows to graze on someone else’s lush pasture, he’d do that too. Tom, to her disappointment, seemed to also believe the world owed him. It was her duty as a parent, possibly her final duty, to teach him otherwise.
She had been sad at first when he’d told her he wouldn’t come and visit her anymore. But that sadness quickly skedaddled, replaced by a tide of anger. How dare he? She didn’t even like his company that much, to be honest.
‘I admit I t-too thought it was bupkis at first. But I did get into it once I acc-accep-pted it for what it is. It’s f-f-fantasy,’ Rita stuttered, ticcing.
‘Does that matter?’ Lulu demanded. ‘Bella is still a role model of sorts for girls everywhere.’
Rita smiled. ‘I wouldn’t be a t-true artist if I said someone else’s work wasn’t valid.’
Lulu snorted.
‘So you don’t believe in escapism?’ Elsa asked Lulu.
‘Not if it promotes women staying in abusive relationships, no.’ Lulu’s cheeks were red and the sun-damage lines on her face were deeper than usual. ‘I thought—’
Elsa nodded and turned to Robert. ‘And what did you think?’
Lulu huffed as her diatribe was cut short.
Robert took a deep breath. ‘Can’t say vampires are my thing,’ he said arduously. ‘I did read Bram Stoker when I was young, but nothing since.’
Robert’s care at Green Hills was thanks to trauma insurance cover that paid out after his stroke. He also was too young to be here, Elsa thought sadly.
The debate raged on between Lulu, Elsa, Rita, Robert and Yvonne (whose Alzheimer’s meant she couldn’t actually remember reading the book or watching the film in the movie room last Friday night), while Doris continued to snooze, her steel-grey curls bobbing with each inhalation. Doris’s doting family and her own personal pension paid for her high level of care. Her grandchildren seemed to love sitting in ‘Nay-Nay’s’ lap and stroking her cheek and hair while she snored on.
Elsa was pleased with the robust discussion going on around her. Wasn’t that what book club was all about? It would be so boring if everyone agreed. They were here to keep their minds active while their bodies took a back seat. Stave off Alzheimer’s, for those who didn’t already have it. She looked at Yvonne, struggling to keep up, and wondered if these mental games would help slow the spread of it in her.
She glanced at the clock. It was nearly afternoon tea time. Robert would want to get a move on soon, as his wife would be waiting to join him.
Beside her chair was a bag containing the next read. She always chose books with a movie tie-in, so that even if one of them couldn’t read the book, or remember it, there was always the movie to give them another chance to be involved. And she knew exactly what they’d be reading for the June meeting, thanks to the idea from Lincoln. She’d ordered the books from the library straight away.
Next month, they’d be discussing Chocolat, and as well as the movie, she’d organised a guest speaker. She’d emailed that lovely Christmas Livingstone from The Chocolate Apothecary, who’d replied immediately, warmly accepting Elsa’s invitation to visit the home. And not only would she speak about chocolate, but she’d offered to hold a chocolate-tasting workshop too. Which would be marvellous for anyone not on a diabetes diet. Elsa was dying for Lulu to end her tirade so she could make her announcement.
She was excited about the news for several reasons, one of which was that she wanted to be the best book-club captain the home had ever known. She was determined that her name would stay in gold lettering on the board in the dining room. It gave her a little lift to see it at each meal; if she were honest, she also took some satisfaction from the knowledge that it irked Lulu, who would have loved to take her place. But booey to her. She’d be out of here one day.
It was also a welcome opportunity to break up the monotony of the days, and a chocolate tasting sounded right up her alley, especially if the gift box Lincoln had brought her from Ms Livingstone’s store was anything to go by. My, my! Wonderful work! Elsa would have loved to have had a job crafting chocolate, instead of milking cows and delivering calves. But those had been the golden years of dairying and eventually, unlike dairy farmers today, she and her husband had made enough money to take care of her now. (Thanks largely to her careful scrimping and planning, it had to be said.)
Of course, marriages were different back then, based on different values. The young people of today had so many more opportunities to pick and choose, and change their minds. But it did mean they could take their jolly time in settling down. Too long, if you asked her. Like Lincoln.
Just days after setting herself the challenge of finding a way to make Lincoln settle down, he’d arrived at her bungalow with potted plants for her room and full of chirpy conversation about Christmas Livingstone’s chocolate shop, effusively praising its range and Christmas’s careful consideration of chocolate brands and their origins. And not ten minutes later, he was telling her about his call with his publisher, and how Jeremy wanted him to find a co-author. Lincoln had looked a bit downcast at the prospect, while she’d sat there thinking, really, could it be this easy and obvious?
‘What about Christmas Livingstone?’ she’d gently queried, not daring to seem too eager. ‘She sounds like she’s got a lot of commercial sense and creativity. Might she not be a possible co-author for your book?’
And Lincoln’s expression had changed in a second from morose to inspired. ‘Yes,’ he agreed, stroking the right side of his bearded cheek. ‘She could well be.’
Elsa smiled inwardly while feigning nonchalance and already planning a visit to Rita; a good Jewish grandmother, known for her matchmaking, Rita could be a useful ally. But she knew Lincoln well enough to know it was better if he thought it was all his doing, so she said nothing more and casually changed the subject.
Now, she cleared her throat to call the book-club group to attention. ‘I have an announcement to make about next month’s novel and a special event.’ She paused, enjoying their rapt attention. ‘I’m sure you’re going to love it. It’s going to be delicious.’