Chapter 18
Beth
Gran had, in principle, agreed to a trip to London to see Gerry, but was oscillating between being giddily excited and wanting to call the whole thing off.
‘What was I even thinking?’ she said to me days later, only hours before I was planning to book the tickets. ‘It’s lunacy. Fancy thinking that I could just pop over to London to catch up with her after all these years. Women my age don’t simply jump on a plane and traipse halfway around the world on a whim. How would I even explain it to people?’
‘You don’t have to explain it to anyone,’ I replied emphatically. ‘It’s no one else’s business. You’re quite entitled to go on a holiday any time you want to.’
‘But I don’t even know if she wants to see me,’ Gran responded. ‘What am I meant to say to her? “Hey Gerry, you know how sixty years ago we fell in love and carried on a secret relationship? Well, what’s say I put my wrinkly, arthritic eighty-two-year-old body on a flight to London and we can pick up where we left off. Next Tuesday work for you?” She’ll probably assume I have frontal lobe impairment caused by dementia or a stroke. Goodness. Maybe I do.’
‘Well, if she doesn’t want to see you, then we’ll just make the most of a trip to London. Are you planning on speaking to her tonight?’
‘Yes. She’s calling at eight.’
‘Well, just talk to her,’ I urged. ‘Tell her you’re thinking of coming over. If she reacts well, tell her you’re planning to come sooner rather than later. If she seems unsure, then we’ll go anyway, and she’ll be none the wiser. We can tour the palaces, wander through galleries and see a show or two. We don’t even have to stay in London the whole time. Don’t you have family in the country? We could go and visit them.’
‘Maybe,’ she said. I imagined she was stroking her thumb on the back of the opposite hand. ‘It just all feels very rushed. Maybe we don’t need to cancel it. Perhaps we should just delay it for a while.’
‘But this is the only time we can both go, remember,’ I rationalised. ‘I’ve got the installation of my possum bridge, and you’ve already locked in the dates for your orchid field trips. You said it yourself: there’s no time like the present.’
‘I hate it when you use my words against me,’ she groaned.
‘Besides,’ I continued, ‘you’re hardly rushing into this. This reunion has been sixty years in the making. And somehow I don’t think any amount of warm fuzzies would see you through a northern hemisphere winter, so it has to be this time of year.’
She emitted a loud hmmmmm down the phone.
I had to admit, encouraging someone else to be bold and supporting them to step bravely into an uncomfortable situation wasn’t my usual role. But hearing Gran talk about Gerry, having Alannah remind me she wouldn’t be around forever, and the idea of using the lotto money to travel to a city I loved, propelled me to continue.
‘And don’t you want to catch up with Gerry properly?’ I continued. ‘A phone call here and an email there isn’t going to bridge all the years you’ve spent apart.’
‘Yes, yes. You’re right,’ she conceded.
‘We’ll leave next Tuesday and be back a fortnight later,’ I said assertively, hoping my pragmatism would help solidify her decision to go.
‘Okay. But I won’t have you paying for the whole thing. I don’t care how much money you won.’
After some debate, we agreed that I would play for flights, she would pay for accommodation and that we were both as stubborn as each other.
About an hour after we hung up, Gran sent a text.
I spoke to Gerry. She’s excited. London here we come.
I set about booking the flights and accommodation immediately. As far as I knew, airlines did not offer flexibility to accommodate matters of the heart, and travel insurance policies did not cover cold feet. Once the trip was locked in, she wouldn’t be able to change her mind again.
~
‘I’m sorry,’ Mum said incredulously down the phone. ‘You and Gran are going where? And when?’
I realised when Mum called later that afternoon that neither Gran nor I had told her about our trip. Now the trip had been booked, sharing our plans seemed pertinent.
‘We’re going to London. Next Tuesday.’
‘O-kay,’ she said, emphasising both syllables in the way people do when they’re processing information en route to forming a judgement. ‘When was this decided? And whose idea was it?’
It was impossible to answer this without providing the backstory, which I was under strict instructions not to do.
‘Well … we just kind of agreed, I suppose. I can’t actually remember whose idea it was in the first place.’
Not entirely true; I had suggested it. Nevertheless, I didn’t feel the details of our decision-making process had any bearing on our ultimate choice to go.
‘What about work? I thought you had some projects on the go. What about the possums?’
I hadn’t thought she’d been listening when I talked about the bridge project.
‘It’s fine. Geoff has okayed me taking a fortnight off. This was actually the only time I could go for the next couple of months. So we just sort of jumped at the chance.’
‘Oh my God,’ Mum said. I heard the slap of her hand against her mouth. ‘Is Gran okay? This isn’t one of those end-of-life trips, is it? She’s dying, isn’t she? Is she going somewhere to have euthanasia? I’ve read about this, where people travel to places overseas where it’s legal.’
Her words tumbled out of her uncharacteristically. She was usually annoyingly calm when it came to sombre or serious situations. When Grandpa died, she took on an almost ethereal calmness, which she credited to daily yoga and meditation. I suspected the half-smoked joint I found in her bedside table had something to do with it too.
‘She’s not—’ I started.
‘Fuck!’ she said, cutting me off. ‘She was talking about her blood pressure medication the other day. She’d just been to see the doctor, and she’d changed her medication. Or had she increased her medication? I think she said she had been dizzy too. Or tired? Or both. I can’t remember what she said.’ Her tone was becoming more urgent with each word. ‘I should have known something was wrong. I told her she should have been taking lemon and turmeric tea, but you know what she’s like.
‘What is it, Beth?’ she implored. ‘Tell me. Is it cancer? Heart disease?’
‘Mum, she’s—’
‘Come to think of it,’ she interrupted again, ‘she was saying some odd things about righting the wrongs of the past and second chances, or something. She must be making amends with her life before she dies. Fuck.’
‘Mum!’ I said, loudly enough this time to demand her attention. ‘She’s not sick. I promise. We’ve just decided to go on a trip together.’
‘But …?’ The word, loaded with questions, lingered down the line. I had to admit, Gran having an incurable illness was probably more plausible than my decision to take an impromptu holiday.
‘Besides, assisted dying is legal in Australia now,’ I added, in an offer of further assurance.
‘Oh,’ she replied. ‘Yes. Yes, you’re right. It is. Although I’m not really sure if that’s a comfort.’
‘It’s just a holiday,’ I promised. ‘I thought you’d be pleased I’m being more spontaneous.’
‘Is that what this is all about?’ she asked, sounding exasperated. ‘Proving that you’re capable of spontaneity?’
‘No,’ I scoffed. ‘I have no interest in proving anything to anyone. But everyone is always telling me to seize the day. And now, here I am “seizing the day”, and you’re freaking out.’
‘I’m not “freaking out”, Beth,’ she replied defensively. ‘It’s just taken me by surprise, that’s all. I’ve seen you spend more time planning what movie you’ll see at the cinemas.
‘Where will you stay?’ she asked, changing the subject in what I recognised as a deliberate gesture of amnesty.
‘We’ve booked a hotel in Kensington, just near the gardens,’ I said cheerily – my own olive branch.
‘Oh, it’s lovely there. Such a pretty area. Your Dad and I stayed there when we spent a night partying with the lead singer of … Ohhhh!’ she exclaimed suddenly. I could picture the way her shoulders had risen with a little shimmy when she had an idea. ‘I’ve got an idea! Maybe I could come too? Three generations travelling together.’
I was grateful to be on the phone, so she couldn’t see my face contort into a look of horror.
‘Um … I … ah.’ I scrambled for reasons to dissuade her. I grasped at the most obvious one. ‘Wouldn’t Jarrah feel left out?’
‘Maybe she could come too? She’s not working at the moment so doesn’t have anything tying her here,’ Mum posed enthusiastically. ‘It could be a girls’ trip.’
A wave of anger rose from my stomach. I was furious that Mum just assumed she could invite herself along, and then twisted it to revolve around Jarrah. The fact she had used Jarrah’s self-imposed unemployment as a reason for her to come only made it worse.
‘Except that you’ve forgotten the bit where Jarrah has no money because she chooses to focus on finding employment that “nourishes her soul”, rather than saving money for a rainy day, or a trip to London,’ I said curtly.
‘Well … maybe she …’ She paused, searching for a way to solve Jarrah’s problem of having no money for a trip that never involved her in the first place.
‘We’re flying business class,’ I interjected before she could continue.
It was true; we were flying business class. I had booked the tickets to make the flight more comfortable for Gran. I’d gawked at the price; two return tickets had cost nearly as much as my new car. But I had purchased them on a credit card with a loyalty points scheme linked to the airline, which meant I would get two free domestic flights from the frequent flyer points I would accrue.
‘Business class,’ Mum repeated, her surprise palpable. ‘Wow. You two do have it all sorted out. Don’t worry about us, then.’ Martyrdom hung on her every word. ‘Perhaps you’ll take another trip together sometime, and you won’t mind us tagging along. If we won’t cramp your style, of course.’
There was a sting in her words.
‘Mum, it’s not …’
I didn’t know how to explain we weren’t deliberately excluding anyone from the trip, without revealing our motivation for taking it.
‘It’s fine,’ she snapped.
I picked at a few pills that had assembled on my jumper.
‘I just wish sometimes …’ she said eventually, but her voice trailed off.
‘What?’ I prompted.
‘It would have been nice to go on a trip with you, that’s all. But maybe we can do it another time.’
I was surprised; she hadn’t suggested we travel together since she’d proposed a girls’ yoga retreat with Jarrah and me. It had been impossible to coordinate our calendars so I told them to go without me. I’d also passed on the rebirthing seminar she went on to celebrate her sixtieth birthday; I couldn’t think of anything worse than re-enacting a descent of the birth canal with a room full of strangers. And I’d deliberately planned a hiking trip to avoid a two-day art workshop that she and Jarrah had attended where they’d made models of their vaginas and written letters to their ‘inner goddesses’.
‘What time do you leave on Tuesday?’ she asked, her voice soft again.
‘We fly out at midday, so we will need to be at the airport at about 10am. I’ll drive to Gran’s and leave my car in her garage.’
I had been thinking about the schedule for Tuesday since we’d booked the tickets. I found the morning of any trip stressful, so I planned for every eventuality. I made a habit of leaving early for the airport to allow for traffic and always allowed plenty of time for check-in.
‘I can drop you off, then.’
‘Well … actually,’ I began self-consciously. ‘The airline will be sending a car to pick us up. It’s one of the perks of flying business class, apparently.’
‘Ohhhh. La-di-da,’ she mocked, but not unkindly. ‘Goodness me. Did one of you win lotto, or something?’
‘Ha!’ I exclaimed, louder than I’d intended. ‘Can you imagine?’
Not telling my family about my lotto win had been weighing on me, but after my first failed attempt at sharing the news, I wasn’t in a rush to try again. I couldn’t tell Mum and Dad, but not Jarrah and Elijah. Nor could I give money to one of my siblings but not the other. So I’d decided to wait until we returned from London to tell any of them. I hoped that Jarrah would have found a job by then, so I wouldn’t be funding her Bikram yoga and coconut water smoothies while she looked for her next soul-nourishing appointment.
‘It sounds like you’ve got it all sorted,’ Mum said. ‘Maybe we can do dinner the night before you go then.’
‘That sounds great.’ I was pleased I would have an opportunity to give them the perishable food from my fridge, so it didn’t go off while I was away. I would hate to see any go to waste.