Spin Cycle (28 page)

‘Sorry about before.' Maggie has moved over next to me.

‘Pardon?'

‘Inside. You and your sister's guy, it's none of my business.'

‘Oh, that's okay.' I turn and smile at her.‘ It wasn't what it looked like, anyway. He was just asking me to be nicer to Elizabeth.'

‘Are you
still
nasty to her?'

‘Well, I wouldn't say
nasty
exactly, and what d'you mean
still
?'

‘Hmm, well, you were always short with her even when I first met you all, and she was only about twelve or so then.'

‘Was I?' I take this on board and turn to look at Bloody Elizabeth, who is grinning madly at Diane. She really
is
thrilled about Diane's news. Maybe Phillip had a point. How well
do
I really know her? For all I know, she is a member of the Richard III Society as well. While I am watching, David gets up, his attention span regarding baby names obviously shorter than his wife's, and heads over to the barbecue. I'm sure it's a male gravitational thing. He gestures to the nearest one of his sons.

‘Chris, run in and get some of the meat out of the fridge and I'll heat it up.' He turns and sees me watching. ‘You don't mind, do you?'

‘Knock yourself out,' I say lazily. ‘There's plenty of those kebabs left.'

‘Oh, perhaps we might save those for later – Chris, just the snags and hamburgers, thanks, mate.'

‘Barbecues and men. I'm sure it's the testosterone, something to do with hunting and gathering.' Maggie pours us both a glass of wine.

‘And playing with fire,' Diane says, leaning across to put in her two cents worth.

I take a big gulp of my wine and close my eyes. I'm sure I must have half-f glasses of wine scattered all around this table. Every time I get up or swap seats I leave one behind and someone else pours me a fresh one. I open my eyes to see Ben dragging Phillip off in the direction of the garage, no doubt to show him the menagerie within and ask about the mystery ailment which has hit the cat. Well, I hope they do something about that damn galah while they're in there – preferably something lethal. I close my eyes again and idly contemplate what Phillip would look like in a loincloth. A brownish one, to match his eyes.

‘I wonder if it's hard for him.'

‘Pardon?' I sit up with a guilty start and look wildly at Maggie.

‘Benjamin, I mean. I was just wondering if it's hard for him being between two such extroverted sisters.' Maggie is looking across to where Ben and Phillip have just disappeared into the garage. I'm very glad that she wasn't looking at my face, anyway.

‘Oh, I don't know. He seems to cope.'

‘Hmm, yes he does, doesn't he?' She turns back to face me. ‘I suppose the main thing is that people
accept him for who he is, and not try to draw him out all the time. I mean, some people are
naturally
introverted. As Ruby always says, it takes all kinds. But you'd know that.'

‘Oh? Of course, that's right. It takes all kinds.'

‘Exactly!' Maggie beams at me. ‘You are
such
a good parent! I mean, you're an extrovert, and the girls take after you, but you can still appreciate that Ben's different and you can't change that. Hmm, not that
you'd
even try.'

‘Oh no, of course not.' I have the distinct feeling that, in her own subtle way, Maggie has just passed on something of great significance. It suddenly occurs to me that it is also something that might just get me off the hook. What if Ben's solitary ways are
not
the result of him being largely ignored during my second marriage, but rather a natural progression of his own personality make-up? If so, I'm not sure where he gets it from because I don't remember Alex as being particularly introverted. But it's true that Ben never was the sort of child who was surrounded by friends, or even expressed a
desire
to be surrounded by friends, even before Keith came into our lives. I close my eyes again as I contemplate the fact that my son might simply be a natural introvert, not an emotionally damaged teenager who holds his mother personally responsible.

‘Mum! How could you!'

‘How could I what?' I open one eye and peer across the table at Samantha.

‘Name me after a bit of leather!'

‘Quite like leather myself,' Maggie murmurs in my ear. I try not to laugh and succeed only in spraying my wine straight down my shirtfront. I sit up quickly and reach for a serviette to mop up.

‘Mu-
um
! Gross!'

‘What are you talking about?'

‘You, spitting all over yourself!'

‘No, the leather, dimwit!'

‘Harold was just telling me. In the army, the officers wear leather things across their chests and they're called Sam Brownes.'

‘Well! I didn't know that. Really?' I look at Harold, who nods sagely, delighted to have been able to share news of such import.

‘At least it's not the enlisted men, dear.' My mother sheds her pearls of wisdom into the conversation, and Harold immediately begins to describe the leather appendage to her in great detail. I have lost interest in the topic because I have just noticed, as Sam jumped up from her chair and her mini-jumper lifted, a belly-button ring where there was previously pristine flesh.

‘Samantha, come here.'

‘Auf keinem Fall.'

‘Just come here.' I notice Sara look up from where she is lying on the grass and give her friend a sympathetic grimace. Sam shrugs and raises her eyebrows theatrically at her friend, and heads over to me.

‘Warum, Mommie dearest?'

‘You have a belly-button ring.'

‘Ach, du liebe Zeit! Das ist unglaublich!'

‘
Enough
with the showing-off.'

‘I did ask you – you remember.'

‘No, actually I don't. Refresh my memory.'

‘Okay, well it was on Thursday afternoon, just after the new bird flew out the door and just before Ben found out his fish were all dead – again – and I was drinking hot chocolate with CJ at the kitchen table, and she had just been dropped off by Keith and you were dressed in a grotty old tracksuit that makes you look rather sallow but I didn't want to tell you, and I just had on my school clothes, and I asked you, and CJ was blowing her new whistle, and I was really surprised that you said yes, but you did so –'

‘Enough!' I hold up one hand to stop the flow. You'd think I would know better by now. ‘I'll talk to you later.'

‘Good, isn't she?' Maggie comments thoughtfully as she watches her niece rejoin her friend and cousins on the grass.

‘Very good.'

‘I do know him, you know.'

I look up at Maggie and follow her gaze over to Harold. My heart sinks.

‘But it's okay, he used to run an out-of-hours chess club when I was teaching.'

‘Oh,' I sigh with relief.

‘Although he has been over a few times since …'

‘Oh!' My heart sinks again.

‘Huh, only joking.'

I turn to her with my mouth open and shake my head. No wonder she was getting on so well with Terry before, they both have totally whacked senses of humour.

‘Where's my camera?' Across the table, my mother begins her customary search for her camera with which to record her family for posterity. ‘Elizabeth, have you got it?'

‘Here it is.' Elizabeth passes it over.

‘Do you remember when you used to call your sister “camera” all the time?' Mum says to her before smiling benignly at us both. ‘It was so sweet.'

‘Why the hell would you do that?' I look at Elizabeth accusingly.

‘
I
don't know. I don't even remember it.'

‘There's no need to get huffy.' Mum frowns at me. ‘She was only little and couldn't pronounce your name, that's all.'

I'm sure she has just made that up. Elizabeth and I look at each other in mutual bewilderment and tacitly decide not to prolong the discussion. Besides, even if it is true, it certainly doesn't say much for her intelligence level as a child. I mean, ‘camera' isn't even close.

‘I meant to ask you, dear, why are your garbage bins still out on your nature strip?'

‘My bins?' I repeat stupidly while I look around for one of my children so that I can cast them a filthy look. They all ignore me.

‘Yes. Your bins.'

‘Oh, we always put them out early. It pays to be prepared, you know.' I smile at her winningly as I give myself a mental pat on the back. Ha, trumped you!

‘Why don't you go back to uni?'

‘Pardon?' Now I look at Maggie in confusion.
This conversation has too many twists and turns for me in my present, slightly befuddled frame of mind. ‘What for?'

‘Well, your friend Terry was telling me about how you've been suspended, and I thought you always said you wished that you had continued. Now's your chance. Make a lifestyle change like me. You won't regret it.'

‘She's right!' Terry leans over and joins in: ‘Stuff the library. I mean, they shafted you, so do something for yourself.'

‘You know, this is really funny because I have actually been thinking about that. Going back to university, that is.'

‘And why not?' Terry is relentless when something appeals to her. ‘You're suspended indefinitely anyway. Afterwards you can go onto Austudy or whatever they call it. You're always saying that you want an actual
career
– this is your chance!'

‘I just said that I
was
thinking about it, you don't have to talk me into it!'

‘Yes, do literature!' Diane has stopped en route to the barbecue where David is handing out reheated hamburgers and sausages. ‘Writing or publishing, you love all that stuff.'

‘Or women's studies!' Maggie chimes in. ‘Equality, feminism, consciousness-raising!'

‘Or psychology, that'd be really useful,' Joanne says, obviously having decided to join in the conversation.

‘Just don't try catering,' says Diane rudely, holding up a kebab.

‘Where's the sauce?' Samantha is standing behind
me with a bread-wrapped sausage in one hand. ‘Has anyone seen the sauce?'

‘You know, I could still be reinstated.'

‘Then quit anyway, dork. Or do what I've always wanted to, and punch Alan right on that pompous, bulbous snout of his.'

‘Then he'll be Al Dente,' interjects Joanne. ‘You know, Al for Alan, and he'll be dented. Get it? Get it?'

‘Of course we get it,' Terry laughs. ‘And it's not bad either. But I never knew you had a sense of humour!'

‘Why wouldn't I have a sense of humour?'

‘Did you know Mum's got newsprint plastered all over her bum?' Diane leans down to whisper in my ear.

‘The sauce! Anyone got the sauce?'

‘Anyway, there's heaps of mature-age students nowadays.'

‘What about social work? You'd make a great social worker!'

‘Yes, I saw it before,' I whisper back to Diane.

‘Are you going to tell her?'

‘Not a chance, you can.'

‘I know! Become a therapist – you'd just about be an expert already!'

‘It has to be here somewhere!'

‘Glass of wine?' Elizabeth is pouring herself one and pauses to look at me questioningly. I look around for my glass. It's half full but I nod anyway and pass it over. Elizabeth smiles at me tentatively as she fills it to the brim.

‘Here you go, Camera.'

‘
Not
a good idea.' But I sort of grin back.

‘Where the hell is the sauce?'

‘Samantha!'

‘The sauce, the sauce! My kingdom for the sauce!'

While everyone else laughs, my mouth falls open and I stare at my eldest daughter in surprise. Apart from the fact that I would have bet my bottom dollar that her knowledge of history did not include any quotes from Richard III (well, before she met Harold at any rate), she has just echoed my thoughts of last Monday almost exactly. The source, the source …

I started this week searching for the source but I just couldn't figure it out. Now, as I look around me, at my friends and family relaxing, eating, drinking and generally making merry, at my mother sharing her Mylanta with the man she is going to marry, at my ex-sister-in-law discussing choices for
my
future with my best friend and Joanne, at my eldest sister who has joined her husband behind the barbecue, at my youngest sister who is carefully watching her boyfriend coming across the yard with her nephew, at the rest of the cousins lounging around on the grass, at my youngest daughter and her friend setting up a home of their own under the fronds of my favourite tree fern …

And I realise suddenly what I should have realised all along – that I never had to look that far for the source at all. It was always in front of me, and behind me, and all around me. The source is the same for my dissatisfaction as for my satisfaction, for my measure of joy and my measure of sorrow – and all
the rest that comes in between. It's all the same and I wouldn't have it any other way. Invariably evolving yet ever constant. These people – this
family
– that surround and support me, the past which inexorably binds us and the future which beckons with intriguing beguile.

The source
is
my kingdom, and the kingdom is my source.

This
is the source.

ALSO AVAILABLE FROM PAN MACMILLAN

Ilsa Evans

Drip Dry

Because sometimes coffee isn't nearly enough and you have to take a deep breath, maintain control, and assess the situation … or just reach for the scotch.

The twice-divorced mother of three is back. New, improved and stronger than ever — but still struggling to keep her head above water, even in the bath. And what a week it is in the Riley/Brown/ McNeill household. There's one wedding, two babies, three engagements and four birthdays. Then ex-ex-husband Alex's long-awaited return from overseas heralds unexpected results, which in turn heralds the arrival of a most unwanted guest. Meanwhile, Sam wants to join the armed forces, Ben is setting up embarrassing money-making schemes and CJ's wreaking havoc with sharp fairy wands.

Along the way there's an infectious disease outbreak, a mysterious death in the family, a broken nose, a bruised rump and several bruised egos. Can life get more frenetic than this?