were coming to stay for the holidays. ‘Melanie works you know,’ she’d state self-righteously. ‘She has to with the cost of living these days.’ Bridget would bite back the retort, ‘and did she have to have a ridiculously big house in a posh suburb too?’
Times had changed and not for the better in her opinion. People didn’t want to save for anything anymore or make do until they could afford to buy it. She remembered how she and Tom had eaten mince for a month back in the day, to buy their lounge suite. They’d bought it in Greymouth and had kept the plastic wrapping on the cushions for weeks after they got it home for fear of Mary or Jack putting their dirty feet on it.
She watched now as Ben straightened, missing smacking his head on the Ute’s bonnet with the practised manoeuvring of a seasoned mechanic. He disappeared from her line of sight into the garage’s workshop. She’d heard that he was seeing the pretty blonde girl who had taken over from Violet McDougall as the school’s new secretary. From what her hairdresser, Marie, had been saying as she snipped at Bridget’s hair last week at The Cutting Room, things were getting serious between them too.
Isla had made a mistake in breaking things off with Ben in Bridget’s opinion. Yes, she knew it was all over years ago, but her granddaughter had not met anyone else worthwhile in the ensuing years. Certainly not the unmanly Tim she’d been shacked up with over in London – Mary had told her he used moisturiser for heaven’s sake and that he had gotten very excited when he’d thought she might be able to ship him Revlon products over at cost. She’d seen the light, thank goodness, and called that relationship a day. But while Ben’s life was moving forward, it seemed to Bridget that Isla’s was floundering once more. It was all well and good having a high-powered job, but it would not keep a woman warm at night.
Bridget became aware that the postman was at the letterbox waving at her. He must think her a right old Nosy Nelly, she thought, giving him a nod of acknowledgement. She let the net curtain fall back into place but not before she saw him slotting an envelope into the box.
Her heart began to thud alarmingly as she left the front room and moved to the hallway with its long reaching shadows. She stood there twiddling her thumbs and telling herself to calm down. If she hadn’t known that this sudden agitation was down to the possible contents of her letterbox, she might have taken herself off to the Medical Centre. A visit there was enough to induce a cardiac arrest in itself. It was another anomaly about getting older that a person was expected to discuss one’s intimate body ailments with a chap who looked as if he had only just waved goodbye to puberty. She waited for a few beats longer to ensure the postman would have cycled further on up the street before stepping outside her front door. She wasn’t in the mood to exchange banal pleasantries.
‘No, I’m not interested in selling.’ she muttered upon opening her letterbox and being greeted with a real estate flyer. ‘And if I were I wouldn’t employ you.’ She pushed the flyer aside – the agent looked like Donald Trump for goodness’ sake – and retrieved the plain white envelope with its Australian postmark tucked beneath it. She was about to disappear back inside the house when she heard a familiar voice. It made her jump, and she hoped she didn’t look as furtive as she felt.
‘Morning Mum. I was going to get some morning tea and then pop in on you. It’s nice to see the sun again after last night, isn’t it?’
Bridget waved across the road to Mary. Good grief, that orange face of hers was like a beacon sitting atop her white pharmacy smock. If she were to stand still by the roadside vehicles would slow and come to a stop thinking they’d reached a pedestrian crossing. When Bridget had asked her why it was she was getting about looking like an Oompa-Loompa lately, her daughter had shot her a withering look and told her it was down to the latest innovation in facial bronzing. ‘It gives my face a healthy, sun–kissed glow Mum, without inflicting the damaging rays of the sun on my skin. Sun damage causes premature ageing as well as skin cancer you know.’ Mary had her sales pitch down pat.
Bridget had snorted but bit back the retort hovering on the tip of her tongue. She’d given up arguing with her daughter years ago. Mary was a grown woman in her fifties and if she wanted to look like Mr Wonka’s helper so be it. Still, it was annoying how the tune kept getting stuck in her head – Oompa-Loompa doom-p-dee-do – whenever she saw her.
She was one of a kind, Mary, definitely not a chip off the old block. There’s a saying; the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. Well, it certainly had with Mary, Bridget often thought. Her daughter had never been much of a cook, despite her best efforts to teach her. She’d given up in the end and resorted to buying her a copy of the trusty Edmonds Cookery Book when she got married. Mary, she knew, wielded it with almost biblical fervour. It had become Ryan’s and Isla’s inside joke growing up, to try and guess the page number for the evening’s meal, some of which they knew by heart so often had their mother made them. Still, Mary was a good mum and a good daughter, and Joe by all accounts was pleased with his choice of bride given his penchant for grabbing her bottom whenever the opportunity presented itself. Even if she was orange.
‘Yes, it’s going to be a lovely day, and you can see I’m fine Mary, you don’t need to pop in. Besides I’m off to bowls shortly. Any word from Isla?’ Bridget called back across the street.
‘No, but I’m not expecting to hear from her while she’s in California, she said the cell phone coverage isn’t very good.’
‘Ah right.’ Bridget mentally shooed her daughter on her way, feeling as though the envelope she was holding was a hot potato.
‘The warm weather will do her good, Mum,’ Mary said giving her a final wave before opening the door of the Kea. Bridget watched her go inside the café before turning and making her way back up to the house. A needle-like pain in her hip made her wince as she ascended the steps to the front porch. ‘Sodding arthritis,’ she said to no one in particular before closing the door behind her.
It was last night’s rain and the ensuing damp air it had left in its wake that had set it off again. The tumble she’d taken a few weeks back hadn’t helped matters either. Mary had begun making noises about Bridget selling up and coming to live with her and Joe ever since. She’d offered to turn Joe’s workshop into a granny flat for her. Tripping over the lip on the backdoor step wouldn’t have been a big deal had she not found herself unable to get up. At the time she thought she might have broken her hip but had found out later it was just badly bruised along with her pride. She’d felt, lying in a heap on the kitchen floor, old. Properly old for the first time and she didn’t like it. Nor did she much like the idea of moving in with Mary and Joe. She was fairly certain Joe didn’t think it was a bright idea either. She wouldn’t want to put him in the position of choosing between his beloved Harley Davidson motorcycle and his mother-in-law.
Her son, Jack who was high up in mining and had a flashy house over in Greymouth had made noises too, about her coming to live with him and that wife of his, Ruth. He was just paying lip service to the idea though. Bridget knew she wouldn’t last five minutes under the same roof as Ruth, who was far too bossy for her boots and insufferable when it came to singing the praises of their children, Thomas and Theresa. No, while there was breath in her body she was staying put thank you very much. She hadn’t spent the last fifty-five years creating memories in her home only to leave it when the going got a little tough.
Oh, they weren’t all happy memories, but then that was the stuff of life. She’d learned to compartmentalize and shut herself off from what she didn’t want to know, mainly thanks to Tom’s philandering a long time ago. She wasn’t called Bridget for nothing she thought, heading towards the sound of the radio emanating from her kitchen. Her mother used to tell her not to cry when she’d run in howling with a grazed knee or some such grievous injury. ‘Don’t you know Bridget means power and strength in Irish?’ she’d say.
Bridget would’ve liked to have gone to Ireland. She’d always thought she and Tom might visit one day, but then he’d gotten sick, and the thought of going on her own after he passed away had been a daunting one. Her mind had been in turmoil for such a long time after his death. All she’d thought she’d known had been proven a lie in the hours before he’d passed and she’d