Hello from the Gillespies (42 page)

Yes, Ruth said, when Genevieve phoned her. She would most certainly like to see Angela. They made an appointment, in six days’ time. The news was great, she said. Wonderful.

She told them what to expect. That Angela’s ‘old’ memory would keep coming back. That there would be overlaps of her memories from the past month too. That she might have lots of questions. They should answer what they could. She advised there might still be occasional moments of confusion, but they didn’t need to be concerned. It was part of the recovery process. All they needed to do was be patient with her. Of course, Genevieve said to Ruth. And yes, they were feeling very positive now too. It felt good to joke about it.

Over the next few days, there was almost a party atmosphere in the house. Joan visited every day. Even her husband Glenn dropped over, bringing their kids and grandchildren. They were visiting from interstate.

Fred Lawson visited twice too. To check up on Ig, he said. But they could tell it was mostly to see Victoria.

Celia was now sleeping in the guestroom. Angela was back in her room with Nick.

‘I hope you don’t have a relapse,’ Genevieve said. ‘You’d get a hell of a fright waking up next to the man of the house.’

They ignored her.

Matt had only been able to stay for one more day. They’d all liked him. Most importantly, he met with Victoria’s approval.

She, Lindy and Ig watched from the kitchen window as he and Genevieve said farewell.

‘Are they going for some kind of kissing record?’ Lindy asked. ‘Ig, don’t look.’

Ig was glad not to.

‘This is the real thing for Genevieve,’ Victoria said. ‘It’s serious. He’s the one.’

Lindy raised an eyebrow. ‘Is that your super ESP twin-sense at work again?’ she said.

‘No,’ Victoria said. ‘She told me this morning.’

Genevieve had come into Victoria’s bedroom for a long chat. Matt was outside talking to Nick. While Genevieve held her, Victoria had wept again. Both in public and in front of her family, she was managing to stay strong. Alone or with Genevieve, she allowed her real feelings to show. She was so sad. Heartbroken.

The night Ig was found on Swing Hill, she’d told Fred about the miscarriage. They’d managed to find some quiet time together, after everyone had left.

‘What did he say?’ Genevieve asked.

‘That he was really sorry,’ Victoria said.

‘That’s all?’

‘It was all I needed him to say.’

After that, Victoria asked Genevieve to change the subject, to talk to her about Matt, to please try to make her laugh, even a little. There’d never been anyone who could cheer her up better than Genevieve.

When Genevieve came in after Matt drove away, they all pretended they’d been doing anything except looking out the window.

‘Don’t even try,’ she said. ‘I could hear you all sniggering through the glass.’

‘We were swooning and sighing, not sniggering,’ Victoria said, smiling.

Genevieve looked around. ‘Where are Mum and Dad?’

‘Where they always are now,’ Lindy said. ‘Over at the chapel.’

‘Again? If it hadn’t been deconsecrated, I’d start to think they’d gone all religious on us.’

Angela and Nick had been at the chapel most of the morning. After months of not being able to talk to each other, they now couldn’t find enough time together.

Angela had already heard from Joan about everything that had happened since her accident. She needed to hear it all again from Nick. Not just the facts. She needed to know how he had felt.

He took it slowly. He told her how scared he had been the night of her accident. The bad days afterwards. How hard it had been when she hadn’t recognised him as her husband. His fear that she might never get better.

They talked about his email. He told her more about the debt. His depression. About his visits to the doctor. About the psychologist.

When she asked him why he hadn’t told her any of this before, while it was happening, when she might have been able to help him, he fell briefly silent.

‘I was embarrassed.’

‘About what?’

‘About feeling so weak. Lost. Everything I thought you wouldn’t want in your husband.’

‘But you’ve always been everything I want in my husband. I thought you knew that.’

‘In your Christmas letter —’

‘Nick, if I’d known anything about how you were feeling, I’d never have written that. I wouldn’t have needed to. I would have understood. Like I understand now. I just needed you to tell me. To talk to me.’

He took her hand. ‘I know that now. I’m sorry.’

‘Are you still seeing the psychologist?’

Yes, he told her. It was helping him. She was glad, she said. He asked her about the headaches. She had to think for a minute. She couldn’t remember getting any. Not for ages. The doctor and the specialist had said they could have been stress-related, she told him. And when the stress had gone from her life, it seemed so had the headaches.

She needed to say something else to him. About her Christmas letter.

‘Nick, I should never have said I wanted a break from you all. Or that I wanted to press a pause button. Because it happened, didn’t it?’

‘You didn’t make it happen, Angela. It was an accident.’

‘I know. But it made me realise something. I had it all wrong. I don’t want to be a different person. What I want to do is stay being me, but do things differently.’ She tried to explain more. ‘I always thought I had to be in charge of everything, of everyone: the house, the family, my visitors. That if I didn’t keep everyone organised, then everything would fall apart. But I was wrong about that too, wasn’t I? You all got along fine without me being in charge.’

‘It wasn’t fine. We didn’t like it. None of us liked it.’

‘But you managed, didn’t you? Everyone played a part and you got through it. The more I think about it, the more I remember enjoying it. It was fun. Relaxing. I feel like I got to know everyone in a different way. Maybe I needed to learn to step back now and again.’

He smiled at her. ‘Maybe you didn’t have to go to such drastic measures, though.’

She smiled back, lifted his hand in hers and kissed it.

‘I’ve been thinking about the Lawsons’ offer,’ she said.

‘So have I,’ he said.

They talked more about it. It was starting to feel exciting. There was a lot they’d have to do to make it happen. Meet with the Lawsons, first and foremost. But it was definitely possible.

So much seemed possible now.

Four days later, Nick drove Angela to Adelaide for her appointment with Ruth.

Once again, Genevieve made the hotel booking. She chose the same hotel Angela had stayed in all those weeks earlier.

‘If you can’t remember it from the last time, Mum, it will be like the first time all over again.’

‘Genevieve, please,’ Nick said.

Angela just smiled.

She and Nick started talking even before they’d driven out of the Errigal gate. She had already heard a lot about his trip to Ireland. About what had happened with Carol. His visit to Angela’s old street in Forest Hill, to the museum. Over the past few days, they had talked about much more too. Old and new memories. Their visit to the lookout in the Adelaide Hills before they were married. Was that why she had gone there the night of her accident? They’d never know for sure. Her memory of that journey still hadn’t returned. They talked about the tour of Errigal he’d taken her on recently. She remembered loving it. She remembered flashes of their conversation that day too.

Now, as they drove, Nick told her about meeting Will.

He shared every detail he could remember. The shambles of an office. The shambles of a flat. The football magazines. The bad jokes. The double alimony. Perhaps he exaggerated a little. Perhaps he made Will sound shorter than he was. Fatter. Balder. Sweatier. He also described a smell of cats in the basement flat that he didn’t remember being there. But he did want to give her as much detail as he could.

‘He was that awful? Really?’

He nodded. ‘Really.’

‘He could be a bit of a know-all, but I always thought he’d turn out better than that.’

‘So I gathered,’ Nick said.

She laughed and then abruptly, she stopped. ‘You did that. For me. Flew to London, tracked him down . . . ’

‘Genevieve found him. I just did the legwork. I needed to see him for myself. Know what my competition was.’

‘And?’

‘No competition.’

‘You’re right.’ She reached across for his hand. ‘Thank you.’

He gave her hand an answering squeeze. ‘Any time.’

It was a cheerful meeting with Ruth. She had invited several colleagues to meet Angela. A confabulation case was rare. Ruth ran a series of tests, saying she’d have the results in a week or so. But she believed there was nothing to be concerned about. It was clear to her that Angela was making a great recovery.

After they said goodbye to Ruth, they drove down to the sea. Not to look at possible houses. There was plenty of time for that. They wanted to sit on the beach for a while. Look out at the water together. Talk.

They had decided to accept the Lawsons’ offer. They were going to leave Errigal and move to the city. But not immediately. There was something else they were going to do first.

‘Are we too old for this kind of thing?’ Angela said.

‘Speak for yourself. I still feel thirty years old.’

‘I mean it, Nick. Are we mad to be thinking about changing everything? Upending our lives?’

‘I think we’d be mad if we didn’t.’

They drove back into the city centre and checked into their hotel. They’d asked for a double room. They were given a suite.

‘Your children arranged it,’ the receptionist said. She read out the note Genevieve had dictated over the phone. ‘ “Happy second honeymoon. Hope you don’t mind, but we’ll need to borrow the money from you to pay for it. Have fun! Love, Genevieve, Victoria, Lindy and Ig.” ’

Angela still had incomplete memories of her time in Adelaide before and after the accident. Ruth had warned her there would always be blank spots. A memory of the view from this hotel had stayed with Angela, though. The suite they were given was even higher than the one she’d had before. The bed was as large. The linen was as crisp and white.

They were also alone. Not in their bedroom in the homestead, where there was always a good chance that someone would knock on the door at an inopportune moment.

They lay on the bed. Nick took her in his arms and smiled down at her, tucking a lock of her hair behind her ear.

‘You’ve defied nature, do you know that?’ he said.

‘I have? With my wonderful memory tricks?’

‘There’s that, yes. But not just that. You’ve got more beautiful the older you’ve got.’

He leaned down and kissed her. She kissed him back, holding him close. She knew every inch of this man. Knew the feel and the smell and the warmth and the kindness and the love of him. She had forgotten some of it for a while. But now she remembered everything about him.

Some time after, Angela’s mobile phone rang. They ignored it. Nick’s phone rang. They ignored that too. They also ignored the bedside phone when it rang. They had better things to be doing than answering phones.

Later, Angela lay in bed as Nick returned the calls. They had planned to go out to dinner. But it was so nice here in the suite. The room-service menu sounded delicious. The view of the skyline outside was beautiful: the sun going down, the lights of the city starting to flicker on.

Yes, Angela’s tests had all gone well, Nick was telling Genevieve. ‘Ruth’s very pleased. But unfortunately we ran out of time. We need to stay down for another day of tests.’

‘Another two days of tests,’ Angela whispered to him.

‘Another two days of tests,’ Nick said. ‘Maybe even three.’

Angela couldn’t hear what Genevieve was saying. But she could guess.

Nick hung up. ‘She said we are a pair of liars and we don’t deserve to be their parents.’

Angela smiled. ‘She’s right,’ she said. ‘We don’t.’

He lay down beside her. ‘She also said we now have to do our best to forget all about them. She seemed to think that was very funny.’

‘It’s a bit funny,’ Angela said.

They were facing each other. She gazed at him, at his beautiful, handsome, familiar face, into his kind dark eyes. She was about to speak when he beat her to it.

‘Welcome back, Angela Gillespie,’ he said. ‘I missed you.’

‘I’m glad,’ she said, just before she kissed him. ‘Because I missed you too.’

Four months later

The Gillespies were all gathering behind the woolshed. All except for Genevieve. She’d instructed Victoria to take dozens of photos of the grand unveiling and email them to her in Canada immediately.

It was the beginning of July, a cold winter’s day. There had been frost on the ground that morning. They were all dressed in warm clothes, boots, thick socks and coats, stamping their feet to keep the chill away, keen to get started.

Joan had done the catering again. Sausage rolls, as usual. Lindy had helped her ice two dozen cupcakes. The celebratory meal was set up in the kitchen. Celia wasn’t there, but they would be drinking tea out of her very fine tea cups and eating off her even finer crockery set. Six weeks earlier, Celia had sold her house in North Adelaide and moved into an upmarket elderly residential complex nearby. She should have done it years before, she’d told Nick. She now had lots of company around her. Lots of support if and when she needed it. Her enjoyable stay in the Hawker hospital after Christmas had put the idea into her head.

Lindy had helped her pack up and move. To everyone’s surprise, she and Celia had grown close since they’d started working on Lindy’s cushion business together. Lindy had started referring to her not as her great-aunt, but as her mentor. Celia had gone quite pink-cheeked when she heard that. She’d given Lindy the china as a ‘thank you for helping me move’ gift.

Today’s big event should have come sooner. But so much had kept getting in the way of the mural being finished. Ig had refused to work on it unless Angela was helping him. He also wouldn’t let anyone else near it. Angela had been up and down to Adelaide for appointments often since she’d ‘come back’. It was how they all referred to the return of her memories. Ruth had been up to the station too, staying overnight. She was almost a family friend now. She’d asked Angela if she could write up her case and submit it to medical journals. Angela was very happy for her to do so. She looked forward to reading it herself, she said.

‘Lindy, come on!’ Victoria called, rubbing her hands together to keep warm. ‘We’re freezing out here.’

Lindy poked her head out of the office window. ‘Hold on. Don’t start without me.’

‘What’s she doing in there?’ Nick asked.

‘Skyping Ireland, I guess,’ Victoria said. ‘Or emailing Ireland.’

‘She’s in love with Ireland,’ Ig said.

It had been that way since Lindy had taken charge of organising the Gillespie reunion. After returning from Ireland, Nick had sent a group email to the international Gillespies. He’d chosen his words carefully, not mentioning Carol but explaining that there had been some discrepancies in the geneaology information he’d received from Ireland. That the information he’d sent them about the Gillespie homelands might not be accurate. No one cared. They all still wanted to go to Ireland. They liked the idea of staying in Cobh. Nick didn’t need to organise a whole week of touring Gillespie homelands, they said. They could do that for themselves. But wouldn’t it be fun to all meet up in Cobh even for a couple of nights together?

Lindy had come into the office one morning to find her father looking through the latest email from Fintan in the Cobh hotel, asking about the reunion plans. She’d finished another Gillespie cushion – her tenth – and wanted to know if there was any point in doing more.

She’d asked what he was doing. He showed her all of Fintan’s emails. In his latest one Fintan had attached information about the heritage walks in the town, as well as a list of museums, restaurants and craft shops.

‘That looks like fun. Let me email him back for you,’ she said. So she had. Fintan had emailed her back. They’d spoken on the phone. Then started skyping. Nick and the others were now lucky if they managed to get on to the computer at all.

Lindy had also started playing a lot of Irish music around the house. Not folk songs. Fintan and his girlfriend played part-time in a band. An indie one, not a traditional one. It also turned out his parents owned the waterfront hotel. He was only working there until he’d earned enough money to give their band a go full-time, he’d told Lindy. Luckily, there was always work in the hotel, especially in the summer, when Cobh was jammed with tourists. She should think about coming over sometime, he said. Not just to help organise the Gillespie reunion. His parents would definitely give her work. She wouldn’t even need a visa, with her mother being English. She could apply for a UK passport. Lindy thought it was a brilliant idea. Fintan was full of good ideas, it seemed. They’d all heard a lot about them.

Closer to home, there was still no sign of mining machinery moving on to Errigal. The Gillespies had, however, finalised their lease arrangement with the Lawsons. It would begin in the new year. Nick had also met with the mining company’s lawyers regarding the caretaker clause he’d signed. He would stay on until the end of December. The role would then be taken over by Fred Lawson.

Fred had big plans for new breeding programs on Errigal. While he was setting those up, he could easily manage the caretaking role on the hectares leased to the mining company. It would also make sense for him to live on site. The Errigal homestead was large. There was plenty of room for him to live there. And as Genevieve said, Fred would be spending so much time on Errigal visiting Victoria, he may as well move in permanently.

Victoria was continuing to work part-time at the radio station, but she’d also taken on a new role. She wasn’t just helping Angela with her station-stay business. She’d virtually taken it over. She’d already updated the website, with Ig’s help. She’d hosted four different couples, from the US, Germany, Sweden and Italy. She’d also announced ideas to expand it over the next year or two. She and Fred were going to do up the shearers’ quarters, turn them into what they were calling ‘boutique rustic accommodation’. She had ideas to expand their tours too, to include more information about the birdlife, the geology, the Aboriginal history. Offer gourmet dinners each night. Fred seemed to be closely involved in all her ideas.

Nick hadn’t been happy about the two of them living together without being married. Angela had talked him around. It was clear to everyone that it was serious between Victoria and Fred. And just as clear that they would get married one day. But not yet. When it suited them.

And as Victoria said, it meant there would still be a Gillespie on Errigal.

‘One of us has to stay living up here, or Joan will pine,’ she said.

Joan wasn’t going anywhere, she’d told Angela. ‘Glenn says he’ll only be carried out of here. I feel the same. But rent a house with a big spare room, won’t you? And put my name on the door.’

Everyone now knew about their plans to leave Errigal after Christmas. With the help of the Lawsons’ lease money, Nick, Angela and Ig were going to rent a house in Adelaide as close to the sea as they could afford. Nick was thinking about studying again. A history degree, he hoped. Angela had looked into photography courses. They’d also had early discussions with a school in Adelaide known for its excellence in computer education. It ran a scholarship program for children showing exceptional IT ability. Ig had already been assessed and invited to apply.

They would be applying. But not yet.

They were having an adventure first. Nick, Angela and Ig. They were hiring a campervan and taking off on a three-month trip around Australia, leaving in early January. They’d already cleared the time off school with Ig’s teachers. They didn’t have a set itinerary. They were going to make it up as they went along. See as much as they could. Ig couldn’t wait. He’d already set up a website. He was going to write a weekly blog about their travels, so Joan, Celia and his sisters could see what they were doing. His mum was going to take the photos for it.

He didn’t know yet if Robbie would be coming with them. His friend still hadn’t returned, but Ig was confident he would.

‘Do you miss him?’ Genevieve had asked when they’d been walking up to Swing Hill, a few days before she flew to Toronto to start working on Matt’s new film.

‘No,’ Ig said. ‘I think about him instead. That’s nearly as good as having him here.’

They were carrying a pot of paint with them. Genevieve had decided not to wait until she died to bequeath her swing to Ig. They were adding his name underneath hers on the middle one.

Matt hadn’t set his film in South Australia or Western Australia. The Canadian government had given him much better tax exemptions and the landscape was just as empty. It wasn’t a film about zombie rabbits. He’d been sworn to secrecy while he was doing the location scouting. It was a big-budget historical drama starring two Oscar-winning actors. The director was his Emmy Award–winning brother. There was a cast of dozens and a crew of hundreds, including five make-up artists and four hairdressers. Megan was one of the make-up artists. Genevieve was one of the hairdressers. It would have been difficult for her to get work in the US, but Canada was a different story. Especially when she was being sponsored by a large film company whose production manager happened to be her boyfriend. Matt’s brother had also forgiven her. Matt had told him he had no choice.

Lindy finally emerged from the office. They were right. She had been skyping Ireland.

It was time for the grand unveiling. A green tarpaulin had been stretched across the wall of the shed. Ig stood on one side, Angela on the other. On the count of three, they pulled at the ropes. The tarpaulin fell down in a heap.

‘Ta-da!’ Ig said.

The mural was revealed in all its bird and gum-tree glory. Ig had done all the drawings. Angela had helped him colour them in. There was an almost-recognisable blue wren. A not very recognisable galah, kookaburra and cockatoo. An odd-shaped emu and a wedge-tailed eagle with oversized wings that looked more like a pterodactyl. Everyone showered Ig with praise. They already knew he was better on the computer than he was at drawing birds. In the right-hand corner, so small they nearly missed it, was a robin. Underneath it, Ig and Angela had signed their names.

It’s FANTASTIC!
Genevieve emailed back when Victoria sent her the photos.
But tell Ig from me – he still REALLY needs a haircut.