Page 46 of Weekends with the Sunshine Gardening Society
Now it’s Kathy’s turn to pause. She thinks about her life now. The week just gone. The week ahead. Work is going well. She likes her co-workers; Hans is funny and kind. And she really likes the Sunshine Gardening Society. When she’s in Elizabeth’s garden, in particular, she feels useful and capable. That’s not a feeling she’s had for a while. If she keeps being a member of the society she’s fairly sure she’ll be fine. Or one of the ladies will make sure she is, because if Lorraine’s not asking her direct questions, Cynthia is gently prying, trying to find out if she’s settling into Sunshine Coast life, whether she has hobbies, whatshe likes to do during her free time when she’s not gardening. Their interest has made Kathy think sheshoulddo more with her life than work and sit at home. So she’s getting there. She just needs to change this one bad habit.
‘I’m working on it,’ she tells Michelle. ‘Promise.’
‘Can I come and visit?’
‘Why would you want to do that? I thought you were mad at me.’
‘I miss you, Mum. Grant does too. Even Dad does.’
Good old Owen. He’s probably still never said a bad word about her.
‘Do you want to visit so you can stop me drinking at night?’ Kathy asks.
When the kids were teenagers she used to insist on picking them up from parties so they wouldn’t be tempted to drink. Michelle is now probably turning this monitoring trick on her.
‘That’s one of the reasons. But the main one is that I’d like to see you.’
‘Then I suppose you can.’
‘Great.’ Michelle sounds relieved. ‘I’ll work out some dates and let you know.’
‘Okay.’ Kathy smiles into the phone. ‘It’ll be good to see you.’
‘You too. Bye, Mum.’
‘Bye, sweetheart.’
Kathy looks around the living room, which is hardly welcoming to her let alone a guest. Next time she sees Shirl she’ll ask where she can buy some cushions or something. Shirl strikes her as the sort of person who’d know that kind of thing, given she seems to know which person grew up in which house and who was related to the mayor and whose uncle used to be a minister in the Bjelke-Petersen government and where so-and-so’s restaurant used to be.
She pours the last of the wine down the sink, tidies up the kitchen, and turns out the lights as she takes herself off to bed.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Lorraineisn’t sure how she feels about going to someone else’s garden. They’ve mostly been working at Elizabeth’s place the past few weekends, with the occasional detour, and she was starting to feel a sense of ownership about it, almost like it washergarden. After they’d yanked out weeds and pruned bushes and cleaned up leaf litter, the design of the garden became clear and with it the reward of their work: beauty. The place looked marvellous, and the blooms weren’t even blooming yet.
‘Gardening’s great!’ she told Mike one night. ‘Once you can see how all the plants and whatnot work together, it’s like creating a space for people to just enjoy looking at. And it’s nice to be around all that nature.’
Mike gave her a funny look. ‘Yeah. Why do you think I do it as a job?’
‘But you never talk about it. You talk about the handyman stuff, not the gardening stuff.’
‘Because I get better stories out of the handyman stuff.’ He’d sat back in his chair and lit a cigarette.
Sometimes, later at night, the two of them sit in the kitchen and have a quiet drink and a quiet smoke, out of the range of Mike’s mother, who particularly doesn’t like smoking. Obviously Lorraine has never revealed to Cora that she’s smoked for years, and she’s invested in a lot of minty chewing gum to hide thatfact. Living with Cora has meant both Lorraine and Mike have had to cut back, though. Or Lorraine has. She’s pretty sure Mike smokes while he works, but he’s outside a lot of the time so it doesn’t seem to stick to his clothes. Lorraine can’t smoke in the house while Cora’s awake. So night-time it is, after the kids have also gone to bed. It’s become their little ritual, hers and Mike’s, and usually they can sort out most things that way – although lately Mike’s been needling her a bit about how she’s ‘upset’ Cora and Lorraine hasn’t taken it too well. She’s been tempted to ask him about the TAB receipts except that might look like tit for tat.
‘I suppose that’s true,’ Lorraine said as he inhaled. ‘You manage to hammer your thumb quite a bit.’
‘Or maybe I just tell you I do.’ He raised an eyebrow. ‘For laughs.’
‘Ha ha. How is it funny when I just think you’re clumsy?’
She’d winked at him and he’d given her a peck, and they’d enjoyed their ciggies and their drinks and gone to bed happy.
Tonight she’ll tell him that they aren’t at Elizabeth’s any longer because they’ve become victims of their own success and fixed it up so well that they won’t need to go back for a little while.
Now they’re at a place at Castaways Beach. The owner died and it’s been years since his children visited, so they didn’t realise that he basically lived in a jungle. A neighbour rang Barb and asked if the Sunshine Gardening Society could help. They’d helped the neighbour a few years before and she’d kept the number.
Lorraine knows they’re in for an interesting time of it when Shirl turns up with her machete. She’s looking forward to seeing her wield it on the vines that are clogging up most of the front garden.
