Even though Margaret and Louise had lived quite similar lives in the same good-sized Victorian country town, and in houses only a fifteen minute walk apart, they never met until eight weeks ago.
Louise recently turned sixty, having been married for the last thirty-seven, and raising two daughters who had long since left to make their own families. Those who thought they knew her, would’ve said she had always been a dependable woman, one having grown up in an older time when wives and mothers tended to blend into the shadows of the household, and where nothing was “her own”. Except maybe for the Ford Laser, a wheezing crate that was the family taxi. And her last nineteen tedious years on the checkout at the local super, those were her own as well.
It had always been Louise’s dream – no, stronger than a dream – it was her intention, to travel “overseas” at least once before she became as old and as weary and as regretful as her own mother had been, about a life that had delivered little in the way of dreams, or even intentions.
Sadly, Louise’s husband wasn’t a travelling kind of a man, but maybe he was just small minded, a man of modest income, limited ambitions, and limited horizons. But, to be seen as considerate of his wife, he once took her to Tasmania, and on the ferry, so that Louise would have her “overseas” experience and so bring peace and predictability back to his house. He was seasick for every minute over and every minute back and forever vowed he would NEVER go overseas again. And was sure he’d put an end to this nonsense.
But at sixty Louise retired, cashed out her super, put it in their joint bank account, and began to once more talk “overseas” to a travel-deaf husband, who quietly took her money, and blew it on a lovely little near-new Mazda 2 hatch, in a sweet shade of blue, and in her name, and made a big thing of his generosity.
Louise lost all capacity to speak for ten days – well, to him anyway – knowing the truth of it only too well, and so simmered gently, until she was well done.
On THAT Saturday, he went off to golf with his mates, as he always did, expecting her to pick him up after he’d had his regulation two hours in the nineteenth hole before coming home happy to a full roast dinner. It was what always happened. Predictable as sunup.
Instead, as soon as he was out of sight, Louise drove her sweet blue car to the bank, set up an account in her own name, drove around to the dealer, sold the car back to him, organised the proceeds into her new account, and dropped by the travel agents on the way home on the bus. Another ten days of quietness followed, but this one full of flabbergasted disbelief.
And then there was Margaret.
Margaret, sadly, wasn’t as latently gutsy as Louise. Yes, a few years younger, but she had been worn down and down, right through her married life, worn down by an overtly domineering husband who ensured she had no access to anything, not means, not money, not self-esteem, a man whose stock answer to any question on Margeret’s part was “That’s on a need to know basis, and you don’t need to know.”
The man’s only joys in life were his four vintage rifles, his semi-trailer named ‘Brutus’, and his totally rebuilt 1968 Chevvie Camaro, a muscle car that he simply referred to as ‘The Boy’. He would often come home after his long haulage trips, anything from three to ten days, and – after checking through the household receipts, and tallying it against the change - say little more than “I’m takin’ The Boy furra run...”, and he’d be gone for an hour or two while Magaret juggled the timing of his sirloin-steak-and-three-veg and fretted a little as she watched the clock.
Margaret was forbidden to drive ‘The Boy’, as it was “too valuable and too powerful t’trust a sheilah with it”, but there were two occasions when she did at least get to ride in it, once when he took her to a Muscle Car Rally in Wodonga, and once when he went to Adelaide’s big Bay-To-Birdwood Run. But there was very little pleasure in this for Margaret, as in company – or in the privacy of his house if it came to that - he would always contradict her and belittle her opinion if she dared speak, until she eventually gave up, and seemed to coast, as if waiting out the years.
They lived in a big old farmhouse - which was only in his name - on two acres that had eventually become the outskirts of the town, as its urban sprawl had been steadily arriving for some years. But back when it was still at a distance, and their two girls needed school ferrying, and groceries and business errands needed to be fetched and carried, Margaret actually had a small car.
It was just a cheapie (not unlike Louise’s), but one day after the girls had left their home, and the father they had no time for, Margaret experienced a strange moment of euphoria and had driven her cheapie all the way down to Pt Fairy for two days. But he’d come home unexpectedly to an empty house and an empty frying pan, and to unauthorised expenditure, and her car soon developed a mystery illness for which the right parts could never seem to be found, and it spent the rest of its days waiting in the back of the big shed. Besides, he said, the girls don’t need you any more and the new shopping mall is only a ten minute walk. It was actually twenty minutes but Margaret could never find an opening, or the energy, to correct him.
After that Margaret’s life became even smaller, housekeeping money doled out once a fortnight, phone accounts and grocery receipts checked in detail, two daughters and three grandchildren who would never visit unless he was well away.
One morning, a few days after his fifty-eighth birthday, Margaret’s husband had a massive heart attack at a truck stop at Nhill while en route to Adelaide, and they rushed him to the Wimmera Base Hospital in Horsham, and there put him on life support. And as he was not expected to live out the day, the staff asked the police could they find Margaret quickly as her phone wasn’t answering.
Two female officers caught her just as she was arriving home, large bags of groceries slung low, her shoulders as always just a little more stooped than her various loads in life should’ve caused. And there in the big farm kitchen they spelled out, with some concern, the seriousness of her husband’s condition, then waited as if ready to catch her should she fall, or somehow react badly. But she said nothing for a while, just seemed to stare past them out the open back door, then –
“Life support you say?”
“Yes ... sorry love.”
“No chance of a power failure I suppose?”
This wasn’t quite what the two officers expected, but they did the right thing and offered to drive her there, which she politely declined, at which they re-stressed the man’s very uncertain condition, but she reassured them she could drive herself. So they left.
Margaret had a shower, changed into the brightest thing in her meagre collection, and found the keys to ‘The Boy’. And something came over Margaret at that moment, sitting there behind the wheel of that forbidden car, not even sure if her driver’s licence was still valid, but not prepared to look unless it really had lapsed.
She studied the time on the dash clock, stared off into the distance through the open doors a while, then fired it up, adjusted the seat and the rearview mirror, put on her seatbelt, ran her eyes over the glossy array of guages, blipped it twice to watch the tachometer jump and to let the beast know who was at the controls. Then selected first gear.
Margaret went sight-seeing. She turned on the radio and drove to Daylesford and Castlemaine, had lunch in Avoca, did a detour through Halls Gap, although not once brave enough to find top gear, as all the way ‘The Boy’ burbled ominously from its twin tailpipes.
He’d been dead for and hour and a quarter by the time she arrived, and the nurses fussed around, found her a chair, made her a cup of tea. When she finished it she thanked them for the tea and - taking only his wallet - left. Radio going. Tailpipes burbling. Third gear all the way.
Being the arrogant man that he was, who believed he would live as long as he chose, she was not surprised to find he had no will, no final decree of what should be done with his body, his rifles, his truck, his car, his house, all the symbols of his manliness and his grip on the things of life. So she had him cremated and – after considering a lonely piece of roadside just out of Nhill – backed away from this unbecoming sense of spite, and had his ashes scattered in the rose gardens of the town’s cemetery, her daughters one each side, little said.
Having no skills in life other than cooking and cleaning and being in her place, Margaret dropped everything into the hands of one of the town’s lawyers, and went about her routines, still little different than those endless other years, filled with hours and days and days and hours, fetch and carry, housework, paying bills, now finding it hard to not put out the receipts and the change for inspection.
Some weeks later, with probate done, her lawyer presented her with the summary of her husband’s estate, having sold the rifles and the truck and the car as she asked, for sums of money that were foreign in their largeness, in what she understood as the value of such things. But it was the bank account that was the bigger surprise, with over a half a million dollars squirrelled away in it, then a life insurance policy and a self-managed superannuation fund came out of the woodwork, adding another seven hundred and ninety thousand. That was the only time Margaret was overcome with events, and sat back, and cried a little, and said something the lawyer thought was “...the waste”.
Margaret and Louise met at the front desk of Wynn’s Hotel, just off O’Connell Street in Dublin, two strangers, both uncertain and a little overwhelmed by their recent lives, but - maybe sensing the parallels - tentatively exchanged accents, then home States, then home towns, then streets. To their utter amazement and delight. Then found they were both booked on the same unbendable ten day package that included Kissing The Blarney Stone, and A Night Of Genuine Irish Music In Killarney.
They had simply the best time in Ireland, but only after baling out of the bus in Cork City on just their third day, cancelling Louise’s plane home, and hiring a car.
They then went just a little bit crazy, all over that green and friendly country, then did three weeks in Britain on Margaret’s lovely new credit card, had more than a few laughs, felt like devils, speculated a while on what may be on the other side of the English Channel over many gin-and-tonics in “The Lamb And Flag” in Covent Garden, while making outrageous plans.
Louise arrived home to a chastened husband – well, chastened enough – while Margaret arrived home to the bulldozers levelling the farmhouse, and by the time the two of them return from their trip to Europe next year there will be six modern two-story houses in its place, one of them Margaret’s.
In the meantime, you can catch Margaret and Louise at the RSL Club any Thursday, where they meet for lunch, play the pokies a while, drink gin and tonic, and talk about... hmmm ... Paris mostly.
© T. R. Edmonds 2017
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