“And you?” asked Daniel, looking at Danny.

  Danny was not so quick to reply. “I think,” he said with a frown on his face, looking at his mother, “I think that I also carried a barely noticeable, nagging ache of missing something or someone important, something I once had that was nice and good. I guess it was probably my mother’s love, which, in spite of her depression, I must have still felt. I was, I guess, too young to really know what I had lost. I had little conscious memory of Mum. Dad just never spoke about her, which didn’t help. I asked him about her a few times, but soon learned that he didn’t like to talk about her.”

  “Are you angry with him about that now?” asked Bridget.

  “I’m not sure. If he had enabled me to stay in touch and maybe visit you a few times, things may have been difficult. Each parting would have been painful and he was probably worried that I might not want to come back. We were strongly bonded. And what use is it being angry? Dad did what he thought was best. Are you angry with him, Mum?”

  Bridget looked away, as she thought about that question. In the end she answered “I don’t know.” If she did feel angry, she thought, she was not allowing herself to feel it. She did not want to. She felt tears welling up. It was more the pain that she allowed herself to feel. Anger was all about blaming someone, judging them to have acted wrongly or unjustly. Bridget had always been quite good at not doing so. In the end, she always told herself, people mostly inflict pain with little awareness or intention and mostly as a result of their own ignorance or pain. She believed that when you remind yourself of that, it is easy not to apportion blame. She also strongly believed that she had great power over whether to feel pain or not. She had prided herself in being good at changing feelings of pain, with her thoughts, or by diverting her mind and body into action.

  The two young men silently watched the tears rolling down Bridget’s cheeks, until Daniel put an arm around her shoulder and hugged her. Bridget pushed back her tears.

  “Do you mind if I go home. I feel pretty tired. I can see you boys are going to hit it off, which makes me very happy. You stay if you want, Danny. I can make my way home under these wonderful stars. Bye, Daniel.”

  Daniel gave her a tender hug and kiss and Bridget felt as if she was blessed with two wonderful sons.

  Walking home along the quiet street, Bridget asked herself if she had any anger toward Jimmy that might have been totally denied, anger which could have been sub-consciously ‘held’ in her body for all those years. She thought about the mild ache in her abdomen and the other symptoms of fatigue and swollen tummy and, recently, discomfort and a feeling of being ‘full’ very quickly after eating. Was she becoming sick as a result of denied anger, she asked herself? A shudder went through her body, but Bridget put it down to the cool night air. She pulled her cardigan closely around her body and walked home briskly.

  52.

  The voluptuous and sensuous girl from the supermarket, Bella, asked for another life-coaching session with Bridget. She came early in the morning the following Monday, just as Danny appeared, wearing only pyjama shorts, out of his bedroom to go to the bathroom. Danny, surprised to see the young woman in the hallway, was somewhat startled. He managed an awkward, mumbled greeting and Bella just gave him a generous smile, which flustered him even more. Bridget introduced them to one another and then bustled Bella into her ‘office’.

  “Who was that hunk?” asked Bella, her eyes shining and a big grin across her face.

  “That hunk,” answered Bridget, “is my son.”

  She hoped that the subtle tone in her voice was giving Bella the message that she really would not like it if she ‘messed’ with her son. The thought of frequent, lively, rampant sex going on in her house, should the two connect in that way, was not one she enjoyed. She wondered why. Maybe it was because she wanted to savour the special mother-son relationship, only so recently resumed, for just a little longer, before she had to relinquish her unique role as the most important woman in his life, as all mothers have to at some point.

  “So, Bella, tell me, are you getting any closer to finding some sort of solution to your situation?”

  “Well, I had wanted to come and discuss with you my choice of action out of all the options we discussed last time. But I’m not so sure now ...” Bella’s eyes turned briefly to the door that opened into the hallway, as she heard Danny’s bare feet shuffle back to his room.

  “So what option was that?” asked Bridget.

  “I thought that maybe I should leave and go to some large city where there was a better chance of meeting someone who was compatible with me. There hasn’t been a single male newcomer in this neck of the woods for so long ...” Bella’s voice trailed off as if she didn’t feel too certain about her decision any more.

  “But before we talk, tell me about your son, Danny. I didn’t know you had a son. Will he be staying here very long? What does he do?”

  “If you don’t mind, I would rather keep my private life to myself. It would be unprofessional of me to share too much about my own life and family with you.”

  “Oh. Yes, of course.”

  “Tell me how you feel that moving to a large city would help you find the man of your dreams, Bella.”

  Bridget listened only half-heartedly as Bella, in her fast way of talking, spoke at length about what she could do to meet ‘Mr Right’ in this theoretical city. Bridget felt that chasing after a dream, or rather, a man, in such a way was not something she believed in. Life unfolds, happens, from the inside out, not the outside in, she thought. It is the result of what one draws to oneself as a result of how and who one is. First be who you truly, genuinely are and all the other things such as a partner, job, home, friends, will naturally evolve out of that, naturally drawn into your life to give you the exact experience you need. Not what you think you need or want, of course. Bridget very much agreed with John Lennon, that ‘life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.’

  Bella seemed to Bridget to be a person who was pretty in touch with who she truly was, following her own truest and most honest path of self-expression. She was a third-generation New Zealand country girl, born and bred here in Golden Bay in a stable and loving family. She was the raw, unblemished, unspoiled and natural product of the land, rivers, sea and sky of Golden Bay which had construed, along with the social conditioning and upbringing of the farming folk, to produce the unique and genuine person that she was. She had little experience of places outside of Golden Bay and had never felt much of a desire to explore the rest of the world. She knew she was happy living here.

  Bridget shuddered to think how a big city and some of the twisted and corrupt humans who lived in them might change her. She knew that, as a life-coach, one did not give advice or make suggestions. One only helped the client to process their own ideas and wishes and to realise them in their lives. For the first time ever, she felt an urge to interrupt her client, to say “Stop!” and “No! Don’t go there. Don’t do that. Just live your life as you love it and your mate will turn up, drawn in by your happiness and energy.”

  But she didn’t.

  Three weeks later, Bella was gone. She left a message on Bridget’s answer phone. The city she had chosen to embark on her search in was Sydney. She said she had a cousin there she would stay with at first. And she said thank you. “Thank you for helping me make my decision and find happiness.”

  Bridget was left with a sinking feeling in her stomach and the uncomfortable thought of having led Bella astray. For the first time since she had taken up her role as a life-coach, Bridget doubted the validity of her work. But she brushed the feelings aside by telling herself that this was entirely Bella’s decision and that Bridget had in fact remained entirely neutral. But, if Bella’s life was going to change radically in Sydney and did not lead to the happiness she thought she might find, how much responsibility would Bridget feel? It was a vexing question to which Bridget could find no easy answer. But one thing Bridget was sure of: she was relieved that Bella had not in any way managed to seduce her son.

  Danny, on the other hand, when hearing the news of Bella’s departure, expressed some sadness. “She was such a live-wire,” he told Bridget. “Going to the supermarket will never be the same again. She was part of what makes this town so special and friendly.”

  “Were you ever tempted to ask her out?” asked Bridget.

  “No,” replied Danny. “She asked me out, but I said no thanks.”

  “Has anyone here turned your eye?”

  “Yes.”

  “Who?”

  Danny was silent for a while, looking away to hide his uncertainty about telling Bridget.

  “Sonya.”

  “Sonya!”

  “Yes. Sonya.”

  “But … but …” Bridget could not find the words to express her thoughts. “She is carrying another man’s child!” she finally exclaimed.

  “I know that. But it doesn’t change her as a person. She’s the one, Mum. I know it. I love her.”

  Bridget was stunned. She had observed that the two had been getting along splendidly, but never entertained the idea that they might fall in love. This was going to be a tricky thing to accept without judgment or fear … judgment that they were making a mistake and fear that there would be complications, that it would be hard to love and raise another man’s child, that Danny was not ready to be a father.

  “Are your feelings reciprocated?” she finally asked.

  Danny looked at her in a calm way.

  “I’m not a hundred per cent sure. I haven’t told her yet. I suspect she does love me, but she hasn’t expressed anything to me yet. I imagine she will be full of doubt and questions about embarking on a relationship whilst pregnant. I think I need to be patient and optimistic. Things will work out, I’m sure. Love conquers all.”

  At that moment, Bridget felt immensely proud of her son. She knew, then, that the foundation she had laid in the first years of his life, no matter how depressed she was, had taught him the meaning of love. She walked up to him and gave him a hug.

  “Thanks, Mum. Thanks for understanding.”

  Bridget stood back and smiled at him, through tears.

  “I think Sonya is a wonderful woman and I hope that she will be yours one day.”

  Danny wiped away a tear that was trickling down his mother’s cheek.

  “But Danny ...”

  “Yes?”

  “I think you should know. Sonya’s husband recently emailed her to say that he was thinking of coming back to Collingwood. I think he said he had hopes of a reconciliation.”

  Danny looked at Bridget with his soft, brown eyes and stated, without any hesitation or signs of anxiety, “We’ll deal with that one when and if it happens.”

  Neither of them knew that it would be a matter of days before it did.

  53.

  Bridget walked out the door of the doctor’s clinic with a sense of relief to have finally done what she had been putting off for so long. The doctor had arranged some blood tests and seemed to think an ultrasound scan would be a good idea. She could just put her worries aside for a while until these things confirmed whether or not there was anything to be worried about.

  The clinic was in the same building as the Rest Home, so she thought she would pop in and visit Mrs Dallimore. Bridget was a little shocked to find that Muriel had deteriorated a lot since she saw her in August. Her body was more bent, her eyes were duller and she seemed to have shrunk considerably. The old lady was, however, still relatively astute. She recognised Bridget and asked how the cottage was suiting her. They talked about the annoying starlings that nested in the roof and the wonderful wisteria that garlanded the veranda.

  “Have you been warm this winter, my dear?” she asked. “That fireplace was never terribly efficient. We used to go through so much firewood.”

  “So did I,” said Bridget. “But stacking the wood and carrying it to the fireplace, chopping the kindling and setting the fire are all enjoyable for me. I wouldn’t live without it. It’s good that there is a door directly from the kitchen into the woodshed at the back. One doesn’t have to go outside into the cold to get more wood.”

  Bridget’s mind went back to the last time they had met there in that small room, when she had told the old lady about the biscuit tin with the $20,000 in it and how Muriel had just not appreciated the value of that. She remembered how Muriel had said how that amount of money would not buy much these days. The old lady’s mind must have turned to this thought as well, for she asked Bridget if she had given the $20 donation to the Rest Home, as she had requested. Bridget realised with a shock that she had forgotten all about that.

  “I’m sorry, Mrs Dallimore,” she said. “I’m afraid the money disappeared soon after I visited to tell you about it.”

  “Disappeared? What do you mean?”

  “One day it was in my kitchen cupboard and the next it was gone.”

  “How sad,” said Muriel. “You could have bought yourself a good cake mixer with that.”

  Bridget smiled. “Muriel,” she said. “Would you like to come and visit the house some time? Have a cup of tea with me and June from next door?”

  “Goodness no!” said the old lady. “It will just remind me of my life there with my husband and the years of loneliness after he died. He wasn’t an easy man, my John, but the loneliness was harder to bear than living with him. Thank you for visiting, dear. Do come again.”

  Bridget never did come again. Mrs Dallimore died peacefully in her sleep a week later. She heard the news from Joe. Bridget reassured herself that her spirit wouldn’t come and haunt her house, as she had seemed not at all attached to the place.

  54.

  December flew past and the end of the year was suddenly there. Bridget hated the Christmas and New Year traditions, but it felt vastly different this time, with her son there on both occasions. Having got over that hurdle of compulsory celebrations, it was time to prepare for the party Bridget had promised June, to celebrate the end of Barry’s home detention sentence. Bridget put out a flyer in every mailbox in town and notices up on the notice boards at the supermarket and café. She also phoned a few people to ask them to spread the word. The party was going to be held on the reserve by the beach and everyone was asked to bring a plate of food to share and their own drinks. June and Barry agreed to organise a spit roast of wild pork. The response Bridget experienced in the following days told her that this was going to be quite a community affair.

  About fifty people turned up that Sunday evening in mid January. Children made banners and streamers and tied them between trees and people brought tables and chairs and picnic blankets. Daniel came, as expected, with his didgeridoo and there were a number of other musicians as well. One lithe young man did some juggling and another danced with fire sticks. The wine flowed, people laughed, children played and June and Barry got many hugs from many people. There was a ceremonial cutting of Barry’s ankle bracelet, which later was thrown into a fire people had made on the beach.

  The days were still long. Around nine o’clock, after the evening light had dimmed into the silvery black of the moonlit sky, most of the families with children had gone home, leaving a smaller group of about a dozen people standing and sitting around the fire on the beach. This was the time that Daniel played his didgeridoo and wove its magic through the night.

  Bridget sat on a log not far from the fire and looked around to see if Sonya and Danny had turned up yet after closing the restaurant. There was no sign of them. She wondered what they were up to, but not for long, as she allowed herself to be magically carried away by the music and the rising moon over the still waters of the bay. The tide was a long way out and she could hear the surf crashing on the hard sand far away in the distance.

  She sat lost in thought, looking into the fire, thinking about all the people who were there with her, some of whom she had not met before. In the eleven months that she had been in Collingwood, she had connected with so many people and they had made her feel that she belonged here. She reflected on her interactions with them during the year and on the people she had met who had gone out of her life: Muriel, Dorian and Bella. She thought about Shelley and her husband, having another go at being a family; about Holly pondering on how to find excitement and self-expression since her youngest started school; Gabrielle, Theo and Daniel and their ‘ménage à trois’, which seemed, on the surface, to be continuing without too much pain and stress and, lastly, the conspirators who had executed June and Barry’s illicit getaway to Pakawau Beach.

  The old couple sat in the folding chairs provided for them, looking weary but very happy, surrounded by people who had known them both for decades and others who barely knew them at all but who felt sympathy and were moved by their plight. They had been a force that had pulled the community together. Well, most of them, anyway. They sat close and held hands under a blanket spread across their knees as they watched the others around them, a warm glow in their eyes and hearts.

  And then, of course, there was Joe. He had occupied himself mostly with the roasting and serving up of the pig-on-a-spit.

  After the meat was all served, all the food consumed and the roasting spit put away on the back of his truck, he had mingled and chatted with a few people. Now, their eyes met and Bridget hoped that he would come over and sit with her.

  He did and slid an arm around her. She welcomed the warmth of his strong body next to hers and smiled at him.

 

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