Chapter 8
THEN
Trips abroad were part of the fabric of my childhood, in the same way dinner and bath time are for other kids.
I’m not sure I can adequately describe the glamour of this kind of travel—these days just about anyone can jump on a discount airline with their neck pillow and compression socks, but back then it was a big deal.
My mother bought outfits just for the ship over there.
She wore tailored dresses with long, pencil-thin skirts and little hats that perched on her head, and she styled her hair to perfection in French twists and the occasional pompadour.
I got a new frock just to throw streamers as my parents pulled away from the dock at Station Pier!
I was not invited on these trips, obviously.
While my parents traveled the world, I stayed home with my Aunt Cecily.
Cess was my mother’s younger sister. She and my mother had grown up at Rosehill, when it was owned by their parents.
Now, as Cess was unmarried, she remained in the guesthouse, except for when my parents went abroad, when she’d move in to a spare bedroom in the main house.
It happened enough that by the time I was ten, she didn’t bother moving back to the guesthouse upon their return.
“All that coming and going,” she said. “Not good for this old body.”
Cess was twenty-eight when she said that. Positively ancient, it seemed.
Cess was a fascinating contradiction to me.
She didn’t work due to her family wealth, yet she was happy to perform duties like cooking and laundry, and believed strongly in rights for women.
She didn’t suffer fools, but she could play the fool if it was advantageous for her in the long run.
She didn’t believe in women conforming, but she put enormous effort into her appearance.
She was the kind of attractive that could stop men, and oftentimes women, talking when she walked into a room.
Her platinum blond hair was pixie-cropped, her lips were Revlon “Cherries in the Snow” red, and she favored slacks over skirts—cigarette pants or pedal pushers with fitted tops and thick shiny belts buckled tightly at the waist. She smoked cigarettes and drank martinis.
My mother called her a widgie, in a whispered voice through pursed lips.
“Wouldn’t kill her to put on a frock once in a while,” my mother would say. “And grow out her hair a little. She’ll never find a husband dressing like that.”
I suspected Cess would have had no trouble finding a husband if she’d wanted one. But I had a hunch she didn’t. And that hunch turned out to be correct.
When Cess was in charge, she tended to my needs without fuss or complaint, and I went about my life as before. Unless Vanessa—Cess’s best friend—was visiting, in which case I made sure I was around. I adored Vanessa.
Cess and Ness, as they called each other, had been friends since they were kids.
Ness worked as a librarian at our local library.
Like Cess, Ness was whip-smart, but she had a softness to her.
Her face seemed always on the verge of a smile, as if recalling a funny joke.
She was small and pretty with a swinging high ponytail and cat-eye glasses.
But the best thing about Ness was her way of making me feel like she was truly interested in what I had to say.
“What are you working on?” she’d ask, if she found me doing my homework at the kitchen table.
Then, rather than going about her business and making tea or drying the dishes like Cess would, she’d sit and give me her undivided attention as I told her about Australian history, or Pythagoras’ theorem, or narrative poetry with the enthusiasm of one who’d never known such things existed.
“She’s fantastic, Cess,” she’d say, after reading a banal piece of writing I’d completed. “Have you read this? Her vocabulary is better than most adults! And her turn of phrase!”
When she did this, I acted embarrassed or uninterested, too afraid she would realize that I lived for these comments. I lived for them.
“You should write a diary,” Ness said to me one day.
“What for?”
“For your thoughts. Or your feelings? Or your imaginations! You can write anything you like in there. It would be a great way to develop your writing.”
Once I heard Cess and Ness talking after I’d left the room to wash up for dinner. “Why don’t they take her abroad with them? It would be fantastic for a kid like Mabel. She’d get so much out of it.”
“She would,” Cess agreed. “But that would involve her parents thinking of someone other than themselves for five minutes and I don’t see it happening.”
It wasn’t the first time I’d heard Cess say such a thing about my father, not by a long shot.
But I was surprised to hear her lump my mother in.
That said, Mum had been drinking more and more recently, and I knew that bothered Cess.
It was true she probably didn’t think about anyone other than herself after a few drinks.
“After what happened to Kitty, you’d think they’d appreciate the child they had. Spend some time with her.”
Kitty. The name sent a jolt through me.
We don’t talk about Kitty, my father had said at that dinner party when I was little. Certainly not with Mabel.
I was starting to suspect my parents had had another child—Kitty. But why didn’t they talk about her? And why certainly not with me?
“Well,” Ness said. “If they’re too stupid to appreciate Mabel, you and I will have to do it.”
“Is that right?” I heard the smile in Cess’s voice.
“Damn straight,” Ness said.
From outside the door, I smiled, even though I had no way of knowing at the time that that conversation changed the entire course of my life.
While my parents were away for months at a time—in England, Hong Kong, or South Africa—my mother and I wrote letters.
Mum was a beautiful letter writer. With pen and paper, she seemed better able to distill her thoughts and feelings.
In this, and perhaps only this, my mother and I were the same.
She wrote on stationery that was floral and embossed, the ink dark and precise, as if every letter had been carefully chosen.
I felt more connected to her by reading her letters than I did when in her physical presence.
You would love Italy, Mabel. Everywhere you turn there is something magnificent—the Colosseum, the Duomo, the statue of David!
I feel like I’m in a history book. As you walk about, you can practically feel the souls of the people who walked before you.
In a place like this, you can’t help but reflect on your life, and what’s important.
Several times a day, I see it through your little observing eyes, I smell it through your sensitive little nose.
I hear your funny little questions—“Why is the air full of happiness here, Mummy?”
You may seem bookish, darling, but in your heart, you’re an artist.
Lovely, right?
That particular letter was in grave danger of disintegrating from so many nights under my pillow, days in my pocket or sweaty hand.
The paper had begun to yellow at the edges, the ink smudged where my fingers had touched it too many times.
It was a silly yearning, I suppose, to be so desperate for a mother’s love.
So desperate that I didn’t mind that I couldn’t recognize myself in the letters at all.
The word “little,” for example, used three times in this paragraph, wasn’t one typically used for me.
The comment about the air being full of happiness was whimsical in a way I could never be.
And she was wrong about me being an artist, a poet. I was bookish, nothing more.
It was almost as though she were writing the letters to someone else entirely. Some days, when I could distance myself enough, I’d wonder who she was actually writing to.
As a librarian, Ness was always on the hunt for books I might enjoy. Each time I finished something, it became her mission to find something I’d enjoy more. Each search began with a quiz.
“What’s the best book you’ve ever read?”
“The worst?”
“What did you just finish?”
“If you could invent a book, what would it be about?”
I’d answer as best I could, shy at first, but with more confidence when I realized she genuinely cared. Every time—without fail—she’d press the perfect book into my hands.
One day, that book was Anne of Green Gables.
“The protagonist, Anne, reminds me of you,” she said, eyes sparkling behind her cat-eye glasses. “She’s smart and creative and has fiery red hair. And she’s an orphan.”
I blinked and took the book from her, startled.
“Not that you’re an orphan,” she added quickly, flustered. “You know what I mean.”
I wasn’t sure I did. My mind scrambled to make sense of it, to decode what she meant. But before I could ask, she did something unexpected: She pulled me into a hug. It was brief and a little awkward—her cardigan smelled like peppermint and old paper—but it was warm. Intentional.
I stood stiffly, heart racing, until something in me softened. And then I understood. Not just the Anne comparison, but something bigger. This woman saw me. And she cared.
It was, I realized, the first time in my entire childhood I could remember someone hugging me without being asked or obligated. Just because they wanted to.