Chapter 20 #2
‘Walking distance to the school,’ Ian had said when Spencer had taken them through on the open day. ‘You’ll have to buy yourself a bicycle, it’s only a short ride on the Rail Trail to the best cafe in town.’
And while he wasn’t sure how he was going to change Clem Crossley’s mind, Spencer had enough sense not to try making a move while he was still packing up his own house, and selling the furniture and appliances he and Belle had chosen.
He also had enough tact to know it wasn’t the time for romance; not when Clem was mourning the death of a beloved family member.
He’d stayed at the back of the church during Jean’s funeral, and while he’d gone to the graveside to pay his respects too, he’d stuck to the fringes.
And boy, what a crowd. There had been hundreds of people, and it had been tough, standing there among the sniffles and the sobbing throughout the sermon.
There was a reason he avoided funerals as a rule, but he’d wanted to pay his respects to the Dellacourte and Crossley families.
The Brealys’ house was in a state of disarray when he dropped Ian back, the messiest Spencer had ever seen it, with moving boxes in every room and a whopping great shipping container in their front yard.
‘Looks like you’re in the thick of things,’ he told Louisa.
‘I’d invite you in for a coffee, but I’ve packed the bulk of the crockery and Heaven knows where I put the kettle. I moved it to shift one thing around and haven’t seen hide nor hair of it since.’
Spencer chuckled, and was about to drive back to his own mid-move mess when Louisa leaned in through his car window.
‘I forgot to say, Alison’s coming tomorrow for a garden tour, so I can show her which bulbs are planted where and what’s what in the garden. Can we pop around to yours after we finish here?’
Spencer nodded. ‘Of course.’
Louisa laid a hand on his forearm. ‘She knows how important Belle’s garden was. Alison is the green thumb of the family, so she’ll do her mum and dad’s garden over here, as well as keeping her own property blooming beautifully. She’s promised to send updates too, if we want.’
A bee buzzed in through the open windows, and Dolly snapped at it from the passenger seat, making them both laugh. Spencer shook his head. ‘It’s okay. I might take a few photos of my own before I leave, remember it as it was.’
His throat tightened and his nose tingled. When he looked up, Louisa’s eyes were damp too.
‘This is a fresh start, for all of us.’ Her voice cracked, and after a shaky laugh, she smiled. ‘They’ll take care of it, I know they will. And they’ll make many memories in the house that made Belle so happy.’
Spencer could only nod. He went to put the ute in reverse and drive off before she could see him cry, then stopped. If he couldn’t cry now, with Louisa, in their last days together at South Giddi Giddi, then when could he?
He put the car back in park, hopped out and wrapped his arms around his mother-in-law. Together, their shoulders shook.
‘I’ve got Belle’s photo albums out. How about I bring them around and we can go through them together?’ he suggested.
Louisa nodded. ‘I’d like that,’ she said. ‘I’d like it a lot.’
Clem stooped down to collect the purple-and-green rollerblades from the verandah.
‘No matter how many times I tell them, they still leave them lying around,’ she said, almost dropping the armload of beach towels she was carrying. It was a beautiful late-January Monday, that sweet spot when the weather was warm, but not too hot, and she had a day off.
Arthur chuckled, the sound of his walking stick accompanying his footsteps as he followed her to the car.
‘There’s something special about watching them zip around the driveway on those rollerblades.’ His tone turned wistful then. ‘Jean loved it too, said it was almost meditative.’
Clem burst out laughing. ‘Meditative for her, perhaps. She wasn’t the one counting the number of broken bones those little rollerbladers risk each and every time they strap themselves in. Certainly isn’t meditative for me.’
She stowed the towels in the boot of the Jeep, along with the bucket and spade Indi had insisted on, and the extra boogie board she’d promised Hazel she’d bring, so Indi and Alma could brave the shallow waves together.
The girls emerged from the house, their faces slathered in zinc sunscreen. Clem wasn’t sure she wanted to see how much of the sticky white liquid was all over her kitchen floor, but she was glad they’d been steadily ticking off the to-do list she’d set them before they could head to the coast.
‘Speaking of Jean, I heard a thing on the radio about telling the bees when someone is gone. Have you heard of that?
Just the word ‘bee’ was enough to conjure up a visual of Spencer.
Clem’s heart ached. She’d done a lot of thinking in the fortnight since her great aunt’s death, especially in light of the revelation that Jean had also made arrangements for VAD.
She knew she’d hurt Spencer, and made a snap judgement on an issue that she hadn’t researched or considered from the perspective of those left behind.
Speaking with Fiona had certainly helped her see it from another point of view.
‘Tell me about it,’ Clem said softly.
She listened as her grandfather recapped the radio segment. ‘Some think they spread the message about a major event far and wide across the animal kingdom. They did it after Queen Elizabeth passed in 2022 and there’re poems and books about it, dating back hundreds of years.’
Clem chewed on her lip, unsure. ‘You’re not normally into folklore traditions, Pop. Do you really believe bees bridge the gap with the afterlife?’
‘That’s what they said on the radio, and I like the sound of it. You could ask Ian and Louisa about it, love. They’re beekeepers, they’ll know.’
She shook her head. ‘They’re packing up before the property changes hands. I think settlement’s directly after the play.’ Arthur tucked his walking stick into the front footwell and shuffled into the seat. Clem checked the girls’ seatbelts, then strapped herself in and started the car.
‘How about Spencer? He’s in charge of the bees until the new owners are up to speed, isn’t he? You know him, you can ask for me. If I’d known about this custom earlier, I’d have asked him at the funeral.’
Clem kept her hands on the steering wheel. Spencer was at the funeral?
But Spencer hated funerals. He’d told her that himself, and she’d also heard him mention it to one of the contestants during the TV show.
‘Jack might be able to ask him,’ Clem said as she stopped to drop her grandfather back at his retirement village.
‘Won’t you be seeing him at the play next month? And every rehearsal in between?’
Arthur gave her a quizzical look, before pressing his lips together, gathering up his walking stick and bidding them farewell.
I can’t ask Spencer for something after I was so awful to him.
She knew she should apologise properly, explain that she’d reconsidered her position.
But there was something, a little jagged edge in the smoothness of her heart, that refused to let it go.
She hadn’t seen her psychologist in years, but she suspected he’d have a few opinions on why this was, or would at least probe her until she reached some conclusions of her own.
The waves looked as inviting as ever when they pulled up at Beachport.
Hazel and Maggie West could almost have been twins, and if Clem didn’t know the sisters, she might have assumed Alma was Maggie’s child, and Cormac belonged to Hazel.
‘Isobel’s here too!’ Indi clapped her hands. ‘This is the bestest day ever.’
Harriet unstrapped herself and then her sister as soon as the car rolled to a stop, and Indi was straight out the door, heading for the sand in an instant.
‘Indi’s wrong, the production night is going to be the bestest day ever,’ Harriet told Clem, helping unload the car. ‘Louisa said I’m the best young lead actress the theatre company’s ever had, and we’re going to bring the house down.’
Her confidence made Clem so proud. Thanks to the Brealys’ guidance, and a helping hand from Spencer throughout the dress rehearsals, Harriet’s lines were near flawless.
It was a far cry from the non-speaking role she’d had in the junior primary play, and her role as the donkey on the Christmas float.
‘I bet you’re right! We’d better keep that sunscreen up, you don’t want to be sunburnt for your starring performance.’
Jeff and Mia pulled up just as Clem was ferrying the final load from the car to the shore.
Mia wrapped Clem in a hug, scanning her face. ‘How are you holding up? Is Selina going okay?’
‘Of course she’s going okay,’ Jeff said, helping Reggie from his car seat. ‘If my granny had left me a unit in Adelaide, I’d be the happiest seventeen-year-old going around. Especially after that stunt she pulled.’
Mia elbowed Jeff.
‘I told you not to say anything,’ she said through gritted teeth. ‘I didn’t mean to tell him, Clem, honest. It slipped out when I was tired. Sorry!’
Clem shook her head, giving her friend a reassuring smile. ‘That’s okay, tiredness is the thief of rational thought. And it’s not really a secret, Selina told Ian and Louisa the other day. Jean knew Selina really regretted the way she’d acted.’
‘Even though she’d been tossing nails in front of your tyres and orchestrating your cafe’s ruin?’
Mia swatted Jeff’s arm. ‘Keep your nose out of this, blabbermouth.’ She turned back to Clem, groaning as she watched him blow a cheeky kiss in her direction before heading to the sand. ‘He tells me nothing, and despite my best intentions, I tell him everything.’
Keeping one eye on the children splashing with Isobel in the shallows, Clem took a deep breath.
‘I knew there must have been a reason you hadn’t been on my case about Spencer.’