imitation of George’s bulk.
Nothing to imitate now, Philippa thought, poor George’s bulk was being bloated by morbid gases and bountiful bacteria hungry for human flesh; as for Gina Ballantyne, she looked like a smiling cadaver. Her skin, so tight and smooth, appeared to be squeezing the substance from her; the skull so defined and the body pared back by exercise and diet was a welded sculpture of angles and joints.
Philippa would have to go downstairs soon and join them. She had learned over the past four days that a bereaved wife was permitted only limited time alone, too much was considered unhealthy. Even now, she saw Evelyn, her sweet, dull daughter-in-law, approach Melanie and whisper to her. The two of them looked up at Philippa, Melanie nodded and moved towards the stairs, while Evelyn collected another plate of savouries for the mourners. But Philippa was not ready to be collected, not yet. She left the landing and slipped into her bedroom and from there to the bathroom and closed the door. She heard Melanie’s ‘Are you all right, Mother?’ and replied with a cheery ‘I’ll be down shortly.’ She slipped off her shoes, loosened her belt and sat on the enamel lid of the toilet. George’s toilet. For that matter, George’s bathroom and George’s house. All of it now Philippa’s: the six bedrooms, the four bathrooms, the three large entertainment areas, the servants’ quarters, the clinker brick, the swimming pool, the tennis court, the terraced gardens. Yet somehow it jarred in a life without George, and as her gaze passed over the marble and gold of George’s bathroom, Philippa knew she would sell the lot.
Exactly five months later, soon after her sixty-second birthday, Philippa Finemore announced to Gray and Evelyn, Melanie and Selwyn, and her younger son Jeremy, that she was leaving home. It was a Friday night and they were lingering over coffee and port at the huge mahogany dining-table George had bought soon after he and Philippa were married. The grandchildren were either in the sitting-room watching television or asleep in the cots that Evelyn and Melanie kept in one of the spare bedrooms. Philippa passed the coffee pot around, waited for a lull in the conversation and made her announcement.
‘I’ve decided to sell the house.’
In the silence that followed, Jeremy smiled and reached for his mother’s hand, while the others looked to Gray for a response.
‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ he said. ‘If it’s help you’re needing we can easily organize that.’
‘Of course,’ said Evelyn, looking at her husband, ‘we’ll organize that. Melanie and I can do the shopping, and we’ll arrange for a cleaning service to help Julia with the housekeeping. And we can increase John Slowe’s hours in the garden, perhaps hire someone else for the lawns.’
Evelyn was clearly warming to the task, but it was not help that was on Philippa’s agenda, it was change. Selwyn leaned over and patted his mother-in-law’s knee.
‘Now Philippa, we know how difficult these past months have been, but what’s required is a little more time, a little more patience.’ And patted her knee again. Selwyn spoke in earnest; he had plans for the property, located as it was in a prime residential suburb and ideal for a substantial town house development. ‘You mustn’t rush into a decision you might later regret.’
‘Besides, it’s our home,’ Melanie continued, ‘you can’t sell our home.’ For Melanie, too, had plans. The house was just the right size and in just the right location for her own family. The house was Finemore property as far as she was concerned, and Philippa had no right to dispose of it.
‘Perhaps it’s only a passing phase,’ Evelyn suggested a few days later as she and Melanie sat in Evelyn’s lounge room drinking coffee and eating home-made almond bread.
But it was not. The auction notice went up, six weeks later the house was sold for a respectable 2.4 million and two months after that Philippa moved into a single-fronted Victorian terrace, fully renovated, only a short walk from the centre of Melbourne and a long drive from the rest of the family. Except Jeremy.
‘I think it’s perfect.’
It was late afternoon and Jeremy had come straight from the university ‘to wet the head of the house,’ as Philippa had so neatly put it. After a day spent cleaning and unpacking and discovering the secrets of her new home, Philippa had retired to the couch while Jeremy opened the champagne. Now she watched him, enjoying the warm distance that tiredness often creates, seeing his dark skin and eyes, noticing how the heavy, almost-black hair fell over his forehead, the deft gestures, the compact body whose slightness had always worried his father, and knew he could be mistaken for no one’s son but her own. He felt her gaze, looked up and smiled, and with the bottle now open and the drinks poured, came and joined her on the couch.
The summer sun was still high in the sky, yet, due to certain architectural feats in the renovation of the terrace, the room was still cool. Philippa sipped her drink and sighed. ‘I’m going to be very happy here. I love the area, the house is extremely comfortable, and it’s just the right size.’
‘Which is what the others find so disturbing. Where can the children play? Where can they take their naps? Where are we to have our family dinners?’
‘At their places.’ Philippa stood and walked to the galley kitchen at the end of the lounge. She rummaged in a box for some rice crackers, returned to her chair, took a handful and passed the dish to Jeremy. ‘Do you think I’m being unfair? Do you think I’m being selfish?’
Jeremy smiled. ‘I’m absolutely the wrong person to ask. But,’ he held up his hand to deflect her interruption, ‘you do have a life to live, your own life and not simply that of grandmother and babysitter. Selfish? The word has a bad reputation. What you’re doing is looking after yourself. I think you’re being responsible.’
‘It’s not that I don’t love them—’
‘I know.’
‘Nor is it that I don’t want to see them—’
‘Of course not.’
‘But I don’t need to see them all the time. The fact of the matter is, Jeremy, I’ve got other things to do.’
‘I know, and I’m pleased.’
‘Only vague ideas at the moment, but a host of them. This,’ she raised her arms to the room, to the little house, ‘is only the beginning.’
TWO
Philippa went into the front room to finish unpacking. She was pleased for Jeremy’s visit and grateful that at least one of her children understood her need for change. Which was fortunate, for the inclination was gathering momentum; each day had its share of new hopes and possibilities, some so bizarre they might have been borrowed. As the months passed, Philippa was discovering aspects of herself that were strange and unfamiliar, yet, at the same time, invigorating and curiously seductive. The discoveries did not help clarify her plans, but they did provide for a burgeoning array of options. Jeremy seemed to understand this mysterious alchemy that had, in such a short time, transformed his mother, not simply into a more lively person, but into a woman unknown.
Philippa smiled: an unknown woman with an unknown future, what a luscious prospect! And set about putting the house to order.
The front room had originally been designed as a second bedroom, but Philippa, determined never again to need a second bedroom, had converted it to a study. The cupboards intended for clothes, housed much of the Finemore finery, that reservoir of silver and crystal and linen and lace once so essential to Philippa’s
