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She would think of Carol when discovering the mountains of France, the
Alps and the Pyrenees. Could she see Carol at her place before leaving,
she would advise her about things to see, where to stay? “You own a
nursery! Wow! I love plants.” But Carol was unfortunately too busy, she
said, although the nursery wasn’t hers, it was her husband’s. She had to
promise Muriel that she would invite her over in February or March, so
that the girl could tell her everything about her European adventure.
Carol was about to ask her to “say hello to the two jacarandas in Barcelona,”
but she could not remember where she had heard of these trees,
maybe she had dreamed them up or read about them in a novel. She just
wished the girl a good safe trip. She harboured no desire to accompany
her overseas, even in thought.
Next to the telephone in her study, she found the issue of Poetry
Australia she had received at the end of last week. An issue dedicated
to “the newer poets of Sydney”, among them that James Neighbour,
whose name sounded like a pen name, or a motto given to some waif,
if it was not that his father or grandfather was a Russian Jew who had
wanted to disappear rapidly among the crowd but had naively chosen
the most conspicuous way of pointing to his difference and remaining
permanently singled out. Curiously, the epigraph to his poems was by
that very Australian poet, Kenneth Slessor:
126
“Fool, would you leave this country?” cried my heart
But I was taken by the suck of the sea.
She smiled. It was not the appropriate time to read poetry, Ella
was crying for food. Then she had to examine the plans for the studio
more carefully, before it was too late to modify anything; and she also
had some bookkeeping to do for the garden centre, not that she liked
crunching numbers, but she was better at it than Fred, and they did not
want to get into any trouble with the Tax Department.
As she was spooning an apricot coloured pap into Baby La’s
mouth, so rosy inside, she remembered that Kathy would soon leave for
France. They had not seen each other for a long time, a good six weeks,
maybe two months. Her studies, yes, the famous French Department!
Many of the same teachers she had herself studied with, twenty years
ago, Kathy had told her: Russo, Carrington, Black, Dewey, Pellerin,
McCormick... Only some had retired and had been replaced by younger
people who looked exactly the same; others had gone away and returned.
So far from her life, all this routine, she wasn’t interested in it, but she
loved Kathy, the girl had been so good to her, so faithful, her only moral
support when Elizabeth, her mother, had gone crazy and nearly driven