Another Life Altogether: A Novel - By Elaine Beale Page 0,37

Rupert the Bear annuals, your little Rupert the Bear scarf.” She sighed. “It’s a shame you had to grow up, really. You were lovely when you were little. It’s a pity you got so—well, let’s face it, you can be a bit of a clever madam these days. It’s really not very attractive, you know. I don’t think the young men will find that very appealing.”

“I don’t care,” I said, swirling the potatoes around in the sink, watching the water turn brown and murky.

“I don’t believe you for a second. When I was your age, all I thought about was boys, boys, boys. Of course, your grandma had a thing or two to say about that. But then your grandma’s always had a thing or two to say about everything.” Suddenly, her voice brightened. “I didn’t tell you, did I? I got a letter from her today.” She began rummaging in the pocket of her dressing gown, pulling out a blue airmail envelope and placing it in front of her on the table.

Grandma Pearson had emigrated to Australia when I was four. According to my mother, it had been her life’s dream to live there. When my mother was twelve, Grandma had pinned a map of Australia above the fireplace in her living room, and for as long as my mother could remember, Grandma had talked about the place as if it were a utopia at the opposite side of the world. Unfortunately for Grandma, Granddad Pearson hadn’t shared her sentiments. A dockworker almost his entire adult life, he spent his days loading and unloading cargo from around the world but had no desire to go anywhere himself. “As far as he was concerned, paradise was at the bottom of a glass of beer down at the local pub,” my mother often said bitterly. “If it wasn’t for him being so stubborn, I could have grown up in Australia. Instead, I had to grow up here.” She said this in a tone that suggested that a childhood spent in England was the worst fate one could wish upon a person.

After many years of complaining about the cold and damp and yearning for a land of marsupials, billabongs, and vast expanses of uninhabitable desert, Grandma finally got her wish. Four years after I was born, Granddad was killed when a container of Australian wool fell from the crane that was lifting it onto the dockside, crushing him beneath it. Grandma took this as something of a sign, and after collecting a sizable widow’s-compensation package and spending what she considered an adequate period in mourning (about three months), she sold most of her possessions, packed her bags, and left. She even managed to take along Granddad, who was now housed in the urn provided by the crematorium. “First thing she did when she got there,” my mother told me, “was scatter that stubborn old bugger’s ashes in Sydney Harbor. See,” she said with obvious satisfaction. “She got him to Australia in the end.” My mother had bemoaned Grandma’s departure many times, dramatically describing how she had watched the ship that took away her beloved mother become smaller and smaller until it turned into a dot that dipped over the horizon “never, ever to be seen again.”

It struck me now as strange that I hadn’t thought to put Sydney or Melbourne or Perth on my mother’s imaginary itinerary. After all, whenever she fell into one of her bad patches she would invariably begin talking about how Australia was as close to heaven as anywhere on earth, how happy she’d be if she lived there, and how she couldn’t understand how her own mother had emigrated there without her, leaving her all alone in this awful, miserable, damp country. My father would try to reason with her, telling her that there was no such place as heaven on earth, and, even if there was, it certainly wasn’t to be found in a continent that was “not much more than a wasteland with a few beaches patrolled by man-eating sharks,” and, in the not-too-distant past, had been used as a dumping ground for the dregs of British society. None of this, however, had very much impact on my mother. Throughout every one of her bad patches, she remained convinced that a ticket to Australia would be a ticket to ultimate contentment.

“It’s winter there now, you know,” my mother said, staring at the letter that she’d set down on the table. “Mind you, from what she