Sweet Home Summer: A heartwarming romcom perfect for curling up with

The Valentine’s Day window display in the pharmacy urged the romantics of Bibury to pop on in and treat their sweetheart to something special. It was where Bridget’s daughter Mary worked as a Revlon Consultant, and the pharmacy’s only floor staff. Next to Mitchell’s was the two-pump Shell garage. The Robson family had owned it under one conglomerate’s umbrella or another for as long as Bridget could remember. From her front room vantage point, she could see Ben Robson’s broad, overall-clad back bent over the engine of a Ute. She’d been at school with his grandfather. Poor old Raymond had gone a bit dotty in the last few years and was now in permanent residence at a care facility over in Greymouth. The garage’s tow truck that Ben took out now and again was parked off to the side of the forecourt with a beaten up looking farm truck still hooked to its boom.

Ben had recently taken over the family business and his parents, Bridget knew, had swanned off last Friday on a month-long cruise to celebrate their newfound freedom. ‘Not everybody’s on struggle street in Bibury then,’ she’d said, pursing her lips when her friend Margaret had relayed the news.

Ben had been at school with her grandson Ryan. They were great mates, the two of them, and still kept in touch. He was a lovely lad, and she’d been pleased when Isla had begun to step out with him. She’d glowed with her first love and in her, Bridget had seen herself as a young girl once more. She’d never understood why Isla had given him the heave-ho the way she had. He’d moped around the town for months after she moved to Christchurch. He’d kept asking her and Mary when Isla was coming home for a weekend, but the times she had, she’d kept him dangling by keeping her distance. The pair of them had been so smitten with each other too, or that was the way it had seemed from the outside looking in. Then out of the blue Isla had broken things off with Ben by saying their long-distance relationship wasn’t working.

There was more to it, Bridget was sure, and she’d been hurt when Isla hadn’t confided in her. She’d always had a special relationship with her granddaughter. Right from when she was a little girl who’d pop in on her way home from school for one of her gran’s freshly baked scones or, if it was a special occasion, Isla’s favourite, a custard square. Bridget could still see the pigtailed girl she’d been, perched up at the kitchen table earnestly telling her about her day.

Bridget understood her granddaughter’s need to broaden her mind, and she knew it was all the fashion to put your career first and stay single well into your thirties these days. Women should have a career if that was what they wanted. Of course they should, and nobody could say Isla hadn’t done that. The thing that seemed to have been forgotten along the way though was that being a wife and mother was a worthwhile career too.

When had staying home to raise your children become a foreign concept? You didn’t need a flat screen television and a new car for heaven’s sake! But your children needed you, and they grew up so very fast. Bridget had to listen to Margaret prattle on about how the grandchildren were coming to stay for the holidays. ‘Melanie works you know,’ she’d state self-righteously. ‘She has to with the cost of living these days.’ Bridget would bite back the retort, ‘and did she have to have a ridiculously big house in a posh suburb too?’

Times had changed and not for the better in her opinion. People didn’t want to save for anything anymore or make do until they could afford to buy it. She remembered how she and Tom had eaten mince for a month back in the day, to buy their lounge suite. They’d bought it in Greymouth and had kept the plastic wrapping on the cushions for weeks after they got it home for fear of Mary or Jack putting their dirty feet on it.

She watched now as Ben straightened, missing smacking his head on the Ute’s bonnet with the practised manoeuvring of a seasoned mechanic. He disappeared from her line of sight into the garage’s workshop. She’d heard that he was seeing the pretty blonde girl who had taken over from Violet McDougall as the school’s new secretary. From what her hairdresser, Marie, had been saying as she snipped at Bridget’s hair last week at The Cutting Room, things were getting serious between them too.

Isla had made a mistake in breaking things off with Ben in Bridget’s opinion. Yes, she knew it was all over years ago, but her granddaughter had not met anyone else worthwhile in the ensuing years. Certainly not the unmanly Tim she’d been shacked up with over in London – Mary had told her he used moisturiser for heaven’s sake and that he had gotten very excited when he’d thought she might be able to ship him Revlon products over at cost. She’d seen the light, thank goodness, and called that relationship a day. But while Ben’s life was moving forward, it seemed to Bridget that Isla’s was floundering once more. It was all well and good having a high-powered job, but it would not keep a woman warm at night.

Bridget became aware that the postman was at the letterbox waving at her. He must think her a right old Nosy Nelly, she thought, giving him a nod of acknowledgement. She let the net curtain fall back into place but not before she saw him slotting an envelope into the box.

Her heart began to thud alarmingly as she left the front room and moved to the hallway with its long reaching shadows. She stood there twiddling her thumbs and telling herself to calm down. If she hadn’t known that this sudden agitation was down to the possible contents of her letterbox, she might have taken herself off to the Medical Centre. A visit there was enough to induce a cardiac arrest in itself. It was another anomaly about getting older that a person was expected to discuss one’s intimate body ailments with a chap who looked as if he had only just waved goodbye to puberty. She waited for a few beats longer to ensure the postman would have cycled further on up the street before stepping outside her front door. She wasn’t in the mood to exchange banal pleasantries.

‘No, I’m not interested in selling.’ she muttered upon opening her letterbox and being greeted with a real estate flyer. ‘And if I were I wouldn’t employ you.’ She pushed the flyer aside – the agent looked like Donald Trump for goodness’ sake – and retrieved the plain white envelope with its Australian postmark tucked beneath it. She was about to disappear back inside the house when she heard a familiar voice. It made her jump, and she hoped she didn’t look as furtive as she felt.

‘Morning Mum. I was going to get some morning tea and then pop in on you. It’s nice to see the sun again after last night, isn’t it?’

Bridget waved across the road to Mary. Good grief, that orange face of hers was like a beacon sitting atop her white pharmacy smock. If she were to stand still by the roadside vehicles would slow and come to a stop thinking they’d reached a pedestrian crossing. When Bridget had asked her why it was she was getting about looking like an Oompa-Loompa lately, her daughter had shot her a withering look and told her it was down to the latest innovation in facial bronzing. ‘It gives my face a healthy, sun–kissed glow Mum, without inflicting the damaging rays of the sun on my skin. Sun damage causes premature ageing as well as skin cancer you know.’ Mary had her sales pitch down pat.

Bridget had snorted but bit back the retort hovering on the tip of her tongue. She’d given up arguing with her daughter years ago. Mary was a grown woman in her fifties and if she wanted to look like Mr Wonka’s helper so be it. Still, it was annoying how the tune kept getting stuck in her head – Oompa-Loompa doom-p-dee-do – whenever she saw her.

She was one of a kind, Mary, definitely not a chip off the old block. There’s a saying; the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. Well, it certainly had with Mary, Bridget often thought. Her daughter had never been much of a cook, despite her best efforts to teach her. She’d given up in the end and resorted to buying her a copy of the trusty Edmonds Cookery Book when she got married. Mary, she knew, wielded it with almost biblical fervour. It had become Ryan’s and Isla’s inside joke growing up, to try and guess the page number for the evening’s meal, some of which they knew by heart so often had their mother made them. Still, Mary was a good mum and a good daughter, and Joe by all accounts was pleased with his choice of bride given his penchant for grabbing her bottom whenever the opportunity presented itself. Even if she was orange.

‘Yes, it’s going to be a lovely day, and you can see I’m fine Mary, you don’t need to pop in. Besides I’m off to bowls shortly. Any word from Isla?’ Bridget called back across the street.

‘No, but I’m not expecting to hear from her while she’s in California, she said the cell phone coverage isn’t very good.’

‘Ah right.’ Bridget mentally shooed her daughter on her way, feeling as though the envelope she was holding was a hot potato.

‘The warm weather will do her good, Mum,’ Mary said giving her a final wave before opening the door of the Kea. Bridget watched her go inside the café before turning and making her way back up to the house. A needle-like pain in her hip made her wince as she ascended the steps to the front porch. ‘Sodding arthritis,’ she said to no one in particular before closing the door behind her.

It was last night’s rain and the ensuing damp air it had left in its wake that had set it off again. The tumble she’d taken a few weeks back hadn’t helped matters either. Mary had begun making noises about Bridget selling up and coming to live with her and Joe ever since. She’d offered to turn Joe’s workshop into a granny flat for her. Tripping over the lip on the backdoor step wouldn’t have been a big deal had she not found herself unable to get up. At the time she thought she might have broken her hip but had found out later it was just badly bruised along with her pride. She’d felt, lying in a heap on the kitchen floor, old. Properly old for the first time and she didn’t like it. Nor did she much like the idea of moving in with Mary and Joe. She was fairly certain Joe didn’t think it was a bright idea either. She wouldn’t want to put him in the position of choosing between his beloved Harley Davidson motorcycle and his mother-in-law.

Her son, Jack who was high up in mining and had a flashy house over in Greymouth had made noises too, about her coming to live with him and that wife of his, Ruth. He was just paying lip service to the idea though. Bridget knew she wouldn’t last five minutes under the same roof as Ruth, who was far too bossy for her boots and insufferable when it came to singing the praises of their children, Thomas and Theresa. No, while there was breath in her body she was staying put thank you very much. She hadn’t spent the last fifty-five years creating memories in her home only to leave it when the going got a little tough.

Oh, they weren’t all happy memories, but then that was the stuff of life. She’d learned to compartmentalize and shut herself off from what she didn’t want to know, mainly thanks to Tom’s philandering a long time ago. She wasn’t called Bridget for nothing she thought, heading towards the sound of the radio emanating from her kitchen. Her mother used to tell her not to cry when she’d run in howling with a grazed knee or some such grievous injury. ‘Don’t you know Bridget means power and strength in Irish?’ she’d say.

Bridget would’ve liked to have gone to Ireland. She’d always thought she and Tom might visit one day, but then he’d gotten sick, and the thought of going on her own after he passed away had been a daunting one. Her mind had been in turmoil for such a long time after his death. All she’d thought she’d known had been proven a lie in the hours before he’d passed and she’d clung white-knuckled, to the familiar. Sometimes she was secretly glad she’d never made the long trip to the other side of the world. That way she couldn’t be disappointed if the colourful picture her mother had painted of the country in which her grandmother had grown up didn’t quite live up to her expectations.

Besides, as she thought of the weatherboard sitting on its quarter acre section that she and Tom had purchased when they were married, she couldn’t imagine leaving the old girl for any great chunk of time. It would be like leaving a sinking ship. It would be like leaving Bibury for that matter, and that was incomprehensible because it was all she’d ever known. Bridget flicked the switch on the kettle and set about making herself a brew. Only when it was strong enough to stand a spoon up in did she feel ready to sit down and open the envelope.

Chapter 3

Bridget’s hands trembled as she stared at the Valentine’s Day card in her hand. A white love heart on a red background inside which the words, For Someone Special, were inscribed. It was two days early, and she didn’t need to open it to know who it was from. Nevertheless, she did.

Her fingers traced his handwriting, and she closed her eyes to see if she could conjure up a picture of what Charlie must look like now. It was the sixth Valentine’s Day card she’d received from him. He’d heard through the miners’ long reaching grapevine that Tom had passed away and had waited a full year after his death before sending her the first card. What a shock that had been! Sixty years had fallen away as she’d opened the card and read his condolences. The verse he’d chosen brought tears to her eyes but it was his request to come and visit her that had made her legs turn to jelly and her stomach begin to churn. She hadn’t replied to that card or the ones that had followed annually since. How could she? Not when there was so much water under the bridge. She couldn’t revisit the past with him; it was simply too painful.

Bridget donned her glasses and read the verse in this year’s card out loud.

‘There is a special place within my heart

That only you can fill

For you had my love right from the start

And you always will.’

He’d written beneath this that he would dearly love to visit her and that all she had to do was call and tell him yes and he’d book a flight. Bridget felt the familiar roiling in her stomach at this request. ‘Oh Charlie, how did I get it so wrong?’ she asked the empty kitchen. The phone began to ring making her jump at the sudden intrusion, and she swore softly as she got up from where she was sitting. A split-second later, Bridget winced for the second time that morning upon hearing Margaret’s not so dulcet tones informing her she’d collect her in five minutes. ‘Good-oh,’ she said hanging up and retrieving her cup from the table. She tipped the dregs down the sink before picking the card up once more. She would tuck it away in the top drawer of her dresser where she put all of her life’s flotsam and jetsam, and try to forget about it.

It was a victorious Bridget who was dropped home from bowls by a po-faced Margaret. She didn’t even toot as she reversed back down the driveway in her cobalt blue Suzuki Swift. She’d always been a sore loser, Bridget thought, giving her a cheery wave before letting herself in the front door. She’d better rattle her dags and get the dinner on because Joe would be calling in soon on his way home from the wood-processing plant where he worked in Greymouth, hoping to be fed.

The packet of beef sausages were where she’d left them defrosting on the bench in the kitchen. Back in the days when Max had still prowled the premises, she wouldn’t have dared leave meat out on the bench; she’d have come home to find the greedy old tomcat had mauled their dinner.

Joe enjoyed bangers and mash; he was a good man her son-in-law and Bridget liked a man who enjoyed his food. What was that phrase? Salt of the earth. She always thought it suited Joe down to the ground. He came to have his tea with her on a Thursday night when Mary swanned off to her dance in the dark session at Barker’s Creek Hall. He’d tuck into the meal she’d put down in front of him with relish, reckoning it was slim pickings on the home front with Mary not wanting a full stomach for all that dancing.

Bridget shook her head, as she unhooked her apron from the back of the kitchen door and slipped it over her head before tying it around her waist. A brief search for the vegetable peeler ensued and after locating it in the compost bucket along with last night’s carrot peel, she set about scraping the spuds. She didn’t know what a woman past her prime was doing jiggling about in the dark with a group of other women who should know better! What was wrong with a brisk morning stroll?

Bridget had been doing the same circuit each morning for years unless it was wet or the frost was particularly hard. Off she’d march, what was the point in dawdling? Down the High Street and passing by Banbridge Park, she’d always be sure to pause by the Cenotaph. It was her way of showing respect for the young men listed on the monument. The Great War was before her time, and she’d been too young to feel the effects of the Second World War. She’d known heartbreak in her time though. Her gaze would drift past the stone edifice and over the tops of the swings to the back of the park as she remembered stolen kisses under the Punga trees.

She’d continue on her way, the Coalminer’s Tavern looming on her left. It always made her grimace when people referred to the old pub as the Pit even if it had seen better days. Then she’d get to School Road. It was the road on which she’d grown up, and it pleased her to see a swing and slide set in the front garden of what had been her family home. The house, long since sold, was rented to a family, which was nice even if they didn’t keep it to the standard her parents once had. Her eyes would inevitably flit to the upstairs window above the thorny rose bushes that needed a jolly good prune, and she’d feel a pang for the girl who’d once occupied that room.

So many hopes and dreams but life hadn’t turned out how she thought it would. She’d stand there on the pavement of her youth lost in her thoughts knowing the woman with the unruly tribe of under-fives who lived in the house these days probably thought she was potty. She’d caught her peeping through the Venetian blind slats once, and had tried to imagine how she must look to her but had found she didn’t care. She’d stopped caring what people thought of her a long time ago and as the wind began to blow and the leaves to swirl, her mind would return to the night she’d met Charlie. She was once more that young girl twirling with joy.

1957

Bridget spun around and around, her arms flung wide. She was young and free, and in half an hour she would be off to dance the night away at Barker’s Creek Hall. The evening that stretched ahead was full of new possibilities and lots and lots of fun. She enjoyed the way the powder blue, poodle skirt she’d sewn for herself, under her mum’s helpful guidance, swung out high around her thighs. She’d spent the morning dipping her petticoat in sugar water, before ironing it over a low heat to give her skirt the fullness that was all the rage. Her mother had thought she was mad! Bridget was surprised, after all she should be used to such carry on from her older sister, Jean.

She had teamed her skirt with a crisp white blouse that suited her dark colouring, a blue scarf knotted jauntily around her neck to tie her outfit together, and on her feet, she had a pair of white kitten heels borrowed from Jean. They made her feel ever so grown up. They’d come at a cost, mind; she’d had to loan her sister her brand new Bill Haley and His Comets record to take around to her friend Edith’s house, before she’d even had the chance to listen to it herself.

She did have her new stole, though. She’d saved hard to buy it from the shillings her mother handed back from the wage packet she brought home once a week. She had worked since leaving school six months ago, as a secretary in the administration area of the Farmer’s Department Store on the High Street, and as such was entitled to a small instore discount. She’d put this to good use with the purchase of her first lipstick. It was tucked away inside her purse ready to be applied when she was a safe distance away from the house and her father’s eagle eye.

Speaking of whom, he rattled his papers just then and her mother poked her head around the kitchen door. ‘Bridget, don’t you be throwing yourself about like that on the dancefloor tonight young lady; I saw your knickers then.’ She tried to look fierce, but her mouth was twitching. Dad looked over the top of his paper, a plume of pipe smoke rising above him and filling the room with its distinctive aroma. He shot her a disapproving look before raising his paper once more. Bridget decided it would be wise to take herself off before he changed his mind about letting her go.

It had been touch and go as to whether his youngest daughter would be allowed to attend the Valentine’s Day Dance at Barker’s Creek Hall. He was convinced young people were being led astray by that music they were all going silly for. ‘Rock’n’Roll has a lot to answer for.’ He’d been heard to mutter more than once. He’d only agreed to Bridget going to the dance tonight because their parish church was organizing it as a fundraiser and Jean had said, under duress, that she would keep an eye on her. Jean could twist their father around her little finger; she could do no wrong in his eyes with her nice young man who had good prospects in the office at the mine where both men worked.

Mum, Bridget knew, was putting a dollop of jam and cream on to each of the pikelets she’d made for the girls to take to the dance as an offering for supper to be held later in the evening. She didn’t want to run the risk of marking her blouse or skirt by helping, but she would go and keep her company while she waited. So picking up her stole from where she’d draped it theatrically across the back of the settee, she pulled it around her shoulders and went through to the kitchen and sat down at the table, safely out of her father’s line of sight.

Jean’s boyfriend Colin was calling for them both shortly, but Jean was still upstairs in the bathroom fiddling about with her hair. Normally Jean would sit on the handlebars of his bike risking life and limb on the gravel roads, but Colin had managed to borrow his dad’s car. Jean had only consented to take her sister and friend because Bridget had threatened to tell their parents that she had seen her parked up with Colin last week when she’d told them she was going to the pictures at the Town Hall with him.

Mum chattered on about what the dances had been like in her day when ‘swing’ had been all the rage and Glen Miller the star of the day. She was about to demonstrate her jitterbug moves, jammy spoon still in hand, when they heard a toot, followed a moment later by a knock at the front door. Bridget looked on with amusement as her father folded the paper, leaving his pipe to smoulder in the ashtray as he got up from his seat to open the front door. She knew he would shake Colin’s hand with a vigour that left no doubt that he had high hopes his eldest daughter would have a ring on her finger by the year’s end.

Jean came skipping down the stairs in a cloud of Arpege perfume, an expensive gift from Colin for her birthday, and Bridget, carefully holding the supper plate her mum had placed in her hands, followed her out the front door. She barely heard the instructions her mother was reeling off for how she should conduct herself with decorum or her father’s watch-tapping instructions for curfew, as she settled herself into the back seat of the Holden FJ, arranging her skirt just so. She did not want it crushed by the time she got to the hall! Colin, she knew would have to hose the car down in the morning because it would be covered in dust by the time they navigated the shingle road leading to Barker’s Creek Hall.

They picked Bridget’s best friend Clara up on the way, and the two girls sat giggling in the back as they bounced along, their conversation full of excited chatter over who they thought would be there tonight and who they’d like to dance with and who they most definitely would not! Their hands nervously smoothed the folds of fabric in their skirts in anticipation. Jean shot them both the odd, ‘oh grow up’ look over her shoulder before rolling her eyes and saying, ‘Kids,’ to Colin. He’d reached over and patted her knee with a smile. Bridget suspected it was just an excuse for him to touch her sister’s knee.