Title: The Jam Setter
Author: Susan Downham
ISBN: 978-1-62420-117-2
Genre: Women's Fiction
Excerpt Heat Level: 1
Book Heat Level: 3
Von has been the keeper of the family secrets for
half her lifetime. She has kept them close to her heart but after a visit from
her favourite niece she decides it is time to share them. As the secrets are
shared, two distant families collide. Von leaves her picturesque haven of Port
Arthur on the Tasman Peninsula in Tasmania for Scotland. Her niece Jennifer
travels with her. It is in Scotland that she finds her own peace as she puts
the family’s secrets to rest. As everyone reveals their own truth about the
past, Jennifer, Von’s niece finds love in the most unlikely of places.
EXCERPT
Von Ellis
loved playing bowls. She had taken it up after her husband passed away, and to
her amazement, loved it. She wouldn't admit to anyone she wished she'd taken it
up years earlier when her knees were in better shape and her joints didn't ache
so much on winter mornings. Von had never been the sporty type, more the
traditional homemaker type. A handful of close friends and Dougie by her side,
she hadn't thought she needed anyone else.
When she
first joined the local bowls club, she thought she would never fit in. It was
her old friend Gwen who insisted she join. Gwen needed something to keep her
mind busy, and besides Von knew she couldn't just stay at home moping about
being shitty with the world because she lost her Dougie. Though some days were
still a struggle she now had new reasons to get out of bed.
She had to
admit she was shitty with the world. There seemed nothing fair about the whole
thing. Dougie retired, they had plans, and they had a whole life to live
together without the burden of a mortgage, children to raise or school fees to
pay. The freedom of being children free often brought couples unstuck, and over
the years Von had seen a few parents split once the kids left home. They had a
name for it now, empty nest syndrome, but back then when she and Doug found
themselves as empty nesters she didn't have a fancy name for it, but she knew
it smelt like freedom. Not that she had ever felt burdened with the children,
far from it, she'd loved being a fulltime mother and never regretted the choices
she made. When they found themselves alone, she and Doug thrived. Not long
after they had the house on their own her cycle slowed to almost a stop. This
did wonders for their sex life. She knew for others it didn't always work that
way, but for Von, who always suffered, she felt like she had been born again, a
whole new woman.
They'd
talked about Doug's retirement for the five years before the day finally
arrived. They bought a campervan second hand, and Doug fixed it up so it looked
brand new, and inside they revamped it so it had every mod con they could think
of. Von, a list maker, made a list of the things they already had that they
would need to pack into the campervan and another list of what they would need
to buy. She had lists stuck inside the cupboards of what food would be going
where so she knew what food would fit. It made Maureen laugh and tell her there
were supermarkets on the mainland. Von knew this but she had concerns about
being stuck out on the Nullarbor without enough food to eat. She hated to go
hungry and didn't want to ever do that again.
They had
been into the city to the map shop and spent an hour with the lovely lady who
helped them choose a plethora of maps and travel guides. They had three maps
pinned up around the lounge-room and made notes on them all, as they worked out
the route they intended to take. Doug had friends he'd worked with who spent
four months a year in a caravan park in Queensland, and they marked out a month
to spend with them. Von also had a sister who moved to Alice Springs in the
early nineties and they made plans to visit her.
When they
had first told Maureen and Kathryn about their big adventure, the girls weren't
very interested, but as the date edged closer, so did their nerves. Maureen
didn't want them to go at all. She was worried who would look after the
children if she and Eric wanted a night out. Kathryn just worried her parents
were too old and too clueless to manage such a trip. They never had anything
positive to say about their parent's plans. Steven simply shrugged his
shoulders, and as long as he wasn't needed to do anything, he didn't care. He'd
always been like that even as a toddler. He was only concerned with what was
going on in his world and not with what was going on outside of it. Because he
seemed different to the girls, Von asked her doctor about him several times but
she told her Steven was just Steven and all children were different.
He didn't
have any learning difficulties, in fact he was quite the opposite, he seemed to
learn at an accelerated rate and adapted to the IT world like a fish to water.
It had never been something either Von or Doug understood. He just understood
how anything electronic worked, pulled things apart and fixed them and when he
got into computing he learned how to write complex programs. He'd wanted to
join the army straight out of high school, but Doug wouldn't hear a thing about
it. He had older cousins who fought in the Second World War and neither of the
two nephews who had been drafted into the Vietnam War came home. He was as
patriotic as the next man, and if there was a war in his own backyard, he told
Steven he would fight. He wasn't going to let his son go off and fight someone
else's war in a foreign country. Steven waited until he was in second Year University,
and then he enrolled. He came home with the paperwork all filled in; being over
eighteen he didn't need his parents' permission or approval.
Doug told
Steven he was a bloody fool and walked out of the house. Von cried and tried to
talk Steven out of it. It didn't matter as his mind was made up. Now he was
forty-six and still working for the army. He'd been deployed in all the hot
spots and now he was in a consulting role, which Von didn't understand. His
last mission had him travelling to the Middle East acting as a political
advisor.
After
Doug's funeral the girls decided, without consulting their mother, that the
house in Stewart's Bay would be sold and she would go and live with one of
them. Maureen wanted her more than Kathryn, but Kathryn was keen for her mother
to visit for a month in the January school holidays. Neither of the girls
thought to involve Von in their plans. They even talked to a real estate
company to arrange an inspection before telling their mother of their plans.
Von had been
livid, and she wondered how she managed to raise such self-obsessed insensitive
girls. Prior to the real estate agent turning up unannounced on a Wednesday
morning only weeks after the funeral, Von had been thinking of asking Maureen
if she could spend two nights a week with her and Eric and the children, so she
wasn't completely on her own.
The day the
real estate agent turned up Von wasn't sure what he was doing there. Still she
made him a cuppa then showed him through the house. He was impressed and told
her so when they sat on the front porch with him talking about how the values
of the houses in the area had gone up. It had once been a haven for holiday
makers who built little shacks for the summer holidays. With an aging
population, many people moved permanently into the area. This pushed the prices
to new sky high levels. Von clicked what was going on half way through the
house tour, and after a cuppa and pleasant chat, she'd given the real estate
agent his marching orders. He apologized and explained how Maureen had
contacted him and told him she wanted to sell. She denied her own need for
company by vowing never to sleep under her daughter's roof again.
That was
what Doug loved about her; she was pig headed, stubborn, honest and real.
That's what he used to say about her. She always stuck to her guns. Staying at
Stewart's Bay was the same thing. She stuck to her guns and wouldn't be moved
by anyone. She wished she'd been able to just
pack up the campervan and take off as she and Doug planned, but she couldn't.
It wouldn't have been the same without him. They'd planned to go skinny dipping
at Monkey Mia, make love in a tent at Uluru, make love in the ocean at Cable
Beach and a lot of other things that included being naked and being in love. At
fifty-six, when Doug's heart gave way, people were surprised because they
thought him to be much younger than his years. His mother had been the same.
She missed
the sex, Doug had been a very demanding husband, and she always enjoyed being
naked with him. Of all the things about Doug she could miss, it was lying naked
in bed with him, feeling his arms wrap around her from behind him hard against
her, rubbing himself on her bottom or back. Sometimes it used to drive her
spare that he wasn't more romantic in the bedroom, and now it was the one thing
she missed the most.
It was also
something she never talked to the girls about. She grinned as she thought of
what their faces would look like if she said to them I miss your father's hard
penis rubbing against the back of me. She smiled and tried to focus on what was
being said.
She wished
this day was a bowls day, but it wasn't. Instead seated at her kitchen table
yabbering on was her youngest daughter who arrived unannounced the night
before, seemingly to chastise her for her lack of a decent diet and her
obsession with beach walking.
Von did
wonder who's business it was if she went beach walking or not. It was her life
and she was feeling determined to live it out any way she chose to. Not that
her children were at all happy with her decision. They were still on to her to
sell the house and move back up to the city with one of them, permanently.
Someday she walked up and down Stewart's Bay Beach, which was a short four
hundred meters long. Other days she walked along Half Moon Bay Beach or Eagle
Hawk Neck Beach or she went around to Premaydena and walked out there in the
shallows. Mostly she walked with Gwen and
Harriett, her two best friends.
Von was a
lot of things, she mused to herself as her daughter turned the pages of the
newspaper and sipped her coffee, but stupid was not one of them. Von was still
eighteen in her head, young and virile and full of life.
"I am
serious, Mum, it worries us you are down here all alone and, well, what if you
had a fall or something?"
"If I
have a fall, Maureen, I will pick myself back up and ring the ambulance."
"What
if you can't pick yourself up?"
"Then
I will pull my mobile phone out of my pocket and ring the ambulance."
"I
don't think that is the answer, you have all those stairs off the deck. What if
you slipped down those?"
"How
old do you think I am, Maureen? I am only sixty seven."
"Only
sixty-seven" she said, not keeping any of her sarcasm out of her voice.
"God,
Mum, you will be seventy in a couple of years, but you think you are a young
woman, and you aren't."
Von turned
her back on Maureen and stared outside at the strip of bright green grass that
was being flood lit by the sun pushing through the trees at the side.
She
remembered it was Thursday, which meant Harold had to be coming to get the
gardening done. She liked Thursdays, as she liked talking to Harold. At least
he was close to her age and remembered all the things she did.
"Are
you listening to me, Mum?" Maureen's voice interrupted her thoughts.
"Yes,
dear, I am listening to you, and I get it, the three of you are worried about
poor old me sitting down here, on the peninsula on my lonesome, about to drop
off the perch at any day. It has just occurred to you that in three years I
will be the ripe old age of seventy and you will need to measure me up for a
wooden casket." She hadn't meant it to come out so sarcastic; she never
used to be sarcastic. She found it was something that was coming with age, and
it seemed it ran in the family.
"Mum,
now you are being ridiculous. We are just worried about you all alone, and I
have a big house. You could come and live with us up there," she spat. Von
noticed what it was Maureen didn't say. She didn't say her husband's name. She
thought back to the night before and she couldn't remember Maureen saying
Eric's name once. She talked about the kids, about her charity work and about
her friends, a subject Von neither cared nor wanted to know about, but apart
from her asking Maureen how Eric was, his name hadn't come up.
"Oh,
am I dear? Sorry, I do know how you hate me to be ridiculous," Von flicked
the kettle on again and got two cups out.
"I
don't want another cuppa, Mum," Maureen said, flicking the newspaper
loudly.
"It's alright, Maureen, I wasn't
getting a cup out for you," she said spooning the coffee in and turning
the cups around so the handles were facing the outside of the bench.
"Oh,
god no, Steven was right, you are losing it." Maureen said.
Von rolled
her eyes, wondering to herself if stabbing her daughter was wrong. She knew it
was but still the thought gave her some relief. She wondered what was going on
with Maureen; she dared not ask her if it was change of life. The last time she
mentioned the idea Maureen turned a horrible shade of white and nearly slapped
her face.
She poured
the boiling water in and gave the cup a stir, checking the clock up on the
wall, the background around the numbers faded and the black plastic now grey in
places. It had been a gift a long time ago from Dougie. Even though Maureen and
Kathryn gave her new clocks over the years, she just couldn't bring herself to
take this one down.
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