In My Mother's Hands by Biff Ward

Author:Biff Ward
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: BIO026000, book
ISBN: 9781743437667
Publisher: Allen & Unwin
Published: 2014-05-22T16:00:00+00:00

Dad’s involvement with Phyl was different from his other dalliances. It was clear he was in love. They both were. The two of them attracted a group of friends who became their other family. Mum was permanently indisposed at home and Bill, Phyl’s husband, was absent for lengthy swathes of time being a politician in Sydney. The group, especially those without young children, had ‘drinks’ after work at Phyl’s house, they played tennis on Saturday or Sunday afternoons for years, they acted in very amateur theatrics and they went to parties and dinners at each other’s houses and soirees and balls at the university. As I saw it, the next circle out in Dad’s world consisted of the other lefties on campus and the next, bizarrely, was made up of the squatter couples of New England merino fame who had been part of Phyl’s world.

Dad was the happiest I ever knew him in those years with Phyl. He laughed often under her tutelage, in her spinning orbit. They swooped up and down the long streets and slopes of Armidale together, public and outrageous in their joy.

He asked me to meet Sue, Phyl’s daughter, who went to New England Girls’ School, the Anglican boarding school on the edge of town, and who was the same age as I was. Presuming he was wanting to augment his own social whirl rather than mine, I declined repeatedly. He and I were shopping on the main street one Saturday morning when, lo and behold, we bumped into Phyl with her Sue on a mid-term break. Within minutes, Sue and I walked across the road together to buy ice-creams. We have been friends ever since.

One night, walking with Prue to the pictures, I saw Dad’s Holden parked around the corner from Phyl’s place. A car in hiding.

Oh, I said. That’s our car, sure that Prue must be wondering.

Mmmm? She went on talking about a song.

I don’t know what he’s doing here . . . I muttered, looking theatrically at darkened houses.

She appeared to notice nothing.

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