Remember Me by Liz Byrski

Author:Liz Byrski [Byrski, Liz]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Biography & Autobiography/Personal Memoirs
ISBN: 21187
Publisher: SPUNC - Fremantle Press
Published: 2008-12-31T11:00:00+00:00

From the dry heat of Perth, through a steaming day in Singapore, we fly above rafts of solid white cloud streaked with sunset pink into the darkness and towards restless uncomfortable sleep. And then a couple of hours at Frankfurt airport where ploughs clear the snow from the runways, dump it in piles where it will not be a hazard.

As the dawn breaks the snow turns to sleet and I watch from the window of the airport lounge as the crisp white piles sink, soften and discolour. The lounge is full of German businessmen with silver hair and double-breasted navy blue overcoats. They are quiet, courteous and totally single minded in their pursuit of coffee, bottled water, newspapers, an empty table. I sit watching a group of them talking quietly. Frankfurt. Two hours to wait until the connecting flight to Lisbon.

From the balcony of Neil’s flat outside Lisbon, I watch the Atlantic Container ships and fishing boats break the straight line of the horizon. The crimson sun sets, its remnant rays painting a backcloth of pink and gold.

‘It’s great to have you here Mum,’ Neil says. ‘It’s ages since I saw you.’

I am so overjoyed to be with him that I can’t stop the tears. We sit down with the maps and plan the holiday we’ll have when he finishes teaching at the end of the week. Five days travel to inland Portugal, back here to the flat for Christmas, and then England for a couple of weeks.

‘Are you all right Mum? You look a bit—well—I don’t know what really.’

‘Jet-lag. It’ll be gone by the end of the week.’

But the nudging, the niggling, the questions do not go away. They travel with me through the glorious hilltop villages of pristine white cottages, where church bells are the only sound to disturb the silence; and across the rolling plains covered with cork trees. They strike me with daggers in the cloisters of magnificent cathedrals, in marble cobbled squares, and on tree clad hillsides.

On Christmas Day Neil lights the fire and we play backgammon on the balcony, and eat our Christmas dinner as the sun disappears behind the cypress trees.

‘Would you like me to teach you to play chess?’ Neil asks.

‘I’ve only just learnt the rules of backgammon,’ I say. ‘I think I might leave chess for another day.’

‘You need an adventure Mum,’ he says. ‘I’m a bit worried about you, you need to do something wild and wonderful just for you.’

I think he’s right and I try to look enthusiastic, but at the moment I don’t think I have the stamina for an adventure. Sadness is so exhausting and a lifetime supply of it seems suddenly to have crept up on me and taken me by surprise.

I think a couple of weeks in England is all the adventure I can cope with right now,’ I say, as we sit in the brilliant Boxing Day sunshine, drinking coffee on the esplanade at Estoril.

The next day we board the British Airways flight for London, and on a dark, damp evening we pick up a rental car at Gatwick Airport.

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