Sunbathing by Isobel Beech

Author:Isobel Beech [Isobel Beech]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Allen & Unwin
Published: 2022-03-17T00:00:00+00:00

18

Giulia’s back was hurting. Spasms and pinches ran from her thigh to her hip and up the length of her back. She tried, but she couldn’t do the garden anymore. The hunching over made the pain worse. Each morning and evening I filled the buckets and walked them back and forth between the outside sink and the garden bed. My arms felt limp and tingly after each session, and for ages after I had to let them hang by my sides until the feeling came back.

‘Thank you for doing this,’ she kept saying, watching me pour cups of water over the beans from her bedroom window or from the table under the tree where she’d sit with her work.

‘Stop thanking me,’ I shouted, ‘or the next bucket’s going over your head!’

Then one morning she couldn’t get out of bed at all. The pain came whenever she moved, so she lay on her side with one pillow wedged underneath her and one in between her knees. I asked her if she wanted to see a doctor, but she said she thought it would pass.

When we weren’t cooking or cleaning or doing the garden, Fab and I would take turns sitting or lying beside her in bed. I would read to her from the book I was reading, and from the one she was reading, a book she told me had been by her bedside for years: Lucia Berlin’s A Manual for Cleaning Women.

I started thinking of Giulia’s friendship like a warm bed. In it, I felt safe and loved and calm, and I didn’t want to get up. We talked and talked and talked, on our way to the shops, on our walks around the hill, on our beds, in our underwear, hanging out the washing, icing our bites. And somehow she always knew when I didn’t want to talk about sad things. Which was almost all of the time. Sometimes when we spoke I felt like we were in a play, like there was a predetermined rhythm to us. Like I had a role and Giulia had a role, and as long as we were together, and stuck to the script (which we almost always did), things made sense. And that made me feel at home in the world.

‘I just love you,’ she said, as we lay on top of the covers one day. Giulia was on her side, and I was on my back. I turned to her and saw her eyes were closed, so I couldn’t be sure if she was talking in her sleep or not.

That week it rained for several days. We kept the shutters and windows open because the rain was coming straight down and not in, and because the cool air was welcome. Fab and I put buckets near the front door to collect water for the garden and for drinking and for cooking. The sound of them filling up put everyone to sleep. First Giulia in her bed, then Fab, on the daybed outside the bedroom door.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.