The Jam Setter

By Susan Downham

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.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Rogue Phoenix Press
• Release date: Sep 30, 2014
• ISBN: 9781624201172

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The Jam Setter

Susan Downham

Published by Rogue Phoenix Press for Smashwords

Copyright © 2014

ISBN 978-1-62420-117-2

Electronic rights reserved by Rogue Phoenix Press, all other rights reserved by the author. The reproduction or other use of any part of this publication without the prior written consent of the rights holder is an infringement of the copyright law. This is a work of fiction. People and locations, even those with real names, have been fictionalized for the purposes of this story.

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

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Dedication

This book started with a little seed of an idea, and one of those wonderful relationships that some lucky nieces have with their special aunts. So this one I wrote with Auntie Doreen firmly in my mind.

But it would not have been more than that little seed had it not been for two wonderful gentlemen, Robert McGoldrick and Captain Jonathan Wallis. Many an afternoon has been spent drinking coffee and sharing tales. So to you both, I say thank you. To Robert I say a heartfelt thank you for giving me Govan and the Glasgow of your youth.

To my publishers I would like to thank you for again believing in my story telling, and for loving Von as much as I do.

And lastly to Keirran, thank you for allowing me the time and space to give Von and her family life.

CHAPTER ONE

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.

~ * ~

Maureen couldn't help herself but follow with her eyes and watch as her mother sat the cup on a plank of wood just under the edge of the house under the deck. She stood and strained her neck to see her mother talking to some man, Maureen could feel a headache coming on and she reached into her handbag for a packet of painkillers.

She closed her eyes and concentrated so she could listen to exactly what her mother was saying. Morning, Harold, I've put your coffee in the usual spot for you.

Thanks, Vonnie, I see you have a visitor, he smirked at her.

Yes, last night I got a lovely surprise to find that Maureen wanted to visit with her old mum.

Harold laughed. Spoke to Ian around the bay, he says you can have it if you want it, Harold said with a wink.

Really, are you serious or just teasing me again? she asked.

Serious, I promise, I spoke to him myself and he said anything for you, Harold said.

Oh that is wonderful news, thank you Harold. I don't know what I would do without you.

Oh, no trouble, Vonnie, Deidre has sent me with that fruit nut roll for later. He wiped his hands on his trousers and reached for the cup.

Oh, good I don't suppose she sent you with the recipe? Von said knowing full well there was no such chance of that ever happening.

No luck there, you know she is very protective about her recipes, Harold said.

And bugger her for that. She laughed and made a face at the house.

I better go back into it, he said.

Right you are, she said.

Back inside Von looked at Maureen hunched over the newspaper with her finger running along the words as she read the story. She saw the discarded silver wrappers on the table and frowned.

You could get glasses, Maureen, it wouldn't be the end of the world you know, Von commented, looking at her daughter.

Thanks, mum, but I think I am a bit young for glasses.

This only made Von laugh. Oh, for goodness sake, Maureen, you are a forty-nine year old women, I think it is high time you got over it. I mean to say at your age it is a wonder you can get around without a hearing aide or a walking stick.

What are you going on about, mother, I am only forty-nine, Maureen snapped.

Surely that is over the hill dear if sixty-seven has me trying out caskets at Millington's Funeral home, Von quipped.

Steven was right, you are losing it. She pouted her lips and began to sulk.

That was a typical thing for Maureen to do, sulk. Now no one in the family mentioned age. Not Eric, he wouldn't dare mention anything to do with age to Maureen. Von could well remember just weeks out from Maureen's fortieth birthday suggesting over a family dinner get together they needed to make a decision about Maureen's birthday.

All hell had broken loose. Maureen swung her head around at Eric, and with the vilest look on her face, told him in no uncertain terms there was to be no party, no surprises. She wanted to pass the day like any other day. Von watched her Grandson Mitchel poke Luke in the ribs. It was all the encouragement Luke needed.

Oh hell, Mum, I was planning to get you some nice new hair dye and maybe some of that wrinkle cream for your birthday.

Maureen stared at her middle son then at Eric very slowly and stood up with her lips pursed together and her hands gripping the paper napkin tightly.

She leaned across the dining room table with her face almost hovering over Luke's plate. If I hear another word out of you tonight, you will feel the back of my hand across your face. She stormed out of the room.

Eric called out to her, telling her not to be so silly, and Von immediately got up and went around the table to give Luke a hug. He shrugged his shoulders and told her it didn't matter, he was fine.

Von knew Luke wasn't fine. He was nine years old and anything but fine. Mitchel turned and finished his dinner, red faced and looking ill. Samuel was oblivious to anything being the matter, and pushed his vegies around his plate a bit longer, hoping someone would call time and he could get up from the table.

Look, Mum, it says in here nightmares follow real life traumas. Maybe that is why Samuel is still having nightmares, after the accident and all, Maureen said, forgetting why only moments ago she was sulking. She pointed to the article in the newspaper.

Thankful her daughter had given up talking about glasses and not being old. Von pulled a chair out and sat down at the old kitchen table. It too had been a gift from Dougie, a Christmas gift in 1974. She ran her hand over the worn Formica, its wavy green pattern worn almost too white in places.

Does it, dear, she said.

Yes, it says here that if the dreamer talked about a different end to the dream out loud before they went to sleep then they would be more likely to have the same nightmare but with a different ending.

Well, I never. Von said, her hand gliding over the surface of the table.

She could remember how Doug wrapped the table up in a big blanket and had it sitting next to the Christmas tree on Christmas morning. It was just beyond her at the time how he could afford such a luxurious gift, she'd been scrimping and saving for months just to get the children the few things she managed to get.

Not that she was any different. Her sister in law and her best friend Nancy had four children at the time and had been struggling just as hard. The difference was Nancy could see things Von could never have seen. Two weeks before Christmas when she had called in after dropping the kids to school, she found Nancy hard at work cutting out some old fabric on the kitchen table. Von asked her what she was up to while she filled the kettle and looked on.

I am covering some old lamp shades with some of this gorgeous fabric for their bedroom, each of them is getting a matching cushion, and I have made them each a clown with those dunce hats in fabric which goes with them.

Nancy threw one of the clowns to Von with her free hand while she marked the fabric with the other.

Wow, they look great.

Thank you, I have been going like a bat out of hell while they are all at school. Look in the bag over there; I have made each of the boys big floor cushions.

Von pulled out a big cushion with white, yellow, blue and red squares.

I made them to match the Partridge family bus. Von laughed.

Oh, I see it now.

How are you going with your Christmas shopping? Nancy asked looking up from her fabric, scissors in hand.

Oh, don't ask. We have hardly any money, and by the looks of it Dougie won't be getting any bonus this year. He is lucky to have a job he keeps telling me.

So, what have you got the girls?

I got Maureen a Magna Doodle and Kathryn Connect Four, she told her sister in law.

They sound great. Much else? she had asked.

No, not yet, just waiting for some money to come in. Von was biting her lip.

"Don't stress. Tell you what, you make me a hot cuppa and I will see what other fabric I have in the box, and we will whip up Maureen and Kath each a clown and a cushion for their beds, and I know you can't sew, but you can use a pair of scissors so you can do the cutting.

For a whole week, they'd spent every spare moment together making all sorts of goodies for the children for Christmas, and when Christmas morning arrived, Von soon understood why there hadn't been any spare money for her to do the Christmas shopping with. Dougie held onto it tightly so he could buy her a brand new kitchen table and six matching chairs. It was their first really new item of furniture ever, except for the telly. Everything else they'd brought second hand and made it their own. Von had fallen to the ground and cried that Christmas morning. The children had been oblivious to what was going on.

Are you alright, Mum? Maureen asked, folding the paper shut.

Oh yes, honey, I was just thinking about the Christmas your dad gave me this old table.

She grinned and stared at her daughter and wondered if her daughter could remember the year.

Oh, was that the year you made us all those things. I mean Santa made us all those things and those horrid matching dresses Kath and I lived in all summer.

Von blinked her eyes. Probably.

Oh god, I remember now, Steven got that big cushion with the bright colors and we got those fabric picture frames and cushions and those fabric covered tubes.

Von laughed.

I remember those tubes. They were about three foot high, and eight or ten inches across. We found them at the tip. They were used to bring in rolls of silk from China or somewhere. The way the lids fitted in so neatly. Nancy and I spent two days covering them and decorating them with ribbons. We thought they were just so pretty, and I seem to remember that you girls thought so at the time.

I guess so, but really we wondered what we had done so badly because you got the table and we got all this stuff that didn't come from a shop or made in Santa's workshop, Maureen said, not sparing her mother's feelings.

Really, she said shocked.

Yes, Mum, Kath thought we were being punished, Maureen said.

Von laughed. Oh, I am sorry, and all that time we spent making those things, we were so broke, Maureen, you have no idea. Really it is much better now days, everyone has a bit more money and things are so much cheaper, Von said.

Come on, Mum, you aren't serious are you? Maureen said.

What? she asked.

Serious about us having more money? said Maureen.

Von shook her head. You and I both know you and Eric have a lot more spare money than your father and I ever dreamt of having. I am not complaining, Maureen, we had what we had. I look at you and your three cars, your holiday to Queensland every year, or Thailand, and I see what you give the boys for Christmas. We couldn't have ever dreamt of doing any of that.

Maureen rolled her eyes. This was a familiar discussion and normally ended the same way.

I work though, Mum, and you never did. Maureen shut the newspaper.

"I couldn't work, Maureen, you know that.