The Cane Suite

By Pamela Gargett and Judy Morris

The Cane Suite brings to mind the vagaries of Queensland weather. The stories it tells thunder through the emotions like tropical downpours, they warm the soul like sultry summer nights and bring just the merest hint of chill to the reader's very core. Memories of childhoods past and and lives lived now are evoked through the eyes of one strong woman, her family and friends and the place where they live.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Jan 27, 2021
• ISBN: 9781716179785

Book preview

Contents

Title

Acknowledgements

Saint Friday

Joy and Happiness

Disgust

Anger

Love

Fear

Sadness

Title

THE CANE SUITE

Pamela Gargett

Copyright ©2021 Pamela Gargett

This is a work of fiction. Characters, places, events, incidents, and organisations are products of the author’s imagination and are used fictitiously.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the author, excepting brief excerpts used by writers of reviews or critical articles.

ISBN 978-0-6450196-1-2

Front cover design and image by Judy Morris

Acknowledgements

This is the book I have waited and wanted to write. When the time finally came, the support came also.

Thank you to Geoff for giving me the space.

Thank you to Shirley for expecting this to happen and offering kind encouragement.

To Paul for setting the bar so high and leading by example and sage advice, to Judy for her advice, support and time and to Susan for her encouragement and enthusiasm, thank you for being there.

To every friend who has shared the love of words with me, I am forever grateful.

For the people where I live.

Saint Friday

If any day were to be made a saint, it would be Friday.

Saint Friday.

Not to be compared with the flashy week-end days. Saturday and Sunday. Definitely not to be held up for comparison to holidays or rostered days off or time in lieu. No, just on its own, Friday is to be revered above all other weekdays.

It is the lure, the magnet, the attraction that drags me through the mire of school lunches, school uniforms and standing over reluctant children as they jiggle their pencils across photocopied homework sheets. It is what helps me to see off the ‘get up right now or you will be late for school’ chore day after day as the week unfolds.

On Thursday afternoon, life starts to swell. Just like the sweet green cane shoots in the fields spurred on by the warmth of sunlight and the soft brush of rain, unfurling as they reach for the sky. Not to put too fine a point on it, that is what happens to me each week. As Thursday afternoon comes around, my soul lifts, my spirits rise.

Things look a little calmer.

I remember to smile. I think of plans and hopes, wishes and wants that focus on the promise of a few short hours.

Friday.

Here it comes!

Nirvana, utopia, paradise, Shangri-La, heaven in my hands.

Laugh all you like but a chance each week to escape a normal predictable life seems all that helps keep me tethered to the here and now.

Out of bed, get kids ready first, rush them off to school. Start the housework, get lunch, snatch a tiny window of the daytime TV soaps. Kids home already. What’s to eat? Mum can I do this? That? This? That? What’s for tea?

Day after day, the tedium grows and grows until there isn’t much left inside that is just for me.

Sound spoiled, do I? Don’t bother to tell me other people are doing it tougher. I read the local newspaper; I watch the TV news. But what I see there is other people.

Not me. Other people.

I see other people’s wars, other people’s accidents, other people’s losses, other people’s money. Not mine.

I have grown a thick skin over the part of me that should care. Sometimes the skin cracks a little and emotion seeps in. Particularly if it is something involving children. I love kids. Long ago I realised I could never open my arms wide enough to gather in the needy of the world. I would never cry enough tears to stop the drought, put out the fires. So, I stopped trying.

Drew myself in. Created my persona.

A loving mother, a dutiful wife, the caring friend.

You would like me. I might even look like you.

I wear clothes which aren’t flashy but follow the trends. My hair is cut and coloured every six weeks. I spend a traumatic hour or so under old towels, hoping no-one I know pops in to witness my entire head sending signals to Mars. I wish foils weren’t all the rage.

As for my nails, I splay them on the plastic covered kitchen table and have them painted a sweet pink.

My kids fit right in with all the other little angels. They certainly are not feral but their grandparents have suggested they could or should be better behaved. As if ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ make much difference to anyone.

Time has moved on. I tell Mum and Dad kids are different these days. They can’t believe I even bought their school uniforms readymade. No home sewn clothes for them. Always the latest lunchboxes and pencil cases and everything on the school booklist.

No, you would never guess my life isn’t just another gerbera as it nods away in the front yard, pretty much like the others. Looks great from a distance and puts on a great show to brighten your day. But this little gerbera has a petal or two that set her apart and give her a story to tell.

I love my husband. He makes me surface happy, most of the time. His kindness shows in the way he treats the kids. The way he gathers them up in his arms at bedtime and nuzzles their necks. The horsey rides around the lounge, bumping the furniture and scootching up the rugs. But today is Friday. It is the day I feel a rush of joy for him.

Saint Friday. You are very welcome.

Saint Friday. What promise and escape you hold in your hours.

Friday dawns never come quickly enough. The kids are always slower. They lie in bed all rumpled, tired eyes. ‘No Mum, sick of school. Don’t want to go. Isn’t today Saturday?’

No, no, no! Not Saturday. It has to be Friday. Mother’s reward.

The small, slow thrill of anticipation cannot be stolen by everybody’s day! Saturday.

And so, it is at last…Friday.

If you are anything like me, your mind has raced along the lines and, maybe, danced between them. You have probably deduced Friday is the day I indulge in some secret passion.

That’s true.

But my passion is not the earthy, bodily kind. There are no secret lovers waiting for me, no trysts, no lustful liaisons in one of the newly built, garishly inviting motels along the arterial highway feeding into the town.

Sorry to disappoint.

My passion is not about retreating to cool caves of riches promised and not delivered. My vice is not to gamble. I don’t sit at the blinking brightness of the pokies and feed the maw with my husband’s hard-earned money.

You may have guessed.

My passion is not to indulge in alcohol, secretly or otherwise. You won’t find me propped up at the bar, slowly sliding into oblivion.

My escape, my weekly pleasure reveals a simple soul. I am happiest when I slide into the front seat of the family car beside my husband, and compulsively check I have everything.

My handbag, the list, the other list.

Lists, lists, lists.

It may look like the most boring way to spend a day to you. Bank first, groceries, perhaps a spot of fashion store browsing, window shopping. But, to me, as I glide between the cane fields, tall and wind wisped, I make a journey of the grandest kind. Stand aside, Homer. Your ventures in the Iliad that bored me in high school are beyond dull again when compared with my Friday trip to town.

Each kilometre I cover is a major step away from the humdrum, the ties binding me to family and the routines slowly turning my soul to stone.

Overdramatic? Might be.

Unbelievable? Maybe so.

But many a life has unravelled in the stultifying days of raising children, fitting in, living just so, in order to make a life. I sit and I smile as we get closer to town. The billboards advertising farm machinery or fast-food restaurants signal my nearness. The farmhouses sitting sedately, prettily, at the edge of the cane fields make way for the encroaching stretch of suburbia.

At last, the countryside ends and the buildings cluster side by side, street after street. Town proper. People doing what people do with their lives. Ordinary lives, each seeming more complex and thrilling than mine. But I have no envy. If I can slide into their lives just once a week, I can develop the fortitude to face my own pale life for another six days.

Finally, the main street. Straight and long. Manicured garden beds dissecting the median strip. Huge palms stand tall between me and cars sliding past in the other direction. Shops display their wares behind huge panes of glass, arranged for me to see, enticing. The products stare back at me as the car slips down the street. I see our car clearly in this window before the reflection speeds up and splashes across the next window.

It’s Friday. I’m drinking in the town. Let me see her in full glory. Out of the way people. Walk on. Move away. Let me see more. Shop windows, filled with dresses I can’t afford, won’t ever afford. The chemist, shelves and cabinets spilling onto the footpath. Trays of products with discreet price tags I can’t be bothered with right now. The newsagent brandishing newspaper headlines trapped in flat cages for all to see. Behind the glass a ‘New Release’ book takes pride of place among lottery posters.

At last, my favourite.

The furniture shop is well established in this town and everyone buys from there. The excitement of the newlyweds as they choose their first bed is matched by the anticipation of shopping for recliner chairs by the elderly. And then there’s the cots, tables, chairs, lounges and outdoor settings that have filled the homes and enriched the lives of those who bought them over the years.

But the window display has changed since last Friday.

What is this? As the car is reversed in against the kerb, I am jolted from my reverie by an apparition. I am overawed by what I see, swamped by unfamiliar emotions.

A cane suite. Four single cane chairs. A table for newspapers and cups of tea. So simple yet so stylish.

I can’t believe a suite of furniture is having such an effect. My voice is trembling as I ask my husband to wait while I have a good look.

I know I must have it.

Joy and Happiness

If you fall into the class of ‘dear reader’, or if you are family, friend or obligated other, I will start your reading off on a good note. Wouldn’t you choose that?

Happiness and joy. Such positive feelings. What we need to grow our souls and fill our cups with achingly sweet truisms.

Me, I am a bit of a sucker for babies and puppies and flowers. I swear and attest they make my spirits rise. Daily doses of laughter don’t go astray either.

That is why I begin with a journey through the most desirable of emotions, joy and happiness.

Of course, you can start wherever you like. But be aware, these tales are not written in the first person. I couldn’t possibly write about these bare-souled things, stories nestled next to the heart, from a personal perspective. Oh no, I have chosen to step back and to wear a cloak of indifference and distance. I have used the security of talking and telling you about things from a place removed. Heaven knows I need to cushion my soul from the rawness and hurtfulness that can come with real life.

And so, let us begin with:

Joy

The vivid emotions of pleasure and extreme gladness

Joy is also known as happiness, felicity, bliss, beatitude, enchantment, rapture, ecstasy, heaven

The emotion of joy lifts us into happy places and times.

Okay, I may have aimed high, but hopefully you will join me to share just a smidgen of joy, and a soupcon of happiness.

Life on the farm was not always what she had expected. It was sometimes fine, tolerable. Occasionally it became so jarring she felt jabs and scratches of little bits of broken glass dig into her heart. When times were good, just the swaying fronds on the royal palms which lined the dusty drive were enough to soften and gladden her heart. When those times faded, the motes of dust floating in the sunrays streaming in through the kitchen window were enough to make her question how she ever became a farmer’s wife, a canefarmer’s wife at that.

She knew she was being unrealistic. No-one lived a life of pure joy. Days following days of unadulterated happiness could only be found spreading like syrup in the pages of those Mills and Boon novels some of her friends read. Overly sweet and cloyingly clinging smells lingering as the chapters churned predictably until the girl meets the boy, overcomes challenges, happy ever after endings. Oh no. She had never been seduced by such promises. She was a pragmatic woman. Toes in the dust, that sort of thing.

But she had always known she was one of the lucky ones. She married someone she met when they were both in their teens. Looking back, she felt a sense of relief that the notion of romantic love was never needed to sustain her, unlike other women, through long, lonely nights, through weddings attended without a partner.

She and her husband met young. All that guff about the universe aligning, fate being ordained by the stars. It seemed quite banal when other women talked about it, when others wrote about it. But, deep down, she knew. That was precisely what had happened all those years ago. One of those schoolkid crushes had lingered and lasted long enough for marriage and kids. Yes, she was lucky. So lucky that sometimes she wished, just for an instant, that her life had not unfolded this way. So lucky, that, once or twice, she envied her unmarried, childless friends.

Yes, she sure was lucky.

Big brothers and three lessons

Time before the farm seemed so long ago. Growing up, she was a ‘Townie’. One of those ‘baby boomer’ kids who didn’t know what it was like to go without. One of a family of four; three boys first up, then along she came, the baby girl to complete the family. She was the apple of her father’s eye, from the moment the nurse beckoned him along the corridor and pointed to the tiny pink wrapped bundle snuffling softly behind the glass of the nursery. She was the youngest, the last of the children, the only girl. She gave them every reason to spoil her in just about every way.

Home was in the centre of town. Just a bike ride from the tennis courts, the town pool and the library. It was nothing special, nothing grand. But it was a perfect home for a family, from its constantly squeaking front gate to the huge old mango tree blocking the backyard skies. She grew, surrounded by the warmth of meals eaten in the tiny, linoleum floored kitchen, by squealing games of swinging around and around on the rotary clothesline and hours spent reading on the bright pink chenille bedspread.

Some years of her childhood lay in the distant parts of her memory. Others, bathed in a rosy glow, sat fondly in her everyday thoughts. She often replayed the cinema reel of her life. Surely it was not all as rosy as she remembered. Just to be contrary, sometimes she prickled her brain with things that went wrong, little misadventures. Did other people do this, or just the fortunate? The unlucky ones are surely too drained to seek out the broken and dull among their memories.

Her life as a baby, then as a toddler, was documented in the black and white photos in the family album. A tiny round-faced bundle held by aunts and uncles. Almost smothered in frills and flounces, face framed by crocheted bonnets or sunshades with patterns of strawberries and ducks. Growing, she toddled past forests of legs belonging to her brothers. Above the scarred and knobbly knees, she knew their faces were topped by spiky crew cuts and split by proud big brother smiles. Sometimes, she saw flashes of those times. One brother loved to toss her in the air and pretend to forget she was coming down until he swooped his arms in underneath her light frame just before she was about to crash to earth.

The oldest brother, eight when she was born, was adept at flicking tiny balls of mud, chewing gum, seeds from the palm trees, or whatever it took to get her to swing around in annoyance and yell. With a grin, he would stick out his tongue and waggle his ears and taunt her further until she ran at him and pushed and pushed at his strong teenage legs until they both fell. He would raise her up into the air and swing her round until she begged him to stop. Or until mum leaned out of the kitchen window and roared at him to stop tormenting his sister.

The neighbours must have loved them.

She had grown up in comparative luxury. The toilet had been moved inside the house by the time she started school. No-one missed the middle of the night dash down to the outside thunder box at the bottom of the yard. This was one of her middle brother’s contributions to her upbringing. As a light sleeper, he often got the midnight summons to take her to the toilet. To pay her back, once she was settled comfortably in the little wooden shed, he would decamp to his bed. She would then have to make the run back to the house on her own, only lit by the moon and stars.

Surely the neighbours must have loved them.

The neighbours’ lights often came on as she screeched her way past the dogs, terrified there would be a possum in the pawpaw tree or fruit bats in the mango tree just waiting to join her on her midnight return.

‘Just the kid next door. Go back to sleep’

School seemed like one long adventure story. Each page was dedicated to the fortunate, the smart-enough kid, the un-bullied. Life at school was off to a pretty good start when your parents saw to it you always ate well. Scrambled eggs, toast soldiers, porridge in winter, pineapple juice from a tin or even delicious warm Milo were all devoured at the crowded and noisy Formica table in the kitchen flanked by a bevy of orange vinyl chairs, all squeaking and puffing when sat upon. Mealtimes always were announced by the noisy arrival of her brothers who always sensed without being called when there was food to be eaten.

Her mother made sure the uniform she wore effortlessly blended her only daughter’s five-year-old self in with the other thirty or so kids. She had watched her mother push the uniform material through the flashing needle of the new electric Singer sewing machine. Her mother fed the material under the needle and sewed seams up and down for hours turning out three bright blue, cotton uniforms. Then her mother sewed baggy matching bloomers to