After the party

Joan had always hated the Pattersons. She’d told John a thousand times how her mother, God bless her soul, had always warned her about being friends with those people. Not that she’d listened, heavens no, and still didn’t. Well, perhaps this might be the final time she thought, struggling with her suitcase up the stairs onto the XPT, perhaps they might have used up their last chance.

“Oh will you hurry up!” barked John from behind her.
“I’m trying as best I can,” she scolded, making a point of heaving the suitcase with both hands.
“Well, you’re not the one left holding the heavy suitcase are you?”
“Oh please stop complaining, I’m nearly there.”
“Nearly there, Patricia will have had her 70th birthday by the time they start the blooming train.”
“Oh stop being so melodramatic.”
“There not even my friends, well Patricia isn’t anyway. I don’t know why you always go to these things anyway.”

Patricia had by this time made her way over to the window seat and was wrestling to fit her bag into the baggage rack. Turning her head sharply at the last remark, she saw John having a monumental uphill battle with his own, heavier, suitcase.

“Not your friends are they?” she snapped back, “Well next time I’ll make sure to tell Bill he doesn’t need to invite you out on the boat.”
“You know what I mean.”
“I’m not sure I do because you seem to enjoy his boat, his beer but when it comes to a simple…”
“Alright, alright, I get the point Joan.”
“You do, I’m so glad.”

John had at last mounted the stairs and was organising the suitcases in the rack. Looking back at Joan, already staring pensively out the window, he felt a heaviness slowly settle itself over his stomach. He usually dreaded these trips anyway; the long train ride followed by hours of the same conversations with people he only met once a year, but to have picked a fight so early on in the piece had made it that much worse. Lumbering back to the seats, as Joan deliberately moved her handbag away from him, he weighed up his options.

“I’m sorry.”
“Really, what are you sorry for?” she replied caustically.
“You know, what I did before.”
“Which was?”
“For yelling at you when we got on the train.”
“And…”
“And those comments about Patricia.”
“Well, I’m glad that you are.”

Joan turned back to the window and continued to look out onto bushland as the train rushed by. In her head she had already forgiven him by the time she had sat down but she knew better than to let him get away with something like that too easily. As her mother, God bless her soul, had always reinforced with her: politeness at all times, especially when you are angry. Thus John needed to be taught a lesson for losing his temper like that, especially in public which most embarrassed her.

“Do you want your magazine?” he said, waving a copy of the Woman’s Day in her direction.
“Not now, you’ve made me cross and I couldn’t concentrate on it.”
“Cross, I already apologised about that.”
“I know and the apology was accepted.”
“So you’re going to use that as an excuse to be cross all the way home then.”
“I didn’t say I would, all I said was that I didn’t want to read my magazine.”

John restrained himself from throwing the magazine into the aisle. For fifty years he had put up with this and every time he asked himself the same question: why? He knew the answer of course: it was what they did now and what they always did. Was it love? He had a vague notion that the longevity of their marriage somehow made that a answer void. Perhaps it was comfort? At the age of sixty-five he surely couldn’t be blamed for seeking a bit of that. The bottom line though was that he would have to hold his tongue until Newcastle and hope she would get over it. He placed the magazine on the spare seat next to her and opened his Patrick White biography.

“How dare they?” she expounded a few minutes later.
John was so absorbed in his book that he didn’t look up.
“It was just so rude!” she said, this time louder.
John put his book down, “What was rude?”
“The Pattersons of course.”
“What did they do?”
“You mean you don’t remember? Or are you trying to ignore it?”
“I genuinely can’t remember.”
“You know; what they said at the party on Saturday.”
“What did they say? I can’t remember?”

Joan had the scene burned into her memory. It was business as usual for Patricia’s birthday weekend, a small gathering of intimate friends with a few nights to drink and catch-up on the year passed. All was going well until the subject of their schools days had been brought up. Patricia, as usual, bragged about how she had come from nothing and that she had always felt looked down upon by everyone. Joan, playing the comforter assured her that it was nothing really and that in the end everyone had turned out alright. Patricia, who was on her sixth champagne by now, decided this night that this wasn’t enough. Turning on Joan she had poured scorn on their friendship and accused Joan of pitying her and treating her like a house pet. Too shocked to defend herself, Joan had tried to calm things down but that only made Patricia angrier. It all ended when Patricia finally got off her chest the thing that had bugged her most all those years: “Joan, your mother was such a bitch.”

“Darling, are you okay?” John’s tone sounded slightly distressed.
“Fine, everything’s fine,” Joan replied as if coming out of a daze.
“What did the Pattersons say? You were about to tell me.”
“Oh, it was nothing really, just something silly.”
“Are you sure? You seemed quite upset a moment ago.”
“Really, nothing but a few drinks talking.”
“Oh, I know how Patricia can get after a few. Are you sure it wasn’t too nasty?”
“No, no. As I said, it was just the drinks talking.”
“If you like, I can cancel the fishing trip with Bill – its just fishing anyway.”
“Don’t be silly, we wouldn’t want to offend Bill over such a small silly thing.”
“Are you certain? It seemed to really upset you.”
“It’s fine. Can you pass me that magazine?”

Joan flipped through the magazine, barely registering the ups and downs of Bragelina and Tomkat. The image of Patricia’s face, heavily made up with her sneering mouth, kept repeating and repeating in her mind’s eye, her words repeating over and over. She resolved to not put up with that ever again.

The phone rang and she fumbled with the keypad before hitting the talk button. It was Patricia.
“Yes darling, we had a fantastic time… Next year? Of course we will Patricia. We wouldn’t miss it for the world.”