The Year of the Fruit Cake Read online

  Dr Gillian Polack is a writer, editor, historian and teacher, with doctor­­ates in both history and creative writing. Several of her books have been short-listed for awards. She is a member of Book View Café and also blogs for the History Girls and for Medievalists.net. In her copious spare time she practises sarcasm, cooking, reading and narrative analysis.

  From her very first novel readers told her that her fiction reflected her life, when it really didn’t. To make up for this, she generally includes at least one real episode in each of her novels. She vows to stop doing this after The Year of Fruit Cake.

  The Year of the

  Fruit Cake

  or

  Aliens With Irony

  by

  Gillian Polack

  This is a work of fiction. The events and characters portrayed herein are imaginary and are not intended to refer to specific places, events or living persons. The opinions expressed in this manuscript are solely the opinions of the author and do not necessarily represent the opinions of the publisher.

  The Year of the Fruit Cake

  All Rights Reserved

  ISBN-13: 978-1-925759-92-1

  Copyright ©2019 Gillian Polack

  V1.0

  This ebook may not be reproduced, transmitted, or stored in whole or in part by any means, including graphic, electronic, or mechanical without the express written consent of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  IFWG Publishing International

  Melbourne

  www.ifwgpublishing.com

  To Vonda

  The Observer’s Notes

  I AM OTHER

  My experiences as a Human, for the most part in Canberra around the Year 2016, chronicled in a bastard form of the English language.

  These are my personal observations, made for private purposes only, and should not be taken as part of the official documentation of my work on the species. They reflect nothing more than my passing responses to my circumstances.

  The Observer’s Notes

  I try.

  Every day, I try.

  Some days I like this planet. Some days I despair.

  Every day, I try.

  Some days I am trying. Some days the human race is trying.

  Every day, I try.

  I’m more grateful than I can say that I’m not human, though every day, I try.

  Notes towards an

  Understanding of the Problem

  Don’t stop me now!

  It was a Queen kind of night. The bright, forever-in-the-moment Queen. So different to the quality of their friendship. Yet it brought them together.

  That was the moment of wonder. Not the joys and terrors of life. Not even meeting an alien. Having a great time out, as if they were entitled to joy. Normal stuff wins, hands down, always.

  Normal stuff is way harder than meeting aliens. It’s also some­thing we try for, every day. Meeting aliens is a meh! kind of thing. We might be kinda-sorta interested, but we hardly spend our whole lives striving for it. Not unless we’re astrophysicists, really. And astrophysicists don’t tend to meet aliens. Aliens try to meet aliens from time to time. I speak from experience. Life is more ironic than it ought to be.

  It comes down to who the alien is, really, and what they’re trying to achieve.

  An astrophysicist once tried to meet me. I refused. End of story.

  Also, it’s not this story, and not this planet. The Research Branch and normal human culture were neither of them involved. It was, in fact, not related to human culture at all. The problem is that human culture and my own, when we meet in the middle, provoke digression.

  Humans claim there are many human cultures, but I only know this single one. The one represents the many. We always focus on knowing something well by drilling deep down into it, rather than by general understanding. It’s who we are. It’s also easier to represent mathematically.

  Enough wittering. Back to middle-aged women. They’re import­ant. Another thing that ought not be ironic at all and yet is pretty ironic. Given the cultural contexts of middle-aged women, and given the circumstances I’m writing about, irony is unavoidable. Given the language I’m composing in, wittering is also unavoidable. Its vocabulary and structural potential encourage enhanced wittering. Let me say now, before I go any further, that this language is not the strangest I’ve worked with, but it comes close.

  Middle-aged women often remind themselves that they’re perm­itted happiness. They could remind themselves that they’re normal, too, but that’s harder.

  “Normal” is what appears in ads and in focus groups. “Normal” isn’t a woman over 45, however successful and however interesting and however precisely she reflects demographics or belongs to an average family. It’s easier to be permitted happiness. That’s why normal stuff wins, hands down—it’s so damned difficult.

  I’ve been struggling with this subject for years, and it never gets easier. I don’t know how they get through life, myself. I possibly should find out, but it’s not essential. All this learning is to address a far bigger question.

  Today’s set of notes covers how they bonded. Five women who, for their own reasons, had developed a broken record of “I’m allowed to be happy” and who, one night, one cold night when the wind was off the snow and the golden wattle lined the streets, all decided “I am doing this thing called happiness, now, with a group of people I’ve never met in my life.”

  If they’d met the Devil that night, he would’ve been included in the group. A bit more reluctantly, mind you, because it’s harder to relax in a group that’s not all women, but he would still have been welcomed. Unless he was a jerk, of course. That would have prevented the hunt for happiness even before it properly got started.

  These women became each other’s good luck trinkets. When things went too bad, they met and distracted each other, supported each other, talked it out.

  All the crises. All the time. Because nothing was going to stop them. Not now.

  How they met is almost irrelevant. The mood that the meeting carried with it, that’s what transformed their lives. Nevertheless, how they met possibly needs to be chronicled. In case it’s important. Even the smallest things can change worlds, after all, and at the very least, this evening on the town changed five lives. Maybe it changed the human world. Maybe it changed a lot more than that. And if this moment had a backing tape, it was Queen, being unstoppable.

  This voice echoing my ideas in someone else’s words is also unstoppable. You’ll just have to accept it for now. I’m immersed in my subject.

  Humans tell story and music, and the story is music and the music is story. They seldom understand the purity of music but then, only a few of them have an inkling that purity is even possible. This intrusion by music, then, is one of the large differences between them and us. Music is not a social activity. And narrative is not at the core of our being. I’m writing about aliens, in their own language, using their own constructs. And, sometimes, those constructs are exceedingly alien indeed.

  The city’s pub scene isn’t that friendly to middle-aged women. Trina was fine there, most of the time, for her makeup and hair and clothes demonstrated that she was really twenty. Inside and outside matching. The body-age itself lying. Her makeup suggested borderline vampire, and her outfit suggested Rocky Horror. Her hair was coloured into submission, and those dark blue and purple streaks also suggested that she wasn’t forty-nine. This
is where her unstoppability came from that night. She knew she rocked her outfit and she was determined to do so in town, along with the teens. Only the teens were drunk and didn’t care.

  It didn’t dampen the mood that they didn’t care. She had been hit upon three times, so of course it didn’t matter. She’d made her point.

  Trina looked up and down the pub segment of London Circuit and decided that pubs were more her scene than clubs, in any case. A better class of hitting upon, especially as she was old enough to be the last youth’s mother. American Horror she was happy to be. Mrs Robinson, not so much.

  Then she decided that chocolate was essential to her existence. Better to be alone at a table with good chocolate than getting drunk with a group of out-of-control teens. It’s odd, she thought, that being drunk seemed so much better when I was putting on my makeup than it feels now. It was the look of the pavement that had convinced her. She didn’t want to spend her evening sidestepping human mess. She wanted to retain her inner sound track. Unstoppable.

  Chocolate made women unstoppable, and so chocolate it was.

  Trina wasn’t the only person who had eschewed the club circuit in favour of chocolate. The second-best chocolate shop in Canberra was more than full.

  Trina was still unstoppable. Instead of being decorous, she shouted at the room: “Is there anyone willing to share a table?”

  A sedate-looking woman her own age (or maybe a bit older, who cared?), alone at a small table, raised her hand, and not only did Trina join her, but three other women from the queue also extracted themselves and sat down. One of them had a handful of bright yellow daisies and handed them to each woman at the table. One polite woman and four unstoppables, now with personal blossoms, crowded around a tiny table, drinking hot chocolate and sharing stories of their favourite flavours. It was the safest of safe environments. The polar opposite of the one Trina had sought an hour ago. And Trina was happy.

  She looked around the table. “I’m Trina,” she said. “We didn’t get round to names.”

  “Names had to wait until we ordered. Priorities. Chocolate first, life details after,” the very tall woman said. She could have been an athlete. She shone with robustness. “I’m Leanne.”

  “Diana,” said the woman whose table it had been, briefly.

  “Janet,” the fourth supplied, she of the daisies, “And I’m sorry we’ve ruined your nice quiet evening by descending upon you.”

  Diana blinked twice, as if she’d heard something unexpected. “Don’t worry about it,” she said. “I was merely people-watching. I’d rather have company. I didn’t want to be alone at home.”

  “Me neither. That’s why I came in search of chocolate. I’m Antoinette.” Antoinette was as round as Leanne was tall. Her face, however, was divided into triangles. It was all lines and geometry. Elegant and convincing.

  And that was the five of them. From that day on, when life became a trial, they found chocolate as a team. When they needed to meet, they always met somewhere that sold good hot chocolate and they crowded round a tiny table. Touching elbows and stepping on each other’s toes brought back the soundtrack of that first Saturday night. Unstoppable.

  The Observer’s Notes

  “The doctor is ready to see you now” is only ever said twenty minutes after a complete sense of futility has set in.

  —said in a conversation among friends

  I picked up a stray piece of paper because it offended my sense of order. I hadn’t written it. It had escaped from my folder of scraps. Ideas picked up, or odd words written down and left by others at libraries. This scrap was from the hospital library.

  After I’d been in hospital three days, a woman came round with books and offered me some reading. I found the paper in its pages and used it as a bookmark, then absent-mindedly slipped it into my bag when I went home. I’d dealt with the rest of the folder two weeks before, when my husband nagged me about the mess, so this was an outrider in more than one way. By itself. So much alone.

  In the interest of understanding humankind, I read it before I recycled it. It said:

  “He loathes me and loves me, staring at my face from a distance, as if I only half-belong in his life. I look to the right of his face so that I’m not caught staring at him the way I caught him staring at me, so that my face doesn’t betray my feelings the way his betrayed his feelings towards me. His terrible pursed mouth tells me everything.”

  Sometimes I feel as if I understand humans. Sometimes I look at words and wonder if anyone can. Sometimes I look at words and wonder if they could be my words, and the thoughts could be mine too. My husband’s mouth doesn’t purse, ever. It pouts from time to time, like when I forget to put my rings on. He knows I forget things, and is scared I’ll lose my rings. Especially the engagement ring. These words had my patterns, then, but not my thoughts. The English language presses patterns upon us. Styles of narrative. Thank goodness these ones were written by someone else.

  I don’t want to know a man with a pursed mouth. Pursed mouths indicate greed and meanness and judgement. Of these three things, the worst is judgement. My husband sulks, but he never judges.

  The woman’s slow voice...

  was counting again

  One, two, three, four, five. I started school. It was a bold day. Bright and hot. I wanted to wear my yellow hat.

  “You don’t wear your yellow hat to school,” Mummy said. “You might lose it.”

  I always wear my yellow hat on sunny days. Always. School, home, playground—I wore my yellow hat if it was a sunny day. I didn’t want to go to school without it. I hated school if it meant not wearing my hat. I wanted to stay home and play in the sunshine, wearing my yellow hat.

  After that day, I liked school. I made friends and played and ate playlunch with my friends and had a small bag of chips with my sandwich. “Your special treat,” said Mummy.

  It was still wrong. Yellow hats and sunny days belonged together. I still knew this. A small segment of my heart had been cut out and put aside, but I only noticed when I had to go to school on a sunny day.

  I didn’t understand. I still don’t understand.

  Yellow hats and sunny days.

  It’s important. I know deep down that it’s very important. More important than my schoolbag. More important than holding Mummy’s hand when I crossed the road. And the frills are inside the hat, not outside. The outside of the hat is bright as the sun and reflects it back. I know this. Deep inside, I know it. I hated being five. I have to remember it, because that was when I lost my hat.

  Notes towards an

  Understanding of the Problem

  “God, it’s a fucker of a day.” Trina used language cheerfully, as if the day would fly away if she didn’t swear. Leanne gave her one of those looks and Trina laughed. “Sorry. I always forget that you’re our polite Queenslander. Next time I’ll be less forcibly offensive.”

  “Thanks,” said Leanne. “It feels wrong that I’m Ms Prunes, but…”

  “But you are,” Trina agreed. “You’re CWA and respectable, and you keep me in line. You’d keep my girlfriend in line, too, if she were still here.”

  “Any news?”

  It hurt Trina to even consider the absence of her loved one. Before she was forced into making an answer, Antoinette joined them.

  “I’m not late, then?” She was surprised.

  “Not only are you not late,” said Trina, “but you saved me from bawling my eyes out.” Diana had sat there, quietly, throughout, but at this she looked puzzled. “A letter,” Trina admitted. “I got a letter from her.” Diana still looked puzzled and this time, so did Antoinette. “My other, my heart, my soul,” clarified Trina.

  There was a supportive silence and, luckily for Trina, someone came round to take orders. Leanne ordered a coffee for Janet. “Janet texted me. She’ll be along soon. She wanted to wrestle a
son into submission. Which reminds me…” She hauled some slightly crushed flowers from her handbag. “She asked if I could give you these. They’re not the regular variety. I found them on the way here, so they’re entirely illegal.”

  “Thanks for the illegal petals. Janet’ll need her coffee soon and strong, I fear me,” said Trina, calm restored. “Thank Go…odness I don’t have sons.”

  This was the pattern of their meetings. Big matters were touched on, gently. Never pushed. Never explored beyond comfort. Until the occasion was right. Much of their conversation was subtly determining whether a topic was safe or not.

  Diana commented on their habit of care from time to time, and whenever she did, someone always pointed out that there was quite enough harshness in daily existence. This was the safe place. This was the place where they each worked to limit the hurt of the other. Important discussion happened; it was essential to all of them, however, that matters were touched on gently, and a sounding was taken before anyone explored with any fervour. On a bad day, they might talk only about the weather and chocolate. On a good day, the depths of the world were dissected, from their own lives to the major politics of the day. Conversation was never no holds barred.

  Every meeting was different. Except that it contained them. And it contained chocolate. And flowers, generally yellow. Sometimes they met several times a week. Then they wouldn’t see each other for a month. Sometimes family came first. Last meeting had been cancelled because Diana’s husband wanted to see a film with his wife, and everyone respected that their time together was sacrosanct. Working relationships were to be supported, at every turn. Since it was just a get-together, they didn’t feel the need to change the time. They simply cancelled it.

  Today, however, was not a simple get-together.