1001 Nights Cast

‘You become more like your mother every day and there’s not a thing I can do about it.’

Rose sagged in her chair in the little kitchen she had shared for over ten years with her granddaughter, Olive. She dropped her head in her hands, fighting a lump in her throat.

Olive came to her side and knelt down, her hand on Rose’s shoulder.

‘She ran away at sixteen to live in a commune. I’m moving in with my boyfriend. Huge difference.’

‘How quickly the young move these days,’ Rose threw up her hands. ‘Last month he didn’t exist and now you live together. What’s next? Babies by Christmas?’

For a decade Olive had made sure she was nothing like her mother. She was organised, disciplined, hard-working. Now, apparently, it all counted for nothing.

Drawers were yanked open and slammed shut and cupboards rattled angrily as Olive stormed through the kitchen. She had envisioned them preparing for this day together, packing her things, laughing, trawling through shared memories before she made her way out into the world.

‘As soon as we’ve bought our own things I’ll bring this stuff back,’ she snapped.

‘That’s if you last long enough,’ Rose drummed her fingers on the table. She flinched with every new crash and sighed heavily whenever Olive passed close enough to hear.

‘You’re acting like Lippy when she knows she is going to the kennel,’ Olive said after one particularly dramatic pause.

‘That may be so,’ Rose heaved herself out of her chair, ‘but you’ll see’. She picked up a battered old kettle and filled it with water before dropping it down with an exaggerated bang and lighting the gas flame. They looked at each other momentarily, Olive scowling, before she went back to packing.

Leaning on the bench, Rose looked over at the old retriever slumped by the back door.

The puppy and child had arrived together, as good as left on her doorstep by her daughter, Grace. ‘It won’t be for long, Mum,’ she had promised. ‘I just want what’s best for Olive.’

Rose refused to believe she was having a hard time letting go. The fear stinging her heart was too great to be purely sentimental. It was driven by the similarity of the scenes ten years apart (and the similarity of the boys involved). Another mess was in the making and she felt powerless to prevent this one playing out any differently.

‘I know there’s nothing I can say to stop this thing but…’

Olive interrupted: ‘…this ‘thing’ is called moving out of home, a natural progression in one’s life cycle.’

‘Yes but do most girls naturally progress with the patience of a cat with its arse on fire? As I was saying, at least let me take you somewhere this afternoon. Our last little trip together?’

‘Fine,’ Olive shrugged. There was a knock at the door and she headed down the hall, calling behind her: ‘As long as it’s lunch at Tiamo’s.’

Out through the kitchen window the cherry blossom was in bloom, the lemon tree hung with fruit and laundry fluttered on the line. How often had Rose lost track of time staring at Olive in the garden?

When they first arrived, Olive and Lippy would chase each other around the lawn for hours. Then, exhausted, they’d sit quietly together, Olive twisting blades of grass into shapes. Rose tied herself into knots contemplating Olive’s confusion over the disappearance of her parents; until one day Olive appeared at the door after a particularly long session of rearranging the lawn to ask Rose why, if flowers looked so good, no one had thought to make them taste like jelly beans.

Then, as the years went on, there were summers spent in the sand pit, then under the sprinkler, then sun-baking with coconut oil. Later Olive would pour over magazines or hold long, conspiratorial phone conversations with horrendous music blaring from a portable stereo. Then came Olive’s own musical phase, the screech of one instrument after another piercing the whole neighbourhood. In Olive’s senior school years she consumed hundreds of cigarettes and cups of coffee while writing madly in a journal that Rose was always dying to read but never once did.

For Olive’s final year, Albert from next door set up a work bench at the end of the garden where Olive would prop her easel. Rose would stare at her little big girl’s back while she painted. Even when Olive wasn’t in, there were always reminders; an ever-changing line up of op shop laundry, empty coffee cups and overflowing ashtrays.

‘At least someone has the decency to lend me a hand.’ Rose jumped at Olive’s voice in the present. She turned to see Albert standing in the doorway, a jam jar in hand, his shirt sleeves rolled to his elbows. As usual, the label proclaimed: ‘Albert Finney’s World Renowned Citrus Marmalade.’

‘Oh great, just what we need. More bloody marmalade.’

‘It’s not for you, Rose. It’s a house-warming gift for Olive.’

Olive put a third mug on the table and motioned for Albert to take a seat.

‘You’ll be looking for a new flat mate then?’ he asked as Rose poured the tea.

‘Very amusing, Albert. Haven’t lost your sense of humour then?’

‘That’s right, Rosie. It’s one of the few senses I’ve retained.’