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An apprentice stonemason, Sergio works with the men who drill, belt, and blast slabs of granite from the quarry walls, dress them in the sheds, and load them onto barges headed north to the city where the granite will be slotted and shaped into buildings and colonnades, monuments, and decorative pylons for the great bridge there. Jean loves the little quarry community by the river, the huge cliffs of granite, the tiny houses with their vegetable gardens, the bush beyond the settlement. She is Scottish. Her family came all the way from the Highlands to this home on the other side of the world when she was just three years old. She thinks she remembers the voyage over, the rolling of the ship, the sea-sickness, the brisk, cutting sea breeze on her face when she took her father’s large, warm hand and went up on deck.

Jean is eighty-five and asleep in her recliner on the veranda outside her room at the nursing home, a book lying face down on her lap. Her glasses, one wing broken, are angled across her face. It is nearly lunchtime and the summer heat wakes her up. For a brief moment she thinks about the Highlands, their sprawling brown and lavender bareness, the burns carving through valley after valley, the breathtakingly cold expanse of it all. The memory, growing larger into the late morning, is not hers, but her mother’s, and like Jean’s own memories, it is crusted with regret and longing.

Sergio has black curly hair, brown eyes, olive skin tanned deeper from his work at the quarry, and a curious, inviting smile. “Typical Eyetie,” her father says, with a kind of sneer mixed with admiration.

Sitting between Sergio and her father on one of the logs at the side of the quarry, eating lunch, Jean is conscious of her pale and freckly skin, her reddish hair, her damp Scottishness. She brings lunch for her father and herself every Saturday. It is not a chore, especially when she gets to see Sergio, who always makes a point of sitting next to her, despite her father’s obvious discomfort.

Lunch in the dining room at the nursing home is no longer a tempting proposition. The food always has two tastes—sweet and salty—and two textures—mildly lumpy and pureed. Things have deteriorated. The hired caterers have changed over the months, each a lot worse than the previous.

When Jean first came into the nursing home from the retirement village just up the hill, she noticed how the dining room was set up as a kind of restaurant. It even had white tablecloths and a menu with a choice of mains and desserts. The soup was chicken, mushroom, or tomato. The little bread rolls were fresh, with butter nestled next to them on the side plate. You could order a glass or two of wine. Jean, frugal and practical, has never been one for the fancy things, and it surprised her that she liked the almost elegant feel of the dining room. This was a little luxury at the toe end of life—a gift, along with the friendship she developed with Thelma, the woman dying patiently in Room 54.

On Saturday night, the entire quarry community gathers at the hall. There is dancing, singing, drinking, and general merriment, the Italians mixing happily with the Scots and the English. The quarry kids are usually chaperoned in a room at the back of the hall; but every now and then, they wander in amongst the dancing and chatting adults, who, as the evening progresses, are less and less concerned about them. People merge and break apart, drifting off into the dark from time to time—singly, in couples, or in groups. Sergio plays the mandolin and sings with other Italian musicians, all of them self-taught, their passion tinged with homesickness for a country they were forced to leave. They might go back when the work here is ended, and there is rumor that it will.

Jean loves to watch Sergio play. She pushes impatiently through the people on the dance floor, looking for him. And suddenly there he is in front of her. He is dressed in a suit and he is carrying his mandolin. He flicks her a smile before stepping onto the small stage. He continues to look at her as he plays. Jean feels the music is just for her. It enters her flesh and makes its home there.

Jean walks reluctantly to the dining room. Her ankles are swollen, and she feels heavy and depressed, but she manages. Thelma is in her room, where she’s been for the past few weeks, and that is part of Jean’s problem: she’ll be alone with Olga, who is there already—chatting— no, flirting—with a man, over a glass of wine. Olga introduces the man as Henry. Jean is in awe of Olga and her glamorous confidence, knows Olga doesn’t like her very much, knows she is not up to Olga’s high standards of dress or deportment. Jean wonders why this matters at this stage of their lives—why it ever mattered, really. But it does to Olga. She must have her reasons. Jean smiles a small hello and asks for the salt.

Sergio is sitting with Jean outside the dance hall. It is too noisy for them to talk inside. Sergio tells Jean about life in the barracks with the other Italian men. They love their tobacco and their wine, they gamble and joke, they employ Vincente, an Italian cook, to make their meals; they cannot get used to the tasteless food the Scots and English eat. They fish for octopus in the river. Jean feels the blandness of her life as she listens to Sergio’s lively stories. But he takes her hand and says that when the quarry work is complete, he intends to settle here, try to get some work on the great bridge. He wants her to be with him. His father and brother might be going back to Italy, but he will not. Jean’s throat tightens with happiness and dread. Perhaps her family will go back to Scotland when the work dries up. She has never thought of this before. Her mother often talks longingly of the Highlands, but Jean has not paid too much attention.

Sometimes Jean thinks about walking out of the nursing home. She could. There is no one to stop her, no one who cares enough, not even Laura, her friend from the retirement village. Jean has no children. Her sister Doreen lives somewhere in the north of Scotland, a crofter’s wife. Jean has not seen her for over sixty years and has no regrets about that. Doreen was the one who betrayed her, and that she will never forgive. Jean’s husband, George, died four years ago. His daughter, Gail, hung around just long enough to collect her “measly” share of George’s estate, then vanished. Self-absorbed, possessive, Gail had flounced in and out of their lives, needy and demanding—mostly money. George, soft, kindly, would always give in. Gail’s indifference to her father’s death still had the capacity to astonish Jean. When Jean told Gail that she was going to sell up and move to the nursing home, Gail simply said to her, “Could I have the dining room suite? You won’t be needing it.”

Sergio loves Jean. He tells her so at least five times a day. They have been meeting in secret: down by the river, in the bushland just beyond the township, even in the quarry at night when she can get away. When there is a full moon, the quarry takes on a ghostly luminescence; the untreated slabs of granite loom like ancient megaliths. Sergio and Jean make love amongst the stones, sometimes urgently, sometimes quietly and slowly, the rubble crunching under the shifting rhythms of their bodies. When they finish, Sergio makes a big show of brushing the dust and small stones off Jean, taking his time, hands skimming over her back and bottom. They hope no  one has seen them.

Lunch is over and Jean walks slowly back to her room. She sits on her bed. Laura is coming over later for afternoon tea. Fifteen years younger than Jean, Laura will write a list of anything Jean needs and buy it for her. She is nice enough, and Jean is sometimes grateful for her company, even though there’s not really much to talk about. Nothing happens in the nursing home except the passing of time, which, Jean decides, has a flat, unshiftable shape. The staff try to interest her in things:  ”What about bingo today, Jean?” “Putt-putt is on today, Jean; some of the other residents in your corridor are going. Why not come along?”  They mean well. Jean never goes.

Jean is pregnant. She dares not tell anyone. Her father would kill Sergio, her mother would have a total collapse. She is not the first unmarried girl in the township to be pregnant, and she knows what happens. The abortion bus takes the girls to the illegal backyard clinics, to the clumsy and furtive hands of male abortionists. Jean knows of one case at least where the girl woke up to find the abortionist on top of her. Jean will keep her secret. She will keep this baby. Somehow, she and Sergio will manage. She doesn’t reckon on Doreen, who, at twelve, knows a thing or two. “I saw you and Sergio down at the quarry,” she says to Jean, her voice a sing-song reproach, her dark eyes a threat. Jean feels trapped. She confides in her sister, hoping to recruit her. But Doreen, desperate for her parents’ attention, which has always been on Jean, tells her mother. There is a dreadful scene. Jean’s father storms off to the Italian barracks. Jean’s mother makes a phone call. Jean has no choice. The bus will pick her up next Tuesday.

When Laura leaves at last, Jean walks across the corridor to Thelma’s room. Thelma is in bed. Her face doesn’t look old at all, even though it should because she is dying. It looks child-like and trusting, her hair fluffed up like a baby’s, her hollow cheeks smooth and ruddy. Jean sits down on the bedside chair and tells Thelma she missed her at lunchtime. Thelma nods slightly, manages a smile. Jean picks up Thelma’s bony hand and strokes it. She tells Thelma about her life, her losses, and her loves. She tells her about her mother’s sadness at leaving Scotland, of her own life as a young girl in the small town by the side of the quarry, about Sergio, about the abortion, about Sergio falling to his death from the great bridge after he left the quarry in disgrace, about her family returning to Scotland without her, about the life she wanted and the life she had. She would like, she says to Thelma, to die without regrets, but here they are, all of them, washing over her now, wave after wave like a failed benediction.

Unswerving

A novel by Barbara Ridley

When Tave wakes up alone in the hospital, she barely remembers the car wreck. Far from home, dazed, and despondent, she struggles to face the challenges of her new paralysis—all while worrying about her partner, Les, also severely injured in the accident, now cared for by her homophobic parents who refuse to allow contact. In rehab, Tave relearns life skills and comes to recognize that her future will be completely different from what she’d imagined. Where will she live? How will she find the help she needs? Can her friends rise to the occasion? Or will she be forced to move back in with her mother, putting up with endless talk of faith healers? Her one beacon of hope is Beth, her physical therapist. But Beth’s relationship problems with her own girlfriend push her toward overinvolvement—and risk damaging both her career and Tave’s recovery. A story of a spirited young woman gradually discovering her inner strength, and finding a new community, this novel challenges readers' preconceived notions of disability. For more about the author: www.barbararidley.com. Available from Bookshop, Amazon, and your local independent bookstore.

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