Brothers & Sisters by Charlotte Wood Page A

Leonie cried, ‘Watch out for cars, Wendy!’ in an irritated voice, and clasped Wendy in the briefest of dry hugs before turning away, with a broad grin, to her mother. Wendy had closed her mouth and stood by while they embraced.
    Now, at the taverna, a breeze shifted the olive branches. Ruth was still grimacing at the menu, fussing over what there was that she possibly could eat.
    Leonie was forty, but looked younger. She was of that new generation of middle-class women who employed an army of other women to take care of their bodies; she and all her friends had pedicurists and hair colourists and massage therapists and personal trainers and beauticians giving them facials, all the time. She went away for weekends to spa retreats with groups of women friends. They were shiny-haired and their bodies were youthful, trim and tanned. Now Leonie wore a sarong and a thin-strapped singlet, and her limbs and her elegant bare feet were smooth and brown, her neat toenails polished bronze.
    ‘What about Greek salad?’ Wendy said to Ruth, her patience draining away rapidly.
    ‘But that’s got that cheese in it!’ said Ruth, with a grimace of disgust. Then she gasped. ‘Goat. Oh my God.’ She closed the menu and slapped it down on the table, and craned around at the other tables, staring at their plates with open-mouthed fear.
    Leonie seemed unembarrassed but Wendy was ashamed, to be sitting here on a Greek island with her sister, a grown woman—an old woman—who refused feta, spat out olives, wanted butter instead of olive oil. Ruth caught her sister’s expression, and cried—it seemed with pride—‘I’ve always been a picky eater, Wendy! You know that!’
    Wendy looked out at the sea, and at the great walls of limestone shearing up on either side of the little bay. There would be a private small space out there, between the rocks, for a person’s ashes. If she was even going to do anything with them. She didn’t yet know. The force that had thrust the little tub into her bag was not reason but some quick flare of fear. She had never travelled abroad without Jim. She could not leave him behind.
    Eventually, the waiter standing by, Ruth stabbed a finger at a picture. ‘ That .’
    Wendy and Leonie each ordered a salad of feta and tomatoes and oil-soaked toasted bread and chopped olives, and glasses of beer.
    As she looked out at the gritty beach, an image formed in Wendy’s mind, of herself crouched by a rock pool after dark, after the wedding, when others were dancing. But Jim had never even been to the Greek islands, let alone with her. It would be strange, and wrong, surely, to leave even a tiny bit of him mixed here in the sand.
    ‘ Efkharisto ,’ Wendy murmured to the waiter as he set down their glasses, while the others said thanks.
    As he walked away, Ruth, her plump arms folded, looked at Wendy with open dislike. ‘What did you say to that fella?’
    ‘I said thank you.’
    Ruth raised her eyebrows and drew her mouth into a long pout to show that Wendy was being pretentious. Leonie sat back with a half-smile, watching them both. Ruth shook her head and said to Wendy, ‘You’re a mystery to me, you really are.’
    Leonie spoke at last. ‘So, how’s the house, Aunty Wendy? Your room sounds gorgeous.’
    Wendy felt her cheeks grow hot at the accusation.
    Ruth’s chef’s salad came; a small plateful of waxy yellow cheese cubes, chopped green lettuce with no dressing and half a dozen squares of cubed ham from a tin. Ruth tucked in cheerfully.
    It was too late now to insist about the room, Wendy supposed. Should she insist? Change the sheets and just move Ruth’s things in there? But this would be accepting Ruth’s way of never saying what she wanted, of always stepping back with lips pressed together, arms folded, and then complaining about being made to wait. It angered Wendy to think of bowing to it.
    ‘Derek is nice,’ she said, to change the subject.
    Leonie groaned. ‘Bloody Derek.’
    Ruth said,