250 Years of Friendship
When my mother, Joy Jobbins, died in 2023, the world lost one of its great raconteurs. Even though she published three books, she still took some of my favourite stories with her — but not all of them.
She had a sharp ear for an unusual turn of phrase, and a vivisector’s eye for human foibles. She also told stories with love and loyalty — and it was the tension in these two world views that always made her stories so funny. I wish I heard one about me!
Sam (30) rang her grandmother to say she’d like to drop by on the following Friday for lunch. Mum (85) was chuffed by the suggestion and, as she often did when the grandkids came to visit, decided to make an event out of it. Because she still worked four days a week (at army land headquarters, no less) a meal such as this required some forethought.
By Wednesday she’d set her table for two with the best napery, crockery and cutlery.
On Thursday she bought an eye of filet steak (young women need their iron) and a good bottle of red wine.
Come her day of rest, Friday, Mum lit the candles, even though it was daytime, because her house was so dark — when the phone rang, it was Sam to say she’d been rostered on for work and asked if she could come on Saturday instead. With the phone still pressed to her ear, Mum blew out the candles, saying, “Saturday would be lovely, dear.”
The next phone call was Jo (45) a young friend with all the love and care of a daughter. “I haven’t seen you for a while,” she said to Mum, “Would it suit you if I came to lunch on the weekend?”
Mum perked up. “Yes, dear, Sam’s coming. We can make a party of it.”
She would need more food. Being her day off, she put on lippy and trekked out to buy another filet steak from the old-school butcher who knew her name and still had sawdust on the floor. She also bought a second bottle of wine and cashed in a wad of coupons to collect a dozen bottles of Johnny Walker red-label whiskey.
“Having a party are you?” Asked the impertinent man at the till.
“No, that’s my superannuation!”
She stopped at the IGA and bought a gold-plated Iceberg lettuce — floods in Queensland, apparently. Along with lemon, oil and garlic it would make a fine French salad.
Delightful.
Saturday morning arrived full of pale yellow sunshine and Mozart. Her daughter’s name had also been Saturday, 12 years ago before she’d been struck down by a bus. Never a day went by that Mum didn’t think of Satty, but anniversaries were particularly poignant.
With a cool winter breeze blowing away the cobwebs, Mum crushed the garlic into the mortar and pestle. She squeezed in some lemon. Scrubbed in a generous amount of pepper and salt, then stirred in the olive oil.
The phone rang. It was Val, offering her sympathy. “Oh, that is thoughtful.” Losing an adult child was something the two women shared — a soft underbelly to their long and involved friendship.
“I’ve spoken to Patricia,” said Val, “and we’re taking you to lunch. We won’t take no for an answer.”
“But Val, isn’t Patricia recovering from pneumonia?”
“I’m not suggesting a picnic.”
“And you, still gambolling around on that footballer’s knee of yours? Why don’t you both come to the Little National Monument? Sam and Jo are coming. We can let the young people do all the talking.”
“Well, if that’s alright with you…” Her friend acquiesced.
With that settled, Mum hung up, wondering how she was going to feed everyone. She contemplated cutting the steak thinner but decided to ring Jo instead. “Jo dear, can you possibly stop by the butcher’s on your way down and pick up two extra eye of filet? Val and Patricia are coming today as well.”
“Today? Isn’t lunch tomorrow? I’m working today.”
The phone began beeping. Another call was waiting. “Ok, we’ll have to rain check then.”
It was Sam on the other line. “Nan, I’ve been rostered on for the whole weekend. Can we do it another time?”
“You know I love seeing you, darling, whenever you can.”
Bingo! She now has enough food to feed everyone.
Val and Patricia arrived laden with flowers and misery. Patricia was childless and prone to claiming Mum’s extended family as her own. “I am so sorry, Twig,” she said, handing over a bottle of rosé. “My baby girl was the daintiest dolly that ever lived.”
Seeing Mum bristle, Val interjected. “Your girl was so much fun, Joy. Remember when she made us margaritas and accidentally knocked over the whole jug?”
“After I hand-squeezed all those little limes!”
“We wiped what we could back into the jug and sipped the rest off the table!” Val explained to Patricia, laughing. “Let’s have margaritas to celebrate Satty’s life!”
Mum opened the liquor cabinet — a steel cupboard under the washing tub — revealing an army of Johnny Walker bottles. Among them were a few blow-ins — tequila and Cointreau, which Mum removed. “Only, I don’t have any limes.”
“You’ve got lemons,” said Patricia, pointing to the fruit bowl. “And oranges. That’s all a lime is, isn’t it?”
“When life gives you lemons — ”
“Make margaritas!”
One-third tequila, one-third Cointreau and one-third lemon juice mixed with orange. “And I have to say,” Mum reported later, “They were delicious.”
After eating the steak and drinking the red wine, Mum put on a Rod Steward video — The Great American Songbook. She’d bought it a while back when the aerial broke on the apartment next door and she couldn’t watch The Bold and The Beautiful.
They opened Patricia’s rosé and started singing along. All except Patricia. “Rod Stewart’s not my favourite person”, she said. “I prefer Michael Bubble’s album — or Harry Connick Junior.”
“But this is the one with all the old songs,” said Mum.
Val had an excellent voice and began singing in her lounge crooner’s contralto. Patricia relented and joined in. “The very thought of you, and I forget to do, the very ordinary things that a person aught to do…”
Mum was armchair dancing, waving her hands in the air like palm fronds. “You can do it, Patricia. Dance with your hands.”
“I like to dance with my legs,” she replied petulantly.
Mum levered herself upright and extended a hand to her rickety old girlfriend. Together, they waltzed around the tiny living room.
If the day had ended there, it might have been perfect, but when Patricia announced it was time to go home, the skies opened and the rain poured out. Not a drizzle. Not, an umbrella will do. But the sort of tropical drenching that brings the city to a halt.
Mum called a taxi — old-fashioned, on the phone — because there was no way her friends could catch public transport in that cacophony of cats and dogs. There was no way her friends could catch a taxi, either — at least not for another hour or so, that being the length of the delay.
Mum put Rod back on and poured another rosé. By the time he was singing, It Was Just One of Those Things, the afternoon had devolved into the long, hormonal teatime of the soul.
“I loved him,” Patricia blurted out about a mutual friend.
“What? Brian Silverstein’s brother?”
“Yes.”
“Was it requited?”
“Of course it was not requited! He was married.” Patricia worried that Mum was being deliberately obtuse. “Don’t tell me you never noticed how handsome he was?”
“Well, of course, I noticed, but I was hardly thinking about throwing my panties at him.”
“Who said anything about panties?”
That’s when both women noticed Val was softly weeping. It might have been the booze, or the music, or the two old broads squabbling over long dead flames. “Oh, Val, this isn’t about Bob, is it?”
Patricia quickly jumped in, “Don’t listen to her, Val. She knows nothing about passion.”
Val’s marriage had come unstuck because she found Bob Lombard — old ‘slobber lips’ — irresistible. Patricia comforted her with all sorts of good advice while Mum tried to keep her thoughts to herself. “Seriously, Val, that man couldn’t say his own name without spitting on you.”
By the time the taxi arrived, they’d finished the rosé and had some difficulty getting out of the house. So much so that Val actually fell out the door. She was laughing face down in the gutter — rain falling on her, “Oh! I am drunk.”
The taxi driver got very upset. “She’s drunk. I’m not taking her. Call an ambulance.”
“I should stay,” added Patricia.
“Why? What can you possibly do?” It was everything Mum could do to get Patricia into the taxi. “Darling, you need to go home now.”
“Is she drunk too?” asked the driver, his accent becoming thicker.
“No. She’s been sick.”
“She’s not going to vomit in my car, is she?”
“She’s fine. Patricia. Go home.”
“But I can help.”
“Patricia, you’ll get pneumonia again. Go!”
Watching the red brake lights blink on and off around the corner, Mum wasn’t sure what to do next. Val was still on the road because she’d put on so much weight she couldn’t lift herself up, and neither could Mum.
“Stop laughing, Val,” she admonished. “This is serious.”
“No it’s not,” replied Val. “It’s hilarious.” Rain was still pouring down the gutter and backing up between her generous bosom.
Mum rang the bell of the next door neighbour — the place where the noisy students lived. A new face answered the door. Guy. Very handsome. Over six feet tall. He stepped outside and saw the problem. Like the romantic lead in a Hollywood classic, he scooped up Val and carried her into Mum’s tiny house.
“Put her on the couch,” instructed Mum, perhaps a little abruptly.
Guy laid her gently on the feather-down couch. “Is there anything else I can do?” He looked around the small, trashed house. The best crockery stacked up in the sink. The linen tablecloth crumb-covered and splattered with red wine. Candles guttering in the candelabra. Rod Steward warbling on the telly. “Please,” he insisted, “take my phone number. And call. Any time. Day or night.”
Mum was fluttering like Scarlett O’Hara, “I’m sure you have better things to do than tend to the needs of a few boring old neighbours.”
The young man was even more handsome when he laughed. “Boring? You lot are more interesting than anyone I know.”
Mum shut the door and looked at her friend, already asleep on the couch. “I’m sorry, Val, that wasn’t very gracious, but it was just as embarrassing as the time Willie got legless, and I had to leave her on the floor overnight.”
Fly Me to the Moon started up out of nowhere. It wasn’t Rod this time. Mum fossicked around Val’s pockets and found her mobile phone. It was Val’s son, Terry, wondering where his mother was. “She’s supposed to be babysitting,” he whined.
Mum looked at her friend, dead to the world, “She’s having trouble with her legs and can’t help you today.”
Terry was put out, “But I have plans!”
“I’d say ‘fair enough’, Terry,” Mum replied, “but your mother’s always looking after your children, so you’ll have to make other plans tonight.”
Val was deep asleep on the couch. Mum left the light on in the downstairs loo — and was pleased to hear snoring as she went to bed.
The silence at six a.m. was eerie. Not hearing anything downstairs, Mum worried that maybe Val had banged her head on the way into the gutter and died of an embolism. She snuck downstairs to check on her — and there was Val making tea.
After tea and toast, Val was ready to go home. Mum worried that she might still be drunk, so she went into the street to hail a taxi. That’s when she discovered the road was cordoned off for the City to Surf marathon!
There was nothing for it — Mum would have to drive her.
Considering the possibility that she, too, was drunk, they buckled up and crept all the way to Val’s house — which, being on the marathon route, meant meandering the backstreets, avoiding the coppers like a pair of old time moonshiners.
It was midday before Mum poured herself back into bed. Shutting her eyes was bliss. She was enjoying the muted patter of marathon runners passing by when she remembered that Jo was coming for lunch.
