The Long Hot Summer by Mary Moody Read Free Book Online Page B

way in the world.
    Around this period, my baby sister Jane tragically died, my brother Jon became a marine engineer and left for the sea, and somehow Dan and I muddled along and survived.
    Mum came to live with David and me when I was twenty-five and the mother of two young children, so essentially I only lived apart from her for about six years of my life. Dad had died and left her with very little financial security, so it seemed natural for her to become part of our growing young family. She was a great person to have around the house and everyone loved her, although there were times when her forceful personality made her difficult to live with. As she aged, her daily routine became fairly rigid. She developed a dislike of going out except once a week to the bank, the newsagency and the liquor shop – stocking up for the week ahead. She always woke early and had several cups of tea to revive her. She then read the newspaper from cover to cover and did the crossword and various word puzzles. Despite the haze of drinking and smoking, her mind remained sharp as a tack and she could take the ABC news down in shorthand until the day she died. She particularly loved finding fault in the work of other journalists, both in radio and print, and kept a notebook record of their grammatical or factual errors.
    Although our children insist that Mum sometimes helped herself to the Scotch bottle during the day, I was only ever aware of her drinking in the evening. She would have an afternoon nap and then at five o’clock sharp she would march into the kitchen and grab two ice blocks from the freezer for her first drink of the day. Her consumption was fast and furious. The level on the Scotch bottle would drop dramatically between five and six p.m., and for me it was always a race to get a meal on the table before the seven o’clock news because by that time she would be utterly smashed. Like a lot of heavy drinkers, Mum lost interest in food and was gradually becoming thinner and morefrail. She would fill up on alcohol before dinner, then just push the food around her plate. To try to overcome this, I changed her routine and started cooking her a hot lunch in the middle of the day, so that at least she would have something solid in her stomach before she hit the Scotch bottle at five.
    If Mum was an outspoken woman when sober, she was totally uninhibited after a few drinks. Her penchant for saying exactly what she thought to anyone at any time caused me a huge amount of embarrassment when I was a child. But as I grew older and matured, I sneakily admired her forthrightness; although it could be alarming, it was mostly just very funny. When Miriam was first married, her husband Rick’s family would come to visit and we liked them enormously. Once his elderly grandmother Phylis was visiting from England and she came for a family dinner which was a great success. Mum did her usual trick of drinking too much and disappearing off to bed without even saying goodnight. She reappeared an hour later, however, having obviously dozed off for a while. She was dressed in a ragged old nightie, her white hair was standing on end, and she had removed her teeth. She came over and sat beside Rick’s grandmother and put her hand on her arm.
    â€˜You’ll have to forgive me, Phylis,’ she said to explain her earlier disappearance, ‘but I’m pissed as a fucking newt.’
    Spoken in her most cultured voice, it was a bit of a conversation stopper.
    Mum no longer resembled the beautiful and elegantly dressed journalist she had once been, but the spirit of that young woman was always there. It never disappeared.
    She often had falls in the evening although she rarely injured herself, which was amazing because I imagine her bone densitymust have been low. I organised for Home Help assistance to get her in and out of the shower as she grew more and more frail, and I also had handrails installed in the bathroom, toilet and