Campaign Ruby Part 2

'Sorry?'

'I got w.a.n.kered on wine last night, woke up and discovered I'd booked and partly packed for a trip to Melbourne leaving at about midnight.'

'As in Ramsay Street?'

I held the phone away from my throbbing head. 'Yes, as in Ramsay Street.'

'Cancel it, Ruby.'

'I can't. Well...I can, but there's an exorbitant fee attached to the privilege. I haven't had a holiday in...' I couldn't remember my last holiday.

'You don't take holidays, darling. You couldn't even come to our wedding without feeling the need to return to work,' said Fran, with an ounce or two of resentment. 'We're coming over with cupcakes. Is there anything you need me to do?'

'Could you put on your lawyer hat and determine whether I'm eligible for one of those online visas?'

'I'll do that. Call Aunt Daphne, darling. I think she lives near Melbourne or Sydney or something. She'll be able to recommend somewhere to stay. See you soon.'

I hobbled around my stinking flat in search of a pen to jot down a To Do list. On the back of a gas bill, I wrote: 1. Call Daphne 2. Shower 3. Ice toe 4. Dispose of empties; spray Air Wick 5. Confirm visa 6. Pack 6.1 Pack Toolkit 7. Go to airport 8. Buy newspaper 9. Inform parents.

My mother's sister, Daphne, is our family's black sheep. Mummy, the eldest of their clan, is a judge. Her brother, Benjamin, is in private practice. My late grandfather, who was a silk, was the son of an attorney-general.

Daphne 'owns a bakery in the colonies' (according to Grandma) and is a lesbian to boot. At Christmas, hers are the purple tissue-wrapped parcels adorned with koala gift tags, clas.h.i.+ng with the cream and gold theme of my grandmother's eight-foot fir. Mummy has long phone calls with Daphne where they laugh and reminisce like Fran and I do, but the rest of the family whisper her name as if she's deceased.

A barking dog answered Daphne's phone. 'Shut up, Pansy!' said a harsh Australian accent. 'h.e.l.lo?'

'Daphne?'

'Who's calling?'

'Ruby.'

'Hold on a minute.' Stomp, stomp, stomp. 'Daph, phone. If it's a telemarketer tell them to f.u.c.k off or I'll report them. It's almost midnight.'

'Daphne speaking,' sang a voice that could easily have been my mother's.

'h.e.l.lo, Daphne,' I said, 'I'm sorry for calling so late. It's Ruby...your niece.'

'Ruby? How lovely to-' The barking continued. 'Shoosh, Pansy!' Silence. 'Sorry about that. My dog's pregnant. The vet says it's normal for her to bark at imaginary things. Ruby, how are you? Is Charlotte all right?'

'Mummy's fine. She and Daddy are at a human rights forum in Paraguay, I think.'

'She's wonderful, your mum. Now tell me about you, Ruby. I think the last time I saw you was when you reversed into the letterbox at Daddy's wake. Or was it Francesca?'

'It was Fran,' I said, recalling the look on my grandmother's face. I was sixteen and in the pa.s.senger seat. That was eleven years ago, when I was full of promise, not a notorious unemployed alcoholic banker.

'Your mother tells me you're doing very well at the bank. Your father must be very proud. How are you finding it?'

Ouch. 'As it happens, I'm no longer with the bank. I'm going on a holiday. To Australia. Melbourne actually. Tonight. Arriving Sat.u.r.day. Hence the call. Do you have time to catch up for a cup of tea while I'm there?'

'Of course. How wonderful, Ruby. I'd love to see you. Where are you staying?'

'I haven't booked anywhere yet-this trip is quite spontaneous. Is there somewhere you'd recommend?'

'With me, of course.'

'No, I wouldn't want to impose.'

'Nonsense, I won't have you being polite with me. I insist. Stay with Debs and me. She's just bought a nice house in the Yarra Valley. We're going to spend a couple of weeks out there.'

None of us had met Daphne's partner-'her beau', as Mummy puts it. 'Well, if it's not too much trouble,' I said, 'I'd love to go to the Yarra Valley.'

'No trouble at all,' she said. 'Text me your flight number and I'll pick you up from Tullamarine. Can't wait to see you. Love to Fran...'

I had made it to Item 4 on my list when Fran arrived. Clem's riotous ringlets sprayed out from under a rainbow beanie that captured every colour on her person from the orange Dora the Explorer pyjama top to the pale pink tutu and navy-blue ribbed tights.

'Clementine decided to dress herself this morning,' said Fran, pulling the long, dark-blonde hair I used to plait from the collar of her Burberry mac. 'You're going to be fine, Ruby,' she convinced herself, s.h.i.+fting her gaze from my left eye to my right. 'Everything's going to be fine.'

'Mummy,' said Clem, crouching on the floor, 'Aunty Wooby's toe is fat.'

'I kicked it,' I said.

'It looks like the cupcake I made you, Aunty Wooby.' Clem pulled out an old cake tin bearing the Queen Mother's rusty face and unveiled a squat cupcake smothered in red and yellow icing. 'See?' She handed it to me. The resemblance was uncanny.

'You need to ice and elevate this,' said Fran. 'Immediately. Sit down. I'll make you a cup of tea.' She waltzed into the kitchen, wincing at the sight of my lime-encrusted kettle.

Fran morphed into the kind of big sister she was when I was three-enabling and incapacitating all at once. While Clem jumped and then slept on my bed, Fran arranged a visa, registered my whereabouts with the Foreign Office, packed a change of clothes, strapped my toe, fed us a homemade supper, refilled my ice-trays and separated like items into labelled zip-lock bags.

'I'm not going on I'm a Celebrity...Get Me Out of Here!' I reminded her. 'Melbourne is a rather large city.'

'Remember to thank me when you can find a clean pair of pants in an instant,' said Sister Superior.

Clem was snoring like a wild boar by the time we were ready to go to Paddington. Fran buckled her nasal pixie into the car seat as I switched off the boiler and bounced my suitcase down the stairs.

We pa.s.sed the kaleidoscope of sorbet-coloured houses on Elgin Crescent, the young couples at trendy Westbourne Grove restaurants, the late-night walkers with their iPods and knapsacks at Lancaster Gate before pulling in at Paddington Station.

Fran turned to me from the driver's seat. 'I'll miss you, Ruby.'

'Me too,' I said, attempting to suppress the anxiety building beneath my sternum.

'Bye, Aunty Wooby,' yawned Clem from the back seat.

I reached back to kiss her forehead. 'You look after your mummy for me, won't you?'

'Say h.e.l.lo to Kylie Danone,' yelled Clem out the window as I wheeled my bag inside.

I looked back and caught a glimpse of my sister blotting away a tear.

Meet the family.

The man at Immigration was called Bruce. I shouldn't have laughed, but in my jet-lagged delirium I remembered Daddy's impa.s.sioned re-enactments of the Bruce sketch from Monty Python. This Bruce didn't appreciate my good cheer.

'I can't see your visa here, Miss Stanhope.' He flipped through my pa.s.sport and scratched his mousy beard.

'Oh yes, sorry, I almost forgot-I have a printed receipt here. It's one of those emergency ones for citizens of the EU.' I removed it from the zip-locked bag marked 'Important Travel Doc.u.ments' in my sister's handwriting.

'I see.' Bruce turned a page. 'You've written here that you're staying at Aunt Daphne's in the Yarra Valley. Do you have an address for this aunt of yours and maybe a surname?'

Having slept for much of the 23-hour journey, I'd only got around to completing the paperwork mid-queue, resting on the dreadlocked backpacker in front of me.

'Um, no, I don't have an address for her, but she's just outside-I could call and ask if you like. Her surname is Partridge.' I was smiling like an idiot. 'Unless...I don't think she's married. She could have taken her partner's name. Do you have gay marriage here yet?'

Bruce scrawled 'Partridge' on the form.

'What's the purpose of your visit?'

'I was made redundant, so I'm having a holiday while I figure out what to do next.'

'Unemployed?'

'Yes, but I was a senior a.n.a.lyst at a very reputable investment bank until quite recently.'

Shut up, Ruby, counselled my head.

'Right, so when are you going home?' asked Bruce, perusing the Kazak visa in my pa.s.sport.

'I've booked a flexible return leg, so who knows? I could be grape-picking in the Yarra Valley by sunset!'

Bruce closed my pa.s.sport and looked me in the eye. 'No, Miss Stanhope. This is not a working holiday visa. It does not ent.i.tle you to pick anything. And if you are not on a plane by the time your visa expires, you will be in this country unlawfully. Do you understand me?'

Don't react, Ruby. Just say yes, said my head. 'Yes,' I said.

'Good.' Bruce tapped his stamp in the ink pad twice and slammed it on a blank page in my pa.s.sport. 'Welcome to Australia.'

It hadn't been the smoothest of border experiences. My subconscious had expected someone resembling Alf Stewart from Summer Bay to give me an affable 'G'day, love' before helping me with my luggage and discussing our latest Ashes loss. I'd always a.s.sumed Australians were a friendly people, forgetting that we were responsible for the development of their bureaucratic systems.

In the arrivals lounge, Samsonite in tow, I scanned the crowd. A news crew was conducting an interview with a grey-haired man in chinos. A woman crouched down to her two children, pointing out their travel-weary father; they ran to embrace him. A businesswoman on her mobile phone manoeuvred her luggage towards a chauffeur with a sign bearing her name. That used to be me.

There stood my aunt. She hadn't noticed me. She was a taller, younger version of my mother. She wore a long lavender linen dress with a baggy white s.h.i.+rt open over the top of it. Her skin was tanned, particularly around her decolletage and sandalled feet, where the sun had wrinkled it. Her long, dark-blonde hair was plaited loosely and tortoisesh.e.l.l-frame sungla.s.ses kept it from her face, revealing a pair of dangling earrings: blush-pink blister pearls encased in silver. Her kind eyes caught mine and I picked a path through the crowd towards her.

'Ruby!'

When I reached her she placed a hand on each shoulder and examined my face as if she was looking for something. 'Hi, Daphne, you look well,' I said, leaning in.

'You're just like Charlotte, except with your dad's chin-which, believe me, is a good thing. You don't want this chin, my girl.' She kissed my cheeks. 'Gorgeous.' She took off her s.h.i.+rt and grabbed one of my bags. 'Now, I want you to prepare yourself, Ruby. You're about to experience heat. When I say heat, I don't mean the kind we have in London every second June when everybody takes their clothes off and goes to Hyde Park. I mean proper heat. It will feel foul at first, but then you'll get used to it.'

She marched towards the sliding doors. I followed, thinking it was an offensive presumption that in all my twenty-eight years I'd never experienced a Mediterranean summer.

Then it hit me. It was not dissimilar to the feeling you get when you open a fan-forced oven to check the progress of a roast dinner; but I couldn't close this oven. The hot wind chapped my lips and sucked every last teaspoon of moisture from my skin. 'Oh my G.o.d,' I squeaked.

My aunt took one look at me and commandeered the luggage trolley. Feet hot in my leather ballet flats, I cursed myself for my choice of outfit: black leggings and a pale pink tunic with three-quarter-length sleeves. It had seemed a perfectly good idea at the time-a cotton-blend dress with cotton tights-but now, it felt like a parker in the afternoon sun. My hair, made frizzy by the Hong Kong lounge shampoo, stuck to my neck like a mohair scarf. I could feel my face turning dark red.

'We're almost there now.' My aunt pointed to a nearby car park. 'Mine's the four-wheel drive.'

The white van was like a mirage in the desert. I got a surge of energy as I strode towards it. 'I'm going to unlock the doors,' Daphne said in the tone of a rescue worker talking someone through an un-anesthetised amputation, 'but we need to cool it down before we can get inside.'

She opened the door, put the keys in the ignition, turned on the air-conditioning and then stepped back. I wanted to yell at her. Inside the car couldn't possibly be any hotter than outside.

'Right, it should be cool enough now,' she finally said.

With a polite smile plastered on my face, I heaved my Samsonite into the boot and leaped into the car. The airconditioning blasted my face and began to dry the dark pink sweat patches under each arm and on the back of my tunic.

'You'll get used to it, darling.' She handed me a bottle of water from a cooler box in the back.

I gulped insanely. As we pulled onto the freeway I spotted a road-worker sitting on a folding chair, jiggling a teabag in his thermos, with his feet up on an orange traffic cone. Close by was a blue sign reading EMERGENCY REFUGE AREA -SOS PHONE . Why isn't he using it? my head wondered.

Aunt Daphne laughed at my empty water bottle and handed me another.

'Thanks. Is this normal?'

'Not really,' she replied. 'It's been a stinking hot summer. It's nice to be in the company of a compatriot who shares my pain. Debs says I'm a sook.'

Even with leftovers of her accent, most of my aunt's Englishness had gone. It was strange. She was a sort of hybrid.

'Tell me about Debs,' I said, catching a glimpse of my sweaty face in the side mirror. I was living up to my name. 'She came into my bakery one Monday. I remember it clearly. She was wearing a tailored black pant suit and killer suede heels. I knew instantly she was a lawyer, but figured she was a straight one.

'She was on her mobile when she approached the counter. I tell my staff not to serve people who are on the phone because I think it's poor manners on the customer's part. She pointed to a sandwich and a flat white on the menu and put twenty bucks on the counter. One of my staff asked her to step aside. Debs demanded to see the manager.

'When I got to her, she was still on her phone. She had the audacity to hold her finger up to silence me. "Listen, all I want's a f.u.c.king sandwich and this little p.r.i.c.k won't give it to me because he's got some precious bulls.h.i.+t att.i.tude about me being on the phone."'

We turned off the freeway and down a bustling suburban street.

'I just shook my head and pointed to the sign on the wall, which says FINISH YOUR CAL , THEN ORDER . By this stage, Debs was really aggro.'

'Aggro?'

'Aggressive. Anyway, she chucked a tantrum and threw her folder on a nearby table, which knocked a bottle of homemade chutney all over her beautiful shoes and my sandals. "Mother f.u.c.ker!" she screamed.'

'She sounds lovely.'

Daphne laughed. 'I offered her a kitchen wipe, dustpan and brush and asked her to clean up the mess and leave. She did. After work that day, I was locking up and she was outside. She apologised and offered to buy me a drink...'

Outside, Melbournians were enjoying their Sat.u.r.day. A sun-kissed couple in flip-flops wandered across the pedestrian crossing in front of us. Underdressed on account of the heat, they linked arms; he carried a picnic basket. At the next lights, a lady drove past in a Range Rover full of sweaty six-year-old footballers sipping from McDonald's takeaway cups. Before long, I was off in the land of nod.