Lost Autumn

by Mary-Rose MacColl

  Thank you for writing to me. It means so much to His Majesty the King and all his family to know that we share so much in common with our friends in Australia. In our hour of need, none was braver than the Australian “digger” who volunteered to fight side by side with his British comrades, because of our long historical bond of friendship. Of all the titles I have been awarded, none surpasses “digger prince.” I know our peoples across the great Commonwealth have suffered, and I feel their suffering.

  I wish you every happiness in the years to come and may God bless you.

  Edward

  “What’s this, Maddie?” Mr. Waters asked.

  “That’s a draft reply, sir,” I said. I was proud of what I’d achieved in a short period of time.

  “But what are you doing in here?”

  “Helen asked me . . .” I hesitated.

  “Asked you what?” he said.

  Just then, Helen herself came through from the next carriage. “Oh, Rupert, you’re back. Look at Maddie Marvel here.” Helen had come in during the morning and I’d shown her what I was doing.

  “I’m sorry,” he said to Helen. “I don’t understand. I thought you were going to help me with the letters today. I came in and here’s Maddie at the desk.”

  He looked slightly irritated.

  “Yes, and she has made tidy your terrible mess, Rupert. She has taken all the letters we’ve received, the ones sitting in nooks and crannies on your desk, the secretary’s desk, the floor. She has expeditiously opened them and read them and now she is setting about replying to them.” Helen smiled brightly. “Maddie is doing this because she is clever enough to do it, which is what Ned told you, I believe.”

  “But, Helen, she’s a servant. We hired her to serve in the dining room.”

  “Rupert, did Ned not tell you this morning that the girl you’d put on serving dinner is a Bright?”

  “Yes,” he said, “but I’m not sure what that has to do with anything.”

  “Her father is Thomas Bright, the poet. You really don’t need to know any more.”

  He looked incredulous. “So you’re saying that Maddie, who I interviewed as a maid, is to be my correspondence secretary?”

  “Yes,” Helen said.

  “Because her father is a poet?”

  Helen nodded. “I know his work, and the literary editor of Vanity Fair counts him among the greats.”

  “But I thought you could do it, Helen. Grigg has promised he’ll do more of the speeches, and you’re so very good at the letters. We might work together on them.” Mr. Waters looked at her, his eyebrows raised, a weak smile.

  “I don’t want to,” she said coldly. “And you know I don’t.”

  “I see,” he said. “Well, I just thought it was something you might . . .” He trailed off, took a breath in and held it for a moment, then breathed out. “Well, that’s that then.”

  He’d picked up one of the letters to which I’d drafted a reply—it was from a mother who’d lost a son—and he still had it in his hand. He read in silence now, narrowing his eyes. After he’d finished reading, he looked at Helen, and then at me. “All right, Maddie?” he said.

  I nodded.

  “Good then. Keep going. We are getting dozens every day and H.R.H. is determined that each should receive a personal reply. Do you type?”

  I nodded. “My father taught me, sir.”

  “Excellent.” He turned to Helen. “Then I will ask Mrs. Danby to send one of the girls from the house with us on the train and Maddie can help out with the correspondence. When we get back to Sydney, I’ll find a proper correspondence secretary to join us for the rest of the tour. Is that what you’d prefer?”

  “Yes,” said Helen.

  He looked again at the draft in his hand. “This,” he said, tapping the piece of paper in his hand, “this is him.”

  Helen just rolled her eyes.

  * * *

  It was late afternoon by the time the train pulled out of the station. A few minutes before, I thought I’d glimpsed the prince, walking hurriedly past the window with a taller, willowy young man at his side. There was a frisson around them, a silent, excited moment as they passed, the crowd of railway staff quietening and moving aside.

  I didn’t poke my head out the window to see where they went, although I wanted to. I could hardly believe I was there, on the train the Prince of Wales was taking to our new national capital, now in charge of writing letters in his name. (In truth, I wasn’t in charge, Mr. Waters was, but I felt as if it was all up to me now.)

  The prince must have entrained in one of the forward carriages. Mr. Waters soon flashed by, on his way to join the prince, I assumed. Not long after, the train rolled out of the station, quickly picking up speed, the whistle blowing its farewell to the city of Sydney.

  * * *

  We were passing through the outer settlements of the city—people waving us by with flags in every village—when Mr. Waters came back to the office. He put some papers down on his desk. “I managed to get us a maid on loan from the governor,” he said. “This is Ruby Rivers.”

  She came in behind Mr. Waters, all breasts, hips, and bright red lips. She wore jewelry on her wrist and neck.

  We said our hellos, and Ruby stood waiting for Mr. Waters. “So, Maddie, you’ve changed jobs and we’ll have to talk about your recompense,” he said.

  “I don’t mind,” I said. I was loving what I was doing and didn’t want to stop. I knew the work of a maid would be harder. “Is it a lot less?” I thought of my mother and how much she needed these two days’ wages.

  He laughed. “This pays more,” he said. “We’ll—”

  The door to the carriage in front of us opened then and there was a hush that preceded the beautiful young man who stepped into the light. He commanded every speck of attention in the room. He was smaller than Mr. Waters, not much taller than Helen or me, and it contributed to an impression of boyishness you noticed and then forgot, because you then remembered him as tall until you saw him again.

  Dressed in a dark tweed coat and slacks, with brown brogues, he smiled at Mr. Waters and then his gaze fell on me. “I’m David,” he said. “Rupert tells me you’re going to get us out of a fix with all these letters we’ve been receiving. I’m so very happy.” I might have melted into a puddle on the floor, but he extended his hand for me to take and I managed to make mine do what it needed to. I couldn’t speak. I took his hand, so soft and warm, mine all calloused and cold, I was sure.

  I thought then, I will cherish this moment as long as I live, the light coming through the window to our left, late afternoon, the look on his face, the soft chug of the train. My mother would have fallen into a dead faint, I was sure. Up close and in real life, he was even more beautiful than his pictures, especially when he smiled, as now. It was a smile that lit up a room. I had no knowledge of the world in which to place this new experience. He looked just like an angel, I thought, with his rosy cheeks, eyes of a blue I’d never seen before and I’ve never seen since, a cherub mouth and that blond hair.

  “I believe your father served,” Prince Edward said then. “God bless him, Maddie. And your brother made the ultimate sacrifice. I’m so very sorry.”

  He knew my name. He knew my father had been in the war, my brother. I thought I might cry.

  “Sir,” I said, my voice high and reedy.

  He smiled again, smaller this time, and then turned from me. It was as if the light had been sucked out of the room. I could see only black. I heard his voice again. “And who’s this now, Rupert?” My vision righted directly and I saw his gaze had fallen on Ruby, the serving girl Mr. Waters had found at Government House, who was grinning like a lunatic.

  Mr. Waters was about to introduce them when Ruby herself curtsied perfectly and said, “I’m Ruby Rivers, sir.”

  “Your initials are R.R.,” he said
. “If I pick Richard as my regal name, I will be R.R. too.” He laughed. “And how old are you, Ruby Rex?”

  “I’m seventeen, sir,” she said. “But it’s Rivers.”

  “Well,” he said, looking at Mr. Waters.

  Helen had come in behind the prince.

  “Rupert, tell Helen that we can’t deliver that speech,” the prince said.

  “I’m sorry, sir, but it’s what we discussed last night,” Helen said. “Colonel Grigg is convinced you need to speak on the issues again.” She looked to Mr. Waters, who was studying the floor. When Helen was around, I’d noticed, the floor often needed Mr. Waters’s total attention. “‘The Bolshies are everywhere’ is what he said.”

  The prince laughed. “I bet he did. Well, I won’t do it. It’s boring. Let’s find something else to say. See what we said in Ottawa—that went down a treat. Grigg wants to whip them with the empire at every turn. People are in terrible pain, in case he hasn’t noticed.” He looked over at Mr. Waters, and his mouth moved as if to smile but it was more of a twitch, a grimace almost.

  “Of course,” Helen said. “So what do you want, sir?”

  He smiled properly then, that lovely boy’s smile, and his eyes moved to Helen. “There are so many different wants on this train I find it best not to want anything.”

  He left us there, Mr. Waters looking concerned, Helen totally deflated, and Ruby Rivers with a grin as big as the train itself.

  Nine

  BRISBANE, 1981

  The letter is in the top drawer of my desk where I am sitting to write. It radiates enough light that I don’t need the lamp on.

  I have often said to people that I am not a person who carries regrets. The word regret becomes egret without the r and an egret is a bird nothing like a crow. It has a t. It is an odd word. It sounds sad. It sounds like you lost everything. I am not a person who carries regrets. Perhaps they carry me.

  I am not an egret.

  I let my memories settle as sludge at the bottom of the pond of my mind, so that only every now and then are they stirred up by what happens in the world.

  Dare I revise them?

  It has been my whole life since I first met them. My whole life.

  There are things we might wish to discuss. That’s what she said. There are things we might wish to discuss. There is nothing I would wish to discuss with her. She says she would love to hear from me. Please, she says at the end. Please write. I don’t have much time left.

  What on earth would I say after all this time, Helen? What would I say to you? I had thought you were my friend.

  “If this were the three bears story, I’d be the porridge that’s just right,” Helen said to me the first day we met.

  “Am I too hot or too cold?” I said.

  “I don’t know yet.” She turned her head to one side to regard me, a gesture I would come to know then imitate.

  Sometimes, in the autumn, I have the strangest feeling of yearning. It wells up from the depths of me, or perhaps from outside, from the earth’s turning, the sun on its journey away from us, the sea already cold. It’s as if I knew, as if I’ve always known in some small part of myself, some small place where I kept my disbelief, where I kept my hope, that the letter was coming.

  I look at the drawer, a plain brass handle. I might take the letter out again one day soon. I am not a person who has egrets.

  * * *

  Andrew Shaw came in to say he’d finished for the day. It wasn’t quite three p.m. I was back in the past but no longer the painful past. I had placed my thoughts elsewhere. Sometimes you can do this. I learned it in one of the books from the Pentecostals with the picture of Jesus, his glowing heart exposed in his chest. Heartburn, I would never say aloud to them.

  Now I was recalling, of all things, having a bath in the kitchen sink, the same kitchen sink I had washed the teacups in an hour ago. Mummy would bathe us, one after the other, me then Edward then Bert, John. By the time the twins arrived, I took over bathing the little ones. I could make lighter work of it than Mummy, who’d bathed enough children for a lifetime, she often said. She wasn’t built for bathing children, I’d have said. She didn’t have the mind-set you need, which has something to do with not minding water all over a floor.

  Sometimes now I climb up on the bench and into the sink to write. All that fits are my two feet, but it makes me feel like a child again, before anything happened to grow me up. I’m not sure it helps the writing, but my feet feel delicious.

  It was early for Andrew Shaw to finish, I didn’t say. How he expected to make money without doing much actual work escaped me, but I didn’t say anything about that either. What business was it of mine how he spent his day? I wasn’t paying him.

  “There’s a bit of work needs doing,” he said.

  “And I suppose you’re the one to do it?” I said.

  “Not necessarily, but some of it . . . I made a list.” He gave me a sheet of paper torn from a spiral notebook. The first item was steps. He was frowning fairly convincingly. “I’ll do up a proper report and drop it off.”

  “Well, the steps are perfectly serviceable,” I said.

  “In terms of treads, you mean,” he said.

  I nodded.

  “Yes, except for the two eaten out by rot, they’re all right, but I think they’re going to fall down unless you rebuild them.”

  “Do you now?”

  “I do, and your knight in shining armor agrees with me.”

  Ed, who should have sobered a little during the morning, was behind him. He stepped into view. “He’s right, Maddie. There’s things need to be done here.” I don’t know why he was still swaying. He couldn’t have taken a drink in these four or five hours unless he sneaked home or brought a flask, and yet he swayed like the newly drunk. Perhaps drink never really leaves you once you reach a certain stage of pickling.

  “Well, I don’t have time to think about all this right now.”

  “No, I just wanted . . .” Andrew Shaw paused. “Let me do you a quote, at least, on the bare minimum.”

  “Am I going to be forced by the neighbors?”

  “No,” he said. “Of course not. Your house is no risk to theirs. And their plans are nothing to concern yourself with. It’s . . .” He looked at Ed. I felt ganged up on. “Like, look at the second one. Termites. We have to get rid of your termites.”

  “For the neighbors,” I said.

  “No, for you,” he said, seeming a little exasperated. “Just because you’ve got termites doesn’t mean you’ll give them to your neighbors. Termites are everywhere.” He looked around. “And they’ve plenty to be getting on with here without having to move in next door.

  “Good news is, they probably won’t touch your foundations. Termites like an easy life and you’ve got a hardwood frame. It’s the cladding under the aluminum we should be worried about. Pine. Some of it’s gone back there. The walls connect to the earth so it’s easy for them to get up. Really we ought to dig it out and cap it.”

  “It’s your conflict of interest that concerns me,” I said—cleverly, I thought. “Not your ideas.”

  “When I say the steps might fall down,” Andrew Shaw was saying, “I mean it in the literal sense rather than some metaphorical falling-down.”

  I liked that he said metaphorical. “I see,” I said. “How old are you?”

  “I’m twenty-six,” he said, looking bewildered.

  “Well, I’m seventy-eight,” I said, “so I know things.”

  “Of course,” he said. “I might call in later in the week and see where you are.”

  I didn’t like him pushing me. “No,” I said. “I will call you if and when I want your help. Now leave me be.”

  “Best go then,” Ed said, nudging Andrew Shaw in the back.

  “I’ll just get the ladder,” Andrew said. “Thanks for your time.”
>
  I wouldn’t say he looked hurt, just resigned. I suppose times must be tough for builders. But he’s not my problem, I thought. The last thing I needed was another person sucking my savings from me. When you get to my age, you don’t know how long your money has to last you.

  After he went out to pick up his ladder, I looked at Ed. “I would have expected a bit more support from you,” I said.

  “But, Maddie, he’s right. You have to get a bit done or the house is going to come down around you.”

  “Well, I can think of worse outcomes than that, Edward.”

  He hates when I call him Edward.

  “Maddie, there might be possums up in your ceiling, but there are rats too. He’s right about that. And you can’t ignore termites. And there’s a leak in the bathroom floor, and a—”

  “Stop, Ed,” I said. “I have the list. I’ll look at it. But right now, I want to be left on my own to write.” It upset me to hear talk of my house as old and decrepit, for the house was exactly my age.

  “All right, love. I’ll pop back later in the evening.”

  Ed would be drunk later in the evening and forget, but I didn’t mind.

  Andrew Shaw came through then and said good-bye. “I’ll drop back when I get a chance,” he said. “It doesn’t have to be me who does the work. I’m not trying to railroad you here. But you should think about getting it done.”

  “I will,” I said. “And tell those people next door to mind their own business.”

  I didn’t want to be so difficult. Andrew Shaw seemed a lovely young man, but I know the world.

  * * *

  After they left, I went into the lounge and turned on the television. I put in the videotape I recorded last night and began to watch.

  She was as beautiful as she would ever be, her arm tucked under her prince’s arm, her eyes so hopeful, looking up toward him constantly to see if she’d been a good girl. A child. She looked more child than adult. She looked as if she had won a prize.