by Robbi Neal
‘I just got back from lunch at the Tonkins’. I could do with one. I like it white with two sugars.’ And Doctor Appleby looked meaningfully at Beth, who knew she had to make the tea but made no motion to leave.
Paul needed the doctor out of the room. He needed to be alone with his wife and children.
Beth didn’t want to go. She was part of the family, wasn’t she? That’s what they always said. Lucy was the closest thing she had to a mother. Paul nodded in the direction of the kitchen, so she motioned grudgingly for Doctor Appleby to follow her.
Paul could never remember when the realisation hit him that Lucy was going to die. It might have been when he saw Edie’s blood drop to the floor, a single tear that fell from her clenched hands and burst on the polished mirror of the floorboards. It might have been when Doctor Appleby came back into the room, balancing his tea cup on its saucer, and leant over and whispered in Paul’s ear, ‘There’s nothing I can do for her. I’m sorry.’ It might have been when Lucy opened her eyes, looked over at him and whispered, ‘Name her Grace,’ with her last ounce of energy and closed her eyes. But whichever moment it was, it was as if someone ripped his heart and soul from his body and tossed them carelessly aside.
Half an hour had passed since the doctor had left the room for an arrowroot biscuit and a second cup of tea. Paul clutched baby Grace as though she was his anchor, the only thing able to hold him back from following his wife as she slipped through the tides of life. Death was in the room, bringing its awful odour with it. It was an odour that curled the corners of the soul if you were living, but perhaps if you were dying it was rose petals and the sea because suddenly Lucy smiled and sang — just a few words of the song that had ensnared Paul’s heart at the very beginning.
‘Dear Child who me resemblest so, it whispered, come oh come with me, happy together let us go, the earth unworthy is of thee.’
Her voice was as light as the first day he heard it and it gave him hope.
‘Mama,’ called Edie and rushed to the bedside.
With an enormous effort Lucy looked into Edie’s eyes and reached out and gently touched her cheek with her finger. Edie burst into heartbroken sobs.
‘You must be her mother now,’ whispered Lucy.
‘No, you must stay,’ cried Edie.
‘Promise me,’ pleaded Lucy, her hand touching Edie’s hair. But Edie was crying too much to answer.
It was hard work for Lucy to stay in this world, even for a few minutes. It was only love that was keeping her. She looked at her new daughter, wrinkled and pink in the rug in her father’s arms.
‘Gracie,’ she whispered.
Paul nodded. ‘I’ll agree to any name you wish, if only you wouldn’t leave.’
She looked at him and tried to send him all her love as she sang, ‘When one is pure as thou art now, the sweetest day is still the last.’
The baby Gracie, wrapped in the knee rug Lucy had crocheted, was quiet as she turned her tiny face. Then she twisted and turned her body. Paul jumped, surprised to feel such strength in such a spindly newborn, and wondered what the baby was trying to do. Then he realised she was turning to see her mother.
‘Go on, look at your mother,’ he whispered in her ear, ‘for you will surely follow her and stay by her side.’
Gracie focused her brand-new eyes, still filmy, on her mother’s face, reached out her tiny fingers, and smiled. That first smile filled Paul with peace.
It was Gracie who sent her mother on her way. Lucy, having received all she needed in that one tiny smile, lay back on the pillow and left them. The room was filled with icy silence, aside from the muffled weeping of Edie.
And the broken heart of Paul.
After a long while Edie spoke. ‘I don’t want her, send her back to God and exchange her for Mother!’
Paul considered his girl. She sounded like a five-year-old child. He looked at the baby and suddenly he knew what to do to push his and Edie’s grief to somewhere controllable.
‘Come and welcome your sister,’ he commanded, ‘she is so small she may not be with us for long.’
Edie didn’t move.
‘Now, Edith!’
Edie shuffled across the room, her face red, wary and angry with grief. She didn’t want to look at the thing that had just taken her mother’s life. She didn’t want to see what had spread blood and pain through her home. Paul moved the baby so Edie had to look at her, then he placed her in Edie’s rigid unwilling arms. Edie turned away. Her father might put the child in her arms like a parcel, but that didn’t mean she had to acknowledge it. So Edie missed it when the baby girl smiled, and everything turned and shifted in their house once more.
Doctor Appleby stood in the doorway wiping crumbs from his face with his white monogrammed handkerchief. He coughed.
‘I see you need me now — to sign the death certificate.’ Feeling he should offer more, he said, ‘It’s all right, I’ve already rung Reverend Whitlock and he’s on his way.’
Down in Eddy Street, a narrow street with only a few sparse trees and small struggling gardens, Young Arthur thumped on the front door of Number 12.
Beatrix Drake and her fella George hid under the blankets.
‘Shhh,’ she giggled, ‘whoever it is will think no one’s home and bugger off.’
Arthur thumped for as long as the coin Mister Cottingham had given him was worth, then put his hands in his pockets and wandered slowly home.
Theo, waiting at the front door of the Cottingham house, felt the house shift and the world turn and was filled with sorrow.
Six
The Decision
Which comes after hot soup and thick slices of bread and a restless night.
The mines meandered under the houses and streets of the town, twisting this way and that under the hills and paddocks and under the great Town Hall clock itself. Countless icy tunnels of dank suffocating air that swallowed men and boys in the dark mornings considered whether or not to spit them back up in the afternoons.
At four o’clock the Town Hall clock, with its eight bells weighing four and half tons, each tuned to a different note, cried out its song four times.
When they heard the clock, the mines breathed a sigh of relief that the working day was over and great gusts of cold, icy wind rushed out of their mouths. The chilly air rose from the tombs of the mines that held the bones of gold and men and filled the town like a rising mist. Women ran for pullovers for their children, men lit fires with damp kindling and everyone rubbed the goosebumps on their arms. The mines could not be trusted for much — they teased men with promises of wealth and played with their lives according to their mood — but they could always be trusted to send out their cold-hearted draughts at four in the afternoon. They were as regular as the chimes that rang out over the town: the cold arrived, regardless of how pleasant the day had been.
The clock chimed and the air turned nippy and Theo Hooley continued to stand outside the Cottingham front door. If his mum could have seen him she’d have snapped, ‘Your arms are goosepimply, son. You’ll catch your death if you’re not careful!’
But Theo hadn’t noticed the frosty air; his hand was raised, ready to knock on the front door when it opened and Doctor Appleby stepped out.
‘How long have you been standing here, Hooley?’
‘Not long,’ said Theo.
He’d been standing watching the house as its beams groaned and shifted for hours.
‘No use going in there, son, they’ve got other things on their minds just now,’ the doctor said.
‘Edie’s all right, isn’t she?’
‘Edith’s fine, the baby’s fine for the moment, everyone’s fine except the mother.’
‘What mother?’ asked Theo, confused by the doctor’s strange words.
‘Yes, yes, the mother — Missus Cottingham. She just died giving birth to a scrawny, underweight daughter. Let’s just hope she fills out and survives but I don’t hold out much hope. Not at all.’
Theo star
ed, trying to take this in. Missus Cottingham was gone, dead, and there was a baby. It was hard to believe and he didn’t know why or how yet, but he knew this would change everything for Edith and him. A stone had been thrown into the pond and the ripple had reached the edge where he stood and wet his toes. Dampness crept over his heart. He somehow knew that his chance at happiness had just disappeared. The knowledge hurt and Theo dropped his cane and clutched his chest.
‘Are you all right son? Your lips are blue — where’s your coat?’ Sometimes it felt to Doctor Appleby as if his work was never done. ‘Son, did you hear me?’
But Theo just looked blankly at him and Doctor Appleby thought, not for the first time, that Hooley might have got a bit of brain sickness over there in Africa. The place was too damn hot. Just like the blistering summer that was coming again here. Heat was a nasty thing that bred germs on your skin and then the sweat of your body turned the germs to liquid and the liquid seeped into your pores and worked its way to your brain. He had begun as a doctor in his twenties and for thirty-five years Doctor Appleby had seen miners fresh from Cornwall turn mad from the Australian heat. Looked like Hooley had got a germ in his brain over there in the African heat. After all, heat was heat. Didn’t matter which country you got it in.
Hooley still stood, looking vacantly at the door.
‘It’s a fine house, isn’t it son? That’s what you can buy with a barrister’s wage.’
Theo looked at him as if he was the one that was mad, and Doctor Appleby saw the sorrow in Theo’s eyes and realised it wasn’t the house he was mesmerised by but what was inside it.
The doctor sighed. ‘I’m only a country doctor; I can’t keep up with advances from the city. I watch miners die of silicosis before they’re forty, I watch women die giving birth, I watch children die of diphtheria. I can’t cure any of them. If the truth be known I can only cure folk of illnesses they are likely to survive anyhow. But I also know I can’t cure you of standing there gazing at that grand house like a cockatoo that has lost its mate.’
Theo remained silent.
‘They mate for life you know — cockatoos,’ the doctor continued. ‘They mourn if they lose their mate. Maybe I should have been a veterinarian — might have been easier.’ He felt the weight of a bad day’s work. He couldn’t cure anything today.
Theo watched Doctor Appleby walk out the front gate, his short stumpy body on long legs like a spider, his bag swinging at his side. The doctor’s house was twice the size of the Cottingham’s and housed three servants.
Theo looked up at the sky. The sun had exhausted itself and disappeared. Grey clouds filled the sky. There was no warmth left in the air at all, and there was nothing to do but walk home.
‘It’s over with Edith,’ Theo said to Lilly, his mum. He fell into the kitchen chair, put his arms on the table and rested his head on them. He could speak with his mum; his words came freely when it was just the two of them. With her it was like he had never gone to Africa and lost his voice and his insides. It was like he was always a child, the voluminous warmth of her being soaked up his hollowness and kept him safe. She didn’t have one harsh edge to make his words bounce back at him; his words soaked into her motherly softness and found a place to belong.
He watched as she poured soup into a bowl, balanced it on her stout middle and carefully walked to the table with it, trying not to spill any on her apron.
‘I didn’t know it had begun with Edith,’ she said. Lilly had been in the church kitchen after the service getting morning tea ready. She’d made a sultana cake and two-dozen rock cakes, and had cut the cake into thin triangles to get twelve slices out of it, as these would be the first to go, the boys would pounce and gobble them up. She hadn’t seen Edie and Theo under the tree. She thought he was interested in that awful Gamble girl.
‘Yes, I was going to ask for her hand this afternoon but everything has changed.’
‘It’s mulligatawny soup, your favourite — not too spicy, though. I know you like it spicy but I can’t eat it as spicy as you, Theo.’
‘How could it change in such a short time?’ he said, and put his spoon into the bowl and left it there. It slid down the side of the bowl and under the soup.
‘Oh dear,’ said Lilly, ‘you fish that out and I’ll get another spoon.’
Theo put his fingers carefully into the hot soup and grabbed the tip of the spoon and tossed it over the table like a cricket ball. It dropped into the kitchen sink with a loud clatter and clang. She handed him the fresh spoon and pushed the bread over to him.
‘Here,’ she said and reached for the butter and started spreading a slice for him. ‘Hot soup and a nice slice of bread will cheer you up.’
‘Missus Cottingham has died,’ said Theo, and now it was Lilly’s turn to drop her knife. ‘And she’s left a baby, apparently, though Doctor Appleby says it will die soon.’
‘Oh, oh! The poor poor man left alone with a tiny baby.’ She knocked her soup bowl and the soup sloshed from side to side and onto the tablecloth, leaving a greasy stain.
‘Sorry,’ Theo said, even though it wasn’t his fault.
‘Would you like some scones? I’ve made some scones for you. No, no, you’ll want them after with jam and cream.’
‘No thanks, Mum,’ he muttered to the soup.
‘How do you know it’s over with her? Have you spoken to her father? Did he say no?’ Lilly wriggled to get more comfortable, to position herself right in the middle of the chair so she spilled evenly over each side.
‘I don’t need to speak to anyone. I just know. Everything has changed.’ He swirled the soup round and round into a whirlpool. ‘I could feel it. The whole house groaned with it and Doctor Appleby said not to bother her. He said it like it meant ever — don’t ever bother her.’
‘Well son, I know you don’t want to hear from me but I’m going to tell you anyway. You don’t give up, you just give her a bit of time. She just has to come to terms with things, she needs time to adjust. Then you start again. You’ll see.’ And she took scones out of the old biscuit tin with a rosella on the lid and piled them high on a plate like the Leaning Tower of Pisa.
Well, well well, she thought. The Cottingham girl. She hadn’t expected that but she was pleased it wasn’t Vera Gamble he liked. Edie Cottingham had more substance, she had a kindness about her that came from inner strength. And she could talk the hind leg off a donkey which could only be an asset to her son. Lilly wanted to do something for her son. She wanted to make the Cottingham girl love him above all else if that was what he wanted. But she couldn’t, she could only feed him good food to fatten his bones so the fat could absorb his aches. He had come back empty from Africa and she did all she could to fill him up. She took the top scone and broke it in half, piled jam onto it and a mountain of whipped cream on top of that and she handed it to him. Theo put it on the tablecloth beside his untouched bowl of soup and his untouched bread. Then, sighing, he took the bread and tore it apart, dropping chunks into the soup like islands. They soaked up the soup and turned it into a grainy mush; the butter formed tiny oily pools that sat on top.
Lilly smiled as he put a spoon of bready soup to his mouth. Later she would get out the lemon cake for supper and if he didn’t want that she had also made a date roll and if he didn’t eat them she would sit and eat them for him, as though he was still inside her and her body could nourish his.
That night Theo slept badly, suddenly waking at 2 a.m., and again at four and at six, each time instantly aware that he’d lost Edie. By morning he’d made up his mind. His mother was right. He, Theo, was not going to be a quitter. He didn’t survive the African war just so he could give up on the rest of his life. Of course Edie would need time to grieve her mother, plenty of time — six months, at least. He could give her that. Six months was not a long time; once a long time ago he had waited for far longer. He knew how to wait and he was going to wait for Edie.
He knew his mother had baked a pie before he got to the kitchen. The
hot pastry wrapped around what was secreted inside and the smells promised rich gravy and salty meat and made him hungry and he pulled his dressing gown tighter around his chest. It was sitting in the middle of the table just aching to be broken open and he reached to break off a piece of the buttery pastry but Lilly slapped his hand away.
‘It’s not for you, it’s for the Cottinghams. It’s mutton and mushroom. I’m going to take it over later.’
‘I’ll take it when I’m dressed,’ he said firmly, the matter decided. He thought his appearance with the pie, as if he had baked it himself, would let Edie know he was there waiting, not forgetting her and not to be forgotten.
Seven
Theo
In 1881 when Theo is a much-loved runt of a boy aged five.
Theo was eating toast dripping with melted butter that trickled through his fingers and down his arms into little pools around his elbows on the table. Theo’s father, Peter, who was thirty years older than his mother, kissed him on the forehead. His moustache prickled Theo’s skin but Theo didn’t mind. Then Peter took his mother in his arms and twirled her around the kitchen, narrowly missing the corner of the table and nearly sending the aluminium teapot and its bakelite handle flying. Lilly was giggling and Peter looked over to Theo with a secret grin and then swooped her backwards over his arm and kissed her long and hard. Theo smiled and clapped his buttery hands at the pantomime they were putting on solely for his enjoyment — or so, being only five, he thought. Peter pulled Lilly back up to vertical and reached over and scooped Theo into his arms and they had all laughed. Peter laughed so hard he coughed and had to bend over with his hands on his knees to catch his breath.
‘Just a mo,’ he croaked between coughs, his finger in the air, holding time still for them all. When the coughing had stopped he stood up and grinned and said, ‘That’s how it’s done, son. That’s how you kiss the woman you love good and proper,’ and Theo nodded in agreement even though he had no idea what his father was talking about. The only woman Theo loved was his mother and he certainly couldn’t bend her over his arm the way his father had done.