by Robbi Neal
‘But I’ve been told my situation is hopeless,’ said Peter.
‘Well, it might be,’ said Doctor Le Sueur, leaning back in his chair. ‘I’m not God so I can’t tell you, but I can tell you that this Doctor Trudeau,’ and he waved the papers in the air, ‘cured himself with fresh milk — he took four big glasses a day — three healthy meals a day and as much exercise in fresh cold mountain air as he could manage, and by exercise I mean at least brisk walking.’
‘Cold fresh air, exercise, milk and healthy meals — that’s all?’ asked Peter, expecting there to be some secret.
‘That’s how he did it.’
Peter thought about it. If he was going to die anyway, what was there to lose? ‘Well, it’s worth a try. I could go to Daylesford. Do you think that it’s cold enough and high enough?’
‘If you like, I expect if you took the waters as well as Doctor Trudeau’s other recommendations that would be a very good thing. I certainly don’t see how the waters could do any harm. But remember, Mister Hooley, you are very contagious — this is now a proven fact so there must be no contact with family members. If you follow Doctor Trudeau’s advice you will be creating your own private sanatorium, Mister Hooley, if you have the means.’
Peter did have the means. He had been single for thirty years before he met Lilly, he’d had no one to spend his salary on until he met her and it was a decent salary. He thanked Doctor Le Sueur profusely and Doctor Le Sueur said, ‘I won’t shake your hand if it’s all the same, as you are contagious, but I do wish you luck and do let me know how you manage. If you’re successful in beating this I would be most interested in knowing.’
Peter walked to the motel in Little Bourke Street and got his briefcase and checked out. From there he walked to Georges in Collins Street, where he purchased a suitcase, a pair of trousers, a shirt, socks, undergarments, pyjamas, a dressing gown, a coat, and, most importantly, a woollen scarf. He chose the scarf he thought Lilly would have chosen, green with a red check running through it. Then he walked to Flinders Street where he took a coach to Trentham and then the train to Daylesford and a coach to Hepburn Springs. He walked into the Savioa Hotel and, pulling the scarf up over his mouth and nose as if he was cold and making sure to stand well back from Missus Gervasoni, he signed for a room.
‘I need the room indefinitely with all meals delivered to my door with a knock — that’s all, just a knock. I won’t bother anyone to bring the food in or lay it out and I’ll light my fire myself, thank you, if you just leave me kindling and wood each day.’
‘But our lovely dining room is just …’ said Missus Gervasoni.
‘No, I won’t be attending the dining room at all — you can take that for a fact but I would like to sit out on the front verandah each day to breathe the air, but I don’t want to be disturbed.’ And so Missus Gervasoni told her husband Angelo that they had a very reclusive guest who was sure to be someone famous or at least important and so they must follow his instructions exactly and make sure to bring up a bottle of their wine from the cellar for each meal and to make sure he had plenty of wood for the fire because he obviously was from a warm climate — maybe Cairns or Darwin — because he felt the cold so badly he was using a scarf in this warm weather.
The room was pleasant, the fire was lit and through the window Peter looked out at the dense bushland behind the hotel where lazy kangaroos grazed. He wished Theo was there to see the kangaroos. He felt a pain in his chest and the pain started the coughing. Peter bent over until it stopped, then he put his few clothes in the drawers and pulled back the rose-patterned cover on the bed and lay down and stared at the timber ceiling. He wondered if this room was the room he would die in, and that the ceiling would be the last image to fill his eyes, or whether Doctor Trudeau’s treatment would work. It seemed too simple.
As agreed, the Gervasonis left a meal outside his door with just a knock, and when he heard the footsteps retreat down the hall Peter collected his food and tried not to think about the pain in his chest that was not the consumption but the spaces that were usually filled by Lilly and Theo.
When he woke in the morning it took him a moment to remember where he was and why. Then it all came back to him so he got out of bed and started his regime. He wanted to return to Theo and Lilly and the only way he could do that was to get well. He went for a long walk, down the main street, around into the mineral water reserve, down to the sulphur spring and back to the hotel. When he got back breakfast was waiting for him. Fat bull-boar sausages and scrambled eggs and, as ordered, a large glass of milk. He ate, washed and went for another long walk. He only allowed himself to rest for two hours in the afternoon when he sat out on the verandah and wrote long letters to Lilly which he dared not post in case he contaminated the paper. He asked Missus Gervasoni for old milk bottles and collected mineral waters from the natural springs every day and drank them down even though they smelt like rotten eggs, and he sucked the fresh air into his damaged lungs. When winter came he purchased another coat and another woollen scarf and gloves and still walked and when it snowed and he really couldn’t walk he sat rugged up on the verandah breathing in the still purity of the air. He had meals of freshly made macaroni from Lucini’s over the road with Angelo’s sauces and fat sausages smothered in rich gravy with mash and osso buco and he learnt the names of the different types of macaroni and every day he thought of his Lilly and Theo and convinced himself that he was doing the right thing — Doctor Le Sueur had told him to stay away and stay away he must. He wasn’t out of the woods. Doctor Le Sueur had told him he would most likely get worse before he got better.
One day, about eighteen months after Peter had walked out the front gate, Lilly received a letter that made her cry. She sobbed loud retching sobs and Theo ran over to her and put his head on her shoulder. He was surprised when she smiled at him through her tears and said, ‘It’s all right, Theo, these are happy tears,’ and then wiped her face on her apron and sat at the table and scrawled out her own letter and she and Theo together put it in the letterbox for the postman to collect that afternoon.
At four o’clock Theo waited for his father on the third step from the bottom as he always did, wearing his coat and a scarf because it was September and cold and his mother brought him a bacon and cheese sandwich and warm milk. The next afternoon she brought him lemon delicious pudding and the afternoon after that she brought him golden syrup dumplings with custard, and anything Theo didn’t eat she ate for him — one way or another she would fatten the boy up and make him healthy and strong.
On the fifth afternoon as Theo sat on the third step from the bottom, he hadn’t touched the cinnamon scroll Lilly had made. Lilly came and sat with him, bringing a rug for their knees.
‘I’ll finish that off for you, shall I?’ she said and he passed her the windmill tray with the cake and the empty glass white in patches from the milk he had drunk.
‘I should stop waiting for him, shouldn’t I?’ Theo asked. After all, he was older now and he knew that sometimes you just had to accept the way things were.
‘Oh no,’ said Lilly, ‘never stop waiting for what you truly want.’
Lilly was wearing her dress covered in red rosebuds; she washed it each night and hung it to dry by the fire and put it on again the next day. About a year ago she had let out the seams, and then again six months ago. Now the dress stretched uncomfortably over her middle and her breasts, pulling hard at the seams, but she couldn’t bear to throw it out. She wore a thick woollen cardigan over the light summery dress. Theo studied the rosebuds, he touched them one after the other with his finger. It had been his father’s favourite dress, he knew that because his dad had said, ‘She’s my rosebud. Your mum agreed to marry an old codger like me when she was nought but a sweet young rosebud.’
Theo didn’t know why he looked up at that moment but he did and there he was, standing at the gate.
And that was how Theo learnt the art of being quiet and waiting.
Eight
Saturday, 11 November 1905, when the neighbours are cantankerous and the sun bears down turning men’s brains to mush.
Young Arthur’s mother and father stood at their kitchen window, their brows furrowed, their eyes wide and their mouths scrunched as though they had eaten a fruit salad made out of lemons. They looked through the spaces in their side fence where palings had once been; they could see everything going on in their neighbour’s yard whether they wanted to or not.
‘Let him be. He’s just lost his wife, for goodness sake,’ said Jack Puce.
‘Wife or no wife, he can’t be taking our fence apart,’ said Daphne Puce.
Egged on by his wife, Jack leaned out the window and called, ‘What are you doing to the fence, Paul?’
Paul ignored him so Jack looked back at his wife and shrugged his shoulders. He’d tried, hadn’t he?
Paul had scavenged discarded planks of wood and old pickets from where they had hidden, happy and undisturbed for years against the corner of the garden shed. When he realised the old timber wasn’t enough to do the job, he had viciously pulled the palings from the fence, creating gaping holes between his and the Puce’s back gardens. On and on he pulled paling after paling from the fence and Daphne said to Jack, ‘Well, when are you going to do something? The entire fence will be gone soon and then what?’
But Jack wasn’t keen on disturbing Mister Cottingham even when Mister Cottingham wasn’t grieving his wife. The man had a way of seeing right through you when you were trying to convince him that the fence boundary was three feet out in his favour when really it was in yours. To disturb him when grief and the searing sun had got into his brain was asking for trouble Jack couldn’t be bothered with, so he told Daphne he’d have a word. And he did have a word. He said hello to Paul on his way to the pub. When Jack came home from the pub, feeling much better about life after four pots too many, his improved optimism was shot to pieces by the sounds of hammering ricocheting through his head and their house. The rhythmic thumping made the walls shudder as if the house was wrenching itself up from its foundations, and the effect made Jack swear he was done with drinking. The hammering went on well into the night. Jack and Daphne turned and moaned in their beds and Daphne said, ‘For Godsakes, Jack, do something to shut him up,’ and Jack snapped, ‘Just what do you expect me to do, Missus Puce? You tell me and I’ll do it pronto.’
Paul’s mind was filled with such a vicious tornado and his soul was so broken into dust that he wasn’t able to think about anything other than hammering. So on and on he went, nailing plank after plank over the windows and then the door of her room. He would entomb her bed, her chaise lounge, her pictures and books, her linen, her summer skirts and bodices. He would seal up the nights they had shared together in that room, wrapped in each other’s arms, keeping each other’s souls safe from the rest of the world. He would seal it all up forever. He couldn’t bear to look at it and he couldn’t bear to have anyone else gaze at the site of their intimacy. He drove each nail through the wood cruelly. He banged and thumped and crashed about.
Beth tried to sleep with a pillow over her head.
Edie couldn’t stand the noise any longer and clambered out of bed and stood a little way away, out of range of the flying splinters of wood, and watched her father in his frenzy. Finally he hit his thumb with the hammer.
‘It was bound to happen,’ she said.
Paul shook his finger in the air and then kept on hammering. The pain seared through him but it was an insignificant pain compared to the pain in his soul. He wasn’t even aware of Edie standing there and he hadn’t heard her speak.
‘Father,’ Edie said. ‘Papa!’ she cried.
He turned then and saw Edie shivering in her nightgown and bare feet even though it wasn’t cold. She looked like a lost little girl, hungry and cold, brought into the court to be admitted to the orphanage. For a moment he started to drop the hammer and go to her. She has no mother, he thought, and the grief consumed him again.
He bent and picked up the next nail. A big dirty one that he’d yanked out of the wall of the garden shed. It was a permanent sort of nail, it was nasty and strong and convincing and once he got it in, it wouldn’t be easy to yank out again. He needed it for the door, it would stop people entering this sacred place. He held it up to the light so Edie could see it.
But she looked unimpressed.
‘This’ll do the job,’ he said.
‘Papa, I’ve been standing here hollering, I called umpteen times but you’ve been making such a racket. Papa, are you listening to me?’
He wasn’t listening. He couldn’t hear her words as he banged the nail into position. He stood back and looked at the door.
That would do it.
Job done.
‘Papa, I need some sleep,’ she pleaded. ‘Are you going to bed now?’
He didn’t know what he might do next, he might go to bed — he might not. How could he know what he wanted?
He saw Edie was frightened. It was he who had frightened her and this brought him back to himself.
‘Oh, no, no, no,’ he said, and he went over to her and wrapped her in his arms.
‘I’ve just lost my mother and it looked like I’d lost my father as well,’ she said. And it’s all the baby’s fault, she thought.
Nine
The Lake
Wednesday, 13 December, when secrets are kept hidden.
If you went down to Fairy Land and stayed very still, you might see a platypus. Fairy Land is at Lake Wendouree and Lake Wendouree is a marsh that humans with shovels turned into a lake, but it refuses to cooperate. In blistering summers, it regularly drains itself when people need its cool wetness the most. The wealthy rowers who live in the houses around the lake curse and fuss when it dries up because they can’t hold their regattas, and a dried-out lake will devalue their properties. The poor miners who live a good mile’s walk away laugh because the lake’s cratered dusty bed has become an eyesore that the wealthy are forced to look at — and that has to be a good joke on them. But the town is proud of the lake they created from a mosquito-ridden swamp. When it has water, musk ducks bicker in its shallows and swans chase children for their picnic lunches — or the children terrorise the swans back into the water. On Saturday and Sunday afternoons the town’s population comes out to walk around the lake whether it is dry or full. They walk with umbrellas to protect them from the sun’s harsh glare when it is warm and with umbrellas to protect them from the icy wind and rain when it is chilly.
The lake was full when Edie was walking the baby around it in a pram, though the town’s engineers were saying the way the weather was going it would be dry by March. At first the baby had been a quiet peaceful soul and Edie wouldn’t even have known it was in the house if it hadn’t killed her mother. But now, at five weeks old, Gracie fretted, whimpered and squirmed and she got worse as it got hotter. Nothing would console her. She knew the sun had evil intentions and she was frightened. Paul had said a walk in the pram might settle her and Edie had replied that she had things to do. Paul had raised his eyebrows knowing full well that Edie didn’t have anything she had to do — which Edie thought was another issue in itself. She didn’t have anything to do, no occupation and no Theo. Theo, who hadn’t come around to ask her father, and for this she could only blame the baby. This baby had ruined everything.
‘Edie, I must ask that you get Gracie out in the fresh air before it becomes too hot,’ Paul persisted.
‘Beth can do it,’ said Edie. She could hear her father’s demanding tone and was purposefully ignoring it. She didn’t want anything to do with the baby if she could help it. If she had her way it would be where it belonged: in the orphanage. Beth was folding a pile of nappies on the kitchen table.
‘Because Beth doesn’t have enough to do already,’ said Beth, holding out her hands.
‘Edie, I’m asking you to do it. Beth has enough on her plate now there are nappies to wash and bottles to be boiled, not
to mention her regular work.’
‘I suppose I could drown it while I’m down there,’ said Edie.
She saw Beth and Paul look at each other.
‘Oh, I didn’t mean it,’ said Edie, and laughed a fake, empty laugh. But she did mean it. And now she was walking around the lake having to put up with people stopping to coo at the baby. Oh, isn’t she beautiful? they said, pushing their heads into the pram. Oh it’s such a shame her moth— Oh, she’s a mixed blessing, isn’t she? And they would stop short and pop their heads up like a jack-in-a-box and look at Edie, waiting for her to forgive their tactlessness.
Well, Edie wasn’t giving out forgiveness for carelessness, not today, and she said goodbye to the baby cooers and said she must get on before it got too hot to be out, and deliberately pushed the pram close enough to brush their clothes and make them stand back.
Edie pushed the pram to the area of the lake called Fairy Land, where the platypus sometimes came out to play and where there were tall native grasses that could hide all sorts of sins. Edie looked in on the baby. It was grizzling and squirming. She looked up at the sun, which was working its way up into a fiery frenzy that would send everyone inside in the afternoon. The baby looked at Edie and Edie picked it up and she stepped through the tall marsh grasses towards the murky deeper water, not minding the mud getting all over her boots and her dress. She held the baby out over the water.