by Robbi Neal
‘I know you know what’s in my heart, Mum, and sometimes I’m ashamed.’ Theo held Lilly’s small plump hands in his own. Her hands were warm and soft like a young girl’s.
She pulled one hand away and brushed his hair back from his face. ‘Oh son,’ she said, ‘you deserve to be happy and Edie Cottingham has chosen another life. And who can blame her with that poor child to look after and an ageing father. Beth loves you, Theo — isn’t that enough for you?’
‘Well, Mum,’ he said, ‘that’s what I wanted to talk to you about. I think it is enough and I am going to set a date. We will marry on the seventh of November.’
Lilly wriggled her ample bottom out of the chair and walked around the table and put her arms around him and kissed his head.
‘I think it’s the right decision,’ she said. ‘It’s the only decision. You deserve a love you can actually have.’
He stood up and pulled away from her arms. ‘Mum — there’s more.’ His voice was full of sorrow for her.
She began shaking, he hadn’t even told her yet and she was trembling. She knew what was coming. He sat her down and moved the tea over towards her.
‘The whole last week I have been worrying you would do this.’ She was already crying.
‘I know,’ he said, ‘you’ve eaten three apple cakes. Mum, come on, I have to. You know I have to.’
‘But you’re thirty-eight years old, Theo — they want young boys. You’re not a young boy any more.’
‘As long as you have at least a thirty-four inch chest and are five foot six they’ll take you, Mum.’ He didn’t tell her that thirty-eight was the oldest you could be to enlist.
‘You’re my boy. My only boy,’ she was sobbing and he passed her the chequered tea towel. He squatted down in front of her. ‘Mum, I will be okay — you know me. I can wait out any strife.’
Twenty-Two
Gracie
Wednesday, 19 August 1914, when Gracie refuses to budge.
Gracie spun around in circles turning her pale blue dress into a parachute and then collapsed noisily on the wooden floorboards. When her head had recovered and stopped spinning she clambered up and did it again, twirling until she fell helplessly in a tangle. Shopping for material was boring for a nine-year-old girl and Beth was taking an inordinate amount of time. Gracie spun herself dizzy a few more times and then, tiring of that, she noticed the hats in the corner of the shop, so she tried on hats, and beads and ribbons, and when Mister Lacey the haberdasher looked cross at her playing with his merchandise she smiled at him, because she knew that being sweet usually always made people happy, even when they were trying to be cross.
Mister Lacey begrudgingly let her play with his stock because after all the poor child had lost her mother and her father had a lot of money and Mister Lacey knew Mister Cottingham didn’t mind spending any of that money on his two daughters. But most of all because no one could deny the child simply had the most delightful smile, a smile that made you instantly stop worrying about the debtors and the suppliers and accounts that weren’t paid. So anything the child did that made her smile was well worth it.
Gracie had on three hats and several strings of beads and she went to find Beth to show her how funny she looked, but Beth was engrossed in materials, carefully feeling each roll, gauging its potential for happiness, its silkiness and shine. She had already chosen lots of material that she had placed on the counter. Gracie couldn’t see how she could possibly need any more. She watched for a while as Beth looked at this bolt and then that one. You couldn’t possibly need that much cloth for just two dresses. She walked over and felt the silky material on the bolt that Beth was studying.
‘I’m trying to do this as cheaply as possible,’ said Beth, ‘taking into consideration that your father is footing the bill and that there is a war on now.’
Beth put the bolt down and moved on to look at trimmings. Gracie, bored with the haberdashery shop and spinning and hats and beads, took them off and put them in a pile on top of the bolts and decided to go and wait outside where she could watch the comings and goings in Sturt Street, which had to be more interesting than Beth and material.
Besides, the Reverend’s wife and Missus Blackmarsh had come into the shop and they kept scowling at her as though she had no right to be on the face of the earth.
‘If you’re going outside don’t forget your coat and hat,’ said Beth.
So Gracie, wondering how Beth knew she wasn’t wearing her coat when Beth hadn’t even looked at her, begrudgingly put on her hat and coat.
‘Uh uh, gloves and scarf too,’ said Beth just as Gracie was about to escape.
Gracie had to search for where she had left those, and found them under the ribbon counter. Waving them in the air to show Beth she had them, she went outside and sat on the steps. She rested her chin in her hands, her elbows on her knees, her dress and coat pulled tightly over her knees to keep them warm.
‘And how are you this morning, young Gracie?’ said a man who knew her. She didn’t know him but she smiled anyway as he walked on and she hummed to herself the song that Edie always sang to her.
As anyone who has lived in a country town knows, the place to meet your neighbours is down the street, where you can catch up with anyone you need to if you just wait for long enough. In the country there is no such thing as a short trip to the shops just to pick up a few things. Any trip down the street will take a minimum of two hours as you must stop and chat to everyone you know. The following hour was no different for Gracie. The first people to bump into her were Nurse Drake and Constable George.
‘And what are you doing sitting on the haberdasher’s step in that lovely coat, young Gracie?’ said Constable George and Nurse Drake patted her on the head. Gracie smiled at them and as they walked off, Beatrix leaned over and said to George, ‘All her early ailments aside, Mister Cottingham is blessed with that girl. She’s so pure she could be the mother Mary.’
‘I’m sure you had a hand in it, dear,’ said George.
Beatrix said, ‘Well, I have practically brung her up so far, haven’t I?’
Gracie listened as the Town Hall clock chimed three and hoped Beth wouldn’t be too much longer. It would start getting cold soon. The next people she saw were Theo and his mother.
‘Beth says you can’t go in,’ said Gracie, moving to the middle of the step to block their entrance. ‘She’s says it’s bad luck for you to see what the bride is going to wear. She’s selecting materials and stuff.’
‘Well,’ said Missus Hooley, ‘we don’t need any bad luck, do we.’
Gracie smiled at them both. As they walked off, Lilly put her arm through Theo’s and said, ‘When that child smiles, you know God is smiling down on the world.’
Gracie watched as some boys kicked a bottle up Camp Street and she watched as Mister Laidlaw stopped his horse and cart when the horse did a shit and got out a shovel and a potato sack and shovelled the shit inside. He saw Gracie watching and he tipped his hat.
‘Miss Gracie,’ he said. ‘I can get good money for that shit. How’s that for a laugh, eh?’
She smiled at him and he said, ‘Oh, you make my heart flutter, you do. You’ll have to marry me now.’
‘I can’t,’ she said, ‘I’m only nine — well, I will be in November.’
‘And I had my hopes up,’ he said. ‘Say hello to your papa, he’ll remember me. And say hello to that sister-in-law of mine. Tell her to come round. Tell her Dottie wants to talk to her.’ Then he thought for a moment and said, ‘He built it for you, you know.’
‘I do know,’ she said and he was off.
Gracie looked just like Edie, but no one saw that. They didn’t notice her plain face or her jutting chin that was just like her older sister’s. All people saw when they looked at Gracie was an angel. Gracie didn’t care that people were always asking her to smile. It was an easy enough thing to do and she smiled gladly at people as she sat on the front step of the haberdasher’s. When Doctor Appleby used to com
e to the house to prod and poke her and to listen to her chest, he always asked her for a smile and then he would say, ‘Gracie dear, you are a gift from God himself.’ But he didn’t come any more unless she was really sick like when she got chicken pox.
Missus Blackmarsh walked out of the shop with Missus Whitlock and they stood on the doorstep behind Gracie. Missus Blackmarsh groaned loudly making out that Gracie was leaving no room for them to pass her and get down the steps, which there plainly was.
‘Indolent child,’ muttered Missus Blackmarsh, so Gracie, who normally would have leant well out of the way to let people past, sat solid in her spot. She didn’t like Missus Blackmarsh one bit; she always looked like she was about to spit something out of her mouth and her bosom was too big, like an army tank clearing the way before her and her hair was like slick black tar.
Missus Blackmarsh, groaned again but Gracie still stayed put.
Missus Blackmarsh crossed her arms over her big breasts and said to Missus Whitlock, ‘I told you so, I could have told you yonks ago it would never last with Edie Cottingham.’
‘Beth is much more suitable,’ agreed Missus Whitlock.
‘Why do you suppose it’s taken so long?’ said Missus Blackmarsh and they stepped around Gracie and trotted off down the street, their rear ends like the rear ends of two cows waddling off to be milked.
Gracie wasn’t sure what hadn’t lasted with her sister Edie or what had taken so long but she would ask Beth as soon as Beth finished her shopping.
Finally Beth emerged as the clock stuck half-past. ‘Righteo,’ she said, ‘that’s all I need to order there, now off to the flag-maker’s.’
‘What’s taken so long?’ asked Gracie putting her hand in Beth’s.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Missus Blackmarsh said it had taken a long time.’
‘Well — I suppose they meant that the one thing you can say about Theo Hooley is he never hurries into anything,’ said Beth. ‘Oh look, the florist, I completely forgot about a bouquet.’
‘Can’t you do it tomorrow? It’s getting cold,’ said Gracie and she hoisted up her skirt and coat and showed Beth the goose pimples on her legs to prove it and luckily Beth decided to take her home.
When they got home Gracie sat and drank hot milky tea to warm her up. She watched Beth cover the sunroom floor in newspaper and draw shapes on the sheets. The shapes looked nothing like a dress and Gracie would have wondered if Beth knew what she was doing if she hadn’t seen Beth make clothes before. Then Beth carefully cut around the shapes and labelled them and folded them and put them in two shoeboxes. Gracie helped her carry them to her room.
‘Now I have to wait for what I ordered to arrive. Three weeks. That’s not too long, is it? As long as it’s here by the end of October. Now tomorrow, missy, you must go to Dana Street. You have to go to school for at least one hundred and forty days a year and as it’s already the end of August that’s going to be a push.’
Gracie didn’t particularly like school. She definitely preferred home to school, home with her father and her sister and Beth, where she imagined they all lived in a jewelled genie bottle full of soft cushions with tassels and beds for princesses, where she was safe from the cruel winds and the sharp hailstones. But the teachers were kind and the last time she went to school, which she thought was probably last week, the teacher had said she was going to show the girls how to knit socks for the soldiers from scraps of wool, and sometimes if the class had been good she read to them from The Children’s Hour.
Twenty-Three
The Parcel
Which comes on 30 September 1914 in the afternoon post.
Gracie saw the parcel on the porch when she came home from school. She dropped her satchel on the floor and walked as fast as she could to find Beth and tell her it was there. Beth squealed and shook her hands about in the air and did a little jig when she saw it, so Gracie squealed and danced about with her. Beth took the parcel and walked down the hall and Gracie followed her, they were going to open it together, it was exciting. But when Beth got to her room she shut the door behind her and left Gracie outside and disappointed.
‘What are you doing? Can’t I come in?’ Gracie asked through the door. She had really wanted to help unwrap the parcel; it would be as if it was her birthday or Christmas.
‘I’m cutting the material and sewing the panels together one stitch at a time, praying that each stitch will be a day, no, a year, I’ll get to spend with my husband.’
‘Why’s he taken so long to marry you? Papa says a three-year engagement is too long and unnatural,’ said Gracie, mimicking her father. As the question left her lips she realised that was the long thing that Missus Blackmarsh had spoken about outside the shop.
‘Because,’ said Beth, ‘these things take time. Now go away, I’m busy making the dresses.’
‘Can’t I see?’ Gracie pleaded.
‘No one else gets to see the dress. It’s very bad luck,’ said Beth.
A few days later Gracie had to stand for what seemed like hours while Beth measured her and pinned a petticoat. ‘Recite your times tables,’ said Beth. ‘That’ll take your mind off standing still.’
Gracie, standing on top of the kitchen table, her legs aching, recited her times tables up to twenty-ones and it didn’t help one bit.
‘Why aren’t you measuring the real dress on me?’
‘Because I want it to be a surprise. The petticoat will tell me how big I need to make the dress.’
Gracie hoped her dress would be white satin with Chantilly lace. She hoped it would have a bow for the waist embroidered with pearls and cream satin rosebuds and that she would have a matching Dolly-Varden bonnet and a new pair of kid leather shoes from Faulls. She’d read in the paper about a flower girl who got to wear all those things.
‘When do I get to see my dress?’
‘It’s a surprise,’ said Beth.
‘Go on, show me, I won’t tell anyone what it’s like, I promise.’ Gracie hadn’t had a new dress in simply ages. Papa said they all had to do without new things and put all their spare money into war bonds for the war effort. Whenever she saw the ad that said, My daddy bought me a war bond, did yours? she would say out loud, ‘Yes he did, thank you very much.’
Papa said he was making a special allowance for Beth’s wedding.
‘I’ll tell you this much,’ said Beth, ‘yours is the same as mine, only smaller. It’s just the right size for a nearly-nine-year-old girl named Gracie. Now I know it’s hard but keep still for goodness sake or your dress will be down at your ankles in one spot and up at your chin in another.’
Gracie beamed. She hadn’t been a flower girl before. This was going to be the most fabulous day of her life. She couldn’t wait and she was sure Beth would make her dress even more beautiful than the one she had read about in The Star.
Twenty-Four
The Disappointment
Saturday, 7 November 1914, when the sun gives way to the rain.
Gracie bit her bottom lip. She bit it hard because if she didn’t, tears were going to spill from her eyes; she could feel them building up, just waiting to burst free and run down her cheeks. She was going to get an almighty ribbing if she went to school on Monday, she knew that much. She might be able to change out of the dress when they got home from church. Perhaps she could wear her Sunday best for the reception at least. She felt like a clown, like the one she saw when Edie took her to Worth’s Circus. He was a kaleidoscope of mismatched colours, like the socks they knitted from any old scrap of wool for the soldiers at the front. The clown was silly and she’d tried not to laugh because she couldn’t see the point of him but then she found herself laughing anyway and Edie said that was the point.
It was hard not to let on to Beth just how disappointed she was.
Beth was standing with her hands on her hips, gazing at her. ‘Perfect, just perfect for a war bride,’ she said.
Gracie looked over at Papa. He was in his best clothes, ready
for the wedding, and raised an eyebrow as if to say what could he do to save her, and went back to reading his paper.
Gracie looked at Edie. She looked disappointed too — surely she could help, she would see that Gracie couldn’t possibly go out in public like this. This must be a joke and there was another dress somewhere.
Without any warning Edie pulled a few of her curls from their clip.
‘Owww,’ said Gracie.
‘Just a minute, Beth, I just need to fix Gracie’s hair,’ and Edie pulled her down the hallway to her bedroom and shut the door. Then Edie put her hands on Gracie’s shoulders and manoeuvred her so she was standing plumb in front of the mirror. Edie stood behind Gracie and trapped her curls back inside the pin. ‘Remember, Gracie,’ said Edie into the mirror, and Gracie looked back at the Edie trapped in the mirror, ‘it’s Beth’s special day and it’s the one day in a girl’s life that she gets to have whatever she wants. After that she has to think about her husband and family first. You can do this for Beth.’
Edie was so sincere that Gracie thought she certainly could do it. She turned and smiled at the real Edie, then threw herself into Edie’s arms and breathed in the soft powdery smell of her older sister-mother.
‘Now,’ said Edie, pushing her back to look directly into her eyes, ‘Beth has decided that today, her wedding day, she is finally going to let us see what she has been hiding in the laundry all these years, and isn’t that exciting? Exciting enough to take your mind off the dress?’
Even though Edie didn’t really look like it was exciting, Gracie couldn’t do anything but agree it was thrilling. She had always wondered what was hidden in Beth’s laundry. She imagined there were wicked imps in there that Beth had trapped in the garden that must never escape or they would wreak havoc on the world. Or perhaps it was full of magic spells for love and that was how Beth had won Theo. Or maybe there were flying unicorns in there.
She put her hand in Edie’s and they walked down the hall to the kitchen.