by Robbi Neal
On weekends when he had leave, he and his mate Holmes would find a dance to go to. Reuben would stand in the entrance of the dance hall as his eyes adjusted to the dim light cast from the hanging lamps hand-painted with scenes from Japan or China. There would be a vocalist on the stage singing ‘It’s a Long Way to Tipperary’ but slow and low and mournful, like jazz. There would be a band wearing suits behind the singer, and behind them wafts of white curtains like the clouds he flew in. There would be a pianist at a grand piano and tables with drinks and sandwiches and staff serving in tails. Mothers would sit at linen-covered tables along the sides of the hall sipping tea and sherry and keeping an eagle eye on their daughters to protect them from men like him.
Reuben was fantastic, standing at the top of the steps in his uniform, a cigarette held suggestively between his lips, his eyes hinting at the immorality he was so eager to share with any young lady who had no chaperone in sight. He would see the young women glancing furtively at him as their dance partners twirled them about. They could sense the danger in him. He was irresistible. Soon the young women gathered around him and when the pianist stopped playing he would walk over to the piano and the girls would lean their delicate elbows on the piano top, sip their sherry, their lips wet and slightly parted, and Reuben would tell them flying stories with such vigour that the blood rose to the young ladies’ cheeks as they gasped at the peril he faced daily as he fought the Huns. The mothers would eye him warily from their perches along the walls. The fathers who huddled together discussing the turns and twists of the war didn’t notice him entrancing their wide-eyed daughters and the men glared at him jealously.
‘I love the forbidden,’ Reuben would say quietly to the girls, and they would gasp at his daring and then he would talk about flying and they would be calmed because that’s what his words did to people. His voice was mesmerising and the way he told stories took the girls to another world where there were no rules and the skin on their arms turned goosepimply and their heads were filled with thoughts of what a man like Reuben Rose could do and at least one of them would disappear into some dark corner to give him hope before his next flight.
Reuben didn’t view the war the same way Theo did. Reuben didn’t see the panic and fear. It was all about victory to him, conquering the skies and glorying over his enemies. Life came easily to him, and success fell into his lap. There was never any thought that he might not win. The Australians were beaten, worn out; some had given up and were waiting for death, some threw themselves into the sea pleading for the Turks to do them in right there and then. Reuben’s optimism slapped them in the face. He was a champion. They weren’t. He was another careless heavy boot stomping the ground over their graves. The Australians could sense his blindness and kept their distance.
Reuben crouched over the dying Aussie. His flanks began to ache so he sat in the mud beside the man who was trembling uncontrollably, his entire body vibrating on the ground, his teeth rattling in his mouth. There was no hope for him, it didn’t need a medic to tell Reuben that.
‘What’s your name?’ he asked gently.
The man didn’t answer so Reuben carefully lifted off his dog tag and saw T Hooley etched into the metal. ‘What’s the T for?’
‘Oh, her smile,’ whispered the man, barely alive.
‘Whose smile? Have you got a message you want me to pass on to your wife?’ He yelled at the men rushing back and forth through the mud, ‘What’s his wife’s name, for God’s sake?’ There was no time for the dying. Reuben shouldn’t really be bothering, either. There was too much to be done and it all had to be done quietly. They didn’t want the Turks to know they were leaving. Soon it would be Reuben’s turn to go back up and distract the Turks in the seaplane while men filed silently onto ships like ghosts.
The dying man reached out and grabbed his hand.
‘Whose smile can you see?’ asked Reuben.
‘It’ll be his mother,’ said a passing soldier. ‘We all see our mothers. We all cry out for our mothers. Thank God they can’t see us. They’d put us to bed with a good spanking for getting in this much strife!’
Reuben looked at the dying soldier. He was older than him, maybe by twenty years or so. He felt a tug in his gut; a feeling that he and this soldier could have been friends in different circumstances. From what he could tell the man had a genuine face. He tried to imagine the face fatter, with colour, smiling. He tried to imagine sitting at the club with the man, raising their whisky glasses together and toasting the King; the King and to the King’s wife and the King’s good health and the King’s good victory and all the King’s soldiers.
The dying Aussie smiled, but not at Reuben, and said, ‘Edie.’
‘Edie. Is that your wife?’ Reuben asked.
Suddenly, Theo grabbed Reuben by the collar with his two bony hands that were thin like a skeleton, and he drew him close. He whispered in Reuben’s ear, ‘If you find Edie tell her I’m sorry and if you see little Gracie — well, if you see little Gracie ask her to smile and you’ll never want anything else.’
The foul smell of the man made Reuben want to vomit.
‘Leave him alone. He’s deluded. It’s just as well; better not to know you’re dying uselessly in a God-forgotten battleground,’ someone yelled.
Reuben was still leaning close as the dying man whispered, ‘Edie,’ again.
‘But I thought it was Gracie,’ said Reuben and gave up asking questions and just cradled the dying man, who obviously wasn’t even going to make it to the hospital ship. He sat in the dirt and the caked blood and stroked the dying Aussie’s matted hair. The poor blighter was seeing the secrets of life that you only saw in death. Finally the ambulance cart arrived. No one saw the wheels roll over Theo’s dog tag, burying it beneath the red dirt.
‘Here, try and give him this and we’ll be back in a moment,’ said the stretcher-bearer, who had a boy’s face, round and fresh. Reuben watched as the boy took a dessertspoon of Bovril from a jar and put it in an enamel tin mug.
‘The label is smudged,’ said Reuben.
The kid looked at the jar. ‘Won’t change the flavour none,’ he said and poured hot water into the mug from a thermos. He stirred it three times with a dirty teaspoon and handed it to Reuben.
‘What’s your name, lad?’ called Reuben, but the stretcher-bearer and the medics were gone so he held the mug to Theo’s lips and tried to feed him some of the liquid without spilling too much down the man’s front. At first Theo spluttered and coughed and sprayed the stuff everywhere and Reuben had to dodge the spittle so he didn’t catch the man’s germs.
Then there was silence everywhere apart from the muffled comings and goings of the men.
‘The Turks have stopped firing,’ said Reuben. ‘They’re letting us leave.’
Part Four
Thirty
The Grave
Saturday, 22 January 1916, in Ballarat, when Milton Blackmarsh has given Lilly a rabbit.
Beth knew that she needed the preserving jars. She needed them so her heart wouldn’t disappear. She could feel her heart dissolving inside her. If it dissolved she would become hard, she would be a sheet of glass and everyone would see everything inside her. They would see she had no heart and they would see all her guilt. They would see she had caused two deaths. She got up from the bed and looked through the curtains at the trees and she wondered how many times Theo had stood in this spot, looking through this window at the same trees. Had they whispered to him? Because she was sure she could hear them whispering over and over, a polyphonic chant. She saw the sun just breaking as it entered the day, its light dappled and soft through the leaves. The sun was deceitful and would turn on them, scorching everything it touched by afternoon. She quietly dressed, pulling on the clothes that were nearest, her black skirt that she had worn a week ago at Theo’s memorial, her white shirt. She held her boots in her hands and made her way down the hallway to the kitchen door and stood in the hallway before peering carefully into the kitchen like a
child playing peek-a-boo. She had hoped Lilly would still be asleep, but no such luck. Lilly was already up and dressed and whipping batter in a bowl. Beth stayed out of sight, peeping occasionally into the kitchen to check what Lilly was doing, and when Lilly was distracted by the whistling kettle Beth took her chance and snuck past the kitchen, then quietly opened and shut the back door. She sat on the back step and pulled on her boots, lacing them badly and knotting them. They would be a pain to undo later. Then, even though there was no need, she tiptoed through the grass to the garden shed. She pulled the latch and switched on the light and there it was waiting for her.
‘Ahhh, you,’ she said, and she took Lilly’s wooden wheelbarrow and put her hands firmly around each handle with its peeled red paint and pulled the barrow outside, then she realised she would need padding so she left the barrow alone in the middle of the lawn, snuck back into the house — it was harder because she was wearing her boots and she tried to time her steps with the beating of Lilly’s spoon against the china bowl — she snuck back past the kitchen as Lilly added fruit to her batter and beat it within an inch of its life — she got the quilt from her bed and some bath towels from the linen press and snuck back outside again and put them in the barrow. Saying ‘Shhh,’ over and over to the barrow as it creaked and groaned, complaining at being woken so early, she pushed the barrow down the side path and out the front gate and didn’t see Lilly watching her from the window. She pushed that heavy wooden barrow all the way to the Cottinghams. The barrow made a ridiculous amount of noise as it was pushed over the rough roads and it caught purposefully on stones and ruts to spite her and she had to use all her strength to heave it over them.
The north breeze, which would work its way up into a suffocating north wind by lunchtime, annoyed her by blowing her hair in her face, and with both hands pushing the barrow she couldn’t brush her hair away. Just over Doveton Street Beth tucked her hair behind her ears, took off her jacket and put it in the barrow with the blanket and towels. It was still only eight in the morning when she got to the Cottinghams and wheeled the barrow around the back to the laundry, wiping the perspiration from her forehead with the back of her hand. She reached inside the door and flicked on the light.
The preserving jars were exactly where she had left them, each standing in its place with its sisters. Beth stood and looked at them. It was like seeing an old friend you could take up with right where you had left off. She took the first jar carefully in her hands and ran her fingers over the glass, then laid the jar on the blanket in the barrow and turned to the next preserving jar and, making sure she had a layer of blanket between it and the other jar, she placed it in the barrow. She handled the jars cautiously, meticulously, like placing a baby in a cot. Each jar had to have a blanket layered around it to protect it from crashing against the others and breaking.
As she reached for another jar she felt Edie behind her. Edie stood in the doorway watching her and for a moment Beth felt like a thief. They had belonged to Edie, these roses, he had given them to her, but it was Beth who had cared for them and she needed them now. She hoped Edie would see how much she needed them.
‘We heard the noise coming down the side of the house,’ Edie said.
‘Must you take them, Beth?’ asked Gracie, coming to stand beside Edie.
Beth turned, still holding a preserved rose safe in its glass coffin. Through tears she looked at Edie, then Gracie, and then at the jars. No, Gracie would never disappear and Edie would never disappear. They were solid people; their feet were firmly on the earth, whereas Beth didn’t know who she was. Everything she had ever had belonged to other people. She had nothing of her own.
‘Would you like me to help you?’ asked Gracie.
‘No thanks, I have to do this myself.’
‘I’ll at least get you more blankets,’ said Gracie, and she went to get some.
Beth looked at Edie, haloed by the morning light as she stood in the doorway in her nightdress. She looked older and worn. Beth could see pain and loss in Edie’s soul, she had always seen it but had ignored it. Beth felt guilt rush through her and her cheeks burnt crimson.
‘I loved him. I truly did. I loved him from the moment he stood on the doorstep with that first rose behind his back. But now he is dead and perhaps you are right, Edie, when you say people’s paths are laid out for them. Perhaps Theo’s path was to love you from afar and perhaps my path was to marry Colin and I didn’t do that, so instead I’ve sent them both off to their deaths.’
Tears fell from their eyes; they were in the same river now, united in their shared grief.
‘No, Beth, don’t say that. War is a horrible thing,’ said Edie. ‘It takes men without any consideration, it doesn’t look into their souls and leave the good ones, it just flails about downing whoever gets in its way. And Colin took risks he shouldn’t have. You can’t blame yourself — that is too much guilt for a person to bear.’
Beth knew Edie was right about the war but that didn’t stop it being her fault that Theo and Colin were both now dead. She would never love another man. Her love sent men to their deaths one way or another.
Gracie came back with the blanket from her bed and the one from Edie’s bed. Beth saw Edie nod to Gracie that she had done the right thing. Edie went and got their wheelbarrow and they filled it with preserving jars as well. Finally Beth placed the last preserving jar in her barrow and tucked them safely in their new bed with more blankets.
‘Just hang on,’ said Edie, ‘just wait while we throw on some clothes.’
Beth nodded. She had thought she needed to do this alone but she realised she needed to do it with Edie. They had both loved him, so they should do this together.
Beth, Gracie and Edie walked back to Ligar Street. They walked slowly because the barrows were heavy to push and because they didn’t want to break the glass. They stopped every couple of blocks for a rest. When the barrows jammed on a stone or a rut, the three would carefully lift the barrow over the obstruction and then continue. Gracie offered to take a turn pushing but Beth and Edie wouldn’t let her, so she carried a jar. It made her feel better to lighten Beth and Edie’s burden even a little bit. Sweat ran down Beth’s and Edie’s faces, but neither of the barrows were as heavy as Beth’s soul. The hard work made her heart pump so she could feel it in her chest and know it was still there. When she got to the house she left Edie and Gracie standing guard over the preserving jars in the front yard. She needed more equipment for the task ahead. The sun was warm but she could see angry clouds coming in from the distance and she hoped it wouldn’t rain until she had finished. Beth went into the garden shed and clasped the spade by its neck and went back into the front yard. When she decided she was plumb in the middle of the yard, without a word she started digging. She dug and dug and didn’t hear Lilly come and stand next to Edie and Gracie. After an hour of digging Beth had made a hole in the ground about two feet deep and two feet wide. She flicked away the sweat from her forehead and neck with her hand. The four stood in silence and stared at the hole.
‘I’m knackered,’ said Beth. ‘I can’t dig any more but I reckon that will do. You’re the gardener, what d’you think, Mum?’
‘Looks good to me,’ said Lilly, still not knowing what the hole was for.
Beth reached out for the preserving jar Gracie held and Gracie put it gently into her hands. She unclipped the lid. The jar breathed a sigh of relief as the air inside was released; they all heard that breath in the silence and let the rose perfume seep into them. Beth read the date on the label out loud, then with the jar in one hand, she carefully pulled out the rose with the other and squatted and laid the rose in the grave. Edie gasped and put her hand on her heart to stop it leaping after the rose. Gracie steadied her so she didn’t topple over. Lilly wept silent tears that wet the ground where the rose lay.
Beth read the date on the next jar and laid its rose into the hole, and another, and with each jar Edie saw her and Theo’s love being buried in the ground forever an
d Beth saw that all she had hoped for would never come to pass and Lilly saw that her son was never coming back and Gracie saw there was too much pain in the world.
‘Do you think he died for nothing?’ Beth asked, her voice weak and small. She began to shake because she believed that he had died for nothing, she’d taken him from Edie’s love and he hadn’t even consummated their marriage. There was no child, nothing of him to remain in this world. Nothing to comfort them. Gracie put her arms around Beth and held her tight.
‘Don’t even think it,’ Edie said. ‘It would be too awful to even think it.’
Beth opened the last jar, read the date on it and placed the last rose in the grave. She looked at the other women. Her job was done.
Theo’s body was lying in some distant place, a strange country that grew trees that Beth had never seen and where foreigners that he had fought would stomp over his grave with no concern that below their shoes was the story of a life. But here at least his roses would be buried beneath familiar soil and no one would trample on this spot.
‘Wait,’ said Lilly and she went inside the house.
She came back and knelt down, not minding her dress turning black at the knees in the freshly turned soil, and she carefully placed a fruitcake and the sheet music for Chopin’s Prelude in E Minor on top of the roses, her tears pouring onto the music and the cake.
Beth, Edie, Lilly and Gracie scooped the black earth back over the roses, the cake and the music with their hands. They did it gently so that nothing under the earth would be disturbed or broken and they all spilled tears over the grave and their tears mingled together and watered the buds below.
When they had cried out all their tears, Lilly looked up with red swollen eyes and dirt-stained cheeks and said, ‘It’s still early I expect but Milton gave me a rabbit he caught so I have rabbit stew inside. We could have it on toast for breakfast or lunch, whichever it’s closest to.’