by Robbi Neal
Old George shook his head and said, ‘I knew it. There are some things it’s just not right for a woman to do.’
‘Oh, I didn’t mean to put a dent in the car,’ said Edie, and Virgil whispered, ‘But the fire hydrant was on purpose?’
‘Well, that’s a fail in my book,’ said George, pleased to have his theories confirmed. ‘I better ring the fire department about their hydrant,’ and he went back inside the police station leaving Edie and Virgil staring at the hydrant and the dent.
‘Ah well, we all have bad days, don’t we, Edie?’ said Virgil, as though he didn’t think the accident was anything to do with a bad day at all. ‘I’ll give you another two lessons to get your confidence back and we’ll test again.’
Monday, 26 September 1921, when the third time should be lucky.
A fortnight later Edie was sitting the test again and at the end of the test she ran into a tree and put a dent in the front bumper bar.
‘This is costing your father a pretty penny,’ said Virgil.
George and Virgil shook their heads at the tree and Virgil looked at the back bumper bar and then at the front and said, ‘At least they match.’ He looked at Edie as though he was starting to work her out and asked, ‘Another bad day, I take it?’
She shrugged her shoulders.
‘You’re ruining my business,’ he said. ‘No one will think I can teach.’
She was filled with guilt then.
Monday, 10 October 1921, when Edie loses a friend.
So a fortnight later there was nothing for it, she had to drive properly. Old George said he’d be blowed but by gum she was safe to drive. She went inside and stood at the counter and Old George issued her a licence and Virgil and Old George shook hands as though the accomplishment was Virgil’s in managing to teach a woman to drive. Edie was rather pleased she finally had her licence, even though she was going to miss the lessons terribly and still had to get Papa to agree to purchase a vehicle. She couldn’t help herself and reached up on her toes and kissed Virgil on the cheek and he looked at her and said, ‘Thank you.’ She let the soft tone of his voice rest on her skin and she knew she was forgiven for purposely failing.
Edie and Gracie, Paul and Lilly had afternoon tea to celebrate Edie’s successful test. They sat around the kitchen table with the stove door open for extra warmth.
‘We must order the automobile, Papa,’ said Edie passing Paul the cake tin. She had forgotten what was in there. ‘I think it’s shortbread.’
‘You do it and I’ll write the cheque. Buy whatever you think is best. I’ve never driven so how would I know. I don’t even know why you need a car when everything is practically in walking distance,’ he said taking two biscuits.
That was the problem — ever since she started her lessons he had been saying that he would write a cheque but when Edie tried to get him to actually sit down and write it he suddenly had to check with his accountant, who he called ‘my money man’, or he couldn’t find the chequebook or he was just too busy to worry about it now. Edie took a deep breath, she didn’t want to say this but she felt the time had come.
‘We need a motor car, Papa, because everything might be in walking distance but you have trouble making that distance these days and think of poor Lilly, she finds it even harder than you.’
Edie looked over at Lilly, who was counting stitches on the cardigan she was knitting for Paul. Doctor Appleby had told Edie and Paul confidentially that Lilly’s heart wasn’t strong. Paul scowled and Edie braced herself.
‘There is nothing wrong with a cab. It keeps men in work and there isn’t much of that around,’ he said firmly and then asked, ‘Where’s my umbrella?’
She sighed. If he wanted his umbrella he was getting worked up and if he got worked up he would pace up and down with his umbrella lecturing them as if giving a closing speech.
‘We need a motor, Papa.’ She looked to Gracie for help.
‘Edie’s right, Papa,’ Gracie piped up and handed him his umbrella, which was right by his chair. ‘They say that horses will be a thing of the past within ten years.’
‘Bah,’ he said. Paul pushed the umbrella into the floor and manoeuvred himself to a more upright position.
‘Motor vehicles are faster, safer and warmer,’ said Edie. ‘You can get to Melbourne in a day.’
‘Or I can take the train and get there in half a day,’ said Paul.
‘Motor vehicles don’t get ill, don’t leave manure everywhere, don’t need feeding and in the end, Papa, they are much cheaper than keeping a horse.’
‘What do you think, Lilly?’ asked Paul, completely unconvinced.
‘I think it’s a different world and if the girls want an automobile and you can afford it, I don’t see the problem.’
Paul scowled. ‘I don’t want you killing yourselves in some silly accident.’
‘Oh Papa,’ said Edie, ‘that’s why I’ve had all those lessons from Mister Ainsworth. Everyone says he charges a little more but he is the best.’
‘He can’t be very good if you had two accidents going for your test. It cost me a fortune between the lessons and those accidents.’
‘Papa, it won’t be a fast car — will it, Edie?’ Gracie smiled at him.
‘I can fight one of you but no sane man would take on three females — especially one who smiles like that. But promise me you won’t do any more than ten miles an hour.’
‘Fifteen,’ said Gracie. ‘That’s the speed limit, isn’t it, Edie?’
But Edie was already thinking how there would be no more lessons and she felt enormously sad.
Thirty-Nine
The Picnic
Sunday, 6 November 1921, when Edie is a mess of trembles.
Gracie turned sixteen and to mark the occasion she’d prepared a special gift for Paul, Lilly and Edie, but it wasn’t quite ready on her actual birthday, which had been yesterday, so she had told them she would give it to them after church today. Edie had no idea what it would be and when she tried to pry it out of her, Gracie only smiled back.
‘Do we have to share it?’ asked Paul.
‘Yes,’ she’d said.
Edie knew Gracie had been preparing the gift for months. Sometimes when Edie had gone to the shops or out for a walk she’d asked Gracie if she wanted to come and Gracie said she had things to do and Edie knew she was working on her secret project.
Edie watched as Gracie carried kitchen chairs one by one into the sitting room and placed them side by side in front of the lounge chairs. She wouldn’t let Edie help but when she had three chairs lined up in a row as if in a concert hall, she let Edie into the sitting room and called for Lilly and Paul to come too.
Edie sat beside Paul and Gracie nodded her head, pleased they were being quiet and giving her their full attention. She ducked back out into the hallway.
‘Today, ladies and gentleman,’ she called from the hallway, ‘all the way from Webster Street, Ballarat, a once-only appearance at Webster Street, Ballarat.’
They clapped and Gracie walked into the lounge room. Edie smiled at her as Gracie nervously pulled at her dress as though she couldn’t get it to sit right.
Well now, Edie had heard Gracie sing at church, where her voice mingled with everyone else’s, she’d heard her sing in the kitchen where her voice mingled with boiling pots and steam and Lilly’s voice and her own, but she’d not heard Gracie sing alone since she was little. She watched Gracie intently, ready to tell her she was brilliant even if she wasn’t.
Gracie took a deep breath and began.
When she finished Edie sat looking at her. She knew she should say something but she couldn’t find any words.
‘It wasn’t any good, was it?’ Gracie asked.
Edie wiped the tears from her eyes. ‘Each note was soft like a rose petal landing on my skin.’
Paul and Lilly wiped the tears from their eyes and agreed. Paul said, ‘Well, how about another? I could sit here and listen to you all day.’
The knock
on the door stopped Gracie as she began to sing again. Edie stood up without even thinking about it. It sounded just like him, but it couldn’t be him because he had died somewhere foreign.
The knock came again.
Edie began to move but Gracie was quicker and flung the door open.
‘Ah, I’m Mister Ainsworth.’
‘I know — you’re looking for Edie,’ said Gracie and she turned and grinned at Edie. ‘The driving instructor,’ she said. Edie gave her a good dig in the ribs for her pointed tone and her cheeky smile.
‘Hello Virgil.’
‘I thought you might like to go for a spin, no charge. Just to keep your practice up. We don’t want you backsliding and crashing into anything else. You need to keep up your practice until you get your own vehicle. Or perhaps your sister might like a lesson?’ He looked at Gracie. Then he brushed his hands through his hair and it flopped onto his brow.
‘Yes, that would be very nice,’ Edie said. ‘How thoughtful of you. I’ll just get my coat and hat.’ Edie brushed past Gracie and almost ran to her room. ‘I’m ignoring you and your giggling,’ she said to Gracie, who’d followed her and stood in the doorway watching. Edie threw her lingerie out of her drawer until she found the lipstick in its metal container. She’d sent to Melbourne for the Helena Rubenstein invention not knowing if she would ever have the opportunity to use it, but thinking if she had it, then a reason to use it might come to her. The automatic lipstick promised to give her lips a cupid’s bow with no need for a template or fussy shaping. She had ordered Red Geranium, which the ad said was vivacious and could take five years off a woman’s face.
‘Can you go and see if he wants to come in?’ she said to Gracie to get rid of her.
Edie put the lipstick on as directed but it didn’t work. There was no bow, just her own lips but redder. She opened the matching compact and smudged a circle on each cheek with the crimson puff, then she licked her handkerchief and tried to remove some of the red and spread the rest of the rouge out over her cheeks so she didn’t look like a clown. She looked at her dress, it wasn’t a good one, and she wished she had worn her black crepe de chine, which she made her look slimmer and younger. She ran the brush through her hair and puffed it out with her hands. She stood back to see what she looked like, decided it was the best she could manage in such a short time and she went out to meet him. He was sitting on the step waiting for her, his hat swinging in his hand. Goodness, had she taken so long that he needed to sit down.
‘Where’s Gracie?’ she said.
‘Oh, I told her I was fine to sit here and wait for you,’ he said. She saw his eyes take her in, he noticed everything about her, and he saw the lipstick, the blush and the hair. Well, he better not think I did it for him. But she knew he did think that.
She said, ‘Shall we go then?’
‘I think so,’ he said, ‘but you were going for your coat and hat and you don’t have them.’
‘Oh,’ she said and ran back inside and pulled her coat and hat from the hallstand.
Once she was in the driver’s seat he instructed her to go up this street and down that street and she realised they were driving to St George’s Lake. When they got there, she pulled up in front of the lake and stared at the gum leaves as they floated on the wind and then settled on the water like boats. She watched them intently as though they were the only thing in the world that needed her attention and not the man sitting so close to her in the compact compartment of the car where she could feel the warmth of his breath.
Realising he was waiting for her to speak first she said, ‘Gosh, it’s quite cosy in here,’ and felt him looking at her.
He turned her face towards him and smiled that slightly crooked smile that happened all over his face. She followed his gaze to her hand resting on her leg, then his hand rested over hers. He left his hand like that for a few moments, letting her get used to the feel of it. His skin was warm and his hand encompassed hers completely. When he leant over and put his lips on hers, his were soft and giving and it stopped too soon.
‘Now, why would you want to do something like that, Virgil?’ Her voice was barely more than a whisper.
‘Edie, you know full well why.’
‘But I’m old.’ She really was, she was thirty-five.
‘Oh, Edie,’ he laughed, ‘not as old as me. Come on, let’s walk around the lake.’
He got out of the car and reached behind the seat and pulled out a basket. She got out of the car and he held out his hand for hers. She hoped he didn’t notice the tremors that were happening in every part of her, and felt the firmness of his hand holding hers as they walked halfway around the lake in silence. He stopped, pulled the rug from the basket and laid it out for her. When they were both sitting side by side he poured her some hot tea, which she held in both hands. Even though the tea was hot and satisfying, it didn’t warm her as much as her contented heart. When she had finished the tea, he took the cup from her and kissed her again and she was sure that she could hear Gracie’s pure voice singing ‘I’m Forever Blowing Bubbles’ all the way from Webster Street and that the people sitting around the lake or canoodling in their cars stopped to listen to the sweet voice that hung in the air.
They walked around the rest of the lake back to the car; they talked about the foliage and the crimson rosellas who flew away when they drew close, the red of their feathers like fiery comets flying through the green of the bush. Virgil drove her back home and all she could think was she was thirty-five and she’d just been kissed for the second time in her life and both times by the same man. Every now and then Virgil looked over at her and she heard that quiet private chuckle that he had.
Sunday, 7 May 1922, when Edie tries to be a modern woman.
Edie and Virgil had been taking Sunday afternoon drives for six months and on this day the wind was blowing from the south and an icy blast almost blew Edie off her feet as she walked down the driveway trying to hold her skirt and coat down. Virgil was leaning on the bonnet, smiling as he always did, waiting for her. As she reached him the wind blew some of his hair into his face. She studied that hair, the way it flicked in the breeze just over his eyebrow, until she reached up and gently moved it away from his face. She got in the car, he shut the door and she took a deep breath while he cranked the car. When he got in she passed him the date loaf.
‘From Gracie,’ she said.
‘Ah, Gracie,’ he said and smiled. ‘Smells amazing,’ and he put it in the glove box.
They drove out to Mount Buninyong. They couldn’t get up to the summit in the car because the road wasn’t finished, so they got out where the road came to a sudden stop.
‘It’s not too cold for you, is it?’ Virgil asked.
‘No use living in Ballarat if you can’t cope with a bit of cold weather,’ she said.
Virgil grabbed the picnic basket and she took the rugs and they walked up the zigzag trail that had been worn through the bush by other picnickers. At the top they walked down into the basin, a dip where they were protected from the wind by the manor gums and messmate trees. She spread out one blanket and the other they shared over their knees. He poured them both hot black tea and they sat side by side, their fingers clasping the warm enamel cups, and listened to all the things they couldn’t see. Then Virgil stood up and ran up and down the side of the crater several times. Edie laughed, she loved the way he threw himself into things and took risks that she wouldn’t. He still had the eagerness of the boy he had been. He wasn’t afraid of appearing foolish, he didn’t think about what people thought of him. He just loved life and whatever it gave him and she loved him for it.
He saw her studying him and he stopped and pulled her up to him.
‘I care very deeply for you, Edie,’ he said at last, ‘but I just don’t know if I’m the marrying kind. You’d be happy being my companion, wouldn’t you?’
She looked at him with his wild hair, the way he grabbed life and laughed his way through it.
Companionate
marriage. On her last visit to Ballarat Beth had told her that companionate marriage was what it was called when you did everything a married couple did except actually get married. Beth said it was the modern thing to do in Melbourne, other than being a divorcee, which was the most modern thing.
‘Some women,’ Beth had said, ‘lie and say they are divorcees just to make themselves seem more exciting and exotic.’ Edie found it hard to believe. In Ballarat divorced women lied and said their husbands had died in the war because of the shame of it.
Edie had said, ‘Well, neither of us are able to do those things, we aren’t modern Melbourne women,’ and Beth had looked at her strangely, as if she wanted to say more but couldn’t. Edie didn’t know of any women in Ballarat who would be brave enough to be companions — not openly, anyway.
Now, here on Mount Buninyong, to her utmost surprise Edie heard herself say, ‘Most modern girls prefer to have a companion than marriage,’ echoing what Beth had told her. ‘And I’ve always tried to be modern.’
Perhaps his offer of companionship was the best she could ever hope for and she should take the love being offered to her. But she wasn’t sure she meant one word of it. It didn’t sit easily as she said it, and she knew she really yearned for more, for something more solid.
‘This was once an active volcano,’ Virgil said, holding her closer. ‘This is actually a crater.’
She leant her head against his beating heart to see if she belonged there.
‘Do you think the mountain is dead or is it just lying dormant, waiting to be awakened again one day?’
He took her face in his hands and kissed her and she gave herself to it, remembering that she always liked his warm kisses that tingled down to her toes and made her feel young. Then she trembled.
‘Oh, you’re cold,’ he said.