by Robbi Neal
Beth dropped the letter onto the table but it fluttered to the floor. Clara grabbed it and read it.
‘But he’s dead,’ Clara said.
‘Apparently not.’
Beth was numb; she couldn’t feel anything, nothing at all. She pinched her skin but no, she felt nothing; she bit on her tongue, nothing; she slapped her arms — nothing. Clara handed her the warm whisky and Beth gulped it down. She could feel it as it burnt all the way down her throat.
‘More,’ she said hoarsely, the whisky still caught in her throat. Clara poured her another one and Beth motioned for her to fill the glass to the very top. She wanted a decent dose. So Clara filled it to the top and handed it to her and Beth downed it in one.
‘How could the bugger come back from the dead?’ Clara asked.
Beth watched Clara pour herself a whisky and follow suit, swallowing the lot in one go. Clara refilled their glasses again.
‘Is he going to want you back?’ asked Clara. Beth could hear the tremble in her voice.
‘What? No. I don’t know what he wants,’ said Beth. ‘He just says he is alive, that it has taken him a while to find me and he needs to talk. Which is a laugh because talking is the one thing Theo can’t do. But there is no return address.’
Beth looked at Clara. Her eyes were blue pools of sadness and her red curls had lost some of their bounce and hung unhappily around her face. Beth knew that Clara was not saying the one thing she wanted to say: Don’t leave me, Beth, don’t go off with him.
‘Come on, let’s have some more of that whisky, hey?’
Beth and Clara forgot about dinner but finished off the whisky and fell asleep in the lounge room sprawled over the couch and each other.
Saturday, 12 July 1924, when there is another ruckus.
Beth woke, rubbed her throbbing head and stumbled to the kitchen where she held up the Cutty Sark bottle, swore at it and put it down again. As she did so she saw the time on the kitchen clock.
‘Bloody hell. Oh sweet Jesus.’ She ran back into the lounge room and woke Clara. ‘Come on, we’re going to be late.’
The girls washed and threw themselves into clothes. Beth brushed out her short orchid bob and looked at her patent leather shoes that were scraped from being dragged along the ground when those nasty bullyboys had thrown her out of Adela’s speech. The leather had torn away making them look old, even though they were new. She threw them to the floor with a sigh and put on her sensible pumps and grabbed her coat and scarf. She stood at the door waiting for Clara to catch up.
‘The signs,’ said Clara. Her red curls flew everywhere and made Beth smile. Clara ran back inside to get the signs, then they ran and got puffed and walked until they could take running steps down Princes Street to Stokes Street, thanking their lucky stars they were only going to another street in Port Melbourne and not somewhere across the city.
They found the house they were looking for. People were already gathered on the street and in the small front yard. Their four comrades stood conspicuously to one side, objects of speculation as to who they might be and why they were there. Beth and Clara joined them.
‘We’re only waiting on Franny and Collette, but they are always late,’ said Evelyn.
‘This is our third in the last fortnight,’ said Beth. ‘They are becoming more and more common as things get worse. The last one wasn’t successful — let’s make sure this one is. Let’s save this poor destitute family.’
The women patted each other on the back. They had protested at a cottage in North Melbourne and another protest in Richmond. The North Melbourne one had nearly got them all arrested.
The front yard had filled with people willing to brave the cold for the sake of a bargain. Someone had lit a fire in a 44-gallon drum on the pavement and some men stood around it laughing and slapping each other on the back. Children squeezed between the men to light sticks that they waved about, flicking embers onto the cold tar of the road, where they quickly died. Women chatted quietly and looked over at Beth and her comrades suspiciously, as if they were going to upset everything when all they wanted was a bargain. The men sent scowls Beth’s way and dreamt of the beer they would have at the pub as soon as this malarky their wives had forced them along to was over. Three policemen arrived and immediately picked Beth’s group as the day’s problem and tapped their batons menacingly in their hands, glaring at Beth and the other women and muttering, ‘Bloody suffragettes, bloody man-haters.’ The biggest copper had put his baton in its loop at his side and swaggered as he approached Beth, each foot landing heavily on the ground as though he was a mountain struggling to walk because of his sheer bulk, a mountain moved by nothing other than his own will.
‘We’re here to do a job, missy,’ he said standing too close and looking down on her. ‘These people have to be evicted and their goods sold. Sherriff’s orders and we won’t be taking any interference with the law lightly.’
He didn’t wait for an answer. Beth was relieved, because her insides were quaking. She watched him move towards a portly, well-dressed man who she assumed was the landlord; they seemed to be discussing how things would proceed.
Beth handed her sign to Evelyn and walked up the steps of the cottage to the verandah. She put her hands in the air to get everyone’s attention. Her comrades clapped and a man yelled, ‘Sing us a song, love.’ The group of policemen laughed loudly encouraging the crowd to heckle her and all the men sniggered.
‘Go home you stupid hussy or I’ll have you locked up!’ said the big policeman but Beth just stared him down and said loudly, ‘Lock me up then! At least in jail I’ll be fed — unlike these poor blighters! At least on these cold nights I’ll be warm, unlike these sad souls.’ And she pointed to the family huddled forlornly by the side fence — the father who had given up and the mother whose clothes were wet with tears and the three terrified children who didn’t know where they would be sent next.
The policeman shook his head. While he conferred with his colleagues, Beth yelled to the crowd squashed into the tiny front yard and spilling onto the street.
‘If any one of you dares bid on one tiny item that in truth belongs to this family, you will rot in hell. Any one of us could be in the position of this poor family. Have Christian charity and refuse to buy any of the goods that belong to them when they are auctioned today. If you do bid on them, you are in fact stealing. I beg you — step into their shoes and do as you would have them do to you. If you wish to donate to their rent, my friend Clara has a hat open and ready. Everything put in shall be passed to the family.’
The small crowd was easily swayed by the last thing that was said to them and, wanting to sleep well that night, they cheered. Beth smiled and nodded. Then the landlord stood up on the porch and elbowed her aside and started the bidding for a rather lovely but worn bridge chair at an extraordinarily low price. One man, egged on by his wife, started to raise his hand but Beth glared at him and he put it down quickly. No one dared bid on the side table or the set of dented aluminium saucepans. Finally, after trying to sell a set of cooking bowls and a set of kitchen chairs, the landlord had no choice but to return every item to the destitute family. With the auction a failure, the crowd dispersed, dropping the coins they had planned to spend on bargains into Clara’s hat.
The family thanked Beth for saving their worldly chattels, few and tattered as they were, and for buying them a few weeks reprieve with the rent. Beth glanced sideways at a shadow under a tree; earlier the shade had blocked him from her view. Now she saw him waiting for her to finish saying goodbye to the family.
They looked at each other for some moments. He stayed rooted to the spot, waiting for her to come away from her friends. Finally she approached him and they regarded each other cautiously for some time before he said, ‘I’ve looked everywhere for you, Beth.’
‘Took your bloody time then,’ she said. ‘It’s 1924, you know. I thought you were dead. For nearly a good eight years you’ve been dead, Theo. In fact I think legally you ar
e dead after seven years. Yes, you’re dead.’ And with that she started to walk off.
‘Beth.’ She stopped. She couldn’t pretend he was dead when he was standing flesh and blood in front of her. She considered him again. There seemed so much to say and nothing at all to say. She realised she wasn’t ready to deal with an alive Theo. This time Theo would have to wait for her.
‘I can’t talk to you today. Come and meet me after work,’ she said. ‘On …’ She wondered how much time she needed and then thought, Oh bugger it, she might as well get whatever was going to happen between them over and done with. ‘Meet me after work at the Coles Variety Store in Smith Street, Collingwood — Clara and I work there,’ and she looked over at Clara who was watching her and Theo and looking like her world might disappear.
‘I need some time to think. Come Monday the week after next, at six, and I’ll listen to what you have to say for yourself while you walk me to Flinders Street station. You’ll have forty-five minutes. I’ll ask Clara to take the tram so we can be alone.’
‘Monday week at six.’ He lifted his hat and turned on his heel like a soldier and walked away. As soon as he was out of sight Clara came running over.
‘Are you all right?’ she asked.
Beth smiled at her. ‘You know, Clara, I am better than I thought.’
Monday, 21 July 1924, when a walk is taken.
She saw Theo waiting when she came out of the store. He was leaning against the verandah post, his hat balanced at an angle on his head, one leg crossed over the other. People will think he’s my lover, she thought, and wondered how long he had been waiting. Knowing him, probably since ten in the morning.
‘So you sell nothing over two shillings, huh?’ he said as she approached.
‘Sorry?’ she said.
‘The sign,’ he said, and pointed.
‘Yes, and it’s so successful they’re opening another store soon. I’m going to be a department manager. The rest of the world might be getting poorer but Coles isn’t.’
She realised that small talk wasn’t going to save them from the big talk, so she took a deep breath and said, ‘Have you seen Edie? Have you told her you’re back from the dead? What about your mother? Have you told her?’ Her voice was accusing. She hadn’t meant to sound so angry.
He shook his head.
‘You’re my legal wife, Beth. I had to tell you first.’
She stopped walking and looked up at him. ‘That hasn’t really meant a whole lot, Theo, has it?’ She could hear the hostility in her voice. ‘Besides, I’m not sure we’re married when you are dead.’
‘Well, I’m here to change that,’ he said gently.
Beth gave Theo the forty-five minutes she promised him. Anyone looking at them would have seen a man and woman walking oblivious to the rest of the world, talking as though their futures depended on it. By the time they had got to Flinders Street station he had said all he needed to say.
Beth caught the train from Flinders Street and walked to Princes Street deep in thought. When she knocked on the front door Clara opened it and held the door ajar with her arm stretched out, creating a barricade. She was in her nightgown, her face was fresh without a trace of the makeup she had worn to work, and her red hair glowed like embers in light from the hallway. Beth could see she had been crying. She stood there not letting Beth in.
‘Well?’ Clara said eventually.
‘If you make me a cup of tea I will tell you,’ said Beth.
‘No, you tell me now and I decide if I let you back in,’ said Clara.
Beth put down her bag. ‘He said he was willing to pick up our marriage and give it a try if I insisted but that I should know he will always love Edie.’
‘Well, I don’t s’pose you can fault him for honesty,’ said Clara, still barricading the entrance.
‘So,’ said Beth slowly, watching Clara’s angst as she drew it out, ‘I said to him that I wanted a divorce. I said “Theo, I’ve learnt who I am and it’s taken me a long time and it turns out I am strong and independent and I like being on my own. I have someone else who loves me,’ she said and looked meaningfully at Clara, ‘and if I was going to be with anyone I would probably be with that person. But right now I want to just be by myself. So Theo, please do get a divorce. I just ask that you be the guilty party. Because you are, really, in a way, aren’t you? You never loved me. In fact it’s quite the in-thing to be a divorced woman, I think I shall like it immensely. Some women pretend they are divorced because it’s more exciting than being unwanted and single but I will be the real deal. You do all the work and I will sign anything I have to and we will both be free to be who we want.” And he said, “Getting an annulment from the judge is quicker.” He was never one for saying much. And I said, “I thought I was a widow, which is rather a sad thing to be. But I was looking forward to being a divorcee.” No don’t look like that, Clara. I said fine, an annulment then.’
‘You said all that?’ asked Clara standing aside.
‘Well, that was the gist of it. I may have said a lot more than that. The strange thing is that he asked me not to tell anyone else he was alive. He made me promise.’
Forty-Two
Lilly
Friday, 25 July 1924, when the afternoon doesn’t pan out.
It was three in the afternoon and Lilly was walking to Webster Street. She had a basket filled with butterscotch rolls for after dinner. They were still hot and she was cocooned in the smell of buttery sugar escaping through the tea towels in which the scones were wrapped. As she began to cross the big intersection at Sturt Street her breath left her. She undid the top button of her coat and pulled her scarf loose and bent over and gasped for air. The pain ran through her jaw and neck and she grabbed her arm, which hurt nearly as much as losing Theo.
The schoolchildren on their way home pointed at the old woman standing in the middle of the road holding up the horses and motor vehicles. George, who was retired now but never stopped feeling he was a policeman, saw her fall to the road and ran as fast as he could, yelling for others to get the ambulance as he kept running. Beatrix, who had been walking with George, waddled over as fast as she could. She pushed George out of the way and loosened Lilly’s coat and cardigan and shirt all the way until she had bared Lilly’s undergarments to the world without a care and pumped her chest and then held Lilly’s nose and breathed into her mouth.
‘You’re amazing,’ said George, admiring her at work.
‘Once a nurse, always a nurse,’ she said between pumps. She was tired but she kept going until the ambulance truck arrived. George got up off his knees and reached out his hand to help her up and she watched over Lilly as they lifted her onto the gurney and into the brand spanking new ambulance.
‘Well, that will be a tale to tell if she lives,’ said George, standing next to Beatrix as they watched the truck pull away.
‘She’s the first to ride in the new motorised ambulance,’ Beatrix said, still red in the face from her efforts.
Lilly was looking for Theo but she couldn’t find him anywhere. She looked up and down the streets and went to the house and called for him in the backyard and looked in his bedroom. She found Peter sitting by the kitchen table in a singlet and his undershorts reading the paper. He looked up and smiled at her. ‘Ah Lillian, my sweet rosebud.’
No one had called her Lillian since her wedding day, when the minister said, ‘Do you Lillian Mary Heathrow take Peter Theodore Hooley to be your lawful wedded husband?’ and she had smiled at him with all her body and said, ‘Oh yes I do.’
‘He’s old. You’ll only get twenty years with him if you’re lucky,’ her mother had said.
‘Well, I’d rather twenty happy years than fifty miserable ones with someone else,’ she’d replied.
Peter put the paper on the table and patted his knee and she sat on his lap and he kissed her and everything she had been missing so deeply came rushing back and she never wanted to leave this place.
It was the yelling that interr
upted her kiss. It was most unpleasant and unkind and she would tell the intruder so in no uncertain words.
‘Lilly,’ said the voice, ‘Lilly, who do you want us to call?’
She opened her eyes and blinked in the harsh lights they were rudely shining right in her eyes. Slowly her pupils adjusted and she saw Young Doctor Appleby standing over her, his face only inches from hers, his antiseptic breath making her queasy. The terrible realisation came to her that she wasn’t in her home with Peter, she was in the hospital, and she felt bereft as everything warm flooded from her and was replaced by everything cold.
She looked at the young doctor’s face. He didn’t care the way his father had. Around her were the cold grey and white walls of the hospital and the harsh lights still glaring into her eyes and the white starched apron of the nurse who was looking intently at the doctor.
‘I couldn’t find Theo, I looked everywhere. I found Peter but Theo wasn’t there, he wasn’t with Peter,’ she said and Young Doctor Appleby looked at the nurse.
‘Who do you want us to call?’ he asked her again.
‘Does she have anyone, sister?’ he asked the nurse.
Lilly had to think hard, it was exhausting. Finally she smiled and said, ‘Call Paul Cottingham.’
Forty-Three
The Tree
Sunday, 3 August 1924, when Maud Blackmarsh is remembered.
Lilly lay tiny and almost invisible among the pillows in the cast-iron hospital bed. She was breathing heavily and dreaming of everyone she loved. When she forced her eyes open she could only just see out the window from her bed. On the other side of the window was a struggling sparse rose bush. She tutted, it was not like her rose bush or Edie’s rose bush. Her rose bush had grown into the largest rose bush anyone had ever seen and almost filled the entire front yard. When young couples thought she wasn’t looking they came and carved their initials into its thick trunk.