Melting Moments

by Anna Goldsworthy

  Then, almost as if the gods are conspiring, Florence gets wind that they are in town, and invites them out to the new Maison de Danse. Ruby accepts with alacrity. She has made a new cloak for Daisy’s wedding, of metallic teal with an artfully concealed pocket, which would benefit from a second outing. It would certainly not hurt to bring a little Melbourne style to her old Adelaide set.

  When they arrive, she sees that Mavis and Bill Clarkson are once more in the thick of it.

  ‘Ruby, you look so chic!’ says Mavis. ‘What do they say? A woman can never be too rich or too thin.’

  ‘I’m not convinced about the never too thin part of that equation,’ grumbles Arthur. ‘Ruby’s not half the woman she used to be.’

  ‘No risk of being too rich,’ she retorts.

  Mavis, on the other hand, has become stout, while Bill looks much the same, apart from a sprinkling of salt and pepper in his hair. Unlike Arthur, he is not the sort to become more distinguished with age. There is still that appeal in his eyes, that urgent need for approval which does not quite become a man.

  ‘Sweet Ruby Rose, might I have the first dance?’

  She can see from the expressions of the other wives that Bill has worked his magic on them, and is determined this time not to fall under his spell. After all, she is older and wiser now, and has two children to her name. She has even lived in Melbourne. At the same time it is a great pleasure to dance with him, she will grant him that. It is better even than she remembered – he is careful yet relaxed, and authoritative in the way he handles her – and soon enough she finds herself telling him things.

  It all starts with Mother’s new Vauxhall. The pinnacle of style, Bill agrees, describing it in a way that sounds something like Mother herself. Elegant and practical, upright yet not uncomplicated. Perhaps it is this that allows her to get too comfortable. All at once she is telling him about Father’s new position as farm manager for Daisy and Alexander, and how glad she is that Mother is finally able to have something nice for herself.

  ‘Didn’t your old man take proper care of her before?’

  She knows this is no way to talk about a father, and yet there is something about the momentum of the dance that prompts her to keep talking.

  ‘Bit of a naughty boy, my father. Always had a larrikin streak.’

  Heavens! What is she doing? She has never even said as much to Arthur.

  ‘Doesn’t mind a bet, I recall you saying.’

  It disarms her that he remembers. That last conversation was more than a decade ago – though she could likely recite it verbatim. What strikes her now is his energy. She feels it as they dance: they have a similar tempo. She never sits down and suspects he doesn’t either. The jazz waltz gives way to the jitterbug gives way to the foxtrot, until it is getting to the stage where they have probably danced too much, but they continue to dance and she continues to talk. Before she knows it, she is describing how tirelessly Mother worked with the fowls, thinking that when they sold the farm she would be sitting on a nice little thing, and how she had nearly fainted when the bank manager said there were no savings.

  ‘She’d gathered her earnings and sent Father to town to invest them, and I think he stayed at the Southern Cross Hotel. Probably met up with some of his old boys from St Peter’s.’

  ‘Fast crowd, that one,’ says Bill. ‘Mavis’s father and his ilk. What’s the bet he got into a poker school.’

  ‘Woke up in the morning and didn’t have any money left.’

  ‘Poor devil.’

  ‘What you might call a loveable rogue.’

  Bill looks serious. ‘Still. No place for secrets like that in a marriage.’

  Perhaps it is this that brings her to her senses. She glances towards their table and sees that Arthur is looking fretful. Mavis is engrossed in conversation with Florence, but even her poise has become a little strained. Bill must have spotted it too, because at the end of that number he lets go of her hand. She thinks it is reluctantly, but cannot be sure.

  ‘You’re all aglow,’ Arthur observes, when she joins him.

  ‘I should hope so. My husband insists that ladies don’t perspire.’

  He laughs more loudly than is warranted, as she fishes around in her clutch for her compact. Drat. She had been so proud of her cape’s concealed pocket that she had stored it in there. It is a shame to abandon Arthur at his most vulnerable, but she can hardly be expected to remain at the table with a shiny complexion. So she takes his hand and squeezes it twice – a code she has taught him that all is well – and makes her way back to the cloakroom.

  As soon as the attendant shuts the door, she is comforted by the silence, and by this small, fur-packed room itself, redolent of perfume and hair oil and ancient body odour. She spots her cape immediately, more than holding its own amongst the tired-looking stoles, and retrieves her compact. As she leans into the mirror to blot her nose, she notices her hairpiece is askew. She has just started to unpin it, and is holding a tendril of hair in her hand – curled like the frond of a monkey-tail fern – when the attendant again opens the door.

  And there is Bill, standing behind her in the mirror.

  She feels exposed, with her hair half undone and her mirror face revealed: those intimate corrections of puckered lips and sucked-in cheeks.

  Neither is his face quite as she knows it: his hair parted on the right instead of the left; that tiny birthmark displaced to the opposite cheek.

  They make a handsome couple, she notes, and suppresses the thought.

  She can still feel the imprint of his arm on her back, the weight of his hand in her own. As she swivels around to gaze at him in the flesh she feels something like awe. At his aliveness. At their existence in this cloakroom together, outside space, outside time.

  He has a high colour from dancing, and his Brylcreemed hair is dark with perspiration. But his eyes, which are usually laughing, tell a different story.

  They look wounded, somehow.

  He neither advances towards her nor turns away.

  Nor does she glance away, though it would clearly be proper.

  She has never quite believed in falling in love. Surely it is a decision rather than an accident. A dive, rather than a fall.

  But it is some sort of congress, this overlong eye contact.

  It is almost too much, like looking into the sun. It is a look that promises something. But it is less summons than acknowledgement.

  Of what?

  That they are two mute animals, staring at one another from behind the bars of their cages.

  She is not sure how long this continues, but at some point she realises there is a strand of hair between her fingers, and she pins it behind her ear. I best be getting back, he says at the same time, and the heavy door shuts behind him like an exhalation.

  It is difficult to fix a hairpiece with a trembling hand. She will tell Arthur she has a headache, that they need to leave early. But by the time she returns to the table, Bill and Mavis have already gone.

  Back in Melbourne, Ruby busies herself with the spring cleaning. She has only just bought the paint to freshen up the dining room when Arthur surprises her with news of a transfer to Adelaide, effective the following month.

  She feels a great flood of something: hope or dismay, she is not sure which.

  ‘Heavens,’ she says, sitting down.

  ‘No doubt it’s a shock, dear, with all the work you’ve been doing around the house and so forth. But surely it can’t entirely be a surprise.’

  She reassures him that she is quite all right, and just needs a glass of water.

  In fact she feels vertiginous, as if hurled into motion.

  Unaccountably, she is reminded of the orrery in the McInernays’ parlour. Once or twice Bobby had wound it for her, and she had been captivated by the movement of the planets, their steady trajectories as they rotated past one another and then came into alignment, dictated by any number of hidden levers and mechanisms. She supposes this is what they call fate; she s
upposes there is no option but to surrender.

  PART TWO

  1

  Although Dolores has been gone for the better part of a year, the smell of urine lingers on in her rooms, regardless of how hard Ruby scrubs. Of course there is no ventilation, as Granny has a set against fresh air, and the entire arrangement – with the flat built into the rear of the house – seems to have been designed to keep Dolores shielded from public view. Ruby is keen to get them out of there as quickly as possible, and once Eva starts at the local school she applies herself vigorously to house-hunting. Over the weeks that follow, she compiles scrapbook upon scrapbook of clippings of open inspections, driving around Adelaide with Charlie in a Moses basket beside her. Naturally, Granny is a fount of advice. Don’t be fussy. Just buy and sell and you’ll turn a profit, and one day you might be able to afford a Studebaker too. Ruby is still not interested in a Studebaker; she wants only to find their dream home. She’s got tabs on herself, your wife, Granny tells Arthur. Airs and graces. Thinks she’s royalty. Too good for any proper normal home. But the longer it takes, the more resolute she becomes.

  ‘Have you made contact with the old gang?’ Arthur asks, one night over dinner. ‘Surely it’s time to alert them. Return of the prodigals and all that.’

  Of course Ruby had been planning to get around to it, but there was always something to stop her. And now it has been three months.

  Take a moment to cultivate poise before using the telephone, Mrs Shmith had advised, but the following morning, when Ruby sits down at the bench to phone Florence, her finger shakes so much in the rotary dial that she has to hang up and start again.

  Florence answers immediately. ‘What a glorious surprise. But goodness, I’m in danger of getting whiplash.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Everyone’s coming or going, it seems. I can’t tell if I’m Arthur or Martha.’

  ‘Who else, dear?’

  ‘You must have heard about the Clarksons.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘They’re off to Darwin, of all places. Apparently Bill’s going to be quite the Grand Poobah. I can’t imagine we’ll be seeing them again in a hurry.’

  For a moment, Ruby cannot quite remember how to talk.

  ‘When are they leaving?’ she manages, finally.

  ‘Why, they left last week! We had the most wonderful shindig. Had I known you were back, I’d have invited the two of you.’

  After Ruby hangs up, she remains sitting for a long time. At some stage, the baby starts crying; eventually she goes to pick him up.

  Every house Ruby inspects thereafter threatens a life of misery. She has no interest in dank, dark bungalows, but equally lacks enthusiasm for cream-brick ‘modern homes’. Perhaps Granny is right and she does needs to lower her standards, but the house-hunt has assumed a greater urgency. In desperation, she tries a new agent, a Mr Frogley, whom she has previously avoided on account of his blustery manner and ostentatious moustache. To her surprise he reveals something of a nose for quality, and after regretfully showing her yet another substandard property on the Parade, he mentions a Queen Anne–revival villa on Greenhill Road that belongs to the Bryce dry-cleaning family, and might soon be on the market. It was built in 1910 by the senior Mr Bryce for his wife, on a substantial corner block directly across from Hazelwood Park. The house is well beyond Ruby’s price range, but since they are driving past anyway he suggests he might just knock on the front door and ask whether a quick inspection is possible.

  As soon as they park outside, and Ruby glances down the slate pathway to the grand front verandah, all the items in her scrapbook – effective insulation, north-facing windows, price range – fall away. She doesn’t even have to get out of the car to know. When Mr Frogley returns to escort her to the door, the housekeeper explains that the lady of the house is resting but happy for them to have a look. And Ruby steps inside and gazes into that vast passage that travels all the way down to the back, and knows she has stepped into her life, and she is home. ‘You’re looking very comely tonight,’ observes Arthur, as she pours his burgundy. She has indeed taken special care with her make-up, and changed into his favourite blouse with the lace trim. ‘Seems that house-hunting suits you. Though I wouldn’t advise you to draw it out.’

  She laughs, and brings in Eva for her goodnight kiss.

  ‘I don’t want to go to bed,’ laments the child. ‘Because I have a headache. It’s not a normal headache but a really terrible one. My head just invented it.’

  ‘That’s the worst news I’ve heard all day,’ commiserates Arthur, pulling her onto his lap.

  ‘It might go on for two years or until I’m dead or one week.’

  ‘How about I give you a kiss. Better?’

  She nods, skipping off his lap and out of the room.

  ‘Too clever by half, that one,’ he says. ‘Could even go on to have a career.’

  Dinner is, of course, insufferable, with Granny demanding to know why Ruby hasn’t yet found a house. Can’t stay here forever, you know. Those children are a strain on my nervous system. Ruby flees to the kitchen to do the dishes, but even here there is no escaping Granny’s voice. Thinks she’s Lady Muck, your wife. Not so much as lifting a finger to find you a house. Knows when she’s on to a good thing, she does.

  Back in their quarters, Arthur announces he wishes to have a word. Ruby brings him a port, then sits on the little footstool by his chair, easing his fine broad foot out of his loafer and onto her lap.

  He clears his throat. ‘I know we’ve been perfectly comfortable here, and that Mother has made us very welcome. But, my dear, it cannot go on indefinitely.’

  A welcome opening indeed. ‘As it happens I saw a house today that might be just the ticket.’

  ‘How much are they asking for?’

  She presses down on the grooves between his toes. ‘It’s one of those Queen Anne villas I know you love. Set across Greenhill Road from Hazelwood Park, right there by the tennis courts.’

  ‘Hazelwood Park! Surely that’s well beyond us.’

  She knows he has spent hours poring over charts at the dining table, contemplating deposits and interest rates and projected repayments. What he cannot be expected to realise is that this is no longer relevant; everything has been superseded by a larger claim.

  But one must be strategic when addressing a husband.

  ‘I realise finances are your domain, dear. But I’ve given some thought to how we might afford it. We could readily accommodate a boarder with a restoration of the stables.’

  ‘A boarder? In our own home?’ His socked foot clenches beneath her hands. ‘Restoration wouldn’t be cheap, you know.’

  ‘I wouldn’t want you to worry about that.’ She moves her hands up to his calves, and kneads with some fervour. ‘I’d oversee all the practicalities, and I’ve given some thought to home economies.’

  He snorts. ‘To be quite frank, all this talk of boarders and home economies worries me enormously. All I’m after is a proper, normal home. Can it really be so hard?’

  She continues kneading, though it has become something of an effort.

  ‘The point is that I don’t want us to struggle. I’m sorry, darling, but we have to aim within our reach.’

  He pats her on the head, signalling that the conversation is over; she abandons the massage and stares at the carpet. Then, like a sleepwalker, she moves to the liquor cabinet to refill his glass.

  ‘Tell me about the house then,’ he says with a sigh.

  She starts by telling him about the wide jarrah passage leading all the way down to the back door; and about the master bedroom with its box bay window and window seat; and about the dear side porch that would make a wonderful sunroom. Then she gets to the leadlight features and the ornate ceilings and the wide verandah and even the original maids’ bells. It is more than she means to say, but she finds she cannot stop, and soon she is outlining her vision for the garden: the fernery she will establish out the back; the hydrangeas th
at will flourish down the side; the golden elm she will plant alongside the fishpond.

  ‘I see.’ He takes a sip of his port. ‘And would it make you happy?’

  It seems to her that if she had this house – this one thing – it would allow her to give him everything else.

  ‘It would, darling.’

  He takes her hand, which he contemplates for some time. And then – beloved man – he suggests that the two of them might go and see it together.

  Although Granny had not wanted them to stay, she is now staunchly opposed to them leaving, finding much to fault in the new house and advising them to subdivide it and rent it out. But it has become easier for Ruby to be gracious to the older woman, and she moves through her remaining days in Henley Beach in a spirit of noblesse oblige.

  ‘Our new house is a mansion,’ says Eva. ‘We’re going to be rich.’

  ‘Poor as church mice, more like it,’ says Granny. ‘It’s going to cost you a fortune to keep it warm.’

  The day before the move, as Ruby is boxing up some final items, she hears a sudden kerfuffle from the neighbouring rooms. Charlie jerks awake with an indignant shout; she ignores him and rushes into the parlour, where she finds Granny shrieking.

  ‘Answer me, Walter!’

  Ruby has never previously seen a corpse, but it is immediately clear that Grandpa Jenkins has become one. He is sitting in his chair with his eyes half open, looking almost indolent.

  ‘Walter, pay me heed!’ The gist of Granny’s loud complaint seems to be that she is not getting the attention that is her due. ‘For goodness sake, girl!’ she says, catching sight of Ruby. ‘Don’t just stand there gawking. Fetch the brandy and revive the man!’

  But at that very moment Ruby hears a brutal thump from the baby’s room, followed by a howl: Charlie must have climbed from his cot and fallen. And her fateful decision is to tend to her child rather than attempt to resuscitate a deceased father-in-law, who at any rate looks quite comfortable, and would likely prefer to remain in absentia.

  After she has collected the baby, she pours Granny a snifter of brandy and leads her into her bedroom. Then she calls Arthur at work. She doesn’t have the heart to leave Grandpa all alone in the parlour, so she changes Charlie on the rug in front of the heater, and then – because it wouldn’t do for Arthur to see his father in such a state – she gently closes the old man’s eyelids. It is a more intimate transaction than any she shared with him when he was alive, the skin as soft and tenderly wrinkled as the child’s scrotum she has just wiped clean.