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Mary has packed the picnic basket and anointed the wax paper around the sandwiches with her tears. William pats the huge forearm of the stolid Ulsterwoman as she hands the basket to him.
"Ready?" Edith slips her shoulder into the strap of the canvass satchel that's heavy with her drawing materials. "Oh, Mary, you can take the rest of the day off. I'll make supper for the men."
As they pass his surgery, Dr Frampton hauls open a sash window and hails them. He must have been lying in wait: the assiduous physician's attention for once not focused on his patients.
There could be no question as to where they would spend their last afternoon together. They'd gone to the Botanic Gardens the first time they'd met alone. William had wondered whether it was quite the right place: Green confided that young couples went there to fornicate in the bushes. But since it was Edith's suggestion, he could hardly object, and it soon became their weekly Eden.
Although he was no expert and thought everything Edith created was a marvel, William could tell that, during the time of their coming to the gardens for her to sketch, her skill and style had improved considerably. He likes to think that he was part of that.
It was hot and muggy the day Edith stopped midway up a steep path to let William, burdened with her paraphernalia, catch up. "Daddy says I could go overseas to paint when the war is over. Perhaps, I'll go to Cornwall and study under Frances Hodgkins. No, I shall go to Giverny to sit at the feet of Monsieur Monet."
"I see." William said. He was a little out of breath, and taken aback by this news. A future without Edith had not occurred to him. "And what exactly would I do?"
"Let me think." She brushed aside his recalcitrant fringe and kissed his hot forehead. "I know, you could come with me to carry my easel, you do it so well. But you'd have to be my husband."
The next Sunday, with conventional reticence and fears of refusal, William asked the father for his daughter's hand. Frampton did, of course, pace his library, as if in deep contemplation, before exploding into pumping handshakes and backslaps. Yet both men knew it hadn't been their decision to make.
The gardens are an album of their engagement. In this place, he pulled her from the path into a grove of willows; behind the green tresses, they were hidden as family parties passed by, unaware their private conversations could be eavesdropped upon. Still the young lovers couldn't hear anyone else. The blood rush and their hectic breathing between embraces drowned out the noises of others. William dared to knead Edith's breasts beneath the starched cotton, and with trembling fingers loosened tight buttons to kiss her throat, the gorge between her clavicles.
A few weeks ago, when they'd been walking arm in arm by the observatory, William pulled free, stuffed his hands in his pockets and stopped.
"Whatever has got into you?" Edith asked.
William didn't answer.
"It's that blasted Napier creature, isn't?"
He shrugged. "Why don't you ever tell me you love me?"
"It's trite," Edith said. "It's what characters say to each other in lieu of conversation in those silly novels Rose is always reading. We have more than clichés."
"Do we?" He started to turn away, but she held his shoulder.
"I love you, Willie – if that's what you want to hear."
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