Joyful

by Robert Hillman

  She opened her notebook and bared the nib of her fountain pen.

  November 17th, 1958

  Jesus My Love in Your Heaven My Love the Blood of Your Wounds My Love runs in my body.

  Mr Beemish of the shire says no. It was acceptable to have David and the children buried at Yackandandah but Beemish draws the line at Francine. He says she was a ‘monster’, and so she was for a moment or two. I will have her buried in the chapel, which is consecrated ground. The chapel will do for me, as well. I have no objection to resting beside a monster, being part monster myself. Oh I am weary enough to do it now, die and be done with it. Or perhaps not. The ducks came back yesterday. It does me good to see a duck. Only let me avoid mirrors if I can! I saw my face and form in a bleaching light this morning and wondered that David could ever have become so roused by me. I do puzzle at the gratuitous mutations of age. My earlobes seem to be flabbier—is that possible? I have to attend to a slight moustache for the first time in my life. Even my feet seem fatter. What is the point of all this softening and spreading? Is it Nature whispering, ‘My dear, I’m done with you, as you might judge at your dressing table.’ When I was in Melbourne for Francine’s last few days I called in at Georges and spent nearly twelve pounds on cosmetics. Unconscionable! Only think, an hour before this extravagance I was holding the hand of a woman who had burned her face away with petroleum. Oh Francine, to survive fourteen months baked in that way dear God! And the baking of your mind must have been many times worse, recalling your children, recalling David. A nurse hissed into my ear when Francine was at last pronounced dead, ‘Good riddance!’ and off she sped on her squeaky shoes. I wished to weep but I could not. Burying her next Wednesday in the chapel will have to stand for unshed tears. It’s not that I didn’t sorrow, I did, but fourteen months of weeping has drained the well. It will only be me and the minister from Beechworth now that Trudy and the children have gone, and Brendan, of course—poor Brendan, who has spent a life overlooked, I have thought of myself alone here even when Brendan, solitary Brendan, was sitting opposite me at the breakfast table. Finally though—just me. Just me with my problematical earlobes and broadening feet. Of all that we’ve grown only the lettuces are left. I tend them as a memorial to our years. It’s what we’re known as in the town—the lettuce people. All the years—yes. Three of us died here, two babies and poor Hunter, who hanged himself for love of me, poor, poor Hunter who came each day with a cup of tea and a look of renewed hope in his eye. I thought his renewed hope would go on forever, I didn’t guess that each renewed hope was a step closer to a length of rope. I could have been more alert. Dear Hunter, my tattered blessings on you, wherever you are. I doubt I was ever loved so fully in my life.

  A dog appeared from nowhere. It stood before Jennifer and stared at her out of bright black eyes. It wore no collar. Jennifer gazed back, more respectfully than the dog. She put down her pen and reached out. The dog extended its neck and accepted the offered hand. She said, ‘Hello, boy, since boy you are.’ Then, to be fancy, ‘I am his majesty’s dog at Kew, pray tell me, sir, whose dog are you?’ She unwrapped a cheese and tomato sandwich, removed the tomato and fed the dog first a quarter, then half, then all. Once satisfied that more sandwiches would not be provided, the dog raced off in zigzags among the apple trees and into the figs.

  Jennifer ate the sandwich remaining in morsels. The whiskey made a mild hum in her ears, pleasant. She thought she might go to the chapel later and say something to David along the affectionate lines she’d offered the dog. But if she could have someone vivid before her now and it couldn’t be David, let it be little Mandrake. ‘Will we cry now, Mama?’ he used to ask. And Dorothy too, her niece, it would be good to have Dorothy here, that child who wrapped her passions in vagueness for public show. Such a private miss, her niece, but made her need for privacy seem full of correspondence; made it a compliment to the person respecting it, somehow.

  Jennifer took up her pen and wrote:

  If there is no achievement for me here, at least there is this to take pride in, some final pride: that life taught me nothing, that I did not gain in wisdom over the years, that my earliest follies became the models of so many others, that the world was always more subtle more sly more savage and without warning more sheerly gorgeous than I could ever keep up with. Lessons were wasted on me, and I am glad of it. I sit on this broad spring day beneath a fruit tree knowing nothing I could fruitfully impart. I wanted forever what I could not have and the instruction of experience was futile. Now I want David Plymouth, and if it had to be the same as in the past, living in longing for my Mondays, seething in the juice of my jealousy as I listened to him rolling Francine and Trudy about, then in the blink of an eye I would take him, take that hell, and, not bothering with apology, turn my back on whatever peace, contentment, wisdom was watching me and weeping. There, I have said it.

  Special thanks to Racquel Buchanan for her generous translation of sections of the text into German, and to Mimo El-Khoury for her translation of Wordsworth’s ‘I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud’ into Arabic. Thanks also to Ingrid Almarker for her advice on fashion and design. I would also like to express my gratitude to Mandy Brett for the maturity and acuity of her editorial interventions.