A Hundred Small Lessons

by Ashley Hay

  The pre-empted catastrophe. So close, and then it hadn’t come. Which should make me feel better.

  It didn’t, somehow.

  The house would have held; it had before. Fibro walls and hardwood fittings. They could have washed it, dried it, and gone on. Compared to the swollen sludge of chipboard, plasterboard, fibreboard she’d seen in other houses, they really could have come home, safe and dry.

  But it was clear, pristine water she pictured, nothing like the brown sludge she’d tipped from mugs, shaken from ornaments, tried to sponge from tubs, boxes and bikes.

  She closed her eyes and saw the water running through her house as if it were possessing the body of a large, sinking ship. She saw it easing clothes from their hangers in wardrobes, easing plastic containers from their cupboards in the kitchen. She saw a silver mosaic of CDs, their smooth surfaces sparkling.

  She opened her eyes when Ben leaned in to turn off the water and pass her a towel.

  ‘Come to bed,’ he said, and he held her close as the house dropped into the next layer of silence and sleep. Lucy, her head against the solid warmth of Ben’s shoulder, dreamed—slightly seasick—about her whole house filling with tides of people as it rushed on down the river to the sea.

  15

  The doilies

  Elsie found the key between the leather and the lining of her handbag when she was rummaging for a hanky. It was a big chunky thing that Gloria had always said looked like the key to a castle.

  ‘Here’s this,’ she said to her son. ‘But where are the rest of them?’ They were sitting together in his kitchen, finishing lunch.

  He’d brought her home to his house when the creek below the units broke its banks. The river beyond had surged to fill street after street, and the power was still out, days later. In Don and Carol’s house, there was power, and sunshine, and a water-free view. As if all was still right with the world.

  And now this key: all things returned to rights.

  She cradled it in her palm. Such a solid thing, she thought, like the good old house itself.

  ‘The rest of what?’

  ‘The keys—to the house. How else am I going to get in?’

  He took the bag from her and set it on the ground. ‘You know, Mum,’ he said gently. ‘You know we gave the keys to the new people—when you sold the house; when you went to live in the new place. They need the keys now. They need the keys to get in.’ He let his hand rest on hers, as if its weight might somehow help what he was saying sink in.

  ‘The new people—’ she said carefully, as if she was practising a foreign language. ‘You told me they’ve painted the door.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Don. ‘Red. It looks wonderful—and imagine it when all your hippeastrums are out next spring. I’ll take a picture for you; it will make the whole house look magnificent.’

  ‘The whole house was magnificent,’ said Elsie, turning the key end on end in her lap. ‘The whole house is.’ She frowned. ‘Such a bother to have to change it when I get home.’

  ‘Mum—’

  She looked up, passing the key to her son and smiling brightly. ‘I know, Donny, I know.’ Play along. ‘Maybe you should give them this one too—whoever they are.’

  Don smiled and dropped the key back into her bag. ‘I told you, Mum—a nice new family, a little boy. Nice to have all that busyness back in the house—that’s what Carol said. She drove past when they first moved in and saw them planting things in the garden. Even trees—Dad’d be horrified. But look, I’m sure you can keep this one. I know we gave them a key to that door. You keep this; you have this memento.’

  Trees: Elsie smiled, leaning down to grab the key again and holding it tight. ‘I’d like to make sure it’s OK,’ she said.

  Donny paused. ‘Are you worried about the house in the flood? I told you it was fine—and Carol checked.’

  ‘Of course I’m worried—not to be there. Not to see it. Not to know.’ Elsie blushed. She never raised her voice at children; that was wrong. And here she was—shouting, at Don, of all people. ‘I’m sorry, love.’ And she patted his hand in turn. ‘I’d like to see the trees.’

  ‘All right.’ He nodded. ‘The weekend. How about I take you then? We’ll go by and have a look, maybe see the river too. And all the clean-up—just like in seventy-four.’

  ‘I wonder who’ll do the papering this time.’

  Don picked up her hand and touched it to his lips. ‘It didn’t flood, Mum. Nothing happened. Not this time.’

  ‘You should go and punch the holes out in the floor. They won’t know they need to do that.’

  She watched him blink, her lovely boy, and nod his head again.

  •

  It was strange to watch her own house from the street. It was so cool inside Don’s car. She watched a woman in the garden, in a thin-strapped frock and a broad-brimmed hat, wipe sweat from her arms.

  ‘Do you want to meet her?’ Don leaned to open the window.

  ‘No. No. Heavens. She doesn’t look a bit like me.’

  Don laughed, nudged the car forward, around the corner, and away. ‘Why would she, Mum?’ He drove on down to the river then, its flow still thicker and faster than usual and the streets between busy with piles of the flood’s muddy wreckage and detritus. They stopped in the park by the cemetery and Elsie watched the water rushing by.

  ‘I miss your father,’ she said after a while. ‘I never quite know who I am when he’s not here.’

  ‘I miss him too, Mum, but it’s more than thirty years now,’ Don said. ‘You know, it’s rising thirty-eight.’

  Elsie nodded. ‘I know, love. I do know that. But coming home now—well, I hoped . . .’

  He rubbed at his forehead the very way Clem would, creasing down the skin around his eyes. ‘You hoped he might be there.’

  ‘I thought he might be.’ She took his hand, the way she had to cross the roads when he was small. ‘Isn’t it lovely, Donny, to let yourself dream he might be?’ Her son’s skin still felt so soft to her. ‘Thanks for bringing me. And I did like the new red front door.’ Thinking, You’ll know. You’ll know about this when she’s gone.

  They watched the water, watched it fold around the rocks below the path, breaking into crystal shapes and foam.

  ‘Do you want to see Dad’s headstone in the graveyard? I can drive in quite close to the plot.’

  ‘It’s not the same, but thanks, love.’ Elsie patted her son’s arm. ‘The house was a better idea.’

  ‘Then let’s go back now—I’ll drive home the same way.’

  She leaned into the comfortable seat, her hands flat against her trousers. She could feel the heavy door key in her pocket.

  ‘Slow down!’ she cried as the car came into her street. ‘Slow down, Don!’

  Along the new fence, she could see a row of roses, and her doilies were all hanging on the line. She closed her eyes and leafed through her memories of them like the samples in wallpaper books that Clem used to consult when his spring-cleaning moods hit. Plain white; lacy trim; embroidered forget-me-nots; embroidered roses; embroidered violets; a hexagon with a filet crochet edge; a whole sheaf of broderie anglaise. They’d have that crisp, fresh smell—clean fabric, infused with all that sun and air. If she could take one, she would set it on the little table by her bed in that new place, under the orchid that Gloria had sent.

  She could still describe her favourite—a pretty thing with twists of pink and red roses and tiny cutwork shapes. Her grandmother had taught her the pattern: her grandmother in a tall armchair, and Elsie on a stool at her feet. She’d only have been six or seven years old. Remember the importance of the neatness, her grandmother said again and again; the importance of a smooth stitch and a tidy pattern. The importance of paying as much attention to the back of your work as the front.

  ‘And here’s how you make the rose, see? Just a little shape, Elsie, a couple of stitches, and it suddenly looks like a flower.’

  So pretty, so delicate, that Elsie could almost smell the
roses too. There was a cream she used to wear, or a perfume. Something to do with roses. Attar. Attar of Roses. Such a pretty phrase.

  And you always said the weather was too humid to grow them here, Clem. For all the projects he’d kept up around the place, he drew the line at flowerbeds and trees. She’d planted a single rose bush—a pink one—after he died, but it had died after two or three years.

  If I could just take a rose for my room. She should say this; perhaps there were still secateurs hanging in the place Clem had made for them in her laundry—drawing round them with texta to mark their spot. But something like nervousness kept her quiet. She was afraid to meet these people, make them real.

  The breeze picked up, and the doilies danced and jumped as the line spun around. And at least they’ve washed them, thought Elsie, which is more than I’ve managed in I can’t think how long. Their patches of white were brilliant in the sun. She wanted to watch them forever.

  ‘Come on, Mum. I’m sure we can come by again.’ Donny was starting the car as he said this, and Elsie wondered just how much she’d said aloud.

  The car purred and Elsie let the window down a little, leaning out towards this landscape that she knew. It was lovely. It was precious. It was home.

  In the garden, the woman in the hat had straightened up at the sound of the engine, cupping her hand to extend the shade of the brim. She raised her other hand—the beginning of a greeting, and in the car, Elsie raised her own hand in response.

  Welcome, she thought, seeing her whole life clearly in that moment. I should send flowers. I should send something. It was lovely to see them taking such good care of the place.

  She smiled at the thought. She’d ask Carol to send some flowers, a big, rich bunch of something special, to welcome them into her home.

  ‘Lucy?’

  Elsie heard the man’s voice through the chink of open window.

  ‘Lucy? Are you coming? Where are you?’

  The woman smiled and waved again, and Elsie went on, around the corner and away, her hand still up and waving, like a picture-postcard image of a queen. A second or two longer and she’d have seen the man who spoke. Clem? She thought the name so hard, it hurt.

  ‘Let’s go home,’ her son said quietly.

  ‘Back to your place?’

  ‘Back to your place,’ Donny said, quieter still again. ‘It’s ready now. Power on. Car parks cleaned. Mud all gone. Good as new.’

  Elsie nodded. She supposed she didn’t mind it after all.

  ‘Just make sure to tell your father where I am,’ she said, leaning back in the seat and closing her eyes.

  She knew. Of course she knew. But still.

  16

  The kiss

  Lucy watched the car drive slowly around the corner, and waved once more as it went out of view. She closed her eyes and saw the postcard from Astrid, the day she’d seen the future Lucy at the beach. The woman in that car: she looked familiar. I’ll come back to this place when I am old.

  ‘Lu? Are you out there? Are you coming?’

  Behind her, Ben pushed the garage door open from inside. She let her hand drop.

  He called, ‘Anyone we know?’

  And she smiled, pushing her hat off her head and walking into the garage’s shade.

  ‘It felt a bit—’ She rubbed at the air with her fingers, hunting for the word. ‘—Like déjà vu, but backwards. You, wordsmith: do you have a better phrase?’

  Ben shook his head. ‘All these cards, all these letters. What’s the plan?’

  There were piles and piles of them, rising like little skyscrapers from the concrete floor—blue ones made of aerogrammes; stiffer ones made of postcards; careful stacks of folded foolscap; a spectrum of coloured envelopes graded purple through blue, green, yellow to red. She hadn’t realised she’d unpacked quite so much.

  Lucy crouched beside one tower, steadying it. On the top was a note that Ben had sent—early days, away on a story, thinking of her.

  ‘From the time when the world was still huge,’ she said, skimming through his words. ‘Now, you can always phone home.’

  ‘You want to keep them?’ he asked, still standing high above her. ‘And when on earth did you unpack all this?’

  ‘Nights,’ she said. Her voice was sharp, as if he should know. ‘Not sleeping.’

  He shook his head again. ‘You should have told me.’

  She shrugged. ‘So you could—what?’

  She let her fingers rest on one pile of papers, as if she was feeling for a pulse. ‘It’s like Elsie’s doilies,’ she said, tilting her head towards the yard. ‘They’ve got a worth. They’ve got a value. And then—’ She clicked her fingers, once. ‘And then it’s gone.’

  ‘Nostalgic Lucy.’ Ben sat down beside her and took up her hands.

  ‘Not nostalgic. Fractured. Transient. Nine letters. I don’t know.’ She shook her hands free and rubbed at her eyes. ‘It was lovely to get all this back. I’d forgotten all the people whose lives are down here. And I feel like the flood brought them in.’ He smiled at her, nudging her shoulder. ‘You’ve got to stop making things huge.’

  She let his words hang and they sat there side by side, Ben scuffing his feet against her archive.

  ‘The Life of Lucy Kiss. A Correspondence,’ he said at last.

  Lucy blushed, pushing out a postcard here, some A4 there, and glancing at their words. She sighed and tapped another pile to neatness. From the quiet rooms upstairs, she heard Tom wake and cry.

  ‘Can you get him?’ she said to Ben. Her fingers grazed against the concrete as she brushed the piles out of their neat stacks and spread them again on the floor.

  ‘Just need to finish this off—’ He headed behind her, quick to be immersed in his own stuff.

  ‘Fine, fine, don’t worry,’ she said, pushing herself up off her haunches and making her way to the stairs. The new phone in her pocket beeped—a message—and she glanced at the screen to see her sister’s name, the first three lines of text. Some surprise, some visit: something. She’d read it when she’d fed and watered Tom.

  From the top of the stairs, the brightness of Elsie’s doilies caught her eye and she paused. The star-shaped mat danced wildly beneath the fixed points of its pegs, its fingers flexing, busy in the breeze. It looked as if someone was waving from down there.

  Going inside, she dropped the phone into a kitchen drawer—safe and sound—and went on through the house.

  •

  Lucy lay on the bed in the hot still air of early afternoon. The way this heat hit the planes and crevices of her body, making them all shine and sweat: she felt as though she’d been gilded.

  She had her headphones on and Tom was fast asleep. The CD she’d been listening to—the songs that had made her remember dancing those weeks, those months before—pounded into the middle of her brain, and she tapped their rhythms onto the mattress like a drum. She’d sung the first of them, loud, defiant, in the shower that morning, and it had felt good to let out the noise.

  ‘Let’s go to Paris,’ she’d said to Ben at breakfast. Before Tom, before the three of them, they’d had this game: if you could wake up tomorrow morning and go anywhere in the world, where would it be?

  Iceland, Ben mostly said, or, once, Perth. ‘You know it’s the most remote city in the world?’

  ‘I’d rather Iceland,’ she’d said. More exotic; somewhere new.

  Last night, she’d slept quite soundly. And when she woke in the morning, she was awake—for the first time in a long while—before Tom. She opened her eyes and made her own way back into the world.

  Beside her, Ben stirred a little and she leaned across to kiss him. ‘Good morning over there,’ she said. ‘How are you?’

  He stretched. He blinked. He flexed his shoulders and his neck. ‘And good morning over there. I haven’t had that wake-up for a while.’

  ‘That’s because I’m usually woken by that small, noisy alarm Tom.’ She smiled. He smiled.

  Here they were: they we
re all right.

  Then: ‘Where would you fly to tomorrow? Where would you like us to be?’

  ‘Well,’ said Ben after a moment. ‘I’ve got a new one. Tristan da Cunha, at the southern end of the Atlantic. But no airport—we’d have to go by ship. Sounds nice and quiet, though; you’d sleep well there.’ He turned to face her, inching his head closer to hers. ‘And you? Still Paris for you?’

  ‘Let’s go to Paris.’

  She’d done it once, a couple of years back now, when they lived in London. Paris on a whim while Ben was at work. It felt like the best reason for living in the wintery, bleak northern hemisphere, and there’d been more sun as soon as the train emerged on the French side of the tunnel.

  She’d eaten a lot of cheese. She’d bought some tacky tourist pictures by the Seine. She’d visited the Musée d’Orsay, the Museum of Arts and Crafts, the Louvre. She carried spotlit moments from that day: a painting of a girl with a red balloon; an aeroplane designed like a bat; a pendulum that showed the movement of the Earth. She remembered watching the pendulum for the longest time, soothed—almost hypnotised—by its graceful regularity. And walking through the gardens towards the Louvre’s big glassy pyramids, even now she could recall how warm the sun felt, and how she smiled as she watched a bunch of children run and skip. She’d been suffused with the most extraordinary sense of wellbeing, as if, for those two or three minutes, she was certain that everything was going to be all right—not that she knew what ‘everything’ was, and not that she’d thought there was anything particularly wrong in the first place. But for those moments, on that afternoon, in that elegant public place in that famous city, something contented and complete hummed through her body.

  She’d caught the train back home to London and thrown away her contraceptive pills.