A Hundred Small Lessons

by Ashley Hay

  She dabbed a spot of the perfume in the centre of her husband’s cool forehead and let her finger rest there for a while. Even its fragrance smelled sad. She knew she’d never wear it again.

  He had loved her without question and he had loved her without pause: she was certain of that. He had thought the best of her always; he’d brought her the one life she’d wanted. Who would she be now, she wondered, without him? Who was Elsie Gormley if Clem Gormley’s idea of her was no longer alive?

  •

  The river was as busy as ever, folding over itself along its rocky edge and running fast and thick in its centre. How clear the waters used to be—there had been beaches further upstream where people went for swimming parties. Now, the water ran a thick and impenetrable brown.

  That’s what she should have asked Ida Lewis, she thought suddenly; she should have asked the proper name for that colour, something less disrespectful than ‘mud’. Then olive, cutch, sap green—these words crept from some lost crevice of her mind. Was she starting to forget?

  She watched the water rush and surge, watched the way the mangroves’ branches twisted and twined along the opposite shore. There was something to be said for a certain vague scattiness—how heavy to remember all things. She’d walk on through the gravestones, she thought, with no particular purpose. And then she’d make her way home.

  As she rounded a corner in the graveyard, a gust of wind puffed through the trees and a flurry of jacaranda petals rained down, so bright against the dimness of dawn. They looked like a glimmer of fireflies.

  Beautiful, she thought, and heard herself say the word: ‘Beautiful and brilliant.’ She climbed to the top of the cemetery’s hill, turning to look at tombstones here and there like someone in a showroom. Would he like a slab, or a headstone? Something ornamental, or a poem? Or just his name—husband of Elsie—and the dates?

  At the end of one row, she pulled up. Ahead of her was a fine granite monument, highly polished and divided in two. The left-hand side recorded the birth and death of a man born not much earlier than Clem, she noted, and dead just this year passed. On the other side, the stone was smooth and blank, and she realised for the first time that that would be her space, the space for the wife, now living, who must ultimately die too.

  She spun around fast, her eye caught by another divided stone in the next row over. The husband dead in 1936; the wife—Elsie almost cried out at the impossibility of it—dead just two years ago, in 1971. Her mind boggled at the maths: thirty-five years that woman had had to live without her husband alongside her. Thirty-five years of missing him, and living. She wasn’t sure which was worse: the certainty that she too would die also, or the idea that she might have to wait so long.

  It seemed an impossible wait.

  She noticed nothing on the rest of her walk—no people, no places, no time. So she was surprised to find herself almost back where she had started and dazzled, for a moment, by the glare of the sun against the glass wall that formed the end of Ida Lewis’s old studio. The property had changed hands so many times in the past years; Elsie hadn’t kept track of everyone who’d come and gone.

  Standing on the verge to cross the road, she closed her eyes and saw the painting. It was funny, but when she thought of herself, she always thought of Clem alongside her—or if not Clem, one of her children, or her grandchildren now. She was never alone, not really, but in that neat rectangle of a painting, that was how she’d been caught and pinned. On her own, completely on her own, as she felt she was, this morning, for the first time.

  Perhaps that was all there was to the difference between her and her daughter, Elsie thought, staring at the shiny glass until her eyes began to smart. Elsie had always thought of herself in the context of other people—her own mother; her husband; her babies; their children. But Elaine thought of herself in the context of herself—or that’s how Elsie saw it. Maybe it’s to do with being younger, thought Elsie. Maybe everyone thought that way now.

  So maybe I’ll call Elaine first; she was closer to her dad. Then I’ll call Donny, and that undertaker up on Ipswich Road. Or do I have to call a doctor? I’ll call the doctor first, and then the children. Someone will tell me what to do. And although she was walking downhill, her feet seemed to slow and stumble against the mountain of tasks that might be ahead of her—letting people know, and clearing things out, and bothersome things with banks and government departments and the university and so forth that she’d never had to think about before.

  Coming up the back stairs, she saw the fly screen door pushed open and thought for one moment that the whole thing had been some mad dream and that Clem, awake, was pottering around the house now, getting ready for his day. But she knew as she stepped over the threshold that it was her own panicked absentmindedness that had left the door like this and that Clem would be lying on the bed where she’d left him.

  As he was.

  •

  Three months later, when the water rose and the river spread out and out until her suburb and so many of its houses were deep within its stream, Elsie stood carefully in a neighbour’s little aluminium runabout—exactly the specifications that Clem had thought of getting—and watched the high tide wash against her windowsills. She’d lost her wedding dress, her furnishings, her books; she’d been entirely unprepared. The only thing she’d managed to do well, she knew, was find Clem’s bit and brace to bore seventeen holes, each the width of a broom handle, into the floor of the rooms of her house.

  The photographs had been the worst loss. She’d left the house with an overnight bag and a box of the papers she’d need—about the bank, about the house, and her will. On top of that she’d balanced two more boxes, which she thought held the family’s photos—from her own childhood, through her wedding, the birth of the twins, and on through the rest of their lives. The last photo she had of Clem, his hands holding the deck’s railing at the back of the house as if he was on a ship in a gale.

  And then, standing in the spare room at Elaine’s, up on the ridge, as the water rose and eddied on the floodplain below, she’d opened both boxes and found them full of packets of vegie seeds.

  ‘I must have picked up the wrong ones,’ she’d said over and over.

  Elaine sighed. ‘I thought you’d be more prepared, Mum,’ she said. ‘It didn’t occur to me that I should check.’

  Gloria stood quietly offering her grandmother a handful of photos that she’d had fixed to the frame of her mirror. ‘You can have these, Nan: they’re a start.’

  Gloria, last Christmas. Gloria, by Elsie’s new Eiffel Tower rose, planted straight after Clem died and now in bright pink bloom. A younger Gloria, wedged into the crook of Elsie’s elbow, the two of them reading a book.

  ‘I wonder which book that was?’ Elsie peered at the image. ‘Can you remember, love?’ But Gloria shook her head.

  ‘I’d have sent Gerry down if I’d known you were in such a mess,’ said Elaine.

  ‘I thought the rain would stop,’ said Elsie. And standing in Elaine’s spare room—without so much as a hand towel laid out for me, she thought—she had an image of moments of her life floating and swirling on a cool, clear lake, and then washed away, swept into some vast plughole.

  When the waters ebbed and she could go back to her house, the boxes of photographs were the first things she rummaged for. The water had carried one across the room to the back door and dumped it there, lid still on, but saturated by muddy muck. The other one she never found.

  ‘I read that you could wash photographs, Nan,’ said Gloria, standing behind her, peering around. ‘You wash them and put them onto blotting paper. I’ll clean the bath out—we can put them all in there. I could go and get some blotting paper, if you like.’

  But it felt as though the whole city had been washed away, and Elsie didn’t like the idea of Gloria, almost twelve, tripping through some muddy, busy street, looking for a stationer whose shop had probably been turned into a mound of mush.

  ‘We’ll make do, love
,’ she said, watching Gloria carry the precious carton to the bathroom. She’d stayed there all afternoon, changing the water, dipping the images—every time Elsie walked in she saw her history floating to the surface of that crystalline lake she’d imagined: her wedding, her mother, her husband, her children. She tried to take a photo of the bath itself and its aquatic mosaic, but there was no film in the camera. When Elaine took Gloria home, Elsie pulled the pictures out of the bathtub, impatient, and set to drying them with a towel, crisp and efficient, wiping off the emulsion from their surfaces and rubbing away most of the pictures with it.

  Gloria took over the delicate photographs after that first day, salvaging what she could and insisting that she would go into town—on her own, on the bus—to buy some blotting paper. By the time she came back, Elsie had bundled the lot into the garbage bin.

  ‘Oh, Nan.’ Gloria hugged her hard, her lanky pre-teenage arms tight around her. Then: ‘I had an adventure with this—’ and she waved the thick white paper. ‘I even met a boy—don’t tell Mum!’ Her brave trip on the bus, with a map, and navigating several city blocks and meeting a boy who’d been as lost as she was.

  ‘He was looking for the shop I wanted; he wanted things for a rocket he was making.’ She barrelled on. ‘He’d watched Apollo on the television, like we did—you and me and Pop.’ ‘I think quite a lot of people watched Apollo.’ Elsie smiled. ‘He lives over on the northside,’ said Gloria as if Elsie hadn’t spoken, ‘and he said his house was so high up a hill that they didn’t even know there’d been a flood. I said, how could he not? It was on the telly, like the moon!’

  ‘Just us with our water views, darling,’ Elsie said. ‘What was his name?’

  ‘Alex—isn’t that nice? I like names with an x in them. They sound special. He said it was a secret name; he said he’d never told another living soul.’

  Elsie laughed. Her girl would grow up all too soon. This time together—for all its messy and smelly mud—a time like this might never come again. She heard Elaine’s car in the drive.

  ‘We won’t tell your mum,’ she reassured her granddaughter. ‘And maybe you’ll see him again.’

  Gloria smiled, kissed Elsie on the cheek and ran down the stairs.

  ‘I’ll bring her back tomorrow, if you want her,’ Elaine called.

  And Elsie called back, ‘Yes, yes, always.’

  She watched the car go around the corner, watched the wind play in the trees. Leaning down, she opened the lid of her rubbish bin, shaking it from side to side to cover the pile of splotchy images as the sun caught their still-white edges here and there.

  24

  The candle

  It was the kind of morning when the sun shone so brightly that the park’s leaves looked moistened, their greens alive with such a polished shine. Such a day, thought Lucy, should go smoothly, but here was Tom refusing to eat his egg and objecting to every conceivable thing. Lucy was trying to be patient while he slammed his head around one way and then the other to keep his mouth beyond her reach. She’d tried encouraging, cajoling and distracting in the space of fifteen minutes. She’d talked about the lovely things they’d do when this breakfast was done. And then her own mood slammed from patience to exasperation like a yacht’s boom, and she was furious.

  She was tired and she was cross and it was not yet eight in the morning. They’d had a possum in the roof the last three nights. Ben had finally wrangled it down through the hatch and into the yard at midnight. Which was when Lucy, waiting to go back to sleep, had heard another noise, and realised that their possum must have been a mother. Their possum had had a baby. And now the baby was alone and in their roof.

  Up the ladder every half an hour leaving fruit and water and peanut butter, she felt sick at the thought of the separation they’d wrought.

  ‘It’s a possum,’ said Ben, more than once. And: ‘We can deal with it tomorrow.’ And: ‘I’ve had enough of this.’

  She didn’t want to know if he meant her fussing with the ladder, or the possum, or something more. But if a baby creature died on her watch, that meant she had no guarantee of Tom’s safety. She’d known that with the clear and dangerous logic of the middle of the night.

  When day came, the fruit and peanut butter were still arranged along the beam, just as she’d left them. And then Tom had wanted as little of his breakfast as her stowaway marsupial.

  ‘Don’t worry about it,’ Ben kept saying. ‘He’ll get hungry later on. Don’t make such a fuss.’

  At that moment Lucy heard her own voice, sounding like some malevolent, cursing thing. ‘I. Don’t. Want. To. Be. Here.’ She spun around, grabbed her bag, her jumper and sunglasses, clattered down the stairs and left Tom’s terrible noise behind.

  Why not? she thought. If Ben could decide he’d had enough of something, so could she.

  It was terrific, this potent mix of elation and rage.

  She stood at the edge of the park behind her house, her fists clenched. I will walk around the block, she thought. I will feel better. Then I will go home. And she went around once and then again, ignoring her own house on both loops.

  On the third circuit she saw in the shadow of one of the park’s trees the old woman in the dressing gown.

  Of course it was Elsie, Lucy thought as she stepped towards her. Who else would she conjure up now?

  ‘I’m Lucy,’ she said. ‘We live in your house, over there.’ She was suddenly aware of silence all around her. She couldn’t hear Tom’s cries anymore, nor the sound of any birds or any cars. Perhaps she’d stepped out of her own world.

  ‘You live in my house?’ The other woman’s voice was very loud. ‘That can’t be right. Surely I should be living in my house.’ And she leaned forward. ‘Is your name Jan?’

  ‘No. I’m Lucy,’ said Lucy again. ‘I mean, we bought your house when you moved out. Listen, did you ever send me any roses?’

  The older woman frowned. ‘Roses? My husband never wanted to grow roses,’ she said, ‘and the ones I planted when he died just never thrived.’ Her voice was small and sad this time.

  Lucy touched her arm, her own eyes filling with tears. ‘I’m so sorry. The last thing I meant was to upset you.’

  ‘Please go away,’ Elsie said the other, older woman in the same tiny voice. ‘I’d like to come back to my home.’

  And Lucy went away, through the park, along the path and all the way up to the train station, blinking hard and rubbing at her head. It couldn’t be Elsie; not really. She must have imagined it all.

  •

  Elsie watched her walk away through the trunks of the fig trees; watched herself, years before, in Lucy’s footsteps; her daughter on the same path; her daughter’s daughter too.

  What had Lucy said about roses? She hadn’t had a thank-you for those yet.

  These girls. Where were their manners? Now, why could she not find her keys?

  •

  When the first train to pull in was one that went to the airport, Lucy smiled as she got on. Maybe today she’d have gone as far as Paris. If only she’d picked up her passport.

  She pushed her glasses up onto her head and wiped her eyes, her cheeks, her chin. I’ll just go into the city, she told herself, and then I’ll get off this train and come home. But she knew she was going to the end of the line, and when the train pulled into the domestic terminal, she knew she was going to walk inside and buy a ticket. She stood on the concourse, squinting at the board.

  Newcastle: she could turn up at her sisters’.

  Melbourne: she could take a taxi to her dad’s place.

  Sydney: she could go and see her mum.

  She took a breath. If she was running away, she would run to Astrid’s mother, to Linnea—just like she did when she was seven years old.

  Hobart: that’s where Linnea lived now, where all her Christmas cards came from. It was no less crazy than anything else Lucy had done this morning.

  ‘You’re lucky, the direct flight leaves in just over half an hour,’ said th
e woman at the service counter. ‘Now, what about luggage? It’s a rush, but we could get it on.’

  ‘No,’ said Lucy. ‘I don’t have any.’

  ‘And a return date?’

  ‘Just one way.’ She felt invincible. She waited for someone to ask what she was up to. She waited for someone to ask, Are you OK?

  ‘How are you paying?’ asked the woman behind the counter, busy at her screen.

  Lucy remained invincible all the way onto the plane, and when her seatbelt was done up low and tight, when her handbag was stowed under the seat in front, she pulled her phone out of her pocket and called home.

  The machine picked up and she exhaled.

  ‘I’m all right,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry. I’m on a plane. I’m going to Hobart. You’re lucky it’s not Paris.’ She heard her own weak attempt at a laugh. ‘I’ll call you when I get there. I love you. I do love you both so much.’ The ‘do’ was wrong, she knew. They would never have thought to question that she did. But it was said now. It was done.

  And then she turned off her phone, leaned towards the plastic window and the warmth of the sun, and closed her eyes as the safety demonstration ran its course.

  ‘If you are travelling with a child or someone who requires assistance, secure your own mask, and then help them,’ said the announcement.

  ‘First rule of parenting,’ as her father always said.

  She felt the plane surge, pushing into pure acceleration. And as the ground fell away, the amazing rush of what she’d done fell away too. Now she felt panic; now she feared catastrophe. Don’t ever scare him, she’d told Ben.

  What had she just done?

  She scrunched her eyes shut and swallowed some tears. Then she slept the deepest sleep she’d had for months.

  It was years since she’d been to Hobart; she’d gone once as a student, with Astrid, and they’d spent two weeks hiking around the edge of the island before fetching up at Astrid’s mother’s new place for the respite of comfortable beds and hot food and long, long showers. ‘Look south,’ Linnea had said as they stood on the steps of the post office. ‘There’s nothing between here and Antarctica.’