‘Don’t mock other people’s pain, Marjorie,’ said Elise. ‘That is a cruel thing to do and you are not a cruel person. Besides, you would be better off trying to manage your own pain.’ She nodded gravely at Marjorie, and Marjorie had the decency to feel shame. Which was not lost on her mother. She wanted to comfort Marjorie, so Elise looked for some other words that might do the job. ‘You look like a lady now, Marjorie,’ she said, and she smiled.
Marjorie jumped. ‘What?’
‘However, you don’t talk like one. Even after all these years. It is I beg your pardon, not what.’
Marjorie smiled.
‘Also,’ Elise continued, ‘I have found there is a piano here, so, I have started playing it.’
‘When? When did you find this piano? How long have you been playing?’
‘Oh, quite some time. I don’t have to tell you everything about myself, Marjorie. Do I?’
‘No,’ said Marjorie.
‘And I have formed a choir as well,’ Elise said.
*
‘Mum is playing the piano again,’ Marjorie told the telephone lines. ‘I’ve seen it. The piano.’ She listened to the sudden jerk in her father’s breathing.
‘She really is on the mend then, isn’t she?’ His voice was wobbly, juddering.
‘I think she is, Dad. She said she wants to start drawing again, too. And she has formed a choir.’
‘A choir! Who with?’
‘Her friends there. That’s what she says.’
‘Well. That’ll be a sight. Won’t it?’ And they both laughed. They were timid and fragile and glad. All up and down those telephone lines.
*
It turned out the piano was a good one. It was a concert grand piano brought along and then left behind by a previous inmate – who had, years back, launched their own personal finale off the lichen and slate roof of the laundry block onto the lawn waiting below. This concert grand had been waiting for Elise for years. And Elise did have a concert – for nobody in particular – one day on that circumspect green lawn. ‘We are going to have a musical recital,’ Elise informed the orderlies. ‘We will be performing on the front lawn. So, if you would kindly move the piano out there, I would be very grateful.’
Elise played the piano; Elise conducted her ragtag choir; Elise sang. And Elise created some magic for them all – and for anybody else who wanted to listen. With her singing and her playing and her rolled-up newspaper for a baton. She pushed back, for just a few wonderful minutes in the middle of that lawn with its distant border of wrought iron. She pushed against the murky confusion that swirled about and entangled them, the bewildering violence that haunted them, the chaos from the voices that wearied their hearts. Elise’s fellow inmates sang and sang. And Elise’s voice joined in and carried them all over the beautiful wrought-iron gates to wherever they wanted to go.
The superintendent of the mental hospital wasn’t partial to acknowledging magic. But he was quick to capitalise on the obvious value of the sort of thing he could see out of his office window, below him there on his pristine green lawns. He called the newspapers. He called the relatives of the inmates. And he required from Elise and her floridly mentally unstable colleagues a second, more proper concert. Which Marjorie and Aunty Agnes and Pa and Bill were invited to attend.
And which was better than the first one and got Elise in The Argus. And The Age. And The Herald.
But not out of the mental hospital.
*
Not all the newspaper reporters gathered on the lawn for the superintendent’s concert were fooled, though. Some of them smelt the bakings of a good story wafting around that grand piano. ‘Where are you from?’ they asked Elise quietly and quickly, before the superintendent could prevent her from answering. ‘You shouldn’t be here in this mental hospital. Why are you in here?’
Elise didn’t have time to tell them everything. But she told them enough. Enough for them to climb aboard a faded red rattler the next week and head out of the city. They headed straight for the Mallee, which had thrown out Elise and Marjorie, and had buried Ruby beneath its red sand.
‘You would have seen her in all the papers,’ they said, waving an armful of them around in front of all those tins of powdered milk and packets of self-raising flour.
‘We only get the mail and papers twice a week here. Maybe they haven’t arrived yet,’ said Mrs Cameron as she tidied her own pile of the very same papers.
‘There was a concert.’
‘Was there indeed?’
‘Yes there was. In a mental hospital. Why is she in a mental hospital? Isn’t there another daughter? Where is she?’
‘You’ll have to go now,’ said Mrs Cameron. ‘I don’t have time for tongue-wagging about other people’s business. And perhaps you two could find something better to do with your own selves than meddling in the lives of a decent family just trying to get on with things.’
‘We’re just doing our job. Reporting the facts.’
‘I have to shut the shop now,’ said Mrs Cameron.
*
‘You must know something about her,’ they said, pencils in hand, standing outside the post office, baking in the heat of a Mallee drought.
‘Yeah. We do,’ said the circle of men in the dirt out the front – theirs legs planted, their arms folded, their eyes locked.
‘What can you tell us?’
‘You’re the reporters. You find out.’
‘Wasn’t there some sort of an accident in the family? Something to do with a house fire?’
‘Was there?’ the men said.
‘That would be none of your business,’ someone said. And they all nodded.
‘Got to round up that mob of sheep; finish off that fencing; check those dams; get back to the missus,’ they said as they jumped in their utes and sprayed those blokes from the newspapers with a shower of red dust and white limestones.
*
The reporters tried the local pub that night. But everybody roundabout had told Bill and Pa by now, so everybody was ready and waiting. And nobody was planning on making it easy for them. The locals lined up all along the bar. Scrupulously facing the publican, their collective backs ignoring the attempts of the reporters to find a spot there. The bar had turned into an impenetrable barrier, a watertight line of country cold shoulders. The publican handed Pa and Bill their beers, and Pa and Bill, beers in hand, turned to the reporters. ‘None of this is any of your damn business,’ Bill said.
‘By the crikies, you’re right there, Bill,’ grumbled Pa.
The two of them stood shoulder to shoulder. They took a long drink from their beers, watching the reporters over the top of the froth until their glasses were empty. Then they put their empties daintily on the bar, before turning back to stare at them again. Pa took his pipe out of his top pocket and clamped it between his teeth. Bill folded his arms tight across his chest.
‘Gorn, bloody clear off now,’ said Pa.
‘It’s going to be a hundred and ten in the shade tomorrow. You two should get on back to the city where you belong,’ said Bill, his head nodding in the direction of the pub door while his eyes stayed on their faces. ‘You’ve got no call to be snooping around here. Not in this heat.’
Everybody at the bar turned around. A solid line of those cold country shoulders turning, arms folding across chests, eyes joining Pa and Bill’s to stare at the unwanted newspaper reporters blundering around in the heat and the flies. Those locals, those neighbours and family and friends, stood there in a mob and stared.
*
Elise concluded her mental hospital commitment some time after the visit from the newspapers. ‘I am going home now, Marjorie,’ Elise said.
Marjorie’s delicate balance buckled – even after all these months of watching her mother find her way back down the path. ‘Are you sure you are well enough?’ she a
sked.
‘I would hardly have been discharged and going home if they didn’t think I was well enough, would I? Of course I am well enough. Because I never have an opportunity to miss those damnable tablets here, do I? There is always someone hovering around dishing them out. And they refuse to leave until you have swallowed everything.’ Elise stopped. ‘What is well enough for anyone in this world, anyway, Marjorie?’ she lamented.
‘But what about me?’ said Marjorie.
‘You don’t have to stay here, dear.’
‘I can’t go back with you. I won’t go back there,’ said Marjorie.
‘You can, you know. If I can do it, then so can you. You are as well able to go back and face the music as I am.’ Elise lifted her chin and glared. While Marjorie blinked and blinked. It was only when that salt water won the battle and flooded triumphant down Marjorie’s face that Elise relented. ‘Marjorie, we need to pardon ourselves,’ she said. ‘You cannot carry this burden on your shoulders for the rest of your life. Even if you are protected on all sides here by the brawny shield of paper and that papery sea of tranquillity that you work within.’ Elise stroked the face of her daughter. ‘Nobody in their right mind would have meant for any of that to happen,’ she said.
‘Have you counted them, Mum? Do you know how many days? How many months of Fridays I have been visiting you?’ Marjorie asked. Her voice was tiny and lonely. Her mother was leaving her again.
‘Of course I have been counting them, you silly girl. I am not mad. I have witnessed two institutional Advent and Christmas celebrations, and fasted through three mental institution Lenten seasons.’ Elise paused and thought. ‘And Lord only knows how many wheat harvests and sheep shearings I have avoided,’ she said, shaking her head. Elise put her finger under her daughter’s chin and lifted it so Marjorie had to look at her. ‘And you have been visiting me for months of Fridays enough for you to look more beautiful than before all of them began.’ She smiled.
‘What will I do here without you?’ Marjorie cried.
‘You could start by reading all those letters from Jesse,’ said Elise as she stood to kiss her daughter.
Marjorie straightaway forgot anything that she might have been doing. She was suddenly, completely still – hands full and face staring. Her handbag with its lipstick, its cigarette case, its tiny punched cardboard tram ticket – all held up in the air and arrested.
*
‘What will you do back there?’ Marjorie asked. She was helping her mother pack her things: clothes, drawings, pencils, sheet music.
‘The first thing I will do is visit the cemetery,’ Elise said. ‘I will stand with your father in front of that hump of red dirt and limestones you talk about, Marjorie,’ she said, her grey eyes large. ‘My mind has cleared and I can weep now for what I have done to my beautiful daughters. I can pray that the one left behind will learn. That she will try to behave like the brave young lady she really is. And that she will turn and look a kindly young man full in the face. As she should.’
Marjorie’s fingers splayed open and the pencils she was holding ran for cover on the floor.
Because how did Marjorie’s breakable mother know that Wheat Bag Boy had been there once again? Jesse. Inside this time. Not just hiding in all those passing faces outside. Marjorie had looked at him. The other times she never needed to look. She would only need to catch a glimpse, before their eyes would rush to drag away from each other in the crowd.
He was different these days, she could see. But, then, so was she. The last few years had crept in on both of them; and she supposed those years had brought their own particular baggage along for the ride with him. Just as they had done for her.
But this time there was some other thing clinging about him. Some new wheat bag lumped on his shoulders. She felt her own shoulders shiver even now. Because this particular wheat bag of Jesse’s was a wheat bag she recognised. Try as his face might to pretend otherwise, he was a man full of sorrows now. A person with a resignation of grief. And even though she might also try to pretend otherwise, Marjorie knew all about that.
Marjorie straightened herself to her full, stiletto-heeled height. A graceful dark-haired beauty in her Singer sewing machine Audrey Hepburn dress, surrounded by shipwrecked pencils. ‘Only one daughter is dead,’ she said.
‘Are you sure about that?’ asked Elise, shaking her head. ‘I say my prayers that one remaining daughter is like a tree. Tall and elegant and beautiful in its bare winter glory. But not dead. Not really dead on the inside. And I long for spring to prove to me that it is still there. But I was never much good at gardening. All I could ever manage was those ridiculous plastic flowers and they are not alive. So I do hope you are right.’
Chapter 17
It wasn’t a small room but it was made small by every available space being crammed full of material to fix things. And Marjorie was right in the middle of it, even now. Summer was back again. Autumn, winter and spring had already had their go – turning up to stare at Marjorie and to wonder about the courage of a mother who had scraped together enough of herself to leave the solace of insanity. Who had walked out of those beautiful wrought-iron gates with Bill and gone back to the Mallee to face the music.
But Marjorie was still there – still doing what she loved – restoring rare and damaged books. She was tranquil in her work among this prevailing, fluttering fragility. But tranquillity is often a flimsy thing – easily broken. Marjorie knew that better than most. So she shouldn’t have been surprised when one day a voice smashed it. ‘Hello, Marjorie,’ he said.
Marjorie spun like a willy-willy, scattering her precious bits of paper everywhere. She spun right into the two hazel eyes of Wheat Bag Boy.
‘Remember me?’ he asked.
‘Yes,’ she said. Marjorie tried to get her eyes to move. But they wouldn’t budge. She couldn’t stop staring at this person she had last spoken to in that cemetery where Ruby’s bones would now be brittle and alone, lying cluttered together under the dirt. Although I have exhausted myself over the years trying not to remember you, was what Marjorie wanted to say. But that was a lot of talking and this was the rare collection section of a library. And silence was golden. ‘What are you doing here?’ she asked.
Jesse Mitchell gazed at Marjorie in that particular Mallee way Marjorie had not felt for so long, and which she had mistakenly begun to think belonged to someone else now. She knew he was taking silent note of myriad tiny details that could be noted and recorded but not necessarily described. Jimmy Waghorn taught Jesse to do that, Marjorie thought with a sudden pang. And that pang did it. It upended her. Marjorie realised a whole trainload of her dead and buried past was starting to derail right now. Wheat trucks full of it. Right in front of her. She watched the train wreck from the inside of her eyes as she was grabbed and thrown, like a bale of hay off the back of a ute. As her dead and buried stuff spilt out in every direction there in her paper castle. ‘What do you want?’ she asked.
‘I need to talk to you; I want you to talk to me,’ he said.
‘How long have you been here?’ asked Marjorie.
‘At this particular rare collection reference desk?’ asked Jesse as his thoughtful hands rubbed the mellow wooden surface. ‘Or in the city?’
Marjorie shivered. She wasn’t about to ask Jesse to answer the second question. She reckoned Aunty Agnes knew the answer, though. And probably her mother. And her father. And maybe even Pa. I know what you have done, Jesse Mitchell, she thought.
‘I am bent on pestering you for a talk. Make no mistake, Marjorie. I will do this until the flamin’ cows come home,’ Jesse said as he looked her up and down. He noted the pencil skirt hugging her, the silk blouse, the pearls, the red lipstick matching the shiny red high heels at the bottom of those glorious legs he remembered so well. His mouth gave a hint of a smile. His eyes did their best not to stare. He gave a slight nod as Marjorie watched her careful life cla
ttering down the embankments. ‘Right now,’ he said. ‘I want to talk right now.’ Jesse leant back against the polished wood of her desk and gazed sideways at her.
He looked so relaxed, leaning there. So calm, Marjorie half expected him to take out a tin and papers and start rolling a smoke. Or pull out a .22 rifle and take a shot at a rabbit. ‘You know I can’t talk right now,’ she said.
‘When could you ever talk?’ Jesse responded as he settled further into the desk.
Marjorie looked around now to see if any of her colleagues was noticing. But Jesse had been watching them all along. He could see them all from his casual and deliberate positioning. Marjorie shouldn’t have forgotten that about Jesse. She sighed. It was so hard to forget what you needed to forget, and at the same time remember the things you should never forget.
‘Can I help you, sir?’ One of her colleagues had come over to assist.
‘I’ll take this one,’ said Marjorie into the awkward silence that had arrived with the helpful librarian and which was now just hanging there. It wasn’t hanging over Wheat Bag Boy though. He seemed fine. Marjorie had to step over her strewn fragilities and leave them flapping and floundering there on the floor. ‘You can go to afternoon tea now,’ she said to the gawking librarian. He wandered off, surprisingly reluctant, glancing back a couple of times. Presumably to confirm Marjorie had not changed her mind. Not because he wanted to get another look at that person with the strange-coloured eyes. Who had not yet stopped staring at Marjorie.
‘I wonder if they’re curious about a bloke like me being here?’ Jesse wondered to the vaulted ceiling. ‘I know I would be if I were them,’ he said as he watched the sneaking, curious glances of eyes roundabout. ‘And do any of them know where you’ve come from?’ he asked, his eyes moving from face to face. ‘I bet they don’t. But I also bet they would just love to know. What do you reckon?’ He turned his head just a fraction and looked Marjorie up and down once more.
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