Gracious Living

by Andrea Goldsmith

  ‘There’s considerable humour in the situation,’ Nana Rosten said, ‘a Jewish atheist yes, but a convert to Christianity never. Not my little girl.’ Vivienne had just arrived home with news of the scripture prize; Nana Rosten was slicing fresh crusty bread and coating it with honey. ‘Here you are,’ she said handing Vivienne a piece.

  Mrs Rosten spread butter thickly on several of her water biscuits and began to nibble. Vivienne loved to watch her grandmother eat, so daintily, so slowly, the pudgy little finger propped high in the air. She finished her biscuit and took another and she and Vivienne began to talk.

  Vivienne, unknown to the school, was being raised for something other than a life of service. By the time Adrian Dadswell opened Eden Park early in 1988, Vivienne Sweet, a PhD in linguistics and a reader at university, had published her fourth book. And while in 1959 she did not know the details of her future, she did know she would go to university, she would study the humanities and she would not become a missionary. She also knew that Kate Marley was a fellow traveller. Vivienne was correct in the first three but only partly so in the fourth, but this was not clear when, at the age of twelve, she and Kate first became friends.

  ‘Sometimes I think I’m an alien from an another planet,’ Vivienne said as she and Kate sat together after school watching the inter-house basketball. ‘Sometimes I think there’s been a terrible mistake and I’ve been sent to the wrong place. I find all this,’ she waved her hand at the game, ‘so pointless, and so boring. Baseball too, and geography – ’

  ‘And what about scripture?’ Kate, usually so private with her opinions, couldn’t help herself.

  ‘I’m an atheist.’

  Kate sat and stared and Vivienne, interpreting her silence as lack of understanding, tried again, ‘I don’t believe in God.’

  Kate had had her doubts too, but fear of God’s bloody vengeance – pestilence, storms, perhaps a disfiguring scar – had made her ignore them. But when the clouds were silent, and the locusts stayed in the north of the state, and Vivienne’s olive cheeks remained pristine, Kate decided that her doubts were well-founded – either that or his attention was elsewhere.

  ‘It usually is,’ Vivienne said. ‘Despite all this omnipotence business it’s obvious he can’t attend to everything. And if it’s a choice of ignoring a well-fed, well-clothed Jewish atheist or neglecting the starving children in India, I rather think, given for argument’s sake he exists at all, that the blasphemous girl would miss out.’

  ‘So apparently do the starving children, or else they wouldn’t be starving,’ Kate said.

  A shout went up from the boarders as their team threw a goal. ‘I’m sick of this,’ Vivienne said standing up. ‘Are you coming?’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Anywhere.’ Vivienne noticed Kate’s face, she looked distinctly squeamish. ‘Just hold that expression and we can pretend you’re ill.’

  It was the truth. Kate felt awful. For students still at school on Tuesdays at four o’clock the options were clear: play basketball, watch basketball, practise the piano, attend debating club, do homework. All else was forbidden. Kate’s stomach was churning and her throat was tight. She pulled her arms into her stomach to try and settle it.

  ‘That’s great,’ Vivienne said, ‘now leave the rest to me.’

  Miss Mitchell required little convincing, she was involved in the match and did not want to be disturbed.

  ‘Take her to Sister,’ she said without shifting her eyes from the play.

  Once away from the basketball courts, Vivienne stopped, threw an arm across Kate’s shoulders and chuckled. ‘Didn’t we do that well?’ She started hopping around on the asphalt, head down, skirting the cracks. From a distance it might have been mistaken for hopscotch, but close up? never. Suddenly she stopped.

  ‘I’ve got it! Let’s go to the boarding-house. I’ve never been inside,’ – which was as it should be, the boarding-house being out of bounds to day girls. ‘Come on Kate, be a sport. We can always pretend you needed help in your weakened state.’

  And so the tone of the relationship was established. It seized Kate, seized all of her except that tough, percussive, protective part that never let her forget she was a scholarship girl whose harmonious stay at the school was dependent on a partnership of high marks and exemplary behaviour. And not only her stay at school but her very future – which was not in Stirling, no matter how clipped her name or witty her manner, and no matter how long and patiently she waited for her mother’s love. She knew her sole ticket of leave was her intellect. Some girls were forced to marry in order to leave an uncongenial family, but Kate would study. So when Vivienne, her hand on the glass knob of the boarding-house staff sitting room asked, ‘What’s in here? Let’s have a look,’ a career as a nurse in some tropical backwater careened through Kate’s mind.

  ‘Come on,’ she said taking Vivienne’s arm, ‘I’ve something better to show you.’

  They walked quickly along the wood panelled corridors, past the dining room set for dinner, past the senior girls’ common room, out of the boarding-house and into the cloisters. The clatter of shoes on stone was welcome comfort.

  ‘Where are we going?’ Vivienne asked.

  ‘To the music room, where I practise the piano. If someone sees us we can say I was feeling better and you’re thinking of taking up the piano.’

  ‘I already play the oboe.’

  ‘Real musicians always have more than one instrument.’ Kate didn’t know if this were true, what she did know was the piano room was safe. And she did have something there with which to impress her new friend.

  Once in the cubicle, with the heavy door closed and the muted air weighing on their ears, Kate selected one of several copies of the Methodist Hymn Book and opened it at hymn 469; she placed the book on the piano.

  ‘That’s the one I’m playing in assembly on Thursday,’ Kate said, ‘ “That Mystic Word of Thine” – it’s my favorite, although I like Blake’s “Jerusalem” too, and “Be Thou My Vision”. In fact, I suppose I like most of them.’ She paused, unsure whether to ask her question, then she was talking and the decision was made. ‘Do you like hymns? Being, well, you know, not really Protestant; can you still enjoy the music?’

  ‘Of course I can! I am half Protestant after all, and all the music is first and foremost about God, who was, as I’m sure you know, a Jewish God before he became a Christian one. As for Jesus, he was Jewish.’

  Kate knew the flaws in this argument, the scripture teacher had been adamant that it was the Jews who had killed Jesus, but having no desire to cross her new friend, Kate simply nodded and remained silent.

  ‘Well, what have you got to show me?’

  Kate knelt down in front of the shelves of music. She stretched behind the stacks of old Speech Night programmes and pulled out a sheaf of papers. The sheets were covered in a child’s handwriting, Kate’s presumably.

  ‘They’re sonnets,’ Kate explained. ‘Love sonnets by Shakespeare.’

  For the next hour the girls sat on the piano stool playing the occasional melody and reading the verses. Now and then they giggled at some of the old-fashioned expressions, but most of the time they were solemn and admiring. And with each mention of words such as ‘breast’ and ‘kiss’ and ‘skin’ Vivienne became more firmly convinced that Kate was right to keep the verses secret.

  ‘Do you ever imagine saying the poems to someone?’ Vivienne asked suddenly.

  And Kate lied: no, never. For Vivienne was still very much a stranger and secrets were the only protection she knew. Besides, some of the people to whom she recited weren’t even real: Ruth from the Bible was one, and Sydney Carton, and Beth from Little Women.

  ‘But Beth was such a sop!’

  The girls were sitting on Vivienne’s bed. It was mid-term break and Vivienne had invited Kate to stay with her and the Rostens. Kate rarely went home during term, and although she was a child who enjoyed solitude, even she found the boarding-house a barren place with only
herself, the overseas students and four girls from interstate to fill it on the weekends home, each of them scuttling about the cloisters pretending they were not really there. The other girls had excuses, Kate only the shame of not being wanted.

  ‘I thought Beth was a pain, and so prissy with all her kindness and love that all she was good for was dying. Now Jo was another matter, she had backbone.’

  Kate merely shrugged: she’d prefer love to backbone any day.

  ‘Did you remember the sonnets?’

  Kate dug deep into her school bag. The sheaf of papers was very much the worse for wear, wrinkled and torn and smelling of stale fruit.

  ‘There’s a rotten apple in the bottom of my bag,’ Kate confessed, ‘left over from the inter-school swimming carnival.’

  ‘But that was more than a month ago!’

  ‘I know, but it’s impossible to get rid of it at school without being seen. When Janie Beaton was caught throwing food away she was given five hundred lines and lost a free Saturday.’

  ‘Give it to me.’ Vivienne held out her hand.

  She took a paper bag stained with brown evil-smelling splotches and disappeared. Kate was mortified: dirt and best friends were somehow incompatible, but Vivienne seemed unconcerned, she returned, hands empty and smiling.

  ‘God I’d hate to be a boarder. I feel so sorry for you, can’t even throw away a rotten apple. And I suppose you have to eat all your meals?’ Kate nodded. ‘Even spinach and brussel sprouts?’ Kate nodded again. ‘Do they ever give you junket?’ Another nod. Vivienne dropped to the floor beside the bed and wrapped Kate’s legs in her arms. ‘I kneel before ye, oh brave and wonderful lady. That ye have survived junket places ye – or should that be thee? – above the heavens.’

  Kate began to laugh. ‘Get up, you silly thing.’

  Vivienne joined Kate on the bed. ‘To more worthy pursuits then. Where’s the sonnet you told me about, the one that proves Shakespeare wrote to a man.’

  Kate read, ‘ “A woman’s face, with Nature’s own hand painted,/ Hast thou, the master mistress of my passion.” QED,’ she said when she was finished.

  ‘Personally I prefer girls,’ Vivienne said. ‘Although I suppose Mr W.H. was very pretty, for a man, that is.’

  Kate nodded, she thought so.

  ‘May I have a look?’ Vivienne took the bundle of poems from Kate and read one or two. Then she sat for some minutes neither reading nor talking. At last she spoke.

  ‘Have you seen South Pacific yet?’ She spoke slowly as was her way when planning something. Kate shook her head, she did not even know what South Pacific was. ‘It’s a film, a musical,’ Vivienne explained, ‘and in it there’s a beautiful Hawaiian girl with long black hair who falls in love with an American lieutenant who is very handsome and they kiss under water. It’s a long kiss too, and very wet.’ Vivienne laughed.

  ‘How do they breathe?’

  ‘That’s what I was going to ask you.’

  Kate applied herself to the problem. ‘Did you see bubbles from their noses?’

  ‘I’ll confess, Kate, I thought the kissing so marvellous that I didn’t notice things like bubbles.’

  ‘All right then, what did you notice?’

  ‘Only that they seemed to be enjoying themselves.’

  ‘Well obviously if that was the case they weren’t suffocating.’

  Later, when Kate had finished in the shower and stood drying herself, Vivienne turned to her and said,

  ‘How about it, Kate, do you want to try? Do you want to kiss under water?’

  Kate nodded, wondering if this was in the service of science or merely a new delight of friendship.

  ‘What about your grandparents?’ she asked.

  ‘They won’t bother us. This is not the boarding-school, private baths are the norm here.’ She laughed at Kate’s worried look. ‘Believe me, Kate, no one will disturb us.’

  The shower was over the bath, which was fortunate, Vivienne said, because they could keep the shower running throughout the experiment and no one would be any the wiser. She put the plug in the bath and turned on all taps. When the water was a few inches deep, Vivienne surveyed the bath and the bodies. ‘The legs will be the main problem,’ she said, and hopped into the bath swivelling her legs to one end. ‘Now, you get in too, your legs towards the plug so our heads meet in the centre.’

  Kate burst out laughing. ‘You’d need a body like a banana to do it that way. Why don’t we try on all fours?’

  ‘Because that way my head is about six inches above the water.’

  ‘So it is, mine too.’ Kate thought for a moment. ‘Won’t your grandparents be suspicious if our hair is wet?’

  ‘Suspicious of what?’

  ‘Anything. I mean are you allowed to have wet hair any night of the week?’

  ‘What an extraordinary question. I’ve no idea, I’ve never thought about it.’

  Life, Kate decided, was an easy matter for some people.

  ‘But we still haven’t solved our problem,’ Vivienne said. She twisted and turned, the head went down and up, but if her head was under water there was no space for Kate’s head; as for lips meeting, they were feet away from that. Vivienne sat back in the bath, her thick dark hair dripping over her shoulders, her dark skin almost silver in the fluorescent light. There was a suntan mark where her bathers began, and small breasts which Kate tried not to notice. She giggled.

  ‘Come on Kate, this is no laughing matter. There has to be a way.’

  Kate removed her eyes from all the bare skin and considered the problem. ‘I’ve got it!’ she said suddenly. ‘The heads have to be under water, but there’s no reason why the bodies do.’

  ‘It looks better, and it’s certainly more romantic.’

  ‘I thought we were doing this for science.’

  ‘It’s clear you haven’t seen the film.’

  ‘Come on, Vivienne, out of the bath. And do you think we could turn off the shower? There’s water everywhere.’

  With the shower off, the two girls knelt at the edge of the bath, tipped their bare buttocks in the air and leaned over the side.

  ‘You’re sure no one will come in?’ Kate asked.

  ‘I’m sure.’

  ‘Well, do you think we should put some towels on the floor?’

  ‘Too late for that.’

  ‘Are you ready then? Deep breath. Go!’

  And in went the heads and almost as quickly out again. The girls spluttered and snorted and tried to blow the water from their noses, laughing so much they inhaled even more.

  ‘I think we’ll need to improve on this method,’ Vivienne said, still laughing.

  ‘We’ll just have to hold our noses.’

  They didn’t in South Pacific.’

  ‘I bet they stuffed their nostrils with something.’

  ‘No!’ said Vivienne. ‘It was all too beautiful for that.’

  ‘Maybe so, but they didn’t have to do it in a bath. We’re doing this under difficult conditions, we have to improvise.’

  Vivienne still muttering about how ridiculous this would have looked in the film, joined with Kate in putting hand to nose, and with bare bodies hooked over the edge of the bath, the two girls rubbed knuckles under water.

  ‘You’ll have to turn your head one way and I’ll turn mine the other so the hands are out of the way,’ Kate said.

  So over the side they went again, bottoms in the air, legs waving, faces under and then a touch of lips and a bit of pressure through a curtain of hair.

  ‘But with so much else to think about – holding your nose, the edge of the bath cutting you in two, the cold air, and all that hair – it was a bit hard to know how it felt,’ Vivienne said when it was over.

  ‘I don’t know about that.’ Kate was sitting back on her haunches, a sweet smile on her wet face. ‘I felt it and it was rather nice. Want to try again?’

  But at that moment Mrs Rosten called the girls to hurry: dinner was nearly ready. The girls dried their h
air as best they could, powdered themselves and dressed in nighties and dressing gowns. The towels were drenched so they used their facewashers to mop the floor. Kate’s hand was on the door knob when Vivienne leaned towards her and kissed her on the cheek.

  ‘I think the dry ones might be better,’ she said, ‘either that or we need a lot more practice under water.’ The two girls smiled and with arms about each other walked into the kitchen.

  ‘Did you actually wash or just let it soak off?’ Lottie Rosten left the stove and came towards them. ‘Let’s have a good look at you both.’ She put an arm around each girl and started rubbing them. ‘You’re both freezing! And look at your hair! Were you diving or washing?’ She gave them both a squeeze. ‘I’ll turn on the radiator and you can warm up while I finish dinner.’

  The girls sat on stools in front of the radiator, chatting with Mrs Rosten as she prepared the meal. They nominated themselves as chief tasters, in which capacity they tried everything and felt even hungrier. ‘Dinner won’t be long,’ she said. ‘If you’re warm enough, perhaps you’d set the table for me.’

  They collected cutlery, napkins and plates and laid the table, taking special care with the Rostens’ settings. Kate had known them for less than three hours and already adored them, as for Vivienne, she thought there were no better nor kinder nor more loving people in the entire world than her grandparents.

  Martin Rosten was a teacher and scholar, a man of great dignity, charm and intelligence. Born in 1895, he radiated an old-fashioned air with his three-piece suits worn with watch and chain no matter what the temperature or the occasion, shoes always shined, and his thick grey hair and clipped beard perfectly groomed. He looked like Freud, Vivienne would decide later, even down to the hornrimmed glasses, but as a child it was enough that he was her perfect Papa.

  Until his retirement earlier in the year, he had taken Vivienne with him to the university during her school holidays, had walked with her around the gardens naming the plants and telling her the myths and legends that were associated with them. She knew her way around the university library before she was ten, knew how to occupy herself there while Martin did his work. And from the time she was a little girl, long before she came to live with the Rostens, she would tiptoe into his study, too quiet to disturb him, and when he realised she was there or when he had finished what he was doing, she was never sure which, he would put her on his knee and talk to her about his work. It made no difference that she was a child and he a great scholar, he spoke to Vivienne in ways she could understand, relating vast tracts of history full of battles and intrigues and love and loss, and always he would ask her what she thought, always he encouraged her to have opinions and express them.