The Art of Preserving Love

by Robbi Neal

  ‘Papa,’ Edie gently shook his shoulder. ‘Papa, time you were in bed.’

  ‘Mmmmm,’ he said, blinking his eyes sleepily. ‘Oh yes, I’ve fallen asleep again.’

  And he reluctantly lifted himself out of the chair. He looked so sad and lost and she knew he missed her mother, but she didn’t know that of all the times he missed her, this time, at night, was the moment he loathed the most. It was now he had to face his large, empty bedroom and his cold, empty bed. There would be no visits from his wife in her nightgown, her hair falling to her shoulders like clouds visiting the earth. This was the time of day when he had to pass her room, the boards still nailed over her door, knowing there was no point taking those boards down, she wasn’t Sleeping Beauty, waiting in there for his kiss. It was the room he no longer visited later when Edie was asleep; he no longer listened to the whisper of her song that filled his soul. His life was now full of no-longers. He envied Edie that she could take Gracie to bed with her and drift off to sleep with Gracie’s plump smell warming the brittle night air. He sighed and wandered off to his room.

  Edie put Gracie in her bed, where she slept with the baby nestled in close to her bosom.

  ‘Gracie, you are so perfect I couldn’t imagine ever being anywhere but with you,’ Edie whispered into the silence of the night. And in the dark, baby Gracie smiled.

  Every night after dinner Theo played Chopin’s Prelude in E Minor and the melancholy notes seeped into the walls, the furniture, and Lilly’s skin and made her weep. It was a fine piano that Theo played: a Beale piano with the new Beale-Vader all-iron tuning system that Octavius Beale had patented in 1902. The frame was hand-strung and the timber panels were wet sanded so they shone like a mirror. It had cost him £45 after the 25 per cent discount for buying direct from the manufacturer. Every string in that piano and every piece of ivory that his fingers touched wept as the notes filled the house. Theo played every night for precisely two hours and as the last note drifted off into the world, he would gaze at his reflection in the piano and wonder who he was now. He knew that his life was no more than a series of perfunctory actions, as though he was acting until his real life could begin — his life with Edie.

  ‘Two hundred and forty-six days,’ he whispered to his reflection, ‘five thousand nine hundred and four hours, three hundred and fifty-four thousand two hundred and forty minutes, twenty-one million two hundred and fifty-four thousand and four hundred seconds, twenty-eight million and three hundred and thirty-nine thousand and two hundred beats of my heart.’

  That was how long he had waited for Edie Cottingham so far.

  Theo could wait and even though he had told his mother he would wait for six months, he had waited eight. In the four weeks he had watched Edie come to church, her skin stricken with grey in her black mourning clothes and a dismal grey hat that bleached the colour from everything it touched, unable to speak to anyone and looking only at the ground. It was Beth or Mister Cottingham who pushed the baby in the pram and who made an effort to smile when the women, including his mother, cooed over it. Then suddenly one Sunday it was Edie with the baby and no pram. She carried the baby like it was the most precious thing in the world and she smiled at everyone and was wearing a white hat with blue ribbons instead of her mourning hat. He saw how tiny and dependent the thing was in her arms, like a bald pink joey peeping out from the safety of a pouch. Then last Sunday Edie had thrown off her mourning clothes altogether and worn crimson like a rose and he knew that was the sign that her mourning was over and she was ready for him. He saw the baby in Edie’s lap playing with a knitted giraffe. The baby had grown so much, it probably didn’t need Edie now. But he did. Now she was no longer mourning, he would ask her father for her hand.

  All this time, for all these months, he had said no more to her than ‘Good morning, Miss Cottingham’ and gone on his way. He couldn’t bear talking to her as though nothing had happened between them. So not being able to step back and not being able to step forward he just hadn’t spoken to her at all.

  Lilly disturbed his thoughts. ‘Penny?’ she asked, putting her hand gently on his head and leaning in close as if he was still six years old.

  ‘Nothing, Mum.’ He closed the piano lid and walked into the kitchen, sat at the table and opened the paper.

  Lilly got the apple upside-down cake she had made that afternoon out of the rosella tin and cut them each a thicker-than-respectable slice. Theo nodded at the paper spread out in front of him.

  ‘I just don’t see how all these legislative changes that occur in the middle of the night in the celebrated Parliament House in Spring Street actually affect real lives down here in Ballarat. The miners are just as poor and badly behaved as ever; the rich are still cosseted in their big houses near the lake. I just don’t see why these pollies get these big fat wages to sit around and yell at each other,’ he said.

  Lilly knew he wasn’t at all interested in politics and was really thinking of the Cottingham girl. It was a worry, the way he was so set on her when he could have had someone else by now. He could be settled and starting his own family and making her a grandmother — oh, wouldn’t that be the sweetest thing.

  Theo felt her gaze on him and spotted another item that might distract her from the subject of Edie Cottingham, which he could see she badly wanted to raise.

  ‘Listen to this, Mum: “Wireless communication successfully sent across Bass Strait,”’ he read out. Lilly cut him another slice of cake.

  ‘I should be a porker with the amount you feed me, Mum. But I’m not, it just doesn’t seem to stick, does it?’

  She worried for him, nothing had ever made him fatten, she was sure his innards had dried out so much in the African heat he could no longer absorb any nourishment at all. The worry of it made her cut another slice of cake and put it on her plate.

  Theo folded the newspaper and leant over and tucked it in the basket for fire lighting, as though he could neatly fold up time and tuck it away. He wondered, as he had many times before, if he should not have come back from that war, whether he should have died over there. War was a bad thing, it emptied a man out. His feet didn’t seem to stick to the ground any more and that was why he needed Edie; she would tie him to the earth.

  There’s nothing to him, thought Lilly, he needs something to weigh him down. And she took the last piece of cake.

  Fourteen

  The Rose

  Sunday, 15 July 1906, when Theo does a simple thing, really.

  Theo sat at the kitchen table. He had pushed his plate of roast lamb to the side to make room for the paper, which rose and fell like a mountain over the loaf of bread. He turned the next page and read that if you hung roses upside down you could dry them and that way keep them forever, but they would lose their colour and the petals would separate. He thought of his mother’s rosebud dress and his father who had finally succumbed to consumption, having survived far longer than Doctor Appleby Senior had said was possible, passing away when Theo was twelve. His father had said that Lilly was his rose, so Theo knew that a rose was a true symbol of love. He wasn’t interested in drying roses if they lost their colour. Colour and wholeness were of the utmost importance to him. The article went on to describe how to dry the roses keeping the bud intact and maintaining most of the colour. It was interesting information but he didn’t want a rose to preserve and he didn’t want just any rose. He wanted a rose that was of the deepest crimson. He wanted a rose that made you want to become one with it, in the same way he wanted to be one with Edie. He closed the paper and left his roast lamb unwanted on the plate, so Lilly finished it for him.

  ‘I’ll be back,’ he said to Lilly and he walked into Missus Blackmarsh’s garden next door. She had many rose bushes meticulously placed in her yard like children lined up at school and he examined each one, looking at its roses and its leaves and half an hour later he chose the rose he wanted. It had the richest blood-red petals and stood out from all the other roses. He went back inside and said, ‘Mum, where a
re your scissors? Quick.’

  She didn’t question him, just put down the knife she was using to chop the celery, wiped her hands on her apron and fossicked in her drawer of kitchen utensils. She handed him the scissors and went back to chopping celery.

  Theo returned to Maud Blackmarsh’s garden and tenderly held the stalk, supporting the flower in his hand as he cut it from the branch.

  Maud, her hands on her hips, watched through the front window and turned to Milton Blackmarsh and said, ‘I think Hooley’s finally lost all his marbles, he just stole my best rose. That was my show rose. I was going to win with that one.’

  ‘Well, you won’t be winning with it now I expect,’ said Milton.

  Theo put some water into an empty milk bottle and put the rose in the bottle, carefully resting the stem against the rim, and put it in the middle of the kitchen table.

  ‘I’m going out, Mum,’ he said and went to see Missus Johnson whose two boys were due to come for piano lessons that afternoon and explained he wouldn’t be available and their lesson was postponed.

  ‘Indefinitely?’ asked Missus Johnson, but Theo was away in his future, the present made no impression and he didn’t answer.

  Theo walked home quickly.

  ‘Mum, I need you to iron and starch my best shirt.’ She washed the onion juice off her hands and got out the ironing board and put the iron on the stove. She liked it when the onion juice made her cry; she had a lot to cry for, it got very tiring being cheery all the time, being able to cry was as good as having a nice lie down. She didn’t know what Theo was up to but he seemed to have perked up and that had to be a good thing, and he had put a rose — heavens knows where he got it — on the kitchen table and that was really sweet of him. Maybe he had even put on a skerrick of weight — or maybe she was imagining that bit. She inspected the shirt for creases and, satisfied it was good enough, left it hanging on his doorknob.

  Theo stood in front of the hall mirror and filled his hair with oil and twirled the ends of his moustache. He had put on the shirt and his new good suit and polished his boots. Then he called out, ‘Mum I’m just popping out for a bit.’

  ‘What, again?’ she said.

  ‘Yes,’ he said and picked up his rose and kissed her on the cheek and was out the front door and on his way. He walked from his mother’s house in Ligar Street, cutting across the railway line and over Doveton Street to Webster Street to arrive at Edie’s door at precisely three in the afternoon.

  Theo thought about how he had stood before this very door some eight months earlier, full of hope for their future together. He looked at the door and felt dwarfed by its unyielding size; it was a tangible barrier between him and Edie. The last time he had stood there for hours, never knocking.

  ‘Come on, Hooley,’ he said to himself. ‘You faced more daunting things than a wooden door in Africa.’ He breathed deeply and knocked loudly and waited. He supposed it would be Beth the maid who would answer. So he was ready when she did; he’d practised his lines so they wouldn’t get stuck in his head.

  ‘I’m here to see Edith,’ he said with rehearsed coolness so the servant girl wouldn’t see his desperation.

  Beth raised an eyebrow at him and stood there like she could see more than he gave her credit for.

  ‘Well, go on, go and get her, that’s what you’re paid for, isn’t it?’ he said, thinking her eyebrow was mocking him and surprised at how well he just handled her.

  Beth glared at him and yelled through the house, ‘Edith!’

  What an impertinent creature, he thought and knew immediately that the battle lines had been drawn and the trumpet sounded.

  ‘If you were in my Company,’ he said slowly, ‘you’d be punished severely for insubordination. I said go and get her, not yell at her.’

  He saw her looking at him as if she would teach him not to muck with her. But maybe he was tougher than anyone thought, tougher than he thought. He sighed loudly, letting her see his exasperation, and reminded himself that she was just a servant and not worth getting too upset about.

  ‘How do the Cottinghams put up with you?’ he said, and that made her turn on her heel and stomp off, leaving him alone to wait for Edie. He wasn’t sure who won that fight — he suspected she had. Perhaps he had been a little too harsh, he thought, and tapped his foot on the stone front step in time to his heart as he waited for Edie to appear.

  It seemed to take longer than all the months just past. Surely she wouldn’t leave him standing there? Surely she would come?

  Finally Edie was before him, with the infant over her shoulder. He looked at the chubby legs kicking under the lacy baby dress. He didn’t think of babies as human and he felt an urge to reach out and touch those fat pale kicking things, they looked so foreign to him. He thought the infant looked like something that should be kept pickled in a bottle, like a museum exhibit.

  Then he saw that Edie was gently patting its back over and over, as though the child was part of her. She seemed completely natural with the baby, as if she was simply twiddling her thumbs or absently rubbing her elbows. And he realised with a terrible shock that the child had become part of Edie. His heart lurched as he wondered why it couldn’t be their infant. If it was theirs it would bring them together, whereas this child had forced them apart, and he hated it. Then he realised that Edie had been gazing at him for some time, waiting for him to speak as she rocked the baby.

  He removed his hat in readiness to give his prepared speech. On the way over he had decided that he needed to take things slowly. Begin again, as it were. Work his way up to asking her to marry him.

  ‘I was wondering, Miss Cottingham, if you would accompany me on a stroll around the lake next Saturday afternoon. There’s a prediction of fine weather,’ and he looked at the sky as if he had a contract with it, already in place for Saturday afternoon. Then he quickly looked at the ground, not daring to read her face in case he saw something in it that wasn’t hopeful. It seemed to take another forever before she answered. His heart thumped so loudly he wondered if she could hear it.

  ‘Everything has changed, Theo, there’s Gracie now. Gracie and my father need me,’ she said slowly and he looked up as she made to shut the door.

  He thought at first that he hadn’t heard her properly, but when he saw her beginning to shut the door he knew he had. That’s it, he thought. I waited eight months for you and you say the baby needs you more than me! How could anyone need you more than me? And his frustration fuelled his determination.

  ‘I know what death does to people,’ he said quickly, putting his polished boot in the doorway, making her step back a little. ‘I’ve seen death, I saw it when I was a little boy of twelve and my father died and I saw plenty of it in Africa. I know death has a way of crippling you so you can’t go on with life. I know what it’s like and if I have to wait till forever for you Edie, I can do it. I’ll wait till you’re ready, Miss Cottingham. I’ve waited this long. What will a little longer cost me?’ Edie didn’t say anything so he stepped back and placed the rose that he had hidden behind his back on her doorstep.

  ‘I am waiting, Edie. I’ll wait forever,’ he said, and really believed in his heart that he could. He walked off down the path, elated that he had finally found his voice. From the study window Beth watched him go.

  Edie clutched Gracie tighter to her chest as though the baby was the anchor that would stop her running after him and keep her where she knew she belonged.

  Later that night Edie took out her notebook, which she hadn’t opened since the day at the lake, that awful day when she had planned to do a terrible thing until Gracie stopped her. How could she forgive herself? Edie would make it up to Gracie, she would love Gracie above all else for the rest of her life — after all, loving Gracie was an easy thing to do. Edie turned to the last entry and ran her fingers over the words.

  Wednesday Thirteenth December Five

  Plan — Always keep the promise Mama asked of me. The promise I

  should have
said yes to when she asked.

  She took out her pencil and added:

  Sunday Fifteenth July Six

  Note — He said he would wait forever.

  Fifteen

  At the Door

  Sunday, 10 November 1907, when Theo has been wooing Edie for nearly eighteen months, he discusses the Harvester Case with Beth.

  Everyone in town knew that Theo never gave piano lessons on a Sunday afternoon any more and hadn’t done so for the past eighteen months, so there was no point asking him. For eighteen months, every Sunday afternoon, he had put on his good suit and walked to Edie Cottingham’s house. He would stand at the gate for a few minutes and check his watch and at precisely three o’clock he knocked on her door.

  Beth always answered. She always rolled her eyes at him as if he had just ruined an otherwise perfectly good day.

  Then, having set the pattern for their relationship in their very first conversation, they bickered. If he said it was warm out today, Beth said that in fact it was cold. If he said it was going to rain, she said there was a drought coming. If he said the child was looking healthy, Beth said she had been quite ill of late. They exchanged curt, cross words with each other.

  ‘What do you think of the Harvester Case?’ asked Theo, knowing she would know nothing about it.

  ‘Do I look like a farmer to you?’ she said, putting her hands on her hips.

  ‘The Harvester Case is a legal ruling, Beth, made just this week. It means a minimum wage for every workingman. It’s a great step forward.’

  ‘Well, you seem not to have noticed but I am not a workingman. So tell me something that helps the working woman, Mister Hooley. Can you do that?’

  He tried to think of something, anything, that would top her, but no words came to him and their war raged on, each waiting to see who would become exasperated first. He saw the smirk on her lips and the victory in her eyes.