The Art of Preserving Love

by Robbi Neal

  She turned and hollered, ‘Edie,’ and her voice bounced off the walls like ping-pong balls as it echoed down the hallway.

  Theo put his fingers in his ears and said, ‘Just shrieking this week? Normally you stomp off on me.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t like to disappoint you,’ she mocked and she spun on her toes and her dress flounced in the air like it was dancing and she stomped off.

  A few minutes later Edie appeared at the door. Theo asked her to go for a turn about the main street. ‘Or would you like to take a ride on the trams? Or we could go for a picnic, or a steamer ride on the lake?’

  And she answered as she always did: ‘I’m so sorry, Theo, but my father and sister need me. I can’t possibly entertain anything that would take me away from caring for them.’

  Her face, which had been so open to him that day by the tree when he had asked her to marry him, was now shut and bolted. He couldn’t tell if she still loved him or if he was a weekly annoyance that she hardly thought of.

  This made Theo more determined than ever to win her. He admired her perseverance and dedication to the child and her father, but sometimes he wanted to shake her, to make her see that he needed her more than they did. But he knew women didn’t like to be yelled at, or shaken, and he had never yelled at anyone let alone a woman, so as she closed the door he stooped and left the rose on the doorstep for her.

  Just as he had done. Every Sunday afternoon at three. For the past eighteen months.

  Sunday, 17 November 1907, when Lilly has a thing to say.

  Theo arrived home after his weekly walk to Edie’s house, where he had been turned down yet again, and where he had left a rose on her doorstep yet again. He was hoping to go unnoticed to his bedroom, but as he passed the kitchen Lilly said very loudly, ‘I’m not saying anything more about it and you’re a grown man, Theo, and you can do what you like with your life and far be it from me to tell you what to do now that you’re an adult when you never listened to me when you were five years old but the way you moon over that woman at church and the way you go up there week after week isn’t healthy. You could have a wife by now. Someone prettier and younger than Edie Cottingham, too. But far be it from me to say anything.’

  Theo stood in the doorway, his hat in his hand, and said quietly, ‘You don’t have to say anything, Mum. I know exactly what you’re thinking because you always tell me.’

  ‘So you know just what I’m thinking, do you?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘because you just said it all.’

  ‘Well, go on, I’m listening to what I think.’

  ‘If it takes years I will wait for Edie. She needs time to get over the shock of her mother dying and feeling she has to look after the baby. When she feels free then she can marry me.’

  ‘And when will that be?’ Lilly asked.

  He thought for a moment. ‘When the child turns six it can go to boarding school or to a nurse and it won’t need a sister for a foster mother any more, so Edie will be free to marry me.’

  ‘Is that so?’

  ‘Yes!’

  ‘Fat lot you know about babies and children and mothering,’ she said.

  Sunday, 24 November 1907, when the children have a pleasant walk.

  As soon as the town’s children had forced down their greens they asked to leave the Sunday lunch table and ran to Ligar Street to wait outside Mister Hooley’s house. They had been doing this for months. When it was cold their mothers made them rug up first in their pullovers, but now it was November and it was hot, so their mothers made them wear hats. In the beginning it had been just a few of his piano students who had waited outside Theo’s door. But as the weeks and months went by the band of children had grown. Lilly heard the noise of children’s voices growing louder in the street outside as if it was lunchtime at the school. She peeked out from behind the curtains to see how many had gathered and saw that the street was crowded with a good hundred or so children. The girls stood in huddles and the boys tossed stones on the road while they waited for Theo to appear.

  ‘There’s more of them every week. You’re the Pied Piper of Ballarat.’

  Theo ignored her disapproving tone as he adjusted his hair and straightened his jacket in the hallstand mirror.

  ‘Well, you encourage them, Mum,’ he said.

  She opened her mouth in a perfect O. ‘Oh, I do not!’ she said.

  He kissed her on her forehead, ‘Yes you do, come on,’ and then he went out the front door with his rose. He had no shortage of roses to choose from these days. ‘Oh Theo, I have beautiful red roses if you want to have a look and see if any suit your purpose,’ the mothers of his students said. ‘Oh Theo, I have grown the most beautiful red rose bush just for you,’ said the women who stopped him in the street. But Maud had Milton Blackmarsh move her best rose bush into the backyard behind the tool shed where it was safe from Theo’s eyes and his mother’s scissors,

  Lilly followed behind Theo with the tray of honey jumbles she had made for the children. Thank goodness she always cooked more than she needed.

  ‘Just one, just one each or there won’t be enough to go around,’ she said as little fingers grabbed for the biscuits.

  Theo didn’t speak to the children. He just straightened, adjusted his collar, looked again at the rose in his hand and the children knew that was the sign they were off. The children followed him all the way to Edie’s. The girls skipped and jostled to be nearest to Theo, the boys tumbled and ran and kicked at stones on the road. Women came out of their houses and stood in their front gardens, waving their fans to cool their faces and chatting to their neighbours as they waited for Theo to pass by. As he passed they called out hello and dreamt of having a man so devoted to them that he would visit every Sunday for years and years.

  The men sat on their front porches drinking beer and they raised their glasses to toast him and wished him good luck as he passed. When he was out of earshot they complained to each other that he was ruining everything for ordinary blokes like them whose wives were going to expect roses from them now.

  When he got to the front gate of Edie’s house the children stopped. Theo wouldn’t let them follow him to the door. It was all very well for them to come on the walk but what he said to Miss Cottingham was private. The children always moaned as if he was cutting them out of the best part and then they waited on the street for him. If it took him a while to knock on the door they got bored and the boys played mock fights and the girls dreamt that they would get to be flower girls when Mister Hooley finally won his love. Some of the older boys lost patience altogether and wandered off to swim in the lake.

  Theo checked his watch and knocked on the door. The girls, leaning against the letterbox watching, put their hands over their hearts. Maybe this week Miss Cottingham would come running into his arms.

  Beth answered the door. ‘You again?’

  ‘You knew it would be me,’ he said, ‘so don’t pretend to be surprised.’

  ‘You and all the town’s ratbag children.’

  ‘It’s going to be a hot summer, don’t you think? It’s already sweltering and we haven’t even hit December yet.’

  She leant out the door and peered into the street. ‘You better make sure those boys don’t ruin Mister Cottingham’s garden throwing those sticks around like swords.’

  ‘Are you going to holler for Edie or stomp off in a sulk to get her for me? The day you behave properly, Beth, will be the day hell freezes over.’

  ‘Some men appreciate a little waywardness in a girl,’ she said and slowly looked him up and down, sizing him up. ‘But you wouldn’t.’

  He thought of the women in Africa. It had been so long ago. He wanted to tell her that he amounted to more than she saw, that he might not have a lot to say, he might not be one of those men with silky words but he knew how to bring out the waywardness hidden in a girl’s soul. He saw her waiting for him to take the bait. But this wasn’t Africa and he wasn’t that person any more and Beth wasn’t the girl he wanted.<
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  ‘Are you going to get Edie for me or do I need to holler myself?’

  ‘You? Holler? You can barely speak, Mister Hooley.’ And she laughed too hard and saw that he knew she was putting it on and she turned and went down the hallway to get Edie.

  For once Edie didn’t have the child with her and it gave him hope.

  ‘Miss Cottingham, I thought a walk around the lake? Or if it’s too hot for you we could stick to the botanical gardens?’

  Did he see pity in her eyes? He prayed not, because if there was pity there was nothing.

  She took a deep breath and held tightly onto the door jamb; he could see her knuckles turning white. ‘I can’t, Theo, I really can’t. Because you see I know and you know it’s not just an afternoon that you’re asking about. Not really. You don’t just want a walk with me. You want a lifetime.’

  He was sure he could see tears welling in her eyes — or were they welling in his own? His heart wanted to crack open but he wouldn’t let it. He would keep waiting. The child was walking now, but in not so many years she would be off to school, gone, and he would have his desire.

  Later that day as the sun loosened its bite and began to set, Beatrix and George sat on her front verandah drinking beer.

  ‘It’s like the Stations of the Cross at Easter,’ Beatrix said, ‘the way he walks up there every week with all those children in tow.’ George reached over and grabbed her plump bottom and pulled her closer and she giggled and said, ‘Next week you better turn up with a rose or else.’

  ‘Or else what?’ he laughed. ‘Let me give you a bit more or else.’

  A little further away, sitting so that busybody Nurse Drake couldn’t see them, Beth and Colin were on the verandah steps next door.

  ‘It’s truly beautiful,’ Beth said to Young Colin Eales as she pulled at the brown dry grass, ‘the way he is so devoted to her. She doesn’t deserve him.’

  And further away still, in the underground room, Edie lay on the bed with two-year-old Gracie asleep at her side. She wrote in her notebook:

  Twenty-fourth November Seven

  Gracie is two years old and she calls me BeeBee. It makes me laugh every time.

  He has the bluest eyes, even bluer than Gracie’s — endless like the sky. Plan — I will stay true to my promise to Mama.

  Theo continued to visit every Sunday afternoon at three. He never missed and every week he left Edie a rose on the verandah step. When the summer came, the sun in its fury cooked the oil out of the rose and the petals became a crisp brown sacrifice, and when the winter came, the morning ice froze the petals and then the afternoon rain turned them to crimson slush, as though they had been bled out. And in all weathers each Monday Beth came out with a bucket of soapy water and a scrubbing brush and washed the rose stain from the porch. It took her hours and she wondered about a man whose love left such persistent stains.

  Sixteen

  Colin

  Friday, 8 May 1908, when the rain falls day after day as if it will never cease.

  Beth’s bloke, Young Colin Eales as everyone called him, was wet, cold and red in the face.

  ‘The rules say us miners only have to work six hours a day in a wet shaft,’ he yelled and the men agreed with him. He looked around at their faces, pleased they were letting him do the talking even though he was the Young and not the Senior Eales. It was his dad who usually did the yelling, but not this time; this time it was his turn and his ability to bellow on behalf of the men must mean he was being taken seriously.

  No one messed with his dad so they probably thought that now he was no longer a boy, they better not mess with him. He was glad, he was tired of being a boy. Growing older couldn’t come quick enough for him. He didn’t know what might be waiting for him when he was older, he just knew it had to be better than what he had now.

  The men stood in a huddle outside the mine entrance that stared at them like a gaping mouth ready to devour anyone stupid enough to walk into it. They were in a stand-off with management, who stood in front of the mine, invisible swords drawn.

  Young Colin was at the front of the miners. They were forlorn, really, their bones were brittle and shivering, their livers were bilious and yellowing and their cheeks were hollow. The dust from the mine floated around them, scratching at their eyes and making their clothes stiff as the wet cloth turned it to clay; their trousers chafed their balls.

  The manager, Mister Bladcock, and Darby, his accountant, rubbed their chins thoughtfully and muttered together in their crisp black suits until finally Bladcock stepped forward and said, ‘Yes, but how wet is wet?’

  Young Colin Eales kicked at the dirt, sending a splosh of mud onto Bladcock’s woollen suit pants and said, ‘Bloody hell!’ And the men standing around him swore too and nodded their heads as if that explained everything.

  Mister Bladcock rocked on his heels in his muddied suit, which he ignored, so as not to give Young Eales the pleasure of knowing he’d annoyed him, and said, ‘Local by-laws don’t clearly define what a wet-shaft-sink is. How deep is the shaft Mister — ah …’

  ‘Eales,’ said Young Colin, knowing the bugger knew exactly what his name was. ‘I reckon it’s maybe …’

  ‘About four hundred and fifty feet I’d say,’ put in Davo Conroy, Young Colin’s dad’s best mate, who up until recently Colin had called Uncle Dave.

  ‘Yeah,’ said Young Colin, ‘I reckon that’d be about right.’

  ‘Hmmm,’ said Mister Bladcock, ‘four hundred and fifty feet. Your dad works the mines too, doesn’t he? Where’s he gone?’

  ‘I don’t exactly know at the moment,’ mumbled Young Colin. Bladcock and Darby smirked and the men looked at the ground, embarrassed. It was a cheap shot. Everyone knew Young Colin’s dad was off with his other family in Hamilton. Jeez, everyone also knew that Alice Hardy had dumped her kid at Beatrix Drake’s and run off to join him.

  ‘Local by-laws state that nothing under five hundred feet constitutes a wet shaft. You’re fifty feet short,’ announced Darby.

  The men swore some more. Who made these laws up? Bloody government employees with brooms up their arses who’d never set foot in a bleedin’ mine.

  ‘We’re constantly bucketing water out,’ said Young Colin vehemently.

  ‘Constantly?’ asked Mister Bladcock, raising an eyebrow.

  Young Colin nodded and said, ‘No amount of bucketing is gonna get rid of the water and working in clothes soaked to the skin constitutes wet in my book. If you want to bring an official down here, Mister Bladcock, you go and do it, but we ain’t doing more than six hours a day in these conditions.’ Young Colin stood as tall as he could and threw his chest out like a barricade. He wouldn’t be broken by men in suits.

  Mister Bladcock stepped back and had another private, mumbled word with Darby, then he nodded and stepped forward again and said to the men, ‘So you’re having to bucket water out all the time?’

  ‘That’s what I said, ain’t it,’ said Young Colin.

  ‘Hmm, yes,’ drawled Mister Bladcock, and Young Colin began to feel edgy, as if he was about to be done over. His shoulders began to slump.

  ‘The removal of water,’ Mister Bladcock said slowly, as if explaining to idiots, ‘constitutes shaft-sinking and shaft-sinking is paid on an eight-hour shift at six shillings. You’ll be paid after your expenses have been removed of course — unless you’d rather tributes.’

  No miners wanted tributes, where they were paid a portion of the value of the gold they mined. Tributes were inconsistent and didn’t keep families fed.

  ‘But our normal pay is seven shillings,’ stammered Young Colin.

  ‘But that’s for normal labour which you yourself said is not what you are doing at present,’ said Bladcock smugly.

  Colin glared at Bladcock, but couldn’t think of anything to say. The bugger had got them on a technicality. Slowly he walked off towards the mouth of the ruddy mine followed by the men.

  Mister Bladcock sighed. His was a tough lot and he wasn’
t paid anything like he ought to be. Some days, he felt he was taking his life in his hands dealing with these uneducated miners. Nothing’s to say there wouldn’t be another Stockade if they got it into their minds, most likely led by Eales Senior, who wouldn’t have been such a pushover as his son.

  The Eales cottage was Number 7 Eddy Street. It was a small low cottage with just one step up to the verandah. The front door was plumb in the middle of the front of the house and sat there sullenly wishing it was the entrance to something much grander. Either side of the door was a window that let in very little light. When you went inside you stepped into the narrow hallway that ran right through the middle of the cottage and straight out the back door. Next to the Eales cottage was a narrow grassy laneway and then Beatrix Drake’s house at Number 9, which lorded it over the Eales cottage with its ornate cast-iron lacework at the corners of its verandah posts and its width, which was a good half as wide again as the Eales cottage.

  Young Colin told Beth all about the meeting with management that night as they sat out of the rain on the verandah. He told it so that he was a hero, like Peter Lalor, and he could feel in his bones that he really could be a hero.

  ‘Mister Cottingham’s always trying to help the miners,’ she said. ‘You oughta talk to him.’

  ‘We can work this out ourselves,’ said Young Colin, who mistrusted anyone who lived around the lake. Bored with talking about work, he noticed the inviting rise and fall of Beth’s chest as she breathed, and whiteness of her breath as it floated like wisps of smoke in the chilly evening air. He thought how much better his head would feel lying on that pretty chest with her breath settling on him, so he said, ‘How ’bout you and I go up the lane and work something out?’

  ‘It’s raining, Colin,’ she said.