by Robbi Neal
‘No, I’m fine, really,’ said Beth.
Missus Eales sighed, ‘Please yourself then,’ and went back inside. Beth knew she would never see the other side of that door again. Would Missus Eales ever talk to her after tonight?
She thought about the last twenty-four hours of her life and how much had changed in such a short time and how only the two of them knew about it yet. Though soon Colin would know and then so would everyone else. Beth rubbed her arms and tried to ignore the salty brinies sloshing around inside her.
She thought about yesterday. She had heard Edie’s final refusal, heard Theo accept it, and knew that he would never again come on a Sunday afternoon. He would never bring another rose and she simply couldn’t live without his roses. They were the way she was going to find her new life. They were charmed, she could feel it each time she walked into the laundry. She had leant into the wall listening to Edie and Theo, hoping the wall would hold her up because she felt like she was dissolving. Then Edie, holding Gracie’s hand, had walked past her and hadn’t even looked at her. Did she look right through her? Or was she writing in her notebook? Beth couldn’t remember but she did remember that once Edie had gone into the kitchen with Gracie, she had run out after him. There had to be more roses, there had to be more of him. She couldn’t just wait, she had to make it happen. She saw him walking aimlessly, his head down as though every last bit of life he had been holding on to had evaporated away. She could see he was empty and she could fill him up, so she took the chance that was right in front of her. She grabbed his hand and then they were swept away together. The roses had worked their magic. With him she became someone else, somewhere else.
She heard Colin before she saw him. She could hear his drunken singing getting louder as he came closer. Let me call you sweetheart … She stood up and watched him come around the corner. He and Davo Conroy were leaning into each other, trying to hold each other up. They walked right past her, both of them giving her wide foolish smiles as they passed, and they stumbled up to Davo’s gate where they untangled themselves from each other and Davo waved at Beth and she waved back. She watched Colin as he made his way back to her, holding onto the fence and singing.
He already looked like a stranger; he was somewhere she didn’t belong.
‘Let me call you sweetheart, I’m in love with you, let me hear you whisper that you love me too,’ he sang and then he grinned at her, a naughty schoolboy who’d been caught smoking behind the shelter shed.
‘How much have you drunk?’ she asked and immediately scolded herself. What was it to her any more what he drank?
‘Enough,’ he said. ‘Or maybe just a little bit more.’
‘Colin, I have to tell you something. I have to give you something.’
His grin widened and he looked towards the laneway.
She should wait until he was sober but she couldn’t wait, she had to tell him now, she had to start her life. ‘No, Colin listen to me.’
‘No laneway — that’s okay, come on love, let’s sit on our step,’ he said, wrapping his arms around her. She squirmed free and stood away from him. He lunged for her again and she stepped back again and said ‘Colin, no!’
‘Oh, don’t be like that, Bethie,’ he said. ‘You’ve seen me have a few before today.’
‘I don’t care if you’ve been drinking. Colin, listen — I have to talk to you. It’s important,’ and she crossed her arms over her chest. She shut herself off from him completely and he felt it like an icy gust that froze his soul. He saw the wall that had gone up between them, built in a second, brick on brick, until he knew he couldn’t reach her.
She saw the realisation spread across his face. She hated herself for what she was going to do to him. She put her hand over her heart; she needed to see if it was still there.
His gaze settled on her bare ring finger and his eyes travelled back up to her unreadable face. He’d always been able to read her face but now there was nothing. There was nothing there for him and the sudden gaping emptiness inside him sobered him up.
‘Where’s your ring, Beth?’ he asked quietly and dangerously.
She shook her head.
‘Bloody hell, Beth. Bleeding hell,’ he swore and kicked at the fence, splintering and smashing the thin palings.
Beth stood further away, she was afraid of what he might do.
He spun around and glared at her. ‘This is some kind of game, is it? You want me to prove my love, you want me to wait for you like that Hooley idiot waits for your boss?’ he spat.
She cringed at how tawdry he made it sound. It was a beautiful thing that Theo had done and Colin just never understood it, he never understood what she needed.
‘It’s not a game, Colin,’ she said quietly. ‘You know it’s not. You know I …’
He moved up close to her, his nose almost touching hers and she could smell his beery breath and she couldn’t breathe.
‘You don’t really love me. That’s what you’re going to say, isn’t it?’
He looked at her like he hated her. She couldn’t bear his hate, it slapped her harder than if he had hit her with his fist.
‘Beth, you don’t love me any more, do you?’
She nodded, she couldn’t lie any more. ‘I love you like a brother,’ she said, knowing it was lame and he stepped back and laughed. His laugh was harsh and bitter.
‘Well, Beth.’ He waved his hand in the air while he thought of what he wanted to say. He stepped in close to her again. ‘I love you and I always will. You might think you belong somewhere else, with someone else, but you don’t. You belong with me. And if you think you’re going to catch that Hooley — well, know this, Beth: he will never love you. He doesn’t belong with you like I do. He belongs with someone else and if you can’t see that you are blind. He doesn’t even know who you are, Beth, but I do. So you know what I’m going to do, Beth? You know what I’m going to do?’ He stopped and spun on his heels. He said calmly, ‘I’ll tell you what I’m not doing. I’m not bringing you frickin roses each week, that’s for sure, if that’s what you’re thinking. No, what I’m going to do is, I’m going to wait for you to come to your senses. Hmmm. Yes. You’ll come to your senses, Beth — you’ll see.’ And he walked inside and slammed the door on her.
She trembled and stood shaking for some time. She heard his mother call out from inside the house, ‘Is Beth okay?’ and she looked towards the window and she heard his voice reply, ‘She’s fine Ma, just leave her be.’ She saw his mother watching her from behind the curtains.
She realised she hadn’t given him the ring, so she took it out of her pocket and popped it in the letterbox.
A light came on in the front room next door and Beatrix Drake stepped onto her verandah and looked at her. She looked straight back, she would feel no shame in front of that Nurse Drake. Beatrix shook her head as if she was telling a child No, no, no, don’t you do that — you know that is wrong, you know there are consequences for bad children. Beth began to cry, it wasn’t happening the way it should. She should be happy but she wasn’t.
‘I always knew you wanted to be somewhere else and something else, Elizabeth Crowe. I just didn’t realise what you wanted belonged to someone else,’ said Beatrix.
Beth turned away and cried all the way back to Webster Street, where she now had to tell Edie she was engaged to Theo Hooley.
Part Two
Twenty-One
The Battle
Wednesday, 12 August 1914, when Theo finally decides to act and everyone agrees it is long overdue.
By the twelfth of August 1914 everyone was declaring war on everyone else. Germany declared war on Russia and interned eleven Russian chess players who were attending a tournament. Because everyone knew chess was a dangerous game of war. Then Germany declared war on Belgium and France. Great Britain, taking its children Australia, Canada and New Zealand with it, declared war on Germany. Australia fired the first Allied shots from guns at Fort Nepean as the German steamer SS Pfalz tried to
sneak out of Port Phillip Bay. Montenegro declared war on Hungary and Austria. Austria and Hungary declared war on Russia and Serbia declared war on Germany. So Great Britain declared war on Austria and Hungary. Italy and America said they were going to sit it out and see where the chips fell. And the tennis went on and Australia beat England three to two.
The world became a schoolyard brawl. The Order of the White Feather was established so that boys not willing to throw their bodies into gunfire could be shamed into it. But Theo wasn’t a man who needed to be shamed into doing the right thing.
Theo stood by his window and looked at the row of trees that ran down the middle of the wide street. They invited children to climb in them and then mischievously sent them home with torn clothes; they invited lovers to carve their initials into them and then kept them even after the love had vanished. In summer they lavished the street with constant shade, but in winter they looked like skeleton trees; without their clothes they were naked and humbled.
Theo was in his flannelette pyjamas and his feet were bare and cold on the floorboards but he didn’t notice the coldness working its way up his legs; he was thinking. He had been woken early by the groaning of the trees in the wind. They were determined not to let him sleep and as he gazed at their exposed branches he made his plans. He had done nothing for long enough and if he kept doing nothing he would become nothing and any love that had kept him in the world would also disappear and amount to nothing.
He thought about the afternoon when he had taken Beth down by the lake. He couldn’t remember how it had happened. How had he made such an awful mistake? He had tried to remember, he had searched his mind for the details but they wouldn’t come.
He remembered that he had let Edie go, he had set her free, but at the same moment he felt he had locked himself into a cage from which he could never escape. He remembered the blackness of the stones in the earth, like evil eyes scoffing at him and how he kicked at them with all his fury. He remembered a voice and he thought it was her voice. He had turned and it had been her dress and then he had been pulled along, hurried into something — and he never hurried into anything. He remembered the deliciousness of her body and how she had wrapped him up and he felt safe and at home. He remembered how his soul sang when she accepted his proposal. He remembered afterward he had sat up and been stunned to realise it was Beth he had made love to; it was Beth who had accepted his proposal, it was Beth in her dress.
It wasn’t Edie. He had said that over and over to himself so many times in the last three years or so. It wasn’t Edie.
Beth had started kissing him and telling him she loved him and that she had loved him since the first rose, and as her warm kisses touched his skin he thought maybe he could love her back. Maybe all those fights they had over nothing at the front door were love. Maybe he had been blind to his true feelings and it was really Beth he wanted after all and he would be happy.
They had walked back to Webster Street arm in arm and just walking with someone, their bodies touching, in a space no one else shared, filled him with such joy. But they got to the house in Webster Street, and he said goodbye and she called him darling and the word grated shreds from his heart and he knew instantly it wasn’t the right fit.
He had seen Edie because he wanted to see her. He had only wanted Beth when he thought she was Edie and now the bars of his cage were pressing into his skin and leaving harsh red marks.
He had gone home from Beth and gone straight to his piano and played Rachmaninoff’s Musicaux Number 3 over and over and the entire house crumpled under the pain the notes sang. Lilly sat in the kitchen sobbing into a tea towel for all she had lost. She wept for the dances and the kisses in the kitchen with Peter that were never to be again. When Theo’s fingers hurt he still kept playing. Cry for me world, he’d thought, cry for me because I can’t cry for myself.
His insides swirled and churned; he was angry. He had given Edie six years of his life, surely that was long enough. Surely after six years it was right that he accepted they could never be together. It was right for him to search for happiness elsewhere. After he had played the music over and over many times, somewhere as the notes built and moved and shifted, his innards moved and shifted as well and they stopped churning. He felt it and stopped playing, and waited to see what would happen next. Slowly the churning began again in the opposite direction. His fingers once again struck the melancholy notes and he thought how he was being cruel to Edie. It wasn’t her fault she couldn’t be with him, she had the child to think of. The child whose smile brought serenity.
As he’d played he realised he had to keep loving Edie even if he had to love her from afar. He wondered what was the more honourable thing to do. Should he break with Beth and say it was a mistake? Or should he marry her? It was an important decision and he couldn’t hurry it.
So he had thought on it every day for the last three or so years.
He’d told Beth they couldn’t be together again as they had at the lake until they were married. He said they needed to wait at least a year to marry because Beth was too young and he couldn’t marry her until she turned twenty-one. He’d thought that would give him enough time to decide and she thought he was being considerate of her age and reputation. The year came and went and in that year he visited the Cottingham home every week and they all thought he was visiting Beth. At the end of the year he told Beth they had to wait another year because it would be disrespectful and hurtful to Edie if they married too soon and Beth’s guilt wouldn’t let her disagree so she accepted it. And so he had afternoon tea with them every Sunday. Then he told Beth they had to wait because there was so much unrest in the world and who knew where it was heading.
Beth was furious. She said he was making her look like an idiot and why couldn’t they do what they had done down by the lake again? She had yelled and stamped her feet and that made Theo only more determined to hold off on marrying her. He didn’t like the way she rushed into things without thinking.
‘I want to wait until we are married Beth, we shouldn’t have done what we did. I want to marry you honourably; we will be together when we marry. I just want to wait one more year until things settle down in the world and we know where we are.’
‘And the way you can wait — that may bloody well be when the cows come home,’ she said and she looked at him with utter contempt.
‘I thought that was one of the things you liked about me, Beth — that I didn’t rush into things.’
She’d pushed him hard in the chest and said, ‘You didn’t mind rushing down at the lake.’
He couldn’t tell her that the longer he was engaged to her the more he got to see of Edie. He no longer stopped at the door of the house. Now he got to sit by the fire, to sit around in the kitchen, laughing with them and being part of their family. When it was hot he got to go downstairs with them into the underground house and eat sausages and potato salad and as Beth’s fiancé there was nothing unfitting about it.
If Edie was upset about the engagement she didn’t show it once. She was polite and warm to him and kind to Beth and acted as though she was happy for them both. It only made him love Edie all the more. So for three years he had sat and allowed himself to imagine he was one of them and during those three years he saw how devoted Edie and Paul were to Gracie. He understood that she was Lucy’s gift to them and he pushed what that cost him aside and let their family love wash over him and let himself believe he was a part of it.
Now, standing at the window, looking out over the street at the grass white with frost and the bare empty trees, he realised it was time to make a decision. He couldn’t hold Beth off forever. He had to break with her or marry her, and believing in being honourable, he knew which he had to choose.
He put on his dressing gown and slippers and walked into the kitchen where Lilly was stirring a pot of porridge. He thought she had put on even more weight over the last three years. Everyone said he was becoming thinner.
‘Mum, I have some news,
’ said Theo.
‘It’s so hard now the war is on,’ said Lilly. ‘I heard there is going to be rationing of food. Do you think I will still be able to get oats, cocoa and sugar? Or flour? I mean, if there’s no flour, well, you just can’t bake, can you?’
‘Mum, I need you to sit down because I have to tell you something.’
She stopped stirring and looked at him. ‘Well, if it’s important I better put the kettle on first, hadn’t I?’
Theo sighed. He wanted to tell her now while the words were clear in his head. Once he said the words, his plan could begin, the words would start it. If she needed a pot of tea to feel comfortable, then perhaps it was just as well he let her make it. He got up and got two cups and saucers and poured some milk into a small jug.
‘The bowls, Theo,’ said Lilly, ‘for the porridge and plates for toast.’
She poured porridge into the bowls and passed him the full one.
‘Way too much for me,’ he said.
‘Oh, go on with you,’ she said, ‘you’re skin and bones.’
She sat down and poured the tea and he reached over and spooned three teaspoons of sugar into her cup. She would need the sweetness to calm her nerves.
‘Well,’ she said after she had taken three sips of tea, ‘I’m ready for this news then.’
‘Well, Mum,’ said Theo, ‘I’m going to marry Beth.’
‘We all know that, dear, you’ve been engaged for three years.’
‘Well, I had to wait for her to turn twenty-one,’ he said.
She raised an eyebrow. ‘Since when has that been a requirement for marriage? I know you, son. I don’t just cook, I can see, you know.’
Theo took her hands in his and they sat together in the silence, knowing each other, the porridge bowls between them like a shared communion.
