The Art of Preserving Love

by Robbi Neal

  ‘Here, dear,’ the woman put a pamphlet into her hands. Beth looked at it: The Woman Voter.

  ‘But don’t we have the vote?’ she said.

  ‘Yes,’ said the woman, ‘but we have no rights. I always say that the position of women is the barometer by which a society can be measured. A society truly rises from barbarism when women have true equality. Adela, come and meet our new recruit,’ she called to a younger woman who excused herself from the two women she was talking to and came over to join them.

  ‘What we want now is for women to vote against conscription at all costs. We must fight for peace and stop this bloodshed of our boys. There would be no war if women ran the world. Don’t you think …?’

  ‘I do think and my name’s Beth,’ she said, and she thought of Theo buried in foreign dirt and she had to agree that saving the boys’ lives was something worth fighting for.

  ‘Where are you from?’ asked Adela, who was perhaps the same age as Clara. Adela had none of the softness the older woman had. Beth could feel her astringency, it was there in her clipped words and the way she held her shoulders back, as if she was ready to fight the world.

  ‘Ballarat,’ said Beth and both the other women laughed.

  ‘Oh, we’ve both spoken in Ballarat, haven’t we, Vida?’ Adela said to the older woman.

  Vida. Beth remembered Paul writing letters in support of Vida Goldstein. This had to be the same Vida, surely.

  ‘I think my employer wrote letters in support of your election to Parliament. Paul Cottingham.’

  ‘Oh yes — he invited us to speak in Ballarat. He’s a wonderful supporter of women’s rights. It was just a shame he was the only one in Ballarat to do so. We didn’t go down too well there, did we, Adela?’ said Vida.

  ‘Ballarat is like that,’ said Beth, feeling traitorous as she so easily distanced herself from her home. ‘It can take a while for things to change. People are suspicious of new ideas.’

  And she thought how Paul supported women’s rights but wouldn’t let Edie work. He said that wasn’t a matter of rights, it was a matter of privilege and as Edie had privilege she needed to leave jobs for women who didn’t.

  ‘Yes, well, you’re our first and only Ballarat recruit apart from Paul. You’d think the spirit of the Eureka Stockade would have lived on, wouldn’t you?’ said Vida.

  Beth shrugged. ‘People got shot in the stockade.’

  ‘How long ago did you come from Ballarat?’ asked Adela.

  ‘I arrived an hour ago,’ said Beth, and all the women laughed and she laughed with them.

  ‘Goodness, child,’ said Vida, ‘where are you staying?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Beth truthfully. She hadn’t thought that far ahead.

  ‘She’s staying with me,’ announced Clara. ‘I have a spare room.’ She smiled so warmly at Beth that Beth heard herself say, ‘I’d love that.’

  ‘Are you going to join us this afternoon? Do you think you’re up to it?’ asked Adela. ‘What do you think of your new housemate, Clara? Is she up to it?’

  Clara looked into her eyes and Beth thought what beautiful green eyes she had. They were like green leaves after rain.

  ‘What do you think, Beth? Do you think you’re up to being a protestor?’

  Beth didn’t think she was, but nodded anyway. She had nothing else to be and nowhere else to go.

  ‘Good,’ said the women. ‘We have a demonstration on in Spring Street this afternoon. You can come.’

  ‘I won’t get arrested, will I?’ Beth asked.

  ‘Quite likely,’ said Adela. ‘It happens all the time. Do you want to subscribe to our paper, The Woman Voter?’ She nodded at the pamphlet in Beth’s hand.

  ‘She can read my copy,’ said Clara, saving her.

  By afternoon Beth was signed up and wrapped in purple, green and white ribbons, holding a placard that said bring our boys home and marching up and down outside Parliament House on Spring Street. While the other woman protested against rising food prices and men ruling the world, Beth stood beside Clara and railed against Theo’s death and Colin’s death and the tears flowed down her cheeks and she felt alive.

  Thirty-Two

  The Friendship

  Thursday, 1 September 1916, when Edie discovers something unexpected.

  The clouds had hovered low and grey for days, rumbling irritably, discontented with their lot in life, menacing everyone and jangling nerves in the process. The wind been blowing bitterly just because it could and the old men said to each other that at least they weren’t at the war, where it was sure to be worse than this. The boys who had returned from the war thanked the gods that all they had to do was live with this God-awful ball-freezing weather, which could never be as bad as the cold in Turkey. The women said to each other if it was this bad for them, what must it be like for the poor boys still at the front? So they must put their chins up and face the iciness head-on. Old ladies struggled pointlessly against the wind until they gave up and went home to sit by the fire. Then, as if God had snapped his fingers, the wind shut its mouth, the clouds quietened and the town was still. Something new was about to be born.

  This is the earth before it snows. A profound quietness descended and nothing stirred to disturb the hush.

  Through all this weather — the hot summer that had come before and the balmy autumn and now through the rain and sleet of winter and the icy stillness of snow — a tiny shoot of green had shot up in the middle of Lilly’s front yard. It had survived.

  Edie had determined not to go out into the cold, but at one in the afternoon she changed her mind, put on her coat, hat, scarf and gloves and got her umbrella in case it rained. She told Gracie to keep on with her homework because she would be back very soon and to put another log in the stove. As soon as Edie was gone Gracie pushed away her homework and started drawing unicorns and fairies dancing on rainbows.

  Edie walked to Lilly’s house and by the time she got there the snow was falling. She went around to the back and called out, ‘Cooeee,’ as she banged on the back door. Lilly came to the door rugged up in a thick cardigan. Despite the bulk of the cardigan Edie could see how thin Lilly had become. Edie had seen Lilly at church on Sundays but until now hadn’t noticed how much weight she had lost.

  ‘You need some coca-wine — a wonderful mix of cocaine and wine that is perfect for fatigue of the brain and the body,’ said Edie, stepping quickly out of the cold into the warmth of Lilly’s house. ‘I’ll get you some.’

  ‘What are you doing out in this weather?’ asked Lilly.

  ‘Oh, I was just wondering,’ asked Edie carefully, ‘if I could take a clipping from the front yard.’

  ‘But it’s snowing. It’s a wonderful thing when you’re inside and looking out at it through a window standing by a warm fire. But it’s not as lovely as it looks when it’s soaking you through.’

  Edie shook the snowflakes from her jacket as she took it off. ‘You know, I don’t know why I had to do it today of all days. I suppose we don’t know if this weather will clear up. I mean, I would rather snow than hail and sleet, which is what we’ve been getting till now and — Well, I just have to do it. May I? May I have a clipping?’

  Lilly had a kind face. Peter always said her face had the kindness of an angel. Her grey hair was tucked loosely into a bun low at the back of her head. Her eyes had gentle folds of age around them but if you looked closely you could see the filmy cataracts of loss. She ushered Edie into the kitchen.

  ‘Of course you can, dear. If you first have a cuppa and a piece of cake with me. You must be freezing.’

  The kitchen was snug and warm and filled with the smell of warm cinnamon and nutmeg and just-baked cake.

  ‘Hmm, did you know I was coming?’ she asked.

  Lilly giggled. ‘You know how much I bake.’

  Edie took off her hat and gloves and put her umbrella on the table. Lilly filled her with hot cake crusted with cinnamon, butter and oats. It was called German cake but Lilly couldn’
t call it that now they were fighting the Germans so she called it potato and cinnamon cake because of the amount of mashed potato in it. She filled Edie’s teacup with hot steaming tea and pushed over the milk and sugar. Lilly watched as Edie ate the cake and as soon as Edie finished her piece, Lilly cut another and put it on her plate. Watching Edie eat the cake made her feel less hollow.

  ‘You haven’t eaten your first piece,’ said Edie, ‘and here you are giving me another.’

  ‘Oh,’ laughed Lilly, and cut off a piece with her spoon. She had no one to eat for now, so most of the time eating was something she just forgot to do. As they lifted the warm cake to their mouths the scent of the cinnamon on the oat crust wafted around the kitchen, making it smell warm, as if they could hear the muffled voices of children playing in the next room.

  Lilly wiped her fingers on her apron and stood up from the table to get some sheets of newspaper from the basket beside the stove and put them under the tap. She handed the wet newspaper to Edie, ‘To wrap the clipping,’ and handed Edie her sharpest knife.

  ‘Do you know where to cut?’ she asked.

  ‘I do,’ said Edie.

  ‘It’s grown extraordinarily fast.’

  They both put on their coats, hats and scarves and shoved their gloved hands in their pockets to keep them warm and walked out into the falling snow in the front yard. The sky was white, the trees were white with fresh clean snow and the yard was a carpet of pure white snow except for the brilliant green of Theo’s rose bush, which had already grown to almost full size and stood with no snow on it at all. They stopped in the silence of the snowing earth and listened. In the stillness that swirled about them they heard the rose bush singing, like whispers on a floating feather.

  ‘It seems to just keep on growing,’ said Lilly. ‘I don’t think it’s stopped yet.’

  Edie bent down and gently took a lower branch and cut a stem from it. Lilly was pleased she cut swiftly and clean; she didn’t want the rose bush to suffer.

  Maud Blackmarsh came out, pulling her scarf down from over her nose, and said, ‘Ooh, are you getting a cutting? Can I have one, too? You have to tell me where you got that rose bush, Lilly. I have never seen a bush grow so quickly, it just sprang out of nowhere.’

  Lilly looked at Edie and they both knew that the bush hadn’t sprung from nowhere, it had sprung from love. She couldn’t give a cutting to Maud, and looked to Edie for help.

  Edie remembered Missus Blackmarsh once saying she was plainer than a bowl of porridge, and as she looked at Lilly she saw Lilly shake her head just enough, so that Edie knew what she had to do.

  ‘We don’t know how this bush grew, Missus Blackmarsh. It was a miracle. It was grown of love and so we are very sorry but if we gave you a cutting it would only die.’

  Missus Blackmarsh pulled her scarf back over her nose and huffed off, slipping and sliding on the snowy ground.

  Edie giggled. ‘I didn’t know I had it in me,’ she said and Lilly giggled with her. Edie stood and carefully cut into either side of the clipping, not deep, but enough to let roots grow from there, then she gently wrapped it in the damp newspaper. The snow kept falling and the children who weren’t at school had run squealing out into the street and were already throwing snowballs. The ones who were in school were pleading with their teachers to let them run outside and before the teachers could answer they were already outside, their faces to the heavens as the snow fell on their noses and eyes.

  ‘Come on,’ said Edie, and she put her arm through Lilly’s, put up her umbrella and walked with Lilly to Webster Street, carrying the clipping as though she was cradling a baby. Lilly waited on the verandah, out of the snow, while Edie ran inside and found one of the preserving jars and took Gracie’s knitting needle from her wool bag. Edie came and stood on the verandah next to Lilly and finally chose a spot in the middle of the front garden. Lilly stood over her with the umbrella as Edie pushed the needle into the soft wet earth, then she turned on the garden tap, but it was frozen up and nothing came out except a whining, gurgling complaint, so she went to the kitchen and filled the jar with water from the kettle and then filled the hole with water. She removed the lower leaves of the cutting and placed it into the hole and packed the earth back around it. Then she got the preserving jar and placed it over the cutting to protect it from the frost and snow. She stood up, holding out her cold dirty hands and looked at the clipping for a while. Then she said, ‘Stay for dinner,’ and realised she really wanted Lilly to stay. They were bound to each other by their love for Theo.

  ‘Well, I guess I have no one to go home to,’ said Lilly and Edie saw her eyes shine a little as they lost a fragment of their loneliness.

  In the kitchen Lilly made an impossible pie and Gracie ran back and forth getting the ingredients she asked for and dipping her finger into the mixture when she thought Edie wasn’t looking. Each time she did it Lilly winked at her. Edie cooked ox tail broth and they all sang together badly — except Gracie, whose voice was true and rang out over theirs hiding all their mistakes. Paul came home from work at six and stood in the kitchen doorway. Edie looked up at him and shrugged and smiled. They’d made a fine mess in the kitchen and dishes, vegetable scraps and cooking utensils were scattered everywhere.

  ‘My gosh,’ he said, ‘I could hear the voices of angels singing from the street.’

  ‘We have a visitor staying for dinner,’ said Gracie, her mouth covered in coconut shreds.

  ‘Ah Missus Hooley hello — welcome,’ Paul said and Edie thought Lilly actually blushed like a girl and she said, ‘Please, you must call me Lilly. Or Lil — my husband used to call me Lil or Lillian but he only called me that when he proposed — Oh, but I shouldn’t have said that.’ Edie had never heard so many words from Lilly at once.

  ‘Lilly,’ said Paul and walked over to her and took her hands in his, not even seeming to notice they were covered in flour. Edie wondered what was wrong with him as he held Lilly’s hands just a little too long to be polite and she coughed to remind him and said, ‘Lilly has made impossible pie for dessert.’

  They ate in the kitchen that was filled with steam and comfort from the smells of the cooking and warmth from the stove and Edie found herself listening as Paul and Lilly chatted on and on about everything and nothing at all. Paul told Lilly all about his latest political interest and how he was trying to get Beth to bring her new friends Vida and Adela back to Ballarat and how the conscriptionists must not win and how they planned to launch their campaign next month on the sixteenth at Alfred Hall and the boys must not be forced to give up their lives and he Paul would be standing with the unionists on this. Lilly told him all about the onions she was pickling and her Piccadilly mustard and her champagne jam except of course at the moment she couldn’t put champagne in it as it wouldn’t be right when there was a war on and the wonderful competitors she saw perform at the South Street Eisteddfod every year. Edie thought Paul couldn’t possibly be as engrossed as he appeared because he never listed to her when she talked about cooking, he just said, ‘You make it, dear, and I will eat it.’

  At eight Edie reminded Gracie it was her bedtime and Gracie complained and said, ‘But if it keeps snowing there won’t be any school tomorrow,’ and looked at her hopefully.

  ‘Half an hour longer,’ said Edie and Gracie smiled triumphantly.

  Paul said, ‘You two girls can go and do whatever you want to do. Lilly and I are fine here chatting,’ and he smiled at Lilly and she smiled back and he added, ‘I’ll see Lilly safely home in a cab.’

  Edie threw him a questioning look and he looked at her steadily in return. So she took Gracie’s hand and Gracie groaned because it meant she was going to bed after all and Edie stopped at the kitchen door and gazed back at Paul and Lilly sitting engrossed in each other’s words. Edie sighed, she felt bothered by her father’s attention to Lilly. It was as if he had been lit by something, and he was happy about it, and she had to admit that if Lilly could do him this much good over one meal then
she would have to invite her for dinner more often. After she had tucked Gracie into bed she went to her writing desk, took her notebook out of her pocket and she wrote:

  First November Sixteen

  Plan — Make Papa happy. Invite Lilly for dinner every Friday night.

  And she knew that once it was written in her notebook it happened, unless she wrote a new plan that cancelled it out.

  Thirty-Three

  The Kiss

  Saturday, 11 November 1918 — no planting today.

  Sixty thousand Australians were killed in the four years of the war. Three thousand nine hundred and twelve had left the wide streets of Ballarat where they had played cricket on Sunday afternoons, stopping mid-game to let traffic go past; where they had swung on lampposts after a few, or carried their mother’s shopping, griping when she stopped to chat because they wanted to get back to their mates. Of those Ballarat boys, eight hundred had died, never to return to have that drink at the Bull and Mouth now it was all over, or to marry that girl who had been waiting so ardently, or to say, ‘See I told you that you were worrying over nothing,’ to their mums. The five hundred girls employed at the Lucas clothing factory sold cloth dolls and held fetes and asked management to hold a portion of their wages each week for a special fund. The money would build an impressive heroes’ arch to announce the beginning of Australia’s first Avenue of Honour. The money would pay for the trees to form the avenue. The girls had approached Mister Smith, who was head of the Art School, and he had drawn up a design and an architect’s plan. The arch would span the width of the road, and was to be crowned with a rising sun and flanked by two large columns. Over the past year the girls and the townspeople had forgone their walks around the lake and instead spent their weekends planting elms, ashes, oaks, maples, alders, birches, limes and poplars.