A Hundred Small Lessons

by Ashley Hay

  I have been lucky, she thought, touching her boy’s hair. She blew a kiss across the small space where he lay.

  There were curlews in the park again, their calls so murderous and violent for such fine, almost delicate birds. The first time she’d heard them—the week they’d first come from Sydney—she’d shaken Ben awake: a fight; he should call the police. And he started upright, sat and listened for a moment, and then laughed at her mistake.

  She touched Tom gently on the head, feeling its warmth. He snuffled a little, and stretched, and Lucy grabbed at the edge of the cot, buffeted by how much she loved him.

  It still knocked her sideways.

  In the outside world, there were cars on the road, the occasional plane, and the low, loud throb of a helicopter on its way to the nearby hospital. There was a burst of voices—a party ending, maybe, with car doors shutting, engines driving away. Then a blare of music and a woman’s voice: ‘Shut up.’ And then nothing.

  Other lives, other spaces, other times. How many mothers were sitting up tonight across this city? Chinking the curtains, she saw three houses deep in darkness—and one lit with a white square of light.

  She let the curtain drop back into place, the gentle swish of its hem jarring against a different sound, something sharper—a noise like their gate, with a squeak and a click. She went through the house, checking the front door, the back door, and peering at the dim and empty street.

  All the other houses she might have lived in. All the other lives she might have had. Her vardøger—she liked the way the word felt, like a time-smoothed stone rubbed between her fingers.

  If I’d married whoever sent those flowers years ago.

  If I’d married Ferdi Klim.

  If I’d never married. If I wasn’t here with Tom.

  Standing at the kitchen sink, she saw a line of Lucys at a line of sinks, each drinking a tall glass of water. She saw rainbows darting out from the prism of each, reflecting and refracting all those other versions of herself.

  And then she heard it again, the definite scrape of her gate. There is someone, she thought, calm and clear, and she opened the back door and looked into the darkness.

  On the edge of the grass, just inside the fence, a woman was standing in a long coat. She must have been eighty at least. The coat was a bright colour—pink or red—and it looked somehow textured in the night’s pale light. On her feet, Lucy could see furry boots like slippers and she was holding some kind of light.

  ‘Hello?’ Lucy called. ‘Are you all right? Can I help you?’

  The woman looked up and waved, as if there was nothing strange about standing in someone’s garden at midnight in furry slippers and—Lucy’s eyes resolved its details—an old chenille dressing gown. ‘It’s all right; it’s like a torch. They have very good torches, these things,’ the other woman said. ‘Makes it easy to see where you are.’

  ‘Are you lost? Are you looking for something?’ Lucy leaned out from the deck, bunching the neck of her pyjamas against the night.

  ‘Isn’t it nice to be out in the quietness?’ the woman replied. ‘I’ll head back in a moment.’

  ‘I could drive you—can I drive you somewhere? Or is there someone I should call?’

  ‘My pace is still pretty good; I’ll be back in a jiffy,’ the woman said. ‘I just wanted to check on the flowers—’

  ‘Flowers?’ Lucy repeated. Elsie? It felt almost preposterous, after so much pretending, to think this might really be true. She felt the shiver of someone walking over her grave and pinched her arm, in case she was asleep.

  She was awake.

  She called, ‘Hang on, I’m coming down.’ And took the steps two at a time, but the yard—the whole street—was empty by the time she’d reached the bottom and turned towards the fence.

  ‘Elsie?’ she called then, feeling a little silly and something—cold, grabbing—that edged towards afraid. Above her the back door blew closed with a slam, and she turned and ran, unable to remember if she’d flicked the lock or not, if she’d be able to get back inside. The handle gave and she pushed the door open and chocked it, her breath coming fast.

  At the deck’s edge again, she scanned the road, the yards nearby, the park beyond, but there was no sign of movement, no sign of anybody. A curlew cried and another, further off, replied. She shivered again, and rubbed at her arms, watching the wind scuttle the clouds across the sky.

  She turned and went in, carefully snibbing the lock. On her way to bed, she paused and turned back to Tom’s room instead. He was always the last thing she checked before sleep.

  Then she stopped in the doorway: the cot was empty.

  I will walk out, I will turn around, and I will walk back in, she thought, clear and slow. He will be there; of course he’ll be there.

  But the cot was still empty.

  She could feel the place—a straight line across her chest—the precise point where her breathing stopped.

  Ben? But no sound came; she couldn’t make her voice work, like a child startled out of a dream.

  Blundering back towards her own room, she collided with every doorjamb, with the edge of the sofa, with the sharp point of the sideboard that jabbed into the softness of her belly.

  ‘Ben?’ There was sound, but choked and awful.

  ‘Where were you?’ He was sitting up in bed, Tom cradled against his chest. ‘Tom was crying; I had no idea where you were.’

  Her body shook with a stammering rush of adrenaline. ‘I heard the gate—I was getting a drink—there was a woman by the fence—she said something about flowers—she was old—in a dressing gown—I thought it was Elsie.’ She was sure, she was sure it hadn’t taken more than a moment.

  ‘Jesus, Lucy, why would you go outside in the middle of the night if you heard something?’ Ben shifted Tom further up onto his shoulder, and the little boy cried again. ‘And this Elsie thing—for fuck’s sake: it has to stop.’

  ‘There was an old lady outside. I thought she might need help. She said something about flowers—and I thought, I thought—’

  ‘As if it was Elsie.’ Ben’s right hand was patting Tom’s back the way Lucy would, but too hard—she could hear the sting of its slap. ‘Any of it.’

  ‘I can take him,’ she said, reaching out.

  ‘I can do it. I’ll put him back.’

  But Tom’s cries ramped up as Ben stood and made to leave the room, and he turned in the doorway, pushing his son away from himself. ‘All right. You do it. I was asleep.’

  She scooped Tom into her chest, soothing and patting. ‘It’s all right, Dad was here for you—Dad came and got you and told you it was OK.’

  Tom’s crying stopped, and he muffled his face against his mother’s shoulder. ‘Cot,’ he said quietly. ‘In cot.’

  ‘I know,’ said Lucy.

  She laid him down, tucked him in, waited until his eyes began to close. What would I have done, she thought, if anything had happened? She wouldn’t let herself think what ‘anything’ might have been.

  Back in bed, she slid close to Ben, feeling for his hand. ‘OK?’ she asked, her voice uncertain.

  ‘Don’t go out into the night if you think someone’s there—what were you thinking? And Tom was crying; I can’t believe you couldn’t hear him. This Elsie thing—Lu, it’s enough. Her, and Ferdi Klim; I’m over all of it.’

  Lucy kissed his hand, and turned her face against his side. It was quiet for a while—not even a curlew—and she could feel the warmth coming back to her feet.

  ‘All right,’ she whispered. ‘It’s enough.’

  Ben let out a snore, and the air filled with the smell of stale champagne.

  Maybe I dreamed it all, thought Lucy, almost asleep herself.

  Another snore from Ben, and then she was asleep. She was dancing with Ferdi Klim in a dark room to a band she couldn’t see or hear. They were the only two people on the floor, while a row of Lucy Kisses lined the walls. A pendulum swung slowly overhead. A bassline thumped, and when Lucy opened
her mouth to try to sing along, she found she couldn’t make a sound.

  22

  The princess

  Clem was dozing on the deck when he heard a footfall on the steps.

  ‘That you, love?’ he called. Elsie was off at the butcher’s.

  But his daughter called back. ‘It’s Lainey, Dad. Are you up or down?’

  ‘Up,’ he said. In the kitchen, his kettle was boiling—had been for who knew how long—and he went in to pour the water into the teapot. ‘That’s what I call timing.’ He stirred the leaves and set it to steep. ‘Time for a cup?’ He smiled at his girl as she entered the kitchen.

  ‘All right.’

  She had a smart red dress on—shirtwaist, Clem thought the style was called, with a bit of a tie like a man’s.

  ‘You look grand, love. Off out somewhere?’

  Elaine smoothed the front of the skirt, sitting down carefully so it didn’t wrinkle underneath. ‘No. Just sick of the same old house clothes.’

  Clem poured the tea and stirred sugar into his. ‘Fetch the milk for me?’

  She poured milk into their two cups, and pulled hers closer, blowing on it before she took a sip. ‘Who was it you knew, the one who poured his tea into a saucer to cool it down?’

  ‘My uncle Perce, that was. When I was just a nipper.’

  ‘I remember you telling us that.’ Elaine blew again across the tea, wincing when it sloshed over the edge. ‘Mum was always appalled that we might try it, me and Don. Uncouth, she called it. Like she’d know.’

  ‘Now, Lainey . . .’

  She held her hand up, as if to stop herself. ‘Sorry. And thanks for the tea.’

  Clem watched her carefully. He was never quite sure what to say to his daughter. Never sure where to step. And she hadn’t brought Gloria, which wouldn’t please Elsie.

  ‘Where is Gloria?’ he asked then. ‘Asleep in the car?’ He adored his chubby-legged and rosy-cheeked granddaughter—was astonished by how busy she could be. She was only three years old.

  ‘She’s with Gerald’s mum.’ Elaine licked her finger, and swiped it around the top of the fine china cup so that the kitchen filled with a piercing ringing sound.

  ‘Now, Lainey, I’ve told you what my uncle Perce used to say: every time you make that noise, you make a sailor die.’

  ‘What did happen to your uncle Perce?’ Elaine set the cup down with such a clatter Clem wanted to check for a chip. ‘Where’d he go, when he sailed off over that horizon?’

  Clem shook his head. New Zealand, Uncle Perce had said and there had been a card or two at first. Then nothing more. ‘I don’t know, love,’ he said. ‘I thought sometimes I ought to find out, but I never knew where to start.’

  ‘I could go,’ said Elaine suddenly. ‘You can fly to New Zealand these days.’

  Clem snorted into his tea. ‘In an aeroplane? What sort of money is this husband of yours making?’ He didn’t really mean to ask—it was too forward a thing—but, really, a child of his, sitting in his kitchen proposing a jaunt in a plane.

  ‘I suppose I could write a letter to a newspaper, or the Red Cross,’ he said. ‘That’s what people did after the war.’ His uncle Perce must be rising seventy—if he was still alive.

  There was a strange sound, and it took him a moment to realise that Elaine had picked up her cup and saucer and thrown them down, smashing them on the linoleum floor. He grabbed the dishcloth, the dustpan and a sheet of old newspaper in what felt like one gesture, pushing the broken pieces together to make a safe bundle, and wiping away the wet mess. His daughter stood just a few inches off, some flecks of the pale tea on her shoes. The second clatter, as the pieces hit the bin, never sounded as satisfying as the first, he realised. Perhaps it was something to do with surprise. He dried his hands on the little towel Elsie kept by the stove and put his arm, awkward, along the stiff ridge of Elaine’s shoulders.

  ‘Now then,’ he said, trying to sound more assured than he felt. ‘What’s this all about?’

  There was no sobbing, no tears, just a thick jittery tremor that seemed to set into his daughter’s frame and would not let her go. He could hear it in her voice, in the rattle of her teeth, when she finally began to speak.

  ‘Send me away, Dad,’ she said. ‘Give me somewhere to go and something to do.’

  ‘Oh, Lainey.’ He pulled her close and held her—he hadn’t done that since she was tiny. ‘Really, what’s this all about?’

  The shuddering was worse, and he tried to press it out of her, holding on with both his arms. He could see her fingers moving along her skirt as if she was counting, and sure enough, when she’d worked through all ten fingers, she spoke.

  ‘I’m bored, Dad. This isn’t who I want to be.’

  And he couldn’t even offer her the household panacea of a cup of tea: she’d already had one. If Elsie was here—but if Elsie was here, he realised, she’d be even more at sea than him. What about Gloria? she’d say. What about your lovely little girl? Which even Clem knew wouldn’t help.

  ‘It was all your mum ever wanted, the two of you,’ he said. ‘I suppose we thought you’d be the same.’ He kissed the top of her head, and settled her back in the chair. ‘There’s a nip of brandy somewhere that Elsie keeps for Christmas.’ He had no idea if it was sound to give his daughter a slug of it, but he couldn’t see how it could hurt.

  Elaine sat perfectly still now, both hands cupped around the heavy glass. ‘It will be better when she goes to school,’ she said. ‘Even Gerald says I might be able to get a job somewhere when that happens—a bit of typing, or a shop—if anyone will take a married woman.’ She drained the alcohol in a single gulp. ‘That’s only two more years.’

  ‘What did you want to do, love?’ It seemed an awful thing to ask her: he was almost frightened of the response. But it seemed awful, too, that he’d never thought to ask her before.

  ‘I don’t know. I don’t even know what I might do. But I wanted more learning. I wanted more life. I wanted something beyond a quick typing speed and a bit of stenography. I didn’t think it would ever occur to Mum—I knew all she wanted for me was a good man like Gerald and a handful of kids as fast as we could. Well, Gloria’s enough—and Gerry is a good man. But I thought you might have helped me—you see them, Dad, you see the people at the university. You see them with their books and their ideas and their busyness. I could have tried it. I could have been smart enough, I could—’

  ‘You could try it still, I guess?’

  ‘I guess I could.’

  Clem pulled the bottle across the table and poured himself a shot. And now this, at eleven in the morning.

  ‘So then, what about New Zealand?’ he said after he’d downed his measure.

  And she laughed. ‘That’s easy. I just want to clear off. Get a boat, like Uncle Perce. Off I go.’

  It was too quiet in the kitchen. Clem hadn’t a clue what he ought to say next. He thought about ringing his son-in-law at work. He thought about ringing Don. He thought about how to keep Elsie away.

  He said, ‘It’d be a shame to waste that nice frock on a yacht, love. I’m sure we can think of somewhere better you might wear it.’ He needed someone to come up with a plan; he needed someone to have the kind of bright idea that would surprise her, take her in. If Ida Lewis was still around the corner, he thought suddenly, he’d march Lainey around there and get her to talk to the girl about changing what she wanted in the world.

  That painter and her husband: he hadn’t thought of them for months.

  ‘You know your mum was once a model?’ He could see the painting now when he closed his eyes—still wished sometimes that it was his to own. ‘She hasn’t led such a dull life as all that.’

  ‘A model? Mum? For magazines?’

  That stopped her in her tracks. Clem gave a smile. ‘No, for that painter, Ida Lewis. There’s a portrait of her.’

  ‘A portrait of Mum.’ Elaine drained the second shot. ‘I don’t believe it. Well. Maybe there’s hope for us all.’
>
  Clem followed the line of her gaze to the point where it sheared off into the nothingness of the backyard. Was it secrets she wanted? Was it mystery? Was that life?

  ‘What about the university?’ he said. ‘I don’t know the first thing about getting there to study, but there must be a way to find out.’

  Elaine shook her head. ‘I’m sure there’s nothing I can do,’ she said—defiantly, he thought, as if she almost enjoyed being defeated. ‘Just chin up, carry on. It will be better for Gloria once she’s at school too.’

  ‘Is it not what you thought, then,’ he asked, ‘being a mother?’ He’d never asked Elsie what she thought of it all—you could see how she felt, the way she beamed and bustled and organised.

  ‘It’s not anything, Dad. That’s the trouble. I don’t feel anything. Everyone says Gloria’s lovely, and I can see she is—she smiles; she doesn’t fret; she’s well behaved. I see the others—see how much they love their children, and how happy they are for all that. I’m not . . . it isn’t . . . I just want something else.’

  She closed her eyes and sat like that a while. When she was very young—Clem remembered—she’d thought this trick made her invisible. He wondered now if she still did.

  Something else, he thought. What world would he conjure, if he could give her something new?

  ‘When I go into town with my friends,’ Elaine said, her eyes still shut, ‘Mum thinks it’s all silly teas and hair-dos and gossip—I know she does, Dad. But they do things, those women. Two are training to be teachers. One is training as a doctor. One goes bushwalking—on her own—and draws pictures of the plants, the rocks she sees. They take courses and hear lectures—they read things and think things. Their world—’ she opened her eyes and frowned at where she was, ‘—is not like this. And Gerald’s lovely, and Gerald says, get a hobby. But a hobby . . .’ She was smacking the flat of her hand against the side of her head; the noise was awful. ‘A hobby is not what I need.’

  He was with her then, stilling her hands and holding her close. He took deep breaths, the way he and Elsie used to when the kids were small, and hurt or scared, and needed to be calmed down. It took longer than it used to, but at last he heard her breathe in time with him.