Thomas was worried about Elsie.
Not overwhelmingly worried – more like a mild level of concern. The kind of sticky apprehension one feels before a routine doctor’s visit: it’s likely everything is fine, but one can’t help but niggle over possible unknowns. For the past week Elsie had been absent-minded, distant. Off-colour. When she made tea Tuesday night, a layer of casserole had burned itself to the bottom of the pot – thick clumps of chewy brownish matter had nestled on Thomas’s plate alongside his buttered bread. When she was making the coffee on Thursday morning, she stared out the kitchen window for several minutes between adding the milk and the sugar; his coffee had been lukewarm and too sweet – she had unknowingly sweetened it twice. And yesterday she had attempted to mop up a spilled cup of tea with an empty, dry bucket.
So by Saturday morning, when Thomas had the day off and slept late as usual, he’d awoken and rolled over to cuddle his wife – as was their weekend routine – only to discover her side of the bed was empty.
Of all of Elsie’s unusual behaviours over the past few days, her absence in their Saturday morning bed was the most unsettling. Didn’t Elsie love their weekend morning lie-ins? The way he would stroke her back and nuzzle into the space between her jaw and her collarbone and tell her how beautiful she was?
So what in the blazes was she doing banging around in the lounge room at 6.50am?
‘Elsie? What in the blazes are you doing?’ Thomas stood in the lounge room in his robe and watched his wife hammer nails directly into the plaster. She wore a knitted jumper over the top of her nightdress.
She said, ‘Hanging some pictures.’
‘But it’s Saturday, we normally lie in together.’
Tap – tap – tap –
‘I don’t think you should –’
Crash. The hammer went straight through the wall.
Elsie dropped the hammer and it bounced harmlessly on the carpet. She flung down the handful of nails she’d been holding, scattering them into a starburst.
Thomas picked up the hammer and inspected the jagged hole in the plaster. ‘That’s quite a hole. What are you wanting to hang?’ He turned to Elsie with a grin on his face but was dismayed to see his wife sobbing.
‘Never mind, love,’ he said, putting an arm about her shoulder. ‘Forget the wall. I’ll fix it later. How about we make a cup of tea?’
Elsie let Thomas guide her into the kitchen. He filled the kettle and set it on the stove while Elsie spooned tea leaves into the pot. Then he sat down at the kitchen table while Elsie waited for the water to boil.
Of course, Thomas missed the baby, too. Over and over he upbraided himself – how could he miss something that had never existed? But it was there. An uncertain kind of grief, a not-quite longing for what could have been. Perhaps they both needed a distraction. To take their minds off it and help them move on. After all, it had been – how long? – at least two months since Elsie’s incident.
‘My love,’ he said, ‘how about tomorrow we pack a picnic and take a drive into the hills? The weather is fining up. Mr Bagnoli told me about this lovely spot . . . Else?’
The kettle was whistling; Elsie was staring out the window.
*
Picnicking in the hills on a glorious spring day was bound to cheer Elsie up. Whatever malaise had come over her the past week would surely dissolve beneath that gorgeous curve of blue sky, with the gladdening sounds of the magpies and wattle birds – the opportunity not to think of all her jobs in the home, if only for a few hours.
Thomas reassured himself with these things as he navigated the car through the steep and winding roads traversing the hills. Dodging potholes the size of milk crates, slowing to a crawl and sticking to the rocky edges around blind hairpin turns, he brought them to a clearing in the vast expanse of cream-trunked gums and scrubby acacias. They got out of the car and Thomas whistled; the sound echoed out into air sharp with eucalyptus. Elsie gave a vague smile.
‘Should we sit in the sun?’ Thomas took the blanket from the boot of the car along with the esky, and they wandered down a grassy slope to the edge of the trees, where the valley stretched out below them. The tops of the gum trees rippled in the breeze as the wattles cast the last of their yellow blossom to the ground. Thomas spread the blanket in a pool of sunlight.
Elsie took out the sandwiches while Thomas poured sweet milky tea from the thermos. They ate in a silence that Thomas told himself was easy, that conversation was spare between them because they were listening to the wind moving through the casuarinas like a flute and the young magpies calling to their parents. But when the sandwiches were finished, and Elsie had turned down the orange he offered to split with her, he rustled up some courage.
‘Is everything okay?’ he asked her. ‘You seem faraway lately.’
Elsie crumbled a bread crust between her fingers and dropped it onto the grass for the ants. ‘Everything’s fine,’ she told him.
He wanted to believe her. Anxiety at even asking the question knotted in him and her dismissal of his concern felt like an act of mercy. Although the lines in her brow and the half of a sandwich she had left uneaten, and the way she jumped when he spoke, as though she’d been caught her with her hand in someone’s wallet, continued to gnaw at him. The picnic wasn’t grand enough, he decided. Too quiet. They needed an activity more energetic, bigger. A few weeks after they had moved into their marital home, they had invited some of his colleagues and a few neighbours over as a house-warming party. He recalled Elsie’s bright laughter as virtual strangers handed her gifts of platters and butter dishes, as plates of melon balls and cheeses on toothpicks were passed around, as second and third beers were opened. His wife hadn’t known anyone well, but despite feeling shy she had glowed and smiled and chatted. How long ago was that now? He decided he had let them become closeted and self-pitying. Tucked away on their quiet street and grieving a baby that never was.
‘Let’s throw a dinner party,’ he said. ‘Have some of the neighbours over.’
A frown crossed her face. ‘I don’t know.’
‘Nothing too fancy. We’ll do a barbecue. What do you think?’
‘Well . . .’
‘Come on, love. It’s been ages. It’ll be fun! I know Mr and Mrs Adelman are keen to see how the garden is coming along . . .’
She brushed the crumbs from her hands. ‘You’d better fix that hole in the plaster, then.’
Relieved, he smiled widely. ‘Right away, my love,’ he said. ‘How about this Friday?’