Elsie watched the rocky coastal landscape flash by outside the car window while nerves fluttered about inside her body. Was she nervous because of today’s plans, or because she had felt cripplingly anxious for two weeks? It was hard to tell the difference.
Joseph was driving, and he was talking but Elsie wasn’t paying attention. Instead, she was thinking as she looked at the back of Thomas’s near-bald head in the seat in front of her, and as she reached across to take Aida’s hand, that they should have done this years ago.
It wouldn’t be legal, of course. One man and his one wife – that was the law. But it would mean something to them. What did an official piece of paper, a record in the registry office, really matter? The signature of an authorised registrar wouldn’t make their love for each other any stronger, any more legitimate in their eyes.
Only hours after Thomas’s garden proposal, Millie and her middle daughter, Jasmine had swept in, laden with armfuls of glossy bridal magazines. ‘Leave it to us!’ they cried, and set about with fevered murmurings over the kitchen table, paper strewn about them like the wreckage from a small grenade explosion. Over outdoors versus indoors, afternoon or dusk, the coast or the river or the vineyards, they had argued and laughed and implored their elders to leave it all to us. For two weeks they strode in and out of the house at all hours of the day and night, carrying swatches of fabric or slices of cake. All Elsie, Aida and Thomas had to do was show up.
So now, after all the decisions had been made and the weather forecast pored over, and Arthur and his family had touched down on South Australian soil, Joseph drove them the two-hour trip up the coast, with the rest of the family following in convoy. At the small beachside town, they arrived at the local caravan park and checked into their cabins. Joseph’s car crawled down the narrow paved drive, between sprinklers juddering over strips of lawn and sagging lengths of electrical cords tethering caravans to power outlets while aging, shirtless men reclined in folding chairs and stared unashamedly. Ensuite cabin numbers 6, 7 and 8 – all booked under the name ‘Mullet’ – were down the back of the park, and they spent the afternoon getting ready together, darting in and out of each other’s cabins like worker ants. Elsie was amazed at how big a crowd of only twelve could seem when they were all so busy and jolly.
Eventually they were dressed and ready, and piled back into the cars for the short drive to the coast.
It was a beautiful day, the sun lazing in its sheet of gauzy sky. The parkland nestled atop a low cliff where the land rose up from a meandering crescent of beach. Overlooking the sea was a tree-lined stretch of lawn, studded with picnic tables and stretches of blossoming tea-tree.
Thomas, looking as dashing as the day he had married Elsie in 1960, was dressed in a lightweight, dark navy suit over an open-collared shirt. Elsie wore a two-piece skirt suit in a colour somewhere between blushing peach and mushroom. It brought out the blue in her eyes, Jasmine had said earlier in the cabin, as she handed her a small bouquet of dark red rose buds.
As they stepped out of Joseph’s car, Aida held up her hem and Elsie chuckled again at the heel of her shoes. ‘I can’t wait to see you walk across the grass in those,’ she said.
Aida smiled so broadly that for a second, Elsie forgot Thomas was ill. Aida’s long dress was made of a dark emerald satin, cut to hug the curves she still had, even in her seventies. Strands of silver draped around her throat, and her hair, a shameless steely silver, shone in glossy waves down the sides of her neck.
The breeze came straight across the surface of the ocean, tossed up the cliffs to finger their hair and leave a fine salt spray on their skin. Sun warmed the sap in the cypress and the trees gave off a fresh scent that reminded Elsie of camping, of hot evenings eating fish and chips.
Nerves clutched again at Elsie’s belly and she wanted to laugh aloud. Fancy after all this time feeling nervous about fifteen minutes in front of their children and grandchildren. But looking at them all in a group like that, all dressed up and merry, it was so bittersweet that Elsie knew she would not get through the ceremony without making a weepy mess of herself.
Although she had made a promise to Thomas, Elsie couldn’t help but glance feverishly about the trees. Would she know, when she saw?
Gripping hands, with Elsie in the middle, the three made their way across the lawn to where their family gathered at a low stone fence at the edge of the cliff: Millie and Joseph and their three children; Arthur and his Pommie wife, Jane, and their two children.
Dappled in the shade, their family stood in fine dresses and strappy heels, smart suits and ties. Arthur and Joseph wore reflective sunglasses and held bottles of craft beer, Millie and Jane cradled tall glasses of sparkling wine and the girls had flowers in their hair. Laughter floated up into the boughs of the cypresses, the jovial notes snatched up by the briny breeze and carried out to sea. They were greeted by smiling faces, furtively wiped tears and raised glasses.
At the fence, Arthur’s eldest, Cara, wearing a long pearlescent dress that pooled on the grass about her feet, was seated on a folding chair with her arms draped over a guitar on her knee. She gave them a wink and began to strum a tune Elsie didn’t recognise, but that didn’t matter, because it was a beautiful song and would play in Elsie’s mind for days. (She would hear it on the radio a few weeks later, and she and Aida would shriek with excited recognition and Thomas would grumble about the lack of peace an old man could get in his dying bloody days.)
Elsie took one last final, darting look about the park, but she still didn’t see anything.
In front of their children and grandchildren, Thomas read his vows first. He declared his love for his wife Elsie, and then for Aida, and formally promised his heart to her to hold. He took her as his wife in as many words. Then it was Aida’s turn, and she told Thomas that he had been hers for many years, and thanked him for bringing Elsie to her.
Finally, it was Elsie’s turn. The sheet of paper she had typed up shook in her hands. She cleared her throat and glanced up at her family. Millie wiped away a tear and gave her an encouraging smile.
‘I, Elsie Mullet, take thee, Aida Glasson, to be my wife,’ she said. ‘To have and to hold, in sickness and in health.’
The formal marriage vows had been her own idea. At first Millie had frowned. ‘You have to say something contemporary, Mum,’ she said. But Elsie had insisted. She wanted the same vows she had exchanged with Thomas. She wanted Aida to experience that.
‘Forsaking all others,’ she said. ‘For as long as we both shall live.’
The guitar strummed, Cara’s notes rolling into the breeze with the sniffs and sobs from the small group.
‘So,’ Thomas said, at another visual nudge from Millie, ‘I don’t have power vested in me by any state or god or what have you. But I do have some power myself. And that’s pretty good, I reckon. I’ve had a long and happy life so I must have done something right. I’ve said it a thousand times over the years – I’m a damn lucky man.’ A laugh went through the group. ‘So by the power vested in the three of us,’ Thomas finished, ‘I pronounce us wife, and wife, and husband.’
He grinned at them. ‘You can kiss the bride.’
And then Elsie kissed Aida, and her lips felt as soft and warm as the day Aida had kissed her beneath the pepper tree, all those years ago.
Her husband’s wife. Her wife.
*
A swarm of hugs and kisses, rose petals littering their shoulders. Laughter; already the men’s voices had grown beery-boisterous, ringing out over the park.
On a table in the shade, Millie and Jane were unwrapping plates of food, calling them over. The children raced past, jostling and elbowing each other, diving on the food like footballers over a loose ball.
Watching them, Elsie felt a hand on her elbow. Thomas.
‘See her?’ he whispered.
Elsie’s heart banged and she whirled around. ‘No, I’ve been looking. Where?’
‘She’s been watching from her car. But now she’s there – by the wall.’
Elsie looked, and now she saw. Standing a way off, by the wall at the cliff, she appeared as a single, unremarkable person, taking in the view of the ocean.
‘And you’re certain?’
‘Yes.’
‘But how do we know –?’
‘She found the paperwork. The original records. It’s all there.’
Elsie’s knees weakened.
He lifted his hand and waved, and Elsie saw her nod. Jacqueline March walked towards them, her long floral dress skimming the grass, a cardigan about her shoulders. As she drew closer, Elsie saw the one empty sleeve, a small hand held at her chest.
Aida appeared beside them, holding a glass of wine. She was laughing. ‘If you want anything to eat, you’d better hurry up. I just watched Samuel swallow a drumstick without even chewing it. It’s like the kids haven’t eaten in . . . what are you two whispering about?’
The woman was closer. Oh, yes. Now Elsie knew it, too. Those green eyes were unmistakable.
Thomas turned to Aida.
He said, ‘My love, there’s someone who’d like to meet you.’