The year turned — there was promise of warmth in the pale sun. We sat in our eyrie above the bay and looked down on the silvered, wrinkled sea and the pink smudges of almond and peach blossom in people’s gardens.
‘When do ducks come back?’ Jo asked. ‘Where have the pelicans been? They ought to have brought us holiday postcards! Ask Josh.’
‘Peter will know.’
‘Oh, Peter!’ she said, ‘all he can think about is that he’s been invited to join the practice for good. That other chap isn’t coming back.’
‘That’s wonderful.’
‘Is it? Now, he says, we can really settle down. He’s gone all clucky and broody — you can practically see the feathers in his beak. “Our Own Home”,’ she said derisively. ‘Choosing wallpaper and putting up curtains! That’s not what I want!’
‘Then what the hell do you want?’
‘I don’t know. I wish I did. All I do know is that I can’t stand being cooped up just being Peter’s wife.’
‘And Deet’s mother,’ I reminded her, coldly.
‘Yes. But what about Jo? What about me?’
She made such a tragic wail of it I could have smacked her.
‘Don’t give me that! You are lucky past your desserts. You have a good, attractive, decent man with a good career for a husband — a lovely, healthy happy-natured child — and all this you don’t want! Most women would thank heaven if they had so much.’
‘Would you?’ she asked, quick as a flash.
‘I might at that,’ I said, surprised to find it was the truth.
She studied my face and groaned. ‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘I never would have thought it but one day you’re going to make a model wife and mother.’
‘Shut up! That’s not what we’re talking about.’
‘No — it’s about what a rotten one I am.’ She started to get upset. ‘But I’m not all bad, honestly, Em. I do care for Peter — in my own way, and I love Perdita. Don’t look so po-faced — I really do. She’s going to be a great person and I’m sure we’ll get on like a house on fire when she’s older — but just now — feeding with a spoon, potty-training — it’s so boring and she needs so much attention …’
‘She needs a pram and a cot,’ I said, to shut her up. ‘When are we going shopping? I’d rather you did it now, before I leave.’
‘But you won’t be leaving!’
‘Of course I will. Don’t you realise how long I’ve been with you already? I’m not your Siamese twin.’
‘But what would I do without you?’
‘What would George expect you to do?’ It was hitting below the belt but I didn’t care.
‘Now you’ve done it,’ she said, tears beginning to stream down her face. ‘Now you’ve really done it!’
I had too. Her grief was frighteningly real.
‘Oh, Em,’ she said brokenly. ‘You’ve no idea how empty I feel — there’s a great big hole here …’ She clutched at herself, heart and belly and then struck her forehead with her fist,’… and here.’
All my old affection for her welled up, she looked so beaten, so extinguished that I became very near tears myself, and there I was, with my arms round her in an anguish of love.
‘Everything is going to be all right,’ I comforted her. ‘We’ll make it all right!’
We clung together, dripping and sniffing.
‘What a pair we are!’ I said trying to loosen myself from her grip and ease the tension. But she clung on.
‘We’re still a pair though, aren’t we? Aren’t we? Please say we are!’
‘Of course,’ I said, ‘of course we are.’
I was as incapable as Peter of being hard on her.
She insisted on buying a very large pram. ‘Like Royalty,’ she said, ‘people will think I am a nanny.’
‘Room for two in there.’
‘No way! Peter has said it’s better not to be an only child, but I told him you and I were and asked him what was wrong with us.’
‘Did he tell you?’
‘No — he suffers from terminal politeness.’
And there we were laughing. But not at you, I promised Peter in my mind.
I understood that Robert might visit us soon so, while we bought the pram I bought two lovely cashmere sweaters.
‘Getting the taste for luxury aren’t you?’ Jo asked, grinning. ‘Now you need some silk scarves to go with them.’
Cashmere and silk — expensive, tasteful, beautiful. I was assembling my armour.
Two weeks went by and there was still no sign of him. ‘Soon’ seemed to mean as little to him as it did to Jo’s mother. I was annoyed to find I would have to wash one of my new sweaters — I had wanted it to be pristine — I had wanted — oh, what the hell.
I washed it carefully, fearfully, and laid it out to dry, patted flat, on towels, away from the light on my bedroom floor.
‘Just like your mother,’ Jo scoffed.
I was discovering that being like her — in some ways — didn’t hurt.
I was ringing her up regularly now and our conversation had become easier.
Jo at least was having no difficulty occupying her time. She had taken up a botanical crusade and was compiling a list of plants indigenous to our neck of the woods, with descriptions, so that people would know what to plant.
‘Aren’t we awful?’ she said, showing me a magazine article. ‘Just read this Em! Plant-breeders are so busy mucking about with breeding double flowers instead of singles that they’ve made them the wrong shape for bees to get at their nectar. They fall off the big, floppy petals. And the poor plants get discouraged and don’t produce as much nectar — and, imagine this, the flowers become sterile! It should be stopped!’
The laptop had come into its own and she was now a tiger for Internet.
‘I am going to be the Australian Fauna-through-Flora,’ she declared one morning.
‘What’s that?’
‘Some woman in England has started a movement. Over there she encourages people to keep part of their garden for local wild flowers —that way the local insects and all the ecology benefit. She has made a database for the whole country — you only have to ring up and you’ll be told what to plant.’
‘And that’s what you plan to do is it? Be the “Wise Woman for Australia”?’
‘Why not?’
‘Have you noticed the size of the place lately?’
‘Trust you! You have to start somewhere and at least I’m starting!’
I had to grant her that. The trouble was she was very good at ‘starting’ — the difficulty came when she was needed to ‘carry on’.
‘Leave her be,’ Josh said later when I complained about the new whimsy, ‘at least she is occupied’.
Jo’s new obsession made her quite content to sit at the computer with Deet beside her, in her high chair banging a spoon, and that gave me a new freedom.
The habit of going out somewhere — anywhere — with Josh, became established.
I never minded the silences when I was out with Josh. When he was driving he only focussed on driving. I liked that, it made one feel safe. As the car purred along I catalogued the other things I liked about him. His easy assurance, the something about him that made people willing to do what he wanted without him having to urge them, his laid-backness, the controlled fervour of his enthusiasms in such contrast to Jo’s voluble displays — and the evidence in the fine-featured creased face of what a beautiful young man he must have been. I was finding too that when one has kissed a man things are never again quite the same between you — a door has slipped ajar and there has been a glimpse of what may lie beyond. And I liked that feeling — and knowing it was shared — and the knowing that when he looked at me, he saw me. It made me want to be worth seeing.
One day he startled me by suddenly drawing the car into the verge of the road, stopping it, and staring down at me.
‘I’ve got it!’ he said. ‘I’ve always known you reminded me of someone. I couldn’t think who.’
‘So tell me.’
‘You wouldn’t know about her.’
‘Try me.’
‘William Morris’s wife. You probably haven’t heard of him — and certainly not of her.’
What did he take me for! Of course I knew about William Morris. My grandmama had been mad about him. My Will-yum, she called him.
‘Of course I know about him,’ I snapped ‘Famous English designer — nobody like him — my grandmama said he had the biggest mind, heart and imagination any man ever had. An artist with a social conscience — rare as hen’s teeth she said.’
‘But she was Australian I take it.’
‘Of course she was — and so am I but that doesn’t mean …’
I stopped. I wasn’t about to tell him how she had me tracing his designs for her so she could embroider them on cushions, stools, hangings, you name it — and I think she left me her money because I grew to share her passion for him.
‘Anyway … I know about William Morris!’ I said firmly.
‘It seems you do,’ he said, starting to look amused. ‘Now what about his wife?’
‘Oh, her! I can’t be doing with her.’
‘No?’
I knew he was egging me on but now he had got me going it was hard to stop.
I had never cared for the look of that soulful, sensuous, over-lipped woman with the wads of hair that could have done with scissors being taken to them. I hated the paintings of her that Rossetti did because I could just see him slavering over his canvases and gloating over having pinched her from Willyum — and he was supposed to be his best friend.
‘She broke Morris’s heart,’ I said balefully. ‘She really did — and do you know he actually took her back and even then she couldn’t be faithful to him!’
‘You set great store by faithfulness then?’
‘Of course I do! And he actually stayed friends with Rossetti.’
‘You find that remarkable?’
‘Of course I do.’
‘Dear girl,’ he said affectionately and lifted the back of his hand to my cheek. I ducked my head away.
‘I hope you weren’t going to say I look like her!’
‘I wouldn’t dare,’ he said, all smiles.
When I got home Jo confronted me.
‘I can’t believe it,’ she hissed. ‘Peter has told me Josh Winter was once married. He isn’t queer at all. And you must have known. You practically lied to me. You of all people!’
I didn’t know what to say — what could I say? She was right.
For the first time in our lives she was looking at me with positive dislike. It was a horrible moment.
Then, to my relief and surprise, there was the sound of a car drawing up outside.
‘Who the …’ she began.
And then there was the slamming of a car door and the sound of a key in the front lock. My heart began to hammer. Only Robert could have a key. He had come at last. ‘I need to pee,’ I said, and fled.
It took time before I had composed myself enough and felt I looked presentable enough to be able to let myself be seen.
As Robert rose to greet me I felt the wild swoop of joy — despite the dark business suit and citified neatness of hair and beard, he was unchanged — wholly, blessedly himself. He filled the room.
‘Miss Soames,’ he said. ‘Miss So-ames!’ And looked me over with wicked admiration.
‘Hello,’ I said, and stuck out my hand.
The affected bobbing of cheek-to-cheek salutations is not for me — we are not courting birds. Naked palm touched naked palm — his grip was firm and warm.
‘How do you do?’ he asked with hearty formality. ‘I trust I find you well.’
‘Yes, thank you,’ I managed to say. My heart was plunging and God knows what colour I must have become.
‘I’m sorry … I’ve forgotten … I must fetch … Excuse me,’ I said and bolted from the room.
When I came back again, Josie was bringing the coffee tray through from the kitchen. She was still displeased with me. ‘And you never told me how much like George Robert is!’ My already unsteady heart made a downward plunge.
Dear God — please! Don’t let her start …
But I knew entreaties were useless — not when she was looking so alive and alight, so lovely and so eager. Now we were in for real trouble.