‘It’s not ever going to be easy for you, Elise,’ life had warned Marjorie’s mother. ‘I’m sorry, but you can’t have everything. I have given you things which are so marvellous they could topple you over. My job, therefore, is to make sure you are well balanced with hard things,’ it whispered as it went about gathering for Elise those particular terrors of hers.
Not that Marjorie really knew anything about that early on, because what could Elise tell of such things to those small, naive daughters of hers? So as far as Marjorie was concerned, there was nothing rickety back then. Those years were jammed full of steadiness. ‘Sing us a going-to-sleep song, please, Mum,’ her big sister Ruby would ask when Elise was tucking them into bed. And Elise would do just that. She hardly ever said no. She would sit herself down on the end of someone’s small bed with its smoothed-down chenille bedspread. Those grey eyes would look at each of the two girls in turn. Elise would smile, and she would drift off as she sang: ‘The Skye Boat Song’, or ‘Swing Low, Sweet Chariot’, or ‘Nessun Dorma’, or ‘I’ll Take You Home Again, Kathleen’, or ‘Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien’. But those small girls were also drifting off, so they weren’t in any position to notice their drifting mother.
These were the years when the city was soft and placid, and the three of them were at the kitchen table with the lace curtains moving gently and the door open to the backyard vegetable patch. When Elise had her wooden drawing box on the table. And the pencils and charcoals and pens and papers were spread in the sweet disorder of creation. ‘Sit still, Marjorie,’ Elise would say, her eyes studying Marjorie perched on the other side of the laminex table. ‘I can’t draw you if you keep wriggling. Why can’t you sit still like Ruby?’ There was never any drifting there with the pencils and paper.
Or when the distant salty haze swaddled their late Sunday mornings, and their house shimmered with the smell of a fresh brew. ‘Elise, your coffee is ready,’ Marjorie’s father would be calling down the hallway to her parents’ bedroom, where Ruby and Marjorie were tiny and contented in that big bed on either side of their mother. Where Marjorie could hear the distant trams, comfortable in their clattering and calling. And the air all around slow and secure from the smell of coffee; and warming asphalt; and clanking, stinking garbage tins holding their carefully rolled, damp newspaper offerings waiting patiently for the pre-dawn Monday morning garbo run. ‘Thank you, Bill,’ her mother would call back, as they smiled and lay there.
Marjorie loved it all. All that art. All those beautiful songs suspended on the melancholy breath of Elise’s wonderful voice. ‘Nessun Dorma’ was Marjorie’s favourite. Which, if she had been paying proper attention later on, Marjorie would have realised was a problem. Given that it was a tenor’s aria, not a contralto’s. And that those small girls were requesting a lullaby and the song was called ‘None Shall Sleep’. And that Princess Turandot was crystal clear beautiful and very good at killing anyone who tried to love her. Just like a salt lake in the Mallee. But Marjorie didn’t know anything about the Mallee then. So she would not have understood at all if Elise had taken the time to confide her innermost fears of haphazard personal tarnishment. And Marjorie wouldn’t have believed her mother then, anyway.
Others believed it, though. ‘That Elise is a bit too highly strung, don’t you think?’ neighbours would whisper.
‘She is tender. Those nerves of hers take advantage,’ family and friends would say, nodding at each other, when Elise was not about.
But both neighbours and family knew more about Elise than the threat of nerves being strung too high. They all knew that Elise had talent, and the magnitude of Elise’s talent was never in question. So they were blithe – all those friends, neighbours, family roundabout Elise. Every one of them truly believed those remarkable talents of hers could defeat anything. Even though Elise was never so sure. But what could she do?
And what of these talents of Elise? Those matters of small human glory that seemed so capable of blotting out to the world the truth of herself? ‘You will study opera, and piano,’ Elise’s father had told her.
‘But I prefer painting and drawing,’ Elise said.
‘No,’ he replied. ‘That is for bohemians. With opera you will go far. We can see it in you.’
‘I don’t know,’ said Elise. What can you see in me? she wondered. What if I go too far? she thought.
Elise was not at all like Marjorie’s father. She was not at all like Bill. For one thing, Elise made her debut and Bill didn’t. For another thing, Elise had to be taught how to dance and Bill didn’t. Marjorie knew all about that because she’d asked one day while sitting in the kitchen among the strewn finery of her mother’s decorations for the inaugural debutante ball: ‘Did you do your deb, Mum?’
‘No, I did not, Marjorie,’ Elise replied. ‘I made my debut. A lady makes her debut at a debutante ball. She does not do a deb.’
Marjorie shrugged. ‘Did ya have to learn how to do ballroom dancing to do your deb?’
‘Yes. I was given dancing lessons.’
‘Dad must have done his deb too then?’
‘No. Your father never made his debut. Why do you ask?’
‘Well, Dad dances a whole lot better than you do, so he must have had lessons.’
‘Your father never had dance lessons. No one around here had dance lessons, before now.’
‘Well, how come everybody can dance then?’
‘They are self-taught, Marjorie.’
‘Well, why have a deb then?’
‘Because there is much more to making your debut than dancing lessons. There are deportment and speech lessons. There is etiquette to learn. Your grandfather was very strict about it all. A young lady making her debut is undertaking her introduction to society. She is presented to the world at her debutante ball,’ Elise said to that. She paused for a bit. ‘It’s not quite the same thing here,’ she then said.
But even though, in later years, when Marjorie was made to understand the fundamental difference between a deb and a debut, she didn’t really know of the magnitude of first appearances that a person could undertake. Or of a life such as Elise’s that was lived in the years before. A life that was not at all like Bill’s life. A life lived within the orbits of various debuts. Like when Elise sang her first principal opera role. ‘Your singing was wonderful, Elise. We will celebrate. We will have tea in the botanic gardens,’ said her father of Elise’s prima donna debut. So Elise did. With her mother and father, with their hats and gloves and pearls. There in the cool of the cafe. There in the gardens aflush with their rhododendrons and their gardenias. Sitting poised and still in her cashmere twin set, while her parents drank their tea, and she sipped her coffee. From china you could see through. How could Marjorie know any of that?
Bill didn’t know of it either. His was a world that expected you to get on with it: to toddle, as soon as you were able, onto the dance floor and figure it out for yourself. He didn’t have any experience with debuts back then. And he knew nothing at all of any prima donnas. Bill first laid eyes on Elise at his factory. Then he heard her. ‘We have invited a young lady here today to sing to you all,’ the boss had announced. ‘In appreciation for all your unstinting efforts over the past couple of years. You can all be proud as we do our bit once more for the Commonwealth.’ Because Bill had been working for ten years in the city now to save the farm back home and that was plenty long enough for the world to appreciate that the War to End All Wars hadn’t sufficiently done its job. And that they were all obliged to think about going back to have another go.
Bill turned around and there she was. Standing with the boss in the middle of the factory floor. She carried a slight and hesitant beauty and reminded him of his horses left behind on the farm – beautiful and shy, nervy and flighty at once. Elise sang ‘Danny Boy’ and ‘We’ll Meet Again’ and ‘Lili Marlene’, and other songs in a foreign language that he had never heard before. Bill was transfixed, and his essential war effort truck tyres and insulated electrical cables were left unfinished where he stood. ‘I will marry her,’ he declared.
Bill wasn’t one for worrying about any niceties of life, like where a person’s proper station in society should be, so he barged around to backstage one night and told Elise what he thought. ‘You sang at my factory and I have been to several of your concerts since then. I have never seen or heard the likes. I don’t know much about these operas and these foreign languages. But I know you,’ he said.
And Elise noticed that Bill’s eyes were blue and green at once, like the sea on one of its soft and wistful days. And like the sea on one of those days, his eyes were translucent. She could look right through to the bottom of him. So she knew that Bill had tallied up everything about her. And still he didn’t seem to mind. He was not like all the other men.
But even so, and despite the small glories of her talents, Elise was ignorant about many things. She probably couldn’t even boil an egg. She certainly couldn’t kill a chook and pluck it. Bill knew how, though, so he cared for Elise and that settled it. And Bill was from the Mallee, which meant he didn’t muck around either. He asked Elise to marry him – even though she was a non-Catholic. And out of his league.
Their parents didn’t approve. ‘She’s a flamin’ non-Catholic. And she’s from the city. What does she know about anything?’ Bill’s father roared.
Bill said nothing.
‘He is not educated. He does not understand the finer things of life. So how can he understand you?’ her father asked.
Elise smiled.
Bill and Elise had as good a wedding as you can muster when you are bereft of a Catholic priest, education or standing. It is a fact that non-Catholic dignitaries, operatic scholars, artists and others attended. And that a wedding march was played on a quietly magnificent organ, as light streamed through the understated splendour of the stained-glass window behind the pulpit. Speeches were made and the couple was toasted. Bill promised Elise’s father to look after Elise. And Elise’s father nodded. Because despite the dexterity of talent to win out over high stringing, he needed Bill to do just that. Even if he was a Roman Catholic.
It was an absolute fact that Elise had a magical and marvellous wedding dress full of lace and crystal beads, because Ruby and Marjorie found it many years later, and Elise confirmed it. It was a fact, too, noted by the Catholics and the non-Catholics alike, that Bill and Elise were good for each other. And despite this feeble non-Catholic start to things, they were happy. But Marjorie didn’t know any of that.
One day Elise came home from the doctor’s and told Bill she was going to have a baby. Their first child was born one warm January morning. She was bonny and beautiful and knowing. She had auburn curls and confident eyes. Bill and Elise called her Ruby because she was a precious gem. And, like a precious gem, they got Ruby out and polished her up. They dressed her and showed her off. And their friends and family smiled because Ruby was indeed beautiful.
A second daughter was born a year later. This time in March fly season and in Lent and right before a second go at a world war. And it was not so much like the magical birth of Ruby because her parents knew what was in store – and because this baby resisted life from the outset and wouldn’t be born. She eventually arrived, screaming in anger and protest at the forced entry to life outside the comfort and safety of a womb. The doctor was not impressed with Elise or the baby. ‘This,’ he said to Elise, ‘has been a very difficult delivery and your insides are now ruined and you are not to have any more children.’
This child was not like Ruby. She was not pretty. She was vague and absent-minded – even before she needed to be. She had no hair. ‘This looks like a stubborn one,’ said Bill, staring into the hospital bassinette. Elise didn’t say anything, probably on account of being exhausted from nearly dying in the giving-of-life process, and probably on account of worrying. They called this daughter Marjorie just because it was a name they liked.
Marjorie could see Ruby knew things, so she attached herself to Ruby, quietly and sneakily. She stuck close. Like mistletoe on a Mallee tree. And despite Marjorie’s alignment with March flies and Lent and a world war that bettered its predecessor, life was good. It was soft and kind and had its own rhythm. Until one day Bill got a call from Aunty Agnes. ‘Your mother is slipping away. She won’t last,’ Aunty Agnes told him. ‘Your father called me on the telephone,’ she said by way of explanation and with no explanation at all for why Bill’s father had not thought to call Bill himself. So Bill, with his suitcase and a thermos of hot black tea, headed back to the Mallee.
*
The sun was low when Bill stopped to open the farm gate. Dust kicked up by the car insisted on hanging in the air around him. You could see it, too, stubborn and rusty in a line above the road for miles back, watching from a distance the closer dust jostling around the car. Bill ignored it. A bunch of galahs startled at the sound, erupting into the air from a paddock over the road. Bill tipped his face to the sky and watched the pink and grey flying overhead. He turned to drag the wire fence gate, with its line of barbed wire and bit of a Mallee stick prop, through its arc across the track. Then he got back in the car to head for the house.
But his mother slipped away faster than he could drive and died before he arrived. His father was on the front verandah and Bill could tell straight away that loneliness had already marched into the house with its own fat suitcase, and he was too late. ‘Your mother’s gone,’ Pa said. Bill nodded. He did what he could in the face of that loneliness and grief. He leant forward and shook his father’s hand.
So Bill found himself once again in that little wooden Catholic Church of his childhood in the Mallee. With his sisters and brothers-in-law, aunties and uncles, and all the other Catholics from roundabout. And with his father. Still tall and stern, but with his chin up. Now gaunt and afraid as well.
Low, sad Latin was said but Bill could not remember any of it. Instead Bill remembered the dust that came to pay its respects – drifting past the light of the amber church windows, moving softly through the gloom of the small church towards the heavy, seductive incense smoke. The candles putting in their bit with their melting and burning beeswax. The clink of the ecclesiastical chains as the priest swung the censer back and forth and across and back over the coffin. And afterwards, outside, the caress of the warm dry perfect autumn day. It was a good and honourable funeral when all was said and done. It paid due and Catholic respect. Before all the cars drove single file and slowly out to the cemetery, with its scrolled metal-and-wire gate and peppercorn trees, and stopped at the Catholic section.
It was time then, there at the bare and stony graveside, to pay due and proper respect to Pa and the family. The women hugged each other and patted hands and cried a bit and gathered in groups, clutching hankies, and talked about Bill’s mum. The men, with hats on heads, faced each other and maintained a time-honoured four-foot distance. They shook hands and nodded. A slight twist of the right side of the head. A lowering of the chin towards the left shoulder. ‘Pa’ or ‘Bill’ would be said. Which was acknowledged with a returning nod and name.
The paying of respect moved on to the local hall, for the eating of sandwiches and scones and lamingtons and the drinking of very hot tea. In solicitous and practical custom, prepared by the non-Catholic women for their Catholic friends in need. And by the Catholic women for their non-Catholic friends. Before finally, the paying of respect concluded with a wake at the local pub.
Bill stayed for a couple of days, sleeping in his old bed with its striped ticking and kapok mattress. Then he stood on the front verandah, his tired brown suitcase packed and waiting in the boot of the car. His hat already on the back window ledge. The thermos filled again with strong black sugary tea and lying on the front seat. His father stood beside him – tall and straight and lonely. His pipe clamped in his mouth. His eyes staring ahead.
Bill reached for his own tobacco and a packet of papers.
‘What’s wrong with a pipe?’ his father growled.
Bill didn’t answer. He smoked his smoke and stared at the farm track leading back to Elise and Ruby and Marjorie and his good life in the city.
*
And that good life stayed good for a fair while after the funeral, until one day Pa called Bill on the telephone. ‘I won’t be saying much,’ he said. ‘It’s long distance. Can’t be extending every three minutes.’ But Pa then straight away forgot about the expense of a long-distance call. He stopped and said nothing for a while – wasting precious time and money. Bill waited. He heard his father draw a breath before he went on to say: ‘I’m not too old, mind. But a man can’t manage a farm on his own these days. You’re not needed there in the city now that blasted war is over. Your sisters can’t do it. What does a woman know about farming? And anyway, they’ve got their own husbands with their own farms to worry about. But a farm is not for losing, don’t forget, and a real man doesn’t shirk his responsibilities. Not like a woman might.’
Pa was right. It was a short telephone call after all. Over before it hardly started. With Elise and the girls in their lounge room in the city, all warm and innocent and unsuspecting. Pa hung up. And Bill hung up. Pa asked no questions, but Bill knew that really he had. Pa had asked Bill to go back to the Mallee and take over working the farm. To save the farm one more time.
Marjorie didn’t know any of this either. And what things she did know about were discoloured and bleached by now. She had soggy memories. Memories crusted and calcified so the truth of them was hard to locate. Memories that were swamped – like a salt lake had overtaken them. One of those salt lakes that had been rudely woken from primal seabed slumber by the uninvited. That then seeped up from under the clay and the sand to rage savagely and silently against the ignorance of the intruders.
But one of the things Marjorie could remember was running. There was no calcification on this memory. This memory wasn’t soggy. It was Ruby who started it and Marjorie, as she did with most things handed to her by Ruby, took to it with a great and thoughtless joy. She never questioned if they were ever running from or running to. The reason was of no consequence then. Ruby would provide the answers if Marjorie ever wanted to know.
As for Ruby, she didn’t take her decision lightly. Other negotiations were tried at first, around reasonable time and attention. ‘Open the door, let us in,’ she would call as they sat on the back step, hands on knees, staring at the backyard.
‘When are you going to get out of bed?’ she would cry from the kitchen, where their pendulum legs busied themselves ticking against the chair, their elbows plastered to the laminex.
And it would be uncalled-for to suggest Elise didn’t try. She made an appearance. She fed them and dressed them and combed their hair and put in hair ribbons. For a while. But Ruby had a fair idea Elise was not going to be able to sustain that sort of effort for the long term. And she was right. Before too long, bits of Elise started to fade. And Ruby had Marjorie – all vague and thoughtless and clinging on like a strangle vine – to look after. So Ruby had a go at things. ‘Come on, we’re going up the street,’ she would say. And they would be off. Away from Elise and her pitiful melancholy non-compliance. Looking for others that might do.
They ran, day after day. Sometimes they squeezed through the loose fence paling at the end of the backyard and ran through blocks crowded with scotch thistles, massing staunch and stubborn, looking down on Ruby and Marjorie and shaking their heads in the breeze each time they passed. They ran, with nothing above but the thin ribbon of sky carefully resting between the tops of the thistles, and no sound except the quiet thud of their shoes on the dirt. Nothing other than Ruby with her auburn curls streaming down her back, bouncy and gleaming in the sun. And that was all Marjorie needed.
Sometimes they ran out their front gate and straight across the warm asphalt road with never a thought to look. Fearless in their small child ignorance. Running to the houses and yards on the other side of the street. Ruby taking charge. Marjorie following. Sometimes they got down on their stomachs and squeezed under closed gates – ruining their dresses and patent leather shoes; leaving hair ribbons forlorn and flapping on the wires. Ruby would stand on tiptoes then and ring doorbells. And Marjorie would put her head back and gaze up at people in doorways, so tall they didn’t have any heads on. These grownups would say hello to Ruby and Marjorie and the girls would go inside, and then Elise would be there and the talk was soft and Elise would take her daughters home.
After a while, Ruby and Marjorie started to run in bare feet, and without ribbons in their hair.
‘What about socks and shoes?’ asked Marjorie.
‘Who cares about socks and shoes?’ Ruby replied.
‘Shouldn’t we have our hair combed? What about hair ribbons?’
‘What’s a hair ribbon going to do?’ Ruby called into the warm wind.
And it was true, Marjorie had no idea what a hair ribbon was going to do. So there they were, feet bare along the warm footpaths, the asphalt soft and melting. The tarred road welcoming with its summer softness. And they were still fearless and ignorant. Hair free of ribbons. Feet free of shoes. Those neighbours talked oddly to Ruby then, asking questions: Where are your socks and shoes? and, Where is your mother?
The neighbours got together one night when everyone had eaten their tea. They invited Bill over and they talked to him about this running. They had all watched Bill and Elise and knew of their decision about the farm. And they were afraid for them – not sure they had made the right decision. But that was a hard conversation to be had and, anyway, they had no right to that conversation on account of them not being from on the land. What did any of them know about the workings of a wheat and sheep farm? But they all did know of some woman or other who was nervy – whose insufficient woman’s disposition made them a sitting duck for bad nerves from time to time. And they all did know about children and running.
Bill sat in the kitchen. He was handed a glass of cold beer – inviting and hospitable in its amber and froth – and he drank it. Placing it carefully between sips on the table’s clean laminex surface – thoughtfully avoiding the tablecloth so he wouldn’t leave a wet beery mark. He took out his tobacco and papers and rolled a smoke. He looked at the faces gathered in the small kitchen.
‘How is Elise?’ the menfolk asked.
‘We don’t see her much anymore,’ the womenfolk said apologetically. ‘Just the girls.’ Watching Bill. ‘Those littlies running around the place on their own . . . Without their socks and shoes . . .’
And the men and women looked at Bill before looking away at their beers or their cups of tea or pausing to examine the thoughtfully pristine tablecloth.
The talk went on for a long time and Bill listened to it all. When, finally, the talk was done and there was nothing more to be said, Bill planted his hands on the laminex and pushed himself up from the table. He thanked everybody and shook the hands of the menfolk before going home. He thought a lot about what the neighbours had said. But he kept packing.
Bill took Elise and Ruby and Marjorie to live in the Mallee. He went back to help Pa run the farm. Just in time for the wheat harvest.