The Last Anniversary

The boys are men in their fifties now, but to Rose, as she watches them walk down the aisle, they don’t seem all that different from the four little boys they were. None of them have lost their hair: they still have identical curly mops, like clowns. They were extremely naughty children, always breaking things. You had to watch them like hawks. As they walk down the aisle of the church, each with one shoulder hunched to carry the gleaming coffin, their heads solemnly bent, Rose realises she is still carefully monitoring their behaviour, as if at any moment they’ll let the coffin crash to the ground and go pelting off to play with their water pistols.

Connie was always very good with the boys, whereas Rose felt a bit scared of them and tried to cover it up by acting too strict and schoolmarmish. Connie cooked them enormous meals and she and Jimmy had midnight water fights with them, whooping around the island in the moonlight.

It should be Connie’s own sons carrying the coffin, not Jimmy’s sister’s children. Jimmy should have let her adopt. He’d let her do anything else she wanted. Rose feels a fresh surge of anger, as if it had all happened yesterday. She should have spoken up after the war, when it became clear that Jimmy and Connie would not be contributing to the baby boom. She should have said, ‘Don’t be so stubborn, Jimmy. It doesn’t suit you. Pick something else to be stubborn about, if you must prove yourself a man, but let her adopt a baby for heaven’s sake!’ People thought bringing up Enigma gave Connie all the mothering she needed. Rose was the only one who knew why Enigma wasn’t enough. Rose was the only one who knew, without ever talking about it, how much Connie yearned for her own babies. The problem was that Jimmy got in a bad mood when he learned the truth about Alice and Jack. That was his ace and he played it. Connie should never have told him. It offended his pride. Made him feel silly. ‘You women have all been sniggering behind my back!’ he kept saying.

The coffin passes and Rose looks at her lap. Next to her Enigma is sobbing with abandon into a man’s handkerchief. Ever since she was a baby, Enigma has cried when she’s unhappy and laughed when she’s happy. For a person whose whole life is built on a mystery, she is very un-mysterious. There is nothing enigmatic about Enigma.

The boys lower the coffin onto its pedestal and walk back down the aisle, separating to go to their wives and children. Rose tries to smile at them but they have their heads bowed.

Another song starts.

‘Danny Boy.’

Oh, Connie, really!

The sly old thing. Rose can just imagine her chuckling as she threw that one in. ‘This will get the waterworks going!’ Enigma is now howling like a two-year-old. Like the two-year-old she was. Margie is making soothing sounds. Like the two-year-old she was. Margie was born motherly.

Rose carefully shifts again to see which members of the Funeral Club have turned up and their expert reaction to ‘Danny Boy’. Good Lord. The first person she sees is Mick Drummond, with his ancient bobbing head. Would that man never die? Was he immortal? Was he real? Would he outlive them all? He’d been old for decades, it seemed. Wait till she tells Connie!

She turns back around and sees the coffin again, lustrous black, like a grand piano. It hits her with a horrible lurch that she won’t be eating cinnamon toast tonight at Connie’s kitchen table and telling her all about her own funeral. It is pointless saving up the good bits. Rose’s big sister is lying flat on her back in her good burgundy suit, inside that shiny box, with her face collapsed and her lipstick perfect but somehow not quite right.

I’m the only one left in the Doughty family, thinks Rose. You’ve all abandoned me. She wants to wail and sob and stamp her feet. She is five years old and stuck in a dreadful old woman’s body that aches and creaks. Mum, Dad, Connie! How could you just leave me here all alone? It’s not right. I’m the youngest! I shouldn’t be left here on my own!

21

‘We are here today to celebrate the life of Connie Thrum.’

The priest stands behind the pulpit with hands outspread. He is a fresh-faced boy. No surprises there. Children are running the dashed world, thinks Enigma, while tears slide down either side of her nose, trailing pink rivulets through her face powder. Doctors, policemen, politicians, newsreaders. Children everywhere, acting so important! They think they’ve always been in charge, which is sweet, although sometimes inconvenient, such as when the doctor refuses to give Enigma the prescription she requests and tries to come up with her own ideas, when Enigma knows exactly what it is that she needs. They all take themselves so damned seriously. Sometimes Enigma has to try not to laugh. All this talk about Australia’s ‘aging population’ when anybody with eyes can see it’s not aging, it’s young-ing, or whatever the opposite word to aging is–Connie would know the right word. Connie filled in every single square of the Sydney Morning Herald cryptic crossword puzzle every single day. The clues are all nonsense to Enigma.

Connie was always a real smart woman. Enigma remembers the night they all sat around doing the National IQ Test on television and Connie got the highest score. Ron had been furious and made accusations of cheating, pretending he was being funny but everyone could see right through him. Veronika had accused her father of being a misogynist and Thomas had told Veronika to stop acting like a pseudo lesbian intellectual. Enigma didn’t understand either accusation. Rose had dreamily refused to take part in the IQ test. Luckily Thomas got quite a high score, nearly as high as Connie, which was a relief because ever since Enigma dropped him when he was a baby she has been secretly observing him for signs of brain damage. (Nobody knows about this–she has never told a soul, it wasn’t her fault, he was such a slithery baby!) Even when Thomas went on to study at the university, she never completely relaxed, worrying that perhaps he was some sort of idiot savant.

Enigma leans back and peeks a look down the aisle at Thomas, sitting next to his wife, dull-as-dishwater Deborah, with dear little Lily on her lap. Oh dear, Thomas looks quite stupid today with his mouth hanging open like that. He probably does have a touch of brain damage. Certainly, it was stupid of him not to hold on to Sophie Honeywell, who was so funny and pretty and really enjoyed her food!

Rose hasn’t cried at all, Enigma notices. She is sitting very still, looking at the priest with that gracious blank expression she gets. You can never tell what she’s thinking. That Rose is an odd fish all right, Enigma’s husband Nathaniel used to say.