The Last Anniversary

She paints a memory of Enigma when she was a baby and learning to walk. She had such a conceited expression on her little face, as though she were the first person in the universe to crack this walking business. She tottered towards Rose’s arms and Rose said, very quietly, under her breath, so Connie wouldn’t hear in the next room, ‘Come to Mummy. Walk to your Mummy!’

Enigma has forgiven Rose for going public about Alice and Jack. After the immense glory of her seven-minute television appearance with Ray Martin she has discovered a new career as a guest speaker. She goes around to Senior Citizens’ Clubs and Rotary Clubs and Bowling Clubs and gives them the inside story on the Munro Baby Mystery. She likes to wear one of those ‘hands-free’ microphones so she can walk around the audience, sometimes patting her more handsome fans on the shoulder, or even the head, which they don’t seem to mind. She has an appointment book and a new mobile phone, and Rose adores the expression on her face when she speaks to her ‘clients’–it’s exactly the same as her conceited toddler face.

She paints Laura and Margie when they were ten and twelve, showing off their diving skills to her at Sultana Rocks, screaming, ‘Look at this one, Aunt Rose! We’re like swans!’ and then diving in with their skinny arms stretched wide.

Margie is somewhere in Central Australia at the moment. She emails Thomas photos, which he shows to Rose on his computer, photos of red rippled landscapes that stretch on forever and Margie looking relaxed and tanned and in need of a shower, standing in front of a dusty four-wheel drive. It doesn’t look like she’s coming home anytime soon. She made everyone promise not to cook for Ron while she’s away, but of course everybody still does. It’s hard not to feel sorry for him, moping around, doing projects around the house that Margie asked him to do years ago. Rose turned up the other day with a chilli beef casserole to find Thomas there, patiently cooking his father a pepper steak, while Lily crawled around his feet. Meanwhile Laura has moved back into her house on the island and is studying philosophy at the university. Laura is the least philosophical person that Rose knows, so she’s a bit worried she’s not going to get very good marks. Laura is also officially dating the Kook and they all have to pretend to have forgotten that the first time they met him he was trying to blackmail them with an urn full of vacuum-cleaner dust. He’s a pleasant, chatty sort of fellow, but he does have a gambling problem apparently, so you have to be careful. The other day there was a discussion about the star of an old movie and Rose had said to him, ‘I bet you ten dollars it was Katharine Hepburn!’ and was mortified in case he should take her up on the bet and set off his problem again.

Rose sits back up on her knees and takes another deep, satisfying puff on the cigarette. She must tell her friend Marie, who also suffers from horribly painful arthritis, about this new solution. She could invite her over for a cup of tea and some marijuana.

She lies back down on the floor and paints a memory of the children when they were little. Thomas was five, Veronika and Grace were four, and they’d all got very, very dirty playing goodness knows where on the island, and Margie had put them all in a big bubble bath together and Rose helped them make beards and moustaches out of the bubble foam, and their giggles of glee bounced around the bathroom, and Rose had thought, If only we could always keep you this happy just by popping you in a bath! Then again, lately the three of them seem to be about as happy as adults can be, or at least as these particularly prickly adults can be. Veronika has moved in with her new special friend, and sometimes at family events, Rose has observed her just sitting quietly, not saying a word! Of course, it doesn’t last long, but it seems as though Veronika isn’t wrestling with her life like it’s an out-of-control crocodile any more. Thomas will always be a worrier, but he and Debbie are worried at the moment about what sort of pavers they should choose for their new in-ground swimming pool (who would have thought there was so much to say on the subject?) and this seems to be a fairly pleasant problem to worry about, and Lily seems to be a good-natured little thing, who will keep her parents under control. Rose can tell that Thomas will always be somewhat in love with Sophie, but that’s life, isn’t it. Sophie seems to have a few different fellows calling on her at the moment, but more often than not she’s laughing her head off with that nice tall friend of Callum’s, Ed Ripple. Everybody assures Rose that no, they won’t be getting married because Ed isn’t interested in girls, but as far as Rose can see he’s very interested in Sophie and he makes her happy, so who knows what’s going to happen there! Grace, Callum and Jake have moved into their beautiful new home in the mountains, and Grace has finished her next Gublet book, and Rose can see that it’s going to be the most beautiful one yet, and when she went over there for dinner the other night, Grace asked if she’d like to see the dedication, and Rose said, yes, of course, and it said, ‘For Rose, my great-grandmother.’ For all the world to see.

She paints Connie, tall and thin and worried, jabbing away with her stick in the sand as she came up with the idea about Alice and Jack, while Rose lay back and closed her eyes and let her take care of everything. ‘One day,’ Connie had said, ‘we’ll be sweet little old ladies and we’ll forget it didn’t happen the way we said it did.’

She paints her mother, before she got sick, in a beautiful silk dress, with a bell-shaped skirt and an embroidered neckline, the sort of dress she could never afford to wear, the sort of dress Rose would have bought for her from David Jones in the expensive designer part if she could have her back for one day, to show her how lovely life can be when you’ve got enough money.

She paints the river, green and still and mysterious and unrolling into a ribbon of lustrous turquoise crêpe de Chine. She paints the shoes she was wearing the day she went to visit Mr Egg Head to show him their baby. Connie would have had an absolute fit if she’d known her plan. Rose had told her she would take the baby for a walk around the city while she looked in the shop windows, and Connie had wanted to go to the pictures with Jimmy, so she never knew about Rose’s idea to catch a train to his house in Annandale, where Mr Egg Head was at home alone while his wife was out cleaning houses. He’d been retrenched from his job at the department store and he was unshaven and unsmiling, his trouser braces dangling over his shoulders, a stained white collar. It was a bit of a shock after his dapper appearance at the store. Rose followed him into his unpleasant-smelling kitchen and he sat back down and kept shovelling spoonfuls of horrible sludgy porridge into his mouth, and Rose said, ‘I just wanted you to see your daughter,’ and held her up under her armpits. Rose had dressed Enigma in her very best outfit and curled up her hair around her fingertips. The baby gazed around with placid interest, while Mr Egg Head flicked her a sneering glance, snorted, and said with his mouth full, ‘Bloody ugly thing, isn’t she?’