The Last Anniversary

It was all a bit embarrassing. The Glass Bay police thought it was hilarious.

She and Ron had taken the boat back over to the island in silence. Ron held an icepack to his eye, while Margie steered the boat and looked up at the stars and thought what a funny old world it was.

When they were nearly at the wharf, Ron had removed his icepack for a second and said, ‘Did you know our daughter was a lesbian?’ and Margie had grinned at him and said, ‘Yes, I did. I had a lovely lunch with her and Audrey last week,’ and Ron had said, ‘Oh,’ and pressed the icepack back to his eye.

Now Ron drums his fingers on the kitchen table and says nervously, ‘We could take a trip to Italy, if you like? You and me? A second honeymoon?’

Margie turns around from the sink and looks at him. It’s as if some sort of blurry substance has been peeled from her eyes and she can see him clearly for perhaps the first time in her life–an uncertain, greying, middle-aged man with a secret terror he’s not as smart or as classy as he’d like to be; a man who pretends he doesn’t care what other people think when he cares desperately; a man who despises himself so much that the only way he can alleviate his feelings of inferiority is by stomping down his wife’s personality with a daily stream of nasty jibes. A little man.

A man with a foolish wife who should simply have said, ‘Don’t speak to me like that.’ Maybe if she had she could have saved both of them.

She sits down in front of Ron and says, ‘I’m not really interested in going to Europe. What I’d really like is to drive around Australia. I’ve always wanted to drive across the Nullarbor.’

‘We could do that. Get a four-wheel drive…’

‘No, I mean on my own. I’d like to take a holiday on my own. For a couple of months.’

‘Oh.’ His face gets all pulpy with hurt. ‘Oh. OK.’

‘I think it might be good for us to spend some time apart, don’t you? I don’t mean an official separation or anything. Just a break. It seems like a good time now that we are talking about closing down the Alice and Jack business. And then we can think about what we’d like to do.’

‘Oh,’ he says again. ‘OK. Yep. That’s a good idea.’

Margie feels suddenly sick with this horrible new power.

‘Well,’ she says. ‘I’m going to call Callum and see how Grace is.’

She stays sitting and she is about to reach over and pat his shoulder but her new, strong body doesn’t move, and after a few seconds she stands up and goes to phone and leaves him sitting there studying his knuckles.

Maybe she’ll call him from some outback town and say, ‘Come and meet me.’

Or maybe she won’t. She really has no idea.

53

Rose’s story is interrupted while they move into the living room, in the hope that Rose will be more comfortable on Sophie’s couch. They experiment with cushions behind her back until she says she thinks that’s about as good as they can manage.

Sophie feels a sick horror over Rose’s revelation. The scrambled eggs sit unsteadily in her stomach. Rose is too pure and fragile to even say the word ‘rape’.

‘That’s so horrible,’ Sophie awkwardly touches Rose’s thin shoulder, ‘what happened to you.’

‘Oh darling, it’s OK, it was a very long time ago,’ answers Rose serenely. ‘There’s no need to be upset. You’re just like Veronika. We only just managed to save her from breaking one of Laura’s good mugs. She was very agitated. She couldn’t understand why I didn’t go straight to the police. But it’s a different era now. You modern girls are a lot better informed and a lot more assertive, which is a good thing. The problem was, I truly believed I was the criminal.’

Rose pats Sophie’s arm as if she is the one who should be comforted, and says, ‘Oh sugar! I brought a photo to show you. It’s in my bag still, in the kitchen.’

Sophie leaps to her feet and goes to the kitchen, conscious of how freely she can move around compared to Rose.

The photo is of Connie, Rose and their mother dressed up in hats and gloves for a day out in the city. They’re walking down a street, arms caught mid-swing, and both girls are looking at their mother and laughing. ‘They used to have “street photographers” in those days who would take your photo without you even knowing,’ says Rose. ‘Then they’d give you a card and you could go to this place on George Street and see if you’d like to buy it. Mum felt sorry for the photographer so we bought this one. It was a few weeks before she got sick.’

‘You were so beautiful.’ Sophie looks at Rose’s young, laughing face. ‘I bet you were like Grace and didn’t even realise how beautiful you were.’

‘Oh, I could be vain!’ says Rose. ‘Look at me with my long hair. The fashion was short bobs but I was so proud of my long blonde hair I refused to cut it!’

She caresses her mother’s face with an age-spotted bent finger. ‘That’s the coat Mum lost in the train. It was navy. Good wool.’ A tear runs down her withered cheek. ‘Oh Mum, you silly thing.’

Sophie feels her own eyes sting as she looks at fourteen-year-old Rose and thinks of the terrible things that were about to happen to her. She wants to go back in time and protect her and Connie. Take them along to an ATM and withdraw as much cash as they need. Buy their mum a new coat on her credit card and take her to the doctor on her Medicare card. March into David Jones and buy a whole damned roll of turquoise crêpe de Chine. Punch Mr Egg Head in the nose and then get him charged with sexual harassment before he even has a chance to lay a single sleazy finger on Rose.

‘Well,’ says Rose. ‘On with my story. Connie always said there’s nothing worse than a person who keeps meandering from the point.’

So, it was only a few days later that Mr Egg Head got transferred to another department, and a few weeks after that I started falling asleep at the counter in the afternoon.

I was fifteen years old, Catholic and pregnant. It was quite a scandal for those days, darling. Quite a scandal. And I had an awful suspicion that my father might actually kill me. I could imagine him quite calmly picking up his bible and thumping me to death with it.

Well, Connie guessed it eventually and I told her what had happened. I remember we were sitting down at Sultana Rocks and Connie had a stick and she was making holes in the sand, and as I told the story she jabbed harder and harder until the stick broke and she threw it hard across the water. Then she gave me a hug. A very quick, hard hug. We weren’t ever a very cuddly family, so it was special. It meant that she didn’t think I was a dirty thief who deserved her punishment. Then she picked up another stick and started jabbing more holes in the sand, but this time in orderly rows, and I knew she was trying to think out a solution. I remember closing my eyes and feeling so relieved because now it was Connie’s problem. I completely abdicated responsibility to her. So, I can’t really complain.