Melting Moments Read online

  She feels very much on the back foot, with the kitchen a mess and the biscuits half done, but she ushers him onto a stool at the bench, where he eyes the mixing bowl. It is always the very best of the doughs – rich and custardy, almost a meal in itself – and on a whim she asks if he would like to lick the bowl.

  ‘Haven’t had an offer that good since I was a tacker,’ he says, laughing. ‘Don’t mind if I do.’

  As she boils the kettle and prepares the tea leaves, she sneaks the occasional peek at him, cheerfully scraping the dough from the bowl. His hair is a flyaway white; there is a boxy hearing aid tucked behind each of his ears. Neither he nor Ruby are what they were, and yet when he grins, his former face comes into focus.

  ‘That Arthur still going strong?’ he asks.

  ‘Well, he’s certainly still going. Just performing his morning ablutions, I believe. And how’s that Mavis?’

  ‘Full-time care these last eighteen months. Dementia. But she’s fighting it. Always been a trooper, that one.’

  The kettle starts shrieking at the exact moment Arthur hollers for help with getting dressed.

  Bill places down his spoon.

  ‘Tell you what. How ’bout I take her out for a spin, then come back for a cuppa when everyone’s good and respectable.’

  Ruby fetches the keys from the lounge room, and leads him outside to the Vauxhall. There is something deft and commanding about the way he hauls off the dust cover, adjusts the mirror and throws the car into reverse. He veers around the corner in a manner that would surely make Mother turn in her grave, but when Ruby returns inside to help Arthur dress, she cannot stop smiling.

  Over the years, Ruby has kept that episode in the cloakroom as a private memento, mostly hidden away. On those occasions she has taken it out, she has handled it with pleasure and care and some sadness. Sometimes it has spoken to her of transience, and made her wistful. Other times all she can see in it is her foolishness.

  Why did he follow her in there? What was the message of that look?

  The terrifying thing was how readily everything fell away. To all intents and purposes, that was her prime. She had a dear little baby, and her darling Eva, who had just started school, and a loving husband to boot. It was unforgiveable, really. She had all of this and yet still she wanted more. Was there no end to her greed?

  If she had stepped forward rather than stepping back.

  But she had not. She had stepped back. Or rather, she had pinned her hair behind her ear, which had somehow amounted to the same thing.

  At any rate, no other path was available. There was only some bumpy off-road trail coursing through any number of briars, as the sorry saga of Ralphy Phillips and Isla would attest. Social condemnation; impecuniousness; the heartbreak of children.

  Why then has she sometimes found herself weeping whilst pruning the roses?

  As if she had missed a summons. As if she had somehow misplaced her life.

  It was all nothing, really. It was just a look.

  By the time Bill returns, Ruby has removed her pinny and dabbed a little perfume on her wrists. The biscuits are cooling on the rack; Arthur is in the bathroom, where he has overdone it with the aftershave again.

  ‘Bill Clarkson is here,’ she tells him.

  ‘Who in heaven’s name is that?’

  ‘You remember Bill. We used to see him out and about with Florence and that set.’

  Arthur shuffles into the kitchen, and does a good enough job of pretending.

  ‘Jolly good to see you again, Bill.’

  ‘And you, old boy. She’s certainly seen better days. The Vauxhall, I mean. Not your lovely wife, who is as ravishing as ever.’

  Arthur laughs robustly, as if the compliment is all for him.

  ‘I’ll have her cleaned up in no time. Good as new.’

  ‘That’s the spirit,’ says Arthur, and glances hopefully at Ruby.

  She gives a quick nod.

  ‘Jolly good to see you again, Bill,’ he says with greater enthusiasm. ‘Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got business to attend to.’

  ‘Jolly good to see you too,’ says Bill, as Arthur limps out of the kitchen, but it is Ruby he is staring at. His eyes are a little rheumy behind his spectacles, and yet they retain that direct gaze.

  ‘You know, you’re still a marvellous-looking woman, Ruby.’

  She has to laugh. Here she is in her house-dress with no make-up on to speak of.

  ‘I have a confession to make. I’ve carried an image of you for years in my mind’s eye. That’s what we men do, you know. We take photographs. With our eyes.’

  ‘Is that right?’

  ‘It was at the Semaphore Palais.’

  The Maison de Danse, she thinks.

  ‘I don’t expect you remember. But I came into the cloakroom for some reason or another.’

  For what reason?

  ‘And there you were, leaning into the mirror, powdering your nose.’

  Fixing my hair.

  ‘And I just thought.’ He removes his glasses to wipe his eyes. ‘I just thought you were the most beautiful thing.’

  She refills his tea cup and her own, although she doesn’t much feel like drinking it. But what else is there to do?

  ‘I’m sure it’s been very difficult. What with Mavis’s condition and all.’

  ‘It was love, you know.’ He says this to his cup of tea as much as to her. ‘That’s all there is to it. It was love.’

  Yesterday morning, Arthur had tripped over in the front passage on the way out to the bathroom. The two of them had spent the best part of an hour trying to get him up on his feet. As he lay there, trying to rock himself up, in reluctant possession of that failing body, Ruby had been struck by how very young his face looked. It seemed entirely free of care, of that care he had brought back with him from the war, and for a moment he might have been that go-ahead young man again, driving her home from the Palais. Old age is a devil of a thing, he had said. Better that than the alternative, she suggested. Couldn’t vouch for that just now, he replied from his position on the floor, and she had laughed out of a hopelessness that was almost merriment, and he had joined her with that great generous laugh, that laugh that had outlived so much else and seemed as if it might outlive him too. At that very moment Charlie just happened to drop by, to find the two of them giggling together on the passage floor. He had helped Arthur to his feet and kissed him on the lips as he always did.

  The three of them together in that passage. This is what she knows as love.

  Bill fishes out a handkerchief from his pocket and blows his nose.

  ‘That’s why I had to put the whole thing into reverse, you see. That’s why I took that placement in Darwin. Didn’t want to upset the applecart.’

  Good sense had prevailed, for better or for worse, but even to say that would be a betrayal.

  ‘Love is love,’ he continues. ‘With all due respect to Mavis and to Arthur.’

  She reaches over and takes his hand. His skin is paper-thin, discoloured with liver spots like Rorschach blots. She squeezes it twice, and when he squeezes back, his grip is as warm and as strong as she remembers.

  2

  Eva and Amy are the first to arrive, clad in their Sunday best and talking too loudly.

  ‘What a treat to see you in a nice dress,’ Ruby tells her daughter.

  ‘Why, thank you, Mum,’ says Eva. ‘For such a lovely backhanded compliment.’

  Charlie is running late, but when he arrives he is terribly debonair in his smart suit, with his colourful socks and pocket squares. She is about to compliment him on his daintiness, but holds her tongue.

  ‘Careful,’ he says to Eva, as he fills her goblet with champagne. ‘That’s Waterford crystal, you know.’

  ‘Oh, I’m the full bottle on Waterford crystal. So to speak.’

  ‘Don’t you worry,’ says Ruby. ‘I know exactly what you’re referring to.’

  ‘What are you referring to, Uncle Charlie?’ asks Amy.
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br />   The girl’s lipstick is a shade too dark, and drains her complexion entirely. It is a shame Eva cannot be relied upon for guidance in such matters, as any advice Ruby offers will only be taken the wrong way.

  ‘Mum and Dad used to have us over for Sunday lunches,’ explains Charlie. ‘Back when your parents were newlyweds. And your father had some passionate convictions.’

  ‘That’s one way of putting it,’ says Eva.

  ‘Things would occasionally get a little heated,’ Ruby agrees.

  It was a shock to her when Eva and Ned were first married, and there was this extra body at the table. The tempo of it! The decibel levels! It seemed as if the next generation was pulling away from her into some louder, faster future, some brave new world of rapid-fire repartee and strong opinions. In the early days, Arthur did a good-enough job of staying abreast, but later, as his hearing deteriorated, he let the carnival move on without him. Always good to see them come, he would say after they had left. But even better to see them go.

  ‘On this occasion your father got a little hot under the collar,’ Eva remembers.

  ‘How entirely out of character,’ Charlie says, and winks at Amy.

  The girl smiles graciously, but Ruby knows she is sensitive about Ned. She supposes it is important for a daughter to look up to her father, regardless of his behaviour. On the Sunday in question, Arthur had been winding the children up about the Vietnam War.

  ‘I didn’t fight the Japs for my children to surrender to the Red Peril.’

  ‘For Christ’s sake,’ Ned interjected. ‘What happened in New Guinea has absolutely nothing to do with the spread of communism!’

  As Ned became more outraged, Arthur shot Ruby a sly smile. It was a side of his character she had not known before these lunches.

  ‘It was sheer cowardice to pull out of Vietnam,’ Arthur declared. ‘Nothing more and nothing less.’

  ‘Forgive my French, but that’s total and utter bullshit,’ roared Ned, pounding the table with his goblet.

  Ruby saw the glass’s stem shift slightly in his hand, fracturing like the leg of a small animal. His smile took on a fixed quality, but Arthur continued to hold forth, oblivious. Ruby knew Arthur would be troubled by the breakage, so she kept quiet, but she was interested to see what would happen next. And sure enough, by week’s end there were twelve perfect crystal goblets lined up again in the dresser. It must have cost Ned a fair portion of his weekly income back then, just out of veterinary school.

  ‘Dad did like to provoke us,’ says Charlie.

  Eva wistfully raises her glass. ‘Here’s to Dad.’

  ‘To Dad.’

  They toast the framed photograph of Arthur, propped up on the sideboard, in which he is wearing the maroon cardigan Ruby bought him last Easter, just before Florence came to stay. At the time, she had taken a long hard look at him, and realised he looked utterly drack in his worn-out brown cardigans with their threadbare elbows. She couldn’t quite believe she had let it come to this. So she had driven into town and bought him some lovely new woollens, which lightened him up no end.

  ‘He always liked sitting in that chair, looking out at those roses,’ remembers Charlie.

  ‘With one of those awful cats on his lap,’ says Eva. ‘Louis the what?’

  ‘Louis IV was your father’s final cat,’ Ruby tells her.

  ‘Not what you would call an accommodating animal,’ Eva says.

  ‘Even so,’ says Ruby. ‘She was milder than her predecessor.’

  After Louis IV died, Arthur had requested a replacement cat, but it was clear by then that he was drawing to an end, and Ruby did not want to be left alone with a cat on her hands. So he just had to make do with a hot water bottle on his lap and regular refills of his cup of tea. He did pine though, poor old boy. All the same, he enjoyed looking at the roses.

  ‘Shall we take the stuff out then?’ Ruby asks.

  ‘What stuff?’ asks Amy.

  ‘Grandpa Arthur,’ says Eva.

  The courtyard of the retirement home is modest, but the established rose bushes had been a great selling point, as had the Erindale address. When Ruby and Eva first came up to inspect it, they had met Mrs Windsor from next door, an extremely well-spoken woman who had once worked as an elocution coach. All of which was a recommendation, and the signs started pointing towards a move.

  Arthur hadn’t wanted to budge, of course. They had enjoyed fifty years in the house on Greenhill Road – almost the entire duration of their married life – and he was determined it would see him out. And in truth, it wasn’t just Arthur who was reluctant. For Ruby, the idea of selling the house was a little like the idea of selling her life itself. Those layers of memories that had accrued in every room; the years of work invested in the garden; the generations of Louis buried alongside the golden elm.

  But the children were adamant, and the facts could not be denied: the house was falling down around them. One morning, Eva turned up with a prospective lady buyer, Christine, who looked very sensible indeed, with her large spectacles and cropped blonde hair.

  ‘I can’t tell you how excited I am,’ she enthused. ‘I grew up just around the corner on Lancelot Avenue, and always thought of this as a magic garden.’

  Thankfully, Christine was not a developer, but properly on the lookout for a family home. As they ambled around the house together, and Eva pointed out areas that would benefit from improvement, Christine made all the appropriate noises.

  ‘The golden elm has wreaked havoc with the foundations.’

  ‘But you wouldn’t touch that magnificent elm,’ said Christine. ‘It really defines the garden.’

  Ruby was pleased to hear it. She had planted the golden elm beside the fish pond at the same time as she had planted the silver birches by the front gate, and over the decades she had watched them grow. The silver apples of the moon, Ralphy Phillips would say when he visited, the golden apples of the sun. The golden elm, particularly, had flourished over fifty years. It was rigorous and incandescent, like proof of something.

  ‘If it were me, I’d remove the sunroom and restore the side verandah overlooking the fish pond,’ Eva suggested. ‘And renovate the northern façade to capture more light.’

  ‘But I wouldn’t want to interfere with the fernery,’ Christine said, glancing at Ruby. ‘Such a rarity these days.’

  Afterwards, over a cup of tea, Christine revealed that her younger brother had sat next to Charlie at Magill Primary School, and had always said he had a gift for music. And Ruby put two and two together, and realised that Christine was a Schmidt.

  ‘It was your mother who came to look at the marquee that time! The morning after Eva’s wedding!’

  Christine had no memory of this, but agreed that her elder sister was indeed married in a marquee, later in 1973, and that her mother may well have come over to investigate. Ruby could scarcely believe the coincidence. When Christine left, she went to the sunroom to tell Arthur, but of course he had no recollection. He had spent the day after Eva’s wedding in bed, recovering from too many mixtures and too much excitement.

  Ruby hadn’t wanted to bury Arthur under a rock in Centennial Park, all alone and surrounded by strangers, but she didn’t know where else to put him. The only place he ever really liked being was home, but she could hardly take his ashes back to the house on Greenhill Road now.

  It was the children who suggested burying him alongside the rose bushes in the courtyard. She was not entirely convinced. Despite her best efforts, the retirement village still felt like temporary accommodation; when she moved on she would be leaving Arthur with the next batch of elderly tenants.

  ‘No, you won’t,’ Eva reassured her. ‘By then Dad would have turned into these roses, and you would have brought him inside and put him in a vase on the table.’

  ‘Maybe so.’

  She contemplated which of her vases would be most suitable for her husband’s interment.

  ‘And then when you die, I’ll put you on my rose bushes, an
d then bring you inside with me.’

  In any case, the cut roses would soon wither and die, but Ruby refrained from mentioning this.

  There had been roses throughout the house on the night of Eva’s wedding. Ruby had never had so many flowers on her hands, before or since. Her neighbour had turned up the day before the wedding with about fifty green hydrangeas – probably hoping for an invitation – and then Daisy had arrived with a car full of pink hydrangeas from the farm. Ruby herself had picked about three dozen gladioli from the garden and two buckets of dahlias, but above all she had been overwhelmed by the roses. There were enough for twelve urns, and five small vases besides. She filled two urns with blooms in a virginal white, with just the faintest touch of pink, and positioned them on either side of the bridal table. Daisy had spent the afternoon twining ivy and white paper around the poles in the marquee, in her exacting way, and then arranging trails of tiny green ivy and pink roses on the bridal table.

  Regardless of the marriage’s eventual outcome, there never was a more successful wedding, Ruby was sure of it. It was just as nice as any of the weddings on Uncle Frederick’s side of the family, but in a different way and at a fraction of the cost. She often wishes she had a movie of that day, or at least of Eva and Arthur coming down the aisle. Eva looked radiant, walking so gracefully and smiling at all the guests, and Arthur was at his most distinguished. He wore hair spray instead of oil, and Ruby had enlivened his best suit with a brand-new shirt and bow tie. Although he was never less than proper, he looked like the cat that got the cream, with that great smile so close to the surface of his face, ready to break out at any moment.

  More than anything, she remembers how spectacular the garden was that evening. She had spent days on her hands and knees with the shearers, neatening up the edging around the flower beds. The rosemary hedge was defined with geometric precision, and the hydrangeas were at their best: lush, exuberant watercolours. Although the gas flares did not provide much in the way of illumination, they lit the trees beautifully, so that the pomegranate just glowed alongside the marquee. Even the lawn underfoot was gorgeous and green and had never looked better. It was one of those moments when all the pieces came together. Grace, you might call it.