Melting Moments Read online

  When Arthur arrives home, Granny explains that it was all Ruby’s fault, because she had failed to fetch the brandy. And that no option remains but for Granny to move into the new house with the four of them.

  ‘I wish you wouldn’t,’ says Ruby, reflexively.

  ‘It’s my son’s house and you can’t stop me,’ replies Granny, and indeed nobody ever does.

  2

  Ruby’s first big job in the new house is to hose the calcimine off the inside walls. She summons Daisy, who has still failed to conceive and seems grateful for the distraction, and she and Mother come up for a week, bringing an extra-long hose from the farm. The three of them squirt at the walls, and sweep them with a broom, and hack at them with a paint scraper, until all that remains is the plaster itself, a blank slate for the family’s future life. Eva and Charlie cavort joyfully through the chalky mess, but Arthur becomes fretful, so Ruby ensures she has a functional kitchen at all times, and is diligent with her apple crumbles. When she gets around to the painting, it brightens the place no end; the eggshell walls are so fresh against the jarrah floors that she is reluctant to hang her tapestries. At night, she props open the doors so that the gully breeze rushes down the long hallway to dry the paint. It feels almost as if the house itself were breathing.

  ‘You’re not out on the farm anymore,’ Arthur chides her. ‘We’re in the big smoke, and crime is rampant.’

  Ruby has sometimes wondered if there are two types of men: those enlarged by the war, and those who were not. It is not only about derring-do but something else besides. A man’s relationship to the physical world, perhaps. Arthur soon becomes fixated upon the risk of electrocution, bringing home a rubber mat to place beneath the ironing board, and insisting Ruby wear rubber thongs whilst operating the Mixmaster. It is clear she needs to settle him in properly before she can even think of anything else, so she asks Father to come down for the weekend and build him a bookcase. Of course he does a lovely job of it, with the keenest of lines and most immaculate of joinery, and before he knows it, Arthur is set up in a reading nook, with his armchair and foot rest and the tasselled lamp they brought over from Melbourne. As long as Ruby serves dinner at the regular time, and avoids climbing ladders within his line of sight, she can work as hard as she likes.

  Naturally, Granny Jenkins doesn’t lift a finger to help, despite making regular appearances to discuss the renovations of her quarters. Usually she announces her presence with a show of such coughing and spluttering that Ruby is forced to climb down from her ladder and make her a cup of tea, even if busily occupied with a cornice. Granny obviously expects special treatment as a widow, and has taken to dressing entirely in black, which does her no favours and makes her very drack and dreary indeed. Mercifully, she keeps changing her mind about the renovations, which postpones the inevitable, but eventually she settles upon a plan to divide the rumpus room into her own bedroom, kitchen and bathroom. She demands that her front door opens directly onto Ruby’s kitchen – Need to keep an eye on what’s what – but Ruby puts her foot down at this, insisting that the door must instead be at the far end of the hallway. A serious border skirmish develops, and several times Arthur recommends surrender, but the last thing Ruby wants is Granny breathing down her neck every time she makes a rice pudding, so she vehemently defends the principle that every woman deserves to be mistress of her own kitchen until Granny relents.

  And at last she can turn her attention to the garden. Despite its good bones, it has suffered recently from neglect. Fortunately, Ruby knows exactly what needs to be done, and she moves through her jobs in a state of grace, as if taking dictation from on high. She plants the elm by the fishpond and two silver birches out the front; she sows sweet peas and poppies in the new curved beds; she cleans out the pond and populates it with plump goldfish. By the end of the year, the garden is producing capsicum, cucumbers, basil and sweetcorn, and the neighbours are stopping by frequently with compliments. Ruby has to pinch herself: that life could be this Edenic. She cannot imagine how she allowed herself to be so foolish last year in relation to Bill Clarkson. It was as if she had fancied herself a Scarlett O’Hara or something, when clearly all she ever required was a garden.

  ‘You’re not overdoing it, are you?’ asks Arthur, if he returns home to find new garden beds dug over and pavers placed.

  ‘Of course not.’ Although camouflaged in house dress and pinny, Ruby knows she has become brown and wiry through work.

  He glances mournfully at her dwindling bust. ‘Mind you’re getting enough nutrition, dear.’

  Once the renovations are complete, and Granny moves in, Ruby congratulates herself on her foresight regarding the hallway. The moment she hears Granny’s warning stomp on the floorboards, she puts out a Scotch Finger biscuit as decoy and hides evidence of whatever project she might be embarking upon. The one drawback to the layout is that Granny has first access to the back steps, and pops out of the screen door as soon as Arthur returns home to accost him with the day’s grievances.

  Your wife was out on the roof today cleaning the gutters. Your wife let the baby cry for a good half-hour this morning in his cot.

  The only saving grace is that the old woman is a creature of habit. Each morning, she fetches the paper, because she doesn’t want anyone else to fade the print. After reading it from cover to cover, she catches the bus into town, coming home in time to make a nuisance of herself as Ruby prepares dinner. Mercifully, she avoids the garden altogether, and Ruby spends more and more of her day out there. As she prunes the hedges or neatens the borders, she feels a pervasive sense of orderliness, the events of recent years not only forgotten, but disproved.

  When Ruby discovers a mouse in the kitchen, she chooses not to mention it to Arthur, but discreetly sets a trap, removing its tiny cadaver early the following morning. But when Granny finds mouse droppings in her living room, nobody hears the end of it. A plague of vermin is upon this house! Arthur becomes so unsettled that Ruby picks up a tabby kitten from the local pet shop. Upon his return from work, he seizes the cat in delight, christening it ‘Louis’; to Ruby’s surprise, the animal takes up permanent residence in his reading nook, sitting proprietorially on his lap whenever he is at home.

  Often, after school, Eva wheels little Charlie across the road to the park in her doll’s pram. Of course Arthur worries about the children roaming unsupervised, but Ruby argues that they are always within cooee; as she gardens, she can usually make out their small figures in the distance, building dams or feeding the ducks. It is at the park, allegedly, that Charlie comes out with his first word: duck, pronounced with a self-satisfied k at the end, as if sealing the word from leakage. Soon enough nobody can stop him talking. I taught him how to talk, Eva explains. And now we’re working on arithmetic. He’s making very expressive progress. Shortly thereafter, Eva claims he has taken his first steps by the tennis courts, though there are no further witnesses to such a feat for some time.

  One morning, when Granny has taken the bus to town, and Charlie is burbling to his toy cars in the dining room, Ruby prepares the oven for a batch of Anzac biscuits. The match dies in her hand, so she lights another, climbing in further to investigate.

  Then a mighty whoosh, and blackness.

  The next thing is the smell of singed hair: a dark, barbaric odour. And Charlie looming above her with a full nappy.

  ‘Mummy cook Mummy.’

  Gingerly, she stands up and then, despite some wooziness, takes him into the bathroom to change him.

  ‘Not a single word to Daddy,’ she instructs.

  In the mirror, she sees that her eyebrows are burnt clear away; her inflamed face wears an expression of astonishment. She soothes her skin with one of Daisy’s homemade ointments, and carefully sketches her eyebrows back on with a brow pencil.

  ‘A new style of make-up,’ she explains to Arthur that evening. ‘Very up-to-the-minute.’

  ‘Always has to be a fashion plate,’ laments Granny.

  Over the months t
hat follow, Ruby’s eyebrows show no sign of growing back, but she still considers it a close escape. Never again will she climb into an oven with a lit match. She could have been hurt, or – almost as serious – Arthur might have found out.

  By the following spring, the renovation of the stables is complete, and Ruby interviews her first boarder: a Mr Yang from Hong Kong. He explains that he is studying Medicine, and wishes to live in a house with children in order to practise his English. Although Ruby has had no previous dealings with the Chinese, she finds Mr Yang entirely amenable. To further recommend him, he is most taken with her Eva – Your daughter is like an angel from heaven – as if he has never before seen a child with fair hair.

  I’ve always said Eva is the spitting image of Hayley Mills, says Granny, do you know Hayley Mills, Mr Yang, the lovely child star? – and launches into one of her blow-by-blow descriptions of Tiger Bay, which seems to last longer than any film. Once he has moved in, Granny persuades him to join her on her regular Saturday excursions to the pictures with her cousin, Primrose. The three of them make quite a sight: Mr Yang in his impeccable suit; Primrose as thin as a thread, with her red hennaed hair; and Granny in her best fur coat, never mind the weather, wielding her walking stick as a weapon. Ruby spares a thought for any recalcitrant ushers, but is always thankful for the reprieve, and Saturdays soon become her favourite day of the week, with Eva on hand to help with little Charlie, and Arthur at his most relaxed. After tennis in the park, followed by a nice warm bath, he installs himself in his armchair for the afternoon, and as long as Ruby finishes gardening in time to prepare a good roast, he could not be happier.

  It is on one such idyllic Saturday afternoon that Ruby sends Eva over to the park to collect some grass clippings. To her chagrin, the child returns empty-handed.

  ‘For heaven’s sake, what have you done with my wheelbarrow?’

  ‘I was getting the clippings,’ Eva says, biting her lip as if she has wet the bed. ‘And then a man rode up on a bike. He wanted to know if I knowed where a fock was. Sorry Mummy I couldn’t really hear what he said because he had a very quiet voice and then he put his coat on the ground and said lie down and then I will show you a fock. I said beg your pardon like you said is good manners. Then he got angry and said he would make me and I felt scared so I runned away and I’m sorry I left the wheelbarrow.’

  Even before the child has finished, Ruby has raced out the front gate with gardening fork in hand. It is a good thing there is no traffic on Greenhill Road at that moment because she looks neither left nor right but charges straight ahead with murderous purpose, and sure enough sees a youth loitering by the tennis courts, kicking around the grass clippings next to her abandoned wheelbarrow, and she runs towards him with a visitation of such speed and fury that it feels almost supernatural, and the moment he claps eyes upon her, rushing at him like a banshee scarecrow and roaring in some primal maternal tongue – That anyone, ANYONE, would have the hide to look at my daughter like that – he scampers onto his bike and pedals frantically away, but she pursues him past the ducks and picnicking families and tennis players, many of whom she no doubt knows from the neighbourhood, all the while brandishing her fork – How DARE you, how DARE you, how DARE you! – across the foot bridge and right to the other side of the park until he disappears from sight and is gone.

  When she returns to the tennis courts, she discovers a duffel coat spread out upon the ground, like a parody of chivalry. She seizes the item, and could well rip it apart with her teeth, but instead she marches over to the bin and hurls it in. Then she fills the wheelbarrow with clippings, gently balances her fork across the top, and crosses the road to home.

  Eva stands at the front fence, regarding her with awe.

  ‘You did exactly the right thing to come and tell me,’ Ruby says. She kneels in front of the child and takes her carefully by the hand. ‘But you must never, ever, under any circumstances, mention a word of this to your father. Do you understand?’

  Eva nods gravely, and returns to the sandpit to play.

  3

  When Eva is offered a scholarship to the Anglican Ladies’ College, commended particularly for her arithmetic and her grammar, Ruby is as proud as can be, but of course she does not mention this to her daughter. Instead, she urges Eva to keep the news close to her chest. One should never draw attention to one’s exceptionality; and besides, she fears scholarships smack of charity. She cannot abide the thought of the other parents looking down on them, particularly as she and Arthur had been planning to send Eva to the Ladies’ College anyway.

  But there is no denying that the scholarship is something of a windfall. Then, when Arthur receives a small promotion at work, she feels almost prosperous.

  ‘About time,’ she says. ‘Everything you do for them. And us living off the smell of an oily rag.’

  ‘It’s always been quite a well-paying job, for all that,’ he replies.

  He is prompted to buy a television set for Granny, which at least keeps her out of trouble for the duration of Pick a Box, and then a record player for himself, housed in a very smart and modern walnut cabinet. Each night, upon returning home from work, he makes a beeline for the lounge room.

  ‘An appointment with a certain Johann Sebastian,’ he explains.

  By the time Ruby brings in his port, he is listening to a Bach cantata, ‘Ich Habe Genug’, with Louis on his lap.

  ‘I have enough,’ he translates. And if she leans over and kisses him on the lips, he grins up at her. ‘Ich habe mehr als genug.’

  It is on one such evening that Arthur makes the unprecedented suggestion that Ruby take a holiday.

  ‘A holiday? From what?’

  ‘From the myriad concerns of domestic life,’ he says, although he does not actually mention Granny by name. ‘And I suspect your mother might benefit from the same.’

  It is true that Mother has been having a miserable time of late, with Father driving her to distraction with his drinking and general slovenliness, but Ruby has to think of the children, whom she can hardly abandon to Granny’s housekeeping. But then Daisy offers to come and stay – Can’t think of a better holiday than a week with my favourite two – and before she knows it, Ruby is driving Mother up to Mildura, where Arthur has booked them into the Grand Hotel. And he could scarcely have made a better choice – what with the well-appointed rooms, the attentive service and the sumptuous meals in the Chandelier Dining Room. Even Mother, a stern critic of buffet lunches, is impressed by the corned beef, and most particularly the artful use of cloves. She helps herself to seconds, prompting Ruby to do the same: Arthur will only be pleased if she comes home with more meat on her bones.

  ‘How the other half lives,’ Ruby observes.

  ‘Better not get used to it,’ Mother warns her, and yet already she looks less drawn.

  When they return to their room, they see that someone has turned down the bed and arranged a small posy upon each of their pillows. It is a little unsettling at first – all this being tended to rather than tending – but it does not take very long to get used to. The bed itself is so comfortable, with its modern mattress and quilt, that lying in it feels like a type of embrace. It is almost as if the hotel itself were mothering them, and the two ladies sleep like queens.

  The following morning, they take a cruise on the paddle steamer Melbourne. From the upper deck, Mother points out a pelican hunched in the water, its bill loaded with fish; Ruby draws her attention to a flotilla of ducks, moving purposefully towards the shore. Mother enquires after Ruby’s fernery and then after the children, with Ruby reporting that the maidenhairs are thriving; that Eva looks a treat in her new school uniform; and that Charlie is forever tinkering away at the piano.

  ‘Hope he practises his scales,’ says Mother fretfully.

  ‘After a fashion.’

  What Ruby doesn’t mention is that Eva has started giving her lip; and that there is always something around the house that needs to be fixed; and that she sometimes wonders wh
ether life should be something more than a series of daily tasks, successfully dispatched.

  ‘And how are you managing with that Mrs Jenkins?’

  It is courteous of Mother to refer to her as ‘Mrs Jenkins’ rather than ‘your mother-in-law’, and yet Ruby still harbours a private shame. She cannot help but feel that Granny Jenkins reflects poorly upon her as mistress of the house: after six years of living beneath the same roof, she really ought to have found a way to lift the tone.

  ‘Well enough, I suppose. Though she is never one to put herself out.’

  ‘Quite,’ says Mother. ‘Mother was the same.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Never did want me to be a nurse.’

  This is something of a revelation, but before Ruby can pursue it further they are interrupted by a shriek from the loudspeaker, followed by the booming sound of the captain’s voice.

  Ladies and gentlemen, you will no doubt be interested to know that the boiler has a maximum steam pressure of one hundred and fifty pounds.

  ‘Fascinating,’ remarks Mother. ‘You must remember to convey that to Arthur.’

  Ruby suspects that Arthur wouldn’t be the least bit interested – as opposed to someone like Bill Clarkson, for example. They pass a tree bedecked with cockatoos; when the racket subsides, Ruby observes that she never realised Mother wished to be a nurse.

  ‘Indeed I did, dear, but you had to supply your own uniform. And your grandmother just would not come to the party. Nor was she one for doing things particularly. When I think of the way she conducted herself.’