The Heaven I Swallowed (11 page)

‘I'll do the beans,' I said.

I took the saucepan full of drained beans and began to ladle them out. I moved in the opposite direction from Mary, to ensure we would not collide. Through the open door came the merry voices of the women, now in the full flight of gossip and recrimination. I listened for any further mention of Mary or myself but, as far as I could tell, we did not come up. Of course, there were crossed conversations so it was not always clear what was being said, exactly who was being ­criticised.

‘That's all of 'em, Auntie Grace,' Mary said, putting the empty bowl on the bench.

‘Them,' I corrected.

‘Them,' she repeated.

‘You can take them out in twos,' I instructed, picking up two plates myself. I moved to the back door.

‘Two by two they went,' I joked.

Mary looked at me blankly.

‘As in, the ark … the animals went in two by two …'

She frowned. She still did not understand.

‘Hurry up then,' I said, realising she did not want to understand.

The widows ‘oohed' and ‘aahed' over the meal, complimenting me on the ham's honey glaze, the homemade mayonnaise of the potato salad, the non-stringiness of the beans. I took the praise graciously, making sure to mention Mary's help with the preparation. She would hear from her place in the kitchen, eating her own portion. She could also have the leftovers. I would not be finishing my meal, my appetite had not yet returned.

Mrs Bishop's ANZAC biscuits were produced at the end. False smiles appeared at the sight of them, everyone eager to remain on her good side. The crunching threatened to overtake us. I could barely hear Mrs Andrews' question.

‘And when will she be going back?'

She had taken a biscuit from the same tray Mary had used for the cheese and crackers and her question went straight into Mary's face.

Again, I felt the abrupt quietness, the way in which all the mouths stopped chewing.

‘She does not have to go back,' I said, ‘as long as I choose to keep her.'

‘Does she have family?' Mrs Joyce asked, although the words seemed to be directed at Mrs Bishop. It briefly occurred to me that Father Benjamin might have mentioned something to them and this was a trap to catch me in a lie. Still, there was nothing else for it.

‘No. No, she doesn't.'

I waited for the explosion, the dramatic production of a copy of Mary's mother's letter out of a handbag, the waving of it in my face with accompanying accusations.

What about her mother?
I could hear them demanding,
Isn't she family?
It was time for it to come to me, this accusation.

Nothing happened. Mrs Bishop took another large bite of her ANZAC while Mrs Joyce took a sip of her tea and surreptitiously lay down the uneaten half of her biscuit on the saucer. Mrs Andrews pursed her lips, continuing to follow Mary's movements as if confirmation of her lack of relatives merely proved whatever point she had been trying to make. Mrs Chilsom started on about the state of one of her cats, Enid Parker leant in to smell the roses on the table and Mrs Jackson reached for the sugar bowl.

†

Mary cleared away after lunch. The widows sat sipping sweet sherry and I could hear her quietly washing the china at the kitchen sink, placing the plates in neat stacks on the table before transferring them to the cabinet in the living room, as I had ordered.

Once the house was empty again, I found her in the sunroom, sitting on the edge of the cane chair, ensuring the last of the afternoon light was catching her legs. She had her head down and
Jane Eyre
open on her palms. She was sucking on the end of her plait and appeared to be reading. Of course, this was impossible. Her lessons with me had been sporadic over the last weeks, conflicted as I was whether it was a good idea to teach her or not. There was no chance she had progressed far enough to comprehend Brontë. Still, there she seemed to be, her eyes trailing across the page like she knew what each word meant.

She must have been aware of my presence. Though I had moved quietly, there was surely enough of my scent, my essence, for her to notice?

‘Mary?'

She looked up and slammed the book shut at the same time. Her face held that defiance I had seen so often recently, a defiance which stopped me asking her any questions.

‘There's still more to be done,' I said. ‘We need to sweep outside.'

She jumped up immediately, the plait whipped out of her mouth.

‘Yes, Auntie Grace.' She moved past me, silent and sure, placing the book on the side table as she went.

I picked up the book, balancing the hard spine on my own palm, waiting for it to fall open at whatever random place it chose. I remembered doing this with my Bible as a child, taking whatever words appeared as a sign from above.
Jane Eyre
creaked apart and I read:

How dare I, Mrs Reed? How dare I? Because it is the truth. You think I have no feelings, and that I can do without one bit of love or kindness; but I cannot live so: and you have no pity. I shall remember how you thrust me back—roughly and violently thrust me back—into the red-room, and locked me up there, to my dying day, though I was in agony, though I cried out, while suffocating with distress, ‘Have mercy! Have mercy, Aunt Reed!' And that punishment you made me suffer because your wicked boy struck me—knocked me down for nothing. I will tell anybody who asks me questions this exact tale. People think you are a good woman, but you are bad, hard-hearted. You are deceitful!

I shut the book. I could hear the awkward rhythm of the broom, too big for Mary, just like the rake. It would be best for me to take over the clean-up.

†

That night I could not sleep, too much inside my head to crawl into the tunnel of slumber. Every time I was almost there, drifting, bumping into innocuous images and words, Mary would reappear, sitting there in the sunroom reading of the evil aunt, a woman whom Jane Eyre would not forgive until she lay dying in her bed.

Could Mary really read? If so, she had lied to me. A bigger lie than the penny.

I had denied sharing Mrs Andrews's fear of Mary, yet I was afraid. Afraid of what? Not the girl herself, surely? How could I be fearful of such a small creature? But, then, it is not the height or the weight or the mass, or even, I realised with a start, the colour of a thing, it is only the way you see it. I had arrived at the point where I was unable to see around her. She had become my centre.

I got out of bed and made my way to the living room. It was early morning, the grey shadows of the furniture waiting in expectation. I went to the china hutch and opened the cutlery drawer. It made its usual clatter, the drawer sticking halfway out so I had to pull at it to release it completely. I carried the drawer into the kitchen, only pausing for a moment to glance down the corridor at Mary's open bedroom door and listen for her breathing. There it was, and I could move on, quietly finding the bottle of polish and rag.

I sat at the table and, until sunrise, rubbed at every knife, fork and spoon I owned. In the bowls of the spoons I saw my own upside-down face, ageing with every passing moment, and wondered if the signs of my love for Mary were at all visible.

8

My lunch was a success by all accounts. The next week at church Mrs Bishop loudly announced how I kept my beautiful home ‘impeccable'. This did not seem enough reward for so many hours of preparation—I had no real memory of enjoying myself at the actual time either—and most of the praise was a dig at married women such as Mrs Mavis who, despite having a husband, could not exactly claim domestic felicity. I found it difficult to revel in this false triumph, Mr Mavis's sunken cheekbones speaking of nights as long as mine.

Surprisingly, Mr Roper came and stood next to Mary and me after the service. I had not seen him all week, but caught up in preparations for the lunch, I hadn't really noticed. He thread the brim of his hand through his fingers nervously and I thought again of the moment in the grotto.

‘How are you, Mrs Smith?' he asked in a formal voice I had not heard for a long time, not since the day he introduced himself to me.

‘Very well, thank you,' I answered. I felt Mary tense beside me. ‘The gardenia cuttings you gave me are coming along well.'

‘Good to hear,' he said.

There was silence among all three of us.

‘I want you to know …' he began.

I could not encourage him to keep going, to provide explanations within shot of every listening ear. There were conversations going on around, yet I knew the skill: the ability to appear to be concentrating intently on those right in front of you while scooping up every word of your neighbour's.

‘I know everything will turn out for the best,' I said, without a clear sense of what I was referring to.

‘I know today is a very hard day for you.' Mr Roper was speaking to my feet and I wondered what had turned him into such a weakling.

‘Today?' I had no idea what he was referring to.

‘The anniversary? Of your husband's death?'

I felt the blood drain from my head. God, how could I have forgotten? Mary looked up at me, confused.

‘Yes, yes,' I managed to say. ‘Of course it is a difficult day.'

The lie of it seemed to spread across the entire churchyard, shaking the baby poplars to their roots.

Mr Roper gave me a little nod, a respectful nod like the ones you receive from people in the street during afternoon walks.

‘I thought Father Benjamin would include him in the Prayers of the Faithful, but I suppose, with his health the way it is …'

‘I didn't want to bother him,' I said, too loudly, and knew my face was moving from white to red, the stress now ­creating a pulse in my forehead. Pathetic, showing all the telltale signs of falsehood, forgetting all I had learnt in my years of deception: never make excuses; let silences speak for themselves; always ensure the other feels so awkward they will eagerly move onto another subject.

‘I'm sorry, Auntie Grace,' Mary said, and squeezed my hand.

‘You look a little peaky, Mrs Smith.' Mrs Bishop joined us.

‘Are you unwell?' Mrs Joyce, as always, tagged behind Mrs Bishop and the two of them now stood on either side of Mr Roper, examining me.

‘Not at all, I'm perfectly fine.' I answered in what I hoped was a strong enough tone to put further inquiries aside, did not want this attention, did not want Mr Roper to remind them of my false anniversary, did not want any of it.

Funny to imagine how they would all look if I told the truth about myself: how my sleep, when it came, was full of the Virgin Mary's face scarred with criss-crossing lines like a painting attacked with a knife; how my stomach turned whenever I could not see Mary so that, for the last week, I had almost tethered her to my side (today she had been forbidden from joining the other children or going into the saint's grotto—poor, rotting Aloysius would have to do without her); how I had checked Fred's desk every morning, inspecting the surface for telltale marks, always wondering why I did not just take the letters and burn them, save myself from the possibility of discovery. Always answering I could not destroy them, not for any peace of mind. The tokens had to be kept in their place.

†

To Grace,

I had never imagined your anger would be so great as to formulate such a plan as you detailed in your last letter. Nor that your desire for respectability would out-weigh any affection or respect you once had for me.

However, since the news of my brother's death in Europe, my ties to home now seem well and truly severed. While it hurts me to agree to your plan, I cannot pretend it will affect my new life over here. So, I consent to becoming your dearly departed husband. I will post a regular money order to you, at the post office requested (I hope you will not have too far to travel) but will have no further contact with you.

I hope this sacrifice is sufficient for you, at last, Gracie. I had never longed for a glorious life, only a happy one. You are welcome to my glorious death,

Fred

†

I had never before forgotten the date of Fred's death. For the last four years I had gently reminded Father Benjamin of the need for his name to be sounded out into the quiet space of the church, collected into the thoughts of those gathered, polished a little with prayer and sent up into the heavens.

‘Off home already, Mrs Smith?' Father Benjamin asked as I made my farewells. His question had a tinge of desperation in it, as if he himself would like to escape, though knowing he could not leave before his congregation had dispersed.

‘Yes, yes. Must be getting on,' I replied, still aware of Mr Roper's gaze, not to mention Mary who was staring into the distance, her forehead a mass of concentration lines. A few drops of rain had begun to fall. I longed to be inside, in quiet warmth.

We arrived home and my appetite limply returned. I had some crackers, sucking their salt on my tongue before biting into them. I sat in the sunroom with a book on my knees—for the moment I had put
Jane Eyre
aside, trying to find a happier orphan in
Great Expectations
—though I found myself checking on Mary too often to hold the narrative.

She was installed in the living room, carefully polishing the rest of my silverware, the idea occurring to me after doing the cutlery. She knelt on the floor in front of the newspaper-covered coffee table lined with the gravy boat, the candlesticks, the butter and cake splades, in fact, the entire contents of two cupboards at risk of going green without an application of polish. If Mary was anything like me, she would enjoy watching the clear liquid harden on the silver to a brown white, then delight in rubbing to reveal the new, shiny surface beneath. It was a task I had done for the Sisters, making the crucifixes glisten.

‘The candelabra are the trickiest,' I said as she started on a holder with vine-shaped crevices. ‘You have to be careful you don't let the liquid dry where you can't rub it off.'

‘Yes, Auntie Grace.'

She did not stop to address me, just went on as before.

‘I'm sorry about your husband, Auntie Grace,' she said, continuing to focus on her polishing.

I had turned on the living-room light because of the overcast sky and a ray caught the silver of Mary's candelabrum and shot over to Fred's photo on the mantelpiece, a coin-shaped patch of light hopping from one point on the glass to another.

‘Thank you, Mary,' I said.

‘You must miss him?'

It was a question, not a statement. The rain started up outside, pattering against the window awning.

‘Of course I miss him.'

My answer held too much anger. I should have been weeping by now, clutching the oval-shaped frame to my broken heart. Mary had stopped polishing and, across the room, she watched me. I had
Great Expectations
open on my lap, the pages flickering over, past my place, driven by the winds coming through the many gaps under the windowpanes.

‘He was a good man?' she asked.

‘Good?'

I had never been asked this question, having had no father to check on the character of my fiancé, nor a mother to worry over my future. Funny to think I had never even asked it myself. There comes a point when it feels almost irrelevant.

‘He was kind enough to marry me,' I replied.

I could not hold Mary's gaze any longer and returned to the lucky Pip. He was being told of his transformed fortunes, plucked away from Joe and the grime of the blacksmith's fire, offered great prospects for wealth and happiness.

I tried to concentrate on the sentences waving before me but my eyes blurred with tears. Real tears, threatening to tumble over my lids. I could feel Mary was still looking at me, her hand not moving, no stink of fresh polish in the air. I did not know what to do. My head ached from the pressure of trying to maintain composure. Perhaps I could bark at her to get back to work and she would not see the drops about to run down my cheeks. Perhaps I could smile weakly and whisper of the need to ‘continue on in the face of lost love', turning this into another performance of my widowhood. Or, maybe, I could speak the truth to her.

I heard the glug as Mary tipped the bottle of polish upside down onto the rag and saw, in the corner of my eye, the movement as she began again to apply the liquid to the long thin arms of the candelabrum.

It was no longer clear to me what my expectations were. When you hope for something, or dread something, it may be that you will it into your life. It'd been my experience that nothing you anticipate—whether an occasion of joy or of misery—could ever live up to the feelings you had marked out for the event. I had always been let down or, worse still, had experienced the moment as if I was outside of myself, detached and only half there, noticing foolish details, like the wedding rice on the steps or the ocean light behind Fred as he stood on the dock. Silly, small things which did not help me to
feel
what I was supposed to feel, did not give me the rush or the pit, the love or the sorrow. How to even pretend to show such emotions after imagining so much more, after looking forward to unfiltered delight or unbridled pain? On the day of Fred's leaving shouldn't I have had more than just a muffled goodbye, being jostled and bumped by all those mothers and sisters, wives and grandmas around us, going through their own separation? More than simply standing there, dry-eyed, waving with my gloved hand, too late aware how my chaste hug had ensured our skins were barely in contact with one another at the end?

I understood why the visions of the saints were so important to the Church. In Saint Teresa's flight of ecstasy there was hope for a heaven on earth, a moment of forsaking longing, a moment of feeling all that one should and showing it to the world, her eyes rolling back into her head, her hands limp and open, her lips parted. As if she was drinking in every minute of the moment, unafraid of the fall. I had never known such a moment.

†

Four days passed and I exhausted myself keeping a close watch on Mary. Night after night I woke up at exactly five minutes past three, sure I had heard movement in her room. Each time, my trip to investigate found her dark shape asleep in bed. From the hallway—I had forbidden her to close the door or to go to the outhouse during the night—her breathing always sounded regular, with no evidence she had recently exerted herself jumping back into bed on hearing me. Still, I woke.

During the day, aside from her taking over nearly all the housework, I began to teach her knitting, to keep her stationary and indoors, and to take her away from the threat of reading. She did not take to knitting as I would have liked, using the needles clumsily and often dropping the balls so they would unravel across the floor. Not only this, but she persisted on constantly asking about our afternoon walks.

‘It's not very cold today, Auntie Grace,' she hinted, after I had used that excuse for not going out the day before. ‘Pretty sunny.'

She was right. It was a mild, still day. We also needed eggs. I had every reason to leave the house.

‘Finish ten more rows and we will see.'

‘Ten?' she muttered and went back to her knitting.

In the hour Mary slowly worked, the weather turned. An afternoon storm rolled in, a blanket of white cloud covering the sky and providing the perfect cover for staying put. Sheet lightning flashed through the curtains I had drawn against the weather. This sudden change was certainly not my fault. Mary's needles clicked and clacked under the thunderous wind.

†

On the fifth day she defeated me. I had been forced into making a promise of volunteering at the St Vincent de Paul shop. Mrs Bishop had, as usual, bullied me into saying yes before I was even aware of what I was agreeing to. I had planned to have Mary come with me but, when I appeared at her door, curious as to why she was not already up and preparing breakfast, she was lying on her bed, her knees clenched up to her body, her arms locked tight around her stomach.

‘I don't feel good, Auntie Grace,' she whined. I had never heard her complain before. Her quilt was lying on the floor, the sheets bunched at the bottom of the bed. ‘Too hot,' she whimpered when I tried to pull them out and replace them on her.

I put the back of my hand on her forehead. She was slightly hot though not, as far as I could tell, feverish. The room itself was stuffy, the windows closed and locked.

‘All right, then, you can stay in bed for the moment,' I said. ‘I'll bring you some water and dry toast.'

‘Not hungry.'

‘You have to eat something or you won't get better.'

I stood at the toaster waiting to turn the bread—I had a habit of forgetting the toast inside the metal drawer, burning one side only to be extra diligent on the other and removing it too soon. I wondered whether I was being too trusting. Mary had been watching me closely, testing my answers to questions, as if to catch me out. The other evening it had been about the jacaranda tree. Sometime, I had told her the story of my father-in-law nursing it back to health.

‘How do you nurse a tree, Auntie Grace?' she asked, as we folded the sheets, her stick-like arms spread wide as she walked the ends towards me. We were in the backyard, making the most of the last of the light and the extra space. We had worked almost completely in silence up until that point. On the final sheet, she asked about the tree, up on tiptoes as she handed me the corners of the double sheet before dropping her heels back down to take the nearly created ends.