5
MY dear Violet,
I am filled with remorse when I think that it is many months since I received your kind letter, but you will forgive me, I hope, knowing that so much has happened. Since we moved from Meroã to Sydney, we have been fitting ourselves into a whole new life, and it has not been altogether easy. If it were only myself, it would be a different matter but Mother is set in her ways and finds it difficult to adapt herself.
However, I must not let our dull existence detract from your good news. I was interested and delighted to hear that you had married Charlie Simpson, who, if I remember, was excellent in a waltz. Violet, I hope you will be happy. Of course you will. While we are still on the subject of marriages, I must tell you that Fanny married Frank Parrott quietly, from the Parrotts’ house, just before Mother and I moved here. It was agreed that there was no reason why any sadness should postpone the wedding, and Fanny herself was anxious to avoid coming here for a month or two before returning to Frank and Sorrel Vale, so the event took place. Fanny was disappointed, to be sure, that it was not the smart function with bridesmaids for which she had hoped, and for which she had planned the dresses, but now she is happy in her new house, on one of the small farms adjoining Mr Parrott’s, which a tenant had vacated at an opportune moment. Of course this is only temporary. Frank is looking about him. He is anxious to go in for sheep.
As for ourselves, we are living in a medium house above the bay. How to describe it I don’t know, for it is not a very distinguished house, thin and red, one of a row. There is a garden in the front and a garden at the back, thin gardens, but places in which to breathe the air, and from upstairs we have a view across the bay, which is full of delightful dancing boats. We brought with us enough furniture to furnish our smaller house. The rest we sold with Meroã.
This, Violet, was terrible. May you never experience a sale in your own house. Mr Parrott and Frank were very kind, all through, helping with the business of settling our affairs, which would have been terrifying otherwise, for my father, poor darling, was careless. However, we have enough to live on, Mother and I, in comfort. I do not want to tell you much about the end of Meroã. Enough to say the land was bought by Mr Parrott, all except the home paddock and the house, which went for a summer place to a Mr MacKenzie, who married that Una Russell from Spofforths’. Mr MacKenzie is a common sort of man with a great deal of money that he made out of beer. I did not see Una, and confess that I was glad. I could not have borne her face peering into private corners, and her bangles jangling at Meroã.
Now you almost have my story. Can you see my life? It is so mild as to be easily imaginable. At first I thought I could not live anywhere but at Meroã, and that Meroã was my bones and breath, but now I begin to suspect that any place is habitable, depending, of course, on the unimportance of one’s life.
Now I must leave you, Violet. Mother is calling for her tea. Naturally she has been distressed by the loss of so many of her possessions, but I do not doubt that time and quiet will restore her.
Again I thank you for your kindness in our troubles, and send you my sincere wishes for your own happiness.
Theodora Goodman
‘Where have you been, Theodora?’ asked Mrs Goodman.
‘I was writing a letter to Violet Adams,’ Theodora said.
‘Violet Adams? A flat, pale girl. I remember. Outside the church. I always thought her rather an insipid friend.’
‘No doubt Violet is all that you say,’ Theodora said. ‘But it appears that she is also kind.’
‘Oh, kindness,’ said Mrs Goodman’s voice trailing into a piece of bread and butter.
The flat, pale kindness of Violet Adams, or Simpson, was like an ointment. It soothed. Theodora Goodman thought about her own letter, which she had written in reply, and which was also kind and flat, flat as its envelope, and yet she was neither kind nor flat. She wondered a little about Violet Adams waltzing with Charlie Simpson beside the great river she had once described in flood. The descriptive letters never did describe. And the writing tables of women, the useless women, must be littered with these lies. The polite, kind letters written in the code of friendship.
‘I do like my tea,’ Mrs Goodman sighed.
If Mrs Goodman softened, it was in moments of small nostalgia such as these, for her own physical well being. Mother is very physical, Theodora thought. She watched the rings encrusting Mrs Goodman’s tea-cup. They were the same rings. And the face was the same. In age it had not softened. It had been carved a little deeper, like a stone that the artist could not bear to leave, as if the next touch might give it immortality, not destroy its soul. So Mrs Goodman sat, perfect within her limits, but, like marble, she did not expand.
‘Tea,’ she sighed, ‘is a most civilized drink.’
And then, ‘I wonder what they are up to. At Meroã. That brewer man with the watch and chain.’
Because the stomach of Mr MacKenzie had rustled with gold, and a greenstone tomahawk, and a ruby star, as Mr Parrott stood with the sun in his eyes on the yellow steps at Meroã and passed him off.
‘Theo, this is Mr MacKenzie, who is going to buy the house,’ Mr Parrott said.
‘Miss Goodman, eh? Heard about you. You and the missus were schoolmates. So Mrs MacKenzie says.’
‘We were at school together, yes,’ Theodora replied.
But Mr MacKenzie was on his way to the yard, to see where he could stable motor cars. Because, of course, he had bought a motor car, in which his wife used to sit looking expensive, with a little detachable parasol.
So that Theodora did not expect there was much more to be said for Meroã. It was swallowed by Mr MacKenzie, and the mouths of the people at the general sale, the red, round, and greedy, or the brown, hatchety, suspicious faces, that gobbled or snapped at LOTS. Because objects had lost their identity and become numbers. It was doubtful whether, even with the ticket soaked off, identity would ever be restored.
When her knees began to tremble, Theodora said, ‘I was not born, unfortunately, with mahogany legs.’
‘Sit down, Theo. There’s no need to stand about. So sit down,’ said Frank Parrott.
He spoke with the accent of kindness with which people address the surface of one another’s lives.
‘You’ll get a tidy price for this stuff of yours,’ he said. ‘Cockies and storekeepers like to lay their hands on something good. If they think it’s got class, they’re prepared to pay.’
But Frank looked sideways at Theodora. It was becoming a habit, as if he blamed her for his own guilt, or else her ugliness, or both. Theodora accepted this approach. There were no ripples on the pool. It was flat and smooth. My brother-in-law, Frank Parrott, she said. There were moments when Theodora was as smooth as glass.
‘Yes,’ said Mrs Goodman, between mouthfuls, ‘I wonder what they are up to at Meroã.’
She exhaled, as if the tea she had tasted had been bitter. Her eyes rounded in the stream, which might give up, she hoped, some vision of vulgarity.
‘But there you are,’ she said.
‘What is?’ Theodora asked.
The straw from the packing cases still twitched at her skirt. The sea of pines swelled, hinting at some odyssey from which there was no return.
‘It is just a manner of speaking,’ Mrs Goodman exclaimed. ‘Really, Theodora, how tiresome you can be.’