‘From Gracie,’ she said.
‘Ah, Gracie,’ he said and smiled. ‘Smells amazing,’ and he put it in the glove box.
They drove out to Mount Buninyong. They couldn’t get up to the summit in the car because the road wasn’t finished, so they got out where the road came to a sudden stop.
‘It’s not too cold for you, is it?’ Virgil asked.
‘No use living in Ballarat if you can’t cope with a bit of cold weather,’ she said.
Virgil grabbed the picnic basket and she took the rugs and they walked up the zigzag trail that had been worn through the bush by other picnickers. At the top they walked down into the basin, a dip where they were protected from the wind by the manor gums and messmate trees. She spread out one blanket and the other they shared over their knees. He poured them both hot black tea and they sat side by side, their fingers clasping the warm enamel cups, and listened to all the things they couldn’t see. Then Virgil stood up and ran up and down the side of the crater several times. Edie laughed, she loved the way he threw himself into things and took risks that she wouldn’t. He still had the eagerness of the boy he had been. He wasn’t afraid of appearing foolish, he didn’t think about what people thought of him. He just loved life and whatever it gave him and she loved him for it.
He saw her studying him and he stopped and pulled her up to him.
‘I care very deeply for you, Edie,’ he said at last, ‘but I just don’t know if I’m the marrying kind. You’d be happy being my companion, wouldn’t you?’
She looked at him with his wild hair, the way he grabbed life and laughed his way through it.
Companionate marriage. On her last visit to Ballarat Beth had told her that companionate marriage was what it was called when you did everything a married couple did except actually get married. Beth said it was the modern thing to do in Melbourne, other than being a divorcee, which was the most modern thing.
‘Some women,’ Beth had said, ‘lie and say they are divorcees just to make themselves seem more exciting and exotic.’ Edie found it hard to believe. In Ballarat divorced women lied and said their husbands had died in the war because of the shame of it.
Edie had said, ‘Well, neither of us are able to do those things, we aren’t modern Melbourne women,’ and Beth had looked at her strangely, as if she wanted to say more but couldn’t. Edie didn’t know of any women in Ballarat who would be brave enough to be companions — not openly, anyway.
Now, here on Mount Buninyong, to her utmost surprise Edie heard herself say, ‘Most modern girls prefer to have a companion than marriage,’ echoing what Beth had told her. ‘And I’ve always tried to be modern.’
Perhaps his offer of companionship was the best she could ever hope for and she should take the love being offered to her. But she wasn’t sure she meant one word of it. It didn’t sit easily as she said it, and she knew she really yearned for more, for something more solid.
‘This was once an active volcano,’ Virgil said, holding her closer. ‘This is actually a crater.’
She leant her head against his beating heart to see if she belonged there.
‘Do you think the mountain is dead or is it just lying dormant, waiting to be awakened again one day?’
He took her face in his hands and kissed her and she gave herself to it, remembering that she always liked his warm kisses that tingled down to her toes and made her feel young. Then she trembled.
‘Oh, you’re cold,’ he said.
‘No,’ she whispered, ‘surprisingly I’m not.’
He unbuttoned her woollen coat and slipped it off her shoulders and arms and he carefully folded it and put it at the corner of the blanket. Then he removed her cardigan, folding it and laying it on top of the coat. He kissed the top of her head and slipped her silk shirt up over her arms and he folded that and put it on top of her other clothes. She should stop right here and now. She had always believed that sex was for marriage, but then she thought I am thirty-five years old. I am old enough to make my own decisions and my own life and to be a companion. He sensed her hesitation and kissed her again and she forgot her qualms as he undid the zip on her skirt and it fell to her ankles. Then he picked her up and carried her over to the rug and laid her down gently, as though she had no weight at all, pulling her folded clothes to form a pillow under her head. He pulled the other blanket over them both and over their heads so they were in their own world. He pulled aside her silk chemise and kissed her breasts and she arched her back, reaching up to him. He trickled his fingers up her legs and inside her and a moan from somewhere deep in her soul was released and he smiled at her and moved on top of her and softly into her and
