‘I still get invited to preach when the Baptist Union can find a spot for me, and they’ve given us this house. I think they are being very welcoming all things considered,’ he said. Sometimes he was invited to be a guest preacher at Collins Street. At other times he travelled by train to Sandringham or Mount Martha as an interim preacher when their usual pastor was away. He would be paid his travel costs and a small fee for giving the sermon and someone would invite him to their house for lunch before he returned on the train. News of his skill as a preacher was spreading among the churches and he was getting more and more invitations. He was sure that soon a church would invite him to be their permanent pastor. He spotted a potato that had rolled onto the floor and under the cooker. He bent down and retrieved it and handed it to Alice. The potato was gnarled and green. She dusted it off and looked at it as if he had handed her poison.
‘I’m so tired of eating vegetable broth because that’s all we can afford to make. It makes my stomach churn.’
He felt sorry for her then because it was true. She could only keep liquid down — she couldn’t stomach any actual vegetables. She complained all the time that there was something else inside her besides the baby and it was killing her. The doctor had taken him aside and told him she was fragile, and added, ‘I’m speaking physically and emotionally and mentally, Reverend.’
Alice said what was inside her was making her vomit and she was vomiting into the toilet often; he assumed it was because of the pregnancy, but he remembered that with the first pregnancy she hadn’t vomited all the time, at least not that he knew of. Back in England she had blossomed with the pregnancy, she had been round and full and her skin was golden and her hair shiny. He’d had to keep away from her, it was all he could do to resist her because he didn’t want to risk any damage to the baby while she was pregnant, so he’d gone to London often. But now she was thin and pasty and her bones protruded and her hair hung lank to her shoulders. There was a sharpness to her that hadn’t been there when he had asked her to marry him.
‘We don’t belong here, Reuben,’ she said. ‘This isn’t what you promised me.’
He sighed. ‘I didn’t promise you anything, Alice, from what I remember.’
‘But you were a different man then, it was going to be a different life.’
‘And you were a different girl then who was happy with whatever the good Lord gave her. Where has that girl gone, Alice?’
‘Just like the Irish,’ she said, holding up the misshapen potato. ‘When poor, eat potatoes.’
‘Everyone’s poor at the moment, Alice. There are men lined up outside the Collins Street church for handouts, men lined up outside government offices hoping for a scrap of work for the dole. Wages are going down not up. The paper says it’s only going to get worse. It’s probably exactly the same in England.’
‘Not in Ashgrove House it won’t be, I promise you that. Do you think your father is eating rotten potatoes?’ She picked up the knife to cut what white segments she could from the potato.
‘We aren’t starving yet!’ He slammed his fist on the table and instantly regretted it. He hated losing his composure. It wouldn’t help matters at all, in fact would only make things worse.
The knife slipped and Alice cried out and grasped her bleeding thumb in a tea towel. The cut hurt and bled, oozing a stream of her anger.
‘Quick, put it under water,’ he said. He reached to hold her hand up and take her to the tap, but he bumped his head hard on the shelves. She glared at him. She blamed him for the cut but he wouldn’t take it, he didn’t make her cut herself. He rubbed his head and sat down again.
‘We’re not starving,’ she said holding her thumb tight in the tea towel that was turning red with her blood, ‘because we owe money to the grocer and the butcher and everyone else you can think of and they let us get away with it because you’re Reverend Rose, so they trust you to pay it back. Why can’t you write to your parents for some money?’
Reuben sighed again, he would control his temper no matter what unreasonable thing she threw at him, ‘God is looking after us, Alice, not my parents. When I turned to God I turned my back on my worldly inheritance. How can I serve my flock if I’m not one of them? How can I tell them to trust God if I don’t? How can I tell them that Jesus looks after the poor if I’m not standing with them? Anyway, I have some good news that should cheer you up. I’ve been asked to go to Queenscliff next July. Apparently it’s a lovely seaside village.’
‘Like in Cornwall?’ She dropped the tea towel to the floor and wiped her hands on her apron, leaving a fresh bloodstain. She had never been to Cornwall but she had heard there were lovely coastal villages that the rich visited. When she married Reuben she’d hoped he would take her there.
‘I expect so,’ he said. ‘It’s the seaside anyway and you’ll like that. You’re always saying you miss the country air. Their pastor is going away for three weeks and we can stay in the manse the entire time and I will get paid a full stipend for the three weeks. We can all
