He shook his head.
‘You’re my legal wife, Beth. I had to tell you first.’
She stopped walking and looked up at him. ‘That hasn’t really meant a whole lot, Theo, has it?’ She could hear the hostility in her voice. ‘Besides, I’m not sure we’re married when you are dead.’
‘Well, I’m here to change that,’ he said gently.
Beth gave Theo the forty-five minutes she promised him. Anyone looking at them would have seen a man and woman walking oblivious to the rest of the world, talking as though their futures depended on it. By the time they had got to Flinders Street station he had said all he needed to say.
Beth caught the train from Flinders Street and walked to Princes Street deep in thought. When she knocked on the front door Clara opened it and held the door ajar with her arm stretched out, creating a barricade. She was in her nightgown, her face was fresh without a trace of the makeup she had worn to work, and her red hair glowed like embers in light from the hallway. Beth could see she had been crying. She stood there not letting Beth in.
‘Well?’ Clara said eventually.
‘If you make me a cup of tea I will tell you,’ said Beth.
‘No, you tell me now and I decide if I let you back in,’ said Clara.
Beth put down her bag. ‘He said he was willing to pick up our marriage and give it a try if I insisted but that I should know he will always love Edie.’
‘Well, I don’t s’pose you can fault him for honesty,’ said Clara, still barricading the entrance.
‘So,’ said Beth slowly, watching Clara’s angst as she drew it out, ‘I said to him that I wanted a divorce. I said “Theo, I’ve learnt who I am and it’s taken me a long time and it turns out I am strong and independent and I like being on my own. I have someone else who loves me,’ she said and looked meaningfully at Clara, ‘and if I was going to be with anyone I would probably be with that person. But right now I want to just be by myself. So Theo, please do get a divorce. I just ask that you be the guilty party. Because you are, really, in a way, aren’t you? You never loved me. In fact it’s quite the in-thing to be a divorced woman, I think I shall like it immensely. Some women pretend they are divorced because it’s more exciting than being unwanted and single but I will be the real deal. You do all the work and I will sign anything I have to and we will both be free to be who we want.” And he said, “Getting an annulment from the judge is quicker.” He was never one for saying much. And I said, “I thought I was a widow, which is rather a sad thing to be. But I was looking forward to being a divorcee.” No don’t look like that, Clara. I said fine, an annulment then.’
‘You said all that?’ asked Clara standing aside.
‘Well, that was the gist of it. I may have said a lot more than that. The strange thing is that he asked me not to tell anyone else he was alive. He made me promise.’
Forty-Two
Lilly
Friday, 25 July 1924, when the afternoon doesn’t pan out.
It was three in the afternoon and Lilly was walking to Webster Street. She had a basket filled with butterscotch rolls for after dinner. They were still hot and she was cocooned in the smell of buttery sugar escaping through the tea towels in which the scones were wrapped. As she began to cross the big intersection at Sturt Street her breath left her. She undid the top button of her coat and pulled her scarf loose and bent over and gasped for air. The pain ran through her jaw and neck and she grabbed her arm, which hurt nearly as much as losing Theo.
The schoolchildren on their way home pointed at the old woman standing in the middle of the road holding up the horses and motor vehicles. George, who was retired now but never stopped feeling he was a policeman, saw her fall to the road and ran as fast as he could, yelling for others to get the ambulance as he kept running. Beatrix, who had been walking with George, waddled over as fast as she could. She pushed George out of the way and loosened Lilly’s coat and cardigan and shirt all the way until she had bared Lilly’s undergarments to the world without a care and pumped her chest and then held Lilly’s nose and breathed into her mouth.
‘You’re amazing,’ said George, admiring her at work.
‘Once a nurse, always a nurse,’ she said between pumps. She was tired but she kept going until the ambulance truck arrived. George got up off his knees and reached out his hand to help her up and she watched over Lilly as they lifted her onto the gurney and into the brand spanking new ambulance.
‘Well, that will be a tale to tell if she lives,’ said George, standing next to Beatrix as they watched the truck pull away.
‘She’s the first to ride in the new motorised ambulance,’ Beatrix said, still red in the face from her efforts.
Lilly was looking for Theo but she couldn’t find him anywhere. She looked up and down the streets and went to the house and called for him in the backyard and looked in his bedroom. She found Peter sitting by the kitchen table in a singlet and his undershorts reading the paper. He looked up and smiled at her. ‘Ah Lillian, my sweet rosebud.’
No one had called her Lillian since her wedding day, when the minister said,
