‘He’s old. You’ll only get twenty years with him if you’re lucky,’ her mother had said.
‘Well, I’d rather twenty happy years than fifty miserable ones with someone else,’ she’d replied.
Peter put the paper on the table and patted his knee and she sat on his lap and he kissed her and everything she had been missing so deeply came rushing back and she never wanted to leave this place.
It was the yelling that interrupted her kiss. It was most unpleasant and unkind and she would tell the intruder so in no uncertain words.
‘Lilly,’ said the voice, ‘Lilly, who do you want us to call?’
She opened her eyes and blinked in the harsh lights they were rudely shining right in her eyes. Slowly her pupils adjusted and she saw Young Doctor Appleby standing over her, his face only inches from hers, his antiseptic breath making her queasy. The terrible realisation came to her that she wasn’t in her home with Peter, she was in the hospital, and she felt bereft as everything warm flooded from her and was replaced by everything cold.
She looked at the young doctor’s face. He didn’t care the way his father had. Around her were the cold grey and white walls of the hospital and the harsh lights still glaring into her eyes and the white starched apron of the nurse who was looking intently at the doctor.
‘I couldn’t find Theo, I looked everywhere. I found Peter but Theo wasn’t there, he wasn’t with Peter,’ she said and Young Doctor Appleby looked at the nurse.
‘Who do you want us to call?’ he asked her again.
‘Does she have anyone, sister?’ he asked the nurse.
Lilly had to think hard, it was exhausting. Finally she smiled and said, ‘Call Paul Cottingham.’
Forty-Three
The Tree
Sunday, 3 August 1924, when Maud Blackmarsh is remembered.
Lilly lay tiny and almost invisible among the pillows in the cast-iron hospital bed. She was breathing heavily and dreaming of everyone she loved. When she forced her eyes open she could only just see out the window from her bed. On the other side of the window was a struggling sparse rose bush. She tutted, it was not like her rose bush or Edie’s rose bush. Her rose bush had grown into the largest rose bush anyone had ever seen and almost filled the entire front yard. When young couples thought she wasn’t looking they came and carved their initials into its thick trunk.
The rose bush that Edie had planted in the Cottingham front yard was not nearly as large but it had the reddest roses you ever saw. They were the colour of heart’s blood.
She remembered Maud Blackmarsh, who claimed to be the rose expert, saying to her that Edie’s rose bush had the reddest roses because it was watered with tears and love. But no, that wasn’t Maud, she wouldn’t say something as lovely as that. No, it was the man who had visited her yesterday. Maybe he had said that. He said something else too, something about her rose bush growing into a tree because a bush wasn’t big enough to hold a mother’s love. Then her mind wandered again and she remembered other things Maud had said. When Beth had married Theo, Maud had said, ‘Oh that Beth is much more suitable for Theo than the Cottingham girl would ever be.’ When Beth went to Melbourne, Maud had leant on the fence and said, ‘I tell you, Lilly, Beth only married Theo in the first place to spite Edie, not because she loved him. It’s all very well for the rich to have staff,’ she said, ‘but they can never trust them. Staff are the bane of their lives. That’s why the Cottinghams never employed anyone after Beth. And that’s why Edie’s rose bush has the superior flower.’ But Lilly thought Maud talked a lot of rubbish about things she knew nothing about and one day soon she would tell her so.
Lilly was hot and she wished someone would bring her some water. The man who came yesterday had, he had gently held the cup against her dry cracked lips so she could sip at it. He had placed one hand behind her head, supporting her as she drank, and she had felt his strong hand holding her and she felt safe.
She really wanted some water now. The rose bush outside the window needed water too, its leaves were dry and cracking. Lilly’s rose tree never wanted for water. She knew it had grown so large because it was watered with a mother’s love, which covers a child to the ends of the earth, just like the man had said. And she hadn’t just watered her rose bush, she had fed it tea for nitrogen and phosphorus, and scones for sugar, and leftover lamb stew for protein. In fact she had fed that tree everything she would have fed Theo if he had been home. Maud Blackmarsh had laughed at her feeding the rose tree all those things, but she only laughed until the tree grew strong and tall and far greater than any rose bush should be. It was Theo’s rose tree.
As she thought of Theo tears filled the corners of her eyes. The man who had visited her yesterday had said he was Theo, but she knew he couldn’t be because her Theo had died at the war. She had the telegram and the cloth badge they gave to war widows and mothers. The man had held her hands gently like Theo used to do at the kitchen table. He’d said, ‘I’m back, Mum, and I’m so sorry I haven’t come sooner.’
She wanted him to be her Theo, so she had patted his hand and said, ‘It’s okay love — you’re here now.’
Then he had said, ‘I never gave
