The Art of Preserving Love

she might not have even lasted this long. One dose a week she’d told Lilly, but she knew that when the pain in Lilly’s heart was too great Lilly sometimes snuck an extra dose or two. But how could she not when her heart was cracked in two and both halves were filled with pain? One half for Theo and the other for her husband. But now Lilly needed something stronger. Yes, she would get Lilly some belladonna tomorrow. Lilly looked lost among the clouds of white sheets and pillows on her bed and the brutal greys and whites of the walls around her. She was asleep and Edie thought that was probably best, to let her body rest. They wouldn’t wake her, they would let her be. Edie kissed her forehead, then she gazed out the window at the dying rose bush and perched on the low windowsill. Paul sat in the only chair, which he pulled up close to the bed, and took Lilly’s hand and gently stroked it. Gracie sat on the end of the bed. Edie took out her notebook and wrote:

Third August Twenty-Four

Plan — Buy belladonna extract and heal Lilly’s heart.

She tucked her notebook away in her pocket. Lilly opened her eyes and looked at Paul and Edie saw the quiet love pass between them. They had a calm knowledge of each other; they never tried to be anything other than who they were and loved each other for it. Edie felt a pang in her heart and the emptiness that had been in her as a young girl cracked open just a little further. She wasn’t a modern girl, she wasn’t being who she wanted to be with Virgil. She took out her notebook again and turned to an earlier page:

Seventh May Twenty-Two

Plan – Virgil Ainsworth: we are companions.

She had written that after the day at Mount Buninyong when he had made his proposal and she had accepted. But she had never made any other plans about Virgil. How could she make plans when he had made it clear that plans were the one thing he really didn’t want? He said he couldn’t live with another person and she had never spent a night with him. He said inside he would always be the lonely soldier and she was his only comfort. Edie told herself it was a good thing they were opposites and opposites are good in a relationship to balance each other out. Edie thought about all the plans she had made in her life. Sometimes a good plan took time but once made, once written in her book, it happened. Well, it had all happened except that very first plan — the plan to marry Theo.

Edie looked up from her notebook. Lilly was properly awake now and whispering something to Paul. He leant in close, putting his ear against her lips to hear her, then he sat back, obviously shocked.

‘What’s the matter?’ Edie moved over to sit next to Gracie.

‘Papa, what did she say?’

‘She said Theo came to see her,’ said Paul.

‘You don’t believe it?’ said Edie. She whispered, ‘It’s what her heart wants to be true.’

‘Of course I do,’ said Gracie. ‘I believe her. Lilly’s never once told a fib.’

Edie didn’t know why but she suddenly reached for Gracie’s hand and held it tight.

Forty-Four

The Stranger

Sunday, 10 August 1924, when Virgil sees a menace out of the corner of his eye.

Edie wet her finger and ran it along her eyebrows that she’d had plucked that week in the new fashion, thin and rounded, and wished she hadn’t because it had hurt so much when the woman at the salon had said it wouldn’t hurt at all. She ran her finger along the outline of her mouth and saw the fine lines appearing at the edges of her lips. Acknowledging that there was nothing she could do about her lines and she just had to live with them, she unleashed her hair from its clip and it fell around her face in a delicate halo and rested on her shoulders. She put on her favourite green cloche hat, even though it was starting to get worn, and pulled it down tight, forcing her hair into obedience. Her light silk coat was hand-painted with Japanese ibis and matched her silk skirt; both were light and completely wrong for a cold day in August but they were Virgil’s favourites on her. Then she waited for his knock.

When she opened the door he was wearing his blue vest, her favourite on him. He held it out from his body and said, ‘I’ll have to throw this old thing out one day, you know.’

‘But it matches the car,’ she said.

‘Yes, well, that’s going to have to be replaced one day too. They don’t last forever, you know.’

‘For goodness sake don’t tell Papa that.’

Virgil drove to the Arch of Victory at Edie’s request. He thought it was a dismal place. All those trees struggling in the Australian weather reminded him of the war and death. A spindly tree with a name plaque seemed poor consolation to the mothers who had lost their sons and daughters. He knew there must be a tree with his name plaque but he had no wish to see it. But Edie wanted to go, so he went. They got out and walked through the trees, winding in and out of them, reading out the soldiers’ names on the plaques. The trees were different heights and ages. Some of the trees were dying, the foreign species that couldn’t cope with Australian heat or the winter frosts, and they were being replaced with elms and poplars.

Edie stopped at one tree and suddenly he felt she’d gone far away. He looked at the soldier’s name. It wasn’t anyone either of them knew, as far as he could remember.

‘I’m glad it isn’t one of the dying ones,’ she said quietly.

‘Who is it?’ he asked.

‘Lilly’s son,’ she said and the words hung