She boiled the water and poured it over the dried chamomile buds. She wanted it ready and cooled for when Edie brought Gracie back from their walk. Beth set the bowl of hot brewing tea aside and placed a doily over it. She had sewn tiny coloured beads around the edges of the doily to weigh it down so flies wouldn’t find their way under it. Later she would strain the tea from the buds. Beth’s mind played Edie’s words over and over in her mind and each time she became surer that Edie wasn’t joking. ‘Surely she was joking,’ Beth said out loud. She thought about it again. Edie could be a very determined person when she got something into her mind.
‘Has she come back yet?’ Paul stood in the kitchen doorway. Beth looked at him and their minds collided on the same path.
‘Come on,’ said Paul, ‘just leave whatever you’re doing. Let’s hurry.’
Beth and Paul ran up Webster Street and crossed over Wendouree Parade to the lake. There was a path that ran around the circumference of the lake but they didn’t know which way to go.
‘We’ll split up — you go that way,’ said Paul, pointing to the left.
Beth nodded and ran, her eyes scanning everywhere, stopping anyone she knew to ask if they had seen Edie, which they hadn’t, or they might have but wasn’t that at least an hour and a half ago? Beth’s mind spun furiously, losing more control with each spin. She saw all the possibilities and all of them were awful and becoming worse as she walked further and further and still couldn’t find Edie. Half an hour later she saw Paul walking towards her and she held out her hands full of nothing and he shook his head.
If something had happened to Gracie or Edie, Paul knew it would be his own fault. He’d been so consumed with his grief he hadn’t really considered Edie’s loss at all. He hadn’t noticed, not until now, when it all came flooding back to him. It was always Beth who bathed the baby, Beth who fed her, Beth who changed her nappies and took her out in the cooler evening air. And it was he who rocked Gracie to sleep each night and he who cooed lullabies to her. Edie never had anything to do with Gracie if she could possibly help it. Paul remembered the times he had seen Edie looking at Gracie as though she was the Devil’s baby. They were just fleeting looks, so afterwards Paul would think he had imagined it.
Paul was puffed from the run from the house to the lake. It was only a short distance, just four or five houses, but he hadn’t been able to breathe properly since Lucy died, the air just wouldn’t come to his lungs. He had walked furiously around the lake, trying to gasp in the air to fuel his pace; he had gone halfway around the lake when he saw Beth walking towards him, her arms held out. She hadn’t found Edie either. He stopped and they both stood still. He didn’t know what to do next. Around them were a few picnickers, mothers with their children; it was a Wednesday and the men were at work. Children were chasing swans, and some of the birds came and hid behind him to escape the bullies. He looked at the houses that gazed down on the lake, and then towards the area of tall grass and caught a glimpse of a woman’s straw hat. Edie’s hat. He ran towards it, pushing his way through the marshy grasses, spraying brown mud over his trousers, shirt and vest until he came to a standstill next to Edie.
He stood in silence. He knew he needed to be careful or they might all drown. Beth stood on the other side of Edie and Paul put his finger to his lips and Beth nodded.
Edie was holding the baby in her arms but Paul couldn’t see if Gracie was okay because she was covered with a cotton sheet. Edie looked at him but didn’t say anything. Her face was unreadable and he didn’t know if Gracie was alive or drowned. He hoped the cotton sheet was to protect her from the sun. But the baby was quiet, and that was a worry.
‘Ssshhh,’ Edie said finally. ‘If you look hard you can see a platypus. There is a yabby he’s been trying to catch. It comes out first and then he comes after it. Ssshhh.’
The only thing Paul wanted to see was Gracie alive and well. Then Edie pointed at a yabby scurrying for its life through the water and after it the hungry platypus, an odd creature from another world, gliding effortlessly through the water like a strange ugly bird. The animal’s grace filled them all and they stood in awe. Too soon the platypus captured its prey and disappeared.
They let the moment wash away slowly and carefully and embedded it in their memories. What they would remember was not the platypus but the mystery of another world touching theirs.
Finally Edie turned and walked out of Fairy Land. Paul and Beth followed and at last Paul asked, ‘Is she okay? Gracie, is she okay? Are you okay?’
‘Of course,’ said Edie and pulled back the sheet to reveal the sleeping baby.
Then she looked up at him and said, ‘She smiled at me, Papa, and everything changed.’
‘I know,’ said Paul. ‘She does that.’
Ten
The Doctor
If he has to give bad news it might
