‘So I’m supposed to spend my wedding night on my own?’ she wailed.
‘At least we will be married,’ he said. ‘Isn’t that what you wanted? Besides, you will get to see me off on the ship if you come to the dock on Monday morning — all the other wives will be there, I imagine.’
‘A proper husband and wife have sex,’ she said. She was red in the face. She knew he couldn’t even look at her.
‘And we will,’ he said, ‘when I get back and we can settle down to a proper family life. Everything in its right time, Beth. I would be a terrible husband if I took the risk of possibly leaving you pregnant and having to raise a child on your own with a war on. It’s better this way. We can start a family when I get back.’
Family was a word that always caught her heart. He saw her soften a fraction and said, ‘In the meantime you will live with my mother. You’re a proper member of the family, and she’ll look after you, I promise.’
Twenty-Five
The Mortification
Sunday, 8 November 1914, when George thinks it’s time for a bit of a chat with Beatrix.
George told Beatrix the news about Young Colin. He had held onto it until after, in case the news upset her and she didn’t want to give him any loving on account of it. So while they were putting their clothes back on he told her casually, like it was nothing at all, and she turned and looked at him square on, holding her petticoat up in front of her bare chest like George had never seen her bare chest, hadn’t been nuzzling her breasts just twenty minutes ago and swearing they tasted like honey and cream.
She said, ‘I’m telling you, he called that collapse on himself. He knew the mine was too wet. And all that rain yesterday. These last three years he’s been that distraught at Beth’s running off to marry Theo Hooley. He’s had a death wish on him, that boy. He brought it on himself. I’ve seen it many a time and I know what I’m talking about.’
George said, ‘Hmmm.’ He stood up now he was dressed and tapped his baton against his hand and said, ‘I’m just going to chat with Davo two doors down while you get some grub up. Can I borrow your brolly?’
George asked Davo if management was at fault. He hoped to God they were — he really wanted to get the greedy buggers. They sat on two upturned milk crates on Davo’s front verandah out of the rain, which still poured down in torrents, and had a smoke and stared out into the narrow street.
Davo thought for a while and finally said, ‘Young Colin had been going down shafts he knew to be dangerous, to places other sensible men wouldn’t go. For this to happen on the very day of her wedding, most likely at the very moment she was pronounced married, I reckon he willed the earth to keep him down there in the black where he couldn’t see or feel nothing. The boy was like a son to me, George, and that is my honest opinion, mate.’
George went back up to Number 9, shook the rainwater off the umbrella and flicked it off his shoulders onto the kitchen floor, making Beatrix scowl. He told her what Davo said and sat down to the afternoon tea she had laid out on the table — drop scones and oat biscuits. It would have been sponge cake and date loaf if there wasn’t a war on.
Beatrix said, ‘Well, Georgie, I have to agree with Davo, not that I’m an expert on mines or anything, but what I do know is human behaviour, and some things are just too much for anybody, even a strapping young lad. Some things just make life seem not worth living.’
Monday, 9 November 1914, when there is a fine account in the paper.
Gracie went out in the rain in her nightdress and grabbed the papers from the front lawn and went back inside with them. She wiped the wet grass off her feet on the doormat and shook her hair.
‘I got them,’ she called, ‘before they were ruined.’
She had both The Star and The Courier. She went into the kitchen where Edie and Paul were sitting at the table. She plonked into a chair and opened the first paper.
‘Careful,’ said Edie, ‘you’ve got it in the milk jug.’
‘Oh,’ laughed Gracie and she shook the soggy corner so that drops splattered over the table. Then she tore through the pages of The Star and found the wedding page. She hoped beyond hope that Beth’s wedding wasn’t written up with her name in it. But luck wasn’t on her side.
‘Read it aloud,’ said Papa.
She looked at Edie.
‘Go on,’ said Edie.
‘Yes, let’s hear it,’ agreed Papa.
So Gracie pushed her chair back and stood up and read the words slowly as nine year olds do.
A Patriotic Dedication, reported by Clarence Watty
A quiet but otherwise interesting wedding was celebrated at Dawson Street Baptist church on Saturday morning at 10 a.m. when Captain Theodore Wilson Hooley of the Australian Armed Forces married Elisabeth Mary Crowe of Webster Street. The bride entered the church to the strains of the ‘Wedding March’ on the arm of her employer, Mister Paul Cottingham, who gave her away. The church had been prettily decorated for the occasion by Mister Cottingham’s two daughters.
The bride had made her dress out of the colours of the flags of the Allies. The bodice was royal blue, and panels of the dress imitated the Australian flag and the Union Jack alternately. A novel feature was a floral ‘V’ she carried as her bouquet, expressing all our hopes for the future and as a compliment to the bridegroom.
The flower girl, Miss Gracie Cottingham, also of Webster Street, was dressed in a replica
