Beth nodded. She had thought she needed to do this alone but she realised she needed to do it with Edie. They had both loved him, so they should do this together.
Beth, Gracie and Edie walked back to Ligar Street. They walked slowly because the barrows were heavy to push and because they didn’t want to break the glass. They stopped every couple of blocks for a rest. When the barrows jammed on a stone or a rut, the three would carefully lift the barrow over the obstruction and then continue. Gracie offered to take a turn pushing but Beth and Edie wouldn’t let her, so she carried a jar. It made her feel better to lighten Beth and Edie’s burden even a little bit. Sweat ran down Beth’s and Edie’s faces, but neither of the barrows were as heavy as Beth’s soul. The hard work made her heart pump so she could feel it in her chest and know it was still there. When she got to the house she left Edie and Gracie standing guard over the preserving jars in the front yard. She needed more equipment for the task ahead. The sun was warm but she could see angry clouds coming in from the distance and she hoped it wouldn’t rain until she had finished. Beth went into the garden shed and clasped the spade by its neck and went back into the front yard. When she decided she was plumb in the middle of the yard, without a word she started digging. She dug and dug and didn’t hear Lilly come and stand next to Edie and Gracie. After an hour of digging Beth had made a hole in the ground about two feet deep and two feet wide. She flicked away the sweat from her forehead and neck with her hand. The four stood in silence and stared at the hole.
‘I’m knackered,’ said Beth. ‘I can’t dig any more but I reckon that will do. You’re the gardener, what d’you think, Mum?’
‘Looks good to me,’ said Lilly, still not knowing what the hole was for.
Beth reached out for the preserving jar Gracie held and Gracie put it gently into her hands. She unclipped the lid. The jar breathed a sigh of relief as the air inside was released; they all heard that breath in the silence and let the rose perfume seep into them. Beth read the date on the label out loud, then with the jar in one hand, she carefully pulled out the rose with the other and squatted and laid the rose in the grave. Edie gasped and put her hand on her heart to stop it leaping after the rose. Gracie steadied her so she didn’t topple over. Lilly wept silent tears that wet the ground where the rose lay.
Beth read the date on the next jar and laid its rose into the hole, and another, and with each jar Edie saw her and Theo’s love being buried in the ground forever and Beth saw that all she had hoped for would never come to pass and Lilly saw that her son was never coming back and Gracie saw there was too much pain in the world.
‘Do you think he died for nothing?’ Beth asked, her voice weak and small. She began to shake because she believed that he had died for nothing, she’d taken him from Edie’s love and he hadn’t even consummated their marriage. There was no child, nothing of him to remain in this world. Nothing to comfort them. Gracie put her arms around Beth and held her tight.
‘Don’t even think it,’ Edie said. ‘It would be too awful to even think it.’
Beth opened the last jar, read the date on it and placed the last rose in the grave. She looked at the other women. Her job was done.
Theo’s body was lying in some distant place, a strange country that grew trees that Beth had never seen and where foreigners that he had fought would stomp over his grave with no concern that below their shoes was the story of a life. But here at least his roses would be buried beneath familiar soil and no one would trample on this spot.
‘Wait,’ said Lilly and she went inside the house.
She came back and knelt down, not minding her dress turning black at the knees in the freshly turned soil, and she carefully placed a fruitcake and the sheet music for Chopin’s Prelude in E Minor on top of the roses, her tears pouring onto the music and the cake.
Beth, Edie, Lilly and Gracie scooped the black earth back over the roses, the cake and the music with their hands. They did it gently so that nothing under the earth would be disturbed or broken and they all spilled tears over the grave and their tears mingled together and watered the buds below.
When they had cried out all their tears, Lilly looked up with red swollen eyes and dirt-stained cheeks and said, ‘It’s still early I expect but Milton gave me a rabbit he caught so I have rabbit stew inside. We could have it on toast for breakfast or lunch, whichever it’s closest to.’
The others nodded, suddenly aware of how empty they felt. Lilly’s food might be just the thing to fill the space inside them. They ate until they felt they could go on with life, though it would never be the same life without Theo.
Thirty-One
The Train Trip
Monday, 24 January 1916, when Beth changes course.
Beth put on the black skirt and her white cotton shirt, her stockings and shoes. It was awfully hot and the stockings were already sticking to her legs. She went into the kitchen where The Courier was laid out on the table with Theo’s photo large and clear at the top of the third page. He looked out at them as though he could just step out from the newsprint and
