Now Paul was kissing her and it was making her tremble and she could feel the warmth of his lips on hers. He pulled away and she opened her eyes and saw Maud Blackmarsh staring at her open-mouthed and she remembered Edie standing up to Maud in her front yard and how good that felt, so she put her arms around Paul’s neck and kissed him back and hoped she remembered how. Somewhere inside her was the person she had been when she ran away to marry Peter. She could almost touch that person and she wanted to stay in this world that was just her and Paul with her lips on his long enough for her to grab hold of who she had been. She hadn’t been that person for a long time.
Paul pulled away from her but he was looking at her kindly. His eyes were moist and glistening, as though he was finding himself, too.
‘Let’s get away from this raucous party. Let’s go for a walk around the lake,’ he said.
Yes, she thought, let’s stay in our own world.
He took her arm in his and placed his hand over hers. ‘I’m sixty-four, Lilly,’ he said as they walked. ‘I’m thinking I’ll retire next year — well, partially retire. I’ll keep a watch over things at work but maybe I won’t go in every day. Maybe I’ll take a trip away. Maybe we could go together? Somewhere where only we two will know who we are.’
She couldn’t answer him because she was still trembling and she didn’t trust her voice. For two years Lilly had been having dinner with the Cottinghams every Friday night. She would arrive at four and help Edie and Gracie prepare the meal. Now that she knew Edie, she could see why her son had loved the girl so much. She was filled with a dignified compassion for others that she had inherited from her father. If Edie had any sorrow that she hadn’t married Theo, or any bitterness that Beth had married him, she never showed it even once. All Lilly saw was her love for her family, her single-minded commitment to mothering Gracie and caring for Paul. If Edie thought anything was a threat to either of them, her chin went up in the air, her feet dug into the ground and she became immovable. Lilly had seen it when Old Mister Crocket at Queen’s Anglican College had, after many threats, finally given Gracie the strap for singing while doing an exam. Gracie had come home in tears and said that she hadn’t even realised she was singing, it just happened. Edie’s chin had gone up and her eyes had narrowed at the injustice of this crime against Gracie. She dropped the potato she was peeling and stormed off down to the school, leaving Gracie to be comforted by Lilly. When she came back she said she had spoken with the headmaster and threatened him with all the legal ammunition at Paul’s disposal if they ever touched Gracie again.
And Gracie — well, she was just a delight. The girl seemed to have a permanent smile glued to her face. Even when Lilly’s heart was bitter and scorched that she had lost Peter and now Theo, Gracie would smile at her and she would feel her heart softening and she would find herself smiling back. If you are smiling at the world, how can you hang on to resentment? Gracie was thirteen now and would be finishing school next year, and Edie had her chin in the air about that, too. She was angry that Paul wouldn’t let Gracie take a job. He was sticking to his guns that while he could support the girls, there was no need for them to go to work. He said they had a social responsibility to leave jobs for the people who needed them and couldn’t survive without them and that was even more important now there were going to be returned soldiers needing work. So that was that.
Six months after Lilly had started having dinner at Webster Street on Fridays, Paul had started coming home from work early on Fridays so they could play croquet together on the back lawn before dinner. If it was cold or raining they stayed inside and played snakes and ladders, climbing ladders of self-denial and kindness and falling down snakes of depravity and unpunctuality. Soon he was leaving work at lunchtime on Fridays, meeting Lilly at Ligar Street and walking with her to Webster Street. They played rummy and snap and his hand sometimes landed on hers and he’d leave it there and gaze into her eyes until she said, ‘I got there first. I just beat you fair and square, Paul Cottingham.’
Then she would join Edie and Gracie in the kitchen and she’d cook him a different cake each week and they all ate together in the kitchen. After dinner he always took two slices of her cake and she felt filled up and nourished and didn’t eat any herself because she wanted to leave it all for him. What was unsaid between them smouldered away quietly, keeping them warm. Now it had been said and she was afraid everything that had been so wonderful and so unexpected would change.
They walked up Sturt Street towards the lake in silence. Truth be told Lilly wanted to sit down, have a cup of tea and maybe an Anzac biscuit, which would be fitting today, and mull things over. They reached the lake and sat on one of the slatted benches in the shade of a tree. The sun filtered through the leaves,
