‘Papa,’ she looked over at her father, who was in the chair, a blanket tucked in around his thin frame.
Tim thought the man could only be days away from death, the way his eyes were sunk in the back of his skull. His teeth looked chalky when he smiled. Although it wasn’t so much a smile as a grimace.
‘Perfecto, my daughter. Perfecto,’ Benito said, putting his fingers to his lips and kissing them before throwing his arm weakly into the air.
Tim saw how Marianne’s face lit up at her father’s words. The three of them talked a little more and then Marianne went into the kitchen to make some tea.
Benito looked to make sure Marianne had gone before beckoning Tim over to him.
‘You marry my girl, uh?’ he said.
A feeling of butterflies exploded in Tim’s stomach. ‘Marry her?’ he asked.
‘Si, si. You marry her. I die soon. This, this…’ He pointed to his chest and Tim knew it was the disease of miners. The dust had got into his lungs and was slowly eating them away. ‘She need a man.’
‘I’ve got nothing but a humpy in the bush,’ he said. ‘I’ve got nothing to offer her.’
‘This house, it is rented, but I have savings. Small, but they are there. They will go to her, to make her comfortable. She is good girl. Strong girl. She will adapt. You love her?’ Tim wanted to laugh out loud. Love? God, what was that? He’d never given it any thought. What he did know was he was fascinated by Marianne. He thought she was exotic, beautiful, accomplished…If that was love then, yes, he loved her.
‘You ask her out. To eat maybe,’ the sick man commanded. ‘Or a walk. Something.’
Marianne came back into the room with a pot of tea and three cups. She poured the tea and handed the first cup to her father. ‘What have you been planning?’ she asked him. ‘You look like you are being devious.’ She looked across at Tim as if to ask for an answer.
‘Not me,’ Benito answered with a wink to Tim.
‘I don’t believe you, Papa,’ she said gently, handing Tim his cup.
Then suddenly they were at the door and Marianne was bidding him good bye.
‘Would you like to…’ Tim spoke with a dry mouth. ‘Would you like to come out to dinner with me?’
‘Dinner?’ Marianne answered, looking up at him with a smile. ‘That would be lovely.’
‘Tonight?’
‘Are you not going back out into the fields later today?’
‘If you say yes, I won’t be.’
‘Yes,’ she answered.
The dream skipped forward a few weeks because next it was the day of their wedding.
A small do at the town hall in Barrabine. Marianne wore a rose-coloured dress which set off her dark hair, while Tim had paid one guinea for a suit from the secondhand store. It was a bit small for his tall frame and he kept tugging at the sleeves.
They’d walked in together, Marianne holding a small posy of wildflowers while the celebrant had taken them through their vows.
There were two guests at their wedding: Benito and an office worker, who acted as the second witness.
‘You are husband and wife. You may kiss.’
Tim turned to Marianne and stared at her for a second, not sure what to do. Then he leaned forward and put his lips on hers for the first time. His thought was how soft they were and how she smelled of roses.
When he pulled away, he looked at her and saw she was smiling up at him, her eyes shining with what he hoped was love.
Benito clapped loudly and said with gasping breath that he’d like to sing but he really didn’t have the voice.
The next scene was a funeral.
Marianne was standing at the side of a grave, crying, her hands clutching a handkerchief, while Tim stood beside her.
He didn’t know what to do, didn’t know how to comfort her. He felt physically ill as he watched her grieve, knowing there was nothing he could do to take away her pain.
As the coffin was lowered into the red dirt, Marianne let out a low, animal-like moan and Tim caught her as she fell.
‘I’ve got you,’ he whispered in her ear. ‘I’ve got you. I’ll always be here. I’ll always look after you, I promise.’
The next day, with some of Benito’s savings, he bought a little car and they drove out to Tim’s hut to start their lives together.
Then there was a black hole.
Three children’s coffins and a rotting body on top. A cloud of flies. The sound of falling…
Tim woke with a start, his heart pounding. Breathing slowly through his nose, he tried to calm his heart by thinking of Marianne. He reached his arm out to touch the place she would have lain if she were next to him. Of course, she wasn’t there. Hadn’t been for many years. The hut was still the same, though. The wooden set of drawers and the piano they’d moved out of Benito’s rental. She’d turned his little humpy into a home.
He burrowed his head into the pillow, feeling the embroidered flowers on the corner of the pillowcase. They were Marianne’s handiwork. She’d made cushions with flowers embroidered in one corner and music notes in the other. She’d boiled water in the billy and scrubbed the encrusted dust away from the pieces of furniture he already had and then bought tablecloths and mats to brighten the place.
Smiling, he remembered the first big summer dust storm that had come through and how they’d sat inside with a sheet over them. It had been the first time Tim had seen her Italian temper, and what a rage it’d been!
When the wind had passed by and she’d seen the thick layer of dust on her piano, Tim had learned some new Italian swearwords.
‘Porca miseria!’ she cried, sweeping off the sheet which had been used to cover the precious instrument and finding there to be another layer underneath.
