Boxing Day
Boxing Day, 1947. They are sweetly, very sweetly drunk these two: drunk on champagne; drunk on the summer air - laden with salt and cicadas and the going-down glow of the sun; and drunk on their escape. They are so heavy, so full, with the sweetness of it all, yet they seem almost to float along the path. They trip, they giggle, they fizz, but stay close together, close enough to touch though they never do, all along that grassy walk. Even now, when it's only a memory, the two never touch, don't even bump hands, yet she remembers that walk and the gentle warmth of their closeness the way a lover, years later, might recall the first tentative caress. Sylvie Sylvie clears Abe's house with an efficiency and a ruthlessness that surprises everyone, not least herself. Her own home suffers terribly from her inability to discard, to organise, to tidy. Even her teenage children are embarrassed by their mother's bower-bird tendencies, by her lacklustre attempts at housekeeping, though this has never yet been transformed into any positive action. As Sylvie's grandmother would say (as she did, indeed, frequently say), Sylvie is slovenly, slatternly. Sylvie has Bad Blood. Of course it wasn't Abe who contributed the bad blood: the evidence of his superior breeding - this neat-as-a-new-pin house with its well polished furniture, frequently washed windows and meticulously filed papers - is a sharp rebuke. Sylvie owes it to Abe, and maybe even to her mother, to do Abe's house well. Perhaps she can redeem herself, prove the Bad Blood good. So she moves in alone, the day after the funeral, moves into Abe's single-fronted weatherboard cottage with an assortment of bags and boxes, mops and brushes and rags. And she is meticulous, fastidious, efficient, ruthless. The boxes are packed and the house cleared and put into the capable hands of a local real estate agent. Sylvie is back in Sydney within a week, and brings with her only a small carton of her dead father's belongings. 'Just a few little things,' she explains wistfully to her husband, 'Just a few little things to remember him by. He was a good father, after all. Wasn't he?' Venie She has time, plenty of time, to remember that day. Once (and it seems so long ago now, so distant; a part of some other existence, not hers) the current of her life seemed too powerful, too relentless, to permit any real consideration of consequences or ramifications - and certainly there was never an opportunity (nor any desire) to ponder the turn-of-events, the chronology, the progression. Childhood, marriage, babies, love - these things just happened. Now, other than the nurse's daily visit, her meals and the mail, nothing much at all happens. Now, in these limbo days where life is all downstream, she has time to reflect. Time on her hands. Too much time. Sylvie Sylvie and her daughter Charlie - named for Sylvie's paternal grandmother, Charlotte - spend a summer afternoon going through a small suitcase crammed with old family photographs, Abe's. Charlie is a confident girl, fair where her mother is dark, tall where her mother is short, and at that age where supreme narcissism is easily masked (and parental confidence pleasantly inspired) by any expression of other-than-self interest. It is obvious that Sylvie is pleased-as-punch to have her Aryan Princess curled up close to her on the lounge; that she is tickled pink with this image of their being girls together - such intimacy - with their iced glasses of coke and packets of chips (though we must allow Sylvie a small sigh at the sight of her daughter's exposed - and oh-so-flat - midriff). And then to be asked - yes asked - to relate stories of this Auntie, that Uncle, oh god is that really you? Maternal Bliss. They're reaching the end of the collection, only a few sepia prints and postcards remain unseen, uncommented upon, when Charlie, who is becoming restless, idly unbuttons a small pocket on the inside of the suitcase lid. There is an envelope inside, smaller than a postcard, yellowed and brittle with age; and a photograph. She glances at the photograph before tossing it to her mother, then, without reading the address details, and hoping for some sort of scandalous disclosure, pulls a letter from the envelope - only thin, but creased and recreased, obviously much read. It may be a love-letter of a sort, but it's not the sort she expected, and certainly not to her grandfather, for the letter begins 'Dearest Venie.' She throws the letter and envelope into her mother's lap and looks at her watch. 'Shit - oops sorry, Mum - but I'm going to be late! Gotta run.' She kisses her mother lightly on the forehead in passing. Sylvie's face has paled, she feels as if she's been struck, been wounded, though not by her daughter's abrupt departure. She clutches the photograph, presses it to her chest, tries to regulate her breathing. The photograph is only small, black and white with a thin white frame all around - a snapshot. Inside the frame stands her young, young mother, long-legged and heavy breasted in a full-piece bathing costume. She stands close to, but not touching, a second swim-suited woman. This other woman is young, too, though she seems older than her mother, and is taller. The two women stand - their legs astride in sand, small white-capped waves in the background - looking at one another and not at the camera, and have been captured right at the moment before their smiles (such an intimate tilt their mouths have) change to laughter. But it is not the photograph itself that has so moved Sylvie. She has seen photos of her mother before, though she has never met her, and is only too familiar with the small dark woman pictured here. (Sylvie remembers her childhood, her adolescence, as a time spent searching - in secret - for evidence, for proof of this woman whose blood, whose Bad Blood, runs in her own veins; as a time spent attempting to establish, to reconstruct, the truth of her abandonment. Each hard-to-come-by detail was evidence - to be committed to memory - absorbed! Every photograph a testament to her mother's existence, and her own: the slight droop of the woman's mouth, the tip of her nose, the slope of her shoulders, the lobe of her ear, the curve between this part and that ... even blurred and in black and white, they were - Oh, they are! - so much Sylvie's own) Her mother. Lavinia. Venie. But the date. The date. She turns the photograph over and reads the back again: Venie and Rose. Delwood Beach, Boxing Day 1947 They are pencilled in, these particulars, in old fashioned copperplate, sloping and graceful. A woman's writing, gentle, quiet, understated - it gives no hint of the significance, of the urgency, that Sylvie knows this date demands. Examining the image again, it is not the possibility of laughter that Sylvie sees on the faces of the two women, but concealment, collusion. Conspiracy. Venie When the girl came with my meal - and it was a new girl today, young, much younger than I can ever remember being herself (was there a time, I wonder, when I was so coloured, so comfortable, my skin, so unlined, so upright?) - I asked if she knew where I could find a Milanese nightgown. She stood uncertain and as wary as a cat as I explained the heaviness of this new cotton nightie and its extraordinary cost; how it's so difficult to get out these days, how I must depend on the kindness of others so much now, how I must settle for less, make do. (Ah, for a Milanese nightgown Where, oh where, I wonder? How I miss the softness of those old silky gowns, the way they slither between legs, breasts, the whisper of them against the sheets.) "Italy?" the girl offered hesitantly, before backing out the door, and I'm certain she wasn't being smart. It passes the time. Sylvie Sylvie spends a good half hour preparing herself for the letter. She splashes whiskey into her coke and takes a great soothing mouthful. She adds more spirit, gulps it down. She wants to be relaxed, to be warm and mellow, to be primed for sentimentality rather than bitterness before reading. She lights cigarettes with shaking fingers, goes through six or seven too quickly, right down to the filter. She blisters her fingers stubbing them out, but barely notices. Christ, she's nervous. Her stomach's churning, she wants to vomit; her chest aches and her head. She pours more whiskey. She doesn't want to read the letter, but she must. Boxing Day, 1947. They lie face to face on the narrow ledge of sand, small waves coming closer each time. They murmur now and then, What time does the boat leave? Ten. I won't come. No, but mostly they're silent, content with the gentle sounds of the late afternoon beach and their own thoughts. They look up at one another occasionally, eyes dark and wide with some emotion - regret, perhaps - but mostly they watch the ocean, or gaze unseeing at their own brown fingers delving easily for shells, tracing lazy patterns. When the tide reaches them they let the warm water lick at their bodies, then gasp at the unexpected coolness of its retreat. Rose August 14, 1972. Dear Venie, It seems strange I suppose, to write to you after so many years. I wrote I don't know how many letters to you in those first years, but never posted any. I don't know why, and you never wrote, either. Perhaps it was for the best. I'm sending this letter to your old address, hoping that even if you've moved, it will be sent on. I'm crossing my fingers anyway. I was going through my old snaps the other day with my daughter Jennifer and came upon this one of us. I'd forgotten -not about you of course - but about this particular day. Boxing Day, 1947. All that champagne we drank, and then lying on the beach until the tide came in. And that funny man who took our photo, the way he looked at your legs. I almost didn't leave, do you know the next day. But the thought of David at the other end, and me not being there, not being on the boat - I just had to. I wonder what you've been doing since. More children, I suppose. Little Sylvie must be in her twenties now and you perhaps a grandmother. Imagine! I hope you and Abe have been happy.You didn't mean it, did you, about never going back? I've been happier with David than I ever imagined possible. Oh, no great wealth or excitement, but, you know just happy, content. We've lived in the same house in the same town since Andrew (our eldest boy) was a baby so perhaps we seem a little dull, but I wouldn't change a thing. I'm flying back to Australia for a few weeks next month as I've a cancer that's progressing very rapidly and want to say good bye to family and friends while I can, and to bring mum back to stay with me until the end. (I'm sorry if this seems too blunt, but it's not an easy subject to bring up, is it?) I'll be staying at the old place in Manly - yes Mum and Dad are still still there! - and would love to see you - we can share our old room again and it'll be just like old times - I feel twenty years younger just thinking about it! I'm sure Abe won't mind sparing you for a week or so while we catch up - and there's so much catching up to do. Please come. We were such friends, weren't we? Rose. Sylvie Nothing is explained. Nothing. Sylvie is relieved, but disappointed. A sad letter, no doubt, and sadder still having never been read by Rose's intended recipient. But it reveals nothing that's important to Sylvie. She thinks she'll send the letter on to Venie. Someone - an aunt, a cousin (she's never asked so can't be sure) - has the address. After all, it's only fair - a dying woman's last request. Denied. Discovered 20 years too late. Sylvie imagines her father reading the letter smugly at night, smoothing the fine paper with thick twisted fingers, imagines him savouring his capture, the power of his withholding. Imagines him filing it, tidy even in his malice, filing it away. After all her anticipation, her working-up-to-it, Sylvie is perhaps more disappointed than relieved. And more than a little drunk. Now, now more than ever, she wants to know why her mother left. She wants to know why, on that Boxing Day, holidaying in Manly, Venie deserted her husband and eight-month-old baby, Sylvie; why she didn't come back to the hotel. Sylvie's really very drunk and suddenly feels old, feels wise, feels brave. She wants to know why. She scrabbles about for paper and pen. She wants to know why, so she'll ask. She'll get that address, send the photo, the letter, and she'll ask. She'll ask. Venie It's too late now to change things. Too late now for regret. The past's over. Past. Rose. Abe. Sylvie. They're so far away, so far back in time, that perhaps they never really existed. And perhaps, perhaps she has always been, will always be, thus (how to escape this pulling-down and pulling-in - the gravity of age?) and that other, lighter self a dream. Though it hardly matters now, for the remembering (if that is what it is), the remembering and the wondering fill in the time. They fill in the time. Boxing Day, 1947. They walk slowly back along the path, these two. They are damp and cold and drag their feet as though weighed down by their futures. In her memory they don't talk, but walk close together, bumping hips, grazing shoulders, linking hands. They are so close together - such friends! - so close together and walking so slowly that it seems quite natural they should stand still for a moment, fingers interlaced, and kiss. Gently, lightly, sweetly they kiss and then move on silently along the pathway.