Cold Light (58 page)

He corrected her, saying it was a bolo tie, which the Rotary Club of Phoenix, Arizona, had presented to him on his recent visit. ‘Men wear this sort of tie over there. More sensible than our dull English ties. College ties and such.’

‘Looks rather smart.’ She introduced Janice and he shook her hand.

She saw that the graves had been freshly weeded. ‘You weeded the graves?’

‘Had one of my men come out and do it.’

‘That was thoughtful.’

But there was a rebuke in it. The surviving children were responsible for the upkeep of their parents’ graves.

‘You will see that they are in the Old Section. They shouldn’t be there, but there was nowhere else.’

They all looked around and saw that the cemetery was divided into Anglican, Catholic, Presbyterian and Methodist.

‘No Rationalist section.’

He laughed. ‘And there were not a lot of epitaphs that the mason could do. Your father chose “At rest – life’s journey o’er” for your mother, so we chose that for your father, too. He had wanted a longer statement, but it wouldn’t fit and the mason thought it might be controversial. We chose to cover each grave with seashells.

‘I’ve arranged an order of procedure,’ he continued, pulling out some notepapers from his worn attaché case, gold-initialled with the initialling fading into history. ‘There doesn’t seem to be any proper Order of Service that I could find dictating how such a service should be held by close relatives first visiting a burial site so long after the burial.’

‘It had never crossed my mind that there would be,’ Edith said.

‘So I worked one up myself.’

Of course he had. She was amused. He put on his rimless glasses.

Janice suggested that they first open the cooler and have a glass of wine. T. George frowned at the outsider’s amendment to his plan and then approved it with a nod.

Edith watched Janice take control. Janice went about getting the glasses and opening the wine wrapped in a wet tea towel from the auto cooler – they had been unable to get ice. Janice had been somewhat pushed aside by Richard coming into her life. Edith felt less need for her. Perhaps Janice had given up on any expectation that she would join the Party and was also drifting away. She still found Janice – both in her manner and her body – attractive in some uneasy way, but it was a direction from which she had again turned and from which, during her life, she had always turned.

Frederick went off on his own and was standing with one foot on the low brick edging wall that enclosed both graves, staring at the graves. She couldn’t read his expression.

‘I thought I should begin with your mother’s eulogy and then move on to your father’s. That is, in order of decease.’ T. George said this in a raised voice, intending that it reach Frederick.

‘That would be good, George,’ she said, answering for her brother and herself.

Janice handed around the glasses of wine. They were the crystal goblets that Edith had insisted upon, which she had wrapped in muslin for the journey. She left Janice and T. George, and went over to Frederick and put an arm around him. He took the wine but said nothing.

‘Let’s do this,’ she said. She turned and motioned to T. George and Janice.

T. George had a stout box covered in felting, which he carried over to the graves. The felt had been nailed to the box. He drank some more from his wine and then handed the glass to Edith for her to hold, and mounted the box. He stared out into the distance across the paddocks and up to the clouds for a second or three, and then returned his eyes to his papers.

‘I will not read out the list of those present. It would take too long. Suffice it to say that those present represented both the district and the Rationalist Society, and included some notables from interstate, including the now Chief Justice of the High Court, namely John Latham.

‘Both your father and your mother had asked for Rationalist services, and both requested that the poem by Robert Ingersoll entitled “Declaration of the Free” be read. I delivered it at your father’s funeral.’ He looked to Frederick and then to her. ‘I forget who read it at your mother’s funeral. Sorry. No, I remember. It was read at your mother’s funeral by Will Andrade. They both cut lines from the poem before they died. Should I read the lines they wanted cut from the poem?’

Edith and Frederick in unison said, ‘No.’

Edith said, ‘Just read what was read at our father’s funeral. You do not have to read the poem twice.’

T. George had always been a man for detail.

They were both familiar with the poem from childhood. Edith thought she would look at the lines they cut, but at another time.

T. George then paused and looked at Janice. ‘I should apologise to you, Miss Linnett. You may not be familiar with the works of Robert G. Ingersoll. He was a leading American Rationalist, and for a time Attorney General of the state of Illinois. If you were interested, I possess the twelve volumes of his speeches. Walt Whitman said he was the greatest orator of his day. He was a friend of Walt Whitman. In fact, Whitman said of Ingersoll that “Ingersoll is the Leaves of Grass”.’

Edith leaned to Frederick and said, ‘Remember our father reading out from Ambrose Bierce’s
Devil’s Dictionary
, which has as the second commandment “No images nor idols make / for Robert Ingersoll to break” ’

Frederick nodded and smiled. ‘I remember that.’

T. George rustled his papers and cleared his throat. ‘Should I commence?’

They both nodded. He adopted a solemn voice. ‘We have assembled to bid a kind and solemn farewell to our dear friends and mother and father of Edith Alison Campbell Berry and Frederick David Campbell Berry . . .’ He paused and said, ‘I will read the poem. There were probably a few more words said before the poem, but I have abbreviated the preamble.

Edith wiped her eyes. She vaguely remembered some of the lines of the poem from her adolescence and had been silently agreeing with the verses, although she saw them as now somewhat antiquated in their simplicity. It was this simplicity that described her and Fredrick’s upbringing.

She hoped George was not going to read it all. She glanced at Janice and Frederick, who seemed to be listening.

Oh God, he was going to read it all. She wondered if she could stop him. Frederick looked her as if sharing the thought.

T. George looked up, gestured to the wine glass and smiled. He repeated the line, ‘The jewelled cup of love we drain, And friendship’s wine.’ Obviously pleased with his linking of the oration to the occasion, his eyes went back to his papers and he continued with the poem.

‘Living flesh, with passion’s soft and soulful eyes, lips warm and fresh . . .’ She had found these again with Richard.

T. George then paused, looked to the clouds and then at them, and said from memory, slowly enunciating each word with a tone of profundity: ‘We question, we dream, we guess.’

He stopped and stood silent, eyes closed.

Edith said, ‘That was very fine, George. Thank you.’

Frederick spoke. ‘Thank you, George. Well done.’

Janice quietly clapped.

Edith said, ‘Not the greatest poetry.’

T. George looked down at the lines on the page as if this were something he had missed. She suspected that anything that rhymed and carried within it thoughts with which he agreed, was great poetry for him.

Probably from politeness, he said, ‘Perhaps not great, but to the point. I like the line, “no master of the show”. Very modern. Will I continue with the service?’

‘Yes.’ Frederick and she nodded.

‘I’ll read your mother’s eulogy first because she died first. It was put together by Bertha McNamara, an old friend. She died not long after your mother.

‘ “Cecilia Gladys Thomas, a Rationalist and reform organiser, was born on 17 March 1880 at Albury, New South Wales, elder daughter of Australian-born parents. Her father was a sheriff’s officer and her mother was the great-granddaughter of Governor King. As a young woman, she visited the prisons with her father.

‘ “The family moved to Melbourne and, as a precocious young woman, she began studying Charles Darwin, T. H. Huxley, Henry George, Thomas Paine and Edward Bellamy with a tutor at home. She attempted an elopement with the tutor at the age of fifteen, which did not last more than a month or so –” ’

‘What?’ Edith cried out, half-laughing, giving T. George a start. ‘I’ve never heard this.’ She turned to Frederick. ‘Did you know this?’

He shook his head and he, too, was laughing. ‘Go on, T. George.’

T. George was worried. ‘You are not embarrassed by this information, I hope? You shouldn’t be. It is a rather poetic act of passion, I would’ve thought, for a young person. Romeo and Juliet.’

‘Continue, George,’ she said. ‘Depends on the age of the tutor. Although, perhaps not.’

George frowned as if rebuked. ‘I do not know that fact. Perhaps it could be discovered, though time has passed. “. . . an elopement with the tutor at the age of fifteen . . . She returned to her home after the elopement ended and then in her teens left home again to study music and singing in Melbourne under a Mrs Trantham Fryer – I believe that to be her name.

‘ “She had a fine contralto voice – a voice I heard at local functions – and performed with the Metropolitan . . .” ’ T. George stopped and frowned. ‘ “Liedertafel” – I hope I pronounced that correctly . . .’ and then tried another pronunciation: ‘Liedertafel.’

‘ “She told me that to pay for her musical training, she started a poultry farm at Deepdene, in Victoria. Of necessity using her own labour, she built the poultry sheds herself from scrap timber and carried out the other farm chores herself . . .” ’

Edith and Frederick and even Janice now laughed. Edith said she had vaguely heard about the poultry farm in her mother’s conversation, but had forgotten it.

Frederick said he had never heard anything about the poultry farm.

T. George was disconcerted somewhat by the interruptions and laughter, and his expression showed that he did not see what it was that caused the laughter. He stood on his felt box and waited until he had their attention again and went on. ‘ “By 1900, she was a poultry expert as well as a teacher of singing and voice production. She turned her back on music after marrying Peter Berry at a Rationalist service and came to live in Sydney.”

‘As you both remember, your mother refused to wear a wedding ring on the grounds that it symbolised servitude to a spouse. She had this stated during their Rationalist marriage service.’

Janice said, ‘Good for her.’

Edith now remembered asking her mother a number of times, at different ages, why she did not wear a wedding ring. She did not recall her mother’s answer. Edith wondered if she would ask that this be stated in her forthcoming registry-office service. No. But she would not wear a ring. She had worn too many rings.

‘ “She then trained as a stenographer and for a while worked as a court reporter. The married couple moved to the country at Jasper’s Brush, but travelled weekly to Sydney to engage in social reform, purchasing one of the first automobiles in the district.” ’

T. George looked up. ‘Actually, I think I might’ve been the first to purchase an automobile – a Chevrolet. It is of no consequence. I will continue. “She distributed early anti-conscription literature for the Australian Freedom League and became a passionate friend of Vida Goldstein, supporting Miss Goldstein’s attempts to get into parliament.

‘ “During the Great War, Cecilia and Miss Goldstein created the Women’s Peace Army, which called for the abolition of conscription and militarism, for equal rights for women, and for control of industrial production and banking by the people.” Your mother and Miss Goldstein fell out when Miss Goldstein became more spiritual and more with Christian Science. She was concerned about the indoctrination of children with militaristic ideas, and with others she formed the Children’s Peace Army . . .

‘ “With the help of the young people in the Children’s Peace Army, Cecilia made red pennants to celebrate the Russian revolution. But these celebrations sparked three days of riots in 1919 when returned soldiers attacked the unionists, radicals and Russian immigrants who insisted on displaying the red flag, which was an offence under the
War Precautions Act
.” ’