Dulcie looked down at Betty lying on the bed, and her heart welled up with love and sympathy for her. She had lost so much weight, her once plump cheeks were hollow and flesh hung in folds around her neck and beneath her eyes. It was doubly hard for a woman who had always been strong and healthy to accept she couldn’t beat this, and though for a very long time she had fought it, making herself get up and do little chores even when she was in severe pain, now she was too weak even to turn herself in bed. Yet her mind was still as active as it always had been, and she focused it on others, worrying that she was becoming a nuisance and a hindrance.
But she wasn’t a nuisance, for she had retained her good humour, her interest in everything and everyone. She never complained, she was always delighted when anyone called to see her, and touchingly grateful for any little kindness.
When she and Dulcie talked about milestones in the last year, the one that always made them laugh most was their embarrassment when Betty first needed help with bathing. Dulcie had never seen an older woman naked before, and Betty admitted that even Bruce hadn’t ever seen her that way in their entire married life.
Betty would laughingly remember how Dulcie once stuck a soapy flannel in her mouth because she had her eyes shut. Dulcie would tease her back with the reminder of the time she put both legs in one knicker leg because she wouldn’t let Dulcie help her, and how she tried to hobble out of the bathroom like that.
Laughter had taught them how to cope, and they found the embarrassment disappeared. Now they were comfortable about it all, blanket baths and bedpans were just another part of the routine, like the medication and bed-making. But the one thing Betty could not accept was that Dulcie was overworked and she was spoiling her life.
Dulcie was speaking the absolute truth when she said she liked looking after Betty. She hated to see her so thin – her weight had dropped from around twelve stone to eight, and her legs and arms were like sticks. It grieved her to see a woman who had once loved her food unable to eat more than a few mouthfuls. But Betty hadn’t lost her sweet nature or her patience, and she was always far more interested in hearing the gossip, talking over old times or discussing things in the news, than she was in herself.
If Dulcie hadn’t grown to love Betty so much, perhaps she might think herself overworked, for she ran the house alone now, doing all the cooking, cleaning and laundry, and had to get up during the night to turn Betty, give her medication and bedpans. She couldn’t have a day off, the only breaks were when Bruce sat with Betty, and then she had shopping and other errands to run. Yet she didn’t feel hard done by in any way; for the first time in her life she felt needed, cared for and appreciated. What she did here seemed so very little in return for all the kindness that had been shown to her in the past.
Dulcie rinsed and dried Betty’s top half and covered that up with a dry towel. ‘The bottom bit now,’ she said, moving the basin of warm water further down the bed and removing the lower towel. ‘Now, suppose I move your bed over to the window afterwards?’ she said as she put soap on the flannel. ‘You’d be able to look at the garden and see Bruce and the men when they’re over by the barn.’
‘You are such a kind girl,’ Betty said, her voice quivering with emotion. ‘Too kind sometimes. You should think of yourself more often. I hear you singing along to that pop music sometimes and I think you ought to be off to Sydney, going to dances and parties, buying lovely clothes and being taken out by men who could give you all the things you deserve.’
‘I don’t want to go to dances and parties.’ Dulcie smiled as she soaped the old lady. ‘I’ve got everything I want right here.’
‘That’s just because you don’t know what you’re missing,’ Betty said.
Dulcie rinsed out the flannel and wiped off all the soap. ‘You haven’t seen much of the world yourself, and you don’t think you’ve missed anything,’ she said reprovingly.
‘It was different for my generation,’ Betty said firmly. ‘We had the two wars, and the Depression in between, and we didn’t know what was happening elsewhere in the world. But you read, you watch the television, you listen to the wireless. You know so much more about what’s on offer than I ever did,’
Dulcie dried her carefully, then massaged her legs and feet with some cream. ‘I’m going to turn you over on your side now,’ she said. ‘Can you roll over if I give you a push?’
Once she’d exposed Betty’s back and bottom she washed and dried it carefully, checking for bed sores, then fluffed talcum powder on it. ‘No sore places,’ she said. ‘But once you’ve got a clean nightie on I think you ought to stay on your side for a bit.’
‘You always change the subject when I get serious.’ Betty wiggled a finger at her. ‘You see, I worry about what will happen when I’m gone. You’ll be all alone here with the men, they aren’t much company, you know! You need women friends. I couldn’t have survived out here without mine.’
Dulcie hated it when Betty spoke of
going.
It was she who asked the doctor point-blank how long she had left, she said she needed to know so that she could put her house in order. Her courage and lack of self-pity was admirable, maybe it was sensible to face it and get everything done or said that she found necessary, but Dulcie found it distressing.
‘Maybe I’ll join your Country Women’s Association,’ she said, slipping the clean nightgown over Betty’s head and carefully easing it down over her.
‘That’s for older women,’ Betty said. ‘You need friends your own age, not a bunch of old biddies talking about jam and their grandchildren.’
‘I’ve got Ross, remember,’ Dulcie reminded her. ‘We will get married before long.’
‘I’m not so sure Ross is right for you any more,’ Betty said with a sigh.
‘Of course he is,’ Dulcie said in surprise. She pulled up a chair by the bed and sat down so she could look right at Betty. ‘What makes you say that?’
When lying on her side, the looseness of Betty’s flesh on her face was most noticeable – she had joked one day that Dulcie ought to make a few tucks in it, the way you did with a too large garment. Even her eyes had faded to the colour of duck eggs, and there was never any sparkle in them any more.
‘I don’t think he’s warm enough for you,’ she said, reaching out and taking Dulcie’s hand. ‘You need warmth to blossom, Dulcie, without it you’ll just shrivel up. You get it from me and Bruce now, but I’m afraid you’ll find it suddenly colder when I’m gone.’
‘But Ross loves me, I love him,’ Dulcie insisted. ‘He’ll be different once we’re married.’
‘I don’t think so, dear,’ Betty said gently. ‘He’ll look after you all right, I don’t think he’ll ever become a boozer or a wife-beater, but there’s no passion in him.’
Dulcie blushed. ‘That comes after the wedding surely?’
‘It should be there from the start, from the first kiss,’ Betty said, her eyes suddenly damp. ‘You’ve seen each other every day for over two years, yet I’ve never seem him kiss you impulsively, hug you, run to you. I put it down to shyness for a long time, but it’s more than that.’
‘He’s different when we’re alone together,’ Dulcie said. Yet even as she said it, she knew that wasn’t entirely true. He hadn’t once tried to go any further than kissing, the way she had been told most men did. On several occasions she’d tried to instigate something more, and each time it had been him who backed away, saying that must wait until they were married.
She had always thought this was consideration for her, and fear they might go too far. But just sometimes it did feel like rejection.
‘I’m only speaking out because I’m so fond of you, dear, and because there isn’t anyone else to point these things out to you,’ Betty said, squeezing her hand. ‘I want you to think hard before you commit yourself to marriage, ask yourself if everything really is right. Think about Bill and Pat Masters, that was a marriage which went wrong because they weren’t suited.’
‘Bill was just a brute,’ Dulcie protested. ‘Poor Pat never had a chance with him.’
‘He was, but you were still a child when you were there,’ Betty said. ‘You’d had no experience of life, or people. You could only have seen it from Pat’s viewpoint. There are always two sides to every story.’
‘I don’t see that going over all that stuff will help in any way,’ Dulcie exclaimed. ‘I’m nothing like Pat, and Ross certainly isn’t like Bill.’
‘I didn’t say they were like you and Ross. I just want you to think about what you saw there, in the light of what you know now. You may well find something there which strikes a chord within you.’
‘It’s time you took your medicine now,’ Dulcie said, getting up and opening up the pill bottle and laying out the five different ones Betty had to take, and pouring a glass of water.
‘Once again you’re changing the subject,’ Betty said with a smile. ‘If you don’t overcome that before you get married you’re going to find yourself in serious trouble before long.’
Dulcie left Betty after that, smarting a little at what she’d said. She swept and dusted the living-room, filled up the washing-machine with water and switched on the heater, then once she saw that Betty had dropped off to sleep she went outside to sweep the veranda.
It was one of those swelteringly hot, still days where the sun made mirages of water across the paddocks, and the ground cracked open with the heat. The birds were silent, the sheep and cattle lying listlessly under what shade they could find, the only sound the buzzing of insects. Dulcie had planted pansies in the garden during the spring, but they were scorched with the heat now, only the geraniums still putting on a brave show.
She had found so much to love about Australia, she felt she belonged here, yet every now and then she could feel dwarfed by its vastness, bruised by its harshness and saddened by its lack of history. At those times she would think longingly of the gentleness of England, the soft rain and breezes, ancient buildings, small fields surrounded by neat hedges, villages which had remained unchanged for centuries. She ached to see crowded, noisy markets again, to see throngs of children tumbling out of schools, to be in an old church, smelling the polish and incense, and listening to an organ playing.
As she swept up the dust, she remembered how scornful Ross had been when she told him that one day. She could understand it was impossible for him to share her memories, but she couldn’t understand why he appeared to resent her having them. Did he want her to do what he’d done, erect a kind of screen on everything that had happened to her before she got here?
Dulcie stopped her sweeping for a minute, suddenly seeing that this was perhaps what Betty meant when she said Dulcie must think about Pat Masters.
She never dwelt on the miserable time she’d had at Salmon Gums, she’d put that behind her. If she ever thought momentarily about Pat it was only to hope she had a happier life now, wherever she was. Yet she remembered now that Pat hadn’t ever spoken about her past, not until that letter from Reverend Mother came. That was the turning-point in their relationship, when she came to understand the woman a little better. Whatever Betty said, Dulcie couldn’t see even a vague similarity between herself and Pat, other than they’d both been in orphanages, yet now she came to think about it, there were similarities between Pat and Ross. The bitterness, difficulty in talking about their feelings, and the moodiness.
Goose pimples popped up all over Dulcie, despite the heat she felt chilled. Betty was right, she was just a child while she was with the Masters’, she’d been nervous of men, and her only knowledge of love and marriage came from romantic books and distant memories of her parents. Now as she thought back to her view of Pat and Bill together as a couple, she realized that she’d just assumed Bill was the one entirely responsible for all Pat’s unhappiness.
Dulcie shook herself. Whatever Betty said, it didn’t do to dwell on all that again, people did do strange things to one another. Some people like Betty, Bruce and John could communicate easily, show affection and give praise, others like Ross and Bob couldn’t. It didn’t necessarily mean they were lesser people, they were just different. Look at her and May – the same parents, the same upbringing, but so very different.
Thinking of May reminded Dulcie that her sister’s letters were getting further and further apart again. She had sent a card and a very pretty petticoat to Dulcie for her birthday in December, there had been a brooch too at Christmas, but not a letter, and the last one was way back in September.
‘I’ll write tonight,’ Dulcie thought. ‘Maybe she’s got a boyfriend now, and anyway my letters have been very dull since Betty got ill.’
‘How is your sister?’ Mrs Wilberforce asked May as she came into the kitchen and found the girl sitting at the table reading the letter that came this morning. ‘And is Mrs French any better?’
May looked up. Mrs Wilberforce was dressed to go out in a pink and white candy-striped shirtwaister dress and a white broad-brimmed hat. ‘Dulcie’s fine, but Mrs French is dying,’ she said with a dramatic sigh. ‘Dulcie doesn’t think she’s got more than a couple of months left.’
‘Oh, how awfully sad,’ Mrs Wilberforce exclaimed, her face clouding over. ‘Dulcie must be very fond of her to stay and look after her.’
‘That’s the way Dulcie is,’ May said, and unexpectedly her eyes began to prickle with tears. ‘She’s one of those people who cares more about others than she does about herself.’
Mrs Wilberforce picked up on the shake in May’s voice, saw the swimming eyes and felt a surge of tenderness for the girl, for clearly she cared far more for her sister than she’d ever let on. When the wedding was postponed, May hadn’t showed much emotion, only some pique that she wouldn’t get her holiday. Yet now Mrs Wilberforce recalled that later, a year ago, around the time the wedding should have taken place, May had become very withdrawn. She hadn’t linked the two things before, but maybe May had been worrying about Dulcie.
‘She sounds such a nice, kind girl,’ Mrs Wilberforce said. ‘I’m sure you are longing to see her again. Of course we can’t really talk about weddings and holidays at the moment, but maybe they will come about later this year.’