“Mabel phoned,” said Rose, setting the morning tea on the table.

     “What did the ear-basher want this time?” asked Gordon as he lowered himself carefully into the armchair. His joints protested with every move.

     “She offered to help with the renovation. Says she’s handy with tools.”

     “Listen, lass, I can manage well enough on my own.”

     “But your knee—”

     “I’ll manage, and that’s final. No ear-bashers in the house while there’s work going on.” He shook open the newspaper. “Or ever,” he muttered.

     Since Gordon’s retirement, they’d been renovating the house, one room at a time. He took on the sanding and painting; she sewed new cushion covers and curtains. Their home, a charming nineteenth-century cottage, was one of the few left standing in Albury.

     “Did you see the headlines? A youth hostel burnt down.”

     “In Melbourne?” asked Rose.

     “No, Sydney. Full of backpackers. Six dead. They think it was arson.”

     “Arson? How dreadful. Who could do such a wicked thing?”

     “The victims were European—three from the UK.”

     “Dying young, and so far from home... it’s horrible.”

     “Plenty died young far from home fifty years ago,” said Gordon.

     Rose knew better than to argue that point. She lifted the lid of the teapot, judged the brew ready, and poured. Her swollen fingers clutched tightly on the handle. Though everyone drank from mugs nowadays, she always served in their bone-china Wedgwood set, a wedding gift from a long-dead English aunt. The set had survived intact—perhaps not so surprising, given there were no children to break it.

 

***

 

A dance hall in Goulburn had brought them together. On Saturday evenings, the descendants of convicts and pioneers—the McCulloughs, the Byrnes, the Murrays—gathered to jig, reel, and fling. Too shy to dance, lanky Gordon leaned against a wooden pillar, watching an auburn-haired girl spin through a quadrille.

Then accordions and banjos were set aside replaced by saxophones and clarinets, and the youngsters crowded the floor. The hot notes of boogie-woogie and swing bounced off the tin roof, electrifying the hall. The auburn-haired girl twisted and twirled to the beat of Sing, Sing, Sing.

     He was a second lieutenant in the army. In battle, he would prove fearless and bold, but that night he lacked the courage to invite the pretty lass even for a country-dance let alone a boogie-woogie. The girl, however, had nerve. She marched straight up to the young officer whose grey eyes had never left her whilst she danced.

     “Hello, I’m Rose,” she said. “Would you care to dance?”

     “Me? I... ahm... I can’t boogie-woogie,” he stammered.

     “But they’re not playing boogie-woogie now.” Her green eyes twinkled with mischief. “Anyone can dance to this. Come on.” She seized his hand and tugged him onto the floor. And so it was that the strains of Moonlight Serenade helped Rose capture her officer. Five months later, in August 1939, they married—he twenty-two, she eighteen.

     Gordon stood awestruck as the bride stepped from her father’s burgundy Plymouth Sedan, the only one of its kind in town. She wore a long-sleeved satin gown, ivory in hue, its bodice trimmed with mother-of-pearl studs—studs Gordon later unfastened with trembling hands. A headband of pale pink flowers adorned her wavy hair.

     “You are, Miss Rose,” he whispered in her ear, “and forever will be my Dante Rossetti lass.”

     After the ceremony, they bade farewell to their families, climbed into his old Ford, and sped to the Hyatt in Canberra for their one-night honeymoon. In the morning, they drove on to Albury, to the house near the Wodonga barracks where Gordon was stationed.

     The halcyon days of sexual fulfilment and peaceful domesticity, however, were short-lived. War broke out. Gordon was dispatched to the Mediterranean, leaving his young bride behind, fraught with fear. Rose refused to return to her family in Goulburn, choosing instead the home in Albury that had been the setting of her happiest days. She planted a vegetable garden, tended the house, set up a nursery, and filled the pantry with preserves. In the long afternoons, she read novels.

     After two years in North Africa, Gordon’s brigade was sent to Greece, where he was captured and held until the war’s end. When he returned to Australia, five years later, he was worn thin and much altered—more silent, more withdrawn. Rose, too, had changed. Her playfulness was gone; the mischievous sparkle in her eyes had vanished.

     But such is war. It wreaks havoc.

 

***

 

“Still keen on going to the pictures this afternoon?” asked Gordon, looking up from the newspaper.

     “Oh yes, Gordon, please. There’s Dead Poets Society at the Regent, or Always—a remake of A Guy Named Joe—at the United.”

     “A Guy Named Joe? That was a war film, wasn’t it?”

     “Yes, but Audrey Hepburn’s in this one.”

     “Well, lass, you can go with Mabel to see that one. I’ve had my fair share of war.”

     The bleeding wounds, the gutted intestines, the torn limbs, the pleading eyes of mates and enemies alike still haunted him.

Not long after his return to Australia, Gordon had resigned from the army and set up a small cabinet-making business. He loved the smell, the texture, the pliability of wood. Most days he turned out sturdy kitchen cabinets, but sometimes a customer ordered a glazed bookcase, an inlaid table, a writing desk, or a painted screen—projects that satisfied his artistic bent.

     To their sorrow, the nursery had remained empty; Rose never conceived. She seemed to accept her lot and turned her energy to the vegetable garden. The influx of postwar migrants brought a wider variety of seeds, and soon the beds burst with fiery red chillies, purple eggplants, and dark green broccoli. She sold the surplus to the local fruit shop.

     “Pizza at Angelo’s after the pictures?” asked Rose.

     “Bit noisy there of a Friday evening,” said Gordon.

     “Maggie’s Tea Room, then? It stays open late on Fridays.”

     “Yes, much better.” He set the newspaper aside. “Lass, have you decided on the colour for the rooms upstairs?”

     “Actually, Mabel suggested wallpaper. More tea?”

     A dog barked outside.

     “There’s Billy. The post’s here,” said Rose. Billy, the neighbour’s dog, announced the postman’s arrival without fail.

     “I’ll get it,” said Gordon, rising stiffly. “Oh, and no more tea, thanks.” He bent to kiss her forehead. “And no more talk of wallpaper either—too grinding.”

Rose smiled, poured herself another cup, and picked up her new library book. The last one she’d read, Anna Karenina, had dragged her into troubled waters; Barbara Pym’s novel promised calmer seas.

     At sixty-eight, Rose had aged well—apart from her arthritic fingers. Her slim figure and short pixie-cut hair, streaked with only a few threads of grey, gave her a youthful air.

     Gordon returned with the mail. “Three for you, lass, and a bill for me.”

Rose sorted through the envelopes: one from her sister Agnes in Adelaide, one from a niece in England, and one without a return address. She opened it first.

The brief message read:

     I think I am your son. I would like to meet you. Robert.

     A telephone number followed.

 

***

 

Rose sat on a bench at Albury’s nineteenth-century railway station. She wore a dainty bucket hat trimmed with a bow, white cotton gloves, and a new pale-blue dress patterned with delicate flowers. Somewhat girlish, she’d thought when she bought it—better, though, than “gran-ish.” The soft fabric ruffled in the breeze as she waited for the Melbourne-bound train.

     You look pretty, lass, Gordon had said as she left the house. They were the first willing words he had spoken since learning of her short-lived affair with the bookshop owner.

     Shocked at the revelation, Gordon had stammered: “What? Mark was... Mark was homosexual. He died of that new disease, didn’t he?”

     “Yes,” Rose had answered. “I think he was. But people didn’t talk about those things back then.”

     Years of guilt—and the unquenched ache for her son—had consumed her in secret. Yet when her deception finally surfaced, she felt an eerie numbness. Almost relief. The weight had lifted.

     “We were lonely, Gordon. Desperate. Mark’s... his friend was killed at El Alamein, and you were missing for eight long, agonising months. I believed you were dead. I’m sorry. It... it happened. And when I realised I was...” Tears had cut her short.

     Gordon had pressed a handkerchief into her hand and waited.

     “That I was pregnant,” she whispered, “I went to Melbourne. I told everyone I’d volunteered to help with the wounded soldiers, but instead I stayed in a convent. The nuns treated me as if I were the devil’s whore. But when the time came, a kind young sister allowed me one long embrace with my child before carrying him away for adoption. Mother, Father, Agnes, not even Mark—no one ever knew about the pregnancy.”

     “And neither did I,” Gordon said, tersely.

     “You would have left me.”

     “What?”

     “The thought terrified me. That’s why I gave him up. My child... my baby.”

     “I would have what?” Gordon’s voice broke into a scream. “You didn’t trust me! We’ve lived together, shared everything—for fifty years—and all without trust?” He had stormed from the house.

     Rose’s eyes had filled then, as they did now, recalling the sting of his rebuke. Since that night he had kept to himself, sleeping in the long-empty nursery stripped of Peter Rabbit wallpaper and children’s furniture.

     She leaned back on the bench and closed her eyes. A husband lost... but a son found. Perhaps.

     “Can we meet?” Robert had asked on the phone. Too curtly, she thought.

     “Why, yes, of course.”

     “And where would it suit you?”

     “I’d prefer not to meet in Albury, not yet. Could it be halfway—at Seymour station?”

     As they spoke, she had wondered: would he have sandy hair and dark brown eyes like his father?

     “And how will we recognise each other?”

     “Let’s linger on the platform,” Robert had said. “The crowds will thin soon enough.”

     Now, with just over two hours to go, Rose’s heart raced. When they met, would they kiss? Embrace? Shake hands awkwardly? Or simply stare...

     “Jingoes! Where are you off to, all scrubbed up?”

     Rose’s eyes flew open. “Mabel! Oh—Mabel. How come you’re going to Seymour?” she asked, panic flaring.

     “Seymour? What makes you think that? I’m getting off at Wangaratta, same as every Saturday. Off to Jenny’s.” Mabel plonked herself down, shopper bag between them.

     “Of course—Saturday. Your night with the grandchildren. I forgot.” Rose’s nose prickled.

     “Rosie, are you all right, luv?” Mabel handed her a tissue.

     “Yes, just... the glare. Making my eyes water.”

     “Right little number you’re wearing, Rosie. Crikey, is this silk? Carla’s boutique, I s’pose. Pricey! Mind you, I prefer the Emporium—good tweeds, comfy cardigans, sensible summer frocks with deep pockets...”

     And off she went. Gordon always grumbled about Mabel’s nattering and left the room when she visited. She was a good friend to Rose, but today Rose wished she had caught an earlier train.

     “Long-distance for Melbourne arriving at platform two,” blared the loudspeaker. “Stops at Wodonga, Chiltern, Springhurst, Wangaratta, Benalla, Violet Town, Euroa, Avenel, Seymour...”

     People gathered their belongings, kissed their farewells, and shuffled towards the platform. Mabel sprang up, clutching her bursting shopper. “Rag dolls for the girls, teddy for the tot, baked some bikkies too because Jenny never has the time to…” She rambled on.

     Rose got to her feet. Her heart pounded; her head swam. As the train thundered into the station, the engine looming, the ornate cast-iron columns and the Victorian awning seemed to dissolve into another place, another time. Anna Karenina at Moscow’s Obiralovka station suddenly appeared – angry, desperate, staggering along the tracks… then the clanging train struck.

     Rose shuddered. She had thought Anna’s fate too extreme, too unreal. Now she understood.

     It was a way out. An escape.

     Mabel nudged her. “Did ya hear what I was telling ya?”

     “Sorry, no. I’m just... feeling faint.”

     “Here, luv, have a bikkie.”

     “No, thanks, Mabel. I’m all right, really.” But she wasn’t.

     Brakes screeched; the train ground to a halt. Passengers bustled, queuing beneath carriage doors as others alighted. The noise, the crowd, Mabel’s chatter, the train bearing down, Robert’s cold voice on the phone, Gordon’s shattered love—all of it battered her like a hailstorm. She cracked. She couldn’t go through with it. She’d call Robert. Cancel the meeting. There—the station had two phone booths, surely one would function… no, too late, he’d already be on his way. Well, she’d ring this evening explain she had missed the train. Tell him she was sorry. Tell him she was ill. And she was. Ill.

     “Listen, Mabel, I have to—”

     “Hey, is that Gordon?”

     A tall man in a suit strode towards them, greying hair swept back, a slight limp in his step.

     “Gordon?” Rose whispered.

     “G’day, Mr Gorgeous!” Mabel called. “Just in time to catch your train. Poor Rosie here’s none too good. Muggy weather’s to blame, if you ask me. So—where are you two off to, all dressed to the nines?”

     Gordon looked at his wife’s pale, stricken face. He took her arm gently.

     “She didn’t tell you?” he said quietly. “We’re meeting our son.”

     Rose’s pulse hammered. Our son?

     And then the truth crashed down with blinding force: surrendering her child had been a meaningless sacrifice. All those years ago Gordon would have stood by her, would have loved the child. She should have known.

     She turned to Mabel, who gaped in astonishment.

     “Yes... we’re meeting our son,” Rose said, her lips trembling.

     “Blimey,” said Mabel. “You’ve got a son? That’s a whack on the head, innit?”

 

***

 

On the train, Rose softly, ruefully, told her tale. Mabel’s whispered gee whizzes and holy dooleys and crikeys and you don’t says accompanied them all the way to Wangaratta.

Gordon interrupted the tête-à-tête. “Mabel, it’s your stop.”

     “What?”

     “Wangaratta. We’ve arrived at Wangaratta.”

     “Already? Oh, pity that! Well, I’m off then. Come to think of it, I could hop out at the next—?”

     “The kiddies,” Rose reminded her.

     “Yeah, the kiddies. Right!” Mabel snatched up her shopper and hurried out just as the station-master blew his whistle.

     “Flaming alone at last,” Gordon muttered.

     “Mabel’s a good soul—tolerant and charitable,” said Rose.

     “And wacky! Are you all right, lass?”

     “I’ve a headache.” The train jolted, then rolled forward. “Thank you, Gordon, for... for everything,” she murmured.

     He took her hand. “Why the gloves in this heat, Rose?”

     “Oh, you know...”

     “The fashion, is it?”

     “It’s... to cover up. For Robert. I’ve the hands of a witch.” Mortified, she turned to the window. A troop of kangaroos lazed under gum trees, a few hopping idly about. As the train gathered speed, the peaceful image fell away. Rose checked her watch. Robert would be there by now, waiting for the mother who had abandoned him.

On the phone, he’d asked about his father. She had told him Mark had died five years earlier but had not revealed the cause. Why? As if Robert would be harmed by the gossip that had swept the town like bushfire when people learned that quiet, gentle Mark had died of AIDS. She had told him only that Mark never knew he had a son.

     “He was unaware?” Robert had said icily.

     “No one knew,” she had insisted. “Not even Mark, your father. I’m... I’m sorry.”

     More questions would come. Should she tell him Mark had been homosexual? And what if Robert was? Would it matter? No. Of course not. Why should it matter?

     Thoughts came and fled like the stations flashing by, drawing her closer and closer to her son. What had she done with her life? A husband betrayed. A child abandoned. Mark denied a son. A friend deceived. She had hurt the very people she loved.

     “We’re pulling into Seymour,” said Gordon.

     Rose’s heart thudded. “Oh, Gordon, how do I look? My hat—is it straight?”

     “Too straight.” He tilted it slightly. “There. You look fine, lass—if only you’d smile.”

     The carriage doors opened. The ageing couple descended and stood aside, waiting for the crowd to thin. Some hurried past; others lingered. Rose scanned every face, searching for a man who might be searching for her.

     “What if he’s not here?” she whispered.

     “What’s that supposed to mean?”

     “What if he lost his nerve?”

     “After all the trouble he went through to find you?”

     “Yes. Silly thought.” She glanced at the clock, then spotted a man in light brown trousers and a green polo, ambling towards them. She tried a smile.

     “What colour was Robert’s hair when he was born?” Gordon asked quietly, watching the same man.

     “He was bald,” Rose laughed nervously. “But his lashes were fair.”

     The man strolled past without a glance. Rose sighed. The crowd thinned, then swelled again with new arrivals—boys larking about, girls giggling, a mother warning her children back from the tracks. Still, no anxious man in his forties scanning the platform.

     “He’s not coming,” she said.

     “Stop it, lass. He might’ve missed the train.”

     “He’s not coming.”

     “Maybe he drove, got stuck in traffic...”

     “Please, Gordon. Let’s go.”

     “Listen. I’ll check the timetable. When the next train from Melbourne arrives, we either board it and go home, or we wait to see if he gets off. You choose.”

     She watched him limp away. It was useless. Robert wasn’t coming. His cold voice, his businesslike tone—it had all been for retribution. She was to taste abandonment, just as she had abandoned him. It was the punishment she deserved.

     The Shepparton train pulled in, noisy football fans descended. Rose leaned against the wall, shivering in the heat. Her head throbbed. If only she could rewind the reel of her life, back to the frame where she surrendered her baby and choose another action. But life allowed only one take. She had blundered hers.

     Someone tapped her arm. She straightened, expecting Gordon.

     Oh! Not Gordon.

     A little girl stood before her, straw bonnet on her head, in a yellow frock smeared by a damp stain, and with a blue sash circling the waist.

     “Hello,” said the child. “I’m Eloise.”

     Rose brushed away a tear. “Eloise—that’s a lovely name. And where are you off to in such a pretty dress?”

     “Nowhere, ’cos I’m here already. Here with my daddy.”

     “Sorry,” said a man stepping up behind her. “She tripped, grazed her knee, smeared ice cream on her dress. We had to clean her up.” He smiled. “Um... hello. I’m Robert. And this is your granddaughter.”

     Rose’s throat tightened; her temple twitched.

     He frowned. “You are Rose, aren’t you?”

     “Yes,” she said at last. “Yes, I am.”

     And after forty-five years Rose’s eyes, drenched in tears, twinkled again.

​

​