Gracious Living. Andrea Goldsmith
gained a little weight and the premature wrinkles thawed. People were heard to mutter that Elizabeth Dadswell, always so prim and proper, had taken a lover – which she had not. At first she tried to explain that her former life, apparently so attractive, was a confected lie, and the man they found so amusing was a shallow clown, but her friends did not want to know, they did not want the truth about a life so very similar to their own. As for Ginnie, she was consumed by the disability as far as the friends were concerned. She had cerebral palsy causing slurred speech and cumbersome movements, and yet, her achievements were many: she had made the junior swimming team, was a top student, and a favourite with her peers. But to the gaze of the Dadswell friends, directed as it was by a firm belief in appearances, Ginnie was less than human. So Elizabeth, a long-time expert at concealment, stopped trying to explain her life. Within a few short months, refined, warm Elizabeth Dadswell was regarded as refined, a little less warm and somewhat enigmatic. Within a year she was described as private and withdrawn and no longer appreciative of old friends. So sad about Elizabeth Dadswell, people whispered behind manicured hands.
But in recent times the whispering had stopped. After a decade of counselling and assertiveness training, the old crowd never whispered, the old crowd spoke its mind and searched for new experiences. People studied her work, running their fingers over the sculptures trying to prise secrets from the stone. They bought her work, they said it made them feel good. Elizabeth Dadswell, former princess of the social set, had become a different sort of curiosity. Of course the old friends still pitied her, never having experienced a mature relationship, never having known the beauty of normal motherhood, but they also envied what they described as her ‘own person’. ‘You are your own person,’ they said solemnly, ‘you’ve reached in deep and found yourself.’ Elizabeth Dadswell had regained her worth and once again the old crowd wanted to know her.
More than she wanted to know them, she thought as she rearranged her pillows and sat up. With her exhibition only a couple of weeks away, the idea of all those people eyeing her work was terrifying. She was about to get up and leave her fears with the early morning when she heard the squeak of the autotray from the passage. She smiled and settled back into the pillows.
‘Are you awake?’ It was Ginnie’s measured voice.
The autotray appeared in the doorway. Behind it, using the trolley in place of her walking sticks, was Ginnie. She crossed the room, her stuttering gait and the sculptured carpet playing havoc with breakfast.
‘Breakfast for two. Coffee, cold toast, slopped orange juice and yesterday’s mail.’
Elizabeth leaned forward and guided the autotray alongside the bed; she moved over and patted the spot next to her. Ginnie flopped down, fell back against her mother, kissed her and swung her wayward body to a sitting position.
‘You were late last night,’ Elizabeth said moving a glass of orange juice to within her daughter’s reach. ‘I thought you were going to Kate’s only for an hour.’
‘I was, but Kate was in top form – a fresh bottle of Scotch, Philip Glass on CD, and a cache of stories I’d never heard before.’ Ginnie drank the juice through a straw and took a piece of toast. She settled back against her mother’s legs and started to laugh. ‘Kate told me how she and Vivienne first met. What a joke boarding school must have been! Has she told you about it?’ Elizabeth nodded. ‘And Shakespeare’s sonnets, have you heard about them too? How she and Vivienne spent years studying them for clues that they were written to a man?’ Ginnie stopped to take a bite, chewed and tipped her head back to hasten a swallow. ‘Kate says the sonnets taught her about love. Sex too. It all sounded so old-fashioned, two children learning about love from Shakespeare’s sonnets; more like the nineteenth century than,’ she paused a moment, ‘what would it have been? 1960? 1961?’ Elizabeth nodded, around that time. ‘Kate also told me Vivienne saved her life.’
‘Vivienne’s very good at saving lives,’ Elizabeth said softly.
Ginnie raised her eyebrows.
‘Another time, darling,’ her mother said. ‘More toast?’
The two women ate in silence. Elizabeth gazed through the bay windows at the brilliant flurry of bougainvillaea, while Ginnie concentrated on eating with minimum spillage. There was little to mark them as mother and daughter, and yet to Kate, to Vivienne, to a few close friends there was a strong resemblance, caught in gestures and mannerisms, words and intonation, a marked similarity despite Ginnie’s erratic arm movements and facial spasms, despite her slow laboured speech. Physically they were very different: Elizabeth small and delicate, and Ginnie much bigger, not fat like Adrian, but with his large frame. Her shape had been further modified by her disability: broad-shouldered from years of using elbow crutches, tapering to narrow hips and wasted child-like legs. The legs were spastic but straight as a result of interminable physiotherapy and occasional surgery. When sitting down with her arms at rest she looked to be a strong, hardy young woman; when she stood it was as if the wrong bottom and top had been paired together in a game of ‘Tops and Tails’.
Ginnie dressed carefully, in slacks never skirts, choosing vivid colours to add bulk to the shrivelled limbs. She wore the colours well having inherited Adrian’s dark hair and skin. Her hair was short, framing a face reminiscent of a sleek, intelligent cat. And cat-like she was with people: intensely loyal to a few, aloof with the rest. For a long time Elizabeth had wondered whether her daughter was more shy than aloof, but Ginnie had said that wasn’t the case, rather she liked to try people out before they had an opportunity to reject her. She was very capable in that way, and rich in humour, a gentle mocking humour. Almost self-parodying, Vivienne had once said, like Jewish humour.
Elizabeth passed Ginnie another piece of toast and settled back into the pillows and sipped her coffee. Over the rim of the cup she watched her daughter eat, saw her determination, challenging the food to escape, daring it to defy her. That was Ginnie: determined, dogged, courageous – and it had saved her. With less courage Ginnie might not have learned to walk and talk, with less determination she would not have won a place at the university.
Ginnie wiped her mouth, pushed the autotray away and leaned back against her mother’s legs. ‘Did you finish it?’ she asked. ‘Did you finish Doublet?’
Elizabeth smiled. ‘I think so.’
Doublet, the last piece for Elizabeth’s university exhibition, was solid sandstone with deep lazy markings, all curves and two figures barely decipherable, the smaller clasped into the body of the larger.
Ginnie bent forward, and in a ragged caress touched her mother’s arm. ‘When will I see it?’
‘Soon. Perhaps later today, depends on how long we’ll be at the university. My appointment with the curator will be no more than an hour, but enrolment could take you all day.’ Elizabeth sighed and stretched. ‘It’s good to be finished.’
‘Does this mean the household will return to normal?’
Elizabeth smiled and nodded. ‘You’ve been very patient.’
Ginnie indicated the mail. ‘Well let’s begin, I’m dying to see what’s in the tinfoil envelope.’
Elizabeth already knew, only Adrian was capable of such vulgarity. It was an invitation to the opening of Eden Park Resort, Adrian’s all-consuming passion these past few years, a gigantic venture that had cost him millions and would reap him millions more. Elizabeth opened the envelope and withdrew a folded card, also in silver foil and embossed in a purple print that was legible only if held at a certain angle. There was a border of Australian insignia – purple kangaroos and emus playing hide-and-seek among sprays of purple wattle – and a request that Elizabeth and ‘little Ginnie if she were well enough’ would join Adrian, as his special guests, in celebrating this great Australian event.
‘What a load of hype! And I do like the bit about how I too can attend his “great Australian event” if I’m well enough.’ Ginnie grasped her throat and pretended to gag. ‘Comments like that make me sick.’
Elizabeth reached across and took Ginnie’s hand. She held it and said nothing because there was nothing to say; Adrian