Chapter Thirty-Seven
‘You’re sure you’re all right here?’ Margot moves more cushions behind Lavinia’s back.
‘I have a broken leg, not a broken brain,’ Lavinia says, somewhat tersely for her.
For an instant Margot is offended, then she pauses to consider that her aunt isn’t used to being infirm. Elderly, yes, but infirmity is a different state, and Lavinia has always moved about this house freely.
After she spent a week at the hotel at Cremorne – with Margot there most of the time to keep her company – they realised it was going to be impossible to make it easier for her to get up to the next floor.
That is, Stephen realised it. Margot kept wondering about railings up the stairs, even suggesting some kind of pulley system, which was as fanciful as it was impractical.
‘I admire your ingenuity,’ Stephen said kindly, ‘but the house isn’t ready for a pulley.’
The only solution was for Lavinia to sleep on the ground floor while her leg healed. As the house had originally been built with a single storey, there was a bathroom there, along with the kitchen and living areas.
The original two small bedrooms had been combined into one large dining room at the time the second storey went on, when Margot’s brothers were small, and all the bedrooms were placed upstairs.
So it’s the dining room that has become Lavinia’s room, with Stephen’s moving men bringing Lavinia’s bed from upstairs.
Lavinia grumbled again about not wanting to sleep near the food, but it was less forceful than the first time, and she’s been sleeping comfortably in the dining room.
And she’s able to move around well enough to make her lunch and go to the loo without Margot hovering – an activity neither one of them had liked.
‘I’m not going to fall into the thing!’ Lavinia had said the first time her niece waited outside the toilet door.
Margot had been unconvinced so she’d kept hovering, but she recognised that it was undignified for Lavinia to have to be monitored.
Now that Lavinia is vaguely independent, Margot can leave her for an hour or two. So Stephen suggested an afternoon-tea picnic at Balmoral Beach, and Margot’s making sure Lavinia is comfortable on the couch before she goes.
‘Yes, your brain is perfectly fine,’ Margot says in answer to her aunt’s protest, moving some books to the coffee table in front of the couch. ‘I just want to make sure the rest of you is too.’
Lavinia inhales noisily. ‘I’m being difficult, aren’t I.’
Margot smiles tightly. ‘You’re allowed. Shall I put the wireless on to 2MBS?’
Lavinia nods her consent; she likes to listen to the local classical music station.
A few minutes later Stephen knocks at the door, then he drives Margot the short distance over the hill and down to the beach.
The day is mild for late February, and as it’s a Friday afternoon, not a weekend, there aren’t too many people around.
Stephen spreads a rug near the Rotunda, a local landmark that is surrounded by grass and overlooks the small island that separates Balmoral Beach from Edwards Beach immediately next to it.
From here they have a view to the east, where HMAS Penguin is situated, and across to Grotto Point Lighthouse on Dobroyd Head.
It is truly one of the most beautiful places on Earth, and Margot hasn’t been here for years. She feels shame about this – she could have caught the bus here from the junction. Why has she waited so long?
As Stephen deposits a picnic basket on the rug the answer is clear: she didn’t want to come alone. She wanted to be here to enjoy food and company with someone who cares for her. Someone she cares for.
It has seemed like too much to ask for, and now that it’s happening she feels a tide of regret rolling in for the years she has lost, then an undertow of irritation with herself for indulging the regret.
‘It’s magic, isn’t it?’ Stephen says, smiling and gazing around them. ‘Sometimes I forget it’s here, but as soon as I come, it’s clear that I should be returning as often as possible.’
Margot quietly gasps as he extricates a thermos and cups and saucers, and biscuits and small cakes from the basket.
‘All this!’ she exclaims. ‘Who put it together for you?’
He gives her a funny look. ‘I did.’
She laughs nervously. ‘I’m sorry. My father would never have done anything like this.’
Stephen smiles kindly. ‘A different generation. But I’m the domesticated sort – I enjoy this kind of thing. Well,’ his smile softens, ‘I like doing things like this for people whom I believe will enjoy them.’
There’s a slight nervousness in him too; Margot can see and hear it in his voice. He couldn’t be nervous about what she would think, surely? Not when he’s shown her such kindnesses?
‘This is so lovely,’ she says. ‘I can’t …’ She wants to say she can’t believe it – except by now she should, of him. Over the past few weeks he has shown her multiple times that she can believe in him.
Stephen holds out his hand. ‘Shall we sit?’
She lets him help her down to the rug, and spreads out her skirt around her. She’s wearing the shirtdress Daphne gave her and Stephen has already complimented her on it.
Taking the lid off the thermos, Stephen pours black tea into their cups, then offers milk contained in a small bottle. Margot takes her tea black but she so appreciates his thoughtfulness.
He produces two delicate china plates with a flower pattern on them and offers her the sweet treats to choose from.
‘I haven’t had a tea party since I was a child,’ Margot says, feeling herself relaxing.
Being looked after has that effect on her, although it has taken her a while to identify that’s what it is, because no one has really looked after her since she was in her early teens.
Lavinia tends to her emotional life, but the practicalities of existing – the things that can really wear a person down when they’re doing them for years without help – have been mainly her responsibility.
Even with small gestures, Stephen takes some of that from her. It is an enormous gift.
Stephen looks delighted. ‘Then I’m very pleased to be the one to create this for you. I love picnics.’ He reaches across and takes her hand. ‘We should do this again.’
‘I’d love to,’ Margot says, with no hesitation. For she feels, for perhaps the first time in her adult life, certainty about what she wants. And it is this: being with him, being supported, being … cherished.
Yes, that is it. Perhaps it’s old-fashioned to want to be taken care of, but it is indeed what she wants; and the more he takes care of her, the stronger she feels.
More capable, more courageous. The Margot of even a few weeks ago wouldn’t have insisted to Lavinia that they establish a bedroom downstairs.
The Margot who knows that Stephen supports her is brave.
Perhaps this is what love is – or part of it. If so, no wonder people seek it out. No wonder they write songs and books and plays and movies about it. For this is changing her, whatever it is.
Stephen frowns slightly. ‘If you still have time,’ he says.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Lavinia said something …’ He pauses. ‘About you looking for work. Perhaps you’ll have a job. They take up a lot of time.’
‘Oh.’ She hasn’t thought any more about looking for work since Lavinia’s fall, because looking after her aunt has been her full-time job. ‘Yes, they do.’ She laughs. ‘Although I’m not qualified to do anything, so I still don’t know which sort of job I could get.’
They look into each other’s eyes and she trusts him enough to feel she can be honest.
‘I have dreamt my life away,’ she says.
‘It’s not over yet,’ Stephen says quickly.
‘No, but …’ Margot looks around at the people promenading by the beach, some with children, some arm in arm with a lover or a parent or a friend. ‘I don’t even know where to start if I’m to begin again.’
They stare at each other again, and in his eyes she sees only understanding.
‘I don’t want you to worry about work,’ he says. ‘I can help you.’
‘You can’t do that.’
Now it’s his turn to laugh. ‘Margot, I am quite a bit older than you and I have earned my right to know what I want.’
Still feeling the urge to be honest, she decides to ask him something. ‘Why are you so good to me?’
Now his gaze holds softness, wonder – and something more powerful than that.
‘Because you inspire me to be,’ he says. ‘I know your life hasn’t been easy. I know you think you should be further along with work and other things than you are.’
‘I’m not anywhere at all!’
He grins. ‘I think you’re wrong. I think a woman who cares so deeply for another, as you do your aunt, is someone who brings so much to the world.
That love – that pure love you have for Lavinia – is a contribution,’ he sweeps his arm to take in the beach, ‘to the whole of humanity.’ He tilts his head.
‘A man could only hope to be worthy of it. So in the meantime I shall settle for honouring it.’
Margot doesn’t know how to respond. She has never thought of her love for her aunt as anything other than a natural function of existing. Yet to him it is noble, rare.
She knows enough about him now to take him at his word.
‘Thank you,’ she says.
‘No, Margot – thank you. For spending time with me. For being here today.’ He picks up one of the cakes. ‘Now – let us eat our afternoon tea, shall we?’
They spend an hour or so drinking tea, eating cake, watching the promenading, and Margot wishes it would never end.
Even when it does, though, she knows there will be more. Knows that being with him, perhaps, is where she begins again.