Chapter Thirty
Margot blinks and feels disoriented for a few seconds, not sure if it’s morning or afternoon. She dozed off sitting on the chaise longue on the verandah in the sun. Which makes it afternoon, because the verandah faces west.
‘Oh,’ she says as she sits up, feeling the need to remark on the fact that she’s inadvertently had an afternoon nap.
Wasn’t Lavinia sitting next to her? She looks around, as if the action will produce her aunt, but it doesn’t.
‘Lavinia!’ she calls and there’s no response. Odd. Usually they’re always in shouting distance of each other.
It’s unlikely Lavinia has left the house – she needs help going down the stairs to the street – but Margot gets up to look for a note or some other hint.
‘Lavinia!’ she tries again, and again there’s no response.
She waits a few seconds, trying to hear if the loo is in use, but there’s only silence in the house and the sound of masts clinking outside. It must be windy to make the normally placid Mosman Bay waters choppy enough to produce the clinking.
The back door is closed so it’s unlikely Lavinia is in the garden, where she ventures to gather flowers from time to time.
Margot is turning to start up the stairs when a flash of colour catches the corner of her eye. Lavinia’s red cardigan. But not where she’d expect it to be.
She pushes open the back door and rushes to where her aunt is lying on the grass, facing Margot, with her eyes closed.
Margot can’t quite understand what she’s looking at to begin with. ‘Lavinia?’ she whispers, not sure if her aunt is asleep and doesn’t want to be disturbed. But why would she fall asleep out here?
Margot bends over Lavinia, who moans.
‘Lavinia!’ Margot’s heart is beating so fast she thinks she’ll collapse herself.
More moaning, but Lavinia puts her hand on Margot’s.
‘Oh, thank god,’ Margot breathes. ‘What’s happened?’
Lavinia opens one eye. ‘I fell.’
‘Are you in pain?’
Lavinia closes the eye and nods slowly.
Margot pats her hand. ‘I’ll call an ambulance.’
Lavinia makes a noise of protest and waves her hand. ‘Too expensive.’
She’s right – it is. But there’s no other way to get her off this grass and to medical attention.
Margot can’t carry her down to the street, nor does she have a car to drive her anywhere.
One of the neighbours may be amenable to assisting them, but on the other hand Lavinia may want to keep her business private.
‘We don’t have another option,’ she tells her stricken aunt, then goes inside and makes the call.
The ambulance officers are kind and understanding – no doubt it’s their job, but Margot appreciates it all the same – and give a preliminary diagnosis of a broken leg, which is a shock.
They tell Margot they’ll take Lavinia to Royal North Shore Hospital, which is at least fifteen minutes away by car. There may be a bus, but Margot isn’t sure she can work out which one she’d need or where to get it from.
As the ambulance drives away, she realises that isolating herself from others means she’s vulnerable at such a time. She needs help.
After a fitful night’s sleep – prior to calling the hospital about a dozen times to ask for an update – she wakes and decides that she needs to be stronger. And what she really needs is to visit her aunt.
Yes, for a few seconds there in the garden she thought Lavinia was dead, and it felt like the world went dark and Margot couldn’t find her way in it. But Lavinia isn’t dead and no one can say when she will be. Or when any of them will be. So, Margot knows, she had best get on with things.
She rings the public transport telephone line and asks them to help her with the buses, then calls the hospital and speaks to Lavinia, telling her she is coming to visit after lunch.
There is, however, something else she needs to do first. She rings the number of the antiques shop.
After four rings she’s about to hang up, then the call is answered and it’s Stephen on the other end, saying hello.
‘Hello,’ Margot says.
There’s a pause, and she realises she needs to supply her name, which she’s forgotten to do because she so rarely makes phone calls.
‘Margot?’ he says.
‘Yes,’ she says, then, ‘I, ah … my aunt had a fall.’
‘Is she all right?’ He sounds concerned.
‘Yes and no. She’s not dead, but she has broken her leg.’
Another pause. ‘I’m glad about the not-dead part.’
‘Me too!’
Their conversation wasn’t awkward at dinner, and there’s no reason it should be now, so she decides to blame the phone. It’s standing between them, creating a barrier. That’s why she feels so shy.
‘Is she at home with you?’ Stephen asks.
‘No – she’s at North Shore.’
‘Ah. Well … that’s a good hospital.’
‘I hope so. I haven’t been there as a patient.’
‘My wife …’ Stephen clears his throat. ‘My wife was a patient there. They were very good to her.’
The unspoken part is that his wife likely died there, or that they couldn’t save her. Which is probably not the hospital’s fault. People die despite the best efforts of everyone involved. Except now Margot doesn’t know what to say. She didn’t know his wife. He barely spoke about her at dinner.
‘I’m sorry for mentioning that,’ he says, and she exhales. ‘You don’t need to hear about my wife’s illness while your aunt is in hospital.’
‘It’s fine,’ she says, and means it. ‘But I won’t be able to have dinner with you tonight. I’m about to go and see her, and I’ll want to stay until the end of visiting hours.’
The day after their last dinner he had invited her out again, and she had agreed immediately, only thinking later that she was probably meant to make him wait.
Except she’s never known the rules of courtship – she’s never had to – and he didn’t seem to judge her harshly for that.
Rather, he had sounded delighted when she’d accepted.
‘I understand,’ he says. ‘May I ask how you’re getting to the hospital?’
He knows she doesn’t drive – she told him the other night.
‘On the bus,’ she says. ‘I can walk to Spit Junction and get a bus from there.’
‘On the bus?’ He sounds almost shocked. ‘And walk … Spit Junction is a long way from your home.’
‘I walk up to Mosman Junction all the time. It’s only another ten minutes from there.’
She hears him take a breath. ‘I’d like to drive you, if that’s all right.’
Margot blinks a few times, trying to understand what he’s saying. He wants to come here, pick her up and take her to the hospital?
‘Why?’ she says.
‘Won’t it make things a little easier for you?’
‘Well … yes.’ The walk-plus-bus would take over an hour, and the walk alone will make her sweat in this summer heat. ‘But I don’t mind taking the bus.’
‘I mind you taking the bus,’ he says firmly.
This is confusing. Why would he be worried about her taking the bus? Margot doesn’t understand.
‘A lady shouldn’t have to take the bus,’ he goes on. ‘I would be much happier if I could drive you.’
There’s something in his statement that fires a recognition within her: her father used to say something similar, about how her mother was a lady.
It was never about her mother being delicate, but about the care he wished to take of her as a way of showing his esteem and affection.
Margot never questioned it, so she shouldn’t really question it now.
Stephen wishes to take care of her and she should let him.
‘Thank you,’ she says. ‘That would be lovely.’
‘I can be there in an hour. I’ll just need to do a couple of things here first.’
She looks at her watch: it is two o’clock. That means he’ll be closing his shop early for her. She’s touched that he would do that.
‘Thank you,’ she says again. ‘I’ll be ready.’
Just after three he pulls up outside. Margot doesn’t wait for him to come to the door but descends to the street, wearing the least shabby summer dress she has in her wardrobe.
‘Oh, you’re here,’ he says, looking slightly disappointed. ‘I would have come up.’
‘I so appreciate you coming at all,’ she says as he opens the passenger door for her. ‘I didn’t want to inconvenience you further.’
‘Margot,’ he says, straightening, ‘it would never be an inconvenience.’
Unused to such solicitousness, Margot takes her time to buckle up her seatbelt, feeling somewhat overwhelmed.
In the space of a few short weeks she’s gone from having no connections other than Lavinia and feeling as though her life was, if not over, then halfway there, to having a gentleman driving her around Sydney and telling her that he cares about her.
She suspects it’s all some sort of joke. The world simply cannot be this kind. It wasn’t kind to her brothers. Or to her parents. Why should it be kind to her?
Yet when they arrive at the hospital, Stephen parks the car and offers her his arm as they walk together into the large building. He asks about Lavinia’s ward at the reception desk, then offers Margot his arm again as they take the elevator up.
When they reach the nurses’ desk he mentions Lavinia’s name, then turns to Margot. ‘I’ll wait for you out here,’ he says, nodding to a row of empty chairs nearby.
‘You don’t …’ But she doesn’t finish, because she thinks she already knows what he’ll say: that he wants to give them some time alone. That he doesn’t want to intrude.
‘Thank you,’ she says. ‘I really appreciate your help today.’
Stephen beams at her and she can’t help smiling back. ‘My absolute pleasure,’ he says.
She walks down the hall, resisting looking back to check that he’s still there, still real, then opens the door to the room.
Lavinia’s lying down with her leg propped up, looking like she’s aged a decade.
Her eyelids flutter open and she smiles weakly. ‘Oh, my dear,’ she says, trying to shift herself upright.
‘Stay there,’ Margot says, leaning down to kiss her before pulling up a chair. Suddenly she feels even more overwhelmed than she did in the car.
She sniffs, trying not to cry, but she can’t stop it.
‘Margot! Whatever is it?’
‘I’m so glad you’re alive,’ she mumbles, tears now rolling down her cheeks.
‘Well, so am I,’ Lavinia says. ‘And I wouldn’t have thought that a cause for tears.’
Margot laughs and cries at the same time, the most odd juxtaposition of actions.
‘I’m sorry,’ she says, then she sighs, as if letting go of years of worry that she didn’t even know she was holding on to.
‘That was a big sigh,’ Lavinia observes wryly.
‘I’m feeling relieved.’
Lavinia narrows her eyes. ‘And something else.’
‘What?’ Margot’s cheeks grow hot.
‘There – you’re blushing. Is it Mr Williams?’
‘No, I –’ Margot stops herself. There’s no need to lie to Lavinia. ‘Perhaps. He’s here. He drove me here.’
‘What a gentleman,’ Lavinia says approvingly. ‘And he knew not to come in – even more gentlemanly. He would know I wouldn’t want to be seen like this by anyone but my nearest and dearest.’ Lavinia holds out her hand and Margot takes it. ‘And that is you, my dear.’
Lavinia reaches up to pat her cheek and Margot lets herself cry again, thinking of how dark the world almost became.
‘And you for me too,’ she says, leaning into Lavinia’s hand, more grateful than she can say that the world remains bright, and that a new sliver of light has entered it, and is even now sitting in the waiting room.