49

Anne measures the days of her life by the TV guide. She has her favourites and one of them is the TV judge, a tough old girl who whips hopeless dills right into gear. She’s got it all worked out. Possibly Anne sees something of herself in the judge. Tiny, frugal and sensible, but not without a smidgin of compassion.

She still sews for her friends and old customers, the gold light from the desk lamp funnelling upon her. The whirring of the machine is the current between the past and the present. Anne has sewed her way through life, joining one day to the next, her head bent over her labours, her hands smoothing each day through the jaws of the old machine.

She does her best thinking when she sews and some of her thoughts surprise her. To be old is not the way she thought it would be. People listen to you less and even look at you less. But you don’t stop being yourself just because you’ve lived a long time. You get wiser and quieter and less hopeful. Much less.

When Emmett comes home sick, lost and frail, holding the little airline bag he used to take to work, she tells him to put it on the stool.

‘Sit down Emmett. Over there on that chair, yes that one.’

‘I don’t want to get in your way.’

‘You won’t,’ she says, and gets up from the machine. Rob comes in carrying a box of kitchen things from Deakin.

Emmett seems to retreat and Anne watches the decline with a painful honesty about her history with him. She lost interest in him for a long part of the marriage when she believed he was insane. She’s not happy about the way things went. But madness is madness and who was going to help the family?

Now she realises that it might have been better to get the kids out of there but at the time she just kept going, plodding through each day not expecting much. Never expecting things to be better. To survive a day was a triumph.

Yet still she remembers the good more than the bad and maybe good comes from the same place as the bad. Who knows? Maybe it’s the place where there is no control. And, honestly, Emmett always knew joy more than anyone.

After Daniel died she couldn’t bear to be near him, well, he just made her skin crawl. He was more horrified than anyone about Daniel’s death. Wallowing around thinking it was all about him, but then Emmett never noticed anyone but himself. So in the way that time moves, slowly and without argument, she gave up on him. Drifted away, didn’t question him, hoped he’d move and in a way he did, he moved to the pub.

Now he’s sick and back here again and she sees that within the terrible man and even within the pathetic man there’s another one, a gentler one. Was he always locked up within Emmett? He wanders from room to room picking things up and putting them down. He smiles at her when she brings him food.

He sits in the yard near the lemon tree, with her little dog beside him. The weather passes through the day. Waiting, just waiting. Seeing this Emmett brings back something of her first love and makes it harder, but then none of it is easy and she thinks maybe I should have told the kids how hard things can be. But they wouldn’t like to hear it, she decides. Who on earth would?