EVIDENCIANDO UN CUIDADO CON CALIDEZ

Cynthia thinks best when she is occupied. Her mind comes to life as her fingers prod and knead the cushion of dough. Her memories are a palimpsest of the real and the imagined, cut and pasted over and over again in her mind. To make sense of it, to sort the thing out and then to decide on a course of action; this calls for both her complete attention and her wit. At any moment she will hear the car pull up in front of the homestead and Madeleine will walk through the door. Crying, laughing: it’s impossible to guess. One thing for sure, there will be the grand entrance and their lives here will never be the same.

A door slams. Cynthia watches through the kitchen window as Alec moves to open the passenger door, protective arm on her elbow as he helps her from the car. They move together, pull the bassinet from the backseat. Of course. The baby.

Cynthia scoops a handful of flour onto the tabletop, gently flips the aerated bundle of dough, cuts it in two using the edge of her hand as a knife. She shapes the soft balls of dough and places them carefully into the greased bread tins. Cynthia loves the process of making bread. There is a rhythmic physicality to it. Doling out the flour; tending the yeast with special care to preserve the micro-organisms (the added water not too hot, not too cold); folding, kneading, shaping; knocking her knuckles on the golden loaves for the hollow resonance that tells her they are baked through. Bread making is one of her meditations. Like her walks along the coast, and out through the rocky escarpments and pindan dunes. Body and mind interlaced, her thoughts connected only to the actions of her limbs.

‘Darling,’ Maddie calls before she’s in the room. Cynthia turns and greets her sister. Maddie rushes into her arms. She’s bony, has lost all the weight she carried during the pregnancy. Cynthia releases her little sister quickly; it’s the best she can do. Alec stands behind the new mother, the white wicker bassinet dangling from his arm. There is no sound from the baby, as if she already knows that it’s her mother who calls the shots.

‘I’ve prepared the room next to yours for the baby.’

‘As long as she doesn’t keep me awake all night. She was so restless on the plane. The hostess was great though, took her up to meet the captain so that I could get some rest. What’s to eat, sister dear? I’m ravenous.’

‘Of course. You are eating for two, now.’

‘Not likely. The little beggar didn’t take to feeding at all, so the nurses have fixed me up with formula. Much better all round.’

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‘Drink?’ Alec says, holding out a glass of white wine. He has placed the bassinet on the floor between the dresser and the fridge.

‘I’ll leave you to it,’ Cynthia says. ‘I’m in the middle of baking bread.’ She turns to the stove and removes a casserole, then slides the bread tins into the hot oven.

‘That smells all right,’ Alec says. ‘Let’s eat.’

In the living room, Alec switches on the new television. ‘We’ll need a few mod cons now she’s coming to live here,’ he’d said.

They eat in the lounge room with their plates on their laps.

On the news, Maggie Thatcher has a lot to say. Lord Mountbatten has been assassinated and Idi Amin deposed. In Australia, everyone’s congratulating themselves on Kakadu and the Great Barrier Reef becoming National Parks.

‘What a world to be born into,’ Cynthia says.

‘Another load of boat people. We’ll be overrun with the slanty-eyed bastards in no time.’ ‘For goodness sake, Alec. I was talking about Kakadu, the National Parks. That they have to put places aside to protect them. What does that mean for everywhere else?’

‘Never enough for you, is it? Whatever they do.’ ‘She’s crying,’ Madeleine says.

‘No bloody wonder,’ says Alec. ‘Your sister’s on her high horse again. And Russia’s invading Afghanistan. Have we learned nothing?’

‘Is it time for her feed?’ Cynthia asks, following her sister into the kitchen. Madeleine spoons formula into the bottle, pours in boiling water and squirts the creamy white liquid onto her arm. ‘Too hot,’ she says. She leans against the sink, pallid, entirely exposed under the fluorescent tube. Cynthia places the bassinet on the table and pulls the protesting baby from it. She’s completely unprepared, has no experience of babies. It feels so small and difficult to manage. The baby’s body arcs in her hands, its mouth seeking until it latches onto its own clenched fist, relieved by the furious sucking. 50,000 billion cells, all that genetic material, so much human memory in this one tiny individual. Though she searches the delicately formed features, Cynthia can see no likeness to any of them.

When the mother pokes the teat into the baby’s mouth, she gulps and swallows. The blue eyes widen with relief. The infant sighs, begins sucking in earnest, droplets of the milky formula making small puddles around her lips. In the quiet of the homestead kitchen with the television voices far off, the sisters stand side by side, the sound of the suckling and the infant’s insouciance strangely comforting.

‘Thank heavens,’ Madeleine says. ‘I can’t think when she cries. It’s like a cord to my brain. All reason flies out the window. I’ve never been so tired, Cissy. The whole thing’s been so bloody

57 awful. I had no idea. Nobody tells you.’

Their eyes meet. Sisters for so many years.

‘Go to bed. Go on, Maddie. Sleep. I’ll muddle through.’

After the bottle, the baby settles in the curve of Cynthia’s arm, pressed against her breast. Tiny fingers grip the edge of her shirt. Lashes, still damp from tears, rest on her perfect cheek. ‘Calypso,’ Cynthia whispers. ‘Welcome home, little girl.’ She lowers the babe into the bassinet and while she tidies the kitchen, the infant sleeps. ‘Well boys,’ she says, as she lets the dogs into the laundry for the night, ‘the balance is shifting. We’ve another girl in the house. And she’s not going to be a push over.’

Cynthia prepares two bottles, wraps them in a thick tea towel to keep them warm for the night-time feed. The baby does not stir as she lifts the bassinet. The lounge room is illuminated only by the greenish tinge of the flickering television screen.

‘Maddie’s gone to bed. I’m off too,’ Cynthia calls to her husband over the noise. He’s heard her; she catches his ‘goodnight’ as she walks on towards their bedroom.

She is in her nightgown, ready to slip between the sheets, when she remembers she’s left her book on the dresser. As soon as she enters the lounge room, she hears them. Even in the dark, she makes them out. Madeleine, hidden in the deep folds of the couch, caresses him with her foot. It rides up from his ankle, along the line of his leg to his groin, and down again.

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