The Most Beautiful Place in the World - short story (fiction)

Thursday  July 7th  1932

The cold pressed heavy and constant over the world in which Lillian existed.

She could never get warm.  The cold gnawed at her body like a incessant tooth-ache.  She could not shake free of it. She layered clothes over her skeletal frame.  The many layers made her feel like a cabbage:  Three jumpers, a thick cotton skirt over a wool petticoat, two pairs of long socks, leather boots, her favourite cloche hat, gloves, and a thin coat.  The clothes were thread bare and the coat was almost useless.  Although, Lillian liked the hat.  It made her feel almost ‘middle-class’ again. The way she had felt two years earlier when she and her husband, John, were living in their comfortable blue-stone villa in a middle-class suburb of Adelaide .

John had then been working as a chartered accountant with a large city firm, while she had kept the house and cared for their young son, George. Things had been so different. She had felt safe and certain about life.  She and John had been happy.  She’d even found time to paint.

During her privileged childhood her parents had paid for a private art tutor and later, when she’d attended the prestigious Walford Girl’s College, she’d received a further five years of art-lessons.  Painting was her passion. Although, she never painted for pleasure now.

She dug around the few possession she still owned until she found what she was looking for. Home was now a shelter beside the River Torrens in the centre of the city.  Since the Depression began, in October 1929, the banks of the river had become dotted with a growing colony of shanties.

The ‘shanties’ were crude shelters made from whatever materials could be scavenged locally:  Scraps of corrugated iron, hessian, wood, and cardboard. The shanties grew like bacteria on an agar-plate, spreading outward from the river: Ugly, smelly, noxious, and unwanted by the clean and civilised inhabitants of the city.  The unemployed homeless squatting around the city in the shanties were a disgrace and an embarrassment to polite society.  And Lillian felt ashamed to be a part of such a useless group.

She was glad that her snobbish parents couldn’t see her now.  They’d disowned her when she married John. She’d married ‘beneath her station in life,’ they’d told her. They could never forgive her for going against their wishes. She recalled their final words: ‘You’ll be sorry!’ She wondered now whether they were right.  Maybe ‘love’ wasn’t enough.

Lillian had no calendar but she knew the date.  It was Thursday July 7th 1932. It was her son George’s fourth birthday.  She felt so terribly sad and inadequate, as a mother, in that on his birthday she couldn’t be with him. The visiting-hours at the Adelaide Children’s Hospital were strictly on Mondays and Fridays only.  It was Thursday.  She wished that she could sing ‘Happy Birthday’ to him, kiss his cheek, and hug him.

Another month.  Maybe two. That’s how long the doctors thought that he’d need to stay in the hospital. She’d taken him there six weeks earlier with gastroenteritis. Infections were endemic in the shanties related to the poor sanitation, unsafe water, and malnutrition.  The persistent cold didn’t help either. When the doctors had examined George they’d found a myriad of other health problems: Chronic ear infections, scabies, failure-to-thrive , and early rickets.

How could she have let her child’s health get to this? What kind of  thoughtless and inadequate mother was she?

She decided that if she couldn’t see her son on his birthday, she would buy him a present and give it to him the following day:  A little car, possibly ... or a ball.

She looked down at the small object, wrapped in a cotton handkerchief, which she now held in her hand.  She’d hidden it away when they’d been evicted from their home.  The bank had forced them to sell everything they owned to repay their debts. However, she’d managed to keep a few small pieces of jewellery. They were nothing terribly expensive. She’d sewn them into the lining of her coat. The Government Sustenance rations were food coupons.  If cash was ever needed she had her small pieces of jewellery to pawn. The item she held, an amethyst brooch, was the last of her worldly possessions worth any money.  She would pawn it for her son.

Lillian put the small wrapped object into her handbag and looked into her husband’s shaving mirror to check that she looked presentable for a trip to the city stores:  Her short dark hair was tidy and pulled to one side with a clip. Her pale skin was clean - although she realised that she had aged a lot over the last two years.  She was still only 28, but her face appeared gaunt and grey, and there were lines etched more deeply into her forehead. She noticed the sadness and hopelessness in her brown eyes.  She had tried to appear happy, especially for her son.  She wondered how long her eyes had betrayed her charade.

‘Where are you going?’ her husband, a blonde and handsome young man in his early 30’s demanded as he entered the shelter. He was returning from the river where he’d washed and had a yarn with a few of the other blokes from the shanties. Lillian detected anger in his tone. He seemed angry a lot of the time these days. Conversations often turned into rows.  She couldn’t cope with another argument.  Not now.

‘Out,’ she replied. ‘I’m going out, John.’

She felt tears well under her lids.  She wiped her face with her coat sleeve and left . Mud soaked through the holes in her boots.  The wind was biting cold and her face burned as she plodded through the drizzling rain.

She hadn’t walked far along King William Road when a bubbly female voice interrupted her thoughts.

‘Lillian!  Is that you?  Yes it is!  Lillian Bartlett!  I haven’t seen you for years!’

Lillian looked up to see a tall blonde woman standing immediately in front of her.  The woman wore an expensive silk drop-waist frock , a smart wool coat, silk stockings, high-heeled shoes and a beautiful cloche hat. She was motioning to a driver in a late model Cadillac to stay parked where he was.

‘Hello, Mildred. How are you?’ Lillian smiled at the woman she recognised. She was an old school friend from Walford College.

‘Oh, what a treat to see you!’ the blonde woman continued excitedly.  ‘It’s been so long.  And you’ll never guess where I’m going right now! Guess!  No, you never will so I’ll tell you.  I’m off to an Old Scholars Bridge Day.  Lillian, if you’re not going anywhere awfully important - won’t you come along?  Life is such a bore these days. Don’t you think? Although, those Charity-ball things are a lot of fun. We get to have all the fun at the balls - and the poor people get a bit of pocket-money.  It's a win-win thing! She laughed. Then, looking at Lillian as if for the first time, she  abruptly stopped laughing and looked away awkwardly. A long silence followed before the blonde woman turned to leave. ‘Well, better go, Lillian. You look ... busy. Toodles, darling!’
 
'Goodbye,' Lillian replied softly as she watched the woman and the car with the driver disappear into a world so far from her own. Two vastly different worlds juxtaposed.

She continued on her way to the pawn brokers, where she exchanged the brooch for a few shillings, and then she walked to the Myer Department store in Rundle street.

The store was warm and dry when she entered.  It was a modern and glamorous place filled with the beautiful fragrances of roses and lavender. She had been present in the shop for only a few moments when a young shop-assistant approached her. The woman addressed her sharply, ‘I think you might need to leave, Madam!’ The woman grabbed her by the elbow and began to turn her to face the exit. ‘We only serve paying customers here,’ she continued. ‘There’s a soup-kitchen further up the road .’

Lillian couldn’t believe the words she was hearing.  Was it really so obvious that she was a homeless. She looked down and realised that she had traipsed mud over the clean tiled floor.  But her son.  She had money.  She was a “paying customer”.

‘I HAVE RIGHT TO BE HERE!  I HAVE MONEY!’ She hardly recognised her own voice.  She sounded hysterical.  The day was turning into a horrible nightmare.  The manager, a middle-aged man wearing a grey three-piece suit was summoned. He stood before her like an angry school principle: ‘What seems to be the problem?’

Before the young sales assistant could speak Lillian took the money from her handbag and held it out in her shaking palm.  ‘I have money!’ she spoke defiantly.  ‘I have money! I have a right ...'

She was shaking and she knew that she had made a spectacle of herself.  Other shoppers were milling about pointing and muttering between themselves. ‘Very well,’ the manager replied.  ‘Just hurry up, buy what you want, and leave. You’re upsetting the staff and the other customers’.  He then turned and left.


Lillian quickly bought a little tin car then she rushed home. However, arriving home she realised that her shelter had been ransacked and the food provisions were gone!  She had been robbed. She thought about the hours she’d spent in queues the previous day, at the Dole Office then the Ration depot.  All gone.  Nothing to eat. What would John say?  What if George were home?  How could she have fed him?

She slumped to the floor, buried her face in her hands, and cried. The tears wouldn't stop.  She'd bottled her feelings for so long.  She'd pushed her misery aside and refused to acknowledge it - until now. And now - like a crumbling dam no longer capable of holding back a  reservoir of painful emotions - her despair rushed to the surface.  The power and fury of her feelings overwhelmed her.  But she no longer had the energy to fight back.

Her tears continued until she could cry no more.  And then, as her  swollen eyes scanned the mess of objects strewn about the floor of the shanty, her attention focused on a painting lying beside her.  It was one of her more recent dark, lonely landscapes:  A storm over the Willunga cliffs, south of Adelaide.  It gave her an idea.  She jotted a short note for her husband, grabbed one of her son’s lovely pencil drawings, and she left.  She had a few shillings remaining in her handbag.  That would cover the train-fare.  She could walk the rest of the way.

Almost two hours later she arrived at her destination.  The clouds were dark and threatened rain.  The ocean waves crashed on the rocks at the foot of the cliffs. She sat on the grass and looked out to sea. This would solve everything. The hospital would find George a better home with a better mother.  John would be free to leave. She would tie him to misery no longer.

She looked to the horizon and noticed a lovely yellow glow beyond the cold raging sea. She was a painter and she noticed colours. The soft light on the horizon looked so warm and peaceful.

She stood and took a step forward.  The cold didn’t touch her now.  She felt numb. She took another step forward, and then another, and then, just as she stepped forward again, a powerful arm grabbed her around the waist and threw her back onto the grass.  A heavy figure of a man had his arms around her.  He was sobbing.

‘Lillian!’ It was her husband John’s voice.  ‘Lillian, what in God’s name are you thinking?’

‘How ... How are you here?’ she whispered, confused.

‘I came home early.  I had news. A job! It's permanent. Accounting. I thought you'd be pleased. I wanted to tell you, Lil. I was so happy. But ... your letter.  The painting of the cliffs. I knew. I just knew ... A mate drove. Thank God I was in time!’

Lilian heard some of what he said.  She let him hold her.  She needed to lean on someone.  She could feel the cold wind again cutting through her wet clothes.  He wrapped his coat around her.  ‘The food was stolen,’ she whispered.

‘And that was why you did this, Lillian?!’ He pulled away from her and looked into her desperate brown eyes. ‘Our neighbours knew and they’d already replaced what was stolen from their own rations. You were never alone. You are loved so dearly by so many.’  He hugged her again and held her close.


Saturday July 7th 1934

Lillian carried the birthday cake into the dining-room of their lovely new Californian bungalow.  A cosy fire warmed the room and the children at the birthday-party gathered around the table to sing ‘Happy Birthday’ to George. John carried their little girl, Doris, now aged 14 months, over to the table to watch her brother blow out his six candles. 

As the children ran out to play again, Lillian stopped her son and handed him a little present the size of a bread-board and wrapped in brown paper. ‘I made this for you, dear.’

‘Another present!  You already gave me lots of toys, Mummy!’

‘This is a painting. It’s a picture of the most beautiful place in the world.’

‘Wow!’ her son replied as he ripped off the wrapping, eyes wide in anticipation.  He looked at the canvas for a moment and shook his head.  He laughed.  ‘No it’s not, Mummy! It’s just a painting of our family!’

‘You’ll understand what I mean when you’re older, dear.’ She hugged him and kissed his cheek. He then ran off to play with his friends. She smiled.  She was exactly where she wanted to be in her life: The most beautiful place.