The Golden Moment
	Copyright © Carmel Bird Feb 2001 All rights reserved. THE GOLDEN MOMENT The story of the golden moment is a story about suburban Australia in the nineteen fifties. The street in which the story takes place is often called ‘the golden mile’ because so many wealthy bankers and barristers and surgeons have for generations lived there in grandeur and comfort with their beautiful wives and happy families. Almost all of these families have very white skins indeed, and are by religion Christians (of the Protestant kind). The rare Jewish or Roman Catholic family is treated with superb tolerance and charity, but it is understood that such families are darkened by a blight too powerful and mysterious to name. The houses themselves bear the names they were given by the original inhabitants and some of these names reflect a nostalgia for places far away, others expressing a hope in the youthful country of Australia. The style of architecture is labelled ‘Federation’ in recognition of the modern birth of the country itself. The trees and flowers are by and large European, and the branches of the oaks and elms that line the street on one side almost touch those on the other, so that in summer a magical green tunnel arches above the traffic, and people from less beautiful suburbs drive along here just to marvel at the trees along the golden mile. Even ordinary traffic seems to move sedately along the grandest section of the road. A golden moment is that time of the afternoon photographers love, when the light of day bathes the world in one last glow of radiance, when Paradise is promised, when everything stands still at the instant between the darkness and the light, when fairies and goblins and other spirits good and bad may be revealed. The golden moment on the golden mile is one of nature’s marvels.   On the veranda of a large old house called The Lilacs in this prosperous part of this Australian city there sits a woman. She wears a grandmotherly floral dress and is reclining on a cane lounge. The time is peace-time, in the middle of the nineteen fifties. There is of course a cold war, but in the warmth of the summer sun in the late afternoon, this cold war casts no shadow, drops no snowflake on the veranda of The Lilacs. Paths, flower-beds, shrubs, trees, vines, a wall - these divide the land on which this house is built from the land on which the next house, called Santa Fe, stands. The foreign and exotic name of Santa Fe alerts visitors and strangers to the fact that there is a certain difference here. So, in this story, the sun shines and the bees drone, butterflies flit. A haze of dreamy happiness drifts across the garden of The Lilacs. The woman drinks weak gin, lime and soda, reads a book, a romance. Ploc! Ploc! This is the sound of young men and women playing tennis on the court in the garden of Santa Fe. Laughter, shouts. Ploc! Ploc! A rhododendron bush, unimaginably large, with pearly pink florets, frilled and abundant, grows between Santa Fe and The Lilacs. It is possible that sometimes through spaces that thread between the leaves a flash of white pleated skirt might dart, flick, distract In the romance being read by the lilac woman, men and women stare into each other’s eyes. They kiss and they swim and they dance on terraces at twilight. Click! Someone has taken a photograph of some of the girls and some of the boys as they sit in the shade beside the tennis court at Santa Fe. The woman on her veranda is unable to hear the sound of the camera, such a small sound to travel across the distance between her and the tennis players. All sounds are masked by the noise of parrots in one of the gum trees. Hundreds of green birds with rosy cheeks that feed on the tree with vigour and raucous intensity, decorating the branches like little bright stuffed birds on a Christmas tree. The sound they make as they sqwark and twitter all together has a peculiar quality; it seems able to enter the ear and invade the mind and fill the head. If Lilac shuts her eyes she can experience the absence of her brain as her cranial cavity is inhabited by the collective cry of pleasure, greed and joy. The green and rosy joy of living. Possibly this is Paradise. Perhaps the tennis players have just taken a picture of Paradise where sun shines, birds sing, bees buzz, flowers bloom, woman reads, hero and heroine embrace, boys and girls in white play tennis. The woman finishes reading, closes the book as sunset glows on the fiction of a golden beach. For a few moments the woman hovers in a corridor between the sunset on the beach and the sunlight that falls in dappled patches on the veranda. Then the hero and the heroine and the beach fade, and the woman hears the Ploc! as the ball hits the racquet. The woman begins to think about the girls who are playing tennis, who live behind the hedges of Santa Fe. A white cat stalks in the shadows of The Lilacs; a black dog watches the tennis at Santa Fe. Each garden has a goldfish pond and a display of roses. The woman on the veranda thinks about the girls from Santa Fe - Rose, Veronica, Marion, Clare and Aurora Blackwood. Aurora, the youngest, was born without fingers. She is home from her convent boarding school for the holidays. Local rumour says she will take the veil, renounce the world, enter. Just before the war, in 1938, Aurora was born. A kind of portent, an astonishment, a perfect picture of a baby girl with the oddest little triangles for hands and the sweetest disposition. She had intellect and a charming singing voice. She wore little mittens, always, made from fine crochet, or softest leather, or silk. She waved her paws around like lavender bags. Ten toes, perfect. Teeth. Long golden curls. Memory like an elephant. Manners, beautiful. She was a swift and elegant swimmer. Everybody said how did this happen, why did this happen. Was it something in the water, the food, the medicines, the air. Was it cat fur, dog hair. Lack of sunlight, exercise, vitamins. Was it the result of bad thoughts. Or the sight of a fishmonger’s mittens at just the wrong moment. Radio waves. The stars. The moon. A shock, a sudden and terrible noise. Mathematics or geology. Electricity. Witchcraft. A tremor shook the earth beneath Santa Fe and The Lilacs and all the houses around just when the hands were forming. Or was it an insect. The war. Naturally people thought, sometimes murmured, about the possibility of heredity. But this was an idea that was quickly dismissed. Four perfect girls - and then the dropping off of fingers? There was nothing whatsoever like that in the background of Handsome Mr Blackwood and his Beautiful Wife. Strange things happen. It’s fate, the stars, the planets, the insects, the wars. A friend of Mr Blackwood, a doctor, very gifted and visionary, said that if this kind of thing happened in the future it would probably be possible to reconstruct, fabricate, borrow, graft, grow the fingers. He said some really terrible and astounding things - if another baby died, supposing, then that baby’s fingers could, in time to come, he imagined, be grafted like the cuttings of a fruit tree onto the little hands of a baby such as Aurora. Imagine. A miracle. So in one sense Aurora Blackwood was born too soon. Or was that just in time? Later in the century she could have had the knuckles, bones, joints, sinews, muscles, blood vessels and any other material that goes to make up the hands of the dead baby of a concert violinist. Aurora’s own skin would be needed. Smooth as a baby’s bottom, take the silky satin skin from Aurora’s bottom and make for her a pair of gloves. These remarkable gloves, ladies and gentlemen, were made from the skin of a baby’s bottom, and will fold up and fit into the shell of a walnut. Fold up, roll up, double up with mirth. See also the miracle of the little violinist. Her hands play the sonata while her mind wanders at will. See the fattest woman in the western world, the tallest man, the dance of the seven veils, the facts of life covered by a bunch of feathers. Everything happens here under the big top. Roll up. They took Aurora to Lourdes. The whole family went. Apparently it is not unheard of for fingers, arms, legs, noses, ears to grow in the miraculous waters. But nothing happened in this case. The family did a short tour of the Continent. War was coming. Visited French relatives. (Celeste Blackwood, the mother, is half French. Was it something French that caused the baby’s hands to stop short just before the fingers?) They climbed the Eiffel Tower, lit candles in Notre Dame, prayed fervently in the basilica of Sacre Coeur. Papal audience. Bridge of Sighs. Gondola. First ship home. War. When Aurora went to kindergarten she learned to do fantastic things with plasticene, and all the other children were very kind. She was a dancer and a singer. It was in the days before finger-painting had been invented. She was good with crayons, bending her little paw to make marvellous marks on paper. All the colours of the rainbow and some nice thick shiny black. As she grew older art became her thing. She drew and painted - water colour, oil, pastel, charcoal. Aurora did pictures of houses in the street and sold them to the owners. Many a study wall is graced by a picture titled ‘Our House by Aurora Blackwood’. She also made pots, and embroidered cloths. You should have seen the speed and skill with which she could braid her hair. The woman on the veranda at The Lilacs more or less thinks all this as she looks up from her book and hears the young people playing tennis. She hears a mixture of sounds - through the noise of the birds in the gum tree she can sometimes get the ploc of the ball on the racquet, the tink of laughter, the chink of ice in her glass, the rustle of a lizard in the dry leaves, the hop of a bird, a breath of wind. Peace and goodwill and it will soon be Christmas. The telephone is ringing in the hall. The book of romance falls to the floor as the woman - her dress is green and violet, and her sandals are white - gets up from the cane lounge, brushes her hair from her forehead and goes to the hall where she answers the telephone. The caller is a neighbour from a house called Waratah across the street. This neighbour has just returned from travels overseas. ‘I must come over soon and tell you all about it. The hotel you suggested in London was quite wonderful, and I met a Chelsea Pensioner in the street.’ ‘Come over now. I’m making tea and there’s half a banana cake from yesterday.’ ‘Don’t go to any trouble.’ ‘No trouble at all. Do come over. I’m keen to hear all about it. And welcome home.’ The Waratah woman sits on the veranda with the Lilac woman and they exchange views and reminisences of the British Isles and France. ‘I went to the Louvre and saw the Mona Lisa. Shopping in the rue St Honore. Couldn’t get a decent cup of tea for love or money. Brought you a small gift from Scotland.’ She hands the Lilac woman a blood red cairngorm brooch. ‘How very kind. My favourite.’ ‘Rhododendrons in Scotland, but nothing like the size of yours.’ ‘Nearly finished for the season. The Blackwood girls have people in for tennis.’ In the garden of Santa Fe they have taken many photographs of this happy afternoon. Aurora is home and there are visitors, boys and girls in white with sunburnt faces and shiny eyes and hair. The black dog catches the tennis ball in its mouth. Another ball is tossed, and Ploc! the game goes on. Milk and sugar and banana cake. ‘Well, Lilac my dear, I have a tale to tell you. Think of this. Something happened. I bring a strange piece of news, a sort of revelation all the way from Paris. You won’t believe this. I could scarcely believe my own eyes and ears. ' It was cold. Rugged up I was, and wouldn’t normally go just wandering into churches. But I was looking for a post office - it’s almost impossible to find them - and as I said, it was cold, bitterly cold. I was in the rue du Bac and there was a big old church. Now I know this sounds peculiar, but it - I mean the church - it seemed to beckon me somehow, seemed to suggest to me that I should push open the door and go inside. As you know we’re C of E, and a person doesn’t just feel beckoned to a foreign RC church and go in out of the cold. Not normally. I can’t explain it, but I went in. ' It was rather pretty really, walls painted blue and stars on the ceiling and a charming mural in what I think of as a very English style. It was just the Virgin Mary and some angels, but quite attractive in its way. There were candles burning, hundreds of candles in little holders.’ ‘Have some more cake.’ ‘And it was much, much warmer than outside. People were kneeling and praying, and one woman was stretched out on the floor. Very exaggerated. But there were some other tourists there just looking. ' It’s a church of miracles, you see. That’s it. The mural was about a magic medal that was given to a saint. So I sat down with my parcels - of course I never found the post office - and I got out my guidebook to look up information about the church.’ ‘More tea.’ ‘And a little old nun came in and sat down beside me. She was incredibly French and all in black and I thought she looked like a witch in a fairy tale. There was a sweet perfume about her. It was embarrassing, her kneeling there in prayer so close to me. Me just staring around and trying to get warm. I shifted along and then she lifted her head, turned to me, and looked me in the eye. 'I hope you don’t think I’m making this up. She had such clear blue eyes, shining. She looked very wrinkled and wise and knowing. Exactly like a witch, as I said, with her arms folded religiously in her sleeves. And then she spoke. I nearly died. I was so embarrassed. I’m not used to talking in church. And she spoke in English. With hardly any accent at all. You are a visitor, she said. And I said yes, and she welcomed me to Paris and said was I enjoying it and where did I come from, and I told her. And then - you won’t believe this - then she said would I by any chance know of her niece Celeste Blackwood, and I couldn’t believe my ears. Yes I said. I live across the street. And the old witch said what a coincidence, but she didn’t even seem to be surprised. Would I be so good, she said, as to pass on her love and blessings to her niece. Knock me down with a feather. I said I would. But now we come to the terrible part.’ ‘More tea.’ ‘I don’t know if I can pass anything on to Celeste at all.’ The shadows of the afternoon are lengthening and the breeze that lifts the leaves of the vine around the veranda is cool. The white cat has gone into the house for food and comfort. The florets of the rhododendron have lost their glow. Silence has settled on the garden at Santa Fe. Then a young woman’s voice is heard calling: ‘Everybody stand over here for just one last shot. It’s perfect, the golden moment.’ Briefly the scene is bathed with incandescence as one final burst of daylight marks the arrival of the dusk. The sharp loud click of the shutter and the final picture is taken. The Waratah woman continues: ‘And the terrible part is this. I swear it’s true. I gathered up my parcels and said goodbye to the nun. She stood up to go. And she took her hands out of the sleeves of her habit. And Lilac my dear, she had no trace of any fingers at all. Hands exact-ly like poor Aurora’s. Exactly. Clearly, Lilac, the thing runs in the family. Their fingers drop off for some reason and they put them, I mean the girls, into convents in foreign countries in an attempt to put a stop to the thing. But of course you can’t. There’ll always be a throwback. It’s so tragic.’ Lilac’s eyes fly open in surprise and she catches her breath. ‘I can’t believe it. I simply can’t believe it. Pardon me, but are you sure you didn’t dream this thing. So far-fetched. Travel broadens the mind and surely plays strange tricks in the light and air of foreign lands.’ ‘I saw it all with my own eyes, as sure as I’m sitting here.’ ‘Then you’ll have to tell her, give her the message. Sort of pretend you saw nothing, that the nun never took her hands out of her sleeves. You must just pass on the message, the blessing, the love. Forget what you saw. Imagine you imagined it.’ ‘How can I? And how can I pass on the message with a straight face, knowing what I know? It’s on Celeste’s side of the family. I can’t look her in the eye. She’ll know I know, no matter what I say. It was a million to one chance I went into that church. Why did I have to do it?’ Lilac is silent. She has no answer to this question. An anguish has twisted its way into the conversation on the veranda. The light has gone, the golden moment passed. One last shot of the players in the garden has been registered on the film in the camera, lit by the last magic splash of light. Final exposure. The women on the veranda pack up the cups and saucers and go into the house as a darkness, like the soft web of a spider, weaves its way through the gardens, linking the Lilacs and Santa Fe in the drifting pall of night.