Gracious Living by Andrea Goldsmith Page A

had subsided, she was very sweet. But the times were many when the sweet blonde features would contort and scream as if the poor little thing would burst. ‘Such a sensitive child,’ Jean would say as she took the little girl in her arms, such a sensitive child she would say before asking the child what Mummy could do, how Mummy could make her better. Such a sensitive child, and so delicate too. Constipation would be a problem, but that was later, requiring Mrs Marley to spend hours reading stories to her delicate daughter while the child sat on the toilet.
    Through it all Kate waited. She learned very early to wait. And while she waited she was good and quiet and undemanding, so good and quiet and undemanding that it was easy to forget she was there, which was fortunate, Jean Marley said, because Faith needed her more than ever now she had started school and Robyn was such a handful. Then in 1949 Graham arrived. There was much celebration on his account and he took it in his stride. He was a chubby, placid, pink baby, more demanding than Kate but not nearly as demanding as Robyn. Faith adopted him; she touted him around the house, played with him in the garden, and gave him his bottle, releasing Jean to devote herself to Robyn’s bowel problems. As for Kate, she still waited, sucking her thumb and watching. She ate when food was put in front of her, giggled when a passing adult chucked her under the chin, played with whatevertoy was dropped in her lap, and although she was slow to walk and talk she seemed alert enough. Thank the Lord Kate is an easy child, Jean Marley would say, there’ll be time enough later for her to develop some spirit.
    In 1951 Robyn started school. She was a demanding child, but indisputably precocious, and secretly Jean Marley was proud of her. Robyn already had spirit, she would insist on happiness, demand it. At age five she still needed to be dressed and fed, she needed Jean to listen to rambling monologues about dreams, people, anything that entered her mind. And twenty-five years later Robyn still needed her mother – to select her clothes, decorate her home, choose the menu for a dinner party, and still to listen to her long rambling monologues.
    Jean did not mind, she wanted to be needed, particularly with Faith’s increasing independence. By nine years of age, Faith was a school leader, popular, reliable and very self-sufficient. Of course she loved her mother, but did not need her, Faith only needed to be admired, which was a task for friends not for parents. Robyn, however, was different. She needed so much you could mistake her need for love. Robyn gave purpose to Jean Marley’s life, which is not to suggest there was anything unusual about Jean, for there was not. Like many of her contemporaries, Jean Marley had, as a girl, expected a great deal from life but long ago had resigned herself to the only future available: the years would pass, the household appliances would become more sophisticated, there would be more wars, some days would be hot others cold, and she would grow old in unison with her neighbours. This was Jean’s future before Robyn arrived, but her second daughter’s needs changed the view and put a gloss to the years ahead; Robyn gave her something worthwhile to do.
    Not so the third daughter, not so Kate. For a start, Kate and her mother looked alike and Jean, never having been satisfied with her own appearance, liked it no better in the daughter: the pasty skin which coarsened with age stretching large pores across cheeks and nose; the medium brown eyes that if a darker hue would have been so much more attractive, the pale mouth that looked as if it had been added as an afterthought, the highforehead and the wiry hair growing in high arches at the temples, forming a thick widow’s peak at the centre of the brow. Jean would sit in her armchair brushing the long blonde hair of her second daughter, eyeing Kate with disappointment.
    Or was it?
    In retrospect Kate