Anniversaries

She wasn't sure the small, stone church with its shingle covered steeple would still be standing. It was 50 years since her wedding and, except for her husband's funeral a few days after they were married, she had never been back. She found it eventually, looking unused and unloved amongst the suburban sprawl of outer Sydney. The doors were locked, but the vestry key was still secreted where she expected it to be. Letting herself in and ignoring the dust and years of neglect, she sat in the front pew -- the family pew -- and for the first time in 50 years, allowed herself to remember.

It should have just been their golden wedding anniversary but it was also the fiftieth anniversary of her husband's death. Even though there were few left who would remember that fateful day, Julie McMaster felt it was a milestone which should be marked.

The war had been over for three years when they met. Her war had been spent at the University acquiring her MB.BS, and she was by then a Resident at Royal Prince Alfred Hospital, battling the male dominated system to establish her right to practice medicine. He was brought by ambulance to Casualty after a car accident. She examined him thoroughly, found nothing more than a few bruises and told him he could go home; but the examination had lasted long enough for him to decide she would make the kind of wife he needed. He pestered her with his constant courtship for six months before she agreed to marry him and their engagement was announced in "The Sydney Morning Herald."

John told her he had joined the army at the outbreak of war and admitted with a self-deprecating smile that his rapid rise to the rank of Lt. Colonel was more to do with background, breeding, and old money than any aptitude for leadership or things military. His overseas service had been brief, and the rumble of distant artillery was the closest he ever came to shots fired in anger -- or so he said.

Even after more than 50 years, it was painful for her to recall how different and difficult he became after their engagement. She had known that he was the last descendant and sole heir to the fortune of the squatter who, more than 100 years earlier, had founded the pastoral empire with which the old, stone church was the last tangible link. However she was unprepared for his insistence that the church was where family weddings were always celebrated and, with the old homestead long gone, that the reception would be held in the ballroom of the Hotel Australia. It wasn't at all what she wanted, but she was informed brusquely that, in matters relating to the family, her wishes counted for little.

Of greater concern was that as soon as they became engaged and despite her vehement objections, he frequently insisted upon exercising what he called his conjugal rights. She considered it rape but would never have dared tell him so to his face. And there were the acts he wanted her to perform which, in the light of her medical training, she considered both abhorrent and unnatural. With hindsight, she realised she should have broken off the engagement. However, at the time, with the newspapers calling it the wedding of the decade, her family so pleased and excited at what a great catch John was, and his promise that she could continue to practice medicine after they were married, there seemed no way out. She remembered how she had comforted herself with the thought that there might be drugs she could use surreptitiously to curb his worst excesses.

She was to discover that in arranging a society wedding there is no substitute for the combination of planning and money. She was swept into the church on the arm of her father and out again on the arm of her husband. They were driven in his Rolls to the studio of the most fashionable photographer in the city where they were dusted down, grouped, posed, flooded with light and photographed. Then it was on to the hotel and the reception where food was eaten, speeches made, toasts drunk, telegrams read, the wedding cake cut and the bridal waltz danced. The program then had the happy couple spending the night in the hotel's bridal suite before sailing off the following day aboard the S.S Orcades for a European honeymoon.

John excused himself as the guests began taking their leave. A few minutes later one of the waiters rushed in shouting that the bridegroom had collapsed in the toilet. There were a number of eminent medical men amongst the guests, and John was soon receiving expert and expensive attention from three of them -- including old Sir Reginald Baxter who, legend had it, never went anywhere without his medical bag. But it was too late. Their agreed diagnosis was that he had died of a massive heart attack, but that wasn't what they called it in the jargon of their trade. It was left to Sir Reginald to inform her, and after doing so, he produced a pad of Death Certificates from his capacious bag, completed one and signed it with a flourish. Handing it to her he explained,

"You will need this to avoid any unnecessary nonsense from the Police or the Coroner. Would you like me to contact the Undertaker for you?"

They buried him amongst his ancestors in the small graveyard behind the old, stone church, and she rejoiced secretly that he had pompously insisted on making a new will in anticipation of their marriage. Everything that had been his was now hers.

She sat quietly in the dusty pew letting her mind roam through those 50-year-old memories until they stilled. Leaving them behind in the church, she emerged again into the sunlight. Removing a large sheaf of red roses from the car, she went in search of his overgrown grave. Parting the weeds to make room for the flowers, she reminded herself that, not all that long before he died, the penalty for rape was death by hanging.