15

She did not know that she had fallen in love with Rosa, only that her heart lightened when she was called downstairs to the telephone. "You must not come if I am interfering with your studies," Rosa would say.

"No, no. I am just finishing."

She would run upstairs again, run downstairs to iron a blouse, upstairs to clean her shoes and when the taxi tooted outside she would leave her normally neat room in a mess of books and stockings, discarded slips and rejected skirts, and arrive at the taxi out of breath. At this moment, laughing, collapsing into the seat next to Rosa, she would not think of the guilt and anger she would feel when the picnic was over, when she would walk heavily to her room and look with disgust at the evidence of her indolence.

They picnicked everywhere, in Centennial Park, Cooper Park, but most often near the harbour. They took ferries to Manly, to Taronga Park, to Mosman and Cremorne. They sat, always, at the bow, in front of the ferry captain, and held their hats with one hand while their faces pressed against the soft-gloved salt air. Then, when the engine bells rang, they would clatter down the stairs with basket and rug to see the harbour framed like a painting in the wide wooden doorway.

Then they would walk along paths above tangles of morning glory and wild lantana and spread their rug and take off their hats and let the warm March sun bathe their uplifted faces. When she was with Rosa she felt as if the world was about to burst open, like a delicious tropical fruit, and spill its seeds into her cupped hands.

It was her youth that Rosa liked, her youth that she celebrated, and yet it seemed to Leah that it was Rosa who was young, whose pleasure in the world made Leah feel old and wooden. Rosa was filled with passions and enthusiasms, sudden squalls of anger and equally sudden exclamations of childlike (Leah thought) delight. It was Rosa, for instance, who would stop to point out streaky cirrus clouds that Leah had not even noticed: "Feathers of ice," she had said as they spread the rug on white-flowered clover. "Oh Leah, I love this city. It is so beautiful. Whenever I am unhappy I come to the harbour. It is always splendid, but it is so much nicer when I can share it with someone who does not know it."

Rosa did not show Leah the battle with unhappiness that made these trips so necessary to her, her empty days, all those days, those years of days since she had stopped being Rosalind the dancer. She lived with an almost crippling sense of wasted time and sometimes it seemed that she only lived to read the letters from the son she really loved, the son she had so carelessly thrown into the arms of the revolution.

But Leah saw none of this. She loved the way Rosa sat on the rug, the looseness of her limbs, the way she had of holding her hands together, the right hand circling the left thumb. She liked the fine wrinkles around her blue eyes, the wideness of her mouth, the wind-tangled curly honey hair.

They ate prawns from newspaper and drank wine: Leah, one glass; Rosa, the rest of the bottle.

And it was under the influence of this single glass that Leah, on their third picnic, began to unburden herself of secrets.

"No," Rosa said, when Leah had made her first confession. "You are not dull or stupid. 'You are young. Of course you know nothing. You are a baby. Don't smile. You have strong feelings and don't know how to argue in their defence. You will spend the rest of your life finding justifications for your strong feelings. I watched you, the day you came to my house – the way you sat, so meekly. Your hands were – so -in your lap, your head bowed, very meek. And inside, I knew, you were boiling with all sorts of things you would like to say. You were not meek at all. So, tell me, what is it you really want to do with your life?"

Leah's hands were sticky with prawns, her head light with wine. She tore a piece of bread from the loaf and threw it to the jostling crowd of orange-legged seagulls.

"I would like," she said, watching the seagulls fight but not seeing them, "to do one really fine thing."

"I knew you were a dangerous girl," said Rosa, laughing. And then, seeing how shy and embarrassed the girl was, added, more tenderly: "What thing?"

"I don't know," the girl said.

"Only one?"

"It would be enough, wouldn't it?"

"I don't know." Rosa poured herself more wine and lay on her back. She held the glass in one hand and shaded her eyes with the other. "When I was young, I was just like you. Very moral. Very serious. But my character was flawed. The real reason I left the Party was nothing to do with what they did to Trotsky (Trostsky was not a saint himself). The real reason was because I couldn't spend my life in dark rooms when the sky is like this. I could not believe there would be a revolution here. I blamed the gold, working men with gold in their mouths, but, really, it was the sky. Look at it. It has no history. But is this why you study medicine? To do one fine thing?"

Leah sat cross-legged, her hands folded in the nest of her pleated skirt. She blushed, but although she wished to bow her head, did not. "Do I seem silly?"

"Not at all. But why a doctor? Why not a baker?"

The girl smiled.

"But why not? Have you never smelt bread?" Rosa shut her eyes and her nostrils flared as she smelt imaginary loaves. "You wish to be of use. I was the same. I joined the Party. Of course I was often travelling, on the road, but I did whatever work I could. My husband thought I was mad, but I did dull and menial things for the Party and I felt that being a dancer was of no worth. But a danceris of worth and a baker… candlestick makers too."

Rosa sat up slowly and rubbed her eyes. "I will tell you why, really, I left the Party. It was because they could not take a dancer seriously. They could not imagine I was a serious person. I was not dowdy enough for them. Do you believe me?"

"Yes, Rosa," said solemn Leah.

"It is a lie," said Rosa, looking out across the harbour where a liner was coming around the point from the Quay, coloured streamers still dangling from its sides. "I am so used to saying it, I believe it." When she turned her gaze was so fierce that Leah averted her eyes and began to fiddle with the loaf of bread. "The bastards expelled me."

Leah blushed.

"Because", Rosa said, "they are puritans and hypocrites, because I had an affair with a married comrade. We used to come on picnics, like this, and tell secrets to each other. But they did not expel him. He was a man. They expelled me. It's quite true. He was very senior too. That is why I can't forgive them." She drank her wine, thirstily, emptying the tumbler and refilling it. "So now, darling, you have my secret. You are shocked?"

"No," said Leah, who was shocked. "Not at all," she said, as if she heard about such things every day. "I was thinking about your son, Joseph, in Moscow."

"What else is there for him to do?" said Rosa hotly, rubbing her eyes. "How could he be anything else but a Marxist? Better a Marxist than some wishy-washy social democrat." And to emphasize the point she threw a prawn head at a scavenging seagull.

"Oh, Rosa!"

"Yes, I know Izzie is your friend, but he is my son." This time it was the wine cork she threw.

"He is very kind," said Leah, "and that is what is important."

Rosa's face then underwent one of those transformations that would always delight Leah – it sloughed off its tired miserable lines and became drum-tight with a splendid smile.

"And that is what's important? Kindness?"

"Yes."

"Yes," said Rosa, shaking out her hair. "Kindness and dancing. Can we agree on that?"

Leah could not say yes but smiled instead.

"I will teach you to dance," said Rosa with a shyness that Leah did not understand. "Then you will understand what I am talking about." But it would be another week before Leah realized how important the dancing lessons might be to Rosa and now she only smiled, relieved that Rosa's mood had passed.