The Golden Age

Sister Penny always leaves the door of the Golden Age open. While the children are at the sea, she comes into the unlocked entry to see Meyer standing there with a crate of soft drinks which he had brought over as a treat. He brings them down to the kitchen and opens a bottle to share with Sister Penny, telling her that he’s changed jobs, and is now a driver for a friend’s company, Bickford’s Cool Drinks. He loves the new job because he gets to work alone and explore the city.

Meyer tells Sister Penny that he’s beginning to understand Perth, meanwhile admiring her “incongruous” beauty–he’s surprised to find someone so beautiful in a country he’s come to think of as provincial and ugly, and especially in a polio hospital. He likes her solid body and the aura of health she gives off. She reminds him of people who had helped him during the war, like his brother’s Christian girlfriend, Suszi. In light of the things he’s witnessed, such goodness seems “extraordinary” to him.

Looking at Meyer, Sister Penny is struck by the sense that he’s lost a lot. She’s reminded of Ida, whose face is “sharpened” by grief and fear.

Meyer asks Sister Penny if she has a home of her own, and she tells him that she lives in the hospital. To be alone, she says, she goes to the ocean and swims or walks along the sand. The phrase that occurred to Meyer when he thought of his own family at the beach, “lie down with me,” returns to him. Sister Penny hears Fabio crying and leaves the kitchen briskly.

Meyer drives away from the Golden Age still thinking about Sister Penny. He doesn’t feel like he’s doing anything wrong; the “meaninglessness” he experienced during the war has liberated him from “conventional virtue.” He’s no longer bothered by the heat, or by the long flat road stretching in front of him. Briefly, he wonders if “there’s a poet growing up here somewhere.”