by Kate Morton
Lil and Nell had been working on the birthday dress for a couple of weeks by then. In the evenings, when Nell was home from the newspaper shop and tea was finished, and the younger girls were bickering lethargically on the verandahs, and the mosquitoes were so thick in the muggy night air you thought you’d go mad from the drone, Nell would take down her stitching basket and pull up a seat beside her mother’s sickbed. He would hear them sometimes, laughing about something that had happened in the newspaper shop: an argument Max Fitzsimmons had had with this customer or that, Mrs Blackwell’s latest medical complaint. He would linger by the door, filling his pipe with tobacco and listening as Nell lowered her voice, flushed with pleasure as she recounted something Danny had said. Some promise he’d made about the house he was going to buy her when they were wed, the car he had his eye on that his father thought he could get for a song, the latest mixmaster from McWhirters department store.
Hamish liked Danny; he couldn’t wish more for Nell, which was just as well seeing as the pair had been inseparable since they’d met. Watching them together reminded Hamish of his early years with Lil. Happy as larks they’d been, back when the future still stretched, unmarked, before them. And it had been a good marriage. They’d had their testing times, early on before they’d had their girls, but one way or another things had always worked out . . .
His pipe full, his excuse to loiter ended, Hamish would move on. He’d find a spot for himself at the quiet end of the front verandah, a dark spot where he could sit in peace, or as near to peace as was possible in a house full of rowdy daughters, each more excitable than the other. Just him and his flyswat on the window ledge should the mozzies get too close. And then he’d follow his thoughts as they turned invariably towards the secret he’d been keeping all these years.
For the time was almost upon him, he could feel that. The pressure, long kept at bay, had recently begun to build. She was nearly twenty-one, a grown woman ready to embark on her own life, engaged to be married no less. She had a right to know the truth.
He knew what Lil would say to that, which is why he didn’t tell her. The last thing he wanted was for Lil to worry, to spend her final days trying to talk him out of it as she’d done so often in the past.
Sometimes, as he wondered at the words he’d find to make his confession, Hamish caught himself wishing it on one of the other girls instead. He cursed himself then for expressing a favourite, even to himself.
But Nellie had always been special, so unlike the others. Spirited, more imaginative. More like Lil, he often thought, though of course that made no sense.
•
They’d strung ribbons along the rafters—white to match her dress and red to match her hair. The old timber hall might not have had the spit and polish of the newer brick buildings about town, but it scrubbed up all right. In the back near the stage, Nell’s four younger sisters had arranged a table for birthday gifts, and a decent pile had begun to take shape. Some of the ladies from church had got together to make the supper, and Ethel Mortimer was giving the piano a workout, romantic dance tunes from the war.
Young men and women clustered at first in nervous knots around the walls, but as the music and the more outgoing lads warmed up, they began to split into pairs and take to the floor. The little sisters looked on longingly until sequestered to help carry food trays from the kitchen to the supper table.
When time came for the speeches, cheeks were glowing and shoes were scuffed from dancing. Marcie McDonald, the minister’s wife, tapped on her glass and everybody turned to where Hamish stood by the gift table, unfolding a small piece of paper from his breast pocket. He cleared his throat and ran a hand over his comb-striped hair. Public speaking had never been his caper. He was the sort of man who kept himself to himself, minded his own opinions and happily let the more vocal fellows do the talking. Still, a daughter came of age but once and it was his duty to announce her. He’d always been a stickler for duty, a rule follower. For the most part anyway.
He smiled as one of his mates from the wharf shouted a heckle, then he cupped the paper in his palm and took a deep breath. One by one, he read off the points on his list, scribbled in tiny black handwriting: how proud of Nell he and her mother had always been; how blessed they’d felt when she arrived; how fond they were of Danny. Lil had been especially happy, he said, to learn of the engagement before she passed away.
At mention of his wife’s recent death, Hamish’s eyes began to smart and he fell silent. He stood for a moment and allowed his gaze to roam the faces of his friends and his daughters, to fix a moment on Nell who was smiling as Danny whispered something in her ear. As a cloud seemed to cross his brow folk wondered if some important announcement was coming, but the moment passed. His expression lightened, and he returned the piece of paper to his pocket. It was about time he had another man in the family, he said with a smile, it’d even things up a bit.
The ladies in the kitchen swept into action then, administering sandwiches and cups of tea to the guests, but Hamish loitered a while, letting people brush past him, accepting the pats on the shoulder, the calls of ‘Well done, mate’, a cup of tea thrust into his hand by one of the ladies. The speech had gone well, yet Hamish couldn’t relax. His heart had stepped up its beat and he was sweating though it wasn’t hot.
He knew why, of course. The night’s duties were not yet over. When he noticed Nell slip alone through the side door, onto the little landing, he saw his opportunity. He cleared his throat and set his teacup in a space on the gift table, then he disappeared from the warm hum of the room into the cool night air.
Nell was standing by the silver-green trunk of a lone eucalypt. Once, Hamish thought, the whole ridge would’ve been covered by them, and the gullies either side. Must’ve been a sight, that crowd of ghostly trunks on nights when the moon was full.
There. He was putting things off. Even now he was trying to shirk his responsibility, was being weak.
A pair of black bats coasted silently across the night sky and he made his way down the rickety timber steps, across the dew-damp grass.
She must have heard him coming—sensed him perhaps—for she turned and smiled as he drew close.
She was thinking about Ma she said as he reached her side, wondering which of the stars she was watching from.
Hamish could’ve wept when she said it. Damned if she didn’t have to bring Lil into it right now. Make him aware that she was observing, angry with him for what he was about to do. He could hear Lil’s voice, all the old arguments . . .
But it was his decision to make and he’d made it. It was he, after all, who’d started the whole thing. Unwitting though he might have been, he’d taken the step that set them on this path and he was responsible for putting things right. Secrets had a way of making themselves known, and it was better she learned the truth from him.
He took Nell’s hands in his and placed a kiss on the top of each. Squeezed them tight, her soft smooth fingers against his work-hardened palms.
His daughter. His first.
She smiled at him, radiant in her delicate lace-trimmed dress.
He smiled back.
Then he led her to sit by him on a fallen gum trunk, smooth and white, and he leaned to whisper in her ear. Transferred the secret he and her mother had kept for seventeen years. Waited for the flicker of recognition, the minute shift in expression as she registered what he was telling her. Watched as the bottom fell out of her world and the person she had been vanished in an instant.
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