New Guinea Moon

by Kate Constable

  ‘Of course he will.’ Teddie dusts her nose with powder. ‘It’s a party.’

  Julie wants to ask, did he mention me? But she can’t. Her face feels hot. Andy leans back in the doorway. ‘I thought it was interesting what you were saying the other day, about us not having any friends among the nationals. It does seem a bit ridiculous when you think about it. So I hope he comes, too. Should be interesting, anyway.’

  ‘I’m glad you asked him,’ says Julie, though she isn’t exactly sure if Simon Murphy counts as a national.

  Teddie surveys her face critically in the mirror. A cloud of faint perfume hangs in the air. Julie breathes in cautiously. Her mother believes in the natural look; she doesn’t often use make-up, and Julie doesn’t often use it either.

  Teddie says, ‘Would you like me to do you, too, when I’m finished?’

  ‘Oh! I don’t usually —’

  ‘Go on, let me, I love doing it. I always thought I’d like to be a make-up artist, you know, for TV, or films.’ She sweeps a deft stroke of eyeliner beneath each eye. ‘Not much scope for that, up here, except when the Drama Club puts on a play. So you should let me practise, to keep my hand in.’

  ‘Well, if it’s doing you a favour . . .’ Suddenly Julie is desperate for Teddie to transform her into a movie star.

  ‘If you don’t let her, she’ll practise on me.’ Andy grins and disappears.

  ‘Your turn.’ Teddie sits Julie at the dressing table and sets to work.

  When she’s finished, Julie can feel the mask of foundation on her skin, smoothing away her spots and freckles, the sweep of mascara heavy on her lashes; she can taste the lipstick on her mouth. She stares at the unfamiliar reflection in the glass, a smoky-eyed, palelipped girl.

  ‘Your eyes are quite pretty, actually,’ says Teddie dispassionately. ‘I love hazel eyes, you can bring out all sorts of colours in them. Now, one more thing . . .’ She twists Julie’s hair up onto the top of her head and jabs it with pins, then teases out two wispy curls to frame her face. ‘Perfect.’

  The gold necklace at her throat glints as Julie turns her face this way and that. She doesn’t look like herself any more; it’s a relief.

  Julie steps out into the garden, feeling like a princess entering an enchanted kingdom. The brief Highland dusk gathers softly in the corners of the yard, the lanterns glow from the trees. Andy has set up a table with a bucket of punch, and Julie helps herself to a paper cup of the sweet, fruity brew. Just one cup, she argues with the phantom of her mother, it’s a party.

  ‘Juliet!’ Andy wolf-whistles as she shyly twirls in front of him, and he seems to really mean it this time. He takes a drag of a cigarette, then holds it out to her. She shakes her head. ‘Sure?’ he says. ‘It’s hand-grown.’

  She smiles vaguely, thinking of the sheaves of tobacco at the market; then she smells the sweet smoke. ‘Is that from Gibbo’s garden?’

  Andy laughs, and shakes his head, refusing to answer. A gang of rowdy pilots from Colditz arrives, and they swarm over the garden. Clutching her paper cup, Julie retreats. She bumps into Gibbo, who materialises like a wraith at her shoulder.

  ‘Silence is a friend who never betrays,’ he says.

  Julie nods, and gulps, and edges around the side of the house. The front garden looks out over the street from the top of the hill. Three spindly gum trees stand sentinel along the fence of bamboo stakes. Teddie and Andy haven’t decorated out here; perhaps they ran out of paper lanterns. Julie leans her elbows on the fence and stares at the primary school across the road. She can see it from Tony’s place too, but because the Spargos live at the top of the hill, the view is clearer here.

  ‘That’s my old school.’

  Julie turns and there is Simon Murphy. Her heart gives a skip. He comes to stand beside her at the fence, and in the fading light he points out one building, raised on stilts, by itself on one side of the grounds. ‘That was my building, the A stream building.’

  ‘So you were in the A stream? They told me that was just for —’ Julie skids to a halt.

  ‘Just for expats?’ Simon looks her directly in the eye. ‘You don’t have to be European. If you speak English at home, you can go into the A stream. It’s just that not many Highlanders qualify.’

  ‘But you do. Obviously . . .’

  ‘Obviously,’ he says dryly. ‘My father’s Australian. Irish-Australian. My mother was born in the village. I can speak her plestok — her tribal language, Pidgin, and English. Oh, and I did some French at school. But that’s pretty rusty now.’

  ‘Are you at uni now?’ Julie grabs eagerly to change the subject.

  Simon gives a deep sigh. ‘I’m supposed to be on holidays. But I don’t think I’ll go back. Dad’s not getting any younger. He hasn’t said anything, but I think it’s time I learned how to manage Keriga so I can take over when the time comes.’ He raps the fence. ‘Touch wood, he’s got a good few years left. He’s a tough old bastard. ’Scuse my French.’

  ‘Could I come and visit your coffee plantation some time? I’ve never seen a plantation; it sounds so romantic.’

  Simon laughs. ‘Nothing romantic about it. Just bloody hard work.’ He leans on the fence so he’s half-turned toward her. It’s almost dark now, she can hardly see him; he’s just a voice in the shadows. He says proudly, ‘My father was one of the first Europeans to come into the Highlands, back in the nineteen-thirties. He arrived just after the Leahy brothers.’

  ‘Wow,’ says Julie respectfully, and makes a mental note to ask Tony who the Leahy brothers were. Maybe they’re related to the Leyland Brothers who have that cheesy TV show . . .

  ‘Dad’s never been back to Australia,’ says Simon. ‘Not even to visit me at school. He loves this place. God’s own country, he calls it.’

  ‘Is that why he married your mum?’

  ‘Well,’ says Simon after a moment. ‘They didn’t exactly get married.’

  Julie’s cheeks burn. ‘Well,’ she says at last. ‘My parents didn’t stay married — so that’s kind of the same thing, isn’t it?’

  ‘Your name’s McGinty, isn’t it. Sounds as if you’re Irish, too.’

  Julie feels caught out. ‘I don’t know. I don’t know anything about Tony’s family. We’ve only just met, really. He and my mother split up when I was little, and he came up here. This is the first time I’ve visited him.’

  ‘You don’t know anything about your people, about where you’ve come from?’ Simon sounds shocked. ‘That must be rough.’ His voice is so gentle, she realises that he feels genuinely sorry for her.

  Suddenly the darkness makes it easy to talk to him; or perhaps it’s the punch. She says, ‘It must be rough for you, too. Caught in the middle.’

  Simon is silent for a moment. ‘Sometimes,’ he says. ‘But in a way I feel lucky, you know? I’ve got the best of both worlds.’

  ‘My mother thinks I should change my name,’ Julie tells him. ‘She’s gone back to her maiden name, and now she wants me to take it, too.’

  ‘But you’d rather keep your dad’s name?’

  ‘It’s not that so much. But I can’t take her name.’

  ‘Why not?’

  She lowers her voice. ‘It’s . . . Dooley.’

  They both laugh. Julie feels a sudden sharp pang of homesickness for her mum, for their empty house, for the beach, for her friends — but then, like a cloud crossing the face of the moon, it passes away. She stands next to Simon in the darkness, not speaking, but comfortable in the silence. At their backs, the noise of the party is building steadily: music, laughter, the clink of glasses, all wrapped into a muffled roar. Above their heads, the stars are beginning to wink into the velvet sky.

  Simon says in a low voice, ‘Did you make your friend invite me tonight? You can tell me the truth. I want to know.’

  ‘No,’ says Julie honestly. ‘It was nothing to do with me. He just ran into you and he thought — he thought you might like to come.’

  ‘I don’t normally get invited to th
is kind of thing. My social life took a bit of a hit after the primary school birthday parties dried up.’

  ‘Well, that’s crazy.’

  ‘Yes. It is.’

  ‘I’m glad you came,’ says Julie impulsively. ‘Andy and Teddie —’

  ‘There you are! What are you doing hiding back here?’

  It’s Ryan Crabtree, storming out from round the corner of the house. He grabs her hand. ‘I’ve been looking for you everywhere! I thought you hadn’t come, I nearly went down to Tony’s to see if you were still dressing up or something. Come on, I want to get a beer.’

  Julie is pretty sure he’s already had at least one. She pulls her hand from his. ‘Ryan, this is my friend Simon Murphy — Simon, this is Ryan Crabtree . . .’

  ‘It’s all right, Julie, we know each other,’ says Simon. ‘We were at school together, weren’t we, Ryan?’

  ‘Yeah,’ mumbles Ryan. ‘Yeah, Simon was two grades ahead of me. How’s it going, mate?’

  ‘Had a year at uni, but I’m thinking I might come back and work at Keriga, learn how to take over. What are you up to?’

  ‘Still got a year of school to go.’ Ryan shuffles his feet. ‘Mum and Dad are making noises about uni, too — engineering, maybe.’

  Julie says, ‘I thought you wanted to be a musician, Ryan?’

  ‘Yeah, well, maybe, we’ll see.’ The quick annoyance in his voice tells Julie that she’s betrayed a secret. ‘C’mon, Jules, let’s get a drink.’

  He drags her back around the house and grabs a stubby of South Pacific from an esky.

  ‘Are you supposed to have that?’

  ‘Come on, Julie, it’s a party. It’s Christmas. Loosen up.’

  He sloshes more punch into her paper cup, and before she knows it, they’re dancing. The magical canopy of the rotary clothesline stretches above them, threaded with streamers, with gashes of star-sprinkled sky beyond. They dance close, not touching, but close enough that Julie can feel his hot breath on her cheek, her ear. The tendril of hair brushes her neck. She gulps her punch and lets the music sway through her.

  ‘I should go and talk to Simon — I feel bad running off like that,’ she calls into Ryan’s ear at the end of the song.

  ‘Relax! It’s not your problem. He’ll find someone else to talk to, you don’t have to babysit him. He’s a big boy. He took the risk of coming; he can look after himself. His choice.’ Ryan puts his mouth boldly close to her ear and whispers, ‘You look great tonight.’

  Julie tries to look over her shoulder to check if Simon has drifted back into the side garden, the centre of the party, but she can’t see him. Ryan whoops as a faster, rockier song comes on the stereo, and he grabs her hands, her cup goes flying, spilling a spray of punch across the grass, and they dance, and she forgets about Simon.

  The music swirls, the stars turn, Julie kicks off her sandals and the grass is damp with dew and soft beneath her tender soles, her head spinning, the taste of punch sweet on her tongue, and the shadow of Ryan tethered to her side, Ryan’s hand reaching for hers, Ryan’s eyes locked on her face, just as if she were beautiful. When the lights snuff out and the music abruptly breaks off, the garden plunges into black, and groans and jeers ring out.

  ‘Bloody power failure!’

  ‘Useless bastards!’

  Teddie drifts about with candles and a cigarette lighter, slender as a fire fairy, and Andy produces a guitar from somewhere and perches on the edge of the concrete laundry trough to strum and sing. Everyone laughs, and Julie laughs too, because everyone else is laughing. And Ryan seizes her hands and pulls her into a dark corner of the garden, sheltered by a passionfruit vine, and pushes his mouth hungrily onto hers.

  It’s her first kiss. Her blood fizzes. Her hands creep to his face, the soft stubble of his jaw, his warm skin. His arms wrap around her, pressing her into his body. Are they hidden, or do Teddie’s candles betray them?

  Julie pushes Ryan’s hands gently from her waist and turns her face aside. ‘Okay, okay,’ she murmurs. Her face feels smeared, her lips swollen. Has Simon seen them? She wants him to be watching, but if he’s seen them, she will die. ‘Wait, wait,’ she whispers against Ryan’s butting mouth. ‘I just need to —’ She breaks away.

  Ryan pulls her back against him. ‘Don’t disappear.’

  ‘I’ll come back,’ she promises. ‘I’ll be back in a minute.’

  She tears herself away and slips along the fence, around the shadowy fringe of the party, toward the other side of the house. The night air is cool against her flushed face. The three spindly trees are silhouetted against the starry sky, a thicket of bamboo rustles by the water tank, like some lumbering, half-asleep beast. My first kiss, my first kiss. Under the New Guinea moon . . . She touches her lips with her fingertips.

  ‘Simon? Are you there?’

  Someone giggles in the dense shadow beside the house. The scent of sweet smoke drifts across the grass. ‘No one here except us, darling.’

  ‘Sorry, sorry —’

  Julie stumbles away. He’s gone.

  ‘Real knowledge,’ breathes a sudden voice out of the darkness, ‘is to know the extent of one’s ignorance.’ Tombstone teeth gleam, like a skull’s smile, leering up out of the night.

  Julie yelps. ‘Gibbo! You scared me!’

  ‘Sorry, love,’ says Gibbo, and he vanishes, folding back into the dark like a bat.

  Julie leans against the wall, her heart hammering. Simon has gone. But Tony must be here somewhere, by now. Soon it will be time to go home, and leave Ryan behind. And deep down, Julie knows she is slightly relieved. She raises her fingers to her lips. Is it weird to feel that thinking about being kissed — anticipating it, then reliving it afterwards — is more fun than the actual kissing?

  She can see Ryan, swimming through the wavering candlelight, looking for her. She touches her upswept hair, her floaty dress, and all at once she feels unsure of who she is. Who is Ryan searching for — Princess Juliet, spun into existence by Teddie and Andy? Or plain Julie McGinty? Would Ryan have kissed plain Julie McGinty?

  She stands by the fence, wrapping darkness around her like a cloak, and watches, waiting to be found.

  8

  When Lina failed to show up on the morning after Julie offered her the job, Julie had felt guiltily relieved. The problem was solved without her having to do anything. Lina must have decided she didn’t want to be a meri after all, or she’d got another job. Or something. If she didn’t turn up, there’s nothing Julie can do about it. She can hardly go out and search for her; she is absolved of responsibility.

  But then, on the Monday morning after the Spargos’ Christmas party, Lina comes back.

  Julie answers a tap at the door, expecting to find Ryan on the doorstep. Instead it’s Lina, smiling hopefully. Tony has already set off for work, so she will have to handle this alone.

  Julie swallows. ‘I’m so sorry . . . There’s been a mistake. I shouldn’t have offered you a job without checking first. Tony — my father — says he doesn’t need a meri . . .’ She’s worried that Lina won’t understand what she’s saying, but she sees the girl’s face fall, and apparently her meaning is clear enough. Without a word, Lina gathers herself and begins to turn away.

  ‘No, wait! Hang on a minute —’ Julie fumbles for her purse. The spending money that Caroline gave her has almost gone, but there’s a five-dollar note still crumpled inside. ‘Please — take this.’

  Lina stares at the pink note as if she doesn’t know what it is.

  ‘It’s for you. For your trouble. It’s — it’s compensation,’ says Julie with sudden inspiration.

  Lina nods, then flashes her a brief, shy smile. Then she tucks the money away inside her clothes and retreats. Julie shuts the door and leans against it. Five dollars is a lot of money, she tells herself; especially for a national. For five dollars, she shouldn’t be feeling so rotten.

  ‘Oh, dear, no,’ says Barbara. ‘That was the worst thing you could have done. She’ll be back, tomorrow
or the next day, with her hand out. You’ll see.’

  ‘But I had to give her something,’ says Julie. ‘I promised.’

  ‘I’m sure you didn’t promise,’ says Barbara. ‘And it’s not as if you had anything in writing.’

  ‘Well, no, but —’ Julie stops, because Barbara is clearly not interested in continuing the discussion, and she’s learned from arguments with Caroline that there’s no point in trying. She wonders how, when Barbara and Caroline’s ideas about the world are so different, she can manage to disagree with both of them . . .

  ‘Come on,’ says Ryan, and he, Julie and Nadine drift out through the kitchen to the sunny patch of concrete outside the back door. Koki is already there, sitting on the ground, shelling peas into a tin basin between her knees. Ryan steals a handful and she smacks his knuckles. Julie picks up some pea pods and starts to slit them open with her thumbnail.

  ‘Tenkyu,’ says Koki, and adds something in Pidgin about ungrateful, lazy children, which Julie can understand without knowing a word. She and Koki grin peacefully at each other.

  Nadine stretches her legs into the sun. ‘Last year the Williamses were still here,’ she says mournfully. ‘And the Spitellis. We’d hang out with them every day . . . Now it’s just us.’

  Silently Julie splits the pods, and thumbs the peas into the basin, aware of herself as a poor substitute for the missing Williams and Spitelli clans.

  Nadine sighs. ‘What about Monopoly?’

  Ryan ignores her. He nudges Julie’s foot with his own. ‘Want to go for a bike ride?’

  ‘But we’ve only got two bikes,’ says Nadine.

  ‘Julie can ride yours. No one said you were invited, squirt. This excursion is for Julie and I.’

  Julie and me, thinks Julie automatically. She says, ‘We could go for a walk. That way Nads can come too.’ Secretly she is quite happy to have Nadine along as a chaperone. She knows if they were alone, Ryan would try to kiss her again, even on bicycles, and while it’s pleasant to think that he wants to, she’s not completely sure that she wants to. Julie shifts uncomfortably on her bottom. It’s never like this in books . . .