by Toni Jordan
‘She would’ve liked you,’ he says.
I knew Mrs Westaway to look at but I don’t think I ever said two words to her and I certainly don’t think she would have liked me. Everyone said she was the grumpiest woman east of Punt Road. Everyone said hers was the smallest funeral that St Ignatius had ever seen. That wasn’t because of her manner though. That was on account of Connie.
‘I’m sure I would have liked her too.’
He raises his eyebrows, pulls at his fingers, cracking the knuckles first and then the joints. ‘Your father, he’s healthy enough. Sometimes we do old people a disservice by mollycoddling them.’
‘He’s not so well as he used to be.’
‘He’d probably do better on his own. You could still do his washing and ironing and shopping and take him round his tea.’
I nod but I don’t have the foggiest what he means. Take him round his tea? From where? And of course I’d do his washing and ironing. What else would I do with my day? I’ll always look after my dad. Not every man would’ve kept a child, especially a girl, when his wife died giving birth to her.
Francis stands in front of me. I tilt my neck to look up at him.
‘Got ya something.’
He hands me a small red velvet pouch with a tiny gold drawstring. It takes me a moment to understand what he’s said.
‘Go on, then. Open it.’
The drawstring is tight but I tease it open and empty the pouch onto my palm. It is a pendant. A purple jewel a good inch long, set in gold, hanging on a chain. The setting is heavy, the chain is fine and warm-coloured. He can’t be giving me this. Something like this could never belong to me.
‘Don’t you like it?’
‘It’s the loveliest thing I’ve ever seen.’ I look down at it, sparkling in my palm. ‘Francis. I can’t accept it.’
‘Why not? What’s wrong with it?’
‘Not a blessed thing. But it must be worth a fortune.’
‘True.’ He grins. ‘Guess what it cost me. Guess.’
I can’t imagine. It could be worth fifty pounds. More. Where would Francis get that kind of money? I shake my head.
‘It cost me nothing. Can you believe it? Not a bean.’ He’s excited as a child, hugging himself, rocking on his heels.
He goes on to tell me a long story about how he used to help old people in their yards when he was a boy, about the importance of respecting your elders, about a little hard work never hurting anyone. He called it his charitable works, he says, and he’d come home dirty and scratched from weeding and pruning, then be up half the night finishing his homework with Kip grumbling and growling about the light keeping him awake.
The pendant was a present from one of his old ladies. She was that grateful. I didn’t want to take it, of course. She pressed it upon him. Please, Francis. You’ve been like a son to me. He’s kept it all these years, hidden away, waiting for the right girl.
‘And I thought to myself yesterday: the time has come. I bet Annabel Crouch would like that necklace,’ he says.
The kind of boy he was. The kind of man he is. You could drive a truck between him and his and me and mine.
‘You should’ve given it to your ma.’
He laughs like I’ve made a joke. ‘It’s from Europe, the old lady said. Italy maybe. She got it off a duke or a prince or something. I’m pretty sure. Maybe a count. What are you waiting for?’
I loop it around my neck. The clasp is so delicate that for a moment I’m scared of my clumsy fingers but then it’s done. I can feel it, cool and smooth, resting at the base of my throat. From Italy, from a duke.
‘That looks fine,’ Francis says. ‘I can’t wait to show everybody.’
On the walk to the tram I feel like a different girl. I ask Francis to slow down and he does. I almost ask him to hold my hand. Inside the ballroom, there’s a crush and a half. It’s the biggest room I’ve ever seen, arches and balconies along the side. The band is playing and a few couples are dancing. Some men are standing down one end, girls at the other. Francis heads off to see his friends, most of them in the law too, all with big futures. I watch as a man hands him a silver flask from a pocket in his jacket. Francis tilts it high and drinks in one gulp, just like Dad.
Over against the wall sit Millie Mathers and Jos McCarthy. They look at me and speak to each other behind their hands. We were never what you’d call firm friends: every girl in Richmond knows every other to some degree, and for a time Jos worked in the munitions factory with me. She was in the office, of course, not on the floor.
I hold the pendant in my hand. Millie and Jos stand: they’re coming over. They say hello, smile with tight mouths.
‘Where have you been hiding yourself?’ Jos says. ‘My mother asked after you the other day. You should drop in for tea.’
I can’t find the words to answer. I don’t know the polite way to say, Thank you. That’s very kind. I’d love to come to your house but I must decline because there’s no way I can ever return the invitation.
‘I like your frock, Annabel,’ says Millie. ‘It’s sweet.’
‘Every time you wear it, I like it all the more,’ says Jos.
Millie and Jos work at George’s, in ladies’ wear. They have their own money and their own lives. I’d like to compliment their dresses, but I don’t know what to say. I don’t know how to describe the fabric or the trimmings. I can’t find words for the colours: one is sombre green and the other reddy-pink, colours that must have their own names. They are dresses for drinking sherry in, not pouring beer.
‘My, Annabel,’ Jos says. ‘Where did you get that pendant? It’s beautiful.’
She means it. They are both staring hard and Jos leans forward and touches my chest when she picks it up, holds it, feels its weight. I tell them it is a gift from Francis. Millie and Jos look at each other.
‘Oh,’ says Jos. She drops the pendant like it’s burned her.
‘Oh indeed,’ says Millie.
‘You two aren’t engaged, are you?’ says Jos. ‘We would have heard.’
‘No. We’re not engaged.’
They look at each other again. ‘Funny,’ says Millie. ‘Francis giving you a pendant first.’ She licks her lips. ‘Not a ring.’
‘Perhaps you shouldn’t let that pendant become common knowledge, Annabel, dear,’ says Jos. ‘You don’t want to give people the wrong impression.’
‘I don’t know what you mean.’
Millie smiles. ‘You’re such an innocent. It’s charming.’
‘You wouldn’t want people to think it was a gift of gratitude from a man to whom you are not engaged,’ says Jos.
More couples are moving on to the floor. The dancing is awkward at first, then faster and smoother. Jos spies someone across the room. She waves her arm as if she’s drowning.
‘Mac!’ she calls out, and waves again, and he comes down our end. It’s her brother. I haven’t seen Mac for years; he looks different in his army uniform and he’s grown tall. He’s the only boy down our end in a sea of girls; everyone stares and some of the women around us move back as if he might have something catching. Jos kisses him on the cheek and so does Millie.
‘You remember Annabel Crouch?’ she says.
He says he does and how do you do and shakes my hand. When he smiles, I can see the boy I knew.
‘Mac’s been over in Japan, getting the Nips sorted out,’ says Jos.
‘You look just the same, Annabel,’ says Mac. ‘Care to dance?’
I say I’d love to.
‘Well,’ says Jos. Millie’s lips disappear entirely.
‘Never realised quite how much of a soldier’s life was spent dancing,’ Mac says, above the music. ‘Every leave, every night.’
He’s right, though it’s not the kind of dancing I remember. At school, before I left for munitions work, the nuns taught us what little they knew. They were Faithful Companions of Jesus and had never been to a proper dance in their lives. Stiff waltzing, white gloves, curtsies. They’d ha
ve a fit if they saw the jitterbug.
‘My memory is: boys don’t like dancing until they grow to men.’
He laughs. ‘The year I did the merit certificate, my mother was dead keen on me learning to dance. I remember telling her I’d broken my leg and couldn’t go. Footy training I could manage all right. The leg healed itself for that.’
‘I’m thinking your mother was on to you.’
‘I should have limped in a more, ah, convincing fashion. Old man gave me the strap for lying.’ He opens and closes the palm of his hand like it still pains him. ‘I was in strife every five minutes at home. Excellent training for the army.’
‘And you don’t hate dancing anymore?’
He smiles and goes to twirl me, then all at once he stops moving. Francis is standing beside us.
‘Saint Francis,’ says Mac. ‘What’s it been? Five years, six? What are you doing with yourself? Still riding that desk? Life must’ve been grand in a reserved occupation.’
‘Annabel. We’re leaving.’
‘We were just dancing, Francis,’ I say.
‘I’m not sure the lady’s quite ready to go,’ says Mac. ‘Tell you what. You have another drink and I’ll give you a hoy when we’re finished.’
‘She came with me and she’ll leave with me,’ Francis says.
‘Now, now, civilian,’ says Mac. ‘Don’t go overwhelming me with gratitude.’
‘Annabel.’ Francis takes me by the arm but then Mac takes hold of Francis and he lets me go.
‘I hate to argue, sunshine, but I will if I have to,’ says Mac. ‘And you know how that will go.’
I look from Francis’s face to Mac’s and back again. Everyone is waiting. Now someone comes up behind them both: a man, standing between Mac and Francis, a hand on each shoulder. For the first time since he’s been back I notice how much he’s filled out, broadened. Army rations and army work. The first thing that strikes me are those hands. They’re nearly as big as Mac’s and you can tell they’re strong just by the look of them.
‘Mac. You’re back. Good to see you.’
Mac takes the outstretched hand and shakes it like he’s drawing water from a pump. ‘Kip Westaway. Him of the good timing: joins up when the war’s as good as won.’
‘Never fear mate, there was plenty of work to be done when I got there,’ Kip says. ‘Cleaning up after heroes like you.’
‘How’s the nose? Sorry, again.’
‘Don’t be. I’ve grown fond of it. It has a certain roguish charm, and it stops people mixing me up with my brother. And I would’ve messed yours up well and truly, if I could’ve landed a punch.’
They both laugh and throw pretend jabs at each other, ducking and weaving. Kip starts walking and steers Mac with one hand on his back, then he holds his arm out for me and says how nice it is to see me again, as if he’s about to accompany me to a royal ball. I thread my arm through his and he leads us over to the side of the hall, on account of the dancers are nearly stepping on us. Francis follows, steam coming out his ears. Millie and Jos appear then and we spread out to become a circle of six.
Kip is full of questions about Mac’s unit and what was it like in Japan and Mac says Japan was the real war, not just mopping up like Kip did in the Solomons and Kip says he was in Borneo too and that was no mop-up. He asks Mac whatever happened to Pike and Cray, who I don’t remember because I didn’t know their sisters, I suppose. It turns out that Mac, Pike and Cray joined up at sixteen and their fathers signed the tricked-up paperwork with the idea it’d keep them out of worse trouble. Pike is an officer now and Cray is in a military prison for something or other.
‘I’m so proud of my brother the war hero.’ Jos squeezes Mac’s arm. ‘Kip. You took your time joining up, didn’t you?’
Half of Melbourne knows why Kip took his time, of course. Jos knows. That’s not why she said it. She just looks at him with a half smile on her face. For a minute no one says anything. I look at Mac. He clears his throat.
‘Had to save some blokes for the end,’ says Mac. ‘And like Kip says, Borneo was no mop-up.’
‘I couldn’t go while Ma was alive.’ Kip looks Jos square in the face when he says it. ‘After Connie died, after the inquest and having it all in the newspapers. Having our business picked over by strangers. Most of the women in Richmond would cross the street when they saw Ma coming. Got so she wouldn’t go out the front gate and then so she wouldn’t get out of bed. I couldn’t leave her.’
Jos has the decency to look at the ground and I’d like to turn away myself but I keep my eyes on Kip while he speaks. Francis is turning pink. I can’t believe Kip talked about the inquest and everything out loud like that, just plain as you please. It’s not the sort of thing you talk about in mixed company. The rest of Richmond whispered about it over fences and gossiped on street corners. It put the fear of God into all of us. For a while, anyway.
Mac coughed again. ‘You still live next to the Hustings?’ Mac says. ‘Jack Husting, what happened to him again?’
‘North Africa,’ says Kip.
So we all stand there amid the music and the bustle, still as statues, and we say nothing. Each of us is thinking about someone we’ll never see again. That’s what war means. It should be all over now and here we are at a dance but there are holes in the crowd. People missing who should be dancing and talking and living and breathing. I imagine for a moment the hall is filled with extra swaying couples. I can almost see them: young men in uniform and women in Saturday-night frocks. They look just like real people except when the light hits at a certain angle, it shines right through them.
‘Annabel?’ says Jos. ‘Isn’t it?’
I blink, and the dancing couples disappear and I’m back among the living and I’m glad that I’m here at a dance with Francis with so much to be thankful for that I could hug everyone.
‘I said that’s a beautiful pendant you gave Annabel,’ says Jos to Francis.
Francis beams. Kip whistles and looks at Francis with his forehead all furrowed. ‘Bloody hell. Where’d you get something like that?’
Francis doesn’t speak. He’s embarrassed, I can tell. Francis always pretends to be big and tough as if he doesn’t care what anyone else thinks. But he does care. He’s soft on the inside, I know it. He shouldn’t be shy. It was helping other people that got him that pendant.
‘Well?’ says Kip.
Francis still doesn’t answer, so I tell them. About the old lady and the garden and how she was so grateful and gave him the pendant.
‘Annabel,’ says Francis. ‘Shut it.’
‘You shouldn’t be embarrassed,’ I say. ‘Francis calls it his charitable works.’
‘No, no.’ Francis laughs and pats me on the arm. ‘I never. I bought it from a jeweller in Collins Street. It was a little story I told her. She’d fall for anything. I was kidding.’
Everyone looks at me, then back to Francis. I can feel my cheeks burn. Millie starts to giggle.
‘You made it up?’ I say. ‘There was no little old lady?’
‘Well, well, Saint Francis. Haven’t you got an active imagination?’ says Mac. ‘That’s quite an interesting story. It seems to me I’ve heard something similar before, something from when we were boys. Because we were so close as boys, you and me and Pike and Cray. Charitable works, was it?’
‘Don’t pay any attention to her,’ Francis says. ‘She doesn’t know what she’s talking about.’
‘That’s right. I’ve mixed it up. I wasn’t listening properly. It was from a jeweller. That’s what Francis said.’ He is so respectable and so modest. He’d hate for everyone to know he does charity work on the side. I’ve said the wrong thing again.
‘I remember our boyhood years well, Francis. What a kind and generous lad you must have been,’ says Mac. ‘Honest. Fair to your friends.’
‘Of course,’ I say.
‘You work in the law now, don’t you? Quite a career for someone with your sense of justice,’ says Mac. ‘You’re at McReady
’s, I remember.’
‘You seem well informed,’ says Francis.
‘Campbell McReady is a friend of my father’s, as it happens,’ says Mac. ‘He owns the whole firm. He’d be your boss, wouldn’t he?’
‘I suppose so.’
‘Yes. I suppose he would be. I haven’t seen Mr McReady for years and years. I should drop around in the morning and pay him a visit.’
The dance is heating up now. The music seems louder and couples are flying around, faster and faster. Mac and Francis have their backs to the dance floor: it seems like there’s a wall of flashing colour behind them. I feel dizzy watching. It’s very hot. I’d like a ginger ale. One light blue streamer has fallen down: it’s resting on Francis’s shoulder.
‘It’s like a zoo in here,’ says Francis. ‘Come on, Annabel.’
Outside the air seems cool in comparison. I didn’t want to go: Leggett’s doesn’t give passouts, everyone knows that. The music is distant now, and my night of dancing seems miles away. I can feel one of the darts at my waist beginning to split. The problem with wearing my mother’s clothes is that my mother had a nicer figure and moved with more grace. So upright and elegant, like a princess. I should have known better. Mac and the others have stayed inside. Out here, it’s just me and Francis. He’s pacing up and down in front of the hall, running his fingers through his hair.
‘I’m sorry,’ I say.
‘You just don’t know when to shut up, do you Annabel? Blabbing my business all over town.’
‘I didn’t mean to say anything wrong.’
‘Do you not understand how sensitive a reputation is? It’s up to me to be respectable. I’m the eldest. It’s my responsibility.’
‘If it was a secret, you should have told me.’
‘I shouldn’t have to tell you every little thing,’ he says. ‘Can you not have a bit of decorum, for God’s sake?’
I don’t speak.
‘I know you weren’t at school for long, but surely the nuns taught you how to act like a lady instead of a fishwife. Regardless of how you live at home.’