‘Australia?’ her mother’s voice had gone up several octaves, ‘Don’t be so bloody ridiculous! Australia! What in God’s name will you do there with no money, no husband and a bastard baby?’
Susie bit her lip at the shock of hearing her little boy referred to like that, but arguing now seemed pointless, even if she could have summoned the strength. ‘I’ll probably die a slow lingering death, Mum, but at least I’ll have my son with me.’
‘Oh for goodness sake, listen to yourself, Susan! Not only are you being overly dramatic as usual, you are ruining your life and throwing away any chance of happiness that you might have. And, I might add, ruining things for me in the process. Have you not considered me at all? Do you think I haven’t imagined what it would be like to become a granny, showing our friends the latest Cine on the dining room wall of our heir apparent’s first steps? Of course I have and in my head it always starts with a big white wedding, not that there’s much hope of you wearing white, not now. You’d be one of those ghastly brides in ivory, which we all know is only one step away from an empire line and a large bouquet to hide a bump. It sets tongues wagging before you’ve even said “I do…”’
Susie tried to interrupt, but her mother was in mid flow, ‘James Tenterden is still single and he’s an only child. His father has a very weak heart and I’ve heard that his mother is ailing. I’ve already described their house to you, they have a stunning Victorian conservatory and the best collection of hand-cut crystal this side of London and he likes you! You could still get out of this Susie, go back to Battersea, drop off the boy and come home; I’d even send you a car, how about that? I could arrange a little soiree; invite James, nothing too flashy, home-catered if you’d prefer and you could take it from there.’
Susie laughed in disbelief, she half-wished she hadn’t called; at least then she could have imagined her mother’s words might bring comfort and homely advice instead of prattling on about hand-cut crystal and a home-catered soiree. She raised her hand to the tiny scar on her temple, and tried to block out the terrible memories it evoked: Please! It can’t be too late… tell them I have changed my mind, give them another baby! Her screaming, while her heart was breaking and her spirit cleaved in two. Nicholas stirred in her arm, and Susie hardened her resolve.
‘Goodbye, Mum. And just so you know, I’m going to try my hardest to make things right. One day, my family will be whole again.’
She clicked the phone back into its cradle and pictured her mother having to lie down on the pink floral counterpane with a large gin and tonic to restore her wellbeing. It didn’t matter, none of it did. Nothing was as important as keeping Nicholas. And at least they had found somewhere to live.
But, following Sandra up the echoey steps to the room above the pub that was to be hers, Susie’s heart sank. It stank of mould and was decidedly grubby. Someone had used the laminate top of the bedside table as an ashtray; it was pitted with scorch marks and sausage-shaped cigarette burns. The sheets on the single trolley bed were greasy and the thin pillow carried an odour of hair oil, sweat and cigarettes.
‘You’ll be all right, love,’ it was Sandra’s parting shot as she gave a small smile and closed the door.
‘I really hope so.’ Susie’s reply drifted up to the stained ceiling, spoken into the silence.
Susie sat down stiffly on the single bed with her legs stretched out and her coat over the two of them. She hummed against Nicholas’s fluffy head, inhaling his intoxicating scent and kissing his tiny cheek and nose. It was easy to forget her squalid surroundings when she had that little face against her own. ‘I love you.’ She spoke this often, barely more than a whisper, but always a confirmation, as if worried that he might forget, even for a second. She cuddled her son against her chest; tucking the white, crocheted blanket under his bootied feet, cradling him as he fed, lying in a sleepy heap against her chest.
She reached into her pocket, and pulled out the pamphlet for what must have been the thousandth time. The cover depicted a big grey ship, and a smiling family sitting on board in deck chairs. Their trouser hems were rolled up to reveal bare shins and they all wore jaunty sun hats to shade their eyes as they smiled into the camera. An advert told of the ship’s paddling pool, ‘perfect for toddlers’. Another boasted of the ‘Italian-themed buffet,’ which would be served two nights a week on board.
Nicholas reached out, blindly batting at her arm with his tiny fist, and Susie smiled at him. Perhaps the journey wouldn’t be so bad after all. And at the end of it lay a new country, and a new start for her and her son, far away from her hateful mother, and far away from Lavender Hill, where the memory of the birth and what came afterwards was still fresh in her mind: It was as if a piece had been torn from her and until she could glue it back, she would for ever be broken. Susie closed her eyes for a second; it was easier not to think about it.
‘Well, my little one. This is going to be an adventure for us, isn’t it? Who knows, we might just love it out there! Maybe swamp life is for us. We’ll go for long walks and go fishing, we’ll grow our own vegetables and you will become a big, strong boy. Maybe you’ll ride a horse in those big open fields. It’s just you and me kiddo, that’s all we’ve got. We might be a tiny family, but we’ll look after each other always. This is our new beginning.’
Baby Nicholas wrinkled his nose and rubbed at his face as a single tear trickled from his mother’s eye and splashed onto his fat little cheek.
2
As Susie stepped off the boat, clutching little Nicholas to her chest, her first shock wasn’t the vast emptiness of her surroundings, or even the red dust that clung to everything it touched. It was the furnace-like heat that assaulted her nose, her mouth, and crept across her skin. When she was on board in the middle of the ocean the heat of the Antipodes had been masked by the sea breeze. Now they were docked, it was like standing still in an oven. She looked around at the battered vessel that had taken them on the final leg of their voyage and felt a pull of longing for her cramped but cosy cabin. This boat trip was the last bit of certainty on her journey, and the temptation to go back to their familiar berth and stay there was huge.
‘What do you think, Nicky? Is a life on the high seas for us?’ He twitched his nose. ‘No, I quite agree, a bit of dry land is in order, our pirate days are done!’ She peered down at the jetty, surrounded by murky, green depths, and shuddered. ‘Come on then, this is Darwin, our stop.’ she spoke aloud to rally herself and, taking a deep breath, she prepared to take her very first steps on a new continent.
She stepped gingerly along the wobbly planks of the dock, juggling to keep hold of both her small suitcase and the baby. Her heavy coat hung over her arm. It had been her pride and joy for two years, warding off the November chill of home. Here it would be useless. The irony wasn’t lost on her that she was hauling her lambskin coat half way around the world to return it to a sheep station, but it felt important, somehow, to hang on to it.
As she trudged down the jetty, every pore weeping in protest, her eyes filled with the salty sweat from her brow and her clothes clung to her damp skin. Nicholas howled. He didn’t like it one bit. Susie was relieved that she had fastened his bonnet before disembarking – and more relieved, still, that Sandra had handed her the bonnet as well as a bundle of baby clothes as she left all those weeks ago.
It had been a cold, rainy morning when they had boarded the boat. As they’d pulled away into the choppy waters, Susie had considered how strange it was that she had lived in this country all her life and yet the only person who was sorry to see her go was the landlady of a pub she had stayed in for only a couple of weeks. Sandra’s eyes had clouded as she hugged her and Nicholas to her breast in farewell, and pushed Susie onto the boat, as far away as possible from the other families whose nearest and dearest had come to wave them off, crying on the quayside with damp hankies held under their noses and headscarves tied tightly under pale, wobbling chins. Susie stood squinting into the squall, trying to take a mental snapshot of the place she was
leaving behind. The pain in her heart was raw as she watched through an open porthole the dock at Tilbury getting smaller and smaller, each mile taking her further and further away from everything and everyone she knew.
The picture on the front of the pamphlet looked like a holiday snap, but it turned out that being crammed together on riveted decks with a great many excitable wives and squealing children, with nothing more than a shuffleboard for distraction, was no holiday. There was no beach within easy strolling distance, no donkey called Daphne to ferry people up and down a flattened stretch of dung-laden sand. No promise of lemon ices in cones, no amusement arcades at the end of a pier. There was also no hint of the interminable sadness that would assault her at the oddest of moments, as the ship ploughed on day and night like a hot knife through butter. Susie filled her days walking with her boy in a borrowed pram around the decks, trying to seek out the sun and avoid the wind. She stopped to admire other people’s babies and to chat to their mothers, though she found that she envied the women their large, noisy families, shrieking with glee in the paddling pool, stuffing their faces happily at the Italian buffet. Most of all, though, she envied them the little gold bands that sat snugly on the third finger of their calloused left hands. They were a symbol and a currency that bought them a place in a world she didn’t have access to. Every time Susie looked at her ten-pound ticket, she was reminded that she did not belong to a husband, or even to herself. She belonged to her new employer.
She became so used to telling the story of how she was meeting her husband, already in Australia and working on a sheep station, that she almost began to believe it herself. The night the ship had crossed the equator, and everyone had put on party hats and celebrated with pizza and whisky, she had got into conversation with one of the waiters. He said, ‘I heard your husband’s on a sheep station; I reckon I might have met him, it’s not Jim is it? Jim from Somerset, came out a few months back and he said his wife and little ’un was going to follow?’
‘Yes,’ Susie stammered. ‘That’s him, Jim. Jim from Somerset.’
‘Well I never!’ He placed his hands on his hips. ‘What a small world!’ he had been delighted at the connection.
Now, clutching her baby to her chest and surveying the vast expanse of land in front of her, Susie fought the overwhelming desire to cry. One night on board she had actually dreamt of this fictitious husband; he was standing on the dock when she arrived, waving furiously and holding flowers. And however silly it was, she felt his absence keenly as she looked around. There were no buildings on the horizon, no clutch of tourists or local shops around the dock and certainly no Jim from Somerset waiting with his floral gift.
Everything was barren. The soil was so dry that it would be a miracle to get anything to grow here. Susie swallowed the tears that threatened to form, as the image of her vegetable garden withered in the heat. She scrunched her eyes shut and tried to focus on something that might lift her spirits, a friendly sign, a wave, a café anything. But, with the exception of the odd spiky tree, nothing sprung from this barren landscape. To think that she had thought Tilbury grimy! What wouldn’t she give for a cup of tea in The Anchor right now, with a view of the war memorial and the easy banter and laughter of the public bar.
Two rough-looking men, unshaven and wearing leather trousers despite the heat, stood with arms folded across grubby vests and patched shirts. They looked like tatty cowboys. They watched, smirking, at the procession of sickly, pale men with shirt sleeves rolled high – some, even, wearing ties – which wobbled down the jetty towards the quay side. Wives in wide-brimmed hats fought to keep their smiles in place as their children, lips quivering and eyes wide, trailed behind.
As Susie stepped onto the wood, Nicholas wriggled inside her grip. She moved to grab him but her sweat-covered hands were ineffective against his shiny skin, and he lurched backwards, falling out of her hands towards the water. She screamed, and, on impulse, dropped her suitcase and coat and grabbed at his fat little leg, squeezing it as tightly as she could. Nicholas howled as she gathered him roughly back into her arms, her belongings tumbling into the slimy water around the pontoon. She sank down on the jetty and cradled her baby into her neck, this time unable to stop the tears. She could not erase the thought of his head making contact with the splintery planks of the dock, of him bouncing up and sinking down into the murky water.
‘Oh my God, Nicky, I am so sorry! I am so sorry, sweetheart.’ She whispered it over and over again, apologising for so much more than the pain in his leg, hoping he might one day understand, terrified that he might not. She cooed and kissed until his crying calmed to a whimper, until his tears had stopped, and both of their bodies had stopped shaking.
One of the smirking unshaven men sauntered over. ‘You’re lucky, crocs’d’ve had him in one bite. A tasty little snack like that.’
She caught the smallest of winks through her drying tears. The man jumped down into the water and retrieved her sodden case, leaving her coat to sink in the filth. Susie imagined a snapping crocodile taking a bite, and tears pricked her eyes. She shook her head and swallowed. She would not cry again. She had to be strong for Nicky.
‘I’m Slade Williams. Mitch sent me to fetch you. Christ the fuss he made about sending someone to pick you up! You’d think he didn’t even want the extra labour.’ Slade was tall, with a long body, wide shoulders and a small, bald head. Susie thought his face looked like a weasel. ‘Anyway, it’s not as if you coulda made it on yer own, could you. Only been here five minutes and you can barely stand up!’
It was true. All those weeks at sea meant that every step Susie took was hindered by an extra bounce as if bobbing on water. Her legs couldn’t work out how to stop accommodating for movement beneath her, even though there wasn’t any. Susie smiled weakly, and followed Slade to a huge red truck with over-sized chrome bumpers. In the back, an open flatbed was littered with packs of food pellets, a couple of pitchforks and bales of twine. Slade hurled Susie’s luggage onto the planks, and Susie winced as she considered the sodden contents: her precious baby clothes, nappies, underwear, her school copy of Pride and Prejudice and miniscule amounts of shampoo and soap.
Slade, clearly unused to the company of women and babies made no effort to help Susie climb up into the cab, but when he saw her struggling to reach out for the creaking door, he went bright red, and ran round to close it for her, muttering under his breath something about ‘bloody women’s lib, always trying to do everything themselves.’
The cab of the battered truck bounced along, throwing up a plume of red dust in its wake. Susie held Nicholas tight; he had cried himself into an exhausted slumber, and she was fearful that he might go flying if she let go and equally fearful of his reaction when he eventually woke up. She waited until she felt slightly more composed before deciding to make conversation with her small-headed driver.
‘It’s very good of you to come and fetch us, I’m sure you have other things that you should be doing. Is it far?’
‘’Bout two hundred and seventy miles.’ He delivered this with a sideways smirk through his lipless mouth.
‘Two hundred and seventy miles?’ she stared at him in disbelief, she had thought that it would be a jaunt of twenty minutes or so, a bit like fetching a relative from the train station at home, giving you just enough time to pop the kettle on, flick a duster and flush the loo before they arrived.
‘Where do you think you are, love?’ Slade said, not unkindly.
Susie gulped. ‘How long will it take to drive?’
‘Six or seven hours give or take.’
‘Gosh, really?’
‘Yes, gosh really!’ He attempted to imitate her voice.
She laughed with embarrassment. He grimaced.
‘Don’t laugh too soon. Reckon you’re in for a bit of a surprise at Mulga Plains.’ He shook his head ruefully and muttered, ‘What the boss was doing employing a useless bloody pom girl is beyond me.’
Susie felt the first flutter of fear. S
he held Nicholas a little tighter and looked out of the window at the open plains beyond. In the distance, a mountain range nudged the sky. She wanted to find it beautiful in the way that the new or exotic can often be beautiful. But try as she might, it only looked threatening, alien and vast. The odd house or farm building they passed looked untended, abandoned. Sheds, fences and gates were all shabby, peeling and dry as tinder. It looked as though it would take just one strike of a match for the whole country to go up in smoke. Susie closed her eyes and pictured the rolling green patchwork hills of home. She saw the fields dotted with hay ricks and swaying crops, the higgledy-piggledy Dorset villages, the horses cantering through the mist of the Downs. She heard the sea in a storm. She remembered the sound of the rain as it lashed against the window on the wildest of days, and the picture-postcard views of cliffs, beaches and dunes that framed each memory of her childhood. Picnics, bathing suits that became immodest when wet, her mother’s huge hats, the way she even wore orange lipstick on the beach as they tucked into pork pies, bottled pop and crust-less sandwiches before chasing a ball on the wet sand. She thought about the way her fingers stung in winter as she shaped snow into small balls of ice and threw them at a wall to watch the splat. The particular smell of bonfires in the autumn as damp leaves hissed and sizzled when forked onto the pyre. And Christmas morning, that single magic moment, when she walked into the sitting room, the fire was lit and the tree glowed, laden with gifts. What would Nicholas’s childhood look like? Susie opened her eyes and looked in the wing mirror. A rolling wave of red dust made it seem as if the car was being chased by fire; as though she had entered hell itself. Well, maybe she had.
Susie felt the cold creep of realisation that she was entirely alone. Everywhere else she had ever travelled in her life, she had made a friend. At Lavender Hill Lodge, despite being in the depths of her misery, she had befriended her roommate Dot Simpson. Even in Tilbury, she only had to ask and Sandra was there with a willing ear and a cup of tea. And on the boat to Darwin, though she had remained aloof, she was surrounded by English families who if the need had arisen would have come to her aid. But out here, she didn’t have a single friend. Anything could happen and no one would care. It was the first time in her life that not a single person was looking out for her.
Stories From The Heart Page 20