Stillwater Creek

by Alison Booth

  ‘Mrs Chapman is not so bad. She’s generous and adores her son.’

  ‘Perhaps she just needs glasses then. The sort that let you see people who don’t matter.’

  Ilona laughed, before saying, ‘He is quite rude.’

  ‘Who – Peter Vincent? No, he’s a nice man. Generous too. Always willing to help people, he’s got a reputation for that. He sometimes comes into the pub for a middy or two. He probably saved your life, you know.’

  ‘I know that, and of course I am eternally grateful.’

  Cherry looked sharply at Ilona. Sometimes she said the oddest things but it was probably through being foreign. Now Ilona said dreamily, ‘When I was a girl, my mother used to pin my clothes for me, just like you. Then she would stitch them by hand, for I am not clever with a needle and thread, and always she would say to me, “Keep still, keep still,” although of course I never moved.’

  Cherry smiled and carried on adjusting the side seams. She stood back to look critically at the effect. ‘Where’s your mother now?’

  ‘She died in the war.’ Ilona’s voice shook but she continued. ‘After the war I was in a Displaced Persons’ camp and then I went to Britain.’

  ‘Just you?’ Cherry stopped pinning and sat cross-legged on the floor in front of Ilona.

  ‘Yes. I met my husband, Oleksii, in Bradford. After we married, we rented a room in a terrace house.’ Ilona started to move restlessly around on the top of the coffee table. She might have been exhibiting the swimming costume but her expression seemed absent, as if she’d forgotten where she was. ‘There were a lot of other people living there too, all refugees of some sort. Most worked in the factory or the hospital. I worked as a cleaner at the hospital. I had hoped to teach the piano but that was not to be.’ She paused. Cherry kept silent. The only sounds that she could hear were the ticking of the clock and a bird’s chittering in the shrubbery outside. That and the endless crashing of the surf. Then Ilona said softly, ‘I am not boring you, am I, Cherry?’

  ‘Never,’ Cherry said. ‘Carry on. I want to know.’

  ‘After Zidra was born, I arranged with a friend who also had a baby to work on different shifts. We needed always to have someone at home to care for Zidra and her little boy. Oleksii was working very long shifts at the factory, much longer than ours.’

  Cherry wondered if Ilona had been happy in her marriage. She must have been; everyone she knew seemed to be happy in their marriage, except for her, although Miss Neville claimed it was mostly a facade.

  Ilona was trembling now, even though the room was so hot.

  ‘You’re shivering, Ilona. Put this blouse around your shoulders.’

  ‘I’m not cold, I’m hot. The day is so hot, but that winter was so cold. Such frightful weather we had in Bradford then. The grey damp days, the grey damp nights, and the rain, the perpetual rain.’ Glancing at Cherry, Ilona blinked as if she was having trouble focusing. Then suddenly she smiled. It was a formal smile, or perhaps a disoriented smile.

  ‘So we decided to emigrate, Oleksii and I. One day Oleksii came home with brochures about Australia. Such a beautiful place it looked and with so many jobs! Zidra would be just the right age to start school. We did not hesitate. A new life for the three of us! And perhaps Oleksii would be able to play in an orchestra and have the time to compose again.’ Her voice sounded brittle and her face looked set. ‘But that was not to be, Cherry. That was not to be.’

  Cherry didn’t know quite what to say. Her own troubles faded. Not into insignificance, they were much too worrying for that, but at least into something slightly less pressing. Without thinking, she said, ‘How did Oleksii die?’ Then she wished she hadn’t. Ilona’s face assumed a blank look, as if she’d decided too much had already been revealed. Suddenly the bird that had been chittering outside the window gave a loud squawk. A small tabby cat appeared on the windowsill. Catching sight of the women inside, it sprang away in surprise.

  ‘You’ve had such a hard life,’ Cherry said gently. ‘I don’t know how you’ve managed to keep your sunny disposition.’

  Ilona laughed bitterly. ‘My disposition is not sunny,’ she said. ‘Every day there is a battle to defeat the blackness.’

  ‘But you are brave too, Ilona. Every day you fight and win.’

  ‘Sometimes I do not win, but I will not be vanquished.’

  ‘No, you won’t be. Especially not after you survived that.’ Cherry gently touched the blue numbers tattooed on Ilona’s forearm.

  Ilona flinched at the touch and Cherry quickly removed her hand.

  ‘You know what they mean, Cherry?’ Now Ilona was rubbing her arm, as if to scrub off the numbers.

  ‘Yes, I know. Miss Neville told me.’

  ‘I will not wear them covered. They are a reminder of what we went through. I cannot yet bring myself to talk of those things, but in time I must.’ Her voice broke and she coughed, as if to disguise her emotion. Once this was under control, she said briskly, ‘But we must finish our pinning, Cherry, for I know you do not have much time. You are not watching the clock but I am, and I see that soon Bill will be looking around the bar and wondering where you are, and blaming your piano teacher who has been distracting you.’

  Bill. Although Cherry knew she had to watch him, she didn’t want to think about him. She’d been watching him ever since she’d made that discovery and, so far, he had done nothing out of the ordinary. But Ilona was right, he would be looking for her soon. Not because he missed her, not because he loved her. He would be looking for her only because of the work she did in the pub.

  ‘Keep still, Ilona.’ And Ilona did keep very still until Cherry instructed her to twirl around for one last inspection. Then after a final adjustment, Cherry felt satisfied. ‘I’ll sew it for you on my machine,’ she said.

  ‘That is so kind of you. The stitching of the machine will be so much stronger than the stitching of my hand.’

  ‘Machine stitching. Hand stitching,’ said Cherry, laughing although she didn’t feel much like it.

  ‘And faster too, but do let me come around to do it at your place. You have so little spare time.’

  ‘It’ll take me ten minutes at the most,’ Cherry said. ‘Up one side, down the other, and maybe a nice strip of bias binding to cover the rough edges inside to stop them prickling. Then the French seam around the hips and it’ll be done. Maybe we can fix your two frocks later, after my lesson next week.’

  ‘Can I watch you do it?’

  ‘No, Ilona,’ Cherry said indistinctly. After collecting all the pins that had fallen onto the floor, she’d started absent-mindedly putting them into her mouth. Taking them out, she jabbed them hard into the silk-covered pincushion. ‘Bill doesn’t like me bringing anyone home,’ she added, but it was more that she didn’t want Ilona and Zidra having anything to do with Bill. She would keep her life as segmented as possible. Everyone would be safer that way.

  If only there were someone she could talk to about what she had seen in Bill’s office. For an instant she wondered if she might tell Ilona, but no, that would be folly; she couldn’t possibly burden Ilona with that, especially after all she’d been through. If Ilona knew, she would advise Cherry to tell the police. She was a mother, after all, how could she possibly say otherwise? Then Cherry would have to follow that through, although she knew the police would never believe anything bad about Bill. Even if they did take her accusations seriously, she’d have to go to court and her own secret would come out. She’d thought all this through many times now and she knew she just couldn’t bear the humiliation. It might be different if she was brave like Ilona but she wasn’t. She was a coward and she knew it.

  That afternoon Cherry stood on the hotel verandah and waited until the last child had straggled out of the schoolyard. Only then did she nonchalantly stroll up the hill and pass through the school gate. She would talk to Miss Neville about Bill but first she must practise the piano a little. It was important to keep up the pretence that she was learning seriousl
y and anyway she wanted to please Ilona.

  Miss Neville usually offered her a cup of tea to take with her to the piano but today she didn’t turn around at the clatter of Cherry’s high-heeled sandals on the wooden floorboards. Stopping at the door to the office, Cherry called, in a parody of a schoolgirl, ‘Good afternoon, Miss Neville!’ But Miss Neville didn’t seem amused. Seated at the desk with her back to the door, she noisily turned the page of an exercise book she was marking.

  ‘I’m here! Will I get on with my practice or would you like me to make you some tea?’

  ‘Carry on,’ Miss Neville said gruffly, back still turned to the door. Her hair was ruffled as if she’d been running her fingers through it, and her double crown was exposed. Cherry was tempted to take the four steps into the office to smooth her hair but thought better of it. Never before had she seen Miss Neville this unwelcoming. It made her nervous, as if she was a naughty schoolgirl again at Burford Girls’ High, waiting to see the headmistress for yet another detention.

  She tiptoed into the large schoolroom and shut the door so that she wouldn’t disturb Miss Neville’s concentration. Perhaps she wasn’t really angry but simply doing something very important. The classroom was hot and it smelled musty, of generations of school lunches and the faint sweat of thirty children. Opening the windows would entail first going out into the corridor and asking Miss Neville for the window opening stick. This long broom handle with its metal hook at one end was kept locked away on the grounds of safety. ‘Need a bloody licence to operate it,’ Miss Neville had said on a better day. ‘A teaching qualification at least. Could be used as an instrument of torture in the wrong hands.’ There was no way Cherry was going to disturb Miss Neville now just to get hold of that stick.

  She opened the piano and began with the scales, using both hands. If only she could induce the left hand to coordinate properly with the right, instead of always being a fraction of a second behind, she could make great strides forward. Stopping, she gazed out the window at the relentless blue sky. It was difficult to concentrate when she’d done something to offend Miss Neville and didn’t know what it was. But Miss Neville didn’t want to be disturbed so she must be left alone. Back to the scales, up and down the piano she stumbled, faster and faster with less and less accuracy. Eventually she could stand it no longer. Leaping up from the piano stool, she threw open the classroom door, and marched into the office next door.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ she said loudly, plonking herself down on one of the visitors’ chairs that Miss Neville kept in an orderly row at right angles to her desk.

  The school mistress closed the exercise book she’d been marking and pushed her glasses onto the top of her head. She turned towards Cherry but instead of looking directly at her, focused on a point slightly to the left of her head. Cherry resisted the temptation to twist round to inspect the wall behind. This manoeuvre must have been perfected by Miss Neville on countless school children and Cherry might find it amusing if she were not so upset. There was a deep indentation to one side of the bridge of Miss Neville’s nose where her glasses had been digging in but it would be dangerous to lean over to attempt to smooth it out.

  ‘I popped into the post office this morning,’ said Miss Neville eventually. ‘It was only to buy some stamps but you know what Mrs Blunkett’s like, especially when there’s a bit of a queue. Bally woman becomes slower than ever and plays up to the crowd. Gossiping like mad about all sorts of silly stuff. Anyway, what she had to say today I actually found quite interesting. Seemed that Ilona woman was looking for a dressmaker. She’d asked Mrs Blunkett to ask Mrs Jamison next time she came in. Needed to have a swimming costume altered and a couple of dresses taken in.’

  She paused, eyes still fixed on the wall behind Cherry’s head. Cherry could guess what was coming but waited just in case she’d got it wrong. A small bird flew into the closed window pane behind Miss Neville’s desk and fluttered down onto the wide sill where, slightly stunned, it rested a while before flying off towards the radiata pine trees on the far side of the school yard. Miss Neville continued to stare at the wall. Perhaps this pause was carefully judged to give Cherry enough time to blunder in with a lie should she be stupid enough to want to try, or to attempt an explanation. But she wasn’t going to do that. Her years at Burford Girls’ High had provided too good a training and besides, there was no reason why she shouldn’t help Ilona with some sewing if she wanted to.

  ‘Anyway,’ Miss Neville continued at last, ‘Ilona turned up at the post office last thing yesterday afternoon, just before Mrs Blunkett was shutting up shop. Seemed she’d found a dressmaker. Seemed that kind woman Cherry Bates had offered to do the alterations for her today. Seemed she was going to pop around to her cottage and pin the swimming costume for her.’ Here Miss Neville broke into a perfect mimicry of Mrs Blunkett’s way of talking. ‘Take it in down the seams and shorten it too, for that Mrs Talivaldis is such a little wisp of a thing and that Cherry’s so clever, she can turn her hand to anything.’

  Miss Neville stopped but Cherry continued to say nothing. Miss Neville was going to have to come clean without any help from her: The truth of the matter was that she was jealous. Jealous of Cherry because this morning she’d had her hands on lovely Ilona’s body. Then an unwelcome thought sidled into her mind. Maybe Miss Neville was jealous of Cherry making friends with another woman not because she wanted to see more of Cherry but because she wanted to see more of the other woman. What a ridiculous prospect, there was no evidence for this at all! She was becoming irrational and should drive this suspicion from her mind. There was no point fabricating extra things to worry about. Bloody hell, her whole life would unravel if Miss Neville cared for someone else.

  ‘You’re making something out of nothing,’ Cherry said, her voice shaking slightly. To steady herself she took hold of the edge of the desk.

  ‘How can you say that? You spend hours with her having lessons and now you’re sewing for her as well. You never spend time with me. That’s not right and you know it.’

  ‘That’s unfair and you know it,’ Cherry said, her momentary doubt of Miss Neville vanquished.

  ‘I know nothing.’

  At this instant the clock began to chime the hour. Cherry knew she’d have to go, or Bill would be complaining again. Complaints here and complaints at home, it was all too much; however Bill complained the loudest and she’d got so much work to do and that other thing to worry about too. Although she couldn’t bear to leave the situation with Miss Neville unresolved, she stood up to leave. ‘I love you the most in the world. Believe me, I really do,’ she said. ‘But I’ve got to go or Bill will kill me.’

  Delicate lines creased Miss Neville’s forehead and Cherry longed to caress them away. Instead she planted a quick kiss on her tousled hair. ‘I’ll come around late tonight,’ she said. ‘Leave the key under the back doormat.’

  Then she hurried out, slowing only when she was visible from the street. Today it was a struggle to assume the carapace: Cherry Bates, the good sort. Cherry Bates, the cheerful wife of the publican, sauntering home after practising the piano at the school and ready for another evening pulling beer in the hotel.

  Miss Neville being difficult was almost more than she could bear but she didn’t want to have to give up seeing Ilona just because Miss Neville was jealous. She needed her friendship more than ever and Ilona needed friends too. Cherry would just have to work harder at reassuring Miss Neville of her affection. The incident upset her though. If Miss Neville could be so easily destabilised it was not at all clear how she would cope with learning about Bill’s nasty little secret.

  After closing time and the last of the drinkers had gone home, Cherry fabricated a headache and went up the back stairs to their private quarters. She shut the bedroom door and lay down on the counterpane to wait. Soon she heard Bill’s heavy tread and the creaking of the floorboards as he blundered around in the bedroom next to hers. Then there was silence. After ten minutes or so she got up and tip
toed into the hallway. Putting an ear to Bill’s door, she could just discern the heavy breathing that signified he was asleep. Although going out now meant she wouldn’t be able to monitor him, she had no doubt that he would sleep right through the night. Back in her own room, she put a couple of pillows under the bedclothes just in case, although it was unlikely that he would look in her bedroom even if he did wake up; he hadn’t done that since they stopped sleeping together years ago.

  The night was still warm but she pulled on a dark coat that completely covered her pale dress and squirted some of the scent Miss Neville had given her onto the pulse points behind her ears and on her wrists. Then she picked up a stocking. After pulling the bedroom door, so that it was open only a couple of inches, she put a hand through the opening and deposited the stocking on the floor just inside the door. If it had moved when she returned she’d know Bill had checked on her, although she didn’t really believe that he cared enough to do this.

  The stairs creaked a bit but nothing would wake Bill once he was asleep. She took the back route to the school mistress’s house, through the lane behind Cadwallader’s Quality Meats. There was no one around, apart from Old Charlie who was wandering along the lane behind the butcher’s, and who paid her no attention even though they passed within several yards of one another. Cherry was used to him and thought no more of it. He often wandered around at all hours, just as she did in her clandestine comings and goings.

  She turned into the lane running behind Miss Neville’s house. The yellow disc of the moon was so bright that the stars looked almost pallid in the velvety indigo sky. After unfastening the back gate and stepping quickly into the yard, she secured the catch behind her. The dog next door barked several times then subsided into silence. In the distance a mopoke cried. She stayed completely still beside the old timber outhouse. This was where the dunny used to be before people started installing septic tanks, when the cottages were serviced by night-soil men who collected the cans twice a week and carted them off in a stinking truck that you could smell from a mile away. But the dunnies were no longer used and all she could smell was the sickly scent of honeysuckle climbing over the outhouse.