by Alison Booth
Now her attention was caught by a light bobbing along, on the far side of the lagoon, towards the bridge. A few seconds later she discerned a figure walking across the bridge.
A cloud passed over the moon but still she could make out the shape of the man holding the torch. A large man, who now moved on, over the bridge and up the hill towards her house. She slipped inside, locking the door behind her. Peering through the front room window she saw George Cadwallader limping past the house, torch illuminated. Perhaps he too suffered from insomnia. Or perhaps the only time he had for walking was at night.
She struggled on with reading. With three new words collected, she looked them up in the dictionary. Peregrination: the action of travelling or of journeying. Hyssop: aromatic herb with blue flower. Heinous: hateful, odious. Cherry peregrinates picking hyssop heinously. It didn’t sound right somehow. Nor did it sound better when she substituted George for Cherry, but at last she had wearied herself to the point of exhaustion and beyond.
In bed she lay quiet. In bed she waited for those black breakers of despair to come rolling in from the depths and wash her into a turbulent sleep.
Late the following Saturday afternoon, Peter Vincent began the journey to Woodlands to collect the kelpie pup, and to endure that infernal dinner party Judy Chapman had organised: he’d been dreading it for days.
A mile or two beyond Jingera, he saw Tommy Hunter walking along the side of the road, a bucket and rod in one hand and the other hand half-heartedly thumbing a lift. He’d known Tommy for years; had met him when they were boys fishing in the lagoon at Jingera. Tommy was wearing a pinstriped jacket, the predecessor to Peter’s winter-weight suit and which he’d passed on to Tommy some months earlier. It suited Tommy far better than it had ever suited Peter, and he must find it more comfortable too, for he was never without it, even on the warmest day. Peter stopped the car and opened the boot for the bucket.
‘You must have half-a-dozen whiting there. Looks like a good dinner.’
‘Might’ve stayed a bit longer if I ’adn’t left me dog tag be’ind. Get thrown into the lockup after six without it.’
‘Ah, the dog tag.’ Peter felt slightly awkward, as if he himself was responsible for those exemption certificates issued to ‘deserving’ Aborigines who would otherwise be banned from town after sundown. He added, ‘But surely the police would recognise you.’
‘That don’t matter. Only way they know I’m deservun is if I’m wearun me dog tag. Anyway we blackfellas all look the same.’ He didn’t sound angry about it; it was just a statement of fact, like a comment on the weather.
‘How’s the family?’
‘Good. Littlest goin to school next year, and Lorna’s got a new friend.’
‘Who’s that?’
‘That girl whose mother’s from overseas.’
‘The Latvian woman’s daughter?’ Peter didn’t understand quite why he felt so pleased with this connection. The day he’d first seen the woman with the purple hat at Woodlands, she’d been holding the hand of a young girl with a mop of curly brown hair. Perhaps it was just that he liked the idea of Tommy’s oldest daughter befriending the girl. He added, as he did every time he saw Tommy, ‘Need some work?’
‘No, they’re pickun at Prentice’s, and the fishun’s good.’ Tommy laughed.
After dropping Tommy off at the camp by the river, where half-a-dozen kids raced towards him, Peter drove on through the long valley leading to Woodlands. Even here, where the shape of the landscape encouraged clouds to precipitate when they reached the escarpment, the countryside was beginning to look dry.
The closer to Woodlands he got, the more slowly he drove. It was when he got to the top of the first rise that he saw it, and an instant later he heard it: the Tiger Moth aeroplane flying low up the valley. With sweating palms slipping on the steering wheel, he pulled the car off the road and stopped the engine. He knew what was coming next: that terrible sensation in his breast like a trapped bird flapping around his heart. To forestall it, he gulped the slightly dusty air deep into his lungs. Despite this anxiety, he couldn’t help but squint up at the sky. Immediately before the escarpment, just before it was too late, the plane performed several loops upwards. Then it changed direction and flew westwards and out of sight.
It was over, it was gone, and he was panting as if he’d run a mile. Taking out a handkerchief, he wiped his damp hands and neck before getting out of the car. Up and down the gravel verge he marched, breathing deeply all the while. This feeling of panic happened every time he saw or heard a plane. Every time.
Years ago his reactions had been different. Years ago, on a summer’s evening just like this, he’d witnessed something that had changed his life. Driving along the Braidwood Road near his parents’ property, he’d seen a tiny plane challenging all notions of flying as a means of moving horizontally from one point to another. Instead it had swooped up and down at right angles to the earth’s surface. Twisting up like a corkscrew, its fuselage glinting as it caught the slanting rays of the late afternoon sunshine. Then flattening out before plunging straight down, wings tilting first to one side and then to the other. For an instant Peter had thought that it must surely bore straight into the ground, but it had suddenly flattened out and flown conventionally, flown horizontally, for perhaps half a mile. After that, as if fatigued by such monotony, the pilot had twisted the plane up into the sky again and repeated the whole performance. How exhilarating it had looked. How fantastic it would be to defy gravity, to swoop through the air like an eagle, like Icarus. He had longed to try it.
This vision he had kept to himself. Once the Empire Air Training Scheme had started, not long after war had been declared, he had enlisted. Never would he forget the medical inspection, in a shabby barn of a hall that stank of disinfectant and sweaty feet. He’d stripped to the waist and taken his place on one of the rows of benches until it was his turn to be called. Several doctors, who had seemed ancient but were probably no older than he was now, had occupied the examination booths. One by one they’d determined the fate of the men enlisting. Eventually it was his turn. Of course he’d got in. He was the right physical type, the right age, had been to the right school. After that, he’d been sent to Williamtown for training and had been one of the first embarking for Canada, and then for England, to join an RAF squadron.
Now he stopped pacing up and down the verge of the road and looked up at the sky again. An empty sky. As empty as he felt inside, and lonely too. Normally being alone wouldn’t bother him; it was what he sought after all; but this was more a sense of isolation and it was a new feeling. Nervousness, he supposed, at the prospect of sitting through Judy’s match-making attempt that was doomed to failure from the start. Yet this would only last a few hours and he’d had plenty of experience dealing with her efforts. Feeling calmer now, he looked around him. White daisies flowered along the roadside and, in the paddock beyond, there was a purple smudge of Paterson’s Curse that someone should get rid of.
A honking from a car caught his attention. Ian and Joy Sutherland pulled up beside him, in a new-looking Chevrolet covered in a film of pale dust. They ran a property a few miles away and he hadn’t seen them for months.
‘Broken down?’ Joy called through the passenger window.
‘No. Just stopped for a breather. Car’s running sweet as ever.’ Although trying to look normal, he felt he was grimacing rather than smiling.
‘Time you got rid of that old thing and got a proper car.’
Peter stroked his Armstrong Siddeley. ‘These ones last forever,’ he said. ‘Aluminium body.’
‘Like a plane.’
‘Just like a plane.’ But the aluminium body was the only similarity, he thought.
‘Heading for the Chapmans’ dinner party, aren’t you?’
‘Yes, and I’m picking up a new kelpie too.’
‘See you there. Give us a bit of a head start so you’re not eating our dust!’
The Sutherlands drove up the valley toward
s Woodlands. Peter rolled a cigarette while he waited for them to get ahead, and then started up the engine.
Now he was at Woodlands, sitting with the Chapmans and their other guests in the drawing room. Through the French doors he could see the blaze of gold as the sun sank below the rugged mountains and then the sky faded to a bleached blue. The upright chair on which he perched must be a valuable antique or its lack of comfort would surely have led to its disposal years ago. Opposite him, Judy Chapman and Grace Smythe, elegantly arranged on a sofa, were chatting vivaciously. They might almost be sisters the way they looked alike and spoke alike and dressed alike. But Judy was a little warmer than Grace, who had a hardness about her, a coldness, in spite of the lovely features. Both were wearing dresses of the same clinging silky fabric. Both were striking in an over-painted, over-treated way. He looked obliquely at Grace. Too much make-up, dress too low-cut, too much cleavage on show. Catching the direction of his eyes, she smiled at him. She thought he found her arousing but the last thing he wanted was titillation from this painted lady.
Shortly the maid announced that dinner was ready and they moved into the dining room. Peter found himself seated between Judy and Grace. With longing he thought of the peaceful kitchen at home. He wished that Judy had placed him next to Ian Sutherland, who usually had a few good yarns to spin. This was what he hated about dinner parties, being wedged between women who either made fun of him or wanted him to marry their unattached friends. He didn’t know quite what was expected of him. Maybe he had once, years ago, but not any more. If he wasn’t charming, the women would dismiss him as dull and he wasn’t sure he wanted that. His ego was too big, or too fragile. But if he was too charming, amazing Grace might fall for him. That would be far worse; he had to get through the rest of the weekend. He wanted to do it with grace but without Grace. In spite of himself, he grinned.
Judy saw the grin and smiled encouragingly. He reminded himself of the reason he had come: for the tennis the next day and because of Jack Chapman’s kelpie. The dinner party was part of the price he would have to pay. Deliberately he asked Grace if she were interested in cattle breeding and saw the smile fade from Judy’s face.
The conversation lapsed. At the other end of the table, the others seemed to be arguing about the hydro-electricity scheme. Peter sipped his wine carefully. He had to be careful not to swig it down as if it were the beer he’d rather be drinking. Seeing the jug of water in the centre of the table, he offered to pour for his neighbours. When he’d finished, Grace leant towards him to take the glass and their fingers touched. So too did their shoulders. Suspecting she was deliberately leaning against him for far longer than necessary, he looked at her. Watching for his reaction, she was certainly teasing him. Unfortunately, in his haste to look away, he found he was peering straight down her cleavage. Staring at the far end of the oval table would help to distract him from the blush suffusing his face.
Judy Chapman towards one end of the table, Jack Chapman at the other. The contrast between host and hostess couldn’t be greater. Judy’s skin so white and her hair so flaming red; Jack’s face so flaming red and his hair so white, so prematurely white. Judy so Eastern Suburbs Sydney, Jack so much the farmer: it was a miracle they’d ever got together. Opposites attracted; but it was more that money attracted money. Wiley’s Woollen Mills meeting Woodlands Stud Farm. There could be no more blessed an alliance than that of the heirs to the fortunes of each. Little Philip Chapman would be sitting on a pretty fortune when it was his turn to take over and so far there were no brothers and sisters to share it with.
Then Peter realised that conversation at his end of the table had been resumed and it was time to abandon his reverie.
‘The Abos are going to be moved on,’ Judy was saying. ‘That camp’s a disgrace.’
‘They’re not doing anyone any harm there, Jude,’ Jack said.
‘They’ve got their own reserve up at Wallaga Lake. What more do they want? That’s prime real estate up there, or it will be in a few years’ time.’
‘They live in such frightful squalor,’ said Grace, shuddering. ‘And such ugly faces.’
Peter struggled to prevent his distaste from showing as he said, ‘Some are quite beautiful. Just as some white people are ugly and others beautiful.’ He didn’t add what he was thinking, that some people can change from beauty to ugliness in just a few seconds.
‘I must tell you about the new piano teacher I found in Jingera,’ Judy said, evidently judging it politic to change the subject. ‘Such a character. I had her come out for an interview and she insisted on playing the piano to show me how good she is. She did play brilliantly, but do you know what she chose? Shostakovich!’ Judy opened her arms wide in a theatrical gesture, as if inviting the others to share in the hapless pianist’s folly.
The piano teacher might be the Latvian woman. Peter waited. He could see that the other men at the dinner table looked slightly bemused but the women seemed to know what was expected of them.
‘That Russian composer.’ Grace was the first to offer an explanation. ‘Communist of course. Stalin’s poodle.’
‘Stalin wouldn’t have a poodle. He’d have a Borzoi.’
‘You always take things so literally, darling.’
‘Do you think she’s a Communist, your piano teacher? Exciting to have a Commie spy at Jingera.’
‘Hardly. What on earth would anyone spy on there?’ Judy dismissed Jingera with a wave of her hand but then recollected that this was Peter’s territory. ‘Except for darling Peter. I’m sure he’s worth spying on.’
‘Who is she?’
‘Ilona Talivaldis. I’ve hired her to teach Philip once a week. She’s terribly talented. Originally from Poland or Estonia or somewhere. She arrived down here only recently. I was really lucky to find her. It was through Mrs Blunkett.’
‘Infernal talker, that woman,’ commented Ian Sutherland, the first words he’d managed to contribute for some time. He was sitting on the other side of Grace, who had her back to him the better to talk to Judy on Peter’s other side.
Now Grace put one arm on the top of Peter’s chair and leant over him for the water jug. ‘Sorry, darling,’ she said when he tried to help her, but he was not to be caught twice and fixed his eyes on the candelabra in the centre of the table.
‘Have you met the Jingera genius?’ Grace asked Peter.
‘I saw her here a few weeks ago,’ Peter said. ‘In the yard here, just as she was leaving.’ Wherever I go people are talking about her, he thought, and wondered why.
Into his mind sprang that image of her on Jingera Beach, dressed in the ill-fitting swimming costume and hugging her chest. There’d been something touching about that gesture. He’d thought of it again and again but he certainly wasn’t going to expose Ilona to the ridicule of the people sitting around this table. Nor would he mention the number tattooed in blue on her forearm. He’d got her number. A new and nasty meaning to that expression. He’d got her number but he knew little about her apart from that.
‘You’ve always been marvellous at finding the right people, Jude. Just look at your divine husband,’ Grace said. ‘How do you do it?’
‘I didn’t find Jack, as you know full well. He found me. At the tender age of seventeen at the Hotel Australia, my second ever ball.’
Later, when the guests had either retired to their rooms or gone home, Peter strolled with Jack across the damp lawn in front of the house. The cool air rinsed away the irritation of the dinner party. He accepted a cigarette from Jack. As they sauntered across the grass, a loud scuffling broke out in an oak tree nearby, followed by a carking noise like an old man clearing his throat. An angry possum leapt from the tree to the slate roof of the house, pursued a second later by a slightly larger possum. A territorial fight or a family argument, or perhaps one possum had just wanted to be left alone. A misanthrope like Peter, who was now thinking that a dinner party was like a lottery. You couldn’t choose who you sat next to and you couldn’t choose when t
o leave.
He drew hard on the cigarette. Now he thought about it, he’d probably been a misanthrope ever since he’d got out of the camp. Too many human beings, too many inhumane beings. People didn’t mention that when they talked of prisoner-of-war camps. Each day petty irritations were magnified by the pain and the hunger and the malnutrition, and the itching skin that made you even more irritable. The fear too, that compounded the jitteriness. The fear you’d die or your mates would die, and that you’d lose all dignity in the manner of your death. It was people who introduced that fear, people who developed that fear.
Only in small groups that he could leave at any time did he feel comfortable. An hour or two at the pub was about all he could stand. There he could listen to a few tales from uncomplicated people he’d known for years, and at any moment he could choose to get up and walk straight out the door. He didn’t feel hemmed in there and nothing was expected of him.
In silence he and Jack strolled around the Woodlands garden. Jack was one of the uncomplicated people and he felt comfortable with him.
‘Have you ever thought of marrying?’ Jack said. ‘It’s one way to avoid a situation like tonight.’
‘No.’ Peter looked at Jack who was occupied in striking a match to light another cigarette. Probably Jude had put him up to this; it was the most personal question he’d asked in the twenty or more years they’d known each other. Jack’s face, illuminated by the burning match, looked older than it had in the soft lighting indoors. His cigarette end glowed in the darkness.
‘I thought you might have married Jenny,’ Jack added.
‘We were far too young before the war.’ And by the time he’d returned to Australia, she’d married an academic whose war had been spent in Intelligence. Not that he’d been faithful to her memory. On his leaves in London there’d been plenty of coupling – in strange bedrooms, in hotels, in a dark doorway one night – with women who wouldn’t have looked twice at him in peace time. Everyone loved a pilot; even a colonial one. Marriage wouldn’t suit Peter now, he felt sure. Men like him in their late thirties were too set in their ways.