by Alison Booth
‘I’m phoning about Lorna Hunter,’ his father repeated, rather more loudly this time. ‘Can I speak to the officer in charge? … Surely you can put me through.’ There was a pause and then he continued, ‘What about the parents? No one in Jingera seems to have heard anything … Oh, I see, well I won’t hold you up then. I’ll try again some other time. Thank you. Goodbye.’ Muttering something about the police all being stupid fools, he put the receiver down before noticing Jim standing in the hallway.
‘News about Lorna?’ Jim said, trying to give the impression that he’d only just come out of the bathroom.
‘There’s some news about Lorna,’ Dad said, looking worried. ‘But I don’t know if it’s true. That’s the trouble, son. I don’t know enough yet.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘Time you fed the chooks, isn’t it? We don’t want your mother rousing on you again, do we?’ Before limping down the hallway, he gave Jim a distracted pat on the shoulder. Into the lounge room he went and shut the door firmly behind him.
Jim stood still for a moment longer, puzzling over his father’s conversation.
There was something unusual about Lorna’s absence, that much was clear. Perhaps the rumour he’d heard from Zidra was wrong and Lorna hadn’t moved to the Sutherlands’ property. Another report had it that the whole family had been shifted back to Wallaga Lake, but perhaps Lorna had run away instead. Perhaps she’d become a Missing Person and that’s why Dad was on the phone just now. Although wanting to ask his father more, he guessed from the overheard conversation that he didn’t know anything much.
And it was the first time ever that Dad had told him to feed the chooks.
Jim went outside anyway, although he’d already fed the chooks that day. Needing some time to think, he went straight to that favourite hiding spot of his, under the fig tree below the chicken run.
The day of the Christmas dance was stinking hot. Jim mooched around at home, trying to keep out of his mother’s way. Her entire morning had been spent baking stuff for the dance at the church hall and by early afternoon she was at her grumpiest. You might have thought she’d be glad to let him and Andy outside to play but she wouldn’t have a bar of that, and she wouldn’t let them near the kitchen either. Hanging around getting underfoot was how she put it. Eventually they shut themselves in their bedroom and started a game of Monopoly. By late afternoon a light breeze sprang up that cooled the house and their mother’s temper. She was almost back to normal when it was time to head off to the hall to get preparations underway. The boys also had to go to help carry, for their father had gone on ahead in the van to collect the trestles. She wouldn’t hear of Jim and Andy dragging her pots and plates along on their billycarts, so they headed off balancing trays, a much more precarious undertaking.
The hall felt stifling, even though all the sash windows on each side were wide open, and Jim was glad the kids would have the backyard to play in once the dance started. After they’d put down the trays in the kitchen at the back of the hall, and grabbed a couple of sausage rolls when no one was looking, Jim and Andy went outside. Around the back of the hall, some of the boys had started a game of French cricket with a bat and tennis ball. They weren’t allowed cricket balls here after that time Andy lobbed a ball through the rectory window and smashed it.
Then Jim saw Roger O’Rourke pick up something from the back of the incinerator. Holding it behind him, he came running across the yard. ‘Here’s O’Rourke coming in to bowl,’ he shouted and lobbed whatever he’d been holding straight at the batsman. It missed and went through the window of the shed at the back of the hall, shattering it into a hundred pieces. Roger shrieked with laughter. ‘It was a cricket ball,’ he shouted. ‘Gotya! I’m batsman now!’ He seemed as unaware of the broken window as he was of several fathers advancing down the side passage, rolling a keg of beer in front of them like a drum announcing their arrival.
Roger’s father was the first to notice his son racing around the yard holding a cricket bat and ball, and the pile of broken glass in front of the shed. ‘That’s enough,’ he shouted, advancing down on him, red hair bristling. Roger swung around and his father yanked the ball from him. ‘Where did you get this from? You know cricket balls aren’t allowed here any more.’
‘Nowhere,’ said Roger.
‘Nothing comes from nowhere.’ Roger’s dad was red in the face now as well as the hair.
When Zidra heard the crash of breaking glass followed by shouting, she ran down the back steps of the hall. Roger O’Rourke being bawled at: she couldn’t stop herself smirking at the sight. Staring at the ground, Roger looked miserable but he was certain to have deserved it. Mr O’Rourke continued rousing on Roger. She might have felt sorry for him if he hadn’t tipped ink onto the cover of her exercise book yesterday afternoon. Miss Neville had blamed her and she’d accepted the blame. Although she could have told on him, she didn’t. But that hadn’t seemed to make him feel grateful.
Roger started to kick with one foot at a clump of grass. This made Mr O’Rourke even angrier. Now Mrs O’Rourke appeared in the yard and marched across the rough grass to her husband and son. Zidra followed close behind and was unable to prevent her smirk from turning into a grin.
‘Where did you get that cricket ball from?’ Mrs O’Rourke’s voice was sharp enough to cut through a stale loaf.
‘Behind the incinerator.’ Roger waved towards the back of the yard. They all stared at the incinerator for an instant.
‘What was it doing there?’
‘How would I know? I s’pose someone left it there after the last game.’
All the boys snickered a bit at this and Zidra grinned too, but Roger carried on watching the grass grow.
‘What are you gawping at, the lot of you?’ Mrs O’Rourke said, turning on them. ‘I’m going to get rid of this and I don’t want you playing with cricket balls here again. Plus you’re going to have to pay for that pane of broken glass from your own pocket money.’
Roger looked up and saw Zidra standing behind his mother. He grinned defiantly. Seeing the grin, Mrs O’Rourke cuffed his ear. Now Zidra grinned more widely. She followed Mrs O’Rourke into the kitchen and saw her stuff the cricket ball into the garbage bin. It wouldn’t stay there long, she knew.
Just then Mama swept through the door from the hall and gave a little shriek. ‘There you are, darling Zidra! I have been looking all over for you.’
Squirming with embarrassment, Zidra wanted to tell Mama to speak like a normal person, not a foreigner. Instead she said, ‘We Australians are given to understatement.’ It was her best imitation yet of Miss Neville. ‘You won’t find us an emotional lot, Mrs Talivaldis.’
Mama laughed, though Zidra could tell it was in spite of herself. So too did some of the other ladies. Zidra’s spirits lifted. She liked an audience, even if it was only mothers and not the children she really wanted to impress. Looking around quickly to see if Miss Neville might have heard, she was relieved to see that she was nowhere in sight. One or two of the older ladies were glaring at her though. ‘Too clever by half,’ one of them muttered. ‘If she were mine I’d give her the strap.’
Mama chose to ignore this, or perhaps she hadn’t heard. ‘You will help Mrs Bates with distributing the knives and forks across the tablecloths in the hall,’ she told Zidra while giving her a hard shove, her equivalent of the strap.
It was late afternoon by the time Peter shut the main gate into Ferndale and turned the car onto the road heading south towards Jingera. It was still several hours before sunset but the western sky was beginning to glow golden through a thin red haze that looked almost like dust. He’d wound down the car windows to get some air but he still felt unpleasantly hot. Accelerating to generate a cooling breeze, he almost missed seeing Tommy Hunter walking along the verge of the road heading north – the very man he’d wanted to see. Immediately he stopped the car and backed up to a patch of shade.
‘G’day,’ Tommy said. He didn’t smile though. It was almost as if he hadn’t wanted Pet
er to stop. ‘Where are you off to?’ His voice was listless.
‘Jingera. The Christmas dance.’ Peter got out of the car. ‘Can’t say I’m all that keen though.’
‘Could’ve fooled me. You was goin’ like the wind. Flyin’ along. Think you was still up in the air?’ Tommy took off his old felt hat and fanned himself with it.
‘Where’re you heading?’
‘Wallaga Lake. The missus and kids are still there.’
When Peter had last seen Tommy’s family, his wife – a small shy creature in a baggy floral dress – had five children in tow. All with brilliant smiles and a willingness to look straight at him, unlike their mother, and now there were only four children. He wondered if their smiles were still as brilliant. ‘How’s the family coping?’ he asked.
‘Pretty crook.’ Tommy fanned himself once more with his hat. ‘Missus in tears plenty often and little kids too.’
‘I checked again, Tommy. With the Welfare Board this time. I drove in to see them yesterday. I’m afraid the police were right. Welfare has taken Lorna.’
It had been a hopeless visit. The woman he’d spoken to, a tall blonde who’d spent too much time in the sun, had been adamant it was for the children’s own good. Got any children yourself? he’d asked her. No, she’d replied but if I did I’d want them to have the best start in life, and then she’d smiled in that mawkish way people did sometimes when they were talking about kids in the abstract. Now he hesitated before adding, ‘And there’s nothing we can do about it, Tommy, but at least we know for sure where she is – Gudgiegalah Girls’ Home.’
‘That’s what Welfare told the Missus when they tookem other kids.’
Peter felt helpless. He didn’t tell Tommy what he’d also learnt from the woman at the Welfare Board. That the children weren’t allowed to keep in touch with their families. There was little chance of Lorna seeing her family again, or at least not until she was older, fourteen or fifteen, but Tommy probably knew that already. ‘I’m so sorry,’ he said. Lame words, but it was better by far to say something, anything, than to ignore Tommy’s distress.
He sighed. Lorna was a bright kid and maybe she’d do all right in Gudgiegalah. She’d get an education and maybe make a life for herself. Though from what he’d heard she was more likely to end up as housemaid to some rich property owner out west, far from where she belonged.
Tommy, gazing into the distance, appeared to be staring at the range of mountains to the west. Or staring beyond the range, as if he could see as far as Gudgiegalah. ‘Gotter get on,’ he said eventually. ‘Gotter get back.’
‘Would you like a lift?’
‘No,’ Tommy said so quickly that Peter wondered if he had interpreted his offer as pity, but it was probably more that he needed to be alone.
Although the car was now as hot as Hades, Peter sat in it for a few minutes. In the rear-vision window he watched Tommy’s reflection, a shabby figure trudging along the dirt verge. It was a long way to Wallaga Lake if you had to walk.
Eventually Peter started the engine and drove on, more soberly now, towards Jingera. Occasionally he caught glimpses of the ocean that was so smooth it looked like faintly rumpled silk. Silky like a woman’s skin. Although he didn’t especially want to go to the Christmas dance, particularly after seeing Tommy’s sad face, he knew that Ilona would be there. Over the past week or so he’d experienced no more nightmares and he’d come to the conclusion that Ilona hadn’t intended to offend him that afternoon; she gets like that when she’s tired, Zidra had said. Instead he’d found his own conduct wanting. It wasn’t his coughing during the Shostakovich prelude that now bothered him but his laughter at her misuse of English.
Initially he’d wondered if she lacked a sense of humour. That would explain why she found correction difficult, but it was one thing to be corrected, quite another thing to be laughed at. Learning new idioms was hard enough without being mocked and he wanted to make amends for that.
The fleeting hope that she too might want to apologise he dismissed as a wild fantasy.
By the time Peter reached Jingera the temperature had cooled by several degrees. The paddock opposite the church hall was so full he parked the Armstrong in a side street where there’d be little chance of it being knocked later by some inebriate. The noise from the hall ratchetted up even in the short time it took him to walk from car to hall.
Most of the people he knew by sight if not to talk to. Farmers like himself, with their wives in brightly coloured dresses and helmets of curled and shining hair. A few fishermen who lived in Jingera although the port was some miles further south. Some forestry workers, and all the Jingera trades-people out in force. In the near corner he could see Mrs Blunkett holding court. She was talking nonstop. It was a miracle she managed to absorb all the gossip that she did when she never seemed to listen.
Seeing Ilona coming out of the kitchen, he was struck by how lovely she looked: her normally wild hair was restrained by a wide black ribbon and she seemed paler than ever, apart from two circles of colour on her cheeks. Her fragile expression belied what he suspected was a core of steel. A core covered in barbed wire that he might never be able to get close to. Yet in spite of this he began to push his way through the throng.
Only at this point did he see that his old acquaintance Jeff Heath was also heading in her direction and would get there first. Good-looking Heath, accomplished polo player; and womaniser too – although the Burford Advertiser never mentioned that bit. Already he had her elbow in a proprietorial grip and was leaning forward to whisper in her ear. Imagining those seductive silver words, Peter felt annoyance stab his breast, and now, as if Ilona were incapable of making her own way, the polo player was steering her through the knots of people towards the tables. Worse even than this sight was that she didn’t seem to mind; indeed, she was laughing up at him. Peter’s displeasure metamorphosed into a novel emotion that he recognised was jealousy. Clearly he’d have to rescue her and might even offer an apology. How to do this was not obvious but he knew that most of his character traits were unforgivable. Curtness. Bluntness. Directness. Humour. At this point he almost gave up. No, he couldn’t possibly leave her to dreadful Heath. She had to be saved from that.
Through the crowd he wended his way. Only occasionally did he stop to talk to people, when it was absolutely necessary to avoid giving offence. Always keeping an eye on his goal. His goal and quarry, for he was determined to separate them. When he had almost reached Ilona and Heath, a whisper arose that it was time to eat. Had he not been so resolved to reach Ilona, he might have stood back. But here she was, holding two empty plates, and good heavens, she was smiling at him and handing him one plate and Heath the other.
Smiling first at her and then at Heath, he imagined for a moment that he’d hidden his true feelings until Heath said, ‘You’re looking a bit out of sorts, old man. Parties not really your thing, are they?’
So intent was Peter on Ilona that he overlooked Heath’s comment. In some indefinable way, she looked altered. It wasn’t just that she was dressed so differently, in a sleeveless dark green dress of some shiny fabric. It was more her open expression and incandescent eyes. Turning to see if there was anyone behind who was the focus of this beacon of light, he could see only Jim Prior’s leonine head inclining towards Dalrymple’s shiny pate, and behind them the shabby cream wall.
‘I adore parties,’ Ilona said.
So that was it. She was wearing a social smile. Never before had he seen her at a public gathering so how could he have known that this radiance was something she put on like a piece of jewellery for a gala occasion.
‘So do I,’ said Heath. ‘I love dancing.’
‘I too like to dance but it’s the music that I really love,’ said Ilona. ‘Tonight I will be playing the piano for some of the time. Daphne Dalrymple and I will take it in turns, and also there will be Billy the Fish.’
‘Perhaps you’ll save a dance for me,’ Peter said quickly.
‘And one for
me,’ Heath said.
Damn the man; it was a struggle for Peter to conceal his irritation. But Ilona wasn’t looking at either of them. Instead she was staring at Cherry Bates beckoning from the kitchen doorway.
‘Perhaps it’s about Zidra,’ Ilona said. ‘Or the sausage rolls.’
For an instant Peter thought she rested her hand on his arm as she slipped by. Although she might have, he saw only Heath’s hand pushing him aside to allow someone access to the table. The woman seemed a little unsteady on her feet. It might have been that someone had just nudged her although she did seem to reek of sherry. He could do with a good slug of something strong himself.
‘Who’s Zidra?’ Heath enquired casually.
‘Ilona’s daughter.’
‘She’s got a child?’
‘Yes. She’s widowed.’
‘How old is the child?’
‘She’s about nine or ten I’d say. Haven’t you heard about her? I thought everyone knew what everyone else was doing around here.’ His voice sounded nastier than he’d intended.
‘I’ve been overseas. Got back last week.’
Heath’s immediate dissipation of interest gladdened Peter’s soul. If he hadn’t felt so happy for himself, he might have been embarrassed for Heath’s transparency. The man just melted away and a few seconds later Peter saw him heading for a group of unattached women of the type that attended the Bachelors’ and Spinsters’ Ball. Beautifully dressed and coiffed and with minds as vacant as a church on Saturday. Any one of them would make a perfect match for Jeff Heath.
He wouldn’t take any chances though. By the kitchen door, he waited for Ilona to return. Although a reasonably good dancer, he was probably not good enough for her and she could add that to the list of his failings. This possibility did not, however, affect his appetite. Institutional living had that effect. You ate what you could as soon as it appeared and you ate it fast. To fill in time he had a second helping. When that had gone, he peered through the door into the kitchen and saw her deep in conversation with Cherry Bates in a room full of women. Beating a hasty retreat, he found a clean plate and made a selection for Ilona from the fast-vanishing food on the trestle tables before returning to his post just outside the kitchen door.