Purple Threads

by Jeanine Leane

  The next day Petal was restless.

  ‘Let’s go for a walk to the horse yards,’ Dinny said to her after we’d eaten lunch and endured another prayer by Sister Bernadette. ‘Want to show you the new colt I’m breakin’ in, and if ya take a shine to the horses I’ll teach ya how to ride and give ya one of your own.’

  Petal was already standing up and arranging her sunhat. Star and I were tired from the restless night we’d had.

  ‘Might be too hot for the kids though,’ Dinny added. ‘Why don’t you two jump up on the couches and have a little sleep?’

  We were glad not to have to go, and we scrambled up on the two big cane lounges at the far end of the veranda. Star fell asleep quickly. I wanted to, but it was too hot and I was wondering what they’d all be doing at home. I turned my face to the wall and pretended to be asleep, though, because I didn’t want to talk to Grandma or Paddy or Sister Bernadette.

  ‘I wanted a good Catholic girl for our Dinny . . .’ I could hear Grandma’s lament to Paddy and Sister Bernadette carried on the hot breeze. ‘Mind you, if he’d taken up with a Red Indian or a Maori I’d get used to it. They’re a better breed. But an Abo! Lord, what did I do to deserve these trials and tribulations?’

  ‘She’s not a full-blood,’ Paddy drawled. ‘She’s got some white in her. Looks to me like she’s less than half Abo. And the kids, you can hardly tell. One of them even looks a bit like our Dinny in the face.’

  ‘What! Have you taken leave of your senses? Even one drop is too much. She’s lazy and useless and vain and surly. And here’s our Dinny, the dux of Brisbane Grammar, could have any girl he wants and here he is with an Abo!’

  Paddy wouldn’t be swayed. ‘She’s a damn pretty girl. And friendly too, if you’d give her a chance.’

  ‘Don’t be daft, man!’ Grandma hissed.

  ‘There’ll be trouble if you don’t make her feel welcome,’ Paddy called over his shoulder as he slunk away to smoke in peace on the back veranda.

  When Petal came back from the horse yards, the sun was in full force. Beyond the chicken-wire fence that surrounded the garden, the flat country was a haze of swaying grasses and massive, sparsely leafed reddish-black trees. Petal laid a blanket out in the far corner of the garden between two frangipani trees in full blossom, and Star and I stretched out on our stomachs.

  ‘What’s an Abo?’ I asked her.

  Petal wasn’t good at explaining things like the Aunties were, and she wasn’t patient either. The colour in her face rose.

  ‘Wait here!’

  Petal found Dinny with Paddy on the veranda, smoking and drinking tea, waiting for the heat of the day to pass before returning to the horse yards.

  ‘Get here!’ Petal’s coal eyes flamed and she stamped her foot.

  Paddy looked at the ground. Dinny was not one for a scene. He came down the steps, cigarette fixed firmly in his lips.

  ‘What, darl?’

  We watched as Petal dug her slender fingers deep into his forearm and pulled him away from the veranda to the far end of the front yard behind a trellis drooping with bean vines in full flower.

  Star looked at me. ‘Ya shouldna asked too many questions,’ she said, mimicking Petal.

  Later, above the clinking of the cups and plates for afternoon tea, we heard harsh words coming from the kitchen. We were still lazing on our blanket. I was lying on my back, eyes fixed on the canopy of pink and yellow frangipani flowers. Petal was back with us, painting her nails.

  ‘You’ll have a bit of respect, Mother!’

  Sister Bernadette hurried our way with a tray. Everyone pretended not to hear what was going on. She smiled and blushed nervously as she rattled around tea cups and butter plates. I tried not to stare at her pimply, pitted face and thick, cloudy glasses.

  ‘Mum’s really a good cook,’ she said, and smiled. Sister Bernadette’s watery blue eyes fixed hopefully on Petal’s black seething ones. ‘She means well too.’

  ‘Thanks for the scones an’ tea,’ Petal said, breaking the stare. ‘Here, kids! Dunno ’bout youse, but I’m hungry.’ She handed us generous warm scones slathered with home-made plum jam. ‘Say thanks ta ya Aunty,’ Petal said, without looking up from pouring us tea.

  Star and I were so starving from not being able to help ourselves to food whenever we wanted that we stuffed our mouths. All we could do was nod as we chomped away, cheeks bulging and bellies screaming in anticipation. Beads of crystal sweat covered Sister Bernadette’s bony red face swathed in its black veil as she teetered away on her skinny little bird-like legs complete with black stockings and flat lace-up leather shoes.

  By the time the scones set in our stomachs and we were awash with tea, Dinny was sitting on the front veranda steps smoking as the beetroot colour drained from his cheeks and they returned to their normal ruddy red. The heat ached out of the day. Paddy went to the horse yards. Dinny flung his cigarette butt into a pink and white sea of rock rose that grew by the steps, and sauntered over to us. He extended his hand to Petal and pulled her to her feet.

  ‘Like to go for a drive?’ he asked suavely. ‘Still quite a bit of the place to see. Mum and Sister Bernadette will watch the kids.’

  ‘Sure,’ Petal beamed. ‘Youse kids have a little rest,’ she called over her shoulder, an afterthought, as she skipped off beside the long-striding, bow-legged Dinny.

  Star was flat on her back with her legs swinging in the air. ‘D’ya think we might go home?’ she asked.

  ‘I aren’t askin’.’ I stretched my full belly starfish-like across the blanket. Sister Bernadette emerged from the kitchen door and headed our way. ‘An’ I’m pretendin’ ta be asleep.’

  ‘Are you girls all right out here?’

  ‘Yes, we wanna have a sleep,’ I said, keeping my eyes closed.

  ‘Good idea.’

  When she’d gone I rolled over and continued to stare into the umbrella of frangipani blooms and the sinking sun beyond.

  ‘When d’ya think that nun’s goin’ back ta where she came from?’ Star asked.

  ‘I dunno . . .’ I snapped. I’d been thinking of home. ‘You ask too many questions!’

  Not long afterwards, we saw Sister Bernadette and Grandma walking near the shady side of the front veranda with their embroidery.

  ‘Don’t work yourself up, Mum, it’s not good for you. Think of your blood pressure. The good Lord will provide,’ she continued soberly. ‘We will find a way to make the most of this. I can already see how we could do something with the children. They’re only young and they can be educated. And their mother . . . well, she’ll take some training and some patience but you can do it, Mum. I have every confidence in you and you know I’ll pray for you.’

  Grandma was silent, her embroidery hoop and needle suspended.

  ‘Mum,’ Sister Bernadette ploughed on, ‘for your own good, you’ll have to make the most of it.’

  ‘Yes, dear.’ Grandma finally plunged the needle into the taut cloth.

  ‘I’ll go and make us a quiet cup of tea.’

  Sister Bernadette was already retreating when the old lady said to no one but the air, ‘I’ll have to play it another way.’

  The needle was suspended again. She nodded to an invisible listener. The thread was plunging and rising rapidly across the printed picture encircled by the embroidery hoop when Sister Bernadette returned with the tea tray.

  ‘Our Dinny’s in love,’ Sister Bernadette said gently, as she handed her mother a cup of tea on a saucer. ‘Dad is right. If we find fault with his choice . . .’ She cleared her throat and gathered strength to go on. ‘No matter who she is we’ll risk driving him away. Besides, Mum, the Lord works in mysterious ways and things will work out in the end.’

  Grandma’s needle and thread were sailing across the wide embroidery hoop. Even from our spot on the law
n, under the tree, we could see the neat picture taking shape. ‘Yes, dear,’ she said without looking up. ‘The Lord does work in mysterious ways.’

  Petal came back starry-eyed and glowing from her drive with Dinny.

  ‘Nah, we’re not goin’ home yet,’ I said to Star as we packed up our blanket and books.

  Long shadows began to creep across the garden. Paddy fired up the generator as the light faded and we all gathered on the veranda at half past six on the dot for tea.

  One day I was starving and went and sat at the tea table early. I started singing my favourite song, from the film of The Wizard of Oz that the Aunties had taken me to see.

  ‘Do you know what happens to little girls who sing at the table?’

  I felt Grandma’s icy hand on my shoulder.

  ‘Uh, uh.’ I shook my head.

  ‘Little girls who sing at the table . . .’ She levelled her steel blue eyes at me ‘. . . little girls who sing at the table end up old maids. Now go and wash your hands.’

  I slid off the chair, my head bulging with questions.

  Grandma tried to teach us how to use our rosary beads. She sat Star and me on the table and demonstrated how the sacred beads should be held. She explained in a quiet, deliberate voice that one usually knelt down for the Rosary, but since my sister and I were just learners the Lord would understand. Grandma cleared her throat and cast one more solemn glance our way to make sure we were appropriately reverent.

  ‘Hail Mary full of grace

  The Lord is with thee

  Blessed are you among women

  And blessed is the fruit of your womb, Jesus.’

  She bowed her head low after she said ‘Jesus’, and said, ‘Now, children, repeat after me and remember that you must always bow your head when you say the name of the Son of God.’

  Star and I were seriously confused. We could see Petal in the background rolling her eyes and clasping her hands in mock prayer. I wondered what ‘grace’ was but Grandma’s demeanour did not invite questions.

  ‘Hail . . . Mary . . .’ we began tentatively.

  ‘Full of . . . of . . . GRAPES!’ Star shouted out and looked so pleased for remembering.

  Her pleasure was short-lived.

  ‘Oh no, child!’ Grandma winced. ‘Not grapes! The blessed virgin is not full of grapes she’s full of grace, which is something very beautiful and special.’

  ‘But so are grapes!’ Star was adamant. ‘They’re my favourite an’ they’re beautiful too.’

  Petal got the giggles. I started tittering too. Grandma looked pained. Petal pulled a really straight face and came and rearranged us on the table and told us to have another try. This time, however, Star was so eager to make up for the grapes that she nodded her head too vigorously at the mention of Jesus’ name and fell off the table. Petal and I burst out laughing. But Grandma didn’t; she just picked up Star, sat her firmly back on the table and persevered.

  Most days the men worked horses in the yard a few hundred yards from the homestead, but sometimes they went away for days on end to muster. The tall summer grasses and the wild cattle kept Star, Petal and I confined to the house most of the time. I’d never seen so much country yet been so cooped up. It was a strange flat country: a vast plain of the comings and goings of cars, horses, caravans and pedestrians. All sorts of travellers passed by the homestead: salesmen in flash dusty cars, peddlers with horses and carts, cattle buyers, horse traders, government geologists convinced that there were veins of wealth beneath the land, surveyors, tradesmen, artists, tourists, archaeologists looking for the remnants of a past civilisation, foreign students, charlatans, swagmen and tramps all called in and had big tin cups of tea and corned meat and pickles sandwiches on the veranda and tried to buy or sell or fix or build or steal something, have a rest, ask directions, get some information, get water.

  If a traveller had hard times on the road they sometimes asked to camp at the workers’ huts beyond the horse yards. Like the battered-faced man whose horse went lame. He stopped at the huts to see if anything could be done. The next morning he ambled down to the house at dawn, borrowed a rifle, shot the lame mare, and came back for steak and eggs on the veranda with Paddy and Dinny. He offered Paddy some money over breakfast and rode off on a lively chestnut. Paddy and Dinny cut up the dead horse for dog’s meat. Petal said it was cruel.

  ‘Why couldn’t ya jus’ keep her?’ I asked Grandma, who insisted that we all do chores in the kitchen. Even Petal had to wash up and sweep floors.

  ‘Because she couldn’t work or be used any more. You can’t just keep feeding an animal that doesn’t earn its keep.’

  I thought about our menagerie at home. I missed home. I missed my Aunties. I missed my freedom. I longed for the sound of the mail van that chugged and spluttered down the road every Wednesday because there was always a letter and sometimes a parcel from Nan and the Aunties.

  Our first fortnight on the station seemed like a year. One day Petal took us up to the garden gate to meet Pete, who drove the mail truck, and pick up our first delivery.

  ‘Well howdy, strangers,’ said the stout woman with the funny accent and shock of carrot hair that was so short and crinkly she looked like she’d been electrocuted. ‘I’m Guinde Petersen.’ Her fat red hands fumbled with a cloth sack of letters. ‘But everyone calls me Pete. And you?’ She eyed Petal up and down.

  ‘I’m Petal an’ these are Dinny an’ my kids.’ She gestured to Star and me, who were interested in nothing else but the letters in the bag.

  ‘Ahhh . . .’ Pete slung the bag over her shoulder and pulled a tobacco tin from the back pocket of her stained moleskins. ‘So you’re the future Mrs O’Riley?’

  Petal said nothing, just smiled.

  ‘What do you think of the place, Petal?’ Pete licked a cigarette paper.

  Petal was quiet.

  ‘Aww, it’s all right . . . bit different ta where I come from.’

  ‘Bit different to anywhere, mate.’ Pete lit her cigarette and passed the tin to Petal, who began to roll her own. ‘It’s the Wild West out here, I tell you! Anything goes.’ She laughed dryly and shook her head. ‘Tell you another thing too, there’s only two kinds of people out here – those that were born here and those that’s on the run . . .’ She took a long draw on her fag. ‘And I wasn’t born here, tell you that for nothing.’

  Petal lit her cigarette. ‘So whatchya escapin’?’ Halos of smoke rings rose and disappeared above her head.

  ‘A husband, children, a job teaching music to screaming kids, my family and everything else society expects of me . . . you name it! I’m on the run out here from everything I don’t want to be.’ Pete threw her butt on the ground and trampled over it. ‘Tell you one more thing –’ Pete winked at Petal – ‘the O’Rileys weren’t born here either!’ She swung open the garden gate and strode down the path with Star and I panting eagerly alongside her. ‘Good-looking kids you got there. Suppose you’ll have a whole tribe of them soon, hey, Petal?’

  Pete cocked her carrot head as she set the bag down on the step. But Petal was too deep in thought to answer.

  When the mail had been handed out, Star and I ran to the far corner of the veranda and guarded our letter like two dogs with a bone. Pete sat on the ground with the men near the front steps and smoked, drank tea and swore. Petal sat by herself on a cane lounge at the other end of the veranda and watched Grandma’s leg-of-mutton arms doused to the elbows in boiled meat juice and flour as she handed around pannikins of tea.

  ‘Pete’s not a bad old stick,’ Dinny said to Petal, who was now sitting alone on the couch after Pete left. Star and I hovered on the steps nearby.

  ‘What?’ Grandma’s face was a grid of tiny bloodlines as she passed. ‘She’s Godless, has no children by choice, says she believes in abortion, is one of those women’s liberationists, who r
uin everything for decent women and . . . and . . . and she’s a German, for the love of God, and probably a Nazi too.’ The tirade made Grandma breathless.

  ‘No, Mum,’ Dinny drawled, a big grin splitting his face from ear to ear. ‘The Nazis were Catholics.’

  Grandma’s mouth was agape, moving without words.

  Paddy flicked Dinny with his faded felt hat. ‘Time to get back to the horse yards!’

  One day a man with only half an arm who said he was a dingo shooter stared so long and so shamelessly at Petal’s legs while she was reaching for the biscuit tin on the top of the dresser that Grandma pulled a big chair up in front of him and plonked her large self down in it, blocking his view.

  ‘Many dogs about?’ she asked flatly.

  A cigarette paper dangled from his lip as he nodded.

  ‘Petal, love,’ Grandma said without turning her gaze from the stranger, ‘leave the tea to me. I need you to get the washing in from the back clothes line, please.’

  Grandma couldn’t leave Petal alone since those heated words had escaped from the kitchen window a week or so before. She was always wanting to show her something or teach her something or tell her a story. Petal didn’t like it but there was nowhere to escape. There was no electricity during the day, so she couldn’t go to her room and listen to her records like she did at home. Sometimes Petal read magazines or a story to us but even then she got bored quickly. She couldn’t give cheek to Grandma like she did the women at home, because Grandma was so serious. Petal’s nail polish was always chipped, her wardrobe was full of clothes she had nowhere to wear, and her hair was flat and lifeless.

  One night Petal and Dinny had a fight. I buried my head under the blankets as the angry words flew through the air.

  ‘Can’t we go somewhere else?’ Petal pleaded. ‘I can’t stay here, it’s too lonely an’ too hard an’ too big. Can’t we go close ta home, Dinny, please?’

  ‘That’s how this country is . . .’ Dinny’s words were thick and slurred. ‘That’s how we do things out here. You and I could get rich some day, Petal, and I could take you on a flash holiday to Europe or America . . . anywhere you want to go. You always tell me you want to see the world.’