The Unexpected Education of Emily Dean

by Robertson, Mira;

  A third sweeping of the verandah was out of the question and still he had not come. She sat down at the men’s outdoor dining table and opened Middlemarch again, only to find that reading was impossible. She was about to count the number of words on the page when she noticed Claudio at the far end of the courtyard. But now that he was walking towards her, anticipation became anxiety. What would she say? Her cheeks were already burning. She stared down at the page, having decided to look up in surprise at the very last minute and greet him with a casual ‘hello’.

  The screen door banged, and her head snapped up to see him already behind it.

  ‘Buongiorno, signore,’ she heard him say cheerily.

  She was stuck outside on her own, for entering the kitchen now would make it seem as if she was following him. How long should she delay? And could she trust Della not to comment on the fact that she had been hanging about for ages, waiting for Claudio to arrive? It was almost enough to make her give up. Should she go in, or should she leave? The dilemma was paralysing her. The screen door squeaked.

  ‘Are you coming in or what?’ Della stood in the doorway with one hand on an enormous hip.

  Given her concerns, she was relieved when Claudio did not pay her any special attention. He put her to work at the kitchen table helping Florrie peel scalded tomatoes for the sauce.

  He was in charge and everyone had a role to play but, beyond the giving of instructions, he barely seemed to notice her.

  Della and Claudio had set up their stations side by side at the long kitchen bench. In front of both was a mound of flour. They worked in tandem, keeping an eye on each other as they shaped their mounds to create a well in the centre into which eggs were cracked. Della began to whisk the eggs with a fork.

  Claudio put a restraining hand on her arm. ‘Delicatamente,’ he said. ‘Like this.’ And he picked up his fork and whisked with a lighter touch.

  ‘I know how to make dough,’ Della grumbled.

  ‘We make tagliatelle,’ he told her.

  ‘I thought we were making spaghetti?’

  ‘Is little bit different. You will see. Is how my nonna is making.’

  Despite her grumbling, Della followed his directions and watched how he drew the flour into the eggy well with his fingertips. Emily watched too, although she had to be careful as the tomatoes were hot and slippery and the paring knife sharp.

  When the dough had been mixed, Claudio beckoned her to the bench. ‘I am showing,’ he said, and began to knead his lump of dough using the heel of his hand to press down into it. ‘Now you turn.’ He moved aside to let her try.

  It was not as easy as he made it seem, but she was determined to persevere. It was her chance to make an impression.

  ‘Is not bad. More, more,’ he urged.

  She repeated the motion over and over until her hand was aching. Della was doing the same beside her, sweat beading her meaty cheeks.

  ‘Got us working like blooming navvies,’ Della muttered. ‘As if I don’t have enough to do.’

  Emily wondered if Della’s complaint was really about giving up her role as the boss of the kitchen. After all, she was the cook and used to kneading – she made bread every week. Even so, it was a long time before Claudio allowed them to stop. Florrie stopped too. She had finished chopping up the tomatoes.

  Once the tomato sauce was simmering on the stovetop, the dough was ready to roll out. Emily was keen to try, but Della shooed her and Florrie out of the way, while she and Claudio took over. She watched them working at the kitchen bench as they wielded their rolling pins, competing for the best results. At least it seemed to her that it was a competition, even if neither of the pasta makers had openly admitted it. After the dough had been rolled, Claudio took the lead again and loosely folded each sheet into a flat roll. Using a cleaver, he cut the rolls into quarter-inch ribbons.

  ‘See. Is tagliatelle,’ he said with a proud smile, unravelling one of the rolls so that the strips dangled from his hand.

  Florrie looked suitably impressed, but Della made a pffft sound, as if it was nothing to write home about. Emily wondered if she was jealous.

  It was no time at all before strands of tagliatelle hung drying from the broomsticks that Claudio had placed between kitchen chairs. The kitchen was filled with swirling floury specks that settled in their hair, and dusted their faces to a papery white. The tomato sauce bubbled on the stove, and there was an air of exhilaration in the room.

  Claudio clapped his hands to get their attention. ‘Time for smoko,’ he announced, sitting down at the table. He took a packet of tobacco from his pocket and began to roll a cigarette.

  Emily hurried across to the dresser to fetch the cups and saucers, while Florrie made the tea, and Della put out a plate of cinnamon biscuits. Florrie set the teapot down on the kitchen table and, turning to go back for the milk jug, slipped on the floury floor. She let out a squawk and Claudio leaped up, catching her before she fell. They staggered off balance until, regaining their footing, he turned it into a dance. Watching on, Emily felt a fizzy sort of feeling in her chest.

  Claudio let Florrie go and took Della by the hand. ‘You now,’ he commanded.

  Emily was sure that Della would bat him away like an annoying bug, but instead the cook let herself be whirled around the kitchen. The fizzy feeling grew. It was her turn next. In the general merriment she didn’t hear the door to the passage open, or see the shadowy shape of someone entering, until Florrie gave a screech, bringing the dancers to an instant halt.

  ‘What on earth is going on?’ Eunice stood in the doorway staring in shocked amazement, not only at the culprits, but the floury strips of pasta dangling from chair backs and broom handles. ‘Like a Chinese laundry,’ she managed to splutter. She raised her hand and pointed a finger at Claudio. ‘You,’ she ordered. ‘Out.’

  Claudio hesitated; the joy drained from his face and his whole body stiffened. Nobody moved. Then he turned and walked unhurriedly to the back door.

  After he had left, Eunice turned to Della. ‘What madness has been going on? You of all people, Della.’

  Emily cast a sideways glance at Della, whose word within the confines of the kitchen was generally treated as law, even where Grandmother was concerned. She could not remember when she had understood it, but she knew that Eunice occupied a somewhat precarious place between family and the servants and to challenge Della in her own domain was a risky business. But, surprisingly, the cook did not respond with a well-chosen biblical quote and a belligerent glare, or even an outright demand that Eunice leave the kitchen. Instead she shuffled uneasily and said nothing at all.

  ‘Letting him loose in here,’ Eunice added, sensing her advantage.

  ‘What does that mean? He wasn’t loose,’ Emily burst out, feeling outraged on Claudio’s behalf.

  Eunice pinned her with a beady eye. ‘Perhaps you should read the Army’s directions regarding the Italian prisoners, Emily. I believe they know more about the Italian mentality than you do.’ And with that, she turned her attention once more to Della. ‘You’ll have to clean up this mess.’

  Della had begun to look formidable again, and Eunice faltered. In a change of course, she gestured at Emily. ‘As for you, come with me. I’ve some jobs that need doing.’

  Feeling unable to defy Eunice, she allowed herself to be hustled from the kitchen and along the various hallways towards the other end of the house.

  ‘You can start in the billiard room,’ Eunice said. ‘Everything needs a good dust. And not just a flick of the feather duster. I’ve left cloths and polish for you.’

  6

  WHEN EMILY ARRIVED AT THE billiard room she found dusters and a tin of polish on a cedar trolley, but she ignored them and moved along beside the billiard table, trailing her fingers over the plush pile of the magenta dust cover. She was not a slave. Nevertheless, she was unable to stop a nervous backwards glance in case Eunice was lurking. The coast, however, seemed to be clear.

  The air in the billiard room was
cooler than the kitchen and smelled faintly of cue chalk and cigarette smoke. How long had it been since the click of billiard balls and male voices had been heard around the table? Thinking of this, Grandfather came into her mind. Everyone said he was a first-class player before he’d had a stroke and been confined to a wheelchair. Not that long afterwards, he’d died. Whenever his name was mentioned someone always said, Poor Alf, felled in his prime, which made him sound like a tree. Of course it all happened eons ago, before she was born. Lydia had only been four. It was awful to think that her aunt could not remember him.

  She reached the mantelpiece and paused there to look at the stuffed mallee hen and her large pinkish-brown egg. The mallee hen always made her feel sad; perhaps it was the bird’s eternal vigilance, guarding the egg from which no chick would ever hatch. Beside the hen lay the greenstone axe head that Uncle Cec had shown the others that first night when she’d wanted to ring home. She picked it up, and it felt cool and smooth in the palm of her hand. She ran her finger lightly along the honed edge and felt goosebumps rise. The axe was sharp enough to cut, and she put it back on the mantelpiece with a clunk.

  She continued on, heading for the leather daybed at the far end of the room. Lying on the daybed, she could see the score on the roller board and wondered if it belonged to William and Harry, and who had won. ‘Wounded in action,’ she murmured to herself, imagining William leaning across the billiard table as he potted a ball. But she did not want to think about him. She closed her eyes and transported herself to the kitchen and Claudio’s arms.

  From somewhere in the house came the muffled sound of footsteps moving to and fro. And then the rise and fall of women’s voices, Grandmother and Eunice. Unlike her, she knew they would be hard at work, emptying vases and rearranging fresh flowers, dusting mantelpieces and polishing the floorboards in the hallway. She sat up to listen. Grandmother was speaking.

  ‘Patriotism is one thing, but working in a factory is quite another, even if it is war work.’

  ‘Quite,’ Eunice responded.

  ‘Anything could happen.’ There was a short period of silence before Grandmother added, mysteriously, ‘Bees to a honeypot.’

  ‘Bees to a honeypot,’ Eunice repeated. ‘Anything could happen.’

  ‘Bees to a honeypot,’ Emily murmured, feeling puzzled. Who and what were they talking about? She waited, hoping to hear more, but their footsteps became fainter and the sound of their voices faded. Even so, she knew her time was running out and that sooner or later Eunice would return to check on her progress.

  Warm air swarmed over her as she stepped out onto the verandah from the billiard room. Where to go? With no destination in mind, she paused at the window to Lydia’s room. The bed was unmade, the sheets all twisted up and two pillows lay strewn on the floor along with some clothes. The wardrobe door gaped open and more clothes spilled from it.

  At the end of the verandah, she took the south path that led to the stables and machinery sheds, arranged around an open yard. She had no destination in mind, just the need to get away from the house and the prospect of a confrontation with Eunice.

  She wandered past open-sided sheds filled with an orderly row of farm machinery, motor vehicles and horse-drawn conveyances. Her gaze swept over the yard. It was empty, and only then did she feel disappointment and recognise a half-formed hope of running into Claudio.

  At the far end of the sheds, the orderly arrangement disintegrated into a jumble of miscellaneous objects. On the tray of a dilapidated cart Grandfather’s wicker wheelchair listed at an angle. ‘Felled in his prime,’ she murmured, relishing the phrase. She moved closer to the wheelchair and saw that the wicker seat had collapsed and, in its place, someone had wedged an old side-saddle. A tangle of rusty wire and scrap iron surrounded the chair.

  It all looked like the sort of sculpture her mother loved to praise in the presence of her father, who liked proper art – paintings by the old masters and the sculptures of Michelangelo. She suspected that her mother didn’t really care about modern art and was only doing it to annoy her father. Poking a stick down the ants’ hole, as her mother might say.

  She had a pang of homesickness and tried to imagine what they would be doing. Her father writing sermons in his study, and her mother … what? She scrambled for a comforting image but, instead, the disturbing sound of her mother chanting good better best intruded. No, she would not think of it and whirled around, setting off diagonally across the yard in an effort to leave behind her unsettling thoughts. She rounded the corner of the stables and hurried along the other side of the building where Virginia creeper had taken over, covering the outer walls in a shaggy coat of luminous green. A faded blue door, half hidden by tendrils of creeper, snagged her eye.

  Inside, all was dark and silent. The smells of coal dust and musty old wheat bags and a faint menthol-y whiff of horse liniment filled her nostrils, and she remembered that it had once been the blacksmith’s workshop. She waited for her eyes to adjust, and flinched when the silence was broken by the sharp crack of tin and timber expanding in the heat. From the far side of the room came the sound of something scuttling. Her toes curled inside her sandals, in tense anticipation of the scratchy tickle of mouse paws.

  After a little while, shapes and shadows became visible. Dust motes swirled in a beam of watery light from a dirt-encrusted skylight in the roof. There was no ceiling, only sheets of corrugated iron over a skeleton of rafters. Old rabbit skins dangled from the centre beam, stretched over wire frames. As each second passed, she began to see more clearly. Along the wall to her left, tools lay abandoned on a long workbench. She trailed her fingers along the dusty surface, past riveters and rusty rabbit traps, saws, files and a pile of horseshoes.

  ‘For want of a nail a shoe was lost,’ she murmured.

  At the end of the bench she looked across the room and, making out the bulky shape of an armchair, moved towards it. Wiry horsehair sprouted from rents in the leather. She peered further into the gloom. Where did the room end?

  She crept forwards a little more and was already thinking about returning with a torch when a wall of books loomed up before her. Was it an hallucination based on her own desire, for what could be more wonderful than to discover a library? Tentatively, she extended her hand, half expecting to meet no resistance and for her fingers to pass through the ghostly apparition. But it – they – were real. Rows of books. Classics, she was sure of it.

  Just as she was about to tug one from its place, she heard her name being called.

  ‘Emily. Emily.’

  It was Lydia, and each repetition sounded louder and more irritated. She felt a prickle of guilt. She did not want to be caught snooping. It made her think of her mother’s frequent reprimand: You’re a sly little thing. She heard it as the truth and not a passing comment, soon to be forgotten. The dreadful feeling of shame was as strong as ever. Shame, and the fear that it was true. She had things to hide even if she did not know exactly what those things were. Why couldn’t she be like Lydia? Forthright and strong.

  ‘Where are you?’ Lydia’s voice was fainter, and it came from a different direction. If there was a time to act it was now and, before she could change her mind, she ran back across the room to the blue door. She inched it open and sidled through, pulling it shut behind her. She was halfway across the yard when her aunt appeared from the shadow of the open-sided sheds ahead of her. A meeting was unavoidable. She tried to slow to a saunter, as if she had all the time in the world but, in executing such an abrupt change of pace, she lost her footing and was forced into an undignified hop. By the time she’d regained her balance, Lydia had reached her.

  ‘Where have you been?’ her aunt demanded. ‘Didn’t you hear me calling?’ She did not wait for an answer and turned away. It was clear that Emily was meant to follow.

  They walked back to the stables where Dapple was standing patiently, harnessed to the cart. Lydia climbed on and took the reins. Emily hovered, unsure what she was meant to do.

>   ‘Come on, hop up,’ Lydia said. ‘I need a helper.’

  They set off, with Lydia regularly slapping Dapple lightly with the reins to keep him moving, as without encouragement he was inclined to slow to a stop. On the tray of the cart, Mrs Flynn ran back and forth, tongue flapping. They made good progress along a dirt lane, one of several that ran through the property and linked up with the main roads. After turning off at a gate, they began bumping their way across a tussocky paddock.

  As soon as she’d encountered Lydia, Emily had noticed that her aunt was dressed in men’s clothes and now, sitting next to her, she discreetly examined them, wondering if the faded blue shirt and khaki work pants held up with a plaited leather belt belonged to William. Even dressed like a man, Lydia looked – as Madame Dubois, the French teacher would have said – très chic. So far, she had still given no hint about their destination or what kind of help she needed, and Emily had decided not to ask, hoping to demonstrate a lofty sort of indifference that she thought Lydia would find appealing. It was proving impossible to maintain.

  ‘Where are we going?’

  ‘See the scrub.’ Lydia pointed to a blur of bush in the distance. ‘Rabbits. In plague proportions. I’ve got to check my traps and set some more. With your help we’ll get twice as much done.’

  Until now, Emily had managed to ignore the iron traps lying in the back of the cart. ‘You’re not going to kill them?’

  ‘They’re vermin, not fluffy white pets,’ Lydia replied. ‘If we don’t kill them they’ll strip the countryside bare.’

  In the face of such a scornful response, Emily lost her enthusiasm for defending the rabbits and tried to think of something else to say.

  ‘Anyway,’ Lydia went on, ‘the skins are worth money. My escape fund.’

  The mention of an escape fund sounded more promising and she waited for Lydia to say more. When no more came, she prompted, ‘I suppose you’ll need to escape if the Japs invade. Especially if Uncle Cec is going to –’