by Joy Dettman
‘They’d both been drinking. The driver of the car behind almost ran over Jack. He’s a bit knocked around, a few cuts and bruises, but he’s getting out tomorrow.’
Ellie sighed as she looked out at her land. The sun was still shining, the sky was still blue, but the warmth had somehow left the day. She didn’t want Jack back. Life had been good, better than good. Even Annie was starting to act more like a normal girl.
‘I don’t know what I should do, Bob. Who was he with? Do they know?’
‘You’ll find out soon enough, I s’pose, love. Old Rella. Dave Eva’s wife. They’ve got a place twelve miles out the Daree Road. It was Dave’s car they were driving.’
Ellie’s head was down. She knew Rella. Everyone in town knew about Rella and Jack. Bob placed his hand on her shoulder.
‘She pissed off two weeks back, Dave said. Must have run into Jack in Sydney.’
‘I should be thanking God that he’s alive, Bob, but ... but I just wanted to know that he was alive. I don’t – ’
‘I know, love. I know what you’re saying. You’re doing real good by yourself. I know exactly what you mean. We’ve been getting on real good too. Of course, you’ve got grounds for divorce. Deserted for twelve months. Proof that he was with another woman.’ Ellie stepped back and Bob’s hand fell to his side. By the look on her face, he might just as well have suggested murder as divorce.
Ellie studied her blood-stained shoe, wiped at it with a handkerchief. ‘Maybe he won’t want to come back,’ she said. ‘I mean ... of course, he probably won’t want to come back here. He hates this town, Bob. Just because he had an accident, it doesn’t mean – .’ She turned to the stove where the kettle was boiling, spitting its water in skittish bubbles over the hotplates. ‘Have you got time to have a cup of tea with me?’
‘I’m choking for one, love. I didn’t think you’d ever ask.’
Ann and Ben sat late with Ellie that night. It was a strange night, it seemed to be leaning on their shoulders, and all eyes kept straying to the yard where Ben’s red ute was parked. Soon another car might pull in there. Soon their peace, their freedom to live, might be forgotten.
Ann’s hands spoke quickly. Ben replied with his hands.
Ellie wanted to understand, but there was little she could pick up when these two really got going. Annie was as handy as Ben around the farm now. So different to what she was when Jack was around. Ellie was getting on so much better with her too. And the old sewing machine Bessy had given her – Annie was a magician on it, making her own dresses, and Bronwyn’s. It was a rare talent that she had, and there were no two ways about it. This last year, Annie had fairly bloomed.
Each Friday afternoon, Mr Fletcher declared an hour of silence when hand signs only were used; he’d asked Ellie if she’d like to join the class for that hour, and she had thought about it. Half the children in town could talk to Annie now, but children learned things easily. She’d probably make a fool of herself. She was afraid of showing her ignorance. Jack had always called her ignorant.
Bob didn’t.
Annie wanted her to learn the signs. She said Mr Fletcher didn’t know how to laugh, and that he was like one of the giant peppercorn trees growing in the schoolyard. Ugly and old and smelly, but covered with delicate pink seeds that it shook off for the wind to sweep up, only his seeds were answers, and Annie was the wind. A funny girl, Ellie thought, she’d come out with some odd things lately, like Jack used to. They were two of a kind and no two ways about it.
Ben’s hands spoke. Annie laughed. It was a delightful sound, and so normal. She never used to laugh out loud when Jack was around. To Ellie, the sound brought back memories of before the girls were taken to Narrawee, before Liza disappeared. Annie had been a capable, independent little thing, and she’d had that beautiful laugh. It was nice to hear it again.
She watched their hands a moment. They were so fast, but Annie didn’t only use her hands. She used her eyes, her face, her entire body to lend emphasis to unspoken words. Ellie loved to watch her. She wished now she’d gone along on Friday afternoons, or had tried to learn the signing when Johnny wanted her to.
Never enough time. That and her lack of confidence in her ability to learn. She was no brain, and she knew it. Jack had picked it up easily enough. ‘What’s she saying, love?’ she asked Ben.
‘She’s making up mad poems. Happy ever after no more fairy-tale. Maybe last for ever, they put Dad in jail. Give life for man slaughter. Make life safe for daughter,’ Ben translated, his smile wide.
‘Tell her she mustn’t say things like that. My goodness. He could have been killed too.’
‘Devil look after own man, Bessy say,’ the flying hands replied as the three-way conversation continued, Ben translating for his mother. Never one to waste his own words, he enjoyed being Annie’s voice now that she had found much to say.
‘No more of that sort of talk,’ Ellie said. ‘It’s a funny old night though, isn’t it. It’s like time has stopped. We should be in bed, but I’m not a bit tired.’
‘Death of last good day. This night, very strong night. Clock tick-tock, slow. Can’t wear away last good night. Tonight, heart thumping happy. Bang, bang, bang, bang. Night dodge from clock. “Yes. Yes,” say night. “Go away clock. Go away time. Go away. I stay one week here. Make happy last,” ’ Annie signed.
‘Bob said your Dad would be out of hospital tomorrow.’
‘Do you think he’ll come home, Mum?’
Again Ann’s hands spoke. ‘He come home. On bus. I think we better make early Christmas. Give him leftover. We have all thing ready. Policeman give us dead chook. Fate. Got present. Got plum pudding ready. Tomorrow we make special Christmas come. Yes. Have party?’ Her eyes watched her mother’s as words poured from her fingers.
Ben translated. ‘We’ll invite Bessy and Bill over. The bus doesn’t get in until ten. We can have an early tea and a last game of cards, Mum.’
Ellie looked at her hands and the fine golden band sunk deep into the flesh of her ring finger. She twisted it, twisted it. It wouldn’t come off, even if she wanted it off. It was wrong to even think such things. Jack found. Isn’t that what she wanted? She shook her head. Found, but with Rella Eva. There had always been other women. Ellie knew it, whether she admitted to knowing or not. That was one thing about Jack that she never understood. Never once had she denied him his rights. Never. Not that she enjoyed it, but it was her duty, and one she hadn’t missed this past year.
One wonderful year with no fear of pregnancy. She was thirty-eight, and didn’t want any more babies. She looked at Annie. She’s growing up, she thought, tall like Jack and Johnny, but no sign of breasts yet. Ellie was only thirteen when she matured. She’d need to talk to Annie about things – or get Bessy to. Bessy was good with her, she’d taught Annie a lot about cutting and sewing in the first months of the machine. They got on like a house on fire.
Ann’s hand tapped the table close to Ellie’s hand.
‘What, love?’
‘Yes. We ask Bessy. Play card.’ Head nodding, Ann pointed to the river, miming the shuffling of cards. She made her signs painfully slow, abbreviated, repeated, willing her mother to understand.
‘We will,’ Ellie said. ‘We’ll open our presents tomorrow and tell Bronwyn Santa came early, and we’ll invite Bessy and Bill over for dinner.’
‘Thank you.’ A nod. Fingers to the point of her chin, away.
Ellie copied the sign. ‘Thank you.’ She’d have to make a point of trying harder.
Annie had never been a pretty baby, not like Liza, but she was certainly going to be a fine-looking woman. Clear olive complexion and not a freckle. Good features too, strong straight teeth, and those eyes – brick walls against strangers, but tonight her eyes were speaking. Her hair was a black cloud she tried to tame in braids that swung over her shoulders. Corkscrew curls sprung free at brow, and neck, and ear. Wilful hair. She didn’t inherit her curls from Jack’s family. Both he and Sam had dead straight h
air. Her long limbs were theirs though. The sisters at the hospital had commented on her long limbs when she was a tiny baby.
Ellie closed her eyes now and allowed her mind to wander back to the night Annie was born. Dear little Johnny. He never knew when he was beaten, so he never was beaten. That night, it was like he’d placed his claim on Annie, and years later, after she came home from Narrawee refusing to speak, Johnny had loved her, persevered with her, and finally got through to her.
And Ellie had made him run. Packed his bag and made him run.
Dear Johnny. He didn’t want to go. ‘I can’t leave her, Mum. Don’t make me leave her, Mum.’
The silence grew long. With her index fingers, she dried two tears before they could escape, then she reached for her daughter’s plait, giving it a playful tug. ‘It’s made of strong stuff, like you are, love. You’ve got a bit of me in you somewhere. I think we might both bend before we break.’
Ann smiled, and her eyes that never wept, glistened beneath the light. Ellie’s own eyes grew moist again. Was a word, the touch of her hand so important to this girl? Guilt washed over her. She near drowned in guilt. Of course it was, but she’d never been able to get close to Annie. Never put her to the breast. Everything had happened too quickly after the fire. Jack disappeared for five months that time. She thought he’d gone for good, and she’d moved back home to her father’s house.
How she loved that little mud-brick house on the highway.
Her eyes looked off into the distance and a smile crept across her features, erasing the outlines of Mallawindy summers. For an instant, she was her father’s golden girl again. Her childhood in that house hadn’t equipped her for life with Jack.
His handsome face, his smile – he was only twenty when he’d stopped to lean his bike against the split-rail fence that first day. ‘Could you spare a mug of milk for a thirsty stranger, Miss?’ he’d said.
She had been milking the house cow, and she’d looked up to see this handsome prince standing there. He’d sounded like a prince too. ‘How old are you, Miss?’ he’d asked.
She wasn’t quite sixteen. Her age frightened him. He’d drunk his milk, then reached for his bike and straddled it. ‘Are you going to tell me your name?’
Her blushing face turned to the old cow, she’d remembered late her father’s warning. ‘I’m not allowed to talk to strangers,’ she’d said.
‘I’m no stranger. I’m Prince Charming and by God, you’re Sleeping Beauty. I’ll be back this way after your birthday, and I’ll wake you with a kiss. Remember me, Beauty,’ he’d called over his shoulder as he pushed off through the dust. ‘I’m drunk on milk and dreams, so you’d better remember me.’
He’d returned to Mallawindy six months later. All the girls in town thought he looked like a movie star, but Jack only had eyes for her. She’d been in love with him since that first moment. His family was rich, and he was educated. He’d spent six months at university, and twelve months with a theatre company, and he was in love with her.
She could still remember his first kiss, remember drowning in his arms. He’d been so gentle, but so impatient. Ellie felt the blood creeping to her brow at the memory. She glanced quickly at her children. Their hands danced beneath the bright white electric light, their eyes on each other, only the rhythmic tap-tapping of finger against finger, the occasional slapping of a hand, broke the silence. She was safe to dream a while, remember the good times.
The upstairs bedroom of her father’s farmhouse had always been her room. Bessy slept downstairs. When Jack discovered she slept alone up there, he’d climbed the oak tree and like a high-wire act, walked across the high-pitched roof to her window. She wouldn’t let him in, though. He’d perched there, quoting Shakespeare for hours, his shoes tied by their laces, dangling over his shoulders, and he vowed he’d sit on her roof until he turned to stone.
For five nights he’d made that climb. It had seemed so romantic to a sixteen-year-old. She was Juliet courted by her own handsome Romeo – until the night Jack climbed through her window and romance went out the door.
Her father had built them a house on the far corner of his land, and close enough to the footbridge. ‘I’m not one to hold a grudge, son,’ he’d said the day they married. ‘The deed is done. Now we all have to make the best of it.’
Ellie was three months pregnant, and so sick, but Jack was good those first years. He drank a bit, and he had a temper, but he was interested in Johnny. It would have been all right if she hadn’t got pregnant with Ben. Jack wanted her, not crying babies. She wanted kisses and poetry and romance, not the bed. The verbal abuse began before Ben was twelve months; by the time he was three, and she pregnant with Liza, Jack was running around with other women. He had such a wicked temper – like the night he had burnt the footbridge, which was cutting off his own nose to spite his face. He couldn’t swim. Ellie could, and she made certain the children swam well.
Ellie looked up at Annie, remembering again the fragile mite in the hospital. The doctors hadn’t expected her to make it through that first night, or the next day. Ellie was still in shock and too worn out to argue when Jack wanted to baptise her C of E. It had been like baptising a stranger’s child; her baby had died under the willow tree. Any one of the other babies in the hospital looked more like her own than that little stick insect with legs as thin as Jack’s fingers. Ellie kept turning to the other babies, looking for her own, certain the nurse had made a mistake.
Johnny knew which one was his though. ‘You killed her, and I made her alive,’ he’d said to Jack that day in the hospital. People heard him too. ‘It’s your fault she came out too soon,’ he said.
Jack didn’t deny it. His face had coloured up and he’d left the hospital without a word. Ellie went home to the farmhouse that night with Johnny and her father, leaving the little stick insect to God and the doctors.
The following months had been the happiest of Ellie’s life. She’d put the baby out of her mind, expecting it to die. A terrible mother. Terrible. But how Liza and the boys thrived at Grandpa’s house. The mud bricks seemed to keep it warm in winter, and cool in summer. Benjie’s asthma even improved, and he started putting on weight. The boys loved their Grandpa, and he loved them. Annie was three months old, and still at the hospital when he died of a heart attack at the dinner table.
The house and all the land on the town side of the river had been willed to Bessy. Already well established in her own house, she sold Mr Mack the house on the highway, plus thirty acres of land, then used part of the money to rebuild Ellie’s fire-damaged kitchen.
It was as if Jack had some contact in town, because two days after Ellie and the children moved back to their side of the river, he had turned up.
They picked Annie up a week later. She was still underweight. To Ellie, in those first weeks, it had been like baby-sitting someone else’s child. It hadn’t felt permanent – like the baby would be going back in a week or two to its own mother. She never got close to her. Independent little thing that she was. Jack had no interest in her, but he couldn’t get over the change in Liza. He’d left a bald, bawling baby, and returned to a golden-haired doll. Liza was sixteen months old, and the most beautiful little girl. Jack spoiled her, wanted to dress her up like a doll. He started taking her with him when he went to Narrawee to see Sam and May. ‘My little Shirley Temple,’ he used to call Liza.
The Miss Tiny Tot competition came up in the newspaper when Liza was almost four and Jack knew she’d win it. He knew it before he had the photograph taken. And she did. Thousands of entries from all over Australia, and their beautiful Liza won the prize. They’d been so proud. Jack was happy for a while. It was as if he were important at last, as if he finally had something special that was his. Sam and May might own the property, but they didn’t have Liza.
May couldn’t have children, and Ellie knew her sister-in-law envied their fine family. She and Sam were always offering to have the boys to Narrawee for holidays. It would have been good for
the boys to see how the other half lived, but Jack wouldn’t let them go. Then, when they got Annie and Liza down there for that month, Liza had disappeared. For a long time after, Ellie believed May had stolen her, had her hidden away somewhere. Perhaps she was in some school under another name.
If only, Ellie thought. If only. If only I hadn’t got pregnant with Bronwyn. If only Jack had been at home when I had to go into hospital. If only Sam and May hadn’t turned up and offered to take the girls. If only Johnny hadn’t let them go. If only. If. If. If.
Until Liza disappeared, Sam and May used to come to Mallawindy once or twice a year. They hadn’t been back since. Sam couldn’t forgive himself, May wrote. Couldn’t stand to be at Narrawee either. He lived in Melbourne now, in Toorak, and employed a couple to work the property at Narrawee.
It wasn’t poor Sam’s fault. He had nothing to feel guilty about. It was all May’s fault. Ellie had never blamed Sam. He’d flown to Brisbane the day before Liza disappeared, then driven non-stop, night and day, all the way home. He was the one who’d found Annie, buried alive in the Narrawee cellar. It hadn’t been Sam’s fault. Poor Sam. He’d been over-generous with money since then. It probably helped ease his guilt.
Sam was the image of Jack, in looks, but so different. A true gentleman. He never touched the drink. Melbourne seemed so far away – like another country. Maybe they did have Liza. Had her in some private school down there.
Ellie shook her head and breathed deeply, attempting to still her memories, still her doubts. The police would have found out. Bob would have found out. She’d told him of her doubts. He was such a good kind man, and so handy around the farm, too. He’d helped Ben put up some new chook pens. He’d put new glass in a broken window. He’d even taken the lounge room door off and planed the bottom so it didn’t stick. Such a help.
Jack never lifted a finger to help. Even in the first years he’d been worse than useless around the cows. The car accident might have frightened him. Maybe he’d changed. His hand hadn’t been raised against her in the first years of their marriage. Perhaps he could change. He probably wouldn’t come home anyway.