by Kim Kane
‘Mummy!’ Gert and Imo cried in unison.
Mrs Williamson smiled loosely in the girls’ direction. She wore a high-collared shirt with a pattern on the front and shoulders, and a high-waisted, dark-blue skirt that showed the curve of her stomach and hips.
Imo and Gert ran up to their mother and threw their arms around her, Charlie close behind them. Their hugs didn’t dent her clothes. Mrs Williamson patted Gert’s head limply, gave Charlie a squeeze and planted a big kiss on Imo’s cheek. ‘I was just going to the nursery to look for you. Oh, I have missed my girls!’
Then she turned to Madeleine and smiled. She held out her hand. Madeleine shook it vigorously, as her mother had shown her, and looked her straight in the eyes. ‘Good afternoon, Bella. I remember that because it’s the same name as my mum! I’m Madeleine.’
Gert stepped forward, her eyes shifting uncomfortably from her mother to Madeleine. ‘I was just about to introduce you to my mother, Madeleine – Mrs Williamson.’
Gert could not have put more emphasis on the Mrs Williamson if she’d slashed it with a massive fluoro pink highlighter.
Mrs Williamson took back her hand and looked at Nanny. ‘It’s certainly a Teutonic handshake,’ she said, raising her eyebrows. She turned to Madeleine again. ‘You must be Madeleine Barnett. I’m terribly sorry but your mother’s letter was swept up in Thomas’s pile – he’s only just unearthed it. I shall respond immediately, but of course you may stay, Madeleine dear. You must. Gert has spoken very warmly of you. Your poor mother will be frantic; I shall telegraph a response to her posthaste.’
‘Thank you, Mrs Williamson.’ Madeleine took a breath that came from somewhere deeper down than her knees. At home she called even her teachers by their first names or, sometimes, their nicknames – Margie, Sharon, Helen, Starky – but she could see that she was going to have to be careful around the adults here. Mrs Williamson, however, seemed to have moved on. She smiled and leant over to give Imo another kiss.
‘Poor Nanny had no idea you were arriving, Madeleine, but you will soon discover she is very good at looking after us, very good indeed. Nanny, on that note, perhaps a lesson revisiting greetings would be useful for all the children.’
Nanny nodded gravely. Greetings were obviously something she took extremely seriously – as seriously as Mum Crum took carbohydrates and Madeleine’s mother took Middle Eastern politics and knowledge of the periodic table.
‘Well, I shall see you this afternoon, children, after your dinner,’ said Mrs Williamson. ‘I shall be in the garden and then the morning room if anyone needs me before then. I have some correspondence to attend to.’
She looked once more to Madeleine. ‘Do you have other siblings, Madeleine, who may also require assistance?’
‘Only my brother Ted . . . Edward, but he’s staying with a friend in Sydney.’
‘A brother. Well, your parents are fortunate.’ Mrs Williamson’s voice had gone soft. She looked down and blinked. ‘I shall be off on my constitutional now, Nanny.’
‘Yes, Mrs Williamson. It is a lovely day.’ Nanny smiled, for the first time since Madeleine had met her, and it was a smile from the soul. She looked . . . well, she suddenly looked like a human being after all.
Gert grabbed Madeleine’s hand once Mrs Williamson had passed them, and the girls ran the rest of the way up the stairs.
‘With your father in his line of work, no wonder everyone’s on constitutionals instead of walks in their spare time,’ said Madeleine.
They both threw back their heads and laughed.
The four girls were spread across Gert and Madeleine’s room in the nursery, playing with the doll’s house. Winter sunlight shone through the window and onto the rug.
Imo and Gert were cross-legged by the doll’s house, controlling the narrative. Charlie had lined all her tin soldiers up in rows on the floor under the window. ‘Watch out, troops, it’s a Trojan Dog!’ she yelled, sending Millie into the scrum. The soldiers tumbled. ‘Ahhh, casualities! Help me pick up my soldiers-bold.’
Madeleine sat up on her bed, changing the remaining dolls into various little outfits Bea had made, as directed by Imo. Imo was very bossy. Madeleine would have preferred to sit on the floor too, but the liberty bodice cut so solidly into her body that it made it too hard. She didn’t know how the other girls coped without complaint.
Mrs Williamson knocked on the nursery door, Nanny at her side. ‘Hello, darlings. Aren’t you all terribly sweet, playing so quietly. Elfriede has arrived and is just getting refreshed in her room. Nanny, please ensure the girls are downstairs and dressed for tea in an hour.’ She paused a moment and then added, ‘I thought their muslins for this afternoon, Nanny? I would like them to look pretty.’
Mrs Williamson’s instructions set Nanny into flurried work mode, which smashed the calm of the nursery like a piñata. Within ten minutes, all the girls were being washed and brushed down like spaniels for a dog show.
When the work was finally complete, Nanny did an inspection.
‘You can stand there, Miss Madeleine. It’s a becoming dress.’ Nanny nodded at Bea, approving. Madeleine moved to the exact leaf on the rug to which Nanny had pointed.
The pale-yellow dress was hayseed light. It had a wide yoke and was then gathered across the chest in a series of pleats, with puffed sleeves, long, tightly buttoned wrists, and a sash. It was clearly a little girl’s dress, but a beautiful one. Bea had brought it in for Madeleine earlier, on Nanny’s direction. Madeleine had felt a little thrill as she’d taken the coathanger.
‘I’ll feel like a lemon-yellow angel in it!’ she’d said. She was anxious to please Bea, and she wasn’t quite sure why. There was something so assured and yet ethereal about her.
‘That dress is an old one of mine,’ Bea said to Madeleine now. ‘Gertrude’s such an awkward shape that Mummy doesn’t care for her in my clothing.’
‘Thank you,’ Madeleine replied and then wished she’d said something to defend Gert instead.
Opposite Madeleine, Gert, Charlie and Imo were lined up in a row in front of Nanny like Charlie’s soldiers.
While the three sisters’ dresses were near identical except for their colours, the effect couldn’t have been more different.
Charlie’s dress was pale blue – some sort of concession, perhaps, to the fact that she had to wear a dress at all. Although Charlie was slight, the bodice was tight across her square chest, and her broad shoulders filled so much of the sleeve that there was little room for puff. She looked more like a lifeguard in a swimsuit than a little girl in a party frock. She looked like she’d make a good cricketer.
‘At least it’s blue and not pink,’ said Madeleine.
‘Blue? Blue is for girls. Why can’t I wear pink?’
‘Isn’t pink for girls?’ Madeleine was now very confused. ‘Where I come from, it’s almost impossible to buy clothes for little girls that aren’t pink or purple. It drove my mum mad.’
‘Blue is a daintier colour. Blue is always appropriate for girls,’ said Nanny. ‘Anyway, chin up, Miss Charlotte. At least it is as blue as your mood.’
‘I want to wear a sailor suit like normal boys.’ Charlie scowled deeper.
‘You know how your mother feels about that,’ said Nanny.
‘She’s scared you’ll turn out like Aunt Hen.’ Gert laughed.
‘Have a look at your own reflection before you go sniping about Charlie,’ said Bea.
Madeleine looked from Gert to Imo. Bea was right. Both were in pink versions of the dress, Imo’s a pale pink and Gert’s a deeper, fleshier shade, and while Imo was as pink and delicious as a sugar mouse, Gert looked as ridiculous as a bald baby in a headband.
‘I can never get near the looking glass,’ Gert retorted to Bea. ‘Because you’re always gazing into it.’
‘Miss Gertrude Williamson, do not be nasty!’ Nanny pulled the silver hairbrush she always seemed to carry from a pocket of her pinafore and raised the yellow bristles with just a hint of malice – ei
ther as a threat to start brushing Gert’s hair again or to beat her bottom. Madeleine wasn’t sure which, and she suspected that Nanny wasn’t either.
Bea shook her head charmingly. Her hair was plaited and then coiled so that it lay like a snake at the nape of her neck, light and dark blondes running in shiny streaks like treacle. She stood behind Imo and retied the little girl’s sash, haughty but calm.
Gert had told Madeleine that she and Bea were five years apart, but Madeleine could see that the gap between them was wider – as wide as the gap between Cook and the Williamson parents; between Madeleine’s time and now. Somehow, Gert had been left behind.
It was because Madeleine was jiggling about in her dress that she was looking at the floor as they walked into the drawing room, and it was because she was looking at the floor that Madeleine smelt Elfriede before she actually saw her. Madeleine would always remember that smell: Elfriede von Fürstenburg smelt heavenly.
‘Ah!’ said Mrs Williamson and clapped her hands. ‘How delightful, the children are here. Friede,’ she tinkled, ‘may I introduce you to my children: my eldest, Beatrice; then Gertrude, Charlotte and Imogen-the-baby. And this is Gertrude’s schoolfriend, Madeleine Barnett. Girls, this is my cousin Elfriede von Fürstenburg.’
Elfriede glided towards them on a wave of smoke and cinnamon. She held out a slender hand; Madeleine was almost too nervous to take it. She suddenly wished that she didn’t bite her fingernails.
Charlie was the first to break the silence. ‘Do you spell that with a small v?’ she asked, crooking her head and looking straight at Elfriede. Elfriede looked confused.
‘You know – big E, little v, big F?’ Charlie said.
‘Why, yes,’ said Elfriede as it dawned on her what Charlie was talking about. ‘Aren’t you clever.’
Charlie beamed. ‘My middle name is Alexandra, and I want to spell it with a small a but Mummy says it’s not done. The Germans are frightfully fond of big letters, you know. They capitalise their nouns.’
Now the children’s mother looked confused. ‘Remember, Charlie, that Friede is German,’ she said and laughed.
‘We’re one-quarter German and three-quarters English,’ said Charlie eagerly. ‘Daddy says our German-ness is minute, two arms at best, but I think it’s probably a bit more. There’s no telling how German-ness would settle in the body. I like to think it’s in the heart.’
‘Darlings,’ said Mrs Williamson in a voice like pudding. ‘Why don’t we let poor Friede sit down before we barrage her with conversation.’
‘I’m actually learning German,’ said Charlie, ignoring their mother and barraging away anyway. ‘I’m teaching myself from a book. Ohne Hast, ohne Rast. Without haste, without rest. That’s a quote by Goethe, and it’s the motto for Gert’s school. French is for girls and Latin is for old-fashioned men in sheets, but German is the language of fighters, of knights – of real men.’
‘I have never heard anyone describe German as the language of men,’ said Elfriede. She laughed, and her eyelashes flickered like the tail of a lyrebird.
Elfriede von Fürstenburg with the small v certainly did not sound like a man, and she certainly didn’t look like one. In fact, she looked as heavenly as she smelt. She was, Madeleine guessed, older than Bea, but not by much. While her face didn’t have the structure of Bea’s, she was very striking. She was immaculately groomed, but she didn’t look oily or powdery. Her lips were thick and red, and her eyes were as round as nutmegs. Her curls couldn’t have looked more polished if they’d been slapped with varnish.
‘Luscious, Elfriede is,’ said Charlie later. ‘Everything about her is quite luscious.’
Happily for Imo, Elfriede was not the only luscious thing in the room. ‘Look!’ she exclaimed, pointing out the food that had been laid out. ‘It’s a special-occasion tea.’
Madeleine looked over at the table. There were slices of cake stacked with glazed fruit; scones with yellow cream and raspberry jam; paper-fine sandwiches with curls of cucumber; and little shortbread biscuits. Every meal was an occasion here. Nobody ate like Madeleine’s mother: standing at the fridge.
‘Come, Elfriede,’ said Mrs Williamson. ‘You must be tired after your journey.’
Once they were seated, Mrs Williamson directed Anna to pour the tea. Madeleine couldn’t help but notice how unembellished Mrs Williamson seemed next to her exotic cousin.
‘Poor Mummy,’ sighed Bea later. ‘How dreadful to be so spongy, so drab.’
Spongy or not, Mrs Williamson had a lot of questions for Elfriede. She asked Elfriede about this cousin and that Cousine in Germany, this play and that Novella, slipping easily from English into German but looking self-conscious each time she strayed.
She punctuated her reminiscences about places and people with thick apologies. ‘Oh, I am dreadfully sorry about the state of the house. Oh, I am dreadfully sorry about this dress – I have got so plump. Oh, I am dreadfully sorry about the girls’ manners. Do sit up straight, Gertrude. Gert and Charlie are the ones I have to keep an eye on: like bunnies and blackberries, they’re the most wont to turn wild in this clime.’
Madeleine couldn’t help but notice that Imo wasn’t particularly interested in manners, either. She was just as captivated by the treats as she was by her cousin; she climbed up onto Elfriede’s lap, crumbs sprinkled around her mouth.
‘Imogen, darling,’ said her mother, ‘I’m not sure Friede will like being climbed upon.’ Imogen reached for another shortbread but stayed put.
‘She’s fine, Isabelle, really.’ Elfriede stroked Imo’s hair. She pulled a coil and it unrolled, doubling in length, before it sprang back against Imogen’s head.
‘There’s no doubt which side of the family these come from!’ Elfriede’s own curls bobbed as she laughed again. It was a high-pitched, musical laugh that leapt up from the table and did pas de chats around the ceiling. Madeleine started – it was the exact laugh she’d heard in the lyrebird’s call, back in the lane near Mum Crum’s.
‘They’re from her crusts, most likely,’ said Charlie, mesmerised. ‘Imo gets through an awful lot of them.’
‘Indeed?’ Elfriede smiled.
‘Why do you speak like that?’ asked Imo.
Although Imo was the first to comment on it, Madeleine had certainly noticed. While Elfriede’s English was flawless, her intonation was slightly out, her emphasis not always on the right syllable. Before anyone could scold Imo, Mr Williamson swung into the room. Hen Pen came in behind him.
‘Daddy!’ yelled Imo and leapt off Elfriede’s lap to run across the room and hug him. Gert, Charlie and Bea showed more restraint, but their eyes all lit up too. Their father had clearly bathed and changed since they’d seen him earlier; his hair was still wet on the back of his neck and Madeleine could see the comb-tracks running through it.
‘Thomas, this is my cousin Elfriede von Fürstenburg,’ said Mrs Williamson, prouder than punch.
Mr Williamson’s tanned cheeks were split by dimples, and his golden hair flopped forward.
‘How do you do.’ He nodded. ‘It’s wonderful to meet you finally.’ He strode across the room and Elfriede offered her hand; then he gestured over his shoulder at Aunt Hen. ‘My sister, Henrietta.’
Aunt Hen offered her hand, straight and strong, to Elfriede, taking in every fold of fabric and shepherded curl. She nodded at Mrs Williamson, smiled at Anna and helped herself to a cup of tea.
‘And now the whole family is here,’ said Imo. She went on before anyone could comment: ‘Did you know, Elfriede, that Daddy has O-legs, just like Charlie? Very bandy, but perfect for riding.’
‘Do you ride, Elfriede?’ asked their father, changing the subject while he accepted his tea.
‘Not as often as my mother would like.’
‘Charlie and I love to ride, don’t we, Charlie? I’m teaching her to hunt, too.’
‘That’s Master Charles Williamson to you, Daddy.’ Charlie winked at her father.
Mr Williamson laughed and ruffl
ed Charlie’s every-which-way hair.
‘Oh, and this, darling,’ said Mrs Williamson, ‘is Gertrude’s schoolfriend Madeleine Barnett, whom we discussed earlier today. I telegraphed her parents this afternoon.’
Madeleine channelled Elfriede and smiled up at Mr Williamson with her best how-do-you-do smile. Mr Williamson nodded in Madeleine’s direction. ‘Mrs Lüers stayed in Sydney then?’ he asked Elfriede.
It wasn’t really a question. Elfriede tilted her head and peeped at Mr Williamson over the lip of her own cup, taking every bit of him in.
All that lipstick and none on the cup, thought Madeleine. Not one smear.
‘Yes, she did,’ said Elfriede in her singsong intonation. ‘She’s still recuperating from a dreadful bug she picked up at a Pacific port. She tires easily, but the doctor doesn’t think it’s malaria.’
‘Poor thing,’ said Mrs Williamson.
‘She insisted she’d travel on with me, but I had to put my foot down. I’m relieved she stayed behind, really; she was so unwell, and one probably ought not to say it, but she is rather advanced in years now.’
‘A bit long in the tooth, is she?’ Aunt Hen smiled into her tea dregs.
Mrs Williamson took in a sharp breath and glared at Aunt Hen.
‘She felt infinitely better about it once I promised her my mother would never know,’ Elfriede went on. ‘I was a bit nervous at first, but travelling alone has been fabulous fun!’ Her eyes sparkled. Mrs Williamson smiled.
Madeleine watched as Mr Williamson stirred sugar into his tea – two measured spoonfuls. He swallowed and his Adam’s apple rolled. As he placed his teacup back on the saucer, he tipped it slightly and the blue cup’s inside flashed white across the table. Madeleine wriggled.
‘I must say,’ said Elfriede, ‘that I had never expected Melbourne to be so far away.’
‘Mel-bin,’ corrected Imo. ‘We say Mel-bin, not Mel-bourne.’