When the Lyrebird Calls

by Kim Kane

  Aunt Hen and Gert had dark rings under their eyes, and Madeleine suspected that she herself did as well. All three had stayed up until well after Anna had returned from the meeting, folding and stapling The Hens’ Convention. Once the magazines were stacked in their case like Weetbix in a box, the three had retired to bed, agreeing that Aunt Hen would just have to take the flag with her tomorrow to be repaired at the Muse. They’d had to get up very early to deposit the magazines back at the Drummond Street house, ready for distribution, before they’d left town.

  A few stops past the city, the train drew in at a station. Smuts blew in through the ill-fitting train windows, and Aunt Hen stomped them with her boot. A Chinese couple boarded the carriage. The man wore a high white collar, waistcoat and smart tweed suit. The woman was dressed in a brown woollen dress, gathered at the wrists, with a square hat on her head. They were an elegant couple, thought Madeleine, smiling at them as they sat down nearby, neatly stacking three wooden crates filled with vegetables, fruit and bunches of herbs at their feet.

  ‘What lovely apples!’ said Madeleine, spotting a red cheek. ‘I’ve barely seen a piece of fresh fruit since I got here. Why don’t you eat the fruit in your garden?’ she asked Gert. ‘Those oranges looked so delicious, but I don’t think I’ve seen them served.’

  ‘Cook uses them,’ says Gert. ‘She makes marmalade with the citrus.’

  ‘Fresh fruit is terrible for the digestion,’ said Aunt Hen. ‘I may take issue with Nanny on most topics, but we will never go to war over stewed apple; it is much gentler on the constitution.’

  Aunt Hen looked at the couple and then looked away. They spoke quietly together in Chinese. Madeleine learnt Mandarin at school, but this Chinese sounded quite different and she couldn’t understand them.

  The woman reached into a bag and pulled out a woven bamboo basket. Inside were four plump white buns with perfect crosses slashed into their tops.

  ‘Char siu bao!’ said Madeleine.

  The man smiled and offered the basket. ‘Would you like a bun? My wife made them this morning.’

  ‘Yum! Yes, please!’ Madeleine took one and bit into the soft, white dough. Glossy sauce oozed out from the middle onto her fingers. The bun was warm and comforting and tasted like dinners in Chinatown with Teddy and her dad.

  ‘Thank you! I’m Madeleine,’ she said, trying to ignore the fact that Gert was staring at her. ‘I love these buns.’

  ‘I am James Chan,’ said the man. He had broad cheekbones and a deep smile, with a gap between his teeth that made him look handsome. ‘And this is my wife, Wong Ting Lei.’ The woman nodded and smiled.

  Aunt Hen was still looking out the window. Despite her earlier claim to want to travel with the people, in practice she sat in silence, staring at nothing and no one.

  The house, when they returned, was unusually calm. Bea sat by herself at the piano, flicking through music sheets. Charlie, Imo and Millie had gone for a ride with Nanny, and the other adults, including the servants, seemed to have dissolved in a puff.

  ‘I’m going to read my new periodicals,’ said Aunt Hen. Lugging her cases up the stairs towards her bedroom, she disappeared too.

  ‘I am bored rigid,’ said Bea, yawning. ‘I shall have a little rest. Send Elfriede up if she ever gets home.’

  ‘Aunt Hen bought you a copy of Table Talk,’ said Madeleine.

  Bea sat up. ‘Oh, wonderful! That will revive me. I’ll fetch it from her.’

  ‘I might go for a walk,’ said Madeleine. ‘Stretch my legs.’

  ‘Do you mind if I stay?’ asked Gert. ‘I’m tired.’

  Madeleine was secretly relieved. They had reached that lovely stage of comfort with each other where they could be apart. Madeleine and Nandi were like that.

  Madeleine shucked her hat and gloves, stashing them behind an urn outside the front door; then she headed straight down the front steps and started running. She hadn’t expected country life to be so inactive. Playing cricket the other day had left Madeleine longing to play with Nandi and Teddy; to smash them. It had reminded her that she was Mum Crum’s wriggly girl – a wriggly girl who loved to stretch and pound and run in nothing but shorts and a singlet.

  Madeleine held up her skirt and ran, up through the bush, jumping over branches and pushing through bracken. She ran until she could hardly breathe, the sharp mountain air punching her lungs; ran until she could feel her muscles tough under her tights. Then she walked back down the hill, self-conscious but calm, hoping nobody had seen her. She could smell her sweat pushed up through the neck of her dress with each step. It may not have been ladylike, but she felt so alive.

  Madeleine passed over the creek again and, not quite ready to return, walked the long way back, up around the house. Passing the stables, she discovered Percy brushing down a dumpy little pony, whistling as he worked. ‘Toow wooooo.’

  She hadn’t been in the stables before. Unlike her sisters, Gert didn’t seem to be much of a horserider.

  Bridles and saddles hung in a leathery line above a floor of smooth mud bricks. There was a long row of low doors, behind which horses and ponies snorted as they chewed on hay. Madeleine recognised a few of the chestnuts from the carriage-ride to the picnic. There was a mattress in the corner, a neatly folded blanket at its end. A book, a chipped enamel cup and an iron lamp sat beside it on the top of an upturned bucket.

  Percy stopped whistling as she walked in. The pony he was brushing snorted, and steam burst out of its broad, wet nose into the cold air. It had short, pale-grey hair, mottled like the marble on the fireplace in the drawing room.

  Percy held a brush flat in the palm of his hand; he pulled it along the side of the pony rhythmically.

  ‘Shhh,’ he said to the pony in his deep, calm voice. ‘It’s just Madeleine.’

  The pony nickered.

  ‘You whistle like Imo!’ said Madeleine.

  ‘I hope not,’ he said. ‘I’m in tune. And the truth is she whistles like me.’ He smiled. ‘I gave her a possum as a pet, which Nanny didn’t let her keep, and taught her some language, which Nanny has forbidden. Then I taught her how to whistle. Nanny doesn’t like that either, but it was more difficult for her to take away. The tune does seem to get under some people’s skin.’

  Madeleine laughed. ‘One tiny grain of sand in a sock can cause a blister. I like that.’

  Percy laughed too. His face looked different, happy. He pulled the brush across the pony’s swollen tummy. ‘Miss Charlotte and Miss Imogen have just had a ride. You feeling better than when you first arrived with us, then?’

  ‘Yes, thank you,’ said Madeleine. ‘I was wondering where everyone was. We’ve been in town.’

  Percy didn’t respond, and suddenly Madeleine felt a bit silly. All she could hear was the breath of the pony and the beat of the brush. She wanted to tell Percy about the monster meeting and the printing press, and ask him what he thought of federation. ‘Would you like to vote, same as Aunt Hen?’ she asked quietly.

  Percy shook his head, his face hardening. ‘Not allowed to. They threw me off my home. Not black enough to stay with my people, too black to vote. Anyway, what’s the point if nobody listens?’

  Percy started pulling the brush across the pony’s chest. The pony kicked out at him and he slapped it above the leg. ‘Stop, you little bugger.’ He turned to Madeleine. ‘You want a turn with the brush?’

  ‘Yes, please.’ Madeleine smiled. Percy handed her the brush, and she ran it along the pony’s heaving tummy.

  ‘That’s the way. That way,’ said Percy. ‘Same direction as the hair, and there’s no trouble.’

  He turned to pick up a tin bucket and opened a sack of oats. For a man who looked to be in his thirties, there was a slowness to his movements. And in the gaps of their conversation, in the silence, Madeleine could sense his hurt.

  ‘Do you hate it here?’ she asked softly.

  Percy shrugged. ‘At least I’m paid. Better than my last job. It was good at Coranderrk – not perfect
, not always happy, but home. We worked; made it pay for itself. What did they do? Changed the law, threw us off for being “half-castes”, left only fifteen men behind. Not enough to keep the station going. Not close.’

  Madeleine shuddered.

  ‘The Elders used to get us kids to help write all their letters. When they kicked us young blokes off, they took the writers from the speakers, crippled our lot so we can’t talk to the authorities.’ Percy shook his head and poured a cup of oats into the bucket.

  Madeleine felt a wind rip through the stables. It came in through the gaps between the wooden walls. Thinking of Percy being thrown from his home made it difficult to breathe.

  ‘We’re a bit alike, aren’t we, Percy?’ she said, thinking of how she herself was stuck back in the past and couldn’t do a thing to change it. ‘Both away from our homes; both lost.’

  Percy put down the bucket. ‘No, miss. We’re not. Not at all,’ he said slowly. He took the brush from her hand. ‘Go along, now – head back up to the house. It’s cold in here.’ He tipped his dented hat at her and turned back to the pony, shaking his head.

  Madeleine took a deep breath. ‘Percy? Your whistle? It’s great.’

  She turned and ran.

  When Madeleine returned to the house, having only just remembered on her way inside to fish her hat and gloves back out of the urn in which they’d been parked, she was very glad she had remembered, for she found Nanny in the drawing room holding up Gert’s hands.

  ‘How ever did you get so filthy, Miss Gertrude Williamson? You can’t traipse through town – of all places – with black fingers. What on earth is it?’

  Gert shrugged, looking lost for words.

  ‘Soot,’ came a voice from within the drawing room. It was Aunt Hen, speaking quickly before The Hens’ Convention could turn into The Hens’ Confession. Gert looked relieved. ‘From the train, I suspect. Upstairs and wash it off quickly now, darling – otherwise it will get everywhere.’

  Nanny turned to examine Imo’s pink little fingers.

  Madeleine held her hands, back in their gloves, behind her back and out of sight as she took a seat. To her right, four tin soldiers were lined up on the arm of the couch, crouching, guns at the ready. Charlie bobbed up from behind them just as Gert came back into the room, making Madeleine start.

  ‘Master Charles Williamson is thrilled to see you girls again.’ She smiled. ‘Did you bring back any sweets? I’ve been through your bags, but I couldn’t find any.’

  ‘Sweets?’ cried Imo.

  ‘Charlie!’ Gert pulled the paper cones from her pinafore (where they seemed to have been stashed since their purchase) and handed them to her sister. The paper had lost its crunch. ‘They’re to share.’

  ‘I know!’

  Millie emerged from beneath the couch. She jumped up at Gert, barking, and then ran about the room in tight circles, chasing her own tail.

  ‘I didn’t mean share with Millie,’ called Gert.

  Millie raced back to Gert and stuck her sniffing nose right up Gert’s skirt.

  ‘At least some things never change,’ said Madeleine, giggling, thinking of all the rude dogs in her life at home.

  ‘Sweets for me too?’ yelled Imo, jumping about in much the same way as Millie.

  Charlie put a lolly in Imo’s mouth and then her own. Millie stared at Charlie, head cocked.

  Charlie took another lolly from the cone and pretended to throw it to the right. Millie tore off, yapping as she hurled herself at a small table while Imogen screamed.

  ‘Miss Charlotte!’ cried Nanny from the doorway. ‘How often do I have to tell you that Millie is not allowed in the house?’ Nanny then looked at Hen Pen. She couldn’t say, Why didn’t you keep them in check? but Madeleine could tell that she wanted to.

  Madeleine squirmed in her seat. The room was too small for disapproval in that sort of measure – that quantity of disapproval required its own space.

  Fortunately, Elfriede broke the moment by strolling into the room, a teacup and saucer in her hand. She took a seat in a chair beneath a fringed lamp. Nanny excused herself from the room.

  Elfriede smiled. ‘I have missed you. Did you have fun?’ The girls nodded.

  Elfriede took her teacup from the armchair to the piano, placing the saucer primly on the top.

  ‘Bea!’ she called loudly. ‘The girls are back. Join me, Bea, do.’

  Bea was at the doorway in an instant. ‘We have been waiting for you, Elfriede! Where on earth were you?’ She took a seat at the piano next to her cousin.

  Aunt Hen watched them sitting together on the piano stool. ‘What about Gertie?’ she asked. ‘She’s playing Minuet in G extremely well now.’

  ‘No, thank you,’ said Gert, going to sit next to Aunt Hen on the couch and picking up Aunt Hen’s periodical, flicking through the first pages.

  Bea and Elfriede looked at each other, nodded, breathed in and began. The song rippled. Their four hands jumped up and down the keyboard, up and down, up and down, barely crossing one another. Elfriede was flushed, her eyes bigger and rounder and shinier than usual. The little teacup on top of the piano tinkled, hitting the saucer as the piano played.

  There was an elegance to both of them – Bea and Elfriede. It wasn’t just their fingers, it was the way their arms and their bodies moved too, in time with the music – Bea’s less dramatically than Elfriede’s, but still moving.

  ‘Bravo!’ Mr Williamson stood in the doorway. ‘That was superb, truly superb. It brought me from my study!’

  There was something very panto about Mr Williamson these last few days. His happiness seemed somehow exaggerated. He reminded Madeleine of her own father when he stood up and clapped extra loudly at her school plays – Encore, encore! – even if Madeleine was just an extra, and the orchestra was two bars in front of the choir, and the lead actor had conjunctivitis (which had happened once).

  Mr Williamson moved over to the piano and placed a sharp elbow on it. ‘What a shame I have a meeting this evening. I really can’t move it. I tell you what, though, why don’t we have a soiree tomorrow evening?’

  ‘A soiree?’ said Bea.

  ‘Just the household. I shall have Bella organise it. No, actually, I’ll ask her to invite some people along. Perhaps the Wilkinsons and the Purveses. I know society’s quite thin around here at this time of year, but the Purveses may enjoy it.’

  ‘Not tomorrow, darling, as I have my Friends of the Spirit World meeting, but later next week we could manage it.’ Mrs Williamson stood at the room’s other doorway. Her face was pink.

  Mr Williamson raised an eyebrow. ‘The only meeting I despise more than Hen’s drawing-room meetings for women.’

  ‘Well, I should be honoured to attend your Friends of the Spirit World meeting, Bella, and to partake in a soiree,’ said Elfriede, standing. She picked up her cup of tea and returned to her armchair. ‘Prost,’ she said all breathily, as if the piano playing had quite winded her. Her big nutmeg eyes stared up over the edge of the cup.

  ‘Cheers,’ said Aunt Hen and took a sip from her sherry, the little glass reminding Madeleine of cut ice or diamonds.

  ‘I love to watch you have a sherry, Hen,’ said Mr Williamson. ‘Especially at this hour of the day. It reminds me that for all your faults – and they are numerous – you’re at least not caught up with that frightful Women’s Christian Temperance Union. Damned Americans. At least you are a suffragist who doesn’t protest port.’

  ‘Anything in moderation, Thomas,’ said Aunt Hen.

  ‘Will you be joining us for dinner this evening, dear?’ asked Mrs Williamson looking at Mr Williamson. The dear was forced, stuck on the end of the question like a sticker on a car’s bumper bar.

  ‘Yes,’ said Mr Williamson. ‘I hadn’t planned to, but why not. It’s not every day one has family visiting all the way from Europe. Business can wait.’

  ‘Now business can wait, can it?’ asked Aunt Hen. She looked back to her book, eyebrows raised.

 
‘Perhaps you ought to learn to play the piano as majestically as Elfriede and Bea, Henrietta. Now that would be a useful way to spend a lady’s time.’

  ‘So when will the soiree be, Daddy?’ asked Bea. ‘How about Wednesday?’

  ‘Thursday. Thursday would suit,’ said Mr Williamson. ‘Can you manage that, Bella?’

  Mrs Williamson twisted her wedding ring and nodded.

  The soiree never happened, however, as the next morning, Mrs Williamson didn’t rise from her bed.

  The next morning, Nanny allowed Madeleine and Gert, as ‘the older girls’, to take their breakfast in the morning room with the adults again. ‘Manners,’ she said, ‘are terribly important, and breakfast is a wonderful way to test them.’

  It’s just breakfast, thought Madeleine, wondering how Nanny would take being handed a box of UP&GO on the way to school. Still, the room had a large, round table placed in a huge bay window overlooking the croquet lawn, so it was a bright and attractive place to eat. More attractive than, say, the backseat of Madeleine’s mum’s car.

  Elfriede greeted Gert and Madeleine brightly as they entered the morning room, and then went back to chatting with Bea. Their voices were low and intimate, their conversation as tight as two fingers of a KitKat.

  The two girls took a seat across the table from Mr Williamson. ‘Good morning,’ he said as he helped himself to a piece of toast from a silver rack in the middle of the table.

  There was a tension about him, a stiffness. For all of his big gestures and floppy hair, he was a man of columns and angles. A moustache sat thickly on his upper lip, almost but not quite concealing a fine scar. He had a small mole high on his cheek beneath one eye. It was the sort of spot Madeleine expected to find on a woman – a woman like Elfriede; a spot as perfect and peaked as a chocolate chip.

  ‘Is Bella coming down?’ Aunt Hen looked up from the newspaper she was reading.

  ‘I think Mrs Williamson is taking breakfast in her room,’ said Anna.