by Judy Nunn
Lucky and Peggy found a relatively quiet spot behind the pavilion.
‘I’ve missed you,’ he said. It had been three weeks and he longed to gather her to him and feel her body against his. He would have done so. Lucky was a passionate man and had no qualms about openly expressing his feelings, but he was aware of her position and the censure of local society, and took care not to compromise her.
‘I’ve missed you too.’ It was Peggy who initiated the kiss. She was suddenly in his arms, her face upturned, her mouth inviting him, and before Lucky knew it their lips had met. The kiss was brief. Even as she’d acted instinctively Peggy had been aware that her behaviour was outrageous. But short though the moment was, it held a wealth of passion and, when they hastily parted, both were a little breathless.
‘Have a seat,’ Lucky said, pulling over one of the many wooden crates strewn about and hoping, for Peggy’s sake, that no-one had seen them. There were a number of people around, but they seemed to have paid no heed as they busily gathered up crates themselves in preparation for packing. The show was nearing its end and in an hour or so they would start clearing the hall for that evening’s ball.
Peggy sat. She didn’t look around – she refused to – but casual glances from the corner of her eyes assured her that none of her many pupils had been present to witness her indiscretion. Thank goodness for that. She’d rather shocked herself.
Lucky overturned a crate and, as he sat, he decided to get straight to the point. ‘I cannot go to the ball with you, Peggy,’ he said.
‘Why not? You said that you would.’
‘I said that I might.’ He hated to disappoint her and he had intended to go. He’d been looking forward to it; he’d brought his best suit into town and it was hanging in the wardrobe at the hostel. But he’d seen the looks on the women’s faces as he’d left the kitchen. They’d been horrified. And it had occurred to Lucky that he’d not heard other workers boasting in the past about having gone to the show ball. On Saturday show night they all went to the pub. It might well cause a great deal of trouble for Peggy if she took him along.
‘None of the other Snowy men ever go to the ball, do they?’ he asked.
‘Of course they do,’ she replied with an all-encompassing wave of her hand. ‘Lots of them, dozens, all nationalities …’
He captured her hand mid-air and smiled as he interrupted: ‘Lots of them, dozens, and all nationalities from the SMA, you mean, don’t you, Peggy?’
‘Yes, of course,’ she said. ‘But that doesn’t …’
‘And along with the SMA hierarchy there will be the show committee. And then there will be the farmers, and the competitors and the exhibitors …’
‘And anyone else who buys a ticket,’ she briskly concluded.
‘But there won’t be any Snowy workers, will there?’
‘Then it’s high time there were. Can’t you get any of your friends to buy a ticket?’
‘They’ll be at the pub, as they always are.’
‘Well, that’s their bad luck,’ she said dismissively before starting on another tack, facetious this time, although she sensed she was losing the battle. ‘Just think, Lucky, you’ll be the envy of Spring Hill – as my guest you get to go to the ball free.’
He squeezed the hand he was still holding, forcing her to be serious. ‘I don’t think it is wise for you to take me along, Peggy. I don’t mean for myself,’ he added, aware she was about to interrupt again. ‘I mean for you. I saw the looks on the faces of those women in there.’
Peggy realised that she had misunderstood his reluctance. She had presumed he felt self-conscious at the prospect of mingling with the locals and the farmers and the SMA bosses. She should have known better: Lucky had the confidence to rise above the petty class consciousness that still persisted in many areas.
‘I’m sorry, I’ve been bossy, haven’t I?’
‘Of course,’ he grinned. ‘You always are.’
‘Once a schoolteacher …’ She gave an apologetic shrug. ‘Thanks for worrying about me, I appreciate it.’ She did. Few people had ever worried about her; it was a refreshing change. ‘But you don’t need to, you know. I can look after myself.’
‘Oh yes, I’m aware of that.’ Lucky nodded vehemently: he’d seen her in action many a time over the past three years since she’d arrived in Cooma. Most people had. It was a known fact that Peggy Minchin could be quite aggressive, particularly when she perceived an injustice. When a busy shopkeeper favoured locals over Europeans, as many very often did, Peggy would loudly announce ‘they were here first!’, embarrassing everyone, particularly the Europeans who would have preferred to wait patiently until the crowds died down and who, often struggling with an inadequate command of the English language, hated suddenly being the focus of attention.
Once, early in their relationship, well before they’d become lovers, Lucky had offered Peggy a friendly word of advice on the matter, suggesting that she could perhaps be a little more ‘sensitive’ in her approach. Peggy had been vociferous in her disagreement. ‘People need to be taught,’ she’d said, ‘both the locals and the Europeans. The longer the Europeans fail to exercise their rights, the longer the locals will walk all over them.’
Unable to refute such a statement, Lucky had never broached the subject again. He respected Peggy for her spirit and her sense of justice and the strength of her beliefs. But, as his respect had slowly blossomed into something deeper, he had seen beyond the facade. It was a pity, he thought, that Peggy Minchin was unable to believe, with equal strength, in herself as a woman. And over the past several months, since they’d become lovers, he often wondered if there were others who guessed, as he had, that beneath the ever-efficient exterior and the outspoken confidence, Peggy Minchin was, at heart, the most vulnerable of women.
‘Come on!’ She jumped up. He was looking thoughtful and she had a feeling he might be weakening. She dragged him to his feet. ‘Come with me tonight, I dare you! There’ll be a band.’ Her eyes, always so piercingly blue and intelligent, sparkled, childlike with hope, and the smile that urged him to say ‘yes’ was, to Lucky, irresistible, the tiny dimple in the right cheek hinting at the daredevil sense of humour which he knew always lurked beneath the surface. ‘Come on, Lucky, give in. You know how you love to dance.’
She had no idea, he thought, how truly beguiling she could be. She didn’t know that, like this, animated and vital, she was very, very pretty. He liked to tell her so, although he was aware that she didn’t believe him.
‘Pretty Peggy Minchin,’ he laughed, pushing back the stray wisp that had escaped its confines and picturing her hair splayed out on the pillow; Peggy had lovely hair. ‘Pretty pretty Peggy, how could I possibly resist?’
She returned his smile. These days she no longer shrugged off his compliments or laughed self-consciously as she first had. Not that she believed him. She was not pretty, she never had been. But she believed that Lucky thought she was and, inexplicably, in his company she felt pretty.
‘I’m glad,’ she said, ‘I like to be irresistible.’ She was as irresistible as she was pretty, she thought, but if she appeared so to Lucky, then that was all that mattered.
Peggy had never had any illusions about her appearance. She looked like a schoolteacher; she had since she was eighteen. Neat, efficient, thin-faced and at times stern, just the way a schoolteacher should look. It had never bothered her. In fact, she’d decided early on that she rather liked her image; it fitted who she was. Teaching was, after all, more than a chosen profession, it was a vocation. At least it was to Peggy. Which was why, following her Sydney graduation, she had volunteered for an outback posting where she’d remained for the following ten years. Outback children, Peggy maintained, were like the land: as starved of opportunity and inspiration as the drought-ridden country was starved of water, and her greatest joy was to watch them blossom like the country did after rain. The only time Peggy ever waxed lyrical was when she spoke of her ‘calling’, as she termed it.
Upon answering the desperate plea for teachers needed in Cooma, Peggy had been confronted by a new form of pupil far more challenging than those suffering the privations of an isolated existence. In the ill-equipped, overcrowded classrooms were many European youngsters who had witnessed and lived through shocking times, some having arrived directly from displaced persons camps. They were frightened and insecure, and they trusted no-one. It was the greatest test Peggy had yet faced and, dedicated as she was, she rose to the occasion. Her new students became her children, and gradually even the most damaged responded to her strength, her discipline, her care, and her utter devotion.
It was Peggy’s blind devotion to her calling which had, over the years, deprived her of any personal life. She had deliberately lost her virginity to a young physical education instructor when she was in her mid-twenties, feeling it was high time she found out what it was all about, but she had never been in love. Nor had she sought a husband; she had no desire to be dependent upon a man, and at thirty-three she had settled quite comfortably into her role as a spinster. Then along had come Lucky. He’d been just a friend at first, an intelligent, well-educated man with whom she shared stimulating conversations and chess games. He remained just a friend for two whole years while she denied to herself there could possibly be any attraction. And then he kissed her. A little over three months ago now. And that kiss had changed Peggy’s life.
‘Don’t bother coming to pick me up,’ she said, efficiency once again the order of the day. ‘I’ll meet you out the front of the hall at half-past eight, things don’t really start happening until around nine, does that suit?’
‘It does,’ he replied with a mock salute, and he walked her back inside the pavilion, refusing the offer of a cup of tea in the kitchen. ‘I’m to meet Pietro at Dodds,’ he said. ‘I left him in the company of some rather hot-headed Italians, although I knew he’d far rather come and see you.’
‘The Italians will do him more good – Pietro needs a bit of toughening up.’
The women were selling the last of the sandwiches and starting to clear things away. In less than two hours the hired professionals would be arriving to decorate the hall for the evening.
‘See you at the ball, Edna,’ Lucky said loudly, before turning to Mavis and Vera. ‘Good afternoon, ladies.’ He bowed slightly, gave each of them a winning smile, then flashed a barely perceptible wink at Peggy and left. Mavis and Vera, aware they were being observed, didn’t quite know where to look.
Peggy and Edna exchanged a quick glance of amusement before getting on with their work. How could she possibly have assumed Lucky’s reluctance to go to the ball stemmed from insecurity? Peggy thought. Lucky of all people!
‘I’ve got nothing against Germans. Live and let live, I say.’ Cam Campbell was a man’s man. Or rather that was how he perceived himself to be and how he wished to be perceived by others. A good bloke who called a spade a spade and wasn’t afraid to speak his own mind. ‘So long as a bloke’s honest I don’t give a bugger where he comes from. Good to meet you, mate. Cheers.’ He clinked his beer glass resoundingly against Lucky’s and both men drank.
Heavy-handed as Cam Campbell’s bonhomie was, he appeared sincere and Lucky was grateful to the man for rescuing him. Peggy had left him stranded with two P & A lady committee members early in the evening, saying she was off to check on Edna and the volunteer caterers and she’d be back in a minute.
‘But I thought you weren’t working tonight.’
‘I’m not. They might just want a quick hand setting up, that’s all,’ and she’d disappeared in the direction of the kitchen.
Half an hour later, as the members of the local band started tuning their instruments, Lucky had found himself still marooned with the lady committee members. Having shared with him their admiration of the decorations – the streamers, the balloons, the floral arrangements and the festive atmosphere of the hall in general – the ladies had embarked upon an intensely personal discussion about a particularly cantankerous judge in the show’s needlework section, and then they’d been joined by two of their male counterparts who’d discussed with equal intensity the improvements required to the main arena fence, and the fact that it must certainly be discussed at the next general meeting. Lucky had by that time been so assiduously ignored that he’d felt invisible, which he’d considered most fortunate. But then several farmers had arrived, one of them keen to discuss the collection and care of birds sent by rail for the poultry section and, as Lucky introduced himself, aware that no-one present would remember his name, he’d suddenly become very visible.
‘You’re a German, aren’t you.’ It had been an accusation rather than a question, and although the others had been silently nursing their own vague discomfort in the German’s presence, they had been most embarrassed by the poultry farmer’s overt hostility.
‘Yes, I am German.’
‘Thought so.’
That was when Cam had come to the rescue. He’d slapped the poultry farmer on the back. ‘Look after your birds, Bill, that’s what you’re here for.’ Everyone knew that Bill was a bit barmy when it came to Germans. His younger brother had died by his side at the Somme, so it was pretty understandable. ‘Come on, mate,’ he’d said to Lucky, ‘let’s go outside and grab a beer.’ Out in the showground he’d headed for the nearest liquor booth and insisted on shouting the first round. ‘Lucky you said, right?’ He handed Lucky his beer and they edged clear of the crowd around the booth.
‘Yes.’
‘I’m Cam. Cam Campbell.’ They shook. ‘I’ve got nothing against Germans …’ and Cam launched into his hail-fellow-well-met routine.
A successful farmer with a large family property not far from Adaminaby, Thomas ‘Cam’ Campbell was a big, beefy man in his late forties, ruddy-faced with a smile both confident and likeable. Highly respected as one of the finest horsemen in the area, he was popular among his peers, and Lucky, like most, found himself warming to the man.
‘You work for the Authority, I take it?’ Cam queried after they’d clinked and taken a swig from their glasses.
‘No, I’m a labourer, I work for Selmers,’ Lucky said, referring to the Norwegian contractors handling the Guthega dam project. ‘I’m based at Spring Hill.’
Cam was surprised. He’d assumed that the German, a cultivated man judging by his faultless English, was one of the experts brought out from Europe by the SMA. But he wasn’t deterred by discovering the bloke was a labourer; he liked him all the more for it.
‘Well, good on you, Lucky,’ he said. ‘There’re plenty of decent honest blokes working here on the Snowy,’ and he raised his glass in a toast of approval, ‘which is more than I can say for the bloody SMA bosses!’ Then he downed half his beer in several swift gulps before steering the conversation, with all the subtlety of a sledgehammer, to his favourite subject, as he always did when he had a captive audience.
‘I tell you, mate, the SMA top brass are a pack of lying mongrels and I wouldn’t trust them as far as I could spit.’ He skolled the rest of his beer as if to emphasise the point; and besides, it was Show Night and Cam was in a drinking mood.
Lucky followed suit, draining his glass. He didn’t really want to drink at this speed, but he knew the rules.
‘My shout,’ he said, and together they wove their way through the crowd back to the liquor booth, Cam talking all the while at the top of his voice.
‘They think they can get us all on the cheap, but they’ll have their work cut out with me, I can promise you …’
There were SMA employees everywhere, and mostly from the upper echelons of the hierarchy, but Cam couldn’t care less who heard him. In fact, he hoped they did. He’d stated his case to the bosses loud and clear enough, and he’d state it again to anyone who’d listen. ‘They can’t buy me out for thirteen quid an acre and they know it. It’s downright bloody robbery what they’ve done to some around here.’
Although Lucky rarely mixed with the farming community, he was
kept well in touch with the events of the day by Rob Harvey, and he knew exactly what Cam was talking about. Despite the fact that it was still some years before the scheduled completion of the dam at Adaminaby and the flooding of the area, the Authority had been buying up the land since 1949 and there was much contention among the locals. ‘The farmers do have a genuine gripe,’ Rob had said. ‘The SMA’s taking advantage of them and the cockies’ll come out the losers.’
To ensure discipline and avoid accusations of favouritism, Rob Harvey maintained a certain distance from his workers at Spring Hill, but he stretched the rules where Lucky was concerned, the two regularly meeting up for a beer in Cooma. Both well-educated men with a strong love of the land, Rob and Lucky shared a friendship of like minds, and Rob was thankful to have someone to whom he could speak openly. Loyal as he was to his employers and to the Scheme in general, there were areas which didn’t entirely meet with his approval, the method of land purchase being just one of them. ‘They’re striking each deal individually,’ he’d told Lucky, ‘and taking advantage of the farmers’ lack of negotiation skills. It’s all a bit dodgy, if you ask me.’
‘Thanks, mate.’ Cam accepted the beer Lucky handed him and they again edged clear of the liquor booth.
‘But I believe there are many receiving double that price now,’ Lucky said after the obligatory clink and the ‘cheers’. Rob had told him as much. One or two of the farmers, Rob had said, were determined to hold out until the very last minute, which was causing a few headaches for the SMA. ‘Good on them, I say,’ Rob had added.
‘And I hear the price is still going up,’ Lucky said after he’d taken a swig from his glass.
Cam wasn’t sure whether he was gratified or disappointed by the German’s awareness of the state of play; he’d rather looked forward to explaining things from his point of view. But then, he thought, the German seemed like a very intelligent bloke, and so he decided to move on to his other pet topic, which was a little more sophisticated.