‘We want tickets,’ said Thea. ‘For the show.’
‘You’d be the first to pay for them,’ said the young woman. ‘The diggers stormed the theatre. The ushers couldn’t stop them. They’ve taken over the place and we’re all scared out of our wits. I don’t know where to hide. I’m too scared to go home through that mob outside.’
‘But our sister is inside! She’s playing with the orchestra. We have to get her out of there,’ said Tiney.
‘I can’t help you,’ said the woman. She pulled down the shutter and disappeared from view.
‘I should take you two back to East Melbourne right now,’ said Frank. ‘The city’s gone mad.’
‘We can’t give up,’ said Tiney. ‘Minna is in there somewhere. We can’t just leave her to the mob. Why don’t you go home to bed. We’ll find her without you.’
‘Stop it, Tiney,’ said Thea. ‘We couldn’t do this without Frank.’
They made their way into the theatre and stood in the aisle, on the far side of the stalls, watching as a performer came out on stage and pleaded with the angry audience to calm down. He could hardly be heard above the roar and stamping of feet, the diggers demanding the show begin. Finally, the actor managed to make himself heard above the catcalls and boos. He announced the performers had been promised a share of the takings and asking them to perform for free was unjust; if the diggers had paid for their tickets it would be a different story. The soldiers seemed momentarily shamed. Up in the balcony, a slouch hat was hurriedly passed around.
Tiney looked up and saw the slouch hat kicked into the air on the boot of a soldier. Coins and pound notes flew out over the stalls and landed in the audience. Immediately there was a scrum of men falling upon each other, scrabbling for the cash. The actor on stage threw his hands up in despair and signalled to the conductor for the orchestra to strike up a tune.
That’s when Tiney saw Minna, dressed in black, sitting in the orchestra pit. Before either Thea or Frank could stop her, Tiney dashed down the aisle and tried to lunge over the side of the barrier.
‘Minna!’ screamed Tiney, as a burly digger grabbed her arm, holding her back.
Minna glanced up, shocked. Then she jumped to her feet, pushed past the other musicians, leaned over the barrier and raised her clarinet like a bludgeon above the head of the man restraining Tiney. ‘Let go of my baby sister, you brute!’ she said.
The man glanced at Minna’s angry face and released Tiney. She flung her arms around Minna’s neck.
‘Minna,’ she said, kissing her sister’s cheek. ‘Come home to us. Come home right now, please.’
‘I can’t, darling. Not until after the show.’
‘No, now, Minna,’ said Tiney, holding fast. ‘You have to come now!’
Minna glanced back at the conductor.
‘Sorry, Mac!’ she shouted. Then she hoisted herself up onto the barrier and jumped over.
‘Let’s get out of this madhouse,’ said Minna.
As they raced up the aisle, Frank ran towards them and swept Minna into his arms. To the hoots and catcalls of the soldiers, he kissed her full on the mouth. Minna clung to him and kissed him right back. Tiney didn’t know where to look.
Twenty minutes later, they were settled at a table in a small back-street club off Little Bourke Street. Frank bought a lemon squash for Tiney, a shandy for Thea and Minna and a beer for himself. Tiney looked around the smoky club in surprise. ‘Isn’t it against the law to sell beer after six o’clock?’
‘I don’t think anyone in this town is worrying about the law tonight,’ said Frank.
Tiney reached for Minna’s shandy and swallowed a mouthful, eyeing her sisters defiantly. It was sweet and bitter in the same instance.
Sunshine in the Riverina
Tiney wiped dust away from her face with the back of her hand. She was glad the noise of the truck engine made it impossible to have a conversation with Ray. She couldn’t think how to explain why she was coming alone to Cobdolga without any of her sisters.
It was as if her family had been swept away by the winds of change in one cataclysmic month. Frank and Minna had come home to Adelaide for only two weeks before their hurried marriage in a registry office and then departure for Melbourne, where Frank had found a new job. Worse still, Thea went with them. Thea had met a small group of artists who painted Melbourne rivers and beaches and she had arranged to work with them. As she packed up her studio, Tiney sat on a stool and tried to persuade her to stay but Thea quietly resisted her arguments. Tiney felt Thea had never fully forgiven her for conspiring with Seb to enter her work in competitions, nor had she recovered from his death.
Tiney was the last one left at Larksrest. For more than a month she moped around the house until Mama insisted that now was the time for her to visit Nette. Papa was still too weak to travel and someone had to stay to care for him, so it was up to Tiney to visit her eldest sister and tell her in person about the events of the past two months. Mama also gave firm instructions that Tiney was to bring back an honest description of the house that Ray had built for his wife and baby. Nette’s letters were worryingly short on the details of their situation.
Ray’s truck screeched to a halt and Tiney took a good look at the ‘new house’. It had four walls and a roof, all of corrugated iron, but beyond that, it fell far short of her expectations. It sat in the middle of a wide, red field beneath a searingly sunlit sky.
Ray had planted groves of citrus as far as the eye could see but the irrigation that the government had promised still hadn’t been developed. To keep the young trees alive, Ray carted water from the river and hand-watered every day. Beside the house he’d also planted a clutch of gum trees to provide future shade, but in the heat of the day they looked thin and forlorn. Tiney’s image of a grove of orange trees smelling sweetly of blossom evaporated instantly, replaced by the stark, sunburnt reality.
Despite the huge swell of her pregnant belly, Nette looked thinner. Her cheekbones stood out far more than they used to, and her hands were red and sinewy. But she folded Tiney in an embrace that was warm and welcoming, and when Tiney pressed her face against her sister’s neck it was as if all the pain and worry of the last year floated up into the bright Riverina sky.
Inside the house, Ray had erected a flimsy wall between the main living area and the bedroom. Tiney thought it far from a proper house for a family. The walls weren’t lined yet, and a single gold-framed painting by Thea, of the jacaranda tree in bloom at Larksrest, made the absence of plaster and paint even more glaring. But the room was tidy, with shelves displaying canisters of flour, sugar and tea and neatly stacked tinned food. Sparkling clean crockery lined the dresser in defiance of the dust and there was a carefully arranged single shelf of books. Tiney noticed the smoothly pressed tablecloth that had come from Larksrest. ‘You’ve made it all look so lovely, Nette,’ she said, trying to sound convincing.
‘When Ray builds another room for us, we’ll be able to take down the partition wall and bring the piano up from Larksrest,’ said Nette.
Tiney peered around the partition wall. There was a new wicker bassinet sitting beside the couple’s sagging double bed, waiting for the baby’s arrival.
‘I’ll make you up a camp bed for tonight and tomorrow. I’m sorry you can’t stay longer, Tiney. I wish you could. I’ve been longing for visitors but Ray says we don’t have enough room.’
‘We’ve been longing for you to come home to visit us,’ said Tiney. ‘Mama is so worried about you.’
‘I couldn’t travel while the flu epidemic was raging and then, just when I thought it was easing and it would be safe to come home, Papa fell ill.’
Tiney took her sister’s hand and stroked it. ‘It’s just I miss you so much.’
‘I will come home after I’ve had the baby,’ said Nette. ‘I’ll be constantly in your way, and the babe and I will drive you bonkers.’
‘Never,’ said Tiney, laughing. They sat at the table in the hot little hut and drank black tea
and talked and talked and Tiney told Nette everything. She spoke of the tragedy of Seb and Thea, of Papa’s illness, of the hunt for Minna and how empty Larksrest had become, now that she was the last in their family nest, alone with their parents in the old home that had once held five children.
‘It’s all happening so fast,’ said Tiney. ‘It was as if the war held us in a cocoon but since it’s ended, everyone has taken flight, except me. The flight of the swan maidens.’
They both laughed then. ‘And now I’m about to have my own little cygnet,’ said Nette. ‘I hope it’s a girl.’
‘Why?’
‘Ray says we should call the baby Louis if it’s a boy, but I don’t think I want that. I’d rather call him Floyd – something modern. I don’t want to think of Louis every time I put my baby to my breast. I don’t want to imagine a future where a war might snatch him from us. They’ve made such a hash of the treaty. What if there’s another war? I couldn’t bear it, Tiney.’
Tiney stared out through the flywire screen at the hot, dusty landscape. ‘What would you call her if she was a girl?’
‘I’d call her Joy. Because if this baby doesn’t bring us joy, I don’t know how we’ll manage.’ Nette put her head down on the tablecloth and began to weep, suddenly changing from laughter to tears.
Tiney stood up and rubbed her sister’s shoulders. ‘Don’t cry, Nette. Joy is a lovely name. And I’m sure if you want to call a baby boy something other than Louis, Ray won’t mind. ‘
‘But you don’t understand. Ray minds everything. Everything exasperates him. I can’t argue with him, I can’t. He’s angry all the time. It’s the land and the heat and that we never have enough water. Oh Tiney, how am I going to manage a baby in this terrible place?’
Tiney stood, stunned, her hands resting on her sister’s shoulders. She went on rubbing Nette’s back soothingly, but she couldn’t help thinking Nette was right. The hut was more like a prison camp than a home, only made liveable through Nette’s work and care.
‘Why don’t you come home to Larksrest to have the baby? You could come back with me. We could be home by Friday,’ said Tiney.
Nette continued to weep. ‘Because Ray wouldn’t like it. It would make him feel angrier. Don’t think I haven’t already asked. But he wouldn’t even talk about it. I’ve never seen anyone so angry before. He goes out into the fields and it’s as if he’s marching against some invisible enemy. Sometimes I think it’s me, that I’m the new enemy. But then he can be so sweet. I never know which way he’s going to be when he comes in at night. And if he’s angry, then he drinks. Not like Pa. Pa was always so quiet if he had a drink, but with Ray it’s like throwing petrol on a fire. I have to go to bed and pretend I’m alone, pretend I can’t hear him shouting and cursing on the other side of the curtain.’
Part of Tiney wanted to say, ‘Don’t tell me this.’ But instead, she said, ‘You must come home, Nette. Not just when you’re having the baby, but for good. Ray will be a terrible father. You can’t live like this. You can’t make your baby suffer as well as you.’
There was a silence before Nette spoke. ‘You don’t leave your wounded,’ she said, so still, so quietly, that Tiney wasn’t sure she’d heard right. Then Nette looked into Tiney’s eyes, holding her gaze, and spoke firmly. ‘You don’t leave your wounded behind.’
‘The war is over, Nette!’
‘It will never be over for Ray,’ said Nette. She put both hands squarely on the table, as if to signal the end of the conversation. Then she pushed herself to her feet. It was as she stood that they both heard an audible ‘pop’. Nette’s eyes grew wide and she stared down at her skirt. Tiney followed her gaze. Gathering between Nette’s feet was a pool of water, staining the floorboards dark brown.
‘My waters have broken,’ said Nette disbelievingly.
‘What?’ said Tiney.
‘The baby is coming,’ said Nette, cupping her hands under the swell of her belly. ‘Fetch Ray, Tiney. Fetch him now.’
Tiney stared at her sister and then out the small window at the bright, hot day. ‘But where is he?’
‘Down by the river. He’ll be down by the river, carting water for the orchard.’ Then Nette groaned and leaned forward, both hands on the table, as a contraction gripped her. Tiney watched the force of the moment wash over her, too frightened to leave.
‘Go!’ shouted Nette, as soon as she could catch her breath.
Tiney stepped out into the bright noonday sun. She ran through the infant orange grove where the ground was cracked and dry, leaping over furrows of baked earth, brushing past the shrivelled citrus trees that were struggling to take hold in the parched ground. She raced towards the line of gums that was the river’s edge, screaming Ray’s name as she ran.
It took over an hour of frantic searching along the riverbank, scrambling over the roots of river gums, for Tiney to find Ray. When the truck stalled on the road back through the fields, she wanted to scream with both fear and frustration.
By the time they returned to the hut, Nette was bellowing. A carpetbag sat open on the table. She had stopped halfway through packing. She stood with her hands on the back of a chair, her face flushed and sweaty, her cropped hair plastered to her forehead. ‘Too fast,’ she muttered. ‘It’s coming too fast.’
‘Help me get her to the truck,’ said Ray, grabbing one of Nette’s arms.
Nette groaned. ‘Too late,’ she said between gritted teeth. But Ray was hauling her towards the open door.
‘Ray, stop,’ said Tiney. ‘She doesn’t want to go.’
‘She can’t have it here. We’ve got to get her to the hospital.’
Tiney rested her hand on her sister’s rock-hard belly. Nette had taken off her shoes and stockings, and her bare legs were streaked with blood. Tiney took a deep breath and raised her sister’s skirts, squatting down to look upward.
‘I can see the baby’s head. I can see the crown of its head,’ she said, feeling her heart swell with despair at the sight of her sister’s bulging vulva and the thick thatch of black hair.
‘Jesus,’ said Ray.
Tiney felt her own smallness, their shared inadequacy.
‘You’re a farmer, Ray,’ said Tiney. ‘You should know about how animals are born.’
‘I know about bloody oranges,’ he shouted, ‘not babies! You’re a woman. This is woman’s business.’
Tiney wanted to shout back, ‘I’m only seventeen!’ But she realised she knew more than Ray. She’d read a little about babies being born, couched in flowery terms. She knew that she needed to boil water and that things needed to be clean and sterile.
Between them, Ray and Tiney manoeuvred Nette towards the bed, but then she knelt on the floor beside it. She roared in pain and tore at the quilted bedcover. Then she grabbed Ray’s hand and Tiney’s forearm, dragging them down to kneel beside her. When the contraction had eased and Nette’s grip loosened, Tiney raced to the stove and tipped a jug of water into the kettle to boil.
Ray looked at Tiney. She’d never seen his expression so helpless.
‘We’ll all be fine,’ said Tiney, rolling up her sleeves as if she was confident, as if she knew what to do, scrubbing her hands at the sink. Inside her head a voice screamed, ‘You have no idea what you’re doing!’ as she folded back her sister’s skirts again and knelt behind her. Nette roared, a shout so loud that the tiny house trembled and all the colour drained from Ray’s face. Tiney watched as a damp, glistening head emerged from between her sister’s legs. She touched it gently, reverently. In the next moment, Nette roared again and the baby’s body slithered from inside her and into Tiney’s hands. It was warm and soft and magically alive.
Tiney turned the baby over and saw he was a boy; a perfectly formed baby with long fingers and a squashed, snub nose. She looked down into his face, greasy with a white slick, and the baby opened his eyelids to gaze up at her with cloudy blue eyes. Then he opened his mouth and a mewling cry came from between his lips. Tiney began to weep, tears streamin
g down her cheeks. She looked across at Ray and he too was weeping. She handed the baby to him, saw how small he looked in his father’s hands.
‘It’s a little boy,’ she said, rubbing her sister’s back soothingly. ‘It’s a beautiful little boy, Nette.’
Nette’s legs trembled and she buried her face in the quilt. Ray handed back the baby to Tiney and managed to carefully lift Nette onto the bed, along with the long bluish-white cord that still dangled from her, connecting her to the baby. Then Tiney placed the infant in Nette’s arms. She folded a towel and laid it between her sister’s legs to catch the fluids that were still seeping out.
‘There’s the afterbirth to deliver now, Ray,’ she said. ‘I’ll need a large bowl. And we have to cut the cord. We need to tie it off, very firmly, and then you must cut it. But sterilise the knife in the flame first.’
Obediently, Ray fetched a reel of cotton and a clean knife and together they tied and severed the umbilical cord. A moment later, with a groan, Nette pushed out the afterbirth, a dark, bloody lump of flesh that made Ray grimace. He put his cheek against Nette’s while he rested his hand on the baby’s head. His eyes were shut and the concentration in his face was like that of a man in prayer. For a moment, everything in the room was as silent as a chapel. Then Ray stood up swiftly.
‘I’m going for the doctor,’ he said, not taking his eyes off Nette and their child as he backed towards the door. The screen door slammed behind him. Tiney heard him bounding down the steps of the hut and the truck roaring to life. A wash of relief broke over her. Help would be with them soon. She took the afterbirth away and covered the bowl with a cloth, then, tenderly, she set about cleaning Nette’s legs and exchanging the damp and bloody towel for a fresh one. Finally, she pulled a fresh sheet over mother and child and then sat on the end of the bed, watching her new nephew.
Nette stroked her baby’s face with her finger and the baby clamped down on it with his mouth. She unbuttoned her dress and placed the baby’s small head against her breast. The stillness in the hut now that the child was born was like the calm after a storm.
The Year It All Ended Page 12