‘Once, when I was a little girl in Kalgoorlie,’ I said, ‘I was watching some Irish dancing with my mother. The girls were dressed in sumptuous velvet dresses, embroidered in marvellous patterns. Their hair was in long ringlets all the way down their back, and their legs seemed to fly over the stage as they danced. I thought it was the most wonderful thing I’d ever seen. I asked my mother if we had any Irish blood, thinking I could be a part of it, by proxy.’
Tom was watching me with a half-smile on his face.
‘My mother replied, rather stiffly, “There are no Irish or convicts in our family.” ’
He really laughed then, throwing his head back, his face lit up in a way I hadn’t seen before.
‘Well, we’ve got Irish and convicts in ours,’ he said. ‘Though we keep schtum about my mother’s grandfather, who was sent out here in the 1850s for stealing sheep. He became very wealthy and influential once he got his ticket of leave, but she’s still ashamed of him. There are thieves, swindlers and even a convicted murderer in my family. And that’s only the ones in Australia.’
I met his eyes. After a while, almost as if a signal had been given, we turned back to examining our coffees.
‘And you’re one of Perth’s best families,’ I said, in a teasing voice. I stirred my coffee again, pushing the spoon around and around and watching the whirlpool. ‘I never would have been good enough for Peter. Your mother made that clear both times he took me home.’
Tom put his hand on mine. ‘It’s stirred enough,’ he said. Surprised, I looked into his eyes. ‘Meg, my parents would have welcomed you. If Pete loved you, that would have been enough.’
I felt again the sense of being drawn into his eyes, of wanting to lose myself in them, only this time there was also an odd sensation in my chest; like pain, but not pain. And then the sudden, subtle shift in my perception. It had been so hurtful to think that Peter’s family saw me as a gold-digger. It hurt more that I now preferred dark eyes to blue.
‘It’s your birthday tomorrow,’ I said, at last. ‘I haven’t got anything for you.’
‘Don’t worry about that.’
When he dropped me off outside my house and saw me to the door, I turned my face up to him. ‘A birthday kiss?’
‘Better not.’
He turned away to leave and I shone my little torch at the lock. Before I could turn the key, he changed his mind and was standing close to me again.
‘Perhaps just one,’ he said. ‘Because it’s my birthday in an hour.’
He bent towards me and very gently put his mouth on mine. Then he was gone, into the darkness.
Sixteen
‘Meg, Meg, you’re in the Mirror.’ My mother’s voice was pitched much higher than usual. She sounded surprised, excited and fearful, all at once.
I was confused. ‘What do you mean? I can’t be. Is it something about Doreen?’
It was late on Saturday morning. We were relaxing after breakfast and Ma was reading the weekend papers. She handed the Mirror to me, open at ‘Nicky’s Merry-Go-Round’, the gossip section.
And who is the girl who has been seen out and about quite a lot lately, often with AIF Captain Thomas Lagrange and often with Allied naval officers, including one very married Chad Buchowski? Well, it’s pretty little Margaret Eaton of Hollywood, that’s who. But she’s not a movie star. I’m told she’s a stenographer with the Crown Law Department and not Tom’s usual sort at all. Rumour has it Tom’s long-time fiancée, Phyllis Gregory, is not too happy about this development. I say, stick to the unattached fellows, Meg.
Ma was looking at me with a worried expression. Joan snatched the paper out of my hands and read the article aloud. I felt sick.
‘Meg,’ said Joan. ‘Just how many men are you going out with?’ She sounded incredulous. ‘When have you been seeing Tom Lagrange? I’ll be asked about this at work. You know that everyone reads the Mirror.’
I knew that. Everybody at my work read the Mirror, too.
‘Margaret, are you really seeing Peter’s brother? Has he broken off his engagement?’ My mother’s voice was quiet.
‘We’re friends. It’s not like that. Not like she says, I mean.’
‘Then why is it in the Mirror?’ asked Joan.
‘I don’t know. I’m friendly with him, that’s all.’
‘Well, you must be seeing a lot of him,’ Joan said decidedly. ‘If it’s in the Mirror. And I’d be worried about Phyllis Gregory if I were you.’
‘The Mirror is a scandal sheet. It doesn’t always get it right.’
Joan gave me a look. She appeared to believe that the Mirror always got it right. ‘You should be more careful of your reputation, Meg. I don’t know what Wally will say.’
‘I don’t care what Wally says. It’s none of Wally’s business. It’s none of your business. The Mirror is a dreadful rag that should get its facts right.’
My mind was racing. Why should I have shot to public notoriety, and in such a nasty way? I was a nobody. Had someone been pointing the finger at me? Someone with easy connections to the Mirror’s social reporter? Was this Phyllis Gregory’s revenge? No. The article made her look stupid and jealous, and she’d hate that.
‘Margaret, I don’t like the idea of you seeing a man who is engaged to another girl.’ Ma’s voice had moved from disappointment to disapproval.
‘Tom Lagrange and I are friends, Mum. We’re not seeing each other, not like that.’
‘But, Meg, if he has a fiancée it is inappropriate to see him socially.’
I wanted to cry with frustration. ‘We are just friends.’
Friends, yes. But what more? I’d been thinking of little but Tom since Wednesday night. And I was to have tea with his fiancée this afternoon. The sick feeling returned. Maybe I could cry off. And then I thought what astonishing timing it was. Did Phyllis want to teach Tom a lesson? On balance, I thought not, because the article was as irritating for Phyllis as it was for me and Tom. I’d heard that no one knew much about Nicky, but she knew everything about everyone. It was probably just appallingly bad luck that the article had appeared on the day I was to meet Phyllis.
I had to put up with smirks and innuendo about the Mirror article from our neighbours as I made my way to the Hampden Road shops to collect Ma’s shopping. Mr Walker, the grocer, thought it was a grand joke. He said with a booming laugh that even if I wasn’t a movie star, I obviously had a movie star lifestyle. Everyone in the shop laughed. I smiled, a trifle stiffly, and left as quickly as I could.
Mrs Bowley at the bakery was even more embarrassing. ‘The Lagranges are a very old Perth family,’ she said, in a conspiratorial whisper as she leaned across the counter to hand me the bread I’d ordered. ‘If you can catch a Lagrange you are doing very well indeed.’
I murmured weakly that she shouldn’t believe everything she read in the Mirror.
‘Watch out for his long-time fiancée,’ someone called out. ‘She sounds scary.’ There was laughter as I pushed my way through the crowd.
Marie McLean was coming out of the newsagent and I crossed the street to speak to her.
‘How’s Jimmy?’ I asked. Even though he’d seemed a little better when I had seen him a few days ago, he was still pale and thin.
‘A doctor at the children’s hospital ordered a tonic,’ she said. ‘It’s done him some good, but he’s still not himself. I hope he’s better before school starts in a couple of weeks. The murder seems to have really upset him; he doesn’t seem to be able to get over it. Well, it’s upset all of us, of course.’
I murmured my agreement as she left me to go into the greengrocer’s. I hadn’t spared much thought for poor Doreen over the past few weeks because I’d been so caught up in my hectic social life. The police still had no idea where Frank Luca could be and I was becoming increasingly worried that he had ended his own life.
I turned down Kanimbla Road towards home, hoping for some quiet time to prepare myself for the meeting with Phyllis.
‘I read about
you in the Mirror.’
The voice was close behind me. I turned to see Betty Barwon clutching her handkerchief. She looked rather tired.
‘Chad Buchowski is gorgeous looking,’ she said, giving me a tight smile. ‘But you want to watch out for him, he has a nasty temper. He hit Doreen once, quite badly. That’s why she stopped seeing him.’
I felt like I’d been hit myself. I wanted to believe that she was lying. In spite of Tom’s repeated warnings, and the quick temper I’d seen him display, I had been so sure Chad was harmless. But it was clear that Betty wasn’t lying.
She laughed at my look. ‘You’re so innocent, Meg. Just like Doreen. You think that everyone is nice. But they’re not,’ she said, with a sigh. ‘They’re not. You’ve got to stop trusting people.’
I didn’t know what to say. I’d been wrong. Tom had been right. I suddenly hated the fact that he was always right. I felt like a fool. In my view, nothing justified a big man like Chad hitting Doreen. I knew what Marie McLean had to put up with, and it filled me with disgust.
‘And I hope you haven’t fallen for Tom Lagrange,’ Betty continued. ‘He’s bad news.’
‘We’re friends, that’s all. We just talk,’ I said. I shifted the bag of groceries to the other hand and tried to make my face blank. I was not going to discuss Tom with Betty. I was confused enough already. It was clear that she disliked him and whatever she said was tainted by that. I would think about all this later. Right now I desperately wanted to get home.
‘Well, I’ll bet you he hasn’t talked about this,’ she said. ‘He had a terrible fight with Doreen the night before she died.’
My heart started to race and I felt a little faint. I did not want to hear this, but I had to know more. I knew so little about Tom’s friendship with Doreen. I needed to find out if what Betty knew could be used to hurt him.
‘They were in the laneway behind the house, but I could hear them clearly from the backyard. She was saying she’d do anything for him, get him anything he wanted. She even said she loved him. “Oh, Tom, but I love you.” ’ Betty imitated a lovesick girl’s voice. I felt acid rise in my stomach.
‘She must have tried to put her arms around him or something, because he said, “No, Doreen. Get away from me.” ’
Betty was watching me closely.
‘Poor Doreen,’ I said, putting the groceries down to rest my arm.
‘You got that right. He was real harsh. Gee, his voice would’ve made hell freeze over the way he said, “Doreen, I don’t feel that way about you. You need to realise that.” ’ Betty made a poor job of imitating Tom’s rather posh accent. Then she lowered her voice and leaned towards me. Up close the red patch under her nose looked moist and unhealthy. I thought she must have a perpetual cold. No wonder she always carried a hankie.
‘She let him have it then. She told him his girlfriend – you know, that stuck-up blonde bitch – Doreen said she was sleeping with Chad Buchowski. Gee, did that make him angry. He told her it was a filthy lie.’
I grimaced, which Betty evidently took as encouragement because she went on in her flat, nasal voice. She was enjoying herself now.
‘Doreen said he was a dirty bastard who didn’t know a good woman when he saw one. She cried then, and he tried to be a bit nicer, but she wasn’t having any of it. She gave him what for. Told him his precious Phyllis was the town bike and that he was an idiot to fall for it. Then he got even colder. He said: “That’s a lie, and you know it. I thought you were better than that, Doreen. Clearly I was wrong.” Rotten bastard. Doreen started bawling her eyes out, but I think he must have left, because I didn’t hear anything else till she came back to the house. I didn’t let on that I’d overheard, of course.’
I’d heard enough. I picked up the groceries and started to walk away, but Betty went on eagerly, following me.
‘She might’ve been lying about the girlfriend and Chad Buchowski,’ she said. ‘And I really can’t see that sourpuss as the town bike. Doreen used to lie a lot, to get what she wanted.’
She slid me a sideways look. ‘I guess she wanted Tom Lagrange. He certainly didn’t want her. Gee, he got mad. Scary, icy mad. Still, he didn’t kill her. Detective Munsie said he had an alibi and I shouldn’t go spreading rumours. I thought you should know, though. What with that story in the Mirror about you both.’
Later that afternoon I got off the tram and slipped into Kings Park. I wanted to walk through the bushland and gardens to clear my head in preparation for my meeting with Phyllis Gregory. As I drifted along the paths that crisscrossed the park, I wondered if Phyllis had told Tom she was meeting me today. I hadn’t heard from him since Wednesday night. When he kissed me. When I asked him for a kiss. My cheeks burned at the memory. While my reason was telling me to keep a distance from him, I’d practically thrown myself at him. Like Doreen.
I was inclined to discount much of what Betty said. She didn’t like Tom and she would put the worst interpretation on whatever she had heard that night. Could Tom be blamed if Doreen had a crush on him? I knew from my own experience how easy it was to be attracted to him. From what Betty had told me, he had been frank with Doreen about his feelings. What did he feel for me? Clearly he liked spending time with me, but what did it mean? Nancy Gangemi and Annie seemed so sure that he saw me as more than a friend. But Tom had a smile that would turn any woman’s head, including a middle-aged Sicilian woman’s. And Annie thought any man who glanced at you twice was interested in you; she was no judge of someone as complicated as Tom Lagrange. When I saw him with Phyllis, they looked right together. I didn’t like her, but clearly he did, whatever he felt for me.
I was jealous of Phyllis Gregory. I had to admit it to myself. I wished they were not engaged, wished that he was free. When we first started meeting I enjoyed just talking to him. I felt as if I was really thinking about issues and able to discuss them sensibly. Without making me feel stupid, he made me want to know more. It wasn’t just that, though. I knew that now. Dancing with him, talking to him in the restaurant and then that kiss, had woken feelings in me that I hadn’t experienced since Peter. His brother.
I almost groaned out loud as I walked through the dense, rather scrubby bushland. It was such a mess. No matter what Annie might say about the Bible, it made me feel strange to want Peter’s brother in that way.
I emerged on May Drive, with its avenue of oaks and plane trees planted after the Great War. Each tree had a plaque commemorating a serviceman who had died. Most had died young. Every one of them was someone’s son: many of the trees had been planted by mothers. They were husbands and brothers; fathers, fiancés and lovers. I wondered if Miss Filmer’s young man was commemorated in one of these plaques, and if she came to visit his tree.
You couldn’t get away from war. I came to the ridge that overlooked the Swan River. It was dominated by the Cenotaph. There were war memorials in every suburb of Perth because Australia had lost so many men in the Great War, but the Cenotaph was the biggest and the most important. It recorded the names of every man from Western Australia who had died in war. It would contain many new names when this war finished. Peter Manton Lagrange would be one of them.
I sat on a bench overlooking the river and tried to calm my thoughts. Peter had died far away from Australia, fighting for England. Now Australia itself was fighting for its life. How had it come to this? Was there something about humankind that made such conflicts inevitable? Why was history so often presented as a list of wars and battles, conquests and defeats? Was this a ‘just war’? It was a war we had to win. Like Tom, I was sure of that.
I looked around me. Lush green lawn stretched out to the edge of the escarpment, and the wide sweep of the Swan River sparkled below a clear sky. The lawn was full of picnickers, many in uniform, enjoying the peaceful sunny afternoon. I watched a family group, a father, mother and two young children, lolling on a big checked rug, the father in the uniform of the RAAF. As I watched, he stood, picked up his little boy and swung him around in the sunsh
ine as the child squealed in delight. The mother was nursing the baby. She was smiling.
I rose and left the family behind, walking quickly to the north-eastern edge of the park. Mount Street, a wide street that followed the line of the hill up to the park, lay in front of me. There were still a few graceful ‘gold boom’ houses, built in the early part of the century, standing alongside modern double-storey houses in mock Tudor style and crisply stylish Art Deco flats, all clinging rather precariously to the edge of Mount Eliza, with the sheer drop behind them to Mounts Bay Road and the river beyond.
As I drew closer to Phyllis’s apartment, I felt like a schoolgirl being sent to the headmistress for punishment. This was stupid. The worst thing that could happen was that she would be patronising. I was used to being patronised; I worked in a legal office. I doubted she would be rude. If she was, I could cope with that, too. My real fear was that she would ask about my feelings for Tom, that she would know if I were dissembling, that my face would give me away.
I would tell her the reason we met so often was because Tom was Peter’s brother, and that we spent our time talking about him. It was partly true.
The shifting shadows of the jacaranda trees that lined both sides of Mount Street made pretty patterns on the footpath. ‘Hillside’ was a red-brick block of six apartments built in the Art Deco style of the early thirties around a large courtyard. According to the letterboxes, Miss P. Gregory lived at number 4, which was one floor up. It overlooked the river, of course.
The risers on the staircase were decorated with Spanish tiles, lending a Mediterranean look that suited the sunshine and informality of Perth. On the terracotta tiles outside her blue front door were three big pots filled with colourful flowers. I knocked briskly. Phyllis opened the door dressed in a pair of exotic lounging pyjamas in apricot and green silk that seemed designed to emphasise her long legs. Her blonde curls were carefully dishevelled and her make-up was perfect. She looked fresh, stylish and beautiful.
A Stranger in my Street Page 17