A Stranger in my Street

by Deborah Burrows

  I suffered a couple of sleepless nights wondering what to do about Tom. At around three o’clock on Monday morning I was finally and irrevocably resolved to tell Tom that I couldn’t meet him any more. I immediately felt much better, and slept then, but by eight o’clock that morning my eyes were heavy and I felt dull and miserable and unsure.

  I dreaded running into Tom so it was an unpleasant surprise to find him waiting for me at the bus stop on the highway. It was even more surprising to see that he was obviously annoyed.

  ‘Damn Nicky,’ he muttered. ‘Damn Mirror. Phyll is furious. I spent most of yesterday calming her down.’

  I held out a hand to hail the trolleybus and Tom climbed on board with me. As the bus moved slowly along Mounts Bay Road, I watched the river rather than look at Tom’s face. The water was white-capped and choppy beneath a grey, overcast sky. Tom’s face was flushed and angry under stormy dark eyes. There were beads of perspiration on his forehead and upper lip and an obvious tremor in his hands.

  ‘I didn’t know you were still seeing Chad Buchowski,’ he said at last, his voice brusque.

  Was that it? ‘You don’t have to worry about me,’ I replied. ‘I have no intention of seeing him again.’

  He moved his gaze past me to look out of the window. ‘Good. We can discuss the rest of it at lunch,’ he said.

  Leaving the river behind, the bus turned up Mill Street and rounded the corner into St Georges Terrace. I had to grip the seat in front to stop from leaning into Tom. I gripped it very tightly.

  ‘Look, Tom,’ I whispered, ‘we should stop having lunch together. It’s too public. And now people will really be watching. Perth is a hotbed of gossip.’

  He waved a hand dismissively. ‘I’ll meet you outside the back of the court at one o’clock. We can talk about it then.’

  I didn’t say anything. We were almost at my stop and I got up. Tom stood, too, and followed me down the bus to the exit. He took my arm to help me down the steps, and didn’t let go when we were on the pavement. His hand was still tight on my arm as I waited to cross the Terrace.

  ‘Let go, Tom.’ I shook my arm, but he kept holding on.

  ‘I’ll let go when you agree to meet me for lunch.’

  ‘Let go, I’ll be late for work.’

  ‘Look at me, Meg.’

  His face was tense, but there was a vulnerable look in his eyes. They were so dark that I couldn’t tell where the pupil became the iris.

  ‘Please meet me for lunch.’ He closed his eyes for a beat, and when he opened them he seemed very weary. ‘Please, Meg. We need to talk.’

  ‘All right, I’ll meet you for lunch.’

  He let go of my arm and slipped into the crowd. I watched until he had completely disappeared. I felt slightly ill. Was I ever going to be able to say no to him and actually follow through with it?

  ‘Meg’s in the Mirror, our Meg is in the Mirror.’ Annie’s voice was a triumphant singsong as I walked into the office. I glared at her.

  ‘Stop it, Zac. The Mirror wouldn’t print the truth if you paid them.’

  ‘Don’t call me Zac if you value your life. But you know what I say: where there’s smoke . . . And it’s not just me. Our Mrs G. has noticed, too.’

  She started to stir an imaginary bucket with an imaginary mop. ‘That army fella, he look at Missa Megga like she dolce, like she a sweet little meringue. And Missa Megga, she look at him like he a great big lollipop she want to lick all over.’

  ‘Annie!’ Miss Filmer sounded scandalised. ‘There’s no need to be vulgar.’

  ‘Whatever would Miss Filmer know about those sorts of lollipops?’ Annie said, as we were recovering in the ladies’ room. We had fled in disarray, giggling uncontrollably.

  ‘Anyway, it’s all nonsense,’ I said.

  ‘He likes you, Meg. A lot. That’s obvious. Not just as a friend, and not just because you went out with his brother. I was watching him when you were dancing together. And he kept looking at you when you were dancing with other men. I saw him. Phyllis Gregory is certainly a looker, but so are you. And he was looking.’

  She lowered her voice, beckoning me closer. ‘I heard that she hangs on to him because she knows some weird sexual technique that enslaves men,’ she whispered. ‘It’s the same one that Mrs Simpson used to ensnare King Edward, so that he’d abdicate for her.’

  I groaned and shook my head slowly. ‘Wherever do you hear these things? That’s ridiculous.’

  ‘No, really. It’s true. They teach it at exclusive finishing schools.’

  Now I was laughing. Annie loved this kind of gossip.

  ‘Anyway, it’s all irrelevant. I’ve decided to stop meeting him. I’m telling him today.’

  Annie just smiled at the mirror and put on more lipstick.

  Tom brought chicken sandwiches and led the way to a bench under a jacaranda. It was almost at the end of its flowering and purple blossom carpeted the ground around us. Tom cut straight to the chase.

  ‘Look, Meg, I don’t want my actions to be dictated by some wretched gossip columnist. We’re friends, aren’t we? Why should we let them tell us what to do?’

  He reached towards me and I froze. I felt his hand in my hair. When he pulled back he was holding a jacaranda flower. Eventually my heart rate slowed.

  ‘Tom, it’s just causing gossip.’

  ‘Please, Meg.’ Although he looked a lot better than he had done earlier, he seemed very tired, and he still had that vulnerable look in his eyes, which was unsettling. I turned away from it to examine the flowers in the garden beside us. A black beetle was making its way up the stem of a canna lily that was the blood-red colour of Phyllis’s lipstick.

  I knew what I wanted to say. I had worked it all out in the early hours of the morning. I turned back to Tom, opened my mouth . . . and said something wholly unexpected.

  ‘Just because I left school at fourteen doesn’t mean that I’m stupid.’

  He looked shocked. ‘I know that, Meg.’

  ‘I was always top of my classes, even though I was put up a year. I could have been a teacher or gone to university, but there was no money. There was never any money. My father died when I was a baby and my mother had to work hard to raise us. People like you and Phyllis will never have any idea what she went through. I’m proud of my mother, proud of my family. My sisters and I, we had to start working as soon as we could.’

  My voice was high and I sounded a bit shaky. ‘I read a lot, you know. I might not know who A.E. Housman is, but I’ve read everything Dickens ever wrote, and Jane Austen, and I’m reading a lot of poetry now, too. It’s a joke in my family, how much I read.’

  ‘Meg.’ Tom sounded perplexed. ‘I’ve never thought you were stupid. Quite the contrary. Why do you think I like spending my time with you?’

  ‘I don’t know why you spend your time with me,’ I practically shouted at him. ‘Why do you spend so much time with me? I wish I knew.’

  But I rushed straight on, not giving him a chance to answer. My words were tumbling out without any thought now. I was telling him all the things I wished I’d been able to tell his ghastly fiancée.

  ‘I’m not a gold-digger, either. Peter and I never talked about money. We did simple things together and that was by choice.’

  Tom was sitting perfectly still, watching me. Letting me get it off my chest, I supposed.

  My voice cracked. ‘Peter wanted to marry me. Your family may not believe it, but he did. I said we were too young. I told him I’d wait for him and he said we’d be married when he came home.’

  I stopped talking and looked away from him, into the garden. The beetle had reached the top of the lily and was climbing down now, into its crimson centre.

  ‘This is Phyllis, isn’t it?’ Tom said, at last. ‘She’s said terrible things to you, hasn’t she?’

  ‘That wasn’t the worst. How could you not tell me about Peter and the English girl?’

  ‘Phyll told you about that? When?’

  I was r
eally angry now, and my voice was high and fast. ‘She invited me to tea on Saturday. Why didn’t you tell me about that girl? Because it’s a lie? Peter never slept with another girl and he certainly never had a child with her. How could anyone believe it for a minute?’

  My voice was shaking. ‘This is Peter we’re talking about. He was writing to me regularly, usually every day. Do you think he wouldn’t have told me if he’d fallen in love with another girl? He used to tell me if he went to dances and danced with other girls.’

  I closed my eyes for a moment and willed my voice to become steady. ‘If there is a girl who wrote such letters, she’s lying.’

  ‘There is a girl and, yes, you are right, she was lying,’ Tom said.

  I could hardly believe it. I opened my eyes, but his expression was unreadable.

  ‘Tell me.’

  ‘I heard the story when I came home from the Middle East in October of ’41. The whole thing seemed dubious to me. If Pete had gotten a girl pregnant he would have tried to marry her. And I was pretty sure he would have written to me about it. So, I wrote to Pete’s commanding officer and I got a response at once. He knew the girl because she’d tried the same thing when other Australian airmen had been killed. She had a baby and she needed money. My parents had sent her money. So had other grieving parents.’

  I felt faint with relief. It explained a lot. Now I understood why Phyllis had written me those curt letters insisting that Peter’s parents weren’t obligated to me, ‘emotionally or financially’. If she had only let me speak to them I could have made it clear that I wanted nothing from them. I could have made it clear to them that this other girl was lying.

  ‘The air force asked if we wanted the girl prosecuted. I said that we didn’t. Perhaps we should have, but there was a baby – someone’s baby – and it needed looking after. She’d sent photos and my mother thought there was a resemblance to Pete. Wishful thinking, of course. Hoping that some part of him still existed. I don’t think they wanted it to be a lie.’

  I could understand that. After Peter’s death I’d wished we hadn’t been so careful. Wished I’d become pregnant, so that some part of him would still exist.

  ‘Meg, if I’d known you then – known that Pete had you waiting for him here – I wouldn’t have believed it for a minute.’ He was watching me closely, holding my gaze. I wasn’t sure what he was trying to tell me.

  ‘I’m not so special,’ I said, looking down. ‘But Peter and I were in love. I would have known if there was another girl. Phyllis should have let me speak to your parents.’

  I shot a quick glance towards him. He was still looking at me with that unreadable expression. I realised how dear his face had become to me, how much I would miss him.

  ‘Tom, I think Phyllis said such horrible things to me because she’s upset about how much time you spend with me.’ I searched for the words I’d rehearsed in my mind. ‘I think that you like spending time with me because in some way it brings back Peter. I think we’ve helped each other deal with losing him. But it’s not fair on Phyllis.’

  As soon as I said it, I knew it was a lie. As if I cared about that blonde witch. It wasn’t fair on me.

  He didn’t say anything, so I went on. ‘You really have helped me. I’m going out again, and I can think of Peter now without crying. That’s wonderful, but . . . I really don’t think we should spend time alone with each other any more.’

  What was I hoping for? What did I want him to say?

  Not this. ‘You’re right, of course.’ His expression now seemed rather bleak. ‘It would be better for you not to see me. I’ve been selfish, as usual.’

  I shook my head. ‘How were you selfish? I’ve enjoyed being with you.’

  His smile was a travesty. ‘Yes. It’s been fun, hasn’t it? But you’re right. It has to end.’

  He closed his eyes for a few seconds, opened them and stood up. The wind had become fresher and he raised his good hand to hold his cap in place.

  ‘Goodbye, Meg,’ he said, and turned to walk away.

  He was going. How could he just walk away?

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘Wait!’ He stopped and turned towards me. Now I was angry again, but I wasn’t sure why. ‘So this is it?’

  ‘Meg, I’m not well, in many ways.’ His voice sounded strained. ‘Phyll looks after me. We’ve been together so many years now. She knows exactly what she’s getting.’

  ‘What are you trying to say?’

  His face was drawn and tired.

  ‘That you’re absolutely right,’ he answered. ‘I hope it all works out well for you.’

  ‘It will,’ I said. He was giving me what I had asked for and I was furious with him. ‘I’ll find someone. It’s such a fun place, Perth in wartime. Mike Sully is due back in a few weeks. He’ll do.’

  ‘Oh yes, that’s a very good idea,’ he said sarcastically.

  I stood up. ‘Goodbye, Tom.’ My voice was hard and cold; I was working to keep the tears at bay. I turned to look at him for the last time. He was watching the river and his lips had become very thin. He was hiding something. I knew it.

  ‘What is it you’re not telling me? There’s something you’re not telling me.’

  He shook his head. ‘Mike Sully seems to be a decent man. If you like him, you should see him.’ His voice was infuriatingly reasonable.

  ‘I don’t need your permission to go out with someone.’

  ‘Call it my blessing then.’ He turned to look at me. His voice was no longer reasonable. ‘See anyone you damn well like.’

  ‘Anyone but Tom Lagrange.’

  ‘This is a stupid discussion. You’re the one who wants to stop seeing me. Do what you want. Go out with anyone you want. It’s your life.’

  Bite your bum. That’s what Stan and Jimmy McLean would say. I stood up and glared at him. I could see the sinews in his right arm knot and tighten. His knuckles were as white as the bone beneath. But when he spoke, his voice was terribly calm and reasonable.

  ‘Meg, I’m a selfish brute, who should have stopped these lunches weeks ago. I hope that you find a man as good for you as Peter was. Goodbye.’

  He turned into the wind and walked away without looking back.

  Eighteen

  Annie threw me a sympathetic smile when I came back from lunch, but didn’t ask any questions. My brain felt sluggish and I found it hard to think of anything at all.

  As I sat in a parlour car on the way home, I could feel the thin needle-sharp pain of a headache begin behind my right eye, bringing with it the threat of worse to come. I had suffered often from blinding, debilitating headaches in the year after Peter died, but it had been a while since the last one. I put up my hand to rub my right temple. Thomas Lagrange and all men could go to blazes. If I’d been Catholic I would have gone on to the convent in Dalkeith and signed up on the spot.

  I opened the front door and wearily called out a greeting. Ma came into the hallway, and as soon as I saw her I knew something was wrong.

  ‘What’s happened?’ My voice was high and frightened. ‘Is it Joan? Mary?’

  Ma shook her head. ‘The plane taking Harvey Bradford back to New Guinea has been reported missing. Harvey is presumed dead.’

  We had parted as friends, Harvey and I, the day following the scene in the restaurant. When we met at a local café after work I had explained to him gently that I had never viewed our relationship as seriously as he had, but I’d enjoyed our time together. He apologised again for his behaviour, blaming the alcohol, and had the grace to admit that he’d also been writing to a girl called Connie. He was going to see if she wanted to make it more serious. I had wondered if it was Connie who had told him that I’d been seen around with Americans.

  ‘You know,’ he said, looking embarrassed, ‘that Captain Lagrange seemed a decent chap. He did what had to be done and left it alone. He’s a bit of a hero among the boys who were in the Middle East with him. He’s got a reputation for looking after his men – won a medal for some foolhardy
stunt in Syria that saved a lot of lives. The men always know who the better officers are. You stick with him, and you’ll be fine.’

  I had a torrid night. My brain whirled away into spirals of pain and nausea relieved only slightly by aspirin and cold compresses. I awoke with bleary eyes and the feeling of light-headedness that followed a bad headache.

  At work, a parcel was waiting for me. I opened it to find two books: The Poems of Wilfred Owen and The War Poems by Siegfried Sassoon. There was no note or card.

  I left the building with Annie at lunchtime, wondering if Tom would be waiting, but of course he wasn’t. I had nothing to say during lunch. The afternoon dragged. I had to stay late to finish some urgent work for Mr Goodley and it was with enormous relief that I put the cover on my typewriter, collected my things and left the office. As I was walking out of the building, clutching my books, I heard my name being called. It was Nancy and she had obviously been waiting for me.

  ‘Miss Meg,’ she said, patting my sleeve. ‘I need to speak to you, can we have a talk, please?’

  ‘Of course. What is it?’

  ‘We can’t talk here. Tomorrow. Can we talk tomorrow after work? Can you come to my house? Come for tea. Then we can talk.’

  ‘Of course. If it’s that important.’

  Her face was tight and anxious. ‘Oh, Miss Meg. It’s that important.’

  I assumed she needed help with more forms. I could do that easily. It would be good to feel useful to someone. I needed to be busy and useful. ‘I’d be glad to help, Nancy. I’ll meet you tomorrow. Here, at five o’clock.’

  That night I started reading the poems in the books Tom had sent to me. And I began to understand, just a little, what I had sometimes glimpsed behind Tom’s eyes.

  I heard nothing from Tom the following day. I told myself I had to accept that our friendship was really over. It had been my choice. It was the right thing to do. So why did I feel so utterly miserable?