‘Just you wait and see,’ he said. ‘And I won’t need your two pounds a week for a deposit.’
It was cold and dark when Sala rose next morning, and as she pulled on her beige sweater over the green-and-white check skirt, her fingers were so numb with the cold that she could hardly do up the buttons of her woollen jacket. She regretted having agreed to take the job, especially when she stood shivering at the tram stop half an hour later, her teeth chattering and her hands like blocks of ice.
‘Pretty cold today,’ the conductor said as he tore off her ticket. ‘Off to work, are you?’
She nodded miserably and pulled the lapels of the jacket closer around her.
‘Cheer up, love. It’ll get better,’ he said and continued on his way past the almost empty compartments calling, ‘Fez pliz.’
‘It’ll get better,’ she repeated several times, copying his inflections, and by the time she reached the Jewish Welfare Society she felt more cheerful.
She was met in the entrance hall by a dumpy woman with shifty eyes.
‘So you finally got ’ere, did ya? We get goin’ at six.’
Sala looked at her watch. It was ten past. ‘The tram,’ she stammered.
‘Never mind the excuses,’ the other woman cut in. ‘Tomorrow, be ’ere at six. I’m Beryl.’
She opened the closet where the mop, wringer pails, brooms and dusters were kept and banged tins, jars and bottles around. Sala didn’t know what any of them were for, and Beryl gabbled so fast that she couldn’t figure out what Oxydol, Johnson’s cream wax, Spic and Span, Bon Ami and Brillo were supposed to do.
‘Just follow me and watch,’ Beryl snapped, and proceeded to rush from room to room, dusting, polishing and mopping at a speed that left Sala bewildered.
‘Bloody foreigners,’ Beryl muttered. ‘You’d think at least they’d learn the lingo.’
‘Lingo?’ Sala asked, but with an exasperated gesture the woman marched ahead and she had to run to catch up with her.
Sala had no idea why the woman was so antagonistic, and couldn’t wait for her shift to end so she could get away. She was hurrying towards the front door when she almost collided with Franka Feldman.
‘How did you go?’ she asked and, seeing the answer in Sala’s face, she added, ‘Beryl’s not a bad soul. You’ll see, her bark is worse than her bite.’
Sala made a noncommittal reply and hurried out of the building. It was a little warmer now, and as she walked towards the tram stop she took her hands out of her pockets, undid the top button of her jacket and filled her lungs with cool, fresh air. The windows and roofs of the Austins and Vauxhalls parked along the road were dripping with condensation. Drops of moisture were hanging off the spear-shaped leaves of the eucalypts, and the edges of the wrought-iron balconies were gleaming in the morning sun.
As she sat down on the bench to wait for the tram the Australian woman sitting beside her asked where she came from. She nodded sympathetically when Sala told her, and said, ‘It must be so hard coming to a new country.’
Sala’s tram squealed to a stop, and as she hurried towards it the woman called out, ‘Good luck to you.’
Touched by the stranger’s unexpected kindness, Sala felt tears spring to her eyes.
Chapter 13
The night was damp and chilly, and Eda Kotowicz rubbed her cold-stiffened fingers in front of the kerosene heater. In the weak light of the single-bulb lamp, she began hemming a skirt, but as she pushed the needle into the thick woollen fabric, she saw neither thread nor cloth. Only yesterday her new friend Sala had said that Australia was a nation without a past, but Eda felt she had enough past to fill up the whole country.
As she turned the garment around and continued to hem, woven into the material she saw the phantom faces of those who had vanished into pillars of greenish smoke, faces that stared at her so reproachfully she had to look away.
Her grandmother, who always found a piece of chocolate for her; her grandfather, who told her wonderful stories about dybbuks and golems; the parents she’d never appreciated; the gentle husband she hadn’t loved enough; the little boy … Her hands trembled and she stared into space.
It would have been a relief to cry, but there was a band of steel tightening her chest and locking her emotions. Except for anger, which seeped through the veins and burned through the flesh. Sometimes she felt that this band was all that held her together, and if it ever loosened she would spill out of her skin.
Before coming to Sydney, she’d believed that a new country would mean a new beginning, but as she threaded the needle again and snapped off the cotton with her teeth, she reflected on her mistake. She’d left Poland because it didn’t feel like home any more. It had become a vast cemetery, with all her loved ones buried in its soil. But she’d had another reason for wanting to migrate to the other side of the world: consumed by jealousy and fear, she’d wanted to make sure that the Majewskis would never get their clutches into Hania again.
As she picked up another skirt and began to hem, she reflected that she didn’t belong here either, and probably never would. Her dream of starting a new life in Australia with a daughter who loved her seemed more improbable with every passing day.
She heard shouting outside and went out onto the verandah. It was only three boys kicking a ball, and calling out to one another. Hania and two other girls were playing hopscotch on the pavement.
As soon as they finished their game, Hania ran over to her mother. ‘We’re going to play in the paddock now, okay?’
‘What about your homework?’
Hania pulled a face. ‘I haven’t got much. I’ll do it later,’ she said, and before her mother could argue, she ran off with the others. With a sigh, Eda turned back to her sewing. The gap between them seemed to be widening, and she despaired whether they would ever understand each other.
In the afternoons after school, the vacant lot behind the lane became a playground for the children of Wattle Street. Overgrown with weeds and long grass, its uneven ground became the scene of rounders, cops and robbers or princesses and pirates, but their favourite game was acting out the movie they’d seen at the Star or the Coronet the previous Saturday afternoon.
‘Let’s do Little Women,’ Beverley said, and added quickly, ‘I bags be Meg.’
That started an argument because all the girls wanted to be Meg, but when Kay, a skinny girl with buck teeth and lank hair, wanted to be Amy, Beverley objected. ‘Hanny should be Amy, because she’s the prettiest,’ she said.
The role of Beth, who dies early in the story, was given to Beverley’s little sister, who always tagged along behind them.
When the girls’ roles were settled, they argued over who should be Jo’s suitor. When Kay suggested her older brother, Beverley shouted her down and suggested Ricky who lived around the corner.
‘He’s a show-off,’ Kay protested. ‘He always mucks up.’
Hania suggested Meggsie, and blushed bright red.
The other boys hooted and made derisive noises as Meggsie reluctantly left off being Biggles and stopped shooting down Messerschmitts to take part in the soppy story the girls were acting out.
‘Hubba, hubba! Make sure you get to kiss your girlfriend!’ Ricky yelled, pointing at Hania.
The girls couldn’t remember what happened first, Meg’s marriage, Beth’s death or the publication of Jo’s book, and while they were arguing about it Meggsie sneaked back to his mates, who let him be the Prisoner of Zenda and proceeded to whip him with a bunch of tall grasses they’d tied together.
After the games were over, Hania was sitting on the grass weaving clover and dandelions into a garland when Meggsie planted himself in front of her.
‘I know where there’s a haunted house,’ he said. ‘Want to see it?’
Her heart started thumping. ‘Is it far away?’
‘Nah.’
She knew her mother wouldn’t let her go but, emboldened by the success of her deceit at the Sunday school picnic, she decided not to as
k. Her mother would think she was still playing in the paddock.
They ran towards Oxford Street and when the Bondi tram swung around the bend, he said, ‘Come on, quick, jump on.’
She was already on the tram when she realised she hadn’t brought any money.
‘It’s a cinch,’ he said. ‘When the conductor comes into our compartment, we’ll pretend we’re getting off, and then we’ll get on again when he’s gone.’
Hania felt uneasy. She hadn’t envisaged catching trams or hitching free rides, but she didn’t want Meggsie to think she was a scaredy-cat.
The tram clattered towards the beach and Meggsie craned his head out of the window as they passed a poster of a man in a red cape and black top hat pasted crookedly onto a wall.
‘That’s Morris the Magnificent,’ he told Hania as he jiggled around in his seat. ‘He’s going to do the bullet trick. It’s so dangerous that a magician once got shot doing it, and dropped dead on the stage in front of everybody. I’m saving up so I can see it. I can’t wait!’
They jumped off the tram at North Bondi. At the end of the beach, Meggsie pointed to a flat rock at the base of the headland. ‘I used to come here with my dad,’ he said.
‘Where is your dad?’ Hania asked.
He shrugged. ‘Dunno. Mum said he shot through like the Bondi tram and never came back. Where’s your dad?’
‘He’s dead. He was killed during the war.’
Meggsie dropped his voice to a reverential whisper. ‘Was he a soldier?’
She didn’t know what to say. It was impossible to explain about round-ups, concentration camps and gas chambers, and she didn’t want to try. It was simpler just to nod.
The sun was about to set and the sandstone cliff glowed with a honey-coloured light.
‘It’s up there,’ Meggsie pointed. Suddenly he stopped walking and leaned against the rock, biting his lip. ‘It’s just my head,’ he said. ‘It hurts sometimes.’
Alarmed by his pale face, she suggested going back, but he shook his head. ‘I’ll be right in a minute.’
It was an easy climb to the spot where the ground flattened out and was covered in dense bushes. With their leathery foliage and sharp serrated leaves, the plants looked so tough that they seemed to dare you to touch them. Even their flowers had menacing shapes: the spiky brushes of the banksias and the blood-red grevilleas like spiders. The wildflowers looked softer: tiny pink flowerets of diosma with their dry bushland smell, and creamy flannel flowers. When she touched the petals, they felt like suede.
‘They reckon the Abos left some cave drawings or carvings somewhere up here,’ he said.
‘Abos?’
‘You know, blackfellows.’
She frowned. Apart from Bennelong, who was Captain Phillip’s guide, the teachers never mentioned the Aborigines. She’d thought they all lived in the desert or in the bush, and was astonished to hear that they’d once lived in Bondi.
‘Get down and don’t make a sound,’ Meggsie whispered. ‘The house is just over there, past those bushes. We don’t want him to see us.’
‘I thought the place was empty,’ she whispered back.
‘He’s there all right,’ Meggsie hissed. ‘Comes back at night. Some nights I used to see a light flickering in one of the windows when I came with my dad.’
Hania felt the skin prickling on the back of her neck.
They crept forward until they saw it, a simple timber cottage with a steeply sloping roof, behind two windswept Norfolk pines.
Hania hung back. ‘I’m not going in,’ she said, and flopped onto the sandy ground. ‘What if he’s there?’
Meggsie laughed. ‘You wouldn’t see him even if he was,’ he said. ‘Nosey’s too smart to let anyone see him. Come on, I dare you!’
While they crouched behind the trees, he told her about the man who’d once lived there. ‘He had one of those horse cabs, but one day the horse kicked him in the face and smashed his nose, and after that he looked so scary that nobody would get in his cab, so he couldn’t earn any money and had to become a hangman.’
Hania shuddered and, pleased with the effect of his story, Meggsie told her more stories about the hangman. Like the weird way he went hunting for sharks, hooking the shark with some bait, wading in and grabbing its tail, and then dragging it out of the water by a rope he’d fixed to the horse’s tail. His dad had told him that Nosey’s horse was so used to going to the pub that it used to trot there by itself, with a pannikin fixed to the saddle. The publican would fill it with beer, and the horse would trot all the way back to Nosey.
‘Why didn’t Nosey get the beer himself?’ Hania asked.
‘He didn’t like people staring at him. His kids stopped going to school because the other kids made fun of them ’cause their dad was a hangman and didn’t have a nose.’
‘That was mean,’ Hania said. ‘It wasn’t their fault.’
‘Kids at school laugh at me because my dad ran off and my mum’s a barmaid,’ Meggsie said, then blushed. ‘I’ve never told anyone that before.’
Hania stole a glance at him. ‘If I ever hear them making fun of you, I’ll tell them off,’ she said.
Meggsie scrambled to his feet and brushed the sandy soil off his legs. ‘Come on, let’s have a look at the house.’
Hania hesitated. The sun was about to sink below the horizon and the light was fading. She wanted to go home but she didn’t want him to think she was a sissy. Before she could speak, he grabbed her hand. ‘Race you up there.’
They peered through the broken window of the abandoned cottage. Most of the floorboards were rotting, and bits of corrugated iron lay against the mildewed walls. On the weathered sill of a small window stood a dust-encrusted beer bottle, and the enamel sink was piled high with blackened pots, rusting knives and grimy ladles.
Hania looked down and saw that a plant with lush green leaves had taken root in a hole in the floorboards and had pushed its way into the abandoned cottage. She was about to point it out to Meggsie when something crashed down, and she screamed. A rusty frying pan had toppled off the pile in the sink.
‘I thought it was the ghost,’ she said, still shaking.
‘Maybe it was.’
He was teasing but the hair stood up on the back of her neck again. ‘I want to go now,’ she said.
Meggsie didn’t reply. He was sitting on the doorstep, holding his head in his hands.
‘It’s my head again,’ he mumbled. ‘Feels like it’s going to split open.’
She looked outside. It was already dark, and there was no one around. Meggsie’s mother would be home from the pub by now, and her mother would know she wasn’t with the other children in the paddock. Scared and nervous, she sat down beside him.
‘Shall I go home and tell your mum you’re sick, so she can come and get you?’
‘Nah, Mum’ll worry. I’ll be okay.’
As they stumbled down the slope, Hania wasn’t sure what she dreaded more: getting Meggsie home on the tram, or facing her mother and explaining where she’d been.
Chapter 14
As soon as he heard the tapping, Meggsie opened his eyes and felt the throbbing in his head again. Ever since the headaches had started, he hadn’t been sleeping as soundly as usual. On these nights, when the house was quiet and dark, he often thought about his father, but that afternoon on the cliffs with Hanny, he couldn’t bring himself to talk about him. It was all too complicated, the roller-coaster of fun and fear that his home life had been when Dad was there.
In the good times, he and Dad would go to the rock pool near Ben Buckler at night, and he’d hold the hurricane lamp while his dad set lobster traps. Sometimes they’d kick a ball around the paddock. But then there were dark days when Dad staggered home late, singing at the top of his voice and stinking of beer, and then the shouting would start, and he’d lie in bed and hear plates crashing and chairs being thrown across the room, shouting, then a terrible silence followed by his mother’s curses and screams. Next morning she�
��d have a dark bruise on her cheek or a dark ring around her eye and pretend she’d had a fall, and he hated his father and couldn’t look at him, especially when he saw him kissing and cuddling her.
Then one day Dad didn’t come home and Meggsie couldn’t figure out if he was relieved, sad, angry or disappointed. He was glad that the turmoil was over, and at last he could look after his mum and be the one she could rely on, but at the same time he missed his father and felt abandoned because his dad had never tried to see him after that.
The tapping grew louder and he slid out of bed, padded across to the window and pulled aside one corner of the curtain. It was dark outside, and a crescent moon floated in and out behind black clouds. The tapping came from the house next door, and when he looked out he saw a light shining from a small window at the back.
Perhaps their mysterious neighbour was a spy, tapping out Morse code messages to the Commies and passing them secret information. The more he thought about it, the more plausible it seemed. For one thing, there was the man’s weird behaviour, the way he never spoke to anyone but seemed to melt into the air and disappear like a phantom. All that had to mean something.
Remembering the pact he’d made with Hanny and Beverley to keep an eye on Mr Emil, Meggsie had stopped Ted Browning in the street the day before and asked if he thought the man could be a spy. Ted had listened attentively, and then said with a serious face, ‘I’d watch him if I were you. For all we know, he could be plotting to overthrow the government.’
This was all the encouragement Meggsie needed. Ted might even write an article about him — how a twelve-year-old boy from Bondi Junction had risked his life to capture a Commie spy. That would stop the bullies at school making fun of him because his dad had run away and his mum was a barmaid. He could already hear them saying, ‘Gee, Meggsie, I never knew you were so brave. Can I be your friend?’ And he’d say —
A sudden bang ended his reverie. Something heavy must have crashed to the ground next door. This was it. Time for action. He pulled on the Fair Isle jumper his gran had knitted for his tenth birthday. It was too tight now but he refused to pass it down to Ray because it was his favourite. He wished she’d knit him another one, but Gran hadn’t been around for quite a while and, to hear Mum talk, it didn’t sound like she’d be coming any time soon. If only he had a normal home life like the other kids who had a dad, grandparents and lots of cousins, so that his mum wouldn’t have to be a barmaid and he wouldn’t have to do paper rounds every day and be laughed at. His mum said it didn’t matter what anyone said, if you were a decent person you could hold your head up and take no notice; but it was all right for her, she was grown up and didn’t have to put up with bullies.
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