by Annie Seaton
Laughter and chatter filled the air as the women prepared salads and then laid damp tea towels over the platters as they were filled up, but Mama’s lilting accent rose above the other voices and her eyes narrowed as Lily walked across to her. ‘Who’s watching the little ones?’
‘Tatiana is,’ Lily replied.
‘As long as someone’s keeping a close eye on that Billy.’ Her mother reached under the long bench at the back of the tent and pulled out two kerosene tins. ‘Seeing you’re here, you can help us out. Take these around to the spring and fill them up, please, Lil.’
Lily frowned. She had packed a book in her bag and had been looking forward to finding a secluded corner and reading now that the kids were occupied. ‘Both of them?’
‘Yes, both of them. And no sneaking off to read your book until after the meal is served and cleaned up. There’s plenty for you to do.’ Her voice was impatient. ‘I don’t know why you even had to bring a book anyway.’
‘Do you really need the water now? I can get it later.’
‘Yes, we do.’ Mama’s eyes narrowed further as she looked past her.
‘I can only carry one tin at a time.’ Lily knew there was a grumble in her tone but knowing Mama, this was a job for a job’s sake. They didn’t need all that water here just to wet a few tea towels.
Idle hands and all that. Her mother was the mistress of proverbs. She had one for every occasion.
‘Can I help?’
Lily swivelled around. Jack was standing behind her.
‘Your dad had to go in the truck to collect some more timber for the fire, so I said I’d come over and see if I could help.’
‘Mama, this is Jack. He and his friends from the air force base are staying in our huts tonight,’ Lily said as Mama’s frown deepened.
‘And your dad has kindly offered to organise for the steamer to collect us at the end of the week.’ Jack turned to Mama. ‘Now, please let me help, Mrs Ellis. What would you like me to do?’
‘You certainly can help, Jack. Lil will show you where the spring is.’ Her mother handed the empty tins to him. ‘Thank you. Now, get a wriggle on, Lil. I’ve got plenty more work for you to do. No dawdling, please.’
Lily tried to keep the smile off her face as she and Jack left the tent. Her mother had eagle eyes and she knew that they would be on them as they walked along the beach to the spring. It wasn’t often that a young man paid attention to her.
‘Lil, wait!’
Uh oh. Lily turned slowly at her mother’s command. ‘Yes, Mama?’
‘After you fill the tins, collect the kids, and then Dad can do the photo as soon as he gets back.’
‘The photo!’ A smile spread across Lily’s face. ‘Oh, yes. I nearly forgot.’
After they’d collected the water and the requisite number of tea towels were soaking—Jack had laughed when Lily started quoting Mama’s favourite proverbs—the whole family gathered together for the annual family photo. Jack stayed with them while Lily and Tat walked along the beach until they found a suitable patch of sand, and Lily caught her mother watching them closely. Her mother treated her as though she was a child. If she ever found out that she’d been out in the streets of Brisbane on a Saturday night and fending off the attention of grown men in uniform, Lily knew she’d never be allowed off the island again.
Dad retrieved his six-twenty Box Brownie camera and loaded a fresh roll of film as Mama kicked off her shoes and left them on the grass. As usual, she was the only one wearing shoes. Kat was doing cartwheels on the grass as Lily and Tat smoothed the sand with the palms of their hands. Jack stood to the side and when Lily glanced up at him from beneath her eyelashes, he sent her a sweet smile.
‘Be careful, Tat.’ She jumped to her feet and tugged Tatiana back from the sand. Her sister was gawping at Jack and, knowing how clumsy she was, she would probably walk on the freshly smoothed surface.
‘We’re ready, Dad.’
Their father stood with the sun behind him as the family lined up in order of age.
Mama, Lil, Tat, Goat, Robbie and Kat. It was a memory that would stay with Lily for the rest of her life.
The annual ritual of the Ellis family footprints in the sand.
The war must be worrying her more than she realised because her throat closed and tears pricked at her eyes. Lily fought back the sob that rose in her chest and put her hand to her mouth as they waited. What if Dad had to go to fight the war too? This might be the last photo he ever took of their family.
‘Rightio,’ said Dad as he looked down into the camera box. ‘Lil, smile. Stop looking miserable. And take your hand away from your face.’
‘Wait, sir.’ Jack’s voice interrupted and Dad looked up. ‘Would you like me to take it, so you can be in the photograph too?’
‘That is very thoughtful of you, son. Just let me do this bit and then you can take a photo of all of us all together. We don’t usually do that.’
Jack smiled and stepped back as Dad held the camera. Mama stepped forward and delicately placed one slender foot in the sand before stepping back slowly with a satisfied nod. ‘Lil,’ she said. ‘Your turn.’
Lily stepped forward and placed her right foot carefully next to the imprint in the sand that her mother had made. Her voice shook as she stepped back. ‘Tat.’ She ignored the tear that rolled down her cheek, not wanting to draw attention to herself by wiping it away.
Tat followed suit and the stepping forward onto the sand continued until the small prints of Goat and Robbie, and finally Kat completed the line. With a fist pump and a cry of satisfaction, Dad took the annual photo.
‘A bloody beauty, that one!’ he said triumphantly.
‘Boyd Ellis, watch your language.’ But the smile on Mama’s face took the sting from her rebuke as Dad handed the camera to Jack and they stood in a line for him to take the family photo.
* * *
As it turned out, there was only room for two extra on the Ellis boat that night, so Jack’s friend, Charlie, went back to South Molle. Wally Bauer was home on leave for Christmas from the RAAF and would bring Charlie across the Passage to Whitsunday Island the next morning.
‘Liliana. Tatiana. Come here please.’ On the way back to the island, Mama beckoned them to the front of the boat. Katarina had gone to sleep with her head on their mother’s lap, and Goat and Robbie yawned as they sat on the floor, their backs resting on the wheelhouse. Jack and Roger were up the back with Dad as he steered the boat past Pioneer Rocks.
‘Yes, Mama?’ Lily kept her gaze ahead as the launch rounded the rock and headed south towards home.
‘It’s past time I had a talk to both of you.’
‘What about, Mama?’ Tatiana sat down as their mother made room for them.
‘About boys.’
‘Oh, not now.’ Lily stood until their mother pointed to the empty seat.
‘Time and tide wait for no one.’ Mama patted the empty bench beside her.
‘What does that mean?’ Tat asked.
‘It means if you don’t prepare for the future, you will fall behind.’ Liliana rolled her eyes and added under her breath, ‘Mama’s going to make sure we don’t.’
‘I’m pleased to hear you learned something at that boarding school.’ Mama’s hearing was as acute as her sight was shrewd.
Her stern lecture to Lily and Tat took up most of the trip. Once when she looked away from the girls as they approached the island, Lily rolled her eyes at Tat; their mother was so prudish she didn’t even use the word ‘sex’. The one time she’d said intercourse to Lily when she’d had her first talk about ‘becoming a woman’, poor Mama had blushed for days after. Sometimes, Lily wondered how she and her siblings had ever been conceived. But the talk of the moment was more about trust and having respect for themselves. As women of course.
‘You have been taught how to act like ladies, and I expect your behaviour to reflect that.’ She looked to the back of the boat where Dad was pointing out the fishing marks to Jack and Ro
ger. ‘At no time over the next two days will either of you be alone with any of those boys—young men. Is that clear?’
‘Yes, Mama,’ they responded in unison. Lily wondered what Mama would say if she knew about the activities of some of her friends at All Hallows’ School. If Amelia did need a sanctuary, it certainly wouldn’t be here on their island.
‘Tatiana. Go and sit with your brothers please.’
Lily knew there was more to come, and she tried not to roll her eyes. The gaps in her sex education—what she hadn’t picked up from reading the novels that Peg had given her—had been filled in when she’d listened to the girls in the dormitory each night, but it looked like she was about to get the next instalment from her mother.
Mama smoothed her hand over Lily’s hair. ‘You can take that look off your face right now.’ Even though her words sounded cross, they were accompanied by a smile. ‘You’re old enough now, Lil. And you have grown into a young woman over the past couple of years. A very beautiful young woman.’
‘There’s no need to talk about that, Mama. We learned it all at school.’
Her mother took her chin gently in her hand and Liliana met her soft gaze reluctantly. ‘You might have learned about the physical aspects of that’—Mama’s eyes crinkled in a rare smile—‘but there’s more to it than that, my sweet. There’s one thing I want you to always remember.’
‘Yes?’ Lily tried to keep the scowl from her face.
‘When you meet somebody, I want you to always remember this. Love is unselfish. True love, I mean. And the respect for a woman should be considered over the pleasures of the moment. A good man will always hold to that.’
This time the heat ran up Lily’s neck and into her cheeks. No matter what detailed conversations the girls had in the dorm, this was her mother, for goodness sake.
‘Yes, Mama,’ she muttered. ‘I need a drink of water.’ She jumped up and headed into the cabin and spent the rest of the journey helping Dad steer the boat towards home.
CHAPTER
10
27 December, 1941
When Charlie arrived on the Bauers’ boat the next morning, Lily and Tatiana met him at the jetty. There was no sign of life at the palm huts where Jack and Roger had bunked down last night. Charlie waved to the crew of the boat as it pulled away into the channel and turned to the girls with wide eyes.
‘This is where you live? You actually live on a tropical island?’
Tatiana nodded. ‘Yep. All our lives. All of us kids were born up there at the house. Mrs Pentecost, the midwife in Prossie, came over to help every time.’ She laughed at Charlie’s expression. ‘Dad can handle the goats but not the kids. Get it?’
‘Really, Tat.’ Lily rolled her eyes and her tone was bored. ‘Grow up.’
‘No, it’s fine.’ Charlie’s smile was infectious. ‘I want to know all about the island and how you live. It’s so much bigger than South Molle. This island is huge.’ He looked past them up to the volcanic peak that rose up behind Sawmill Bay. ‘I come from Brisbane, but I’ve never even been to Moreton Bay. This is just … just amazing. Where are the other lads?’
Lily pointed to the palm huts that lined the shore. ‘They’re in the first one over there. I haven’t seen them this morning. Maybe they’ve gone for a walk around the island. It’s late.’
Charlie laughed. ‘Not bloody likely.’ A flush ran up into his cheeks. ‘Oh, sorry. Not blooming likely. They’ll both be snoring in there. Come on, we’ll go in and wake them up.’
Tat went to follow him, but Lily put her hand on her sister’s arm. ‘No. We’ll wait here. Mama put some bread and fruit in there for them last night. When they’ve eaten, we’ll take you for a walk and show you the island.’
Charlie left them on the path and carried his kit bag down to the small hut. Boyd and Alexandra had thatched the huts from palm leaves, and the openings that substituted for windows had been covered with hessian sacks.
‘Hey, you layabouts! I’m here and I’m ready for action.’ Charlie pounded on the wooden door at the front as he called out. ‘Come on, you blokes, get up and going.’
Lily waited until the door opened. Jack stood there yawning, his chest bare, and his hair tousled. That strange, shaky feeling ran down her legs and she looked away.
‘Come on, Tat. We’ll go and let the goats out while they get themselves organised.’ She couldn’t believe that they were still asleep at this time of day. The sun had been up for about three hours.
Early to bed and early to rise, Mama said. And that was the way the Ellis family lived. By another of Mama’s proverbs.
‘Charlie.’ She pointed up the hill when he turned to her. ‘Come up to the farm when you’re all ready. We’re going up to the goats.’
And make sure Jack wears a shirt.
As per their father’s insistence that they entertain Jack, Roger and Charlie, and Mama’s decree about appropriate behaviour, Liliana and Tatiana spent the rest of the morning showing off their island home.
They swam by the jetty after the boys appeared, and then walked along the shore from Sawmill Bay to Joe’s Beach, heading for the bush when the water was too high to walk along the sand and mud flats. The bush was crisscrossed with myriad paths from years of the children playing, and the wider tracks had been cleared by the sawmill workers making a track to bring the logs down to the water for floating to Bowen in years gone by.
‘What’s all this?’ Jack asked, pointing to some old rails on the side. Tatiana was leading the way, chattering nineteen to the dozen, with Charlie and Roger laughing every few minutes. Probably being polite, thought Lily. Tat’s jokes were woeful, although the boys seemed happy to listen to her. She and Jack were about fifty yards behind them as they headed for the beach a couple of miles north of the house. Lily loved the history of the island and enjoyed talking about it. After living at school in Brisbane, her appreciation for the beautiful place she lived in had grown, although she knew she would leave one day—after the war was over—to see the world.
‘Left over from the timber days. Our island is a timber reserve. When Bowen was established in 1861, the need for timber for housing brought timber-getters to the Whitsundays. The hoop pine’—she pointed to the towering pines on the side of the mountain—‘is used for building houses and furniture. The first timber was logged here on our island. We own one hundred acres where the house and the palm huts are, and where Dad grows the crops, but from that low fence we crossed at the first gully where the creek came out, all that is a timber reserve owned by the government. It’s leased to a timber company in Townsville, but they haven’t worked here for a couple of years now.’
Jack shook his head. ‘I can’t believe that they came way out here onto the islands for timber. How did they get it to the mainland?’
‘They floated it behind a launch all the way to Bowen, and then it was offloaded.’
‘We used to have a mill at our farm before Dad decided it was too much work for little return,’ Jack said.
‘There’s a few mills scattered around the islands, if you want to see a working one on one of your visits.’ Lily was surprised by the depth of his interest and she was enjoying telling him about her island. ‘Over at Woodcutter Bay on Hook Island, and on Long Island at Happy Bay. I’m sorry, I’m probably boring you.’
Jack shook his head. ‘No, it’s interesting. Our timber was all on flat land. How the heck did they get it off these hills and down to the shore?’ He stopped and looked up at the steep hill that led up to the peak. ‘It would have been an engineering nightmare.’
‘Tat, we’ll meet you at the beach. I’m going to show Jack the old sawmill workings,’ Lily called out. It didn’t seem to bother her sister. Tat waved and the three quickly disappeared out of their sight. Lily held her hand out to Jack.
‘Come with me.’ She knew she was disobeying Mama’s decree, but they had behaved like genteel young ladies so far and she would continue to do so. No matter how free the girls’ upbringing had be
en, and how much they could run wild on the island, they respected their mother and they usually accepted her word as law. Lily had got to know Jack already and it was obvious to her he was from a good family. She knew instinctively she could trust him. She’d held out her hand without thinking about it first. The warmth that travelled up her arm was only because it was getting hot as they walked up the hill.
‘The pine trees grow best on the leeward side of the island and you can see the terrain is rough and steep.’ Lily waited till they reached a gap in the bush and pointed to the peak that towered over the middle of the island. ‘That’s Whitsunday Peak. Apparently, it was a lot more heavily timbered in the old days and they say the timber-getters cleaned it out. Do you reckon you’d all be up for a climb to the top later? It’s an amazing view and it will show what it looks like from the air.’ She realised what she’d said, and heat ran into her cheeks. ‘Oh, how stupid of me. You’ve probably flown over here already.’
‘I have but it was cloudy.’ Jack squeezed her hand. Holding his hand seemed natural now, and Lily wasn’t self-conscious anymore.
Lily kept walking, trying to ignore the shaky feelings in her legs. She’d climbed up here to the old sawmill hundreds of times but this was the first time her legs had been unsteady.
Maybe it was the heat.
‘Tell me about the plane you fly in. What do you do?’
Lily turned onto the old sawmill path. The bush had thickened since she’d last been up here, and the light was blocked by the thick canopy above them.
‘I’m in a Catalina squadron. It’s a flying boat.’