Thirty minutes later, the train has barely gathered speed before it slows again to stop at Woodend. As they wait at the station he remembers the Avenue of Honour, the names of the fallen soldiers he chanted in time to the push of his pedals, as if to ward off ghosts. Forty minutes of hard-going to get to Woodend each day. He looks out at the flickering fence line and the ranges in the distance, thick with trees. He stretches out his legs. It’s all behind him. What do a few extra miles on a bicycle matter now?
After Digger’s Rest the holdings lie closer together, and by the time they stop at Footscray the city’s swallowed them up. There are many tracks now, crossing and merging, a network of comings and goings. So many sidings and railway huts, so many brick walls and bridges. He thinks of Robbie Cameron’s electric train set: he’s now inside it, a painted figure in a carriage, the great wide world passing by his window.
At Spencer Street Station they go down the ramp and out through the exit to Bourke Street, carrying their suitcases. They know where to go, more or less — Mr Neville has given them directions — but the unfamiliarity of the city puts hesitancy in every step. From Bourke they must head to Elizabeth Street, where they’ll board their tram. ‘A bit swisher than Mollison Street, isn’t it?’ his mother says, her hand to her hat in the stiff southerly breeze. He nods his agreement. The footpaths are wide, the shop windows more confident than those at home, but what he notices most is the grey of the sky, and the clouds banked low where he imagines the horizon to be. Strange that he can’t actually see the horizon, no matter which way he looks.
The trams are something else again, rolling stolidly past them down the straight Melbourne streets. To think he’ll take one every day to the university and back: it seems almost miraculous. And when the tram that moves along Elizabeth Street is close enough for him to make out its sign — No. 19 Nth Coburg — things fall into place, heavily, insistently. His stomach drops. It’s real. A tram ride is one thing, but here is his new life beginning. ‘This is ours,’ his mother says, picking up her suitcase. He sees the strain in her arm, the awkward angle of her shoulder, and tries to take the case from her but she refuses. ‘It’s just an overnight bag, as light as a feather. Yours is heavy enough by itself.’
The tram sweeps them along to the city edge and into a grand, tree-lined avenue. ‘University!’ the conductor shouts so suddenly that his mother jumps in her seat. ‘This stop for the university.’
They both lean forward into a vista of sandstone and leaves. ‘It looks beautiful, Dom,’ his mother says, her voice reverential. ‘A real place of learning.’
‘Yeah, it looks all right.’ The words are thick in his mouth. Beautiful? He’s never heard his mother talk that way before.
On they are taken, down the one straight road, treeless now and criss-crossed with overhead wires, past milk bars and billiard halls, past windows crammed with wedding gowns, and factories spewing smoke. ‘Oh, look at that,’ his mother says, at least once a minute.
‘Next stop, Bell Street,’ the conductor announces. His mother stands and straightens her hat. The sudden sway of the tram unbalances her and she lurches forward. Dominic puts out his arms to catch her and for a moment she leans into him, her hands against his chest. He blushes with the strangeness of it all. The conductor approaches with a practised gait. ‘You right, love? Getting off here?’
‘Yes.’ His mother stands straight again. ‘This is our stop.’
The conductor picks up his mother’s case. ‘This weighs a ton. Out you get then, and I’ll hand it down to you.’
‘Thank you,’ says his mother, poker-faced. Dominic can’t get off quickly enough.
Seventy-two Rose Street is a brick bungalow, painted white, with a privet hedge and a tiled verandah. His mother stands on the footpath and inspects the garden. ‘Neat enough,’ she says, as if to herself, ‘but it could do with a bit more colour.’ He senses his mother’s tacit approval, which reinforces his own, more readily given. ‘Let’s see how it is inside,’ his mother says. She steps onto the verandah and rings the bell.
At the sound of footsteps, heavy and slow, Dominic’s palms start to sweat. He wipes them against his trousers. His mother coughs daintily, putting her hand to her mouth.
Mr and Mrs Neville, or ‘Bert’ and ‘Dot’ as they immediately insist upon, bring them inside to the smells of mutton fat and lavender, the cuckoo of a clock in the hall. The Nevilles stand in the front room as solid as oak trees. Dot wears her apron and slippers. ‘We’ve never had a boarder,’ she confesses to Dominic’s mother. ‘But there’s lots of room now that Trevor and Trudy have both married and Bert’s mum has passed.’ She turns to Dominic. Her eyes are red-rimmed, perhaps from recent crying. ‘But don’t worry, love, she didn’t die in the bungalow. She was in the house by then.’
Silence. Dominic reddens and looks at his feet, waiting for his mother to ask about Trevor and Trudy, or old Mrs Neville, recently departed.
‘Perhaps we could see the bungalow?’ his mother asks instead.
Bert takes his pipe from his mouth. ‘It’s nothing flash.’
Dot concurs. ‘It’s not the Ritz. But Bert gave it a new coat of paint just last week, and I’ve cleaned out all the cobwebs.’
‘It’ll keep the rain off, anyhow,’ Bert says. Husband and wife continue to stand immobile, looking expectant and vaguely pleased, as if the bungalow tour has already been completed and, despite their protestations about the plainness of the place, compliments from their guests are sure to be forthcoming.
Dominic’s mother picks up her suitcase. ‘So, Mr Neville, if you could kindly lead the way?’
Dot Neville has drifted back to the kitchen while Bert moves about in his shed — the sound of rattling paint tins reaches Dominic through the bungalow window. He unpacks his suitcase while his mother opens drawers and sniffs in corners. ‘Cleaned out all the cobwebs? I can see one she’s missed.’ She stands, hands on hips. ‘I’ll ask them for a broom.’
‘No, please. I’ll do it later. Don’t ask them now.’ He changes tack, to distract her. ‘It’s big and airy, don’t you think? And it looks out onto the garden.’
His mother sits by him on the bed. ‘It will be cold in the winter. Windows on three sides.’
‘I’ll wear more clothes. An extra blanket on the bed.’
She folds her hands in her lap and looks at him. ‘Yes, of course you’ll manage.’ She goes to her suitcase. ‘I’ve brought a fruitcake. Leave it here, in your room. It’s not for them.’ From the case she also brings out a thick brown-paper parcel. ‘This is for you, too, for your studies.’
He takes it from her and carefully peels away the paper. An Elementary Textbook of Australian Forest Botany by Cyril Tenison White. It’s heavy on his thighs. He opens it at random. Melaleuca fulgens, melaleuca megacephala.
His mother speaks quickly. ‘I telephoned the university and told them my son would be studying botany and I needed advice about textbooks. The helpful woman on the switchboard put me through to the professor’s assistant, who told me that this is a very useful reference.’
He thinks of her on the telephone, sitting in the hallway on that old wicker stool, waiting to be transferred to the professor’s office. He thinks of her carrying her case all the way along Bell Street, the drag of it on her shoulder. ‘It must have cost a lot.’
‘It doesn’t matter.’
‘It’s wonderful. It really is. Thank you, Mum.’
He puts the book beside him on the bed. Outside, Bert Neville leaves the shed with a pair of hedge clippers and a hammer.
His mother closes her suitcase. ‘I think I’ll go home. This afternoon.’
‘But you were going to stay the night.’
‘There’s no need. I can catch the five o’clock train.’
He knows the need she speaks of is all to do with railway timetabling. Still, he feels a sad and lonely relief. ‘Is it the spiderwebs?’
/> She laughs. ‘Yes. You know I’m afraid of spiders.’
She’s not afraid of anything.
Dot knocks at the bungalow door. ‘Everything all right, then?’ She steps inside and a floorboard creaks. ‘How about a cuppa? You must need one after that long train ride.’
‘It was only an hour and a half,’ says his mother, articulating each word, ‘but a cup of tea would be very welcome.’
At the fold-down kitchen table in what she calls ‘the nook’, Dot pours. Dominic sees the weak tea flow from the pot and glances at his mother. She’s noticed too, of course: he can tell by the tightening of her lips.
‘Milk?’ Dot asks, reaching across the table for the opened bottle.
‘I’ll have mine black,’ says his mother, ever so lightly. Dominic looks down at the linoleum and sees dirt between its cracks. It’s as if his mother’s eyes have been placed into his sockets. The kitchen curtains could do with an iron, he notices, and on the stove a saucepan rim is patterned with drips of something brown and congealed. But when his mother leaves she’ll take her eyes with her, and he’ll soon be blind to creases and stains. The state of Mrs Neville’s kitchen will become his new benchmark, and her cake — he takes the proffered slice and puts it to his mouth — while now as dense as plaster of Paris, will be standard fare. It will be on his visits home that everything will surprise.
‘Was there much of a crowd when you got off the tram?’ Dot asks. Her voice quakes. ‘There’s been a lot of fuss around the prison lately. I thought you might have seen it.’
‘What sort of fuss?’ his mother asks. ‘We didn’t see anything.’
‘Protests. A lot of people don’t want that woman to hang. Jean Lee. You must have read about her.’
‘Yes, a little,’ says his mother. ‘I haven’t paid it too much attention.’ The slice of cake sits on her plate, untouched, crumbling at the edges.
‘She’s due to be hanged on Monday, her and the two men as well.’ Dot shudders, sloshing tea from her cup. ‘It’s awful, thinking that it’s happening just down the road.’
‘Then best not to think about it,’ his mother says crisply. ‘No point in worrying about things you can’t change.’ She looks at Dominic and he understands that she’s talking about something else.
After their tea he plans to walk with her to the tram stop, but at the front gate his mother says, ‘You stay here, finish your unpacking. I know my way back.’
The grazes and cuts of his childhood, the sticking plasters that she tore quickly, almost savagely, from pink, healing skin. ‘Quick is better in the end,’ she’d say. ‘Shilly-shallying hurts more.’ So that now he doesn’t protest. ‘I’ll write next weekend,’ he says instead, hands in pockets. ‘After classes have started.’ Will he be different by then? Will he know what possessed him to come?
‘Yes. I want to hear everything.’ She lowers her voice. ‘And don’t pay too much attention to what that Mrs Neville tells you. She’s liable to exaggerate.’
‘Why do you say that?’
‘Because I know her type. She’s drawn to the sensational. You won’t be able to avoid her talk entirely, but take what you’re given with a pinch of salt. Don’t let it distract you.’
His hands remain in his pockets. What can he be afraid of? If love and duty are two sides of the same coin, where does death show its face? He’s his mother’s son. He has her ability to bear it all in a singular silence, to be as strong and resolute as the soldier his father never was. His mother would have made a fearsome soldier.
She tilts her face to look at him, and to his mind she seems suddenly smaller, slighter. ‘My boy,’ she says softly. ‘Look after yourself.’
He watches her go. She’s three houses away before he runs to catch her. He puts his arms around her, despite his fear, and for one truthful second he feels her body yield before she’s out of his grasp and on her way.
~
St Kilda. There’s a wonderful wildness about the place. Sometimes it comes with the wind off the water, blowing in so much salt that Mary’s hair grows stiff. The sand worms its way between her toes and into the farthest corners of her sheets. It tickles her feet on the floor of her room, a little reminder of how lucky she is.
In the Catani Gardens the vagrants sit and tell stories of the glory days, when they worked as delivery boys to the toffs of Fitzroy Street, struggling from the drays with blocks of ice as big as a room, a dozen crates of champagne. There was always a band in the bandstand and dancing at the Palais de Danse, and the whole damn place was decked out with lights. ‘The glory days are still here,’ Mary tells them. ‘There are still so many lights.’ The old men remember the war years: the closure of all the funfairs, and the dark, deserted streets. The Palais de Danse was requisitioned as a post office, its famous floor scoured and dimpled by soldiers’ hobnail boots and the grinding wheels of postal carts.
In Fitzroy Street, right across from the gardens, a caravan park has mushroomed, crammed with refugees from displaced persons camps. Their children wash under the cold showers at the sea baths and run shivering back to the arms of their mothers. She brings them chipped lollipops and broken musk sticks, the imperfect sweets that can’t be sold. Sometimes she slips them whole ones, too. One day there’s a bright new caravan in the park, with a Red Indian painted on the side. ‘It belongs to Big Chief Little Wolf,’ the children tell her. ‘A famous Red Indian wrestler.’
‘All true,’ Tom confirms that evening. ‘Runner-up in the 1935 American world heavyweight championship. Doing a tent show down in Elwood. The Indian Death Lock — bloody magnificent.’ He demonstrates on a cushion, squeezing it so hard that the stuffing pokes through a gap in one of the seams. ‘Wait until you see him parading Fitzroy Street in his feathers.’
In the back streets the shopkeepers live. The Jewish brothers who run the kosher butcher shop are side by side in Jackson Street, sharing a wall like twins in the womb. The Fontis, who’ve been in St Kilda since the Great War, own the milk bar in Robe Street. Mr Fonti plays the violin, and his youngest daughter, raven-haired Sylvia, sings for their neighbours in their lamp-lit garden. O Sole Mio, Funiculì Funiculà.
The Lees from Clyde Street — she’s counted eight of them — serve sweet-and-sour fish and dim sims at their café in Acland Street, where the Jews like to eat. She leans over the Antonious’ fence to pick purple figs and extra lemons for lemon butter; on warm evenings their garden is scented with rosemary and smoky barbequed lamb. The Antonious run the fish-and-chip shop where Robbie bought lunch on that long-ago Sunday, the day she first laid eyes on the uptilted plane of the sea.
A discounted bathing suit from Foys in Chapel Street (emerald green, a shirred bodice that clings nicely to her breasts) and every spare hour spent on the beach, flicking through old magazines left in the kiosk, cooling off in the water, paddling around to the western side of the sea baths where the men lie naked on the deck, their bodies brown from head to toe. Tom’s discouraging of this. ‘Those blokes are perverts, Mares, parading up and down, eyeing one another off. Stay away, there’s a girl — don’t give them the satisfaction.’
‘You’re just jealous,’ she teases Tom. She envies them their muscular nakedness, their all-over suntans.
Tom chuckles. ‘Maybe I am.’
‘You’re a regular dago,’ Tom says a week later, when her skin, too, turns brown. ‘Not a freckle. You must have Eytie blood; that, or a touch of the tar.’ In her room she peels off her bathing suit, marvelling at the pallor beneath, the timid skin of her old life. She likes to think that St Kilda’s bringing her true self to the surface.
Along Fitzroy Street and the Esplanade the grand mansions have become boarding houses and bedsits, home to those who, like her, have fled somewhere worse. The stairways from the Esplanade down to the beach zigzag through rockeries sprawling with orange-yellow daisies and the beer bottles and chip papers of summer picnickers. And in
the evenings the sad organ music of the German merry-go-round rises above the lapping of the water, along with the rumble of the Big Dipper and its accompanying crescendo of screams, and Mr Moon beams his gap-toothed smile over the entrance to Luna Park.
Every Saturday Mary scoops ice cream into cones and leans her elbows on the glass while the children choose mixed sweets, their eyes round with delight, their little noses screwed up with indecision. White Knights, Fantales, Minties, silversticks, sherbet bags with liquorice straws — the glorious abundance of rationing’s end. The love hearts are her favourites: Kiss Me, Real Love, For Keeps, You’re the One, their messages sweeter than sugar because they bring her Robbie — the cleft in his chin, the nuggetty bones of his spine, the sound he makes when he comes.
On Sundays they do a wonderful trade in Devonshire teas. Mary makes the tea, spoons jam and whipped cream into bowls, and carries the rattling trays, heavy with cups and plates, across the wooden floor. People smile at her approach and settle back in their chairs as she places a tray on the table before them. ‘Here you are,’ she says, proud of what she’s brought, because it’s all made with laughter and noise and the co-operative Jessop spirit, the like of which she’s never known before. She wants to wait for a while: to see the steam escape as the scones are sliced in two, the layered composition of jam and cream, the first bite, the satisfied nods and smacking of lips, but Tom’s mother, Molly, has told her to leave the table as soon as she serves. ‘Don’t hover, love. You’ll put them off their food.’
The kiosk smells of dough mixed with the tang of the sea. Customers eat two scones each, sometimes three, their appetite piqued by the healthy sea air. In the kitchen Molly kneads and cuts dough all afternoon until the room’s stuffy from the oven. ‘Ooh, my aching wrists,’ she groans. Mary wets a tea towel with cold water and wipes the flour and sweat from Molly’s forehead. ‘You’re a good girl, Mary,’ Molly says. ‘Now crank open that window as far as you can.’
‘Why don’t you go out and have a quick swim as soon as this batch goes in? You could be back by the time they’re ready.’
The Science of Appearances Page 11