by Joy Dettman
Jeanne Johnson would have to put on a uniform and play serving maid. The third Johnson son would hang up his working clothes and play his manservant role. And he’d complain to his mother in the kitchen again, tell her he was clearing out, going to live at the Greens’ with Willie, that he wasn’t Squire’s lapdog, and that one day he’d tell Squire where to shove his bloody butler’s suit. But he never would; he liked his fancy suit, spent a lot of time preening and admiring himself in the mirrors when he played manservant.
Stuck at home all day looking for things to do, Helen saw and heard much that she shouldn’t have. She’d known of Ruby’s trouble, had known exactly how she got into trouble. She heard Nicholas’s guests bickering, heard Percy’s mother commenting on Nicholas’s favourite guest room one morning. ‘Seriously,’ she’d said. ‘You would think he’d do something about that ceiling. I mean, cherubs – in this day and age, Hubert.’
All of the guest rooms would be in use on Tuesday. Percy would be peacocking around, acting so concerned for his almost fiancée, pretending he was seriously interested in her and not in Nicholas’s money. Strangers would fill the church’s front pews, and those who had known and loved Rachael would sit or stand at the back, flinching while Mrs Cochran screeched a hymn. Then everyone would go out to the cemetery, place their flowers on Rachael’s grave and come back here for a party while the flowers shrivelled up and died.
Brimful of life, Rachael, overflowing with living and breaking every rule. She couldn’t be dead. This was just another nightmare, except Helen hadn’t been allowed to let the scream out and wake herself.
‘Rachael passed away this morning at the Willama hospital,’ Nicholas said when he and Olivia returned this morning. He offered his hand to Helen, a fine-boned hand, freezing cold on a day when the whole world was burning up. ‘Father Ryan was driving behind us. He’ll be here shortly. Dress suitably, and do something with that hair.’
That was self-control. A stone cold white face, tight thin lips, but still giving orders. Helen had no self-control. She’d felt a disconnection, a hazy non-seeing, non-being, until his cold hand brought her back to reality with a stinging whack. That’s when the scream had become trapped inside her like a heavy lump of raw meat.
If Rachael had been a boy and old enough to go to war, she would have gone, just like Freddy, and she would have flown the skies in the wildest storms. She probably wouldn’t have come back. Australia sent over three hundred thousand soldiers to that war; sixty thousand had died and more than one hundred and sixty thousand were wounded or gassed, which meant that about sixty percent of Australia’s soldiers had been either killed or wounded.
Helen would never have gone to war. People could have sent her a whole mattress full of white feathers and she wouldn’t have gone. Olivia wouldn’t have gone. Arthur shouldn’t have. Nicholas would have been there in his uniform, telling everyone what to do. He liked guns and uniforms. He’d asked Dave to wear his lieutenant’s uniform for the wedding. He’d chosen Rachael’s frock too, a beautiful white frock with beaded shoulders. Rachael loved it on sight when she saw it in the city shop window. She had to buy it. After that wedding, she’d despised it. It looked almost like a wedding dress in the photographs; Rachael looked like a bride – until you noticed her eyes. Faraway eyes, lost eyes, as if they had finally realised escape from Nicholas was impossible.
Arthur’s spoon worked hard on his sweet bowl seeking out the last of his pie. He loved sweets. Rachael bought him a big bag of liquorice as a coming home present, and he’d hugged her, then almost choked on a piece. She continued buying him liquorice, but only if it was fresh. Until she married and had no spending money, she bought him liquorice. Now Helen bought it, when she could wheedle sixpence from Olivia, though her reasons for buying it differed from Rachael’s.
She glanced from Arthur’s empty bowl to the tablecloth. A food artist, Arthur. He didn’t eat with the family when they had guests, or even if Father Ryan was here. He made too much mess. Much of his main meal was spread onto that white cloth, and now he’d added touches of pink apple and rhubarb pie, smears of yellow custard. Through blurred eyes it looked like one of those modern paintings of nothing, though it needed more gravy for contrast, and perhaps a splash or two of Olivia’s red wine.
Aunt Bertha used to take Helen into the city to study the old masters’ paintings. She’d bought her oil paints and canvases, encouraged her to paint.
Mustn’t think of paintings today. Not today. On Tuesday she would think, when Aunt Bertha was here. Just get this meal done, then she could go to her room.
‘How do we go on, Nicholas?’ Olivia asked, her sweet plate empty, her wineglass empty. ‘How do we go on?’
‘Time heals all,’ he said.
‘Time doesn’t heal scars, Father. That’s all we are now, stained bandages wrapped around scars.’
Whack! Helen sprang from her chair, knocking it to the floor, leaving it where it fell as she stepped out of his reach. Olivia was up at the sideboard, pouring wine.
Shouldn’t have said that.
Rule: Squires did not see Arthur’s scars, nor mention scars in Arthur’s presence.
‘Never you forget, Missie, not as long as you live, what the Germans did to this family. They will pay, and this I pledge.’ A deep breath, a calming count to ten, a sip of wine. ‘And never you forget, if your sister had possessed one iota of family loyalty, one jot of self-control, she would have stayed away from that scum, and she’d be seated here today, with her husband and her family.’
‘Do you want my pie, Arthur?’ He nodded and she passed it to him.
‘Leave the room,’ Nicholas said, reaching for the pie, his expression one he might wear when studying a diseased sheep. His gaze turned to Olivia, perhaps wishing her to mash it, then, his expression unchanged, he set to with his fork and spoon, breaking the crust, sinking it in custard then scraping the mess into Arthur’s heavy bowl.
‘People will be coming by,’ he said. ‘Keep drinking, Olivia, and you’ll be in no fit state to speak to them. And you, Missie, I told you to leave this room. Now! And get that petticoat off your back, clad yourself in something presentable and, for the love of God, do something with that hair.’
Her frock had no sleeves, no collar, no waist, and the rich gold brought out the golden lights in her hair – that’s what Rachael had said when she’d bought the fabric.
‘Rachael made it for me.’
‘You will not leave the house in that rag today!’
‘I won’t be leaving the house today, Father.’
‘We are a family. We will leave at three, call on Dave, then go to the site, and we will go there together!’
Why didn’t he say cemetery? Why couldn’t he say Rachael died, instead of passed away. Euphemisms didn’t change what was into what wasn’t. Anyway, why leave flowers at cemeteries? They were not repositories for people’s souls. Rachael’s soul was already in heaven, making friends with the angels, absorbing every sight and sound up there.
And . . . and Freddy was with her, and she was saying to him, ‘So, where do I line up to get my wings, Freddy? I want to start my flying lessons so I can see what the eagles see when they glide across the sky.’
a respectable woman
All morning Elsa Reichenberg had cleaned and cooked, hiding in work. Now, only her mind worked as she waited to serve her men. That is what women did; they waited to serve the men. She had said this to Rachael. She had said too much to little Rachael. ‘Marriage is for the children it brings, and for respectability. The woman who leaves her husband brings great shame on the family,’ she’d said – and she’d given very bad counsel.
Until that marriage with Kennedy, Elsa had been certain that time would give Rachael to this house as a daughter. Wait until they are older, she had thought. Wait until she is of an age to make her own decision. Let the children learn patience, a good lesson in life for all to learn. She had not foreseen that marriage to Kennedy. So much she should have foreseen
.
Christian, never a patient boy, was always the difficult one, always growing too fast, out of his trousers before he was in them, out of his boots before they were worn, out of boyhood into manhood, everything had been too fast with that one. For Kurt, life had been kind, as if the clock within him was a calm thing, tick-ticking slow, allowing time to grow slowly, calmly. Such beautiful boys she had made from that old man’s seed.
Her big work-worn hands stroking the cat’s sleek black fur, she stood on the back porch, scanning the land for her men. She couldn’t see them.
This morning she’d stood here, weeping on Katze while Kurt walked to the paddock to tell his brother of Rachael’s death – like the movie show she had gone to at the town hall. She couldn’t read the words but she’d understood the action. Christian’s hands rising, as if to push his brother, or his brother’s words, from him. Many words then she could not hear, Christian facing his father, his face angry, Kurt stepping between them, concerned for his brother. And Joseph’s closed fist striking.
For two hours now Christian had roamed the property, driving a sharp prod deep into the earth, seeking Joseph’s jars of buried money while his father followed behind, abusing him. No more dam digging today. The horses released into the paddock, Kurt had left those two fools to their war.
Elsa returned to the kitchen where she checked on the vegetables, boiled to rags, the meat drying out in the pan.
‘Did I cook this for the waste bucket?’ She picked up an old baking pan and her heavy cast-iron serving ladle, the aching mixture of pain, anger and fear finding vent in belting the base of that pan, denting it.
‘Mutti.’ Kurt came quickly into the kitchen and took the pan from her, tried to take the ladle but she threw it hard at the frying pan. Fat splashed onto the stove.
‘Find your brother and father. Bring them to my table.’
‘I don’t want to eat with them today, Mutti. Nor do you.’
‘Bring them now, before one kills the other. Now!’
Joseph was never missing when his meal was ready. He always sat waiting at the table, sharpening his knife. He didn’t smile at many but he had at Rachael. ‘That silver’, he had named her, as he had named the wife he lost forty years ago. ‘That silver, she carries laughter in her big handbag,’ he’d said. He had unlocked the closed room for Rachael, and given her a hairbrush, taken it from his tin trunk of precious memories. Only one year ago, on Christmas Eve, when Rachael had come to this house with her gifts and laughter.
‘You like, eh? You have. Is good brush, eh?’ he’d said in English, his ice eyes warmed by her smile.
Elsa blew a still-blond tendril from her face as Kurt and Christian entered the kitchen, taking their places on either side of the heavy table.
‘Your father?’
‘I hope he’s having a stroke,’ Christian said.
‘I think he’s coming, Mutti.’
She stood a moment, studying Kurt’s swollen eye, then she turned away to fill the plates. No talking, only the clatter of utensils until Joseph arrived and stood behind his chair.
‘I do not sit with thieves,’ he said.
‘Do you think I want to sit with you, you mean old bastard?’
‘Leave my table, thief.’
‘I would have left it months ago if you’d given me ten lousy quid. She would have been alive today if you’d given me ten lousy quid. I’ve worked my guts out for you and you give me nothing. Kurt works his guts out for you, and you blacken his bloody eye because he’s handy and I’m not.’
Kurt’s left eye had closed, the swelling around it darkening into a bruise. He smoothed it with a finger as he looked first at his brother, then his father. For years he had stood between these two. The time comes to all fence sitters when they must choose a side. He shrugged, repeated Christian’s words verbatim, but in his father’s tongue.
This was not good. Elsa filled her mouth, sealed it. If that old man did not take great care, he would drive both sons away. And did he think she would remain here when they left? Oh, no. She had money in her bankbook. She would take her bankbook and Katze, and follow her sons to the end of the earth.
She knew Christian had asked for money, though not why he’d asked for it. Her mouth filled with meat and potato, her eyes on her plate, she listened to the three-way war while good food on the other plates remained untouched.
‘We work like tame dogs for you, and you take our wages and bury them in the dirt.’
‘You offend the dog. My son is less than a thieving cur.’
‘When you starve a dog, he becomes a thief to live.’
And Kurt, his voice emotionless, translated.
‘Look at the sons you have given me, woman!’ Joseph bellowed at her now – because he could not win against those boys when they stood together.
Elsa chewed, swallowed, reloaded her fork. She would not reply, was not expected to reply. It was a woman’s place to hold her tongue, keep the bad words inside.
‘Look at the bloody life you’ve given us – and her. You never gave her a penny to buy us an ice cream! You buried it, you mean, land hungry old fool. You’re like a crazy old bull, trampling on the good grass of today while you search for the dead paddocks of last bloody century.’
Perhaps those words repeated in German angered Joseph more than Christian’s English. He turned his ire on the translator. ‘Close your mouth, or I will close it for you.’
Kurt’s finger again smoothed the swollen flesh beneath his eye. ‘Do you hit the translator as well as the message bringer, Papa?’
‘Eat.’ Elsa’s feet wanted to stand. She forced them to be still. ‘Eat. All of you. Your food grows cold.’
‘Look at the sons you have raised on my land. Australian shit. You hear how they speak to their father?’
‘If you do not give the pup a pat on the head when he obeys the whistle, he does not continue to obey, my husband.’
‘Schlampe!’ he roared, near dancing with rage. ‘You talk back to your husband?’
She stood, flicked the back of her hand at him as she might flick it at a fly. ‘Go from my table then. Starve,’ she said, and in English. ‘You want to bellow like the old bull, go to your paddock and chew on dry grass.’
He stepped towards her, one hand raised. She didn’t flinch. He wouldn’t hit her. Her boys too were on their feet. He looked from one to the other, then his clenched fists opened and one hand moved to his brow to rub at the red stain of anger there. He could not win here today. Only if he sat at the head of her table and ate the meal she had cooked could he win – a little win.
Pity the old man, his great strength and control eroded by age. Pity him. He knew his age today, knew his sons now stood together against him.
‘Sit,’ Elsa demanded, but in the old language. ‘Sit and eat the good food I have prepared. I am tired of your stupid fighting.’
And they sat, picked up their knives and forks, and ate.
the handbag
Tom had dropped off to sleep, one palm supporting his head, elbow propped on the table, feet propped on a hard wooden chair. Amazing where, and how, a man can fall into a deep dreamless sleep when he is tired enough – and if not for that knocking on his front door, he might have slept longer.
‘Mr Thompson! Mr Thompson, are you in there?’
Tom’s feet hit the floor running; he was halfway up the passage before he realised that apart from his drawers, he was as bare as his feet.
‘Mr Thompson!’
‘Hang on to your shirt,’ he muttered, trying to get back into his own, which made him think of Len Larkin trying to dress himself with one hand; Tom’s right arm was stone dead from leaning on his elbow. He gave up on his shirt, found his trousers, got them on, left his braces dangling and unlocked the door.
Only Mike Murphy and Billy O’Brien. ‘Keep the noise down. You’ll wake Mrs Thompson.’
‘Is Rachael Squire’s handbag missing?’
‘What do you know about it?’
‘I know where it is, and I know who threw it where it is too,’ Mike said.
‘Threw it where?’
‘In the river, near the swimming bend. It was one of the pickers.’
‘Are you fair dinkum, lad?’
‘It’s as true as I’m standing here, Mr Thompson. I saw a bloke chuck that bag in the river early this morning.’
Tom rubbed his arm, hoping it was only a lack of circulating blood and not a stroke. He had too much to do today. ‘Righto. If one of you can grab Jeanne from the post office for me, I’ll get my boots on and you can show me what you’re talking about.’
It was close to two-thirty before the trio parked their bikes at the swimming bend and walked through the bush to the fruit pickers’ squalid camp, deserted by all bar the blowflies and a few birds squabbling over rubbish. Tom had a poke around the huts, stuck his head inside a tent, tripped over a few bottles, shook his head at the filth and walked on down to the river, expecting to find a few loafing coots taking it easy on Sunday. Not a soul – all out picking by the looks of things, which was what they’d come up here to do.
‘When I saw him, he was standing right about here, Mr Thompson,’ Mike said. He stood on a clay bank overlooking a sand bar and good clear water – which had always been the local swimming hole. Kennedy owned this land, but he’d never cut off public access to the river.
Tom looked downstream to where a massive tree had tried to bridge the river. A lot of years had gone by since much of that tree was visible above the waterline, but bits were visible today – the river was lower than most locals had ever seen it. Squire owned the land on the other side, owned the lot, all the way downstream to the bridge, which gave him a mile and a bit of river frontage. His land went well back in. Someone had mentioned the figure once – maybe three thousand acres. His house was visible from this bank, or at least parts of the roof and most of the steeple-cum-widow’s walk were visible.
‘So, what exactly did you see, lad?’
Mike shrugged. ‘Well, as you probably already know, I’ve been setting my traps in Squire’s wood paddock – doing him a favour, like, Mr Thompson, his place is riddled with rabbits. Any rate, I’d gone out early to get the rabbits before the Johnsons found them and pinched my traps.’ He pointed downstream. ‘I’d set one just over there, and I was taking a rabbit out of it when I saw this bloke standing right about where we’re standing. He swung something around his head and pitched it into the river. I didn’t think much about it, except to sort of wonder what he was pitching. I finished what I was doing and went home to get a bit of breakfast.