Fireshadow (16 page)

5 August 1946

Alice and her grandfather sit facing one another on opposite sides of the old wooden table in his kitchen.

Are you certain?
she asks him.

Yes
. He doesn't say anything more. He doesn't need to. Now that he is back, she spends a lot of time at his house. It is warm and dark and filled with the smell of wood polish and hints of lavender. Her grandmother used to put lavender in all the drawers and in the linen cupboard, and even now, all these years later, pockets of it still linger and waft through the dusty air.

I'm sorry
, her grandfather begins, but Alice manages a half smile and a nod.

Don't be
.

Alice isn't. Now that her grandfather has confirmed it, she realises she already knew.

When will it show?

The old man shrugs. It could be early, it could be later.

Some women manage to hide it all together until the very end. She won't be like that, he knows.
A couple of months at least
, he tells her.

She will have to tell her parents. Does she want her grandfather to do it for her?

No
. Alice shakes her head, emphatic. This she will do herself.

Do they know about Erich?

Again, Alice shakes a negative response. Since her return to the city, her parents have been impossible to talk to, outside the pointless conversations of day-to-day life. Her mother is walking on eggshells again. At nights when Alice is lying awake she can hear her sobbing, alone in her room for hours on end. During the days she is quiet, withdrawn and world-weary. Her father has started looking for a job, but there's nothing around for a returned soldier in his forties. There's little around for anyone in Perth at the moment.

On the stove the kettle is bubbling quietly. The fire flickers through the narrow grate and fills the dim kitchen with warmth and the smell of wood smoke.

Another cup of tea?

Yes
.

Grandfather makes the tea strong and stewed, like he always does. Alice has to put a lot of milk in hers. The warmth of the mug tingles into the palms of her hands and she inhales the sweet, fragrant aroma. Her grandfather is talking to her.

Just the once
, she tells him.
On that last afternoon.

For a long time the old man says nothing and the silence fills the space between them like a comfortable blanket.
It won't be easy, you know
, he tells her. Alice nods.

Walking home again, Alice cuts through a park. Two small children – a boy and a girl – play on a pair of old wooden swings while their mother watches from a nearby bench. She is young and would be pretty except for a weariness which hangs about her shoulders. The children are having a competition to see who can swing the highest. The mother smiles at Alice as she walks past.

There is a sense of unreality about it all. The sky is grey, but there is no rain, only a heavy curtain of clouds which hangs overhead, muting the sunlight, hiding the blue. As she walks, Alice holds her hands on her belly for a few moments, trying to feel the life in there.

All she feels is her own breathing.

10 August 1946

This bedroom used to be her mother's when she was a girl. Then it was her grandmother's sewing room. Now it is filled with boxes. Alice clutches the eiderdown tightly around herself and allows the faint scent of lavender to fill her.

It is early to be in bed, but tonight, for some reason, Alice feels tired.

When she was a child she would stay here at least once a week with her grandparents while her own parents went out. Her grandmother would tuck her in, just like this, every night. Alice remembers those dry lips kissing her goodnight, just lightly brushing against her hair. She remembers the joy of burrowing deep under the covers, swimming in lavender-scented warmth.

She hopes that one day her child will be able to burrow under quilts like that.

A few yards away, in the main room, her grandfather is reading. It is nice to know that he is out there. It's like being back in the camp again, except this time Erich is much more than just a few minutes walk away. At night in the camp they were separated by barbed wire and searchlights. Here they are held apart by oceans. She still writes in her journal most days. On those pages she pours out the things that would otherwise circle in her mind, building pressure like an oncoming storm. Most often she writes to Erich, but sometimes she writes to herself and sometimes to the world.

She hears familiar voices in the main room. Her parents.

Her first instinct is to dive deeper under the eiderdown, to cover her head and shut out the gentle whispering beyond the door. She knows it won't work, though. No matter how deep she buries herself, she won't be able to shut out the voices from inside her head.

After the warmth beneath the quilt the room seems cold and Alice trembles as she pulls her threadbare old dressing gown around her shoulders. At the door she hesitates. It has been three days since she has seen or spoken to her parents. Three days since telling them about Erich and her, and the baby growing inside her. Three days since her father struck her.

Even now she can feel his slap stinging her cheek. Drawing a deep breath, Alice opens the bedroom door.

They are sitting in the parlour at the front of the house. Her parents and grandfather. The fire is banked and an old spirit lamp burns on the sideboard. As Alice enters they all stop speaking and look up at her. Her parents sit beside one another on the lounge. It is the closest Alice has seen them to each other since she returned to Perth. Her mother has been crying, her father's expression is unreadable. The only thing Alice can see in his face is the usual sadness. No lighter or heavier than it was the last time they spoke.

Did we wake you?
There is concern in her grandfather's voice.

No
.

Alice
. . . her mother begins, but stops after that one word. For a long time nobody says anything. Four people in a room with pain holding them apart.

We'd like it if you came home
. Her father's voice is flat, neither love nor hate behind the words.

I don't want to.

Alice
, says her grandfather,
you should think about it
.

She is startled. She hadn't expected him to be on their side. Then she looks at him and realises that he isn't. The old man is regarding her with nothing but concern as he runs his fingers across his scalp, through his thin white hair.

They love you, Alice.

Do you?
She turns to them.

How can you even ask that?
Her mother starts to cry again. But she knows, she remembers, the things that were said the other afternoon. Before the slap. She knows she used words like
disgrace
and
shame
and talked about convents and
‘going east for a while'
. As far as Alice is concerned, these aren't words of love.

The silence fills the room again, thick and engulfing. Alice stands in the doorway. Her parents look at the floor.

Her father stands suddenly and steps towards her. For a moment Alice thinks he is going to grab her, shake her or strike her again. But he doesn't. When he lifts his gaze she looks into his eyes and sees something new there.

Alice
. . . He hesitates then reaches for her hand.
I'm so sorry
.

Something seems to shift deep in the pit of Alice's stomach.

Excuse me
. . .
I
. . . She runs from the room, out to the front garden, and vomits into a flowerbed.

17 August 1946

Alice sits in the park and writes. It is a warm afternoon for late winter, but even so she is bundled up against the cold wind which blows up from the south. On her lap the leather-bound journal is filling with her thoughts and longings, and high in the air above, the occasional wispy, white cloud goes scudding past.

Birds sing.

As she writes, a part of Alice's mind detaches itself and simply watches the black ink spidering across the pages. This afternoon she is not writing to Erich but to her baby. She chooses the words she writes carefully.

Voices float down the path and she looks up to see a mother and two children walking towards her. It is the same family that was here two weeks ago on the afternoon she found out. The little boy is running ahead, the girl skipping beside her mother, holding her hand. When they reach the swings, she drops the hand and runs off with her brother.

The mother stands and watches them, then wanders across to the bench and sits beside Alice. There is tiredness in the way she lowers herself onto the hard wooden slats.

Hello
, she says, and offers Alice a brief smile.

Hello
.

Alice starts to write again, but the sound of laughter is distracting and after a while she gives up and watches the children. The boy is pushing while his sister swings, trying to make her go higher and higher. The little girl is getting scared and tells him to stop, but he doesn't. Finally she screams, her thin voice wailing through the warm afternoon, and the woman beside Alice calls out sharply,
That will do, Harry.

The boy stops, chastened, and the little girl tries to get off the swing, but she is scared and the swing is moving too quickly and as her feet hit the sand they slip and she pitches forward onto the ground.

Her brother is beside her immediately and Alice can hear him trying to comfort her as she sobs and gets to her feet, stumbling through tears towards her mother, who is rushing over.

You're all right
, he tells her again and again, and Alice can hear the desperation behind his words. He wants them to be true. He wants to believe his little sister is fine. It's a selfish sympathy, but Alice feels more sorry for the boy than his sister.

The girl has grazes on her knees and the heels of her hands and a grass stain on her pinafore. She is more upset about this last indignity than about her injuries.

Calm down, Elizabeth
, her mother soothes her.
We'll go home and wash it out.

With the little girl now gathered onto her hip, the mother takes Harry's arm with her free hand and leads him away, back up the path. She throws a last, weary smile – almost apologetic – at Alice as they pass.

19 August 1946

In the evenings the three of them sit together in the front room and listen to the wireless. Her father prefers to listen to music, preferably classical, but tonight a visiting professor is talking about the war.

Usually, whenever the war is mentioned her father reaches out immediately and fiddles with the tuning dial, swinging the needle across the frequencies until he finds something else, anything else, to listen to. Tonight, however, he doesn't.

The professor is British and is visiting Perth on his way to Melbourne to lecture at the university there. His accent is thick and plummy and he is talking about the Germans and the rumours that have been circulating. He talks about death camps and propaganda and makes it sound as though all Germans are little better than animals. Alice wants to scream at him, to shout into the radio set and tell him about people like Erich and Günter and Commander Stutt, tell him about their families and how they are just men like him. She doesn't though.

The voice is scratchy and distant, but each time the professor makes a point, Alice's father nods his head and makes noises of agreement.

The German people as a whole find it difficult to stand up against the group instinct
, says the radio.
Hitler was able to use this aspect of his people's mindset to manipulate them for his own depraved ends . . .

Alice's father mutters,
Exactly!

Unconsciously, Alice's hands creep to her belly and rest there, protectively. Does her child have the ‘German mindset'? She knows it doesn't. She knows the professor is wrong.

She says nothing.

Finally, the interviewer thanks the professor and their voices are replaced by music. A brass band plays a popular dance tune from the days of the war.

That was interesting
, says her father.

It was wrong
. Alice walks from the room.

Later, she lies in her bed in the dark staring out the window. Her bedroom door creaks. She feigns sleep, doesn't turn her head to see whose footsteps are padding across the room. Her mattress sinks slightly and her mother is perched on the edge of her bed. She doesn't say anything. She knows Alice is awake. She runs her hand over Alice's hair, stroking it gently, and her fingers are warm. Then she rests her hand lightly on her daughter's belly and Alice can feel the distant pulse of her mother's heart beating through her fingers.

For a long time mother and daughter sit like that, and the soft warmth of her mother's touch seems to creep through Alice's skin, into her womb, calming and soothing, and Alice slips off to sleep. Finally her mother leans down and brushes her lips against her daughter's forehead. Then she leaves quietly.

Alice wakes in the night and can hear her mother crying through the wall.

2 September 1946

Her grandfather is asleep in his chair in front of the fire when she arrives. On his lap is the framed photo of his son, Paul, in his uniform. She doesn't want to wake him, so Alice tiptoes into the kitchen, stokes the fire in the stove and puts the kettle on.

Is that you, dear?

Yes, Grandfather. I'm making tea.

Lovely.

He walks in and sits at the kitchen table and Alice watches him. He is looking older, she thinks. Each step seems more of an effort, and even sitting takes time.

How has your day been?
He always asks her this.
Fine
, she always answers. She considers telling him the news – the neighbourhood women have somehow found out about her ‘condition' – but she decides against it.

Sipping his tea, he makes appreciative noises and, when their cups are empty, gets up as slowly as he sat.
All right, let's take a look at you.

His battered old medical bag is in his bedroom. He takes her pulse, timing it with a small stopwatch, then her temperature, then he feels her belly. His touch is soft, his hands cool.

You will need to see someone else from now on
, he tells her.
A specialist.

She protests, but the old man shakes his head.
I'm too old. I haven't done a pregnancy in years
. He gives her a name, writing it in his precise copperplate hand on a piece of card and she promises to make an appointment tomorrow.

They sit again at the kitchen table, opposite one another.

Do you still think about him?
he asks.

All the time
, she answers.

And she does. But recently it's been different. She doesn't tell the old man this, though. Lately Alice has found herself wondering about Erich, not with the longing, not with the desperate hunger that she felt when he first left, but with a strange sort of detachment, treating his absence and her feelings for him like a puzzle. Most nights now she writes about this in her journal, trying to sort out what she feels.

Of course, there has been no word. Not yet. She knows it could be months. And so she waits.

On the way home she stops in the park. Usually, at this time of the day, the mother and her children (what were their names again?) are having their afternoon play. Not today, however, and after a few minutes Alice continues on home. Turning the corner at the end of her street, she sees Mrs McKaigh in her front yard, weeding.

Good afternoon
. Alice smiles. The woman doesn't reply. She offers nothing more than a reluctant grunt, before pointedly returning to her roses.

It's been like that for a week now. And Alice knows she is the main topic of discussion down at the markets each morning. She knows the question they are all asking each other.
Who's the father?
Nobody has been brave enough to ask her, though. Not yet.

Even when they do, she won't tell them.

Let them wonder.