Still Waters (11 page)

‘’Cos you and your dad was strangers to us,’ she had said, telling the tale. ‘You’d come from the city, I s’pose. That was a week afore I spoke out, axed your dad if I could give a hand, like. He were glad to say “yes”, and since then, my woman, we’re been good neighbours an’ good friends. He telled me your ma had passed on, said he were goin’ to try to manage for hisself, and I said we’d stand by the two of you. An’ we have, wouldn’t you say?’

‘Oh yes,’ Tess had assured her friend. ‘Daddy often says he doesn’t know what he’d do without you.’

So now she knew Peter had fibbed when he’d said he had moved to Barton directly after his wife’s death. Her mother had died soon after Tess’s own birth, Daddy had told her so a couple of times. But why had he fibbed? It seemed such a strange thing to tell untruths about! She helped herself to another sandwich, then put it down. She did have another question and she didn’t see why she shouldn’t ask it, and hope for truthfulness.

‘Daddy, I’ve thought of something else. Can I have another go?’

He laughed. But she could see unease lurking.

‘Course you can. Fire away.’

‘Was my mother an only child and do I have relatives from her as well as from you?’

‘Is that all? I thought . . . but anyway, it’s easily answered. Leonora was an only child and since her parents were both only children too, so far as I’m aware, there were no other relatives. Or if there were, I never met them.’

‘Didn’t they come to the wedding? People come to weddings, don’t they? Relatives, I mean.’

‘They do as a rule, of course. But Mr and Mrs Meadowes didn’t want their daughter to marry me, so they didn’t come to the wedding themselves. Sorry, love, I’m not very helpful, am I?’

‘And the church . . . what church is it in the picture?’

‘St Andrew’s church, love, in Blofield. That’s the rule, you marry in the bride’s parish, not the bridegroom’s.’

Tess stared down at her sandwich. Something wasn’t right, but she couldn’t put her finger on it, and all her questioning seemed to be doing was upsetting her father. Only she had to know! She looked up, then down at her hands once more.

‘That first boyfriend, Daddy, was he a friend of yours? Did he die in the war?’

Peter’s eyebrows rose and he smiled. At least that question, which could have been tricky, seemed to be acceptable, Tess thought thankfully.

‘I liked and admired Ziggy, but he wasn’t a close friend. We were all members of the Yacht Club, and wild about sailing. But I loved Leonora right from the first, even when I thought I didn’t have a chance. Actually, it was after Ziggy’s funeral that I asked Leonora to come out with me.’

‘I see. Where’s my mother buried, then, Daddy?’ Tess said the words without looking up from her intent perusal of the sandwich she was about to eat, but she could feel the tension in the lengthening pause. She didn’t know why she had asked it, either. It had simply popped into her mind and out of her mouth. She had always assumed that one of the graves in the church of St Michael and All the Angels in Barton belonged to her mother, but now she doubted it. She looked across at him and he was staring down at his clasped hands. There were, she thought, tears in his lowered eyes.

‘Daddy? I’m sorry if . . .’

He spoke quietly, but didn’t look up, didn’t look across and meet her anxious, apologetic eyes.

‘Darling, it’s not something I can talk about easily. One day, when you’re older, I’ll take you to see her grave. There’s a simple headstone . . . it’s a quiet spot, I think you’ll like it. But not now, not yet.’

‘Thank you,’ Tess said, in a subdued little voice. ‘I just wanted to know where . . . I’m sorry if I upset you.’

He looked up then, and forced a smile.

‘It’s all right, pet. Only it was a sad time and I hate remembering it. And now, if you’re ready, we could have our cake.’ He smiled at her, but the tears still stood in his golden-brown eyes. ‘We are honoured to have Mrs Thrower’s date and walnut loaf, aren’t we? She’s told me often that she only makes it for very special occasions, and I can’t remember ever seeing it outside her cottage before.’

‘Yes, she only serves it at theirs, usually,’ Tess said. ‘But this one’s to celebrate you getting married. More tea?’

Three

Sydney, 1927

MAL CAME OUT
of the school gates and began to slouch along the pavement, heading home. It hadn’t been his home long, but he was used to that – used to going to different schools, moving from town to town, making new friends.

‘It’s your father,’ Kath had said once. ‘He just can’t seem to get along with folks, and sooner or later the bosses realise who’s causing the aggro, and they give Bill the push. But there you are, I married him. For better for worse, the preacher said – who’d ha’ thought it ’ud be this much worse?’

At the time, Mal had been angry, because he’d known very well that his father was the most wonderful person in the whole world, the strongest, the best. He and Petey adored their father . . . though Petey liked his mammy best. But he’d learn better one day, Mal thought tolerantly. He was just a kid, so you couldn’t expect him to understand that a feller looked up to his father. Petey, Mal thought, was scared of Bill and he was too young to hide it. That was not good. It annoyed Bill, and annoying Bill could be dangerous.

Bill had no patience with young kids, he said so often, which was strange when you thought how patient he had been with Mal. The two had been big pals even when Mal himself had only been five or so, because he’d looked up to Bill, turned to him for advice, taken his side in disputes, even when reason, common sense, everything, told him that Kath was right and Bill wrong. Dad was a man and men, Mal felt, were always right. Weren’t they the stronger sex, the dominant one? So naturally, Bill would be right and Kath wrong, even if, at first glance, it looked the opposite. Besides, Bill understood what a boy wanted and needed. Kath only understood clean necks and decent shirts and socks.

And Bill had never failed Mal, though he sometimes failed others. ‘C’mon, son,’ he used to say. ‘I’ll get you out of your mammy’s hair for an hour,’ and off they’d go for the whole day very likely. Fishing, hunting, playing beach cricket, picking berries in the bush . . . it all depended where they were, but whatever they did it was always fun, and Bill always made sure that from each experience Mal learned something. Sometimes the lessons were hard and hurt, but Mal gritted his teeth and endured, because his father’s praise was music in his ears.

Bill wanted to be proud of his son, so he didn’t like you to cry or make a fuss even if you were hurt bad. When Mal had broken his leg falling in a fast-running river whilst he and Bill had been collecting fresh-water mussels, Mal hadn’t shed a tear though he’d gone awful white and felt sick and swimmy. Bill had been pleased, had praised his pluck loudly, had carried him three miles to civilisation and had held his hand during the bumpy car ride to hospital.

But Petey wasn’t like that. He was puny, for a start, with a twisted leg, a lumpy forehead and eyes which were always screwed up against the light – until the doc realised that Petey was short-sighted and needed specs, that was. Mal knew that Petey wasn’t really a sissy or a little yeller skink – one of the many things Bill called his youngest son – but he understood in a way why Bill got so impatient with him. Petey bumped into things because he didn’t see so good, and he walked slow, because if he tried to hurry his twisted leg turned under him and he fell down. But none of it was Petey’s fault and if Mal could see it, why couldn’t Bill?

So busy was Mal with his thoughts that he walked straight past their new street, then remembered and turned back, diving past the shop on the corner and along Loftus Street. The Chandler mansion consisted of a couple of rooms in a tall, dirty house near Circular Quay and Bill worked on the docks, loading and unloading cargo. It was tough work but quite well paid so Bill, with his usual easy optimism, had told Mal that it wouldn’t be long before they moved out of the city and into one of the leafy suburbs, close to the ocean.

‘Life’ll be different here to what it was in Melbourne,’ he promised them. ‘Folk took agin me in Melbourne; they won’t do that here. This is a big city, Mal!’

When he had sauntered out to have a jar or two Kath muttered, ‘What does he mean, different from Melbourne? That was what he said when we went to Broken Hill, Narromine, Dubbo, Port Macquarie . . . it’s always goin’ to be different. And is it? Like fun it is! When will poor old Bill realise that nothin’ won’t change until he does?’

But that was defeatist talk. ‘It will be different this time, Ma,’ Mal assured her. ‘Dad’s goin’ to make it different. Honest, Ma – he told Petey an’ me.’

So now, sauntering along the pavement, enjoying the smells of fish, oil, salt sea-water, Mal considered this latest move. Dad got more money than he’d got for driving big waggons in Dubbo, or for road-making up around Port Macquarie. What was more, he was a city man who didn’t think much of the outback. So, Mal thought, there was a good chance, this time, that they really would settle down, that folk would take to them instead of agin them, that they would move into a proper house instead of rooms . . .

But that was for the future; right now it was Friday, which meant the end of the school week and tomorrow, Saturday, Bill had promised to take Mal sea-fishing. Mal hugged himself at the prospect. Ma would put them up a picnic and they’d set off, first on a train, then on foot, until they reached the perfect spot. And there they would stay all day, until they’d hauled enough fish out of the ocean to keep Ma cooking all week, because Dad said the place he would take them to was that sort of place.

‘It ain’t the same as fishin’ in some creek, or stream,’ he said expansively. ‘Sea-fishin’ like this means takin’ your rod out on the rocks which run along into deep water. We’ll catch real fish there, Mal my boy – big ’uns.’

‘D’you mean eatin’ fish, Dad?’ Mal had asked eagerly. When they moved house things were always tight for a bit and they’d not been in the Loftus Street house a week, yet. ‘I’d really like to catch fish that’re good eatin’.’

‘Sharks, rays, whales,’ Bill had promised, grinning like a shark himself. ‘Shrimps, jellies, stings . . . they’ll all come swimmin’ past us tomorrow. We’ll just take our pick, son.’

But now, Mal reached the house and pushed open the heavy front door. They were on the top floor, which meant a powerful lot of stairs to climb, but Bill said stairs strengthened your thigh muscles and a feller had to have good thigh muscles to hump cargo. A real man, he said, would deliberately climb steep stairs at a run if it strengthened him. Mal, gritting his teeth, began to mount the stairs at a run. By the time he got to the top the leg that he’d broke two years ago would be aching dully . . . but he’d be stronger, which was what mattered. A bit of pain, Bill said, was the price you paid for fitness.

Half-way up, however, he met Petey, coming down. Petey stopped and grinned. ‘Hey, Mal,’ he said in his rather high little voice. ‘I’m goin’ to buy taters an’ Ma said if I saw you could you carry ’em for me? An’ there’s money for an apple each.’

Mal turned back with a statutory grumble, though in fact he wasn’t sorry not to have to face the rest of the flight. No one, he reasoned, would expect a feller to run up all those stairs whilst carrying a bag of taters.

‘All right, tiddler,’ he said. ‘What’ve you been doin’ today, eh?’

‘Oh, I helped Ma to set the beds to rights. Then she took me to the little school and I played with this girl . . . Fanny, she was called. I liked her. Ma came for me, dinner time, and after we’d et we went into them gardens, the ones with the palm trees an’ the cannon. We saw the sea, only we din’t have time to paddle, and we bought some meat from an abo . . . only Ma said not to tell, I forgot . . . an’. . . an’ . . .’

‘Aw, c’mon, Petey,’ Mal growled, turning on the stairs. ‘Let’s get these bloody taters, then we can have our grub.’

All the way to the greengrocer’s, Petey and Mal exchanged news. Despite the seven years’ difference in their ages, Mal seldom got bored with Petey and was secretly astonished at Bill’s impatient indifference to his younger son. Petey was fun, bright and amusing. He was affectionate, too, and would, Kath was fond of remarking, give you his last. She never said exactly what she meant by this, but Mal took it to mean his last sweetie, or his last cent – and he knew it was true. Petey was only a little kid, but he always thought of others first.

So the two brothers walked and talked, and Mal told Petey about the fishing trip he and his father were going to take tomorrow.

‘Wish I could go too,’ Petey said wistfully. ‘I ain’t been on a fishin’ trip, Dad said I was too small. But I’m bigger now, Mal, as big as anything.’

He tried to stretch and did a sort of swagger, and then his bad leg turned him and he landed on his bottom on the pavement, the grin much in evidence. ‘I’m a drongo, ain’t I, Mal?’ he said, getting to his feet. ‘You reckon Dad’ll take me, this time?’

‘I’ll ask him,’ Mal promised. ‘Here’s Evans. What weight of taters did Ma tell you to get?’

It was early when the three of them set off, Petey so excited that he hopped along beside Mal, chattering nineteen to the dozen, now and then tugging off his short tweed coat, because although it was the end of June, and beginning to be cold and blustery, excitement had warmed him to a point where a coat did not seem necessary.

‘We’ll catch an omnibus, which will take us further along the coast,’ Bill said as he hustled them across a wide road, normally humming but now, two hours before breakfast, quiet under the cool grey sky. ‘There’s good rocks at the bay I’ve got in mind.’

They stood at the stop, Mal shivering a bit in the cutting wind, even Bill looking a bit blue. Only Petey was warm, hopping from foot to foot, chattering. Mal noticed that Bill was looking bored, scowling, and told Petey brusquely to shut up. ‘We’ve got to plan our campaign, Petey,’ he said when Petey stopped talking and looked a little hurt, instead. ‘Do we need to dig bait, Dad, or is there enough in the tin?’

Mollified by this attention, Bill said they could start off with what was in the bait tin, anyway, and then, if they caught some small fry, cut them up for bait. Petey winced, but the two real men in the party decided not to notice and went on talking until the omnibus came along when the boys tore up to the front of the vehicle, leaving Bill to take the last seat right at the back.