Three Summers (2 page)

It's why they'd come back to her now, thought Ruth, after years and years.

Her arm was burning. She switched on the bedside lamp and carefully examined the tender skin above her elbow, half expecting to find the red marks of Tam Finn's fingertips there.

The arm was unmarked. There was nothing. Ruth clicked her tongue in the way her nan did when she was knitting and dropped a stitch. Of course there was no mark; you didn't get marks from a dream, however real it seemed, just like you didn't make love in a dream and have it turn out to be real. ‘
But what if you don't know who you really are?
' Helen's voice echoed faintly, but this time Ruth took no notice; she was properly awake now, and she could tell by the brightness of the light at the edges of the blind that it was late, well after nine. She could hear her dad moving round in the shop downstairs, the sound of a heavy sack being dragged across the floor, the clang of the metal lid on the big flour bin and then the squeak of the screen door and a voice calling, ‘Morning, Mr Gower,' and Dad's gentle voice replying, ‘Morning Mrs Harrison, what can I do for you this lovely day?'

She switched off the lamp. The bedrooms above the shop were silent; Nan would be out in her garden by now. She always got up early. ‘It was a habit I learned at the orphanage,' she'd told Ruth once.

‘And never got out of,' Ruth said.

‘Never,' Nan had replied. She'd been smiling. But there were other times, like certain dark winter afternoons when Nan would stand at the window gazing out at the rain, when Ruth could see the orphanage in her eyes, like a shadow, and then she felt she'd do anything to keep that shadow away.

She loved her nan.

‘Don't you mind not having a mum?' her best friend Fee had asked on their very first day at school.

Ruth had thought about it for a moment. ‘Yes,' she'd said at last. ‘But I've got my nan.'

Fee had taken Ruth's hand and looked gravely into her new friend's face. ‘And me,' she'd said. ‘You've got me now.'

TWELVE
years on, they were still best friends. ‘Tam Finn's back,' Fee had told her yesterday morning, and Ruth's heart had jumped. She hadn't thought of Tam Finn for ages, and yet the moment Fee had spoken his name her heart had given that strange little leap, as if it had a secret life of its own and knew things that Ruth didn't know.

‘Back?' she'd echoed stupidly.

‘Got kicked out of Ag School, didn't he?'

It was no surprise. Tam Finn had been kicked out of two private colleges; that was the reason he'd been at their school for those brief few months. The teachers hadn't liked him.

‘How do you know he got kicked out of Ag School?'

‘Joanie Fawkes at the post office, who else?' Fee answered. ‘She told Mum Mr Finn and Tam had this big fight in the middle of Main Street and Mr Finn was roaring out how he was going to leave
Fortuna
to someone else if Tam didn't change his ways.'

‘What ways?'

‘Girls, I s'pose, you know what Tam Finn's like – people say that's why he got kicked out of those other schools. Joanie Fawkes does, anyway.'

‘Joanie Fawkes is a stupid old gossip!' Ruth had cried, and Fee had glanced at her curiously, surprised at the anger in her friend's voice. ‘And she steams the letters open, I bet,' Ruth added more calmly.

‘Course she does. All the same, it's best to know things sometimes.' Fee had given Ruth a funny, sidelong glance. ‘Pity Helen Hogan doesn't.'

‘Helen Hogan?'

‘She's been going with him. This mate of Mattie's saw them down the creek – you know, down the little beach, mucking round. Her dad's going to kill her if he finds out; he'll have the hide off her, for sure.'

Ruth flinched, thinking of Helen Hogan's skin, her
hide,
which was a pure and perfect white with faint blue shadows, like new milk.

That was why she'd remembered the scene in the playground, of course – because Fee had been talking about Helen yesterday, and she'd had the dream about Tam Finn because Fee had been talking about him as well.

Though there was something else. Yesterday afternoon the house had been so hot that she had taken a book and gone down to the creek to read. The brown water had trickled over the stones, crickets chirped, birds called drowsily in the trees – and then there'd been another sound, a rustling in the bushes on the other bank, and something that could have been a long, long sigh. Looking up, she thought she'd seen a narrow wedge of pale face framed in those broad green leaves: a pale face, curly black hair, grey eyes staring straight across at her.

She'd jumped to her feet and scrambled up the bank towards the road. No one had followed. The road was as empty as the afternoon.

She'd imagined it, of course she had. It hadn't been Tam Finn amongst those bushes, only light and shadow and strange little games going on your mind that someone else seemed to be playing, perhaps that person Helen Hogan said you didn't know you were. Tam Finn wouldn't be spying on her down at the creek; she wasn't his type. ‘Anyone's his type,' Fee would say. ‘Anyone.'

‘Not me,' said Ruth aloud, and she slid out of bed and went to stand in front of the wardrobe mirror. ‘Not
you
,' she told the girl in the old blue nightie with her hair all tangled and messy from sleep. ‘
You're
not his type at all, whatever these funny feelings. Fun-ny feel-ings,' she chanted, rising up on her toes and then down again, smiling at the serious face of the girl in the mirror, making her smile back, a little uncertainly. ‘And anyway,' she added, ‘
you're
going away soon, you're going to Sydney University.'

two

Only she mightn't be. Living in Sydney, going to the university – Ruth's new life, as her nan kept on calling it – was hanging in the air, suspended like some shining miraculous treasure, just out of reach. Everything depended on how well she'd done in the exams.

‘You
love
exams!' Fee had accused her gleefully when time was up and pens put down and the two of them burst out from the very last afternoon of school.

‘Who, me?'

‘Yes,
you.
' Fee had flung her old school case down and given it a kick along the ground.

‘How do you know?'

‘Finished early, didn't I? And then we weren't allowed to go outside and there was nothing to do so I was watching you.
Your face!
You looked like – a kind of happy angel.'

‘An angel!'

‘Honestly! Anyone could tell from that face you're going to come top of the state.'

‘Angels don't come top of the state. Or people from Barinjii.'

‘Always a first time. You will, I bet! And then – then you'll go flying far, far away.'

‘You're as bad as Nan!'

Fee's slender arms had flown out in a wide clear gesture. ‘You'll fly away over the great wide world, and never come back, and I'll never ever see you again.'

Ruth had laughed; it was impossible to think that she'd never see Fee again. Fee was for always.

‘Course you'll see me. I'd come back, even if I did go away; can't miss your wedding, can I? Specially since I'm going to be bridesmaid and wear that awful purple shroud.'

‘It's not purple; it's lilac! And it's not a shroud!'

‘Anyway, I mightn't even be going; it depends on the results.'

‘If it depends on them, you're on your way. And I can
feel
you're going; best friends always know.'

Fee was staying in Barinjii. Love made her world go round: she loved Barinjii and she loved Mattie Howe and they were getting married at Easter. ‘I'm going to stay here and be a mum,' she'd said, nudging the battered school case further along the road. ‘Keep the home flag flying, eh?'

It was a kind of joke, but Ruth knew Fee was truly happy; she could see it in her shining eyes and the way her feet had skipped in a little dance on the dusty road. ‘Oh, last exam!' she'd exclaimed joyfully. ‘My last exam forever! Oh, I'm so glad – glad, glad, glad! It was torture sitting at that desk for hours. It was torture being at school. All those years! And now I'm free!' She'd given the old case one last kick and sent it sliding into the long grass of the verge. ‘Free, free, free!'

AS
for Nan, there'd been no stopping her. ‘You'll be needing new things,' she'd announced over breakfast the very first day after the exams.

‘New things?'

‘Clothes!' Her small face had been almost swallowed by her smile. ‘For when you start at university!'

‘But Nan, it's too soon! What if I don't get enough marks?'

‘Of course you'll get enough marks. More than enough. Your teachers tell me you're a certainty.'

‘But—'

It was no use. The very next day they'd gone into Dubbo on the bus, to the biggest department store in town and bought the material: linen and cotton for summer, wool and cord for winter, zips and buttons and sewing thread and braid. Nan had sewed for days, the needle of her old Singer flashing down the long seams of straight skirts and flared skirts, gathering fullness into narrow waistbands, tracking carefully round the curves of collars and the armholes of dresses and blouses. In the evenings they'd turned up hems and sewed on buttons and zips and braid, while Dad sat reading the paper in his armchair, and from the mantelpiece above his head Ruth's mother Polly, who'd died when Ruth was a baby, smiled down at them from her silver frame. Ruth had no real memory of Polly, though sometimes at night she'd have an occasional fleeting sense, right on the border of sleep, of being rocked and held, of great delighted eyes gazing into hers, and a gentle hand cupping her head, leaving its warmth behind.

‘Your mother would be so
proud
of you,' Nan had said last night, and Ruth had needed to bite hard on her bottom lip to stop herself from crying out again, ‘But Nan, it's too
soon
.'

Now she swung open the door of her wardrobe and reached inside. She took out the brown linen skirt with the saddle-stitched side pockets and ivory buttons from the waist to the hem. ‘For best,' Nan had said, ‘for when you get asked to some special occasion in Sydney.'

‘Some special occasion!' Ruth had scoffed, because that was Nan all over, imagining special occasions and unknown people who would ask her to them, imagining a whole
life
for her, before anything was certain, making plans with such excitement you'd think that imaginary life was hers.

Ruth stared at the skirt for a long moment, struggling to imagine that far-off special evening, the unknown room where she would dress up in this skirt and her new best blouse, stand in front of a different mirror to brush her hair, getting ready to go out. The picture wouldn't come; she had never liked parties; Nan's ‘special occasion' didn't seem like her. She touched the top button of the skirt and her hand jumped back as if the cold ivory had given off a small electric shock. But it was an image from the dream of Tam Finn that had shocked her, rushing in suddenly from that other world: how Tam Finn had laid a fingertip right in the very centre of her forehead, and it had felt exactly like this button, cold as old, old bone.

She slid the skirt back onto the rail and closed the wardrobe. Down in the street, the dogs began to bark, first the high shrill yap of Fancy, old Mrs Tregoar's little Pomeranian at number 81, then the deep roar of Kray, Mal Burton's big Alsatian at number 89. ‘Shut up, you silly bugger,' Mal was bellowing.

Ruth's heart seemed to freeze beneath the thin stuff of her nightie, as it did every morning when the postman came. Up at the school the teachers had told them the exam results would come either this week or the next. Today was Friday, and Ruth had given up on this week, because letters hardly ever seemed to come on Friday. Next week then, she'd told herself yesterday when Fred Fawkes had sailed right by their door. Monday, perhaps. Things took a long time to reach Barinjii and when they arrived they smelled of the Western Express, of diesel oil and tobacco smoke, of dry curled sandwiches and boredom and heat and dust.