by Di Morrissey
‘No . . . !’ He lashed out, hurling the tray to the floor, and slapped his newspaper madly at Mary’s face, shouting incoherently.
Crouching in fear and shock, Mary fled from the room, shaking and crying. As she ran down the hallway his shouting echoed behind her. ‘Go! Get out of my sight. Go! Go back where you came from!’
Then came a cry which rang from rafters to cellar; a cry of utter agony. ‘Catherine . . .’
Unshaven and dishevelled, Robert sat at his office desk and penned a hasty note. He sealed it and scrawled Confidential — Hock Lee on the front, then tucked it into the corner of the blotter on his desk. He pushed back his chair and stood, gazing briefly at the smiling face of Catherine in the silver frame on his desk; then, without looking around him, leaving his jacket on the coat stand, he walked from the office.
Mrs Butterworth sat in the kitchen garden in an old wicker chair feeding Kate in the sun. Harold came up and squatted beside her, peering at the baby on Mrs Butterworth’s ample lap. ‘How’s she doing?’
‘Good. Doctor Hampson came and we weighed her on the kitchen scales. She’s doing real good. Well, she’s healthy anyway.’
‘Has he looked at her at all?’
‘No,’ sighed Mrs Butterworth. ‘He doesn’t want to know about her. It’s so sad. I’m worried, Harold. Mary is convinced he’s going to send her back to the orphanage. Mary told me he said he was going to send the baby away too.’
‘But that’s crazy, she’s his child!’
‘Maybe it was Mary exaggerating, but he did threaten to send Mary back. I heard him.’
They sat in silence for a moment or two.
‘It’s not right, her not being christened, not having a proper name even,’ muttered Harold Butterworth, laying a roughened finger against the baby’s downy cheek.
‘Y’know, Harold, maybe, maybe . . .’ Mrs Butterworth paused.
‘What are you thinking, Glad?’
‘That maybe we should bring her up.’
‘Well, we are.’
‘No. I mean properly. Adopt her, like.’
Harold was taken aback and stared at his wife in total amazement. She calmly pulled the near empty bottle from the baby’s mouth. Kate was smiling and gurgling contentedly, a dribble of foamy milk at the corners of her little mouth.
Finally Harold managed to splutter, ‘Gladys, are you mad? This baby is not only not ours, she has a parent. Not to mention the fact she is an heiress!’
‘She has no mother and a father who has virtually abandoned her,’ argued Gladys stubbornly.
Harold rose and pottered about the small kitchen garden, pulling out a weed here and there, vaguely snapping off the dead heads of the daisies.
Gladys kept silent; she knew he was mulling.
‘Well, it’s a sensible idea,’ admitted Harold finally. ‘But it could only be temporary like . . . till Mr Mac recovers himself. Poor wee thing does need some security and love, that’s for sure. Seems a big step, but. Better let things be for a bit.’
It was a big speech for Harold and Gladys appreciated the depth of feeling that had prompted it.
‘Here, put her over your shoulder and burp her. Pat her on the back. Gently, Harold.’ Mrs Butterworth put the baby in his arms and headed back to the kitchen. ‘I’ll make a pot of tea.’
From the kitchen window Gladys Butterworth could see Harold’s lips moving and a bit of a smile on his face, and she knew he was humming to the baby. He’d come round all right.
Gladys was bleary-eyed with sleep as she prepared the baby’s milk, sterilised bottles and began to brew a pot of tea for herself and Harold before making breakfast for Robert. Not that he often ate his toast and marmalade these past months, but Gladys hoped that one morning the tray would reappear cleared and empty and that Robert would be his old self once more.
Her reverie was shattered as Sid Johnson burst in the kitchen door, his boots muddy, his face pale and wide-eyed with panic. ‘Mrs B . . . quick, where’s Harold? Oh, my lordy . . .’
‘Sid, what is it . . . HAROLD . . .’ she shouted, heedless of disturbing the house, for something was obviously wrong. ‘Sid . . . what is it?’
Sid slumped in a chair, buried his face in his hands and in a broken voice choked out, ‘It’s Mr MacIntyre . . . I . . . he’s . . . dead’.
Gladys felt her knees suddenly buckle and a spasm shot through her belly as she gripped the edge of the kitchen table. ‘Sid, what are you saying? What’s happened? Oh no, it can’t be!’
Harold shuffled into the room, holding his pants up with one hand, and pulling his shirt down with the other. ‘Sid, what’s wrong?’
‘It’s the master . . . he’s dead. I just found him out in the punt. I was going fishing.’
‘God Almighty! Quick . . . let’s go, he might not be dead!’ Harold headed for the door stumbling over a trouser leg.
Sid stood heavily. ‘He’s dead, Harry.’ He glanced at Mrs Butterworth and in a hoarse voice added, ‘He shot himself.
Mrs Butterworth began to sob. ‘I knew it. Oh no . . . Oh that poor man . . .’ She collapsed onto a chair, her shoulders shaking, her apron lifted to her face.
Harold and Sid looked at each other. Slowly Harold moved to the black telephone hooked to the wall. ‘I’ll ring Sergeant Thompson then I’ll be right with you.’
Sniffing, the tears still rolling down her face, Gladys poured two cups of tea and silently handed one to Sid, who took it with a shaking hand.
‘How do you think it happened, Sid?’
‘He must have taken the punt down the river a bit. He used the shotgun I kept in the stables . . .’ Sid’s voice quivered. ‘I should’ve kept it locked away. But the foxes were becoming a bloody nuisance . . .’ His voice trailed off.
‘Oh, the poor children. Sid, what has happened to Zanana? It’s like there is a curse on this place. It was such a happy house when we moved here . . .’
‘Now that’s enough of that talk, Glad,’ said Harold sternly as he came back into the room. ‘Come along, Sid, we’d better bring the punt back to the boat jetty. The Sergeant said not to touch anything. Glad, are you up to ringing Hock Lee?’
Gladys nodded. ‘Yes. He’ll know what to do. Oh dear, they were so close.’
Hock Lee was silent at the other end of the telephone line after Mrs Butterworth broke the news to him.
‘Are you all right, Hock Lee? Are you still there?’
‘Yes, Mrs B,’ he sighed deeply. ‘Saddened as I am, I can’t say I am really so surprised. I am shocked, but somehow I knew something was coming. I will be there as fast as I can.’
Mrs Butterworth was restless as she waited for the arrival of the police, Hock Lee and the visitors she knew would soon descend. But for the moment all was quiet. The baby and Mary were still sleeping, the men on the estate had gathered by the river. Her shoulders sagging, Mrs Butterworth walked slowly through the beautiful rooms Catherine and Robert had created. She pushed open the nursery door where the baby Kate lay in her ruffled bassinet. Two rooms away Mary slept in her blue and white bedroom, the possessions of her new life dotted about in tidy rows. Having never owned anything before, she was a fastidious child with her belongings, caring for her clothes and toys with reverence and pleasure. Mary’s dark ringlets were spread on the white lace pillow as she slept soundly.
Gladys Butterworth tightened her fist on the china doorknob and closed her eyes, suddenly overcome with grief.
‘Don’t you worry, Catherine, my pet,’ she whispered absently, ‘I won’t let anything happen to your children. I promise you that. You and he are together now. I will look after the babies.’
In the deserted rose garden, a chill wind ruffled the thorny plants and climbers where now no roses bloomed.
CHAPTER SIX
Amberville 1958
Time passed on sticky feet. Odette felt she had plodded through each day as if walking in glue. Forgettable schooldays were coming to an end, and ahead lay The Future.
Aunt Harriet
harped about The Future in foreboding tones and made Odette feel she was about to plunge from the precipice of school, home and Amberville, into some terrifying abyss Aunt Harriet referred to as Life.
‘Life is no picnic, Odette. You must think carefully about The Future. Many of us did not have your advantages, and couldn’t pursue The Future we might have wished.’
‘What advantages are you referring to, Aunt Harriet?’
‘A comfortable life, security, a good education. You have the world at your feet, Odette. The Future awaits. If you can get a scholarship to university, life will be much, much easier.’
As far as Odette was concerned, Amberville did not offer her the world, or indeed a future, or even a life. The place was as dull, as mind-numbing and as insular as it had appeared when she’d arrived. Aunt Harriet’s limited circle of acquaintances were small-town snobs, prejudiced against the Labor Party, ‘the blacks’, all foreigners and any drastic change to the town, whether it be an improved railway station or a widened road.
Odette did not want to go to university. She knew what she wanted to do, and knew, too, how much Aunt Harriet disapproved of her dream to be a newspaper reporter. Her aunt considered it a passing fancy, generated by her part-time job as a copy girl on the local newspaper.
If there was life in Amberville, it was, Odette decided, only surviving at the Clarion.
She rushed to the Clarion after school each day for two hours and on Saturday mornings. She hung about making tea, running messages, answering the telephone, cutting and filing articles from the papers for ‘the morgue’. She also wrote lots of little articles in her spare time at home, but hadn’t yet worked up the courage to show them to anyone on the staff.
Harriet was unaware that Odette had scribbled since she was a child. Her mother, Sheila, had loved Odette reading her stories aloud and encouraged her, although never believing writing could be a career. Creative endeavours were regarded in the world of Sheila and Ralph Barber as a hobby. To Aunt Harriet, a good job was something solid like a bank clerk, a salesgirl or, if one had the skills and temperament, a teacher.
One Saturday afternoon, riding home on her bike — bought with money earned from her part-time job at the Clarion — Odette took her favourite track by the river. It had been an interesting morning at the paper. An old man had come in with photos and letters going back to before the turn of the century. His wife’s family had been early settlers in the district and now that ‘she’d gone’ he was having a bit of a clean out and thought the local paper might be interested.
Odette had been told to deal with the old fellow, so she’d chatted to him, taken his name and address, and thanked him for bringing in the old cardboard hatbox of letters that had belonged to his wife.
‘These look like they could be of historical significance,’ said Odette.
The man had scratched his head before adjusting his hat. ‘Dunno ’bout that, luv. Seems like a lot of old rubbish to me. But she was a sentimental old duck and always said I was never to turf any of it away. She reckoned it might be of interest to someone someday. I dunno who’d be interested in all that old stuff. Nobody wants to know about the old days anymore. You go through it, girl, and do what you want with it.’
Odette had spent an hour looking at some of the old photos taken in Amberville’s early days. There was a particularly good one of a bullock dray under the command of a wizened bullocky posing outside the original bank in the main street.
The letters appeared to be from a farmer’s wife living out of town, to her sister. In fine copperplate writing she told of the hardships and struggle of their life with stoic good humour. Odette found it fascinating and planned to go through it all thoroughly and write an article for the paper using extracts from the letters and some of the old photos.
For the first time the town of Amberville had a broader dimension. It had a past, and the nostalgia caused her to feel some affection for the bland and fading country town she knew today.
She was deep in thought when she became aware of the steady thud of horse’s hooves behind her. She cycled to the side so the rider could pass, but instead the horse stopped. Odette looked over her shoulder and skidded to a shaky halt. Smiling down at her from a large black horse was the gypsy boy, Zac.
He looked more dashing than ever on a horse which had a brightly coloured blanket and decorated bridle. He swung from the saddle and went to Odette, leading his horse. ‘Odette, I was hoping I’d find you. And as pretty as ever too.’
‘You’re back!’
‘We are, we are. Will you come and see us?’
‘Now?’
‘Why not?’ He took her hand. ‘Meet Mercy Mild, my gallant charger. Don’t be fearful. Horses are like dogs, they sense your fear.’
Gingerly Odette reached out and patted the horse’s velvety nose. ‘I’ve never had much to do with horses.’
‘We often fear what we do not know, eh? Here, you lead her and I shall ride your bike. Now, tell me what momentous events have happened in your life since I saw you.’
‘Momentous! In Amberville? Hah!’
Leading the large gentle horse, with Zac’s long legs pedalling her bicycle in a weaving pattern beside her, Odette began to tell Zac about the boredom and frustration of her life. How she longed to get away, how she wanted to write and work for a big city newspaper. He listened seriously and Odette felt better unburdening herself to her special friend.
‘I’ll probably never get to do it, or get away, but I am working on the local paper after school. Just sort of helping out.’
‘Don’t give up your dreams easily, Odette. Go after what you want. You can make the things you want happen. You have the power — we all have — but few of us know how to use it. You have made a start, that’s good.’ He paused for a moment and smiled at her. ‘And what do you want to write about? I am puzzled by your wish to write. We have no written language but this doesn’t mean we are an illiterate people. Our reading and perception of the world doesn’t come from books but from understanding what is around us — the earth, the plants, the animals, the wind and sky. We learn by oral tradition, and by the old ways.’
‘What old ways?’
‘Certain sciences and divinations — what your people call spells and foretelling the future.’
‘Is that true?’
‘Truth is what you believe,’ answered Zac enigmatically. ‘I can read English, but my learning has come from poetry and songs.’
‘I remember your songs,’ said Odette shyly.
‘I have composed many more since I last sang to you. I shall sing some to you and one day I shall sing them to the world.’
Odette glanced at him. It was said simply and his eyes were focused on something a long way ahead. Then he turned his head and softly began to sing.
His melodious voice drifted through the trees around them as the girl, leading the placid black horse, listened to the lanky gypsy boy sing of space and freedom, and the place called home. A place where the heart rests. He came to his song’s stirring final chorus and lifted his arms above his head, making the bike wobble.
Odette laughed. ‘That was beautiful. I know what you mean . . . home is where your heart is. I sort of think of my home as a special place I knew once.’
Zac steadied the bike. ‘Tell me about it. Was it where you lived with your parents?’
‘No, but not far away. It was a beautiful old house on a river. With a garden filled with roses and memories. It had a kind of magic . . . It’s hard to describe.’
Zac didn’t press her; he could tell she was back in this favourite place in her mind, so he didn’t intrude on her thoughts.
In the distance, Odette could hear voices and a heavy hammering ringing through the trees. Soon she could see once again the raggle-taggle gypsy camp spread along the banks of the river. Children ran forward to greet them, an old man hammering at a piece of car metal straightened up, and the women around the cooking fire lifted their arms in a friendly wave. Odett
e waved back and smiled.
‘They remember you,’ smiled Zac.
‘That’s nice,’ Odette laughed as children ran to meet them, forming a giggling chattering escort.
‘What are all the horses for?’ asked Odette, seeing a dozen horses tied in a makeshift pen.
‘To sell to those who want to buy a spirited and healthy horse.’
‘Where did they come from?’
‘That would be telling, wouldn’t it,’ winked Zac. ‘Come along. My family wish to see you.’
Again Odette was welcomed by a bewildering array of cousins, uncles, aunties, brothers and sisters. Everyone was related to everyone else by blood or spirit. She sat on the steps of one of the little caravans with a small child on either side gazing at her with friendly interest; Zac sat at her feet while several of the older women squatted on their haunches, regarding her with bright-eyed interest.
Odette was wearing white pedal pushers, white sandshoes and a simple cotton blouse. She felt very plain beside the flamboyantly dressed women.
As if reading her mind, one of the little girls said with the frankness of a child, ‘Why do you not wear clothes like us?’
‘Because I don’t have clothes like yours to wear. You look very pretty,’ replied Odette touching the scarf, which was deep scarlet shot with golden threads, tied about the girl’s shoulders.
‘Then we shall give you some to wear!’ cried Zac, leaping to his feet. ‘Cousin Delia, pull out your trunk and find something for Odette.’
‘No, no I couldn’t,’ protested Odette as Zac dragged her across to another caravan.
She shyly emerged a short time later. A transparent glittery skirt fell to her ankles over her white pants, a silk-fringed shawl embroidered with colourful flowers was knotted about her shoulders, gold earrings jingled and her hair, released from its braid, sprang free in wild curls pinned to one side with a tortoiseshell comb.
