The Last Rose of Summer

by Di Morrissey

  Odette spent the rest of the morning trying to remember names and finding her way through the maze of offices. Toby, the copy boy, befriended her and showed her where the hot water urn was so she could make herself cups of tea or instant coffee. He spent his time in a small cupboard-like cubicle by a board of numbered buzzers. When he was needed to run a message a numbered light came on and he knew by the number who was summoning him. He was sixteen and longing for a cadetship, but he knew he had another year to wait.

  Odette was glad about the tea and she helped herself to biscuits, having no money to buy lunch.

  Kay Metcalf came to her rescue when she asked if she had been to the pay office and filled in the necessary forms. Odette shook her head and asked shyly, ‘When do we get paid?’

  ‘Every Thursday afternoon.’ She smiled at her. ‘Would you like a loan to see you through till Thursday? I know it’s expensive setting up home in a new place. You’ll notice how much more costly the city is, I’m sure.’

  ‘I haven’t got settled yet. I arrived on the weekend and checked in to the YWCA . . . and had my money stolen right away.’

  Kay Metcalf roared. ‘The Christians are no better than the lions! This is the city, treat every man, woman and dog as the enemy, till they prove otherwise. Come on, girl. We’d better get you sorted out. At least this is one profession where we girls are paid the same as the men!’

  Odette was glad she was under the wing of Kay Metcalf. The size and the bustle of the Women’s Gazette, which only occupied one floor of the building, bewildered her. Outside, the city was large and unfamiliar, filled with strangers and a little threatening. But there was an excitement in the air that lifted her spirit. The city seemed to be throbbing with life and Odette felt close to the heart of it.

  Kay Metcalf and Elaine took her to lunch up the road at what they laughingly called ‘The Greasy Spoon’, a large and rowdy Greek restaurant above the disposal store. A sign in peeling paint announced it was really called The Parthenon.

  The tablecloth was stained with the sauce and spilled wine of previous diners, but it drew no comment from the journalists. They lashed into moussaka, Greek salad and thick black coffee. Odette had never tasted food like it. She would remember it as one of the great meals of her life.

  ‘Filling and cheap. Even the bigwigs eat here,’ commented Elaine.

  Late that afternoon, Odette was walking down a hallway when she met the bald and bearded artist she’d asked directions from earlier that morning. She smiled at him.

  ‘How’s it goin’?’ he asked.

  ‘Good,’ Odette grinned. ‘I think I’m going to survive.’

  ‘Yeah, that’s the name of the game — survival.’

  Within two weeks Odette was sharing a flat with Elaine, who had been looking for a place closer to the city. Officially it was Elaine’s flat and Odette rented a bedroom. They travelled to work together and Elaine confessed she was in her late thirties and still looking for a husband. But after years of caring for her elderly mother, she’d never learned to be a ‘girl about town’. Now her mother had died, Elaine was finding it hard to adjust to single life. But she and Odette got on well and Elaine began teaching her to cook more than the basic foods she’d reluctantly mastered under Aunt Harriet.

  The first weeks flew by and Odette wrote happy and enthusiastic notes to her Aunt. She wished she could also tell Zac how much she was enjoying her new life but she knew he was on some personal journey of his own. Besides, she had no idea where he was. She somehow felt — or wanted to believe — that their paths would cross again.

  She sent Fitz a note, thanking him again for paving the way and giving her this opportunity, saying she realised more than ever what a terrific job he did almost single-handed at the Clarion. She promised to send him her first by-line story. Odette didn’t know that Mr Fitzpatrick had already started taking the Women’s Gazette each week — ‘for the missus,’ he’d explained to the newsagent.

  One day, after the weekly editorial meeting, Kay Metcalf stood in front of Odette’s desk and announced, ‘Right, you’ve got three months on Social’.

  Odette’s heart sank. The social pages — how dull. How shallow. How unexciting. ‘Do I have to move from here?’

  ‘No. Edna likes her big office. You might want to spend some time going through her files though. She’s got half the skeletons of the social register in there.’

  Odette wrinkled her nose. ‘I don’t go much on the social scene.’

  Kay Metcalf gave a half smile. ‘Umm . . . Whatever your private feelings, having your mug in the Gazette’s social roundup means you’ve made it. All very prestigious. Helps the mag’s circulation and you’ll find some of the invitations can be to fun places. You might meet a rich eligible bachelor.’

  ‘If he’s keen on getting into the social pages of the Women’s Gazette, he’s not for me.’

  ‘Ah, that’s the secret you’ll learn. You don’t go after the people who want to be in the social column, but after the people who don’t. They’re the true elite. Sift through the social climbers for the bluebloods.’

  ‘Do we have any?’

  ‘No comment. Miss Cooper will show you the ropes.’

  ‘I just hope I don’t hang myself,’ muttered Odette. ‘I suppose she wants to see her new ace cadet.’

  Odette trudged from the office as Elaine and Kay grinned at each other. They had become very fond of Odette even in so short a time.

  Miss Edna Cooper, the social editor, was from one of Sydney’s ‘good families’, by which she meant a family which had wealth or power or both. She took the social scene very seriously. Odette thought the social activities of a seemingly select and snobbish section of society rather shallow and silly.

  ‘Why do they do all this stuff? These charity balls, luncheons, black-tie cocktail parties, coming of age and deb balls?’ she asked.

  Miss Cooper, who looked to Odette like the English mistress of a posh private school and spoke ‘naicely’ with rounded vowels and perfect grammar, looked askance. Her eyes blinked behind her glasses in surprise that anyone should query what was her raison d’etre. Odette noticed her glasses for the first time. They appeared to be the only frivolous thing about the impeccably but conservatively attired Miss Cooper. Her spectacles curled upwards in a cat’s eye shape and were studded, though discreetly, with small flecks of gold and silver.

  ‘Odette, these functions raise money for worthy causes. Charity, dear. There is no harm in making an occasion out of it as well. To get people to part with their money they have to be given something in return. It’s lifestyle. A manner of living and entertaining and maintaining standards. Meeting one’s obligations. A lot of these functions might look like parties, Odette, but they are often business occasions. Getting to meet and know the right people can open doors in high places.’

  Odette didn’t answer. It wasn’t all fun then. Beneath the small talk, cocktail circulating and banter, a primitive barter system was at work. Business contacts, information and favours exchanged; sons and daughters introduced. But why couldn’t they do it over a plate of sandwiches and a pot of tea instead of over carpetbag steak and champagne? Maybe the ladies needed somewhere to wear their Beryl Jents outfits.

  Odette threw herself into the social round with a lot of energy, knowing that she had to make ‘every point a winning point’ as Aunt Harriet used to say. However, the more Odette observed the social rituals the more she detested their world. She developed an unerring knack at any function, no matter the size, of going directly to a man who was with his mistress and asking if they could be photographed together for the social pages. The various staff photographers began running a book on Odette’s strike-out record. Those she did manage to get to pose never pleased Miss Cooper.

  ‘Odette, these are not top drawer people. Here, take home Who’s Who and the Social Register and learn the better families.’

  ‘They’re not better families, Miss Cooper. They just have more money.’

&nb
sp; ‘Whether they have bought their way in, or were born to it, they are still in. Our true royalty is out there on the land; in the meantime we have to make do with the eastern suburbs.’

  Miss Cooper was terse. Clearly she didn’t appreciate Odette questioning what she had always taken as a matter of course. Her empty life was consumed by the round of engagements, weddings, births and deaths of a hierarchy she’d been born into but in which she had never really participated. Gradually Odette came to learn that, while Miss Cooper’s family had a ‘name’, they had little money. Although she had a certain power as the arbiter of who appeared in the social pages, she never attended functions in her capacity as Social Editor of the Women’s Gazette. Having to work for a living was not quite comme il faut.

  Odette didn’t feel inferior to the wealthy social set, but she couldn’t help feeling unsophisticated in her dress and grooming compared to the elegant senior women on the Gazette, and the modern styles worn by the other girl reporters. Odette had always dressed simply — skirts and blouses, button-through dresses. Now she was confronted by worsted, nip-waisted suits, hats and gloves, and whatever style was new from Europe.

  Many of the girls wore their hair in neat smooth French rolls, or had a permanent wave. Odette’s unruly mass of red gold curls refused to lie flat or be trained into a controlled style. She didn’t paint her fingernails and wondered how some of the girls managed to type with elongated scarlet talons. Her make-up was basic and she gazed in awe at the elaborate eye make-up of some of the fashion models who came in to be photographed.

  She commented on this to Kay Metcalf, who grinned. ‘You outshine the lot of them, Odette. You are pretty and natural, so keep it that way. A fresh daisy among the artificial flowers. Anyway, you’ll catch up quick enough — next month you’re off social and will work with Betsy Blake the fashion ed.’

  Odette didn’t confine her interest to the Women’s Gazette but wandered through the building where the other papers of Australian Incorporated were produced. Led by Toby, she went to the basement, to the composing and printing room where the linotype presses clanked and clattered, worked by men in ink blackened aprons and caps made of newsprint. It was an industrial world which fascinated her; a place of intoxicatingly hot lead type and inky smells where stories on small pieces of copy paper were transformed to lines of lead, inked and then rolled off on large strips of paper for proofreading. Printers’ apprentices rushed pages and galleys of type around the floors and all was noise and movement. There was a tension that was almost tangible, particularly near printing deadlines, yet the men exuded good-humoured friendliness.

  Watching the great throbbing heart of the newspaper when the huge presses began to roll gave Odette a new sense of excitement. She had an intense feeling of belonging. She knew she had found her direction and place in the world. She befriended several of the printing staff, who appreciated her dedicated interest in their work. They explained how, out of the seeming confusion, came order and a publication that was always on time.

  The new colour printing plant for the magazine was an exciting development in a print shop that hadn’t seen much new technology since before the war. ‘Might have a newspaper with coloured pictures one day,’ they told her.

  She wrinkled her nose. ‘No, it wouldn’t be the same. Magazines are one thing, but I like my morning newspaper in black and white.’

  ‘You’re a traditionalist, Odette. You can’t hang back in the past, new technology is coming along every day,’ said one printer.

  ‘And might put you blokes out of work,’ she laughed.

  ‘I’ll go fishing if that happens,’ said another.

  The men suddenly straightened up and looked very businesslike. Odette turned to see the old man she had met in the lift on her first day looming over her. He wore a dark suit and the same thick-rimmed dark glasses.

  ‘You still working here?’ he asked.

  She grinned at him. ‘Yes. And it seems you are too!’

  A slight smile curled at the corners of his stern mouth. ‘I am indeed. You liking it?’

  ‘Oh, yes. Very much.’

  ‘Why are you down here?’

  ‘Just learning how it all . . . happens. I wanted to know where my words went.’

  ‘And how do you evaluate your words at this stage?’

  ‘They’re starting to really work for me . . . well, I think they are. They’re at least better than some rubbish that gets printed.’

  ‘By these presses?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Mmm . . . You had something in the Daily?’

  ‘Not yet. I’m still a cadet on the weekly Gazette.’

  ‘You will, young lady, I’d lay odds on that.’ He turned and walked away.

  The compositor looked at Odette with a bemused expression. ’Struth, you’re a one, aren’t you?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Talking to the boss like that. I thought he’d send you on your way for being down here.’

  ‘The boss? Who was that?’

  ‘Sir George Tippit. Owns Australian Incorporated Newspapers. The lot.’

  Odette clutched her head. ‘Oh no! Do you know, on my first day I met him in the lift and asked if he worked here!’

  The men roared with laughter and within half an hour the story had spread round the press room.

  Having settled into her flat and the job, Odette decided to make her long-dreamed-of pilgrimage to Zanana. Assuming the gates would be locked and entry would be difficult, she decided to go as she had in the beginning. By boat.

  But first she went ‘home’. Walking down the suburban street in Kincaid where she had lived with her parents stirred many memories — the warm knowledge of having been loved, the close-knit family they had been, and the togetherness of Ralph and Sheila Barber.

  Although little had changed, everything seemed somehow smaller, diminished from the overwhelming scale of memory. Houses and gardens looked a little more prosperous, a few new shops had appeared, but it was as familiar as when she’d left it years before.

  She stopped at the gate of her parents’ house. It, too, was the same. Odette was overcome with the sudden fancy she could walk up to the path, in the door, call out, and Sheila and Ralph would be there to greet her.

  ‘Odette . . . ? Is that you?’

  Mrs Bramble, the neighbour who’d cared for her, came down the footpath, a smile spreading over her face. ‘There’s no mistaking that hair. How are you, my dear?’

  ‘I’m very well thanks, Mrs Bramble . . . I’ve just moved down to Sydney and well . . . just thought . . .’

  ‘Of course. Your aunt wrote to me that you were coming down. Come and have a cup of tea. No use asking to go inside and see your old house.’ She lowered her voice. ‘Fussy old lady lives there. Keeps to herself. Not very neighbourly at all.’

  ‘I don’t think I want to go inside anyway. Nothing much seems to have changed around here.’ They walked together back to Mrs Bramble’s house.

  ‘No, dear. Nothing does change much in Kincaid. Tell me, how is your aunt and what are you doing? You’ve grown into a pretty thing,’ she smiled.

  By the time they’d finished tea and the plate of Arnott’s Little Pillow biscuits, they had caught up on all the news. Odette didn’t tell Mrs Bramble the real reason she was in the neighbourhood.

  However, just in case there was some news about Zanana, she asked hesitatingly, ‘Been any big changes around here?’

  ‘Goodness me, no! Nothing changes in Kincaid. Well, keep in touch, drop round any time, dear. Give my best to your aunt. And I will be looking for your name in the Women’s Gazette.’

  ‘Be a while before I get a by-line. Thanks again, Mrs Bramble. Goodbye.’

  Odette made her way to the boatshed and asked if she could hire a dinghy. ‘I used to live here . . . I just wanted to go for a bit of a row up the river for a couple of hours. Sort of a sentimental journey.’

  The proprietor looked at her curiously. There was so
mething familiar about the tall slim girl with the head of bouncing burnished curls and the clear aquamarine eyes, but he couldn’t make the connection. ‘Oh, just take one of the boats tied to the pontoon there, luv. We’ll fix up the payment when you’re finished.’

  He watched Odette as she pulled away from the wharf with firm strokes, slicing through the sunny water. Then he remembered. The Barber girl, whose parents had drowned. He shook his head. Sad sort of sentimental journey.

  The river was the same as ever and at first she felt warm and comfortable recapturing the rapture of summer days years before. But then she had a sudden feeling of dread, of fear, at what she might find. She rested on the oars, drifting, puzzled by her feelings. She wondered if the caretaker and his son were still there. She hoped so, and resumed pulling towards Zanana.

  As she approached the bend, she stopped rowing and sat still, letting the oars drag through the water. She closed her eyes and then it came drifting softly like the first faint stirring of a breeze — the wafting perfume of the roses. She was transported to her childhood. The memories of Zanana flooded back. Would it be as before?

  The reality matched the memory. The sagging jetty and leaning boathouse, the grove of whispering bamboo, the terraces, the sunken garden, the empty sandstone pool and the overgrown grotto.

  Odette moored the boat and walked slowly through the waterside thicket, stopping to take in the familiar surroundings. All was tranquil and quiet. Strangely silent. It was like looking at a picture without sound. She turned and headed for the rose garden. The banks of rose bushes had survived in thorny profusion in a carpet of fallen petals.

  She continued on past the stables to the caretaker’s cottage which crouched among thick oak trees near the coach house. Immediately Odette knew it was deserted — dusty windows, a padlock on the door and tall weeds everywhere. She wandered about dejectedly then decided to go to the dairy.