Three Summers

by Judith Clarke

  What if Mrs Lachlan had been home and heard them talking? What if Mrs Lachlan had passed on the story to Nan? She had a sudden image of Tam Finn from long ago, a small boy in a white shirt standing between his father and old Mrs Finn in the front pew at Saint Columba’s. People had loved him then, the little boy from Fortuna; they had smiled when he walked into the church, holding his grandmother’s hand. Now they hated him, even those girls who’d gone with him for a little while.

  ‘I hate him, I hate him, I hate him!’ Meg Harrison had bawled in the washroom at Barinjii High after Tam Finn had dumped her. ‘I hate him more than anyone in the whole world! He’s got no heart! I hope he goes to Hell!’

  ‘Oh, he’ll do just fine in Hell,’ Helen Hogan had said. ‘He’ll get on really well with the devil. They’re two of a kind, maybe.’

  There was something a bit scary about Tam Finn – the way he’d talked about the snake ring and how he was swallowing himself had frightened her. And those strange rain-coloured eyes: they gave you this feeling there was another person hidden in there down beneath the rain. But that person wasn’t the devil, he was more like a shabby importunate stranger waiting outside a door. She thought of his long fingers twisting the ring, his thinness, when the blue shirt had blown back against his chest—

  They shouldn’t all hate him. She swallowed, picturing the hatred of Barinjii like a great black wave sweeping after him over the paddocks, engulfing him. Someone should love him. Someone should. Not Helen Hogan, but—

  A sudden noisy racket filled the quiet street and she looked up and saw Mattie’s old Holden lurching down the road. It shuddered to a stop outside the front gate, engine still revving, because if you turned it off it wouldn’t start again. The passenger door flew open and Fee burst out onto the footpath. ‘No, no, no, don’t stop! You’ve got to pick your dad up, remember? Go! Go! Go!’ The car roared off again and Fee stood waving and blowing kisses till it disappeared around the corner, trailing clouds of gritty smoke. Then she came racing up the path, yellow hair flying, arms stretched out towards her friend. ‘Oh, Ruth! Ruthie! I’m so sorry! We had a flat just outside Dubbo, could you believe?’

  ‘I believe.’

  ‘And then Mattie couldn’t get it to start again, not for ages. And the spare’s nearly had it, and that wheel’s got a bit of a wobble anyway, so we had to drive slowly—’ She broke off and peered into her friend’s face. ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘I’m all right,’ said Ruth. ‘I haven’t been to Dubbo in an old, old Holden.’ She got up from the verandah and pushed her hair back, smiling – simply to look at Fee, to see her happiness like sunshine, made her feel better. ‘Why did you think I wasn’t? All right, I mean.’

  ‘I don’t know. For a moment, when I was coming in the gate, I thought you looked sort of—’ Fee stepped back for a moment and surveyed her friend again, ‘different, like something had happened.’

  ‘Nothing’s happened. I went for a walk and got a bit hot, that’s all.’

  ‘You’re crazy, going walking in this heat.’ Fee swung the door open on a long cool hall. ‘Let’s get inside; you lie down on the sofa like a princess and I’ll get you a cold drink.’

  ‘I’m all right, honest,’ said Ruth, but already Fee was gone, and from the kitchen came the sounds of the fridge opening and closing, the clink of china against glass; and then a brief silence broken by a small, soft scream. ‘Aaah!’

  ‘Fee?’ Ruth ran into the kitchen, where Fee was standing in the middle of the floor, a scrap of paper in her hand. Her face was white and the band of gold freckles across the bridge of her nose had gone dark. ‘Mum’s left me a message,’ she said in a low, shaky voice, holding the paper out to Ruth, her eyes wide and round. ‘She says – she says they’ve come! Look! They’re there!’ She pointed to a long white envelope lying on the table.

  ‘The results,’ said Ruth. ‘Yes, I know.’

  ‘You know? Why didn’t you tell me?’

  ‘I forgot.’ It was true. Tam Finn had driven all of that from her mind.

  ‘You forgot!’ Fee slapped her forehead. ‘I don’t believe it! Ruth Gower forgetting about exam results!’

  Ruth pointed to the envelope lying on the table. ‘Aren’t you going to open it?’

  Fee did a funny little hopping dance on the tips of her toes. ‘No! No, I can’t! I can’t touch it! You do it, Ruthie, please!’

  Ruth picked up the letter from the table. ‘Will I open it?’

  ‘Open it,’ said Fee.

  Taking a small knife from the kitchen drawer, Ruth slid the blade beneath the flap of the envelope. There was a soft ripping sound. She drew out the pages and held them towards Fee, but Fee clasped her hands behind her back and shook her head.

  ‘You’re not going to look at it?’ said Ruth. ‘Ever? You’re going to be this old, old lady who tells everyone, “I never knew the results of my final exams . . .”?’

  ‘No, I’m not that bad. But you read them for me, okay? My hands are shaking like anything, I couldn’t even hold it properly. It doesn’t matter what’s in there anyway, I’m totally, absolutely sure I’ve failed.’

  ‘And I’m sure you haven’t.’

  ‘Yes, I have.’ Fee tossed her head and the heavy hair went flap, flap, against her shoulderblades. ‘And I don’t care, really. Stupid old exams!’ But then she sighed, and her whole body appeared to falter and fold a little into itself, so that she seemed suddenly smaller. ‘Mum and Dad will care, though,’ she said. ‘And Gran. Gran especially. She says a girl always needs something up her sleeve.’

  Ruth scanned the sheets quickly and smiled. ‘Well, you’ve got something up yours.’

  ‘What? What?

  ’ ‘Five Bs and an A. You’ve passed. Told you.’

  Fee unfolded. She was strong and beautiful again. ‘What’s the A for?’

  ‘History.’

  Fee sat down on a chair and covered her face with her hands.

  ‘Are you all right?’

  Fee’s hands flew away from her face. She was smiling. ‘Oh Ruth, I was so sure I’d failed! I never did a stroke of work all year. It was all Mattie, you know. All Mattie and getting engaged and making plans – school just faded away. It seemed stupid to be going there. And yet I passed! I passed anyway! I can’t believe it!’

  ‘You’re a genius, that’s all.’

  Fee stretched one leg out and admired her slender brown foot. ‘Well, you might just be right. Here, give us!’ She snatched the pages from Ruth’s hands. ‘Look at all those Bs. Queen of the hive, that’s me! Only one poor little A. Guess I’ll have to wait till Joanie Fawkes kicks the bucket and apply for her job as postmistress.’

  ‘No need. With five Bs and an A you could go to teachers’ college.’

  ‘Teachers’ college! Catch me! Anyway, they don’t take married women in that place, not if you’re pregnant, anyway.’

  ‘Are you—?’

  Fee laughed. ‘Could be, who knows? Anyway, bet I soon will be.’

  ‘Would you be happy if you were?’

  ‘Yes. Oh, yes! Mattie’s child! And mine!’

  All good things come to Fee, thought Ruth, and they came easily and naturally, as if she’d been born for happiness. She felt no jealousy; Fee’s happiness came because she fitted in so perfectly with life. ‘I’m glad,’ she said.

  ‘Oh, Ruth. Ruth!’ Fee sprang up from her chair. ‘Oh, look at me! So full of myself, I haven’t asked about you. Did you get into university? Did you get a scholarship, Ruthie?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Good!’ Fee clapped her hands. ‘And top marks, I bet.’

  ‘They were all right.’

  ‘All right. Oh, you!’ Fee shook her head and then said a little mournfully, ‘You’ll be going away then. You really will. All the way to Sydney.’

  ‘I know. It’s sort of hard to believe.’

  ‘Are you scared?’

  ‘A little bit, sometimes.’

  ‘I’d be scared if it was me. I love it
here where I’ve always been – I’m an old stick-in-the-mud, really; I couldn’t bear to be in some strange place all on my own where I didn’t know anyone and no one knew me. I’m not brave like you.’

  ‘I’m not brave.’

  ‘Yes you are,’ said Fee, thinking how Ruth didn’t have a mother or any brothers and sisters, and how her dad was sort of – funny, not like a real dad at all. And how people told mean stories about her nan pushing her granddad into Skelly’s dam, which Fee’s mum said was just gossip and pure Barinjii spite. All these things passed across Fee’s face and for a moment made it sad, and when they went back into the living room she picked up the beautiful quilt her Aunty Gwen had sent from America and hugged it to her chest as if she suddenly felt cold. ‘It’s a marriage quilt,’ she said to Ruth, running her hand over the pattern. ‘You know, I can’t believe things either. I can’t believe I’ll soon be a married lady – it seems sort of – unreal.’

  ‘Mattie’s real.’

  ‘Oh yes, my Mattie!’ She added softly, ‘One day you’ll get married too, Ruthie.’

  ‘I’m not sure I want to,’ said Ruth. ‘Get married, I mean.’

  ‘Of course you are. Of course you will!’ cried Fee, though in her heart she thought that Ruth just might not – and Ruth read this in her friend’s face, which was tender and kind, but also a little pitying, and she turned to the window and looked down the long garden where they’d played as children, past the shed and the peppercorn trees to the sagging fence, and beyond the fence to the paddocks and the narrow roads beside them and the little lonely farms. She’d seen that view forever and its sameness had seemed to contain a promise that she’d always be here. It had never really occurred to her that she wouldn’t be. And now she was going.

  ‘Ooh, isn’t it glarey!’ Fee dropped the quilt over a chair and yanked down the blind.

  ‘Oh!’ gasped Ruth.

  ‘What’s the matter?’

  ‘Nothing,’ said Ruth, but her face had gone pale, and she stared at the drawn blind as if a magician had clapped his hands and made the backyard and the country beyond it disappear. There, it was gone! All gone. All of it. It could happen so quickly, she thought: the blink of an eye, and a world which had seemed part of you forever could be left behind.

  nine

  Merle Hogan couldn’t get to sleep. She turned this way and that way, punching the pillow with her fists, but it was no use. Her head was buzzing.

  After leaving Saint Columba’s that morning she’d popped into the post office to have a chat with Joanie Fawkes. Joanie had told her that the Leaving Certificate results had been sent out first thing this morning and that Ruth Gower had won a scholarship to Sydney University.

  ‘Sydney University? A scholarship?’

  ‘It’s a thing that pays for all their fees and what-have-you – books, fares, lodgings in some fancy college—’

  ‘I know what a scholarship is, thank you, Joanie.’

  Merle was ropeable. The hide of that Gower girl! Off to Sydney, to the bloody university, who did she think she was! And the thing that had really got her going was how Margaret May had been in the church with them this morning, messing the place about with her hydrangeas, and she hadn’t said a word! Even when Merle had asked if Ruth’s results had come, she’d pretended she didn’t know. Of course she’d known! Merle pictured Margaret May in her neat navy dress with the buttons down the front and remembered how there’d been this little smirk on her face: like the cat that got the cream! She hadn’t said a word because she thought Merle and old Milly Lachlan weren’t good enough to hear!

  ‘Sydney Uni!’ Joanie Fawkes had sighed dreamily from behind the post office counter. ‘Imagine! It’s like a fairy story or something, isn’t it? Like Cinderella!’

  Bugger Cinderella!

  ‘WELL, what did you expect?’ Merle’s daughter Helen demanded when her mother passed on the news. ‘Where else would a stuck-up teacher’s pet like her go to, Mum? No one would want her up here, would they? She’d be an old maid for sure! But, Jesus wept!’ Helen cried, swishing her long black hair so that two dead leaves and a few blades of grass released themselves and drifted to the floor. ‘I’m sorry for those poor boys down in Sydney!’

  ‘Helen!’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Don’t say that!’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Don’t say, “Jesus wept!”’

  ‘Dad says it all the time.’ Helen chewed on a torn fingernail and added, ‘But yeah, I’m sorry for those Sydney boys all right; she won’t even give them a sniff!’

  ‘Helen! Go to your—’

  ‘Room!’ bellowed Helen before Merle could finish her sentence. ‘S’all right, Mum, you can save your breath; I was going anyway!’

  Merle was at the end of her tether with Helen. The little madam had started sneaking out at night. Merle hadn’t actually caught her in the act, but she was certain of it; she had a nose for that kind of thing. And sneaking out at night in a place like Birinjii could only have one meaning.

  All the same, Helen was spot on about Ruth Gower. Boys, even those with a bit of education behind them, weren’t keen on that type of swotty girl, and who could blame them? Merle had delivered herself of this opinion to everyone she’d met on her way home through the streets of Barinjii, and there hadn’t been a soul who’d disagreed. Boys wanted girls who had a normal interest in a home and kiddies, and you couldn’t run a home with your nose stuck in a book all day. Try as she might, Merle couldn’t imagine that little snip Ruth Gower changing nappies or wiping up puke in the middle of the night; she couldn’t imagine her comforting a man. No more than she could imagine Margaret May doing any comforting, even though she’d had three boys before Don Gower died.

  Before she’d pushed him in the dam.

  Merle gripped her pillow and wrung it with both hands – Margaret May Gower had done her hubby in for sure! What had he been doing, anyway, wandering round the country in the middle of a rainy winter’s night? Some people said there was madness in his family, like there was in the Finns’, but Merle didn’t believe a word of it. Don Gower would have been out wandering because Margaret May had driven him from the house with her nagging, because he couldn’t stand the sight and sound of her for one minute longer and preferred to be out in the rain. And then Margaret May would have gone sneaking out after him . . .

  Don Gower had been a big man – Merle could remember him from when she was a girl, hulking behind the counter at the store; she’d thought he was an ogre. Margaret May was little and light and so soft spoken you’d think butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth – but that didn’t mean she couldn’t have finished him off! In the dark and with the ground all slippery with mud, and the rain pouring down so he couldn’t hear a sound behind him – just one push would do it, one shove in the back and he’d be gone. Skelly’s dam was a deathtrap – it was still a deathtrap now: the sides had eroded into steep banks, sheep and cows and wild animals were always going in.

  And look how she’d gone for the priest, instead of to the police like she ought to have done, like anyone else would do! She’d wanted Father Joseph to help her cover things up, and he would have, you could bet on it. They were close, the pair of them; always had been. Too close. Merle could remember from the time she was pregnant with Helen, going over to Benson’s place for a pot of honey and seeing the two of them walking along the road near Perry’s orchard; they’d been so close together they could have been holding hands. Margaret May had been wearing a white dress with green flowers printed on it, far too good for traipsing round the dusty back roads of Barinjii. People said Father Joseph had made that fancy garden for her too, not long after Don Gower had died – and Margaret May was always over at the presbytery. They were old now, of course, but they hadn’t been all that old the time she’d seen them out walking together. Where had they been going? Or coming from? Perry’s orchard? She sniggered at the thought of it. Or perhaps they’d been off to the little beach down the creek!

&n
bsp; Merle was on a roll. Suddenly she remembered Vinny Gower. Vinny was Margaret May’s second son; Merle had been at school with him. Vinny had been big like Don Gower, but Father Joseph was a big man too. And Vinny had been dark haired, while the other Gower boys had been fair, like Don. Father Joseph had been dark, before his hair went white. And Vinny had those same red cheeks the priest had, and those same big square white teeth. ‘Aaa-aah!’ breathed Merle with satisfaction. It was as if, on a hot summer’s day, she’d been given a bowl of cold red cherries and her fingers were hovering above them while her eyes searched greedily for the biggest, the juiciest, the most luscious one of all – and she’d spotted it, and her fingers went dipping down straight towards their target: Vinny Gower was probably Father Joseph’s son!

  ‘Len!’ she whispered excitedly, nudging at her sleeping husband’s side. ‘Len!’

  Len stirred drowsily. ‘What’s up?’

  ‘Len, do you remember Vinny Gower?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Vinny Gower – Margaret May’s second son. He was at school with us.’

  ‘Vin Gower? Sure. Used to play cricket with him down the oval after school.’

  ‘Do you remember what he looked like?’