by Rachel Rhys
There’s a small crowd waiting on the quayside to greet some of the Australian passengers whose voyages finish here. As the ship draws near, Lily is taken aback to hear a chorus of strange sounds coming from the waiting families and friends. ‘Coo-ee!’ ‘Coo-ee!’, and now the same sound is being echoed back from the Aussies on the boat. ‘Coo-ee!’ Long on the first syllable, with the second just an afterthought, a flick of the tongue, an old lady’s ‘Eh?’
‘Don’t look so shocked, Lily.’ Ian is laughing at her. ‘It’s a typical Aussie greeting, that’s all.’
He insists that Lily and Helena have a go at emulating the sound, which prompts the little girl who’d been disappointed at the scale of Australia to join in, and they all end up clutching their stomachs with laughter. All except the girl’s mother, who sniffs and looks away, as if trying to imagine herself somewhere else.
The ship is to spend the day in Fremantle, so many passengers are preparing to take the train into Perth. The trains run every hour so there is plenty of time to explore. The Fletchers are heading into Perth. Ian is keen to show them around their first Australian city. But Lily decides not to go with them. Though things are, on the surface, back to normal between them, there is a residue of tension that did not exist before.
Fremantle looks at first glance like a pleasant enough town in which to while away a few hours ashore – clean and quiet, with the sun not too hot, just the equivalent of a lovely English summer’s day. The buildings squat low and flat to the ground, and there are bursts of greenery, but a different green to the measured, school-uniform green of English trees. This is the vibrant, almost luminescent green of only just ripe apples.
As she queues to descend the gangplank Lily’s eyes dart around the deck, looking for Maria or the Neumanns. If she sees them, she will offer to spend the day with them, she resolves, to make up for the guilt she feels at hiding from the couple instead of reporting back what the doctor had told her. She catches the eye of George Price, who is also queuing to get off, and his face instantly flushes the colour of red wine. He looks away, making a strange, jerky motion with his head. The Neumanns, though, are nowhere to be seen, and Lily feels heavy with relief.
It is a peculiar feeling, setting her feet down on Australian soil. Or rather on Australian decking, knowing that, beyond this town, lies the continent she must learn to consider home. Lily remembers a seaside holiday with her family when she was a child. Dorset, she thinks. Or perhaps Devon. She and Frank on their hands and knees in the sand, digging with toy spades. ‘We’re going to keep going until we reach Australia,’ she’d said, and Frank, that much younger, had believed it possible, not wanting to stop until they could see kangaroos for themselves. And now here she is. She has left them all behind.
The others are dismayed when she announces she won’t be joining them on their trip to Perth. ‘Please come, Lily,’ Edward whispers as they stand on the corner where Lily will turn off to go into town while they continue on to the station. But she has made up her mind. Besides, Edward is in a strange mood still, jumpy and introspective, with little sign of the easy charm he showed at the start of the voyage.
Walking through the town alone, she feels liberated. It is so long since she was on her own, and she finds she has missed her own company. The houses she passes are colonial-style bungalows, painted pretty colours with verandahs running the length of the front and set back from the road behind small lawns. Lily has already heard about the poinsettia trees with their large red leaves, but there are also hibiscus bushes, aflame with blooms of red and orange, and huge clumps of pampas grass with whiskery, biscuit-coloured plumes shooting up out of a skirt of green rushes. She feels her spirits improving with each step.
The shops are also low-slung. Lily passes a greengrocer’s full of exotic-looking produce, its owners chatting away in Italian to a group of Italian passengers from the boat, who look relieved and happy to have found some friendly faces on their first foray into their newly adopted homeland. Some of the women, who, on the ship, seemed far older than her, burdened down with babies and washing and a clinging poverty, here reveal themselves to be young and, in several cases, beautiful, with black hair that gleams in the sunlight and eyes wide with excitement.
As she walks along the broad pavements Lily can’t help staring at the passers-by, comparing them to the people she’d see walking around in London or Reading. Surprisingly, their accents don’t immediately jar. Rather, it’s the small differences she notices – the fact that the young women are wheeling their babies in pushchairs rather than bassinets, with shopping baskets attached to them. The placards and billboards on the sides of the buildings are advertising a bewildering mix of the familiar, like Oxo, and the completely unknown.
She buys a newspaper and some postcard scrolls – six colourful views of the town and environs concertinaed together with a space for writing on the back. Passing a smart-looking hotel, again with a colonial-style verandah and saloon doors into the bar, she decides to go in and have a drink and read her newspaper and write her letter home.
The lounge of the hotel is lovely and cool, with horsehair sofas and large pots containing small palm trees. Lily sinks into a leather armchair and orders a ginger beer from a garrulous waiter who, hearing her accent, insists on giving her the low-down on where to go (Fremantle, obviously, and Sydney, but not Melbourne or New Zealand, which are deemed too English and formal). Finally, he is called away and she is left in peace to read her newspaper, which seems still to be sending out confusing messages about the likelihood of war. As the voyage has gone on, so the news reaching the passengers by way of the noticeboard has slowed to a trickle. Now, as Lily catches up on political events she has missed during the long days adrift on the Indian Ocean, her mouth feels suddenly dry, her stomach tight. Germany, it seems, has signed a non-aggression treaty with the Soviet Union, promising that neither will ally itself to the enemies of the other. Before she’d left it had seemed certain that Russia would make a pact with Britain and France, so this step seems ominous. And a few days ago Chamberlain in turn signed a pact with Poland, promising it protection should Germany invade. And yet still there is hope. The opinion of the newspaper’s editor is that the new British treaty will make Hitler think twice about continuing his campaign of expansion.
As Lily is nearing the end of the editorial she is surprised by a hand reaching over her shoulder and folding the newspaper shut.
‘You shan’t read any more. I forbid it. The news is very bad for your health.’
Eliza flings herself down into the chair opposite Lily. She has on her big, floppy hat, and again her sunglasses cover her eyes. Lily automatically glances towards the entrance, expecting to see either Max’s broad-shouldered frame or else the silver mane of Anthony Hewitt, but there is no one.
‘He’s not here,’ says Eliza, not specifying who ‘he’ might be. ‘I gave him the slip once we got on the train. Pushed on ahead of him, and then came straight out of the next available door!’
She seems to be waiting for Lily to make some sort of expression of admiration, but Lily refuses to oblige so Eliza presses on.
‘I really need to get rid of him. He’s becoming so tiresome.’
Ah, so they are talking about Anthony Hewitt. Eliza’s next statement confirms it.
‘You know, Lily, I think I was so in love with listening to his voice it stopped me realizing how little I cared for what his voice was actually saying. The man is an ass. Utterly in love with himself and how he thinks he appears to the world. You know, when we were in Ceylon the hotel manager approached him with the bill and he thought he was being asked to sign an autograph!’
Eliza summons the waiter and, before he can launch into further travel advice, demands a gimlet, which seems to confuse him into silence.
Lily is just about to ask her what has happened to Max when Eliza whips off her hat and glasses.
‘Oh, my!’ Lily clasps her hand to her mouth. ‘What on earth –’
The f
lesh around Eliza’s left eye is livid and purple, like chicken liver, and the white is not white at all but a lurid pink.
Eliza makes a face. ‘I know. Ugly, isn’t it?’
‘But what happened?’
‘Oh, you know. Max.’
Lily doesn’t know. She doesn’t know at all. She thinks of Max Campbell and his glass-chip eyes and broad, thick hands. But still. Not this.
‘He hit you? On purpose?’
Eliza smiles. ‘Oh, Lily, don’t be so dramatic. Yes, he hit me. I wanted him to. In fact, I goaded and goaded him until he did. Look!’
She shows Lily her right hand, turning it upside down to reveal the red-raw knuckles.
‘I had to hit him a few times until he retaliated. It bloody well hurt.’
‘But why?’
‘To feel alive, Lily. Why else? I’m so tired of it all. Tired of looking, always looking, for that thing that’s going to make me feel something – that new thing, that new person. Never sleeping in case I miss it. Do you know what it’s like to be always searching for something you know you’ll never find? Something that will finally make everything mean something? Sometimes I take Max’s razor into the bath and make cuts in my skin just to feel pain, to feel something.
‘So I goaded him until he hit me and, you know, for a moment it worked. Right at that second when my eye socket exploded, I actually felt alive.’
Lily sits back in her chair, aware of her heart pounding in her chest, her mouth still open as if trying to formulate a word that might make sense of what she has just heard. How little she understands of life. She had thought, because of what happened with Mags, that she was so worldly-wise, and yet she knows nothing of this, of how men and women might act towards each other, of how elastic a marriage can be, stretching itself into shapes she had no concept of.
‘Don’t look so shocked, Lily, please.’
Eliza sounds drained suddenly. Defeated, almost. The waiter approaches with her drink and she holds her hand up to her head, shielding her eye.
‘You know, I admire you so much, Lily,’ she says once he has gone. ‘You’re so much braver and stronger than I am. No, you are, look at you. Taking this huge step, embarking on this big adventure, all on your own. I wish I had your courage, but I don’t. I don’t have the courage to leave Max, even though I know we will end up destroying one another. Isn’t that silly?’
‘Do you really hate him so much for what happened to Olivia?’ Lily asks.
Eliza looks at her as if she has said something incomprehensible.
‘I could never hate Max. Not really. He’s my husband. I love him. But I will never, ever forgive him. That’s why I can’t make love to him. It drives him crazy.’
For a while they sit drinking in silence. Eliza’s drink has a twist of lime and she picks it out with her fingers and presses her teeth into it, wincing at the sourness. She has lost some of the manic energy of the previous few days and Lily feels emboldened to ask her, at last, about the dreadful rumour the woman from first class had told her.
Eliza listens in silence, flicking the tip of her tongue around the rim of the glass that is raised to her lips. Finally, she sighs.
‘Poor Rupert.’
‘Rupert?’
‘Rupert was the husband. I’m surprised you didn’t see him on the dock as we were leaving. A rather beautiful man. You couldn’t have missed him.’
‘But I –’
‘The fact is, I am sorry about Annabel. Of course I am. She was a sweet person, really, just very highly strung. But I liked her.’
‘So why?’
‘How old would you say I was, Lily?’
Lily finds herself wrong-footed by the sudden change of topic, floundering to regain her balance.
‘I don’t know. Twenty-nine?’
Eliza laughs.
‘You’re very sweet. I’m thirty-four, nearly thirty-five. For practically my whole life I’ve been defined by the men who have wanted me. But men aren’t going to keep looking at me for very much longer, and then what? What will be the point of me?’
‘There are other things, Eliza.’
But all the things Lily thinks of saying don’t seem to apply. Eliza will never need to get a job. She cannot have more children. She does not even seem to have any hobbies. Once, when she saw Lily with her nose buried deep in a book, she told her she hated reading because after a few minutes the letters seemed to dance across the page and wouldn’t keep still.
‘I know you’re looking for remorse – about Annabel Wright, I mean – and I really am sorry about it. I was devastated. But, you know, she would have done it anyway. If not because of me then because of the next woman, and there would certainly have been a next woman. Rupert was just that sort of man. He loved being in love too much.’
‘But why couldn’t he have stayed in love with his wife?’
Lily is aware how naive she sounds. How foolish. Yet she cannot help herself. She sees in her mind the young man on the quayside, with his smooth, toffee-apple skin, and she wants to turn him around and rewind time and send him back to his wife, to his home, to the time before he set eyes on Eliza Campbell. She wants the world to be just as her parents had led her to believe it was. You fell in love, you stayed together, in sickness and in health, for better, for worse.
‘Men do carry on loving their wives,’ she says hotly. ‘Max is in love with you.’
‘Which is why I can’t be in love with him. Don’t you see? In every relationship there is a lover and a beloved. It’s just my beastly luck to be the one who is loved and not the other way round. At least if I was the one who loved I would have a function. Good job Max doesn’t want for female attention to bolster his self-esteem. There’s nothing more attractive to a certain type of woman than an uxorious man.’
She glances at Lily sideways as she says this, and Lily looks determinedly away.
When they’ve finished their drink, they decide to go outside and find the nearest beach. Eliza is growing bored of being stared at on account of her eye, which, even in the dimness of the bar, has a luminescent sheen on the skin beneath it that draws attention.
Just a few moments’ walk brings them out on to a long, sandy beach, sheltered by a row of trees at the back and virtually deserted, despite the perfect temperature, with only a few women sitting together, watching their young children playing in the shallow surf.
‘Let’s give them a wide berth,’ says Eliza when she sees them. ‘Who can bear all that screaming young children do?’
But when they settle on a spot twenty yards further along, Lily notices how Eliza’s gaze is drawn constantly back to the group of women, two of whom are dancing babies upon their laps; notices the hungry look in her eyes.
Despite herself, despite all the heartbreak Eliza has caused, Lily feels her own heart creak and crack like an over-fired pot.
To distract them both, she starts to tell Eliza about Maria and her inexplicable pains, and what the doctor has said, then immediately she feels guilty for using Maria’s troubles as a conversational aide.
‘It doesn’t in the least surprise me,’ says Eliza, who has taken off her shoes and is paddling in the shallows in front of where Lily is sitting. ‘They are inclined to histrionics, her people. You should hear some of the fanciful stories they’ve been circulating about what the Germans are doing to Jews in Austria and Czechoslovakia.’
‘But couldn’t those stories be true? Some of them, anyway?’
Under the floppy brim of her hat, Eliza makes a face, her nose wrinkling so her sunglasses move up and down.
‘Lily, darling, only barbarians could do the things they’re accusing the Germans of. Let me tell you, I’ve known a fair few Germans in my time and, though I haven’t always agreed with them, they’ve all been at least moderately civilized. No, it’s a fact, I’m afraid, that the Jews have highly active imaginations. I’m not saying it’s your friend Maria’s fault. It’s in her blood, probably.’
A figure approaches from t
he other end of the beach, small and slight and dressed in black. Lily groans softly to herself as recognition dawns.
‘So this is where you’ve got to,’ says Ida. ‘Glad to see you decided to give Perth a miss. Can’t see why anyone would bother spending the money on a train when there’s a perfectly good little town right here.’
She is addressing her comments to Lily, as if she cannot see Eliza standing, right there, in the shallow waters where the sea meets the sand.
Lily freezes. The moment stretches out, long and painfully tight, Ida hesitating in her long, black dress, a wet patch along the hem where she has got too close to the sea even now drying into a salt-bleached stain.
Lily thinks about inviting Ida to sit down on the sand next to her, turns the words over in her mouth, but somehow they won’t come out. Instead, Eliza speaks:
‘Yes, there is a perfectly good town. You’re absolutely right. I think you’ll find it most amusing. It’s that way.’
She points along the beach in the direction from which she and Lily arrived. Her meaning cannot be misinterpreted, and Ida’s dark eyes harden to little black stones set into her parched, pinched face.
‘You ought to be careful,’ she says to Lily, her mouth like the twist of lime from Eliza’s gimlet. ‘Now we’re here, in Australia, you need to pay more attention to what you do, and who you do it with. Remember, in less than a week’s time you’ll be looking for work. You don’t want prospective employers to hear things about you that might put them off.’
She sets off down the beach, and though Lily is shocked by what she has just said, and how boldly she has said it in front of Eliza, as if she weren’t even there, she is also grudgingly admiring of Ida’s straight-backed walk, the way her sharp chin is thrust out towards the direction she is going, as if leading the way.
