by Alison Booth
The home paddock was bounded to the east by a low cliff, while to the south it sloped down sharply to a narrow gully that was the only access to the beach. To one side of the gully were some rough stone steps that Peter had built for his grandparents years ago, on a holiday from school, and which only he and his dogs ever used now.
The dogs dashed down the steps and were already racing along the white sand and barking at the advancing waves when he arrived at the bottom. As usual he left boots and socks on the last step and walked barefoot through the sand. It squeaked as he sank into it, rasping grain upon grain in a countless number of tiny collisions. Life was like that, a series of collisions. He walked up the short beach to the northern headland. There he sat, on sand still warm from the sun, and watched the waves swelling in from the Pacific.
Ilona Talivaldis. It was a lovely name. She had a charming accent, although what she’d actually said on the beach this morning hadn’t been much to his liking. In trying to avoid glancing at her half-exposed breast he’d focused on her face and arms. A pale face, probably due to the cold water and the shock. Then he’d seen it: that blue tattoo on her left forearm. Not just any old tattoo but a six-digit number. He’d known right away what that meant.
Ilona had survived a concentration camp. Most didn’t. He wondered how long she’d been in it. Sad if she’d survived all that only to drown on Jingera Beach. After bawling her out of the water, he’d been surprised to discover that she wasn’t grateful, only annoyed and fussing about her swimmers. Once he’d recovered from his initial anger, he’d found it amusing that she should be fretting about appearances when all that really mattered was that she was alive, and not a corpse floating in the waves and being nibbled at by sharks. Her modesty made him aware of what she was covering up, but when he saw that tattoo all amusement drained away. It was shocking to see that right here in Jingera. That reminder of the Nazi concentration camps, the numbers given to the Jews and the gypsies and the agitators when they arrived there. Possessions taken away, clothes taken away, lives taken away too in so many cases.
After all those years of trying to forget, seeing that reminder of the war on Ilona’s forearm had shocked him, he could admit that now he was home again and able to think. Seeing it had moved him too, as had Ilona’s fleeting expression of defencelessness that was so quickly replaced with antagonism.
He watched the ocean. Each swell formed a crest, which curled over on itself in a great crash of white foam that, by the time it reached the shore had been tamed by the retreating breakers into a gentle swirl of water. The waves would always roll in like this no matter what people might do to each other. That was what was so reassuring about the ocean’s edge, but the surf was dangerous too. You had to know what you were doing before venturing into it.
From the beach, only the homestead roof and the surrounding trees were visible above the cliff edge. He had always loved Ferndale and his grandparents had known that. They’d left it to him just before the war, when he was no more than an overgrown schoolboy. Returning from England after the war, he found it had been badly neglected. Being honest with himself, it was still neglected, except for the land and the stock and the water tanks. There seemed no point in making any other improvements, no one else would see them and he didn’t care about appearances, but just as his grandparents had done, he would live and die here. No other way of life appealed to him. Certainly not a city life; not the sort of life Judy Chapman and her friends led, spending half their time in the Eastern Suburbs of Sydney and the other half in the country.
Although he’d loved big cities as a young man, he soon got over that. In the war he’d witnessed the destruction of too many, spread out beneath the planes before the area bombing began; and afterwards the burning, afterwards the death and destruction. It was still impossible for him to go near a big city now without remembering that. The claustrophobia of burning city streets. And, in his dreams, that terrible sense of falling, falling, falling into a yawning abyss. He always woke at this point, sweating and sometimes screaming.
Now he stumbled back up the beach. Pulling on socks and boots, he noticed a single purple flower blooming on a low-growing plant. Pig’s face, that’s what his grandmother used to call it. The flower was the exact shade of purple as the Latvian woman’s hat that day he’d seen her at Woodlands. Pig’s face, purple colour; purple hat. Funny that he should think of that wretched hat again.
He didn’t want to think of Ilona Talivaldis. They had Europe in common, they had the war years in common, but he didn’t want to be reminded of those memories. He’d spent years putting them behind him. They still resurfaced in his sleep but not in his waking hours. Not until today when he’d seen that blasted number on her arm.
A purple hat. Colours stuck in your mind somehow; colours and flowers. White roses conjured up his first love, Jenny. Reminded him of the white rose she wore when she accompanied him to that last school ball. Sweet Jenny, who had married someone else by the time the war ended. When they’d bumped into one another in Pitt Street, not long after he’d arrived back in Sydney, she hadn’t recognised him at first, but they could never have got back together again. He’d known he was a different person to the confident young pilot who’d left all those years before. Quite literally unrecognisable.
At the top of the steps, he paused to roll a cigarette and wait for the dogs, who were reluctant to leave the beach. A sliver of a moon was visible, and a smudge of stars over the darkening indigo sky and he could hear breakers crashing onto the shore below.
He sucked hard on the cigarette. This land was his and it was where he belonged, if only for an instant in a bigger order of things. For now he and the land were as one. He stubbed out his cigarette on the hard ground.
‘Long, Long Ago’, Cherry couldn’t get that tune out of her head. She whistled it to herself while she cleaned the upstairs bedrooms of the hotel. Ilona had been teaching her to play it on the piano. So far she was only doing the right hand. The chords would come later, Ilona said, after she had built up more expertise with five-finger exercises and of course the scales. She had talent but didn’t seem to be practising as much as she should, or so Ilona had decided at the last lesson. Miss Neville always stayed behind to lock up the school after Cherry finished playing and that tended to eat into the practice time.
It was most important, Ilona had told her, to keep a diary recording meticulously how many minutes she played each day. She hadn’t started that yet. It wouldn’t make impressive reading. But she did like to play the piano, and to whistle. Over and over she whistled ‘Long, Long Ago’.
This morning there was a bit less work than usual because only two rooms had been occupied the previous night, by commercial travellers. So Cherry had some spare time that she could spend doing Bill’s office at the end of the upstairs verandah. It hadn’t been cleaned for ages. Normally he kept it shut up and she only went in when asked, to give it a quick once-over after he’d tidied it up a bit. Today the door was slightly ajar. She knew he wasn’t in there or he’d have been out like a shot to silence her whistling. Couldn’t stand her singing either; said she was never in tune although he was tone deaf anyway.
Bill did the accounts in his office every morning for an hour or two, or at least that was what he said he was doing, though she suspected he was actually reading the newspaper. By the time he was ready to harass the cook and open up the bar he always seemed remarkably well informed about the sporting news. Pushing the door slightly open, she stuck her head in. The room was empty. Just as she’d thought, the newspaper was spread out on the desk and open at the sporting pages. Bill did deserve a bit of time to himself, poor bugger, but why he had to pretend he was doing the accounts when he locked himself in here was beyond her.
She pushed the door to again and carried the mop and bucket into the guests’ bathroom. Water all over the place and damp towels tossed any old how onto the floor. Surely people didn’t act like this in their own homes. It was probably more that paying goo
d money for their accommodation made them think it was acceptable to throw stuff around. Whoever used the toilet last hadn’t even flushed it. She yanked at the chain and pushed up the sash window to let in some fresh air. The bathroom faced south and probably had the best view of the entire hotel, right down the beach. If they had spare cash she’d like to convert this room into a sitting room, or perhaps a sewing room for herself.
After cleaning the bathroom, she left the wet towels on the verandah railing and knocked on the door to Bill’s office. No response. Then she saw him in the yard below, yarning with old Mr Giles, who seemed to have taken it into his head that it was time for a schooner, even though the hotel wouldn’t open for another half hour yet. Mr Giles was getting more and more absent-minded, senile, some might say. Some of his marbles seemed to have got mislaid when he’d lost his wife last year. Married sixty years, now that was a life sentence. She couldn’t imagine being with Bill that long but she hadn’t worked out yet how to get away.
She got the vacuum cleaner from the hallway and plugged it into the extension lead. Bill’s dusty shelves were full of books but none of them were his. They came with the hotel, he’d said when he’d brought her back here after their wedding. He’d been over twice her age and she’d been barely sixteen years old; hard to credit it really. The books were largely do-it-yourself manuals. How to construct a septic tank; how to build load-bearing brickwork four storeys high; how to build a boat; how to do your own electrical wiring. They’d had no use for any of that stuff. She ran a finger over one of the shelves. There was so much dust here you could write your name in it and it would glare right back at you.
When she’d finished dusting, she flapped the cloth out the window and watched with satisfaction as the dust drifted down towards the rough grass below. Then she lifted up the newspaper on the desk and stopped when she saw what was underneath.
The room started to swim and then go black, as if a dark blind was being pulled down in front of her eyes. It couldn’t be. Not Bill with this stuff. Surely not Bill. She dropped the newspaper and sat on the floor.
Impossible; she must have imagined it. She’d have to look again. Not now, but when the faintness went. With her head between her knees and eyes shut, she took slow deep breaths. Her entire body seemed to be pounding: heart, pulses, head. She mustn’t think about anything yet. Hopefully Bill wouldn’t come back for a bit. No, Bill was still talking to old Mr Giles in the courtyard. Everything was normal, except in her head.
The girl was too young. In and out, she breathed, in and out. Maybe she was only dreaming though. This hadn’t happened except in her head.
The faintness passed. She stood up; heart still beating too fast and the palms of her hands sweating. After wiping her them on her skirt, she lifted the newspaper.
The naked young girl was no more than five or six and the man straddling her body was around Bill’s age. Wasn’t Bill though. She averted her eyes. She’d look again in a moment. Her heart was now hammering like a piston and numbness began to envelope her brain. Clutching the edge of the desk, she swayed slightly and focused her eyes on the bookshelves while willing herself to stay calm.
After another moment she lifted up the picture. Underneath were half a dozen more drawings and photographs. As quickly as her shaking hands allowed, she flicked through them. They were all on the same theme. Men and children. Girls, very young girls. The children too small, the men too large.
Stomach now churning so much she felt as if she could throw up, she gulped air into her lungs. Once more her vision clouded as the room started to swim. She had to get out fast but she couldn’t see the door. Fainting wouldn’t do; only an idiot would stand here holding the pictures when Bill could come back at any moment. Get out now and get away fast. Go somewhere safe to think before the blackness comes down again.
With quivering hands she put the pictures under the newspaper and smoothed the paper down. Everything had to be left exactly as she’d found it. Bill mustn’t know she’d been in here.
She glanced around the office. All that had obviously changed was the removal of the dust and Bill would never notice this. After dragging the vacuum cleaner out of the room, she carefully checked the door to make sure it was exactly as she’d found it, just a couple of inches ajar. She pushed the cleaner back into the hallway and inhaled deeply before going out onto the verandah. She sat on the splintered wooden floor with her back against the wall and tried to collect herself.
Bill liked young girls … in a special way. A horrible way. A cruel way. The girls were too small, far too small. What the men were doing to them would hurt. What the men were doing would damage them.
Then it hit her. She’d been small too when she married Bill, although not so small that the act of penetration hurt. Not a child at all but a slender young woman with a boyish figure that had filled out in the first couple of years of their marriage. She’d been a late developer and by then Bill had stopped sleeping with her. By then they had separate bedrooms. The reason he’d stopped sleeping with her was now clear. It was because she was a woman and no longer a child. At the time she’d felt a failure, as if it was all her own fault that he found her unattractive, and it was true that, after a time, she too found him unattractive. Now I understand it all, she thought, and a great sadness engulfed her.
She deliberately made herself think back to the day they’d first met. She’d been fifteen when he came into the haberdashery store in Burford where she worked. Just demobbed, he looked handsome in the uniform. Ignoring her at first, he’d joked with the manageress about employing underage girls. Then Cherry had told him her age and he’d laughed, saying she looked years younger. They’d married on her sixteenth birthday. If there’d been other girls since then, since she’d become a woman, she hadn’t known about them. Surely she would have known, what with Jingera being such a small town. Yet maybe not. There were secrets aplenty just in her own family. Her loving the school mistress. Her dad abusing her mum. Her dad walking out on her mum and the pretence that he’d gone west shearing.
And Bill with his child pornography.
Down in the yard he was still yarning with old Mr Giles. She couldn’t see them but could hear the murmur of their voices. The leaves of the wisteria climbing up the verandah posts were twisting gently in the faint breeze and sunlight flickered over her. Everything looked just as it had ten minutes ago and yet nothing was the same. Nothing was as it seemed. She was different. Bill was not the man she thought he was. Now she had another secret to conceal from the world and she felt sick at the thought of it.
For a whole day Cherry felt as if someone had died. Unable to function and unable to look Bill in the eye, she told him she was ill and couldn’t work. Then she was sick, throwing up into the toilet pan all that she’d eaten, and when that had gone, thin green bile that burned her mouth. After that, she locked herself in her bedroom and began weeping. Falling asleep eventually, she woke up in the small hours screaming. At first she had no idea where she was and then, for a moment, thought she was at home again, with her mother in the next room.
But Bill was in the next room. She could hear him snoring.
It was impossible to fall asleep again. She felt like a wounded animal that needed to crawl off into a hole somewhere and lick her wounds, but the only hole she had was this room. There was nowhere else to go.
Tainted by her association with Bill, she felt as dirty as if she’d been a party to his fantasies, and even if they were still only fantasies, she became afraid of what he might do next. One day he might act them out and destroy someone’s life.
Knowing about Bill but not knowing what to do was a terrible strain. Head pounding and throat parched, for hours she tossed and turned, struggling unsuccessfully to come to some decision. At six o’clock she arose and dressed and busied herself about the hotel. By eight o’clock she was on the hotel verandah washing the floor when Miss Neville walked by.
‘Come and practise tomorrow,’ Miss Neville said. ‘You forg
ot yesterday.’
Although Cherry opened her mouth as if to speak, she couldn’t begin to articulate the words that might explain her absence.
‘You don’t look very well. Anything I can do?’
‘No,’ Cherry croaked, but Miss Neville there are so many things I want you to do, she thought. If only you loved me enough you’d know what I’m going through and you’d look after me and unwind all these days and take me back to when I was a girl again. Back before I was married. Back before I met Bill. But Miss Neville was a woman not a saviour, and she dismissed her thoughts as childish. She’d gone beyond childish things. It was the child in her that Bill had once loved. Straightening her shoulders, she said, ‘No, Miss Neville, thank you for offering but there’s nothing you can do. I’m a bit off-colour today but tomorrow I’ll come and practise again.’
‘Get better soon,’ Miss Neville said softly before walking on to the schoolhouse.
For a moment Cherry watched her athletic figure, carrying the basket of exercise books as if it were weightless, and was overcome with sadness. Two small children ran up the hill behind Miss Neville and one handed her a small bunch of flowers. Although I love her so much, Cherry thought, there’s a huge part of my life that I can’t let her know about or she’ll stop loving me. I’m tainted by associating with Bill and I’m unlovable.
