Stillwater Creek

by Alison Booth

  Once Ilona and Cherry had agreed on the oven temperature, Cherry said, ‘You be nice to him, won’t you, darl.’

  ‘Who?’ Ilona helped herself to another asparagus roll from the plate on the kitchen bench.

  ‘Peter Vincent. And watch out for that Jeff Heath.’

  Ilona smiled. While initially tempted to suggest that Cherry was fussing too much, she now decided that she liked this attention. ‘I will. I know Heath’s type, and anyway he’s flirting with those smart women in the far corner. They both asked me to dance, by the way.’

  ‘I thought Peter would. I saw the way he was looking at you.’

  ‘I hope his dancing is better than his conversation.’ Ilona now took two sausage rolls.

  ‘Don’t be too quick to jump to conclusions. He’s a good man, just a bit shy.’

  ‘He’s arrogant.’

  ‘He’s the least arrogant man you could meet. Personally I find him very easy to get along with.’

  ‘You should dance with him then.’

  ‘Perhaps I will, if he asks. He’s a beaut dancer, by the way, I saw him at last year’s dance.’

  Although Ilona now experienced an unreasonable twinge of jealousy, she certainly wasn’t going to ask who Peter had danced with.

  ‘But tonight he’s only got eyes for you, Ilona, and I’ve got a great topic of conversation for you. It’ll probably last several dances at least. Just ask him what he found out yesterday in Burford. He popped into the pub in the late afternoon and told me all about it.’

  ‘What was he doing in Burford?’

  ‘You can find out yourself. It’ll give you something to talk about.’ And with that Ilona felt Cherry’s gentle push in the direction of the hall.

  Holding a laden plate, Peter waited just beyond the doorway. ‘I got this for you. I thought you might be hungry and the food’s going so quickly.’

  ‘Thank you, how nice.’ Only now did she notice his haircut. No longer did his hair fall foppishly forward but it sat neatly on either side of a sharp parting. Far too neatly, it might almost have been painted onto his skull. Although in the kitchen she had already consumed three sausage rolls, four cocktail frankfurters and two asparagus rolls, she accepted his offering. The source of the irritation she was now feeling was surely this overloaded plate rather than disappointment with his dreadful haircut.

  As she started to eat, she became aware that he was watching her carefully, as if she were an invalid who hadn’t eaten for some time. ‘I can never take very much before I play the piano,’ she said. ‘Although Daphne will play first.’

  ‘Nerves?’

  ‘Not so much nerves as anticipation that swells up inside me like a dried apricot in water.’ She was about to put the plate down but he took it from her.

  ‘Do you mind if I finish it?’

  He ate neatly with his lips together and she was glad of that, although why, she had no idea. This man was nothing to her apart from being a source of irritation. He unsettled her. She’d known that was the trouble with him from the day of the beach rescue and that annoyed her, for she didn’t want to feel unsettled.

  It really was too bad about his haircut. In the right hands – her hands, for Oleksii had always said that she was very good at cutting hair – Peter’s thick straight hair could be shaped to look quite sculptured. Of course cutting his hair was out of the question. She would dance once with him out of politenesss and afterwards she would play the piano, and at this thought she smiled.

  After Peter had finished eating, he said, ‘Are you going to play Shostakovich?’

  ‘No,’ she said at once, wincing slightly. ‘Too modern.’

  ‘The jazz suites perhaps. Maybe “Tea for Two”?’

  She had forgotten those. This, and her suspicion that he might be trying to make amends for that unfortunate afternoon tea, made her feel almost favourably disposed towards him. She said, ‘I don’t think that would be appropriate. Though of course it is lovely music. Being associated with Russia isn’t good these days. Not that I am, of course, but since the Hungarian revolution everyone from a Soviet Bloc country is vanished by association.’

  ‘Tarnished by the association.’

  Correcting her was something he simply couldn’t resist and she was tempted to retaliate by changing her mind about the first dance. But no, she must not cut off her nose to spite her face. She really wanted to dance, even with this unsettling man. Then unbidden came the thought: particularly with this unsettling man. After dabbing at her mouth with a serviette, she repeated, ‘Tarnished by the association. I could, of course, be a Commie bastard.’ Right away she realised she’d failed to get the Australian accent right. It wasn’t from her that Zidra had inherited a gift for mimicry.

  ‘I know you’re not,’ he said, laughing.

  ‘But probably people make rumours about me because I am foreign.’

  ‘People start rumours about everyone, foreign or not.’

  Start rumours, not make. She filed away the correction.

  ‘That’s human nature,’ he continued. ‘We talk about one another.’

  ‘Cherry said just now that I should ask you what you were doing yesterday in Burford.’ Leaning against the doorjamb, she waited.

  ‘I went to see the Welfare Board. Tommy Hunter told me last week that Lorna had been taken away by the police. I had to check if he was right, and he was, I’m afraid, and she’s going to be sent to the Gudgiegalah Girls’ Home.’

  ‘Surely not. That’s a long way away. You said only the other day that she’d be back.’

  ‘I thought she would be. The Aborigines regularly get moved on and then they come back, but this is the first time they’ve taken away the kids from this area, the half-caste kids that is.’

  She listened carefully while he explained what had happened. You wouldn’t think this possible in Australia, she said when he’d finished. In Europe during the war, and before the war. But not now, not in this country that was supposed to be such a safe haven. Only after he’d repeated everything once more could she believe it. Poor little Lorna. Poor Lorna’s family. It’s the assimilation policy, Peter explained, but it was more that they thought the Aborigines were no good. Aboriginality had to be bred out of them and the taint of blackness removed. It was not so very different to what had motivated the fascists. Get rid of the Jews, get rid of the gypsies. Although here at least the children taken away were being educated, or so Peter had said.

  ‘Can’t anything be done?’

  ‘I’m afraid not. It’s government policy and they’re sticking with it. Believe it or not, they think they’re doing the right thing.’

  ‘There may be a right policy for the wrong reason but there’s no such thing as a wrong policy for the right reasons,’ she said firmly. ‘In Europe I may as well still be.’

  ‘In Europe I’m glad you’re not.’

  She already knew how it felt to lose your family, she didn’t have to imagine that. And a dance was not the place for these thoughts; her hands started to shake and her heart to pound.

  Only now did she realise how wrong she’d been about Peter. He was kind and considerate and not the arrogant person she’d thought. He’d gone out of his way to help an Aboriginal family and to try to intervene on behalf of Lorna with Welfare. She’d misinterpreted what he’d said about Lorna that afternoon of the tea. He wasn’t dismissing her at all. Just as Cherry had hinted, she’d been far too quick to judge him. Let’s face it, she’d felt grumpy that day, annoyed that the car had broken down and that Zidra had talked nonstop ever since seeing that Lorna’s camp had gone. And even though Ilona had been dropping with fatigue and there were no cakes or biscuits in the house, she’d felt obliged to go along with Zidra’s ill-timed tea invitation. That had felt like the last straw but it was such a small thing. His comment about Lorna, that suggestion she would always return, had been an excuse to hate him. Converting all her frustration into anger, she’d made him the target for her indignation with the world. He hadn’t des
erved it, this much was now clear. He wasn’t callous at all. Suddenly she wanted to unburden herself and to her surprise found she was willing, indeed she wanted, to tell him not only how she had mistaken his comments about Lorna that day when he came to tea but also how she had been taken away herself.

  Perhaps he had been thinking along the same lines, for he said, ‘Where in Latvia are you from?’

  She did not resent this question as she might have a few weeks ago. ‘Riga originally,’ she said. ‘When the Nazis came, my parents and sister and I were taken to a labour camp. Is that what the Gudgiegalah Girls’ Home is like, a labour camp?’

  ‘It’s a boarding school, Ilona. However much one might hate this policy, it’s not a labour camp or a death camp.’

  ‘It’s an internment camp.’

  ‘Yes, I’m afraid that’s exactly what it is.’

  Now she glanced at him. He was watching her. His eyelashes were short and straight, and the dark blue of his irises was flecked with a paler blue. At some stage while they were talking he’d ruffled his hair. Funny how a tousled bad haircut could impart such an endearing boyishness.

  ‘You were telling me about Latvia,’ he said gently.

  It was impossible to look at him and simultaneously relate her history, which she now felt compelled to do. Instead she focused on his shoes. Brown riding boots, the countryman’s footwear, even for a dance. How strange that her brain could register that, while at the same time her heart was beating rapidly and the palms of her hands sweating at what she felt obliged to relate.

  ‘We were taken to a concentration camp in 1942. They sorted us. For some reason I was chosen for life and the others for death. None of my family survived except for me.’ Now she was finding it hard to draw air into her lungs. That old panic was starting. She was guilty of surviving when all those she had ever loved had died. It was almost as if, by choosing to love someone, she was condemning them to death.

  But no, there was Zidra, lovely Zidra.

  Again she tried to take a deep breath but the air got lost somehow, as if her trachea was lined with sponge. Although she could hardly breathe, she started to speak very fast. There was a yawning chasm in front of her but it was imperative to have this conversation and she would leap right over the chasm, and leap over the detail of those war years too; she could not describe those, even to a man as sympathetic as she now felt Peter to be. ‘After the war was over, I was selected from the DP Camp to go to England. I ended up in Bradford. I didn’t want to go back to Riga because of the Communists.’

  From the jug on the table, Peter poured a glass of water and passed it to her. Her hands were shaking. His touch as he gave her the glass was as reassuring as if he were reaching out his arms for her to catch hold of. She might have grasped his wrists if she had not now been clutching the glass.

  ‘I met my husband-to-be, Oleksii, in Bradford. He too was Latvian, although we had never met before.’ At this moment Daphne Dalrymple started to play the piano, loudly and fast. For once Ilona cursed music. It became hard for her to speak above the sound of people’s voices competing with the melody. Although she raised her voice, Peter bent his head towards her so that his right ear was just inches from her mouth. It was a large ear, resting flat against the side of the head.

  ‘Oleksii was a Catholic and after a while I too became a Christian. Notionally at least, for I am not anything in fact. I am only myself, or what is left of myself.’ Sometimes she doubted she was even Ilona Talivaldis, rather than a shell left behind by some once-living creature. Yet tonight she knew who she was, and perhaps even where she was going. She added, ‘Though I do observe the rituals from time to time. When it is convenient.’

  ‘The marking of life’s passages,’ Peter said.

  Averting her eyes from the delicate whorl of his ear, she stared at the tongued and grooved floorboards. ‘Oleksii was very musical,’ she continued. ‘Much more so than I. He composed as well as played. He was destroyed by his talent because he could not develop it, and in due course he died.’

  ‘It can’t have been easy for him in Bradford.’

  ‘Or in Sydney,’ she said, and then wished she could bite the words back. She did not want to cause offence to this man who was hearing her confession.

  ‘It can’t have been easy in Sydney either,’ Peter said gently. ‘You can be an outsider anywhere. Even in your own country.’

  The noise level around them dropped as people began to move onto the dance floor. At the same moment that he shifted his head to look straight at her, she glanced at him. ‘Is that you? Are you an outsider?’

  ‘Sometimes. Especially since the war. I was lucky to survive the prisoner-of-war camp. A lot of the others didn’t. Now I feel I belong only at Ferndale. There I’m a part of the land.’

  ‘Ferndale is your farm?’

  ‘My property, yes. It’s where I belong.’

  Daphne Dalrymple started to play another piece on the piano. Peter held out his arms to Ilona and she moved into his embrace. He held her lightly while she lifted her head high. This was the first time she had danced for many years. Cherry was right, he was a beaut dancer. At first she thought she was imagining the violin. But no, there was a man with a fiddle standing next to the piano. Billy the Fish was now accompanying Daphne.

  Kids were running around everywhere but wherever Zidra went she was in the way. The whole evening all she’d heard was watch it, or scram, or where’s Lorna. She might as well go home, no one would even notice. Then someone turned on the fairy lights that were strung along the eaves of the hall and over the lower branches of the pine tree and everything changed. The hall was the vast cabin of a ship sailing across the ocean and the yard became the decks crowded with people. Beneath the tall mast of the pine tree was a dark space where she would take shelter. She could lie on this thick carpet of needles and never be seen.

  But she was wrong.

  ‘Great spot you’ve got here,’ said Jim. ‘Mind if I join you?’

  He sat cross-legged next to her and immediately she began to feel more cheerful. Just as he’d opened his mouth to say something, Roger O’Rourke came barging up. Right away she knew Roger wanted to get even with her for laughing when his parents roused on him. Bracing herself, she waited.

  ‘Wotcher doing here, eh? Got any smokes, Jim?’

  ‘No. We’re just talking, that’s all.’

  ‘Jim loves Zidra. Zidra loves Jim.’ Roger danced around them, chanting.

  If she ignored him, maybe he’d go away. She sneaked a quick look at Jim to see how he was taking it. You could see he didn’t care. ‘Bugger off, you little twerp,’ he said.

  In spite of this, Roger didn’t seem to want to leave. He leant against the rough tree trunk and idly kicked at the pine needles while simultaneously picking at a scab on his elbow. ‘I heard your Ma talking to Mrs Bates,’ he said to Zidra.

  ‘What about?’ Her voice came out even sharper than she’d intended.

  ‘Menzies and stuff. She’s a Commo, your Ma.’

  ‘No she’s not,’ Jim said. ‘She had a letter published in the Burford Advertiser about Hungary. How can that make her a Commo? She’s against the Reds not for them.’

  ‘My dad said she’s a Red.’

  ‘You’re a Red,’ said Zidra. ‘Red hair; red freckles. Red, red, red Roger.’

  ‘Reds under the bed,’ said Roger giggling. ‘Better watch out for yours.’

  ‘Yours more like.’

  ‘I’m in the top bunk and Johnno’s in the bottom.’

  ‘Reds under your bed then,’ said Jim. ‘Johnno’s hair’s even redder than yours.’

  Grinning, Roger pulled off the scab and flicked it into the long grass next to the fence. ‘Sure you haven’t got any smokes, Jim?’

  ‘Mum would skin me alive if I did, and put me through Dad’s sausage machine.’

  Zidra smiled although it wasn’t much of a joke. Especially as she wouldn’t have put it past Jim’s mum to lose her temper and carve him up
if she caught him with a cigarette.

  ‘Betcha don’t know where Lorna is,’ Roger said.

  ‘Bet you don’t either,’ Jim said. She could tell without looking he was checking on her reaction.

  ‘Do so. Just heard she’s gone to an orphanage.’

  Stupid Roger, thought Zidra, and decided to leave the questioning to Jim. He didn’t let her down. ‘How can she go to an orphanage when she’s not an orphan?’ he asked.

  ‘’Cause she’s an Abo,’ Roger said defiantly.

  ‘That’s no reason.’

  ‘Ask Dad then. That’s what he said, and she’ll never be able to go home.’

  ‘Where is this orphanage?’

  ‘Gudgiegalah Home.’

  ‘That’s not an orphanage.’

  ‘What is it then?’

  ‘A home for girls.’

  ‘What for, if they’re not orphans?’

  ‘It’s for Aboriginal girls whose families can’t look after them.’

  ‘Lorna’s family look after her,’ Zidra said, unable to keep quiet any longer.

  ‘Half-caste girls.’

  Zidra now felt completely confused. Lorna had gone to the Sutherlands’, that’s what Mr Jones had said. Then Mrs Bates had said she was at Wallaga Lake. And now stupid Roger had made up another story, just to upset her; he knew what good friends she and Lorna were. Then to say Lorna was half-cast instead of being fully and perfectly cast was too much. ‘There’s nothing wrong with Lorna,’ she said. ‘She’s beautifully cast. She can run faster than anyone.’

  ‘Not cast, caste,’ Jim said quickly. ‘It means race.’