The Indigo Sky

by Alison Booth

  Yet that evening neither of his parents mentioned his hair. Maybe they hadn’t even noticed, he was that unimportant to them. For an instant he wondered what further damage he could inflict on himself before they would comment.

  At dinner his father began to talk about their plans to go to Europe. Mummy, with a narrowing of her eyes and an almost imperceptible tilt of the head, at least had the good grace to signal him to stop. His father didn’t understand her though. She had to say, Later, Jack, several times before he got the message.

  Daddy was a bit obtuse, Philip decided as he pushed the food around his plate, rearranging it to look as if he’d eaten something. He had no appetite and felt that he’d never eat again. It wasn’t just that his father was tactless talking about their stupid trip to Europe without him. It was more his refusal to understand that being picked on at school wasn’t character building, or not for someone like him. Now Daddy was wolfing his dinner down as if he hadn’t seen food for weeks, or maybe he just wanted to get the meal over with as quickly as Philip did.

  ‘It’s so lovely to have the house to ourselves again,’ Mummy said. ‘Just the three of us.’

  ‘And the rest,’ said Philip, as rudely as he knew how. ‘M-mr and M-mrs Jones and M-mmary.’

  His father laughed but Mummy stared at him with a dangerous glint in her eye. ‘Don’t be so literal, darling. You know quite well what I mean.’

  ‘Just the three of us,’ his father echoed, grinning. He lay down his knife and fork, having polished off everything on his plate and might even have eaten the pattern off the second best Wedgwood if it wasn’t glazed on so well. ‘Thought I’d take you around the property tomorrow morning, son. It’s been a while since we’ve done that together and it’s time you got to know the lie of the land.’

  ‘N-no th-thanks. I already know the lie of the land.’ After years wandering over it, Philip knew every gully and paddock, and every rock and fence post even. He avoided looking at his father though. While he wanted to hurt him for not taking him out of Stambroke, he didn’t want to see the wound.

  Mummy laughed, that tinkling little sound like a xylophone that she could produce when she wasn’t at all amused. ‘Daddy means that metaphorically, darling. He wants to explain things to you.’

  ‘All this will be yours one day, son,’ his father said.

  Philip flinched. He wanted none of it, apart from the piano.

  ‘So you may as well get familiar with the workings of it sooner rather than later.’

  He glanced at his father. Solid and honest he was, and Philip might have felt a moment’s pity for him if he wasn’t still so upset about having to return to Stambroke.

  Then a thought occurred to him, one that was to shift in and out of his consciousness in the coming weeks. If he couldn’t hurt his parents, maybe he could hurt himself instead.

  There must be lots of ways of doing that.

  Chapter 18

  Unusually, there was no queue in the post office and Mrs Blunkett seemed delighted to see Ilona. Not that she was special, Ilona knew. Any face would serve to release the dammed-up torrent of words.

  Before Ilona even had the opportunity to ask for stamps, Mrs Blunkett said, ‘Mrs Cadwallader was in here yesterday wondering if I’d set eyes on you. Said she hadn’t seen you for a while, so I said there was always the phone, but she said it was nothing special. Expect you’ve been busy with the school holidays and all that.’

  ‘Have you seen the Hunter family?’ Ilona managed to interject as Mrs Blunkett took a breath. ‘I need to find out where they’re living.’

  ‘Which Hunters is that? . . . Oh, I see . . . Not the farming Hunters but the other ones, the Aborigines. Yes, I remember them. They never came into the post office, but. Their kiddy Lorna and Zidra were friends before she was taken. No, haven’t seen them for a year or more.’

  Ilona fought down her disappointment. She’d been convinced that Mrs Blunkett would know something. That she didn’t probably meant that the Hunters had gone somewhere else, and this could make her search really difficult.

  ‘Well, I can certainly keep an ear open. You know me, soul of discretion, won’t ask why. Expect you’ve got some work for Tommy out at Ferndale. Oh, here’s Mrs Smythe. Won’t be a moment, Mrs Smythe, just got to finish serving Mrs Vincent. Ta-ta love, that’s a good-looking daughter you’ve got. S’pose it won’t be long before she gets a boyfriend, eh?’

  Out in the street Ilona paused for breath; listening to Mrs Blunkett did tend to take it out of one. She was beginning to feel anxious that they wouldn’t find the Hunters in time. Realistically, her only hope now was that meeting about Aboriginal housing in two weeks time. There’d be lots of Aborigines there and the Hunters might turn up too.

  Now she walked down the hill to her old cottage. The hedge had produced its usual abundance of small white flowers, and she inhaled their heady perfume, sweet but not sickly. The orange trumpet flowers growing over the verandah blazed in the morning sunlight, and the crashing of the surf drowned out all other noise as it pounded inexorably on the beach.

  Once she’d thought the sea unchanging but how wrong she’d been. Some days it was noisy, others it was quiet. Like people, oceans were in a continual state of unrest. Bending down now to pick up an ice-cream wrapper that someone had left under the hedge of her old cottage, she was saddened by how neglected the place looked. At that instant a small bird flitted out of the dense foliage, maybe the offspring of the birds who’d nested there four years ago. As she straightened up, she decided there was just enough time to visit Eileen Cadwallader before driving on to Woodlands. The challenge of chipping away at Eileen’s prejudice was too attractive to pass over, and she could tell her all about the letter she was composing for the Sydney Morning Chronicle about the Gudgiegalah Girls’ Home.

  But when Eileen opened her front door her hair was awry and her face creased in distress.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ Ilona said.

  ‘Nothing. Well, I’m feeling a bit low actually.’

  ‘Shall I go away?’

  ‘No, come in, please, you’ll cheer me up.’ Eileen held open the fly-screen door and showed Ilona into the front living room.

  ‘New coffee table,’ Ilona said. ‘It’s very beautiful.’

  ‘Andy made it.’ At this, Eileen burst into tears. Ilona stood up again and put an arm around Eileen’s shoulders. The older woman recoiled slightly, evidently one of those people who don’t like being touched, Ilona decided. Removing her arm, she said, ‘There, there, let me make you a cup of tea, and then you can tell me all about it.’

  ‘No, you won’t know where anything is.’ Eileen began to laugh through her tears, in a slightly hysterical way, Ilona thought. The occasion called for a tablespoon of brandy but she guessed that there wouldn’t be any in the Cadwallader household. Eileen added, ‘I’d get one of the boys to make the tea but they’re hardly ever here anymore. Even though its school holidays, I never seem to see them. They’re out all the time and before you know it the holidays will be over.’ She fumbled in her pocket for a handkerchief. ‘I think of all the times I’ve roused on them and wished them out of the house, and soon they will be, permanently.’

  Ilona sat down. On a previous visit she’d heard Eileen bawling out Andy: Don’t walk all over my clean polished floor in your Blücher boots! Somehow she doubted Andy would be leaving home for this. It was one of Eileen’s more colourful expressions that he’d probably recall with great affection when he was older.

  After blowing her nose loudly, Eileen continued. ‘The last straw is Andy saying he doesn’t want to stay on at school. He wants to do an apprenticeship. I’d hoped for better things for him.’

  ‘There’s nothing wrong with learning a trade, Eileen.’

  ‘It would mean he’d be earning his own wages right away, and probably going to live somewhere el
se, not that they pay them much, and then I’ll be on my own. All alone.’ She sat down in the other armchair. ‘I’ll have nothing to do, no company and at night only George. There’ll be no purpose to my life.’

  Poor George, Ilona thought. Such a sad thing to be loved by the whole town but unappreciated by his wife. But no, she was being too harsh; Eileen must love George, she just didn’t know how to express her appreciation.

  ‘Anyway he’s not going anywhere until he’s done the Intermediate Certificate,’ Eileen said. ‘That’s what I’ve told him and I’m sticking with it.’

  ‘That seems sensible,’ Ilona said gently. ‘But when children do leave home eventually I suppose it could also be an opportunity. For the parents, I mean. To follow new interests.’

  ‘Never!’ Eileen said almost angrily.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘What am I if not a mother? I’m nothing!’

  Ilona felt shocked by this revelation. How could Eileen’s identity be defined only by motherhood? It was a biological imperative and a source of great satisfaction but it never solely characterised who you were. She said, ‘You’re Eileen, and unique.’

  ‘But my children are my life’s work. I never expected it to end so soon.’

  ‘It’s not ending. It’s just evolving into something different. They still love you. They always will. And they’re good boys, both of them. They’ll keep in touch.’

  ‘I’ll be so isolated. And George is starting to drink.’

  ‘George drink? Surely not!’

  ‘Last Friday he went to the pub after work and didn’t get home until twenty minutes past six. That’s twenty minutes after we normally have tea.’

  Ilona resisted the temptation to smile. ‘So he was in the pub for just over an hour?’

  ‘Long enough for tea to spoil. It’s that drunkard, Mr Hargreaves. He collected George from Cadwallader’s at five o’clock, apparently. Hargreaves is in the pub every night until closing time when they throw him out, that’s what Mrs Blunkett told me. Don’t know why his wife puts up with it.’

  This was news to Ilona, although Peter had mentioned that Hargreaves liked a spot or two. But so too did half the township of Jingera, the male half mainly, and she knew that Eileen was occasionally prone to exaggeration. Anyway why begrudge George an hour or two with Hargreaves on a Friday after work? Maybe there was some other reason for Eileen’s irritation with George. ‘You’ll have to find new things to do,’ she said. ‘For instance, you could come with me to the demonstration in Canberra for Aboriginal rights. The Aborigines have just got the vote, but there’s a long way to go yet. The demo’s not for some months though, but there’s a meeting in Burford about Aboriginal housing I can take you to first.’

  ‘Me in a demo?’

  ‘Yes, why not?’

  ‘But I don’t approve of all that.’

  ‘Yes, you do. You said only the other day it wasn’t a bad thing the Aborigines got the vote. Just think, most of them are people like you and George.’ While Ilona suspected that Eileen would always view whites as superior, part of Ilona’s own mission was to erode Eileen’s bigotry. She continued. ‘Decent people with children they love and who want a good future. Why should we exclude them? Anyway, it might be fun to go to Burford together. What do you think about that?’

  Eileen surprised her. ‘Maybe I’ll take you up on that,’ she said. ‘And now it’s time for that cup of tea.’

  ‘Next time,’ Ilona said, glancing at her watch. ‘By the way, you haven’t seen the Hunters, have you?’ When Eileen looked blank, she said, ‘The family of that Aboriginal girl, Lorna, who was taken away to the Gudgiegalah Girls’ Home, do you remember? She and Zidra were best friends.’

  ‘No, I haven’t seen them. Not for ages.’

  ‘Not even Tommy? He used to fish from the jetty in the lagoon here.’

  ‘No. I expect they’re up at the Wallaga Lake Reserve, where they’re supposed to be.’

  Suppressing her annoyance at this last remark, Ilona said, ‘They’re not there. I checked. If you see them, do let me know. Phone me at any time. It’s pretty urgent.’

  ‘Sure.’

  Eileen didn’t ask why, and Ilona was glad of this. The situation wasn’t one she felt she could explain to her. After all, if the Gudgiegalah authorities got wind of a planned meeting they could always cancel the trip, or leave poor Lorna behind.

  Yet Ilona wanted everyone to be aware of their search for the Hunters. If this was common knowledge, surely someone would contact her with information. She hoped the family hadn’t left the area altogether. They weren’t at the Wallaga Lake Reserve, they weren’t at the camp outside Burford. And as far as she could tell, they weren’t picking at any of the farms with crops either. Peter had telephoned all the local properties and no one had seen them.

  It was as if they’d vanished from Wilba Wilba Shire altogether.

  Her only hope now was that they’d turn up at the meeting about Aboriginal housing.

  Chapter 19

  ‘I’ve heard the news,’ Mrs Vincent said, bursting into the drawing room at Woodlands and interrupting Philip’s concentration. While knowing she was coming to visit this morning, he hadn’t expected her to come unannounced. No barking dogs, no swish of tyres on the gravel, no footsteps in the hall; all sound drowned out as he hammered out a prelude. ‘Your mother told me just now. So you are to stay on at Stambroke. Did you not show them your poem?’

  ‘N-n-no.’ Removing his hands from the keyboard, he waited.

  ‘Why?’

  She stood only a couple of feet away. Hoping she wouldn’t come any closer, he held his breath. He didn’t want to cry again but if she touched him the tears would spill at once.

  ‘Why?’ she repeated.

  ‘I-i-t’s . . . s-s-s-silly poem.’

  ‘It was a good poem, Philip, although its quality is hardly the point, as you know. It was the content that mattered. So your mother hasn’t seen it?’

  ‘N-n-no.’ He lifted his hands into the air and let them hover over the piano. Lowering his hands onto the keys he played a scale in F sharp.

  ‘And your father?’

  ‘H-h-he says s-s-school is g-g-good training.’ Now Philip played a swift arpeggio.

  ‘For the hard knocks of this world. I see. Would you like me to speak to them?’

  ‘N-no.’ He closed the piano and stared out the window, not wanting to see the kindness that would be in her eyes. Outside, Mr Jones was raking the gravel path to clear it of the cedar needles. The sunlight, filtering through the trees, cast dancing shadows over him as he moved backwards and forwards with the rake.

  ‘Your parents are off to Europe,’ she said slowly. ‘But it will only be for a term.’

  Philip said nothing. There was no point when everything had already been decided.

  ‘So you have only a couple more weeks at home. What are you doing with yourself?’

  ‘P-p-playing.’

  ‘Have you been to the beach yet?’

  ‘N-no.’

  ‘Would you care to stay with us at Ferndale for a few days soon? I know Zidra would love you to visit and so would Peter and I. Would you like that?’

  ‘Y-y-yes.’

  ‘I shall organise it with your parents then. Perhaps you’ll be able to come in a couple of days’ time.’ Gently Mrs Vincent kissed the top of his head, before departing only slightly less abruptly than she’d arrived.

  Later, he’d heard the crunching of gravel as she drove away. Afterwards his mother came to find him. When he heard her approaching, he started to play a piece that he knew she wouldn’t like; Shostakovich was too Russian, she thought. He pretended not to hear the tip-tap of her heels on the polished wooden floor-boards that became muffled by the Persian rug as she advanced towards him. Perching herself on the
chaise longue, she remained silent until he’d finished. He might have played it again if she hadn’t started speaking.

  ‘The Vincents have invited you to stay for a few days,’ she said. ‘So very sweet of them, darling, and she said you wanted to go. That will work out rather well, as I was planning to have Jones drive me to Sydney for a few days. I need to get some more clothes to take away, and there’s simply nothing in the Burford shops, nothing. I might have taken you to Sydney with me if she hadn’t invited you, but I’m sure this is the best. You’d hate visiting the dressmaker and traipsing around the gown shops with me!’ Here she laughed. ‘Your father certainly does.’

  As no reply seemed necessary, he began to play again the same piece and after a moment or two she left. As soon as the door shut behind her, he stopped. There was no point continuing now he could no longer annoy her. After opening one of the French windows, he walked around the side of the house, avoiding Jones, who’d moved on to the northern end of the gravel path. The scent of honeysuckle filled his nostrils. He picked a flower from the vine climbing up the side of the house and broke the stem to suck out the sweet nectar. But that didn’t satisfy him and he bit hard on the stalk before spitting it onto the grass.

  Skirting around the gravel area at the back of the house and steering well clear of the stockyards, he headed towards the paddocks behind the white-painted outbuildings. Beyond these, the land rose in a series of hills towards the bush flanking the escarpment. At the top of the first hill, he sat on a granite boulder and looked out over Woodlands.

  When his father had taken him around the property the previous week, discussing man-to-man the way it was run, Philip hadn’t absorbed one-tenth of what he’d heard. All he’d been able to think about was that he wished for nothing to change. He wanted to never grow up, never be left alone. Never have his parents go away. If he hadn’t already hated them so much for leaving him at Stambroke, he might have hated them more for leaving the country.

  Although he loved Woodlands, he didn’t want any of it. If his parents went to Europe and never came back, what would he do? He’d be all alone, but would that be so terrible? He’d leave school, he decided at once, and live somewhere else. In Sydney, probably. That would mean he could carry on his piano lessons at the Con, and this prospect didn’t seem too bad. He could practise the piano as much as he wanted, and go to concerts and listen to the crowds and the traffic. And to the tugboats hooting on the harbour, the clinking rigging of the boats moored at the marina, and all those other sounds that he’d never consciously noticed when he was at school. Yet at this moment they emerged from his memory as if waiting for the chance to resurface, already formed into a coherent whole that he simply had to get down before it vanished again.