Elsewhere Girls

by Emily Gale

  Coach pulls a face I’ve only ever seen when Ma learned I’d snuck out one morning to train when I was supposed to be looking after Dewey and she’d wandered off and no one could find her.

  ‘Trudgen is nobody’s best stroke! That’s why nobody swims it. It hasn’t been swum in at least a hundred years! Can you imagine anyone swimming the trudgen at the Olympics?’

  I’m not sure what to say. I dreamed of swimming trudgen at the Olympics if women were ever allowed to compete. Trudgen is my best stroke. Even Mr Wylie says so.

  I fight back tears.

  ‘And your breaststroke was no better! Very sloppy. Where’s your technique? You’re a great swimmer, Cat. Why aren’t you taking this seriously?’

  I drop my head. I have nothing to say. Mr Wylie is always so encouraging. He never yells at me. I wish I was back in 1908 swimming in my own style, in my own body.

  ‘Do you want to swim for Victoria Grammar, Cat?’ I think about the feel of the water moving across my skin. It’s as important to me as breathing. I look straight into her eyes. I want her to know I’m serious. I’m not sure how Cat feels about all this, but as long as I’m here, and I’m Cat, then swimming is everything. ‘I want to swim all the way to the Olympics,’ I tell her.

  ‘Well you won’t even be in the team if you keep swimming like you are today. I’m moving you from fourth spot in the relay. Rebecca can swim last leg.’

  ‘I’ll swim harder. I promise,’ I tell her, furious about the relay.

  ‘Back in the pool. Take your own lane and find your breaststroke rhythm. I want to see your usual speed.’

  Relieved I don’t have to try to swim freestyle just yet, I throw the towel into the stand and dive back into the water. I’m going to have to train harder than ever to stay in this team. And until I find Cat’s missing things and a way home, I want to do the best I can. Cat might have lost her way with swimming, but to me, it’s still everything.

  Cat

  21

  Con

  As we leave Coogee Aquarium, I spot the path I walked up that morning I skipped training, the one that leads to Wylie’s Baths. This could be my chance.

  ‘I’m not coming home with you,’ I tell the sisters. ‘Bye, Dew.’ I pull her into a hug that she doesn’t know might mean goodbye forever, and my tummy is fluttering like anything.

  ‘Why, where do you think you’re off to?’ says Mary. ‘Ma will have a list as long as your leg of things to be done by yesterday.’

  ‘I’m going to Wylie’s Baths for training. It’s important.’

  ‘You can’t leave everything to us again,’ says Kath.

  ‘I know, and I’m sorry. You just have to believe me—what I’m doing is best for everyone.’ I wish I could tell them the real Fan will be back in their lives if my plan comes off.

  ‘I suppose you’re going to meet Arthur,’ says Mary. ‘To give him swimming lessons. Well, Kath and I have been talking and we don’t think the swimming association would like it. We’re sorry, Fan. You can’t take his money.’

  This web is getting more tangled. ‘I’m not meeting Arthur. I just need to be there,’ I say.

  ‘Yes and I need a night out at the Tivoli with a dashing fellow, but I’m not likely to get it,’ says Kath. ‘We’ve taken most of the day with the carnival. You can’t swim your whole life.’

  ‘Why can’t I? Other people do.’

  ‘But not girls like us. With barely two coins to rub together. We’re needed at home.’

  ‘But it isn’t fair. Isn’t there something else you want to do with your lives? Dewey, how about you?’

  She shrugs and says, ‘Get married and have a baby. I’ve got it planned.’

  ‘You’re thirteen, Dew!’

  ‘And my plan is to be out of Ma’s skirts by the time I’m eighteen at the latest.’

  ‘And you two?’ I ask the others. They’re devoted to organising swimming carnivals, so they must know there’s more to life than sweeping a pub floor.

  ‘We can’t abandon Ma and Da,’ Mary says. ‘Da’s seventy, John’s got his own life. Thomas is god knows where. Con’s got a mind to run his own shop. The boys are at school and who knows what they’ll get up to.’

  ‘So us girls just get to do the washing and look for a husband?’ I reply.

  ‘That’s life, Fan.’

  If the real Fan were here instead of me would she go along with that? But in this moment I have to be myself, and the thing I’m fighting for is my own life.

  ‘I’m sorry but I don’t have a choice.’

  I take off up the hill and don’t look back, even when they call to me. Arguing with them is the last way I wanted things to end, but the thing I care about most is finding Mr Wylie.

  Outside the entrance to Wylie’s Baths, I get a feeling like I’m about to sneeze or shiver but I can’t. It makes me pause. I’m doing the right thing, aren’t I?

  Of course I am—I can’t feel guilty for wanting this.

  There are voices coming from down below where the pool is. It’s him, the man Dewey was talking to when this thing first happened—Mr Wylie—and he’s down there with Mina. He waves at me as I head for the changing room. The cozzie is still wet but I squirm my way into it.

  Mr Wylie and Mina are over the far side. I haven’t been in this water since that day and my instinct is to get in and start swimming, see if that’s all it takes to get home.

  I jump in and squeal—it’s freezing, but like always that first plunge makes me feel alive. I dip down and start to swim breaststroke underwater. Maybe, just maybe, when I touch the end of the pool everything will be normal again.

  When I think I’m nearly at the end I open my eyes and stretch out my arms to check for the change.

  Please work, please make my own hands appear.

  Nope. Nothing. No sign of that strange magic.

  I can’t let myself panic—I’ve still got my hunch about the stopwatch.

  Mr Wylie and Mina are staring down at me. ‘Don’t be upset about today,’ says Mina. ‘Father says that with our times we’ll both of us make the State team.’

  ‘Oh.’ I can’t think of anything else to say and I’m scanning Mr Wylie to see if he has the stopwatch.

  ‘Are you quite well?’ says Mr Wylie. ‘You seem out of sorts. I know you’re ambitious and third place isn’t what you wanted today. But you can do it. I believe in you.’

  ‘Thanks, Mr Wylie.’

  ‘Now, enjoy,’ He gestures to the water and starts to walk away.

  ‘Wait!’ I shout, a bit too loud judging by their expressions. ‘I was wondering about your stopwatch. Could I have a look at it?’

  ‘You only borrowed it last week,’ says Mina, sounding a little bit huffy. Maybe she doesn’t like to share her father’s things in case Fan starts to beat her.

  ‘Come now, Mina. But I’m sorry, Fanny, I left it at the house.’ By now Mr Wylie is halfway to the stairs and I’m fighting back the tears, realising that I’m stuck here still.

  ‘What’s with the face like a sad fish?’ says Mina. ‘It’s only a stopwatch.’

  ‘Then how come you don’t want me to have it?’ I say.

  ‘First tell me why you want it so much.’

  ‘I just need it. I can’t explain.’

  ‘Have your secrets then. But maybe we can think of some arrangement.’

  ‘Like what?’

  Mina has a tricky sort of smile as if she’s plotting something fun. ‘Not sure, I’ll let you know!’ She skips off after her dad. I’m left in the water with my plan all stuffed up again. Strangely enough there’s only one thing I feel like doing. Swimming. There’s no one around so I can swim my own way: freestyle.

  My session felt good but it’s late now and I can’t face the Duracks.

  I’m hiding across the street in a small park and I can see the pub has been shut up for the night. I’ve missed supper and must be in a heap of trouble. But I’m scared out here, alone.

  Treading lightly, I go through the
yard. One of the dunny doors swings open suddenly.

  ‘There you are,’ says Frankie, hitching up his trousers to his braces. ‘We had bread-and-butter pudding and Ma said I could eat your share, but I said, “No, Ma. It’s Fan’s favourite.” And by the way you’re about to see our brother get the belt.’

  ‘The belt? Why?’

  ‘Da reckons Con took some of the takings.’

  My stomach flips as I realise he must be talking about the money I stole.

  ‘But he didn’t take it, Frankie.’

  Frankie shrugs. ‘Who did then?’

  What have I done? I hitch up my skirt and run up the stairs. In the kitchen, Con has his hands on the table. He flicks me an embarrassed glance. Da’s there with a wide leather belt.

  ‘Stop!’ I yell. ‘It wasn’t Con!’

  ‘It’s all right, Fan,’ says Con.

  He’s putting on a brave face. But I have to stop this.

  ‘It was me!’ I take hold of Da’s arm but he won’t look at me. He snatches his arm away and tells me to get out.

  Where’s the kind, jokey Da I know?

  ‘But this is wrong!’ I shout.

  ‘Leave it, Fan,’ says Con, raising his voice.

  So I run out of the room, and as I cry guilty tears in the hallway I can hear the belt striking Con. There is no other sound, not from Da or Con. I can’t believe someone as lovely as Da would do that. Or why Con would take it, knowing he’s innocent.

  If only I hadn’t taken those coins.

  Fan

  22

  Necklace

  My new mother’s still asleep when we get home from school and Dad tells us to be quiet and do our homework without waking her. Lucy didn’t talk to me all day today. She is really angry about the presentation.

  Instead of doing homework, I lie on my bed and try to remember how the other swimmers were swimming. Da paid the entry fee so that I could go in and watch the lessons at Mrs Page’s in Coogee when I was nine, but he couldn’t afford the lessons. I learned by watching and teaching myself dog paddle and then trudgen and then swimming as much as I could until I was fast enough to compete.

  Here in the future I can swim every day if I want to. As much as I miss my family, things are easier for me here. There are more choices. I can go to school instead of having to stay home and help with the chores. I can learn like boys do. I can get a job, eat food from a packet, and wear a thing called a tracksuit.

  I doubt Ma would even believe me if I told her what women can do in the future.

  Now I need to teach myself freestyle before the next training session or risk being booted off the team. I’m in the bedroom balanced over two tall stools I took from the kitchen. It’s a bit wobbly but I start to kick my legs up and down. Then I raise one arm over my head and turn my face to the side under it like they were doing into the water.

  I manage my arms okay because that part isn’t too different from trudgen, but coordinating my arms, legs and head at the same time seems impossible. Perhaps it’s partly because I don’t want to un-learn my favourite stroke. If I ever get home, that’s how I’ll beat Mina.

  I roll my head to the side, lose my balance on the stools and crash onto the floor with a yelp.

  Maisy runs into the room, shuts the door behind her. ‘What are you doing, Cat? You’ll wake Mum.’

  ‘Sorry,’ I whisper. ‘I’m just practising my strokes.’

  Maisy glares at me and plonks down on her bed. I jump up and join her, with my knees crossed, impressed at how flexible these joints are.

  ‘Is this because of training this morning?’ Maisy gives me a look that suggests she feels sorry for me.

  ‘I’m worried about my place in the team,’ I tell her.

  ‘You just need to take it seriously.’

  ‘I do!’

  ‘No you don’t,’ she says. ‘You’ve relied on the fact that you’re a natural? I’m sick of hearing it.’

  She stretches out her legs. ‘I work harder than you. I want it more than you. But you’re the natural. You could go to the Olympics if you want to. I’m just not sure you do.’

  ‘I do. Believe me. That’s all I want.’

  ‘You have a funny way of showing it, Cat.’

  I’ve always been lucky that my sisters are happy for me to be the swimmer while they pursue more ladylike things. It’s obviously not the way with Maisy and Cat.

  ‘Mum’s up,’ says Maisy, as the door to the other bedroom creaks open. Barely containing her excitement, she jumps up and leaves.

  I carefully balance myself across the stools again in an effort to try to work out this stroke. I have to be able to swim it at the race meet on the weekend. If I don’t then I’ll be off the team.

  We’ve eaten fancy pastries for breakfast, and now my new mother, whom I’m struggling to call Mum, hands me a beautifully wrapped box. Maisy is ripping the paper open on her present, but I go slow, not wanting to ruin the corners or the edges or the folds. I lift up the flap at the end and slide out a small blue box.

  Inside is a gold necklace with a pendant that has a swimmer lifting her arm as she glides across the water engraved on it.

  ‘What a treasure!’

  Maisy and my mother laugh. ‘See! I told you she was different,’ says Maisy.

  I look up at them both grinning at me and I grin back. Mum takes the box from me and tells me to turn so she can fasten it around my neck. I go to lift my hair up to help her, and then remember that I’m not Fanny and I have short hair.

  The only necklace I’ve ever had was one that I won in a race, and it was nothing as fine as this. I feel the pendant against my neck, reminding me I’m a swimmer.

  Maisy has a swimming necklace too but hers is silver. Like second place I think to myself, while mine is the gold of first. I wonder if Maisy had the same thought.

  I have so many questions for my new mother. About where she’s been and what she’s seen and what she does with her time. ‘Are you always away for so long?’ I ask, amazed that mothers can leave their families.

  ‘She wasn’t on holidays, Cat! She was working,’ snaps Maisy. ‘You always do this. Make her feel bad for being away. It’s her job.’

  Mum squeezes Maisy’s hand like she’s calming her. ‘I don’t think Cat was suggesting I was swanning around Europe.’ She turns back to me and sips from a cup of tea. She drinks it black like Ma does, but this is made from a teabag and this mother leaves the bag in.

  ‘It was long this time. But Paris was lovely. We were only there a night but I did get to see the Eiffel Tower.’

  I nod but I have no idea what she is referring to. Luckily Maisy dives in with chatter about French food and snails. I listen, trying to pick up as many scraps of information as I can. There is something about flying and business class and serving people in the air and I gather that the aeroplane I saw my first day here is where she works. She delivers meals, like a servant in the sky. The idea that a plane can hold so many people and that someone can walk around in it is hurting my head.

  ‘Tell me more about your travels,’ I say, wanting details of lands I’ve never imagined. My family always marvelled if we ventured as far as the mountains for a day on the train.

  Mum looks at me and I see how blue her eyes are. They are nothing like Ma’s dark Irish eyes. This mother looks more like Maisy than like Cat. She’s strong and slim and I wonder if she was ever a swimmer too.

  ‘London was busy and we didn’t have long before we had to fly out. I went to some galleries in Paris and ate stinky cheese!’

  I laugh. ‘Like cheese left on the bench too long? Cheese on the turn?’

  Mum tilts her head like she’s examining me and I realise I’ve spoken strangely again, like someone from another time. I push my chair back to escape her close watch. ‘I might start on dinner if that’s okay? I’m starved.’

  ‘See?’ says Maisy to Mum. ‘She cooks now. Told you she’s weird!’

  Cat

  23

  Names
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br />   Being someone else feels different now, like a pair of new runners that are starting to remember the shape of my feet. For days I’ve been picturing the look on Con’s face when Da belted him. That happened because of me—Cat. I made the choice to take the money and Con got punished.

  It’s made me think about the kind of person Fanny is. All the clues I have are from the way people talk to me. She must be kind and funny, and ambitious. I don’t think she’d let the strict rules for girls in 1908 stop her from doing anything. I get that from the way Mr Wylie and Mina were talking, all the fretting out loud Ma does, the sisters saying there are no choices for girls, as well as a gut feeling.

  It’s teatime. The meal is delicious tonight: potato puffs made from yesterday’s meat mashed up with boiled potatoes, then flattened into saucer-sized rounds, dusted in flour and fried in boiling fat. There’s also pickled red cabbage and a loaf of bread that Mary baked. The whole family is at the table, except for Ma who hardly ever sits down. If Ma isn’t feeding us she’s feeding the stove with wood, or clearing out the ashes, or chucking out the kitchen slops, or preparing the next meal. Kath and Mary are always bobbing up and down from the table to help her. The boys have their chores but they get to sit and enjoy the meal.

  ‘I said, any more for you, Fanny?’ says Ma. ‘Can somebody nudge that girl?’

  ‘Sorry, Ma,’ I reply. ‘I was thinking about something else.’

  ‘Her race on Saturday, I’ll bet,’ says Con, smiling.

  Frankie says, ‘She’ll win for sure this time,’ and then he and Mick start chanting, ‘Fann-y! Fann-y! Fann-y!’

  They’re so sweet but I can’t help cringing: I’ve almost got used to plain Fan but every time someone calls out Fanny! I squirm as much as if they were yelling bum or boobs. I know it’s just old-fashioned, but come on!

  Then I get a brainwave, and I’m going to try it the next time that someone calls me Fanny.

  ‘Pass the butter, Fanny,’ says Dewey, literally a second later.

  ‘Actually,’ I begin. ‘I’ve decided I want to be called Franny from now on.’

  Nobody moves or speaks. Then I feel Dewey take the butter dish from my hand and the entire family bursts out laughing. They think I’m joking!