‘ “Miss Ginger, I think we must be kindred souls. I’ve been sitting here for the last fifteen minutes musing on exactly the same sentiments.” He extended his hand for me to shake; I glanced around before I took it, thankful I was wearing gloves. Who knew when he’d last washed his hands.
‘ “Sir, it’s been nice chatting, but I’ve got to get back to work – if I even have a job after coming to see this lot.” I stood up and then, on some charitable impulse, as discreetly as I could handed the poor thing a couple of shillings and threepence. “I wish I could spare more, sir, but times are tough. I’ve got Ma to look after at home. Pa’s away, thank God. At least the war was good for something.” At the mention of Ma, my throat closed up again and I just wanted to leave the noisy, crowded gallery and return to the safe monotony of the store.
‘I turned to leave and the man caught my arm. I looked at him, surprised and a little alarmed. The hobo was laughing at me! “Thank you, Miss Ginger, for your frank words and your kindly offer to a stranger. Let me try to be of assistance in return. I’m an artist in need of a new model. You’ve a face and spirit, Ginger, that interests me a lot. I’d love to paint you.” He laughed again at the expression on my face – no doubt a mixture of shock, pity and fear. I glanced around, wondering if there was a guard nearby who would come to my aid if he tried anything.
‘ “I can offer you board, food and a very good wage,” he went on quickly. “How much do you earn, Ginger, at your place of work?”
‘I told him automatically and in return he stated a figure that made me gasp.
‘ “Don’t say anything now,” he said. “But consider how much more you’d be able to help out at home.” He glanced down at the shabby black suede high-heeled shoes I had picked up second-hand at Paddy’s Markets. I knew somehow he had detected the holes inside patched up with paper. “You could earn enough to buy yourself some pretty things,” he said, persuasively. “You should have pretty things, Red.”
‘ “Sir, I don’t mean to be rude, but you hardly look as if you’re in a position to be offering me work,” I said, trying to be as tactful as possible. In those days, you never knew what sort of men you were dealing with, whether they had seen service overseas and come home with a screw loose.
‘ “Rupert?”
‘I looked around in surprise. The voice came from Miss Snooty, whom I had spotted with Kitty earlier. She eyed me with disapproval, and then looked past me. “So this is where you’ve been hiding! The Herald men are waiting, Rupert! Albert and Sidney are ready for the photo.”
‘I turned around to look for the notorious painter, and the hobo – the devil himself – raised his hat to me. “It’s been a pleasure to meet you, Ginger. And you were spot on with your assessment. A monkey could paint a better picture than Rupert Partridge.”
‘I stood staring after him as he vanished into the crowd, my face the same shade as my hair as I realised my faux pas.
‘I was on my way out of the main doors, escaping into the sunlight and my humdrum life, when I heard my name being called. When I reluctantly turned back, there he was, grinning away and fishing around in his suit jacket, before he handed me a card. “My contact details,” he said. “I’d love to hear from you, Ginger.”
‘Rupert Partridge, the card read, Currawong Manor (with no number but lion guardians), Mount Bellwood, Blue Mountains. Curled around that ridiculous-sounding address was a doodle of a naked woman. Motionless, I studied the card for several seconds, my heart pounding. Somehow, the entire scene felt unreal, as though I was an actress playing the part of Ginger and what I had taken to be reality was no more real than last night’s dream.
‘He placed his hand on my arm and I looked up at him. Those dark eyes seemed to burn into my soul. “What do you say, Miss Ginger? Are you up for an adventure?” And in that moment, by some curious twist of fate, some mischievous breath of the gods, my destiny had opened before me. And I could feel the sparkling shimmer of Sydney Harbour tingling in my chest and mouth with its watery promise of a new life.
‘That’s how I met the bloody devil himself, Rupert Partridge! He loved recounting how I’d mistaken him for a down-and-out trying to snatch a bit of culture, and often repeated the story to friends. What a shame I didn’t obey my initial impulse and rip the card in half and save myself an immense amount of trouble.’
Holly clapped her hands. ‘What a romantic story, Ginger! You wouldn’t be able to make up a meeting like that. They do say truth is better than fiction.’
‘Romantic? There’s very little romance in this tale,’ Ginger scoffed, but Elizabeth had noticed that her face had flushed as she talked about Rupert, and her expression softened. She’d heard that there were rumours at the time that Ginger Flower had had a steamy affair with the artist under the same roof as his wife – was it possible they were true after all?
‘I told myself after that meeting there was no way on earth I would work for a degenerate like Rupert Partridge,’ Ginger went on with a new hauteur, as if afraid she’d given herself away. ‘Despite my initial superior attitude towards the protesters, I found myself silently agreeing with them. There had to be something filthy going on at the manor. With naked women in his studio every day, there were probably orgies. But life conspired against me that afternoon. However it happened – I don’t recall the exact details – I was delayed in returning to work. In spite of Helen’s efforts to distract her, Jane eventually noticed my absence, and seeing a customer waiting at my counter, alerted Mrs Stafford; when I finally made it back to Mark Foy’s, I was sacked on the spot. It was a relief, in a way, as I was fed up with the constant pressure of sales. “Sorry, dear, just browsing” – I still wake up with that nightmare sentence in my head. But I was also horrified, as I knew how it would affect Ma.
‘I sobbed in the park that evening, too afraid to go home and confess to Ma what had happened. She relied on my housekeeping money; it would destroy her that I had lost my job. All the while the devil’s card seemed to smoulder in my handbag, sending up small sparks of hope.
‘And, to be honest, I kept seeing the sparkle of the harbour and hearing Rupert’s voice: You should have pretty things, Red. How I longed for pretty, impractical shoes, like the silver dancing sandals in the latest Mark Foy’s catalogue. A new frock, not just my work uniform, or something Ma had run up out of curtains, or second-hand clothes from the market that made you scratch. I hated poverty: the rationing and coupons that never stretched far enough to buy anything nice. It was awful having to divide up a measly pound of butter for a week and two ounces of sugar and never having the money to pay the black marketeers as the more fortunate did. All the little taken-for-granted “luxuries” that the war had squeezed out of us were sorely missed in our Brick Lane terrace. Being Surry Hills rats gave us no time to contemplate anything except survival and hunger! All poverty did was fade the world to grey. If I had to spend my life eating bread and dripping, killing bedbugs, listening to neighbours fight and mate like wild cats through the thin walls, what was the point of it all? While we were scratching around for a mean and meagre living, why did some have so much – like Miss Snooty, or the blonde girl smirking as she strode off with her doughboy? I was sick of watching Ma slowly shrink away, weary of the knot in my stomach at the thought of Pa returning home to unleash all his frustrations and furies on her.
‘I finally walked home in the dark in my second-hand shoes that pinched and gave me blisters. As I walked dejectedly down the grimy, smoky, litter-filled streets, I barely glanced at the cut-throats and prostitutes, the doughboys prowling in groups for Australian girls or the angry expression on the Italian mama’s face as she surveyed her smashed windows yet again. All the familiar smells and sorry sights of Surry Hills hardly registered as I passed them – I was too busy worrying about what I was going to tell Ma. And with every step, that card continued to smoulder. By the time I reached our house, it was a bushfire in my pocket.’
To Elizabeth’s alarm, Ginger paused and snatched
up a tissue to dab her eyes. ‘I’m sorry. This is not as easy as I thought it would be when Holly suggested it. I can still see his shiny patent-leather shoes against the wooden art-gallery floor. I should have known then that he was no tramp! I should never have fallen under his spell.’
She broke off and looked away from them, her face twisted in pain. ‘Damn, I can’t bear to think about him sometimes. Can we have a break now?’
5
Truth and Beauty
For a moment Holly, Elizabeth and Nick watched Ginger grapple with her emotions. Elizabeth finally dared to reach out and touch her arm. ‘Are you okay, Ginger? You don’t have to do any more today.’
Ginger pressed the tissue to her eyes. ‘You don’t understand,’ she said angrily. ‘I need to get it all out as quickly as I can. Otherwise I’ll change my mind. You don’t have any idea how hard it is when the most trivial details sprout such unexpected emotions. I still hate to remember Ma’s grey face when I confessed the truth two days later. I wasn’t off work with stomach pains – I’d been sacked from the store. Even worse was Ma howling like a wounded animal several months later when I packed my suitcase to take up Rupert’s offer.’ She imitated her mother’s rough Australian vowels: ‘ “May the shame kill me, Holy Mother, as your pa will blame me for it when he gets wind of this! I can only pray the Japs take him first. What will the neighbours say? It’s going to destroy our family name. Once Father O’Connor and the nuns find out, the blame will be laid at my door. I always knew that hussy Kitty Collins was bad news!” ’ For a second Elizabeth could almost see another woman standing there. Ginger, despite what her trashy television roles might lead you to expect, was an excellent actress.
‘Kitty Collins contacted me not long before she died,’ Elizabeth said quietly to Nick. ‘Unfortunately I missed the chance to meet with her.’
‘Pity.’ Nick frowned. ‘It would have been interesting to have her anecdotes for Flowers of the Ruins. Her own book was a bit too sensational. Lots of hints about a conspiracy with the Flowers and the staff employed at the manor, but none of it went anywhere.’ He clicked his pen, watching Ginger closely as she began weeping again.
Holly sought to console Ginger. ‘Well, you can understand your mother’s point of view, dear. Values have changed so much over the years.’
‘But the shame didn’t kill her,’ Ginger retorted. ‘On the contrary, the months I spent as one of Rupert’s notorious Flowers made her life easier than before. Up until she died, anyway. Rupert made sure of that. The regular sums of money posted to the tiny Brick Lane terrace ensured the Jarvis family had access to more nutritious food and comfortable clothes than they’d experienced before. Ma only visited the Ruins once – a total disaster – but it was enough for me to see that my new occupation as the devil’s Ginger Flower had failed to kill her as she had melodramatically predicted. Even Pa was placated by our improved fortunes on his return from the Pacific and stopped belting his wife and children as much.’
‘Can I ask, Ginger – how did she die?’ Nick said, scribbling away.
‘It was the last baby, the ninth child, who extinguished my mother’s life. A tiny girl, she was, who died in the long and bloody labour trapped inside my screaming ma. The baby may have realised this world wasn’t worth a look-see, but she was too young to be alone in the shadow worlds and took her mother for company.’
A respectful silence fell upon the group as they watched Ginger struggle with her emotions. When Ginger next spoke, her words were heavy with sadness.
‘It stung me even years later that Ma had been content to take Rupert’s money, that in a warped way she was proud of me for becoming one of the Flowers, but at the same time she never forgave me for disrobing for the devil – and for having “tickets on myself”, thinking I was better than that inner-city struggle street of failure.’
Elizabeth hugged her knees, thinking of how similar that scenario sounded – having to endure a mother’s disapproval.
Ginger went into the bathroom to touch up her make-up, and Holly reluctantly got up to leave. ‘Stay with her for a while longer and make sure she’s okay,’ she whispered to Nick and Elizabeth. ‘I’ve never seen her so emotional. Poor old thing. I just hope her health is up to it.’ Then with a knowing nod she hastened out the door.
Ginger came out of the bathroom. ‘Are you two kids still here?’ she said. ‘Holly’s gone to run after Sunshine Bob and her workmen, I suppose. Now that she’s gone, I can give you these.’ She gestured towards a couple of large boxes on the floor. ‘There’s a heap of old stuff I’ve been sorting. And in this,’ she picked up a plastic shopping bag, ‘tapes where I’ve been recording my memories. There’re also letters and diaries I’ve had hanging around from the old days, and loads of Rupert’s photographs as well. I make it a rule never to throw anything out! I keep meaning to contact the Mitchell Library to see if they’ll take them when I go. I’d hate to die and have it just thrown out by one of my siblings who won’t appreciate its cultural heritage. I don’t get along with any of them. But if you’re very good children, I’ll give you both full access. As long as you don’t use anything without permission . . .’ Ginger dangled the bag in front of Nick in a teasing manner. She leant towards Nick and for a startled moment Elizabeth thought she was going to kiss him. ‘I don’t know how to fit all the pieces together of my life in this bag. But I think you’ll know how to make it fit.’ She raised an eyebrow suggestively and Elizabeth smothered her laughter. Ginger would have given Diana Dors a run for her money.
Elizabeth spotted several old photos taken at the Ruins as Ginger opened the bag. There was one of the three Flowers on the lawn with Shalimar and Lois that she hadn’t seen before. She couldn’t wait to examine the photographs and felt protective of them. She wished she could go through them on her own, rather than having to see them for the first time with Nick. She felt uneasy around him and had done since they were first introduced, sensing that he found her a contrast to her more exotic grandfather with his brooding, dark, Gothic features
‘Hopefully the contents might provide us with some clue about the mystery of what happened to Rupert, where he vanished and if he did or didn’t have anything to do with the drowning of his daughter,’ Nick said, raising an inviting eyebrow. Elizabeth felt an unsettling combination of irritation and anxiety. She was annoyed at Nick for trying to manipulate Ginger by flirting with her, but also she dreaded what he might unearth in her family history.
Ginger watched them both with shrewd eyes. ‘Everyone needs secrets. Mystery makes the world more interesting. I want to set the record straight. Kitty’s death has shown me that we don’t have eternity to tell our stories, and I’m weary of hearing other people’s versions of that day in 1945. Most people think they know what happened. Most people are wrong.’
Nick nodded in agreement as he scribbled in his notebook. Elizabeth, studying a photograph from the box, tried not to stare at him in case her face gave away how attractive she found him.
‘I can imagine what you’re thinking,’ Nick said to Ginger, tossing back his hair. ‘You think I’m just another journalist who wants to crank out an exploitative, biased piece of work rehashing all the same old witnesses, stories and fabrications to make myself a buck. I don’t blame you for being suspicious, but please give me a chance, Mrs Law . . . Ginger.’
‘Well, you’re wrong, Mr Hip,’ Ginger said. ‘I was actually thinking that you remind me slightly of Rupert. Filled with boyish charm. Before you know it, men like you are in a girl’s heart and knickers. And once upon a time you’d have been pulling out all the stops to get into my knickers.’
Elizabeth laughed out loud and Nick grinned. ‘Ginger, all I’m interested in is the truth,’ he said. ‘But I also want this book to be a bestseller.’
Ginger paced the floor before continuing. ‘Holly thinks all of Australia cares about what happened to Rupert and the Flower’s role in the events of 1945. She may have misjudged the public’s interest in the Ruins, but who
cares if she did? I get to spend time back here while I work on my section of the book. We all need time out sometimes. So what’s your story, Elizabeth?’
Elizabeth flushed deeper at the attention now focused upon her. Nick smiled at her encouragingly.
‘I’ve always been fascinated by the case, because of the connection to Rupert,’ she began in a quiet voice. ‘Mum would never discuss it at all, just said she had no interest in the story – which of course made me keener to discover why! And when Holly approached me to photograph the Ruins and said you’d be here, Ginger, how could I refuse?’ Ginger gave her a gracious nod. ‘You’re iconic, Ginger! Your life is inspiring for any modern-day woman to study. You were so ahead of your time. A movie should be made of your story.’
‘So true,’ Ginger murmured, without embarrassment. She smiled widely at Elizabeth, revealing bleached white teeth.
Encouraged by Ginger’s sudden warmth, Elizabeth went on, ‘I grew up watching reruns of Terrace Street – when Mum wasn’t around, of course. You were terrific. You definitely gave Abigail from Number 96 a run for her money!’
Ginger preened like a giant peacock. ‘They don’t make TV like they used to!’ she boasted. ‘I can’t stand all this stupid crime and garbage reality television that passes for entertainment. Who wants to watch people cook dinner or eat rats? I refuse to watch it. Why bring myself down? Back then we knew what the public wanted and we gave it to them!’
Nick nodded, his lips twisting, and Elizabeth had to stop herself from elbowing him in the ribs. In the iconic early soap opera Terrace Street, Ginger had played a nymphomaniac, busybody neighbour, spending more time with her clothes off than on. No doubt this was a large part of the show’s popularity among men of all ages.
‘I can’t wait to photograph you, Ginger,’ Elizabeth continued. ‘I think we’ll work together brilliantly. I love the way women can truly understand and support each other in creative collaboration.’ Nick’s eyes narrowed at that and he looked at her more closely. ‘I’d love to do a few current nudes to sit alongside the past photographs my grandfather did of you. I heard about Playboy wanting you to pose – that’s wonderful, and a real tribute to your enduring sex appeal, but our book is a much more artistic medium. The antique camera I use, handed down from Rupert, gives a flattering effect no modern use of photoshopping could equal. Our photos wouldn’t be exploitative but rather an intimate appreciation of a mature woman’s beauty. And current nudes of an original Flower will provide excellent publicity for Flowers of the Ruins. Don’t you agree, Mr Cash?’
Currawong Manor Page 6
