by Kim Kelly
I laugh. The floodwaters won’t reach Still Waiting. They never do. But I say: ‘All right, I’ll wait.’
She says: ‘It will break next Christmas – you mark my words. Hughie will arrive with trumpets. Then sell the year after.’
Righto. Mrs Wells has arranged it with the man in the sky. As if she might arrange the rest of my future, she says: ‘It’s about time you settled down. Have you got in touch with that Bernadette Cooper again yet? I’ve heard she’s back in Sydney, poor girl. All on her own. You know you broke her heart. She’s still holding a candle for you.’
I’m not happy I broke her heart. I know that feeling. And the only thing more incredible than the idea that she might still be waiting for me is the extent of the CWA telegraph. I would bet Mrs Wells has never even met Bernie, but she knows her. Knows what she had for breakfast. I’m resisting the urge now to bolt to her. Thank you for the information, ladies, I’ll be on my way. But Mrs Wells has me fixed in my seat. She says: ‘A hardworking girl, that one. Done a lot with the CWA and setting up with the Women’s Land Army. Bess Lockhart has a lot of time for her. She’s had a lot to contend with, too. And she wrote a book in amongst it all – did you know that?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Have you read it?’ Mrs Wells looks like she has.
‘Yeah.’ That’s embarrassing.
‘Do you think it might be time to go and end the story well for her?’
‘Yeah.’ I go to get up from the table.
But Mrs Wells says: ‘Stay right where you are and I’ll get the clippers. You’re not going anywhere with a daggy head like that.’
I submit to the shearing and put the essential pieces together. Slowly. Bernie’s not married. She’s had a lot to contend with. She’s on her own, in Sydney, without her Mum and Dad. Everything she wrote in that novel is true. Except she left out the part that says I’m an idiot.
Mrs Wells says: ‘And don’t you go tearing off without a nap. You know you shouldn’t drive for long stretches without resting your eyes – you might hit a bull or something.’ She laughs. She knows all about that too.
She says: ‘Mrs Morrison, up at Bourke, her nephew Harry was the AMS pilot that got you back to Adelaide. You were carrying on delirious about someone called Bernie, to the extent that Harry phoned the police to go and check the wreck for another boy. No one could work out who this Bernie might have been, till Mrs Morrison mentioned it as a curiosity to me when she came down for the Nyngan race day.’
Which means the entire country knows what an idiot I am.
‘Isn’t that funny?’
‘Too funny.’ I look at the telephone out in Mrs Wells’s hallway. I could call Bernie right now. Tell her I love her right now. Tell her I’m sorry. But I’m not going to do that. I don’t know how I could begin to tell her everything that needs to be said. Not going be worrying about the cost of a call while I’m saying it, either. No. I’m going to have a good night’s sleep and drive to Sydney in the morning. After I’ve been to the bank. I’ve kept meaning to make a donation to the Flying Doctor and keep forgetting. Not forgetting any more. I’m pretty glad I’m alive.
BERNIE
For the umpteenth time I’ve walked past this sign in the window of Niagara: WAITRESS WANTED. And kept walking. Mum would be horrified: waitressing, in a milk bar. She did too much Cinderellering herself to want any daughter of hers to serve and clean up after others for a handful of coins. But I need the coins; and I don’t want a proper job where I’d actually have to think. And there’s not much choice at the moment. Ellie suggested Abe get me some proofreading work with Ray, the typesetter, and Abe roared, there’s no other word for it: When we need someone with expertise in creative grammar, I’ll let you know. I’m barely literate. I’d go back to school and learn some grammar but I haven’t any blooping money for a course.
Still, I keep walking right past the sign at Niagara again, on my way down to the south end, for a surf. A few hundred others are of the same mind. The weather is perfect, Christmas holidays perfect, four o’clock in the afternoon and plenty have knocked off early to enjoy it at Coogee, and if I ignore the barbed wire I can almost believe the peace has been won. That Japan is not hanging on to this stupid war like a mad dog with a bone. No one really believes they’re coming here any more, except for real estate agents who can’t sell anything because no one’s quite prepared to gamble on their surrender yet. It’s only a matter of time before they’re chased out of the islands. Hurry up and lose, I tell them, squinting out over the Pacific before I duck in under a wave. Give up, go home. I imagine I’m a torpedo heading for Tokio. I want to blow them all to smithereens. I’ll show them a new world order: where they have nothing left. Whoomp.
Stop it, Missy. Push out through the wash, push these black-cloud thoughts away. Try to. Out the back of the wave, I turn and look at the beach. The sand, the people, the prom, the sheds, all the Heartbreaks around the bay. My home, but somehow I am disconnected again. Treading water, that’s all I seem to do, under a storm that never eventuates. Sometimes it seems as if I’ve cursed myself into believing that I won’t write the end of The Ending until the war actually ends. At least it has a title now, I suppose.
Maybe I should go back to Hay for Christmas, see if it doesn’t change my view and get things going. Just move. Mrs Lockhart’s invited me for the holidays, and I would love to see her. I’ve missed her, I’ve missed Odds too, but I don’t want to see Mitch. That still scrapes at me.
I get dumped on a wave coming back in now and that scrapes more, scraped half the skin off my knee, so I get out of the surf and lie on the sand to take the last of the sun and pretend that Gordon’s lying next to me, his skin gone the colour of the red earth I am yet to see in reality. He’s asking me if it’s time to go up to Niagara for a malt. Another curse. Waiting for the war to end so that I can end things with him too.
So that I can actually cross the threshold of Niagara one day without crunching through the million irreparable pieces that my world has smashed into. There’s a nicely overblown, overwrought proper-writerly metaphor. I let some tears fall into my towel, of frustration more than grief. I want this endless ache to end. I lie on the sand till my arms are numb under my head and my head is a blank.
Pages and pages and pages of blank.
‘Hey Bernie!’
Look up and see Colin.
Oh no. Not today. Please.
But I see he’s with a girl, a nice one, Beverley Someone, went to Sacred Heart. Bev … Reilly, yes. They wave, going for a walk after work, khaki cuffs rolled. Something good.
It’s getting late, though, and the breeze is cooling. Teatime. Time to go home.
What for?
If I could turn myself into a damp smudge of sea and disappear into the sand I would.
GORDON
In the time it takes me to pull on the handbrake and get out of the jeep, Mrs Zoc is out her front door, across the lawn and screaming: ‘Gordon! Where have you been? Gordon! What are you doing to me?’ Slapping me hard across my face. Screaming the whole time: ‘You didn’t call. I thought you were dead. You are bad. Look at what you have done! I love you like my best son. And you – you – ’ She gives me a mouthful of Italian I might not understand but take the meaning from anyway. I have a lot to answer for.
‘I’m sorry.’
She raises her hand. I think she’s going to hit me again but her eyes do the job instead. She says: ‘Stupido.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘And what you do to Bernadetta. You are–’
‘Is she here?’ If she is she’s hiding. Half the street is looking out their front doors and someone’s opened a window up the top of the flats on the corner.
‘No.’ Mrs Zoc sniffs. ‘She went to the beach, to swim.’
‘I’ll wait here then.’ Go and sit on her front fence. My face is still stinging. I thought Mrs Zoc would be upset but I wasn’t expecting that. It’s not as though I’ve been off having a party. I’ve also been d
riving all day, since dawn.
She comes over and puts her hand on my shoulder, and I almost flinch again, but she says: ‘I love you, my boy. Don’t you ever do that again.’ Then she turns around and goes back in her house.
I look at the road, and wait.
BERNIE
The breeze has turned chilly coming off the water, blustering me up the steps, and I hold my parcel of hot chips against my chest to keep warm. I’ve eaten half of them already. Half of one thing less I’ve got to do this evening when I get in. Might go round and play gin rummy with Mrs Zoc.
Round the corner I see there’s a great ugly army jeep sitting outside our Arcadia. There’s something else to do, while we’re playing gin rummy: I can complain about that eyesore. It’s a dirty thing too, covered in dust.
Red dust.
And then I see the moleskins sitting on the fence. I see blue Scotch twill.
No. No, it’s not him. Don’t be ridiculous. I am the primary agent of cruelty to myself.
‘Bernie?’
But it sounds like him.
He stands up.
It is him.
I can’t move. I can’t speak. I can’t even say his name.
GORDON
She stares at me. Not just shocked. She’s wary.
I should have called, or sent a note. You can’t just turn up on the doorstep after five years. She looks sad. Holding it in. Her big brown eyes are so sad I’m ashamed she has to look at me.
I tell her: ‘I’m sorry. Tell me to go and I’ll go now.’
She shakes her head and says: ‘Do you want a chip?’
‘No. Thanks.’
She drops the chips. She says: ‘Rock.’
Her arms are around me, and I’m home. Never leaving home again.
BERNIE
There couldn’t be a more perfect ending for our second beginning. At the first touch of his lips on the top of my head, five years fall away with the ache and we start gathering and mending what’s precious together. In my parents’ bed. That’s our bed from today. Somewhere inside it, inside his arms, I hear him say: ‘Does this mean we’re still engaged, or should I ask you again?’ And I say, right into his heart: ‘No. Definitely not. It’s a jinx. Every time marriage comes into anything, terrible things happen. I don’t want a wedding. I only want you.’ He says: ‘It’s good to know you’re still a flip.’ Mental. And he gives me all I want again.
We tell each other our stories through the night, but we keep our secrets close. I’m not ever going to tell him all of what I’ve learned of grief, just as I’m sure he’ll never tell me all of what happened in Rabaul. It’s enough to know for now that a man called Errol Flynn saved his life rowing him almost back to Queensland. You couldn’t make that story up, could you, and some stories can’t be shared. I can’t avoid telling him what happened to Mum, though, and when I do, it hurts him.
‘I’m sorry, Bernie, I’m so sorry I wasn’t here, with you.’
I tell him: ‘Not your fault, and you’re here now. And I want to make my family with you.’ I hope it’s already begun. I hope for as many children as Hughie will allow us.
My Rock says: ‘We should get married. I want to marry you. We can just go to the registry if you want.’
I say: ‘No. If we do that you’ll get hit by a tram the next day.’
He laughs: ‘You’re beautiful.’
Oh I am, much more than beautiful, when he looks at me that way, those cool-warm grey eyes promising …
… So much that I get out of bed, put my dressing-gown on and tell him: ‘I’ve got some work to do and you’re a time-waster. Why don’t you go outside and play.’
I go out to the kitchen table to Good Companion and I start writing the ending for The Ending. He goes and plays with the motorbike, then rides it into the university and he comes back with a job of his own. Course he does. Six months’ research in chemical mineralogy, whatever that is. ‘Looking at dirt under a microscope,’ he says. ‘See what this drought is doing to soil fertility.’
‘Hm.’ I push him back into bed, and I’m glad he’s got somewhere to go in the morning, or I’d never get out of it again.
The Ending just happens. Like breathing. A little under three months it takes, but it feels like about three days. Fancy that. I’d wonder if I’ve dreamed this too, but for the dire state of my fingernails. I give the pages to Gordon first and he stays up all night reading the whole thing. It’s thrilling to watch him read. I know it’s good. I just know it this time. There’s three parts to it: The Peace, set in the camp; The War, set out at Hell; and The Price, set here, in our bed. It’s a story about what peace means and costs, from the end of the line and back, to here at the beginning. A compass circle dance. I knew exactly what I was doing this time. I could write my own catalogue copy on it. When he’s finished, my Rock looks up at me and he says: ‘You’re amazing.’
I say: ‘You are.’
Abe says he’ll give me a hundred pounds for it, and then he phones back again to add: ‘Could have wider appeal, this one. I’m thinking of sending it off to an old friend in New York. Don’t get your hopes up, but let’s see, eh?’
I do a cartwheel up the hall.
Then I drag Gordon up to the Ginger Jar, to get out of the kitchen as much as to celebrate. Not just finishing The Ending, but to celebrate us. Look at us. Three months he’s been home. Three months in my bed. He’s real. Nerida keeps making faces at me behind his back and mouthing: No! Gorgeous! Isn’t he what? He’s so wonderful to watch, meeting my friends, the way he has about him, genuinely interested in interesting people. Listening all the time, clearly. He’s the thoroughly good article. He has more laugh lines on his face than frown lines. How did that happen? Miracles, each one of them, and I’m more in love with him than ever.
On the way home, walking up to Taylor Square for the tram, he squeezes my hand: ‘Bernie, I really want to marry you. Before the obvious happens, you know. Please?’
‘Oh all right.’
And at the tram stop at Taylor Square we kiss, dizzy with the wine and the trams and the buses and the crowds spinning round us. In the centre of the universe, we kiss.
An American calls out: ‘Hey, baby doll, you’re breaking my heart.’
Let it break. We deserve our peace. Every last caramel-tasting second of it.
Poor Mr Curtin, our Prime Minister, doesn’t get to enjoy his. He’s died, of heart failure, on the wireless just now: Dead from a coronary occlusion brought on by the stress and worry of the war. It wasn’t quick like it was for Mum, but it’s got him in the end and I doubt there’s a dry eye in the country, from either side of the political fence. We’re just about to win – for real. Rolling up the wire, the Nazis have surrendered, just waiting for the Japs to give it up and sign the papers too when they get tired of being bombed to smithereens in Tokio. And Mr Curtin, so responsible for this peace, for us men and women of Australia, has died. On the fifth of July. It seems too great a cost. With the death of the American President a couple of months ago now too, it seems a curse of peace.
The phone rings, and it’s Mrs Lockhart, you could set your watch by her: ‘Oh Bernadette dear, did you hear the news about John Curtin? Oh yes, well that’s what smoking and drinking will do to you, I don’t care what anyone says. But poor Elsie, she loved him so. They had a cup of tea together around midnight, he said, It’s time you went to bed, Mother, and she did, and then he left her around four. Terribly sad, but not wholly unexpected. Tell me, though, how are your wedding plans going?’
‘Still for August, the eighteenth,’ I say.
Disappointing her: ‘But you know that’s the weekend of the christening.’ Mitch and Jen’s little Elizabeth. ‘You haven’t been able to change it?’
‘No.’ And I lie again: ‘It’s the best date to fit in with Gordon’s work.’ The date doesn’t matter. Gordon is beholden to no one but some bits of crystal something -ide to do with bauxite on some other research thing he’s got and I just don’t want to make
a deal of our wedding. If we invite Mrs Lockhart, I have to invite Mitch and Jenny, which will mean all the Fitzgeralds will come, and then half of Nyngan, plus Dad’s Aunty Ena from Gilgandra, and then the Quinns would have to come too, and then Mrs Cronin, and on and on it will go. I want to marry Gordon, not half the nation, and I want to do it without worrying about which church will horrify the least people. We’re just going to pop round to the registry with Mrs Zoc and the Jacobs and have a party at the Ginger Jar afterwards. Full stop. I’m going to get to meet Errol Flynn. That’s enough for me.
‘Oh well darling, you two know what you’re up to these days, don’t you.’
Yes, I suppose we do. But when I hang up from Mrs Lockhart I go to Mum’s blanket box and unfold the magnolia shantung of my wedding dress, run my hands across her thousand glass pearl beads, and I shiver as I hold it. Silly, winter and the silk is cold, and no doubt only a cloud rolled into my mind with Mr Curtin’s leaving us, but I’m asking the pearls: is getting married the right thing to do at all?
Of course it is. I’m only having difficulty seeing myself in this dress because the obvious is happening right now, isn’t it. Yes, Missy, it is. Curse is a month overdue, this magnolia shantung is bias cut across the hips, and wedding is six weeks away. Cutting it fine.
My smile curls around the vast warm ball of this idea as I look over at the package sitting on my dressing-table: the pages of The Ending, with Abe’s red pencil scribbled all over them. He wants me to do a bit of rewriting, and I don’t want to do that either. I just want to have a baby. Can’t everything be perfect just as it is? Not quite. There’s no such thing as a perfect manuscript. There’s no such thing as curses that say something dreadful will happen to Gordon, to us, if we marry either. My emotions are all over the place because I’m going to have a baby.
