by Wendy Harmer
I just shove the clean crisper back in the fridge and brush past her. A couple of mouse clicks and she'll find out soon enough. Just like the rest of the world.
'Eleanor? Hello? Did you do what I said, or what?' Her voice echoes down the hall after me.
I don't know what to say, or think. Why can't I just be like laughing Lily Cameron and string beads onto thread, make pretty bracelets and necklaces instead of having to wrestle with all these jumbled words and thoughts?
Sunday. 3 pm.
PM. AW.
Another Sunday afternoon and a classic roast dinner with Nan. I only picked at a few of the edges of the crunchy potato (my fave bits). Thinking about everything that's happened, my stomach was still doing tumble turns. Thankfully, Mum and Dad decided to lay off nagging me to eat and went for a walk to St James Park to burn off their Yorkshire puddings.
I'm helping Nan with the washing up in her funny old kitchen. The dark green paint on the cupboards is cracked and peeling, the red paint on the wooden benchtops is faded and the walls are a soft old yellow. She's got a row of plain white plastic pots with blooming pink geraniums on the windowsill. I love this place, and as the spring sunshine lights up the room, I think there's no place on earth I'd rather be.
As long as I can remember, Nan's kitchen has been exactly the same as it is this afternoon. There's the chair with the carved kookaburra on the back. There's the old biscuit tin with pictures of wattle on the lid. There's the wooden dresser where the teacups all dangle in a row from their little metal hooks. I feel like I'm still a baby girl when I'm at Nan's and today I think it would be good to go back to being small enough to sit on her knee.
It's not like Nan's really old – she's not quite seventy yet. Grandpa Pickering is eighty-two! But Nan is proud of being old-fashioned. She's lived in the same house here in Port Britannia since after she was married. It's where Mum and Auntie Marg were raised. Dad thinks she might like to get away from the noise of the coalloading terminal and the hoot of the tugboats and go to a retirement village that has a pool and golf course. Nan says the silence would drive her mad! (And she's always hated golf.)
Her little house is perched at the top of the street and looks as if it might roll down the hill any moment. It's the same steep hill that Pop walked down to go to work on the docks for almost forty-five years. I wonder if Nan sometimes imagines that he might walk in the door one day, covered in coal dust and carrying a bag of prawns and oysters for tea.
It was Pop's lungs that gave out in the end. He would sit for hours on the front veranda, smoking and watching the supertankers being loaded at the dock, but he barely had breath to walk to the gate. I used to bring in the mail from the letterbox. Sometimes there were letters from his cousins back in Manchester, England, and I used to sit on the step and read them to him.
Nan and I are standing at the sink. She doesn't have a dishwasher, so I'm using her Royal Golden Jubilee memorial tea towel to do the drying up. She's had this tea towel for seven years. I don't know whether this means that Nan doesn't have that many dishes to dry, or that this is a very well made tea towel.
I'm slowly wiping a saucer with Queen Elizabeth II's nose when Nan pulls the plug on the soapy water and turns to me. The sun's shining through her silver perm and she looks like she's wearing a crown. Her name's Elizabeth too, after the Queen Mother. And that's funny, 'cos Nan's the mother of my mother who's named Elizabeth after our Queen! Her smiling face is on this tea towel that I'm now mashing into a bread and butter plate.
'I got a letter from the Queen at Buckingham Palace once,' says Nan. 'Would you like to see it?'
A letter from the Queen? The real Queen, herself? Nan's never mentioned this before.
I smooth out the tea towel and leave Her Majesty to dry on the front of the old gas cooker. I follow Nan up the narrow hallway to her bedroom. I don't often go in Nan's bedroom. The curtains are pulled shut and I can't see much, but I can smell mothballs and violet talcum powder. It's a fragrance I love, but it makes me sad 'cos it also reminds me that Pop's not here. If he was still with us I would also be able to smell the eucalyptus and Friar's Balsam that he used in the vaporiser on his bedside table.
MUSM
'Now, you're a lovely tall girl Eleanor, just like your sister Matilda,' says Nan. 'So be a dear and get the box down from the top of that shelf.'
I stand on a little stool with spindly legs and pull down the box covered in floral paper.
'Let's bring it out to the dining table where we can have a good dig around in it,' declares Nan. 'Lots of treasures in there – if the moths haven't got to them.'
Nan shifts a Wedgwood serving plate sitting on a little lace doily and places the box on the dining room table. She lifts the lid and I can see it's crammed full of bundles of yellowing envelopes tied with red ribbons. And there are roses! The smell of roses is really strong.
'Oh, isn't that wonderful!' exclaims Nan. 'I can't believe I can still smell those divine red roses. That was the last bunch of flowers your pop gave me before he passed away. I dried them with a few tablespoons of orris root and popped them in here.'
Nan lifts a dry stem from a silky bag and papery petals crumble and fall. I see her eyes begin to mist with tears and I feel like crying myself. I lay my head on Nan's shoulder and she kisses my forehead. We are both remembering darling Poppy.
'Now,' Nan sniffs and straightens her back, 'where did I put that letter? It's got the royal seal on the back of the envelope.'
But I don't want see that yet. I'm dying to see what's in these bundles of letters tied with ribbons.
'Oh, those?' smiles Nan. 'They're love letters. From before your pop and I were married. He was away three years working on the Snowy Mountains Scheme as a labourer and wrote to me every week, without fail.'
I've heard of the Snowy Mountains Scheme in Australian history class at school. It was where they diverted the melted snow from the rivers into massive dams and then through turbines to make hydro-electricity.
'Your pop's family sailed out to Australia from Manchester in England in 1955 and settled in Britannia. I suppose the name made them feel at home,' Nan chuckles. 'When your grandfather turned eighteen a year later, he got a job in the Snowy Mountains. We were already engaged to be married and all his savings went into putting a deposit on this cottage. It was an old place, even back then, but we did love it so. The same rose bush is still climbing around the front door to this day.'
Nan and Pop were engaged when they were teenagers. Imagine if Tilly came home wearing an engagement ring. Mum and Dad would freak!
I ask Nan if I can read one of Pop's letters and she picks out one bundle and carefully unties the ribbon. She opens an envelope and hands me the stiff, coarse sheet of paper inside. The words are written very neatly in lead pencil.
My dearest Bet Bet,
I hope this letter finds you well, my darling girl!
This morning I went fishing along one of the beautiful ferny mountain creeks. What a sight to see the rainbow trout jumping right out of the water, chasing swarms of dragonflies in the sun!
It is a strange thing to think that all around will be under the depths of the mighty Eucumbene Dam some time soon.
The old town of Adaminaby will be drowned, so they're moving more than a hundred buildings to a site five miles away to the north-east. They are even dismantling an old stone church to re-build it in the new town. I met a man who had not long been married in that very church and he was most upset to see it so ruined.
It's sad and sorry work, Bet. Ten thousand people came here almost a century ago looking for gold and so much history will be lost. Many of the old-timers will be saying farewell to their family farms.
But I have to remind myself that it is all progress and when we are married we will turn on the electric lights in our home in Port Britannia and be jolly grateful to the army of people from all over the world who've come to work in the bush and build this New Country.
It's a grey Sunday afternoon a
nd I've just seen a squirrel glider flash past the window of my hut. The scallywag had better find refuge soon. I can see the snow will be early this year!
Tonight the Italians are treating a few of the chaps to spageti and red wine. I am very much enjoying their food and company and perhaps I will teach you how to make spageti when I return home.
I miss you Bet and think of you always. You are never far from my heart my dearest love.
Your adoring fiancé,
Andy.
I stare at the words on the paper and can't quite believe that Pop wrote them more than half a century ago. Funny that he couldn't spell 'spaghetti', but Nan says no-one in Oldcastle had ever tasted spaghetti back then. And no-one had ever heard of pizza either! Pop was just a bit older than Tilly when he wrote this letter and it's hard to imagine her travelling all the way across the world by ship and going to work in the bush. (Although I sometimes wish she would! But where, oh where, would she plug in her hair straightener?)
'Your pop had a rickety old wooden table in the hut he shared with three German boys,' remembers Nan. 'It was hard to get the paper and pencils and sometimes the snow made it impossible for the post to get through for weeks at a time – but he always wrote to me, every Sunday.'
Looking closely at the paper I reckon I can see the grain of the wood table coming right through the lead pencil writing. As I look at this letter I can imagine Pop in the high country with the snow piled up against the window of his hut, far away from everything he knew and wondering what was happening in the outside world. I ask Nan how she could stand getting just one letter a week.
'Well, the world was so much bigger then, I suppose,' Nan smiles. 'We just didn't expect to hear from each other every day. I knew that I was always in his thoughts and he knew he was in mine, and that was enough for us. I spent hours daydreaming about your grandfather. It's not like you young people now who call and do those text things night and day. I suppose you're lucky to have one another on the end of the line – but the daydreaming was marvellous. Everything was bigger and brighter and better in my imagination.'
Nan takes out a few more of the letters for me to read and they are all so beautiful I feel like crying again. Nan must have more than a hundred letters here in this box and in every one Pop tells her he loves her madly. I especially adore the ones that she sent back to Pop in the Snowy Mountains – written in lovely loopy letters in ink on paper as fine as a butterfly wing. Pop saved every single one.
Then we find the letter from Buckingham Palace from when Nan was just eight years old. She embroidered a linen handkerchief with wattle and sent it to Princess Elizabeth (before she was crowned the Queen) as a wedding present. This letter is on stiff paper headed with a red coat of arms and written with a typewriter.
Miss Elizabeth Spencer
15 Tower Street,
Britannia,
New South Wales,
Australia
19th December 1947
Dear Elizabeth,
The Princess Elizabeth has asked me to pass on her sincere appreciation for the lovely present you sent on the recent occasion of her marriage.
The Princess is extremely fond of wattle and your embroidery is certainly very fine.
Your kind thought is much appreciated and the Princess thanks you for your best wishes for her and her husband Prince Phillip.
Yours sincerely, Lady Meg Egerton Lady-in-Waiting to Princess Elizabeth 'It was such a thrill to receive it,' says Nan, smiling. 'I remember taking that letter to read to the class at Britannia Public School. I was quite the celebrity there for a while and even got my picture in the Britannia Bugle! I have the clipping here somewhere . . .'
Nan shuffles through the box, and eventually holds up a tattered scrap of brown newsprint. We are both disappointed to see that the silverfish have gnawed a hole right through her face and we can see clear through to the geranium pots in the kitchen.
'Well, that's that!' declares Nan. 'I've been decapitated. I suppose that's one good thing about the technology now. I could have just googled my name and the story would have been saved forever, and in full colour. Do you know, I can even remember I was wearing a yellow ribbon in my hair the day that photographer from the Bugle came.'
I am amazed. How does Nan know about Google?
'Well dear, I do like to keep up with all that's going on in the world. It's not as if I'm in the middle of the Snowy Mountains in the 1950s. I've even been thinking about getting a personal computer. They have lessons at the library.'
I look at Nan. Astonished.
'And if I did get online we could talk to each other all the time on FacePlace. I'd like that, I really would.'
I tell Nan that I'd like it too. It would be great to have her online. I could ask Nan's advice, instead of consulting the Great Oracle Tilly or Sun Tzu – because what does some ancient Chinese warrior actually know about my life? I'm not sure that Nan wants to be walking through the battlefield that's FacePlace at the moment, although I could send her photos of the family (Mum's edited versions, anyway).
Nan carefully re-ties all the letters with ribbon.
'When I die, you can have these letters to pass onto your grandchildren, Eleanor. It will be a lovely way for you to remember me and hear my voice long after I'm gone.'
I don't want to think of Nan dying and this dear little wooden cottage empty. But at least I will have this box of letters. It will be a precious bit of family history that I'll always treasure.
Then I realise that I don't have any letters – at all! Not one. And definitely not one from royalty! I've kept some old birthday cards and party invitations, but that's about it. All the texts and emails from Will and my friends have vanished and they might as well be sitting in the drowned post office at the bottom of Lake Eucumbene.
I'm reminded that I really should get around to putting all the thousands of photos on my computer onto a disk for safekeeping. Imagine if our house was flooded . . . or burned in a bushfire? Just losing my phone was bad enough.
I read an old birthday card decorated with blue wrens that my Nan got on her twenty-first birthday from her mother. Here's my great-grandmother's greeting, right here in black ink!
Many happy returns for the day, dearest daughter. Your loving mother.
I shouldn't think it, but I wish I had some cards or love letters from Will to keep and tie with red ribbon!
There might be an eye2eye l still have from him that I could print – but that's hardly romantic. I've got nothing in his handwriting. In fact the only time I've seen his handwriting is on some schoolwork I've read. It was so straight and tall – just like Will himself.
'There are people who study handwriting. They're called "graphologists",' says Nan, as if she's reading my thoughts. 'I remember reading a book about it once. The way your pop rounded out all his letters showed he had a logical and sound mind. And the way he slanted his writing – a little to the right – meant that he was a sociable and outgoing sort of person who was interested in others. All good qualities in a man.'
I'm thinking about Will's handwriting. I ask Nan what it means when it's straight and tall.
'Hmmm, I should think that it means he's a selfcontained sort of fellow. That he's not given to extravagant shows of affection.'
That's true! This is amazing!
'Is his writing small or large, would you say?' Nan asks me.
It's smaller than mine. Much smaller than Bianca's which is huge and wanders all over the place!
'Well, that says he has good concentration. That he's humble and has a good sense of himself. That he doesn't run with the pack. Anything else? Does his writing go up or down at the end?'
It's even. That's what I remember most of all. Straight across and even. It's still like that when there are no marked lines on the paper.
'Well, that means he's determined to stay on track. That his mind controls his emotions. It also means he's reliable, loyal and honest.'
