Mirabel glanced at Margo, who seemed to have noticed it too. Then she turned to Fred. ‘How would I go about getting a job there?’
Fred took a fountain pen and a small notepad from his shirt pocket. ‘Just come down to the office at nine on Monday morning and I’ll see what I can do. I’ll introduce you to the head of the department. Bring some of your artwork with you.’
Fred tore the sheet of paper out and handed it to Mirabel.
She looked down at the address. Maybe at last she had found a job she really wanted. Being a cartographer wouldn’t be forever, of course, just until the war was over. Then she would open a dress shop filled with her designs.
Margo stood up, rubbing Harry’s shoulder. ‘Now that Mirabel’s job is settled I think it’s time for dessert. Who would like a slice of homemade apple pie and ice-cream?’
Pretty Little Thing
‘On ya, Harry. Keep your chin up, mate,’ Fred said, as he and Mirabel left Margo’s flat. It was a little after nine and Fred offered to drive her home, but she politely declined. It was still early and she felt like walking.
As she strolled towards the city, Father’s words echoed in her head. ‘The city is a dangerous place at night, Lei An. I don’t want you going there alone.’
She knotted her brows as a feeling of rebellion rose. Why couldn’t she be more like Lola? How liberating that would be. When would Father realise that she was no longer a schoolgirl? Since he sought her advice on important family matters, he should consider her old enough to take care of herself. I am who I am so I do as I please. Lola’s favourite phrase. Tonight, she was going to act like Lola.
She crossed the road and caught the tram to the city. She would make a small detour through Chinatown and soak up some of the excitement there before heading home. It can be my pre-work celebration if I get the job, she thought, with a thrill.
She settled back into her seat, staring out the tram window and thinking about Harry. Suddenly she felt a chill ripple through her. They were passing the park, and the pale leprous light of the moon outlined mounds of earth beside long rows of open graves. Then something shifted and she realised that what she was seeing were the slit trenches dug in case of an air raid, nothing sinister at all. She had seen them many times during the day. It was just the moonlight playing tricks.
At the top end of Collins Street, Mirabel hopped off the tram. She loved this elegant part of town. Of course, everything in the shops was far too expensive, but she was always just as happy to window-shop – to think, to dream. As she neared the Town Hall, her pace quickened. An air-raid shelter had been dug underneath the building and sandbags were piled high against the walls. The reminders of war were everywhere. The government had been so nervous about the threat of Japanese attack it had even recommended that people dig shelters in their own backyards.
As Mirabel passed the newly opened coffee house, the Black Tulip, she thought of Rose and smiled to herself. Since Dave had joined the air force, Rose was free to spend weekends with Mirabel. What would Rose be doing right now, she wondered. Homework, probably. How different their lives had become since school ended. Still, their friendship had remained as strong as ever.
Mirabel entered the long narrow main street of Chinatown. She felt safe here. The street was so familiar she could almost walk it blindfolded. Each shop had its own distinct smell. The woody aroma of the Chinese herbalist, the tartness of pickled vegetables from the grocery store, the heavy, clinging flavour of hot peanut oil from the restaurants, the sweet fragrance of incense burning on the ancestral altars, and the sickly perfume of bananas from the banana-ripening warehouse. This last smell evoked a sudden sharp memory of Margo’s twenty-first and the young Chinese soldier. With effort, she thrust the image aside.
She walked past the building where she sometimes accompanied Father to the Kuomintang government party meetings. All the members would face the portrait of Chiang Kai-shek, the President of China, and they would sing the Chinese National Anthem accompanied by Mirabel on the piano. The façade was beautifully ornate with twisting columns and colourful spires, and in this muted light it looked like something from a Hollywood movie set.
The lights from Her Majesty’s Theatre beckoned her on, casting a yellow glow on the footpath up ahead. Mirabel felt a tinge of excitement. She stepped up to the posters framed behind glass trimmed with brass. The Boronovsky Australian ballet was performing Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake. One day, she thought, one day when she had saved enough money, she would buy two tickets – one for herself and one for Mama. She turned to go.
‘Whoa there, filly!’ a thick Texan accent drawled.
Mirabel looked up, startled. A small group of American soldiers surrounded her.
‘Well, what have we got here?’ one of the men said. ‘A pretty little thing, ain’t she, boys?’
‘Leave me alone,’ Mirabel said sharply, but her voice was shaking.
‘Hell, she’s got a bit of grit to her, too,’ the Texan said. ‘I like that in a gal. How’s about you an’ me go steppin’ out tonight? I can show you a real good time.’ He put his arm around her waist and swung her around, then bent over and aimed a kiss at her lips.
Mirabel could smell the alcohol. She turned her face away and fought herself loose.
‘Let me go, you drongo!’ she said, and surprised herself by aiming a slap at his face.
He caught her wrist and his expression turned ugly. ‘You little slant-eyed slut. Who’re you calling a drongo? We came over here to fight the likes a you. You’re lucky I don’t …’ He raised his hand to strike her, then suddenly fell backwards, yelping in agony. Someone had grabbed his wrist and elbow, and now held him in a tight lock. The Texan grimaced in pain, on his knees on the footpath.
It was a soldier, a Chinese soldier.
Mirabel looked at him in disbelief. It was her soldier.
The Texan’s friends started forward.
‘Stop!’ the young soldier commanded. ‘I break arm. You go!’ He jerked his head to point down the road. When they didn’t move, he twisted the Texan’s arm more tightly, and the big man cried out.
‘Get away! He’ll do it! Go!’ he yelled.
The group of Americans started reluctantly down the road, looking back and muttering.
When they were far enough away, the soldier pushed the Texan forward so he fell face-down on the ground. ‘Now go! Find friends.’
Then he quickly turned and took Mirabel’s arm to lead her up the street towards a tram stop.
‘You all right?’ he said to her, at last.
She nodded, still stunned, but her pounding heart and rapid breathing were not completely from fear. Here he was, the man she had been dreaming about. Such a handsome face, and the stern eyes that only a moment before had stared down the Texan were now soft and dark.
‘Soldier, drink too much, not true bad. Girl want careful.’ He looked up as a tram rumbled to a stop. ‘Go home now.’ Then he gave a slight bow and walked away.
Wait! she called – but it was only in her mind. She couldn’t find her voice, to ask him to stay, to thank him, to ask his name. And, like a ghost, he had vanished. Again.
The Art of Map-making
A week later Fred took Mirabel up to the drafting room on the third floor where she was to begin work.
Because she was still only seventeen, the director had initially refused to let her sit the exam. But then he saw her book of paintings and relented. She had entered the exam room nervously, even though Fred had tutored her for several days, but she breezed through the paper – it was almost as if the maps were speaking to her. The next day she received the news – she had passed!
She followed Fred through double doors into a huge open room with a high ceiling and ornately decorated plaster cornices. Sunlight poured through the large windows, illuminating columns of blue cigarette smoke that twisted and danced upwards. Twenty large wooden desks were lined up in parallel rows and each cartographer perched on a stool with an array of pens, pencils
and paintbrushes spread before them.
The old wooden floor creaked as Mirabel followed Fred between the desks. One or two heads bobbed up for a glance her way, but most were seriously engaged in their work. A whisper of excitement stirred within her.
‘This is your desk,’ Fred said. He was almost apologetic as he led her to the very back row. He pulled out a drawer with pens, inks and rulers. ‘This is your equipment, all supplied by the department. Most of us end up buying our own things though. You’re an artist, you know what it’s like using brushes someone else has worn in.’ He pointed down the rows of desks and whispered, ‘The longest-serving map-makers are the ones closest to the windows and the natural light. That’s why you might notice the heads getting progressively older and greyer.’ He smiled.
‘I like it up the back,’ Mirabel replied, picking up a paintbrush, its hairs worn thin with use. ‘It’d make me nervous having people look over my shoulder, especially the grey hairs down the front.’
‘We’ve all been in your position before, so a mistake won’t be the end of the world. Everything gets checked and crosschecked thoroughly. As I said, you do your training on the job. But I don’t think you’ll have any trouble from what I’ve seen of your meticulous artwork. Now, let me introduce you to the others.’
Mirabel was delighted to discover that many of the cartographers were artists, which meant that the whole atmosphere in the department was casual and light-hearted even though the work was of a very serious nature, crucial to the war effort. Maps of Australia were vital in case of a Japanese invasion.
From day one, Mirabel loved it. Time seemed to melt away as she became lost in a coastline somewhere or a mountain range with its valleys and plateaus, deep ravines and gorges. A dip in her line was a bay, a small squiggle a tiny cove – real places with real names that sang in your head and rolled around your tongue, like Ringarooma Bay or Tullamunga Point.
Sometimes she would find herself thinking about the young Chinese soldier while staring at dust motes as they rose and fell in the beams of sunlight. She would shake her head, shut her eyes for a moment, and then get on with her work. After all, he had shown no interest in her that night in the city. He had even treated her like a little girl, telling her to go home. If he liked her, he would at least have asked her name. But no, he simply disappeared into the night. All he’d done at Margo’s twenty-first was glance across the room and she had gone and created this whole fantasy in her head. Romanticising like a twelve-year-old schoolgirl. Still, when she needed to rest her eyes, she would open her painting book and make small sketches of his face – the tilt of his head, the flash of a smile, the way his eyes searched hers.
As well as being a brilliant map-maker, Fred was also a surveyor, and he would go out in the field for weeks at a time. The maps he brought back were beautiful – works of art so intricate it was hard to believe that they were drawn in pen and ink on a table mounted on a tripod out in a remote location in the bush. Most of his maps were also adorned with tiny black-and-white miniature scenes – an old shack amongst the gums, kangaroos grazing on the plains, or a river winding through a steep gorge.
Map-making was exacting work, often using compilation sheets that surveyors such as Fred had drawn out in the field to work from. Mirabel was the youngest, but with her steady hand and beautiful lines, she soon made a name for herself as one of the best in the department. Even the grey hairs gave her friendly pats on the back.
She would come home from a satisfying day, sit with Mama over a cup of tea, then go into the good room to work on her clothes. Mama had been well enough at last to come home and, to make things easier for everyone, Father had finally managed to bring his cousin’s daughter, Mei Lin, down from Bendigo to cook and clean. For the first time in her life, Mirabel felt free to concentrate on her passion.
She had designed a gown for Rose’s formal, a new outfit for Mama to wear to church, and a summer dress for Lola, who was now working in a factory packing parachutes. Mirabel had never been so happy.
Jock and Murray worked on either side of Mirabel. Jock was twenty-two, dark, gypsy-like, with a halo of tousled brown hair. He had been called up and trained as a machine-gunner before applying for assignment to the cartography department. He said his training sergeant used to tell them gleefully that in battle a machine-gunner’s life was not measured in weeks or days, but in minutes.
‘I thought that was too short.’ Jock grinned. ‘So I got out.’
Murray was slightly older, fair, and as stocky as a bulldog. He had wanted to join the fight, and tried to enlist, but was rejected on medical grounds. ‘Flat feet don’t stop me drawing maps, though,’ he growled. Mirabel discovered that Murray had also produced a popular series of chamber pots for houses without toilets. Inside each pot was a picture of Hitler – on the bottom.
At lunchtime, she would sometimes go with them to a cafe to drink coffee and eat pies. They would often do a silly walk or pretend to be long-lost friends meeting in the middle of the street, putting on strange accents. Mirabel thought they were hilarious together and laughed until the tears flowed. Never before had she been around such free spirits, people not afraid to be different.
Murray was working on a series of paintings that required him to go bush every weekend, camping out then bringing back sketches to incorporate into his larger paintings. On Monday mornings he would arrive at work with nicks and scratches on his sun-reddened face and hands, and spots of paint on his fingers and in his hair.
‘Art is one of the most basic instincts of man!’ Murray pronounced one day as they sat at their work tables eating lunch. ‘It allows us to make sense of the world. Creativity is a necessary function, just like eating and going to the toilet.’
Jock finished his banana, took aim and threw the skin into the bin. He sighed. ‘That’s fine for you, mate. I feel like chucking it all in. My painting is going nowhere.’
‘Your paintings are beautiful, Jock!’ said Mirabel.
Jock shrugged. ‘When the war’s over I’m heading to London.’
‘Do you think it will be over soon?’ Mirabel asked.
Murray rubbed the stubble on his chin. ‘We just trounced the Jerries at Cassino in Italy. And our boys in New Guinea attacked the naval base at Rabaul. The Japs ran for their lives.’ He punched his own hand with a loud slap. ‘Damn, I wish I’d been there! It might be over sooner than we think.’
‘Oh, I hope so,’ Mirabel replied.
But as she said this, she realised that if the war was over, her young soldier would probably be called back to China, job completed. And she didn’t even know his name.
Scent of Butterflies
As Mirabel came through the gate and up the path after work one evening, she noticed the lights on in the good room. When she opened the front door and stepped into the hallway, she was surprised to hear male voices. One of them was her father’s, but the others she did not recognise. From the few words she picked up, she guessed that they were discussing the growing threat of Communism in China.
‘Well, at least the Communists fight the Japanese.’ Murray’s words echoed in her head. She had been shocked to discover that Murray was a Communist, and for a while she had struggled to reconcile the well-read, witty artist with the images her father had portrayed of evil revolutionary plotters.
Busy sounds from the kitchen meant that the guests were staying for dinner. She could hear Mama telling Mei Lin what to do, which was a good sign. It meant that, for the moment anyway, Mama was doing really well.
Lola tiptoed down the stairs, a high heel in each hand. Putting a finger to her lips, she gestured to Mirabel to keep quiet, then slipped out the door.
As Mirabel passed the good room, she glanced casually in through the doorway. Father was sitting in his armchair, leaning forward, while two soldiers sat side by side on the couch. They were deep in conversation. But she didn’t take any notice of what they were talking about, because her eyes were glued to one of them.
Thick
dark hair, handsome face, wide intelligent eyes. It was her young soldier! What was he doing here? Mirabel flushed with confusion.
He hadn’t seen her yet. She needed time to think, to prepare herself. She ran up the stairs, breathless and heady. She could hardly believe it. These past few months she had given up all hope of ever seeing him again. And here he was, in her own house! She trembled with excitement. If only her heart would stop pounding and her hands stop shaking.
She threw open her wardrobe. Her eyes worked their way along the rack, imagining how each dress would feel on. Father was proud of her talent and had always provided her with plenty of money to buy material and have the clothes she designed made up. But not one dress or skirt felt good enough for tonight.
‘Lei An.’ She heard Father calling her down.
‘I’m coming!’
With a resigned sigh, she pulled out a white blouse with short sleeves and a flared yellow skirt, a recent addition to her wardrobe. She held them up against herself, looking at her reflection in the mirror. No, too boring. She threw them on the bed. Next she held up a slim-fitting cream dress with slanted pockets. No, too formal. Aaghh!
In the end she settled on her old favourite – a dusky blue dress with three-quarter-length sleeves. There was just one problem. That cigarette hole under the elbow. Carefully she trimmed away the singed threads with her sewing scissors, mixed some blue paint to match the material, then painted her bare skin where the hole would appear. There, problem solved. If she didn’t lift her arm, he wouldn’t notice a thing.
Mirabel combed her hair, applied a faint coating of lipstick – pale enough so that Father wouldn’t notice – took one last look in the mirror, then walked down the stairs, pinching her cheeks to give them colour as she went.
Outside the good room she breathed slowly in and out. Then she walked through the doorway.
When the young soldier saw Mirabel, he looked surprised. A smile lifted the corners of his mouth.
Little Paradise Page 6
