Whisper My Secret

by JB Rowley

  “No! Mum! How can I be?”

  “Well, you tell me, love.”

  Her mother’s direct gaze seemed to hold the answer.

  “That young Henry Bishop has been hanging around here a lot lately. Hasn’t he?”

  Myrtle’s face burned. Her mother shook her head.

  “That’s what I thought. You should have more sense, my girl. How many times have I told you? Don’t let a boy touch you.”

  Myrtle wanted to scream at her mother: Why didn’t you say what you meant. Why didn’t you tell me everything? Shame kept her silent.

  The next day her mother marched her down to the doctor’s surgery. The doctor’s examination and test confirmed Etti Webb’s diagnosis.

  Myrtle still refused to believe it but her mother seemed to adjust to the idea quickly, apparently resigned to the inevitable.

  “Anyway, he’s not a bad catch, love,” she said.

  Myrtle cringed inwardly at this matter-of-fact assessment of Henry. She wanted to marry someone who was passionately in love with her. Whether he was a good catch because of his financial status or social standing was not criteria that concerned her. It was more important that he sweep her off her feet and devote his life to her happiness. She recalled earlier advice from her mother on matters of matrimony and her down to earth predictions of the probable prospects for the daughter of a widowed dressmaker. Myrtle had barely listened. In her heart of hearts she believed that love was the most important thing and love would make everything perfect.

  “I’ll talk to his mother,” Etti said. “He’ll do the right thing by you.”

  Her mother might as well have thrust a knife into her heart. Myrtle wanted Henry to come to her, overjoyed that she carried his child. To be married to someone because he had to do the right thing would shatter all her hopes and dreams.

  Leaning against the solid trunk of a tall gum tree she looked across at her hometown. Without warning a draught of loneliness swept through her. A connection had somehow been severed. She knew it, yet could not define it.

  As if to stall the separation, thoughts of Albury suddenly swamped her. The people of the town were intimately familiar to her. People who worked their farms, ran their businesses and raised their families. She knew them as well as she knew her own back yard. Good people lived in this town. Women knitted bootees and matinee jackets for newborns. Mothers nurtured their own and cooked and cleaned. Men with sun-bronzed bodies worked their farms, laboured hard in the open, ploughing the ground. Neighbours ran to beat the bush fires that threatened farms and pitched in to help others with their harvest during times of difficulty. Thinking about them somehow deepened her feeling of isolation.

  The town, she thought, was like the river with shadowy depths below the surface. Kindness and generosity sometimes veiled narrow minds desperately yearning for stimulation and finding only the titillation of gossip. Tongues wagged with wild tales about anyone who dared to be different. Men who worked hard to protect their farms and their families searched for excitement in ways their wives knew nothing of.

  Those less caressed by social norms secretly stepped outside the unspoken rules of nice behaviour; lonely women like her mother who hid her bottle in the pantry disguised as cooking spirits. She knew that young mothers with everything they had yearned for were sometimes unhappy, dreaming of glamorous adventures. Myrtle understood. She too had fled from boredom, searching for diversion on aimless walks, sometimes witnessing others in surreptitious acts—like Mrs Brussells.

  Watching a ladybird, its red wings dotted with black, crawl slowly along a flower stalk Myrtle’s spirits lifted slightly as she recalled that shared adventure with Lily.

  She imagined Mrs Brussells with hat and gloves properly in place, her generous body covered from ankle to neck in a pretty floral print, a picture of conservative respectability meeting her mother in the street when Myrtle was a baby. She had no doubt bent over to pull back the covers to bestow her admiration on the little pink cheeks buried in the baby rugs. Oh isn’t she sweet. What a beautiful baby, Etti.

  Etti Webb would have smiled and glowed with pleasure, proud that Mrs Brussells and others like her admired her child but even prouder that she had achieved motherhood. Finally she had a child, only one child, but it was enough to cross the threshold from the socially questionable to acceptable.

  That one child must have been a difficult achievement thought Myrtle because her parents had not produced brothers or sisters for her. Myrtle had vowed not to follow their example. She wanted at least nine children all with little pink cheeks; lots of tiny feet running through the house, warm little bodies to hug and nappies to change. But not now. Not before she was married. This wasn’t the way it was supposed to be.

  The ladybird scurried along the stem of a yellow daisy. When it reached the top its short fat legs pulled its oval body into the centre. Oh to be a ladybird. To be an insignificant insect and hide under a blade of grass. The solitary ladybird opened its wings and fluttered into the air. Myrtle’s gaze followed the beetle’s journey as it flew higher and disappeared from view. Ladybird, Ladybird, Fly away home.

  Home. Yes she would have to go back home and face up to her situation. There was no escape, no flying away and no more dreams.

  It’s not fair!

  Myrtle yanked at a tuft of grass, violently wresting it up by the roots. Fighting back the tears she pulled herself up and ran to the edge of the river, raised her arm high in the air and flung the grass into the water. The slender green blades separated as they fell into the river. She stood staring at them floating on the surface of the water. The tears flowed.

  Finally she took a deep breath, wiped her wet face with her handkerchief and started for home.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  It is the Snowy River, not the Murray that I associate with my mother. One of my earliest memories of her is a picnic by the Snowy River.

  The walk to the Snowy River from our place out on the Bonang Highway was a nature trek, which could be walked in around half an hour except that my mother turned it into an adventure taking close to an hour and a half to reach the river. On the way she took us on a wildflower hunt through the bush. That morning we had explored a new track and discovered a shy native orchid, a pretty little green flower, hiding behind some bracken.

  My brothers had wandered off. Suddenly we heard them shouting with excitement.

  “I found it first.”

  “I saw it first.”

  “I found it.”

  “I saw the nest! I told you it was there.”

  “Mum! Mum! Look what we found.”

  “I saw it first, Mum.”

  They came racing towards us. Billy was holding something in his cupped hands.

  “Look, Mum,” he called.

  “I saw it first, Mum,” protested Tommy.

  They came to a halt in front of us, both breathing fast and gasping for air. Billy’s serious face was flushed with excitement, which made his large white ears stand out more than usual. Slowly and carefully he opened his hands. Nestled in his grubby little palm was a tiny speckled bird’s egg.

  “It’s not a hatched one, Mum.”

  My brothers were always searching for birds’ eggs but usually found only broken ones, the remains of the cocoon left behind and dropped from the nest by a fledgling bird. But now their faces were glowing, their eyes gleaming.

  “We can take it home Mum. We can hatch it.”

  I stared at the little egg. How could a bird grow in such a tiny space? My mother’s voice sounded sad when she answered them.

  “Did you take this egg from the nest?”

  “No. Mum. Honest.”

  Both my brothers knew it was forbidden to take eggs from a nest.

  “We didn’t, did we, Tommy?”

  “No Mum. It was on the ground. Honest, Mum.”

  “Show me,” Mum demanded, with a heavy sigh.

  They took her back down the track to a large paperbark.

  “Just here, Mum.
It was just here,” said Billy still breathless with excitement, pointing to a pile of brown leaves at the trunk of the tree.

  My mother looked up into the tree.

  “There’s a nest up there,” she said accusingly.

  “We didn’t take it Mum. Honest! We found it.”

  “It was on the ground, Mum. Just here.”

  Tommy pointed at the dry leaves on the ground. Earnest honesty shone from his green eyes.

  “It doesn’t matter where you found it. Put it back in the nest.”

  “Mu …um!”

  “Oh! Mum! We found it. Finders keepers.”

  “This is not a thing,” said my mother, sharply. “There is a baby in that egg you are holding in your hand. Its mother will be very sad if she comes back and finds it gone.”

  Something in my mother’s tone silenced my brothers into obedience. Tommy climbed the tree. When he was close enough to reach the nest Billy carefully passed the egg up to him.

  “The mother bird won’t come back anyway, Mum,” said Billy, pouting. “They don’t come back if their nest is disturbed.”

  “That would be a terrible thing Billy, if you have frightened the mother bird away with your interfering! How many times have I told you not to go near the nests?”

  “I didn’t!”

  “We’ll come back tomorrow,” said Mum quietly. “If the mother bird has not returned we’ll take the egg home and hatch it.”

  We’d done that before with chooks’ eggs—hatched them in little boxes, kept them very warm by the stove. I just loved it when the little chickens appeared in place of the eggs. It was magic!

  “Quickly,” said my mother as Tommy jumped down from the tree. “Before she sees us.”

  After that we continued on our way and had other little adventures on our journey to the river. When I began to tire my mother carried me on her hip. By the time we got to the river I was more than happy to roll around contentedly on the ground. The boys, as always, still had plenty of energy and raced along the riverbank, calling out, throwing stones into the water to watch the ripples and generally disturbing the riverside tranquillity.

  My mother laid an old tablecloth over the grass for us to sit on—there wasn’t very much beach along the Snowy River in those days because the water came up high along the banks for most of the Orbost section of its journey. Anyway, we preferred to sit on the grassy bank in the shade of the tall gums. We could see the river from where we sat, surging by on its way to the ocean at Marlo, ten kilometres away. Us kids liked to sit on the grass and eat yum-yums—the seedpods of pretty little pink flowers that grew very close to the ground. The warble of the magpie and the occasional cackle of the kookaburra provided background music. My mother would point out the birds when she saw them and tell us their names. Sometimes when she heard a bird call she would put her fingers to her lips, warning us to be quiet.

  “Listen. That’s a bellbird singing to us.”

  She was very good at creating delightful fantasies. There were only three of us kids at that time. At four years of age I was the baby, enjoying the short window of opportunity for a child of a large family to be the special one.

  We finished our sandwiches and saved the cakes till later—the cakes my mother had baked that morning. Some of them had quickly disappeared even as she pulled the great oven tray from the old wood stove. That oven tray must have held at least thirty-five little cakes in their paper patties but unseen hands magically reduced their number substantially during the short journey from hot oven to kitchen table. However there were still quite a few left for the picnic and some my mother set aside for my father when he returned from working in the bush.

  My brothers raced away from the picnic area to climb one of the tall gum trees that graced the bank, calling to each other, their noise and energy frightening the magpies. The birds fluttered in fear, squawking threateningly but wisely retreating across to the opposite bank where the pelicans were strutting along in the mud in search of gourmet delicacies at the water’s edge. I sat on the picnic tablecloth with my mother. She took one of my hands and began to make a very light circular motion with her finger on my upturned palm. Her touch was so light that it caused my hand to tingle and made me want to laugh. She chanted, watching my face as she did so.

  “Can you keep a secret… Can you keep a secret? I don’t suppose you can…”

  I was never very good at the game because I could not contain my excitement, knowing what was to come and long before my mother’s finger reached the point where she would suddenly run her hand along my arm I had dissolved into giggles.

  And it was always true that I could not keep a secret. Often when my loose tongue led me to betray a confidence she had shared with me my mother would put her finger to her lips and say, “Shhh. That’s a secret.” Then seeing the mortified look on my face she would smile and say, “It’s all right. It’s not really telling if you whisper. You can whisper my secret.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  Agnes Bishop, not long back from church, was still in her Sunday best minus her hat and gloves. Her pearl necklace and officious air gave her an imperial manner. Underneath a navy and white floral printed dress her rolling hips had been gathered under the firm command of a corset. The ends of her dark hair were tightly rolled back into sausage like coils that hugged her skull. White face powder failed to soften the stern lines earned from years of strict authority as family matriarch and church organiser. She raised her eyebrows and looked enquiringly at Myrtle and her mother when she answered the door to Etti’s knock.

  Myrtle shrank back behind her mother as Agnes’ dark eyes devoured them. What little she knew of Henry’s mother she had heard from her friends but it was enough to make her apprehensive. Old Ma Bishop they called her, but not to her face. One of her school friends who had been sharply reprimanded by Old Ma Bishop for giggling and whispering during the church service said she ‘ought to ride a broomstick’. Since then Myrtle had thought of Henry’s mother as a fatter version of the witch in Hansel and Gretel although she had not met the woman face to face, not even after moving into the Bishops’ flat. Her father had once described Ma Bishop’s eyes as dark as the black clouds of thunder. Myrtle saw the dark pupils glint when her mother requested a meeting to discuss a matter of grave importance. Etti’s implied intrigue seemed to irritate her.

  “You’d better come in then,” she said in a tone she might use to command her husband to swat a fly. In her voice Myrtle heard generations of precise vowels and correct grammar that made her feel hopelessly inadequate.

  Following her mother into the house Myrtle hung her head, embarrassed and fearful of facing Agnes Bishop when she heard the news they brought. Her first glimpse of the interior of the Bishop home filled her with awe. It seemed so grand with its polished floors, Axminster rugs and heavy dark furniture that gave the appearance of being centuries old. Everything shone with diligent cleanliness.

  Ma Bishop, shoulders straight, head high, led them along the passageway and ushered them into the parlour. Fresh pink camellias on upright stems in a crystal vase adorned the round walnut table in the middle of the room. Beside the fireplace, its grate empty and scrupulously dust free, sat Henry’s father, his long legs stretched out in front of him. He folded his newspaper and balanced it on the arm of the chair before rising to greet them. Seeing Mr Bishop at close quarters for the first time, Myrtle was struck by his kind brown eyes. Like Henry’s, she thought. He was tall and slim with a face to match. Angular features and a strong nose. She felt a twinge of sympathy for him, knowing from her mother that he was hen pecked because his wife controlled the purse strings. During the Depression he had lost his job as manager of a clothing firm when the business folded. Falling share prices dashed any hope of sustaining an income from investments.

  “It was Agnes,” her mother told her one day, “who saved the day. Her family had money you know. And Agnes won’t let him forget who pays the bills, you mark my words.”

  Her mother also
told her Agnes’ parents, Albert and Edna Mitchell, had not approved of Agnes marrying John Bishop. For one thing the Bishop family were outsiders, having only settled in the district after the turn of the century. The Mitchell family boasted strong traditional roots in Albury, through their family connection, so they claimed, to Hamilton Hume, an early explorer to the area. Besides that the Mitchells felt their only daughter, with her dark eyes, regal features and family heritage was virtually a princess. She deserved to marry someone of similar ilk, and at the very least someone with prospects, not a mere shop assistant.

  “Some thought Agnes was keen on Keith Young,” Myrtle’s mother told her. “Certainly her parents encouraged their friendship. They say Edna and Bert took years to recover from the shock when Agnes just up and married John Bishop. Eloped they did… Ran away to Melbourne and came back married. Just like that. Agnes always did have a wild streak in her. Not that you’d ever guess that these days. And John ... well ... everyone knew he adored Agnes. Mooning over her, carrying her books to school, that sort of thing.”

  “Was Keith Young heartbroken when they eloped?”

  “Keith? Oh, well I shouldn’t think so, love. He was a dreadful womaniser. Dashing and devilish. The sort women always fall for. She had a lucky escape, if you ask me. He’s married now, of course. You know him, Mr Young who runs the real estate office. Ridiculous when you think about it, her family would have approved of her marrying a rogue like Keith because he had a good family background, money and what not. She landed a much better husband with John Bishop as far as I’m concerned.”

  Myrtle had seen Mr Young standing outside the real estate office in the mornings. She had watched him scratch his back on the doorframe and lean back on it, soaking up the morning sun. He liked to preen his bushy black eyebrows and moustache. After he warmed his body he would straighten his waistcoat and adjust his trousers, trying to make them sit on his rotund waist. Myrtle found it almost impossible to imagine Mr Young as dashing or Agnes Bishop as a wild princess but it was not so difficult to imagine John Bishop mooning over her.