A Thousand Candles

by Joyce Dingwell

  A THOUSAND CANDLES

  Joyce Dingwell

  Pippa and her cousin Rena had never been particularly close, and it was mainly for the sake of her beloved little brother Davy that Pippa had accepted Rena’s invitation to visit her in Australia.

  But why should Rena be interested in Davy? And what was the explanation for all the rest of her odd behaviour?

  CHAPTER ONE

  Davy’s small nose pressed against the train window had changed into a squashed marshmallow. His eyes never left the passing scene, but his mouth whistled tunelessly da-da-da-da-da-da. Six da’s, and Pippa knew what they meant. Almost visibly he had fondled the words when she had explained them to him, smiling back at her when she had finished: ‘I like that, Pip.’ Dear little boy, dear little brother, he was his father’s own son when it came to expression, though ... achingly ... little use that gift would be.

  She, the daughter, had taken after Mother, nothing in particular, Aunt Helen had fondly admitted to her sister, adding, ‘But if you’re half as sweet—’

  Pippa’s own memory of her mother was vague, only to be expected when Mother had died ten years ago and she had only been ten herself. Davy had been born and Mother had died. Then, soon afterwards, Father had died, and Aunt Helen had taken the two of them, Pippa who took after her mother and was ‘nothing in particular’ and Davy who would have been a poet like Father if he had grown up.

  Only, and Pippa looked at the small marshmallow nose, he wasn’t going to have the time.

  That was why she was here now. In this Australian train. Why otherwise would she have come to Australia? She had no Australian links, save Uncle Preston who was not really an uncle but her mother’s and Aunt Helen’s cousin, and Uncle Preston’s daughter Rena.

  Admittedly she knew Rena slightly. They had attended the same English school. Uncle Preston had done well in Australia, so well that flying his daughter back and forth for her education had meant nothing at all. The identical choice of schools had been coincidence. Uncle Preston had selected it because of its prestige, but Pippa had achieved it because of an entry exam. She was not particularly smart, but she had a deep sense of responsibility, responsibility to Aunt Helen who was devoted and kind, and responsibility to Davy who was dependent and small. The selection board had said to Aunt Helen and Aunt Helen had passed it on to Pippa: ‘She showed such anxiety in her papers we really felt she must have her reward.’

  The reward, of course, had been only the bare subjects, no extras; they would have to be paid. There was no money to pay them, so Pippa had done without the music and dancing that most of the others ... and certainly Rena ... had enjoyed.

  She remembered her first meeting with Rena.

  ‘Has your second cousin Rena Franklin looked you up, Pippa?’ Aunt Helen had asked one day.

  ‘No, she’s a boarder, and boarders and day girls don’t mix much.’

  ‘Then you must look her up. After all, you two girls are related. Then that poor child, all the way from Australia!’

  Only Rena hadn’t been a poor child. She had made that obvious without saying a word. When Pippa had proffered shyly: ‘I’m Pippa Bromley, a kind of cousin,’ proffered it humbly as well as shyly, for Rena was exceptionally pretty, exceptionally vivacious, and, even in a similar gym tunic, exceptionally exclusive, Rena had simply looked Pippa up and down and said: ‘Oh.’

  Looking back now Pippa smiled slightly and could not blame her. I was, she remembered, a frog of a child. Aunt Helen always had had to buy uniforms that had been discarded by girls who had left and they certainly shouted it. Then those corrective glasses she had worn, so big and round! Then those rabbit’s teeth behind that brace! Yes, no wonder Rena...

  The way it is in big schools, the two had seen little of each other after that meeting. Pippa had sometimes said uncertainly, ‘Hullo, Rena,’ and Rena had condescended a nod in return.

  Rena had been whisked away quite soon and finished in Switzerland, and that had been the end of Pippa’s brief association with Mother’s and Aunt Helen’s cousin’s child.

  Yet here she was travelling to Rena’s home in this Australian train!

  She had been told that she and Davy would be met at the airport and driven by Rena to Tombonda, but at Mascot there had been a further message telling them to find their own way. Fortunately, Pippa learned, it was not a long distance from Sydney. Tombonda in the Southern Highlands was only a matter of some three hours, and with a fare to match. Otherwise, Pippa had thought later at Sydney’s Central Railway, she might have been in a spot. It sounded ridiculous after a flight from England, but that had been Rena’s gift.

  Over the telephone, London telephone, Rena had said, ‘I’ve seen my air agent, Pippa, and you have only to state your name.’ Then she had added enthusiastically, ‘And Davy’s.’

  It was the undoubted keenness for Davy that had won Pippa. She might have demurred for herself, but to hear someone ask for Davy...

  It had all started when Rena had called in at the cottage one day when Pippa was at work.

  ‘She’s in London shopping for a week or so.’—Still flitting back and forth, Pippa had envied.—‘She happened to be passing through our village, and decided to say hullo. I will say, Pippa,’ Aunt Helen had reported, ‘she was taken with Davy.’

  ‘Rena was?’ Pippa had been surprised.

  ‘He’s a winning little boy,’ Aunt Helen had reminded her, but a little surprised herself.

  Pippa had been more surprised when Rena had rung soon after and said what she had.

  ‘Oh, Pippa,’ the clear cool voice had greeted, ‘Would you remember me, Rena?’

  ‘But of course, Rena. And lately, I’m told, you visited Aunt Helen.’

  ‘Missing you, dear, but, a pause ... ‘not Davy.’

  So Aunt Helen had been right. She had been interested in Davy.

  ‘A darling little boy,’ Rena had said. ‘But so pale.’

  ‘Yes.’ Because she knew the end to that now, Pippa had found no words to say.

  Then she had heard Rena’s words, Rena telling Pippa that she and Davy must come to Australia. Soon.

  At another time she might not have listened, or at least only half listened, she might have answered politely, ‘Yes, some day perhaps,’ thinking ‘Never at all.’

  But, because of Doctor Harries, of what he had told her, had told her only this afternoon, she had listened. Then said: ‘Yes.’

  ‘Yes, Pippa?’ Aunt Helen had looked incredulously at her niece after the phone had gone down.

  ‘Yes, Aunt Helen. Where is Davy?’

  ‘Feeding the birds. He can’t hear, he’s at the other end of the garden.’ Aunt Helen had drawn aside the curtain to show Pippa.

  But Pippa had had to accept her aunt’s assurance that he was out there, for she couldn’t see for tears.

  ‘What did the doctor say?’ Aunt Helen had asked quietly, but her voice had told Pippa she already knew, for they both had sensed for a long time that Davy was only on loan to them, that he was that shorter thread in the pattern of life.

  ‘He put it gently,’ Pippa had said brokenly, ‘but it still meant the same. He—he said that this was the last spring.’

  It was April. Pippa thought she had never known a more tender English April. Walking to the station each morning she had felt the magic—but with it a pain beyond belief. From the leafy ledges had come the twitterings of birds, from the grass-hidden roots of bramble and. hawthorn the stirrings of little creatures, dew gemmed the delicate lace the field spiders threaded on the briar. Yet Davy was not to see it again. It was the last spring.

  Then Rena had rung and said what she had and standing and listening and waiting to insert a polite ‘No’ ... Thank you very much for the thought�
��—Pippa had remembered that down there, down under, it was different from up here, that winter came in June, that summer came at Christmas, that autumn, never fall there for nothing fell, came when the buds were bursting here. That September, not April, was the first of spring.

  September. Only five months away, and Doctor Harries had estimated around nine ... ten perhaps...

  There could be another April for Davy. April in September. September, the first of spring.

  ‘You’ll be alone when it happens,’ Aunt Helen had said afterwards.

  ‘Yes. But you do see, don’t you?’

  ‘Yes. And Rena was certainly very nice when she called, and undoubtedly she took to Davy. It should be all right. After all, she is a relation.’ If there had been a note of uncertainty in Aunt Helen’s voice it had only been faint. Not like the blunt warning that Janet had blurted out. Janet had been at the school, too, a kind of in-between Rena and Pippa, less extras than Rena, but certainly more than Pippa, and Janet had looked incredulously at her old friend when she had been told Pippa’s plans.

  ‘Australia! Rena Franklin! Wake up, Pip.’

  ‘It will be all right.’

  ‘Leopards don’t change their spots.’

  ‘I never knew Rena that much.’

  ‘I did, and I can tell you—’

  ‘And I can tell you,’ Pippa had prevented, ‘that you could be wrong. I changed. Remember the little owl I was? Or was I a rabbit? Not that I’m much different now but I don’t have corrective glasses and braces any more. At least I’m different there.’

  ‘Yes, a great deal different, and it’s worrying me.’ Janet had looked consideringly at the slender girl with the soft quiet face, the soft brown hair and the hillside green eyes.

  ‘Worrying you? What on earth for?’

  ‘Who ... or is it whom? ... not what,’ had corrected Janet dourly. Then she had answered barely: ‘Rena.’

  ‘You’re worrying because of Rena?’

  ‘Yes. And I’m very sorry you’re going. Why must you, Pip?’

  ‘In Australia September is the first of spring, and Davy ... well, Davy...’

  ‘I see,’ Janet had nodded. ‘Well, good luck, Pippa.’ But Janet’s voice had sounded as though she strongly doubted that luck.

  Pippa had gone to the air office as Rena had instructed her and the tickets had been handed over. Good-byes had been said ... if Aunt Helen had held on to Davy longer than she had to Pippa the little boy had not noticed it ... then, with a minimum of trouble, for which Pippa mentally thanked Rena, they had set off.

  Rome ... Karachi ... New Delhi ... Bangkok .,. Darwin. It had gone like a dream. Only after Darwin had Pippa felt any cobweb of doubt. The brown grass far beneath them was so unending, so—so unchangeable. Did summer ever leave such terrain, she doubted, and if it didn’t, and if there was no winter, how could there be spring?

  Then Mascot was coming up and Pippa’s cobweb was being brushed aside in the busyness of collecting bags and getting ready to be met.

  Not being met had been another doubt, but at least Rena had not forgotten about them, she had left a message.

  Then soon after the Southern Highlands train had left Central, had spun through suburbs whose colourlessness could have been suburban colourlessness anywhere, the cobweb had gone completely, gone in ferny hillocks, in turfed fields, in belts of green treetops, ponds of cloud-reflecting water ... most of all in the apples, pears, damsons and greengages, the medlars and walnuts that had to have an awakening otherwise they would not be there. That was when Pippa had happily told Davy that here ‘September is the first of spring’ and he had started his da-da song.

  ‘It’s like home.’ Davy had unsquashed his nose for a moment to say this of the Southern Highlands and to accept a railway lunch-box sandwich. He had always been an outgoing little boy and he asked companionably of the only other traveller in their compartment: ‘Is it like your home, too, sir?’

  ‘Not on your life, cobber.’ The passenger who had been reading ever since he had stepped into the compartment just as the train had moved out from Sydney folded the paper and put it down.

  ‘Then what is your home like?’ asked Davy with interest.

  The man ... large, rather too large for a narrow train compartment, Pippa thought ... so darkly bronzed you felt yourself to be almost of a different race, began packing a pipe with such loving care that Davy forgot his sandwich to watch in fascination. The man waited until he had completed the packing to his satisfaction, then lit up and said to Davy: ‘Big.’

  ‘Big country?’

  ‘That’s it.’

  ‘What else?’ asked Davy.

  ‘Real hills, not these pretty ups and downs they call hills down here.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘But only hills in the distance mind you; around us is dead flat. Red, gold and purple hills. Rocks sticking out of them like bare bones.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Flowers you’ve never seen before, cobber, Salvation Jane ... though that’s only a weed—mulga when it comes into its yellow, wild iris.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Empty miles, burning heat, scrubbers and brumbies.’

  ‘Please.’ Her lips thinned, Pippa leaned across and put a slab of railway cake firmly into Davy’s hand. At the same time she drew his attention to a riding school they were passing, and once more Davy’s nose became a squashed marshmallow. He was thinking, she sincerely hoped, of nice dapple greys and cute chestnuts, not scrubbers and brumbies.

  ‘Sorry if I widened the horizon,’ drawled the brown man, weaving out smoke now but carefully directing it away from her.

  ‘I’m sorry, too,’ said Pippa shortly. ‘When something can’t be, why begin it?’ She compressed her lips again.

  ‘You have the wrong slant there,’ the man answered. ‘Nothing never “can’t be”, miss.’

  ‘I don’t wish to discuss it with you.’ She took up a magazine.

  ‘You really mean you’re beaten,’ he grinned. ‘Oh, yes, you are. You’ve laid down your guns.’

  ‘I’m reading.’

  ‘But you’ve never seen a word. Look, I don’t meet many people, not where I come from, so when I do meet them I like to talk. That’s why I’ve trained it today instead of taking my car. To talk.’

  ‘Then I’m very sorry. There are other compartments.’

  ‘This one will do.’

  She ignored him and proceeded to read, though ... maddeningly …not seeing a word.

  ‘Big country, you said?’ The riding school was past and Davy was back again.

  ‘That’s right, little scrubber.’

  ‘Those scrubbers, are they—?’

  ‘They’re wild cattle, wild from years in the bush. To run a steer down you have to do it in full gallop, flick it by its tail and then pin it to the ground.’

  ‘Look, Davy,’ called Pippa desperately, ‘I’m sure I saw a bear in one of those trees.’

  The nose became a marshmallow again and the brown man mouthed silently but unmistakably, so unmistakably Pippa could not ignore it: ‘Liar.’

  ‘I beg your pardon,’ she said icily.

  ‘So you should beg it. Liar. Rail backwards, we used to say as kids. You knew there’s none down here.’

  ‘How would I? I’m—’

  ‘A pomegranate. Yes. But surely you’d still know koalas don’t run wild any more. A few on the coast north of Sydney, some in Queensland, but not in this bit of England.’

  ‘Bit of England?’

  ‘It is, isn’t it? The young scrubber just said so. Home, he said. And that’s why you like it to the exclusion of any other place, isn’t it? You just don’t want to spread your wings. Also’ ... accusingly ... ‘that’s why I can’t widen his horizon.’ A nod to Davy. ‘The moment I open my mouth it’s “Please.... please...” ’

  ‘Please,’ said Pippa again, but frigidly, definitely, closing the subject for all time this time ... or so she thought.

  For quite calmly he lean
ed across and took the magazine away from her, placed it face down.

  ‘Where I come from we pass the time of day,’ he told her, ignoring her indignation at his action.

  ‘Where I come from we do, too.’

  ‘You surprise me. I wouldn’t have thought it.’ He gave an impudent grin.

  ‘What you think or don’t think doesn’t concern or interest me.’

  ‘It mightn’t concern you, but I bet it would interest you. Why don’t you give it a go?’

  ‘I am not interested,’ she said furiously.

  ‘The boy was.’

  ‘He can’t be.’ The words, the aching words were out before Pippa realized it. She gave a little involuntary cry and put her hand to her mouth. Now, surely, he would leave her alone.

  But not the brown man.

  He said slowly, so slowly she saw at once he understood and she wondered at the intuition in such a big, tough person: ‘The way I look at things you must live life as though it’s lived for ever.’

  ‘And when it isn’t?’ she asked in little more than a whisper.

  ‘Then you live it all the more. The young ’un, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes.’ She wondered why she admitted it to him, a stranger.

  ‘Care to tell me?’

  ‘No. I mean ... I can’t. I mean ...’

  There was a pause. ‘Look.’ He broke the pause. ‘Look, you get back to your magazine.’ He handed it to her. ‘I’ll give him some living for half an hour. No, don’t be scared. I won’t disturb him.’

  ‘I—’ She did not know what to say; she felt very close to tears.

  ‘Read,’ he advised, sensing the tears, and she got behind the pages, not seeing a word, only hearing his voice, then Davy’s entranced little voice, then his again, Davy’s, and then somewhere in the conversation, in answer to Davy who seemed since he had started that da-da song to take a lot of interest in spring: ‘Sure there’s spring up there, scrubber, the most spring in all the world. Well’ ... a grin ... ‘sometimes. One week the ground is stony and bare, but the next it’s knee-high in grass. Then there’s mulga. Wild Iris.’