Elianne

by Nunn, Judy

  Then in only a matter of minutes they were out of town and on the road to Bargara, the coastal settlement that lay nine miles to the east.

  The day was hot and they drove with the windows down, the warm wind whipping their hair. None of them minded – they loved the heat. The landscape they passed through was the familiar flat, open plains of cane country. Here and there some fields lay fallow, rich and red-brown, but mostly they were surrounded by a waving green mass of sugar cane in various stages of maturity.

  Several miles before reaching the coast, however, they passed an anomaly in the landscape. There it was to their right: the Hummock, rising incongruously two hundred feet above the sea of cane, the only hill in the entire district.

  ‘Dad and I took a bloke from Sydney on a sightseeing tour a month or so back,’ Neil said, ‘and he reckoned it looked like a pimple.’

  ‘A pimple,’ Alan piped up from the back seat, ‘you’re joking.’

  ‘No, I’m not. “A pimple on the face of an otherwise unblemished landscape”, those were his exact words. He was a journalist,’ Neil added as if that explained everything, ‘doing a story on the sugar industry. He was just trying to sound smart, that’s all.’

  ‘I hope you set him straight. Did you tell him it was once an active volcano?’

  ‘No, I was a bit more precise. I told him it was a cinder cone and the reason these lands were so fertile. He ended up putting that in the article, but he couldn’t resist adding the pimple on the landscape quote as well, trying to be smart like I said – thinks he’s Ernest Hemingway.’

  ‘Well it’s our pimple,’ Alan replied tersely. ‘It’s our hill, the only one we’ve got, and we like it.’

  ‘I think it’s pretty,’ Paola said, turning to catch a last glimpse of the Hummock through the rear windscreen.

  Bargara, fronting the Coral Sea, had been a popular seaside resort for decades, a holiday-maker’s haven where grassy slopes fringed long, sandy beaches and swaying coconut palms and pandanus trees gave a flavour of the tropics.

  ‘Where to?’ Kate asked. ‘Neilson Park?’ Neilson Park was the surf beach particularly favoured by the young bloods. It boasted a long-established Lifesaving Club of which the locals were justifiably proud.

  ‘Yep,’ her brothers chorused; both were keen body surfers.

  Immediately upon arrival, they stripped down to their bathing costumes and headed for the water, or rather Kate and her brothers did. Paola chose to sit on the beach and watch. Unlike the Durham siblings, she was not confident in the surf.

  After ten minutes or so, Alan jogged up from the water’s edge.

  ‘Aren’t you coming in?’ he asked, plonking himself down on the sand beside her, inadvertently spraying her with water as he flicked back his wet hair.

  ‘It’s a bit rough for me,’ she said apologetically.

  He looked at the waves. ‘Really? You’ve got to be joking.’ The surf was extremely mild.

  ‘I’m not a very good swimmer,’ she admitted, shamefaced.

  ‘Oh. I didn’t know that.’ Alan was surprised. They’d been to the beach together on family picnics a number of times over the years and he’d never noticed Paola was a poor swimmer. But then, he thought, there was probably a lot he hadn’t noticed about Paola.

  ‘I usually avoid the surf. That way people don’t find out.’ She gave a rueful shrug. ‘I look Italian enough as it is,’ she added, ‘and being a lousy swimmer’s so terribly un-Australian.’

  He didn’t get the connection. ‘What’s wrong with looking Italian?’

  ‘Nothing I suppose.’ She shrugged again, carelessly this time. Then with a sudden change of heart, and much to her own surprise, she found herself confessing. ‘Well yes, there is actually. I was born here. I’m Australian. I get sick of people calling me a dago and thinking I’m a foreigner just because of the way I look.’

  There was a pause before Alan’s response, which strangely enough popped out with the greatest of ease. He didn’t feel in the least self-conscious.

  ‘I love the way you look.’

  ‘Do you?’ She flushed with pleasure. ‘Do you really?’

  ‘Yep. You look just like Natalie Wood.’

  Paola burst out laughing. ‘Natalie Wood’s not Italian.’

  ‘She looks Italian.’

  ‘Natalie Wood’s about as American as you can get.’

  ‘She’s not actually.’ Alan’s tone held an air of superiority. ‘She’s Russian-American – I read that in a magazine somewhere.’ Then he added with a ring of triumph, ‘So what about that? Natalie Wood’s Russian-American and you’re Italian-Australian. You should be proud of your ancestry, Paola. I’ll bet she is.’

  ‘I am.’ Paolo flushed again. She was very prone to flushing, but this time it was with guilt. She felt she’d betrayed her family in admitting her private secret to Alan Durham, and she wished now that she hadn’t. ‘I am proud,’ she said, staring down at the sand.

  ‘Of course you are.’ Alan cursed himself. He’d been clumsy and hurtful. His intention had been to offer encouragement, not criticism. He reached out and took her hand, unsure of what he should say to make amends.

  She looked up from the sand and met his gaze.

  ‘I meant it as a compliment, you know. When I said that you look like Natalie Wood?’ He thought how terribly lame and pathetic he sounded.

  Paola could see the desperation in his eyes. ‘I know you did.’ She smiled. ‘And I’m flattered. Thank you.’ I love the way you look too, she thought, so solemn and serious, and yet when you smile so like a little boy.

  Alan breathed a sigh of relief and then stood abruptly, pulling her to her feet. ‘Right,’ he said, ‘let’s go to The Basin and I’ll give you a swimming lesson.’ A mile and a half around the point, past the holiday bungalows and the golf course and the rocky outcrops of basalt that typified the area, another long sandy beach boasted a still-water tidal swimming pool. Many years previously, Kanaka workers had erected the low-slung wall of black boulders that encircled the pool and ‘The Basin’ had been a favourite choice for families with small children ever since. ‘Come on,’ he said, releasing her hand and picking up his towel.

  ‘No, no,’ she insisted, ‘I’m perfectly happy here. Really I am.’

  ‘Well I’m not. I want to go to The Basin.’

  ‘That’s absolute rubbish, Alan,’ she said, calling his bluff. ‘You don’t want to swim with a bunch of little kids.’

  ‘Of course I don’t. I want to swim with you.’ He dumped his towel back on the sand. ‘Won’t be a tick, I’ll just tell the others.’ And Paola watched as he jogged off.

  Alan swam out to where Kate and Neil were standing chest-deep waiting eagle-eyed for the next wave.

  ‘Paola and I want to go to The Basin,’ he said.

  ‘Oh, all right,’ Neil was puzzled, obviously wondering why, but good-natured as always, he was happy to oblige. ‘One more wave in and we’ll join you.’

  ‘No we won’t.’ Kate’s look to him was so laced with meaning that Neil was baffled and suitably silenced. ‘We’ll meet up with you at The Basin in a couple of hours, Al, say about one o’clock. I’ll bring the car around and we’ll have lunch there.’

  ‘Right you are then.’ Alan swam off, catching a small wave that took him halfway to shore.

  ‘What was that all about?’ Neil asked.

  ‘I think they want to be alone.’

  ‘What?’ Her brother’s expression was comically incredulous. ‘You mean Alan and Paola . . .’ The rest was left unsaid.

  Kate nodded. ‘I can’t answer for her, but he’s keen, I know that much.’

  ‘Well, well, little brother’s growing up, eh?’ Neil grinned. ‘I must say he shows good taste. Paola’s become quite a looker.’

  ‘Don’t you dare tease him,’ she warned.

  ‘As if I’d do such a dastardly thing,’ he replied with mock innocence. Then he noticed the waves looming out to sea. ‘Hey, there’s a good run coming up.’ />
  The conversation stopped right there as the bigger waves started to roll in. But Kate knew there’d been no real need to sound a warning: Neil was always sensitive to the feelings of others.

  They joined up for lunch, the four of them devouring Cook’s ham and pickle sandwiches, and, after a dip in The Basin to wash off the yellow stain from the ripe mangoes that had followed, they packed the car and set off on the drive home.

  Neil was at the wheel this time. Kate had promised Alan a drive too, although they’d need to wait until they were back on the estate as he was under-age, but Alan, oddly enough, hadn’t appeared all that interested.

  During the drive, Alan and Paola were quiet in the back seat, but Kate had noticed as she’d climbed into the passenger side that they were holding hands. Of course, she told herself, he doesn’t need to show off any more. How completely together they are in each other’s company, she thought, how content and at one. Is it possible, she wondered briefly, for fifteen-year-olds to be in love?

  Beside her, Neil glanced in the rear-vision mirror. Well, well, he thought, little brother has a girlfriend.

  The Krantzes’ move to Bundaberg was slow and methodical, but also highly efficient, in keeping with Ivan’s approach to both business and life. The offices of Krantz & Son had been well set up in advance and the home he’d bought on the outskirts of town was well-appointed with new furnishings, the plan being that once he and his wife and son had made the move, they could take their time picking through those of their possessions that remained at old Elianne House. Stan had assured them there was no rush as the house was to be demolished, and Hilda had been only too grateful that the old home was to be spared that little bit longer, perhaps in the naive hope that there might be some last-minute reprieve.

  It was early February before the house was finally deserted and plans were set in motion for its demolition.

  ‘How fortunate you are not to be here for that saddest of days,’ Hilda said as Kate pulled the Holden up in the driveway of old Elianne House. Kate was leaving for Sydney in two days. She’d decided to go back several weeks early in order to find a place of her own. She’d given ample notice before the holidays that she would not be returning to the flat she’d shared with three fellow students, although she’d not told them why. She’d had her reasons at the time and she still did. Now more than ever Jeremy was beckoning.

  ‘You won’t have to stand by and watch it you know,’ Kate said as the two of them climbed out of the car. ‘You could plan a trip into Bundy on that saddest of days.’

  ‘It would not ease the pain, Kate,’ Hilda said a little tartly; sometimes her daughter’s practicality was annoying. ‘I would know it was happening.’

  They walked up the front steps together. The old home, so similar in design to The Big House, was a Queenslander built on stilts and surrounded by wide verandahs, but the living area was restricted to one floor only with storage space beneath. Indeed, Stanley Durham in having The Big House designed along the lines of the original had been true to his promise: ‘the same only bigger’.

  ‘To think she brought up three children here,’ Hilda said, running her fingers reverently over panelled surfaces and carved wooden fixtures. ‘Married so young, half-French as she was and new to the country, how foreign it must all have seemed . . .’

  Kate had prepared herself for a running diatribe about Grandmother Ellie and the past.

  ‘And oh, the tragedies she suffered,’ Hilda continued. ‘Well, they both did of course: they shared the heartache. Losing two sons in the Great War, just imagine the pain.’ She floated through to the next room like a wraith, her hand trailing over surfaces as if making contact with another life.

  Kate couldn’t romanticise the house herself. Pretty as the detail and the fixtures were, the house now empty and unlived-in was just a house. How interesting, she thought as she followed her mother, that the rooms are so much smaller than I remember from my childhood visits.

  ‘It was their great love that gave them the strength to carry on.’ Hilda suddenly stopped floating and they came to a halt in the main drawing room. ‘Throughout all of their trials, Big Jim and Ellie always had each other.’

  Kate couldn’t help but register the note of regret in her mother’s voice. Why? she wondered. What did her mother regret?

  ‘Ellie lived the whole of her married life in this house,’ Hilda said. ‘The early days in particular must have been so very happy.’ She remembered how happy she’d been in the early days of her own marriage. But things had changed when they’d moved into The Big House. That was when the babies had arrived and Stan had become unfaithful. Nothing serious, just dalliances, only two, and neither had lasted long. She’d supposed that many men with children needed dalliances in order to keep them distracted from the mundane aspects of parenthood. But she’d been so shockingly disillusioned. How she’d longed for a great love like Ellie’s and Big Jim’s, a love without dalliances, a love where fidelity was sacred.

  ‘Are you all right, Marmee?’ Kate asked, concerned. Her mother’s silence was puzzling, and she looked worryingly sad.

  ‘Of course I’m all right, my darling.’ Hilda painted on a bright smile, ‘just saying goodbye to the past.’ My own or Ellie’s? she wondered momentarily. ‘That’s always a little affecting.’ She looked about the drawing room. ‘Despite her share of tragedy, Grandmother Ellie was very happy here. She told me so. I remember the occasion well. She was sitting over there, on the little pink sofa that used to live by the window,’ Hilda’s voice took on a distant quality, ‘and she told me that the isolation hadn’t bothered her at all. She told me that she hadn’t minded in the least being marooned out here in the middle of nowhere.’

  Kate had the sudden feeling that her mother was referring more to herself than she was to Grandmother Ellie. Did Hilda feel marooned out here in the middle of nowhere? When she was first married she may well have done, Kate thought, for isolation would have remained very much a governing factor in the forties. Was that why she drank?

  Hilda snapped out of her pensive mood. ‘The women were so terribly alone in those early days,’ she said, and once again she was on the move, gliding off towards the dining room.

  Kate followed in silence.

  ‘It’s different for you modern young things,’ she continued with an airy wave of her hand. ‘You have your independence with the roads as they are and your very own cars.’

  Kate didn’t state the obvious. Her mother was only forty-four. She could learn to drive if she wished. Independence was hers for the asking. But Hilda Durham refused any form of driving tuition. She was accustomed to being chauffeured and preferred things that way, even though it made her reliant upon others.

  They wandered around the house for a further fifteen minutes, Hilda chatty and animated, refusing to give in to another maudlin bout.

  ‘Well I suppose that’s it,’ she said finally. ‘I do believe we’ve successfully farewelled the past, wouldn’t you agree?’

  ‘Yes, I would.’

  They walked down the front stairs to the car.

  ‘There’s a trunk load of Grandmother Ellie’s old books under the house,’ Hilda said. ‘They’ll need to be cleared out of course and donated to some charity or other. Would you like to look through them before I have Max take them into town?’

  ‘Yes, I would.’

  ‘Half of them are in French, so you’re the only one who’d be able to understand them anyway,’ she said with a light laugh. At school Kate’s language of choice had been French, and like the rest of her subjects her matriculation results had been excellent. ‘Goodness knows what we’ll do with that particular lot,’ Hilda added as she climbed into the passenger seat, ‘I suppose Max will simply have to find a French charity.’

  ‘I’ll come back tomorrow and go through them.’ Kate started up the engine. ‘There might well be some I’d like to keep, particularly among the French editions.’

  As they drove off, Hilda gazed back at the o
ld house. ‘Yes,’ she said her mood again pensive and her voice distant, ‘I remember Grandmother Ellie loved her books. They were very precious to her. She was always reading. Perhaps it was her form of escape.’

  Once again, Kate sensed that her mother wasn’t really talking about Grandmother Ellie.

  The following morning, rather than walking as she would normally have done without the need to chauffeur her mother, Kate drove to the old house once again. It would save her carrying home any of the books she might choose to keep, and they could simply stay in the boot of the car ready for the following day when she would set off on her drive to Sydney.

  She discovered the trunk sitting in a protected corner in the storage area beneath the house, surrounded by a number of empty packing cases. It was not locked and she opened it without any difficulty.

  She’d expected that after twelve years, damp might have set in and that the books might be mouldy, but they certainly were not. The trunk was airtight and the books had been packed with great care, wads of folded tissue paper resting between each layer as if protecting items of the most delicate crystal. Kate found the degree of care taken touching. Following Ellie’s death, the trunk would have been packed upon Big Jim’s orders, he could possibly even have packed it himself, although that was doubtful, she thought, for he’d been over ninety when Ellie had died. But either way, the intention was obvious. Big Jim had wished to preserve his wife’s precious books in respect for her memory.

  Kneeling on the ground, Kate lifted the books from the trunk one by one and placed them on the tissue paper that she’d spread out beside her. There were publications in both English and French, and she made a separate pile of each. It was the French editions she was most interested in for they were harder to come by.

  Despite the gloom beneath the house, enough light shone through the wooden lattice work for her to read the authors and titles with ease. Balzac, Dumas, Hugo, collections of poetry by Voltaire and Baudelaire . . . Grandmother Ellie certainly enjoyed her French classics, Kate thought. There were several de Maupassant and Zola, and then moving into the twentieth century, Colette, André Gide . . . There were also French translations of other great European writers: a copy of Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina and Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment.