‘Evie, you mentioned knowing someone who knew Rick Henzell,’ he said to her as I put the bread and butter custard on the table. ‘What was her name?’
Evie looked up from her pudding. ‘Lily. Her mother is nutty as a fruit cake, so Lily ran away from home. I don’t like her that much. She drinks a lot and has too many boyfriends – Lily I mean,’ she finished with a giggle. ‘Not her mother.’
She went back to eating with sublime unconcern.
‘Does she have a friend called Susan?’ I asked.
Evie’s spoon halted halfway to her mouth. ‘No, I don’t think so – not a friend. I met a girl called Susan, but she and Lily hated each other. Susan’s such a crybaby. She hates Lily. Blames her for everything. I haven’t seen Susan for ages.’
The girls had only been missing for six weeks. ‘Ages’ could mean a fortnight to Evie.
‘Blames Lily for what?’ I asked.
Evie shrugged. ‘Dunno. They had a big fight when I was with them. That’s how I found out they knew Lena Mitrovic and Rick Henzell. Lily said—’
‘She mentioned Lena?’ Johnny interrupted. ‘What did she say?’
‘That Lena was nice and she’d go to hell and burn forever if Lena got hanged. Lily would, not Lena. And then Susan said that communists didn’t believe in hell, so Lily was being stupid. And then Lily thumped Susan and told her to shut her mouth. And then Susan started crying and said that everything was Lily’s fault.’
Evie turned her attention back to the pudding. When Johnny and I exchanged looks, his eyes betrayed his excitement. Just what did Lily and Susan know about the murder?
‘Where are they living?’ asked Johnny. ‘Lily and Susan?’
Evie looked wary. ‘I don’t want to dob them in,’ she said.
‘You’re not,’ he assured her. ‘We just want to talk to them. Promise. We won’t tell Child Welfare.’ I noticed that he didn’t mention not telling the police.
‘God’s honour?’ said Evie, very seriously. ‘If you promise God’s honour, then that’s the one you can’t break.’
Johnny said, also very seriously, ‘I promise, God’s honour, that I won’t turn them over to Child Welfare.’ He shot a look towards me. ‘And nor will Nell.’
‘God’s honour?’ said Evie to me.
I hesitated. If we found the girls living in dangerous circumstances, then how could we possibly justify not reporting them? The other girl from Richmond, Jane Prynne, had contracted a venereal disease. What if Lily and Susan were in a similar situation? Those diseases were hard to treat and the consequences could be terrible.
As I remained silent, Evie’s mouth tightened. ‘Then I’m not telling you,’ she said firmly.
I glanced at Johnny, but he was no help; he was eating his pudding with apparent nonchalance.
I thought about it. Maybe we could convince the girls to return home and Child Welfare wouldn’t need to know about them.
‘All right,’ I said reluctantly. ‘God’s honour. I won’t dob them in to Child Welfare.’
Evie swallowed a mouthful. ‘Last I knew, Susan and Lily were living in the house in Stirling Street. The big one with the iron lace. It’s pretty horrible. I went there once, and it stank. I think Lily’s somewhere in Fremantle now.’ She turned to Aunty May and said in a low, intense voice, ‘I never did anything wrong – not really bad. I promise. God’s honour.’
Aunty May nodded. ‘Thank you, dear, for wanting to reassure me, but I knew that already.’
As I was clearing the table Evie announced that Jack had invited her to the American Independence Day celebrations at the Gloucester Park racing ground that afternoon. There was going to be a rodeo display and music and clowns, and please, please, could she go?
Aunty May nodded. ‘Yes, that’s fine, Evie. But be home for tea – by six at the latest.’
Evie gave her a brilliant smile. ‘I’ll make sure that we are. Thank you.’
She jumped up and gave Aunty May a hug. She and Aunty May seemed to have become very close in the last two and a half days. That was marvellous for Evie, who had blossomed under the affection, but it was also a worry if Evie was leaving us the next day. She was due in the Children’s Court tomorrow, and who knew what Magistrate Schroeder would want to do with her? Still, if I told him how well-behaved she had been with us, then surely that would count in her favour. I was intending to do all I could to ensure that she was treated fairly by the magistrate.
I hid a smile and said mischievously, ‘But Evie, you promised to help me mix up another batch of shampoo this afternoon. I’m making you a new skirt. It’s only fair.’
Her face fell. ‘Oh,’ she said in a small voice. ‘I forgot.’ Enormous blue eyes looked at me imploringly. ‘Can I do it tomorrow?’ Suddenly there were tears in those eyes and I felt awful. ‘Oh, that’s right. I’ll be gone then.’
Johnny said, ‘Is it hard, this shampoo brewing? I was an A-grade chemistry student at school.’
Evie’s face lit up. ‘Please, Nell, could Johnny help you do it? Please. I really want to go with Jack.’
‘Evie darling,’ said Aunty May soothingly, ‘Nell is teasing you. You go off and enjoy yourself. And there’s nothing to say that you won’t be here after tomorrow, so stop worrying and come home safely.’
Evie gave her another hug, and practically flew out of the room. Now it was me who was worrying. Just what did my aunt intend to do the following day?
We took our cups of tea into the lounge room. Aunty May gestured towards Uncle Pat’s old armchair.
‘You sit there, Johnny, and rest up for a while,’ she said. ‘The blessed shampoo can wait. Nell, would you get the
footstool for him, please?’
I brought the embroidered footstool over to Johnny’s chair, feeling rather like a slave girl attending the sultan. When I caught Johnny’s eye, he winked.
‘Thanks, Nell. Who did the gorgeous embroidery?’ he asked. ‘Was it you?’
‘It was Biddie,’ I muttered. ‘I’m not that good at embroidery. She did it as a present for Uncle Pat.’
He smiled, put up his legs on the footstool and settled back in the chair with an audible sigh of contentment.
Aunty May turned on the wireless to the Sunday Symphony. As the room filled with the sound of a Mozart piano concerto she said something about doing the dishes and told us to stay put. ‘I need some peace and quiet to write my letters to my boys, and I’m going to bake some biscuits to send to them.’
‘I’ll write to the boys this evening, so don’t seal the envelopes,’ I told her.
She nodded and bustled out of the room.
Johnny smiled after her. ‘She’s a ball of energy. Might be little, but she never stops.’
‘No, she never does,’ I said, grinning. ‘She writes to the boys every Sunday, and always includes Father Tierney’s homily. I’m not so sure that they are longing to learn about his latest anti-British invective. Except for Danny; he thinks Father Tierney is hilarious.’
‘Do you write them all every week too?’
‘I try to. We tend to write the same letter four times, but Danny and Frank are in the same unit so we have to try to vary their letters a bit.’
‘They’re the ones fighting in New Guinea?’
I nodded. ‘Charlie too. He’s a commando. He was in Timor and we thought he’d been lost when the Japanese invaded – killed or captured.’ I paused, remembering. ‘It was a terrible time. But those commandos were tough – amazingly tough – and they survived. He was evacuated in December last year and we had him home for three weeks. Then he was sent up to fight in New Guinea.’
I finished my tea and put the cup back on the saucer. ‘Mick is in the RAAF ground crew. He was injured in the Japanese air raid on Darwin in February 1942, but not badly and he’s fine now. Then he was sent to Townsville, in Queensland, and they were bombed in July.’ I laughed. ‘He wonders if the Japanese are upset about something he said, or so he wrote in a letter to me. Mick’s always joking.’
‘And your other cousin, Bridget is it? What about her husband?’
‘Oh, Ned’s forty-two, too old to be conscripted as a married man. And he’s a telephone engineer – works for the postmaster general’s department. That’s a reserved occupation, so he’s been manpowered and couldn’t join up even if he wanted to.’
Johnny was obviously amused. ‘Manpowered. I love the way you Aussies use language.’
‘It’s from the Manpower Act. I suppose it does sound a bit strange – especially as women are being manpowered too, now.’
Johnny looked very comfortable in the chair and I thought it was unlikely that he’d be leaving any time soon. But I had work to do.
‘Johnny,’ I said, ‘I was planning to make Evie a new skirt for her court appearance tomorrow. Do you mind if I get on with it?’
‘Go right ahead. I’ll just relax. When you’ve made your skirt we can tackle the shampoo.’
I went to my room, changed into my old flannel slacks, threw on a bottle-green ribbed sweater and twisted my hair into a high ponytail. I collected the fabric and my sewing basket and returned to the lounge room, where my sewing machine was set up on a small table by the window. I’d taken measurements from Evie early that morning and had drawn up the pattern on brown paper.
‘You look no older than Evie, dressed like that and with your hair up that way,’ he said. ‘Can I say that your hair looks real cute like that?’
I smiled, but didn’t reply.
After pinning the pattern pieces onto the fabric I cut them out with my big dressmaking shears and sat cross-legged on the floor to tack them together. Johnny had been watching it all with interest, saying nothing. But when I next glanced towards him, he was lying back in the chair, fast asleep.
The temptation was just too great. I stared at him, memorising every feature of his face and body, storing up memories for the time when memories would be all I had of him. He fitted neatly in the armchair, as had Uncle Pat; although my uncle had been taller, they were both strongly built men with broad shoulders and narrow hips. The light falling on him from the lamp highlighted the angles of his cheekbone and jaw, and in the fine line of his temple I could make out a pulse beating lightly and rapidly. Under the thick wings of eyebrows, his dark eyelashes were surprisingly long as they rested on his cheeks, the sort of lashes my aunt would say were ‘wasted on a man’. His brown hair had fallen onto his forehead. In sleep the slight cynicism he usually displayed had disappeared, so that he seemed younger and, for the first time, vulnerable.
Since I had met him outside the church that morning his behaviour had been impeccable. I knew I should be pleased about that, but I found myself missing his playful flirting. I missed the underlying intensity and the not-quite-masked desire. Last night he had said that he loved me, but he had known me for only three days, how could I believe that? I knew he wanted me, wanted me as a lover, the way he had wanted Lena Mitrovic. As a diversion. And what were my feelings for Johnny? Looking at him now, what I felt for him was a mix of sharp desire and sweet longing, like nothing I had felt for any man before. But I had no illusions about the fact that this passion would go nowhere. I had been right to resist him in the car the night before. I could not give in to these feelings. I knew what would happen if I did. Johnny would eventually stop wanting me. And how could I bear it when he did?
So remember this moment, Nell. Save every detail somewhere in your memory. Because you are not throwing caution to the wind and embarking on a doomed love affair that would destroy any chance of marrying Rob.
I took one last look, turned away from him and went back to my sewing.
‘I was dreaming about you,’ he said.
I looked up from my sewing machine. I had just completed the waistband. All that remained now was some hand stitching. I would take up the hem when Evie was back, to get the length right.
‘So you’re awake,’ I said. ‘You dreamed a little dream of me? Did you dream I dwelt in marble halls?’
He laughed. ‘Something like that. My mom loves that song – both those songs.’
‘What song?’ asked Aunty May as she came into the room with her sewing basket.
‘“Dream a Little Dream of Me”,’ I said.
‘Oh that’s such a pretty one.’ Aunty May had a faraway look in her eyes. ‘Pat used to sing it to me.’
‘Come on, Johnny,’ I said. ‘Let’s go to the laundry and make shampoo.’ I really couldn’t take Aunty May’s reminiscences of her sublimely happy marriage to Uncle Pat right now.
The laundry was in an asbestos lean-to off the back verandah. Ten years ago Uncle Pat had enclosed and converted half of it into the bathroom. The other half, which remained open, contained the laundry trough and the copper, where Aunty May boiled up the washing once a week before putting it through the mangle.
‘We need to shave up these two bars of soap,’ I said, handing one to Johnny. ‘Use your pocket-knife. They’re Castile soap, made from olive oil. We dissolve the shavings, strain them through two layers of cheesecloth, add some alcohol and geranium oil, et voila, shampoo.’
I lit the copper to boil some water, then we sat together companionably, shaving the soap into bowls at our feet.
‘So we’re searching for the lost girls this week?’ I said.
‘That’s the plan,’ he replied. ‘What Evie said is very interesting. I can’t help but wonder if those girls went missing because they knew something about the murder. The timing is too coincidental. Do you think Gleddings will know where this place is in Stirling Street?’
I nodded. My heart had started to race. Perhaps Johnny was right – Lena was innocent and we could help her to prove it.
‘The Marvel has done stories on most of the dubious establishments in Perth and Fremantle. Even I know the place in Stirling Street. It’s a lodging house and there are always men and girls going in and out. A nasty piece of work called Wilfred Hanlon owns it.’
‘When’ll we go?’ he asked.
‘Evie’s court appearance is tomorrow. What about Tuesday?’
‘Deal.’
ohnny didn’t seem to want to leave, even after the shampoo was done. He was helping me to prepare tea – cold mutton and salad – when Evie returned just before six. The front door was open and we could all hear the loud voices as she and Jack came down the front path. Their argument was not a private one.
‘Shut up! Just shut up, why don’t you?’ Evie was crying as she came to the front door. ‘I’m sick of hearing you. I didn’t do anything wrong, so stop telling me that I did.’
We heard quick steps down the hallway. A flushed Evie came into the kitchen, mumbled a hello and went through into the back verandah and her bedroom. The door shut and there was silence. I exchanged looks with Johnny and Aunty May and got up.
‘Leave her,’ said my aunt. ‘She’ll want to be alone for a while.’
‘I think I should see if she’s all right,’ I said.
Aunty May shrugged.
Johnny got up also. ‘I’ll step out onto the porch and have a cigarette,’ he said.
When I got to Evie’s room I could hear her sobbing.
‘Evie,’ I said to the closed door, ‘it’s me, Nell. Are you all right?’
‘I hate him,’ said Evie in a high-pitched, angry voice. ‘Go away.’
I went. When I returned to the kitchen Aunty May smiled. ‘I’ll look in on her in a bit,’ she said. ‘It’ll blow over, but she’ll probably not want her tea just yet. Biddie had these sorts of arguments with Ned all the time when they started walking out together.’
Don’t try to marry Evie off yet, I wanted to say. She’s not fifteen, for heaven’s sake.
I made my way down the dark hallway towards the front verandah, where I could see the lighted tip of Johnny’s cigarette in the gloom. He was sitting on the front step, talking to Jack, so I paused near the open door. I knew I shouldn’t eavesdrop, but they were talking about women. I couldn’t resist listening to that.
�
��Don’t ask me, buddy,’ Johnny was saying. ‘I’ve never been able to work them out. But it sounds to me as if she didn’t do anything wrong, exactly. Sounds like it was your problem. It’s something you’ll have to learn to deal with if you date such a pretty girl.’
Jack’s voice was low and bitter. ‘I know that. It was really grouse at first, when the blokes were looking at her and I knew that they were jealous of me because I had such a grand sheila.’ His voice broke a little. ‘She’s so pretty, Johnny,’ he said. ‘It’s a bit scary, how pretty Evie is.’
‘Yeah. It can get you like that.’ The tip of his cigarette glowed a bright red as he inhaled.
‘Don’t you hate it when blokes stare at Nell, say things to her, look at her like they – like they want to – you know?’
Johnny murmured something that I couldn’t catch and Jack laughed.
What had he said? That he didn’t give a damn about what other men thought of me? That other men never looked at me like that? I could have cried with the frustration of not knowing.
‘Anyway, Evie hates me now,’ said Jack bitterly.
The tip glowed bright red again and I heard a soft chuckle from Johnny. ‘You know, buddy, I don’t think Evie does hate you. She was too angry – you must mean something to her. You’ve got to let her cool down, though. Say, why don’t you write her a letter?’
‘Another letter?’ Jack sounded incredulous. ‘I wrote her a letter yesterday. What would I write this time?’
‘Write that you’re real sorry for upsetting her and you know she didn’t do anything wrong. Say that she’s so pretty it’s no wonder that other fellers come on so strong, and if she’ll give you another chance you’ll try your darndest not to get so jealous again. Something like that. Just make sure you say that she’s right and you’re wrong, you think she’s pretty and you want another chance.’
‘You think it’ll work?’ Jack’s tone was doubtful. I wasn’t surprised. It was not the Australian way to be so open with regard to feelings.
‘I do. Just be honest with her.’
‘If you really think so, then I’ll try.’ Now he sounded nervous, but resolved. ‘I like her. I’m a dumb bastard, eh?’
Taking a Chance Page 18
