Fireshadow

by Anthony Eaton

  Did we wake you? There is concern in her grandfather’s voice.

  No.

  Alice . . . her mother begins, but stops after that one word. For a long time nobody says anything. Four people in a room with pain holding them apart.

  We’d like it if you came home. Her father’s voice is flat, neither love nor hate behind the words.

  I don’t want to.

  Alice, says her grandfather, you should think about it.

  She is startled. She hadn’t expected him to be on their side. Then she looks at him and realises that he isn’t. The old man is regarding her with nothing but concern as he runs his fingers across his scalp, through his thin white hair.

  They love you, Alice.

  Do you? She turns to them.

  How can you even ask that? Her mother starts to cry again. But she knows, she remembers, the things that were said the other afternoon. Before the slap. She knows she used words like disgrace and shame and talked about convents and ‘going east for a while’. As far as Alice is concerned, these aren’t words of love.

  The silence fills the room again, thick and engulfing. Alice stands in the doorway. Her parents look at the floor.

  Her father stands suddenly and steps towards her. For a moment Alice thinks he is going to grab her, shake her or strike her again. But he doesn’t. When he lifts his gaze she looks into his eyes and sees something new there.

  Alice . . . He hesitates then reaches for her hand. I’m so sorry.

  Something seems to shift deep in the pit of Alice’s stomach.

  Excuse me . . . I . . . She runs from the room, out to the front garden, and vomits into a flowerbed.

  17 August 1946

  Alice sits in the park and writes. It is a warm afternoon for late winter, but even so she is bundled up against the cold wind which blows up from the south. On her lap the leather-bound journal is filling with her thoughts and longings, and high in the air above, the occasional wispy, white cloud goes scudding past.

  Birds sing.

  As she writes, a part of Alice’s mind detaches itself and simply watches the black ink spidering across the pages. This afternoon she is not writing to Erich but to her baby. She chooses the words she writes carefully.

  Voices float down the path and she looks up to see a mother and two children walking towards her. It is the same family that was here two weeks ago on the afternoon she found out. The little boy is running ahead, the girl skipping beside her mother, holding her hand. When they reach the swings, she drops the hand and runs off with her brother.

  The mother stands and watches them, then wanders across to the bench and sits beside Alice. There is tiredness in the way she lowers herself onto the hard wooden slats.

  Hello, she says, and offers Alice a brief smile.

  Hello.

  Alice starts to write again, but the sound of laughter is distracting and after a while she gives up and watches the children. The boy is pushing while his sister swings, trying to make her go higher and higher. The little girl is getting scared and tells him to stop, but he doesn’t. Finally she screams, her thin voice wailing through the warm afternoon, and the woman beside Alice calls out sharply, That will do, Harry.

  The boy stops, chastened, and the little girl tries to get off the swing, but she is scared and the swing is moving too quickly and as her feet hit the sand they slip and she pitches forward onto the ground.

  Her brother is beside her immediately and Alice can hear him trying to comfort her as she sobs and gets to her feet, stumbling through tears towards her mother, who is rushing over.

  You’re all right, he tells her again and again, and Alice can hear the desperation behind his words. He wants them to be true. He wants to believe his little sister is fine. It’s a selfish sympathy, but Alice feels more sorry for the boy than his sister.

  The girl has grazes on her knees and the heels of her hands and a grass stain on her pinafore. She is more upset about this last indignity than about her injuries.

  Calm down, Elizabeth, her mother soothes her. We’ll go home and wash it out.

  With the little girl now gathered onto her hip, the mother takes Harry’s arm with her free hand and leads him away, back up the path. She throws a last, weary smile – almost apologetic – at Alice as they pass.

  19 August 1946

  In the evenings the three of them sit together in the front room and listen to the wireless. Her father prefers to listen to music, preferably classical, but tonight a visiting professor is talking about the war.

  Usually, whenever the war is mentioned her father reaches out immediately and fiddles with the tuning dial, swinging the needle across the frequencies until he finds something else, anything else, to listen to. Tonight, however, he doesn’t.

  The professor is British and is visiting Perth on his way to Melbourne to lecture at the university there. His accent is thick and plummy and he is talking about the Germans and the rumours that have been circulating. He talks about death camps and propaganda and makes it sound as though all Germans are little better than animals. Alice wants to scream at him, to shout into the radio set and tell him about people like Erich and Günter and Commander Stutt, tell him about their families and how they are just men like him. She doesn’t though.

  The voice is scratchy and distant, but each time the professor makes a point, Alice’s father nods his head and makes noises of agreement.

  The German people as a whole find it difficult to stand up against the group instinct, says the radio. Hitler was able to use this aspect of his people’s mindset to manipulate them for his own depraved ends . . .

  Alice’s father mutters, Exactly!

  Unconsciously, Alice’s hands creep to her belly and rest there, protectively. Does her child have the ‘German mindset’? She knows it doesn’t. She knows the professor is wrong.

  She says nothing.

  Finally, the interviewer thanks the professor and their voices are replaced by music. A brass band plays a popular dance tune from the days of the war.

  That was interesting, says her father.

  It was wrong. Alice walks from the room.

  Later, she lies in her bed in the dark staring out the window. Her bedroom door creaks. She feigns sleep, doesn’t turn her head to see whose footsteps are padding across the room. Her mattress sinks slightly and her mother is perched on the edge of her bed. She doesn’t say anything. She knows Alice is awake. She runs her hand over Alice’s hair, stroking it gently, and her fingers are warm. Then she rests her hand lightly on her daughter’s belly and Alice can feel the distant pulse of her mother’s heart beating through her fingers.

  For a long time mother and daughter sit like that, and the soft warmth of her mother’s touch seems to creep through Alice’s skin, into her womb, calming and soothing, and Alice slips off to sleep. Finally her mother leans down and brushes her lips against her daughter’s forehead. Then she leaves quietly.

  Alice wakes in the night and can hear her mother crying through the wall.

  2 September 1946

  Her grandfather is asleep in his chair in front of the fire when she arrives. On his lap is the framed photo of his son, Paul, in his uniform. She doesn’t want to wake him, so Alice tiptoes into the kitchen, stokes the fire in the stove and puts the kettle on.

  Is that you, dear?

  Yes, Grandfather. I’m making tea.

  Lovely.

  He walks in and sits at the kitchen table and Alice watches him. He is looking older, she thinks. Each step seems more of an effort, and even sitting takes time.

  How has your day been? He always asks her this. Fine, she always answers. She considers telling him the news – the neighbourhood women have somehow found out about her ‘condition’ – but she decides against it.

  Sipping his tea, he makes appreciative noises and, when their cups are empty
, gets up as slowly as he sat. All right, let’s take a look at you.

  His battered old medical bag is in his bedroom. He takes her pulse, timing it with a small stopwatch, then her temperature, then he feels her belly. His touch is soft, his hands cool.

  You will need to see someone else from now on, he tells her. A specialist.

  She protests, but the old man shakes his head. I’m too old. I haven’t done a pregnancy in years. He gives her a name, writing it in his precise copperplate hand on a piece of card and she promises to make an appointment tomorrow.

  They sit again at the kitchen table, opposite one another.

  Do you still think about him? he asks.

  All the time, she answers.

  And she does. But recently it’s been different. She doesn’t tell the old man this, though. Lately Alice has found herself wondering about Erich, not with the longing, not with the desperate hunger that she felt when he first left, but with a strange sort of detachment, treating his absence and her feelings for him like a puzzle. Most nights now she writes about this in her journal, trying to sort out what she feels.

  Of course, there has been no word. Not yet. She knows it could be months. And so she waits.

  On the way home she stops in the park. Usually, at this time of the day, the mother and her children (what were their names again?) are having their afternoon play. Not today, however, and after a few minutes Alice continues on home. Turning the corner at the end of her street, she sees Mrs McKaigh in her front yard, weeding.

  Good afternoon. Alice smiles. The woman doesn’t reply. She offers nothing more than a reluctant grunt, before pointedly returning to her roses.

  It’s been like that for a week now. And Alice knows she is the main topic of discussion down at the markets each morning. She knows the question they are all asking each other. Who’s the father? Nobody has been brave enough to ask her, though. Not yet.

  Even when they do, she won’t tell them.

  Let them wonder.

  3 September 1946

  It’s a perfect day. Sunlight trickles between the branches of the weeping willow beside the playground. A magpie perches on a telegraph pole at the edge of the park and warbles at the sun. The air is warm, filled with the beginning of spring. Harry and Elizabeth and two other children chase each other around the playground while their mothers stand and gossip nearby.

  Alice sits on the bench.

  In her journal on her lap she is making a list.

  Things she doesn’t know about Erich.

  His mother’s name. His sister’s date of birth. His shoe size. The names of his grandparents.

  The children are playing some kind of tag game. Elizabeth is ‘it’ but the other three children are too big and fast for her and she can’t catch any of them. She is starting to get frustrated when her older brother, Harry, pretends to trip and fall and his sister is on him in seconds, the two of them giggling.

  The size of his home. The names of his friends from school. His favourite subjects. His favourite book.

  Harry and Elizabeth. Harry and Lizzie. In a few minutes, as usual, their mother will gather them up, wrap their coats around them again, and walk them home. What is their house like? Alice wonders. Is it a lovely little semi-detached cottage, where their father will be home from work and waiting for them? Their father . . .

  What he looks like out of uniform. What sort of music he listens to. Whether or not he has had any other sweethearts.

  Their father. These two lovely children would have a father, of course. He’d be young and handsome, and would probably read to them or play with them every night. And whenever they needed him, for a hug or a story, he’d be right there for them. Right there always.

  Tears escape as she watches the children playing. Her list, abandoned now, sits on her lap.

  Are you all right?

  The children’s mother is standing beside her, concern written across her face.

  Oh. Yes . . . I’m sorry, I . . .

  Alice fishes in a pocket for a hanky, can’t find one, rubs ineffectually at her eyes.

  Here, use mine. A fresh, crisp square of linen is pressed into her hand. The young mother sits beside her.

  Thank you. I’m okay, really. I don’t usually . . . Alice stops. Breathes. Tries to get herself back under control. You have a lovely family.

  Thank you. The woman offers a brief smile and glances quickly at her two children, who are tickling one another on the grass. They keep my hands full.

  I can imagine.

  The magpie sings into the silence.

  I’m Anne.

  Alice. Alice Andrews.

  The two women shake hands.

  Are you sure you’re all right?

  Yes. I am now. It is good to talk to someone. Someone new. Someone outside her family. It’s just that . . . Alice stops.

  That’s fine. You don’t have to talk about it.

  Alice says nothing for a few moments. Then, I’m pregnant. And I was making a list . . .

  She stops again and the other woman says nothing. After a moment or two, though, she places a hand on the girl’s arm. It feels warm and slightly rough, but the moment of human contact, of reassurance, is enough.

  The father?

  In Europe somewhere. I don’t know. I miss him.

  I know. I miss my husband, too.

  He’s gone?

  Killed. In Africa.

  Oh.

  The little girl disengages herself from her brother and runs, still giggling, across to the bench. Mummy, can we stay longer? Please?

  Just a little while. Elizabeth, this is Miss Andrews.

  Hello.

  Hello, Elizabeth.

  For a long time the two women sit, arm in arm, watching the children.

  25 September 1946

  In her parent’s bedroom there is a full-length mirror, the only one in the house. Alice stands before it, naked.

  It is afternoon. Her father is job-hunting and her mother at the shops. The house is silent. Alice turns this way and that, studying her reflection closely, looking at her body.

  It is changing.

  Her breasts seem a little fuller already. They feel oddly heavy and pendulous even though they look much the same as always. She stands side-on and runs her hands over her stomach. It might be her imagination, but she thinks there might be a lump, or at least the beginnings of one.

  She still throws up in the mornings, but not so much any more.

  Alice slips back into her clothes and studies her face closely. It seems more lined than it used to. There are dark bags beneath her eyes – she hasn’t been sleeping well. She looks older, she thinks.

  In the front room she sits and opens her journal. She hasn’t written in it since that day in the park. The last entry is her list. She reads it again and is half embarrassed by it.

  She thinks about Anne.

  Most afternoons now they meet at the park and talk while her children are playing. Alice sometimes feels that she knows more about Anne’s husband than she does about Erich. She knows his name was Jim. She knows they were married only three years before he went off to war. She knows he never laid eyes on his daughter, and that his son was too young to remember him properly. She has seen his photograph. She knows he had light hair and a strong chin. In his army uniform he reminded her a little of Erich. She knows he liked roast potatoes.

  All she has told Anne about Erich is his name. Nothing else, and Anne hasn’t asked for any more. Alice is scared that she will.

  She is scared she’ll have to lie to her friend.

  29 September 1946

  Alice? The voice behind her is unfamiliar. Alice stops and turns.

  I thought it was you. It’s me . . . Victoria.

  Victoria. Vicki. Alice remembers her from primary school. They sat
beside each other for a year. The boys used to dip her blonde pigtails in the ink wells. Victoria . . . Alice’s voice sounds strange, even to her. How are you?

  I haven’t seen you in years. Victoria is one of those people who don’t seem to hear anything anyone else says. How have you been? What are you doing now?

  Nothing really.

  I’m working in the city, in a dress shop. It’s wonderful work. Mr Williams, who owns the shop, says that I have a real eye for it. And of course it’s nice to have a little bit of spending money for dances and things like that . . .

  Alice just nods.

  Victoria is engaged. She shows Alice the ring proudly. It has a tiny diamond, little more than a chip of glimmering rock, set between two small rubies.

  Of course it’s not very big, but it was all that Allen could afford on his Army pension and everything. He’s got a job now, though, driving timber trucks, so we’re planning a lovely wedding. But I’m talking all about myself. What about you? Is there a young man in your life?

  Unconsciously, Alice’s hand brushes lightly across her belly, as though trying to shield it from her words.

  No. Nobody.

  That’s sad. Victoria touches her arm. I know, there’s a dance this Friday night, at the Empire. Allen and I are going – why don’t you come with us? It would be great fun, and I could introduce you to some of Allen’s soldier friends. They’re lovely blokes. What do you think?

  Thank you, but no. Alice shakes her head. Not this week.

  Oh. The other woman seems taken aback by her refusal. Well, perhaps another time, then?

  Perhaps. They both know Alice is lying.

  Anyway, I must go. Have to get home. It’s been good catching up with you, Alice. We must do this properly some time. Perhaps over a cup of tea?

  That would be nice.