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by Larissa Behrendt

  But a new threat — communism — became her most consuming fear. Where young men had mowed down the threat of the Hun in the Great War, the communists had sprouted. This spectre had arisen to mock the dead, her dead. She could see its hand reaching over to her with no one left to protect her, everyone either buried or unwilling. There was now no Harold with whom she could build a life. Those dreams had been crushed in crash of surf and gunfire on the shore of Turkey.

  There was no Edward Howard either. His handsome face and masculine poise had made her think that he possessed a character to match his looks. That illusion had disappeared as the little darkie’s stomach had started to swell. Feeling alone, she was fearful of what she saw as threats to the way of life she had now, simple as it was. She had no sympathy for the Germans, but the communists, she felt, were feeding amongst her. She was overwhelmed by the slow sinking terror that the world was falling in upon her, that she would be crushed.

  A change was noticeable in Mrs Howard too. One not related to the end of the war. One that eclipsed her burgeoning civic interest in prohibition (she was excited by the nobility of abstinence, of public denial). Lydia Howard’s obsession was with the kitchen girl, “the little darkie” as the housekeeper called her. That she had allowed Elizabeth to stay on was rooted in a need to see the girl more closely and to force this presence onto her husband; the girl was a constant accusation levelled at him, a reminder of the way he had insulted her.

  Lydia’s vengeful plan to keep Elizabeth in the house did not play out as she had intended. She found herself consuming the poison she had laid out for Edward. Though she pretended distraction, Lydia watched the girl’s every movement carefully as quick hands polished silver, dusted, oiled, cleaned. She wanted to find what it was that had attracted Edward, but the only distinctive features were the dark skin and even darker eyes. She concluded that her husband, unable to express himself to her, had used the girl. Her reasoning attempted to account for his actions but settled nothing within her. When he expressed an opinion about the lack of character of the new doctor or criticised an editorial in the newspaper she felt the festering of her inability to forgive him. Lydia concluded that the danger must come from the girl, that the evil must emanate from within her.

  Elizabeth had noticed the increased attention she was receiving. She sensed the eyes following her careful movements, could feel the sustained discomfort of having someone reluctantly drawn to her. It made her uneasy and she much preferred the days when she had existed unobserved, when she had wondered if Mrs Howard even remembered she was in the house.

  She tried to cope as best she could with the open animosity that lurked everywhere within the house. Late at night she would lie on the ground in the back garden and look into the same sky that covered her home. All that made her happy she tried to find in the lights that sparkled above her: the seven sisters of the Mea-Mei, the shell that Peter gave her, her jade brooch, Euroke. She grew thin from a lack of appetite. Within the damp walls of her room, her thoughts would turn to her troubles and she would lose herself in her late-night ritual of scratching, raising cherry-pink marks across her arms, legs and now empty stomach.

  The oppressive humidity of Lydia Howard’s antagonism towards Elizabeth began to permeate the house; it stuck to the skin of the women who lived under the same roof. Lydia’s glowering became like distant thunder rumbling. Over time it increased with the curtness of her tongue and objects slammed into hard surfaces — a mirror on her dressing table when she thought her face too lined, a book at a wall when she could no longer keep her thoughts on reading, a plate on the floor when the imploding anger within her made eating impossible. She would shriek when she imagined she saw stains on her clothes and demand that they be rewashed. She would push her food away and refuse to eat, complaining about the taste. Her anger was directed at all the staff but fell hardest and swiftest on the kitchen girl and the housekeeper.

  One morning, as Elizabeth polished the silver, Mrs Howard approached her. With her face so close that Elizabeth could feel her constrained breathing, Lydia stared into the girl’s stunned eyes. Seeing innocence when she wanted to see cunning enraged Lydia beyond her ability to control it. She became infuriated by the fear in the dark eyes before her, the shrinking away. She brought her hand hard across Elizabeth’s face in an attempt to expel her resentment. It remained tightly within her. She hit the girl’s face again, clipping Elizabeth’s skin with her nails.

  Elizabeth fled the house and ran to the railway station, believing that the train could take her away. She had no money and did not know where to go, but if she jumped in front of it, with one giant thump, she would be carried somewhere. Perhaps some place with long grass she could run through, some place she could wait for Euroke. Elizabeth stood on the platform, feeling the sting in the graze on her face. It matched the burning sensation she felt across her body as an aftermath of her own silent acts of scratching.

  Miss Grainger arrived to bring her home. She did not understand why she had followed Elizabeth to the train station, was surprised that she had any pity left within her.

  “You don’t want any more trouble,” she said with a sigh as she offered Elizabeth a handkerchief. As Elizabeth gratefully took it, she added, “If your family had wanted you, they would have come for you by now.”

  This last remark, escaping just as Mrs Howard’s slap had, came from the part of Frances Grainger that, despite all that had transpired, still coveted Mr Howard and his handsome frame, that part of her that still cursed the fact that he had chosen the little kitchen maid over her.

  “I never wanted him to,” Elizabeth had blurted, aware of the source of Miss Grainger’s hatred.

  “You say that again and I’ll slap you,” was all Miss Grainger could offer, grabbing Elizabeth’s limp hand and dragging her towards the house. Elizabeth fell into the despair of captivity.

  For as long as Elizabeth had been away from the soil she was born on she had wanted to return to it. As the time since she had been taken from the camp stretched from months into years, she began to have doubts about why her family had not come to rescue her. She knew that they could be as unable to find her as she was to get to them, but the seeds that Miss Grainger had sown about her not being wanted had started to grow within her. She would always remember what it felt like to want to leave but not have any money for a ticket, to contemplate escaping from the hollowness she felt inside by lying down before an oncoming train. The suffocating feeling of being chained to an unwanted life left her unaware of the scratch on her face and oblivious to the lone male figure standing in the shadows of the train station.

  10

  1921

  ELIZABETH HAD MET GRIGOR Brecht at the Chinaman’s shop, amongst the bags of flour, bins of potatoes, and crates of bottles. It was one of her rare trips there and Elizabeth was happily visiting with Xiao-ying. Grigor was buying provisions from Mr Chan and as they bartered, he kept looking over at the two girls.

  “That man’s looking at you,” Xiao-ying said with a grin.

  “No, he’s not,” Elizabeth blushed and looked at her hands.

  When she lifted her eyes, she saw that Grigor was still gazing at her. She quickly turned back to her friend.

  “He is nice-looking. Tall and thin. And look how blue his eyes are,” said Xiao-ying.

  Elizabeth took another glance. He was staring at her, but this time, as he caught her eye, he tipped his hat at her. She turned back to Xiao-ying who was grinning behind her hand.

  “You had better go back or Miss Grainger will send a search party for you,” Xiao-ying said, gently pushing Elizabeth towards the front of the shop. Elizabeth realised that Miss Grainger would be getting cranky with her for taking so long. She grabbed her packages of pepper and chocolate. Her breath quickened as she walked down the small aisle towards Grigor, who was standing near the door.

  “Hello,” he ventured, taking his hat off.

  Elizabeth’s hands felt sweaty and she could feel her heart beating
against her breastbone. She had grown taller and thin in this, her seventeenth, year, but still had to look up to meet Grigor’s gaze. She was unable to speak.

  “How are you today?” he added, turning his hat slowly in his hands.

  Elizabeth noticed that he had an accent when he spoke. “You’re not from here,” she thought to say, her eyes dancing between his face and her feet.

  “No. No, I’m not,” he said. “I’m from Germany. From a small city called Cologne. I have lots of interesting stories to tell you. And I will if you let me.”

  “I have to get back to Miss Grainger with these,” she said, holding up her parcels.

  “I will walk you back then.”

  “Oh, she will get mad at me if I bring you back,” Elizabeth said nervously, knowing that Miss Grainger would be sure to give her that look of disapproval that she so often signalled with these days.

  Grigor smiled. “Alright, I will walk with you as far as I can so Miss Grainger will not see. Then she cannot disapprove. My name is Grigor.”

  Grigor followed her up the steep slope of Church Street towards the corner of Hill Street, carrying her parcels for her. She dawdled as he spun magic around her with his thick voice. She thought Grigor attractive despite being so much older. He had broad shoulders and a strong face with eyes that fascinated her as much as the shape of Xiao-ying’s had.

  Elizabeth had heard of Germany from Miss Grainger and knew that Germans were less than human, crazed, monster-like devils. They ate children and did other terrible, unspeakable things, so unspeakable that Miss Grainger could never tell her what these things were. Looking into Grigor’s face now she couldn’t see what she was supposed to be afraid of. She just saw a man. If he had not spoken, there would have been no way to prove that he was not like everyone else in Parkes.

  “Do you know what comes from Germany?” he asked as they walked.

  “You?” she replied, enjoying the smile that spread slowly across his square jaw as she made her joke.

  “Yes,” he replied, delighting in the humour in her, “but what else?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Beer.”

  “But beer comes from everywhere.”

  “Ah, a common mistake and I shall not hold it against you. But I must clarify something for you. Only German beer comes from Germany. And German beer is very special. It is the best beer in the world. I say this objectively. Do you know why it is the best?”

  “No,” replied Elizabeth, supressing a laugh at Grigor’s enthusiastic seriousness.

  “The special nature of German beer dates back to laws made during the sixteenth century which meant that beer in Germany could only be made with hops, malt, yeast, and water. So, you see, all other beer is not real beer.”

  At the corner of Church and Hill streets, Elizabeth said she had to go. Grigor looked at her wistfully and said, “Meet me again. Let me take you to a moving picture.”

  She longed to — the chance of escape beckoned her—but she felt it was impossible. Mrs Howard would not let her and Miss Grainger would not help her.

  His knowledge of the world charmed her. She knew so little of it, except for Dungalear Station, the Howards’ house and that horrible place in Sydney where Miss Grainger had taken her. Within the Howard house she received either cruel words or frosty silence, so to meet a man like Grigor who wanted to talk to her made her feel like she was smiling inside.

  “Meet me here then,” he suggested. That she knew she could do. No one noticed as she slipped out under the darkened sky.

  She met Grigor at nights, escaping to lie under the stars with him. He made her laugh deeply, in an almost forgotten way, and he seemed to know many things beyond her comprehension. He was unlike anyone from Dungalear and not like anyone in the Howards’ home. Yet, like her, he was from faraway, displaced. Grigor told her things he thought she would like, tried to please her. He treated her as though she could think and feel. He showed her that a white man would not always be a Mr Howard. She grasped at Grigor’s slow show of affection.

  Grigor listened to Elizabeth when she spoke. Though shy at first, she opened up to him with things she held precious to her. She told him about her family, Kooradgie, her parents, and, most sacredly, Euroke.

  As more conversations passed between them, she grew closer to him. She would, as they lay in the grass together, lean against his arm, curl her hands around his large muscles, smell his smoke and pepper scent. As she grew more intimate and confident with him, more things fell from her lips, into the air between them, leaving her words for him to inhale.

  She would tell him stories of her time at Dungalear, of how her mother would scold her for day dreaming. And how she had overheard her aunt say that the daughter was just like the mother and ever since then when she was told to come down from the tree she would sing back, “No, Mother, I want to be just like you.” She spoke proudly about her father whose ability to provide food through the toughest of droughts meant that he was greatly respected and that the family was held in the highest esteem. And she told him of the time she and Euroke were fishing and he fell into the water and dragged her in as he slid. They were both laughing so hard that they couldn’t stand up and were at risk of drowning. Kooradgie, who stood watching from the shore, had scolded them for behaving in such a silly manner saying that they didn’t need white people to kill them off when they were capable of doing it through their own stupidity. They stood in silent embarrassment as he stormed off until they heard his laughter from behind the trees.

  With Grigor, she shared her lost brother, not her lost son. The lost son, who would be over a year old by now. This boy was too secret to speak of and she feared Grigor might react as Miss Grainger, Peter and Xiao-ying’s parents had done; he might withdraw his affection and grow cold towards her. Besides, telling of her family, especially Euroke, was hard enough. When she got to the most difficult parts of her story — being taken away from Euroke, her fear on the night she was locked in the gaol, the terror of the train journey with Mrs Carlyle — Grigor would fold her hands into his to let her know that he understood how much she had hurt, how much pain had made its home within her. She would press her head against his chest, feeling the strength of his comforting arms. He loved her most at those moments, this soft, vulnerable thing folded into his arms. No one had recognised this part of her before and she kissed Grigor tenderly for caring. He would respond by touching her until Elizabeth’s pleasure turned to fear — the shadow of Mr Howard hanging above them — and Grigor would stop. For Elizabeth, this also distinguished him from the other, omnipresent, white man.

  “One day, we will get home, both you and I,” he had told her, and she relished his vision for it affirmed her wishes and hopes, made her own dreams seem real and close. He was strong and dependable and could pull her from the circumstances that she found herself trying to survive in; he would not leave her on the train platform unable to return home.

  She told him stories, ones she could remember and was not forbidden to tell a man:

  Googar was married to two wives, Mutay* and Kukughagha. Kukughagha was the mother of three sons. One was grown and lived away from the home; the other two were just babies. They lived in a goolahgool.

  * mutay = possum

  goolahgool = a waterhole in a tree trunk

  One day, Googar and his two wives went hunting, leaving the babies at home. They took all the water with them to drink, filling their possum-skin bags with as much as they could carry. They left no water for the babies, who began to get very thirsty under the hot sun. Their tongues began to swell and they could not speak. They saw a man coming towards them and realised that it was their elder brother, named Kukughagha, like his mother. He asked where their mother was but the babies could not answer him. When he asked them what was wrong, they pointed towards the empty goolahgool.

  He asked them, “Did your mother leave you without water?”

  They nodded.

  Kukughagha, the son, told the babies, �
�I am going to punish them for leaving you here to perish. Go away and wait.”

  The babies complied, and when they were a safe distance away, Kukughagha, with a mighty hit, split the tree in two, right down the middle. As the tree split, water gushed out in a stream. The babies drank happily and bathed in the water. The pool grew bigger and bigger.

  When the hunters were returning to their camp, they reached a stream of water. They realised that their goolahgool must have burst and they tried to make a dam, but the water was rising too fast and the current was too strong. 4s the three hunters tried to cross the water, the three sons spied them. The eldest brother told the babies to tell the others where to cross the stream. This the babies did, following their elder brother’s instructions.

  Googar and his wives crossed the river where the babies pointed. Kukughagha, their mother, was getting out of her depth. She cried out “Ku ku gah gah. Ku ku gha gha. Give me a stick. Give me a stick.”

  Her sons answered from the bank. “Ku ku gha gha. Ku ku gha gha,” they laughed.

  The three hunters were drowned in the rushing stream.

  “You see, we are taught to watch children. And I need to remember that when I wonder why my family has not come for me yet. They are most likely just trying to find a way to reach me.”

  With each tale Elizabeth told him, Grigor responded tenfold. When he unwrapped his tales of other places she felt lifted out of her surroundings, felt the excitement of escape and the hope it encourages. He told her about the places he had been: London, Paris, Vienna and Venice. He told her about life in Cologne, of his own ceremonies, of Fasching and Oktoberfest, of masked balls and of cross-country skiing.