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by Larissa Behrendt

  Not far from the school was an orchard. One day, walking back to the red stone buildings of the home, Bob and Danny ventured there. This was a serious breach of the rules since they were forbidden to leave the school and were now also trespassing. The post-war rationing limited the amount of food the boys received. After a successful but unsatisfying stint of stealing potato peelings from the chickens to satisfy their hunger, Bob had marked out a plan to raid the orchard, enticing Danny with a map drawn in the dirt with a stick.

  As the brothers became caught up in their adventure, the thrill of being where they should not have been became intoxicating. To Bob, the feeling of climbing over the orchard fence with a secret purpose reminded him of the feeling he had during the late summer games of cricket with Thomas and William, the cicadas ringing in the light breeze, and his mother calling out to them that it was bedtime.

  The rewards for their escapade turned out to be slimmer than their ravenous imaginings. The trees had already been plucked of their fruit, all naked except for one lemon tree. Danny’s disappointment about the size of the bounty was eclipsed by Bob’s sensual pleasure: the sweet, acrid smell. Bob had desperately peeled back the skin, enjoying the lemon scent that sprayed him. Bringing the fruit to his lips, he was unprepared for the rebellious reaction of his mouth, repelled by the unsuspected tartness. The comfort of the smell and the sensation of bitterness were irreconcilable.

  The citrus spray that lingered on his fingers consoled Bob, even after the smarting cut of the cane was brought swiftly down upon them. Folded against his cheek, the scent on his hands sent him off to a sweet dream.

  Apart from the smell of lemons, Bob was discovering other sensual pleasures: Annabel Stewart and a wet first kiss behind the chicken coop. He had asked her to meet him there because he had something to show her, he said. When she arrived, he leaned close to her. A fumbling kiss and a soft giggle proved to him that he could be admired. Annabel Stewart, with her curly brown hair, freckles and hazel eyes, and smelling of rose water, made Bob feel as though he was as good as everyone else.

  Annabel Stewart. Bob had thought there was no better creature on God’s earth than Annabel Stewart. Bob, would spend eight years in institutional care and one of the few highlights for him was Annabel Stewart. He had been drawn to Annabel. On his ninth birthday, Patricia had given Bob a copy of Frankenstein. He remembered reading Victor Frankenstein’s description of his beloved Elizabeth; it captured the way he felt about Annabel:

  She was docile and good tempered, yet gay and playful as a summer insect. Although she was lively and animated, her feelings were strong and deep, and her disposition uncommonly affectionate … her hazel eyes, although as lively as a bird’s, possessed an attractive softness. Her figure was light and airy; and, though capable of enduring great fatigue, she appeared the most fragile creature in the world.

  He often recalled Frankenstein’s monster and his question to his maker: “All men hate the wretched; how then must I be hated, who am miserable beyond all living things.” When his classmates had stared at him, blaming him for the impediments of a civilised society, Bob had felt that hatred. And like the monster, he wondered why he had been created in a way that meant that others would not like him. He felt loathsome — “When I looked around, I saw and heard none like me.” Bob feared that he may not be able to conquer his blackness, that he might be unlovable and alone. Annabel Stewart had shown him what being accepted felt like, but the fear of rejection fed a dark, recurring nightmare.

  Bob found himself facing a presence — more frightening and forbidding than his father. A fire raged between him and the figure. It seemed like a man but the apparition was distorted by the heat and smoke of the fire. He was a black shadow behind the fire. He beckoned Bob, held a hand out to him. Bob stood still. Terrified. Unable to move. Unable to speak.

  Bob had long since learnt that it was easier to be popular if you were like everyone else, and this also meant making sure that people didn’t know what you were thinking. Words, he thought, had great power. Words spoken aloud could never be taken back. The things that were said to him—the accusations, the facts of history — revealed the magic power of the word. His dreams for his future would have him speak words, as an actor or a lawyer, that would hang in the air forever like a gallery of ghosts.

  Bob thought he saw this power of words in another form: photographs were picture-ghosts. There was a picture of Bob taken in an orphanage line-up. In it, he was himself a ghost.

  Bob was fascinated with how the pinhole in a camera could invert an image onto film and then, after the film was exposed, create an invisible latent image that remained mysterious until revealed by placing the film in developing fluid. The negative would show the darkest regions of the image lighter and the lightest darkest, and there he could be white, as white as everyone else. His image was framed in chemicals that darkened in response to light. Only when the negative was placed between a glass plate and light-sensitive paper and then exposed to light would the print appear, re-revers-ing dark and light, black and white, on paper as proof, undeniable, for all to see. His father, through his photographs, captured people on paper, making them immortal. Disappointingly for Bob, just as his interest in photography blossomed, Grigor’s visits stopped altogether.

  Bob saw less and less of Daisy as she found her way around the home and the school. She had always been good at making people like her and now Bob saw her using the same charms that had made her so loved by his older brothers. She was able to read people, knew what they needed to hear, exactly the right things to say. By using that art, she had become the favourite of her House mother and father and most of her teachers. As she spent more time talking to adults, she became distant, almost dismissive of Bob and Danny. Sometimes she would pretend not to see Bob in the playground. When he came over to talk to her, she would seem distracted and impatient with him, as though he were keeping her from something more important, or she was embarrassed by him. He would catch her rolling her eyes with exasperation while he was trying to talk to her.

  Although Daisy’s slights hurt him, Bob felt oddly consoled that his sister had found a place for herself. He fretted about Danny and tried to encourage the other boys to include him in their games. Sometimes his friends would tolerate him, out of deference to Bob, but Danny was more often dismissed as too young, too quiet… too different. This worried Bob, who understood that being popular with others was something to be cherished, something that eased unhappiness. He wanted this acceptance, this popularity, for Danny too. Bob could work his way around situations, rules and personalities most of the time. He wasn’t one to question or challenge. Daisy was able to do this as well. Danny was more like Frankenstein’s monster than he was, Bob thought, especially since Danny was even darker than he or Daisy and so more obvious, more tainted. For this reason, Bob believed, Danny should have been trying the hardest to gain acceptance and to fit in.

  When Danny was grudgingly allowed to play games with his brother’s friends, because he was the youngest he always batted last and often the school bell would ring before he got his turn. Bob knew that his friends were unfair and tried gentle urging to get them to treat Danny better but, in the face of their taunts and their tricks, Danny would begin to complain or his eyes would swell up with tears. This would only make the older boys delight more in teasing him. In games of touch football, they would never throw the ball to Danny, or they would trip him over or punch him as they fell over in a tackle. “C’mon fellas,” Bob would say.

  Although Danny would often get upset, only once did he get really angry. In the heat of a summer lunch-time, Danny had been made to fetch the balls that went far afield. He was hot and exhausted. The older boys kept denying him a turn to bat, even letting boys who joined the game late hit before Danny. Bob finally intervened and insisted that his brother have a turn. Frank Phillips, urged on by Benny Miller, threw the ball high so that it almost hit Danny in the face. “Good one,” Benny Miller had roared as a second b
all whizzed past Danny’s head.

  A third ball went past, and Charles Wainwright, who was playing wicketkeeper, yelled “Out!”

  Danny turned around. “It was not,” he said angrily. “You pushed the wicket with your knee. I saw you.”

  As the other boys began to laugh, Danny got more agitated. Charles Wainwright shrugged his shoulders sheepishly. “You were facing the other way. How could you see me hit the wicket with my knee?”

  “You cheated.” Danny spat.

  “Now, now Blackie,” Benny mocked, “don’t start telling lies just because you were bowled out.”

  “I don’t tell lies. You do. You all do. You all cheat.”

  Danny threw his bat to the ground and stomped off the field. As he passed his brother, he glared at him and through gritted teeth said, “I hate you.”

  Bob felt indignant that Danny would blame him for the behaviour of his friends. He did find it hard when they would use names like “Blackie” because he feared that if he made too much of a fuss, they would call him that too. Danny didn’t appreciate how hard he had tried to get them both accepted by other boys. Danny losing his temper and storming off didn’t help things. This time, Bob would admit, the boys were pretty cruel and he didn’t see how it was funny to tease Danny so much. He remembered Danny clinging to him in the dark hours of cold nights and saying, “Don’t leave me.” The memory came back to him of the way he had felt on those first nights in the home when Danny had held him close and Bob had felt strong. This memory and the harshness of Danny’s angry words began to make Bob feel uneasy and he soon made an excuse so he could go and find his brother. Bob searched their dormitory, the toilet block, and behind the chicken coop but he did not see Danny again until dinner. His younger brother would not look him in the eye. It took days before Bob could get Danny to speak to him again.

  When Bob would look back over those years in the home, this period when Danny refused to talk to him was the worst.

  18

  1946

  PATRICIA HAD ALWAYS ENJOYED the time spent in her mother’s company with needle and thread, each focused on their own stitching. When they sat together at the kitchen table there was studious silence, but Patricia felt there was also something special at those moments which joined them together in caring for their family whose clothes they made and mended with such devotion. And although Patricia always sensed that her mother kept many secrets inside herself, it was at these times that she felt she came closest to being her confidante.

  “That’s good, Patsy.” her mother would say with an approving smile as Patricia learnt the crafts of dressmaking and embroidering. “You do lovely stitches. It seems a shame the boys don’t know how much work goes into repairing their clothes.”

  “I’m sure it’s far from their mind,” Patricia laughed, “when they are playing stacks-on-the-mill.”

  “Well,” her mother looked at her with a tender smile, “we know, Patsy.”

  As Patricia sewed in happy silence with her mother, her thoughts would race through the household goings-on. She would think about how to bring Daisy and Thomas closer, how to convince William that she was only trying to help him, and what toys she might make for Bob and Danny.

  Now, as she worked as a junior dressmaker in Madelaine du Pont’s shop, a terrace house in Strawberry Hills, her thoughts, as she stitched, would turn to those times she had spent with her mother.

  Madelaine du Pont had moved to Sydney from Paris during the war. She had worked for Coco Chanel and spoke of her former employer as though she had been her personal friend rather than just another worker in her large fashion house. Madame du Pont used the same method of dressmaking that she had been taught as a young apprentice in Paris. From her, Patricia learnt the tailoring tradition where, instead of using sketches, she used pins to drape and fit the garment directly on the body.

  “Madame Chanel would sometimes insist on up to thirty fittings for one dress,” Madelaine would recall airily. The poor models would have to stand for about six or seven hours until we could produce a blueprint from the muslin toile, which we used as a pattern for jersey of finely knitted silk and wool. I will tell you something: I was there when she made jersey fashionable.”

  Patricia spent most of her time making copies of the clothes Madelaine du Pont selected from fashion magazines. “I am a seamstress, not a designer,” Madelaine would say as she stuck the sketches for “ideas” on the wall. But Patricia found that she could look at cloth, its patterns and colour, see it hanging, folded and gathered and begin to imagine it as a dress or coat. She liked blood-red fabrics with gold embroidery or trimmings.

  “Ah, Madame liked that too, this red and gold you love so much,” Madelaine would reminisce. “I remember we made clothes in the 1920s, loose shift dresses, tunics, crepe de chine blouses, waistcoats and evening coats — dark and neutral colours adorned with Russian peasant designs. I will tell you, we are inspired by what we love and when Madame Chanel fell in love with a Russian Duke you could see it in her clothes. Madame was an artist but she was also a shrewd woman. After the turmoil in Russia, the aristocrats all moved to Paris, and to earn a living the women used their embroidery skills. Madame took advantage of that. We used their work in our clothes.”

  Patricia noticed that when Madame du Pont talked of her memories of life back in Paris they seemed much dearer to her than anything that occupied her now. Patricia would listen attentively, though as she slid needle through cloth her thoughts would drift back to her own happier times. “Nothing matters more than family,” she could hear her mother saying.

  “Such fine work,” Madelaine would sigh as she examined a jacket perfectly lined with material from which the matching dress was made. “We made them like this for Madame — the lining and dress the same. It was a new thing when we first started making them but it is quite common now.” Still looking at the neatness of Patricia’s handiwork she would sigh, “Ah, I wish I could pay you more for your work. But,” she would add cheerily as she looked from the garment to Patricia, “when we are rich, we will live like queens.”

  Patricia’s arrangement with Madelaine du Pont included her use of the low-ceilinged room at the top of the narrow two-storey brick house from which Madame ran her business. Patricia would work on the clothes from before eight in the morning until well after five. Madelaine would be in the shop from about ten to four. During that time she would show her clientele day dresses of jersey and satin tulle and afternoon and evening dresses of lace and velvet. Madelaine would examine Patricia’s work and cautiously encourage her young apprentice to create her own designs.

  “I am not sure about this one. It is a little inelegant. But,” she would pat Patricia on the arm, “I will show it and see. I do not want to discourage you. I will tell you, I remember so well how it felt to be so dedicated to the craft of making a beautiful dress. When I worked for Madame, I began as one of the arpetes, a young apprentice picking up pins and sweeping the floors. Then I became a petite main and then a seconde main until I became & première main. This meant I was responsible for the finished product and directed all of those who were below me. At the time I thought it would be wonderful to be a vendeuse, one of the sales people. They were assisted by the ex-models, the habilleuses. I didn’t get to do that there, but now I have my own little business. It is much better this way.”

  Patricia found the stretchy nature of the jersey a challenge at first but, with patience, learnt to overcome the difficulties by using a simple shape so the fabric almost moved itself into a dress. Her designs always resulted in more orders. After closing, she would remain downstairs working till late. Madame du Pont was in ever higher spirits as the interest in their clothes increased; her light-hearted playfulness always made Patricia smile. Madelaine would begin their day with a splash of Chanel No.5 on Patricia’s wrist. “Five was Ma-dame’s lucky number. Perhaps it will bring good fortune to us too,” she would chirp as the scent of the perfume filled the salon.

  Patricia’s p
leasure came from thinking about the day when she might, as Madame du Pont often declared, live like a queen. She would buy a big house and bring Daisy and Bob and Danny home to live with her. She would find Thomas and William and they would live there too. They would sit at the dinner table, laughing and talking and teasing each other. She would sit at one end of the table and Thomas would sit at the other. That, she thought, would be better than being a queen.

  With these daydreams in her head, Patricia would take the train on a Sunday to visit her brothers and sister. She always felt a mixture of apprehension and anticipation, her stomach unsettled and her mind racing ahead.

  She was concerned about Daisy and Danny whose moods could be vivacious or sulky and petulant. On some visits Daisy would be sweet and tender, chatting lightly and admiring Patricia’s clothes. Other weeks she was surly and spiteful, passing comments about how fine Patricia’s clothes were while her own were so tattered and unfashionable. She would constantly insist on new items — leather gloves, a velvet coat, black shiny shoes with a silver buckle, rose-scented perfume — and sulked if Patricia arrived empty-handed. As Patricia would try to explain that she did not have the money or could not find what she had been asked for, Daisy would pout.

  Patricia did not resent Daisy’s demands, her ingratitude at the sacrifice and effort made to appease her. When she looked at Daisy she could see the little girl who rode on William’s shoulders, the pretty girl she made frilly dresses for, the little girl they called “Princess”.

  And Danny. He was always so happy to see Patricia that his words tumbled out too quickly, but as her short trip crept closer to its end he would become quiet and hug her arm. His change in mood would pull at her heart.

  Bob attempted to make the best of his current circumstances. He was always cheerful and undemanding. Patricia remembered how brave he had tried to be at their mother’s funeral, hiding his tears as he put his arm around Danny.