Oddfellows

by Nicholas Shakespeare

  ‘That’s the stuff,’ in his English from Lakovsky.

  It was icy cold, like a blast.

  What was the flavour? She was curious to know.

  ‘Pineapple,’ his smile growing now.

  ‘How much?’

  ‘Threepence.’

  She drew in her breath. There was the smell of hot canvas.

  ‘All right, I’ll buy one.’

  Rosalind fished around in her purse while he filled a cone. ‘I’ve got sixpence only,’ giving him the coin, and in the same motion taking his ice-cream.

  He looked crestfallen – he didn’t have change. Mrs Rasp had used up his last pennies with her sovereign.

  It was suddenly all very irritating. ‘Keep the sixpence,’ she told him. He could bring it to her later, what he owed. She worked at Stack & Tyndall’s. ‘I will be there tomorrow.’ And the day after, she said to herself.

  It was easier than returning the cone.

  ‘But who do I ask for?’ he said.

  Her hazel eyes looked at him. ‘Rosalind Filwell.’

  ‘Rosalind Filwell, I will see you tomorrow.’ There was nothing casual about his promise or about the way he spoke her name.

  ‘I am Gül Mehmet.’

  The following afternoon in the drapery store, Mrs Rasp tried on a straw bonnet on which Mrs Stack had reduced the price. She planted her feet apart to assess herself in the floor-length mahogany mirror. Her flat white face was an envelope, but with nothing inside unless a thank-you letter from the League of the Helping Hand. She should stop trying to convince people she was not a whale, thought Rosalind.

  With a toss of her head, as though a young woman again, Mrs Rasp addressed Rosalind in the glass. ‘Do you imagine you’ll be here, behind that counter, for the next twelve years? Looking at people like me in the mirror? Don’t you have other ambitions?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  Mrs Rasp contemplated Rosalind’s breasts, which always aggravated her, and the accumulated years tumbled back. ‘There are good shops in Adelaide. You could always try,’ she said in a distant voice. She rotated her plump body, and laid the bonnet on the counter. ‘I’ll take it.’

  Mrs Rasp had left Stack & Tyndall’s by the time Gül Mehmet appeared in the doorway. His glance ricocheted around the store – tablecloths suspended from the ceiling; hats on wooden stalks, like planets on an orrery; the petticoats, stockings and brassieres – and dropped to the floor.

  After a moment of indecision, he advanced in long strides and placed a threepence on the counter, then withdrew his hand.

  Mrs Stack sat out of sight in the millinery room, talking in a loud voice to Ern Pilkinghorne about that day’s headlines in the Barrier Miner. The Ottoman Empire was being mentioned. And something about a Holy War.

  ‘Of course, the Huns are behind it!’ shouted Ern, who had seen action in the Eastern Transvaal with the Victorian Mounted Rifles.

  Gül turned to listen, but the news from Europe was getting muffled in the bonnets and a large notice which read: ‘If you’re not one of our clients, we’re both losers.’

  His eyes found hers. He asked if she knew what was going on. Had the Allied armies reached Turkey?

  Rosalind confessed that she hadn’t been following events. She sympathised with Mrs Brodribb, who only the night before had said to her, ‘It’s too depressing the news, so I listen to music.’

  Gül talked about the war for a while. Four of his friends had enlisted with the Expeditionary Forces. They’d left by train last week. He referred to the Gurkhas’ bravery in the fighting in Europe. He seemed to take great interest in the fighting.

  But his manner had altered from the previous afternoon. He was agitated about something. He looked at Rosalind with a brownish hawk’s eye that tore through her. ‘Why so many go to war?’ he asked, no longer in Lakovsky English.

  She pointed outside. ‘They want to go. They want to leave. There’s nothing much doing here.’

  In the street, a woman was shouting at a small boy.

  He had not followed her hand. ‘We are here.’ He said it with a laugh.

  Her eyes sparkled back in irony. ‘Yes, we are. But don’t you reckon that says more about us.’

  He looked at her reprovingly. ‘You believe we enemies?’

  ‘Enemies?’ Then, not wishing to be evasive, ‘How do you mean, enemies?’ and raised the back of her hand to her mouth to suppress a cough.

  ‘What you bin say to him?’ He threw the question at her.

  ‘Who?’

  His eyes were darker. ‘Meester Dowtah. You bin spoke to him!’

  ‘Mr Dowter?’ She looked back up, and her body rose and fell.

  ‘He bin say ice-cream dirty. He say I pay fine.’ It was all coming out now, in his husky voice. He was angry as two sticks. ‘He bin say – oh, why you tell him?’

  Hearing voices, Mrs Stack appeared. ‘Rosalind, is everything all right?’ Sometimes in Stack & Tyndall’s someone wanted more than a hat.

  ‘Yes, yes.’

  When she turned round, he had gone.

  In fact, Rosalind had said nothing to Clarence Dowter about what had made her cry out. The one person she had told, and not in a serious way, was her best friend, Mary Brodribb. That was in the Red Cross Society tea-room in Argent Street.

  Now, without quite knowing why, she sought Mary out after work. Had Mary mentioned the story to anyone? She was struck cold to discover she had, only that morning – to Oliver, of all people.

  Mary had repeated it to Oliver in Harvey’s as he pondered which ring to select from the black velvet tray he had asked her to pull out for him.

  Because, Rosalind accepted with a small smile, this is what you did in a place that wasn’t even on the edge of things, but in the centre of nowhere. A hole in the earth, and beside it a heap of earth, and no neighbours for hundreds of miles, and those neighbours that you were fortunate to have all of a sudden now in Egypt. So when someone walked into Harvey’s – a person who had a jokey way of looking at you that made you feel you were funny and intelligent – to detain them in the jeweller’s a moment longer, you ended up glancing over their shoulder at a brass bell clanging and a white cart clattering by. And then leaning forward, cheeks between two hands, you told them about a spoonful of buttermilk ice-cream with something revolting concealed in it, and even quoting Rosalind’s words: ‘It looked like a red worm!’

  It was clear that Oliver had felt obliged to report the matter to his uncle.

  And something else Rosalind learned from Mary. ‘That engagement ring was for you, Ros!’

  Rosalind wished that she had been able to respond with a better smile. After Mary confided in a voice from which she could not keep her envy that she knew where – and when – Ollie was intending to slip the gold-framed opal on Rosalind’s finger, Rosalind did not see Oliver on his knees in Umberumberka Creek, but the two black beaks of Gül’s eyes tearing at her.

  For the rest of that day, Rosalind could not shake off her concern that Gül had suffered all because of something she had told Mary in a giggle over a late biscuit. Clarence Dowter was such a stickler for the rules.

  In any case, the way ahead was not so clear or exciting as Mary imagined. A decision would have to be made. And before that an apology.

  He came into view at the corner of Sulphide Street, shaking his brass cowbell. From a long way off she could make out the green canopy shading the ice-chest, and the cart like the four-poster. She saw her parents on it, on the street in the brutal light.

  But when Rosalind waved at him, as if hoping to make reparation by her display of recognition, he gave her an offended stare and urged his horse on, kicking so hard against the cart that his left boot fell off.

  He had to jump down and retrieve it.

  Rosalind didn’t see Gül again for two more days in which she was conscious of her revolving passions. Part of her hoped he hadn’t noticed that she cared. But she caught herself scouting the streets and shop-fronts for a pale bay horse
, listening out for his bell. The Afghan had started to become interesting now that she had hurt him.

  A mistake had been made. She had made it. But it annoyed Rosalind that Oliver had not said a word to her. Wasn’t it her story to tell? Definitely, it hadn’t been Oliver’s to pass on to his uncle behind her back. So when the Sanitary Inspector approached her counter one morning and asked Rosalind to verify an allegation that concerned Gül Mehmet, she gave him a pale smile.

  The denial plopped out of her mouth like curdled milk. ‘No, it must be a misunderstanding.’

  Clarence Dowter had stared at her. ‘Are you sure about that?’ Everything about him was downturned and suspicious. Her father laughed with his whole frame, but in the case of Oliver’s uncle, only his lips moved on the rare occasions when he couldn’t conceal his mirth. They were motionless now.

  ‘Quite sure,’ said Rosalind cheerfully. ‘The ice-cream I had was delicious. It was pineapple.’

  ‘Pineapple?’

  ‘Pineapple. That’s right.’

  The Sanitary Inspector put his homburg back on and did not thank her for her time.

  The Red Cross Society tea-room was in the basement. Rosalind turned around to see if it was Mary descending the metal steps, but it was Mrs Kneeshaw, who gave her a friendly greeting and disappeared into the kitchen. That was when she noticed the woman in the corner. Thirtyish, long blonde hair, with a mole on the side of her nose, like the jewel on an Indian. She sat less than ten feet away, in the shadow of the spiral staircase, stirring her tea.

  They caught each other’s eye through the cast-iron banister, and the woman smiled a peculiar smile, then picked up her cup and saucer, and walked over. She wore a long print dress, plum-coloured, and sandals.

  ‘Don’t I know you?’

  Her gaze did seem familiar.

  Now where was it, each one wondered, that they might have met. In the drapery store? The grocery? The Methodist church?

  The woman put down her cup, and raised her arm until it was horizontal across her face and the distracting mole. Two green eyes looked over it at Rosalind, as though above a veil. ‘Remember now?’ and held out her hand.

  She seemed thinner than the shrouded woman in blue clustered about with five small children; more angular.

  ‘Sally Khan,’ and asked if she could sit down.

  Rosalind introduced herself. She had been keeping the chair for a friend. ‘But she’s late,’ she added superfluously.

  Sally was intrigued to know what had taken Rosalind to the camel camp.

  ‘I wanted to see if the Afghans would get me,’ Rosalind said humorously.

  ‘And did they?’

  Rosalind heard herself laugh. ‘I’m more worried about the Australians, to tell the truth.’

  Sally cast her an eye of surprised curiosity. ‘But you’re Australian?’

  ‘I suppose so.’ If having two sets of grandparents from Ireland made you Australian.

  ‘How old are you?’

  ‘Twenty-one. Nearly twenty-two.’

  ‘I remember twenty-two …’ as though it cleared something.

  Sally had been that age when she met her first husband in Port Pirie. Alastair. There was a sense of closeness around the wide mouth at his mention. ‘He was one of those difficult men. He cared more about his horse than he did about me. With Badsha, I am number one in his life. What did I ever get from Alastair but sneers. It was probably my fault. I did some stupid things. But.’

  She laid down her cup with a crack. She was sick to death of Australian men. They were so weak. There was something to be said for an ancient culture. It never made Badsha snaky if she went into town on her own.

  Rosalind admired her good humour. Sally seemed to have a happy life, although she did miss her ginger-snaps – and Mrs Kneeshaw’s were the best! Which was why Sally liked to pop in to the tea-room when her kids were at school. Only now and then, mind you.

  Then she was all apologetic for gabbing on so much. There weren’t many Australian women in the camp, and Badsha had no gift for talk. She came here when she wanted to thrash things out in her mind. She thanked Rosalind for being a sympathetic listener. If there was one thing she couldn’t bear, it was being told to shut up. ‘I don’t get to my age to be having someone always yelling at you. Or to be crawling to them for every penny. Badsha gives me half of everything he earns. Like I said, with Badsha I am number one. You’re not eating those?’

  ‘Help yourself.’

  Sally took the biscuit with a grateful smile. ‘I’ll have one more and shove off.’

  Eventually, Mary arrived. She was sorry to be late. She had bumped into Oliver on his way to the South Mine. They had stopped to chat about his opal ring, for which he had left a deposit, and about his calling in to Harvey’s to pay the final instalment.

  Rosalind was leaving Stack & Tyndall’s at the end of a trying Friday afternoon when she heard Gül’s bell again.

  She continued on down Oxide Street and then stopped and checked a non-existent watch, and paralysed by her own recklessness, turned and trod in heavy steps along the pavement she had once tripped over, scraping her knee, when she was a girl.

  There was a cardiac thump underfoot. Horses tethered beneath shop verandahs jerked back on taut reins. Rosalind was accustomed to muffled subterranean explosions, although since August these had become less frequent. New was the reverberation in her chest.

  She saw the white cart trundling along Argent Street and walked towards it with a face that Gül immediately knew was for him.

  The fracture in his glance came from what people like her had done to him, she told herself. He shook the reins, but she grabbed the harness and held it. She knew how to stop a cart.

  His horse snorted like a flag unflapping. There was the smell of animal sweat.

  She raised her eyes. ‘I have something for you,’ and dug into her pocket.

  Curious, he looked down at what she had given him, coiled in his palm like a young tiger snake, before awkwardly stretching it out: a lace from one of William’s boots.

  Rosalind waited for Gül to thread it before she questioned him. And though he was not in the mood to talk, she did eventually get it out of Gül: what Oliver’s officious uncle had said when he called at Lakovsky’s ice-house in Blende Street.

  This was the story Gül told.

  Dowter interrupted Gül in the little front room, damping casks, and asked him what he was doing, and Gül said, ‘Damping casks.’ Dowter then said, ‘You will get into trouble.’ Gül said, ‘How will I get into trouble? Mr Lakovsky makes the ice-cream in that room over there that has been made by the rule – as you know.’ Dowter then stepped into the refrigeration room, but on this occasion not to check that the motor was functioning, or that the temperature was at 22 degrees below freezing point, or that none of the cans had their lid off, or that his instructions to Lakovsky as to the concrete floor had been carried out. The Sanitary Inspector seemed to be looking for something else.

  Whatever Dowter hoped to find, it was not in the cans that he emptied with tremendous fastidiousness onto the floor and examined in messy succession.

  Dowter was on the point of leaving when he saw a rolled-up object at a lean against the wall. He walked over and unravelled it with a kick. He bent down, a deceptively cheerful expression on his face, and plucked out, with no apparent effort, a length of reddish wool.

  Looking at Gül, Rosalind remembered the rug she had sat on in the camel camp, its strange patterns and motifs, lozenges and zig-zags, woven in brown, crimson and indigo. With unusual clarity, she saw Gül laying out his mat in the refrigeration room, where no one would see him, to say his noon prayers. Later, some loose strands must have brushed off him when he was filling a can, and fallen in.

  So my guess was right, she exclaimed within herself.

  ‘And you haven’t heard from him again?’

  Gül shook his head, but he could not shake from his mind a very angry Meester Dowtah threatening him with a large fin
e.

  Rosalind pieced it together; it was easy to piece together. There was only one reason why Clarence Dowter had taken no further action. He did not possess a sample of the contaminated ice-cream, as the Pure Food Act demanded. Rosalind had swallowed the only proof. And felt a tickle in her throat from the woollen ghost of it.

  ‘He was angry because he realised he couldn’t fine you.’

  Rosalind was so absorbed by where her thoughts were leading that she scarcely registered Gül saying he had to go – he had glimpsed the flustered shape of Mrs Lakovsky, his boss’s wife, pushing a large perambulator across the street. Rosalind watched him kick the side of the cart, and was pleased when his boot stayed on.

  The incident brought them together. Whenever Gül’s horse and cart appeared, Rosalind felt an internal tugging combined with a surge of relief.

  How often did they meet in the next five weeks? There were blanks which no one would be able to fill in. But it wasn’t hard to bump into each other in Broken Hill.

  It became harder to tear herself away. Rosalind’s fear of being discovered in conversation with a ‘Turkey lolly’ was mingled with an unfamiliar feeling, a loosening of something inside her in which excitement and possibility were present too. His skin might be brown, and yet Gül had a heart not so different to hers, and a good heart, it seemed to Rosalind.

  She would not have been able to talk in a coherent way about their relationship, if that is what it was. It was something private, mysterious, and she felt it spreading. She began to spend the money that she had been saving for her wedding dress on ice-creams.

  People who observed Rosalind with Gül saw a young woman at the head of a queue of snottering children wiping their noses and bawling at her to get a move on. Sometimes she stood there with Lizzie, who from the start associated Gül with the sugary tastes that she liked so much. Over the past three years, it had become automatic at mealtimes for Rosalind to contract into a state of vigilance – to ensure that Lizzie didn’t choke on her food. But ice-cream was safe, the way it slipped down your throat. Good for invalids, too, apparently.