‘Yes, we met at your ceremony.’
‘Does that count?’ I asked, surprised.
‘Hardly, but in this instance, we’re proving useful to each other. Besides, she strikes me as a thoroughly nice person.’
‘I see,’ I said, but didn’t. The morning had already been strange. First I’d discovered Nicole Lenoir-Jourdan could speak German and French, and now we were going to tea with the governor’s wife.
Jimmy was seated in the front of the taxi and Nicole Lenoir-Jourdan and I shared the back seat. She turned to look directly at me. ‘Jack, I don’t know what might happen. You are going to have to leave this to me.’
‘Is this about, you know, Jimmy?’
‘Perhaps. It wouldn’t do to get our hopes up too far.’
Jimmy had remained silent throughout. Now he turned to the back.
‘Nicole ma’am, yoh gone done all this foh me?’
‘James, don’t be silly. The White Australia Policy as we know it, and the parody known as the “dictation test”, is plainly wicked legislation that preys on fear and ignorance, deliberately inculcated into the belief system of the Australian people by our politicians. I was born in Russia, but spent a lot of my childhood in Manchuria and early adulthood in Shanghai. In Shanghai I was regarded as a stateless person but eventually obtained Chinese travel papers, so technically I was Chinese.
In fact, I feel more Chinese than Russian, and even used to dream in Chinese. But my hair is blonde and my eyes blue so I am excused the dictation test and happily accepted as a citizen of this country. I am ashamed to say that until you came along, like so many others, I chose to remain silent – hidden away on a little island where I wouldn’t be confronted by racism, and where my conscience wouldn’t bother me unduly when people such as you are refused admission on the basis of a wickedly devised trick!’
Chinese! Nicole Lenoir-Jourdan Chinese! If she was Chinese, then I was a Hottentot!
We’d arrived at Government House and Jimmy was looking in his wallet for change to pay the taxi driver. I could hear the butler’s feet scrunching on the pink gravel driveway as he approached. There wasn’t time for any further questions. Then, just as I went to open the taxi door, Nicole Lenoir-Jourdan said, ‘Do you have your harmonica with you, Jack?’ I nodded, too confused to think why she would ask me – she must have known I always carry it.
If you’re a woman then you must know that women think differently from men. They can be deadset cunning and manipulative. They can make end results come about by taking the most obscure and circuitous routes most men wouldn’t even think of attempting, let alone even think of in the first instance. Patience is yet another weapon they employ, sometimes taking years to achieve an objective – which they never lose sight of. Paradoxically, it has been my observation that having finally achieved what they want, it turns out they don’t want it after all. But that’s by the by.
If Jimmy had a way of making people see things his way, making them do things they might not otherwise have done, Nicole Lenoir-Jourdan had a way of making things happen without people knowing they were doing what she required of them. That wasn’t to say she couldn’t be openly persistent and decidedly didactic, as she had been with me when she’d scooped me up off the library floor and decided I was worth the trouble of attempting to educate so many years before.
However, in her role as justice of the peace, a mere witnesser of signatures, she often managed to calm family feuds on the island, prevent cruelty to wives and children, shame the greedy and rapacious into behaving decently, and persuade young blokes who’d got a girl up the duff to walk down the band of gold to the altar. She knew more about land entitlements and fishing rights than anyone on the island, and could untangle a quarrel between two fishermen over a cray lease better than the Tasmanian Fisheries Department ever could, although never by direct interference. Now she was at it again, and I for one hadn’t a clue how we’d found ourselves on the steps of Government House for the second time, with the governor’s butler hurrying around to open the taxi door for us.
Morning tea took place in the music room, home to two pianos. The butler served Earl Grey tea and hot scones with strawberry jam and cream. After the disastrous session with Cuffe I guess we were still pretty upset, which in my case made me ravenous. Jimmy must have felt the same only more so, and we tucked in while Lady Cross and Nicole Lenoir-Jourdan talked about things women always talk about. You’d have thought they’d known each other for years.
Jimmy kept looking around, and I guess he felt much the same way as I did. This wasn’t the sort of place we’d expected to find ourselves. So we munched the warm scones and tried to sip the tea graciously, which was served in little bone china cups that looked so small in Jimmy’s hand they reminded me of those cups hanging in the miniature kitchen in the doll’s-house museum in Launceston.
Then, to our surprise, two young teenage girls and a woman in her early twenties walked in, the youngest of them carrying sheet music under her arm. Jimmy and I hastily put down our cups and jumped to our feet. All three were pretty in what Gloria would have described as an ‘English rose’ way. Lady Cross smiled as they entered. ‘Ah, there you are, darlings.’ She turned to Nicole Lenoir-Jourdan. ‘Let me introduce you to my daughters.’ She indicated first to the young lady who appeared to be in her early twenties, the eldest of the three. ‘This is Diana, then Susanna and our youngest, Karina. Girls, you know Nicole Lenoir-Jourdan, if only by correspondence, so now you’ve met.’ Nicole Lenoir-Jourdan smiled, but didn’t offer her hand, and both the two younger girls did a tiny little curtsy, smiled brightly and said, ‘How do you do, Miss Lenoir-Jourdan.’ Diana reached out and Nicole Lenoir-Jourdan took her hand and they exchanged greetings.
Then Susanna, who looked to be about sixteen, said, ‘Thank you so much for the music. I hope we do it justice.’
Lady Cross indicated Jimmy and me. ‘This is Mr McKenzie and Mr Oldcorn. You may recall Mr McKenzie recently received the Military Medal from your father, and Mr Oldcorn is visiting us from America.’
‘Korea, ma’am,’ Jimmy corrected.
‘Yes, of course – how careless of me. Mr Oldcorn is a Korean War veteran.’ The Cross girls greeted us politely, but once again they didn’t shake hands. They glanced at me and smiled and then at Jimmy. The two younger girls then immediately lowered their eyes, while Diana kept her blue eyes on Jimmy, smiling.
Oh Christ, not the ole black magic again! Which was what I’d come to call the almost magnetic attraction the various island sheilas seemed to have to Jimmy. I couldn’t even bring myself to imagine him and the governor’s daughter in a bucking scene.
‘Please ta meet yoh, ma’am. James Pentecost Oldcorn, but yoh can call me, Jimmy,’ he said in his most mellifluous voice, looking directly at Diana and extending his hand.
‘And mine is Jacko,’ I added, grinning like an ape.
‘Jacko and Jimmy Pentecost Oldcorn,’ Diana repeated, accepting his hand, her eyes dancing. Jimmy’s eyes remained fixed on Diana Cross, while hers were now sending out signals that you wouldn’t need to know Morse code to translate. Wouldn’t that half set the cat among
the pigeons! Jimmy held Diana’s hand just a fraction too long before releasing it.
I had this sudden vision of Wendy and me with Diana Cross and Jimmy standing at the altar of St Stephens in a ceremony conducted eccentrically by the Reverend John Daintree. The governor in his flashy ceremonial uniform, epaulets blazing and medals bumping each other out of the way on his chest, having just led Diana, radiant in a gown of at least a hundred yards of white tulle and holding a bouquet of white lilies, down the aisle, with Jimmy waiting at the altar, nearly seven foot tall, in striped pants and tails. Wouldn’t that be a turn-up for the books? Then when the Reverend Daintree asked, in my reverie, ‘If any man should know of any reason why this man and this woman should not be joined in holy wedlock, let him speak it now or forever hold his peace,’ Cuffe rushed in shouting that Jimmy hadn’t passed t
he dictation test!
I could see the whole thing in my mind’s eye. ‘Dictation test? What dictation test?’ the Reverend John Daintree would demand to know. Whereupon Cuffe would pull a piece of paper from the pocket of his shabby suit and give it to Helmut, who would read out something in Russian, and the Anglican minister would immediately translate it, then Chinese, Urdu, Maori, Greek and finally Swahili, and each time Reverend Daintree would rattle it off while often stopping Helmut mid-sentence to correct his pronunciation. Then Cuffe would protest that the dictation test was intended for the yellow-skinned nigger in the striped pants and tails. The Anglican minister would dismiss him with a wave of his hand and say, ‘Go away at once, you stupid old duffer. Can’t you see this is a vice-regal occasion, where I’m burying the past and christening the future in a wedding ceremony of the present! ’
Nicole Lenoir-Jourdan interrupted my daydream by saying to Susanna, ‘So you received the music and the translation of the lyrics?’
‘Oh yes, thank you. We’ve been practising like mad. I hope you all approve,’ the two younger girls said, almost simultaneously.
Then Lady Cross said, ‘Diana’s just returned from London where she’s been staying with Angela, my eldest daughter. The girls’ music teacher, Olga Linley, went over with Diana to study at the Royal College of Music in London, so the girls have had to work out their parts on their own. They’ve decided Susanna will sing it while they both play.’
I looked at Jimmy, mystified. The old ‘Gloria’s done it again’ feeling was rising in the pit of my stomach, but this time it was Nicole Lenoir-Jourdan, which just goes to show no woman can be completely trusted.
‘The girls wanted a new piece for the original-composition section of the Hobart City Eisteddfod, so they wrote to me at the Gazette and we started corresponding.’ She said it as if it was the most normal thing possible.
‘What, “Johnny, I Hardly Knew Ye”?’ I asked. ‘It’s hardly a new song.’
‘No, no, “The Fish Song”.’
‘“The Fish Song”? – but it’s in Chinese!’
‘Cantonese actually, not even that – a river people’s dialect,’ Nicole Lenoir-Jourdan corrected.
‘So how did you get the words?’
Nicole Lenoir-Jourdan glanced at Jimmy, who spread his hands and shrugged. ‘Hey, man! I don’t done nothin’, Brother Fish. I jus’ sing dem words in chink. Nicole ma’am, she done wrote dem down. She don’t say nothin’ about no translation foh Susanna an’ Karina in dat I-sted-ford.’
Nicole Lenoir-Jourdan, the picture of innocence, then said, ‘I do believe I mentioned earlier that I spent much of my late childhood and early adult life in China. After all, among other things I am a music teacher. I ought to know how to put a piece of music on paper – though I must say the melody proved surprisingly subtle.’
‘Oh, do play it with us, Jacko?’ Karina said. ‘Jimmy, would you sing it?’
‘I don’t know dem words in English,’ Jimmy protested.
‘No, of course – but we’d much rather you sang them in the original. Susanna and I will play piano. We’ve worked out parts, but we’ll take our lead from Jacko,’ Karina replied.
Susanna looked at me, appealing, ‘Please, please, will you play the harmonica? You make it sound so beautiful!’
What could a man do? The perfidy of the opposite sex had struck again, but I must say the governor’s two younger daughters were wonderful musicians. We messed around a bit trying a few things out and then gave it a go. Karina, who we later learned was twelve, and Susanna took turns to do the dramatic parts with each filling in the backing, which was never obtrusive, never drowning, allowing my harmonica to persist. I’d nod when one or the other was to do a solo and nod twice when it was my turn on the harmonica. Jimmy still believed Jesus had left him with an irreparably broken voice after puberty. All I can say is he owed JC a big apology. When we’d completed the song both Lady Cross and Nicole Lenoir-Jourdan had tears in their eyes, and Diana hadn’t once taken her eyes off Jimmy. Even if I say so myself, it was a bloody good effort all round.
Then the girls did it by themselves – Susanna singing the words in English at the piano while Karina took the dramatic instrumental parts. Susanna had a very nice contralto voice that suited the music beautifully, whereas a soprano might have been a little too shrill for the essentially Chinese melody. Listening to Karina without having to concentrate on playing, I realised what a talented young musician she was.
‘Dat da first prize, foh sure!’ Jimmy said, as we all clapped furiously. ‘Dat good, good music, man!’ He was right – the song had lost very little in translation, and hearing it in English highlighted how beautiful the lyrics were. Lady Cross and Nicole Lenoir-Jourdan excused themselves and left the music room.
After this we messed around a bit, having a bit of a jam session with the girls, who also played and enjoyed jazz. Diana knew the lyrics of just about everything. I know it sounds bloody corny when I retell it, but Jimmy whispered something to Susanna, who giggled, and next thing the opening chords of ‘I Only Have Eyes for You’ followed. I picked it up immediately on the harmonica, Karina worked the second piano, and Jimmy started to sing to Diana, who blushed furiously but held his eyes throughout, even when at the end the two younger girls broke up, unable to stop giggling.
Then the butler entered and announced that lunch was being served in the conservatory. Lady Cross and Nicole Lenoir-Jourdan were already seated when we entered the room. ‘You’ll just have to take pot luck – it’s the cook’s day off,’ Lady Cross announced, as she tossed a green salad and then added a bit of oil and vinegar.
Pot luck turned out to be cold cuts – ham, chicken, a half-carved leg of lamb – and, of course, the salad. I mean, if you give the salad a miss, that’s your Christmas food – you can’t do much better than that, can you? What’s more, there was jelly and ice-cream to finish. During the lunch I asked Diana if she played a musical instrument. ‘I’m afraid she’s inherited Ronnie’s ear,’ Lady Cross said, laughing. ‘Although she can beat us all at chess, including her father, who gets very cross.’
‘Mummy, that’s a terribly old pun.’ Diana said, laughing despite herself. She and Jimmy had spent most of the lunch talking to each other and you could see she really liked him.
If it hadn’t been such a sad day, it would have been a terrific one. On the bus back to Launceston Nicole Lenoir-Jourdan and Jimmy sat together and I had a seat to myself, so I had plenty of time to think. I hated what had happened to Jimmy. I was angry, hurt and humiliated. The dictation test had been so cynical, sneaky and hypocritical that it was ugly and well beyond being self-righteous. I felt ashamed for my country. Whoever had thought it out must have sniggered behind his hand, dead chuffed with himself, like Busta Gut when he suggested blaming the queen over a damaged parcel.
I simply had no idea what we could do next – the dictation test seemed an insurmountable hurdle. They could simply go on and on in endless languages. It occurred to me that if Einstein had been black and had applied for Australian citizenship he would have been rejected. But then, of course, he was a Jew, historically among the most rejected people on racist grounds anyway.
Then a bizarre thought occurred to me. What if Jimmy and Diana Cross became an item? I mean, not the silly fantasy with the Reverend Daintree, but really? Jimmy Pentecost Oldcorn, Colored Orphanage, Bronx street-gang leader and resident of Elmira Reformatory and the honourable Diana Cross, private school, probably finishing school in Switzerland or tertiary qualifications from some posh English university and Government House, Hobart. What would the bloody government say then? Would the dictation test still apply? ‘I’m sorry, sir, owing to your lack of Zulu Miss Diana regrets she is unable to dance tonight.’
But then I remembered Nicole Lenoir-Jourdan once telling me how important the correct bloodlines were to the English aristocracy, and I felt certain Jimmy wouldn’t be the right crossbreed. I felt momentarily pleased with the pun I’d accidentally made
, which was no worse than the one made by Lady Cross at lunch. But I told myself forlornly that the Dianas of this world might as well inhabit different planets to the Jimmys – such a conjoining could never take place in a million years. I’d grown thoroughly morose by the time we got to Launceston. What’s more, Wendy wasn’t home when I called from the telephone box at the airport, so I’d have to go all week without talking to her.
At Launceston Airport we had little opportunity to review the day. I felt pretty scruffy – the starch in my dress uniform had left deep green sweat creases across the inside of my elbows and behind my knees, and the sweatband on my slouch hat was soaked from the bus journey and the hot March day. Other people returning to the island were crowding around, talking to Jimmy and me. Charlie Champion, who owned a dairy farm on the island, cornered Nicole Lenoir-Jourdan about making cheese. He wanted to call his cheese ‘Queen Island Cheddar’ with a picture of the new queen on the wrapper, but Canberra had said no way unless he obtained a royal warrant. He wanted Nicole Lenoir-Jourdan to write to find out how you’d go about getting one. She explained that being granted a royal warrant wasn’t something you could apply for, but was personally granted by the queen. She suggested he refer to his cheese label as ‘The choice of all the Champions’. Charlie called her a genius, and then asked her to write a stinging rebuke to the Minister for Primary Industry, who was dragging the chain over an import licence for some piece of machinery from France that helped to make something called brie. So we couldn’t really talk about the day.
It wasn’t much better on the plane back to the island, for while she and I sat next to each other, Jimmy preferring two seats with the armrest up, we were forced to remain silent as the plane took off. After it had levelled out the noise wasn’t a lot better – we’d copped a seat over the wing next to the engine and had to shout to be heard.
‘What now?’ I shouted on one occasion. ‘It’s Mission Impossible!’
Nicole Lenoir-Jourdan leaned close to my ear, and said, ‘Louise Cross knows Zara Holt.’
Brother Fish Page 52
