Meet Alice

by Davina Bell

  Contents

  1 INTO THE TWILIGHT

  2 A MILLION TINY DOTS

  3 WHILE THE MUSIC PLAYS

  4 NEWS AND APPLE TEACAKE

  5 A HEAVEN FULL OF DANCING

  6 THROUGH THE RAIN

  7 MEANWHILE

  8 THE HAZY DUSK

  9 JUST A DREAM

  10 A SPECIAL DELIVERY

  11 THE LAST SUNDAY

  WHAT LIFE WAS LIKE IN Alice’s Time

  FROM CHAPTER 1 ON NAPOLEON STREET

  Meet the other Australian girls

  As Alice walked out of her Friday dance class and into the wintry afternoon, she was met by two of her favourite things in the world. One was her best friend, Jilly, who had waited outside for an hour reading so they could walk home together. The other was a sunset as bright as flames. Down the hill, beyond the arch of peppermint trees that hung over Forrest Street, the air was glowing.

  ‘Jilly, look at that!’ said Alice, her face to the sky. ‘Have you ever seen anything prettier?’

  Jilly snorted. ‘What, the sky? You’ve seen it every day of your life.’

  But I haven’t, Alice thought to herself. Not this one. The setting sun burned like a hot, rosy ball – as red as Jilly’s hair. The pink sky was streaked with gold trails like the tracks of a plough. The horizon was a purple smudge over the navy sea, and the soft night breeze smelled of salty ocean and wood fires and home. Alice rose up on her toes so she could be closer to it all, feeling her ankles twinge with the delicious ache of so much ballet.

  ‘How was class?’ asked Jilly as they set off.

  ‘It was heaven. Miss Lillibet made us do rounds and rounds of devéloppés and a new port de bras.’ Not everyone had kept up, but Alice had loved every second. She sighed happily as she remembered the feeling – a lightness and brightness, as if she were covered in little stars. She’d felt it since she was tiny, dancing to the gramophone on the big soft rug in Papa Sir’s study. And even after seven years of lessons, she felt it each time she crossed the ribbons of her ballet shoes over her ankles. Which was every day at the moment, with all the extra classes she’d been doing and practising down in the greenhouse whenever she got a second.

  ‘Do you think Miss Lillibet will put you on pointe soon, Alice?’

  ‘Oh, I hope so! I am still quite young, though. Perhaps I’m not good enough yet.’

  ‘Rubbish,’ said Jilly. ‘You’re the prettiest dancer that ever lived.’

  ‘I wish your mother would still let you come to class – you were good too, Jilly.’

  ‘No use wasting time wishing,’ said Jilly briskly. ‘I wasn’t half as good as you. Besides, Mother’s got some strange ideas about Miss Lillibet.’

  In an instant, Alice felt her neck get hot with anger. What on earth was strange about beautiful, elegant, perfect Miss Lillibet?

  ‘What do you mean strange?’

  But before Jilly could answer, the loud clink of a bell rang out from the bottom of the hill near the Village. Alice and Jilly turned to look as a bicycle shot up towards them, past the big houses wrapped around by their shady, wide verandahs, and the big rambling gardens where cows and goats and chickens wandered. Against the sunset, the rider’s curls flashed like sparks.

  ‘Alice,’ said Jilly, blushing, ‘isn’t that –’

  ‘Teddy!’ Alice cried. Her big brother Teddy could ride further and faster than anyone. He could pedal round Devil’s Elbow with Alice and her siblings all on board and still have enough puff to sing rounds. George, who was ten and came next in the family after Alice, dinked on the crossbar, and Mabel, the next after him, sat in the big basket up the front. Little, who was six but tiny, would sit on Teddy’s lap, and Alice would squeeze behind him with Pudding, their baby, who sadly wasn’t a baby anymore, on her back.

  ‘Oh dear,’ said Jilly, smoothing her hair madly.

  Alice smiled to herself. Jilly was always very sensible, but she went to pieces whenever Teddy was near – tall handsome Teddy with his dark tumbly hair, just like Mama’s, and eyes the spit of Papa Sir’s, as blue as the river, which they could see from most of their windows. Jilly wrote little poems about Teddy by moonlight, which she read to Alice when they were quite sure that they were alone. Alice would never have said so, but Jilly was not actually very good at poetry.

  ‘Tink,’ he called to Alice as he sailed past them, not even puffing. ‘Look at that sunset! I’m off to the river to paint it – oh, hello Jilly. Come down – both of you,’ he called over his shoulder. ‘Tink, you could do your stretches there. Got to fly before it’s gone!’

  ‘Shall we?’ asked Alice, as they watched him get smaller and smaller. ‘Before it’s too dark?’

  Jilly sighed. ‘I’ve got to do the milking.’

  ‘Oh, of course, sorry. I’ll come and help you. It’s always faster with two.’

  Since Jilly’s papa and big brothers had gone off to fight in the Great War in Europe, she was the only one left to do the heavy chores, and her mother was terribly, horribly strict. It didn’t seem fair to Alice – her mother didn’t mind in the least about waxing the floorboards and milking Honey, their brown cow, at exactly six o’clock, and learning bits of the Bible by heart. And though Alice’s father, who they called Papa Sir, had been at war for three years now, they still had Teddy to watch over them.

  ‘No, really, it’s fine,’ said Jilly. ‘I’m pretty quick now. Will I see you over the weekend, Alice, or do you have extra dancing?’

  ‘Only for some of it. Come round tomorrow afternoon. Little’s baked shortbread.’

  Jilly looked at the ground. ‘Sorry, Alice – Mother’s hosting the Red Cross ladies tomorrow and I’m to take all the knitting to the depot when they’ve finished.’

  Now it was Alice who was blushing. Peppermint Grove was filled with ladies who knitted and sewed for the soldiers, and put on fetes and balls to raise money. But since the war had started four years ago, Alice’s mother hadn’t stitched a sock or rolled a bandage, and everybody knew it. Mama said she didn’t believe in fighting – that it all came to no good for anyone – and even when Papa Sir had gone to war, she wouldn’t change her mind. Jilly’s mother said that was a disgrace.

  ‘Go and see Teddy,’ said Jilly. ‘You mightn’t be able to for much longer.’ As soon as she said it, Jilly winced as if she wished she hadn’t.

  Alice stopped sharply. ‘You’re not talking about the war, are you? You know Teddy doesn’t believe in fighting.’

  ‘Sorry Alice, I overheard Mother talking, that’s all. Teddy’s seventeen soon, and, well …’

  Alice started to walk very quickly, not minding the thump of her ballet bag against the backs of her knees. ‘That’s just rubbish.’

  ‘But your father went – Papa Sir, I mean.’

  ‘Not to fight, Jilly. He’s a doctor – he went to help people, not kill them.’

  Jilly looked uncomfortable.

  ‘As if Teddy would hurt anybody,’ Alice continued. ‘And he’s too young, anyway – you can’t enlist before you’re eighteen.’

  ‘But lots of boys do and no one seems to mind,’ panted Jilly earnestly, trying to keep up. ‘My brothers did. And you know how people treat cowards round here – white feathers in the mail and whatnot.’

  ‘No. Teddy’s staying here to take care of us.’

  And though it made her heart hurt to think of Jilly milking alone, the idea of life without Teddy was so unbearable that Alice sprinted off into the twilight, hoping that if she ran fast enough, she’d leave it behind forever.

  As Alice ran along Lovers’ Walk, the path by the river, she thought back to Teddy’s latest painting, which they’d put up on the wall just last night. When you looked at it from across the parlour, it was the most perfect copy of their tall brick house wi
th its wide verandah, honeysuckle up the wall and the rope swing on the ghost gum. He’d painted their tennis court to the left, the orchard on the right, and their bright green lawn, as big as a field, sloping gently down to the fence line. But if you went up close to the canvas, you could see that the whole scene was made up of thousands of dots – millions – that seemed to shimmer like tiny coloured stars with the magic that Teddy gave them. Castle of Dreams – Ours, he had written underneath. Now why would he ever leave that?

  ‘What’s eating you, Tink?’ asked Teddy, looking up as Alice stormed round the bend and dropped her bag next to his easel. ‘Tell Uncle Ted.’

  ‘Everything,’ she said, kicking off her shoes and not knowing where to start. She found a soft patch of dirt and slid into the splits, laying her chest down and inching her fingertips towards the sliver of moon, white as milk, hanging over the water. Every night, Alice would stretch and point and glide and unfold until she felt that she had done everything that a perfect ballerina would be able to do. A real ballerina. It was all that she wanted to be.

  Her thoughts wandered back to poor Jilly, out doing the milking. Even though Jilly’s house wasn’t much different to theirs from the outside, on the inside it felt a little like a church and a little like a gaol. Jilly had once told Alice that her father ran a cold bath in the evening and let it sit all night so that by the morning, when he jumped in, it was extra specially cold. Papa Sir had liked nothing better than a warm bath, a pipe and a hot cocoa all at the same time, while someone sang to him from outside the door. It’s a wonder that Jilly turned out so nice, thought Alice.

  ‘Teddy,’ she said as she switched legs, ‘why aren’t we like other families? Not that I want to be,’ she added hurriedly

  Teddy paused with his brush in the air. ‘There are lots of ways we’re different. Which way are you thinking?’

  ‘Well … how Mama doesn’t really believe in things. You know, like going to church, and having a cook or a governess or anyone, and being on those committees that make things for the war – you know, like Jilly’s mother does. And how she has a job.’

  Mama was brilliant with numbers, and had been asked to work at a bank in Perth when the manager had left to go to war. They were all so proud of her that they didn’t mind one bit that it meant extra chores. Besides, Little was magic at cooking, if someone helped her lift the pans. And even though he couldn’t talk, they could always call on Uncle Bear, Papa Sir’s brother who lived at the bottom of their garden with Pan, the handsomest, smiliest dog that Alice had ever met.

  ‘Mama doesn’t care what people think – she just wants everyone to do what they love,’ said Teddy. ‘Why do you think I paint and you dance? And Mabel sings like a blooming bird, and Little can cook like some kind of fairy chef? And Pudding, well, who knows what she’ll do?’

  ‘Love people,’ said Alice smiling, thinking of their littlest sister, who was three and so blonde and plump and soft and sunny that she was always being squeezed but didn’t mind a bit.

  ‘If we were off to church or knitting socks every second, we wouldn’t have time for any of that. Good grief – can you even imagine what a governess would make of Mabel?’

  Alice laughed as she pictured it. Mabel absolutely could not be quiet. Mama said it was because she was eight, and that eight is a chatty age. But Alice could just imagine Mabel as an old lady, chattering away to a young man at a shop counter while people waited behind her, looking at their watches.

  ‘As for Mama’s job,’ Teddy went on, ‘well, she works because now she can. You mightn’t remember, but before the war, women mostly stayed at home with their crochet and croquet.’

  ‘Some still do,’ said Alice, thinking of the ladies in their frilly white dresses who took tea on their verandahs every afternoon.

  ‘Perhaps around here, where they’re not short of money. But others are working in factories and shops – there are even some at the front, driving ambulances. And the really clever ones like Mama, they’re showing that they can do a man’s job just as well,’ said Teddy, frowning at his canvas. ‘Now, is that really what was on your mind?’

  Alice looked out across the mauve water to the curved white sandbar that sliced into the bay. She took a deep breath. ‘Jilly heard her mother say to someone … that you might go and leave us. To fight, I mean.’ She couldn’t bear to look at Teddy, so she put her hands on the ground and flipped her legs over her head, pushing into a handstand with her body straight and strong, just as Miss Lillibet had taught her.

  Teddy looked up. ‘I think the real question here is whether you’re going to leave us. They’d go wild for you in the circus, Tink.’

  ‘Don’t be funny,’ said Alice crossly from upside down. ‘I’m serious, Teddy. You’ll be seventeen soon. Are you going to war?’

  Teddy put down his palette and slowly wiped his brush on a rag, looking out at the river. ‘To leave you all here alone to go off and blow up some poor fellow I’ve never met?’ he said. ‘And not be able to paint or think or see you dance again? I don’t see anything brave or noble about that – I don’t care that I’m one of the only chaps still here. Let them call me a coward, but you’re more likely to run off and join the circus than I am to ever go to war. You have my word. Now, come and tell me if I’ve gone overboard on the purple.’

  As she bent over his painting in the dying dusk, Alice smiled. In his tiny dots, Teddy had scooped up everything Alice loved about the river and sprinkled it onto the canvas: the way the water reflected the sky, like an echo; the tight, thin circles, like silver bangles, that formed when a bird flew by.

  Papa Sir, who was from England but had been everywhere, had told her that other rivers were brown and thin. But the Swan River – their river – was broad and wide and blue as a field of sky.

  ‘That’s why I stayed here, Tink,’ he would say. ‘A town on the edge of the ocean with a river like a piece of the sea.’ Alice thought of him now, so far away. He would have loved Teddy’s painting too.

  ‘I think it’s your best yet,’ Alice said, as snuffling noises came from up the path.

  Suddenly there was Pan, wagging his tail. Alice put her arms around his silky back. ‘Dear Pan. Has Little sent you to call us home?’

  By the time Teddy had packed up his paints, lights were twinkling across the river and the sky was deep and full with night. As they made their way up the hill, Alice couldn’t help doing jetés – big ones – across the lawn, happy that they were home and safe and always would be, no matter what anyone said.

  ‘ARE you sure?’ asked George.

  ‘Yes! I can hear her – listen!’ said Mabel.

  They all tilted their heads towards the door and, sure enough, the ripples of Mama’s harp were flowing from Papa Sir’s study.

  ‘Go on then,’ said Alice.

  George leapt up and pulled his special bundle out from behind the parlour curtains and Little fetched his map from under the sofa. Each evening, in secret, they would stick coloured pins in his big map of Europe to show where the armies were fighting. Britain’s soldiers were the blue pins, and it didn’t look like they were doing all that well, thought Alice, as he spread everything out.

  They had to do it all in secret because Mama wouldn’t have any talk of the war in the house – or anything sad or serious. ‘Alors! I will not ’ear it,’ she would say in her pretty French accent. ‘Life is not for worry and gloom. We must eenjoy it – every second.’ But recently Alice had begun to wonder if there were some things that you couldn’t pretend away – big things that you needed to think about, even if it wasn’t pleasant.

  As Mama played, they would listen to records while they looked at the map and went through George’s war scrapbook, trying to figure out where Papa Sir might be. The first year he’d been gone, he’d sent letters and postcards every month with pictures of London and Paris, and silly rhymes and sketches.

  But the gaps between letters had grown bigger and bigger, and they hadn’t heard anything now for almost a
year. They used to write to him, too – every week – but one awful day before Christmas, they’d got a big packet in the mail of all their letters, tied up in string and marked ‘Return to Sender’. And since then, they’d heard nothing. Mama had said it was because he was busy, and then she wouldn’t talk about it again. But looking at the maps each night in secret was their way of keeping Papa Sir close to them. Somehow it helped.

  ‘Let’s have some boogie, then,’ said Mabel, skipping over to the gramophone.

  ‘Wait a second, Mabel,’ said Alice. ‘Where’s Teddy? He hasn’t disappeared again, has he?’

  Nobody answered. For the past couple of weeks, Teddy had been gone at all sorts of odd times and no one knew where he’d got to.

  ‘Oh well, we’ll have to start without him. Has everyone done their chores?’

  Mabel clicked her tongue impatiently. ‘I’ve gathered up all the clothes – some people’s were very dirty and did not smell good – and put them on the porch for Uncle Bear to take to the Chinese laundry. And I’ve got the money to pay the grocer – though we won’t be paying for those horrid, mushy sprouts.’

  Alice smiled. Mabel loved being in charge of money, and nobody could bargain with a shopkeeper quite like her. ‘And Little?’

  ‘Everything’s put away in the ice chest, and I’ve filled the tray with more ice. The oats are soaking for our porridge, and there’s stew for Uncle Bear’s lunch, and I’ve wrapped the sandwiches in paper for school tomorrow.’

  Alice looked at Little with wonder, and for the millionth time she thought that she wouldn’t have believed someone so small could run a kitchen so perfectly if she didn’t see Little do it every day.

  ‘Oh, and Pudding’s fed Tatty and Beaker.’

  Beaker was Pudding’s hen, and as jolly and pleased to see you as Pudding always was. Tatty was their grumpy billygoat who didn’t do much at all.

  ‘And I’ve chopped the wood and laid the fires,’ said George. ‘I did some calculations and I’ve laid the sticks at very precise angles, Alice, so that they have the best chance of catching alight.’