by Joy Dettman
An ant, investigating Tom as a meat source, was making its way up his trouser leg. With thumb and middle finger he flicked it, and watched it fly. Those red ants could give you a painful nip. Maybe they didn’t like his boots in their territory. Head down then, he studied two ants manhandling a beetle back to their nest so they could feed the kids. A man’s life wasn’t much different.
He hadn’t been born to country living. He’d come here in late 1920. It wasn’t a bad little town. The cow cockies and orchardists along the river were doing well, thanks to the cannery and butter factory in Willama. There was not much to do socially, a few concerts and dances, the movies once or twice a month, Murphy’s gramophone parties, Dolan’s pub parties and church on Sundays. Tom never felt what he thought he ought to be feeling when he sat in a pew listening to a parson sermonising, so since Rosie had lost interest in churches, he’d stopped going.
The city was in his blood; he’d watched it grow, loved the place, always something to do, something happening in the city. He’d made this move thinking it might be better for Rosie – which had pretty much been the story of his life: doing what was best for Rosie and hoping that things might get better. They hadn’t got any better. During the last few years, the heat and dust and flies had turned a menopausal mope into something else entirely.
‘No good thinking about it, Thomo,’ he said, digging a hole with his heel and emptying the bowl of his pipe into it, burying it.
A morning pipe always got the memories flowing, and it wasn’t healthy for a man to go digging around too deep in some of them. It didn’t alter what was into what might have been, so why bother doing it? Let them gather dust, get buried in the dust.
His digging in their territory had upset the ants. They poured out now from beneath the log. He spread his feet, looked between them and sighted a cigarette packet. Someone else had sat here and not too long ago either. That packet was clean, and inside it was a lone fag. He claimed it, checking it for ants before dropping it into his trouser pocket. Someone could have been sitting on this log last night, having a smoke while watching that girl, or watching the bugger who’d put her there, or resting after he’d put her there.
Tom was on his feet and walking through to the road, searching the ground as he went. Nothing. He stood at the roadside for a while, looking at a dark patch of clay inside that tepee of branches he’d watched Kurt construct. A bit of blood there, but Rachael would have lost a lot more than that. Where had she lost it? Where did he start looking for it?
Mason’s herd of white-faced steers began to move closer and Tom wasn’t fond of horned steers. With the heel of his boot he dug a long arrow, pointing from that tepee back to his sitting log. Rob’s bike still lay beside the road – he’d ridden up with the ambulance and it wasn’t safe leaving it there where those steers could trample it, or some picker might come along and help himself to it. He picked it up and walked it across the road, lifted it over Reichenberg’s fence, then followed it behind the wire until the mob went by and a horse rider drew level.
‘Morning, Mr Mason. Just a word or two if you’ve got the time. I’ll grab my bike and walk along with you.’
phone calls
Sunday, 6.10 am
Rob Hunter hadn’t given a thought to his bike. He’d lost half an hour somewhere and he couldn’t believe it was gone. Willie Johnson, having heard the ambulance, assumed it had been called for his sister. He was waiting on the hospital veranda when the ambulance pulled in. Ten minutes of that lost half-hour must have been spent in trying to explain to Willie why Ruby couldn’t be moved across to Willama, that she’d lost too much blood and was more dead than alive, that moving her would be the final straw. Five minutes more had gone into explaining why Willie couldn’t give her some of his blood, in attempting to explain how the wrong blood could do more harm than good.
‘I’ll go across with her in the ambulance. They can check out my blood over there, can’t they?’
They could. There wasn’t much they couldn’t do at that Willama hospital. Rob had ended up asking Irene to draw off a bit of the boy’s blood, and to steal a teaspoonful from Ruby, if she could find a teaspoonful left in her. The last of that half-hour had gone into loading Ruby’s infant and the Johnson blood on board the ambulance, and sending it on its way. He watched it disappear over the hill, watched Willie disappear down the post office lane, then walked inside to his telephone.
At six-fifteen Miss Jessie Martin, fifty year old sister of Miss Lizzie, the postmistress, was woken from her sleep for the third time that morning. She made the connection between Hunter’s hospital and the Squire house, and heard every word spoken, until Dr Hunter told her that if she didn’t clear the line immediately, he’d personally give her an enema the next time she came complaining to his wife of women’s trouble. Miss Jessie didn’t know how he knew she was listening in, but he always knew. She cleared the line fast, but she’d heard enough.
Up the narrow stairs she went, faster than she’d climbed them in many a day, and into her sister’s room. ‘The ambulance was called over here for Rachael Squire and they’re taking her to the Willama hospital so it must be bad. Doctor Hunter just called Nicholas Squire.’
Lizzie, newly woken from sleep, was a picture no artist could paint, or would want to paint – her upper and lower dentures in a jar beside her bed, her pink scalp glowing where her sparse hair parted, her pink nightgown clinging.
‘Oh, my word. Did he say what happened to her?’
‘Helen answered the call first, then her father came on the line and told her to get off. Doctor Hunter said he was sorry to be the bearer of bad news, and that the ambulance had been called for his daughter, who’d been injured this morning. Then Mr Squire started asking questions, then Doctor Hunter said –’
‘Nothing was said about what happened?’
‘No, Lizzie. I thought it sounded like an accident, though. Has been injured sounds like an accident to me.’
‘Yeeees,’ Lizzie said thoughtfully, raising herself up on her pillow. ‘If it’s something internal, they don’t say, “has been injured”. Not a word about this, Jessie. Not to anyone. If this gets out before it’s supposed to, Squire will know where it came from and he’ll have my job this time. Hunter didn’t say anything else?’
‘No. Or if he did I didn’t hear him. Doctor Hunter knew I was on the line, Lizzie. He knew it.’
‘He didn’t know,’ Lizzie scoffed, ‘not for certain. He’s just a tricky old coot, and he always was. I would have ignored him. If you get off while they’re still talking, then they hear it, which I’ve told you before. Just stay on it and don’t breathe.’ She turned her back to her sister, inserted her dentures and settled them in with her tongue.
‘I wonder what happened to her.’
‘Whatever happened, it must have happened earlier on, because I placed a call to Squire’s around three-forty but they didn’t wake up. I had to call for the ambulance at quarter to five, but Sister Hunter told me to clear the line, then she waited until I did. I’ve been up and down all night, Lizzie, and I’m worn out. Then the ambulance woke me again. It’s a wonder it didn’t wake you. That bell rang all the way through town, then it seemed to turn around and come back, or that’s what it sounded like to me.’
‘You should have woken me.’
‘You told me last night that if you got to sleep, I was to make any connections and not to wake you even if a space man from Mars wanted to be connected up to the Prime Minister.’
‘What time was this?’
‘After midnight.’
‘The ambulance, girl. What time did it get here?’
‘Oh, just after five-thirty, and it didn’t leave until a few minutes ago.’
‘Tell me exactly what Hunter said.’
‘I told you. All he said was, he was the bearer of bad news, and “Your daughter has been injured”. That’s all I heard. It must have been something serious or they wouldn’t have got the ambulance across.’
&n
bsp; Attempting to wring more information from too little frustrated Miss Lizzie. She sat smoothing the thin greying hair from her brow with one hand while seeking her glasses with the other. Perhaps somehow they would enable her to glean more information. ‘She’s had some sort of an accident by the sound of things.’
‘Yes, Lizzie. And as if those Squires haven’t had enough trouble these last years. They’ve had nothing but trouble since they lost young Freddy. And Arthur’s wife, leaving him as she did, and taking his son with her. Mr and Mrs Squire doted on Jennifer and that little boy.’
Lizzie had ongoing problems with Nicholas Squire. She’d almost, though not quite, given up listening in to his calls. Without further comment, she pushed the sheet back and rolled a pair of tree-stump legs free of the bed.
From the waist up Miss Lizzie was not a large woman, but something had gone wrong in utero. She had hips and thighs designed for an overweight woodcutter, which curved absurdly into a female waist and average upper proportions. Her lower regions, usually concealed by the high counter of the post office, drew many glances when she came out into the open.
‘Pass my wrapper, Jessie, then make us a cup of tea. I won’t be doing any more sleeping now. Something should be done about those young larrikins running around the streets until all hours of the night.’
‘You said last night that someone was going to do themselves an injury. Did you have one of your funny feelings, Lizzie?’
They sat together in the kitchen, drinking tea, discussing Lizzie’s premonition of doom and hoping there’d be another call to connect which might offer more reliable information than Lizzie’s premonitions.
Two peas in a pod, Miss Lizzie and Miss Jessie Martin, close-set eyes, narrow, beak-like noses, thin-lipped mouths. Lizzie’s features had settled early into worldly intolerance, while Jessie’s expression was long-suffering. They had the same tree-stump legs, though Jessie’s thighs and backside could not yet hope to compete with her sister’s; however, she was nine years Lizzie’s junior and thus had time to expand.
Laws unto themselves, that pair of stickybeaking old maids, they’d been delivering telegrams and steaming open likely letters for thirty years. The telephone exchange offered a more immediate form of gratification.
At six-thirty Helen Squire was in her father’s library, willing the telephone to ring. She wasn’t supposed to be in the library, but before her parents left for Willama, her father had told her to listen for the telephone. There was a second line in the hall, which was the one he’d meant her to listen for. She knew that, but she’d asked to go to Willama with them, had pleaded to go, and he’d ignored her, so she’d come in here to listen, and to read old letters – not his private letters, only the ones addressed to Mr and Mrs Nicholas Squire.
Safe to read this morning. The trip to Willama took over half an hour, then the same back, and if they had to talk to the doctors and see Rachael, then they weren’t likely to get back until eight at the earliest.
The letters were in the bottom right hand drawer of his desk, two rows of them, still in their envelopes and placed there in chronological order. On her knees, head down, she read, replaced, selected and rejected until she found a letter from Arthur.
My dear Mother and Father,
News of Freddy’s death was a great grief to me. I hope you can take consolation in knowing that he died, if not in the action, none the less, for his country’s sake, and with good work to his credit.
He was recognised as one of our best flyers. I have heard it said that our chaps seem to be better at it than the Germans or even the French. From what I have recently learned, he was flying the machine in such weather as kept most flyers indoors. Would we expect anything less of our Freddy?
I try to take comfort in knowing he died in the way he would have chosen. We could not ask more for him, other than to hope his death was swift and painless.
This place is hell on earth, and death not always swift and painless…
‘You shouldn’t be in here, Miss Helen.’
Mrs Johnson stood in the doorway on silent feet. Servants should have been made to wear clodhoppers with metal heels.
‘I . . . Father said to stay close to the telephone.’ Helen stumbled to her feet, backing away from the open drawer.
‘He didn’t tell you to listen to his private telephone or to go through his private papers, Miss. It’s not proper. He wouldn’t be pleased about it, you know.’
Big grey eyes too wide, plump lower lip ever ready to tremble, Helen grasped that lip between her teeth, looked at the letter in her hand and not at Mrs Johnson, self-elected watchdog of Nicholas Squire.
‘You hop out of here now and we’ll say no more about it. Has there been word of your sister?’
‘They wouldn’t be there yet.’
‘Doctor didn’t say what had gone wrong?’ Like her postmistress sisters, Mrs Johnson was after her own restricted information. That was where the resemblance ended. She was string-bean thin, dried out and wrinkled. Her breasts too were dry, for the first time in thirty-odd years. At fifty-four, her youngest child three years old, Mrs Johnson hoped her childbearing years were finally over.
‘Father said the ambulance had taken her to Willama, that’s all,’ Helen replied, placing Arthur’s letter on the desk then drawing her hair back from her face. The ribbon had slipped off her plait in the night and her hair now hung loose. She stood twisting a hank of it around her hand, thinking of Rachael, and what she always did when caught out by Mrs Johnson. She didn’t stand twisting her hair and looking guilty; she put on Nicholas’s imperious voice, waved her hand and said, ‘On your way now, Johnson.’ Mentally Helen practised it, visualising the wave of her hand – except, if she said that, she’d sound nasty. Rachael sounded funny.
‘It’s to be hoped all goes well for her then, Miss. Now, put that letter back where you found it. We don’t want to go causing any more fusses, do we?’ she said.
Helen slid it back into its chronologically correct place, closed the drawer and stood waiting.
‘Will you have some breakfast then, Miss Helen?’
‘No thank you.’
‘Tea and toast, perhaps?’
‘No thank you.’ If she ate now, she’d eat again when her parents came home and that Willama dressmaker didn’t appreciate having to let seams out.
‘Do you want me to fix that hair up for you then? We’ll hear the hall telephone bell from your room.’
‘Not always, and no thank you.’
‘You know how it snarls up when you leave it hanging like that. I’ll put it up for you, nice and tidy.’
‘No thank you, Mrs Johnson,’ she said, tossing her hair back as she walked from the room.
‘The doctor didn’t wake Mr Arthur up then, with that telephone bell?’ No reply, just a shake of her head. ‘You might give me a call when he wants his breakfast, Miss Helen. We don’t always hear him from the kitchen – not when I’m tossing the pans around, we don’t.’
Sound didn’t carry well in Nicholas Squire’s house. It was too large, too long. The L-shaped passage was wide at the front of the house, then it went through an arch near Nicholas’s library, turned a sharp corner and became narrow, the second half of the passage a poor relation of the first. Built over a period of ten years by Molly Squire, Nicholas’s grandmother, she had either run short of money, or come into money. The front rooms were opulent, each ceiling ornate, the walls ‘papered’ with imported printed hessian. There were six bedrooms in that north-facing section, each one unique. Only Nicholas’s guests slept in them.
The family lived and slept in the second half of the building, down the long and narrow passage. Arthur’s room was opposite Nicholas’s, Helen’s mother, Olivia’s, was opposite the girls’. There was the blue room, where Father Ryan slept when he stayed, and he frequently stayed, then the gold room opposite his. They had a family dining room and sitting room, a wall of folding doors between them so the two could be opened into one long room. A wall
of glass doors led out to a raised terrace and an enclosed courtyard on the eastern side of the house. A rear passage also led to that courtyard. It was used as the family entrance. Nicholas parked his car behind the courtyard wall.
The kitchen – a necessity, but not the sort of place those within the house generally concerned themselves with – was in a separate construction approached via that rear passage. An enclosed walkway protected those coming and going with the meals prepared there by Mrs Johnson and her daughters. Mrs Johnson’s sneaking shoes were whispering down that rear passage towards the walkway when the telephone rang.
Helen ran to answer it, eager for news of Rachael. Mrs Johnson, as eager, was not many steps behind her.
Joan Hunter didn’t want to speak to Helen. She asked for Mrs Johnson.
‘Good morning,’ the housekeeper said, holding the telephone as if it were a viper poised to strike. She listened a moment, then shook her head. ‘I’ll speak to my husband,’ she said before hanging up the earpiece and walking away. Helen turned the handle and rang off.
‘What did she say, Mrs Johnson?’
‘A private matter, Miss Helen.’
‘You didn’t ask her about Rachael?’
Mrs Johnson turned, looked at her for an instant, shook her head and continued on her way to the kitchen.
the dairy
A comforting sound in the early morning, horse’s hooves on dust, milk urns rattling – but this morning it didn’t comfort Kurt. His mind was not on his work as he filled milk billies with the long-handled milk dipper, collected coins, made change from his moneybag that was as worn as the old dipper. Too many billies filled too often.
The horse had her mind on the job; she knew when to stop and when to go. Constable Thompson was a regular, always one pint, and like the proud poor he paid daily. Kurt forced the lid on and walked next door to the post office. A distrustful household this, the Martin sisters left an enamel jug behind their trellis gate, the measurements imprinted on the side. They received their pint, and no more.
