Mattie had his arms stretched out for the cuckoo, the tractor discarded for this more interesting toy. She knelt with it, let him grip the head and pull the beak.
‘Bird,’ she tried. ‘B … bird.’ It was the best idea. She would collect him on her return, healthy and happy, not dragged from pillar to post.
‘Burr,’ said Mattie, showing his two teeth. It was almost his first word — but no point in pretending a milestone had been reached when it had not. She let him have the cuckoo. Already the beak was awry and one wing yanked sideways to a jaunty angle.
Out of the silence came the sound of an approaching motor, between the avenue of trees towards the house. The dealer, any minute. Rufina stood again and considered the big vitrine. It could go out into the hall, since it was on castors. She shifted Mattie to one side, folded back a corner of the carpet and gave the case a preparatory shove. The castors squealed, as she expected — the thing hadn’t shifted for decades. Mattie gave a little wail, startled away from his investigation of the bird. A feather stuck to his wet chin.
‘It’s all right,’ she told him, huffing at the case. It stood as high as her shoulder and was a good three foot long. No — too big and too heavy. Instead, she would carry out a smaller one, the Christbird with his mirror pond and raffia reeds, and get a sense from the dealer if he would like to see any of the others. It was becoming fashionable now to castigate and lecture on the waste of life, the cruelty, the morbid fascination.
The case was the size of two kerosene tins perhaps, easily managed and not too heavy. As she lifted it from its stand she heard footfalls on the front steps and voices — the dealer must have brought advisors with him. Through the window above Mattie’s head was a clear blue May sky, not a cloud; they would have had a pretty drive up from the coast, which with luck will have put them in a buying frame of mind. Hurrying now, in order to be able to greet the dealer when he came in — Mr Simmons, that was his name — she caught her foot in the folded-over carpet. Over she went, the case flying from her grasp. As she went down she saw it fall towards Mattie and the remains of the cuckoo — the feathers, he could choke on the feathers! — and smash to pieces, her hands spread among the shards. When she lifted her head, blood from a gash in her brow obscured her vision of four sets of legs with a pair of elastic sided boots the closest.
Above Mattie’s wailing she heard Irving’s voice, ‘Are you all right?’ and then quickly afterwards from Lena, ‘No, Mattie!’ and a woman, not Lena, raced forward in ancient plimsolls to gather up the baby, who had been crawling towards his father through the glass. Woozily, Rufina struggled to her feet; she must have bumped her head on the edge of the door — her hands were cut as well — but the arrivals were gathered around Mattie, who was really screaming now. ‘It’s in his knees,’ from Jellicoe and they were leaving, running towards the kitchen with the baby to find tweezers and Condy’s Crystals and whatever, leaving Rufina clinging to the door jamb with blood dripping from her hands like stigmata.
The woman with them. It was Evie. Or was she losing her mind again? Rufina had looked up from the glittering floor and seen for a moment Evie’s girlhood face before the older worn one slipped into its place. Evie hadn’t been smiling — but then why would she, walking in on shattered glass and a screaming baby? She had looked astonished. And curious. Yes, there was curiosity and astonishment. And also compassion. Compassion! After all this time.
Rufina picked her way out to the front verandah and sat woozily on the top step, leaning against a post. She would not be able to think of anything to say to her. Where would they start? Would Evie expect a scene of forgiveness or of mutual recrimination?
And why didn’t someone come to see if she was all right?
In the end it was Evie who came, bringing a washcloth and a basin of water. She set to, picking her flesh clean and bathing the cut in her head. For the first while they did nothing but concentrate on the task — there’s a bit, there’s another — but stole glances at one another’s faces.
‘Where is Mattie?’
‘With Irving. Having a cuddle.’
‘Is he all right?’
‘Yes, he was lucky. Only a couple of scratches, not deep.’
‘Good.’
‘A mouth full of feathers, though. How did he do that?’
A water dragon had come out of the garden and sat staring at them, motionless as stone. It was warm today. Soon, as the weather grew cooler, the dragons would hide away.
‘Hello, little fella,’ said Evie.
‘Hardly little,’ said Rufina. It was about two and a half feet long, with spines as big as teeth.
‘We have lots of them where we live,’ said Evie, and she told Rufina about her place on the Hawkesbury, and her husband Reg, and how they’d been able to weather the hard times with their garden and fishing, and how Reg sometimes took day-trippers out on his boat for money. It seemed there had been no more children. Rufina wanted to ask her about how she had missed Helena, if at all, how it had been for her when she first went away. She could see in Evie’s careworn face that her life had not been easy, even though the picture she painted was idyllic. Her ministrations were gentle, patient, though by the way she squinted and brought her eyes close to Rufina’s open palm she could do with a pair of spectacles.
‘There,’ Rufina pointed, ‘and there. Missed a bit.’
Irving came out onto the verandah behind them, Mattie in his arms, and at the sudden movement the water dragon scarpered.
‘You see the dragon, Mattie?’ Irving said, and Rufina wondered if he’d glanced in her direction at all. ‘What’s going on?’ he asked now in a harder tone, and she knew the question was directed at her.
‘I’m sorting out a few things.’ She was evasive. She’d tell him her plans but not now.
‘Nan says you’re talking about building a new house.’ The cat was out of the bag already.
‘Whether I do or not it’s just an idea. I want to modernise.’
‘Modernise,’ he echoed softly. From inside came the sound of glass being swept up, and Helena and Nance’s voices.
‘We don’t need all this stuff. I feel sometimes as if I’m suffocating in it all. And besides, it’s not to my taste.’ It was an outburst she hadn’t intended to have in front of Evie, or anyone for that matter, Evie now dabbing at her cuts with a solution of Condy’s and wincing in sympathy as she did so. Rufina felt a rush of affection for her, unbidden and odd. Despite Evie’s long absence, or because of it, she was one of her longest standing associates in Australia. The Schneiders had gone back to Germany, the last letter full of anxiety about the possible new war. ‘What if we are rounded up again and imprisoned?’ Frau Schneider had worried. They were approaching their sixties now and wouldn’t be able to bear it.
Rufina wouldn’t be able to bear it either, if it happened. But it wouldn’t!
She stood up, Evie with her and offering a steadying arm.
‘I’m all right.’
Mattie gazed at her, as did Irving, their expressions of casual concern identical. It would be difficult to stick to her plan. The more she saw them together the harder it would be to separate them. She held her arms out for the baby but Irving shook his head.
‘Bill and Jell have gone down to the river for a spot of fishing. Making the most of their last day off. I’m taking Matiu down to take his mind off his wounds.’
Rufina’s eye fell on the bandage carefully wound around the baby’s right hand and found that all she could do was nod.
‘Does he need changing?’
Gamely, Irving lifted the baby and sniffed at him. ‘No,’ and he was gone, bounding down the river steps where fat Bacchus, removed a year ago from Eddie’s wing, stood as a lonely sentinel. He was a poor copy from the nineteenth century and not worth anything.
‘Handsome lad,’ observed Evie. Rufina said nothing, wondering where the dealer had got to.
‘Twenty-two,’ he told me.
‘That’s right.’
&nb
sp; ‘You must be forty.’
Was Evie judging her? She wouldn’t dare.
‘He loves him, doesn’t he? The baby. Talked of nothing else on the trip north.’
‘Did he …’ Rufina turned back from the end of the verandah, where her feet had led her to watch her baby go down to the fishermen. She would observe Evie closely for any hint of falsehood. ‘Did he ever talk about going back to New Zealand?’
As far as she could tell, Evie showed genuine surprise. ‘No. Why would he? In clover here. All in his name now, isn’t it?’
‘Upon my death, yes. Until then I hold it in trust for him.’
‘Well. You don’t look like you’re going to die any minute, so it isn’t his.’
‘Yes it is.’
It was Evie’s turn to look suspicious. ‘He thinks it’s in his name now.’
‘It’s our own private business, Evie. Nothing to do with you.’ Irving should never have discussed it with her.
‘What about Helena?’
‘What about me? What are you saying?’ Helena had appeared at the front door with a pan and brush, the pan full of glass and balanced on top of it the remains of the cuckoo.
‘Provision will be made.’ Rufina had made a little, but Irving would inevitably give her more. Helena stood, looking from Evie to Rufina, waiting to be enlightened. When neither woman would meet her eye she said, ‘What do you want me to do with this?’
‘The rubbish heap. Where else?’
A glance passed between mother and daughter and Rufina realised she would have to modify her tone while Evie was here.
‘You must have got a surprise, Rufe, to see Evie again. I told her the story of the swaggies and how you thought one of them was her.’
‘Won’t you call me Ma?’ asked Evie plaintively. ‘You said you would.’
‘No. I’ve thought about it and I won’t. Nan says if anyone is my ma it’s her, since she raised me.’
Rufina sighed. She wasn’t interested in any of this. She lifted her hand to make the dismissive gesture she had so many times to send Lena away and thought the better of it.
‘You’re my girl, Helena,’ said Evie. ‘Nothing will change that.’ She went to her and kissed her on the cheek. Helena’s eyes welled.
‘You’ll take her back with you, then,’ asked Rufina, ‘to the Hawkesbury?’
‘If she wants. Not much for a young woman there, or for Jell.’
That’s right, thought Rufina. She’d forgotten that they’d got married quickly, just before they went away with Irving. She hadn’t attended either the service or the breakfast, hosted by Irving in Eddie’s wing.
‘And besides,’ Helena burst out, ‘I’m going to have a baby!’
Then it was Evie’s turn to get teary and Nance came out to see what the fuss was all about. The remains of the mess in the trophy room were abandoned and the women disappeared to the kitchen for cups of tea and cake to celebrate.
Alone on the verandah again, Rufina wondered bleakly why it was that she was so often left to her own company when she enjoyed it less and less. She leaned over the railing and looked into the shrubs for the water dragon but it wasn’t in evidence. After a while she followed the others down to the kitchen and drank her tea at the table with only half an ear on their chatter. Nance was exercising her claim on Helena, giving her all kinds of old wives’ tales on what to eat and how much rest she should take, even though she had never had a child herself. Evie petted and cooed and encouraged her to eat more cake, though the girl’s dress was bursting at the seams.
Rufina found herself thinking about love, about forgiveness, how Lena had somehow excused her mother for abandoning her for all these years. She saw Evie’s joy at the prospect of a grandchild. She wished she could confide in them about her plan to leave Mattie in Sydney, to keep him safe, and even as she wished it she knew, suddenly, that she wouldn’t be able to carry it through.
Helena caught her eye and gave her a tentative smile. ‘They’ll be able to play together,’ she said, patting her stomach, ‘Mattie and this little one.’
Rufina nodded. ‘I’ve got some dresses you can have. The ones I made when Mattie was on the way.’
‘Ta!’ Helena beamed a real smile across the table then, Matthew’s even broad smile, and launched into a plan to take Evie to see Ma as soon as possible, since she was once again poorly and confined to her bed.
Someone was knocking at the screen door — the dealer, whom Rufina had completely forgotten about.
‘No answer round the front,’ he said, a sweaty little man in a brown suit and felt hat.
‘I’ll be with you in a minute,’ she told him. He was staring at the cut in her forehead. ‘We had a little accident.’
*
Mr Simmons, as suspected, was not at all interested in the specimens, extinct or otherwise. Neither did he want the heavier pieces of furniture, but a price was agreed on the gloomy oil paintings, silver candlesticks and bone china tea set. Rufina helped him pack them into the back of his Ford truck. ‘Simmons Second Hand and Antique Dealers’ in gothic lettering along the sides and ‘A Fair Price For Your Curiosities’ on the back.
Not so fair, thought Rufina, watching him go down the driveway, a rising plume of dust and smoke lit golden in the afternoon sun.
Irving and Mattie were making their way back from the river and she went to join them at the top of the steps. Her spirits were lighter, floating. It wasn’t just the casting off of the belongings of the dead, it was the change of plan made for the wellbeing of the living, a change made not so much in her head but her heart, while she sat with Nance and Helena and Evie. There would be no kindly stranger in Sydney to care for Mattie, someone she could not possibly trust entirely because the woman would be just that, a stranger. She would go alone to Germany and leave Mattie here, among the people who loved him, and return to him just as soon as ever she could — even if, God forbid, only in spirit.
PART IV
2013
1.
Matti Fenchurch
WAITANGI DAY AND THE FAMILY HAVE GATHERED AT MY son’s place at Coogee above the sea. We’ve had roast lamb, beer and wine, and the guitars out, and now it’s mid-afternoon, thirty-six in the shade, and there’s a fair bit of dozing going on among us oldies. The women are in the kitchen doing the dishes, God bless them. I can hear my Aussie daughter-in-law’s shrieking laugh. The teenagers have gone down to the beach, so it’s just the koros and the tamariki in the bright afternoon yard, the oldies and the bubbas dozing and waking.
Each time my eyes open it’s to the Sydney sun slicing off the ocean, blinding as the blade of a butcher’s knife, so I have to close them again straight away. It’s enough to make you long for home, for the grey-green light, for a slow walk in the bush dripping cool with recent rain. Straw hat repositioned, I breathe in the mingled distant salt of the sea and the closer car fumes from Coogee Bay Road and the spice of hot gum from the trees in the garden and the frangipani in flower.
Lovely. The smell of home. This home. There have been so many, on both sides of the Tasman. Close my eyes, remember Evie’s story of the first home, the story she told on that rainy 1961 night in a Kings Cross pub. It was the days of the Kiwiroos, when bands like mine were in high demand in Sydney. I remember she started around midnight and didn’t shut up until the sun was high. At first she was just another drunk old lady with too much makeup, ogling me and the boys while we sang, but she reckoned I looked just like a brown Matthew Fenchurch, and that she’d noticed that even before she’d seen my name under the picture on the playbill outside, and she’d had to come in. It was Calypso night. We were all in bright shirts and too-small straw hats, singing Harry Belafonte and the like. In a break I sat with her at the bar and she said, ‘You must go to Jarulan. You must go back and see it.’
Sitting here in the sun with my little granddaughter asleep on my lap, fifty years after I heard the story, I can still recall her cracked, smoky voice reeling on and on, telling me more than she th
ought she was.
*
She had waited for me after the show, fending off the barman who wanted to throw her out, since she wasn’t their usual club clientele — the young South Sea Poms and Maori and Aussies that flocked to hear us at the Taboo in the Cross. From the stage I’d noticed her, a skinny old lady joining a Congo around the dance floor and between the tables, everyone singing along loudly ‘In the New Zealand isles where everybody smiles’, all the young Kiwi misses shaking their nonos like they never do at home. ‘They don’t mind a little earthquake, to them it’s just an earthquake, shake shake shake shaking in the Shaky Isles, shake the blues away’. When they did ‘Nobody But Me’ the old lady had her arm around one of my cousins, who was over on a trip. ‘Nobody but me!’ they all roared. More and more New Zealanders were coming every month to Sydney and I loved it. There were times when it seemed that nearly everybody I loved was all together in one place, in whichever club we were singing in, five nights a week. Party time.
At the end of a number she reached up from the dance floor to tug on my trouser leg. ‘Who’s your father?’
I thought she was having me on.
‘Go on, love, tell me his name. Was it Irving Fenchurch?’
The band was playing the intro to the next song. I remember I had an ominous feeling, as though I was about to learn something about my father that would change my life. She looked like a little wizened witch, smiling up at me.
‘I’ll wait for you,’ she said.
Much later we were on stools at the high polished bar, me in my Calypso rig, silly too-small hat and lei and Hawaiian shirt that wasn’t true Calypso but at this distance from the Caribbean people neither knew nor cared. Evie lit another fag with her little monkey hands.
Jarulan by the River Page 37
