Stillwater Creek (6 page)

Cherry Bates stood in the side entrance to the hotel and watched the children streaming down the hill. When she heard footsteps behind her, she didn't need to turn to know they were Bill's. He stood so close to her she could feel his breath on her hair. She stepped forward one pace.

‘Lovely little kiddies,' he said and sighed.

‘Noisy little blighters.' Cherry didn't want to encourage any sentimentality. ‘I bet Miss Neville's glad to see the last of them. Rather her than me any day, even though you work me like a navvy here.' She laughed though. There were a few customers in the bar and she didn't want them to think she wasn't a good sort. Wouldn't be good for business, and the good Lord knew they could do with more business. It might stop Bill griping on about all the expenses and maybe they could fix some of the rotting woodwork and get the wiring redone. Bill reckoned the wiring was fine but she wasn't so sure. She'd always been a bit nervous about living in a weatherboard building, ever since she was a kid and the house two doors up had caught on fire, and the old lady who'd lived there burned to death. In her sleep, Cherry's mum maintained; she hadn't stubbed out a cigarette properly. So each night Cherry prowled around the
hotel after ten o'clock closing, checking and rechecking that all the ashtrays were empty and that there were no cigarette butts smouldering anywhere. At least Bill didn't smoke, thank God.

‘The Cadwallader boy'll be off to high school next year,' Bill remarked, as Jim Cadwallader passed by in a knot of his friends, skinny boys mostly, with legs too long for their bodies.

‘Bright boy. Scholarship material,' Cherry reported, but softly because this might not be common knowledge and brightness didn't always win friends.

‘How do you know?'

Cherry wished she hadn't said anything. The last thing she should be doing was over-quoting Miss Neville, whom Bill didn't like. Education and women don't mix, he was fond of saying. ‘I can't remember who told me,' she prevaricated.

‘Probably George's missus. She's always keen to blow the old trumpet.'

‘Yes, but all she plays is Andy Andy Andy. Have you noticed?'

‘Can't say I have,' replied Bill.

‘I feel quite sorry for Jim.' It was his grazed knees that made him look vulnerable. She'd seen him and his friends in the late afternoon, racketing down the hill to the lagoon in their billycarts, flimsy affairs made out of packing cases and odd bits of sawn timber they'd managed to scrounge.

‘There goes Mrs Talivaldis. Only woman in the town to collect her kid from school.' Bill never had approved of what he called mollycoddling.

‘I guess losing most of your family makes you cling on to what's left.'

‘She lost all her family?'

‘Yes, in the war. Except for her husband, who died in Sydney apparently. Of a broken heart and pneumonia, she told George Cadwallader.'

‘Perhaps there was no husband.'

‘You're always on the lookout for the worst interpretation, Bill Bates.' Cherry laughed again, to take the sting out of the words. She liked the Latvian woman and the funny way she spoke, as if finding the right word was an impossible battle. She could well have been running away from something but it wasn't to conceal her lack of a husband. ‘I've seen a photograph of the husband,' Cherry added. ‘She showed it to me when I dropped around with a jar of plum jam yesterday afternoon.'

‘Does she look like him?'

‘Who?'

‘The daughter, of course. Does she look like the father?'

‘Yes, quite like him.' Mrs Talivaldis' lounge room was dark and she'd carried the framed photograph to the window so that Cherry could see it more clearly. It was a wedding photograph. The man was short with curly brown hair growing away from his forehead. Dressed in a dark double-breasted suit, he was looking directly at the camera. He'd worn a rather puzzled expression, as if to ask what he was doing in the photograph. Next to him stood a smiling Mrs Talivaldis, in a white dress with lace around the neckline and a skirt with stitched-down pleats that emphasised the slenderness of her hips.

‘Both parents with curly hair, but one dark and one fair,' Cherry said. ‘Inevitable that the daughter should have curls. She's got the father's colouring. She looks more like him than her mother. Why do you ask?'

‘No reason. Just idle curiosity.'

Cherry glanced at him leaning on one of the verandah posts. His eyes were slits against the glare. She could never work
out what he was thinking, but now was probably as good a time as any to tell him about her decision. She took a deep breath and said, ‘I thought of having some piano lessons. Mrs Talivaldis put a notice in the post office window.' Her voice quavered a bit but Bill didn't seem to notice.

‘What do you want to learn the piano for?'

‘I've always wanted to. Oh, please let me learn, Bill. It's something I've wanted to do for years.' Bill hesitated long enough for her to know he was thinking seriously of it. ‘They're a musical family,' she added. ‘The father was a pianist, Mrs Talivaldis said, and the little girl Zidra sings divinely.' This last bit was a fabrication on her part but she sensed that it might influence Bill.

‘We haven't got a piano.'

‘That doesn't matter. I could practise on the school one after the kids go home.' This was what she wanted, of course, but you had to be a bit devious when you were dealing with Bill. If only he would agree, she'd be able to spend four afternoons a week up at the school. Although she'd have to keep up the pretence of practising, that wouldn't be necessary all the time. Maybe ten minutes out of thirty, and that would leave twenty to be spent with Miss Neville. If she appeared too eager, though, Bill might guess what she was after. She added, ‘Or maybe Mrs Coles would let me use her piano. She loves seeing me and I think she's a bit lonely living on her own.'

‘Better if you use the school one,' Bill said at once. ‘Mrs Coles would keep you nattering half the afternoon afterwards.'

‘That's good of you, Bill.' She could have danced with joy and might have hugged him if he'd been anyone else, but instead she simply smiled sweetly. ‘Mum always said I could learn the piano when I was a kid, but it was always next year. And when next year came around, it was the year after.'

‘That no-good father of yours,' Bill muttered. ‘Your mother was better off without him.' Then he added casually, ‘Has the Talivaldis woman got any other pupils?'

‘Don't know. I haven't mentioned this to her yet. Thought I should ask you first.'

‘Does the little girl play?'

‘I don't know, Bill.'

‘You'll have to get out another jar of your plum jam and pay another visit.' He laughed, rather nastily she thought, glancing at him. He appeared as inscrutable as before but her heart lurched at the possibility that he might know where she went after her jam deliveries. She looked away again, towards the street. Just then the old lady from up by the cemetery hobbled by and Cherry waved at her.

Bill said, ‘You must be just about out of plum jam. You're always running around trying to off-load it.'

‘I've got lots more jars of jam left,' she said lightly. ‘Anyway, I thought you liked me doing it,' she added. ‘Good for business if the publican's wife is a bit sociable.' The ugly corrugated iron walls of the old Masonic hall opposite caught her attention. They had acquired two new posters. One was about the Christmas dance at the church hall and the other was about the bushfire danger. That's how you knew summer was here, when the posters started going up. Earlier and earlier every year. It was still two months to go till Christmas and already they were planning for the dance and, if she wasn't mistaken, they'd moved the date forward too.

She sighed. Surely there was no way Bill could guess what she got up to with Miss Neville. He didn't have the imagination and even if he did, she doubted he would care. Their marriage had gone beyond all that. What would concern him much more would be Cherry getting ideas above herself
through associating with Miss Neville. Practising the piano at the school would afford many opportunities of bumping quite spontaneously into the schoolmistress and she needed these. They made her life here bearable. It wasn't just the physical side of things, it was the friendship.

Time to get back to work. She glanced around at Bill, who was still standing behind her. Through the open door Les Turnbull was visible, waiting patiently at the bar counter. He must have come in through the other entrance and she wondered how long he'd been there. ‘G'day, Les,' she called out. ‘Sorry to keep you waiting.'

She hurried inside to pull a middy of New for Les, while half-listening to his complaints. Today they were mostly focused on the Commie bastards, excuse the English, Cherry.

Zidra hadn't enjoyed her first week at school but at last it was over. While Lorna had looked after her to begin with, today she'd been away and that made things seem much worse. And now, to top it off, here was her mother waiting at the school gate again, even though Zidra had especially asked her not to. The only parent in sight, her clothes suddenly appeared odd to Zidra. She'd got on that funny straw hat without the crown and her dress was shouting
look-at-me
with its red and orange flowers and the hem dipping slightly. This afternoon she'd pretend not to know her, this strange foreign woman.

Zidra attached herself to a group of children who were pushing through the gate, laughing and shoving at one another. She would walk straight down the hill with all the other children, clutching her cardboard school-case that, although so new, had already absorbed the smells of stale lunch and musty classroom. If she went very fast, she'd be able to get rid of the sandwich she'd hidden at lunchtime in her bloomers when no one was looking, and then Mama would never find out. The bloomers had tight elastic round the legs and formed a useful pocket. The sandwich had been there all afternoon, making her hot and flapping against her leg when she moved.
She didn't know how Mama could have put nasturtium leaves on a Vegemite sandwich. ‘You will love it,' her mother had said. ‘Nasturtium leaf tastes just like watercress. We had it growing in the stream at home when I was a girl, and how your Papa loved it too, darling Zidra.'

Zidra knew that Your Papa, as invoked by her mother, bore no resemblance to the Papa that she'd known, or even to that other Father, Who Art in Heaven. Zidra remembered her Papa as the man who wasn't there. He wasn't there all day and he wasn't there at night either. He'd barely exchanged two words each day with her. If it hadn't been for the trip to the circus, she might almost have been glad that he had gone away. To heaven, Mrs McIntyre had said, and that had confused Zidra for a while, for she knew that Papa was not Thou Father Who Art in Heaven but Thou Papa Who Art in Heaven. There were two of them there now. But Papa had taken her to the circus and the other father had not. The one who had taken her to the circus had enjoyed it almost as much as she had, and had bought her fairy floss afterwards, lovely sticky-sweet stuff that was pinker than anything she'd ever seen before.

Zidra, salivating as she thought of the fairy floss, was brought abruptly back to the present. ‘Zidra!' Mama called out. ‘Look, darling, I'm over here!' She stooped to give her two big kisses, one on each cheek, right in front of all the grinning children.

Zidra flushed in anger and in embarrassment. Already she could hear red-haired Roger O'Rourke, with whom she shared a desk, imitating her mother.
Look dorlink, I am over here!
All the other boys sniggered. To give them time to move away, she bent down and pretended her shoelaces were undone. Then, looking at her mother, she saw that her eyes were swimming with tears. Zidra guessed this was her fault and took a deep breath. Mama should know better than this by now. Surely she
should have learnt to hide her feelings. Zidra glanced from her mother to the other children but they were no longer looking this way. Engaged in kicking stones down the road, they'd forgotten all about the wogs.

Still she felt angry. ‘I hate Vegemite and nasturtium sandwiches,' she cried, pulling at the elastic around the right leg of her bloomers and yanking out the horrid-looking sandwich, only partially wrapped in greaseproof paper. So roughly did she tug at it that the elastic snapped back on her legs and hurt. The sandwich landed on the ground in front of her mother. They both stared at it. Squashed flat, it looked like a piece of cardboard. Mama would surely strike her, her face had become so crimson. Zidra would have to act first. Hurling herself at her mother, she hugged her legs. Although unable to make the tears come, if she hid her face Mama would imagine that she was crying. How she hated school, she blurted out through the stuff of her mother's skirt. The boys were nasty and the girls all had friends and wouldn't play with her! Except for Lorna, that is, and she'd been away today. And when Zidra had played with her, the others called her a nigger-lover. That didn't sound nice, whatever it was.

‘No, that is not nice,' said Mama, her face now restored to its natural pallor. She fumbled in her bag for a handkerchief, and then cuddled Zidra and kissed her hair. ‘That is not nice at all.'

Zidra let her mother wipe her face, certainly reddened by emotion if not by tears, and submitted to having her hair ribbon retied. Mama, distracted by this, would forget all about the business with the Vegemite sandwich. Maybe she'd even consider letting Zidra stay away from school next week.

Her mama lapsed into Latvian, which normally she spoke only inside their house, to say, ‘You must not care what people say or think. You must do only what you think is right.'

Zidra puzzled over this advice. She did try not to care what people said, but often what they said was unfair. It was surely right to stand up to people when they were unkind, but when she did what she thought was right, she got into fights. And sometimes what she thought was right was not the same as what her mother thought was right. While pondering this, she pulled at one end of her hair ribbon, and absent-mindedly fed it into her mouth.

‘Don't suck your hair ribbon,' Mama said at once. Sometimes she seemed to know what Zidra was up to without even looking at her. ‘If you're feeling better, perhaps we might go home now.'

They were too late. ‘Mrs Talivaldis! Mrs Talivaldis!' Miss Neville was striding across the school playground. One arm was raised in a wave while the other was weighed down with a large basket of exercise books. ‘Good afternoon, Mrs Talivaldis,' she said, looking quite friendly now she had caught up with them. ‘Glad to see you. Wanted to let you know your daughter's had a good week.' She bared her teeth in a grin. ‘And her arithmetic will improve with hard work.'

Hard work; Zidra didn't like the thought of that. Endless reciting of multiplication tables was not her idea of fun. Even worse was being dragged out to the front of the class by the ear, as had happened to Roger O'Rourke that morning. He'd then been made to recite the seven times table and hadn't been able to get beyond seven fours without making a mistake. If he hadn't deserved to be humiliated, she might have felt sorry for him, but only two minutes earlier he'd wiped snot on the wooden pencil box she'd placed in the middle of the desk they shared.

Miss Neville stopped in front of them. Beads of perspiration stood out on her upper lip. She looked at Zidra and said, ‘You must ignore those more obnoxious children, my dear.
They'll be used to you in a week or two. The Jingeroids are always a bit resistant to change.'

Mama laughed but Zidra didn't. Although she was grateful to the teacher for her kindness, she guessed that what was said to parents differed from what was said to
obnoxious
children, of whom she must certainly be one. However she quietly mouthed to herself the new words. Obnoxious and Jingeroids. Later she would use Jingeroid. It made such a lovely sound and it had made Mama laugh too.

The three of them walked down the hill together. Her mother and Miss Neville chatted about somewhere called Hungary while Zidra picked flowering soldier grass from the side of the road. She amused herself by looping the stem around the flower and then firing the head by pulling the loop quickly down the stem. Miss Neville left them in the square. Zidra fired a soldier head at her backside. It missed, as she knew it would, and Mama chose not to notice.

There was a large truck parked around the side of the hotel. Mr Bates was standing next to it, taking delivery of beer. He winked at Zidra when he saw her. If she didn't have Mama with her, she was sure that he would have offered her a rainbow ball.

‘He's certainly good-looking,' Mama said after they had gone by. ‘But as my own mama always used to say, never trust a good-looking man.'

She must have got wind of the rainbow balls somehow.

‘His wife is lovely,' she added. ‘It was so kind of her to bring us that homemade jam yesterday.'

It wasn't the rainbow balls after all. Zidra started skipping. Some things you just had to keep secret and eating lollies was one of them.