Jubilee (25 page)

The thought of the sea was almost enough to lift her out of the flatness she’d felt since he’d told her about her mother. ‘Can we take Drake?’ The terrier pricked his
ears as she mentioned his name.

‘Of course.’ And Robert gave her a gentle smile. ‘And we might be able to sort out a school for you, too.’ Her heart gave another slight lift at the thought of being with
other children. ‘If we can find somewhere safe,’ he went on.

‘I would like to go to a proper school again,’ she wrote to her cousin. ‘It’s not the same doing it over the radio. You can’t play with the children at break time.
I wish I had my pony here. Do you know what happened to him, Rachel? And all the other animals? There are cattle here but the dogs live outdoors and they growl if I go up to them. Except for Drake,
my terrier. He’s a nice dog.’

There was something she really needed to ask Rachel. ‘Did my mum miss me when I left? She didn’t write. Was she really, really busy on the farm? It was so strange to go off on
holiday without saying goodbye to her and you. But Uncle Robert thought it was for the best. And Mum had told us there’d be a surprise after the party, hadn’t she? So she must have
known I was going to be all right. It’s lucky I’ve got Uncle Robert to look after me now that Mum’s dead. He’s very kind, even if he does sometimes forget my name. Sometimes
he says weird things and it’s a bit frightening. But then he seems to go back to normal.’

Even driving this slowly we’d reached Winter’s Copse at last. The sight of its pale walls filled me with relief. Home again. Thank God the drive rose up steeply
from the lane. The car would be safe from the floodwater overnight. Jess and I dashed for the door.

We flopped by the range. I thought of the bottle of whisky Evie kept on her drinks tray but the thought of alcohol made my stomach remember that it felt unusually delicate.

Before I could even suggest Jess might like a drink she started to talk again, words again seeming to flood from her like the rain from the skies.

Jessamy

Cardew sugar cane plantation, near Cairns, Queensland, January 1979

He’d lost more weight since she’d been away at school. It had only been twelve weeks since she’d seen him but he looked much thinner. His hand shook as he
poured the tea. She suspected long nights in the hotel with his mates. ‘You’ll have to show me that report of yours, Jess.’

‘You’ll be impressed.’ She worked hard, always had done, ever since she’d started at the new school in Brisbane. The teachers had told her she was behind, she, Jessamy
Winter, always top of the class back in Craven. She’d been so cross she’d put her head down and worked. The other girls had thought she was a swot until they’d seen her play
netball. Then she’d won the sprint and the hurdles in a schools’ championship and found herself a bit of a hero among her year. Strange, really, as she didn’t give a damn about
any of them.

‘This house looks smaller.’ It had been a shock, coming back to the plantation. The girls’ school in Brisbane was an old Victorian building, with high ceilings and marbled
floors.

‘Places always do when you come back to them. Tell me about school.’ And he asked her scores of questions. Did she have the right clothes and sports equipment? Were they kind to her?
She’d reassured him that she was fitting in well, crossing her fingers behind her back.

‘How’s the cane doing?’

‘Should be a good year. It’s nearly all in now.’

She noticed the shadows under his eyes and the grey tint to his skin, even under the tanned skin. The cutting was dusty and noisy. Every year someone got injured or bitten by one of the snakes
curling around the canes. ‘I’ll be out in the fields with the men all day for the rest of the week, I’m afraid.’

He looked exhausted. The climate didn’t suit him, the doctor said. Robert had told the doctor that he knew all about the tropical jungle, thank you.

He came in at six and she cooked him some tea: chops and a pudding made with a locally grown pineapple, and sponge, which Mary, Robert’s half-aboriginal housekeeper, had
taught her to make before she’d gone off to school. Back in England pineapples were a treat: you got them once or twice a year, perhaps at Christmas. Up here they ate them whenever they
wanted.

After they’d eaten they sat on the veranda, looking out over the trees to the west of the cane fields. The fields still to be cut were lined with the canes, now far taller than she was.
Behind the bluey-green mountains rose up, steep and lined with forest. The landscape should have been beautiful, it was populated with birds and exotic-looking animals which still took her breath
away. But things were only really beautiful if you felt them inside you. This lush landscape meant nothing to her. Sometimes Robert took her for walks in the forest. Once the trees had covered
these fields and the house, too, before they’d cut them back.

What on earth was she to do with herself up here? Robert had designed a garden that flowered all year round. He’d redecorated her bedroom while she’d been away, buying her new blinds
and a rug. There were flowers in a vase by her bed. He said he’d borrow a pony so she could ride.

There were few girls her age to play with. In the township a half-mile away there was a hotel, a bar, really, where the men drank, and a general stores. There was nothing else except for the
elementary school. The nearest library was miles and miles away in Cairns.

It was past eight now but still the heat pushed down like a steam iron. All those weeks in Brisbane she’d longed to leave school and come back here. Now she was here the thought of the
long Christmas holiday stretching out seemed to crush her like a python. Perhaps she’d catch the bus down to the town, to the beach. She’d have to go swimming just to keep cool, but not
in the local pool with all those children who stared at her because she didn’t fit in here. And not in one of the apparently inviting creeks. Only last year a child had been pulled from the
bank by a croc. Jessamy shuddered, remembering. They’d found one of her hands on a muddy shore half a mile upstream.

Sometimes there were people to talk to in the town: hippies in their VWs peddling herbal soaps and flower oils. Robert had an almost animal aversion to their patchouli-oil-scented presence and
would try to hurry her past the camps where they grew vegetables and plaited strips of leather with beads to make belts and necklaces to sell in the market. Sometimes boats went out from the town
to look at the Great Barrier Reef. If Robert wasn’t with her she could chat to the visitors. Some of them came from England. Robert wasn’t keen on people from England. He wasn’t
keen on lots of people. ‘Best to be safe rather than sorry,’ he said whenever someone new appeared in the township. ‘You get odd sorts up here. Drifters.’

Something rustled behind a clump of vivid blue agapanthus. ‘There he is again.’ Robert nodded and Jessamy saw the stubby-legged brown bandicoot with its long nose. ‘Sniffing
around.’ They watched the creature, like a cross between a badger and a possum, Jessamy thought, but without the striped nose, or perhaps a badger and a rat, but more appealing. He scuffled
around below them, before vanishing under the veranda. When they’d first moved here Robert had taken her out into the garden and clasped Jessamy’s arm so tightly it had hurt.
‘Never ever go under that veranda.’ He pointed at the space beneath the stilts. ‘Even if you lose your best ball, even if Drake goes under there and you can’t get him to
budge. Just wait for me to sort it for you.’

She already knew enough about this country to know there’d be snakes and spiders under the veranda.

Robert was good at sorting stuff for her. He was good around the bungalow, too. He’d already emptied her trunk of clothes and washed them all for her. Every morning she found her sandals
outside her bedroom door, dusted and polished.

Nobody could have taken better care of her but at nights strange images swarmed in her mind. The space under the veranda had become a space in her head, populated by dark thoughts rather than
snakes and centipedes and other creatures that bit or stung. Once or twice she dreamed that Martha had taken up residence under the veranda, but when she called to the woman, she turned into a
lizard and scuttled away.

Drake growled at the bandicoot. ‘Stay here, boy.’ Robert put a hand on the dog’s collar. ‘You’ll get yourself into all kinds of trouble if you go chasing
him.’

Robert sniffed.

‘What is it?’

‘That jasmine smell.’ He sounded disgusted. ‘I’m going to have to pull that bush out.’

Why? She added the question to all the other unspoken questions she’d accumulated over the last year and a half. ‘I like the smell.’

‘It’s too sweet.’ Perspiration ran down his head. ‘Sickly. Think I’m going to have to get myself a beer at the hotel. Would you mind, love?’

‘No.’ It would be a relief not to have him here for a while.

It was late when his friend dropped him back. ‘Come in!’ Robert shouted. ‘Make yourself at home. Jess will have turned in. I’ll make some
coffee.’

She turned in bed and tried to find a cool spot. She must have fallen back to sleep because for a while she was back at home, at Winter’s Copse and it was cool and grey and her mother was
telling her to hurry and get up because she was late for school.

Robert was talking loudly. ‘You try and save them, you do your best but then it all ends up bad. And you know it’s your fault, that everyone blames you.’

‘You’ve done a grand job with the girl, mate.’ Another male voice. A local.

‘I wasn’t going to let anything happen to Jess, that’s for sure. Not after I’d seen what they did to Noi.’ A pause. ‘It looked just like a ruby, you know.
Pretty almost.’

‘What looked like a ruby, mate?’ the friend asked.

‘The mark on Noi.’

Noi. When he’d first taken her on holiday he’d sometimes called her Noi by mistake. She’d asked him who Noi was but he’d stared at her with blank eyes and she
hadn’t liked to ask again. She fell back asleep and this time she dreamed of a child, a girl who lived under the veranda and came out at night to haunt them.

It took some weeks before she could persuade Robert to take her into Cairns so she could shop. Perhaps visit the library too. By now the school holidays were almost over. She
dared not plead too much. He’d have to think it was his idea. Fortunately nature provided her with another growth spurt and her clothes became unwearable.

He loathed the town, hated it, abhorred it. ‘You don’t need to take me.’ She tried to sound casual. ‘I can go by myself on the bus.’

‘By yourself?’ His eyes widened. ‘I’m not sure I’m keen on that idea, sweetheart.’

‘Mary could come with me. She likes looking at the shops and she can visit her niece.’ Mary had a European niece who workd in the hotel kitchen. Jessamy examined Robert. His head was
lowered. One of his feet kicked against the kitchen table. Don’t push it, she told herself. Don’t drive him into a corner or he’ll start talking about stuff you don’t
understand, weird stuff.

Jessamy rose and feigned a yawn. ‘Not sure I can really be bothered. I like my skirt short. Some of the girls say it’s a bit daggy, though.’

A bit risky; he hated her looking different from the others and the worry that she didn’t look quite proper might send him into another black period. ‘You’ll buy a new skirt.
And shoes. I don’t want you looking like, like . . . that.’

‘OK.’

He handed her some notes. ‘Get whatever you need, honey.’ She could see that he was trying hard to calm himself. ‘Don’t mind me, I just worry about you. There are people
in this world you just wouldn’t believe, Jess.’

In the library she found the shelf of books about foreign countries. There were lots on England. Probably because so many Australians came from there. Most of them just had
dull black and white photographs. But there was one that had coloured plates:
A walk through the Berkshire Downs.
She flicked through it.
Above the downland villages the Ridgeway crests
the green wave of the hills.
There were photos of the White Horse taken from the air. Not at all like a kangaroo, Rachel. She flicked over and found a view looking north across the vale.
Jessamy squinted at the villages, trying to work out which one might be Craven. She thought she could identify it by the square tower of the church, but couldn’t be sure. If it was, her
mother would be buried in the shadow of this very tower. She wanted this book but wasn’t a member of the library.

Perhaps she could join. The librarian at the information desk assured her that she could. ‘We normally ask for a parent’s signature on the application.’

‘Both my parents are dead.’

The woman flushed. ‘Sorry, dear.’ Her eyes went to the book Jessamy had chosen. ‘Are you from those parts? My husband grew up in England.’

‘I lived there once.’ Something made Jessamy guard her tongue. ‘But I live here now.’

‘There are some more books you might like, then.’ She led Jessamy across the parquet floor to the geography section. ‘These are slightly less accessible but there’s one
about the geology of the Downs. You might find it interesting because there are some good photos.’ She reached over Jess’s head. ‘Oh, and here’s a good map of the
area.’

‘Thanks.’ Jess’s legs wanted to sprint to a desk so she could pull open the book covers but she made herself shuffle across the library parquet as though the heat had rendered
her listless.

She opened the map. Wantage had been the nearest town to Winter’s Copse. Jessamy remembered a market: boxes of cauliflowers and leeks, tangerines wrapped in bright tissue paper, the
stallholders shouting greetings to her mother, their cheeks red in the frost. There was a statue of a king in that marketplace, crown on his head, holding something in his hand . . . Which
monarch?

King Alfred.

But even looking at these books and the map made her feel guilty, as though she’d forgotten what she owed Robert, who’d looked after her with such care. She didn’t understand
why this should be. Why shouldn’t she look at pictures of these places?