Nine Days (18 page)

Kip is full of questions about Mac’s unit and what was it like in Japan and Mac says Japan was the real war, not just mopping up like Kip did in the Solomons and Kip says he was in Borneo too and that was no mop-up. He asks Mac whatever happened to Pike and Cray, who I don’t remember because
I didn’t know their sisters, I suppose. It turns out that Mac, Pike and Cray joined up at sixteen and their fathers signed the tricked-up paperwork with the idea it’d keep them out of worse trouble. Pike is an officer now and Cray is in a military prison for something or other.

‘I’m so proud of my brother the war hero.’ Jos squeezes Mac’s arm. ‘Kip. You took your time joining up, didn’t you?’

Half of Melbourne knows why Kip took his time, of course. Jos knows. That’s not why she said it. She just looks at him with a half smile on her face. For a minute no one says anything. I look at Mac. He clears his throat.

‘Had to save some blokes for the end,’ says Mac. ‘And like Kip says, Borneo was no mop-up.’

‘I couldn’t go while Ma was alive.’ Kip looks Jos square in the face when he says it. ‘After Connie died, after the inquest and having it all in the newspapers. Having our business picked over by strangers. Most of the women in Richmond would cross the street when they saw Ma coming. Got so she wouldn’t go out the front gate and then so she wouldn’t get out of bed. I couldn’t leave her.’

Jos has the decency to look at the ground and I’d like to turn away myself but I keep my eyes on Kip while he speaks. Francis is turning pink. I can’t believe Kip talked about the inquest and everything out loud like that, just plain as you please. It’s not the sort of thing you talk about in mixed company. The rest of Richmond whispered about it over fences and gossiped on street corners. It put the fear of God into all of us. For a while, anyway.

Mac coughed again. ‘You still live next to the Hustings?’
Mac says. ‘Jack Husting, what happened to him again?’

‘North Africa,’ says Kip.

So we all stand there amid the music and the bustle, still as statues, and we say nothing. Each of us is thinking about someone we’ll never see again. That’s what war means. It should be all over now and here we are at a dance but there are holes in the crowd. People missing who should be dancing and talking and living and breathing. I imagine for a moment the hall is filled with extra swaying couples. I can almost see them: young men in uniform and women in Saturday-night frocks. They look just like real people except when the light hits at a certain angle, it shines right through them.

‘Annabel?’ says Jos. ‘Isn’t it?’

I blink, and the dancing couples disappear and I’m back among the living and I’m glad that I’m here at a dance with Francis with so much to be thankful for that I could hug everyone.

‘I said that’s a beautiful pendant you gave Annabel,’ says Jos to Francis.

Francis beams. Kip whistles and looks at Francis with his forehead all furrowed. ‘Bloody hell. Where’d you get something like that?’

Francis doesn’t speak. He’s embarrassed, I can tell. Francis always pretends to be big and tough as if he doesn’t care what anyone else thinks. But he does care. He’s soft on the inside, I know it. He shouldn’t be shy. It was helping other people that got him that pendant.

‘Well?’ says Kip.

Francis still doesn’t answer, so I tell them. About the old
lady and the garden and how she was so grateful and gave him the pendant.

‘Annabel,’ says Francis. ‘Shut it.’

‘You shouldn’t be embarrassed,’ I say. ‘Francis calls it his charitable works.’

‘No, no.’ Francis laughs and pats me on the arm. ‘I never. I bought it from a jeweller in Collins Street. It was a little story I told her. She’d fall for anything. I was kidding.’

Everyone looks at me, then back to Francis. I can feel my cheeks burn. Millie starts to giggle.

‘You made it up?’ I say. ‘There was no little old lady?’

‘Well, well, Saint Francis. Haven’t you got an active imagination?’ says Mac. ‘That’s quite an interesting story. It seems to me I’ve heard something similar before, something from when we were boys. Because we were so close as boys, you and me and Pike and Cray. Charitable works, was it?’

‘Don’t pay any attention to her,’ Francis says. ‘She doesn’t know what she’s talking about.’

‘That’s right. I’ve mixed it up. I wasn’t listening properly. It was from a jeweller. That’s what Francis said.’ He is so respectable and so modest. He’d hate for everyone to know he does charity work on the side. I’ve said the wrong thing again.

‘I remember our boyhood years well, Francis. What a kind and generous lad you must have been,’ says Mac. ‘Honest. Fair to your friends.’

‘Of course,’ I say.

‘You work in the law now, don’t you? Quite a career for someone with your sense of justice,’ says Mac. ‘You’re at McReady’s, I remember.’

‘You seem well informed,’ says Francis.

‘Campbell McReady is a friend of my father’s, as it happens,’ says Mac. ‘He owns the whole firm. He’d be your boss, wouldn’t he?’

‘I suppose so.’

‘Yes. I suppose he would be. I haven’t seen Mr McReady for years and years. I should drop around in the morning and pay him a visit.’

The dance is heating up now. The music seems louder and couples are flying around, faster and faster. Mac and Francis have their backs to the dance floor: it seems like there’s a wall of flashing colour behind them. I feel dizzy watching. It’s very hot. I’d like a ginger ale. One light blue streamer has fallen down: it’s resting on Francis’s shoulder.

‘It’s like a zoo in here,’ says Francis. ‘Come on, Annabel.’

Outside the air seems cool in comparison. I didn’t want to go: Leggett’s doesn’t give passouts, everyone knows that. The music is distant now, and my night of dancing seems miles away. I can feel one of the darts at my waist beginning to split. The problem with wearing my mother’s clothes is that my mother had a nicer figure and moved with more grace. So upright and elegant, like a princess. I should have known better. Mac and the others have stayed inside. Out here, it’s just me and Francis. He’s pacing up and down in front of the hall, running his fingers through his hair.

‘I’m sorry,’ I say.

‘You just don’t know when to shut up, do you Annabel? Blabbing my business all over town.’

‘I didn’t mean to say anything wrong.’

‘Do you not understand how sensitive a reputation is? It’s up to me to be respectable. I’m the eldest. It’s my responsibility.’

‘If it was a secret, you should have told me.’

‘I shouldn’t have to tell you every little thing,’ he says. ‘Can you not have a bit of decorum, for God’s sake?’

I don’t speak.

‘I know you weren’t at school for long, but surely the nuns taught you how to act like a lady instead of a fishwife. Regardless of how you live at home.’

The air is very still. I am very still.

Then I say, ‘What? What did you say?’

He shakes his head. ‘Forget it.’

‘No.’ I can feel a rush inside me, heat moving up my body, and my ears are buzzing. There’s an energy in my hands and in my legs that makes me want to start running. Run fast and never stop. ‘What did you mean by that?’

‘Francis.’

I turn my head and Kip is standing on the stairs to the hall. I can barely make him out with the light behind him.

‘They’re playing slower music now, easier to dance to,’ Kip says. ‘And someone’s put out the sponge cakes. Annabel might like some cake and they won’t last long. Like locusts in there. Francis, come back inside. You can sweet-talk the lady at the booth. Tell her you stepped out for a moment, to get some air.’

‘Why don’t you mind your own business?’

‘It’s all right, Kip,’ I say.

‘I don’t want Francis to say something he might regret.’

‘Regret?’ Francis spins to look at him. ‘I won’t be the one who has any regrets. I’m trying to bring her up in the world. You’d think I’d get a bit more gratitude, seeing how she lives with her father.’

‘Francis,’ says Kip. ‘This is the drink talking.’

‘What, does she think nobody knows? Everybody knows. All of Richmond knows.’

I take a breath that I wish could last forever, so I never have to exhale again but I hear a creak and feel the seam at my waist give a little more. I want to go home. I can walk from here: it’s not that far. But there’s one thing I have to do first. I reach behind my neck and undo the pendant.

‘Here.’ My throat seems bare. I hold it out. ‘I don’t want this anymore.’

‘Francis, don’t you dare take that back,’ says Kip. ‘Don’t you dare.’

‘I wouldn’t keep it if he got down on bended knee.’

‘You’ve already accepted it. It’s already yours,’ says Kip.

‘Keep out of it.’

‘Francis. You can’t take a gift back like that. It’s not right.’

Francis turns to me. ‘To think I was going to ask your father tonight. What a lucky escape. There’ll be another girl more than happy to get a necklace like this. Any one of those girls inside, right now.’

‘Francis. You gave it to Annabel. It’s hers,’ Kip says.

‘She doesn’t want it. She said.’

Kip walks over and takes the pendant out of my hand.
He holds it up to his eyes: it’s dark out here. I wonder he can make it out.

‘I’ll give you ten pounds for it,’ he says.

Francis snorts.

‘Twenty.’

‘Where would you get twenty pounds? What sort of wages do they give you at that pathetic job?’

‘I’ll give you a pound a fortnight, from my pay.’

Francis shuts his eyes for a moment, then opens them. ‘Twenty-five.’

Kip feels around in his pockets and pulls out a note and a handful of change. ‘Here. One pound two and six. Down payment.’ Then he walks over and stands in front of me. I’m shaking. From the cold, I think.

‘I don’t want it, really. Give it to some other girl.’

‘Look, Annabel,’ Kip says. ‘There’s no point Francis taking back what he said. We’re all so close together around here. There’s no way to keep secrets in these little houses.’

I can barely keep my head up at that. At heart, I always knew everyone talked about my father and me. Passing me on the street and smiling, thinking their horrible little thoughts. Kip takes my hands and holds them in his. I can feel my mind calm, my breathing steady. Other than dancing, it’s the first time I can recall that I’ve touched the skin of a man who isn’t my father.

‘Annabel Crouch,’ he says. ‘I know you want to be the one who does the honourable thing. But I’m asking you to be generous. I’m asking you to let someone else be honourable for a change.’

The difference between generous and honourable isn’t something I’ve thought about before, but I look at Kip’s face and see that this is important. I nod. Kip walks around behind me and reaches around my neck. One of his hands touches my shoulder and the other brushes my throat. His skin is warm and dry and soon I feel the pendant again, the familiar weight, the way it smooths my skin.

‘You’re a bloody idiot, Kip,’ says Francis. ‘Always were, always will be.’

Francis heads back into the ballroom. I watch him buy another ticket, with Kip’s money. Kip and I walk along the quiet streets in the dark. It’s late, so we take the train back to Richmond. We aren’t touching, but it doesn’t matter. The skin on my hand remembers. We don’t say much. When we get home, I thank Kip for the pendant, and for bringing me home. He says that without a doubt Francis will be over first thing, to apologise.
People fight, Annabel. What matters is how they make up, how they say sorry. He had a few too many, that’s all. Mark my words.
Francis might come around tomorrow, and he might not. It’ll make no difference to me. I’ve already made up my mind.

I say goodnight and Dad is sitting where I left him, as if it’s only been a few hours instead of a hundred years. Most Saturday nights, I wish he was awake. I imagine him reading or listening to the wireless and waiting up for me. I’d make us tea and we’d sit up and talk for ages about everything that
happened. What the other girls were wearing, what the band was like. Tonight I’m glad he’s out cold.

Normally, I do whatever needs to be done to move him to bed. I like him to meet the morning horizontal, between clean sheets. On a good day he’ll have sobered sufficiently to make it under his own steam with just a little prodding, and once he’s in bed he won’t wake until the early hours for his nightcap from the little bottle that he keeps buried under his singlets. Some kind of spirit or else port or sometimes sherry. Who does he think washes his singlets, irons them and folds them and puts them away? Yet every night he pretends I don’t know about the bottle and I do the same.