Nine Days (26 page)

‘I’m not asking you to wait,’ he says. ‘Do you hear me? I’m not asking you.’

I am buttoning my dress, daring myself to stand. It seems that all the life has drained from my legs: they can barely take my weight. It’s a wonder that married women can stand at all, much less walk. He has brought some water in an old mug from out in the yard and I’ve made a shoddy try at cleaning myself and I’ve dried off with a towel.

‘I can hear you.’ My thighs are sticky. The sun will be up any moment. I need to get home and run a bath.

‘You have a life all planned out,’ he says.

‘All planned out by my mother.’

‘I’m going to war.’

‘I understand.’

‘I’ve got nothing to offer you,’ he says.

‘I know,’ I say. ‘Just come back.’

His shirt has hay sticking stuck to one side and his trousers look like they’ve never seen an iron. He runs one hand through his hair and transfers more hay to it. ‘It’d be some pretty poor kind of love if I didn’t want what was best for you,’ he says.

I stop fidgeting with my dress and turn to look at him. ‘Is that how it is.’

‘It doesn’t matter how it is. I’m going off, Christ, in just a few hours. You’re here and you’ve got to do what’s best for everyone.’

I stand in front of him and run my finger along the line of his jaw and down the cliff of his chin and along the beauty of his throat. I can feel him swallow under the pad of my finger and he squeezes his eyes tight for a moment.

‘Although,’ he says, ‘the whole show will probably be over in a few months and then I’ll be back.’

‘Could be.’

He clears his throat. ‘And if you were free when I got back, if you were free by some chance, I’d spend all my years becoming the kind of man you’d deserve.’

‘Would you now.’

‘Hypothetically.’

‘Hypothetically. Your mother would have a pink fit.’

‘More like deep magenta.’ He laughs. ‘She’s had her time. Now belongs to you and me.’ He kisses me again, deep and long. ‘And Connie,’ he says. ‘I do have one thing to ask you.’

On the platform, I walk among the crowd of strangers and somehow nobody knows. No one stops and stares, no one points. It isn’t possible I look the same as I did yesterday, I just can’t. But Kip is standing beside me and even he can’t tell. He speaks to me like he would any other day. Even when I got out of the bath this morning, even though it’s not my usual bath day, Ma straightaway asked me if we had any eggs and where did I put the starch. Not one scrap of me is the same yet they notice nothing different at all.

‘Look at all these people,’ says Kip. ‘And so many soldiers! Be a wonder if they all fit on the train.’

As well as becoming a woman, I am now suddenly someone who can design things for her own ends. It was a simple matter to be here at the station: Mr Ward is keen on my ideas and agreed that the embarkation of part of the second AIF for North Africa would make a fine picture for the
Argus.
There’s no photographer here yet. One is on his way after another job at a fire on the other side of town. I have a spare camera with me in case he’s run out of film, and I have the camera ready: out of its case, and I’ve set up the aperture and shutter speed. The lens I’ve chosen is wide enough to get most of the train. Kip is here because he has the day off from the Hustings, who have shut the shop to weep in peace over Jack’s departure, and because I asked him to come. Kip being here will ensure I behave. In a group of strangers, I don’t trust myself not to cry.

Kip’s right about the crowd; it’s huge and growing. There are all sorts of people here: an older woman in a wide-brimmed hat holding a baby in a bonnet; men in their sharpest suits; a group of young women also dressed up to the nines, hankies to their eyes already; police and station guards patrolling. A whistle blows. The train is leaving. All the soldiers give one last look around and the stragglers climb on board. I’d thought we’d have more time than this. We’ve only just made it.

‘Would you look at that.’ Kip grabs my arm and points his own. ‘There’s Jack Husting.’

He’s leaning out of the train window in uniform: khaki with big square pockets, a strap across his chest holding his swag in place. He’s looking everywhere. He is searching for someone.

‘So it is,’ I say.

‘Jack, Jack!’ Kip yells.

His head spins and he sees us. I curse bringing Kip because now I don’t care a fig what anyone thinks. I want to run to Jack, hold him tight, beg him not to go.

‘Connie!’ Jack waves one arm above his head, out the window.

‘The train’s leaving,’ says Kip. ‘And the photographer’s still not here.’

In front of the train, the crowd is milling and jostling. If I just fit through that gaggle of people, I can reach him.

‘Here,’ I say to Kip, and I take the strap of the camera and hang it around his neck. He sags a little then straightens at once: he wasn’t expecting the weight of it. ‘Just hold the
camera, all right? Stay out of the crush and don’t let anything happen to it. And don’t touch anything. Especially not here.’ I point to the shutter release button, so he knows, so there’s no confusion.

‘As if I would,’ he says.

Any moment now Jack’ll be gone. I run to the crowd, I thread my way through, using my elbows, pushing like a fishwife. He is still there, leaning from the window. I can see his mouth form words he doesn’t say, I can see him swallow. I reach up and he takes my hand. We look and look, but looking and hands aren’t enough. I wedge one foot against the rail of the train but it’s too thin. I can’t gain enough footing to hold my weight and any moment now the train’ll start to move and if I don’t watch it I’ll fall between the carriage and the platform. All at once I notice a soldier beside me, an older man in the same uniform. He’s as tall as Jack, or taller. He’s seeing someone off.

‘He’s a lucky soldier.’ The man gestures to Jack, who is by now leaning so far out of the window I fear he’ll fall on his head on the platform. ‘Need a hand, miss?’

And I can hardly believe it, but the man squats nearly to the ground and wraps an arm around my waist and as he stands—Lord!—I’m hoisted in the air like a small child, sitting on the shoulder of some stranger. I must be more than eight foot off the ground. I grasp a handle on the train door to steady myself but the man is strong all right. He has a big grin on his face and he gives my rump a squeeze.

‘Go on then,’ he says.

I do go on. Jack doesn’t say anything, and neither do I.
Everything that can be said’s already said. I reach up, and Jack reaches down, and I kiss him. I’m the one kissing him. I’ve come this far, I’ve fought through the crowd. I feel his lips and the touch of it lasts and lasts and just when I think I’ll drop off my perch with dizziness, I hear the whistle and the stranger kneels and I’m standing and the train is pulling out. There’s nothing but a blur except for Jack’s eyes, Jack’s face. I don’t stop looking until the train is gone.

I blink. The stranger is gone, the people are gone, the train is long gone. I’m hit with a sudden fear: what if I forget his exact expression? The look in his eyes, the line of his jaw? It might be months before I see him again. What happens if I forget that a kiss can last forever? Somehow I keep my head upright, then I feel a tug on my sleeve. Kip is standing beside me.

‘I did exactly what you told me,’ he says, camera still around his neck. ‘I didn’t touch a thing.’

The Lord only knows what will happen. Every night I lie here, in my own bed, in the room I share with my mother. Kip and Francis are asleep next door; if I listen close I’ll hear Francis’s snoring. I know every squeak of every bedspring, I know the wardrobe is heavy timber with a bevelled mirror in the centre and you need to lift the door a little when you open it because it’s sunk on its hinges.

The secret to happiness is to be grateful. I think about Ma, widowed with three children, and Nan who was a slave
all her life, first in domestic service, then to Pop, then back to the ironing factory when she was widowed. I have a wonderful job. I have my mother and Francis, and I have Kip, my darling Kip.

And here is the most wonderful thing of all. I have had one night with the man of my heart and, just this once, I have had something that I wanted. Whatever happens, I will keep this night stored away like the linen in my glory box, his breath on my skin, the small hollow at the base of his throat soft on my lips. I will have that night forever. I can hardly believe my good fortune. Everything will be all right.

Early readers have the worst job in publishing, trudging their way through lumpen, leaden first drafts. My sincere thanks to mine. I’ve also been blessed with the generous research helpers Margaret Klaassen, Lee Falvey, Judy Stanley-Turner, Nada Lane and Katherine Sheedy. Clare Renner kindly donated the name Kip, which set the ball rolling. Kevin Culliver took the time and trouble to gently correct my many errors about the early years of St Kevin’s College.

I’ve never met Kate Darian-Smith or Janet McCalman but I owe them both a drink or three; their respective books
On the Home Front
and
Struggletown
were heaven-sent and I recommend them for more information on Melbourne during the Second World War and on Richmond—and as great reads besides. All errors are, of course, my own.

At Text Publishing, the inimitable Mandy Brett was her usual patient, exacting self and was a joy to work with. The support of Jane Novak, Anne Beilby and Kirsty Wilson kept me going on dark days, so thanks.

I’m not one of those writers who have ideas banked up like circling planes awaiting their turn to land. My creative brain is more like a desert across which the odd ball of tumbleweed occasionally rolls. Michael Heyward understands this, and I just want to say thanks.