Nine Days (9 page)

An hour later I find myself on the front step of the Westaways’ in an ironed shirt and my good jacket, an old cane basket filled with lemons on my arm.

When the door opens I manage to keep my jaw from dropping. I am greeted by two boys standing together, peas in a pod, the same but different.

‘Ma! There’s someone here,’ yells one of them. They’re fine-boned with gangly limbs that don’t quite fit right. One is thinner than the other. Their eyes are dark and deep-set, wide mouths and straight hair. I know Kip, he’s the one who needs a haircut. The other one has a new-looking short back and sides.

‘Mr Husting, hello,’ says Kip. He shakes my hand. His nose is bent; someone’s helped it to that shape. He’s got a faded shiner and a cheeky grin, the kind of lad who’d have been a great ally in getting up to mischief when I was his age. It’s a shame there’s a good six years between us. I tell him it’s good to meet him properly at last.

‘You work right there and haven’t met?’ says the other.

Kip looks bashful. I raise my eyebrows and shrug. We nod at each other from time to time but truth be told, Kip’s not allowed in the house. Mum says Catholic boys are odds on to have lice. And, for my part, the feel of Charlie and the smell of him and the warmth of his flank under my hand makes me want to saddle up and head west without even stopping to pack or say goodbye. Inside, I’m out of temptation’s way.

‘I’m out the back,’ says Kip. ‘Charlie sure is some horse.’

I suppose he probably is. Every boy thinks his first horse, his first love, is the only one for him. He’ll never forget Charlie, not for the rest of his life.

The neater one shakes my hand, says
how do you do
and pronounces his name
Frarncis.
At boarding school he’d have his head beaten in for that kind of poncing. He’s not the kind
of boy whose friends call him Frank. I tell them to call me Jack.

Their mother appears behind them, Mrs Westaway, hands on her hips, hair loose and grey and hanging in her eyes. She might be the same age as my mother, younger maybe, but she has no padding. She is all sharp angles and tart features, her eyes chips of granite. I feel a surge of guilt that my father is alive. I tell them my mother sent me with lemons from the tree that’s weighed down with fruit in our backyard.

‘Your mother, indeed. Mrs Husting. Sent us over a basket of lemons.’

I don’t trust myself to speak under her stare so I nod and she scowls and humphs, and then Connie Westaway comes up behind her. She’s not wearing her apron now. Her dress is the colour of new wheat and her hair is almost black. Her nose has freckles carefully placed, as if with a pencil and a steady hand.

‘How thoughtful.’ She leans forward to take the basket. For an instant, her hand is next to mine. ‘You must thank Mrs Husting for us. You can never have enough lemons.’

‘I never saw that many lemons at your place,’ says Kip.

‘On the far side,’ I say. ‘Nearly pulled the tree over with the weight of them.’

He looks me square in the face. ‘You’d think I’d of noticed a thing like that.’

‘You’d be flat out working, I’d expect,’ I say.

‘They’re lovely lemons,’ says Connie. ‘Aren’t they boys?’

‘They’re heavy all right.’ Kip lifts one, tosses and catches it. ‘And they’re good looking too. I’ve never seen anything quite so lemony.’

Francis shrugs. ‘Things that grow in piles of manure are Kip’s department, but they look just like normal lemons to me.’

‘To me,’ Kip says, ‘they look just like the ones in the front of the shop on Swan Street that go for a shilling a bag.’

‘How tall are you, Mr Husting? Six foot?’ Connie says.

‘Thereabouts.’

‘I’m having some trouble with the washing line. It’s come down, I’m afraid. Would you mind?’

We leave the boys—Kip with his forehead creased and puzzled—and Mrs Westaway, who is glaring. Connie leads me down the hall and through the kitchen where she tumbles the lemons into a bowl so I can take the basket back: a good idea; it’d be awkward if Mum misses it. In the backyard, it takes two shakes to fix the line. The far post’s half down and needs knocking back in the ground, which I do with a half brick I see lying near the fence. It’s on its last legs, though. It needs fixing before it collapses one day and a whole wash gets dragged in the dirt. I can bring a piece of timber from home and it’ll be right as rain, I tell her.

She says thanks, looks at the clothes basket on the ground and tells me to hold out my arms straight. She takes off the shirts and towels one peg at a time, flicks them with a quick movement of her wrists so the edges line up crisp and straight, and lays them on my arms. It’s as if her arms were dancing, just the way her feet were this morning. Take the peg off, then another, stretch the towel, flick and fold. Her skin is white and cream and pearl under the sun. There’s a bracelet on her wrist. Rosy-gold, tiny clusters of grapes joined together. As
she brings her hands up and down, the bracelet moves: first dangling at the top of her hand, then tight against the plump white flesh of her one arm. For a while, everything is quiet. Just the usual late-afternoon sounds; birds, kids playing, water running in a yard on the other side. A distant wireless.

‘And where do you go to, then? At night?’ She doesn’t even look at me. She focuses on her task as though she’s never in her life seen such fascinating towels before. ‘After the lights go out next door.’

‘Where do I go?’

She nods. ‘At night. When everyone else is asleep in their beds.’

‘Not everyone is asleep. You, for example. Or else you wouldn’t notice that I go anywhere.’

She takes the pile from my arms and transfers it to the basket. She’s folding a bed sheet now, holding it under her chin, stretching her arms wide. I take one end and we stand with the sheet stretched wide between us like a white river, then she walks towards me. Close, closer, she stretches out her arms and our fingertips touch as she joins my corners of the sheet to hers. ‘Me and Mum share the front room. You try to be quiet but that’s when people are the noisiest of all. And I’m not such a great sleeper myself.’

It strikes me that she’d understand. I’ve not said a word to Mum and Dad but they’ve never noticed and they’ve never asked. I met Connie Westaway, really met her, only ten minutes ago but I’ve seen her dancing with a broom around her backyard with no music. Something tells me she’d know what I meant if I told her about how the sky’s different in
the bush, about how the ceiling seems to press in at night. About how the only way I can sleep in that little room is if I let myself in at dawn so tired I can barely stand.

But instead I say, ‘I’m sorry if I disturb you. I walk. Down by the river or through the city. Sometimes to the Botanic Gardens. That’s all.’

‘You’re lucky. If I was a man, that’s what I’d do all night long. Just walk and walk.’ She doesn’t ask why I walk. She seems to know already.

‘The city’s not the same in the dark.’

She nods. ‘Why would it be? Nighttime’s not just daytime with the sun gone. It’s different entirely. After Ma and the boys are asleep it’s like I’m the only one here alive and the whole world belongs to me.’

‘You should see the dark in the bush. You can just about touch the dark. You can feel it on your fingertips.’

‘Why did you come back, then? To the wilds of Richmond?’

I would tell her if I knew. Instead I stand here in the Westaways’ backyard holding sheets, tongue-tied. Connie Westaway has an easy way of talking. As if we’re not really strangers, as if she’s known me all her life. She has a new job, at the
Argus.
Her boss is very kind. She is an assistant to the photographers. She files their photos, types up labels, keeps track of their jobs, cares for their cameras. Sometimes she goes out with them, sometimes they let her hold the camera and even take a picture, although she is still learning. It seems too much for her some days, she says, on her feet morning till night then cooking for the boys and cleaning when she gets
home. Yet even this is not enough to make her want to sleep. And she loves the photographs.

‘Your memory fades,’ she says. ‘But not the pictures. They’re just like real life, except flat and crisp. That’s what I like about them. They last forever. One day I’m going to be a photographer myself.’

I hear a muffled snort from the side of the house and two shiny faces appear.

‘The Shadow knows!’ yells Kip, as he leaps around the corner.

I never listen to the wireless but even I know The Shadow is really Lamont Cranston, an American crime-busting hero, worshipped by boys the world over.

Francis is behind Kip. ‘The Shadow. Honestly, Kip. You’re such a baby.’ He rolls his eyes to include us all in his sweeping disdain. ‘A girl photographer.’ He raises his arms and pulls on the clothes line, which explains its condition. ‘That’s stupid.’

‘It’s not that different from being an artist,’ Connie says. ‘It’s about imagining a picture and making it real. You have to think ahead to what the photograph will look like when everyone can see it. The kind of story it’ll tell. Look, Kip. See that wall there? See where the light hits it?’ She holds the boy by his shoulders and turns him so he’s facing the side of the house, then points to the edge of sunlight as it shines on the boards. ‘It looks closer, doesn’t it? But it isn’t. It’s the light that makes it seem that way.’ She makes a rectangle out of her thumbs and index fingers and peers through them. Kip stands in front of her and does the same.

‘The light decides where you look first,’ she says.

Kip nods. ‘The light’s boss and your eyes just do as they’re told.’

‘It’s not a respectable job, a photographer.’ Francis leans against the back of the house. ‘It’s dicey. Like working at Rosella when the fruit comes in. A good job’s a steady job. At a desk, in the government.’

‘Connie had something in the paper just last week, didn’t you, Connie?’ Kips says. ‘Tell Jack about the umbrella. Connie makes suggestions sometimes.’

She smiles, and for the first time it strikes me that in different company she might be shy. ‘For the fashion pages, mostly.’

‘Last Monday she came up with the idea that one of the models oughta be holding an umbrella over one shoulder, and sure enough that’s the one that went in the paper,’ he says.

‘Lucky,’ she says.

‘I’d want to take pictures of fires and car accidents,’ says Francis. ‘Fashion. Who cares about that?’

‘You will, soon enough,’ I say. ‘Fashion’s all about pretty girls.’

‘She only got the job because of Dad anyway. He was a typesetter. That’s why Mr Ward took her on. Ma says that’s why he’s spoiling her rotten. Driving her home and giving her chocolates and buying her dinner when they work late. Because of Dad.’

‘Is it true you know how to shoe a horse?’ says Kip.

There’s no more talk of photography, or of Mr Ward. I tell Kip about Jasper, who can find his own way home using the stars, who never needs tethering, who can carry two men for
hours without failing but, it seems, is inferior to Charlie in every way. The sun is setting. I hadn’t realised how much time has passed. I say my goodbyes and the three of them walk me down to the side gate.

‘Thanks again for the lemons,’ Connie says.

Kip shakes his head. ‘A whole shilling. There’s one born every minute.’

When I get home, I ask Mum about the Westaways. How they’ve been since Tom Westaway passed. She does not approve of Connie’s new job.

‘She seemed such a nice girl,’ Mum says, over tea. She asks if I’d like more mash and when I say no, she piles another dollop on. ‘Everyone in the street worried when they lost the boarder. She was a decent woman, never married, never had any visitors. Always had time for a hello, more than you can say for that Jean Westaway. Having a boarder is a respectable way for a Catholic family to improve themselves. Then we heard Connie’d got a job. First we all thought it’d be good for her, good for the whole family. She looks a picture in her new suit and stockers, her hair set properly instead of that ponytail. Pretty girl, colouring’s not too Irish. Maybe a bit broad across the face.’

‘Not everyone can have features as refined as yours, love,’ says Dad. He doesn’t catch my eye.