The Secret Keeper (45 page)

With a wistful glance over her shoulder at the creek, a promise to come back as soon as she could, she started for home.

Aunt Ada was sitting on the back stairs, head in hands, when Vivien emerged from the bush. Some sixth sense must’ve told her she had company because she glanced sideways, blinking at Vivien with the same perplexed expression she might have worn had a bush sprite appeared on the lawn before her.

‘Come here, child,’ she said finally, beckoning with one hand as she pushed herself to standing.

Vivien walked slowly. There was a strange swooping sensation in her stomach for which she had no name, but would one day come to recognise as dread. Aunt Ada’s cheeks were bright red and there was something uncontrolled about her; she looked as if she were about to shout or to clip Vivien across the ears, but she did neither, bursting into scalding tears instead and saying, ‘For God’s sake, get indoors and wash that muck off your face. What would your poor mother think?’

Vivien was Indoors again. There’d been a lot of Indoors since it happened. The first black week when the wooden boxes, or caskets, as Aunt Ada called them, were laid out in the sitting room; the long nights during which her bedroom walls retreated into the darkness; the stale muggy days as grown-ups whispered, and clicked their tongues at the suddenness of it all, and sweated into clothes already damp from the rain that bore down outside the steamy windows.

She’d made a nest against the wall, tucked herself between the sideboard and the back of Dad’s armchair, and that’s where she stayed. Words and phrases buzzed like mosquitoes in the fug above—the Lizzie Ford … right over the edge … incinerated … hardly recog- nisable—but Vivien blocked her ears and thought instead about the tunnel in the pond and the great engine room at its centre from which the world was spun.

For five days she’d refused to leave the spot, and the adults had humoured her and brought plates of food and shaken their heads with kindly pity, until finally, with no obvious sign or warning, the invisible line of leniency was reeled in and she was dragged back into the world.

The wet season had set in well and truly by then, but there’d been one day when the sun had shone and she’d felt the faint stirrings of her old self, sneaking out into the glare of the back yard and finding Old Mac in the shed. He’d said very little, laying a big gnarled hand on her shoulder and squeezing hard, and then he’d handed her a hammer so she could help with the fencing. As the day wore on, she’d thought about visiting the creek, but she hadn’t, and then the rain came back and Aunt Ada arrived with boxes, and the house was packed away. Her sister’s favourite shoes, the satin ones that had sat all week on the rug, same spot she’d kicked them after Mum said they were too good for the picnic, were tossed into a box with Dad’s handkerchiefs and his old belt. Next thing Vivien knew there was a ‘For Sale’ sign on the front lawn and she was sleeping on a strange floor as her cousins blinked curiously at her from their own beds.

Aunt Ada’s house was different from her own. The wall paint wasn’t flaking, there were no ants wandering the bench tops, cascades of garden flowers did not spill from vases. It was a house where spilling of any kind was not tolerated. A place for everything and everything in its place, Aunt Ada was fond of saying, in a voice that shrilled like a fiddle string wound too tight.

While the rain continued outside, Vivien had taken to lying under the sofa in the good room, pressed against the skirting board. There was a droop of hessian lining, invisible from the door, and to squeeze beyond it was to become invisible herself. It was comforting, that torn sofa base, it reminded her of her own house, her family, their happy tattered clutter. It brought her as close as she ever came to crying. Most times, though, she concentrated only on breathing, taking in the smallest amount of air she could, letting it out so that her chest barely moved. Hours—whole days—could be passed that way, rainwater gurgling down the drainpipe outside, Vivien’s eyes closed and her ribcage steady; sometimes, she could almost convince herself she’d managed to stop time.

The room’s greatest virtue, though, was its designation as strictly out of bounds. The rule was laid out for Vivien on her first night in the house—the good room was to be used for entertaining, only by the aunt herself, and then only ever when the status of the guest demanded it—and Vivien had nodded solemnly, when prompted, to show that yes, she understood. And she had, perfectly. Nobody used the room, which meant that once the daily dusting was done, she could count on being alone within its walls.

And so she had been, until today.

Reverend Fawley had been sitting on the armchair by the window for the past fifteen minutes as Aunt Ada fussed over tea and cake. Vivien was stuck beneath the sofa, more specifically pinned by the depression of her aunt’s backside.

‘I don’t need to remind you what the Lord would counsel, Mrs Frost,’ said the Reverend in the cloying voice he saved usually for the little baby Jesus. ‘Do not forget to entertain strangers, for by doing so you may be entertaining angels without realising it.’

‘If that girl’s an angel, then I’m the Queen of England.’

‘Yes, well,’ the pious chink of a spoon against porcelain, ‘the child has suffered a great loss.’

‘More sugar, Reverend?’

‘No—thank you, Mrs Frost.’

The sofa base slumped further as her aunt sighed. ‘We’ve all suffered a great loss, Reverend. When I think of my own dear brother, perishing like that … falling all that way, the lot of them, the Lizzie Ford going right over the edge of the mountain. Harvey Watkins that found them said it was burned so bad he didn’t know what he was looking at. It was a tragedy …’

‘A terrible tragedy.’

‘All the same.’ Aunt Ada’s shoes shifted on the rug, and Vivien could see the toe of one scratching at the bunion trapped within the other. ‘I can’t keep her here. I’ve six of my own, and now Mum’s moving in with us. You know what she’s been like since the doctor had to take her leg. I’m a good Christian woman, Reverend, I’m in church every Sunday, I do my bit for the fete and the Easter fundraiser, but I just can’t do it.’

‘I see.’

‘You know yourself, the girl’s not easy.’

There was a pause in conversation as tea was sipped and the particular nature of Vivien’s lack of easiness considered.

‘If it had been any of the others,’ Aunt Ada set her cup on its saucer, ‘even poor simple Pippin … but I just can’t do it. Forgive me, Reverend, I know that it’s a sin to say so, but I can’t look at the girl without blaming her for all that’s happened. She ought to have gone with them. If she hadn’t got herself in trouble and been punished … They left the picnic early, you know, because my brother didn’t like to leave her so long—he was always too soft-hearted—’. She broke off with a great gasping wail and Vivien thought how ugly adults could be, how weak. So used to getting what they wanted that they didn’t know the first thing about being brave.

‘There, there, Mrs Frost. There, there.’

The sobbing was thick and laboured, like Pippin’s when he wanted Mum’s attention. The Reverend’s chair creaked and then his feet came closer. He handed something to Aunt Ada, he must have, for she said, ‘Thank you,’ through her tears, and then blew her nose wetly.

‘No, you keep it,’ the Reverend said, retreating to his chair. He sat with a heavy sigh. ‘One does wonder, though, what’s to become of the girl’

Aunt Ada made some small sniffly noises of recovery and then ventured, ‘I thought perhaps the church school out Too-woomba way?’ The Reverend crossed his ankles.

‘I believe the nuns take good care of the girls,’ Aunt Ada went on, ‘firm but fair, and the discipline wouldn’t do her any harm—David and Isabel always were too soft.’

‘Isabel,’ said the Reverend suddenly, leaning forward. ‘What about Isabel’s family. Isn’t there anyone who might be contacted?’

‘I’m afraid she never said much about them … Though, now you mention it, there is a brother, I believe.’

‘A brother?’

‘A schoolteacher, over in England. Near Oxford, I think.’

‘Well then.’

‘Well then?’

‘I suggest we start there.’

‘You mean … to contact him?’ Aunt Ada’s voice lightened.

‘We can but try, Mrs Frost.’

‘Send him a letter?’

‘I shall write to him myself.’

‘Oh, Reverend—’

‘See if the man can’t be prevailed upon to act with Christian compassion.’

‘To do the right thing.’

‘His familial duty.’

‘His familial duty.’ There was a new giddiness in Aunt Ada voice. ‘And what kind of a man wouldn’t? I’d keep her myself, if I could, if it weren’t for Mum and my own six and the lack of room—’. She stood up and the sofa base sighed with relief. ‘Can I get you another slice of cake, Reverend?’

It turned out there was indeed a brother, and he was induced by the Reverend to behave correctly, and so, like that, Vivien’s life was changed again. It all happened remarkably swiftly in the end. Aunt Ada knew a woman who knew a fellow whose sister was travelling across the ocean to a place called London to see a man about a governess position, and she was to take Vivien with her. Decisions were made and details moored neatly together in the stream of grown-up conversation that seemed always to flow above Vivien’s head.

A pair of almost-new shoes were found, her hair was forced neatly into plaits, the rest of her into a starchy dress with a rib-bon sash. Her uncle drove them down the mountain and on to the railway station to meet the train for Brisbane. It was raining still, and hot with it, and Vivien drew with her finger on the steamy window.

The square out front of the Railway Hotel was full when they arrived, but they found Miss Katy Ellis precisely where she’d arranged to meet them, beneath the clock at the ticketing window.

Vivien hadn’t guessed even for a second that there were so many people in the world. They were everywhere, each one different from the other, scurrying about their business like bull ants in the damp muck where a rotten log used to lie. Black umbrellas, and large wooden containers, and horses with deep brown eyes and flared nostrils.

The woman cleared her throat and Vivien realised she’d been spoken to. She chased across her memories to recall what had been said. Horses and umbrellas, bull ants in the wet, people scurrying—her name. The woman had asked if she was called Vivien.

She nodded.

‘You mind your manners,’ scolded Aunt Ada, straightening Vivien’s collar. ‘It’s what your mother and father would’ve want-ed. You say, “Yes, Miss,” when you’re asked a question.’

‘Unless you disagree, of course, in which case “No, Miss” will do perfectly well.’ The woman gave a neat smile that signalled she was making a joke. Vivien looked between the pair of expectant faces staring down at her. Aunt Ada’s brows drew together as she waited.

‘Yes, Miss,’ Vivien said.

‘And are you well—this morning?’

Compliance had never come naturally, and once Vivien would have spoken her mind and shouted that she wasn’t well at all, she didn’t want to go, it wasn’t fair and they couldn’t make her … But not now. It struck Vivien now that it was far easier simply to say what people wanted to hear. What difference did it make anyway? Words were clumsy things; there were none she could think of to describe the bottomless black hole that had opened within her; the ache that fed upon her insides each time she thought she heard her father’s footsteps coming down the hall, smelled her mother’s cologne, or worst of all, saw something she simply had to share with Pippin …

‘Yes, Miss,’ she said, to the lively woman with red hair and a long, tidy skirt.

Aunt Ada handed Vivien’s suitcase to a porter, patted her niece’s head, and told her to be good. Miss Katy Ellis checked her tickets carefully and wondered whether the dress she’d packed for her interview in London would do as well as she hoped. And, as the train whistled its imminent departure, a small girl wearing neat plaits and someone else’s shoes climbed its iron stairs. Smoke filled the platform; people waved and hollered; a stray dog ran barking through the crowds. Nobody noticed as the little girl stepped over the shadowed threshold; not even Aunt Ada—who some might’ve expected to be shepherding her orphaned niece towards her uncertain future. And so, when the essence of light and life that had been Vivien Longmeyer contracted itself for safekeeping and disappeared deep inside her, the world kept moving and nobody saw it happen.

Twenty-three

London, March 1941

VIVIEN RAN INTO the man because she wasn’t watching where she was going. She was also going very quickly—too quickly, as was her habit. And so they collided, on the corner of Fulham Road and Sydney Street, on a cold grey London day in March. ‘Excuse me,’ she said as shock turned to contrition. ‘I didn’t see you there.’ He had a slightly dazed expression on his face and she thought at first that she’d concussed him. She said, by way of further explanation, ‘I go too quickly I always have.’ Speed of light and limb her father used to say when she was small and whipping through the bush. Vivien shook the memory away.