‘She won’t be walking along the sea-front with anyone as dangerous as you,’ Betty said indignantly. ‘Not if I can help it.’
‘Don’t get all bristly with me, Betty,’ John grinned. ‘Dulcie’s got to learn these things.’
‘I think what John was trying to tell you,’ Bruce said, his lips quivering as if he wanted to laugh aloud, ‘is that men put girls into groups, and depending on what group she goes into, that’s what decides what they do on a date.’
Betty changed the subject sharply, and it wasn’t until the men had gone outside, and she and Dulcie were washing up, that Dulcie brought it up again.
‘Explain to me what Bruce and John were talking about?’ she asked.
‘Well, dear, there
are
different sorts of girls.’ Betty looked a bit embarrassed, drying the dishes very fast. ‘There’s the nice girls, the bad ones, and the in-betweens. Nice girls are the ones they all want to marry, and they don’t take liberties with them. They’ll take the bad ones drinking, knowing they can get their way with them, the in-betweens, well, they’re in-between, they might be bad with the right bloke, and if he gives her a good enough time. That’s the ones John said he’d take dancing.’
‘So the nice girls only go for walks?’ Dulcie said. ‘That sounds a bit dull!’
Betty gave her a sharp look. ‘Better to be a bit dull than end up getting a reputation for being fast,’ she said. ‘Young men have very strong urges, you go off somewhere smooching with one and there’s no one about, anything can happen.’
‘You mean they might rape a girl?’
Betty looked deeply shocked. ‘Who told you that nasty word?’
Dulcie shrugged, she wasn’t going to tell her it was Pat. ‘I can’t remember. But is that what you meant?’
Betty seemed to come over all wobbly and she sat down heavily on a kitchen stool. ‘Rape is when a man forces a girl against her will, Dulcie. It’s a very wicked thing and I don’t believe many men would do it. But kissing and canoodling can make a girl lose her head, especially if she really likes the man and thinks he really likes her. Young men can be very persuasive, they all want the same thing, and they go all out to get it. So when you meet a young man, you keep to places where there’s people. If he really cares for you, he won’t push you, do you understand?’
Dulcie nodded.
Betty seemed relieved and got up off her stool to finish the drying. Daylight was fading now, but through the window in front of the sink they could see Ross and John perched on a couple of boxes by the barn having a cigarette.
‘John’s the kind of bloke you want to be wary of,’ Betty said thoughtfully. ‘I don’t mean him exactly, he’s too old for you and anyway he wouldn’t try and sweet-talk you or he’d be out on his ear. But he’s got charm, he’s handsome and worldly, he knows what he’s doing. Ross might end up like him in ten years, but right now he’s shy, nervous of girls, he doesn’t know anything. Yet don’t let that fool you either, Dulcie, you never know with men how they are going to be when you’re alone with them. When I was your age in Perth I met a young lad at church, sweet as pie, with lovely manners, then blow me if I didn’t let him walk me home one night and he changed into a beast.’
‘He didn’t force you, did he?’ Dulcie exclaimed.
Betty laughed. ‘Never got a chance with me, I kneed him in the crotch and I was off up those back lanes like a rabbit.’
‘So how do you know when the boy’s perfect for you?’ Dulcie asked.
Betty gave her a tender look. ‘You’ll just know. That sounds vague, I know, but it’s true.’
‘How long does it take?’ Dulcie asked.
Betty blushed. ‘It took me five minutes from meeting Bruce to know he was the one. But the secret is not to let on straight away, keep them dangling a while, wait and make sure.’
Dulcie sighed. ‘It sounds so complicated.’
Betty laughed. ‘It’s not really, not if you keep your head. Besides, you’re not ready for that sort of thing yet.’
It wasn’t until October that Dulcie made any real headway with getting to know Ross better. They had brief conversations when she took tea out for the men’s smoko, the Australian word for tea-break, and sometimes after supper, but these were always centred on the farm work. On this particular day, however, the men were mending fences on the far side of the lake, and to save them coming all the way back for their lunch-time sandwiches, she’d driven out with them on the tractor. Bruce, Bob and John were all together and she left the food with them.
‘Have a look at the wild flowers while you’re out here,’ Bruce said. ‘They’re all just coming out by the lake. Ross is over there, he’ll show you, but watch out for snakes.’
Dulcie always wore shoes outside now. She’d only been here a few days when she almost stepped on a brown snake. She jumped back and it slithered away, but the memory of the way it reared up momentarily as if to strike out at her had stayed with her.
She left the tractor and walked over to the lake. Fred, one of Bruce’s three dogs, came bounding out of the gums surrounding it to greet her, showering water as he came.
Ross came through the bushes and looked suspiciously at her.
‘Bruce said to come and look at the flowers.’ She thought he was jealous because Fred the dog was making a fuss of her. ‘Will you show me them?’
He merely nodded and strode off ahead of her down the edge of the track.
The sun was really warm now at midday, but by four or five it turned very chilly again. There had been a great deal of rain during the winter and the lake was almost twice the size it would be in summer. Dulcie thought the gum trees growing out of the water looked a bit sinister – she had come down here early one morning and there was a low-lying mist swirling around them, and she half expected to see some apparition rise out of it.
Suddenly Ross stopped. ‘There you are,’ he said.
The sight took her by surprise. There, sheltered by a semi-circle of thick bushes, was the most incredible array of flowers. Red, blue, purple, yellow and white, all jostling for attention, as beautiful as any display she’d seen in parks as a child.
‘Gosh!’ was all she could say, for the sight made a lump come up in her throat. She had thought the spring flowers up at Salmon Gums lovely, but there were only small clumps there, not this huge variety or so many of them.
‘The Kangaroo paws are my favourite,’ Ross said and sidled round the edge of the patch to pick one of the larger species at the back. There was something about the reverent way he was avoiding trampling the flowers that made tears spring into her eyes.
‘Look, feel it,’ he said, coming back to her. ‘It’s all furry on the stem.’
Dulcie touched it, keeping her eyes down.
‘Why are you crying?’ he asked. His voice was gentle – normally he adopted a curt tone with her.
‘I don’t know, I guess because they are so lovely, and unexpected,’ she said, wiping her eyes with the back of her hand. ‘Beautiful things always make me go all silly.’
‘They do me too,’ he said. ‘New lambs, puppies and kittens. A calf was born when I first came here, and I cried like a baby.’
This was a major breakthrough as far as Dulcie was concerned, and she felt compelled to keep his attention. ‘It was the careful way you went to pick that flower that really made me cry,’ she admitted. ‘Most men wouldn’t have even noticed them being beautiful.’
‘I expect I would have been like that if I hadn’t come here,’ he said. ‘It’s Bruce, you see, he loves the land and everything that’s on it.’
‘You were in some terrible place too, weren’t you?’ she said very softly, frightened he would rebuff her.
But to her surprise he nodded. ‘I ran away three times, but they always caught me. The next time I made up my mind I wasn’t going to be dragged back, beaten and have my head shaved, and I made it.’
‘Where was this place?’ she asked.
A fearful look came into his eyes and Dulcie instinctively put her hand on his arm. ‘You’re a man now, Ross, they can’t make you go back there,’ she said. ‘You have to talk about it some day. You can tell me, I know what it’s like to be ill-treated too.’
He just stood there for a moment, looking at her hand on his arm, but not shaking it off. ‘It was Bindoon, about eighty miles north of Perth,’ he blurted out. ‘I got away at night, kept walking all through it, and next day, every time I heard a car or a truck I hid. I’d got some boots but no socks and my feet were bleeding and blistered. I was so hungry too, but I kept going all that day. I got lucky just as it was nearly dark, I saw a truck outside a house, with its engine running, there was nothing on the back but a few sacks. I reckoned the driver had delivered something to the house and he’d be out and on his way in a minute. So I got under the sacks and hid. He drove all the way into Perth.’
‘But how did you get from there to here?’ she asked, imagining herself hungry and with bleeding feet – at least when she’d run away she had a little money.
‘I got on the train,’ he said, still holding his head down. ‘Of course I didn’t have a ticket, and I had to keep ducking into the toilet when the guard came along. But I reckon he must’ve known I was there all along and felt sorry for me because just before we got into Kalgoorlie, he turned up unexpectedly and told me to try looking for a job there.’
‘Then you came here?’ she asked.
He half smiled. ‘Yeah, someone told me I might get a job on a fishing boat. But it took a long time to walk it, I was too scared to try and thumb a lift, and the sole of my boot came off so I threw them away. I can’t even remember the last part of the way, I was so weak and hungry. Bruce found me in the barn.’
‘Why didn’t you ever tell him and Betty about it?’ she asked.
He shrugged. ‘I suppose I thought they’d make me go back to Bindoon, so I kind of made up I didn’t know where I’d come from. Every time they asked me something I just looked all stupid at them.’
Dulcie giggled. ‘I bet that didn’t fool them!’
He grimaced. ‘No, I suppose it didn’t. Betty once said when you find an animal that’s hurt you don’t try to find out how it got hurt, all you do is nurse it. So I got the idea they didn’t really want to know where I’d come from, so I never did tell them. I still don’t want to.’ He paused, giving her a cold look. ‘I don’t know why I’ve told you. I bet you’ll go straight back and blab it all out.’
‘No I won’t,’ she said indignantly. ‘Why should I? Just to get back at you because you let out about me to John before?’
‘I didn’t mean to give you away,’ Ross said quickly. ‘But I was scared for you. John saw me waving for you to hide off the road, and he kept on asking what was I trying to tell you. I didn’t really even tell him. He guessed.’
Dulcie remembered then that wave which she thought was to remind her the post office was closing. She nodded. ‘Okay, I was mad at you then, but as it turned out it was better to go back, or I wouldn’t have ended up here. But for your information I’m not a blabbermouth or a taleteller. I can’t see why you can’t tell Bruce now, he’s fond of you and he’d like to know all about you. But I’m glad you told me, it feels nice to share a secret with you.’
His face had suddenly softened dramatically, almost as if by the telling of his story he’d shed a burden. The wary look was gone from his eyes, and his grin was a really happy one, turning up the corners of his mouth in a way that made him suddenly handsome.
‘You got any secrets to trade?’ he said. ‘A pact so we don’t tell on one another!’
She nodded. Something told her the only way to become friends with him was to show she too had a past.
Dulcie had told Betty and Bruce the same simple story she’d told Pat, that her mother had died and her father put her and May in the convent because he couldn’t look after them. While she had talked about her gran and Susan on occasions to Betty, she had never felt able to say anything more, and Betty had never asked.
‘My father is in prison in England, for the manslaughter of my mother,’ she said.
Ross’s mouth dropped open. ‘Really!’ he exclaimed, then his face hardened. ‘No, you just made that up to be big!’
‘I don’t see anything big in saying something like that,’ she said, hurt that he should see this as a lie, when to her it was offering him something very important. She turned her back on him and began to walk away.
He came after her and caught her arm. ‘I’m sorry. I find it hard to trust anyone to tell the truth.’
‘I don’t tell lies,’ she said, looking right into his eyes. ‘I might leave things out, but I don’t make things up.’
‘Is it a real secret, or do Bruce and Betty know?’ he asked.
‘I’ve never told anyone.’
It was clear Ross didn’t know what to say either. His mouth opened and closed and he was looking furtively around him as if wanting to run off.
Dulcie was still angry with him but she pulled herself together. ‘I forgot to say I brought tea and sandwiches over. I’d better get back to the house, Betty will be wondering where I am. Thank you for showing me the flowers.’
She strode off back to the tractor, jumped on it and drove off back to the house, not even stopping to speak to Bruce. It wasn’t until she was back in the kitchen that she found tears were streaming down her cheeks.
Fortunately Betty was in her sewing-room, engrossed in her patchwork. Dulcie washed her face with cold water and went back outside to do some weeding in the front garden. Yet even though she had outwardly composed herself, speaking of her mother and father had churned her up inside.
She had felt that the kindness shown to her by Bruce and Betty had wiped out all the misery of the past, that the unfair, cruel and humiliating things which had been done to her didn’t matter any more. But that clearly wasn’t so, or why would she feel so upset now? Pat had never got over the past, Ross clearly hadn’t either, so why had she thought it would be any different for herself? She must have been stupid to think that just because she had a job she liked, a few pounds saved and a few new personal belongings, a happy future was assured.
The harsh truth was that she was still a ward of the Australian government, with no rights. She had a father back in an English gaol whom she had been prevented from keeping in touch with, and a sister back in St Vincent’s whom she hadn’t heard from since she left Salmon Gums. In all the excitement and happiness of the past months that hadn’t seemed anything more than May just being too lazy to write, but maybe she was fooling herself about that, in just the same way she’d fooled herself into thinking the past didn’t matter.