Currawalli Street (23 page)

‘The eggs, of course. Why else do people have chooks?'

‘Their good looks? Their beautiful singing? Why all of a sudden do we need more eggs?' Gerald is the only one who laughs at his joke.

‘The pub wants Mum to supply their kitchen with pasta. Norm told the manager how good her pasta is and so he came around yesterday. She wants to do it.'

‘What about using that young bloke who's been working on the Cummings' veranda? He might be cheap. Anyway, I'll pay for it.'

‘Okay, we'll do that then,' Rosa says, happily.

Immediately a plate of Romano cheese is placed in front of Gerald and Gina brings over the wine bottle to refill his glass. The women begin
to talk happily about the suspected assignations of a woman they know in the street. Before Gerald can catch her name, he realises that his offer of payment for the chook shed was probably the result required. This has happened before. He looks across the table. Rosa smiles sweetly at him. So, unusually, does Gina. And then Kathy follows suit. So his daughter is in on it too! He looks down at Bradley, playing on the floor with a fallen bread crust, pretending it is an aircraft carrier, unaware of the scene that has just played out. Gerald recognises him as his only future ally.

He sighs and returns to his paper.

Mary looks down at the old newspaper clipping on the table in front of her: ‘A coronation cake to celebrate the Coronation of George the Fifth, 22 June 1911, created by Sir Stephen Bolton, Master Chef to our Royal Family.' Mary loves this newspaper clipping. It was inside a recipe book given to her by Patrick's grandmother when Mary first moved in. The recipes were mainly of English cakes and Mary made a few. One day when she picked the book up, the clipping fell out from the back. Mary took it in next door on her visit for a cup of tea the following day. By then Rose was crippled with arthritis and she drifted away a lot but she smiled when she saw the clipping.

‘Make it and bring me a piece,' she said to Mary. ‘Will you do that?'

Mary went home, grabbed her bag and walked straight down to the store. They had all the ingredients the recipe required. She made the cake that afternoon and took over a piece that night. Rose was too tired to eat it but she asked Mary to hold it under her nose so that she could smell it.

Rose closed her eyes as she spoke. ‘The first time we made that cake was right here at this table. Most of the women of the street were here and we took turns to beat the mixture and tell stories. What a good day it was. I know the year—1914. This clipping came from London and was sent to Kathleen Oatley—the mother of Kim across the road in number ten—by her mother living in London. She was a lovely girl, Kathleen. They all were.'

‘Yes, I remember her,' Mary says patiently.

‘My own daughter, Elizabeth, who of course you know, was away at the time meeting her husband, Patrick's father. I remember because Alfred and I were worried about her. But she brought the wagons home and a husband to boot. The house you're living in was being built then and they moved in a few months later. Then Elizabeth was with child and Alfred and Walter went away together to the war.' She fell silent.

‘So Patrick's father wasn't there when Patrick was born?' asked Mary.

Rose looked at her for a long time. ‘No.'

And now the clipping is even more yellowed. Mary doesn't need to look at it to make the coronation cake; she just likes to do so for some reason that she can't really fathom. Perhaps it is because she is starting to see that her own life is only relevant when she looks at it as history. Just as the clipping is fading, maybe she is too.

Mary puts the clipping back in the tin on top of the fridge and turns to the window. She sees Patrick pulling at weeds outside in the garden. He picks up an old rusted horseshoe and throws it behind him to be placed with all the other rusted horseshoes they have always found in
their yard.

A
lmost symbolically Jim hits a nail into the veranda floor that doesn't really need to be hit again. That should be the final blow. Just then, Mary steps out the front door carrying a tray with a cup of tea and a piece of coronation cake on it. She puts the tray on the wooden bench just under the new ticket window.

‘Finished,' Jim tells her. ‘I think I've done everything we said. Can you see anything that I've forgotten?'

Mary looks around. ‘Other than the signs, that looks like it to me.'

‘We can put them up now.'

Mary walks along the veranda to where the signs are leaning against the wall. She pulls away the canvas that has kept them dry overnight and, with two hands, carries them back.

She puts two of them on the ground below where they are going to be attached to the wall. Jim picks up his drill and plugs it into the extension cord that is snaking out of the front door. The first sign is going to be hung next to the ticket window, and Mary holds it in place while Jim
drills the holes. They work together well, Jim thinks as he puts the drill down at his feet and pulls a screwdriver from his top pocket.

‘It's level, isn't it?' he checks.

‘Yes. Good enough for me.'

Jim begins tightening the screws. It is harder than he thought it would be. Even though the timber is soft, it is biting hard on the screw and squeezing it tight.

Jim finishes the second screw and they both stand back and look. ‘Peter did a pretty good job,' he observes. ‘Maybe he should be a signwriter?'

Mary looks at the sign, then at Jim. ‘I think he is better off doing what he does.'

‘Probably. What does he do exactly?'

‘I don't really know. He's harmless though.'

‘He did paint these signs well. You've got to hand that to him,' Jim says, as he uses the screwdriver as a back scratcher, at the same time tilting his head to see the sign.

‘His father was a signwriter. Now, he was a strange potato. There are lots of stories about him. He's back in Poland now.'

‘Mary, did the police ever talk to Peter?' Jim asks quietly.

‘They did more than that. They took him away for a few days. Locked him up. They thought he was the one who . . .'

‘He didn't tell me that. He pretended that he didn't know anything about the shootings.' Jim looks at her for a moment then out towards the street. ‘But he wasn't, was he?'

‘No, they had to let him go. I don't think they could get much sense out of him.' Mary's hand goes out towards the sign on the wall. ‘I don't
know whether he would have been pretending not to know anything about it; it's probably more likely that it just left his mind. He's a troubled boy. What must go on in his head, I don't know.'

‘He had an alibi?'

‘I don't know exactly. I wonder . . . Have they been around to talk to you yet?'

‘They rang. They're coming tomorrow.'

She rubs her forehead as she says, ‘Life goes on, even when we don't want it to. If you don't mind, when we have finished with these signs here, I will start going through your mother's wardrobe, throwing things out. Is there anything you particularly want me to keep?'

‘Nothing. Nothing at all.'

‘Are you sure?'

‘Positive. Nothing.'

‘Good. It will make it easier to . . . clear out her ghost.' Jim flinches. Mary thinks she has spoken too coldly. ‘Sorry. I don't . . .'

Jim straightens up, standing taller than usual, and gives the tiniest of coughs. He says, ‘That's alright. They are only words and it is what has to be done. Sometimes though it is hard to keep her in the place where I keep dead people.' He looks at her quickly and tries to explain. ‘I mean, in my . . . head. I don't keep real dead people.'

‘I know what you're trying to say. Words seem to get themselves in the way of your meaning sometimes.' She places her hand on his back and rubs it twice. ‘Let's finish here and then I'll go over.'

The last sign goes up easily and Mary disappears inside for a moment while Jim puts his tools together and rolls up the extension cord. He is standing in the hallway when Patrick walks out of the kitchen, followed
by Mary. She ushers him out through the screen door. Jim stays in the hallway and listens.

‘We've finished, Pat. Your very own platform. I don't want you to have to walk up to the station anymore. This way we can be together like we always wanted. Remember how you used to say you wished we lived in the station as that way we would always be together? Well, this is pretty close.'

Patrick walks over and fingers the lettering of one of the signs. ‘But there are no trains.'

‘That's true. I can't do anything about that. But there will be plenty of people who will come onto the platform to sit and talk to you,' Mary says softly.

‘Will there? Oh well. Trains aren't everything when it comes to a station. I was getting a bit tired of walking up there. The other day, a man spat on the concrete in front of me.'

He walks along to the end of the platform. ‘I like the look of this. I could make up my own timetables.' He looks around. ‘I'll need a good broom.'

Mary smiles sadly at him. ‘We'll buy one.'

Patrick goes to the screen door and looks in. ‘Jim, I didn't really know what you were doing. I see it now. Thank you.'

‘It's my pleasure, Patrick.'

‘Did you learn to do this in the army? Over there in Vietnam?'

‘This is some of what they taught me.'

‘In its own way that makes it worthwhile. For me anyway.' Patrick looks up and down the platform before he says, ‘Did you enjoy doing it?'

‘Yes, I think I did. It was good work.'

They hear voices. Upper Lance and Debra are coming in the front gate, responding to Mary's open invitation. Megan is just closing the front door of number nine to join them too.

‘You'd better get some cake ready, Mary,' says Patrick.

By the time Jan returns from his office work that evening, Sally is at the front window waiting for a friend to pick her up. All the classmates are going out to celebrate something, nothing important. But a night out together is what is needed and so no one declines.

Sally knows that it has been a long time since Jan has seen her dressed up like this. He has probably forgotten that she could look like this. She notices him trying not to stare too hard.

Since her life at university started, Sally has noticed that many things are, if not changing, at least altering. She has never been so aware of her mind before. She has never been so aware of her body before. She attributes this to spending so much time with other women and the rhythms they create together which resonate strongly through her. She didn't comprehend the meaning of the word ‘sensual' until she heard it come from another woman's lips. It has less to do with desire and more to do with an awareness of what her classmates call her spirit.

Jan would never understand that, no matter how much he pretended to. Sally is confident from seeing his face that she looks good and he knows from the way she is looking at him that she is aware of what he is thinking.

Jan sighs, knowing that he is transparent to her. As she turns back to
the window, he notices the earrings.

He is about to ask her where she got them from but by the time his mind has run through the possible answers, he has decided to stay quiet and pretend not to notice them. They are not the gift of a relative or even a close friend. They are the gift of a lover. The blue light that they reflect sears straight into his mind and without another word he walks from the room, accidentally knocking a Bible from the sideboard as he does so.

As her friend's car pulls up on the street outside the manse, Sally smiles.

T
he apostle birds won't settle in the branches this morning. Their fluttering and arguments draw Val from her house to look up into the tree. The colony has been in that tree longer than Val has been in the house. The silly old railway man across the road said that they were already there when he was a little boy. Mr Oatley, from number ten, told her that apostle birds select a tree and the flock will stay there for generations. She believed him, though, in hindsight, she thinks he probably lied to her. People who get murdered aren't the sort to have any regard for telling the truth to next-door neighbours.

Val decides to look up apostle birds next time she is at the Choppingblock Library. She actually came outside to see if it was Thomas disturbing the birds. He has been gone now for a week and she has stopped pretending that she isn't worried. It is unlike Thomas to be away for so long. Something has happened, of that she is now sure.

That dog from down the street—the one that fouls the nature strip and treats each lamppost as if it is his very own urinal—now
comes to the front gate and looks in. His look may not be of dejection but Val reads it as such. She watches the birds for a few minutes and then goes back inside. The house seems cavernous without Thomas.

Val thinks back to how she coped with her husband's death. He was only forty and she was thirty-two. She dealt with his death as any robust thinking person would: she replaced him with physical, tiring duties and worked at them hard until she felt brave enough to stop. It took three years. But her expression of grief was minimal. Now, though, with Thomas, she doesn't think she can begin a new round of frenetic activity; she feels too tired.

She walks over to the mirror and when she looks at her reflection the tears begin. They are hot and stinging. She has an uncontrollable need to call out to someone. She can't say Thomas's name but she can say her husband's. The tears are full and run easily down her cheeks. She leaves the mirror and walks into the lounge room. There is a picture of Thomas on the mantelpiece, next to a picture of Keith that she took when they were on their honeymoon in Sydney.

When the tears begin to dry up and the aching begins in her chest, she picks up the picture of Thomas to bring back the tears in force. At least they keep the aching at bay. She cries like this for the next twenty minutes. But the next time she looks down at the photograph she is clutching, she realises that it is the one of Keith wearing his uniform. She starts to cry again.

Keith was a good man. He would never have let her answer the door on her own when the postman delivered the telegram. He would have stood by her side with a hand on her shoulder as she read it. He would
have known how sad the news would make her and he would have held her tightly in his arms. He was a good man.

And he would be out there now looking for Thomas.

The tears dry up, her breathing becomes steady and she feels as if something has been pushed a little further from her mind.

She turns to the window as she dries her cheeks. In front of her house, looking up at the apostle birds, is the priest, Jan. Without too much thought, she walks to the front door and opens it, just as he has begun to walk on down the street. He is jingling some coins in his pocket. He turns his head and looks at her, lifting an imaginary cap. She notices that he is not wearing his collar.

Keith would not have liked such an exciting man.

Jim listens to the apostle birds in the tree next door as he finishes his ham sandwich. He feels comforted by the sound. It is the silence in nature that he has grown to be wary of. Birds won't sing when there is impending violence in the air; when men are sneaking up on each other or shells are about to fall from the sky they know to fly to another place.

That was one of the first things that Jim was taught when he arrived in Vietnam. Out on a jungle track, he was answering a question from one of the other men about his life at home when he noticed that no one was listening anymore. They had stopped walking and opened their eyes wide. It made him so scared that he fell silent, the word about to leave his lips forgotten.

The birds had stopped singing.

Brent moved quickly to his side and pushed him into the cover of the large leaves surrounding the trail. As one, the other men followed. Brent put his fingers to his lips but no one needed that reminder.

Twenty feet away, six soldiers from the North walked down the trail towards them; they must have been just as aware of the silence of the birds, but had evidently decided to keep moving and trust that they would be safe. And they were. Happy not to engage them, Jim's platoon let them walk on. The men didn't set off again until the sound of birds returned, and they didn't talk until they reached the relative safety of the main camp, where their voices had to be raised to be heard over the sound of the helicopters.

So the restlessness of the apostle birds now tells Jim that it is safe for him to continue on with his day. To celebrate finishing Patrick's platform, Jim is wearing his favourite shirt that Mai picked out for him in Saigon. Mary ironed it for him. He found it hanging on the lounge-room doorknob. It is a deep red, too light to be crimson, too dark to be pink. He steps out the back screen door and pulls the hammer out of the holster of the nail bag as he walks over to the side fence. Yesterday he noticed that the rusted nails had loosened, and some of the wooden palings are listing. He is going to pull out the original nails and replace them with new ones that will keep the palings in place for another sixty years. He puts some nails head first between his lips and then pulls the first of the palings away.

A sulphur-crested cockatoo sits in the tree above the fence, head turned sideways, looking down at him. He is shocked to see a grey-haired man leaning on Val's wall, carving out what looks to be one of the decorative roof supports around her house. The man's face looks lined
and wind beaten, and he retreats quickly back around the corner of Val's house. He shows no emotion and Jim doesn't feel at all compelled to engage him. It is a strange vision.

And it is enough to make him put off fixing the fence today. Just as he is stepping into the kitchen he hears a knock at the front door.

Mary is standing on the porch, looking back out towards the street. At her feet are some small calico sacks, a big paper bag with a department store name across it, and an empty cane basket. When she hears the door open she turns to face Jim. ‘I thought now might be a good time to finish cleaning out your mother's wardrobe. Is that alright with you?'

‘Now is as good a time as any—come in. Shall I help you?'

‘Of course not. Why don't you go down to the pub for a while? Or there is a seat free on Patrick's platform if you prefer to go there.'

‘I might do both. Shall I leave you the key?'

‘What for? No, you go. And don't rush back. This will take a while. That shirt looks good on you.'

‘Thanks for ironing it.' Jim grabs his wallet from the windowsill where he left it last night, and finds himself stepping out the front door without any firm idea of where he is heading. At first it is an uncomfortable thought and he realises he hasn't enjoyed this type of spontaneity in the three years since he was conscripted. It gives him a strange sense of freedom and, without giving the decision too much consideration, he heads across the street to number seven where Patrick is overseeing a small number of neighbours who have answered Mary's request and come over to see the new platform. Patrick engages him as he comes through the gate and climbs the steps.

‘Good afternoon, Jim. Trains are running late today, I'm afraid. But Mary has made some tea and there is some of her coronation cake. And there is room for you to sit along here.' He points to a spot on the bench between Megan and Debra. On the next bench, Eve, Rodney's mother, and Bill Casey from number three sit watching the street. Each person has a cup of tea and a piece of cake. Jim leans into the ticket window and pours himself a cup and grabs a slice of cake. Everyone stays silent while he is doing this but as he lifts the cake to his mouth to try a little bit straight away, they resume talking. As he sits down he knocks Megan's hand, which is holding her teacup.

‘Oh, I'm sorry,' he says, politely.

‘Don't worry. It's empty. How are you?' she responds, just as formally.

‘I've no complaints. Something strange, though—I think I've just seen a ghost in my backyard.' He rests the piece of cake on his knee and scratches his head.

‘You mean one of your . . . ?' Megan begins nervously.

‘Oh no. This was one from next door. You know, Val's place. I've never seen him before.'

‘I'm glad I've never seen a ghost. I don't know what I'd do.'

‘No? You strike me as the sort of person who would be pretty good if something unexpected happened.'

‘Really?' She looks at him. ‘. . . Was I?'

Jim nods. ‘Yes.' But it is Mai's question he is answering.
Am I good for you?

Debra has been talking to Eve, but now she turns to greet Jim. ‘This is wonderful cake,' she says. ‘Has Mary told you where she got the
recipe from?'

‘No, where?' Megan asks, speaking past Jim.

‘It came from the old woman who used to live in your house, Megan. She was Patrick's grandmother and she had been making this cake since before the Great War.'

‘Really?' says Megan, looking suddenly uncomfortable. Being this close to Jim made her think of the surprising event in her kitchen, and what with his talk of ghosts and now the old woman's cake originally coming from that kitchen, she feels decidedly uneasy.

‘It is good cake,' Jim adds, noticing Megan's sudden discomfort.

‘Oh, hello!' Debra and Eve say together as Jan Domak comes through the front gate.

‘Hello, ladies. Has anybody seen Peter, my neighbour?' he asks, to no one in particular.

‘Not since he brought down the station signs,' Jim says, with a mouthful of cake. He was trying to remember what he wanted to ask the reverend.

Jan puffs out his chest and turns to look at the street for a moment. Debra and Eve are looking at each other, suddenly aware that each has used the same tone of voice to greet the reverend, and beginning to suspect that the other may be feeling the same sort of tingle in their stomach. At the same time, they both look towards Jan who still has his back to them and continues to speak, this time as if he is addressing the street.

‘Mary says he has done this before. Apparently he wanders off sometimes. Well if you see him, come up to the church and let me know, the door is always open. Well, nearly always.'

He sweeps around to face the others.

Jim notices that Debra moves suddenly in her seat, making the bench squeak, and that Eve has leaned forward and is quite still, not breathing. She reminds him of a sniper about to fire a shot. Instinctively, he freezes too. He steals a look at Megan, smiling quietly at the reverend, her mind evidently elsewhere.

Patrick walks to the end of the platform, consulting his watch. He returns it to his pocket, looks into the far distance, clasps his hands behind his back, and begins to bounce on his toes.

Jim stands too and places his empty cup on the tray by the door. When he turns around, he finds that the reverend has taken his seat between Megan and Debra. He suddenly remembers what he wanted to ask him. Are secrets the same as things never spoken? The three women and the large priest are now engrossed in conversation, all four leaning forward. Bill Casey has wandered off down the platform to ask Patrick something. Jim's farewell is answered only by Megan and he walks to the front gate. Patrick turns from Bill and watches him leave. A willy-willy runs down the road; on a whim Jim follows it till it blows itself out at the end of the street. He continues on to the pub where he stands alone and looks at the reflection in the glass of whisky.

A South Vietnamese soldier told him a legend as they waited for a retrieval helicopter to find them. If the spirit of the person who stole your heart is around you then you will sometimes see their reflection in still water. A bath. A sink. A pond. A glass of whisky.

Jim looks for a while and then swallows the liquid in one mouthful.

He walks back to number ten, goes inside and instantly notices that
the house feels different. First he is struck by the smell. His mother's smell was always easy to identify. Lavender rose, she called it. Lately, it has been the strongest he has ever smelled it, as if she has just walked through the hallway on her way out shopping. But now there is no real sense of her presence anymore. Instead there is a new scent, one he recognises but can't identify.

Mary peers out of the bedroom. ‘Feels better, doesn't it?'

‘Sure does. What did you do?'

‘Just cleaned out her wardrobe and cupboard. There is nothing of hers left there anymore. And I lit some Chinese incense to keep her spirit from returning.'

Jim realises now why the scent is familiar—he remembers it from the town temples he walked past in Vietnam. ‘How do you know about incense?' he asks Mary.