Fire Song (4 page)

‘Maybe not many laughs for the likes of her,’ Mum snapped, when Ingrid told her.

Mrs Klein even commented on the name
Emoh Ruo,
when Ruth told her about it after her first visit. ‘How endearing!’ she said, smiling broadly, as if it was funny to spell a house name backwards, but also something else – quite nice.

Ingrid helped Ruth the day she arrived at school, scared witless and already looking different in her funny foreign dress and with her brown lace-up ankle boots, the likes of which had never been seen in the Blue Mountains. It hadn’t taken long to like the girl, but her first impression wasn’t the best.

‘What about those funny brown-rimmed glasses she wears. They’re so ugly!’ Eileen Featherstone had breathed, as soon as Ruth entered the classroom.

‘My mother said she’s a Jew-girl,’ Robyn Smithers had whispered after Mrs Marks introduced her. ‘Everyone, this is Ruth Klein. She’s a new girl all the way from Austria, a country far away in Europe. Who knows where that is on the map? Of course you do – near Germany. It’s one of the places where the war was waged and when it was over, many people had to seek new lands.’ Mrs Marks’s voice always went a bit shaky at this, because, like Mum, she had lost an older brother in the fighting.

‘Welcome, Ruth Klein. You can take a seat next to – ’

Don’t let it be me, Ingrid remembered thinking at that second. But of course it was.

‘Next to Ingrid Crowe and she’ll help you on your first day. Won’t you, Ingrid?’

‘Yes, Miss.’ Her face felt hot, because she really didn’t want to be saddled with any new girl, and especially one in such an old-fashioned looking dress, weird boots and boring glasses. But she’d taken to Ruth the moment she sat down
and Ingrid could hear her short frightened breaths, as she smiled in that nervous new-girl way. Ingrid had felt that same rush of something she always felt for Pippa, whenever Mum got mean with her and she had to somehow distract Mum and whisk Pippa away.

After Ruth’s shyness melted and her English improved, she turned out to be really funny.

In the ice-cold playground, on that first day, as the winter wind swooped up from the valley in gusts that sent them all into a wild frenzy, Robyn Smithers started it – just as she had with Dom, when he arrived the year before. She had teased him about being a dago, but it had backfired because he was a good fighter and great with a football. Poor little Ruth, though…

‘Jew-girl, you go back where you came from. We don’t want you here,’ Robyn chanted as an interested group formed round them.

There were Ruth’s short, scared breaths again.

Ingrid took her freezing hand. ‘And we don’t want you here, Robyn Smithers. You can go to hell!’ She’d marched Ruth away and ignored the handful of gumnuts tossed after them, and Robyn’s voice above the wind.

‘You swore, Ingrid Crowe, and I’m telling. And she is so a Jew. Mum said.’

‘That ain’t real swearing, Robbie,’ Evan Evans cut in. ‘And what’s a Jew, anyway?’

‘Same as a dago or a chink, but different,’ said Robyn Smithers. ‘My mum says that their religion is different and she says we don’t need any more foreigners here, overrunning the country.’

Evan had lost interest. There was a game of footie starting in the paddock. Dom was one of the players, and he was Dom’s mate.

‘Righto,’ he said, because he was a bit sweet on Robyn Smithers – but that was all – and then he was gone.

Ingrid couldn’t bear Ruth’s grateful smile, so she made her draw a hopscotch on the tarred bit of the playground near the school with some old bits of chalk she carried in her pocket, exactly for that purpose. And then watched Ruth’s strange-looking boots do some good, as she kicked her way round the chalk marks – not expertly, but not as pathetically as she’d imagined. And it was good to see Ruth could laugh and that made Ingrid laugh too, as if they were old friends. Even so, she couldn’t help saying when the bell rang and they walked back towards the class line, ‘You better get a proper school uniform, Ruth, quick as you can.’

That afternoon she’d asked Mum a dangerous question. Mum was in a good mood at the time, because a new boarder was going to arrive at
Emoh Ruo
and had paid a month in advance. She’d been baking that afternoon and she offered Ingrid a slice of teacake before she’d even hit the kitchen. Things were peaceful.

Ingrid slid her Globite school case clear across the verandah, patted the dog and promised him a walk. Then she went straight into the kitchen, took Pippa on her knee and jiggled her up and down in the warmth of the stove and Mum’s happy face. She ate the whole slice without speaking and then Mum sat down opposite them as if, for once, she were waiting for Ingrid to speak.

‘Robyn Smithers called the new girl, Ruth Klein, a Jew-girl, Mum,’ Ingrid said, licking her fingers and feeding
Pippa the white creamy icing she liked, ‘as if it was a real bad thing to be.’

‘As if I care,’ Mum said quickly, ‘whether she’s a Jew or a Calathumpian. Or about anything that Smithers girl says.’

Ingrid looked up a bit alarmed at Mum’s tone, to see a warning frown creasing her brow. ‘But aren’t we a bit Jewish?’ She knew she was risking a change in Mum’s mood by asking this, but it seemed like as good a time as any, because Grandma Logan had told her a bit about their family. To her surprise, Mum didn’t yell, but leant across the table and said quickly, almost urgently, ‘For heaven’s sake don’t go blabbing about that in this town, or you’ll know what is.’

‘Know what
what
is?’

Like so many adults, her mother often spoke in riddles. But she cut another slice of teacake and Ingrid took that as a good sign.

‘Mum?’ She thought she might get more out of her if she trod softly.

‘My grandmother was a Jewish woman, yes. A good woman, come to that, and what a cook! And seamstress. She could turn out a dress quick smart, and often did on Saturday afternoon – one for Ivy and one for me, if there was a dance.’ Something in her voice told Ingrid that her mother had loved this grandmother who was rarely spoken of. ‘She lost everyone in that horrible war. Everyone but my mother. She was sent here with a lot of other migrants. But mostly, in the family, well, we kept good and quiet about the Jewish bit.’

Dare she ask why? Mum was unfolding.

‘Why, Mum? Why did you keep quiet about it?’

‘Had to – like a lot of things. Especially in a small country town. There weren’t many Jews – none, really, where we were.
And people don’t like anyone different. They get nervous, you know. Like things will change, get out of hand. Foreigners might be funny, eat queer stuff, have queer ways, believe in different things and spoil things. And people can be cruel, Ingrid, you know that – even here, in this dump. Look at all the name-calling that goes on in this town! But not just names; things can get far worse than that!’

How? What was she talking about? Had people been cruel to Mum’s grandmother, then?

‘So we all kept quiet about our foreign grandma when we moved to Sydney. It was better that way. True blue Australians – not from foreign parts, sort of thing.’

‘But didn’t everyone come from foreign parts?’ Ingrid asked, thinking of the sailing ships and the first settlers she’d learnt about at school. ‘Other than the Aborigines, that is.’

‘You talk too much, Ingrid Crowe. Far too much. Just eat up and then you can give me a hand. Dom’s dad bought me a whole heap of fresh peas that need shelling. The potatoes need peeling, too.’ And she shook the crumbs from her bright apron and stood up and Ingrid thought there was nothing more to be said on the matter. But there was one more thing.

‘Don’t you go hanging around the new girl, what’s-her-name Klein, or go to her house, now will you? And don’t say a word about what I told you, understand?’ She nodded, but Ingrid didn’t understand why Mum was making it such a secret, as if her old Jewish grandma was something so shameful. Nobody liked to talk much about what had happened to them in the war, it was so terrible. They had sympathy about it, though, if ever anyone did mention it, so why this secrecy now?

She’d gone to visit Ruth Klein’s house as soon as she could, not to spite Mum, but because Ruth told her at school that she’d found a nest of kittens in her backyard. Six of them, blind and mewing and gorgeous. And she liked Ruth and was interested in all that she’d told Ingrid about her parents. And interested in what a home was like where you were the only child.

Mr and Mrs Klein had been more than welcoming whenever she visited after that. She was fascinated to find out that Mrs Klein ran the whole house from a wheelchair, because something bad had happened to her that meant she had weak legs for life, Ruth told her. Mr Klein had made special wooden ramps for the house so she could get up and down the steps to the kitchen and the bathroom all by herself. She preferred it that way.

Mrs Klein always dressed in pretty florals Ingrid knew her mum would like. Her cardigans were of fine wool with fancy buttons and she knew Mum would like those, too. And Mrs Klein sang a lot and seemed happy as anything, despite her affliction. Not only that – she baked pastries such as Ingrid had never tasted, and never seemed to lose her temper with Ruth.

And what about that morning she and Ruth had performed especially for her! Mrs Klein had wheeled herself over to the cumbersome old pianola, so big in that tiny room, and sat there with her hands poised. Ruth took up her place by her mother’s chair, clasped her hands in front of her as if she were going to recite poetry the way they did at school, and took several deep breaths. Just watching her, Ingrid saw Ruth Klein’s face change. She was staring into the distance and gathering herself, as a cat might before it made an extraordinary leap.

As Mrs Klein played the introduction, her daughter’s face was giving and receiving, Ingrid thought, but almost as if it weren’t Ruth anymore. And then she stopped playing, turned and said with a throaty laugh, ‘Let’s tell her, Ruthie, before you sing, that this song is for her. For you, Ingrid. It’s by the famous German composer, Schumann and it’s called “The Raven". That’s a crow!’ And there was that happy laugh again, as she swung back to the keyboard.

Ruth merely nodded and concentrated once more, as the introduction played out. And then she sang a strange, sad song about a crow, not that Ingrid could understand the words at all. It wasn’t the song as much as Ruth herself that was surprising, her face somehow quite transformed with the effort of singing. And then as she finished the song she came back to being Ruth again. And Mr Klein came into the room to clap and Mrs Klein chimed in with, ‘Bravo! Bravo, Ruth!’

‘Pure, like an angel,’ she wanted to say, but thought that would only make Ruth laugh.

‘Beautiful.’ Mrs Klein sat there at the pianola.

‘But so sad,’ Ingrid added.

The Kleins all nodded in agreement and smiled at her as if she’d said something really clever.

Why couldn’t it be like this at home with Mum – ever?

Because it can’t, you stupid thing, she thought as she made her way home that day.

It was cosy being with the Kleins and sometimes amazing, like the time Ruth had shown her some of the treasures from their china cabinet. ‘Miniature opera glasses from our house back in Austria! Mummy and Daddy went to the opera all the time, before the war.’

Ingrid didn’t like to admit that she didn’t even know what the opera was.

It was true her own mother sometimes did nice things, like making one of her apple pies as a treat. Nice things. She searched her mind anxiously for others and then thought of something and smiled.

There was the way she showed Ingrid how to dress the sprigs of wood they called ‘mountain devils’ that time, when she admired another one dressed in frothy tulle in Grandma Logan’s lounge room. Their china cabinet with its mountain devils and ash trays with pictures on them, was a very different set-up from the Klein’s, which as well as the tiny opera glasses had a silver edged biscuit barrel among their fine china cups. Mum fetched scraps of material, her sewing kit and pinking shears and she took a whole morning to show Ingrid how to dress the mountain devils they’d found in the bush, better than the one in Grandma’s cabinet.

And sometimes she would come into their bedroom at night and sing to them all soft and quiet, and cuddle little Pippa just like she was a baby and smile in a really happy way. There were good times with Mum. You just had to wait a bit for them.

And the Kleins had Ruth as their only child, didn’t they? There was no Pippa. She caught sight of those bright brown eyes and that curly mop of hair up ahead as she turned into their street. They didn’t have a darling Pippa, did they? There she was – that cute, silent child, swinging to and fro on their squeaking front gate. She had probably been there all morning, waiting and waiting for Ingrid to come home. And Ruth didn’t have anyone to love her to bits like that.

Ingrid thought maybe she could talk to Mrs Klein about
Mum’s dark intentions. She was a kind woman. But how could Mrs Klein do anything much from her wheelchair? She’d tell Mr Klein, because anyone could see how loveydovey they were and how they even held hands whenever they were near each other. Maybe Mum wouldn’t listen to Mrs Klein even if she rang her up, because Mum didn’t know her. If there was just some way of getting them together sometime, though, Mum would like Mrs Klein very much. Mrs Klein liked pretty clothes and she was bright and liked to laugh and never seemed to gossip like some of the other neighbours.

What was she thinking? She couldn’t ask the Kleins for their help, Mr or Mrs. That was impossible!

‘Hullo, young Ingrid Crowe!’ Mr Spicer boomed as he adjusted his glasses to get a better view of her troubled expression.

She flashed the ten shilling note in his surprised face and said, quick as she could, because Mrs Spicer was nowhere to be seen, ‘Mum needs some Drum tobacco, please. And some cigarette papers too.’ She couldn’t bring herself to say, ‘And a box of matches,’ as she always did, because a wall of fire rose up in front of her, high as Mr Spicer’s highest shelves, and the fire song started in her head,
Fire! Liar! Fire!
and she had to look really close up at the giant tin of Arnott’s biscuits on the counter, with the picture of the brightly coloured rosella perched on it, to stop the panic showing on her face.