Orphans of the Storm (8 page)
Mr Bellamy had agreed that this seemed reasonable and the very next day had telephoned her, from his office in Southport, to say that the sale of all goods and effects would take place on 15 December, which would leave the house empty. ‘Apparently, it’s easier to sell an empty house than one half full of old-fashioned furniture and carpets,’ he had said. ‘So if that date would suit you, Miss Williams . . .’ Jess had assured him that it would be fine and she and Gladys began to plan their futures.
Gladys had been lucky and had got a good job as cook/housekeeper to a small family of four living quite near the park. Mr Bellamy had given her an excellent reference, extolling her abilities as a cook and assuring her prospective employer that she was very honest and a hard worker. Jess, on the other hand, did not attempt to get another job since she and Ken had decided to see how they went on as a married couple. Ken’s wages should be adequate for most of their expenses – they had considered buying a property but in the end had decided against it. ‘If we decide to buy later, then it’s an easy matter to give a landlord a week’s notice and move out,’ Ken had said. ‘But we neither of us know a darned thing about property. We could easily splash out our gelt on a house and then discover the roof leaked like a sieve, or the drains smelt bad or the beams had worm, and then where would we be? No; I reckon we’ll leave owning property till we’ve had more experience.’
Jess had agreed, and after having viewed a number of rented properties they took a small terraced house in a side turning off Heyworth Street. It had a parlour and a kitchen and scullery on the ground floor. There was a large brass cold-water tap over the kitchen sink and another smaller one in the scullery. Upstairs, there were two decent-sized bedrooms, and up a further flight two tiny attic rooms. There was a back yard with a wood shed and a lavatory, and this last particularly pleased Jess since, when she had lived at home in a court off Vauxhall Road, there had been a communal lavatory which was shared by all ten houses, and a communal water tap from which the householders filled numerous buckets, morning and night. She had said nothing of this to Ken, knowing that his parents had been far more affluent than her own, but had simply agreed with him that the house would do very well for a start.
She had told Gladys, who was to be her bridesmaid, that it would be a quiet wedding. ‘Ken’s parents are dead and me mam’s as poor as a church mouse, so the cost is going to fall on us and we’ll have enough expense without adding a huge wedding,’ she had explained. ‘My very best friend, the person closer to me than a sister, lives in Australia and couldn’t possibly come home. But I’ve other friends, of course, girls I nursed with. I may invite some of them.’
And despite Jess’s fears that something would occur to ruin their plans, everything had gone forward smoothly. The sale of the household goods and personal effects had taken place on the date selected, and Gladys had moved into her new post, whilst Jess, laden with bulging bags, had taken up residence in a small lodging house. The weather had been cold and crisp and Jess was fully occupied with Christmas coming on. She had written a long letter to Nancy and had spent the rest of the time either helping her landlady with the preparations for Christmas, or cleaning their future home from top to bottom. Over Christmas itself, she and Ken had whitewashed all the walls and ceilings and moved what little furniture they owned into place. Ken had ordered coal and logs but said they were not to be delivered until 28 December, for though the neighbours seemed pleasant enough there was a jigger behind the back yard and it would have been easy for anyone who knew the house was vacant to nip over the wall into the yard of No. 4, break open the rickety door of the shed, and help themselves.
On the evening of the twenty-sixth, tired from the pleasant Christmas they had enjoyed, but excited by the prospect of the wedding next day, Ken and Jess had taken themselves off for a walk through the frosty streets. ‘It’ll be a grand day, because we’ve planned it all so carefully,’ Ken had said contentedly, squeezing her hand. ‘I know Christmas isn’t a good time for flowers but chrysanthemums is real pretty – colourful, like. And Mrs Clarke has done wonders with the money we gave her to get food for the reception. Oh, aye, it’ll all go like clockwork, you’ll see.’
‘And after the reception, we’re having a real honeymoon,’ Jess had breathed ecstatically. Ken had booked two whole days in Blackpool, a place she had only ever visited once, and she had never before stayed in a real hotel – a hotel, furthermore, which would provide them with three meals a day. ‘Oh, Ken, it’s going to be wonderful, I know it is.’
As they had turned and walked back towards her lodgings Jess had thought that, if she were honest, the thought of being married was even more exciting than staying in a hotel. But she could scarcely say so; nice girls never mentioned such things. One was supposed to be nervous, anxious even, not all lit up and longing for the feel of Ken’s arms round her and his body close to hers.
She had looked up at Ken as they reached the front door, and he had taken her in his arms. Was he worried, or anxious? Would the responsibility of having a wife trouble him? But then their eyes had locked and she saw the smile and the little flame of desire in his, before their lips met. And she had known, suddenly, that it would be all right, that they were meant for each other. Slowly, they had drawn apart and Ken had turned, reluctantly, back towards the tram stop. Jess had waved him out of sight, and slipped into the house.
It was February and when Nancy woke that morning, it had been to the steady clattering of rain on the iron roof. She lay still for a moment, remembering that Andy lay beside her, that it was Sunday, and that breakfast could be late, for once. There were definite advantages to the wet, though there were disadvantages, too. Lying there, with the sound of the rain deafeningly loud, she considered the day ahead. She ought to seize the opportunity of a quiet day to write to her parents . . . and Jess, too. Her friend had been married to Ken now for . . . goodness, fourteen months . . . and she had only written twice. She really should have a letter-writing session this very afternoon, tell Jess and the Kerris family all her news.
Moving cautiously, so as not to wake Andy, she rolled on to her back and looked up at the mosquito netting which shrouded the bed and saw, with revulsion, a positively enormous beetle, a scorpion and a number of other ugly and hateful insects suspended in the gauzy material almost directly above her head. Thank God for the netting, she told herself. She had been stung by a scorpion in the previous wet season and Andy had cut the small wound and sucked out the poison, but even so the sting had been horribly painful.
Beside her, Andy stirred, then woke. Nancy pointed to the scorpion and Andy groaned and sat up. ‘I’ll deal with it,’ he said, knowing that she hated the things so much that even killing them worried her. Not that it stopped her dealing with the creatures when Andy was away, mustering cattle; she and Violet had once killed thirty or forty intruders, including several small snakes, during a bad thunderstorm. But Andy, of course, was used to such things. He had been born and bred in Queensland and took it for granted that, during the wet, they would be invaded by every sort of animal and insect that desired to get out of the rain and under a roof. Snakes and scorpions hid themselves in any convenient corner, and great care had to be exercised, since the dark clouds decreased visibility. Nancy had learned to be very cautious when crossing a room or going out to the kitchen to make a meal.
Andy disentangled himself from the mosquito netting and got out of bed. He picked up the book he had been reading the previous evening, flipped the scorpion on to the floor and disposed of it, then carefully surveyed the room before yawning, stretching and reaching for his clothes, which he shook vigorously before beginning to dress. ‘Might as well get up, I suppose,’ he remarked, tipping his boots upside down and examining them carefully before putting them on. ‘C’mon, old girl, and I’ll help you cook the breakfast.’ As he spoke, he was shaking her clothing and upending her shoes, a task he performed every morning when he was not away mustering cattle.
‘Right you are,’ Nancy said, climbing reluctantly out from beneath the thin sheet which was all the covering they ever needed, for even in the wet the sullen heat did not lift and the humidity was worse. Besides, she was pregnant again, and every movement was an effort.
‘What are you doing today?’ she asked, as the two of them left the bedroom. ‘I’m going to bake, but once the first batch is in the oven I mean to write some letters. I feel awfully guilty because I’ve barely been in touch with Jess since her wedding and that was more than a year ago. Somehow I’m always too busy.’ She looked down at the mound of her stomach, patting it thoughtfully. ‘I wonder if she’s expecting yet? It would be lovely if Jess and I had a baby at about the same time.’
‘Well, you aren’t likely to hear about it even if she is,’ Andy observed. ‘I reckon we’re in for another month of rain and the river will soon be so high and the floods so deep that Bullwhip won’t be able to get through. Which means no mail in either direction, of course,’ he ended.
Nancy sighed. She hated being cut off from the rest of the world, as they always were in the wet, yet she loved waking up each morning to find Andy beside her. When the finer weather came, he would be away for weeks at a time, mustering the cattle for sale, because when the floods subsided grass, sweet and good, grew up almost overnight and the fattened cattle fetched their best price. During the wet, however, both Andy and Clive slept each night in the homestead and worked at repairing the yards and buildings. Occasionally, they went further afield, but this was the exception rather than the rule, and they nearly always got home at night since sleeping out in the wet was impossible.
‘So you’re baking, eh?’ Andy said, opening the door and stepping out on to the duckboard walk which he had constructed between the house and the kitchen. ‘Well, I’m going on an egg hunt, and you aren’t to worry. I’m always careful, particularly in the wet. I’ll take Clive with me and half a dozen of the blacks. I’ll probably be out all day, because finding the nests isn’t always easy, but I’ll be home for dinner.’ He cocked a hopeful eye at her. ‘Are there any spuds left? There’s tinned peas, I know, in the store, and if you’re baking . . . well, how about a steak and kidney pudding, with mashed potatoes and peas? Or a pie, for that matter?’
‘I’ll make one or the other, I promise,’ Nancy said, trying to keep her voice steady. Of all the frightening things on the Walleroo, the creatures which scared her most were the great crocodiles. They could grow up to twenty feet in length and they were remorseless and cunning killers. She had seen a strong young stockman taken by a crocodile last year, when the river had been in flood, and she knew she would never forget it. The man had been fishing, standing on a rock only a foot or two from the shore, and she had been staring at him as he wound in his line. There had been a splash, the beginnings of a scream, a turbulence in the swirling water, and then . . . nothing. Other men fishing had fled for the bank and it had been one of them who had answered her frantic queries. ‘It were crocodile, missus,’ he had said, grabbing her arm urgently. ‘Come away from river, missus, in case there are others . . .’
So now Nancy knew what Andy meant when he said he was going egg hunting. The big crocodiles came ashore in the wet and dug themselves ‘nests’ in the mud which fringed the lagoons formed by the flood water. They laid their eggs there, and although the floods would have begun to recede by the time the eggs hatched and the baby crocodiles emerged, there would still be plenty of water for the young crocodiles to make their way back to the river. Andy and the other men would visit the places where they knew the crocodiles lay up to smash the eggs and kill any young already around. If they had not, life on the Walleroo would have been more dangerous than it already was, but even so, Nancy hated it when the men went egg hunting. Andy had assured her many times that crocodiles had no motherly instincts; they simply laid their eggs and then went back to the river, never to return, but she always had the nasty, niggling feeling that one day a furious mother crocodile would come back to examine her brood and discover Andy, Clive and the others in their destructive work. But it would never do to say so; instead, she asked him if bacon and beans would do for breakfast since the hens laid almost no eggs in the wet. Andy said that bacon and beans would be fine and he hitched himself on to one of the work counters and began wielding the opener on a can of beans whilst Nancy cut half a dozen thick rashers off the joint.
She was just beginning to fry them in the big iron pan when she felt the first warning stab of pain in the small of her back. She said nothing, but she must have stiffened because Andy said at once: ‘What’s the matter, hon? Did you splash yourself with hot fat? If so, I’ll watch the pan while you dip the burn in a bucket of water.’
I must have jumped as well, Nancy thought remorsefully, turning to assure Andy that she was just fine. There was no point in alerting him yet. He needed to destroy the crocodile eggs and the pain might be a false alarm. She began to lay the cooked rashers on a dinner plate, then tipped the can of beans into another pan and put that over the heat. ‘I wonder if Pete’s awake yet?’ she asked idly, gently stirring the beans so that they did not stick to the bottom of the pan. ‘If so, I’ll put some porridge on.’
‘I reckon he’ll be up and doing,’ Andy said, as Nancy tipped the beans on to his plate. ‘You start the porridge off and I’ll take this across to the living room and check on Pete and Aggie for you.’
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