Silver Wattle (33 page)

‘How do you know so much about snakes?’ I asked her.

‘Robert told me. He had a pet diamond python when he was a child, and is fascinated by reptiles.’

‘Robert Swan? Where did you see him?’

‘He is a patron of the Conservatorium of Music and occasionally comes to the high school’s performances too. He and Freddy took Esther and me to see a jazz band.’

I stopped in my tracks. Robert seemed a decent young man, but Klara was fifteen and still at school. But Klara had said that Esther had accompanied her when she went out with Robert and Freddy so I did not believe they were trying to lead her astray.

‘Do you like Robert?’ I asked.

Klara glanced at her feet. ‘I am not sure,’ she said. ‘I enjoy talking with him so much that I never want our conversations to end. He knows a lot about so many things and he is passionate about music.’

She is in love with him, I thought. It would have been foolish not to see how well suited Klara and Robert were to each other. But since she had been born, it had always been her and me. I was not prepared for Klara to share her secrets with someone else. Perhaps I wanted her to remain a child. But that was ridiculous. One day she would marry and have children of her own, as I had hoped to do with Philip. But I did not want to think of those things now. I changed the subject to the shape of the clouds floating overhead.

‘That is definitely a sailboat,’ I said, indicating a cumulus cloud.

‘No,’ said Klara. ‘I see a set of scales.’

One day Klara and I were taking our morning walk, and had progressed a short way along the path, when Klara stopped and pointed at something. My gaze followed the line from her finger to the branch she was looking at. I heard the familiar ‘koo-koo-ka-ka-kook’ call of the kookaburra before I saw it. We had a shared fascination for the squat birds with the mask over their eyes. There was a family of them that sat on our washing line in Watsons Bay in the early evenings. The kookaburra swooped to another branch and we continued on our way, Klara a short distance ahead of me. She pushed aside a fern with her walking stick then dropped to her knees in the leaf litter. Thinking that my worst fears had come to pass and she had been bitten by a snake, I rushed towards her. But there was no snake. Klara was running her fingers through the fur of an animal, about the size of a cat, lying on its side. There was a wound to the head near the ear and a trickle of blood oozing from its mouth.

‘It’s a possum,’ Klara said, turning the animal over. From that angle I could see that the creature had a pretty face with eyes framed by kohl-like markings. ‘They shoot them for their fur,’ she said, studying the gum tree above us. ‘This one must have fallen where they couldn’t find it.’

I touched the possum’s fur. It was soft and dense and would be appealing to coat makers. The body was cold but not stiff. It must have been killed at dawn. The death of the possum affected us and we remained silent until something in its stomach moved. My first thought was maggots and I was appalled when Klara pushed her fingers into the white belly fur. Two skinny legs with clawed feet appeared then disappeared again. Klara lifted a flap of skin and eased something out. I remembered that some Australian animals had pouches.

‘It’s a female and she has a joey,’ Klara said. The creature that appeared in her hand looked nothing like its mother. The eyes were still closed and it had a head like a bald puppy. Its ribs were showing through its fragile skin. ‘It is still warm,’ she said, holding the creature towards me. ‘You take it. Your skin is warmer than mine.’

I tugged the cotton scarf from around my neck and formed it into a truss. Klara placed the animal in it and I tucked it down the front of my blouse, securing the ends of the strap to my camisole and holding the animal against my chest. I felt it wriggle then settle against my flesh.

‘It is so small and has hardly any fur. Will it live without its mother?’ I asked.

‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘Let’s see what Uncle Ota says.’ She gathered up her satchel and we picked up our sticks before running in the direction of home.

Uncle Ota examined the joey and pointed to a slit in its tummy. ‘It’s a girl. See, she’s already got a tiny pouch of her own.’

Ranjana appeared with one of Thomas’s woollen caps. ‘Shall we wrap her in this? It looks like a pouch.’

Thomas was proud that his hat was being employed in the joey’s cause, and watched me tuck the scarf and possum into the pouch before placing them on a warm water bottle in a small hatbox, provided by Esther, with holes in the lid.

‘What are we going to feed it?’ he asked.

Uncle Ota averted his gaze. He was thinking the same thing I was: that the unformed creature was not going to live more than a few hours. But I could still feel the tingle on my skin where the joey had lain against me and prayed that she would.

Ranjana had taken to the joey as much as Thomas had and was full of suggestions. ‘They give orphaned kittens Carnation milk and vitamin drops,’ she said. ‘Perhaps we can try that. And egg yolk might be good.’

Uncle Ota looked as if he was wrestling with his conscience. But something made him decide to get into the spirit of things. ‘All right,’ he said, sitting up. ‘What shall we call our little orphan?’

‘Angel,’ Thomas replied.

‘Angel is a good name,’ agreed Esther. ‘We all need an angel.’

Ranjana rummaged through the cupboards and found a can of Carnation milk. She pierced it, added some vitamin drops and poured the creamy mixture into a jug, diluting it with warm water from the kettle before handing the mixture to me.

‘Indeed, we all need an angel sometimes,’ said Uncle Ota, giving me a knowing smile. ‘Now let’s hope our little one lives.’

O
pening night for the Cascade Picture Palace was set for 18 December. The auditorium had been built with a sloping floor so that every seat had an unhampered view. There was a dress circle, finished in Russian red with gold trimmings and chandeliers that could be dimmed or brightened on demand. But when the beginning of the month came around, there were many jobs still uncompleted. The columns of the proscenium were not finished and only half the fresco had been painted. We had plasterers and painters working day and night. The stage was designed so that it could be converted from a film screen to a traditional platform for cabaret acts, but the mechanism for closing the curtain jammed when it was halfway down. Freddy sent technicians from Sydney to iron out the glitches.

I was supervising them one morning when Uncle Ota rushed into the auditorium and called out my name.

‘I am over here,’ I answered from the second row of seats.

Uncle Ota shook his head. ‘I’m going deaf with all the noise. Come with me, I need to speak to you about the program for opening night.’

I stepped over the canvas that had been laid across the floor to protect it. ‘I will be back here in half an hour,’ I told him. ‘I have to go home to feed Angel.’

‘Ah, Angel,’ said Uncle Ota, with a smile and a nod. ‘Of course.’

The first night we had Angel, Klara and I did not sleep. Her cries for her mother were pitiful and we had to change the water bottle every three hours to keep her warm. Klara and Esther returned to Sydney on Sunday afternoon, and Angel was left in my care. Despite my efforts to encourage her to eat, she would not take any food. Her weight dropped half an ounce. By the third day, it was clear from her laboured breathing that Angel was ailing.

‘The little thing is like an orphaned child,’ lamented Ranjana. ‘She wants the smell of her mother.’

‘Her mouth opening is not very wide,’ Uncle Ota observed. ‘And she can probably only drink small amounts at a time.’

Ranjana found a baby bottle and some teats that had belonged to Thomas. She took a fine piece of rubber tubing and pushed it into the opening of the teat. I tested the temperature of the milk mixture and gently inserted the tube into Angel’s mouth.

She began to drink.

I fed her every two hours, through the day and night, for the next week. Ranjana offered to help but Angel would not accept food from her, nor even from Klara who came down the following weekend. As the baby possum began to put on weight, I took on the glowing but dishevelled look of a new mother.

‘It’s just like when I had Tommy,’ Ranjana laughed.

I toileted Angel and rubbed her body with a dab of lanolin. One day when I opened the pouch I found her gazing back at me with shining eyes.

In the moment the little creature looked at me, my relationship with nature changed. I had always loved the beauty of trees and forests but I became interested in all the lives around me, no matter how small: the magpie on its nest; the kangaroo grazing at the edge of the bush; the fish that kissed my legs when I waded in the shallows. I felt a sense of lightness and ease that I had not experienced in months. Happiness bubbled up inside me when I came across another living creature. Even when I found a brown snake sleeping in the woodshed, I did not ask our landlady’s husband to kill it, as I might have done in the past. I shut the door loosely and put a note on the handle:
Snake in residence
.

‘The Buddhists have a saying that whenever you help another living being to thrive, you will find that the real healing has taken place in yourself,’ Klara told me.

I thought about Klara’s words when I fed Angel her first solid food: the new tips of gum leaves. I tickled her ears. The other brushtail possums I had seen walking along the fence at night had pointed ears, but one of Angel’s ears was flat. It was her special quirk.

Klara finished school for the year and she and Esther stayed for the holidays so Klara could rehearse with the cinema orchestra for opening night. Hugh, Giallo and Peter arrived from Sydney on the train the day before the event. Uncle Ota and I met them at the station.

‘The ticket collector wasn’t going to let us on the train with our feathered friend here,’ said Peter, pointing to Giallo. ‘We almost didn’t make it.’

‘Oh, silly people,’ I said, putting my finger out so Giallo could shake hands with me using his claw.

‘It’s all right,’ said Hugh. ‘I played the crippled soldier. I lost a leg for this country, I reckon they can let me ride a train with my bird.’

Hugh sounded bitter. I decided to introduce him to Freddy. They had met briefly at my premiere but Hugh had not stayed for the party. Ranjana and Freddy were instant cures for self-pity: Ranjana would kick you in the pants, and Freddy would walk right over you if you did not get up soon enough.

When we arrived at the house we found Esther had baked an orange cake for our guests. She was wearing the emerald green dress she kept for formal occasions. She placed the cake on the dining table and went about setting out the teapot and cups and saucers with care. She served everyone but made a special point of asking Hugh how he liked his tea.

‘Sugar for sweetness? Milk to make it smooth?’ She held the jug over one of the rose-patterned china cups we saved for special occasions.

‘Just milk, thank you,’ Hugh said, without looking at her.

Esther was not perturbed by his aloof manner. She moved to Uncle Ota’s gramophone and dropped the needle. ‘Un bel di vedremo’ from Puccini’s
Madame Butterfly
filled the room.

She knows how he likes his tea, I thought. Esther had made a cup for Hugh almost every hour when we were working on
The Bunyip
. He asked her to stop because he was going to the toilet all the time.

I glanced at Klara. She shrugged her shoulders, not able to understand Esther’s diligent attention to Hugh either.

On the night of the premiere, I weighed Angel. She had tripled her weight and was covered in dense fuzz. Klara and Thomas clapped their hands with delight.

‘She looks like a pom-pom,’ observed Thomas, stroking Angel’s fur when I held her out to him. I pinned her pouch to the side of a parrot cage and left her to munch on the grevillea blossoms Thomas had collected with Klara.

The whole town turned up for the opening of the Cascade Picture Palace. I was proud when I heard the guests chattering in the auditorium before the show. The excitement in the air was palpable. As well as Beaumont Smith’s picture
The Prehistoric Hayseeds
, there were chorus lines, comedians and an opera singer on the program. The local beauty queen cut the ribbon and the president of Bulli Shire Council gave a speech commending us on building a cinema in Thirroul. Klara, beautiful in a saffron yellow dress encrusted with sequins, performed Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No 1. Robert, who had come to the premiere, could not take his eyes off her.

At the party afterwards, we lowered the lights and a dance band played in the foyer. I knew that Freddy was coming but I had not seen him all evening. I was making my way past the dance floor when someone tapped me on the shoulder. I turned to see a well-built man with dark hair standing behind me. I assumed that he wanted to dance. In a strange way, I felt it would be disloyal to Philip to dance with another man, but the gentleman was a guest. He was dressed in a formal evening suit with a white tie and textured silk lapels. I took the hand he offered to guide me to the dance floor and caught a glimpse of the smart braid-covered buttons of his jacket.

‘You look swell,’ the man said, leading me into the light of the dance floor.

I recognised the voice and blinked. ‘Freddy!’

‘Yeah, what?’ he said.

‘Your suit!’

He glanced down at his jacket. ‘Klara chose it for me. You know, I wanted to blend in a bit. I have to play it low-key. There are a couple of people from Galaxy Pictures here and I don’t want them knowing I own the place.’

‘You look nice,’ I told him.

The band started up a foxtrot and Freddy led me around the floor. His hold was a touch too firm, but he was a big man and I barely reached his chest, so we had a strength disparity anyway. We glided past couples and I thought of Beatrice and Philip.

‘So what have you been doing down here? Any writing?’ Freddy asked me.

‘I have tried,’ I said. ‘But nothing comes out.’

‘Maybe you’re trying too hard. The bunyip idea worked. You need to take a story like that and make it longer.’