A Waltz for Matilda (50 page)

She wasn’t going anywhere, though, until she had changed. How did women manage to even breathe? she thought crossly, trying to open the hooks. A knock sounded on her bedroom door. She grabbed her dressing gown and pulled the belt tight, and opened it.

It was Mr Drinkwater. She held the door open further and he limped in then lowered himself into the armless chair by the dressing table. ‘You looked very nice at luncheon.’

She grinned. ‘I wasn’t going to appear before your family in trousers. Not at the table, anyway.’

‘You are my family,’ he said.

Tears stung suddenly. ‘I’m glad.’ She bit her lip. ‘Thank you for what you said to Bertram. It’ll stop him countermanding my orders while he’s here. But I do understand that Drinkwater will go to your family. I’ve always known.’

‘As I said, you
are
my family.’

She stared at him. ‘I don’t understand.’

He smiled. ‘I think by now Drinkwater is as much yours as mine. I got the land by squatting here, clearing the trees, making it my own. You’ve made it yours too.’ He shrugged. ‘It’s time we made it legal. I could leave it to you in my will, but Bertram would contest it, and might well win. It is best to sell it to you now. Don’t worry — the price won’t be anything you can’t afford. You’ve more than earned part of this place already. I’ll send Murphy into town to tell the lawyer to draw up the papers. We’ll have it settled by the end of the week.’ He looked at her sardonically. ‘I expect I shall survive till then.’

It was almost impossible to speak. Impossible even to comprehend it yet. ‘You … you old biscuit. You’ll live to be 150.’

He stood, then stepped over to kiss her cheek. ‘I think parts of me will have worn out before then. But thank you for putting up with Bertram and Florence, my dear. He is a fool. He always was. But he is still my son. And the children.’ His face softened. ‘They are darlings, aren’t they? And they shall certainly have enough to buy their engines and their aeroplanes, or whatever else they want that their father thinks they shouldn’t have.’

‘There is no way I can ever thank you,’ said Matilda softly. ‘And our partnership stays. Half of all profit for each of us.’

‘Of course. Where would you be without my guidance? I should miss our arguments, as well.’

He met her eyes. ‘You know, even today, if James was alive, I would be against your marriage. But long before he died you were closer to me than I could have imagined any daughter being.’

He let himself out of the room, shutting the door behind him. Matilda sat, her stays still half untied. It was a while before she realised she was crying.

AUGUST 1913

So George was engaged. Matilda put the thick cream invitation down on the verandah table. She hoped his fiancée was a nice girl. A strong girl too, who could cope with the problems her mixed marriage would bring. But money eased problems. She smiled at the formal wording of the note — one of Patricia’s children must have written it — and at the pleasure it would be to see her and her husband, to play tennis on their new court, to wear her tennis dress, with its daring ruffled skirt inches above her ankles.

There was a tennis court next to the church now too, so the churchgoers could play after services each Sunday, the men and
women taking it in turns to use the parish hall to change out of their Sunday-best clothes.

Strange to remember the days when there had been a service only once every two months, when town and church had been impossibly far away for most of the district. Now there were a fair few cars, and many bicycles, and more horses than ever before now there was grass to feed them. Almost everyone had some form of transport. The desperate isolation that so many women and their children had faced was gradually ending, for most at least.

She had been dreaming of the past last night; she felt bleary today. She and Tommy had climbed the path to the cave together. She was twelve again, and he fifteen. He had been flying a kite, a giant white one that soared above the valley, which then turned into a giant white eagle that had flown off toward the river.

Nonsense, like all dreams. Tommy was long ago now. Yet her father, Auntie Love, Aunt Ann and her mother were still with her and the world they had given her all around. They were dead, and Tommy was alive. Why was it so strange that she still sometimes felt his presence too?

‘Hello, cocky!’ The cockatoo waddled toward her, back and forth on his perch. She reached in to scratch his head, then stopped, and reached for the door latch instead.

She opened the cage door, and waited.

The cockatoo stared at her, then at the open door, then back at her.

He is waiting for me to shut it again, to put in more seed or water, she thought. ‘Come on, boy. Or girl, whichever you are.’ She put her hand into the cage, next to the perch, to encourage it.

The cockatoo bit her wrist. A speck of blood appeared, but she kept her hand still. At last he stepped onto her hand, clutching her index finger with his claws. Slowly, very slowly, she drew him out, then rested her elbow on the arm of the chair. The bird didn’t hesitate now. It stepped over onto the chair, then jumped down onto the floor, flapping its wings as it walked over to the edge of the verandah.

‘He’ll never fly.’

She’d thought he was inside, asleep on the sofa. She stood up — slowly, so she didn’t startle the bird — and helped him sit down in his chair. ‘He might.’

‘He’s been in that cage for forty years.’ Mr Drinkwater waved a hand irritably. ‘No, I don’t need a rug over my legs. I’m not an invalid.’

Of course he was. And of course she couldn’t tell him so. They watched the bird flap its wings again, using them to glide down to the ground.

‘See?’ said Mr Drinkwater.

‘I’ll leave the cage door open. He can come back if he likes.’ She reached in and found a handful of seed, then threw it out onto the grass.

‘The dogs’ll get him —’ he began, just as Dusty galloped around the side of the house. The dog gave a startled woof, then bounded toward the bird.

‘Scratch cocky!’

Suddenly the bird was airborne, with a vast fluttering of wings. It made it to the lower branches of the Chinese tallow-wood tree, the new green leaves just showing. It glared down at the dog. ‘Scratch cocky!’ it yelled malevolently.

Matilda laughed. ‘I bet in a month or two it’ll fly off with the next mob of cockatoos that passes.’

‘You mean the ones that come to steal our apples? More likely it’ll teach the lot of them to hang around for a handout.’ Mr Drinkwater peered at her over the reading glasses he had begun to wear. ‘You’re planning to put out seed for it, aren’t you?’

‘And water,’ said Matilda cheerfully. ‘It’s worked for you for forty years, entertaining your visitors. We owe it a pension.’

Suddenly he laughed too. ‘Go on!’ he yelled to the bird. ‘Fly! Who knows what you’ll find over the hills? A fortune, a wife and baby birds —’ He stopped.

‘I expect an apple orchard’s a fortune to a mob of cockatoos,’ said Matilda. ‘Or a paddock of ripe corn. Hopefully not ours.’

‘I was wondering if we should put lucerne in down on the river paddocks.’ Mr Drinkwater still looked at the bird. ‘It’s doing well higher up. They say lucerne roots are deep enough to survive when river flats get flooded.’

‘It’s an idea.’ It had been hard watching their corn wash away last flood, and so much of their best soil too. Floods were part of their lives now. ‘Let’s give it a go. I have a feeling we’re in for another deluge, and soon.’

She watched as the bird flapped its way up to a higher branch. We never really know the future, she thought. One day the door is closed, and then it’s open. But at least thanks to Auntie Love she had some feeling for what the land might bring next.

She smiled at the man beside her. He was smiling too, watching the bird, remembering … what? she wondered. How he had flown from the safe world of his father’s house in Sydney? All that he had found and done? His wives, his children …

She clicked her fingers to tell the dog to come up onto the verandah, then stood up. ‘Will I tell Mrs Murphy we’ll have lunch out here? That way we can see where it flies next.’

SEPTEMBER 1914

Mr Drinkwater’s bedroom smelled of bay rum for his hair and the bitter brown medicine in the bottle by the bed. Matilda thought the old man was asleep at first, but he opened his eyes as she walked toward the bed.

She bent down as he whispered to her, ‘The old biscuit is crumbling.’

‘Shh.’ She smoothed his pillow. ‘No need to talk.’

She sat on the chair next to his bed — polished wood, a cushioned back and seat, so different from the chairs her father had made. But they were made with love, she thought. And then: maybe, somewhere, this chair was too. His skin felt like cool parchment when she took his hand.

‘Left the place to you in my will,’ he whispered.

‘Thank you.’ She leaned over and kissed his cheek. No point reminding him that she already owned the place, that he had transferred it to her four years before. In his mind the land was his, and always would be.

‘You’ll look after it. You won’t leave? Love left me. Did I tell you Love left me?’

‘I won’t leave you. I’ll be here, by your bed.’

His breathing grew shallower. She thought he was asleep or unconscious, when one bright blue eye opened. ‘Sing to me. So I know you’re here. Not that song,’ he added.

‘What song?’

‘The one about the swagman.’

‘I wasn’t going to,’ she said gently.

So he too had made the connection between the song and those tragic, confused moments at the billabong all those years before.

How long had he known about it? she wondered. Had he felt the same pain as she had when first hearing it?

She sang another ballad instead, softly, almost under her breath, held his hand in hers, watched his face relax until he slept.

No, this wasn’t sleep. His breathing was too hoarse. He began to pant, like a dog, his failing lungs straining to get air. She was glad he was unconscious, didn’t know of his body’s last desperate attempts to live.

His hand was limp, but still she held it. She watched as his breathing changed again, and then the sudden slackness as it faded, and life finally drained away.

She had been closer to this man than any person in her life, perhaps. So many kinds of love, she thought.

She bent down to kiss his cheek. ‘Sleep well, old biscuit,’ she said softly. ‘I’ll tend your land. I promise.’

Mrs Murphy was polishing the side table in the hall as she came out. Waiting, thought Matilda. ‘He’s gone.’

The housekeeper reached over and hugged her. ‘We’ll miss him,’ was all she said.

‘Yes,’ said Matilda. Her tears had been shed while she watched him die. Now, strangely, she just felt the peace she had seen on the old man’s face at the end.

Mrs Murphy straightened. ‘I’ll get Murphy to tell the funeral parlour then.’

‘Tell them to bring the coffin here. They can hold the service in the church, but he’s to stay here till he’s buried.’

She would need to send a telegram to Bertram, but she knew the funeral instructions in the old man’s will. Mr Drinkwater would lie next to his wife — his second wife — and the tiny daughter he’d never known. But James rested elsewhere, as did Auntie Love.