Blue Smoke (38 page)

His hair was longer now, curling where it touched his collar. He was as handsome as he’d ever been, and his body was still strong and hard. But the more Leila looked at him, the more her heart sank. There was absolutely nothing about him to justify what she was trying so hard to deny, but she knew that Jake had somehow changed. The flame that had once burned in him — the one that had made him swing her around to ‘Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy’, the one that had made her knees weak and set her on fire, the one that had so much made her want to say ‘I do’ when they were married — had gone out. He wasn’t cold, he was just … somewhere else.

But, she told herself, this was to be expected. She was probably the same; it had been such a long time and they would have to get to know each other all over again. It might take time but they would get back to the way they’d been before. They would.

The truck was a particularly elderly one, with a hole in the floor through which Leila was convinced she could see the gravel road, and it was rattly and draughty and the window at the back of the cab was missing. The headlights worked, though, and in them she caught brief glimpses of small animals — looking suspiciously liked stripey possums — as they dashed from the fields on one side of the road to the fields on the other.

‘What are they?’ she asked Jake.

‘What are what?’

‘Those little animals running across the road.’

‘I didn’t see. Gophers, maybe? Raccoons?’

‘What does a raccoon look like?’

‘Well, it looks like a … raccoon.’

‘Do they have stripes on their tails and sort of goggles on?’

Jake laughed. ‘Yep, sounds like a raccoon all right.’

Leila contemplated waking Daisy so she could see them too, but decided against it — there would be plenty of opportunities for her to see the local wildlife.

They were silent again, until Leila eventually asked, ‘How far now?’

‘About another thirty miles or so. The road gets quite rough just a bit further on.’

And so it did, but Leila didn’t feel the bumps and swerves as the truck went over and around various potholes, because she too had fallen asleep.

She woke with a jolt almost an hour later, wondering where she was.

Jake had pulled up in front of a small, L-shaped house in the middle of what appeared to be an endless field of stunted little bushes. By the moonlight she could see that the house had never been painted, and that the yard surrounding it was of bare earth. In front of the house stood a single tree with a tyre swing hanging from it, swaying gently in the breeze. A decrepit shed stood to one side, empty. Somewhere, not too far away, a dog was barking; otherwise the silence was total, except for the ticking of the truck’s motor as it cooled down.

She sat up. ‘Why have we stopped here? Are we lost?’

Jake looked at her, and in the moonlight his eyes were unreadable. He reached for her hand. ‘No, Leila, we’re home.’

Kenmore, April 1946

V
iolet and Sam had been on a train too, the one that travelled from Wellington up to Napier.

Violet had been fine all the way across the Atlantic and Indian Oceans until they’d reached Australia, but then she had woken one morning in the cabin she and Sam shared, wondering if she was doing the right thing.

What if Billy’s parents rejected them? What if they denied that Sam was Billy’s son and wanted to have nothing at all to do with him? He was only a little boy, but he was very perceptive and Violet feared that such a rejection would harm him badly. He knew all about his father being a soldier from New Zealand, and that he and his mum had fallen in love but that his father had died in the war before they could be married. There had been no secrets between mother and son, and no silly stories to explain away the fact that Sam had no father. But the possibility that his grandparents might not want to know him might prove too much for him. She hadn’t even written to them in advance, for that very reason. If she had, and they’d declined, she would eventually have had to tell Sam that they weren’t interested. But perhaps she should have done it that way after all. Billy had said his parents were wonderful people, but Billy
was dead, and he would not be there when they finally did meet.

But it had been too late by then. So here she and Sam were, having trudged to the outskirts of Napier because she didn’t have the money for a taxi, standing on what she had been assured by a passing cyclist was the road out to where Billy’s parents lived, with their thumbs out hoping that some kind motorist would give them a lift. It was cool and they both had their winter coats on, but it was nowhere near as cold as early spring in England. They had one suitcase between them, and Sam was sitting on it with his head down, almost asleep he was so tired from all the travelling. He was wearing his little cap as well, and Violet bent down and pushed his dark hair back under the brim.

‘Won’t be long now, love,’ she promised. ‘Someone will come by soon and give us a ride.’

Sam said nothing, and continued to stare unseeingly at the stones on the road. He was exhausted and hungry, and his feet hurt in his new boots.

Violet gave him a kiss, and dug an apple out of her bag for him to eat while they waited. New Zealand was a very pretty place, she thought, almost like England in some ways, and there were all sorts of things in the shops that you couldn’t get at home, although the shopkeeper she’d spoken to earlier today had said that some items were still being rationed. But he’d given Sam a biscuit out of a huge jar on his counter for nothing.

They waited for another half-hour and still no one stopped. In fact, hardly any motorists went past at all. Finally, though, a man in a big black car did stop for them. His name was Doctor Fleming, he said, and he’d been into town to pick up medical supplies but was heading home. He lived on the road beyond Kenmore Station so he would be happy to give them a lift.

Violet climbed into the passenger seat and Sam hopped into the back, lay down and went to sleep immediately.

‘Come a long way, have you?’ Doctor Fleming asked. ‘I note you have an English accent.’

Violet nodded. ‘We arrived in Wellington yesterday morning, and caught the train straight to Napier.’

‘Oh, I see. I didn’t realise you’d come that far! You
are
a long way from home, aren’t you?’

He was curious as to the nature of the pretty young woman’s business at Kenmore, but refrained from asking out of propriety. On the other hand, there had been serious upheavals out there lately, and he didn’t want her to arrive without being forewarned. She had come a long way and it would probably be the decent thing to at least give her the essential details.

‘Visiting, are you?’ he asked casually.

‘Yes, we are,’ she replied, and left it at that.

He tried again. ‘Anyone in particular?’

The woman turned and looked at him directly in the eye. Her own remarkably blue eyes were full of weariness and something he suspected might be close to anxiety. Her lovely English face was drawn, and there was dust and grime on her smart but clearly inexpensive coat and hat.

‘Does it really matter?’ she asked.

‘I’m afraid it does, actually. The family have suffered a bereavement recently and, well, forgive my directness, but I’m not entirely sure who will be welcome at the moment and who will not.’

Violet closed her eyes. This was the last thing she had expected to hear. She fixed the doctor with her gaze again, and he saw that his news had upset her.

‘Did you know Billy Deane?’ she asked cautiously.

‘Billy? Of course, a fine young man. Killed on Crete, a hero apparently. Tragic.’ He glanced quickly into the back seat, then back at Violet again, and his bushy eyebrows shot up as he suddenly put two and two together.

‘I say, the boy, he isn’t …?’

‘He is, actually.’

‘Hell’s bells,’ Fleming exclaimed, ‘I didn’t even realise Billy was married.’

‘He wasn’t, we weren’t.’

‘Oh, I see.’ He shrugged, a man who had seen the ways of the world change markedly in the last six years. ‘And you’re bringing him home to meet his grandparents?’

‘Something like that.’

‘Do they know?’

Violet grabbed at the door handle as the doctor swerved to avoid a rabbit on the road. ‘No, not yet.’

Fleming straightened the wheel, then thought for a moment. ‘Well, I should tell you then that it was Drew Murdoch who died, James and Lucy’s son, and Billy’s cousin. He’d been in a Japanese prisoner of war camp in Burma for several years and had developed a brain tumour, although he’d apparently taken it upon himself not to tell anyone else, not even me and I’m the family doctor. The tumour was progressive, and inoperable, and when it became unbearable he took all of his medication at once and wandered off up into the hills to die.’ The doctor was silent for a moment. ‘But he was a troubled lad, Drew, apart from the tumour.’ Then he reddened, as if realising he might have gone a little too far with the Murdoch family’s confidences. ‘But I suppose we’ll never know about any of that, and perhaps it’s not our place to know. Who’s to say?’

Violet declined his offer to drive them up to Kenmore’s front door, and he let the pair of them off at the gate.

They stood at the end of the long, tree-lined driveway for several minutes, staring in awe at the elegant, two-storeyed colonial house
set in beautiful, manicured gardens.

‘Come on, love,’ Violet said as she hefted their suitcase. ‘Let’s go and meet your grandparents, shall we?’

Sam was feeling better after his nap, and he smiled, transforming himself into a miniature version of Billy. He held his hand out to Violet and she took it, and together they walked towards the house.

But before they reached the front entrance, Violet stopped. There was no sign of anyone about.

‘Let’s not knock on the front door, shall we? Let’s go around the side. I’d rather do that.’

Sam shrugged — he couldn’t care less, as long as there was a lav when they got there. He was dying for a wee.

So they went around the side of the house and into the garden that lay beyond the French doors of the parlour. And then they stopped.

A tall young man was working in the rose garden, wearing scruffy trousers and an old shirt, the sleeves rolled up to above his elbows. His head was bare and his curly blond hair flopped over his forehead as he bent over, hoeing the soil around the roses, stopping now and then to pick up a weed and toss it onto the lawn, and humming to himself as he went.

Violet knew the tune. It was ‘Blue Smoke’.

Oblivious to the woman and child standing quietly next to the big, fragrant daphne, he started singing. He managed, ‘Blue smoke goes drifting by into the deep blue sky’, and then, to Violet’s shock, he burst into tears.

Dropping his hoe, he wandered over to a bench under a tree, sat down and put his head in his hands. After a minute he looked up through bleary eyes, and it was at that moment that he saw them.

If Violet was shocked a moment ago, she was mortified now.

What he saw was a young woman with the bluest eyes he’d ever seen, and long, fine hair the colour of eggshell that lifted in the
breeze and settled again on her shoulders. She was holding Billy’s hand, except it was Billy when he’d been a little boy, not Billy as he had been when he’d gone away.

‘Which one are you?’ Violet asked gently.

‘I’m Liam.’

Violet nodded, because she’d already known that — he was exactly as Billy had described him, although perhaps a little older-looking than she’d expected.

‘Who are you?’

‘I’m Violet Metcalfe. This is Sam, Billy’s son.’

Liam nodded, for some reason not at all surprised at the appearance of the woman and her child. He opened his arms, and when Billy’s son shyly approached, he hugged him close and felt his tears starting again. If there was nothing left of Drew, then at least it seemed they would now still have a part of Billy.

He held out his hand to Violet, and she came forward, took it and hung on tight.

Philadelphia, July 1946

In all likelihood, it was never going to work, and she could see that now, quite clearly.

Leila moved her breakfast tray off her knee, set it on the floor and walked over to the window, where she sat in an upholstered chair and gazed out at the gracious trees and gardens surrounding the Hartmans’ house. She and Daisy were going home to New Zealand in three days’ Time, and she was grateful to the Hartmans for allowing her to spend her last week in America in peace and comfort.

It had not been Jake’s lies that had destroyed it, because they hadn’t really been lies. His family did have land, and he was a
farmer. What he had not said was that the Kellys were sharecroppers who merely rented their small patch of dirt on which to grow cotton. He also hadn’t mentioned that they hadn’t had a successful harvest in almost a decade, and that his family were dirt poor, although his father, Roscoe Kelly, refused to load everything into the truck and leave, as many other sharecroppers in the north-western reaches of Oklahoma had done. He was a stubborn man, and a patriarch, and apparently would rather see his family starve than admit defeat.

It had not even been that his mother, Wynne Kelly, who after years of trying unsuccessfully to scratch out a living and feed her family from the mean and sterile soil, was an embittered and angry woman. She had resented Leila even before they met, and made no pretence about the fact that she had not wanted Jake to marry a foreign woman — especially one with such ‘airs and graces’, as she put it. As she had bluntly said on the morning following Leila’s arrival, there were enough single young girls — all of whom would have given their right arms to marry a handsome, virile buck like Jake — for him to have had the luxury of being able to pick and choose. But no, he had to go and get himself a fancy girl from New Zealand, who didn’t know the first thing about cotton farming, had a funny accent no one could understand and who didn’t look capable of having produced the child she already had, never mind five or six more, which was the number of grandchildren Wynne had set her heart on. And although Leila could understand her disappointment, she could not condone Wynne’s offhand treatment of Daisy. It was almost as if Wynne did not believe that Jake was the little girl’s father, even though her parentage was patently obvious when you looked at them together.

Leila was expected to pull her weight in the house and around the farm. She stood for hours in the kitchen baking and cooking in the near-primitive conditions, and in almost continual silence,
as Wynne and her daughter Faith would not talk to her unless they had to. There was no electricity or running water — the stove was powered by wood, and water had to be collected in buckets from a pump in the yard and then heated on the stove. Laundry day was a nightmare, because although Wynne Kelly was a fairly basic sort of a woman she was a very clean one, and insisted that every piece of household linen, threadbare as it was, be laundered once a week without fail. It was a job that took all day, and almost broke the back of the woman allotted the job of scrubbing and rinsing, which usually turned out to be Leila.

Jake had done his best to act as a buffer between Leila and his mother, but it was very difficult when they all lived in a house that was only the size of Kenmore’s kitchen and parlour put together. Faith and her two children lived there too, Faith’s husband having disappeared some time ago, as well as Wynne’s mother, an ancient woman who, in Leila’s opinion, was even nastier than her daughter. It was extremely crowded, and although Jake and Leila initially had the luxury of a bedroom to themselves, they were soon sharing it with Daisy, who refused to sleep in the front room with the other children because they were mean to her and teased Ginny.

Poor Daisy had perhaps been affected most of all. She had spent all her short life waiting to meet her father, whom Leila had built up to be such a hero, such a wonderful, capable, larger-than-life person, that the reality had fallen well short of any expectations. Jake liked Daisy, and was very kind to her and took her out into the fields each day, teaching her about cotton farming and all the little field animals and the ways in which the weather changed and what it meant, but the bond that should have developed between them simply had not. He was aloof at times; Daisy could not understand why and naturally thought she was the cause of it, and became upset herself, and grizzly and difficult. Leila assured her day after day that things would get better, that Daddy had to
get used to having a wife and a daughter after such a long time by himself, but as the weeks then months passed, even she stopped believing that.

Jake knew it was not going well, and would become upset himself and drink at night to cover his disappointment. He was not a violent drunk, and never once shouted or raised his hand to them, but he often came to bed reeking of the dreadful moonshine he consumed by the pint, and would subside into what seemed closer to a coma than natural sleep. It gave them little opportunity to talk, and even less to make love, which Leila found extremely frustrating and disappointing. The lover who had once transported her physically and emotionally to unimaginable heights of pleasure and passion had gone, and in his place was a tired, sad man barely able to sustain an erection even if he managed to produce one. At first Leila had thought it was her fault, that she had lost her appeal, and went to great lengths to tempt him sexually, but nothing had worked, and then Daisy had moved into their room, and the opportunity had been lost. But finally, and in spite of the fact that her ego was taking an immense battering, she had decided that the problem lay not with her but with Jake, and she stopped telling herself that she was responsible for the failure of her marriage.