Four Fires (26 page)

thought he had me there and nearly did. I pray he doesn't go on much longer, it's easy to forget what you've heard when you're in a bit of a panic like I am at the moment. If he asked for more birds, I was going to give him the painted honeyeater and the superb blue wren, but after that I could have been in big trouble.

Thank you, Mole, now perhaps we'd better get on with the history lesson meant for this period.'

So I've squeaked through the lie by a hair's breadth and I don't have to answer anything about the old lady.

Tommy's kept his word to Mrs Rika Ray. Him and the other two men took John Crowe's ute to cut bark and struts and stakes, and in three days they've built a new bark hut for the old lady that is much better than her old one. It even has a three-sided kitchen with a stone fireplace and chimney so when it rains she can still have a fire and cook.

John Crowe brings some corrugated iron which he says fell off the back of a truck' and he uses it to put on a proper roof with guttering that won't ever leak. Lucky, heh? About ten pieces fell off the truck and it must have made a helluva racket landing on the road. All I can say is the driver must have been deaf as a post.

The fireplace is double-sided, the inside and outside sharing the same chimney. The sides are separated by a steel boiler door taken from an ancient steam engine left in the bush from during the gold-rush days a hundred years before. The door shuts off orfe half of the fireplace, depending on which side the old lady is cooking. The idea is that if she lights a fire in winter she can cook inside the hut and the fire will also keep the hut nice and warm as well. They've also found an old tank for catching rainwater in case there is a drought and the creek runs dry.

'I am counting my blessings because I am meeting you, Master Mole,' the old lady says to me all the time. There I go again, getting the credit when the others are doing all the work, which is something Nancy says we must never do. But when I tell Tommy, he says it's okay. John and Ian are good blokes and they understand it's because I'm a kid and the old lady can't go telling them every ten minutes how grateful she is, because it would become downright embarrassing to blokes like them.

It turns out that John Crowe is the expert who can do anything with bush carpentry and he even makes her a bed from native timber using the springs from her old army cot which the fire hadn't damaged. Only the paint was scalded off. But she has to buy a new mattress because she couldn't throw the old one in the creek as it would have

been just as ruined in water, so she left it to burn. The mattress kept smouldering for days after and smelled a bit like that incense.

By mid-February Mrs Rika Ray's herb garden is coming on real good and, because I asked her to, she's planted a sunflower seed where the other once stood and it's about eight inches high already.

I go and see her a bit when I have the time, because now that I'm interested in the bush she says there are lots of things I should know. She'll teach me about plants and their medicinal properties and although she is Indian and not Aboriginal, she's learned a bit about Australian plants and will teach me stuff I should know in case I get lost in the bush or fall down a cliff or something.

Well, by January Sarah is getting bigger and bigger. I mean, you see ladies who are pregnant but you daren't look properly because you're not supposed to stare. But now that it's in front of your very eyes all the time you can't believe that Sarah could swell up like that and become so sticky-out all of a sudden in only five months.

Nancy says, 'God forbid, maybe she's having twins! I hope not, is all I can think, the last time there were twins, my two aunties up top, it didn't turn out so good.' But, Nancy's only kidding, because she says twins would show up much earlier than five months. One thing I'll guarantee, whatever she s having, it's going to be the best-dressed baby in the universe. Nancy and Sarah
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and Mike are making sure of that every afternoon on the back verandah, embroidering and smocking, probably using every stitch in 'Wicked Witches'.

But the good thing is that whatever the town is saying about Sarah, it ain't coming from us doing anything wrong for a change. Not even the town doctor is involved. Morrie comes with Sophie every week to check Sarah out so not even old Mrs Turkington who works for Dr Hughes in his surgery can pass on any juicy gossip.

Crocodile Brown making me talk to the class about birds turned out to be a good thing as well.

All the kids must have went home and told their parents what had happened and soon enough there's tongues wagging overtime to everyone in sight and, whether they liked it or not, the bird-nesting theory was the best reason they had for me knowing the mvsterious Mrs Rika Ray John Crowe and Ian McTavish turn out not to be gossips. Either that, or they forgot that the old lady mentioned Sarah when we were all sitting in the creek. So the lie for the greater good has worked, though I wouldn't want to go through the experience too often.

But that's the funny thing, I've become genuinely interested in birds and Tommy includes them in my lessons when we go bush.

Then at the end of January 'the letter'arrives for Sarah. It's from Melbourne University. There's this crest on the envelope so even the postie, Jimmy Phipps, knows where it's from. Nancy says he's got a big mouth and you can be sure that the arrival of the long-awaited letter will spread around town like wildfire. It's been a big month. Earlier Sarah's matriculation results have come through and she's got a distinction in every subject and over ninety-five per cent for Biology, Maths and Latin.

Well, we're very excited and it's me who gets the letter from Jimmy Phipps, so I go rushing through, shouting, The letter! It's the letter! It's come!'When anyone says 'the letter'it only means one thing and every day for weeks we've stored a little joy or sorrow energy in our hearts because maybe this will be the day it comes. t

I give it to Sarah who's in the kitchen at the time and she says she has to sit down, then uses the envelope like a fan in front of her face. We all go to the back verandah where Nancy is working with Mike. Sarah sits down slowly on the old wicker chair and her hands are shaking as she starts to open it. Then she stops and puts it on her lap, looks out sort of into the backyard and I think I'm going to piss my pants if she doesn't hurry up and open it.

We've got a plan worked out if she gets in. Everything hinges on what's in the letter. It takes about a hundred years for her to open it and untold it and start reading. Everything is stopped.

Even Bozo's Bitzers know something's up and they're lined up, tongues lolling. Then Sarah closes her eyes and brings the letter up against her chest and we don't know whether it's good or bad but we think it's good. Then she opens her eyes and smiles.

Yippee!'we all shout and start to kiss and hug her. Nancy starts to Cry and so does Sarah and even Mike s having a bit of a sniff and Bozo's

dogs are doing somersaults and rolling over and barking to his exact instructions.

'Read it!' Bozo shouts. 'Read it out aloud!'

Sarah wipes her eyes with the side of her hand but still has to fight back the tears. Bozo stops the Bitzers and lines them up and she starts to read, her voice not yet completely under control.

Miss Sarah Maloney

2 Bell Street

Yankalillee

Victoria

25 January 1956

Dear Miss Maloney,

It is with great pleasure that I inform you that the Council has approved the recommendation of
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the selection committee for the Faculty of Medical Science in 1956 and that you have been granted a position in the Medical Faculty. The first semester will commence on 12th March 1956. Youwill meet at the School of Medicine at Block 22 on campus at 10a.m. to enrol Tlie Writer and Professor Marcus Block will he in attendance.

Enclosed please find a list of the textbooks and stationery you will require. You will also need two white lab jackets. The lab jackets are also obtainable from the University bookshop or you may purchase them elsewhere. They should have plain bone buttons and the hemline should not fall beyond the knee.

May I offer you my sincerest congratulations, I remain your humble servant, M. Tompkins Asst Registrar

P.S. It can get cold in Melbourne around this time and you are advised to bring warm clothing with you.

The P.S. isn't typed like the rest of the letter but is written in a neat almost copperplate handwriting which Nancy says is nice to see in a man.

Well, I can tell you, we're that excited even though we know things can go wrong with the Grand Plan. That evening Morrie and Sophie come over. Morrie also has his letter saying he can be a student and they're just as happy for us as we are for them. We're totally wrapped, much too happy to ask ourselves what will happen if the Grand Plan fails.

This is how it happened, the Grand Plan, that is. When I said trouble seems to follow our name perhaps I wasn't being fair. Good things happen too. Remember how I told you the people who were at the very top of the social heap in Yankalillee were the graziers and the topmost of their mob are the Barrington-Stones, who once had a horse in the Melbourne Cup that came last and they also fly a Piper Cub?

Well, Mrs Barrington-Stone's daughter Claudina, who is married to a barrister in Melbourne and lives in a place called Toorak, is having a baby, so Mrs Barrington-Stone orders the works from Nancy. She wants a complete layette as well as a very posh christening robe. The full catastrophe, no expense spared. It keeps everyone pretty busy for a month during November and part of December and Nancy says, thank God, because it will help pay the bills that come after Christmas and take her mind off Sarah's pregnancy.

All was finished on December the fifteenth and Mike and me were meant to take it out next morning but then Mrs Barrington-Stone phoned to say could she have two extra bibs. It doesn't sound like much, but Nancy and Mike worked on them until about three o'clock the next day and they had to get them to Mrs Barrington-Stone that night because the next morning early she was flying to Melbourne in her Piper Cub to do her Christmas shopping. Mike and me had to take the two big brown-paper parcels the stuff is wrapped in to the property about seven miles out of town and so it's a fair hike. Luckily it's a Friday and it's summer so it won't be dark before we get home and, with no garbage, we can sleep in tomorrow.

We walk and we walk and eventually we get to the front gate, which has got a curved iron sign straddling two big red brick pillars.

200 bkyce CoURTENAY

The arched sign would be high enough and the pillars wide enough apart for the Diamond T to go through and under if Bozo had driven us. Which normally he would have done, but couldn't because he's gone with Sergeant Donovan in the police car to Wangaratta to attend a training session with their Police Boys boxing team. There has been some talk that Bozo might be invited to the Olympic boxing trials in Melbourne. The sign above the gate in these big iron letters says

'Passing Cloud' and then arched under it in smaller letters, 'Prop. J.P. Barrington-Stone 1872'.

We start to walk down this private road, which is their driveway I suppose. It's flanked on either side by huge eucalyptus trees. Big old trees that must have been there seventy or eighty years and are about eighty feet high.

'River Red Gum, Eucalyptus camaldulensis,' I say casually to Mike. 'Bit high up for them mind,
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usually found along the bank o' the Murray River, but they look to be doing okay.' I'm talking like Tommy, and Mike just grunts, I think he knows I'm showing off a whole lot. The trees have a smooth white bark with patches of grey and Tommy says that among the eucalyptus the River Red Gum is thought to be a most graceful tree. It's not his kind of language so he must have read that bit in a book. Anyway, the driveway with the River Red Gum is so long it goes over the crest of a hill and you can't even see the Barrington-Stone house from the big gate or even when you're nearly there.

Then when we see it, we can't quite believe our eyes. It is bigger than any house in town, with tractor sheds and haysheds and stables, an open-sided hangar for their new Piper Cub and a second older Cub that's used as a crop-duster. There is also a small airstrip leading away from the house. People say Mrs Barrington-Stone flies the Piper Cub herself to Melbourne and all over Victoria when she's going to the Country Women's Association meetings. People call her the Amelia Earhart of the bush. Nancy says she's a real bigwig in the organisation and has just been elected national president, which makes a nice change from the old busybodies who've done the job before her.

There is also a big garden with lots of bushes, like camellia, azalea and plumbago as well as beds of summer plantings, zinnia, marigolds, shasta daisies and others I don't know about. I only know those

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Jlwecause of our class garden at school. There s also a trellis covered in wisteria and a big splashing fountain in the centre of the lawn with a fat little stone boy peeing in a big arc into the water that's very funny. When we see the fountain close up, it has goldfish which Mrs Barrington-Stone later calls carp, same as they have in the Murray River, but of course not all the good colours of these ones in the pond.

Anyway, three kelpies come barking out at us but they're wagging their tails. You can see they're old with grey muzzles and one has a milky eye so we take no notice, probably lost all their teeth anyway. We go to the back door like Nancy said we must. There's a screen door and we look into a large kitchen with a big fan turning quite slowly from the ceiling. We see a lady who we think must be Mrs Barrington-Stone. She's quite fat and is making a racket with a meat mallet, banging at a piece of meat on a large butcher's block. There's no place you can knock properly on a screen door and, besides, the lady's making such a noise she wouldn't hear us anyway.

'Mrs Barrington-Stone!' Mike shouts out, polite but also loud enough so she'll hear.