The Audrey of the Outback Collection (13 page)

Audrey held her legs still and wondered if proper ladies felt as bored as she did. She looked up at the shiny brown clock on the mantelpiece. Its ticking could be heard right through the house. The clock didn’t have proper numbers, just lines, V’s and X’s. Maybe it was one of those ‘two-bob’ clocks that Bloke had talked about.

‘Mrs Paterson, why doesn’t your clock have numbers?’

‘It
has
numbers. They are in Latin. They are usually called Roman numerals.’

‘We only have Australian words in our house,’ said Audrey. ‘We don’t know how to do Latin.’

‘I am sure you do not. In any case, it is a dead language.’

Audrey blinked. Why would Mrs Paterson have dead numbers on her clock?

‘Do you think ghosts can read dead numbers? That’d help if they were supposed to come out at exactly midnight.’

‘Tommyrot.’

‘Thank you.’

‘That was not intended as a compliment.’

Audrey fiddled with the end of her plait. Although she was tempted to chew on it, she decided to let it drop. Price said that chewing your hair gave you a hairy chest.

She longed for Douglas to wake up from his nap. He would totter out with sweaty, mussed-up hair and a confused expression. His thumb would be in his mouth. Audrey glanced down the hallway, but it was empty. The rumble of snores from the end bedroom told her that he was sound asleep.

Stumpy was still hiding. He was probably scared. This house wasn’t much fun for a camel like him.

‘You may begin writing your list of house rules now,’ said Mrs Paterson. ‘It might aid your memory. Although the school is closed for the holidays, you should keep up your skills.’

‘I don’t have any skills,’ said Audrey. ‘But I can write words. Not big ones. But they’re proper words.’

She picked up the pencil and paper from the small table beside her. ‘Do you think people are the same as the list?’

‘Whatever do you mean?’ said Mrs Paterson.

‘I reckon there might be “Do” and “Don’t” sorts of people. If you’re born a “Don’t”, you can’t help it. You just see “Don’ts” everywhere.’

Mrs Paterson’s mouth drooped.

Audrey wondered if Mrs Paterson ever laughed. Audrey’s home up north was small and there was nothing fancy about it. But her family laughed a lot. Sometimes at each other. Sometimes at themselves. And sometimes at nothing at all.

Here, the old house was large and there was a lace tablecloth on the sitting-room table. But the clock had dead numbers and the rooms were filled with shadows.

Seventeen

Mrs Paterson made a
click-clack
sound as she knitted with her wooden needles. The yarn wriggled and the needles wobbled and somehow it was all growing into a red something-or-other.

‘That Jenkins family,’ said Mrs Paterson, ‘I’m not certain they are suitable company.’

Audrey held her breath. Mrs Jenkins’s note had asked if Audrey and Douglas could come over to play with her children. Audrey wanted to go. She
needed
to go. It was part of the secret plan she was hatching.

‘They have … foibles.’ Mrs Paterson tossed her head like a sulky horse.

‘What’s a foydool?’

‘F-o-i-b-l-e.’ Mrs Paterson spelt out the word. ‘It’s a bad habit. Those children run wild and they always have runny noses.’

Boy
had
wiped his nose with the back of his hand, and then hidden the evidence on the side of his shorts. Audrey didn’t care about that. Camels often had runny noses. Sometimes they snotted on purpose to annoy people. Stumpy didn’t do that, though.

‘There are
some
girls amongst that brood. Mrs Jenkins herself is a good-hearted woman. And it is a duty to be kind to the poor. Faith, hope and charity.’

‘Are they the names of the girls?’

Mrs Paterson made a
tsk
sound. ‘They are the three great virtues.’

‘Is virtue like washing dishes?’ asked Audrey.

‘I would say so.’ Mrs Paterson tugged on her knitting yarn.

So it’s a bad thing
, decided Audrey. But she didn’t say that aloud.

‘We
could
consider it part of your social instruction. And I can’t be expected to keep two children amused all day long.’

Mrs Paterson was so old she had most likely forgotten how to play.

Audrey studied the mantelpiece above the fireplace. There were several pretty plates, a small vase holding stalks of lavender and two old photographs. The men in the photos looked alike, although the older man had a crooked nose.

Mrs Paterson held up the red rectangle. ‘This should fit
you
.’

‘Where would my arms go?’

‘I have not reached that far yet.’ Mrs Paterson’s eyebrow did its jump. ‘Don’t you know how to knit, child?’

‘Mum tried to show me once. But I was little and the stitches kept dropping off the sticks. It was too hard.’

‘They are
needles
, not sticks.’ Mrs Paterson peered over the top of her metal-framed glasses. ‘It’s high time you learnt. Come and watch over my shoulder.’

Audrey put down her pencil and paper. Knitting might be a ‘Do’ that was fun. She could make something warm for Dad to wear when he camped out bush.

Close up, Mrs Paterson smelt like baby powder. She didn’t smell old. Although Audrey wasn’t sure what
old
was supposed to smell like. Potatoes didn’t smell too good when they got wrinkly and started to sprout. But potatoes were not the same as people.

‘This is how you hold the needles. You rest each one on the part of your hand between your thumb and forefinger and you do this …’ Mrs Paterson twiddled the needles and a stitch appeared.

‘That’s like magic.’

‘Magic is an instrument of the Devil. So is card-playing. This is simply knotting yarn with two needles.’

Audrey wondered why a devil would want to play cards.

‘Here’s how I learnt to knit when I was young,’ said Mrs Paterson.

Audrey sneaked a look at her grey hair and the wrinkles on her long neck. It was hard to imagine her being a little girl. But she wasn’t born with her hair in a bun or her heart in a cage.

‘In through the bunny hole …’ Mrs Paterson inserted the right needle into the first loop on the left needle. ‘Around the big tree.’ She wound the yarn between the two needles. ‘Back through the bunny hole.’ The right needle came back across the middle loop. ‘And off hops he.’ Mrs Paterson pulled the new loop of yarn from the left to the right needle.

‘Of course, I can’t give you needles while you’re learning. You might break them. You can start with nails. There are some long ones out in the shed.’

‘Nails won’t make the right sound,’ said Audrey, half-expecting an abrupt reply.

But instead, Mrs Paterson slowly nodded. ‘You are quite right. I practised knitting with nails in the outside toilet on Sundays when I was your age. My father was a good man, but strict. He believed the Sabbath should be rigidly enforced. No activity of any kind.’

‘I practise reading in
your
dunny,’ said Audrey.

The old lady lowered her eyelids. ‘Of course what I did was deceitful. I do not approve of such behaviour now that I know better.’

‘Who are those people in the photos on the mantelpiece?’

Mrs Paterson’s hands stopped making bunny holes and sending yarn around big trees. ‘Hasn’t anyone taught you that asking questions of grown-ups is rude?’

‘I don’t think so. I’d remember something like that.’

‘You have been in the bush too long. It’s a disgrace.’ Mrs Paterson stabbed her needles into the ball of wool. ‘You, child, are going to be my next project. Let us see if we can shake the bush dust from your manners and turn you into a lady.’

Audrey felt her heart sink into her shoes.

Beltana, April 1930

Dear Mum,

I wrote the top of this letter like you showed me and the numbers are real ones. See? Not like the dead ones on the clock.

Hope you are having a good rest. Me and Dougie miss you. Xx. That was two kisses, one form from each of us.

Mrs Paterson is teaching us to do good manners at the tabel table. So far we learned—

Don’t sing when you are eating.
(You’d spit on the table.)

Don’t put your head down to your bowl. Bring the spoon up to your mouth.
(When I told Mrs Paterson that lifting the spoon makes splashes on the tablecloth she said that King George would never put his head down to the bowl so we carnt neither. But I don’t think she has really seen the King.)

Mrs Paterson says Stumpy is a lie. Which is anuther lie. She reckons I’m not aloud to say he is real. But if I say he’s not then that is a lie too. So I got some thinking to work that one out. Stumpy is not here much. He knows Mrs Paterson doesn’t like him.

My hand is hurting so I will stop now.

Before I go to sleep I will say goodnight to you, Dad and Price. Even tho you carnt hear me. That’s why I told you.

Love from Audrey, Dougie and Stumpy

Eighteen

Audrey lay in the dark. The third night in Mrs Paterson’s house was no easier than the first. Back home, she knew all the sounds. Even the tiny feet that sometimes ran across the roof didn’t bother her. Possums were naughty but fun.

As hard as Audrey listened, she couldn’t hear Stumpy outside. The first camel-breeding station in Australia was only a few miles away, so Stumpy was probably out there making friends.

Mrs Paterson’s house seemed to
breathe
.

‘Audwey,’ whispered Douglas from the other bed.

‘Yes?’

‘I want to go home now.’

It was a perfect sentence, the longest one Audrey had heard her little brother say.

‘We can’t leave Mum here at the hospital on her own, can we?’ said Audrey.

Something scratched at the window.

‘Wossat?’ asked Douglas.

‘Twigs from that tree outside the window, moving in the wind.’

It was the right thing to say. The kind of thing Mum would say, but Audrey didn’t sound nearly as confident.

The scratching came again. Leaves shaking in the wind sounded like whispering.

Audrey called out, ‘Mrs Paterson.’

There was no answer.

‘Mrs Paterson!’

A light came on down the hallway. Audrey heard Mrs Paterson’s slippers scuffing the linoleum. Then she appeared in the doorway, wrapped in a dressing-gown that was as dark as her daytime clothes.

‘What is the matter?’

Audrey turned onto her side. ‘Can me and Dougie have the light on?’ Then she added ‘
please
’, remembering how fond of that word Mrs Paterson seemed to be.

‘Have you been naughty?’

‘Not ’specially. ’Course, sometimes I might be naughty and I don’t know. So maybe that isn’t really naughty. Can you be naughty if you don’t know you’re doing it?’

There was a pause, then Mrs Paterson’s voice floated around the room like a leaf on water. ‘I have not understood one word you just said. No, you may
not
have the light on all night. If you have been good, then you do not need to be afraid of the dark.’

‘I’m not scared of the dark,’ said Audrey. ‘I’m scared of the house.’

‘It is just walls and rooms.’

‘This house is
sad
.’

Mrs Paterson gasped. At least, Audrey thought she did. The sound was so quiet that she couldn’t be sure.

The old lady turned and walked away.

Seconds later, the light went out.

Audrey knew her dad wasn’t often wrong. Yet she wondered if he had made a mistake about
everyone
having a good side.

She went across to the other bed, scooped up Douglas and carried him over to her own. He took her pillow and kicked her in the leg several times before he settled.

Audrey lay awake long after she finished telling Douglas stories about Stumpy’s pranks. Long after Douglas started snoring and twitching. And long after the sound of crying had faded at the other end of the house.

Nineteen

‘Make sure the water is boiling.’ Mrs Paterson’s voice easily reached the kitchen from the sitting room.

‘I will,’ Audrey called back.

She was careful, as her mum had taught her. This stove was a corker. The wood fire was inside a metal box and the kettle sat on top of it. At home, Audrey’s family had only an open fire in their kitchen.

‘Warm the pot first.’

‘I will.’ Audrey had already done it, but she didn’t want to say so.

A mound of black leaves from a Griffiths Brothers Choice Tea tin sat in the pot. Was that too many? It would be too hard to dig them out. Anyway, what would she do with them? The leaves were damp and couldn’t go back in the tin. Audrey added boiling water to the teapot.

‘Make sure you let it draw for at least three minutes.’

‘I will,’ repeated Audrey.

‘The tea-cosy is under the sink. Put it on so the tea doesn’t go cold.’

Audrey slipped the striped, knitted tea-cosy over the pot. She struggled getting the spout into the hole but burnt her finger only once. She picked up the pot with both hands and poured tea into a cup. Tea splashed onto the saucer. The tea looked awfully dark. More like the brew a swagman would make if he left the leaves in his billy for a long time.

Audrey counted eight leaves floating in the cup. She wondered if she should have strained it. The water was too hot for her to stick her fingers in to pick out the tea-leaves. And if she tried to get them with a teaspoon, she knew she’d drop them and make an even bigger mess. It was too late now. Wobbling a little, she placed the teacup and saucer on the silver tray next to the milk and sugar.

She was glad that Douglas was in the bedroom making a cubbyhouse with the blankets. Otherwise he would be running around her feet and she would be sure to trip.

‘Don’t forget the milk and sugar,’ Mrs Paterson called again from the sitting room.

Picking up the tray, Audrey inched towards the door. More tea spilled over the side of the cup. It sat on the saucer in a lake of brown liquid. But there was still enough left in the cup for Mrs Paterson to have a drink.

When Audrey reached the sitting-room table, she wasn’t sure how to put the tray down. If she bent over, the remaining tea would slop out. Mrs Paterson solved her problem by taking the tray herself.