The Turning Tide (2 page)

Since losing Marion, things long forgotten have been rising like wraiths around me, and dear God I wish it would stop. Every fucking moment reminds me of something else, till I’m exhausted with trying not to remember. Or exhausted with remembering. And now this. No wonder I never came back before.

I sigh and lean back and lie down with my old canvas hat over my face. The air is comfortable in the hazy morning sun. My thoughts gradually slow and I doze.

After a time I hear Lena come back and lie down on her towel. A while later she gets up and calls out and runs towards the path. I roll over to see. She’s hugging a muscular lad, then they walk hand in hand towards me. As they get
closer he stares hard at me for a moment, then grins. He’s clearly reassured I’m no threat to his Lena.

Funny. That’s how Johnny used to look whenever he saw me with Helen.

We walk back to the car park. On the way Lena stops to gaze at the commando memorial and this time I’m prepared.

‘I always wonder what he was like, my grandfather. In the photos he looks sort of fun, always smiling. Was he like that?’

‘Yes. Yes, he was a good bloke, laughed a lot, kept everyone amused.’

When he could, I think, when he wasn’t in pain from dysentery or malaria or tropical ulcers, or no boots and no food and no sleep. When he wasn’t being tortured.

Lena says, ‘I live with Mum in Foster when I’m not at uni. But Nana’s further out in the hills. You know she remarried after the war? But she’d love to see you.’

‘Actually, I have to go back to Melbourne now,’ I say. ‘I don’t think there’s any chance of getting to see her today.’

Lena borrows my notebook and writes down Helen’s phone number and address.

‘Promise me you’ll go and see her sometime?’

‘Yes, of course. Give her my best wishes and say I hope she’s well.’

Lena looks at me, doubt in her eyes. Pete calls, ‘Leen-ah,’ from the car.

She puts her hand on my arm. ‘Thanks so much, Mike. I’d have been stuffed if you hadn’t come along. You promise?’

‘Yes,’ I say. I’m tired.

She beams and hops into Pete’s car, waving as they pull away. I open my door and sit down heavily. The car park is where the old parade ground was. I can hear magpies again, calling tree to tree. I think of this morning, the first time I’d looked forward to the day in ages.

Dear God. Why didn’t I go home yesterday?

I drive back along the road through Fish Creek to Meeniyan, avoiding any possibility of Foster, even from a distance. Old Harry O’Brien would take me that way sometimes in the cart. I can smell the big brown horse for a moment, feel her velvet ears, hear her snuffle, as she nibbled grain from my hand. Betty? No, Bessie. Betty was someone else entirely. But her eyes were as brown and her lashes as long: I laugh at my absurdity. Oh, Betty, my dear.

The O’Briens had been in service with Mum’s family before the Great War, then they bought a small dairy farm here. Sally O’Brien looked as tough as nails but she was kind to me when I was so homesick: only seventeen and soon to attend the great University of Melbourne.

My parents thought a few months on a farm before starting uni would do me good. They didn’t want me hanging around Broome with nothing to do. Not because they didn’t like having me there – Mum was red-eyed for days before I left – but because of Betty. They worried we might be getting too close, too young.

No, don’t think about Betty, I scold myself, or Ken. Don’t think about the Egawa kids, friends of my childhood in that red and green and turquoise place, so different from anywhere else in the country. Almost alien.
Alien
. Funny
word. That’s what they used to call Betty and Ken’s dad, Yoshi. And their mum too – Australian-born, but always Japanese. Always alien.

I sigh. Stop it, you old fool. Concentrate. I’m here now, driving in this rich green and blue countryside, an academic close to the end of his career, an adequate researcher, not a bad teacher. But I’m back there too, a boy yearning for the colours, the smells, the sounds of red-dust Broome, two thousand miles away.

The O’Briens worked me kindly – harvesting, milking cows, repairing, keeping me busy on the endless tasks around the farm – until it all slowly became familiar. Their small weatherboard farmhouse, off the appropriately named Muddy Lane, was surrounded by green fields running down to Corner Inlet. Across the water was the Prom, and sometimes from my bedroom I’d watch sunlight and shadows dancing over the mountain peaks for hours.

I turn onto the highway and keep going. The road humming past, I think of young Lena and the first time I met Johnny, her grandfather. Harry brought him to the stable one day when I was feeding the horse.

‘The Erikssen lad,’ Harry said, ‘come to give a hand with the harvesting.’

He was tall and strong, fair-haired with a slow smile. ‘Johnny Erikssen,’ he said, and shook my hand like a man. Johnny was great company, easy to work with, no shirking, no bullshit. I would have been in awe of him except he was so down-to-earth.

A year older than me, he was as charmed by my life in exotic Broome as I was by his in green-blue Gippsland.

His family were Swedish, common in this area, and when they weren’t working on their farm they were fishing. Corner Inlet fish were famous, Johnny would say, served in the best of Melbourne’s restaurants. I’d grown up sailing small boats and was happy to offer him a hand.

Johnny’s family lived not far from Foster on the road to Port Franklin, a little harbour at the mouth of a river, all mangroves and small scuttling crabs. It reminded me pleasingly of Broome. During very low tides Corner Inlet’s blue waters would drain away, revealing acres of seagrass and rippled mud, again like Broome. As a child I would watch the moon rising over Roebuck Bay, the strips of light on the mudflats like a ladder to the sky.

That summer in Foster was idyllic. I was anchored, safe, harboured by the green hills around me and the Prom across the water. I’d be working with Johnny in the paddocks or out on the boat or milking cows at dawn, and would breathe the scent of mown hay and be filled with a great joy, as if I were about to glimpse something wonderful, something I’d never thought possible, something I’d wanted, without even knowing, all the brief years of my life.

Chapter 2

Johnny and I stayed mates even after I went away to Melbourne in early 1939, because I’d go back to Foster in the term breaks to help the O’Briens. University wasn’t easy but I’d been at boarding school in Perth and was used to study and keeping my head down in a crowd of lads. In any case, I enjoyed the work.

In the second semester I started going out with a girl I met in a pub one night. That was Kitty, dark-haired and quiet, a secretary in an insurance company. She’d let me feel her small round breasts through her jumper, no further. But just being allowed to kiss her was a revelation.

It was a shock that September when war in Europe started. The threat had rumbled on for so long it hardly seemed real. Of course, Britain’s war was Australia’s war and change happened quickly. One of Johnny’s brothers
joined the 2nd AIF in October 1939 and was sent to Palestine. Johnny itched to join up too but was needed at home to keep the farm going. I stayed put as well because the government didn’t want recruits from universities or industry, or anywhere vital to the war effort.

I walk quickly along the Carlton street through the wet leaves, hands in my pockets and shoulders hunched, expecting the rain to start again any moment. A colleague is with me who wants to have a chat over lunch about the latest reshuffle in the department. I’ve lived through so many I barely notice them, but he’s young and still thinks it matters.

We enter the lounge of the Royal Oak as the rain begins and order lunch. As my colleague frets about his future I tell him not to agonise, he’s safe for now. He’s unmollified and goes over the state of play again. I watch the flames in the fireplace and eat my sandwich and nod encouragingly every now and then. He’s a good lad but I wish he’d shut up.

Looking around, I’m pleased to see the old pub hasn’t much changed over the years. In early 1940 my parents came over to Melbourne for a few weeks, and this was where we’d had lunch one afternoon. I took my girlfriend Kitty along to meet them. When they saw her, Dad got that expression he’d use when he was being careful (something about his eyebrows always gave him away) but Mum – Lucy – was lovely, just as she was to everyone. She must have been in her late forties then, grey streaks in her brown hair and laughter lines around her eyes. I thought she was
beautiful, but then I always did. Kitty seemed to enjoy herself, though it was hard for her to keep up with our family jokes and fast-moving gossip.

The weeks of my parents’ visit passed quickly. We took the train to Foster and visited the O’Briens, who hadn’t seen them since before the Great War. There was a lot of talking about people I’d never heard of, but Mum was so happy it didn’t matter. My parents met Johnny Erikssen too and liked him. That night was the first time I ever stayed at the Exchange. Mum said how nice Kitty was but I shouldn’t rush into anything, I was still studying, shouldn’t tie myself down. Dad just grinned and didn’t say much.

My parents sailed home to Broome in February 1940. I was a little sad when they left and Kitty took pity on me. One night we went to the cinema to see the Marx Brothers and laughed ourselves silly. I thought Kitty looked a bit like Maureen O’Sullivan and said so. She was pleased and after I’d walked her home to the rooms she shared with her friend Dottie, she asked me up for a cup of tea. When we opened the door we found Dottie was out.

We were soon lying together on the couch, arms around each other, legs and clothes entwined and hot. I’d assumed it was to be another evening of aching frustration and limited liberties, when Kitty whispered shyly into my neck, ‘Would you like to lie down in my room?’

I had imagined this moment over and over, breathlessly wanking, but hadn’t thought the details through very precisely. All I could do was nod, get up clumsily and follow her to a neat little bedroom. She undressed, draping her clothes over a chair as if she were by herself, until she was
wearing only her white brassiere and panties. She pulled back the cover and lay down on her single bed.

I somehow got out of my clothes and sat beside her in my underpants, tented by an erection I pretended not to notice. I leant down and kissed her, wriggled into bed and pressed against her. At last, at last, oh, thank you, Lord. After a moment of awkwardness I managed to get the brassiere undone and finally saw those adorable breasts, more beautiful and mysterious than I’d ever imagined.

I stroked her nipples and thought, how could this be happening? Amazingly, she caressed me with her pretty hands and pulled my underpants off, kissing me all the while. Then she turned away, reaching to her bedside drawer. ‘Mike, we need protection,’ she whispered. She handed me a small rubber object and I managed, awkwardly, to get the thing on.

I still feel shame today at my shock. Kitty wasn’t a virgin, she knew what to do. She even had a stock of frenchies in her drawer! But the shock certainly wasn’t enough to stop me in my tracks.

I pulled her panties off and rolled on top of her. She parted her legs and guided me inside to a heat I hadn’t expected. Dazed with smoothness and thighs and belly and breasts I lasted only a minute or two, but in the glorious wave of climax was shocked again to realise she was returning my thrusts, utterly lost in her own pleasure.

Oh Kitty. What a gift you were.

I’d promised to go down to Gippsland to the O’Briens’ farm after my parents left, so had an excuse to get away a day or so later, part exultant and part ashamed at leaving Kitty
so suddenly. As the train drew closer to Foster I imagined Johnny’s look of awe and respect when I told him. I dropped my bag at the farm, kissed Sally and shook Harry’s hand, and rode a rusty bicycle into town to meet Johnny for a drink at the Exchange.

I told him my wonderful news, trying all the while to pretend it wasn’t so earth-shattering, so marvellous (me, a man of the world). He gave me his slow, affectionate smile and stubbed out his cigarette and I realised, without a word being spoken, that Johnny had done it already, long ago, with half the girls in town.

He nodded his head towards the barmaid. ‘See her?’

I’d been so taken with my own news I hadn’t. I looked, and looked again. She was fair, gold-blonde, and even from ten feet away I could see the perfect blue of her eyes and the quick dimples in her pink cheeks as she handed someone a glass. Later I’d see she had a tiny flaw, a dot of brown in one iris, but it only made her all the more fascinating.

Johnny’s smile was calm, confident. ‘Her name’s Helen, Helen Cunningham. I’m going to get her to go out with me.’

‘She’s gorgeous,’ I said, overwhelmed by my own ordinariness. A girl like that; a boy like Johnny. It was only natural. People like me ended up with the everyday Kittys of the world, the secretaries with French letters in their drawer. I got self-pityingly drunk that evening.

I’m sitting at my desk in the study, trying to mark papers, a half-empty glass of wine to one side. I put my hands over my eyes and groan in horror at my stupidity, my own young, male, heartless stupidity.

I didn’t even have the conviction of my beliefs. When I went back to Melbourne I kept seeing Kitty, kept accepting
the generosity of her sensuality over months of my own pleasure and growing confidence. I didn’t understand for an instant the risks she was taking with her reputation, her health, her future.

Kitty must have known how superficial my commitment was. When the inevitable happened after about eight months together, when she was late and desperate and came to speak to me, I could see she already knew there would be no reprieve by marriage.

I had enough in my bank account to pay for an abortion. She refused to meet me afterwards and I never saw her again; although once her friend Dottie passed me in the street and gave me such a look of contempt it still makes me hot with shame today.