Stillwater Creek (14 page)

‘You can't know that,' Zidra said. ‘You've only been to Sydney.'

Jim laughed. Picking up another pebble, he flicked it across the water. Five bounces this time. He was getting better.

‘Try to keep still, Ilona.' Cherry, mouth full of pins, looked appraisingly at Ilona. Wearing only the green swimming costume, Ilona was standing on the coffee table in the living room of her cottage. ‘It doesn't need taking in much,' Cherry said. ‘But the length's a problem.' She scooped up the material at hip level to raise the leg line to where it should be. ‘We can make a tuck in the material here. Maybe we'll expose it on the outside so it looks as if it's part of the grand design, and it'll draw attention to your nice backside.'

‘And away from my not so nice knees,' Ilona said.

After Cherry had heard Ilona's story of the beach rescue, she'd volunteered to alter the swimming costume, picking just before lunchtime when Bill would be busy in the bar. Knowing what she did of both Ilona and Peter, she could easily visualise how embarrassed each would have been at this way of meeting. Peter so reserved and private. Ilona so proud and independent but with that touching vulnerability, although she had turned it into a comic tale that had made Cherry laugh. Desperate for distraction from her worries about Bill, Cherry was especially glad of things to laugh about these days.

Now removing the pins from her mouth, she said, ‘Peter
Vincent lives not far north of Jingera, and he hangs about a bit with the Woodlands crowd, Mr Chapman and his wife Lady Muck. Although he's not stuck up at all, unlike that woman. I've served her twice in the Ladies' Bar when she's come in with Mr Chapman, but will she acknowledge me if she passes me in the street? No, never.' Pausing, she made a minor adjustment to the fabric she was pinning. ‘Mind you, you hang out a bit with Lady Muck yourself, don't you? Teaching her son the piano and all that.'

‘Mrs Chapman is not so bad. She's generous and adores her son.'

‘Perhaps she just needs glasses then. The sort that let you see people who don't matter.'

Ilona laughed, before saying, ‘He is quite rude.'

‘Who – Peter Vincent? No, he's a nice man. Generous too. Always willing to help people, he's got a reputation for that. He sometimes comes into the pub for a middy or two. He probably saved your life, you know.'

‘I know that, and of course I am eternally grateful.'

Cherry looked sharply at Ilona. Sometimes she said the oddest things but it was probably through being foreign. Now Ilona said dreamily, ‘When I was a girl, my mother used to pin my clothes for me, just like you. Then she would stitch them by hand, for I am not clever with a needle and thread, and always she would say to me, “Keep still, keep still,” although of course I never moved.'

Cherry smiled and carried on adjusting the side seams. She stood back to look critically at the effect. ‘Where's your mother now?'

‘She died in the war.' Ilona's voice shook but she continued. ‘After the war I was in a Displaced Persons' camp and then I went to Britain.'

‘Just you?' Cherry stopped pinning and sat cross-legged on the floor in front of Ilona.

‘Yes. I met my husband, Oleksii, in Bradford. After we married, we rented a room in a terrace house.' Ilona started to move restlessly around on the top of the coffee table. She might have been exhibiting the swimming costume but her expression seemed absent, as if she'd forgotten where she was. ‘There were a lot of other people living there too, all refugees of some sort. Most worked in the factory or the hospital. I worked as a cleaner at the hospital. I had hoped to teach the piano but that was not to be.' She paused. Cherry kept silent. The only sounds that she could hear were the ticking of the clock and a bird's chittering in the shrubbery outside. That and the endless crashing of the surf. Then Ilona said softly, ‘I am not boring you, am I, Cherry?'

‘Never,' Cherry said. ‘Carry on. I want to know.'

‘After Zidra was born, I arranged with a friend who also had a baby to work on different shifts. We needed always to have someone at home to care for Zidra and her little boy. Oleksii was working very long shifts at the factory, much longer than ours.'

Cherry wondered if Ilona had been happy in her marriage. She must have been; everyone she knew seemed to be happy in their marriage, except for her, although Miss Neville claimed it was mostly a facade.

Ilona was trembling now, even though the room was so hot.

‘You're shivering, Ilona. Put this blouse around your shoulders.'

‘I'm not cold, I'm hot. The day is so hot, but that winter was so cold. Such frightful weather we had in Bradford then. The grey damp days, the grey damp nights, and the rain, the perpetual rain.' Glancing at Cherry, Ilona blinked as if she was having
trouble focusing. Then suddenly she smiled. It was a formal smile, or perhaps a disoriented smile.

‘So we decided to emigrate, Oleksii and I. One day Oleksii came home with brochures about Australia. Such a beautiful place it looked and with so many jobs! Zidra would be just the right age to start school. We did not hesitate. A new life for the three of us! And perhaps Oleksii would be able to play in an orchestra and have the time to compose again.' Her voice sounded brittle and her face looked set. ‘But that was not to be, Cherry. That was not to be.'

Cherry didn't know quite what to say. Her own troubles faded. Not into insignificance, they were much too worrying for that, but at least into something slightly less pressing. Without thinking, she said, ‘How did Oleksii die?' Then she wished she hadn't. Ilona's face assumed a blank look, as if she'd decided too much had already been revealed. Suddenly the bird that had been chittering outside the window gave a loud squawk. A small tabby cat appeared on the windowsill. Catching sight of the women inside, it sprang away in surprise.

‘You've had such a hard life,' Cherry said gently. ‘I don't know how you've managed to keep your sunny disposition.'

Ilona laughed bitterly. ‘My disposition is not sunny,' she said. ‘Every day there is a battle to defeat the blackness.'

‘But you are brave too, Ilona. Every day you fight and win.'

‘Sometimes I do not win, but I will not be vanquished.'

‘No, you won't be. Especially not after you survived that.' Cherry gently touched the blue numbers tattooed on Ilona's forearm.

Ilona flinched at the touch and Cherry quickly removed her hand.

‘You know what they mean, Cherry?' Now Ilona was rubbing her arm, as if to scrub off the numbers.

‘Yes, I know. Miss Neville told me.'

‘I will not wear them covered. They are a reminder of what we went through. I cannot yet bring myself to talk of those things, but in time I must.' Her voice broke and she coughed, as if to disguise her emotion. Once this was under control, she said briskly, ‘But we must finish our pinning, Cherry, for I know you do not have much time. You are not watching the clock but I am, and I see that soon Bill will be looking around the bar and wondering where you are, and blaming your piano teacher who has been distracting you.'

Bill. Although Cherry knew she had to watch him, she didn't want to think about him. She'd been watching him ever since she'd made that discovery and, so far, he had done nothing out of the ordinary. But Ilona was right, he would be looking for her soon. Not because he missed her, not because he loved her. He would be looking for her only because of the work she did in the pub.

‘Keep still, Ilona.' And Ilona did keep very still until Cherry instructed her to twirl around for one last inspection. Then after a final adjustment, Cherry felt satisfied. ‘I'll sew it for you on my machine,' she said.

‘That is so kind of you. The stitching of the machine will be so much stronger than the stitching of my hand.'

‘Machine stitching. Hand stitching,' said Cherry, laughing although she didn't feel much like it.

‘And faster too, but do let me come around to do it at your place. You have so little spare time.'

‘It'll take me ten minutes at the most,' Cherry said. ‘Up one side, down the other, and maybe a nice strip of bias binding to cover the rough edges inside to stop them prickling. Then the French seam around the hips and it'll be done. Maybe we can fix your two frocks later, after my lesson next week.'

‘Can I watch you do it?'

‘No, Ilona,' Cherry said indistinctly. After collecting all the pins that had fallen onto the floor, she'd started absent-mindedly putting them into her mouth. Taking them out, she jabbed them hard into the silk-covered pincushion. ‘Bill doesn't like me bringing anyone home,' she added, but it was more that she didn't want Ilona and Zidra having anything to do with Bill. She would keep her life as segmented as possible. Everyone would be safer that way.

If only there were someone she could talk to about what she had seen in Bill's office. For an instant she wondered if she might tell Ilona, but no, that would be folly; she couldn't possibly burden Ilona with that, especially after all she'd been through. If Ilona knew, she would advise Cherry to tell the police. She was a mother, after all, how could she possibly say otherwise? Then Cherry would have to follow that through, although she knew the police would never believe anything bad about Bill. Even if they did take her accusations seriously, she'd have to go to court and her own secret would come out. She'd thought all this through many times now and she knew she just couldn't bear the humiliation. It might be different if she was brave like Ilona but she wasn't. She was a coward and she knew it.

That afternoon Cherry stood on the hotel verandah and waited until the last child had straggled out of the schoolyard. Only then did she nonchalantly stroll up the hill and pass through the school gate. She would talk to Miss Neville about Bill but first she must practise the piano a little. It was important to keep up the pretence that she was learning seriously and anyway she wanted to please Ilona.

Miss Neville usually offered her a cup of tea to take with her to the piano but today she didn't turn around at the clatter of Cherry's high-heeled sandals on the wooden floorboards. Stopping at the door to the office, Cherry called, in a parody of a schoolgirl, ‘Good afternoon, Miss Neville!' But Miss Neville didn't seem amused. Seated at the desk with her back to the door, she noisily turned the page of an exercise book she was marking.

‘I'm here! Will I get on with my practice or would you like me to make you some tea?'

‘Carry on,' Miss Neville said gruffly, back still turned to the door. Her hair was ruffled as if she'd been running her fingers through it, and her double crown was exposed. Cherry was tempted to take the four steps into the office to smooth her hair but thought better of it. Never before had she seen Miss Neville this unwelcoming. It made her nervous, as if she was a naughty schoolgirl again at Burford Girls' High, waiting to see the headmistress for yet another detention.

She tiptoed into the large schoolroom and shut the door so that she wouldn't disturb Miss Neville's concentration. Perhaps she wasn't really angry but simply doing something very important. The classroom was hot and it smelled musty, of generations of school lunches and the faint sweat of thirty children. Opening the windows would entail first going out into the corridor and asking Miss Neville for the window opening stick. This long broom handle with its metal hook at one end was kept locked away on the grounds of safety. ‘Need a bloody licence to operate it,' Miss Neville had said on a better day. ‘A teaching qualification at least. Could be used as an instrument of torture in the wrong hands.' There was no way Cherry was going to disturb Miss Neville now just to get hold of that stick.

She opened the piano and began with the scales, using both hands. If only she could induce the left hand to coordinate properly with the right, instead of always being a fraction of a second behind, she could make great strides forward. Stopping, she gazed out the window at the relentless blue sky. It was difficult to concentrate when she'd done something to offend Miss Neville and didn't know what it was. But Miss Neville didn't want to be disturbed so she must be left alone. Back to the scales, up and down the piano she stumbled, faster and faster with less and less accuracy. Eventually she could stand it no longer. Leaping up from the piano stool, she threw open the classroom door, and marched into the office next door.

‘What's wrong?' she said loudly, plonking herself down on one of the visitors' chairs that Miss Neville kept in an orderly row at right angles to her desk.

The school mistress closed the exercise book she'd been marking and pushed her glasses onto the top of her head. She turned towards Cherry but instead of looking directly at her, focused on a point slightly to the left of her head. Cherry resisted the temptation to twist round to inspect the wall behind. This manoeuvre must have been perfected by Miss Neville on countless school children and Cherry might find it amusing if she were not so upset. There was a deep indentation to one side of the bridge of Miss Neville's nose where her glasses had been digging in but it would be dangerous to lean over to attempt to smooth it out.