Three Summers (12 page)

Helen Hogan.

Helen lowered her arm, and Ruth saw that her face was swollen and smudged with crying. There was a big rip in her dress almost from waist to knee. Helen sat up and bunched the tear together. ‘What do you think you're staring at?' she demanded.

‘Nothing.'

‘Nothing, eh?' Helen tilted her head back and yawned. She gathered the blue-black hair in big handfuls, twisted it on top of her head and then let it fall again, heavily. Her red dress was cut low in the front so the tops of her white breasts showed and Ruth imagined Tam Finn's head lying there, his white face pressed into that soft, translucent skin.

‘I could do what you did,' said Helen unexpectedly.

‘What?'

‘Win a scholarship. Go to Sydney.' Seeing the expression on Ruth's face, her voice rose. ‘Oh yes, I
could.
Easily. If I wanted to, that is. If I'd wanted to stay at school and sit mooning over dusty old books and writing essays day and night and night and day, I could have passed those exams just as well as you did. And gone down to the
university
.'

‘Yes, but—' began Ruth, and then couldn't think of any more to say.

‘
Yes, but
—' mimicked Helen, and Ruth remembered Tam Finn mimicking her in Starlight Lane: ‘
No, thenk you.
' She pictured the two of them, dark heads together, talking about her and laughing.

‘
Yes, but,
' said Helen again. ‘Yes, I could have, but I wanted to have a life, see? A
real
life. That's the thing, you know; the
only
thing.' With a sudden swift movement she got to her feet and Ruth flinched back from her.

Helen laughed. ‘Thought I was goin' to punch you, eh? For coming spying around down here? Well, I'll tell you something for free, Miss High-and-Mighty, I don't hit babies, see?'

There was blood after all, Ruth saw. A thin red trickle of it was sliding down Helen's long, pale leg.

They both gazed at it. Helen made no move to wipe it off. She swung her head back, and the black hair swirled. ‘So just you remember this when you're down in Sydney: just remember that you know nothing, okay? Nothing that's
real
.'

A sudden gust of hot wind sent the long fronds of the willows swaying. ‘Something's burning,' said Helen, sniffing at the smoky air. ‘Somewhere.' She smiled and now Ruth could smell the burning too, and when she breathed in, she thought there was a taste of ashes in her mouth.

‘Scared?' sneered Helen, throwing her arms out wide. ‘Scared of fires, little girl? Little
baby
?'

‘No, I'm not.'

‘Yes you are.' Helen laughed. She threw her head back again, and her beautiful throat quivered with the laughter, a beating pulse beneath the pearly skin. Then she stopped, and her voice was filled with scorn as she looked Ruth up and down. ‘Better run home to Mummy, then! Oops!' Helen slapped a hand over her grinning mouth. Her fingernails were painted red to match her dress, but the polish was chipped and the tips were ragged and bitten down. ‘Sorry! I forgot, you haven't got a mummy, only a wicked old granny who pushed her hubby in the dam!'

‘She didn't!'

‘Oh, didn't she? How come everyone says she did, then?'

‘It's
not
everyone. It's just people like you.'

‘People like me, eh?' Helen smiled dangerously. ‘You mean like – the dirt beneath your little feet?'

‘No, I didn't mean that, I meant—'

‘I don't care what you meant,' said Helen savagely, ‘or what you think in that fancy brain of yours, Little Miss Know-Nothing!' She glanced down at her torn dress, the smear of blood on her thigh, and smiled slowly. Then, dismissively, she waved her hand. ‘Get lost, why don't you?' She lunged forward again. ‘Go on! Scram! Run away home to Nan!'

eleven

Up at Saint Columba's they were doing the flowers again. In the back kitchen, Milly was taking down the big silver altar vases for the pink lilies Margaret May had brought. Cold water spurted from the tap above the sink, filling the small room with the deep dark scent of foliage and earth.

Merle Hogan's big hands moved angrily amongst the flowers; she'd had another fight with Helen this morning – and now mucky green sap was running, the thick stalks of the lilies were leaking all over her. ‘Ugh! Nasty stuff!' She wiped her fingers on the front of her apron and went to stand at the small window which overlooked the presbytery garden. ‘Tsk,' she murmured after a little while, and shook her head from side to side. ‘Tsk!'

‘What's the matter, Merle?' asked Milly.

‘Will you look at that poor old man! Just look! Why, he's a shadow of himself!'

Milly went to the window and peered out: she saw Father Joseph forking the soil round his tomato plants and thought he appeared as big and bulky as ever. ‘He looks all right to me.'

Merle drew in a loud, important breath and rounded suddenly on Margaret May. ‘I'm surprised at
you
,' she said, ‘upsetting him like this!'

‘What do you mean?'

‘You know very well what I mean! The poor old soul's worried sick about your Ruth swanning off to Sydney and what she'll get up to there!'

‘She's not swanning and she's not getting up to anything,' retorted Margaret May. ‘She's going to the university to study for her degree.'

‘Her
degree
,' sniffed Merle. ‘Studying's not all they do in that place! Mrs Ryan told me yesterday the worry about your Ruth is eating the poor man away! And to think you and Father Joseph used to be such
friends
!' Merle's words were accusing but her voice had a gloating sound – this would teach the old fool to have favourites! And it would teach Margaret May Gower a lesson, too.

Margaret May looked out into the garden; the old man's arthritis was troubling him again, she could tell by the way he moved. They hadn't spoken to each other since that morning in the presbytery three weeks ago. She'd believed then that he'd come round to the idea of Ruth going to the university, but he'd stuck to his guns and she'd stuck to hers. They shook hands at the door after Mass, and that was all. It seemed strange that she no longer had him as a friend when they'd known each other for such a long time. When Ruth goes, she thought, when Ruth goes down to the university – when it's an accomplished fact – then he'll come round. Only – Margaret May was worried about her granddaughter. Last night when they were doing the dishes, Ruth had said suddenly, ‘Nan, what if—' and then stopped, the tea towel drooping from her hand.

‘What if what?'

‘Well, down in Sydney, what if people don't like me there?'

‘Of course they'll like you!'

‘Why should they? They'll be Sydney people, mostly, I'll probably seem weird to them.'

‘Of course you won't seem weird.'

Ruth had taken a cup from the draining board and dried it very carefully. ‘What if I'm not as clever as you and the teachers think I am? What if I only
seem
clever, because I'm up here? And when I'm down in Sydney, where everyone else is clever, I'm just ordinary? Even stupid?'

‘Ruth, don't be silly! Of course you're not stupid! What about your marks in the exams? Your scholarship? You beat a lot of Sydney people there.'

Ruth had put the cup carefully down on the table. ‘Not stupid exactly,' she said, ‘but—' She'd flung the tea towel aside and stood there in a sudden storm of tears. ‘I don't want to go! I don't want to!'

‘Oh, sweetheart!' Margaret May had put her arms round her and after a bit Ruth had stopped crying, and they'd gone on with the washing up and nothing else had been said. Last-minute nerves, that's all, Margaret May had told herself. It had to be – if Ruth didn't go it would be like – oh, it would be like those long-ago afternoons at the orphanage when, watching from a high window, Margaret May would see a car turn through the gates into the drive and really believe that it was someone kind come to take her away – and then it would only be the doctor, or one of the Sisters coming back from a visit, or someone to see Mother Evangeline.

BEHIND
her in the kitchen they were still talking. ‘And all that reading they had to do for their exams, poor loves,' Milly Lachlan was saying to Merle, as she wiped the drops of water from the big silver vase. ‘All that studying. I know I'm an old softie but it seems wrong to me, somehow, when they're so young.'

‘Well, it wouldn't do for me,' said Merle. ‘Life! That's what you want! That's what you need to be good at, not books! What good did books ever do anyone?' She threw up her hands and waggled her fingers and shot a gleaming glance at Margaret May, who picked up a big silver vase of pink lilies and walked out of the kitchen, through the sacristy into the church, past the big statues with their staffs and shepherds crooks and crowns, past the long rows of polished pews, over to the little wooden Virgin standing patiently in her corner. ‘There you are,' she said, placing the vase on the floor beside her, and then sitting down on the end of a pew to calm her angry feelings.

People like Merle had a down on reading, she thought. No, it was more than a down, it was stronger: it was suspicion and distrust, even a kind of jealousy, as if they thought there might be some secret dangerous treasure in those pages other people read that they themselves could never find. If the nuns at her old school caught you reading on the verandah at lunchtime, they made you get up and go out to play. There'd been no books at the orphanage except for holy ones, and as she got older Margaret May could see why: they were bringing you up to be a skivvy and reading might give you ideas.

‘You don't get paid to
read
,' the housekeeper at
Fortuna
had said to her, snatching the old copy of
Romeo and Juliet
Margaret May had kept from school. She hadn't got it back until she'd left the place to marry Don Gower.

Don hadn't liked her reading either. In the first few months when he'd caught her browsing through a couple of tatty old books she'd picked up at the church fete, he'd only wrinkled his nose and asked her if she didn't have anything better to do. ‘Isn't there some work you can get on with around the house?'

Later on, it got more serious. ‘No reading when you're minding the shop,' he'd said. ‘People'll come in and think you can't be bothered with 'em.'

He'd caught her twice. ‘Haven't I told you about that?' The third time, an afternoon of heavy rain when no one would have come in anyway, his face had grown dark as the heavy sky outside.

She could see at once that he was in a mood. The way he went silent made you walk on tiptoe, and a panicky voice in your head kept crying silently, ‘Talk to me! Talk!' He'd snatched the book and thrown it down.
Wuthering Heights
, it had been, and she'd thought how ‘wuthering' was a good word for him, when he got a mood. ‘I thought I told you,' he'd said, and he'd slapped her right across the face. ‘There,' he'd said. ‘Now
learn
.'

She hadn't learned. And neither would her Ruthie, if she had anything to do with it.

It had been another wuthering night when Don had died. He hadn't spoken to any of them for two whole weeks. It had been raining for days; their eldest, Charlie, had left his muddy gumboots in the hall and Don had tripped right over them. He'd punched Charlie in the mouth and a tooth had fallen out, a front tooth, a second tooth, lying there like a little white shell on the hall floor. Don had drawn his fist back for another go and Margaret May had grabbed his arm and then he'd hit her too and gone rushing out into the rain. She'd gone after him.

She wasn't having him punch the children in the face like that! No, she wasn't! She remembered the mud squelching under her feet as she followed him over the paddocks: his tall black shape at the edge of Skelly's dam, the glimmer of water – then he was gone.

She'd run for Father Joseph. There was a drowned calf in the water next to Don's body and Father Joseph and Doc O'Hare had told Sergeant Lawson that was how it had happened: Don had seen it struggling, tried to pull it out, then he'd slipped and fallen in. Sergeant Lawson had looked at Margaret May's bruised face but he hadn't asked her anything, not even why Don had been out walking in the rain.

Margaret May bowed her head into her hands. Oh, that her Ruth should ever have bruises on her face! And though she never said prayers, Margaret May couldn't stop herself from whispering, ‘Please let her go to Sydney. Please let her go.'

‘
Right
where people walk!' boomed a big voice in her ear, and she lifted her head and saw that Merle had followed her and was staring down at the vase of pink lilies.

‘What did you say, Merle?'

‘Right where people walk, that's what I said.
Right
where they'll kick it over.' She swooped down on the vase.