Black Diamonds (10 page)

Saint Francis, of course; a company of sulphur-crested cockatoos rises out of the wattle behind her as if to confirm it. And this must be
the
Mrs Jones. I'm so moved by her directness I don't know what to say.

She adds: ‘And you must be a kind girl too, bringing Danny out today.' The whistle blows for the game to start up again and she says: ‘Well, I just wanted you to know that we appreciate it. Good day, then.'

‘Good day to you too, and thank you for telling me.' I barely breathe the words out.

She looks softly into my embarrassment, then walks away. She glances back at me once, and then I see: she knows, or thinks she does. Of course, most likely everyone knows. This town is a heaving bustle, but it's not that big, certainly not round this side. She probably lives in Dell Street too, has seen me and Hayseed traipsing up and down. That's not a difficult two and two, is it, not for a woman with an imagination at least. Opinion is inscrutable, though: was I being reminded of my place and to be kind, or being given approval? Does it matter? No: it only feels like it matters because I've been conditioned to think it
should
matter. Facts are, kind is not the word for what I feel and I have my own approval. That'll have to do. At least they don't appear to hate me.

Daniel's bellowing out something or other again at whatever's going on in the field; I can't even pretend to watch: I'm too busy grabbing glances at him. And I feel like bellowing too. We're different, but there's nothing impossible about us. I must be staring shamelessly now, because he turns to stare back. Good. Except he keeps on looking at me, till I can't bear it any more. I look into the sky, into the grey cold clouds; take deep, steady breaths. And see the ball, high in the air, spinning end over end; rather like my brain, I think, as it descends. And descends. And descends, landing with a filthy thump in my lap, stinging my thighs.

‘Oh!' I squawk, but I stand straightaway in the trap and throw it at the nearest man on the field. A cheer roars up at that and I feel ten feet tall. I'm Francine Connolly and that'll have to do!

‘Good pass.' Daniel's looking up at me in that way, like I am a lunatic. ‘They should have you on side.'

‘Just an accident, I'm sure,' I say, sitting down again; the cat that ate the cream.

He's still looking at me. He says: ‘I might have to accidentally marry you one day.'

‘I'm still not shocked,' I say, and my heart is charging like a train.

‘Well, I'll have to make it deliberate then. Would you? Consider it?'

‘Yes.' As if I was ever going to say no.

No caps win and it starts to snow. We don't stay to picnic. I've never seen snow before and I am positively weepy with ecstasy, watching it fall upon his dark hair. Driving back to Dell Street is bliss itself, flakes zinging on my cheeks, a beautiful silence of possibility between us. When we pull up at his house we just sit there in the trap. Didn't expect all that, did we.

 

DANIEL

I don't want to say a thing, but I want to make it real. Make sure I did actually ask her and that she did actually say yes. She didn't hesitate for a second, did she. Flaming hell. So I say: ‘We should probably wait a while, so at least it looks halfway reasonable, don't you think?'

I can't tell you what she looks like right now, I just can't. But we have to wait: Dad's barely cold, and although I reckon he'd see the brutal humour in this, it's just not appropriate. And the rest.

She nods, and after a while she says: ‘You'd better ask my father sooner rather than later, though.'

I meant wait a while before we start stepping out, not asking her father, but she's got a point. ‘Yes, when I get this thing off my leg.'

‘How long will that be?'

‘A month maybe; Nichols said about eight weeks, and it's been just over three.' Very long and now very eventful ones.

‘That might be too long,' she says; that's too real. I want to hold her to me but I'm not sure if she'd want me to. Not only because we're out here in the street, but because she is who she is. I don't want to do anything to make her think twice.

‘Well, should I do it tomorrow then?' I can't do it right now — I have to tell Mum first, then have a bit of a long moment with myself.

‘Yes, but we can keep it quiet after that for a while. That's sensible. We'll need time to work everything out anyway.'

Too right. ‘I suppose you'll have to come and get me, though. It doesn't seem right. But I can't very well ask any of my mates, can I, without making it obvious. Maybe I could ask Mum to give me a double on my bike.'

She laughs her head off at that. ‘How about Mr McNally comes to get you?'

Forgot she had servants; poor old McNally. He used to be a miner, uncle of Fred's, I think; had some sort of mental problem years ago when I was a kid. Which makes me think of Fred, who died with Dad … this is going to trip us up everywhere we turn. But I've done it now, haven't I. And I'm not giving her up for anything now anyway — there is only one Francine Connolly and I've got her, thank you very much. I've already got a bit of a plan forming too. When I'm fit, I'll go back in for the rest of the quarter, just to prove the point that I haven't choked on them, and then we can get married, and then I'll … don't know. It'll come.

‘All right,' I say and then I can't stand it any more. I just have to do what I've been wanting to do every second since Friday afternoon. ‘Well, I'll see you tomorrow, I suppose,' I say, then I lean in and kiss her. Just on the cheek, quickly. Any more than that and I'd be dangerous. She blinks at me then — and I've definitely got to go. She touches my hand on the trap wheel as I get out, just lightly, but it's enough to make me feel like I'm going to fall over.

 

FRANCINE

Father is only holding up by a thread, but so determinedly incorrigible: he pretended shock and outrage at first with Daniel; I know because I listened at the parlour door, of course. ‘YOU WHAT!' he began, but I couldn't hear much after that. Polly actually laughed at me when she saw; she's much nicer these days, I've found, possibly because I am less of a morose horror to deal with. Another easy equation. So I had to tell her, and swear her to secrecy until we're ready to announce. Daniel looked as though he'd been through the Inquisition when he hobbled out, but when he saw me sitting on the stairs he pointed and said: ‘You're sold, if you're still keen on the buyer.' Father guffawed and offered him a malt, but Daniel doesn't drink — ‘What, not a drop?' ‘No.' —
Deo gratias.

We've stuck to our Friday rendezvous, my weekly kiss, my fix of joy, except when I can't bear it and have to sneak round for extras, and Mrs Ackerman, goddess of wisdom, is as sweet to me as I could ever have hoped. She makes the most delicious cinnamon cake, I wonder if I'd go there for that alone, and has filled me in on the extent of the clan. There's Peter and his wife Violet in Newcastle, whom she hopes to get up to see as soon as Daniel is on his feet. Then there's Miriam and her husband Roy McKinnon and seven little ones, all of them naughty, she says, and clearly adored by her. She'll go off to stay with them in Bathurst for a while too, and help Miriam with her brood. She's a lovely, soft-spoken woman, so delicately made that I find it hard to fathom how she has a son as large as Daniel. I'd love to ask her about Calypso, and about the bookmarked copy of a French tome entitled
Les Arcs d'Amour
that sits on the side table by the little sofa, but something about her tells me not to pry, to let her do the talking and the asking. I'd love to hear the little upright against the far wall being played, too, but I don't dare ask that; this house, I must presume, is still in mourning. For now, I can only imagine Daniel playing it — I just bet he does. And I bet he's better than me — wouldn't be hard: I'm all fumbles with that.

I am so very happy, I mean inside my bones happy. I tingle with it, it ripples even through the knowledge now that mourning is not long away for me; it sings to me: your father gave all this to you, how can you not be joyful? The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away, but Father has the trumps on that: Go forth and be in love, Francy. And I am. Oh, I am. So, miraculously so, I can hide my tears for him inside it, entertain him instead with tales of lovers not getting around to much working out of dull details. We've been too busy, Daniel and I, doing what is conventionally done
before
a marriage proposal: getting to know each other, and everything I'm getting to know makes me adore him more and more, from his preference for lemon in his tea, to the fact that he actually used the word
proletariat
in conversation the other week and I wasn't certain of what it meant. He's also intriguingly neat: no slurping or crumb-dropping or staining of napkins; he makes me feel deliriously unkempt. Even this waiting is sublime, though Daniel's kisses get a little longer each time, and he has expressed some impatience: ‘You are a torture.' Good. We're even. He calls me France, says he'll have this
bourgeois
princess conquered by spring; I tell him the Kaiser wouldn't dare. I'm such a tease! Where do I get that from? I can guess the answer to that easily enough.

Then three things happen in the last two weeks of July: Daniel is released from The Thing.

The Kaiser, it seems, will dare, and Europe braces for war. Father takes to his bed, and he won't be getting up again.

 

 

TWO

JULY 1914 – SEPTEMBER 1915

 

DANIEL

Francine is unimpressed when I ride up to her house on Sunday morning to tell her. But I'm not moving on this; besides, I'm fat from loafing and my left leg looks like a sick twig — it took me a week to get it going at all. France's not marrying that; two months back in will fix me up.

She's standing with one hand gripping the side of the mantel, tiny in her huge sitting room, glaring at me after the surprise. ‘So is this a once a miner always a miner sort of thing? Like once a Catholic always a Catholic? If so, that's ludicrous. Look at Joe Cook — he doesn't seem to need a
spell in the pit
these days. He's the Prime Minister.'

What?
‘That liberal, Free Trader, capitalist arse?' I say. ‘Cream rises to the top and has a vested interest in staying there, is all he's about. Took him five minutes to see what side he'd butter his bread on and forget there ever was another side. They kicked him out of the Labor Party for it before I was born. He's got nothing to do with me. And I've got a commitment to finish the quarter.'

‘No you don't,' she says, and that's true enough. ‘And don't be crude.' Sometimes, even looking at her, I forget that she's a woman — and that she's only eighteen, for Christ's sake: who made her? — and let the language slip out.

‘Well, I want to finish the quarter, then,' I tell her. ‘I don't want all this to change who I am, how I live, just like that.'

‘You sound like some bleater from
Australian Worker
' she says, for all our previous agreement on the issues, for all that she's read every red rag in my house. ‘No.' She's changed her mind. ‘You sound like a gaga Wobbly from
Direct Action
— except you're not planning industrial sabotage: you're planning to sabotage yourself. Is that who you are?'

‘I'm a miner so far, is all.'

This is not going too well.

Then she says: ‘I don't want to be married to a miner — and I don't want to be your
employer!
'

‘Then don't marry me.' Out before I could stop it, and it stops her. ‘I didn't mean that,' I say.

She stares: ‘You're an arse.' And keeps staring, wanting me to roll, and stares some more, until it's just dippy, her own
crudity
hanging there like she's holding a sign.

‘Don't laugh, will you,' I say, stoking it, and she nearly cracks. But doesn't. Instead she says: ‘Well, if you get hurt again, don't expect any sympathy from me.'

Didn't think I got lashings of it this time around, and that only proves her more, but I don't say that. ‘It's not forever,' I tell her. And it won't be, just till I sort out what it is I am going to do. Write rubbish for the socialist papers? I can barely string two sentences together. What about carving? I'm a bit beyond that by now, though I've made France a beauty that I'll give to her after we say ‘I do'. I love her so much I'd punch a hole through this wall to prove it, but she's not going to keep me, not while I'm sorting myself out, not ever. Anyway, if she's all for the worker, then she can know what it is to marry one for a bit, that it's more than just doing your own housework, it's … It'll do us both some good. I reckon Dad would be happy with that.

 

FRANCINE

I'm still furious, but there's no point in arguing about it. I suppose this is what is called a man's prerogative: to be irrationally stubborn when it's too hard to come up with a more sensible alternative. As if I am qualified to judge. So much for the crusade … Well, he can finish his
quarter
and then we can marry and when we're married, he'll have to give it away: it'd be too ridiculous after that, and possibly immoral since he'd be depriving someone else of job.

He comes around the other side of the sofa now — for heaven's sake he's still limping — and I know he's going to kiss me. And I know that I will vaporise happily at it too; it's glorious to do it standing up properly like this, on the tips of my toes, and he smells wonderful now — The Thing was beginning to stink a bit, but today he smells of Sunlight soap and clothes bleach and Daniel smell laced with wood and linseed oil. And I can sympathise, sort of: what
is
he going to do with himself? Can't he just love me and forget about the rest? We've broken almost every other rule … What's wrong with whittling useless pieces of art? There are worse things a man can do with his time.

Anyway, it's a good thing he came round, because Father wanted me to get The Lad over here today; he wants to see us both upstairs. And now it stabs that I've spent this time arguing and vaporising with Daniel. There is no more point to squabbling than there is to not spending every last second with the Leprechaun.

Father's propped up in bed: jaundiced and looking a hundred, while his indomitable cheerfulness winks through my shock at seeing his frailty anew every time I come back into the room. Methuselah says: ‘Daniel, you must have heard me calling.' Then fakes a death cough, like there is something wrong with his lungs. ‘Pour us a drink will you, son,' he adds, gesturing at the stand by the windows.

Daniel is supremely respectful with Father, but there is a look that comes across his face which betrays his utter bewilderment. He's wearing it now as he does as he's bid, and I swear his hand is a little unsteady as he gives Father the glass.

‘Thank you, that's lovely. Now sit down, the pair of you.' He indicates either side of the bed. And we do.

He glances at me and says: ‘For the moment you're decoration, so be quiet.' Then he trains his eyes on Daniel, who looks like a boy of twelve with his yes-sir ramrod-straight back. ‘As I said to you, son, if you upset my daughter I'll come back to murder you, and don't think I don't have the power — I'm more religious and better connected than I let on. Now, having reminded you of that, I'll remind you that I am a betting man. I have a very sure tip for you: Britain will declare war on Germany by the end of the week, give or take a day, and we will all tag along for the ride. Jingo-jangle all the way. And with the call to arms will come heavy profit for heavy industry, which is always an outstanding but less publicised result of war — ah, if only I'd held off investing in aeronautics till now; but there's no sense in regret. I will offer only one piece of advice: try not to do anything rash, nor anything you don't want to do. But having said that, war does strange things to people. So, having a bet each way, I give you this.'

He hands Daniel a thick, large envelope from the bedside table; I see a pile of smaller envelopes behind the lamp. I lean across to look at this big one as it trembles ever so slightly in Daniel's fingers: on the face Father's written
INSURANCE
in determined but scratchy letters.

‘Don't open it now,' Father says, though Daniel's too transfixed to do anything of the sort anyway. ‘Open it outside, in the drive. Now off you go, the pair of you. Leave me alone, I'm feeling poorly.'

I say: ‘Father, what's —'

‘I thought I told you to be quiet.' Wink, reaching for his pipe. ‘Don't worry, I'm not going to die this afternoon. Polly will fuss about me while you're out. And Mrs Moran is coming in a little while. I'll be well entertained.' Daniel bends his head and smirks under his hair at that in shared experience.

Father says to me,' Better give me a kiss, just in case.' I do, then Daniel stands, gigantic over Father, and shakes his hand, saying, ‘Whatever it is, I'm sure I don't deserve it.'

‘Make sure you will then.' Daniel wants to say something more, but Father won't let him. ‘Now go!'

One last death cough for us and an impatient wave, then we head for the stairs — and bolt down and out to the drive.

It's a title transfer, from one Colin McLaughlin, whoever he is, to Daniel Ackerman. There's a little note pinned to the top which says:
Sign in the obvious places, if you like it. All property is theft — blah, blah, blah — but there are some things you can't help thieving, and not an innocent among us. FPC.
There's a map below, showing the way to
Josie's Place
, and I'm already crying: Josephine was my mother's name.

Daniel pushes the hair away from my face and holds his hand there against my cheek, and I can't move for a minute. Then I say: ‘Quick as you can — you drive.'

Poor Hayseed, in a canter all the way, through rough short cuts down to town and across Main, and away out of town, then along the length of Dell. Daniel knows exactly where he's going, right past his house. He slows as we hit the ruts leading into the gully, but so soon there she is: Calypso in the window, and then she's gone, behind us as we wend and wend to the left, and down, and then up again to a sharp plateau, and Josie's Place. The sign on the fence is new, and small, one lavender-blue hyacinth and one golden wattle sprig behind the name. The house is a marvellous abandoned wreck of peeling boards and smeary windows which look directly at the escarpment, at Calypso, except you can't see her face from here, but the V of the true shape of the precipice, like a massive prow.

And as if this is not enough to do me in, beside the house lies an orchard. I can see what they are now: apple trees. Of course that's what they look like, now I see them in a bunch, fruit scattered all over the ground beneath them. I snagged my sleeve on the one by the side of Daniel's house and couldn't see it for looking. And I've dropped to my knees inside the gate and I can't feel anything except Daniel's arm around my back and I weep and I laugh like the ground's surging up through me.

‘You like it then,' Daniel says when I calm.

I can't speak. And I don't need to.

Daniel folds me into his chest, and I know that this is what Paradise is. It's just here. Right here in front of your nose. If I didn't know better, I'd suspect Saint Francis himself.

True to his punt, Methuselah is not dead when we get back at dusk. Daniel stays down in the parlour while I go up to see if Father's awake; Mrs Ackerman has gone up to Newcastle for the week and won't be back till Wednesday, so Daniel's decided to stay for dinner anyway, rather than go to his workers' club for a
feed
; and as I climb the stairs I'm almost tempted to decide that he should stay the entire night so that I can whisper all my wishes into him and. Stop there, Francy.

Father's alive enough for me to kiss him all over his face, then lie down next to him and cuddle him. ‘Thought you'd like it,' he chuckles softly, then his eyes spring open at me, twinkling even in this dim light. ‘You two had better move swiftly, though, my girl, because I've sold this house to pay for it.'

No more surprises, hmm. And I know he's planned this so I don't have time to mourn him — I've come to suspect that his every word and deed over the past few months has been calculated down to the second:
It's far more indulgent than that
, chortle, chortle.

He says for the hundredth time: ‘Is the lad gentle with you?'

I say: ‘Yes and no.'

He says, ‘Good,' and asks me: ‘What is his gentlest?'

‘When he touches me.' I can feel Daniel's hand on my shoulder now, reaching up through the floorboards.

‘What's his worst?'

‘I don't know.' I don't know what Father is asking any more when he says this. I've said Daniel's kiss is the best and his surly scowl is the worst, and described both in rapturous detail for his pleasure; that the rasp in his laugh is the best and … I don't know what is worst. The calluses on his hands? ‘What should I know — tell me.'

Father closes his eyes and whispers: ‘Nothing's more important than his gentleness — keep an eye on your own too.'

‘My gentleness?'

But he doesn't answer.

He sighs into sleep, but it's not sleep. I can't say how long I watch him for, before I pull myself up to call Polly through the dark. She sends McNally out to get Doctor Nichols, but Father's already stopped breathing. I know. I know. I've pushed him and even slapped him and he's gone. And there's a sound that comes out of me that cracks the world in two.

As Daniel might say: like you wouldn't believe. And he is here now, pulling me away, just as my Leprechaun intended.