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Now in the kitchen with her, Mr Howard beckoned her and as she moved towards him, he leaned in to her and kissed her on the mouth. At first she liked it, the warm-wet touch of his lips, but as his hands moved and grabbed her sides she stood stiff, afraid. He brushed one hand across her breast, down her side, across the curve of her hip and squeezed her, feeling her under her clothes; his other hand held her hard. He was murmuring as though tasting something sweet and melting. Elizabeth was flushed with quivering relief when he stopped, the initial sensual pleasure now erased by her anxiety and the unfamiliarity of being so close to a man. Her whole body was alert with it.

He drew back, studied her lips, and whispered, “Of course, we can't be seen like this, can we?” He turned and exited the room.

Elizabeth stood motionless, her body inert, her mind racing with a flushing guilt. She had liked his touch at first; then she had hated it, that feeling against her skin, his taste and his force. She was fearful of his weight crushing against her, afraid of what he would do next. She felt ashamed of how she had felt both attraction and revulsion, both on her skin and in her body.

She ached to tell Miss Grainger, but she sensed that the older woman would be displeased. She was not even sure how to explain it, what to call it, which words to use. Nor was she sure what it meant. She couldn't even be sure, now that the pot was filling with washed and peeled potatoes, that anything had even really happened, whether Mr Howard had been there at all.

She slipped out after dinner and went to find Xiao-ying. As they lay in the grass in a paddock at the back of town, looking up at the sky, Elizabeth wanted to tell her friend about the strange encounter with Mr Howard. She felt a wariness about revealing it, even to her only friend.

“Do you ever think about boys?” she asked instead.

Xiao-ying laughed. “Do you mean like to kiss and cuddle?”

Elizabeth smiled at Xiao-ying's amusement and nodded.

“Well, I don't think that my father would be very friendly to any boy who came to take me out for a walk or something like that. But,” she giggled, “I do think that the boy who delivers the mail, Peter, is very handsome. And,” she paused with a cheeky grin, “I think you do too.”

Elizabeth felt herself blush and this made Xiao-ying laugh even more. The laughter was contagious and Elizabeth lost herself in it. When their giggles subsided, Elizabeth said to her friend, “Before I was brought here, my family was still trying to figure out who I should be married to. There was one man, but he was taken away by the gunjies for stealing a horse.”

“What's 'gunjies'?”

Elizabeth smiled at her mistake, “That's what we called the police back home, in our old language. Sometimes when I am talking I still forget to change some words.”

She paused as the thought of the way Miss Grainger would slap her hand when she didn't speak English properly. Then she looked over at Xiao-ying who was still staring at the stars. Elizabeth continued the conversation, “My mother said they used to arrange marriages but all the old ways are hard to follow now and the white people do not like it. Will you marry someone who is Chinese?”

“I guess so. My parents haven't said but I think that's what they want me to do.”

“Do you find white-people good looking or do you like Chinese boys better to look at?”

“I like both. I must like white boys because I think that Peter is very handsome.” As she made this last remark, Xiao-ying lapsed once more into fits of laughter. Elizabeth, despite her embarrassment that her secret was not so well kept, smiled.

The happiness of spending time with her friend, the teasing and shared wishes, made the encounter with Mr Howard seem far away.

Elizabeth woke to feel pressure on her bed, startled by an intruder. His cold hands were on her warm skin, sending an icy terror through her. His body was heavy, his breath stained with tobacco and whisky as he lifted her nightdress and began stroking her legs. She couldn't move, could only clench her fists as he began to feel between her legs and pressed wet lips against hers. The feel of it made her spine tense up with disgust.

“You are a beautiful girl, Elizabeth,” Mr Howard slurred as he lay on top of her. He moved quickly, pushing his hard fleshy part inside her, his voice almost a whine. “I need this. You don't know how much I need this.” He kept pushing into her, harder and harder, grabbing her hips and rubbing her breasts. He then made a grunting noise as he shuddered. He released her and fell beside her on the bed. “You must tell no one about this. This will be our secret,” he had said, his voice as cold as the night air.

He took some deep breaths, rose, rearranged his nightshirt and stroked her head, “You are a good girl.”

She nodded into the darkness, still feeling his sweat and stickiness on her as he closed the door, leaving the smell of their bodies rubbed together. She walked, a little dizzy, to the ceramic basin and washed herself all over, at first gently, then harder and harder, to remove the sweat and smell and the memory of Edward Howard's touch. She remembered how she had been so flattered by his attention, how he had told her she had pretty hair and that she was beautiful. But if the result of that was what he just did to her, she didn't want it. She started to scratch herself, angry at her skin and the body it held. She scratched harder and harder, ripping at her skin.

Mr Howard came to her several times after that, each time with a caress of her hair and a warning not to tell.

Why don't I matter anymore?
Where is Euroke?
Why hasn't he come for me?
Why did he not want me?

7

1919

”T
HIS SOLEMN MOMENT OF TRIUMPH … is going to lift humanity to a higher plane of existence for all the eyes of the future.”

Lydia Howard and Frances Grainger listened to the crackling voice of David Lloyd George as it echoed through the radio. The war was over. More than three hundred and thirty thousand Australian men sent to fight, over sixty thousand dead in battle, over half injured in some way—a heavy price to pay by a country with a population so small. Lydia Howard was already dreaming of the monument to be erected in the town square: “a higher plane”, “for all the eyes of the future”, names in gold upon cold granite, immortal and heroic. She held her throat with the overpowering beauty of it.

Frances Grainger thought of three young men, of lines on a map and the taste of the Bondi sea.

One morning, not long after the announcement that the war was over, Miss Grainger had come across Elizabeth hunched over and vomiting on the back verandah. She looked suspiciously at the young girl, noticing the emerging dark circles under her eyes and that her skin was unnaturally lighter. Upon witnessing the same the next morning, Miss Grainger became concerned. She left Elizabeth curled over on the back steps and went to see Mrs Howard in her morning room. “Excuse me, ma'am,” she nervously started.

“Yes,” Mrs Howard replied, her eyes trained on her letter to emphasise her displeasure at being interrupted.

“I need to speak with you on a matter of some importance … and delicacy.”

Mrs Howard looked up, her expression already communicating deep disapproval.

Miss Grainger continued: “I think the little darkie is … indisposed.”

“The little kitchen girl?”

Miss Grainger nodded, wondering what other 'little darkie' there could be.

“How did this happen?” asked Mrs Howard sharply.

Miss Grainger started to blush but was relieved when she realised that Mrs Howard (who was, after all, a married woman) hadn't really meant for her to answer.

Mrs Howard sighed. “Send for Dr Gilcrest.”

Dr Gilcrest examined Elizabeth in the privacy of her room. He ordered her to remove her clothes and lie on the bed. She had shivered at first but reluctantly did as he asked, obeying Mrs Howard's stern instructions that she was to do as she was told. He squeezed her tender breasts, pinched her nipples and inserted cold fingers into her. Then he left the room, making a tart 'tut-tut' sound. Elizabeth felt shamed by the way he touched her, telling herself over and over that he was a doctor, and that the things he had just done to her were what doctors must do, even if they felt too much like the things Mr Howard did to her. She reminded herself that it was her fault, that she must have done something very wrong. She scratched at her arms, her torn nails leaving white marks that slowly rose in pink lines on her skin.

As she buttoned her dress, she could hear voices through the door. She leant against the splintering wood to hear Dr Gilcrest and Mrs Howard talking.

“It is as we suspected,” the doctor pronounced.

“I have no idea how this could have happened,” puzzled Mrs Howard. After a pause she added, “I wonder who the father could be?”

That was how Elizabeth realised that she was going to have a baby.

When her husband returned, Mrs Howard sat down with Edward and told him about the kitchen girl's pregnancy.

“I was very surprised. I can't think who could have fathered it. So few men come to the house,” she had chattered, more to herself than to Edward who was sorting through his mail. “Even deliveries are supervised by Miss Grainger, and rarely is that girl away from her duties.”

Lydia had grown accustomed to her husband's indifference to the concerns of her household. Had she looked at Edward, who was looking more intently at his paper than usual, she may have noticed a constriction of his throat and a discemable widening of his eyes.

There was a change in Mr Howard's attitude towards his wife. He was suddenly more attentive to her, as though she were fragile, more easily broken. Lydia initially enjoyed Edward's refocused attention, the sidelong glances when he thought she couldn't see him. But slowly the truth became apparent to her. Lydia Howard could not explain how she pieced it together other than by intuition, which she seldom had; she operated more by calculation than feeling. This time, however, she brought the threads of her suspicions together and they created a tapestry so vivid and clear she could not deny the image it formed. One night, in the privacy of their bedroom, in that intimate interval before sleep, she found the words that had been suffocating her daily thoughts.

“What
do
you know about the girl's condition?” she asked.

He noticeably coloured as he spluttered, “I do not know what you mean. What would I know of it? I didn't have anything to do with it! Is that what you think of me?”

In the weak glow of the bed-lamp, Edward turned his reddening face away from her, unable to meet her gaze, “Really, Lydia, haven't you got more to fill your day with than coming up with such fanciful ideas?”

He turned his back to her. Lydia felt the white-hot surge of anger and the heat of humiliation creeping through her. She was silent but the overwhelming odour of false indignation hung in the air between them.

As Elizabeth's body started to ripen and burst against her pinafore, Miss Grainger could no longer look her in the eye. She had noticed the flirtation between Elizabeth and the delivery boy and had expressed disapproval even though she had thought that it was a harmless infatuation. She believed Catholics were untrustworthy, but she had never seen him at the house other than to deliver the mail. As the housekeeper, there was little that passed under her nose or was not brought to her attention.

She had noticed Edward Howard's attention towards the young girl, thinking it odd he did not mind that Elizabeth dusted around him when he could have ordered her to come back later when he had finished in his study. Frances had dismissed his attention towards the girl as just part of his concern over the fate of her race, a noble expression of concern for someone so much his inferior. When she had seen the young girl come out of the study smiling, knowing that Edward was also in the room, she presumed that he must have said something kind, given her some little scrap of encouragement. Even now she could not bring herself to imagine that he would act in a scandalous manner. He, with all his dignity and masculine grace, could not have behaved in such an unworthy way with a little darkie. Frances could not even finish the thought, preferring to shudder at the hideousness of it, to suppress her own hungry unanswered longings. But she had also noticed the alteration in the relationship between husband and wife, something she had always observed the nuances of, and she suspected that Lydia shared her suspicions. She no longer saw Edward as the embodiment of perfection, tried not to dream of his lips against hers. And she no longer spoke of him to anyone, especially not Elizabeth.

Elizabeth tried not to be hurt by Miss Grainger's cooler attitude towards her. She had been sick before and had been treated with sympathy and given a lighter load of duties. She knew something was different this time. From Miss Grainger's distance, her unwillingness to engage in conversation, Elizabeth sensed she had done something Miss Grainger found unforgivable.

Xiao-ying remained her only friend, but Elizabeth's movements were now more closely monitored and restricted. Miss Grainger had kept her on an almost impossible schedule and timed her trips to the store. On those occasions, Xiao-ying could only offer consolation in glances and faint smiles.

Rare were the times they could find to meet each other. Once, when the lump in her stomach was only just showing, in the morning cool of spring, she was sent on an errand to the shop. She sat with Xiao-ying on the crates at the back.

“See, there's a lump here how,” Elizabeth said, holding the fabric tight over her stomach.

“How will you keep him?” her friend had asked.

“Well,” Elizabeth paused, “I don't know. But he can sleep in the bed with me. Back home, everyone just helped each other.”

“I can't see Mrs Howard holding the baby while you peel the potatoes.”

The thought of Mrs Howard's soft, flowery dresses covered in spit and baby sick made Elizabeth laugh. After a pause, Elizabeth added cautiously, “Maybe they'll let me take the baby home, back to my family.”

“That would be good. But,” Xiao-ying's voice tapered, “do you think that could really happen?”

Catching the way Elizabeth's face clouded over, she added hastily, “I just mean, have they said anything to you yet about doing that?”

Elizabeth shook her head slowly. “No.” Then she said brightly, “But I haven't asked yet.”

Xiao-ying left her for a moment and returned with some cloth. “This one was given to me by my mother. I like the blue colour in it,” she said, fingering the embroidery on the material. “These other two are just old dresses but there is enough here to make some baby clothes.”

She placed the cloth on Elizabeth's lap. Elizabeth touched them, the rough cotton of the discarded floral dresses and the shiny, smooth silk.

“I'll have the best-dressed baby in the world,” she said and smiled at Xiao-ying with thanks.

Later that night, when making the tea, Elizabeth ventured to talk to Miss Grainger. The reply was short and sharp. “No. Don't be stupid, girl. If you can't be trusted here, what makes you think you can be trusted there?”

Despite her loneliness in the Howards' house, Elizabeth was excited that she was pregnant. She had her own shame — of being touched in the dark, of being silenced—but her swelling stomach was not part of it. Mr Howard stopped his night-time visits after Dr Gilcrest had looked at her. And now, with the blessing of life growing within her, she couldn't comprehend the coolness of those around her. She sat silently nursing her secret joy — hands on her stomach, soft songs on her breath, kind thoughts and blessings for her belly, her birrawee. It was a boy, she knew, as she stitched together a frock and a bonnet with the material that Xiao-ying had given her. She could feel it. She would name him Euroke. Not Sonny, just Euroke, and she would no longer be all alone.

The Protection Board suggested a new assignment for Elizabeth, to be taken up after the birth. Yet Mrs Howard insisted that the girl stay on, pretending to believe the exterior of her husband's denial.

“I see no reason why she shouldn't,” Lydia had said to Edward, daring him to protest against the unstated facts that floated between them. Lydia was holding the pregnancy up to him, trying to break him. She had her triumph over him, had humbled him. She hated him for his weakness, yet some part of her was drawn to him more because she felt that she had beaten him.

Lydia Howard was shrewd enough to ensure that the birth didn't take place in the local hospital. She wanted no speculations, no connections and no contact between her husband and his little half-caste. She would send the kitchen girl to Sydney in the last month of her pregnancy.

For the second time in her life, Elizabeth looked at the world speeding past as the rattle of the train carried her along.

Frances Grainger made the trip with Elizabeth, walking her to the door of a large brick building in East Sydney that was a home for pregnant girls.

“Try not to get into any more trouble,” Miss Grainger said curtly before turning on her heel and leaving Elizabeth on her own.

Frances then made her way to Bondi Beach, to her own memorial. So much had changed since she had been there before the war. There were new shops and others had been painted, as though they were all trying to renew themselves and blossom now peace had arrived. She could see the spot on the beach where her brothers and Harold had placed their towels beside her. She imagined the young men as they were that day, running to and from the water, kicking the sand under their feet, splashing in the waves. Back in Parkes, Mrs Howard's charity work on the Country Women's Association Committee, particularly organising the war memorial, had become infuriating. Mr Howard's indiscretion eroded her infatuation for him and he had been one of the main reasons that she had decided to exile herself to the country in the first place. She needed to escape the house and agreed to escort the girl to Sydney and back to Parkes after the birth. She would take the time to look for positions back in the city.

Still, she thought, if only she had felt the touch of Edward's hand on her skin or the sensation of his lips, as she did in her daydreams, she could endure the rest — the rudeness and vindictiveness of Lydia Howard, living in Parkes with only memories from before the war when there was a family in her life. What was the weakness, she asked herself when she looked into the mirror, that made others — Edward, her mother, her father — not want what she had to give?

Frances, who had once felt affection and even pity for Elizabeth, now detached herself from the girl who had done the unforgivable. She would pinch Elizabeth on any slight provocation, enjoying squeezing the young girl's flesh between her own strong fingers. She accompanied such impulses with cruel comments. “No wonder no one wants you,” she would say.

Elizabeth's brown skin became tainted for Frances in a way that it had not been before. Before the pregnancy the inferiority of her dark face and arms evoked sympathy. Now the hue would give rise to thoughts that Frances would never have allowed others to express: the darkies were a treacherous race with no morals. Frances felt betrayed by having, at moments in the past, felt a closeness, even an affection, for the traitorous native. She had treated the girl as though she were equal to any other girl on her staff. Now, all concessions and exceptions she had given to Elizabeth were withdrawn. Silence filled the vacuum.