Moonlight Plains (17 page)

Uncle Jim nodded. ‘That’s much more sensible than fussing around here and getting under my feet. Let
me
deal with Alex if he tries to make a fuss.’

Moonlight Plains, 2013

‘Hi, Gran, how are you?’

‘Oh, you know, Luke . . . still here.’

Luke winced at the familiar response. When he rang his grandmother with updates on the homestead’s progress, she invariably expressed surprise or even disappointment that she’d woken to find she was still alive. He couldn’t imagine what it must be like to live to ninety. He hoped she wasn’t depressed.

‘Well, I’ve a suggestion that might cheer you up.’

‘Yes, dear? What is it?’

‘I’m thinking about throwing a big party when the homestead’s finished.’

‘A party?’

‘Yeah, a kind of celebration for family and friends, but I’m thinking of possibly widening the circle and raising money for the bush fire brigade as well. It could be a good way of showing off the house, a chance to spread the word. Kill two birds with one stone.’

‘I see . . .’ His grandmother sounded dubious.

‘Even if we don’t make it too grand, it would be fun to have a family get-together – the uncles and their lot, Mum, Bella and Gabe, Zoe and Mac and their little guy – and you, of course. It’s been a while since we all got together.’

‘Does this mean the renovations are almost finished?’

‘Well, there’s still a way to go in the kitchen, but they’re certainly getting closer. And it takes time to plan these things. I thought maybe Zoe could help with the catering.’

‘I was wondering who would help you. I haven’t met Zoe, but I think Virginia mentioned that she used to be a professional chef.’

‘Yes, she’s brilliant.’

‘Then she’ll be a great asset, if she’s free. But I don’t think you’ve had much experience at throwing parties, have you, Luke?’

‘Well, no,’ he admitted. ‘I’d definitely need help.’

This was greeted by a rather prolonged silence.

‘Gran, are you still there?’

‘Yes, yes . . .’

‘So you like the idea?’

‘It’s a lovely idea, Luke. I guess I’m just a little surprised that you came up with it.’

Luke could feel the back of his neck burn. This hadn’t been his idea, of course. It was Sally’s brainchild, hatched yesterday afternoon as they’d lain together, lazy and happy after making love, talking about the homestead and its possibilities, which was still a safer topic than talking about themselves.

‘I
have
talked it over with Sally Piper,’ he said carefully. ‘She paid another visit to get more pics and info for her story.’

‘Ahhh . . .’

His grandmother’s tone was hard to read and Luke decided it was safer to drop Sally from their conversation.

‘I’ve been meaning to ask if you got that letter I forwarded from America,’ he said instead.

‘Oh, yes, I did, thanks.’

‘Does it mention anything about the airmen who were here during the war?’

The small sound on the end of the line might well have been a sigh.

‘Yes, Laura certainly mentioned
one
of the airmen,’ his grandmother said after a pause. ‘She’s his daughter. She wrote to tell me that her father had died.’

‘Hey, that’s great. Well, it’s not great that he died, but it’s great that she’s a rellie. I was thinking, if she was connected, why not send her an invitation?’

‘An invitation?’

‘To the party.’

‘Oh, Luke, for heaven’s sake. Why on earth would you ask
her
?’

‘It’s worth a try, isn’t it, Gran? I mean, if we’re throwing a party for the homestead, why not invite anyone with a connection? Think how cool it would be if she actually came all the way from America.’

‘It’s highly unlikely.’

‘Yeah, I know it’s a long shot, but I’d be happy to write to her. I kept a copy of her address.’

‘Oh.’

This unmistakable lack of enthusiasm was puzzling. Luke had expected that his grandmother would be fascinated to meet this woman and swap memories about her father.

‘I’m sure you’re right. She probably won’t be able to come,’ he said in his most placating tone. ‘But I may as well give it a go, don’t you think?’

Sally closed the book on another chapter of
Seven Little Australians
.

‘So, Nan,’ she said, taking her grandmother’s scrawny hand and giving it a gentle squeeze, ‘I have some exciting news. I’ve met a really nice guy.’

Her grandmother nodded with her habitual sweet smile. ‘Josh is a lovely boy.’

‘No, this isn’t Josh, Nan.’ Sally tried to ignore the sudden heaviness in her chest. ‘Josh died some time ago. He’s gone.’

‘Has he, dear? That’s terrible for him. I’m so sorry.’

Even though Sally was getting used to this now, she was still saddened by each new sign that her grandmother was losing her mind. It was especially hard when other elderly folk like Kitty Mathieson were still so lucid and switched on.

Eight years ago, her nan had still been living in her little timber cottage in South Townsville with its neat lattice-fronted verandah and an enormous mango tree in the backyard shading innumerable, carefully tended pots of ferns and bromeliads.

Sally used to call in each week to take her grandmother out for shopping and afternoon tea. In those days, Nan had been a canny shopper, always ready and waiting with her carefully prepared list that noted the specials at the supermarket. And she would never forget if a chemist prescription needed to be filled, or if she’d needed to buy a birthday gift for a family member.

But after a stroke – only a little stroke that required a mere two days in hospital – everything had changed.

Sally would arrive for their regular Thursday afternoon outings to find Nan sitting on the verandah just staring into space, having forgotten all about the shopping trip. Then she’d begun to notice that Nan was buying jars of honey and Vegemite every week, stockpiling them in the pantry, while forgetting essentials like toilet paper. She’d broken Sally’s heart when she constantly asked about Tom, her husband, who had died several years earlier.

Sally’s mother was alarmed when Sally finally convinced her there was a problem.

‘I’m sorry, Sally. I feel so guilty. I should have taken more notice, but I’ve been so busy at work. We’ll have to do something. See someone. She can’t live on her own like that.’

Sally’s mother was always crazily busy at work, so Sally had been happy enough, especially after Josh died, to be the one who sat and held Nan’s hand and answered the same question three times in thirty minutes, or listened to her rambling stories.

And today, there was an advantage to having a grandmother with next to no short-term memory. Sally could tell her all about Luke and trust that her story would go no further. It was a relief to be able to talk about him with a goofy smile on her face and without being questioned.

‘He’s not just good-looking and tall and athletic. He’s a really nice guy, Nan. I like being around him. I guess you could say we’re friends with benefits,’ Sally told her now. ‘That’s a term you wouldn’t have heard of, but it means we can sleep together and enjoy each other without any expectations of long-term commitment. These days, a lot of younger people have that kind of arrangement.’

‘Why?’ her grandmother demanded, looking stern and disapproving.

Sally gulped. The unexpected challenge had caught her completely wrong-footed. ‘Not everyone wants to rush to get married,’ she suggested. ‘Don’t you worry about it, Nan.’

She was a bit ashamed of herself for speaking to her grandmother in such a patronising tone.

Perhaps Nan hadn’t liked it either. Her dark and normally clouded and vacant eyes looked surprisingly clear and knowing. ‘Tom won’t like it,’ she said. ‘You mark my words.’

Kitty shut her book, took off her glasses and closed her eyes as she rubbed at the bridge of her nose. She’d been trying to read a novel that she’d borrowed from the mobile library van on its weekly visit, but she wasn’t making much headway.

Her eyes were troubling her today, but that wasn’t really her problem. The book was a large-print edition, a romance by one of her favourite authors, which she could manage quite well when it was resting on her propped knees. Normally she would have filled in an enjoyable morning lost in this story.

Today, however, ever since Luke’s phone call, she’d found it almost impossible to concentrate. She couldn’t believe Luke planned to invite Ed’s daughter to a party at Moonlight Plains.

It was such a surprise, such an unexpected, impossible proposition. And it was just too risky.

The woman wouldn’t come, of course. Why on earth would she drop everything in Boston and make the long, tedious flight to Australia, simply to attend a party with a whole lot of strangers? The very thought was absurd.

Then again, Laura Langley Fox
was
an American, and everyone knew that Americans were a law unto themselves. The nightly news and endless Hollywood movies were evidence of that – although Kitty had long ago experienced the mysterious power of Americans firsthand, of course.

Just about everyone who’d lived in Townsville during the war had been charmed by the Yanks. There’d been so many of them, taking over the town, wolf-whistling at the girls, calling them ‘honey’ and handing out nylons and compliments with equal ease, or throwing loose coins to the kids, as well as lollies – aniseed balls, rainbow balls, Texas bars, Kurls.

The Americans would even pay schoolboys to shine their smart lace-up shoes – paid them with shillings, too, not pennies. And they’d dressed so finely, with brass buttons everywhere on their spruce and well-pressed uniforms that were a lighter khaki and a more tailored cut than the Australians’.

Uncle Sam’s glamour boys.

The poor Aussie diggers had looked dowdy beside them in their unbecoming, baggy Bombay bloomers and clumpy boots.

It was strange how clear those times were to Kitty now. She found it alarmingly easy to picture hot and dusty Townsville, so bustling and busy in the autumn of 1942 after her return from Moonlight Plains.

Townsville, 1942

Townsville was almost unrecognisable when Kitty returned. Castle Hill was the same, of course, still dominating the landscape with its stern pink cliffs bravely facing the sea and the encroaching enemy. And even though it was now the middle of autumn, the tropical sun was still bright and hot in a solid blue sky. But the country town by the sea that Kitty had left behind six weeks ago was now a garrison city, busy and buzzing with men and machinery.

The streets were full of men in khaki. Both the Australian and American military had arrived in droves, doubling and then tripling the population, and in many cases they’d moved into hotels, schools and private homes, including her grandparents’ house.

Where bicycles had once been the main mode of transport, the streets now rumbled and rattled with trucks and jeeps, their headlights covered by blackout hoods. Vehicles were always on the go, bringing equipment and supplies from the railway yards and from the harbour, moving troops between the railway station and the camps in outlying suburbs.

And there were guns
everywhere
.

Kitty was rather alarmed to see anti-aircraft guns poking out of the bright-purple bougainvillea that tumbled over the cliffs facing the Strand, or sticking out from the islands of camouflaged sandbags in Strand Park. Guns had even been placed in the suburbs, and the streets in North Ward were now filled with the same ugly barbed-wire entanglements that covered all the beaches.

All over town, soldiers, stripped to the waist, were digging slit trenches. A massive Australian tent hospital had been set up near Cape Pallarenda and Australian casualties were already arriving from New Guinea. The Americans had established their own hospital in Rowes Bay, complete with American nurses with cow-horn hairstyles just like in the films.

At night, more searchlights than ever crisscrossed the sky. If the Japs secured Port Moresby, the whole of North Queensland would be within their bombing range.

But rather than intimidating Kitty, this grim, nervous new world energised her. She accepted the challenge to be braver and more determined, which proved a distinct advantage when she faced her grandfather.

First, she enjoyed a delightful newsy chat with her grandmother over a cuppa in the Robinsons’ kitchen in Hermit Park, and then she and her grandfather sat in stiff cane chairs on the front verandah while she outlined her plans.

‘I want to be of use in the war effort,’ she told him. ‘And it’s all arranged. I’m going to live with Elsie Gibson and her son Geoff in Mitchell Street. Elsie’s husband John is in the islands somewhere. No one knows exactly where, of course.’

Her grandfather couldn’t really argue with this
fait accompli
, especially as Elsie Gibson was a parishioner, although Kitty half-expected he might insist that the Gibsons’ place was too exposed, being only one block back from the Strand.

‘I’ll share my coupons and do the washing and ironing for Elsie in return for a bed, and I’ll finish my VAD training and work at the Red Cross.’ Kitty lifted her chin. ‘And you don’t need to worry about any further black marks against my reputation. I’ve already met two Americans out at Moonlight Plains and they were gentlemen.’

‘I suppose that’s why they’ve already set up bordellos behind the Causeway Hotel.’ Grandfather’s response was grating and pompous, but he didn’t put up much of a fight.

Perhaps he’d sensed the change in Kitty. Perhaps he recognised that she was no longer a malleable young girl, but a woman with a new sense of purpose. Or perhaps he was changing too, with the threat of invasion increasing each day as the Japanese fleet headed south.

Kitty soon discovered she’d had it easy at Moonlight Plains. On a cattle property, meat was readily available and daily supplies of fresh milk and eggs were taken for granted. Life in town was much tougher. Almost everything was in short supply. There was no ice or bread. The shopkeepers had stopped making deliveries and civilians could only buy the scrag ends of meat, after waiting in long queues. Watermelons had leapt from two shillings to a pound and potatoes were a luxury of the past.

‘Can’t remember the last time I tasted a real spud,’ Elsie said as she served up their dinner on Kitty’s first night in Mitchell Street. A rather scrawny mutton chop sat beside a hefty dollop of mashed potato made from a tin of the dehydrated variety, and there were boiled beans and choko courtesy of Elsie’s valiant efforts to grow a veggie garden.

Nearly everyone was trying to grow vegetables, some with more success than others.
Dig for Victory
, the posters urged. A few families kept a cow and quite a few had hens as well, so their homegrown produce could sometimes be exchanged for eggs or half a bucket of milk.

Young Geoff, a cheerful ginger-top of eleven, dutifully recited grace. ‘For what we are about to receive may the Lord make us truly thankful.’

‘We should also be thanking God for the Yanks’ gifts of food,’ Elsie remarked to Kitty when he’d finished. ‘Don’t know where we’d be without them.’

‘How do they help with food?’ Kitty was eager to learn anything and everything about the Americans.

‘Oh, they’re wonderful. If you get to know one or two of them, you can mention that you haven’t got much of so and so, and next minute they’ll be on your doorstep with whatever you need. That’s how I got these dehydrated potatoes. They’ve given me dehydrated onions and tins of peaches too.’

‘And packets of chewing gum,’ Geoff joined in.

‘How handy.’ Kitty refrained from asking Elsie how she’d got to know a Yank or two, but of course the question of Ed’s whereabouts was practically burning a hole in her brain.

‘Our Yanks built our air-raid shelter,’ Geoff added self-importantly.

‘They did a good job.’ Kitty had been impressed by the setup in Elsie’s backyard, comprising a large reinforced concrete pipe with big boxes of sand and gravel at either end. One box blocked one end of the pipe completely, while there was just enough room to squeeze behind a second box at the other end. Planks of wood formed seats.

‘Art and Bud have moved on though,’ Elsie explained. They shipped out last week.’

Again, Kitty wondered where Ed was.

She threw herself conscientiously into her new life, not only starting her VAD training, but taking full charge in Elsie’s laundry too. She would boil up the cotton sheets and other whites first, and then dig them out with a stick and rinse them in the big concrete tub with a blue bag in the water. Then she would ease one corner of a sheet or towel into the wringer and roll it through, before pegging the washing on long lines strung across the backyard to dry in the sun. The next day, she would tackle the ironing, and she also practised her first aid bandages on Geoff, who was at a bit of a loose end with the schools still closed.

Together with Elsie, Kitty made pyjamas for the military hospitals, too, and they were quite a team. Kitty cut out the material on the dining room table while Elsie sewed the seams on her treadle machine, before Kitty hand-stitched the buttons and buttonholes.

In her first week back, she also called on Andy’s parents . . .

Her stomach was churning as she stood on the footpath in front of the Matheisons’ high-set timber house which, like Elsie’s and most of the houses in North Ward, was painted with a dark-brown oil stain. Just looking at the familiar house brought back so many memories of Andy. She found herself remembering the time they’d played cricket in the backyard and she’d tried to bat, closing her eyes as she swung and, to her amazement, connecting with the ball. Such a cheer had gone up, until they heard the sound of splintering glass.

Kitty still felt guilty that she’d given in when Andy insisted on taking the blame, but at least she’d been able to raid her moneybox to help him to pay for the damage.

She remembered a special Guy Fawkes Night. Every year, all the kids in their suburb saved up for weeks to buy crackers and let them off out in the street. That particular year, Andy had spent a good chunk of his savings on a Catherine wheel, which normally only the rich kids could afford, and he’d brought it up to Kitty’s house. He’d wanted to share it with her. Kitty could recall that hot November night so clearly, with the sharp smell of gunpowder hanging in the air, as she and Andy sat together in the gutter and gazed in awe at the spectacular, high-reaching spirals of purple and gold fire.

She might have stayed there on the footpath, lost in other happy memories, if she hadn’t noticed a figure on the verandah, peering out at her through the lattice and no doubt wondering why she was standing there staring.

Trying to ignore the nervous tightness inside her, she pushed the gate open and went up the short path. She was only halfway up the front stairs when the door at the top opened.

‘I thought it was you, Kitty.’

Mrs Mathieson looked very thin and strained, and Kitty was sure her hair had become quite a bit greyer.

‘How are you?’ Kitty asked tentatively.

‘Oh, not too bad.’ Mrs Mathieson smiled bravely, but then she wiped her hands anxiously on her apron. ‘We still haven’t heard anything about Andy.’

Kitty let out a huff of relief. That was one difficult question answered. ‘No news is good news, surely?’

‘I hope so, my dear. It’s good to see you back here at any rate. Come on inside and I’ll put the kettle on. I’ve just made a fresh batch of Anzac biscuits.’

The house was filled with their warm, sweet aroma as the two women went inside.

After dinner at Elsie’s that night, Kitty wrote to Andy, which was a very difficult task, especially when she had no idea where he was, or if he was hurt, or even if he was still alive.

She told him about her time at Moonlight Plains, not suggesting that it had been banishment, and she told him about Bobby. Andy knew her well, and he, of all people, would understand how upset she’d been, but she wrote to him as a friend, not as a future fiancé. She wrote to Uncle Jim as well, and included all kinds of details that she hoped he would find interesting. She mentioned the food shortages and the reputed American generosity, and how the American Negroes were segregated and living in a big camp out on the edge of the Town Common.

She reported that the harbour was jam-packed with vessels now and that more and more planes seemed to arrive every day, lining up in all the newly built aerodromes, wing tip to wing tip. Everyone was sure something big was brewing.

She asked Uncle Jim about his cattle, about the two dairy cows and how many hens were laying, and whether the magpies still warbled a wake-up call each morning. She also asked if the Americans had arrived to collect Bobby, but she did not ask if Ed had been in the party.

She was quite certain Ed would have been too busy flying in the raids to New Guinea, but she was also shy about drawing any attention to her interest in him.

Since she’d left Moonlight Plains, she’d begun to feel a little foolish about the way she’d fallen so hard and fast for a man she hardly knew, a stranger from another world, and a snobby elitist world by the sound of it.

At other times she was kinder to herself, remembering that in wartime everyone took risks. Life was more precarious and intense in every way and no one dared to look too far into the future.

Meanwhile, the women at the Voluntary Aid Detachment were always chattering about their social lives – the dances at Heatley’s or at Garbutt, and the free ice-cream suppers at the Flying Squadron Hall. They, along with Elsie, urged her to come out with them on her nights off.

Kitty could easily imagine the fun of dancing the Pride of Erin and the Gypsy Tap with all these new and exciting men, or jitterbugging to new songs like ‘In the Mood’. Six months ago, she would have jumped at the chance, but now she’d changed.

Her experiences with Andy, with Bobby and with Ed had all left their mark. Within a matter of weeks, she’d lost her virginity, witnessed her first death and unwisely fallen in love. She felt distanced now from her carefree companions, who were all so eager for reckless romantic adventures.

Eventually, however, Kitty made a decision. It was pointless to moon around thinking about a certain airman. She had to get on with life. So she raided her small savings account and bought a dress pattern, a length of pink georgette and some glamorous strings of black beading.

She was nervous about cutting the dress out, hurrying to get it done before teatime when the table would be needed. The skirt had triangles on the hemline and had to be cut perfectly, and she was concentrating hard on her task when a knock sounded at the front door. Geoff was still playing streets away, so he could be no help.

Elsie, who was busy in the kitchen, called, ‘Can you get that, Kitty?’

Reluctantly, Kitty removed three pins from her mouth and carefully set down her scissors, mentally reminding herself to cut from the opposite angle into the next peak. She went down the hall and saw an American uniform through the lattice door on the front verandah.

One of Elsie’s Yanks.

She opened the door for him.

‘Ed!’