The Year It All Ended (12 page)

Tiney racked her brain, trying to think what was the last thing that Minna said before she disappeared. Had they argued? Had Tiney spoken sharply? Was there something she said that tipped Minna over the edge? Or was one of the men Minna had danced with connected to her disappearance?

The morning after the Alstons’ ball, Tiney had been slow to wake up. By the time she did, Minna was gone. Her bed was neatly made, the coverlet smooth, the pillow plumped.

Tiney was sitting at the breakfast table, rubbing sleep from her eyes, when Mama came silently into the room and handed her a note. It was on the soft mauve writing paper that Minna used for all her correspondence.

Dearest Mama,

I do not mean to cause you any grief but I have to go away for some time. I can’t say when I will be home but events have arisen that have made it clear to me I cannot stay in Adelaide for the moment. I will write again when I am safely settled. Please don’t worry about me. I am with friends and in no moral jeopardy.

Your loving daughter, Wilhemina (Minna)

Tiney read it three times, as if the words were incomprehensible. ‘Where did you find this?’

‘Minna left it propped beside my teacup. It was waiting for me this morning. She must have slipped out before dawn.’

Tiney leapt up from the table and ran back to the bedroom she shared with Minna, searching for some sign of her sister’s plans. There was no evidence of a hurried departure, only of a frighteningly clear-headed intent.

The small grey cardboard suitcase that Minna kept under her bed for visits to the country was missing. Some of her wardrobe remained but the blue crepe-de-Chine frock, a black opera cloak and her black silk concert skirt were no longer hanging in the wardrobe. Wherever Minna had gone, she would look her best.

Thea was as bewildered as Tiney by Minna’s sudden departure. Papa showed a flash of rage and then retreated to his study, back to the interminable task of building his scrapbook of Louis’ life.

‘We must make a plan,’ said Tiney. ‘A plan to find her.’

‘What if she doesn’t want to be found?’ asked Thea.

Tiney ignored Thea’s question. ‘Let’s make a list of all the people who might know something. That ghastly Tilda Constance-Higgens probably has something to do with it. If she doesn’t have any answers, then we’ll question all Minna’s students. And the police, we should call the police too. And Ida – she might have noticed something at last night’s ball. Minna danced with a dark-haired man I didn’t recognise. He might know something. Or that Sebastian Farr.’

Thea put her hand on Tiney’s forearm. ‘Mr Farr wouldn’t know anything about it. He only danced with her once. And Minna would have danced with every man at the party. You can’t
go questioning all of them. They’ll get the wrong idea about her.’

‘Thea’s right,’ said Mama. ‘You must speak to no one about this. If anyone asks, we’ll tell them Minna’s gone to stay with relatives in the country. We must give her the chance to come back of her own volition, without a scandal.’

‘But someone might know where she is! I’m sure Tilda will know something.’

‘Minna is a sensible girl. She wouldn’t be swayed by someone like Tilda. I trust her to do the right thing,’ said Mama. ‘Your father and I are very upset, but we have decided the best course of action is to wait. We must all bide our time and give Minna the chance to come home without a fuss.’

Tiney felt her face grow hot, her mouth burn with all the secrets she was keeping from her mother. She thought of Minna kissing the soldier on Armistice Day, of the way men looked at her when they were out together, of Minna peeling off her black skirt and of her spinning across the Alstons’ dance floor. Minna was too dangerously beautiful. Couldn’t Mama and Thea understand that?

Tiney sat hunched over her morning tea, listening as Mama telephoned every one of Minna’s students to explain that Minna wouldn’t be taking classes for the next week or two. She felt a sick, hollow feeling in the pit of her stomach. What would they do without Minna’s wages? She had been counting on Minna’s help in saving up for the trip to Europe. She had been counting on Minna being at Larksrest forever.

By the beginning of June, there was still no word from Minna. At night, the quiet of their bedroom was almost unbearable. Tiney would wake in fright and then realise that it was the silence that woke her. To not hear Minna’s gentle breathing made Tiney
feel as though she was sleeping in a tomb. A week after Minna had left, Tiney moved her things in with Thea.

Tiney couldn’t bear to go to the Cheer-Up Hut any more. She lost interest in the plans for their Victory Ball. Most evenings, after clearing up the kitchen, she would sit quietly in her room and write in her journal or lose herself in a book.

Then, on a bright, clear winter morning, four letters arrived from Nette. Nette wrote twice a week without fail but they’d never all received letters from her at exactly the same time. Papa came to the breakfast table and handed Thea, Tiney and Mama a letter each. As if Minna had only gone out for a walk, he put her letter on the mantelpiece for when she returned. They each took turns using the bone-handled letter-opener to slice open their envelopes.

Tiney read the opening sentence of her letter and clapped one hand over her mouth with surprise. ‘Does yours say the same thing as mine?’ she asked Thea.

Thea glanced at Mama and Papa, who were both smiling. ‘Of course it does. Congratulations, Auntie Tiney!’

Tiney scanned her letter again. ‘Does yours say when the baby is due?’

‘November,’ said Mama. ‘Our Nette will become a mother in November.’

‘She’ll have to come and have the baby in Adelaide,’ said Tiney. ‘We’ll be able to have her home again for months.’

‘That will be up to Ray,’ said Papa. ‘He may want Nette and his child to be with him.’

‘He can’t!’ said Tiney. ‘They’re still living in a tent!’

‘Perhaps this will give him the impetus to finish building the house,’ said Mama.

Tiney and Thea looked at each other sceptically but said nothing. Mama and Papa had enough grief and worry to deal with without adding criticism of Ray to their burden.

Tiney was humming cheerfully to herself as she polished the mirror on the hallstand when a courier arrived later in the day. She opened the front door and called for Papa to come and sign the delivery receipt. The parcel was from the Australian Imperial Force. But the courier announced the parcel was addressed to Mama – Mrs Charlotte Flynn. Papa watched carefully as Mama signed.

‘Find your sister,’ said Papa to Tiney. ‘We must open this all together. These are your brother’s possessions sent from France.’

In the parlour, Mama laid the parcel on the cedar table and the family sat in a circle as she cut the strings.

The first thing that she took out was a small pouch. She pressed it against her face and smelt the fabric, as if it might still hold the scent of Louis. Then she laid it back down on the brown paper and gently touched the rest of the contents with the tips of her fingers.

‘Five years of his life,’ she said. ‘So little for five years.’

Tiney picked up one of the photos. It was of all four sisters. Louis had carried a picture of them to the trenches. She blinked back tears.

Papa opened up one of the accompanying letters. It was an inventory of Louis’ effects.

‘The diary, discs, photos, pouch, purse, pipe-lighter, watch chain and his medals and medal ribbons were with him at the front,’ he said. ‘It says they were “received from the field”. The second set of things is from his kitbag held in store.’

Thea took the letter from Papa, looked at it, and then began
separating the items into two piles: the ones that were with him when he died and the ones that had been in his kitbag. She glanced at Tiney and smiled as she picked up three pairs of socks. They were ones that each of his sisters had knitted for him. Only the socks that Minna had knitted were missing. Tiney wished Minna was there with them at that moment. To know that her socks were the ones he wore on his last day.

In the pile of things from his kitbag there was a gift tin that Mama had sent him, his unit colours, some badges, a small stack of letters and a single photo of a woman with long dark hair holding a tiny baby. Thea handed the photo to Papa, who in turn handed it to Mama. She studied it closely. ‘Who could this be?’

They were all thinking the same thought at the same time, but no one seemed to want to say it out loud.

‘Does the baby look like Louis?’ asked Tiney.

Thea put one hand up, as if to admonish her sister. ‘Louis would have told us if he had married.’

‘I would know,’ said Mama. ‘I would know in my heart if Louis did such a thing.’

Tiney didn’t want to remind Mama that she hadn’t known that Nette was pregnant for three months before she wrote, or that Minna had been planning to run away until they found her note. When Tiney was little, she’d imagined Mama and Papa knew every thought inside her head. Now, she knew how fallible they were.

Papa snatched the photo from Mama’s hands. ‘You mustn’t jump to wild conclusions. This woman could be anyone. Someone he helped, the wife of one of his comrades. If she meant something to him, he would have carried the photo into battle. But it was among his things in the kitbag.’ He turned the photo
over. ‘There’s a date in pencil, here on the back:
May 1915
. Our Louis was in hospital in Malta in May of that year. He would have written to tell me if she were anyone important.’

As if that meant there was to be no more discussion, Papa gathered up the letters from the parcel and Louis’ diary and retreated to his study.

Tiney couldn’t understand why he and Mama should want to dismiss the possibility that the photo might be of someone important to Louis. She went to her room and drew out her writing folio. Inside was a letter from the Thomas Cook Agency about their tours of the battlefields, costings of travel to England and France, and a letter from the Prime Minister’s office saying there would be no assistance for families of the bereaved to visit the battlefields of Europe. Then she drew out a fresh sheet of paper and began to write a letter to Nette congratulating her on the news of the baby and telling her of the arrival of Louis’ possessions. As she wrote a description of the photo of the mysterious woman and baby, she lifted her pen and gazed out the window. Was it possible that they were already both aunts?

Christie’s Beach

The dark had come down early and a wintry night had settled on Larksrest. When Thea reached for her hat and coat from the hallstand, Tiney asked in a whisper, ‘Can I come too? Please?’

Thea looked puzzled. ‘You want to come to the life drawing class at the Society?’

Tiney blushed. ‘I thought it was a lecture. You said there was something about Normandy. Mrs Colbert talking about her trip to paint the ruins. I thought I could ask her about France and . . .’

Thea touched Tiney’s cheek. ‘Darling, not your mad plan about France again.’

‘Please let me come.’ Tiney glanced down the hallway anxiously.

‘What’s wrong?’

‘I can’t bear another evening here alone.’

‘Mama and Papa are here.’

‘But Papa just stays in his study, working on Louis’ scrapbook, and Mama works on her embroidery, and I feel so alone. I don’t know how only children bear it.’

Thea smiled. ‘Put on your hat and coat. You can’t come to the life class, but why don’t you go to the library and then we
can walk over to Hindley Street together and have a hot drink at West’s Coffee Palace.’

Thea had joined the Royal South Australian Society of Arts back in 1915 but now it was the focus of her life outside Larksrest. As the tram rattled into town, Tiney took the Society’s newsletter and a catalogue of recent work out of Thea’s bag and flipped through the pages. The symbol of the Society was a seated Grecian woman, bare breasted, holding an easel and a palm branch. Even though Tiney knew that Thea never modelled in the life classes, only drew, she couldn’t help but think of the goddess as being connected somehow to Thea.

Tiney ran her finger down the list of members, searching for Sebastian Farr’s name but he wasn’t mentioned. Then she saw the announcement. The Society was calling for entries to their annual prize. There were categories for still life and portraits but the biggest prize was for a landscape. Fifty pounds – half a fare to London. Tiney slipped the newsletter into her bag and then opened up the exhibition catalogue.

Nette and Minna always said the Society was full of stuffy old fuddy-duddies, but since meeting Sebastian at the Alstons’ ball, Tiney had begun to think they were quite wrong. There was something romantic about sitting in a room full of people focused on capturing beauty, even if it did mean staring at a nude for hours.

‘Is Sebastian Farr a member of the Society?’ asked Tiney. ‘His name isn’t listed in any of these pamphlets.’

Thea blushed and snatched back the exhibition catalogue.

‘Candidates have to submit two paintings and have them approved before they can even become an associate member,’ she said.