In The Company Of Strangers Part 12

Now, as they turn into the main street and he swings into a parking s.p.a.ce, Declan looks across at Todd. 'Look, mate,' he says, 'do me a favour, will you? Stick with me. Don't wander off on your own, and if we meet anyone the story is we're in a bit of a rush. No time to stand around talking.'

'What like Scooter and Will from the pub?' Todd asks. 'I thought they were your mates, helping with the music festival and stuff.'

'No,' Declan says, switching off the engine. 'No, not them. Anyone else, you know, like well, like a woman, for example.'

Todd laughs. 'Oh, you mean that Mrs Craddock. I heard she was coming back.'

Declan turns to him sharply. 'Who told you that?'

'No one told me, I just heard Paula talking to her on the phone. She was telling her the names of places to stay.'

'What places?'

'Dunno really . . . well, the guest house, and the pub, and that place out on the road to Busselton.'

'b.u.g.g.e.r,' Declan says. 'Trust Paula to get involved.'

'She fancy you then?' Todd asks.

Declan feels his face flush. 'Oh . . . um . . . I don't know exactly . . .'

'She was hanging around looking for you when you went to the hospital.'

'Was she?'

'Yeah, asking everybody where you were and if they could give her your number.'

'Did she ask you?'

'Yep, coupla times, said she needed to talk to you urgently.'

'So what did you say?'

'I said she should tell Ruby or Alice and they'd ring you and ask you to ring her.'

Declan smiles. 'Well done.'

'So I'm like . . . protection today, am I?'

'Spot on,' Declan says getting out of the car.

Todd slides awkwardly down from the high seat of the four-wheel-drive and does a few swift karate chops accompanied by appropriate whoos.h.i.+ng noises. 'Todd the Terminator, personal bodyguard to Declan Benson,' he says, grinning. 'No task too dangerous, no one gets past these hands.'

Declan shakes his head, laughing, 'You're wasted here, Todd,' he says, 'you should be in the movies.'

'I'm counting on it,' Todd says, looking around as though guarding the president from potential a.s.sa.s.sins. 'Meanwhile you can count on my services in keeping you safe from dangerous women.'

'Just the one woman will be fine,' Declan says, 'you can let the others through. You got a girlfriend, Todd?'

Todd shakes his head. 'I did last year but it sort of fizzled out. I've got other things to think about right now.'

'You and me both,' Declan says, and as he locks the car and they head off to the post office he has the distinct feeling that there are eyes everywhere watching him. It's all in his head, of course; Lesley can't possibly have arrived yet. She would have called to say she was on her way after all, she has called him every day, sometimes twice a day, since she got his number. Even so he can't shake off the feeling that she might suddenly step out of the newsagent's or screech to a halt alongside him in the car. He will eventually have to face her and he's dreading it, but he's also sure that it will be better if that meeting is planned, if it takes place in controlled circ.u.mstances, although he has no idea what those circ.u.mstances might be. It's difficult for him to understand quite what's happening but she's obviously under the illusion that something emotionally profound has developed between them.

Her husband, she'd told him, once he'd caved in and taken a call from her, has taken himself off to the Kimberley and isn't coming back for a while. She was relieved but also offended that he had let her know by email instead of waiting to see her. Declan found this entirely understandable she, after all, had taken off from home with little explanation, failed to answer her phone for days on end and then delayed her return with a text message. Sauce for the goose, he thought, but he kept that thought to himself. It is the rest of it that bothers him.

'I have to see you and talk to you,' she has said several times in her phone and text messages. 'We need to talk about us, about you and me and what we're going to do.' And Declan, who fears misunderstanding on both their parts, has been trying to say as little as possible in the hope that she will eventually see that what happened between them as just what it was: a pleasant but fairly superficial encounter that is best forgotten. As far as he's concerned there is no 'us'. He liked her and it had helped to talk to someone detached from Benson's, but taking it further had been a big mistake. At the same time he thinks he has done nothing worse than most men would have done in the circ.u.mstances, and others probably would have cut her off quite brutally by now.

Declan can see that he has made things worse by avoiding her, but how is he supposed to respond when she tells him that it is the first time she has been unfaithful to her husband in more than thirty-five years? Is she attempting to a.s.suage her guilt by confusing s.e.x with something more like oh s.h.i.+t like love?

'I'm coming back to Margaret River as soon as I can,' she'd said. 'We need to spend some time together and work out what to do.'

'I've got a lot on at the moment,' Declan had said. 'The music festival's coming up, other stuff I don't have a lot of time.'

'Never mind,' Lesley said, 'you won't be busy all the time after all, you have to eat and to . . . to sleep, of course.'

Declan had opened his mouth to say something but nothing came out, which, he thinks now, was probably a good thing.

'But I can't come yet. Just the day after I got back my daughter-in-law collapsed with a ruptured appendix. She's going to be okay, but I need to stay on here and help with the twins for a while. Maybe book one of the cottages for me from . . . now let me see, I think the . . .'

'We're fully booked for some time now,' Declan had cut in. 'Easter, you see, and then the jazz and blues festival.'

She'd gone very quiet then. 'Well I suppose I'll just have to find somewhere else to stay . . .' she'd said, her voice trailing away as though expecting him to take responsibility for this, or at the very least to suggest something.

Lesley, he thinks now, as he and Todd empty the post box and take the mail back to the car, is in a very fragile state, almost a loose cannon, and his own stupidity has added to that. If, as he suspects, she thinks that they are at the start of a relations.h.i.+p he is going to have to set her straight about it and the prospect brings him out in a cold sweat.

'Freeze!' Todd hisses as they are about to cross the road. 'Check out, target approaching from the right.'

Declan's heart pounds in his chest and he drops the mail as Todd doubles up with laughter.

'Gotcha! You're too jumpy, gotta stay cool, man.'

'w.a.n.ker!' Declan says, hitting him over the head with a large envelope. 'Some bodyguard you are. You nearly gave me a heart attack.' He sinks down onto a nearby seat laughing, and as Todd hops around doing karate chops he wonders what he has missed. Is this what it's like to have a son, growing up and becoming a mate? Someone who accepts you for who you are, who will laugh with you and at you, forgive you and be there for you even when you've totally p.i.s.sed them off or let them down? And for a brief moment he is overcome with longing, and with a sort of melancholy for what might have been if things had been different, if he had been different if he'd been brave enough, sober enough, mature enough to risk love.

'Come on, Todd,' Declan says, getting to his feet. 'Let's get this stuff back to the car and then we can go to the supermarket. What sort of pizza are you making?'

'It's my own recipe,' Todd says, 'thin crust with chorizo, mushrooms, green capsic.u.m and buffalo mozzarella.'

'Onions?'

'No onions.'

'And no pineapple, I hope. Can't stand pineapple on pizza.'

'Yuk, no way. No pineapple.'

'Plenty of chorizo then?'

'Heaps.'

'Good,' Declan says. 'That sounds like a pizza for real men.'

'Sure is,' Todd says. 'But you can have some anyway,' and despite his dodgy ankle he manages to duck out of reach as Declan wields the envelope again.

uby has reached the end of the line. No more distractions, no more excuses, time to face up to the past at least the part of it contained in Catherine's room. Outside in the grounds teams of people are doing things with temporary fencing, and bales of straw are being stacked under tarpaulins in case the threatened rain reduces the car park to mud. She has been thinking of London she's been away longer than she antic.i.p.ated. Jessica is more than able to run things in her absence but Ruby feels it unfair to expect her to manage everything for much longer.

'How do you know I'm not enjoying it?' Jessica had joked on the phone. 'With you out of the way I can do things my way. I'm drunk with power. But really, Ruby, just stay as long as you want, it's fine, really it is.'

The prospect of her London life holds little appeal for Ruby right now. Years ago Benson's Reach had helped to heal the wounds of childhood, but then her life here had soured suddenly and dramatically and she had left vowing never to return. But she is back, nothing terrible has happened and once again the place has worked its magic on her. Even so the past waits and she is still avoiding it. Cleaning up Catherine's room was one thing, but what remains is the task of sorting the contents of the boxes in which Catherine had stored her personal possessions. This seems like the final rite, after which the room can be returned to its original purpose as the heart of the house. Ruby unlocks the door and crosses immediately to the window to fling it open. Despite her many attempts to air it the same musty smell remains. Turning away from the window she surveys Catherine's boxes and, determined to put an end to her procrastination, picks one at random. It's quite heavy but she lugs it onto the table, puts on her gla.s.ses and opens it.

It's full of papers, most of them recent, in no sort of order and most of them of no particular significance: some receipts, guarantees and instruction books for small household items an iron, a hair dryer, the kitchen toaster, other bits and pieces. There are letters or printouts of emails from acquaintances. Ruby retrieves those from people who have not yet been advised of Catherine's death, her guilt growing with each new discovery. She really should have done this weeks ago. She makes a small pile of the essentials and tosses the rest into a larger box Todd will be spending some time with the shredder if the rest of the boxes are like this. But of course they're not, most of them will be nothing like this, and that's what she's dreading.

The next box is packed with trinkets, souvenirs, some small gifts. There are china ornaments concealed in bubble wrap, a collection of framed photographs of the lavender fields and other shots of Benson's Reach, some with Catherine standing awkwardly alongside smiling strangers, mementoes probably from satisfied visitors who have scrawled messages on them: 'A wonderful holiday, so lovely to have met you.' 'We'll be back again and that's a promise.' 'We love Benson's Reach, thanks for everything.' 'Another splendid visit, thanks Catherine.' All followed with illegible signatures and some adorned with kisses.

There are other gifts too, obviously from people who didn't know Catherine well: a box of lace trimmed handkerchiefs embroidered with the initial C. A couple of printed silk scarves, one decorated with riding crops and stirrups, another with exotic plants accompanied by their Latin names. There are several strands of ugly and unmatched beads that look homemade, some purple leg warmers, a pair of Christmas reindeer horns on a black velvet headband, and some green earrings in the shape of Christmas trees. There is a hip flask, an imitation leather writing case and more, all packed carefully away with their original gift wrapping folded loosely around them. Ruby dumps the wrappings, removes the photographs from their frames keeping them in a pile, returns the frames and everything else to the box and scrawls 'Op Shop' across the lid in black felt pen. There two boxes done already, not so bad after all. Maybe Catherine didn't keep much from the past, their past, maybe she, like Ruby herself, disposed of it all years ago.

She leans back, putting her feet up on the op shop box, reliving her own ritual burning of the past, now such a long time ago; the early seventies when she and Owen had just moved into the Islington house that he'd inherited, along with a healthy share portfolio, from an aunt. It was a glorious June day, a day for fresh starts. From the window of what would become their bedroom when he'd finished the decorating, Owen, wearing an old green viyella s.h.i.+rt spattered with paint, looked down to where she was standing in the garden, feeding the remains of her Australian life into a bonfire.

'Hey, Rube, what are you burning?'

'The past,' she'd said, looking up at him, shading her eyes against the sun with one hand and poking a stick at the embers with the other. 'My past. Start of a new life, clean slate, all that.'

'You'll regret it,' he'd said, waving his paintbrush. 'One day you'll wish you'd kept it. I can put all that stuff up in the roof. We're not exactly short of s.p.a.ce.'

She shook her head. 'I'll never regret it, there's nothing here I want to remember.'

He was down the stairs in seconds, running up behind her, wrapping his arms around her. 'Stop, please, darling. It's history, your history. It'll be part of our family's history. What about our children and grandchildren? They'll want to know about you.'

But she had kept on burning. 'Not this part,' she'd said, 'no one would want to know this. The things worth keeping are happening now. I'll keep our stories, tell them the stories that began here in London.'

Ruby sighs now, remembering how he had turned away in frustration and walked back to the decorating. The house and Owen himself had seemed unusually quiet that evening, as though something really quite important had been consumed by the flames.

'You weren't there,' she'd said. 'You can't know what it was like. If you did you wouldn't want me to preserve it.'

Owen had shaken his head. 'But that's the point,' he'd said. 'I can't know and neither will our children. Even if you can't face looking into it now you should still preserve it, write it down. Stories are important. Sometime in the future you'll find out more about what happened to that s.h.i.+pload of children, and why you were sent to such an awful situation, in fact why you were sent away at all. You'll wish you'd never lit that bonfire. I just can't help feeling that what happened to you is part of something much bigger. I wish you'd hung on to that stuff. And I wish you'd try to find out more-'

'No,' she'd cut in then, 'I just want to be free of it. All I want from the past is to find my mother. I still don't believe she died that night. It's just a gut feeling, that's all. Everything else is . . . well, it's ashes now, in every sense, and that's how I want it to stay.'

And she hadn't regretted it, at least not then, not even when she had been searching for her mother, nor even when in the fourth month of pregnancy she lost the baby and was told she would never be able to carry a baby to term. She threw herself into a demanding and rewarding life in the present, into the work and activism that would sustain her then and has continued to demand her attention and her energy ever since. It was only in the early nineties when the stories of children who had been s.h.i.+pped out of the country to different outposts of the Empire began to trickle through in the press that she allowed herself some regret. Owen had been right: stories are important, far more important than she had realised the day she had set fire to her own and willed herself to forget. But painful memories, she knows now, always remain, however many bonfires you light.

'Owen,' Ruby murmurs softly. 'I still miss you. I really do.' She had promised to bring him here one day, but when she'd made that promise she hadn't really meant it.

'We can go together and you can make your peace with the place,' he'd said, and so she'd promised, crossing her fingers behind her back, hoping she would never have to keep the promise, and she hadn't, but for all the wrong reasons.

They were going to grow old together, surrounded by children and grandchildren. They would restore the house to its original Edwardian charm, and fill it with old furniture, books and paintings, mementoes from places they would travel to. It would be a place of memories and imagination where family and friends would find a welcome and a bed whenever they needed it. It would be everything that Ruby believed she had been robbed of and it would house the story of their lives together. But that story was cut short by Owen's death.

'I haven't been very good at hanging on to the people I love,' Ruby says aloud, 'and now it's too late. But you know all about that, don't you, Cat? That's why you've brought me back here.' And pus.h.i.+ng the op shop box aside she reaches out and picks another at random.

Confident now, with two boxes under her belt, Ruby opens it quickly, gasps in shock and closes it again. It's only now that she notices that this box is actually marked: a note in felt pen on the side reads '19471969 Me and Ruby.' She jumps up from the chair, takes several steps backwards and stares at the box as though it might explode at any minute. Then, very slowly, she walks around it, viewing it from every angle, trying to calm herself.

There is a tap on the door and it is opened immediately.

'I thought you might be here,' Paula says, stepping inside. 'It's months since I've been in here. Catherine kept it locked, very mysterious about it, she was. Anyway, I spotted you through the window so I thought I'd come and give it a clean.' And as she walks past Ruby towards the long table and the boxes, her eyes flick back and forth, apparently registering everything from the pictures on the wall to the pile of discarded wrappings on the floor.

'Not now, thanks, Paula,' Ruby says, pointedly walking briskly to the door and holding it open. 'I've got some work to do in here,' and she gestures to her to leave.

'It's months since it was cleaned,' Paula protests, running her fingers along the edge of the table and then examining them for dust. 'I've got a bit of time this morning if you want to leave me to it. It won't take me long.'

'Well as you can probably see I've cleaned and reorganised it myself quite recently,' Ruby says, 'now if you don't mind . . .'

Paula tosses her head. 'Okay, well it's up to you,' she says, looking around again, this time as though searching for something. 'But there might be some things of mine in here. I'd like to come in sometime when you're not busy and have a look for them.'

'What sort of things?' Ruby asks, still holding the door.

'Things I lent to Catherine. I can't remember exactly, but you know how it is, you lend someone something and then you forget until they give it back. Only now, of course, she won't be able to give anything back.'

Ruby grits her teeth. 'Well I suggest you think hard and try to make a list of things you might have lent her, and I'll look out for them. In fact,' she says, in a moment of inspiration, walking over to pick up the op shop box, 'they might be in here. Why don't you take this box off to the staff room now. You can check whether there's anything of yours, and if there is anything you or any of the staff would like. You're welcome to help yourselves. There may be more for you to go through when I've finished. Anything that's left can go to the op shop in town.' And she thrusts the box into Paula's arms and urges her to the door.

'All right, all right,' Paula says, awkwardly clutching the heavy box, 'I know when I'm not wanted,' and she makes her way out of the door and down the hall.

Ruby closes the door, locks it and returns to the box. Tentatively she lifts the double layer of tissue paper that covers the contents. The nightdresses are a shock: small, wafer thin white cotton yellowed with age, their initials, CR and RM, still readable among the other faded laundry marks inside the back of the collar Catherine Rogers, and the smaller one, Ruby's own, Ruby Medway. Ruby lifts hers from the box and shakes out the folds. It was already well worn when it was issued to her on arrival at the convent. There is a very neat darn under one armhole and she puts on her gla.s.ses to study it closely, remembering the nun's metal ruler rapping her knuckles until they bled when she got the st.i.tching wrong.

She holds it up in front of her, picturing her own skinny arms in those flimsy sleeves, clutching the folds of the fabric around her body, feeling the brush of the fabric against her thighs. How long did she wear this? How many times did she wet the bed in it, peeing herself with fear, knowing she would get a beating? But how did Catherine manage to keep these, to get them out of the convent? Did she hide them somewhere? Steal them from other younger girls to whom they had been pa.s.sed on? The fabric is so fragile it seems as though it might fall apart any moment. Ruby inhales the scent of it lavender, of course, Catherine had it everywhere, but another smell too, the smell of the past, of sadness. It brings back the terror of dark nights on a thin mattress that barely protected her from the coa.r.s.e steel springs of the iron bedstead. Her heart pounds at the memory of lying there listening for the sound of footsteps in the pa.s.sage, the swish of a nun's habit, the rattle of rosary beads, the creak of the door. She holds her breath now, just as she did then lying rigid with fear as the nun's hand felt under the coa.r.s.e grey blanket searching for a damp patch on the mattress. She s.h.i.+vers with the terror of being dragged from the bed, stripped of her nightdress, the leather belt slas.h.i.+ng indiscriminately at her back and b.u.t.tocks. And now sixty years on she bites her lip again as she did then to stop herself from crying.

'Filthy child. You girls are sc.u.m, that's what you are,' the nun would shout. 'All of you, filthy, lazy sc.u.m.'

Closing her eyes now, Ruby can hear the hiss of contempt, smell the fear in the dormitory as the girls lay in silent terror waiting to see who would be next. There were always three or four, sometimes more, ordered to gather their sheets and carry them down three flights of stairs to the laundry, returning to spend the rest of the night naked and s.h.i.+vering on damp mattresses, their blankets confiscated, listening to m.u.f.fled sobs, and greeting the dawn in shame.

Ruby sets the nightdresses on the table and turns back to the open box. There, wrapped in tissue paper, are their rosaries: Catherine's made of small black beads, her own a pale amber colour, the only things other than ragged second-hand clothes, well-worn shoes and combs with broken teeth that they were ever given in the convent. Alongside the rosaries are the two prayer books they had stolen from the chapel on their last day, just to see if they could get away with it. There are more clothes next, a cotton dress with a faded floral pattern that Catherine had worn that last day, socks, vests and knickers, a threadbare cardigan with darns at the elbows; the things that would have been in her bag when they left. Ruby can barely remember what had been in her own bag very little, she thinks, maybe just one change of clothes and shoes. What else? Now she wishes she could remember what she might have found if this were her own box, if she had listened to Owen that day and stopped feeding the fire.

Beneath the clothes are some papers. The map of Perth with the location of Benson's Hotel marked on it that Freda Benson had given them, a faded Benson's Hotel brochure offering 'a warm welcome and outstanding facilities, for the whole family or business travellers'. Next a small brown envelope with Catherine's name and the date written on it her first pay packet a newspaper clipping from some years later about the Bensons selling the hotel, and a plastic envelope full of black and white photographs. Ruby peers at it through the plastic. The top photograph is of herself arm in arm with Catherine, both in their bathers, knee deep in the water on Scarborough beach, the wind whipping their hair back from their faces. She can almost feel the chill of the water and the salty sting of the wind; a spring day, a Monday, their day off from the hotel, and Harry with his camera, urging them to smile.

'Come on, girls, this one'll make the front cover of a magazine Australian beach belles,' waving his hand to describe a banner headline. He always had delusions of grandeur when it came to his photographs.

Ruby bites her lip and puts the package of photographs on the table. Later, she thinks, not now, can't cope with it now, and as she turns back to the box her heart seems to stop. A book, an exercise book with a familiar but previously forgotten cover. One of Catherine's journals. Ruby can see her now, sitting up in bed in the room they shared when they worked at Benson's Hotel. She is wearing a red and white spotted nightdress with thin red shoulder straps that she'd bought with her first week's pay, and scribbling away in the dim glow of the bedside lamp.

'I'm writing it all down, Rube, our adventures, everything that happens to us from now on.'

'Whatever for?' Ruby had asked. 'Who's going to want to read about that?'

'We will, you and me. One day when we're old we'll be sitting in our rocking chairs on a verandah, with crocheted rugs over our knees, and we'll read it together and remember. Best friends, we'll still be best friends then, and we'll laugh and cry together.'

A lump swells in Ruby's throat a lump of grief. Not grief over Catherine's death, but the older grief for what they had lost, the dislocation of everything that these journals represent. Ruby tries to focus once again on the present, not daring to drift back into the mora.s.s of hurt and anger that she has stored for so long. Breathing deeply she steadies herself and begins to flick cautiously through the pages. The notebook covers several months and on the inside of the back cover Catherine has written 'More follows . . . watch this s.p.a.ce.' Leaning back over the box Ruby sees that there are several similar notebooks, their dates scrawled across the front covers. Catherine's post-convent life and her own are contained in these books. Ruby toys briefly with the tempting idea of destroying them, unread. Who's to know? And who would care? But the painful answer is that she herself would care. She will read this journal and all the others, line by line, however painful. For too long she has walked wide circles around the past, savouring only the hurt, allowing the good times to fade into oblivion.

A tap at the door jolts her out of her reflections. Paula again? Shaking her head, Ruby puts the journal down on the table, straightens her shoulders and walks briskly to the door.

'Yes, Paula,' she calls, 'what is it now?'

'It's not Paula, it's me,' Alice says, popping her head inside. 'Should I come back later?'