‘So, Mum, Mum, can I have that puppy?’ asks Nadine.
‘No, darling! We’ve already got Roxy, and you’ve got enough pets, you only get to see them for six weeks a year anyway! And those poor little pups are racked with disease.’
Julie follows them back to the car, nursing her bilum of fruit in her arms.
‘Should be a good do, this arvo,’ says Ryan. ‘The Colditz guys are pretty cool.’
Julie wonders fleetingly if Simon Murphy might be there . . . But already, somehow, she knows that he won’t be.
6
When Teddie said pool party, Julie had visions of a palm-lined, turquoise swimming pool, like something out of Hollywood. When she arrives at Colditz with Ryan and the Spargos, and sees the canvas-sided tub of lukewarm water, filled with a garden hose, she feels hot and foolish.
A knot of shirtless young men stand around the homemade barbecue, beers in hand. There is one young woman in the pool, in a crochet bikini, her hair dangling in wet strings, her skin as golden as a goddess’s. The men around her gaze at her with the same drooling eagerness as the boys around the barbecue, poking hopefully at the meat. Julie tries not to stare, torn between envy and scorn. A couple of other girls sprawl on the grass, careless and loose-limbed, but they are far outnumbered by the men.
If I can’t find a boyfriend here, there really is no hope.
Andy strips off his shirt and leaps into the water with a whoop. But Teddie and Ryan head for the shade beneath the trees, and Julie follows them. The thought of exposing her pale, skinny body beside the golden goddess is too humiliating. Teddie smiles vaguely around, behind her dark glasses and big hat. Ryan drops onto his stomach and starts plucking up blades of grass with his usual scowl.
Neither of them seems inclined to conversation, so Julie eavesdrops on the group slouching in deckchairs nearby. They are discussing Independence, though from the way they speak, they might be talking about impending Armageddon.
‘It won’t be safe to stay. We’ll all be murdered in our beds. They’re getting cheekier already. Did you hear the raskols roaring up and down Wahgi Parade last night?’
‘As soon as the kiaps pull out, there’ll be nothing to stop them from slaughtering each other. It’ll be full-scale tribal warfare.’
‘They’ll kick us all out. This time next year, there won’t be any Europeans left, apart from the God-botherers.’
‘It’s the end of an era . . . It’ll never be the same.’
It’s odd, Julie thinks. There is anger in the way they speak, bitter resentment at their dismissal from the scene. But there is a wistfulness too, nostalgia for the lives they are still leading, as if they see themselves as ghosts already; they miss living here and they haven’t even left yet. Did the Romans sit around talking like this, before their empire fell?
‘Hey, Ryan, what’s Curry going to do? Stay here or go finis?’
Ryan shrugs and mumbles. ‘If it was up to Dad, we’d stay here forever. But I’m pretty sure Mum wants to go home.’
Julie leans forward. ‘If your family leaves — what would happen to the company?’
Andy throws himself down on the grass, scattering drops of water over them all. ‘Don’t worry about Mac, Juliet. Someone’ll give your dad a job, whatever happens. He’s the best pilot I’ve ever met.’
‘Really?’ Julie feels an unexpected glow of pride in the stranger who is her father. ‘Andy? Can I ask you something?’
‘Sure thing, Juliet. But let me remind you that I’m a married man.’
She ignores this, embarrassed. She says, ‘Why aren’t there any local people here? Any nationals?’
Andy’s grin fades. He shifts his body uneasily on the grass. ‘Well, I guess we just don’t make friends with many of the nationals. There’s not much chance to, you know . . . mingle.’
‘But you must meet some local people.’
Andy laughs. ‘Well, yeah. There’s our meri, there are the kago bois at work. But they’d hardly fit in here, would they?’ He waves his hand vaguely at the gathering around them.
Ryan says patiently, ‘You don’t understand, Julie. It’s all separate. They stick to their people, and we stick to ours. It’s just more comfortable that way.’
‘But you must have local friends,’ Julie says ‘You grew up here. Didn’t you go to school with local kids?’
‘Not really. The schools are in two streams, the A stream for the expats, and the T stream for the nationals. They get taught in Pidgin, and the expat kids get taught in English. Makes sense when you think about it.’
‘But —’ Julie stops. Andy and Ryan are looking at her indulgently, as if she is a bit dim for even asking the question. And it does make sense to teach the locals in their own language. And you couldn’t teach Australian kids in Pidgin. So maybe it is the only way —
Teddie, who has been staring at the sky and not apparently listening to any of this, suddenly returns to earth. ‘Are we doing anything tomorrow? How about a picnic by the river? You’re not going to church or anything, are you, Julie?’
‘God, no!’ she says, and everyone laughs, though she didn’t mean to be funny.
‘Better make it early,’ says Andy. ‘Before the rain comes.’
The next day Julie is squashed in with Teddie in the back of Andy’s little green Datsun, bumping along a bush road after the Crabtrees’ blue Holden. It doesn’t take long to leave all signs of the town behind; after only a few minutes, it’s as if they’ve plunged into the ancient past, a world of villages and garden plots and uncleared jungle.
Andy pulls up by the banks of a shallow, clear-flowing stream. The Crabtrees and Roxy the dog spill from the other car, and soon Barbara is spreading rugs over the sandy bank and unpacking eskies of beer and sandwiches. Tony and Julie have brought nothing. ‘Don’t worry about it,’ he’d shrugged. ‘Barb always handles the catering.’
Julie knows her mother would be horrified if she could see that her daughter had turned up to a picnic empty-handed. But Caroline is a long way away.
The river is as clear as liquid glass. The stones at the bottom are honey-coloured, amber, with silken threads of sunlight flickering over them through the water. Birds call in the trees, but their songs are unfamiliar. There is one with a long whistle, followed by a questioning trill, and another with a cascade of notes like a waterfall. The trees are so thickly crowded, it’s impossible to imagine walking between them. The road is close by, but there is almost no traffic. They might have been the last humans on the planet, or explorers on an undiscovered continent. The only sounds are the songs of the birds, and their own voices.
Nadine says, ‘Let’s walk along the river.’
She and Ryan kick off their shoes and leave them on the rocks. Julie tugs off her sandals and wades into the ankle-deep water, so icy it makes her gasp. Her toes waver whitely underwater, like carved marble.
Nadine steps from rock to rock, as sure-footed as a cat. Julie splashes clumsily behind her; Ryan brings up the rear, stumping through the water with his hands shoved in his pockets, his shoulders hunched. Without speaking, the three of them in a silent line, they make their way upstream, around bends, across gurgling rapids, through a knee-deep pool of beer-coloured water, lined with soft mud, until they’ve left the adults far behind. There is not one piece of litter, not one soft drink can or scrap of plastic. The sun pours out its gentle warmth onto their skin. The birds sing, the breeze murmurs in the trees.
On the way back, Ryan, behind Nadine’s oblivious back, stretches out his hand toward Julie’s. She has a split second to decide: is this something she wants?
Oh, well, she thinks, it can’t hurt. And I can always get out of it later.
She reaches out her hand and catches hold of his, and without looking at each other, they splash along side by side, their hands clasped.
When they come in sight of the others, sitting on the bank, and Roxy snuffling on the rocks, Ryan lets her hand fall. And for the rest of the afternoon, they both pretend t
hat nothing has happened.
Midway through the picnic lunch, Julie notices that Nadine is struggling to stifle a fit of giggles. She feels a prickle of anxiety. Had Nadine noticed her and Ryan holding hands? She says, ‘What’s the joke?’
‘You —’ Nadine can hardly speak. ‘You and Tony!’
‘What?’
Tony and Julie exchange a nervous look.
‘The way you eat your sandwiches!’ crows Nadine. ‘Nibble, nibble, nibble all along the crust, and then you throw the crusts away! You both do it exactly the same! It’s so funny!’
Tony gazes down, bewildered, at the crust at his hand. Julie, scarlet-faced, tries to scrunch up her discarded crusts in the sandwich paper. Then they catch each other’s eye, and Tony gives his shy smile.
‘Never did like crusts,’ says Tony.
‘Me either,’ admits Julie.
Nadine shouts, ‘You even have the same smile! Look, look at them! They’ve both got the same dimple!’
‘Shut up, Nads,’ says Ryan. ‘Can’t you see you’re embarrassing them?’
‘It’s okay,’ says Julie. ‘I don’t mind.’
Tony looks away. His cheeks are flushed with pink, but Julie thinks he’s pleased.
‘You’re coming over tomorrow, right?’ says Nadine anxiously, before Julie and Tony go home that night.
Julie doesn’t look at Ryan but she can feel his eyes burning on her.
‘Yeah,’ she says. ‘Okay, I will.’ And Ryan’s whole body relaxes.
The next morning, after Tony leaves for work, Julie is moving sluggishly around the unit, preparing to walk around to the Crabtrees’ house, when she hears a knock on the door. She assumes it’s Ryan, come to escort her, so she unlocks the door without checking.
But it’s a woman standing on the doorstep, a national — a girl, really, not much older than Julie is. She is holding a bilum filled with lemons.
‘Yu baim muli, misis?’
She smiles at Julie, but her eyes are pleading, almost desperate. She offers up her bag of lemons, and Julie sees that her meri blouse is ragged, gaping open with a tear beneath the arm, and her baggy skirt is grimy and faded.
‘Muli?’
‘Yes!’ says Julie. ‘Yes, I’ll buy some. Wait a minute.’
She runs back to the bedroom and rummages in her shoulder bag for her purse. She can hear Barbara’s admonishing voice in her head: don’t leave them on the step with the door open, they could run in and help themselves . . . She pushes the voice away.
‘I’ll have two — no, threepela,’ she says, and holds up three fingers, just in case. The girl opens the bilum to let her choose, and Julie gives her a ten cent coin. She knows from the market that it’s far too much for a few lemons. ‘Take it,’ she says. ‘Please.’
The girl lowers her eyes and slips the coin inside her clothes. Maybe she can’t believe her luck. She’s hurrying away — probably afraid that Julie will change her mind — when Julie does call her back.
‘Wait a sec — do you want some of these?’ She tears open the bundle of old clothes that Barbara gave her for the missionaries next door. She pulls out a dress, a T-shirt, a yellow blouse. ‘You want them? For you, look.’
The girl steps back, shaking her head uncertainly. But as Julie waves the clothes at her, insisting, ‘For you. You take them!’ she creeps forward again, and at last she accepts the dress. Julie beams; then she has her inspiration.
‘You want a job? Work? Work here?’
Tony has no meri. Julie can help this girl, help her in a lasting way: she can give her a job. Then she won’t need to tramp from door to door, flogging lemons. Julie can help her.
‘You be our meri? Cleanim house? Cookim food? Kaikai?’ She is laughing at her own pitiful attempt at Pidgin, and the girl giggles too. ‘What’s your name?’ says Julie. ‘Name belong you?’ She points at herself. ‘I’m Julie. Julie.’ She points at the girl. ‘You?’
The girl whispers so softly that Julie has to lean forward to catch it. ‘Lina.’
‘Okay! Lina! Will you be our meri? Yes? Okay —’ Julie realises she’d better let Tony know what’s happening. ‘You come back tomorrow?’
The girl nods, and clutching her bag of lemons, she scurries off down the driveway. Julie gazes after her, not sure how well she’d managed to make herself understood. But she is well-pleased, and proud of herself, as she marches around to the Crabtrees’ house.
‘Oh, dear.’ Barbara passes a hand across her eyes. ‘You don’t know anything about this girl! If you wanted a meri, you should have asked me to find someone reliable, one of Koki’s wontoks . . . And Tony’s always said he doesn’t want a meri.’
‘Well, maybe he’s changed his mind,’ says Julie stubbornly. A familiar feeling of defiance hardens inside her. Barbara and Caroline might not have much else in common, but clearly they’d agree on one thing — whatever Julie does is wrong.
But later that night, when she confesses what she’s done, it seems Barbara might have been right. Tony is dismayed.
‘Oh, no, I don’t —’ He stares at the wall. ‘I don’t want a meri. You should have asked me first.’
‘I was only trying to help,’ says Julie.
‘Yeah, I know . . . I had a meri when I first came up here, but it didn’t work out. Never again.’
‘Okay. Sorry.’
‘Apart from anything else, I can’t afford it,’ says Tony apologetically. ‘I’ve got to save up for my old age, you know.’
‘Okay, okay,’ says Julie. ‘I’ll tell her to forget it. I’m sorry.’
‘Don’t worry about it.’ Tony rubs his bald spot, running his finger along the dent of his scar. ‘Look . . . I wish we could live like the Crabtrees. Big house, meri and a garden boi, all of that. But —’
‘I don’t want to live like the Crabtrees. I was just trying to —’
‘Make my life easier?’ Tony finishes the sentence for her. ‘Thanks, mate. I appreciate it. But I’m doing all right. Don’t worry about me.’
Julie stares at him helplessly, unable to explain that she wasn’t thinking of him at all; it was Lina she’d been trying to help. And now she is going to have to turn her away, because Tony feels too poor to employ her. And yet Tony has so much more than Lina . . .
‘I’m sorry, love,’ says Tony.
Julie manages to muster up a smile. ‘It’s all right.’
Tony says, ‘You want a game of backgammon? I play a game with Gibbo now and then.’
‘I don’t know how.’
Tony’s face falls, but then Julie adds, ‘Maybe you could teach me?’ And the shy, eager smile spreads across his face once more.
7
‘But we always have a Christmas party,’ says Nadine, a few days after the picnic by the river.
‘Not this year,’ says Barbara.
‘I just don’t feel up to it this year. I’ve done it for seventeen years. Let someone else do the work for a change.’
‘Teddie and Andy are going to have a Christmas party,’ says Ryan unexpectedly from the depths of the armchair where he’s curled around his guitar.
‘Are they?’ Barbara shoots him a look. ‘Well. Good. Good for them. I hope it’s a great success.’
She stalks from the room and Ryan chuckles as he pulls Julie down onto the arm of his chair. ‘She’s pissed off now. She makes out she doesn’t want to do the work, but she doesn’t want to lose the glory either. Poor Mum.’ His arm snakes around Julie’s waist and he presses his face against her back.
‘Yay!’ Nadine jumps up. ‘Now I have to figure out what to wear. Come and help, Julie.’
Julie wriggles out of Ryan’s embrace. ‘Just for a minute,’ she says apologetically. ‘Girl stuff.’
Ryan scowls and strums a chord. ‘Don’t take too long.’
Two nights later, Julie walks with tentative steps into fairyland. Teddie and Andy’s garden glows with Chinese lanterns of scarlet paper, and garlands of white flowers looped between the trees. Soft music and golden
light stream from the windows, echoing the tangerine flush of the declining sun.
Julie is the first to arrive, because the Spargos’ house is just two doors up from Tony’s. Her father rang, mid-afternoon, from the HAC terminal. ‘Looks like I’ll be stuck here for a while, mate. If I’m not back in time for Andy’s Christmas whatsit, don’t wait for me, you go along and I’ll meet you there. You’ll be right, won’t you?’
Julie said it didn’t matter, that she didn’t mind at all, but as she picks her way up the Spargos’ steep driveway, she wishes she’d stayed at the Crabtrees’ house after all, and arrived with them. Even though she’s wearing her best party dress, and a necklace borrowed from Nadine, there is something forlorn about arriving at a party alone.
Teddie draws her inside. ‘I’m glad you’re early. Come and sit on the bed while I put my face on.’
Julie follows her into the bedroom, feeling suddenly childish in her pale blue floaty dress. Teddie is wearing a tight, high-collared Chinese dress of creamy silk, her long copper hair knotted at the nape of her neck. Julie can’t stop staring at her, wondering how such a demure outfit can be so incredibly sexy. She catches sight of herself in Teddie’s dressing-table mirror, her hair hanging loose on her shoulders, and feels disconsolate. Her light-brown hair is messy and limp; it’s nothing hair. Nothing colour, nothing length. Maybe she should just cut it all off.
‘Hey, Juliet!’ calls Andy from the kitchen. ‘No Mac? What have you done with him?’
‘He’s still at work, with Curry. He said to come without him.’
Julie perches gingerly on Teddie and Andy’s unmade bed while Teddie sweeps a cotton ball languidly across her face. Andy pokes his head round the door and whistles.
‘Wow, Juliet, you look gorgeous.’
Julie murmurs something, flushing, but he’s still talking. ‘Guess who I ran into in town? That guy Simon, the one we flew up from Moresby. You two seemed to hit it off, so I invited him to come along tonight; I thought you might like to see him again.’
‘Oh!’ Julie twists around on the bed to face him. ‘Do you think he’ll come?’