Betty laughed. ‘Never got a chance with me, I kneed him in the crotch and I was off up those back lanes like a rabbit.’
‘So how do you know when the boy’s perfect for you?’ Dulcie asked.
Betty gave her a tender look. ‘You’ll just know. That sounds vague, I know, but it’s true.’
‘How long does it take?’ Dulcie asked.
Betty blushed. ‘It took me five minutes from meeting Bruce to know he was the one. But the secret is not to let on straight away, keep them dangling a while, wait and make sure.’
Dulcie sighed. ‘It sounds so complicated.’
Betty laughed. ‘It’s not really, not if you keep your head. Besides, you’re not ready for that sort of thing yet.’
It wasn’t until October that Dulcie made any real headway with getting to know Ross better. They had brief conversations when she took tea out for the men’s smoko, the Australian word for tea-break, and sometimes after supper, but these were always centred on the farm work. On this particular day, however, the men were mending fences on the far side of the lake, and to save them coming all the way back for their lunch-time sandwiches, she’d driven out with them on the tractor. Bruce, Bob and John were all together and she left the food with them.
‘Have a look at the wild flowers while you’re out here,’ Bruce said. ‘They’re all just coming out by the lake. Ross is over there, he’ll show you, but watch out for snakes.’
Dulcie always wore shoes outside now. She’d only been here a few days when she almost stepped on a brown snake. She jumped back and it slithered away, but the memory of the way it reared up momentarily as if to strike out at her had stayed with her.
She left the tractor and walked over to the lake. Fred, one of Bruce’s three dogs, came bounding out of the gums surrounding it to greet her, showering water as he came.
Ross came through the bushes and looked suspiciously at her.
‘Bruce said to come and look at the flowers.’ She thought he was jealous because Fred the dog was making a fuss of her. ‘Will you show me them?’
He merely nodded and strode off ahead of her down the edge of the track.
The sun was really warm now at midday, but by four or five it turned very chilly again. There had been a great deal of rain during the winter and the lake was almost twice the size it would be in summer. Dulcie thought the gum trees growing out of the water looked a bit sinister – she had come down here early one morning and there was a low-lying mist swirling around them, and she half expected to see some apparition rise out of it.
Suddenly Ross stopped. ‘There you are,’ he said.
The sight took her by surprise. There, sheltered by a semi-circle of thick bushes, was the most incredible array of flowers. Red, blue, purple, yellow and white, all jostling for attention, as beautiful as any display she’d seen in parks as a child.
‘Gosh!’ was all she could say, for the sight made a lump come up in her throat. She had thought the spring flowers up at Salmon Gums lovely, but there were only small clumps there, not this huge variety or so many of them.
‘The Kangaroo paws are my favourite,’ Ross said and sidled round the edge of the patch to pick one of the larger species at the back. There was something about the reverent way he was avoiding trampling the flowers that made tears spring into her eyes.
‘Look, feel it,’ he said, coming back to her. ‘It’s all furry on the stem.’
Dulcie touched it, keeping her eyes down.
‘Why are you crying?’ he asked. His voice was gentle – normally he adopted a curt tone with her.
‘I don’t know, I guess because they are so lovely, and unexpected,’ she said, wiping her eyes with the back of her hand. ‘Beautiful things always make me go all silly.’
‘They do me too,’ he said. ‘New lambs, puppies and kittens. A calf was born when I first came here, and I cried like a baby.’
This was a major breakthrough as far as Dulcie was concerned, and she felt compelled to keep his attention. ‘It was the careful way you went to pick that flower that really made me cry,’ she admitted. ‘Most men wouldn’t have even noticed them being beautiful.’
‘I expect I would have been like that if I hadn’t come here,’ he said. ‘It’s Bruce, you see, he loves the land and everything that’s on it.’
‘You were in some terrible place too, weren’t you?’ she said very softly, frightened he would rebuff her.
But to her surprise he nodded. ‘I ran away three times, but they always caught me. The next time I made up my mind I wasn’t going to be dragged back, beaten and have my head shaved, and I made it.’
‘Where was this place?’ she asked.
A fearful look came into his eyes and Dulcie instinctively put her hand on his arm. ‘You’re a man now, Ross, they can’t make you go back there,’ she said. ‘You have to talk about it some day. You can tell me, I know what it’s like to be ill-treated too.’
He just stood there for a moment, looking at her hand on his arm, but not shaking it off. ‘It was Bindoon, about eighty miles north of Perth,’ he blurted out. ‘I got away at night, kept walking all through it, and next day, every time I heard a car or a truck I hid. I’d got some boots but no socks and my feet were bleeding and blistered. I was so hungry too, but I kept going all that day. I got lucky just as it was nearly dark, I saw a truck outside a house, with its engine running, there was nothing on the back but a few sacks. I reckoned the driver had delivered something to the house and he’d be out and on his way in a minute. So I got under the sacks and hid. He drove all the way into Perth.’
‘But how did you get from there to here?’ she asked, imagining herself hungry and with bleeding feet – at least when she’d run away she had a little money.
‘I got on the train,’ he said, still holding his head down. ‘Of course I didn’t have a ticket, and I had to keep ducking into the toilet when the guard came along. But I reckon he must’ve known I was there all along and felt sorry for me because just before we got into Kalgoorlie, he turned up unexpectedly and told me to try looking for a job there.’
‘Then you came here?’ she asked.
He half smiled. ‘Yeah, someone told me I might get a job on a fishing boat. But it took a long time to walk it, I was too scared to try and thumb a lift, and the sole of my boot came off so I threw them away. I can’t even remember the last part of the way, I was so weak and hungry. Bruce found me in the barn.’
‘Why didn’t you ever tell him and Betty about it?’ she asked.
He shrugged. ‘I suppose I thought they’d make me go back to Bindoon, so I kind of made up I didn’t know where I’d come from. Every time they asked me something I just looked all stupid at them.’
Dulcie giggled. ‘I bet that didn’t fool them!’
He grimaced. ‘No, I suppose it didn’t. Betty once said when you find an animal that’s hurt you don’t try to find out how it got hurt, all you do is nurse it. So I got the idea they didn’t really want to know where I’d come from, so I never did tell them. I still don’t want to.’ He paused, giving her a cold look. ‘I don’t know why I’ve told you. I bet you’ll go straight back and blab it all out.’
‘No I won’t,’ she said indignantly. ‘Why should I? Just to get back at you because you let out about me to John before?’
‘I didn’t mean to give you away,’ Ross said quickly. ‘But I was scared for you. John saw me waving for you to hide off the road, and he kept on asking what was I trying to tell you. I didn’t really even tell him. He guessed.’
Dulcie remembered then that wave which she thought was to remind her the post office was closing. She nodded. ‘Okay, I was mad at you then, but as it turned out it was better to go back, or I wouldn’t have ended up here. But for your information I’m not a blabbermouth or a taleteller. I can’t see why you can’t tell Bruce now, he’s fond of you and he’d like to know all about you. But I’m glad you told me, it feels nice to share a secret with you.’
His face had sudde
nly softened dramatically, almost as if by the telling of his story he’d shed a burden. The wary look was gone from his eyes, and his grin was a really happy one, turning up the corners of his mouth in a way that made him suddenly handsome.
‘You got any secrets to trade?’ he said. ‘A pact so we don’t tell on one another!’
She nodded. Something told her the only way to become friends with him was to show she too had a past.
Dulcie had told Betty and Bruce the same simple story she’d told Pat, that her mother had died and her father put her and May in the convent because he couldn’t look after them. While she had talked about her gran and Susan on occasions to Betty, she had never felt able to say anything more, and Betty had never asked.
‘My father is in prison in England, for the manslaughter of my mother,’ she said.
Ross’s mouth dropped open. ‘Really!’ he exclaimed, then his face hardened. ‘No, you just made that up to be big!’
‘I don’t see anything big in saying something like that,’ she said, hurt that he should see this as a lie, when to her it was offering him something very important. She turned her back on him and began to walk away.
He came after her and caught her arm. ‘I’m sorry. I find it hard to trust anyone to tell the truth.’
‘I don’t tell lies,’ she said, looking right into his eyes. ‘I might leave things out, but I don’t make things up.’
‘Is it a real secret, or do Bruce and Betty know?’ he asked.
‘I’ve never told anyone.’
It was clear Ross didn’t know what to say either. His mouth opened and closed and he was looking furtively around him as if wanting to run off.
Dulcie was still angry with him but she pulled herself together. ‘I forgot to say I brought tea and sandwiches over. I’d better get back to the house, Betty will be wondering where I am. Thank you for showing me the flowers.’
She strode off back to the tractor, jumped on it and drove off back to the house, not even stopping to speak to Bruce. It wasn’t until she was back in the kitchen that she found tears were streaming down her cheeks.
Fortunately Betty was in her sewing-room, engrossed in her patchwork. Dulcie washed her face with cold water and went back outside to do some weeding in the front garden. Yet even though she had outwardly composed herself, speaking of her mother and father had churned her up inside.
She had felt that the kindness shown to her by Bruce and Betty had wiped out all the misery of the past, that the unfair, cruel and humiliating things which had been done to her didn’t matter any more. But that clearly wasn’t so, or why would she feel so upset now? Pat had never got over the past, Ross clearly hadn’t either, so why had she thought it would be any different for herself? She must have been stupid to think that just because she had a job she liked, a few pounds saved and a few new personal belongings, a happy future was assured.
The harsh truth was that she was still a ward of the Australian government, with no rights. She had a father back in an English gaol whom she had been prevented from keeping in touch with, and a sister back in St Vincent’s whom she hadn’t heard from since she left Salmon Gums. In all the excitement and happiness of the past months that hadn’t seemed anything more than May just being too lazy to write, but maybe she was fooling herself about that, in just the same way she’d fooled herself into thinking the past didn’t matter.
All at once the terrible beating Dulcie had received from Reverend Mother so long ago came back to her as though it was yesterday. She remembered only too well from her own experiences, and those of other girls, that the woman was cruel and vengeful. She’d often thought the main reason she’d singled out May as her little pet was to make a rift between them. Perhaps when Sergeant Collins telephoned her it made her really angry and so she had taken her revenge by holding back her letters.
The more Dulcie thought about it, the more likely this became. Letters were the only link between the sisters, and if they stopped completely, when May left St Vincent’s, she wouldn’t know where to find Dulcie.
But what could she do? She doubted getting Sergeant Collins to intervene on her behalf would achieve anything. Reverend Mother might even take it out on May. Dulcie shuddered, she knew there were a hundred and one ways the Sisters could make May’s remaining time with them a misery.
Over the following few days Dulcie kept mulling this problem over in her mind. She thought of telling Ross about it and asking if he had any ideas what to do, but he seemed to be going out of his way to avoid being alone with her. This worried her too, she thought by sharing secrets that they’d become friends, but maybe he was wishing he’d never told her anything.
All the talk around the table at dinner was now of the approaching harvest. Like last year with the Masters, Bruce and his men were watching the weather, hoping there’d be no more rain while the wheat and barley fully ripened. Their crops looked good, the machinery had all been overhauled ready to start, it was just a case of waiting until it was ready.
Bruce and Betty went into Esperance to visit some friends late one afternoon, leaving Dulcie to see to the evening meal for John, Bob and Ross. It was a very subdued meal without Bruce to lead the conversation, and as soon as the men had finished eating they left the house, John saying he thought he might go down to the pub.
Dulcie saw him drive off in his battered old car, and she thought she saw Ross in the passenger seat. Once she’d finished the washing up she went to sit out on the veranda to watch the sun go down. So it was a surprise to see Ross suddenly appear in front of her.
‘I thought you went with John,’ she said.
‘That was Bob,’ he said. ‘I said I’d stay and look after things.’
She knew he really meant her and this made her smile because it wasn’t scary to be here alone, the dogs were in the yard and she felt perfectly safe. ‘Would you like a cup of tea?’ she asked. ‘I was just going to make some.’
‘Okay.’ He nodded and sat down on the veranda steps.
When Dulcie came out with the tea he was gazing intently up at the sky. The sun was just about to disappear over the horizon and the sky was pink and orange. ‘It’s lovely, isn’t it?’ she said, handing him his tea and sitting down beside him.
‘Umm,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘It’s going to be a hot day tomorrow.’
‘I’m glad you came over,’ she said after a little while. ‘I was afraid you were wishing you hadn’t told me all that the other day.’
‘I’m not very good at talking, especially to sheilas,’ he said gruffly, looking straight ahead. ‘Anyway, I thought you’d gone into a blue ‘cos you told me that about your dad.’
Dulcie explained a little of how it had churned her all up. Ross went on to tell her he had been in another orphanage, called Clontarf, in Perth, since he was seven, and he remembered a lot of British migrant children being brought there. ‘I suppose we were cruel, ‘cos we used to laugh at the Pom kids whinging when they got burnt in the sun and ‘cos they’d had their shoes taken away. But we were used to it and anyway that’s the way it was there.’
Dulcie knew exactly what he meant. She hadn’t forgotten the names the Australian orphans called her and the other English children at first, or the lack of sympathy from everyone. But she also remembered a year or so later watching more English girls arrive and thinking how drippy they were. She didn’t think she was very sympathetic either.
‘Was Clontarf a bad place too?’ she asked.
He gave her a sideways odd sort of look. ‘Yeah, and Castledare, the place before that, but I’d never known there was a different way of treating kids. The Brothers told us we were worthless lumps of shit right from when we were old enough to know what that meant. The work, punishments, horrible food, being cold in the winter and burning in the summer, that was just the way it was. It’s only since I got here that I found out that not all kids get treated like that. But if Clontarf was bad, Bindoon was a hundred times worse. They told us we were going to a farm, packed
us off on a truck like they was taking us off for a holiday. When we got there all we could see for miles and miles was bush, and in the middle of it, an orphanage only half completed. We’d been taken there to finish building it.’
‘Young boys! Building an orphanage!’ Dulcie said incredulously. ‘I can’t believe it!’
‘We couldn’t believe it either,’ he said shaking his head. ‘We’d always done bush-clearing, building and farm work at Clontarf, but not on such a vast scale as this. Boys built the whole of Bindoon, right from scratch, dug the foundations, mixed the mortar, hauled up the bricks, the lot. I was told the huge underground water tank was dug out and built by the first boys that went there, they were conned into thinking it was a swimming pool! Those poor devils had to sleep in tents too.’
He paused for a moment, and when Dulcie looked at him she could see he was trembling with rage. ‘We had to shin up and down scaffolding, push wheelbarrows nearly as big as us, we got burns on our bare feet from the lime in it, but the Brothers didn’t sodding well care, they had boots. The stones for the building came out of the bush, ruddy great boulders dug and hauled out by us. There was a Spanish architect, the Brothers were the overseers, but we were the labourers, like little ants building a nest, and if we stopped work for a minute, complained or did anything wrong, we got beaten.’
He paused briefly, and Dulcie noticed he was clenching and unclenching his fists.
‘Bruce showed me a book once about how the Japs treated the soldiers in the prison camps over there,’ he went on. ‘I guess he was shocked I didn’t react, but why should I? That’s how it was for us too, only we were just kids. We had to learn to live with torn, bruised and burnt feet, with being hungry all the time. I’ve seen boys fall off scaffolding and even envied them when they got thrown on to the back of a truck to be taken to hospital because however much pain they were in, for a few days they’d get looked after and fed.’
Dulcie was astounded at this sudden and lengthy outpouring of his rage. It was difficult to believe him, but then surely no one could make up something quite so outrageous.