Trust Me

  Ross, however, veered between ingratiating himself with the guests and ignoring them. Sometimes he was too familiar, almost as if he was part of the family, at other times so distant he could have been a newly arrived stockman. He drank too much, interrupted some of the men’s conversations, and he was awkward with the women. It was true he helped Dulcie quite a bit, but in a flamboyant way that was irritating. The top and bottom of it was that he obviously felt like a fish out of water and he was trying far too hard.

  Bruce couldn’t help but look at John and admire his effortless charm. He paid the women gentle compliments, remembered their names and found them seats. He could talk to city-born Clive just as easily as he could to some of the old farmers. He curbed his drinking, introduced people to one another and managed to maintain just the right balance of solemnity fitting to the occasion without letting it sink to maudlin levels.

  That night when Bruce went to bed over in the bunk-house, he found himself wishing it was John Dulcie loved. He was too old for her, he had a long record of loving and leaving women, but he had a youthful spirit, and Bruce suspected that he’d left more women smiling than he’d ever left in tears. But it was the openness of his character that appealed most. There was something malignant inside Ross, some deep hurt he hadn’t been able to overcome. He’d blurted out when they had their talk that the school he’d been to and run away from was Bindoon, and that it was the treatment he’d received there which made him different from other people. Yet Bruce remembered reading in the paper that Brother Keaney of the Christian Brothers who founded it received an MBE for his unselfish and efficient work with the youth of Australia. Keaney was a popular hero throughout Western Australia. Bruce couldn’t imagine such a man condoning ill-treatment of the children in his care.

  In view of all this, Bruce intended to encourage Dulcie to wait a little longer before marrying Ross. She would be twenty-two in December, old enough to marry anyone she chose. But there was no harm in introducing a little more variety and outside interest into her life. That’s what Betty would have done if she hadn’t become ill.

  Just thinking of her made the sadness well up inside him again. He knew Dulcie had moved all his things back into their old bedroom today. Tonight he’d sleep under Betty’s beautiful quilt, he’d look up at the curtains and remember how flushed with excitement Betty had been as they hung them together. It had meant so much to them both finally to have a real house of their own. They believed then that they still had another twenty years or so to enjoy it. The bed was going to be too big without her, the whole place seemed pointless without sharing it with her. They had no children to leave it to, perhaps he should sell up?

  He sighed and opened his eyes. Dulcie was standing in the doorway looking at him. ‘Would you like some tea?’ she asked, her sweet face wreathed with concern.

  ‘If you come and sit with me and have some too,’ he said. ‘I got into thinking sad thoughts,’

  She came closer and ruffled his hair. ‘It will be like that for quite a while,’ she said. ‘But you can share them with me if you want to.’

  He half smiled. For someone so young she had so much understanding. ‘No, you just boot me out to do some work,’ he said. ‘That’s what Betty would have done.’

  ‘I will when I think that’s what you need. But right now you need rest, tea and sympathy.’

  ‘I’ll drive you up to Perth when you go,’ Bruce said impulsively. ‘I’ll drop you off with Rose and Joan, then go on up to Geraldton and see some old mates. Then I can pick you up on the way back. Reckon we both need something to look forward to.’

  Chapter Nineteen

  Dulcie walked down View Road in Peppermint Grove with a light step, happily admiring all the nice houses and well-kept gardens. She had never really been able to imagine where May worked, what the house was like, or the neighbourhood. All she knew was that it was near the river on one side, and the sea on the other.

  It was November, a warm spring afternoon without a cloud in the sky. She and Bruce had driven up from Esperance and arrived at Joan’s yesterday. Tomorrow Bruce was going on up to Geraldton, and when Dulcie telephoned May this morning Mrs Wilberforce invited her over for tea.

  Dulcie paused for just a second when she saw number 32, suddenly understanding what May had meant when she said it was an English house. It was perhaps the oldest in the street, and very like the Edwardian villas she remembered in Blackheath. Old grey stone, bay windows, and a tiled path up to the front door. She could remember such houses having a balcony upstairs too, but this one had been extended to a veranda right round the side of the house. The many climbing plants scrambling up to it and the bushes and trees shading it made her think of pictures she’d seen of homes in the tropics.

  ‘Dulcie!’ May exclaimed gleefully as she opened the door. ‘It’s so good to see you. Come on in, Mrs Wilberforce is really pleased she’s going to meet you at last.’

  ‘You can’t imagine how excited I’ve been,’ Dulcie said as she hugged her sister. ‘But let me look at you! I can’t believe it, you’re so grown-up.’

  She had never doubted that May would still be pretty, but in the three years since they last saw one another May’s looks had taken on a new dimension. Even in a plain navy blue dress and apron she looked polished, not a blemish on her perfect complexion, her hair fixed up in a sleek style Dulcie recognized as a French pleat. She was no longer just pretty, but beautiful.

  ‘I feel like a country bumpkin next to you,’ Dulcie admitted, suddenly wishing she’d made a little more effort with her appearance – putting her hair up in a pony-tail was hardly sophisticated.

  ‘You look lovely to me.’ May grinned, then moving closer went to whisper in her ear, ‘Come on, let’s get this tea over with. After that we’ll go down to the river so we can talk. I’ve been saving my days off, so I’ve got three whole days to spend with you.’

  Dulcie thought Mrs Wilberforce was the most elegant and gracious woman she’d ever met, beautifully dressed, her hair just so, and such a lovely English accent. But then she was spellbound by everything here in Peppermint Grove – Mrs Wilberforce, her house and garden, even her own sister’s looks. She couldn’t help but feel a little envy that May had landed a job like this, while she’d been packed off to Salmon Gums.

  Yet seeing her little sister acting like a real lady, pouring tea into bone-china cups, passing round plates of dainty sandwiches and cakes, all prepared by herself, was so pleasing. She would have been very upset to find May in a position where she was treated like a drudge.

  ‘Isn’t farming rather a hard life?’ Mrs Wilberforce asked at one point in the conversation. ‘You look so very fragile, Dulcie. I expected a big strapping girl.’

  Dulcie laughed. Both Joan and Rose had made similar remarks to her at the funeral. She supposed she didn’t look like the stereotype farm girl. ‘I’m tougher than I look,’ she said. ‘Besides, I don’t actually work on the farm, except at harvest when I pitch in. I feed the chooks, look after the garden, but everything else is indoors.’ She went on to describe a little of how it was at her first job and Mrs Wilberforce winced.

  Mrs Wilberforce asked how Mr French was managing without his wife, and it was clear to Dulcie she was as kind-hearted as she was elegant. Then finally the tea was over, and she told the girls they could go on out, and that she would clear up.

  ‘Just let me take these out,’ Dulcie hastily began stacking up the plates and cups on to a tray. ‘I wouldn’t feel right leaving you to do it.’

  ‘What a sweet girl you are, Dulcie,’ Mrs Wilberforce said, smiling. But she took the tray from Dulcie’s hands and shooed them both out. ‘Go on with you. You’ve got a lot of catching up to do.’

  May chattered non-stop all the way down to the river, pointing out her favourite houses and what she knew of the people who lived in them. Dulcie stopped listening when they came to the riverside, for it was breathtakingly beautiful. It was in fact a little curving bay, small boats moored at anchor, a
narrow strip of sand along the water’s edge and several children splashing in the shallows, which gave more of an impression of a seaside scene than a river.

  ‘You aren’t listening,’ May said, her voice a little sharp.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Dulcie said guiltily. ‘I was just taken aback by this place. It’s so lovely.’

  ‘Umm,’ May replied. ‘A bit boring though, I always see the same people here. Anyway, I was telling you about the new can-can petticoat I bought, it’s got about a mile of net.’

  Maybe Dulcie looked blank, for May launched into telling her that net underskirts were the latest craze from America and some girls wore two or three under their dresses when they went dancing. It seemed she went dancing most Saturday nights with her friend Angelina. ‘I love jiving,’ she said rapturously. ‘Can you do it?’

  Dulcie had seen jiving on the television and on the news at the cinema, but it hadn’t arrived at the Saturday dances in Esperance as far as she knew. But then she hadn’t been to one for over a year. When she told May this her sister looked appalled.

  ‘But what do you do then when you go out with Ross?’ she asked.

  ‘Mostly to the pictures, but we haven’t been out anywhere for ages because of Betty being so ill,’ Dulcie replied. ‘He’s not very keen on dancing anyway.’

  May wrinkled her nose. ‘I wouldn’t marry a man who didn’t like dancing, I like to get dressed up and be seen by everyone when I’m on a date. Are you still going to get married?’

  Dulcie nodded. ‘We haven’t set a date yet, but I think it will be next January or February. It depends on Bruce really.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Well, he keeps trying to put me off. I don’t mean in a nasty way, he isn’t like that, but I suppose he thinks I’m still a bit young.’

  ‘You’re nearly twenty-two, that’s old enough,’ May shrugged. ‘I expect it’s because he wants you to stay in his house looking after him. Men are selfish like that.’

  ‘It’s not that, he doesn’t think I’ve looked around enough yet.’

  ‘Well, you could do better than a stockman,’ May said bluntly. ‘I don’t understand why you’ve stayed on a farm anyway, it must be so boring.’

  Dulcie didn’t want to get into an argument about that so she asked May if she had a boyfriend.

  ‘Two,’ May said. ‘There’s Ken who lives just up the road from the Wilberforces, and Matt, he’s an accountant with an office in the city.’

  After much probing for more information about these two boyfriends, and a little astute guesswork, Dulcie established that Ken was the stand-in for when Matt wasn’t available. It crossed her mind Matt might have another girl too, for it seemed odd that he could only find time to take May out once a fortnight. Ken on the other hand sounded very nice. He was twenty and at Perth University studying mathematics, and lodging with his aunt.

  ‘I hope you aren’t going to give me one of those don’t you get carried away talks,’ May said suddenly. ‘Mrs Wilberforce did that one day, and it was so embarrassing.’

  ‘Do you mean getting carried away about getting married?’ Dulcie said innocently.

  May burst into laughter. ‘No, of course not. I meant sex, silly. Mrs W. thinks everyone is as dumb as she was when she got married. She started trying to tell me about French letters, as if I didn’t know about them.’

  Dulcie was lost now. ‘What are French letters?’ she asked.

  May looked at her in astonishment, then giggled. ‘You must know, Dulcie. You’ve been going out with Ross for ages. Or are you such a good girl you don’t let him do anything?’

  ‘Of course not, we’ll wait till we’re married,’ Dulcie said indignantly. ‘I’d be scared of having a baby.’

  ‘That’s what French letters are for, you chump!’ She paused to look at Dulcie and perhaps saw real bewilderment. ‘Don’t tell me no one told you?’

  Dulcie could hardly believe her ears as her little sister who she expected to come looking to her for advice proceeded to tell her about these rubber things men put over their penis to prevent a girl getting pregnant. But the worst of it was that May sounded as she was speaking from personal experience, not repeating something she’d just been told.

  ‘Have you done it then?’ Dulcie whispered.

  ‘Of course not,’ May said, but she didn’t sound convincing. ‘I’ll wait until I meet the right man.’

  During the course of the next three days Dulcie was to discover that May not only looked far more sophisticated than she did, but she really was. Gone were the days when Dulcie had to look after her little sister and explain things to her, May appeared to know everything. From the first of her three days off work when she met Dulcie at Perth station wearing stiletto heels, her hair teased up into a beehive, and her new net petticoat under a pink and white dress with a full circular skirt and her waist pulled into a handspan with a three-inch belt, Dulcie was in awe of her.

  May took her into huge department stores and dismissed every item of clothing Dulcie wanted to buy as old-fashioned, insisting she let her choose something for her. Once Dulcie had actually tried a dress very similar to the one May was wearing, she did think her own plain shirtwaister looked a bit dowdy, but yards of net petticoat on a farm was hardly practical. May broke down her objections, saying there was no point in buying a dress that looked just like the ones available in the shop in Esperance, and besides, she’d be going out more now she hadn’t got Betty to look after.

  May knew her way round the cosmetics counter too, and insisted Dulcie should buy eyeliner and pale lipstick because that was the look of the moment and Dulcie’s eyes were her best feature. She scoffed at the low-heeled shoes Dulcie wanted to buy and talked her into buying a pair of pointed-toe sling-backs with three-inch heels.

  May led her into record shops where they listened to the Top Ten, and she seemed horrified Dulcie hadn’t heard ‘Till I Kissed You’ by The Everley Brothers, or ‘Poison Ivy’ by The Coasters before. ‘You’ve got to get hip,’ she exclaimed. ‘Don’t you listen to John O’Keefe’s Six O’Clock Rock? Even Mrs W. likes to hear it so she knows what’s going on.’

  Dulcie thought ‘Till I Kissed You,’ was the most wonderful song she’d ever heard. She wished she had one of the Portagram record-players that May said Mr and Mrs Wilberforce had bought her for her birthday, so she could buy the record and take it home and play it to Ross. But they were £66 3s, half a year’s wages, and she couldn’t even afford to buy one of the new transistor radios May showed her, though she thought it would be lovely to lie in bed at night and listen to music.

  *

  Being with May was like entering a whole new world. They went into smart milk bars which looked like something out of American films, all shiny plastic and chrome. They sat up on high stools and had frothy coffee, and May insisted she tried a cigarette. She knew how to work the juke-box too and selected ‘Till I Kissed You’ especially for Dulcie. So many people seemed to know May too, though more men than girls, and she watched in envious amazement as her sister flirted effortlessly with them.

  That first afternoon they caught a bus up to King’s Park and lay on the grass in the sun, just talking and looking at fashion magazines together. To Dulcie that was almost the best part of the day, for she felt the same closeness they’d had when they were little girls, looking at their mother’s magazines together. Later they went back to Joan’s house in Subiaco for tea, and afterwards May backcombed Dulcie’s hair and put it up in a beehive and supervised her new makeup. It was thrilling and scary going out to the dance at the Embassy later. Scary because Dulcie didn’t know how to jive, but thrilling to see how modern and even glamorous she looked in her new dress with a new hair-style.

  The dances in Esperance parish hall were Old Time or ballroom style, the band could be anything from just a pianist or a pianist and drummer to almost a whole orchestra of local musicians on an important occasion, and young and old alike went to join in the Barn Dance, Pride of Erin and the Oxford Wal
tz.

  The Embassy was quite different. Roy Jenkins’s band were seasoned professionals, slick-looking men in dinner jackets and bow-ties, and they played all kinds of dance music. The lights were low, sparkly mirrored balls hung from the ceiling, there was even a bar which served alcohol, something unheard of back home. It wasn’t so difficult to learn basic jive steps, not after she’d had a couple of port and lemons, and she and May had no shortage of enthusiastic partners.

  Maybe the first day with May was the best one. It did get a little bit repetitive when they kept looking in shops, going into milk bars and sitting around while May smoked and talked about clothes. She did seem a bit obsessive about how she looked and the impression she was making on other people, and not at all grateful that she’d been so fortunate in getting sent to the Wilberforces. She said airily that she was going to work in Sydney next year, and she scoffed at Dulcie’s anxiety that maybe her new secretarial qualifications wouldn’t be enough without experience to land a good enough job to be able to keep herself. Dulcie also thought she was a bit too forward with men. But all the same it was wonderful to be with her again, becoming friends along with being sisters. She so much hoped they could build on it and put all the sadness of the past behind them.

  On their last day together it was overcast and a bit chilly and they spent the whole day in shops. May suggested they went into the Criterion Hotel which she said was very swish and think about what they wanted to do that evening. It was already nearly six, and Dulcie’s feet were aching from wearing her new shoes, so she was grateful to be able to sit down somewhere warm and comfortable.

  May ordered a pot of tea and toasted tea-cakes, and they’d hardly even poured the tea before the man at the next table started speaking to May. Within ten minutes, the man and his friend were sitting beside them, and all at once Dulcie became aware that May not only wanted their company, but she’d suggested coming in here for the sole purpose of picking someone up.