Eighteen
SYDNEY, 1920
I left Government House for the day and took the ferry to Balmain. On the harbor on my own in the Sydney winter sunshine, I felt like a bird that had just taken its first flight. Until a week ago I had been unable to keep a serving job, and now I was writing letters for the Prince of Wales. I had a sense of destiny, or what I thought was destiny. This was what I’d been born to do, I told myself. And now I had been invited to join the rest of the tour, entirely on my merits. They knew me, knew my writing, and they had singled me out. The prince had singled me out. I could have sung to the ferry crowd.
Before leaving, I had tied the remaining letters that needed replies into three bundles—those for a standard reply, those that needed thought, those for which action was required. I took the action pile and sat down with the clerk and steward to give them the prince’s instructions. The clerk was an employee of the governor, a middle-aged man with a gray beard and glasses, and the steward, a government appointee lent to the prince for the duration of the tour, was not far behind in age and seniority.
It was amazing to me that these men would do as I asked. This fellow is to get a refund on his train ticket (went to see the prince but the prince wasn’t there). This one is to be sent the official cup and saucer (lost a grandson in the fighting), plus a personal reply. And this one—I paused, for it was the one that had touched me the most deeply—is a little boy whose father has come home terribly unwell. He is coming to Brisbane with his mother to meet the prince in person, I said.
“Yes, miss,” was as much as either of them said in reply.
I couldn’t wait to get back to my aunt Bea’s house in Balmain. While I had seen Daddy earlier in the day, I very much wanted to tell Bea what I’d been doing as part of the prince’s personal staff. She would be so proud of me, I knew, even prouder than Daddy.
I had been relieved two weeks before when Mummy said Bea had sent money for tickets to Sydney for us all. I thought if anyone could help with Daddy it would be Bea. She was his older sister and she’d all but raised him. Bea had always been in our lives.
On the second morning after we arrived in Sydney, Mummy had gone in early to see the prince again and Bea said I could come into the library with her on the train—she had planned I would work there with her once I completed my matriculation. She hoped that, like her, I would study at the university.
Bea had been thrilled when I’d won a scholarship to the state high school. She said it was a new era for women after the war and I would be able to do whatever I wanted. I hadn’t told her I’d left school, that I’d never complete my matriculation now as I must work, that university was a dream.
That day we went together into the library, Bea already knew something was wrong with Daddy. I tried to tell her what was happening at home.
“Is this after Edward?” she said, not understanding.
“It’s everything,” I said, shaking my head. I was nearly in tears. “Daddy has these nightmares, and he becomes afraid, or sometimes angry. Sometimes they happen in the day. He doesn’t know who we are. It’s like he’s not there. Ask Mummy.”
“Your mother would never tell me anything about it. She’s too proud. Is he writing?” Bea asked.
I shook my head. “Rats,” I said. “He writes about rats.”
“Poetry about rats?”
“More like essays. He describes the different subspecies in detail, noting characteristics, habits. He draws them, writes about them. Please don’t tell Mummy. She doesn’t know.”
“Has he talked to you about it?”
“No, I go into his study. Mummy thinks he’s working on a collection.”
“That’s what she told me—that he quit teaching to write.”
“He was sacked,” I said. I was crying now, my eyes filling with tears, my voice unsteady. “He tweaked this boy’s ear very hard. Daddy never did anything like that before.”
Bea looked out the window of the train. “Poor Tommy,” she said.
I walked up to Bea’s house from the ferry just as night was falling. Mummy was full of excitement about my working for the Prince of Wales, and the boys were just happy to have their big sister back among them to help, but I quickly saw that Daddy was lost to us again. I found him out on the veranda, sitting on his own on the porch swing, back and forth, back and forth.
“You should still be at school, Maddie,” he said, his jaw set tight. “I don’t know how I’ve let this happen.” He looked so very upset. “You’re clever, and you’re going to write. I had more schooling than you have, and I had no parents to provide. I’ve let you down.”
“I don’t mind working, Daddy. I really don’t. The tour might be fun. And I’ll be home in a month.”
Daddy’s hands were shaking. I took them in mine. “I think it won’t always feel like this,” I said. I could see the sweat beading on his forehead. “I think it will feel better one day. You’ll come back to us.”
He smiled bitterly. “I don’t want you to go, Maddie. I don’t feel right about it. Not after everything.”
If I’d thought it would have helped Daddy, I would have said no to Mr. Waters in a minute, or at least I hope I would have. But I knew in my heart that we were in no position financially for me to refuse this job even if I’d wanted to. When my mother ran off from her parents’ estate with my father, Edward already forming in her womb, her family cut her off altogether. We had nothing, and no one to fall back on but Bea, who for all her kindness could not support five hungry children and who, I realized that night, was at a loss about how to reach her poor brother now.
Early the next morning, I rose before the sun and washed and dressed in my only good dress, a pale gray linen, and my sturdy black boots. I went into the room where the three youngest boys slept peacefully. I gave them each a shield of kisses on their brow and told them in a whisper I’d be home before they knew it. Only John stirred. He mumbled something and smiled in his sleep, such a beautiful boy. The twins smelled of Bovril.
I crept out of their room and went into the room Bert slept in, our uncle Reg’s office. Bert was already awake. “So you’re going?” he said.
I nodded and smiled.
“You’re a good sister, Maddie.”
“And you’re a good brother.”
We hugged and I had a lump in my throat, as if I would never see Bert again.
I went down the stairs and out the front door.
Oh, stop! you want to say to your young self. Just stop a minute and think! Do not do not do not walk into danger’s arms. But she can’t hear me and wouldn’t listen if she could.