EIGHT

Hardly had Joshua lifted the latch on the old-fashioned iron gate than a dog rushed between them. Ilan swore in Hebrew and his hand dived for his pocket. ‘‘Cut it out, Ilan, it’s only a dog,’’ Joshua cautioned.

‘‘I know that.’’ Ilan laughed lamely and pushed Joshua through the gate.

The house was bathed in moonlight streaming down from a sky breathtakingly studded by the Milky Way. It showed the two young men a freshly painted corrugated roof with deep eaves that overhung sandstone walls. No lights shone from the front windows but a thin curl of smoke from the back chimney, unhindered by even the faintest breeze, floated skywards. The dog now nipped lightly at their heels, a small warning to them not to do anything silly.

Ilan pointed to the electricity meter; the thin black disc rotated rapidly. Joshua nodded. ‘‘Somebody home?’’ His lips framed the words.

Ilan shrugged, ‘‘Could be just the refrigerator,’’ he whispered.

Joshua reached up for the door knocker. ‘‘What the hell are we whispering for?’’ he said aloud. They looked up and down the deserted street then Joshua banged with the knocker. The dog jumped up on him excitedly and barked.

From down the hall a girl’s voice floated — ‘‘Caaarming!’’

Behind her another voice called: ‘‘It might be Ted about his tractor linkage.’’

A porch light went on and Ilan automatically flattened himself into a window recess. Joshua grabbed his hand and pulled him back; at that instant the door opened and the girl saw the two men, hand in hand and looking utterly foolish. She surveyed them gravely for a moment, then with a huge grin she said, ‘‘Must be my lucky day! Grandma said to expect one bloke, but oh boy, now I’ve got two on our doorstep.’’

‘‘Is that you, Ted?’’ a man called.

The girl asked mischievously, ‘‘Is one of you Ted?’’

They shook their heads. ‘‘No, Dad,’’ she called back. ‘‘OK, quick, I know one of you is Joshua Kaiser — own up!’’

The dog deserted Ilan and fawned on Joshua. The girl grinned. ‘‘Oh! So you’re the one. Bazza doesn’t make mistakes.’’ She sized up Ilan. ‘‘Who are you then, mate?’’

Joshua freed himself from Bazza’s affections. ‘‘I’m Joshua …’’ he started, when she interrupted him.

‘‘Of course you are.’’ She laughed. ‘‘As if I didn’t know, what with Nana showing me your picture every second day.’’ She put her hands on her hips and struck a mock-belligerent pose. ‘‘Now tell us who you are,’’ she told Ilan, ‘‘or I’ll sool Bazza on to you.’’

But the girl didn’t wait for an answer. She propelled them into the light of the hallway and called out to her father: ‘‘It’s the Jewish fella, Dad, only there’s two of ’em.’’

Mr Piper strode up the hall. ‘‘Well, well. It never rains but it pours. We — that is, Mum — only bargained on one and now we’ve won the bloody double! Won’t she be surprised when she comes home.’’ He and Bazza shepherded them all into the living room. Bazza, having done his duty, flopped down before the fire. Mr Piper stood next to the dog trying to look in command of the situation. The two young men stood in front of him as though he were reviewing his troops.

After a moment he turned to the girl. ‘‘Well, Toni, don’t just stand there like a stale bottle of lemonade. Go and make a pot of tea.’’ He added: ‘‘I called her Antoinette but I had me heart on a boy; I was gonna call him Anthony — y’ know, after the leader of the Country Party. Mum nearly killed me when she found out, she being a Labor voter from the cradle. Anyhow, ‘he’ turned out to be a girl, but I’ve still got a Toni.’’

Toni kissed her dad and went into the kitchen. Mr Piper indicated that they should sit. Joshua did so; Ilan stood stiffly to attention. Joshua began to explain Ilan’s involvement, despite the glare he got from him. He did not mention the gun-running episode, giving emphasis to his cover mission of water conservation.

Mr Piper showed mild interest in this but was really more concerned about Joshua’s future in Bathurst. Right from when his mother had first broached the matter of hiding Joshua (she called it ‘‘protecting’’ him from a bloody-minded government), Andy Piper had doubts. He argued that what she proposed would ‘‘bring the bloody cops around’’. ‘‘Not the locals,’’ she had responded. ‘‘Not your drinking mates, Constable Charlie Mackson and Sergeant too-big-for-his-boots Bill Fisher. We’d be fighting the Commonwealth Police. They’ve already caught two lads hiding near Gosford.’’

Andy Piper had then tried another tack. ‘‘What about my work, Mum? What if Joshua is sprung and he’s in my workshop? What about that? They’ll lumber me too. Next thing you know the lad and me will be in adjoining cells at Long Bay.’’ All he’d got from his mother for this argument was an arm around his shoulder and an assurance that she would take care of everything.

Perceptively, Ilan read the situation and told Mr Piper that as soon as he’d had a cup of tea, he would be heading back, giving no more detail than that.

Toni came in with a tray. Ilan took the cup of tea from her and their hands touched. He made a kiss with his mouth. She stuck her tongue out at him. Ilan gulped his tea down, shook hands with Mr Piper and gave Joshua a friendly hug. ‘‘Shalom, Joshua,’’ he said, ‘‘Chazak b’ amatz.’’ (Peace; be strong and of good courage.) Toni saw him to the front door. Joshua thought she took a fair time to say goodbye.

When she returned, the atmosphere seemed more relaxed. Andy Piper, Peg’s brother, who had started his working life as a plumber, was now the town’s ‘‘Mister Fixit’’ — Handy Andy, as he called himself. He had an absolute talent for mending just about anything that needed fixing, whether in the home or on a farm. Toni was very proud of him. Her mother, dissatisfied with her life in a country town, had enrolled at the University of New England. Her visits home were geared to the semester breaks and with each succeeding one she seemed more reluctant to stay with her family. Toni had taken over much of the responsibility of running the house.

Her grandmother was forever comparing Toni to Peg. ‘‘Could have been sisters,’’ she would say, propping up pictures of them both at the same age. Nevertheless, it had taken Mrs Piper a long, long time before she could bring herself to tell Toni how her Aunty Peg had died in a land she knew only from childhood Bible stories.

Mrs Rothfield’s early letters were ignored. To this day she still did not wish to know of Jacob’s life, but when the appealing baby pictures of Joshua began to arrive, accompanied by Mrs Rothfield’s doting explanations, she weakened. Every so often Mrs Rothfield would go to the post office to use the long distance phone and call her friend whom she had never met. As long as she had coins to feed the phone, she talked of Joshua’s doings, carefully avoiding mention of Jacob, knowing that Mrs Piper held him responsible for her daughter’s death.

With Ilan gone, Joshua felt more in command of himself. On the trip up he had rehearsed what he would say to Mrs Piper. Mrs Rothfield had also schooled him thoroughly, particularly in his all too brief and shattered relationship with Pnina. The old woman sang Pnina’s praises, comparing her to the loyal, Biblical Ruth one minute and the militant Deborah the next. It was Jacob who hesitantly revealed to Joshua the story of his true, natural parents, each in their own way victims of the Holocaust. Joshua buried this information deep within himself. It was at the one time a great personal tragedy and a burden to carry through his growing years. It was something he could never be free of.

He looked around the lounge room with its curious mix of well-worn solid furniture and the odd pieces of trendy modern make. The huge walnut-veneered radiogram was now nothing more than a cabinet to stand Toni’s hi-fi equipment on. The LPs were in a functional wire rack. The girl’s influence could be seen also in the magazines scattered on a kidney-shaped coffee table.

Joshua finished his tea and put the cup on the coffee table. He had drunk it standing up. Andy noticed this and said, ‘‘Sit down, son. I think it’s going to be a long night of talking when Mum gets home so take the weight off your feet.’’ Toni took the cups out, then came back and sat next to her father on the lounge. The three of them seemed uneasy without the focal point of Ilan to unite them. Bazza saved the occasion by going to each one in turn for a pat. Joshua was about to say something irrelevant when there was a loud rapping at the front door.

Toni sprang up, her long auburn hair flouncing on her shoulders. ‘‘It’s Grandma, I betcha. Forgot her keys again.’’ She and Bazza ran up the passage and reappeared with Mrs Ethel Piper, widow of the fireman who stoked the train that Ben Chifley drove, mother of Peg/Pnina and Andy, grandma of Toni, latterly the confidante of Shulamit Rothfield and, finally, the putative grandmother of Joshua Kaiser, draft resister and fugitive.

If Ethel Piper was aware of her multi-faceted persona, outwardly at any rate it did not appear burdensome.

Joshua could see at once she was a woman of immense dignity. She did not speak until she reached the lounge room and had removed her coat, hat and gloves. She spoke directly to him in a warm, rich voice. ‘‘Welcome to my home, Joshua.’’ She held her hand out to him, a hand he could see was work-worn but with well-shaped fingernails. She and Joshua were about the same height. Joshua started with recognition — Ethel Piper’s eyes were like those in photos he had seen of Peg — the colour of grey-green opal slivers.

The electric silence that followed her greeting was broken by Andy’s laconic ‘‘You missed the other bloke, Mum. He drove Joshua here and then shot through.’’

Toni was about to speak, then thought better of it. Mrs Piper sat down and patted the seat beside her. ‘‘Can you trust this other fellow?’’

Joshua nodded. Andy said, ‘‘I reckon he’s some sort of Israeli secret agent. At any rate I’ll swear he had a gun in his pocket.’’

‘‘I don’t want to know about those things, Andy. I’m a pacifist. Guns and war have no place in my life.’’

Joshua saw Andy and Toni exchange glances.

Toni said: ‘‘But Nana, we’ve got a gun in this house. You know that.’’

Mrs Piper replied, ‘‘Toni darling, I may be old but I’m not stupid. If you live in the country you usually own a gun and ours is only a .22 rabbit gun anyway.’’

Andy laughed. ‘‘And it helps keep the young lairs away from Toni!’’

The girl blushed and replied sharply to her father. ‘‘Do shut up, Dad, or Joshua will think I’m the last virgin in Bathurst.’’ A look from her grandmother was enough to tell her that she had gone that one step too far. She tucked her skirt round her knees but looked up under her eyelashes at a startled Joshua.

Mrs Piper assumed command by her mere presence. First she asked with genuine warmth, ‘‘How is my friend Shu-lamit?’’

Joshua told her the old lady (she seemed ancient compared with Ethel Piper) was in good health. He added: ‘‘And Dad sends his …’’ but Mrs Piper cut him off.

‘‘Now we’ll talk about you, Joshua.’’ Her voice softened. ‘‘Andy and me, we’ve been talking about nothing else since Shulamit told us. I meant to ask you if you could grow a moustache. Not a beard — it seems as though every political lefty has a beard. Anyhow, let’s get started with the ‘mo’. That ought to help disguise you.’’ She studied Joshua’s face, then declared, ‘‘The lad hasn’t got a Jewish nose but then what would I know about that. I wouldn’t know a Jew if I tripped over one.’’ She appeared lost in thought for a moment, then said almost to herself: ‘‘What a shame we never had a picture of his real parents.’’

Andy, to fill the momentary awkwardness, told Joshua what he did for a living; how he used to be a plumber but enjoyed tinkering with this and that. Bathurst’s townies and the surrounding graziers kept him busy in his rambling tin shed out on Havannah Street, near the railway yards. When the petrol-heads powered into town for the Mt Panorama motor races, Andy was, as he put it, ‘‘as busy as a one-armed paper hanger! They all think they’re Jack Brabham and they end up with bits hangin’ off their cars and come to me to patch ’em up!’’

Toni giggled. ‘‘That’s what you think, Dad. They come to see me,’’ she teased.

‘‘Those that get too fresh have a rough ride back to Sydney,’’ Andy laughed. ‘‘And out comes the rabbit gun.’’

Mrs Piper let this banter continue for a bit longer, perhaps to put Joshua at his ease, then cut it short. ‘‘We reckon we can pass you off as Andy’s cousin’s son from Sydney — from Bondi actually, so if you do get cornered you know the background. See, not every young bloke got caught up in the birthday lottery call-up so it could be fair dinkum.’’

Andy chipped in: ‘‘Yeah. Handy Andy’s tinkerin’ business is booming so I can take on a helpin’ hand.’’ He looked at Joshua’s hands. ‘‘I reckon Toni’s got tougher paws than you, old son. Still, a bit o’ time dismantlin’ old car bodies will fix that up.’’

Ethel Piper took command again. ‘‘Andy and Toni are living with me while my … my daughter-in-law is away at …’’ she left the sentence floating. ‘‘There is room for you Joshua, out the back.’’ Her voice trembled slightly. ‘‘It used to be Peg’s room.’’

Joshua glanced quickly at Toni, who pretended to be concentrating on Bazza’s ears but shot quizzical glances at her grandmother. Mrs Piper went on: ‘‘We may have to change your name or at least shorten it, Joshua. Would you mind if, outside this house of course, you were known as Joe? And we thought maybe, if the need arose, your surname could be King. After all, a Kaiser was a sort of king, wasn’t he?’’

Toni burst out laughing. ‘‘You have to be kidding, Nana. That would make his name ‘joking’ — Joe King — joking oh ho, ha ha. What’s your name, sport? My name is Joe King — Ah, you’re joking, of course!’’ And she fell about, shrieking with laughter.

Ethel Piper said sharply, ‘‘That’s enough, Toni. If you don’t take this whole matter seriously, Joshua could end up in gaol.’’

Andy was smart. He warned his daughter that any slip-up and Joshua would be sent back to Sydney to take his chances. Toni quietened down and even Bazza looked serious. Her grandmother continued:

‘‘All right, tomorrow’s Monday. Joshua will leave in the morning and go to work with Andy. When Toni and I go down town to the shops we’ll start dropping the word here and there that Joe King, Andy’s nephew from Sydney, is spending a little time with us.’’ She glared around the room. ‘‘Let me tell you this is not a game we’re playing, and I wish to God we didn’t have to do it. We’re in it up to our armpits now as law-breakers …’’ She broke off. ‘‘Right oh, all of you, off to bed and sleep with your mouths shut!’’