Amberville 1956
The town of Amberville hadn’t improved in Odette’s eyes in the past three years. She found it small, boring and claustrophobic with no quaint country charm. The townspeople were closed and withdrawn and made her aware she was still an outsider.
Amberville looked liked most Australian country towns. A sprawl of mainly timber and iron-roofed houses with big verandahs, several well-kept churches and an imposing bank and post office. The broad main street was divided by wilting palms, parked cars and trucks. The pavement was wide, shaded by awnings from dim shops. No one hurried.
Isobel Street was the town’s business and social thoroughfare. At one end was the park with rusting swings and World War I memorial. At the other end was the new Returned Services Leagues club built with funds raised by veterans of two world wars. In between these was a century of enterprise — from the chemist shop, which always had the town’s prettiest girls serving behind the counter, to the musty hardware store where a bank of tiny drawers held nails, screws and bits and bobs.
The big general store, which still bore the nineteenth century designation of ‘emporium’, stocked everything from food to general merchandise and birthday gifts. The town jeweller, Mr Steiner, a goldsmith who fled Vienna in 1939, carried a range of silver and crystal wedding gifts, clocks ticked across one wall, and watches were neatly lined up in glass showcases with hands all pointing to quarter to three.
The haberdashery, run by two grey-haired spinster sisters, Ethel and Audrey Armstrong, stocked school uniforms, mosquito netting and bolts of practical fabrics. One section of the small shop was devoted to notions, ribbons and a range of brightly coloured knitting wool. A well-thumbed pattern book hung by a length of string next to the counter. When the ladies weren’t serving or tidying the shop, they sat and knitted tea cosies, covered coat hangers, toys and babies’ layettes for the Red Cross stalls.
The butcher’s shop had sawdust on the floor, and one of the black and white tiled walls was decorated with a poster of a massive bull dissected into popular cuts of meat. On crushed ice in the window were trays of fresh meat killed at the local abattoirs. The Trunkeys, father and son, uniformed in blue-and-white striped aprons, wielded knives and choppers with noisy dexterity at two great blocks cut from ancient tree trunks.
The newsagent was always busy, presided over by the bustling and bespectacled Mr Lennox. It was the first business to open each day so people could collect their newspapers which came up from Sydney on the overnight train. It was in the newsagent that locals bought their ‘ticket of dreams’ in the lottery, filling in the syndicate’s name with favourite lucky omens. It was here that neighbours paused to comment on the headlines, exchange gossip, or remark on the dry weather and the need for rain.
The young people of the town were to be found in the Athena Cafe, sipping frothy milkshakes from metal canisters or scooping ice cream from the bottom of their spiders — tall glasses filled with a fizzy soft drink. The ever-smiling Mr and Mrs Spiros cooked at a sputtering hotplate, meeting the demand for hamburgers, rissoles, bacon and egg rolls, and steak sandwiches. At night they were the last in the street to pull the iron grille across their closed doors.
Smaller shops came and went, changing hands to out-of-towners. At the far end of the main street near the war memorial was a garage with a mechanic’s workshop. It was also the seed and grain supplier. Next door, past a paddock where two old Clydesdale horses were seeing out their final years, was the blacksmith and farriers, still defying competition from the internal combustion engine.
Across the park, the community hall and council chambers were solid, conservative brick buildings. Further down the street was the whitewashed wooden schoolhouse and recently added fibro classrooms. A wire fence ran around the schoolyard where several horses were tethered after being ridden to school and where loyal dogs waited for their owners to be released at three each afternoon.
Isobel Street finally ended at the river where a vehicle punt chugged across to the far side. Around its banks and running back towards the hills was a square mile of dense rainforest known as the Brush. Odette quickly discovered and fell in love with this shadowed haven where only glimmers of light filtered through the canopy above. The roots of the fig trees formed walled caverns as big as rooms, making hiding places that smelled of rich rotting leaves. Aerial roots and vines swung like fat ropes from the tree branches, reaching towards the sweet moist earth. In here she was reminded of the secret peace and mystery of Zanana.
The Brush was home to a multitude of fauna unobtrusive except for the noisy exception of thousands of fruit bats known as flying foxes because of their razor teeth and claws. During the day they hung upside down, enfolded in the velvet capes of their wings like a prodigious crop of dark ripe fruit. At twilight they rose in a screeching cloud to forage, devastating fruit trees for miles in every direction.
Odette trudged home from school. It was hot. She wished she’d brought her bicycle, but Aunt Harriet had sold it, along with almost everything else in the deceased estate sale of her parents’ home. It was typical of Aunt Harriet to take control and assume that she knew best and that everyone agreed with her. The years of caring for her father then living alone had made her somewhat impervious to the sensitivities of others. Most people didn’t argue with Aunt Harriet, not willing to challenge her imperious and often supercilious demeanour.
How Odette had hated every moment of that sale. A day of invasion where strangers had rifled through the accumulated life of Ralph and Sheila Barber with critical and bored comments.
‘These chairs are a bit tatty. Might do in the sunroom.’
‘Why do you think she kept all this old stuff? . . . S’pose we could make a bid for the fishing gear and sewing basket, luv.’
Odette had given up arguing and protesting as Harriet had busily sorted the contents of cupboards and drawers into piles. ‘Don’t need any of these linens, I have plenty,’ she trilled cheerfully.
Surreptitiously, Odette delved back into the box of linen when her Aunt’s back was turned, pulling out the crocheted doilies and cover for the sauce bottle. She also salvaged the hand-knitted cosies that went over their ‘soldier eggs’.
How the three of them had loved their soft-boiled eggs, each sitting upright in its eggcup; when the cosy was pulled off the warm egg, a silly face, funny message or sketchy picture drawn by Sheila surprised and delighted Ralph and Odette. There was a ritual to soldier eggs — the top tapped off with a knife — Sheila was a ‘little ender’, Odette and her father were ‘big enders’. The white was scooped out of the severed top, then the spoon plunged into the creamy yellowness, breaking the yolk, which had to be soft but with no gluey undercooked white. A piece of toast was cut into four ‘fingers’ which were dipped as deeply as possible, never letting the yolk dribble over the jagged edge. And when finished, the egg shell was tipped upside down in the eggcup and they joked with each other that they had an untouched egg.
Holding the egg cosies Odette remembered how Sheila had always opened her father’s egg for him, slicing the top off neatly, sprinkling in pepper and salt and pushing it towards him with a smile and, ‘There you are, Ralphie, done just the way you like it. Now don’t let it get cold.’
And as her father folded the newspaper he would always peer at the egg and marvel, ‘Your mother cooks eggs to perfection within a second — and she never times them. She must have a built-in clock, eh, Detty?’ And with a smile for his wife, lift the spoon and dip into the egg.
Odette secreted the memorabilia in an old cardboard suitcase under her bed, along with other items she had saved — a cut-glass bowl which had sat on her mother’s dressing table and held seldom-used face powder, and, from the top of the piano, a plaster figure of a ballerina in a pale green and pink tutu.
Odette didn’t know where the ballerina had come from. As long as she could remember, it had stood, frozen en pointe, on top of the piano; one arm arched above her head, the other curved across the front of the rigid tutu, fingers delicately placed, the tapering index finger pointing to her dainty toes. Dust had long settled into the tiny holes between each stiffened net square of the skirt, and the colours had faded, but it gave the figure a translucency which made the tiny dancer seem even more delicate.
These were not valuable, but their familiarity, and knowing how her mother liked them, made them special, and so she kept them a secret from Aunt Harriet.
‘Odette? You’re late home from school, dear. You shouldn’t dawdle in this heat.’ Harriet’s voice sliced through Odette’s memories. ‘Afternoon tea is set out, dear,’ said Harriet, holding open the porch door. ‘Wash your hands and then start your homework. But before it gets too late, I’d like you to go down to the butter factory. I need some fresh cream. I’ve made a sponge cake.’
‘That’s nice,’ said Odette dutifully. She eyed the Sao biscuits topped with Vegemite and slices of cheese and the jug of cold lemonade. She wished Aunt Harriet wouldn’t fuss so much. Left alone Odette would have enjoyed the snack, but with her aunt standing over her, smiling in that self-satisfied way, she found it hard to swallow.
It seemed to Odette that in Harriet’s house one had to be constantly thankful. She was always being reminded to ‘give thanks for our blessings, Odette. There are a lot of people far worse off than we are.’ Once the evening meal was set on the table, Harriet clasped her hands and uttered a fervent grace in ringing tones. Odette never truly felt grateful or thankful, but guilty, as though she was a constant drain on Aunt Harriet’s resources.
Finishing her lemonade, Odette escaped the confines of the house, her ugly school uniform and Aunt Harriet’s questioning about her day. She hopped, skipped and jumped along the railway line, enjoying her freedom. She walked carefully, as if on a tightrope, along a steel track, then ran down its centre, leaping across alternate ironbark sleepers. The train only came into Amberville twice a day — in the early hours of the morning going north, and seven o’clock at night going south. The railway line passed by the old butter factory where local milk was turned into butter, cream and pasteurised milk to go on the train to Sydney for the city’s breakfast.
Harriet had befriended the wife of the manager and was invited to free samples each week or so. Harriet didn’t like to ‘take advantage’ as she put it, but nonetheless Odette was dispatched each fortnight to the butter factory to have the billycan filled with thick yellow cream.
If they weren’t busy at the factory, one of the men would let Odette clamber up the narrow metal ladder on the outside of the big vats and peer into the swirling oceans of milk. It was a sweet rich smell which still lingered when their daily milk was delivered. In the early hours of the morning the milkman carried milk from the factory in a horse-drawn cart, then in metal cans to the letter box or front doorstep where an empty jug or billycan waited to be filled.
Odette didn’t linger at the factory — the day was fading. With the tin lid clamped firmly on the billycan she took the bush track back along the river bank which swung behind the butter factory. Coming around a bend in the path, she stopped in astonishment, clutching the cream protectively to her chest.
Spread along the bank among the trees was an impromptu camp. But what a camp! A dilapidated bus, three old American cars, two wooden caravans painted many colours and several horses all formed a rough circle. Figures moved around the bright campfire, and all seemed colour and light and cheerful noise. Odette stepped back, frightened to be seen by these peculiarly dressed people for they were unlike anyone else she had ever seen. But at the same time she was fascinated by the almost circus-like atmosphere and the sheer strangeness of it all.
The women wore long sparkly skirts and velvet jackets with scarves knotted over their thick dark hair. The men wore bright, multicoloured clothes and funny hats and scarves tied at their necks. They all seemed to be made of moving lights and flashes of gold, and laughter rang from one to another. Several children, dressed like the adults, romped with noisy dogs.
Odette watched for a few moments, quite enchanted by this strange tribe. She was standing in the shadow of the trees when suddenly a voice from nowhere spoke to her. She started so violently that the cream slopped from under the billycan lid.
‘You needn’t hide there. We’re quite harmless, you know.’
It was a gentle male voice, with a slight accent, which, as Odette thought later, sounded smiley.
‘Who’s there? Where are you?’
‘Look up, girl, look up.’
She tilted her head and stared into the tree.
‘Hello.’ A young man grinned back at her.
‘Oh. Hello. What are you doing up there?’
‘I like trees. You hear music in trees.’
‘You do?’
He swung from the tree with an agile leap, landing in front of Odette, who gazed at him in silence. He was only a few years older than Odette, a tall slim boy with a crop of long black curls, deep brown eyes and startling white teeth. His skin was tanned and he too wore the same colourful clothes as the people by the fire. She was fascinated to see a small gold hoop earring in one ear.
‘Do you want to hear the music?’
Odette blinked. ‘What music?’
‘Here. Put that down.’ He took the billycan from her and put it on the ground; taking her hands, he wrapped her arms about the slim trunk of the tree so she was hugging it. He gently pressed her cheek against the smooth new bark. ‘Listen, listen to the tree singing to you.’
Obediently Odette closed her eyes and concentrated. The tree seemed to vibrate with life, it felt warm and growing and she imagined she could hear, deep inside its tall trunk, a faint hum. Then she really did hear a soft song in a language she didn’t understand. She opened her eyes to see the boy whispering the song close to her ear. Odette dropped her arms from the tree and stood back. ‘You’re teasing me.’
‘Not at all. Trees sing, I sing too.’ He sang more of the lilting song to her. He had a soft melodious voice.
‘What language is that? I don’t understand the words.’
‘It’s Romany. We’re gypsies. Don’t you know?’
Odette shook her head.
‘You don’t know much, do you? Fancy never listening to a tree sing. Come on, come and meet my family.’ He picked up her billycan.
‘Oh no, I have to get home.’
‘Don’t be shy. If you haven’t heard of gypsies, you haven’t heard what wicked mischievous people we are. Come along then.’
She followed behind the boy as he stepped out in a long swinging stride, whistling as he walked.
No one seemed surprised to see Odette; they smiled and greeted her, exclaiming at her pretty name. Several of the women touched her burnished head of red-gold curls in delight.
‘Lucky girl. You’ve been touched by the spirits!’
A bit taken aback, Odette glanced at the boy beside her.
‘Good spirits, don’t worry,’ the boy grinned. ‘Now. You’re Odette and I’m Zachary and we are all one big family here.’ He waved his arm about the circle of people.
‘You all belong to one family?’ asked Odette in surprise.
An old man spoke up. ‘No one person belongs to another, my child. We are all of one family. We share and care for what we have — children, horses, possessions. All belong to the family group, not the individual.’
‘There is my mother and my father, and these are my uncles and aunts and cousins,’ said Zachary, making a sweeping gesture round the group. He pointed to the old man. ‘Edwin is our tribal chief, designated by our queen. She is in another place,’ he added, seeing Odette’s swift glance around the women for the one who might be queen.
‘Where do you live?’
‘In the moment, dear child,’ answered Edwin. Then, looking at the sky, he continued, ‘We travel the road of life. We are the children of Bohemia, the eternal wanderers.’ He paused, about to say more, but stopped. ‘So, you live in the town here?’
Odette nodded unenthusiastically.
‘You don’t like it?’
Odette shook her head.
One of the women shrugged and spread her arms in a broad gesture. ‘Then come with us! Be as free as the birds and follow the weaving road and wandering river.’ She was wearing lots of bangles, necklaces, rings and earrings. Odette had never seen so much jewellery on one person. She had several skirts on top of each other of different colours and material. A handkerchief was knotted over her hair, which fell in two thick braids down her back, the ends tied together with coloured wool.
‘I have to go to school,’ said Odette.
They laughed and Zachary pulled one of her ringlets. ‘And what do they teach you there? How to be happy? How to listen to trees singing and understand the song of the birds? To enjoy life’s great adventure?’
Odette couldn’t help smiling back at him. ‘No such luck . . . it’s reading and history and arithmetic. Don’t you go to school?’
‘I go to the school of life and the world.’ He started singing once more. One of the men produced a small violin, another a squeeze box, while one of the girls began beating on a tambourine decorated with bells and ribbons.
A beautiful young woman with a flashing smile and sparkling eyes snapped her fingers and stamped her feet, and began to dance. Everyone joined in, the women’s long skirts swirling about them as their bare feet scissored in an intricate pattern. The men, graceful, controlled and with sensual arrogance, danced towards them. All were completely absorbed in the passion and flow of the music.
The children laughingly ran and joined them. Before she knew it, Zachary had caught Odette and was twirling her about.
‘Stay and have supper with us, girl,’ said one of the women as the merry dance ended.
‘I can’t. My aunt will be worried about me. Gosh it’s getting dark. I must go.’
‘Zac, see her back safely. Farewell, little one. Come again if you can.’
The boy Zac took her hand and began walking her back towards town. Odette waved to them and asked, ‘What did she mean, if I can?’
‘We have a habit of moving on,’ he laughed. ‘Now tell me your story. Real or not, I don’t mind.
Odette tossed her head. ‘I live in a tree. And every week a magic kingdom drifts to the top of my tree on a cloud and I have adventures in all these strange and wonderful lands.’ She doubted he would have read one of her favourite childhood stories.
He listened with his head cocked, his expression thoughtful. ‘What happens if the land moves on and you are still in it?’
‘Oh, you must never do that! You have to hurry down the ladder from the cloud to the tree before the land moves on, or be lost forever!’
‘Ahh, I see. I must climb to the top of my trees and see if I can find such a wonderful place. In the meantime, I think this must be your house.’
He winked at her at the front gate of Aunt Harriet’s house, squeezed her hand briefly, blew her a kiss and, singing, danced away. In a daze Odette watched him go, then hurried indoors.
‘Where have you been?’ demanded Aunt Harriet. ‘I was just about to set out and look for you. You are a dreamer, Odette, you never pay attention to what you’re doing. It’s all very well and good you making up stories and mooning about the place all of the time, but life goes on. You will never get on in this world if you spend half your time daydreaming. Now, where’s the cream? Dinner is ready.’
‘Oh. I don’t have it, Aunt Harriet.’
Her aunt stopped what she was doing and turned and faced Odette. ‘And why not? Where is the billycan? Don’t tell me they refused you?’
‘No, no . . . I . . .’ Instinct warned her not to mention the band of gypsies. Indeed Zac and his family were beginning to seem like a dream. ‘I think I left it down by the river. I walked back that way.’
‘There, what did I just tell you — you live in another world, Odette. Really, you are hopeless, how you are going to manage out in the big wide world, I can’t imagine. You’ll be losing your handbag and walking into a bus or getting lost.’ Harriet sighed in exasperation. ‘Well, it’s too dark to go back for it now. And just what I’m going to do with that cake for the Red Cross tea tomorrow morning, I don’t know. I am very annoyed with you.’
‘I’ll fetch it in the morning before school.’
‘Oh, it will probably be off by then. Just go and get ready for dinner,’ she snapped.
Meekly Odette left the room. Dinner was eaten in silence and, after washing up the dishes, Odette fled to her room on the pretext she had homework to do. Harriet sat listening to the radio, knitting another tea cosy for a charity fundraiser. The fast snapping of her needles and tight set of her mouth indicated she was still bothered by the loss of the cream.
Outside Odette’s window a bird called. She lifted her head in surprise at the sudden burst of song in the night. She went to the window and peered into the dark street, but the song had stopped. She went back to her desk and the story she was writing about her meeting with the gypsies, then suddenly she paused and laughed aloud.
Hurrying as quietly as she could, she crept from the house and ran to the front gate. The billycan of cream was hanging on the gate, a single rose stuck under the lid handle. Odette recognised the rose from a garden up the street and, smiling to herself, she knew where that bird call had come from.
She hid the rose in the folds of her cardigan and took the cream inside. ‘Aunt Harriet, I just remembered where I left the cream! Up the road at Eileen’s.’
Odette was humming as she skittered back to her room, the sweet-smelling bud lifted to her lips. She hoped the gypsies would still be by the river tomorrow.
After school she hurried to the river, paused to compose herself, and swung around the bend in the track. She stopped, disappointment surging through her. The camp site where the gypsies had danced was empty. The wanderers had moved on, following the pull of centuries of searching.