Читать книгу Bird of Paradise - Rosemary Esmonde Peterswald - Страница 11

In the morning, Merryn awoke with a sense of loneliness and expectation. Which was the strongest she wasn’t sure? For a moment she felt embarrassed about last night. Had anyone heard her outburst? But the more she thought of what Jake had said about telling her mother and Amy about their baby, the madder she got. What a nerve. Even if he said he didn’t really mean it. Or did he? She knew he would do anything to protect his career. Hadn’t he given up his son in the first place?

When she glanced at her watch, she was surprised to see it was already nine. Would breakfast still be on? But she needn’t have worried—for when she went downstairs, a beaming young Papuan, wearing an orange lap lap and a red hibiscus tucked into a thicket of sooty hair , showed her to the same table she and Jake had sat at last night. Shortly she served herself a few small pieces of pawpaw and pineapple from the buffet in the corner. By the time she was back at her table, the waiter was hovering with a steaming coffee pot and a copy of the South Pacific Post.

‘Thank you,’ she said, giving him a smile.

‘Emi olrait, missus,’ he said cheerfully, his whole face glistening.

Merryn, too, was perspiring terribly, and it seemed even hotter than yesterday.

‘Ah, there you are. You survived the Gubba then? God wasn’t it howling?’ It was Jo, the receptionist from yesterday. This morning Merryn was aware of her bright airy smile and easy manner. Yesterday she hadn’t really noticed that, nor that Jo was pretty, in a country sort of way, creamy skin contrasting to rich dark hair, which this morning was tied back in a ponytail. The skirt she wore was even shorter than yesterday’s, and on her feet she was wearing a pair of rubber thongs. Merryn wondered if she was up in Moresby with the public service. Or was she perhaps a schoolteacher, working in the pub in her spare time?

Or was this her main job? Before she had a chance to ask, Jo straightened the small vase of flowers in the centre of the table and cast her eyes to the window.

‘The blighter comes straight in from the water.’ Then pointing to a Chinese trade store with a galvanized roof across the road, she waved her hands in an exaggerated arc. ‘A few years back it blew that roof clean into air, ending up in the street...lucky it was at night and no one was around.’

‘I thought the whole pub would blow down,’ Merryn said. ‘It seemed to go on for hours.’

‘Ah, it must’ve been worse here,’ exclaimed Jo, eyeing a scraggly palm tree alongside the veranda with a tangle of tattered fronds hanging in shreds and a pile of fallen coconuts strewn at its base. ‘I’m at Badilli. It wasn’t quite as bad there. But what d’you say?’ she asked, looking towards the kitchen. ‘Can I get you something hot? Bacon and eggs perhaps?’

Merryn could think of nothing worse in this heat. ‘No, this is fine, thank you.’

‘Well, help yourself to some more fruit if you like.’ She pointed to the buffet. ‘There’s heaps more where that lot came from.

It’ll just go to waste if not eaten. Anyway,’ she added, looking at the paper in Merryn’s hand, ‘I’ll leave you in peace to catch up on the news. Not that there’s much in that...never is. I’ve a copy of The Australian if you’d like. A few days old mind you. Always is.’

‘Thank you, but I read yesterday’s on the plane up.’

‘More killed in Vietnam. You see that?’ Jo raised a neatly plucked eyebrow and sighed in exasperation. ‘Jees, that’s some war we should’ve stayed out of. Let the Yanks get on with it. Bloody Holt had the hide to commit us. Then what’d he do? Up and disappear into the bloody ocean. Never to be seen of again. Probably living it up on some tropical island whilst the cream of Aussie youth gets shot to pieces.’

Merryn’s lips formed a half smile. ‘Yes...well...I suppose we didn’t have much choice.’

Merryn saw Jo give a slight flinch. Had she remembered Jake was in the army? She leant towards Merryn’s cup.

‘Ah ...well...yes...anyway what about more coffee?’

‘That would be great.’

Having filled Merryn’s cup, she was off to seat a middle-aged couple. Merryn eyed the wife’s sensible garb—long floral skirt, matronly blouse, and thick leather sandals. Her husband, a long tall string of a man with a pair of steel rimmed glasses perched on his flat nose, was wearing dark shiny trousers with a short-sleeved white shirt and carried a Panama hat. No doubt new missionaries come to convert the hordes of marauding natives, Merryn mused, suddenly finding she was inwardly smiling, lifting her mood. She looked out of the window to where a group of little children were climbing up the coconut tree, their shiny ebony eyes awash with glee, their shouts of unadulterated merriment wafting through the humid air to where Merryn sat. And as she watched them playing, she realised she was excited to be here, in this strange country. It would have been easy to say she wouldn’t come. Despite what she’d said to Jake last night, Barty Harmon probably would have understood. But that would have been giving in. She opened the louvres and waved to the gaggle of children. With a twinge of longing, she thought her son would be much the same age as the youngest one. What would he be doing now? Who would he be playing with? Where?

After a moment of eyeing her shyly, the little children waved back, small black hands raised high above their curly heads.

But look what I would have missed out on, she thought, if I hadn’t come to Moresby.

She had not long turned her attention back to the South Pacific Post when a soldier appeared in front of her.

‘Missus... mi Wafiago, ‘ he said, his huge beam contagious.

‘Hello, Wafiago. You come to get me?’

‘Yes... mi driver bilong yu...’ he said proudly, bending down to pick up Merryn’s case.

She noticed he was not as dark as Phillip, but taller. For some reason she’d expected Phillip, yet was grateful for anyone. In any case, she told herself, feeling a stab of pain, Phillip had probably driven Jake and Amanda to the picnic at Idler’s Bay.

‘Thank you, Wafiago,’ she said, following him to the car. ‘Do you know where we’re going?’

Nodding enthusiastically, he opened the boot, carefully placing her suitcase inside.

‘Where are you from?’ she asked a few minutes later, as they drove down the busy main street with cars parked on both sides.

‘Me no save.’ He shook his head vigorously.

Was that where he came from, or didn’t he understand?

‘Your village, where is it?’

‘Ah,’ he said. ‘Vanimo—bilong Sepik.’

‘Is that a long way from Moresby?’

He nodded , ‘Longway tumas.’

She understood the longway part and left it at that.

A short time later, as the beach approached and then fell away when the road divided, they rounded the point. Slowing down he turned to face her.

‘Em bilong Koki,’ he said, pointing through the windscreen at an expanse of makeshift stalls spread out under tall palm trees and multicoloured umbrellas. Beyond the stalls, native outrigger canoes, some with crude timber masts and hessian sails, dropped off fish and other produce. A little further on, dozens of archaic houseboats were tied to the shore. Under the palms and corrugated roofs, the dark-skinned masses thronged, their clothes a maze of zychoodelic colours.

Wafiago stopped the car, and Merryn opened her window wider. Straightaway an aroma she had never experienced before assaulted her—a mixture of fish cooked on wood fires, the sweat of humans, dry dust, and tobacco smoke. It was different but not unpleasant.

She opened the door and asked Wafiago to wait. Maybe it would be nice to arrive with something for Tori, the girl she was to flat with. The pineapple and mangoes she picked up from a bare-breasted meri‘s straw mat felt ripe and juicy and the paw paws and bananas firm. She squirmed a little as live crabs, tied up with string, wriggled on the mat next to the fruit. Laid out on the dry dirt were intricate wooden carvings, vibrant rainbow coloured string bilums, shell bags, and necklaces. Next to that— on a hessian bag—sweet potatoes, village greens, and wild yams sat alongside piles of betel nut and clumps of firewood. In a wire cage, a white cockerel poked his beak through a hole trying to peck at the dirt. Further on, a tight group of men stood smoking and chewing betel nut under a tree. But mostly the people, Papuans and some Europeans, wandered happily.

It was strange to feel so alone amidst all this. Then, Merryn reflected, would she not feel the same in Sydney, down by the ferries, or in a busy street? At least it was different here.

When she was back in the stifling heat of the car, Wafiago started the engine and moved through a group of children who then ran after them, banging on the shiny green metalwork. Was it the uniform that was the attraction? Merryn wondered. A little to her left was a village with oblong-shaped houses built on stilts out over the water. Amidst the houses, tall palms shifted in the breeze, and a number of canoes, with rusty outboards, were tied to the stilts.

Not far on, they passed a trade store and a small electrical shop. Then Wafiago turned right at two iron gates opening to a yard full of huge trucks and front end loaders. Surely he must be mistaken. No. For he drove right through, stopping next to a two-story green fibro building.

Turning to Merryn, he proclaimed with pride. ‘Em ples bilong yu.’

Merryn’s heart sank as she eyed the building, the dry dusty yard, mountains of discarded rubber tyres, rusted out car chassis, and piles of fuel drums. A group of small children played behind a barbed wire fence. Under a tree, a mangy dog stopped chewing on a bone and barked at the car. An old woman, her face resembling the shrivelled skin of an overripe passion fruit, leant over a derelict wash stand, a tiny naked baby playing in the pale dust by her feet. Three little boys in filthy shorts and torn shirts rushed to the fence and peered through. No one spoke—just stared. Surely the Catholic mission she’d been told about, Merryn thought.

Another dog, huge and black, untangled itself from under the fibro building and barked threateningly. Too nervous to get out of the car, Merryn was wondering what to do next, when two tanned legs descended the stairs. At the summit of the legs appeared a pair of red shorts, then a bare midriff, and a white cropped T-shirt. An animated round face, within a halo of unruly glossy hair, topped it all off.

‘Hi there,’ the girl called out excitedly, waiving her hand in the air. ‘Welcome to hell hole.’ Her voice was light and airy with a slight Aussie twang to it.

‘You’re Tori?’ Merryn asked.

‘Sure am.’,

Merryn smiled as Tori walked towards the car and then eyed the dog warily. ‘Is he friendly?’

Tori laughed. ‘No need to worry about old Gunga Din. All bark, no bite...not that the neighbours know that.’ She grabbed the dog by the collar and opened the car door. ‘Sorry about the landscaping...hope it doesn’t scare you off. You get used to it after a while.’ She grinned, gesturing across the yard. ‘Some of the loaders are even quite cute.’

Merryn gazed around, this time taking in a couple of black sows trying to nuzzle through the fence from the mission. It looked as if it wouldn’t be long before they’d succeed, or at the very least the fence would collapse in a heap around them. ‘It’s different...to what I expected,’ she said.

Then again, she wondered, what did I expect?

‘Bet it is,’ Tori went on brightly. ‘But I reckoned if I explained you’d never come. It’s really quite nice upstairs. The Department of Works owns it, hence all the machinery. You’ll get used to it... and Gunga Din here looks after us not bad.’ She patted the dog’s shiny head. And such was the force of Tori’s personality that Merryn was quite sure Gunga Din would.

‘Sorry I didn’t pick you up from the airport,’ Tori apologized. ‘Barty said a friend was meeting you. Great you’ve someone you know here.’ She raised an eyebrow. ‘He’s at Karu Barracks, isn’t he?’

Merryn waited a moment before speaking. ‘Yes, he is.’ She fiddled with the clasp on her chain belt. ‘He’s an old family friend.’ I’d better get used to saying this, she thought. ‘It was good to see him again. I hadn’t seen him for a while.’

‘Ah! Anyway come on up,’ Tori beckoned, pointing to the stairs and grabbing Merryn’s carry all. ‘I bet you’re melting.’

After watching Wafiaga reverse out of the yard, Merryn fell in behind Tori, to a long narrow room with the floor covered in black and white lino. Under the window was a table with a red checked tablecloth, and pushed against the wall was a battered cane lounge suite half-hidden under a Batik print throw over. In the corner, a huge yellow beanbag was covered in dog’s hair—no doubt Gunga Din’s favourite spot. Merryn placed the fruit on the table, next to a vase of purple and magenta bougainvillea and leant down to pat the dog. She was rewarded with much wagging of his tail and a huge lolloping lick to her hand. Suddenly she was homesick for her own dog, Rusty, now living with her mother and Amy. She remembered his huge soulful eyes looking up at her as she walked from the door to catch the plane up to Moresby. He knows I’m going, she’d thought. Yet her mother loved him nearly as much as Merryn did, so she knew he would be spoiled rotten.

She stood up, arching her back. ‘How old is he?’

‘Only two. But the heat and dust gets to them...not to mention the parasites and mange, no matter what you do. Anyway,’ she added, leaning down for Merryn’s suitcase, ‘come and I’ll show you where you’re sleeping.’

With Gunga Din in tow, they moved on to the bedroom where Tori hoisted Merryn’s case onto the single bed. It was a simple room, but to Merryn surprisingly appealing, even though the paint was chipped in places and the wooden floor raw and unstained. ‘I’ve got a double bed next door,’ Tori went on airily. ‘You’ll have to wait till I go to get that.’

Merryn’s eyes skittered around the room, to the white damask bed cover, to the colourful tattered Kilim on the scuffed floor, and over to the wooden louvres with white gauze curtains billowing in the breeze.

She smiled. ‘This will do just fine.’

Bounding back through the door, Tori called over her shoulder, ‘Come and I’ll get you an iced tea. Bet you’re dying of thirst?’

Merryn followed her to a small kitchenette where she pulled a jug from an old Kelvinator fridge and poured an iced tea into a long glass, handing it to Merryn.

‘Here, get this into you. It’s the best for quenching thirst. You don’t drink the water round here without boiling it heaps.’ She paused, raising her dark eyebrows in a fine crescent. ‘Now, what d’you say to something to eat? I’ve some fresh bread from the bakery at Boroko. Afraid I’ve picked at it. I just adore it hot.’ She chuckled. ‘It’s my one treat—one that keeps me fat.’

What was skinny if this was fat? Merryn wondered. For although she was tiny, probably only five foot two, her well-toned body was perfectly proportioned. Watching her standing there, Merryn noticed that her deep-set grey eyes darted to and fro, and one was slightly crooked, making her all the more attractive. But it was difficult to know which eye to follow.

‘Follow the left and you’ll be right,’ Tori said as if in answer to Merryn’s thoughts. ‘The right does its own thing. No matter what I do that’s how it is.’

‘I think it’s very attractive. Like Lauren Hutton the actress and model. You heard of her?’

Tori laughed. ‘Sure have. Then she’s six foot tall and divine. Me, well, I’m just little old Tori with a crooked eye.’

Merryn thought she was going to like Tori; it would be difficult not to.

Sipping thirstily from the long glass of iced tea, she licked her lips. ‘This is great. Just what I needed.’

‘Goodo.’

‘But tell me about work.’

‘Sure.’ She gestured for Merryn to sit on one of the stools by the table. ‘Well, as you know, Barty Harman runs the place. He used to be in the Department of Civil Aviation before he started BOPAIR about six years ago. We’ve eight planes, some Hertz hire cars, and an aerial mapping section’

‘How many staff?’

‘Five in the office in town and then...at the airport...well... two office staff and six pilots. Seven now you’re here. Imagine you being a pilot,’ she said wondrously. ‘We’ve never had a female pilot flying commercially in New Guinea before, not that I know of ... not even at PATAIR.’

Merryn put her glass on the table. ‘I know of at least one.

Pat Graham flew with Gibbes Sepik Airways in the fifties.’ She paused. ‘I suppose in a way she was my inspiration to come here—apart from the fact I’ve got to get my hours up before I can fly commercially in Australia.’

‘You will—before you know it. Old Barty will have you in the sky day in day out. We’ve taken on a bit of army work lately so it’s all go.’

Great! Merryn thought. Perhaps it will be harder to steer clear of Jake after all.

‘Anyway,’ Tori continued, ‘in the city we look after the paper work, bookings, hire car, and aerial mapping. At the airport they do baggage, some aerials, and maintenance. Barty’s a bit of a tyrant at times, but on the whole he’s okay.’ She gave a wry smile. ‘He’s got a mistress. Had her for years. She helps with the aerial mapping. You’ll like her. Her husband’s a machinery salesman with Burns Philip and’s away most of the time so doesn’t know what’s going on. Barty’s wife does, however, and she’s a bit of a pain.’ She squashed a mosquito with the palm of her hand and then went to the sink to wash it off. ‘Probably can’t blame her.’ She swung around, wiping her hands on a tea towel. ‘She lives in a unit in town with their two kids. Barty stays between them and Virginia, but everyone calls her Ginny.’

‘Sounds interesting,’ Merryn said. ‘And what about you, Tori? What do you do?’

‘I’m the receptionist and Barty’s secretary. He’s not a bad boss—a bit demanding. Refuses to use shorthand and insists on doing all his dictation into a tape recorder, even when he’s flying.’ Tori cast her eyes to heaven. ‘It’s impossible to hear what he’s saying, which drives me nuts, and he gets furious if you ask. But really he’s okay...you’ll like him. I do, despite his faults.’ She reached out her hand. ‘More tea?’

‘No thanks, this is plenty.’

‘Well, there’s heaps more if you change your mind.’ Sitting down, she curled her feet around the leg of the stool. ‘Anyway, tell me—what made you decide to come here? Couldn’t you get your hours up in Australia?’

Merryn stood up, stretching her arms in the air. ‘No, Papua New Guinea’s the only place I could find to take me.’ A pause. ‘But what about you?’

‘The oldies were here for years with Burns Philip. I used to come on school holidays and fell in love with a fellow. When they went home, I stayed. Eugene and I were to be married.’ Her eyes ceased darting and settled on the top of her glass of iced tea. ‘Then didn’t the silly bugger up and die on me. He was a government patrol officer...got a really bad case of malaria...in the highlands.’

Merryn gave her a sympathetic smile. ‘I’m sorry. How long ago was that?’

‘Three years. We buried him in the southern highlands, which he adored. He loved the sea too, so do I. It’s good here being close to the water.’ She took a sip of tea, and then ran a finger over her lips. ‘But it’s not all bad. I’ve met someone else. As a matter of fact, he’s from Karu Barracks. Matthew Upton. We’ve been going out for a year now. He’s even popped the question. I haven’t said yes...not yet anyway...but you never know—maybe there’ll be wedding bells around the corner! We agreed to wait and talk about it when he comes back from the army exercise he’s on.’ She wrinkled her forehead. ‘Perhaps I’ve met your friend through him?’

Crossing her knees, Merryn tapped the sole of her foot on the ground. ‘You may well have. He’s a captain...Jake Hawkins.’

‘Hawkins? Ah yes, I’ve heard of him. Isn’t he taking the colonel’s daughter out? Aren’t they getting married soon? All seems very quick.’ She chuckled. ‘Mind you, that’s the tropics for you. If the wedding’s in the sac sac chapel at Karu Barracks, it’ll be divine. No doubt you’ll be going?’

As a family friend, Merryn would be expected to go. She’d be hard put to come up with an excuse not to. But there was no way in the world, if she could help it, that she was going to put herself through that.

Fortunately Tori rushed on before she had a chance to answer. ‘There’s a rumour she’s pregnant. And that’s why the colonel’s insisted on them getting hitched so soon. You heard anything?’

Merryn took her glass to the sink and ran it under the tap. Moving to the window, her fingers fiddled absently with the gold cross around her neck, a gift from Jake. ‘No, I haven’t,’ she said, ‘but I wouldn’t put it past him. He was pretty fast as a kid...and well...’ She didn’t finish her sentence, too overcome with the ridiculousness of the absurd things she was saying. Why didn’t she just blurt the truth out?

For a moment she stood mulling this over. Idly, she watched a grey tabby cat climb onto the seat of one of the bulldozers in the yard below. Then she turned around, leaning against the sink. ‘If it’s okay by you, I think I’ll unpack. I haven’t much, but I might as well put it away and get ready for work tomorrow.’

Tori looked at her watch. ‘Crikey, is it that time already? I’ve gotta head into the office for a while. Barty left me a tape to transcribe. He needs it for a meeting tomorrow, so I said I’d type it up today. I’ll stop at the market on the way back and get some vegies. Why don’t you have a snooze this afternoon? You must be jet lagged. Those planes are the pits...so bloody hot and humid, and the useless cooling system never seems to work.’

Merryn grimaced. ‘You’re right there. It seemed to take an age, but I’m okay. I had a good sleep last night,’ she lied. ‘What about dinner? Can I do anything?’

Tori’s smile was bright. ‘Nope. I’ve got some mince, and with the vegies I’ll get at Koki Market, we can have a chop sui. Hope you like spicy things. I adore them and as I’m always a bit thingy about the meat up here adding loads of chillies helps.’

‘Anything does me. I’m not fussy.’

‘Just as well. Anyway make yourself at home. I’ll see you when I get back.’

With that Tori drained her glass of iced tea, grabbed her purse off the bench, and headed for the front steps. ‘Have a cool bath if you get too hot. The bathroom’s under the house. Just watch for snakes though. Wear shoes. I keep it locked. The key’s behind the stove. Lock it when you’re inside. Sometimes the kids from next door wander over.’ She laughed a wonderful free laugh. ‘And the parents!’

‘Thanks,’ Merryn said, imagining it was going to be some time before she worked up the courage to have a bath.

‘The loo’s down there too,’ Tori called back up the steps.

That’d be right.

With that Tori took the stairs two at a time and hopped into her Mini, shutting the door with a slam. Shortly Merryn heard the tyres swivelling on the hard ground, and when she went to the door and stood on the landing, a gigantic whirlpool of pallid dust rose in the air above the yard as the Mini sped out of the gates onto the road.

Back in the bedroom, Merryn stepped over to the window and gazed at the view. Mainly shanty roofs. Beyond she could just make out the sun-washed bay, and for a moment, she thought she could hear the water. Surely not. But somehow just being able to glimpse the blue of the sea lifted her mood.

Could she be happy here? she asked herself. With Tori? Without Jake? It’d be easy to say how unfair it all was. But then hadn’t Tori had her share of unfairness too? Why quarrel with what life had thrown up? Little could be done about it anyway. She’d work out later whether she’d continue with the charade of never having being engaged to Jake. In the meantime, she’d go along with it. For what was there to lose, particularly with him away? Even now she imagined Tori’s reaction if Merryn had told her.

‘I was engaged to Jake Hawkins. We were to be married at the chapel at Karu Barracks. The same one he’s marrying Amanda James in.’

She could just see Tori’s eyes popping out of her head. ‘What! You were engaged when he got her pregnant? God how awful? Poor you. Crikey, if it was me, I’d kill him. What if you come across them? You’re sure to in a place like this. Jees, if I see him ... well, rest assured I’ll tell him what’s for.’

Immediately she would regard Merryn in a different light. Feel sorry for her.

Merryn unpacked her suitcase. Most of the clothes were new, although she’d brought some old favourites. Behind the door, she hung a shimmering evening dress, one she always loved and Jake’s favourite—silver, clingy with a large slit up the side. Would she ever have anywhere to wear it again? In another drawer, she carefully placed her wedding dress. She should have thrown it away, but somehow she couldn’t bring herself to. That would have been giving up all hope. After a moment, she took it from the drawer and placed it in the now empty suitcase, which she pushed under the bed.

Beside the bed she stood a black and white photograph, taken when she was just fifteen on her pony, Kinsale; Amy on her thoroughbred, Aron; her mother holding the bridle. She looked at her father, Paddy, and for some time gazed into his eyes. Her eyes. Again she marvelled at his smile and remembered, with a pang, how when she first met Jake his smile reminded her of his. Bringing the photo to her lips, she kissed her father’s happy face. They’d been for a picnic to the bottom paddock—where they’d arranged a few logs under the huge gum tree by the creek and lit a fire, cooked some sausages, and boiled a billy. The flies driving them mad as they lay on the bank listening to the water gurgling over the brown speckled stones in the creek below. It was the last time they’d all been together. Two days later her father was dead.

As she looked at the picture, feelings and memories she’d put on the back burner were revived. She remembered how she wanted everyone to leave after the funeral, so she could go back to the small cemetery beside the wooden church and sit by her father’s grave. Talk to him. Cry over the newly turned dirt. And yet they wouldn’t go, would they? Too afraid to leave the family on their own. In the end her mother, her beautiful gorgeous mother, the belle of Tipperary, had got roaring drunk, collapsing into bed with a packet of Relaxa tablets. Merryn was too frightened to leave her by herself in case she choked to death on her own vomit. For three days, her mother lay in that bed of rumpled sheets, curtains closed, refusing to get up. Only when she eventually surfaced did Merryn go back to her father’s grave to grieve on her own, taking the yellow daffodil bulbs he loved so much to plant by his head.

For days Merryn could remember holding Amy in her arms as she sobbed and sobbed. All the time Merryn just wanted to sob too, but was afraid if she did Amy would curl up and die. She remembered the motions of getting though each day. She made a cup of tea in bed for her mother before getting hers and Amy’s breakfast. Then she sliced the thick crusty loaf of soda bread she’d baked in the fuel stove the night before for their sandwiches and wrapped them up in greaseproof paper before placing them in their new bright red lunchboxes their father had given them for Christmas. He’d chosen them himself at the corner store. Then she would sit in the ute, tooting the horn for Amy to come. And when Amy wouldn’t come, Merryn would go back inside, one time discovering her in the bathroom crying, because she couldn’t find the lid of the toothpaste and their father would have got cross. It was the only thing that had driven him mad. When they came home from school, Merryn would cook the dinner, and then sit down and do her homework. And all the time her mother walked around in a daze, until finally one morning she came out and asked.

‘What would you like in your sandwiches today? How about some hundreds and thousands?’

Merryn wanted to exclaim. ‘Mum, I’m fifteen. I haven’t had hundreds and thousands for years.’

But she knew it was a start and said, ‘Thanks Mum. That’d be great.’

Merryn brushed her hand over her eyes before giving the picture a final glance and going to the kitchen. Removing the key from the hook, she headed downstairs to the bathroom. In one corner of the small room was a bath with rust stains and a couple of geckos playing in the bottom. An enamel basin, crudely bolted on the wall, sat next to an antiquated hot water cylinder. After using the loo, she ran her hands under the tap and locked the door behind her. She then became aware that she was being watched. Three small boys covered in dirt stood not more than two feet away. Even their clothes were black.

‘Hi there,’ she said.

‘Apinun,’ the taller one said, his huge liquid eyes eyeing her curiously.

‘Good afternoon,’ she answered.

Grinning mischievously, they just stood there staring at Merryn. After a moment she beckoned for them to wait and went upstairs. In her handbag, she had a packet of Jaffas she’d bought at the airport in Townsville. Downstairs she divided the sweets into equal portions, handing them to the boys. She could almost hear Tori scolding her. ‘Do that and the little imps will be back every five minutes for more.’

But, what the heck.

After stuffing the Jaffas in their pockets, the boys giggled a ‘tenkyu,’ and scuttled towards the back fence. Would they share them? Merryn wondered. Or would they gobble the lot down themselves? In a way she hoped that’s what they’d do; otherwise, before she knew it, she’d have all the children from the mission climbing over the fence, and then Tori would be cross. She smiled. Either way it was worth it, for she was pretty sure she’d made three new friends in her adopted country.

Upstairs again she pulled Cat Stevens’s Matthew and Son from a pile of records, slipped it from its sleeve, and positioned it on the record player in the corner. After a few moments, the room was filled with the unmistakable haunting voice of her favourite singer. Somehow just hearing him sing gave her a feeling of comfort and familiarity. She walked over to the table and lifted a ripe mango out of the bowl. Carrying it to the wicker chair in the corner of the room, she sat down, kicked off her sandals, and cut the skin with a knife. Taking a bite she relished the sweet taste.

She was still sitting there, having fallen asleep in the hot afternoon sun filtering through the cane string curtain hanging over the back door, when Tori rushed up the stairs carrying the vegies from Koki market.

‘God, how could you sleep through that?’ she cried, lifting the scratchy needle off the record. ‘It gets caught at the end of that track every time.’ She headed to the kitchen. ‘Anyway, how about a drink? I’m parched. I reckon an icy cold Bundy and Coke will do the trick. I know it’s early, but being your first day, you could probably do with a pick me up.’

Merryn stood up and leant down to put on her sandals. ‘Sounds good to me.’ She yawned, running a hand over her moist forehead. ‘I must be jet lagged after all.’ She walked across the room to where Tori had plonked the vegies down on the floor next to the table. ‘What do you want me to do with these?’

‘Not a thing,’ Tori said. ‘We’ll have a drink first. Think about dinner later.’