‘He understands English. I heard him.’
‘What is the girl saying now?’ Mr Bhattacharya, he could tell, was offended by her barely decent mode of dress. Mr Vaghela suspected that while he secretly knew the young people were innocent of his charges, he had worked himself into such a rage that he was determined to continue the argument. Mr Vaghela had met many such men in his life.
‘I don’t like the way he’s talking to me.’
Mr Sanjay moved towards the girl. ‘You don’t even know what he’s saying! You’re making things worse, Jen. Go back to the car and take your gran with you. We’ll sort this out.’
‘Don’t tell me what to do, Jay.’
‘Where is he going? Where are they going?’ Mr Bhattacharya was watching Mr Sanjay with increasing fury.
‘I think it would be better if the girl left your yard, sir. My friend is just persuading her of that.’
‘I don’t need you to—’ Miss Jennifer stopped abruptly.
There was a sudden silence, and Mr Vaghela, who was uncomfortably warm, followed the eyes of the crowd to the shaded area under the hull of the next ship.
‘What is wrong with the old lady?’ said Mr Bhattacharya.
She was sitting slumped forward, her head supported in her hands. Her grey hair looked silver white.
‘Gran?’ The girl sprinted over to her.
As the old woman raised her head, Mr Vaghela exhaled. He was forced to admit he had been alarmed by her stance.
‘Are you all right?’
‘Yes. Yes, dear.’ The words seemed to come out automatically, Mr Vaghela thought. It was as if will hadn’t had anything to do with them.
Forgetting Mr Bhattacharya, he and Mr Sanjay walked over and squatted in front of her.
‘You look rather pale, Mammaji, if I may say so.’ She had one hand on the ship, he noticed, a curious gesture, which she had to bend awkwardly to make.
The shipbreaker was beside them, cleaning his expensive crocodile shoes on the back of his trousers. He muttered to Mr Vaghela. ‘He wants to know if you’d like a drink,’ he told her. ‘He says he has some iced water in his office.’
‘I don’t want her to have a heart-attack in my yard,’ Mr Bhattacharya was saying. ‘Get her some water and then please take her away.’
‘Would you like some iced water?’
She looked as if she was going to sit upright, but instead lifted a hand feebly. ‘That’s very kind, but I’ll just sit for a minute.’
‘Gran? What’s the matter?’ Jennifer had knelt down, hands pressed on her grandmother’s knee. Her eyes were wide with anxiety. The posturing arrogance had evaporated in the heat. Behind them, the younger men were murmuring and jostling, conscious that some unknown drama was being played out before them.
‘Please ask them to go away, Jen,’ the old woman whispered. ‘Really. I’ll be fine if everyone just leaves me alone.’
‘Is it me? I’m really sorry, Gran. I know I’ve been a pain. I just didn’t like the way he was talking to me. It’s because I’m a girl, you know? It gets up my nose.’
‘It’s not you—’
‘I’m sorry. I should have been more thoughtful. Look, we’ll get you back to the car.’
Mr Vaghela was gratified to hear the apology. It was good to know that young people could acknowledge their irresponsible behaviour. She should not have caused the old lady to walk such a distance in this heat, not in a place like this. It indicated a lack of respect.
‘It’s not you, Jennifer.’ The old woman’s voice was strained. ‘It’s the ship,’ she whispered.
Uncomprehending, they followed her gaze, taking in the vast pale grey expanse of metal, the huge, rusting rivets that dotted their way up the side.
The young people stared at each other, then down at the old lady, who seemed, suddenly, impossibly frail.
‘It’s just a ship, Gran,’ said Jennifer.
‘No,’ she said, and Mr Vaghela noted that her face was as bleached as the metal behind it. ‘That’s where you’re quite wrong.’
It was not often, Mr Ram B. Vaghela observed to his wife on his return, that one saw an old lady weeping. Evidently they were much more free with their emotions than he had imagined, these British, not at all the reserved stiff-upper-lips he had anticipated. His wife, rather irritatingly, raised an eyebrow, as if she could no longer be bothered to make an adequate response to his observations. He remembered the old woman’s grief, the way she had had to be helped back to the car, the way she had sat in silence all the way to Mumbai. She was like someone who had witnessed a death.
Yes, he had been rather surprised by the English madam. Not the kind of woman he’d had her down as at all.
He was pretty sure they were not like that in Denmark.
PART ONE
I
Money in rabbits! At recent sales in Sydney best furred full-grown bucks made 19s 11d per pound, the highest price I ever heard of in Australia. The percentage of top pelts would be small, but at about five to the pound just on 4s each is a remarkable return.
‘The Man on the Land’, Bulletin, Australia, 10 July 1946
Australia, 1946 Four weeks to embarkation
Letty McHugh halted the pick-up truck, wiped non-existent soot from under her eyes, and noted that on a woman with ‘handsome features’, as the saleswoman had tactfully defined hers, Cherry Blossom lipstick was never going to alter much. She rubbed briskly at her lips, feeling stupid for having bought it at all. Then, less than a minute later, she reached into her bag and carefully reapplied it, grimacing at her reflection in the rear-view mirror.
She straightened her blouse, picked up the letters she had collected on her weekly visit to the post office and peered out at the blurred landscape through the windscreen. The rain probably wouldn’t let up no matter how long she waited. She pulled a piece of tarpaulin over her head and shoulders and, with a gasp, leapt out of the truck and ran for the house.
‘Margaret? Maggie?’
The screen door slammed behind her, muffling the insistent timpani of the deluge outside, but only her own voice and the sound of her good shoes on the floorboards echoed back at her. Letty checked her handbag, then wiped her feet and walked into the kitchen, calling a couple more times, even though she suspected that no one was in. ‘Maggie? You there?’
The kitchen, as was usual since Noreen had gone, was empty. Letty put her handbag and the letters on the scrubbed wooden table and went to the stove, where a stew was simmering. She lifted the lid and sniffed. Then, guiltily, she reached into the cupboard and added a pinch of salt, some cumin and cornflour, stirred, then replaced the lid.
She went to the little liver-spotted mirror by the medicine cupboard and tried to smooth her hair, which had already begun to frizz in the moisture-filled air. She could barely see all of her face at once; the Donleavy family could never be accused of vanity, that was for sure.
She rubbed again at her lips, then turned back to the kitchen, her solitude allowing her to see it with a dispassionate eye. She surveyed the linoleum, cracked and ingrained with years of agricultural dirt that wouldn’t lift, no matter how many times it was mopped and swept. Her sister had planned to replace it, had even shown Letty the design she fancied, in a book sent all the way from Perth. She took in the faded paintwork, the calendar that marked only this or that agricultural show, the arrival of vets, buyers or grain salesmen, the dogs’ baskets with their filthy old blankets lined up round the range, and the packet of Bluo for the men’s shirts, spilling its grains on to the bleached work surface. The only sign of any female influence was a copy of Glamor magazine, its straplines advertising a new story by Daphne du Maurier, and an article entitled ‘Would You Marry A Foreigner?’. The pages, she noted, had been heavily thumbed.