Cherry Bates stood in the side entrance to the hotel and watched the children streaming down the hill. When she heard footsteps behind her, she didn’t need to turn to know they were Bill’s. He stood so close to her she could feel his breath on her hair. She stepped forward one pace.

‘Lovely little kiddies,’ he said and sighed.

‘Noisy little blighters.’ Cherry didn’t want to encourage any sentimentality. ‘I bet Miss Neville’s glad to see the last of them. Rather her than me any day, even though you work me like a navvy here.’ She laughed though. There were a few customers in the bar and she didn’t want them to think she wasn’t a good sort. Wouldn’t be good for business, and the good Lord knew they could do with more business. It might stop Bill griping on about all the expenses and maybe they could fix some of the rotting woodwork and get the wiring redone. Bill reckoned the wiring was fine but she wasn’t so sure. She’d always been a bit nervous about living in a weatherboard building, ever since she was a kid and the house two doors up had caught on fire, and the old lady who’d lived there burned to death. In her sleep, Cherry’s mum maintained; she hadn’t stubbed out a cigarette properly. So each night Cherry prowled around the hotel after ten o’clock closing, checking and rechecking that all the ashtrays were empty and that there were no cigarette butts smouldering anywhere. At least Bill didn’t smoke, thank God.

‘The Cadwallader boy’ll be off to high school next year,’ Bill remarked, as Jim Cadwallader passed by in a knot of his friends, skinny boys mostly, with legs too long for their bodies.

‘Bright boy. Scholarship material,’ Cherry reported, but softly because this might not be common knowledge and brightness didn’t always win friends.

‘How do you know?’

Cherry wished she hadn’t said anything. The last thing she should be doing was over-quoting Miss Neville, whom Bill didn’t like. Education and women don’t mix, he was fond of saying. ‘I can’t remember who told me,’ she prevaricated.

‘Probably George’s missus. She’s always keen to blow the old trumpet.’

‘Yes, but all she plays is Andy Andy Andy. Have you noticed?’

‘Can’t say I have,’ replied Bill.

‘I feel quite sorry for Jim.’ It was his grazed knees that made him look vulnerable. She’d seen him and his friends in the late afternoon, racketing down the hill to the lagoon in their billycarts, flimsy affairs made out of packing cases and odd bits of sawn timber they’d managed to scrounge.

‘There goes Mrs Talivaldis. Only woman in the town to collect her kid from school.’ Bill never had approved of what he called mollycoddling.

‘I guess losing most of your family makes you cling on to what’s left.’

‘She lost all her family?’

‘Yes, in the war. Except for her husband, who died in Sydney apparently. Of a broken heart and pneumonia, she told George Cadwallader.’

‘Perhaps there was no husband.’

‘You’re always on the lookout for the worst interpretation, Bill Bates.’ Cherry laughed again, to take the sting out of the words. She liked the Latvian woman and the funny way she spoke, as if finding the right word was an impossible battle. She could well have been running away from something but it wasn’t to conceal her lack of a husband. ‘I’ve seen a photograph of the husband,’ Cherry added. ‘She showed it to me when I dropped around with a jar of plum jam yesterday afternoon.’

‘Does she look like him?’

‘Who?’

‘The daughter, of course. Does she look like the father?’

‘Yes, quite like him.’ Mrs Talivaldis’ lounge room was dark and she’d carried the framed photograph to the window so that Cherry could see it more clearly. It was a wedding photograph. The man was short with curly brown hair growing away from his forehead. Dressed in a dark double-breasted suit, he was looking directly at the camera. He’d worn a rather puzzled expression, as if to ask what he was doing in the photograph. Next to him stood a smiling Mrs Talivaldis, in a white dress with lace around the neckline and a skirt with stitched-down pleats that emphasised the slenderness of her hips.

‘Both parents with curly hair, but one dark and one fair,’ Cherry said. ‘Inevitable that the daughter should have curls. She’s got the father’s colouring. She looks more like him than her mother. Why do you ask?’

‘No reason. Just idle curiosity.’

Cherry glanced at him leaning on one of the verandah posts. His eyes were slits against the glare. She could never work out what he was thinking, but now was probably as good a time as any to tell him about her decision. She took a deep breath and said, ‘I thought of having some piano lessons. Mrs Talivaldis put a notice in the post office window.’ Her voice quavered a bit but Bill didn’t seem to notice.

‘What do you want to learn the piano for?’

‘I’ve always wanted to. Oh, please let me learn, Bill. It’s something I’ve wanted to do for years.’ Bill hesitated long enough for her to know he was thinking seriously of it. ‘They’re a musical family,’ she added. ‘The father was a pianist, Mrs Talivaldis said, and the little girl Zidra sings divinely.’ This last bit was a fabrication on her part but she sensed that it might influence Bill.

‘We haven’t got a piano.’

‘That doesn’t matter. I could practise on the school one after the kids go home.’ This was what she wanted, of course, but you had to be a bit devious when you were dealing with Bill. If only he would agree, she’d be able to spend four afternoons a week up at the school. Although she’d have to keep up the pretence of practising, that wouldn’t be necessary all the time. Maybe ten minutes out of thirty, and that would leave twenty to be spent with Miss Neville. If she appeared too eager, though, Bill might guess what she was after. She added, ‘Or maybe Mrs Coles would let me use her piano. She loves seeing me and I think she’s a bit lonely living on her own.’

‘Better if you use the school one,’ Bill said at once. ‘Mrs Coles would keep you nattering half the afternoon afterwards.’

‘That’s good of you, Bill.’ She could have danced with joy and might have hugged him if he’d been anyone else, but instead she simply smiled sweetly. ‘Mum always said I could learn the piano when I was a kid, but it was always next year. And when next year came around, it was the year after.’

‘That no-good father of yours,’ Bill muttered. ‘Your mother was better off without him.’ Then he added casually, ‘Has the Talivaldis woman got any other pupils?’

‘Don’t know. I haven’t mentioned this to her yet. Thought I should ask you first.’

‘Does the little girl play?’

‘I don’t know, Bill.’

‘You’ll have to get out another jar of your plum jam and pay another visit.’ He laughed, rather nastily she thought, glancing at him. He appeared as inscrutable as before but her heart lurched at the possibility that he might know where she went after her jam deliveries. She looked away again, towards the street. Just then the old lady from up by the cemetery hobbled by and Cherry waved at her.

Bill said, ‘You must be just about out of plum jam. You’re always running around trying to off-load it.’

‘I’ve got lots more jars of jam left,’ she said lightly. ‘Anyway, I thought you liked me doing it,’ she added. ‘Good for business if the publican’s wife is a bit sociable.’ The ugly corrugated iron walls of the old Masonic hall opposite caught her attention. They had acquired two new posters. One was about the Christmas dance at the church hall and the other was about the bushfire danger. That’s how you knew summer was here, when the posters started going up. Earlier and earlier every year. It was still two months to go till Christmas and already they were planning for the dance and, if she wasn’t mistaken, they’d moved the date forward too.

She sighed. Surely there was no way Bill could guess what she got up to with Miss Neville. He didn’t have the imagination and even if he did, she doubted he would care. Their marriage had gone beyond all that. What would concern him much more would be Cherry getting ideas above herself through associating with Miss Neville. Practising the piano at the school would afford many opportunities of bumping quite spontaneously into the schoolmistress and she needed these. They made her life here bearable. It wasn’t just the physical side of things, it was the friendship.

Time to get back to work. She glanced around at Bill, who was still standing behind her. Through the open door Les Turnbull was visible, waiting patiently at the bar counter. He must have come in through the other entrance and she wondered how long he’d been there. ‘G’day, Les,’ she called out. ‘Sorry to keep you waiting.’

She hurried inside to pull a middy of New for Les, while half-listening to his complaints. Today they were mostly focused on the Commie bastards, excuse the English, Cherry.