Ilona stared hard at the book. Perhaps she should get up and turn on the ceiling light rather than rely on the rather feeble glow of the lamp. The lines of print were starting to look like rows of tiny black ants marching across the page. She blinked and the ants turned into words. If she were not trying to delay the moment when those breakers of fear started rolling in, she would go to bed. Each night she tried to divert the tidal wave by reading anything she could lay her hands on; novels mostly, from the local library. Although the library collection was small, it would take her years to work through it for she read English so slowly. Yet always she would learn; always she would struggle to improve herself and that way, would control her fear.
Reading some more, she halted at the word peregrination; she had no idea what it meant. If only she had more energy she would look it up. Her vocabulary was expanding rapidly although she had to be wary of using a long word when a short one would do. Her grammar was possibly impeccable. Those many hours of studying had certainly brought dividends but she suspected her speech was still slightly too formal. In the future she would endeavour to use colloquialisms. When people talked, she listened out for them and stored them away in readiness for the day when she would have enough confidence to employ them. Although despairing of her own accent, she found the local accent far worse, for it was so different from the way that English was spoken in Bradford. Here it was not always easy to understand what people said. Their vowels were different and if she imitated them, they thought she was making fun of them; taking the piss, or making them look a right galah.
After a while she got out of her chair and tiptoed into Zidra’s room. The girl was sleeping on her side with her hair partly concealing her face. The top sheet and blanket had been thrown back, and lay twisted together at the bottom of the bed.
Ilona watched the rise and fall of her daughter’s thin chest, clad in white fabric patterned with blue roses. Here in Australia Zidra would be safe, she reflected, safe from the aftermath of the savagery delivered and received by her generation. Not to mention the Red Menace that everyone talked about, although she suspected no one really knew what was happening behind the Iron Curtain. Only a few years ago the Russians were generally regarded as saviours but not in her Latvia. Now they were the enemy and all those former allies were hurling propaganda at one another as if they’d never fought on the same side to defeat the Nazis. She sighed, though not loudly enough to disturb Zidra. If the politicians were to be believed, the biggest peril facing the civilised world was communism. That was what the Prime Minister, Mr Menzies, said and that was what people thought. Propaganda or the truth, there was no way of telling, not until it was all in the past.
Kissing Zidra’s forehead, Ilona smelt the sweet scent of clean skin. She knew she would do anything to protect her daughter, anything. She had to; she was the only survivor. She hadn’t died when all those others in the camp had died. She hadn’t died when Oleksii had died.
Suddenly she found she could scarcely breathe, her throat felt so constricted. A black wave of despair began to wash over her, and might have engulfed her had she not focused on Zidra. Her daughter was her reason to live. Without her, the guilt at surviving would be impossible to bear. Shutting her eyes, she crouched next to the bedside for some minutes, listening to the distant pounding of the breakers and the quicker rhythm of Zidra’s breathing. Everything was going to be fine. She had endured that moment, she would get through all such moments. After smoothing a strand of hair away from Zidra’s nose, she untangled the top sheet and pulled it gently over her.
Later she made a cup of tea and took it onto the side verandah. The old cane chair felt slightly clammy with the salty air. As her eyes adjusted to the dark, it became possible to distinguish the glimmer of the lagoon and the dark shape of bushland separating the estuary from the beach. Beyond, the crests of the breakers were silvery in the moonlight. She stared up at the stars, so numerous that they formed a great white band they called the Milky Way. It was a soothing sight but not quite soothing enough. Why she’d unburdened herself to Cherry that afternoon she couldn’t understand. Perhaps it was because of Cherry’s kindness in offering to do those alterations for her; perhaps it was because Cherry had laughed so much at the story of the beach rescue. But another possibility was that meeting Peter Vincent had reawakened some of those old memories she’d spent years forgetting. War and the legacy of war. So many lives lost or blighted. Even in a town as remote as Jingera, the war memorial was covered with the names of locals who’d lost their lives in the last one and in the one before.
So when Cherry had asked about her past, all that stuff about her mother sewing for her and her life in Bradford and their decision to emigrate came pouring out, but nothing about the war. She might think of it but she would never talk of it. And she would avoid seeing Peter Vincent again. He unsettled her.
Cherry had seemed genuinely interested in her story but when she’d touched her tattoo, and such a gentle touch it had been, Ilona had felt as if she might break down altogether and she couldn’t have that. Rebuilding her life had been a battle that she was winning, she knew it, but she had to keep control. For Zidra’s sake as well as her own.
Long after she had finished her tea, she continued to sit on the verandah. In the distance the breakers rolled in, an endless thud, thud, thud on the shore. An unexpected pleasure of living here was this feeling of closeness to nature, closer than she’d ever felt anywhere before. A large bird flew into the tall eucalyptus tree at the bottom of their yard, one of the pair of owls that lived there. It began to call, a strange boo-book sound that had startled her when she had first heard it, but which was now reassuring. Several doors up the Burtons’ baby started bawling again and then abruptly stopped.
Now her attention was caught by a light bobbing along, on the far side of the lagoon, towards the bridge. A few seconds later she discerned a figure walking across the bridge.
A cloud passed over the moon but still she could make out the shape of the man holding the torch. A large man, who now moved on, over the bridge and up the hill towards her house. She slipped inside, locking the door behind her. Peering through the front room window she saw George Cadwallader limping past the house, torch illuminated. Perhaps he too suffered from insomnia. Or perhaps the only time he had for walking was at night.
She struggled on with reading. With three new words collected, she looked them up in the dictionary. Peregrination: the action of travelling or of journeying. Hyssop: aromatic herb with blue flower. Heinous: hateful, odious. Cherry peregrinates picking hyssop heinously. It didn’t sound right somehow. Nor did it sound better when she substituted George for Cherry, but at last she had wearied herself to the point of exhaustion and beyond.
In bed she lay quiet. In bed she waited for those black breakers of despair to come rolling in from the depths and wash her into a turbulent sleep.