She loved living privately, not in a hotel, and loved that the family was together for the first time in years. Max was at Cronulla Public School and Frank came home from Newington every weekend.
Bert got Nance and Max up for school, gave them their porridge, made their school lunches. The lunch embarrassed Nance. Her father didn’t seem to know what a school lunch should look like. She longed for egg or cheese sandwiches like the other girls but it was always what he would have liked, a working man’s lunch: a cold chop with a couple of tomatoes or a big chunk of strong cheese. The other girls would sit around waiting for her to undo her lunch. At first she thought they were laughing at her, but after a time she realised they’d have liked a cold chop now and then.
The doctors thought Dolly’s womb might be at the bottom of her moods and always being off-colour, and she had a hysterectomy. It didn’t seem to help. She was in bed a lot of the time. Oh, she was sick. No one knew how she suffered.
Still, she had some good times too. Bert bought a car and she learned to drive, like Miss Cohen. Most Saturdays they’d drive to the races and the children were free to do as they pleased. In winter they took pancake batter in a jar and went into the bush near the house, made a little fire and cooked the batter. Nothing had ever tasted as good, the lemon and sugar running out of the rolled-up pancakes, the smoke easing its way through the leaves, the water that bright wintry blue in glimpses between the trees.
But at home the old tensions were starting up again like a toothache. She tried to hear what Bert and Dolly were arguing about behind the closed door. It was broken bits of sentences but she heard Bert say, You’ll have the income from the flats, then something from Dolly she couldn’t hear, then Bert again, You can live here and I’ll manage. Frank and Max knew something was up too, but the three of them said nothing to each other, as if by ignoring it they could make the trouble go away.
One night Bert and Dolly told the children that they’d bought the Caledonian Hotel in Tamworth. It was the first time they’d bought the freehold of a pub as well as the license. Eighteen thousand pounds. They’d mortgaged everything. We’ve got the touch, Bert said. Pay off the mortgage in no time.
Tamworth was only ten miles from Currabubula and Nance knew it from staying with Auntie Rose. She remembered it as a dull and dusty country town. Why Tamworth, do you think, she asked Frank.
It’s the salmon-returning thing, he said. You know, going back to the place where they started. Showing everyone how well they’ve done.
Mrs Trimm had started the Caledonian back in the 1890s and it had always been the top pub in town. Hot and cold water in the bathrooms, a grand piano in the parlour, a lock-up garage. The cheapest room was sixteen shillings a night and a meal there cost four shillings when you could get a good feed at the Greeks’ for ninepence.
Bert and Dolly were lucky they’d inherited all the staff from Mrs Trimm, because the two of them were out of their depth. The first week there was a problem with Mrs Chipp who ran the laundry. Dolly had noticed that the starched damask table napkins were ironed only on one side and thought Mrs Chipp was skimping on the job. Marched downstairs to give her a piece of her mind.
Oh, Mrs Russell, didn’t you know? Mrs Chipp said. You only iron the napkins on one side, otherwise they’d be slipping off people’s laps. It’s how it’s done in the best houses, Mrs Russell, I assure you.
Dolly was cranky the rest of the day.
Con and Arthur knew everything about the catering trade and ran the dining room perfectly. Quiet men, both of them, each seemed to know what the other was thinking. They were more tactful than Mrs Chipp. They pretended Dolly knew what a fish knife was and what shape of glass you drank burgundy out of.
In the polo season the bar and dining room were crowded all day with rich people. Honeymooners stayed in the Bridal Suite under a golden taffeta bedspread with a black appliqued crane winding across it. When the famous soprano Florence Austral came through, with maid and manager and accompanist, she sang for the guests in the parlour. Isador Goodman played Chopin and admired the tone of the piano. Jim Anderson and Jack Crawford arrived with a dozen tennis racquets each. Nance was in awe: Wimbledon champions!
Fifty years after Mr King had told Dolly’s father to stand back, my man, the Kings were still out on Goonoo Goonoo Station, still the local aristocracy. The King girls came up from Sydney for the polo and they loved to scandalise the locals by wearing pants and smoking in the street. Oh, provincial with a capital P, Nance heard one of them say to the other, laughing, tossing her cigarette away without a glance as she got into the car behind the chauffeur.
Some well-to-do Maunder relatives, Dolly’s cousins, came to afternoon tea. Nance saw straight away how smooth and polished they were compared with her parents. Those cousins hadn’t gone to humble Currabubula Public School and sat in Grade Six until they were old enough to leave. They’d gone to the Dominican Sisters in Tamworth. Hearing their quiet well-spoken voices Nance thought, Is that why Mum kept trying me with the Catholics?
Dolly insisted on giving them a tour of the place. The Bridal Suite, everyone staring at the gold taffeta bedspread. The parlour where Florence Austral had sung. Dolly told them how much it cost to have the piano tuned. How someone had offered her twenty pounds apiece for the firedogs. The Maunder ladies said, Oh really, Dolly. Fancy that. Nance saw that her mother was the only one in the room who wasn’t embarrassed.
There were a few Russell relatives too. That was a surprise. Dolly had always said Bert was an only child and his mother was divorced, but here was Uncle Alan. He was a bookie, had a strong voice that filled the bar. His son was another Alan, a tall dark young man with a moustache like a film star and eyes so brown they were almost black. His daughter Rita was a Spanish-looking beauty with pale skin, brown eyes, straight black hair and red lips. Why didn’t I get those looks, Nance thought.
Bert was a man arrived at his dream. New dark suit, a lovely piece of cloth. He served in the bar, but there were plenty of workers to take over when he wanted to spend the afternoon in one of the big armchairs with a Western, or out in the backyard with the magpie he was teaching to come back to his fist.
Frank had grown into a tall young man. Nance thought him handsome, but Frank hated his big ears and kept to the side of family photos. He was out at Uncle Willie’s being a kind of jackaroo, because he wanted nothing more than to go on the land. Max was now a term boarder at a fancy school in nearby Armidale. He got on with the rich boys in a way Frank never had, because he was good at running, boxing, anything to do with a ball. Nance missed her friends from St George Girls’ High, but having everyone contented for once—they even had a dog, like a proper family!—made up for a lot.
Tamworth High was another government school and Nance thought it would be like St George, except with boys. She felt the difference, though, from the first day. It was back to classes that were too easy. No more algebra, no more plays in Latin. No one was too fussy about things like what homely meant. If you got the general drift, that was good enough. Most of the students couldn’t wait to leave. Every week another pupil in Nance’s class turned fourteen and there was another empty desk.
Being with boys gave the classroom a heavy unsettled feeling, like an undertow. Most of the teachers were men, and if you were on the girls’ side of the room it was hard to catch their eye. They think we’re all just going to get married, Una said. Don’t want to waste their time on us. The undertow could turn nasty if any of the girls beat the boys in a test.
Most of the teachers were fresh out of Teachers’ College, working through their country