Clancy of the Overflow Read online

  She smiled, despite the worry. William. She’d had a crush on him at school, but he’d been three years ahead of her, and three years was three decades back then. He’d kissed her for the first time when he left last weekend, a proper ‘this is leading to something seriously more’ kind of kiss.

  She was still smiling when she fell asleep.

  She dreamed. Dreamed of sitting strapped into a special seat, one that kept her upright, her arms supported but still able to move feebly. A spoon moved towards her; soft, mushy food slid down her throat. She longed to grab the spoon, to feed herself, not with mush but the chops and baked potatoes Tim and Sharon and the others were tucking into, those lucky others who wore callipers on their legs or wheeled their own chairs.

  But this time she was an adult, not a six-year-old girl, with a nappy that would be changed by the kindest hands in the world but she didn’t want to be grateful, just to be free . . .

  No, she thought. I am free. Two decades of intensive therapy, working long beyond the hours her therapists required, every centimetre of her small frame made of determination and hope. And she had got there . . . or perhaps whatever still unknown condition had caused a baby to be born with almost no muscular strength had simply faded . . . But it didn’t matter because as soon as she woke, she would be able to walk . . .

  And suddenly she did wake; she woke to terror as she tried to push the blankets from her too-hot body, but the blankets had turned to granite, impossible to move. She pushed again, managed to turn and switch on the light, but even that was an enormous effort, the kind it had been ten years earlier when she’d had to concentrate even to eat an ice cream . . .

  She looked at the bedside clock. Six am. She’d had eight hours sleep, but every hour had drained her, not refreshed her, as if a vampire had sucked on her in the night.

  Not a vampire. Just her body. Her traitorous, treacherous body that had let itself fall back to weakness just as she had thought her life was finally opening to normality. No — for who wanted to be normal? Into wonderfulness: a career she loved, a man she was very, very near to loving, a life of fulfilment stretching before her.

  Gone. Vanished. Her hands like weights again. Her head ached. Her throat felt like someone had lit a bushfire in her larynx . . .

  She blinked, marshalling her thoughts again. Sore throat? And she felt hot. A fever then. She lifted her far-too-heavy hands and felt her neck, the swollen glands on either side.

  And grinned.

  She managed to pick up the phone and dial again. ‘Jed! It’s me. Guess what! I’ve got mononucleosis. Epstein-Barr virus. Glandular fever, you ignoramus. I’ll be fine in a few weeks, but I won’t be able to come down. Yes, yes, I’ll call a doctor, but have you ever known me to give a wrong diagnosis before? Okay, ever known me to be wrong since I was ten years old? Oh, Jed, I’m so happy. I’ve got mono.’

  Five hours later, the diagnosis confirmed by Dr Tham, as was the treatment (‘Bed rest, eat well, don’t kiss anyone or share utensils so you don’t pass it on.’) and prognosis (‘You should feel much better in a week, but given your history it might take a month or two to get your strength back.’), delight had faded to worry.

  She could miss a week of lectures, maybe even two weeks. But Dr Tham was correct: her body was still not conventionally strong. It might well take her a month to get back to uni. A whole month might mean losing a term, which meant losing a year.

  There was also the problem of eating, washing, even going to the toilet, which she desperately needed to do. Even if she used her wheelchair, she wasn’t sure her suddenly boneless arms could grab the pulley and lift her from chair to toilet seat.

  A knock on the door of the flat, then the sound of the door opening and a deep voice: ‘It’s only me.’

  William. She managed to pull up the bedclothes. He couldn’t see her like this! Her hair a mess, no make-up, eyes like a fairy’s after a midsummer debauch. And weak. Ridiculously, stupidly weak. ‘You can’t come in!’ she called. ‘I’m infectious.’

  ‘I know.’ The thud of a box on the bench, the fridge door opening and shutting, then William in her doorway. ‘Jed called me, then I called Dr McAlpine. He said I probably gave it to you. It’s called the kissing disease. I had it last year and Dr McAlpine says the virus stays dormant once you’ve had it. Sorry about that! Anyway, Blue and Mum gave me some stuff to bring up for you, and I’ve told work I won’t be in for a while, though I can keep drafting the plans anywhere.’

  ‘Why won’t you be in for a while?’ she croaked.

  Totally gorgeous brown eyes looked at her in surprise. ‘Because I’ll be looking after you.’

  ‘There’s no need to feel guilty about giving me glandular fever. I could have got it from eating at the refectory or sharing someone’s coffee, all kinds of places. There’s no need to look after me either. Someone comes and does the housework, and I get groceries delivered . . .’

  Her voice died away as he looked at her patiently. ‘You’ll need more help than that.’

  Of course she needed more. But not from William!

  ‘William . . .’ she said desperately.

  ‘What?’

  All she could think of was the truth. ‘I don’t want you to nurse me. I want to walk with you, swim with you, dance with you . . .’ make love with you ‘. . . I can hire a nurse.’

  ‘Why?’ he replied gently. How could such a large man sound so gentle? ‘I helped care for Gran, you know. I can even give a bed bath. And I know about bed pans.’

  No, she thought, not bed pans. A million times no. Except suddenly the need for the loo was urgent.

  ‘Maybe . . . maybe you could carry me to the toilet?’

  Strong hands. Strong arms. She was lifted, placed perfectly, the door closed. And she managed, even the toilet paper.

  He knocked as he heard the toilet flush. ‘Ready?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said shakily.

  Lifted again. Hands washed with a warm face washer. He sat on the bed beside her. ‘No bed baths?’

  ‘No.’ If he ran the bath, placed her in it, then she could take off her nightdress and wash herself, or at least let the water do most of the work.

  ‘Pity. I was looking forward to that. How about you drink some of Mum’s guaranteed strengthening mutton-bone soup, sleep again, then I’ll run a bath for you and carry you in to it?’

  ‘That . . . would be okay. But, William . . .’

  ‘You helped me. Maybe saved my life when I’d made such a mess of things I thought I wasn’t worth taking up space in the world.’

  ‘I don’t want gratitude.’

  ‘Okay. What if I said I’d love the excuse to get my hands all over you and seeing you stuck in that bed is the sexiest sight I’ve ever seen?’ He looked at her seriously. ‘If that troubles you, I really will go. Because that’s what I feel.’

  ‘It . . . it doesn’t trouble me.’

  ‘And if I said I’ll sleep in the spare room, but as soon as you feel up to it, I’m getting in that bed with you and will probably never let you go?’

  ‘Sounds okay.’

  He shut his eyes for a second. She suddenly saw how much this meant to him. Exactly as much, perhaps, as it meant to her. But he just opened his eyes and said, ‘Good. I’ll get the soup.’

  He leaned down, kissed her gently on the forehead. But he had only been gone a few seconds before he appeared in the doorway again. ‘About that bath. Do you think you might need a hand getting dry? Putting on your nightdress?’ He wriggled his eyebrows suggestively.

  ‘Maybe tomorrow.’

  She was still grinning as he left.

  Chapter 6

  Broccoli Bill’s Tomato Sauce

  6kg ripe tomatoes, 1L white vinegar, 1kg chopped onions, sautéed till soft in a little oil, 150g sugar, 10 cloves chopped garlic, 2 whole chillies, 1tsp ground ginger, pepper and salt to taste.

  Boil for two hours, strain through a sieve. Bottle. A little olive oil on top before sealing will help it to keep lo
nger and keep the colour brighter.

  GIBBER’S CREEK, 1979

  JED

  Sam had been placed in a slightly different position that afternoon to prevent bedsores, breathing in, breathing out. Jed kissed him, then spread out Mattie’s toys. Mattie had just reached for her wooden hammer when young Clancy appeared in the doorway.

  ‘Want me to take her again?’

  Mattie looked up with a dribbling grin. ‘Gancy! Gancy!’ She hauled herself to her feet and toddled over, arms reaching up to him. ‘Play now!’

  ‘Hello, Matilda Rose.’ Clancy lifted her onto his hip.

  ‘Thank you —’ began Jed.

  ‘No worries. I want to get some close-ups of the drool dripping down her chin. They’d be really cool.’ Boy and toddler vanished down the hall.

  ‘Well.’ Nancy dropped her handbag and sat. ‘Wonders will never cease. I didn’t even have to bribe him.’

  ‘Your son is a darling. Mattie was so worn out yesterday she fell asleep as soon as she’d eaten and didn’t wake till six am when the phone rang.’

  ‘Scarlett, I suppose. How is she?’

  Jed didn’t ask how Nancy knew about Scarlett’s illness — from the McAlpines or William’s mum or even Broccoli Bill, who distributed gossip as well as the world’s best tomatoes, the only vegetable crop to survive the drought except melons and corn, on his vegie round. Gibber’s Creek had the universe’s most efficient gossip system. ‘Relieved it’s only glandular fever. William’s gone up to look after her.’

  ‘Has he now?’

  They grinned conspiratorially.

  ‘They’d be good for each other,’ said Nancy decisively.

  ‘Is that what you said about me and Sam?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Nancy frankly. ‘And what Mum and Dad and Tommy and Matilda thought about me and Michael. Gibber’s Creek doesn’t do arranged marriages. Just nudged ones.’ She looked at Jed with sympathy. ‘Michael and I were apart for four years in World War II, Joseph and Blue for even longer. But things worked out.’

  ‘You think they will for me and Sam?’

  ‘Yes.’ Nancy met her eyes. ‘One way or another.’

  Which meant that either Sam would recover, which each day seemed less possible; or die, as she’d been gently warned was likely by his doctor father. Unless Sam was moved to a large hospital, kept in isolation, given assisted breathing if necessary, any infection might lead to pneumonia. And one day there would be infection, as his immune system weakened. Death would be laboured, but quick.

  But Sam belonged here in Gibber’s Creek, where his parents would visit in the morning, then Blue could babysit while Jed wrote, then Jed and Mattie would come here with Nancy. Sam’s mates still dropped by in the evenings, Tubby and the rest of the fire crew, the Beards from the Whole Australia Factory, and other friends too. Almost every day there was another small bunch of home-grown flowers, or a card a child had drawn for him, and once the specifications for a new solar panel rolled up and left under his arm, as if technology was a charm that might call him back.

  Which, knowing Sam, it might be. But if he had not come back for her and Mattie . . . Jed firmly switched her thoughts.

  ‘Scarlett said Maria might have had a tumour. She wanted to know what age she was when she died.’

  ‘No idea,’ said Nancy cheerily.

  ‘But you said you’d tell me the story . . .’

  ‘Doesn’t mean I know every date in the family.’

  ‘But do you know if she died old or young?’

  ‘Yes. I even know where she’s buried.’ Nancy grinned. ‘I know where all the skeletons are buried, but not their exact ages. Are you going to let me tell my story my own way, or not?’

  It wasn’t really a question. It rarely was with Nancy. ‘Your way,’ said Jed.

  Nancy glanced out the window, where young Clancy was sitting on a swing rocking Mattie gently on his lap. ‘It was a wonderful five years . . .’ she began.

  Chapter 7

  Victoria Sponge Cake

  4 eggs, 8oz caster sugar, 4¼oz plain flour, 1tsp baking powder, 3tbsp boiling water, 1tsp butter

  Beat the eggs and sugar together for 20 minutes till pale yellow and thick. Add the flour and baking powder, then boiling water in which the butter has been melted.

  Bake in two buttered and floured tins in a moderate oven for about 20 minutes or until lightly browned and the edges shrunk slightly from the sides. Do not overcook. Cool. Spread one cake with whipped cream and sliced strawberries, place the other cake on top of it. Top with more strawberries and cream or dust with icing sugar. A good colonial addition is the juice of the passionfruit spread over the top layer of cream. This cake must be served with a cake slice to avoid spillage.

  SYDNEY, 1870–75

  CLANCY

  It was a wonderful five years. An almost perfection of years.

  The first weeks he watched Flora and Maria poring over catalogues and sketching furniture designs, choosing rose varieties, curtain patterns, silverware as well as the final preparations for the wedding. Maria did not even bother to wear her veil with her new sister.

  His father left for Overflow after assuring himself he’d got his money’s worth, returning only for the wedding in Sydney’s new cathedral, a wedding attended by society, the families of his school friends — though few of their parents had ever invited a convict’s son to their homes — as well as other prominent families, even ones who had never met either bride or groom. But with the promise of an Honourable — or even Lady — a surprising number of them came, and drank champagne at the reception too.

  The wedding: watching Flora in tiers of pale blue lace-draped silk entering on his father’s arm. Clancy had never seen such beauty, never hoped for it, never been so happy. He was delighted also that he had achieved his father’s ambition of being a gentleman at last, and that even Maria had felt confident enough to attend, sitting at the end of the pew by the wall and heavily veiled, but there nonetheless.

  And then the nights: Flora allowing him her body, rose perfume combining with the scents of sex and lavender-stored sheets.

  Within a year, the house was transformed, the ‘parlour’ given the more acceptable name of ‘drawing room’, with walls newly covered in grey silk, its curtains green and silver-blue, almost the same colours as the shafts of light reflected from the harbour. The second year the rose bushes bloomed, over a thousand of them, carefully graded from deep red on the top part of the hill through shades of pink to white by the driveway just as Flora had first dreamed, so that carriages began to rumble up the cobbled hill just to glimpse the sight, with underplantings of alyssum and rosemary and French lavender to give colour in the few winter months when the carefully fed and pruned roses didn’t bloom on that sun-drenched hill. No one, of course, refused an invitation to any of the parties thrown by Mrs Clancy (‘Lady Flora, you mean? A darling girl! I know her well!).

  Two rooms had been combined to make a ballroom — a piece of grandeur even Ezekiel hadn’t imagined, with a frieze of rosebuds and cherubs and a floor so highly polished that Clancy found the boot-boy sliding there on his bottom, and thus shining his trousers into the bargain, and gave him a gentle cuff on the ear (a very gentle one, just enough to make sure the boy did not try it again and find himself dismissed by Grange).

  Mrs Hanger the cook–housekeeper was soon gone — a gin drinker, it seemed. She was replaced by a Mrs Robinson, and a small fierce Frenchman who served meals exquisitely presented and took over ordering the wines and other liqueurs from Grange, who was half offended, half relieved.

  The house now had footmen, kitchen maids, chars who did not live in ‘to do the rough’ and so who did not sully the respectability of the servants’ hall, and two carefully chosen chambermaids, Irish orphans sent to the colony as it was cheaper than feeding them in their institution but, as Flora said, within six months they’d lost their deplorable accents, learned to wash and were loyal and hard working.

  Clancy even had a vale
t, he who had been dressing himself since he was two years old and shaving himself since he was sixteen and had only peach fuzz yet to scrape. But this new life required him to shave twice a day, not once or twice a week, as well as multiple changes of clothes each day: outfits for morning, afternoon, evening and each activity, from the decorous pre-breakfast rides together to the balls at Government House.

  He needed a valet now almost as much as Flora needed Sarah to arrange her hair, button her dresses and boots and lay out the appropriate costumes, as well as arrange for the dressmakers to follow the illustrations of the latest Paris fashions, or take the measurements for the most special gowns to be made in Paris and altered as necessary on their arrival.

  Golden years, when Clancy looked back on them: carriages arriving, leaving; cards left on the silver salver by the door; dinners at Government House with every visiting dignitary, for who could be more suitable to invite than the Honourable Flora Clancy? And where ‘Lady’ Flora went, her husband must go too.

  Clancy had expected to be bored. He wasn’t. The Government House visitors spoke of a wider world: of politics; of new farm machinery, for many of them too owned property and, like him, divided their time between country estates and Sydney, or even property in England or Matabeleland or South Africa. He spent much of his time talking with squatters’ sons like himself — most, but not all, with more acceptable lineages. They might not be close friends, even the ones he had been at school with — he never quite felt one of them and not because he felt ashamed of his background — but he enjoyed their company.

  He occupied himself as a gentleman should, reading the newspapers at his club and lunching there. He bought a racehorse, met with its trainer and celebrated with champagne each time it won. But, increasingly, he found himself drawn to the business side of the wool trade.