The Last of the Bonegilla Girls Read online

  ‘You okay?’ he asked her, gazing into her eyes.

  ‘Frances,’ she blurted.

  Then Iliana was there, pushing in next to her brother. ‘Lei e Frances.’

  ‘Frances,’ he repeated. Massimo, she remembered now. And the memory caused a throbbing in her head that beat against her temples and she closed her eyes to shut it down. And it seemed like only a moment later that another person was pushing through the crowd and she thought someone might have rushed to get her father and she didn’t want to get anyone in trouble because it was just an accident, but it was a man, saying doctor. And he held her upturned wrist and then pulled her eyelids wide open and stared into her eyes and that hurt. Then there were more words she didn’t understand and a moment later she was being lifted, hands under her arms and on her legs and she was carried slowly and carefully to the hospital.

  And all she could think about as she closed her eyes, trying to squeeze away the headache, was that she would be put in one of the baby cages in the children’s ward. She hoped Massimo would squeeze his hand through the gap and hold hers.

  Chapter Seven

  ‘Frances is going to be just fine, Mrs Burley.’

  Dr Jenkins from the Bonegilla hospital lay a soothing hand on Mavis’s shoulder. She was standing at the end of Frances’s hospital bed, dabbing at her red eyes with a dainty embroidered handkerchief, trying not to look at her daughter. The tanned and dark-haired soccer players and the blond Dutch doctor had carried Frances to the hospital across the camp and one of the nurses had been swiftly despatched to fetch Mrs Burley from the director’s house. It wasn’t far and Mavis was there almost before Frances was tucked up in bed in the adult ward with a cold compress on her forehead.

  ‘She’s a sturdy girl,’ Dr Jenkins said. ‘The ground probably did more damage to her head than the soccer ball.’ He chuckled, slipping a hand into one of the pockets on his white coat. With the other, he rubbed his chin. ‘Those Europeans do like the round ball, don’t they?’ He shrugged. ‘Don’t understand it myself. Cricket’s my game. That’s what I call sport. Very much looking forward to the Ashes this summer. The Poms are coming, you know, and I’m a member at the MCG. Best five days of the year.’

  Mrs Burley’s frustrated question pulled him out of his obsessional reverie. ‘But what about concussion, Dr Jenkins? I’m sure that Dutchman doctor said something about Frances possibly losing consciousness for a moment.’

  He sighed, lowering his voice. ‘Those chaps aren’t real doctors, not now they’re here in Australia. Who knows what their training was like back in the old country? The war and so on. In my medical opinion, he may have got a little bit ahead of himself. Frances looks fine, Mrs Burley. Perhaps I’ll prescribe a couple of Disprin just in case and I’m sure that after Frances has a little kip, she’ll be right as rain.’

  ‘Are you dizzy?’ Mavis peered at Frances.

  ‘It’s just a bit of a headache. I’m sure I can come home. Truly.’

  ‘Perhaps the nurses could keep an eye on her for tonight?’ Mavis asked Dr Jenkins. ‘Mr Burley is in Canberra for a few days for meetings with the department and I would feel so much better if I knew she was being looked after by you and the nurses, Dr Jenkins. Just in case that headache becomes something worse.’

  Frances waited, her gaze moving between doctor and mother.

  ‘It’s just a precaution, Frances,’ her mother told her with a reassuring smile.

  Dr Jenkins patted Mavis on the arm and nodded wisely, his glasses slipping down his rather large nose.

  ‘It’s easily done, Mrs Burley. Leave Frances with us and we’ll keep an eye on her tonight. Don’t you worry about a thing.’

  Mavis leaned over and kissed her daughter on the forehead, a soft press of her lips to Frances’s hairline. It was reassuring, as was the scent of her favourite perfume. Frances couldn’t ignore the realisation that something had changed. Her mother wasn’t fussing over her as if she was a child. Despite her throbbing head, Frances felt a swell of pride at being treated like a young woman for perhaps the first time ever.

  ‘You rest up now, sweetheart.’ Mavis stroked her daughter’s hair. ‘You be sure to tell Dr Jenkins if anything changes.’

  ‘Yes, Mum. I’m sorry I’ll miss your roast lamb. It’s my favourite.’

  Mavis winked. ‘I’ll save you a plate for tomorrow’s dinner. I’ll have to keep Tom away from it first.’

  Frances found a smile and held it, even though it made the pounding in her head worse. ‘That sounds delicious.’

  The next morning, Frances woke to the sounds of voices and squeaky footsteps on the linoleum and the clatter of crockery on trays in the hospital ward. The pale early-morning autumn light was barely strong enough to lighten the room and lights flared overhead. The ward was alive with people and patients getting out of bed, and bedpans being replaced and the shuffle of slippers. The long ward had rows of beds on each side, perhaps fifty Frances guessed, and each seemed to be filled. Around her, she heard all the languages she was used to in the camp, but there was also crying and sniffling and, in the distance, a man was moaning and screaming. The shooshing of a woman’s voice seemed to have no effect.

  Frances wondered which of the ghosts the wailing belonged to.

  Bonegilla was full of people, but it was full of ghosts, too.

  She had seen them, even though her parents probably thought she was too young to understand. The ghosts were people who seemed to be only half alive. There was a man whom she had never heard speak and had never seen smile, who walked around Bonegilla, taking the same route over and over as he wore a path in the grass along the fencelines, his head bowed, his hands clasped behind his back. His baggy trousers were held up with a piece of rope knotted at his waist. He muttered to himself incessantly, whispering. He was the saddest man Frances had ever seen. She had never felt threatened by him, the man she believed was a Pole, because he seemed to exist in another place entirely. He physically had migrated to Australia but his mind was somewhere else, still in the middle of something clearly terrifying. She asked her father once what had happened to him in the war.

  ‘Hitler, Frances. That’s what happened to him, to many of them. Poor old chap.’

  The hospital’s breakfast trolley had rolled up at the end of Frances’s hospital bed.

  ‘Good morning, Miss Frances.’ A nurse in a crisp white uniform smiled at her. Her dark curls, held back with bobby pins, made her white cap seem even whiter.

  ‘Good morning.’ Frances lifted her head, taking a moment to determine if it still throbbed. It didn’t, but she still felt thick-headed. She had slept fitfully, her night-time hours filled with dreams of dark-haired soccer players.

  ‘Here’s some breakfast for you. Toast. A little on the cool side, I’m afraid. Marmalade on the side. Corn flakes and a hot Milo.’ The nurse manoeuvred the bed table close as Frances sat up. She plumped two pillows and positioned them behind her patient. Frances regarded her meal. She loved corn flakes. Her mother didn’t allow them in the house. Mavis Burley still firmly believed that porridge was a healthy and filling start to the day for growing boys and girls. Porridge with salt scattered on top. Frances felt secretly thrilled to be having such a treat.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said.

  ‘So, I’ve been told I have to take very special care of you. Are you feeling better this morning, Miss Burley?’

  Frances was sure her blush could be seen right across the camp. ‘I’m feeling very much better, thank you.’

  Frances glanced at her name badge. Nurse King fussed over the sheets, which didn’t need any attention, and gave her patient a warm smile. She didn’t seem much older than Frances herself. Nineteen or twenty perhaps?

  ‘I hear you were clocked on the head by a soccer ball.’

  Frances stared down at her toast. ‘Yes,’ she said softly, feeling the humiliation once again at the memory of what she had been doing in the moments before that. Everyone around her had lifted their arms to protect
their heads. She’d been much too distracted.

  ‘How frightful.’ Nurse King sat on the edge of the bed. ‘Oh, there’s no need to blush, Frances.’ She leaned down and began to whisper. ‘Those new Australians boys are very handsome, don’t you think? It’s totally understandable that a girl could be distracted by one of them. Especially when they get hot and take off their shirts.’ Nurse King grinned wickedly. Frances let herself enjoy the conversation. Perhaps if she’d had sisters she might have had someone to share her embarrassing feelings with. There were some girls at the local school who were quite nice, but she didn’t have a best-friend sort of friend. Frances relaxed into the pillow at her back and sighed.

  ‘They certainly are smashingly good at soccer. And they play such a lot of it.’ Nurse King sighed and hopped off the bed. ‘I suggest next time you’re watching a match, you pay ever so slightly more attention to the ball instead of the players?’

  ‘I’d better, hadn’t I?’ Frances let out a little laugh.

  ‘Listen here.’ She leaned in and grinned. ‘We gals are only young once and everyone’s entitled to take in the scenery, don’t you think? You eat up now. I’ll ask Dr Jenkins to come and have a look at you and I expect he’ll ring your mother to come and fetch you. It’s been a pleasure having you here, young Frances.’

  As Nurse King moved on to the next patient, her friendly voice trilling in the distance, Frances poured milk over her corn flakes and scooped them up hungrily. Once she was finished, she pushed her bowl aside, smeared her toast with butter and marmalade from the little white china bowl on her tray and tried to ignore the ghost wailing in the distance.

  Once she’d eaten, she found she was feeling much better and, just as Nurse King had predicted, when Dr Jenkins visited her bedside he agreed Frances could go home. It wasn’t her mother who came to fetch her half an hour later, but her brother, Tom. She wished he’d already gone back to Melbourne. They slowly walked the short distance from the hospital to their house, Tom cracking jokes about a huge lump on her head that only he could see, and when they got there, her mother was waiting with a cup of warm milk and a very relieved smile. Her mother fussed over her, tucking her up with a blanket on the floral linen sofa in the living room. Mavis had thoughtfully placed two books on the table next to Frances: Five Go Off To Camp and The Magic Faraway Tree. Frances may have been too old for Enid Blyton, but there was something comforting about having her favourites at hand.

  ‘So poor little Frankie got bonked on the head, did she?’

  Tom had returned from the kitchen clutching a handful of ginger nut biscuits he’d scooped up from the biscuit barrel on the kitchen sideboard. He bit into one as he flopped on their father’s armchair, draping one leg over the wide and flat arm rest. The fabric of his trousers waved as he jiggled his leg and grinned at her.

  Frances narrowed her eyes. ‘Stop calling me Frankie. You know I hate it. It makes me sound like a boy. And a child.’

  ‘Frankie, Frankie, Frankie.’ Tom laughed and his deep voice echoed in the room. ‘You’re my little sister, Frankie, and I get to call you whatever I want.’

  Sometimes Frances longed to be anything but plain old Frances Burley of Bonegilla. She wanted to be someone else far more exciting. Perhaps she might be Francesca Somebody of Rome one day. Or a glamorous princess like Grace Kelly. Or a queen like Elizabeth. She reached for Five Go Off To Camp and flipped it open to a random page. It didn’t deter Tom.

  ‘Here’s what I want to know, Frankie.’ He took a bite of a ginger nut and spoke through the crumbs. ‘What were you doing at the oval anyway? You don’t play soccer. I think you were having a good old butcher’s hook at the soccer players, weren’t you?’

  Why, oh why, couldn’t she have had a sister? Frances lifted the Enid Blyton so it covered her face and blocked out her brother’s. ‘You’re awful and I’m not listening to you any longer.’

  ‘Frankie likes the dagoes, Frankie likes the dagoes.’ Tom leapt up from his chair and dashed over to Frances, tugging at her legs, trying to tickle the soles of her feet.

  She tried to hate it but she couldn’t because it was Tom and she did love him, deep down. She kicked him playfully and he groaned when she made contact with a forearm.

  ‘Ow!’

  A loud knock distracted him. Tom stopped rubbing his arm and turned to the door. Frances took advantage of the diversion to kick him harder in the shin.

  ‘Ow. That’s it, Frankie, you’re going to cop it now.’

  ‘Stop it, Tom!’ Frances laughed, as he gripped a hand around her ankle.

  ‘Don’t like the tickling?’ he teased. ‘How about this?’ He leaned in close and blew out a big breath in Frances’s ear and her giggles turned into a howl of protest, which drew their mother from the kitchen.

  ‘For goodness sake, Tom.’ Mavis stood in the living-room doorway, her hands at her hips. ‘Leave your sister alone. She’s been in hospital. She had a concussion!’

  ‘That explains everything.’ Tom winked.

  Mavis waited, looking from her daughter to her son. ‘Is anyone going to answer that door then?’

  Tom pulled back and stood. With his back to their mother, he poked his tongue out at Frances. She reciprocated as soon as Mavis returned to the kitchen and her favourite radio program, When a Girl Marries. Tom pulled the door open and a cold rush of air whooshed into the living room. Frances put her book down on her lap and pulled her blanket back up to her chin.

  Tom cleared his throat, as if he was about to make a big announcement. ‘Hello there.’ His tone was one Frances didn’t recognise. Deep, serious, formal.

  Frances looked up. Tom was no longer slouching. With a quick hand, he smoothed down the hair she’d been ruffling just moments before.

  Frances heard the shuffle of footsteps on the other side of the door.

  ‘Hallo. Frances. We come to …’

  Then there was a sigh and a word in a voice she didn’t recognise.

  ‘Her head.’

  Iliana? Was it the Italian girl from the soccer? Massimo’s sister?

  ‘Righto. Yes. Come in then.’ Tom held open the wooden screen door and Iliana entered the living room, her face transforming from shy to smiling when she saw Frances reclining on the upholstered sofa. Close behind her was the short Greek girl, and another girl, slightly taller with lovely auburn hair and the palest of skin, with faint freckles dotted across her fine nose. They stood in silence, taking in every detail of the living room, from the floral curtains to the radiogram across one corner; from the glass lightshade to the rug under the coffee table. Frances knew this room alone was twice as big as the huts they were living in and felt a twinge of embarrassment about the difference in their fortunes.

  ‘Hello, Iliana,’ Frances said. ‘How lovely to see you.’

  Iliana crossed the room and presented Frances with a small bunch of flowers, gum leaves with a few daisy blossoms, tied together with a length of brown string. She opened her mouth to speak, hesitated, and then continued. ‘Get well soon.’

  ‘Why, thank you. That’s very kind.’

  The Greek girl smiled at her. She was slim, and her black hair was fashioned into two long plaits that hung forwards over her chest, the ends curled up into frizzy black pom poms. Dark eyebrows, deep brown eyes and full lips created a mysterious and exotic look.

  Iliana pulled the girl forwards. ‘She is Vasiliki.’

  ‘Yes, of course,’ Frances said. She tried to remember how to say it: Vas-i-leekie.

  Vasiliki narrowed her eyes, concentrating. ‘Get … well … soon.’

  Iliana and Vasiliki exchanged glances and giggled and then the girl standing behind them came forwards. Up close, her freckles were darker and her eyes were a piercing blue. ‘I am Elizabeta,’ she said, her voice soft. ‘They have me because they can not speak English so good. It is not good you are hit on the …’ She patted her own head. ‘Kopf.’

  ‘Head.’ Frances smiled and absentmindedly copied the gesture. ‘My head.’r />
  ‘Ja, the head. It is now good?’

  ‘Yes, much better. Thank you.’

  Iliana tugged on Elizabeta’s dark brown hand-knitted cardigan and spoke to her in a language Frances knew was German.

  Elizabeta nodded. ‘Also, Iliana says her brother is very sorry he kicked the ball on you.’

  ‘Oh.’ Heat flamed Frances’s cheeks. Her lungs felt tight. Her heart began to beat faster and she felt it behind her eyes, too. The thump thump thump of this new connection between her heart and her head. Perhaps her mother was right and she had been concussed after all. Did she need another Disprin? She made a fuss of rearranging her blanket. ‘Tell him he needn’t worry.’

  Elizabeta’s brow furrowed. ‘He needs to worry?’

  Frances gasped. ‘Oh no. He should not worry.’

  ‘Ah, good.’

  The four girls smiled at each other in turn.

  ‘We go,’ Iliana finally announced. ‘Get well soon.’

  Vasiliki fell in behind her and Elizabeta nodded before breaking into a smile. ‘Goodbye,’ she said.

  Frances had an idea. ‘Auf Wiedersehen.’

  A look of surprise and delight shone in Elizabeta’s eyes. ‘Auf Wiedersehen, Frances.’

  ‘Ciao,’ said Iliana. ‘That is goodbye.’

  ‘In Italian. I know,’ Frances added. ‘Ciao.’

  ‘Yia sas,’ said Vasiliki.

  Frances lowered her eyes for a moment. She would need to practise that one. She waved at Vasiliki, who waved back.

  The three visitors looked to Tom, who still stood at the front door, staring. Frances wasn’t alone in realising he hadn’t said a word the whole time. Of course. She had forgotten to do the introductions.

  ‘This is my brother, Tom.’

  The three young women exchanged glances and giggled, before turning to the door and departing.

  ‘Cheerio,’ he finally managed to say as they left. Tom closed the door before moving to the window. He parted the lace curtain and stared out into the front yard and across the camp.