Chapter 5

5

brISBANE – SUMMER 1971

The slow-flowing, warm water trickled over Rebekah's toes as she sat perched on the edge of the narrow creek bank, wearing no more than her underwear and her floppy, yellow, terry-towelling sun hat. Birds chattered in the tall trees overhead and the high-pitched ticking of cicadas filled the humid afternoon air as the distant sound of a growling lawnmower hushed abruptly after what seemed like hours. Rebekah leant forward and picked up another handful of gritty mud and dribbled it onto her feet and legs, then rubbed it all over her knees, the grit lightly scrubbing her skin. She peered back over her shoulder, up the little hill from the creek and into the backyard.

No one was watching. Mum must have finished taking the washing off the line and gone back inside to fold and iron it. Even Scat the cat was sound asleep with her head on her paws in the shade and relative cool of the back verandah. The sun was at its highest and Rebekah knew that if she made any sound and reminded Mum that she was out here frying her shoulders and back in the mid-afternoon heat, she'd be called inside.

Rebekah firmly pushed her palms into the warm, prickly brown grass on the creek bank and lowered herself carefully down to sit in the trickle of water that she called her creek. It was only just wide enough for her tiny form to sit inside and there was never more than a trickle of water except in the middle of a rainstorm, when it ran like a torrent from the big overflowing water tank at the top of the hill all the way down until it disappeared into the stormwater drain at the low end of the street.

The backyards of all the houses in Barrawondi Street had no fences to the rear so each one opened out onto this stretch of bushland that seemed to be owned by nobody, though if the residents had tried to build anything there, the Brisbane City Council would surely have had something to say about it. Rebekah's creek was no more than the downhill route that the stormwater run-off took through the empty land, but to her four-year-old mind, it was a wild waterway full of fascinating creatures, rocks, and her favourite part – the mud.

She scooped up more water and washed the mud off her skin until she was meticulously clean, and then started the process again. A handful of mud, dropped onto her feet, shins, knees, and thighs, then rubbed in all over. She scooped the next handful of mud and, looking out from underneath her long, dark eyelashes, chin low to her chest, she did one more check for anyone who might be watching. Then she slowly lifted her hand to her mouth and did the one thing she was not allowed to do with the mud. But she couldn't resist the sandy feel as it crunched between her teeth and Rebekah closed her eyes against the sun to better hear the crunch and grind inside her head as she bit down on the grit. And while she was crushing it, feeling the textures on her tongue, she scooped up more soft, warm water and washed her legs clean again.

The cicadas sang their endless chirpy background music and she looked, trying to see them, to find where their chirruping came from, but they were like the hot air she breathed – always there but impossible to see. A kookaburra laughed overhead, and Rebekah looked up to the top of the gum tree, through the blue-green haze of eucalypt leaves that hung like rain from the branches, to find the bird. Was he laughing at her? Afternoon thunder rumbled from miles away and within a few minutes, a flock of rainbow lorikeets had filled the branches of the giant tree, chattering to each other about the coming storm.

Rebekah knew what was coming next in her summer afternoon play ritual. Soon Mum would come and call her out of the creek, hose her down and get her inside, safe from the storm that would soon come to fill the creek with fresh, cool rain.

But the sound when she heard it was not her mum's sweet call, or the sound of a loud and close thunderclap. It was that sound she had begun to dread. The angry yell of her dad, home from the pub after his long lunchtime session. He was perennially angry now. Either he was angry after he came in smelling of beer, or he was angry in the morning when his head hurt. Sometimes, he was angry with Mum for not cooking his steak the way he liked it, and other times he was angry with Rebekah for leaving her toys on the floor. Whatever the reason for his erupting temper, Rebekah had learnt to hold her chin on her chest and put her hands over her ears when she heard him shouting, so she could hide and wait for the storm to pass. She stayed that way, in the creek, until her hands hurt and her ears burned from squeezing them so tight.

She let go cautiously and, fearing what she might hear next, the unexpected voice, when it came from behind, though known and loved by Rebekah, was a surprise.

‘What are you doing in there, muddy miss? Doesn't your mother have a proper bath indoors?' Aunty Pig's chuckle was warm and soft, and she held out her hand to Rebekah to help her climb out of the creek. ‘Come on indoors with me, my lovely, and you can have a bath and a pikelet or three.'

Rebekah obeyed without question, knowing and trusting her neighbour as if she were her own mother, but still she looked back to her own back verandah with a frown.

‘Where's my mum, then?' she asked as she grabbed a few treasured rocks in her chubby hand to bring indoors for later.

‘She's very tired today, love, and I think she and your dad have got some business to attend to. You come in with me for a while. Is that all right with you?'

Rebekah nodded as they walked into the backyard of Pig's house next door, past the timber hut that housed the outdoor dunny, the big, rotary washing line, and up the little concrete path to the base of the timber steps that led to the back verandah of Rebekah's next-door neighbour's home.

‘Let's have a look at you then, Becky. Do we need a hose-off first?'

Rebekah held her arms up and turned around to show off her muddiness, giggling at the prospect of the jet of warm hose water on her skin.

‘I reckon you could do with a once-over. Don't want too much of that creek in our bathtub, do we?' Pig laughed. The rubber hose had been lying in the full heat of the Queensland sun for hours, so Pig held it away from Rebekah's delicate skin until all the burning hot water had passed through the pipe, and it ran lukewarm, safe for a little girl's shower.

‘Got any in your hair today?' teased Pig as Rebekah laughed under the shower of water, then stood still as Pig dried her off, wrapped her in the old towel that always hung on the peg near the hose, then carried her inside.

‘Have you got bubbles, Piggy?' Rebekah asked as the bath water was run and she dropped various plastic cups and jugs into the tub to play with. Pig dribbled in some bubble bath and dropped the lavender soap for Rebekah to chase around the tub.

‘In you get then, missy. I'll be back in a minute. Then when you've had enough, you can help me mix up the pikelet batter.'

Rebekah lay down in the warm water and floated on her back, dropping the bubbles onto her tummy and blowing them away again until the water was almost the same temperature as the creek.

Pig came in and dried her properly when she climbed out of the tub, and dropped a clean sundress over Rebekah's head, then she helped the little girl step into her clean undies, as Rebekah leant on Pig's shoulders.

‘You're all set, gorgeous. You smell pretty good now, chicken. Have you had a nice bath?'

‘Yeah, I was a bit muddy in the creek, but now I'm nice. Are we gonna make pikeliks now, Piggy?'

Half an hour later lightning lit up the kitchen and thunder rumbled around the suburb while the rain pounded on the tin roof, sounding like the fat from a giant's frying pan sizzling his sausages for tea. Rebekah sat with her elbows on the Formica kitchen table, kneeling up on the vinyl-covered chair as she licked butter and strawberry jam from her fingers and told Pig all her discoveries of the day.

‘And there was a kookaburra, and lots of lorikeets, and I think they were all talking 'bout the rain?—'

‘Are you sure they were lorikeets and not budgies, Bek?' interrupted Piggy.

‘Yep, lorikeets – too big and noisy for budgies,' she answered with a firm nod of the head and another mouthful of pikelet. ‘And in the creek, there were rocks with shiny bits, see?' she said, pointing to her now clean and lavender-smelling creek treasures lined up on the table beside her plate.

‘Did you have to dig them out of the mud, or were they in the dry grass?'

‘These were in the mud. I like how it feels on my fingers when I find them all hard in the squishy mud.'

‘I like that feeling too,' said Piggy. ‘When I was a young girl, I used to row my dad's boat across the harbour to the beach on the island?—'

‘To Brownsea Island?' asked Rebekah.

‘That's the one, love, to Brownsea Island in the middle of the harbour. I would land my boat on the shore and paddle in the water in my bare feet and feel in the mud with my toes for the cockles. Then, when I found one, I would reach my hand down and pull it out of the mud, give it a little wash, and put it into my bucket. And then, when I had collected enough, I would take them home and we'd boil them up and eat them for our tea, with vinegar and some lovely bread and butter,' Piggy told her, with that faraway look in her eyes that made Rebekah's heart feel full and happy.

‘What did they taste like?' Rebekah asked, as fascinated as ever by Pig's tales of the magical harbour with its beautiful island where she used to live, in the ‘olden days' of the war.

‘They tasted salty and vinegary, and they're a little bit chewy and a little bit soft,' replied Piggy thoughtfully.

‘ Pikeliks are a bit chewy and a bit soft,' said Rebekah, making Piggy laugh. ‘What colour are cockles?'

‘The shells are white and brown, a little bit stripy. You have to make sure the shells are shut tight before you cook them else they might be no good. You soak them in salted water for a few hours, which cleans the grit out of them, then pop them in a pan of water and boil them. When they're cooked, the shell opens and you can see that they are white with a bright-orange beak. Very tasty, they are, too.'

‘I'm goin' there to eat some cockles, too,' said Rebekah in the matter-of-fact way that Pig seemed to love about her surrogate granddaughter.

‘Are you, Becky? When's that then?'

‘When I'm big and I know all about the animals and birds and trees in Australia. Then I'm going to England to learn all about the animals and birds and trees there too.'