Page 43

Tom had to laugh. ‘All right, all right.’

‘It’s one and six to get in, but well worth it. Bring a few bob so we can have some beers. I’ll see you tomorrow.’

So now here he was, hanging back in the shadows as the band hit its first number. He watched couples skip onto the polished boards that had been chalked and made ready for a full evening of happy people twirling around the ballroom.

‘What do you think, mate?’ Charlie asked, dark eyes shining in the glittering ballroom lights.

‘I’ll admit, it’s fun. Thanks for bringing me.’

‘Right, now stand proud, Tom. I want the girls watching you and that means they’re watching me.’

Tom laughed and straightened his back amenably as he took in the room. He was impressed that the ballroom overlooked the sea. The sun had lowered beneath the horizon, scattering rose gold and soft orange hues and bleeding away into the darkening twilight claiming the sky. He was mesmerised until his attention was caught by a flick of darkly golden hair at the corner of his eye. It belonged to a woman he recognised as the one he’d seen standing in the doorway a couple of nights ago. Had to be her. The hair was identical in colour, and he now saw it framed her face in soft waves. She was with a man who looked to be around her age, hovering on the other side of the large ballroom, and they seemed to be having words. The last time he’d noted her slim height she’d looked equally unhappy. Tom couldn’t help but wonder what was making such an attractive woman so miserable. She still felt strangely familiar to him, though he couldn’t pinpoint why.

‘What, or should I ask who, has caught your attention?’ Charlie gave him a nudge.

Tom didn’t drop his gaze fast enough and Charlie was able to follow it directly to the woman.

‘Mmm. You don’t waste time, do you? She’s got to be the prettiest girl here. Out of my league, but not yours.’

Tom didn’t reply.

‘Well, don’t stand here like a shag on a rock, mate. Go over.’

Tom cut him a withering look. ‘Beer?’

‘Buying already? Sure. I’ll just wait here and work out who will have the benefit of my twinkle-toed brilliance tonight.’

‘Goose,’ Tom replied, shaking his head and departing towards the bar. When he returned, carefully balancing a couple of schooners, the band had taken the energy up a notch. The dance floor was full of eager dancers and he could no longer see the girl with the tumble of loose waves. Charlie had disappeared too; no doubt the opportunity for a twirl with a pretty woman in his arms was far more alluring than a schooner of West End.

Tom drifted to the back of the room, where he found a small table to put down Charlie’s beer. His height gave him a good head above most in the room and as he sipped his deliciously cold beer, he scanned helplessly for the lovely but sad woman.

A flash of pale fabric caught his attention and there she was, moving around the edge of the dancefloor, looking – in his opinion – awkward in the arms of the bloke she’d obviously arrived with. They weren’t talking and were instead looking in different directions, although he, from what Tom could tell, was joshing with friends nearby with their dance partners. The group of four men all looked to be ignoring the women they were with. And then they were gone again, lost to the crowd.

Tom caught sight of Charlie, chatting enthusiastically to a woman in a pink dress; her chin was tipped back as she laughed at whatever Charlie was saying. There was no doubt he was fun company and Tom knew he wouldn’t have come to an event such as this without Charlie’s encouragement. He was going to have to shake off his reticent, country boy attitude and learn how to be a city dweller, integrating more with others. People couldn’t be avoided. Life was never going to be quiet again unless he moved back to a station – and right now nothing struck him as less palatable. He imagined there may well come a time when he could face a shearing shed again, but not yet . . . not nearly.

Charlie twirled into view again. ‘Hurry up, mate. The dance will be over before you get going.’

Slightly stung by Charlie’s friendly sarcasm, but also able to see across the dancefloor to where something was unfolding that he didn’t like the look of, Tom moved into the crowd.

Fleur was trying to make this evening work, but Jimmy was frustrating. They were so mismatched in every way that it was hard enough just finding something to talk about. She thought dancing might help, but they’d been even more awkwardly silent as they moved around the ballroom.

She’d hoped they would be able to take the woman at the ticket counter’s advice and put their hostile words aside, but her patience was wearing thin. Jimmy was a clumsy conversationalist anyway, but his suggestion that Appleby’s should really be using the Coglins exclusively for their coffin-making was ill-timed. She refused to get into a heated exchange over why that was a supremely poor idea. While she acknowledged that he was making an effort to find a shared topic to discuss, she resented that he seemed to feel he could discuss her father’s business with such familiarity and, worse, propriety. What’s more, his tone held a sense of entitlement that Fleur couldn’t go along with; she hoped no one had overheard her withering response, which was probably the reason Jimmy was now disinterested in talking to her.

The truth was, there was so little to say to each other unless they were talking about funerals, but she had no desire to discuss business with him. He and his father made coffins, but not so well any more. Fleur began to imagine the horror of allowing Jimmy free rein in a mortuary; he would surely take their business back decades. There was simply nowhere that they comfortably connected to help this night along. He was a mad-keen footy fan – a diehard Port Adelaide supporter – still mooning about losing to South Adelaide by just over a goal at last year’s Grand Final. As he carried on next to her with his mates about the next weekend’s match and whether Jack Dermody would kick a swag and take his boys a step closer to another battle for the premiership, she realised that she not only barely understood him, but she wasn’t interested in learning anything more about him – or the football, or the new pub that was opening at Alberton, or that one of the freemasons was going to sell him an Ariel Square Four motorcycle . . . On it went.

‘I can attach a dusting sidecar,’ he said, casually flicking a thumb her way.

The gesture only made her irritation feel more heated. It was rude of Jimmy to ignore her, rude of all his friends to forget they each had a girl in their arms, but if she was going to shine an honest light, then she needed to accept that she was at fault too. She had nothing to offer him. She played no sport and had no interesting pastimes, nor did she really have a close set of friends. And if she was completely truthful, her attitude towards him was wrong. She didn’t particularly like Jimmy or his lack of imagination; she felt sorry that he was being used by Irma, but he was obviously happy to go along with her plans with no aspirations of his own. No, they had nothing in common.

She had the dead. She was their friend, and they were hers.

Fleur looked to the young women she was supposedly with and yet here she was, standing slightly aside from the three excited girls who’d come on the arms of Jimmy’s friends. They didn’t seem to share her indignation at being ignored; perhaps this was how these things usually went. Instead, they were sparkly eyed and seemingly enjoying the evening, as she knew she should be, but didn’t really know how to join in. The current conversation between the girls was about how to change the contours of their faces using clever make-up techniques.

‘No, Joanie, you can have high cheekbones,’ Shirl was saying. ‘You can make your whole face look longer by shifting your hair back like this, for a start,’ her friend said, lifting Joanie’s curls away from her forehead. ‘And then you need to apply rouge at this angle . . .’

Fleur looked away, sipped her lemonade and watched Jimmy laugh about something; it was to do with the footy again, she realised, and was about to turn away when he seemed to sense her attention. He moved closer.

‘Why aren’t you talking to the other girls?’