Page 9 of The Island Girls

‘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.

‘Pikeliksare 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 opensand 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.’

6

POOLE – JANUARY 1941

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