On The Beach

There followed a very restful two days for Dwight Towers. He handed over a great bundle of mending to the two women, who took it away from him, sorted it, and busied themselves over it. In the hours of daylight he was occupied with Mr. Davidson upon the farm from dawn till dusk. He was initiated into the arts of crutching sheep and of shovelling silage up into a cart and distributing it in the paddocks; he spent long hours walking by the bullock on the sunlit pastures. The change did him good after his confined life in the submarine and in the mother ship; each night he went to bed early and slept heavily, and awoke refreshed for the next day.

On the last morning of his stay, after breakfast, Moira found him standing at the door of a small outside room beside the laundry, now used as a repository for luggage, ironing boards, gum boots, and junk of every description. He was standing at the open door smoking a cigarette, looking at the assortment of articles inside. She said, "That's where we put things when we tidy up the house and say we'll send it to the jumble sale. Then we never do."

He smiled. "We've got one of those, only it's not so full as this. Maybe that's because we haven't lived there so long." He stood looking in upon the mass with interest. "Say, whose tricycle was that?"

"Mine," she said.

"You must have been quite small when you rode around on that."

She glanced at it. "It does look small now, doesn't it? I should think I was four or five years old."

"There's a Pogo stick!" He reached in and pulled it out; it squeaked rustily. "It's years and years since I saw a Pogo stick. There was quite a craze for them at one time, back home."

"They went out for a time, and then they came back into fashion," she said. "Quite a lot of kids about here have Pogo sticks now."

"How old would you have been when you had that?"

She thought for a moment. "It came after the tricycle, after the scooter, and before the bicycle. I should think I was about seven."

He held it in his hands thoughtfully. "I'd say that's about the right age for a Pogo stick. You can buy them in the shops here, now?"

"I should think so. The kids use them."

He laid it down. "It's years since I saw one of those in the United States. They go in fashions, as you say." He glanced around. "Who owned the stilts?"

"My brother had them first, and then I had them. I broke that one."

"He was older than you, wasn't he?"

She nodded. "Two years older-two and a half."

"Is he in Australia now?"

"No. He's in England."

He nodded; there was nothing useful to be said about that.

"Those stilts are quite high off the ground," he remarked. "I'd say you were older then."

She nodded. "I must have been ten or eleven."

"Skis." He measured the length of them with his eye, "You must have been older still."

"I didn't go skiing till I was about sixteen. But I used those up till just before the war. They were getting a bit small for me by then, though. That other pair were Donald's."

He ran his eye around the jumbled contents of the little room.

"Say," he said, "there's a pair of water-skis!"

She nodded. "We still use those-or we did up till the war." She paused. "We used to go for summer holidays at Barwon Heads. Mummy used to rent the same house every year…" She stood in silence for a moment, thinking of the sunny little house by the golf links, the warm sands, the cool air rushing past as she flew behind the motorboat in a flurry of warm spray. "There's the wooden spade I used to build sand castles with when I was very little…"

He smiled at her. "It's kind of fun, looking at other people's toys and trying to think what they must have looked like at that age. I can just imagine you at seven, jumping around on that Pogo stick."

"And flying into a temper every other minute," she said. She stood for a moment looking in at the door thoughtfully. "I never would let Mummy give any of my toys away," she said quietly. "I said that I was going to keep them for my children to play with. Now there aren't going to be any."

"Too bad," he said. "Still that's the way it is." He pulled the door to and closed it on so many sentimental hopes. "I think I'll have to get back to the ship this afternoon and see if she's sunk at her moorings. Do you know what time there'd be a train?"

"I don't, but we can ring the station and find out. You don't think you could stay another day?"

"I'd like to, honey, but I don't think I'd better. There'll be a pile of paper on my desk that needs attention."

"I'll find out about the train. What are you going to do this morning?"

"I told your father that I'd finish harrowing the hill paddock."

"I've got an hour or so to do around the house. I'll probably come out and walk around with you after that."

"I'd like that. Your bullock's a good worker, but he doesn't make a lot of conversation."