Elianne Read Free

dances in Brisbane, nor was it the clumsy fumbles of local boys, easily fought off, in the back row of Bundaberg’s Paramount picture theatre on a Saturday afternoon. This was the tenderest exploration of mouths. She could still recall her wonderment at the fact that she hadn’t found his tongue repulsive. She could relive, and had done many times, every moment of her surrender to an intrusion that was at first shocking, then fascinating, then amazing as in her boldness she’d parted her lips that little bit more, allowing him easy access, even flickering her own tongue over the delicate tips of his teeth.
    She could have given herself wholly to him in the back room of that poky East Sydney flat while the party raged next door. And indeed in a way she had given herself to him. The promise had been there – they’d both recognised it. But Jeremy had not rushed her. Twenty-year-old Jeremy, a second-year Arts student, mature and experienced, but also infatuated, was, Kate knew, not after a one-night stand. Jeremy wanted a full-on affair and aware she was a virgin he had no wish to frighten her. He’d been content to bide his time. Over the ensuing weeks, he’d progressed a little further – his lips travelling down her neck; his hand straying lightly over her breast, sending shivers through her body – never too invasive, but steadily more intimate. To Kate, however, it was the indelible memory of that first kiss that remained the true turning point. She’d made her decision. Jeremy would be the man to whom she would surrender her virginity.
    The week before her return to Queensland for the Christmas holidays she’d visited a doctor and put herself on the contraceptive pill for that express purpose.
    ‘I’ll see you in the New Year,’ she’d whispered as he’d kissed her goodbye at the train station, and they’d both known exactly what she meant.
    Having passed by the cookhouse and mess hall, and then the bakery, Kate reached the village green, with Elianne Hall to her right. The estate’s village green and hall had been social centres throughout the whole of her childhood, as they had throughout the childhoods of many of her contemporaries, and also those of generations past.
    She came to a halt, once again chastising herself, but this time in a more serious vein. I really must put Jeremy and sex out of my mind, she thought crossly. She’d been away from Elianne for close on a year and yet her head was full of the impending loss of her virginity. If she went on like this she’d ruin her entire holiday.
    She sat on the hall’s front step, Cobber flopping contentedly at her feet, Ben as ever wandering off to explore. Looking out across the village green she recalled the many fetes and picnics, where teams of small children had competed in every imaginable event contrived to excite and enthral the young. Workers’ children of all colour and creed: Australians, Italians, a few Kanakas and Chinese, English, Scots, here and there the odd Scandinavian and German, here and there several Torres Strait Islanders. She could see them all now, herself included, running themselves ragged in three-legged races, staggering clumsily about in hessian sacks and hauling on twenty yards of rope as if their lives depended upon winning the tug o’ war.
    The same fetes and picnics and parties continued to this very day. The numbers had dwindled somewhat of late, but Stan the Man insisted tradition be upheld. She’d been home for just one week, and on the Saturday following her arrival there’d been a pre-Christmas picnic attended by at least twenty families. She and her younger brother Alan, who was home from boarding school, had handed out the presents and the toffee-apples, while Neil, soon to turn twenty, the oldest of the three and heir apparent, had awarded the prizes, a job that had always been the domain of their father. These days, however, Stanley Durham, while remaining as dominant a figure as ever, preferred to sit