Four Fires by Bryce Courtenay Page A

bleed.
    'I don't know what's to become of that boy,' Nancy says, tut-tutting, before agreeing reluctantly to let Bozo off the hook. But we know she doesn't mean it. Bozo is loved by her just the same as all of us and she was dead proud whenever Big Jack Donovan stopped by to tell her Bozo was going great at boxing.
    Then Bozo hands Nancy three pounds and ten shillings, which is what's left of his winnings, and says he's sorry and all is forgiven.
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    We take the morning looking around and spending Bozo's money.
    Then that arvo we've got the presentation, it's not the Queen, only the Lady Mayoress of Melbourne. Still and all, we have on our best clothes and Sarah wore this dress Mike tie-dyed and remade from an old one.
    Nancy had the usual daisies-on-a-yellow-background but she wore a big hat and these white gloves Sarah had crocheted and Mike had embroidered with a sprig of bush blossom to keep the theme going. So they both looked great standing up there on the stage with the flash bulbs going off pop, pop, pop and people clapping.
    Nancy and Sarah got their names in the women's section of The Weekly Times with a black and white picture of the two blue ribbons
    arranged over 'Bush Blossoms'. The Melbourne Sun also gave them a mention and the Border Mail had a black and white picture, but they got it wrong and showed Sarah and Mike's 'England's Cottage Garden'
    by mistake. Toby Forbes gave the win a big spread in The Owens & Murray Gazette.
    BUSH BLOSSOMS
    BELTS ALL BONNETS,
    BIBS, BOOTIES BLANKETS
    BEST OF THE BEST!
    ROYAL MELBOURNE SHOW
    Nancy said Toby Forbes was being a smart-arse and, anyway, why Wasn't our name in the headline. But it seemed pretty damned good to me, our big win in black letters that took up half of the front page of Gazette. I tore it out and sticky-taped it to the wall next to my bunk.
    Some of the teachers at school came up to me in the playground the week after and said we should be really proud. For about five minutes the Maloneys were famous in Yankalillee and I reckon we stuck it up a few people even without the Queen. Showed them they weren't the only ones who could do good things.
    Mike was a boy wonder at embroidery but couldn't ever share the glory. We had all his blue ribbons pinned onto the picture rail in front room. Of course, he'd probably have killed us if we'd at school. But we knew it was just something he did to help Nancy because he was the artistic one in the family. Sarah said we must speak about it, that it was a Maloney thing to help each other and people wouldn't understand.
    Nancy could do all of this stuff real well herself, of course. It Page 49

    her who taught Mike and Sarah in the first place. Because they were good, they'd do the special pieces and Nancy would concentrate smocking. Altogether it was a pretty good team and I doubt if there anyone in our part of Victoria who could take us on at embroidering.
    It was one of those days when Nancy was in a mood to talk and she continued with the saga of our family.
    'After we were married I stayed faithful, no more
    I took the vows before God and there's been no one else since, for Tommy.' She looked at us and gave a small shrug as if to for her error in judgement, 'I couldn't leave the poor miserable after all he'd been through in the war. Besides, his heart's in the place, there's not too many blokes who would have gone away promise to make his pregnant sweetheart respectable when
    returned and then found that, in his absence, his obligations increased to four. You've got to hand it to Tommy, he done the thing.' She laughed, a big open sort of guffaw, 'Mind you, I must say]
    hasn't taken his subsequent obligations too seriously. But it must come as a bit of a shock to the system coming home near dead three years of starvation as a prisoner of war to find out I'd popped three babies he hadn't had a hand in and didn't even know about.'
    She smiled again, this time real sweet. 'Come here, all of you.
    your old mum a hug