CHAPTER SIX: ANNABEL
Saturday 9 November 1946
Chapter Six is Annabel’s story, and by this stage the readers are well aware of who she is and how she fits into the Westaways' story. Annabel’s retelling of her day takes place seven years after Francis’ story in the previous chapter, and her chapter offers a different view of the happy, attractive girl Kip encountered in the first chapter. Annabel is the sole carer of her alcoholic father, the only reference to her mother, Meg, being ‘the wedding photograph beside [her father’s] bed’ (page 177) and the fact that he calls her by her mother’s name when he’s really drunk. Annabel is trying desperately to ensure they have enough food by using the ‘mock’ (page 175) meat recipes from the Women’s Weekly. Annabel tries her best to manage the household, but the rationing makes this hard, as does the financial burden of supporting her father’s drinking habit. The impact of rationing on the social climate is made clear when her father wryly observes that they had better ‘draw the curtain’ (page 176) when they are eating their meal, just in case the ‘neighbours...dob us in’—the implication being that if neighbours suspect that the ‘mock’ sausages are real they will assume they have been illegally gained. Annabel’s disempowerment is further delineated when she explains that she lost her job ‘in the munitions factory…[when] the men came home and our girls got our marching orders’ (page 178) further exemplifying the social inequities of the time and the privilege of men over women. Annabel’s chapter also depicts the damaging impact World War II had on Australia’s relationship with the Japanese. This manifests itself in the way Annabel talks about Japanese people. For example: ‘the only countries that thought to grow it couldn’t get out of the way of the Japanese’ (page 176) and ‘The fear of the Nips coming’ (page 178). Whilst to modern ears this might seem like casual racism, it is important that these remarks are contextualised in terms of Australia’s brutal and taxing war with Japan. The terrible realities of alcohol abuse by fathers and its impact on families is a recurring theme. Prioritising caring for her father over romantic relationships has denied Annabel the freedom to marry. She is openly scorned because of her father’s drinking. She is going out with Francis, and there are plenty of hints that he is about to ask her to marry him but the past and the present collide to derail this plan. Francis ‘is a clerk in a law office [McReady’s]’ (page 184) and Kip is ‘a photographer’s assistant at the Argus’, having returned from fighting in Borneo (page 184). It is revealed that the death of Ma (page 186) enabled Kip to enlist and when derided by (the still revolting) Mac for joining up late, he explains that he couldn’t leave his mother after the death of Connie (p.194). What happened to Connie is still unanswered but it’s clear that her death brought very public social shame on her mother (pages 186 and 196). Francis takes Annabel to a dance where he runs into Mac, now a returned soldier. The amethyst pendant makes an appearance again. Francis gives Annabel the pendant he stole seven years ago (the same one Charlotte receives when she is eighteen) but lies and says that the old lady gave it to him. Mac threatens to tell Francis’ employer the true story about the pendant after Annabel repeats the lie (page188). Slightly drunk and fearful of being exposed, Francis berates Annabel and implies that she is stupid and that he has been ‘trying to bring her up in the world’ (pages 199–201). Kip intervenes and buys the necklace from Francis. He puts the necklace on Annabel, even though she had been warned earlier that wearing a necklace given to her by a man she wasn’t engaged to would be social suicide (page 191). Francis tells Annabel that he was going to ask her father if he could marry her but it’s clear that this remains a family secret, given Stanzi in her earlier recount said that Kip was Annabel’s first love (page 64) and that Annabel’s father was ‘a saint of a man’. The theme of family secrets and lies is exposed by the reality of Annabel’s father’s drinking. Stanzi’s other reflection— that Annabel ‘went from being looked after by one man straight to the bed of another. When you’re beautiful, life is easy. Someone will always look after you’ (page 64) exposes Stanzi’s ignorance about the truth of her mother’s youth and the dangers of making assumptions.