Alison Booth - Stillwater Creek

PRAISE FOR STILLWATER CREEK

Who could not be charmed by Stillwater Creek ? I loved the characters, the scenery, the dramas, the gentle humour, and the sense of Australia as it once was. Enjoy a feel-good beach read this summer!

Good Reading

Jingera may be a fictional creation but one that is firmly anchored in the smell of eucalyptus, the yellow, bruised light of a summer storm and the ever-present ocean. Stillwater Creek is an enchanting place to spend a few hours.

Notebook , Pick of the Month

A great summer read fans of Di Morrissey will enjoy discovering a new talent.

Herald Sun

A story that lingers long in the imagination. Debra Adelaide, bestselling author of

The Household Guide to Dying

A mythical town and its people are brought beautifully to life a really lovely book.

The Sunday Telegraph

A finely observed historical drama set in small-town Australia in the 1950s Booths novel is evocative and eminently readable.

The Age

An evocative romantic drama set in a sleepy Australian country town.

Australian Womens Weekly

Stillwater Creek is written with a great sense of place and Booths powers are such that this small town forms vividly in the minds eye a heart-warming story.

The Sunday Territorian

A powerful tale.

The Sunday Tasmanian

This book is a great summer read.

The Sunday Times (Perth)

This gentle, heartfelt story is rich with small-town secrets.

Australian InStyle

A great holiday novel, lending itself to relaxed reading It reads as many novellas threaded into one novel and I look forward to the sequel.

Australian Women Online , Book of the Month

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted by any person or entity, including internet search engines or retailers, in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including printing, photocopying (except under the statutory exceptions provisions of the Australian Copyright Act 1968 ), recording, scanning or by any information storage and retrieval system without the prior written permission of Random House Australia. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the authors and publishers rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

Stillwater Creek

ePub ISBN 9781864715774
Kindle ISBN 9781864717914

Permission to reproduce words from The Power and the Glory by Graham Greene courtesy of David Higham Associates and Random House UK.

Permission to reproduce words from Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett courtesy of Faber and Faber Ltd.

A Bantam book
Published by Random House Australia Pty Ltd
Level 3, 100 Pacific Highway, North Sydney NSW 2060
www.randomhouse.com.au

First published by Bantam in 2010
This edition published in 2011

Copyright Alison Booth 2010
Map copyright Shane Nagle 2010

The moral right of the author has been asserted.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted by any person or entity, including internet search engines or retailers, in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying (except under the statutory exceptions provisions of the Australian Copyright Act 1968 ), recording, scanning or by any information storage and retrieval system without the prior written permission of Random House Australia.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the authors imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Addresses for companies within the Random House Group can be found at www.randomhouse.com.au/offices

National Library of Australia
Cataloguing-in-Publication Entry

Booth, Alison
Stillwater Creek

ISBN 978 1 86471 125 7 (pbk)

A823.4

Cover photography by Corbis & Getty Images
Cover design by Natalie Winter

CONTENTS

To my family

There is always one moment in childhood when the door opens and lets the future in.

GRAHAM GREENE, The Power and the Glory (1940)

J INGERA T OWNSHIP , 1957

Ilonas first impression was of light. Light glancing off the water, light sluicing the valley, light shaping the folds of the green hills that tumbled down to meet the sea. A golden light, for the sun was sinking fast. Surely the bus must soon arrive at Jingera. She and Zidra were the only passengers left after a sun-dried woman, wearing a floral dress and a miscellany of string bags, had alighted several miles back. Before long it would be dark but not before they saw the cottage, pray God not before then, for Ilona couldnt bear to reach a new place after night had fallen.

There had been too many arrivals after dark. The first was in that cold Latvian winter at the concentration camp near Riga. And after the liberation, a series of displaced persons camps, and ultimately her arrival in England. Only in Sydney had she disembarked in daylight, this time with her husband Oleksii and small daughter Zidra, the three of them walking down the ships gangway, in the harsh morning light of a summers day.

But she would not dwell on the past when todays journey was looking so promising; when the light was streaming down the valley and illuminating Zidras face, so that her sallow skin assumed an unusual radiance. Ilona examined her daughter: only nine years old but already she was striking with that combination of upturned nose, short upper lip and disproportionately high forehead. And the pretty dark curls that were just like those of poor dead Oleksii.

Look at the sign! Zidra pointed to a white sign at the side of the road. Welcome to Wilba Wilba Shire, and underneath, in smaller letters, Drive Carefully. This was ignored by the driver, who swerved the bus into the next bend in the road.

Ilona peered through the front windscreen, at the road snaking down in front of them. There at last was the town of Jingera, a haphazard collection of weatherboard cottages clinging to the hillside. It was smaller than shed expected, although the McIntyres, her friends in Sydney whose Jingera cottage she had arranged to rent, had warned her that the place was a bit of a backwater. But full of such friendly people, theyd said, who are crying out for a piano teacher.

Just look at the sea, Mama!

Below the town lay the river, widening into a lagoon that seemed to be connected by the thinnest thread of water to the ocean beyond. Ilona put an arm around Zidras shoulders. Her face was starting to acquire that pinched look it took on when she was tired.

Pickin up the key from the butchers shop? The bus driver twisted his head round to look at them and grinned. Not a bad place, luv. Could be worse, there could be more people! He restored his glance to the road just in time to negotiate another of the hairpin bends. Cadwallader shuts up at five sharp, so its lucky were on time, or youse mightve bin campin under is awning!

Opening the bus window slightly, Ilona inhaled deeply. The air was fresh and salty and she felt her spirits lift. She had left Sydney behind, she had left Europe behind. Maybe it would be possible to forget the past and start a new life in Jingera, this sanctuary by the sea. Unclasping her handbag, she felt inside it for the reassuring shape of the LatvianEnglish dictionary. While it hadnt been needed so far today, she did not know what linguistic challenges the evening would bring.