by Lily Hammond
‘I’ll take the next one in,’ she said.
Maxine’s eyes widened, and then she laughed.
It was a light sound on the afternoon air, which had dimmed with the arrival of thick grey-white clouds billowing in from the ocean over St Clair way. They brought with them the scent of rain, and something about that exhilarated Clemency. She loved rain, loved storm, loved all weather. It made for marvellous photographs. Especially now her new Leica had finally arrived off the boat from Britain.
‘You’ll take one in?’ Maxine repeated, hating the way her voice sounded so hopeful. There was room for someone at Clemency’s, she calculated.
Clemency nodded, turning with her dearest friend to walk towards the large house that sat just outside the notorious Devil’s Acre, which maybe explained Maxine’s efforts with the poor. They lived right under her nose.
‘That’s what I said, and that’s what I’ll do.’ She didn’t let herself feel alarmed at the promise. She had the space after all. ‘If she’s a quiet sort, that is. She can help Riley.’ They were almost at the house and Clemency could hear the noise of several female voices talking all at once. ‘Although, if she isn’t the quiet sort, maybe you could swap her for one you already have who is?’
That brought on another laugh from Maxine. ‘Clemency, darling, I appreciate the thought, but maybe we should just leave things as they are. If I gave you one of these women to take home with you, I don’t think you’d know what to do with her.’
Clemency shrugged. ‘But Riley would.’
‘Riley, bless her soul, needs to be consulted before you go making promises. Although I dare say she might be good with some help around the place.’
But Clemency didn’t answer. Her thoughts had wandered away to the film in her bag, and she wanted suddenly to be away, foot to the pedal driving back home, there to disappear into her darkroom for the rest of the afternoon. Turning to her friend, she nodded.
‘I’ve got to head on,’ she said. ‘Get this film developed.’
‘There’s going to be another demonstration soon, I’ll warrant it,’ Maxine said, standing still and stretching the kinks out of her back.
‘I agree completely.’
Maxine nodded, feeling the tug of her aching muscles under her shirt. ‘I’ll be taking some of the girls along if so. We’ll go in front of the board and ask for assistance. Demand it. These demonstrations won’t stop until someone does something to help. They need to know that, the Hospital Board. And they need to help the women, as well as the men.’ Maxine shook her head, her voice tired and heavy. ‘We have children inside, do you know that? Two women with children, came in three days ago. They don’t know where their men are – went away looking for work, neither heard from since. Away at one of those dreadful labour camps, most likely. The little kiddies are so thin.’
Clemency looked up at the clouds that had thickened overhead, moving fast to blot out the heat of the sun. She shivered. ‘I’ll come back into town for it whenever it’s happening. Telephone me to let me know what you hear,’ she said, remembering the way the men she’d photographed had looked. She shook her head. ‘But Maxine, you have to be careful, in the midst of that. The crowd was ready to smash every window on George Street until they organised giving out those food parcels tonight. It’s not going to be any better next time, I’m sure.’
Maxine shrugged, stuck her hands deep into the pockets of her apron. ‘You’ll need to take care too, Clemency. No one’s going to feel like having a camera in their face.’ She lifted hers to the clouds for a moment, darkness brewing in her gaze. ‘Maybe the people who make the decisions will get the message, if something does happen.’ She looked back down from the sky. ‘Not that I’m suggesting that it ought or condoning it if it does. But the people with the power need to realise this situation is untenable.’
They’d reached the motor car, Clemency’s cherished, modern Ford Model A. She was glad she hadn’t bought a newer one last year. This one was still sleek, a thing of beauty to her eyes, as well as function. And she did not need to be swanning around in expensive brand-new motors when so many were suffering. She opened the back door, glanced automatically over at the front passenger's seat to make sure of her camera case, and then dragged out the basket Riley had packed that morning. She pressed it into Maxine’s arms, then stuck her hand into the pocket of her skirt and pulled out the little billfold she’d tucked in there that morning in case she needed anything.
‘Here,’ she said, plucking out a pound note. ‘Take this. You need it more than I do.’ She creased her face in a smile. ‘Use it to buy food, or clothes, or toys for those little ones you told me about.’
Maxine stared at her a moment, then took the proffered note without a word. It disappeared into her trouser pocket. ‘Give Riley my blessings,’ she said. ‘I don’t know how we’d get along without her.’
Clemency nodded, but she was impatient to get home now. She could see the black case on the passenger’s seat, where her new camera lurked in its darkness, along with the rolls of film.
Maxine knew she’d lost her friend’s attention, and she gave Clemency a little shove. ‘Go on. Off you go. I know you want to get into that darkroom of yours.’
Gratefully, Clemency nodded and opened the driver’s door, sliding behind the wheel. She lifted a hand in a wave at Maxine, standing there with Riley’s basket, then started the motor car and backed out of the driveway, and turned to weave her way out of the city streets and onto the road around to Port Chalmers, and home.
Chapter Eight
Eliza fluttered light fingers over the curve of her stomach beneath the night dress. A cramping pain had woken her, made her give a soundless groan against the cool morning air. She’d lost weight, said her fingers as they measured her abdomen sunken between the twin prows of her hips.
Hunger gnawed at her, drew her onto her side into a huddle, wincing as her knee ached. Her hand ached too. Everything hurt.
It was cool in the room at least – the window was still open, and she gazed out at the sky that looked back at her from under a heavy brow of clouds. Yesterday, as she limped home, the clouds had gathered in the sky, sweeping in across the city as though fleeing ahead of the wind and she had looked up at them and tried to hurry her steps.
A bird woke up outside her window and cried out at the dawn. Quardle oodle ardle wardle doodle.
Yesterday, she’d given up looking for the laundry, afraid of the roaring crowd that swept past, afraid of the shouts, of not knowing what was going on. Her knee had hurt, her hand too, and she had turned back the best she could, limping and retracing her steps, past the windows of the fancy shops, stopping for a long moment at a grocer’s, mouth watering and eyes wide at the food piled high in the window. She’d remembered where her red purse was, of course – in the handbag she’d clung to the whole time, and which was still held securely, the old leather straps sticky with her sweat under her tight fingers. The red purse with its few coins was in there, along with the papers she’d taken from her mother’s suitcase, the ones that had her name written somewhere on them.
She could hear the crowd in the distance as she limped back towards the boarding house, too tired to admire the buildings this time, turning her head aside at the fancy gilded decoration on the outside of the hotel she’d never be able to afford to even step foot inside.
By the time she’d dragged herself up the stairs to her bedroom, she was done in, exhausted, her body weary and hurt, her mind dragged down and dark on the inside, her thoughts heavy, thudding against the inside of her skull in a slow, muddy swirl.
Her lips were dry, and she tried licking them to dampen them, but her tongue was like sand. Dragging herself upright in the narrow, mean little bed, Eliza wished for her mother, wished with all her might to be back in the little house they’d lived in, just a tiny little house, but so much better than this room high in this strange sky. She’d had warm blankets there, a soft pillow, and in the morning, there had always been her
mother, up and bustling about, the kettle on the range, hot water for tea, and a crust of bread for toast, a bit of jam for sweetness. The comforts of home.
Eliza groped for the glass of water on the dressing table and tipped it to her parched mouth, gulping down the warm, slightly metallic water and glad for every drop. She licked her lips and this time they got a bit of moisture.
Her stomach cramped again, and she bent over it, closing her eyes and trying to think what to do. Yesterday, she hadn’t reached the hospital. Hadn’t even found it, had not managed to find her way down to the laundry, offer her services, show she was strong, could stir a vat of boiling sheets, could lift wet bedclothes, feed them through the mangle, could do it all as well as anyone. It was almost all she’d ever done.
But she hadn’t found the place, and now she knew she’d have to try again. It was necessary to keep trying, that was what her sluggish mind told her, repeating it over and over until the sounds in her head were almost meaningless. She breathed in, tasted salt and rain, and thought about lying back down again and drawing the sheet up over her head, just closing her eyes on it all.
Instead, she limped over to the window and sank down in front of it. The bird outside was still talking. Wardle quardle, it said, and a smile curved her dry lips. She moved them silently, trying out the bird’s conversation, hearing it in her head. She leaned out the window, then drew her head back in as a squall of rain threw itself in a flurry of cold needles at her, as though it had just been waiting for her.
Reluctantly, she picked herself up off the floor and stood crooked on one leg. Her grazed knee was sore, stiff, and when she prodded it experimentally with her fingers, it was puffy with swelling also. There went her hope of walking a distance this day.
Her mother’s handbag was on the little jutting shelf, and she limped over to it and tugged it down so that it thudded against her chest. She opened it, wincing a little at the graze on her hand, then reached inside and drew out the sheaf of papers, to spread them out on the bed in front of her to frown over.
She’d looked them over before, of course, but now she did it again, looking to see if any had emblems on them she could recognise, particularly to do with the laundry, or the hospital. There might be something, she thought. Maybe there was something? She’d not considered it before, hadn’t been interested in examining the pieces of paper and their taunting black words, but now she bent over them in the weak light from the morning sun, and squinted at every page.
None of them had anything discernible. She traced a finger against a looping, swirling script at the top of one page, but it told her nothing except perhaps that what else was on the page was important. She scooped it up, along with the rest, and put them back in the handbag.
She’d had an idea.
There were three spots of blood on her new dress and she gazed at them in dismay. She’d have to wash it again, and one glance at the window told her it wouldn’t dry in any sunshine today. She slipped into her old clothes instead, feeling them settle about her like heavy clouds. Since it was raining, she pulled her coat from the coat hanger in the corner and shrugged it on. It smelled of ocean water and she stopped, stood still in the middle of the room to breathe the scent in.
The ocean had had so many colours, she thought. One day it had been blue, another grey; once, when they had slid down beside the coast of a strange, long land, it had turned brown from the river that spilled out into it.
And then it had been green. Deep and green, the colour of the emeralds the Queen sometimes wore in the coloured pictures of her in the magazines in the shop windows, where she stood beside the King, looking regal and ever so elegant.
It had been green like that, deep and emerald, when they had tipped her mother overboard into its depths. It had been green and deep and hungry that morning and had taken her mother into its wide mouth without a please or thankyou but as though such an offering was only its due, the price necessary to cross its sleek hide.
Eliza drew in a sharp breath and shook herself, more of a shuddering than a shaking, then reached out and tugged the coat close around her, wrestling to thread the buttons through the salt-encrusted wool. She shoved her feet into her heavy shoes, picked up the handbag and left the room, trailing her courage along behind her.
The ground floor was a maze of closed doors, like the floor above had been. But Eliza had seen the landlady disappear behind one of them, after emptying the red purse of a great many coins that first day. Eliza might not be able to read, but she had sometimes a memory sharp as could be, and she hesitated only a moment before raising her hand to knock on what she was sure was the right door.
There was a grumbling behind it, and after a long moment, heavy footsteps. Eliza had placed her hand against the wood grain of the door, as though the better to hear what was on the other side of it, and she dropped her hand as the door opened abruptly.
‘Oh, it’s you. What do you want? You’re still paid up for another few days – and don’t argue with me about that. Fair is fair and there isn’t anyone who won’t say I’m fair in all my dealings. I run a respectable house, I do.’
Eliza blinked at the woman, at her broad, flat face, the cheeks red under eyes that were pale and watery, little crusts of yellow congealed at the corners of them.
The landlady looked at her then tapped her foot. ‘Well? What do you want, then?’ The girl couldn’t talk, and likely would sink rather than swim, or at least end up on the streets if someone didn’t take her along to the mental hospital instead – just as well that little purse of hers had been lightened while it still had something in it. ‘You’re interrupting my breakfast.’
Eliza knew it. The scent of hot food, of tea and toasted bread, and sausage and bacon, she thought, maybe potatoes, made her mouth water in a sudden bloom of saliva. She licked her lips.
‘Quit your gaping, girl, and tell me what it is you want.’
The landlady’s mouth flapped open and closed as she spoke and Eliza looked at it, fascinated. It was a small mouth – too small for the size of the face.
She held out the handbag, snapping the clasp open and digging into the depths, drawing out the sheaf of papers and holding them out to the landlady, arranging her face into a suitable plea as she did so,
The woman looked down at them and blinked her heavy eyelids. She wrinkled her nose, thinking about her breakfast going cold on the table. ‘What do you want me to do with these, then?’
Eliza nudged them towards the woman’s round stomach. She opened her mouth, but nothing came out and she shut it again, heaved a sigh. The landlady stared at her, took a step back to look her up and down, starting at the worn shoes with their snapped and retied lace on the left foot, up Eliza’s stockinged leg to the drooping hem of her skirt and coat and upwards to bypass the outstretched hand with its flat bundle of papers to Eliza’s face, her hat, blue felt crusted with white waves of salt from the boat trip over, and then, finally, her gaze dropped back to the hand holding the papers. She took them.
‘You want me to tell you what these are?’
Eliza bobbed her head up and down in frantic agreement.
‘Can’t read either, then, I take it?’ Mary O’Hara shook her head, drifting back into the room with Eliza’s pieces of paper. Whatever the papers had to say they weren’t going to change where the kid was going to end up. She sniffed and gave it three weeks – and generous, that was – before the girl was standing down the street at night, walking up to all the passing men and telling them her rates were a shilling a fuck. That was the only career ahead for this one.
‘Come in and close the door then, will you? Don’t need the whole house to see me in my dressing gown.’
Eliza stepped into the room with alacrity, turning to push the heavy door closed behind her. When it closed with a loud snick, the aroma of breakfast meat and potato was even stronger, and her mouth was awash again. She swallowed it down and her stomach gave a loud gurgle.
Mary gave her a heavy, sideways look.
She knew what the girl was thinking, dumb or not.
‘You can quit your thinking that I’m going to invite you to my breakfast right now,’ she said, and the girl quickly shook her head.
The scent of the food was exquisite torture, but what Eliza really needed was help with the papers. She reminded herself, swallowing again and pressing a quieting hand to her stomach, that those were the most important things, and felt vaguely proud of herself for thinking so. Maybe she was able to work things out after all, to reason things through if she tried hard enough, to make plans and follow through with them. The thought was almost enough to make her not care about the intoxicating smell of the bacon.
Soon enough, she’d have the coins back in her purse enough to buy her own bacon.
There was a small table under a window, and this was where the landlady sat herself, pushing away her breakfast, the egg yolk orange against the plate where it cooled. Eliza wasn’t invited to sit, so instead, she stood where she was, a few steps in from the door, her mother’s handbag gripped in both hands but favouring the left, because the other had the grazed palm.
The landlady held up two pieces of paper and fluttered them at Eliza. ‘These are your birth certificates. You and your Ma’s. Says here your name is Eliza Mia Sparrow.’ She gave a sniff but Eliza nodded. She’d known her name since she was born, she reckoned, speaking or no speaking.
‘You were born in 1910. A new year’s baby.’
Eliza shrugged. There was no mother now to buy her a bit of chocolate with which to celebrate her birthday, so she didn’t think it mattered much, the date of it. Besides, she thought, with a glance out the window, she wasn’t sure she knew what day it was. Or even what month it was anymore. Everything was different in this part of the world. The seasons were all wrong – perhaps the months were different too. How was she to know without someone to tell her?