Nine Days

by Toni Jordan

  If I had nothing to be ashamed of, I’d tell them about my parents getting older and worrying and how I have to help them. The look in my mother’s eyes when she hears about another boy from the neighbourhood signing up. That if I was going anywhere it’d be back out west to the station, back where I can breathe. I’d tell them I haven’t made up my mind to go. Not yet. But I say nothing.

  ‘First soldiers are already there. Saw it in the Herald,’ the first man says.

  ‘Perhaps you think you’re too good to go,’ says the other.

  ‘Perhaps I think my reasons are my business.’

  ‘Now, now,’ he says. ‘Don’t be like that. We’re just offering a little encouragement to blokes who might be lacking in the spine department.’

  ‘Them spineless blokes,’ says the old timer.

  ‘Hard to tell which blokes have nothing but jelly where their spine should be.’ He waves a fly off the front of his face.

  I take off my hat and hit it against my thigh to shake the dust off it. ‘I’ll be sure and tell them, if I see any. Blokes without spines. I’ll tell them you’re looking for them.’

  ‘You do that,’ the younger one says. Neither of them moves. They just watch me go.

  At home, Mum’s picking up a load of fabric scraps from the kitchen table, red and white check against the polished timber. She sorts the bits that are big enough for patches from those to be thrown away, she gathers up her threads and needles. Then she starts bustling around the kitchen and I see the good cups being wiped with a tea towel and cake plates and forks out on the sideboard.

  ‘Jack,’ she says, when she sees me in the doorway. ‘Why are you wearing that old thing? I’ve ironed your new shirt. How about putting it on?’

  She wants me to wear the new shirt she bought from the Myer Emporium for Christmas. Now, for afternoon tea with her and Dad. This from my mother who, after twenty-odd years of marriage, takes the linen from her glory box twice a year to replace the mothballs. I don’t say anything. I go up to my bedroom where the blue shirt is hanging on the door and I put it on.

  When I get back to the kitchen she adjusts my collar. ‘Look at the state of you. Did you shave this morning? We’re not out in the sticks now, you know. How about running a wet washer around your neck? There’s a cake of Sunlight in the trough. Go on.’

  I sniff under my arms. Nothing I can detect. It’s the first time she’s asked me to do this in six weeks but if that’s what she wants. When I get back, the kitchen is empty. I hear a murmur from the front room, Mum’s company voice, higher pitched, with tighter vowels. I wander down the hall and she’s sitting there with Dad and a woman and a girl, a brown-haired girl. The girl is wearing a red suit and a white shirt and her face is shiny and her hair is done up with a red ribbon. They all stand when I come in. Her teeth are straight and friendly. Good, strong teeth. There’s not one thing wrong with the look of her.

  ‘Jack,’ says Mum. ‘There you are. We wondered where you’d got to. This is Mrs Stewart and her Emily.’

  Mrs Stewart nods. Emily steps forward and I shake her hand. Her grip is cool and firm. A proper handshake, not a ladylike drape of the fingertips.

  ‘The Stewarts go to St Stephen’s,’ Mum says.

  ‘Don’t see you there, Jack,’ says Mrs Stewart.

  ‘He’s still settling in,’ Mum says. ‘They do things different in the country.’

  ‘Men do things different you mean. My Albert. Like pulling teeth, church is,’ says Mrs Stewart.

  ‘Dad says the good Lord knows where he is if He wants him,’ says Emily.

  ‘Still, good to know who shares a pew, isn’t it, Jack? I’m not one of those prejudiced people. We’ve a family of Catholics right next door and we let their lad help around the yard. Not that I’ve ever been inside their house. Not that they’ve ever invited me. Probably wall to wall with statues of the Virgin and no room for visitors at all.’ She giggles. ‘Emily’s father has the hardware shop on Swan Street.’

  ‘I’m forever down there getting new screws, paint for touching up, bits and bobs,’ says Dad. ‘What Albert doesn’t know about varnish is nobody’s business.’

  ‘Not just varnish, Mr Husting. Nails too,’ says Emily.

  When they all sit I see there’s an empty chair next to Emily. Mum looks at me. I stare at the chair, then I look at the front door. It’s closed but the bolt isn’t drawn. It’s not far away. Half a dozen strides.

  ‘Jack,’ Mum says.

  Parents raise and feed and clothe and educate us. A good education in my case. Ballarat Grammar, as befits the only nephew of a childless station owner. Geography and Latin and history. Sitting is not too much to ask. Come on, Jack. Knees, they’re not made for decoration. They bend, given the right encouragement. There’s cake, I see, with apricots and jam on top. Mum’s got her hat on, the one she bought for my cousin Sarah’s wedding. If they had given me a bit of notice I could have been prepared. Although, to be fair, if I’d known in advance I might be out the other side of Sunbury by now. I pull the chair out. I sit.

  ‘There’s an outdoor part where they stack the timber,’ Mum says. ‘A decent-sized yard. I’ve often wished our shop had a yard like that.’

  I look up. First I’ve heard about that particular ambition.

  ‘Half the work is outside, looking after the timber and whatnot,’ says Mrs Stewart. ‘My Albert really knows his timber.’

  ‘Good storage, that’s the trick,’ says Emily. ‘Warping, splitting. It’s the damp that does it.’

  She is sitting with her back straight, knees and feet together. Her gloved hands are folded in her lap and little dark circles of sweat are blooming between the fingers. Her legs are still, her waist is still, her ankles are still.

  ‘Our Jack’s very fond of timber,’ says Mum. ‘Well. Trees, at any rate. Knows one kind from another. Not just the normal ones, oaks and elms and so forth. The scrubby ones too. Gums and whatnot. And birds. Jack’s fond of being outdoors. Aren’t you, Jack? Fond of being outdoors? And of timber.’

  ‘We have hoop pine and bunyah, mostly. From Queensland. For floors,’ says Emily. ‘And ash. Local, of course. Not New Zealand kauri. Can’t get kauri anymore.’

  ‘That so?’ says Dad.

  ‘Runned out,’ says Emily.

  My mother cuts the cake: large slabs for Dad and me, slender pieces for the ladies. Emily balances her plate on her lap in a delicate manner that’s impossible to fault. She and her mother compliment the cake, the little forks, the napkins.

  ‘Lovely,’ she says. ‘Crown Derby, is it?’ Mum blushes parrot-pink, turns one plate over to show the maker’s mark, the part that tells women what’s what if they speak the language. I stare at the cake. The cake stares back, two apricot halves looking at me cross-eyed. I use my fork to break off a bit and force it down with a swig of tea.

  ‘Emily only has sisters,’ says Mum. ‘Girls are a blessing for mothers but it must be hard on your father, dear.’

  ‘Dad always says Mum shouldn’t feel bad. He says he’s sure she did as best she could.’ She lays a glove on her mother’s knee.

  ‘A good husband,’ Mrs Stewart says. ‘And so generous with us girls.’

  ‘For Christmas he bought us all stockings just like the Duchess of Kent’s,’ Emily says. ‘Two-thread sheer. Colour of orchid bronze.’

  ‘I’m sure you and our Jack would have a lot in common. Are you fond of the pictures? Our Jack loves going to the pictures, don’t you Jack. And animals, I’ll bet you’re fond of animals. Our Jack was shoeing horses until recently on my brother’s station, out west, near Darlington. Practically South Australia. Of course, that wasn’t all he was doing. A very responsible position, wasn’t it Jack, for so young a man? And,’ she pauses until it seems that inspiration strikes. ‘Very educational, shoeing horses. As far as nails.’ She bestows a triumphant smile on Emily, who clearly has no idea what to do with this insight.

  ‘You work as well,’ Dad says. ‘In the shop.’

 
‘We all do. My sisters and me. Dad can’t lift much, on account of his arm.’

  ‘Shame.’ Dad rubs both elbows. ‘Best mark in the under- 19s, Albert Stewart.’

  ‘The Great War. That’s where he lost it.’ Emily shakes her head. ‘In France, or somesuch.’

  I have an image unbidden of the poor arm, wandering over foreign fields, trying to find its way home.

  ‘Can’t imagine him with two. That long ago,’ says Mrs Stewart.

  ‘He’s a wonder, your father,’ Mum says. ‘And never any trouble with the drink.’

  ‘He always says he’d rather be missing one arm than got gassed,’ Emily says.

  ‘Wicked, that gas,’ says Mum. ‘Credit to him that he never breathed it in.’

  ‘He can do most everything except wash his hand and roll his shirt sleeve up and pin it and cut his nails. We girls take it in turns to do that, have since we were little. In the shop I work mostly inside. I’m in charge of washing machines.’

  ‘Washing machines,’ says Dad. ‘That must be a good deal of responsibility for so young a lady. How old are you, Emily? Eighteen?’

  ‘Nearly. Do you have a washing machine yourself, Mrs Husting?’

  ‘I’m sure they’re wonderful for a certain type of family,’ Mum says, ‘but I have a girl every Monday.’

  ‘Our new vacuum washer, it has a copper plunger. The lightest silks and stockings can be washed in it. No boiling, no rubbing, no scrubbing.’

  ‘Fancy,’ says Mum.

  There is more talk of washing machines but no further mention of stockings. There is talk about bicycles. Emily maintains they are the future of cheap transportation for working people. She believes it possible to cycle in a ladylike fashion and my mother’s expression betrays her politely withheld disagreement. Emily also believes that horses will soon live only in zoos and every good family will have a car and, if her washing machines are any example, there will be so many labour-saving devices that women will have all day to practise drawing and needlework.

  ‘Is that so, Emily?’ says Mum. ‘I’m sure I wouldn’t know what to do with myself if my labour were to be saved.’

  After an hour or so, Emily’s mother says they must be getting back, and Mum says how nice it is that they’ve visited, and would she like to take some cake for her husband, bless him. They must come again.

  I say goodbye and shake Emily’s hand again. After they’ve gone, Dad says what a beaut girl, that she’ll make some lad proud, and even with so many young men away a girl like Emily can have her pick of any fellow she likes. Then Mum says what a good little cook she is and what she can do with a bunny is nobody’s business. And how her father is so clever, running the shop instead of becoming a lift driver or going on the susso like most one-armed men you see. It’s a good job, though, lift driver, Dad says. A job for life. There’ll always be a need for lift drivers; every new building in the city’s taller than the last. Neither of Emily’s sisters is married yet—they’re plainer than she is and one has a trace of a moustache—and sure as eggs the first son-in-law will have his way with the shop. It’s no McConchie’s or Provan’s, not yet. Modest. But it could be. My mother’s eyes are shining.

  An hour later I find myself on the front step of the Westaways’ in an ironed shirt and my good jacket, an old cane basket filled with lemons on my arm.

  When the door opens I manage to keep my jaw from dropping. I am greeted by two boys standing together, peas in a pod, the same but different.

  ‘Ma! There’s someone here,’ yells one of them. They’re fine-boned with gangly limbs that don’t quite fit right. One is thinner than the other. Their eyes are dark and deep-set, wide mouths and straight hair. I know Kip, he’s the one who needs a haircut. The other one has a new-looking short back and sides.

  ‘Mr Husting, hello,’ says Kip. He shakes my hand. His nose is bent; someone’s helped it to that shape. He’s got a faded shiner and a cheeky grin, the kind of lad who’d have been a great ally in getting up to mischief when I was his age. It’s a shame there’s a good six years between us. I tell him it’s good to meet him properly at last.

  ‘You work right there and haven’t met?’ says the other.

  Kip looks bashful. I raise my eyebrows and shrug. We nod at each other from time to time but truth be told, Kip’s not allowed in the house. Mum says Catholic boys are odds on to have lice. And, for my part, the feel of Charlie and the smell of him and the warmth of his flank under my hand makes me want to saddle up and head west without even stopping to pack or say goodbye. Inside, I’m out of temptation’s way.

  ‘I’m out the back,’ says Kip. ‘Charlie sure is some horse.’

  I suppose he probably is. Every boy thinks his first horse, his first love, is the only one for him. He’ll never forget Charlie, not for the rest of his life.

  The neater one shakes my hand, says how do you do and pronounces his name Frarncis. At boarding school he’d have his head beaten in for that kind of poncing. He’s not the kind of boy whose friends call him Frank. I tell them to call me Jack.

  Their mother appears behind them, Mrs Westaway, hands on her hips, hair loose and grey and hanging in her eyes. She might be the same age as my mother, younger maybe, but she has no padding. She is all sharp angles and tart features, her eyes chips of granite. I feel a surge of guilt that my father is alive. I tell them my mother sent me with lemons from the tree that’s weighed down with fruit in our backyard.

  ‘Your mother, indeed. Mrs Husting. Sent us over a basket of lemons.’

  I don’t trust myself to speak under her stare so I nod and she scowls and humphs, and then Connie Westaway comes up behind her. She’s not wearing her apron now. Her dress is the colour of new wheat and her hair is almost black. Her nose has freckles carefully placed, as if with a pencil and a steady hand.

  ‘How thoughtful.’ She leans forward to take the basket. For an instant, her hand is next to mine. ‘You must thank Mrs Husting for us. You can never have enough lemons.’

  ‘I never saw that many lemons at your place,’ says Kip.

  ‘On the far side,’ I say. ‘Nearly pulled the tree over with the weight of them.’

  He looks me square in the face. ‘You’d think I’d of noticed a thing like that.’

  ‘You’d be flat out working, I’d expect,’ I say.

  ‘They’re lovely lemons,’ says Connie. ‘Aren’t they boys?’

  ‘They’re heavy all right.’ Kip lifts one, tosses and catches it. ‘And they’re good looking too. I’ve never seen anything quite so lemony.’

  Francis shrugs. ‘Things that grow in piles of manure are Kip’s department, but they look just like normal lemons to me.’

  ‘To me,’ Kip says, ‘they look just like the ones in the front of the shop on Swan Street that go for a shilling a bag.’

  ‘How tall are you, Mr Husting? Six foot?’ Connie says.

  ‘Thereabouts.’

  ‘I’m having some trouble with the washing line. It’s come down, I’m afraid. Would you mind?’

  We leave the boys—Kip with his forehead creased and puzzled—and Mrs Westaway, who is glaring. Connie leads me down the hall and through the kitchen where she tumbles the lemons into a bowl so I can take the basket back: a good idea; it’d be awkward if Mum misses it. In the backyard, it takes two shakes to fix the line. The far post’s half down and needs knocking back in the ground, which I do with a half brick I see lying near the fence. It’s on its last legs, though. It needs fixing before it collapses one day and a whole wash gets dragged in the dirt. I can bring a piece of timber from home and it’ll be right as rain, I tell her.

  She says thanks, looks at the clothes basket on the ground and tells me to hold out my arms straight. She takes off the shirts and towels one peg at a time, flicks them with a quick movement of her wrists so the edges line up crisp and straight, and lays them on my arms. It’s as if her arms were dancing, just the way her feet were this morning. Take the peg off, then another, stretch the towel, flick and
fold. Her skin is white and cream and pearl under the sun. There’s a bracelet on her wrist. Rosy-gold, tiny clusters of grapes joined together. As she brings her hands up and down, the bracelet moves: first dangling at the top of her hand, then tight against the plump white flesh of her one arm. For a while, everything is quiet. Just the usual late-afternoon sounds; birds, kids playing, water running in a yard on the other side. A distant wireless.

  ‘And where do you go to, then? At night?’ She doesn’t even look at me. She focuses on her task as though she’s never in her life seen such fascinating towels before. ‘After the lights go out next door.’

  ‘Where do I go?’

  She nods. ‘At night. When everyone else is asleep in their beds.’

  ‘Not everyone is asleep. You, for example. Or else you wouldn’t notice that I go anywhere.’

  She takes the pile from my arms and transfers it to the basket. She’s folding a bed sheet now, holding it under her chin, stretching her arms wide. I take one end and we stand with the sheet stretched wide between us like a white river, then she walks towards me. Close, closer, she stretches out her arms and our fingertips touch as she joins my corners of the sheet to hers. ‘Me and Mum share the front room. You try to be quiet but that’s when people are the noisiest of all. And I’m not such a great sleeper myself.’

  It strikes me that she’d understand. I’ve not said a word to Mum and Dad but they’ve never noticed and they’ve never asked. I met Connie Westaway, really met her, only ten minutes ago but I’ve seen her dancing with a broom around her backyard with no music. Something tells me she’d know what I meant if I told her about how the sky’s different in the bush, about how the ceiling seems to press in at night. About how the only way I can sleep in that little room is if I let myself in at dawn so tired I can barely stand.

  But instead I say, ‘I’m sorry if I disturb you. I walk. Down by the river or through the city. Sometimes to the Botanic Gardens. That’s all.’

  ‘You’re lucky. If I was a man, that’s what I’d do all night long. Just walk and walk.’ She doesn’t ask why I walk. She seems to know already.