by Toni Jordan
The air is very still. I am very still.
Then I say, ‘What? What did you say?’
He shakes his head. ‘Forget it.’
‘No.’ I can feel a rush inside me, heat moving up my body, and my ears are buzzing. There’s an energy in my hands and in my legs that makes me want to start running. Run fast and never stop. ‘What did you mean by that?’
‘Francis.’
I turn my head and Kip is standing on the stairs to the hall. I can barely make him out with the light behind him.
‘They’re playing slower music now, easier to dance to,’ Kip says. ‘And someone’s put out the sponge cakes. Annabel might like some cake and they won’t last long. Like locusts in there. Francis, come back inside. You can sweet-talk the lady at the booth. Tell her you stepped out for a moment, to get some air.’
‘Why don’t you mind your own business?’
‘It’s all right, Kip,’ I say.
‘I don’t want Francis to say something he might regret.’
‘Regret?’ Francis spins to look at him. ‘I won’t be the one who has any regrets. I’m trying to bring her up in the world. You’d think I’d get a bit more gratitude, seeing how she lives with her father.’
‘Francis,’ says Kip. ‘This is the drink talking.’
‘What, does she think nobody knows? Everybody knows. All of Richmond knows.’
I take a breath that I wish could last forever, so I never have to exhale again but I hear a creak and feel the seam at my waist give a little more. I want to go home. I can walk from here: it’s not that far. But there’s one thing I have to do first. I reach behind my neck and undo the pendant.
‘Here.’ My throat seems bare. I hold it out. ‘I don’t want this anymore.’
‘Francis, don’t you dare take that back,’ says Kip. ‘Don’t you dare.’
‘I wouldn’t keep it if he got down on bended knee.’
‘You’ve already accepted it. It’s already yours,’ says Kip.
‘Keep out of it.’
‘Francis. You can’t take a gift back like that. It’s not right.’
Francis turns to me. ‘To think I was going to ask your father tonight. What a lucky escape. There’ll be another girl more than happy to get a necklace like this. Any one of those girls inside, right now.’
‘Francis. You gave it to Annabel. It’s hers,’ Kip says.
‘She doesn’t want it. She said.’
Kip walks over and takes the pendant out of my hand. He holds it up to his eyes: it’s dark out here. I wonder he can make it out.
‘I’ll give you ten pounds for it,’ he says.
Francis snorts.
‘Twenty.’
‘Where would you get twenty pounds? What sort of wages do they give you at that pathetic job?’
‘I’ll give you a pound a fortnight, from my pay.’
Francis shuts his eyes for a moment, then opens them. ‘Twenty-five.’
Kip feels around in his pockets and pulls out a note and a handful of change. ‘Here. One pound two and six. Down payment.’ Then he walks over and stands in front of me. I’m shaking. From the cold, I think.
‘I don’t want it, really. Give it to some other girl.’
‘Look, Annabel,’ Kip says. ‘There’s no point Francis taking back what he said. We’re all so close together around here. There’s no way to keep secrets in these little houses.’
I can barely keep my head up at that. At heart, I always knew everyone talked about my father and me. Passing me on the street and smiling, thinking their horrible little thoughts. Kip takes my hands and holds them in his. I can feel my mind calm, my breathing steady. Other than dancing, it’s the first time I can recall that I’ve touched the skin of a man who isn’t my father.
‘Annabel Crouch,’ he says. ‘I know you want to be the one who does the honourable thing. But I’m asking you to be generous. I’m asking you to let someone else be honourable for a change.’
The difference between generous and honourable isn’t something I’ve thought about before, but I look at Kip’s face and see that this is important. I nod. Kip walks around behind me and reaches around my neck. One of his hands touches my shoulder and the other brushes my throat. His skin is warm and dry and soon I feel the pendant again, the familiar weight, the way it smooths my skin.
‘You’re a bloody idiot, Kip,’ says Francis. ‘Always were, always will be.’
Francis heads back into the ballroom. I watch him buy another ticket, with Kip’s money. Kip and I walk along the quiet streets in the dark. It’s late, so we take the train back to Richmond. We aren’t touching, but it doesn’t matter. The skin on my hand remembers. We don’t say much. When we get home, I thank Kip for the pendant, and for bringing me home. He says that without a doubt Francis will be over first thing, to apologise. People fight, Annabel. What matters is how they make up, how they say sorry. He had a few too many, that’s all. Mark my words. Francis might come around tomorrow, and he might not. It’ll make no difference to me. I’ve already made up my mind.
I say goodnight and Dad is sitting where I left him, as if it’s only been a few hours instead of a hundred years. Most Saturday nights, I wish he was awake. I imagine him reading or listening to the wireless and waiting up for me. I’d make us tea and we’d sit up and talk for ages about everything that happened. What the other girls were wearing, what the band was like. Tonight I’m glad he’s out cold.
Normally, I do whatever needs to be done to move him to bed. I like him to meet the morning horizontal, between clean sheets. On a good day he’ll have sobered sufficiently to make it under his own steam with just a little prodding, and once he’s in bed he won’t wake until the early hours for his nightcap from the little bottle that he keeps buried under his singlets. Some kind of spirit or else port or sometimes sherry. Who does he think washes his singlets, irons them and folds them and puts them away? Yet every night he pretends I don’t know about the bottle and I do the same.
‘Dad.’
I touch his shoulder and without a word he’s up and teetering towards the back door where he fumbles with the lock, then he stands just inside and relieves himself, out into the yard. I hear it, impossibly loud and long, and it sounds like he hasn’t cleared the cement which means I’ll have to wash down the stinking stain in the morning. I fetch two glasses of water from the kitchen and leave the one for drinking within reach of his bed. It’ll be untouched when I clean tomorrow. He comes back in, fly buttons undone, trousers half off, reeking; he sits on the bed, eyes closed.
I kneel and lift his feet one by one to rest on my bent knee, untie his shoes and take them off, take off his socks. His limbs are limp and heavy, he does nothing to help me. I fold his arms out of his shirt, haul him to his feet to pull down his trousers, then sit him back down again. I hang up his pants and his belt. I hold my hand flat and he takes out his teeth and drops them into my palm: warm and sticky, shiny pink and white. I put them in the spare glass on his bedside table and wipe my wet hand on the sheet, then pull it back, and he climbs inside. I kiss his forehead and turn to leave.
At the door, I stop. I can’t forget what he said earlier tonight. I shouldn’t disturb him. There’s a risk he’ll wake up properly, that he’ll be angry, that he’ll fight with the walls or the furniture or me. But I’ll never sleep without knowing.
I walk back to the bed and kneel beside it. I can see the web of red veins around the sides of his nose. His eyelids droop into heavy folds. I can hear his breathing pause, like he’s filled his lungs for the last time. He is killing himself, I know that. I won’t have him for very much longer. The time will come when I’d give anything to put him to bed one more time.
‘Dad.’ I shake his shoulder. ‘Dad. Wake up.’
He startles, his eyes and mouth bolt open in alarm and he clutches the sheet around him, a frightened boy wakened from a bad dream. I’m sorry I’ve disturbed him now. I should climb in bed beside him and sing him a lullaby, but I don’t. I need him to answer.
‘Hmmm? Wha’?’
‘Kip Westaway. Francis’s brother. Why don’t you like him?’
He snorts the silly-Annabel snort and rolls over in the bed, turns his back. I hear him mumble. He speaks very softly.
‘Take you away from me,’ he says.
CHAPTER 7
Jean
IF I’M NOT out the door by twenty to seven and on the tram I won’t be in the kitchen by half seven and the missus insists upon punctuality and all the silver needs doing for the war widow dinner tomorrow night.
‘Ma. Aren’t you having any breakfast?’ Kip is still in his pyjamas. This morning there isn’t anywhere he is supposed to be. He’s eyeing the last slice of bread. Boys that age, hollow in the middle.
‘Couldn’t fit a thing in,’ I tell him.
‘Ma could I have a ha’penny for a bun?’ says Francis.
‘Tomorrow.’
By rights it should be Connie’s job to do the breakfast and I’ve already spent ten minutes I do not have looking for that girl. She’s not in the kitchen. I look in the bedroom: she’s not there either. I open the front door for a bit of breeze: just the usual workers dawdling past, rubbish blowing along with the wind, dust and soot and the smell from the tannery that blows up the hill. The rising tide of the world I spend every last breath keeping out of this house.
‘Ma. Maybe I should go in next door,’ says Kip.
‘Go over later and look after the horse. Most boys’d be happy for a day off.’
How do you keep a civil tongue in this damn heat? And my head, it’s cruel. I take the damp hanky out of my sleeve and wipe my neck with it. The pain comes from the bones above my eyes, pressing in and down. Kip plonks himself down right in the hall, panting like some animal.
‘We have chairs for that,’ I say. ‘Your sister. Seen her?’
He drags himself to his feet like the world’s against him and leans in the doorway to the bedroom. He shakes his head. ‘Maybe there’s something I can do. Make myself useful.’
That’s the last thing the Hustings’ll need, my youngest bobbing up, trying to make himself useful. I know full well what it’s like in there: curtains drawn to make sure the day hasn’t started and they’ll be hoping it never does. No wireless playing, no one speaking. Ache in her stomach like a kick from a horse, wondering why they let him go, why they didn’t bolt the door to his room while he was sleeping. Mr Husting will be wishing he could have yesterday over and over again, for ever. They’ll be holding that telegram until it crinkles in their hands. She won’t be so high and mighty today.
At least with Tom I had a body to bury.
‘He used to help me brush Charlie, some days,’ says Kip.
‘Good of him,’ I say.
‘At the railway station, at the last minute. It seems like a couple of days ago. Doesn’t seem nearly four months.’
‘Time flies.’
‘I think he changed his mind. I think he didn’t want to go after all.’
‘Too late by then, wasn’t it.’
Kip has that set on his face that reminds me of his father, that wistful look. I’d never confess it to another living soul but some days I can’t bear the sight of that boy. It’s a judgment on me. He’s Tom when he stirs his tea, clinking the spoon on the cup. Clink, clink. Tom when he tilts his chair to balance on the back legs. He’d snap one or the other if he fell: his back or the chair’s, and who’d have to look after him then? Mugsy me. Those moments, when he reminds me of Tom, I have to leave the room. The fury rises up my legs and up my body like a scream and it’s all I can do to not let it out. I go to the laundry and splash my face with cold water and count to fifty. Sometimes I’d like to slap him. My own boy, for the way he stirs his tea. Tom. I ask you. Falling off a tram. Sometimes I dream Kip is Tom come back to life and I let him have it good and proper for dying on me like that.
‘Libya. That’s in the desert. Must be a lonely place,’ he says. ‘I hope he had a good horse. I hope he didn’t die alone.’
‘We all die alone,’ I say. ‘No need to make a song and dance about it.’
Francis is flicking through his school books, showing no signs of moving. ‘Do you know where she is?’ I say. He shrugs.
This is not how I imagined it to be. Children. Mothering. As a girl I had plenty of suitors but none like Tom. Best behaviour in front of my father, children brought up in the church all right by him. I saw myself in a rocking chair with a plaid rug around my shoulders and a wee one sleeping in my arms and another sitting quiet on the floor beside me. Embroidering, maybe. We’d have a piano. Tom would have a respectable job in an office and I’d have a girl to do the heavy work and he’d come home and smoke his pipe and read his paper in front of the fire. I saw myself brushing the babies’ hair, watching them sleep on our big bed curled like kittens, breathing each other’s sweet baby breath.
Then, just so: Tom won the treble only two weeks before the wedding. I remember the look on his face when he showed me, a fat roll of paper, more than I’d ever expected to see at once. Straight off he put down a cash deposit on this house and never laid another bet. Small and run down, yes, but halfway up the hill. Away from the slums. Funniest thing was: Tom never had any religion and ever since our wedding day, it was me that went over to his side. Oh, I kneel and speak the words, make the children go, even take the sacrament but fact is the Lord fell away from my life the moment Tom slid that ring onto my finger.
I am about to give up looking for that madam. Nothing will induce me to yell out for her like a fishwife. But then I spy her from the kitchen window. She’s in the backyard of all places, under that awful tree, the one that’d be felled, uprooted, chopped up and burnt by now if I still had a husband to do it. Those berries leave stains that are a bugger to get out. It’s hotter inside than out and she’s sitting on the ground, hands on her stomach. Lord, don’t let her be ill. No sense trying the boss’s patience. Doesn’t know how lucky she is, with a boss like Mr Ward. She should be on time, not give him any reason to complain. Sitting under trees can wait until she’s married.
I call out ‘Connie’ but she doesn’t look up. She’s ignoring me. Right. She’ll wish she’d come when she was called soon enough.
‘What time do you call this?’ I say. When I’m standing right there she raises her head and she’s white as powder. Her clothes are crushed and crumpled and then I see they’re yesterday’s. There’s no need for that: she’s got a perfectly good nightgown and two blouses, one to wear and one to rinse out. I don’t go peeking over her side of the room. That’s why the wardrobe’s in the middle, for a bit of privacy.
‘Connie. Did you not go to bed last night?’
She’s looking next door across the lane. The curtains are still drawn. The shop will stay closed today. Someone should write out a sign: shut due to family bereavement. Make sure they don’t have customers knocking on the door all day. The priest, or minister or whatever they call them, he might be there already but neighbours and friends will give them until noon before they come, cakes in their hands. I know.
‘Next door all this time,’ she says. ‘Just across the lane. One day we won’t even remember what he looked like, not without reminding.’
‘Young men die in war. It’s a sad fact.’
My headache has moved: now it’s a band like an overly tight hat. It feels like my skull doesn’t belong on the top of my head and if I relaxed it’d fall right off. My neck is stiff, my back aches too, right down the bones in the middle and at the bottom of my spine, a dragging. I’m too old to work like a blackfella. Connie needs to get up, now.
‘I saw the telegram boy on my way home yesterday.’ Her eyes are rimmed red. I wonder if she’s slept at all. ‘I saw him ride ahead of me up Lennox Street and slow down to read the numbers. I saw him get off his bike and lean it against the fence.’
I didn’t see the boy arrive, but Connie’s not the only one who knew a telegram had come. I’m used to this row of little weatherboard houses maki
ng all kinds of noises in strange weather: the boards moaning and sighing, the gutters creaking, the whole lot of them shifting together in the heat and the cold. Last night was stinking and the street was full of a different kind of noise altogether. It was Ada Husting, keening well into the small hours. It’s not a wonder Connie couldn’t sleep.
I try to get her up again but she doesn’t move. I tell her there’s nothing wrong with her.
Then she looks me in the eye. ‘Ma. There’s a baby.’
‘What do you mean, there’s a baby? Here? In the backyard?’
I look at her, in her crushed and dirty clothes and no slippers, at her sick face and her lank hair, at her hands clasped around her belly. How thin she’s got. How blind I’ve been.
Oh, she is a clever thing. A wonderful clever girl. I lean down and haul to her to feet and I hug her. She’s surprised because we don’t go in for that kind of thing: as my mother used to say, there’s a word for women who can’t stop touching each other and it’s not a very nice one. But I can’t help it. She’s skin and bone in my arms. A good spew cleans out the body. A healthy pregnancy, a healthy baby. ‘Connie. Mrs Ward, I should say. Mrs Constance Ward. Doesn’t that sound respectable?’
‘Ma.’
They’ll have to get a wriggle on. Can’t have her showing. Still, at his age, a widower already, no one expects a long engagement. ‘We can have a wedding ready to go in six weeks. Eight at the outside.’
‘Ma, please.’
I can have the room next to the baby. In the Hawthorn house. Francis and Kip can share a room and she’ll need a nursery. How many bedrooms are there? More than five, I suppose. I can direct the domestics. There’d be more than one, I’d say, and I know better than anyone the kind of tricks girls like that get up to. Connie won’t have to worry about a thing. ‘Hawthorn’s further from St Kevin’s but that’s neither here nor there. And Kip! Maybe Mr Ward can get him a job at the Argus.’
‘Ma.’
I know. Kip can take Connie’s job. That’s a good idea. He talks about nothing but photographs these days. Connie won’t be working, not after the wedding. Hawthorn wives don’t work and besides, she’ll have this one to look after, and Mr Ward’s two. And likely more. I hope this one’s a girl. Makes sense to have the girl first so she can be a little mother to the next one, the boy.