by Fiona Kidman
‘Took it out of her purse,’ he said solemnly, joining in the story.
‘Tell her why.’
‘Because if I’d put it on for you, you wouldn’t have taken the winnings, even if you paid me back for the bet.’
‘Right. A pound. A whole pound Clara. I don’t know whether I should tell Mumma, what do you think?’
‘I don’t think she’ll care if you won,’ Clara said, for of course by then it was obvious that she had. ‘How much did you get?’
Winnie looked as if she had had her story spoiled a little by being anticipated, but she said, as if she was doing a conjuring trick, ‘Twenty-nine pounds, Clara. Can you imagine it?’
It was Winnie who couldn’t imagine it, really. She didn’t know of anyone having so much money all at the one time, not the actual money in their hand. But she had it. It was folded up in notes in her purse. She held one of them up to Clara.
‘As soon as I get change for this I’ll give you five shillings.’
‘She’ll get the change on Monday,’ said Albie, ‘because that’s when she’s going shopping.’
‘Oh I can’t Albie,’ she said, as if continuing a conversation they had already begun.
‘I’m not taking you to the races in this again,’ he said, touching the sleeve of her tatty old garment. ‘You do want to come again, don’t you?’
On the Monday she bought a Donegal tweed suit and a green hat and matching green shoes, and gave Clara her five shillings.
They didn’t go to the races every time they were on but still they went quite often; after the next time Winnie was able to buy an oak dresser much like the one she had sold, and slowly the house was refurnished.
Meanwhile, Reg’s money kept on coming. One day in an idle moment Winnie said to Mumma, ‘I wonder where he is nowadays. Reg. You know, I wonder where he is.’
‘If you really want to know, you can trace where the money goes into your account, young lady.’ Mumma’s tone was unusually sharp.
Winnie’s face closed like a trap. Still, she had taken to giving Mumma presents lately, and Mumma didn’t refuse them. Winnie didn’t know what had prompted her to mention Reg, for she seldom thought about him these days. But after that conversation she found herself staring down the garden more than ever, and he kept creeping in, through the corners of her attention. It had become increasingly difficult to recall exactly what he looked like, which seemed extraordinary when she considered that there had been a time when his image was imprinted on her like part of herself. It came to her one morning that that was partly the explanation, that she had always expected him to be there, and he had gone away, and with him he had taken any certainty of him. She became less surprised by the lack of his image in her mind.
The other thing that occurred to her was that she was happier now than she had ever been, and with this came the knowledge that the reason she thought of Reg so often now was because she was afraid he would return.
And that she loved Albie.
She wondered if other women were so slow and ordered in the progression of their thoughts, and why it had taken her so long to understand what was so obvious, now that she had come to this point. ‘I am older,’ she said aloud, in the kitchen, one morning. There was nobody there, but she needed to hear herself talk. ‘It’s not like I was a silly kid.’
All that day, and in the days that followed immediately afterwards, she was animated and laughed a great deal. But the mood didn’t last long. In the progression of her thoughts there were the other considerations, which she had, for a time, put aside. She wanted him now, with her in her bed. He could not fail to notice, and her new awareness of him changed the way he was when they were together, too.
They were sitting together on the sofa one evening. There was a good fire burning, marking an early autumn. Pine cones were spitting in the grate and there was a glow in the room. Albie moved towards her, but instead of letting him come closer to her she moved down the sofa, away from him. They had the wireless on, and there was static in the air.
Albie got up to adjust the set.
‘Shall I turn it off?’
‘No. I don’t know. There might be something on.’
‘There might.’ He walked around the room.
‘You’re restless. Can’t you sit still?’
‘Not really. No, as a matter of fact it’s very difficult.’
‘Perhaps you should go home and have an early night.’
‘Is that what you want? Is it?’ He was close to shouting at her. She sat very still. On the wireless a singer began to croon, ‘What’ll I do?’, anticipating parting and the loss of love.
He sat down again and they looked at each other, their faces aching and painful.
‘Why can’t we?’ said Albie. ‘I can’t bear this.’
‘I’m still married,’ said Winnie. Her voice was strained.
‘That’s an excuse,’ said Albie harshly. ‘You would have at the beginning.’
She didn’t answer him at once, then she said, ‘But we didn’t did we?’
‘Don’t you want to? Don’t you want me?’
‘You know I do.’ She was surprised by her own violence.
‘Then now. While we both want it. While it’s right.’
‘But it’s not right, don’t you see. The children … any of the girls could get up … they’re too old …’
‘Too old for what?’ he said.
‘To know that we … that it was like that, when we haven’t the right.’
‘It’s killing me Win,’ he said. ‘D’you understand?’
‘What’ll you do?’ she said, like the song.
‘Do?’ He was trembling. ‘I think I’d die if I couldn’t see you every day I live,’ he said. ‘That’s what I think I’d do.’
She put her hand on the back of his neck.
‘It’ll be all right soon,’ she said. ‘It’ll be all right love.’
He lifted his head. ‘What d’you mean?’
‘I’ll work something out, you’ll see. So that it is right.’
He gripped her hand then, and was still. The music was gentle and only the flames moved.
In the kitchen where she had gone for a drink, Clara slipped away back through the shadows, and lay awake beside Jeannie.
It was less than a week after they had talked that Winnie and Albie gathered them all up for a walk to the lake. The two adults walked behind Jeannie and Clara pushing Caroline in her pushchair. It was a grey flat day, and they were wearing their heavy coats for the first time of the year, except for Clara who had reached the age where she didn’t want to be different if she met any friends. The ducks at the edge of the water went round and round in aimless little circles, waiting for stray scraps to float past. The older girls fed them out of a brown paper bag filled with crusts. Clara remembered when there had been no crusts to spare. Mostly they had their hands filled with looking after Caroline.
For all she was a pretty yellow-haired little girl, she was restless and still irritable. If she was crossed it always seemed as if it was their fault and even Clara and Jeannie found themselves uneasily lined up together to defend each other when she grizzled.
They tired of feeding the ducks. Clara felt as if she had been tired of it for years. The feathers of the birds eddied around them in small dusty clouds and there was nothing to do. Some mothers sat with their children near the waterfront and it was the kind of day when they all seemed cross. Behind them eight very tall pine trees stood in a cluster. They had had all their branches removed right up to the bushy tufts at the very top. Clara wondered who on earth could have bothered to strip them like that. Probably someone as bored as them, with the advantage of axes and ropes. At least they had done something. That was what she craved, that something would happen. Anything.
She was nearly thirteen now, and she had seen two boys from the High School kicking stones along the lake front. She was glad they weren’t Tech boys. They would have run a mile if they had spotted Albie even tho
ugh it was said that he got on well with his pupils. She fancied one of the boys in particular, for she had seen him often. He lived down Winnie’s street. But though she had seen him around for years, she hadn’t really noticed him till just recently. She could see that he noticed her too.
She put Caroline in her pushchair and strapped her in.
‘Sit with her a while, she’ll settle down,’ she said to Jeannie, making her voice as callous as she could.
‘Where are you going?’
Clara wondered how many times she had heard Jeannie ask that same relentless question.
‘Just for a walk.’
‘Can’t we all go?’ But it was clear that Clara would say no even before she had asked. Clara was learning to say no.
She walked rapidly, with her head down. She ran a hand through her hair and felt it fluff out beneath her fingers, and arched her spine so that her waist pulled in tighter, though she knew that is was already very small and neat, and she gave her bottom a little wiggle the way she had seen Jean Harlow doing it on the screen, or at least it felt as if she was doing it the same. But when she looked round furtively to see if the boys were watching, they had gone. She was almost relieved. She had not really worked out what she would do if she met them. At least she had had a brief respite from Jeannie and Caroline.
As she turned to go back to them she heard Winnie and Albie’s voices. They were sitting together on a seat behind the bush alongside the drive that encircled the lake. She stopped, thinking she was going to be caught for leaving Jeannie and Caroline, or half afraid that they might magically divine that she had been chasing boys.
‘I’ve done everything I could to trace him,’ Winnie said. ‘They don’t know where he is.’
‘What about the last deposit he made?’
‘They tracked it down to Christchurch, but they didn’t know anything about him there. They think he was just passing through. And that was two months ago, Albie, so it looks as if he might have stopped sending money altogether. I don’t think he’ll ever come back.’
‘Does it make you feel any better?’
‘About us? Oh yes.’
‘It’ll be all right then?’
She looked up at him. ‘I’ve been hard on you haven’t I?’
He picked up her hand and turned it over in his. ‘It’s all right now though. It doesn’t matter.’
She turned her face towards him and he kissed her, holding her close, and said, against her sensible short brown hair, ‘Oh my sweet love. Don’t ever leave me Winnie.’
Soon they got to their feet for in the distance Winnie heard Caroline’s fretful cry. Jeannie and Clara pushed the pushchair up the hill again between them. Clara was pleased to see that the boys had gone.
She looked back at Winnie and Albie and they were following a little way behind. Albie was swinging along, jaunty and certain, and his shoulders were straighter than she had ever seen them. Winnie had a dreamy silly sort of smile hovering around the corners of her mouth. As they turned out of the gates and back towards the water tower, Clara felt absurdly pleased for them, not knowing quite why, but glad that for them at least, something was going to happen. She was sure that it was so.
And that was the way it was when Reg walked along the street to meet them, just a few moments later.
After Reg had kissed Winnie’s cheek he shook hands with Albie and thanked him for keeping an eye on his family while he’d been away. It was as if he had been gone for a week rather than three years, the way he spoke.
He and Winnie slipped back into a routine, and he never asked where the clothes or the furniture had come from. He didn’t need to ask about Caroline though the records would have been sufficient to dispel any doubts. But he didn’t ask to see them. Caroline was just like the Hoggards which was something none of them had really noticed before, and so pretty that she delighted her father. She stopped being cross within a week of him being home as if something missing had been put in place in her life. Clara was glad for Reg’s sake.
Albie didn’t die, but he didn’t come round any more either. Winnie cut the Donegal tweed down for Jeannie, and Caroline tottered round the yard a few times playing at dressing up in the brave green shoes and hat until they were relegated to the rubbish tin.
Reg got a job at the dairy factory and it wasn’t long before they gave him a job in management. He and Winnie began to prosper and if she was quiet, she looked well enough. As for Clara, she had other things to do besides worry about them.
4
Clara always painted Hamilton in the most gloomy colours when she described the town to people afterwards. The way she talked about it, anyone would be justified in believing that it was always foggy and cold, frosty and bitter, or grey and leaden. It is true that it can be all of those, but it can be beautiful too. When the sun shines, it is a great ripe ball in the sky and the green land at the edge of the town glistens like a soft coat on the earth. The river, to be sure, is always sombre, but in its steady and unhurried flow there is the heart of the matter. There is a movement, a deep current. And if the water is touched with the hand, it is clean and lovely water. Not everyone bothers. People don’t always take the time to study the Waikato river. But on a good day, one of the high-domed shiny days, it is worth it, as Clara came to know over the years.
It was a day like that when she finally got to talk to Robin. He lived near Winnie’s, and it was he whom she had watched with such admiration, the day that Reg came back from the goldfields. A High School boy.
She was sent to High the next year, or rather she elected to go there. In a way it was because of Robin, although she couldn’t have spelled it out as being the reason then. She was certainly interested in boys, there was no doubt about that, and he was the one that she could watch secretly every weekend that she was at Winnie’s place. He came to represent high school to her and the tantalising possibilities of boys in general. When the question of where she would go to school came up there really wasn’t any doubt about it. She was going to High too.
She was enrolled for French and Latin and mathematics; everything that had a difficult ring to it. But if her teachers had thought that she had a glimmer of cleverness, they hadn’t reckoned on the baleful influence of clever Jeannie, or how Clara already knew how much easier it was to be popular than clever. By the end of the first year she had dropped out of French and Latin. Her stray and strange passion for history and mathematics, which was more evident in class than in her exam results, kept her uneasily in the second class down from the top. She could only disrupt the lower classes; she was manageable where they placed her. It suited her and later she was grateful for it when she met Robin, properly that is, for he, glittering and brilliant, would not have taken kindly to the competition of a really top girl, and would have been embarrassed by a dull one. It was ideal. It was where Clara stayed, without distinction, for her entire time at high school.
Towards the end of her first year, she got to know Robin. She would catch glimpses of him walking to school if she stayed over at Winnie’s at the weekend and went to school from her place on the Monday morning, although by then that didn’t happen very often. She would see him around school too, but only from a distance. She was a year behind him and besides, the girls and boys were not encouraged to mix.
In a way it didn’t matter, because he was still just one of the whole hairy-legged, pimply, and amazingly exciting horde of boys that teemed around the place, whistling and appearing to jeer at the girls.
On a Saturday morning in late November, Clara went out to Winnie’s letter box. Winnie and Reg were having a rare outing. One of the Hoggard cousins was getting married and they had asked her to stay over with the girls while they went to the wedding. She was resentful because she thought they were old enough to take care of themselves. Besides she felt she was only invited there these days when Winnie wanted something. She was particularly incensed that weekend because there was a dance on at the Junction and, although she hadn’t yet turned f
ourteen, it was amazing what she could get away with. Mumma never seemed to notice what Clara did. In spite of that she had never actually had the nerve to go to one of the dances, though she was one of a group who hung around the door of the hall on the way home from the pictures some nights, and crept round parked cars before retreating with their breaths flapping in their chests like a line of washing. This night was to have been the night when they ventured across the doorstep.
Instead Mumma had put her foot down with unusual force. Perhaps she had an inkling of what was on Clara’s mind, and with it an attack of conscience. Clara wasn’t sure what it was, but between Mumma and Winnie they got her over to stay with the girls. The wedding was at eleven o’clock and Winnie and Reg didn’t expect to be home till late in the evening, for they were being driven out to Cambridge by relatives who were sure to stay the distance.
The postie’s whistle shrilled at Winnie’s box and Clara ambled out to see what was there. A couple of bills and a circular from the Labour Party which had probably been delivered by hand the night before.
What a morning. The trees and shrubs had come to life and were shiny and flowering, there was a smell of summer in the air. Across the road a forsythia blazed like yellow fire, an enormous spreading ball. Clara was surprised that the Council hadn’t cut it back, it took up so much room on the street. Robin Mawson appeared from behind it on his hands and knees, coming out backwards. She couldn’t believe it at first, it was such an absurd sight, which he must have known, or would have if he hadn’t been so concerned about something else. Instead of being embarrassed or rushing off without looking at her he called out.
‘Have you seen a pup by any chance?’
‘Have you lost one?’
‘I wouldn’t be under a bush if I hadn’t.’
There were several reasons why he mightn’t have been under a bush but she didn’t say that. She asked him, instead, what the pup was like and how long it had been lost. It was a very small puppy he said, too small to be wandering about on its own, and he had only had it a week. It was a Labrador and its name was Chip though he supposed it wouldn’t know its name yet. It had been gone since the night before, and even though the weather was warmer now he was afraid that it might have suffered from a night in the open. Would she watch out for him, he beseeched Clara.