The Fringe Dwellers

by Nene Gare

  ‘Ta!’ Mrs Comeaway said casually. ‘See ya later. You girls say thank you fa ya breakfast?’ she enquired. ‘Then we be off.’

  Noonah smiled her good-byes. Trilby’s mouth smiled, but her eyes were still thoughtfully cool. They walked one each side of their mother away from Mrs Green’s home.

  ‘An now ya fed,’ Mrs Comeaway said comfortably, as if some mammoth task had been satisfactorily completed.

  The thoughtful look disappeared from Trilby’s eyes. ‘Gee, isn’t it lovely to be away from that mission?’ she asked Noonah.

  ‘Isn’t Mrs Green nice, Mummy?’ Noonah said, affectionately slipping a hand through her mother’s arm. ‘She speaks sort of nice too, doesn’t she? Different from’—she hesitated—‘us.’

  ‘Been most of her life up on one a them big stations,’ Mrs Comeaway said. ‘Yeah, I always like ta hear her talkin. No rough stuff about er.’

  ‘Yes, I like her,’ Trilby added, a note of decision in her voice.

  A lot of people liked Mrs Green. Coming of a people to whom hospitality came naturally, there was a gentle kindliness mixed with Mrs Green’s that set it a little higher. There were never less than a dozen of her friends and relations under her roof; some of them part-paying guests, some of them just ‘staying’ with Gramma until some better job turned up than the one they had left. And there were the children of school age, who represented a cross-section of Gramma’s children’s broods, whose parents took it for granted that the old lady would see that they got their education. Under the shaky, boy-trodden roof there were three outside rooms, built on and added to by visitors who were used to providing their own shelter, and four main rooms, the biggest of which was the kitchen. The two top rooms were labelled sitting-room and dining-room, and occasionally, on some special occasion like someone’s wedding, they were used as such. Mostly, the genoa velvet suite and the dining-room table were pushed aside to make room for beds. Not seldom, the bumpy old lounge served as an extra bed. Only two spots in the house were sacred to Mrs Green—her tiny bedroom that opened off the kitchen, and the oven-side of the kitchen table which she needed because nearly all her chores involved the use of both. There on the top of the stove her washing-water heated in a kerosene-tin, her irons grew hot, her big black kettle boiled, and her savoury stews and fries sent mouth-watering smells throughout the kitchen.

  There was one hard and fast rule. No young males over the age of sixteen. They didn’t mean to, but they always made trouble, specially with the teen-age girls. The high-spirited youths went down to the big camp in the wattle-studded valley, the reserve set aside for coloured people, where there was plenty of space for them to fight and rough-house each other without endangering their surroundings.

  Mrs Green was old-fashioned about swearing. She had accustomed herself to the men’s easy oaths, but she was quick to correct the children and the young girls, so the children and the girls hardly ever swore when Gramma was round to hear. Mrs Green thought fighting and swearing gave you a bad name with the neighbours. Her own neighbours were a couple of hundred yards away on each side, but the old lady kept on the politest of terms with them. It was never the neighbours who complained about the kids playing on the road in front of the house. It was the townsfolk and the visitors who did that. They never failed to yell angrily from the car window when they had swerved to miss a child, though Mrs Green could have told them there was not much to worry about. The children were quick as race-horse goannas, and mostly they ran the gauntlet of the road just to see what the driver of the car would do and say.

  Mrs Green had acquired citizenship years before—before, in fact, she and her late husband had known or cared about such things. The owner of the station where she had spent most of her life had attended to the details for them. Mr Scott had talked of citizenship rights as something rather valuable, but it was not until Mr Green had died and Mrs Green had moved to the house on the hill, nearer to town, that she had appreciated to the full the distinction and convenience of possessing them. She rarely abused her privilege of buying grog, and when she did it was to benefit her friends and not her pocket. Mrs Green did not trust easy money, and she knew of more than one citizenship-rights holder who had spent a month or two in jail because his pals had split on him.

  Mrs Green’s own children had married well. One of her sons assisted with the management of a small station. Another owned a farm. Mrs Green went visiting whenever she felt like it, and her children and their families were always overjoyed to have her. They even arranged for transport, paying her fare on the train if they could not pick up a lift for her.

  Mrs Green had a plan for living and she stuck to it. First you went to school and stayed there until some of the teachers’ learning came off on you. And you didn’t wag it from school because you’d rather go swimming or fishing or tramping over the sand-hills that bordered the beach. Mrs Green had a special deterrent for the wagsters under her control. She treated them as if she felt sorry for them for not understanding better. Somehow, it worked. Mrs Green was philosophical when it didn’t. She had quite a few successes to look back on. Little Nancy was a fully trained typist now, working in the department’s office down in Perth. Joe was apprenticed to a signwriter, and his two brothers had gone into the army. The others were good boys and girls, even if they did come back every so often from their jobs on stations, as musterers and shearers’ assistants and childrens’ nurses, filled with complaints about their bosses and their bosses’ wives and the dullness of life lived miles from anywhere. And wanting, as Mrs Green very well knew, just a bit of a holiday with the other youngsters before they took another job on some other station, mustering someone else’s sheep and minding someone else’s children.

  More than a few romances had blossomed from Mrs Green’s house. There were always a few young bloods down at the camp. Some romances ended well. Some didn’t. You couldn’t blame a boy who came down from a station ready for a bit of fun, and the girl more than willing, even if it meant having the girl on your hands for months before the baby was born. Besides, after the baby had arrived, the young started to take things, and each other, a lot more seriously. And if they didn’t, well, a baby was as good a way as any to teach a girl that she had to carry it in other ways than in her arms.

  Mrs Green loved babies, anyhow.

  ‘She didn’t act a bit as if we were nuisances,’ Trilby said slowly.

  ‘Why should she?’ Mrs Comeaway asked mildly. ‘She’s me neighbour, ain’t she?’

  FOUR

  The girls sat with their backs against trees and watched the smoke-blackened kettle resting against a burning log. The stove inside the humpy functioned only as an extra hold-all. ‘Smoke everywhere,’ Mrs Comeaway had explained cheerfully. ‘And outside just as good. Maybe the ole feller fix im up one day.’

  Trilby agreed with her mother. It was fun to cook outside and there wasn’t much wrong with sitting here looking down over the valley while you drank your second lot of tea for the morning.

  ‘That big camp down there,’ Mrs Comeaway pointed, following Trilby’s gaze, ‘that’s the government place. Anyone come ta town an don’t have some place to stop at, they go there. Can do washin if ya like. Them little places down there, they take their washin up the big camp. Have a shower—anything they like.’

  Mr Comeaway came through the doorway yawning and yanking at his pants. He smiled amiably at the girls and sat down between them. Mrs Comeaway took him an enamel mug of tea, steaming hot and strong. ‘This packet’s fa you. Mrs Green give it to me for ya.’

  Mr Comeaway took his bread and butter. ‘You girls like this place?’

  ‘It’s so pretty here,’ Noonah said warmly. ‘Mummy!’

  ‘Watcha want?’

  ‘I told Bartie I was going to ask you could he and Stella come back,’ Noonah said diffidently. ‘They want to. They don’t like being left behind.’

  ‘The young’un, eh?’ Mr Comeaway said, with pleased interest. ‘How’s e goin, up there?’
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  ‘Nnnh!’ Mrs Comeaway cocked an eye at her husband, frowning. ‘I dunno bout that, Noonah. That mission a good place fa kids. All right ta come back when they been there a while an got some education. When they bigger.’

  ‘Not Bartie,’ Noonah said. ‘Bartie’s different from the others and they laugh at him. He draws, Mummy. You should see the things he draws. And he says funny things all the time, not like other kids his age. He needs to come back.’

  Mrs Comeaway’s lower lip was pendulous, her smooth brow puckered. She kept her gaze on Mr Comeaway’s face as if it acted in lieu of a hand over his mouth.

  ‘It’s like this here,’ she said at last. ‘You kids don’t understand proper. I made up me mind ta send my kids to a mission a long while back. Up there, theys all the same, nothing ta choose between em. Nobody don’t call em names just because they coloured. An even if they don’t like it for a little while…’

  ‘I hated it,’ Trilby burst forth. ‘All the time I was there I hated it.’

  Mrs Comeaway’s face was wounded. ‘Ya never said well.’

  ‘You didn’t come up much,’ Trilby said indifferently.

  ‘We knew yous was all right but,’ Mrs Comeaway said a little anxiously.

  ‘The little bloke—he don’t like it up there,’ Mr Comeaway brooded.

  ‘Now don’t you start on about it,’ Mrs Comeaway said angrily. ‘There wouldn’t be no place for em ta come, not like they got up there. I seen them little houses,’ she half accused Trilby. ‘Little beds with covers over em. A place ta go to school. Plenty a fruit an tucker. They just gotta stay there like yous two, an come down when they bigger. That’s all about it.’

  ‘If we got a place to live like Mrs Green’s got?’ Noonah questioned, her eyes wide and brown and sad.

  ‘None ta get,’ Mrs Comeaway said briefly. A deriding expression on her face changed to pity when she saw tears fill Noonah’s eyes.

  ‘Stop worrying about Bartie and spoiling everything,’ Trilby said, her voice irritable. ‘It won’t kill the kids to stay up at the mission, will it?’

  Mrs Comeaway bent to the kettle again. Her voice was more cheerful. ‘Nah! Not gunna kill them littlies. Kids—they soon get over things.’ She straightened, and with the steaming kettle in her hand, looked over at Noonah. ‘I got ambitions for my childrens, just like Mrs Green.’ She stumbled over her explanation. ‘I put my kids up there in that place cause I think that a good place for coloured kids to be all together, see?’

  ‘I promised!’ Noonah was humble in defence. ‘And it wouldn’t matter, Mummy, except he seems different from the others. I know he won’t be happy now.’

  ‘I know those things ya mean,’ Mr Comeaway said unexpectedly. ‘That Bartie. He a funny kid all right. All those questions he asks a feller. Does leaves like blowin around in the wind? About how heavy’s a cloud? An drags a man out of a good sleep to show im a bit a water with some oil on top of it. Pretty, too, them colours in it. Yeah, I know! Always comin out with something that sort of catches ya up because ya ain’t expectin it. I tell ya something else. I miss that damn kid.’

  ‘Don’t you get worryin, Noonah. E gunna be all right.’ Mrs Comeaway’s back was to her daughter. There was a sombre note in her voice.

  Noonah looked at her mother, at the uneven hem of her frock, at the run-over black patent shoes, at the strong arm lifting the heavy kettle from the fire.

  ‘It’s all right, Mum,’ she said, as if it were her mother who must be comforted. ‘It’s all right.’

  ‘Where do you wash the cups?’ Trilby said practically when Mr Comeaway had had his fill of tea and bread and butter.

  ‘Just take em over to the tap an give em a rinse,’ Mrs Comeaway told her. ‘Sure ya had enough?’

  ‘Oh yes, haven’t we, Trilby?’

  ‘I want to hurry and go down and see things,’ Trilby said gaily. ‘I can hardly wait.’

  Mrs Comeaway laughed indulgently. ‘Course we’ll hurry.’

  She watched the girls as they went off with the cups. ‘What ya think of em, eh?’ she asked her husband.

  ‘Coupla nice kids,’ Mr Comeaway approved. ‘Smart, too.’

  ‘Didn’t do them too much harm,’ Mrs Comeaway half-questioned. ‘Gee, when that Noonah starts talkin about young Bartie. As if I don’t know. Terrible hard job it was ta leave im, that time I took the two littlies up. Had me cryin too.’

  ‘The ole lady seems ta manage all right.’ Mr Comeaway nodded in the direction of Mrs Green’s house.

  Mrs Comeaway looked stubborn. ‘She got her ideas. I got mine.’

  She set to work damping down the fire with the tea-leaves. In a little while her habitual expression of cheerful good will returned to her face. She hummed a bar or two of a song as she waited for the girls to come back.

  Trilby was dancing with impatience.

  ‘All right!’ Mrs Comeaway humoured her. ‘I gotta change me frock first. Get meself dolled up to match yous two.’

  She walked through to the inner room and went over to one of the hanging wardrobes. From the drapes she picked out a blue silk frock she had once picked up at a jumble-sale. Mrs Comeaway went to all the jumble-sales, though she rarely kept what she bought. She looked on sales as a quick and easy way to boost her income. The dresses and overcoats and other odd items she bought always brought four times what they had cost—friends and acquaintances down for a holiday snapped them up quickly, if Mrs Comeaway got in early before their holiday pay had been gambled away or borrowed. This particular blue silk, though, she had marked out as her own. It was a bit tight, but good looking and almost new except for the split under the arm. She smoothed the dress down over the pendulous bosom that rested on her high, proud stomach. She kicked off her run-over shoes and felt round under the bed for the suitcase that contained all the things she couldn’t hang from nails. Another pair of shoes appeared from the case and she sat heavily on the bed to pull them on. And that was a hard enough job. She winced as she stood upright and tried to wiggle her toes, but the toes were caught, squashed, imprisoned against the hard toe-caps.

  Giving up, she teetered across to the chest of drawers. The drawers of this piece of furniture were never used. The slats for the drawers were broken and they were almost impossible to open. There was another swift flurry of Carnation talcum powder down the neck of her frock. And a careful application of oil to her hair.

  ‘Someone bring me that flannel hanging out there,’ she called.

  Noonah, who had been taking a quick wash, came hurrying in with the blue-striped washer.

  ‘Gettin flash,’ Mrs Comeaway admired. She scrubbed the wet washer over her face and ears and handed it daintily back. Then she took up a vast black purse and scrabbled through its contents. Face intent and serious, she hid the dusty purple of her wide mouth behind a swathe of pale pink. With her index finger she smoothed the gummy mess into her lips.

  ‘Now!’ she said, with satisfaction. ‘All yous ready out there?’

  Noonah had changed her dress for a clean one. The two girls stood before their mother, young, slim, bright-eyed with excitement. Mr Comeaway’s white shirt was on him again, wrist-bands buttoned. His hair had been wetted and sleeked down. Mrs Comeaway looked them over with approval.

  ‘Come on!’ Mr Comeaway pleaded from the doorway. ‘Anyone’d think we was gunna see the Queen.’

  The girls laughed.

  They started off down the slope to the road, waving to Mrs Green, who sat with a child on her lap on the veranda of her house.

  ‘Not too fast now,’ Mrs Comeaway warned. ‘I gotta remember my feet. These damn heels likely to send me over if I don’t take things quiet.’

  The other three slowed their pace down the dark blue road. Mrs Comeaway walked with bent head, her mouth pursed with discomfort, her eyes searching the road ahead for the smoothest path. From one hand dangled the overstuffed black purse.

  Down the road a bit a sandy track curled off into the bush. Mrs Comeaway stopped her stomping. �
�I wonder,’ she said, ‘if we better not stop an see Hannie an Charlie a while. They lations, an I tell them bout these two comin down. They got two girls round your age,’ she told the sisters. ‘Nice girls, they are.’

  Everyone changed direction. Mrs Comeaway stopped again as soon as she stepped off the hard road and into the softer track. ‘An now I’ll just take these damn shoes off a while,’ she said with satisfaction. ‘Gawd! That’s good. Felt like I had me feet in a coupla traps.’

  The girls followed the sandy track, their shoes sinking ankle-deep with each step. Pleasing itself where it went, the path turned and twisted like the bed of a creek. The bush crowded close. Branches of green wattle and wild hibiscus brushed the girls’ clothes and stung their faces and legs. Cream blossoms covered the wild hibiscus, the smell of them wildly sweet. The ground beneath them was sown with patches of colour, amethyst, blazing yellow, deep bright pink—each star-like flower upturned to the sun. A delirious chirping filled the air.

  Mrs Comeaway walked with a sprightly step, freed from her shoes. Mr Comeaway rolled himself a cigarette and smoked contentedly. Noonah, her mind on Bartie, stepped off the path to exclaim at the vivid blue of a trailing creeper. ‘An what ya think a this?’ Mr Comeaway grinned, pulling free a spray of white flowers with delicate green stamens. Noonah smiled happily. Today she would buy paper and pencils and a big black box of water-colour paints. There was tenderness in her smile. And a doll for Stella, with eyes that closed and opened.

  Trilby looked ruefully down at her shoes. Their bright polish was lost under a layer of dust. The black sand had seeped inside them, making her feet feel hot and tight. She looked ahead at her mother and envied her.

  Around the next bend they heard voices. The girls sighed thankfully. Ahead of them they saw a camp like their own, though here there were only two side-walls—both ends being open to the air. Sheltering beneath was a double bed with long thin legs of iron. A second shelter projected from the first, its roof a tattered travelling-rug. A length of wire tied between two wattles supported a line of still-dripping washing, the barbs acting as pegs. At the back of the camp, a sight which drew both girls’ eyes, a man’s bicycle hung in lonely state from the branches of a tree.