The Fringe Dwellers

by Nene Gare

  ‘Your hands, Trilby,’ Noonah cried when once they were home. The hands that Trilby had taken such care to keep out of sight were examined with compassion. Perturbed and impatient, Trilby saw that Noonah was crying.

  She dragged her hands away and put them behind her back. ‘That’s nothing! I did it getting the stones out of the wall. I suppose they told you that.’

  More tears waited to fall. ‘Trilby, I hate them too. I know you didn’t deserve to be put in jail. Those policemen were beastly. I hated them. And they’ll never get you again.’

  Trilby remembered her first night in jail and smiled wryly. ‘Don’t be a fool. I broke that glass, didn’t I?’

  ‘Never mind,’ Noonah said passionately. ‘They were horrible and Dad went mad.’

  ‘He didn’t get me out,’ Trilby observed drily.

  ‘He helped,’ Noonah said swiftly. ‘He called in at the office nearly every day, just to tell them about you and how you weren’t a bad girl at all.’

  Trilby smiled. Her eyes watched her sister narrowly. She wondered if now would be a good time.

  ‘You know what’s wrong with me, don’t you?’ she said roughly. ‘I’m going to have a baby.’

  With a sort of sour pleasure, she watched the shock in Noonah’s face. And admired unwillingly when she saw that Noonah instantly conquered her shock and allowed only her affection to show in her eyes.

  ‘Does Mummy know?’

  Trilby shrugged. ‘They soon will.’

  ‘Do you want me to tell them? Trilby,’ she reached for her sister with impulsive hands. ‘Trilby, I’m sorry if you don’t want it. What about your—the man…Does he…’

  ‘He doesn’t know and he’s not here,’ Trilby said shortly. ‘He won’t be back for a long time—and I don’t want him back. See?’

  ‘Yes.’ Noonah’s eyes were puzzled.

  ‘And when it’s over I’m going off somewhere,’ Trilby said defiantly. ‘The baby can go to a mission. It isn’t mine really. I didn’t want it. I don’t even want to see it. Another six months of this,’ she finished savagely, looking down at her still flat stomach. ‘I’m sick—nothing I eat tastes good. I hate this baby before it’s even born. And there’s still six months to go.’

  ‘Trilby, you shouldn’t talk like that. You can’t hate babies. It’s not the baby’s fault. Can’t you see…’

  Trilby interrupted her sister. ‘You don’t understand anything.’

  ‘You can give it to us if you don’t want it,’ Noonah said childishly. ‘We’ll have it.’

  Trilby gave her sister a long straight look. ‘It’s my baby and it’s going to a mission.’

  Noonah’s bottom lip trembled. ‘Don’t, Trilby. Don’t let’s talk about it yet.’

  ‘All right! I don’t want to talk about it.’

  ‘I’ll get you some books from the hospital. You can read them.’

  ‘Okay!’ Trilby picked up a comic, lay back on her bed pretending to read it. She had just remembered school. Of course she could not go back now. She’d made a muck of things. Behind the comic the long grey eyes stared blindly.

  ‘What’ll er father say?’ Mrs Comeaway moaned, when she knew about the baby. ‘Blame me as usual, I spose. An I kept telling er not to go gallivantin about, specially night-times. Warned er bout them sailors too. Dunno what more e expecks. Gawd, no wonder she run amuck, always bein full of erself and what she was gunna do after she took this exam. Poor kid! You listen ta me, Noonah, an don’t you go getting yaself in no fix like that. It’s always the girl’s left ta look after the babies when they come.’ She flashed a look of inquiry at Noonah. ‘She tell you who done it?’

  ‘Just that he’s gone away and she doesn’t want him back. I don’t think she likes him, Mum.’

  ‘Musta liked im one time,’ Mrs Comeaway said with weary worldliness. ‘You can’t tell em but. Think ya just an ole fool tryin ta spoil their bit a fun.’

  Noonah went over to the stove and pushed another piece of wood under the kettle.

  ‘Yeah, that’s right,’ Mrs Comeaway said gratefully. ‘We’ll make a nice cuppa tea.’

  ‘I wish it had been me,’ Noonah told her mother fiercely. ‘I’d love a baby.’

  ‘Gawd, don’t you start,’ Mrs Comeaway said comically. ‘Let’s get this one over first. An you oughtn’ta talk like that anyway, girl. Ya might bring something down on yaself.’

  ‘You don’t have to worry about me,’ Noonah said bleakly. ‘All the boys I see round act as if they’re frightened of me.’

  ‘An a good thing too,’ Mrs Comeaway pronounced.

  Noonah was not so sure. If training to be a nurse cut you off from other youngsters, she was not so sure she wanted to be one.

  Mr Comeaway reacted with a flood of anger that covered every inmate of the house, except the cause of it. ‘I tole you,’ he said furiously, ‘ta keep a good eye on er. She’s just a bit of a kid and doesn’t know what goes on. That damn fool Hannie oughta keep er two away fum ours, gettin Trilby mixed up with their bunch. Ya know the tricks they get up to, careerin round them sandhills, stayin out all night fa all that silly fool Hannie cares.’

  ‘Don’t you come that bullyin with me,’ Mrs Comeaway defended herself, standing like a battleship before him. ‘After all it’s ony nacheral, ain’t it? Happened ta plenty before Trilby. Gunna happen ta plenty more.’

  ‘Who done it?’ Mr Comeaway demanded.

  ‘Ain’t no father,’ Mrs Comeaway said shortly. ‘She don’t want no father for it.’

  ‘Ya mean she don’t know?’

  ‘He went away, Dad,’ Noonah said nervously. Apart from the nights when her father grew uproariously argumentative after a night on the conto, this was the first time she had heard him in a rage.

  ‘Bicrikey, if I get me hands on im,’ he smouldered. ‘Why wouldn’t she tell ya who the bastard was? Dunno what everyone’s gunna think. First jail, an now this.’

  ‘All your pals is too busy thinkin bout their own mistakes ta bother much bout other peoples,’ Mrs Comeaway informed him. ‘An now shutup. I ad enough. I’m gunna drink me tea.’

  ‘An you’ll be next, I spose,’ Mr Comeaway said unhappily, at Noonah.

  ‘I just tole er,’ Mrs Comeaway said imperturbably. ‘Not till we get this one over. An not then less she likes ta make a fool of erself. Come on girl, stop starin an sit down. An call that Trilby out. Won’t do er no arm ta get a cuppa tea inside erself.’

  Noonah’s face felt hot. She got a few cups down from the sink and set them out on the table.

  ‘You don’t know bout things like that do ya?’ Mr Comeaway’s face was unhappy. His eyes had a wounded look.

  ‘Keep ya big mouth closed,’ Mrs Comeaway said sharply. ‘She don’t wanta learn fum you, anyway.’

  Trilby would not come out. Noonah took her tea into the bedroom, then she returned to the living-room to have hers with her mother and her father. The three of them sat round the kitchen table holding the heavy cups, sipping the steaming brew.

  ‘Saw Mrs Green today,’ Mrs Comeaway said in a normal conversational tone. ‘Know what ole Skippy bought isself last pension day? If e didn’t turn up in one a them furry ats. An a feather in it, believe it or not. Said at last e’s gotta at what don’t fall down over is eyes. Real pleased with isself.’

  Mr Comeaway broke into delighted laughter. ‘I seen im hoppin down the main street,’ he said. ‘An later on I seen im goin ell fa leather up that hill. Dunno ow e does it with them legs a his.’

  ‘Mrs Green says e’s always yappin bout is house. What e isn’t gunna do when e gets it. An ain’t no one been able ta make im understand it’s gunna be built up the camp.’

  ‘Someone oughta go in an tell that partment man,’ Mr Comeaway brooded. ‘Ole man like im buildin up is hopes.’

  Mrs Comeaway stared at her husband in derision. ‘Ya think that man ain’t in the same boat as us? Don’t tell me.’

  Mr Comeaway chuckled again.

  Mrs Comeaway pushed her cup
across the table to Noonah. ‘Ya know, I miss that ole place we had, up there with Mrs Green. Ya feel a bit out of it down ere.’

  ‘Trilby will be company for you,’ Noonah reminded her mother.

  Mrs Comeaway looked uneasily at the wall that divided the living-room from the girls’ bedroom. ‘She’s me own daughter, an I wouldn’t say a word against er, but I tell ya what. I ain’t lookin forward ta that. Not the way she’s feelin.’ Her face brightened a little. ‘Wonder what it’ll be. Girl babies is nice—easy ta have, too. I always liked a little girl. Bet young Stella will too. Like another doll ta that one.’ She stopped suddenly, looked at Noonah and at her husband in turn, and began to laugh.

  ‘What’s a matter with you?’ Mr Comeaway asked heavily, looking up from his tea.

  Mrs Comeaway lowered her voice to a whisper. ‘Just thought of it. She’s gunna make something on the deal. What about that dowment?’

  Noonah looked worried. ‘Mummy, she’s going to send the baby away as soon as it’s born. To a mission.’

  ‘Send it away soon as it’s born?’ Mrs Comeaway was scandalized. ‘She ain’t gunna do no such thing. Bit later, if she wants to. Not while it’s little.’

  ‘I knew you’d say that, Mum.’ Noonah’s voice was jubilant.

  ‘What’s she comin at, sendin a baby off ta some mission?’ Mr Comeaway wanted to know. ‘Can’t she look after it erself?’

  ‘I spose I can help me own daughter raise er baby,’ Mrs Comeaway bridled.

  ‘She doesn’t want it.’ Noonah shrugged her shoulders.

  ‘Lotta rubbish,’ declared Mrs Comeaway. ‘We gotta good house, ain’t we? Plenty a room?’

  ‘Got some idea in er head,’ Mr Comeaway said darkly. ‘Fum that Audrena, most likely.’

  ‘You wait,’ Mrs Comeaway told them. ‘She won’t wanta send that baby away once she’s seen it. Look at young Blanchie. She was the same way, wasn’t she? You try an get that baby away from er but.’

  ‘I remember,’ Mr Comeaway’s face wore an embarrassed grin. ‘Babies is funny all right, but when they belong to ya—I dunno. Something different bout em then. Remember when we was worried bout young Bartie, eh?’

  ‘That was when e had the stummick trouble,’ Mrs Comeaway said. ‘Didn’t think we was gunna keep im. An that woulda been the third boy I lost in a row, just because round that time, after we had you two girls, we was wantin one. Joe was, anyway, wasn’t ya, Joe?’

  ‘I spose.’ Mr Comeaway was still embarrassed.

  ‘How did you lose them, Mummy?’

  ‘Stummick trouble mostly,’ Mrs Comeaway said matter-of-factly. ‘Ain’t much ya can do bout that once they get real bad.’

  Noonah nodded. She had seen many children hospitalized because of stomach trouble. ‘Enteritis,’ she told her mother. ‘It’s caused through…’

  ‘Damn thing,’ Mrs Comeaway pondered. ‘Seems ta hop fum one to the other, too. There’s seasons for it I spose, just like ya get colds when it’s wet and blowy. Nothin you can do bout it.’

  Noonah compressed her lips, and vowed silently that the new baby wouldn’t get enteritis, not if she could help it.

  ‘Ya don’t bring any of ya friends down fum the hospital,’ Mr Comeaway said suddenly. ‘Why don’t ya do that, Noonah?’

  Mrs Comeaway threw an uneasy glance in the direction of the house next door. ‘Ah, ya either got em stickin to ya like feathers ta honey, or they lookin down their noses at ya like you was dirt.’

  ‘I don’t want them down here anyhow,’ Noonah said indifferently. ‘I see enough of them all day long.’

  ‘Eyein ya like you was a dog with two tails,’ Mrs Comeaway grumbled softly. ‘Mind,’ she told her daughter, ‘you wanta have some girl down ere, you can have er. You just let me know, an I’ll be off out fa the day.’

  Noonah laughed. ‘Well you can just stay home, because I’m not asking anyone.’

  ‘Not ta speak of them serve yets, which I ain’t got any.’

  Noonah was giggling. The atmosphere was clearing again. Trilby’s baby wasn’t nearly as big a piece of trouble as she had imagined it might be. Her mother would handle that as she handled everything else. Comfortably, with no fuss and bother.

  ‘I just thought,’ Mr Comeaway brooded over his second cup of tea. ‘I just thought.’

  SEVENTEEN

  The last drop of bitterness in Trilby’s cup was in having her Aunt Hannie and the rest of Hannie’s family move in to the house in the Wild-Oat Patch. She thought the invasion had come about because her mother, no less than her aunt, now considered her no better and her opinions no more important than anyone else’s.

  In fact, Mrs Comeaway had felt an urgent need for company more cheerful than Trilby’s promised to be during the next few months, and Hannie, never a strong opposer of other people’s wishes, had at last allowed herself to be persuaded that life in a real house held luxury and ease far beyond her imaginings.

  As far as the elder Comeaways were concerned, the enlargement of their ménage had been entirely successful. Mr Comeaway found that company right in the house was a fine and handy thing to have. It made unnecessary the long walk into the town and the longer and more arduous walk up Heartbreak Hill. He and his brother spent companionable hours discussing the things most important to them, and as the long summer days shrank to the cooler ones of winter they settled into a pleasant routine. In the mornings they sat on the back steps, and in the afternoon, when the sun moved over, they sat on the front steps.

  Often, they planned to go down to the wharf and get themselves a job. Several times, they actually hitched their pants higher round their waists and set off, just a little too late to be among the men picked to work on the ships that day. They could always blame the women for their late start and even before they left the house they were openly pessimistic about their chances and self-righteously indignant that they had not been woken earlier.

  When they found their pessimism most gratifyingly justified they walked on into the town, seeing they were this far already, and if they did not see anyone they cared for on the main street they most times took the bit between their teeth and bolted up Heartbreak Hill to the humpies and temporary camps scattered in the bush behind it.

  Back home again some time in the late afternoon or evening, depending on hospitality offered, they shook their heads regretfully over their inability to get jobs. ‘Never could expect to,’ Mr Comeaway would say reproachfully, ‘not that time in the morning.’ And according to whether Mrs Comeaway herself had enjoyed her day, she either accepted the implied reproof in the proper spirit or counter-accused.

  Not that there was any need for real worry about jobs for the men. Noonah’s money came in regularly and so did the child endowment. And there were plenty of extras like relatives and friends arriving for a holiday with two or three months’ pay in their pockets. Mr Comeaway thoroughly enjoyed acting as host, differentiating not a whit between friends and relatives with money and friends and relatives without. The main thing was having company.

  It followed naturally, too, that the Comeaways’ fame as hosts spread and there were weeks when the house seemed never to be free of guests.

  In between times, Mrs Comeaway felt she could have done with a little more of liveliness in her chosen companion, but on the whole the two women managed to live together in the same house remarkably well, with an immense tolerance and good humour on the part of Mrs Comeaway and a noteworthy capacity for listening on the part of Hannie. Hannie never argued nor put forth her opinions. She was perfectly happy with Mrs Comeaway’s even when these changed from day to day and sometimes from minute to minute.

  ‘Better than the damn cat,’ Mrs Comeaway told her husband. ‘Even if she don’t talk much ya know she understands ya lanwidge.’

  On the other hand, her aunt irritated Trilby to the point of frenzy, and the girl would spend hours of her time in her own room rather than be forced to look at her aunt slip-slopping about the house in her draggle-tailed dresses, her
hair hanging like greasy black snakes on her greasy fat neck, her shoes, when she wore them, too loose on her large awkward feet. Work, to Hannie, was a trap into which only the unwary fell, but in a household where the accent was on comfort rather than on spotless cleanliness she annoyed nobody but Trilby with this deep-rooted dislike of exertion.

  Blanchie’s baby was the pet of the entire household, apt to find himself swung up from the floor and soundly hugged by whoever tripped over him. Since one of Blanchie’s friends had just lately rolled over on her own baby one night and suffocated it, Tommy slept on a couple of chairs alongside his mother’s bed, safe from this danger if not from falling through or over the edge of the chairs.

  Audrena went into the double bed with Stella and Bartie, and with this bed wedged tightly against the wall, room had thus been made for the tall double bed which belonged to Charlie and Hannie.

  Trilby had refused indignantly to share her room with anyone but Noonah, so Blanchie had to make do with the living-room, but as everyone who used the living-room made do with her bed as a sort of settee, the arrangement was really quite satisfactory. And it still left plenty of floor-space for the accommodation of out-of-town holiday-makers and casual droppers-in.

  One of these out-of-town friends had recently embroiled the whole family in a lot of trouble. The Comeaways had had much difficulty proving to the police that they had had nothing to do with a certain robbery involving the premises of a golf club. Nothing, that is, apart from innocently partaking of the spoils.

  The true culprit was eventually forced to take full responsibility, but on the day of his trial Mrs Comeaway still smarted. ‘Ain’t nothin ta say ya can’t cook a few chops if someone brings ya some,’ she said indignantly, sweeping the back veranda with unusual vigour.

  The line of men dangling their legs over the edge turned their heads away from the clouds of dust. ‘Lucky fa young Willie it’s gettin to the end a summer,’ one of them ruminated. ‘That jail gets awful hot some a them summer days.’