Tirra Lirra by the River

by Jessica Anderson

  ‘Except for those clumpy shoes,’ said Lewie.

  ‘When he sees you in this dress,’ said Ida, with pins in her mouth, ‘he will want to buy you some new shoes.’

  ‘I love these shoes,’ I said.

  Ida and Lewie said nothing. You could hear them saying it.

  Every warm Saturday, Colin took me to the beach, every cool Saturday to the pictures, and every Sunday, whatever the weather, we went to see his mother and Les. We never saw Les’s wife because on Sundays she took the children and went to see her mother, with whom Les had been feuding for eight years. It was feuding territory out there.

  ‘Ooo,’ said Una Porteous, ‘another new frock.’

  ‘All togged up again,’ said Les.

  ‘She got those dresses free, gratis, and for nothing,’ said Colin.

  ‘She’ll have to let them out when the babies begin to come,’ said Una Porteous.

  ‘If they ever do,’ said Les. ‘Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha.’

  Colin did not speak to me for four days. Then he reconciled himself to me in bed, and afterwards, I wept storms of tears.

  ‘Oh, stop it,’ he said wearily.

  ‘It isn’t as if I can help it.’

  ‘Nobody’s blaming you. I expect you’ll fall one day.’

  But I continued to weep because at last I had begun to admit the truth—that my greatest need was not for a baby. Indeed, there were times when I thought that all I wanted in the world was to be left alone in my beautiful room, close to people who never asked, audibly or otherwise, who I thought I was, but who nevertheless were interested in the answer to that question.

  Then, suddenly, I was no longer frigid. I threw my arms about Colin. ‘Oh, aren’t you glad? Aren’t you glad?’

  ‘Yes, but I’m reading this.’

  I felt that I wanted a baby after all. My night of wild tears seemed a temporary madness.

  ‘Now we can have a baby,’ I said.

  ‘Yes, there’s that.’

  ‘God, you look lovely, Nora,’ said the artists.

  ‘My dear,’ said the watercolourist sadly, ‘you look as if a light has come on inside you.’

  ‘God, you look healthy,’ said Lewie with disgust.

  ‘Ignore him, love,’ said Ida.

  Although I still thought, every day, ‘I must show Lewie this,’ or ‘I must tell Lewie that,’ I went less often to Bomera. I bought provisions at Kings Cross or in Macleay Street, and as I carried my basket home, under plane trees full of cicadas, I was proudly conscious of my status of housewife. I cut recipes from newspapers, and every night cooked as splendid a meal as our means would allow. I looked into prams, not with my former speculation, but with an expression of mindless doting, having cozened myself beforehand into liking what I saw. I told Colin that our baby would be a blond boy. I set my lips among the hairs on his sweating chest.

  ‘I wanted to marry a dark man, but oh, I’m glad now I married a fair one.’

  Empty cicada cases lay under the plane trees in Macleay Street. The trees shed their leaves, I read Women in Love, and Colin started to take me to football games. I stood with a hand tucked in the crook of his arm, while the cold entered my shoes, sent branches up my legs, and grew through my body like a tree of stone. I clung to his arm and was bewildered when he made an excited forward lunge and forgot that I was there. I was jealous of his absorption in the game, and estranged by the savagery of his shouting mouth. At home I was hurt when he read the newspaper at the dinner table, and I sulked when he took my arms from about his neck and absently put me to one side. I was unhappier than I had been before. My budget book, with its additions of halfpennies and pennies, threepences and sixpences, and its checked and disputed weekly balances, seemed to degrade my new and passionate love.

  ‘An extra two-and-six? What for?’

  ‘My shoes need mending.’

  Colin examined one of them. ‘They’ll do for a while yet.’

  And still, there was no baby.

  ‘If you ask my opinion,’ said Una Porteous, ‘you’re leaving it a bit on the late side.’

  ‘I’ll say!’ said Les.

  ‘A woman’s figure has got to be ruined sooner or later,’ said Una Porteous, ‘no matter how good.’

  I burst into tears.

  ‘Unless,’ cried Una in a powerful voice, ‘you can’t have any?’

  ‘Boo-hoo!’

  ‘Oh, sorry. If I had of known I would of cut my tongue out first. But I was not informed.’

  Les spoke in a low but manly voice. ‘I want you both to accept my sympathy.’

  Colin looked out of the window.

  ‘All the same,’ said Una, ‘what a tragedy for Col.’

  ‘Can’t be helped,’ snapped Colin.

  How clear all three of them looked through my tears—as clear and shining as fish in a fishmonger’s streaming window.

  Then, one day, I got a daring idea. I ran over to Bomera.

  ‘Ida, I’ll take that job.’

  Ida dropped both hands to her lap. ‘Oh, Nora, I offered it over a year ago. I’m not getting the work now. Haven’t you noticed? It’s this slump. People like me are the first affected.’

  ‘Ida, I’m sorry.’

  ‘Don’t you worry about me, love. I’ll get by. What’s this about you? I thought he didn’t want you to work.’

  ‘I’m not asking him. I want to be independent.’

  ‘Try the big places, I’ll give you a reference.’

  I tried the big places. ‘Sorry,’ they said, ‘not just now.’

  ‘Try the alteration rooms of the big stores,’ said Ida.

  But at the big stores they said, ‘Nothing now. Perhaps later.’ Months went by. Whenever I quarrelled with Colin, I rushed out and tried the big places and the big stores. But now they both said the same thing.

  ‘Not a hope. We’re even putting people off.’

  No new magazines were arriving at Ida’s rooms, and Lewie made truth of fiction by coming over to Crecy to borrow butter. Sometimes he stayed for an hour or two, and we sat in a patch of sunlight on the floor, moving as it moved, and made up Ogden Nash verses. People no longer spoke of ‘the slump’, but of ‘the Depression’. At last Lewie became so poor that he was forced to move to a very small room in Bayswater Road.

  We sat at his window, looking out. ‘So many people,’ he said. ‘And all those trams. Isn’t it lovely?’

  But I was sad. ‘Do you ever feel like being a child again, Lewie?’

  ‘Not if I had to go back to Wagga to be it.’

  One day Colin came home from work looking pleased. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘it’s happened at last.’

  “What?”

  ‘Les is transferred to Forbes. We can go to Mum’s.’

  ‘What? But not to live?’

  ‘And why not? Ah yes,’ he said, looking into my face, ‘I well remember you saying you would die if you had to live there. But we will see whether you die or not.’

  ‘Of course I won’t. I didn’t mean die. But why must we go?’

  ‘Nora, sit down.’

  Because, whenever Colin wanted to talk to me ‘seriously’, we had to sit down. We sat down.

  ‘Nora, haven’t you heard of this Depression?’

  ‘But you still have your job.’

  ‘In the meantime.’

  ‘You mean, you are threatened …?’

  ‘We are all threatened. For all I know, this week will be my last.’

  ‘But even so, you have more than a thousand pounds in the bank.’

  ‘So I’m to eat into my savings!’

  ‘Is there no alternative to going out there?’

  ‘I see none.’

  ‘I do.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Staying here.’

  But Colin was giving me his stare of wonderment. ‘Do you know something, Nora?’

  ‘No. What?’

  ‘You’re mad.’

  ‘I am not.’

  ‘You are. I notice you haven’t once
considered Mum in all this. A widow. How is she going to get on without what Les kicked in for his keep?’

  ‘But you always say Les is a bludg—’

  ‘I’ll do the swearing round here! He’s a bludger, all right, but naturally, he had to kick in something.’

  ‘Why can’t she make the place into flats, and live in one of them?’

  ‘Would you like to live in a flat, Nora, after having had your own home?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well, Mum’s different.’

  ‘I know. That’s why I don’t want to go.’

  ‘Oh, come on, Nora, be reasonable. It won’t be for long.’

  ‘Oh. Won’t it?’

  ‘Of course not.’

  ‘Why didn’t you say so in the first place?’

  ‘You didn’t give me a chance.’

  ‘How long?’

  ‘Oh … just till we see how things work out.’

  ‘Oh. And after that, could we come back here? Or somewhere like it? Anyway, a place of our own?’

  ‘I don’t see why not. Come on, now—smile. That’s better. Kissie, kissie, kissie.’

  I went to Bomera and told the artists. ‘Cheer up,’ they said. ‘It’s not Timbuctoo. Half an hour in the train. You can come to see us often.’

  I went and told Ida Mayo. She kissed me. ‘Well, he’s not the only one that’s panicked. Come any time you like, Nora. I’m always here.’

  I walked up to Bayswater Road and told Lewie. ‘Jesus,’ he said, ‘you poor thing.’

  ‘Oh, cheer up,’ I said, ‘it’s not Timbuctoo. I’ll come to town quite often.’

  ‘Oh, good. And we can go for a walk, or to Ida’s. And if we’re terribly rich’—he raised his voice against the noise of a tram grinding up the hill to the Cross—‘we can go for a tram ride.’

  Very early the next day, Betty Cust comes to attend to my morning needs and to make me a pot of tea, which she stays to share with me.

  ‘Do you remember the Depression, Betty?’ I have not slept well, and the question seems a natural extension of my night thoughts.

  She replies that she remembers it very well. ‘But it must have been worse in the south, because such a lot of men came up here. Or perhaps that was because it’s easier to be broke in a warm climate. They used to come to our place for hot water, or for tea or bread or anything else we could give them. Dad said we must have had a chalk mark on our gate, but I think it was only because we lived near the park. One afternoon I was coming home from school across the park, Nora, and a man suddenly sat up from where he had been lying in the long grass. Sat up and stared at me. And then lo and behold a woman sat up beside him. They were both still half asleep. They had been sleeping in the grass with their heads on rolls of blankets. Imagine in those days a woman humping a swag. There were hundreds of men, but that was the only time I saw a woman.’

  ‘It wouldn’t have occurred to most women then,’ I say, ‘though some must wish it had.’

  ‘Not too awful, I suppose, as long as they could travel with a man for protection. Jack and I are going over to Clayfield this morning, Nora, with some plants for our daughter-in-law. But we’ll be home in time for your lunch. And to get you up, I hope. Gordon Rainbow said he will try to get here about half past ten.’

  ‘And he said I could get up?’

  ‘He thinks so, for a while. Oh yes, and I brought you a pawpaw. I left it in the kitchen. It’s not quite ripe yet.’

  At about nine o’clock Lyn Wilmot comes.

  ‘A pawpaw! They’re not ripe here yet. It must have been sent down to them from Cairns. People are always sending the Custs things. Not that they need it. Oh well, to them that hath! That old newsagent’s shop—you know that old newsagent’s shop they had, with the great big backyard?’

  ‘Yes. Somebody used to practise scales,’ I say slowly, ‘in the sitting room above the shop.’

  ‘I wouldn’t know. Long before my time. What I was going to say is, there’s a supermarket there now. A hundred thousand, the Custs are supposed to have got for the site. And just afterwards, Mrs Cust’s mother died, and Mrs Cust got her place. And what happened? Ampol bought it!’

  But I am still hearing those piano scales, and am wondering why they give me a sense of uneasiness, even of danger. For what can be dangerous about the Custs, the innocent Custs? ‘Does Mr Cust play the piano?’ I ask.

  ‘Wouldn’t have a clue. When are you going to be let up, by the way?’

  Her voice is sullen this morning, her manner incipiently aggressive. Because she is tiring of her task, she is beginning to bully me. I should be happy to be oblivious of such portents, but after my term in Una Porteous’s house, such innocence could hardly be expected of me.

  Lyn Wilmot moves slowly about the room, dusting and setting things straight.

  ‘High time you were let up.’

  ‘I hope it will be today.’ And I add apologetically, ‘I didn’t dream I would be so long in bed. If I had, I would have gone to a hospital.’

  ‘He should have known. Doctor Smith would have known. I wouldn’t have Doctor Rainbow if you paid me. Doctor Smith’s good. We’ve had Doctor Smith ever since we’ve been here.’

  I try to deflect her anger. ‘And how long is that, Mrs Wilmot?’

  ‘Best part of three years.’

  ‘Then you would hardly have had a chance to know my sister.’

  ‘Not to know her, no. She wasn’t easy to know, was she? I got on all right with her, what I saw of her, but Gary and her had a big row about her mango tree shading our vegetable bed. That big mango out the back.’

  ‘So the old mango tree is still there!’

  ‘I’ll say it’s still there! Not that it’s any good to anyone. It’s the old sort with fibrous fruit. But never mind—she wouldn’t have parted with that mango tree for one million dollars.’

  Again I am reminded of Una Porteous, who also liked to use the figure of one million for emphasis. ‘I would not see husband and wife unhappy,’ she used to say, ‘for one million pounds.’

  Or happy, I used to think, for two million.

  Lyn Wilmot’s resemblance to Una Porteous is becoming more remarkable by the minute. Again she is dusting with her husband’s worn singlet, and after shaking it out of the window, she stays there for a while, looking up and down the street with the same strange aimless longing with which Una Porteous used to look up and down the street from her front door. That, if anything could have, might have reconciled me to Una Porteous.

  But when Lyn Wilmot turns into the room again, she resumes her dusting in a manner more slouching and sullen than ever.

  ‘Wouldn’t you think that with all his money your nephew would have had you live down there with him, instead of up here all alone?’

  I open the drawer of my bedside table and write on my shopping list, ‘yellow duster’. Then I close the drawer and say, ‘I loathe living in other people’s houses, Mrs Wilmot. I loathe it.’

  ‘Yes, but when you think of it, when it comes down to tin tacks, if it wasn’t for the Custs having nothing to do with their time … what I mean to say is, it’s okay living alone as long as you’re not a burden on others.’

  Also like Una Porteous, she disowns her arrow as soon as it reaches its mark. ‘Not that I mean anything by that! Oh, I hope you don’t think I mean …’

  I interrupt these protestations. ‘Of course you didn’t, my dear.’

  ‘Oh, I could cut out my tongue.’

  It is really too bad that I should be afflicted with this reincarnation of Una Porteous. But I smile, and beg her not to cut out her tongue. I turn the conversation to enquire about her two little girls. I ask their names and ages, and express interest in their schooling.

  ‘And are they as pretty as you?’ I ask at last.

  ‘I don’t know about pretty. They’re all right, I suppose.’

  But her grudging tone cannot conceal her pleasure. She flicks her husband’s singlet about at a great rate. ‘I’ll just run down and
bring up your newspaper before I go. Mrs Cust must’ve forgotten it. Now there’s nothing else you want? Sure?’

  I suppose that is how I ought to have treated Una Porteous from the start, but in those days I should have been ashamed, for her as well as for myself, if I had employed such crude tactics. And so, instead of lashing out with flattery when cornered, I allowed my feelings to show, in one way or another, and by the time I had learned the defensive uses of flattery, and had deteriorated enough to enjoy the private revenge to be gained from watching it work, it was too late to heal the breach made by my initial frankness, although not too late to spread a smear of false goodwill over my relations with her. Coarse fighting would have been healthier, but I doubt if I could have kept it up for all the time I lived in her house.

  Five years. Five years of waste, and worse than waste, and all unnecessary. In that famous Depression there were pockets of prosperity. Colin never lost his job, though he constantly said (and perhaps believed) that ‘for all he knew, this week would be his last.’ It was winter when we went there, and outside the window of the bedroom assigned to us stood a lemon tree heavy with fruit. I took fire from the yellow and green and asked Colin if I might make new curtains and a bedcover. I explained that when we got our own place, I would adapt them, and since both bed and windows were bare, he had to agree.

  ‘Better get good stout stuff though,’ he said.

  I rang Lewie and told him I was coming into town, and after buying the good stout stuff I met him on Farmer’s corner. It was only a fortnight since I had seen him, and I was shocked by the change in him, his look of poverty and illness.

  ‘Thank God for the bourgeoisie!’ he said when he saw me.

  That night I gave the bill for the material to Colin. In the train on the way home, I had had a revulsion against pretending to lose the change, and had determined to tell the truth, and face it out.

  ‘I lent the change to Lewie Johns,’ I said.

  ‘You what?’

  ‘He was hungry.’

  ‘How do you know he was hungry?’

  ‘He told me so when I met him.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Colin. Colin never lost his temper. ‘So you met him?’