by Kim Lock
Elsie held out her hands, beckoning. ‘This one is plenty healthy. Too healthy. Come see.’
Aida didn’t move. She looked over her shoulder, back into the house, as though consulting with someone unseen.
‘Please?’ Elsie said. ‘After last night I . . .’ She shuddered. ‘I’d really love some company.’
The door inched closed and Elsie’s heart sank. But Aida was moving her feet, and Elsie realised she was fishing a pair of shoes from behind the door. She slipped them on, and came outside.
At the top step Aida’s eyes flicked to her, almost embarrassed, and Elsie gave her what she hoped was a most encouraging, most trustworthy smile. Perhaps she was also trying to convince herself. A modern lady is also a welcoming, open-minded lady.
In the light of day, dressed in a plain, fitted blue dress, an unmistakable bulge was visible at Aida’s middle. Elsie felt a quiet sense of awe. It wasn’t huge, like a lady ready to drop any day, but it was well enough along. Well enough to have nothing to do except wait.
‘How’s your husband?’ Aida asked.
‘A little stiff and sore, but he’s trying to hide it. His biggest injury is his pride.’
‘And the car?’
‘Not such an escape from harm, I’m afraid. It’s a write-off.’
‘I suppose it’s a big tree.’
‘Barely even missing any bark,’ Elsie said.
Together they crossed the yard. Elsie was aware of how very bright it seemed, how open the yard was. They really needed that fence: it would offer so much more privacy. When he’d finished licking his wounds from the accident, she must chase that up with Thomas. He’d been so busy of late he had probably forgotten to follow up with the builder.
They reached the chook pen. In slatted light beneath the limbs of the gum tree, and hidden from the street by Elsie and Thomas’s house, Elsie sensed Aida relax.
‘In here,’ Elsie said, opening the gate. Aida followed her in. ‘Look, in the nest.’
Aida looked. She propped her hands on her hips and surveyed the hen with suspicious curiosity.
‘Your chook needs a calendar,’ she said. ‘It’s autumn.’
From inside the nesting box, the hen stared back at them with defiance. Her head was a beady-eyed lump upon her flattened-out body, feathers rounded protectively.
‘They don’t have babies in autumn?’ Elsie asked.
‘Spring or summer they’ll go broody, usually.’ Aida observed the squatting hen. ‘How many eggs is she sitting on?’
‘I don’t know,’ Elsie said. ‘She won’t let me see.’
‘What do you mean she won’t let you? Her brain is the size of a split pea.’
‘Every time I get near her she pecks me,’ Elsie protested. To illustrate, she showed Aida the backs of her hands. Small red welts peppered her skin.
Aida crouched in front of the hen, whose feathers fluffed to double their size. The bird made a threatening, drawn-out squawking sound.
‘Hush, for heaven’s sake,’ Aida said and slipped her hand beneath the hen. Too startled to react in time, the animal could only protest by way of defiant strangled noises.
Aida withdrew her hand. Propping her hands on her knees, she made to stand but struggled. Elsie extended her hands and after a beat, Aida took hold. Elsie hauled her upright; they both staggered.
‘Well,’ Aida began, briskly brushing dirt and straw from the front of her dress, ‘I counted.’
‘How many?’
‘None.’
‘None?’
‘She’s sitting on thin air.’
Elsie laughed. The hen continued to stare them down without a skerrick of remorse.
‘Are the others still laying somewhere?’ Aida asked.
‘A few days ago I found a couple of eggs in the sand, behind the box. But nothing yesterday, or the day before.’
‘So she’s put them off laying.’
‘Yes,’ Elsie said, suddenly feeling cross. ‘This is not good enough.’
Aida said, ‘You’ve got a couple of options. You could put some fertilised eggs under her and see if she hatches them out.’
‘Fertilised eggs?’
‘Yes, it’s where chickens come from.’
Elsie’s cheeks warmed. ‘I know that, I just don’t know how to get them.’
‘Know anyone with a rooster?’
Whether reacting to Aida’s jibe or simply not thinking, Elsie would never know. But she couldn’t help but respond by staring meaningfully at Aida’s swollen middle.
‘Yes,’ Aida said wryly, ‘I’ve had some experience with cockerels.’
Elsie blushed furiously, but Aida burst out laughing. The sound startled the hens and sent them in a flurry of flapping feathers and squawks to the other side of the pen. In the nest box, the chook remained staunch and disdainful.
It was as though Aida’s shield had shattered. The wall that Elsie had been trying to climb over crumbled, and now, by way of a seasonally confused (and barren) hen, there was only free ground between them. Elsie’s thoughts drifted to her belly, to the tiny life tucked inside and growing there. A frisson of excitement ran through her.
‘Do you think chickens have it easier, sitting on their eggs and not having to grow it inside their body?’
‘I don’t think so,’ Aida said after a while. ‘They don’t get much time to think about it. They’re either broody, or they’re not. Women, I guess, have some time to get used to it. Keep it to ourselves before it becomes obvious to everyone.’
Elsie smoothed her hands over her dress, down her hips. Even with the fabric flattened there was nothing to show but the regular soft flesh of her tummy. ‘How long do you need to get used to it?’ she said. ‘It feels so private. Like, once it’s bigger, everyone will know.’ She lifted her head and squirmed. ‘They’ll all know how it got in there.’
Aida’s eyes widened. ‘Congratulations,’ she said. ‘No wonder your husband looked petrified at you trembling last night.’
Like uncorking a bottle, relief flowed out. ‘I’ve only told my mum,’ she said. ‘And, well, Thomas.’ The hens returned, clucking cautiously. Elsie went on, ‘He wanted to announce the news straight away. We’re both so happy, it’s hard to keep it to ourselves. But I’m too superstitious. You know?’
Aida nodded and the sense of unease returned. Heat flamed in Elsie’s cheeks again; their situations were incomparable.
Aida cleared her throat. ‘So.’ She surveyed the sitting hen. ‘Can you get some fertilised eggs?’
Elsie shook her head. ‘I don’t have the energy to raise chicks. I’m not much of a farmer. Not like my mother.’
A silence settled between them, and then Aida said, ‘In that case, you’re going to have to put her in a box.’
‘A box? As in, a cardboard box?’
‘Any kind of box. Anything dark. Take her off the nest and put her in there for a day or so. When they sit like this, they go into a kind of trance,’ she explained. ‘Putting them in the box –’ she snapped her fingers ‘– breaks them out of it.’
‘That doesn’t seem fair.’
‘It isn’t,’ Aida said. They regarded the hen glaring murderously up at them. ‘But females often have their decisions made for them in this world.’
Elsie pointed at the hen. ‘At least she didn’t end up with the snail bait.’
Aida laughed.
‘Help me find a box,’ Elsie said. ‘Then I’ll make us some lunch.’
Aida paused and Elsie held her breath. The hen let out a short growl. Elsie thought, she’s going to say no.
Slowly, Aida ducked her head. Once. ‘Okay,’ she said softly. Then with more conviction, ‘Okay, let’s have some lunch.’
17
‘Twelve weeks? That’s the earliest you can do?’
Thomas was convinced the builder must be pul
ling his leg. Maybe he didn’t want the job. ‘If you don’t want the job,’ Thomas went on, ‘I can call someone else.’
‘It’s not that, Mr Mullet,’ the builder said. ‘It’s this new development by the train line. We’re booked solid for months.’
Thomas was in his tiny office, and had taken a few minutes before the end of the work day to chase up the builder about the pending internal fence between the two houses. It was now almost six months after he and Elsie had moved in and the two yards remained adjoining. And now, hearing the builder’s schedule was full for another three months (and Thomas understood, he knew about the new development – a block of flash new offices for rent – because Bagnoli had been chasing a contract to supply electrical goods to the future tenants), Thomas kicked himself for his tardiness in following the builder up.
With a promise to contact him again in a few weeks, he hung up. He wrinkled his nose in disgust. The fertiliser was particularly pungent today, a real ripe stinker in his office. With no house calls to make this evening, he decided an early mark was well in order. Elsie would be delighted to see him home in daylight – there would even be time for a drink before tea.
18
In the weeks as autumn moved onwards, Aida ballooned steadily and alarmingly.
Getting in and out of bed, in and out of the bath, bending to pick up the laundry – it all took negotiations with her body. Some relief came as the days grew chill, but as she plumped like bread dough and her shame advertised itself within the obscene swells of her body, increasingly unable to be disguised by clothing, a steady fear wormed in and established itself beneath her skin.
On an overcast day in May, the door opened and Elsie walked boldly into Aida’s living room. Aida jumped and the novel she was reading flew from her hands.
‘I knew if I knocked you’d ignore me,’ Elsie said, lifting her chin. ‘So I let myself in.’ Her blouse was buttoned crookedly; two empty buttonholes blinked on the fabric beneath her misshapen collar. ‘I’ve just had my mother on the phone – for forty-five minutes. One of my cousins had another baby. Everyone is having babies.’
Unsure what else to do, Aida said, ‘It does seem that way.’
‘There’s no husband away at the mines, is there?’
Aida clamped her teeth behind her lips, avoiding Elsie’s gaze. ‘No.’
‘It’s just you here, waiting until . . . ?’
Finally Aida looked at her. ‘Yes.’
Elsie hesitated, appearing to argue with herself internally. Taking a step forward, her eyes slid around the carpet before she knelt, then curled her legs beneath herself by Aida’s feet.
‘I assume your parents know you’re here?’
Aida nodded.
‘Does the, uh –’ Elsie paused, smoothing her skirt. ‘Does the father know you’re here?’
Closing her eyes, Aida shook her head. ‘He left. Sydney, last I heard.’
‘Oh.’
‘My parents sent me here. They don’t want me to . . . I’m not supposed to be seeing or talking to anyone.’
A long silence settled, before Elsie said, ‘You can trust me.’
‘I’m not sure I can trust anyone,’ Aida replied softly. When she added, ‘I’m scared,’ her hands began to shake.
Elsie gently took her hand and held it. ‘After Thomas’s father died,’ she said, ‘when Thomas was only a boy, his mother fell in love and remarried. And Thomas’s family treat his mother like she’s a . . .’ she cast about for the word, ‘a harlot. It’s like they would only be happy if she had given herself up when he died, and followed his body into the crematorium.’
The last person who had held her hand was Jimmy. Aida sighed, with longing or grief she wasn’t quite sure. It all felt the same to her now: sadness, despair, frustration. Each was a pain that pulsed with the same beat: loneliness, humiliation, fear of the future. All fed by a robust artery of shame.
Jimmy. All long legs and vein-sculpted forearms and laughter. All sweet-alcohol breath and warm lips and strong hands tugging at her waist. Aida imagined following his dead body into a funeral pyre, flames licking the flesh from her bones. By his passing, her own body would be made redundant and her life irrelevant. Would that be a good enough sacrifice? Would she be forgiven, then?
For some time they were silent, their faces turned away from each other to watch the clouds crab darkly across the sky outside the window. Eventually Aida said, ‘I suppose I’m lucky. I had to move out of home for a while, but they gave me this house.’
‘Why is that lucky?’
Aida searched her face. Was Elsie really that naïve? Did she really not know how many girls had it worse? Exiled, humiliated, locked away with their shameful bulges – or, worse still, forced helplessly into the hands of backyard butchers? Elsie’s grey-blue eyes were wide and searching. Filaments of a finer, paler blue flecked through her irises.
‘Because most women in my position are sent away,’ Aida said carefully. ‘To Sydney or Melbourne to wait out their confinement in convents or hospital homes. That’s what they call it: confinement. I might be lonely, but I’m not far away from home. Not really. And besides,’ she looked around the room, offered Elsie a smile. ‘It’s not so bad here, now that I’m settled in. Mum comes up once a week and brings food and things. I’m lucky,’ she repeated, firmly.
Elsie said, ‘I must admit, your parents sound like very kind people.’
Aida did not reply straight away. ‘They are,’ she agreed, eventually. ‘But I don’t think it’s kindness that caused them to do this for me, so much as that my father has an almost pathological need to find something good in even the worst situation.’
‘Well now, that sounds like a pathology we could all use.’
Aida’s brows drew together. ‘No, there was always a lot of pressure on me. Expectation. Dad always said that in the war he’d seen the worst of what humans were capable of, what authorities were capable of, so he came out of it with this kind of . . . insistence, that I should never do anything wrong, nor do something just because everyone else was. But not in that stifling academic sense – it wasn’t about good grades at school. More of a moral thing.’ She picked with care around what she disclosed next, like searching for benign stones on a sea bed of stinging, venomous creatures. ‘I’m an only child – and a daughter at that – of affluent parents. Yet I was raised to look after myself. I can change a flat tyre. I have my own bank account.’ She paused. ‘I know all the State and Federal MPs by name, so I know who to complain to about any manner of injustice – and how to write the letter to do so.’
Elsie smiled at her. ‘My sisters and I would be hopeless with a flat tyre. I can barely drive out of third gear.’
‘I had a distant cousin,’ Aida went on. ‘We used to see her at family gatherings, barbecues, from time to time. And then one time she wasn’t there. Everyone could feel the strange silence about it. Her parents said she’d gone away to stay with a relative, and wouldn’t be back for a few months.’
‘What happened to her?’
Aida scoffed sadly. ‘No one knows exactly but it’s obvious, now, isn’t it? When she came back she was different. Too quiet. Like she wasn’t all there anymore. I think that’s part of the reason why my dad wanted to do this.’ Once again her gaze roamed across the room; she took in the sparse furnishings, the lace drawn over the windows. ‘An attempt to find the rightness.’
Elsie didn’t say anything.
‘I can’t go back and undo it in the first place.’ Aida’s voice was soft. ‘So maybe this is making the best of it.’
Elsie was sitting cross-legged on the floor at Aida’s feet. Her hair was loose and sandy brown curls touched her shoulders. Aida could see a pale stretch of skin at her throat, beneath her ear, running down to her collarbone where the neck of her blouse fell open. A fine scattering of freckles dusted the skin there.
‘Can
I ask a question?’ Elsie said.
Aida’s wariness seemed to have evaporated. Tiredly, she shrugged.
‘Where is the father?’
Jimmy again. Before coming here, girlfriends had told her that Jimmy had gotten a gig in Sydney but Aida knew he could be anywhere, strumming his guitar. Wherever he was, though, there would be no confinement for him.
She said, ‘He wanted to marry me.’
‘And you didn’t?’
Aida smiled, rueful. ‘Maybe I did. But we both know it wouldn’t have worked. Not for long.’ She ran a hand over her belly. ‘We would have ended up hating each other. It wasn’t his responsibility. God, it’s not like I didn’t do my share in this.’ She patted her middle and laughed, almost angrily. ‘In the end I pushed him away – it was the gracious thing to do.’
Aida felt the stirring inside, then. An internal rippling slide of movement. Something bulged out and drew ticklishly down the length of her abdomen.
Elsie rocked back. ‘Did you see that?’
‘Hard not to.’ Aida winced at a thrust at her lower ribs.
‘May I?’
Their eyes met. Aida nodded.
At Elsie’s touch to her abdomen, Aida’s breath caught. Tentatively, Elsie rested her hands over the top of the curve, finding the source of the movement. She spread her fingers wide, flattening her palms, the breadth of both hands cradling the bulk of her. Movement increased as though in response, and Elsie giggled as her hands were prodded and kicked from within.
‘How much longer?’
‘Not even two months, I wouldn’t think.’
‘What will . . . ?’ Elsie looked aghast, as though visualising a future of her own as an unwed mother and finding it unthinkable. ‘What will you do?’
Aida looked at her. Could this polite housewife really unleash the scandal her parents feared, from all the way up here in Gawler? It was like a whole different world up here: out of the city, past the northern suburbs and dirty industrial spread, miles and miles along the lumpy waves of Main North Road through horse paddocks and infinite sheep. Aida pictured her father’s face and felt the familiar warm rush of love and pride. She recalled how he would take her to work in school holidays, and she would sit in on all his meetings. As she grew older he encouraged her opinion, would turn to her, stir her to voice her thoughts, no matter how outrageous. Some of his colleagues even listened to her. Disgrace gripped her like teeth. Oh, how she had hurt him.