by Kim Lock
She was startled to feel a swell of tears and she blinked quickly. ‘Do you follow politics?’ she asked Elsie.
‘As in, the Prime Minister? A little bit,’ she replied, unconvincingly.
‘Local politics? Your local State Member, for instance – do you know who he is?’
Elsie bit her bottom lip and appeared to be thinking hard. ‘It’s Mister someone, isn’t it? Mister . . .’ she trailed off and laughed.
‘My father is –’ Aida stopped. She’d almost said it. His name had been right there on her tongue. My father is John Glasson, Deputy State Minister for Health. So why did she stop herself?
‘My father is in politics. State politics. He’s fairly high up.’ There, it was out. Nothing identifying, but close enough. She reminded herself that despite how much time they’d spent together of late, Elsie didn’t know her surname. Aida would make a point of keeping it that way.
Understanding dawned on Elsie’s face.
‘In my neighbourhood in the city, everyone knows him,’ Aida continued. ‘All our neighbours – for blocks all around – know him. But not only Dad, they know Mum and me, too. They know my face. Something like this,’ she spread her hands, ‘Is an unthinkable scandal. Impossible.’
‘But what about when . . . ?’
Aida knew what she was going to ask.
‘We’re going to keep the baby,’ she said, and the relief was like taking a lungful of air after a long submersion in water. ‘But we’re going to tell everyone it’s Mum’s. I’ll be the big sister.’
19
Elsie drummed her fingers on the countertop. She checked the clock; just after 7pm. Thomas had an in-home demonstration this evening; he could be gone for two more hours.
A container of tuna mornay she had set aside for Aida was cooling on the kitchen bench. The mornay was runnier than she would have hoped, but if Aida preferred it thicker she could stir through a handful of grated cheese. Although, Elsie wondered, was cheese a thickener? Cornflour, perhaps, swirled into a little milk. She would have to check her Women’s Weekly.
Elsie stood in the living room, a motionless figure on the carpet, as she pondered whether or not to wait up for her husband. Elsie knew he would love for her to be up when he arrived home, the house softly lit, some tea warming on the stove. She should get his slippers out and set them in front of the heater. And perhaps she should put on some lipstick and a fresh dress, like her mother had instructed.
On the carpet Elsie walked in a slow circle, chewing a thumbnail. She straightened the curtains, smoothed her grandmother’s crocheted rug over the back of the couch. The fridge clicked off and the silence unrolled like a ribbon.
‘Oh!’ Elsie cried. ‘What is wrong with me?’
Storming to her chair, she sat down and reached for her stack of magazines. She flicked through the pages with an aggressive vigour. In every picture the women were composed, serene, organised. They looked fulfilled and fuelled with industry and purpose, handmade aprons edged with lace, kitchens sparkling with the latest appliances. Be-suited, Brylcreem-haired husbands were pictures of impressed contentment. Is this what her mother wanted her to strive for? Elsie tried to match the images of these men with her own father, but he was little more than a memory: always gone at sunrise and not home until after sunset, smelling of sheep shit and lanolin at the kitchen table. And then after the war, he was wordless and nodding with drink. She rifled through pages with photographs of fluffy cakes, abundant trays of biscuits. Troops of curly-headed children wrapped in charming handknits.
The magazine made a fluttering sound as Elsie hurled it across the room. Like a shot bird it dropped to the floor and lay limp and all out of promises.
Elsie felt the first dull ache then. Like fingers clasping between her hips.
‘Damn tuna mornay,’ she muttered, getting to her feet.
The light in the bathroom was starker than the living room, gleaming off the tiles. Cautiously she inhaled, but was still relieved that the scent of pine cleaner didn’t send her stomach roiling. It hadn’t for a couple of days now. But when the ache came again, and Elsie lifted her skirt and drew down her underwear and saw the thick daub of blood, she should have known why her sickness had eased.
Because at three months along, her first baby was gone.
20
Mr and Mrs Arnold Feint were pleasant enough people, Thomas thought, but the children were dreadful.
Three boys, all late primary school age, had traipsed through the house with an extraordinary sense of licence for the entire ninety-minute demonstration. Sniggering, they had pulled the electrical cord from the socket in the middle of Thomas’s display over the rug, giving the Luxomatic the appearance of having inexplicably died mid-suck. Thomas’s voice, set at a boom to be audible over the noise of the machine, had rung so clamorously into the abrupt silence that Mrs Feint had lifted her hands to her ears. All the while, as Thomas had zoomed the machine swiftly over the vinyl floor and fluffed the pile in the worn carpet back to life, a baby had wailed angrily from a bedroom down the other end of the house.
By the time 9pm arrived, Thomas rolled in the Luxomatic’s cord with relief. He pressed his card into Mr Feint’s palm and shook his hand. ‘We’ll give it some thought,’ the man said, in a tone that suggested to Thomas that ‘thought’ would last about as long as it took him to toss Thomas’s card into the wood stove.
After stowing his equipment in the boot of his new car, Thomas pulled the driver’s door shut and sank into the seat.
Through the windscreen, the night sky was dark and blank, the stars blotted out by low smears of cloud. The gear shift was chilly beneath his hand.
Thomas drove home quickly. Elsie would be waiting up.
*
‘Else?’
The house blazed with light and smelled faintly of tuna. Thomas set his case on the floor and loosened his tie.
‘Elsie?’
The living room chairs were empty. A rumpled magazine lay in the middle of the floor, one page torn and protruding at an odd angle.
From the other end of the house came a strange cry.
The bathroom door was closed and he knocked softly. ‘Elsie?’
The whimper came again. Thomas pushed open the door and found his wife slumped in an empty bath. He uttered a shout at the sight of the blood pooling beneath her dress.
‘I’m okay,’ she held up a hand, smeared crimson. ‘You shouldn’t see this.’ Her face was turned away from him. ‘Quickly, you should go.’
Thomas’s mouth opened and closed in horror. He dropped to his knees and reached for her. ‘I have to call an ambulance!’
‘No.’ The force of her voice rocked him back on his feet. She shook her head fiercely. ‘No. I’ll be okay. But you shouldn’t see –’
‘But you – are you hurt?’ He looked everywhere without seeing anything.
Finally Elsie turned her face to him. ‘It’s the baby,’ she said. ‘The baby is gone.’
Thomas thought he might be sick. He knelt on the tiles and took his wife in his arms. Averting his eyes from the gore, he patted her back as she wept into his shoulder. He didn’t know what to say.
‘It’s because we talked about it,’ Elsie sobbed. ‘It was bad luck.’
‘What can I do?’ Thomas asked.
Elsie pulled away. She wiped her nose on her wrist. ‘This isn’t for a man’s eyes.’ Colour couldn’t even rise in her pale cheeks as she pulled selfconsciously at the hem of her dress, trying to inch the fabric over her bloodied thighs. ‘Go next door. Fetch Aida.’
*
A light flicked on behind the door at the sound of Thomas’s knock. A timid female voice came through: ‘Who is it?’
Thomas swallowed a lump of acid at the sight of the bloodied prints he had left on the door. ‘Uh – it’s Thomas Mullet, ma’am. From next door? I’m sorry to bother you s
o late, but my wife asked me to fetch you.’
The locks clicked and the door was pulled open a fraction.
‘Is everything okay?’
Many weeks had passed since the night he had run the car into the tree. He recalled with a pang of alarm how Elsie had shuddered that night – had that shock caused irreparable damage? Yet Thomas remembered the green of this woman’s eyes as though it had been yesterday. Through the sliver of doorway, his neighbour was a single bright green eye, a slice of pale, clear skin and a lock of dark hair. A nightdress that touched the floor.
The eyebrow sank lower. ‘Mr Mullet?’
‘It’s my wife,’ he said. ‘I’m so sorry to trouble you this late and unannounced, but I’m afraid it’s an emergency.’
The eye widened. ‘Why didn’t you say so?’ The door was flung open and she hurried out, knocking straight into him. Thomas leapt backwards and rolled his ankle painfully.
Aida was enormous. Her middle swelled forth like she had swallowed a basketball. All he could see was the ripe swell of her, and all he could think of was how hot and firm it had felt and why on earth hadn’t he noticed it earlier?
‘What happened?’ Aida was asking as she strode, barefoot and unflinching, across the gravel, her nightdress fluttering over the stones and her toes darting back and forth from beneath the fabric.
‘It’s uh – women’s issues,’ Thomas said helplessly.
Aida tossed him a strange look but didn’t say anything as he held open his front door for her.
‘She’s in the bathroom.’ He flattened himself against the doorframe as she squeezed past, trailing a warm cloud of sleep-scented skin and mint toothpaste. ‘It’s this way,’ he said, but she seemed to know where to go: through the living room, down the hall, second door on the left opposite the master bedroom.
From the bathroom doorway, he caught a glimpse of his wife – she had gotten up and was seated on the edge of the bath. Towels were strewn across the floor.
‘Else –?’
He was cut off when Aida turned to him and smiled. ‘Thanks, Thomas,’ she said. ‘I’ll take care of her. Don’t you worry.’
The bathroom door closed in his face.
*
Driving home from work the following day, Thomas battled with the same frustrated guilt and bewilderment that had plagued him all day. Perhaps he should have stayed home from work. Demonstrated his devotion, shown Elsie that he could be of use.
Although, what use could he have been to Elsie today? More to the point, he asked himself as he braked for an intersection, what use could he have been to Elsie last night in the bathroom, that another lady was not more equipped to provide? Why was he feeling slighted, replaying the closing of the bathroom door in his mind?
Women’s business was women’s business and he had no place in it.
Or did he?
An ancient truck lumbered through the intersection, gearbox yowling. It occurred to Thomas that Elsie’s predicament was as much his as it was hers. After all, the conception had not been immaculate.
He arrived home with no clearer mindset and no less guilt than with which he’d left that morning. But as he got out of the car, he noticed the scent of cooking wafting from the house.
See? Elsie is fine. All that worry for nothing.
‘Hello, my love,’ he called as he stepped inside. ‘How are you –?’
The words dispersed as he saw Elsie on the couch, weeping. Her head tilted to one side and her hand cupped her cheek. Her knees were drawn up, her feet tucked beneath herself. A blanket rested over her lap and she leaned heavily to one side.
Onto the fecund bulk of the lady from next door.
‘Good evening, Aida,’ he said, getting over his verbal lapse. ‘How lovely to see you.’ He realised he was fibbing. It wasn’t lovely to see the young, heavily pregnant woman from next door whose husband seemed never to be home, tenderly cradling his wife while she wept tears of grief and sadness. It was . . . A surprise. No, that wasn’t quite right.
It was an intrusion.
He decided to employ a triage system.
‘Are you in pain?’ he asked his wife, gently.
Elsie didn’t respond. He opened his mouth to repeat the question, closed it again when he saw Aida shake her head at him. She offered Thomas a smile: a sad, wistful expression that told him there was little he could do to rectify things.
‘She’s doing fine,’ Aida said.
Thomas left his case by the door and approached the couch. The two women looked so established in their distress-succour circumstance. Maybe he should leave them to it? Elsie’s delicate face crumpled in sorrow tugged at his heart. Suddenly the sense of intrusion fled, and he found himself looking to Aida, quite desperately, for advice or reassurance.
Then he saw a hand gesturing to him from behind Elsie’s shoulder. Aida’s arm was wrapped around Elsie, and Aida was beckoning him over. She inclined her head, indicating Elsie’s other side and said, ‘Here. Come sit.’
Elsie looked up and smiled at him through her tears. He sat down and gathered Elsie into his arms.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said, because he didn’t know what else to say. ‘I’m sorry I talked about it early. It’s just . . . I was so proud.’
Elsie said, ‘I know. I was proud, too. It’s my fault.’
‘No, it isn’t,’ he told her. ‘It’s nothing you did.’ He held her closer.
It wasn’t until some time later, when Aida murmured about serving the casserole and stood up, that he realised Aida’s hand had been beneath his own upon Elsie’s shoulder. He only noticed it – the supple heat of Aida’s hand – when it was withdrawn.
21
The bell jangled overhead as Elsie pushed through the shop’s front door. Mr Swaffer was rearranging the last of the season’s apples in their tray, checking the skins and flicking dried leaves to the floor.
‘Good afternoon, Mrs Mullet. Isn’t it cold today?’
Elsie murmured a greeting to the shopkeeper and drew her basket closer to her chest. She picked an apple from the tray and rolled it in her hand. The skin was smooth and firm, rosy red like a baby’s cheek.
‘Lady William,’ Mr Swaffer told her. ‘Lovely for eating straight as they are, or baking in a pie.’ The shopkeeper leaned in a little closer and Elsie saw the deep silver scar that puckered the outside of his right eye. ‘I bet Mr Mullet loves apple pie. Why don’t you take some and bake him one for when he gets home from work? Nothing like the scent of baking to make a man feel loved.’
‘Thank you,’ Elsie said, although she was unsure why. She selected a half-dozen apples and they rolled into one another in the base of her basket. She added two loaves of fresh white bread, along with a loaf of yesterday’s bread for pudding. Mr Swaffer wrapped a few bacon bones in paper, for soup.
‘What happened to your pretty smile, love?’
Elsie glanced up from the parcel of bones. ‘Pardon?’
‘Give us a smile,’ the shopkeeper said. ‘Whatever it is, it can’t be that bad. Your scowling is making us all sad.’
Elsie looked around the store; other than an elderly lady stooped over a can of condensed milk, it was empty. She didn’t feel like smiling. But wasn’t that the role of a good housewife – to be a wellspring of perpetual contentment and comfort? So Elsie tried to lift her lips at the corners, but it felt mechanical. She put a couple of tins of cream of chicken soup in the basket. What else did she need? Yesterday, Mr Jenkins, the milkie, had delivered two pints of milk, a cube of butter and a block of cheese. Oh, tea leaves, she thought. A pound of sugar. Her mind went blank again. Elsie paid for her groceries – dragging up another forced smile at Mr Swaffer’s repeated prompting – and slipped outside.
The cold metallic tang of winter laced the air and Elsie hunched her shoulders, drawing her collar up closer to her chin. Her shopping basket hung heav
y from her elbow, the wicker rubbing back and forth across her hip as she walked. Jonquils pushed blunt green spears through the earth. Elsie counted the cracks in the footpath, the dandelion seedlings defying the concrete, the magpies that cocked their heads at her and toddled away. The walk between Swaffer’s store and their house was short, less than half a mile. But she was anxious to get home, to strip off her day shoes and coat and curl on her chair with a cup of tea.
She wanted to talk to Aida.
Elsie kept smelling the blood. Sweet and coppery. Every time she glanced down she expected to see it there, spreading between her knees. Every time she went to the toilet her heart would thud and her throat went dry and sticky. But always, with the scent of blood and the feel of it oily and warm on her fingers, there was the memory of Aida’s face pulling in to hers, Aida’s arms enfolding her shoulders. Aida’s nimble hands moving towels to cover the puddles and gently wiping her legs clean. When Aida had moved into a squat to help Elsie sit up, Elsie had seen her own blood soaked into the front of Aida’s skirt, below the enormous bulb of her belly. The memory was both frightening and yet, somehow, deeply comforting. As though the memory was safeguarded by Aida’s presence, her confident hands and the way she had said, I’m so sorry. This wasn’t your fault. You’re going to be okay.
The street ended at the back fence of the cemetery, and Elsie turned right. She passed the giant red gum Thomas had crumpled his car into; how calm Aida had been! She passed under the large pepper tree and then, on the left, was her house.
Elsie stood on the footpath and gazed at her house – hers and Thomas’s – and its matching pair, Aida’s house, as silent and still as always.