by Kim Lock
Each house had a tiny front porch with three steps up to the door. Aida had scarlet flowered geraniums growing in paint tins on each step; Elsie had a sprig of rosemary from Mrs Pellarin’s hedge three doors down browning drearily in a terracotta pot. It was the fourth cutting Elsie had tried. A carport jutted off the far side of each house – a short roof held up by steel poles. Thomas parked his new Holden in theirs when he came home each evening, but Aida’s carport was always empty. Aida disclosed that her mother visited once a week, but Elsie had rarely seen or heard these visits. Only once, she’d heard the thud of a car door and had glimpsed the front door closing, a wheeled grocery cart tugged through.
Stepping from the footpath, Elsie felt the poke of stones and sticks through the soles of her shoes. Three steps up the porch. Elsie touched the sickly-sweet geranium blooms, their petals the red of fresh blood.
Elsie rapped her knuckles on Aida’s front door. After waiting a minute, she knocked again, a little more firmly.
‘Aida?’ she called. ‘It’s me.’ Leaning over, she used her hand like a visor above her eyes, pressing against the window pane. The lace curtain was drawn, obscuring anything but a ghostly blur of light and shadow inside. No movement was visible.
Elsie retreated down the steps. She walked along the strip of adjoining yard, past the side doors, into the backyard and stepped onto Aida’s back porch. There she knocked again, called out and tried the handle.
Nothing.
Elsie’s shoulders drooped. Taking a step back, she set a loaf of bread and a tin of soup on the porch. ‘I’m leaving something here for you, okay?’ She pressed her palm against the screen and waited another minute before retreating, reluctantly.
*
The next day, the bread and soup were still on Aida’s back porch. Elsie knocked again and shouted Aida’s name but there was no answer. After two more days the bread was sprouting fluffy greenish-grey spots.
By the fourth day of Aida’s absence, Elsie knew something had happened. Aida wasn’t hiding in the house like she had those first few weeks, choosing not to answer the door. Elsie knew it, as she picked up the sick-looking bread to throw in the bin, and she pictured the heavy swell of Aida’s body. How big she had grown lately. How ready.
Elsie knew it. Aida was gone.
22
‘It’s worth another shot, don’t you think, my love?’ Thomas said to Elsie in the dark.
The sound of her voice came from close to his face on the pillow. ‘I suppose you’re right.’ Her breath tickled his nose, spearmint-sweet.
‘I know you’re sad, but we can try again. And keep trying.’
‘Okay.’
‘Maybe this time it will work.’ Thomas gathered his wife close into his arms and kissed her. She was warm and soft beneath his hands, as he cradled the rises and falls of her. Her nightgown was twisted around her legs and he made a less than suave effort at untangling it. But Elsie, bless her, seemed unaffected by his fumbling. She had always been that way: forgiving, sweetly amenable. The first time he kissed her, his teeth had knocked painfully against hers but she had simply laughed and planted her hands either side of his face to guide him. The first time they had made love he had felt he might shatter into a thousand pieces, he’d lost all track of time and gravity, but she had wrapped her arms around him and kept him whole.
Thomas rolled over and brought his wife beneath him, and the cloud-cover moved away from the moon and illuminated her face on the pillow. Her eyes were directed away, towards the window.
‘Are you okay?’
She nodded, smiling, and squeezed him with her knees. Convinced, Thomas regained his rhythm but, when he opened his eyes to gaze upon her sweet face, he found her inattentive again.
‘My love? You seem distracted.’
‘No, of course not, darling. Keep going.’
Thomas didn’t need to be told twice, and off he went again. The end was close, he could feel it coming, the inexorable swell of it. What about her? Her thighs gripped him, her hands pressed his shoulders, but where was her attention?
Exercising considerable restraint, Thomas paused again and managed to say, ‘Is this good for you?’
‘I don’t know where Aida is,’ she said.
Thomas stopped. He propped himself on his elbows. ‘Aida?’
Elsie’s eyes glimmered. ‘She won’t answer the door. I . . . I miss her.’
A threefold quandary came upon Thomas. His wife was upset, and he wanted to comfort her. He also wanted, rather urgently, to keep going with his present occupation. And finally, why had his wife’s thoughts strayed to the young woman living next door when her husband was making love to her?
But Elsie, his darling wife, his beloved, came to his rescue by suddenly thrusting her hips at him. She grabbed his face in her hands and pressed her mouth firmly against his.
And then, oh goodness, for Thomas, it was swiftly over.
23
Friday morning, Elsie waved Thomas off to work and then stood in the hallway, swallowing nervously.
Aida had been absent for five days.
She picked up the telephone handset, thrust it down again. Hurrying to the living room window, she drew the curtains closed. Then she changed her mind and shoved them open.
Returning to the phone, she stood in front of the stand and wiped her palms on her skirt. Perhaps she should do the breakfast dishes first. Or hang out the washing. Or pop down to Mrs Pellarin’s to show her that six-stitch cable she had repeatedly been asking about.
‘Stop procrastinating,’ she said aloud. ‘Just start somewhere.’
Elsie picked up the phone.
‘Calvary Hospital, please,’ she told the operator.
Her heart beat faster while she awaited the connection. What was she doing? She had no right to be poking into other people’s business like this. No right whatsoever. It felt like spying through a keyhole, watching the intimate movements of someone else. An invasion of privacy. Overcome with shame, she was about to hang up when the line was connected.
‘I’m looking for a patient,’ she blurted, before she could change her mind. ‘In maternity.’
‘Name?’ the lady barked. The hassle expressed in that word only deepened Elsie’s embarrassment.
‘I . . .’ Elsie didn’t know Aida’s surname. Heat flared up her neck. ‘Her name is Aida.’
After a few moments the lady replied with intense annoyance, ‘No listing for a Mrs Aida here.’
‘I’m sorry, it’s not . . .’ Elsie stuttered. ‘It’s not Mrs Aida. Aida is her Christian name. I . . . I don’t know her surname.’
The line clicked and warbled.
‘Uh – her husband works in the mines, if that helps.’ Elsie supposed that the lie Aida had told Thomas could also be extended to hospital staff.
‘If you don’t know the patient’s name, I cannot help you. Goodday –’
Much to her own surprise, Elsie said, ‘Can you please check?’
A huff blew into the earpiece. ‘There’s no Aida in maternity here, by any name. Goodbye.’
The line went dead. Elsie set the receiver down. She picked it up again.
‘Queen Victoria Maternity Hospital, please.’
The person she was connected to this time was equally brusque. ‘I’m looking for a patient,’ Elsie said. ‘First name is Aida. Surname is –’ she feigned a cough and rubbed her sleeve over the mouthpiece.
‘We have no lying-in patients of that name,’ the lady on the end of the phone told her. Elsie asked her to double check, yet when she returned to the line the answer remained the same. No Aida. Elsie managed to thank this one before being disconnected.
‘McBride Maternity Hospital, please.’
Over the background noise of the exchange, the operator said, ‘Please repeat that.’
Elsie wanted the floor to open up and
swallow her. What is wrong with you? she demanded inside, while what came out of her mouth, clearly and loudly, was, ‘McBride Maternity Hospital.’
When the call was answered she repeated the process to no avail.
Elsie asked the operator, ‘Um . . . are there any others?’
‘Please repeat that.’
‘I said, are there any others?’
The operator paused. ‘Other hospitals?’
‘Yes. Other maternity hospitals.’
‘Which hospital?’
Elsie said, ‘I don’t know any others by name.’ There were other hospitals, of course: the Women’s and Children’s, Royal Adelaide, even one here in Gawler. But those weren’t the places where unwed mothers crept and hid.
‘Which hospital do you want?’ the operator yelled down the line. ‘You’ll have to speak up. It’s very loud here.’
It was the pinprick Elsie’s brazenness needed. Humiliation finally overcame her. ‘Never mind,’ she said, and set the phone down. Anxiety churning inside, she went to the kitchen to do the breakfast dishes.
24
Thomas entered the room with his hands behind his back.
Elsie was knitting. Over her lap she had smoothed her grandmother’s crocheted blanket; she wore a plum-coloured cardigan with tiny buttons. Thomas’s heart kicked when he took in the sight of her tucked beneath layers of wool, the heater glowing by the wall next to her.
She lowered the needles and gave him a curious look. ‘What have you got there?’
‘It’s a surprise,’ he said, somewhat superfluously.
Elsie set her knitting down. From behind his back Thomas withdrew the box and set it on Elsie’s lap. It was heavy, the size of a large shoebox.
‘What is it?’ she asked, tipping the box to read the print on the side. Her eyes darted between the box and Thomas.
‘It’s the latest,’ he enthused, sitting down alongside her. ‘Open it.’
Elsie opened the flaps and withdrew a sleek electric clothes iron. The sturdy black handle was affixed to a slender, gleaming base with a smooth point. The striped electrical cord was coiled neatly.
‘Mrs Bagnoli has one and I’m told she loves it. Considers it the absolute best.’
An expression had settled upon his wife’s face that Thomas struggled to read: brows drawn together, bottom lip thrust out. Perhaps she was confused, unsure why he had purchased a new iron for her when her current iron worked well enough.
‘It’s supposed to halve your ironing time,’ he clarified. ‘I know how busy you are, and this will make your jobs a bit easier,’ he finished with a beam.
Elsie thrust the appliance back in its box. ‘Thank you,’ she said, briskly. The blanket and knitting fell to the floor as she shot to her feet, clutching the box. She kicked the blanket away.
‘What’s the matter?’ Thomas asked.
‘Nothing’s the matter.’ She strode to the kitchen where she banged his gift on the counter.
Thomas hurried after her. ‘You don’t like it?’
She fixed him with a look that made him take a small step back.
‘Is it the wrong brand, my love?’
‘Not at all, dear,’ she said. ‘Although I’m not particularly conversant with all the brands favoured by the most efficient housewives. I’m sure if Mrs Bagnoli says this is the best, the best it must be.’
Thomas was confused. ‘What’s the matter?’ he asked again. ‘I thought a gift would cheer you up.’
‘A gift would cheer me up,’ she said. To Thomas’s immense horror, she broke into sobs. ‘But this isn’t a gift. This is another . . . chore.’
He hastened around the counter but she pushed him away, so he stood in the middle of the kitchen with his arms half up, half down, in quite a state of uselessness. ‘I thought you’d like it. I didn’t mean to upset you. And what do you mean “chore” – I thought you enjoyed keeping busy.’
‘I fear I’m going to disappoint you,’ she sobbed. ‘But I’m a terrible housewife.’
‘No,’ Thomas said, wanting to hold her but frightened she might reject him again. With great care, he reached out and put one tentative hand on her shoulder, relieved when she didn’t shrug him off. ‘You do a great job taking care of our home. Look around,’ he used his free hand to sweep an arc around the kitchen. But it was then that he noticed the layer of gritty dust coating the top of the fridge, the brownish tea drips down one of the cupboard doors. A handful of daisies wilted in a splash of greening water on the windowsill.
‘There, now. Don’t be silly.’ He meant to say it affectionately, but she stiffened at his words. He hastened to reiterate, ‘You’re doing a wonderful job. You’ve had a setback with . . . you know . . .’ he trailed off. ‘But I’m sure you’ll get back into the swing of things in no time.’
‘We’ve eaten savoury mince three nights in a row,’ she pointed out. ‘And it wasn’t even particularly nice.’
‘It was lovely,’ Thomas lied. ‘Very tasty.’
‘It was dry. The peas were all sucked in on themselves.’ Elsie covered her face. ‘The truth is, I’m not enjoying it,’ she admitted. ‘I’m so . . .’ she dropped her hands and looked him in the eye, ‘bored all day.’
He frowned. ‘But you have so much to do.’
‘But it’s all boring!’ she cried. ‘Scrubbing and sweeping and baking? It’s so dreary. None of the other housewives seem bored. I don’t understand – what am I doing wrong? I –’ she sighed, a long breath that seemed to deflate her entire body ‘– I miss work. Ugh. I sound like a suffragette.’
Hesitantly, Thomas stepped forward and opened his arms. To his relief, she stepped into him and he held her tightly. He didn’t know what to say. At work, all his colleagues’ wives seemingly adored their roles. His co-workers brought home-cooked cakes and biscuits and scones, their clothes were all neat and pressed to perfection. They reported happy wives, well-behaved children and perfectly run homes. Thomas had thought it was a role – the domestic scientist – that Elsie, as clever and determined as she was, would relish.
So why was she miserable?
Scrubbing and sweeping and baking, she had said. Admittedly, although those were necessary and surely noble tasks in keeping a home, they didn’t sound like particularly rousing pursuits. That gritty smear of dust on the fridge, those cupboard doors – if Thomas had to wipe them day after day, he would probably tire of it and begin to ignore it, too. Whenever Bagnoli tasked him with something mundane like dismantling packing crates, or even the mind-numbing counting of stocktake, Thomas’s own mood would always plummet. Certain daily tasks were uninspiring and often unavoidable, but everyone needed those tasks to be broken up by stimulating challenges, a little excitement. Problem was, Thomas had thought that ‘domestic science’ was a source of excitement for women – and that it would be for Elsie, too. After all, that’s what all the men said.
Maybe some blokes were not being entirely liberal with the truth. Behind closed doors, who knows how those wives really felt? Because sure as hell, even if Thomas were a lady, he couldn’t imagine himself revelling in their position.
His wife sniffled in his arms, and he wanted to help. But how? It was because she had married him that she’d had to resign from her secretarial work. And it was supposed to be his job to provide for her.
And then Elsie said something that stopped his train of thought altogether. She said, ‘I lost our first baby before it had even begun.’
Thomas felt his throat thicken. ‘Never mind,’ he said, croakily.
‘Never mind?’ She drew back and looked at him with horror. ‘How can you say that?’
‘I mean, you needn’t worry on it so. Keep your chin up and look to the future. A little bad luck, my love, but you’re doing fine.’ On one level he knew it was sensible, solid advice but even to his ears it sounded futile.
At
the look on her face, Thomas’s groin clenched unpleasantly. She stared at him with what looked like fear, as though he might slap or shake her. He didn’t know what else to say, nothing helpful came into his head. He felt utterly redundant; she may as well have spoken to him in a foreign language. So Thomas held her, helplessly, there in the kitchen, with the new iron in its box sitting on the counter as though to burn right through the laminate.
25
Elsie couldn’t think what to make for tea. Her mind was blank as through the kitchen window, she watched a juvenile magpie and its parent hustle across the grass. The younger bird, with its mottled grey feathers where its parent’s were snowy white, eee-eeked impatiently, beak open, trotting along behind the older bird. The parent bird would dig a morsel from the earth and the adolescent would gobble straight from its parent’s beak, its greedy cries stuttering off as it swallowed. How busy the birds looked, Elsie thought. How fruitful and productive. And how free.
Tears slid down her cheeks. Tears of self-pity, of anger and resentment. But who was she angry with? No one, she realised. She was simply angry with the way things were. The indulgence of the gloomy thought only enraged her further. With her sleeve, she scrubbed at her cheeks, sniffing defiantly. This misery, this grief over nothing – how she longed to put it in a box, to not let it rule her.
The magpies opened their wings and lifted from the yard, disappearing into the afternoon sky. Through watery vision she watched them vanish: one moment they were there, the next they were gone. Their liberty made her feel panicked.
Wait a minute. Elsie pushed her face closer to the glass. Was that . . . ?
Aida’s laundry window was open. Only a crack, but it was definitely opened. Had it been open all this time, and she had never noticed?
Slipping down the hall, Elsie went out into the yard and pretended to check the washing on the line. Fingering the sleeve of one of Thomas’s shirts, movement caught the corner of her eye. She heard the sound of a door slammed shut. Feigning interest in her drying sheets, she unpegged one and let it drop into the basket. As the fabric fluttered down, Elsie saw an older woman hurrying out Aida’s front door.