Except what she has in mind for herself is the advertisement she saw in the Argus. It’s a secretarial course for young ladies and that’s in Christchurch. She’s worked out that if she stays at Smithsons until the end of the year and saves everything she gets she’ll have the money to pay for it.
It’s what she wants for herself. A good job in an office. Anyway, Greymouth is too close. Daddy would come looking for her in Greymouth. She has to hold on a bit longer.
11
Mrs Smithson is in one of her moods all week, Gloria Irvine with her new this and her new that and whatnot, the airs and graces that one puts on, my word I could tell people a thing or two about Gloria Irvine when she was Gloria Brown. Pansy has hardly the time to run up to Miss Tinsdale’s room to give her back the beads and tell her about the ball.
What about this custard, Pansy?
Well and what about the custard? It’s finished, isn’t it, and yes, it’s not so thick as usual but she’d meant it to be that way. Wasn’t it better to have it thinner with all the richness and heaviness of the steamed ginger pudding?
It needs thickening up, custard has to be thick.
She peels the spuds, cuts up the pumpkin and slides them under the leg of mutton. Friday night, roast dinners, it had been her idea — so we can have cold meat for the weekends, Mrs Smithson. Or we can use it in a shepherd’s pie. She does the work, the cleaning up afterwards and Mrs Smithson gets the smiles. Ooh look, Miss Phillips, mint sauce, how lovely, Mrs Smithson.
She scrapes the carrots, lifts the kettle off the range and tops up the water bubbling around the pudding. She has the table done in the dining room, all’s needed now is to boil the cabbage and carrots and make the gravy.
She knows how to set it all up so a house runs right, but how would she manage in an office? Would she ever be able to learn to use a typewriter and manage the filing and categorising they talked about in the advertisement for the secretarial school? She doesn’t even know what filing and categorising means. She told Miss Tinsdale about saving her money to go to the school. Miss Tinsdale said she thought she’d be perfect at it.
There she’d be in the office tap-tapping on a typewriter and her hands all white and smooth. She’d be wearing a blouse and a smart skirt and when she went out with her new friends to places like the Victoria Tea Rooms she would take the matching jacket from the hook on the door and wear that as well. She’d board in a nice house with other girls who worked in offices and at the end of the day there’d be a hot dinner ready for her.
Mr Billcliff heaps his spoon up with pudding and custard and thrusts it through his thick, pink lips. He never speaks or even looks at her when she’s putting his dinner down in front of him. It’s different, though, when she’s up cleaning out the rooms. First of all it was him just hanging about, then he took to brushing by her just close enough to touch or resting his hand on her arm or on her hip then pulling it back quickly like it’s a mistake, his squinty eyes daring her to complain. But just today she was at the top of the staircase dusting the balustrade and he came down the stairs and pressed his nasty, fat belly right up against her backside, before he passed by.
And here he is now singing and looking at Mrs Smithson with his cow eyes, Take a pair of sparkling eyes. Hidden, ever and anon.
Well, she stamped her foot hard right down on his but, by God, when she leaves she’ll empty his chamber pot with all his piss and shit right onto his bed, the ugly bugger.
It’s late when she starts to walk home and she’s dead tired. Tonight she won’t mind taking her frock off, pulling on her nightgown and getting into bed. She’s halfway down Hilton Street when the rain comes and the first hefty splotches exploding against her face and shoulders tell her how it’s going to be.
She starts to run and it’s sheets of water now gushing down so thick and so hard she can barely see. You’re in, you’re in. There are waterfalls already pouring out over the roofs, the drains are a gushing, rushing moat and she looks for the narrowest part to leap over. She’s soaked to the skin, rivulets running down her face from her hat and her shoes are squelching as she pulls open the door and shuts it behind her. But she feels like laughing.
Home free.
Daddy is at the table, his whisky bottle at his elbow, the newspapers in front of him and Ma beside the range her head down over the sock she’s mending. She doesn’t look up when Pansy comes in. There’s a stillness in the room, not the ongoing heavy silence of past months but taut and angry, like the old taunts and bitterness have come back, filling up the room.
‘Well, would you look at yourself?’ Daddy’s voice sounds calm enough and he’s smiling. ‘Don’t you look a fright?’
‘I got caught out,’ she says.
‘You did that,’ he says, nodding.
She’s crossing the room, moving past Ma’s chair, then his chair. She doesn’t know where this tightness has come from or what it means, nor does she care too much any more. She’s tired and she’s cold; she has to get dry and get her head down to sleep.
‘Hold the horses there. Where do you think you’re going?’
‘Daddy, I have to change my clothes.’ She says it softly, nicely enough so he won’t get angry but oh, she’s so tired of it, the washing dangling down from the hoist over the stove, the cold damp of her room and Daddy’s moods and Ma’s silence.
‘How about changing into this?’
He pushes aside the newspaper, uncovering the box that lies on the table, the square, cardboard box Miss Tinsdale had given her with the folds of tissue inside and he’s taking hold of her dress in his great hands with the soot embedded into his skin and his fingernails split and jagged and black. He’s standing now, holding it out in front of him and she can feel it deep down in her body, the hurt of the roughness of his hands and the animal coarseness of him near that wonderful, delicate thing. She can’t bear it, she can’t bear it and she’s reaching for it and crying out, ‘It’s mine. Give it to me.’
She feels her heart drumming against her ribs and it’s not fear but black, bitter rage scorching now through her body and her head.
‘It’s mine. It’s mine.’ He’s mimicking her voice and he’s lumbering about holding the dress up before him. ‘Is this what it was like at the ball, Pansy? All them boys after you, wanting to put their hands on you? You like that? Ah, but you’re your mother’s girl.’
She wants to tear it from his hands, wants to slash at his face and his eyes with her fingernails. Mrs Smithson would take her in for the night and after that she will go. She will just go. But she needs her dress, she has to have it and she knows Daddy’s temper, knows he’s just as likely to rip it to pieces. She looks at Ma, still with her head down. Well, she won’t speak up for her, she never has, never will. She’s on her own. She has to get the dress back. She has to be little Pansy again, pleasing her Daddy, sitting on his knee.
‘Please, Daddy. I only borrowed the dress. I have to give it back.’
He stops dancing and his eyes are on her, frightening with the drink in them. ‘You said it was yours.’
‘It was just I got a fright seeing you with it when I have to give it back.’
‘You’re not telling me lies now, are you?’
She looks at him, sees the craftiness in his face she’s seen before of him knowing something more than he’s letting on. She has to tread carefully.
‘Is it yours or is it borrowed? Come on now.’
‘Miss Tinsdale, from Smithsons, helped me make it and I haven’t paid her yet so really, Daddy, it’s hers.’
‘You can’t be telling your daddy lies, Pansy.’ He’s bunching the dress up in his hand, he’s opening the top of the stove and she’s running at him, now, beating at him with her hands and screaming, ‘You can’t do that!’
He’s shoving her back from him with one hand and he’s dangling her dress above the smoke and the flames which are leap
ing up out of the stove and she’s snatching for it, shoving, hitting out and kicking and there’s the smash of his hand across her head and the black circles racing across her eyes and she’s falling, her head slamming into the side of the table, she’s on the floor, him standing over her.
‘Get up.’
She puts her hand to her head, feels blood sticky and warm on her fingers. She’s sobbing now, she can’t hold it back and she’s shaking.
‘Sit down.’
He takes a swig from the bottle. ‘I know what you’ve been up to,’ he says.
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ she says but he knows. He knows.
He raises his hand, slaps her again. ‘Well now, I just happened to be talking to one of your little friends who let it slip how she wasn’t even getting half as much from Mrs Peterson as Pansy Williams does from Smithsons for the same work. So I asked your friend how much Mrs Peterson gave her and she told me four bob and twice times four bob is eight, isn’t that right?’
It’s Klara, then, who told.
‘It’s because of the extra hours. When I work extra Mrs Smithson gives me more. It’s not all the time.’
‘That money comes to me.’
‘Daddy, I had to have new dresses. Mrs Smithson said she wanted me smart at work for opening the door and doing the tables and that. It was only because of work I got them and I sewed them myself out of material from Currans.’
‘I see it now.’ He was nodding his head slowly. ‘You got a little bit extra from all the work you were doing and you had to get a couple of dresses. That seems fair enough.’
‘So,’ she can barely breathe, ‘so I can keep the dress? I shouldn’t have done it. I know I should have asked you. But all the other girls were getting new dresses for the dance and Miss Tinsdale said she’d help me. Really, Daddy, it didn’t cost all that much. From now on, I promise you, I’ll give you all the extra money I get. It’s just I needed to look right for work.’
He was still nodding. ‘And you needed to look right for the dance as well?’
Why did Ma look up at her like she was trying to tell her something? Was she trying to tell her to stop talking, to keep her mouth shut before it all got worse again?
But she was getting around him; she always could calm Daddy down, get around him in the end. Oh, but she hated doing it and she hated him, deep down in her gut she hated him and she was leaving. Tomorrow she was leaving. She didn’t have enough money but she wasn’t having this happening to her ever again. She looks up at him, now, nodding and smiling with the drink fogging up his eyes and she thinks the way he looks he’ll be asleep in his chair before too long if she’s lucky. She tries to smile at him like she used to, like when she was a little girl and he brushed her hair. You’ve got the blue-black hair, Pansy, from the Welsh. Like all the pretty girls I left behind.
‘I’m sorry, Daddy.’
‘You would’ve looked a treat at the ball, girlie. I’d say you were the belle of the ball, eh? My little girl. Bet you gave the other girls a run for their money. Pity you didn’t think to let your Daddy see you in your fancy dress but you’d be out with your friends now, wouldn’t you, wanting them to see you all done up. You’d not be thinking about me and your ma back home here.’
‘It wasn’t like that. It was just Mrs Smithson said I had to work so I went on after.’
‘Ah, well, there’s always another day. So then, Pansy, I’ve got your promise that from now on any extra you get you’ll give it straight to me? Is that right?’
So you can spend everything I skivvy for seven days a week, morning till night, at the Dominion to piss against a wall?
‘Yes, Daddy.’
‘And so you’ll be all right with me having this as well?’
He pulls the notes and coins from his pocket, drops them onto the table and slams her bank book on top of the pile. The pages flutter open and she sees the stamp across the last one: Cancelled and closed.
There’s a sickening, stifling lump in her gut. ‘I gave you the five shillings a week like you said,’ she says. ‘The rest was mine because I worked longer hours.’
His face is close up against hers. He’s gathered the top of her dress tight around the throat and he’s shaking her and she’s got no strength in her arms and legs, he’s shaking her like she’s nothing, she feels the hard, bruising grip of his clenched hand. ‘Nothing is yours. Are you listening to me? I own everything that’s here and I own you as well and your mother for all the good it does me. You better get used to that, girlie. That’s the way it is.’
He stands up, scoops up the money and shoves it into his pockets. He picks up her dress and shoves it into the box. He’ll sell it or give it to some woman. She can’t stop him.
‘You own nothing. That’s the law, Pansy, and don’t you be forgetting it. And just in case you’ve got other ideas I’ll be having a word to Mrs Smithson. From now on I’ll be picking up your wages off her meself.’
He’s gone, the door slamming behind him and she can’t seem to get up though she’s soaking wet. She’s ice-cold and there are shivers running up and down her body, her teeth are chattering and she can’t hold herself still. She has to change her clothes. She has to dry herself properly and change her clothes. She has to stand up, go into her room, take off her drenched clothes and try to rub some warm back into her and get her hair dry.
But she can’t do it. Everything gone. Her money, her dress. Her dress. She felt so special in her dress, holding her hand out to the boy standing over her asking, dancing, laughing, walking along Stafford Street, her arm linked into Clem’s.
In a minute she’ll be all right. In a minute she’ll pull herself together like she always does. She has to think. He thinks he’s got her now. Thinks he’s won over her. But he hasn’t. He hasn’t.
Perhaps Mrs Smithson would let her stay there. Except Mrs Smithson wouldn’t go against her father, she’d think that was wrong and the town would be on Daddy’s side, even though they all know what he’s like and even if Mrs Smithson did side with her against Daddy she’d never go up against people in the town. She’d probably agree with him, anyway, that a girl should give her money to her family, it’s the way it works around here.
Miss Tinsdale’s got next to naught herself, only the room she sleeps and works in. Maybe she’d be able to give her enough for the fare to Greymouth. She could go there, get one of those live-in places. But what if Daddy came after her? He has control of her until she’s twenty-one. He could take her back. I own everything that’s here and I own you as well.
In a minute she’ll pull herself together, think it through. Ma sitting there not saying so much as a word. Other girls have mothers that look out for them. She pulls herself upright. Stands there looking down at her. ‘You never wanted me to get on, did you? Never wanted me to do better for myself. Always wanted me down and miserable like you. Well, you’ve got what you wanted.’
Ma has her head down, still holding on to that sock. Mending socks for him. Washing his back. Cooking and cleaning. All for him that she hates. And never anything nice to say for her. Never once that Pansy can remember. It was all the boys. She probably helped them get out, probably gave them money she had tucked away. There’s never been anything for her, though.
‘I’m getting out,’ she says. ‘I’ll sleep in the street if I have to. Anywhere’d be better than seeing your miserable face and that bastard and all his yelling and shouting. Are you listening to me, Ma? Anything’d be better for me than that.’
She’s in her room shoving things into a bag. Her underthings, her two dresses and her skirt and her blouse and her nightdresses. She’s still drenched but it doesn’t matter. She’ll let herself in at Smithsons. She can sleep in the kitchen. So long as she’s quiet no one will know she’s there. She’ll slip up to Miss Tinsdale’s room in the morning. She’ll give her the fare, Pansy’s sure she will. S
he’ll see her face. Miss Tinsdale will help her. She will. She has to. Or Clem. Clem would help her. There’s always Clem. She picks up her bag. She’s still shaking. But she’s ready now to go.
12
If she hadn’t looked. If she’d just gone.
She’s there by the door, she looks back and Ma’s slumped forward in her chair, her arms hugged around her belly. ‘Ma?’ As Pansy goes to her, crouches beside her, she sees Ma’s eyes are dazed, as if she doesn’t see she’s there. ‘Ma. What’s happened, Ma?’
But she knows already what’s happened from the bruise, livid and purpling up already, covering one side of Ma’s face. Maybe she did speak up for her this time. She’s trying to pull herself up out of the chair but she’s whimpering with the trying and there’s . . . is it blood?
Blood covering the seat of the chair, blood on the floor and gushing down Ma’s legs. She’s crumpling up and Pansy grabs her. She’s got her under the arms, lowering her to the floor.
‘I’m losing it.’
‘I didn’t know you—’
‘You don’t know everything, missy.’
‘I’ll go for the doctor.’
‘Get the bucket. Here, hold me up.’
She’s squatting over the bucket, grasping on to Pansy’s arm, her fingernails digging in so hard they’re breaking the skin and she’s grunting and there’s blood streaming into the bowl and, in the end, dark jelly-blood and a fistful of flesh. Ma’s head lolls back, she’s only half-conscious and Pansy helps her, half-lifting her, to the bed. The blood’s slowed but it’s still coming. She gets a towel, rolls it into a pad and wedges it between Ma’s legs.
She fills a pan with warm water, takes her mother’s clothes off, washes the blood off her legs and her thighs and her hips. She throws the water out into the backyard, fills up the pan again and wipes her body, taking care to go gentle over the bruises. Ma is so little, her legs and arms like spindly sticks; when did she get so skinny? She draws a nightgown over her head, pulls the blanket up, then takes the blanket off her own bed and puts that over her as well. Ma’s shuddering, shivers coming on like waves, juddering her whole body. Her lips look blue around the edges.
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