Through the Lonesome Dark

by Richardson, Paddy

  ‘I’m going for Doctor Spenser now, Ma.’

  ‘I don’t want no doctor.’

  Ma’s eyes are wide open, staring up at her and her hands are clutching and fidgeting at the covers and, though it feels strange, Pansy takes one of her hands in her own. ‘You need help.’

  ‘It’s not the first time. I’ll be all right.’

  Her hand is icy and Pansy rubs at it, then takes the other, trying to get the warmth back. Ma’s face looks grey and her eyelids are flickering, one minute closed, then staring up at her. ‘I tried to stop him.’

  ‘Ma, it’s not your fault.’

  ‘I want you to know.’

  Ma’s forehead is slick with sweat and Pansy wipes it with the towel. ‘I should’ve told you to be more careful.’

  ‘Ma, it’s all right.’

  Her mother’s eyes are filled with tears. ‘They were nice little fellas, my boys. Never was much of a mother to them.’

  ‘They’re all right, Ma.’

  ‘I never could stand up to him.’

  She closes her eyes and sleeps but it’s a fitful sleep she jerks in then out of. The bleeding’s not so bad now but what if she’s bleeding inside somewhere where you can’t see? He’s hurt her bad this time. Pansy saw the marks where he kicked her. How do you tell if someone’s dying? How would she know?

  ‘I’m going next door. I’ll only be a minute. One of the lads will go for the doctor.’

  ‘No doctor.’

  ‘But Ma—’

  ‘It’s gone now and good riddance to it.’

  She closes her eyes. Pansy stays beside the bed listening to her mother’s breathing coming ragged but regular enough. She goes back to the kitchen, picks up the bucket, takes it out into the yard and picks up the spade. The rain is still streaming down but she manages to dig through the top layer of muck to make a decent enough hole. It’s gone now and good riddance to it. She tips the bucket, covers up the hole, goes back inside and starts to clean up.

  13

  She can’t leave, not yet, with Ma so poorly. Most days Ma doesn’t get out of bed. Pansy hears her vomiting into the bucket and she goes in, wipes her face, swills the bucket out and takes it back into her.

  Pansy’s told Mrs Smithson Ma’s sick and needs her home more but she can keep working, just not the same hours. Mrs Smithson’s eyes narrow as she looks at the bruising down the side of Pansy’s face and the gash on her forehead but she doesn’t say anything. You don’t ask those kind of questions: women just have to make the best of what they’ve got and that’s an end to it.

  Miss Tinsdale, though, is another story. She stops Pansy as she passes her on the stairs. ‘Pansy? What has happened?’

  ‘I fell. Miss Tinsdale, I have to get on.’

  Pansy feels her eyes on her as she goes back down the stairs and for the next few days when Miss Tinsdale invites her into her room to have a cup of tea and look at the new catalogues, she makes her excuses and runs off. In the end, Miss Tinsdale comes out of her door, catches Pansy by her sleeve, and pulls her inside. ‘How did this happen? The truth, now.’

  Pansy looks at prim, faded Miss Tinsdale with her made-over clothes and her patterns and fabrics and Singer sewing machine and her catalogue-dreams. How could she possibly explain to her about Daddy’s face up against hers and the whisky on his breath and the savagery of his grip on her arms? How could she tell her of the bruises on her mother’s body and the blood and that fistful of flesh?

  ‘Tell me what has happened.’

  ‘I fell.’

  ‘Some brute has done this to you. I can see it.’

  ‘I have to get on.’

  ‘Pansy, we’re friends. Please. Let me help you.’

  Pansy shakes her head. How could Miss Tinsdale possibly help her? How could anyone? She’s tried to persuade Ma to let her get Doctor Spenser or to ask next door to call in and see to her when she’s at work, to even get Mrs Timmins who delivers babies around the town to come in. But she won’t. She won’t. I’m not having them know my business. She’s tried to persuade her that what’s happened is wrong and Daddy shouldn’t be allowed to get away with it, not this time.

  ‘Constable Egan. He’s a good man, Ma. He’d listen to us.’

  ‘He’d take him away, you think? And then where would we be? What do you think we’d live on without your father’s wages coming in?’

  ‘Ma, he’s hurt you and he’s killed his own—’

  ‘It never was wanted.’

  Daddy hasn’t come back. The story is he’s at the Dominion. There, she thinks, until her money runs out. Mrs Smithson tells Pansy to take what’s left over from the day’s cooking home with her and, though she’s told her that her daddy’s been in and he’s taking her wages from her from now on, she doesn’t look happy about it and slips her half a crown. She’ll know what’s going on. In Blackball, there’s nothing a secret.

  Without him, there, the house is quiet when she goes home. She sees to Ma, stokes up the fire, gets the place warm and heats up whatever she’s brought back from Smithsons, then divides it into two plates and takes it through into the bedroom. It’s lucky she has that because there’s hardly anything in the larder or the safe. There’s no money either in the jar and when she goes to Kinsellas and asks for butter and sugar and flour on tick Mr Kinsella shakes his head. ‘Sorry, Pansy. Too much there already.’

  She’d been having most of her meals at Smithsons and so she hadn’t noticed. What’s Ma been living on other than the few eggs from the chooks? Has Daddy not been giving her the money he usually dishes out, grudgingly enough, but he used to give it to her every week regular from his pay packet. The money I earn with my sweat, missus, and don’t be forgetting that when you start throwing it about.

  What’s been going on? Ma was right. She doesn’t know everything. She’s been too caught up with her own ideas and plans to see what’s going on right here at home, and she feels bad about that now. All she’d wanted was to get out of the place, just go like the boys did, without a word. They were there one day filling up the place with their loudness and then they were gone.

  Ma’s not getting better. Her face is drawn and she winces when Pansy helps her up, as if she’s still in pain. If she’d only eat something she might get her strength back.

  ‘Try to eat this, Ma. It’s good.’

  ‘I’m not hungry.’

  Sometimes Pansy wants to shake her, she’s so stubborn. But it’s how she’s kept on going, Pansy tells herself, her stubbornness is what’s kept Ma doing the cleaning and washing and cooking, stoking up the fire day after day when she got nothing in return, never even a thank you. But is it now that she doesn’t want to live any more? Is she trying to starve herself?

  Ma’s not even forty yet, she’s got years ahead of her, there might even be better years for her, why can’t she think there might be? Like now, with Daddy gone, it’s more comfortable than Pansy can ever remember between them. Perhaps he’s not coming back.

  Pansy sits most nights at the end of Ma’s bed. She can’t remember ever sitting there with Ma before, even when she was little. There’s not all that much talking, Ma’s never been one for talking, but it’s more than before, little snippets in answer to Pansy’s questions, and she has a lot of questions. Until now she’s not known anything of where Ma came from but, at last, she seems willing to tell her.

  Well, she was born in Ahaura. She had a brother, Thomas, and two sisters, Agnes and Annie. She came after them. There was Mary, as well, but she never knew her because she died; she came first, did Mary.

  Her own daddy? Well, he came from Cornwall; he mined for gold in Ballarat but he liked it here when he came and so he sent over for his wife. Her mother — she was Mary as well but they called her Molly, and baby Mary to come, but Mary died on the boat over. They settled in Ahaura and her daddy was a miner but then he bought a bit of l
and, he was one for saving and looking forward. It’d be Thomas most likely on that land now. She doesn’t know about the rest of them. Agnes was religious, she could have gone into the convent like she wanted. But she doesn’t know.

  Sometimes Ma’s eyes will look distant, as if she’s looking way off somewhere far away and better but then she’ll shake her head it’s all done and over with now, looking backwards doesn’t do a body any good it’s time you were in your bed.

  ‘What did your sisters look like, Ma?’

  ‘They were prettier’n I ever was.’

  ‘I heard Mrs Bright say to Mrs Carr you used to be the prettiest girl in Ahaura.’

  ‘Did she now?’

  ‘Are you feeling better, Ma? Do you want a cup of tea? I’ve got some cake. I made it this morning and I brought a bit for you.’

  ‘I’m all right for now.’

  She won’t talk about Daddy. Any questions about how Ma met him and what happened, she closes up her eyes and pretends to sleep.

  ‘What was your daddy like, Ma?’

  ‘He worked hard. He kept on with the mining even after he got the land so he’d be off early to the mine and then out in the paddocks working as well. We all were out working on that land.’

  ‘Did you like it?’

  ‘I liked it well enough.’

  ‘Were there animals?’

  ‘We had chooks and a few sheep and a house cow.’

  ‘And your ma?’

  ‘She was strict. Daddy was as well. She was softer on us though. I don’t think she wanted to . . .’

  ‘What, Ma?’

  ‘I’m tired, Pansy.’

  The bleeding has stopped, the bruises less livid, so why isn’t Ma getting better? She’s feverish one minute, the next shivering and cold, and when she wakes out of those fitful sleeps she falls into her face is slick with sweat and the sheets drenched. Pansy washes her mother and changes the bed as often as she can but there’s a funny smell. Could be there’s a rat died beneath the house. But it seems it’s in Ma’s room. The bed and Ma herself smell bad.

  Ma hasn’t had a bath. Not since it happened and that could be what’s wrong. She builds the fire up so that the kitchen is warm, drags in the tin bath, fills it up high and shakes in the rest of the lavender bath salts Miss Tinsdale gave her. ‘Come on, Ma. We’ll do it slow. Hold on to me.’

  She eases her mother up so she’s out of bed with her feet on the floor. She’s so weak and there’s nothing left of her. She’s all skin and bone.

  ‘I’ve got you. Just put your arm round my shoulder. Lean on me. Here we go.’

  Ma can only take tiny steps and she has to keep resting even on the few it takes to get into the kitchen. She slumps against Pansy as she takes her nightgown over her head and then she has to almost lift her into the bath. Should it be like this? She’s heard of other women losing babies. Are they always this sick?

  She washes Ma gently but still she feels her flinch as she presses the cloth against her skin. Her belly’s still swollen out and it’s hard, hard as a brick when she washes her. Apart from that, she’s as little as a child, her shoulder blades jutting like spiky wings out of her back.

  ‘Rest forward, Ma, and I’ll do your hair.’

  She pours water from the jug over Ma’s hair; it’s so long when it’s down like this, way down to the bottom of her spine. She soaps it carefully, using the Castile soap she bought back when she had the money, soaping right through to the scalp, running her hands through it. She rinses it over and over with the jug, sees the coal dust running out of it. She soaps again, rinses it again and again until the water runs clean.

  She remembers Ma doing the same for her. Remembers crouching between her knees in front of the range as Ma brushed out the tangles, brushed her hair until it was dry and flying this way and that from her head.

  She helps her mother out of the bath, dries and dresses her, sits her on the kitchen chair, close by the warm, and she rubs her hair until it dries and she brushes it. Ma’s hair is so fair, like pale butter, when the soot’s washed out of it. She brushes it, catching the ends up in her hand and brushing it again up from the roots.

  Ma has her eyes closed and Pansy has to almost carry her to get her back into the bed. She pulls up the blankets and looks down at her. Ma’s face looks less drawn. Perhaps she’s beginning to get better.

  ‘I saw you.’ She whispers it.

  Probably Ma’s dreaming but she answers her. ‘Where did you see me, Ma?’

  ‘I went round the back of the hall.’ Her voice is barely a whisper, her eyes are closing, opening. Closing, opening. ‘You looked so pretty.’

  Pansy sits with her. It’s still early, not much past seven o’clock. She’ll stay by her. But she drifts off herself and when she wakes she knows something’s wrong.

  The smell’s got stronger, despite Pansy washing her so carefully, and Ma’s face is flushed with fever and when she wakes she doesn’t know Pansy nor where she is. She cries out and pushes the blankets back off her body. I’m too hot.

  Pansy bathes her mother’s forehead, her face, her shoulders, trying to bring down the fever. The sheets are soaking again, there’s only the two pair and the others aren’t yet dry. She could put her in her own bed but should she move her, what if she gets chilled?

  But she’ll get chilled in a wet bed. She strips the sheets off her own bed, wraps her mother in the blanket, rolls her to one side and then the other, making the bed around her. She rinses the sheets under the pump outside the door, wrings them out as best as she can and throws them over the pulley above the stove. The others are nearly dry: she can use them later.

  She should go for help but she’s afraid to leave Ma. She should have got the doctor a week ago. Oh, why didn’t she get him? She doesn’t know what to do. She wants to sit on the floor and cry and cry like a child. What if Ma is dying, what if she dies from her not doing things right? Ma’s skin is burning, she’s calling out and making no sense, laughing one minute, crying the next. Tommy, I’m coming after you. Tommy. Her breathing is coming quick and sharp and panting.

  She has to get her temperature down. She runs outside, pumps more water from the pump into the bucket, runs back into the bedroom, Ma’s eyes are closed and she’s quiet now. She’s dying, Pansy is sure of it. She’s never been with someone dying before. ‘Ma? Ma?’ She takes her shoulders and shakes her gently. ‘Ma. Don’t die.’

  She wipes her face with the wet cloth, dips it into the water, wrings it out and holds it against Ma’s forehead. Even if Daddy was here, it’d be someone else with her, someone else to tell her what to do. Where is he? Where is he? It’s him that’s done this thing to Ma, him that put that baby there in her and him knocked it out again and caused whatever’s happened, the fever and the smell. Maybe something’s still inside her, something of that baby that’s making her sick; she doesn’t know what it can be.

  She hears the rooster. The sound of it presses at her, drives and thrusts its way in and she’s opening her eyes and there’s light at the windows.

  ‘Ma?’

  She’s breathing. Still breathing. But it’s harsh and heavy with each breath catching like treacle at the back of her throat. Her hair is drenched and her face scarlet. She’s staring up at the ceiling.

  ‘Are you any better, Ma?’

  Ma turns her head, looks at her and she moves her lips, trying to speak. There’s the rattle of the doorknob turning, the door hitting the back of the wall as it flies open.

  ‘I’ll see to him.’

  His shirt is hanging out from his pants and his face is puffed up and his eyes are slits. He’s boozed all the money and now it’s gone he’s come home.

  ‘Ma’s sick.’

  ‘Sick, is she? She’d better start getting well, then.’

  ‘She lost the baby.’

  ‘Eh?’ He stares at her, then
shakes his head. ‘That’s nothing. It’s happened before and she’s got over it.’

  ‘It’s not nothing. Not this time. What would your fine cobbers think of a man who beats his wife so bad she loses his child then goes off for days on end spending all his money on booze and who knows what else?’

  He steps forward, his eyes are flashing wild and his fists coming up, but she stands her ground and keeps her eyes on him. ‘You let Ma be or I’ll tell. Don’t think I won’t.’

  There’s a soft thud and Ma’s lying crumpled up at the side of the bed. Her face is waxy white and her eyelids are fluttering. He’s behind Pansy and he moves towards her but she pushes him away.

  He’s blustering, ‘Coming between a man and his wife, are we now? Well, that’s a fine state of affairs.’

  Pansy lifts Ma back into bed. ‘Go for the doctor.’

  ‘She’ll be all right now, Pansy.’ He looks bewildered and afraid. He won’t want people knowing. Not about this.

  ‘Go! Or I’ll go myself.’

  14

  ‘

  She had a fall, doctor, lost a baby. Not far along. Oh no, not far along at all. Said she’d be fine in a coupla days. It’s happened before and she’s been up and about next day most times. She’s strong in her views, is Teresa. Stubborn, like. No offence, but she don’t like doctors.’

  Doctor Spenser pushes past him. Well, he’ll know only too well about men like Daddy. He’s in the bedroom a while. She hears him talking to Ma in a soft, low voice. She hears Ma cry out and he comes out of the bedroom, goes outside to the pump and holds his hands under it.

  ‘Wash your hands, Pansy,’ he says. ‘I’ll need you a while.’

  She goes in with him and stands by the bed. Ma’s laying there, her eyes fluttering up into her head. Doctor Spenser’s face is stern and grave. ‘There’s something from the pregnancy left inside your mother that’s causing the infection. I’ve got to try to get that out. Now listen, this isn’t going to be easy. I’m going to hurt your mother, I can’t pretend otherwise, but I want you to hold on to her and try to keep her still.’