One Life

by Kate Grenville

  Una had a place at the Teachers’ College, but no scholarship. Have to go nursing, she said, matter-of-fact. That’s the way it is. Had my chance.

  Dolly had been talking to the pharmacy man from down the road and he’d told her Nance should do pharmacy. It was a real profession, higher up than being a teacher. It was nearly like being a doctor. Everyone called the pharmacist Dr Cohen, and he wore a white coat and had a doctor’s grave manner. But medicine was an expensive five-year degree whereas pharmacy was an apprenticeship. Three years of apprenticeship, and a few university courses at the same time. For the daughter of pub-keepers, that put pharmacy up the ladder but not out of reach.

  And pharmacy was good for a girl. A woman teacher only got half what a man did, and had to leave if she got married. A woman pharmacist got the same as a man and, if she wanted to go on working after she married, she could.

  Nance didn’t think she wanted to do pharmacy. Fiddling around with smelly things in bottles, standing in a stuffy shop all day listening to people go on about their bunions. But she could see it was as good as done in Dolly’s mind. Dolly got Bert to go down to Sydney to see Dr Pattinson of Washington Soul’s, to find out about being an apprentice. Not his offsider, mind, Dolly said. You want something done, you go to the butcher, not the maggots on the block!

  He came back saying Washington Soul’s didn’t take any girl apprentices, though a girl might get in with a small chemist somewhere. Good, Nance thought, that doesn’t sound likely. Then a man came to stay at the pub, a commercial traveller in pharmacy lines, silver-tongued, buttering up Mrs Russell. Turned out he knew a man named Stevens in Sydney. Enmore, not far from the university. He was looking for an apprentice, wouldn’t mind a girl.

  My word, Nance, Bert boomed down the table at her, carving into the leg of mutton. You’ve fallen on your feet there, my girl!

  No! was Nance’s thought, but how could she say that with her mother at one end of the table smiling for once, and her father at the other thinking everything was settled? And what better idea did she have to put in its place?

  Something else stopped her from saying no: it might turn out all right. Tamworth was a narrow world. When you stood up on the top of the hill behind the town you could feel you knew every single person who lived there. It was as small as that, the grid of streets that naked. Up there with Una and Wade one day she’d declaimed to the warm breeze blowing off the plain:

  Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes He stared at the Pacific—and all his men Looked at each other with a wild surmise—Silent, upon a peak in Darien.

  The others had laughed, and yes, she’d said it as a joke. There was a private joke behind the public one, though: she meant it. In her own small way she might be like Cortez, and find a world bigger than a dusty country town that rode on the sheep’s back.

  THREE

  BY THE middle of March 1930 Nance’s suitcase was under the second bed in the room of her friend from St George, Maggie Glendon, at Bondi. Sydney felt like home. Nance loved the feel of the sea breeze, it was like the best days at Cronulla. Sun glinted off cars and gleamed along tram tracks. Seen from the bustle of Bondi, sleepy old Tamworth was a good place to have left.

  The Glendons’ flat was round the back of a liver-coloured brick block where the stairs always smelled of potatoes being boiled to death, but that was all right because it was near the beach, and everyone welcomed her. She and Maggie shared a cramped bedroom like sisters. Maggie had had to leave school when her father died. Now she worked in Hosiery at David Jones. She’d have loved to do something more than a dead-end job but there was no money. Mrs Glendon was a timid woman who seemed overwhelmed by widowhood. Maggie’s brother Wal was a cheerful fellow, had left school at fourteen, had a job on the trams.

  The first day of lectures Nance got the bus through the city and out to the university, proud of the heavy bag of books over her shoulder. Other than some of her teachers, she’d never known anyone who’d gone to the university, and here she was walking between the sandstone gateposts!

  At nine o’clock the professor came into the lecture hall, black gown billowing around his long legs. She opened her notebook, uncapped her pen, and got ready to become a pharmacist.

  Botany was more or less familiar: The Structure of Life Processes in Green Plants, Principles of Classification, Floral Biology. But Chemistry was a foreign language. Empirical, Molecular and Structural Formulae. Gravimetric Determination of Phosphoric Acid. The Calibration of Pipettes.

  Among eighty men, six women were doing Chemistry and Botany. They were expected to sit together in the front row. There was a Mavis who she got a bit friendly with, and a clever young woman named Marjorie. She’d have liked to go to lunch with them and ask them what a covalent bond was, but the minute classes were over she had to race for the tram so she’d be at the shop on Enmore Road by one o’clock. Mr Stevens would be at the door with his watch in his hand. He’d tell her again that a master could dismiss an apprentice for tardiness.

  The pharmacy was cramped and airless and full of the noise of traffic. The cars roared and beeped, the trams screamed going round into Stanmore Road. The dispensary was a dark corner under the stairs. In rows, with their gilt-lettered labels, the pharmacy bottles looked a bit grand. It was only when you shook the stuff out that you could see it was nothing but dried-up leaves, seeds, gritty stuff like sand. Mr Stevens measured the amounts. Then it was Nance’s job to grind them in the mortar and make them into a pill or a cream.

  When she wasn’t grinding away at the mortar and coughing at the fine powder that floated out, or rolling the pills in sugar, or washing out bottles, Nance had to serve in the shop. The customers frightened her. Half the time she’d never heard of whatever it was they were asking for, let alone where in the shop to find it. Enmore was full of people too poor to go to the doctor and some of them didn’t realise Nance had no idea what to do for a nasty chesty cough, or the big red stye on their eyelid. She asked Mr Stevens or Moira, but she felt stupid to be forever pestering them. Then there was the worry of handing someone the wrong package and killing them.

  Moira was the apprentice she was replacing. She’d done her Finals but was staying on for a week to show Nance the ropes. At the end of each day they went over the dockets together. That was another worry, if they didn’t come out right would she have to make up the shortfall? Some of the things on the dockets were a mystery and finally she asked, What are these FL things?

  Oh, Nance, keep your voice down, for heaven’s sake, Moira said, and jerked her head to tell Nance to follow her into the back room.

  Look, she said, they’re french letters, you know anything about them? No, well, they go over the feller’s willy. Stop the babies coming.

  She laughed. Moira was a coarse sort of person, though not when Mr Stevens was about.

  Know what a willy is, do you, Nance? Country girl like you? You’d have seen the bulls and that?

  The bulls and the horses were all Nance knew about sex, apart from Tom Vidler’s kiss at the Tamworth Memorial Dance.

  The fellers are awkward about coming in and asking, Moira said. Needn’t be, in my view. I like a feller with a french letter in his back pocket.

  Nance felt like an innocent fool, but at least now she understood about the young men who’d come in expecting to be served by Mr Stevens and got her instead. They’d stammer out a request for a comb or a pair of shoelaces. Blushing, mumbling, spilling their change. Later she’d see them lurking outside and when Mr Stevens was behind the counter they’d come in again. They’d wall themselves off from the women with their shoulders and murmur together.

  Moira showed Nance the place under the counter where Mr Stevens kept the FLs. There were things for women, too, that you had to know about. Little pieces of sponge with a string that you soaked in vinegar, and the Housewife’s Friend. Kind of a foamy thing you put up yourself, Moira said. Terrible mess on the sheets.

  Monday to Friday she got to the shop at one and was the
re until seven or eight at night. There was another pharmacy next door and they played the game of who could stay open longer. On Saturday and Sunday she had to be at the shop at nine in the morning. At one o’clock she could go home, but she had to be back again at six and stay till whenever the shop closed. Saturday nights were busy, sometimes they didn’t close till ten. There was no morning of the week when she could sleep in. No complete day was her own, not even a full afternoon. Her life before pharmacy seemed a mad luxuriousness of time.

  For the first weeks her feet ached so she could feel the bones against the floor. At the tram stop there was no seat and there were nights when she sat down to wait on the footpath, feet in the gutter like a tramp. She was past caring.

  Eventually her feet got used to it, but she didn’t. Did you have a nice day, dear, Mrs Glendon asked every evening. Nance tried to smile, tried to eat her dried-up dinner, too tired to be hungry. Mrs Glendon had left school at fourteen, had never worked outside the home. Nance training to be a pharmacist seemed wonderful to her. How could Nance tell her, It’s awful! I don’t understand the lectures! And Mr Stevens rouses on me if I’m not back at the shop on time!

  Each day she put on the white coat again knowing there was nothing ahead of her but loneliness and exhaustion. She wished she’d never won that prize at the Intermediate, never attracted Mr Crisp’s interest, never squeaked that pass at the Leaving. She hated every day, went to sleep with her wrist still tightening around the movement of the pestle, and on the other side of the too-short sleep there was another day like the last one.

  By the time Nance was desperate enough to write to Bert and Dolly to tell them how awful it was, it was too late. Something terrible had happened to the stock market in America a while earlier, and now everyone all over the world had lost their money.

  She knew from what Dolly and Max wrote that things were bad in Tamworth. No one had the money to buy anything, so shops were closing all along Peel Street. The commercial travellers who had been the backbone of the Cally’s income stopped coming. People on properties still came into town but they didn’t go to the Cally for the four-shilling dinner, or even to the Greeks’. They brought a sandwich from home. Out at Goonoo Goonoo there was no more polo. The King girls had to wangle jobs at David Jones. At the Cally they’d let go all the staff except Arthur and Con, and they were only kept on because they were willing to work for board and keep.

  Thank God you have a job, Nance, her mother wrote. Lucky we got you in there in time. Nance knew she was saying, There’s nothing for you here.

  She wouldn’t have known any of it from her father’s letters. Bit of a downturn, that’s all, he said. Things are bound to look up any day.

  As an apprentice Nance was paid sixteen shillings a week. Bert had paid the first year’s university fees in advance and he sent her money every month. Now each cheque was smaller than the last. Still enough for her board, but not much else. Ever since she could remember she’d been able to have plenty of good food, a new dress now and then, the pictures on a Saturday afternoon. Now there was no money for new clothes or shoes and the pictures were a luxury she had to scrimp for. At the Glendons’ there was no more butter, only dripping. No more chops, now it was scrag end in a stew and a lot of potatoes. Bacon once a week, the rasher thin enough to see through. Getting the tram from the university to Enmore came to seem an indulgence. She walked, and ate her sandwich on the way, so she hiccupped all afternoon.

  But she had a job, no matter how badly paid, and if you had a job you had to hang on to it. Every day she saw long lines of skinny men standing with their heads down outside the church soup kitchens or holding cardboard signs saying they were clean and honest and would do any kind of work. When Mr Stevens needed a delivery boy, the queue of people went down the street, and they were mostly grown men.

  In the short days of winter, the wait for the tram home was dark and cold, the wind spiteful as it sliced up Enmore Road. One night she watched the tram light coming towards her, the rails gleaming, the road slick with rain. The trams had been a little adventure in the beginning but now they were the emblem of the hard machine of her days.

  I could step out in front of it, she thought. That would put an end to the misery and the loneliness and the feeling that every day would be like this forever. It would hurt, she supposed. But if she was lucky it would all be over in a second.

  In the moment she stood with that choice, she was free of everyone else in the world: what her mother wanted, what her father said, what Mrs Glendon thought. It was just her, Nance Russell, alone with eternity. She’d have prayed, if she had the words for a prayer, or believed there was anyone to hear it.

  Now more than ever seems it rich to die. They were the words that rose out of memory.

  Now more than ever seems it rich to die,

  To cease upon the midnight with no pain.

  She’d sat in that hot classroom while the blowf lies droned against the windows, and listened to Mr Crisp read. For many a time I have been half in love with easeful Death. She hadn’t known then how you could be half in love with easeful death. Still, the words had lodged in her somewhere, and now they were the words for what she felt. Keats knew how much you could want it all to be over. The weariness, the fever and the fret. He’d known, and out of memory his words were speaking to her.

  She remembered the shake in Mr Crisp’s voice as he read. Now she thought he might have known what it was like to want to die. Everyone who’d ever read that poem and had wanted to die was with her on the Enmore footpath, a spilling crowd of faceless and voiceless people, all bound together by having their feelings put into words. Standing in the dusk watching the great yellow eye of the tram light rushing towards her, she understood why some words were worth binding in leather and handing on. In the darkest hour, all the other humans who’d known dark hours were there with you. They’d been to the dark places before you, and they were with you now.

  FOUR

  NANCE DIDN’T tell Maggie what she’d been so close to doing. Didn’t even think of telling Mrs Glendon or Wal. In that moment with eternity she’d touched the edge of something that lay beyond their world. She could be dead, and she’d chosen not to be. Her life was hers now. She was free to do whatever she chose.

  She couldn’t get away from the pharmacy or the university, but she could get away from having to pretend all the time with the Glendons. Moira had told her about St Margaret’s Hostel for Women. It was around the corner from Stevens’ shop. You got a bed in a room you shared with another woman and they gave you breakfast and dinner. Twenty-five shillings a week, the same as Bert was paying Mrs Glendon. She’d save on tram fares, and get to sleep for a little longer in the morning.

  Churchy, you know, Moira warned. Grace at meals, all that. And you have to go to church of a Sunday. But not bad people, do their best for you.

  The gleam of polished lino and the smell of cabbage at St Margaret’s were depressing, and the rules were strict. Just the same, her only regret was that she hadn’t moved earlier. She shared a room with Meg Naughton, a girl the same age who was at the Teachers’ College. Meg had some frightening ideas. She was an atheist, she told Nance the first night. Best be straight about it, Nance, she said. They can kick me out if they have to, but I won’t be a hypocrite. And she was a socialist. Nance knew the word, sort of, and with anyone else she’d have bluffed her way through, but Meg was someone you could ask. Very simple, Meg said. From each according to his ability, to each according to his need. That’s my belief. To Nance that sounded fair and sensible, especially when you looked out the window at the world.

  But Meg’s ideas went in other directions that Nance couldn’t follow. Men keep women down, Meg said. Keep us uneducated, keep us poor. Far as I’m concerned, that means marriage is nothing more than legalised prostitution. Nance thought Meg was wrong, but she wondered if that was just because she’d been taken in like all those other women. Meg didn’t mind when Nance disagreed, urged her on, in fact, because
she loved an argument. The unexamined life is not worth living, she’d say. What if we agreed about everything? We might as well not be alive.

  With Barbara from along the hall, Meg and Nance would get the train out to the Blue Mountains or the Hawkesbury River on a Saturday for the afternoon. To get away from the city for a few hours was bliss: to see the bush tossing in a clean sea breeze, smell leaf-mould underfoot, cup your hands and drink from some swift cold creek. Always with an eye on the time, and the shop waiting again at six o’clock, but a reminder that there was a life beyond the pale-green walls of the pharmacy and the grim streets of Enmore. Meg said this was a chance to remember how small a person’s life was in nature’s big picture.

  On Sundays she went to the Glendons’ for the family lunch. She knew she should invite Meg, too, her family was at Broken Hill, even further away than Nance’s. The trouble was, she knew Mrs Glendon would find Meg’s ideas shocking, and Wal wouldn’t understand a woman with such firm opinions. It would be too hard to be the go-between juggling the different parts of her life, the old and the new, around the same table.

  It was common knowledge among the first years that half of them would fail. Barbara had done Chemistry the year before and helped her, but Nance was sure she’d be one of those failures. Her father’s money would have been wasted. So would her year of hell.

  The results were pinned up on boards in the quad in late December 1930. At the top of the page there was a note in red ink: X denotes female student. The women were all Miss, where the men just had their initials. She supposed the men who made up the lists would say they were being polite. But she hated being singled out like that.

  She’d passed. Fifty-four in Chemistry, thanks to Barbara. Fifty-eight in Botany. That was a credit. Only two of the other women had passed: Mavis Sherlock and Marjorie Hyder. Marjorie had come within one mark of topping the year in Chemistry. In Botany she was ten marks ahead of the nearest man. They had to give her dux and the Gray Prize. Marjorie was a small quiet woman with a square face that was usually hidden under her hat. Today she was flushed, had pushed her hat back as if to say, Yes, I am Marjorie Hyder!