Loving Daughters

by Olga Masters

  Those who thought the trees out of place and Enid better employed inside the house, and said as much to Jack, changed their view as the garden developed into something close to a small, well-kept park.

  They praised the elder Herbert girl to soured wives immersed in motherhood and small, dirty houses. The wives’ envy turned to dislike of Enid as they waited darkly hopeful for her life to become a pattern of theirs.

  Enid watched the may bushes toss their heads about above a bank of salvia, losing its fiery red to the approaching dusk, and a border of white daisies, their navy blue centres no more than a blurred hole.

  Yes, I am pleased with you, she said to herself, feeling the tightness around her heart melt like a dish of butter on a hot window sill.

  She turned to see Una, binding an old shawl to her shoulders with tightly folded arms, slip through the hall and pass out the back door, off walking to the old racecourse before tea. Well, let her go, Enid thought, taking a stack of plates to warm by the stove. She saw her garden again glancing sideways from the dresser. She hasn’t got what I have.

  But she did not know which was the stronger emotion, pity or triumph.

  Two weeks later Edwards came.

  6

  A legacy from a bachelor who grew up in Wyndham and later became a successful seed merchant in Bega brought Colin Edwards to the church and rectory of St Jude’s

  There was no resident minister during the war years, a man coming from Candelo or Bega once a month to take a service.

  The seed man left the legacy for the appointment of a minister to St Jude’s, and the sum covered a single man’s stipend for two years.

  It was considered providential by the Bega Parish Council that Edwards was available, his arrival in Australia known to one council member through a relative, a high-ranking Sydney churchman, with whom the member kept in touch, adding an aura to his own humble post.

  This was enhanced by taking Edwards in and boarding him for the few weeks spent in Bega adjusting to the new environment.

  Edwards came out from England with a shipload of returned soldiers at the end of 1919. He avoided large packs of diggers on the journey, conspicuous in his clerical dress among the khaki uniforms. It was the robust soldiers unmarked by the war who made spitting motions with their lips and snorting noises through elevated noses when close to him. Those on deck chairs with frail hands clutching sticks, and faces hardly less white than their abundant bandages, appeared humbly grateful when he sat by them to talk, although there were padres (in uniform like the soliders) who were carrying out counselling duties until the ship docked.

  (These he avoided too.)

  Edwards’s only brother James was lost in the war. He had risen to the rank of captain and died in Egypt. The event brought great stress and grief to the family, particularly the father in charge of the fashionable parish of Kensington.

  Colin had secretly believed he would be pleasing his father greatly by joining the church.

  But it was clearly James who was favoured. He studied law, took a degree then joined the Army at the outbreak of war. He died tipping from his horse, like a child playing war games.

  Colin, struggling with his studies at theological college, returned home to help ease his parents’ grief, or so he believed. When he walked between his father and his mother in the drawing room, his father ran cold eyes over him as if he were a stranger yet to be introduced whom he was sure he wouldn’t like.

  His mother turned her drowned eyes to the window to give him no view of her face, only her little plump hand holding a sodden handkerchief on her knee.

  His father said little about the opportunity of going to Australia. But it surprised Colin to hear how many of his father’s colleagues told him he would do a fine job in a new country where there was a shortage of young men trained for the church.

  Colin allowed his eyes to say briefly there was no less a shortage in England since the war had taken so many, then he lowered them as was expected of him in the company of his superiors.

  His mother wept openly as he was boarding the ship, but he could take little comfort in this manifestation of her love for him (although she may have been weeping for James as well), aware of the stiff shape of his father, intolerant of emotional behaviour.

  He suspected the enlisting would have pleased them both. It might have helped avenge James’s death for his father and he had heard his mother blurt out to a woman relative, who was on a visit to offer sympathy, that she was so proud of James’s legs in their beautiful shiny leggings.

  But I am no good at killing and that is all there is to it, he said to himself, watching the great sheet of sea from the ship’s deck, surprised that he saw no beauty in it, and came close to hating it for its contribution to his loneliness.

  He dreamed of rising to great heights in the church in Australia (a bishop no less – that will show him!) and greeting his parents in his fine house on their visit to Australia.

  The dream was disposed of fairly quickly when he got to Wyndham and found the church let the rain in and the damp crept up, staining the wood at the base of the altar and causing mildew on the strip of carpet by the pulpit.

  ‘I will think of it as God’s rain,’ he said, leaving it to go into the rectory where the rain had also come in to invade the recess that held the kitchen stove, so that the iron claws of the stove appeared like the feet of a stubborn black steer, guarding his territory with head down, determined to remain, whatever depth the water reached.

  Edwards turned some wet wood over, plucking splinters from the short alpaca coat he wore when not in the cassock. It reached to the top of his boots, which he favoured, liking the idea of people knowing immediately who he was, for aside of pride in his status, he was still a little shy at introducing himself.

  A little money had been spent furnishing the rectory with a bed and cedar chest of drawers for the bedroom (other bedrooms were left empty), a couch, two chairs and a table for the living room, and a dresser, safe and chairs and table for the kitchen.

  ‘Quite enough for one,’ Edwards said, humble and grateful when he saw it. ‘Quite comfortable. Thank you.’

  He wandered about the rectory with an air of ownership when he was alone, the councillor with whom he boarded going off in his old brown Studebaker to Bega. The councillor was glad to have the house to himself, as he put it, although this was scarcely so, for his mean wife ran the house and interfered in the butchery business as well, not serving choice cuts at her table, as you would think, but mutton scraps, pork knuckles and bacon that had been oversalted and had to be soaked in water so long it emerged like old thin grey socks and tasted much the same.

  Edwards unpacked his case and put his brush and comb and the circular celluloid box for his clerical collars, a gift from his mother, on top of the chest with a mirror in a wooden stand.

  He interrupted his task to glance through the front and side windows although the view was the same from both. No buildings could be seen from that part of the house, although there was the corner of an apple orchard, indicating life somewhere not too far off.

  Edwards wondered if the apples on the kitchen table had come from that orchard, unaware that every farm in Wyndham had several trees bearing a January fruit, a dullish red on the green skin, hard and tough of flesh, needing an effort with jaws and teeth to draw juice into the throat.

  He did not know as well, but was soon to learn, that the orchard belonged to a Presbyterian family named Tunks, intolerant of other denominations, and unlikely to contribute to largesse delivered to the rectory for Edwards’s arrival.

  He walked about his living room, glad to see through the windows there the Wyndham Post Office, hall and monument and a corner of the Ned Herbert home. But the silence and the creaking floorboards frightened him. He stepped from one to another, the squeaking under his boots like some protesting mouse. Even leaping across three or fo
ur boards it seemed that those he was about to land on set up their squeaking in advance. He sought safety at length on the rug before the fireplace where he stood sweating slightly and clinging to the mantelpiece.

  ‘Well, it’s something I can do, I suppose, when things get too deadly dull around here,’ he said, making his way to the kitchen, aware that his voice was squeaking too.

  A fresh nervousness came over him there, realizing so little of his life had been spent in kitchens. He had gone to boarding school and then to college, spending only a few months assisting his father’s staff before leaving for Australia. He remembered standing in the kitchen doorway at Kensington, looking past a cook and maid working at the table with lowered eyes, waiting for his mother to bring him shoes warmed at the hearth, hurrying in her fluttery way, lest his father come upon them.

  Here was a kitchen he was in charge of, and good heavens, what was he to do with it? He stood by the table, grateful for the sturdier floorboards, setting up no protesting squeak. With the apples on the table was butter in a dish, the dish inside a flat wooden box lined with sand. He felt the butter through the damp muslin covering it and touched the wet sand. Keep sand wet, was written in untidy letters on the side of the box. I hope I do, Edwards thought, nervously prodding at the sand, should it dry up under his eyes.

  His glance took in the other goods, jam and jelly in tall, thin glasses, pickles in a sturdy jar, a teacake wrapped in a serviette and bread smelling so fresh he glanced about him to check that the donor was not lurking somewhere in a corner.

  Also on the table was a little pile of linen, and Edwards laid his hand on the fresh crispness of tablecloths and towels.

  Topping the pile were two hand towels, embroidered near the hem with the words St Jude’s.

  The apostrophe separating the last two letters was so perfectly done, it was as if paint in a rich satiny blue had been dropped from the tip of a brush and fallen in a tear shape.

  Edwards touched it to prove there were stitches.

  Handsome indeed, he said to himself, I wonder who sewed that?

  Una had.

  7

  Edwards decided to punish himself for looking forward too eagerly to the funeral by allowing himself only an occasional glance at Una. He tried to be stern with his face in the mirror when he saw it so lively, and turned away to brush his cassock. When he laid his surplice over his shoulders, the white caused such a flash from the mirror he turned to almost purr in appreciation of his shape and Mrs Watt’s excellent ironing.

  I will give of my very best to the service, he told himself, groping for a humble attitude but overruled by the thought of ‘Abide With Me’ and his voice raised about the others (for Una’s ears).

  His eyes did keep fairly clear of Una up until the graveside service when a wind came up suddenly and flung itself among the ladies gowns. Most pressed black gloves to their thighs but Una used both hands to hold a little hat with upturned brim. A tweed cape, pale blue to match the trimming on her dress, lifted and came over her hat so that she had to shake it back, keeping a grip on her handbag and prayer book.

  Edwards, saying the last prayers, had to keep his eyes on the tipping edge of the coffin, taking earth with it as it grazed the edges of the cavity, and he had to fight an urge to smooth Una’s cape back in place. In spite of the chilly midwinter day, he felt a film of cold sweat at his collar and a moisture on his hands which he hoped Una would not feel through her gloves, for he was looking forward to shaking hands with her, although this was still some time off.

  It being his first funeral, he had not thought of an invitation back to Honeysuckle for refreshments until it came from Enid, and he forgot himself to look hastily Una’s way and see her with her gaze on a bank of distant oak trees and her fingers like scissors holding her cape to her waist, even narrower than Edwards thought at first.

  The older one asks naturally, he thought, noting that even this gave him a small shiver of pleasure. He thought of his mother’s mouth approving and her anxious eyes on his father begging his approval but ready to go neutral if he didn’t. Why am I thinking of Mother now, he wondered, hurrying to his horse and sulky, then having to loiter to allow the Herberts’ Austin to get away to avoid the humiliation of it passing him.

  There was an air of urgency about it, due perhaps to Enid, who sat forward in her seat ready to leap out and fly into the house when the car pulled up. She mentally ticked off the order of jobs to be done, eyeing the dreamy Una and deciding not to rely too heavily on her for help, and grateful she had made extra scones and jellied brawn, in the event of a buggyload of Turbetts, distant cousins who lived six miles the other side of Burragete.

  But only May Turbett and her daughter Jinny came by sulky, Jinny at twenty-two being closest in age of the unattached Turbett females to the newly arrived Reverend Colin Edwards.

  The Turbetts pulled over now to let the Austin have the middle of the road, Alex in his peaked tweed cap raising a free hand. The startled horse tipped the sulky backwards when it jumped with all four feet together, and looked wildly back beyond its blinkers wondering whether to step out and try and keep up with the odd contraption or take to the side of the road and shiver there with head down until the strange and frightening noise died away in the distance.

  Inside the Austin the Herberts were quiet. Alex very privately was grateful to his late sister-in-law for this opportunity of showing the car to a fairly representative gathering of Wyndham people. George, between his sisters in the back seat, felt a sense of inferiority at his inability to drive, and the way Alex was in full possession it seemed unlikely he would have a chance to learn. He sided with his father that a new silo should have priority, but Alex, of whom Jack was a little frightened, got his way, and the car was one of only three or four in Wyndham. He talked so much about it the others wondered what he found to discuss before it came.

  Jack next to him sat with a fold of purple jowl over his collar. The boys wore shirts with soft attached collars, but Jack clung to the stiff ones over which Enid toiled to get the shine he liked. Jack’s eyes were on the road and his hands on both knees, pressing them hard, expecting the car to stop any moment. He tended to lean forward as if urging it to keep going, and Alex leaned back to show his confidence in the motor, and the more Alex leaned back the more Jack leaned forward until Alex shouted in anger.

  ‘Sit back against the seat! That’s what it’s there for!’

  Jack, infrequently receiving a command, obeyed in shock.

  ‘Some people can’t move with the times,’ Alex said, changing gears with no more than one or two quite mild jerks.

  ‘Just look at it! You’d think it had a brain of its own,’ Alex said as the Austin sailed sedately on.

  ‘I wouldn’t mind a go at driving,’ George called out.

  ‘Then sit in the front and watch me!’ Alex said. ‘I don’t make the seating arrangements!’

  Enid as much to protect Jack as for any other reason put her face near his rapidly reddening neck.

  ‘Please remember where we’ve been!’

  They all remembered. Una remembered Edwards in the wind, it tearing his cassock backwards so that his thighs were clearly outlined. Enid was troubled at the memory of Henry climbing in the hearse, a converted Ford with a coat of new black paint. He should not have taken a seat beside Cecil Grant, but should have travelled home with them in the family car. She only saw his back and thought it rebuked them for all their aloofness to his dead wife. Enid moved her shoulders under her moire silk, but this did not shake off the guilt which stuck and rubbed at her skin as if the seams were weighted. Jack’s good Chesterfield overcoat was weighted too, as if the dead girl sat there. He saw her again, wistful of eye when brave enough to meet his, which blinked intolerance and found something else more worthy of his gaze.

  ‘I do not feel it has gone off all that well so far,’ Enid said in the kitchen, stacking extr
a china on a tray to almost race with it to the living room.

  Una raised questioning eyebrows above the scones she was buttering, keeping the rest of her face dreamy.

  ‘For one thing, Henry should have ridden home with us! The chief mourner!’ Enid was back unstacking the big meat dishes which would take the boiled fowls, their greyish white sweating skins to be scattered with parsley she had picked from the garden soon after dawn that morning.

  Una rushed to the stove flinging her apron over her head, pretending she was overcome by smoke, when in fact she was overcome by uncontrolled giggling.

  The chief mourner! Oh, dear me, I’ll explode, she thought. Enid saw the crossed straps of her white apron shaking over her black back.

  ‘I also thought your blue cape was wrong,’ Enid said. ‘Blowing about like it did.’

  Una smoothed her apron down and tipped her chin up, a snap in her brown eyes.

  ‘I’ll pin it to my waist for the next funeral!’ she said.

  ‘Curb your disrespectful tongue!’ Enid said. ‘The Turbetts are here already!’ Their horse, rough bred and rough coated, had outpaced the sleeker animals, and Enid had to show them to the bedroom to wash at the china basin. They slid their eyes from left to right to take in the details of the room, sniffing both in appreciation and disdain at the French soap Enid had set out for the visitors.