by Olga Masters
‘Has he been behaving?’ Enid said, uncertain that this was a suitable question.
‘Crying all the time, like most newborn babies!’ Violet said.
Enid felt the beautiful peace of the house.
‘And how is Ned?’ she said, actually seeking information on Ned’s reaction to the intrusion of Small Henry.
‘The same!’ Violet said sharply. They all blamed Ned’s condition on the war, and one day pretty soon she would say right out that Ned hadn’t found old Phoebe’s tree yet, but he was getting terribly close.
‘Just as well I came,’ she said testily to Henry on a chair, smoking with his elbows on his knees and his eyes mostly on the floor. ‘You wouldn’t have seen him before you left!’
He’s not seeing too much of him now, Enid thought drily.
Henry got up and carried his cases to the verandah. Una followed, standing on the verandah stonework while Henry sat on the edge. Many times in the past she had stood and he had sat, in similar poses, waiting for the car to take her back to school. Her black clad legs were long and thin and her clothes had always seemed too big for her, particularly the mushroom hat with a binding of ribbon at the edge, brown like her eyes, slits of rebellion under a forehead of thick hair.
She had followed him about in the holidays, mostly to the racecourse where dead and whitened tree trunks, narrow as a woman’s body, had been made into seats and a stand for judges to watch the races, and a counter to serve beer on, and logs jammed together and bound with leather at either end. The timber was weathered smooth as silk, particularly that making the rough ladder on which they climbed to the judges’ stand, he following, wondering at the mystery between her legs where they disappeared under the hem of an old cotton holiday dress, and when they sat together, she studying the back of his neck, tanned by the sun, except where his fair hair grew in a duck’s tail, pushed about by his collar.
Now at nineteen and twenty-three the gap had widened between them, although her heart was soft towards him, and she might have cried before the car came, had she not kept her teeth together and her chin up. She had joined her hands together behind her and was beating them gently on her rump as she used to do to steady herself waiting for the mail car to school.
When she slid her eyes around cautiously to look at him, she saw his head down and only a piece of fair cheek and a red ear visible above his overcoat collar, giving him an air of innocence as great as when they climbed the racecourse ladder.
They heard the mail car rumbling towards them, and Violet and Enid came onto the verandah.
Una looked for Small Henry, but there was nothing to show of him except the crumpled front of Violet’s grey morrocain dress where he had lain. Only that to show Small Henry had been born! Una looked back to the living room, longing for him to wake and cry for the sound to follow Henry, who was climbing into the car. Something for him to carry away!
But he was gone like the grass seeds she had watched from the racecourse ladder, blown by the wind to rest somewhere. Like a grass seed too, Henry had stopped to give roots to the child, and now he was blown away again.
Jack, Alex and George, working in the corn paddock, watched the car carry Henry off. They were not close enough to each other to speak. There was no reason to pause in their work either, for they could look and listen while they tore the corn from the stalks, now dank and smelling of mould, the long silken tassels turned to dead strings.
Alex compared the sound of the engine to that of the Austin. The mail car was a Ford and both Bob Twyford the driver and Cecil Grant (with his Ford hearse) had tried to persuade Alex to buy a similar make. Well, listen to that engine, growling and straining like a mongrel dog on a leash! The Austin purred like a well-fed kitten.
Dinner would be in an hour and he would look in on it on his way to the house. As a boy Alex had dreamed of finding an old chest and tearing it open, half blinded by the jewels inside. His Austin was like that inside the old dark shed, when his eyes could pick it out after the bright sunlight outside. Bright as a jewel with its deep green paintwork and cream wheel spokes, warm brown polished wood inside, blending with the finest leather. If Henry had stayed he would be hankering for a licence to drive it. He was gone now! Even straining your ears you could barely hear that labouring engine. There was Jack with his back to the road, just slightly slower in stamping the corn stalks into the earth. The old geezer didn’t like Henry going, not that he gave too much away!
Jack put Henry to one side to think of the girl. It was all her fault, dead as she might be! She would have told Henry on the quiet she wanted to go back to Sydney when the baby was born, he going ahead to find a job and somewhere to live, apart from their former squashed existence in her brother’s rented rooms in Surry Hills, which became intolerable and brought them to Honeysuckle for minimal living costs and Violet to deliver the baby for nothing.
Jack had been prepared to restore Henry’s former wage and give them the old house he and Nellie had lived in before Honeysuckle was built a mile away close to the new road.
Jack came upon her once sitting on the narrow little verandah rubbing her feet gently into the earth. He had pulled his horse up, hidden by a thicket of eucalyptus, and watched the girl get up and clear a window of cobwebs to look in. Not much to see but four rooms and a fireplace that would take a stove and had a chimney still in working order. Nellie had made a home of it! He was beginning to think grudgingly that the girl might too, when she moved to the end of the verandah, standing so that her big stomach became a silhouette. Jack wheeled his horse then and cantered away, too angry to care whether she had seen or not. Those stomachs on women offended him! The girl had trapped Henry, there was no doubt of that. He was glad he did not have to look at her that evening at tea, for she had gone to bed with stomach cramps, he overheard Enid say, and Henry went off to play cards at the Hickeys.
George blamed the girl too, but had envied Henry, mostly at night, George’s room being next to theirs. He heard, or imagined he heard, the thud of Henry’s body leaving hers, and the stirring of bed springs as he gathered the bedclothes around him for sleep. A woman with you in bed! Violet next to him! He needed to rub his face into the pillow to rub her away. The girl spoke little in the daytime in the Herberts’ company, and he listened hard at night for her voice, thin and wispy like her hair.
She had a short haircut, one of the few in Wyndham, convincing Jack that here was another reason why she got herself in trouble.
Girls with long hair wouldn’t be free with their favours, Jack thought, with his mind on Enid.
George had to keep in mind Violet’s haircut. But that was different, she was a nurse and it was convenient with her cap.
She had given them a demonstration when she returned from having the cut in Bega. Even Jack did not turn at once from the sight of the starched white cap sitting as easily as an upturned cup on Violet’s thick hair, black as ebony and showing all that lovely white neck.
George tipped a bag of corn into the dray causing it to tip and Dolly in the shafts to shake her harness by way of telling him to steady on.
‘Steady on yourself,’ George said. ‘I might find some other use for your useless legs after this!’
He had just thought of it, but there might be an excuse to go to Wyndham in the sulky after dinner and call on Violet to drink tea with her and eat of the cake she kept for him, a bit rough on the outside, not professional like Enid’s but full of sultanas and peel inside, just to his taste (rather like Violet). There would be no more work on the corn, for Alex was moving steers to the south paddock and Jack was off to the share farm where a family called Skinner with six children were tenants. Jack needed to keep an eye on the place. Skinner was lazy but not so his wife, who had a hard, lean body and unusually long arms and legs. He had seen her with a foot and a hand steer a great bristly boar into a pen, the pig blinking a hateful eye but doing no more than grunting low as
he scrambled over the rails. They were in need of repair, as you would expect, but Skinner was waiting for George to come and do the job.
Here was Jack now pulling his braces over his shoulders, a sign they were leaving for the house. George would go ahead to open up the shed where the corn was stored, feeling his way inside with hanging harness slapping his face and rats and mice scuttling for safety. Alex would look in on the car in the neighbouring shed, opening the back door and scraping at the floor with his fingers to remove any twigs and fragments of earth left there by shoes after the funeral. They were a pretty careless lot!
Alex stayed there until the corn was in the shed and Jack was unharnessing Dolly and George made his way towards the house. The fire in the living room was burning well judging by the smoke from the chimney. George knew there was curry for dinner made from the meats left over from the funeral meal. He felt the hollowing out of his stomach to take it and the taste buds in his mouth at the ready. He hoped no one had called right on dinner time, as sometimes happened. Enid thinned the helpings out if she had not cooked more than enough and it was his plate that was lighter than Jack’s or Alex’s. What was this? There was someone there, a shape with Enid and Una in the garden looking down at the flower beds. But it was Violet! He had thought with that baby to care for he would hardly see her now. But there she was! Violet! Staying for dinner! He clicked the back gate open louder than was necessary and she was the first to turn her face. It softened too and the mouth stretched at the corners, digging into her creamy cheek. She was pleased to see him, though the others weren’t, pulling faces at the thought of having to go inside and dish up the dinner. Violet could have most of his!
10
But George was not happy through dinner, although he got a good helping of curry and the pudding was trifle, using up some of the cake left over from the funeral.
The baby squirmed and whimpered throughout the meal and Violet had her body screwed towards it a lot of the time. Enid suggested putting it in a bedroom, in the washing basket with pillows (already the good cushions were getting creased with all the writhing). But Violet set a stubborn mouth. Let them see what she had to put up with and what could be their lot if she decided to pass him back to them. Back to their ordered ways as if nothing had happened! Look at the sparkling clean house and hers littered with napkins and nightdresses and basins for sterilizing bottles, as well as Ned’s mess. (But she was a poor housekeeper at any time.) Wait till she got the hospital though! They would see then the real meaning of cleanliness and order.
‘Why don’t you feed him?’ Enid said, coming in with freshly made tea when Una had taken the pudding plates away, and Small Henry was squealing in an alarming way.
‘It’s crying with flatulence,’ Violet said, for she tended to use medical terms when she had an audience. ‘Feeding it would make it worse.’ She looked at the grandfather clock in the corner and Una’s alarmed eyes rivetted on it too if willing the hands to move faster. ‘It’s a good half-hour to its feed time.’
Another half-hour! The news hit them with such force, Jack and Alex rose from the table simultaneously, and George would have got up too if Violet had not stayed where she was, her tea tucked between her elbows supporting her chin. She was not bothering to look back on the child now but allowing it to bellow on, fighting its way out of the constricting blanket. Una was afraid Small Henry would smother and her frightened eyes ran from what was visible of his purple face and neck to Violet’s unconcerned profile.
‘You’re finished, George!’ Una said as if she had to order someone to do something. George pushed his chair back, although he felt he had eaten nothing. He had seen many kittens and puppies newly born, but they mostly lay sleeping, squirming gently when awake, murmuring with a thin sound as if grateful to be alive.
This was something different, this shouting at the world as if it was not to Small Henry’s liking, and someone had better set about effecting a remedy or he would squeal himself to death.
Violet got up suddenly and lifted him from the cushions. He stopped crying, and Enid lifted a relieved face from the cups she was stacking and Una brought her hands together in a clap under her chin and left them there in a praying pose.
‘Nothing in the world wrong with him,’ Violet said, binding him in his blanket from the neck down and moving to lay him down again.
‘Don’t!’ Una cried. ‘Let me have a go!’
‘A go at what?’ said Violet, poised with Small Henry in the air, his face dropped sideways and his eyes closed.
‘Well, he might cry again!’ Una said.
‘A fat lot you could do if he did,’ Violet said, taking a spare blanket from her bag and tucking it over Small Henry and under the cushions, as if there was a danger of his escaping.
‘Well,’ Una said, looking at the clock, ‘it’s so close to his feed time shouldn’t we keep him awake?’ (Five minutes had gone by.)
‘I’ll mighty soon wake him when it’s feed time!’ Violet said, returning to the table and pouring herself more tea.
Small Henry snorted and squeaked and was silent a couple of times, fooled into thinking the edge of the blanket was a bottle teat. Jack and Alex left for their rooms, like soldiers sneaking away before the firing started up again. Enid noiselessly tidied the music inside the piano stool and Una sat where she could get a full view of the clockface.
George by the fireplace marvelled at the changes in the room. The tablecloth was askew with Violet turning so often to look at Small Henry, the blind was down nearly to the window sill above his head when it was usually thrown high to let in what winter sun was about and the sight of a passing rider on horseback, buggy or car. There was only a small glow from the fire. He should put more wood on, but lifting his head he saw as much as felt the quiet. Small Henry had fallen asleep again. He dare not make a noise with the dropping of a log, and putting out a foot gingerly put some ends together, sweating gently and catching a heavy frown from Una.
Blast Henry to bring them to this! Look what he left behind this time! Usually it was a big bill for tobacco at Grant’s store, and heaven knows there was plenty said about that for weeks afterwards.
Even Violet was still thoughtfully marking the tablecloth with the handle of her teaspoon. Enid was now pulling the cloth from under the cruet and the few odd things left on the table without even a tinkle of silver and Una moved up silently to help. Violet took the cue and raised her cup from her saucer so there wasn’t even the tiniest grind of china.
He couldn’t stay here, his joints would creak, his stomach would rumble, he would be responsible for a noise that would waken that small ruling king with his purple face faded now to the beauty of a pale mauve plover’s egg. He had seen one in a nest once and stared barely believing the life inside it. Small Henry was a living thing, no doubt about that.
George would get outside, escape this oppressive atmosphere, it was a woman’s world, in spite of Small Henry, no place for him just now! He took large jerking steps to the front door, but Violet turned on her chair when he cupped the knob in his hands only inches from Small Henry’s head. She frowned on his hands so he dropped them and resumed his giant jerking footsteps, walking with heels raised, fearful of a squeak from the linoleum, to the door leading to the hall past the bedrooms – left open by Jack and Alex thank heavens! – and outside into the back yard.
There the cold hit him and he shivered against a verandah post while the wind laid flat the short pale grass around Enid’s roses, for she had a new planting in beds adjacent to the back verandah in addition to those in the big side garden, and would, he sometimes felt, extend it all to the dairy half a mile away if given a chance.
He took a spade from the garden shed to warm himself with some digging of the vegetable patch. Looking up he saw through the window Una in the kitchen mincing about mocking him with his tweed cap on, imitating his gait.
George put his head down and ru
bbed the dirt from a carrot he had sliced through.
‘Eat it up, George,’ Una called. ‘Never mind the dirt since you must be starving!’
Enid came past her and put her head out the window. ‘You can drive Violet home if you like, George!’
Well that was more like it! He swung wildly into the digging, hiding his joyful face from them, not allowing them to see his great wide grin, although it almost set his ears twitching and sent sparks of delight from the back of his neck.
Una threw George’s cap to land expertly on a peg in the hall, then sauntered to the other window to beat her knuckles on the edge of the table below and stare onto the garden, or more likely the empty road. Enid, not sure why, wanted to cut across her thoughts, whatever they were.
‘You can bring in some of the clothes,’ she said. ‘The sheets were quite dry when I felt them earlier.’
The washing was not done on Monday as usual, but a day late because of the funeral. It threw the week’s routine out and Enid would not feel totally comfortable until things were right back to normal. Una slipped into the hall and taking an old coat from a peg shrugged herself into it. She was moving fast for a change.
‘Take the basket and don’t dump the things on the ground now,’ Enid said, hoping the words would cause Una to turn her face and Enid to read her expression. A baffling girl! Una went without the basket and Enid opened the back door to call her, but she was walking swiftly under the clothesline and through the sliprails of the house paddock, up the short rise towards the dairy and soon would be out of sight.
The wretched girl! thought Enid, angry enough to forget the sleeping Small Henry and make quite a clatter with the washing-up. She poured water on crockery almost without sound, though, when Violet slipped into the room, soundlessly, as large women often move, to set about mixing Small Henry’s bottle.
Una will miss seeing him fed, that’s good! I’m glad! Enid decided she would leave the things to soak and find something to do in the living room if Violet fed him there. Violet was swirling milk inside the bottle now and Enid noted the bluish tinge, not full strength. How did she know these things, she wondered, feeling inadequate, a new experience for Enid. How did people know what to do with small babies? Given Violet was a nurse, she had never raised a child of her own, and here she was, eyes on the kitchen clock and the too-hot bottle on her morrocain knee cooling to the right temperature – what would that be? – for Small Henry’s mouth.