by Olga Masters
‘Una’s gone wandering off,’ Enid said. (Surely the bottle was ready now!) ‘She’ll do it once too often and I’ll be speaking to Father!’
‘Perhaps she’s taken the track to the rectory,’ Violet said. ‘Then there’ll be good reason to speak to Father!’ She had her back to Enid, sauntering off to Small Henry, leaving Enid to guess accurately the malicious smirk on her face.
It took a while for Enid to gather her thoughts and when she did she was in front of the hall mirror, angry that her nose had gone red. She pinched and slapped at it and wished for a comb to do her hair. It might not be so noticeable then! She rebelled anew at Una, leaving her with all the afternoon work to do, and no time to wash and change her dress and shoes. You never know who might come!
After a while she went into the living room to set a small table in case Jack wanted his afternoon tea by the fire.
That done, she rearranged some daisies in a brass jardiniere that had arrived too late for the funeral. She didn’t have the kind growing so would save some for seed when they were ready to throw out. A peppery smell was in her nostrils – from the flowers or Smell Henry? He was finished feeding, spread out like a frog on her cushions, the navel of his egg-shaped belly moist and bloody, legs no thicker than pipe stems, feet too long for them. His genitals lay like a mound of used tissue paper and Enid thought they might detach themselves the way Violet was ruthlessly wiping around them as she put him in a dry napkin. Of course she had set him crying again! She was too rough with him, showing off perhaps, how dare she? The small innocent thing, the victim! She felt the beginning of a small ache somewhere around her wrists and elbows, and then dropped her arms to her sides quickly lest Violet see them partly outstretched. Violet bound him in his blanket and flung him over her shoulder to go to the kitchen and gather up anything left there. Enid saw Small Henry’s small squashed face on Violet’s shoulder sailing away from her. She turned back to stroke the creases from her cushions in an automatic way.
A smell rose from them. Of warm flesh and urine and newness, that peppery smell again. And faintly of blood.
And tenderness and terror.
11
George put on his best trousers to take Violet home. Enid kept the smell of Small Henry close to her when she carried the bag with his wet napkins and bottle to hand it to Violet in the sulky. He was lost to her almost at once due to Violet’s bulk. She’s nearly as wide as the sulky seat, Enid said to herself going inside.
The sulky purred along and so did George. The air was rushing past them clear and cold, making Small Henry’s face a deeper purple. Fresh air was good for him according to Violet, who told her mothers to get their babies out in the air for some time every day and not swaddle them too much or have them close enough to the fire to catch alight.
This thought reminded her of Ned. He might not be home though, out of the way in the bush somewhere and she could sit with George over the kitchen table in intimate talk. The news of her hospital was banked up there in her stout chest and George’s red ear was close by, ready for a stream of words.
George was pacing Dolly out swiftly, not such a good idea in one way if he got to Albert Lane and found Ned at home. But he was dreaming of driving the Austin with the side curtains up and Violet beside him, the child somewhere else. He slapped Dolly into top speed, swaying the sulky as the Austin swayed so that Violet needed to put the arm not holding Small Henry along the back of the sulky seat and George’s tingling back came in contact with her fingers.
‘Well, the place hasn’t burned down at least,’ Violet said, although irritated at the difficulty of getting out of the sulky. She couldn’t see the iron step past her skirt and might miss it.
You couldn’t see down at all with this great bulk to hang onto! George leapt out and went around Dolly’s head (keep steady while this is on, you perverse old nag!) to help Violet down. She handed him Small Henry instead and his surprise was so great he nearly dropped him, looking up and down the street fearing someone would pop from a door or window and see him. Was he expected to go into the house and face Ned this way? But Violet, taking her time in hooking her bag onto her arm, hoisted Small Henry onto her own shoulder and George, turning hot then cold, was so confused he overlooked tying Dolly to a fence post, until Dolly took a warning step forward, suggesting he watch out for the consequences if she was a free agent.
Ned was in his corner of the kitchen couch, smoking and staring at the stove fire as if his one mission in life was to keep it going. Violet, having dumped Small Henry in his basket in the bedroom and closed the door, flung up the blind to show on the littered table the newspapers Ned was reading to tatters, a heel of bread he had been eating and a cup tipped over with cold black tea swamping the dish of butter beside it.
She made an angry show of cleaning it up, embarrassed that George, in spite of an association of many years, might make a comparison between her housekeeping and Enid’s, and even irritated by George remaining standing with lowered head.
‘Sit down, George!’ she said. Here was another exasperating man needing directing all the time! George sat and Ned went shuffling to the front room, tucking his papers under his arm, as if they were all that was worth salvaging.
‘Let him burn himself and his wretched papers to a cinder there if he wants to!’ Violet cried, throwing a dipperful of water into a kettle that had puffed itself dry.
She sat at the table overcome with rage, trembling and with both hands before her face.
George longed to but didn’t dare reach out and touch her wrist.
‘George!’ she said suddenly uncovering her face. ‘I’m going to open a hospital!’
George had the strange and foolish thought that she wanted somewhere to admit herself.
Or Ned?
Violet brought both hands down – slap! – upon the table and the heel of bread, overlooked in the clean up, bowled itself over. Question marks hung invisibly in the air between the two. ‘A hospital for midwifery cases, George,’ Violet said.
Where? said George’s round eyes, grey like well water unfit for drinking, but useful in emergencies.
He looked down the back towards the fowl pens and down the hall to the closed front door as if the hospital would suddenly spring up for Violet.
‘I need some help to get it started,’ she said, taking the lid off the teapot for the dipper of water in the kettle was already near the boil.
‘Money?’ said George, and Violet gave him a smile for his cleverness.
George had a bit put away. Alex had some steers of his own and George had pigs and when these were sold the returns boosted any savings from wages. (Jack did not pay too generously.)
The girls received no regular wages, but gifts of money from Jack for clothes and occasional visits to Sydney or to the seaside towns of Pambula and Merimbula.
George thought of the bathing costume Una bought with money for her birthday six months ago. She ordered it secretly from a catalogue, for Jack would not approve anything so brazen, and showed it to him in secret too. It was a lovely thing of dark green wool with bands of orange at the sleeves running right up to the shoulder and around the scooped-out neck. In its box of tissue paper George saw it a tender and sensual thing and would have liked Una to put it on for him, so that he could picture Violet in it. Violet would have strained the wool and her thighs would have come out of the green legs like thickly poured cream. George put her in the costume now, her breasts nearly brushing her teacup filling their green wool nests.
Her face was soft and happy – if it could always be that way! She sipped her tea, cut more cake for George and talked on in low tones like music whispered from piano keys. She would miss out on the two local women nearing the end of their pregnancies and booked into Mrs Black’s at Candelo. Mrs Black was not as good a nurse as Violet, giving more attention to the horses she kept than to her patients, and known to go off and ride in a show,
leaving a woman in labour in the care of her daughter Stella and a drunk doctor.
Here was Violet saying something that made his heart jump. If she had a spare room – ward, I mean! – she would take the occasional broken limb. Or a bad case of boils. George saw himself with one of his heavy winter colds that irritated Enid and Una, and Violet putting him into pyjamas and a bed fragrant with eucalyptus.
‘Nothing infectious, though,’ she said, dashing his hopes and rising briskly in good imitation of the efficient matron.
She attacked the washing-up as if already practising the ultimate in hygiene, finding a clean teatowel for George to wipe up. (At home he left all this to Enid and Una.) The day was closing in, the lemon tree casting a great shadow over one end of the back verandah. George hung his towel on the verandah line and taking a dipperful of corn from a sack in the wash-house, with the air of one who was part of the household, flung it to the fowls, who immediately turned from sad little bundles to a great screeching agitated tablecloth with grain running into a score of crevices.
He came inside to find Ned back by the kitchen stove and Violet standing by a corner of the table. She might have told Ned about the hospital! It was their secret, he didn’t want anyone else sharing it! He took up his hat, trying to read her expression and Ned’s, whose eyes were on the scarlet line around the stove door and whose soft pale hands were holding up a khaki knee. No, she hadn’t said anything for her brown eyes were melting toffee with the dream stuck to them. He spun his hat on his hand which was his way of saying he was leaving.
‘I’ll walk you to the door, George,’ Violet said loudly as was her habit when she wanted Ned to be informed too.
They were passing Small Henry’s door when he gave two or three warning grunts and by the time they reached the front verandah his wailing was rushing under the door and through the skylight above it. Violet’s face tightened and her eyes snapped and her fists were closed and beat on the verandah rail.
‘Listen to that! What would they do at Honeysuckle if that was ringing in their ears all day long? I’m here bearing it all, and I’m not even a Herbert!’
(Neither she was, thank God, neither she was!)
She went ahead of him, flinging the gate open and causing Dolly to swing her head inquiring if Violet was to be carried home as well as George. I’m not in favour of that, said the violet jerks following the swing, and the stamping of a front hoof.
‘Steady on there!’ George cried to Dolly, and he might have used the same words in a more gentle way to Violet.
‘I’m having that hospital, George!’ Violet cried. ‘See if any of them can stop me! I deserve it, George! You know I deserve it!’
George leapt into the sulky and turned Dolly around. He raised the reins and set her pacing off, as if he were leading an army into battle and the prize was a hospital for Violet.
12
At Honeysuckle they were all quiet during tea, so quiet that the scrape of spoons on the last of their soup set up a squeaking chorus that normally would have set Una giggling, but she bore traces of a mutinous expression, brought about by a tirade of angry words from Enid for returning right on teatime.
Enid had no help from her to carve the jellied brawn and whip the potatoes, for she had to send Una off to change her dress and shoes and comb the leaves and twigs from her hair before Jack saw her.
Eating his brawn, George wondered if Violet could make it, dreaming of the familiarity of saying ‘Make some brawn, Violet.’ He imagined helping Violet with the patients’ trays in the kitchen of her hospital. By heavens, he could almost say ‘their hospital’!
He lifted his head to look around the table, pitying the others stolidly eating. Their faces were as dull as their lives!
Jack was heavy jowled because of a discovery at the share farm. Mrs Skinner was expecting again, and an air of neglect had already taken over. He and Alex and George would need to give a hand there or the spring crops would never go in. Henry would have been of some use if he had stayed! He would be in Sydney by morning among those smoking factories and dark little dens, where men and women sat drinking cheap wine and the trams went screeching along with sparks flying from wires overhead. There was more life there than in the people! Every couple of years Jack went to the Sydney Show, sometimes taking Enid and Una. He wanted to return home after two days. But of course the girls trudged about the streets and went into shops buying stuff they didn’t need. Una one night at the hotel dining table talked about staying and sewing for one of the big shops. He soon put a stop to that!
He watched them now, eating in small ladylike mouthfuls the way women should, Una dreamy as usual and Enid with her efficient, no nonsense face, getting up to bring in the pudding, for they had it at teatime, as well as for dinner, as Nellie used to.
That girl dying made him think a lot of Nellie, although the two were in no way alike. (What would Nellie have thought of her!)
A week ago she was at this very table, sitting farther back than everyone else because of that great stomach. He had not even then abandoned the idea of her and Henry and the baby moving into the old cottage, although he knew the girls wanted them right out of the way. As if that would remove the disgrace brought to them.
Now she and Henry were gone there seemed hardly anyone at the table. A foolish thought that!
When the girls had gone to the kitchen Jack brought up the subject of the delicate condition of Mrs Skinner. And that wretched man had seemed pleased to tell him!
Alex appeared unaffected by the news, going off to his room to read. George almost rose from his chair in his excitement. He wanted to get to Violet and tell her! A patient for the hospital! He wanted to be the first to tell Violet, see her eyes shine and her face go soft. It would be terrible if someone else got in first with the news!
He went off in a glow to measure the space in the lumber room where Enid wanted a closet to keep the place tidier. If it was started in the next day or so there would be an excuse to go to Wyndham for nails and screws.
Enid came back to the table to sit with Jack and offer him freshly brewed tea. Una snapped the door shut on herself in the bedroom and Enid looked pointedly at it, so Jack had a fair idea that Una was the subject of discussion.
What was coming now? Jack moved his bulky body in his chair. There had been enough lately. Couldn’t they settle down again, content with their full bellies? His thoughts swung to Mrs Skinner as he saw her on the woodheap rubbing her arms, for she seemed cold huddled there, but she got up when she noticed him and walked with a show of dignity into the house.
Skinner said she was crook all the time now, sounding quite proud of himself. Jack had enough of full bellies with that girl dying and now the child whom he had avoided looking at so far. He didn’t want full bellies on these girls, wondering why he should be thinking this! Never Enid and not Una if they kept a close watch on her. What was this Enid was saying?
‘She needs a little holiday, I think, Father.’
Well, that was a relief. Nothing more than a little holiday! He would give them some money each before the spring, and they could have a week in Sydney or at the seaside.
Violet and Ned would come as they usually did, although it would be awkward now with that baby. He wouldn’t tolerate a repeat of mealtimes like their dinner today. Nellie had always kept small babies out of his way until he was ready for them. He had quite liked walking about the farm with them occasionally, showing them flowers and animals, their fat little rumps jigging with pleasure on his arm.
Nellie would hold his other arm, looking down on her skirt swishing about her ankles, glad her stomach was flat, he knew that!
He thought of the women’s skirts at the funeral, getting higher and higher, showing legs that were once never seen out of bedrooms.
Nellie would sometimes lie on their bed, behind the closed bedroom door, and raise her nightgown above her knees, then he
r white legs and ankles would be raised too. And she would laugh, not unkindly, teasing and joyful, at him, normally painstaking and ponderous, trying to shed his trousers with speed.
He needed to drag himself away from all that, back to Enid saying something with closed eyes lowered onto her teacup.
‘I couldn’t get away of course, now that Violet has the baby to care for, it would be too much for her here with Ned and you and the boys.’
Here was a how-do-you-do! Suggesting Una go away on her own! But Jack’s jowls settled down with her next words.
‘She could go to Merimbula and have a week there with the cousins!’
Percy Herbert, a brother of Jack and Ned, owned and ran a hotel at the coastal town, less frequented by the family for holidays than the closer Pambula.
Percy and his wife Alice had six daughters. Percy got out of farming and into the hotel trade. With all those girls, could you blame him? The eldest was Enid’s age and besides Sadie there was Clara, Sybil, Annie, Bridget and Linda. The hotel was full of holidaying guests in the summer and travelling salesmen and fishermen in the winter.
Percy had land behind the hotel and kept cows and poultry and grew vegetables. He boasted about how well he was doing and what a better choice he had made than to remain tied to farming like Jack and Ned.
His girls, a buxom lot, though not as refined looking as Enid and Una, were kept out of mischief with all the hotel work, and Percy considered them providential.