by Olga Masters
‘This is absurd,’ she said. ‘Knocking on your own front door!’ A flash of her eyes accused him.
Enid opened the door. From behind her came the smell of roasting meat and another thinner smell, fragrant and sweet like vanilla. Whatever happened he must not fall down in a faint.
‘Small Henry!’ Una cried. ‘Where is he?’
Enid moved to let her past and she flew around the dining table looking for him on the floor then on to the kitchen where, judging by her cry, she found him.
‘Is he alright?’ Edwards said, sinking down onto the couch, thinking heaven might be like this. Enid sat there too.
‘A tooth,’ she said, and put a finger in the centre of her own bottom set.
‘You walked all that way,’ she murmured in disbelief. He felt a sense of guilt that he hadn’t walked to see her. Una came in with Small Henry, her arms bound about him as if cemented there. He looked at Enid’s arms lying with the inner part turned upwards on her lap and her fingers curled loosely as he had often seen them. Disturbed at their emptiness he stood and looked at Small Henry, Una craning her neck to see his face too.
Small Henry decided he would not cooperate immediately. They had been gone a long time to him and should not be forgiven at once. He stared down at a foot caught in the folds of Una’s skirt. Edwards stared too and put out a hand and grabbed the foot. Small Henry with the start of a smile pressed it hard against Una and Edwards pulled at it, tickling it gently. Small Henry laughed as he pulled it away. Edwards grabbed it boldly and Small Henry equally bold thudded it back into Una’s stomach. He opened his mouth wide to laugh again and Una saw the tooth. She put a finger in and felt it and sought a chair to recover from the shock and the joy.
‘A tooth! His first tooth! He has a tooth. He’s grown a tooth for us!’ she cried, swinging him back and forth with her face in his neck. When Edwards saw it the cheeks were flushed a deep pink and the eyes full of tears. Enid began to set the table and Edwards watched to take pleasure in her calmness. Una raced towards her old bedroom crying out that she and Small Henry would take a little rest. Although Enid did not lift her eyes from folding two extra serviettes, Una balked at the step, then ran on and they heard the springs of the bed in Henry’s old room leap to take the two bodies, Una’s triumphant shout and Small Henry’s chuckle.
After doing a few more things to the table Enid slipped to the kitchen returning with a tumbler of water for him, which he drank with his face turned from the direction of the room where Una and Small Henry were.
‘Come with me into the kitchen,’ she said, ‘while I finish off dinner.’
‘Perhaps I could do something to help,’ he said, remembering.
Jack came in and found him on one of the kitchen chairs in the pose remembered from earlier days, his hands crossed on his knees. Jack’s jowls shook and his black eyes snapped. He had thought the fellow was removed from the Honeysuckle kitchen forever! He looked to Enid to explain. ‘They have come to see how Small Henry is,’ she said. Jack had seen her face, as if there was a light under the skin and behind her eyes and darting about the corners of her mouth. He saw it that way when she began counting plates, then a frowning concentration take over as if the number wasn’t coming out right. He put his hand on a chair back. Perhaps he should wait here in the kitchen until dinner time.
Enid’s heart asked him to go. Give me five minutes with him. Can you spare me that? There, two will do. He’s here in my kitchen and I can’t believe it yet. Stay and I’ll never believe it. Go somewhere please. He may say nothing to me, or I to him. But you speak to me without words, don’t you? So it’s a language I understand. Let us have this silent conversation, this fragment, the last we may ever have. Go away, please. That’s all I ask in return for all you have taken from me.
She went to the pantry, returning with a jug of liquid, and slicing a lemon swiftly slipped the pieces in and Edwards watched them sink to the bottom like a pale swimmer then rise and bob about in a lazy float.
‘Come somewhere cool,’ she said, leading the way out. ‘And have this to drink before dinner. Both of you.’
Alex drove Edwards and Una back to Pambula to resume their honeymoon. Una sat as she had on the first trip in a corner of the back seat and kept her face to the scenery passing the curtained window. Alex was not pleased about the errand. There was a tennis game at Towamba and he had intended going. There were people there who had not seen the car. There were girls who worked during the week in Eden, home to the farms for the weekend. Pretty, soft young things to tease between sets, and sit with for tea and buttered teacake, admiring the length of leg stretched on the grass, and the shortness of skirts, not folded piously at ankles, but spread out like the petals of a flower creeping higher as they moved, sometimes as if in energy and exuberance bodies wanted to leap altogether from the confines of their covering. The back of Alex’s neck told Edwards that was where he wanted to be. Edwards turning for comfort to Una saw her neck saying she wanted to be back at Honeysuckle, holding Small Henry.
Well, blow them both, thought Edwards, letting the wind dig a deep path in his hair and send his coat collar flapping. He did not know how to draw the blind at the window and Alex was not going to offer any help. He remembered taking Una’s hand to comfort her on the trip yesterday. Now he had no desire to. This must be how married people change, Edwards thought. It comes earlier than I expected, I must say. He took in great gulps of air for the wind was stronger as they approached the coast. He started to feel pleased to be free soon of the obligation to Alex, then had to change the feeling back to gloom at the thought of coping with Una’s mood. The Austin stopped at the guesthouse gate to let them both out, Alex giving a curt nod as he swung the car around in a swirl of gravel as if performing on a race track. Edwards saw him go with envy. He looked with such certainty a single man. Una in her usual way went rapidly ahead, and he had to hurry so as not to be dragging behind in view of Mrs Chance, who was doing something at an upper window.
Una flung herself on the bed and Edwards took the chair and it occurred to him that this appeared to be the pattern of behaviour for them when they entered their bedroom. Una pulled half of the pillow across her face, as if closing her eyes was not enough. Edwards took his bathing costume from his drawer.
‘There is time for a bathe before tea,’ he said. ‘Will you come?’
The pillow waggled.
‘Very well,’ he said in a voice as chilly as he expected to find the water. Awkwardly he draped the costume across his arm and went out passing Mrs Chance fiddling at the hallstand.
‘A warm day for your walk,’ she said.
Not as warm as your curiosity though! Not as bubbling hot as that! Not as seething and boiling as your speculation! And false it all is!
He took the track to the sea that other honeymooners and holiday-makers had cut through the earth. Were some of the feet heavy and sad as his? Yes, they would be, he told himself. The pathway through life wasn’t easy, as he frequently told others, but with faith the dark clouds rolled back and showed the sun.
I had better heed my own advice, he said to his thudding feet, now on the descent to the beach, the track cut so deeply the sides almost reached his knees. By jove, some of those feet must have been heavy indeed! Well, he thought, springing onto a rock, I’ll make mine light for a start! He took off his boots then sheltered by a large rock removed his trousers and pulled on his costume.
It reminded him of undressing with Una in the room.
I seem to be destined to keep this thing under cover, he said to himself, stuffing its slackness inside the black wool, then peeling off his top clothing. What has marriage brought me so far? To dress and undress in secret, to find a rock or a bed bottom to hide behind! To take a shameful view of this thing he imagined would get working at last, loosening the creeping sting at his groin, opening the flood gates, rushing as the wave rushed now and filled his toenai
ls with foam. Flesh on flesh, lightly moist, a tickling of hair, a cushion of a breast, a nipple to gently bite, a knee to lift and stroke a hip, jutting gently as a rock jutted here, submissive as a wave flowed over it.
Edwards bound his arms around his hunched knees and bowed his face on them, letting the sea sing in his ears. A seagull squawked, flying low over his head, and he lifted his face and cried out, shut up, shut up! Shut out that body in the crumpled dress on the bed, the flinging arms, seeking a body, but not his!
He stood and jumped to meet the next wave, letting it swirl about him, his feet sinking into the sand when it receded, holding on to the wetness. He walked farther in and a strand of seaweed floated by his thigh. He flung it off. Limp like the other!
He looked at it wobbling like a stranded jellyfish under the black wool. He saw the fold of cloth, like a fold on nothing.
Oh damn and hell, he called to the swooping gull, swooping himself into the deep. He put his head into a wave, then turned and laid a cheek on it. He rolled over floating because he could not swim and shut his eyes against the stinging sun. The waves were small and gentle and he thought of the peace of Enid’s arms, and when he was lifted light as the lemon that floated in her jug of drink, he thought of her breasts rising and falling. I am lying on her sweet, cool, soft body. Feel her rock me.
He opened his eyes to a line of pines on a ridge beyond the guesthouse, straight, stiff trees, not moving, trapping the wind inside them, remaining with heads proud and cold. That is she, the other one. Unconsciously he used Jack’s term.
Enid the sea bobbed him about and after drifting a little he put a foot to the bottom, to find by stretching, a scratch of sand at his toes. She is not drowning me. She is the one, the one! He made for the shore, fighting the drag of water. ‘Don’t worry, little one! I’ll be back to you!’ he cried out, running to his clothes.
His remembered he had no towel. She would have made sure he brought a towel!
He dabbed with the outside of his coat his wet chest, and peeled the costume from his body, pulling his trousers on, drying his crotch with his hands, slapping affectionately at it. Wait, wait! We can wait!
He tore up the hill, his big boots wanting to pull him back on the slippery grass, and the wind flying about him, drying his hair. A crow in a large and solitary gum took flight crying aah, aaah, aah and he answered, null and void. Aaah, aah, aah, null and void!
I will sit quietly on my chair and tell her. She can bind her skirt about her ankles and I’ll be glad. Yesterday never was. Null and void, null and void!
He tapped on the door and when there was no answer opened it. She was standing by the window holding a hat, a creamy coloured hat trimmed with bunches of red cherries. She held it above her, ready to drop it on her head.
Her lips were smiling, red as the cherries. ‘You’ve never seen this hat on me, have you?’ she said.
When it was on she had to lift her chin to see him from under the brim. She put a leg forward and laughed and laid a hand on one hip, as if ready to be photographed. His eyes clung to her face for a moment, then slipped down to her feet.
They were naked as was all the rest of her.
40
Una was tired of the honeymoon by the middle of the week. She suggested taking the mail car home on Thursday, two days before the stay was to end. Edwards had paid for a full week at the guesthouse. He tried not to allow his expression to show a parsimonious streak but Una saw and gave her deep frown which was never far from her face since she began easing out of her exuberant state about Tuesday.
She was putting her hats one inside the other in the round hat case, and he saw with sorrow that she treated the one with cherries as if it were like the others. She is really going then, he thought. I must learn to accept the shortness of bliss, if that is the word for it.
He stood up from the chair and wished he hadn’t, for he was developing the habit of adapting to her whims too readily. So he sat again and in reply to her raised eyebrows said he did not have much to pack.
‘No,’ she said, and he felt she was acknowledging his indigent state.
‘But I think I shall take a bathe in the short time we have left,’ he said. He did not ask her to accompany him.
He ran down the track to the place where he had bathed before. The waves he saw were brushing the sand tenderly and were unhurried in their wash backwards.
A different time, a different tide, a different mood. He pulled off his trousers, more efficient now, having put his costume on underneath his trousers and going without his boots.
The water lapped about him sadly as he floated. He could not find a wave rising and quivering like a breast. The water seemed heavy, sluggish. It had no arms to hold him. It was grey too, for the sun had gone behind a cloud and there were long shadows on the sand, streaking it with grey as well.
He left the water, but not wanting to return to Una too quickly sat on a rock to dry off a little, as he had forgotten a towel again.
I never got to do the thing properly, he thought, remembering Una getting her things together long before they set out, not forgetting cream for her nose, her bathing cap, and a comb all in a little bag she had obviously made for this very purpose.
Women are different, he said to the rim of the sea for he did not want to look at the part he had just left. I’m finding that out, but I’ve much more to learn. Much, much more.
He stood to pull his trousers on, keeping his back to the sea. Coward, coward, he told himself. Look back and say goodbye. No, don’t. She is too cold and still, too sad. The water a billion tears. He began to scramble up the grass, not taking the track, pulling at tufts with his hands, his body sometimes only inches from the earth.
Crawling like an ant, he thought. An ant, no more than an ant.
A crow cried and he looked for it. Not in the gum where it was before. Aaah, aaah, it called again.
Edwards stood and watched the pines, but no branch bent, nothing black showed in the inky green.
Aah, aaah, came the sound again, and it was there deep in the tree.
I know you’re there, cried his heart.
Aaah, aah, it said again. I’m coming, I’m coming.
He ran to beat the call should it come again, and only when he let himself inside the gate did he walk with dignity to the front door.
Una pointed out that it would be best to leave the mail car at Honeysuckle in case the furniture Jack gave them for a wedding present was not yet delivered to the rectory. ‘Besides we will need milk and things for the larder.’
How clever she is, he thought, sneaking a grip of her hand under the staring eyes of a pallid child on its mother’s knee, suffering travel sickness and filling the car with the fumes from its turbulent stomach.
But Small Henry was not at Honeysuckle. With the discharge of Mrs Skinner and the Gough girl, Albert Lane creaked with emptiness. Ned disappeared after being underfoot the ten days. Violet, after loud and frequently repeated threats that she would have a few days to herself when her patients were discharged, found the quiet unbearable.
The melancholy air the rectory wore depressed her too. She put on her mauve flowered voile and set off for Honeysuckle. It was a warm day but she walked happily, her best black shoes gathering a film of fine dust. Her excitement at two patients at the one time so soon after the hospital opened had not yet worn off, and she smiled up at the sky and the tops of the trees as if they were friends congratulating her. Another booking had been made for April, but you never know, someone could turn up before then the way the Gough girl did, two or three perhaps.
She was the best nurse on the coast and her reputation could only be enhanced with the opening of Albert Lane.
The Gough girl had paid too, and the Skinner woman would have to since Jack controlled the cream cheque, and could, if the need arose, deduct the hospital bill from the Skinners’ share and pass it to Vi
olet.
If Una conceived straight away there would be that to look forward to. Yes, I reckon he would know what it’s all about for all that lowering of the eyes and brushing at himself. She wouldn’t be backward either at flashing around the bedroom with her drawers off! A pair of leg cockers, both of them, if you asked Violet!
Things were not turning out too badly, after all (she would put Ned to one side for the moment) and she would have Small Henry back. Making his strange noises as he watched the birds hop down on the back verandah. Turning his blue eyes up at her when she came near him. Smiling with his eyes, like Ned when he had both of his.
She quickened her steps, getting a little closer to him. She hadn’t seen him since the wedding. And he had a tooth. George had called to tell her when he was at the store on Monday.
And the Reverend and Una had walked from Pambula to see how he was!
Devotion like that was useful. She could pass him over to them when she had more than enough work at the hospital. Honeysuckle was too far away and Enid showing signs (from George’s conversation) of getting overfond of him. He was safer at the rectory if he had to be anywhere but Albert Lane.
Una discovered he wasn’t at Honeysuckle when she alighted from the mail car as Alex was collecting packages from the driver. She looked up angrily at the house as if it had betrayed her. Enid, coming from the kitchen untying her apron on her way to the bedroom, came upon her in the living room biting her lips and looking about her as if she suspected he was really there. But when Edwards was about to come through the door with the luggage she told him she would ask Alex to take them to the rectory almost straight away.
‘We won’t be staying,’ she said to Enid, who had not so far seen into Edwards’s face but was nonetheless trying to fix the image of it to her mind. She was quite pleased with her own face, seeing it in the mirror of the dressing table. Her eyes had gone bright and her nose wasn’t red. I believe I’m inclined towards that red nose when Una’s around all the time, she told herself, giving it a stern and silent warning to behave itself. She pinched and stroked it, pleased to see it return to a good natural colour, and putting it in the air she smoothed her muslin blouse down and tightened the belt of her grey linen skirt, thankfully not one Una had made.