Loving Daughters

by Olga Masters

  ‘You’ll stay for dinner at least,’ she said, flinging a white damask cloth on the table. Edwards had his hands on a chair back and his head at an angle that had the power to melt Enid’s heart.

  ‘That woman!’ said Una, not attempting to help Enid with the cloth at the corner of the table where she stood, Edwards needing to fight an urge to pull her away. ‘She is allowed to get away with everything!’

  ‘Do sit down,’ Enid murmured to Edwards at the drawer that held the cutlery. He sat and tried, she could see, not to look to Una for directions.

  ‘The furniture came,’ Enid said.

  ‘All the more reason for us to go at once and put it in place,’ Una said.

  ‘I’ve done that,’ Enid said, measuring with her eye the centre of the table for the cruet.

  ‘It still may need to go into place!’ Una said. She picked up her bag from the chair and went coolly into her old room, tossing her head backwards should Enid be watching.

  ‘I am sorry,’ Edwards murmured.

  Enid, laying the table with an air of serenity, thought about how pleased he would be to see how she had arranged the things in the rectory. She had made the bed holding onto a dream that she would share it with him. Lavender inside the pillowslips. For him, for him!

  ‘The Robertsons killed and gave us some beef,’ Enid said. ‘We’re having it for dinner and there is some to take home for your tea.’

  ‘So kind,’ Edwards said, but looked partly distracted towards the bedroom door. ‘She will be happier when she sees Small Henry.’

  Enid stirred the sugar in the silver bowl and snapped the lid shut. A snap in her eyes too before she lowered them. ‘It was hard for you to part with him,’ he said.

  Always he says exactly what you want to hear, Enid thought, marvelling at the miracle.

  ‘Violet had first claim on him,’ she said. She, too, would say what he wanted to hear. He was almost overcome by her saneness and goodness. Oh, perfect love, he said to himself remembering the hymn Mrs Palmer sang at the wedding. I mean, oh perfect woman, of course! He stood, determined to help her bring in the dinner however Jack may disapprove, and Una appeared and ran her eyes over the table.

  ‘Just like old times!’ she said. ‘It all might never have been!’ She went ahead of them and the back door banged. Through the kitchen window they saw her walking in the garden, pulling the heads of roses to her and fingering the petals. In a moment she ran into the garden shed, returning with shears with which she cut the air a few times before slicing at the bushes. Enid winced but turned resolutely to the meat, sweating brown juice through its shiny yellow coat. Edwards was carrying it to the dining table when Jack came in.

  That fellow again! said his undisguised expression. He is here as often as before.

  I won’t explain, said Enid’s expression in return. I’m done with all that. ‘You can carve as soon as you like, Father,’ she said, for Alex and George were there and Una was putting her roses wrapped in wet paper with the luggage by the front door.

  ‘So we won’t go without them. Our first flowers in our first house!’ She went to Edwards’s side and flung an arm around him, rubbing a cheek on his shoulder.

  Enid saw him close his eyes to shut away from them the ecstasy there.

  41

  Una was not critical of the arrangement of furniture at the rectory but hummed a tune happily while she selected a wedding present vase for the roses. Head to one side she put them first on the centre of the table in the living room, then to one end grouped with the marble figurine of the shepherdess she had begged Nellie to buy her once when on a visit to Sydney.

  ‘It’s a suitable sort of ornament, don’t you think, for a church house?’ she said.

  Edwards, helping in his braces, was never happier in his life.

  In a little while he heard her in the room next to theirs moving things around and he went tut-tutting in husbandly fashion at the way women called for help in minor things and attacked major ones with a great display of independence.

  ‘Look how she has put the stuff in here any old how!’ Una said, pushing his old chest of drawers against the wall. Edwards wanted to fly to Enid’s defence. She had done so much and done it so effectively, but he wanted Una’s good mood to continue.

  ‘Take the bottom end of the bed and put your end of the rail in that little slot,’ she said. He did, managing it quite well, marvelling at her knowledge of these things and a little fearful too that she might be contemplating sleeping here apart from him.

  Of course! It was their guest room. How wonderful if Mother could come. Interrupting her as she was flinging sheets on the bed he took her in his arms and rocked her back and forth as she did with Small Henry.

  He did not kiss her, just bowed his head, crushing it into the sweet flesh of her neck, feeling the rush of hair on his forehead. He lifted his face and felt he could shelter it there in her hair forever. But he glimpsed the dent at the edge of her mouth, a barometer of her mood, and reading impatience there went to the other side of the bed to help smooth out the sheets and blankets.

  There was only a hooked rug on the floor and she straightened this with her foot and a frown and he knew she wished it was covered with a linoleum square like those in their bedroom and living room, which she had selected to add to the pieces Jack had agreed to buy for the rectory.

  ‘Draughts will come up through the cracks and lay me low with pneumonia!’ she had said in the Bega store during the purchasing. ‘It will be bad enough suffering boards in that cold old kitchen!’

  Jack with a short curt nod indicated his agreement, but jammed his hat on and went out to wait in the car, the gesture stating there was to be nothing more added, and he would wait only a limited time for them.

  Una now found a white linen runner for the top of the chest and plumed a cushion on a chair by the washstand which held a china jug, basin and chamber pot given as a wedding present by Rachel and secondary to the larger set from Alex, in the more modern commode cabinet in the main bedroom.

  ‘Shall we share a jerry, or have one apiece?’ Una said when, on the week of the wedding, she saw them taken out of their packages at Honeysuckle. ‘I bags the blue daisies if we have one to ourselves!’

  Enid bent her hot face over the wrapping paper she was folding for future use. Una flung herself onto a chair with her legs stretched out before her, her head back and her eyes rolled towards the ceiling. Enid slipped away to put the paper in the lumber room. ‘We must try and believe she never pees,’ Una said. ‘Hard as it is this is what we must believe!’

  Edwards now had the irreverent thought of his mother urinating in the pale green chamber pot then returning it to its little shelter behind a door.

  He was looking its way when Una flung both arms around him from behind. ‘What do you think of it?’ she said dreamily into his neck. He only thought of her as a soft and human burr he would never want plucked from him.

  In a moment she moved to the chest of drawers, opening each one and checking, it appeared, to see that nothing was inside.

  ‘Come!’ she said, reaching one of her long white arms back to him. ‘We’ll go and get him!’

  He followed her through the kitchen that had looked so homely a half hour ago. Not any more. The canisters on the shelf too stiffly new, unmarked by hasty thumbs, the china on the dresser sterile, the stove cold and black as if it would never burn, the paper trimming a little shelf near the window cut into peaks, sharp as knives, the window too clean with too white curtains, the floor scrubbed to a hard grey coldness, resenting his feet. He was glad to leave it, following her straight little back and determined neck but grew afraid again when his horse by the sulky under the tree snorted loudly and shook his head, as if delivering some sort of warning.

  As they came closer to Violet’s house his heart slipped from its rightful place and beat somewhere up near his throa
t and he tried to be stern with himself and despise his weakness, but there was nothing, nothing, to dispel the feeling of doom.

  42

  ‘Alright,’ Violet said grudgingly. ‘But only for a little while. He has a bottle at five o’clock.’ She looked at the clock as if it had some way of confirming this.

  Una wrapped her arms around Small Henry and peered into his face. It was already alerted to something going on for his benefit and involving the doorway, towards which he screwed his head and stuck out a hand.

  ‘He knows so much!’ Una cried. ‘He knows he’s going somewhere!’

  ‘Well, make sure he’s back from somewhere in time for his feed and bed!’ Violet did not see them off but took up the fowl buckets and went off on that errand, glancing into the bush for signs of Ned, her conscience troubled more than usual since he had gathered up extra eggs and the last of his war souvenirs when he found Small Henry back at Albert Lane.

  ‘Oh, stay away, stay away, stay away!’ she cried, able to shout as loud as she liked, the words drowned by the squawking of the fowls. Out of the corner of her eye she allowed herself a glimpse of the shrinking backs of Edwards and Una, with Small Henry’s head like a small round sun between them.

  She went into his room and remade his cot, turning the covers back ready for his body, and returning to the kitchen looked hard at the clock, doubting the slow moving hands.

  Una took Small Henry straight into the room they had set in order and laid him on Edwards’s former bed, loosening his clothing, and to Edwards’s surprise she unpinned Small Henry’s napkin and pinned it on him again.

  ‘Just as well she didn’t have you all wet!’ she said, gathering him up. ‘We’ll show him everything, shall we?’

  Edwards felt she was addressing Small Henry not him. She took Small Henry’s hand and placed it on the foot and head of the bed and on the washstand, letting it run over the jug and wash basin and towel rail which he gripped and pulled at.

  ‘That’s where we hang his towel that wipes his beautiful face!’ she cried. She took him to the window and tickled his face with the tassel of the blind. He laughed so loud Edwards found himself smiling and Una darted to his side and with what arm she could spare wrapped it around him, and Small Henry, not having paid much attention to him up to now, became shy and lowered his lashes to turn them into tiny fans on his cheeks and lowered the corners of his mouth as well.

  Edwards took his foot and shook it. ‘I’ll go and open up the church and air it,’ he said.

  Una took a hand of Small Henry and wagged it at Edwards’s back. ‘Ta-ta Papa! Ta-ta Papa!’ she called.

  There was just the slightest pause in his step, the smallest stiffening of the back of his neck, and Una might not have noticed for she found a peak of hair growing downwards at the back of Small Henry’s neck which she could blow about with her kisses.

  When Edwards returned to the rectory he heard voices raised in the kitchen. Violet was there telling Una it was nearly a quarter past five.

  ‘We haven’t wound and set the new clock yet!’ Una was saying. He came inside to see Una making no signs of passing Small Henry over.

  ‘That’s something he can watch us do!’ she said. ‘Come on, we’ll fix up the clock since Auntie Violet has told us what time it is!’

  She went off to the front room and Violet found a chair as if her frustrations were too much for her. Edwards looked at the stove as if surprised it was not burning since someone else was in the house now beside himself. ‘I should get that going, I suppose,’ he said.

  Violet with a hand on each of her large knees snorted. ‘You’ll be the one to get it going if there’s any hope of you eating tonight!’ she said.

  ‘Enid gave us cold meat for our tea,’ Edwards said, cold too.

  ‘May she keep it up! That’s all I can say!’

  Una’s voice floated in to them explaining the workings of the clock, and in spite of himself Edwards’s mouth and eyes began to smile. Violet stood and shoved her chair under the table.

  ‘If she stays there much longer he’ll be old enough to tell the time himself!’ Then in a louder voice: ‘Come on, come on! Enough is enough! He’ll be looking for this every afternoon!’

  Una sauntered into the kitchen with him, her arms wedged to his gown, her face pressed to his face and her eyes hidden from them. Violet clapped her hands together and held them out but Una swung Small Henry in the opposite direction and went through the back door saying she would carry him. Violet with an angry mouth followed, and Edwards went as far as the woodheap, kicking some chips together, then gathering them up to take to the kitchen.

  Opening the stove door he found that Enid had laid a fire and all he had to do was put a match to it. It leaped to life in a way that he could never achieve and he was sitting watching it when the kettle, which Enid had filled, began to sing and Una came in.

  He sprang up as if she had caught him out, but she kept her face averted and went to their bedroom and closed the door with a finality that made the house seem in two parts. When the kettle boiled he made tea and served himself a plate of meat and pickles and cut a round of bread and ate at the kitchen table.

  ‘Like old times,’ he said aloud, picking up his knife and fork.

  Una appeared before he was finished and he sliced her some meat too, noticing she had not bothered to comb her hair, used her fork only to pick at her food and shook her head at the round of bread he cut her which turned out more ill shaped than his own.

  He would not mention Small Henry, he decided. There was something else to say surely! What would they do tomorrow? He would take the sulky and visit the Robertsons and the Grubbs. He thought with pleasure of her body falling gently against his as they sped along the flat part of the road.

  They would take Small Henry. Yes, that would make her happy. She would have it to look forward to all morning until they set out after dinner. He would show Small Henry to the little Grubb girl. That was something he had always wanted to do.

  He stole a look at Una’s tight little face and wished it could have the innocence and peace of the Grubb child’s. He put out a hand and closed it over the arm that supported her chin.

  ‘We shall go and make a few visits tomorrow, shall we?’ he said.

  ‘A few visits! That would take us practically to Sydney, wouldn’t it?’

  ‘We wouldn’t want to travel too far,’ he said. ‘With Small Henry.’ She moved her arm and allowed her hand to slip into his. When she spoke her voice wobbled just slightly.

  ‘That woman drove her own husband from home with her bossiness!’

  She rose with a sudden show of energy and took their plates and cups to the washing-up dish, shutting the stove door with her foot after putting more wood on and looking through the window at Violet’s house as if she had resumed ties with it. He came to her side and together they watched the smoke rise from the chimney, curl and spread out and in a little while it could not be distinguished from the transparent clouds.

  ‘What did you do in the church?’ she said. She cares, she cares. Thank God she cares!

  ‘Gathered up a few leaves that had blown in, otherwise it was alright,’ he said.

  Una fixed her gaze on the tips of his horse’s ears under the bough of the big gum it had rubbed smooth. ‘The dead flowers removed, the vases polished, and the altar cloths washed and starched?’

  Yes, that’s the way it was. He turned from the window and took up the kettle and poured water in the dish over their tea things, and thought this was foolish of him, she would want to do it perhaps.

  But she sauntered off to the bedroom and when he hung up the tea towel she was passing the window with a spade that he had failed to notice in the shed.

  From the living room window he saw her attack a strip of ground parallel with the front verandah. He saw her bobbing head with its long stream of hair falling over
her face then down her back and the rise of her thigh under the thin stuff of her dress, then the rise of her breasts and he watched for her to tire soon, ashamed at the thought that he would have.

  He saw someone in a buggy on the road slowing it down to watch too, and withdrew from the window, feeling his manhood in jeopardy.

  Sarah Hart, who kept a small herd and a lazy husband six miles the other side of Wyndham, was pleased at the sight. That’s what she had said to Albert, the young one was not as flighty as people said. She could settle down and do everything the older one did. Still on her honeymoon and making a garden. Beat that! He had made the wisest choice after all.

  Sarah whipped up her horse to get home to her delayed chores. He had chosen the prettiest and the best. The cunning bastard.

  Edwards was saying much the same in a letter he was writing to his mother.

  ‘Dear Mother’, he wrote, ‘I have certainly chosen wisely. My little bride of a week, where others might be fiddling with ribbons and laces and such fripperies, is out in the hot Australian afternoon making us a garden. We had a wonderful honeymoon. Bathing and long walks mostly. The guesthouse was very comfortable and the owner quite motherly. We got back today.’

  (He crossed out the date at the top of the letter and made it the seventh day after the wedding.)

  ‘Tomorrow we go to make some visits neglected somewhat in the rush of the wedding and setting up the rectory. You should see the transformation. Everything fits in so well. Most generous wedding presents. Guess what we did as soon as we arrived? Fixed up the second bedroom. I live for the day when you will come.’

  (He spread a hand across the words with his head raised checking that the digging continued.)

  ‘We just had tea, delicious cold meat we brought from Honeysuckle. You will be so happy that I no longer have to find my own meals. I will slip into the church before bed and thank God for his great blessings.’