by Olga Masters
Tears came to Edwards’s eyes when he wrote this and he put down his pen and hurried out.
When he returned it was almost dark and she was sitting on the couch with her eyes swallowed by the shadows.
‘In that letter you wrote to your mother you did not mention Small Henry once. Not once did you say his name. Do you hate him?’
43
He tried his best to persuade Violet to allow them to have Small Henry for the afternoon, but Violet insisted the sun was too hot for him in the exposed sulky. He went back to the rectory to tell this to a mutinous Una.
‘We could try her again when it is cooler,’ Edwards said.
‘Then it will be his bedtime according to her! Did you suggest she go off and find Ned, which is what she should be doing!
‘Those are the kind of things you should be doing I would think!’ She slapped the new cushions she had made while they were engaged, tossing them back on the couch where they arranged themselves, Edwards saw, with the stencilled emus looking guardedly at each other.
‘Well, what do you say?’ she said when he did not speak. He went and straightened the pad and ink where his letter was still exposed. He should finish writing it. But it seemed, since she had read it, not to be his any more.
He folded the pages back and on the first blank one wrote the date of Sunday when he would give his next sermon. She saw with eyes like pieces of brown glass slanted suddenly towards the sun.
‘What shall it be?’ she said. Her amiable voice did not deceive him. He thought of eating a soft, sweet fruit, foolishly biting at the seed and filling his mouth with a bitter acid taste.
‘I could make some suggestions,’ she said.
‘Yes, I believe you could,’ he said. He stared at the white paper and felt his inside had the same emptiness. She slipped behind his chair and imprisoned his neck with her arms. He wanted to bite through the cotton of her dress and taste the flesh. She put her mouth on his forehead and flung her hair forward to cover his face.
‘Love Small Henry,’ she said. ‘That’s all I ask.’
He stood and held her, kissing her through her hair, holding it so that it remained a shield for her face. It shielded his face also. In a little while she broke away and rearranged her hair swiftly with her fingers.
‘Finish your letter,’ she said. ‘It’s quite a nice letter.’ He sat again and turned the pages back to read his last sentence.
‘This is a shorter letter than usual,’ he wrote, ‘but you will understand. Much love from us both.’
He saw where the corner of the table dented her skirt and he noticed it pushing at her crotch as she slid gently back and forth.
‘PS,’ he wrote, ‘Small Henry is growing nicely and has a tooth.’
She straightened her clothes and caught up her little bag on a chair back. ‘We’ll go for a little walk and post it, shall we?’ she said. ‘I’ll go and put my hat on.’
She returned in her hat with the cherries and he as a token of respect brushed his alpaca jacket down with his fingers. He worried about the letter. It was very short for the cost of sending it, but to leave it and write a longer one would mean wasting the envelope. These things did not appear to bother her, he thought with envy. He expected that sometime in the future it would have to be a subject for discussion.
In the Post Office Rachel looked them over to try and gauge from their bodies the activity of them in the privacy of their room. Dear me, Edwards thought, perhaps we should tell them right off.
They crossed the road on the way home to come directly to Violet’s gate. The ruffle at the neck of Una’s dress, the brim of her hat narrow at the back, her bunch of hair all said she was trying. He caught her waist, not caring that Rachel was watching them from the Post Office window. ‘We can call in if you like,’ he said.
She shook her head so violently the cherries wobbled. ‘No!’ she said, throwing the words behind her. ‘Five minutes with him is no use to me!’
What is it you want then? he said silently to her angry shoulder. Don’t answer me? Don’t tell me! Don’t say it!
Inside he sat at the table and pulled the writing pad to him. After a while he raised his eyes to her hat. ‘Please take it off,’ he said. ‘It disturbs me.’ She was on the couch with her arms arranged as if she were in a drawing room full of guests.
Around them the house creaked in the stillness. The wind blew the curtain at the window so that for a moment there was a patch of bare road visible. She seemed, sitting there in her limp state, not to belong and he looked for some sign that she did, hastily past the vase of roses lest they bring Enid too forcibly into the room, to the outside where the spade lay slanted across the dug ground. It would be wonderful, he thought, if she would go out and take it up again and set up some sort of rhythm, as winding up a clock or lighting a fire brings a house to life. He looked about for something he might do, and would have liked to lay their new tapestry cloth on the dining table as was the practice at Honeysuckle between meals.
But he was not certain of the right side and it was sure to go on unevenly. He remembered the horror he experienced once when, turning back to the altar after the congregation had left the church, he saw the altar cloth barely touching one edge and hanging so generously on the other the hem scraped the floor. He righted it but imagined with a hot face the people tittering as they climbed into their buggies and Una looking for somewhere to collapse and laugh herself out.
He looked now at her face, so little of it showing below the brim of her hat, yet all that hunger and rebellion in the curve of her chin and mouth.
Would she never laugh again? Was it he who had wiped the joy from her face, like jerking a blind down on a sunny window?
He leaned across her and raised the blind for the day was fading. It emphasized the hollowness of the room and the blank walls, and at that moment a fading rose sent a scatter of petals to the table like a shower of tears. In one corner there was a little stack of her paintings.
‘Let’s hang those,’ he said, hoping she would have nails and things or knew their whereabouts.
It seemed minutes before the words registered. He saw the cherries duck then rise. ‘That is what I planned to do,’ she said, terribly mournful.
He waited. ‘Paint him,’ she said.
‘Well you still can!’
She stood and lifted the hat from her head. He looked her down, foolishly believing she might be naked.
‘Will you help me get him to paint him?’ she said.
‘Of course I will!’
She put both arms around him. ‘You are beautiful, kind and good,’ she said.
He gripped her shoulders quite hard to still the rocking motion she had set up.
The brim of her hat sawed gently at his forehead.
It isn’t me she’s holding, he thought, wondering if the chill of his body reached the flesh of her hands.
He released himself as politely as he could.
44
Violet refused outright to allow it.
‘I’ve got him into a good routine now,’ she said to them both in her kitchen next day.
Her chair partly blocked off Small Henry’s doorway, enabling her to guard it and keep an eye on the bush through the back door.
At the end of the table there was a mound of bread which gave off an appetizing, if slightly sour smell. It seemed to be waiting also for Ned.
Edwards began to think of their bread. They had brought some from Honeysuckle, but it would run out soon. Would she set a bread-making pattern, baking on certain days as other Wyndham women appeared to? He saw her hands lightly holding her elbows. He could not visualize them buried in flour, and to his own surprise he did not care for the thought.
‘When he’s older, perhaps,’ Violet said.
Una lifted her chin with one of her small elegant snorts. Her long fingers tapped i
n agitated fashion her upper arms. She stood with a sweep of her hands on her skirt.
‘I do like your hat,’ Violet said.
‘It’s quite my favourite too,’ Edwards said, fixing his eyes on the cherries.
Una went quite fast through the back door and Edwards, though he was unhappy about it, had only time to make a large nod in Violet’s direction and follow.
‘Come, walk a little slower and enjoy the scenery,’ he said. At that moment his horse, tossing his mane to wave off flies, parted his back legs, raised his tail and from the dark wrinkled lips of his anus there flopped a pile of green dung moulding itself into a steaming heap on the ground.
Una stood like a tourist giving the scene rapt attention. Edwards looking for distraction saw their lavatory. Those wretched things! They seemed always to bend a little to one side like someone with a physical handicap of which they were ashamed. He would need to empty the can inside more frequently now. There is no end to my woes, he said to himself, seeing her little bottom quivering under her skirt in her hurry to keep ahead of him.
She went straight to their bedroom when they reached the rectory, and he to the church to say evening prayers.
He had dreamed of her kneeling in one of the pews, he at the altar exquisitely distracted, the moment coming closer all the time when he would turn and find her. He had to fight a feeling now that God had let him down as he knelt on the thin strip of carpet and averted his eyes from the abandoned birds’ nests where the roof did not quite meet the wall.
When he stood and dusted off his knees she was there. She had made no sound coming in. Her face was bowed to such an angle he saw all the cherries on her hat at once. Her eyes were shut so he could allow the joy to wash over his face uninhibited.
The lovely thing! If only his mother could see this.
He tiptoed down the aisle until level with her, but she did not open her eyes or cease the rapid movement of her lips. He saw the passion in her trembling shoulders.
Outside beckoned him. It was a relief to be there. The sunlight was more honest.
As if he had no wife he set about getting the evening meal himself.
She gave the briefest glance at the dining table, which he was setting, on her way to the bedroom, and he wondered if she would go to bed without eating. Nothing would surprise me, he thought, putting their new cruet to the centre of the table, reminded of Enid. He studied the edges of the white damask cloth to see if it was level. Thank heavens I’m getting something right, he told himself, loving the shine on the cutlery and serviette rings. Elegance has returned to my life, even if I am in charge of it. He cocked his head on one side, seeing that the knives and forks were straight.
He looked in the pantry for some food. He opened a jar of preserved quinces and tipped them into a dish and found some tomatoes ripening on the window sill. They seemed too beautiful to cut, the skin smooth as a girl’s, and in the end he arranged them on a plate and took them in with some cheese and the last half load of bread.
She came out of the bedroom then, shutting the door with a snap as if to lock her private thoughts from him. He waited, listening to her making noises in the kitchen, realizing after a while she was stoking the fire and getting the kettle to boil, something that had escaped him entirely. Dear me, dear me, he said to himself waving off the flies, remembering the sprigs of mint Enid scattered on the Honeysuckle table to deter those penetrating the back screen door.
When they began to eat, he suggested to Una that they grow some mint. No doubt there would be some to be dug up at Honeysuckle for transplanting.
‘No doubt my sister will provide you with all the mint you require,’ she said, taking small bites of her quinces, obviously deciding this was all she would have.
‘Could we go that way tomorrow?’ he said amiably.
‘What about the Grubbs and the Robertsons? I thought they topped the list of those in need of spiritual guidance.’
He took a nectarine from their bowl of fruit, running his thumb over some hard green patches, relieving the soft pinky red. You take the sweet with the sour, he thought, dragging it apart under her watching eyes.
‘You will come with me, whichever way I go?’ he said.
‘I shall see,’ she said, getting up and taking up the silver teapot snapped the lid open and shut as she went to the kitchen.
When he woke next morning he heard her moving about in what he thought was the room she made ready for Small Henry. When he got up he discovered her in the room beyond, where she had put her sewing machine, a table from the lumber room at Honeysuckle and her easel. There were other odds and ends there and she was sorting these and obviously getting the room in order to work in. She had a sketching pad and pencils on the table. Working with energy, she seemed capable of, and indeed planning to, use physical strength to get Small Henry to pose for his picture.
But to his relief she said she was going to make sketches of him at Violet’s and paint from those.
‘I’ll suggest she nurses him while I draw,’ she said.
He stepped over the suitcases she had taken on their honeymoon and put his arms around her.
‘To hear you say that makes me so proud,’ he said. She dug her chin so deeply in his shoulder he marvelled at her strength and needed all his to avoid sagging under the force.
She went passive soon afterwards and he released her body, waiting to leap back into its former activity.
He went out, trying to decide whether to go to the church for morning prayers or light the kitchen stove. ‘I’ll do both!’ he said aloud, reverting to his old habit. ‘And for the first time in my life I might make porridge without lumps! By George, I feel I can do it!’
He went alone to Honeysuckle. He fought a sense of uneasiness when they were parting, she with her sketch pad and pencils and he with his Bible. He was determined not to see it as a pointer to their future life. But it was best for her to adjust to visiting Small Henry, and who knows, she may come to be satisfied with that.
It was a sunny optimistic sort of day, and Edwards whipped up his horse, who ducked its head deeply and gave a great snort to say things are back to the old way, are they? And it’s no surprise to him and glad he was to leave her behind. He threw out his knuckly knees and paced away with spirits akin to those of Edwards.
There were no Anglican families to visit between St Jude’s and Honeysuckle, causing Edwards pangs of guilt. When I return though, I might persuade her to come with me to see the Grubbs, he thought. He could not face the little Grubb girl without Una to show her. He slapped his horse with the reins to race away from a vision of Small Henry placed tenderly in the little Grubb girl’s arms.
Enid came down the steps at Honeysuckle with an expression on her face which he read as concern for the absence of Una.
‘I have been banished while she does some little jobs on her own!’ Edwards said, believing it to be the truth.
She swung the gate open to admit him. ‘But you won’t be able to stay to dinner!’ she said, running up the steps ahead of him and hurrying to the kitchen for she must have left her cooking pots at a crucial time.
He stopped in the living room, feeling a lesser right now to invade her kitchen. She was back with him almost immediately, with her apron off and her hair smoothed down, and he could see she was not unhappy with her appearance. Her dress was a fine striped cambric with a deep organdie collar which Una had made, but he was not to know this. She may have been expecting me, he thought. I mean us.
‘We do thank you most sincerely for arranging the furniture and everything else you did,’ he said, crossing his legs and noticing her glance on his thighs. Then he saw her lifted brows asking a question.
‘She was quite happy with it,’ he said.
The smoothing of the stuff of her dress on her knee was another question.
‘We are settling in quite satisfactorily,’ he said
, dusting off his knees unnecessarily. ‘There are no real difficulties. Except to grow some mint. For the flies, you know.’
He saw her little smile in the cool and flyless room. ‘In fact I had thought about starting a garden quite some time before –’ he said. ‘I remember planning to come and see you one day for three reasons.’
She looked down surprised to see no movement of the cambric over her rapidly beating heart.
‘One was a cat to drink my spare milk.’ She smiled, loving this.
‘Another was your advice on digging and planting.’
He stood and she took in all his face, disguising nothing on her own.
He forgot for the moment the third one and when he remembered it was Small Henry’s christening he could not find the words.
He decided to keep the image of her face to return to throughout the rest of his life.
45
Una was digging some ground by their tankstand to plant the mint when he got back. ‘By George, I’m glad I remembered it,’ he said, hauling it from the sulky with some new baked bread, plums and peaches, some round oatmeal biscuits Edwards was dying to get his teeth into and a dressed chicken.
Una flung the spade down and planted the trailing roots of the mint to catch the drip from the tap, and inside, in a housewifely manner Edwards admired greatly, put the food away. She had made the place neat in his absence, and he inquired of her face, on which there was no trace of discontent, what had happened about the sketching.
‘I made the drawings and she cooperated remarkably well,’ Una said, lifting a ring of the stove to put the kettle on the heat and hurry their dinner along. Things were taking an upward turn he thought, enjoying the sight of her back with her crossed apron strings and the tie at her slim waist, all remaining amazingly neat while she bent and stretched at stove and dresser.