But her destiny was cast in bronze. By the time she reached the Quay, she knew she could not go and wash dishes hopelessly for some man, waiting for the day when he asked her to marry him. Better the rough and rolling sea than this convent with one nun. She no longer understood how she could have been tempted. On the way to work she went and told the woman that she could not take the room.
“I’ll have to keep the five shillings deposit.”
“I know,” said Teresa. “That’s all right. I’m sorry I let you down.” The woman smiled involuntarily. “I’ll give you back two shillings,” she said. “You probably need it as much as I do,” and she fetched her shabby black purse from a lace-covered table in the hall and handed Teresa two worn shillings. The small round coins felt grateful in Teresa’s hand; she would bank two shillings more at the end of the week. She smiled at the woman, thanked her profusely.
To be hungry was her life and a necessary condition of getting to Jonathan; therefore she did not mind it at all, and it made life more interesting than it had been for years. She began to love the streets through which she passed and which were her life, she began to notice avidly shops, stands, and men and women lifting things up to their mouths. This evening, coming home, she thought only satirically of the scene that awaited her; perhaps they had already fetched Kitty home, in any case. But had Kitty been fool enough to tell where she was going? She felt a hot flash as it occurred to her that Kitty, wildly, might have told that she, too, was going—to England, the irrevocable journey. Surely not? Surely not? It worried her through the trip and spoiled her game.
She did not really care about her beggared dress, since everyone at work was kind to her. Erskine protected her and even “the Old Man”, Remark, put up with her peculiarities and had a sympathy for her, remembering his poverty. She took two or three days off every few weeks, when she was not really ill but pretended to be, in order to rest. These days of sick leave she spent at home in the back yard, lying on two chairs with her hair covered against the sun and wind, her body exposed to the warm light. For economy’s sake, they never lighted fires in the old house, and lately they had substituted beans and spaghetti for meat meals, margarine for butter and the like. For four winters, whatever the cold, she had worn summer dresses and no coat, and she often arrived home wet through, but pretended that she felt nothing and could never take cold. She had a deep cough which shook her whole frame and did not leave her even in summer. If she had not taken off one or two days of sick leave occasionally, she would not have got through. This trick of hers was allowed at the factory and she was grateful to them for allowing such a patent fraud. For a long time, she had not noticed the cold weather nor her cough, which, she said, was not really a cough, but a perpetual hunger which had slipped out of consciousness for several years, lately coming back, so that cheap sweets, dirty jars of pineapple and coconut juice, fruits in windows, crawling with cockroaches, and even sticky, bright cakes attracted her fearfully. Several times, on her way to the boat, she came to herself, to find that she had ceased to walk and was lounging dreamily against some window looking vacantly at one of these objects. While she looked and dreamed, she ceased to feel the hunger; it was as if she was masticating. Then she would smile at herself, hitch herself away from the window-pane, start walking with a rush, and a few blocks lower down the permanent hunger would begin blowing through her like a draught. Once or twice, lately, she had stopped and bought a sweet drink, unable to resist a wave of pleasure and gluttony which overwhelmed her as she drank; afterwards too, she experienced no shame, but would rub her hands secretly, and would walk close to other such places, to enjoy the warm rich smell. She never went to shops where people sat down, she felt more inconspicuous standing at a street bar. Later, the sight of her purse a few pence poorer shamed her as if she had embezzled. But two or three days later, she would fall again, and with the same low pleasure would buy another sweet drink. Recently, she had begun to reason with herself, saying: “If I fall again and again like this, I must need the food, it would be more sensible to live near the factory and buy myself a lemonade every two or three days.” Her father would say she could not now take a room near the factory, when Kitty was away. What else could she do? If she could find one of the factory girls to live with, somewhere near. But she knew none of the factory girls. She knew only the office staff, and as most of the factory girls were very young, lively girls, she was afraid of them. Sometimes, in a white glare of anger, she would wish for Erskine. He pretended to like her, men succoured women, but he would not even give her twopence to go down to the Quay in a tram. (He did not know she walked to the Quay.) He would not even give her a lunch. He would not even share a room with her.
This same evening, as she crossed the park in the heat of the setting sun which she was facing, she looked round to see if there was not somewhere to sit in the middle, some hummock, a stone, but there was nothing. The heat, confusion, irritation poured into her. She thought: “Much he cares for me, to let me stagger home like this, to others he pretends he likes me, but I don’t know about it, I don’t feel it, he’s a mere doll.” At the same time, she was absurdly carrying a bouquet of fresh garden flowers, immense, colourful, an old English garden, in her arm, which Erskine had brought her that day. She put the bouquet down on the grass and sat beside it. How heavy it was! She only got the bouquet to make it harder for her, to make her more grotesque, staggering home with it. It was only her illness that made her wish for him. She was nearing the end, but there were moments now when she was afraid that illness would get to her before the end. She was not now walking only to save money. She was outstripping illness and failure. Wherever she walked, something of bluish-white with long stride came after her a pace away, bowed forward, not malignant, only natural, but that bluish-white thing of her own height was Exhaustion itself. Why did not Erskine, if he loved her, give her a glass of milk before she left work, so that she could walk down to the Quay? These mad complaints battering round her temples, the staggering landscape, her fear of falling, accompanied her with her lunch box, her purse, and her bouquet, while she walked in her rubber-soled shoes, crossed over the parks. Once this week, she had been forced to take the tram from the station. It was like the lemonade. What a mad excessive delirious luxury to sit in the tram and let it carry her along the roads! She had not a movement to make. She merely sat there, smiling to herself, looking with rapture at the people who rode in the tram. If they looked well and happy, she understood how they felt! If they looked sad and peaked, she wanted to nudge them and say: “Rejoice, you are riding! Ride, ride, people can’t ride every day! I myself know someone for example—but never mind that, just enjoy yourselves!” In no time at all she was at the Quay.
The tram ride only cost twopence, so that it might seem folly to wear oneself out in this way, but she was afraid to give in on any count and in some way the endless walking, walking, meant England. She was walking her way to England. In three years to the day, less Sunday and Christmas Day and one or two other holidays, she would have walked 2,772 miles and by the time she sailed she would have walked just 3,000 miles. But on the other hand these three thousand miles represented seventeen pounds, three shillings, and fourpence and perhaps a bit more, saved to take abroad. Now as she would not have more than a few weeks’ money, about twenty pounds, when she landed in England, and the Australian pound was going down in relation to the English pound—and she considered twenty pounds a very generous margin—she considered the wear and tear of the body and beauty as nothing. With beauty and health she could not get one wave nearer England, but even though her bones poked through and she was carried aboard, she was welcome, if she paid her fare; she could sail the seas like any free soul, from Ulysses to the latest skipper of a sixteen-footer rounding the world. She thought of death, indeed, but only as an obstacle that might prevent her sailing and must be circumvented.
She looked at the ground as she walked and considered things, cast-off shoes that might have served her, a
crust of bread; often a piece of green paper fluttered like a banknote. She was astonished at the Salvation Army singing in the street with so many people starving—how could they expect converts? She was surprised that people were so honest—Mark Foy’s had their bazaar open day and evening, people could steal some of these gewgaws; for people were beginning to seem to her strange things, creatures like parrots, that liked sweetmeats and baubles. For herself she kept away from all these, they were the barbarian tastes of headless, heartless monkeys. She never looked at the pretty things that go into trousseaux, though the time had now come for her to buy her travelling wardrobe. She bought yards of rough Chinese silk, cotton, lace and cut out underwear for a cold climate, nothing for a marriage, but solid, plain things that would last for years if she was unlucky and he rejected her. All this she began to make up on a sewing-machine. In turn, this sewing-machine became for her the dream of her life. At the office, she would see it, standing towards the back street, the sunlight falling across it through the old lace curtains, its cracked veneer, and the virgin cloth with straight selvedge lying across it. When she got home, carrying her hat and bag in her hand, she would go and stand by it, smoothing down whatever had been left upon it. Now she always had work on it. This picture began to draw her homewards, she dreamed about the skilful gathering and running of the stuff as she marched along. How beautiful if she had piles of exquisite things in silk and lace, fine things, not strong and sensible as she had now! How would she cut the silk, put in the lace? She devised as she walked along. If she had linen and linen thread sufficient, she would make such and such a tablecloth or bedspread; couldn’t one learn to imitate Brussels, Irish rose lace, merely by looking? She felt sure she could. She would take with her a blanket that really belonged to her, a lace mantelpiece runner. She would make six lawn handkerchiefs with drawn thread work and Johnny’s initial, on the boat. She would embroider something for him—what?—in which their history would be pathetically referred to—she would show him on a cloth, as a priest of learning in a chasuble, green, gold, and white. He could use the cloth later on for his household when he had one and she might be dead. What matter if she got nothing out of it? To love is to give for ever, without stint, and not to ask for the slightest thing. Such is woman’s love. There are women who do not do that, but when they become mothers, it is the same thing, they give lovingly and in suffering and without requital.
All the time, she looked about. There were plenty of places where she could curl up unseen at night, once dusk had fallen. She could be stirring early in the morning. Not the Domain, because the walk was too long from the Domain to her factory.
Her breed could stand any hardship. Her own grandmother, Eileen, had come out on a sailing-ship with only one pair of boots to her name, and had picked up a husband in a but with an earthen floor on the goldfields, the whole thing done on her savings as a servant, in the old days. No teachers’ salaries and highly paid stenographers then!
Between buildings in this hot weather were places cool and protected where no one went, surely, where a person could sleep all night. A coat, blanket or something else would be necessary.
What about washing? She could get to the factory early and wash, or go to the Central Railway Station. How did vagrant women wash? In pools and streams. But here? In the factory then. At the station, money was needed to wash. The factory was her home. It failed her in nothing. Money, washrooms, even affection, she was liked there and everyone knew there what no one knew at home, that she was sailing soon. Such was the good-nature and solidarity of the factory.
The factory backed on a paper factory which had been burned out not long ago. Beside the burned-out factory was a junk and lumber yard, and between the two a small grassy area shut in by a loose arrangement of palings. No one ever went in there. It was no man’s land. She had often seen it from upstairs in the hat factory. There was also a vacant grassy space in between the two factories, but this was open to men and dogs. Her green hat had been there for several days, then one day a man had come poking at it and taken it away. Supposing one night, when she was very tired, after nightfall, she went in through that plank gate and slept there? No one at all could see her till morning. Light came early—about four-thirty or five. The night watchman would not look down—in any case, she could sleep right up against the fence nearest the factory and he could not see her. On the other hand, perhaps she could secrete herself in the factory itself, sleep on the roof or the like? But how would she get out to get her food? It was all a question of not walking the two miles back and forth, but if she was to pay extra for her food! Then, could she undress in the grass patch? She could not sleep in her only dress needed for work the next day. Besides, it might rain and she could not arrive drenched in the same dress, a thin silk. She observed all kinds of things, thought about the silk lying on the machine at home, and sharply kept a look-out for a hiding-place where she might sleep at night. How about the cathedral? The Art Gallery? The latter had a bare open hall where she would be seen. The cathedral was an excellent place, but surely they swept and looked round for tramps who wanted a roof over their heads? There was an infectious disease hospital in the Domain and a little morgue with a very pretty blind corner, covered with vines and half-filled with old gardening implements. But surely it was at night they came to remove the corpses? A funeral with plumes and lights—? Then again it was so far from the factory. She went on. She came to the boat. She sat and dreamed on the boat as it choughed over the waves and she was almost home round the beach path when she remembered that Kitty had run away this morning.
She found the two men stricken, like two old men who had lost their sister, but to their questions: “Did you know?” “Why didn’t you tell us?” she returned languid replies. “She ought to get out and make a place for herself, she ought to get a chance.” Lance, with hollow eyes and a suffering air on his cheeks, she saw was near to tears. She said: “It will be cheaper with only three of us instead of four.” Lance asked: “Am I going to stay here all my life?” She went upstairs and found Kitty’s room turned upside down—why? She stared for a moment at the familiar mess, forgotten things which Kitty had stored “to come in useful some time.” Now she had left them all behind. All no use now. She was very far from picking and prying into Kitty’s things; with a great disillusion about the young girl’s life she surveyed everything from the door, when suddenly she saw a very long dark green shawl in wool, which Kitty had knitted at one time, ugly but heavy and nearly a yard wide. It had served Kitty instead of a coat for a long time. This would do! Teresa stepped forward, shook out the shawl and contemplated it with a beating heart. Wrapped in such a shawl against the dew she might do very well one night, if she could find a place in the factory or elsewhere to sleep.
The next day, she packed it in a small valise. The two men questioned her so much about her little valise and looked so frightened that she opened it up smiling and said the shawl was for a poor woman she had met in the street near the factory, who sold matches. Erskine, too, noticed the little bag and wanted to know if she were going away. She said: “Yes, for the night.” Later, she went up to see Erskine in his room, a thing she had never done, and leaning on the window-sill while he chatted and while he approached and put his arm round her shoulders, she studied the empty spaces underneath the two factories. The one she coveted was well closed. Inside were three or four notice-boards, “No Trespassers”, and “Trespassers Will Be Prosecuted”, which had perhaps been thrown over from the junk yard. Or was there an entrance from the junk yard? This frightened her. She realized she would be trespassing and could be fined or sent to jail if she set foot on the little enclosed patch. Was there an entrance through the burned factory, without forcing an entrance? She slowly revolved phrases in her mind, “breaking and entering”, “vol avec effraction”—but she would not be stealing. Meanwhile she was answering Erskine, pulling away from him. His hand had wandered up to the gathers on the shoulder of her dress, and now wandered down, he pl
ayed along the gathers and his eyes shone. She looked at him mildly, unable to understand why he was so restless and bright, his eyes glittering, whispering madly at her. A girl sent by a workroom head for some samples of braids came in the open door and laughed aloud as she said: “Mr Erskine, Miss Allbright wants the Italian braids.” Erskine fretfully, but with a smile, dropped his hands and said: “On my desk, on my desk.” The girl picked up the cards and went out, looking back and laughing.
“You see,” said Teresa thoughtfully, still puzzling about the entrance to the vacant lot, “you are making a scandal!”
“I don’t care,” Erskine replied. “I want to make a scandal. You take no notice of me, so I must make a scandal!”
She laughed, and looking out the window, asked: “Do you think anyone could get into that empty lot down there?”
He looked. “I don’t know.”
“Would it be hard to pry open those boards there?”
“No, I could do it easily,” he said. “What for?”
“I thought I saw someone in there.”
He turned back to her and came back to running his finger over her dress. “That’s the first time I’ve seen you in a pretty dress.”
For Love Alone Page 33