Union Belle

by Deborah Challinor

  He loved her very much, she knew that, and she loved him back. He was safe, solid and dependable. He seldom did anything out of the ordinary, she always knew how he would behave in certain situations and she had no cause to worry about him. Except for him working underground, of course, but that was the lot of a miner’s wife.

  He was a gentle and considerate lover, too, even if the passion they’d shared in their early days of marriage had gradually been replaced by the comfort of an easy, predictable and undemanding familiarity. They had sex once or twice a week, but not often more, not these days. Her mother had warned her it would go like that, that the physical excitement of the first year or so would ebb slowly but surely away, but Ellen hadn’t believed her. Then, she’d simply been unable to foresee a time when she and Tom wouldn’t snatch every possible moment to be together. But Gloria had been right, although Ellen had never admitted it to her.

  She enjoyed Tom’s lovemaking—it was comforting to be held in his strong arms and feel his warmth and know he desired her—but if she were to be rigorously honest about it, and she rarely was, sometimes it was boring. Sometimes she lay there while he grunted away on top of her, his eyes screwed shut and his jaw clenched with concentration, and thought about what she might need to buy from the grocer the following morning, or whether it was time to put the broad beans in yet. And whenever that happened she felt guilty, as if she were stealing something from Tom. Then, the next time they had sex, she would be extra attentive and loving to make up for it, and things would be all right again.

  Unbidden, she thought about the dark hairs on Jack Vaughan’s wrists and at the base of his throat, his strong white teeth and the toughness of him, and wondered what he would be like as a lover. And then she choked on her drink, because, with a spurt of excitement and fear churning in her belly, she suddenly knew what was going to happen.

  ‘Ellen?’ Milly was looking at her.

  ‘Sorry, went down the wrong way.’

  ‘Do you need a pat on the back?’

  ‘No, thanks,’ Ellen said, coughing until she was red in the face.

  Content to be away from their coal ranges and children and husbands for a few hours, they gossiped and laughed, and drank. By two o’clock Ellen and Val had polished off almost half of the whisky. Ellen felt carefree, vital, almost airborne, and anything anyone said was unbearably funny. Val, who was a more seasoned drinker, was watching her with amusement. Dot had also had two small glasses of whisky, which was very unusual for her. She rarely drank much, and on top of the three sherries she’d already had, she was beginning to slur her words. At one point she missed the low coffee table with her glass entirely and it tumbled onto the floor.

  Avis said, ‘Steady on, love, we’ll be taking you home in a wheelbarrow if you’re not careful.’

  Dot gazed at her with a startled expression, then started to laugh. She laughed so hard that the others joined in at the sight of her red cheeks and streaming eyes, but stopped abruptly when they realised that her hysterical laughter was turning into sobs.

  Ellen blinked and shook her head slightly to clear it. ‘Dot, love, what’s the matter?’

  Dot cried even harder.

  Ellen moved closer and put her arm around her friend’s jerking shoulders. ‘Dot? What’s wrong? What’s the matter?’

  ‘I don’t know!’ Dot wailed, doubled over now, her arms crossed tightly over her stomach.

  The others looked on in sympathetic silence; Dot had come over like this before, the poor thing, and they’d all witnessed it at one time or another.

  ‘Put the kettle on, Lorna,’ Avis suggested.

  As Lorna left the room, Milly moved to sit at Dot’s feet. ‘Are you not feeling well?’ she asked.

  ‘I…no, I’m not. I’m sorry.’

  Milly patted her knee. ‘Don’t be sorry, love, it’s all right.’

  Dot made a noise halfway between a cough and a sob. A dribble of snot slid out of one nostril onto her upper lip, and Ellen reached into her bag for a handkerchief. Her own ebullient mood was gone now, flattened by the sight of her friend in such obvious pain.

  ‘Here, its clean,’ she said, offering the handkerchief to Dot.

  ‘I’m sorry, I don’t know why I’m crying.’

  ‘Has something happened?’ Milly asked.

  ‘No.’ Dot blew her nose loudly and wiped her lip, then started crying again.

  Milly said, ‘Do you want me to walk you home?’

  ‘No, thanks, I’m all right, Bert’s coming for me after the fishing.’

  Avis came over and sat on the arm of the couch next to Dot. Rough around the edges, and kind but always candid, she asked what everyone else was thinking. ‘Is it your nerves again, do you think?’

  Dot nodded.

  ‘Because of the strike?’

  Dot nodded again. ‘I think it was starting before that, but its got worse. It’s just so hard already, so hopeless.’ She hiccupped, and drew in a deep breath to calm herself. ‘It’s all coming down on me, the darkness is coming again.’

  A shiver scuttled up Ellen’s spine, because they were exactly the same words that Tom used when he had one of his buried-alive nightmares. She felt a fierce pang of guilt and regret; she’d been so busy rushing about thinking about the strike and food parcels and Jack bloody Vaughan that she hadn’t even noticed what had been happening to her friend and closest neighbour.

  Lorna came in with a cup of tea. ‘Does anyone else want one?’ she asked as she set it on the table in front of Dot. ‘There’s two teaspoons of sugar in it, so drink up, it’ll make you feel better.’

  It wouldn’t, but Dot sipped at it anyway.

  Nobody else wanted tea. Ellen, unsettled, ignored her own common sense and went back to the whisky.

  To distract Dot, and to revive the party mood, Val launched into a story involving Stan’s ill-fated trip home from the Waingaro pub. He’d been with a group of other blokes, two carloads of them, when the car in front had gone off the winding road at the bottom of a hill and into a creek. The vehicle Stan had been travelling in was only just cresting the hill, and they’d had a clear, heart-stopping view of the car some distance below them subsiding slowly into the swift-flowing water. They’d raced down the hill towards the spot where the car had gone over the bank, imagining the whole, winding, bush-screened way down the muffled screams of the men inside, the frantic scrabbling at windows and the desperate shoving to get doors open against the pressure of the water. At the bottom of the hill they’d come to a skidding halt in the gravel and leapt out, rushing to peer over the bank into the creek for any signs of life.

  There, six feet below them, were their mates, waist-deep in the creek, wading around the overturned car with stricken and desperate expressions on their faces. Someone on the bank bellowed, ‘Is someone missing?’ and the would-be rescuers launched themselves into the water to join the search.

  Val paused, letting the tension of the story swell under its own momentum.

  ‘Did anyone drown?’ Milly asked.

  Val delivered the punch line. ‘No, but there was half a dozen on the backseat before the crash, and they could only find five.’

  Even Dot smiled.

  By the time Bert arrived half an hour later, with the youngest twins in tow, Ellen was well on her way again. She’d reached the stage where, after just one or two more drinks, she would plummet from inebriated elation into a pit of belligerence and remorse, but was too inexperienced to know it. It was the point where dedicated drinkers reached for the bottle again, and everyone else called it a day.

  Avis was also the worse for wear, and Milly not much better, although she’d stopped drinking half an hour ago. Avis wasn’t particularly bothered—Dennis probably wouldn’t even look up from the racing pages when she got home—but Milly was starting to worry about Frank. He would no doubt smile at her and say, ‘Come on, old girl, let’s get a cup of tea down you,’ and make a joke of it, but she was feeling guilty; it was unfair of her to rub his face
in it.

  Ellen took a sip from her glass, realised that it was empty and reached for the whisky. Upending the bottle, she waited for several seconds before she noticed that the lid was still on it.

  ‘Are you all right, Ellen?’ Bert said.

  Carefully unscrewing the lid, she nodded.

  Giving her a doubtful look, he went over to Dot and crouched down in front of her. ‘You been crying, love?’ he asked.

  Dot touched his sleeve. ‘A little bit.’

  ‘Let’s get you home then, eh?’ Bert said. ‘I’ll make us something to eat and we’ll have a nice cup of tea. We didn’t catch any fish, but the kids had a good time.’

  From the door, the two children, not identical but very similar, watched their mother with round, wary eyes. They looked apprehensive, as if they weren’t sure of what she might be going to do next, but when she reached out her hand to them they trotted over and latched onto her skirt.

  Bert announced, ‘We’ll be off then, ladies,’ and began to shepherd his family out of the room.

  Dot waggled her fingers. ‘See you next time,’ she said, and gave them all a sad little smile.

  Bert turned back, and for a horrible moment Ellen thought he might be going to tell them off for getting Dot drunk and upsetting her. But all he said was, ‘Dot hasn’t been well again, what with one thing and another. She just needs a rest.’ And then he was gone.

  After several moments, enough time to let the Sisleys get outside and out of earshot, Lorna said, ‘He must be a saint, Bert.’

  ‘Christ, I’ll say,’ Milly agreed. ‘Poor Dot.’

  Avis reached for her drink. ‘Poor bloody Bert.’

  ‘It must be hard for him, having all those kids to look after, and Dot as well,’ Lorna said, although not unkindly.

  ‘I know,’ Avis said. ‘I bet he’s made more dinners and changed more nappies than all the men in this town put together.’

  ‘Stan’s never changed a bloody nappy in his life,’ Val said with a hoot of laughter.

  ‘Neither has Frank,’ Milly agreed, ‘but then it’s not his job. He’s a miner, not a baby’s bum-wiper’

  They all laughed then, and Ellen tried to remember whether Tom had ever changed Neil and Davey’s nappies. She thought he might have, just the once, but had refused to do it ever again, claiming that the stink was worse than anything he’d ever encountered down the mine.

  She put her glass down on the arm of the couch, thought better of it and moved it to the coffee table. ‘I’m off to the toilet,’ she announced.

  ‘Need a hand?’ Lorna asked, thinking of the steps Ellen would have to negotiate to get out to the yard.

  ‘No, I’m all right,’ Ellen said, although when she got to her feet she discovered that actually she wasn’t, and put out a hand to steady herself.

  She held onto the rails on both sides going down the back steps, and raised her face to the breeze when she got to the bottom, feeling her hair lift away from her neck and the damp skin there cooling. This was better; she’d been starting to feel sick. She made her way across the lawn, taking care to step squarely on the paving stones that led past the clothesline and on to the outhouse, dimly remembering a rhyme they all used to chant in the playground when they were kids. Step on a crack, break your mother’s back. But there weren’t any cracks here, just the square lines of concrete pavers, blurring double then back into one again, and the faded green neatness of recently clipped, late-summer grass.

  In the toilet she closed the door, hiked up her skirt and yanked her pants down, peeing almost before her bum was on the seat. She bent forward and put her elbows on her thighs and her face in her hands. The pee went on for ever, and she wondered dimly how she’d managed to hold it all in. What would Tom say if he came home and found her in this state? Perhaps she should head home herself; the boys would be in soon anyway.

  She tore off some toilet paper, leaned over to wipe herself and nearly toppled off the seat, banging her elbow smartly on the wall. Giggling, she pulled her pants back up, stepped outside into the bright sunlight and headed for the house.

  Her mood turned halfway through her next drink, and the room started spinning soon after that. When she dropped her glass on the floor and it broke, Avis announced, ‘Right, girl, that’s enough for you, time to go home.’

  Ellen didn’t disagree. She fumbled about looking for her handbag, which she’d kicked under the couch, and lurched unsteadily to her feet.

  ‘Thanks for a lovely afternoon, Lorna,’ she said, hearing herself making a mess of the words.

  Milly stood too. ‘I’ll come with you. I’m not sure you’re safe to stagger up the street by yourself.’

  ‘I am,’ Ellen insisted. ‘It’s not far.’

  Milly looked doubtful. ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘I’m all right.’ Ellen was vaguely embarrassed now at the state she’d got herself into, and determined to salvage her pride by getting herself home. ‘Have to stop off at the shop, anyway.’ Except that it came out as ‘stoff op’.

  ‘No, Ellen,’ Avis said. ‘Come on, we’ll walk you home.’

  ‘No! I’ll walk home myself!’

  ‘Oh dear,’ Val said.

  Milly shrugged and sat down again. ‘Well, if that’s what you want.’ Then her sunny smile reappeared. ‘But if you’re in the gutter by the time I come past, I’ll get one of the stretchers from the rescue station, shall I?’

  Ellen nodded, oblivious to the joke, and made her way to the door.

  Milly watched her uneasily, wincing as Ellen put a hand out to stop herself from crashing into the wall in the hall.

  ‘Oh, shit,’ she said, ‘we can’t let her go up the street like that! What if someone sees her?’

  ‘You won’t stop her,’ Val said, with the wisdom of someone who has spent years trying to manage the behaviour of a chronic drunk and has finally given up. ‘Just let her go, she’ll be all right.’

  This time, the fresh air only made Ellen feel worse. Nothing she looked at would stay still. She went down the steps slowly, one at a time, clutching onto the rail with both hands, then made her way around to the front of the house. Lorna’s place was at the very foot of Joseph Street, but all Ellen could see were two front gates where she dimly knew there should only have been one.

  She lurched up the garden path, lost her balance and veered onto the grass. Another two steps, and then the ground raced up to meet her.

  Jack was pulling away from the grocer’s when he saw Ellen stagger across someone’s front lawn, then fall over, hard. He gunned the motor and roared down the street, the wheels of his truck throwing up little spurts of gravel and dust. Outside the house he stopped, jumped out and ran over to where Ellen lay sprawled on the grass.

  ‘Ellen? Are you all right?’

  She opened her eyes. ‘I fell over.’

  Leaning closer, he caught an eye-watering whiff of whisky coming off her, and swore. He sat her up, slid his arms under hers and hoisted her to her feet, holding her there until she found her balance.

  ‘Sorry,’ she moaned. ‘Dunno what’s wrong.’

  ‘I do,’ Jack said in her ear, ‘you’re pissed as a ferret. What the hell have you been doing?’

  ‘Girls’ getagether.’

  Jack shook his head, then slipped his arm around her shoulders and steered her towards the gate. ‘Come on, I’m taking you home.’

  Ellen gasped. ‘The boys!’

  ‘Don’t worry, they’ll be all right.’

  He led her over to his truck and propped her up with one arm while he opened the passenger door. The step up into the cab was high and she couldn’t manage it, so he gave her a push; it was gentle enough, but she ended up on her face on the seat. By the time he’d gone around to the driver’s side she’d righted herself and was scrabbling around looking for something.

  ‘My bag!’ she cried.

  ‘You’re sitting on it,’ he said, hauling the leather straps out from under her backside and setting the bag in her lap.


  At the top of Joseph Street he turned left into John Street and coasted along in first gear until he came to Ellen’s house, wondering whether she would be able to get inside by herself. He thought not; she was pretty plonked.

  ‘Do you need a hand?’

  ‘No.’

  He eyed her doubtfully. He wanted to pick her up in his arms and carry her inside and perhaps set her down gently on the couch or somewhere comfortable like that, but he’d spent enough time in pubs to know that whisky more often than not significantly increased the arsehole quotient in drinkers, and that his efforts would probably be rewarded with a fist in the face.

  She rammed the door handle down, shoved the door open with her foot and fell out onto the grass verge at the side of the road.

  Jack swore again, got out himself and went around to the passenger side. ‘Come on,’ he said, lifting her to her feet, ‘let’s get you inside.’

  The steps up to the back door were daunting, but they managed, almost. Halfway up Ellen tripped and fell, banging her knee hard on the next step up, and said, ‘Ow, fuck.’

  Jack’s eyebrows went up—he hadn’t expected that from her, normally she seemed quite reserved.

  The back door was open. Neil and Davey were sitting at the kitchen table eating Marmite sandwiches they’d made themselves.

  ‘What’s wrong with Mum?’ Neil asked, his sandwich halfway to his mouth. He looked somewhat shocked at the sight of his mother, dishevelled and swaying at Jack’s side.

  ‘She’s feeling a bit off,’ Jack said. ‘Why don’t you lads take your feed outside while I get her sorted, eh?’

  Neil and Davey seemed uncertain, but collected their plates and went out to sit on the steps.

  Ellen collapsed in the chair Davey had just vacated. ‘I feel sick,’ she mumbled, and retched.

  Jack looked around wildly for something she could spew into. There was the fruit bowl, but it was full of feijoas and anyway it was made of wicker. He dashed into the washhouse off the back porch, grabbed a bucket and darted back to the kitchen, where Ellen was leaning forward in her chair, her knees apart and her hand clamped over her mouth.