The Sparrows of Edward Street

by Elizabeth Stead

  ‘I saw the notice. I reckon we can all chip in a bit.’

  ‘I spoke to Father Beale about a funeral, but he went all mortal sin, with the Lord giving and taking away etcetera. I told him off.’

  ‘Good on you, Aria. Maybe we could charge him for peeping through the laundry window. We could make a collection box . . .’

  ‘With a notice saying The Lord giveth, and see how long it stays empty?’

  ‘I take it you’ll be going straight to hell, Aria Sparrow?’ She laughed.

  ‘Like a Bondi tram, Mrs Bentwick!’

  In the meantime there was the matter of Mr Biddle’s funeral, and poor Nancy’s expenses. I wrote notices and put them all over the Camp. I made a collection box from an old biscuit tin, bought a padlock and kept the box locked in a cupboard in the laundry. Hanora offered to act as collector. Mr Sparkle, bless him, gave an astonishing twenty pounds he had collected, but apart from that the poorest gave the most – I imagine that’s why the poor are poor. The others never let it out of their sight. But the biggest surprise was Father Beale.

  ‘He gave me ten pounds! He said something at Mass, and they chucked a bit extra in the plates. I was so grateful,’ said Nancy, ‘but I was really embarrassed. He told everyone who the money was for. I wish he hadn’t done that.’

  ‘Oh, for goodness sakes! He’s just a typical do-gooder on show. He’s one of those people who only do good if everyone knows about it. Just forget it, Nancy; they will. Think how happy you’ve made him – letting him blow his bloody trumpet.’

  We’d been told that Nancy Biddle would need at least forty or fifty pounds. We had already given her the twenty donated by Mr Sparkle, and she had naturally kept the ten pounds the church had paid her, for their sins. The rest came in dribs and drabs of coins. The coins arrived in envelopes and paper bags, and there wasn’t really very much, but I locked it away in the biscuit tin each night. Mrs ‘Up Herself’ Glass had given two pounds, and I thought that was nice of her, considering the way she was trashed by the laundry gossips. It all seemed to be going very well, I thought.

  *

  ‘How much do you think you’ve collected for Nancy Biddle so far?’ a washerwoman asked. I wasn’t sure of her name. We were waiting at the bus stop together. The bus was late.

  ‘I’m not sure right now, but at last count it was nearly seven pounds, apart from the money I’ve already given her.’

  ‘Just as well it wasn’t twenty.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Some lair broke into the cupboard last night and took the lot – tin and all!’

  ‘Bloody hell!’

  ‘I was in the laundry at five this morning. It must have happened last night.’

  ‘Bugger! I can’t believe anyone would steal from anyone in the Camp – someone like Nancy Biddle. I just can’t believe it!’

  ‘My guess is the local hoodlums.’

  ‘They’d better hope I don’t find them – or him – or her. It couldn’t have been one of the women, could it?’

  ‘No. Not a chance.’

  The bus arrived and I had to go to town. There was no time to go back to the laundry or the hut to warn Hanora. The washerwoman took the window seat next to me.

  ‘None of us would do that to poor Nancy. It was someone with tools. Maybe a screwdriver.’ And she grinned. ‘I hear you’re pretty handy with a screwdriver.’

  ‘What a bloody terrible thing to say!’

  ‘Only joking.’

  ‘And I have the key, haven’t I? Why would the person with the key break in with a tool?’

  ‘Sorry, Aria. I really was only joking.’

  ‘We’ll have to start all over again. What a bloody awful thing to do.’

  I was suddenly aware of silence around our seat. Everyone within earshot must have heard every word. I turned around and looked at every seat bum, every strap-hanger, their ears flapping and eyes pointed in our direction. I stood up.

  ‘Listen, all of you! I’ve got something to say.’

  ‘What’s going on?’ said the driver.

  ‘Keep driving. We don’t want to be late.’ And, apart from the bump of wheels on the bad road surface, we could have heard a pin drop. ‘The thing is, I come from the Camp, and I’ve been saving up for Mr Biddle’s funeral because his wife can’t afford it, and I had some money in a biscuit tin locked up, but it was broken into last night and the lot was stolen, and it would have been about twelve pounds and it’s all gone, so if any of you can spare a bit so Nancy Biddle can pay for his funeral we’d all be very grateful – and that’s all . . . thank you.’ I sat down.

  ‘I thought you said it was seven quid,’ said the washerwoman.

  ‘A mistake.’

  ‘Ah, what the hell, here’s a pound,’ said a man.

  ‘I’ve seen you before, and I think you’re all right. I can only spare five shillings,’ said another.

  ‘And me, too. Here’s ten bob.’

  ‘I’ve got a bit of change.’

  ‘Me, too. It’s not much, but I feel really sorry for you lot.’

  ‘I’ve got a spare quid, Aria,’ said the driver.

  And before I knew it I was squeezing up and down the aisle like a fare collector without a bag. Someone took a large manila envelope out of his briefcase and gave it to me. By the time we arrived at the station the envelope was almost bursting. I stood at the bus door and thanked everyone as they left.

  ‘There’s no doubt about you, Aria. How much do you think is in there?’ asked the washerwoman.

  ‘I’m not sure. Maybe eight or nine pounds. Aren’t people nice?’

  ‘Bloody hell, Aria. If I had done that the police’d be here by now.’

  The Camp – Winter

  There’d been a crack like a chip of ice breaking and the corrugated iron told me it was now too cold to touch before the sun was well up. Autumn had come to an end, it said, with a shiver of spines. One of the wall studs moved and a framed print fell. The print was a still life by a Dutch painter. It featured a table with an urn of roses, a bowl of fruit and a game bird with its neck broken.

  When we arrived at the Camp, spring had already become summer, so I expect winter thought it might as well be early too. It was the season we’d all been dreading. The sky looked hard and cold. For the first time since we’d occupied the cells the draughts that came through the spaces in the walls were as cold as the ice man’s cool room, without the bunny corpses.

  Dust lay brittle on the ground, as though an iced lacquer had been sprayed and a few fallen liquidambar leaves from the proper side of the fork in the road flew around, didn’t like what they saw, and tried to catch a breeze back home. Smoke curled up the flues from stoves fired more for warmth than cooking. The sudden change of season had created a sudden change of mood in the Camp. Radios blared, women appeared in cardigans and slippers, and the local kids abandoned their cricket stumps and shanghais and began the football season up and down the grace and favour streets.

  It was a Saturday morning so crisp and clear that if the morning had been a soprano it would have shattered glass.

  Hanora wore an old wool poncho she had bought at a market, her wide hat, scarves and socks on her feet. She’d slept in the poncho and, for all I know, the hat as well but still she shivered. She had been devastated when I told her about the theft of money from the laundry.

  ‘But I can’t believe what you did on the bus, love! I would never have thought of such a thing.’

  ‘It’s a wonder you weren’t reported, Aria. I’m pretty sure there’s a law against that sort of thing.’

  ‘It was on the spur of the moment, Rosy Posy. I was so angry. Anyway, it worked, didn’t it? I was given more than was pinched. But I’d love to get hold of the bloody crook who took it!’

  ‘Aria!’

  ‘I’m not sorry. But he will be, the day I catch him – or her.’

  I had naturally given the takings to Mrs Biddle as soon as I returned to the Camp that Friday night.

  ‘I’
ve got close to forty pounds, mainly thanks to you Sparrows and Mr Sparkle.’

  ‘That should be more than enough,’ I said.

  ‘The funeral parlour said I owe them fifty.’

  ‘Didn’t you discuss it with them?’

  ‘I didn’t know what to do. They just told me I owe them fifty pounds.’

  ‘Rubbish! I can do better than that, and you can keep the change. Have you heard from the Housing Commission, yet?’

  ‘No.’

  *

  Apparently I had given the laundry gossips richer fuel than Mr Biddle’s funeral and holding up a bus like a bushranger.

  ‘I hear you met the Housing Minister in his office.’

  I had not been looking forward to this, but I’d been sure someone would find out. Of all the women in the camp who might have known something, it had been the small, sharp, thin one with the cauliflower hair. I had only seen her in the laundry twice before, and she’d ignored me.

  ‘Yes. I made an appointment with him.’

  ‘Nice for some.’

  ‘How did you know?’

  ‘This is the laundry, darling,’ a washerwoman said through pegs in her teeth.

  ‘Did you notice a bloke cleaning brass at the entrance?’ the cauliflower asked.

  ‘Yes, I did.’

  ‘Well, he’s my brother-in-law. You didn’t know that, did you? I told them about you and I showed them magazine pictures. He thought you looked familiar.’

  ‘I was going to tell you.’ I looked around and at no one in particular. ‘Not that it’s any of your business.’

  ‘Did you do yourself any good?’ And the cauliflower winked.

  ‘No,’ I lied. ‘It was disappointing. No promises, or anything. We just had a talk and a cup of tea.’

  ‘That’s not what I heard.’

  ‘I don’t give a damn what you heard! What are you suggesting? What a bloody basic thing to say!’

  ‘You can’t stop people talking, my girl.’

  ‘Oh, shut up!’

  Elsa Bentwick came into the laundry with a small load.

  ‘What have I missed, Aria?’

  ‘Nothing much. Just me doing the dance of the seven veils, then throwing myself stark naked across the Minister for Housing’s desk. Ask her.’ And I pointed to the cauliflower. ‘And by the way – any one of you can make an appointment to see the Minister. He is a public servant, you know! We’re the public, and he’s the servant! So any one of you can get off your bums and do the same thing!’

  And I stamped out of the laundry. I tried to slam the door, but the hinges were broken.

  Good grief! I’d better get away from this place soon. I was in danger of becoming as rough as the iron I lived in – rougher. Maybe that’s what happens to all of us in the Camp. I seriously thought I’d changed into a washerwoman, with scrubber’s arms and a tongue like a bread knife crumbed with expletives.

  *

  Then there were more dramas. It was as though the Camp had been storing them for cold winter days. I would have kept a special page in my imaginary album for the misery of inmates suddenly living in ice boxes.

  Mrs Tom Gardiner was as reclusive as her husband, but in a different way. I thought her isolation must have been caused by anxiety and sheer exhaustion. She had obviously been very nervous and very tired, but it seemed to Hanora and me that she was more or less able to look after herself, and Tom. Apart from the itch, she had given the impression that she somehow scraped by. I had never seen her in our laundry. That did not mean she was dirty, and never washed their clothes. I didn’t quite know what it meant, but I assumed she laundered in the bathtub. A lot of inmates did that. But I’d been told one Friday that there’d been screaming coming from her hut. It was said to have been like the howling and wailing of an animal trapped. The Gardiners lived in Churchill Street, and the inmates of Edward were not aware of the screaming.

  That evening, in the laundry, as I washed pants and bras, a washerwoman was seen to be quietly crying.

  ‘What is it, Caroline?’ asked another.

  ‘Oh, it had to happen one day.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Tom Gardiner’s wife’s gone off her head. But who can blame the poor biddy?’

  ‘Do you know, I’ve only seen her one time. She must have been a beautiful woman once,’ I said. ‘My mother reads to Tom Gardiner almost every day. She came down to Edward Street one day to thank her. But she said she had a terrible itch. She thought she had a rash all over her, but I couldn’t see anything at all – she scratched the air all over her, but she never touched her skin. I can’t say I’m surprised she’s snapped, poor thing.’

  I had bought Condy’s crystals from the chemist. I’d thought a solution of those might help, even if, as her doctor suggested, the itch was in her brain. The insensitive idiot! The crystals would not have done any harm. I’d intended to give them to her if she came down to Edward again.

  ‘I think she’s an angel, poor thing,’ said one. ‘But we knew it was only a matter of time.’

  ‘She’s had an awful lot to put up with.’

  ‘We’re next door, God help us. You should hear him at night. He recites bloody poetry, non-stop, until the pills drop him off.’

  ‘My mother, Hanora, reads poetry to him when he’s down by the boundary. She’s been reading to him for a long time.’ And I suddenly wondered if I should have kept my mouth shut.

  ‘Well, she’s got a lot to answer for!’

  ‘But he likes it. He likes her reading poetry. He even thanked her the other day. He actually spoke.’

  ‘Well, she’s finally lost it!’

  ‘I’m so sorry. What can we do?’

  ‘How do I know? She’s just another limb that’s cracked off a tree around here. There are plenty of others.’

  It was all so bloody sad here – so sad. I didn’t know what to say. I bit my lip until it nearly bled. I wished I hadn’t told them about Hanora and the poetry.

  ‘Do you think it would be okay if I went to see her?’

  ‘Do what you like, but I think they’ll have to take her somewhere – and him too. They need care.’

  ‘Not likely to happen to you lot, is it? Not the Sparrows,’ snapped the cauliflower, and the spite in her face was hot enough to fry.

  ‘Now, you listen to me! You all need to know that I spoke for all of us when I saw the Minister! I wasn’t being selfish.’ It was a half-lie, of course. I would have liked to have another talk with the Minister, but I was afraid I’d lose what I’d achieved for us.

  ‘If you say so,’ said the sharp, hard woman, who half-smiled as she closed her eyes and turned her back. She looked medieval. She would not have been out of place at a public hanging.

  There were two new washerwomen in the laundry, and they had no idea what was going on. Washerwomen came and went, but it wouldn’t take them long to settle into the life of the laundry, I thought. I felt like an old, rough hand. I introduced myself to the two new women. They were nervous and shy and fearful, and I thought, We were all like that once, but sometimes, when the shyness goes, the fear stays. That has been my observation. It is possible I am mistaken.

  *

  One Saturday afternoon, not long after Father Beale had thrown his net and fished for his Sunday souls, an algid wind came from the south to Edward Street with icicles on its tail. It chased Hanora and the deck chair inside 19B and whipped the hessian around the lemon-scented gum. The wind blew into the Camp with a southern land’s blessing and a warning of colder days ahead.

  There had been white clouds racing through patches of blue over the tops of the huts, but the wind turned nasty and coloured them grey, then black as pitch, and filled them with water until they burst and poured torrents all over the place. The Sparrows crudely nested for the duration of the storm, almost wrapped around the stove, and were unaware of the fire in the Gardiners’ hut until we heard the scream of sirens.

  Despite the cold and the rain, inmates from all over the Camp st
ood around the hut in Churchill Street in mournful silence. A few were in tears. One or two men were nursing burns they’d suffered when they tried to help after the fire started. The police had trouble holding back some of the distressed neighbours. There was a sound of weeping when the ambulance carried away the two very badly burnt victims.

  Rain, in unforgiving sheets, spat on the hot iron roof, turning it into a plate of steam. Ice-cold wind and rain, and mud and red-hot iron, and inmates weeping for the Gardiners. Later, in the laundry, it was said to have been possibly the worst of terrible times.

  Hanora was inconsolable. I persuaded her to take a double dose of pills, but she wept so much I wondered if the pills would have a chance to find their target. She lay sobbing on her bed while Rosy held her hand.

  ‘It is not your fault, Hanora,’ I said.

  ‘But he’s dead!’

  ‘He was brain-damaged, Hanora.’

  ‘But I thought I was helping – and now he’s dead! What have I done?’

  ‘It was an accident. It was not your fault!’

  I did not tell Hanora that the police suspected Tom Gardiner had deliberately set the fire. The rain and the fire brigade had prevented it from spreading. Thank goodness for corrugated iron, I thought, but it must have been like a furnace in there. The iron was red-hot, I was told, and there was some damage to the neighbours’ cells.

  ‘Oh, God, Aria! This is so awful! How is Mrs Gardiner?’

  ‘Badly burnt – mainly her hands.’

  ‘Is she still alive?’

  ‘Just.’

  Tom Gardiner had died, lying next to his wife, in the ambulance on the way to hospital. Mrs Gardiner was, thankfully, unconscious. I did not tell Hanora or Rosy that Tom had spoken to an attendant before he died, answering questions in a dying whisper – something about: ‘Pit fire . . . the pit fire.’ And of course it was a mystery to the man who heard it, and he had written the words in his report book as ‘Spitfires’, which to him made more sense. The officer also noted that smoke had billowed from Tom Gardiner’s lungs with every word.

  ‘Nothing after that seems important! Nothing!’ Hanora said. ‘Aria, please try to find out where they’ve taken her.’