The Sparrows of Edward Street

by Elizabeth Stead

  ‘I feel for him, love, if it’s what I had. It made me very sick.’

  *

  But it seemed that Leon did not just have the ’flu – he had become too ill to stay at home. Max had had to take him to hospital. While a small flock of Sparrows wept their way through It’s a Wonderful Life in the steamy, overcoated, overheated local cinema, Leon had taken a turn for the very worst. I did not know this until the following day. I rang the studio from the public box behind the laundry, and was told.

  ‘It’s a bugger not having a telephone!’

  ‘I’m sorry, love. Is he very sick?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Are you going to visit him?’

  ‘Not allowed to for a while. There’s the risk of infection. Max is with him.’ I think I must have had moist eyes.

  ‘I’m so sorry, Aria.’

  ‘How’s the hat going, Rosy?’

  ‘It’s finished. Mrs Scully is picking it up tonight.’

  ‘Well done!’

  ‘She said her sister wants one too. I think I’m going to be busy.’

  ‘Of course you are, love. But no bother, you’re an artist.’

  ‘I’ve given them a list of materials. They said they’d buy them. I really think I’m going to enjoy it. I’m not so nervous now.’

  The front cell of 19B Edward still had Mr Sparkle’s hessian stuffed into the gaps in the wall. It never moved. It looked as though it had frozen into place, and I imagined that any living creature in its folds would have long gone to an icy grave. The hut was as cold as a berg, and we huddled around the stove. We naturally had to buy the wood, so the stove was never as hot as we’d have liked.

  ‘Mr Sparkle said he would drop in and see us soon,’ said Hanora. ‘I saw him at the butcher’s shop today. He looks very well.’

  ‘Have Mrs Sparkle and the kids done him the honour of a visit, Hanora?’

  ‘Practically the minute after he moved into the house the Commission found for him, love. Three bedrooms and brick, and right at a bus stop.’

  ‘That would do it! I hope they’re happy.’

  ‘I think they are, love, but you know, he said that he sometimes misses the Camp. Isn’t that strange?’

  ‘I wonder if we will?’

  ‘Good grief, Rosy, what a thing to say! I visited the Holt Estate flats today. I’ve been there a couple of times. It’s still a construction site, but there’s not much more to be done. I think the flats are going to be very nice. We’re having a top-floor one.’

  ‘How do you know that?’

  ‘I ordered it.’

  ‘Heavens, Aria, sometimes I wonder about you! Did you tell them to get a move on, love?’

  ‘As a matter of fact, I did. They don’t look too bad at all. They’re very close to the train. Just a stroll, and there’s a general store right next door.’

  ‘Lovely! Oh, lovely! Maybe it won’t be long, now, Aria.’

  ‘I hope not.’

  ‘A lot of people have left us, love. There are lots of new Campers.’

  ‘Of course people will come and go. There must be thousands of us. Isn’t it terrible? I’ll hate this place to the end of my life.’ In all this time Rosy had not come to terms with what she thought of as a forced and terrible life upturned.

  ‘Nancy Biddle’s gone, too,’ said Hanora.

  ‘When?’ I hadn’t been to the laundry for a while. Hanora had taken to it like a bar of soap. ‘Where? I would like to have said goodbye.’

  ‘The week before last. A tiny one-bedroom flat in a huge building in the city. She’s not a bit happy about it. She said the building is too big and noisy, and she doesn’t know a soul. I think she’s very lonely and frightened there, but she had no choice. I’ll go and visit her soon.’

  I realised I hadn’t seen Elsa Bentwick for a while either, and wondered about her husband.

  ‘I obviously need to go to the laundry more often. I’m losing touch. Have you seen Elsa Bentwick, Hanora? Do you know how her husband is?’

  ‘He went to hospital a few days ago, love.’

  It was the same hospital Mr Biddle had been taken to – its basement, rather – the same hospital the Gardiners had been taken to – basement for one and intensive care for the other – and the same hospital in which Leon’s lungs were being cared for. I wondered if they had a special section for the Camp and anyone associated with it.

  *

  While Rosy worked hard for Madame and made wedding hats in her cell at night, I was at last able to visit Leon. I’d had to wait for two days because of commitments with Mr Booth at the Weekly, and studio work with a terribly earnest new photographer. I had to ‘love’ self-raising flour, furniture polish, a colour shampoo and an exercise booklet on ‘How to Improve the Currency Area’ – sorry, I made that up – ‘Breasts’!

  When I arrived at the hospital I was asked to wait in a lounge room until I was called to Leon’s ward. It had been a train and bus trip, so I couldn’t carry much, but Max had told me Leon would like some fruit jubes. I bought two packets at the station. I had a couple of books, and a print of me ‘loving’ the self-raising flour. I thought it might cheer him up – it made me laugh, anyway.

  It was Max who came to the lounge. He was stooped and grey, and he looked terribly tired. His eyes were red-rimmed and he blinked in the sudden light from the window, as though he’d been hiding in a burrow.

  ‘Max? Have you been crying? Don’t cry – he’ll be all right.’

  ‘He is not all right. Do you want to come in with me?’

  ‘Yes, of course, but what’s happened? What’s gone wrong?’

  ‘Everything!’

  Leon was not in a ward. He’d been given a small room lit by a very weak lamp. Curtains had been drawn across the window.

  ‘He can’t tolerate light in his eyes,’ said Max. ‘I should have warned you about this, Aria. I’m sorry.’

  ‘Oh, Max. It’s okay. You’ve had enough to do. I just wish I could have helped.’

  I hardly recognised the man lying on the bed. In such a short time he had become another person. Small, thin, and every breath forced through a mesh of some kind, and every cough an agony. He could not control the saliva and mucus that flowed from his mouth. Max gently wiped them away. It simply wasn’t Leon. I was watching a once colourful butterfly creeping backwards to its grub state, I thought. I dropped the bag of jubes and books and the print by the door.

  ‘Leon? Leon?’ I spoke quietly.

  ‘It’s Aria,’ said Max. ‘She’s come to see you.’

  Silence.

  ‘Can you hear me, Leon?’

  ‘I don’t think he can. I don’t know; he might. I have to tell you, Aria, apparently we’re very close to the end. Do you want to stay?’

  ‘Oh, no! Yes, yes, of course I want to stay, unless you’d rather not have me here.’

  ‘Stay.’

  ‘Oh, bugger it, Max . . . Oh, Max, I had no idea. What is it?’

  ‘Some sort of complication from the ’flu. His lungs have filled up. It’s worse than pneumonia. He’s just not responded to treatment. Oh, I don’t know. I don’t think the doctor bloody well knows, either! He’s taken this badly, too.’

  I knew there had been a ’flu epidemic in Brisbane, but I didn’t think Leon had had contact with anyone there, and I’d always thought of Leon as fairly robust and strong enough to resist viral intruders.

  ‘Oh, poor you, Max.’

  ‘Poor us, Aria.’

  There was nothing else to say. There was nothing else to do. We sat there, on either side of the bed, and held his hands. One in the hand of his lover, and one in my hand. And there we stayed for just over an hour, Max and me, howling our eyes out. Medical staff came and went, but quietly, for the sake of death and grief.

  At the end I left the room so Max could be alone with Leon. I went to the lounge, where I found a quiet corner and sat there until I could control myself. I think I was in shock. It had all been so terribly sudden and unexpected. A man like
Leon poleaxed by something visible only through a bloody microscope.

  After a while Max joined me. For some reason he’d brought my shopping bag. We held each other closely for a very long time, and then Max said: ‘We might as well eat them.’

  ‘Might as well,’ I said. And I gave him one of the packets of fruit jubes. Who can explain something as basically silly as that after such a tragedy? After such a terrible day? Humans are indeed strange creatures, I thought.

  I used the telephone in the corridor, and rang Boston’s, and two other numbers Max had given me.

  Max needed to stay, but before I started the trip back to the Camp I made inquiries about Mrs Gardiner. It was difficult for me, but I felt honour-bound to at least ask. The Camp would want to know. When the file was found I was told she’d been transferred to a nursing home. She was badly scarred and mentally ill, and her fingers were held together with splints of metal, but she was alive, the woman said. ‘It’s a miracle, isn’t it?’ But briefly, thinking of the agony she’d have to suffer for the rest of her life, I seriously disagreed with whoever or whatever granted her the miracle of pain and disfigurement. Leon had not been granted a miracle, but he had looked beautifully at peace at the end. He hadn’t looked dead at all – just blissfully asleep. I thanked the woman for her trouble, and went to the bus stop, slowly and unsteadily, dragging along the remnants in the shopping bag like an old woman.

  *

  ‘How was Leon, love?’

  ‘He’s dead.’

  ‘Dead? Oh, my goodness. That was sudden, love. It must have been a shock for you, Aria. You were very fond of him.’

  ‘Yes, it was – and yes, I was!’ The distracted, almost distant way Hanora remarked upon his death irritated me. I assumed her pills must have something to do with it. But it was one occasion when I would have liked a fairy godmother to put an arm around my shoulder. It was, however, an old dream I’d learned to recover from very quickly.

  ‘I also made inquiries about Mrs Gardiner. She is alive and in a nursing home.’

  ‘Thank goodness for that! I hope they’re looking after her well enough, love. She must be in a terrible state. Is she in pain?’

  ‘Yes, of course she is.’

  ‘I can’t imagine how she’s lived through it all, can you? Do you know which nursing home?’

  ‘No. Where’s Rosy?’

  ‘Making hats in your cell, love.’

  ‘Then I’ll go to the bathroom. I’ll be a few minutes.’

  ‘Tummy troubles, love?’

  ‘No. I have something in my eye.’

  ‘You must be very upset,’ said Hanora.

  But I changed my mind, and instead of the bathroom I went to the laundry. With any luck Elsa Bentwick would be there with her strong arms and her common sense. I had no intention of howling and being a misery, but I just needed to be with someone who was grounded – and despite her own problems she was a woman I could talk to. I did not know what I was going to do without Leon. I tried not to think of poor Max.

  As it happened, Elsa was not in the laundry.

  ‘She spends most of her time at the hospital,’ a washerwoman told me.

  ‘He’s not too good,’ said another.

  And I thought, It is as it should be. He needs her much more than I do. I rinsed a few things out in a spare tub and wrapped them in a towel.

  ‘Where have you been, Aria? We haven’t seen you for a while.’

  ‘I’ve had a lot of work. And then our photographer got sick.’

  ‘Is he okay now?’

  ‘Yes.’

  *

  Back in 19B I asked Rosy if she’d like some help with the hats. She was still in our cell with the door closed. She was draped in a blanket. Hard rain had tried to smash through the roof, but failed. Hanora had made a pot of soup, mostly with the aid of the tin opener, but it didn’t smell too bad.

  ‘Thanks, but I’ve almost finished them. Have you eaten anything?’

  ‘No. What’s the date of the wedding?’

  ‘July seven.’

  ‘You still have a couple of weeks.’

  ‘I wanted to get them out of the way. I’m pleased with them.’

  ‘So you should be. I think they’re beautiful. If I ever have a wedding I hope you’ll whip something up for me. Not that that’s ever likely to happen, of course.’ I sat on my bed and draped my blanket around my shoulders. We looked like a couple of American Indian squaws. I couldn’t think of anything else to say.

  ‘Aria, are you all right?’

  ‘Leon died today.’

  ‘Oh, Aria.’

  And Rosy came to my side and put one arm around my shoulders and patted me with the other. It was surprisingly comforting. There were no words, for there was nothing to be said. I sat still and accepted the warmth of my sister for a long time. I hadn’t needed Elsa after all. I vowed, from that moment, never, never to treat Rosy like a child again.

  ‘Are you going to the funeral?’ she asked.

  ‘I hadn’t thought. It will be a very private affair. I imagine his mother will come over from Perth, but she’d never approved of his lifestyle. I don’t know if I’ll go. I hate funerals!’

  ‘So do I. I hate anything to do with death.’

  ‘Oh, Rosy, I sometimes forget what you’ve been through.’

  ‘Thank goodness it’s never happened to you.’

  ‘But it has.’

  ‘No! When?’

  ‘A couple of years ago. It was very quick and very early. Nobody knew.’

  ‘I wish I’d known.’

  ‘I’m glad you didn’t. You were a different person then.’

  Hanora called from her bed: ‘Aria, come and have some soup and bread before the wind blows the fire out again.’

  ‘Coming.’ I went in silence to the soup pot, and Rosy went silently back to her hats.

  *

  Winter had become an angry block of ice with a blow hole in it. This winter knew its way around the Camp. It knew how to get through the gaps between the iron walls and the roofs; it knew how to create enough draught to blow out a stove. It had discovered that if it brought intense rain and storms it could cut the power throughout the Camp and leave unprepared inmates shivering with cold food and tea, and make a cheap radiator look more ridiculous than it had when its meagre elements were alight.

  This winter played its games with the Camp grounds, and churned the dust to thick, cold mud through which the inmates, tired after a day of work or rejections or pretences, had to wade like peat-boggers, tramping thin-soled feet with cold mud to their ankles into the icy cells of huts.

  That winter at the Camp was a spiteful and cruel spit of a season, and I wondered if it was jealous of winters in another hemisphere, where it would have been made welcome with hot toddys and snow and chalets and ski runs. Would it have preferred to be like the backdrops in Boston’s studio? Northern Christmas card winters with chimney smoke and tobogganing children and robins and snow piled like soft wool on window sills? It probably wanted to be where tall, thin girls modelled ski suits, and where men, looking rich and strong and tanned behind their dark glasses, watched them. Ski lifts and log fires, laughter and parties and sex in the hot bunks. This Camp winter would most certainly have been jealous of that.

  Hanora was very worried about the lemon-scented gum, and had knitted a scarf for its trunk. Somehow it survived.

  *

  Rosy was invited to the Scully wedding, but had politely refused.

  ‘I’m grateful for the money, of course,’ she said. ‘But I really don’t want to get too involved.’

  ‘Exclusive to the end, Rosy! But not as bad as you were.’

  ‘How is the new photographer in the studio? Do you like him?’

  ‘Oh, he’s okay. It’ll be a while before I can get him into shape.’

  ‘How good it is to hear you say that, Aria. You’re almost your old self.’

  It was nice to be able to laugh with Rosy, then. Hanora dared not open her mo
uth in the cold, and waddled around the cells with as many layers of cloth as she could stuff under her poncho. She had begun to look like an eccentric shoplifter.

  *

  That day in the studio I was introduced to the next summer’s range of resort wear. A few shots were taken by the keen young man behind the camera, and I was grateful for the lights of the studio to keep me warm. I dreaded having to pose on a beach in the middle of winter, but of course I kept that to myself. Despite the tragedy of Leon’s death, I worked very hard at any job that was offered.

  The Boston agency knew how close I had been to Leon, and they were very patient and sympathetic. Max kept in touch, and that was a help. I decided not to go to the funeral. Leon’s mother demanded a Jewish burial, despite Max’s objections. Leon’s mother did not like Max, and had had as little to do with her son as possible. I could not have coped with that. And what is a burial anyway? It’s a hole in the ground for rag dolls. For empty shells. It’s just a hole in the ground to bury a mourner’s guilt. The dead know nothing about it. The memory of the man is his immortality. The memory of Leon will last forever. To me it will be the photograph of the cow under a tree on a misty morning. I had no idea how Max managed to get through the whole farce!

  *

  The afternoon that Amy Scully came to show us her brother’s wedding photographs, Mr Sparkle also paid a visit.

  ‘How nice to see you, Mr Sparkle.’ I introduced Amy to him and put the kettle on for tea.

  ‘I can’t stay too long. The wife likes me to help the kids with their homework.’ He gave us a tightly wrapped parcel which perhaps contained meat, a pie or a boxed stew of some kind – or sausages. Mr Sparkle had begun to make savoury sausages. They were very popular.

  ‘Thank you so much,’ said Hanora. ‘Mrs Scully was just showing us photos of her brother’s wedding.’

  ‘Congratulations,’ said Mr Sparkle. ‘Weddings are a real ray of light in this place.’

  ‘Oh, they weren’t married from here. I think they’d rather have died first! But Rosy here made the hats for me and my sister, and I have to say she’s pretty good at it,’ said Mrs Scully.

  ‘I’m not surprised. What you’ve got here is a family of ladies with a million talents.’

  ‘What a very nice thing to say, Mr Sparkle,’ said Hanora. ‘I hope it won’t be too long before we meet your wife and children.’