by Olga Masters
Bent low like a runner starting a big race, Kathleen flew to the end of the veranda to scoop a jam tin of corn from an open bag there. She had to grapple with the legs of a chair to get to the corn, for the boys had thrown Amy’s furniture there when they brought it from her place, and were paying no heed to May’s constant pleas to take it to the shed where it belonged.
Kathleen ran with the corn to fling it over the wire netting into the pens. Setting up a squawking and fluttering of wings, the fowls threw themselves against the wire, scrambling on each other’s backs and pecking at the air.
“Stop your noise!” she said, throwing the corn over their backs to the far side of the pen, causing them to turn and run in that direction, gobbling wildly under the shower of grain.
The mass of backs, Kathleen thought, looked like the grey patterned eiderdown on her grandmother’s bed.
“Eat and be quiet!” she called. “Or my granma will be very angry with you!”
Running back with the empty tin she saw May hook her hair behind her ear in the old way, setting the table for tea.
We’re not going, no one’s going, we’re not going, I know we’re not going, she sang inside her head.
5
The getting away was terrible.
Kathleen was very white and Patricia buried herself in the corner of the couch and cried quietly like a grown-up. Lebby had a fever and May had put her into the double bed under the speckled eiderdown. It was ironic that May should spare Lebby from witnessing the departure, since she was the one least troubled by it.
When Amy came into the kitchen with her luggage, Patricia made for the corner of the couch and Kathleen ran to Gus and clung to his leg. He lifted her up, with a brief look of hate towards Amy, across Kathleen’s tangled head for it was quite early in the morning, and May had not found time so far to comb Kathleen’s and Patricia’s hair and wipe their faces with a damp cloth. Kathleen thought how strange it was to see Amy dressed up with a hat on at that hour and a thick coating of lipstick. Beside her the kitchen seemed in even worse confusion. The teacups from the first pot, made when the boys and Gus had got up for the milking, waited beside the stack of porridge plates and rounds of bread, ready for what the farming community called second breakfast, taken in more leisurely fashion when the chores were done.
Amy took a piece of bread and ate it dry, pushing it through her red lips, eyes very round.
“If Fred is finished I’ll get him to carry my port down,” Amy said, laying the bread on the tablecloth.
“Come on,” Gus said to Kathleen and hitched her higher, to carry her nearly at a run towards the dairy.
May scooped Patricia up and ran after them. “We’ll see the poddies fed!” she cried.
Amy set off for the gate, bent sideways with the weight of her case. Fred saw, and ran to catch her up and take it, while she ran ahead to stop the car, wobbling down the rough track on her high heels. The car made a great deal of dust stopping suddenly. Climbing in, Amy got a showering on her navy skirt. Since she had not said any formal goodbyes to the others, she was too embarrassed to say goodbye to Fred and fussed with her handbag, looking inside it and snapping it shut and slapping at some imaginary dust on it. Only once did she lift her head to see Fred’s round hungry face under his round felt hat, and beyond him Patricia running screaming towards the road (she couldn’t hear the screaming but she saw it)—and Kathleen standing stiff like a small stone statue, and May with her fist raised shaking it in the air.
Some of the passengers in the centre of the rear seat, with others obscuring their view, thought the driver was receiving a reprimand. The driver, who had known May from childhood, thought so too. He lifted his hands from the wheel and raised them palms upwards and swung around to look for an explanation from Amy. But Amy had shrunk in her shame and misery between a small boy bearing signs of car sickness and a man bearing signs of a traveller in tea, for his attaché case was across his knee and he was utilizing travelling time by going through papers.
In spite of herself Amy was impressed by an illustrated spill of tea from one corner of a sheet of paper, the leaves growing fainter as they crossed the page. She wondered if she might get to know the man, perhaps he would find her a job at the place where he worked. There would be jobs for a lot of people surely, because of all the tea sold. She had a swift vision of the big brown enamel teapot in May’s kitchen, nearly always full and hot, and felt her chest and throat begin to tighten. She decided to imagine a handsome tin of tea which she would send home as a gift. She saw Kathleen and Patricia bent over it, only their backs showing. Lebby was in May’s arms looking down on it too, her eyelids lowered.
Amy and the man exchanged one glance. His eyes were cold and a pale grey with very pale lashes and sandy brows that grew in a little tuft near the bridge of his nose and didn’t bother going further. Amy looked again to make sure she wasn’t mistaken. She thought there must be hairs above his eyes, too faint to see clearly. But there were none, only skin shining and faintly blue, stretched tight on the bone without flesh to nurture growth.
Amy looked away from the glare of his unfriendly eyes. Oh my goodness, she thought, up till now I’ve only seen one kind of eyebrows. There must be a lot of things I haven’t seen. An excitement crept in faint shivers from her thighs upwards to pump her heart harder. I’ll see things, I’ll do things! Keep your old job in your tea factory! The farm houses flew past, the cows leaving bails in bored little knots, the dead timbers of great trees white against the green of grass-covered hills. Goodbye to all that! Amy ran her hand down her side raising a buttock, tucking her skirt under it, no longer touching the tea man.
“Pardon me,” she said, and the small boy in spite of advancing further into his state of squeamishness raised respectful eyes to her face.
Nearing Sydney, Amy had begun to worry, aware that she must leave the train at Central Station and find her way to Annandale. She left her case in a locker at the station (wishing she did not have to spend money this way) and took only her handbag and a bag crocheted from string, a method taught her by a hotel guest, and inside this wrapped in brown paper a nightdress, toothbrush and hand towel. Her aunt would surely allow her to stay overnight and a few subsequent nights until she found work and a room or board somewhere cheap. Sydney was cheap, she knew that, and there was proof of it visible from the tram she was riding in—a great sign on the side of a building that said three-course meals for sixpence. One of those meals a day would be all she would need, with a cup of tea and a slice of bread and butter for breakfast and a twopenny pie at midday. That would mean eating for ten shillings a week, and if she got a room for ten shillings there would be money over from her wage (she hoped for thirty shillings) to buy some clothes. She had to jerk her thoughts away from clothes, remembering a pleading promise to send things home for the little girls when May shouted to her about their thin jumpers and the absence of warm singlets for the winter.
She had asked the tram guard to tell her when Wattle Street came up. Intrigued by her big blue eyes, he hovered near her and put on an air of authority, giving tickets and change with a flourish and saying “Fares, plis,” even when he was aware there were no new travellers on board. All of it was put on to impress Amy, a girl from the country as she had told him, who might be seen on the tram again and would be good for a squeeze of the hand when they exchanged money, nothing more, him a married man with four children and a good Catholic. He snapped his bag open and shut for nothing, then when the tram started up after a stop, he held up two fingers and she didn’t know what he meant and looked frightened, which gave him cause to bend over and say he meant there were two more stops before she got out.
A nice man, Amy thought, gripping both her bags tightly in case she left them behind. People were helpful in the city, they minded their own business too, as she had been told by travellers through Moruya. Amy looked for verification around the tram but saw only solemn and frowning faces, many of them pinched looking, wedged between shabby h
ats and coat collars. They are hungry for their tea, Amy thought generously, wondering what hers would be. She stood now, for the guard had given her another signal. I know he’s sorry to see me go, she thought, feeling loved and wanted and happy so far with Sydney.
But number seventeen did not look welcoming, not being favoured with a street light close by and looking resentful of this, crouching dimly with only a faint light showing behind the glass top of the front door like an orange in a fog.
More light came from a May bush near the front gate, scattering petals on the path as the wind rushed about it, reminding Amy of the shower of confetti two giggling young cousins threw on her and Ted when they walked out of All Souls. She shook the memory off as the May shook off the surplus blooms, finding a bell to press and hearing slippered feet growing more distinct as she waited.
“Aunty Daph!” Amy said, squashing her crochet bag in both hands.
“My goodness me!” cried the woman, who looked a lot like May. She peered around Amy, looking for children, and appeared greatly relieved there were none emerging from the gloom.
“Come in!” she said, so heartily that Amy felt she would be welcome to stay forever. At the end of the hall was a large room where food was cooked, meals were taken and the laundry done. A small space had been left for a bathroom, otherwise this room occupied the entire rear of the house. Daphne’s husband Dudley and the two sons were at the dining table, and a knife and fork were crossed on a plate of curry and rice where Daphne had left her place. Now she was pushing the plate along and setting a place for Amy, who had put her bags on the sofa, a twin to the one at home in Diggers Creek (for the sisters had got one each from the parents’ home after they died). Amy was sad at the superior condition of Daphne’s sofa, for Kathleen and Patricia (and Lebby, Amy supposed, though she had never seen her there) rode the high rounded end of theirs for a horse and scuffed the leather where their toes kicked it.
The stove and a big pine dresser occupied the kitchen corner and next to the dresser were laundry tubs and a large enamel gas copper. Amy knew from Daphne’s letters to May that hot water from the copper was carried into the bathroom, Daphne giving details of changes, particularly improvements in her domestic arrangements whenever they occurred. She had written of the convenience and ease of lighting the copper, and told of its endless supply of hot water, bringing on a bout of discontent on May’s part, out of which she eased eventually, claiming Daphne needed all the warmth available to compensate for the coldness of Dudley.
The laundry tubs were disguised when not in use by a board, covered with the same brown linoleum that was on the floor, and laid across their tops. This was used as a serving bench at mealtime, and Amy saw a rice pudding there in a dish shaped like a bed, the brown wrinkled skin like a bedcover. It made her wonder where she would sleep that night.
Daphne was at the stove pushing pots together over gas rings and lighting them with a flare of blue, a hiss and a roar.
That’s gas, Amy thought, I’m seeing it for the first time. But she wished that Daphne did not look so much like May, with the same round fussy bottom and twitching apron strings. She brought a plate of curry and rice for Amy and pulled up a bentwood chair by spinning it on one of its featherlight legs.
“You here for a holiday?” Dudley said, making it sound more of a statement, not strictly requiring an answer or any continuity of conversation. He looked not at Amy but at her plate and she was afraid he might have wanted another helping and she had deprived him of it.
“There’s rice custard,” Daphne said, part soothing, part irritated.
“Just like Mum,” Amy said. “She always cooks rice for the curry and uses up the rest for pudding.”
The elder of the boys, nearly seventeen, smiled at Amy as if she were kind in saying something he could understand and appreciate. He was apprenticed to a bricklayer, having been so poor a scholar that Dudley and Daphne took him from school the day he was fourteen and found him work in the building trade, deciding that since he was big and strong and without brains, the right place for him was dealing with materials of a similar kind.
Daphne was at the tubs now spooning out the pudding. John was watching her, keen for a good helping. The other boy, Peter, a schoolboy still, kept a shy face on the dessert spoon he was fiddling with.
Peter was going to be a teacher, Amy knew from Daphne’s boastful letters to May. The thought made her recall May’s scornful reaction (though she did not put her views on paper), spurred on by her own sons’ failure to do better than become farm hands.
“Pasty faced, miserable young know-all!” May had branded the ten-year-old Peter. The only time he visited the farm he stayed clear of the animals, would not look for tadpoles in the creek with his cousins, and whinged because there were so few books in the house to read.
Amy looked furtively now at Peter to see if May’s description fitted him, and saw he had a gentle face with a thoughtful expression and fair eyelashes on cheeks with a light spread of freckles the same colour as his thick thatch of hair. She decided May would not be able to describe him in her old way, and then she felt a small smile start up for she knew how May would want to, more as an insult to Daphne than to Peter.
“Your uncle wants to know if you are here for a holiday,” Daphne said, more curious than Dudley, and covering it with a phony concern that he should be answered.
“Oh, sorry,” Amy said, and laid her knife and fork together on her plate which was lightly smeared with brown sauce from the curry along with a few grains of rice. Amy had read that it was good manners to leave a morsel of food on your plate, not eat it clean, and she used to watch guests at the hotel to see who observed this rule of etiquette. She wove little dreams around those who did, and who crumpled their serviettes beside their plates, and left her to pick up dropped cutlery. She imagined the young men pursuing her frantically with offers of marriage (she mostly forgot she was still wed to Ted).
“Actually,” Amy said, making sure she met no one’s eyes. “I’m here to get work.”
Spoons clinked and there were swallowing sounds, John’s quite loud causing Daphne to look severely at him, though Amy felt part of the look was for her.
No one spoke so Amy did. “I know it will be hard.”
“The girl next door got a job in labels,” Daphne said. “She was four months waitin’.”
“What’s labels?” Amy asked.
“Don’t youse have them down there in the bush?” Daphne asked, only slightly playing down the scorn.
John with his round shiny face gone red reached out and touched the handle of a jug, fawn coloured with a deep brown glaze near the top threatening to outshine John’s eyes.
“The people bring the tops of the tea packets to her and she counts them,” said Peter, taking the responsibility for explanation. “She got us the jug for all Mum saved.”
“She’s a great counter,” John said.
Peter dug him with an elbow.
“She’s got a bloke.”
John beamed around them all, as if this added to the thrill of conquest.
“Mum saves the labels of our tea too,” Amy said. “But she has to post them away.” The silence following might have said here was another reason to escape the backwardness of Diggers Greek.
I will get it over now, Amy thought. “I was wondering, Aunty Daph, if you could put me up for a few days.”
“Yes, sir!” John cried raising an arm. Having failed throughout his schooldays to raise a hand to answer a question in class, he took every opportunity of doing so now to make up for the humiliation of having to remain still and silent in a sea of waving limbs and vibrant, confident voices.
Daphne reached across and slapped his ear. “How many times have you been told to stop that silly habit?” she shouted.
Dudley got up from the table.
Men always walk away, Amy thought. Ted did, Gus does and here is Dudley going. She watched his back pass through the door for he was going into one of the rooms
off the hall, the one furnished as a sitting room. Amy glimpsed it on the way in, overfull of pieces, the edge of a piano nearly touching a table of photographs, window curtains not able to hang freely since they were not clear of the table and brushing an upholstered chair jutting well towards the centre of the room, and a lounge and two matching chairs fitted around the remaining walls, and a cabinet wireless as well. There might have been an illusion of space if the centre of the carpet square had been free of clutter, but there was another table there with a green fringed cloth reaching to the floor and on it a silver vase of artificial poppies, and there was a picture of the same flowers burning a square of colour into the dun coloured wall.
Dudley went there to listen to the wireless, for almost at once there was the sound of crackling and squeaking as if someone had let fireworks off in a box of mice.
Disregarding the slap and with a big smile John shook his head and looked at Amy. “He’s never learned to tune it in.”
Daphne gathered up the pudding plates. “Then go and tune it in for him!”
“As per usual,” said Peter.
Daphne rattled the plates and Amy thought she might be pretending not to hear to avoid rebuking Peter, who was most likely his mother’s favourite.
Amy helped with the washing up. There was hardly any conversation between the two women, and when Daphne had wiped down the linoleum on the tub covers, she went into a room off the hall opposite the sitting room and switched a light on there. Amy followed and when she saw the single iron bed made up with a thin quilt on top and starched pillowslips she felt a beautiful ache to her limbs, an ache to the side of her head, a creeping of the flesh of her body, loosening it against her clothes. It will be heaven lying there, she thought.
“I’ll put a table for Peter to work at in here when he goes to college, and something for his clothes if I don’t get any setbacks between now and then,” Daphne said, turning back the quilt.