by Olga Masters
Amy decided to look for something in her handbag, and seeing the compartment with Lance’s note inside about the furniture she gave it a little pinch for reassurance. I am being silly, she thought. He has not changed towards me at all.
“You do these, Miss Ross!” Lance said, coming out of Victor’s office with a sheaf of letters. “The replies are written on the back. File them with your carbon copy.”
He put a paper weight on them with quite a flourish and darted out.
Amy heard the clang of metal as the drawer of a filing cabinet shot home. “Ouch!” said Miss Armstrong who bruised her fingers. Watching Amy, she had neglected to get them out of the way.
In the days following, Amy hardly glimpsed Lance except to meet him on the front stairs, on her way to the park to eat her lunchtime sandwiches.
“Good morning!” Lance said although it was past midday. He went faster up the stairs and Amy went slower down them.
Lance had given Victor his rise in salary. Tom didn’t think he should have it. Tom’s wife Sadie was talking of sending their eldest girl to boarding school to allow her greater attention to her music. Anything extra the firm could afford would be useful for that.
Lance had felt miserable instead of pleased when Victor, thanking him for the extra pound in his pay packet, said it would take care of the weekly repayments on his furniture. Lance didn’t want to be reminded of Amy’s furniture. He had acted (he told himself) on an impulse, wanting nothing more than to cheer her drab life, and the same went for taking the two of them out to dinner.
That night Allan had been playing a minor role in a school concert. Lance had said he couldn’t be there, he needed to catch up on some work at the office before Victor’s return. There was no risk of the lie reaching Randwick. Sadie and Eileen were not speaking, so neither family encroached upon the private life of the other.
The rift started years earlier when Allan ruined a birthday party for Sadie’s and Tom’s little Jean. Allan swept a knife blade of cream from the top of a sponge cake and aimed it with commendable accuracy at Jean’s forehead.
Jean shrieked and smeared her cheek and new party dress with a handful of the cream. The small guests shrieked too for this was more entertaining than Pin the Tail on the Donkey. Sadie shrieked at Eileen when she failed to chastise Allan, who had whispered to his mother the name Jean called him in reference to his chubby bottom. Eileen with a fat father and two fat brothers felt the humiliation just as deeply.
After the party both women sat by their telephones waiting for an apology from each other. In the end Sadie rang demanding it and Eileen slammed the earpiece so violently into its hook the wall shook, wobbling a picture of the fat father beside it.
After the concert Lance failed to attend, Allan at breakfast next morning bowed mournfully over his plate.
“I’ll be there next time,” Lance said. Inside himself he was saying how glad he felt to be done with all foolishness, in the next minute bringing a blush to Eileen’s cheek with his praise for the crispness of the bacon.
Near the end of the week Amy looked for and found a reason to go downstairs to the factory.
I’ll tell him. Now I’ll tell him. Her brain tapped out the words. Only her tapping heels spoke them.
The top of Lance’s head was visible, bowed between the long cutting-out tables where a hand-operated electric cutter was moving through several thicknesses of fabric. With great concentration, Lance watched the hand of the woman guiding the cutter and gave a little slap of approval to the pile of tunic sleeves she had pushed to one side. He needed to raise his eyes, Amy was so close. She saw them dried of their oil. She plucked a pile of invoices from a spike on a rough little table and ran for the stairs. I hate him, I do, I do. I hate him! So said the soles of her shoes, sluggish on the wood. A great sigh from the presser was in her ears.
That evening over tea in the kitchen, Kathleen broke the silence by asking for money for things from the chemist’s for experiments in the school laboratory.
“That’s ridiculous!” Amy said. “You’re not going to be a chemist!”
“Miss Parks said I could be,” Kathleen answered. “But she wants me to be an English teacher.”
Amy swept her plate to the bench where the washing up was done.
“I’m giving up my job at Lincolns,” Amy said, filling the kettle, the rush of water causing her to raise her voice, the better for her ears to believe it too.
“Good on you, Amy!” Kathleen cried. Amy turned her face in astonishment and Kathleen took the last slice of bread and buttered it with great speed.
Just look at her, Amy thought. Not a care in the world where the next slice is coming from.
“What’s so good about it?” Amy asked, taking things from the table speedily too. “Jobs don’t grow on trees, you know.”
Kathleen chewed and swallowed. “You’re very capable, Amy,” she said with her eyes on the little line John had put up for the dishcloth. Amy took the cloth and the line slapped the wall a couple of times.
“What did he say when you told him?” Kathleen asked.
Amy pointed her chin at the middle of the window and swirled the soap in its wire holder so hard an angry sea of foam swished against the sides of the dish.
“He simply said I was to train Miss Ross to do my job before I go,” she said.
25
“Train Miss Ross to do your job. She’s quite able to handle it!” Lance said to Amy when she gave her fortnight’s notice.
It was, it had to be, the result of the changes in Lance’s life. Allan had started to sing in the Baptist Church Choir. Lance had gone with Eileen to hear him. He had never attended church with Eileen since they were married. He was proud of his son, in his good clothes, his hair done so nicely with just the right amount of hair cream. Eileen with too much scent on was doing all the right things throughout the service. She nudged him when he did not appear to be going to rise with the congregation. He was daydreaming. That was his boy up there, better looking than the others, a bright lad who would take over Lincolns one day. He would join Lance there in what time? Three, four years at the most. Almost tomorrow! My God it was closer than he thought.
Eileen heard his breath go out in a puff, like someone blowing at a dandelion. She looked in his face and got a reassuring slide of his eyes in return. She shut her own on her rouged cheeks to pray on and Lance prayed too. He hardly knew what to say but keeping his eyes squeezed shut he got started. I love that boy up there and if you can help me take good care of him, get him into Lincolns when he’s old enough, I’ll do a few things around the church as Eileen has always wanted, fixing the windows (he opened his eyes to check them and could not see anything wrong although she complained about the way they rattled in windy weather), anything at all, cleaning the grounds with the other men (Eileen did all the gardening at home), I will do anything you ask if that boy will love me back. I think he will. And looking earnestly at the singing group, Lance felt sure Allan quirked an eyebrow of recognition over the top of his music sheet.
Faith of our Far-ar-thers, living still, in spite of dungeon, fire and sword! The words were almost shouted down on the heads of the congregation, some tilted upwards, Lance’s in particular, mesmerized by his son’s open mouth, the skin stretched on his jaws, even his eyes were singing. Faith! Lance felt it wash over him as strong as the sound. By heavens yes, he would have faith!
God had given him a son years before Tom. (Thank You!) Allan would be well installed long before Tom’s boy would be ready (if he ever was) to come into the business. Lance saw the two of them, himself and Allan, talking on their way to work and home, business of course. The boy would learn everything. “This is my son,” he would say to colleagues, proud of him in his suit and tie. He would learn to run the office too. Victor or no Victor, the place (after the war) would be big enough for them all. The war! Please God it would be over before Allan was old enough to go. (There was good reason for praying there!) His boy dying like that cousi
n of little Miss Fowler’s! Up there alive and strong and beautiful. Lance felt the moisture on his face and turned his thoughts to the Fowler girls for distraction.
He did a foolish thing with that furniture and dinner, but he would put it well behind him. With Allan around there would be no indiscretions, no entanglements, he would make sure of that. You never knew with people like the Fowlers. That talk of the young one becoming a doctor could be all ballyhoo. Most likely she would leave school and want a job at Lincolns. From tomorrow he would be a model of discretion, someone a son could be proud of. To think at that dinner he actually thought of Allan and that girl...! Lead me not into temptation (he knew that part of the prayer well enough!).
The congregation was standing. Lance opened his mouth and pushed a finger and thumb into each corner looking at Eileen. She took a handkerchief and wiped at the lipstick trickled there and asked with her eyes if that was right. Lance’s eyes replied yes and he pressed back in the pew to let her pass. He even touched her doughy waist on the way out.
It was nothing short of a miracle the way it happened, Miss Fowler lifting her face to say something when he was on his way to Victor’s office, and Lance hurrying past keeping his eyes on Victor’s door. Not the time and place for conversation thank you all the same, said his back, giving a little shake in its grey suit striped with a deeper grey, the zigzag pattern sending a quiver across Lance’s shoulders like a sudden chill wind across water.
The Misses Ross, Armstrong, Harris and the new junior all saw. A little burning of their cheeks said this would breathe life into the lunch hour, thank heavens only thirty minutes off.
Amy rose and went into Victor’s office. Both men heard the scrape of chair legs and turned surprised, quite hostile eyes, petulance there too. Who does she think she is interrupting this way?
“I’d like to mention to you, Mr Yates, that I am leaving here in two weeks. I’ll want a reference too for my new job.”
She trembled for a long time when she was back at her desk but no one noticed.
I started here with a lie, and ended the same way, Amy thought. But never mind.
26
When Kathleen was a few weeks from her seventeenth birthday she folded her arms across her breasts, flicked her hair from her face as was her habit and told Amy her plans.
They were in the Petersham kitchen. It looked different, so did Amy, and Amy, throwing her hands up to press her cheeks, kept her eyes from Kathleen, too afraid to face the difference there.
“But I bought you a single bed!” she cried, foolishly she knew, but it was the first thing to fly into her mind.
The incident of the single bed had happened years earlier in the week that Amy gave Lance Yates her notice.
Amy and Kathleen were in bed, Kathleen taller and a little heavier than Amy, her well-shaped bust straining her old nightdress, the strain of their relationship since the dinner with Lance causing each to jerk away when flesh touched flesh.
“When you get your new job, Amy, I’d like a bed of my own,” Kathleen said quite amiably. “I’ve already got my pillow.”
Daphne had given her a spare pillow she had as soon as she saw the pillowcase stuffed with a sheet that Kathleen used for several weeks after she came to Sydney.
Amy’s body turned with such a violent movement the bedclothes were pulled from Kathleen, who pulled them back just as violently.
“See what I mean?” she cried.
“See what you mean!” Amy shouted the first part of the sentence, the last part a squeak for there was a cough from one of the Misses Wheatley above the ceiling.
“And that’s another thing,” Kathleen said, swooping foward, rearranging the bedclothes on them both, then sliding carefully back onto her pillow to keep them in place. “Those Wheatley women should be asked to leave.”
“Those Wheatley women, I’ll have you know, keep a roof over our heads!”
There was another cough from overhead and Kathleen answered with a loud artificial cough of her own, which caused Amy to say “Shush, shush!” in a hoarse whisper.
“Calm yourself down, Amy,” Kathleen said. “I only want what’s best for you.”
“You want what’s best for me. I like that!” All I can do, Amy thought, is repeat her words. I haven’t any conversation of my own any more.
Kathleen was back on her pillow, very calm. “So far you’ve done a very good thing getting away from that Lincoln man.”
Amy was about to shriek: “So I’ve done a very good thing, have I?” then stopped herself. She crunched the blankets under her chin, while Kathleen smoothed the sheet back to free her own.
“The man is married, and would use you for his own ends. I see that very plainly.” Kathleen was still using her amiable, even pleasant tone.
“I can’t stand the greasy-skinned thing, I’m always telling you!”
“People in love always say that.”
“In love! What would you know about it?”
There was a small silence before Kathleen answered. “There is this boy I like.”
Amy listened. Kathleen’s voice was a kind she had never heard before. She thought of rain falling on a tree, sending the leaves brushing against each other making a whispery sound, a light and slithery noise, so gentle it was hardly audible. Hardly a noise at all, a precious sound, thin but strong, only ears trained hard would hear the vibrancy. Only the whispering, rustling noise telling of the rain, so light you would not know it was falling at all sheltered by the tree.
“We walk home from school together. Tina goes ahead.”
“Very obliging of her!” Amy made a show of wanting sleep, turning over to be ready for it.
What was this boy like? A succession of boys’ faces raced before Amy’s shut eyes, pasty, pimply pale, round eyes that said nothing, mouths falling open. Peter’s face came up after a while, smooth and golden, the lips raised just enough to show the tips of his white teeth, his blue eyes crinkled like water with the sun and a breeze teasing it.
Amy opened her eyes. “How long have you known this boy?”
“Since Monday.”
Amy pushed her body deeper into the bed, wriggled once and was still. In a moment Kathleen slipped from her side and taking her pillow wrapped in her arms went to stand by the window.
“You’ll freeze to death!” Amy cried. Kathleen’s shape was in silhouette against the street light. The pillow was held so that a bulge of it rested on Kathleen’s stomach.
“Come back to bed!” Amy shouted, mainly to cover the fear in her voice, but she doubted Kathleen would detect it, there with a cheek laid on the pillow end.
Amy climbed from the bed and grabbing a coat from a chairback laid it across Kathleen’s shoulders. Her arms stayed along the shoulders.
Kathleen laid her face on Amy’s neck and, when the coat fell to the floor, still wrapped in the embrace they went back to bed.
27
Amy got a job in materials at Anthony Horderns.
She honoured her promise to Kathleen, and taking advantage of a discount for employees bought a single bed and mattress from her first pay. Kathleen, almost hysterical with joy, helped her set it up in the small room opposite the one she shared with Amy, closed until now. Kathleen dragged her desk in too and Amy noticed she did not treat it as reverently as she had when they carried it home from the shop.
“I wonder is that shop still there with the same man and woman,” Amy murmured.
Kathleen, dumping books in careless fashion on the desk top, seemed not to have heard. She was anxious to make up the bed and when she smoothed the blanket out, the one they got while Amy was at Lincolns, she thanked Amy yet again for allowing her to have it.
“Old Greasy Guts was a bit handy at times, wasn’t he?
“You know what I think I’ll do, Amy? I’ll ask Tina to show me how to crochet and I’ll make a cover, in a pale colour like green so that the blanket will show through it.” She stood back, hands on hips, head to one side.
“Ha
ve you homework for Monday?” Amy asked. The books on the desk had an abandoned air and Amy went and made them neat.
“Oh, I’ll waltz through that old exam, never fear, Amy dear!”
“And the old exam after that, the one for your Leaving Certificate?”
“I may as well tell you,” Kathleen said, her eyes lingering on the bed, admiring the pillow in a freshly laundered slip, the corners stiff and shining with starch, looking sharp enough to cut.
“And I’ll crochet a sham for the pillow as well, Amy!” And Kathleen in her delight jumped backwards to sit on her desk and swing her legs vigorously over the edge.
Amy, wanting to sit down but not prepared to use the bed, waited, her folded arms squashing her breasts.
“I’m leaving after the Inter, Amy. That’s fair warning.”
Amy turned to the bed and turned the pillow to its other side, needing to reverse it at once, for on that side it exposed one of Amy’s beautiful little darns on the slip.
“You’re staying at school. Of course you are!”
“Of course I’m not, Amy! Now be a sensible girl and listen to reason.”
“Only two more years is reason enough to stay on!”
Kathleen waggled her head, but her hair did not swing with the vibrancy of the old days. It was grown-up hair now, cut below her ears. Kathleen put her hands to it and turned the ends under in the pageboy style not allowed for schooldays. She looked for a mirror, but the little cane dressing-table was in the other room.
“I need to get a mirror and something to hang my clothes in,” she said, frowning at the space along the walls.
Amy left for the kitchen. Now ride this out with calmness, she told herself. She has no intention of leaving school! To help stifle her fears she swung chairs onto the table and caught up the broom to give the floor its thorough weekly sweep. I will think about my job, she decided, with a lift in spirits.