by Olga Masters
She was glad to have the counter to herself, wartime rationing was still in force and one salesgirl was considered enough for the section. The sharp, slightly acid smell of the new materials when the paper was torn from them was pleasing to Amy and had the effect of taking the edge off the strangeness she felt in new surroundings.
She arranged the bolts of material to give the illusion of full shelves and stood some of the more brightly patterned rolls on their ends on the counter, loosening the last few folds to have them fall in a drape as if a provocative knee was thrust out behind.
The floorwalker saw and bowed towards it. He was always bowing. He bowed to customers and to heads of the company visiting the floor, though never to the staff below him, and had Amy known it, the honour of having her work bowed to was great indeed. He was very pale of eye with a skin not unlike a piece of creased unbleached calico. The top of his head was quite bald, and he attempted to disguise this by parting his hair low on one side and spreading the strands across to the other. Amy was intrigued by this and had to check her stare. Why did he do it, she wondered. It only made his baldness more of a baldness. Hey there, she said to herself, making a neat pile of the pattern books for customers to choose styles, I’m back to finding odd things about faces! Now there’s a good sign.
But bending down to make her personal things neat on the shelf under the counter, there was the intrusion of Lance’s face. His yellowy eyes were soft the way she saw them at Lincolns when they trailed with tender amusement over her comb and soap and little mirror under the counter there.
Briskly she began rerolling a bolt of cream flannelette for babies’ layettes. I know what I’ll do, she decided, I’ll measure up all the short rolls and mark them so that I’ll know how much is there when a customer asks, and I won’t waste time on measuring.
The floorwalker, Mr Benson, came up and watched her write twelve yards and four inches in the tiniest figures in the world on a selvedge.
“Only on the shorter rolls to save disappointment if the customer wants more,” Amy explained, thinking perhaps she should have asked permission first.
Mr Benson bowed at the figures then walked off thinking he hadn’t approved of married women working, but in the case of Mrs Fowler she was a credit to the floor.
In fact Amy, to improve her chances of employment, had said Ted was missing in the war.
“He could be though,” Kathleen said. “You could be telling the truth, Amy.”
Witnessing the bullying of women in Tina’s home by Tina’s father and the ill humour of her Uncle Dudley, Kathleen decided she was better off without a father. She often thought fondly of Gus though and wondered if he missed her, since she thought of herself as his favourite. Had he transferred all his affection to Patricia and Lebby?
Gus is probably one of the few decent men in the world, Kathleen thought, reflecting on the few males of her acquaintance. She decided John was not too bad except for his habit of ignoring her when Helen was around. Against such competition, old Greasy Guts did not fare all that badly.
Men, men, oh, mysterious men! she sang to herself, thinking perhaps she could be a songwriter and make that the opening line, then giving the thought away in the distraction of a little pleasing shudder that ran from her knees to her neck.
Amy finished sweeping and made a clatter putting the furniture back in place, and thought about going to Coxes before tea. Daphne would support her on the subject of Kathleen staying at school.
“Kathleen!” she called. “I need another pair of hands out here!” There was no reply and Amy, now in the front room dusting around the windows, switched her thoughts to the curtains she could now buy from furnishings in the store, cheap because of the discount, and felt so cheered she did not call Kathleen again, but went to the back fence for some jonquils that had sprung up there. She put them in her spare jug on the mantlepiece, her head cocked to one side in admiration as she backed out the door.
“Kathleen!” she called along the silent hall. “We’ll go to Aunty Daph’s. She’ll want to hear about my new job!” That was clever of me, she thought.
She went rapidly to look into Kathleen’s room. Her clothes, the skirt that was Amy’s, the first blouse and jumper she had for school and her bloomers and singlet were piled on the desk.
Kathleen was in bed, one naked shoulder lifted, one naked arm, cream like the creamy blanket lying across it, the points of the pillowcase making slits in her dark hair. Her eyes were closed, her chin was pointed upwards.
Amy, disbelieving, pulled the blanket back to see that all of Kathleen’s body was naked between the sheets. She covered her quickly, stepping back red-faced, anger covering her fright.
“That’s the silliest sight I’ve ever seen!”
Kathleen kept her eyes closed. “The human body should never be called silly, Amy.”
“What on earth possessed you?—Oh you are too silly!” And Amy, greatly agitated, shook out Kathleen’s bloomers and spread them on the chair back turned to a careless angle at the desk. She then smoothed out Kathleen’s other clothes and laid them there too. Kathleen watched, surprise in her eyes, when the desk was bare.
She raised herself and Amy blushed deeper at Kathleen’s breasts jumping about on the edge of the sheet.
Amy tucked the chair under the desk, lips pressed together in her bowed pink face.
“We’ll go to see Aunty Daph. But you have to get dressed first.”
Kathleen flopped back on the pillow and raised both arms above her head. “Oh, Amy, Amy! I’m so happy!” The words whispered their way through her full throat.
“With your new bed?” asked Amy.
“No. With Jim.”
28
Daphne was no help in persuading Kathleen to stay at school.
Her face closed like a door on a room that gave little away even with the door partly open.
Amy said that Miss Parks, Kathleen’s teacher, would like Kathleen to become a teacher too.
Amy watched Daphne’s eyes fall to her lap and her mouth go in at the corners and the smudge of dark hair on her upper lip go darker.
It’s Peter and because he was a teacher, Amy thought, wanting to put her arms around Daphne for comfort but afraid to bring on tears, or worse still, a rebuff.
“I don’t know about teaching for a girl,” Daphne said, jerking her body on her chair in a way Amy recognized as ridding herself, however temporarily, of her grief. I’m forgetting Peter, Amy thought. She never will.
Another jerk took her to the stove and the kettle, and encouraged, Amy tried again.
“This Miss Parks said Kathleen could be a teacher.
“If she leaves school she will start thinking about boys and get married too young.”
Daphne prized open the lid of the biscuit tin and up rose a sweet smell of vanilla and butter. She still makes those biscuits Peter loved, Amy thought, pleased.
“I reckon she’s thinkin’ of them without leavin’ school,” Daphne said with a sideways cock of her head.
“She’s in there lookin’ at Helen’s glory box.”
At the end of the school year Kathleen came home with her case bulging with her used exercise books and a linen bag she had made for her library books bulging with more. She had her Intermediate Certificate in its envelope between two fingers.
Amy was already home from work and peeling potatoes, for Kathleen had spent the past couple of hours with Tina at her father’s fruitshop, where Tina was now employed, partly as punishment for failing the examination, but mainly to save her father paying wages.
Amy heard the heavy thud of Kathleen’s load as it hit her bedroom floor, and when she came to the kitchen she slipped the envelope behind the tea caddy, and brushed her hands one against the other, then flung herself down on a kitchen chair.
For a little while she appeared to hold a dream trapped to her face, looking past Amy’s profile to the window over the sink. A potato jerked about in Amy’s hand, refusing to be steady, the jerking knif
e close to cutting her. She did nick her palm for Kathleen jumped to her feet.
“Good on you, Amy!” she cried. “What’s for tea?”
Kathleen went to work with Amy at Anthony Horderns in the book department. She squealed with joy when Amy told her her applications had been successful and she could start the following Monday.
She was passionately devoted to her job, smart and pretty in her navy blue dress buttoned from neck to hem and with a detachable white organdie collar. She washed her collars every second night and ironed them, with Amy admonishing her for adding to the electricity bill. But Kathleen paid ten shillings a week board, and Amy, who undertook the job of packing away Kathleen’s school uniforms and books so that she was never given a glimpse of them, told her conscience life was much easier now.
Kathleen disposed of Jim a few months after she started work.
While they were both at school they were hardly able to afford any outings, even something as simple and cheap as a ferry ride to Manly. Once Amy asked Jim to tea at Petersham on a Sunday night, and one Saturday afternoon Kathleen and Jim were taken for a drive to Penrith with John and Helen in John’s truck, a tight squeeze which added to their fun. John had to pay for their milk shakes after they watched a soccer game in a park. Kathleen longed for the time when she and Jim had pay packets of their own.
Kathleen was the first to get one, two weeks before Jim started as a clerk with the railways. Bursting with generosity she slipped four shillings into his hand before they set out for the Parramatta Roxy. Jim as a railway employee travelled free and Kathleen rushed forward to buy her own ticket, wanting to make the treat complete for him.
“We’ll do this again soon. My shout,” Jim said on their way home along Crystal Street, so tightly wrapped in each other’s arms they fell over each other’s feet, laughing so much that people stared, thinking they were drunk.
But when it was Jim’s turn to pay he walked with his hands in his overcoat pockets and his hat tipped forward to nearly cover his eyes, and if Kathleen hadn’t put an arm inside his she would have been left several paces behind.
Turning back her bed and shivering, partly with cold but mostly with disappointment, Kathleen channelled her anger towards Jim’s mother. He gave her his pay packet unopened and she gave him back what she called his pocket money. He had brought her into Anthony Horderns to introduce her to Kathleen there. She was pale complexioned, wearing a close-fitting black felt hat that seemed to shrink her face. Kathleen, who like Amy thought about faces, was reminded of a cup with features drawn on it. The eyes were dark like Jim’s, and darting from Kathleen’s display of children’s books to her organdie collar and back to the bare counter, their expression did not change.
“Do you read a lot, Miss Fowler?” she asked, frowning and shrinking her face even more. Kathleen was sure it would be considered sinful to admit she did.
The eyes that told nothing swept the floor to take in all the departments on show. Kathleen was pretty sure she was looking for Amy.
“Or do you sew like your mother?” Jim reddened and turned his body, pressed to the counter, from his waist, ashamed of having informed his mother of the domestic habits of the Fowler household. Kathleen liked him for this, but when she tried to thank him with her eyes he turned away further. In her disappointment, she was then unable to answer his mother, added to which was her confusion at hearing Amy referred to as her mother, since she still thought of her as a sister after years without her, and Amy’s years at Lincolns feigning the sibling relationship.
Jim walked behind his mother on the way out, sheltered deep in his overcoat. But he turned his face as they were about to disappear and mouthed goodbye. Kathleen, happier now and serving a customer with a thirteen-year-old daughter with a copy of Little Women, began to look forward to their next night out at the pictures. It will be lovely like it was before, Kathleen thought, her fingers smoothing the brown paper lovingly around the book, shutting away the title and understanding the sorrow in the girl’s eyes, as if there was a danger of losing it forever. But the mother allowed her to carry it off hugging it to her little hard chest, and old Mr Benson bowed between the book and Kathleen, who had used string sparingly, judging the right amount needed, and making a beautiful little loop with her fine long fingers. Some staff who had been there much longer than little Miss Fowler would have cut off enough to go twice around the parcel. Tch, tch.
In bed Kathleen tried to think of the good parts of the evening, but there were none. Jim had crouched in his seat at interval, and Kathleen’s throat had ached for the potato crisps rustled by others around them. The only good thing she could remember at all about him was that goodbye he mouthed to her behind his mother’s back on their way out of Anthony Horderns.
It had seemed a conspiracy, a secret message of love between the two of them. She sat up sharply in bed and saw it differently. He would love her only behind his mother’s back, and soon most likely not even then. She turned her pillow over and cried into it for a little while, then scrubbed her face dry with the edge of the sheet and sat up again.
She mouthed goodbye to the wall opposite, then sliding deeply under the covers she slept soundly until morning.
29
For a long time afterwards Kathleen showed no interest in boys.
“Sometimes I wish I could change places with you Amy!” she said. “Go into materials!”
“Whyever?” Amy asked.
“So’s I wouldn’t have to serve M-E-N,” she spelled the word. It seemed less distasteful that way.
Away from their counters they were seldom apart.
“Let’s save on lights and I’ll read in your bed!” Kathleen said once and fell asleep with the cover of the book pressed into her cheek. Amy stroked the mark away and curled up on her small portion of the bed, careful not to disturb her, and fell asleep crying a little with love.
Kathleen began to call Amy her Siamese twin. They packed their lunch together at the kitchen table and ate it together at midday; sometimes if the day was fine they walked up George Street to the park Amy used to cross to go to work at Lincolns when she lived with the Coxes. They looked at shop windows but never bought anything. Because of the discount for Anthony Horderns’ staff they bought everything there. Ah-Ha, Kathleen called it because of the initials A.H.
“Ah-Ha!” she would greet Amy when they met to go home together, and “Ah-Ha!” she would say when she had an excuse to pass Amy’s counter. No one within earshot took any notice.
“Never in a million years would they wake up to anything as simple as that!” Kathleen said of the staff.
“Without you Amy, life would be as dull as ditch water. Let’s work all the weekend in the garden, shall we S.T.?”
Amy was surprised, since Kathleen liked to get away from the house at weekends, occasionally going straight to a movie matinee after work on Saturday, or with Amy to the Coxes on Sunday.
There was the chance then of an outing with John and Helen, although Daphne expected to have a turn now and again, and Mrs Cousins as well, and Helen’s young brother was ready to set up a whine if he was left out.
Since the one seat accommodated four at a squeeze, there was usually an uncomfortable start, with John at the wheel and Helen beside him, and the others standing about trying to look as if they didn’t care one way or another.
It was usually Daphne and Amy who stayed behind, glad if Mrs Cousins went. She was inclined to follow them into the Coxes’ house, compensating herself for the missed ride by gloating over the coming nuptials, not attempting to hide her triumph that her Helen was getting a good hardworking man and Amy had none.
On the road John and Helen were triumphant too. Helen liked to travel with her hand between John’s thighs, unacceptable behaviour if Mrs Cousins was looking on. John had to make a show of cheerfulness, as if he actually liked having Mrs Cousins there. But privately he was resolving to let her know once he and Helen were married that his mother-in-law would need to find another place
for her great, fat arse.
Amy was doubtful that Kathleen would keep her promise to spend her free time working in the garden but she did, although there was an unusual start. She came out of her room, after shutting herself in there when they had finished their midday sandwich, wearing a new bathing costume. Amy was almost as surprised as when she’d found her in bed naked. The costume was fuschia coloured and Kathleen turned around at once to show her back naked to the waist. She put her hand to her back to finger the start of a shoulder strap. “One of Ah-Ha’s best efforts, wouldn’t you say, Amy?” She lowered her chin and eyes to look at her breasts running into the rich cloth. She pulled a piece with thumb and forefinger and it returned to its place with a little caressing slap. She touched the space between her breasts stroking at the fine stitching there, telling Amy to love them.
She put a foot on a kitchen chair, and her hands one on top of the other on a knee. Amy saw the dark shadow between her legs and sat herself abruptly on another chair. Her eyes willed the legs to close.
“I thought we were gardening,” Amy said, gathering up their cups and banging the breadboard sharply on the table to free it of crumbs.
“We are!” Kathleen cried and ran to the back. Amy heard the clang of spade and hoe taken from the corner of the lavatory, and emerged to find Kathleen hoeing with great energy between the rows of young spinach. Amy checked the neighbouring fences for faces.
“You’ll get it dirty! Please go and change!”
Kathleen stepped a pace backwards, stretching her body as if it were elastic, laughing as she hoed solidly. “Oh, I’m getting a suntan S.T.! Ready for the beach, you foolish old thing!”
Amy looked down at her own clothes, an apron such as May or Daphne would wear over an old mauve linen dress she often threatened to make into dusters.
“Go and put yours on!” Kathleen said, and flung the hoe from her and stretched full length on the grass under the clothesline, face downwards.