Amy's Children

by Olga Masters

  “Mind you keep that off the floor,” Daphne said sharply, and Patricia went to the couch and lay there arranging the quilt fussily over herself, as if she were both nurse and patient. Daphne took oatmeal from the food safe and began to mix it for porridge. Amy, now securing the pockets on the gown, felt her stomach hollow suddenly and her mouth fill with saliva. I will get sick of a morning soon, the same as with the others, Amy thought, in sudden panic that she was already sick. If I’m still sick at work whatever will happen? She looked at the solid figure of Daphne to allay her fears.

  Patricia snuggled under the quilt. “I’ll get material for a dressing gown with my first pay,” she said.

  Daphne gave a little snort of laughter. “What next is coming out of that pay, I wonder! You’ve already bought Farmers and Anthony Horderns out!”

  I don’t know what job she has, or where it is. What a mother I turned out to be, Amy thought. She laid down the scissors and put her hands to her face, pushing the flesh up to make two glittering blue slits of her eyes.

  “If you feel like layin’ down, go off and I’ll finish that,” Daphne said.

  Patricia shot up from the couch and fixed her gaze on Amy, who with a display of control began to hand stitch the end of the braid into place. Patricia lay down again.

  “Off you go miss, make your bed and when you are done give that John a yell. He’d lay there forever if you let him. Things’ll be different when he’s married to that one.” She sat with her knees wide. “I’ll say they’ll be different.”

  “You’ll miss him when he’s out of the house,” Amy said, looking down on her needle, knowing there were added words on Daphne’s face, a little afraid of reading them.

  Daphne got up and flung a cloth on the table and took spoons from the dresser drawer and set them with little thuds in four places.

  “Nothing for me, Aunty Daph,” Amy said. “I’ll get back.”

  “John might take you,” Daphne said. “Asking Madam first, of course.”

  “No, I’ll walk and get the milk on the way.”

  “Well, walkin’s good for you.” Daphne gave the porridge its last hard, rapid stir.

  Amy walked rapidly too towards home. It’s true then, she thought, really true. I have to start to believe it.

  39

  When Amy reached the Petersham house Kathleen was sprawled by the kitchen table, her chin close to Amy’s note as if it were written in a foreign language and required deep concentration to interpret it.

  Amy dumped the bottle of milk beside it. “I went to Coxes and put some trimming on Daphne’s grey dressing gown, and half promised to make one for Patricia and got all their news.”

  Kathleen pulled a face like a child anticipating a dose of disagreeable medicine.

  “Patricia has a job but I came away without finding out what it was.” Amy sat pulling her arms out of her coat and shrugging it off to rest it on the chair back. She spread her legs out and Kathleen looked on with distaste.

  “You’re getting very slovenly Amy,” she said, sitting erect and crossing her knees and draping an arm over her chair back, letting a hand trail elegantly from her wrist. She inspected her nails one by one.

  “You haven’t heard the rest of my news,” Amy said, and Kathleen swung her hand back and forth as if to wave away whatever was coming.

  Amy went to the dresser for a packet of cereal and shook out a plateful and reached for the milk. “I need this food,” she said, looking at Kathleen with round eyes and full round cheeks. “I’m having a baby.”

  “Oh, you’re not!” Kathleen said and looked at her nails again. “Don’t put the cornflakes away. I’ll get some in a minute.” She disposed of her elegant pose and raised a knee to sit her chin on it.

  “God, life’s a bore, isn’t it?”

  “Quite the opposite I think,” Amy said, dumping her plate in the washing-up dish. “Will you have tea and toast if I make it?”

  “If you want it. Or crave for it. Certainly.”

  “No craving. Just necessary nourishment.”

  “God Amy, you’re a fool,” Kathleen said.

  Amy kept her back turned, filling the kettle, lighting the gas, getting out the toaster Lance had bought them from a factory beginning to manufacture peacetime goods again. She was quite a while turning round. When she did tears were pouring down her face.

  Kathleen got to her feet, astonished. “You are then? You’re not!”

  Amy pulled out a chair with her foot to sit and hold her face. Tears ran through her fingers. “Oh, I can’t stop crying!” She reached for an apron hanging from a hook to mop her face.

  “I cried with all of you!” Amy sobbed. “For days and days.”

  “That’s something to look forward to,” Kathleen said, sitting again, sprawling her legs, turning her toes in. “My God, Amy, you’re selfish!”

  Amy swallowed and held her throat and opened her eyes very wide, the whites showing up the reddening rims.

  “You heard me! Selfish!” Kathleen stood, then sat with the legs of the chair tearing the floor. “Do you realize what this will do to Allan and me?”

  Amy’s face said she had given no thought to this.

  “You are the most totally selfish person I know!” Kathleen shouted, on her feet again the better to raise her hands to tick off the fingers of one with the forefinger of the other. “There’s his wife, there’s him, for what he’s worth, there’s Allan, there’s me, just for a start!

  “There’s Patricia dumped on Aunty Daph!” Kathleen looked back for her chair to avoid missing the seat and this time sat erect with her feet together like a schoolteacher dealing with an errant pupil.

  “Which reminds me, since you dumped us all, who will you dump this one on?”

  Amy gave her head a little tired shake as if she had not yet reached this point in her planning.

  “You’re probably not pregnant at all, you know! You want to be to break up his home and break up Allan and me, you’re imagining it! Amy you’re a harlot! A scheming harlot!”

  The kettle whistled and they both allowed it to go on, looking at it as if they expected it to shriek itself out if they waited long enough. In the end Kathleen snatched up the teapot, and clicking the little metal lid open, poured in the stream of smoking water.

  “After I’ve had this I’m going to Tina’s and we’ll walk to Hyde Park. The spruikers there, mad as they are, make more sense than any conversation here with you!”

  “I thought you’d be going somewhere with Allan,” Amy said.

  “Oh, just listen to her! ‘Going somewhere with Allan.’ My shame is so great I’ll never face him again!”

  She went swiftly to her room, banging the door behind her, and went close to the mirror door, her chin nearly touching the glass while she searched for flaws in her complexion, and with her fingers plucked at stray hairs disturbing the line of her eyebrows.

  “I’m sick of the creep anyway,” she said to her reflection.

  40

  It was nearly three months before Lance was told.

  Amy was not sick, her figure was slow to change. She decided to enjoy the few outings they had together.

  Kathleen was not seeing Allan. She wrote and told him it was better that they part.

  “Under circumstances beyond my control,” she wrote with relish and repeated to herself many times, even after the letter was posted.

  Allan rushed with it to Lance, alone at the time in Victor’s office.

  “She doesn’t mean it! She can’t!” Allan cried. His words seemed to come from his eyes. They were larger than his mouth and growing wider with the plea in them for Lance not to believe it either. Lance took the letter and going to the partition he rapped on the glass, to bring about the instant lowering of girls’ heads and the rattling of machines like a burst of gunfire.

  That afternoon Lance took Allan to a jeweller he knew personally in King Street, and although the sign said “Quota Sold for Today”, Lance bought Allan a wristwatch.
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br />   On the way home to Randwick in the car, Lance noticed that Allan allowed his suit cuff to ride back so that the watch was not lost to sight. It seemed the face winked at Lance every time he glanced down at Allan’s hand lying on his knee. He needed to curb an urge to wink back.

  Nearing home Allan broke a long silence. “I’ll have to go and see her, Dad,” and Lance caught another wink as Allan gripped his kneecap.

  Lance was very calm at the wheel. “Bide your time, son,” he said as he changed gears.

  But his calmness had the effect of churning panic inside Allan’s chest. Watch or no watch, he thought, suddenly allowing his cuff to cover it, I’ll go and see her at lunch time tomorrow.

  Joe Miller was new at Horderns and worked on window displays. He had very black hair and a white skin which did not make him look effeminate as you might expect. He was a little overweight but tall enough to carry the extra flesh, and he had reddish lips like a girl’s. He smiled a lot, showing his white, even teeth. He wore white shirts and a dark suit and Kathleen, describing him to Patricia, said he looked like a cross between a magpie and a penguin.

  “But he’s absolutely gorgeous!” Kathleen said. “When he’s in the window people stop and stare thinking he’s the model. Truly!”

  Patricia got a job in a corner grocer’s store in Annandale where Daphne had dealt since she and Dudley moved into Wattle Street before John was born. Clyde and Maude Campbell were about to put a card in the window bearing the words “Junior Wanted” when Daphne came in with Patricia for the dozen wooden clothes pegs she’d been promised when the first postwar supply was delivered.

  Maude said: “I reckon we could give her a go,” then yelled: “Clyde,” in such a loud voice Patricia jumped and went very red and held onto the edge of the counter, in sudden terror that her behaviour might put an end to her chance of employment.

  Clyde came out in the white calico apron Daphne had never seen him without in twenty years, the only change in his long, sad face a curiosity bringing a small spark to his dull brown eyes when he rested them briefly on Patricia.

  “This here is Daphne’s niece,” Maude said, measuring sugar into a dozen brown paper bags set upright on the counter. There was no need to stop work she considered, her round red arms wobbling flesh as she shovelled sugar into the bags then slapped them on the scales.

  “If she’s honest and a good worker like the rest of the family she’ll do. Anyway we’ll give her a go.” She did not look at Clyde for confirmation or denial and Patricia did not dare to. There was no change in his expression anyway as he pulled the filled bags to the opposite end of the counter and folded the tops down, applying a dab of glue with a little brush, not allowing so much as a grain of sugar to escape. Watching, Patricia forgot her nervousness. She thought if she were doing a job like that she would ask for nothing more in the world.

  Kathleen came straight from work the next Saturday and Patricia closed her bedroom door on the two of them. In their exuberance, Kathleen with Joe Miller and Patricia with her job, they leapt one on either end of the bed, the springs shrieking loudly enough to cause Daphne to call from the kitchen: “Steady there! There’s no money box I can empty for a new bed, thank you very much!”

  “The mood’s been black all the week!” Patricia whispered, rolling her eyes towards the ceiling, but rolling Daphne out of the way too to get to the more important topic of Joe Miller replacing Allan Yates in Kathleen’s affections.

  Kathleen flung a hand across her face, which was tipped over the side of the bed, as if Allan Yates were a troublesome fly to be brushed off before it had a chance to settle.

  As he’d intended, Allan reached Anthony Horderns in time for lunch, and just in time to see Kathleen come out of the big wood and glass doors leading to the street hand in hand with Joe Miller.

  His first impulse when he saw Kathleen and Joe Miller together was to plunge through the pedestrians on the footpath and rush between them. But he stopped and allowed himself to be bumped and jostled, miraculously keeping his balance with heels and chin raised until the two dark heads bobbed out of sight. Then he turned to break into a half run, jostling and bumping in his turn, sometimes breaking through the joined hands of a mother and young child, the mother indignantly calling after him and others picking up her protesting cry.

  “Watch it Buster!” cried an old man, shaky on his legs, when Allan plunged into a thick knot of people pressing towards a stationary tram. Allan saw the tram was marked Railway and stood at the back of the crowd panting and close to tears, looking away as the heads turned to stare at him. In his seat he forgot Kathleen for a moment, in his enormous relief at finding he had enough money in his pocket for the fare.

  He caught another tram at Railway Square bound for the eastern suburbs. He was crying when he went into the kitchen and found his mother shelling peas and reading the old newspaper they were wrapped in.

  “Did you lose your watch?” she cried, getting to her feet with some difficulty, for she was growing stouter and her stomach was fairly well wedged under the table.

  Allan, shaking his head, was blubbering freely now, as he had done as a small boy reaching the shelter of the house after losing a fight in the neighbouring backyard. He went straight to his room.

  On her way to the telephone Eileen heard the rattle of bed springs and a great sobbing sniffle, as much of relief as sorrow.

  Lance was very calm at the other end of the telephone.

  “Leave him be,” he said. “It’s his first bout of puppy love. He’ll meet another girl.”

  Eileen trotted towards the kitchen in a glow of love. She had foolishly expected Lance to order Allan back to work at once. She pictured him at the telephone (she knew he was in the factory by the whirr of machines and thud of the presser), businesslike, brisk and smart in his nice grey suit. A man of authority. In control. She felt a little shivery warmth that he was in control of her too. As he said, the silly girl was a passing phase. Here was a chance to get the boy back into the church choir. The minister, Reverend West, was constantly asking for him to join the new youth fellowship. Eileen thought Reverend West masculine and authoritative, but he was quite namby-pamby beside Lance. She dismissed forever a small and shameful dream of Mr West kissing her, his quirking mouth serious for the occasion. She had always been intrigued by the way his lips darted back, making a dent in his cheek before he actually parted them to smile. Behave yourself from now on, she told herself sternly, getting up her brightest smile to sneak open Allan’s door. He was on his back reading a comic and slid his large, blotched face past the cover to stare at her.

  “Your father said you’re not to worry about a thing!” she said.

  “That traitor!” Allan cried, and flinging the comic from him he swung over and buried his face in the pillow.

  41

  Although Kathleen had known Joe Miller for less than two weeks, it took a good part of the Saturday afternoon to explain his charms, real and imaginary, to Patricia.

  Patricia, however, refused to be totally humbled in her role as the younger sister with the more menial job. There were gems to be offered from her first week as a wage earner and she was determined to offer them.

  She had won praise from Mrs Campbell for her pyramid arrangement of display packets of tea, biscuits and dried fruits in the shop window, none of which were available yet from the shelves inside. Wartime restrictions had not been lifted, and Australia was exporting large quantities of goods to Britain, suffering more acutely the aftermath of war.

  Daphne had not been a responsive audience when Patricia rushed home to tell her.

  “Dud would have given his two eyes for a helpin’ of rice custard! But where does all the damn rice go? Into the hollow innards of them Poms. We died for them in the war and now we starve for them in the peace!”

  Patricia explained that the idea was to show customers what the shop would be selling when there was no more rationing, introducing the remark with “Mrs Campbell said”, which had fr
eely punctuated all her speech since she started her job.

  “Just as well them two came from Scotland and not further down,” Daphne said, scorning the use of the word England as she did its inhabitants. “Else you wouldn’t be workin’ for them, make no mistake about that!”

  Patricia at this stage, unable to imagine an existence anywhere but behind Campbell’s counter, vowed to keep from Daphne any hint of liaison with England or the English.

  She jerked herself up now on her bed and wrapped her arms tightly around her knees, biting them in her agitation.

  “If I meet a boy I like I’ll have to ask him straight away if his grandmother comes from England.

  “If she does I’ll be sunk.” She looked around the room, the first of her own, as if to assure herself it had not been swept away from her. Daphne had given her a chest of drawers from her own room and promised a cupboard John had made for brooms and dust pans, which could be spared from the side veranda and was seldom if ever used as John had intended.

  “Madam has her eyes on it for her linen, but she’s got another think comin’,” Daphne had said. “We’ll get it cleaned up nice and in there with your dresses hangin’ up before them weddin’ bells start to peal.”

  Patricia’s eyes rested on the corner where it would go and her mind dreamed up dresses she was most unlikely to own filling it.

  “You know about the new wardrobe I’m getting?” Patricia addressed Kathleen’s stomach, since her head was hanging over the side of the bed, her feet tapping the floor on one side and her hair sweeping it on the other.

  “There will be times in my life,” Kathleen said, “when I’ll pine over Allan and what might have been.”

  Patricia did not ask what might have been but her silence did.

  “A beautiful home, a life of leisure, tons of clothes, my own car, a maid probably.” Her hair whooshed back and forth and her heels clicked together in time with her words.