by Olga Masters
“Now I don’t have to ask Mrs Campbell can I go early on Friday night for a gander!”
“You certainly don’t.” Kathleen stood and turned her back in the direction of Joe.
“I’d like a look,” Patricia said with a trace of wistfulness.
“Go ahead while I take a swim.” Kathleen began easing her shorts down over her hips, bringing sparks to the eyes of the Greek men. “Look out for a lump of lard, but make haste before it melts and there’s nothing left but a straw hat.” She folded her shorts with great care, no tremor in her long fine hands among the folds. “He’s wearing, I’ll have you know, his school hat! To let everyone know he went to a posh school. Not a trace of a suntan.
“I’d be humiliated beyond words to set foot on a beach without a suntan!”
“Was he all by himself?” Patricia asked, not entirely innocent.
Kathleen ran fast towards the water and Patricia following did not see her face.
“He may have been, or he may not have been!” Kathleen leapt over small waves poised for breaking. “As far as I’m concerned he’s by himself from now on!”
They were leaving the beach, going up the steps to the boulevard when Kathleen gripped Patricia, who winced at the hurt to her sunburned arm.
“I was descending these steps when I first saw Allan Yates,” she said. “This place is doomed for me. Let’s leave it behind forever!”
She raced for the tram stop with Patricia, who was growing a little plump through eating too many broken biscuits at Campbells, a few paces behind.
When they flopped down on the seat for waiting passengers, Kathleen took out her compact and fastidiously flicked sand from little crevices in her face and among her eyebrows. She continued her toilet, combing her hair and rolling the ends under, until the tram rumbled towards them.
“I might write to Allan Yates tonight,” she said, swinging her bag onto her arm. “Never a weekend passed that he didn’t take me somewhere.
“We never passed a cafe that he didn’t drag me into for coffee and cake, magnificent toasted sandwiches. Nothing was too good for me. To hell with Amy and her wanton ways!”
They climbed on the tram and needing to strap-hang, Kathleen had to continue in a mutter, her lips crushed against her raised arm.
“I’ll write and bring him running!”
45
But she wrote to Miss Parks instead.
It was quite late in the evening before she shut her bedroom door. Daphne was still at the house when she and Patricia got back, still in the lounge room with Amy.
Patricia rushed straight in to take Daphne’s hand and sit close to her. It was plain that Daphne had shed a great many tears during their absence. The handkerchief she had spread on the chair arm was now crumpled on her lap, and her leathery skin was blotched with a pale beetroot colour, darker on the tip of her nose. Amy had given her a face washer wrung out in cold water to dab on her forehead. The washer was laid across a shoulder and Patricia jumped and had to stifle a giggle when her cheek felt the unexpected chill.
Amy’s face had taken on its customary late-Sunday expression of anxiety, contrasting with the relief when she turned her back on curious and suspicious eyes leaving work at midday on Saturday. Now her eyes and mouth betrayed the torment of facing them again on Monday morning.
But she told herself she must worry more for Daphne. Dudley had died without leaving life insurance, the house was not fully paid for and Peter’s gratuity pay for war service was almost gone.
She would need to go out to work and after twenty-five years, she doubted that she would find work at her old trade of seamstress.
“I would find it easier to bear but for the way she put it,” Daphne moaned. “‘He’ll get the place eventually.’”
Amy made sympathetic noises with tongue and teeth.
Daphne rubbed her eyes briefly with the washer, and forgetting it wasn’t a handkerchief squeezed it in her hand, causing a little trickle of moisture onto Patricia’s arm and another stifled giggle.
“I wish I was lyin’ beside Dud, except that’s exactly what she wants!”
I am alive and giving life, Amy thought. It’s not wrong that I feel glad.
“Everything goes against you,” Daphne moaned on. “I lose Peter then Dud, and all I have left gets into the clutches of that crowd. Dud never took to them.” She laid the washer back on her shoulder.
“I don’t suppose now the way things have gone with you and the Yates man there’s any chance of me gettin’ work in his factory.
“My eyes are not that good for fine work, but I can still make good buttonholes. I was always the best at buttonholes.”
Amy made more soothing noises, this time with wistful overtones.
She had to fight off a swift vision of Lance at the finishers’ table watching the women, chin resting on the sharp ridge of his collar, two fingers in a waistcoat pocket. Then if he saw her his chin would jerk sharply up, his body moving involuntarily, as if he would skirt the table to reach her, but instead taking himself in control, looking back on the women’s work with a deepening frown, furrowing their brows too and setting up a new nervousness in their fingers.
“Your buttonholes are always perfect,” Amy murmured.
“To think of the hundreds I made for them! Never a dress or skirt that didn’t come over the fence for me to finish off!”
“Don’t think about it,” Amy pleaded.
“She won’t be callin’ on me for the weddin’ dress. Make no mistake there!”
There was the sound of Kathleen and Patricia beating their young feet on the steps coming in.
Amy got off the chair arm. “It’s time for us to refill that teapot,” she said.
“I should be goin’ ’ome,” Daphne said piteously.
“’Ome! I wonder how long I’ll be callin’ it that!”
46
Kathleen wrote to Miss Parks:
I have intended writing for a long time but it is not until now that I have completely made up my mind.
I am going to get more education. I have had some disastrous experiences with men. I absolutely loathe them. I want to become something, at this stage I’m not sure what, but you are the one person who can advise me. I know I must first get my Leaving Certificate and this should be possible by going to night school, which I am prepared to do.
As you know I broke my heart at leaving when I did, but such were the circumstances. Apart from my attitude towards men and my decision to blot them out of my life forever, I am disappointed in my mother, Amy. You would have witnessed the diabolical behaviour of mothers in your time and I can add one more sample to them. I have suffered greatly through her. First she left me at the tender age of four, and then brought great turmoil and embarrassment to my life by pretending we were sisters in order to act years younger than her rightful age and pretend to the world at large that she was without responsibilities. As you know, it was to relieve her of the burden of keeping me at school that I left to go into my present dead-end job. The only compensation is the books I can read during the dull, so deadly dull times. Even this is fraught with problems since the floorwalker wants a duster in my hand when I’m not wrapping books or ringing up the till. I am absolutely green with envy when people (students, groan, groan) come in to buy Shakespeare, Homer, T. S. Eliot and the like. Those are the only men in my life from now on.
But you would rap me over the knuckles at the way I have changed course (as you used to say) without an eye to correct structure. I beg your tolerance, and will forthwith return to the point. After surviving the era of Amy-my-sister-and-not-my-mother I am now faced with the coming of an illegitimate child to the same person. Yes! This and some quite devastating personal experiences have turned me off men, motherhood and everything connected with it. I want to get an education, follow a career, travel and be happy in the companionship of someone with whom I’m intellectually matched. And that, dear Miss Parks, is someone of your ilk.
Write to me here
if you care to, but make haste if that is not asking too much, for there is another trauma in my life with Amy at the helm as you would expect, and that is we must leave here soon. She will soon be dismissed from her job and I cannot be expected to meet the rent and provide for myself and my sister as well. Then again, my younger sister was recklessly brought to Sydney and has this dreadful job behind a grocer’s counter. Could you imagine such a life? There is another sister still to come. Our Amy is quite prolific as you can see.
Oh Miss Parks I need to be rescued. Most desperately I need to be rescued.
Your former (and loving) pupil,
Kathleen Fowler.
In the days that followed Kathleen relieved the boredom of work by repeating under her breath some of the best lines from her letter.
“You have witnessed the diabolical behaviour of mothers,” she whispered, taking a copy of Tom Brown’s Schooldays from a shelf and putting it between the shabby gloves of a woman who looked a lot like one of the Misses Wheatley. The gloves stroked it as if it were some rare first edition.
“A Christmas present for my grandson,” she said, bringing her watery glasses to life with the shine in her watery eyes.
She’s been a mother then, thought Kathleen. What a fool. She swept a fine white hand over the brown paper she wrapped the book in, keeping her eyes on it, not changing her expression when Mr Benson padded up to express a wish that the customer would enjoy the book, and to compliment her on her wisdom in shopping at Anthony Horderns. Kathleen turned her back immediately to find another copy of Tom Brown’s Schooldays to fill the gap, and Mr Benson, glaring at her back, decided that the Fowler women had failed to be the acquisition to Anthony Horderns he had once thought. Mrs Fowler would need to go as soon as the Christmas rush was over. He had got Mrs Benson to come in and confirm what was now common gossip on the floor. Easily four months, Mrs Benson had said, and he shut himself in the floor manager’s office to share with him this scandalous revelation. But he was told coldly the matter was in hand, for the manager’s wife was an embittered, harping, barren woman and the manager indulged in fantasies while he sneaked his eyes over Amy’s changing figure, dreaming of sleeping beside her, his dry thin hand on her stomach, sliding down to the crevice where her thigh joined it, exploring there, the leap of his blood with hers when she turned and flung her leg across his.
Oh my God, he said to the blurred page in his open Daily Staff Record Book.
Amy saw Mr Benson leave Kathleen’s counter and come towards hers, and to avoid him, bent down to straighten bolts of material, already in pin-neat order. She heard a button on her navy dress pop off and saw the gap, open-mouthed with relief.
That does it, she said to herself, I’ll go and see Mr Henty at once. Whatever he says to me I’ll just have to bear it, and say nothing in return.
But he said: “Sit down, Mrs Fowler.
“You’re on your feet too much.”
47
Daphne planned to move with Patricia into the Petersham house in time for Christmas.
The Misses Wheatley planned to have moved out by then.
Amy’s pregnancy decided them.
“See, Grace,” said Miss Heather, opening one of the dear little drawers that ran like silk in a circular cedar table.
She took out the cutting of Amy’s advertisement seeking tenants for her rooms, the old maroon-coloured fingers plucking it from among Christmas cards from Henry, the obituaries in the Dubbo paper recording the deaths of their parents, and a recipe for a Dundee cake which they had not made for twenty years.
“‘Rooms in clean, respectable house’,” Miss Heather read aloud in a voice mingling emotion with disgust. “‘Share conveniences with single lady.’ Poor Mumma would turn in her grave.”
“Poor Papa would turn with her,” Miss Grace said.
They were getting ready to go and see Mrs Murray, the wife of the minister at the church they attended. Mrs Murray, who had been the matron’s assistant at a church boarding school before her marriage, made herself available for counselling in crises other than those of a spiritual nature.
The Misses Wheatley were intending to explain their circumstances as delicately as possible.
“We are lucky to have Mrs Murray,” Miss Heather said. “You couldn’t very well approach a man.”
“Mrs Murray will most likely know of somewhere for us,” Miss Grace said.
“God is so good to us,” said Miss Heather, putting on her round little shiny straw hat, getting a fresh thrill at the success she had made of turning the ribbon band to the other side, and folding the bow in such a way that only the best parts showed.
On the stairs they nearly turned back. Daphne and Amy were surveying the length of the hall, Daphne trying to decide if her hall runner would be long enough and annoyed that she hadn’t measured it before leaving home.
Miss Heather’s back told Miss Grace they might turn back. But the pause lasted hardly a second. We are not the guilty party, said Miss Heather’s navy blue crepe shoulders and the rush of air up her nostrils. They continued on determined feet and were soon looking down into Daphne’s upturned face, a pleased and amiable one.
“Just the two I wanted to see!” Daphne said. “You’ll be payin’ the rent to me from now on. I’m movin’ in and we’ll get on fine.”
The Misses Wheatley for the first time in weeks managed to keep their eyes from Amy’s stomach. They held the bannisters in their gnarled, gloved hands and Daphne’s bold brown eyes with theirs.
“I’ll come up,” Daphne said with an upward movement of her arms as if she were urging two sheep up a ramp.
“My, you have it nice,” Daphne said, looking around the Misses Wheatleys’ sitting room, thereby giving herself leave to stroke a rose-splashed china fruit bowl containing a single orange.
“We were going out for the messages,” Miss Heather said, daring Miss Grace with a frown to contradict her.
“Then I won’t keep you,” Daphne said, moving to the edge of a round-bottomed tapestry-covered chair with arms like melting milk chocolate.
“One little thing,” said Daphne with earnest eyes on the Misses Wheatleys’ glasses. “I’ll be puttin’ a little notice in the front window of the downstairs sittin’ room where Mrs Fowler—”
“We never got used to saying Mrs Fowler—” murmured Miss Grace.
“Then you don’t need to try any more,” Daphne said. “Because Mrs Fowler’s goin’ back to her ’ome town—”
The Misses Wheatleys’ glasses were like a collision of wheels sending out shrieks and sparks as metal hit metal.
“I’m going to do ’ome dressmaking,” Daphne explained. “I’ll do most of the work in the daytime, so’s the machine won’t bother you at night.”
“We never hear a sound once we’re in bed,” Miss Heather said. And mindful suddenly of not hearing what might have been worth straining their ears for, she blushed and the pearl brooch shaped like a lily trembled on the crepe.
“My son John, the only one left, is takin’ over my ’ouse.” Daphne decided to get it all said now and if she chose to, restrict future communication with the Misses Wheatley to a bidding of the time of day.
“It’s too out of the way for me to ’ave me business there,” Daphne said, allowing a recurring dream to invade her thoughts—of someone’s silk dress whispering against the wood of her machine and Patricia’s brown head bowed over someone else’s dress, while her hands made a neat job of turning up a raw hem. I don’t see why not, she said to herself, getting up with energy and assuming a severe expression to impress on the Misses Wheatley the association of landlady and tenant and nothing more.
When Daphne had gone the Misses Wheatley took off their hats and put them away on the top shelf of their handsome rosewood wardrobe. They sat on their chairs on either side of the window overlooking Crystal Street. There was nothing unusual to see, only the baker’s cart drawn by a brown horse with a woolly coat and a knotted mane, throwing its head wearily at the flies
and moving the cart against the wishes of the delivery man, who called out “Woa!” and went around the front with his basket, clouting the side of the horse’s head as he passed.
The Misses Wheatley usually winced at such a sight and thought of the beautiful proud animals at home on the farm, but looking at each other now, they each gave a gentle shake of their grey heads.
“I can only think of God’s great goodness to us,” Miss Heather said.
“So can I,” said Miss Grace.
48
On the Saturday before Amy left for Diggers Creek, Kathleen told her she was going to live with Miss Parks.
“But I bought you a single bed!” Amy cried.
Kathleen went on as if Amy hadn’t spoken. “Miss Parks has a huge flat with a huge bedroom and a bed big enough for both of us.
“Put my old bed under your arm and take it as a present for Lebby. She was sleeping on the couch the last I heard!”
They were eating a lunch of bread and cheese at Amy’s bare kitchen table. The tablecloths had been packed with her other linen and her kitchenware to go by rail to Nowra then by lorry to Moruya. Daphne had lent them a couple of saucepans and some crockery for the last few meals before Amy and her suitcase boarded the train at Central. Daphne urged Amy to take most of her household goods.
“May’ll appreciate some new things. She wouldn’t have had much for herself for a long time.”
No she wouldn’t, Amy thought, startled by her guilt, and Daphne said quickly: “It’ll seem more like ’ome to me if I have all me own things around me.”
She grumbled about Amy giving the lounge suite to John. “He did so many little things about the place for me,” Amy pleaded.
“I hate the thought of that great arse of hers squashin’ the life out of it,” Daphne said. Amy gave the cane dressing-table to an ecstatic Patricia.
Just when it seemed there was some sort of future for them all, here was this new blow delivered by Kathleen.