by Olga Masters
“Oh don’t go dull!” screamed the little Torrenses hoping for a miracle to save the colours from merging into a dull stone colour when the water dried.
Aileen some distance away dug her toes into the sand and stared down at them. Her lashes lay soft as brown bracken fern on her apricot cheeks.
“Come on Snobbie Dobbie!” called Mrs Torrens.
“Come and wash the beautiful stones and see the colours!
“They’re brown and beautiful as your eyes, Snobbie Dobbie!”
“Come on, come on!” called the other little Torrenses.
In the end Aileen came and the high voices and peals of laughter from the creek bed had the effect of sending the walking Tantello mooching home across the bridge.
There came the rage that ended all the rages of Mrs Torrens in Tantello and drove the family from the town.
Harold lost the fingers of his right hand in a mill accident.
Holding a length of timber against a screaming saw, a drift of smoke blew across his eyes and the saw made a raw and ugly stump of his hand and the blood rushed over the saw teeth and down the arm of his old striped shirt and the yelling of the mill hands brought the work to a halt and for a moment all was still except the damaging drift of smoke from a sawdust fire.
A foreman with a knowledge of first aid (for many fingers were lost at the mill although Harold was the first to lose all four) stopped the flow of blood and drove Harold twenty miles to the nearest hospital.
When the mill was silenced an hour before the midday break the townspeople sensed something was wrong and Mrs Torrens came running too.
A chain of faces turned and passed the word along that it was Harold. Mrs Torrens stood still and erect strangely dressed in a black dress with a scarf-like trimming from one shoulder trailing to her waist. On the end she had pinned clusters of red geraniums and on her head she wore a large brimmed black hat with more geraniums tucked into the band of faded ribbon. On her feet she wore old sandshoes with the laces gone.
All the eyes of the watching Tantello were fixed on Mrs Torrens who stood a little apart. She stared back with a tilted chin and wide and cold blue eyes until they turned away and one by one left the scene. When the last had gone she walked into the mill to the cluster of men around the door of the small detached office.
“We’re sorry, Mrs Torrens,” said one of them.
Behind the men was a table with cups on it for the bosses’ dinner and a kettle set on a primus stove. Mrs Torrens looked from the cups to the men’s hands and back to the cups and a strange, small smile lit on her face.
Then she stalked to the timber stacked against the fence and climbed with amazing lightness and agility for a big woman onto it stepping up until her waist was level with the top of the fence. The men watched in fascination while she hauled herself onto the fence top and stood there balancing like a great black bird.
Her old sandshoes clinging to the fence top were like scruffy grey birds.
“Come down! We don’t want no more accidents,” called the mill owner.
But Mrs Torrens walked one panel with her arms out to balance herself. Then satisfied she was at home she straightened up and walked back, coming to a halt at the fence post and standing there looking down on the men whose faces were tipped up like eggs towards her.
She stared long at them.
“What have you done to my mannikin?” she said.
They were silent.
“My beautiful, beautiful mannikin?” she said slightly shaking her head.
“Accidents happen,” said a foreman a small and shrivelled man who wet his lips and looked at the boss for approval in making his statement.
Mrs Torrens walked like a trapeze artist along the fence top to reach the other post.
She swooped once or twice to the left and the right and when she settled herself on the post she lifted her chin and adjusted her hat.
The foreman encouraged by the success of his earlier remark wet his lips again.
“Go home to your kiddies, Mrs Torrens,” he said. “They need you at home.”
He considered this well worth repeating in the hotel after work.
Mrs Torrens stared dreamily down on the men giving her head another little shake.
“My beautiful, beautiful mannikin,” she said.
Then she put out both arms and almost ran to the other post laughing a little when she reached there safely.
Someone had lit the primus stove and the shrill whistle of the boiling kettle broke the silence causing everyone except Mrs Torrens to start.
She merely lowered herself and jumped lightly onto the timber picking her way down until she reached the ground. She shook the sawdust from her old sandshoes as if they were expensive and elegant footwear.
Then she looked about her moving pieces of timber with her foot until she found a shortish piece she could easily grip.
She then walked into the office and swung it back and forth among the things on the table sending the primus like a flaming ball bowling across the floor and pieces of china flying everywhere.
The men were galvanized into action beating at the blaze with bags jumping out of the way of the stream of boiling water and trying vainly to save the cups and avoid contact with the timber wielded by Mrs Torrens.
After a while she threw her weapon among the debris and stalked off walking lightly casually through the mill gate and up the hill to where the Torrens house was. The little Torrenses home from school for midday dinner stood about with tragic expressions. Mrs Torrens broke into a brilliant smile.
“All of us will be Dadda’s right hand now!” she called. “Dadda will have six right hands!”
She went ahead of them into the house.
“My beautiful, beautiful mannikin,” she said.
It may seem strange but that, the most violent of all the rages of Mrs Torrens, was not generally discussed in Tantello.
Mill wives standing on verandahs and at windows saw her walk the fence and saw she spoke but the husbands evaded the questions on what was said.
Some repeated her words but kept them inside their throats in the darkness of their bedrooms and seizing their wives for lovemaking held onto the vision of Mrs Torrens with her still face under her black hat and her strong thighs moving under her black dress as she walked the fence.
Even Thomas Cleary couldn’t be persuaded to repeat what Mrs Torrens said.
Young Thomas tried from the kitchen floor where he was doing his homework.
“What did Rager say, Dad?” said young Thomas. “What was she saying when she walked the fence top?”
“Don’t you get ideas about walking the fence top,” said Mrs Cleary from the table where she was sullenly making Thomas senior’s lunch for the morrow. “Don’t you go copying that crazy woman!”
Thomas senior jerked his head up and opened his mouth but closed it before a denial escaped his lips.
“Go on Dad! You musta heard Rager!” said young Thomas.
But Thomas senior staring into the scarlet stove fire saw only the flaming red of Mrs Torrens’s hair and when a coal broke it seemed like the petals of red geraniums scattering into the ashes. He opened and closed his two good hands on his knees but even that did not ease the hunger inside him.
The Torrenses left Tantello soon after the accident. The townspeople let the family go without ceremony fearful that an appearance of support might jeopardize others’ jobs at the mill.
The Torrenses left their furniture to sell for the rent they owed (for they never caught up from the week Kathleen threw Harold’s pay into the creek) and took their clothing and what else could be stowed in the car besides the five children.
Mrs Torrens drove with Harold’s useless heavily bandaged hand beside her.
She did in effect become his right hand.
The work they ultimately found in the city was cleaning a factory in two shifts a day, early morning and late afternoon.
Harold learned to wield a broom holding the handle
in the crook of his right arm and Kathleen worked beside him picking up the rubbish he missed.
After some practice he was proficient and she could work independently so that they sometimes had time to sit on an upturned box and eat their sandwiches together Harold laying his on his knee between bites and holding his mug of tea with his left hand.
The rages of Mrs Torrens subsided with the help of medication from a public hospital not far from where they lived.
During these times Mrs Torrens’s blue eyes dulled and her beautiful red hair straightened and she moved slowly and heavily with no life in her step or on her face.
She looked like a lot of the women in Tantello.
The little Torrenses did very well which would have amazed the people of Tantello if they had followed their fortunes in professions and trades.
Mrs Torrens was in her fifties when she died from a heart attack and Harold made his home with the second daughter Rachel who was a nurse educator in a big hospital with a flat of her own.
It was Aileen who won some modest fame in the rag trade.
She started sweeping floors and picking up pins and scraps of cloth then graduated to more important things.
When she was a beautiful young woman nearing thirty she was designing her own materials and having them made up into styles she created.
Long pursued by a colleague who designed and cut clothes for men she eventually married him and he agreed to her whim to drive through Tantello while on their honeymoon.
“Did you live here?” he said standing with her near the little grey house with the small square verandah now with all the railings missing and the roof on one side dipping dangerously over a tank tilted dangerously too from the half rotted tank stand.
She stood near a clump of red geraniums cold and proud and still as Kathleen stood outside the mill the day Harold lost his fingers.
“I lived here,” she said and looked down on Tantello with the mill shut down now and only a few of the houses occupied mostly by Aboriginal families.
“Is that bridge safe to cross?” her husband asked looking at her profile with her lashes lying soft as brown bracken fern on her apricot cheeks.
She stretched her mouth in a smile he didn’t understand and began to walk with Kathleen’s walk light and casual towards the car.
He was a little ahead and his heart leapt when her heard her speak.
“My beautiful, beautiful mannikin,” she said low and passionate.
He turned swiftly to take her hand.
Then he saw her face and felt he shouldn’t.
ON THE TRAIN
The young woman not more than twenty-seven slammed the gate on herself and the two children both girls.
She did not move off at once but looked up and down the street as if deciding which way to go.
The older girl looked up at her through her hair which was whipped by the wind to read the decision the moment she made it.
Finally the woman took a hand of each child and turned in the direction of the railway station.
“Oh goody!” cried Sara who was nearly five.
“The sun’s out,” the woman murmured lifting her face up for a second towards it.
Sara looked again into her mother’s face noticing two or three of her teeth pinning down her bottom lip and the glint in her eyes perhaps from the sun? She felt inadequate that she seldom noticed such things as sun and wind, barely bothering about the rain as well, being quite content to stay out and play in it. The weather appeared to figure largely in the lives of adults. Sara hoped this would work out for her when she was older.
The mother bent forward as she hurried the younger child Lisa having difficulty keeping up. Her face Sara saw looked strained like the mother’s. Sara hoped she wouldn’t complain. The glint in the mother’s eyes was like a spark that could ignite and involve them all.
She saw with relief the roof of the station jutting above the street but flashed her eyes away from the buildings still to be passed before they reached it.
The ticket office was protected by the jutting roof.
Sara was glad of the rest while her mother had her head inside the window and laid her cheek lightly against her rump clad in a blue demin skirt.
The business of buying tickets went on for a long time. Sara’s eyes conveyed to Lisa her fear that the mother’s top half had disappeared forever inside the window. She clutched her skirt to drag her out and opened her mouth to scream. Lisa saw and screamed for her.
The mother flung both arms down brushing a child off with each. They dared not touch her when she turned around and separated the tickets from change in her purse.
She snapped it shut and looked up and around in a distracted way as if to establish where she was.
It was Sara who went in front taking the narrow path squeezed between a high fence on one side and the station wall on the other. She swung her head around to see that her mother and Lisa were following her bouncy confident step.
On the platform waiting for the train the few other passengers looked at them.
Sara’s dress was long and her hair was long and she was not dressed warmly enough.
The people especially a couple of elderly women noted Sara’s light cotton dress with a deep flounce at the hem and Lisa’s skimpy skirt and fawn tights. They looked at the mother’s hands to see if there was a bag hanging from them with cardigans or jumpers in. But the mother carried nothing but a leather shoulder bag about as large as a large envelope and quite flat.
“She’s warm enough herself,” one of the women murmured to her companion with a sniff.
They watched them board the train noticing the mother did not turn her head when she stepped onto the platform. It was Sara who grasped the hand of Lisa and saw her safely on.
“Tsk, tisk,” said the watching woman wishing she could meet the mother’s eyes and glare her disapproval.
The mother took a single seat near the aisle and let Sara and Lisa find one together across from her.
Dear little soul, thought the passenger on the seat facing them seeing Sara’s face suffused with pleasure at her small victory. Lisa had to wriggle her bony little rump with legs stuck out stiffly to get onto the seat.
Sara read the passenger’s thoughts.
“She doesn’t like you helping,” she said.
This was almost too much for the passenger whose glance leapt towards the mother to share with her this piece of childish wisdom.
But the mother had her profile raised and her eyes slanted away towards the window. The skin spread over her cheekbones made the passenger think of pale honey spread on a slice of bread.
She’s beautiful. The woman was surprised at herself for not having noticed it at once.
She returned her attention rather reluctantly to Sara and Lisa.
She searched their faces for some resemblance to the mother. Sara’s was round with blue worried eyes under faint eyebrows. Lisa’s was pale with a pinched look and blue veins at the edges of her eyebrows disappearing under a woollen cap with a ragged tassel that looked as if a kitten had wrestled with it.
The passenger thought they might look like their father putting him into a category unworthy of the handsome mother.
For the next twenty minutes the train alternated between a rocking tearing speed and dawdling within sight of one of the half dozen stations on the way to the city and the passenger alternated her attention between the girls and the mother although at times she indulged in a fancy that she was not their mother but someone minding them.
“I can move and your mummy sit here,” she said to Sara with sudden inspiration.
I’ll find out for sure.
Sara put her head against the seat back, tipping her face and closing her eyes with pink coming into her cheeks.
The passenger looked to Lisa for an answer and Lisa turned her eyes towards her mother seeing only her profile and the long peaked collar of her blouse lying on her honey coloured sweater.
Lisa looked int
o the passenger’s face and gave her head the smallest shake.
Poor little soul.
The passenger stared at the mother knowing in the end she would look back.
The mother did her eyes widening for a second under bluish lids with only a little of her brow visible under a thick bang of fair hair. There was nothing friendly in her face.
The passenger reddened and looked at the girls.
“Your mummy’s so pretty,” she said.
Sara swung her head around to look at the mother and Lisa allowed herself a tiny smile as if it didn’t need verification.
“Do you like having a pretty mummy?” the passenger asked.
The mother had turned her attention to the window again and her eyes had narrowed.
The passenger felt as if a door had been shut in her face.
“Are you going into the city for the day?” she said to the girls.
Sara pressed her lips together as if she shouldn’t answer if she wanted to. Lisa’s mouth opened losing its prettiness and turning into an uneven hole.
There’s nothing attractive about either of them, thought the passenger deciding that Lisa might be slightly cross-eyed.
She sat with her handbag gripped on her knees and her red face flushed a deeper red and her brown eyes with flecks of red in the whites were flint-hard when they darted between the mother and the girls and vacant when they looked away.
After a moment the mother turned her head and stared into the passenger’s face. The girls raised their eyes and looked too. The train swayed and rushed and all the eyes locked together. The mother’s eyes although large and blue and without light were the snake’s eyes mesmerizing those of the passenger. Sara swung her eyes from the passenger to the mother as if trying to protect one from the other. Lisa’s face grew tight and white and she opened her small hole of a mouth but no sound came out.
The mother keeping her eyes on the passenger got up suddenly and checked the location through the window. Sara and Lisa stumbled into the aisle holding out frantic fingers but afraid to touch her.
Sara stood under her mother’s rump as close as she dared her eyes turned back to see Lisa holding the seat end. The train swayed and clanged the last hundred yards slowing and sliding like a skier at the bottom of a snow peak stopping with a suddeness that flung Sara and Lisa together across the seat end.