by Olga Masters
This was fortunate.
The mother level with the passenger now leaned down and sparks from her eyes flew off the hard flat stones of the passenger’s eyes.
“I’m going to kill them,” the mother said.
LEAVING HOME
There was a practice at Berrigo to gather at the Post Office in the afternoon to wait for the mail.
The doors closed while it was sorted and by the time they were ready to open a crowd swelled by children from both the public and Catholic school had filled the porch.
Weeks before Sylvia McMahon was to leave for Sydney to find a job she was singled out for attention when she arrived with the others to wait for the mail.
“Won’t be long now,” said Mrs Percy Parnell (there was also Mrs Henry and Mrs Horace) who as the youngest of the trio felt she had a licence to use current slang terms of which this was one.
Sylvia smiled, pleased at the attention focused on her.
“Three weeks,” she said, feeling the old familiar tingle.
“And three and a half days,” said her small sister Esme who blushed and hid her face in her sister’s skirt when everyone laughed.
Esme aged ten amid the flock of schoolchildren could have collected the mail but Sylvia sixteen and waiting for departure day dressed herself like the adult women of Berrigo and went daily to the Post Office, probably to collect no more than a Farmer and Settler and a doctor’s bill which Mrs McMahon would throw in the fire since she had not paid for the confinement resulting in Sylvia much less Frank, Lennie, Esme, Rose, Yvonne and Jackie.
It was true that Sylvia could have been employed helping her mother but the income from the farm was stretched to the limits, and it took a good season during which the cows gave liberally of their milk to atone for the bleak winter when grocery bills mounted month after month and unlike the doctor’s bill could not be thrown into the stove and forgotten.
Mrs McMahon now past forty hoped for no more children and avoiding old Doctor Hadgett was relatively easy as he spent most of his time behind the high garden wall of his house and surgery within arm’s reach of his liquor cupboard.
These days he was of little use in confinements anyway handing over to the district nurse when a birth was imminent and charging for the lavatory.
But it was a different matter in relation to the town’s only grocer.
L.F. Parrington was a prominent local figure running the agricultural show and sports day or running the committee running the events. L.F. as the townspeople called him was churchman, sportsman, businessman and with one of the district’s best farms. He was in everything and everywhere. You would have to be a recluse to dodge him. Mrs McMahon gave him the child endowment cheque each month in the winter and was grateful for the brief lift of his hat when their paths crossed.
Since no jobs were offering in Berrigo or larger towns within a radius of one hundred miles it was proposed that Sylvia go to Sydney before the winter set in and with luck get work. With a little more luck the pay might allow her to send some money home.
“Parcels too,” said Sylvia at home after the post office jaunt and wiping up for her mother with a threadbare tea towel. The subject was invariably the going away.
She glanced at her mother seeing side-on the drooped eyelids and corresponding droop to the mouth still soft and pretty in spite of all the children and hard work.
Mrs McMahon had been silent while Sylvia rattled on. Now Sylvia saw something set and unyielding in her mother’s profile.
“Things are so cheap in Sydney,” Sylvia said.
Mrs McMahon spoke at last.
“You’re not there yet,” she said.
Sylvia laid down a plate in fear. Would it be possible her mother would change her mind and not let her go? She must know at once if there was a hint of this!
She stared hard at a handful of forks.
“Can we write and say the date I’ll be there?” she said.
Oh, God don’t let her say I can’t go!
Mrs McMahon took the washing up dish and moved up a step onto the verandah tipping the contents onto flowers that grew below the rails.
Sylvia watched her back, heard the rush of water.
When she turns and shows her face I’ll know, Sylvia thought entertaining the idea of rushing on her and begging her not to say no.
But the McMahons did not demonstrate affection and they kissed begrudgingly the children fearful of hearing the words “Don’t slobber like a calf!”
Mrs McMahon kept her eyes down when she stepped back into the kitchen the dish under her arm.
“That’s done,” she said hanging it in its place above the fountain in the stove recess.
The recess and a door leading outside took up one end of the kitchen. Built of corrugated iron smoked grey-black the recess was big enough for both the stove and an iron grate for an open fire in the winter.
Sylvia saw herself sitting by it with the others on cold nights, her father taking most of the lamplight reading the Farmer and Settler, her mother in the shadows making what she called a “start for tomorrow” which was slicing bread for school sandwiches and soaking oatmeal for porridge.
A chill as cold as the coldest night ran through Sylvia. Would she be here this winter and the winters to come, all her life in Berrigo with no one decent to marry? Oh my God to end up a Gough, a Motbey, a Wright, a Henry or a Turner! To die would be better!
All her youth spent with no money of her own, no job but helping her mother around the house, nothing to go to but the Berrigo Show and the Berrigo Sports and the Agricultural Ball where Berrigo’s idea of decoration was to pile the stage with potatoes, pumpkins and marrows and cross stalks of corn around the walls! You felt you were dancing in the farm sheds.
She sank onto a chair pushing her feet out before her and raising her eyes to see a piece of sky visible where the galvanized iron did not quite meet.
Oh to be free as the sky, to escape forever the closeting of the kitchen!
“Can’t we write to Aunt Bess and say when I’ll be coming?” she said staring at her skirt stretched tight across her knees.
Her mother was dragging the sewing machine to catch the late afternoon light from the one window and didn’t hear or chose not to hear.
She sat at the machine and began to sort through a little pile of cutout garments still with the paper pattern against each piece.
My dress! thought Sylvia. She has been reminded to sew my dress! But Mrs McMahon bypassed Sylvia’s dark grey flannel with a collar in white pique intended for wearing to job interviews and selected a skirt for Esme cut from a tweed suit sent in a parcel of good worn things by Bess, a sister of Mr McMahon who had promised temporary shelter for Sylvia in Sydney.
“I am sorry she cannot stay permanently,” wrote Bess in reply to her brother’s suggestion.
“But George and I have reached an agreement owing to all the relatives coming to stay with us since we came to Sydney.” (George was a policeman.)
“I get no extra money from him when they are here and it is a struggle to keep the meals up.
“So we decided none of his come and none of mine.
“But Sylvia can stay until she gets a job and we will help her find a boarding place.
“Our Margaret is doing very well and got a raise last week. They are not putting any more girls on there.”
Mrs McMahon got up from the machine now and laid Esme’s skirt on the table to remove the pattern and put the pieces together for machining.
Sylvia stood too. Her mother did not appear to notice as she sat again and slipped the tweed under the machine needle. When the wheel began to whir Sylvia got up and let herself out of the kitchen.
The sky was right above her now with clouds idling across it in unconcerned fashion.
Her father and Frank and Lennie were finishing the day’s farm jobs and Esme, Rose, Yvonne and Jackie were on the rails of the fence around the dairy watching. Esme was on the top rail her long thin legs dangling and Jackie
who was three had his neck between the two lowest like one of the young calves.
“Sylly, Syllvy!” cried Esme seeing her.
Sylvia turned and made for the fence surrounding the house. She heard Jackie’s wail and his cry “Take, me, take me!” and turned once as she scaled the fence to see his woeful moonlike face and the others sober too in the afternoon light.
She took a track that led to the well a slab covered hole of water of a milky substance that supplemented the tanks of rainwater during a dry spell and was used mostly for washing clothes and scrubbing the dairy.
Behind the well on a small rise there was a clump of wattles with roots raised above the ground forming a kind of armchair. The spring that fed the well kept the grass there soft and green.
It was a place for Sylvia and the others to rest when they took the slide and cans to draw water.
If I am here in the winter I’ll be carrying that blasted water again, she said to herself rocking her body and letting the roots hurt her.
The hills were folded in front of her to meet the sky and there was nothing much to gaze upon but tracks running through the grass even now threatening to turn a pale early winter brown.
Sylvia stood and grasped a branch of the wattle and shook it.
“I hate them! I hate them!” she cried.
Then she shut her eyes and laid her head on the branch until her anger was partly spent.
When she opened her eyes there was a horse and rider crossing the hill on one of the tracks.
“Arnold Wright!” she whispered, sinking down onto the grass. “I can see his buck teeth from here!”
Arnold was riding in the direction of the Wright farm one of the poorest in Berrigo. If she sat still and pulled a branch over her head he might not see her when he crossed the gully a little higher up riding by the straggling fence that divided the McMahons from their neighbour.
Seeing him with one eye a new thought struck Sylvia.
Berrigo would know she wasn’t going to Sydney after all! She would have to face the Post Office crowd! She would drown herself first! She looked towards the well where the water winked between the slabs.
She saw herself pulled out by the armpits and all of them wailing while they watched.
She would look terrible with her hair plastered on her head and her clothes stuck to her body, perhaps her shoes missing. No she would not die that way.
She would walk to Sydney! Forgetting the proximity of Arnold Wright she pulled the branch aside to see where the road showed patches of beige coloured gravel through the trees. She could walk and walk and walk with the signposts telling her the way. She would leave at night when they were all asleep and would be too far away when they found her missing. She would arrive at Aunt Bess’s and then it would be too late to be dragged home. The idea was so appealing she leapt to her feet and Arnold quite close now saw the flash of her old pink spotted dress. He jerked his surprised horse to a halt and after sitting a moment climbed down and tied the reins to a post. Sylvia was trapped. She could not run home and she could not escape Arnold striding towards her. She sank down onto the grass again.
“I thought it was you,” Arnold said.
Who else would it be? Sylvia thought with scorn and snapped a twig off the wattle branch.
In the silence following she traced a pattern with it on the tree root.
“Gettin’ in some practice for writin’ home?” Arnold said squatting beside her.
Oh, what a clot! she thought, lifting her head.
But Arnold thought he had said something smart and stretched his lips farther over his teeth.
You think he’s grinning all the time but he’s not, Sylvia thought.
Arnold sobering drew his lips as far as they would reach to cover his teeth and glanced towards the road.
“I’d like to be goin’,” he said.
“What would you do there?” said Sylvia half scornful although she had resolved not to speak to him just remain mute.
“Work. Get money,” said Arnold.
Sylvia realized she had been pressing the twig deeply into the root when she heard it snap.
“See all that life,” said Arnold. “Jeez, you’re lucky.”
Sylvia lifted her chin, shook back her hair and let the breath out of her body.
She was going! She was going!
She felt an overwhelming pity for Arnold. He was stuck on that terrible farm with a simpleton brother, hillbilly parents and grandmother and his young sister Nellie.
She looked into his face amazed that in spite of this fate he seemed normal, as normal as Arnold could be.
Does he think of drowning himself, she wondered.
Arnold looked at her leaning back wriggling her toes inside her old sandals.
“You’ll miss the well chair,” he said.
“How do you know we call it that?” she said.
“Esme told Nellie,” he said.
He looked away and swallowed.
“I ask her,” he said.
He gripped both his knees.
“About you,” he said.
Sylvia felt her face warming.
The horse by the fence snorted and shook its head.
It startled them both.
“You should be going,” Sylvia said.
He didn’t move and she felt a small gladness that he didn’t.
She stole a glance at his profile. Except for his teeth he wasn’t bad looking. Arnold Wright good looking! She must be mad! She snorted not so loud as the horse and Arnold turned her way. He has nice eyes, she thought. Oh hell and damn! Those were the words she was going to use freely when she got to Sydney. She was going to paint her face and curl her hair, things she wasn’t allowed at home. Oh God, if she didn’t go! She moved her toes again curling them inside her sandals. Arnold saw. He looked as if he might lay a hand on her feet.
“Got chilblains?” he said.
Chilblains! Of all the impossible people Arnold was the most impossible! Daggy. That was the word for him. A word that was probably well aired in Sydney but not in Berrigo because it was too close to the bone.
Daggy sorts. Arnold was a daggy sort. She must get away! She had to go! She got to her feet as if she would take off then. Arnold was leaning on an elbow staring up at her.
She sat down again swiftly at the sound of steps. They were Esme’s running along the track to the well.
Esme pulled up sharp when she saw them and stood legs apart several yards off as if reluctant to trespass upon their privacy.
“Come home, Mum says,” she called.
Sylvia leaned back on an elbow slightly towards Arnold.
The spectacle caused Esme to stiffen like a small statue among the waving grass.
She plucked a piece and chewed it.
“Hullo Esme,” called Arnold with something close to music in his voice.
It struck Sylvia that way too.
His voice should sound daggy, she said to herself glancing at him and deciding his teeth weren’t so bad when he smiled a face splitting smile as he was doing now and showed them all.
“Mum’s making gingerbread for our supper,” Esme called.
Sylvia swallowed away the trickle of treacly syrup that invaded her saliva.
“She’s making your blasted skirt!”
Arnold looked as if he liked her spirit.
Esme was astounded at the swear word.
“Oooooh, aaaah,” she said both loud and hushed.
“Go home!” said Sylvia.
“She’ll send me back!” said Esme.
“I won’t be here,” said Sylvia.
No one including Sylvia could work this out in that moment.
“I’m going for a ride on Arnold’s horse!” Sylvia called out suddenly.
“You’re not allowed,” said Esme breaking a small silence involving them all even the horse who flung his ears back and his nose up.
“Can I?” said Sylvia turning to Arnold who would have gladly given her the horse along wit
h himself.
She stood and he did a moment later.
“You ride behind,” she said making for the fence.
Esme watched as Sylvia climbed the fence and slipped a leg across the saddle. The horse inquired with a shake of its neck. Arnold patted its rump soothingly then jumped on.
Sylvia took up the reins.
“Go home, pimp!” she called to Esme who after a moment started running hard towards the house.
Arnold wished there was no saddle to separate his body from Sylvia’s. There was this hard raised rim under which he forced his crotch and Sylvia’s beautifully rounded bottom at the end of her straight back seemed yards from him. He laid a hand just above her thigh. She didn’t object so her laid the other hand near the other thigh.
Sylvia swished her head around and Arnold got a mouthful of her dark hair.
“Hang onto the saddle,” Sylvia said.
Arnold obeyed. They moved off, the horse staying close by the fence and its rump broadening as they went up the incline.
When the fence turned a corner so did Sylvia and she kicked the horse into a canter down by the line of oaks on the western side of the McMahon’s farm. Esme now on the woodheap by the house saw the flash of Sylvia’s pink dress and raced inside to tell the others. When Sylvia and Arnold were clear of the oaks the McMahons like a small defending army were at the woodheap. The children not as tall as their parents stood on pieces of wood so they appeared a uniform group.
Sylvia pulled the horse up sharply and swung around to face them.
“Just what do you think you’re up to, miss?” called Mrs McMahon across the couple of hundred yards separating them.
“Put your arms around me,” said Sylvia low to Arnold.
Arnold placed his hands lightly at her waistline.
“Where they were before!” said Sylvia.
Arnold lowered them an inch.
Esme jumped from her block of wood to the ground and Mr McMahon took a few strides forward.
“Lovely goings on!” called Mrs McMahon.
“Them hands should be round cows’ tits where they belong!” called Mr McMahon.