by Olga Masters
Arnold withdrew his hands and clung to the saddle.
“Put them back,” said Sylvia low to Arnold.
Before he had time to Mrs McMahon called out again.
“There’s no Sydney trip for you, miss!”
Esme gasped loud at this news and hopped in her agitation like a spider back onto the woodheap.
Arnold in deep shock looked for a change in Sylvia’s expression.
She merely tilted her chin and lowered her lashes.
Under other circumstances Arnold might have crushed her small waist between his hands.
All he could do now was cling wretchedly to the saddle.
“Mum made the gingerbread!” called Esme.
“Shut up about the gingerbread!” said Mrs McMahon.
All of them heard the tears in her voice.
“Get down and come home!” said Mr McMahon somewhat feebly.
“I haven’t finished my ride!” said Sylvia, pulling the horse’s head back as if preparing to canter off.
“Getting around with Berrigo riff raff!” said Mrs McMahon.
“He’s not riff raff!” called out Sylvia.
Arnold bowed his head longing to lay his forehead on Sylvia’s neck.
Esme agitated at the thought of losing the friendship of Nellie when her mother’s remark reached the Wright household gasped and hopped off the woodheap.
Mr McMahon took a couple more steps forward and picked up a stick lying in the grass, a piece from a quince tree abandoned by one of the children at play.
Who would he hit? thought Arnold. Please, not her!
Sylvia with her head up pulled the reins and the horse danced two or three little steps turning as it did, so that Sylvia and her father were almost face to face. Mr McMahon saw how her body flowed into the horse’s body. They moved as one shape. She can ride, he thought, how well she can ride! Her hair swept past her cheek onto her neck. Her cheeks were pink from the ride and there was the rise of her bosom under the old spotted dress with the collar fastened loosely just above her breasts. If Arnold looked over her shoulder he could see between her breasts through the opening. Mr McMahon felt anger towards his wife. She had no right to sew clothes with openings in them like that!
Arnold sat in misery with his hands hanging on the horse’s sides. Mr McMahon watched to see if his gaze fell over Sylvia’s shoulders.
If he looks I’ll kill him, Mr McMahon thought.
The buck toothed bastard, he’s not getting her!
“Come home,” he said hoping no one detected the pleading in his voice.
“There’s nothing to go home for,” Sylvia almost curled her lip towards the shabby old farmhouse with the smoking chimney.
Mr McMahon knew his wife would move a few steps towards him.
He saw her face creased and suddenly old.
“We’ve had enough of this, miss!” she called.
“Me too,” said Sylvia.
“Listen to that cheek! It didn’t take her long!” Mrs McMahon looked briefly and with hate at Arnold.
“Go on up inside,” said Mr McMahon throwing a brief look at his wife.
“Huh!” she said ugly and angry. “Much good you’ve done! Haul her off that horse and send that riff raff packing!”
Arnold waited for Sylvia to say he wasn’t riff raff.
But Sylvia’s cool eyes held her father’s eyes unwavering while the horse arched and swung its neck and took two more dancing steps.
“Use the stick on her!” shouted Mrs McMahon.
Mr McMahon looked at the stick as if he’d forgotten he held it.
Sylvia looked at it too and stretched her mouth in a little smile.
“Look at the cheeky grin!” cried Mrs McMahon.
It’s not a cheeky grin, said the heart of Mr McMahon.
It’s my daughter leaving me.
He threw the stick from him and turned and walked towards the house.
“Leaving me to do the dirty work!” shouted Mrs McMahon.
“Go to hell!” Mr McMahon shouted back.
She raced after him and caught him by his old blue shirt.
He pulled free and walked faster.
Mrs McMahon stood with her legs apart looking from him back to Sylvia and Arnold.
The wind whipped her apron like a white flag and Sylvia as if seeing it as a symbol of surrender climbed from the horse. She stood a moment with her face almost against the slippery leather of the saddle.
“I’ll say goodbye,” she whispered.
Arnold sat still with tears in his eyes. His mouth nearly covered his teeth as he hitched himself onto the saddle and when Sylvia turned away he slipped his feet into the stirrups and wheeled the horse around.
It allowed itself a shake of the head as if to say it knew all along things would finish this way.
Arnold did not turn his head when he cantered off.
Sylvia climbed the fence and Rose, Yvonne and Jackie ran to her and held her by the waist and legs. Esme and Lennie and Frank watched soberly from the woodheap.
Sylvia put Jackie on her back and made her way towards the house.
Mrs McMahon did too and near the woodheap stopped to pick up an armful of wood.
Sylvia stooped with Jackie still on her back and scraped up large chips dumping them in her skirt and gathering it up with one free hand.
“Lady Muck might soil her lily white hands!” cried Mrs McMahon.
“We’ll do it!” said Esme.
They all went into the house.
Mr McMahon was sitting by the kitchen window with his hands on his knees.
He was looking out at the sky grey now.
Sylvia dropped the chips into the stove fire and put the kettle over the ring.
She sat and Jackie climbed on her knee and she linked her arms about him.
When the fire began to glow they showed smooth and white and round like the work of a sculptor.
Rose set the table and Esme sliced the gingerbread.
Mrs McMahon sat at the machine and let her face fall on her hand while she stared at the little pile of sewing.
Mr McMahon saw the white of the collar of Sylvia’s dress now on the top of the pile.
He wanted to take it and tear it savagely between his hands.
But he sat with them still on his knees and said nothing.
PASSENGER TO BERRIGO
Sylvia McMahon was away nearly two years before she was able to afford her train and coach fare home for a holiday.
She was seventeen and a half by this time.
Just as the family had talked of nothing else but her going away weeks ahead of the time, they seldom let drop the subject of her return.
“Let’s mark every day off on the calendar!” cried Esme now twelve.
They all looked at the calendar, the one wall decoration in the kitchen.
Mrs McMahon turned her eyes back to the bowl of flour into which she was rubbing suet and turned the corners of her mouth down.
“Must you write all over everything?” she said, “Leave the calendar the way it is!”
“We would only make little marks!” said Esme.
“I said not to mark it at all!” said Mrs McMahon.
The pudding making went on and the children, Frank, Lennie, Esme, Rose, Yvonne and Jackie silently and unanimously agreed that the subject of Sylvia’s homecoming should be dropped for the moment.
“Mum’s sort of cranky about Sylly coming home,” Rose said to Esme when they were outside.
They were ordered by their mother to go to the cream box at the roadside and collect groceries left there by the general carrier for Berrigo.
It was cold walking in the wind and the girls pulled a slide between them to carry the things home.
Esme with her head down said sharply: “Don’t call her Sylly!”
Rose in awe of Esme as Esme was in awe of Sylvia couldn’t find words to say the pet name meant loving Sylvia.
Esme took a pace or two ahead of Rose to express disapprova
l and Rose panted to keep up.
“We could draw a little calendar and keep it in our pants drawer,” panted Rose to the back of Esme’s neck.
It looked in disagreement.
No calendar was drawn and hidden but the days passed just the same.
Finally Sylvia came.
“We’ll all go to the Post Office to meet her!” Esme cried.
The coach from the nearest rail head brought passengers to the Berrigo Post Office.
Mrs McMahon was stuffing wood into the stove when Esme spoke.
She straightened and slammed the stove door shut.
“That would be stupid!”
Esme braver now that Sylvia was nearly here answered with spirit.
“That way we can all be with her for the longest possible time!”
“Two weeks and she’ll be gone again!” said Mrs McMahon.
Briefly the eyes of all the children accused her as she went with her strutting step to the dresser to take out a mixing bowl.
She broke eggs into it and the children thought there could have been a better pudding offered for Sylvia’s return than baked custard.
“Who would stay here to keep the fire going and start the milking if we all charged off to hang around like the rest of Berrigo?” said Mrs McMahon.
She scorned the practice of waiting on the mail every day at the Post Office. She seldom went into town at all due mainly to the family’s almost constant state of debt. When the general store bill was paid there would be a few pounds hanging onto the butcher’s bill from earlier lean months or the baker could only be paid at the end of alternate months.
Not only was Mrs McMahon afraid of coming face to face with her creditors but she felt the eyes of all Berrigo were on her accusing her of these shortcomings.
In the end it was Lennie, Esme and those younger who went to meet Sylvia. Frank at sixteen was nearly a man and not to be spared to any leisurely caper like meeting a coach.
Esme was downcast. She was an avid reader and characters in books spent a lot of time in loving communication. Fathers embraced mothers and parents openly kissed and hugged their children.
She fell a little behind the others dreaming of the McMahons carrying on this way. She imagined them spread across the road arm in arm joyful in their anticipation of meeting Sylvia. When Esme lifted her head to face reality they had rounded the last bend and Berrigo, the coach and Sylvia came into view.
“It’s there!” screamed Rose and Lennie flung Jackie on his back and the five of them raced the few hundred yards pulling up and moving into a bunch when they had almost reached Sylvia.
She stood holding her case taller than they remembered her wearing a dress they had never seen.
“Sylly, Sylly!” cried Esme forgetting.
Rose gasped a reminder.
Lennie plunged forward to take her case the old one she went away with.
“Something terrible happened just before I left,” said Sylvia looking back over her shoulder to see who of Berrigo was staring from the Post Office.
Oh, what what?
Sylvia with five pairs of eyes fixed on her wet her lips which her sisters observed were outlined in lipstick and flashed her eyes away from them.
“I got a new one and had it packed to bring and left it behind.
“I left it sitting on the table of the flat. I must have.”
Oh, poor Sylvia.
“It had presents in it too.”
The sympathy of the children was transferred immediately to themselves.
Presents! What could they have been?
“What were they!” said Lennie.
“It doesn’t matter!” Esme cried. “Poor Syll—Sylvia!”
“I’m not called that now,” said Sylvia walking rapidly and stretching the legs of Jackie to their limit.
“What is your name then?” said Lennie with the smallest edge of scorn to his voice.
Esme shot a look of warning at him.
“Is it Maud?” said Rose with reference to Sylvia’s second name.
Esme looked fearfully into Sylvia’s face before throwing Rose a withering look.
“Sylvarnia most of the time,” said Sylvia as if she hadn’t heard. “Varnia sometimes for short.”
She was walking fast with her chin up and lowered eyes and the others were fully taxed trying to keep up with her and read her expression.
Lennie dropped the case suddenly in the middle of the road and stood legs apart. The others halted and Sylvia too slowed a little.
Lennie blew out his cheeks and looked as if he might say something. Esme pleaded with her eyes not to. But Lennie had lowered his to look at the case and fix his gaze on the label attached to the handle. He turned it towards him and putting his head slightly to one side read it silently. It said “Miss Sylvia McMahon, Passenger to Berrigo”.
Lennie picked up the case almost with a smile on his face and walked with new energy. Esme raced to Sylvia and took her hand.
“We should have a car to come and meet you,” she whispered for none of the others to hear.
“I thought Father might have bought one,” said Sylvia.
Father. That was a new way of addressing him who had been Dad as long as Esme could remember.
She looked anxiously back but the others had not heard. They marched in a little army with Lennie bent sideways by the case.
Esme saw with surprise they had reached the big gate to the farm with the cream box on the roadside. She looked into Sylvia’s face for signs that she might have remembered collecting bread and groceries there, crushed inside to shelter from rain, or sitting with dangling legs for a rare visitor who might otherwise miss turning in. But there was nothing to read on Sylvia’s thick white skin, bluish lidded eyes and folded red mouth.
There was not much of a walk now to the house, a few dozen yards with saplings and dog bush obscuring the view, then into the clear and there it was inside its crooked fence, small and grey like a crouched mouse.
There were only two real bedrooms. The other for Frank and Lennie was a closed-off end of the verandah that did not keep out the weather and when there was a big storm the boys, bedding and all, were moved into the sitting room to finish their sleep among the table, chairs and chiffonier legs.
The girls and Jackie had the second bedroom and the thought hit Esme now that Sylvia would not take too kindly to making a fifth in the already overcrowded space.
“You’ll be having my bed and Mum’ll make a bed for Vonnie on the couch,” Esme said but the whisper was clearly heard by Yvonne whose seven year old face creased with anger.
“You keep slipping off!” she said.
“I’ll sleep with Rose and Jackie and you can have the bed to yourself,” Esme said ignoring the outburst.
The thought of someone with a bed to themselves sobered and silenced the McMahons and they held onto this small miracle while they trudged a few more steps.
But it did not stay with Yvonne too long.
“You’re making all that up!” she cried.
Esme was about to shout a denial when they saw Mrs McMahon had come onto the verandah her two hands on the rail.
“She’s come!” cried Esme unnecessarily.
Soon there was nothing but a narrow flower bed between Mrs McMahon and Sylvia.
In books, thought Esme, Mrs McMahon would have leaned over and clutched Sylvia and the flowers would have been trampled uncaringly in the embrace.
“Come round,” said Mrs McMahon, “Don’t tread on the bulbs.”
When they were bunched together and Mrs McMahon close enough to touch Sylvia, Mr McMahon and Frank in their old milking clothes stepped up onto the verandah from the other end.
Frank was carrying a bucket with the house milk in it and he held it out as if to say this was the real reason for coming.
“Put that milk on the kitchen table with a cover over it,” said Mrs McMahon.
“Look at her, Dad!” cried Esme.
Mr McMahon was looking. His
eyes were level with the top of her head and hers with his chin. His chin and her chin had the same cleft. Their eyes though not quite meeting were washed with the same toffee brown liquid. Each mouth quirked slightly with the same shy smile.
Mrs McMahon stepped between them like a bustling hen leading chickens to somewhere else.
“There’s things for all of you to do!” cried Mrs McMahon taking her apron from a chair and pinning it rapidly on.
The children lingered somewhat dreamily some of them leaning against chairs as if they thought it more appropriate to sit but Mrs McMahon pushed the chairs under the table and the guilty ones had to move fast to avoid being pinned there too.
“The place for that’s in the bedroom,” said Mrs McMahon of Sylvia’s case and Lennie having just dropped it thankfully picked it up again.
Mr McMahon suddenly looking as if he wanted to get his face out of the way hurried off with Frank following.
The kitchen had emptied of all of them except Sylvia, Esme, Rose and Yvonne.
“Sit on a chair,” said Esme to Sylvia.
Sylvia sat and took off her little round black hat and held it on her knees.
They saw her fluffed-out black hair with the deep wave running right round it.
“Let me do it!” cried Esme her hands hovering over Sylvia’s head as if they already held brush and comb.
“We’ve got to set the table!” said Rose.
Sylvia tilted her face and shook her thick, beautiful bouncy hair.
“I’m having it waved when I get back. Little waves all around my face.”
She drew with her two forefingers a scalloped edge to her cheeks.
“Oh, oh!” cried Esme looking to Rose and Yvonne to say with her eyes how splendid this would be.
But Rose and Yvonne setting the table frowned at the knives and forks.
“We’ll tell Mum you didn’t help!”
“You pair of pimps!” said Esme nearly leaning against Sylvia.
“Nellie Wright might be over to play tomorrow,” said Rose with lowered eyes and significant cunning.
“She wouldn’t like Arnold now!” cried Esme.
Sylvia’s face said nothing and her long fine fingers stroked the crown of her hat.
“I’m dying to see all your things,” whispered Esme.