by Olga Masters
“There’s more than one rat scuttling about the building!”
“My little rat doesn’t scuttle anywhere! He just comes to me!” Irene cried.
“It’s a ‘she’ don’t forget!” said Vera.
Irene intending to lean forward towards Mabel jerked sideways until she hung over the edge of the settee. She addressed the corner of the room past Mabel’s chair.
“Don’t tell Henderson! Don’t tell Henderson!”
Mabel’s hibiscus sleeve fell back to her elbow when she lifted an arm and looked with meditation on a raised hand quite well shaped with nails painted Maud noticed with a wildly beating heart.
“Come to think of it Bert doesn’t scuttle about the building either,” Mabel said. “He just comes to me!”
“Oh Mabel, he doesn’t!” Maud cried out. “How can you be sure, Mabel?”
Maud looked wildly around her. “Bert goes to work and comes home!”
“So you say Maud,” said Mabel placidly looking at her hand again.
“Oh Mabel, stop joking!” Maud went to stand then sat and looked around her feet as if in search of something but she had forgotten what.
“It’s no joke,” said Mabel. “You can’t watch Bert every minute of the day Maud.” She paused blinked her eyes rapidly. “Or night.”
“Bert sleeps in his bed all night!”
“All night?”
“He gets up with his bladder! I hear him!”
“You hear him get up or go back to bed Maud. Not both.”
“Mabel, stop it!” Maud cried getting up and briefly glancing at her ankles before returning her wide and blazing eyes to Mabel.
“Bert wouldn’t hurt anyone! I know he wouldn’t!”
“He certainly doesn’t hurt me, Maud,” said Mabel. “Quite the opposite.”
“Oh my God!” shrieked Vera rocking herself with delight. “This is better than the pictures! I didn’t miss anything after all!”
“She’s joking. She’s never met Bert!” said Maud.
“You hustle us out of here every Thursday before Bert gets home,” Mabel said. “You don’t want us to meet him, do you Maud?”
Maud took a pace or two towards Mabel but stopped before she could stand over her. She did not look at her feet.
“Get out of my house!”
Mabel stood both hands brushing down in a flowing movement her hibiscus dress.
“That’s right! Say ‘my house’, Mabel! It’s a good start!”
“Get out!” cried Maud.
“I’m going,” said Mabel.
“Surely not before you’ve made a date for the pictures!” cried Vera, but she too was on her feet and just behind Maud when she flung the door open.
They went into the hall with Irene behind when Henderson came towards them on one of his routine inspections of the building.
Maud as if in a race against Mabel cried out: “There’s a rat in the building, Mr Henderson!”
No one spoke although Irene was about to. Her gnarled purple hand crushed to her mouth caused nothing to emerge but a thin squeak.
They all leapt and looked at their feet. Henderson had trouble with his legs and they creaked and wavered while his trousers always worn too long seemed in danger of tangling him up.
“It’s in Miss Crump’s flat, Mr Henderson!” Maud cried. “It’s upsetting us all, isn’t it Mabel? But Mr Henderson will get rid of it, won’t you Mr Henderson?”
But Mabel’s head was up and her back towards them sailing away like a floral boat in the direction of her door.
A DOG THAT SQUEAKED
The girl Tad who was nine came into the kitchen and saw her mother ironing.
The sight made her drop her schoolcase with a thud and think of running back and telling her brother Paddy.
He was rolling in a patch of dirt beside the verandah with the dog, a mongrel with a creamy grey coat patched with tan and eyes that apologized for his lowly state.
“Look at the mongrel!” the father had said more than once. “A rump like a wallaby and front paws like a blasted bandicoot!”
The dog rolled eyes desperate with shame, begging the father not to put him out of the kitchen if it was where Paddy and Tad were.
Paddy and Tad (shortened from Tadpole the nickname she got when she was born with a large head and body that whittled away to tendrils with feet on the end) wanted to get between the father and the dog to save it further hurt.
Foolishly the dog would make a squeak of protest which angered the father more.
“Get him out!” the father would say with a swing of his boot sending the dog up the steps—for the kitchen was on a lower level to the rest of the house—yelping and slunking for the patch beside the verandah where it usually lay in wait for the children.
Paddy was now having a glorious reunion with it, his shirt open and dust all over his pants. They snuffled and snorted and murmured and squeaked and it was hard to tell which noise came from the dog and which from the boy.
Tad went to the table and put her chin on the edge squeezing her eyes shut waiting for her mother’s kiss.
There was the smell of heat and scorch and beeswax in the air.
Tad opened her eyes after a while and the mother was spreading an old work shirt of the father’s on the ironing sheet.
Her face was shut like a window and her mouth not a kissing mouth.
But her hair was pretty with little gold springs near her ears and temples.
Tad ran a hand down a waterfall of tapes on a stack of ironed pillowslips.
“Don’t rumple them up!” the mother said sharply.
Tad saw one of her play dresses looking only partly familiar with the sash ironed flat and the faded parts showing more than before. She went to go out to Paddy and the dog but only got to the door because the mother made a noise and Tad turned and saw her face with the eyes large and round and very blue.
“I’ll do this damned ironing if it’s the last thing I ever do!” she said.
Tad trailed back and sat on a chair.
“Where’s Dad?” she said.
The mother snorted, picked up the father’s shirt and flung it back into the old basket Paddy and Tad slept in as babies, now piled high all the time with wrinkled clothes. Tad noticed all the things in view in the basket seemed to be the father’s.
The mother picked through the clothes and seemed to get angrier finding nothing but big shirts and rough old trousers.
“I’m not ironing another thing!” she said, and seizing the poker she slapped the irons on the stove sending them skidding to the back.
She sat down and drew a hand down her cheek leaving a black mark. She looked like a little girl who had played in the dirt at least no older than Mimi Anderson the big girl at school who sat by herself in the back seat. Often the teacher sat with her helping her with the hard work she did. No one was allowed to turn around and look.
Tad waited for the mother to say more.
“Your father made me do the ironing,” she said.
This sounded strange to Tad.
“He rode over to McViety’s this morning and had lemonade in their wash house!”
Tad felt her throat contract with a longing for lemonade. She and the mother looked at the stove where the kettle was sending out whispery grey breaths.
“There’s no tea started,” the mother said. “I can’t even think what we’ll have!”
“Stew with a crust?” Tad said, and knew at once it was a foolish suggestion.
On stew day the mother pushed the breakfast dishes back and threw the end of the tablecloth over them. She placed a large piece of quivering crimson meat on the bare table and cut it into little squares piling them on an old tin plate. If it wasn’t school day Tad leaned over and watched, and unable to handle a sharp knife and squeamish at the feel of raw meat secretly worried about the time she would be married and want to feed her family stew and mightn’t be able to.
The ironing was all over one end of the table now and a d
ish full of washing up at the other end so today was certainly not stew day.
The mother reached over for a clean handkerchief on the pile and blew her nose.
“Henry McViety built Dolly a shelf in the wash house and Henry showed it to your father.” The mother tossed her head. “Dolly came along with a tray of cake and lemonade.”
Tad wondered what kind of cake.
“I was here putting in a new row of beans,” the mother said with a big tremble in her voice. “And then I had to nail two palings on the fence to stop the fowls from scratching the seeds out.”
Tad wished for a big glass of lemonade for the mother when she was done.
“The stove was out and I had to build up the fire again.”
There was the crunch of a big boot near the door and the father ducked inside because the door frame at that end of the kitchen wasn’t high enough for him.
“The tadpole girl!” the father said. “Home from school!” He sounded more hearty than seemed necessary.
Tad didn’t think she should kiss him since the mother hadn’t kissed her. The father kept his eyes on Tad perhaps to avoid seeing the mother who laid a cheek on her hand with the handkerchief prominent.
“Mum did the ironing,” Tad said. She looked at the basket. “Nearly all the ironing.”
The father looked away quickly seeming to search for the dish on an iron frame in the corner under the tap, something he had arranged himself, setting up a small tank on a stand outside and bringing the tap inside by means of a hole cut in the kitchen wall. The children never tired of the story of how he did it as a surprise for the mother when she came home from hospital with Paddy as a baby.
He washed now with much sluicing and dried his hands the way he always did dragging the towel down each finger separately.
Tad wanted his cup of tea steaming on the table with a wedge of cake beside it, and couldn’t look at the place where it should be.
Paddy came in and Tad knew by the scratching on the verandah boards the dog was coming too.
Paddy halted aware of the error and the dog compromising went and curled up under the safe where there was just enough room for him.
The father hung the towel up and sat down looking at the floor.
“Cowtime!” he said. “Tadpole and Paddymelon!”
The dog made a squeaking noise as if he wanted to be included. Paddy sitting on the step frowned a warning.
The father looked at the whispering kettle. Tad felt a corresponding dryness in her throat.
“Cowtime!” he said again, slapping both hands on his thighs. The dog raised his head and gave a yelp.
The mother blew her nose again. “Help me put the ironing away, Patrick and Freda,” she said. The children felt a chill at the unfamiliar sound of their real names. The dog uttered a low growl reserved for strangers.
The father looked about him. “I might have a drink of water, eh Tadpole?”
“I’ll get it for you, Dad,” Tad said.
“You were told to put the ironing away,” the mother said standing up and putting her handkerchief into the neck of her dress as if she wanted it close at hand. “But of course we haven’t got a lovely tidy linen press like Dolly McViety.” She sniffed deeply and began to sort the ironing. “We haven’t got a linen press at all.”
“We’ve got the sheet drawer,” Tad said.
This was the middle drawer of the old cedar chest of drawers reserved for the household linen but almost always empty because the sheets were brought in from the clothes line and put on the beds and tea towels and face towels plucked from the basket when they were needed.
“The knobs need fixing,” Paddy said.
The father burst into a laugh which sounded strange in the kitchen.
The mother burst into tears.
The dog jumped up and squeaking and snuffling circled the floor as if it were a circus ring.
Paddy and Tad were torn between concern for the mother’s tears and the dog who almost brushed the father’s boots with its low slung belly.
“There’s no beds made, no tea on—” the mother wept.
“Mum doesn’t even know what we’ll have,” Tad said with tears in her eyes.
Paddy took an old bald tennis ball from his schoolbag and began to bounce it between his feet. The dog barked with every bounce so Paddy stopped and gripped the ball tightly between his hands.
Outside Strawberry leading the other cows home gave a low bellow.
The father winced as if he too had a full udder.
The mother sat on her chair again and wiped her cheek with her fingers spreading the black mark farther out.
Tad couldn’t summon the courage to tell her, although the mother told her over and over to say if there was a black mark on her face from the poker or pots and pans encrusted with soot and grease. “You never know who might come,” she would say meaning Dolly McViety or her brother Henry, the nearest neighbours and just about the only people to call without warning.
“We don’t want to be finishing up in the dark, do we Paddy and Tad?” the father said.
The dog gave a low growl, appreciating the seriousness of this event.
The mother stood up, sniffed and tossed her head. “I have to clean up the wash house,” she said. “I have to make it so neat you could do the washing in the middle of the night without a light. Or serve cake and lemonade there like Dolly McViety does.”
The father said nothing.
“Lucky Dolly McViety,” the mother said. “How long since we’ve had money to spare for a bottle of lemonade?”
Tad and Paddy had a vision of a marble wobbling at the top of a bottle of greenish-white lemonade sweating a little with cold. Saliva came into their mouths.
“Dolly made the lemonade from their lemons,” the father said.
In the small silence the mother took an iron from the stove and an old piece of curtain from the basket.
“Our lemon tree never got a go on,” Paddy said.
The mother swept the iron across the curtain making more tears in it.
She laid it folded on the bank of ironing.
“I’m supposed to make the lemon tree grow I suppose, on top of everything I have to do.
“Why didn’t you marry Dolly McViety?” she said.
“Why didn’t you marry Henry?” the father said.
Tad got up and went and sat close to her brother on the step. The dog with a squeak and a stretching of his jaws got up too and lay across their feet.
The mother took a fresh iron and held it near her cheek already hot and scarlet.
She began to iron the ironing sheet. Her eyes were cast down and the black showed up more. I should say something, Tad worried although the McVietys would hardly come at milking time.
“Dolly would be sitting in her front room now with her sewing,” the mother said. “She never has to go to the yard.”
The father looked at the wall outside of which the dairy was waiting.
“Henry would be there now with a big slab of Dolly’s caraway cake under his belt,” the father said.
“I can’t imagine anyone eating my cake after Dolly’s,” the mother said.
“Henry would,” the father said. “He wouldn’t notice whether it was seeds or flies’ legs he was eating.”
The children moved closer together. They had a vision of Dolly and Henry as their mother and father. They saw themselves wandering through the scrupulous order of the McViety house. The dog as if bidding them goodbye forever laid his jaws on his paws with a low mournful cry.
“Henry said regards to your Mollie when I was leaving,” the father said.
The mother might not have heard. She took an armful of ironing and walked to the other part of the house with it.
The father stared at the doorway over the children’s heads. Bellows from other cows added to Strawberry’s painful plea. The father winced.
“Those cows’ll bust,” he said.
He looked at Paddy and Tad. “All I said was D
olly was a wonderful housekeeper,” he said.
The dog growled in fearful amazement that one could be so foolish.
The mother returned. She had wiped her face clean of the black smudge and it was all pink and gold and white. You could see the mark of a comb through her forehead full of wheat-coloured curls.
She went to the stove. There was a click as she lifted the metal lid of the teapot, and the sound of a stream of puffing water.
She tossed her head while she tossed away the pot holder.
“Henry McViety can keep his old regards,” she said.
The father stood up. He closed one crinkling brown eye on Paddy and Tad.
Then he saw the dog.
His smile vanished.
“Get that mongrel out!” he cried. “How did it get in? Rump like a wallaby and legs like a blasted bandicoot! Get him out!”
A YOUNG MAN’S FANCY
He woke and saw the empty place in the bed and knew at once he should worry about it.
He turned over away from the sight and thought through his half sleep what she might be doing.
After a while he could bear it no longer and got up and went to the back of the house.
He dodged past chairs in the living room pulled to odd angles. There were toys on the floor, a cup half full of coffee near the leg of the television, a half-knitted garment near a pile of tangled wool.
In the kitchen he saw the toaster showing a line of scarlet and there was a smell of hot metal.
He snapped the power off and let himself out of the house standing in the bleak cold with the yard emerging from the morning fog equally bleak.
There was the clothes hoist and under it a hole dug in the clay. Nearby was a battered doll’s pram and a cardboard carton on its side sheltering a few pieces of dolls’ furniture. Everything looked colder and more neglected for its film of dew.
He felt eyes. He jumped and so did Mrs Lake next door who had pulled aside a branch of a cassia bush on her side to look at him there shivering in his pyjamas.
She dropped the branch pretending to look into the shrub.
He wanted to say, “Have you seen my wife?” but couldn’t bring himself to.
He heard her stops going back onto her porch.
She stopped abruptly and into the silence called out: “Your wife’s on the road there, Mr Benson.”