The Home Girls

by Olga Masters

  Immediately she was inside the lottery ticket sent to her by her son Tom for her sixty-fifth birthday appeared to spring at her from where it was propped against a coffee canister that held her rent receipts.

  I’m being silly, Mrs Halliday said to herself turning from it and pulling out a chair for the man turning the cushion onto its better side.

  But I know I’m not, thought Mrs Halliday creaking herself into a chair too and managing not to look into the man’s face.

  Josie was lingering not too far from Mrs Halliday’s door when the man let himself out. On the second step he paused and stared so hard at Josie with his chin tipped up she turned and scurried in the direction of her flat.

  The man was seething. Sometimes on occasions similar to this he was given champagne, sometimes he was cried over, sometimes he was promised money (though this seldom eventuated) and mostly he was asked back for a celebration party (which he wasn’t allowed to attend under a rule of the lottery office) but never had he encountered a winner like Mrs Halliday.

  He remembered her at the table with her arms around her old shopping bag saying nothing.

  A waste, a waste a waste! cried the man to himself getting into the car which was shabby and old and in need of replacing.

  Give me a rich winner any time.

  He got a swift mental picture of Josie, laughing with her head back, her fattish neck hung with pearls and that hand she held to her mouth ringed with winking stones.

  “I can just see the bitch!” he said, his words drowned out with the roar of the engine as the car to his amazement started at the first attempt.

  Inside her flat Mrs Halliday stared at the closed door as if daring it to open or be knocked upon.

  She began almost noiselessly to unpack her shopping bag. First the meat. Unwrapping it a wave of happiness washed over her. She had asked for a piece for a stew and the butcher trimmed it ruthlessly, leaving pieces of red meat clinging to the fat he was discarding. He heard Mrs Halliday’s intake of breath and flicking his eyes in her direction he put the handful of discards with the portion she was paying for.

  “For your cat,” he said wrapping it swiftly.

  Mrs Halliday remembered his hands, so clean pale pink and smooth coming like a nice surprise at the end of his hairy arms.

  “Such nice hands,” she whispered putting the meat into the coldest part of the refrigerator.

  She usually smelled it for freshness but felt this would be an insult.

  She moved about as quietly as she could keeping an eye on the door. She couldn’t remember it looking menacing before.

  You look different, door.

  Don’t look different.

  She sat at the table and tipped the contents of her purse out trying too late to stop the clatter.

  She always counted her money after shopping.

  But her hands hovered above it now and in the end she picked it up silently and put it back in the purse.

  I don’t want to make a noise, she said to herself.

  Her eyes were on the door when there was a tap, one knuckle striking once almost shyly.

  Mrs Halliday held her body in with her breath and didn’t move.

  It’s not Josie, she told herself. Josie always gives the door one bang and shouts out “It’s me!”

  But she knew it was Josie.

  I will say I was having a rest and didn’t hear.

  She got up without allowing the chair a squeak and went into the bedroom.

  She got onto the bed the way she always did, kicking off her shoes and throwing her legs in the air, wriggling her bottom until it fitted into the centre of the bed. She blew strands of hair out of her eyes as she stared at the ceiling. She heard in her mind the tap of the door and tried to fit an expression to Josie’s face.

  I don’t know how she was looking, she said to herself closing her eyes. But Josie’s face kept floating before her and the doorknock repeating in her ears. She couldn’t get comfortable and in the end sat up and pulled the covers back to look at the mattress. The pattern was gone, long melted into the thin dull grey fabric streaked here and there with rust. I should try and get that off worried Mrs Halliday. She rubbed a finger on a mark feeling a spring. She rubbed harder and the spring seemed on the point of bursting through the covering. She tried to lift a corner of the mattress thinking it was a long time since she had turned it over but the rolled edge was flattened with age and there was nothing to grip. She put the covers back and lay down again. But she couldn’t rest. She put a hand underneath a buttock and rubbed again at the spot where the spring poked her. She moved like a hen settling into a nest and felt lumps around her thighs. Then she turned over and thought she smelled dust. It’s old, she thought, older than Tom who was forty-five. I’ll have to write and tell him. She wriggled and it was close to a writhe. I don’t have to yet, she thought closing her eyes. A vision of Tom’s wife rose before her. The wife’s name was Mavis and she had sparse sandy hair and watery blue eyes without lashes and a nose that appeared to grow longer when she pulled her thin mouth in which she frequently did. Mrs Halliday turned away from the sight. She rubbed a leg against the mattress trying to smooth away a lump.

  She appeared only to succeed in making larger lumps. It’s just that I can’t lie still, she said to herself. She willed herself to try but after a while gave up and sat up her hair in her eyes and both hands supporting her. A mirror was opposite and she looked long into it as if addressing another person.

  “I will have a new one,” she said and waited almost expecting it to answer.

  “Yes, a new one,” she said and lay back again. She imagined it richly coloured, smooth and firm and yielding gently to her body and smelling of newness.

  She turned over and ran a hand down the side of the old one. I’ll have to do something with you, she thought.

  She judged the space under the bed but it would not fit there. She placed it with her eyes in different parts of the room but she saw it obscuring the window or making it impossible to open the door. Wherever it was it appeared to half fill the room with a bend in the middle like a drunken old woman struggling to stand upright.

  That will be a problem, she thought.

  Then she shot into an upright position again.

  “Josie can have it!” she said aloud to the mirror daring it to argue.

  She fished with her feet for her shoes beside the bed. Josie was forever talking about her need for a new mattress. She and one of the children slept on an old one bowed in the middle like the bottom half of a hoop. In the summer she packed spare blankets into the hollow and the bed when made up looked quite respectable.

  Mrs Halliday raked her hair into some sort of order with her fingers and let herself out of her flat and hurried along to Josie’s. She felt that fervent inner glow of someone about to do a good deed. The door was open and inside were the two girls leaning over the table where they took their meals and Josie had her back to the sink looking as if she had just imparted some news of great importance. She was startled when Mrs Halliday appeared and the girls drew back from the table as if attached to a length of string.

  “Now behave yourselves both of you,” Josie said to them pulling out a chair for Mrs Halliday. Josie turned to take cups from a shelf and set them on the table. The girls sat on one chair, one was a large child and the other thin. They wriggled their rumps together giggling.

  “Behave, I said,” said Josie sternly. “Behave in front of—” She lowered her eyes and set saucers under the cups.

  I think she was going to call me Rose, Mrs Halliday said to herself astonished.

  Josie addressed herself again to the girls.

  “Remember you’re only children!” she said.

  They sobered while digesting this undeniable truth and pressed their chins to their chests allowing themselves a controlled titter now and again.

  Mrs Halliday struggled in her mind to find something to say.

  She thought of the meat but when the words started up sh
e swallowed them back.

  No, I won’t tell her that, she said to herself averting her eyes so that she looked directly through the open doorway onto Josie’s bed.

  There was no build up of blankets in the middle and the dreadful sagging was emphasized because one of the children had obviously sat there when she came in from school. The head and foot seemed to bow towards each other but perhaps the pronounced dip gave this illusion.

  Mrs Halliday saw not so much Josie’s bed but her own.

  She saw it as flat and smooth as a table top with the quilt on and not a lump or dip in sight.

  Even staring into the cup of tea Josie placed near her elbow Mrs Halliday held onto the vision of her bed.

  It’s got years and years of wear in it yet, she told herself with a lifting of her spirits.

  She lifted her cup too feeling Josie’s watching eyes and waiting ears.

  I’ll have to say something or she’ll wonder why I came, thought Mrs Halliday.

  She broke the silence at last.

  “What I really came for,” said Mrs Halliday, “Was to ask you to give me a hand to turn my mattress over.

  “There’s no hurry,” she said when Josie did not speak.

  “Any old time will do.”

  CALL ME PINKIE

  The house was perched on the side of a hill with a verandah in front.

  A few May bushes, one or two scraggy geraniums and a wild pink rose grew level with the verandah boards so the outlook to the road was unimpaired.

  I had come home from school and found Mother on the verandah staring dreamily at the road. It was 1932 and a fairly steady stream of tramps went by but not many cars.

  At school that day Sister Alfreda had seen a family on the road, a mother and father and three children. The mother and father walking together had packs on their backs and the spindly legged children were spread out with old rag hats pulled down to their eyes.

  “A family on the road,” said Sister, “God help them.”

  I looked at the picture on the classroom wall of Jesus with his fingers pointing to his bleeding heart, half expecting Him to step down and perform some miracle.

  All the class rose like a flock of sparrows to crane through the window.

  “Sit down!” Sister Alfreda said sharply. “You weren’t told to stare like a herd of cattle!”

  Mother did not watch the road for tramps.

  She would leave whatever she was doing or when she was doing nothing and go out and look when she heard the noise of a motor that was not Creamy Ryan’s lorry on its way to the butter factory or Father Slattery on his way to see some parishioner who hadn’t been attending Mass regularly.

  I had seen her snap Clem off her breast with the suddenness of a gun going off and fling him down roaring on the couch while she dashed out.

  Now she was standing leaning against the verandah post, her eyes on the flat where a car was twinkling between the gums and the dog bush that lined the road.

  The engine hummed with the noise of a droning bee, then took deep groaning breaths as it climbed the hill where the road had been cut through one side. I always wished the road was on our side of the hill. Then Mother could watch the cars for longer, and the dreamy shine would not fade so quickly from her eyes.

  “I saw a woman in the front seat with a big black hat on,” she said her voice just above a whisper. “There was a big pink rose under the brim.”

  How could she? It must have been that she was so tall with wonderful sight in her large blue eyes that made her see so well. I saw only a glint of sun on transparent side curtains, and a spare wheel at the rear almost hidden in a puff of blue smoke.

  Mother wrapped her arms around the post as if it were someone she loved.

  There was a crash in the kitchen. I knew by the sound one of the little boys had emptied the contents of the saucepan cupboard with the swipe of an arm.

  “I’ll see, Mother,” I said.

  In a little while she came down the hall into the kitchen so quietly I turned and found her. She mostly moved this way. In her spotty muslin dress she walked as I imagined a lithe mountain cat would. She stood staring at Eric aged three and Clem one and a half surrounded by pans on the floor. Eric stretched out an arm to her with his starfish fingers sprayed out. A little absent smile settled on her mouth then vanished when she looked at Clem standing up with a fly in the corner of his eye, one nostril running and only a singlet on.

  “I’ll get him some pants from the line,” I said. Mother appearing not to hear me went to the stove, looked in the fire box then snapped the door shut. I had time to see a bed of ashes with one or two little pink points. She turned and leaned against a chair back looking over the kitchen table through the window into the peach tree. All over the table were the plates and cups from breakfast, the butter run to oil and the loaf of bread with the cut edge dry and curled like an old leaf.

  “I’ll get some wood for the stove,” I said quite loud because I was never sure if she heard or not.

  I went down the back steps to the little room that was both wash house and wood shed. Inside scattered about were several pairs of the boys’ pants, most of them screwed into hard little lumpy heaps. A cloud of flies rose from a pair on the bottom of a dry wash tub. I found a bucket and put in all those I could see and poured on a flood of water. With a potstick I churned them round and round letting the muck rise to the top. Transferring the pants to a tub I flung the water deep into the May bush. Climbing on a stump of wood I balanced the old grey washboard against the tub and ground yellow soap into the stained parts of the pants, plunging them up and down in the fresh water.

  I imagined myself saying to Mother, “I’ve washed all the boys’ pants and hung them out, Mother,” and seeing the smile chase the strain from her face.

  In a little while a shadow fell across the tub.

  “Oh Father!” I said, as if he’d frightened me. As if gladness could frighten you.

  My blinking smile and his beautiful one washing into his brown eyes made nothing of the distance between us.

  “Hullo Pinkie!” he said. “Little washerwoman Pinkie!”

  He sat down in the doorway to unlace his old reddish boots caked with clay from the roadworks where he had a job. I had this urge to say something that would please him.

  “Mother’s not sick,” I said to my red hands in the water. “She’s getting tea.”

  He said nothing and I stole a look at his back, past the day’s last piece of sun laying some gentle fingers on the edge of the tub. The back of his neck was creased beautifully like a doll’s pleated skirt. When he moved the pleats deepened. His hair grew in and out of his collar touching him lovingly. His shoulders moved under his old blue shirt with the rhythmic unlacing. He made some nice little gentle grunts. My blouse felt too tight for my skinny chest, my throat too tight to swallow.

  Beautiful Father.

  “How was school today?” he asked with his last boot coming off.

  “Oh, good,” I said. “We saw a family of tramps. Sister Alfreda said to pray for them.” I wrung at some old serge pants of Eric’s. “I’m going to pray for them.”

  Father put his arms on his knees and let his hands hang down. Perhaps he hadn’t heard.

  “I saw a nest of robins,” he said. “We didn’t have to cut the tree down.”

  “Oh, I’m glad,” I said.

  After a while he said into the stillness: “I’ll have to go inside soon.”

  “When I’ve washed the pants I’ll come too,” I said seeing his troubled face with the back of my head.

  “Well Pinkie,” he said stuffing his socks into his boots and standing up.

  He went and I saw through the cut-out square above the tubs that evening had come. The clothesline stretched bleakly across the sky. The May bush was bent in the wind with the flowers parted like the hair of a white headed old woman. The road was quiet. No singing cars went by and there was no light in McTaggert’s house on the other hill. The water in the tub, slo
shy and lively before, grew still and chilly. I didn’t want to wash any more. I took my arms out of the water and wiped them along the sides of my tunic and went to the bottom of the steps.

  I heard Mother scream out: “Nancy said she was getting wood! It’s not my fault the fire’s out!”

  The door opened and Father hurtled down the steps past me.

  “You had to get wood for the stove!” he said.

  “Oh Father I know!” I wailed.

  Inside I saw the furniture had backed into the shadows taking Mother who was hard to pick out at first in the corner of the couch with both hands pressed flat against her face.

  The little boys were staring at her in the shadows too except for their faces like pale discs.

  With a moaning cry she dropped her head against the hard end of the couch and began to roll it from side to side.

  Eric stood up with a scattering of pans and began to wail. A second later Clem started up so when Eric’s wah—ahh—ahh—ah was dying away Clem’s shrill scream cut across it. The three of them were like instruments of a human orchestra, someone was blowing unable to draw from them any sweet or hopeful sound.

  Father was in the shed scrambling for wood that would burn quickly.

  I had stopped on the middle step looking back and looking forward.

  “Go inside!” he called to me.

  Oh Father don’t talk to me that way.

  “Inside!” he said. “Clem’s messed in a saucepan! The fire’s dead out!”

  I looked at him, nothing to see except the brown egg of his face tipped towards me. His mouth was jagged and ugly.

  Oh Father you were so beautiful.

  “Inside at once! Nancy! Get inside!”

  Say Pinkie, Father. Please father, call me Pinkie. Oh Father, say Pinkie please.

  He would not have heard the words if I had said them, for he was splitting wood with hard quick blows, sending pieces flying about. There was a wind too, one of those winds that come with evening, a wind with a breath of warmth from the day just gone and a chilly edge warning of worse to come.

  ADAMS AND BARKER

  Cheryl and Dennis saw the house with both sets of parents one Saturday morning.