by Olga Masters
They went early before the influx of people to the estate the young women in their weekend jeans and their young husbands straddling babies on their hips very often like the young Barkers with parents along.
The three women and Dennis went into one of the houses and the elder Barker and Adams, Cheryl’s father, stayed near a bed of petunias at the base of a gum tree.
The salesman rushed to help the women up the steps to the porch which was unnecessary since the house was almost flat on the ground.
He looked expectantly towards Adams and Barker but their backs said clearly they would have no part in any inspection.
“All these places are the bloody same,” Adams said licking the edge of his cigarette paper as he rolled a smoke.
“Gawd it’s a long way out,” said Barker.
They each thought with a sense of cosiness of their own places (rented) half a dozen doors from each other in Parramatta. They were semi-detached with the roof sloping down in Barker’s case almost touching the dusty little hedge in front. Adams’s place had the front verandah closed in as a bedroom for the Adams boy born when Mrs Adams was forty-three, ten years after the last of the three daughters.
Mrs Adams sat in her dark little kitchen and wept for most of her pregnancy. She hoped the child would be born dead or so severely handicapped it would go into an institution. When he was normal and a relative the same age as Mrs Adams bore a sub-normal child Mrs Adams became very proud of her achievement and spoiled the boy rotten.
The verandah room of faded canvas blinds did not enhance the Adamses’ place because their neighbour kept the exposed front and the cottages had the appearance of a face with one eye closed.
Not that the Adamses or the Barkers noticed this kind of thing.
When the Adamses’ lawn mower broke down once, it stayed in the middle of the tiny lawn for the remainder of the summer and the grass grew high enough to cover it.
The Barkers had an old canvas chair on their lawn with a split in the seat through which the grass grew. Barker never bothered to move it when he cut the grass, grumbling and cursing and throwing old shoes and dogs’ bones that got in his way into the hedge.
Adams and Barker were always in a hurry to get to the club. The wives were the same.
Making sure she had her cigarettes and money for the poker machines Mrs Adams (Mrs Barker too) would bang the front door shut and pick her way down the steps where missing tiles gave them a gap toothed look and make for the club leaning forward as she walked as if this would bring it closer.
The two couples formed a foursome when Cheryl and Dennis married. The women took great pleasure in comparing notes on what the two families were up to in pre-marriage days.
“Fancy that!” Mrs Adams said when she learned the Barkers were also in a rented cottage at The Entrance for a holiday in January 1960.
Both swore they remembered Cheryl and Dennis making up to each other on the sand.
“She used to talk about this little boy,” Mrs Adams said looking into her beer with eyes as moist.
Mrs Barker dreamily stroked her glass.
“I remember this little girl in red swimmers,” she said.
“Gawd,” said the men looking around to find the drink waiter again.
Cheryl and Dennis spent the first two years of their married life in a rented flat and were now ready for something better. Cheryl worked the switchboard of a glass factory by day and Dennis drove a delivery van for a grocery warehouse. At night both worked in clubs and hotels serving at the bar, washing glasses and waiting on tables.
A place of their own was their dream. They had saved enough for a deposit and were now deciding between a block of land and building to a plan they liked (“Gawd they’d be findin’ fault with it inside a year,” said Adams or maybe it was Barker) or going into one of the places already built on estates like this one.
Adams and Barker showed little interest in either scheme beyond wondering how anyone could be bothered undertaking such a project.
“I couldn’t take that movin,” Barker said over his Saturday beer.
“They’ll be leavin’ it to their kids to pay for,” said Adams gloomily taking up his glass.
Cheryl and Dennis had no car because all their money went into their home savings account and the senior Barkers with a beaten up old Holden were prevailed upon to drive to the estate this Saturday. Barker agreed to go only if Adams went.
“Show an interest,” said Mrs Adams with some severity. “It’s the least you can do.”
Mrs Barker had said the same earlier on to Barker who complained for the thousandth time in their married life that she was too bloody useless to get a driver’s licence and if she had acquired one Adams and Barker might have been spared the trip.
They showed their reluctance to become involved in the exercise by keeping their backs to the little place Cheryl and Dennis and the mothers spent about twenty minutes inspecting.
A noise made them turn.
It was Mrs Adams swinging her handbag at them.
“Oh Gawd,” said Adams and Barker.
“Come and look,” she said.
“At what?” said Adams.
“The place!” said Mrs Adams.
“There’s no room in there to swing a cat!” Barker said.
“Come on,” Mrs Adams said.
“Gawd,” said the men throwing their cigarettes into the petunias.
They followed Mrs Adams’s back and trotting legs.
Cheryl and Dennis and Mrs Barker and the salesman were in a room that seemed all the house. Behind one jutting counter was the kitchen and behind another a built-in table and seats.
“No dining room suite to buy,” said Mrs Barker dreamily stroking the surface of the table.
The salesman gave his head a knowing little shake as if he had personally organized this.
Cheryl stood holding her elbows looking upwards as if she was seeing angels. She had her mouth open and her tongue wandering about as if trying to check her perpetual smile. She had washed her hair before leaving home and it hung like bootlaces around her whitish face. Her legs and feet in thongs were the same whitish colour. Her cotton dress was shapeless and dipped unevenly around her knees that looked like uncooked buns.
Dennis stood a little distance from her rubbing a forearm and running his eyes around the skirting board and window frames keeping them away from Cheryl as if too shy to show her the happiness in them.
“Great,” he said.
“Oh, it’s beautiful!” said Cheryl the last syllable engulfed in a sigh rising from her chest.
“Well you two?” said Mrs Barker looking at Adams and Barker who appeared almost to be clinging together just inside the doorway.
They began to feel in their hip pockets for smokes.
The salesman embraced Cheryl and Dennis and the mothers in a look of conspiracy.
“I’ll be back in a minute,” he said as Adams and Barker went closer together to give him room to get past them.
“Look at the rest of it,” said Mrs Adams glaring at Adams and Barker.
They did not move but cast their eyes towards an opening into a small hallway as if to say this was seeing all.
“It’s nearly dinner time,” said Barker with a whining edge to his voice.
“He means gettin’ to the club!” said Mrs Barker curling her lip and dumping her handbag heavily on the dining table.
Cheryl looked to see if it left a mark.
Mrs Adams reached down and smoothed around the edges of a cupboard and Cheryl watched as if she should perhaps censor this.
The salesman returned. He had two handfuls of printed and illustrated matter which Adams and Barker saw were bright and bold with pictures of houses and drawings of house plans. He put a handful into each of the hands of Mrs Adams and Mrs Barker.
“Gawd,” whispered the men looking across at the car by the petunias and wondering when they could decently escape to it.
The salesman pressed past them grin
ning as if he had just won a major prize with Cheryl and Dennis following him looking only a shade less so.
“Don’t wait for us,” said Dennis.
Adams and Barker and their wives halted in a little heap on the gravel path.
The salesman looked back leading the way to the little office on the estate.
“We’ll get them home safely,” he said.
“Gawd,” said Barker making for the car.
Silently they climbed in, the women in the back.
The car started off ripping at the gravel and discharging rudely from the rear. Safely away and on the highway Barker with one of his eternal cigarettes jutting upwards and looking in danger of setting a thick thatch of grey hair alight called to the back: “Youse all right back there?”
The women clutching their brochures each flung a head towards a window.
“Will we go ’ome first or straight to the club?” said Adams.
“We gotta boy at ’ome waitin’ for his lunch!” shouted Mrs Adams. “He’s forgot!” she muttered as if this did not surprise her.
“He’s done for himself before!” said Adams.
“And he’ll do for himself again if you got anything to do with it!” shouted Mrs Adams.
“Gawd,” whispered Barker.
“Drop me at ’ome anyway!” said Mrs Adams and she would have flounced if her substantial rear had not been anchored to the rattling seat.
“What about you?” shouted Barker and it had to be taken for granted he was addressing his wife. He seldom if ever used her first name.
“’Ome for me too,” said Mrs Barker.
“Gawd,” whispered Adams.
They came upon the Adamses’ place first so Barker pulled up and the two men sat without turning their heads. Mrs Adams was on the side nearest the kerb and she looked through the car window. She looked away almost at once.
“Gawd look at it,” she said.
They looked though barely seeing the long straggling lawn, the opening between the edge of the blind and the verandah rail showing the top of a chest of drawers littered with bike parts, tattered magazines, empty drink cans, odd socks, a rubber surf vest and shorts that had been left to dry stiff with salt. The bowed end of the unmade bed was also visible.
Barker waited at the wheel and Adams turned and blinked his eyes on his wife.
“Git out or stay in,” he said.
“I’m stayin’ in,” she said, “What does it look like?”
Mrs Barker fingering the brochures on her lap turned away to look out her window.
Barker turned and blinked at her.
“You can walk from ’ere,” he said.
“I’m walkin’ nowhere,” said Mrs Barker.
“Gawd,” said the men wondering what was next.
Barker decided. He started up the motor and turned the car around grazing the kerb on the other side and causing the women to hang onto the front seat and snap their legs together to save the brochures from littering the floor.
“He’s headin’ for the club!” said Mrs Barker.
“Where else?” said Mrs Adams.
“We’ll be bloody lucky to get a parkin’ spot,” said Barker.
They found one and Adams and Barker got out with a show of briskness.
“If youse want to stay ’ere and wait youse can,” Barker said.
“That’s what they think!” said Mrs Barker scrambling out with Mrs Adams following.
Adams and Barker led the way faster than they usually did up a ramp that took them through swing doors into the club. A roar of sound met them but not a word distinguishable.
“Hardly a bloody seat left,” said Barker.
But they found a table with a solitary drinker sitting sideways on his chair. They crushed around him and overwhelmed he swept his cigarette packet into his pocket and took up his drink and found a seat against a wall.
“Disruptin’ everything gettin’ ’ere late,” said Barker.
They sat and the women laid their brochures on the table.
Adams and Barker avoided looking at them.
Thankfully the drink waiter was hovering not too far away.
“What do youse want?” said Barker and a second later he wished he had put it another way.
“We want a ’ouse,” said Mrs Adams and Mrs Barker.
MRS LISTER
I dreamed there was a bear coming down the passage to my room.
Get up and close the door, I screamed to myself.
But I had that watery feeling in my limbs that dreamers have.
I screamed just as the blank doorway was about to be filled with the bear’s shape.
When I woke it wasn’t morning through the doorway, but a light from the kitchen.
There was still the noise of the bear’s padding feet.
I sat up and screamed, “Mum!”
A low moan was the answer mixed with the rattle of a chair.
“Oh, shut up, shut up!” she said.
Then the chair creaked under another moan, and the padding feet started again.
Something was terribly wrong. I stared at the pale doorway wanting and not wanting to see her.
“Get up you and help me!” she cried. “Help me, damn you!”
I got out of bed and went to her.
She was on a chair, on the edge of a chair with her knees apart and her hands on them. I was struck by the whiteness and the newness of her nightgown. I stared at the blue flowers she had embroidered on the yoke and wondered why she hadn’t taken care with something so pretty to fasten all the buttons at the neck. Her hair sprayed about and half covered her eyes but not the hate in them.
Two pin points of hate coloured grey blue.
“You do nothing to help me,” she said.
She plucked at her kneecaps under her nightie. She was in the dining room called that because there was a dining table and chairs there, but we always ate in the kitchen. I looked through to the kitchen where a circle of the floor showed up from the hanging light bulb.
“I’ll sweep the kitchen floor,” I said.
“Oh, oh,” she moaned in reply and her hair was flung about with the movement of her head.
She didn’t want it swept then.
“Go and get Mrs Lister,” she said, making circular movements on her thighs with her hands.
Mrs Lister.
She always said that red bitch up above.
I made for the door looking back at her not sure that she meant it.
“You don’t want to help me, do you?” she said, rocking about.
The Listers’ house was the next up the street from us, and was almost above us due to the steepness of the hill. Mrs Lister could stand at her window—and often did—and look down on our little back yard.
My mother would be there sometimes, pegging out clothes.
“Let the bitch stare,” she said once flapping a towel free of creases before pegging it out in a slow deliberate way quite unlike her.
I was playing in the dirt that day making a little house out of dead wattle sticks with a roof of stiff dead gum leaves. Mrs Lister’s breasts and thick red hair about filled the window. I had been so anxious before to get up to putting a little verandah on the house of sticks laid close together. But when I looked from Mrs Lister to my mother then back at the little house I didn’t want to go on with it.
My mother hoisted the clothes prop jabbing it towards Mrs Lister who withdrew.
My mother laughed on her way back into the house.
But when I wandered into the kitchen she was on a chair crying.
I ran now out the rickety gate onto the street hoping some miracle would save me from asking Mrs Lister for help.
Albie Thomas was the miracle.
“Hey,” he said when I opened the gate onto his skinny stomach. He was on his way home clinging to the fence because he was drunk.
“Mr Thomas,” I said, “Mum wants me to get Mrs Lister.”
The street light showed his surprise at me in my nightie. H
e put out a hand and pinched a piece of it over my tittie. He might have wanted to hold something to help him stand up. Then his hand strayed downward and I jumped back when it came to rest on my navel.
Mr Thomas let his hand fall and glanced up at Lister’s house with a light in the back window. There were only a few other lights quite a way off, one outside the police station and another showing up the side way into the hotel. There did not seem to be help anywhere else but at Mrs Lister’s.
Mr Thomas stared at my hand crunching the neck of my nightie. His eyes were watering a little, and his mouth was open a little and wet. His face had a shine on it like wet clay. I thought I might make Mr Thomas’s head next time I played in the clay.
“Walk some of the way home with me. That’s a better idea,” he said. He put out a crooked finger and scratched at my waist. I looked up and saw the hairs in his nostrils.
“Mrs Lister!” I screamed.
Her window flew up.
“Mona!” Mr Thomas called.
“Get on home there, Albie,” Mrs Lister called back.
She couldn’t see me under the palings.
“Who sang out?” she said.
“Yu hearin’ things, Mona,” said Mr Thomas starting to walk off.
I stayed against the palings because Mr Thomas didn’t want Mrs Lister to know about me.
There was a scream from our house and then I didn’t care about Mr Thomas only Mum.
“Mrs Lister!” I screamed too. “Come to Mum!”
I heard her feet on her back steps and she ran through the stumps and old tins and tangle of weeds on the ground between our houses and over our side fence. I raced down the side of our place in time to see her land near our back door open and bright from the kitchen light.
She was like a lovely large white bird with a crest of red feathers. She was in a nightgown too, with blue ribbons tied under those big breasts which showed through the white nightie like the creamy underneath of a shell.
A little smile like a message of love was on her lips and in her eyes while she looked at me going up the steps.
A moan of my mother’s hit us.
“Sarah!” Mrs Lister said. I did not know she knew my mother’s name, let alone called her by it.
My mother now on a kitchen chair raised heavy dull eyes with hate in them for Mrs Lister. “You caused this,” my mother said.