by Olga Masters
“That’s not true now, Sarah,” Mrs Lister said putting a hand on one hip and looking straight at my mother.
“It’s true all right,” my mother said, rocking about.
“Come on now, Sarah,” said Mrs Lister with that little smile I wished was for me.
Mrs Lister looked at me. “Has she got a case packed, do you know honey?” she said.
Honey.
No one in the little town said honey only Mrs Lister.
She was saying it to me.
I went to the bedroom where the cases were and lifted a corner of the lid of one on top of a stack of three. Inside in beautiful array were white things I’d never seen before. There was a little nightgown on top embroidered with blue flowers the same as on my mother’s new nightgown. I shut the lid, fastened the locks and hoisted it down.
My mother hated me with her eyes when I came into the kitchen with it. But Mrs Lister’s eyes twinkled and crinkled all over me.
“Good on you, honey,” she said taking the case from me and checking inside like I did.
“Now come on Sarah,” Mrs Lister said, using the same words as before but meaning differently.
“I’m staying here,” my mother said, sweat shining on her cheeks like Albie Thomas’s. “Both of us can die.”
“That wasn’t what you thought at first now, was it Sarah?” Mrs Lister said with her little smile.
My mother reared back with a scream and Mrs Lister took her under the shoulders.
“Get away, get away!” my mother said but she yielded enough to take a couple of forward steps.
“You carry the case, honey,” Mrs Lister said to me. I wondered if she knew my name was Clarice, and how wonderful it would be to hear her say it.
We made our way outside my mother walking like one of the ducks old Mrs Hadgett kept while Mrs Hadgett whom nearly everyone called nurse seemed to supply the women of the town with babies.
We got into the Listers’ car in the shed beside the house and my mother clawed at the seat perhaps not wanting to be there. But Mrs Lister shut the door near her and got in behind the wheel with me in front. She looked back over her shoulder past my mother and her hands lay light as white moths on the wheel. My mother’s stubby little red hands scratched at the seat back between Mrs Lister and me.
When I’m grown I’ll drive a car like this, I thought. I’ll wear a white gown threaded with blue ribbons and I’ll drive through the night like this.
My mother moaned.
The car sped along by the river turning towards Hadgetts’. There was a screeching and squawking from the fowl yards when we got there and almost at once the hooped-over figure of Mr Hadgett came towards the gate.
There was light coming over the sky so if must have been getting close to morning. Mr Hadgett slept in a little shed near the fowls and ducks and they had probably wakened him. It was said in the town he preferred the noise they made to the crying of the babies. I was surprised to see him in clothes so early so it must be true that he never undressed at all.
He came up to the car, not seeing my mother or me only Mrs Lister.
“Mona,” he said and wet his lips.
“Hullo Clive,” Mrs Lister said turning her face and giving him that little smile. Mr Hadgett’s eyes clung to her watering and blinking. The edges of his shirt cuffs under his coat showed a line of dirt like a pencil mark. Mrs Lister looked at them while his hands rested on the car door near me. He took his hands away and combed his sparse hair with his fingers.
“Who is it Dad?” Mrs Hadgett called from the verandah.
My mother moaned.
“Sarah Downs, Mother,” Mr Hadgett said very quickly.
“I’ll come,” Mrs Hadgett said.
“I’ll bring her up,” Mr Hadgett said opening the back door, and taking my mother’s case out. He moved fast for an old man.
Mrs Lister sat still and smiling until they moved clear of the car.
“Who brought her?” Mrs Hadgett called.
They did not reply, or if they did I didn’t hear because Mrs Lister was turning the car around.
We sped away and I noticed Mrs Lister’s beautiful waist with a soft bulge below like a baby’s pillow.
“Put your head down honey and sleep if you want,” she said.
She smelled of warm violets.
The sun was inside the car when I woke and we were outside the town near the camp set up by the old bridge. There was the start of a new one, ugly and raw looking, beside the old with its big willow at one end. It looked beautiful and solid and safe and I never could believe it was ready to fall down like the people said.
There seemed a lot of machinery about and a lot of men in the camp for just one bridge but I was glad my father had work. I saw him duck out of a tent and come towards the car looking and walking as if he couldn’t believe what he saw.
He went around to Mrs Lister’s side and laid one arm on the car roof while he looked down at her, sliding his eyes past her face to the blue ribbons tossed by the wind between her creamy breasts.
“I took Sarah in,” Mrs Lister said.
“Is it here?” my father said.
“Probably,” Mrs Lister said.
Half my father’s face was showing below the edge of the hood. He wet his lips leaving his tongue showing between them. I saw the spit gathered around his teeth.
Mrs Lister put her tongue out too, wetting her parted lips. There was hardly room to see between their faces.
“I’ll be in tonight,” my father said, dropping his arm.
Mrs Lister bent down to move a gear stick and my father stepped back when the car started.
He stood in front smiling with his head back as if he defied her to run over him. She was smiling her smile through the windscreen at him.
A little way off the workmen were standing about the fire outside the tents where their breakfast was cooking. But they had their backs to it and looked hungrily down on us.
Mrs Lister put her head out the car window passing close by my father when he stepped aside.
“See you honey,” she said.
The car gathered speed and the wind tore at her hair and the ribbons used all their frail strength to beat at her breasts and neck.
Her lips still shaped her smile but I fancied the wind carried this away too back to my father striding up to the camp.
I glimpsed him growing smaller and the men still like statues eyes fixed on him and mouths (I thought) half open.
Mrs Lister glanced down without any light in her eyes for me. They reminded me of the rock behind our place, pretty while the sun passed over it but blank when it was gone.
“Put your head down again honey, if you’d like another little sleep,” she said.
I saw her body curved under the wheel like a white cloud. But I felt if I laid my head on it I would fall through into nothingness.
I looked away from her at the racing sky and the flying trees.
“I’ll be all right, Mrs Lister,” I said.
THE CREEK WAY
“You say Grammar. Why don’t you say Grandma?”
Hetty Black said this to me in the ring of girls under the peppercorn tree at playtime in the grounds of St Joseph’s Convent.
Tears rushed to my eyes. I plucked at some grass to hide them.
“She’s crying,” said Lilian O’Riordan.
“She bawls for nothing,” Rose Boxali said, staring at me and putting a cheek almost on Hetty’s shoulder to show what close friends they were.
Perhaps I imagined it but I thought they all edged a little away from me. I saw Sister Patricia at the bottom of the playground supervising the boys at football. When the ball flew up near her she put out a black laced-up shoe and sent it back. Then she straightened the crucifix in her belt and looked to see if Sister Francis who was in charge of St Joseph’s had seen.
“Sister Patricia kicked the football,” I said.
Everyone looked but it was far too late. Sister was just squinting against the
sun, watching the boys.
“She didn’t,” Lilian said. “Now she’s lying.”
“She did before you looked,” I said, misery making a mess of my voice.
“It’s all right for a nun to kick a football,” Rose said. “Isn’t it Hetty?”
“It is if she wants to. But Sister Patricia didn’t kick the football.” Hetty fixed such fierce eyes on me I began to think I might have imagined it.
“We could tell Sister Francis that Nellie Wright said Sister Patricia kicked the football when she didn’t,” said Lilian.
“We could say that Nellie Wright says Grammar, and she should say Grandma,” said Rose.
I looked away from them with an ache starting to come up into my neck with the effort of holding off from crying. The girls in the lower classes skipped on the bare patch of ground between the school and the gate leading into the convent where the nuns lived. Their hair bounced on their shoulders (Elsie MacMahon had curls like yellow sausages) and their tunics bounced on their knees. They skipped frantically inside the long rope held by Aileen Boyd and Stella Logan as if to ward off the clang of the bell when the playbreak was over. Sister Francis came through the gate back to school after her eleven o’clock in the convent.
“There’s Ssta now,” said Rose. They said Sister like that, hissing it out between teeth and tongue.
Rose looked at Hetty and then at me. Rose’s eyes said the time might be right to tell Sister Francis on me. I thought of praying but in the matter of Sister Patricia and the football it was like praying against a nun and God wouldn’t approve of that. He might also expect me to say Grandma, not Grammar.
I plucked a blade of grass and chewed the sweet white end.
“You’re eating grass,” said Lilian.
“The Wrights are so poor they have to eat grass,” said Rose, safely cuddled against Hetty.
“Why is your Grandma,” Hetty pronounced it carefully, “housework mad? She never stops scratching like an old hen, my mother says.”
“Yes,” said Lexie Connolly whose farm was next to ours and who was wisest of all on the peculiar habits of the Wrights. “Before they finish eating she’s into the washing up. We sit over our dinner table for hours and hours.”
“So do we,” Rose said. “Anyway cleaning and cleaning doesn’t make any difference to the Wrights’ old place.”
“We’re clean,” said Lilian. “But not mad clean, like old Mrs Wright.”
Rose whispered into Hetty’s ear. It was about me because both pairs of eyes were on me during the whisper. Then Rose drew back. “Your brother Bernard is mad,” she said.
A couple of the girls breathed “oooh” at this daring but as Hetty and Rose and Lilian were the power at St Joseph’s they just dropped their eyes and plucked at the grass.
Sister Francis now inside the classroom threw up a window.
“Two girls please to put the desks back for singing,” she called.
The ring of girls flung their arms in the air. “Me, Sssta. Me Ssta. Please Sssta, Sssta,” they cried.
“Mary Caldwell and Alice Lawler,” said Sister Francis shutting the window.
“Poke your tongue out at them,” said Hetty when Mary and Alice could be seen through the window moving desks and seats.
Thank you God, I thought. If Hetty or Rose or Lilian had been called they would almost certainly have taken the opportunity of telling on me. In my relief I plucked more grass and began to chew it very hard.
“She’s eating grass again,” said Rose.
Why do you call your brother Bernard, anyway?” said Lilian. “Everyone says Bernie.”
The grass danced under my eyes, but there was no wind stirring it. Bernard danced there too. I saw him on the kitchen couch with his roley poley body and his great round head that bounced and shook almost without stopping. I hated him with all my heart.
“Yes,” said Rose “There’s Bernie O’Reilly and Bernie Caldwell.
“No one calls them Bernard.”
“Grammar and Bernard,” mocked Hetty.
I looked over the school ground at Patterson’s corn paddock and the creek where a string of cows stumbled through a water hole on their way to the other bank. Everything swam because of the tears. How do I stop? Our Father who art in heaven. Don’t let me cry. Mother of God help me. There was loneliness everywhere. Patterson’s house was on the hill with the windows shut and no smoke coming from the chimney. The Pattersons got up at four o’clock in the morning, an hour before the other farmers and went to bed after the milking. They got up then to go to the yard at two o’clock in the afternoon. There was a story about Mr Patterson in his nightshirt and Mrs Patterson in a flannelette nightgown chasing a man selling saucepans who banged on their door at twelve o’clock in the day. They were so wild they chased him through the school grounds and the nuns blessed themselves and turned their backs at the language and the sight. People were risking Patterson’s curse if they called at the farm in the middle of the day, the town said.
In the bottom corner of the playground were the lavatories. They sat there snug with the long grass on three sides of them. They did not wink cold bossy eyes like the windows of the school. I could go there and sit on the scrubbed pine seat and cry myself out. Then I could wash my face pretending to get a drink of water and hang around the taps until it was time to go in. I got up and ran.
“Ooh. Aah…” I heard Rose say, “She’s going to the lavatory and it’s bell time!”
The bell did peal out when I was bolting the door.
Stop crying now, I told myself laying my face on the grey walls of the lavatory in the luxury of being alone. Holy Mother, stop me. The bell clanged with an urgency that said woe betide those who disobeyed it. That set me crying harder.
I would never stop now in time to run and join the straggling end of the lines. But I’ll stop soon, I thought. Soon I’ll stop. Think of something good, something funny. Think of someone. Pa, Ma, Grammar. Why do we say Grammar? Who started it? I hate them all, I thought. I hate every one of them. Down against the wood ran my tears. Singing would be started. Sister Patricia bent over the piano would be striking notes with her long white hands in her long black sleeves. If anyone played up she saw them reflected in the glossy wood of the piano. For a long time I believed her when she said she had eyes in the back of her head (was that counted as a lie?). I pictured the half circle of children ready for “Nymphs and Shepherds”. None of them liked me. None of them put their arms around me at playtime.
If Hetty and Rose and Lilian left St Joseph’s would it be different then?
Hetty and Rose and Lilian.
A picture of them shot across my mind with arms flung in the air.
“Ssta, Sssta, Nellie Wright went to the lavatory when the bell was going. Can we go and get her? Sssta, Ssta?”
Come away, said the song. Come, come away.
Who would go away from St Joseph’s? Half way through the school day? It was as daring as the Pattersons’ chasing the saucepan man. I sneaked the lavatory door open.
The singing floated across the school ground.
Come away. Come, come away.
Yes. I will, I will! Before the porch door opens and Hetty Rose or Lillian come tearing towards the lavatory and me.
I plunged through the long grass to the fence, over it and down to the creek. Only one of the Pattersons’ cows saw me, a black nostrilled placid old milker who tossed her head sideways as if to say she wasn’t going to get out of my way.
You hate me too, don’t you old cow Patterson?
I started crying again and running fast up the creek, almost dry because of the long spell without rain. I was going home the creek way! It was forbidden by Pa and Ma and Grammar because of the jagged rocks you had to leap across, the torrent of water when it rained in the mountain, the cattle straying there to drink, snakes, a man kangaroo at times.
As well there were boots chipped of leather on the rocks and sodden by the mud and slime. It was a sin as deadly as any reci
ted from the catechism to go the creek way to and from school although it cut half a mile off the walk. “You go the creek way and you’ll be skinned alive,” Ma said a hundred times.
Walking was not that much easier the road way. The road was a series of ruts and bumps and the few cars belonging to the farms on our side of the town travelled over it at a snail’s pace. We sometimes got a lift. You couldn’t tell whether the cars were going to stop or not, so you tried to look as if it didn’t matter. Once I saw the Clem Murphys coming and knew they wouldn’t give me a lift because Mr Murphy and Pa were fighting about a dividing fence that was falling down and Pa didn’t want to do his share of the repairs. I was surprised when they slowed down almost to a dead stop, and as I was about to step onto the running board, the car leapt forward and I fell back into the tussocks. Clem and his son Tiny (Pa said Tiny was madder than Bernard) roared with laughter looking back at me while they bumped about in the front seat. I wept anew at the memory, dragging sobs from my chest paining with the effort of running.
I suddenly felt something different about my right arm. It had a feeling of emptiness. I knew. I’d left my school bag behind hanging in the porch with the others. I pictured it there in isolation at dinner time and Hetty or Rose or Lilian snatching it up and pulling out my beetroot sandwiches.
“Look, she’s got beetroot sandwiches,” one of them would say. “Beetroot! It always runs into the bread. Ugh! We never have beetroot sandwiches.”
I saw them running to the circle of children holding my shameful sandwiches aloft for all to see, offering them around, but no one accepting food from the poor Wrights’ kitchen. I wept and sniffed, sobbed and ran, jumping from rock to rock and landing sometimes on the edge of a waterhole, surveying soaked boots with soaked and stinging eyes. I ran as if I was being chased, wondering why I did because I would arrive home hours ahead of the usual time, and Pa and Ma and Grammar would want to know why.
I teetered on the edge of a sheet of rock that fell away into a narrow gully, sloping up the other side. You needed to leap across the gully, landing half way up the slope to scramble to the top. I wiped my eyes on my tunic hem to get ready for the jump.