No Small Shame

by Christine Bell

  But wait, she did. Weeks passed and the postman never brought a single letter from Melbourne to Mrs Liam Merrilees.

  Every evening Mary checked the mantle for the post, but apart from an occasional postcard from Winnie, bemoaning the misery of her condition, never more waited for her.

  Days at the boarding house grew more difficult and she took to walking around carrying sheets and armfuls of washing, anything to conceal her stomach bulging over her unbuttoned skirt.

  How much longer she could get away without someone guessing her condition was a nail-biting worry. Any glimpse in a mirror enough to make her wonder how no-one had twigged already, her skin breaking out in spots and her breasts heaving under her blouse. Plus she got bone-achingly tired. Her brain betrayed her constantly. She couldn’t even remember if the sisters’ chamber pots had waited outside their rooms that morning. It was one of the absolute ‘must dos’ on Miss Beatrice’s daily schedule and she’d never hear the end of it if she forgot. She bit hard on her bottom lip like that might remind her. She was forbidden to enter the bedchambers after the luncheon hour on threat of dismissal, but, adding many more ‘incidents’ to her slate, she’d be out the door quick as she could take off her uniform.

  Besides … she hadn’t seen Miss Beatrice since lunchtime and Miss Celia had gone out.

  She could just duck in and check. Like as not, the doors would be locked and she’d have trekked up the damn stairs for nothing.

  But … Miss Beatrice’s bedroom door handle turned under her hand and she inched the door open. The woman must have risen late for the window draperies were still drawn and the room in darkness, except for a beam of light bathing the centre of the room where the curtains didn’t quite meet.

  Mary’s foot froze mid-step halfway across the room when a phlegmatic cough crackled, followed by a soft tweet of laughter.

  The cheval mirror was set at an angle, an image moving within. Astride on the bed knelt Miss Beatrice, naked as a newborn. Her hair hung loose over her shoulders, fanning across her breasts.

  A hand reached up to cup the roundness of the smooth flesh.

  The woman’s eyes came over dewy, so unlike her usual scowl.

  Beside her on the bed, Mr Dutton, the banker, lay on top of the bedclothes, wearing not a stitch of clothing either.

  He brushed a stray tendril from Miss Beatrice’s cheek, leaving his fingers to trail down the pale throat.

  Mary dared not breathe but went to back out of the room, her foot stumbling on a shoe.

  ‘Who’s there?’ Miss Beatrice’s head snapped around, meeting Mary’s horrified gaze with one even more appalled.

  ‘Out,’ Miss Beatrice ordered.

  Mary fled, slamming the door on the woman’s furious mutters. She flung herself down the stairs, hardly able to breathe for the shock of what she’d seen. And being caught seeing it.

  Her hand stalled on the front door handle in the entry a full two minutes, not knowing whether to stay or go. She couldn’t be dismissed now. Please God, not until Liam sends for me.

  Besides, how could Miss Holier Than Thou say a word, when the woman doing what she was doing? With the manager at the bank, no less. Him, a so-called pillar of the community. And Miss Beatrice supposedly so prim and proper.

  Oh, God! What would Maw say? Wasn’t she in trouble enough? But to lose her position? Her wages?

  Well, she would tell Maw the truth of it. She owed Beatrice Trafford nothing. Oh, but if the woman would just listen to an apology. All could come right yet. Please, please God, let her listen. Just this one time.

  The loose board on the landing squeaked overhead. The tread on the stairs fell heavier than usual. Mary swallowed a painful gulp of air down her gullet, believing at that moment God had not forgiven her mortal sin and was no longer listening to her at all.

  Miss Beatrice appeared fully dressed and pointed to the parlour doorway. She sailed in ahead of Mary – her intention crystal clear.

  ‘Don’t sit down, girl. I won’t keep you long. In fact, we’re not keeping you on at all. You’ve proved unsatisfactory from the start.’

  ‘But, Miss …’

  ‘You are dismissed without notice. You’ll have no recommendation from us. Your work is slap-dash at best and your manner too common for a decent establishment. Why Celia ever gave you a chance, I don’t know.’

  ‘Please, Miss Trafford, my … my husband will be sending for me soon and I need the wages until he does.’

  ‘Husband? What husband? When did this alleged marriage take place?’

  ‘In June.’

  ‘Pray, where is your wedding band if you’re a married woman?’

  ‘I … I don’t wear it to work.’

  ‘So you’ve been lying to us all these weeks.’

  ‘No. Not lying, just not telling,’ Mary gulped.

  ‘So I should add dishonesty to your list of other sins,’ Miss Beatrice said, running her eyes distastefully over Mary’s thickening waist. ‘It seems you’re not so very clever, after all, Miss O’Donnell. Or Mrs Whoever you are. You’ve got one minute to take yourself and your lies out of this house.’

  Mary bit back tears and shook her head pleadingly, but Miss Beatrice smirked the smile of someone who’d gotten exactly what she wanted.

  THE VISIT

  LATE AUGUST 1915

  In the weeks following, with no job to go to and Maw barely speaking to her at home, Mary kept her head down. She did everything Maw asked of her, else kept out of her way. And wasn’t she ever careful not to mention the coming babe or draw attention to herself, despite bursting out of her skirts?

  She read the war news aloud to Da in the evenings, Maw saying she’d not the voice for it anymore and what was the point of her saying anything when certain people took no notice.

  Mary wasn’t sure she wanted the job any more than her mother – casualty lists now appearing every other day and photographs of poor, young laddies killed bringing the reality into the room with them. Headlines on ‘Important Gains’ could not wipe away the horror of ‘Belgians Starving’ and losses in the Dardanelles mounting into the thousands.

  The slitted line of disapproval thinning Maw’s lips whenever their eyes met became an ongoing source of dismay, until one night, sitting at the kitchen table reading under the dim light of the kerosene lamp, a deep flutter of protest rippled across her belly, sending her giddy. She gripped the seat of her chair, hugging her stomach as the wave ran back the opposite way like faeries running over her skin from the inside. She gazed down awestruck. Could it be her baby moving?

  ‘Maw.’ Her cry of delight was out before she could stop it and Maw glanced up from turning the heel on the sock she was knitting, with no real interest. Mary bit her tongue and shook her head. ‘No matter.’ She raised the newspaper over her face, but couldn’t hold back a smile at the heady confirmation her babe was growing and on the move. The love she’d feared non-existent over the months since Liam’s denial welled in her chest. Her hope now that one day the da might recognise his child, know the same joy.

  She couldn’t understand what was taking Liam so long to write. Two months and six days it had been. In less than four months their child would be here. Surely he’d found a position by now. With one in five men enlisting, there must be jobs to be had in the city. He must have a roof over his head, somewhere the postman could drop a letter. So why hadn’t he sent word? Was he all right? Was he well?

  She said her prayers of a night, praying the dafty were not too proud to say if he was struggling to find work this time. Or the type of work he wanted. She’d saved her fare to Melbourne. Extra even. If only she had an address, she could put herself on the train and surprise him. He wouldn’t have to come home at day’s end to no meal cooked.

  Oh, God, if he were coming home at all? She hugged her belly to steady herself. No. Liam wouldn’t enlist without telling her. Course not. He’d have to come back to Wonthaggi to say goodbye to your face and to his family. Please, Lord, he would, wouldn’t he?


  ‘Well, is it from your husband?’

  ‘No, Maw.’ Mary tucked Winnie’s postcard back inside her apron pocket, unsure if she should mention the few lines begging her come for a visit. Not until she’d had a chance to think over the invitation herself.

  You’d be such a help to me with the baby due in a few weeks. I can’t believe the work one man can make. He’s worse than all the lodgers at the hostel put together. Your cheery face would do me a power of good and we could talk the day away like a couple of married magpies. Do say you’ll come.

  Earnestly yours, Mrs Frank Sloy.

  The chance to escape Maw’s sighs and accusatory glares, as if she’d gone and got herself pregnant and dismissed from her employment on purpose, was sorely tempting, but watching Maw hack a poor, innocent onion to a helpless pulp, like it responsible for every ill in her world, she couldn’t help but wonder if Maw’s fury was at more than herself. Perhaps it was worse for Maw to watch her daughter grow big with child having so recently lost her own babes. That guilt made Mary almost consider Winnie’s offer seriously, but … the idea of staying under the same roof as Frank Sloy!

  ‘Keep your secrets then, since I’m not to be told.’ Maw jolted the salt pig on the kitchen table, glaring at Mary as if that was all her fault too, before throwing a good pinch over her shoulder and crossing herself at the very same time. Mary could only shake her head at her mother’s protestations about God’s will when the woman as superstitious as a gypsy.

  ‘Maw, it’s just a card from Winnie Sloy wanting me to come for a visit. You know, to help out before her baby is born.’ Mary bit back the plea for understanding in her tone. Why did Maw always act as if she was up to no good?

  If it wasn’t for Jane’s friendship and the occasional lines come in the post from Winnie, she’d surely have climbed the walls these past weeks waiting on a letter from Liam. If not to escape the scowl riding her mother’s face.

  But she’d prefer Maw’s scowl any day to the evil set on the woman’s face now. She braced herself for whatever was coming.

  ‘A visit sounds the ideal solution, daughter. You could go today.’ Maw drew herself up, crossing her arms, nodding as if the answer a given.

  ‘Solution to what?’ Mary suppressed the urge to laugh. Not least because Maw was too short to stand up tall, but her mother’s frigid tone put paid to any real mirth. That and Mary realising she was serious.

  ‘Maw, today? Really?’ Mary laughed away a prickling unease. ‘I haven’t even decided if I’m going yet.’

  ‘Seems to me it weren’t that long ago you were desperate to be out from under the same roof,’ Maw huffed. ‘We’ll get on right enough here without you. Better for your sisters too if you’re not flaunting your sins in front of them.’

  ‘Oh, Maw, don’t. I can be a help to you here.’

  ‘Ain’t nothing I need your help with. You’re the one in … a condition.’

  ‘A condition that never stopped you doing anything, Maw.’

  ‘No, but I weren’t sixteen and pregnant out of marriage.’

  ‘I am married, Maw. With a piece of paper to prove it. Do you want me to go about wearing it stuck to my forehead, so’s you’ll remember.’

  ‘Mind your manners, girl. I remember well enough. And how it came about. Yes, you should go and stay with your friend – the sooner the better.’ Maw sniffed, bringing the talk to an end.

  If Mary hoped Maw would forget the idea, the travel valise left on the scrubbed wood table in the kitchen confirmed her mother couldn’t wait until she was out of the house. Perhaps it would be better if she did go. She couldn’t be sure anymore if it were shame and anger spiking Maw’s tongue or grief. Guilt that it just might be grief, and her the cause, made up Mary’s mind. Plus Winnie did sound in need of a friend.

  Course, she was anxious to hear news of Liam as soon as she could, but she could wait just as well at Winnie’s.

  SLOY FARM

  SEPTEMBER 1915

  Perhaps she should have written Winnie properly first, instead of penning a few lines to arrange her collection the next time Frank Sloy stopped in town. Shame stilled her pen, beyond telling that her husband had gone to Melbourne to seek a better position.

  Mary barely sat her backside on the jinker seat before Frank Sloy eyed her belly with contempt and told her he hoped she’d an arm to churn butter, unlike the piss-weak sparrow he’d married. ‘If she wasn’t carrying my son, I’d have packed her off by now.’

  If Mary hadn’t been flung backwards when Sloy whipped his poor horse into going and not suddenly filled with a desperate need to be sure the sparrow all right, she’d have told Sloy to put his evil tongue back in his head and keep it civil. The hour-long trip to the farm showed Sloy’s particular tongue knew no side of civility at all.

  Her discomfort grew with every passing mile. Unlike Scotland, where another village was visible over every hill, there was barely a chimney pot to be seen. When the track grew rougher and the bush blocks spare of even animals, she began to wonder how Winnie could bear it, stuck out in the middle of nowhere.

  And what was this talk of a son? How the devil would Sloy know that?

  Coming down the rutted driveway from the road, Mary gulped at the sight of the dilapidated wee house sitting lonely in the scrub, not a board painted, the tin roof near to rusting and the chimney likely the only thing holding it up. The barn beside it better looking.

  When Sloy brought the jinker to a stop, three big brutes of dogs flew off the shack porch, barking their heads loose in what Mary could only pray was a welcome.

  Thankfully Winnie’s greeting made up for her husband’s rudeness. She came charging down the porch steps and flung her arms around Mary before she could even climb down off the jinker. Gushing and laughing and kissing her as if they’d been buddies since babes – convincing Mary she’d at last made a right decision.

  Until Winnie stepped back gawping.

  ‘God, Mary, look at you. Frank’ll flay me you being pregnant. He thought you were coming to help me. He’s made a list.’ Winnie walked a full turn around Mary, eyeing her bulging belly in disbelief. ‘Are you giving birth to a monster? Frank says he’ll divorce me if I ever get fat. He says he doesn’t want to go rummaging down there trying to find me important bits.’ Her laughter held no mirth this time and she turned away, running her hands over her middle, fear flickering in her eyes like it had only just occurred to her that something might not be right.

  Mary gave her friend’s arm a reassuring squeeze, but she worried Winnie was thinner than a willow rod despite being just weeks off having her child. The small bump of her belly didn’t look ready to give up a grapefruit let alone a full-term babe. ‘At least you’ll have an easier time of the birth,’ she reassured her friend. ‘I’ll be labouring a month to push out this wee elephant.’

  ‘My son better slide out quick smart. All the Peats have fast labours,’ said Winnie, without a seeming doubt in the world.

  When Mary suggested the babe might be a wee girl, Winnie shook her head avidly.

  ‘No, they only have boys on Frank’s side of the family. Mine too.’

  ‘Winnie, you may not have noticed, but ain’t you a girl?’

  ‘You know what I mean. I’m the only girl, so I don’t really count.’

  Mary could’ve argued Winnie’s logic, but that last comment needed some digesting; plus she was tired from her trip. She guessed Winnie had been caught in dumb surprise, as much as herself, at how sorely their expectations had been misled.

  A list … !?

  Of course she was happy to give Winnie any help she could. Have the fun of doing things together, as Winnie put it.

  Winnie at least had been honest in that she needed help. What she didn’t spell out was that she was so sickly she could barely swat a fly, let alone change a bedsheet or feed a few scrawny chooks. A helping hand was one thing, but …

  Mary’d never expected to arrive to laundry piling out the washhouse door or layers of
grime and pork fat thick over the tables and shelving, the shack walls lined with hessian bags, then pasted over with newspaper – impossible to clean. With just two rooms, a cooking/eating/living room combined, and Sloy and Winnie’s bedroom off to the side, she couldn’t guess where she was expected to sleep.

  Until Winnie opened a small door off the back wall that Mary had surmised a cupboard. The closed in lean-to was a narrow, suffocating space holding a skinny mattress and what seemed like any bit of wood or wire or junk not needed in the house. The walls were bare of paint or lining and the only source of light a shuttered, unglazed window. The rest of the low-ceilinged shack was quite light in comparison, especially in the middle of the day, thanks to extra nail holes in the corrugated iron roofing. Roofing, Winnie proudly boasted, Frank had salvaged off his rebuilt pig sheds.

  Mary offered up a prayer in thanks she wouldn’t be stopping long.

  Peering out the screen door the next afternoon at Winnie lolling on the porch, sipping on a lemonade, it was all Mary could do not to tell her they had very different ideas when it came to fun and doing things together. But to see a little colour come back into her friend’s face and her worried grimace lifted, Mary closed both the door and her mouth. Besides, by the time she milked the reluctant house cow, churned the butter, collected the eggs, baked the bread and chased Sloy’s stray pigs out of the vegetable patch for the tenth time in the day, she’d no breath left to argue. Not to mention sweeping and scrubbing and brooming down cobwebs from one end of the place to the other until the shack gleamed, as much as could be expected without knocking it down.

  Winnie let her do it all too, except for when Frank came in for his tea. She soon found the energy then to struggle to the stove and dish up the meal, pushing back her limp fringe, damp from the steam and the closeness of the room, almost pleading, ‘It’s best Frank don’t know you cooked, Mary. Frank never had no-one to cook for him special before. His aunt preferred the bottle to the stove. So he’s kinda funny about his meals and likes me to do all those wifey things special for him, you know. Best not to upset him.’