No Small Shame

by Christine Bell

  Mary might have wandered the mile or so to the edge of town and kept on going out into the bushland until she was lost and she wouldn’t have cared. Except her feet found their way to Watt Street, where, overheated and ready to faint, she met Nate outside the Co-operative store.

  ‘Fancy seeing you again so soon.’ His eyes travelled down to her valise. He reached out and took it, prising her fingers from around the handles, and shuffled her towards a small coffee house. There he plied her with hot, black tea and sugar, but no questions, and then helped her onto the cart, taking her back to Sloy farm. All the while he kept up a stream of meaningless chatter, not Nate-like at all, but for which she was fiercely grateful.

  She could not reconcile her words to Maw or her mother’s slap. How long was Maw going to punish her? Did she not think being stuck married to Liam Merrilees for her whole life punishment enough?

  Each turn of the jinker wheels carried her further away from Da and her sisters, banishing her seemingly into the desert. Condemned to wait on the whim of her husband. The truth of the matter, and the bile sickening her and Maw both.

  She gasped at a sudden jar to the jinker wheels. Her hands pressed to her sides protectively.

  ‘Are you all right?’ Nate glanced worriedly across at her.

  She nodded through gritted teeth. Not against the jolt or any pain as Nate might’ve thought, but at Liam. Where are you, you lying bugger? You done this to me.

  A crust hardened around her heart then, same as the hard-baked earth on the track. It were hard to imagine the deluge that would be needed for it to ever soften.

  INNOCENCE SHATTERED

  OCTOBER 1915

  Winnie welcomed her back as if her return a given. And it was just as well, when in the wee hours a few nights later, Winnie’s pains started and her husband refused to fetch the midwife in the dark. Instead Winnie sent Mary flurrying and fetching cold cloths, hot flannels, another blanket and a bolster for her pillow like the damn Queen of Sheba.

  ‘It’s your first – you’ll be hours yet,’ Mary reassured, but Winnie insisted the brat wouldn’t dare make her endure any such thing as hours.

  Winnie was proved right in less than four when a shock of Sloy black hair emerged into the dawn. The mother let out a hellish scream and kept on screeching like a scalded cat.

  ‘Whatever’s the matter?’ Mary shouted in panic.

  Winnie quit her ruckus immediately. ‘Oh, Mary, I’m sorry. I should’ve warned you. Him out there says birthing is a woman’s punishment. You know, for Eve eating that apple in the Garden of Eden. If I don’t yell a bit, he’ll think I’m not paying for me sins.’

  And didn’t she yell harder the next pain coming. And when it was spent, she shook her head guiltless at Mary – grinning. ‘I told you, he’ll make me pay. By coming back into me bed too soon. Have a heart, Mary …’ Winnie dropped her voice to a whisper. ‘Don’t I deserve a lie-in for a few days after carrying this one around for nine months? Running the house till I’m dropping on my feet?’

  Mary didn’t think Winnie’d done much running of anything since the day she’d stepped into the house, but a fresh contraction and final push saved Winnie from the blasting Mary was apt to give her. Baby Sloy slid out into the world with a gusty cry of his own.

  No wonder, Mary thought, looking down at the bloodied mess of child between Winnie’s legs. The poor mite born with such a burden – the little fellow’s foot turned so severely, its sole facing clear back-to-front – on top of the father he’d been blessed with.

  She whipped the babe away to the washstand where she had a bowl and towel waiting. ‘You have a beautiful son, Winnie.’

  In the mirror she caught the new mother’s relief.

  ‘Of course. I knew he would be,’ said Winnie. ‘Anything less and I’d never hear the end of it. The threats that man’s made over getting a son.’

  Mary avoided meeting Winnie’s eyes and sponged the baby over, including his wee clubbed foot. The tiny rosebud mouth yawned and the little fellow stretched inside the towel. Such a wee innocent. For a moment she held him tighter, then dressed and hurried him into his mother’s arms, wishing him all the love he could grasp before his innocence shattered. As it surely would the moment he met his father.

  ‘What the hell did you do to it in there? Look at it.’

  Mary reeled at the viciousness in Sloy’s tone. His accusations raged while he stomped around the kitchen, kicking the table leg and hurling his tobacco tin across the tabletop, narrowly missing the baby’s head. The poor wee thing lay screaming, naked and exposed, skinny arms jerking upward, seeking the blankets and clothing flung aside as his father derided his disfigured limb.

  Whenever Sloy drew close to the child, Mary stepped forwards protectively.

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous, man. Something like that didn’t happen in the birthing. The wean was made like that, or didn’t grow proper. No-one can do such a thing when a wean’s being born.’

  Fever burned in Sloy’s eyes while he paced the floor, clenching and unclenching his fists, sending her murderous looks like he really believed she’d done something to cause his child’s club foot. ‘What am I supposed to do with a cripple? It’s gonna be bloody useless to me on the farm.’

  ‘He’s not an it. He’s your son. Aren’t you planning to call him James?’

  ‘He’s not getting my father’s name. He’ll be lucky if he gets a bloody name at all. They don’t live long, do they, cripples? It’d be kinder to put it out of its misery now.’

  ‘Over my dead body.’

  The man scowled back like he’d happily oblige.

  She snatched up the hysterical infant and rocked him in her arms, as much to stop her own legs from shaking, before holding him up in front of his father. ‘Look at him. He’s a bonny babe with a fire in his belly. He’ll not go quietly and you’ll do nothing to make him. Or I’ll go straight for the constables.’

  Sloy swung around raising his fist, but instead of the clout she thought a given, he waved his knuckles in her face. ‘I’m not molly-coddling no cripple. No-one did me no favours and that thing ain’t getting none from me. I should’ve sent you packing the first day you and your smart tongue arrived. Pumping me wife with your fancy ideas and encouraging her to be weak, doting on her like an invalid.’ He jabbed his finger in the direction of the baby. ‘That there’s your fault. If you’d never come, this wouldn’t have happened. Now get it out of my sight, or I won’t be responsible.’

  Mary hunched over the baby, re-dressing him and wrapping him up warm, saying nothing further to inflame the vile tongue of his father. She only breathed again when Sloy snatched up his gun from the hooks over the fireplace and strode out the back door, his dogs slinking after him.

  She slumped into a chair with the babe in her arms. Only then did she realise how bone-weary she was, her belly tightening more uncomfortable by the day. The misery of the wee babe in her arms, gulping and hiccupping through its sobs enough to start her own tear-bags welling.

  ‘We’re a grand pair, ain’t we? The whole house running with tears and us a pair of sooks in need of our maws.’

  That thought pulled her up. Did she? Did she need the woman who’d banished her without hope of reprieve or return?

  Though mail came regular on supply days, only the occasional postcard came from Maw. Dutiful talk on how her sisters were doing at school and how Da’s cough was getting worse, not better, in the ‘ideal’ Australian climate. Not a single word of apology bled from Maw’s nib, nor to ask when Mary was coming home. As if it were natural Mary now living under another family’s roof and not welcome back under her own.

  Jane’s letters served as her only cheer, apart from the sudden, and, to Mary’s mind, rather shocking news of Joe’s marriage to Catherine Dewar, a new teacher’s assistant, who, in six short weeks, went from caring for fifty youngsters to just three – wee Hughie and the twins. Mary didn’t care she’d missed the wedding, stuck out at the farm. She didn’t think Joe would m
uch mourn her absence. His heart full, no doubt, but no longer it seemed with his sweet beauty resting in the sea.

  She stood up, sniffing. ‘Bawling ain’t getting any of us fed. Your mother can cry and feed you at the same time. Don’t worry, she’ll grow to love you. Hush, hush, hushaway now,’ she cooed, jigging the babe on her shoulder to no avail. Starving no doubt with a mother who’d do nothing but weep, lamenting the loss of her ‘perfect son’ and withholding her breasts from this one.

  ‘I can do little enough for you, but I can see you fed.’ Mary marched into the bedroom. ‘Wake up, Winnie. Your baby’s hungry.’ She took no notice of the girl burrowing down under the quilt, but laid the babe alongside her and yanked her into a sitting position. ‘Now sit up proper. I’ve plumped your pillows.’ She unbuttoned the protesting Winnie’s nightgown and when the girl tried to snatch the faded flannel back about herself, Mary grabbed her wrists and held them tight, staring sternly into her eyes. ‘This is your child, Winnie. He needs you. He’s not going to have a father worth speaking of, but he has a mother. And you will feed him.’

  ‘I can’t. He makes my skin creep with that thing dangling off him.’

  ‘It’s called a foot, Winnie. He has two. One’s not so perfect, I grant you, but look at him. He’s no weakling. He’ll grow strong, but not unless he gets some nourishment along the way.’

  She exposed Winnie’s purpled breast and laid the babe across her belly. She pressed the downy head onto the engorged nipple and guided the babe’s mouth until soft sucking sounds started. Despite the mother cringing and refusing to hold him close, the wee thing latched on and suckled in a way that made it clear he wasn’t giving up.

  Mary patted the bulge of her own belly then. And I won’t either.

  TURN OF THE TIDE

  NOVEMBER 1915

  While Winnie struggled to feed her son, harbouring neither the will nor the want, and stretching her ‘few days’ lying in to a fortnight, Mary had her hands full cooking and cleaning and caring for the new babe while his mother feigned sleep for as long and often as she could.

  In the end, Winnie got up only when her husband booted her out of both the bed and the bedroom. ‘A man can’t get a wink of sleep, you two creatures bawling. Since you’re no bloody use in any other way, go and share your friend’s bed. See if she’ll put up with your smells and your yowling.’

  So Mary moved over and shared her narrow mattress with Winnie, claiming what few inches were left once her bedfellow settled.

  Any chance Winnie got, she thrust baby Albert, as his father at last condescended to name him, into Mary’s arms, refusing to take him back, confessing, ‘I can’t take to him. I’m sure there’s more wrong with Bertie than his foot.’ Her milk dried in her reluctant breasts, forcing Mary to bottle-feed the baby with rubber teats and infant bottles purchased by Nate from the apothecary.

  Mary doubted Sloy would spend the pence to keep the child from starving. She didn’t know what had got into Winnie since her baby came. Maw said some women went a bit barmy after a birth and rejected their weans or turned into she-devils with moods and misery. None of that fitted with Winnie though. It’s more like she’s angry at me. Perhaps she had overstayed her welcome. Yet wasn’t Winnie always saying how she’d ‘simply die’ if Mary was to leave?

  With Christmas only weeks away, any hope the war would end before the New Year dissolved. Instead, across the Western Front, men dug deeper into the trenches, while on the home front every man of military age was called for service, else asked to explain himself to the new recruiting scheme. Mary was more anxious than ever that her husband had enlisted without telling her.

  The fear grew in her mind, until one hot morning in December, desperate to escape both Bertie’s pitiful wails and Winnie’s shocking indifference, Mary knelt in the dirt digging up the potatoes, wiping both tears and perspiration off her face, her eyes straining to the property gate, hoping for a cloud of dust – some hint that Maw had had a change of heart, her grandchild due in just weeks. She refused to acknowledge who else she was hoping to see on the horizon. But surely after six months, even Liam must know a telegram or a bloody postcard wouldn’t be good enough. She’d expect him to come fetch her himself.

  She trembled in spite of the heat, forced to face a truth she’d long been ignoring. All the weeks of telling herself she was staying because she could not let down Winnie, or abandon Bertie to his father’s mercy – lies. She could not leave. She had nowhere at all to go. Not until her baby born. Or her husband returned to fetch her.

  She rubbed the tightening bulge of her belly at a sudden kick.

  ‘What am I going to do when you arrive?’ It won’t be long the way you bounce around in there. I think you’ll be boxing your way out any day.’ She wanted to add, ‘Throw punches day and night if it makes you come out to meet me faster.’ But really she prayed the mite would stay put until its useless dunderhead of a father turned up to claim them or put pen to paper, if he ever did.

  Who are you fooling? He’s not coming. He’s deserted you. You and the wean both. And he’s not coming back. Or he’d write.

  Coward!

  She’d made a thousand excuses, wanting to believe Liam was perhaps too shame-faced to let on he was not raising himself up. Or finding a better position. Or he was not wanting to write her until he could send for her with pounds in his passbook. More lies.

  Even if he’d gone off to war, he’d not written a single word or directed a shilling of his pay towards their child. Can he make it any clearer? He doesn’t care about you or the babe. He never did. You’re a damn fool pretending other.

  Wouldn’t she give him a piece of her mind, if he suddenly appeared in front of her?

  ‘Shuddup.’

  At the sudden shout from Sloy, Mary glanced towards the house wondering what was worse? To be like Winnie, stuck with a pig of man for a husband? Or deserted by one who refused to be any type of husband at all. Or a father to his child?

  ‘When you arrive, angel, we’ll be going,’ she whispered. ‘We don’t need your useless da. We don’t need anyone. We just need for you to arrive and then we’ll get on our way well enough.’

  She sniffed back a hysterical urge to laugh. It was a pretty poor plan really. Nothing in the way of details, but for now it was the best she could offer.

  A WEE BOY

  JANUARY 1916

  Conor Liam Merrilees saw in the New Year of 1916 by seconds. His introduction to the world somewhat rough at the hands of Winnie. She barely rinsed him off before she thrust him at his mother. ‘Yours is perfect.’

  No snitchy words could upset Mary as she gazed into the face of her son. The babe she’d feared she might not be able to love, due to the awkwardness of his conception and the absence of his father. All such fears faded in the swamp of delight brought on by his hearty bawling.

  Who needs your bloody father anyhow? Who needs any of them?

  What Winnie failed to give her own son, she gave in spades to baby Conor. Within days, reluctantly, but of necessity – with Bertie failing to thrive, Mary took to breast-feeding him as well. The older child was runty enough to be the younger babe, and no-one would know he was not. At first, it was done on the promise – only until Mary had word from Maw, welcoming her home now that her son was born. A brown paper package had arrived in the post the week before his birth, bearing Maw’s precious baby layette. Mary took it as a peace offering and hoped they might be reconciled yet. She worried though that Maw had not brought it herself.

  While she fed Bertie, Winnie never had to be asked to pick up Conor if he should fret, or croon a lullaby to him. Something Mary never heard her do for her own son.

  ‘Come to Mumma Winnie,’ she’d trill, giggling over her shoulder to Mary. ‘It’s so confusing for the pair of them having two mothers. They might not even know which is their own soon. I’m sure Bertie is more comforted in your arms than in mine.’

  The very suggestion stabbed at Mary’s heart, but what could she do? Sh
e wouldn’t abandon Bertie, not while he was so in need of nourishment and his own mother unable and unwilling to do it herself. So busy was Winnie fussing over Conor. She pushed her own son into Mary’s arms anytime they weren’t filled with Conor feeding and was first to Conor’s crib the moment he stirred, less it in the night. She was back in Sloy’s bed and in his favour again. The pair could be new lovers so frequently did Mary see them whispering in each other’s ears, taking themselves out of her hearing.

  She was glad for Winnie’s sake. Her friend would have the family she’d always wanted now that she’d gotten over the shock of Bertie’s poor foot.

  Winnie hadn’t quite recovered her memory though.

  ‘Winnie, I’m right here. I’ll take Conor now.’

  ‘Oh, silly me. Sometimes I don’t even look at which baby I’m picking up. They might be both of ours.’ Winnie laughed, planting noisy kisses all over the wee thing’s face before handing him over.

  Mary said nothing aloud but comparing the fair curls of Conor to the black tufts of Bertie was hardly confusing. Much as she held a warm spot in her heart for Winnie’s son, it couldn’t be helped as much as it couldn’t be said – he was an ugly babe. Lovely and loving, but not endearing with his pinched cheeks and blessed with the beaked nose of his father.

  Of course, Winnie would come to think differently in time, being his mother. Didn’t Mary think her own son the handsomest baby ever born? She couldn’t wait to show him off to Da and Maw, but she’d no reply to her postcard announcing his birth and she hoped it only because they were busy at home.

  Presenting Conor to his grandparents and arranging his baptism was proving no easy task. According to Sloy, neither he nor Nate could be spared to take her into town. She couldn’t drive the jinker either with its wheel broken and lying on a hay bale in the barn for over three weeks, waiting on Sloy to find time to put it back on the cart.