‘Too bloody right.’ Tom laughed, raising his beer glass in salute. ‘You bring back that ugly mug without so much as an extra dimple carved in it, you hear?’
Despite Tom’s show of joviality, Mary caught the intensity in his tone, as if he was trying to convince Nate that nothing else would do.
It struck her as odd then that no-one made mention of Tom Robbins not joining his cousin in uniform, especially when he asked all manner of interested questions about the training and workings of Nate’s battalion. An undercurrent she couldn’t place ran through the chatter, as if something wasn’t being said. Something not quite right.
‘Don’t you want to see the Eiffel Tower too then, Mr Robbins?’ she asked, head down, busy sawing the meat off her chop bone.
At first, she didn’t notice that silence was her only answer. When she glanced up, the stricken look on the fellow’s face sent her searching around the table. Finding Pearl’s and Nate’s expressions equally horrified, she wanted to dive into the gravy boat and drown herself without even knowing the reason. Oh, God! Was it Mr Robbins’ bad chest? After Pearl warning her too. When she tried to catch the fellow’s eye to apologise, he bit in first.
‘What do you know about it? What’s it to you?’
‘Tom, don’t be rude,’ Pearl interrupted. ‘Mary was just asking.’
‘Well, she doesn’t need to know all our private business.’
‘Tom …’ Pearl soothed. ‘Come on, eat up your tea, all of you. I haven’t spent half the day making one of my famous trifles to have you lot natter all night and leave it go to waste.’
‘Oh, that won’t happen, Aunt,’ said Nate, winking at Mary as if to comfort her. ‘You’ve not tasted anything like Aunty Pearl’s trifle. You’ll have to send me one on my birthday.’
‘The postman might find that a bit distressing.’ Pearl smiled, as if pleased regardless.
Their effort at easy banter did nothing to cool Mary’s burning cheeks or banish the fear she’d made a poor start with her landlady’s other nephew.
The awkwardness of the moment passed in Pearl’s sudden bustle to collect the dinner plates. Mary gulped down her last mouthful, suspecting hers not the only meal removed unfinished. But she couldn’t look at Tom Robbins. Whatever the fellow’s problem, it was hardly fair of him to act so rude.
Only later, the men leaving, Tom jammed on his hat in hallway, mouthing, ‘I’m sorry.’ He held her eye until she nodded his apology accepted.
After the men had said their goodbyes – that cheeky Nathaniel refusing to stumble down the porch step without a promise she’d write him often – Mary followed Pearl into the small, usually cheery kitchen, concerned that Pearl’s pensive mood was her fault too. She worried more when the woman dropped the stack of dinner plates into the sudsy sink with enough clatter to chip the porcelain tub.
‘Sorry, love, it’s just,’ Pearl dropped her voice as if betraying a confidence, ‘it’s breaking Tom’s heart, Nathaniel going off to war without him. It’s always his chest letting the poor man down. They won’t take him at the enlistment because of his asthma. He’s strong as three men without it, but helpless as a kitten in the grip.’
‘Oh, God, what must he think of me, then – asking such a question?’ Mary wrung the tea towel in her hands into knots.
‘You weren’t to know,’ said Pearl. The man’s so sensitive on the subject, a person can’t say a word about it. He was always such a gentle soul, but a Mr Independent wanting to prove himself and too proud. He’s that frustrated they won’t let him enlist. He’s grown a gruffness and a temper.’
‘It’s not your nephew’s fault if the enlistment won’t take him.’ Mary tried to ease Pearl’s upset. ‘Though I suppose he feels bad when the need so great.’ She said the last, thinking of the growing call for conscription. Not like a year ago when they were turning chaps away from the enlistment. With Pearl frowning back at her, she wished she’d held her tongue, fearing her words had been taken as an accusation.
‘Yes. And he’s never let forget it. Some mean bugger posted another white feather in his mailbox last week. Poor man would give an eye to do his bit for King and country. God help him! It worries me stupid one day he might do something rash to force the issue.’ Pearl dropped her voice again, despite it only the two of them there. ‘The last time he tried to enlist he nearly thumped the attesting officer. Him and his, “No exceptions”.’
The following Sunday, a frantic knocking at the front door sent Mary scurrying in answer. Finding Tom Robbins on the porch, leaning on the jamb, a clumsy dressing draped across his forehead, she wondered if the man had gone and done that something rash that had Pearl so worried. The dark stain on the cloth a cause for concern.
‘What the devil have you done to yourself? And why are you coming in the front door?’ Mary glanced back down the hallway, praying Pearl was still out back bringing in the washing.
‘Ssh!’ Tom pushed inside. ‘I was hoping you’d get the door. I can’t let Aunt see me like this, but she’d worry more if I didn’t come to tea. Can you help clean me up a bit? I can’t seem to stop my stupid noggin from bleeding.’
Mary hurried him through the living room and into the kitchen, before ducking to the back door in search of Pearl. From the voices coming from behind the washhouse, her landlady was still talking over the side-fence to Mrs Oliver, checking that woman’s husband was home from the repatriation hospital.
When Mary returned, Tom shrugged off her concern. ‘It’s just a cut. I didn’t see the damned lamppost jump out at me until it was too late.’ He laughed, pulling off his hat, but grimaced when the brim caught on the bandage, tugging it loose.
Mary gasped as blood seeped a wider arc through the gauze.
‘Jings, man! Sit down. And take off your good shirt before you mess it.’ She pulled out one of twin chairs from under the small dropleaf breakfast table before hurrying to the cupboard under the sink, dragging out a tin of dressing cloths and the antiseptic wash.
When she turned back around, Tom was still on his feet, shrugging out of his braces and tugging off his shirt. For a moment, his strong, bare arms took her aback. Funny how a look, a smell, a movement could bring Liam into the room or the street with her. Sometimes it was as simple as a fellow swaggering cocky off the steps of a tram and she’d find herself searching the face. Of course, it was never the one she expected. Or wanted.
Realising Tom Robbins was staring at her questioningly, Mary dropped her eyes in search of a suitable bandage in the tin. Not without first glimpsing the livid bruise on his collarbone and a nasty purplish weal on his shoulder.
A moment later – drawing away the sodden compress – she gasped when the two-inch gash above his eyebrow began to split apart. ‘Sweet Jesus, you need stitching. I’d best fetch Pearl.’
Tom’s hand reached out and gripped her firmly about her wrist; the warning in his voice undermined by a pleading note. ‘No need for hysterics. Or calling Pearl. Just wrap it up tight. I’ll make up a more credible story to tell Aunt.’
‘Your aunt’s not stupid. And neither am I.’ Mary snatched back her hand, smarting at the accusation of hysterics. ‘Your so-called post did a lot of damage. To more than just your head from what I can see. I hope you reported it to the constables.’
‘Stop fussing, will you? You’re worse than Aunt. I got caught in a dust-up with a couple of overeager soldier boys thinking they’re something special in their khaki.’
Mary winced at the bitterness in Tom’s tone. But after what Pearl said about his temper, she couldn’t help but wonder if the ‘overeager’ soldiers were the ones giving a hard time first, despite Tom’s protests that the whole thing no big deal. She’d no chance to ask when he changed the subject.
‘I’m sorry to hear about your husband. Was he on his way to enlist?’
Mary fumbled the bandage. Clearly Tom had been told something of how Liam died, but she’d no clue as to how much of the tale she’d shared with Pearl had been passed on. She i
gnored the question, busying herself instead in wiping away a fresh rivulet of blood trickling over Tom’s eyebrow. She wound a bandage under the soft hair of his fringe and around his head before crossing the kitchen and poking the bloodied evidence of their complicity into the fire box in the range. ‘You can tell Pearl my clumsy efforts make it look worse than it is.’
‘Are you finished then?’ Tom grinned, standing up and shrugging back into his shirt. ‘I’d appreciate it if you don’t say anything to Aunt about, you know – the fighting. She’s got enough to worry about.’
Was it a coincidence then that Tom glanced towards the living room and bedroom beyond where her son was sleeping? Did he resent the pair of them being there? Or was it only concern for his aunt having two extras to cook and clean after?
No matter. She would show him, and everyone else too, she would be no burden on Pearl or anyone. She bit the skin off the side of her nail – so long as she could find a job, quick smart.
That night, in the quiet of her bed, Mary prayed Pearl meant her insistence repeated over weeks that the good woman truly was happy to take over the care of her son – at least during working hours.
‘Who else would take care of the sweet little leprechaun, but his Aunty Pearl?’
Mary smiled into the dark at her and her son’s good fortune and kissed her finger before laying it over Conor’s wee brow, the action bringing a let-down of milk in her breasts. ‘I’m sorry to deprive you, Master Merrilees,’ she whispered into the softness of his ear as he snuffled and wriggled beside her, cuddled up close despite the bed being big as a boat. ‘But there are some sacrifices neither of us are going to like but cannot be helped.’ She reached out her hand and laid it over the soft flannel of her son’s nightshirt in the small of his back to feel the reassuring beats of his heart. ‘We’ll be all right, you and I.’
The next morning, Mary bound her breasts in strips of cloth and bought infant bottles and nipples despite Pearl’s protests that she’d not deny a babe his mother’s milk. No need to take any board from her yet.
‘He’ll grow just as bonny on a bottle, Pearl. We’ll have our pride and pay our way, else we’ll have to go.’
Pearl, the dear, said no more.
Ten days later Mary swallowed the bile of defeat rising in her throat as she trudged down Cubitt Street, scratching out the umpteenth advertisement in The Argus. It’s too soon to give up yet, ninny.
Yes, but it wasn’t going to be long. Unless pennies started raining from heaven.
Every day, bar Sunday, she’d knocked on the doors in the advertisements, chasing situations vacant from Apprentice to General until she was sure her shoulders sagged three inches lower than a week ago. Perhaps more when she recalled the bounce in her step that first day out, Pearl waving her off and wishing her luck. Much the same, she recalled with a guilty flush, as Liam’s sure steps a little over a year ago when he too thought the war would open doors to a job above-ground.
With thousands of men gone to the front, she’d not reckoned on the Government decreeing it not proper for women to take over the jobs of men. What was the big call for women in Australia? Socks! Socks and pyjamas, thank you. Don’t trouble yourself to fill a real job, just sew and knit a bit! It made her wonder if women struggling in the bush to keep sheep alive in the drought, and bringing in a harvest with their menfolk away, knew they ought not to be doing ‘men’s’ work.
‘Perhaps the Australian Government think women weaker at the bottom of the world,’ she’d mused to Pearl that morning, reading aloud from the newspaper how girls in London were being called on to drive ambulances and work in the factories making up the munitions.
She didn’t think it funny really, but hoped her laughter hid the desperation she was sure beginning to show on her face. Much as Pearl was dear, she couldn’t keep them on charity. With the passing of weeks, Mary’s meagre savings were all but gone and since there seemed no-one willing to take her on, with or without her son, images of Maw’s damning face began to rear nightly in her dreams. Images that echoed by day in the shaking heads of foremen and shopkeepers and fine ladies of the house. Wrong as it was to think ill of the dead, sometimes she couldn’t stop the traitorous thought that if Liam had stayed where he was blooming-well supposed to, no harm would’ve come to him. She’d still have a husband and her son a father, and she’d not be fretting now on the need to take the train back to Wonthaggi and Maw.
The thought prickled in her chest. Already, she couldn’t bear the thought of leaving the little house on Egan Street, but it wasn’t the light, airy rooms or cheery kitchen or section of veggie garden handed over solely for her use that pained, but the hugs and smiles from Pearl for no reason at all. Even if the woman in need of them as much as giving them. But Mary wasn’t sure how long either of them could hold on without her getting a job.
All she could do was pray harder and gaze into the sweet face of her son, burbling and gurgling back at her like he believed she was the very best thing in the world, even if no-one else did. His smiles enough to get her up the next day to try again.
There were jobs for a lucky few though and, being Irish by blood, Mary had always fancied herself lucky. She couldn’t know how lucky, shaking hands with Mrs Fletcher – Pearl’s neighbour’s second cousin – the following Sunday on the steps at St Ignatius. She knew it one week later though, skipping out of R. L. Duffy and Son their newest dressmaker’s apprentice. Her starting wage of twelve shillings a week not a fortune, but better than a stomp on her toes and in four years she’d be earning twenty-six shillings a week and practically rich.
Of course it had been a very good bit of luck that Mrs Fletcher happened to be on the Women’s Auxiliary Committee with a certain Mrs Duffy and that Mrs Fletcher not adverse to omitting certain facts from her recommendation. Even luckier that Mary had thought to bring her old school report so she could still be Miss Mary O’Donnell in the workplace. A small lie but necessary with no jobs allowed for married women, or those not wanting to make difficult explanations at Duffy’s.
Twelve shillings a week was enough to pay her and Conor’s board, though Pearl could get more from someone else if she’d a mind. Best of all, Pearl made no judgement and truly appeared to embrace taking care of the babe.
Unlike some in Wonthaggi who Mary could not bear to think about.
JUDAS
AUGUST 1916
Weeks turned into months. News of intense fighting on the Somme and explosions heard all the way to England brought the war into every home and conversation. Casualty lists grew in the newspapers and Pearl scanned the bereavements daily, her face only relaxing on not finding a dreaded familiar. But Mary looked up one morning when Pearl’s voice faltered reading aloud of two local brothers lost, before abandoning The Argus a second day in a row.
‘You’ll be home for tea, won’t you, love?’ Pearl asked, changing the subject.
Mary nodded. ‘Of course. Besides …’ she tweaked the nose of the baby in the woman’s lap, ‘I wouldn’t miss giving this slippery, little merman his bath. Now, would I, Master Merrilees?’
Pearl bounced the child in her arms and thrust him towards his mother. ‘Give your mama a kiss before she’s late for work. You’ll be dismissed if you’re late again. I don’t think Mr Duffy will take playing Who’s got your nose as a good enough excuse for you dragging in after eight. Now, go along. This one’s nose will still be here when you get home.’
Mary flung herself out the front door, but as soon as her feet hit the footpath any reluctance at leaving her son dissolved in her enthusiasm to get to work. Only a few months into her training, she could pin and cut an undershirt along with the best of her fellow dressmaker’s apprentices.
She bit her lip on the guilty thought that life for her was going on better than it perhaps should for a recent widow. But taking the shortcut along Egan Place to Highett Street and glancing at the poor chappy in uniform, shaking a tin outside the Kingston Hotel – his terrible scarred face shadowed blessedly ben
eath his hat – how could she go about feeling sorry for herself?
She sucked in a deep draught of frigid air and strode up the Lennox Street hill, the waft from the tanneries down by the river already strong in the clear morning air. All the way along to Bridge Road, housewives were waving off husbands at the gate, while shopkeepers were setting up in their stores. The door to Gibson’s Bakery stood open, the sweet smell of fresh bread a relief. But Mary wouldn’t trade places with anyone, anywhere on such a blue-sky winter’s day and she said her prayers in time with her footsteps, thanking the Lord for sending Nate and his Aunty Pearl her way.
With Conor settled happily into a routine and her loving her job at Duffy’s, she couldn’t even say she was overly grieving anymore.
Some Saturdays she and the girls from the workroom stepped out to the pictures or to the Paladium, or iceskating at the Glaciarium, chaperoned by Tom Robbins. Pearl was not happy to let her out of the house otherwise. ‘Not with all those eager beaver recruits chasing one last fling before their postings.’
After the first time she could hardly not ask Tom, half the girls at Duffy’s smitten and Genevieve Willets insisting ‘that gorgeous young chappie’ come too. The girl no doubt ready to swoop on him again as soon as he did.
At first it had taken some convincing for Mary to go on the outings at all.
In the early months at Duffy’s when her fellow apprentices tried to gather her into their circle of chums, she’d shaken her head and let them gossip and wonder at her need to get home after work and stay there on the weekends. None had a wee boy, out of their sight and arms all week, to make up to and fuss over. Or a landlady and friend in need of a rest and grateful for company on the weekend, not worrying after some Saturday flit-about.
Nor were they grieving a dead husband and feeling guilty they weren’t grieving enough. Of course, she was sad to think of Liam gone from the world. All his dreams and promise snuffed out. But it was strange how she had to force herself to think of him as her husband. More often she preferred to remember him as her friend.
No Small Shame Page 18