Thirty minutes later, she tripped through the factory doors of R.L. Duffy’s on Cubitt Street. She bade Mr Jobling, the porter, good morning, trying not to giggle at his agitated, ‘Good day, Miss O’Donnell,’ while his eyes travelled to the large clock on the wall chiming eight.
Inside the workroom most of the girls and seamstresses were already at their sewing machines and cutting tables. The hum of the treadles filling the air.
All except Mary’s fellow apprentice and friend, Lizzie Baumann. The girl oddly packing up her workbench and tugging on her street coat, tears splashing off the end of her nose onto a bolt of linen spread out on the adjoining table. The droplets spreading in darkening circles.
As Lizzie made to move past her, Mary touched the girl’s arm. ‘Lizzie, you’re not leaving?’
Lizzie only shook her head and tucked her purse handle over her elbow. ‘Goodbye, Mary. I’ll miss you. Goodbye, girls. Good luck to you all,’ she waved on a sob and pushed past Mary, running back down the aisle past the rows of apprentice workstations and on past the cutting tables and machinists. Her shoes clacked on the wooden walkway, echoing around the vast room. One by one, the whir of sewing machines slowed as the girl ran sobbing out of the workroom.
Mary looked up to the glassed-in office overlooking the factory floor and Mr Duffy gazing back down, lips pursed and anger in his eyes. Only he wasn’t looking to Lizzie’s departing back but across at Genevieve Willets, her fat backside pressed up close to the gas radiator, rather than at her workbench.
Mary grimaced. Genevieve, a year ahead in her apprenticeship, was rostered as her work partner. Mary had to sew on buttons to match the other girl’s ragged buttonholes and restitch her badly finished hemlines on any shirts they both had a claim to. At first, she’d thought Genevieve the loveliest, kindest girl bringing her treats. An apple one day, a juicy pear another. That was until she recognised the girl a bone-lazy idler only buying her silence.
‘What are you looking at?’ Genevieve snapped, catching Mary staring.
Mary ducked her head back to her work and tried to hold her scissors steady, cutting around the pins and paper pattern, while the hulking girl rushed at her.
‘It’s not my fault Baumann’s a Fritz.’
‘Is that why Lizzie’s going?’ said Mary, ignoring the no chatter in worktime rule.
‘Yeah. My dad says we shouldn’t have to work with no Germans. Lizzie should be put in one of them internment camps. We’re at war, don’t you know?’
Self-conscious at the scene the girl was making and noticing Mr Duffy had disappeared from view upstairs, Mary peeped around at the other apprentices, all keeping their heads down. The senior workers held their tongues too, unlike them as it was to avoid a bit of gossip. But Mary noticed Rose Phipps, the head seamstress, jerk her head upward to the manager’s office and frown a warning.
How could any of them say much, Rose being Genevieve’s cousin? Her viper tongue was quick to judge and hand as swift to rip out a seam not right. Only not Genevieve’s – Mary righting those more often than not.
Mary dropped her head and hissed out the side of her mouth, ‘Lizzie’s not German. She’s more right to be here than me. She was born here.’
Genevieve snorted. ‘No wonder they call you Irish stupid. Baumann’s as German as the Kaiser. Her father was born and raised in Bavaria. That’s Germany, don’t you know? Besides, her name’s not Lizzie, it’s Liselotte. My nana says so and she’s lived next door to the Baumann family since before Lizzie was born.’ Genevieve finished with a so there pout and stared around the workroom, daring anyone to argue. ‘Well, what are you all looking at? I only did my patriotic duty. Thanks to them murdering Huns, my brother is lying in a hospital bed unable to see the blue of the sky or even walk in the gardens across the bloody road from him.’ Genevieve glowered, not even noticing no-one was meeting her eyes, all intent on their work again – the thrum of sewing machines silencing Mr Duffy’s approach.
Out the corner of her eye, Mary could see the man’s face darken. The distress in his eyes hinted that Lizzie’s heritage had been news to him too. Either that or he’d chosen not to acknowledge it.
‘Kindly gather your things and come with me, please, Miss Willets?’
Not a pair of scissors sheared while he bustled the girl towards the exit, ordering loud enough for everyone to take warning. ‘Go home, Miss Willets. We’ll see you back here tomorrow. And if you find any more Germans you want to report, don’t bother to come back again.’
JUST FRIENDS
SEPTEMBER 1916
Much as Mary had been sad at Lizzie leaving, she accepted it the way of war. Same as had gone on in Wonthaggi. Like Pearl said, it wasn’t personal, only a matter of security.
She couldn’t accept Genevieve Willets’ part in Lizzie leaving so easily.
Of course, they were lucky in the southern hemisphere. If one ignored the newsprint and hummed over the top of the newsboys shouting the headlines outside the railway stations, life went on pretty much as usual, though everyone took a cut in wages, a cut that hurt, what with the price of everything going up in equal measure.
War was far from Mary’s mind one Saturday afternoon as she fussed over two suits laid out on the bed. She wasn’t sure why when she was only going to a matinee with a few of the girls from Duffy’s, along with Tom. ‘It’s just a few friends going on a jaunt into the city, is all,’ she told herself, not quite explaining away her indecision – the navy gabardine or the brown speck.
Not that she had much in the way of choice, both sets made from drab wartime cloth. The lack of colour in the fabric did nothing for her pale complexion. She gazed into the mirror over the dressing table and poked her tongue out at the pallid face staring back. Pinched and plain. The freckles of two summers ago gone as if they’d never been, and her cheeks wan without the sharp pinching Pearl had given them on her first day at Duffy’s.
‘Oh, get away, fool thoughts,’ Mary told the guilty flush creeping up her neck. ‘I told you, it’s just an outing.’
An hour later, walking along Swanston Street, up from the Flinders Street Station with the gang from Duffy’s, Mary could enjoy none of the bustle of pedestrians or buggies, motor cars and trams in the road, seeing Genevieve’s arm tucked into Tom’s. The girl’s overloud voice echoing off the shop fronts.
‘If I’d been asked, of course, I’d have preferred to see Miss Petticoats, starring that lovely Alice Brady, but,’ Genevieve squeezed Tom’s arm, snuggling close to him as if she already his intimate acquaintance, ‘since you were so kind as to go ahead and buy our tickets to The Fireman, I’m sure we’re all happy to go and laugh at Mr Chaplin. Aren’t we, girls?’ she called over her shoulder, before simpering again to Tom. ‘I don’t think Mr Chaplin is as funny as he looks. You won’t grow one of those horrid moustaches, will you, Mr Robbins? We girls aren’t over fond of them. They tickle our noses when … Well, I’m sure you know when.’ She tittered.
Mary sighed at the girl’s brashness, but was more intent on studying the stiffness in Tom’s gait and trying to guess his likely thoughts. Had he noticed the girl’s skirt was ‘shamelessly short’, as Pearl would say? Of course, her own skirts were shorter than before the war too, but …
She couldn’t help but chuckle as the poor chap extracted his arm out of Genevieve’s a third time, pointing to a buggy driver trying to argue his right of way with a tram. The two drivers waving their fists and trying to shout the other out of the way. No sooner had the little group passed the stalemate than Genevieve’s gloved hand tucked back into the crook of Tom’s elbow.
‘My, what strong arms you have, Mr Robbins. And such big muscles. The AIF will be happy to have them when you enlist, I’m sure.’
Mary could scarcely draw breath for fear that the vein beginning to pulse on Tom’s neck might burst open. The next second, he wrenched out of Genevieve’s grip. The girl’s dropped jaw near brought a cheer to Mary’s lips, only the pain behind Tom’s grimace held her tongue. S
he kept her eyes cast down, counting the cobblestones along the gutter rather than see him upset.
All of a sudden, a strong hand grabbed up hers and dragged her along. Tom’s voice accusing loudly, ‘You’re lagging behind, Miss O’Donnell. You don’t want to make us miss the first reel, do you?’ Before she could retort, his warm breath hissed in her ear, ‘If you bring that leech of a girl again, I’ll throw myself under the wheels of a motor car rather than spend another evening with her tongue in my ear.’
Mary couldn’t help but laugh out loud, until she glanced ahead and caught the fury in Genevieve’s eyes. ‘Oh, Lord, I’m in for it come Monday. I’ll never hear the end of my meanness.’
‘Don’t you dare let go of my hand,’ Tom warned, ‘I’ll not be responsible for what might spit out of my mouth next.’
Mary nodded and Tom kept a firm grip. Even after they halted ready to cross the road into Bourke Street, she was sure she could not tug loose if she tried. Not that she wanted to; the warmth of Tom’s touch a comfort. A reminder of what she’d dreamed of once. Going to the pictures with Liam. Strolling hand-in-hand. In those musings there’d been no Genevieve. Or Duffy’s. No small son back at Pearl’s.
No war.
How much had changed since those days of dreams? She glanced up to Tom winking at her. The gleam in his eyes, a sign he was not deaf to Genevieve muttering beside them about ‘certain pushy girls’. And, ‘Why on earth would he be interested in her?’
Tom’s fingers squeezed his comraderie, but … surely he held her hand too tight – the way sudden tingles tickled up in her belly. Her cheeks flushed overly warm.
Mary tugged her sweaty hand out of his grip.
She peered along the street through the Saturday crowds, pretending to look out for the Melba Theatre, flapping her hands as if to shoo off a fly while really she fanned her roasting cheeks.
She’d only held the brat’s hand so he could avoid Genevieve’s advances – no reason to come over as silly as that one acted. Glancing back a moment later, Tom was still grinning at her stupid.
Lord, was she that obvious? How could she be, when she’d not even thought? Not once considered? And Tom a Prod as well.
You daydream like you’re living in a moving picture. Da’s right, you’ve no brains under that hair at all.
THE SHIRKER
DECEMBER 1916
With a production change to manufacturing uniforms at Duffy’s demanding overtime, Mary delayed a visit to Wonthaggi, writing Maw in the hope she and Da would understand her not bringing their grandson home for Christmas. As much as she missed both them and her sisters, war demanded sacrifices, though not from enough mothers and fathers for Billy Hughes’ liking – his conscription referendum defeated in the October.
Pearl told her often how she and Conor were ‘God sent’ and Mary delighted in the closeness between herself and her landlady; her friend and her son.
News that Tom Robbins had sold his first story was cause for celebration; a sweet relief from the sombre mood and worsening war talk. When Tom proposed an outing with Mary and the girls from Duffy’s to celebrate, Pearl insisted Mary go and leave the laddie home with her.
The following Saturday, kissing the babe’s wee fingers, Mary laughed when he pressed them into her mouth, wanting to continue their game. ‘Watch out, my laddie, I’ll gobble them up. I’m extra hungry this afternoon.’
‘Shouldn’t you be getting ready?’ Pearl asked as the clock chimed three.
‘Thank you, Pearl. Yes. I’d better go and get dressed.’
‘Before you do, can I talk to you a minute, love?’
‘Of course, Pearl, but Tom will be here soon.’
‘That’s why I want to speak to you, and plain too.’
Mary frowned, it unlike Pearl to come over so serious except where family or the war concerned. ‘What is it, Pearl?’
‘When I encouraged this outing, I didn’t realise it would be just you and Tom going on your own.’
‘Oh, Pearl, why ever not?’ Mary laughed, glancing up from her son quizzically. ‘The other girls all have plans.’
‘Really, Mary? Have you not noticed how my nephew looks at you of late?’
‘Get away. I’m sure I don’t know what you mean.’ Mary nuzzled her reddening face into her laughing son’s neck. ‘Give Mama a kiss, angel.’
Pearl lifted the babe out of her arms then held Mary’s gaze in stern reproof.
‘That flush on your face says I’ve good reason to ask. Haven’t you had enough grief for one short lifetime? And Tom and his family the same?’ Pearl raised her eyebrows in question. ‘You understand what I’m saying, don’t you, love? I told you the situation. This battle over conscription should show you the divide in Australia too between the Catholics and the Protestants. They can’t even agree over the war. Let alone anything else.’
Mary fidgeted under the older woman’s scrutiny, nodding. ‘Tom and me are mates. Just ask him. He tells everyone the same. We’re just two friends going on a jaunt, is all.’
Why, then, could she not look Pearl in the eye when she said it, but tickled her son’s toes dangling in front of her instead? Why did a knot tighten in her chest and a tingle run through her belly at the memory of Tom’s hand held warm in her own? What’s wrong with you, ninny? Was she as bad as Genevieve going weak at the knees for any boy – or man – winking her way? She flushed hotter recalling a certain rug and how quickly that had come about …
But never again. Any future kissing would be done only in a marriage bed or with just such an intention clear and stated and not before.
Oh, leave off. You sound sanctimonious as Maw.
Wasn’t it nice for a girl to have a little attention, even if it going nowhere? With so much misery in the world, was it a sin to have any fun? She couldn’t help being lonely sometimes, despite all her blessings. Was it so very wrong to forget sometimes she’d ever been married? Or that Tom was Orange?
She stood up and kissed her son on the forehead, before patting Pearl’s arm. ‘It’s all right, Pearl. I understand. Tom is sweet, is all.’
And if the man wanted to visit Luna Park one more time before they closed the gates on wartime frivolity, she was leaping to go with him. She’d never been to an amusement park before and couldn’t wait to see the high-wire artist walk across the cable strung across the park with no net to catch him should he fall.
Weren’t no harm in that. And they’d hardly be alone.
‘Last time I rode the River Caves ride, I was a man floating on a sea of hope, instead of mere dirty water.’ Tom patted his heart and shrugged ruefully at Mary, as if in need of her earnest sympathy.
‘I was sitting alongside Miss Caroline Potts, my neighbour’s cousin. You might laugh to know I pinned my entire romantic future on a nod of that pretty sixteen-year-old head. Only I never counted on the girl’s fickle nature.’
Crowded in the small wooden boat of the ride, Mary shifted sideways, setting the craft to rocking, surprised at her twinge of pique at the mention of some Caroline person. Not that she had reason to be jealous. As she’d told Pearl, she and Tom were mates. Just like she and Liam had been back in Bothwellhaugh. Was that to be her destiny – to be a mate, a friend, a confidant? What mysterious veil cloaked any feminine charms she might have and made the boys, and now it seemed the men too, blind to her in any way romantic?
Perhaps her pique was only because they were riding what was supposed to be the most romantic ride in the Park. Only it was not the dreamy boat ride through exotic scenes of the world that Pearl had primed her to expect. Not at all.
Instead, patriotic banners and freshly painted war scenes covered over the promised vista of penguins in Antarctica and the mysterious wonders of oriental Japan.
Tom seemed not to notice her silence and went on with his telling.
‘I was determined to win a kiss from the fair Miss Potts before that day’s end, not knowing the devil himself rode in the vessel ahead of us. Just as I was about to steal that k
iss, he filled the cavern with his venomous wind. A smell so foul you’ve never smelt the like, leaving no doubt the size of the plate of baked beans Lucifer had been munching over luncheon.’
Mary couldn’t help laughing.
Tom clapped his hand over his heart. ‘Don’t mock me. I was crushed. My boyish confidence destroyed by the shrivel of that young lady’s pug little nose. Even after the femme fatale in the boat ahead slapped the dandy beside her in an attempt to escape him and his malodorous scent, Caroline refused to believe it wasn’t me trying to poison her by making a smell so foul. And after I’d spent five shillings, the savings of a lifetime, on tea and cakes and mouth-watering ices to win her heart and the reward of one sweet kiss.’
‘Serves you right,’ laughed Mary, suddenly aware of the tang of his shaving stick and his warm breath blowing on her face. ‘If you’d connived to kiss me like that, I’d have slapped you myself.’ The words weren’t out of her mouth before his closeness and intention dawned. His face so near, she could see the tiny bristles above his lip missed from his morning shave. A sudden tingle of pleasure rippled in her belly at the image of those lips closing over her own.
Oh no, you don’t. She jerked away. Her vow of earlier that afternoon warring with her traitorous body, along with her promise to Pearl. She folded her arms to hide her mortification, feigning interest in a poster calling for folks to buy war bonds and support the troops.
In that fleeting second she caught the injured flicker in Tom’s eyes – as if she were judging him and found him wanting.
Her cheeks came over hotter. ‘Oh, look.’ She leaned over the front of the boat. ‘Do you think there’s any fish down there?’
The little craft cruised around the next bend before she picked up on her fellow sailor’s silence. Well, if he had any romantic intentions towards her at all, they couldn’t have been real if he could lose interest so fast. She turned to find he wasn’t even looking at her but staring dead ahead, his face pained, eyes locked on a billboard blaring with letters a foot high.
No Small Shame Page 19