Pearl handed her a vase off the shelf and Mary smiled, grateful. Of course, she’d keep the stupid flowers. It was a sweet thought and she’d have told Liam so if he’d given them to her instead of taking himself off in a snit. Or maybe the flowers said he wasn’t waiting for the promise of the new year to play happy families.
She sighed. Wasn’t a happy family all she’d ever wanted?
‘Come on, Conor. Maw will read you a story about a faraway land with tigers and bears and a cheeky little scamp like you running wild in the jungle.’
She sat him on her knee and took the book out from her pocket.
Pearl settled herself beside them, sipping an afternoon sherry. The clock chimed five and, holding her small son in her lap, Mary couldn’t think of anywhere she’d rather be right at that moment.
‘It was seven o’clock of a very warm evening in the Seeonee Hills when Father Wolf woke up from his day’s rest …’
FINAL STRAW
NEW YEAR’S DAY 1918
‘Oh, my God, Liam, how could you? Pearl’s in there crying in her bed and saying she wants us out of her house by the end of the week. You could have broken anything. Anything in the whole damn place excepting that. She thinks you’ve mozzed her Charlie and now he’s going to die.’
Mary didn’t care if it were Liam or one of his drunken mates who’d knocked the picture frame off the wall, crashing into the thing so drunk it jumped off its hook. All that mattered was Pearl, heart as broken as the frame she refused to let go of, not even for Mary to see if it could be fixed.
She could hardly bear to look at Liam slouched over the kitchen table, his clothes mussed and dirty. A bleeding eye and his once shiny curls manky for want of a wash, stinking of booze and sweat. Bad enough he didn’t care enough about her reputation, making a show and fighting on the street in the middle of the day, but what about Pearl? She had to go on living in Egan Street long after the Merrilees moved on. And Liam near naked in his singlet. She’d not forgive him for that. Or his mates wrestling like a pack of louts, shouting and drinking straight out of beer bottles in front of the whole neighbourhood. She’d tried to shoo them off, not back inside the damn house to stampede down the hallway like a herd of drunken rhinoceroses hell-bent on racing one another to unstopper the next bottle.
How could the five of them empty so many in the short time she and Pearl had gone down the street to Mrs Phillips’ for a cup of tea? Only an hour to cheer the poor woman, distraught at her husband being put back in Mont Park.
The louts must have been ten parts sozzled to start and brought around enough booze to hammer them ten times more – like Liam had been warned not to even think about doing. Bloody Kevin Wilks couldn’t hold a puppy, let alone his beer. And Priestley. She couldn’t believe Liam had let him back after her warning. Especially when he knew damn well from the grocer, the man only enlisted to get out of going to prison. She could hazard a guess as to why too.
Crouched on the kitchen floor, picking up fragments of broken glass, she stared up at Liam, waiting on his answer. She might have spoken to the ducks hanging askew on the hallway wall for all the response she got. ‘Drunken eejit,’ she muttered, but shimmied further along the floor at a sudden shuffle of his boots. Her heart thumped savage in her chest to think what life had come to when she’d call her own husband such a thing to his face? Mutter it to his shoes, more like. He’d heard.
‘Oh God, Liam, no!’ she cried, picking up a tiny silver spoon from between a gap in the boards. Only then did she recognise the fine shards of glass she’d been picking off the floor and dropping into a dented cigarette tin. Her hands shook so badly at the realisation that the last wafer-thin sliver of crystal sliced up under her fingernail, biting into the tender quick. Her cry of pain turned fast to attack. ‘Jesus, Liam, this was Pearl’s mother’s crystal cruet set. She treasured it. We can’t never replace it, not if we had a thousand pounds.’ Her hands flew to her mouth at a creak in the hallway lest Pearl overhear and come out and get all upset again.
‘I can’t even ask Pearl to let us stay now,’ she hissed. ‘Look at the damage you and your fool mates have done. What were you thinking, Liam? No, but you don’t think, do you? Not about anything, or anyone but yourself.’
‘Mawwww.’
The sudden wanny sight of Conor trembling in the doorway, his cheeks raining tears and head soaked with sweat, saw her quickly on her feet and sucking the blood from her finger. ‘How proud you must be for your son to see you in such a state. Are you proud, Liam?’ She rounded on him again.
Liam ignored her, and the child, puffing on his fag, head hung in his hands.
In that second, she saw the room through her son’s eyes – the litter of empty beer bottles, along with the playing cards and cigarette ash scattered over the floor like a bunch of drunks had been boozing down the pub. ‘Get back to bed now and don’t come out again.’ She didn’t mean to shout at the laddie. She just wanted him out of the room, to not see his father’s dirty habits strewn over the bleeding floor. But the stubborn minx stood there bawling louder.
With no mind to think straight, she sent him off with a stinging smack on the back of his leg. He ran away down the hall whimpering like she’d turned into one of them monster mothers from Canaan sacrificing him to the heathen god Moloch.
‘See what you made me do, Liam? I’m ashamed for the both of us. First thing in the morning we’ll have to go the post office to send a telegram to your da, tell him we’re coming home on the Friday train. He’ll have to take us in, cause we’ve no money and no place else to go. And no matter how long it takes, we’ll pay Pearl back every cent for her repairs and compensation. And you’ll apologise to her before we leave. I won’t have no more of your nonsense, or you either, if you ever let me down again.’
Her breath panted in short angry gasps. Trying to calm herself, she pushed back her hair and smoothed it down, hoping she didn’t sound half the shrew bleating in her ears. More afraid her son might remember the she-devil she’d turned into in her anger.
Liam used the edge of the table to haul himself to his feet. His face and lips set grim while he picked up his beer bottle and pushed back his chair. She wondered if an apology coming when he stopped in front her. He stared down into her eyes and raised the bottle in a mock-salute, before he drained the dregs and licked his lips. With a scowl, he lobbed it over her head.
She cringed waiting on the inevitable crash in the sink behind her, probably cracking the tub and costing them more money. Dumb with shock, she couldn’t even open her mouth to roar when he staggered out to the hallway.
At the slam of their bedroom door, she fell to her knees sobbing, ‘Go to blazes, you manky Scot.’ She cried all the harder, Conor wailing in his cot and Liam shouting at him through the wall.
‘Shuddup, you bugger, or I’ll give you what for.’
In the ensuing silence, Mary noticed the once soothing night noises of the house had fled. The clock ticked on the mantle in the living room, same as ever, but the muffled sobs from Pearl in the front bedroom she’d heard only once before.
It pained her to know that she’d be no more comfort to Pearl this night than the night they’d news of Nate’s death. At that moment, she hated Liam. Hated him like a leech out of the Clyde.
THE PRODIGAL SON
WONTHAGGI – JANUARY 1918
Heat haze shimmered across the paddocks, lending their homecoming a surreal air. Mary held her hand out the train window, feeling the patter of soot on her open palms and fingers. She tried to catch some to show Conor but her hand came back empty, though she knew that when she washed the laddie’s hair the grit would be all through it. She held the wriggler tight out the window to watch the breakers rolling onto the beach at Kilcunda, but had to haul the wee brat back when he squirmed and threatened to roll down the outside of the train and into the saltbush lining the track. The wheels click-clacked over the trestle bridge telling her Wonthaggi was near and her heart jolted knowing Maw and Da were waiting
at the end of her journey. Waiting would be right, but not at the station. She’d no doubt have to seek permission to call, being the errant daughter returned.
She sighed then for Pearl – for all the hugs given for no reason, just the woman showing her care. And for their last hug, words dry in Mary’s mouth for her shame and sorrow at leaving. Pearl’s forgiveness shown in her tight embrace. Mary closed her eyes on the memory of Tom Robbins helping carry their bags to the station, before shaking her hand and nodding her off like some nameless porter. His eyes tight and unreadable, he’d hugged the laddie and bid him look after his mother while sobs swamped her throat.
Liam spoke few words to her on the train other than to spit accusations.
‘You couldn’t stand to see me content with me mates in Melbourne, could you? We weren’t hurting no-one. Only Priestley got carried away. We could have dealt with him. I don’t know why you always have to force me to your will, woman. You can never just let me be.’
Mary would not answer nor give him the satisfaction of hearing tears in her voice. The way he put it sounded selfish, meaner than the truth. Only she did want him to change … for his own good and for hers and Conor’s too. She wasn’t asking him to chop off his drinking arm, only slow it down.
No words made it to her tongue; they festered in her head instead. Be a bloody crybaby. I’m not your maw. Wipe your own arse in future and then get off it and get yourself a job. The Repat says you’re able.
She pulled her nose back off the window glass after gazing out at the near empty Wonthaggi railway platform. Empty of anyone she knew. ‘Not quite killing the fatted calf for you either, eh, Mr Prodigal Son?’ she muttered, unable to hold back the snipe, while she lugged her son and bags and baskets along the corridor and got her own self out the door and down onto the platform.
No matter she had a small extra load of her own to carry. She hadn’t even told Liam yet.
Joe met them coming into the road, running the last few feet, stopping to peer into his son’s face, and determine him real, before clutching him to his breast, a father’s tears damp on his lashes. His gaze locked onto Mary’s over Liam’s shoulder though, suspicion etched his features, as if to say, ‘What’s the bugger done now?’
Mary dropped her eyes, not wanting to break a father’s heart so soon. The truth would out soon enough, not by any word from her but through Liam being no more than himself.
Joe carried her bag and parcels the rest of the way to Hagelthorn Street, the Government cottage newly painted blue with a cream picket fence. Roses bloomed in the small front garden, suggesting the cheeriness of the second Mrs Merrilees.
Joe helped set their worldly goods down on the floor in the living room, now done out with cherry-red curtains and a gaudy chintz sofa.
Mary searched the room. Finding no sign of Julia Merrilees’ precious wean chair, she breathed a sigh and closed her mind to the room the last time she’d seen it.
Joe’s new wife, Catherine, nodded and held out her hand to greet Liam. A moment later it hung limp in Mary’s. An unspoken line drawn.
Catherine surveyed Conor as if sizing up his potential. Clearly she found him as wanting as his mother. Contempt burned on the woman’s face, along with her school teacher’s glare: I’m not putting up with any nonsense from either of you and I don’t really want you here anyway.
Mary gave her son’s hand a reassuring squeeze to let him know she understood why he might be hanging back.
‘I’ll put the kettle on,’ Catherine said, before she waved Mary pick up her valise and follow her towards the back door.
There was no giving over of the good front room this time and Mary followed along behind, wondering if they were to be shoved outside in a tent. Well, she’d got on fine living in one before, but Liam’s chest would not stand up to any cold night air.
She needn’t have worried – the June just gone, Joe had purchased his Government cottage and as soon as the deposit paid, he’d tacked on a lean-to off the back door for Samuel, as he told them, standing tall as two men with pride.
It were the lad scowling hardest at them across the table, having been put back in a room with his sister and forced to give over his own to them.
Mary tried to reassure him with a smile. ‘We won’t put you out for long, Samuel. Just ’til Liam gets work and we find a place of our own.’
She was grateful for the cup of tea Jane placed before her, especially when the lad’s huffy shrug belittled any such hope.
Darling Jane had hugged her hard, shining bonny eyes on her as if their homecoming a joy instead of a disgrace. She passed currant cakes and topped up Mary’s teacup on every sip, restoring pieces chipped from Mary’s heart during her years of absence.
Liam’s sister had grown into a handsome young woman keen on books and learning, taking after Mary’s own heart. A kindred-spirit and friend, Mary hoped.
Catherine – she learned through Jane’s aside, when her stepmother out of the room – had insisted Jane leave school the day she turned fourteen and go into a dressmaking apprenticeship, in spite of Catherine’s own education and training. It seemed Jane had had no say in the matter and no support from her father, so eager had Catherine been for her to start bringing home the wages and stop beholding to them, as she’d put it.
Jane confided to Mary later her burning wish to study school teaching and said she’d find a way yet, regardless of what her sour duck of a stepmother insisted.
It reminded Mary of her own quiet dreams, long ago. She wished better for Jane, but plastered a smile on her face and held her head high. She’d not let that Catherine, nor Maw, nor anybody have reason to find fault, nor look down their noses at her this time. The babe on its way deserved to come into a happy home. Lord knows, they couldn’t offer it much else.
She could only pray that being back under his father’s roof would cheer Liam. That he’d be well again soon. And not drink so much. And get a job. Any job making enough shillings to rent a room of their own. Maybe with the new wean coming, they might yet become a real family.
‘Give me that child.’
Mary had scarcely handed Conor over to Maw than she had to blink in surprise at the fat tears sliding down her mother’s cheeks.
‘What’s wrong, Maw?’ she cried in alarm, thinking Maw must be dying.
‘Get away with you. Nothin’s the matter. Old eyes weep at a change in the wind, is all. Jesus, Mary and Joseph, girl, what are you feeding this child? Fat as butter he is and weighs even more.’ Maw bounced the boy on her knees and hugged him to her fiercely – until Conor’s wee mouth began to scrunch in protest. Only then did Maw let him wriggle down to run outside and chase the chooks around the backyard.
‘Cup of tea for you, lass?’
Mary smiled at Da, saddened by his grizzled hair gone hoary and his once deep blue eyes faded to grey. ‘Yes, Da. Lovely. How are you, Da?’ It grieved her to watch him shuffle to the stove, his clothes hanging off him as if he’d stolen them from a man three sizes larger. By her reckoning he’d aged ten years in two.
Any enquiries after his health stalled when halfway across the kitchen he doubled over in a sudden paroxysm of coughing, dragging out his handkerchief to catch an inky expectoration. His convulsions worse than Liam’s.
‘Whatever’s the matter, Da? You sound at death’s door.’
‘Don’t go putting ideas in your fool father’s head,’ Maw bit in. ‘Haven’t you enough of your own business to worry about with that husband of yours out of work still?’
Mary clenched her teeth on the retort, why was her husband’s employment, or the lack, her fault? What was she supposed to do when Liam not fit to walk out of the house some days? With his boozing, he was about as reliable as a bear watching over a beehive. She’d worried herself sick on the train that Joe might try to push him down the mine again, but from the furrowing on Joe’s brow at the sound of Liam coughing and vomiting up his supper the night of their homecoming, even Joe recognised Liam couldn’t go down th
e pit with his lung troubles.
Liam’s nightmares seemed to be getting worse too. She’d long learned waking him when he was rising to them not a wise move and had more than once worn a new bruise for her pains. Not that any malice lay behind them; they were merely accidental fall-out from his thrashing. Many a night she finished wrapped in a rug in a chair. She caught glimpses of his horror in his anguished mutters, but never again had he confided in her the terrors behind them like he had the night in Egan Street when he’d told her of his unfortunate friend.
It made her defensive when Joe rode him with enquiries on where he’d called to that day. Had he spoken to this one or that one? Did he see the advert for the job in Malloy’s timber yard in the Sentinel ?
She didn’t know how Liam was supposed to work, his leg dragging and paining, and his cough set to put him in a box. Nor did she know how to ease the suffering in his mind, yet suffering she knew he was. No amount of nerve tonic eased the problem and his bloody drinking didn’t help.
The doctors at the Repatriation Clinic gave him powders at his monthly visit, and pushed him to get a job, riling his temper enough without Maw starting.
Would being back in Wonthaggi help or make things worse? Please, Lord, let it make the difference.
Mary tried not to let her concern show on her face and turned instead to gaze around the Ivor Street kitchen, pleased for Maw – a brand new Hoosier cabinet on casters in the corner. The wood workstation buffed to a high polish and she didn’t miss Maw checking that she was checking it out. ‘Lovely, Maw.’ But even in the mid-afternoon the room rested in semi-darkness, the one small window not catching the light. Electricity had not yet reached North Wonthaggi and God forbid anyone heading the O’Donnell house would waste a candle or light the kerosene lamp to save their eyesight in the middle of the day.
No Small Shame Page 26