Secrets & Lies
Page 23
Edward Baker had a concerned look on his face when he walked through the front door of the narrow shop front on Burke Street on a hot and humid, summer’s morning. It was eight am and the dressmaking repairs and alterations business owned by the Rainaldi sisters had just opened its doors for business. Carla and Rosa were out the back making coffee and the deep, rich aroma of Italian ground coffee beans wafted through to the front of the shop where I stood at the counter, preparing for the day’s business ahead. His eyes were wide and and he was handsome; in his early forties, he was tall and slim and I was immediately struck by the quality of his suit.
The pair of pinstriped trousers which he pulled out from a paper bag he had tucked under his arm, had a small tear below the knee. He asked if I could mend the trousers as a matter of urgency as he needed them for a special occasion that afternoon. His demeanour relaxed when I said I would attend to it immediately. He turned and smiled at me as he left the shop, and smiled at me again when he returned later that afternoon.
Edward began dropping by the shop on a regular basis after that day to have other clothing mended or altered. I had my suspicions that he bought suits or shirts a size too large just so he could get me to alter them for him. After a few months, with a friendship firmly formed, he had summoned enough courage to ask me out to the Saturday matinee at the local picture theatre. Edward lived with his mother and his maiden aunt and was respectful of women.
I had a great deal of esteem and affection for Edward Baker and enjoyed his attentions and his company, but it was never a great love affair. His mother nagged him constantly to find a wife, to settle down and provide her with grandchildren. She didn’t consider me suitable, so he succumbed to her demands and moved on with his life and I moved on with mine. A month later, I discovered I was pregnant with his child.
Mother and father tossed me out of home when they noticed my thickening waist. They guessed my secret long before I had thought of a way of telling them and in the years that followed when I looked back to that time, I consoled myself with the thought that their decision to evict me in such a cruel, heartless manner was done on impulse. We were a Catholic family living in a predominately Catholic neighbourhood and I don’t know how my parents explained my sudden departure and what they said to the neighbours when I never returned.
I went to live in Dora Valentine’s boarding house, in a working class suburb in the inner city. The rent was within my means as I was always careful with my money right from the start and had a good head for figures. I still had my job with the Italian sisters and the shop was an easy walk from the boarding house, so I settled comfortably into my new life with Dora Valentine.
The boarding house was in a narrow, treeless street. All the houses in the neighbourhood were similar and the shop fronts, like the houses, were narrow, crammed and butted hard up against one another. The front windows were flanked by tall and narrow shutters which were painted a pleasant shade of pea green. The terrace didn't have a verandah and the front door opened directly onto the street. The wash house and the fuel stoves were out the back.
Dora didn't have children, there had been no time in her life for that, or at least, that is what she told me, so it wasn’t long before I became Dora’s family, and she mine.
Dora Valentine was a practical, hard working woman who was blessed with a heart of gold. She wore her thick dark hair, peppered with grey streaks, in a tight bun at the back of her neck and being a solid woman, her strong arms and straight back, gave the impression that she was someone who was not to be fooled with. Her eyes were bright and blue.
Dora pooled her life savings, converted the terrace into five bed sitters and as luck would have it, my son, Billy and I came to occupy two of the rooms. The main room, the smaller of the two, was a sitting room and the larger which served as our bedroom, was connected to it by a narrow opening. The sitting room was adorned with ornamental ceiling roses and was fourteen feet high. It was painted a soft shade of buttercup yellow, offset by a feature wall covered in wallpaper which was mottled with tiny sprays of white and yellow flowers. The wallpaper ran from the skirting boards to the picture rail and was neatly hung. The rooms were bright and cheerful, especially when the morning sun hit the window panes, throwing in rays of soft, warm light.
As the owner of the boarding house, Dora was popular and well respected in our neighbourhood. Her hands were enormous and she wore a smile as wide as a cricket pitch. Dora Valentine was the only person to know the truth about Billy’s father, the handsome soldier who sat silently on my mantelpiece in the sitting room. I had decided to call him Douglas, Douglas Ernest Phillips. Dora often wondered where my lies would lead and what effect it would have on Billy when he eventually discovered the truth, as she knew he would one day. Fortunately, Dora never lived to witness the consequences of my deception and to see that things didn’t quite turn out the way I had expected. I should have realised that the lies and deceit I peddled with the aid of Isabelle Dwyer, would one day come back to haunt not only her but Billy and me as well.
I had just had my thirtieth birthday when I walked back through the door of the Rainaldi sisters’ dressmaking shop with a baby in my arms and asked for my old job back. They never asked why I left so abruptly without adequate explanation, but it became clear to them when I introduced them to Billy. The sisters were kind-hearted women and assumed that Billy was Edward’s son. They cast no judgement on me and as Edward had married and moved away from the area, we never mentioned his name again. With no children of their own, their tears fell and I watched on silently as Carla’s nose reddened and the coral lipstick which was applied so generously, smudged against her upper lip as she blew her nose into a delicate lace handkerchief. Rosa, being the more practical of the two, walked over to the till and handed me a five pound note, took Billy from my arms and ordered me to start work immediately.