For Love Alone (42 page)

“I've got to run,” said Teresa. “Look, here's a letter for you”, and she put in her father's place the letter that Kitty had given her to hand to him. She ran for the boat, though she heard a long frantic whistle behind her. She looked over her shoulder as she ran. Lance was not coming, he would miss the boat. That was one blessing. She joined her sister. Kitty, with her valise, sat on the engineer's seat, looking round. Flushes of happiness came over her, anyone could see it. She was like a runaway bride.

“I'll see you in town sometimes,” said Teresa, “when you can get away. Let me know your days off. I'll take you to tea, I get more than you.”

“Oh, I'll be able to take you to tea.” Kitty laughed, and looked slyly at her. She gleamed, shivered alternately, as she thought of Bayliss or of her father.

“Bayliss will be at work when you get there.”

“I know, but I have the key. I'll just straighten up and he's coming home for dinner tonight. He wants Irish stew, he's very fond of it, so I'm making it for the first night,” said Kitty, looking eagerly in front of her.

Teresa had a sharp pang of jealousy. By tomorrow, she would be washing, sweeping, ironing, cooking for the man she loved, and
he had given her a home. For a burning moment, she wondered if she, too, ought not to become a housekeeper. There were plenty of advertisements in the papers, where middle-aged men, doctors, lawyers, all kinds of respectable, gentlemanly men, widowers, bachelors, asked for housekeepers. It seemed such a quiet, decent job; at the same time a woman was doing for a man, she was not alone in her life. A man came home, she had something to live for. If she starched things properly, polished the tables and oilcloths, brasses, silver, blued the sheets nicely, looked after his clothes, he praised her, talked about her to his friends. “I have a wonderful housekeeper, Miss Teresa Hawkins.” It was a kind, decent life, and one had a man at once, without the struggle, just by going to an agency. In the end he might marry her and they would go together into the dark, high, over-polished, starch-smelling bedroom, cold man and wife; not love but honourable marriage. Clever Kitty, to have thought out all this, thought Teresa, looking at her; and I am so clever—I never saw this solution! Clever Teresa! Yes, I am very clever. I am killing myself for a man who might possibly, if it suits him, if he is still there, if he is not too much put off by me, kiss me.

But her destiny was cast in bronze. By the time she reached the Quay, she knew she could not go and wash dishes hopelessly for some man, waiting for the day when he asked her to marry him. Better the rough and rolling sea than this convent with one nun. She no longer understood how she could have been tempted. On the way to work she went and told the woman that she could not take the room.

“I'll have to keep the five shillings deposit.”

“I know,” said Teresa. “That's all right. I'm sorry I let you down.” The woman smiled involuntarily. “I'll give you back two shillings,” she said. “You probably need it as much as I do,” and she fetched her shabby black purse from a lace-covered table in the hall and handed Teresa two worn shillings. The small round coins felt grateful in Teresa's hand; she would bank two shillings more at the end of the week. She smiled at the woman, thanked her profusely.

To be hungry was her life and a necessary condition of getting to Jonathan; therefore she did not mind it at all, and it made life more interesting than it had been for years. She began to love the streets through which she passed and which were her life, she began to notice avidly shops, stands, and men and women lifting things up to their mouths. This evening, coming home, she thought only satirically of the scene that awaited her; perhaps they had already fetched Kitty home, in any case. But had Kitty been fool enough to tell where she was going? She felt a hot flash as it occurred to her that Kitty, wildly, might have told that she, too, was going—to England, the irrevocable journey. Surely not? Surely not? It worried her through the trip and spoiled her game.

She did not really care about her beggared dress, since everyone at work was kind to her. Erskine protected her and even “the Old Man”, Remark, put up with her peculiarities and had a sympathy for her, remembering his poverty. She took two or three days off every few weeks, when she was not really ill but pretended to be, in order to rest. These days of sick leave she spent at home in the back yard, lying on two chairs with her hair covered against the sun and wind, her body exposed to the warm light. For economy's sake, they never lighted fires in the old house, and lately they had substituted beans and spaghetti for meat meals, margarine for butter and the like. For four winters, whatever the cold, she had worn summer dresses and no coat, and she often arrived home wet through, but pretended that she felt nothing and could never take cold. She had a deep cough which shook her whole frame and did not leave her even in summer. If she had not taken off one or two days of sick leave occasionally, she would not have got through. This trick of hers was allowed at the factory and she was grateful to them for allowing such a patent fraud. For a long time, she had not noticed the cold weather nor her cough, which, she said, was not really a cough, but a perpetual hunger which had slipped out of consciousness for several years, lately coming back, so that cheap sweets, dirty jars of pineapple and coconut juice, fruits in windows, crawling with cockroaches, and
even sticky, bright cakes attracted her fearfully. Several times, on her way to the boat, she came to herself, to find that she had ceased to walk and was lounging dreamily against some window looking vacantly at one of these objects. While she looked and dreamed, she ceased to feel the hunger; it was as if she was masticating. Then she would smile at herself, hitch herself away from the window-pane, start walking with a rush, and a few blocks lower down the permanent hunger would begin blowing through her like a draught. Once or twice, lately, she had stopped and bought a sweet drink, unable to resist a wave of pleasure and gluttony which overwhelmed her as she drank; afterwards too, she experienced no shame, but would rub her hands secretly, and would walk close to other such places, to enjoy the warm rich smell. She never went to shops where people sat down, she felt more inconspicuous standing at a street bar. Later, the sight of her purse a few pence poorer shamed her as if she had embezzled. But two or three days later, she would fall again, and with the same low pleasure would buy another sweet drink. Recently, she had begun to reason with herself, saying: “If I fall again and again like this, I must need the food, it would be more sensible to live near the factory and buy myself a lemonade every two or three days.” Her father would say she could not now take a room near the factory, when Kitty was away. What else could she do? If she could find one of the factory girls to live with, somewhere near. But she knew none of the factory girls. She knew only the office staff, and as most of the factory girls were very young, lively girls, she was afraid of them. Sometimes, in a white glare of anger, she would wish for Erskine. He pretended to like her, men succoured women, but he would not even give her twopence to go down to the Quay in a tram. (He did not know she walked to the Quay.) He would not even give her a lunch. He would not even share a room with her.

This same evening, as she crossed the park in the heat of the setting sun which she was facing, she looked round to see if there was not somewhere to sit in the middle, some hummock, a stone, but there was nothing. The heat, confusion, irritation poured into
her. She thought: “Much he cares for me, to let me stagger home like this, to others he pretends he likes me, but I don't know about it, I don't feel it, he's a mere doll.” At the same time, she was absurdly carrying a bouquet of fresh garden flowers, immense, colourful, an old English garden, in her arm, which Erskine had brought her that day. She put the bouquet down on the grass and sat beside it. How heavy it was! She only got the bouquet to make it harder for her, to make her more grotesque, staggering home with it. It was only her illness that made her wish for him. She was nearing the end, but there were moments now when she was afraid that illness would get to her before the end. She was not now walking only to save money. She was outstripping illness and failure. Wherever she walked, something of bluish-white with long stride came after her a pace away, bowed forward, not malignant, only natural, but that bluish-white thing of her own height was Exhaustion itself. Why did not Erskine, if he loved her, give her a glass of milk before she left work, so that she could walk down to the Quay? These mad complaints battering round her temples, the staggering landscape, her fear of falling, accompanied her with her lunch box, her purse, and her bouquet, while she walked in her rubber-soled shoes, crossed over the parks. Once this week, she had been forced to take the tram from the station. It was like the lemonade. What a mad excessive delirious luxury to sit in the tram and let it carry her along the roads! She had not a movement to make. She merely sat there, smiling to herself, looking with rapture at the people who rode in the tram. If they looked well and happy, she understood how they felt! If they looked sad and peaked, she wanted to nudge them and say: “Rejoice, you are riding! Ride, ride, people can't ride every day! I myself know someone for example—but never mind that, just enjoy yourselves!” In no time at all she was at the Quay.

The tram ride only cost twopence, so that it might seem folly to wear oneself out in this way, but she was afraid to give in on any count and in some way the endless walking, walking, meant England. She was walking her way to England. In three years to the
day, less Sunday and Christmas Day and one or two other holidays, she would have walked 2,772 miles and by the time she sailed she would have walked just 3,000 miles. But on the other hand these three thousand miles represented seventeen pounds, three shillings, and fourpence and perhaps a bit more, saved to take abroad. Now as she would not have more than a few weeks' money, about twenty pounds, when she landed in England, and the Australian pound was going down in relation to the English pound—and she considered twenty pounds a very generous margin—she considered the wear and tear of the body and beauty as nothing. With beauty and health she could not get one wave nearer England, but even though her bones poked through and she was carried aboard, she was welcome, if she paid her fare; she could sail the seas like any free soul, from Ulysses to the latest skipper of a sixteen-footer rounding the world. She thought of death, indeed, but only as an obstacle that might prevent her sailing and must be circumvented.

She looked at the ground as she walked and considered things, cast-off shoes that might have served her, a crust of bread; often a piece of green paper fluttered like a banknote. She was astonished at the Salvation Army singing in the street with so many people starving—how could they expect converts? She was surprised that people were so honest—Mark Foy's had their bazaar open day and evening, people could steal some of these gewgaws; for people were beginning to seem to her strange things, creatures like parrots, that liked sweetmeats and baubles. For herself she kept away from all these, they were the barbarian tastes of headless, heartless monkeys. She never looked at the pretty things that go into trousseaux, though the time had now come for her to buy her travelling wardrobe. She bought yards of rough Chinese silk, cotton, lace and cut out underwear for a cold climate, nothing for a marriage, but solid, plain things that would last for years if she was unlucky and he rejected her. All this she began to make up on a sewing-machine. In turn, this sewing-machine became for her the dream of her life. At the office, she would see it, standing towards the back street, the sunlight
falling across it through the old lace curtains, its cracked veneer, and the virgin cloth with straight selvedge lying across it. When she got home, carrying her hat and bag in her hand, she would go and stand by it, smoothing down whatever had been left upon it. Now she always had work on it. This picture began to draw her homewards, she dreamed about the skilful gathering and running of the stuff as she marched along. How beautiful if she had piles of exquisite things in silk and lace, fine things, not strong and sensible as she had now! How would she cut the silk, put in the lace? She devised as she walked along. If she had linen and linen thread sufficient, she would make such and such a tablecloth or bedspread; couldn't one learn to imitate Brussels, Irish rose lace, merely by looking? She felt sure she could. She would take with her a blanket that really belonged to her, a lace mantelpiece runner. She would make six lawn handkerchiefs with drawn thread work and Johnny's initial, on the boat. She would embroider something for him—what?—in which their history would be pathetically referred to—she would show him on a cloth, as a priest of learning in a chasuble, green, gold, and white. He could use the cloth later on for his household when he had one and she might be dead. What matter if she got nothing out of it? To love is to give for ever, without stint, and not to ask for the slightest thing. Such is woman's love. There are women who do not do that, but when they become mothers, it is the same thing, they give lovingly and in suffering and without requital.

All the time, she looked about. There were plenty of places where she could curl up unseen at night, once dusk had fallen. She could be stirring early in the morning. Not the Domain, because the walk was too long from the Domain to her factory.

Her breed could stand any hardship. Her own grandmother, Eileen, had come out on a sailing-ship with only one pair of boots to her name, and had picked up a husband in a but with an earthen floor on the goldfields, the whole thing done on her savings as a servant, in the old days. No teachers' salaries and highly paid stenographers then!

Between buildings in this hot weather were places cool and protected where no one went, surely, where a person could sleep all night. A coat, blanket or something else would be necessary.