Loving Daughters (10 page)

18

Una returned to the table to stare at the open book and the only sound was the grind of the scissors as she absently cut nothing with them. The noise set Enid's teeth on edge so she slipped away to the kitchen.

How different it looked without him! There was the sweater hanging by the hall mirror, puffed up gently with the shape of his body. She would not pat it flat but leave it to look at with secret pleasure. She went close to it and saw her eyes were bright, and smoothing her eyebrows she thought she might pluck a few stray hairs from them with tweezers Una bought when last in Bega.

Enid saw Una's face come into the mirror too. She was by the kitchen table with the scissors, making their squeaking noise as she cut the air with them.

‘Did you look for the brown paper in the lumber room on the bottom shelf?' Enid said.

‘To the right or left, past the empty preserving jars or before them, beside the tin of flower seeds or next to the dead daisies you saved from the funeral?'

Enid pushed the words away from her by putting more wood on the stove and wondering what he would eat for tea. She could have sent something home with him, if Jack had not dismissed him so curtly.

There was time to work for a while in the garden before starting tea. She took an old woollen jacket from the peg close to Una, now studying her face in the mirror.

‘We're off to look at the cabbages, are we?' Una said. ‘Look hard, there might be something inside one!'

I will turn the other cheek, Enid said to herself going out. He would.

She stirred the earth around the wallflowers and straightened poppies beaten by the rain and pushed clumps of pansies together, smiling tenderly at their black and brown and yellow faces smeared with tears of rain. She would have liked to dry them. She would have liked too to turn up her skirt and work in the freedom of her long woollen bloomers but Una was hovering about behind the kitchen window and there was George bowling home in the sulky. It brought Edwards closer.

Where was he when George met him? George would not think of turning the sulky around and sparing his legs for the last mile. She stabbed the earth with her fork as if it were George.

She finished the poppy bed and went inside, George eating bun and drinking tea at the table, for Violet had not been in a good temper after Jack left and had not produced the customary tea to fuel George for the drive home. Under cover of Small Henry's yelling he whispered in the hall that there was a baby coming at Skinners. Her reaction had been disappointing.

‘I wish she'd ladle out three or four in the one go to make it worthwhile!' she said. ‘We live on that cream cheque from Halloween, and now there's an end to it!'

She saw George's unhappy face and was angry enough to want to make it unhappier. ‘I may not bother about the hospital, after all! Why should I work round the clock with groaning women and screaming kids to keep every seat in the house warm for his lazy arse!

‘In which case I'll be sending that back to Honeysuckle too!' With snapping eyes she tossed her head towards Small Henry's door. His yelling dropped to a pathetic bleat.

The pale sunlight outside enhanced the misery on George's face.

He put out a hand and touched Violet's wrist.

‘You have your hospital,' George said. ‘You'll be good at it.'

‘I've never lost a case, you know, George!' (George knew.) ‘Up and down the coast there isn't a better nurse!'

George was certain there wasn't. Flying home in the sulky he was sorry for everyone in the world except Violet and himself. She would have her hospital and he would help her get it. He raised his whip in superior fashion to the straggling figure of Edwards making his way home. A poor and sorry lot was his!

George thought the lot of Enid and Una poor too as he watched them at work, Enid rolling pastry for jam tart for tea and Una faced with a pile of vegetables to peel and chop. He would liven things up for them.

‘There's a new one coming at Skinners, you know,' George said.

‘Oh, pooh!' said Una. ‘Who would bother counting heads there!' George was downcast for no more than a moment.

‘You'll never guess where it could be born,' George said.

‘In Albert Lane Private Hospital!' Una said, giving a cabbage a hefty whack.

Enid felt a stirring at her thighs and groin. She must have gardened in the one position too long.

George's face fell and he had to turn to the fire so that he could blame that for his burning neck and ears.

‘You'll have to do better than that, George, to liven up our dreary day!' Una said.

So she thought the day was dreary even though he came! I know now what they mean by a singing heart! said Enid silently to her singing heart.

George's was hurt and heavy. It was not his and Violet's secret after all.

‘There's only Ned left to tell!' Una said. ‘He'll take to the bush and never return!' She slapped a saucepan heavily on the table and flung handfuls of carrots in.

‘Not so rough there!' Enid said. She treats her vegetables like children, Una thought, pressing a half-cabbage into another saucepan.

‘She needs help to get it going,' George said, running both hands down over his pockets, indicating this was where the help would come from.

George loves Violet! Una thought, as if she were scratching the words on the smooth trunk of a gum tree. George is fond of Violet, Enid thought with a hot rush of love and pity.

‘Hoopers are leaving, I suppose you know,' George said.

They didn't! How did he?

‘Jack came to Violet's while I was there and told her,' George said, feeling he was ahead at last.

Enid took her tarts to the oven, opening it with her foot. Jack would have known Edwards and she were alone in the house. That accounted for Jack's hostile manner towards Edwards. She saw herself between the two, each desperate for her. Oh, poor Una! Poor, poor Una!

‘I know!' Una cried, suddenly sitting on a chair and throwing both legs out in front of her. The blushing Enid felt Una did know.

‘Let Ned go and live at Halloween and Violet will have him out of her way!'

George reared a delighted head. Yes, yes! A great idea, that!

Enid, building the stove fire lest it cool off for her pastry, fixed blazing eyes on Una.

‘That's no way to talk!' she cried. ‘Violet's job is to care for Ned, not discard him!' She's talking like a wife, Una thought. Just like a wife. George had been roused to leave for the dairy but Una on her feet called to him. ‘Put a saddle on Horse for me, George!' His halted back said ‘What for?' as did Enid's raised eyebrows.

‘I'm riding to Violet's! I need to borrow a dress of Small Henry's to cut a pattern by.' She saw George's back had turned sulky.

‘We don't have to ask permission of you, George, every time we go to Violet's!' Una was now in front of the hall mirror doing her hair, brushing at her skirt and putting on an old riding jacket hanging there. She slapped a pocket to check that a comb was there, and calling out that she would be back in time to set the table for tea, raced out the back door.

Well, let her go, Enid thought, the peace of the kitchen bringing him back. He loves me, I know. Nothing can take him from me. Nothing and no one.

19

Una sent Horse flying along the road. She pulled him up sharp just outside Wyndham, her eyes softening towards the roof of the rectory, and Horse finding a patch of short, sweet grass under a clematis bush which the frost had missed. He tossed an inquiring head when she slipped her feet out of the stirrups.

‘Make the most of your cropping, for short and sweet it will be!' Una said with hairpins between her teeth. She shook her hair down over her shoulders, combed it rapidly, then rolled it into a bun lying like a glistening coiled snake on her white neck. She smoothed the sides over her ears and caught up the reins and with her feet back in the stirrups rubbed the toes of her shoes on Horse's belly and gave him some muttered directions.

‘Walk, if you don't mind. Make a noise with your hoofs too, if that's not asking too much!'

He was at the rectory woodheap. Una was not sure it was he at first, for she had never seen him without a black coat. He had on a grey woollen jumper and was searching for lengths of wood that did not require cutting. She suspected his axe needed sharpening and he had nothing to do the job.

Horse, preparing for a walk to Violet's, was reined in sharply and sent flying up an embankment, through a patch of dead ferns which stuck into his knees. The next thing he had his neck over the rectory fence and Edwards, wood in arms, was coming towards them. Horse raised his neck, curved into a question mark at what came next. Una loosened the reins and patted his neck. Edwards put his free arm over the fence and stroked under Horse's mane.

There were the two of them, one patting one side of his neck and the other at work on the other side. Una jumped from the saddle and tied him swiftly to a post.

‘He's had two big rides today. Poor old dear! Let him crop here for a while!'

Edwards became aware of the wood and embarrassed about it. Una looked up the Wyndham road.

‘I'll walk to Violet's from here,' she said. ‘I'll go through the back gate and surprise her!'

That meant passing through the rectory, or going around it. Edwards and Una walked towards his gate, one on either side of the fence. They both turned their faces when Horse shook his head and snorted. He was stuck among the roots of a wattle tree coming into bloom, with the pollen tickling his nostrils and the branches jabbing his rear. There wasn't a blade of grass in sight. Cropping indeed!

Edwards shifted the wood to the arm farthest from Una. Suddenly she stopped and picked up a branch on her way. Edwards murmured an apology that it was not he removing it. But surprisingly Una dragged the branch after her. ‘We'll break it into small pieces and it will get your fire going!' she said.

‘Let me!' Edwards said at the rectory gate, and taking the branch from her they went side by side in the direction of the backdoor.

‘You take the big wood in and I'll snap this into starting wood,' she said. Starting wood! He had a lot to learn. He liked his teacher though.

Inside, Edwards as usual found his stove choked with ashes. He made a space for some crumpled paper and when he turned round, Una was there with an armful of her wood that looked eager to be alight.

‘Let me,' she said, dropping her load, and in a second had emptied the ash pan in the back yard and had it back in its place.

‘If you had a garden you could put your ashes on it,' she said.

She stood back while he built the fire. I will die of shame if it doesn't burn, he thought, remembering his past failures. Una went to the window and looked out on his barren yard. ‘I intend asking about starting a garden,' he said. ‘You have such a fine one at Honeysuckle.' (She would work in it too.)

The fire was catching. He would keep a stock of dry brambles on hand in future, he thought, putting the iron lids on the stove and watching with pleasure the orange glow in the cracks. But it would not be the same gathering them alone. He joined her at the window.

‘A path to the what-you-call-it, don't you think?' she said. He blushed at the sight of the half-open lavatory door, and wanted to rush out and close it.

‘Could I get vines to grow over it, do you think?' he said.

‘Grow over what?' said Una, looking about the yard and keeping her innocent expression from him. She felt his smile and saw briefly a stretch of red-brown jaw.

‘Vines grow over ours,' she said gravely. They had one too! His did not look so bad now.

Una turned a curious but still merry face towards the door leading to the other rooms. Yes, he should take her to the living room. It was improper having her here in the kitchen. In spite of mooning about the house all the morning before the weather cleared, he had not made his bed and it would be seen through the half-open bedroom door. There was also a good chance of a view of the chamber under the bed not emptied either. Edwards disposed of his slops only on the days Mrs Watts was due to come.

He went ahead of Una and pulled the bedroom door to and cleared a chair of books and writing pad, unaware thankfully of what she saw. She sat folding her hands prettily at her waist and he went and straightened the wrinkled rug before the fireplace, leaning there and reminding himself nervously of Jack.

‘I wonder how our fire's going?' Una said.

Our fire!

They saw it was going immediately they got to the kitchen, for it was fluttering and sparking and the big kettle was there gasping for breath. He realized he'd done it again. He seemed always to have full kettles on cold stoves and empty kettles on a hot one. He filled it, painfully aware now that he should be offering her tea. But he had no cake until Mrs Watts came tomorrow. He saw himself hacking at stale bread and trying to spread cold butter that curled into lumps around the knife and made holes in the bread. He could not rely on the kettle boiling either. In his experience they never hurried themselves when needed.

‘I must go,' Una said, and he felt relief in his pain. Letting her out the front door he discovered, with a fine shivering inside him, that he was closer to her than he had ever been. There was a tiny mark at the corner of her lips, formed there by that quirking smile, and fine creases on her brow from her frown. The little frown was at work now. She was not pleased about going! He walked with her to Horse, neither speaking, and he had a job keeping up with her rapid step.

When she climbed on Horse she looked at the sky. ‘The rain's all gone, I think,' she said, and plunging down the embankment cantered off.

She had gone a quarter of a mile when she pulled Horse up so suddenly he turned himself right round, facing the opposite way with his mouth jammed against his chest. He lowered his backside in alarm, then needed to straighten up immediately for she dug her heels into him and sent him towards Wyndham.

‘You crazy fool of a horse!' she cried. ‘You dumb, stupid, crazy thing! You knew I was going to Violet's! You turned your stupid head and went the wrong way! He will see me! The noise of your stupid, clumsy hoofs will bring him running. You are no help, you know that?'

Edwards did hear, but was too disconsolate to go to his window, although he was fast falling into the habit of other villagers and shamelessly flinging open windows and doors whenever there was the sound of feet, wheels or motor engines.

He was in the kitchen, staring down at his fire. It had gone out again.